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Category / National
August 30, 2019

ACT EAST: An Indian Odyssey in the South China Sea

East Asia has been a major foreign policy consideration for India in the 21st century. India has held its ‘Look East policy’ for almost three decades, and still strives to do so—with its updated ‘Act East policy’. These policy derivatives were structured to counter China’s growing regional prowess in the Indo-Pacific region and to restrict Beijing in East Asia.

‘Act East’ was a head-to-head approach to thwart China by adding woes to its strategic concerns in East Asia. Among the many issues, the South China Sea dispute has become a key issue. South China Sea, a region ravaged by ‘invalid’ Chinese occupation, gave space for countries like India to put China on the backfoot in its own backyard.

India’s significance in the South China Sea is twofold; economic and strategic. In economic terms, 55 per cent of India’s total trade passes through the region; Trade outlook has been another major factor dictating India’s strategic interests in the region.

Defense, International, National, National Seurity, Politics
By K A Dhananjay
August 28, 2019

“Find me one leader from Kerala who has made 10% of the effort I made to oppose Modi”: Shashi Tharoor

Thiruvananthapuram MP Shashi Tharoor has been in the eye of a storm following his tweet: “praising Prime Minister Narendra Modi whenever he says or does the right thing” and refusing to budge from that position ever since. Tharoor has come in for scathing criticism from Congress leaders from Kerala for his position, with K Muraleedharan even suggesting that Tharoor quit the party and join the BJP. The Kerala Pradesh Congress Committee (KPCC) President Mullappally Ramachandran dubbed Tharoor an “opportunist” and sought the latter’s explanation in a sharply-worded letter.

The Kochi Post has accessed Tharoor’s reply to the KPCC Chief where he goes on to argue how he has been consistent in his stand on the matter and how he has been working hard and taking on the government in the Lok Sabha and outside—more than any of his critics. On Mullappally’s point about raising the matter at a party forum, Tharoor argues how he was merely reacting to comments on social media and that he has always been a loyal Congressman. Read here the full text of Tharoor’s letter to the KPCC Chief:

Respected KPCC President, dear Mullappally-ji:

Daily, Kerala, National, Politics
By The Kochi Post Team
August 25, 2019

Obituary: The Artful Mr. Jaitley

In the passing away of Arun Jaitley, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has lost an incomparable leader. As the Hindutva party’s moderate face, Jaitley played a vital role in making the “Brahmin-Bania party” respectable among the Indian upper middle class and the urban elite.

In fact, Jaitley’s unparalleled skill to put across the most ludicrous arguments with aplomb was an art in itself. Jaitley could be trusted to give a spin to any setback. With a straight face, he would rattle off seemingly rational arguments to make a virtue out of the indefensible.

In his crucial role as the Information and Broadcasting (I&B) Minister from 2014-2016, (apart from being a full-time finance minister and part-time defense minister), Jaitley had the press do pretty much his bidding. In fact, a senior editor of a prominent daily once told me how they would get memos after certain stories were published and, how he had to instruct his reporters to hedge vital information in their stories—only those who read between the lines and others who knew the policy reporters personally could decipher it.

National, Obituary, Politics
By Anand Kochukudy
August 24, 2019

The Rise and Fall of Palaniappan Chidambaram

It might not be the end of the political career of Palaniappan Chidambaram. Consensus is that the case against him is weak and hence he is unlikely to be convicted even in this ‘Modi-fied’ era.

But the look-out notice, arrest and detention could all be said to have severely dented the image of the former Home Minister who doesn’t walk as much as strut. Since Chidambaram is perched on the ‘wrong’ side of the political line, his prospects in the immediate future seem not all that pleasant.

All the same a talent-starved Congress will do all it can to bail him out. Chidambaram is not exactly a grass-roots politician, not very popular even in his native Sivaganga in southern Tamil Nadu, a backwater with little to boast of for its association with a high-flying leader. He represented the constituency in the Lok Sabha for many years and was a central minister too, but he never bothered to nurse the region. His electoral victories could be largely attributed to the clout of alliance partners.

National, Politics, Profile
By T N Gopalan
August 24, 2019

Balkanising the Idea of India: NRC in Assam and siege in Kashmir

While the entire country and its media are busy dissecting the legality of the abrogation of Article 370 in Kashmir, another part of India is being ripped apart on the basis of ancestry and citizenship troubles. Actually, if one looks at it, Kashmir and National Register of Citizens (NRC) in Assam lie at the two extreme ends of the ‘Idea of India’, both in territorial and metaphorical terms, where that idea is being mutilated everyday.

While the Kashmiris have been asking for their right to self-determination to be respected in accordance with the historical commitments made to them, the process of NRC has exposed the decades’ old faultlines of ethnicity and religion, wherein people living in different parts of Assam for over generations, including those born in India, are being stripped off their citizenship rights, designated as ‘foreigners’, and dragged to Foreigners Tribunal for years.

In this context, the question to be asked is—what does ‘nation’ mean, and who is a ‘citizen’ of this country? When India unconstitutionally annexed Kashmir by abrogating Article 370 of the Constitution on 5th August, 2019, and sought to impose its ‘nationhood’ on millions of Kashmiris through a total  communication blackout for over two weeks, does that make all Kashmiris part of India?

Law, National, Politics, Society
By Amritananda Chakravorty
August 23, 2019

Kashmir: A Hindutva Love Story

Is this love, is this love, is this love that I am feeling? –Bob Marley.

The love-bombing of Kashmiri Muslims began within minutes of Prime Minister Modi announcing the scrapping of Article 370 of the Indian Constitution, which deprived Jammu and Kashmir (J&K) of its much-maligned, though by now largely fictional, autonomy. 30,000 additional troops had moved in, apart from restrictions on mobility and the imposition of a total communication blackout, as J&K was converted into an open-air jail overnight.

The Prime Minister himself, along with cheerleading news anchors, embedded journalists and social media influencers all took up the narrative that this unconstitutional act was an act of love for Kashmiris, especially its Muslim population.

National, Opinion, People, Politics, Satire, Society
By Subir Sinha
August 21, 2019

The Annexation of Kashmir

Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s dramatic decision to abrogate the special status of Jammu and Kashmir enshrined in Article 370 of the Indian Constitution seems to have taken the world by surprise. It is an extension of the strategy adopted by Narendra Modi in his statecraft, where the dominant factor dictating his policies is its impact on the Hindutva constituency, who openly root for India to adopt a majoritarian character.

Since 5 August 2019, the situation Kashmir Valley, which has been on a lockdown, is tense. While the Bharatiya Janata Party’s Hindutva backers are rejoicing over the decision, many others are justifying it by arguing that Article 370 had not been able to bring peace in the Valley for seven decades, and how this decision could bring about a change. This argument is problematic, as nowhere in the world has a country brought sustainable peace in a region bedeviled by separatism by taking away whatever limited autonomy that the region enjoyed.

This sort of arbitrary centralization has only two outcomes—a violent insurrection leading to the independence of the territory or brutal state repression resulting in massive human rights violation of the rebelling population. As regional geostrategic political environment dictates such outcomes, the first possibility appears bleak in the case of Kashmir, at least at this point of time. Thus, the second outcome is most likely.

National, Opinion, Politics
By Ashok Swain
August 21, 2019

Behind Modi Government’s Activity Overdrive

The Narendra Modi-led National Democratic Alliance (NDA) government has gone into an activity (and legislation) overdrive ever since its re-election. Jammu & Kashmir (J&K) has been reorganized, and its special status withdrawn, triple talaq has been criminalized, amendments have been made to the Right to Information Act (RTI) and the Unlawful Activities Prevention Act (UAPA), a position of Chief of Defense Staff (CDS) has been announced—also, there is a concerted push towards closing the Ram Janmbhoomi-Babri Masjid case.

More is on the anvil: Rollout of the National Register of Citizens (NRC) across the country; and, going by the prime minister’s Independence Day address, some action on the population control front. Defense Minister Rajnath Singh has signaled that India’s long standing no first use (NSU) nuclear policy could be reviewed.

Almost all these moves and proposals have sparked huge debates. In fact, some of them have been on the table for years and remained un-acted upon, fearing either disruption of established arrangements and balances of power. It is fashionable to single out the Congress party, the party of governance for the longest time, for inertia, but Modi’s own party and the NDA’s largest constituent, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), too chose to park its core issues till an opportune moment came.

National, Opinion, Politics
By Manish Dubey
August 20, 2019

The Lynching Hour: When Hell itself Breathes Out

Shirley Jackson’s The Lottery, first published by The New Yorker on June 26, 1948 describes almost clinically the dehumanized mob behavior while a lynching happens. Though I read the short story decades ago, the horror of it has been tattooed permanently somewhere on my mind, so much so that every time I view a video of an honorable mob of gau rakshaks lynching someone for eating beef or smuggling cows—a few seconds into it—my mind veers to that short story. It’s perhaps my way of trying to comprehend the beast.

Set in an all-white, small town North America, the story unfolds around an annual event called the lottery which happens in the village square on June 27. The children come first, their pockets bulging with stones and they collect more into a heap. The men and women follow, adding up to around 300 of them.

It’s quite a democratic process, the rules are read out and everyone takes a fair chance. “There was a great deal of fussing to be done before Mr. Summers declared the lottery open. There were the lists to make up–of heads of families, heads of households in each family, members of each household in each family. There was the proper swearing-in of Mr. Summers by the postmaster, as the official of the lottery.”

Crime, Features, National, Politics, Religion, Society
By Minu Ittyipe
August 17, 2019

RTI Amendment: A Fundamental Blow to a Fundamental Right

Few things imperil representative democracy as gravely as irreverence for the mandate that sanctions it. ‘Transparency’ is a common phrase associated with a functioning democracy; opacity in Government functioning is accepted anathema. So how did the Right to Information (Amendment) Bill, 2019, survive scrutiny? And why does it pose a threat to democracy?

The ‘right to know’ has a chequered history in the context of India, post-independence, and is not without its share of bloodshed, even in the recent past—a bleak indicator of the potency of the disclosure of information  in an inherently imbalanced power dynamic. The Supreme Court had held that citizens have a “right to know” as early as 1975, and recognized the ‘right to information’ as a fundamental right implicit in the right to freedom of speech and expression under Article 19 (1) (a).

However, a substantial push for an effective RTI regime is traced back to Devdoongri in Rajasthan and the Mazdoor Kisan Shakti Sanghatan (MKSS) in the 1990s, where peasants and landless workers in rural areas were often cheated of their complete wages, and were left remediless for lack of information to confront the administration with. Thereafter, hitherto isolated movements in various parts of the country transformed into one consolidated national movement and eventually culminated to give rise to The Right to Information Act, 2005.

Corruption, Law, National, Politics, RTI
By Gitanjali Balakrishnan
August 14, 2019

The Law as a Deterrent to Mob Lynching

In recent years, there has been an alarming spike in mob lynching incidents across the country. Most of the violence is directed against minority communities, creating a sense of insecurity and fear among them. In the backdrop of violence, hatred and bigotry, do we need to revisit our laws? Is there a need for a cohesive, clearly-defined law against lynching?

Cow vigilante violence involving mob attacks in the name of protecting cows targeting has risen since 2014. Most states in India have banned cattle slaughter. Taking the law into their own hands, these cow vigilante groups, claiming to protect cattle, have been responsible for several lynching deaths. Acts like former Union Minister of State Jayant Sinha’s garlanding of the Ramgarh lynching case accused seems to have emboldened and encouraged them.

According to a Human Rights Watch report, more than 100 cow vigilante attacks occurred in India in the last three years; “44 Indians, 36 of them Muslims, were killed and 280 injured” in these attacks, adds the report.

Crime, Features, Law, National, Politics
By Manisha Jain
August 13, 2019

Rahul Gandhi needs a creative agenda for Wayanad

This Bakrid, the people of Wayanad had a guest among them, whose own life and destiny appears to be inextricably interwoven with theirs in an unusual way. For one, Rahul Gandhi, being the scion of the Nehru-Gandhi dynasty that overshadowed the destiny of India for much of the seven decades after its independence, was never expected to run for parliament from this remote tip of the vast Indian subcontinent.

Though Rahul Gandhi was rejected by his family’s traditional pocket borough of Amethi, Wayanad wholeheartedly accepted him, offering the greatest of winning margins ever enjoyed by any candidate in the Lok Sabha elections in the state. This week’s visit to Wayanad is the second one for Gandhi after the May elections, preceded by a brief thanksgiving tour immediately after his victory.

But this time, the circumstances have changed, and Gandhi returns to a people who are desperately fighting a battle for survival. Wayanad has been totally devastated—the floods and natural disasters that hit the state for the second year running, has hit Rahul Gandhi’s constituency the hardest. Whole villages have been wiped out and thousands of people have been rendered homeless.

National, Opinion, Politics
By N P Chekkutty
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