More than Make in India, Jaitley Needs to Focus on Farm in India

By Devinder Sharma on 24/02/2016 •

http://thewire.in/

The agricultural sector has been neglected when in fact it has the potential to reboot the economy. Arun Jaitley’s focus should therefore be on revitalising agriculture. Budget 2016 provides the opportunity to do this.

We are in a moment when the global economy shows no signs of revival; Russia and Japan are faced with recession, and emerging economies like Brazil and South Africa are in dire straits. There is no silver lining visible as far as domestic industrial growth is concerned. At such a time, all eyes are on Union finance minister Arun Jaitley to see how he plans to sustain economic growth that eventually leads to job-led growth.
Growth without jobs is meaningless. For the past 12 years, despite its rate being high, India’s growth has been largely jobless, with only 15 million jobs created during the 10 years of the UPA regime. With employment per factory declining steeply over the years, the chances for a revival seem difficult. This is indicative from the data published by the Department of Industrial Policy and Promotion (DIPP). Investment proposals received by DIPP for new projects to be set up in 2014-15 showed a possibility of creating a maximum of 4.11 lakh jobs.
Arun Jaitley’s agenda revolves around pushing reforms in order to lift growth and create jobs. But what is not being realised is that agriculture alone – the sector that has been neglected all these years – has the potential to create massive gainful employment, build domestic demand and thereby revitalise the sluggish economy. Whether we like it or not, the only pathway to reboot the economy passes through agriculture.
This assumes importance given the fact that 153 million youth in the age bracket of 15-29 were looking for work in 2015-16. With only a fraction of that number of jobs available, and knowing that new projects in FY ’15 employed only half the number of workers compared to new projects a few years ago, creating ample and suitable employment opportunities remains a Herculean task. Considering that the young people expected to enter the job market by 2020 is likely to swell to 156 million, more of the same therefore is not the answer.
Budget 2016: a chance to break the shackles of the past
The potential of ‘growth economics’ to create jobs has reached saturation. The growing protests, often accompanied by violence – by Jats in Haryana, UP, Delhi, Rajasthan; Patidars in Gujarat; Marathas in Maharashtra; Lingayats in Karnataka – seeking job quotas is clearly indicative of the failure of the trickle-down theory. It also reflects the continuing neglect of agriculture that has turned farming into a loss making enterprise. Farm incomes are now at the lowest level, thereby forcing the huge farm workforce to abandon agriculture in search of menial jobs in the cities.
This trend has to be reversed. There is no other alternative.
As per Census 2011, 52 per cent of the country’s workforce is engaged in agriculture. In other words, the agricultural sector is India’s biggest employer. But over the past few decades, agriculture has been systematically starved of financial resources, and continuing neglect and apathy has turned farming highly uneconomical. The spate of farmer suicides, which has now increased to an average of 52 deaths each day, and reports of farmers selling their blood to make a living in the drought-hit Bundelkhand region, shows the severity of the agrarian crisis, which worsens with each passing year.
Presenting the budget last year, Arun Jaitley had listed increasing farm incomes as the government’s top-most challenge. But somehow, by the time he ended his speech, he seemed to have forgotten about rescuing the farming community from economic distress.
NSSO 2014 had computed the income of an average farm household at about Rs 6,000 per month, of which only Rs 3,000 came from farming. The rest came from non-farm activities, including MNREGA. Studies by the Commission for Agricultural Costs and Prices (CACP) have shown that the net income per hectare from cultivating wheat and rice even in the frontline agricultural state of Punjab is about Rs 3,000 per hectare. If this is the situation in Punjab, the extreme economic distress prevailing in the rest of the country can be imagined.
If Rs 6,000 is the income of a farm household – comprising five members – it is quite natural that the young would swarm into the cities looking for menial jobs. RBI Governor Raghuram Rajan as well as the deputy chairman of Niti Ayog Arvind Panagariya have repeatedly said that the best reform is to move farmers out of agriculture so as to provide a cheaper labour force for the industry. This is based on the economic prescription doled out by the World Bank and pursued by the global financial markets.
Rather, at a time when jobs are scarce and farm incomes are plunging, Arun Jaitley’s focus should be on reviving agriculture instead of creating an army of dehari mazdoor. This will provide gainful employment to those who are already engaged in farming, and in turn will create more domestic demand.
Five thrusts for reviving agriculture and creating employment
Here are five thrust areas that I think need immediate attention:

• After two years of back-to-back drought, and with an unprecedented spurt in farmer suicides in 2015, I expect the government to provide an economic bailout package of Rs 3 lakh crore to the agriculture sector. Remember, a similar economic bailout package of Rs 3 lakh crore was provided to industry after the economic meltdown of 2008-9. An economic bailout package for agriculture would benefit roughly 10 crore farm families.
• Public sector investments in agriculture must be increased to Rs 1 lakh crore for 2016-17. Allocations for agriculture should be enhanced by 25% in every budget to make any meaningful contribution. Not many are aware that the budgetary allocations for MNREGA at present exceed that of agriculture, which employs 52% of the population. In 2014-15, the budget allocation for agriculture was Rs 15,267 crore. A year earlier, in 2013-14, it was 12,006 crore.
• Since the NDA government has, through an affidavit in Supreme Court, made it clear that it has no intention of providing farmers with 50% profit over and above the cost of production, as recommended by the Swaminathan committee, since this will distort markets, the government should announce the setting up of a National Farmers Income Commission, which will work out the minimum assured monthly income package that a farming family must get. The 7th Pay Commission provides a basic monthly salary of Rs 18,000 to a chaprasi whereas the average monthly income for a farm family does not exceed Rs 6,000. This anomaly must be corrected.
• The focus of infrastructure investment must shift to agriculture and rural development. Adequate investment must be made available for building market yards or mandis. If a market yard has to be provided in a radius of 5 kms from a village, India will need 42,000 such mandis. At present, only 7,000 Agriculture Produce Market Committe-regulated mandis exist. Along with the mandis, the emphasis should also be on building a network of rural godowns and rural link roads.
• Rural enterprise too needs encouragement. Start-ups have been given a three-year tax holiday with several other concessions. The same benefits should also be given to farmer producer companies, which continue to pay 30 per cent tax every year. Similar tax concessions should also be given to small and medium entrepreneurs who are linked to Mudra Bank.
  

Devinder Sharma is a food and trade policy analyst, and an award-winning Indian journalist, writer, thinker and researcher

The Ghosts of 1920s Italy Are Here to Haunt Us

"many similarities between the rise of fascism in Italy and the present Indian situation are too evident to be missed."

"democracy is something that takes a long while to build, but very little time to destroy."

Dr. Diego Maiorano  

The blackshirts were squads of fascists in Italy in 1920's who instilled fear and used violence against opponents

As a scholar of modern Indian history, recent events in India – namely, the repeated attacks on whoever does not share the ideology of right-wing ultra-nationalist groups – prompted me to reflect about how novel a phenomenon this is and whether previous historical processes might offer some clue to as to the longer term impact of such events

The Emergency regime (1975-77) imposed by Indira Gandhi immediately sprung to mind. I soon realised however that, even though in both cases freedom of expression was attacked, under Mrs Gandhi’s regime censorship was systematically imposed by the state’s institutions, while, in Modi’s India, what we are witnessing are targeted attacks on free thinkers by groups only loosely associated with the party in power.

The next comparison I alighted upon was the ‘strategy of tension’ in the Italy of the 1970s. During that troubled decade, Italy experienced a tremendous amount of political violence, both from left-wing and right-wing extremists – about 15,000 terrorist attacks occurred between 1969 and 1988. What made me compare today’s India with that violent chapter of my country’s history is the fact that right-wing extremists in both cases acted in cooperation and collaboration with parts of the state’s apparatus. In today’s India, this is clear from the prompt support that, for example, Smriti Irani offered the ABVP in the University of Hyderabad in the wake of its altercation with Rohith Vemula and his Ambedkar Studies Association comrades; or from Rajnath Singh’s supportive reaction to the ABVP students when he first heard of the clash with some leftist ‘anti-nationals’ at JNU.
Government support to right wing
But that’s where the similarities between the two cases ended. First of all, right-wing groups in India have not so far resorted to large scale terrorist attacks like their Italian predecessors did, preferring to target (fatally, in some cases) individual critical thinkers or writers. Also, the support of the Italian ‘deep state’ was covert, whereas the Indian government is openly and blatantly supporting ‘its own’ right-wing extremist groups.
I finally came to the conclusion that I was trying to avoid: the best parallel with Modi’s India is with Italy and Germany just before the consolidation of the fascist regimes. The main reason why I eschewed making a comparison between Modi and the Fascist regime is that one should take into account both the obvious differences in the personalities, styles and political objectives of Mussolini and Modi and their different attitude vis-à-vis democracy both as a system and a philosophy. Also, fascism was a phenomenon deeply rooted in the socio-political context of post World War Europe. As such, it is unwise to attach the fascist label to a completely different context. But once that has been pointed out, the many similarities between the rise of fascism in Italy and the present Indian situation are too evident to be missed.
The first and more conspicuous is the modalities through which, in today’s India, right-wing groups are trying to silence every form of dissent in pursuit of their own ultra-nationalist narrative. This is strikingly similar to the strategy adopted by the various ‘fascist squads’ that played such a crucial role in the consolidation of Mussolini’s regime. They started attacking left-wing intellectuals, unionists and communist leaders in order to create a climate of fear.
Operating in large groups, they would surround their victims’ house, often at night, telling them to get out, shouting slogans and brandishing sticks. They would then often beat them up or threaten to burn down their homes, which they often did. It is difficult not to be reminded of the Dadri lynching or the protests that led Perumal Murugan to quit writing.
Crucially, when the first of such raids were ignored by the Italian authorities, the squads understood that the state was on their side and that they could therefore count on total impunity. It was during this early stage of the fascist regime that numerous opponents fled the country or decided to remain silent. The fascist party then consolidated its regime, building on the climate of fear that its goon squads had created.
The local sections of some nationwide organisations like the Bajrang Dal or the ABVP strongly remind me of these fascist paramilitaries. They too are only loosely associated with the government and, in some cases at least, hardly controlled by the BJP. However, what is striking is the climate of impunity in which they operate. Whether they choose to target a Tamil writer because of his ‘anti-national’ writings or to raid trains in search of beef, or to beat up a student in police custody, what they can rely upon is that no one will take much effort to punish them. While the authorities do act when serious crimes are committed, as in the case of the Dadri lynching, even in these extreme cases, there is no political condemnation either of the acts themselves or of those political leaders that publicly defend the attackers.
he political impunity guaranteed to these squads, on the one hand, further galvanises right-wing extremists throughout the country; on the other hand, it reinforces a clear strategy of the government to take over the control of India’s cultural institutions. This again is strikingly similar to the strategy adopted by the Italian fascist party during the first phase of its existence.
Fascist worldview

One of the very first acts of the Fascist regime was indeed a root and branch reform of Italian educational institutions. They not only changed the curricula so that they would be more in line with the fascist worldview – and here, again, the similarities with the action of Smriti Irani’s Ministry are striking – but also penetrated the educational institutions of the state with individuals loyal to the regime. Such was the climate of fear that when, in 1931, the Fascist party demanded that all university professors state their loyalty to the regime, only 15 out of over 1,200 refused to do so.
The crusade to conquer India’s cultural institutions is the clearest example of the collaboration of the government with the RSS. From the appointment of Yellapragada Sudharshan Rao as the chair of the Indian Council for Historical Research, to the pressure that RSS-affiliated organisations exercise even on foreign universities to the recent crackdown at JNU or the beating up by a mob led by a BJP Rajasthan MLA of activists associated with the MKSS, what is emerging is not a series of unrelated episodes, but a clear pattern aimed at ending the supposed dominance of ‘secular’ or ‘anti-national’ elements – the two terms by and large coinciding – on India’s cultural life.
The crackdown at JNU is particularly worrisome not only because a student was arrested and several others forced underground because they dared to express their opinion. This had happened only twice before: upon the proclamation of the Emergency regime in 1975 and during the last term in office of Indira Gandhi, which will be remembered as a period of near authoritarianism. It is also important because of the message that it sends: expressing opinions that are at variance with the government’s notion of national interest will not be tolerated. If you were a student at one of India’s universities, would you now dare raise the issue of, for example, human rights in Kashmir, if for your pains incarceration awaits? Fortunately, many will be brave enough to risk jail; but many others will understandably succumb to the growing climate of fear.
Is India’s democracy in danger? My tentative answer is maybe. Its democratic institutions are much stronger than Italy’s in the 1920s. But this does not mean that the dangers should be underestimated: democracy is something that takes a long while to build, but very little time to destroy.
Dr. Diego Maiorano is with the School of Politics and International Relations, University of Nottingham and is the author of Autumn of the Matriarch – Indira Gandhi’s Final Term in Office, Hurst & Co./ Oxford University Press / Harper Collins, London, New York and New Delhi, 2015

The basics for free speech

 

January 30, 2016  The Hindu

http://www.thehindu.com/opinion/lead/arundhati-roy-and-hc-hearing-the-basics-for-free-speech/article816883

Suhrith Parthasarathy

Courts have routinely invoked contempt to punish expressions of dissent, when such expressions often posed no threat to the administration of justice.

Through a most pernicious act of judicial fiat, in a judgment delivered on December 23, 2015, Justice A.B. Chaudhari, sitting on the Nagpur Bench of the Bombay High Court, issued notice to the Booker Prize-winning writer Arundhati Roy for committing what he believed constituted a clear case of criminal contempt of court. The decision was rendered on an application for bail by the Delhi University professor, G.N. Saibaba. Not only did the court reject Dr. Saibaba’s plea, in spite of his substantial disabilities, it also hauled Ms. Roy up for writing in support of the professor, and in criticism of the Indian state, including the country’s judiciary. In initiating contempt proceedings, Justice Chaudhari’s judgment has exemplified the state of the right to free speech in India — a liberty fractured by colonial vestiges such as the law on contempt, which we have embarrassingly embraced as a supposed necessity to uphold the majesty of our courts.
The conventional defences adopted in favour of the judiciary retaining powers to punish acts of contempt invariably point to the Constitution. Article 19(1)(a) no doubt grants to the country’s citizens a right to freedom of speech and expression. But the ensuing clause, Article 19(2), limits this freedom, and accords the state the express authority to make laws that establish reasonable restrictions on speech, on various grounds, including contempt of court. When in 1971, Parliament enacted the Contempt of Courts Act, with a purported view of defining and limiting the powers of courts in punishing acts of contempt, it was the inherent constraint in Article 19 that it took refuge under. But this statute is neither reasonable nor in keeping with the fundamental mandates of a legitimate government.
Contempt’s broad contours

Broadly, the 1971 law recognises two common forms of contempt. First, it defines civil contempt to include, among other things, a wilful disobedience of a court’s judgment, order or direction. And second, it defines criminal contempt to include publications that do one or more of the following: (a) scandalise or lower the authority of any court; (b) prejudice or interfere with the due course of any judicial proceeding; or (c) interfere with or obstruct the administration of justice in any other manner.
As is evident, there are clear divisions between different types of contempt. Some of these categories are more obviously justifiable as offences. For instance, the court’s power to punish acts that tantamount to disobedience of its orders, or indeed a court’s inherent authority to ensure that its hearings are conducted in a fair and undisturbed manner, is required to ensure that we subscribe to a basic rule of law. But the idea that the judiciary can also punish acts that have very little to do with the actual administration of justice and all to do with the impact of speech on the institution’s supposed reputation in the eyes of the public is substantially more problematic. Notably, the power to punish acts which ostensibly scandalise or lower the authority of the court speaks not to the majesty of the institution, but to an ingrained sense of insecurity, coupled with an almost despotic view of its own infallibility, that the judiciary seems to possess. In a democracy, properly understood, it’s difficult to locate any justification for thwarting speech at the face of the judiciary, notwithstanding the fact that contempt of court is one of the explicitly spelled out restrictions to the guaranteed right to freedom of speech under the Constitution.
During the course of drafting the Constitution, there was, writes the lawyer Gautam Bhatia in his new book, Offend, Shock, or Disturb: Free Speech under the Indian Constitution, “a marked uncertainty among the framers about the understanding of contempt they were inserting into the Constitution”. When T.T. Krishnamachari suggested the inclusion of contempt of court as one of the permissible limitations to free speech, he was met by members who were passionate in their opposition to the category’s inclusion. One of these challengers, Pandit Thakur Das Bhargava, believed that contempt of court was simply not germane to a discussion on freedom of speech and expression. In his understanding, powers to reprimand contempt concerned only actions such as the disobedience of an order or direction of a court, which were already punishable infractions. Speech in criticism of the courts, he argued, ought not to be considered as contumacious, for it would simply open up the possibility of gross judicial abuse of such powers. Almost none of the responses to Bhargava in the Constituent Assembly met his core argument: that the guarantee of free speech in a democracy ought to serve as a value unto itself.
Courts and criticism

Bhargava’s warnings have since proved prophetic. India’s courts have routinely invoked the long arm of its contempt powers to often punish expressions of dissent on purported grounds of such speech undermining or scandalising the judiciary’s authority. But, while doing so, the court has rarely conducted a strict analysis on whether those acts posed any actual threat to — or interfered in any direct manner with — the administration of justice.
For example, in 1970, the Supreme Court famously upheld a conviction of contempt of court against the former Chief Minister of Kerala, E.M.S. Namboodiripad. During his tenure as Chief Minister, Namboodiripad had apparently delivered a speech arguing that judges were guided and dominated by class interests. “To charge the judiciary as an instrument of oppression, the judges as guided and dominated by class hatred, class interests and class prejudices, instinctively favouring the rich against the poor,” wrote Justice M. Hidayatullah, “is to draw a very distorted and poor picture of the judiciary. It is clear that it is an attack upon judges, which is calculated to raise in the minds of the people a general dissatisfaction with, and distrust of all judicial decisions. It weakens the authority of law and law courts.”
The judgment made no effort at showing any actual link between Namboodiripad’s statements and the supposed weakening of the courts’ authority. In so doing, a disturbing trend was set in motion, which culminated in a 1996 decision in which the Supreme Court ruled that “all acts which bring the court into disrepute or disrespect or which offend its dignity or its majesty or challenge its authority” amount to punishable contempt. The ultimate consequence of this ruling is typical of Indian free speech jurisprudence: a complete eschewal by the courts of any regard for individual choice and liberty, coupled with a belief that some forms of speech are to be muzzled purely by virtue of their content as opposed to any actual anti-democratic harm stemming through their expression.
In 2006, with a view to reducing the breadth of the judiciary’s powers, Parliament amended the Contempt of Courts Act of 1971. The law now provides two additional safeguards in favour of a dissenter. One, it establishes that a sentence for contempt of court can be imposed only when the court is satisfied that the contempt is of such a nature that it substantially interferes, or tends to substantially interfere with the due course of justice. Two, the truth in speech now constitutes a valid defence against proceedings of contempt, if the court is satisfied that the larger public interest is served through the publication of such content. In spite of these amendments, though, courts have continued to routinely equate the supposed scandalising of the judiciary’s authority to an act of contempt.
Constitutional lawyers have proposed many different justifications for the right to free speech. As legal philosopher Ronald Dworkin argued, these justifications usually fall into one or the other of two larger categories. The first involves an instrumental understanding of free speech: that to allow people to speak freely and openly promotes good rather than bad policies. The second justification is premised on a larger platform of a commitment to individual autonomy, of treating people with equal concern, and of therefore respecting their right to speak freely. Punishing speech for supposedly scandalising or lowering the authority of the court falls afoul of whichever rationale we might wish to adopt in our theorising of the abstract right to free expression in India.
Interestingly, in England, whose laws of contempt we’ve so indiscriminately adopted, there hasn’t been a single conviction for scandalising the court in more than eight decades. What’s more, in 2013, after a recommendation by its Law Commission, the country altogether abolished as a form of contempt the offence of scandalising the judiciary. In so doing, it gave credence to Lord Denning’s characteristically precise opinion in a case where contempt charges had been pressed against Queen’s Counsel Quintin Hogg for what was an excoriating attack on the courts in Punch magazine. “Let me say at once that we will never use this jurisdiction as a means to uphold our own dignity,” Denning wrote. “That must rest on surer foundations… We do not fear criticism, nor do we resent it. For there is something far more important at stake. It is no less than freedom of speech itself.”
(Suhrith Parthasarathy is an advocate practising in the Madras High Court.)

Attack  on Soni Suri and cause behind it : An editorial by The Hindu

A sordid record in Chhattisgarh

http://www.thehindu.com/opinion/editorial/adivasis-killlings-in-chhattisgarh-a-sordid-record/article8276829.ece

Editorial

Adivasi rights activist and Aam Aadmi Party leader Soni Sori was attacked by motorcycle-borne assailants in Chhattisgarh on February 20. They threw an acid-like substance on her, which left her in deep pain, and her face swollen with chemical burns. This was not the first physical attack on Ms. Sori. As international human rights watchdogs have reported, Ms. Sori was also allegedly tortured and sexually assaulted by the Chhattisgarh police while in their custody in October 2011. The latest attack on her comes in the wake of a series of developments that suggests a government-endorsed clampdown on free speech and dissent in the State. Earlier this month, Malini Subramaniam, a journalist associated with the news portal Scroll, and Jagdalpur Legal Aid, a group of human rights lawyers working with Adivasis, were allegedly forced out of the State for highlighting police atrocities against the tribal population. Both the journalist and the lawyers have claimed that their landlords were intimidated by the police into issuing eviction notices on them. It is worth noting that Ms. Sori had been trying to lodge an First Information Report against the Inspector General of Police, Bastar Range. She has been leading a powerful Adivasi movement that has sought to hold the State administration accountable for the killing of Adivasis in fake encounters, arbitrary arrests, and alleged sexual assault and torture of Adivasi women by the police and security forces. She had planned to highlight these issues through a 200-km march from Bijapur, set to end in Jagdalpur on International Women’s Day, March 8, before she became a target of the latest attack.
For some time now, free speech and dissent have been on the retreat in Chhattisgarh. The official excuse for this has been the ongoing civil conflict between the state and Maoist insurgents. But the fact that individuals who have no connection with the conflict are being forced out, suggests a larger anti-democratic agenda at work. And this is in keeping with the pattern across the world where so-called underdeveloped but mineral-rich regions have fallen prey to fierce corporate plunder of natural resources at the expense of the local population. The Bastar region is rich in minerals as also Adivasi settlements, and the people are loathe to giving up their land for resource-extraction. It is their resistance to being forcibly evicted from their land — best exemplified in the figure of Ms. Sori — that is the trigger for the crackdown on democratic rights in Chhattisgarh. Given the current political scene where a perverse form of nationalism is threatening to shut down free speech, the attack on Ms. Sori represents another front in the battle against the criminalisation of dissent. The kind of spotlight that has been illuminating the absurd charges of sedition against the JNU students needs to also be focussed on the likes of Ms. Sori who have been waging such battles for a long tim

  Invoking Hitler, Raghuram Rajan warns: A strong govt may not move in the right direction

'Hitler provided Germany with extremely effective administration – the trains ran on time, as did the trains during our own Emergency in 1975-77'

Raghuram Rajan  · Feb 21, 2015

When Dr Raghuram Rajan, Governor, Reserve Bank of India, was invited to DD Kosambi Ideas Festival held on February 20, 2015 in Goa, who'd have thought that he would discard his RBI hat and put on his hat as "a professor in the field known as political economy "? And go on to give an extraordinary speech titled Democracy, Inclusion, and Prosperity, in which, among other things, he also made some pointed observations that have already set tongues wagging:

Strong governments may not, however, move in the right direction. Hitler provided Germany with extremely effective administration – the trains ran on time, as did the trains during our own Emergency in 1975-77. His was a strong government, but Hitler took Germany efficiently and determinedly on a path to ruin, overriding the rule of law and dispensing with elections. It is not sufficient that the trains run on time, they have to go in the right direction at the desired time. The physical rail network guiding the trains could be thought of as analogous to rule of law, while the process by which consensus is built around the train schedule could be thought of as democratic accountability.

But why do we need both rule of law and democratic accountability to keep strong government on the right path? Would democratic accountability not be enough to constrain a dictatorial government? Perhaps not! Hitler was elected to power, and until Germany started suffering shortages and reversals in World War II, enjoyed the support of the majority of the people. The rule of law is needed to prevent the tyranny of the majority that can arise in a democracy, as well as to ensure that basic “rules of the game” are preserved over time so that the environment is predictable, no matter which government comes to power. By ensuring that all citizens have inalienable rights and protections, the rule of law constrains the majority’s behaviour towards the minorities. And by maintaining a predictable economic environment against populist democratic instincts, the rule of law ensures that businesses can invest securely today for the future.

Full text of the speech: Democracy, Inclusion, and Prosperity

Thank you for inviting me to this Festival of Ideas. Since this festival is about ideas, I am not going to tax you with the Reserve Bank’s views on monetary policy, which are, by now, well known. Instead, I want to talk about something I have been studying for many years, the development of a liberal market democracy. In doing this, I will wear my hat as a professor in the field known as political economy, and discard my RBI hat for the time being. If you came here expecting more insights on the path of interest rates, as I expect many of you did, let me apologize for disappointing you.

My starting point is the truism that people want to live in a safe prosperous country where they enjoy freedom of thought and action, and where they can exercise their democratic rights to choose their government. But how do countries ensure political freedom and economic prosperity? Why do the two seem to go together? And what more, if anything, does India have to do to ensure it has these necessary underpinnings for prosperity and continued political freedom? These are enormously important questions, but given their nature, they will not be settled in one speech. Think of my talk today, therefore, as a contribution to the debate.

Fukuyama’s three pillars of a liberal democratic state

In his magisterial two-volume analysis of the emergence of political systems around the world, political scientist Francis Fukuyama builds on the work of his mentor, Samuel Huntington, to argue that liberal democracies, which seem to be best at fostering political freedoms and economic success, tend to have three important pillars: a strong government, rule of law, and democratic accountability.

I propose in this talk to start by summarizing my (necessarily imprecise) reading of Fukuyama’s ideas to you. I would urge you to read the books to get their full richness. I will then go on to argue that he leaves out a fourth pillar, free markets, which are essential to make the liberal democracy prosperous. I will warn that these pillars are weakening in industrial countries because of rising inequality of opportunity, and end with lessons for India.

Consider Fukuyama’s three pillars in greater detail. Strong government does not mean one that is only militarily powerful or uses its intelligence apparatus to sniff out enemies of the state. Instead, a strong government is also one that provides an effective and fair administration through clean, motivated, and competent administrators who can deliver good governance.

Rule of law means that government’s actions are constrained by what we Indians would term dharma – by a historical and widely understood code of moral and righteous behaviour, enforced by religious, cultural, or judicial authority.

And democratic accountability means that government has to be popularly accepted, with the people having the right to throw unpopular, corrupt, or incompetent rulers out.

Fukuyama makes a more insightful point than simply that all three traditional aspects of the state – executive, judiciary, and legislature – are needed to balance one another. In sharp contrast to the radical libertarian view that the best government is the minimal “night watchman”, which primarily protects life and property rights while enforcing contracts, or the radical Marxist view that the need for the government disappears as class conflict ends, Fukuyama, as did Huntington, emphasizes the importance of a strong government in even a developed country.

No matter how thuggish or arbitrary the government in a tin-pot dictatorship, these are weak governments, not strong ones. Their military or police can terrorize the unarmed citizenry but cannot provide decent law and order or stand up to a determined armed opposition. Their administration cannot provide sensible economic policy, good schools or clean drinking water. Strong governments need to be peopled by those who can provide needed public goods – it requires expertise, motivation, and integrity. Realizing the importance of strong government, developing countries constantly request multilateral institutions for help in enhancing their governance capacity.

Strong governments may not, however, move in the right direction. Hitler provided Germany with extremely effective administration – the trains ran on time, as did the trains during our own Emergency in 1975-77. His was a strong government, but Hitler took Germany efficiently and determinedly on a path to ruin, overriding the rule of law and dispensing with elections. It is not sufficient that the trains run on time, they have to go in the right direction at the desired time. The physical rail network guiding the trains could be thought of as analogous to rule of law, while the process by which consensus is built around the train schedule could be thought of as democratic accountability.

But why do we need both rule of law and democratic accountability to keep strong government on the right path? Would democratic accountability not be enough to constrain a dictatorial government? Perhaps not! Hitler was elected to power, and until Germany started suffering shortages and reversals in World War II, enjoyed the support of the majority of the people. The rule of law is needed to prevent the tyranny of the majority that can arise in a democracy, as well as to ensure that basic “rules of the game” are preserved over time so that the environment is predictable, no matter which government comes to power. By ensuring that all citizens have inalienable rights and protections, the rule of law constrains the majority’s behaviour towards the minorities. And by maintaining a predictable economic environment against populist democratic instincts, the rule of law ensures that businesses can invest securely today for the future.

What about asking the question the other way? Would rule of law not be enough? Probably not, especially in a vibrant developing society! Rule of law provides a basic slow-changing code of conduct that cannot be violated by either government or the citizenry. But that, by itself, may not be sufficient to accommodate the aspirations of new emerging groups or the consequences of new technologies or ideas. Democratic accountability ensures the government responds to the wishes of the mass of the citizenry, allowing emerging groups to gain influence through political negotiation and competition with others. Even if groups cannot see their programs translated into policy, democracy allows them to blow off steam non-violently. So both rule of law and democratic accountability check and balance strong government in complementary ways.

Where do these three pillars come from?

Much of Fukuyama’s work is focused on tracing the development of each pillar in different societies. He suggests that what the nature of states we see today is largely explained by history. For instance, China had long periods of chaos, most recently before the Communists came to power; groups engaged in total war against one another. Such unbridled military competition meant groups had to organize themselves as hierarchical military units, with rulers having unlimited powers. When eventually a group was victorious over the others, it was natural for it to impose centralized autocratic rule to ensure that chaos did not remerge. To rule over the large geographic area of the country, China needed a well-developed elite bureaucracy – hence the mandarins, chosen by exam based on their learning. So China had strong unconstrained effective government whenever it was united, and Fukuyama argues, unlike Western Europe or India, did not have strong alternative sources of power founded in religion or culture to impose rule of law.

In Western Europe, by contrast, the Christian church imposed constraints on what the ruler could do. So military competition, coupled with constraints on the ruler imposed by canon law, led to the emergence of both strong government and rule of law.

In India, he argues, the caste system led to division of labour, which ensured that entire populations could never be devoted totally to the war effort. So through much of history, war was never as harsh, or military competition between states as fierce, as in China. As a result, the historical pressure for Indian states to develop strong governments that intruded into every facet of society was muted. At the same time, however, the codes of just behaviour for rulers emanating from ancient Indian scriptures served to constrain any arbitrary exercise of power by Indian rulers. India, therefore, had weaker government, constrained further by rule of law. And, according to Fukuyama, these differing histories explain why government in China today is seen as effective but unrestrained, while government capacity in India is seen as weak, but Indian governments are rarely autocratic.

Any of these grand generalizations can, and should, be debated. Fukuyama does not claim history is destiny, but does suggest a very strong influence. Of course, the long influence of history and culture is less perceptible when it comes to democracy where some countries like India have taken to it like a duck to water. A vibrant accountable democracy does not only imply that people cast their vote freely every five years. It requires the full mix of a raucous investigative press, public debate uninhibited by political correctness, many political parties representing varied constituencies, and a variety of non-governmental organizations organizing and representing interests. It will continue to be a source of academic debate why a country like India has taken to democracy, while some of its neighbours with similar historical and cultural pasts have not.

I will not dwell on this. Instead, I turn to a different question that Fukuyama does not address. Clearly, strong governments are needed for countries to have the governance to prosper. Equally, free markets underpin prosperity. But why is it that every rich country is also a liberal democracy subject to rule of law?

I will make two points in what follows: First, free enterprise and the political freedom emanating from democratic accountability and rule of law can be mutually reinforcing so a free enterprise system should be thought of as the fourth pillar underpinning liberal market democracies. Second, the bedrock on which all four pillars stand is a broadly equitable distribution of economic capabilities among the citizenry. That bedrock is fissuring in industrial countries, while it has to be strengthened in emerging markets like India.

Free Enterprise and Political Freedom

Why are political freedoms in a country, of which representative democracy is a central component, and free enterprise mutually supportive?

There is, of course, one key similarity: Both a vibrant democracy and a vibrant free enterprise system seek to create a level playing field which enhances competition. In the democratic arena, the political entrepreneur competes with other politicians for the citizen’s vote, based on his past record and future policy agenda. In the economic sphere, the promoter competes with other entrepreneurs for the consumer’s rupee, based on the quality of the product he sells.

But there is also at least one key difference. Democracy treats individuals equally, with every adult getting one vote. The free enterprise system, by contrast, empowers consumers based on how much income they get and property they own. What then prevents the median voter in a democracy from voting to dispossess the rich and successful? And why do the latter not erode the political rights of the ordinary voter. This fundamental tension between democracy and free enterprise appeared to be accentuated in the recent U.S. Presidential elections as President Barack Obama appealed to middle-class anger about its stagnant economic prospects, while former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney appealed to business people, disgruntled about higher taxes and expanding healthcare subsidies.

One reason that the median voter rationally agrees to protect the property of the rich and to tax them moderately may be that she sees the rich as more efficient managers of that property, and therefore as creators of jobs and prosperity that everyone will benefit from. So, to the extent that the rich are self-made, and have come out winners in a competitive, fair, and transparent market, society may be better off allowing them to own and manage their wealth, settling in return for a reasonable share of their produce as taxes. The more, however, that the rich are seen as idle or crooked – as having simply inherited or, worse, gained their wealth nefariously – the more the median voter should be willing to vote for tough regulations and punitive taxes on them.
In some emerging markets today, for example, property rights of the rich do not enjoy widespread popular support because so many of a country’s fabulously wealthy oligarchs are seen as having acquired their wealth through dubious means. They grew rich because they managed the system, not because they managed their businesses well. When the government goes after rich tycoons, few voices are raised in protest. And, as the rich kowtow to the authorities to protect their wealth, a strong check on official arbitrariness disappears. Government is free to become more autocratic.

Consider, in contrast, a competitive free-enterprise system with a level playing field for all. Such a system generally tends to permit the most efficient to acquire wealth. The fairness of the competition improves perceptions of legitimacy. Moreover, under conditions of fair competition, the process of creative destruction tends to pull down badly managed inherited wealth, replacing it with new and dynamic wealth. Great inequality, built up over generations, does not become a source of great popular resentment.
On the contrary, everyone can dream that they, too, will become a Bill Gates or a Nandan Nilekani. When such universal aspirations seem plausible, the system gains added democratic support. The rich, confidant of popular legitimacy, can then use the independence that accompanies wealth to limit arbitrary government, support rule of law, and protect democratic rights. Free enterprise and democracy sustain each other.

There are, therefore, deeper reasons for why democratic systems support property rights and free enterprise than the cynical argument that votes and legislators can be bought, and the capitalists have the money. The cynics can only be right for a while. Without popular support, wealth is protected only by increasingly coercive measures. Ultimately, such a system loses any vestige of either democracy or free enterprise.

The Bedrock: Equitable Distribution of Economic Capabilities

There is, however, a growing concern across the industrial world. The free enterprise system works well when participants enter the competitive arena with fundamentally equal chances of success. Given the subsequent level playing field, the winner’s road to riches depends on greater effort, innovation, and occasionally luck. But success is not pre-determined because no class of participants has had a fundamentally different and superior preparation for the competition. If, however, some group’s economic capabilities are sufficiently differentiated by preparation, the level playing field is no longer sufficient to equalize a priori chances of success. Instead, the free enterprise system will be seen as disproportionately favouring the better prepared. Democracy is unlikely to support it, nor are the rich and successful as likely to support democracy.

Such a scenario is no longer unthinkable in a number of Western democracies. Prosperity seems increasingly unreachable for many, because a good education, which seems to be today’s passport to riches, is unaffordable for many in the middle class. Quality higher educational institutions are dominated by the children of the rich, not because they have unfairly bought their way in, but because they simply have been taught and supported better by expensive schools and private tutors. Because middle class parents do not have the ability to give their children similar capabilities, they do not see the system as fair. Support for the free enterprise system is eroding, as witnessed by the popularity of books like Thomas Pikkety’s Capital in the 21st Century while the influence of illiberal parties on both the Left and Right who promise to suppress competition, finance, and trade is increasing. The mutual support between free enterprise and democracy is giving way to antagonism.

Moreover, as class differences create differentiated capabilities among the public, governments can either continue choosing the most capable applicants for positions but risk becoming unrepresentative of the classes, or they can choose representativeness over ability, and risk eroding effectiveness. Neither biased nor ineffective government can administer well. So government capacity may also be threatened.

Thus, as the bedrock of equitable distribution of capabilities has started developing cracks in industrial countries, all four pillars supporting the liberal free market democracy have also started swaying. This is, to my mind, an enormously important concern that will occupy states across the world in the years to come.

Lessons for India

Let me conclude with lessons for India. India inherited a kind of democracy during British rule and has made it thoroughly and vibrantly her own. Of the three pillars that Fukuyama emphasizes, the strongest in India is therefore democratic accountability. India also adheres broadly to the rule of law. Where arguably we may have a long way to go, as Fukuyama has emphasized, is in the capacity of the government (and by this I mean regulators like the RBI also) to deliver governance and public services.
This is not to say that we do not have areas of excellence strewn throughout central and state governments – whether it is the building of the New Delhi Metro, the reach of the public distribution system in Tamil Nadu, or the speed of the roll-out of the Pradhan Mantri Jan Dhan Yojana – but that such capabilities have to permeate every tehsil in every state. Moreover, in many areas of government and regulation, as the economy develops, we need more specialists, with the domain knowledge and experience. For instance, well-trained economists are at a premium throughout the government, and there are far too few Indian Economic Service officers to go around.

An important difference from the historical experience of other countries is that elsewhere typically strong government has emerged there first, and it is then restrained by rule of law and democratic accountability. In India, we have the opposite situation today, with strong institutions like the judiciary, opposition parties, the free press, and NGOs, whose aim is to check government excess. However, necessary government function is sometimes hard to distinguish from excess. We will have to strengthen government (and regulatory) capability resisting the temptation to implant layers and layers of checks and balances even before capacity has taken root. We must choose a happy medium between giving the administration unchecked power and creating complete paralysis, recognizing that our task is different from the one that confronted the West when it developed, or even the task faced by other Asian economies.

For instance, a business approval process that mandates numerous government surveys in remote areas should also consider our administrative capacity to do those surveys well and on time. If it does not provide for that capacity, it ensures there will be no movement forward. Similarly, if we create a multiple appellate process against government or regulatory action that is slow and undiscriminating, we contain government excess but also risk halting necessary government actions. If the government or regulator is less effective in preparing its case than private parties, we ensure that the appellate process largely biases justice towards those who have the resources to use it, rather than rectifying a miscarriage of justice. So in thinking through reforms, we may want to move from the theoretical ideal of how a system might work in a country with enormous administrative capacity, to how it would work in the actual Indian situation. Let me emphasize, we need “checks and balance”, but we should ensure a balance of checks. We cannot have escaped from the License Permit Raj only to end up in the Appellate Raj!

Finally, a heartening recent development is that more people across the country are becoming well-educated and equipped to compete. One of the most enjoyable experiences at the RBI is meeting the children of our Class IV employees, many of whom hold jobs as business executives in private sector firms. As, across the country, education makes our youth economically mobile, public support for free enterprise has expanded. Increasingly, therefore, the political dialogue has also moved, from giving hand outs to creating jobs. So long as we modulate the pace of liberalization to the pace at which we broaden economic capabilities, it is likely that the public will be supportive of reform. This also means that if we are to embed the four pillars supporting prosperity and political freedom firmly in our society, we have to continue to nurture the broadly equitable distribution of economic capabilities among our people. Economic inclusion, by which I mean easing access to quality education, nutrition, healthcare, finance, and markets to all our citizens, is therefore a necessity for sustainable growth. It is also, obviously, a moral imperative.

Notes:

The Origins of Political Order: From Pre-Human Times to the French Revolution by Francis Fukuyama, 2011, Farrar Straus and Giroux, New York.

Political Order and Political Decay: From the Industrial Revolution to the Globalization of Democracy by Francis Fukuyama, 2014, Farrar Straus and Giroux, and

Political Order in Changing Societies by Samuel Huntington, 1968, Yale University Press, New Haven.

How many crores must you spend to fly the flag before they call you an Indian?

CHARU SUDAN KASTURi   The Telegraph 21 Feb 2016 A meeting between HRD minister Smriti Irani and the vice-chancellors of central universities had decided on Thursday that all centrally funded varsities would fly the national flag “prominently and proudly” on their campuses — all through the day and night.The flags should ideally be modelled on the Tricolour that flies at the centre of Delhi’s Connaught Place, officials said. Commander K.V. Singh of the Flag Foundation of India, which provided the Connaught Place flag, said the pole was made of high tension steel and cost between Rs 1.25 crore and Rs 1.35 crore. The flag, made of knitted polyester in Mumbai, cost Rs  65,000, he said.  The prices of steel in India have increased by about 20 per cent since the Connaught Place flag was installed. Taking Rs 1.25 crore — the lower limit — as the benchmark, a pole of the same dimensions will now cost around Rs 1.5 crore. The Connaught Place flag is illuminated at night by eight 1000-Watt lights, Singh said. Assuming the lights burn from 8pm to 6am — 10 hours — they will consume 80,000Wh (Watt-hour)  or 80 electricity units a day. Over a month, they consume 2,400 units.  With New Delhi’s power tariff slabs — among the lowest in the country — the electricity charges for the lights work out to Rs 17,870 a month, and Rs  214,440 (2.14 lakh) a year. India has 40 central universities. The total one-time expenditure on the poles to mount the Tricolour at central universities will be around Rs 60 crore (Rs 1.5 crore x 40).  Assuming that the costs of the cloth and of stitching have remained the same since 2014, 40 flags would cost Rs 26 lakh. With New Delhi’s power tariff slabs, emulating the lighting around the Connaught Place flag  will cost Rs 86 lakh (Rs 214,440 x 40). In all, replicating the Connaught Place Tricolour at the 40 central universities will cost at the least Rs 61.12 crore in the first year, leaving aside maintenance. The cost will go up dramatically if the decision is extended to other centrally funded higher education institutions that will admit students this year. Such institutions include 22 Indian Institutes of Technology, 21 Indian Institutes of Management, 30 National Institutes of Technology and eight Indian Institutes of Science Education and Research — 81 technical institutions. The total cost of installing similar flags in all these centrally funded higher education institutions, including the 40 central varsities, will come to Rs 185 crore in the first year. WHAT Rs 185cr CAN DO OTHERWISE • Fund full scholarships for all IIT students for two years — with some cash left in the kitty. (The student fees are Rs 90,000 a year at present, and the IITs admit just under 10,000 students each year) • Pay almost the entire Rs 195-crore annual budget for skill-based higher education, including community colleges, one of the Prime Minister’s pet projects  • Pay three-fourths of the central government’s entire higher education scholarship budget — Rs 243 crore last year • Fund, with a few crores to spare, the central government’s total annual budget of Rs 180 crore on information and communication technology at all universities and colleges Provide more than one-and-a-half times the Rs 112-crore budget allocation last year for the Indira Gandhi National Open University, which boasts 4 million students at present and is India’s largest engine of access to higher education •

‘My conscience has started to revolt : A Zee News producer quits over channel’s handling of JNU row

 Vishwa Deepak resigned over what he says were grave lapses in the way Zee News covered the JNU sedition case.

This reproduced with thanks to Scroll 

http://scroll.in/article/803943/my-conscience-has-started-to-revolt-a-zee-news-producer-quits-over-channels-handling-of-jnu-row

  21 Feb 2016

 High Lights added
 We journalists often question others but not ourselves. We decide the responsibilities of others, but not our own

 Along with being a journalist, I am also a citizen of the country in whose name the poison of blind “nationalism” is being spread and the country being pushed towards a state of civil war. My responsibilities as an Indian citizen as well as my professional duties is to stop this poison from spreading

 I have started to seriously doubt whether we are journalists at all. It seems like we are nothing more than the government’s mouthpiece or contract killer.

 Kanhaiya’s home is not a “home” but a painful symbol of the helplessness of this country’s farmers and common people, it is a graveyard of those hopes that are being buried every second in this country. But we have become blind.

My salary is good but it comes with too many sacrifices, which I’m unwilling to give. I come from an ordinary middle class family, so I know how difficult it is to be without a salary, but still my consciousness will not be stifled.

It is also important to say that if a media house wants to impose its right-wing preferences, individuals should also be free to talk about their own political lines. It is my job as a journalist to remain neutral, but as a person and an enlightened citizen, my path is of the Left which is found not in party offices but in our everyday lives. This is my identity.

Now  Read  in Full

Watching TV coverage of the Jawaharlal Nehru University sedition case can be a study in contrast. While some networks have questioned the portrayal of JNU as a bulwark of anti-nationalism, others have emphasised this perception.
Many quarters have, in the last few days, raised the issue of the way Zee News covered the issue. The media watch website the Hoot carried a piece on Sunday with the headline "How Zee TV fuelled state action against JNU students".
The Hoot report notes, on the basis of the first information report filed by Delhi Police:

The short point is that the police were present [on February 9] when the groups were clashing and shouting slogans, they stayed on the campus until the two sides dispersed, they saw no reason to register any complaint on the basis of the slogan shouting they heard. It is the Zee video which gave them actionable evidence. The implication is that Zee did their recording by being there in time for the action, did it at length, and showed the ‘anti-national’ parts the next day. How did the police come to know of the programme shown? It does not say. Did the channel bring it to their notice?

The Hoot report concludes by calling Zee News programming as amounting to “incitement against the students of JNU”.
Adding to the coverage's criticism, a producer of Zee News, Vishwa Deepak, resigned from the channel on Friday, asking whether it was “in nexus with the Delhi Police?” His letter of resignation went on to note:

Are we the mouthpieces of the BJP or the RSS that we will do whatever they say? The video didn't have any "Pakistan Zindabad" slogans at all – yet we played it repeatedly to spread madness and mayhem. How did we believe that some voices coming out of the dark belonged to Kanhaiya and his companions? Due to our biases, we heard “long live Indian courts” as “long live Pakistan” and working on the government line, brought the careers, their hopes and aspirations and families of some people to the brink of destruction. It would have been better if we had let the agencies do their jobs and waited for their conclusions.

Last week, three office bearers of the Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarathi Parishad in Jawaharlal Nehru University had announced their resignation from their designated positions in the organisation.
Here is a rough translation of the full letter Vishwa Deepak posted in Hindi on his Facebook wall.

We journalists often question others but not ourselves. We decide the responsibilities of others, but not our own. We are called the fourth pillar of democracy but are we, our institutions, our thinking and our methodology democratic? This question is not mine alone but is being asked by everyone.

The way the Jawaharlal Nehru University Student’s Union president Kanhaiya Kumar was framed in the name of “nationalism” and, after a media trial, was proved to be an anti-national, is an extremely dangerous trend. As journalists, it is our responsibility to question the powers that be, not move step in step with the powerful. Whatever good and beautiful has been achieved in the history of journalism is the result of these questions.

To question or not to question is the personal choice of every individual. However, for me, the personal is political. There comes a time when one needs to to chose between one’s professional responsibilities and socio-political views. I have chosen the latter and due to these disagreements have resigned from my organisation Zee News on February 19.

My resignation is dedicated to those lakhs and crores of Kanhaiyas and JNU-ites who will keep on struggling and sacrificing for their dreams.

***

My resignation letter to Zee News

Dear Zee News,

After a year, four months and four days, the time has come for me to leave you. Although I should have done this earlier, if I don’t do this now, I’ll never be able to forgive myself.

What I am about to say is not a result of anger, irritation or emotion but is a well thought-out account. Along with being a journalist, I am also a citizen of the country in whose name the poison of blind “nationalism” is being spread and the country being pushed towards a state of civil war. My responsibilities as an Indian citizen as well as my professional duties is to stop this poison from spreading. I know this is liking trying to cross the ocean in a boat but I still want to make a start. I am therefore resigning from my post as a protest against the role we played in kindling and then promoting a campaign of blind nationalism which used the JNUSU President Kanhaiya Kumar as an excuse. I request that this letter be accepted without making the issue one of personal enmity.

In any case, the matter isn’t personal at all. It is one of professional duty, social consciousness and, finally, one of patriotism. I regret to inform you that that as a result of being a part of your organisation, I have failed many times as a journalist on all three counts in the last one year.

Post May 2014, ever since Shri Narendra Modi has become the Prime Minister, more or less every newsroom has been communalised – but the situation at our organisation is even more appalling. I apologise for using such grandoise vocabulary however there really is no other word for it. Why is it so that the news is written by giving it a Modi angle? The aim in writing the news is to push the Modi government’s agenda.

I have started to seriously doubt whether we are journalists at all. It seems like we are nothing more than the government’s mouthpiece or contract killer. Modi is the country’s prime minister, he is my prime minister but as a journalist I am unable to swallow any more Modi worship. My conscience has started to revolt against me. It’s like I am ill.

Behind each news story is an agenda, behind every news show is an effort to show how great the Modi government is and behind every debate is the attempt to shoot down Modi’s opponents? Nothing less than words like “attack” or “war” is acceptable to us. What is all this? When I stop and think about it, I feel like I have gone mad.

Why were we made to be so immoral, unethical, and despicable? After having studied from the country’s top most media institute and having worked in esteemed institutions such as BBC, Aaj Tak and Deutsche Welle, Germany, my journalistic capital has now been reduced to people calling me a “Chhee (yuck) news journalist”. Our integrity has been blown to bits. Who will take the responsibility for this?

How much should I say? A continuous campaign was run against Delhi’s Chief Minister, Arvind Kejriwal, and is still being run. But why? Basic policies which helped the people, like those of water-electricity and odd even scheme, were also questioned. It is fully within one’s rights to disagree with Kejriwal and to criticise him, but Kejriwal’s assassination is not a journalist’s right. If I start compiling a list of negative stories run against Kejriwal, then it will fill several pages. I want to know whether journalism’s core values of “neutralism” and honesty towards the viewers have any value or not?

This is what happened on the issue of Dalit scholar, Rohith Vemula’s suicide. First we addressed him as a “Dalit scholar”; then as a “Dalit student”. That’s still fine. But at least they should have written the news properly. The role of ABVP leader and BJP’s Bandaru Dattatreya in driving Rohith Vemula to commit suicide is still surrounded by dubious questions (everything is clear). But as a media house our work was to dilute the issue and to be their saviour.

I remember when Uday Prakash and other eminent writers started returning their awards on the question of intolerance, we started raising questions about them instead. Let’s just talk about Uday Prakash who is read by millions. He is the pride of the language we speak, the one we use for our livelihood. His work reflects our lives, our dreams, our struggles, but we are trying to prove that this was all a conspiracy. I was hurt even then, but tolerated it.

But now how long should I do it – and why?

I am not able to sleep well. I am restless. Maybe it is the result of a guilty conscience. It is the biggest taint any individual can be marked by: treason, of being a traitor. But the question is, as journalists, what right do we have to give certificates and degrees on being a traitor? Isn’t this the domain of the courts?

Along with Kanhaiya, we made many students appear to be traitors and anti-nationals in the eyes of the people. If anyone is murdered tomorrow, who will take its responsibility? We have not merely created a situation for someone’s murder or to destroy some families but we have created the conditions ripe for spreading riots and brought the country to the brink of a civil-war. What sort of patriotism is this? After all, what sort of journalism is this?

Are we the mouthpieces of the BJP or the RSS that we will do whatever they say? The video didn't have any "Pakistan Zindabad" slogans at all – yet we played it repeatedly to spread madness and mayhem. How did we believe that some voices coming out of the dark belonged to Kanhaiya and his companions? Due to our biases, we heard “long live Indian courts” as “long live Pakistan” and working on the government line, brought the careers, their hopes and aspirations and families of some people to the brink of destruction. It would have been better if we had let the agencies do their jobs and waited for their conclusions.

People are threatening to rape Umar Khalid’s sister and attack her with acid, they are calling her the sister of a traitor. Think, if something like this happens, would we not be responsible for it? Kanhaiya said it not once but thousands of times that he does not endorse anti-national slogans but he was not even heard once because the mayhem we created was on the government line. Have we taken a serious look at Kanhaiya’s home? Kanhaiya’s home is not a “home” but a painful symbol of the helplessness of this country’s farmers and common people, it is a graveyard of those hopes that are being buried every second in this country. But we have become blind.

It hurts me to say this but I want to say that there are many houses like this where I come from. Indian rural life is equally colourless. Those broken-down walls and already-weakened lives have been injected with the poison of nationalism without thinking about its consequences. If Kanhaiya’s paralysed father dies out of shock, would we not be responsible? If the Indian Express had not done the story [on Kanhaiya’s family], this country would not have come to know where Kanhaiya gets the inspiration to speak for the rights of the deprived.

Rama Naga and others are also in the same state. From modest backgrounds, having struggled against poverty, these boys managed to get a subsidised education at JNU. You can see the confidence in progressing. But those willing to sell out for TRPs have almost ruined their careers.

It’s possible that we don’t agree with their politics or that their ideas are radical, but how did they become traitors? How can we appropriate the work of the courts in judging? Is it just a coincidence that Delhi Police’s FIR has Zee News’ name in it? Is it that we are in nexus with the Delhi Police? What answer can we give the people.

After all, what do we have against JNU or JNU’s students? I believe the modern values, democracy, diversity and co-existence of opposing views has made JNU an eden in India, but now we have begun calling it a den of treason and outlaws.

I’d like to know if it is JNU that is beyond the law or the BJP leaders who stormed into court to beat up a leader of the Left? The BJP MLA and his supporters were beating up a CPI leader on the streets, with the police simply standing by and watching the spectacle. On screen we could see the assault and we wrote ‘Allegations of violence against OP Sharma’. I asked why did we have to say ‘allegations’? I was told this was because it came from ‘upar’ (above). How has our ‘upar’ gotten so low? You can understand if it goes p to Modi, but things have gotten to such a state that we are now saving BJP leaders like OP Sharma and ABVP workers?

I have started to loathe my existence, my journalism and my helplessness. Is this why I left a number of careers to become a journalist? Maybe not.

Now there are only two options before me. Either I leave journalism, or I separate myself from these conditions. I am taking the second route. I have not made any decisions, I am just asking some questions about my profession and my identity. It is a small matter, but this accountability is important. It’s less for others and more for me. I’m quite certain I won’t be able to get a job anywhere else. I also understand that if I had kept at it, I would have gotten close to a lakh. My salary is good but it comes with too many sacrifices, which I’m unwilling to give. I come from an ordinary middle class family, so I know how difficult it is to be without a salary, but still my consciousness will not be stifled.

I am saying again that I don’t have any personal complaints. These are issues of institutional and editorial policy. I trust that it will be understood also in this way.

It is also important to say that if a media house wants to impose its right-wing preferences, individuals should also be free to talk about their own political lines. It is my job as a journalist to remain neutral, but as a person and an enlightened citizen, my path is of the Left which is found not in party offices but in our everyday lives. This is my identity.

And finally, I am thankful for the year in which I struggled within Zee News. It is because of that struggle I managed to make some good friends.

Respectfully yours,

Vishwa Deepak