September 2015 Archives

Two Years after the Food Security Act, the Poor Remain Starved of their Due

New Delhi: Addressing the issue of the faulty implementation of the National Food Security Act, the Delhi Rozi Roti Adhikar Abhiyan held a public hearing here last week. The NFSA provides for priority ration cards for 42% of Delhi’s population. Households with priority ration cards are eligible to receive 5 kgs of foodgrains per person per month at subsidised prices. Despite Delhi being one of the first states to start implementation of the NFSA, there are still plenty of poor residents struggling to get their ration cards. More than 200 people, mostly women, from all parts of Delhi came to the hearing to share their grievances.

Chief among the issues raised, was that of people getting ration cards with partial details. In a number of cases, the names of children were left out of the card due to the absence of an UID number. Despite repeated Supreme Court orders stating that having a UID number cannot be mandatory to receive any government benefits, the Delhi government continues to insist on Aadhaar for each member of the household. One of the government officials present stated that children of 3 months or older can be enrolled under the UID.

Saira, a resident of Sunlight Colony said that there are nine members in her family but only four names have been included in the ration card, because the others don’t have UID numbers. They receive only 20 kgs in place of the 45kgs they are entitled to. Seema, who has four children said that her ration card has the names of only her husband, herself and her eldest son while three children have been left out for the same reason. Due to some of the criteria in the guidelines of the Delhi government, households which are poor and used to get rations earlier as they had BPL cards are now being left out. In particular, those living in category E colonies stated that because of the blanket criteria excluding all households in A to E colonies, they are being denied subsidised rations. “We have been here for 40 years and now we are being left out. We have been placed in category E on the basis of the average income tax paid by residents of the area, but that doesn’t mean that all members pay high income tax. We have a BPL certificate, but we are still being left out”; said Chandravati from Savitri Nagar.

Ration shops were a part of the discussion as well with many stating that their ration shops have been shifted far away and they are spending about Rs 100-150 on each trip now.

Vimla, a widow from Jagdamba Camp Basti is the head of her household and has to look after a family of four. Before the NFSA, she had a BPL card but it got cancelled because she failed to get an Aadhar card despite having the prerequisite documents. .

Resham Devi made multiple trips to the ration shop to get her ration because the point-of-sale device was not working because of power cuts, which occur often in her area. People’s problems were further aggravated by the absence of a clearly defined grievance redress mechanism.

Experts and civil society representatives including Harsh Mander (Special Commissioner to the Supreme Court on Right to Food), Usha Ramanathan (human rights lawyer), Kavita Srivastava (convener of the National Right to Food Campaign), Biraj Patnaik (principal adviser to the commissioners to the Supreme Court) Annie Raja of the National Federation of Indian Women and Anjali Bhardwaj (Right to Food activist), were present at the public hearing.

S.S. Ghonkrokta, Special Commissioner for Food and Consumer Affairs, Department of Delhi was also present along with a number of officials of the Food Department. He assured the people present that the department would look into the issues raised and try to resolve them along with the community. However, he urged those present to comply with the requirement for an Aadhaar card.

The Ugly Underbelly of Make in India

A shocking new report on the automotive sector questions whether manufacturing in India can ever deliver on its promises without offering a safe environment for workers.

A shocking new report on the automotive sector questions whether manufacturing in India can ever deliver on its promises without offering a safe environment for workers

23-year-old Ravi hails from Aligarh, Uttar Pradesh. He oper- ated an injection-molding machine in a small tier-3 factory that manufactures spare parts for heavy vehicles. On his fifth day on the job, there was an unexpected malfunctioning of the machine and it closed down on its own. Before he could switch off the machine, Ravi’s hand got caught in the machine and he lost four fingers and part of his left palm. The employer paid for his treatment but is now demand- ing a return of the treatment expenses. The employer also refuses to give his salary on time and is instead coercing Ravi into handing over the ESI com- pensation payment.

23-year-old Ravi hails from Aligarh, Uttar Pradesh. He operated an injection-moulding machine in a small tier-3 factory that manufactures spare parts for heavy vehicles. On his fifth day on the job, there was an unexpected malfunctioning of the machine. Ravi’s hand got caught and he lost four fingers and part of his left palm. The employer paid for his treatment but is now demanding a return of the treatment expenses. Credit: From What Can Safeguard Workers?

New Delhi: With the Indian auto industry – which produced 23.37 million vehicles in 2014-15 and attracted FDI of $12.2 billion between 2000 and 2015 – all set to play a central role in Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s call to “Make in India’’, an alarming new report on shop floor injuries in the automotive sector has questioned whether “Make in India” can be successful without first ensuring that manufacturing is ‘safe in India’.

The report – What Can Safeguard Workers? – jointly produced by Agrasar and SafeInIndia, a new civic initiative launched by former IIM graduates, Sandeep Sachdeva, Ravi Gulati and Prabhat Agarwal, and was released in Gurgaon on Tuesday.

With an estimated workforce of 80,000, the auto industry in the Gurgaon-Manesar region near New Delhi is one of the largest automotive hubs in India. Of these, over 1,000 workers meet with serious industrial accidents every year – a rate of incidence that is testimony to the casualisation of labour, non-existent training, long working hours, poor pay and absence of basic safety in the automotive sector, and especially in ancillary units.

The report points out through 20 case studies the complete apathy of most of the companies – owners, managers and contractors – towards the plight of the injured workers, most of whom are left with permanent disabilities and a consequent loss of employment and income. “This happens despite a slew of safety laws and monitoring agencies… Such incidents are only increasing by the day,” claims the report.

The summary of the 20 case studies provided by the report makes for grim reading:

Pre-accident:

In almost all cases (16 out of 20), there was no training provided to  workers
In 8 of 20 cases, there was no system of machine/safety regulation  inspections in the factories. In another 5 cases, the safety inspections were  irregular and ad-hoc.
No automatic safety control system was found in 14 out of 20 cases.
Appropriate quality safety gear/equipment was not provided in any of the  cases.
Very few workers (only 8 out of 20) had ESI  cards prior to the accident, risking their post- accident care and compensation. However, in almost all cases, workers’ knowledge of ESI processes was inadequate.
The age profile of accident victims varied from 18 years to 52 years; however, the majority (15 out of 20) were under 23 years of age.

Post–accident:

In half of the cases post accident, employers showed complete apathy, especially where the worker was easily replaceable.
Most workers (14 out of 20) were first treated  at small private hospitals instead of ESI  hospitals. The choice of hospital appeared  to be influenced by convenience, previous  experience of dealing with similar accidents  at workplace, distance to the hospital, and  availability of doctors during evenings and  night shifts at the concerned hospital. The  employers and employees due to ESIC’s  time-consuming procedures and attitude saw ESI hospitals as unattractive. Though not clearly evident, preference towards private hospitals was often driven by non-compliance of employers towards ESI registration and procedures.
In 18 cases, the victims lost their jobs after the accidents.

Based on accidents in the automotive industry in Gurgaon, case studies and stakeholder responses, the report notes how rarely these accidents come to the attention of the national media. One such instance was in August this year when an industrial robot killed a 23-year-old employee of an automobile factory while the employee was trying to fix a metal sheet that had been dislocated. “It was subsequently reported that in this factory, 113 out of 118 robots lack sensor barriers,” the report, said pointing to the abysmal adherence to safety norms by most companies.

Worse still, the report expresses the fear that there has been a gross under-reporting of accidents in the region and indeed across India. “In 2005, the International Labor Organization published a report on work-related accidents around the world. It pointed out a strange anomaly: India had reported 222 fatal accidents that year, while the Czech Republic, with a working population of about 1 per cent of India’s, had reported 231. The ILO estimated that the “true number of fatal accidents” taking place in India every year was 40,000. However, as a result of under-reporting, the total number of fatal accidents recorded in a year is much below the actual number of accidents.”

The report said the Delhi-Gurgaon-Faridabad region is home to many Original Equipment Manufacturers (OEM) and sub-contractor manufacturers ranging from Tier-1 to Tier-3 who employ over 80,000 workers in factories across the region.

However, to keep their cost of operations low, many a times these companies overlook the aspect of safety for their employees. “Unsurprisingly, while laws regarding work place safety, post-accident care and compensation do exist, there is an absence of strong and effective institutional mechanisms to support their implementation. This had led to unnecessarily hazardous working conditions, a low level of safety consciousness and training and inadequate post-accident treatment, care, compensation and rehabilitation. Injured workers are, therefore, often left with long term psychological and physical damage, with its consequent financial implications.”

Through interviews with 20 workers who suffered serious injuries, the research has highlighted how in 80 per cent of the cases there was no training provided to workers.

Credit: From What Can Safeguard Workers?

Consider the case of 18-year-old Suraj from Bulandshahr, Uttar Pradesh. He had just taken up his first job with a small Tier-3 manufacturing unit and was on his third day at work when due to total lack of experience he held the machine cap of the object in a wrong manner due to which the die press got stuck and his right hand was caught in the press shop machine. He lost two fingers of his right hand. Still recuperating, Suraj is now extremely scared of working in a similar environment again. He has hidden the accident from his parents and family back home for fear of upsetting them and their plans for his sister’s wedding.

Suraj’s case illustrates how without any training, young workers are often asked to operate a press shop machine, especially ones which lack any safety mechanism. Suraj’s uncle, who owned the unit, took the responsibility of treatment, but the boy has received no other support. Though a permanent employee with the factory, he did not have an ESI card and is not even aware about the scheme or its benefits.

Loss of job

The report found that workers who get injured for no fault of their own can end up losing their job and livelihood.

Surender. Credit: From What Can Safeguard Workers?

One such case is of 20-year-old Surender from Alwar in Rajasthan who operated a forklift machine in a Tier-2 auto component manufacturing unit Gurgaon. A new worker with no training was asked to work on a powerful machine right away and his inability to control the machine caused serious injury to Surender’s left leg. Again, the machine came with no safety mechanisms.

For Surender, a contract worker who was not on the rolls of the company, the consequences of his accident were severe. Not only did he suffer a grievous injury, in the absence of the employer helping him, he had to sell his family land to cover his treatment cost. Though the contractor initially spent Rs 4 lakh on his treatment, Surender has been bearing the subsequent expenses on his own. Surender possessed an ESI card, but the ESI hospital claimed that it was invalid even when he had got it renewed from the branch office of ESI.

The research also highlighted how there were significant shortcomings in inspections of these factories; how no automatic safety control system existed in 70 per cent of cases; quality safety gear/equipment was completely absent in all units; less than half the workers had ESI cards prior to the accident; and how nearly 75 per cent of the workers were under 23 years of age.

In most cases, the approach of the employers was found completely apathetic following the accidents. Despite India having a good legal framework in the form of the Factories Act, 1948, the Employees’ Compensation Act, 1923, Contract Labour (Regulation and Abolition) Act, 1970 and the ESI Act (and other related acts) for the protection of workers, 18 of the 20 workers lost their jobs after the accidents. With 19 of the accidents being reported in Tier-2 and Tier-3 factories, the report said it was also a pointer to shortcomings that exist in the safety protocols and infrastructure in such units.

Raja Shah. Credit: From What Can Safeguard Workers?

The research also revealed that there were “significant shortcomings in ESI facility inspections and in recruitment of doctors; lack of basic amenities and equipment at ESI designated facilities and often apathy among the ESI officials in monitoring the overall ESI service delivery process.”

In view of these findings, the report has suggested the need to “improve safety consciousness among workers as well as manufacturers” through their training; improvement in supply chain safety audit from OEM/Tier 1 manufacturers and sharing of best safety practices in the industry for long-term productivity gains.

For improvement in treatment and rehabilitation of injured workers, the report has called for better and immediate post-accident treatment, a more effective ESI process and a system to identify appropriate roles for injured workers.

It has also suggested better implementation of labour laws and safety regulations, addressing shortage of safety inspectors and revision of antiquated laws as means of improving the lot of workers.

Why is the Government Being So Shy?

It’s time the government standardised its communications online and made relevant information available and intuitively accessible.

For a government which has prided itself on leveraging the internet to connect with its people, some of its policies are remarkably difficult to find. Take the case of the widely-reported Draft National Encryption Policy, formulated by an Expert Group of the Department of Information Technology (DeitY). One would think that to disseminate it as widely and openly as possible would be the way to dispel any suspicions surrounding its bona fide. But this is not what the Government did.

Instead, the Policy was published on an obscure webpage which attracted few hits. No notification or press release accompanied it and no external page linked to it. It was only the search for an equally obscure legal document, the habit of browsing for regulatory updates – and some measure of providence – which led me to the webpage. After an immediate update to a client, I posted the link to a WhatsApp-based internet-interest group. As things would turn out, this was the first most people in the field had heard of this Policy.

This surprise comes at a time when the government portal in question (www.deity.gov.in) had dedicated sections titled “Public Opinion” and “What’s New” on its homepage. As well as a prominent, if not garish, scrolling banner providing outdated updates. If a policy development as critical as this [Policy] did not require the use of these resources, we can only wonder what we have missed out on in similar fashion.

In all fairness, it may have been the case that the Government withdrew the Policy before it was to be circulated but then why upload it in the first place? Was the problem merely a rogue junior-scientist or was it more institutional? Questions such as this are not novel. Access to government news and releases has never been as intuitive as they should be. Documents are never where they are supposed to be and, by the time you locate them, they are gone. In a similar fashion, you will now no longer find the Draft Encryption Policy or the infamous clarification to it on the DeitY page. All that remains is the damage-limiting withdrawal statement.

At the same time, exceptions do exist. Portals such as that of the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) and myGOV are regularly updated and relatively straightforward to navigate. Calls for comment from the public find prominent placements on them – TRAI even posts the comments and counter-comments. myGOV ironically was developed by the National Informatics Centre, a unit of DeitY.

In DeitY’s case, its expertise in technology and cyberspace can only be held up against it. Either the placement of the Policy was a careful attempt to minimise its exposure or the very expertise that we so readily assumed above is to be questioned. In any case, one inescapable fact is that the status quo does not work to the advantage of any stakeholder. Inadequate circulation of a policy document not only reduces public engagement but may – inadvertently, in some cases – cast aspersions on the intentions of the Government itself.

What is required is easy access to and, if possible, centralisation of government releases and communications such as call for comments, draft legislation and other policy-linked documents. A possible solution would be a direction or office memorandum issued by the concerned Government (at the Central or State level) that all communications be routed through the Press Information Bureau which itself does a reasonably good job of providing timely updates online. If government-wide centralisation would take time, at least in the interim, implementation on a ministry-wide level could be a quick compromise. Existing policies aside, a standard format for government portals and binding rules on notification, upload and deletion of communications would also go a long way towards easier access to governance – a critical facet of any move towards a more ‘Digital India’.

Tarun Krishnakumar is a Delhi-based policy lawyer with a technology-focus. The views expressed are personal.

Edward Snowden is on Twitter: @Snowden

As of shortly after the launch of his new Twitter account, Snowden was only following one other account: @NSAGov.

Reprinted with permission from The Intercept.

Edward Snowden isn’t just a hashtag anymore. The NSA whistleblower joined Twitter on Tuesday, using the @snowden Twitter handle.

Snowden, who has lived in Russia since turning over a trove of top-secret documents to reporters more than two years ago, has remained in the public eye thanks to frequent appearances and interviews using video links and sometimes even robots.

But joining the Twitterverse establishes him even more firmly as a major figure in the public discourse about surveillance and privacy that he jump-started in June 2013.

He recently engaged in a wide-ranging interview with astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson. Part two of that interview was posted on Friday night, and in it, Tyson asked Snowden why he’s not on Twitter.

“You kind of need a Twitter handle. So like @Snowden, maybe? Is this something you might do?” Tyson asked.

“That sounds good, I think we’ve got to make it it happen,” Snowden replied.

“You and I will be Twitter buddies,” Snowden told Tyson. “Your followers will be: the Internet, me, and the NSA.”

A hero to some, a traitor to others, Snowden lives in Moscow, having been granted asylum there after U.S. authorities charged him with three felonies. Two of the charges are under the Espionage Act, a draconian 1917 statute that blocks defendants from explaining why what they did was justified. Snowden has said he would come back to the U.S. if he were granted a fair trial.

The @Snowden handle had been taken by someone who hadn’t used it in three years. So Twitter was contacted, and agreed to turn it over to Snowden himself.

According to Snowden’s lawyer, Ben Wizner of the ACLU, Snowden himself will be controlling the account.

As of shortly after the launch of his new Twitter account, Snowden was only following one other account: @NSAGov. But @NSAGov was not — at least not officially — following him back.

Here is his first Tweet:

Can you hear me now?

— Edward Snowden (@Snowden) September 29, 2015

UPDATE at 4:25 p.m. ET: Within four hours, Snowden had gained more than half a million followers, and tweeps around the world took notice:

Today @Snowden joined Twitter, and here's the world's response. pic.twitter.com/d6HgVvdRsf

— Twitter (@Twitter) September 29, 2015

Reprinted with permission from The Intercept.

To Taste or Not to Taste: How Bitterness is a Defence Mechanism

Herbivores have evolved to be less sensitive to bitter leaves and fruits than carnivores, and their larger livers detoxify these natural compounds. However, some animals are losing this ability.

Animals do the most amazing things. Read about them in this series by Janaki Lenin.

Illustration caption: An inability to taste bitterness was once thought to be an undesired trait, but Kyoto University researchers have shown that Japanese macaque monkeys have an evolutionary advantage if they cannot taste bitter fruit. Credit: Kyoto University

Some Japanese macaques eat bitter-tasting fruits and vegetables.

Most bitter plants produce toxins to protect themselves from herbivores. For example, castor plants produce ricin, while deadly nightshade produces atropine. They can give anyone who consumes them more than a bellyache.

The unpleasant taste forces humans and animals to give the toxin-producing plants a wide berth. If many plants produce vile-tasting leaves and fruits, herbivores won’t be left with much to eat. So they have evolved to be less sensitive to bitterness than carnivores, and their larger livers detoxify these natural compounds.

Macaques are omnivores; they are not immune to bitter foods as herbivores, nor are they as sensitive to them like carnivores. Yet, some Japanese macaques have lost this life-saving trait.

Mammals recognise five taste sensations – sweet, bitter, sour, salty, and savoury. One group of taste receptors, TAS2R38, is sensitive to limonin in citrus fruits and sulphur-containing glucosinolates in vegetables like cabbage, broccoli, and mustard. People with a fully functional receptor create a fuss about eating brussels sprouts or bitter greens. More than 40% of Indians have a mutation in TAS2R38 that renders us incapable of tasting bitterness to some degree.

Such mutations affect humans and non-human primates alike. Most western chimpanzees can tolerate bitterness, but none of the eastern chimpanzees can.

Since these variations are known to exist in humans and some primates, researchers from Kyoto University extracted DNA from the blood and tissue samples of close to 600 macaques from 17 locations throughout Japan. They found that all the ones indifferent to bitter taste were confined to the western part of Kii peninsula in Honshu, Japan.

“Using cellular and behavioural experiments, we found that a large number of Kii monkeys, through adaptive evolution, have lost TAS2R38 function, leading to the inability to taste bitterness,” explains Nami Suzuki-Hashido, the lead author of the study.

In a previous experiment, the researchers gave apple pieces to captive macaques from different parts of the country. When some chunks were coated with a bitter substance, most monkeys refused to eat them. But those from Kii couldn’t tell the difference between bitter and sweet apples and ate both with gusto.

The researchers say the genetic mutation is found in 29% of the population. If the ability to tolerate bitterness had neutral value, giving the macaques neither advantages nor disadvantages, it would take 84,000 years for a population of 20,000 macaques to spread to that many monkeys. The researchers say the mutation first arose and spread in Kii within the past 13,000 years only. The rapid spread of immunity to bitterness in fruits and vegetables must provide an evolutionary advantage to these macaques. Perhaps, they could feed on specific plants available in the area.

If some Japanese macaques can’t taste bitterness, how do they avoid eating plants that could be dangerous?

“There are approximately 27 taste receptors in the genome of monkeys,” says Hiroo Imai, one of the senior researchers, of the study. “They can detect toxins by using the bitter taste receptors other than TAS2R38.”

However, as a species, these macaques seem insensitive to other kinds of bitter plants. The ones in the snowbound northern part of Japan often eat the bark of willow trees, which contains a bitter compound called salicin, when there are few options.

The first wild citrus species, the Tachibana orange, Citrus tachibana, started growing in Japan approximately 2,800 years ago. Its place of origin is thought to be Kii peninsula. It’s a small, inedible fruit that resembles a tangerine.

In captivity at the Kyoto University, monkeys from Kii eat large mandarin oranges by peeling the rind and removing seeds. But they eat small tachibana fruits without even peeling them. Elephants love oranges with their rinds. But it’s unusual for monkeys to eat small bitter oranges whole. The researchers suggest this provides the Kii monkeys, insensitive to bitter tastes, the advantage of eating small tachibana fruits.

Tsunamis hit Kii at intervals of 400 to 600 years. The researchers suggest the macaques’ inability to taste the bitterness of the Tachibana orange may have helped them tide over the immediate aftermath of a disaster.

If eating bitter citrus fruits gave them an advantage, it ought to spread to the rest of the species. Yet, the mutation appears to be restricted to the monkeys of western Kii peninsula only. Even the population in eastern Kii doesn’t have the mutation, although young monkeys migrate between the two. Perhaps the habitat of the Kii population affirms the lack of aversion to bitter taste.

While this is a probable reason, there may be more to it.

Cabbage, brussels sprouts, and mustard greens are not injurious to our health. On the contrary, they are potent sources of nutrients. Glucosinolates in these vegetables especially protect us from cancer and heart disease. Humans sensitive to their taste are less likely to include them in their diet. Limonin, the bitter tasting compound in citrus fruits, is being investigated for its anti-carcinogenic and cholesterol-lowering effects. Being immune to these strong tastes is an advantage.

Scientists think those of us with a mutated receptor may taste a different bitter compound. Unusually for a taste receptor, TAS2Rs is found all over our bodies. We don’t know what they are doing in our guts, hearts, and lungs. Researchers suggest the role of TAS2R38 may not be restricted to taste alone. The study was published on September 15, 2015.

Featured image credit: gregthebusker/Flickr, CC BY 2.0.

Janaki Lenin is the author of My Husband and Other Animals. She lives in a forest with snake-man Rom Whitaker and tweets at @janakilenin.

Modi’s Charm Offensive May Not Convince US Corporates to Invest

Narendra Modi will be mistaken if he thinks American companies will treat the NDA differently from the previous regime.

Why is Prime Minister Narendra Modi wooing big American corporations so assiduously? The manner in which he is trying to hard sell India to US multinationals may reflect a deeper anxiety over the lack of investment revival in the domestic economy, partly due to fresh fears of a world recession caused by the ongoing commodities meltdown. There is a realisation that if the world economy moves closer to another recession, a possibility many leading analysts consider very real, India cannot escape the consequences.

It is this worry which prompted Prime Minister Modi and Finance minister Arun Jaitley to have a meeting with leading industrialists in the capital. After the interaction both Modi and Jaitley seemed a bit disappointed that Indian industry in general was not so forthcoming with new investments. The Prime Minister, somewhat exasperated, is believed to have urged them to take some more risk by spending on new investments. Privately, Arun Jaitley has been more blunt in suggesting that the traditional businesses are just complaining all the time and don’t seem to have the will or optimism to embrace an ambitious growth path.

In fact Jaitley has even suggested that the government would rather pin its hopes on Public Sector companies and global multinationals, both of whom have ample cash, to revive investments in India. Though they don’t say it publicly, many leading businessmen, who vocally backed Modi in 2014 general elections, now seem to feel a sense of distance from the government. They feel the government is not listening to them.

Bad digital infrastructure

It is partly in this context that Modi’s assiduous wooing of the US multinationals must be seen. A BJP spokesperson gave me an interesting insight in this regard. He said Modi, by his very nature, cannot take pessimism for long. Leading Indian businesses seem to have put him off with their negative body language. Modi intuitively thinks the new generation of entrepreneurs, especially in the technology sector, have the necessary hunger and optimism which traditional Indian businesses may have lost. This could be the reason why Modi spent so much time in the Silicon Valley trying to woo the biggies like Google, Microsoft, Oracle, Facebook, etc. Modi wants early results and he thinks these cash rich MNCs could probably help in rapidly scaling up India’s digital economy.

However, this is easier said than done. India’s digital infrastructure is woefully inadequate today and this is something the leading CEOs of Silicon Valley told the PM bluntly. Recently, in an interview to this writer, Rahul Khullar, till recently Chairman of TRAI, said, “the digital India vision is fine. But it is not yet accompanied by a clear plan on the ground. There is a need to lay down necessary infrastructure to connect over a billion people”. The 2014-15 target of taking broad band to 70,000 gram panchayats was missed badly with only about 13% of the target achieved. There is a need to connect 250,000 panchayats by 2019.

“Annual fund allocation for this is a minuscule Rs.3,000 crore when the actual requirement is Rs.30,000 crore per year.” Many other critical gaps like innovative software application development for users in semi rural India has not even started,” Khullar says.

Digital India project involves a grand plan to integrate the three initiatives of the UPA government – National Optics Fibre Network, National Knowledge Network and e-governance systems going down to the panchayat administration. In substantive terms, this has not even begun.

The viscous political economy

So the US digital giants are happy to shake hands with Modi and take group photos. But they can start investing in India only when the government keeps its promise of modernising and adequately scaling up the digital infrastructure. Of course, there are other important issues raised by Indian start ups and tech companies who feel the government must, first and foremost, have a digital policy which will help create home grown digital giants like China has done so successfully. Many local tech companies are apprehensive that in the absence of a proper policy and rational regulatory framework, global biggies like Facebook, Google etc will naturally seek dominance of the vast Indian market. After all, the next 800 million smartphone users in India would constitute the most valued customers/assets for e-commerce and other digital companies. So domestic digital companies were naturally somewhat apprehensive about Modi’s excessive bonhomie with the likes of Facebook which is surrounded by controversies related to privacy issues and its approach to net neutrality.

In New York, the Prime Minister met corporate honchos from across various sectors and they all told him India needed to speed up reforms. They are happy with Modi’s intent but unhappy with the “speed of reforms”. Of course, Modi is quite unable to tell the owners of foreign capital that India’s complex political economy accepts reforms only at a certain pace and anything beyond that tends to cause political and social disruption. Modi has experienced this in regard to the land bill and labour legislation.

Overall, Narendra Modi’s meetings with businesses in New York and Silicon Valley merely helped in reiterating India’s promise that it will dramatically ease the process of doing business. Foreign companies will not invest until they see some of these promises translate on the ground. Narendra Modi will be mistaken if he thinks American companies will treat the NDA differently from the previous regime. Hard-nosed businessmen don’t go by emotional appeals, which Modi is so good at making. Global businesses study objective conditions in regard to where they will get returns with minimum red tape. It is not for nothing that the entire ecosystem for manufacturing components of Apple products is around South China, Hong Kong, Taiwan and Japan. Over 300 parts of Apple products are manufactured in China, 150 in Japan and about 50 in Taiwan.

Vulnerable to another recession

Narendra Modi wants Apple to do something similar under the “Make in India” plan. He spoke to the Apple CEO Tim Cook about it. Tim Cook knows it won’t be easy to replicate the Apple value chain that exists in the East Asian region. Especially, when the global economy is facing deflationary headwinds, with excess capacity all around. The current situation of over capacity in most sectors is not a good omen for the “Make in India” project. The global deflationary condition may take at least two years to play itself out before reaching a new equilibrium.

Though our policy makers are trying to build a narrative that India will escape the commodities meltdown because it is a net importer of oil and metals, the fact is India cannot escape a possible global recession because most resource exporting nations in Latin America, Africa and West Asia are substantial importers of goods from India. If they go down, their ability to buy from India also goes down. No wonder we have 9 months of back to back negative export growth. After Narendra Modi’s UAE visit, the government claimed the Arab economies would invest $75-85 billion in India. This cannot happen if oil prices stay at today’s levels. The promise of big Middle East investments abroad are contingent upon the oil price recovering to some moderate levels like $70 to $75 a barrel.

So until commodity prices somewhat recover and global deflationary conditions ease, Prime Minister Narendra Modi will do well to interact more with important domestic constituents like the farmers, small and medium size enterprises who provide employment to about 130 million people in the country. Taking a bottom up view of the economy will be more beneficial.

Should India Worry About a Dramatic Price Rise of Old Drugs?

Treating life saving drugs as just another profit making commodity can lead to a big public relations disaster, as an American fund manager discovered

Medicines, including off patent ones, are becoming expensive

Last week, America found itself a new super-villain in hedge fund manager Martin Shkreli, after the New York Times published a story on how he had hiked the price of Diaprim, a drug, from $13.50 to $750, virtually overnight. Diaprim, which is the brand name for Pyrimethamine, is prescribed for the treatment of malaria and toxoplasmosis. The latter is a disease that is known to frequently affect patients whose immune systems have already been compromised by AIDS.

Invented by a Nobel Prize winner working for Burroughs Welcome, the rights to the drug were recently acquired by Turing Pharmaceuticals which was founded by Shkreli, a 32-year-old hedge fund manager with a controversial past that has been documented by the NYT in this detailed article. The backlash against the price rise by almost everybody who is somebody, including Presidential hopefuls Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump, has forced Shkreli to backpedal on the price rise.

While high prices for newly invented drugs, which are still covered by patents is quite common, it is quite rare to find cases where pharmaceutical companies hike the price for old drugs. The simple reason for this is because old drugs not protected by patents can be manufactured by multiple competitors. This ensures competition and low prices. The only way to profiteer from a drug not under patent is if there is only one manufacturer in the market thus creating a de facto monopoly.

Notwithstanding, this rather simple arithmetic logic, the US had been witnessing shocking increases in the prices of off-patent generic drugs. In April this year, the Wall Street Journal reported on how Valeant Pharmaceuticals International Inc. bought the rights to two life-saving drugs and increased their prices by 525% and 212% respectively. The spokesperson for the company had justified the price increase as being in the interests of the company’s shareholders. Others, try to justify such price increases by claiming that profits would be ploughed back into research or expansion of manufacturing facilities.

The problem has reached such proportions in the US that American Senators, Bernie Sanders and Elijah Cummings have started asking questions about such price rises and the Department of Health and Human Services’ Office of Inspector General (OIG) has begun an investigation into the effect of such hikes on the Medicare rebate program. The last time the American pharmaceutical industry was put under an intense scrutiny for pricing was in the late ‘50s when Senator Kefauver carried out an intense and highly publicized investigation into its practices. At the time Kefauver was heading the Antitrust and Monopoly Sub-Committee and he had concentrated on exposing monopolies in the American economy. While little changed due to Kefauver’s investigation, the highly publicized hearings caused decades of bad press for the pharmaceutical industry.

Mind boggling price increases

The mind boggling increases in the price of generic drugs in the US begs the question of why other generics aren’t entering the market to increase competition? For reasons that are not entirely clear, the American pharmaceutical industry appears to have several monopolies, or at the very least oligopolies, for old drugs not covered by patents. Apart from unnatural price rises as seen in the case of Diaprim, a monopolistic market for even old drugs can have a dangerous impact on public health in case of manufacturing problems within the few companies supplying the drug to the market.

For example in 2011, President Obama had to issue executive orders authorizing the US FDA to take extraordinary steps to counter the shortage of two drugs: methotrexate, a drug used to treat leukemia and Doxil, a drug used to treat cancer. The first drug was from the 1950s and not protected under any intellectual property laws, while the second was a more recent drug which, although not covered under any active patents, was still protected by marketing exclusivity. The supply of methotrexate in the US had dwindled in 2011 because one of the major manufacturers, Bell Venue Laboratories had voluntarily suspended operations because of manufacturing issues at its plant. The four remaining manufacturers in the US could not cope with the demand and the US FDA had to fast track approvals for new firms to enter the market. In the case of Doxil, the USFDA took the extraordinary step of allowing the temporary import of unapproved replacement drugs manufactured by Sun Pharma, an Indian company. The US apparently faced over 195 drug shortages in that year.

Moving to the more important question of the impact of such price rises on the Indian market. Prima facie, India is unlikely to face such meteoric price increases. The country has a huge pharmaceutical industry with a lot of competition and this usually keeps prices down. As recently reported in the International Business Times, Lupin sells Pyrimethamine in India for Rs. 6.67 and as the paper put it, it would be cheaper for an American patient to fly to India and buy the medicine than pay the price demanded by Turing Pharmaceuticals. More importantly, the drug also happens to be covered by the Drug Price Control Order (DPCO), 2013 that is notified under the Essential Commodities Act, 1955. It is therefore impossible for a private company in India to jack up the price of pyrimethamine in India. Does this mean that all is well for India? Possibly not, because unlike the US where insurance companies would have fielded the extra cost and perhaps even pushed back against the price rise, the average Indian patient usually lacks health insurance and the Indian insurance companies aren’t yet strong enough to take on the pharmaceutical industry. In the case of steeply priced patented medicine, which is not covered under the DPCO, an Indian patient can easily go bankrupt paying for treatment costs.

However, it should be mentioned that several foreign pharmaceutical companies who have previously burnt their fingers on the pricing issue, have introduced differential pricing for the Indian market for their patented medicine. This means that an Indian patient pays less than a patient in the West. As a result Gilead licences its breakthrough Hepatitis drug Sovaldi in India for a fraction of the drug’s price in the US. Similarly GSK and Roche have reduced the price of their cancer drugs, Tykerb and Herceptin, although by a much smaller margin than Gilead’s Sovaldi. Merck, which is one of the pioneers of differential pricing in the Indian market, prices its diabetes medication, Januvia, at a lower price than in the US and the strategy appears to have paid off.

Moral dilemma about profits

The rising gap between the Indian prices and American prices of the very same drugs however raises a moral dilemma similar to the current Turing Pharmaceuticals controversy. How much profit is too much profit? Reports last year that Sovaldi, for example is sold in India at approximately $ 900 per 12 week treatment by Gilead, while it sold the same drug in the US at $84,000. The vast gap between the prices in both countries raises the fundamental question of the economics, logic and ethics of pharmaceutical pricing. Most people presume that pharmaceutical companies price their medicine according to the cost of manufacture and/or research and development costs. However differential pricing shows that a pharmaceutical company is more likely to price drugs in the same way that a soft drinks company is likely to price its soft drink i.e. the price that a consumer is likely to pay to enjoy the product. In the case of a life-saving pharmaceutical medicine, the price could theoretically be infinite because a life is invaluable. This logic led to the great pricing debacle in Africa during the height of the AIDS crisis. Thirty nine international pharma companies fought with the South African government over their patents and the concurrent right to price their life-saving AIDS drugs at an astronomical price. That dispute led to an unparalleled global public outburst against the big pharmaceutical companies. Enter Yusuf Hameid, the maverick CEO of Cipla who offered to play the saviour by selling the same drugs at a fraction of the $10,000 being demanded by his competitors. He won the tenders and the public relations battle hands down and his company made profits of Rs. 2351.20 crores in 2001-02. Hameid remains a hero in the public narrative, while the big pharmaceutical companies are still licking their wounds.

That lesson taught most of the big pharmaceutical industry that conventional economic logic has to often give way to human emotion and public relations. Medicine is always an emotional issue, more so when it is life-saving. Shkreli, like several other pharma CEOs, learnt that lesson the hard way last week by earning the title of the most hated man in America at the tender age of 32.

The writer is an alumni of Stanford Law School and practices in New Delhi

What America’s Nuclear Deals with India and Iran have in Common

The contents of the agreements are very different but in both cases, Washington was driven by concerns about strategic shifts occurring in the wider regions of South Asia and the Middle East

Photo By Abdolreza Mohseni

It may be a mere coincidence that Washington and its partners operating as the P5+1 were able to strike a nuclear deal with Iran exactly 10 years after the US and India issued their landmark join statement on civil nuclear cooperation in July 2005. In terms of their contents and scope, the two agreements couldn’t be more different. Yet, they also make for an interesting comparative study.

When the George W Bush administration announced its intention of changing its laws and pushing for an India-specific waiver at the Nuclear Suppliers Group, there were many critics within the US who saw this as an unwarranted dilution of the international nonproliferation region. They asked why India was being “favoured” despite possessing nuclear weapons when Washington was working hard to ensure Iran did not develop a military nuclear programme.

Of course, India was not a signatory to the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty – and ought never to have been penalised by the attendant regime for its weapons programme – while Iran was (and is) party to the NPT and had committed itself to forgoing the weapons option. Nevertheless, debate raged over this chalk-and-cheese comparison and eventually became a stick to extract further concessions from the Indian side.

As India’s own relations with Iran came under sharp scrutiny, New Delhi eventually acceded to the American diktat that its strategic and energy ties with Tehran – including the pursuit of gas import options via pipeline – had to be downgraded if the nuclear deal was to go through. Once India fell in line, Bush was able to crack the whip and ensure the deal’s critics in Congress remained a minority.

Fast forward to 2015. Where earlier it was a Republican president who decided to reverse the India policy of his Democratic predecessor, this time it was a Democratic president, Barack Obama, who pulled out all the stops to suppress a Republican revolt in the Senate that was threatening to scuttle the Iran nuclear deal. Earlier this month, in a major victory for the White House, the deal’s critics were bested on Capitol Hill.

While this is not the place to analyse the contours of the Iran agreement, it differs from the India deal in one major respect. The US-India deal brought India’s civilian nuclear facilities under an international verification regime but exempted its military nuclear programme from such verification. In the case of Iran, which is a signatory to the NPT, however, the already existing supervision of the International Atomic Energy agency (IAEA) has been supplemented in additional ways – the purpose being to help Tehran reassure the international community that there will never be a military dimension to its nuclear activities.

Beyond this difference, however, there is one striking parallel between the Iranian and the Indian deals. In both cases, it was the strategic dynamics of their respective regions that pushed the US towards accommodating New Delhi and Tehran.

Evolution of Indian deal

India’s nuclear programme had begun to face troubles after its first atomic test in 1974. The troubles were as much due to the gradual withdrawal of aid to its nuclear programme by its Western partners, as because of the progressively stringent non-proliferation measures imposed by the evolving international regime, particularly after the first Gulf War of 1991, when the NSG tightened its guidelines to bar the sale of safeguarded nuclear material to countries that were outside the NPT. India’s pariah status became even worse after the nuclear tests of 1998, when the US and others imposed sanctions.

Pokhran-II, however, had come at a time when politico-strategic equations in South Asia had begun to change rapidly. During his tour to India in 1999, the then Russian Prime Minister Yevgeni Primakov mooted the idea of a Russia-China-India strategic triangle. The suggestion came immediately after Moscow had made a rapprochement with Beijing, and just at a time when the post-Cold War estrangement of New Delhi and Moscow was coming to an end.

Around the same time, New Delhi and Tehran also began discussing the extension of the proposed Iran-Pakistan gas pipeline (agreed in 1995) to India. US-Pakistan relations deteriorated following the October 1999 coup in Pakistan. Washington imposed further cuts in its aid to Pakistan, already curtailed after Islamabad’s nuclear test of 1998. As the Bush administration took charge, the geopolitical equations in the wider Asia-Pacific region had begun to change as well. China had successfully improved its relations with ASEAN and its economic aid had made significant inroads in Myanmar, the newest ASEAN member on the northeastern frontier of India. Washington was quick to comprehend the benefits of winning over New Delhi’s friendship as a counter to China in the Asia-Pacific, thus adding impetus to New Delhi’s renewed thrust on a Look East policy. As a result of these events, the non-proliferation priorities of the Democratic administration in Washington gave way to a pragmatic perspective on the need to tap into the economic and strategic opportunities that a rising India was presenting; this in turn resulted in a genuine effort to improve relations between the two “estranged democracies.”

New Delhi had major apprehensions with Primakov’s idea of a Russia-India-China strategic triangle because it seemed to introduce rigidity and exclusivity at a time when India believed it was in a position to simultaneously improve its relations with all major powers. Over the years, of course, the RIC triangle has been overshadowed – and made more palatable – by the newer and broader group of countries, BRICS. After the initial enthusiasm, the IPI pipeline too stalled for almost a decade, largely due to American concerns. Though Washington quickly improved its relations with Islamabad following the 9/11 attacks, it also brought about a crucial “dehyphenation” in its South Asia policy – thus walking the tightrope of maintaining good relations simultaneously with New Delhi and Islamabad. The US-India nuclear deal was the cumulative product of all of these events happening in the wider region.

US rapprochement with Iran

The first sign of trouble for Tehran’s nuclear programme appeared in 2003 after allegations by a dissident group that Iran had not reported some sensitive enrichment and reprocessing activities to the IAEA. After a series of agreements between Iran and Europe failed successfully to resolve these issues, the IAEA, with the active encouragement of the US, voted to report Tehran to the UN Security Council.

Iran was asked to suspend its enrichment programme; following its refusal to do so, the UN imposed sanctions. A series of inconclusive negotiations followed – first with the E-3 (UK, France, Germany), and later also with the US, with the continuous participation of the IAEA.

It is true that the election of Obama as president of the US and Hassan Rouhani as president of Iran raised hopes of a deal between the P5+1 and Iran. It is also true that back-channel negotiations between Washington and Tehran helped the two sides move towards a mutually agreeable position. However, as in the case of India, it was the unfolding regional dynamics which played a major role in pushing the two sides towards a deal.

The political landscape of the Middle East after 2011 began to change with the Arab Spring, that led to regime change in four states – Tunisia, Egypt, Libya and Yemen – and anti-government protests and uprisings in another half dozen countries. One unintended outcome of the Arab Spring was the rise of Islamism in the Middle East – both moderate and radical. The widening sectarian divide between Shias and Sunnis was another unintended impact of the Arab Spring. Anti-government protests and civil unrest in Iraq subsequently led to the rise of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, now called the Islamic State (IS) or Daesh. These developments coincided with steadily declining American dependence on energy resources from the Middle Eastern and Persian Gulf States, particularly since 2007. This was perhaps an important reason why the US chose not to directly interfere in the region during the Arab Spring, even when regimes friendly to it were threatened.

The rise of the Islamic State, however, has brought about a change in US policy – to the extent to which Washington is back to using military force in the region and reinvolving itself in regional politics. One of Washington’s concerns in the Middle East currently seems to be to avoid having multiple adversaries. The other is, possibly, looking at the merits of a truce with a Shia theological state which is most unlikely to support Sunni radicalism. Both factors seem to have provided added incentive to Obama’s resolve to strike a nuclear deal with Iran.

Thus, in addition to other positive factors, the dynamics of regional international relations have provided an impetus to the making of nuclear deals with Iran too. It remains to be seen how the US brings about a balance in its policy in the Middle East: walking the tightrope of good relations with Israel, Saudi Arabia and Iran simultaneously. We are likely to see a Middle Eastern version of “dehyphenation”.

Uttara Sahasrabuddhe is Professor of International Politics at the University of Mumbai. Her email is: suttara@politics.mu.ac.in

Curious Bends – Affordable Cigs, Notes From Fukushima, a Destructive Bladder Craze, and More

Curious Bends is a weekly newsletter curated by science journalists Akshat Rathi and Vasudevan Mukunth.

Curious Bends is a weekly newsletter curated by science journalists Akshat Rathi and Vasudevan Mukunth. Subscribe here.

1. Despite rising taxes, cigarettes in India have become more affordable

“Over the past few years, the Indian government has been stepping up efforts to reduce tobacco consumption by hiking taxes on cigarettes. In February, finance minister Arun Jaitley proposed raising the duties even further by at least 15%. Despite this, the WHO report shows that the level of tax as a percentage of the price of India’s most popular cigarette brand remains below the recommended 70% mark. Moreover, India’s tobacco taxation system remains convoluted. Cigarettes are taxed based on their length, with longer ones being taxed more. But this has given rise to some innovative attempts by tobacco firms to preserve their profits.” (3 min read, qz.com)

2. Why reprocessing of spent fuel from nuclear reactors makes little sense

“Reprocessing is hugely expensive; constructing and operating this highly complex facility filled with radiological and chemical hazards costs billions of dollars. The alternative way of dealing with the spent fuel is significantly cheaper. In 2007, economist JY Suchitra and I published a paper in International Journal of Global Energy Issues that used the actual expenditures on the Kalpakkam Reprocessing Plant near Chennai to demonstrate that reprocessing of spent fuel in India costs about 25 times what it would cost to directly dispose it. In a subsequent 2011 paper in the same journal, we showed that the use of plutonium to fuel reactors was also not economical.” (5 min read, economictimes.com)

3. How reliable are psychology studies?

“Although 97 percent of the 100 studies originally reported statistically significant results, just 36 percent of the replications did. Does this mean that only a third of psychology results are “true”? Not quite. A result is typically said to be statistically significant if its p-value is less than 0.05—briefly, this means that if you did the study again, your odds of fluking your way to the same results (or better) would be less than 1 in 20. This creates a sharp cut-off at an arbitrary (some would say meaningless) threshold, in which an experiment that skirts over the 0.05 benchmark is somehow magically more “successful” than one that just fails to meet it. So Nosek’s team looked beyond statistical significance. They also considered the effect sizes of the studies.” (10 min read, theatlantic.com)

4. Fukushima today: A first-person account from the field and the conference table

“In reaching Tomioka—badly hit by the tsunami—we found a nearly destroyed town invoking an image of the Apocalypse. All we saw were homes, businesses, and shops as they stood or fell after the tsunami hit and then the radiation struck. There was no sign of life other than decontamination workers going about their grim task. Continuing our journey toward Namie—one of the worst-hit towns, whose boundaries lie about six miles northeast of Fukushima Daiichi at the closest point—we passed through the small villages of Okuma and then Futaba. We continued onward, and edged as close as 1.5 miles from the plant at one spot, but no closer. All roads to the plant from here on were barricaded. Ironically, one banner welcoming visitors to the town read: “Nuclear Power is Our Future.”” (21 min read,thebulletin.org)

5. How China’s fish bladder investment craze is wiping out species on the other side of the planet

“The story of how the bladder bubble inflated and then burst is a classic tale of globalization—of the intersection between monetary policy, financial markets, luxury goods, international regulation, and transnational crime. It’s also an all-too-familiar and depressing environmental tale, because while the bladder trade has endangered the totoaba, it’s driven the vaquita—a tiny porpoise that’s prone to getting tangled up in totoaba nets—almost to extinction. Fortunately for both animals, after years of lax enforcement, the Mexican government is finally cracking down on illegal totoaba fishing in waters the vaquita inhabits.” (11 min read,qz.com)

Chart of the week

“World poverty is on the decline, with less global hunger and more access to education and healthcare, the United Nations trumpeted in a new report on its Millennium Development Goals. But progress on the targets established in 2000 is very slow for women, and especially those in developing regions. “I am keenly aware that inequalities persist and that progress has been uneven,” UN secretary general Ban Ki-Moon writes in the introduction to the report. “Progress tends to bypass women and those who are lowest on the economic ladder or are disadvantaged because of their age, disability or ethnicity.”” (qz.com)

Source: Quartz

Some Homage but Not Enough for Independence in Catalonia

Though inconclusive, the latest election results in Catalonia suggest the Spanish establishment’s credibility continues to be low.

Though inconclusive, the latest election results suggest the Spanish establishment’s credibility continues to be low

View of the Sagrada Familia with the Catalan flag in Barcelona. Credit: Jordi Boixareu/Flickr CC BY-NC-ND 2.0

View of Barcelona’s landmark Sagrada Familia with the Catalan flag fluttering in the foreground. Credit: Jordi Boixareu/Flickr CC BY-NC-ND 2.0

Reading the tea leaves of Sunday’s elections in Catalonia, which accounts for a fifth of Spain’s GDP, it can be safely divined that the ruling Partido Popular (People’s Party, PP) will lose its majority in the December general elections. Though the elections were for the regional parliament, it was seen as a plebiscite for Catalan independence after the Madrid government and the country’s Supreme Court disallowed an independence referendum.

The turnout was a record 77.4%, up 10% since the last elections three years ago. The pro-independence parties together won 72 of the 135 seats and will keep governing the province, as they have for decades. Of these, the Junts pel Sí (Together for Yes) coalition – consisting of the centre-right Convergencia and leftist Esquerra Republicana de Catalunya (ERC) – won 62 seats, losing seats and votes compared to what they won earlier, while the radical pro-independence and anti-capitalist Popular Unity Candidacy (CUP) won 10 seats. The two groupings together received 48% of the votes.

Catalonia in Spain. Credit: Wikimedia Commons

The Citizens Party (C’s), a Right-wing Catalan political brand that has gone national, emerged at the head of the pro-Madrid opposition with 25 seats compared to nine in 2012. The PP and the PSOE (Spanish Socialist Workers Party), which alternate in the national government, lost votes and seats, especially the former. The pro-Madrid establishment parties received 40% of the votes, principally from the elderly and the normally apathetic poorer Spanish working class voters in Catalonia who seem to have turned out this time, fearing independence.

The clearly identifiable loser on the Left was Sí que es Pot (Yes we can), the regional derivative of Podemos, which won 11 seats, about a third of its own worst estimates. The Podemos-led third way coalition supported an independence referendum but wanted the province to stay in Spain. It was squeezed out by the polarised vote but was also given a more generalised warning that it will not emulate Syriza in the December elections. Spain is tiring of Podemos leader Pablo Iglesias’ constant attention-seeking theatrics.

Tea leaf reading at this point gives way to the sharper (Donald) Rumsfeldian logic. The “known knowns” of the situation (things we know we know) are that Catalonia has become a highly politicised part of Spain even as apathy runs strong in the rest of the country. The pro-independence segment of the population has stabilised at about half the population and it could squeak through with a referendum victory if Madrid allows one – which it won’t.

This suits the Catalan regional leader Artur Mas and his Convergencia, a pro-business party tainted by charges of corruption and misgovernance. Keeping the Catalan independence issue on the boil distracts attention. The PP government in Madrid is not too displeased either. Aware that it is losing support, which is heading the way of the party of the C’s, it will hope that a running verbal battle with Barcelona will pay electoral dividends.

File photo of Artur Mas. Credit: Agencia Catalana de Noticias/Flickr CC 2.0

The “known unknown” (knowing there are some things we do not know) is if the Catalan nationalists, without a little less than 50% of the popular vote, will push through with the route map of unilateral independence as they had warned before the elections. The government of Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy has said it will use all judicial means to stop that from happening. Retired generals have warned that the military will not watch Spain crumble. The Catholic Church hierarchy has opposed Catalan independence. Neo-Nazi and pro-Franco groups have been hitting the streets to whip up nationalist passions.

There are no “unknown unknowns” (the ones we don’t know we don’t know) to report of at the moment. Perhaps the only way to find one is by falling off the Rumsfeldian epistemological cliff.

Spanish nationhood is creaking with Catalonia, the Basque country, Valencia and Galicia all seeking in different degrees to wrest free of central control. Franco’s ghost still haunts Spanish federalism. The dictator tried to crush vernacular languages, cultures and identities in his obsession with a hegemonic Spain, held together by nationalism, military, the Church and violence. The past was never exorcised after his death and the Spanish establishment unmistakably bears Franco’s imprint.

The subprime crisis hit Spain hard with high unemployment, precarious jobs, poor wages and inadequate labour laws. Hundreds of thousands have lost their homes for failing to pay the banks. Its gag law (ley mordaza), aimed at curtailing popular protest, is the most retrograde in Europe. The results of the Catalan elections are perhaps an indication that many of its citizens have reached a point where they think they could do better without Madrid.