December 2015 Archives

The Best of The Wire in 2015

It’s been a news-filled year and The Wire was in the forefront of offering informed analysis from authoritative voices to its readers.

California: Prime Minister Narendra Modi hugs CEO of Facebook, Mark Zuckerberg at Facebook headquarters in California on Sunday. PTI Photo by Subhav Shukla (PTI9_27_2015_000340B)

California: Prime Minister Narendra Modi hugs CEO of Facebook, Mark Zuckerberg at Facebook headquarters in California on Sunday. Credit: PTI Photo by Subhav Shukla

Since it was launched on May 11, 2015, The Wire has published many articles and analyses of current affairs by domain experts that have ignited debate and conversation. Whether it was “award wapsi” or ghar wapsi, assessing the Prime Minister’s foreign tours or studying the emergence of ISIS, analysing Bajrangi Bhaijaan or calling out the politics of attacking Aamir Khan, The Wire covered them all.

Across international affairs, strategic issues, domestic politics, science, the environment, social policy, cinema, culture and even nostalgia, The Wire offered fresh insights and authoritative commentary. As 2015 winds down, here’s a list of our top ten stories, selected on the basis of their popularity and impact.

1. Mahatma Gandhi on beef-eating – At a time when eating beef became a political issue, exploited by hotheads and even leading to the lynching of an innocent man, it was useful to recall what Mahatma Gandhi had said about this contentious matter. As always, the great man preached understanding and tolerance, much needed in his time as much as ours.

2. Thomas Piketty on the Greek crisis – Piketty is more than just a best selling author or a star economist. His arguments about redistribution of income and wealth have struck a chord worldwide. He is in many ways the voice that adds sanity to heated debates and his interview about the crisis in Greece and the German response to it was a big hit with our readers. The original interview was in the German magazine Die Zeit. The Wire obtained the exclusive rights for the English translation.

File photo of Thomas Piketty. Credit: Sue Gardner

3. Drama at FIFA – The ongoing scandals in the international governing body for football, FIFA, made headlines around the world. At stake was the control of a powerful organisation presiding over the management of the beautiful game. A series of articles exploring the goings-on behind the scenes were published in The Wire – one in particular dared to explore the episode’s political implications.

4. Arabia and the refugee crisis – Asif Kichloo’s compassionate plea for sparing a thought for the two million Syrian refugees left homeless and stateless, rather than spending money to go for the Hajj, drew a huge response from our readers.

5. The disappearing act – Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s hugely successful trip to London evoked memories of his early 2003 visit and raised questions about why he didn’t go after that. India’s former Deputy High Commissioner to UK, Satyabrata Pal, recalled the behind-the-scenes diplomacy of those times. The widely shared piece then disappeared from readers’ Facebook timelines but was back again after the company clarified that their spam filters had mistakenly caught the piece and blocked it.

6. The Free Basics debate – The year ended with Facebook’s controversial proposal called ‘Free Basics’, which many in India see as going against the concept of net neutrality while also reducing competition and giving enormous power to technology companies. Then, venture capitalist Mahesh Murthy came out with a set of cogent objections to the offering Basics – to which Facebook replied and Murthy then responded. And this story is not yet over.

7. Covering murder wrong – Crime always sells, and often, the media gets carried away while covering stories of murder in high places. The alleged murder of Sheena Bora was one such story – covered at a high pitch with almost complete disregard for facts and confirmed details. A critique of the media’s handling of this sensational case was appreciated by The Wire’s readers.

8. Something smelly about the Metro – A commuter on the Delhi Metro was told by CISF jawans that he could not board because he was carrying raw eggs. Is there such a rule or were the authorities trying to do it surreptitiously? An intrepid activist tried to get to the bottom of it and met with the usual obfuscation and vagueness.

9. Despite being a minister – Culture minister Mahesh Sharma has come to be known for some outlandish utterances. His statement that the late President A.P.J. Abdul Kalam was a great nationalist and humanist “despite being a Muslim” betrayed a starkly communal mindset that ill befits a man sworn to uphold the Constitution.

Union Minister for Tourism & Culture Mahesh Sharma being offered sweets as he unveils a 365 kg jumbo laddoo to celebrate Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s birthday at FICCI Auditorium in New Delhi on Thursday. Credit: PTI

10. A historian on secularism – The distinguished historian Romila Thapar is known not just for her rigour and scholarship but her deep commitment to the secular idea as well. She has never shied away from expressing her thoughts, and had much to say about the current climate of cultural intolerance. Her Asghar Ali Engineer Memorial Lecture at the Jamia Millia Islamia was published by The Wire in full and, despite being a long read, was widely read and discussed.

Kedgeree and Kipling at 150

Kipling’s work is a reminder that we live in a linguistic soup and always have, just as much as we belong to a genetic one and always have

Poet and critic Arvind Krishna Mehrotra pays tribute to Rudyard Kipling on his 150th birth anniversary

Rudyard Kipling was born 150 years ago on December 30, 1865. Painting by John Collier. Credit: Wikimedia Commons

Every 150 years, but perhaps more frequently than that, we need to remind ourselves about whose descendants we are. We are all, as everyone who reads and writes English knows, descendants of Rudyard Kipling. Not because we carry the white man’s burden, for that is a burden only a pucca white man carries, but because we use his language, which is sometimes English but mostly not while still being English.

Long before there was the kedgeree that Salman Rushdie served up in Midnight’s Children, and long before we had Upamanyu Chatterjee’s English, August with its ‘Hazaar fucked’, we had Kipling’s Plain Tales from the Hills (1888), most of the tales written when he was an upcoming journalist, aged twenty-one or twenty-two, which is about the age when most young Indians today are finishing their first worthless university degree.

One of the tales in the book is ‘The Three Musketeers’ which describes the encounter between three privates—Mulvaney, Ortheris, and Learoyd—in a line regiment and a newly-arrived visitor, Lord Trig, to the cantonment. Trig has expressed a desire to inspect the troops but has the reputation of afterwards insulting the commanding officer on the appearance of his men. The troops have come to know this and are indignant. The day before the inspection, Trig goes out shopping and while he’s in the bazaar waiting for the colonel’s barouche to come and fetch him he sees the three privates, who, not ones to let a chance slip by, send him on a ride that he will not easily forget:

Pristinly, he sthrols up, his arrums full av thruck, an’ he sez in a consiquinshal way, shticking out his little belly, “Me good men,” sez he, ‘have ye seen the Kernel’s b’roosh!”—“B’roosh?” says Learoyd. “There’s no b’roosh here—nobbut a ekka.” – “Fwhat’s that?” sez Thrigg. Learoyd shows him wan down the street, an’ he sez, “How thruly Orientil! I will ride on ekka.” I saw thin that our Rigimental Saint was for givin’ Thrigg over to us neck an’ brisket. I purshued a ekka, an’ I sez to the dhriver-divil, I sez, “Ye black limb, there’s a Sahib comin’ for this ekka. He wants to go jildi to the Padshahi Jhil” –’twas about tu moiles away—“to shoot snipe—chirria. You dhrive Jehannum ke marfik, mallum—like Hell? ’Tis no manner av use bukkin’ to the Sahib, bekaze he doesn’t samjao your talk. Av he bolos anything, you just choop and chel. Dekker? Go arsty for the first arder mile from contonmints. Thin chel, Shaitan ke marfik, an’ the chooper you choops an’ the jildier you chels the better kooshy will that Sahib be; an’ here’s a rupee for ye!”

The ekka-man knew there was somethin’ out av the common in the air. He grinned an’ sez, “Bote achee! I goin’ damn fast.”

What does this strange language tell us about ourselves? It tells us that we live in a linguistic soup and always have, just as much as we belong to a genetic one and always have. As for the soup itself, you only have to travel from Allahabad (where Kipling once lived and worked for The Civil and Military Gazette) to Varanasi, stopping for tea and snacks at Handia. Ask for Shri Ramu Sweet & Dosa Chow Mein Corner. It’s near the bus stand. You can also Google it.

The Science at Work in Star Wars

It’s said that great science fiction has a basis in good science, but it is also true that good science can be inspired by great science fiction.

Warning: contains mild spoilers.

In any science or engineering lab, in any part of the world, there is one subject that is certain to have come up at some point over tea, coffee, or lunch: how do you build a lightsaber? It’s true: ask any of your friends in those fields and they will talk endlessly about how they think it can be built. (I personally subscribe to a plasma containment philosophy, while a friend thinks he has come up with a waveguided laser design – a true ‘light’ saber if you will). We are all, at our hearts, geeks and Star Wars fans.

It’s said that great science fiction has a basis in good science, but it is also true that good science can be inspired by great science fiction. At the heart of the Star Wars series lies a concept that owes as much to mysticism as science. I am, of course, referring to the Force. Disregarding The Phantom Menace’s ill-advised attempt to explain the Force (Midi-chlorians? Why?), can we explain any of its seemingly magical properties with good hard science?

The Force Awakens, the latest instalment of the Star Wars series (officially Episode VII) opens with a very striking demonstration of the Force when our villain, Kylo Ren, stops a blaster shot in mid-air. Those who have seen the original trilogy will be familiar with Darth Vader performing a similar feat. While Lord Vader may simply be wearing good armour with a high melting temperature or is very efficiently dissipating heat, Ren takes this to a new level. But how would you stop a blast in mid-air?

Plasma containment is something that we can do today with very powerful magnetic fields, suggesting that Ren could simply be exhibiting Magneto-like manifestations of power. But here’s the catch: when that magnetic field is released, the plasma would simply dissipate as it will no longer carry any forward momentum. Instead, we see the blaster shot continue forward as before.

The next possibility then, is that he stopped or slowed down time. For this to happen, Ren must create a large gravity well at the centre of the plasma, i.e. a great mass that is also too small for us to see. A quick calculation: assuming a time dilation factor of 30,000:1 and a distance of 1 m between the centre and where everyone’s standing – gives us a mass of roughly 6.7 x 10²⁶ kg (about 100 times the mass of the Earth)! But this raises several important issues: 1) time would slow down less the further away you are, making for an odd scene for the Stormtroopers in the background: 2) the gravitational effect on the planet would be enormous; and 3) why would the First Order need to build a new ‘Death Star’ in the first place if Ren can simply create a black hole with his mind?

By now, I think I’ve angered enough general relativity experts with my loose interpretation of equations to safely say that perhaps there are some wonders in Star Wars that we don’t need to explain.

Science aside, The Force Awakens has managed to recapture the spirit of the original in a way that the prequel trilogy never could. From start to finish there is a sense of excitement, with the old cast lending presence without overshadowing our new heroes. Far from being mere carbon copies of Han, Luke, and Leia, the new trinity (Rey, Finn and Poe Dameron) add life to series, helping The Force Awakens escape the trash compactor that was the prequels (Episode III was almost ok … almost).

J.J. Abrams weaves a tale that says to the fans, this is for you and we’re going to do it right. Without revealing the plot, it’s enough to say that the film tips its hat to the original Star Wars, laying a solid foundation for the new trilogy. The film, simply put, is a good old-fashioned ride through the galaxy that captured the imagination of so many of our younger selves, and is well set to inspire the generation to come.

In the end, everything else aside, the feeling of childhood excitement as the trumpets blast off and the title scrolls across the stars is an experience in and of itself. For any fans of the saga, that alone is worth the ticket.

This article was originally published on the University of Cambridge website.

Featured image credit: aloha75/Flickr, CC BY 2.0.

The Economy Isn’t Turning Out the Way We Were Told

Contrary to the NDA’s political claims, the overall emerging picture does not indicate a revival of the economy as had been stated in early 2015. Consequently, the government’s economic managers will remain in fire-fighting mode in 2016.

Contrary to the NDA’s political claims, the overall emerging picture does not indicate a revival of the economy as had been stated in early 2015. Consequently, the government’s economic managers will remain in fire-fighting mode in 2016.

Finance Minister Arun Jaitley coming out of cabinet on December 30.

Finance Minister Arun Jaitley coming out of a meeting of the Union cabinet on December 30. Credit: PTI

A few months after the BJP-led National Democratic Alliance came to power in mid-2014, Finance Minister Arun Jaitley publicly declared that the economy had bottomed out and was poised to achieve higher levels of growth in the subsequent financial year. This optimism was also reflected in the Economic Survey and the budget presentation of 2015-2016, which estimated GDP growth at 8 to 8.5% for the current fiscal. However, nine months on, there seems to be considerable gloom as the mid-year economic survey of the finance ministry released recently admits to a deceleration in GDP growth compared to 2014-2015. Clearly, the economy hasn’t bottomed out as the finance minister had claimed. So what’s going on?

Worse, businesses seem to believe that GDP is slowing at a faster pace than what the official figures are capturing. RBI governor Raghuram Rajan explained this in an interview to Doordarshan after he cut interest rates by 50 basis points some time ago. He suggested that the real experience of businesses on the ground is not that of a GDP growth of 7% plus. When the head of a central bank says something like this, one must take serious note of it.

The mid-year review also addresses the general skepticism regarding the GDP numbers and in fact tries to allay apprehensions of deliberate data fudging. The review, guided by Chief Economic Advisor Arvind Subramanian, says, “the processes and institutions involved in their [data] construction are fiercely independent, with the Advisory Committee on National Accounts Statistics (ACNAS) being the principal decision maker on all matters … and the National Statistical Commission (NSC) being the final arbiter. The composition of the ACNAS and the NSC has remained substantially unaltered under different governments. The suggestion or insinuation of motivated GDP estimates is therefore preposterous.”

One tends to agree with Subramanian that there is no deliberate attempt to fudge GDP data. There could be genuine problems of collecting and collating data for India’s vast services sector, for instance, which accounts for nearly 60% of GDP.

However, even if specific data sets are somewhat inaccurate, they still give a reasonably good idea of the trend or direction of economic activity. The mid-year review gives a very disturbing account of the nominal GDP growth trend (real growth plus inflation). It says the nominal GDP growth was 13.5% in 2014-2015 and has slowed sharply to just 7.4% in the first half of 2015-2016. This is almost like suggesting that the income growth rate across the board is nearly halved!

Evidence on slowdown

According to the survey, the dramatic slowdown in nominal GDP growth shows up in the extremely low growth in corporate earnings. This obviously affects the future investment decisions of companies. Businesses look at nominal GDP growth as a key indicator for making new investments. When businesses don’t do well, the employees also suffer in terms of retrenchment and low salary growth. The organised private sector has experienced the worst retrenchment, the scale of which has not been seen in the past two decades. All this impacts demand adversely.

But the unorganised sector is affected even more, thus depressing rural demand in a big way. Farmers are reeling from the worst income/output crisis in decades with back-to-back droughts and unseasonal rains, and minimum support prices barely covering the cost of production of many agriculture items. Agriculture incomes this year may well be witnessing negative growth and the vast array of services associated with agriculture may also be impacted badly. Agricultural output is linked to global prices and has suffered a serious deflationary impact along with various commodities in the manufacturing sector. One example would suffice to explain this phenomenon. In rural Gujarat, farmers got over Rs. 7000 per quintal of cotton as minimum support price from the government until early 2012. This year, the farmers got Rs. 4000 per quintal, barely covering costs because global prices of cotton fell 40%.

This distress was visible among voters in the Gujarat panchayat elections, where the BJP lost over 75% of the zilla panchayats for the first time in 12 years. This story is repeated across many other agricultural items where the minimum support price has barely covered costs, according to well known farm sector economist Ashok Gulati.

There is another very disturbing trend in 2015-2016 – the GDP deflator for the economy, which measures price changes across agriculture, industry and services, and which economists widely regard as the most accurate indicator of prices, is negative for the first two quarters. The national accounts for the latest quarter, July –September 2015, show a deflator of minus 2.2%. This means nominal GDP is lower than real GDP for the same quarter. If real GDP growth is 7.2%, the nominal GDP growth will be about 2 percentage points less. This will be a further dampener for businesses that face shrinkage in earnings.

So the overall picture that emerges from the data presented in the mid-year review does not indicate a revival of the economy as had been anticipated in the beginning of the year.Union Railway Minister Suresh Prabhu was quite forthright in telling this writer that his own projections for the growth in freight traffic receipts, a direct play on the economy, is much lower than expected. “We had projected close to 10% growth in freight revenue but growth is flat so far,” he admitted, adding, “We need to rework our assumptions.”

Prabhu also conceded that the global demand recession, commodities deflation and the Chinese slowdown need to be analysed more closely. It is clear we have not fully understood what is going on, he said.

What Prabhu says is echoed by renowned Harvard economist Kenneth Rogoff, who has questioned the narrative that the dramatic halving of oil prices since last year would hugely boost consumption by putting over $1.5 trillion in the hands of the consumer. Rogoff says the anticipated uptick in global demand and GDP, which many expected would come from the oil price fall, hasn’t happened so far. Consequently, the overall global GDP growth for 2015, at 2.5%, is much lower than anticipated. Since most emerging market currencies this year have declined against the dollar, global GDP growth in dollar terms would be negative, according to Ruchir Sharma, chief of Morgan Stanley Investment Management.

The finance minister last week publicly claimed “great satisfaction” that India is doing better than most emerging economies. That should be cold comfort as most emerging economies are in serious recession. This is hardly a time to express “great satisfaction” because there is visible distress in rural India where 60% of India’s population lives.

Mounting rural distress

What do you say about an economy in which total power consumption, in peak summer, is only about 55% of available capacity? Some say the poor are willing to live without power because they are unable to pay for it. India’s political economy confounds global experts. Normally, one would expect that people would even pay a higher price for something as basic as electricity. But in India this is not so; the very poor seem to have taken darkness for 14 hours a day in their stride because they are unwilling to pay Rs. 5 to Rs. 6 per unit of power. And states like Uttar Pradesh don’t buy power to supply at lower rates for fear of having more red ink in their already bankrupt State Electricity Boards.

The complexities of India’s economy seem beyond most experts sitting in North Block. What really takes the cake is an observation in the mid-year review lauding “muted rural wage growth” for helping dampen consumer prices (almost celebrating stagnating farm incomes). This is strange because the wage growth in the farm sector is so muted that it is causing election debacles for the ruling NDA. The next episode of this could be witnessed in Punjab, where farmers are already up in arms.

Against this backdrop, there are reports that Prime Minister Modi and Finance Minister Jaitley will focus the 2016-2017 budget on shoring up agriculture and coming up with some innovative social security net for the unorganised sector. There seems to be panic in the BJP camp after some shock defeats in the state assembly and panchayat elections in recent months. It appears that the NDA’s economic management will remain in fire-fighting mode in 2016 too.

The Truth Behind the “IS” in Afghanistan

The biggest threats to peace in Afghanistan still continue to emanate from the Pakistani deep state, and not from dysfunctional Arab states.

The biggest threats to peace in Afghanistan still continue to emanate from the Pakistani deep state, and not from dysfunctional Arab states

Grab from a Daesh propaganda video showing a leader from the Wilayat Khorasan.

The US Department of Defence’s report to the Congress on 16th December gave credence to the presence of the Islamic State (IS) in Afghanistan. Assessing the current security environment in Afghanistan, the report says that “The Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant – Khorasan Province has progressed from its initial exploratory phase to a point where they are openly fighting the Taliban for the establishment of a safe haven, and are becoming more operationally active.” Subsequently, articles in a few US magazines such as Foreign Policy have already made arguments to the effect that “it’s time to make a deal with the Taliban — the enemy we know” in order to fight the Islamic State.

The first signs of IS evincing interest in South Asia emerged when it issued a map depicting parts of South Asia as a province of the Islamic State. In early 2015, a ‘Wilayat Khorasan’ (the province of Khorasan) was established in Pakistan’s frontier region which then shifted to Afghanistan, partly because of the power vacuum in Nangarhar and Faryab provinces and partly because of the Pakistan Army’s Zarb-e-Azb operation.

At that point (April 2015), NATO did not foresee any significant threat from the IS in Afghanistan. This view changed rapidly after Islamic State claimed responsibility for suicide bombings in Jalalabad that killed 34 and injured 125, leading NATO to concede that an offshoot of IS is “probably operationally emergent in Afghanistan.”

Having come a full circle about the threat from the IS, the Department of Defence report begs the question — is the IS really a threat in Afghanistan? And if so, in what way is it going to alter the ongoing war against the other violent non-state actors in Afghanistan?

Unlike the fears being raised in the Western media, it is highly unlikely that the Islamic State, or more correctly, the Wilayat Khorasan (WK) will launch a frontal attack against the Afghan state. The Taliban still continues to be the principal challenge to Afghanistan. It is numerically stronger than the WK and enjoys Pakistani state support. The WK, with its goal of a Caliphate as opposed to the nationalistic Emirate of Afghanistan—the stated objective of the Taliban—will always be a foreign entity feared for their extreme levels of violence.

Perhaps the most significant level of threat to Afghanistan (and also to Pakistan and India) is that a construct like IS will act as a totem pole for local Afghan terror outfits like the Taliban. The WK will attract elements within the Taliban who are unhappy with the peace process. Terror operates through fear, and the fear that is generated by the WK would attract many groups who are now at the end of their utility cycle.

Apart from owing allegiance to the IS, there is little semblance between WK and its Syrian parent. There are no Arabs in its ranks and it comprises mostly of the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP). Other elements under the WK banner are the Afghan Taliban at odds with the post-Mullah Omar leadership, and Uzbeks from the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan(IMU) who were driven out of Pakistani sanctuaries due to Operation Zarb-e-Arb. The motives for each of these sub-groups differ. For the TTP, it is the pursuit of sanctuaries, control over smuggling and money laundering supply chains, and most significantly, on the heroin trade that passes through Jalalabad to Peshawar and thence onwards to Western Europe. For those from the Afghan Taliban, it is opposition to Mullah Mansour and a lack of an alternative, and for the IMU it is also a search for sanctuaries.

These outfits in the region have a long history of shifting allegiances. Lt Gen. Abdul Raziq, the police chief of Kandahar who has kept his province free of the Taliban, in a reply to a question about the presence of the IS in Afghanistan said ‘there are many who claim to be Daesh but what I have seen are some black flags and the same people’.

Even the leadership of WK is predominantly Pakistani. WK’s foes are principally the Pakistani state and its proxy — the Afghan Taliban, which has been described by the WK as an agent of the ISI. WK has come out against the peace talks between Taliban and the National Unity Government referring to the latter as a “puppet government”. This hardline position against talks is meant to attract elements within the Afghan Taliban who are unhappy with the peace process.

In getting the US to formally take note of the presence of an IS affiliate in Afghanistan and to conduct drone strikes, Pakistan seems to have prevailed in convincing the West of the IS threat in Afghanistan. Principally, the IS now serves as a convenient bogey for Pakistan to remain relevant to the US in counterbalancing India.

Operationally, the WK in Nangarhar is of concern to Pakistan principally because it checkmates their plans of re-establishing Taliban’s control in southeast Afghanistan. The Pakistani state has been stuggling in its war against the TTP which it claims has the support of the Afghan intelligence. Media reports indicate that the Taliban has constituted a Special Forces unit to take on the IS. No doubt, this unit will have its fair share of Pakistani Advisors, principally the Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT). However, given the worldwide revulsion with the IS, Pakistan finds it beneficial to portray the Taliban as a lesser evil and hence a part of the solution, rather than the problem.

What this strategy illustrates is that whether it is through Lashkar-e-Taiba in India or through the Taliban in Afghanistan, the biggest threats in South Asia continue to emanate from the Pakistani deep state and not from dysfunctional Arab states. There is a long history of Pakistan volunteering to be the “frontline” state of the West for various causes: communism in the Cold War era, War on Terror in the post-Taliban era and now it plans to use IS for the same effect. Similarly, in focusing on the western world’s fears of the IS, Pakistan’s aim is to legitimise its proxies in the Afghan region and pave the way for mainstreaming the Taliban.

Anand Arni and Pranay Kotasthane work with the Geostrategy Programme at Takshashila Institution, a Bengaluru based think tank.

New Fronts Are Taking Shape in Tamil Nadu But the Dravidian Parties Are Still on Top

The PMK and the Peoples Welfare Front, which brings together the Left, the MDMK and the Dalit VCK, are saying they will fight the 2016 elections alone. But challenging the dominance of the AIADMK and DMK is easier said than done.

The PMK and the Peoples Welfare Front, which brings together the Left, the MDMK and the Dalit VCK, are saying they will fight the 2016 elections alone. But challenging the dominance of the AIADMK and DMK is easier said than done.

J. Jayalalithaa. Credit: moneybazaar.com

J. Jayalalithaa. Credit: PTI

Political parties in Tamil Nadu have started to make moves keeping in mind the forthcoming elections. The All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (AIADMK), which is in power and more or less in a comfortable position except for the floods that ravaged Chennai and other northern cities – which could play into traditional anti-incumbency factors – is the one party remaining aloof from alliance talks and electoral meetings. This demonstrates its strength and marks it out as the party to beat. Perhaps for this reason, most of the others have started their work; the DMK has already formed a committee to work on its manifesto, and the Congress has put forth its pre-conditions for an alliance.

Whilst these moves are typical of any Tamil election over the past few decades, the erosion of the Dravidian duopoly is also evident. The Pattali Makkal Katchi was the first to announce its chief ministerial candidate and has organised multiple conferences across the state calling for an end to Dravidian rule. With the coming together of parties like Vaiko’s Marumalarchi Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam, the Left and the Viduthalai Chiruthaigal Katchi (VCK) as People’s Welfare Front, which has also released its common minimum programme, the stage is set for a multi-cornered fight in Tamil Nadu. Whilst this points towards the slow growth of multi-party contestation in Tamil politics, however, some factors remain constant.

Amidst all the pre-election machinations, it is clear that caste is set to play a predominant role in deciding electoral fortunes. While the caste basis of several smaller parties is apparent, the notionally caste-free Dravidian parties continue to operate a caste logic. This is exemplified by the fact that Jayalalithaa recently announced the appointment of 50 district secretaries keeping in mind the forthcoming elections. The caste-wise break up shows us that 30 out of the 50 are Mukkulathor (a cluster of Kallar, Maravar and Agamudaiyar castes, often known as Thevars), Kongu Vellala Gounders and Vanniyars. Only one Dalit, one member of the fisherfolk community and one tribal candidate were chosen; the rest were all from the trading and other intermediate castes. Caste majoritarianism, we see, continues as political praxis in Tamil Nadu.

Slipping hegemony of DMK

DMK leader M K Stalin posing for a selfie with students at Coimbatore during his ‘Namakku Naame Vidiyalai Thedi’ campaign ahead of the 2016 assembly polls. Credit: PTI

In a bid to reconnect to the grassroots, the DMK has started a programme called Namakku Naame (We for Ourselves), where the party’s treasurer and DMK patriarch’s son M.K. Stalin will be visiting all 234 constituencies in the state to interact with people. Stalin ended his tour at the symbolically significant town of Kancheepuram, birthplace of DMK founder Annadurai on November 8, 2015. The images we saw of Stalin’s tour invited comments from political onlookers akin to that of what Rahul Gandhi did in Uttar Pradesh where, in an effort to connect to the masses, he stayed at a Dalit’s hut, ate food there, and was found working in a field helping a tiller. Stalin in his tour came out breaking the stereotype of a Tamil politician. Trading in the traditional white veshti and shirt for smart trousers and sneakers, he tried his hand at tilling a piece of land using a mattock and posed for selfies. All of this was dubbed by political commentators as attention-seeking efforts unlikely to bring the DMK votes.

The programme is seeking to revive DMK’s fortunes by returning to its past and is based on one of Karunanidhi’s famous slogans. The phrase was earlier used by the DMK for a popular government welfare scheme promoting self-reliance, and the party is hoping to recapture voters in the process. A website has been also created by it to reach out to educated and young voters. Coining terms and sloganeering is one of the cornerstones of Dravidian politics, which invests much on rhetorical flourishes and symbolism. Here the slogan has been transformed into action in a last-ditch effort save the DMK’s fortunes, and speaks to the decline of its strong local organizational base.

Emergent challengers

The weakness of the DMK as a challenger to Jayalalithaa is perhaps best seen in the emergence of the non-aligned fronts. Sensing the continuing unpopularity of the DMK and the reluctance of the AIADMK to share seats, two alliances have emerged to exploit the cracks in Dravidian hegemony. On one hand we have the People’s Welfare Front (PWF) which comprises the MDMK, the VCK and the Left parties who claim that their poll alliance stems from a coming together of like-minded parties to address people’s issues. The participation of the Left parties here is the most significant indicator of change in Tamil politics, given their tendency to prioritise national questions and Parliamentary representation over questions of principle. The front’s common minimum programme gives us an idea of the ideological influence of the Left in its drafting and prioritises economic aspects and welfare measures rather than emotional issues like Tamil nationalism that are the political staple of the MDMK and VCK. The most important aspect of the CMP is the promise to enact a law against (dis)honour killings which are rising, but which the Dravidian majors carefully avoid talking about.

The PWF is a coming together of weaklings in the electoral politics of the state. Statistics show that all of them together do not even constitute 5% of the vote share. Not only does arithmetic count against them but they are weak even in terms of having established bases. The Left can claim East Thanjavur and Nagapattinam as their strongholds, and MDMK can say that about Virudhunagar though Vaiko couldn’t win in the Lok Sabha election. The VCK unfortunately has no constituencies, which it can claim as its bastion. Mangalur and Chidambaram come close but one of the major setbacks of the Dalit-dominated party, which has a good presence across the state, has been its failure to create such constituencies. In an effort to become a mainstream party, the VCK has emphasized Tamil nationalism in a manner that has alienated its core base of Dalit supporters.

The party’s leadership assumes that the Dalit populace would vote for them by default. Its general secretary recently argued that it has identified 84 constituencies where the Dalit population constitutes 25-44% and that the VCK has a strong presence. He suggested that if his party can get 30-40% of Dalit votes, it could pull off a win when its allies’ share is also added. Judging by the VCK’s past record, we can understand that this is a highly impossible scenario. The PWF’s most realistic chance of upsetting the Dravidian majors from this perspective may be if they rope in Vijaykanth’s Desiya Murpoku Dravida Kazhagam and G. K. Vasan’s break-away Tamil Maanila Congress. If the alliance remains intact, we will at least get a true impression of the support that each of these parties – who normally stand alongside one of the two dominant parties – have at the grassroots.

Caste consolidation?

Like the DMK, the PMK stands as a party with no alliance partner. The PMK is a party of ironies, a party which grew out of the Vanniyar Sangam in the 1980s in a classic case of the ‘politics of caste mobilisation’, The party’s infamous Vanniyar agitation in 1987 demanding reservation for most backwards castes, saw close to 5,000 Dalit hutments set on fire and hundreds of trees felled in protest. A few years later, the party floated a movement called Pasumai Thayagam (Green Motherland) with no appreciation of the irony this entailed. On the back of this mobilisation, the PMK grew into a major party and has been a first choice ally both for the DMK and AIADMK in the past. For a while, the party acted as a weather-vane in Tamil politics, successfully joining the winning side in multiple elections. Persistent alliance hopping, the loss of Dalit votes to the VCK and the fracturing of the Vanniyar vote by the DMDK saw the political fortunes of the PMK decline. Following successive electoral reverses, its leader, P. Ramadoss, swore never to ally with the Dravidian majors again and returned to caste-based mobilisation. In recent years, he has sought to consolidate an anti-Dalit front of intermediate caste groups in the state.

Now P. Ramadoss wants to see his son, Anbumani Ramadoss become chief minister, so he is playing a very careful game of politics – talking about caste only in regions where it is a vote-winner (such as in the southern districts and the Vanniyar belt) while maintaining an image of ‘developmental politics’ elsewhere. One of the possibilities is the coming together of caste and religious orthodoxy, which saw the PMK ally with the BJP in the national elections. The BJP, which desperately wants to make inroads in Tamil Nadu, is engaged in wooing both Dalits and intermediate castes – casting them as the victims of Dravidian politics – and may be open to a similar alliance in the coming state polls. Given that the PMK’s electoral base is confined to the Vanniyar belt and the BJP’s sole foothold in Tamil Nadu is in Kannyakumari, these parties too are assiduously courting Vijayakant as an electoral partner.

New directions in Tamil politics

The deliberations and discussions in advance of the 2016 elections suggest that the hegemony of the Dravidian giants has been effectively eroded. This does not mean, however, that one or the other will not emerge triumphant next May. The AIADMK as noted at the outset, remains set to repeat its victories in the past two elections. The two uncertainties confronting Jayalalithaa are the appeal against her acquittal on corruption charges, and the propensity of Tamil voters to choose the better offer. In a similarly unpromising scenario in the past, the DMK has managed to confound expectations with manifesto commitments and promises that have captured the imagination of the people. Whether they are capable of constructing such a package, and whether this will offset the taint of corruption and family rule is less clear. Certainly, the hurdles ahead of the DMK are higher than any they have faced in the past.

What, though, of the emerging fronts and the changing formations of Tamil politics? Both the PWF and the PMK are untested as non-aligned electoral fronts. We can safely predict that neither will form the next government, but there is still huge interest over their performance in the coming months. The first question is whether they can resist the allure of the Dravidian fronts and remain independent. All too often, parties have used pre-election campaigns to maneuver themselves into a stronger bargaining position. The second question is whether Vijayakant can bounce back from the problems of the past few years and resurface as a credible force. The third question relates to the performance of the PWF and the PMK. We know that people in Tamil Nadu are tired of Dravidian dominance, but will they be prepared to vote for alternatives when so many resources and opportunities flow through the political institutions of the DMK and the AIADMK? Irrespective of the answer to these questions, we know that caste considerations will inform the vote and it is here that the electorate have a significant choice: will they opt for the unstated caste majoritarianism of the Dravidian parties, the outspoken caste sentiments of the PMK and the BJP or the anti-caste rhetoric of the PWF. That these remain the options in the land of Periyar shows how far the state has yet to go to realise his vision of social justice.

Karthikeyan Damodaran is a PhD candidate at the Centre for South Asian Studies, University of Edinburgh and Hugo Gorringe is a Senior Lecturer in Sociology, University of Edinburgh and the author of Untouchable Citizens : Dalit Movements and Democratisation in Tamil Nadu, 2005.

Remembering Chandralekha – Artist, Choreographer, Feminist

On the ninth anniversary of Chandralekha’s passing, marked by a photo exhibition in Chennai on her life’s work, a remembrance of her singular presence – integrating work, play and life into a single whole; and emphasising the centrality of the feminine principle in dance.

Under the maple tree, New York, 1994. Credit: Sadanand Menon

Under the maple tree, New York, 1994
Chandralekha (6 December 1928 – 30 December 2006)
Credit: Sadanand Menon

For the annual event to remember Chandralekha, an outdoor photo exhibition on her and her choreographic works spanning 20 years is on at SPACES, Chennai, till 5 January 2016.

Each time I revisit Chandralekha’s home by the sea in Chennai, I feel her subtle presence in the various spaces in and around the house and the big compound: The living room with piles of newspapers and books on the open shelves, benches and floor. The open kitchen with old fashioned brass thookkus hanging from a hook in the ceiling. The open to sky theatre where perhaps a transgender group is rehearsing a play. The workshop space with Kerala style roofing where students are learning the martial art of kalaripayattu. And the numerous trees that dot the neatly swept compound – hardy native trees that require virtually no tending — neem, banyan, peepal, bakul, casuarina, junglee badam, gul mohur, maramalli and odhya marams creating a serene canopy.

Not far, the campuses of legendary institutions like Theosophical Society and Kalakshetra exude a similar ambience. Yet what a contrast. Chandra was disdainful of permanence, of creating entrenched institutions. She would work hard to create a brilliant production and then say, it cannot be created again, it has to be dissolved; I want to make an offering of my creations to the ocean. And then she would plunge into a fresh work. Thus it is that several of the early performances of her productions have no record on film.

Sadanand Menon, her close friend and collaborator has kept her spirit alive without memorialising it. The theatre and workshop spaces are used regularly by artistes: individuals and groups who want to experiment or rehearse or perform and cannot get or afford or do not want commercial spaces. He is in the process of archiving her work through the trust they jointly created called SPACES. Would she approve?

‘Sakambhari’, opening sequence of ‘Sri’, 1991. Credit: Bernd Merzenich

Chandra’s thinking about her dance, evolution of her choreographies and rehearsals with her dancers were all done here, as also the first performance. This was her work space. But she would also water her beloved trees, make her kolam designs on the threshold, playfully doodle, experiment occasionally with making sun-dried pickle, rattle the dice for a game of daayakattai with a friend, chat on the phone sitting on the swing. It was also her living space and play space. Nor did she work exclusively with dance. She painted, wrote, made posters, taught poster making to political activists, curated exhibitions and was engaged in feminist issues from the 1960s through the 1980s. Only in the last two decades of her life did she start focusing largely on choreography.

Chandralekha and Kamadeva, ‘Navagraha’, 1971. Credit: Dashrath Patel

Chandra’s integrating her work, play and life into a single whole – in thought and deed – and her seeking out ideas and practices from allied fields for her dance work was what allowed many people like me, not from the field of dance, to access her choreography. It was inspired by nature, philosophy, yoga, martial arts, iconography, art, music and craft.

Chandra’s initial base was in Bharatanatyam. Although she became a caustic critic of its conventionalisation, routinisation and other trappings, she never lost her affinity for and appreciation of the form. But her refusal to keep it as an island of (attributed) purity and authenticity put her, as an artiste, in a different category. Except for Rukmini Devi, Bharatanatyam gurus were initially wary of her work.

But Bharatanatyam itself has been changing. Performers in the last two decades, both within India and in the Indian diaspora, have done some rethinking. The solo margam dancer following the traditional structure and order of performance is still the norm. But some performers have experimented in stretching the classical margam to its limits. Some have taken up group choreography, some have gone for less opulent and more innovative costumes and some have delinked from religious mythology to take up broader themes and socially sensitive issues. Overall, rasikas are now more accepting of ‘innovation’ within an overall conventional framework. These could be attributed at least in part to the ripples created by Chandra’s pioneering approach. Formal recognition of the roots and genesis of trends comes late and only in retrospect. Ideas are neatly lifted and co-opted any which way without acknowledgement. But those who are keen followers of the classical dance scenario can trace the line of influence. Anyway, Chandra would scoff at becoming part of the canon and would surely disavow any miracle that is needed for canonisation.

So too, the field of contemporary Indian dance is now much more fertile than two decades ago. Among other things, it has opened up to performers with initial grounding in a variety of classical genres, who have transited to a more abstract conceptualisation of movement and rhythm. One can see in their productions and utterances, Chandra’s spirit hovering around.

Namaskar, 1986. Credit: Sadanand Menon

In general, Chandra was loath to label herself, but she did consider herself a feminist. Her basic conceptual framework was grounded in notions of the centrality and power of the feminine principle, drawn from samkhya and tantra philosophy and from the iconography of the mother goddess. She approached it not as a scholar but as a visual artist uncovering insights from what she called her ‘primitive accumulation’ in the cultural fields over many decades. More than equality, she spoke about the historical and civilisational primacy of the female and the feminine.

I first knew Chandra in the late 1970s when she deeply engaged with the women’s movement. At that time, the fledgeling movement, what we now call the ‘second wave’, was hungry for inspiration and vision. Chandra spoke, wrote, made posters and choreographed productions around the notion of empowerment of women. She created the first poster for the Forum Against Oppression of Women. She created the logo for the new publishing house Kali for Women. She was invited to design the original cover of the journal Manushi; it had elements from her repertoire, including ideas of shakti and other primal concepts. The Manushi editors were uneasy and initiated a huge debate at their office in Delhi with Chandra and a large group of feminists participating. Chandra felt that they simply did not understand the cultural politics she was proposing in her graphics. The cover never got used.

Chandra had a running fight with feminist friends that they did not do their cultural homework and were shallow in their understanding of basic concepts. Now, that was harsh criticism of a struggle in which many women had toiled with the tough nitty-gritty of issues like rape, dowry, domestic violence, equality of wages, reproductive rights and many more. Chandra, of course, had stood up to be counted in the campaigns then current – Shah Bano, Roop Kanwar, Mathura.

For the ‘Stree: Women in India’ exhibition at the Festival of India in Moscow in 1988, she wrote texts celebrating women’s unsung labour – walking miles in search of water and fodder and firewood for family survival, sustaining the environment, nourishing life. In a panel titled ‘How She Copes’ detailing a village woman’s day of unending work, of creating value out of virtually nothing but her labour, I remember her moving last line “While men run the world, she runs life”. ‘Essentialising’ was the tart comment from some feminists. Unfair, according to me. Chandra stopped short of attributing inherent traits to men and women. But her poetic and visual skills were so persuasive, that one had to be alert to the message. She was acutely conscious of the inferior status of women in contemporary society. But she did not engage herself in the process of explaining the ‘fall’, the change from ‘empowerment’ to ‘enslavement’ which one of her posters depicts dramatically – a Kali like figure with many arms: on one side, white, adorned with weapons, and on the other side, dark, with the hands and weapons cut off.

Tishani Doshi, ‘Sharira’, 2002. Credit: Sadanand Menon

Chandra’s evocation of the ancient primacy of the female and feminine was inspirational, not historical, and that was how I think she meant it to be. But when she presented this idea through her choreography, you could genuinely be convinced that her evocation was true to how it might have been ‘once upon a time’. It was palpable in the bodies of the female and male performers, in the abstract movements and play of light and energy, and sound and silence on stage. The world of Indian feminism in the 1970s and 1980s, with its lineage in Left and liberal thinking, was both attracted to and suspicious of what seemed to be an ode to ‘Hindu’ ideas in her work but which she herself consistently held went much further back in time before Hinduism.

Chandra did not bother to explain on their terms. Her truth was there for all to see in her work and her life.

The writer is a sociologist based in Mumbai.

Facebook’s Rebuttal to Mahesh Murthy on Free Basics, with Replies

The debate between Murthy and Facebook raises issues that speak to the larger net neutrality discussion within India.

Note: 2015 will undoubtedly go down as the year during which important debates regarding net neutrality, India’s technology industry and the country’s Internet ecosystem were settled. The last year has seen zero-rating, the controversial practice by which mobile network operators refuse to charge for data used by specific Internet applications, become a major source of criticism and discussion, with net neutrality activists pointing out that it reduces competition, distorts the free market and allows major technology companies to play kingmaker in the Indian Internet space.

One of the more controversial zero-rating initiatives includes Facebook’s Free Basics – a suite of Internet applications that are packaged together by Reliance Communications in India and given free to the telecom operator’s users. While the exact legal status of Free Basics and other similar initiatives still remains murky, with telecom regulator TRAI in the middle of its regulatory process, Facebook has embarked on a massive advertisement campaign in favour of its Free Basics service. In the last few weeks, the Silicon Valley-based company has conducted polls, lobbied with industry executives and published its arguments in the public sphere.

Indian venture capitalist Mahesh Murthy recently wrote a piece, which was republished in The Wire last week, that took a critical look at some of Facebook’s claims regarding Free Basics. In the piece below, we publish Facebook’s replies to the original article as well as Murthy’s responses. We believe that the debate between them is emblematic of the larger net neutrality concerns that plague India.

Mark Zuckerberg on stage at Facebook’s F8 Developers Conference 2015. Credit: pestoverde/Flickr, CC BY 2.0

FACEBOOK’S ADVERTISEMENT CLAIM: Any developer can have their content on Free Basics. Nearly 800 developers have signed up their support for Free Basics

MAHESH WRITES (ORIGINAL ARTICLE): Who said they can’t? But the big sites don’t. They don’t want Facebook to own their customers, and they don’t want Facebook to snoop on their customer data, because all traffic goes via Facebook servers. Data is cheap enough in India and eventually everybody will be on the full and open internet, given time. Or our government could offer a neutral and free internet service to its citizens. There are other solutions to getting the poor online. Selling our people to Facebook doesn’t need to be one.

FACEBOOK SAYS: It is false that big sites do not participate in Free Basics. Many large sites participate in Free Basics including India Today, Network 18, Accuweather, BBC, Bing and literally hundreds more around the globe. In addition, we think it is great that small sites and big sites both participate. The concern of net neutrality activists with our original program was that small sites would be locked out. We listened and responded to that concern, so we opened the platform and we’ve been thrilled that small sites have chosen to be a part of the program. Regarding your privacy concerns, we do not keep any customer personally identifiable information (PII) past 90 days.

And we only keep it for the first 90 days to ensure we zero rate the appropriate traffic and to improve the user experience. Finally, accelerating internet adoption is good for the whole ecosystem and is what this program does. A lot of the above assertions are covered at the following link for your reference.

MAHESH’S RESPONSE: Only two of India’s top 40 sites, as ranked by Alexa, are in the list of Free Basics sites released by Facebook – and one of those is Facebook itself. The other is Wikipedia. The rest are sites that range from a number 43 at best to a number 1 million plus ranked at the worst.

To make it clearer let’s tell you what the people of India will NOT find on Free Basics: no Google. No YouTube. No Amazon. No Flipkart. No Yahoo. No LinkedIn. No Twitter. No Snapdeal. No HDFC. No ICICI. No PayTM. No eBay. No IRCTC. No NDTV. No Rediff. No Quora. No Quikr. No RedBus. No BSE. No NSE. And the list goes on. It’s clear: the “Basics” of the Indian internet are not on Free “Basics.” Just like Internet dot Org was neither Internet nor Dot Org, Free Basics is neither Free, nor is it the basics.

Now to the point about privacy. What’s interesting is this – that even when the user goes to Bing to search – her bits and bytes go via Facebook servers – so they know what you’re searching for. Look for an article on India Today, and Facebook knows that too. These sites, in effect, have handed over your profile and personally identifiable data to Facebook.

Facebook claims – and we’ll re-visit this in Point 10 – that they are not currently selling ads at this audience. But they clearly reserve the right to do so in the future. They say they are currently keeping your data for just 90 days, but first – there’s no one to audit Facebook, and second even if it is for just 90 minutes – that’s a lot of time for a lot of ads – you’ve handed over your data to the largest reseller of personal profiles in the world.

Basically, the wolf is saying, trust me, I’m guarding the sheep.

FACEBOOK’S ADVERTISEMENT CLAIM: It is not a walled garden. 40% of our users go on to access and pay for the full Internet within 30 days. In the same time period, 8 times more people are paying versus staying on just the free services.

MAHESH WRITES (ORIGINAL ARTICLE): Which means 60% of their users are stuck in Facebook jail. Why should even one Indian citizen be? The internet should be open for all our people, or the net should be neutral as we say, especially on public property, which the wireless spectrum is.

FACEBOOK SAYS: Here’s the simple math that we’ve released: 40% of people who start their online journey at Free Basics go on to access the full internet within 30 days. Eight times more people have gone on to access the internet as stay on only using Free Basics. That means that 5% are using only free services. 55% have churned which is a pretty typical number for any new service that people use. So actually, of people who use the service, the vast majority is off to use the entire internet. We’ll always work hard to get the 55% to use to the entire internet, but we’re happy with how this is working so far. For the 5%, we hope that they’re using the tools to access health information, communicate with people, or find a job. We think it is good that they can at least access this information and do it for free.

MAHESH’S RESPONSE: There’s lies, Facebook statements and statistics. There’s no “simple math” in the fancy footwork of words Facebook is using. Let’s simplify all of this to Facebook and Reliance’s own declared data and real numbers. As of October, about 1 million people had logged on to Free Basics.

Of these, about 80% by Facebook’s own admission were already users of the full internet who dropped in to try the offering of free data. They’re not, as Facebook puts it “people who started their online journey on Free Basics”. That leaves around 200,000 people who were newbies who actually came on board. Of these, 80,000 or 40% went on to the full internet, and the rest 60%, that is 120,000, were locked in the Facebook walled garden.

And of the 120,000 who were locked in the walled garden, almost all of them: 110,000 dropped out and never came back again (the 55% of 200,000 who have “churned”) – perhaps disappointed with what they saw there. And 10,000 continue to remain locked in there.

(Again this is my personal read from all the dibs and dabs of data Facebook and Reliance have revealed. They’ve never shared any real numbers – and one has to read deep between the lines to try make out what they’re trying to say – or not say. I could be wrong, and if I am, I hope Facebook can come and correct me with the right data. The data above is my best guess.) Now here’s the irony. Facebook, by industry estimates, has spent over Rs. 100 crores on this advertising, PR, lobbying, Narendra Modi hugging and diplomacy effort.

If they’d simply put that money sponsoring, say the first 100MB a month at 2G speeds for new users of the full internet, that would have barely cost Rs. 200 a year, per person at current published pre-paid top-up rates of many mobile carriers. In effect, the same spend from Facebook could have given 5 million Indians full internet access for a year. Instead of these 50 lakh new Internet users from India, what it’s gotten them instead is 10,000 people locked in their walled garden and 110,000 people who don’t want to go online again, even to the free Facebook offering. And a net of 80,000 people who went online to pay for full internet access from their own pockets.

If I was the Facebook CFO, I’d be asking some tough questions indeed. Meanwhile, you, dear reader can take a shot and telling us tell us which of these routes actually “brings the benefit of going online” to the poor and the unconnected.

FACEBOOK’S ADVERTISEMENT CLAIM: Free Basics is growing and popular in 36 countries, which have welcomed the program with open arms and seen enormous benefits.

MAHESH WRITES: This is a lie. This scam may have been pushed through in these poor, mostly helpless African nations who have no experience of anything better, like we have, and who have no ‘activists’ like us who tell their governments they’re raising a generation of deprived children with no access to the real internet. Also, tellingly, the more online-progressive countries like Japan, Norway, Finland, Estonia and Netherlands have outright banned programs such as Free Basics. With your help, and 12 lakh emails to TRAI last year, we’d helped to work towards a ban for it in India too – but Facebook has since spent a large amount of cash in ads, lobbying, diplomacy and PR to try to get it unbanned here. They’ve managed to re-open a closed issue, again. With your help, we’d like to re-shut it. More to the point, this program, call it digital apartheid, if you will, has been roundly condemned by experts ranging from Tim Berners-Lee, the gent who invented the world-wide web, to Ph. D. researchers to civil society officials working in the field, globally.

The fact that Tanzania didn’t know how to say no to Facebook doesn’t mean India has to say yes. In fact, we hope that India saying no to this digital apartheid will inspire the African and other poor nations to kick out this evil program that serves no one but Facebook at their government’s expense.

FACEBOOK SAYS: Your characterisation of these countries is rather insulting. We wouldn’t categorize them all as poor and we wouldn’t categorize any as helpless. People everywhere are interested in the benefits that the internet can bring to their lives. The statistics of people moving off of the service hold up in these countries so nobody is getting stuck – people worldwide are smarter than you’re giving them credit for. The list includes Columbia, Philippines, Thailand, Bolivia, Peru, Mexico, Pakistan, Mongolia, Bangladesh, Panama, Mongolia, Iraq and others. By the way, it seems pretty arrogant to refer to “mostly helpless African nations.” That is just our opinion.

MAHESH’S RESPONSE: By the way, it’s “Colombia” in South America not “Columbia” in the US that you probably mean. That somewhat-telling slip aside, when we refer to ‘poor’ countries, it’s on GDP and other economic norms, not some imaginary “insult” or “arrogance” you seek to pin on us.

The insult and arrogance here really is your hypocrisy, Facebook. In the US, you are strongly on the side of net neutrality – but in the developing and undeveloped world, you speak from the other side of your mouth, blatantly seeking to violate net neutrality and to give our citizens here a second-rate online experience that you wouldn’t dream of offering people in your home country. There are almost 50 million unconnected people in the US. Why don’t you try offering them this shoddy program there, and let’s see how the FCC responds to you?

Also, it’s good to see that you don’t disagree with Tim Berners-Lee and other experts who say your program is terrible.

But we’re the natives, right? How would we know, hmm? You wonderful folks in the developed world have decided what’s best for us, and with your high-decibel ad campaign and the pamper-the-ego-of-their-prime-minister tactics, you’re trying to push your low-quality offerings down our throats.

And now you ask, Mr Zuckerberg, in your piece in The Times Of India: “Who could possibly be against this?” More than a few of us, massa, as it turns out, more than a few of us.

FACEBOOK’S ADVERTISEMENT CLAIM: In a recent representative poll, 86% of Indians supported Free Basics by Facebook and the idea that everyone deserves access to free basic Internet services.

MAHESH WRITES: Guess what, if you’ve ever clicked “yes” on any misleading poll by Facebook apparently asking you to support “connecting India” or “free internet”, then you too apparently voted for them. They never brought you both sides of the story, to take a fair decision.

FACEBOOK SAYS: This is false. This was a door to door in person poll of more than 3,000 people in India. Link is here.

By the way, the poll as well asked pointed questions that opponents have used as arguments against Free Basics. We tested a number of arguments:

When the Internet is restricted, it means India is weaker. To be strong, the Internet should be free and open to everyone. Free Basics is just a scam by Facebook to try to get more people to use their site. The only reason they care about people without Internet is because they want to make more money.
Free Basics creates a world with two types of Internet: one for rich people and one for poor people. It’s important that everyone has access to the same Internet.
Free Basics has given Reliance a monopoly by partnering with them and no one else.
Free Basics does not protect its users, many of whom are new to the Internet and will be exploited by the service.

We wanted to fully understand what a broad range of Indians thought of Free Basics, rather than just speak to supporters or opponents. And we have been incorporating global feedback into the program all along.

MAHESH’S RESPONSE: We can see that your questions in the survey itself were misleading. No one can sensibly answer “yes” to both statements: “the Internet should be open to everyone” and “I support a program like Free Basics that takes people away from the full Internet”.

Just like your survey triumphantly reports the idiocy that a majority of Indians want net neutrality and at the same time want the opposite of net neutrality, that is Free Basics. So pardon us if there’s not much credibility in your survey or how you conducted it.

What adds to the lack of credibility is how you pushed even Americans into voting to show support for Free Basics in India, and how you carefully failed to give Facebook users the other side of the story – all among the 3.2 million votes you speak proudly of.

FACEBOOK’S ADVERTISEMENT CLAIM: In the past several days, 3.2 million people have petitioned the TRAI in support of Free Basics

MAHESH WRITES: Let’s again say it for what it is: 3.2 million people out of Facebook’s base of 130 million people who were repeatedly shown a misleading petition by Facebook on top of their pages clicked yes and submit, without being told both sides of the story, and thinking they were doing something for a noble cause, and not to further Facebook’s business strategy. A large number of them, shocked at realizing what they were conned into doing have since said no.

FACEBOOK SAYS: This is false. Only a small fraction of our 130 million users were notified. We largely provided the notice to people who had previously indicated their support of Free Basics months ago and then notified their friends only if the person showed support once again. And the response rates of support are high compared to average campaigns. There is no evidence that “a large number” of them feel conned. Note: Claims on Twitter about false sends or notifications are disproved by the code – which we will happily supply to TRAI. Our program is benefiting people and we will continue to advocate for its benefits, much like its critics are using their communication channels to make their opinions known.

MAHESH’S RESPONSE: Thank you for confirming that your Facebook vote-getting effort wasn’t representative, but aimed as you say at only that “small fraction” of your users who had already showed support for Internet.org. In other words, you’d stacked the deck.

So why wouldn’t you say this earlier, and why brandish a number like 3.2 million about that you yourself admit is heavily selection-biased and not representative at all?

FACEBOOK’S ADVERTISEMENT CLAIM: There are no ads in the version of Facebook on Free Basics. Facebook produces no revenue. We are doing this to connect India and the benefits to do so are clear.

MAHESH WRITES: First the unintentional lie. Facebook DOES produce revenue, about Rs. 12,000 crores worth globally. Then the intentional half-truth: It may not produce revenues from this Free Basics YET because the current version of Facebook on it has no ads YET.

FREE BASICS SAYS: No revenue is given to Facebook from the Facebook app on Free Basics: None. We responded to this in the link above, but here it is cut and paste: “There have never been ads in the version of Facebook in Free Basics. Ever. What if we find out that an ad-based model down the road has better conversion to the full internet and better serves the unconnected? We don’t think that’s likely, but this is why we do not want to say “never.” By the way, some opponents of Free Basics want it to have ads, so we’re a bit wondering how much of this particular criticism is based in anything logical and how much is just wanting to debate for its own sake.

MAHESH’S RESPONSE: Just a roundabout way of saying what they’ve said and we’ve said all along – Facebook doesn’t have ads yet, but reserves the right to bring in ads at any point in time.

Nothing new here.

GENERAL ISSUE #1: Has Facebook started Free Basics for altruistic or corporate reasons?

MAHESH WRITES (ORIGINAL ARTICLE): Let’s add a point here, and actually get to why Facebook is doing this. Forget their lies about “wanting to connect India” – if they really did, they would offer the open and full internet to everybody, free. They can, easily, but they have repeatedly have declined to do so, saying first the poor person has to sign up for Facebook and then a few scraggly sites are also shown to them.

The real reason is something they have never denied: their rivalry with Google and their questionable stock price. We are no apologists for Google, but this might interest you: Both companies have 1.5 billion users, but Google makes Rs. 70,000 crores while Facebook does less than one-fifth as well. In other words, for every new user that comes on the internet, Facebook makes Rs. 8, while Google makes around Rs. 48. Facebook’s stock is valued at a much higher multiple than Google, but people have begun to ask why they deserve this. With no reason to support the stratospheric price, it will fall.

For Facebook to have a chance to keep their stock price high, and to keep Zuckerberg and wife as rich as they are, they need to find new users who sign up for Facebook, but at the same time do not use Google.

Enter the strategy: A program to offer Facebook but not Google at the mass, poor people level. Who is outside the first 1.5 billion people? Mostly people in India and China. Facebook is banned in China. So who becomes essential to Mark Zuckerberg’s balance sheet? Enter us Indians. What’s a hundred crores of ad spend, against tens of thousands crores of valuation?

FACEBOOK SAYS: First of all, Free Basics is the best bridge to a full internet we’ve seen and we have proof from many other countries that this is true. Second, the mission of Facebook is to connect the world and it matters to us more than money. This is so true that a Wall Street analyst on an earnings call asked why he should care about internet.org because it’s non revenue producing. Mark Zuckerberg, our CEO, simply suggested that if he felt that way then he should invest in a different company.

There are several, practical reasons we cannot offer full, free internet to everyone and just giving away a full data pack does not work: a) it’s not a sustainable business model for telcos or anyone else over the long term. Telcos invest nearly a half trillion dollars (US) per year infrastructure; b) giving away free megabytes mostly only helps existing internet users, as opposed to the unconnected as existing users are more likely to have access to better connections; c) it also means users on low–bandwidth phones in 2G environments burn through their data very quickly – or have a terrible user experience with data intensive sites; and d) this latter point means that conversion to full paid internet is likely to be poor. We’ve studied this issue in 35 countries.

We’re not perfect, but we’re getting a very good idea about what actually works to connect people around the world; d) Finally, you’re implying that people must sign up to Facebook to use Free Basic Services. This is false. They don’t. They only sign up to Facebook if they choose to use Facebook. Using Free Basics does not force you to use Facebook.

MAHESH’S RESPONSE: Nonsense and still more nonsense. Let’s start very simply. We don’t need a “bridge” to the full internet, when we can have the full internet itself. The “bridge” is a fancy invention by Facebook to refer to a holding area where Facebook holds, numbers and tracks people before they pay up and wander off into the real internet.

Study after study has shown that the poor and the less fortunate in undeveloped nations vastly prefer limited access to the full internet (for example a data limit or a speed limit) rather than full access to a few limited sites – like Facebook Free Basics offers. They want the freedom of choice.

Why hasn’t Facebook chosen the other, proven options to bring people to the internet that do not violate Net Neutrality? For example, in India, Aircel has begun providing full internet access for free at 64 kbps download speed for the first three months. Facebook could sponsor and expand that.

Schemes such as Gigato offer data for free for surfing some sites. The Mozilla Foundation runs two programs for free and neutral Internet access. Facebook could work with them. In Bangladesh, Grameenphone users get free data in exchange for watching an advertisement. In Africa, Orange users get 500 MB of free access on buying a $37 handset.

There are many, many proven and better ways to get the less fortunate on the Internet – rather than have to come in wearing the Facebook Free Basics handcuffs.

And contrary to what Facebook claims, these are ALL sustainable models for telcos. They’re already up and running. More importantly, by offering the full internet to all people, these are the models that are best in line with how the scarce national resource of wireless spectrum should be best put to use.

We believe India’s spectrum should be made available only to folks who offer the full internet to people – and not just a self-serving tiny slice of it.

One more proof of this assertion is in the actual data itself: Facebook itself says that 55% of newbie users who see a glimpse of the Facebook walled garden in Free Basics actually drop out from the service altogether. Shouldn’t that be proof enough that it’s a bad idea and needs to stop, and that our people want and need the full internet?

Now to notice that Facebook completely ducked the valuation and anti-Google nature of Free Basics. Thank you for your very revealing non-rebuttal there, folks. And to your assertion that you don’t make money till people enter the full internet, that’s false too. You will make money the moment ads or sponsored posts are served against this audience – on whichever version of Facebook or Messenger they are on: the Free Basics one or the regular internet one.

And again, if you are really concerned about getting people on to the full internet because that’s where you’ll make your money, we’ve detailed above a few ways to do it. Thing is, you know of all these ways and you yet seek to not do that because you probably really don’t care a fig about bringing people to the full internet – all you want is to keep them away from Google for as long as you can so you can save your stock price. That’s why you’re spending a ridiculous amount of money to defend what is otherwise a completely indefensible position.

Especially when the same amount of money demonstrably can deliver 100 times more numbers of full internet users, if you were to work towards that and not this truncated little sliver called Free Basics.

And to your last point about advertising, we notice the fancy footwork again. What we’re saying is that brands who want to reach out to these Free Basics users cannot find them on the full Internet and hence will need to pay you to reach them, as and when you decide to turn the advertising or promoted post tap on.

GENERAL ISSUE #2: Is Free Basics bad for new, digital entrepreneurs?

MAHESH WRITES (ORIGINAL ARTICLE): There are many other reasons why Facebook’s Free Basics Digital Apartheid is bad. It’s bad for entrepreneurs – your business can’t be discovered by these new potential users on the Internet till you advertise on Facebook. The same goes for big businesses.

FACEBOOK SAYS: This is not true. No one needs to advertise at all with us to have their application on Free Basics. And there are a lot of small developers seeing success on the Free Basics platform.

GENERAL ISSUE #3: Are India’s net neutrality activists, the Save the Internet movement, speaking on behalf of India’s rural population? Are they against greater Internet access?

MAHESH WRITES (ORIGINAL ARTICLE): We are happy to support any effort that brings the full and unfettered internet to as many Indians as possible, as cheaply as possible.

FACEBOOK SAYS: Then you ought to support Free Basics because it serves as a bridge to the full internet. For example, Socialblood is building the largest network of blood donors, hospitals, and blood banks on the internet. Since joining the Free Basics Platform, Socialblood has seen an 85 percent increase in monthly visitors, a 59 percent increase in requests for blood, and a 65 percent decrease in donor response time. Through Free Basics, Socialblood has connected thousands of patients across the globe to life saving blood products. How is this not a good thing?

MAHESH RESPONDS: Like we’ve said before – why build a tiny bridge to the full internet, when the entire darn thing can be made available to all at lesser cost and with full net neutrality?

And it’s nice to see social programs. Pity they’re on a tiny, small and unconnected part of the online world. We’re certain the entrepreneur would much rather have the full gamut of potential blood donors than what just the Facebook micro-network offers. Even citizens who need and can give blood would also much rather be on the full internet. We wonder about the lives that’ll be lost because either the donors or donees can’t be found on the real Internet in an actual time of need.

It’s not that the full internet is an impossibility to offer and hence government spectrum needs to be used to deliver the Facebook micro-network of sites. It’s quite the opposite. The full internet is very viable to provide, globally, at lesser cost and much larger benefit than the Facebook micro-network.

The shame is that Facebook seems to have no apparent real interest in its supposed mission to make the world more open and connected. If it did, it would absolutely support full access. The Facebook interest – as can be seen from the tremendous spend in media and lobbying on this issue – to create a closed and disconnected Facebook province, separated from the real world of the full Internet.

GENERAL ISSUE #4: The need for a public debate on Free Basics and net neutrality.

FACEBOOK ASKS: Finally: Mahesh – would you agree to a public debate on this topic in front of an audience of developers (large and small), tech students and media? We’re game if you are.

MAHESH RESPONDS: Absolutely. But why just developers and tech students? Let’s get all kinds of students, all kinds of entrepreneurs, lots of media, politicians and even the lay public. We could do it in Hindi too, if you like.

It’s all about keeping it open, right? You know where to reach me. Lord knows you track me enough online!

This article has been edited for clarity.

Rehabilitation Not Retribution Should be the Focus of Juvenile Justice

Society and the legal system should not aim for harsher or milder punishments, but rather creating an effective system that would lead to fewer victims

We still remember the evening of December 16th 2012, and its aftermath. The next weeks were spent following the coverage of the brutal and spine chilling gang-rape of a young girl, who became etched in public memory as ‘Nirbhaya’ because of the courage with which she fought for her life, and gave a statement to the police.

As our hearts went out to her there was a nagging worry. It is understandable why people wanted an instant change in the law. In fact, laws relating to sexual violence were in dire need of a reform. The reform that came had certain much needed features like an expansion of the ambit of rape, and defining offences such as stalking and voyeurism. However, it had some problematic features too (note the provision for mandatory minimums and statutory rape, that did not take into account the need for age proximity clauses). The tendency to effect legal reform as a response to a singular event, when the nation is in the throes of emotion, is/was worrying.

Things have now come full circle, and the Rajya Sabha has passed another legal reform that many feel is a response to the release of the juvenile in conflict with law who was convicted of committing the December 16th gang-rape. This is The Juvenile Justice (Care and Protection of Children) Bill, 2015.

Though this Bill is a comprehensive bill and a ‘nuanced one’ (according to the Minister for Women and Child Development), its most controversial provision allows those who have completed the age of 16 years to be tried as adults, if they have committed a heinous crime. However, the idea of having a juvenile justice framework is defeated, if we punish children as adults or keep them in contact with adult offenders.

‘Heinous offences’, are defined by the Bill as those for which the minimum punishment under the Indian Penal Code or any other law is imprisonment for 7 years or more. This issue has polarised people, and sparked a debate on whether this Bill is regressive and reactionary. We thought this was a good time to look into the deliberative/legislative process behind the passing of this bill.

Regressive or Responsive?

Shashi Tharoor, in his speech on the Bill, provided a scathing indictment of its provisions, and stated that ‘It’s a bad law, badly written, and badly thought through’. He relied on the provisions of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child, and provisions of our own Constitution, to say that the provisions of the Bill would end up embarrassing India before the international community. His fears are not incorrect, since a reading of Article 2 of the UNCRC shows that the principle of non-discrimination enshrined in it, does enjoin the State to treat all children in conflict with law equally.

Not all parliamentarians were as critical of the bill, however. Rajeev Chandrashekhar, who has been a strong pillar of support for victims of child sexual abuse, talked about the need for protecting victim’s rights as well as the children’s rights. He stated that the Parliament should have passed the bill earlier, which would have been more responsive to the sentiments of the people of India, rather than being reactive now. He mentioned that the definition of heinous offenses was too broad, and in fact it should be restricted to the categories of ‘rape, murder, kidnapping, trafficking and terrorism’.

K.T.S Tulsi provided a comparative analysis with other countries, and stated in his speech that he felt the bill erred on the side of caution, and did not in any way compromise on the rights of the child.

The CPI (M) walked out in protest against the Bill, and Sitaram Yechury bemoaned the fact that the Bill was not deliberated upon in a more ‘dispassionate and scientific’ manner.

The myth of the prowling juvenile

One argument of those supporting the Bill is that there is an alarming spike in the crimes committed by juveniles. Let us examine the veracity of this claim. The NCRB data shows that in terms of overall crimes committed by juveniles under IPC, during the period of 2004-2014, there has been a significant increase. This shows that crimes committed by juveniles are becoming a serious issue. However, it is important to keep these figures in context. According to PRS Legislative Research, ‘over the last ten years (2003-2013), crimes committed by children as a percentage of all crimes committed in the country, have risen from 1.0% to 1.2%’.

If we narrow it down to crimes committed under Section 376 of IPC, the rise is steeper. However, we cannot rule out the role played by other factors such as increase in reporting, general awareness, and the expanded ambit of rape in the Criminal Law Amendment Act of 2013 (See Table 2) .

If we look at the category of ‘gang rape’ committed by Juveniles in the NCRB data, we see that states like Uttar Pradesh and Madhya Pradesh are problem areas. Similarly if we look at gang rape committed in Union Territories, the capital stands out as an outlier. We need to analyse what factors contribute to make some states real problem areas.

The idea that juveniles are used by gangs to commit organized crimes, since these gangs know that juveniles will not face stringent punishments, has gained momentum. There is truth to this perception, since in 2011, the Juvenile Justice Board ordered the SJPU (Special Juvenile Police Unit) to take stringent action against adults pushing juveniles into organized crimes. This was echoed by various parliamentarians in the recent debate on the Juvenile Justice Bill. Even if this is accepted, concluding that some juveniles to be tried as adults is an abdication of state responsibility. It is the job of the State to ensure that law and order is maintained, and that organized gangs are not able to exploit children. Our efforts would be better utilized in trying to check this tendency, rather than penalizing the juvenile.

Further, there may be cases where young people (say a 17-year-old boy and a 15-year-old girl), engage in ‘consensual’ sexual activity. Cases of young people experimenting or falling in love can no longer be brushed aside. Since the provisions of the POCSO Act do not recognize a child’s consent, the 17-year-old boy could potentially be tried as an adult. While both the male and female children in such a case are technically Children in Conflict with Law (CCL) and Children in need of care and protection (CNCP), the police invariably treats the male child as a CCL and the girl child as a CNCP. While we have provided a hypothetical example here, such a situation is not outlandish. We need to examine whether the new law is open to abuse on this front. If it is, then certain safeguards will have to be provided. (This might include introducing age proximity clauses in case of statutory rape, and/ or narrowing the ambit of heinous crime).

What does justice hope to achieve?

In our country justice and vengeance are often conflated, but there are many competing visions of justice. One such vision is restorative justice (RJ) based on the principles of ‘repair, involvement, and justice system facilitation’. RJ wants to enable ‘offenders to understand the harm caused by their behaviour and to make amends to their victims and communities’. It envisions ‘giving victims an opportunity to participate in justice processes.’ Finally it aims at protecting the public through a process in which the individual victims, the community, and offenders are all active stakeholders.

The new Bill that enables children, between 16 and 18, to be tried as adults is conceptually flawed. Its intention is to punish those who have committed heinous crimes, while its focus should be on alternative treatments (such as reformation, rehabilitation and re-integration with society). According to Professor B.B Pande, who was on the drafting committee of the Juvenile Justice Act of 2000, the CCLs in the 16-18 year age group targeted by this Bill are of a relatively small number, and could easily be weaned away from a life of crime, through sustained individual care and preventive programmes. This approach helps keep young offenders from relapsing. This approach has worked effectively in Germany, and has been supported by judges who work in the Juvenile Court. Learning from this system, we should focus more on preventing new crimes, rather than punishing the ones already committed. The idea is not to establish harsher or milder punishments, but rather having an effective system that would lead to fewer victims. We must note that a lot of children in conflict with law were once in need of care and protection. The fact that they do not receive the help they need, results in them being drawn to a life of crime. Without rehabilitation as a focus of the juvenile system, we might end up becoming no country for juveniles.

Srishti Agnihotri is a lawyer working in Trial Courts in New Delhi, and is engaged in providing legal aid to survivors of child sexual abuse.

Minakshi Das is engaged in research and advocacy in the field of child rights.

The Ways in Which Delhi’s Pollution Can Kill You

Before you draw your next breath, be aware that it could seriously damage you. Scientists have estimated that air pollution by prevailing PM2.5 levels will have led to 6.6 million premature deaths by 2050.

Take a deep breath. The air quality index measured at the New Delhi US Embassy’s real-time monitor. Source: aqicn.org

There is now a tsunami of evidence that air pollution by increased particulate matter raises the incidence of cardiovascular disease, hypertension, diabetes, respiratory diseases and lung cancer. Bad air impedes the optimal growth of lungs in children and also adversely affects cognition. There are reports that it can also lead to Alzheimer’s disease and Parkinsonism as well. Delhi has gathered for itself the dubious distinction of being the most polluted city in the world, striding ahead of Beijing. The state and central governments are making the necessary noises but predictably haven’t yet come up with a concrete action plan. The state government, for starters, has come up with the plan of permitting odd and even number registered cars to move on alternate days. It is estimated that significant reduction in PM2.5 levels will be achieved with about 1.4 million vehicles off Delhi roads on a single day.

But then the current government cannot be blamed for a crisis that has been developing for decades. The Supreme Court mercifully is seized of the grave problem and is deliberating imposing necessary remedial measures. It has in the meantime banned the sale of diesel SUVs till April 2016.

An article by academics of the Delhi School of Economics published by the World Bank has reported that installation of the Delhi Metro has substantially lowered levels of carbon monoxide (CO) and nitrogen dioxide (NO2) at the Income Tax Office crossing in New Delhi. The report suggests that this reduction in polluting gases by almost 30% (assessed by a monitoring station in the vicinity) was probably due to reduction in vehicular traffic because of availability of the Metro for the commuters. The authors have noted that during this period, almost two million passengers used the metro on a daily basis. They have also pointed out that domestic bio-fuel usage, diesel generators, waste burning and construction activity contribute some 20-25% of Delhi’s air pollution.

The study however misses out entirely on the noxious role of fine particulate matter less than 2.5 microns in diameter (PM2.5). We must understand that the haze we encounter every day during daylight and under the dirty glow of streetlights after sunset are due to PM2.5, and that various prospective long-term exposure (years or decades) studies have documented that elevated PM2.5 levels are associated with increased risk of cardiovascular deaths. Ambient and domestic air pollution is among the top 10 contributors to the global burden of disease. There is also the worrying evidence that short-term exposure, from a few hours to a few days, can also trigger acute myocardial infarction and unstable angina. Studies have shown that short-term exposure to raised levels of PM2.5 can spark an ST-segment elevation myocardial infarction (STEMI) – a full-blown heart attack.

These microscopic particles originate from smoke, and from dirt and dust from factories and roads. These particles can stay in the atmosphere from days to weeks and travel hundreds of miles. When you inhale, you breathe in these particles suspended in the air. An air quality index of 100 for PM2.5 corresponds to PM2.5 levels greater than 40 micrograms per cubic meter. The WHO has chosen (PDF) an annual average concentration of 10 µg/m³ as the threshold above which there are adverse health affects. Health risks associated with shorts term exposure have also been found to be significantly raised in cities of developed and developing countries.

A recent North American study examined 20 years of acute coronary syndrome event data in patients who had undergone coronary angiography. These data were linked with air pollution plus weather data and analysed using a crossover design. Elevated short-term exposure of PM2.5 was associated with a greater risk of heart disease, but only in those people who already harboured heart disease confirmed by coronary angiography. The authors suggest that increased incidence of ST-segment elevation was probably due to destabilisation of blocks (plaques) in the coronary arteries. It has been recorded that an increase of 10 µg/m³ in PM2.5 levels (in the previous hour) can increase STEMI by as much as 8% to 26%. The study discusses that risk threshold be maintained at 25 µg/m³ of PM2.5 with a linear effect above this level.

Short-term exposure to elevated levels of PM2.5 leads to a heightened inflammatory state, which promotes thrombosis apart from causing endothelial dysfunction. A Chinese study has documented reduced inflammatory and thrombogenic biomarkers by substantially reducing PM2.5 levels for as briefly as 48 hours by air purifiers.

So before you draw your next breath, be aware that it could seriously damage you. It could kill you, too. Scientists estimate that air pollution by PM2.5 has led to more than 3.2 million premature deaths globally (as of 2010), and this figure could jump to 6.6 million by 2050. Most deaths occur in developing countries with high population and poor air quality due to heavy industrial activities. Some 32% of the premature deaths in China (as of 2015) were because of pollutants from coal, biomass and diesel generators. Air pollution kills approximately 4,000 Chinese people in a day. Around 1.6 million people in China die each year due to heart, stroke and lung problems as a result of bad air. There were 60,000 to 88,000 deaths due to air pollution in 2010 in the USA. More people die of air pollution in the world than malaria and AIDS.

Domestic energy use causes 50% of the 645,000 deaths in India, and the same pollutants account for 50% to 70% of deaths in other Asian countries. It is imperative that the people of Delhi are provided the grim picture, that most air pollution deaths are caused by PM2.5 that is small enough to get deep into the lungs and also from there into the blood stream to play havoc with the human body. These particles cause heart attacks and strokes (three quarters of the 3.3 million deaths) and the remaining die because of lung disease and cancer.

Agricultural emissions of ammonia, mainly from cattle, pigs, chickens and overuse of fertilisers, react with fumes from traffic and industry to produce tiny air pollutants. These PM2.5 particles account for most premature deaths in Europe, Japan and eastern US. About 48% of premature deaths in the UK are due to agricultural pollution. Considering the grim situation in Delhi, the government must ensure limits to reduce air pollution are strictly enforced. The wintry morning mist barley lifts the entire day because it is largely smog. And by night the smog morphs to a carcinogenic haze that stings your eyes thanks to the thousands of trucks that infest Delhi in those hours.

We can now no longer sacrifice our environment for the sake of money. A balance has to be found because time is not running out – it already has, and we can’t let the present go up in smoke.

Deepak Natarajan is a cardiologist based in New Delhi.

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