Month: May 2019

Rameshwar Teli’s Inclusion in Govt Telling of BJP’s Desire to Woo Assam’s Tea Tribe

The BJP has strategically chosen Teli to continue nourishing the community keeping the assembly polls in mind – which are just two years away.

New Delhi: The second term of the Narendra Modi government, much like its first, includes two ministers from the Northeast.

While Kiren Rijiju, an MP from Arunachal Pradesh, has been named a minister of state with independent charge (sports), Rameshwar Teli, who represents the Dibrugarh Lok Sabha constituency of Assam, is the new minister of state for food processing.

In the 2014 Modi regime, Rajen Gohain from Assam had also been appointed as the minister of state for the railways.

If you approach the term-two ministerial announcements made earlier today from the angle of specific Northeastern states being represented in the Modi ministry, it is no different from 2014. These two states also had a reason to be represented in 2014 – BJP picked up Lok Sabha seats only from these two states during the Modi wave of 2014.

Also read: Home for Amit Shah, Nirmala Sitharaman Gets Finance, Jaishankar to MEA

In 2019 though, aside from Assam and Arunachal, the BJP won seats – for the first time – in two Northeastern states – Manipur (one) and Tripura (two). By that logic, the 58-member strong central government should have a representative from at least one of these states.

A strategic move

But Teli’s elevation from a Lok Sabha MP to a central minister is a strategic move by the party.

A two-time BJP MLA and a two-time MP, Teli belongs to Assam’s tea tribe, a community that BJP has been pandering to for some time now. Since the 60s through the 90s, the Congress’ typical vote bank in the state has been the proverbial Ali-Coolie-Bongali (Muslims, the tea tribe and the Bengali Hindus) bracket, a combination of voters sufficient for the party to win an election. The ability of the Congress to hold on to this axis was also a reason for heartburn among the majority Assamese community.

From the late 1990s on, the BJP start chipping away the Bengali Hindu vote from the Congress, and the Muslim vote began to shift towards the All India United Democratic Front (AIUDF) from 2005 onwards.

While these two core voter bases of the state leaned majorly towards religious politics, it was the tea tribe that stood firmly with the Congress, and which helped the party retain its electoral control over the state for three consecutive terms till early 2016.

The tribe, with 35-40% vote share in the Brahmaputra Valley, which has most of the 126 assembly seats, has a considerable say in every election. It made it absolutely crucial for the BJP to snatch these votes from the Congress in order to weaken its hold in the state. The RSS, which had infiltrated the labour lines of the tea gardens in the 1980s, amplified their work to gain that goal for the BJP.

The outcome was the Duliajan assembly seat, which Teli, as the influential former general secretary of the Assam Tea Tribe Students Union (AATSU), won for the party in 2001. He was the only MLA of the party from the Brahmaputra Valley to win that election aside from the seven others mainly representing the Bengali Hindus.

Recalling that time at a press meet held for journalists in New Delhi on May 31, Teli said, “It was a big win. Even after five supporters of Assam Movement were killed in the assembly constituency during the height of the agitation, the AGP couldn’t take that seat from the Congress.” It was mainly because the tea tribe continued to back the Congress.

Both in the 2014 Lok Sabha and the 2016 assembly polls, the BJP could become victorious in the Brahmaputra Valley mainly due to the success of the RSS in channelling the tea tribe votes into BJP. With the Assamese community getting vocal against the BJP close to the 2019 Lok Sabha polls due to the Citizenship (amendment) Bill, it became all the more vital for the BJP to hold on to its tea tribe votes.

The result was a volley of sops announced in the last state budget, which helped the party reap results on May 23. Aside from partnering with the AGP, the ability to retain Jorhat, Lakhimpur, Dibrugarh and Tezpur Lok Sabha seats on May 23 was due to the support it bagged from the tea tribe community. The budget sops also neutralised to a considerable extent the Modi government’s failure to grant scheduled tribe status to the community as promised before the 2016 assembly polls.

Teli’s selection to the Modi government on May 23 was done to continue nourishing the community keeping the assembly polls in mind, which are just two years away. So was the decision of the party to pick former MP and a young leader from the community, Kamakhya Prasad Tasa, to the Rajya Sabha early this week.

By naming Teli as a minister of state, the BJP has also equaled what the Congress had done for the community. In 2011, Pawan Singh Ghatowar, a five-time MP from Dibrugarh who was defeated in two consecutive terms by Teli (2014 and 2019), was a minister of state in the UPA II government.

One of the reasons that Congress’ hold on the tea tribe has dwindled over the years is also because of the shrinking popularity of the Asom Chah Mazdoor Sangh within the community. The trade union has long been considered the representative voice of the tea tribe. Though Ghatowar still heads the Mazdoor Sangh, that he couldn’t do much to get his community’s votes in the recent polls is a case in point.

On asked about the declining effect of the Mazdoor Sangh on his community, Teli told reporters, “It was once our voice but over the years, it became the voice of the tea garden owners, not the labourers. It was since then our people have begun to lose interest in it. Another reason is that people of our community are more educated than before. They now can think for themselves.”

Troubling Unemployment Data, Leaked in January, Now Released Post-Elections

The NSSO survey confirms that the 2017-18 unemployment rate was higher than recorded in nine earlier surveys, but warns about methodology changes.

New Delhi: India recorded a 6.1% unemployment rate in 2017-18, official data released on Friday noted, which the statistics ministry says is higher than what was recorded in previous government surveys but is still not strictly comparable on account of methodological changes.

The data comes from the Periodic Labour Force Survey (PLFS), which was conducted by the National Sample Survey Office (NSSO) from July 2017 to June 2018, and covered 4.3 lakh people across 1.02 lakh households.

The PLFS notes that the all-India unemployment rate – defined as the percentage of unemployed persons in the labour force – was at 6.1% for 2017-18.

Also read: NSSO Data Puts Unemployment at 45-Year High in 2017-18: Report

This data was leaked and first reported by Business Standard earlier this year. A few months ago, a controversy around the release of the report was sparked when the former head of the National Statistical Commission resigned, hinting that the report was suppressed for political reasons.

Can it be compared or not?

“Compared to the quinquennial rounds, in 2017-18 the unemployment rates in both usual status (ps+ss) and CWS were higher for both males and female,” the report notes.

The problem with a comparison of the PLFS results and the quinquennial survey rounds conducted by the NSSO is that the methodology of both statistical efforts are different.

Also read: A Simmering Unemployment Crisis in India

“It’s a new design, new metric,” chief statistician Pravin Srivastava told reporters at a press conference on Friday evening.  “It would be unfair to compare it with the past,” he added.

One table in the report, titled ‘Statement 31’ (shown below), does lay out the results of the PLFS and survey rounds by the NSSO going back to 1974 – which indicates that unemployment is at a 45-year high in India.

Credit: NSSO

Credit: NSSO

The table however says that this data must be read in conjunction with an explanatory note attached in the report’s introduction. The explanatory note on the methodology suggests that while for half of the urban areas surveyed in PLFS, the same design as the one used in NSS 68 was followed. In the other half, a new design was used.

In the case of rural areas, the methodology followed for sampling was the same as followed in earlier rounds of the NSS using the population census.

Also read: India Does Have a Real Employment Crisis – And it’s Worsening

The stratification to differentiate between rural and urban areas followed a more complex strategy in PLFS using the population figures for the towns to classify them differently. “The rural areas of each NSS region constituted rural stratum.”

In NSS 68, each rural stratum comprised all rural areas of the district and each urban stratum comprised all urban areas of the district.

The sample size for both PLFS and NSS 68 was almost the same. In PLFS, 12,800 units were surveyed, while 12,784 units were surveyed in NSS 68.

The Culture of Professional Colleges Failed Dr Payal Tadvi – Just as It Did Me

Bright, well-meaning students convinced me that I didn’t deserve to be in my university. I so deeply internalised their narrative that I couldn’t fight it within my own self, let alone with them.

The conversations around Dr Payal Tadvi’s suicide, on May 22, 2019, have been quite unsettling. That some have attributed it to work pressure or “cowardliness”, shows a lack of understanding about how caste works or how deeply pervasive it is. I can imagine what could have driven her to end her life – I experienced unapologetic casteism at university too.

I attended one of India’s elite law schools. In these spaces – unlike in medical and engineering colleges – casteism was subtle and intellectualised (perhaps because aspiring lawyers knew how to avoid a penalty under the Prevention of Atrocities Act). I could never really tell what made me feel different, lonely and marginalised.

I sensed that I didn’t think like them, share their fascination with the same cultural icons and activities, and did not behave in a manner deemed appropriate by them. All of which, I later understood through my readings, was shaped by one’s caste background.

In my first year, a faculty member proclaimed that she was Brahmin, and went on to ask other Brahmin students to raise their hands. The same lecturer asked us to make a project on our ancestors. I wasn’t comfortable sharing my ancestry, but I had to – it was to be marked for 20 marks.

The upper caste students didn’t see it as a big deal. For many of them, it was an opportunity to boast of the achievements of their forefathers and their rich ancestries, all somehow related to their social location. Some of us, who had no such histories to tell, felt ashamed when it was our turn.

The casteism of my peers was mostly implicit. Explicit references to caste were mostly stereotypical and prejudiced. Tambrams and Kayasths were the most intelligent, apparently, Rajputs valiant and emotional; Banias shrewd and money-minded, and so on. In groups dominated by savarnas, such remarks were often made, for each other in jest. It made me wonder how they’d refer to me if they knew who I was: a former untouchable.

Also read: Even After Payal Tadvi’s Death, Doctors’ Body Unconvinced of Caste Discrimination

When I tried to point out that such statements were inherently casteist, they defended themselves, saying they had a right to feel proud of their caste and that I should be proud of mine. Be proud of the fact that people from my caste were routinely humiliated, pushed into bonded labour, and beaten up when they tried to go to school? Okay.

A savarna friend once told me that I was uncultured because I was not trained in any classical dance or music. Another told me she would never forgive people who availed of SC/ST quotas because, if it weren’t for us, she would be in a better law school. Her tone made me feel like I had committed a heinous crime.

Some even rationalised the caste system as a result of genetic differences among the varnas, with Dalits and Adivasis as the most inferior. One boy used this as the reason he was in love with a certain Kshatriya girl, because she was apparently honourable and would give birth to strong children.

One boy didn’t hesitate to let the elevator shut on a boy from the Meena community, saying ”ye Meena log ke saath aise hi hona chahiye’‘. It was that normalised. If you called them out on it, they would brilliantly justify themselves, leaving us feeling like we were just over-reacting.

Classroom discussions on the jurisprudence of reservations were one-sided, usually concluding that reservations must wither away or be provided on economic grounds. The discussions were dominated by UC students; our voices silenced by their loud, assertive ones, confident in their ignorance of the larger social context.

These were all bright, well-meaning, caste-blind students who were extremely thick to the social realities outside of life as they knew it. My confidence and self-esteem were beaten to a pulp by everyday microaggressions. Eventually, it got to me and I succumbed into believing that I deserved to feel that way.

After all, my existence in that university was an anomaly, and I had taken up their space. The assault to my dignity was the price I had to pay for the privilege of studying at such an eminent institution.

Also read: A Young Doctor’s Appeal: Let’s Understand Privilege Before We Talk Merit

Those experiences, coupled with rampant sexism, took a toll on my mental health. I tried to talk to the few people I thought I could, including my parents. But they couldn’t understand what I was going through. I’m a first-generation college graduate, and my world is very different from theirs.

My savarna seniors told me that I was victimising myself, and that law schools are extremely competitive spaces; I had to toughen up or be left behind. I didn’t know how to explain this to my doctor either. She told me I had “low self-esteem and an inferiority complex and that I should only think positively.”

I couldn’t, so I became a recluse. I took up less space, participated less and confined myself mostly to my room, escaping into books and art. I managed to get through five miserable years. I have had enough time since then to process and understand that ordeal.

When I look back now, what bothered me most was my inability to respond in a way that made me feel empowered. Instead, I protested weakly, with the savarnas beating me with their eloquence. I was already gaslighted into believing I was a waste of space in a meritorious institution. I had so deeply internalised their narrative that I couldn’t fight the it within my own self, let alone them.

B.R Ambedkar. Credit: Wikimedia Commons

B.R Ambedkar. Credit: Wikimedia Commons

It wasn’t until I read Ambedkar (conveniently excluded from the law school’s curriculum), Yashica Dutt’s Coming out as Dalit or Christina Thomas Dhanraj’s writings that I could develop the intellectual ammunition to fight the narrative – first with myself and then others.

My colleagues from the Dalit, Bahujan and Adivasi communities went through similar experiences. When we enter these privileged spaces, we are very vulnerable and develop various coping mechanisms. Some internalise the dominant campus culture, hiding our identities and trying to emulate them. Some become depressed, even self-destructive.

At my university, we refrained from forming a homogenous group, because some of them were not comfortable with being ‘that quota group’, as one friend put it. Many of us wanted to learn from our savarna peers, even if it meant putting up with their micro-aggressions and gritting our teeth through their thoughtless remarks.

Also read: India’s Universities Are Falling Terribly Short on Addressing Caste Discrimination

Expecting savarnas to magically unlearn their casteism and make these spaces inclusive would be foolish. It is so central to their lives that they may genuinely not see it, the way fish may be unaware of water. Those of us who were never a part of it, can’t help but see it – we are reminded of it with every interaction.

That’s where our institutions have failed us. Professional institutions – medical, engineering or law – do not encourage any form of student politics. Their students have no safe spaces in which to confidently come to terms with their identities, and assert the same when someone threatens their dignity.

Greater student representation from these communities would also help make these spaces more inclusive. Another institutional-level solution would be to establish mandatory workshops on casteism and sexism every year, so that these spaces don’t churn out even more insensitive professionals, like the ones who killed Dr Payal Tadvi, Rohit Vehmula, Bal Mukund Bharati and others.

The author is a young lawyer, who is deeply interested in learning how to build socially just and diverse institutions and contributing her bit for the same. You can follow her on her Twitter handle @lawandemotions.

India’s GDP Growth Slumps to 5.8% in Fourth Quarter

This means that economic growth for FY’19 is now officially at 6.8%, a five-year low.

New Delhi: India’s economy expanded as its slowest pace in over a year in the fourth quarter of 2018-2019, according to government data released on Friday evening.

Gross domestic product (GDP) growth rose at 5.8% for the quarter that ended March 2019, reinforcing fears that the new Narendra Modi government’s first task would be to revive flagging economic growth. 

Data released by the statistics ministry also showed that the economic growth rate for  FY’19 came in at a five-year low of 6.8%, on the back of a consumption and investment slowdown.

The numbers that were released on Friday are below market expectations: earlier estimates had predicted that Q4 growth would be 6%-6.5% and that growth for the whole financial year would be 7%-7.1%.

Financial Quarter GDP Growth (Constant Prices, 2011-12)
Q1 2018-19 (April-June) 8.0%
Q2 2018-19 (July-Sep) 7.0%
Q3 2018-19 (Oct-Dec) 6.6%
Q4 2019-19 (Jan-March) 5.8%

According to government data, India’s fiscal deficit for 2018-19 stood at 3.4% of GDP, roughly in line with the Interim Budget’s estimate. Spending during the financial year was Rs 23.1 lakh crore, against the revised target of Rs 24.1 lakh crore.

Financial Year GDP Growth
FY’14 6.4%
FY’15 7.4%
FY’16 8%
FY’17 8.2%
FY’18 7.2%
FY’19 6.8%

The rate of growth in eight core infrastructure industries during April came to 2.6%, against 4.9% in the previous month.

The Choice of Nirmala Sitharaman as Finance Minister

Her lack of experience and deferential working style are likely appreciated by Modi, who may want to play a bigger role in steering the economy over the next five years.

It’s rare that an Indian parliamentary debate racks up millions of views online, is tweeted by the prime minister, and avidly shared and reported in the news.

One such debate took place in the Lok Sabha in January 2019. It was Nirmala Sitharaman’s hour-long rejoinder to the allegations of cronyism leveled by Rahul Gandhi and the Congress party over the controversial Rafale deal.

For most of the duration of her speech, Sitharaman is a sharp, no-nonsense and solemn defence minister, slowly and calmly listing out the nuances of the medium-multi role combat aircraft (MMRCA) tender.

Near the end, she becomes less raksha mantri and more angry BJP spokesperson – a role that she not only excels at, but which propelled her initial, rapid rise in the party.

Also read: Why Nirmala Sitharaman’s Rafale Defence Was on a Weak Wicket

Pointing furiously at Rahul Gandhi across the aisle, Sitharaman said:

“I was called jhoothi (liar). Later, it was expunged but I heard in the melee that day… It was said Raksha Mantri Nirmala Sitharaman jhooth bol rahi hai. Pradhan Mantri chor hain, ye bhi is parliament mein bola gaya. Pradhan Mantri jhoothe hain, ye bhi idhar bola gaya. (Defence Minister Nirmala Sitharaman is telling lies. The prime minister is a thief, it was said in parliament. The prime minister is a liar, this was also said here).”

In staccato bursts, she continued:

“I don’t have a khandaan to boast of. I come from an ordinary background. I come from a middle-class family. I come with my honour intact. The prime minister comes from a very low, poor economic background. He has come up with hard work. His name is untarnished till today. He is not corrupt.”

Modi’s enthusiastic and public approval of her speech was just one sign of how the BJP considered Sitharaman the right woman for the right job – even if it sometimes meant throwing her to the wolves, as when she was sent to distance the government from the Nirav Modi scam – despite being defence minister, while Arun Jaitley was finance minister.  

But her quick rise – from a low-profile, English-speaking spokesperson on TV in 2010, to an occupant of the Ministry of Commerce (MoS – independent, 2015), Defence (2017) and now Finance ministry – shows that the BJP and the Modi-Shah duo consider her a prized asset.

It is easy to mark Sitharaman as the odd one out. A high-ranking Tamil in a party dominated by Hindi-speaking North Indians. A BJP minister with almost zero prior affiliation to any Sangh Parivar body – whose formative institution was Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU), where as an economics student, she was part of a group called the ‘Free Thinkers’.

Also read: Home for Amit Shah, Nirmala Sitharaman Gets Finance, Jaishankar to MEA

Sitharaman chalks up her quick promotion, in part, to cosmic grace.

‘Cosmic grace’

“Somebody who has come from a small town, grown into the party with all the support of the leadership… and if given such a responsibility, it just makes you feel sometimes that cosmic grace is there,” she told reporters in 2017. “Otherwise, it is impossible.”

Her small-town roots extend back to Madurai, where she was born into a Tamil family full of Congress party supporters; both her in-laws served Congress governments in Andhra Pradesh. After studying economics at Seethalakshmi Ramaswami College in Trichy, she went onto do her masters at JNU, with research on the textile industry and Indo-European trade.

After moving back to India from London with her family, Sitharaman was appointed to the National Commission for Women during the first NDA-Vajpayee government. Her further journey into the BJP was encouraged by Sushma Swaraj, who at the time was looking to rope more female faces into the saffron party.

It was her time in the party’s national executive, and on television, when Sitharaman shined. She built a reputation for being the straight-backed, unsmiling and fierce spokesperson who went on air each night to effectively question the UPA-II’s scams and the culpability of the Lutyens’ elite in allowing corruption to fester.

As a minister

Sitharaman’s time in the government has been more of a mixed bag. It’s unclear whether the problem lay in the Modi government’s vision or in her own skill at implementing specific programmes.

As minister of state (MoS) in the finance and corporate affairs ministries, and then as a MoS (independent charge) in the commerce ministry, she was described by columnist Mihir Sharma as a “grave disappointment”. Sharma wrote in December 2015:

“The ministry in charge of trade and ‘Make in India’ is effectively scuppering the programme by being protectionist and distrustful of trade. Its greatest success is a rise in foreign direct investment. But that’s not a consequence of any changes to policy.

Even the recent relaxation in FDI norms was, even Sitharaman insisted, ‘not a new policy’.  What should have been a laser-like focus on reducing paperwork and compliance and increasing service efficiency has been effectively diluted by one headline-grabbing campaign after another.”

Other programmes that Sitharaman headed, like ‘Start-Up India’, are widely acknowledged to have not succeeded or almost completely fizzled out. Again, it’s unclear if this was a problem in how they were conceived and structured by Modi’s PMO.

Also read: Vijayi Modi? Yes. Vijayi Bharat? Not on Your Life.

Much of the improvements in India’s business environment – and a jump in the World Bank’s Ease of Doing Business rankings – came a year after Sitharaman joined the defence ministry. They are widely credited to micro-management by Jaitley and the PMO.

She also presided over years of mostly flat growth in exports (which had doubled under the UPA-II), a problem that the next commerce minister, Suresh Prabhu, tackled equally ineffectively.

Sitharaman’s promotion to the defence ministry was widely seen as a surprise move. Indeed, in the run-up to the shuffle, media reports based on anonymous sources had indicated that she would be dropped from the Union Cabinet. At the time, Indian Express columnist Coomi Kapoor wrote that the stories were deliberately leaked from BJP headquarters, and that her promotion was meant to cut certain party-members to size.

Her critics argue that her lack of experience and deferential, collegiate working style are appreciated by Modi’s overbearing PMO.

In 2017, national security expert Bharat Karnad stingingly noted:

“There was a reason to install Nirmala Sitharaman, a junior party apparatchik and political lightweight with no constituency of her own as defence Minister: She would be more amenable to direction by the PMO.

In the first year or so of her tenure, with no intuitive grasp of the subjects she handled, she frequently crossed over to North Block to ask Finance Minister (and sometime Defence Minister) Arun Jaitley about what decisions to make.

It convinced the PMO that it had made the right choice because Jaitley, as a rule, decided on defence issues only after first consulting with the PM. In this respect, both Jaitley and even more, Sitharaman, were a welcome contrast to the late Manohar Parrikar, who kept his own counsel.”

Her time as raksha mantri has been a well-rounded performance, although one-and-a-half years is too short to really take on the challenges that the ministry presents.

She was, as her critics note, less visible on the Pulwama-Balakot issue – perhaps on instructions from higher-ups – but also made her presence felt on other public-facing issues, like the government’s handling of litigation against retired army officials and their families.

Finance ministry and the future

Two questions surround her role in the Modi 2.0 cabinet.

Firstly, why was Sitharaman picked over a more natural fit like Piyush Goyal?

Secondly, what are the challenges she will face and how well will she tackle them?

Piyush Goyal. Credit: PTI

Initial market reactions have been one of surprise. Among the more tepid reactions was that of Samco Securities’ Omkeshwar Singh, who says there will be “uncertainty as her appointment was not expected”. Well-known fund-manager Sandip Sabharwal called her a “relatively unknown entity despite holding a key portfolio in the previous government”.

“Frankly, the portfolio should have been given to Piyush Goyal, who is a CA by qualification, and he would have been the first choice of the market. But, I think Nirmala has done well previously, so it should be alright,” Yogesh Nagaonkar, CEO, Rowan Capital Advisors said in a statement.

Why not Goyal? The Wire’s M.K. Venu says that it’s likely because of his “social proximity to Mumbai businessmen who had assumed he might be FM”.

“General integrity and a distance from business lobbies has possibly gone in favour of Nirmala Sitharaman who takes charge as finance minister.”

Also read: Arun Jaitley Bows Out of New Modi Cabinet, Cites Health Reasons

The challenges that she will face as finance minster are immense. India’s economy is starting to sputter on the back of a consumption and private investment slow-down. Fixing this and jump-starting the economy are the first order of business.

Then comes the task of setting the country’s banking and NBFC sectors back in order, while addressing agricultural distress without ruining the government’s fiscal stance. 

Looking forward, she will have to shepherd the government’s new reforms on labour, land and public-sector undertakings. In an interaction on Friday, Niti Aayog’s Rajiv Kumar promised the moon on this front –  it will be up to Sitharaman to deliver it.

Payal Tadvi Suicide: Three Accused Doctors Sent to Judicial Custody Till June 10

The three doctors were booked after their 26-year-old junior colleague at the BYL Nair Hospital allegedly hanged herself at her hostel room on May 22.

Mumbai: A special court on Friday sent three doctors of a state-run hospital, arrested for allegedly abetting the suicide of a junior colleague, to judicial custody till June 10.

The accused – Bhakti Mehere, Hema Ahuja and Ankita Khandelwal – were arrested for allegedly abetting the suicide of doctor Payal Tadvi by tormenting her with casteist slurs.

They were produced before additional sessions judge R.M. Sadrani at the end of their police custody.

The judge did not accept the argument of crime branch, which took over the case from local police Thursday, to extend their custody for further probe in the matter.

Also read: College Confirms Payal Tadvi Was Subjected to ‘Extreme Harassment’

He then remanded the trio to judicial custody till June 10.

The accused will be lodged in a jail here.

The three doctors were booked after their 26-year-old junior colleague at BYL Nair Hospital allegedly hanged herself at her hostel room on May 22.

While Mehere was arrested Tuesday evening, Ahuja and Khandelwal were taken into custody in the early hours of Wednesday.

After Tadvi ended her life, her family alleged that the doctors taunted and hurled casteist abuses at her as she belonged to a scheduled tribe.

The accused were subsequently booked under provisions of the Scheduled Castes and Tribes (Prevention of Atrocities) Act, Anti-Ragging Act, Information Technology Act and Section 306 (abetment to suicide) of the Indian Penal Code.

Congress’s Decision to Withdraw From TV Debates May Spawn Fake ‘Spokespersons’

While some anchors believe the party has not opted for the right ‘solution’, others have remained silent on the issue.

New Delhi: The Congress’s decision not to send its spokespersons to media debates for a month, while it introspects as to what went wrong with its strategy for the Lok Sabha elections, has evoked a mixed response from television anchors.

While some have said this is “not the solution” to avoid bad press, others have called it “stifling of freedom of expression”. Surprisingly, many leading anchors, on whose programmes the party’s spokespersons were regulars, have maintained a stoic silence on the subject.

The decision comes in the wake of Rahul Gandhi’s insistence to step down as Congress president after its dismal performance in the general elections. The party, which was bolstered at the end of last year after it unseated the BJP from the state governments of Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh, could not get even one seat in 18 states and union territories.

Though its tally grew marginally from 44 in 2014 to 52 this time, it still fell three seats short of being able to get the leader of the opposition status in the Lok Sabha.

Also Read: Amid Leadership Crisis, Congress Not to Send Representatives to TV Debates

As Gandhi offered to resign and there was a lot of mudslinging between party leaders in the Congress Working Committee meeting called after the election results, the media focussed entirely on its shortcomings.

According to sources, the decision was also taken with the view that many channels did not allow the party’s spokespersons to speak their mind on these issues. Congress national media in-charge Randeep Singh Surjewala announced the decision on Thursday.


The move was immediately slammed by some senior journalists.

India Today anchor Rajdeep Sardesai commented that it may bring in more ‘real issues’ and ‘real people’ and less debates.

However, he added that a boycott was not a solution

The issue also drew responses from political leaders. Saurabh Bharadwaj of Aam Aadmi Party said while some anchors lend credibility to the channels, others run “propaganda of BJP”.


Incidentally, this is the first time that the Congress has taken a decision of this nature. In the past, it has often boycotted certain channels or certain programmes when it found anchors inimical towards it. The party has refrained from sending any of its spokespersons to either Republic TV or Zee News. It had also withdrawn them from Rohit Sardana’s show on Aaj Tak.

Finding an opportunity to attack the Congress on the issue, Sardana called the move a “stifling of freedom of expression”.


He also recalled that before the Congress, the Samajwadi Party also took a similar decision.

The Congress was apparently miffed that channels like NDTV and Mirror Now, which usually give its spokespersons adequate time to express their views, projected it in a negative light since the elections began.

The NDTV debated “Was Congress’s election campaign negative?”. The line of argument convinced the party that such debates were not helping its image or cause.


Interestingly, senior NDTV anchors who often tweet about other issues and developments, chose not to comment on the Congress’s decision.

Mirror Now’s celebrity anchor Faye Dsouza held a debate titled, “What do you think the future of the Congress party is?”


Clearly this has been discomforting for the grand old party.

Its decision is also likely to hit the NDTV hard, as the BJP has stopped sending its spokespersons to the channel’s debates. With the Congress also choosing to stay away for a month, the demand for ‘dummy’ spokespersons, who claim to be political analysts and who views align with the party, will grow.

The Strangeness of Murray Gell-Mann

In the 1940s and 1950s, experimentalists dredged up the so-called strange particles, a group of really heavy particles that Murray Gell-Mann studied to make sense of the strong nuclear force.

What holds a nucleus together? Today, we teach the answer to this question in school. A precocious high-schooler might even mention the strong and weak nuclear forces, the latter responsible for radioactive decay. It is difficult to imagine that just 70 years ago, we knew close to nothing about this.

Let’s go back to 1932, when the only known particles were the photon (light), electrons and anti-electrons (a.k.a. positrons), the proton and the neutron. Protons are positively charged and neutrons are electrically neutral, and they make up nuclear matter. Since like charges repel, what keeps the protons in the nucleus from flying apart? Moreover, neutrons don’t carry any electric charge, so what binds them to the protons inside the nucleus?

Werner Heisenberg was thinking about this problem and took inspiration from an unlikely source. After the development of quantum mechanics, one of the first tasks it was brought to bear upon was that of explaining how chemical bonds work, and by the late 1920s, a compelling picture emerged. In the same way that chemical bonds are made up of electrons shuttling back and forth between atoms, could it be that that protons and neutrons were playing catch with *something* that in turn forced them to stay close to each other? And what was this something?

Isospin symmetry

At first, Heisenberg thought that it could be an electron, so he imagined neutrons would spit electrons out and turn into protons, whereas protons would ‘eat’ these electrons and turn into neutrons. This mechanism conserved charge, meaning if you added the charges up before and after the process, they would always match. More generally, when we speak of “X conservation,” we mean that if we add up the quantity X for all the particles before and after the process, they will match.

Now let’s imagine watching a process like this through glasses that shield our eyes from any information regarding the electric charge. It would look like neutrons and protons are morphing into each other. Indeed, apart from their different electric charges, the neutron and the proton are almost identical. Heisenberg wondered if the neutron and proton could be – as seen through these magical charge-cancelling glasses – two states of the same particle.

This his how he introduced the notion of isospin. At the time, atomic nuclei were made up of nucleons, which looked sometimes like protons and at others like neutrons, and were related by an abstract rotation in an “isospin space.” More technically, they were collectively dubbed an isospin doublet, each carrying an isospin of number 1/2.

However, there was a flaw in Heisenberg’s picture of nuclear forces. If neutrons were turning into protons by emitting and absorbing electrons, the charge would be conserved in the process *but not their spin*. For his theory to work, he needed a charged particle with zero spin – but no such particle existed!

A Japanese physicist named Hideki Yukawa had been studying Heisenberg’s investigations into the nuclear force. He proposed, rather boldly, that a neutron transformed into a proton (and vice versa) by emitting (and absorbing) an undiscovered spin-0 particle that mediated nuclear interactions. Yukawa’s particles were called pions and three of them (two charged and one neutral) formed an isospin triplet, each with an isospin number of 1. It was a simple and beautiful world.

The particle zoo

But things wouldn’t remain as simple much longer. Significant developments in accelerator and detector technology meant there was an abundance of experimental results, sourced from the energetic beams of particle accelerators, the debris of particle colliders and snatched out of the sky through cosmic rays. It seemed like every day, there were more particles than there were yesterday. When told about the discovery of a particle called the muon, Isidor Rabi remarked “Who ordered that?” The need of the hour was to bring some order to this proliferation – this subatomic bestiary – of newly discovered particles.

Then, in the 1940s and 1950s, experimentalists dredged up the so-called strange particles, a group of really heavy particles produced quickly in pion-nucleon collisions and which took a surprisingly long time to decay. Their decay timescales indicated that the strong nuclear force was responsible for their creation, and the weak nuclear force (responsible for radioactive decay) had a role to play in their demise. This is where Murray Gell-Mann enters our story.

Also read: How Murray Gell-Mann Brought Clarity to a New Force of Nature

Strange particles came in all shapes and sizes: the heavy hyperons, the welterweight kaons, and so on. Gell-Mann and other theorists at the time believed that kaons – that is, the charged kaons K+ and K- and the neutral kaon K0 – were cousins of the pions, only thrice as massive. If one had to, one might have guessed that kaons also formed an isospin triplet.

Gell-Mann however knew that the rapid decays of strange particles couldn’t not be because of the strong nuclear force, so he thought perhaps isospin conservation – the requirement that isospin is the same before and after the decay – would exonerate the strong nuclear force and explain the lifetimes of strange particles.

However, he forgot about the electromagnetic interaction, which would result in a shorter lifetime than was observed. It was clear then that isospin conservation would not suffice. His solution was to introduce a new label: strangeness. This concept was also introduced independently by Abraham Pais and Kazuhiko Nishijima. It is a quantum number that characterises particles just like charge and isospin do (and was more whimsically named).

He supposed that, just like charge and isospin, strangeness was conserved by strong interactions: the amount of strangeness before and after a process would be the same. Since nucleon-pion collisions produce copious amounts of strange particles, and nucleons and pions themselves weren’t strange by definition (i.e. had strangeness 0), strange particles would have to be produced in pairs. This was called associated production, a name due to M.G.K. Menon.

Further, if strangeness was conserved in strong and electromagnetic interactions, then neither of these interactions could be implicated in the decay of strange particles. Finally, Gell-Mann supposed that weak interactions did not conserve strangeness, and so they can cause the decay of strange particles, which would explain their unusually long lifetimes.

Strangeness would cleave the family of kaons (K+, K0, and K-) into two isospin doublets, like so: a doublet with strangeness +1 (K0, K+) and a doublet with strangeness -1 (K-, anti-K0).

Eightfold Way

While kaons were just an illustrative example, this new quantum number allowed Gell-Mann to explain the relatively long lifetimes of strange particles and, more significantly, explain or predict the allowed decay channels and properties of newly discovered particles called hyperons that go by the names Xi, Sigma, and Lambda.

Strangeness was also to be an important ingredient of Gell-Mann’s Eightfold Way, a classification scheme that lumped the then-known baryons into groups like the octet (a family of eight) and the decuplet (a family of ten).

The power of this classification scheme closely parallels that of Dmitri Mendeleev’s periodic table. Once you hit upon the right organisational scheme, it will lead the way! And as with the periodic table of elements, where the organisational principle implied the existence of hitherto undiscovered elements, Gell-Mann’s baryon decuplet was missing its apex: the Omega^- particle, which hadn’t yet been discovered. Gell-Mann predicted the existence of this particle with electric charge -1, strangeness -3, and a mass of around 1,680 MeV. It was found just two years later.

This classification was based on an underlying group (a collection of symmetries) that governed the strong nuclear force, which we now call SU(3). The clue came from the sizes of families (groups of eight, ten, etc.) which correspond to the sizes of representations of the SU(3) symmetry group, or the different ways in which the symmetries of the strong nuclear force are permitted to manifest themselves. Gell-Mann’s Eightfold Way (discovered simultaneously by Yuval Ne’eman) ultimately led to the development of the quark model, but it all started with strangeness.

Madhusudhan Raman is a postdoctoral fellow at the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research in Mumbai. The views expressed here are personal.

ICMR Calls for Ban on E-Cigarettes

A white paper released by the organisation said that in many countries, disturbing trends have emerged of adolescent people using these devices.

New Delhi: The Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) has recommended a complete ban on e-cigarettes and other electronic nicotine delivery systems (ENDS) based on currently available scientific evidence.

In a white paper released today, the council noted that e-cigarettes and other such devices contained highly addictive nicotine solutions that were highly addictive as well as harmful ingredients such as certain flavouring agents and vapourisers.

“Use of ENDS or e-cigarettes has documented adverse effects on humans, which include DNA damage; carcinogenic, cellular, molecular and immunological toxicity; respiratory, cardiovascular and neurological disorders; and adverse impact on foetal development and pregnancy,” a paper released by the organisation noted.

Also read: Health Ministry Put Checks on Publishing or Discussing Research on E-Cigarettes

The document has also rejected the argument that e-cigarettes could help smokers quit tobacco consumption.

“While such benefits have not been firmly established, there is also evidence that there is risk of people continuing to use both them as well as tobacco products. In addition, these devices could encourage non-smokers to get addicted to tobacco,” it said.

A committee headed by K. Srinath Reddy of the Public Health Foundation of India analysing over 300 research articles from across the world and prepared the white paper.

It noted that manufacturers add to the allure of the devices using various  flavours and attractive designs, and that in many countries, disturbing trends of adolescent people using these devices have emerged.

“Use of ENDS or e-cigarettes can open a gateway for new tobacco addiction. On balance, these have a negative impact on public health.”

The committee included experts from ICMR, the All India Institute of Medical Sciences, New Delhi; the Post-Graduate Institute of Medical Education and Research, Chandigarh; the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare; and the Food Safety and Standards Authority of India.

Reddy noted that, at present, there are more than 460 different e-cigarette brands providing different configurations of nicotine delivery systems, that they come in over 7,700 flavours and that they are fast becoming a fad among youngsters.

“Studies have found that youths using e-cigarettes and other such devices are more likely to use regular cigarettes later,” he said. “They increase the likelihood to experiment with regular products and increase the intention to indulge in cigarette smoking.”

Also read: Check Your Vocabulary Before Using ‘Coffee’ and ‘Cancer’ in the Same Sentence

Ravi Mehrotra, the director of the National Institute of Cancer Prevention and Research, Noida, and a member of the panel, added that in the wake of low barrier to entry, the market for e-cigarettes and other such devices has been growing rapidly, with the industry bringing in a diverse set of products through a variety of channels.

Balram Bhargava, the director-general of the ICMR said scientific and research data provided in the white paper could help the government formulate necessary policies on e-cigarettes and other such devices.

Sunderarajan Padmanabhan writes for India Science Wire and tweets at @ndpsr.

Andhra Pradesh: Why Pawan Kalyan’s Political Debut Flopped

Despite stitching together an alliance with the BSP and Left parties, the Jana Sena could win just one assembly seat.

Naakonchem tikkundi, kaani daanikolekkundi, Ah tikkento chupista, andari lekkalu telustaa. (I am bit mad but there’s a method to my madness. I’ll show what that madness is and will settle scores with everybody).

This was a dialogue delivered by Pawan Kalyan in Gabbar Singh, the Telugu remake of Salman Khan’s Dabangg, released in 2012. Gabbar Singh’s huge success put him on a higher pedestal. Popularly known as ‘Power Star’, he has acted in more than 25 films, mostly with themes such as anti-establishment, rags to riches and family drama. With the success of these films, Pawan Kalyan connected well with student and female audiences.

Like many other Telugu film personalities, Pawan Kalyan announced his entry into politics in 2014, starting the Jana Sena Party (JSP). Politics in Andhra Pradesh is virtually polarised around two castes – Reddys and Kammas. Pawan Kalyan, a Kapu, an agrarian caste, tried to alter the political landscape through his social and ideological interventions.

Also Read: Is Jaganmohan Reddy Serious About Ending Sand Mining in Andhra Pradesh?

Though the party was formed in 2014, he did not contest that year’s state or Lok Sabha elections, but unconditionally supported the BJP-TDP alliance. In the 2019 elections, he aligned with the BSP and the Left, an ideological somersault that prompted critics to question his integrity.

JSP’s campaign

The JSP’s election campaign largely centered around Pawan Kalyan. This self-centered strategy to put himself before social identities and structural factors proved costly to the JSP alliance. Pawan Kalyan lost both the assembly seats he contested, though the constituencies (Gajuwaka, Bhimavaram) are Kapu bastions. His party could win just one of the 175 seats in the Andhra Pradesh assembly.

From the 1950s, Andhra’s political space has been controlled by two social groups – Reddys and Kammas. However, from the 1980s, the Kapus, with relative upward social mobility, started consolidating to compete with Reddys and Kammas in acquiring political power, access to land and control over natural resources. The consolidation process began with Vangaveeti Ranga in the 1980s, who challenged the Kamma economic hegemony in the provincial towns of Andhra Pradesh. He was murdered in 1988, and Mudragada Padmanabham took over.

Later on, Chiranjeevi, Pawan Kalyan’s brother, took over the mantle of Kapu aspirations, In 2009, he formed the Praja Rajyam Party (PRP), but could not fulfill the aspirations of the upward social mobile Kapus.

A decade later, Pawan Kalyan’s political debut was immediately hailed as a formidable challenge to the two dominant castes. Political analysts and media felt he could be the kingmaker in Andhra politics. But strangely, even his charisma did not translate into votes and the JSP won a single seat.

Chiranjeevi’s political experiment

This result was in sharp contrast to the PRP’s performance in the 2009 elections. Chiranjeevi’s party, despite having little time to develop grassroots cadre, and for campaigning, still managed to win 18 seats with an 18% vote share. The party’s success was attribute to its adoption of social justice (samajika nyayam) as the principal agenda. This social justice operated at two levels. Firstly, Chiranjeevi tried to fuse several Kapu jatis together (as jati cluster), as has been done from the 1870s. Secondly, he felt that this fusion would lead to unity among Dalits and OBCs, making Kapus the formidable force in Andhra politics.

These hopes did not materialise because of two reasons. The economic and cultural hierarchies among several Kapu jatis, who are spread across the two Telugu states (Telangana and Andhra Pradesh), prevented the fusion. The impending social and structural limitations between OBCs and Dalits and Kapus remained as they are. These reasons were also responsible for Chiranjeevi, once hailed as the giant killer, losing in his native place (Palakollu).

The fact that Kapus claim an ambiguous status in the caste hierarchy – sometimes OBC, sometimes upper caste – confused the other stake holders. That the PRP deployed both ‘identity politics’ and ‘representative politics’ at the same to attain hurt its prospects.

Acotr and politician Chiranjeevi. Credit: PTI

Pawan Kalyan instead chose to form a mahagathbandhan by aligning with the BSP and Left parties. This may be an outcome of the discussion of an alliance – popular in universities – between lal salaam (Karl Marx) and neel salaam (Ambedkar). Pawan Kalyan, on several occasions, displayed affinity towards Gaddar and Katti Padmarao, who represents the communist and Dalit ideology in the Telugu states.

While his brother took up the task of uplifting the Dalits, OBCs in the name of social justice, Pawan Kalyan brought communists and Dalits together in the name of ‘social transformation’. Pawan Kalyan, the combination of idealism and pragmatism, evaded the discussion on caste and replaced it with class. But even his attempts failed.

Is there space for alternative politics in AP?

Initially, Pawan Kalyan’s oratory skills and “angry man” image won him many supporters. 2014 was also simmering with the issue of bifurcation. Considering the situation, he supported the BJP-TDP (NDA alliance) in 2014 and nullified the Congress with slogans such as “Congress hatao, desh bachao“. His presence consolidated the Kapu vote bank and was instrumental in making N. Chandrababu Naidu AP’s chief minister.

Also Read: Why Voting Patterns of Farmers in Andhra Pradesh Go Beyond Agricultural Issues

Eventually, he left the NDA and began attacking the BJP, Naidu on failing to deliver the special category status and charging them of corruption. Despite these attacks, he could not maintain his momentum. In fact, he has criticised by opposition parties, calling him a “weekend politician” or even Chandrababu Naidu’s ‘B’ team. During the campaign, he was criticised for not taking on the TDP.

It is evident that a mish-mash of a leader’s charisma, a vote bank and an alliance does not produce results. They have to be diligently stitched together, with complete allegiance, to open up an alternative political space. Pawan Kalyan was unable to grasp the political economy of Andhra Pradesh.

These results show that Andhra politics has space for alternative politics. With persistence, it can be achieved someday, if not today.

Ch. Satish Kumar is an associate professor at Centre for Studies in Social Sciences, Kolkata.