The appeal comes after at least 14 incidents of violence, threats, and disruptions targeted Christian gatherings across the country during the Christmas season, the leaders and church groups wrote in a press release.
New Delhi: Over 400 senior Christian leaders and 30 church groups on Tuesday (December 31) have issued an urgent appeal to President Droupadi Murmu and Prime Minister Narendra Modi, calling for immediate action to address the surge in violence against Christians.
The appeal comes after at least 14 incidents of violence, threats, and disruptions targeted Christian gatherings across the country during the Christmas season, the leaders and church groups wrote in a press release.
The signatories, including prominent Christian leaders such as Thomas Abraham, David Onesimu, Joab Lohara, Richard Howell, Mary Scaria, Cedric Prakash S.J., John Dayal, Prakash Louis S.J., Zelhou Keyho, E.H. Kharkongor, Allen Brooks, K. Losii Mao, Akhilesh Edgar, Michael Willams, A.C. Michael and Vijayesh Lal, expressed deep concern over the alarming trend of rising intolerance and hostility.
They pointed to troubling statistics, including over 720 incidents of violence targeting Christians reported to the Evangelical Fellowship of India and 760 cases recorded by the United Christian Forum between January and November 2024.
The appeal highlights systemic concerns, including the misuse of anti-conversion laws, growing threats to religious freedoms, escalating hate speech, and exclusionary policies denying Dalit Christians Scheduled Caste status. The leaders also urged the prime minister to take a visible role in fostering peace and reconciliation in Manipur, where violence has resulted in over 250 deaths, 360 destroyed churches, and thousands displaced since May 2023.
The Christian leaders called on the president and prime minister to take concrete steps to address the situation, including ordering swift and impartial investigations into incidents targeting religious minorities, issuing clear guidelines to state governments on protecting constitutional rights to religious freedom, initiating regular dialogue with representatives of all faith communities, and protecting the fundamental right to freely profess and practice one’s faith.
The appeal emphasises that inclusivity and harmony are vital for India’s moral fabric, economic prosperity, and social unity.
A short summary of some of the memorable text stories that The Wire has done in 2024.
New Delhi: There are years in which decades happen and 2024 was one such year – full of small, big, seemingly insignificant but in fact enormous developments. Some of the memorable text stories that The Wire has done in 2024 include:
PM Modi in Ram Temple Pran Prathishtha: End of Secularism as ‘Distance’ Between State and Religion?
In this analytical piece, Sravasti Dasgupta observed how the official sanction to the destruction of a mosque by an organised group heralded the end of secularism as principled distance between religion and state. The religious event at the under-construction temple had enormous fanfare.
BJP Stares at Defeat in the Land of Ram Mandir
Six months after the inauguration of the Ram Temple in Ayodhya, Narendra Modi’s party, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) lost from the Ayodhya seat in the Lok Sabha polls. In his piece, Omar Rashid noted that it was a symbolic defeat of the saffron party’s project of pitying marginalised Hindu castes, including Dalits as foot soldiers against Muslims.
9.23 Things to Think About as We Look at the 2024 Election Results
The Lok Sabha polls gave us 9.23 things to think about, Seema Chishti wrote in her piece. “In 23 years of electoral politics for Narendra Modi, this is the first time, Modi has fallen way short of a majority, of the half-way mark. This has a bearing on the cult he heads, the strong brand of divisive politics he has championed in the state of Gujarat from 2002 and then nationally from 2014,” Chishti observed.
‘Where’s the Proof They Were Raped?’, Biren Allegedly Says of Kuki Women Paraded Naked, ‘Reward Those Arrested for Saving Them’
In August, Sangeeta Barooah Pisharoty’s deeply investigated reports brought under scrutiny Manipur chief minister N. Biren Singh’s role in the ongoing ethnic violence in the state. A recording, purportedly of Singh’s voice, which has been placed on the record of the official commission of inquiry under the law suggested that Singh allegedly supported the use of lethally destructive ammunition in parts of the state last year. It also suggested that he reportedly got banned militants groups to join together and allegedly asked for proof that two Kuki women who were seen being paraded naked in a video were indeed raped.
Two Years On, How Is India’s Project Cheetah Faring?
Aathira Perinchery’s piece in September on what happened to the first batch of African cheetahs that were brought and released in Madhya Pradesh’s Kuno National Park is a stark reminder of why it is necessary to record how ambitious projects are progressing.
How Government Policies and SECI Have Favoured the Adani Group
Pavan Korada’s deep dive throws light into how government policies surrounding green energy have favoured the Adani Group. “The emphasis on centralised solar plants, alleged manipulation of the coal market and pressure on states to sign unfavourable PPAs suggest that corporate lobbying has seemingly trumped consumer interests,” Korada wrote.
Fact Check: Old Data, New Spin in PM-EAC Report on India’s Population
Banjot Kaur reminds in her fact check that come election time, the Muslim population growth bogey is back in the news. India’s demographic history and that of the world has established that population stabilisation is most closely linked to women’s education, empowerment and other socio-economic factors, not religion.
Vikash Yadav: An Empty Flat, a Govt Order Confirming Job at Cabinet Secretariat Just After Trudeau’s Claims
After the US department of justice named and charged Vikash Yadav as the Indian government official who had allegedly orchestrated a plot to assassinate Gurpatwant Singh Pannun, a lawyer for Sikhs for Justice, a US-based group banned by India for its pro-Khalistani stance, Devirupa Mitra visited the unassuming block of flats that Yadav had listed as his address and found that there was no indication of its significance – no guards present and no signs of barriers.
Amit Shah’s Rajya Sabha Speech Didn’t Just ‘Insult’ Ambedkar, It Also Peddled Lies About Him
In his piece, Ajoy Ashirwad Mahaprashasta analysed that what has gone unnoticed in the outrage over Amit Shah’s comments on B.R. Ambedkar is the fact that the home minister has misconstrued, and also lied about, Ambedkar and his opinions on two vital counts that shouldered his entire argument against the Congress.
‘End Authoritarian Regimes of Pre-constitution Era’: What SC Said When Ending Caste-Based Prison Work
In October, the Supreme Court declared that provisions relating to caste-based discriminatory practices in prison manuals are unconstitutional, and directed all states and Union Territories to revise their Prison Manuals, in a landmark judgment. The order came after a petition was filed by Sukanya Shantha, whose 2020 report ‘From Segregation to Labour, Manu’s Caste Law Governs the Indian Prison System‘ formed the basis of the plea which Shantha wrote along with Jahnavi Sen.
Watch this video for an overview of all the important stories that The Wire has covered in 2024:
An excerpt from Amrita Shah’s ‘The Other Mohan’, a part travelogue, part memoir and part family history. As her great-grandfather, Mohanlal, set sail for South Africa from pre-independent India, Amrita Shah takes the reader into an era of unprecedented global mobility.
The Lawyer Gandhi
Gandhi arrived in Durban by ship on 23 May 1893. Slightly built, in his early twenties with curious bright eyes, he provided no hint of his approaching greatness; yet there was enough in his appearance to suggest that the Indian lawyer Dada Abdullah had engaged was no commonplace individual.
Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi was born in Dada Abdullah’s hometown, Porbandar. Like most people in the coastal town with its white limestone walls, Gandhi was ever-mindful of its fluid edge. The sea was ‘almost within a stone’s throw’ from the city’s walls, he told a future biographer. ‘It swept around the city so closely that at times it made almost an island of Porbandar.’The breeze lifted off it and wafted inland, through temple streets and bazars, to find the boy on the terrace of his three-storeyed house. The Gandhis were not Muslim Memons like Dada Adbullah but Hindus of the merchant vania caste and with a long record of state service. One of his ancestors, Uttamchand Gandhi aka Ota Bapa, had been a legendary customs collector and his father was the chief administrator for the local ruler.
With the rise of the East India Company, Kathiawar, one of India’s numerous princely states, became a British Protectorate; that is, it continued to be in the hands of its erstwhile feudal lords but supervised by a British political agent stationed in the capital, Rajkot, 150 km inland. Gandhi’s family moved to Rajkot and he attended Kathiawar’s first English school, the Rajkot High School.
Just as in Bombay and Surat, a wave of reform was sweeping over Rajkot at the time, urging Indians to change their traditional mores to align with the superior understanding of the West. Young men, for instance, were convinced that Englishmen derived their enviable strength and ability to rule over India through the consumption of meat. A doggerel then in vogue among the boys at Gandhi’s school went: ‘Behold the mighty Englishman/ He rules the Indian small/ Because being a meat-eater / He is five cubits tall.’
The promise of physical and moral strength tempted Gandhi to try the forbidden food, but the strong Vaishnava ethos of his upbringing did not allow him to swallow it and he vomited it out. The failed experiment did not diminish his fascination for the British, however, and when some years later, after his father’s death, a family friend mentioned the possibility of travelling to England for higher studies, Gandhi jumped at the suggestion.
Cover of ‘The Other Mohan’ by Amrita Shah, HarperCollins
Nobody in the backwater of Kathiawar, where no more than a couple of boys matriculated every year, had ever travelled abroad to study. In pursuing this course Gandhi had to incur debt and also risk a potential caste boycott for breaking the taboo against crossing the dreaded kaala paani. Explaining his uncommon resolve, Gandhi later attributed it to ‘ambition’. ‘I had a secret design in my mind to come here to satisfy my curiosity of knowing what London was like … I thought to myself that if I go to England, not only shall I become a barrister but I shall be able to see England the land of philosophers and poets, the very centre of civilization.’3
In London, the gawky Kathiawari boy took lessons in ballroom dancing and the violin, went to the theatre and was known to frequent Piccadilly Circus in a high silk top hat, fine striped silk shirt, double-breasted vest and patent leather boots, with gloved hands wrapped around a silver mounted stick.4He was overwhelmed by the elevator and bright lights of the Victoria Hotel and felt he ‘could pass a lifetime’in its rooms.
The return to India was a rude shock. Lacking connections, he could not find work in Bombay where he expected to start a practice. And when he did land a case, he botched it. ‘I stood up but my heart sank into my boots. My head was reeling and I felt the whole court was doing likewise.’6He fled in shame to Rajkot where he focused on drafting petitions. But there, too, an incident occurred which put paid even to his greatly diminished aspirations. Persuaded by his elder brother, to whom he owed a great deal, and against his better judgement, he approached the British political agent for a personal favour. The furious agent had him removed, leaving Gandhi feeling humiliated and conscious of having further destroyed his prospects of professional success. The feudal politics of the town, familial obligations and the arrogance of the white agent crowded upon the sensitive young man, suffocating him. At this point, more than anything, Gandhi desperately ‘wanted somehow to leave India’.
And here he was, on tossing waves and a nippy wind that may have reminded him of his first big adventure, the one that took him to ‘dear old London’. Memories may have flooded back, of the foppish youth aspiring to play the violin and twirl in a ballroom. After the initial enthusiasm had worn out, Gandhi found his affectations dropping away naturally one by one. Frivolous fancies did not hold his attention. In the city with its ‘teaching institutions, public galleries, museums, theatres, vast commerce, public parks’, a space of a myriad options, he had discovered his true self in more sober passions such as vegetarianism and religious philosophy.
The brief period he had spent back in India had been deeply disappointing. But despite his recent setbacks, there was again a sense of possibility. Despite the fact that this new job was temporary and not quite commensurate with his qualifications, it was an escape from the privations of home and a second chance at proving his professional competence. The incident with the agent had disturbed him (a ‘shock’ that led him to change his life, as he puts it) and his appearance suggested the nature of his response. It was a combination that conveyed pride in his Indianness as well as in his English legal training. He wore a European frock coat, pressed trousers, shiny shoes and a turban (‘Being a barrister-at-law, I was well dressed according to my lights and landed at Durban with a due sense of my importance’). It also conveyed how little he knew about the society he was entering.
When he arrived in Natal, Gandhi ‘had no idea of the previous history of the Indian emigrants’. The large Indian presence in South Africa stemmed from the need for agricultural labour in Natal. Imported in 1860 after considerable debate, Indian indentured workers had proved greatly reliable and been engaged by the Natal Government Railway as well as the municipality. But the first contingent of indentured workers had gone back to India in 1871 after completing their contracts with complaints of such a serious nature against plantation owners that their export was suspended for a few years. It was only resumed in 1874 after new guarantees regarding medical care and abstinence from corporal punishment were put in place and the office of a Protector of Indian Immigrants was established.
The protector’s authority was limited in practice by the influence of plantation owners who also enjoyed the favour of the courts. The proprietors of Reynolds Bros, owners of the Umzinto Plantation and Trading Company, one of the largest employers of Indians, were repeatedly given a free pass by the authorities despite a stream of horror stories involving intolerable living conditions, bestial assault of workers and suicide by overworked labourers emerging from their farms.Even small white employers were high-handed in their behaviour, leaving the indentured Indian in a state of extreme vulnerability as the following case demonstrates.
A merchant named Hay found his servant, an indentured Indian called Isaac, with some playing cards in his hand. Annoyed by his apparent idling, he ordered him to get to work and open some wine cases, which Isaac proceeded to do with more noise than the task warranted, according to Hay who reported him to the authorities. A second criminal magistrate of London convicted Isaac for breaching Section 36 of the Immigration Law and being ‘insolent to his master’. The Natal Witness in February 1906 reported that their lordships (Supreme Court) considered Isaac’s appeal against the ruling and upheld the magistrate’s findings.
These instances of white misbehaviour and arrogance fitted into a fundamentally racist outlook, which perceived the indentured Indian in purely instrumental terms. The absence of recreation, of cultural nourishment and a severely distorted gender ratio led to a high prevalence of drunkenness and brawls among workers. So strong was the stigma attached to indentured workers that it even repelled their own countrymen. Muslim passenger Indians — mistaken for ‘Arabs’ in their loose garb and Turkish caps — embraced the nomenclature, hoping it would distinguish them from the wretched indentured worker. Parsis called themselves ‘Persians’. The former took pains to stress their religious taboos against alcohol and campaigned for facilities such as a graveyard and a maulvi to solemnize marriages, to demonstrate how much more culturally evolved they were than the indentured labourers who followed no proper marriage or burial rituals.
Excerpted with permission from HarperCollins.
AmritaShah is a former editor of Elle and Debonair, an ex-contributing editor with the Indian Express, and has worked for the US-based Time-Life News Service. She is the author of award-winning Ahmedabad: A City in the World (2015), Vikram Sarabhai: A Life (2007) and Telly-Guillotined: How Television Changed India (2019).
The Tirukkural’s deep-rooted presence in Tamil politics has not gone unnoticed by the Bharatiya Janata Party.
On January 1, 2025, the iconic statue of the late saint-poet Tiruvalluvar in Kanyakumari, which stands majestically at the southern tip of Tamil Nadu, will celebrate its 25th anniversary. Commissioned and inaugurated by former chief minister M. Karunanidhi, the statue has, over the past two decades, become a symbol of Tamil Nadu’s cultural identity – just as timeless as the revered text authored by Tiruvalluvar himself.
The Tirukkural, a first-century BCE Tamil treatise, is revered as a universal and timeless text offering wisdom on various aspects of life. Esteemed for its secular and all-encompassing nature, it transcends class, religion, and boundaries, earning praise as a text for the entire world. Its enigmatic author, Tiruvalluvar, is a widely honoured figure in Tamil culture, with his identity shrouded in mystery and overshadowed by the enduring brilliance of his work. The Tirukkural’s concise two-line, seven-word verses continue to captivate readers with their profound insights, solidifying its unparalleled stature in Tamil literature and beyond.
Inaugurating a three-day event to mark the 25th anniversary of what has now become synonymous with the cultural landscape of Tamil Nadu, chief minister M.K. Stalin announced that the statue would henceforth be known as the “Statue of Wisdom.”
“Kanyakumari is considered the gateway to Tamil Nadu. Placing Tiruvalluvar there carries deep cultural significance,” says A.S. Panneerselvan, veteran journalist and author of Karunanidhi: A Life.
“Tiruvalluvar served as a powerful counterbalance when the VHP [Vishwa Hindu Parishad] attempted to assert dominance in the region. Also, many entry points around the world are defined by iconic cultural symbols, such as the Gateway of India in Mumbai or the Statue of Liberty in the United States. Similarly, having Tiruvalluvar as our own cultural emblem is profoundly meaningful,” Panneerselvan adds.
The celebration comes amidst repeated yet unsuccessful attempts by right-wing forces in Tamil Nadu to appropriate Tiruvalluvar. Just last month, an invitation from the office of Tamil Nadu governor R.N. Ravi, for a multilingual seminar comparing Tiruvalluvar, Kabir Das and Yogi Vemana, depicted Tiruvalluvar in saffron robes and religious symbols – a move that sparked vehement protests from Dravidian leaders and movements in the state. This is not the first time the governor has pushed such portrayals.
The Tirukkural’s deep-rooted presence in Tamil politics has not gone unnoticed by the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), which has struggled to gain traction in Tamil Nadu. Prime Minister Narendra Modi has quoted the text in unlikely settings, while finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman has often incorporated it in her budget speeches.
In 2019, the BJP’s Tamil Nadu unit posted an image of the saint-poet in saffron robes on social media, challenging the widely accepted portrayal of him in white robes, a depiction based on artist K.R. Venugopal Sharma’s interpretation that eschewed religious symbols, reflecting the Tirukkural’s secular essence.
These efforts to appropriate Tiruvalluvar have sparked significant backlash. Critics see the BJP’s attempts to alter this image as a bid to redefine the Tirukkural’s unifying role in Tamil society.
The Tirukkural is deeply intertwined with the ideals of the Dravidian movement, which has shaped Tamil Nadu’s politics for over five decades. This relationship began with a rejection of Parimelazhagar’s 13th-century commentary, criticised by Dravidian stalwarts like Periyar for its Brahminical and Manusmriti-based interpretations, particularly its caste-centric view of “profession”.
Periyar, a rationalist and atheist, viewed the Tirukkural as a text transcending caste and religion, embodying self-respect and love. He criticised patriarchal elements in some verses but emphasised reclaiming the Tirukkural’s egalitarian essence. Periyar’s call for fresh commentaries inspired figures like Karunanidhi, who offered accessible interpretations and honoured Tiruvalluvar through initiatives like Valluvar Kottam and the declaration of Tiruvalluvar Day.
This Dravidian critique sparked a wave of rationalist reinterpretations, firmly positioning the Tirukkural as a cornerstone of the movement’s ideology. “It is a masterpiece that champions social equality, ethical governance, and universal love core values of the Dravidian movement. As Kalaignar [Karunanidhi] emphasised in his profound work, Kuraloviyam, the Tirukkural reflects the Dravidian ethos by rejecting hierarchies and fostering inclusivity. Tiruvalluvar’s wisdom, immortalised in these verses, aligns seamlessly with the egalitarian principles championed by the Dravidian movement. The remarkable celebrations led by the chief minister today exemplify the pride and reverence Tamils feel for this enduring legacy and its universal values,” says T. Sumathi, Tamil writer and Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK) MP.
Referring to the statue as a “towering embodiment of Tamil pride and Dravidian resistance,” Sumathi says the BJP and right-wing forces’ attempt to appropriate Tiruvalluvar is “ironic and deeply hypocritical.”
“These are the very forces that propagate casteism, curtail linguistic diversity, and oppose the progressive ideals that Tiruvalluvar stood for. Their attempts to appropriate him are not just ahistorical but also antithetical to his teachings. The statue serves as a reminder to resist such cultural and political distortions. It reaffirms the Tamil people’s commitment to secularism, equality, and the Dravidian ideals of social justice, which remain as relevant and necessary as ever,” Sumathi adds.
The idea of erecting a statue of Tiruvalluvar was a long-cherished dream of Karunanidhi. He first announced the project in 1975-76 during his tenure as chief minister, but it did not take shape until 2000. After returning to power in 1990, Karunanidhi commissioned the renowned sculptor V. Ganapati Sthapati to bring the vision to life.
The statue was designed to stand 133 feet tall, symbolising the 133 chapters of the Tirukkural, divided into three books. The 38-foot pedestal represents the Arathu Paal (Book of Virtue), while the 95-foot statue symbolises the Porut Paal (Book of Polity) and the Kaamathu Paal (Book of Love). “Kalaignar believed that Aram (virtue) was the foundation of everything, so it had to be fundamental,” explains Govi Lenin, writer and Dravidian ideologue.
“Silapathikaaram and Tirukkural represent two major literary traditions in Tamil, and Karunanidhi has contributed significantly to both,” says Panneerselvan. “He developed a tourist complex at Poompuhar, the setting of Silapathikaaram, and established the Valluvar Kottam and the Tiruvalluvar statue for the Tirukkural. It’s also crucial to note that both works embody universal values. Silapathikaaram revolves around the pursuit of justice, while the Tirukkural explores the idea of justice. By celebrating these epics as cultural icons, their values have become integral to Tamil identity.”
Panneerselvan also emphasises that the true significance of the statue lies in its endurance. As Lenin notes, the statue withstood the devastating tsunami that struck this part of the state four years after its erection. And similarly, Tiruvalluvar’s legacy will resist any attempt to alter his portrayal.
A statement was issued commemorating the 20th anniversary of the formation of the group.
New Delhi: In a joint statement issued on Tuesday (December 31), the foreign ministers of Quad countries hailed the contribution of the group in responding collectively to address the needs of the people in the Indo-Pacific region. The group reiterated its commitment to providing a response to people affected by ‘disasters and humanitarian crises’ in future.
The statement was issued commemorating the 20th anniversary of the formation of the group. Australia, India, Japan, and US form are members of the Quad.
The group was formed in response to the earthquake in the Indian ocean and tsunami. As many as 0.25 million people died and 1.7 million were displaced in 14 countries.
According to the statement, 40,000 emergency responders from four countries, along with other partners across the Indo-Pacific region, came together to provide relief to the millions of people affected by the disaster.
The leaders of four countries have been meeting annually since 2021.
The foreign ministers stated that the group has broadened its efforts to address pressing challenges such as climate change, cancer, and pandemics, while also focusing on enhancing quality infrastructure, maritime domain awareness, STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Medicine) education, counter-terrorism, critical technologies, and cybersecurity in the Indo-Pacific region.
The group also committed to supporting other regional groups.
“We reaffirm our unwavering support for ASEAN’s centrality and unity as well as mainstreaming and implementation of the ASEAN Outlook on the Indo-Pacific. We respect Pacific-led regional architecture, foremost the Pacific Islands Forum. We are also steadfast in our support for the Indian Ocean Rim Association, the region’s premier organisation,” the statement read.
In a post on X, external affairs minister S. Jaishankar wrote, “Today, the Quad stands as a vital force for stability, progress and prosperity in the Indo-Pacific. “
Two decades ago, the idea of Quad began with a shared response to the Indian Ocean tsunami.
Today, the Quad stands as a vital force for stability, progress and prosperity in the Indo-Pacific.
Autocratisation has no relationship with the per capita income of a country. Political ideas matter.
The elections in India, Turkey and the US in 2024 point to the rapidly shrinking liberal political space in democracies.
Despite the enormity of the threat to a secular and inclusive vision of politics, the elections in India and Turkey, however, suggest that possibilities of liberal resilience do exist. The US, however, has failed the resilience test.
Opposition fought back in India
Since 2014, India has increasingly turned autocratic under the leadership of the right-wing Hindu nationalist Bhartiya Janata Party (BJP) which nominally leads the National Democratic Alliance (NDA).
The Indian elections in 2023 and 2024 point to three significant factorsthat may have enabled the Centre-Left Indian National Congress (INC), which leads the Indian National Developmental Alliance (INDIA), to defy majoritarian politics in a limited way.
First, a secure leadership or coherent coalition that rose above competing political factions.
Second, a clear secular narrative with a citizen-friendly stance.
Third, working closely with like-minded groups in civil society.
The state-level election results in India support these claims.
When the leadership, narrative and the civil society favoured the INC in Karnataka (2023) and Telangana (2023), the party surprised the ruling BJP. The Telangana victory of the Congress was modelled after the one in Karnataka.
When, on the other hand, the Congress lacked a clear secular narrative and was ridden with factionalism, it lost the elections that could have yielded substantially different results.
This was evident in Rajasthan (2023), Chhattisgarh (2023), Madhya Pradesh (2023), Haryana (2024) and Maharashtra(2024).
It took the INDIA bloc some time to emerge as a coalition of diverse political parties on the eve of the June 2024 Parliamentary elections.
The autocratisation of the incumbent government seems to have inspired some coherence within a diverse opposition alliance.
The INDIA bloc thus became the rallying point for the forces opposed to majoritarianism and favouring social justice.
Civil society organisations played a significant role, even under adverse conditions.
This political mobilisation restricted the BJP-led NDA to 240 seats in a 545-member lower house of parliament, 32 short of a simple majority in the general election.
The BJP, for the first time since 2014, needed coalition partners to form a government.
This was a favourable result for the political opposition, considering the substantial incumbent advantage of the BJP. The Congress won 99 seats and INDIA bloc’s 234 MPs sat on the Opposition benches.
For the first time since 2014, the Indian Parliament in 2024 looks relatively more balanced.
The ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP), which first came to power in the 2002 general elections, has gradually captured state institutions over the past two decades.
It has eroded democratic safeguards and placed the media, civil society and academia under greater control.
As a result, under Erdoğan’s rule, democracy in Turkey has eroded and was replaced by a hyper-presidential system in 2018.
Erdoğan’s recent victory over the joint opposition candidate in the 2023 presidential election is seen by many as a watershed moment that might lead to the consolidation of the authoritarian regime in Turkey.
Contrary to widespread expectations, the March 2024 elections were a significant upset for the ruling alliance.
The ruling AKP suffered its worst defeat in over two decades and was overtaken by the center-left CHP for the first time.
Despite the disintegration of the main opposition alliance after the 2023 defeat, the main opposition party won 37.8 percent against the AKP’s 35.5 percent, taking control of 24 out of 81 provinces.
As a result, the CHP currently controls 6 out of 7 of the largest metropolitan municipalities and numerous others in the Anatolian heartland, including some provinces long held by the ruling party.
Meanwhile, the pro-Kurdish DEM (the People’s Equality and Democracy Party) and the pro-Islamist New Welfare Party won 10 and 2 provinces respectively, reducing the ruling alliance’s local control.
The defeat of the ruling alliance can be attributed to several factors.
As the stakes were lower in the local elections, some pro-government voters strategically voted for the opposition parties to protest against poor economic conditions.
After several years of high inflation and a weak currency, Erdoğan switched to an orthodox economic agenda and placed the burden of reducing inflation on middle-class and poor voters in major cities.
Against the government’s poor economic record, the CHP’s strong performance at the local level in the municipalities attracted higher levels of popular support.
In Istanbul and Ankara, which have been governed by the CHP since 2019, the municipal governments provided voters with effective services and generous social assistance.
The worsening humanitarian crisis in Gaza also angered some pious Muslim voters, who switched their support to the New Welfare Party to punish the government’s refusal to cut trade links with Israel.
Majoritarianism triumphs in the US
The US, however, failed the resilience tests in 2024.
The re-election of Donald Trump as President in 2024 is widely recognised as a low point in American democracy.
Neither did Harris’s progressive agenda work for attracting the poor find any purchase, nor did the Democratic Party appear racially more inclusive.
Under these conditions, majoritarianism triumphed as more Black and Latino voters favoured Trump over Harris in the 2024 Presidential contest than in the past.
Threat remains
Majoritarian leaders are adept at creating the convenient myth of a majority community threatened by the minority. This is a political ploy for garnering the majority vote.
Majoritarianism poses a threat to rich, middle-income and low income countries alike.
The lessons from India, Turkey and the US suggest that autocratisation has no relationship with the per capita income of a country. Even adopting a softer version of majoritarian nationalism is likely to defeat the liberal cause in the long run.
No longer can one live with the belief that capitalist societies produce democracy. Even advanced industrialised countries today are not immune to the majoritarian threat.
Rahul Mukherji is Professor and Chair of Modern Politics of South Asia in the South Asia Institute at Heidelberg University in Heidelberg. Berk Esen is Associate Professor of Political Science at Sabanci University in Istanbul.
Jai Shankar Prasad, PhD candidate in the Department of Political Science at the South Asia Institute at Heidelberg University in Heidelberg, assisted in writing this article.
As young Kashmiris discover that modalities mechanising the ‘New Kashmir’ are similar to the old, it is likely to become a source of incipient anger against the structures of power that have been put in place in the aftermath of 2019.
Earlier this year, the Parliament passed four laws pertaining to Jammu and Kashmir. In continuity with the Union government’s plan to rework the entire legal architecture of the erstwhile state, the new legislations introduced a series of new changes including making special nominations for members of West Pakistan refugees and Kashmiri Pandits in the legislative assembly, changing the nomenclature of ‘weak and underprivileged classes’ to ‘other backward class’ (OBCs), and expanding the list of scheduled castes (SCs) and scheduled tribes (SCs) eligible for affirmative action benefits in the union territory.
Couched in the idiom of welfarism, the changes did not initially evoke any concern outside of the political circles. However, the lakhs of Kashmiris students and job aspirants from the ‘general’ category were soon to realise the crushing costs of these measures that effectively pushed the reserved quotas in jobs and education to 70% (from 52% before 2019), leaving an overwhelming population (69%) of those who aren’t eligible for any reservation benefits to compete for far fewer jobs.
The groundswell of anger erupted last week when a massive crowd of students descended outside the house of the J&K chief minister Omar Abdullah, demanding the end to the new policies in the region where unemployment has peaked to 32.8%, the highest in the country.
To illustrate the desperation among youth, over 5.5 lakh applicants appeared for just 4,000 police constable posts earlier this month in J&K.
Reluctant to come into a confrontation with the Centre (which is responsible for the policy), CM Omar is left scandalised, not least because the students’ movement is being shepherded by his own party MP Aga Ruhullah, who has managed to cultivate a lot of goodwill among the young sections in the last few years.
The year of realisations
The year 2024 has offered a lot for Kashmiris to chew on and ruminate, for it is in this year that a lot of decisions taken without their consent in the post-2019 scenario are coming to fruition and impressing upon the people the true intent of these changes.
Let’s take another example. In October 2020, the Centre notified UT of J&K Reorganisation (Adaptation of Central Laws) Third Order revoking 12 land related state laws in J&K, while readapting 26 others with major changes. Again, the changes didn’t spark much outrage back then.
But it is in 2024 that the full malevolent force of these decisions is baring its fangs. Last month, the villagers in the south Kashmir districts of Shopian and Pulwama took to the streets to resist the seizure of their orchard land by the Indian Railways that plans to build five new railway lines across the Valley. The villagers who subsist mostly on apple farming allege that such a project will usurp their prime agricultural land.
They also refused compensation alleging that they won’t trade a lifelong income generating vocation with reparations that will last only a few years.
To be sure, all this would have been difficult before the J&K Agricultural Land (Conversion of Non-Agriculture Purposes) Regulations, 2022 that were notified pursuant to the amendments made in October 2020.
The elections as political setback for BJP
The biggest development in 2024 in J&K was the holding of both parliamentary and assembly elections. The latter took place after a gap of 10 years.
Leveraging its five years of direct control over the UT, the BJP government had girded its loins and seemed certain of squeezing some kind of electoral benefits out of it. It banked on a massive number of independents (365 out of 908 total candidates in fray) signalling how the idea of political fragmentation suited its strategy. But that plan fizzled out as only seven independents won, four of whom were already the National Conference (NC) deserters who rejoined the party.
The plan to encourage political surrogates also failed miserably as they parties accused of having a tacit understanding with BJP couldn’t perform as was expected of them. Altaf Bukhari of Jammu & Kashmir Apni Party (JKAP), for instance, lost his own constituency of Channapora in Srinagar with more than 5,000 votes.
The plan to tweak reservations rules to the advantage of Pir Panjal’s tribal people – whose 7.35 lakh voters were added to the South Kashmir constituency as a counterweight to the Kashmiri vote – also did not work the way BJP had expected. It was NC that eventually won the South Kashmir parliamentary seat in the Lok Sabha polls.
Also proving to be a damp squib was the delimitation program. The NC-Congress alliance wrecked the BJP’s strategy – of racking up more numbers through awarding new seats to Jammu division out of proportion to its population – by winning seven of the eight major seats in Pir Panjal region, paving the way for for NC to romp home with thumping majority.
It was perhaps to hedge against such an eventuality that the Union Home Ministry July notified J&K (Second Amendment) Government Business Transaction Rules, 2024, arrogating more substantial powers for the UT’s lieutenant governor, while leaving the elected CM to play a largely titular role.
Unable to actualise his key campaign promises, the beleaguered CM Omar is now busy tending to snow clearance operations, fixing broken power lines and organising surprise visits to hospitals and health centres.
A timeline of major events this year
A lot happened in 2024 that reinforced the idea how the authoritarian tendencies, coupled with absolute contempt for local political sensibilities, continue to complement the governance in Kashmir.
Earlier in January, J&K Board of School Education mandated only Board-authorised curriculum in schools across the UT, raising concerns that the LG administration was limiting access to study materials from independent publishers, and that the move was geared to control ideas. “No such order is applicable across India,” opposition leader Mehbooba Mufti tweeted.
People in the Valley also grew angry over a power purchase agreement between a subsidiary of J&K based power utility and its counterpart in Rajasthan for a period of 40 years. Asserting that the agreement had fuelled feelings of betrayal, the NC spokesperson had then said that “the government should have prioritised providing electricity to the domestic consumers, given the looming energy crisis. For electricity-starved people of J&K, is this agreement a solution?”
This posturing stood in sharp relief against this week’s statement from CM Omar who said that uninterrupted power supply in J&K was only possible after 100 percent metering of electricity connections.
Two particular incidents in 2024 also served to highlight that, on the heels of Centre’s imperious attitude towards J&K, even non-local civil servants have begun to grow contemptous of institutional checks and balances.
In August, one IAS officer posted in Ganderbal district sanctioned the “demarcations” of the land owned privately by a judge who had previously ordered the officer’s salary to be withheld for not complying with the court’s order. The court later asked him to tender an apology for this conduct.
In another case, the judges at the JK&L High Court decried the administration for acting “consistently with utter contempt” towards the judicial system following the incident involving two senior administration officials who offered two contradictory responses by way of explaining the absence of the UT’s chief secretary from the court proceedings.
New Kashmir is the same as Old Kashmir
In yet another significant move this year, home minister Amit Shah declared that family members of militants and stone pelters would be denied government jobs in the UT, raising concerns that the administration would arbitrarily target people on account of guilt by association.
Separately, the J&K government also pulled out an archaic law Enemy Agents Ordinance (EAO) from its decades long obscurity and said it will be invoked against any people supporting foreign militants.
The law mandates either life imprisonment or death as punishment. As one retired officer remarked with a zinger, “They (are discarding) old colonial laws from July 1 (in reference to adapting the new criminal code) but consider using a Maharaja-era law to maintain peace in J&K. Have we not moved beyond 1947?”
Last month, the new elected administration also struggled with its first big challenge after the Army’s Rashtriya Rifles (RR) unit got embroiled in allegations of torturing four civilians in Kishtwar district in Jammu. Although the Army ordered an inquiry into the allegations, nothing is known about its progress or lack thereof.
This happened in the context of upsurge in violence in the Jammu region this year, belying the Modi government’s claims that militancy in J&K has all but ended.
As young Kashmiris discover that modalities mechanising the ‘New Kashmir’ are similar to the old, it is likely to become a source of incipient anger against the structures of power that have been put in place in the aftermath of 2019.
The greatest challenge for Omar in 2025 will now be to go out of his way to persuade Kashmiris that his rule will not be a continuation of the status quo.
Shakir Mir is an independent journalist based in Srinagar. His work is located at the intersection of conflict, politics, history and memory
Artificial Intelligence and the World Brain will forever struggle to grasp our inner lives. As Andrei Tarkovsky’s cinematic journey into the Zone – a metaphor for the Unconscious – reminds us, there are depths of human experience that lie beyond the reach of technology.
It is very peculiar. The human attitude towards AI.
Consider the backlash to the generative AI-powered Spotify Wrapped 2024. Wrapped provides a personality digest to its listeners based on year-end metrics (so published in December). What it offered this time put off most users.
Many declared on social media to leave the app altogether. One user declared on X that “Spotify Wrapped is like my annual mental health report and it’s getting worse by each passing year”.
Meaningless genres like “pink pilates princess” or “indie sleaze catwalk” were doled out as “your favourite” music. Users reacted by calling them cringe. Appeasing users with narcissistic pride about their supposed unique taste backfired as they called out Wrapped for producing slop – shorthand for AI spam.
Not that this was the first time AI or algorithms were used for the purpose by Spotify. But in December 2023, Spotify laid off 1500 workers and replaced them with AI. The backlash by users was related to this increased dependence on AI.
The backlash around Wrapped is very revealing.
We complain or critique AI for not really getting us, for mispresenting us, and as internally biased. It is as though we really want AI to truly get us, forgetting that the “dangers” one highlights about it, is really about the possibility that were it to truly get us, it will actually (and not just supposedly) prove to be dangerous, replace us humans, and so on. There is a circularity in our outbursts and scepticism about AI.
What is forgotten is that in not really getting us right or getting us who we truly are, that is, in that gap, remainder or flaw, lies the promise, or the hope for humans. We complain about this gap but is this not what precludes the “dangers” of AI, or, if you like, the coming Apocalypse where apparently humans will be reduced to slaves to not just the Machine but the World Brain?
Music often pertains to a very inner experience, memory, and unconscious associations. There is too little scope for “deep machine learning” to really capture your inner life through the metrics generated by your usage data. The failure of AI seems inevitable.
And yet the training AI receives allows it to get better and better, asymptotically approaching the quintessential human. Ultimately, what the machine wants to capture is that which makes us irreducibly human, the human soul. In the meantime, it has access to difficult terrains of our inner lives. We hear that machine learning is uncovering neural pathways to narcissism. So if you want your narcissistic partner to become more kind and giving, go consult your AI psychiatrist. Also called Silicon Shrink, it cuts much closer to the inner lives of humans than say the AI Doctor collating millions of test reports about CT scan and MRI.
Tech gurus and entrepreneurs like NVIDIA’s CEO Jensen Huang tell us that presently we are making a massive and historic transition from accumulated data to intelligence. “Data to AI,” that is the great movement and transformation. Data is crucial raw material which produces AI.
The Machine lives off us humans. Remember, The Matrix pursued the idea that our everyday world is the product of a computer-driven digital matrix that feeds on humans.
So our question – what is life which cannot be captured as ‘data’? Can we lead and practice a life today which is autonomous of the Machine?
Perhaps here we might be asking a version of that age-old question society and its thinkers have always asked: what is a good life? Aristotle said, it is a life of contemplation. The Buddha would say, it is a life without karmic accumulation, and so on. Nietzsche would say it is a life where the conscious merges with our unconscious drives.
We might wonder whether that which is beyond the ken of AI, that which is specifically and incontrovertibly human, is expanding in the world. Or is it shrinking? Rather than focus on AI and its dangers and the policies to regulate it, we might want to reflect or even probe the life we are living. How rich is our inner life, or outer life, to begin with? Is our truly human self itself undergoing a change, already simulating that which we claim to keep at a distance? Is the “enemy” getting too intimate?
II
Today in “the age of AI,” narratives about the “end times” or the coming Apocalypse are getting a new lease of life. Machines taking over humans and disrupting society is routine talk among policy makers, governments and tech innovators.
Mary Shelley’s imagined Apocalypse of humans producing a Frankensteinian monster continues to be in the realm of the fantastic but one which is becoming more sub-textual in our lives. What follows is endlessly sanctimonious talk about the need to regulate AI, the dangers of digitalisation, deep fakes, cyber-crime, dark crypto, and what not.
I guess we achieve greater clarity if we imagine a world where “it is all over” and we are already in the Apocalypse.
Such an attitude is nothing new. In fact, popular culture has great appetite for the Apocalypse, and consumes dollops of it.
Movies like the Dune or Mad Max Fury have stories entirely situated within a post-Apocalyptic world. More to the point is the message that true freedom is on the other side, as in the rather cultish Fight Club: “Tt’s only after we lost everything, that we are free to do anything.”
The last scene is where the insomniac protagonist with Marla witnesses massive destruction. The permanent erasure of debt seems to be achieved through the explosion of the buildings of banks, or perhaps the destruction of the world as such. The movie ends and we are supposed to go home with the lingering image of a life of freedom on the other side, where “we are free to do anything”.
We get back to our lives, we work to build the same structures whose destruction is necessary for freedom. Naturally then we must wonder what we can already do in the here and now, as we live our lives in the immense shadow of the Machine.
III
Should we say that today the good life is the life of the schizophrenic?
For one thing, it seems fairly clear that, by all accounts, when “it is all over” (as we heard in Fight Club) and humans are truly free, they live as crazy schizophrenics. That’s how they behave. That’s how they lead their lives. That’s how they relate to each other.
Interestingly, philosopher Gilles Deleuze actually proposed a schizophrenic life as a kind of a counterpoint to the normalisation of the dominant system and dominant order of life. He declared: “A schizophrenic out for a walk is a better model than a neurotic lying on the analyst’s couch. A breath of fresh air, a relationship with the outside world.” Proposing “the schizo as Homo natura,” he wrote that “the self and the non-self, outside and inside, no longer have any meaning whatsoever.”
What we are looking at is meaninglessness, or the void as the form of life. This implies a rejection of a life which puts a premium on what we can call the plenitude of representation in articulation or even communication. For such a life too easily lends itself to simulation and capture, towards the formation of the simulacra and the spectacle of capital.
Not just that we are a mirror image of the spectacle, but we generate the spectacle in and through our actions. I am already caught up in a situation always prior to myself and yet generated by my actions. It is in disentangling these actions, through say the “talking cure” or “free association”, that we discover our thoughts and the unconscious. This is what Foucault meant when he said that in the modern cogito (as against the Cartesian cogito), thought always implies action.
We must then ask: how does one free action from generating the spectacle. How can you not be the mirror image of the structures you generate daily? What is the life one is leading?
The great visionary Andrei Tarkovsky seems aware of this modern predicament. Think of what he is trying to suggest in his 1979 movie The Stalker, in particular the scenes about the travel to the Zone and the Room.
For, as Tarkovsky put it, “the zone is the zone. It is life and does not symbolise anything.” Earth and water, nature are all sentient and responsive, in different colours. The Zone is never the same, or even always new. Neither same, nor new – it is anything you think. What you discover in the Room is who you really are. You are your soul which cannot be known. In knowing yourself, you are no longer the same, hence knowing is not possible, or a contradiction in terms. The knowing is what makes you unknowable.
It is a no-brainer now to say that here we have a form of life beyond the framework of data and metrics, beyond the algorithm, by far. The inner life which the Wrapped users found missing by found missing or ignored or misrepresented is imagined by Tarkovsky in all its luminosity.
Tarkovsky imagines a world where the Freudian unconscious loses its power and is dissolved. He exteriorises the unconscious as a world in which we live, travel, and walk around – in our waking state and not in a dream – but as though in a dream. The inner life is the outer – or as Deleuze said, the distinction between the two has no meaning. That is how lucid your life is – completely unavailable to any data or metric. The most creative gesture would be to taunt AI to come and capture life in the Zone.
We must get over the endless self-flagellation about the “dangers of AI”. We must fix our lives in the first place. We need more attention on what it is to be human today, so that it is no longer a mirror image of the spectacle.
For now, our inner life will forever frustrate AI and the World Brain, producing a lot of people disgruntled with even the best AI available. But we can and should use AI, and not be Luddites at all. For one, we can transfer our less-than-human work to them.
In an ornate, historical hall, a massive tidal wave peaks and begins to crash. Two surfers, seizing the moment, skilfully navigate the face of the wave.
Saroj Giri teaches Politics in University of Delhi and is part of the Forum Against Corporatization and Militarisation (FACAM).
The essence is that Sri Lanka’s institutions held. Because of this there was time and in turn, anarchy was avoided and the economy saved from greater damage.
A Nepali colleague asked why Sri Lanka turned out differently from Bangladesh (and he was not implying our outcome was worse). This is a considered answer, within the limits of my observations. Like much of history, this account cannot establish definitive causes for observable effects, such as the continued adherence to the constitution and the economic recovery. Given the complexity of the phenomenon, no one person can know all that happened. So, the account is necessarily incomplete.
The essence of the explanation is that Sri Lanka’s institutions held. Institutions do not mean just the judiciary or the legislature. Institutions include entities such as professional associations, chambers of commerce, trade unions and various non-governmental organisations.
And it was because the institutions held that we had time. It was because we had time that anarchy was avoided, and the economy was saved from greater damage.
The aragalaya did not occur just at Galle Face Green/Gotagogama. That was its focal point. But the actions of the aragalaya, if defined as efforts to compel the president to resign, happened in multiple locations, some physical and some virtual.
Its duration was not limited to the period from March 31, 2022, when protesters approached the president’s private residence, to July 14, 2022, when President Gotabaya Rajapaksa’s letter of resignation was received by the speaker of Sri Lanka’s parliament. One may even interpret the recently concluded elections as aftershocks of the aragalaya.
Thirty-plus months allow realignments and adjustments in the social fabric to occur without it tearing.
Sri Lanka’s was a slow-motion power transfer: it took more than a month to displace Prime Minister Mahinda Rajapaksa and his cabinet; another month for the Rajapaksa brother who managed the ruling party to resign; and another month plus a few days to get the resignation letter from President Rajapaksa (around three-and-a-half months in total).
It was not without violence; 12 deaths are attributed to the aragalaya.
By contrast, regime change in Bangladesh occurred over seven weeks, within which more than a thousand fatalities were recorded. Even adjusted for population (22 million versus 173 million) Sri Lanka’s losses were one-tenth of Bangladesh’s.
The economic crisis that came to an end in December 2024 manifested itself in 2021, peaked in 2022 and was contained in 2023. The economy expanded on average by 4% year-on-year in the four quarters ending in June 2024, after six quarters of contraction. Inflation, which hit a high of 70% in September 2022, has been in the low single digits since the second half of 2023.
Institutions
The protests focused on President Rajapaksa as the head of the executive and on the cabinet, which included four other Rajapaksa family members. The apex of the executive, the presidential secretariat adjacent to the Galle Face Green protest area, was besieged for more than three months, but the president continued to operate from his official residence and the cabinet functioned.
Several officials and ministers resigned as the protests took hold. One of the more significant resignations was that of the director general of telecommunications, who objected to the shutdown of internet services for the entirety of April 3. The blocking orders were lifted by 3 pm and no government has tried to shut down internet access since.
The April defections were followed by the forced resignation of the prime minister on May 9. The resulting power vacuum was quickly filled by appointing an opposition MP, former Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe. No changes were made in the leadership of the armed forces or the police.
The legislature had been considerably weakened by President Rajapaksa by means of the 20th amendment to the constitution enacted in 2020. The ninth parliament was not proactive in responding to the crisis in the early stages, with a few exceptions until Wickremesinghe became prime minister on May 12. Before that the president committed to repealing the 20th amendment.
A noteworthy legislative initiative was the meeting convened outside parliament on April 6 by the MP M.A. Sumanthiran in his capacity as former chair of the Committee on Public Finance in the eight parliament as the protests were building up. All parties in the opposition, disaffected members of the ruling coalition and the former speaker were invited.
The plan to build an all-party alternative to the Rajapaksa-dominated cabinet was not realised because Sri Lanka Podujana Peramuna (SLPP) defectors did not attend. However, this meeting led to the drafting of a private member’s motion to replace the executive presidency with government by cabinet.
The above initiative illustrates the working of the legislative and judicial branches during the crisis. The private member’s motion was gazetted within one month on May 6 and placed on the order paper on May 17. This was unusually rapid progress for a private member’s motion. It was taken up for constitutional review by the Supreme Court on May 26 and arguments were concluded in five days. The speaker announced the ruling that a referendum was required for its enactment by mid-June.
While the conclusion did not allow the crisis to be resolved, the short timeline illustrates the commitment by members of the legislature and the judiciary to break the stalemate between the president and the protesters.
Friends and colleagues of the recently deceased minister Mangala Samaraweera, who was known for making connections among political parties and factions, made an early effort to connect the protesters to mainstream political actors on April 21. A satyakriya, a reflective ceremony without speeches, was organised at the main public space in Colombo other than Galle Face Green that was occupied by protestors.
Most political leaders except for those from the currently ruling National People’s Power (NPP) and its splinter, the Frontline Socialist Party that was making its presence felt at the protest site, attended. The organisers adopted yellow flowers as their symbol and periodically conducted yellow flower campaigns at courts where arrestees appeared.
Other entities such as the Bar Association of Sri Lanka (BASL) made important contributions. Their actions in having members appear pro bono for arrested protestors are well-known. But most significant was the 13-point statement to restore political and economic stability issued on April 23. The very first point was critically important in bounding the various solutions that were being worked up:
“All actions must be consistent with the constitution and the relevant legal instruments and transparency. Transitional provisions that are being recommended are purely due to the exigency of the situation and should not be used as a precedent.”
The mostly peaceful three-month period leading up to the president’s ouster allowed the building of relationships and trust in mainstream political actors and institutions among at least a subset of protesting groups that made them refuse calls to violence. Photo: Nazly Ahmed/Flickr. CC BY-NC-ND 2.0.
Within a week, the BASL’s proposals were presented to leaders of political parties with the blessings of representatives of all religions at a meeting organised at the Sri Lanka Foundation Institute (SLFI). All parties other than the ruling SLPP and its ally, the Mahajana Eksath Peramuna, were represented.
The BASL’s proposals were also taken up for discussion at a webinar on May 1 with the participation of protestors and MPs. This was as a part of a series of weekly “kathikawa” webinars organised by the National Movement for Social Justice (NMSJ), a well-respected civil organisation headed by former speaker Karu Jayasuriya.
From 2020, NMSJ had been leading opposition to the 20th Amendment, seeking to influence the ongoing constitution-making process and preparing for the foreseen economic crisis. By late April, the NMSJ had given up hope that the then-Prime Minister Rajapaksa would allow any changes conducive to an all-party solution.
Though well-attended, the SLFI event failed to generate the expected momentum for an all-party government, which was seen as the most desirable solution. That disappointment led to the NMSJ providing the organisational muscle to the religious leaders to form a broadly based people’s organisation with the input and support of leaders from all religions to be called the Mahajana Sabha/Makkal Sabai/People’s Assembly.
Abandoning their usual deference to those in authority, the Ceylon Chamber of Commerce and several other chambers called for the president’s resignation after the violence of May 9. Professional associations also joined in this call.
On May 21, the Mahajana Sabha was launched at a well-attended meeting at the Bandaranaike Memorial International Conference Hall’s main auditorium. Most substantive speeches were made by young activists who came from, and returned to, the protest site at Galle Face Green/Gotagogama.
The trade unions that participated in the formation of the Mahajana Sabha subsequently invited some of the associated professionals (including the writer) to engage with state-sector trade union leaders, including some who had been arrested and released by the then government in the lead up to the aragalaya. These exchanges focused on what could be done within the constitution and the economic repercussions of political instability.
The attendees of the trade-union meeting on May 26 then made their way to the protest site that was 2.5 km away to show their solidarity, some in procession shouting slogans.
On July 8, one day before the planned “last push” to make ‘Gota Go Home’, the leaders of the Mahajana Sabha went to Kandy, where the Senkadagala Declaration was made public and presented to the two Mahanayake theros of the Siam Nikaya, who hold an unofficial position of authority in Sri Lankan politics.
Had they both signed, arrangements had been made to obtain the assent of the Mahanayakes of the other orders and of the leaders of other religious orders. In Gotabaya Rajapaksa’s post-resignation book, it was stated that he resigned because the prelates asked him to. But as of July 8, they were not of one mind.
Lines of communication were thus opened between mainstream politicians, civil-society actors capable of bridging the various gaps and the groups occupying and leading the aragalaya. Some degree of trust had been built, along with an understanding of the risks of straying from the path of peaceful protest and the economic repercussions of political instability amid ongoing negotiations with the IMF and creditors.
On July 9 massive crowds surged toward the President’s House, and the security forces guarding it did not fire. The president and his wife escaped through a tunnel.
When leaders of different left-wing factions subsequently called on the protesters to take over parliament, they were rebuffed. This was perhaps because of the trust that had been built up over three months and because by then it was clear that the formal institutions of the legislature and the judiciary were also actively engaged in seeking a way out of the political and economic morass. The police lines held, and parliament was saved.
By this time, the Prime Minister’s Office had been occupied. His personal residence had been destroyed by arson. But the damage was contained.
On July 14, Bastille Day, the president’s resignation was received by the speaker. Perhaps the only demand of the aragalaya on which everyone agreed, ‘Gota Go Home’, was won.
As shown above, the mostly peaceful three-month period leading up to the president’s ouster allowed the building of relationships and trust in mainstream political actors and institutions among at least a subset of protesting groups that made them refuse calls to violence. While politicians were not welcome at the protest site, there were considerable interactions off site, enabled by undisrupted communication services.
The lulls in the aragalaya also allowed for greater understanding of what was possible within the constitution and the economic implications of deviation. For example, the pros and cons of calling early elections before a modicum of stability was achieved were debated in April and opinion shifted away from early elections.
People understood that negotiations for emergency assistance and with the IMF would be stalled unless government continuity was ensured. The secretary of treasury and the governor of the Central Bank who assumed office in March 2022 are still in office, after two and half years of crisis management, serving with three different ministers of finance.
Understanding the enormous impact of high inflation and job losses in 2022, the government committed to an expanded and better-targeted cash-transfer-based social safety net with the support of the IMF and the World Bank.
Despite the complexity of the task and the refusal of seven state-sector trade unions to cooperate in building the social register, the government managed to get payments started by mid-2023. Even with its flaws, the Aswesuma program signalled that the government was not abandoning those most affected. That perception may have helped keep the peace.
Claims of odious debt that should be dishonoured and easy-to-achieve debt forgiveness were understood to be divorced from reality. Without two-and-a-half years of relative political stability, it would not have been possible to get the wishful thinking under control or for the ascendant NPP to better understand the challenges of macro-economic management.
Giving the lack of funds as an excuse, the government compelled the postponement of local-government elections that should have been held in early 2023 before adequate progress had been made on recovery measures.
Because the elections would have been held across the country in one day, the results would have been interpreted as a vote for a government change. Because the president who had the authority to dissolve parliament could not be dislodged, the tension between those in power at the centre and those who believed they had a mandate for change would have yielded dysfunctional governance as in 2018-19.
The presidential election was held at the right time and the general election ahead of time.
The NPP was able to capture the presidency and a super-majority in parliament. By this time, the country was more than halfway into the IMF program, the domestic debt had been restructured and the external debt restructuring was in its final stages. The victorious NPP chose to continue within the IMF program parameters to avoid economic disruption.
A peaceful transfer of power has been achieved, and the economy is doing well. All because our institutions held and gave us the stability needed for recovery. The next challenge is capitalising on this foundation and getting the economy on a sustainable growth path that will allow us to repay our debts and restore the gravely eroded living standards of most of our people.
Rohan Samarajiva is founding Chair of LIRNEasia, an ICT policy and regulation think-tank active across emerging Asia.
16 critical datasets are delayed, nine ministries are yet to release their annual reports and the Census is now three years overdue, affecting policy-making and weakening transparency.
Mumbai: Sixteen critical government datasets are delayed, and nine Union ministries have not released their annual reports – some of them for several years. The Census of India is now three years overdue.
The delay is spread across government datasets spanning multiple sectors including health, environment, demography, agriculture, and criminal justice.
Many datasets are intended to be released on an annual basis. However some, like the Census of India (decennial or 10 years) and the livestock census (quinquennial or 5 years), follow longer cycles. Despite their critical importance, these datasets have not adhered to their scheduled timelines.
One of the reasons why India puts out data with a year’s lag is due to the sheer number of entries and the time taken for collection of the nationwide data, according to this report by Citizens for Justice and Peace (CJP), a Mumbai-based Human Rights movement.
As 2024 comes to a close, we look at the state of India’s public data.
The following are a few of the datasets that have been delayed anywhere from two to four years.
The Medical Certification of Cause of Death is compiled under the Civil Registration System in accordance with the Registration of Births and Deaths Act, 1969, and adheres to the International Classification of Diseases (ICD) – Tenth Revision (1993). Collected by state governments and published by the Office of the Registrar General, this data is crucial for researchers, health planners, and epidemiologists. It provides detailed information on causes of death, categorised by gender and age profiles, aiding in public health planning and mortality trend analysis. There have been no updates since 2020.
IndiaSpendhas reached out to Sanjeev Kumar, additional registrar general at the Civil Registration System, regarding the delays in MCCD, CRS and SRS datasets.
TheCensus is a decennial survey which determines, down to the village level, the population numbers, sex breakdown, age bands, literacy and migration, among other aspects of India’s population. The 2021 census was delayed due to the nationwide Covid-19-induced lockdowns, but since then, despite life returning to normalcy, the timeline for the next census is unclear. The government has now announced that the census will be conducted in 2025 as per this recent news article.
“The major missing dataset is the Census, which has not been conducted since 2011. While the exact reasons for this are unclear, they appear to be largely political and administrative rather than technical,” says P.C Mohanan, former chairman of the National Statistical Council (NSC).
The delay in compiling census data affects other datasets as well.
“The Census is critical for various applications, including updating the National Register of Citizens, the National Population Register, and potentially redrawing parliamentary constituencies. Initially, the delay was attributed to Covid-19, but with elections and other national exercises now being conducted, this justification no longer holds. The absence of updated Census data significantly impacts other statistics, as it provides the population baseline needed for calculations such as poverty rates, employment figures, and other critical metrics” says Mohanan.
IndiaSpend has reached out to Biswajit Das, Deputy General Director for the census division at the office of the Registrar of India, regarding the delay. We have also reached out to Rekha Lohani, director of research at BPRD, with questions regarding delay in data on police organisations; Amandeep Garg, additional secretary at the Ministry of Environment, Forests and Climate Change regarding the delay in Swachh Bharat rules compendium and Siddharth Shankar, senior statistical officer at the department of animal husbandry and dairying, regarding the delay in livestock census.
It is not only datasets but also annual reports of ministries that are being delayed. IndiaSpend looked at all 53 ministries to track their annual reports. An annual report summarises government ministry’s activities, policies, and programmes for the past financial year and the first three quarters of the current year). Nine ministries have delayed their annual reports, as of 4.30 a.m. on December 30, 2024.
Experts argue that the government has been removing data that could hurt it politically, and that this is one of the main causes for the delay.
“There are several factors at play here,” says Anjali Bhardwaj, transparency activist and founder of the Delhi-based Satark Nagrik Sangathan (SNS) or Society for Citizens’ Vigilance Initiatives. “For example, with the Consumer Expenditure Survey, it was found that consumption had dipped, but this data was withheld, likely because it was inconvenient for the government. Similarly, it’s inexplicable why the government has not conducted the census, something that is typically done every 10 years. By not doing so and offering no explanation, people are left in the dark. Naturally, questions arise about why the government would avoid conducting the census–are they concerned about revealing data that could be inconvenient?”
Implications of delayed data
Experts point out that lack of current data impacts important policies. “When the government halts data collection, people lose access to critical information needed to hold it accountable,” says Bhardwaj.
She highlights how outdated census data from 2011 undermines basic rights like those under the National Food Security Act, which uses census figures to determine ration card eligibility. Despite projections of population growth, the absence of a new census has left millions excluded from food security support.
Experts point to the fact that currently, most of the programs and schemes are running on estimates based on the 2011 census. “In policymaking, this disconnect has significant consequences. Take PDS (Public Distribution System) as an example: its coverage of the poor depends on poverty line calculations and population estimates, which are currently rough guesstimates,” says Vrunda Bansode, a partner at Sattva Consulting, a Global impact and CSR consulting firm from India.
Bansode highlights that the absence of updated census data forces reliance on outdated figures for “per capita and per-thousand calculations,” complicating district-level planning where broad state or national data falls short. She adds that projections for metrics like population growth or children in need are undermined by missing trends such as migration or fertility shifts.
New data release new problems
The Household Consumption Expenditure Survey 2022-23–the first such survey in 11 years–was released by the National Sample Survey Office (NSSO) in two parts: a fact sheet in February 2024, and the full survey in June.
The previous survey, conducted for July 2017-June 2018, was withdrawn in 2019 due to “data quality issues“, leaving the outdated 2011-12 data in use. The NSSO has since changed its methods for measuring household consumption, moving from the Mixed Reference Period (MRP) to the Modified Mixed Reference Period (MMRP), affecting comparability.
The 2022-23 survey introduced further changes, including more items surveyed, three separate questionnaires, multiple visits for data collection, and computer-assisted interviews, along with data on current prices instead of constant prices.
Mohanan notes that the 2022-23 Consumer Expenditure Survey introduced improved data collection methods but is “not strictly comparable with past surveys”. While the government had hinted at publishing 2022-23 and 2023-24 data together to address these issues, the former were released independently. The 2023-24 survey, completed by July 2024, was scheduled to be released by December, though delays beyond six months could make it overdue.
Experts also point out another trend where the government has not agreed with international ratings and indexes and has contested those claims. For instance, the global hunger index ranked India 105 of 127 countries, with a score of 27.3 in the 2024 Global Hunger Index pointing to a serious level of hunger in the country. The government responded by questioning the methodology and calling it ‘erroneous’.
Bhardwaj highlights that when global indices critical of the government are released, there’s often an attempt to discredit them, with the government countering by presenting its own data or altering collection methodologies. For example, data on anaemia, which were traditionally collected in a specific way, are now being modified, making it difficult to compare with past data.
She believes that such changes undermine decades of progress tracking and research, and discrediting indices like the Global Hunger Index or Democracy Index isn’t a constructive response, experts say, pointing out that governments should address the issues these indices raise rather than dismiss them.
This article originally appeared on IndiaSpend, a data-driven, public-interest journalism non-profit.
