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Bangladesh: After the dust settles

August 30, 2024 | By Eklavya

Now that the dust is settling in Bangladesh in the wake of the unceremonious resignation of former Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina and her hasty departure to India, there are issues that need clarity before the world – and immediate neighbour India – can design a policy response to these developments. First, let us be clear that hubris was the primary force behind Ms Hasina’s political fate.

She certainly rode roughshod over Constitutional norms and conventions. Her sacking of Bangladesh’s first Hindu Chief Justice Surendra Kumar Sinha was just one example. The disproportionate use of violence by the security forces against protesting students was another. The fact that the Awami League, a party founded by her father Sheikh Mujibur Rehman which was once a bastion of secularism, intellectuals, progressive thought, and Bengali pride, was widely seen as having been taken over by contractors, big businesses, and middlemen on her watch was perhaps the final straw.

But let us also resist the South Asian tendency to see the world in binaries. Ms Hasina cracked down on terrorism, made the first genuine effort at deradicalisation of the population, was a friend to India while protecting her own country’s interests, balanced the China-US jostling for influence over Bangladesh with aplomb, ensured the army stayed in the barracks, and helmed her country’s journey from a low-income country to an aspirational middle-income one adroitly.

The Hasina Administration formulated policies and initiated structural reforms that diversified Bangladesh’s economy which is overly dependent on the manufacturing and export of garments. Indeed, even in the garment sector, a concerted attempt to make Bangladesh an integral part of Global Value Chains was evident through her years in power and was paying dividends. Economically, the past 15 years have been best for Bangladesh since its Independence in 1971and have seen the maximum number of people lifted out of abject poverty.

Sheikh Hasina won her fourth consecutive (and fifth overall) General Election in January 2024, though the victory was clouded by reports of widespread irregularities by neutrals and allegations of outright rigging by the fundamentalist Jamaat-e-Islami as well as the main Opposition Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) of Khaleda Zia which boycotted the poll.

The US had anyway been supporting the ‘Hasina-must-go’ narrative over the past few years as Washington was thought by many analysts to be getting increasingly restless because of the independent foreign policy being followed by Dhaka. Great power rivalry the strategically critical Indian Ocean Region (IOR) is intense, and the Bay of Bengal, with Chinese influence in neighbouring Myanmar dominant, is a geography that the US is desperately seeking to gain a foothold in.

Hubris may well have set in for the Hasina Administration before her 2024 electoral success due to its own actions but, and this is the key, her adversaries comprising the BNP, Islamists, and the US also realised that time was running out for them as Ms Hasina had consolidated her hold on power.

Soon after her poll win, the former Prime Minister announced reservations for the descendants of freedom fighters who had given up their all in Bangladesh’s Liberation War. Students across the country not affiliated with the Awami League were infuriated because despite the increasing prosperity in the country, government jobs – the holy grail for employment seekers across the Indian subcontinent due to deeply embedded socio-cultural reasons – threatened to become scarce for all other sections of the population. (Government jobs in South Asia are the only guarantee of job security, and health, educational, and pension benefits.) Imagine, if you will, the anti-Mandal Commission agitation in India of 1990 for a rough comparison.

As temperatures soared over the summer months and the students’ stir intensified, Ms Hasina’s opponents seem to have decided that they had the perfect foil in the student-led protests against the quota to foment trouble for the government. Each for their own reasons, of course:

The non-Awami League students’ organisations because they felt a genuine sense of grievance at the dwindling opportunities such an affirmative action policy would lead to;

The BNP because their supporters would be largely if not wholly excluded from the quota given the marginal role played by their progenitors in the country’s freedom struggle;
The Islamists because such a policy would underline Bangladesh’s privileging of its Secular-Bangla traditions over the Islamic-Urdu identity sought to be imposed on the country by Pakistan and its acolytes ever since the Partition of India in 1947 and;
The Americans because they wanted security and intelligence gathering facilities in Bangladesh which the Hasina administration was being ‘uncooperative’ about, especially giving the US untrammelled access to the strategically important St Martin’s Island.

It was the perfect storm. To her eternal credit, however, not only did a combative Sheikha Hasina push back against this multipronged attack on her, she even reached out to the student leaders in a televised interaction and asked them bluntly: If not for freedom fighters’ kin, whom should reservation be for, the Razakars (collaborators with Pakistan who gained infamy for murders, rapes, and targeted killings of minorities and secular-liberal Muslims during Bangladesh’s the freedom struggle)?

But it was too late to shape the narrative, especially given her own mistakes in terms of her autocratic functioning, the corruption indulged in by those around her, and her capture of state institutions. History will, however, record that when it came to the crunch, she left Bangladesh for refuge in India rather than be the cause of more bloodshed.

Manipur needs a fresh start

June 30, 2024 | By Eklavya

When moderate voices are marginalized so completely and effectively as has happened in the North-Eastern state of Manipur over the past year and more, it is apparent that societal cleavages have deepened exponentially. Indeed, a number of highly respected commentators are now saying that the Meitei-Kuki divide has widened to form an unbridgeable chasm.

Of the many causes for this state of affairs, the prolonged inability and/or unwillingness of the N Biren Singh government to take on the Meitei radical and vigilante groups is surely a pivotal factor. This is not to say that Kuki armed groups have not been equally vicious if not more so. But to underline the fact that it is of some solace to saner minds across the political spectrum that this so-called strategy did not pay off. In fact, it seems to have boomeranged with the Congress winning from both Lok Sabha seats in the state including the Meitei-dominated Inner Manipur parliamentary seat. It also is worth noting that RSS chief Mohan Bhagwat in his post-General Election statement indicated that the Sangh wants the hurt, resentment, and fear across vast swathes of the population of Manipur to be addressed on a priority by the administration at the state-level and the Centre.

Recent reports that the Chief Minister, who has served primarily his own agenda regardless of whether he was in the Congress or the BJP over the past two decades, is finally on the way out were denied but primarily by Biren Singh himself! In Delhi’s power corridors, the talk is of when, not if, there is a change in political leadership in Manipur. And about time too. For, a new beginning is sorely – and surely – needed.

The adjective used by a longtime observer of state politics to describe ties between the Meitei and Kuki communities, “toxic”, is unfortunately entirely accurate. This, in turn, has led leaders on both sides to say in private that coexistence is not possible for Meitei and Kuki within Manipur. If the divide in the state is as permanent as the ground reports suggest, the atrocities we have seen till now will likely fade in comparison with what may yet come.

Though the violence has not been one-sided, the Kuki community has borne the brunt of Meitei mobs on the rampage across the state over the past year. Kuki distrust of the state government is entirely understandable as the state law-enforcement machinery has failed in its primary duty. The bigger concern, however, is that the dominant narrative amidst the majority Meitei community seems to justify violence against the Kuki.

The Kuki community, it is alleged, are mostly illegal immigrants from Myanmar who are engaged in poppy cultivation having cleared large tracts of forest land in the hills of Manipur. The truth of this assertion is contested, though it cannot be wholly dismissed. But that is a law-and-order issue which should have been dealt with strictly by the Biren Singh administration. That this did not happen, however, can in no way justify the mob on the street calling for the large-scale “eviction” of the minority Kuki community from the state much less be a ground for the atrocities unleashed on those belonging to it.

The bloodshed in Manipur may have been sparked by the attacks on members of the Meitei community by hardline Kuki in Churachandpur District in May last year, but there should have been no room for so-called “retaliation” by vigilante groups. It was a clear failure of the state government which could not handle the fallout of the May attacks by swift and robust action against the perpetrators. Anyone who is claiming anything to the contrary is indulging in whataboutery. The atmosphere of intimidation in the months following the violence, and the lack of politicians of stature attempting to seriously initiate inter-community dialogue till today, points towards a bleak future.

It must also not be forgotten that a state-seeking separatist movement in Manipur was led by a section of the Meitei community in past decades, and many of the cadres of proscribed outfits such as the UNLF led the orgy of violence against the Kuki community in 2023. It would be naïve to believe that these are the people who have taken up arms against “Kuki infiltrators” out of a desire to protect the integrity of India. In this context, the Meitei community in particular needs to be appreciated for having, in essence, sent out a clear message to its hardline leaders in the Lok Sabha poll – not in our name. Moderate voices in both communities need to take a stand. Because Manipur deserves better.

Lessons for India from the UK election

July 01, 2024 | By Eklavya

Whether the Indian electoral-governance matrix, premised as it is on the British Westminster model, was the appropriate choice to deal with complexities of governing post-colonial India is a debate that has been going on for the past 75 years. And one can be sure it will continue in future decades.

After all, calls for a so-called Second Republic have been aired in India for a while now. Arguments and counter-arguments on the merits of a Presidential system as opposed to the extant Parliamentary system for the country too continue to be made. The debate on which method of making the vote count, as it were, and best reflects the Indian electorate’s will – proportional representation or the current first-past-post-the-post, winner-takes-all electoral approach – also have passionate adherents on either side.

But this is not an essay on these lofty debates. Rather, it a practical itemisation of the lessons stakeholders in the Indian political system could learn, if they so choose, from what has just gone down in the United Kingdom. As the headlines in the global media understandably highlight the Labour Party’s landslide electoral victory in the July 2024 General Election, which delivered its best showing in terms of number of seats won since the 1920s, there are some critical minutiae that seem to have been lost in the focus on Labour’s stupendous win. These hold lessons for India which follows much the same electoral system as the UK.

First, the Labour Party, while it emerged the winner in 412 Parliamentary seats in the 650-member House of Commons, did so on the basis of only 34% of the popular vote. Replace the Labour Party with BJP and the House of Commons with the Lok Sabha, and the parallels are eerie (albeit the BJP’s vote share has been a few percentage points more than Labour’s over the past three Lok Sabha polls.)

Secondly, the Conservative Party, in winning a measly 121 seats, did not completely collapse in terms of percentage of votes cast in its favour as some political pundits were predicting, which stood at 24%. Think of the Congress Party and the narrative shaped by BJP-simpatico media that India’s Grand Old Party is in terminal decline to understand the similarity. Indeed, the Congress too has been winning about 20-22% of the vote on average in three successive Indian elections beginning 2014.

Thirdly, the Eurosceptic Reform UK Party led by the controversial Nigel Farage won four million votes, which is about 15% of the popular vote, but ended up with just four seats. This compares to the traditional third party in British electoral politics, the Liberal Democratic Party, which won as many as 71 seats with a mere 12% of the national vote. Readers may decide which parties in the Indian set-up correspond with the smaller British parties such as the LDP and Reform to reach their own conclusions.

The fact remains, as the BBC pointed out in its coverage of the UK Election, that the disparity between the vote-share of parties and the seats won by them has been the highest in British history at 30%. Disproportionate representation, anyone?

The short point for Indian political parties which still operate within the ambit of the Westminster system despite desi variations, is that political parties will win some polls and lose others, but the structural issues in the Indian electoral system will have to addressed urgently to prevent a perversity in the name of democracy. For that to happen, however, these issues need to be debated and decided both within party fora and in public discourse. There is, unfortunately, no sign of that happening anytime soon. Readers may decide which parties in the Indian set-up correspond with the smaller British parties such as the LDP and Reform to reach their own conclusions.

The short point for Indian political parties which still operate within the ambit of the Westminster system despite desi variations, is that political parties will win some polls and lose others.

A Tale of Two Indias

June 04, 2024 | By Eklavya

The dichotomy in the priorities, target groups, and programmes of the two major national parties for the 2024 Indian General Election could not be starker. This is reflected in sharp relief in the manifestos of both the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and the Congress Party. An analysis of both documents shows that the parties’ respective understanding of the Indian condition – and the mitigation strategies each promises to implement for the greater good – is premised on two very different Indias, as it were.

The broad political messaging in the BJP and Congress manifestos is explicit. While the former projects confidence in coming back to power and promises, effectively, more of the same, the Congress, as the challenger, has done some out-of-the-box thinking to try and make a mark among an electorate that has been wary of voting for it at the national level over the past decade.

The BJP presents its focus on infrastructure creation and making India a “product nation” as the stepping stone to the country becoming a developed country or Viksit Bharat by the 100^th anniversary of Independence in 2047. No major new welfare schemes have been announced in the manifesto which includes promises to increase the Minium Support Price (MSP) for farmers, extend the Ayushman Bharat health scheme to senior citizens (over 70 years of age), and enable large-scale manufacturing.

The party seems confident that its personality-centric campaign crafted around Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his “guarantees” will do the trick. Reading between the lines of its manifesto, the BJP also implicitly derides the political culture of freebies or revdi and doubles down on the there’s-no-free-lunch philosophy albeit with a security net for the poor and marginalised sections of society. Apart from a manufacturing and infrastructure push, the BJP manifesto focuses on controlling inflation, ensuring macro stability, and placing a premium on fiscal prudence as it promises to make India the world’s third-largest economy (after the US and China) during its third term if re-elected. But what it doesn’t do, is set a target in the manifesto for what India’s GDP per capita – currently an abysmal US $2,000 – should be as the third-largest economy in nominal GDP terms. Therein lies the rub.

It is this perceived policy gap which elides the actual spending power or money in hand of individual citizens which brings forth the issue of the concentration of wealth in a few hands that the Congress has tried to focus on.

The Congress manifesto doesn’t pull it punches, promising cross-sectoral reservations on the basis of socio-economic/caste criteria, and a wealth redistribution effort. These bold if controversial assurances have the potential to strike a chord among the electorate if pitched right in the election campaign. Despite criticism from the usual suspects of the Congress seemingly intent on taking the country back to its “crony socialist” path, and India being reduced to relying on quotas and cash transfers in lieu of economic growth, there is a vast multitude of Indians for whom these assurances matter deeply. The party has shown courage in going against conventional wisdom and promising to reset economic policy.

Among its traction-inducing promises are the Rs 1 lakh annual cash transfers to the poor; a new employment-linked incentive scheme for corporates to encourage additional hiring; a nationwide socio-economic/caste census and reservations based on its results; raising the 50 per cent cap on reservations for SC, ST, and OBC sections of society; making available easy institutional credit to SCs and STs; a massive increase in health expenditure; legal guarantee for MSP; increasing wages under MGNREGA; introducing an urban employment guarantee programme; and bringing in a law to curb monopolies in media as well as cross-ownership of media by mega corporates. Congress has said it will refer cases of suspected monopolies to the Competition Commission of India and all media organisations will be required to disclose their ownership structures (direct and indirect), as well as cross holdings if any.

Combined with some of the Congress’ forward-looking manifesto promises, these so-called throwback policies may, if propagated sensibly, explained fully, and implemented without bloated bureaucracies indulging in rampant corruption, give Congress a fighting chance in the 2024 poll. Especially, outside of the metros and big cities of the country where economic distress is real and the voice of the marginalised often goes unheard.

Poll 2024: Where Cong is to blame and where it’s not

April 20, 2024 | By Eklavya

At around this time last year, the Opposition seemed to be in with a fighting chance to stitch together an alliance/seat-sharing arrangement that would pose a challenge to the BJP-led NDA for the 2024 General Election. Whether or not it would have prevented Prime Minister Narendra Modi from winning a third successive term, it certainly could have prevented the sweep now being predicted by pollsters and pundits alike for the ruling party.

The I.N.D.I.A. alliance launched in Bengaluru in July 2023 seemed to indicate that the Opposition brains trust had realised what had been obvious to most – that a fragmentation of the anti-BJP vote would need to be prevented if the saffron electoral juggernaut was to be halted in its tracks – or at least slowed down – come 2024. For a while, it actually seemed possible.

The presence of political heavyweights including Sonia Gandhi, MK Stalin, and Mamata Banerjee at the I.N.D.I.A. launch, and major regional parties including the RJD, Samajwadi Party, AAP, CPM, CPI, NCP (Sharad Pawar), and Shiv Sena (UBT) among others also open to reaching an understanding, did have the BJP concerned. From there, to the shambles the Opposition is in at present, has been a rather swift journey.

For leading lights of the Opposition, the operating adage appears to be success has many fathers but failure has a single parent, the Congress! The Grand Old Party has been blamed for having delusions of grandeur and being in denial about its diminished clout in the Indian political-electoral system, which may or may not be true, and more specifically for the failure of seat-sharing talks with numerous prospective allies.

That is where the Congress has been treated rather shabbily by the rest of the Opposition. The initial idea behind a Grand Opposition Alliance was that, as far as possible, there be a one-on-one contest against the BJP and its allies on all Lok Sabha seats. So, far, so good. But the methodology suggested to arrive at which party which would contest which seat, was that all I.N.D.I.A. alliance members would contest the seats their respective parties had won in the 2019 election, and a majority if not all seats in the states where they were the ruling or main Opposition party.

This was clearly an attempt to cut the Congress down to size. It does not take a genius to work out that with less than 50 sitting Lok Sabha MPs, and the Congress Party mainly ruling or occupying the status of the main Opposition in states where the BJP is phenomenally strong, the party would struggle to better its 2019 performance. There was clearly an element of trying to be too clever by half by non-Congress Opposition worthies.

Political logic and that of self-survival dictated that the Congress would, as it did, push back against this attempt to corner it by so-called allies. This led to delays in seat-sharing talks, and opportunistic regional parties jumping into the welcoming arms of the BJP-led NDA, which has once again grown in size as it does prior to most polls.

The Congress is to blame for creating many of the situations that the BJP has exploited over the past ten years, and its organisational-ideological degradation is evidence that it is paying for its sins, as it were. But the Congress is certainly not to blame for an Opposition in disarray seemingly ready to give a walkover to the BJP. The truth that Congress-baiters need to accept is that apart from the Grand Old Party, reduced as it is in both coherence of narrative and agitprop ability, there is no other major party in India that will never ally with the BJP.

Yes, the communists also fit the above framework except the Left parties are a very marginal electoral force today.At present, the electoral reality is that there is no pan-Indian party in play. For example, the BJP is negligible albeit making attempts to grow in the South, the Congress is missing in action from most of the North, and regional parties hold sway in large parts of the East.

Proof of the continued political relevance of the Congress is that the BJP recognises it as still the only nationwide political force which can, at some point, challenge it. That is not the Congress’ fault.

Youth representation or lumpen voice?

February 10, 2024 | By Eklavya

As yet another General Election looms in India complete with polarisation on all sides being the name of the mobilisation game, it’s perhaps apposite to reexamine what age Indians ought to have the right to vote. For the first four decades of Independence, 21 was the age at which voting rights came into play for citizens. Then came Rajiv Gandhi’s unleashing of the nation’s so-called youth potential and the voting age was lowered to 18 via the 61st Constitutional Amendment, 1988, which was passed into law in 1989. It’s been downhill ever since.

As early as in 2018, foreshadowing the march of populist and emotionally charged narratives the world over, psychologist Dr James McCue of the Edith Cowan University in Western Australia pointed out that the idea of adulthood – when it happens and how it is defined – is being challenged. Australia, Japan, and Malaysia are among many countries which have, with varying degrees of success, attempted to lower the voting age in recent years. In the main, the motivation for this move has been to address voter apathy and help young people feel more engaged in politics. But it may also signal that social views regarding the commencement of adulthood have shifted across the board, in effect becoming more dynamic in the definition of adulthood.

McCue’s research iterates that adulthood has traditionally been defined by a combination of age and the achievement of social milestones, and most countries have a legally defined age to determine when a person is considered an adult or has attained majority. In India, this is 21 years of age except in the highly discriminatory minimum age for marriage which is pegged at 18 for females but 21 for males. What is also not recognised enough in these parts is that becoming an adult is a process, with gradual increases in social responsibility, and not an event.

Rapid social changes, the hallmark of a society in transition, have accentuated the already chaotic ecology of contemporary India and have resulted in our expectations of young people and their levels of responsibility getting increasingly diverse. It has been brought out by experts that psychologically, age alone is an unreliable determinant of adulthood, as each individual varies in their rate of biological, cognitive and emotional development.

The recognition of a new life stage – emerging adulthood – has been recommended by developmental psychologists to account for the changes to social milestones that have traditionally represented adulthood. The concept of “emerging adulthood” acknowledges the varied levels of independence exhibited by young people and reflects the process of personal development, writes McCue. So, if a more dynamic definition of adulthood is adopted, at what age is it reasonable to assign social responsibility and by implication voting rights to young people?

In the Indian context, that must be 25 for the Lok Sabha i.e. General Election, 21 for State Assembly polls and 18 for panchayat and urban local bodies.

If, as the psychological evidence suggests, the current approach in law of gradually increasing social responsibility for young people is prudent and accurately reflects the transitional nature of development to adulthood, the above suggestion should surely find takers. Young people in high arousal situations are at risk of making impulsive decisions up until their mid-20s; however, during times of low-emotional arousal, the reasoning abilities of young people are equivalent to adults, research has underlined.

In India, civic engagement and its concomitant notion of nurturing a sense of civic nationalism premised on the idea of a non-supremacist Indic civilizational ethos is vital for citizens to have skin in the nation-building game. The nature of the adulthood of its citizenry, therefore, becomes vital in this endeavour to build a calmer, less frenetic, and more reasoned political discourse.

The modified voting ages suggested here seek primarily to achieve a twin-objective: First, to make responsible citizenship aspirational and privilege it as an attainment not to be exercised lightly but only after mature introspection; secondly, to ensure that the voting system is structured to reflect a progressive increase in both rights and responsibilities. In the process, it may even protect younger co-citizens of the republic who are in the process of ‘finding themselves’ from acting upon the propaganda, rent-seeking, and discourse that comprises the outreach architecture of all political parties including those on the extremes.

The argument is not, it bears underlining, to prevent those in the 18-25 age bracket from believing and/or being receptive to whichever political narrative tickles their fancy but to ensure that a cooling off period, in a sense, is in place before they act on their individual political predilections.

Then there’s the ‘independent economic contribution’ argument which, in the Indian context, where children in the main stay in the parental home far longer than in developed Western democracies and function as autonomous citizens in the economic sphere at a later stage in life (usually only by their mid-20s), cannot be ignored. This holds true both in urban and small-town India across the middle class and lower/emerging middle class, as well as in rural India where those dependent on agriculture tend to split landholdings between siblings to function as independent economic units much later in life than at 18 or even 21.

The palliative to the danger of a disconnect with democracy among young people is the progressive voting-age scale which is being suggested, as opposed to burying one’s head in the sand and pretending that radicalised, lumpen youth are not the bigger danger to Indian democracy.

The age of 18 is old enough for young adults to have a say in local governance; 21 to grapple with issues at the state-level and; 25 to engage with the national and international priorities of our nation-state. After all, if one needs to be 25, as one does, to stand as a candidate for the Lok Sabha election, on a parity of reasoning there is nothing wrong with the electorate also having that as the minimum qualification-age to vote in that poll.

Similarly, 21 years of age, the minimum suggested for being eligible to vote in Assembly elections, is no different from the age requirement that existed for 42 years to be eligible to vote in Lok Sabha and Assembly polls and it cannot be anybody’s argument that the Indian electorate did not use its ballot wisely and well despite much lower levels of education and prosperity. The 18-year-old threshold is apt for local polls to enable a rights-and responsibilities regime to boost robust grassroots democratic traditions and encourage electoral interface by the youth on everyday issues that impact them directly. That is the way to combat the traction generated by emotive disruptions initiated by a self-seeking political class.

It shouldn’t surprise anyone that despite castigating its predecessor governments and attempting to rollback many of their policies, there’s not a peep from the current regime on the voting-age issue. What’s sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander.