Communalism, Regionalism, Secularism
Why in news?
Relevance: G.S paper I: Communalism, Regionalism, Secularism
- Over the years, BHU lived by Malaviya’s ideals, but recent developments at the famed university should worry us all.
- Some students of its Sanskrit Literature department have been protesting the appointment of a Muslim as one of its faculty members.
Background:
- In 1916, Madan Mohan Malaviya established what is now known as Banaras Hindu University (BHU) in 1916.
- They argue that adherents of the Islamic faith should not be allowed to enter the department building.
- In support of this stance, they point to a plaque purportedly installed by Malaviya that says “non-Aryans” are not allowed in.
- As a result, the department has held no classes since the man who’s the focus of their ire was appointed on 6 November.
Reasons behind the protest are called an outright shame:
- It’s a violation of the Constitution to discriminate against anyone on the basis of his caste or religion.
- BHU, like any other university, is governed by the rules of the University Grants Commission, and the professor in question has been appointed as per the criteria laid down for such appointments.
- He holds a doctorate in Sanskrit Literature and has been awarded by the Rajasthan government for his scholarship.
Conclusion
- Literature is literature, and Sanskrit is a classical language that’s open to anybody who wants to study or teach it. Its “Aryan” association is irrelevant.
- The protesting students need only go back and read the Rigveda in order to shed their misgivings.
- The classic text in Sanskrit says: Aah no bhadraah kartavyo yantu viswatah. Let noble thoughts come to us from every side.
- Highlights of the National Statistical Office survey data
Relevance: G.S paper III: Indian economy
Why in news?
- A leaked survey report of the National Statistical Office (NSO), published on Friday in Business Standard, seems to confirm suspicions of such a trend.
- According to the report, inflation-adjusted consumer spending in 2017-18 fell for the first time in four decades.
Titled Key Indicators:
- Household Consumer Expenditure in India, it crunched data from a vast sample of households across the country to find that in the period from July 2017 to June 2018, when the survey was conducted, India’s monthly per capita consumption expenditure was ₹1,446, down 3.7% from ₹1,501 in 2011-12, the last time the NSO went out asking people.
- The average money spent every month by rural residents in 2017-18 was 8.8% less than six years earlier, while urban consumption was up 2%.
- If accurate, this would lend credence to the argument that people’s purchases alone could not have sustained high levels of economic growth while investment was trailing off over the past seven odd years; the slowdown looks far broader.
- It also raises the worry that large numbers of low-income Indians might have slipped into poverty.
Arguments from the government
- The government has rejected the NSO survey as flawed and it may well be. Since it’s carried out twice a decade, it does not offer year-by-year data for analysis, and given the fog that hovers around official datasets, it’s difficult to determine the reliability of any.
- Even samples that are random to the extent possible can fail to be representative.
- Also, flaws could creep in from the “deflator” being used to snip out inflation.
- What should make us pause before taking those bleak numbers at face value, however, is the fact that they’re hard to square with India’s economic growth over the six-year span under study. Consumption constitutes about three-fifths of our gross domestic product (GDP).
- Investment expenditure, which makes up most of the rest, has clearly been sluggish.
- If individual spending was in decline across India, aggregate demand would have been hit hard and our GDP would not have recorded much growth over those years.
- Even the performance of corporate India would have been worse than reported.
- Admittedly, allegations have been made that our GDP was inflated by a 2015 switch in the way it is calculated. Even so, the discrepancy looks much too stark.
Might some other factor be at play?
- One plausible explanation involves that great black box of the Indian economy, the informal sector.
- Commercial activity that is not on the official radar does not get captured properly by our GDP data, but this sector is undeniably vast and has always had millions of dependents.
- The NSO survey began about half a year after the demonetization move of November 2016.
- This exercise left large parts of the country starved of cash and millions of currency-dependent businesses reeling.
- Also, July 2017 was the point at which the goods and services tax was imposed, which also had a major impact on the sector.
- There is little except plain observation to support this, but it’s possible that consumption saw a sudden drop in 2017-18 as a result of those disruptions.
Conclusion
- The distress in the countryside, we know, was especially severe.
- There may well have been a recovery since, but various signals suggest that plenty of pain persists.
- Whether the survey’s findings are valid or not, rural India deserves extra government help.
- Relations between Tourism and Religion
Relevance: Mains: G.S paper III: Tourism
Why in news?
- Karl Marx could not have got it more wrong when he reduced religion to “opium of the people”.
- The Chanakya sutra probably got closest to the truth. It held, among other things, that the basis of dharma is wealth (“dharmasya moolam artha”). Dharma and economic well-being, here, are inextricably intertwined.
Economic improvement
- In a country struggling to create jobs for our millions, temple tourism offers one major focal area for investment with a huge job multiplier potential.
- Unlike manufacturing, agriculture and even services, which are increasingly being automated, tourism is one sector where people and storytelling will always be important.
- Add the infrastructure and commercial potential of other tourist spots, and one wonders why Ayodhya was such a contentious issue.
- The temple’s construction will benefit both Hindus and Muslims.
Tourism as a sector of development
- Tourism is driven by four key attractions: natural beauty, esoteric adventure and sports, historical monuments, and religion.
- While the first three are driven by the quality of upkeep of the assets and attractions involved—something we have simply not managed to ensure—the last one, religious travel, is driven by the inner spiritual drive of individuals.
- It needs no marketing.
- The sheer fact that badly kept temples still draw the faithful by the million should tell us what a little bit of investment in better temples and well-managed charitable trusts can do to boost religion-related tourism and commerce.
Sardar Patel statue – A case study
- A Gujarat state tourism official has been quoted as saying that the ₹3,000 crore Sardar Patel statue earned ₹57 crore from the sale of tickets to 2.6 million visitors between November last year and mid-September.
- The Taj Mahal, in 2018-19, earned ₹78 crore from 6.8 million tourists, according to replies to questions in the Lok Sabha.
- If an artificially created tourist spot like the Patel statue—the world’s tallest—can, in less than a year, draw revenues to rival the centuries-old Taj, consider the revenue that can come from religiously motivated tourism around the Ram Mandir in Ayodhya.
- Not only the temple, but the entire ecosystem around it will generate huge revenues and jobs.
- North India, in particular, has huge potential for religious tourism because it cradled the birth of major Indic religions like Hinduism, Buddhism and Sikhism.
Marx’s ideology on religion
- The problem with the Left is that it thinks of religion as retrograde.
- Marx’s big contribution was his materialist interpretation of history, but beyond basics, men are not driven only by economic motives.
- The Left traces the evolution of modern-day India to political unification under the Mughals first and the British later.
- But this view is highly questionable, for India is really a ground-up nation, a country created from below through a common and deep reverence for the sacred.
- Diana Eck described India as “a sacred geography”, one created by the footprints of pilgrims who traversed the length and breadth of India from ancient times in pursuit of the spiritual and the sacred.
Way ahead
- In today’s situation of an economic slowdown, our economists prescribe antidotes like investment in
infrastructure, and boosting jobs through rural employment guarantee boondoggles, or even direct cash payouts to the poor. - But the one thing they have not talked about is investment in religious places and related infrastructure.
- When economists do not think about the culture they operate in, their remedies fail.
Conclusion
- There has been much breast-beating about people being unable to buy cheap glucose biscuits or even undergarments in this slowdown, but they will be proved wrong when it comes to funding the Ram temple.
- People and philanthropists will contribute to building the temple even in the midst of a slowdown.
RPA Act
Relevance: G.S paper II: Indian Polit
Why in news?
- Even while upholding the Karnataka Speaker’s orders disqualifying 17 defectors this year, the Supreme Court has allowed the former legislators to contest the by-elections to Assembly seats.
Karnataka scene:
- Most of them had tried to resign from their respective parties in July. It was seen as a ploy to bring down the JD(S)-Congress regime of H.D. Kumaraswamy.
- The suspicion was that they would get ministerial positions as soon as BJP formed a BJP government. The then Speaker kept them at bay for days by refusing to act on their resignations.
- Ultimately, he disqualified all of them and said the disqualification would go on till 2023 — the end of the current Assembly’s term.
- The Speaker’s stance was quite controversial as it created a conflict between resignation and disqualification.
- Now, his argument that resignation could not be an excuse to evade a disqualification has been accepted.
- The Speaker was also hoping to keep the defectors out of any alternative regime as members disqualified for defection are barred from becoming ministers until they get re-elected.
Welcome move
- The court’s exposition of the law relating to the interplay between resignation and defection is quite welcome.
- On the one hand, resignation does not take away the effect of a prior act that amounts to disqualification.
- On the other, Speakers are not given a free pass to sit on resignation letters indefinitely. Under Article 190(3), a provision under which the Speaker has to ascertain the “voluntary” and “genuine” nature of a resignation before accepting it, the court is clear that it is a limited inquiry, only to see if the letter is authentic and if the intent to quit is based on free will.
- “Once it is demonstrated that a member is willing to resign out of his free will, the Speaker has no option but to accept the resignation,” the court has said.
Way forward
- This effectively ends the argument that the Speaker is empowered to consider the motives and circumstances whenever a resignation is submitted.
- The verdict bemoans the fact that Speakers sometimes tend not to be neutral, and that change of loyalty for the lure of office continues despite the anti-defection law.
- Identifying its weak aspects and strengthening the law may be the answer.
Highlights of the BRICS summit outcomes
Relevance: G.S paper II: International relations
Why in news?
- With storm clouds gathering over the world economy, trading arrangements in disarray and questions over the relevance of the World Trade Organization (WTO).
- The summit of leaders of Brazil-Russia-India-China-South Africa (BRICS) could not have come at a more opportune time.
Highlights of the summit:
- BRICS has proved its naysayers wrong since the idea of grouping the world’s “five emerging economies” was coined by a consultant two decades ago (BRICS was formed in 2006).
- India and China have buoyed the grouping with their growth, and even though the idea behind BRICS has been dimmed by sluggish growth in Brazil and South Africa, and Russia’s sanction-laden slowdown, the group has adapted to the times and proven its resilience.
- The five countries are heading in different directions politically, they found ways to build a common vision for the world’s economic future with an emphasis on multilateralism and a joint statement at Brasilia that decried “unilateral and protectionist” actions.
- For India, in particular, the articulation of this vision comes at an important time, given that it faces its own economic crisis, and troubled trading ties with several nations.
- The failure of officials to resolve issues in time to join the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) had raised questions about whether India is reversing its market liberalisation and openness to trade.
- It is significant that Mr. Modi and Chinese President Xi Jinping used the BRICS platform for continued talks on bringing India back into the RCEP fold and focused on resolving their trade issues through the recently launched mechanism led by Finance Ministers.
Acknowledge made by BRICS countries:
- BRICS countries, which acknowledged the weakening of global economic growth in the statement, repeated their commitment to the WTO though the original promoter of the multilateral structure, the U.S., is retrenching its interest in the body.
- They also presented a vision for “rules-based, transparent, non-discriminatory, open, free and inclusive international trade.
- While commending the BRICS-led New Development Bank, and the BRICS business council in ensuring that BRICS countries, major drivers of growth in the past decade, continue to represent “close to a third of global output”.
- Where BRICS has failed its founders is in the vision of interdependence between the five countries; despite their combined population accounting for 40% of humanity, intra-BRICS trade still makes up just 15% of world trade.
Way forward
- It is greater connectivity and more trade that will allow the BRICS countries to claim their rightful space, and provide the leadership and energy that the global economic order needs urgently.