📰 The leaders we need in today’s world
Existentialist questions of the day magnify the importance of leadership committed to a liberal, inclusive. egalitarian order
•A tormented world, shaken out of its comfort by a pandemic whose devastating reach mocks humanity’s collective capacity to prevail, yearns for answers about our common future. Glaring and persisting inequities of the world order, accentuated by the virus and the digital divide, foretell the story of a failed leadership and failing realisation of the Millennium Development Goals.
•The question of leadership befitting the moment was, therefore, seldom more relevant. History beckons us once again to summon leadership that can navigate a happy and secure future for all, anchored in the inviolability of values that define our humanity. Whether one subscribes to the view that history is a chronicle of accomplishments of the great men and women of their time, or believes that they do not make history “...as they please but under circumstances existing already...” the centrality of leadership at transformative moments in history stands empirically established. As Will Durant reminds us, leaders “are the very life and blood of history, of which politics and industry are but a frame”. Arnold Toynbee, in his monumental work, A Study Of History , tells us similarly that the rise and fall of civilisations is a history of periodic challenges and our response to them. Clearly, the question of leadership is integral to the context that summons it.
A potent cocktail
•A survey of the present landscape is both daunting and depressing. The global retreat of democracies, relegation of the ethical imperative to an obsessive pursuit of raw power as an end in itself, a crisis of institutional legitimacy, and the challenge of forging a political consensus needed for hard but necessary decisions interrogate the proclaimed assumptions of democratic resilience. The rise of ‘jingoistic nationalism’ in confrontation with an international cooperative endeavour to face common challenges, a skewed balance between demands of security and sanctity of civil rights, the sordid saga of fake news and misinformation, an unprecedented global financial crisis that has weakened our collective capacity to rescue national economies, loss of millions of jobs with an estimated $3.4 trillion lost in labour revenue and the resultant social distress, heightened geopolitical rivalries, racism, xenophobia, and woeful absence of a united global response to the challenge of climate change collectively present a potent cocktail of societal instability and political disruption.
•Increasing encroachment of the private sphere by a ‘surveillance state’ through the abuse of digital technologies and Artificial Intelligence systems raise discomforting questions about the flawed dominance of efficiency over ethics and power over principle. Notwithstanding the wholly welcome technological empowerment of vast swathes of humanity, digital inequality, the omnipresence of algorithm-driven platforms and commercial harvesting of personal data raise disquieting questions about an unhindered infraction of privacy rights and human dignity. Issues concerning accountability for autonomous systems, the absence of enforceable global norms on cybersecurity given the expanding reach of cyber bullies, and communal polarisation and violence facilitated by social media raise questions about the future of liberty and dignity in an age of rights. In a world driven by untamed technology, the relationship between its creator as the ‘measure of all things’ and his creation has been reversed. Digital ‘code wars’ are seen as the new ideological confrontation with a potential to divide the world. The diminished authority of the state to regulate the impact of technology on our social and political life questions the original premises of the social compact. The ‘insidious creep’ challenges the idea of the democratic state itself.
•The absence of an enforceable philosophical framework of values defining the boundaries of the digital world in which life as a drama of decisions is supplanted by algorithms and robots impels an unhurried reflection on the kind of world we want and the choices we must make. The new world in which life will be re-engineered and adapted to unprecedented changes will need extraordinary leadership that can apply knowledge of the new age to challenges of the future within a moral framework that celebrates freedom and fairness as cherished values.
•Leaders moulded in different frames are expected to follow their own trajectories, hopefully without falling to the seduction of absolute power induced by narrow nationalisms. Indeed, they must decide the bridges they should burn and those they must cross. Leaders are expected to mould the collective reflections of the people and flesh out a vision befitting the task at hand. They must reconcile power with public sentiment. In a world scarred by conflict and injustice, leadership is about giving hope in the future to the marginalised and respecting aspirations and mediating amongst competing views to forge a sustainable political consensus through powerful messaging.
True leadership
•Integrity, consistency, empathy, relentless determination, self-effacing humility, a binding moral compass and the ability to motivate masses within the inviolate ethical and ideological framework of politics are leadership attributes more relevant today than ever. A largeness of heart willing and able to rise above the petty and personal, together with intellectual depth necessary to lead the battle of ideas for the establishment of a dignitarian global society, best define the qualities of leadership in these troubled times. Arrogance, ignorance, obduracy, boastfulness, and ‘scapegoating’ have no place in the lexicon of elevating leadership needed to address the vexed questions that we confront. True leadership is about loyalty to larger purposes of the day and which, when confronted with a necessary choice, owes no apology to other multiple loyalties. It is about investing politics with a high moral purpose.
•Existentialist questions of the day magnify the importance of inspiring leadership committed to a liberal, inclusive and a truly egalitarian order. The time for such a leadership is here. Those aspiring to lead will have many challenges to meet and lessons to learn.
Addressing poverty is the key to improving the health and nutritional status of mothers and their infants
•From the ramparts of the Red Fort on Independence Day, the Prime Minister declared that the government is considering raising the legal age of marriage for girls, which is currently 18 years. He said, “We have formed a committee to ensure that daughters are no longer suffering from malnutrition and they are married off at the right age. As soon as the report is submitted, appropriate decisions will be taken about the age of marriage of daughters.” The Committee in question is the task force set up on June 4, announced earlier by the Finance Minister in her Budget Speech. It is widely understood (but not officially stated) that the task force is meant to produce a rationale for raising the minimum age of marriage for women to 21, thus bringing it on a par with that for men.
Population control
•Since there is no obvious constituency that has been demanding such a change, the government seems to be motivated by the belief that simply raising the age of marriage is the best way to improve the health and nutritional status of mothers and their infants. Because it flies in the face of the available evidence, we need to ask where this belief is coming from.
•One plausible source could be those who advocate for population control and who are influential and whose research is well-funded. Consider, for example, an article published in the prestigious journal The Lancet Child and Adolescent Health , by Nyugen, Scott, Neupane, Tran and Menon, on May 15, 2019. It was funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. This article analyses data on stunting in children and thinness in mothers (as measures of under-nourishment) in the latest round of the National Family Health Survey 4 (2015-16). The paper uses rigorous methods to chase a flawed hypothesis. The authors examine the strength of the association between many different causal factors (the mother’s age at childbearing, her educational level, living conditions, health conditions, decision-making power, and so on) and the health status of mother and child. As it turns out, the poverty of the mother plays the greatest role of all by far — both in relation to her undernourishment and that of her child, but this is not acknowledged. The authors only concede that their cross-sectional design (using data from a single time period) “reduces causal inference. For example, becoming pregnant early might lead to reduced education or wealth; however, a woman from a poor background and lower education might be more likely to become pregnant early.” In other words, instead of early pregnancy causing malnourishment, they may both be the consequences of poverty.
•The stated concern of the study was to find ways to break the “intergenerational cycle of undernutrition”. Surely the best way to go about breaking such a cycle would be to pick the factors that are playing the strongest role in perpetuating it. In this case, it would be to address the poverty of the mother, which could be done in a myriad ways, beginning with the most direct method of nutritional programmes for girls and women through a range of institutional mechanisms from Anganwadis to schools. However, the authors choose to concentrate on delaying the age of pregnancy, even though this is the weakest link of all. In fact, age only begins to have some real significance when pregnancies are delayed to ages of 25 and above, which is true of only a minuscule proportion of women in India. The article is unusually generous in its use of the usual scholarly caveats, but leaves itself open to being co-opted by larger agendas driven by the doctrine that “over-population” is the root of all evil in poor countries.
Declining fertility rates
•It is unfortunate that such thinking is finding a home in the highest office of the Indian government. Just a year ago, from the ramparts of the same fort, the Prime Minister bluntly declared that “population explosion” was one of India’s major problems. As he put it, “with an ever increasing population, we have to think, can we do justice to the aspirations of our children? Before a child is born in our home, we must ask if we have prepared ourselves to fulfil the child’s needs, or are we going to leave the child to its fate?” Perhaps he (or his advisers) were influenced by the many international reports making alarming predictions about future dystopias that would result if child marriage were not swiftly eliminated in countries like India, which is home to the largest number of underage marriages in the world. It is a pity that those who have the Prime Minister’s ear did not bother to seek the advice of our own demographers who have been studying the apparent link between early marriage and escalating fertility rates for decades. As it turns out, India’s fertility rates have been declining to well below replacement levels in many States, including those with higher levels of child marriage. This could be the reason why those advocating population control have chosen to shift from fuelling fears about booming populations to expressing concern for the undernourishment of children.
Costless and effortless
•Perhaps there is a more cynical reason at work. Raising the age at marriage by amending the law is costless and can be effortlessly achieved by legal fiat. Why not claim that doing so will enhance the welfare of women and children, since addressing the true causes of the poor health and nutrition of mothers and children is too difficult a task? The government will not incur any financial costs for raising the age of marriage of girls from 18 to 21 years. But the change will leave the vast majority of Indian women who marry before they are 21 without the legal protections that the institution of marriage otherwise provides, and make their families criminalisable. Those who fervently believe that the minimum age of men and women should be the same in the name of gender equality can suggest that India follow global norms of 18 years for both.
•Given the present climate, it could even be that this move is partly prompted by a vague belief that child marriage is more prevalent among Muslims and helps them reproduce faster. The evidence shows that this is not true, but such prejudices are inoculated against all evidence. In this context, it is interesting that the States with high mean ages at marriage of 25 years are erstwhile Jammu and Kashmir, Mizoram, Nagaland, Manipur and Goa. Even Kerala (22 years) and Delhi (23 years) have significantly lower mean ages at marriage.
•The proverbial “thinking Indian” — fast becoming an endangered species — has now become accustomed to watching helplessly as acts of state folly unfold. She can also continue to hope for miracles.
📰 A losing proposition
Nativism is not a solution to India’s growing unemployment crisis
•India has seen many versions of the ‘sons of the soil’ argument over decades. Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan’s announcement that only those domiciled there would be eligible for government jobs in the State is not unique in that sense. At the same time, it denotes a certain mainstreaming of nativism that more parties and States appear to be adopting. Mr. Chouhan’s announcement was packaged as a promise to the youths of the State, but in reality, it is a sign of gloom. Regional parties have always focused on local sentiments, but what is notable in recent years is the BJP and the Congress too jumping on the bandwagon. The Congress in Madhya Pradesh is supporting the move, and in Maharashtra, it is part of the ruling coalition led by the Shiv Sena which is pushing measures to give priority to locals in employment in the private sector. Similar moves from States such as Karnataka, Gujarat, Andhra Pradesh, Haryana and Telangana in recent years to introduce various types of domicile eligibility for job seekers, in private and government jobs, have either been aborted or had limited outcomes. But measures that raise artificial barriers go against the grain of national integration, which includes market integration.
•There are regional particularities to be considered, nevertheless. Some States require a certain proficiency in the local language to be employed in government jobs, which is for administrative reasons. There are also restrictions on movement of people into tribal areas of India. These are exceptions provided in the legal and constitutional scheme of India to manage its remarkable diversity. Inciting local passions in order to divert public attention from the real challenge of generating employment for the country’s swelling youth population falls in a different realm. Migrant populations fulfil a market demand created by gaps in skills and preferences. That is one reason why government orders and even laws of the past in several places that mandated quotas for locals in employment were not enforced. The spectre of locals losing out to migrants is hugely exaggerated and often designed to beguile the people. In Gujarat, politicians including those of the ruling BJP continue to raise a hue and cry for a domicile quota of 85% in the private sector workforce whereas the government data showed in 2017 that 92% of it was local already. India has a severe unemployment crisis and efforts that match the challenge are badly needed. Nativism is not a part of the solution. In fact, it can aggravate the crisis by creating a hostile environment to investment, growth and employment generation.
