📰 4,000-year-old settlement found during Odisha excavation
Archaeologists encounter distinct traces of three cultural phases at the excavation site at Durgadevi village
•The Odisha Institute of Maritime and South East Asian Studies (OIMSEAS), an archaeological wing of the State government, has discovered a 4,000-year-old settlement and ancient artifacts in Balasore district.
•After uncovering traces of fortified early historic sites near Balasore town, the OIMSEAS had sought permission from the Archaeological Survey of India (ASI) to document the site at the Durgadevi village in Remuna tehsil.
•Durgadevi is located 20 km from Balasore town. According to the ASI, the site has a circular mud fortification of about 4.9 km etween the Sona river to the south and the Burahabalang river on its northeastern margin.
•Archaeologists have come across distinct traces of three cultural phases at the excavation site — Chalcolithic (2000 BCE to 1000 BCE), the Iron Age (1000 BCE to 400 BCE) and the Early Historic Period (400 BCE to 200 BCE).
•“Two small nullas, Gangahara and Prassana, join the site on its north and south, forming a natural moat for the site, which was an ancient water management system developed at least 4,000 years back from present,” the institute said.
•Excavation was started with an aim to correlate the simultaneous growth and development of maritime activities, and urbanisation in the east coast of India, linking the Ganga valley in north and the Mahanadi valley in central Odisha, more particularly to focus on early cultural development in northern Odisha, the institute informed.
•According to the OIMSEAS, horizontal excavation was concentrated in an area of two acres of high land, where a cultural deposit of about 4 to 5 meters was seen.
•Archaeologists have come across a human settlement, and artifacts belonging the Chalcolithic period.
•“The major discovery of the Chalcolithic period of Durgadevi is the base of a circular hut, black on red painted pottery, black slipped ware, red slipped ware, and copper objects. The floor of the circular hut is rammed with red soil,” Sunil Kumar Pattnaik, archaeologist and Secretary, OIMSEAS.
•“From the base of the circular hut and the utilitarian objects found, the lifestyle of the people has been derived. People were mostly leading a settled life and had started agriculture, and domestication of animals and fishing,” he said.
•Similarly, the cultural material evidence and remains found from this phase include pottery, remains of black burnished ware, black and red ware, iron objects like nails, arrow heads, and crucible and slag of various kinds belonging to the Iron Age.
•“The use of iron is a landmark phase in the growth of civilisation in Odisha, particularly in north Odisha. There are several iron age sites discovered by various archaeologists in the upper and middle Mahanadi valley, but in north Odisha, this is the first site,” said Mr. Patnaik.
•Cultural materials from the early historic period such as pottery specimens of red ware, terracotta ear studs, bangles, beads, and some conical objects, were also discovered from the site.
•“The lifestyle of the people, which is derived from the cultural materials, was very improved at that time, from an agricultural base to trade and construction of fortification around the site with a moat, which signify the emergence of urbanisation at Durgadevi around 400 BCE to 200 BCE,” said the OIMSEAS Secretary.
‘Citizen can’t be penalised for discrepancy in form by Centre’
•The Delhi High Court has restrained the Centre from taking any coercive steps against an NGO that was unable to submit its annual return due to discrepancy in the new form prescribed for declaring foreign contributions.
•“The citizen cannot be penalised for a discrepancy in the form prescribed by the respondent [Centre], which has resulted in the form being unable to be submitted even in the case of a law abiding citizen,” said Justice C. Hari Shankar.
•The court’s order came on a petition by Arbor Charitable Foundation, an NGO, which receives foreign contributions in accordance with the protocol set out in the Foreign Contribution Regulation Act, 2010 (FCRA). The NGO’s grievance arises out of the peculiarities in the new FC-4 form, in which returns, regarding foreign contributions received by it are required to be filed.
The rules
•Section 18 of the FCRA requires the beneficiary of the foreign contribution to file an intimation before the Central government regarding the contributions received. The process for filing said intimation is set out in Rule 17 of the Foreign Contributions Regulations Rules, 2011.
•These rules were amended with effect from September 28, 2020. By the amendment, the earlier Form FC-6, in which the intimation/ return was required to be submitted by the beneficiary of the contributions, was replaced by an FC-4 form.
•The FC-4 form is required to be accompanied by a copy of the statement of account of the beneficiary from the bank in which the beneficiary maintains the requisite exclusive Foreign Contribution Account, and is also required to be certified by an officer of the bank.
•In September last year, the Centre made it mandatory for all NGOs to receive foreign contributions only at the New Delhi Main Branch of the State Bank of India (SBI). Prior to this there was no requirement of the FCR account being in SBI.
A peculiar situation
•The NGO submitted that this has resulted in a peculiar situation in which, though March, 31, 2020 would be the relevant date for filing of the return for the year 2019-2020, the requirement of the account under the FCRA/FCR rules being in the SBI, New Delhi was introduced only in September, 2020 and the specific branch of the bank was notified only on October 7, 2020.
•The NGO’s accounts where foreign contributions were received were not in the SBI, till October 7, 2020. As a result, the NGO submitted that it has “become impossible” for it to submit the return under FC-4 form for the year 2019-2020.
•The NGO submitted that though it made a representation to the Central government on June 15, this year the problem continues.
•“The difficulty being faced by the petitioners [NGO] appears, prima facie, to be genuine,” the court said.
•“Till the next date of hearing, the respondent (Centre) is restrained from taking any coercive action against the petitioner for failure to file the requisite return under the FC-4 form before 30th June, 2021,” the High Court ordered.
•The court also dismissed the submission made by the Centre’s counsel that the NGO can submit its return even after June 30, 2021, with appropriate penalty. “It [this order] would open a pandora’s box. Number of associations will come like this,” the Centre’s counsel argued.
•“You said it will open Pandora’s box. What was there in Pandora’s box?,” Justice Shankar asked while rejecting the plea.
📰 Anganwadi workers struggle with Centre’s order on ‘Poshan’
They seek phones to download mandatory mobile app.
•Anganwadi workers in several States, including Punjab and Haryana, are up in arms after a government order threatened them with a pay cut if they did not download the government’s mobile application called Poshan Tracker to record delivery of services by them. They demanded to know who would give them the mobile phones and bear the expenses for recharge.
•The mobile application and the use of technology for real time growth monitoring and tracking of beneficiaries is the mainstay of the government’s Poshan Abhiyaan or Nutrition Mission which aims to improve nutritional outcomes for children, pregnant women and lactating mothers.
•In Punjab’s Gurdaspur, several thousand anganwadi workers and helpers held a demonstration on Friday registering their protest against the mandatory use of the mobile application.
•“There are nearly 30,000 anganwadi workers affiliated to our union and none of them have downloaded the Poshan Tracker application because the government has neither given us mobile phones, nor money for recharge,” says Usha Rani, president, All India Federation of Anganwadi Workers and Helpers (AIFAWH). “Most workers are financially weak as widows, disabled and divorced women get a preference for the job. How can then the government expect them to foot the bill from their pocket?” she asked.
•They are also demanding payment of dues totalling approximately ₹40,000 - ₹45,000 per worker in Punjab, which they say have accumulated since the inception of the scheme in March 2018.
•“On the one hand, the government has linked our incentives with the mobile application and on the other hand, it hasn’t procured mobile phones for us. As a result, it has failed to pay us our monthly incentive under the Poshan scheme of ₹500 per month for three years and ₹200 per month for recharge sanctioned by the Centre, which add up to ₹27,000. We have also not been paid an amount of ₹200 per beneficiary under the Pradhan Mantri Matru Vandana Yojana,” says Usha Rani.
•“We are not opposed to the Poshan Tracker, but we need a mobile phone, expenses for recharge as well as training to use smartphones as the application is compatible with mobile phones that are Android 6 or above. Many workers only know how to use the keypad mobile phones,” says Shakuntala Devi, general secretary, Haryana Anganwadi Workers and Helpers Union.
•The AIFAWH has demanded that the Union Ministry of Women and Child Development withdraw its “illegal and unethical order”.
•The order issued by the Women and Child Development Ministry on March 4 read, “It may be kindly noted that payment of honorarium of AWWs (anganwadi workers) for the month of March 2021 onwards will be linked to downloading of Poshan Tracker App and expeditious inputting of data by all anganwadi workers in States and Union Territories. Allocation of food grains/funds to States and Union Territories from the first quarter of 2021 onwards will also be based on data of beneficiaries on boarded on Poshan Tracker system.”
•Workers also questioned Union Minister for Women and Child Development Smriti Irani’s claim in May that over 14.05 lakh anganwadi centres in the country were connected with the Poshan Tracker when anganwadi workers in many States have not been able to download the application.
•In Himachal Pradesh, anganwadi workers are faced with a different challenge.
•“Recording all the information on the mobile application has resulted in two or three fold increase in our workload,” says Veena Sharma, general secretary, Himachal Pradesh Anganwadi Workers and Helpers Union. “Many anganwadi centres are situated in remote locations and often don’t have Internet connectivity. As a result, we have to walk 500 metres to 1 km to a spot where we can get some network coverage. Moreover, though the mobile application was developed to replace registers, we still have to enter all the details in our registers for backup in case the data is lost,” she explains.
📰 Pandemic increased vulnerability to human trafficking: U.S. report
The report said that the Chinese government engaged in “widespread forced labour, including through the continued mass arbitrary detention of more than one million Uyghurs, ethnic Kazakhs, ethnic Kyrgyz, and other Muslims” in Xinjiang.
•The pandemic resulted in an increase in vulnerability to human trafficking and interrupted existing anti-traffic efforts, according to the Trafficking in Persons report, an annual study released by the U.S. State Department. The U.S. has determined that governments of twelve countries, including China, had a policy of trafficking in the reporting period (year ending March 31). On India, the report says that while it did not meet the minimum standards to eliminate trafficking, the government was making significant efforts, although these were inadequate, especially when it came to bonded labour.
•“The concurrence of the increased number of individuals at risk, traffickers’ ability to capitalise on competing crises, and the diversion of resources to pandemic response efforts has resulted in an ideal environment for human trafficking to flourish and evolve,” Kari Johnstone, the official with oversight of the report wrote in it its introduction.
•Twelve governments were determined, by the State Department, to have a “policy or pattern” of human trafficking resulting in their countries being assigned a ‘Tier 3’ rating in the report. Afghanistan, Burma, China, Cuba, Eritrea, North Korea, Iran, Russia, South Sudan, Syria and Turkmenistan were on this list.
•The report said that the Chinese government engaged in “widespread forced labour, including through the continued mass arbitrary detention of more than one million Uyghurs, ethnic Kazakhs, ethnic Kyrgyz, and other Muslims” in Xinjiang.
•For India, the report said the government is not meeting the minimum standards to eliminate trafficking “but is making significant efforts to do so.” The government, in the US administration’s view, had increased efforts in the latest reporting period relative to the previous one, taking into account the impact of the pandemic on anti-trafficking efforts, resulting in India retaining a Tier 2 classification. The report said the efforts included identifying more victims of trafficking and prosecuting more cases.
•“Overall anti-trafficking efforts, especially against bonded labor, remained inadequate. The government achieved fewer convictions, and the acquittal rate for traffickers remained high at 73 percent,” the report said.
•On the chapter on the United States, the report says that although the government met the minimum standards for the elimination of trafficking, it had policies in place that limited immigration options for trafficking victims, before repealing those policies. There is also a reference to unaccompanied minors being expelled from the U.S.
•While U.S. law “requires the government to screen unaccompanied children and follow certain procedures to place the children in the least restrictive setting in the best interest of the child to combat child trafficking, unaccompanied children were processed and expelled,” the report says.
📰 Unjust green: On vaccine passports
India must continue to monitor discrimination in vaccine passports issue
•The European Union’s decision to enforce a “Green Pass” to allow travel within the EU from July 1, and linked to specified vaccines, has set off a storm of protest from several quarters including India. According to the European Medicines Agency (EMA) that sets the guidelines, the vaccines given “conditional marketing authorisation” were Comirnaty (Pfizer/BioNTech), Vaccine Janssen (Johnson & Johnson), Spikevax (Moderna) and Vaxzevria (AstraZeneca), which makes it clear that neither of India’s vaccines, Covishield and Covaxin, as well as Russia’s and China’s, would be eligible for the EU Digital COVID Certificate (EUDCC), as the Green Pass is formally called. External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar took up the exclusion strongly with EU authorities this week, particularly the case of Covishield, which is made under licensing and certification from AstraZeneca, and cleared by WHO. India has argued that the entire idea of “vaccine passports” would leave developing nations and the global south at a disadvantage, as they have restricted vaccine access. An unspoken but valid criticism is that there is a hint of racism in the action — the EMA list only includes vaccines already used by Europe and North America. A letter of protest on the EMA’s decision was also issued by the African Union and the Africa CDC this week, which called Covishield the “backbone” of the COVAX alliance’s programme, that has been administered in many African countries. The EMA list is not binding however, and countries can choose to include others individually. After India’s vocal protests, and its subtle threat to impose reciprocal measures, at least a third of the EU has said they would recognise Covishield (Estonia has accepted Covishield and Covaxin).
•While the news that Austria, Estonia, Germany, Greece, Iceland, Ireland, the Netherlands, Slovenia, Spain and Switzerland (not an EU member) have accommodated India’s concerns is welcome, there are still some hurdles before Indian travellers. Most of these countries are not at present accepting Indian travellers at all, as no non-essential travel is allowed to EU countries, and the spread of the Delta variant, first identified in India, has meant further travel restrictions. In addition, Indians who have taken doses of Covaxin will need to wait even longer, until this vaccine receives WHO clearance. Finally, as more nations complete their vaccine programmes, they will seek to tighten their border controls with “vaccine passports” and longer quarantines in order to curtail the spread of new variants. While it is necessary for the Government to keep up with these actions worldwide, and battle discriminatory practices, the real imperative remains to vaccinate as many Indians as possible, given that more than six months after the Indian inoculation programme began, only 4.4% of those eligible have been fully vaccinated.
📰 Net loss: On Internet access to schools
The Centre must help provide Internet links to all schools as an essential service
•The digital divide in India’s school education system, reflected by the absence of computers and Internet access on campus, emerges starkly from the Education Ministry’s Unified District Information System for Education Plus (UDISE+), for the pre-pandemic year of 2019-20. Physical infrastructure has traditionally meant good buildings, playgrounds, libraries and access to water and toilets, but the advent of hybrid learning even ahead of the coronavirus crisis has made essential online access and computers key adjuncts to make the learning process more engaging. During 2020-21, it became painfully evident that most students had to rely on remote learning, but many faced the double jeopardy of not possessing their own computing devices and smartphones at home, and their schools remaining in the dark without such facilities. In remote areas, particularly in the Northeast, many had to travel closer to mobile phone towers to access the Internet on shared phones to get their lessons. The latest data confirm that a mere 22% of schools across the country on average had Internet access, while government institutions fared much worse at 11%. On the second metric of functional computer access, the national average was 37% and for government schools, 28.5%. Beyond the averages, the range of deficits reflects deep asymmetries: 87.84% of Kerala schools and 85.69% in Delhi had an Internet facility, compared to 6.46% in Odisha, 8.5% in Bihar, 10% in West Bengal and 13.62% in Uttar Pradesh.
•Students and teachers not being able to use computers and the Internet is acknowledged to be a form of deprivation, especially during the pandemic, just as the inability to attend in-person classes is another. Many scholars see the teaching-learning process as multi-dimensional, helping to inculcate social skills. COVID-19 has, however, compelled all countries to evaluate hybrid education models, with a mix of lessons delivered virtually now and on campus later when the virus threat abates. In such a multi-layered process, bringing computers and the Internet to all schools cannot be delayed any longer. The Centre must explore all options, such as the National Broadband Mission, the BSNL network and other service providers, to connect schools, including all government institutions that are severely deprived; the upcoming 5G standard with the benefit of high wireless bandwidth may also be able to help bridge the gap quickly. Getting computers to schools should also not be difficult because, apart from public funding, communities, corporates and hardware makers can use recycling and donation options. The UDISE+ shows that many schools have fallen through the net, and they need urgent help to get connected.
📰 Rural power solutions even other States can emulate
As a recent ruling by Rajasthan’s power regulator implies, enabling energy access must go beyond powering rural homes
•Over the past decade, India has made great strides in expanding energy access in rural areas. Credible estimates suggest a near doubling of electrified rural households, from 55% in 2010 to 96% in 2020 (World Bank, 2021).
•However, the measure of access to power supply, has been the number of households that have been connected to the electricity grid. While this is a significant measure, it discounts large areas of essential and productive human activities such as public schools and primary health centres. And despite greater electrification, power supply is often unreliable in rural areas.
•A recent ruling by Rajasthan’s power regulator points to this yawning gap, but also suggests solutions that other States could emulate. The Rajasthan Electricity Regulatory Commission (RERC) has ordered the State’s three power distribution companies, or discoms (the Jaipur, Ajmet and Jodhpur Vidyut Vitran Nigam Limited) to solarise unelectrified public schools. This has the potential to electrify about 1,500 government-run schools in the remote parts of the State with roof-top solar panels and generate about 15 megawatts (MW) of power. The RERC has also suggested installation of batteries to ensure storage of power.
•Apart from enabling education, this ruling would benefit several other crucial aspects of rural life. Government schools serve as public spaces in rural areas. They doubled up as COVID-19 care centres in the past year and have housed villagers from extreme weather such as storms and floods, apart from turning into polling centres come election season.
•Battery storage of power ensures that they cater to children’s after-school activities. Schools could also extend power supply to mid-day meal kitchens, toilets, and motorised water pumps and not limit it to powering fans and lights in classrooms.
Clean energy drive
•The RERC order also directs Rajasthan’s cash-strapped discoms to seek corporate social responsibility (CSR) funds for the solarising drive and allows schools ownership of the power systems in a phased manner. This removes the burden of infrastructure development expenses on discoms, while also ensuring clean energy for the schools.
•The power that is generated could also be counted towards the discoms’ Renewable Purchase Obligations (RPO). RPO is the proportion of power that distribution companies must procure from renewable sources. This ratio is a gradual annual progression to encourage greater use of renewable energy and to provide for a phased manner to reduce dependence on climate warming fossil fuels.
Achieving a target
•In 2019, Rajasthan set itself an ambitious target of producing 30 GW of solar energy by 2025 (Rajasthan government, 2019). It currently has an installed capacity of about 5 GW, most of which are from large-scale utility plants, or solar parks with ground-mounted panels. The State must install at least 7 GW every year for the next four years to achieve this target. This is not impossible, but it would require investment and installation on a war footing.
•While Rajasthan is India’s largest State in terms of land mass with vast, sparsely populated tracts available to install solar parks, bulk infrastructure of this scale is susceptible to extreme weather events. With climate change increasing the possibility of such events, a decentralised model of power generation would prove to be more climate resilient.
•Taking a cue from the RERC ruling, a greater number of public buildings could be used to install roof-top solar panels. Buildings such as primary health centres, panchayat offices, railway stations and bus stops could easily be transitioned to utilising clean energy. And with battery storage, the susceptibility of grid infrastructure to extreme weather events could be mitigated. This is called climate proofing.
•For instance, the power blackout in the American State of Texas due to an extreme weather event earlier this year was caused due to inadequately climate-proofed natural gas equipment, which supplied domestic electricity. While the State’s Governor Greg Abbott blamed it on frozen wind turbines and solar panels, about 70% of power that is generated in Texas is from natural gas and coal-fired power plants. Windmill power is about 20% and solar is a mere 1.1%.
•Large-scale projects are generally financed by companies that wish to profit from economies of scale. They are less interested in investing in rural electricity as it is not as lucrative. Large-grid based projects add to the supply of power in urban areas, and therefore, only marginally further greater energy access goals.
•As solar installations become inexpensive and with rapidly advancing battery storage technologies, decentralised solar power generation has become a reality. A State such as Rajasthan, which is most exposed to solar irradiation, could set an example by making its urban and rural centres, power generators, consumers, and suppliers in the same breath. Indeed, its government has an ambitious plan to catapult the State into being a power “exporter”, but it must consider the possibility of achieving this through means that do not destroy the environment and are most productive, cost-effective, and optimal for human activity.
Working together
•One of the hurdles to holistic, climate resilient, clean energy access is the lack of convergence between government departments.
•In Rajasthan, for instance, the discoms could work with the State’s Education Department to determine the schools that require electrification, and their expected demand and infrastructure expenses. They could then liaise with the CSR arms of companies to generate funding, and with industry to produce cost-effective solar photovoltaic panels and batteries. Sustaining these new power systems would require some unlearning and re-learning, but it is not unimaginable.
📰 In centenary backdrop, this is no hand of peace
Beijing’s recent and muscular behaviour towards India could stem from deeper tensions within China
•An atmosphere of unpredictability prevails as regards India-China relations, even as China embarks on its 100th anniversary celebrations of the foundation of the Communist Party of China (CPC). Memories of the bloodiest clash in recent decades that occurred in the Galwan Heights in June last year, are still vivid in India’s memory. The situation in Eastern Ladakh currently remains tense. After some progress in talks over troop disengagement in the vicinity of Pangong Tso Lake and the Kailash ranges, matters have since reached a stalemate. Meanwhile, there is new information on China’s manoeuvres in the border regions across Ladakh. China is reportedly raising new militia units comprising local Tibetan youth, to be deployed in Eastern Ladakh, for both high altitude warfare and surveillance. India has, meanwhile, been expressing its concern to China about the continuing ‘close up deployments’, which has only produced a strong verbal riposte from China.
•All this has left an indelible imprint on the state of relations between the two Asian giants, who share a several thousand kilometre land border. Answers to the question as to why China chose to attack Indian positions in Ladakh, without any provocation, causing the death of a platoon of soldiers belonging to the Bihar Regiment, are still not forthcoming. An answer needs to be found before a reset in India-China relations can take place.
Global concerns
•India’s concerns about China are grounded in reality. Other nations today have, however, begun expressing concern about the threat posed by China to the existing world order. During the past month, both the G-7 and North Atlantic Treaty Organization, have criticised China for its military ambitions and the threat it posed to world peace. China is, however, unlikely to be deterred by any of this, and its mindset is best revealed by its actions in the South and East China Seas, its treatment of its Uighur Muslim minority, and its actions in Hong Kong.
•A lesser nation might be deterred by the kind of criticism that China faces today, but it does not seem to impact China. Moreover, and notwithstanding the hype surrounding India’s membership of the Quad and the role assigned to it by the United States and the other western powers in the Indo-Pacific, to think that this may have rattled China, compelling it to indulge in actions that verge on the erratic would be a mistake. China could be expected to have fully catered for all such eventualities.
Going back into the past
•We may, hence, need to look elsewhere to find a proper explanation for China’s behaviour vis-à-vis India, and also elsewhere. Delving into China’s recent past, and examining periods when it possibly acted in a similar erratic manner, may provide some clues. In the late 1950s and 1960s, China’s then Chairman, Mao Tse Tung/Mao Zedong, when finding himself in a difficult situation on account of his ill-conceived policies and programmes (history tells us that Mao confronted one of the worst famines in history on account of his misadventure of the Great Leap Forward Movement) rather than accepting his mistake and retracing his steps, embarked on his campaign to attack India, in spite of the close friendship that existed at the time between the two countries.
•Later, it was surmised, that Mao’s actions were intended partly to divert attention from China’s internal turmoils at the time, and possibly more important, to counter the dissidents who existed within the CPC, and who were critical of Mao’s autocratic attitude and his ill-conceived policies. Other instances of this kind exist and can be quoted: Deng Xiaoping’s behaviour following the Tiananmen Square movement in the 1980s, is an excellent example.
A leader in a hurry
•Xi Jinping is seen today as a Mao clone, someone who seeks to achieve the same kind of dominance over the CPC as the latter. Like Mao, he is a man in a hurry, seeking to consolidate his power and achieve a pre-eminence of the kind enjoyed by Chinese Emperors in the past. He has assiduously attempted to accelerate the pace at which China expects to overtake the U.S. as the world’s number one super power which, however, seems to be stalling for a variety of reasons. China’s attempt, under Mr. Xi, to become the world’s most powerful military is also nowhere in sight.
•On the other hand, China’s misadventure in the Ladakh heights in June last year, exposed certain shortfalls with regard to mechanisation of China’s People’s Liberation Army (PLA), diminishing the latter’s hopes of becoming fully mechanised by the time the PLA celebrates its Centenary in 2027. Much of the blame for both situations is being attributed to Mr. Xi. Given the extent of concentration of power in his hands, this is leading many in the Party to question Mr. Xi’s claims to omniscience.
•Apart from this, several of Mr. Xi’s other ideas have run into difficulties. His plans to remake the global order on terms favourable to the CPC seem to have gone awry. The Chinese economy — though performing better than most other world economies — is showing signs of slowing down. Mr. Xi had been betting on technological prowess and economic heft to achieve the kind of geo-political transformation that he wished for, but this is clearly not happening at present.
•Most important, and despite having accumulated so much power, Mr. Xi seems to be finding it difficult to push through his ‘new socialist ideology with Chinese characteristics’ (through which he hoped to demarcate himself from his immediate predecessors like Hu Jintao) and is intended to be his lasting legacy.
There are some clues
•Undoubtedly, therefore, Mr. Xi is finding himself in a difficult situation, including within the Party. There is an old Chinese proverb that says “the wind sweeping through the tower heralds a storm rising in the mountain” and this, perhaps, provides a clue to Mr. Xi’s, and Chinese, behaviour in the recent period. The extent of inner-party tensions is little known to the world outside, given the opacity of Chinese society, but the existence of dissidence or dissension within the CPC is no secret, however.
•While it is generally believed that the CPC is a monolith entity, the reality is otherwise. In the 100 years of its existence, the CPC is known to have gone through several transformations, many of an ideational nature, leading to serious upheavals. Deep fissures have existed, and perhaps, still exist, within the party, though the extent may not be known outside. What is generally seen is that during such periods, China’s attitude often borders on the erratic. The question is whether something of this nature is occurring at present inside the CPC and China.
•It is tempting to think that history is again being repeated, and China’s recent erratic behaviour is largely due to growing inner-party criticism of Mr. Xi’s policies and actions, rather than due to extraneous factors. The Ladakh adventure (or misadventure) could well have been a misguided attempt by Mr. Xi to demonstrate to his opponents within the CPC that he is well and truly in command. One could also anticipate that this could well be a prelude to a limited purge of dissenters within the highest echelons of the CPC.
•An accumulation of problems does produce in closed societies (such as China) a ‘pressure cooker’ syndrome, where the safety valve is often in the hands of the leadership. If the latter is precariously poised, and out of sync with reality, it leads to erratic behaviour. What may be aggravating Chinese leadership concerns at this time also is that the world is seemingly tilting towards India at this juncture, regarding it as more sophisticated, diplomatically, and more flexible, ideologically, compared to an increasingly obdurate China. Within the CPC itself, there are reportedly quite a few who prefer ‘peaceful coexistence’ to sustain peace, as compared to Mr. Xi’s more muscular approaches.
India needs to be on guard
•A final thought. It is worth remembering that Mr. Xi is one of the few world leaders known to have made a study of Goethe’s works, including Faust. Not only that, some of Mr. Xi’s actions, such as modelling himself on Mao and a practising advocate of Maoism 2.0 — despite the humiliation both he and his father suffered at the hands of Mao prior to, and during the Cultural Revolution — tend to make him out to be something of a Faustian character. Was Mr. Xi, through his aggressive behaviour in Ladakh, and notwithstanding the warm relations that he is known to have with India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi, preparing the ground for a ‘Faustian Bargain’. If so, Mr. Xi has made yet another serious miscalculation, not only about the ground situation but also the mood of the nation and its leadership. This could cost him dear. What all this suggests is that ‘peace is not at hand’, and that India should expect, and prepare for, more situations of this kind, with many more provocations coming from China.
