📰 Government lays down norms for quota in promotions
Departments asked to collect data on SC/ST representation
•The Department of Personnel and Training (DoPT) has asked all departments of central government to collect the data on inadequacy of representation of Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes before implementing the policy of reservation in promotion in government offices.
•The move is likely to benefit Central Secretariat Service (CSS) officials who have not been promoted for the past six years. The CSS comprises middle to senior management rank officials in various Union government ministries, and in an unprecedented turn of events in February, around 1,500 officials had assembled at Personnel Minister Jitendra Singh’s office to mark their protest.
•On April 12, DoPT sent a memorandum to all Union government offices where it laid down the procedure to be followed prior to effecting reservations in the matter of promotions.
•It said that following a January 28 Supreme Court judgement, the Attorney General has opined that three conditions are to be met while implementing the policy of reservation in promotions.
•“(i) Collection of quantifiable data regarding inadequacy of representation of Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes; (ii) Application of this data to each cadre separately; and (iii) If a roster exists, the unit for operation of the roster would be the cadre or which the quantifiable data would have to be collected and applied in regard to the filling up of the vacancies in the roster.”
•The order said that all the ministries and departments are required to ensure that the conditions are complied with before implementing the policy of reservation in promotions and carrying out any promotions based thereon.
•It added that in order to ensure maintenance of efficiency of administration, the promotion committee shall carefully assess the suitability of the officers being considered for promotion.
•According to CSS Forum, an association of government officers, there are 6,210 officers in the rank of section officer, under secretary, deputy secretary, director and joint secretaries in central government offices. Of this total strength, as many as 1,839 positions are vacant as officials have not been promoted.
Programme aims to improve governance of Panchayati Raj institutions
•The Cabinet Committee on Economic Affairs (CCEA) on Wednesday approved a proposal to continue the Rashtriya Gram Swaraj Abhiyan (RGSA), a scheme for improving the governance capabilities of panchayati raj institutions, till 2025-2026.
•The CCEA, at a meeting chaired by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, approved the extension of the scheme that ended on March 31 at a total financial outlay of ₹5,911 crore, of which ₹3,700 crore would be the Centre’s share and ₹2,211 crore the States’ share.
•“The approved scheme of RGSA will help more than 2.78 lakh rural local bodies…to develop governance capabilities to deliver on SDGs [Sustainable Development Goals] through inclusive local governance with focus on optimum utilisation of available resources,” a government statement said.
•The scheme would work towards “poverty free and enhanced livelihood in villages; healthy village, child friendly village; water sufficient village; clean and green village; self-sufficient infrastructure in village; socially secured village; village with good governance; engendered development in village”.
Strengthening the panchayats
•The government said panchayats would be strengthened and a spirit of healthy competition inculcated. No permanent posts would be created under the scheme but “need-based contractual human resources may be provisioned for overseeing the implementation of the scheme and providing technical support to States/UTs”.
•While announcing the decision to extend the scheme that started in 2018-2019, Information and Broadcasting Minister Anurag Thakur said the government’s focus had been the development of rural areas which, he said, had been neglected after Partition.
📰 UGC issues norms for students to do two programmes at once
The guidelines are applicable to academic programmes other than Ph.D.
•The University Grants Commission (UGC) on Wednesday issued new guidelines to allow students to pursue two academic programmes simultaneously at higher education institutes recognised by it or statutory councils or the Government of India.
•According to the UGC notification, the guidelines come into effect from Wednesday based on which universities can now devise mechanisms through their statutory bodies to allow students to opt for two courses simultaneously.
•The UGC says students can't claim retrospective benefit. The guidelines will be applicable for academic programmes other than Ph.D.
•In a letter to the Vice–Chancellors and principals of colleges and higher education institutes, Secretary, UGC, Rajnish Jain said the move was in line with the National Education Policy (NEP), 2020, “which emphasises on the need to facilitate multiple pathways to learning involving both formal and non–formal education”.
•Explaining the rationale for the UGC’s decision he wrote, “With the rapid increase in demand for higher education and limited availability of seats in regular stream, several higher education institutes have started a number of programmes in Open and Distance Learning (ODL) to meet the aspirations of students. It has also led to the emergence of online education programmes.”
•The move has evoked mixed response.
•“This decision will increase the load on universities. It doesn’t increase the number of students enrolling in universities because the same student will study two courses. So, the gross enrolment ratio [GER] in higher education doesn’t go up. The move will also lead to a demand for more teachers when thousands of vacancies for current needs haven’t been filled. We are already stretched,” said a former UGC Chairman who didn’t want to be identified.
•The GER for higher education is at 27.1% according to the All India Survey on Higher Education (AISHE) 2019-20. The NEP has set the target of raising this to 50% by 2035.
•Former Delhi University (DU) Vice–Chancellor Dinesh Singh welcomed the move, which the DU had already implemented during his tenure.
•“Admission to one course doesn’t preclude your capability to pursue another course. If a student is not capable, then they will not succeed. But if they are capable, let them take it. I think this decision was long overdue. Before my time at DU, students pursuing a second course on the sly would be penalised. Why penalise a student who is only looking to enhance his or her skills. This is why we decided to allow students to pursue more than one course.”
📰 Hits and misses: India’s solar power energy targets
How far has India come with respect to solar power generation and storage? Why do the authors of the report say that India will not meet its 2022 solar goal?
•The story so far: A report, jointly prepared by two energy-research firms — JMK Research and Analytics and the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis — says India will likely miss its 2022 target of installing 100 gigawatts (GW) of solar power capacity. This is because of rooftop solar lagging behind, the authors say.
What is India’s solar policy?
•Since 2011, India’s solar sector has grown at a compounded annual growth rate (CAGR) of around 59% from 0.5GW in 2011 to 55GW in 2021. The Jawaharlal Nehru National Solar Mission (JNNSM), also known as the National Solar Mission (NSM), which commenced in January 2010, marked the first time the government focussed on promoting and developing solar power in India. Under the scheme, the total installed capacity target was set as 20GW by 2022. In 2015, the target was revised to 100GW and in August 2021, the government set a solar target of 300GW by 2030.
•India currently ranks fifth after China, U.S., Japan and Germany in terms of installed solar power capacity. As of December 2021, the cumulative solar installed capacity of India is 55GW, which is roughly half the renewable energy (RE) capacity (excluding large hydro power) and 14% of the overall power generation capacity of India. Within the 55GW, grid-connected utility-scale projects contribute 77% and the rest comes from grid-connected rooftop and off-grid projects.
What does the report say?
•As of April, only about 50% of the 100GW target, consisting of 60GW of utility-scale and 40GW of rooftop solar capacity, has been met. Nearly 19 GW of solar capacity is expected to be added in 2022 — 15.8GW from utility-scale and 3.5GW from rooftop solar. Even accounting for this capacity would mean about 27% of India’s 100GW solar target would remain unmet, according to Jyoti Gulia, co-author of the report and Founder, JMK Research. A 25GW shortfall in the 40GW rooftop solar target, is expected compared to 1.8GW in the utility-scale solar target by December 2022. Thus, it is in rooftop solar that the challenges of India’s solar-adoption policy stick out.
What are the reasons for rooftop solar adoption not meeting targets?
•In December 2015, the government launched the first phase of the grid-connected rooftop solar programme to incentivise its use in residential, institutional and social areas. The second phase, approved in February 2019, had a target of 40GW of cumulative rooftop solar capacity by 2022, with incentives in the form of central financial assistance (CFA). As of November 2021, of the phase 2 target of 4GW set for the residential sector, only 1.1GW had been installed. The disruption in supply chains due to the pandemic was a key impediment to rooftop solar adoption.
•In its early years, India’s rooftop solar market struggled to grow, held back by lack of consumer awareness, inconsistent policy frameworks of the Centre/ State governments and financing. Recently, however, there has been a sharp rise in rooftop solar installations thanks to falling technology costs, increasing grid tariffs, rising consumer awareness and the growing need for cutting energy costs. These factors are expected to persist giving a much-needed boost to this segment, the report notes. Going ahead, rooftop solar adoption is expected to proportionally increase as land and grid-connectivity for utility solar projects are expected to be hard to come by. Factors impeding rooftop-solar installation include pandemic-induced supply chain disruption to policy restrictions, regulatory roadblocks; limits to net-metering (or paying users who give back surplus electricity to the grid); taxes on imported cells and modules, unsigned power supply agreements (PSAs) and banking restrictions; financing issues plus delays in or rejection of open access approval grants; and the unpredictability of future open access charges, the report notes.
How critical is solar power to India’s commitment to mitigate climate change?
•Solar power is a major prong of India’s commitment to address global warming according to the terms of the Paris Agreement, as well as achieving net zero, or no net carbon emissions, by 2070.
•Prime Minister Modi at the United Nations Conference of Parties meeting in Glasgow, in November 2021, said India would be reaching a non-fossil fuel energy capacity of 500 GW by 2030 and meet half its energy requirements via renewable energy by 2030.
•To boost the renewable energy installation drive in the long term, the Centre in 2020 set a target of 450GW of RE-based installed capacity to be achieved by 2030, within which the target for solar was 300GW.
•Given the challenge of integrating variable renewable energy into the grid, most of the RE capacity installed in the latter half of this decade is likely to be based on wind solar hybrid (WSH), RE-plus-storage and round-the-clock RE projects rather than traditional solar/wind projects, according to the report. On the current trajectory, the report finds, India’s solar target of 300GW by 2030 will be off the mark by about 86GW, or nearly a third.
•The authors in fact speculate that that the government, in the short-term, will aggressively push for expediting solar capacity addition to achieve the 100GW target by 2022 by re-allocating some of the unmet rooftop targets to utility-scale projects.
📰 The real script behind the call for a Hindi-India
The attempt to stoke Hindi pride could have more to do with the state of the Hindi belt and the 2024 general election
•Some 2,000 years ago, Tholkappiyar, the fabled author of Tolkappiyam, said that poetic words can be distributed in four types: Iyarcol, Thirisol, Thisaiccol and Vadasol. Of these, he held, ‘Vadasol’, words from northern languages, “become fit to be used in Tamil only when they adopt Tamil phonetics discarding their northern phonetics”.
•From ancient times, a sensitivity to language difference has almost been the core of Dravidic self-hood. A similar sensitivity existed among the speakers of Prakrits in ancient times. It was in one of the Prakrits that Mahavir had presented his teachings in the sixth century BCE. Eighteen centuries later, Acharya Hemachandra, a major Jain scholar, poet, mathematician and philosopher, produced his Desinamamala, a treatise on the importance of Prakrit words used in Gujarat of his times as against those from Sanskrit. In the process, he gave a tangible form to the Gujarati language. Mahatma Gandhi, who defined the idea of selfhood for India in Hind Swaraj (1909), chose to write this iconic book in Gujarati. So, language sensitivity has been a feature of selfhood in the case of every Indian language.
Clarity in the Constitution
•It would be unreasonable to expect a contemporary Indian to know about a 2,000-year-old Tolkappiyam or a nine-century-old Desinamamala. But would it be too much to expect the person to know about the Constitution adopted by the republic seven decades ago? The Constitution states two things with utmost clarity. One, India, is ‘a union of states’; and two, the official language used for communication between the States shall be the language that has been in use at the time of adoption of the Constitution. The move from English to Hindi can take place only if, as the language related Articles unambiguously state, ‘two or more states agree’ for the shift. Article 344 (4) provides for a ‘Committee consisting of thirty members’, ‘twenty’ from the Parliament and ‘ten’ from State assemblies, for safeguarding language related provisions.
•The functions and the scope of the committee, as laid down by the Constitution, are further clarified by the practice of distribution of language as a subject between two Ministries, the Human Resource Development (HRD) Ministry and the Home Ministry. The scope of the HRD Ministry with reference to language extends to education and the promotion of cultural expression. The Home Ministry’s scope extends to safeguarding relations of the States with the ‘union’, protecting the linguistic rights of language minorities and the promotion of Hindi. The last of these, the Constitution states, has to be ‘without interference with other languages’.
Data on language decline
•There are two crucial questions for the Home Ministry and its Hindi Language Committee which should be understood correctly in light of the provisions of the Constitution: ‘Has Hindi seen any growth during the last seven decades? And, if there is such a growth, does it interfere with the growth of other Scheduled languages?”
•There is quite a story to tell using the data from the Census. In 2011, Hindi speakers accounted for 43.63% of the total population, with a total of 52.83 crore speakers. In 1971, the number was 20.27 crore, accounting for 36.99% of the total population. Between 2001 and 2011, the growth in proportion of the population was 2.6%. The next most spoken language, Bangla, — the first is Hindi — had negative growth. It was spoken by 8.30% of Indians in 1991, 8.11% in 2001 and by 8.03% in 2011. Telugu, which slid from 7.87% in 1991, to 7.19% in 2001 and 6.70% in 2011, has a similar story to tell.
•It is no different for Marathi either: 7.45% (1991), 6.99% (2001) and 6.86% (2011). Tamil, the oldest surviving language in the country, should have received at least some attention from the Home Ministry. But the truth is that it is no different from that of Bangla, Telugu and Marathi. Tamil recorded 6.32% of the total population in 1991, 5.91% in 2001 and 5.70% in 2011. The only major language to show decadal growth (though small) was Gujarati. And the only small yet scheduled language to show good growth was Sanskrit. The 2021 Census, when conducted, will have another count of languages in the country. And for reasons that are too obvious, the situation of all languages in the Eighth Schedule — except Hindi and Sanskrit, and perhaps Gujarati — will have worsened. In this context, the Parliamentary Committee for the promotion of Hindi should have expressed its concern about the decline of Indian languages, except Hindi, and the lack of growth of Sanskrit, which has ceased to be a living language since the ninth century.
Hindi’s growth is more fiction
•If all other languages show a relative decline, why is Hindi recording steady growth? The 52.83 crore speakers of Hindi (as recorded in 2011) included not just the speaker of ‘Hindi’ but also those of more than 50 other languages. Bhojpuri, which was claimed by more than five crore speakers, and evident in its growing visibility in its cinema, literature, newspapers, songs, theatre and publication industry, is placed within Hindi. Most languages of Himachal Pradesh, Uttarakhand, Chhattisgarh, Rajasthan and Jharkhand have also been pushed into the Hindi package. Even the Pawari language (spoken mainly in Maharashtra and in some parts of Madhya Pradesh) has been shown as ‘Hindi’, overlooking the fact that most Pawari speakers may find Hindi almost unintelligible.
•Thus, the story of Hindi’s growth is quite fictitious. Had the Census not included these other languages under Hindi, the strength of Hindi speakers would have gone down to about 39 crore, — just a little under 32% of the total population in 2011 — and would have looked not too different from those of other scheduled languages. The Committee should also have concerned itself with making the Census data for Hindi more realistic.
•The data for English speakers is far more truthful. Census 2011 reports a total of 3,88,793 Indians as English speakers (2,59,678 men and 1,29,115 women). Compare this with the least spoken among the scheduled languages, i.e., Manipuri at 17.61 lakh speakers and Bodo at 14.82 lakh speakers. No further comment is necessary; there is nothing to be proud about these figures.
Other languages shine
•Hindi is a beautiful language, as is the case with any small or big language in the world. Hindi cinema has brought India some fame and some foreign currency. Hindi literature is rich and evokes pride when mentioned. Yet, it is also true that among the languages included in the Eighth Schedule, it falls within the younger lot of languages.
•On the other hand, Tamil, Kannada, Kashmiri, Marathi, Oriya, Sindhi, Nepali and Assamiya have a much longer/older history. As a language of knowledge too, Tamil, Kannada, Bangla and Marathi (with their abundance of encyclopaedias and historical literature), quite easily outshine Hindi. A language evolves slowly and cannot be forced to grow by issuing ordinances.
More politics, the economy
•If all wisdom related to the history of Hindi, India’s multilingualism, the federal structure of India and the issue of language sensitivity in so many States should have guided the Committee and the Official Language Committee to accept linguistic realism, what is it that prompted Home Minister Amit Shah to call for a Hindi-India all of a sudden? It is perhaps not so much the ideology of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh of hyphenating Hindi-Hindu nationalism that has prompted the Home Minister’s Hindi assertion. It may also not be the Bharatiya Janata Party’s idea of majoritarian democracy that has prompted it. Hindi speakers in the country, despite the inflated figure of 52 crore against 121 crore put out by the 2011 Census, do not form a linguistic majority.
•The fact remains that 69 crore (even in the 2011 Census), were non-Hindi speakers. In that sense, it was not and cannot be the majority language of India. It is quite likely that Mr. Shah’s attempt to stoke Hindi pride is required as a balm for the vast unemployment that hurts the youth in the Hindi belt, an area so crucial for the 2024 Lok Sabha election. Yet, the Home Minister has overlooked the fact that while harping on Pakistan being a threat to security works for Hindu mobilisation, depicting English as an anti-national entity will no longer work to mobilise the Hindi-speaking people. It makes for utterly poor economics and an absurd linguistics. Most of all, it makes for anti-federal politics. Does India need these?
📰 The key phrase is ‘focus on the foetus, for the future’
Early detection of diabetes in pregnancy can help prevent trans-generational transmission of NCDs
•The novel coronavirus pandemic has been an eye-opener to all about what a widespread, global public health issue looks like. Drawing an analogy from this communicable disease pandemic, one would be better placed to fathom the range and the depth of another pandemic — a silent ‘pandemic of non-communicable diseases’ (NCDs), i.e., diabetes and related conditions such as obesity, hypertension and heart disease, sweeping across the world, rapidly yet steadily over the last few decades.
The global burden
•To illustrate the global burden of NCDs, let us use the example of diabetes mellitus. Diabetes is a disease characterised by a sustained increase in blood sugar (“hyperglycemia”) that eventually affects the blood vessels in the body causing damage of various vital organs that include the heart, eyes, kidneys, nerves and brain. In the year 2021, the prevalence of diabetes was estimated by the International Diabetes Federation (IDF) to be 537 million people. On extrapolating the data to the year 2045, it is safe to say that almost 783 million people will be living with diabetes. In addition to this, for every person who is known to have diabetes, there is another person whose diabetes has yet to be detected. Further, a number of people live with what is called ‘pre-diabetes’, which is the penultimate stage before overt diabetes.
•There is a saying in Tamil that one should not search for the origin of a sage and the headwaters of a river. But, in the case of diabetes and other NCDs, we have no other option but to fervently search for the sage and the headwaters before the world faces a deluge.
•While several reasons can be ascribed for this rising trend — these include an aging population, urbanisation, genetic predisposition, nutrition and lifestyle transition — there is one factor that has not yet received due attention, namely, diabetes that occurs during pregnancy. Pregnancy-related diabetes encompasses both newly detected diabetes during pregnancy (or ‘gestational diabetes’) as well as women with pre-existing diabetes (or ‘pre-gestational diabetes’). For the sake of simplicity, we will use the broader term ‘Hyperglycemia-in-Pregnancy (HIP)’ that covers both. The global prevalence of HIP is 16.7% of all live-births. In India, one out of four live-births is complicated by HIP.
A programming
•In the 1980s, the British physician and epidemiologist, Prof. David Barker, put forward his hypothesis of “fetal origins of adult disease”. Prof. Barker stated that a man’s susceptibility to many of the adult-onset diseases had already been programmed while he was still an unborn, developing baby (“foetus”) inside his mother’s womb. In this intra-uterine (inside the womb) programming, any adverse stimulus — say an increased blood sugar level in case of maternal diabetes — permanently affects the structure, the functioning and the metabolism of the developing human body at the cellular and tissue levels, thereby predisposing the individual to disease in adult life.
•Furthermore, the pancreas of the foetus (which secretes the hormone insulin), is able to respond to the maternal blood-sugars present in the blood that go to the foetus. In case the blood sugar levels are increased, the fetal pancreas secrete excessive insulin, which in turn deposits fat in the growing foetus, sometimes even resulting in a ‘big baby’. When this adversely programmed child grows up, he is faced with an unhealthy environment of high caloric foods, lesser physical activity and stress. At this point of time, the trigger of the gun loaded inside the womb is pulled by the environment. Eventually, the child develops diabetes or pre-diabetes. He also becomes prone to other related NCDs such as hypertension and heart disease.
Transgenerational effects
•The claws of HIP extend even more to reach future generations. The offspring, when an adult, might transmit unfavourable genetic and epigenetic effects to the next generation. If the offspring were a girl, she is also prone to develop pregnancy-related diabetes, adding additional adversity for her progeny. Thus, a vicious cycle is established. Hyperglycemia begets hyperglycemia; diabetes begets diabetes and the vicious cycle goes on. All of this started at one point — when a woman developed HIP sometime earlier!
•A major strategic point for checkmating diabetes and other NCDs lies at the intra-uterine level. To achieve this, action should commence well before conception. In a woman with pre-existing diabetes, blood sugar values need to be maintained closer to normal levels prior to conception. She should also maintain a healthy weight. The first trimester in pregnancy is a critical period when the organ systems of the body begin to form. If any perturbation occurs at this stage, the damage is likely to persist for life. If such a perturbation could be thwarted, say by achieving good blood sugar control in the mother, the risk of future NCDs in the offspring could be minimised. Therefore, the need is that pregnant women should be screened for diabetes at their very first visit to a maternity clinic. The present recommendation by the ‘Diabetes-in-Pregnancy–Study Group of India’ (DIPSI) lays emphasis on testing for diabetes in ‘all pregnant women’ from the ‘early weeks of pregnancy’. Once HIP is detected, further management by medical nutrition therapy — and if needed, insulin therapy — is done.
•DIPSI, led by its founder-patron, Prof. V. Seshiah from Chennai, has established a ‘single-test approach’ wherein a pregnant woman is subjected to a single glucose-load by mouth and blood sugar is tested after two hours. Here, the pregnant woman need not be fasting to undergo the test. This test has been approved and adapted by the Government of India in its National Health Mission.
A window of opportunity
•The time around conception offers a great window of opportunity to optimise metabolic status in all women in the reproductive age group. The health of offspring and of further generations depends upon the metabolic health of the pregnant woman. Targeting pregnancy-related diabetes and breaking the vicious cycle of transgenerational transmission is a wholesome action to significantly bring down the expanding burden of diabetes and other NCDs.
•In recognition of his numerous contributions to the field of pregnancy-related diabetes in India and around the world, the Government of India has declared the birthday of Prof. Seshiah, which falls on March 10, as “National Gestational Diabetes Mellitus Awareness Day”. Furthermore, Prof. Seshiah was conferred the Padma Shri in the field of medicine (as a part of the Republic Day honours this year). At this juncture, it is wise to reiterate his words on the prevention of NCDs in the community, i.e., “Focus on the Foetus, for the Future”.
📰 Beijing’s move, India’s turn
If this moment provides for a reset of India’s ties with China, it will alter New Delhi’s relationship with the U.S.
•Looking at the long list of diplomats, officials, and ministers from across the globe rushing to New Delhi in the last few weeks, one would assume that India was playing an active role in resolving the crisis in Europe. Despite his ambitions to be hailed as a global statesman, Prime Minister Narendra Modi has scrupulously avoided engaging with the crisis. India has refused to condemn Russia’s military invasion, continues to trade with Russia, and has abstained from voting on United Nations resolutions.
An unmistakable signal
•India is the centrepiece of the Joe Biden administration’s Indo-Pacific strategy. Indian Foreign and Defence Ministers recently held the ‘2+2’ meeting with their American counterparts. The Japanese Prime Minister was in New Delhi last month. The Australian Prime Minister held a virtual summit with Mr. Modi days before the two countries signed an interim trade deal. He had to then explain that he had not betrayed Ukraine by signing the deal with India.
•Even as India’s Quad partners (U.S., Japan, Australia) impose trade sanctions on Russia, condemn Russian President Vladimir Putin and provide military aid to Ukraine, India recently welcomed the Russian Foreign Minister to New Delhi. The signalling was unmistakable: he was the only visiting foreign official among the many in New Delhi to get a personal meeting with Mr. Modi.
•A shift is nevertheless discernible: India has chosen to increase, rather than reduce, import of its meagre crude oil supplies from Russia, being offered at a discount. Despite a warning by the U.S. Deputy National Security Adviser Daleep Singh in New Delhi that there will be “consequences to countries that actively attempt to circumvent or backfill the sanctions,” India and Russia are exploring ways of conducting bilateral trade by bypassing the dollar-based financial system.
•India’s Quad partners have been exceptionally sympathetic towards New Delhi’s case so far, but the underlying stress in their ties with India will come to the surface as the crisis drags on. These tensions have been noted in Beijing, which has praised India for pursuing an independent foreign policy. In recent years, Chinese officials had looked at Indian moves in the region through the prism of their U.S. policy, but India’s stance on Ukraine has triggered a rethink in Beijing. Foreign Minister Wang Yi’s visit to New Delhi in March was driven either by the need to wean India away from the Quad or as an exploratory step towards a larger strategic reset with New Delhi.
•It would be erroneous to focus on the minimal outcome of the visit to deem it a failure. That the visit took place is itself a big success given that some 90,000 soldiers from both armies have been deployed in Ladakh for nearly two years now, after Chinese troops moved in to occupy certain territories that were hitherto in Indian control. Despite 15 rounds of negotiations between senior military commanders, China continues to occupy at least three such areas. From other such areas, both the armies have disengaged i.e., moved their soldiers a couple of miles behind, but there has been no de-escalation i.e., they have not moved the troops to their bases.
•In his meetings with Mr. Wang, External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar did not demand the restoration of status quo ante of April 2020 in Ladakh; disengagement from remaining “friction points” was the only precondition for return to normalcy in China-India ties. In a rush to declare the crisis as resolved, India made further concessions to China by seeking disengagement only from Patrolling Point 15, suggesting that the other two areas — Depsang and Demchok — are “legacy issues”. This is in keeping with Mr. Modi’s stance since June 2020, when he first denied Chinese occupation of Indian territory in Ladakh and has since kept silent on the matter. Questions on the border crisis have been denied in Parliament. No official media briefings have taken place in two years. The government has thus successfully kept the truth of Chinese ingress hidden from the Indian public.
•Mr. Modi’s desire to downplay Chinese bellicosity was confirmed by former U.S. Ambassador to India, Kenneth Juster, when he said that the Indian government had instructed the U.S. officials to neither mention the Chinese aggression in any joint statement nor raise it in a strong manner otherwise. While New Delhi is being excessively accommodative of Beijing, China is unconcerned about Indian sensitivities. Before coming to New Delhi, Mr. Wang signed a provocative statement on Kashmir in Islamabad with the Foreign Ministers of the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation countries and asserted China’s strong ties with Pakistan. While it has allowed South Korean and Pakistani students to return to China, Beijing has not extended the same courtesy to over 23,000 Indian students. If China is extending a handshake to India, it is only on its own terms.
•Despite the border crisis, India’s trade with China reached a record high of $125 billion in 2021. India remains the biggest recipient of loans disbursed by the Asian Infrastructure and Investment Bank. The Modi government did not criticise China’s clampdown in Hong Kong and has never raised the issue of mistreatment of Uighurs in Xinjiang, although it may have been driven by a defensiveness about the criticism of its own strong-arm policies in Kashmir. The activities of the Dalai Lama and the Tibetan community in India have been calibrated to remain within limits that do not provoke Beijing.
Changing relationships
•China is the glue that binds the Quad together. While Indian and American policies are at variance in countries such as Myanmar, Iran and Afghanistan, China is the one interest that aligns the two countries together. That basic premise of a collaborative partnership with India will be tested by these recent moves from Beijing towards New Delhi. Questions have always been raised in whispered tones in Washington about the relative power gap between the two Asian powers (China’s economy is nearly six times India’s size). This notwithstanding, it has been an article of faith in Washington in the past couple of years that having suffered from Chinese military aggression in 2020, India realises that it needs the U.S. to counter the threat from Beijing. This was the thrust of Mr. Singh’s blunt counsel in New Delhi.
•During Mr. Wang’s visit, China offered to create a virtual G-2 in Asia by protecting India’s traditional role and collaborating on developmental projects as ‘China-India Plus’ in South Asia. Once India’s limited preconditions for declaring the border crisis resolved are met, the offer will seem more alluring and real than it does today. When Mr. Modi as Chief Minister of Gujarat was denied a visa to travel to the U.S. owing to his association with the 2002 Gujarat riots, he made regular visits to China. His comfort level with Beijing goes far deeper than any tactical realignment at play due to current geopolitical churning. If this moment provides for a reset of India’s ties with China, it will alter New Delhi’s relationship with the U.S. and raise questions about the effectiveness of Quad.
•While the Biden administration continues to harp on “shared values” with the Modi government, the truth is that New Delhi’s commitment to democratic values, basic freedoms, constitutional rights, and treatment of religious minorities has been alarmingly poor. Mr. Modi’s critics allege that his idea of democracy is closer to that of Donald Trump, Viktor Orbán and Mr. Putin than of the current U.S. administration.
•Misgivings already in place have been brought into a sharp contrast by the Ukraine crisis. The geopolitical churning has placed the choices made by Mr. Modi as Prime Minister under a harsh glare. New Delhi’s decisions have not been to the liking of the U.S. As India is put under greater pressure, the outcomes could spring another surprise for Washington.
