An uncertain future

 

Existential threats that can haunt the earth in the near future are human-made — unintended consequences of our intense desire for material consumption and comfort

The world is challenged by many existential threats. Some of them are old, some more recent, and some hanging over a not-so-distant future. If one considers all the threats together, the forecast indeed induces a sense of foreboding. All the cheers of good tidings cannot overcome the possibility of a grim future. All these threats are human-made — unintended consequences of our intense desire for material consumption and comfort.

The first threat is an old one, that of nuclear weapons being used in an arena of war, leading to mass destruction. More countries than ever before are armed with growing numbers of deadly weapons. In most of these nations, the political leadership does not signal the maturity and responsibility that the ownership of these weapons demands. There are many related worries. Rogue terrorists could make nuclear weapons themselves, a task that is possible and relatively cheap. What is even more terrifying is the knowledge that not all nuclear weapons manufactured are accurately accounted for. Although no mishap has occurred so far, this does not mean that a disaster is impossible. Geopolitical tensions between India and Pakistan, between Russia and Ukraine, between North Korea and the United States of America are all flashpoints that might ignite without much warning.

The potential of nuclear disaster is aggravated by the fact that nations are moving away from global collaborations and cooperation to more inward-looking ideologies where the fear of and hatred for the foreigner and the immigrant are deeply entrenched. Fanned by political hot air from authoritarian leaders, this crude brand of nationalism survives and flourishes. Tension about the backlash of retreat from the globalisation of the last decade of the 20th century and the first decade of this century does not mean a return to the world of the 1980s. That is not possible anymore. Consumers have exhibited a huge appetite for goods and services from all over the world. New international supply chains had made that possible to a large extent. Now, with the growing political preference for protectionism, the supply chains are broken, while domestic production systems have not re-adjusted yet. Hence, costs of production have risen fast, as have inflationary pressures across the globe. Output growth is sluggish, with strong recessionary tendencies being witnessed even in some strong economies of the world.The global economic disorder,along with a disrupted financial sys­tem, is here to stay, at least for some time.

The magic of economic growth and material prosperity has accelerated the use of fossil fuels, resulting in ever-increasing carbon emissions. The unstoppable increase in emissions has brought the threat of climate change closer and closer. Now, most serious climate scientists believe that the average temperature rise is likely to be closer to 2° Celsius than 1.5° Celsius. At the moment, even a rise of 3° Celsius by the end of the century cannot be ruled out. The signs of climate change and the attendant unpredictable and unusual weather events have clea­rly shown that climate tipping points are much closer than we thou­ght. Climate change is, arguab­ly, the most important one of the long list of environmental threats looming on the horizon. The great growth story has resulted in a great acceleration in the use and depletion of critical natural resources such as fresh water, soil nutrients, forest cover, biodiversity, minerals and ocean ecosystems through acidification. Despite a long list of international meetings and agreements on the reduction of carbon emissions, there has been no success. As of now, the way the nations of the world are behaving, the targets of the Paris Agreement will remain unfulfilled. Economic development is unsustainable.

Last, but not the least, is the threat that appears as a seductive solution to many of humanity’s prob­lems of health, education and effective governance — the threat from the new technologies of artificial intelligence and machine learning. It has often been claimed with the wisdom of hindsight that new technologies are initially always sus­pected of displacing human beings from their jobs. However, all new technology has ultimately resulted in creating more jobs and made human life a little less trouble­some. This time, the emerging technology is qualitatively different from the older technologies, including the first wave of the information and communication technology re­volution. These new technologies can make a device take its own decisions, not necessarily sticking to the set of instructions given to it at the time of training. In this way, it takes something away from human beings. Moreover, the new technologies can be creative and generate new ideas on their own. Unlike the entire gamut of machines that humans have known and used since the Stone Age, the new ones will have autonomy and agency. Hence, they will ultimately be able to learn and act on their own. They will do­m­inate humans according to the laws of evolution and might ultimately displace us from being the most influential species on planet earth. The comparison of their intelligence and our own, according to some scientists, would be the difference between our brains and that of a frog’s. And we do not show a great deal of respect for the cerebral ability of frogs.

As these threats keep growing in magnitude over time, the cocktail effect can be quite deadly. All these threats increase vulnerabilities. These vulnerabilities, in turn, create insecurities. First of all, there will be a steady rise in insecurities of all sorts that will become manifest in everyday life. Insecurity about the loss of economic stability, insecurity about lethal diseases, about natural disasters like floods and fires, insecurity about displacement and, above all, insecurity about bodily suffering and death. Despite the staggering rise in global inequalities in income and wealth over the last 100 years, these insecurities will be felt by the rich and the poor alike. The rich might be able to defend themselves a little while longer than the poor, but ultimately the bell will toll for them too.

Human behaviour tends to be very defensive when faced with a variety of threats. Thin­king tends to become short-term and self-centred with a focus on survival. An alternative behavioural response is to believe that the threats are overstated and not immediate in nature. Then people have a marked tendency to ignore them altogether or assign unusually low probabilities of their occurrence. In the political arena, such threats are used to exploit the vulnerabilities and insecurities that arise. People look for distraction or salvation from threats. A political saviour who can distract attention, in whatever fashion, from the perils of the here and now would be considered a messiah. A charismatic false pro­ph­et who can make people forget their real condition could swiftly rise to the helm of power. People also wilfully accept greater control and authoritarianism, thereby relegating the responsibility over their own lives. The whole culture of fear and anxiety discourages the need to think freely. The authoritarian repressions of dialogue and dissent are not objected to. Most refuse to believe the terrible news. Instead, in the brave new world of forgetful­ness, they wear a smile on their fa­ces, and a badge of their leader on their chests.

Anup Sinha

Source: The Telegraph India

Manipur crisis reveals the limits of BJP’s politics in the Northeast

 The continuing violence in Manipur ought to be shocking for many reasons. But its sheer scale, endurance and brutality is still not getting national attention. As is typical, the prime minister who is never shy of taking leadership credit, is completely absent when there is an actual crisis that goes to the heart of both constitutional values and national security. In this instance, it seems like the double-engine sarkar, even after invoking Article 355, is unable to control the violence.

It takes nothing away from the culpability of the present dispensation to acknowledge the long-standing and irresolvable contradictions of Manipur politics. Whenever the central organising axis of politics is a distributive conflict between identity-based groups, there is a high chance of violence. This is particularly the case where the conflict inherently has the character of a zero-sum game. In Manipur, the politics of distribution between Kukis and Meiteis turns on four goods whose inherent logic is zero-sum.

The first is inclusion in the ST quota which is the proximate background to the current conflict. By its very nature, the inclusion of more groups in the ST quota will be a threat to existing beneficiaries. The second is land, and the tension between the valley and the hills. This is also a zero-sum resource, where protecting the land rights of Kukis is seen as foreclosing the opportunities for other groups. The third is political representation, where historically Kukis have felt dominated by the Meiteis. The fourth is patronage by the state in the informal economy, in which groups compete against one another for control of informal trade. Each state intervention in regulating trade becomes a locus of conflict.

Place on top of that a default demand that the boundaries of ethnicity and territorial governance should, as much as possible, coincide. In principle, these demands could be negotiated through building inclusive democratic institutions. But this is easier said than done, when every policy instrument in contention — quotas, land, representation, and the state-economy nexus — are defined in terms of zero-sum games. The tragedy of Manipur was that, in part, there was no other game in town, one that could prise politics away from this zero-sum alignment of distribution and ethnicity.

Dealing with such a situation requires at least three things. It requires a capable state impartially enforcing constitutional values. It requires a political culture that respects identity but does not politicise it. It requires a development narrative that all sections of society can potentially participate in.

Instead, the Indian state made Manipur a charnel house of human rights violations, abetted violence and militarisation to unprecedented levels. It opportunistically used ethnicity both for electoral alliances and divide and rule. In some ways, under colonial divide and rule, the state pretended to hover above the various contending groups. The point of divide and rule was to present the state as neutral and shore up its legitimacy. But in democratic India divide and rule has meant the state itself getting implicated with one group or the other. The result was a weakening of the state’s capacity to govern. We can see the long-term effects of this even in the present crisis, where there is widespread agreement that the state security forces and police cannot be trusted to be neutral and impartial. This creates a vicious cycle where all ethnic groups feel the need to preemptively protect themselves. And finally, the state was not a neutral actor in the economy.

It is worth remembering this structural contradiction when we diagnose the present moment. The politics of majoritarianism in Manipur was always more complicated. It was this history that had first given the BJP an opening, where the Congress was seen as an instrument of the Valley, so much so that the Kukis called for supporting the BJP. But the current dispensation, rather than seizing the opportunity to create a new politics, has made the same mistakes. Only this time, the consequences are even more tragic and irrevocable. The violence has given a lie to the BJP’s project in three senses. The first is that the BJP can build a capable law and order state. In this instance, that state has proven to be both deeply incompetent and partisan. The ease with which literally thousands of weapons have been looted would shame any half capable state. But more disturbingly, the pattern that the state is seen to be a partisan actor in the violence continues unabated. Second, it exposes the ideological dangers of the BJP’s project.

The BJP tried for a brief moment to run with the hare and hunt with the hound. It tried to capitalise on Kuki construal of Congress in Manipur as majoritarian at the same time as it politicised and promoted Meitei identity. Now that contradiction has burst open: A visible demonstration of the limits of Hindutva accommodation. Contingently convenient alliances will, in the end, be overrun by the ideological juggernaut. And third, it has shown that the BJP’s political instincts can be overrated: Its capacity to negotiate complicated social fissures in the North-east has been overestimated. What the BJP had touted as the moment of its greatest ideological triumph, winning in the North-east, is turning out to also expose the limitations of its politics.

It is not going to be easy for Manipur to recover from this violence. There are no credible public institutions that can hold perpetrators of violence to account, impartially. The nature of the violence is such that both the Kukis and Meiteis will be left with a deep sense of victimhood. But there is a deeper question: Is there any political force left in the state that can do the job of political mediation? In a situation where, singly, all parties are considered partisan, the only possibility would be an all-party mediation, one that tries to lift Manipur out of a fatal combination of zero-sum identity politics. But such imaginative gestures are now beyond our ruling establishment.

When I first read journalist Sudeep Chakravarti’s book, “The Eastern Gate”, one line stood out. He recounts a visit to Churachandpur, ground zero of the current violence, where he sees a sign by a church: “There is a way that seems right to a man, but it ends in death.” Alas, these words seem all too prophetic at the moment, when no one is prepared to break the mould of politics in Manipur. Nero will, of course, continue to fiddle, while Manipur burns.

Written by Pratap Bhanu Mehta 

Source: Indian Express, 9/06/23

Quote of the Day May 30, 2023

 

“What we are seeking so frantically elsewhere may turn out to be the horse we have been riding all along.”
Harvey Cox

“हम जिस चीज़ की तलाश कहीं और कर रहे होते हैं वह हो सकता है कि हमारे पास ही हो।”
हारवी कॉक्स

Economic and Political Weekly: Table of Contents

 

Vol. 58, Issue No. 21, 27 May, 2023

Editorials

Stagnant Household Savings

Neither a Survey, Nor a Census

From the Editor's Desk

Is Caste a Private Matter?

From 50 Years Ago

From 50 Years Ago: Tamil Nadu: Gentlemen Killers of Kilvenmani

Strategic Affairs

Geopolitics Drives the New US Economic and Industrial Strategy

Anuradha M Chenoy

Commentary

Data Discrepancies between National Surveys and Official Reporting

Amitabh Kundu, P C Mohanan

The Eurasian Economic Union and India - North–South Transport Corridor and the Northern Sea Route

Jawahar Bhagwat, Atul Bhardwaj, A E Shaparov, V M Kapitsyn, F K Sokolova

Failure of the ‘Pharmacy of the South’

Ranjit Kumar Dehury

Land Regulations and Doing Business in Himachal Pradesh - A Case for Regulatory Impact Assessment

Ravinder N Batta

Book Reviews

Accomplishing the Goals of Gender Equality

Ratna M Sudarshan

A Positivist History of Knowledge

Srinivasa Ramanujam

Special Articles

Internal Labour Migration in India - Circular versus Long-term Movements

Gaurav Nayyar, Kyoung Yang Kim

​​​​​​​Online Gaming - A Data-driven Regulatory Framework

Aishvarya, Sharada Sringeswara, Shailaja Grover, Dinesh Kumar U

Sectoral Efficacy of Macroprudential Policies in India

Richa Saraf, Pallavi Chavan

Current Statistics

Current Statistics

Postscript

Understanding Commodification through Street Art in Guwahati

Tanay Choudhury

Patiya: A Pre-independence Tale of Homosexuality and Feudalism

Preety Choudhari, Richa Chand

Lonely Nights

Aditya Pawde

Last Lines

Letters

Wrestlers’ Protest at Jantar Mantar

Radhika Jagtap, Manika Kamthan

Towards Inclusivity within Knowledge and Culture

Fredrick Ruban Alphonse, Arya Parakkate Vijayaraghavan

What is Daam Malware?

 The Central government recently issued an advisory warning individuals about a dangerous malware known as ‘Daam’ that specifically targets Android phones. This advisory highlights the severity of the threat and provides crucial information on how to safeguard personal data and devices from potential attacks.

Understanding Daam Malware

Daam is a malicious software that possesses the capability to infiltrate Android devices and gain unauthorized access to various sensitive components, including call records, contacts, history, and even the device’s camera.

Distribution and Modus Operandi

The Daam malware primarily spreads through third-party websites or applications obtained from untrusted or unknown sources. By luring users into downloading and installing infected files, the malware manages to bypass security checks implemented on Android devices.

Once the Daam malware successfully bypasses the security check, it starts its nefarious activities. Its primary objective is to compromise sensitive data stored on the targeted device, such as call records and history. Additionally, Daam can modify device passwords, leaving users vulnerable to unauthorized access and control.

Encryption Algorithm and File Manipulation

Daam utilizes the AES (advanced encryption standard) encryption algorithm to encode files present on the victim’s device. This encryption process results in the deletion of non-encrypted files, leaving only the encrypted ones with the “.enc” extension. Victims also receive a ransom note, typically named “readme_now.txt,” which serves as a demand for payment in exchange for restoring access to the compromised files.

Precautions and Best Practices

In light of this advisory, several precautions are recommended to protect oneself against the Daam malware and similar threats. Firstly, it is crucial to avoid visiting untrusted websites and refraining from clicking on unverified links. These measures significantly reduce the risk of inadvertently downloading infected files or accessing malicious content.

Furthermore, keeping antivirus software up to date is essential. Regularly updating your antivirus program ensures that it remains equipped with the latest security patches and can effectively detect and neutralize potential threats like Daam.

Identifying Suspicious Numbers and Exercising Caution with Shortened URLs

Users should exercise caution when encountering suspicious numbers that do not appear to be genuine mobile phone numbers. Scammers often use email-to-text services to mask their true identities, making it crucial to remain vigilant and skeptical of such communication.

Shortened URLs, particularly those utilizing ‘bitly’ and ‘tinyurl’ hyperlinks (e.g., “https://bit.ly/” or “bit.ly” and “tinyurl.com/”), should also be approached with caution. These URLs may redirect users to potentially harmful websites or initiate malicious downloads.

Current Affairs- May 29, 2023

 

INDIA

• ISRO launches its next-generation navigational satellite – NVS-1 from Sriharikota.
• Praveen Kumar Srivastava was sworn in as Central Vigilance Commissioner.
• Prime Minister Modi to flag off Guwahati-New Jalpaiguri Vande Bharat Express in Assam.
• India shows a reduction in stunting and recorded 1.6 crore fewer stunted children under five years in 2022 than in 2012.
• Delhi Police files FIR against protesting wrestlers after detaining Vinesh Phogat, Sakshi Malik and Bajrang Punia.

ECONOMY & CORPORATE

• UPI to account for 90% of retail digital payments by 2026-27: PwC India report.
• CBIC issues SoP for scrutiny of GST returns for FY’20 onwards; DGARM to identify cases.
• Report: Microfinance loans grow 21.3% YoY to Rs 3.5 trillion in FY23.

WORLD

• 75th UN Peacekeepers Day is observed today. “Peace begins with me” is the theme of the 75th anniversary of Peacekeepers Day.
• Turkiye President Recep Tayyip Erdogan wins Presidential election in runoff vote.
• Justine Triet becomes only the third woman to win Palme d’Or at Cannes.
• Somalia to introduce direct universal suffrage in 2024

SPORTS

• Men’s Junior Asia Cup Hockey: Defending champions India defeats Thailand 17-0 in final Pool A match in Oman.
• Hockey: India beat Japan 3-1 in Men’s Junior Asia Cup at Salalah in Oman.
• IPL 2023: Final match between Chennai Super Kings and Gujarat Titans to be played in Ahmedabad
• H.S. Prannoy, won his maiden BWF World Tour title as he clinched the Malaysian Open.

The subaltern speaks

 

Late resurgence of Lohiate politics being driven by a changed political economy stifling the economic prospects of both the dominant as well as the non-dominant backward and marginalised castes

V.D. Savarkar is unquestionably the most influential political thinker of the Hindu Right. If Rousseau is considered to be the philosophical founder of post-revolution France, Savarkar now occupies that status for the republic of ‘New India’, guiding the spirit of the new Parliament which is set to be inaugurated on his birthday.

But who is the most influential political ideologue from the side of the Opposition? Arguably, that space increasingly belongs to Ram Manohar Lohia or, more precisely, Lohiate socialist politics. We mean Lohiate politics in a broad, substantive way, in terms of the increasing political viability of a congealed backward caste-class alliance against the upper caste-led and middle class formulated hegemony of the Bharatiya Janata Party. The difference from 50 years back is that Nehruvian “vested socialism” (in Lohia’s words) has given way to Hindu nationalist ‘crony capitalism’ as the dominant pole pushing disparate political actors into this emerging counter-alliance of the excluded.

The Congress’s victory in the Karnataka polls is, after all, what one would call in the Hindi belt a classic Lohiate alliance. There is a remarkably neat caste-class overlap in the Congress’s electoral mandate: an interlocked polarisation of the backward Ahinda communities and poor, less educated voters.

Of course, the Congress’s mandate under P.C. Siddaramaiah builds on the progressive roots of state politics, more specifically, the political legacy of D. Devaraj Urs. Surely, such a progressive coalition seems inconceivable in the Hindi belt where Hindu nationalism enjoys a ‘common-sensical’ dominance of the public sphere.

Admittedly, such scepticism is well-founded. The force of Lohiate socialism as a comprehensive framework had already started to wane in the Hindi belt by the early 1970s. A receding socialist camp was either subordinated or got merged in the mid-1970s into the potent stream of farmer politics represented by the Lok Dal party helmed by leaders such as Charan Singh in Uttar Pradesh and Devi Lal in Haryana. This caste-agnostic farmer politics was the politics of the challenger elite castes of Jats and Yadavs wherein upwardly mobile farmers merely sought to assume the dominance of the old upper caste elite. The socialist space further shrivelled into the narrow Yadav-Kurmi-led caste coalitions of the 1990s in the post-Mandal phase.

Why did Lohia’s aggregative backward class politics fail in UP while broad coalitions of the backward classes succeeded in Kerala and Tamil Nadu in not just capturing power but also transforming the political economy in favour of their constituents?

Firstly, there was a cultural constraint. The political scientist, Prerna Singh, located the answer in subnationalism in a book, which partly argued that a progressive, vernacular sphere allowed challenger elites (such as Nairs and Ezhavas in Kerala, and Chettiars and Vellalars in Tamil Nadu) to forge wider networks of solidarity of the marginalised against the ‘outsider’ Brahmin elite. Although Lohia sought to articulate a similar opposition between subaltern ‘Hindi’ and elite ‘English’, it hardly made a similar impact because of the historical evolution of the Hindi public sphere as a vessel for upper caste-led Hindu nationalism.

Second, there was a constraint of political economy. The challenger elites of South India — the middle peasant castes — had acquired a measure of economic capital by the time of Independence. Therefore, the challenger elites sought to forge broad, pro-development coalitions with the upper segments of middle castes, filling up the urban professional and entrepreneurial base, while the poor mobilised through social welfare. In northern India, the urban professional/entrepreneurial base was monopolised by the (numerically larger) upper castes. The newly rich middle castes of Jats and Yadavs found it more beneficial to establish dominance over the impoverished lower castes than to mount a frontal challenge to the dominance of the upper castes.

If Lohiate politics is seeing a late resurgence, it is being driven by a changed political economy which is stifling the economic prospects of both the dominant as well as the non-dominant backward as well as the marginalised castes, leading to a shared resentment, if not yet a shared agenda.

In fact, the Congress of today seems to have revamped into a neo-Lohiate formation. Three out of four Congress chief ministers belong to OBC castes, the fourth started out as a poor milkman. The Congress stands upfront with the Mandal parties in demanding the caste census and endorses the principle of a fair division of economic resources among communities in line with the share of the population. Mallikarjun Kharge leads the Congress as the third Dalit president of the party. The Bharat Jodo Yatra emphasised the economic anguish of those left-behind from the ‘Adani-Modi’ model of economic development.

But can this socio-economic message work nationally? This week’s CSDS-Lokniti national survey provides some preliminary straws in the wind: 41% of the people claim to like Rahul Gandhi, of which 15% claim to have developed this affinity because of the Bharat Jodo Yatra. Rahul Gandhi has also clearly emerged as the leader of the Opposition with 34% opting for him as the principal national challenger to Modi. The survey also found that the Congress has climbed to 29% of the vote share (an additional 10% from 2014), while the vote share of the BJP remains stable at around 39%, indicating that the Congress is eating into the Opposition space. Some of these votes are probably leached from declining parties such as the Bahujan Samaj Party and the Janata Dal (Secular); this is a rare recovery of the Congress’ space.

The massive farmers’ movement of 2021-2022 had first signalled a shift by forging “new solidarities across class, caste, gender, religion and regions” as the sociologist, Satendra Kumar, observed, discursively moving beyond middle-caste farmers and including the concerns of Dalit labourers. After all, the dominant peasant castes of the Hindi belt have been mired in an economic crisis for close to a decade. As Christophe Jaffrelot has shown using Indian Human Development Survey data (2012), the income of the bottom 60% of Jats, Patels and Marathas stood much lower than the average income of the non-dominant OBCs in their respective three states and substantially less than the Dalits (except for Jats of Haryana). Worse, the OBCs and Dalits had made rapid gains in education and salaried jobs as compared to them. The crisis only became worse in the Modi years, seen in both new reservation demands and the dominant caste backlash to the BJP in the assembly elections of Haryana and Maharashtra. Meanwhile the rural wage growth boom of the United Progressive Alliance years has virtually stagnated. As Jean Drèze has documented, the growth rate of real wages between 2014-15 and 2021-22 was below 1% per year for both farm and non-farm workers. Therefore, the class interests of different OBC groups might slowly be coalescing, witnessed in both the Samajwadi Party-Rashtriya Lok Dal coalition in UP as well as in the Grand Alliance in Bihar.

The CSDS poll indicates that the 2024 election is still pretty close, with 43% favouring a third chance for the Modi government as opposed to 38% who oppose it. But who are these 38% and what kind of platform can potentially unite these disgruntled voters?

Consider a few more statistics from the same poll. One, only 35% respondents claimed improvement in their economic condition over the last four years. Two, contrary to the aspirational neo-middle class voter captured by the Lokniti survey in 2014 favouring growth over redistribution, today 57% people support subsidies as essential for the poor. Third, 46% believe that the government has failed on farmer issues, 45% on corruption, 57% on price rise, while 36% believe that government policies have only favoured the wealthy.

The Lohiate spectre of bottoms-up subaltern discontent hangs over the Modi regime. This cannot be wished away with the rarefied bluster of vishwaguru or New India.

Asim Ali is a political researcher and columnist based in Delhi

Source: The Telegraph, 27/05/23