Dispatch #23: Weekend Linkfest
Here is a curated list of a few good articles from the world of policy, politics and development.
Source: CNN/ Ayodhya Deepostav 2020
1) Nehru against Nehruvians- On Religion and Secularism:
Should a politician visit a religious place in public? Should Indian state support religious events? Is there something called ‘Indian Secularism’? Is Indian secularism anti-religion? Can a political party that thrives on religious polarization upheld the idea of India?
These questions have been troubling us for the past few years. There are several essays written by scholars and political theorists that can help us resolve some of these dilemmas. One of those academic pieces is a 2017 article by Rajeev Bhargava who has explained that the secularism that the Nehruvians endorse is actually very different from the one that Nehru espoused. Using a thought experiment Bhargava first distinguishes two kinds of religions- A and B. While A comprises of a diverse set of beliefs, religious practices and is syncretic, religion B has hierarchies of power and status and has developed its own set of doctrines that have led to a bureaucracy that acts as a gatekeeper inorder to control who can be given entry into the religion and who can be kicked out of it. Bhargava argues that Nehru believed in A and found B to be dangerous for a country like India.
Talking about religion B, Bhargava writes, “Not only does it reduce the status of others, it inferiorises and marginalises them. Thus, since all states in the modern era are nation states, Nehru opposed all narrow nationalisms, including religious ones. In religiously diverse societies, all religious nationalisms are exclusionary. He may have underestimated the power of such nationalisms when he said that they were “relics of the past and backward,” but his critique was heading in the right direction. The nationalism that needs to be built in India, he argued, must have its doors and windows open to internationalism. But for this to happen, the state must not identify with even any Religion A. The ends promoted by any religion A, no matter how valuable, cannot be the ends of a secular state.
Second, in Nehru’s view, a secular state cannot be an anti-religious state. It is not a state where religion as such is discouraged, or pushed into oblivion. How could he indiscriminately oppose religion or espouse its absence, given his acknowledgement of the indispensability and value of Religion A? He also appreciated that since many faiths express themselves publicly, a secular state must accept the public presence of Religions A. There should, he insisted, be “free play for all religions”. A secular state must protect their places of worship and guarantee their religious practices. It must protect freedom of religion and conscience, including, of course, freedom for those who have no religion (including the atheists). Indeed, Nehru goes a step further and says that it must honour all faiths equally and give them equal opportunity. Of course, this is a duty of a secular state in a religiously diverse society and the duty of both minority and majority communities not to jeopardise the ideals of a secular state.”
Nehru’s secularism was very different from the one advocated by the Nehruvians who came after him. Bhargava further writes, “So, Nehru’s views on secularism were subtle, complex and distinctive. Unlike the model that often operated in modern France and Turkey and approved by some post-Nehru Nehruvians, it was not anti-religious. In this model—call it model 1, (i) religion is not officially recognised, (ii) it becomes a target of active disrespect by a state that excludes religion from its affairs but retains the power to intervene in religion, (iii) is removed from the public domain that is, privatised, (iv) qualification of citizenship, both membership in the state and all rights are made wholly independent of religious affiliation.
Regretably, most Nehruvian secularists have frequently defended not this complex, sophisticated, very conception of Nehru (also found in the Constitution) but instead a very limited and partial version of it or worse, one or the other Western variants. They have alternatingly defended a secularism that is anti-religious—alienating the religious by failing to treat them as citizens worthy of equal respect—sometimes put their force behind an areligious secularism—failing to understand that no modern state can keep itself aloof from religion, especially in places like India where religion cannot easily be separated from the social and the cultural, and sometimes chosen to support a multireligious secularism that has a high propensity to tolerate indefensible socio-religious practices and that cries foul every time the state intervenes in religion.”
2) Why Do People Stay Poor?
There is a huge body of literature on poverty traps in low and middle income countries. Most of them have explored income shocks (adverse health episodes and out-of-pocket expenditure) that push households into poverty trap.
In a latest paper, economists Clare Balboni, Oriana Bandiera, Robin Burgess, Maitreesh Ghatak, and Anton Heil, have further built upon this literature. They argue that households that remain in poverty traps and mainly because of unproductive and non-remunerative occupations. If these households are being provided with productive assets (income support or livestock) then they can cross the poverty trap thresholds. The policy implications of this study could be on ‘big push policies which transform job opportunities represent a powerful means of addressing the global mass poverty problem.’
On development policies that low and middle income countries can adopt, the authors conclude by writing, “Poverty traps are one of the most fundamental concepts in development economics. The contribution of this paper has been to provide evidence for their existence using the combination of a randomized asset transfer and an 11-year panel in rural Bangladesh. Our key finding is that people stay poor because they lack opportunity. It is not their intrinsic characteristics that trap people in poverty but rather their circumstances. This has three implications for how we think about development policy. The first is that big pushes that enable occupational change will be needed to address the global mass poverty problem. Small pushes will work to elevate consumption but will not get people out of the poverty trap. The magnitude of the transfer needed to achieve occupational change may be much larger than is typical with current interventions, though importantly it can be time-limited. Therefore, the fiscal cost of permanently getting people out of poverty through a large, time-limited transfer might actually be lower than relying on continual transfers that raise consumption but have no effect on the occupations of the poor. The second is that big push policies can have long-lasting effects. Our analysis of long-run dynamics indicates that the asset, occupation and consumption trajectories of above threshold beneficiaries diverge from those of below threshold beneficiaries over time. This finding is important as it indicates that, by engendering occupational change, one-time pushes can have permanent effects. The third is that poverty traps create mismatches between talent and jobs. We have shown that misallocation of labor is rife amongst the poor in rural Bangladesh. Indeed, we show that the vast majority of the poor in rural Bangladesh are not engaged in the occupations where they would be most productive. They are perfectly capable of taking on the occupations of the richer women but are constrained from doing so by a lack of resources. The value of eliminating misallocation is an order of magnitude larger than the cost of moving all the beneficiaries past the threshold. This is important as it implies that poverty traps are preventing people from making full use of their abilities and indeed it is the mass squandering of people’s abilities that is the key tragedy of mass poverty.”
3) How Parliament Overstepped Itself in Bringing the Three Farm Laws?
In this insightful article, senior advocate at Supreme Court, Bishwajit Bhattacharyya, argues that the Union government overstepped its jurisdiction to pass the three farm laws. He writes, “The word ‘agriculture’ finds mention 12 times in the three lists. In List I, it appears in entries 82, 86, 87, and 88; in List II under entries 14, 18, 30, 46, 47 and 48; and under entries 6 and 41 of List III. It would be observed that under List I in entries 82, 86, 87 and 88 (where the word ‘agriculture’ appear), parliament’s law-making power has been circumscribed by the words ‘other than’ agriculture income (entry 82) or ‘exclusive of’ agricultural land (entry 86), or ‘other than’ agricultural land (entries 87 and 88). This means the Union List does not empower the parliament to enact any law on agriculture.
Under the State List, ‘agriculture’ is mentioned in entry 14. So, states are entirely competent to enact laws on agriculture. Entry 18 mentions, inter-alia, ‘transfer and alienation of agricultural land’. Entry 30 mentions, inter-alia, ‘relief of agricultural indebtedness’. The parliament seems to have pressed entry 33 (b) of the Concurrent List into motion, which mentions trade and commerce, and the production, in the supply and distribution of ‘foodstuffs’, including edible oil seeds and oils. Entry 33 (b) does not use the word ‘agriculture’. The question is whether parliament is competent to expand the scope or definition of ‘foodstuffs’ into agricultural items in entry 33 (b) through legislation without a constitutional amendment? Surely not, in my view.”
4) India's Poor Are Eating Into Their Savings, Thanks To High Inflation & COVID-19:
India’s rising inflation is hurting its poor and eating into their savings. Indian poor households have been struck by double whammy- loss of jobs due to pandemic and rising prices because of the disruptions in supply chain because of months long lockdown. This India Spend article takes a deep dive into a crisis that’s unfolding.
As households dip into their savings because of either stagnating or no running incomes, economists warn that India's gross household savings could decline, thereby denting future consumption and jeopardising economic recovery. This could lead to a lowering of investor sentiment as India's consumer market would get narrower with constricted household savings, warned economists. For instance, global investors would be discouraged to put their money into a market where consumers have less disposable cash to spend, thereby leading to reduced investments into new projects, which would dampen job creation.
5) The political economy driving farm protests:
Neelanjan Sircar has a very interesting take on the farmers’ protests. He contrasts the protests with the political and economic centralization in India.
Sircar writes, “As Harish Damodaran recently argued, the concentration of wealth in a few corporate actors has upended the traditional model of funding for political parties. The ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) requires extraordinary financial resources to maintain its dominance electorally (at a national level) and the strength of its party machine. No party in India can be successful unless it procures a stable source of funding; this is all the more pressing for a party such as the BJP, which requires significantly more resources. Until recently, a key source of funding came from “regional capitalists” — landed elite, liquor or sugar barons, builders. This diverse pool of regional capitalists provided for a reservoir of funding for myriad political parties, especially regional ones.
The recent (and growing) concentration of wealth has weakened the political financing environment for opposition to the BJP in two important ways.
First, many corporate actors disproportionately gaining wealth today operate at an all-India level — so it is particularly important to curry favour with the national government. This generates incentives to fund the party in power at the Centre, which has become all the more possible due to India’s controversial electoral bond scheme.
Second, given India’s sluggish economic performance, particularly after demonetisation, extracting money from local contracts is less lucrative than before — which, in all likelihood, impacts parties in power at the state level, often other than the BJP, to a greater degree.”