Current affairs

There’s No Voter Apathy in India

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With 2019 Lok Sabha elections a few days away, I have been thinking of one question: what explains the voters’ confidence in Indian governments to provide them with guaranteed incomes, guaranteed pensions, or guaranteed work even when governments are terrible at doing what they must – fix market failures?

In other words, the Indian State’s performance on law and order, education, and public health, is poor. And yet there’s wide support whenever Indian governments and political parties promise new schemes to accomplish even grander things. What explains this paradox?

I have two hypotheses.

One, the political enthusiasm hypothesis. This is the reverse of the voter apathy idea. It means that the voters who have a disproportionate influence on setting the political agenda (read middle-income voters) were never apathetic to politics but only to government provision of public services.

They became apathetic towards government provision of public services because with rising incomes, they could substitute the missing services with their own private solutions. Having done that, politics became a means to achieve other outcomes – those unrelated to market failures. Voting apathy never meant political apathy.

See this from the Exit, Voice, Loyalty thesis. Loyalty makes exit difficult. So the median Indian voter never really exited from Indian politics and instead chose to voice concerns unrelated to government provision of basic services.

My second hypotheses is more charitable to the Indian voter. I call it the expanding moral arc thesis. It is based on the book The Moral Arc by Michael Shermer. The book argues that the moral arc is continuously expanding. A few decades ago, the arc excluded non-White men in large parts of the world. Today, it includes all humans and even animals.

The key insight for us is that Indian politics is being played out in the background of this rapidly increasing moral arc. This makes the Indian developmental challenge more moral but less fast. The demand for universal basic incomes in India is a reflection of this expanding moral arc. The government’s role in India is seen as a moral project not a utilitarian one and hence we are okay to give its record on fixing market failures a free pass.

A Duty to Question Fake News

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The discourse around fake news often focuses on the ones disseminating it. Organised troll factories, chatbots, media houses with questionable integrity, elected leaders who like to play fast and loose with facts: the list is endless. But it is equally important to look at individuals, the targets and consumers of fake news, and ask what they should do when bombarded by inaccurate information.

This was the subject of a short essay titled The Ethics of Belief, written in 1877 by the mathematician and philosopher William K. Clifford. He sets a very high standard for people to follow, as is evident from the following line:

…it is wrong, always, everywhere, and for anyone, to believe anything upon insufficient evidence.

Clifford justifies the need for such an ethical duty for three reasons. One, and the simplest of them all, a wrongful belief can dictate wrongful action. Second, it can foster a bad habit where individuals become credulous believers, their sense of discernment dulled by a tendency to accept whatever is presented to them. And three, the larger social reason of human actions and thoughts being a form of common property, and thus to be considered both a privilege and a responsibility.

Regardless of how convincing one finds Clifford’s reasons, what makes his position relevant for the current age is its flipping of the discourse. By presenting the questioning of beliefs as an ethical duty, the essay gives primacy to individuals. It remains to be seen if this framing can be used to arrive at a public policy solution to the problem of fake news.

The Police Should Not Police Hate Speech

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A recent report (of which I was a co-author) looked at the way in which hate speech provisions in the Indian Penal Code, 1860 (the IPC) need to be reconfigured to fulfil their function and prevent their abuse. The report recommended replacing certain existing provisions in the IPC with narrowly constructed alternatives that do away with vague standards and instead hold liable only that speech which incites violence.

As I think more about how this will be an improvement on the status quo, I also believe that more must be done to further reduce the scope for abuse. One way of achieving this is by rethinking the way these hate speech provisions (in particular, sections 153-A, 295-A, and 505 of the IPC) are categorised under the Code of Criminal Procedure, 1973 (the CrPC).

These provisions are cognizable offences at present. What this means is that a police officer receiving a complaint about one of these offences can arrest anyone without an order or a warrant from a magistrate. The subjective satisfaction of a police officer that this entails is a recipe for disaster. This is particularly so for complaints regarding hate speech, where there is a need to evaluate the content of the speech itself and its proximity to violence before taking any action. It is too much to expect police officers to perform this function. Thus, in addition to reworking the provisions of the law, it would be prudent to classify them as non-cognizable offences under the CrPC to ensure an additional layer of scrutiny.

A Global Shift in the Nuclear Weapons Narrative

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It’s quite fascinating to observe the global conversation on nuclear weapons. It resembles a simple pendulum oscillation with a time period of ten years.

Back in 2009, the then US president pledged to seek an arms reduction treaty with Russia, ratify the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty (CTBT), and convene a global summit to discuss the eventual elimination of nuclear stockpiles. It was the first time that a US president spoke of a roadmap for nuclear disarmament.

And yet that goal seems even more distant nine years later. An excellent article titled ‘The Vanishing Nuclear Taboo‘ in The Foreign Affairs describes the situation well:

After decades of arms control agreements, security cooperation, and a growing consensus about the unacceptability of nuclear weapons, the world is now headed in the opposite direction. Geopolitical tensions have heightened. New arms races have started. States have reverted to valorizing nuclear weapons. The nuclear taboo is weakening. But nothing about this is inevitable; it is a choice our leaders have made. Nuclear disarmament will have to be a long-term project. Today’s decision-makers may not be able to complete the task, but they have an obligation to pursue it.

The taboo is vanishing fast. Apart from the usual suspects, the European states have also changed their tones. This excellent paper gives an idea of the possible scenarios in Europe that seem likely as a result of the ongoing churn. While rejecting the idea of a single European deterrent, the paper argues that the following scenarios appear realistic:

  1. In the current context, Paris can consider extending nuclear deterrence to Europe as a whole including rotations of Rafale fighter-bombers (without their nuclear missiles) to allied bases across Europe.
  2. If the US-Europe relationship worsens further, France can consider these options:
    • base part of its airborne arsenal (say, in the order of ten missiles) in Germany or in Poland (basing) and/or agree that they could be carried by European fighter-bombers (sharing).
    • replace the NATO SNOWCAT (Support of NATO Operations With Conventional Air Tactics) procedure with an identical European one, where non-nuclear nations commit themselves to participate in a nuclear strike with non-nuclear assets.
    • create the possibility of a European nuclear maritime task force, with accompanying European ships and, possibly, a European nuclear squadron based on it.

The fact that such themes are even being discussed seriously in Europe is just another indication of the fact that the NPT regime is falling apart. Consequently, the terms of the debate now need to shift from the ambitious goal of zero nuclear weapons to the more realistic goal of nuclear restraint by a global commitment towards no first use and by taking weapons off high alert to reduce possibilities of accidental use.

The terms of the nuclear weapons debate are definitely up for a change; it would be interesting to see which nation-state will declare itself as the next nuclear power. Any guesses?

 

 

Cities and their names

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We, the people of India, have been in a flux over the recent proposals being made to change the name of our beloved cities based on their historical or religious past. There are various sides and nuances to the conversation. In the past decades, the names of the cities were changed either to reclaim the names they had before the colonial rule or based on the linguistic preference of the local community. The argument against the recent change of names is that it has religious connotations and is biased towards one majority community’s preference. Although an interesting conversation, as someone who has been studying urban governance for half a decade now, I wonder how does it help the cities.

I have a proposal. Let’s allow the person who grants the largest amount to the city municipal corporation to name the city. This would not only make the process immune to the religious and linguistic impositions but would help the cash-strapped urban local bodies raise money to provide better public service. For instance, if a rich businessperson can afford to pay for it, she should have the option to rename one of our metropolises to her parent’s name. This would be a classic win-win situation.  

The municipal corporations that have been highly reliant on union and state governments to make the ends meet would gain significantly from the grants for a small price of changing the city’s name. The grants would have a provision for the grantor to provide a pre-defined amount to cover for the administrative costs that may be incurred in the process of changing the name. While the city would make financial gains, the grantor would be able to give one of the most significant forms of homage to an individual or an institution of their choice. This won’t be very different from the schools and institutions being renamed based on the wishes of the grantors.

To keep the cost of the transactions to a minimal, cities can restrict bidding to once every 25 years. This way the cities can plan large scale expenditures based on when the next grant would be flowing in. Of course, the large-scale expenditure can range from building a statue or creating a robust public health system. The final decision will be with the city municipal corporation or the state government, that oversees most of the significant urban functions. I believe this proposal would be appealing to all sides as it caters to none and the final winners would be the real underdogs, the cities.

What Hate Speech Is Not

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The CEO of Twitter, the social media platform, recently found himself the subject of some heckling on, irony be damned, Twitter. The reason was a photograph taken of Jack Dorsey holding a poster that read ‘Smash Brahmanical Patriarchy.’ Some claimed that this amounted to hate mongering and hate speech, a notion that is as misguided as it is dangerous.

To begin with, the plain text of the poster is not directed against any individual and arguably, it does not target a particular community either. What it does is call for the end of a regressive tradition of patriarchy that anyone can subscribe to.

Which brings us to the second point: the inordinate amount of focus on the use of the word ‘smash’ and how this is tantamount to a call for violence. It is almost as if the hecklers have seen one too many movies containing a certain green-skinned comic book character who likes to wreak havoc and now cannot help but associate the said word with violence. In reality, the word is little more than an example of the usage of a forceful verb.

This examination of the plain text of the poster must also be seen in the context of what the intent behind it was. In the Shreya Singhal judgement, the Indian Supreme Court looked at the conditions under which the right to freedom of speech and expression can be restricted. It held that speech and expression that amounts to either discussion or advocacy, howsoever unpopular, cannot be restricted. The only valid ground is that of incitement. Can the language of the poster be categorised as incitement? Clearly not, judging by a measured understanding along the lines of the first two points above. Does it fall within the scope of discussion or advocacy? Yes.

Thus, the claims of hate mongering and hate speech against the poster are ill-founded. Their attempt to lower the bar for the freedom of speech and expression is as regressive for society as the patriarchy that they implicitly champion.

The False Promise of Connectivity in International Relations

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When the first transatlantic telegraph cable became operational in 1858, utopians hoped that nationalism would soon perish. And just two years ago Facebook was talking about how it aimed to create one global community.

But we now know that nationalism has proved to be an adversary deserving far more respect and reflection than what the technologists believed it to be. For an excellent discussion on this topic, I recommend this episode of The Secret History of the Future podcast.

What caught my attention were the parallels between the false promises of information connectivity in inter-personal relations and infrastructure connectivity in international relations.

It is almost an axiom in foreign policy circles today that powerful nation-states should envision and deliver on infrastructure projects in regions where they seek higher influence. China’s BRI has only strengthened this narrative — alternatives to BRI are often just modified variants of infrastructure connectivity projects. This narrative has its own dodgy economic reasoning as well: connectivity projects are thought of as ‘global public goods’ providing initiatives.

Even if we leave the misapplication of economic theory aside, the utility of many connectivity projects is not immediately clear to me. One, these projects will also run up against the force of nationalism. Familiarity will breed contempt regardless of the benefits of these projects. The BRI has started encountering this force in Palau and Sierra Leone. It’s not long before CPEC will face this challenge as well. Two, even from an economic standpoint, assuming the financial risk of connectivity projects in under-governed regions makes no sense for the investing countries. Just like pipeline projects, it is not difficult to sabotage such road projects — warlords and terrorists can easily block them in areas where the writ of the state runs weak.

Maybe converting infrastructure debt to equity control (in the form of transfer of land rights etc) is the primary consideration that makes countries project connectivity as the lynchpin of their foreign policy.

 

Fissures Emerge in the Pakistani Military-Jihadi Complex

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Not all’s well with the Pakistani military-jihadi complex (MJC). The anti-blasphemy protestors have blocked arterial roads in Lahore, Karachi, Islamabad, and Rawalpindi. Led by the Tehreek-e-Labaik (TLP), they are opposing the Supreme Court’s acquittal of Asia Bibi in a blasphemy case.

The current showdown — amongst other things — is different in the sense that it threatens the unity of the Pakistani MJC. In our chapter for the Contemporary Handbook of Pakistan 2017, we had argued that there are five factors that keep the MJC afloat. One of the factors was ‘Islam as the ideological refuge’. And it is here that trouble has been brewing now.

The TLP is outdoing the other elements of the MJC in championing the Islamist cause. Having failed in the last elections, they seem to have decided that mobilised violence is their weapon of choice. And this time around, they are leaving no stone unturned. A cleric, Afzal Qadri, speaking to a group of protestors earlier in the week even called for a revolt against the army chief and the putative government. The Pakistani army soon went on the defensive with DG, ISPR issuing a statement that the army had nothing to do with the Supreme Court’s decision. Last time around when the TLP protested in November 2017, the army managed to get the protesters off the streets by throwing money at them. Thus the stakes are much higher now and a similar move will most likely be rejected by the TLP. This means that a showdown within the MJC is likely to take place in the days to come.

PS: It is almost as if Pakistan is hellbent on writing a playbook called Why and How to not be Pakistan.

 

 

CAATSA Implementation Makes US Strategy in Afghanistan Even More Unsustainable

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The next chapter in the Countering America’s Adversaries Through Sanctions Act (CAATSA) saga will unfold on November 5, 2018. On this day, the provisions reimposing sanctions on entities trading with Iran in certain sectors will come into effect.

In India, the primary discussion point has been whether India will receive a significant reduction exemption on November 5. Such an exemption will allow Indian companies to continue importing Iranian oil without coming under ‘menu-based’ sanctions. It is quite likely that India might receive an exemption for both oil imports and for development of the Chabahar port. However that is not the only point of contention for India and the region.

Regardless of the decision on November 5, CAATSA is already closing the door on new solutions for the war in Afghanistan.

First, it increases the costs for Iran and India to collaborate on Afghanistan. We had written last year that not only will the Chabahar port help Afghanistan, the US will have much to gain from a connectivity project for Central Asia which does not have China at its core. But with the threat of secondary sanctions looming, companies at the margin will not invest in any project that involves Iran — why assume the risk of a volatile geopolitical environment which comes at a prospective cost of making business in the US market difficult?

Second, it also closes the door on a Russia – US understanding in Afghanistan. What we often forget is that ouster of the Taliban after 9/11 was made easier by an alignment of interests between US and Russia albeit for a brief period of time. Russia at that time provided critical logistical support from Afghanistan’s north and shared crucial intelligence for US-led coalition forces. CAATSA makes any such arrangement in the future even more unlikely.

Combine these two effects with the fact that the US attempt at talks with the Taliban are making no headways, and what you get is that there are zero new possibilities to end the war in Afghanistan. Only two scenarios remain. One involves the US withdrawing out of Afghanistan completely. The second involves the US returning to its dependence on Pakistan. Both scenarios will leave Afghanistan worse-off.

 

 

Reevaluating Citizenship

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Last week saw the European Union raise concerns about golden passports, schemes that amount to little more than a sale of citizenship by some EU member-nations to rich individuals in lieu of investments. The EU is understandably worried that many individuals with questionable credentials could use a golden passport to enter and operate in the region. This is an excellent opportunity to wonder aloud about what citizenship entails in today’s world, particularly because there have been plenty of other cases in the past year alone that drive home the need for more clarity on the subject.

First, there was the case of Roman Abramovich, a Russian billionaire, being granted Israeli citizenship and using that to enter the UK when the extension of his original visa was held up by red tape and tensions between the two countries. Israel grants citizenship to any person of the Jewish faith who wishes to relocate to the country and a person holding an Israeli passport can visit the UK without a visa for short periods. But is not a citizenship based on religious denomination an anachronism? Religion remains a powerful identifier but should it be a sufficient condition to gain citizenship of a country?

Second, the conversation following France’s football World Cup win earlier this year shows the need to distinguish between citizenship and nationalism. Hamsini Hariharan has written about this nationalism debate before in the Pragati Express. However, what would be of interest is to know how many of the victorious French squad hold dual-citizenship, something that is recognised by France. If the answer is yes, how would it affect the existing conversation?

Third, and not really connected to citizenship, is the farcical case of Boris Becker, the former tennis player seeking immunity from bankruptcy proceedings by claiming he has a diplomatic passport from the Central African Republic, which the latter denied. While there are genuine reasons for the continued existence of diplomatic immunity, an illustrative list of other cases from the past shows that the system can be abused. And, in the context of this post, if an individual with sufficient funds and influence manages to gain not just citizenship but also diplomatic immunity, there is surely a need to revisit the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations to see if a change to the status quo is necessary.

Closer home, two features of Indian citizenship bear mentioning. One, the absence of dual-citizenship. Two, the absence of a monetary component, be it through net worth or investments in the country, to become a naturalised citizen under the Citizenship Act, 1955. These are sound positions, lending citizenship an exclusivity while at the same time avoiding the pitfalls that come with ascribing a monetary value to it. It would be interesting to see if the world moves towards a similar system in the future.

Note: It would remiss to end this post by only mentioning the positives of Indian citizenship without mentioning the recent furore over the register of citizens in Assam, which surely demands a better way of being handled than stripping four million people of their citizenship.

A Major Setback in Kandahar

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Things just got worse in South Afghanistan. The screenshot below taken from Long War Journal’s Mapping Taliban Control in Afghanistan project illustrates the significance. The areas marked in dark grey are under Taliban control. Those in red are contested districts. The uncoloured ones are controlled by the Government of Afghanistan. Kandahar city and surrounding districts immediately pop out as islands of government control in Southern Afghanistan. May be not for long anymore.

Image source: Mapping Taliban Control in Afghanistan, Long War Journal by Bill Roggio and Alexandra Gutowski

The reason is that Lt Gen Abdul Raziq, who was the police chief and the governor of the province was killed on 18 Oct 2018 supposedly by Taliban fighters who had infiltrated his inner circle. Gen Raziq was a major anti-Taliban leader in the South and his death makes Taliban’s complete control of the South imminent.

In many of our previous articles covering Afghanistan, we had mentioned how important Raziq’s role was. This is from 2015:

An unstated tenet of Afghan history is that the march for control of Kabul and the country is predicated on wresting control of Kandahar, the Taliban’s traditional base. In recent times though, ever since General Abdul Raziq was appointed police chief of the province, the Taliban have not tasted much success in Kandahar. Raziq has singularly been responsible for the relative peace in the province.

Raziq was no stranger to suicide attacks on his life. Various estimates say that there have been 30-40 attempts on his life before the fatal one. Only in May this year, there was an suicide bombing in front of his house. In his previous speeches, he had singled out the Haqqani Network and ISI for trying to wipe out the military leadership of the province.

It seems unlikely that such an attack could have been arranged without Pakistan’s support. It is also strange that this attack happened while the Taliban leadership is in talks with the US envoy. Moreover, the attack took place in the presence of the US Commander in Afghanistan. Some reports even claim that the main target of this attack were these US military leaders and not Lt Gen Raziq.

This is a big moment for Afghanistan. Even as elections take place on Saturday, the focus will be on what the US decides to do in response.

 

 

 

India’s Defence Production Optimisation Problem

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The Caravan has an excellent in-depth story on the Rafale controversy. Beyond the specifics of the current controversy, the investigation throws light on the problems in defence production that continue to haunt India’s strategic ambitions.

On the face of it, defence production suffers from an acute case of what I had referred to earlier as hyper multi-objective optimisation. My argument was that the reason some government policies in India fail is because they try to optimise several objectives simultaneously, ultimately creating a solution that meets none of the objectives.

Now defence procurement is essentially an oligopsony i.e. it is a market where only a few buyers exists — only a few nation-states in the world have the financial muscle to buy 10 submarines or 100 multirole aircraft for example. My argument is that this oligopsony makes the optimisation problem even worse. The government believes that because it has more weight in the market, it has the luxury of optimising many more objectives in the process.

Let us look at what the government is optimising when it sets out to purchase defence equipment today.

  1. defence preparedness: primarily determined by the end users i.e. the armed forces
  2. costs: both explicit and opportunity costs
  3. strategic value: every defence purchase from foreign players raises the question that should we buy from existing trade partners or not
  4. creating an indigenous defence-industrial complex: this is further divided into two sub-goals. One is sustaining the ailing government-owned public sector companies. The second one is spurring investment from private Indian entities.

Now, even without any prior background, optimising all these objectives appears to be a herculean task. But even while India’s procurement processes were notoriously lethargic, new objectives were being added. The fourth objective was explicitly added  through an offset policy in 2005 and more recently through a strategic partnership model in 2016. And quite naturally, it is this fourth objective that has become the main sticking point in the Rafale controversy.

So with the government’s flagship reform failing, we are back to the starting point: what should be the mechanism to address India’s defence requirements? What principles should govern procurement and purchase?

One of the ways to resolve hyper multi-objective dilemmas is withdrawal. The government could let go of the aim to indigenise when it is looking to make a specific defence purchase. Get rid of the offsets policy altogether for a few years. The indigenisation problem should then be targeted at a later point of time. This is just one method. There could be other variations of choosing objectives that can work better but what is clear is that the current method needs a complete and urgent shakeup.