If I was to present the budget, it would follow this outline

The budget wish list is big. Yes, the urgent needs of different social classes and the suffering of the poor with high unemployment, inflation, poor healthcare system and education in the country make them aspire for some relief on the big day.

More than that, the current malleability of the rulers in the background of elections this year in nine states ~ Telangana, Karnataka, Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Rajasthan, Tripura, Meghalaya, Nagaland, and Mizoram ~ and to the Lok Sabha next year make people think that the government will come with a people friendly budget and therefore make them demand more. But the likely size of the budget is not going to be big enough to meet the challenges.

The trends of previous years and the current state of the economy make it easy to guess the most probable size of the budget and its capacity to make allocations for different sectors.

The budget’s size which was about 18 per cent of the GDP has been gradually declining from 2009-10; it reached to a 12.59 per cent level in 2015-16.

Later, with some ups and downs, it peaked to 17.1 per cent in 2020-21 thanks to Covid-aided slow growth coupled with the high expenditure needa of the government.

Again, the share has fallen, and it was 15.29 per cent in the current year’s budget and the government is not much likely to go much beyond that level now.

So, assuming the same level of 15.29 per cent of GDP in 2023- 24, too, the budget size would be Rs 46.32 lakh crore. This guess is based on the most likely GDP estimate of Rs 303 lakh crore for the 2023-24 budget year.

To be clearer, the 2022-23 GDP estimate as shown in the budget document was Rs 258 lakh crore. This sum is going to be revised in the budget to Rs 273.08 lakh crore based on the NSO’s first advance estimate.

Now it is being heard that the government is going to estimate an 11 per cent nominal increase over this which means the GDP figure to be the basis for budget 2023-24 would be Rs 303 lakh crore.

Add to this, the government wants the fiscal deficit to be under control; it wants to peg it at 5.9 per cent of the GDP or so. That limit will be necessary now to achieve its goal of reaching its FRBM roadmap of 4.5 per cent in 2025-26. So, it has no choice but to be parsimonious in fixing the budget size.

In absolute terms, the budget of Rs.46.32 lac will be Rs.6.87 lac crore higher than the current year’s budget of 39.45 lakh crore, which means not a big increase after factoring in the current inflation.

The government has some compulsory spending that it cannot reduce. The essential spending during the current year which includes states’ share in taxes (17 per cent), pensions (4 per cent), interest payment (20 per cent), Finance Commission and other transfers (10 per cent), subsidies (8 per cent), and other subsidies (8 per cent) add up to 67 per cent of budget expenditure that is Rs 31.03 lakh crore or 10.25 per cent of the GDP. What remains is only 33 per cent meaning Rs 15.29 lakh crore, which is 5.04 per cent of the GDP.

While the available balance itself is about 5 per cent of the GDP, the demands are like 6 per cent spending on education as recommended by the Kothari Commission long back, 3 per cent on health (of course this means States and Centre together) as per Planning Commission or Srinadha Reddy Commission recommendation and so on.

So, the government will not be able to spend on various sectors at desired levels. Also, it cannot spend enough on capital investment. So, will be the case with the other schemes that it might introduce with an eye on coming elections.

Yet, the government cannot ignore the middle classes totally because the ruling party has high hopes for support in voting from this class. So, it looks like it might indulge in some tinkering with the income tax rates. The peak in personal income tax may be brought down from the present 42.74 per cent since it is 25.20 per cent higher than that of the corporate tax.

Also likely is the increase in the standard deduction from its 2019 set limit of Rs 50,000 to Rs 75,000 or Rs 1 lakh. So will be some concessions under Section 80 C, housing loan deduction and relief on the interest on these loans.

Although the government is likely to announce newer schemes for the benefit of the poor, the allocations may not be enough to give any tangible benefit to anybody whereby they remain as token gestures.

The economic policy the government is following ~ which restricts the government’s role in the economy ~ constrains it from spending expansion. Finally, the budget will end up as everything to everybody but not enough for anybody.

Pak Has no External Enemy, Its Enemy is Within

Elite-bashing is Pakistan’s newest sport. As the country stares into the default abyss, the ubiquitous phrase — ‘elite state capture’ — putatively explains all that has gone awry. Fat-cats are blamed for stealing public resources, conspicuous consumption, and dollar flight. But this super-simplified, sophomoric reasoning misses the real point.

Doesn’t every country have its ultra-rich? Are they less greedy, avaricious, exploitative, and degenerate? Wealth and privilege in America, Europe, China, Russia, and India are still more concentrated than here. But mafias and silovikis notwithstanding, their knowledge-based economies keep soaring and their spacecraft are circling the moon and Mars.

Our elite versus theirs — something truly sets us apart. Beaming a spotlight onto this is useful because it reveals actual differences between societies; every elite mirrors what lies below.

Look at Pakistan’s home-grown elite. Like the common man, they spit on the law. Last week, when Britain’s prime minister was hauled up for not wearing a seatbelt, he meekly apologised and paid the fine. Compare: an anti-terrorism court judge reportedly had two patrolling officers suspended for preventing his travel on the thickly fogged-up Sialkot Motorway. Or, when an MPA’s SUV zipped through a red light and crushed a policeman in Quetta, the MPA’s political might ended the matter after the family was paid token compensation.

As in some African countries, Pakistan is home to the world’s richest politicians, real-estate tycoons, and generals. Symbiotically bound together, on Fridays they love being seen in a state of unctuous piety. Donning a prayer cap and dressed in starchy white shalwar-kameez, one by one they step out from their shiny new SUVs and into a DHA mosque.

In cultured societies, elites take delight in scientific and academic matters. They endow universities with chairs and professorships. Institutions bearing their names immortalise the donor. Named after J.R.D. Tata, the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research is the proud flagship of Indian science. But you can fruitlessly scour all of Pakistan for someone who will donate for science or the arts. As for music: famed Pakistani ghazal singers like the late Mehdi Hasan and Ghulam Ali received more appreciation in India than Pakistan. Philanthropy in Pakistan means donating to madressahs, mosques, and hospitals.

Instead of blasting away with a shotgun, let’s understand that all rich people are not rich for the same reasons. Some are rich because of brain power and hard work. Others are rich because they are thugs, land grabbers, manipulators, and rent-seekers.

Forbes (2023) identifies the five richest Americans: Jeff Bezos (Amazon), Elon Musk (Tesla), Bill Gates (Microsoft), Larry Ellison (Oracle), and Mark Zuckerberg (Meta). Their creations have altered your lifestyle and mine. While rich Indians are not highly innovative, they too are quite technological. Forbes identifies the five richest as Gautam Adani (power generation), Mukesh Ambani (petrochemicals), Shiv Nadar (IT), Cyrus Poonawalla (vaccines), and Radhakishan Damani (retail).

No wealthy Pakistani with businesses in the country has made it to the Forbes list but reportedly the five richest are: Mian Mansha, Sadruddin Hashwani, Asif Ali Zardari, Malik Riaz and Habibullah Khan. How they made their billions is not for me to know. But what exportables have they produced? Will Pakistan forever rely on bedlinen, underwear, and footballs to earn dollars?

As forex reserves dwindle, one hears the dictum “import less and export more”. This is a no-brainer that macroeconomic jugglery cannot fix; between PDM and PTI’s approaches, the choice is of Tweedledum versus Tweedledee.

Sociologists from the time of Max Weber have established that wealth production correlates directly with values, culture, and worldview. Clearly, significant change in Pakistan has to be generational — a culture of honest hard work, high-level skills, or a law-abiding citizenry cannot be created with a finger-snap.

What kind of attitudinal, cultural, and ideological changes are needed?

First, stop force-feeding nonsense to our schoolchildren. What goes under “education” is actually religious and propagandistic indoctrination. The result is mass stupidity and Somalia-level learning outcomes. Don’t blame the government alone — all of society is at fault. With a handful of exceptions, our universities are trash; half of fully tenured professors are fit only for driving taxis. In such intellectual deserts, students demand only grades and degrees. Most vice chancellors, deans and chairpersons would, at best, count among the semi-educated elsewhere.

Second, stop blaming the world for Pakistan’s problems. You cannot hate the West and, in the same breath, supplicate it for bailouts or apply for immigration. We are authors of our own misfortune.

Without Pakistan’s help, the Taliban monster and terrorism wouldn’t have existed. It’s true we were misused by Americans in warring with the Soviet Union. But didn’t we milk the American cow until its udders ran dry of dollars?

Who created the vast countrywide network of jihadist organisations aimed at installing fanatical forces in Kabul and liberating Kashmir? But for FATF, Hafiz Saeed would still be strutting around Pakistan instead of cooling his heels in prison.

Climate change, of course, is not our fault. Others spew CO2, but impoverished Sindhi and Baloch peasants pay the price. Pretending to speak for them, our predatory political elite celebrate an anticipated bonanza. Their diplomatic blitzkrieg at COP-27 procured billion-dollar pledges from a guilt-ridden West. But who will benefit from climate reparations?

Before, during, and after the floods, thousands of luxury SUVs were imported. While the UK government has a car pool of 45 for all ministries and departments, Sindh alone has around 25,000 official vehicles with generous petrol quotas.

Third, stop being a security state. Pakistan is chronically unable to live peacefully with its neighbours as well as with itself. This is unsurprising. In the 1990s, the federal national curriculum required sixth class children to know about “India’s evil designs against Pakistan” and “to make speeches on jihad and shahadat”. Why the murderous TTP is so attractive to large swathes of Pakistanis is not hard to see.

Note how quiet the LoC is these days and the unusually low level of vitriol from Indian leaders. From their point of view: why spoil the fun? Just wait and watch as the unforgiving, amoral law of gravity asserts itself. Pakistan doesn’t need an external enemy for collapse; its civil and military elites have hollowed out their own house.

FM needs to build on India’s macroeconomic performance

Nirmala Sitharaman presented this government’s penultimate budget – in the looming shadow of yet another global economic slowdown and consequent uncertainty. The last three budgets had most of their underlying assumptions knocked out by the outbreak of Covid and then conflict in Europe. Notwithstanding these shocks, India’s done well to keep its macroeconomic parameters under control. Against this backdrop, the budget should ensure consolidation of positive aspects while calibrating spending and taxation policies to support economic growth.

Gross tax revenue in all likelihood will exceed the last budget’s targets. A surge in inflation last year has led to a forecast of nominal GDP growth of 15.4% in 2022-23 against the last budget’s expectation of 11.1%. Consequently, tax collection in 2022-23 is likely to overshoot the budget’s estimate of Rs 27.6 lakh crore. This should keep the fiscal defict/GDP ratio around the budget estimate of 6.4%. In the last few years, an adverse global environment has led to India’s fiscal deficit/GDP ratio shooting up, which pushed the debt to GDP percentage of all levels of government beyond 80%. Interest payment on debt, the largest source of GoI’s expenditure, is projected to increase 16% to Rs 9.40 lakh crore in the current financial year.

A credible plan of fiscal consolidation is essential to bring down the GDP/debt ratio. It will lower interest outgo and create more space for development spending. In the current economic situation, enhanced capital expenditure will have a positive impact on India’s development. On average, GoI and states together contribute 11% of India’s annual fixed investment. However, in a year marked by uncertainty, public investment has to lead the way with a relatively larger share. Enhancing capital expenditure will lead to a positive spillover on economic growth and tax collections.

Two trends stand out in GoI’s tax profile. Uncertain economic conditions have led to using indirect taxes such as fuel duties to stabilise revenue collection. It’s iniquitous. India’s tax side needs two changes. The expanding database through GST’s stabilisation needs to be leveraged to widen the direct tax base. What India needs is not higher tax rates, but a broader base that plugs exemptions. In this context, the alternative offered two years ago to individual taxpayers needs to be calibrated to make it more meaningful for salaried employees. They too need a less burdensome tax regime.

In the Political Duel Gandhi Lost to Jinnah

As January’s end approaches, so does the anniversary of Mahatma Gandhi’s assassination. The usual memorials will speak of how a fanatic ended the life of a man who strove for tolerance and a united, multi-religious, egalitarian India. Gandhi envisioned an India where both caste and religious identities were subordinated to a larger, national identity. He imagined a single nation that spanned Karachi, Delhi, and Dhaka.

No student of the 1947 Partition, however, can think of Gandhi’s career as a total success. In the run-up to the British departure, two visions dueled to determine the map. If Gandhi had his way, the entire territory of the British Raj would become one nation-state; Mohammed Ali Jinnah wanted Muslim-majority areas, both east and west, to be made a separate country.

We all know who won. But it is worth considering why Gandhi lost that duel. He was a bigger celebrity than Jinnah at the time, commanding the passionate devotion of millions around the world. Yet with the Partition, Jinnah’s vision prevailed over Gandhi’s. Gandhi could have forced his ‘One India’ vision into reality — as Jinnah did his Pakistan — if only he had galvanised the Hindus against all other groups. The Hindus were far more numerous, after all. Why didn’t he do so?

Part of the reason is that ‘the Hindus’ is a political term that does not reflect the fragmented, early twentieth-century reality. Even today, the BJP is often called a Hindu political party but South Indian states with large Hindu majorities elect zero or very few BJP candidates to their state legislatures and do not form part of the BJP’s governing coalition. Uniting all Hindus is difficult even today; consider how hard it must have been 75 years ago, when divisions of caste, language, and regional culture were even stronger. The Hindu Mahasabha and Veer Savarkar envisioned that kind of Hindu political unity, which has proven just as elusive as Pan-Arabism and Pan-Africanism. Gandhi chose not to join the Hindu Mahasabha and rejected its political platform and ideology; one of its leading figures, Veer Savarkar, inspired Gandhi’s assassin. In his hundreds of speeches and articles, Gandhi never used inflammatory, sectarian rhetoric to galvanise Hindus into a single bloc; he imagined India’s Hindus as one part of a larger, national movement. Though he read or listened to the Bhagavad Gita every morning, including the morning of his assassination, he insisted on platforming the Bible and the Quran at his multi-denominational prayer meetings.

Gandhian philosophy remains a well-intentioned, self-unaware misreading of Hindu philosophy. Gandhi thought ahimsa so universally effective that he recommended it as a tactic for Jews to use against Hitler. Ahimsa is mentioned in the Bhagavad Gita, true — on a battlefield, as Krishna exhorts a dejected warrior to take up his bow and fight. Interpreting ahimsa as commanding non-violence in all contexts is a Gandhian innovation, inspired perhaps by Jainism. Gandhi also cherished Christ’s advice to “turn the other cheek,” commanding his followers to allow themselves to be beaten. Gandhi was the first and only political leader in history to take that advice literally: Crusaders, conquistadors, and Company sahibs ignored it and reaped the benefits of power.

Gandhi’s ultimate failure stemmed from his noblest principle: The rejection of tribalism. This principle distinguishes Gandhi from other politicians of his day. Gandhi’s most powerful enemy was neither Jinnah nor the British Empire. It was human psychology itself, and that enemy is impossible to defeat. Muslim League separatists and British imperialists each single-mindedly pursued the interests of their own group. The British wanted profits, and the All-India Muslim League wanted territory. Internally divided Indians, having surrendered treasure to one, surrendered land to the other. Gandhi’s staunchest British antagonist, Churchill and the Tories, allied with the Pakistan movement. In December 1946, even though Churchill was temporarily out of power then, he wielded his influence and arranged Jinnah’s meeting with the King and Queen.

This was the same Churchill who refused to redirect Canadian and Australian grain to Bengal during its 1943 famine, preferring to send it to his fellow white Europeans. Jinnah, likewise, worked toward a goal that benefited his fellow Muslims and no one else. Unlike his tribalist political opponents, Gandhi tried to transcend his identity categories, both his religion and his caste, so he could mediate among different religious groups and caste groups. He wanted to supersede centuries-old identities with a broadly national, “Indian” one. Gandhi tried to do the most difficult thing in politics, which is to unite many groups
for something.

Jinnah, by contrast, united one group against something. He persuaded South Asia’s Muslims to join the Pakistan movement by painting Gandhi as a Hindu politician and the Indian National Congress as a Hindu political party. This tactic was effective because Jinnah chose to work with the tribalist tendency of the human mind, not against it. Earlier in his career, Jinnah, too, had tried — and failed — to mediate between the All-India Muslim League and the Indian National Congress. As late as 1937, India’s Muslims were voting, in legislative assembly elections, for the Indian National Congress and various regional parties. Within ten years, Jinnah turned India’s Muslims into a bloc capable of backing up demands with threats.

That threat — of widespread religious war — effectively pressured the British to agree to Pakistan. We know how much violence Partition caused in 1947; we have no way of knowing how much violence it averted.

Jinnah rowed with the current of human nature to reach Pakistan. Gandhi’s imaginary India lay unattainably upstream. It should not surprise us that he lost. A charismatic figure might successfully oppose a political rival or a global empire, but no one can oppose human nature. Not even a Mahatma.

Politics and Popularity: Why are there still so many monarchies in Europe?

What’s the secret of European royalty’s success?   

King Charles III’s first Christmas address to the people of the UK, was repeat of a duty his mother Queen Elizabeth II carried out for 70 years. The royal Christmas speech is an important cultural event in the UK and Charles’s taking of the reins is an essential piece of continuity for life in the country, which is one of the last remaining monarchies in Europe, and a sign of the royal family’s enduring popularity. 

At one time practically every country in Europe was ruled by royalty, but today only 12 principalities and kingdoms remain. Europeans consider their modern nation states to be the embodiment of democracy and liberal values, so isn’t it contradictory to have an archaic hereditary head of state?

What’s the secret of success for the remaining European royals?

The democracy paradox

All the royal families left in Europe coexist with democracy and do it rather well at that.

Unit in 2021 ranked Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Netherlands, Luxembourg, and the UK in its top 20 of its Democracy Index with Spain and Belgium close behind. “I think there is rather shallow thinking in Europe particularly in countries like France that the highest form of democracy is to be a republic,” says Professor Robert Hazell of the Constitution Unit at University College London. “It is a teleological assumption that all good democracies eventually become republics.”

At the start of the 20th century only France, Switzerland and the tiny nation of San Marino were republics, but defeat in World War I spelled the end for the Romanovs of Russia and the Hapsburgs of Austria-Hungary. Following World War II many remaining eastern European monarchies were dispatched by the Soviets one way or another, not that this led to thriving democratic republics.

The paradox principle

“There is no contradiction between a country being a monarchy and being an advanced democracy,” says Hazell. The western European countries that retain their Kings, Queens and Princes are also lucky enough to combine democracy with extremely high living standards.

The Scandinavians are known for their high rankings on the World Happiness Report, but all the western, central and southern European monarchies reap the benefits of being industrialised nations. “If you look at these countries, they have among the highest standards of living in the world. They have social security nets people in other places dream of,” says historian of European royalty Marlene Koenig.

“There doesn’t seem to be any real rumblings anywhere for getting rid of the royals. It is a difficult process and there is no revolution and no Soviet troops coming in.”

A popularity contest

If you have a democratic process and citizens generally enjoy a high standard of living in any case, are monarchies just there because people can’t be bothered? It may be more than that. “Any monarchy depends on popular support and the levels are remarkably high,” says Hazell.

At the death of Queen Elizabeth II public mourning reached a fever pitch in the UK, with thousands of Brits queuing for hours on end to see her lying in state. These scenes were mere months after equal numbers turned out on the street for joyful celebrations of the platinum jubilee.

The Queen’s son King Charles III was long considered either a villain for his treatment of his ex-wife Princess Diana by some and an eccentric figure of fun by others. However, on his accession to the throne he enjoyed a surge in support with 63 per cent of Brits saying he’d do a good job as king.

In Denmark, around three-quarters of the public support the monarchy and, even after a string of COVID-related scandals, the Dutch royal family enjoys over 50% public support.

“Those countries that remain monarchies, unless and until the monarchy loses popular support the country will remain a monarchy,” says Hazell.

One way in which Royals keep ahead of the popularity curve is by staying in step with the times, giving them a sort of ironic accountability. Royals pick progressive but uncontroversial causes like Queen Beatrix of the Netherlands’ patronage of the arts or King Harald of Norway’s 25th centenary speech in support of multiculturalism.

Meanwhile avoiding shifting the public mood through scandal is always key. “The bigger the size of the royal family the greater the risk one or more of them will go off the rails,” says Hazell.

Recently Queen Margrethe II of Denmark stripped four of her grandchildren of royal titles to slim-down the Danish Royal family, while in 2019 King Carl XVI Gustav of Sweden acted similarly to five of his son’s offspring.

The British royal family operates a core contingent of 10 so-called ‘working royals,’ with King Charles rumoured to want to slim down the family further. Given recent events surrounding Prince Andrew it isn’t difficult to understand why.

Dodging controversy by eliminating rogue elements allows for a tighter grip on royal operations in an age of social media, but it can also be a way to reduce royal expenditure. In the current climate that mindfulness is needed more than ever.

It will be interesting to see in the plans for King Charles’s coronation to what extent it is slimmed down. He is very sensitive to the risk of excessive lavish spending at a time when everyone is tightening their belts. “They [The British royals] want more transparency. You will see changes, it will be a much smaller royal family,” says Koenig. “They are going to be mindful of things with the coronation.”

Accountability and politics at the palace

One thing everyone could agree about now-deceased Queen Elizabeth II was that she was scrupulously impartial, whatever speculation might have happened about secret messages encoded in her choice of hats. One of the roles for the royal family is to be a symbol for the nation as a whole and therefore the monarch as an institution has to strive to represent the whole of the nation. That is why they need to rise above politics. For most of them they are historically interlinked in the history of their country. To have somebody above the shop is a good thing. I think that is important.

A national figurehead can be a useful thing, as in Belgium where it is said that King Philippe is the only person in the country not to take sides in the bitterly oppositional politics of a country split between Flemish and French speakers.

British post-war Prime Minister Clement Attlee went so far as to say that the sentimental attachment to royal figureheads prevented a slide into dictatorship. “Far less danger under a constitutional monarchy of being carried away by a Hitler, a Mussolini or even a de Gaulle,” wrote the politician.

Not all royals are the same in this regard, Queen Beatrix of the Netherlands was well-known for having liberal views on European unity and immigration. Not that this damaged her popularity; she enjoyed 80 per cent approval ratings at the time of her abdication in 2013.

Royals who enter politics – of their own volition or not – are not always so lucky. The Spanish royals (who themselves coexisted with a dictatorship for decades before playing a part in bringing democracy back to Spain in the 1980s) have been on the rocks more than once after former king Juan Carlos’ alleged business deals with Saudi Arabia.

Still, politics or not, the longevity of the monarch as a figurehead goes some way to securing their place in people’s hearts. It is easier for the public to identify with a long serving monarch. That person becomes much more familiar and they will identify with the wider royal family too.

In former monarchies of the Eastern Bloc some royals have moved back to town and court a certain level of favour with the public. In Romania, daughters of the now-dead King Michael who abdicated after the rise of communism today live in the Elisabeta Palace in Bucharest. The Romanian government recognises the royal family. They have a rather public role which is interesting.

In Albania too Prince Leka, Grandson of King Zog I of Albania, hopes for a future role to unite the diverse nation. A failed referendum campaign to reinstate the monarchy in 1997 contrasted the instability of Albania with the wealth and political cohesion of the Nordic monarchies.

That comparison may or may not be fair. Whatever happens, as long as European royal families keep their eye on the ball and adapt to change, they might be around for much, much longer.

The perverse outcome of AI surveillance at work

Across all kinds of jobs and workplaces, companies are swiftly adopting artificial intelligence in the name of efficiency. The typical business rationale behind the adoption of AI-driven technologies is that they help to identify wasteful activities, or allocate resources more effectively, or otherwise streamline work processes in the service of maximised productivity. AI software is used to optimise supply chains, to reduce bottlenecks, to identify and reward workers for behaviours aligned with organisational goals, and to predict outcomes that can drive firms toward desirable practices in their quest for profit.

Yet many of these technologies rest on a fallacious premise – that these tools save time and effort. In practice, a more accurate assertion is that while these technologies appear to eliminate efficiencies, they often don’t do so. Instead of reducing labour, cost or risk, we can better understand AI technologies as reallocating these burdens from firms onto workers. In so doing, AI may appear to serve the bottom line – but it does so not through labour saving, but the distribution of extra burden onto workers.

Here are a few examples of what I mean.

Across many industries and workplaces, workers’ productivity is increasingly tracked, quantified and scored. For example, a recent investigative report from The New York Times described the rise of monitoring regimes that surveil all kinds of employees, from warehouse workers to finance executives to hospice chaplains. Regardless of the quite different kinds of work, the common underlying premise is that productivity monitoring counts things that are easy to count: the number of emails sent, the number of patient visits logged, the number of minutes that someone’s eyes are looking at a particular window on their computer.

Sensor technologies and tracking software give managers a granular, real-time view into these worker behaviours. But productivity monitoring is rarely able to measure forms of work that are harder to capture as data – such as a deep conversation about a client’s problem, or brainstorming on a whiteboard, or discussing ideas with colleagues.

There’s a mismatch between what can be readily measured and what amounts to meaningful work

Firms often embrace these technologies in the name of minimising worker shirking and maximising profit. But in practice, these systems can perversely disincentivise workers from the real meat of their jobs – and also results in them being tasked with the additional labour of making themselves legible to tracking systems. This often takes the form of busy work: jiggling a mouse so it’s registered by monitoring software, or doing a bunch of quick but empty tasks such as sending multiple emails rather than deeper but less quantifiable engagement.

One likely result of AI monitoring is that it encourages people to engage in those sometimes frivolous tasks that can be quantified. And workers tasked with making their work legible to productivity tracking bear the psychological burdens of this supervision, raising stress levels and impeding creativity. In short, there’s often a mismatch between what can be readily measured and what amounts to meaningful work – and the costs of this mismatch are borne by workers.

As more data-driven metrics are built by default into office tools and software, they also can have the effect of locking down channels where workers might organise or talk among themselves about workplace reforms. While these dynamics have been ramping up for a long time, the pandemic has accelerated them as employers look for ways to control remote workers and worry about shirking.

One classic example of how workplace monitoring technologies are affecting long-haul truck drivers in the United States is clear evidence. The geographically distributed, mobile nature of truckers’ work has meant that they have long been able to maintain a significant degree of autonomy over how they conduct themselves day-to-day – much more so than other blue-collar workers have. These new technologies are changing the experience of trucking work, however, in significant ways.

These tools disproportionately burden workers, infringing on their bodily privacy and occupational autonomy

Truckers find themselves increasingly monitored by systems that record myriad dimensions of how they do their work. The technologies record how fast they go, how long they drive, whether they brake too hard, how much fuel they use and how fatigued they are. Some of these systems use AI-augmented cameras or wearable technologies to monitor truckers’ eyelids, heart rates and brainwaves. Companies often impose these technologies in the name of safety, arguing that gathering such data will prevent truckers from driving recklessly, or will help managers ‘coach’ drivers not performing according to a firm’s standards.

Yet digital monitoring systems can in fact make public roadways less safe by removing flexibility from truckers’ work and driving veteran drivers out of the industry. These tools again disproportionately burden workers, infringing on their bodily privacy and occupational autonomy, while employers benefit from fleet-wide analytics and amass valuable data on truckers’ activities.

The technology also shifts burdens of time and labour to workers in the form of algorithmic staffing and scheduling. In retail and food service, work schedules are increasingly determined by just-in-time staffing algorithms. These systems draw on real-time customer traffic and sales data, among other things, to generate ‘dynamic’ schedules for workers.

A dynamic schedule can mean shifts that are assigned with very short notice, irregular and fluctuating numbers of hours per week, and micro-shifts that are sliced and diced into small chunks where more demand is expected. Such erratic scheduling appears efficient from the perspective of the firm: the company wants to predict and avoid the risk of either overstaffing or understaffing a shift, either of which can undercut profit. It’s a different matter for workers. A good deal of research shows how these systems can make it difficult for workers to earn a steady income, or work a second job, or take classes, or care for their families.

In fact, these harms even cross generations, affecting the outcomes of the children of people who work under these conditions. The risk of fluctuating customer demand – which used to be borne by the company – is not eliminated by AI tools, but instead gets offloaded onto employees. It gets hidden because it’s been shifted to – and forced onto – low-wage workers, who are the least powerful players in the ecosystem.

It is important to understand, then, that AI is fundamentally a reallocator of burdens from firms to workers. Any effective policy response must target this dynamic and return some costs back to firms. There are a few possibilities. We might curtail some of the harms of workplace AI by directly regulating the technologies at issue – as, for example, a number of states and cities have done via ‘fair scheduling’ laws.

These laws attempt to mitigate the instability of predictive scheduling algorithms by ensuring workers have sufficient notice of their schedules, and are compensated if shifts are cancelled or changed at short notice, among other provisions. Similarly, some EU member states have made rules that constrain the use of certain types of invasive monitoring (such as GPS tracking) in the workplace.

Other strategies might involve recalibrating pay regimes to ensure workers are fairly compensated for the true amount of work they do; for example, recently introduced legislation would reverse long-haul truckers’ exemption from the Fair Labor Standards Act, which prevents them from receiving overtime pay for their work.

And we might find promise in policies that protect the capacity of workers to bargain collectively: the US Department of Labor has recently taken aim at workplace surveillance technologies that could interfere with workers’ abilities to talk confidentially among themselves about unionisation. Together with other protections, strategies like these show promise for tipping the scales back a bit in order to protect labour interests and worker dignity in the AI-mediated workplace.

Creatures from Chinese Mythology

Chinese mythology is a vast body of folklore and traditions that have been passed down in both oral and written forms within Greater China. Many of the stories found within Chinese mythology tell of distant historical people and events, albeit in a deeply mythologized way. Many myths explore the creation of the universe, its deities, and its inhabitants. Myths recording the origins of the Chinese state are particularly common, along with those recording the creation of specific dynasties. Chinese mythology is deeply related to rituals and the folkloric religions of the area.

Chinese mythology boasts a variety of different mythological creatures, drawn from nature and from the inventions of folkloric imagination. These include the Four Supernatural Spirits, animal guardians of the cardinal directions, and a host of diverse mythological monsters. Within Chinese mythology, creatures are often divided according to which being they are ruled by. Humans are ruled by the emperor, winged creatures are ruled by the phoenix, and swimming and crawling creatures are ruled by the dragon.

Chinese Supernatural Spirits

The Four Supernatural Spirits are four mythological creatures that appear in Chinese Mythology. Also known as the Four Symbols, Four Guardians, or Four Images, these symbols are based on Chinese constellations of stars, and the creatures are viewed as being the guardians of the four cardinal directions. The Four Symbols are the Azure (blue) Dragon of the East, the Vermilion (red) Bird of the South, the White Tiger of the West, and the Black Tortoise of the North.

Each of the four symbols was an animal that was believed to have a particularly high degree of intelligence. Each of the symbols represented a particular class of animals, which they were believed to rule over. In addition, each of the symbols represented a particular season, emotion, virtue, and element, as well as an origin story and purpose. These animal symbols have been hugely influential and important across many East Asian cultures.

The Azure Dragon

The Azure Dragon of the East is the first of the Four Guardians of the Cardinal Points. The Azure Dragon represents the East, the season of Spring, and the Element of wood.

The Dragon is one of the most important symbols in Chinese mythology and culture. Often depicted in a snake-like form with four legs, scholars believe that Chinese dragons originated in the ancient worship of snakes, alligators, and nature. In Chinese culture, dragons symbolize good fortune and auspicious powers, along with wisdom, strength, and benevolence. Dragons are associated with water and are believed to have control over rain, storms, and floods. The most powerful of all Chinese mythological creatures, it is said they can create clouds with their breath. They are also seen as the rulers of moving bodies of water, such as rivers and waterfalls. The Dragon is seen as a zoomorphic representation of the principle of yang, which is the masculine power of active creation.

During the Imperial period, the Chinese Emperor used the dragon as a symbol of imperial power. The representation of the dragon within Chinese mythology has had a major influence on the way the dragon is understood in other Asian cultures, particularly in Korea, Vietnam, and Japan. Today, the dragon is often used to represent Chinese culture and folklore.

The Vermillion Bird

The Vermillion Bird is one of the Four Symbols or Chinese mythological spirits related to the cardinal directions. Representing the South, Fire, and the Summer, the creature is described as a red bird similar to a pheasant, covered in a beautiful coat of red feathers like flames. According to Chinese folklore, the Vermillion Bird is particularly elegant and noble, being highly particular about where it chooses to perch and what it chooses to eat.

The Fenghuang (or phoenix) and the Vermillion Bird are often mistaken for one another due to their similarities in appearance, however, they are two distinct creatures.

The White Tiger

The White Tiger is one of the Four Symbols related to the cardinal directions. The White Tiger is the guardian of the West and represents the season of Autumn. The White Tiger represents the Chinese element of metal. In Chinese culture, the tiger was seen as the king of the beasts. According to Chinese folklore, the tiger’s tail became white when it turned 500 years old. Because of this legend, the white tiger came to be seen as a mythological creature. It was believed that a white tiger would only appear when there was true peace throughout the world.

The Black Tortoise

The Black Tortoise is one of the Four Symbols or Chinese mythological spirits related to the cardinal directions. The Black Tortoise represents winter, the North, and the element of water. It is also known as Black Warrior, and the iconography of the Black Tortoise often shows a tortoise entwined with a snake.

Tortoises of various kinds appear throughout Chinese mythology. The tortoise is believed to represent the qualities of tranquility and steadfastness. In Chinese mythology, the tortoise appears as a symbol of wisdom and wealth. Tortoises were believed to be able to speak the language of humans, bringing wisdom and predicting the future. The tortoise is also a symbol of endurance, longevity, and protection, and was often worn as an amulet. In Feng Shui tortoises are viewed as guardians of the compass. They are seen as enhancing the energy and protection of the family, as well as bringing success, prosperity, and wealth.

The Phoenix

The Fenghuang is a mythological bird found within Chinese folklore. Believed to rule over all other birds, the Fenghuang was seen as a feminine entity and the counterpart to the Chinese dragon. The Fenghuang is often called the Chinese Phoenix in the West, however, its similarities with western Phoenix symbolism are superficial.

The Fenghuang is a symbol of grace, virtue, duty, propriety, and mercy. The Fenghuang originally included a masculine aspect, the Feng, and a feminine one, the Huang. However, over time Feng and Huang merged into one feminine deity. Symbolizing yin, the Fenghuang represented the feminine passive force and counterpart to the yang symbolized by the Chinese dragon. When pictured together, the dragon and phoenix represent the joyful balance of yin and yang and are often used as decorations for Chinese weddings. The Phoenix is often seen as representing the Chinese Empress, complementing the Dragon of the Emperor.

The Kylin

Several different types of unicorns can be found in Chinese mythology, known as lin. One of the most important types of lin is the Kylin (also spelled Qilin). This mythological creature was a composite of several different animals (a form of creature known in the west as a chimera). It was said to have the body of an antelope, and the tail of an ox, and bore a single horn on its head. In other sources, the Kylin is described as having a dragon’s head, deer’s antlers, horse’s hooves, and a wolf’s head. Unicorns were believed to only appear during the reigns of benevolent emperors. Some scholars believe that mythology surrounding the Chinese unicorn may have been influenced by animals that had once roamed in China but had since become extinct (such as the rhinoceros).

Israeli X-Wing-Looking Loitering Munition To Be Tested By U.S. Special Ops

Israel will be developing and delivering new hand-launched and recoverable loitering munitions to the U.S. Department of Defense under a multi-million dollar, multi-year contract. The state-owned Israel Aerospace Industries will be designing the vertical take-off and landing drone with missile-like capabilities that the company has named Point Blank. 

And yes, it looks a lot like a little X-wing.

An Israel Aerospace Industries (IAI)  explains that the company will produce and provide prototype versions of Point Blank designated as ‘ROC-X’ to the United States. ROC-X will be tailored to meet Defense Department (DOD) requirements. The contract was awarded to IAI by the Pentagon’s Irregular Warfare Technical Support Directorate (IWTSD), which is responsible for exploring new capabilities with a particular focus on special operations forces missions.

ble “electro-optically guided missile that can be carried in a soldier’s backpack.” However, it’s worth noting that the Point Blank system seems far more reminiscent of a loitering munition, sometimes referred to as an optionally reusable ‘kamikaze’ drone, than it does a missile. 

“Point Blank joins Israel Aerospace Industries’ family of missiles, to provide ground-based tactical forces with more precise capabilities to undertake offensive operations, especially against short-lived targets,” Guy Bar Lev, executive vice president for IAI’s Systems, Missiles & Space Group, was quoted as saying in the press release. “We wish to thank the IWTSD for its support and cooperation in the field of precision munitions, confirming, yet again, the importance of tactical missiles to the modern army.”

Because of its relatively smaller size, the hand-launched Point Blank can be operated by one soldier alone. IAI says the munition weighs about 15 pounds and measures around 3 feet in length. Additionally, it will be able to fly at altitudes over 1,500 feet for up to 18 minutes and reach maximum speeds of approximately 178 mph. Point Blank will be designed with vertical take-off and landing (VTOL) capability, as well.

As loitering munitions do, IAI says that when launched, Point Blank will be able to hover in the air above a target while the operator best determines its position and how to engage. The drone will also come with what  is called an ‘abort option’ for automatic return and landing, which means in addition to being able to launch directly from the operator’s hand, Point Blank can also be called back to land right in the same grip if needed.

The company brochure also states that Point Blank’s Circular Error Probability, which uses the radius of a circle to determine the average distance between the target and the end of the munition’s flight path, is less than one meter, supporting IAI’s claims that the system will offer high levels of accuracy. This applies to both stationary and moving targets, according to IAI. 

The literature goes on to say that due to the munition’s low acoustic and thermal signature, Point Blank will even be capable of ‘stealth operations’ as well.

Point Blank will come equipped with a hybrid electro-optical (EO) and GPS guidance system, allowing the munition “to validate and collect surveillance information in real-time” as IAI describes it. In terms of how it will transmit data back to the unit, IAI’s website page for Point Blank explains that the munition’s Ground Data Link Terminal will be able to integrate into any existing mobile network data link. 

aeli defense firms have been leaders in. This would allow for fine-tuned course correction right up until the point of impact, which is something that most loitering munitions are designed with to increase accuracy and provide a margin of safety. Hitting known, fixed targets autonomously would also be a given.

Point Blank was conceptualized specifically to provide both smaller ground-based tactical teams and larger battalions with a transportable and highly precise capability that can be used to engage various targets. This includes those in the naval domains. 

The company also states that Point Blank is “being developed to be equipped” with a 2 kilogram (4.4 pound) warhead that leverages an impact/proximity fuze, which provides target proximity detection and point-detonation capabilities. This would comprise Point Blank’s ‘attack mode’ as described by IAI, while the munition’s reconnaissance, surveillance, and target acquisition (RSTA) mode will utilize only its cameras.

Which configuration the DOD will be receiving from IAI — be it modified for RSTA, attack, or both

“As the [press release] states,” said IWTSD staff, “ROC-X is the version of Point Blank that Israel IAI is developing for IWTSD. Israel IAI will develop the initial ROC-X platform for [RSTA]. IWTSD should receive 10 Point Blank ROC-X versions this summer for operational test and evaluation by [Special Operations Forces]. However, a lethal variant of ROC-X has to be Americanized, which means integrating the lethal package and conducting safety testing in the U.S. This phase of the project should begin later this year.”

IAI says that it will be providing associated training for operators along with the delivery of the 10 RSTA-configured ROC-X Point Blank prototypes this upcoming Fiscal Year 2023.

Point Blank will only add to the list of drone-like attack and surveillance capabilities coming out of Israel. Locally based companies like IAI and Elbit Systems, for instance, have been pumping systems like this out as of late, most with a focus on supporting smaller ground units with situational awareness and attack capabilities. As a recent example, last November Elbit introduced what the company is calling LANIUS, a fist-sized search-and-attack loitering munition based on racing drones and designed for urban warfare. 

While similar systems have been around for many years now, and the utility of soldier-launched loitering munitions has only been highlighted by the war in Ukraine, where this system differentiates itself is in its ease of launch and recovery paired with higher performance. Beyond that, the system stands as another reminder that aerial surveillance and precision bombardment continue to be ‘democratized’ down to the squad, and even the individual soldier, level, with increasing ease of use and expanding capabilities.

Gandhian Ethics

The word ethics is derived from the Greek word ‘ethos’, which means ‘way of living’. The judgement of right and wrong, what to do and what not to do, and how one ought to act, form ethics. It is a branch of philosophy that involves systematising, defending, and recommending concepts of right and wrong behaviour.

Morality is the body of standards or principles derived from a code of conduct from a particular philosophy, religion, or culture. It can also derive from a standard that a person believes in. The word morals is derived from the Latin word ‘mos’, which means custom.

Many people use the words Ethics and Morality interchangeably. However, there is a difference between Ethics and Morals. To put it in simple terms, Ethics = Moral + reasoning.

For example, one might feel that it is morally wrong to steal, but if he/ she has an ethical viewpoint on it, it should be based on some sets of arguments and analysis about why it would be wrong to steal. Mahatma Gandhi is considered as one of the greatest moral philosophers of India. The highest form of morality in Gandhi’s ethical system is the practice of altruism/self-sacrifice.

For Gandhi, it was never enough that an individual merely avoided causing evil; they had to actively promote good and actively prevent evils. The ideas and ideals of Gandhi emanated mainly from: (1) his inner religious convictions including ethical principles embedded in Hinduism, Buddhism, Jainism and Christianity; (2) the exigencies of his struggle against apartheid in South Africa and the mass political movements during India’s freedom struggle; and (3) the influence of Tolstoy, Carlyle and Thoreau etc. He was a moralist through and through and yet it is difficult to write philosophically about his ethics.

This is because Gandhi is fundamentally concerned with practice rather than with theory or abstract thought, and such philosophy as he used was meant to reveal its ‘truth’ in the crucible of experience. Hence, the subtitle of his Autobiography ~ ‘the story of my experiments in truth.’ The experiments refer to the fact that the truth of concept, values, and ideals is fulfilled only in practice.

Gandhi’s ethics are inextricably tied up with religion, which itself is unconventional. Though an avowed Hindu, he was a Hindu in philosophical rather than a sectarian sense; there was much Hindu ritual and practice that he subjected to critique.

In his Ethical Religion, published in 1912 based on lectures delivered by him, Gandhi had stated simply that he alone cannot be called truly religious or moral whose mind is not tainted with hatred and selfishness, and who leads a life of absolute purity and of disinterested services. Without mental purity or purification of motive, external action cannot be performed in selfless spirit. Goodness does not consist in abstention from wrong but from the wish to do wrong; evil is to be avoided not from fear but from the sense of obligation. Consistency was less important to Gandhi than moral earnestness, and rules were less useful than specific norms of human excellence and the appreciation of values.

Politics is a comprehensive term which is associated with composition and operation of state structure as well as its interrelationship with other states. It is activity centred around power and very often deprived of morals. With its power-mongering, amoral Machiavellianism, and its valorisation of expediency over principle, and of successful outcomes over scrupulous means, politics is an uncompromising avenue for saintliness. Inclusion of ethics in politics seemed to be a contradiction to many contemporary political philosophers.

Bal Gangadhar Tilak among others warned Gandhi before he embarked on a political career in India, “Politics is a game of worldly people and not of sadhus.” Introducing spirituality into the political arena would seem to betoken ineffectiveness in an area driven by worldly passions and cunning. It is perhaps for these reasons that Christ himself appeared to be in favour of a dualism: “Give to Caesar what is Caesar’s and to God what is God’s.” In this interpretation, the standards and norms that apply to religion are different from those relevant to politics.

Gandhi by contrast, without denying the distinction between the domain of Caesar and that of God, repudiates any rigid separation between the two. As early as 1915, Gandhi declared his aim “to spiritualise” political life and political institutions.

Politics is as essential as religion, but if it is divorced from religion, it is like a corpse, fit only for burning. In the preface to his autobiography, Gandhi declared that his devotion of truth had drawn him into politics, that his power in the political field was derived from his spiritual experiments with himself, and those who say religion has nothing to do with politics do not know what religion means. Human life being an undivided whole, no line could be drawn between ethics and politics. It was impossible to separate the everyday life of man, he emphasised, from his spiritual being. He said, “I feel that political work must be looked upon in terms of social and moral progress.”

Gandhi is often called a saint among politicians. In an epoch of ‘globalisation of selfcentredness’ there is a pressing necessity to comprehend and emulate the moralistic dimension of Gandhian thought and re-evaluate the concept of politics. The correlation between ends and means is the essence of Gandhi’s interpretation of society in terms of ethical value rather than empirical relations. For Gandhi, means and ends are intricately connected.

His contention was, “For me it is enough to know the means. Means and ends are convertible terms in my philosophy.” Gandhi countered the assertion that ends vindicate means. If the means engaged are unjust there is no possibility of achieving satisfactory outcomes. He compared the means to a seed and the end to a tree. Gandhi stuck to this golden ideal through thick and thin, without worrying about the immediate results. He was convinced that our ultimate progress towards the goal would be in exact proportion to the purity of our means.

Gandhi believed that “Strength does not come from physical capacity. It comes from an indomitable will.” His seven social sins refer to behaviours that go against ethical code and thereby weaken society. When values are not strongly held, people respond weakly to crisis and difficulty. The seven sins are: (1) Wealth without work; (2) Pleasure without conscience; (3) Knowledge without character; (4) Commerce without morality; (5) Science without humanity; (6) Religion without sacrifice; and (7) politics without principle. Gandhi’s Seven Sins are an integral part of Gandhian ethics.

The Satyagraha (Sanskrit and Hindi: ‘Holding into truth’) as enunciated by Gandhi seeks to integrate spiritual values, community organisation and selfreliance with a view to empower individuals, families, groups, villages, towns and cities. It became a major tool in the Indian struggle against British Imperialism and has since been adopted by protest groups in other countries.

According to the philosophy of Satyagraha, Satyagrahis (Practitioners of Satyagraha) achieve correct insight into the real nature of an evil situation by observing a non-violence of the mind, by seeking truth in a spirit of peace and love, and by undergoing a rigorous process of self-scrutiny. In so doing, the satyagrahi encounters truth in the absolute. By refusing to submit to the wrong or to cooperate with it, the satyagrahi must adhere to non-violence. They always warn their opponents of their intentions and forbid any tactic suggesting the use of secrecy to one’s advantage. Satyagraha seeks to conquer through conversion: in the end, there is neither defeat nor victory but rather a new harmony. Gandhi’s Satyagraha always highlighted moral principles. By giving the concept of Satyagraha, Gandhi showed mankind how to win over greed and fear by love.

Gandhi without denying the distinction between the domain of Caesar and that of God repudiates any rigid separation between the two. As early as 1915, Gandhi declared his aim ‘to spiritualise’ political life and political institutions. Politics is as essential as religion, but if it is divorced from religion, it is like a corpse, fit only for burning. Gandhi is often called a saint among politicians. In an epoch of ‘globalisation of self-centredness’ there is a pressing necessity to comprehend and emulate the moralistic dimension of Gandhian thought and re-evaluate the concept of politics

There was no pretension or hypocrisy about Gandhi. His ethics do not stem from the intellectual deductive formula. ‘Do unto others as you would have them unto you.’ He never asked others to do anything which he did not do. It is history how he conducted his affairs. He never treated even his own children in any special manner from other children, sharing the same kind of food and other facilities and attending the same school. When a scholarship was offered for one of his sons to be sent to England for higher education, Gandhi gave it to some other boy. Of course, he invited strong resentment from two of his sons and there are many critics who believe that Gandhi neglected his own children, and he was not the ideal father. His profound conviction of equality of all men and women shows the essential Gandhi who grew into a Mahatma.

The question of why one should act in a moral way has occupied much time in the history of philosophical inquiry. Gandhi’s answer to this is that happiness, religion and wealth depend upon sincerity to the self, an absence of malice towards others, exploitation of others, and always acting ‘with a pure mind.’ The ethical and moral standard Gandhi set for himself reveals his commitment and devotion to eternal principles and only someone like him who regulated his life and action in conformity with the universal vision of human brotherhood could say “My Life is My Message.”

India Variety of Politics of Populism

Nirbhaya, Shraddha Walkar to now Anjali Singh, each have headlined shameful and gruesome events from the national capital, Delhi. The accompanying brutality and graphic details pertaining to these horrors has been discussed extensively in dinner table conversations. Politicians, celebrities, advocates, police personnel to the average person on the street, each has added their perspective and angularity to the rote debate. But it is a tired and repetitive narrative.

A sense of deja vu is unmistakable, as the template of the latest horror follows a well beaten path of minute details, public outcry, usual finger-pointing and then some vested insinuations by those who have their own agendas. Essentially the plot, formula and end of each societal outrage is the same as it was with Nirbhaya in 2012 i.e., we fret till the next outrage consumes our meaningless verbosity and passions, yet again.

Beyond the brute insensitivity of the culprits involved and the obvious failing of the police, the larger winds of societal regression, apathy and even revisionism, are palpable and shocking. So, who defines or impacts these dark winds that blow? In one word, leadership ~ the political leadership, the religious leadership, and all others in prominent positions of societal impact. If only the ‘leaders’ could talk and walk the hard course of meaningful societal reforms, as opposed to pandering to populist positions and emotions, things could change.

The timeless problem of India’s populism is having its heyday as there is a political frenzy to ‘out-appeal’ the other partisan persuasions with reckless notions of nativism, reinterpreted ‘culturality’ and revengeful justice ~ all these are from the playbook of authoritarians.

Social media is flooded with barely concealed chauvinistic comments of ostensible ‘culturality’ questioning the rights of women to go out and party or walk that late at night as it happened in the Anjali, or even the Nirbhaya case ~ it is a valid concern if it were to be irrespective of the sexes, but obviously that is not the case. Supreme Court Justice BV Nagarathna presciently counterpoised, “Respect for women, being an important value in society, has to be inculcated in the minds of young boys, as this would go a long way in securing the safety of women in the country”.

But such sage advise militates against downright sexist comments about well-off urban women as, ‘par kati mahilayen’ i.e., short-haired women (by a ten-time parliamentarian from Bihar) or the even the more despicable, ‘ladke, ladke hain … . galti ho jati hai’ or boys will be boys… they commit mistakes (by a three term Chief Minister and ironically, Defense Minister). Seemingly, politics and leadership chances are served better with such retrogressive stands. Populism is inherent as this toxic stand strives to posit the emancipated women as an elite group, not worthy of ‘culturality’.

The next leadership failure is of continuously invoking populism as opposed to more reformatory discourse, to twist raw societal emotions towards unbridled vengeance, which metastasizes and feeds other phenomenon like lynching and vigilantism, instead of the rule of law.

Vacuous talk of ‘hanging culprits’, ‘parade criminals if I had my way’ (said by an incumbent Chief Minister) or ‘shooting culprits in the streets’ all sounds like some medieval era justice in some Sheikdom that may appeal to the wounded sentiments instinctively, but actually do incalculable harm by weaponising the society and its discourse. In times like this, unhinged politicians do not waste time on the symbol of the ‘blindfolded lady justice’ with the scale of justice in her hand, but instead seek to proudly posit a ‘bulldozer’ as a symbol of strong societal action. That the ‘blindfolded lady justice’ inherently suggests impartiality, as opposed to a specifically chosen location for a bulldozer, is ironical. When extra-constitutionality is normalised and heroized, society becomes automatically violent.

National leadership has barely undertaken any policing reforms (above all, delinking lawand-order from the clutches of politicians), judicial reforms (despite staggering number of pending court cases, vacancies in the judiciary continue), or political restraints/reforms (each day a more sophisticated form of telling silences, dog-whistling and innuendo laced ‘hate speech’ is allowed).

While there has been a huge enthusiasm to ‘rewrite’ and ‘correct’ history of the land in the school syllabus across the country, no such enthusiasm to inculcate social liberality and inclusivity of the myriad societal ‘others’, be it in terms of religion, ethnicities, gender, orientation, or abilities has been equally vociferously mooted. If anything, each such incident is stripped for any plausible opportunity to suggest a partisan point of relevance/differentiation e.g., in the Shraddha Walkar case, the religious denomination of the culprit was bandied to ascribe a community’s wantonness.

A carefully curated, signaled and protected universe of what can be conveniently called ‘fringe elements’ (with the plausible deniability of any official linkages) and a handy troll army is retained to stitch-up and then dial-up up a storyline full of implicit accusations and hate mongering.

Populism is a hydra-headed curse in a diverse society like ours, as it can easily derail hard won reforms and rail against the constitutional spirit of inclusivity. Politics of populism also normalises age-old stereotypes and perpetuates the entitlement of a few. The Anjali Singh case has shamed Delhi after the Nirbhaya case, after ten years of clearly unlearnt lessons.

As a symbolic reflection of the times that be, the government had set up a Nirbhaya Fund for ‘empowerment, safety and security of women and girl children’, and as per the NGO Oxfam India Report in 2021, the fund remained underused and underutilized (later owing to unrelated issues, Oxfam itself has been facing raids and other curbs).

TV channels are meanwhile screaming with ‘Breaking News’ of case details with sanctimonious panelists discussing the issue ad nauseum, with little or no pressure building on the leadership to effect course-change or systemic reforms.

Parallel drama on the ostensible colour of a dress by an actor and the equally charged emotions heaped thereon, is a sad reminder of the triumphant politics of populism, as opposed to the spirit of constitutionality and reforms.

Interdependence is the norm of nature

Interdependence is a fundamental law of nature. It is because our own human existence is so dependent on the help of others that our need for love lies at the very foundation of our existence.

It can be terrifying: depending on anything outside of ourselves for our well-being. And yet, we all do. We depend on medicine to stay healthy. We depend on our partners, friends, and family for support, joy, and love. We depend on food, water and oxygen for survival. On the most basic levels, we are not designed to be wholly independent. We rely on the world around us, just as it relies on us: a symphony of symbiosis. And while not all forms of symbiosis are positive, those in which both organisms benefit—known as mutualistic relationships—exist all over our planet.

Beneath the waves, a flowerlike creature blooms—though it’s not a plant at all. Rather, sea anemones are marine invertebrates that possess a powerful neurotoxin in their tentacles which they use to take down plankton, crabs, and fish. One fish has evolved to be immune to their sting, though: clownfish. With their signature orange and white stripes, these fish take shelter among the anemone’s tentacles. In return, they keep their habitat free of parasites and provide nutrients to their neighbour by dropping food. Their bright colors even lure in more prey for their anemone hosts to feed on. Anemones with clownfish have lower mortality rates than those without.

Elsewhere, in the tropical jungles of Borneo, another mutualistic relationship flourishes. Pitcher plants are experts at attracting prey; a slippery secretion on the lips of their cylindrical bodies cause unsuspecting mammals and insects to fall into their acid-filled pits, where they are slowly digested. But one animal chooses to enter this territory willingly. Woolly bats use their claws to hang from the rims of the plant, providing them with a safe space to rest. As compensation, their waste provides fertile food for the pitcher, allowing it to grow healthy and strong.

Across African savannahs, red-billed oxpecker birds find companionship with their considerably larger mammalian neighbours. They feed on the parasites that crawl over the bodies of giraffes, zebras, and wildebeests—ridding their hosts of vampiric ticks and flies while scoring an easy meal. Recent research has found that they have a particularly beneficial relationship with rhinos, which have famously terrible vision and are therefore relatively easy to stalk. Oxpeckers, on the other hand, have good eyesight—which they use to identify potential threats, making alarm cries to alert the rhino of approaching predators and even poachers. They protect their companions.

When the moon rises over the Sonoran Deserts of North America, the senita cacti bloom. Under the cover of nightfall, they are visited by fluttering white and brown senita moths. Females of this species have evolved abdominal scales that allow them to transfer pollen from flower to flower. As they do, they lay a single egg on a flower’s petal. When it closes and the egg hatches, the burgeoning mothling feeds on the cactus’s growing fruit. But they devour less than 21% of it, leaving the cactus enough to continue on—a lesson in not only mutualism but sustainability.

Popular wellness theory will tell you that “you have all you need within.” And I agree with that to an extent; obviously, our need for external validation and fulfilment has grown destructively excessive. At the same time, I think that mentality reflects yet another side of late-stage capitalism: its isolating obsession with individualism. We consume and we scroll, forever longing for what’s outside—but I don’t think a lack of independence is what drives us. If anything, it’s the opposite; we’re interdependent. What we’re reaching for is connection.

I wonder if clownfish ever forget the anemones that keep them company if woolly bats ever long for the sanctuaries that grow so abundantly for them. I wonder if rhinos ever lose sight of the fact that someone else is looking out for them, if senitas ever bloom with uncertainty about who might find their rare brand of night-born beauty. I wonder if we humans are the only species that gets lonely. When we do, we can trust that life is symbiotic. How frightening, how magnificent it is to realize what we know in our deepest cores to be true: to be alive is to depend on each other. 

US and Russia’s war of attrition in Ukraine is getting dangerous

Ukraine seems to be on the back foot in the Soledar and Bakhmut regions and this fact would have made some European countries reluctant in their support for the war. This fact had to be dodged by another headline-catching news item in order to divert attention from what was happening on the ground in Ukraine. Information of new supplies of superior tanks to Ukraine has now overruled the small victory of Russians in Bakhmut and has now become the new narrative of the war.

At the same time, Turkey is relentlessly exerting pressure on Sweden in its criteria for joining NATO. Lately, a right-wing Danish-Swedish politician, Rasmus Paludan, has caused a furore in the entire Middle East over Quran-burning events. Demonstrations against Sweden have spread to Pakistan, Iran, Iraq, and Lebanon. Seemingly, Sweden cannot stop Paludan from making his spectacular Quran-burning events as it is his constitutional right to do so. Simultaneously, Turkey won’t stop accusing Sweden of being Islamophobic. This drama does not seem to end, either.

Both Russia and Ukraine are now claiming to be planning a grand offensive to bring the opposing forces to a grinding halt. The West seems to be incessant in supplying weapons and in upgrading the quality of arms sent to Ukraine. The technological grade and capacity of weapons and tanks have reached the level of NATO’s best equipment. Gone are the days of using outdated equipment. The war in Ukraine is becoming a war of attrition with no warring party to emerge as the winner.

But the winner is surely the weapon manufacturing industry in the USA, which will benefit immensely from the sale of new weapons as the compilation of weapons in NATO countries is rapidly being depleted.

Secondly, the cheap gas flowing from Russia to Europe is seeing all its sources of transportation being blocked or blown up. So America can easily sell its gas at a much higher price, adding to the benefit of its indigenous gas industry. So America is in no rush. But fractions are seemingly appearing in Europe or in NATO.

The big question remains, for how long will the NATO countries tolerate the Turkish president’s blockade of Sweden entering NATO? On the other hand, tensions are rising in Sweden as people do not want their government to sell out on the fundamental right to protest and the fundamental right of ordinary citizens to free speech. So voters in Europe are spelling out the coming losers of elections. The present coalition government in Denmark, enjoying a thin margin in parliament, won’t get reelected as per the new polls. It is simply because cuts in public funds affecting the welfare of people are being felt. The new proposal of slashing a public holiday to work for extra funds for defence has been met with stiff resistance.

Several European governments are forced to take painful measures, and the cost of living is rising as the war in Ukraine drags on. Russia, which has the upper hand in the war at the moment, sees no reason to retreat and Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, after having gained access to highly sophisticated tanks from Germany, UK and USA, is neither in a mood to accept defeat, as all his demands seem to be fulfilled by the NATO members.

What is next in the row? F-16 aeroplanes to be shipped or the risk of miscalculation, and the first nuclear exchange in Europe? The conditions for social and political unrest are ripe in Europe, and one thing is that Ukraine is destabilized and many of its cities were destroyed in the fighting, the other thing is that it seems that the war will have its spillover in EU countries. It remains to be seen how growing inequality and growing poverty will be addressed in the coming months in Rome, Budapest, Stockholm and London.

Recep Tayyip Erdogan is giving stiff resistance, and his growing popularity in the Middle East and his staged drama of opposing Sweden to join NATO is raising his prospects of winning in the coming elections. So the prospect of Sweden joining NATO anytime soon is not a probable scenario.

The West, while predicting a regime change in Moscow, might soon have to confront the prospects of a regime change in Kyiv, as well. The war of attrition in Ukraine is creating a doomsday scenario in the EU. And there are no signs of relief anywhere.

Parties That Fought for Freedom and Thereafter

The role of political parties in winning freedom is well known. But how many of them, on attaining the goal of freedom, put their nations on the path of progress? Freedom parties are initial mother institutions that largely craft all new state institutions. Their traits hugely influence the fate of new states. Here, I look at the link between post-freedom progress and key party traits like social roots, ideology, mode of freedom drive, etc for 10 such parties each from Asia and Africa.

I cover 10 states that have seen high or moderate progress: Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore, Vietnam, Bangladesh, India and Sri Lanka in Asia and Mauritius, South Africa and Botswana in Africa. I also include 10 moderately or very stagnant ones: Timor, Myanmar and Pakistan in Asia and Eritrea, Sudan, South Sudan, Kenya, Zimbabwe, Algeria and Ghana in Africa.

There are 13 cases of freedom from colonialism and four from larger states (Bangladesh, Eritrea, South Sudan and Timor), two unique cases of both together plus a split later (Pakistan and Sudan) and one eviction case (Singapore). I exclude revolutionary parties that toppled their own autocratic regimes, as in Russia, China, etc, as their issues are distinct.

The freedom parties of successful states were older at freedom than the others. The Indian and South African Congresses were 60-plus years old. Such parties had more time to develop organisationally with strong mass roots. Among stagnant states, the oldest party was ours, having existed for 40 years by 1947 but for the most part without strong mass roots. Except for Bostwana, all others had a middle-class leadership. Almost two-thirds had a lower-middle-class leadership: 80pc among stagnant states and 50pc among successful ones. Six in the successful group were socialist, even if the two most successful ones, Singapore and Malaysia, had right-wing leaderships led by upper-middle classes. But even among the less successful states, the leadership of only two (Pakistan and Sudan) were right wing.

So, the critical fact was not only ideology but also the mode of freedom. Six stagnant states had militant parties that won freedom after decades of war. Among the successful ones, only Vietnam and Bangladesh did. The others got freedom via talks or civic agitation. Thus, the freedom leaders of less successful states were more militant and autocratic who ruled ruinously for decades, as in Zimbabwe and Eritrea.

Among the 10, the most stagnant states today mostly had militant freedom parties. But the constitutional and agitational routes of most in the successful group produced professionally skilled leaders who could rule well even after freedom and deliver progress. In most cases, such parties and even some founding leaders ruled well for decades. Among less successful ones, the freedom parties either lost power early or became long-ruling autocrats.

In Pakistan’s case, these observations show that our poor progress is linked to the Muslim League’s flaws despite its non-militant, professionally skilled leadership. The key shortcoming was the concerns of many of those driving the freedom quest who belonged to the elite. These concerns, according to Hamza Alavi, included the fears of elite Muslim salariats about their interests under Hindu rule. Elite Muslim landed and commercial elites had the same fears, fed by Congress’s socialist talk.

Unlike the Congress, little thought was given to political and economic issues. The Lahore Resolution gave a sound vision for a decentralised democratic state, under the pressure of the regions. But not much work was done in seven years to operationalise it further, and, in 1947, the Muslim League found itself poorly endowed to govern or produce sound institutions and policies. The early exit of the two main founding leaders harmed the party and also exposed its poor organisation.

Ten of the 20 founding parties are still dominant ruling parties, decades later, while six to seven are still major parties. The Muslim League was perhaps the only one to largely cease to be a major power within a decade, with the current parties using that name having no direct links or continuity from the original one.

This party outcome was not accidental but emerged from the low political viability and coherence of the Muslim nation and polity pursued by the elites. But these were not insurmountable issues had non-political institutions that grabbed power, given the League’s flaws, given more time to political institutions to mature, as in dozens of other post-colonial states that too had low initial political viability and coherence. So, if the unstated objective was to protect elite interests, the state has faithfully lived up to these birth aims for 75 years.

Sikhism The Only Post-Modern Religion of the World

Sikhism is the youngest religion. But it is a religion with a difference. Is not only modern, but, in reality, it is post-modern religion, and possibly the sole one at that. Sikhism established and defended human rights along with caste, racial and gender equities, This focuses on the characteristics of post-modernism and emphasizes that Sikhism is really the post-modern religion of the world. Watch to know this amazing truth.

What is the Post Modern Era?

There has been a chain of interlinked eras marked by special characteristics and special names. Numerous and varied classifications have been presented from the historical viewpoints. But for brevity’s sake and for our purpose here, I would like to identify only three major eras namely: pre-modern, modern, and post-modern. The main thesis of this paper is to demonstrate that Shri Guru Nanak Dev Ji, the founder of Sikhism, even though born in pre-modern era, was far ahead of time to present religious and spiritual solutions to our present day postmodern problems.

Pre-modern era, between fourteenth and seventeenth century, is also described as the renaissance period of vigorous artistic and intellectual activities. Cartesian-Kantian or modern era, encompassing eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, is generally characterized as an era of rationalism, characterized by “individual subjectivity, interiority, and self-subsistence autonomy”

There seems to be no consensus about the beginning of the postmodern era. I venture to propose that the post-modern era began on October 24, 1945 after the Charter of the United Nations was signed at San Francisco in USA. After the colossal havoc, death and destruction caused by two world wars, it became quite clear that humans are not necessarily rational and the future of the whole humanity is doomed.

In the twentieth century more people died than all people put together in the previous centuries. Even at the cusp of the new millennium, September 11, 2001 tragedy caused by terrorism and current wars in Afghanistan and Iraq are the stunning reminders that humanity is in peril begging for survival. The prevalent world plight is reminiscent of Guru Nanak’s words, “Jagat jalandha rakhle aapni kirpa dhar, “God! Please save this world, it is on fire.”

Characteristics of Postmodernism and Attributes of Sikhism

In this section, I would like to discuss some unique features of postmodernism and propose that they are characteristically different from the previous era of modernism. I would also like to introduce Sikhism and describe some of its basic tenets as introduced by Shri Guru Nanak Dev Ji. Since the central theme of this paper is to argue that Sikhism is the religion of the postmodern world, many lines from the Shri Guru Granth Sahib, will be cited to prove this point. Furthermore, I will present all information under various subheadings. These subheadings are intended to highlight postmodern concepts, followed by quotes from the Sikh scriptures.

1. Reality Transcends Sensual Experiences

Post-modernism has questioned the empirical methods of the modern era to search for the absolute reality. It contends that ultimate reality can never be found through senses and scientific instruments. According to a postmodernist, reality cannot be determined objectively, it is more complex than meets the eye.

Since the reality is trans-empirical, it cannot be known through sense experiences in the way in which empirical/ scientific knowledge is gained. Reality is comprehended through intuitive experience for it transcends both the rational and the sensory aspects of human experience.

Guru Nanak, the founder of Sikhism, asserted, “Jo dise so chalanhar,” “what can be seen, must vanish” suggesting that objective reality is misleading. The supreme truth remains hidden beyond the reach of our senses , and we are capable of finding only the partial truth. In Sikhism, mysticism is considered a viable approach to gain complete or real knowledge.

Mysticism is a reality which is beyond the grasp of our senses. While describing the mystic world, Guru Nanak Dev Ji pointed out that “In this realm, one sees but without eyes; one listens but without ears; one walks but without the feet; one works but without the hands; one speaks but without the tongue; thus attaining life in death. O Nanak, one meets God after realization of the divine law.”

The truth scripture speaks about is the direct outcome of the intuitive or mystic experience of the ancient seers. It contains what is borne out by their direct and authentic experience. The mystics seem to be able to attain non-ordinary states of consciousness in which they transcend the three-dimensional world of everyday life to experience a multi-dimensional reality which is impossible to describe in ordinary language.

The scientific and rationalist discourses during the postmodern era have lost their legitimacy. For example, quantum physics and chaos theory are some prime examples to demonstrate that so called science cannot make reliable predictions. Truth transcends the obvious.

2. Postmodern Era: An Age of Globalization

Due to a large number of significant technological advances in the postmodern era, the world is rapidly shrinking. Globalization has become the buzzword of this era. Some profound changes are taking place which is distinctly different from the modern era. Clearly, there is a rethinking and reconfiguration of ideologies of the previous era. We are living in an era of many tensions, confusions, and insecurities. Postmodern era can be described as an era of anxiety.

In this shrinking but volatile world, there is a dire need for one universal religion. As a matter of fact, from the gallery of many religions, Sikhism stands tall and distinct to fulfil this aspiration. Reverend H.L. Bradshaw’s words describe adroitly such a message of hope,

Sikhism is a Universal world Faith., a message for all men. Sikhs must cease to think of their faith as just another good religion and must begin thinking in terms of Sikhism being the religion of this New Age. The religion preached by Guru Nanak is the faith of the New Age. It completely supplants and fulfils all former dispensations of older religions. The other religions contain the truth, but Sikhism contains the fullness of truth.

After studying Guru Nanak’s proclamation that “Hai nain Hindu, Hai nain Mussulman (There is no Hindu, there is no Mussulman’, I think that between this dichotomy there is a third something, tertium quid about Sikhism. I would like to add that this third something is very unique and is distinctly universal that deals with the whole of humanity, not one special ethnic or religious group. As such, Guru Granth Sahib is truly the first interfaith scripture that is replete with universal messages for all humans inhabiting this planet earth.

3. Shattering Myths in the Postmodern Era

Postmodernism in a nutshell is the loss of meta-narrative. Meta-narrative here is defined as the myths by which humans organize their lives. In the postmodern era, many previous overarching stories that held civilizations and mindsets intact are deconstructed as governing and authoritative powers. Guru Nanak, the founder of Sikhism, was clearly a revolutionary iconoclast of myths and hollow rituals. He also deconstructed many beliefs from previous religions such as that the earth is standing on the bull’s head. Instead, he provided more logical explanations that not only the earth but also the whole universe is run by God’s rules called “hukam.”

4. Postmodern Issues and Sikhism

As a result of globalization, post-colonial awakening, technological innovations, and economic concerns, there are several issues that have become very specific and major concerns of the postmodern era. Such issues include global violence or terrorism, racial and gender inequities, diversity and multicultural issues, human rights violations, and eco-violence to name a few.

I would like to discuss each issue mentioned above and present lines from Guru Granth Sahib Ji to illustrate how Sikh Gurus have already provided answers to our postmodern problems. In this sense, Gurbani is clearly postmodern in nature.

A. Human Rights Issues

At the end of the Second World War (1945), the world community came together to address some of the problems of the humanity through establishment of the United Nations Organization. This organization mainly focused on the issues of human rights.

A cursory look at the Preamble of the United Nations Organization (1945) will make the readers wonder if many of its lofty ideals have been borrowed from Shri Guru Granth Sahib Ji. The major emphasis on human rights, dignity and worth of humans, and the equal rights of men and women as advocated in the charter of the UNO have been the prime and central message of the Sikh Gurus dating back to the fifteen century. It seems that Shri Guru Nanak Ji had envisioned the basic problems of postmodern humans 500 years ahead of time. Some lines from Gurbani are presented below to prove this point:

“Nanak naam chardi kala, tere bhane sarbat ka bhalla” is one of the much quoted lines from the daily prayer of a Sikh who prays for the welfare of all humans. Social justice, equity among races and genders, compassion for all people, and a voice against oppression are some of the hallmarks of Sikhism. Aval Allah noor uppya, kudrat ke sabh bande, another line from Guru Granth Sahib emphasizes the brotherhood of mankind.

B. Equal Status of Women

Sikhism is perhaps the first and the only religion of the world that has granted equal status to women. In Indian society, like everywhere else, women have been historically oppressed and severely degraded for centuries. A woman was referred to as equivalent to man’s shoe, the root of all evil, a snare, a temptress.

Guru Nanak shattered the myth of implied inferiority and challenged women’s second-rate treatment. He questioned the rationale for treating women in a degrading manner,

In a woman, a man is conceived,
From a woman, he is born,
With a woman he is betrothed and married,
With a woman, he contracts friendship.
Why denounce her, the one from whom even kings are born?

Tenth Guru, Shri Guru Gobind Singh Ji, named women as “kaur” or the crowned princess. Women’s movement for equal rights in the postmodern era now actually has roots in Sikhism.

C. Diversity Issues and Multiculturalism

There is much talk these days about diversity and multiculturalism. Two predominant and major underlying themes of multiculturalism are to promote equity and social justice. Five centuries ago, Guru Nanak preached the whole world as one large multicultural family. He proposed that all human beings regardless of their race, caste, and creed are equal.

Shri Guru Gobind Singh’s line, ” Manas ki jaat, sabhe ek hi pahichanbo” (All humans are equal) is the central theme in the Sikh ideology. According to Guru Nanak, the persons who love all humans as equals, are of the highest kind. Guru Sahib preached that in every heart it is the same God, none else than Him speaks from there. “Sabhe ghat Ram bole Rama bole. Ram bina ko bole re.” (Guru Granth , p. 988).

According to Guru Nanak, God does not discriminate people by their sectarian religions such as Hindus or Muslims. In response to Qazi’s questions in Mecca, whether Muslims are superiors or Hindus, Guru Nanak declared,

Pushan phole kitab no Hindu vadda ke Musalmanoie.
Baba aakhe hazia shubh amlan bajhun dono roie.
(Bhai Gurdas, Var 1-33)

Those are superior who perform superior deeds. Without good deeds, people suffer regardless of their religious background. Guru Nanak also rejected every type of discrimination, whether it was based on creed, colour or caste. “Phakkar jaati, phakkar nao. Sabhna jian eka shao” (AGGS, M1, p. 83).

The following lines can be considered the centre piece of Guru Granth Sahib (page 1349) that highlight equality among all humans, the ultimate goal of multiculturalism,

Aval Allah noor uppaya, kudrat ke sabh bande.
Ek noor te sabh jagg upjya kaun bhale ko mande.

The same reflection of God is in every human. So how could one be recognized as superior and the other one as inferior?

D. Alcohol and Drug Abuse

Alcohol and drug abuse are the scourge of the present era. Guru Nanak condemned the use of alcohol in a very logical message,

If one wants to enjoy ecstasy, he should “drink” the name of God,
And that is the way to realize Him. One should strictly avoid alcohol
By drinking which one loses control of one’s faculties.
(Guru Granth Sahib, p. 554)

E. Violence and Terrorism in the Postmodern World

I believe that Guru Nanak’s message is the most relevant to address the postmodern era’s problems of violence and terrorism. According to Guru Nanak, humans have to shed their egocentrism to combat religious and political conflicts. Leaders and people have to learn to take principled positions on divisive issues. They also have to learn how to self-discipline themselves. In Sikhism, kaam, krodh, lobh, moh, and ahinkar (lust, anger, greediness, attachment, and haughtiness) are considered as five main culprits that lead to problems in life. I believe that these are the same main reasons that cause conflicts at the national and international levels.

Guru Nanak’s message is a message of hope. To make this world peaceful, it is important that people practice truthful living. Guru Nanak asserted that “Sachu oore sabh ko upper sach achar. (AGGS, M. 1, p. 62),” meaning that all else falls short of truth, yet, higher still is truthful living. Internal purity and moral conduct are highly prized in Sikhism. In addition, Sikhism enjoined upon its followers to observe external as well as internal purity, eventually, isnan, customary bath in the early morning has developed into an essential religious practice.

F. Appreciation of Nature and Ecological Considerations

Contrary to many other religions, nature is eulogized in Sikhism. In the following lines, Guru Nanak proposes that not only Almighty has created Nature, but He also resides in it. Also, He is the Creator of all the forces and laws of the universe and He is responsible for the existence of life in everybody.

Appine aap sajio, aapne rachio nau
Dui kudrat sajie kar aasan ditho chao.
(Aad Guru Grant Sahib, M 1, p. 463)

Guru Nanak also proclaimed that this universe is real, not an illusion as suggested by some other religions. “Real are Thy continents; Real is the universe; Real are these forms and material objects; Thy doings are Real, O Lord.” Guru Nanak calls the universe as His chamber when he writes, “Eh jag sache ki hai kothri. Sache ka vich vaas.” AGGS, M 2, p. 463. Appreciation of Nature as the reflection of God is obvious in Sikhism. Hence, the postmodern era’s ecological considerations are equally important to the followers of Guru Nanak.

Conclusion

Nobel Laureate, Pearl Buck noted about Sikh scriptures, “I have studied the scriptures of the great religions, but I do not find elsewhere the same power of appeal to the heart and mind as I find here in these volumes. I believe that the basic reason for this appeal to the heart and mind is due to the relevance of Guru Nanak’s message to the postmodern problems of the present time.

Sikhism is a scientific and logical religion, therefore, it can be universally accepted by the generations of humanity to come during the Third Millennium, and beyond. A critical analysis of Nanakian Philosophy indicates that both are intertwined with each other as a hand in a glove.

For the survival of humanity in these troubling times, Sikhism, because of its universal nature, can be called the religion of the future humankind. Archer’s are noteworthy in this context: The religion of the Guru Granth is a universal and practical religion.
The world needs today its message of peace and love.

Guru Nanak was the first post-modern scholar. He was centuries ahead of his time in his view of language, culture, the natural world and God. In fact, he is the perfect guide for the post-modern person because post-modernism leaves people feeling empty, that life is without meaning. But Guru Nanak takes the deconstruction of post-modernism and then says- see-at the heart of it-there is an amazing creative play that we can’t comprehend or define.

Indians need to ignore godmen & pay attention to climate change and communal tensions

Indians seem to have a penchant for stoking fire, be it the fire of communal tensions or the fire of global warming. I say so because while the world is watching in horror as fires ravage forests, hurricanes devastate cities, and extreme weather events put humanity at risk, many Indians are more concerned with what religious leaders, or “Godmen,” have to say.

It’s time for these Indians to wake up and realize that climate change is not just an environmental issue, it is an economic, healthcare, and educational issue as well. Rising temperatures, changing rainfall patterns, and increasing frequency of extreme weather events all have a major impact on India’s economy, environment, and public health.
The economic costs of climate change are staggering, with the World Bank estimating that it could push more than 100 million people in India into extreme poverty by 2030. The healthcare costs are even more sobering, with the Indian Council of Medical Research finding that climate change is already having a major impact on public health, with rising temperatures leading to more heat stroke and other heat-related illnesses, as well as increased incidence of respiratory and vector-borne diseases.

Climate change is not just a threat to the present generation, it is a threat to the future of our children and grandchildren. The extreme weather events, the droughts and floods, the loss of biodiversity and the rising sea levels will all have a devastating impact on the future of our planet and our children.

As a nation, we need to start prioritizing the issue of climate change and taking steps to reduce our carbon footprint, such as using renewable energy, conserving water, and protecting forests. We need to speak out against those who deny the reality of climate change and work to elect leaders who are committed to addressing this urgent issue.

It’s time for India to take a stand and start prioritizing the issue of climate change. We must put the well-being of our future generations above all else and take urgent action to address this issue before it’s too late.

To cut the long story short, instead of getting stoked up to know how a godman is reading peoples’ mind, be more interested in knowing ways to adapt to and mitigate the effects of climate change.

An Old Coin to Solve the Mystery of a Lost Roman Emperor

Gold coins bearing the name Sponsian had not been analyzed in detail since being dismissed as forgeries in the 19th century. 

Paul Pearson has always been fascinated with ancient human history, even though his professional area of interest is more like earth science and paleoclimate. Pearson, of Cardiff University in the United Kingdom, has indulged his interest in the Roman Empire for a long time, and in March 2022 published The Roman Empire in Crisis, 248–260: When the Gods Abandoned Rome, a book focused on a particularly challenging stretch of Roman history. In the third century, the empire was plagued by a series of civil wars, economic turmoil, an empire-wide pandemic, and a succession of leaders and usurpers vying to rule the sprawling Roman world. Pearson didn’t expect to stumble on an ancient mystery as well.

In 1713, eight gold coins of five different designs were dug up in Transylvania, in modern-day Romania, and acquired by a man named Carl Gustav Heraeus. One of them featured a face and the name “Sponsian.” Roman coins bore the faces of the ruler who issued them, even if his reign had been brief. The eight coins were discovered to have come from a larger hoard of gold coins that had been spread around at the time. Four Sponsian coins from that hoard are known to exist today. However, Sponsian’s name doesn’t appear in any ancient texts or sources. Over the years, the coins were written off as fakes—and the emperor was, too.

The name Sponsian doesn’t appear in any ancient texts or sources, leading to the assumption that the gold coins bearing his likeness are fake. 

Pearson decided to look into the story behind this obscure possible emperor as an entertaining digression from the grim book he was writing. “I thought it was an interesting story to research,” he says, “partly because it seemed like there was a slightly puzzling issue explaining how that came to be.”

While doing his early research, Pearson realized that there were no clear photographs of the slightly infamous coins anywhere. “There were some grainy black-and-white published photographs, but nobody had ever had a close look at these coins.” He learned that the Hunterian Museum in Glasgow had one of the Sponsian coins and three others of similar design, depicting Gordian III and Philip (I or II), both of whom were real emperors with brief reigns during the tumultuous third century. So Pearson emailed Jesper Ericsson, the museum’s curator of numismatics, to request a photograph of the Sponsian coin. “We were both quite puzzled by the appearance of it,” he says, “which had indications of being deeply worn and having incrustations on the surface.” Why would a forgery appear to have spent a long time in the ground? Unsure of what it all meant, Pearson and Ericsson assembled a team for a study to get to the bottom of the mystery.

The study, recently published in the journal PLoS, examined the four coins in the Glasgow collection, in addition to two other Roman gold coins of Gordian III and Philip I that are thought to be authentic. The study concluded that the four coins, as appearances suggested, had been buried in soil for a substantial period of time, and were already deeply worn before their interment. This suggests that they had actually been in circulation in antiquity. It seemed possible from the first scientific analysis of a Sponsian coin that he could represent a real, lost Roman emperor.

There weren’t high-quality images of the Hungarian Museum’s Sponsian coin until Pearson (left) and Ericsson (right) examined it in detail. 

The third century was a bad time for the vast empire, and it was a period that saw rapid, constant changes in political leadership. Between A.D. 235 and A.D. 284, there were at least 26 claimants to the title of emperor, mostly generals. When the Sponsian coins were first discovered, scholars thought they hadidentified a new emperor or usurper who had claimed the title in A.D. 249. But then 19th-century French numismatist Henri Cohen dismissed them as “very poor quality modern forgeries.” It didn’t help that no one had ever heard of Sponsian before. The case seemed to have been closed.

Pearson’s study, however, appears to have opened the discussion once again. “There’s been a lot of comments since we published the paper,” Pearson says. Responses have been posted online, he says, but nobody has “contacted me as the corresponding author with any serious critiques of the paper.” Pearson and his team hypothesize that the coins aren’t fake, and that they do indeed point to the existence of an otherwise unknown emperor.

Richard Lim, who teaches ancient Roman history at Smith College, says that the name Sponsian had never been on his radar. “There is such a long list of usurpers in the third century,” he says, “that even getting the names of all the emperors who were acknowledged as having actually reigned is a very trying experience.”

Four coins in the Glasgow collection were examined (clockwise from top left): Sponsian, Gordian III, and two of Philip (I or II).

Lim found Pearson’s study well presented, particularly in its pushback against previous dismissals of the coins’ authenticity. Most compelling, he says, is the question of why anyone in the 18th century would bother making up an emperor. “Why would anyone do that as opposed to so many other kinds of forgeries that could have been attempted at that time?” he says.

Even so, Lim is cautious about speculating on who Sponsian was, even if he did exist, on the basis of a few coins. The labeling on the coins, “IMP SPONSIANI,” he points out, doesn’t necessarily make him an emperor. “‘IMP’ stands for ‘imperator’ in English, but for the Romans, it meant a successful commander, which is what a victorious general would have been called by his soldiers,” Lim says. There’s not enough on the coins, he suggests, to formally crown Sponsian.

For Pearson, the publication of the study is just the first step. “It’s certainly true that there’s more to be done,” he says. “Ours was the first study of coins that are in Glasgow. There are others.” Pearson hopes to study a coin that is currently in Romania, in a similar condition as the ones in Glasgow. “What we hope to do is try to fingerprint the gold itself to a source,” he says. Pearson and his team hope the discovery will draw a little more attention to this period of crisis in the empire, and what leadership might have meant at the time. “I think it’s a really interesting period,” he says. “Whether our hypothesis turns out to be true or not, we hope it has stimulated debate and discussion about that period.”

America’s China Policy Is Another Massive Failure

For all the talk of how we have entered a new global era, the last year bears a striking resemblance to 2008. That year, Russia invaded its neighbour, Georgia. Tensions with Iran and North Korea were perennially high. And the world faced severe global economic challenges.

One notable difference, however, is the state of Chinese-U.S. relations. At that time, self-interested cooperation was possible even amid political and ideological differences, clashing security interests, and divergent views about the global economy, including China’s currency valuation and its industrial subsidies.

Today, such cooperation is inconceivable. Unlike during the financial crisis, the COVID-19 pandemic failed to spark Chinese-U.S. cooperation and only intensified deepening antagonism. China and the United States jab accusatory fingers at each other, blame each other for bad policies, and trade barbs about a global economic downturn from which both countries and the world have yet to recover.

The world has clearly changed. China has very different and more assertive leadership. It has more than tripled the size of its economy since 2008 and now has stronger capabilities to pursue adversarial policies. At the same time, it has done far less to open its economy to foreign competition than many in the West have advocated and expected. Meanwhile, U.S. attitudes toward China have turned sharply negative, as have the politics in Washington. What has not changed, however, is the fact that without a stable relationship between the United States and China, where cooperation on shared interests is possible, the world will be a very dangerous and less prosperous place.

In 2023, unlike 2008, nearly every aspect of Chinese-U.S. relations is viewed by both sides through the prism of national security, even matters that were once regarded as positive, such as job-creating investments or co-innovation in breakthrough technologies. Beijing regards U.S. export controls aimed at protecting the United States’ technologies as a threat to China’s future growth; Washington views anything that could advance China’s technological capability as enabling the rise of a strategic competitor and aiding Beijing’s aggressive military buildup.

China and the United States are in a headlong descent from a competitive but sometimes cooperative relationship to one that is confrontational in nearly every respect. As a result, the United States faces the prospect of putting its companies at a disadvantage relative to its allies, limiting its ability to commercialize innovations. It could lose market share in third countries. For those who fear the United States is losing the competitive race with China, U.S. actions threaten to ensure that fear is realized.

Coalition of Like-Minded

The United States is attempting to organize a coalition of like-minded countries, especially the democracies of Asia and Europe, to counterbalance and pressure China. But this strategy is not working; it hurts the United States as well as China; and over the long term, is likely to hurt Americans more than Chinese people. It is also clearly in Washington’s interest to cooperate or work in complementary ways with China in certain areas and to maintain a beneficial economic relationship with the world’s second-largest economy.

Although many countries share Washington’s antipathy to China’s policies, practices, and conduct, no country is emulating Washington’s playbook for addressing these concerns. It is true that nearly every major U.S. partner is tightening up its export controls on sensitive technologies, scrutinizing and often blocking Chinese investments, and calling out Beijing’s coercive economic policies and military pressure. But even Washington’s closest strategic partners are not prepared to confront, attempt to contain, or economically deintegrate China as broadly as the United States is.

In fact, many countries are doing the opposite of what the hardest-line voices in Washington seek. Instead of decoupling or deintegrating economically, many countries are instead deepening trade with China even as they hedge against potential Chinese pressure by diversifying business operations, building new supply chains in third countries, and reducing exposure in the most sensitive areas. Perhaps that is why, in 2020, despite years of American warnings, China overtook the United States as the European Union’s largest trading partner. Both EU exports to and imports from China grew in 2022. And Asian and European leaders, spurred by the November 2022 visit to Beijing by German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, now look set to beat a path to Chinese President Xi Jinping’s door, with trips by Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos, Jr., French President Emmanuel Macron, and Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni likely to drive a broader trend.

Washington’s “less of China” approach is faring even worse in the global South. Chinese-African trade reached a historic high in 2021, rising by 35 percent from 2020. An intensive U.S. campaign to push Chinese technology firms like Huawei out of backbone telecommunications architecture has fared comparatively well in Europe and India but poorly nearly everywhere else. Just take Saudi Arabia. Its largest trading partner is China, and its Vision 2030 reform plan leans heavily on hoped-for collaboration with Chinese tech firms, including Alibaba and Huawei, even in the sensitive areas that are squarely in Washington’s crosshairs, such as artificial intelligence and cloud services. Indonesia, a huge Asian democracy that Washington has courted to counterbalance Chinese influence, has actually made Huawei its partner of choice for cybersecurity solutions, and even for government systems.

These U.S. efforts are likely to be even less successful now that China is reopening. Beijing is matching Washington’s “less of China” strategy with its own “more of everyone but America” strategy.

Beijing is reversing its restrictive COVID-19 policies, reopening its borders, courting foreign leaders, and seeking foreign capital and investment to reboot its economy. Last year, Xi made his first foreign trips since the outbreak of the pandemic to Central Asia and the Middle East, underlining his strategy to increase China’s global connectivity. With Xi now traveling the world again after a three-year hiatus, scattering renewed pledges of Chinese investment, infrastructure, and trade at every stop, it is Washington, not Beijing, that may soon find itself frustrated.

Trade rules are a good example. In 2017, U.S. President Donald Trump withdrew from the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), and six years later, Washington clearly has no intention of rejoining it. Yet Beijing has applied to join the pact, now called the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP). China has also ratified the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership in Asia, applied to join the Digital Economy Partnership Agreement, and upgraded or initiated new free trade agreements with countries from Ecuador to New Zealand. China is now the world’s largest trading nation. Nearly two-thirds of all countries trade more with China than with the United States.

Meanwhile, the United States is pursuing a “worker-centric” trade policy that looks very much like protectionism. And Washington’s Indo-Pacific Economic Framework looks timid by comparison. The framework is struggling, not least because it denies new market access to the very countries that have joined the pacts that Washington has shunned.

Washington risks pushing against economic gravity. The United States has succeeded in controlling the most sensitive technologies, including advanced semiconductors. But it will have less success with a strategy premised on promoting broader technology deintegration with China because most countries are not following its lead and may, eventually, find ways to adjust.

These efforts to shut out China will certainly hurt China, but they hurt the United States, too. American businesses are put at a huge competitive disadvantage, and U.S. consumers pay the price. One sensible step to correct this problem would be to limit tariffs on imports of Chinese consumer goods, which make them more expensive for U.S. consumers. These are politically popular but economically nonsensical.

They hurt China but hurt U.S. job creators, as well, including ordinary companies that depend on Chinese suppliers, have few workarounds, and have been crushed under the weight of inflation and high energy bills. But these should not be lifted without getting something in return. For example, Washington should push China to live up to the terms of the 2020 Phase One trade agreement, including by buying more U.S. agricultural products. China also should be required to open its markets to more U.S. goods.

Ultimately, competition with China begins at home. The United States and China have very different political systems. The United States’ is superior, but it must be demonstrated through results. This means sticking to the principles that made the U.S. economy the envy of the world and underpin U.S. national security. It also means demonstrating economic leadership abroad.

It is critically important that Washington win the race to develop technologies and attract talent. Economic success will be driven to a large extent by technological superiority. This requires the United States not just to develop those technologies of the future but to commercialize them and not hoard them. It demands the United States set global standards rather than ceding the playing field to China. And the United States should be leading on trade, not withdrawing from the very pacts China has applied to join and cutting U.S. workers off from export opportunities.

To be sure, security tensions are baked into the relationship, and Xi’s China is a formidable competitor with which the United States must take a very tough-minded approach. Beijing is pursuing policies inimical to U.S. interests in many areas, and it is unlikely to adjust anytime soon. Washington needs to be tough-minded but fair, open to dialogue but not for its own sake, and prepared for a tough, long slog in pursuing self-interested coordination with China.

Such cooperation has been meaningful in the past. At the height of the financial crisis of 2008, China was a huge holder of corporate, banking, and Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac securities. The close coordination established with Chinese leaders during the Strategic Economic Dialogue helped Washington convince Beijing not to sell U.S. securities, which was critical to avoiding another Great Depression. The Chinese stimulus package that followed the first G-20 in 2008 also helped to counteract the effects of the crisis and assist the global economic recovery.  

Financial crises are inevitable, and they will be much easier to manage in ways that limit the economic hardship in both countries and the world if the two largest economies and drivers of economic growth are able to communicate and coordinate to anticipate and forestall economic disruption, as well as to mitigate its impact.

And it is in China and the United States’ shared interests to do just that. But this requires U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen and her colleagues to have a regular dialogue with their Chinese counterparts where they discuss and monitor global and domestic macroeconomic and financial risks.

A shock in the real economy can move quickly to the financial system, and financial excesses can wreak havoc on people’s lives if left unaddressed. Modern finance, where money can move around the world with the speed of light, makes the world seem like an increasingly small place. The Chinese economy is so large and integrated globally that disruptions there in 2015 and 2021 immediately rippled through global financial markets.

The primary and secondary economic and financial linkages between China and the United States are so broad and deep they cannot be wished away, which makes it particularly important that the two states share views on macroeconomic risks. China is the second-largest holder of U.S. Treasury bonds and a large investor in other U.S. securities, so it is in both countries’ interests for China to have an understanding of U.S. economic policy and confidence in U.S. policymakers, particularly when Congress is wrangling over the debt limit.

The lack of transparency around China’s lending to some very troubled economies and the large amount of U.S. business investment in the Chinese economy, which can seem like a black box to outside analysts and where abrupt policy changes can take the market by surprise, mean it is critical to both states that U.S. policymakers have a better understanding of China’s economic policies and challenges. 

The United States needs to solidify the floor that the Biden administration has tried to put under the freefall. This is essential because the allies and partners Washington hopes to enlist to pressure China expect a good-faith effort to seek cooperation with it, where possible. And that is one reason that U.S. President Joe Biden, in his meeting with Xi in Indonesia last November, sought to establish guardrails around a deteriorating relationship.

To improve coordination, Chinese and U.S. decision-makers should meet more frequently and talk much more candidly. Friendship is no prerequisite for such coordination. And obvious political, security, and ideological tensions do not preclude self-interested cooperation on issues such as macroeconomic stability, pandemic preparedness, climate change, combating terrorism, nuclear nonproliferation, and firewalling the global financial system against future crisis and contagion. U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken’s upcoming meeting with Chinese State Councilor Wang Yi is a good starting point. Yellen should be talking regularly to China’s new economic czar, He Lifeng. Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell should also be speaking with China’s top central banker.

Washington should negotiate aggressively with Beijing to win opportunities for Americans in its market. And Beijing should not hold hostage cooperation on global issues such as climate change because it is upset about unrelated issues. Linking different foreign policy issues undermines China’s effort to present itself as a constructive global problem solver.

The United States also needs to carefully distinguish what it must have from its allies from what is merely nice to have. Controlling weapons-related technologies and dual- and multiple-use technologies, and more intensively screening Chinese investments and mergers and acquisitions with global tech companies are a must. But Washington does not need to encourage deintegration in areas that are not central to national security or the competitiveness of the world’s democracies at the technological bleeding edge.

Some level of decoupling is inevitable. In the case of high technologies, some targeted decoupling will be absolutely necessary. But wholesale decoupling makes no sense. Americans benefit from access to the world, and China will remain a huge market that Americans can either partake in or abandon to competitors. China is the world’s second-largest economy, its largest manufacturer, and its largest trader.

It will be a big part of the global financial picture for decades to come. Instead of fatalistically accepting the descent of an economic iron curtain, Washington should negotiate aggressively with China to win opportunities for Americans in its market. Administration officials should have serious discussions with Chinese leadership about how to manage the decoupling in a way that allows for mutually beneficial trade. Right now, the two countries are mostly trading charges and countercharges while doing nothing to expand mutually beneficial economic opportunities.

Chinese-U.S. security tensions cannot be wished away, and Americans are rightly concerned, especially after the Russian invasion of Ukraine, that Beijing will throw its weight around, not least by coercing Taiwan. Bolstering deterrence is a big part of the answer. So are improved relations with allies. But U.S. allies and partners have made no secret of their desire not to isolate or contain Beijing. That is one message Washington should take away from the world’s refusal to disengage with China—and from China’s effort to drive wedges between Washington and everyone else.

The political winds are strong and the desire to punish China even at the United States’ expense is driving many in Congress. Biden will need a lot of courage to be smart and bold in the face of these challenges

India Battling Poverty

A sizeable percentage of India’s population is multidimensionally poor (UNDP, 2019). Further, much of the poverty is concentrated in rural areas. Given the fact that various sectors are not able to generate sustainable sources of livelihood for a subsistence level of living, it is indeed important that state initiatives come as a major respite.

The farm sector has reached almost a saturation point. Climate change and water scarcity forced many farms to give up multiple cropping around the year, resulting in a sharp reduction in the scale of activities. Further, mechanisation impacted employment drastically. The rural non-farm sector, on the other hand, has not emerged as a major source of livelihood.

On the whole, poverty in rural areas persists both in the agricultural sector and the non-farm sector. Mechanisation, water shortage and climate change effects have rendered agricultural labour redundant, and disguised unemployment has been significant. The lack of demand-induced activities in the rural non-farm sector has led to the supply-push phenomenon. Marginal activities may raise the share of non-agricultural sector, and the process of urbanisation may have been underway, but that does not result in sustainable development and livelihood. The massive growth of the census towns between 2001-2011 is a witness to this fact.

Rural transformation was not accompanied by the growth of demand-induced activities and the emergence of the new towns (not recognised by the government as statutory towns) is rather a misleading process if urbanisation is to be taken as an indicator of development.

The expansion in the city limit and the rural hinterland being considered as a part of the city agglomeration is interesting but whether it is able to create employment opportunities for the rural population is an important question. A continuous change in the land utilisation pattern has rendered many farm households redundant and jobless. The policy interventions naturally must reflect on these rapid changes that have been occurring over the years. The organised industry which is expected to generate employment on a large scale for the semi-skilled and unskilled workforce and shift them away from the farm sector, is rather lagging behind.

The adoption of capital-intensive technology tends to restrict the pace of labour demand. The high-productivity services sector on the other hand, is also capital and skill intensive, restricting the opportunities for those who are not endowed with skill and quality education. The periodic labour force surveys which have information on households over different sub-rounds within a year show that some workers do not remain within the same activity throughout.

They keep depending on different activities in different seasons or keep shifting from one activity to another as sustainable livelihood sources are shrinking. Besides, at a given point in time, some workers have to depend on multiple sources of livelihood as one source is not sufficient to provide a subsistence level of income.

Some of the workers engage themselves in two or more subsidiary status activities simultaneously while some augment their income by working in a principal and a subsidiary status activity. The livelihood diversification strategy is beneficial for households as it helps smoothen consumption expenditure. Else, fluctuations in consumption can push some of the households, particularly those marginally above the poverty line, into the domain of poverty and such fluctuations affect the productivity of the workers severely.

However, on several occasions, households remain below the poverty line in spite of pursuing multiple sources of livelihood. Due to the lack of gainful employment, they strive hard, engaging in a number of petty activities. The recent pandemic and the subsequent lockdown wiped away the sources of livelihood, particularly in the urban space, and more so in large cities, which kept attracting migrants on a significant scale.

The return migration occurred, raising the vulnerability of the workers. The regions which had witnessed lower unemployment rates before the pandemic experienced a hike. Regions with higher levels of urbanisation and large cities and with higher rates of rural-urban migration are the ones which encountered a massive increase in the unemployment rate. The complete closedown of the informal sector forced millions of workers to become openly unemployed and could bring in considerable overlaps between unemployment and poverty.

There has been a severe stress in the rural sector: those who have returned to the rural areas cannot get absorbed in gainful activities as the rural non-farm sector hardly comprises demand-induced activities.

On the other hand, the agricultural sector has already been in a state of an excess supply of labour. In this context, the rural employment guarantee programmes came as a major safety net. From the periodic labour force survey data (2019-20), the April-June quarter in 2020, which exactly coincides with the first phase of the pandemic-hit lockdown period, shows a massive decline in the work force participation rate in the urban areas.

However, the annual average figures for all areas (rural and urban combined) do not unravel such adversity. This is precisely because of the implementation of the rural employment guarantee programmes at an unprecedented scale. Without the employment guarantee programme, Indian labour market indicators would have been miserably poor even prior to the pandemic.

In fact, given the effectiveness of MGNREGA, an urban counterpart of this programme has been envisaged as a safetynet for those engaged in petty and residual activities. On the whole, given the bleak employment prospects in the labour market expounded by the sluggish growth in labour demand in many sectors, MGNREGA works as a matter of last resort without which many households would have slipped into abject poverty.

In addition, the National Rural Livelihood Mission (NRLM) which was launched in 2011 and later renamed Deendayal Antayodaya Yojana (DAY-NRLM) in 2015, aims at empowering the rural poor by helping them access financial services that may contribute to the augmentation of the household income.

Keeping in view the multidimensionality of poverty, the housing aspect needs immediate concern. In rural areas particularly, given the paucity of income, it is difficult for households to generate surplus resources which can be invested in the construction of housing. In this context, PMAY-G which was restructured in 2016, is a major break, helping millions to build shelters of durable quality.

The primary goal of PDS is to distribute essential food commodities like rice, wheat and kerosene at highly subsidized rates to those below the poverty line, addressing the issue of food insecurity in the rural areas of India. In spite of the criticisms against the programme and the quality of food grains distributed to the poor, its effectiveness in reducing consumption poverty cannot be denied. The reduction in destitution and the intensity of poverty will have to be attributed to the existence of PDS.

While pursuing fieldwork in the villages of Odisha in 2017 under an ICSSR-sponsored project on climate change and rural livelihood diversification, the comment was received from a layman who in his personal capacity tries to help the poor households in that area, is commendable, “people would have simply died out of hunger had PDS not been in place.”

Thinking About Future & Building a Happier Life

We should think more about whom we’ll be in the future – because doing so has profound consequences for our health, happiness and financial security.

Take a moment to imagine yourself in 10 years. Depending on your age, you might have a few more grey hairs and wrinkles, and you might hope for some changes to your material circumstances, too. But does the person you imagine feel, fundamentally, very close to the person you are today? Or do they feel like a stranger?

Some people have a vivid sense of their future self, which feels very close to their current identity. These people tend to be more responsible with their money and more ethical in their treatment of others; they are keen to act in a way that will make life easier in the years ahead.

Many other people struggle to imagine their future self as a continuation of the person that they are today, and they tend to be far less responsible in their behaviours. It’s almost as if they see their future self as a separate person that has little connection to their present identity – and, as a result, they are far less worried about the long-term consequences of their actions.

You could almost think about your future self as a relationship that needs to be nurtured and cultivated. Fortunately, there are some simple strategies to strengthen your empathy and compassion for the person you will become – with some profound consequences for your health, happiness and financial security. 

Philosophical origins

The inspiration for the recent psychological research on the future self can be found in the writings of philosophers such as Joseph Butler, in the 18th Century. “If the self or person of today, and that of tomorrow, are not the same, but only like persons, the person of today is really no more interested in what will befall the person of tomorrow, than in what will befall any other person,” Butler wrote in 1736.

The theory was later expanded and championed by the British philosopher Derek Parfit, whose work caught the attention of a young researcher called Hal Hershfield. “It was just such a compelling idea,” says Hershfield, who is an associate professor of marketing, behavioural decision making and psychology at the University of California, Los Angeles. He suspected that a disconnection from our future selves might explain many irrational elements of human behaviour – including our reluctance to set aside savings for our retirement.

To find out, Hershfield first had to find a way to measure someone’s “future self-continuity”. He settled on a simple graphic that presented pairs of circles representing the current self, and a future self (see below). The circles overlapped to varying degrees, and the participants had to identify which pair best described how similar and how connected they felt to a future self 10 years from now.

He then compared these responses to various measures of financial planning. In one experiment, the participants were presented with various scenarios in which they could either receive a smaller reward soon or a larger reward later. As expected, participants who felt a greater connection to the future were much more willing to delay their gratification and wait for the bigger sum.

To check whether this tendency for sound financial planning corresponded with real-life behaviour, Hershfield next looked at his participants’ real-life savings. Sure enough, he found that the more the participant felt connected to their future self, the more money they had already squirrelled away.

Back to the future

Hershfield’s later research has examined the phenomenon in many other areas of life. In 2018, for instance, he found that people’s future self-continuity could predict their exercise behaviours and overall fitness. It seems if you identify strongly with your future self, you are more willing to look after your body to make sure that it experiences better health in the years ahead.

Other experiments suggest that people who score highly on the future self-continuity measure have higher moral standards than the people who struggle to identify with their future selves. They were less likely to cheat in tests, for example. “If people are better connected to their future selves, then they’re going to have an enhanced ability to recognise the consequences of their present-day decisions on their future selves,” says Hershfield. “And that’s going help them put the brakes on these behaviours.” 

In 2020, Hershfield confirmed that someone’s (in)ability to identify with their future self can have long-term consequences for their overall wellbeing. The longitudinal study, which tracked more than 4,000 participants for a decade, found someone’s future self-continuity at the beginning of the study could predict their life satisfaction 10 years later.

Importantly, this was true even when he controlled their initial well-being. This helped to eliminate the possibility that the people who felt connected with their future selves had simply started the study with higher life satisfaction, and then remained that way. Instead, it seems likely that the greater satisfaction at the end of the study was the result of all those positive behaviours – like financial saving and increased exercise – that together resulted in a more comfortable life.

Future vision

On the back of these results, neuroscientists have started to take a closer look at the brain processing behind these phenomena – and the reason that so many people find it hard to identify with their future selves.

Meghan Meyer, an assistant professor at Dartmouth College in New Hampshire, US, recently asked participants to estimate the future-self continuity overlap at various time points. In one of these tests, participants had to estimate the similarity in their current and future selves by controlling the overlap of two circles – much like Hershfield’s experiments. They repeated the task multiple times, while imagining themselves in three months, six months, nine months and a year into the future.

If you identify strongly with your future self, you are more willing to look after your body to make sure that it experiences better health in the years ahead

In line with Hershfield’s results, Meyer found that the average participant’s concept of their future self diverged from their concept of the current self fairly rapidly – with a large sense of disconnection already appearing at the three-month point. Interestingly, however, this change started to plateau as they considered the later time points. As such, there was little difference between the nine-month and year time points – and we can guess that the same would have been true if they’d considered even later dates. Meyer suggests that their vision of their future self was becoming “blurrier” and less nuanced. 

This was also reflected in results from functional MRI scans, which offered some intriguing evidence that, at the neural level, we really do start to think of our future selves as a different person. Besides considering themselves at various points in the future, the participants were also asked to think about a stranger, such as the politician Angela Merkel. As the participants moved further along the timeline – imagining themselves from around six months onwards – the brain activity concerning themselves started to resemble the response to thoughts of the politician. 

“As you move farther out into the future, the way you represent yourself isn’t so different from the way you represent Angela Merkel,” says Meyer. “It’s consistent with this philosophical idea that you treat your distant future self like a stranger.”

The things I wish I’d known

Given the many benefits for our financial security, health and overall happiness, it’s natural to wonder whether we can strengthen our sense of connection to our future selves.

Hershfield’s research offers a couple of suggestions. In one series of experiments, his participants entered a virtual reality environment with personalised avatars that simulated how they may look aged 70. As hoped, they reported feeling a greater connection to their future self, and in subsequent measures of decision-making, they showed more financial responsibility. They reported being more likely to set aside money for retirement, for example. Many photo editing apps already allow you to prematurely age your selfies, and this kind of technology could be incorporated into educational programs that encourage people to think more carefully about their future wellbeing. 

For a low-tech intervention, you might consider a simple imaginative exercise – in which you write a letter to yourself 20 years from now, describing what is most important for you now and your plans for the coming decades. Like the sight of the aged avatars, this encourages people to feel a greater sense of connection with their future self – and, as a result, primes them for positive behavioural change. Hershfield’s studies have shown that the task increased the amount of time that people spent exercising over the following week – a sign that they had started to take their long-term health seriously. (If you are keen to try this out, he suggests that you could amplify the effects by writing a reply from the future, since that will force you to adopt a long-term perspective.)

As expected, Hershfield applies his research to his own life. When dealing with the stresses and frustration of parenting, for example, he tries to put himself in the shoes of his future self to imagine how he might look back on his own behaviour. “I try to think whether he would be proud of the way that I handled myself,” he says.

It might seem eccentric to start a “conversation” with an imagined entity – but once your future self becomes alive in your mind, you may find it much easier to make the small personal sacrifices that are essential to preserving your wellbeing. And in the years ahead, you’ll thank yourself for that forethought.  

Vietnam-Indonesia agreement on EEZ demarcation implies joint rejection of the Chinese nine-dash-line

A significant positive development in the South China Sea (SCS) is the agreement between Vietnam and Indonesia on the demarcation of Exclusive Economic Zones (EEZs), signed on the 22nd December 2022. It not only provides hope for the settlement of boundary disputes among other ASEAN countries but also clearly indicates that the two countries are united in rejecting the Chinese claim to the nine-dash line.

This agreement was made without any consultation with or involvement of China, which is also claiming this area. Furthermore, the delimitation of Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ) boundary reflects their intents to resolve the boundary disputes in accordance with the 1982 United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS). This agreement is the result of twelve years’ negotiations based on pragmatic approach. The two countries earlier had concluded an agreement in 2003 on the Vietnam-Indonesia continental shelf boundary.  

This agreement would bring an end to the clashes between the two nations over the issue of illegal, unreported, and unregulated (IUU) Fishing. In the past several untoward incidents had taken place between the Coastguards of the two countries around the Natuna Islands. In 2017, Vietnam detained an Indonesian Officer, when the Indonesian Coastguards tried to escort the Vietnamese vessels from the region. In 2019, there was a collision between the vessels of the two countries. Later, in the same year, Indonesia destroyed 38 Vietnamese fishing boats for ‘illegally fishing’ in the region. In 2021, Indonesian Coastguards arrested two Vietnamese fishing boats. 

Since its unification, Vietnam has steadily moved to settle its maritime boundaries with its neighbours systematically and pragmatically realising the importance of sea-lanes. As a first step, it strengthened its domestic laws. In 1977, the Vietnam government issued the Declaration on the Territorial Sea, Contiguous Zone, the Exclusive Economic Zone and the Continental Shelf. In 1982, Vietnam issued the Declaration on the baselines from which the breadth of the territorial waters is measured. And in 1994, the Vietnamese National Assembly ratified the UNCLOS of 1982.

Vietnam has successfully resolved its maritime boundaries with its neighbours, where possible, for the sake of regional peace and security. Despite the fact that Cambodia had been creating problems for Vietnam, the latter made an agreement on the maritime boundaries in the Gulf of Thailand in 1982. Under the agreement, the two countries agreed to use the Brevie Line (drawn by the Governor Brevie in 1939) as the dividing line of sovereignty over islands, settling the dispute over them. This placed an area of about 8000 sq. kms. of the Gulf of Thailand under the internal waters of the two countries.

In 1992, Vietnam and Malaysia worked out an arrangement for joint exploration of petroleum products in the Gulf of Tonkin based on the principle of equality of rights and obligations. Vietnam settled the overlapping area totalling 6074 sq. kms. with Thailand in 1997. The agreed line defines a single boundary of the countries’ overlapping Continental Shelf and EEZ. 

Vietnam also succeeded in reaching an agreement with China over the overlapping claims in the Gulf of Tonkin. Negotiations lasted 27 years. Vietnam’s sustained efforts resulted in the signing of an agreement in 2000 that came into force on the 30th June, 2004. The agreement delimits Territorial Waters, EEZs and Continental Shelves in the Gulf of Tonkin between Vietnam and China: Vietnam got 53.25% of the Gulf, while China got 46.77%. 

However, the situation in the SCS deteriorated with the claims made by China in the nine-dash-line. It submitted its claims in 2009 to the UN and has since taken an aggressive stance towards other claimants. It began to occupy features. Later, China began to use its muscle power to encroach on other countries’ EEZs and obstructed their drilling operations. Then it created artificial islands and militarised them. The creation of artificial islands near the Philippines is still continuing. China also uses it coercive powers to keep ASEAN divided or weakened. The Code of Conduct (CoC) is delayed because of China’s reluctance to have it.

The Vietnam-Indonesia agreement has fourfold significance. First, its strategic significance lies in the fact that it is made for the region that China also claims, and the signatories did not consult China. Thus, it was a joint rejection of the Chinese claim to the nine-dash-line. Second, it may encourage others to settle their maritime boundaries without consulting China. Vietnam, which has made continuous efforts to resolve the conflicting claims through negotiations, could now focus on having similar agreements with the Philippines.

The Philippines, is unhappy with the Chinese Coastguards that drove away its fishing boat from the Ayungin Shoal, which belongs to the Philippines on the 9th of January, a few days after Marcos Jr visited China and signed several agreements. The Philippines has strongly protested the Chinese action. Under these circumstances, the Philippines may agree to have a separate agreement with Vietnam.

If that happens, a united front by Vietnam, Indonesia, Malaysia and the Philippines could emerge against the Chinese claims. Third, this agreement would strengthen the bilateral relations between Vietnam and Indonesia, resulting in increased economic development for both countries. Last year, the bilateral trade had crossed $ 12 bn and they have plans to reach the target of $ 15 bn by 2028. Fourth, this would bring an end to the clashes over the activities relating to IUU Fishing between the two countries.  

In essence, this is a welcome agreement in the SCS, which is witnessing rising tensions because of Chinese belligerence. While the Chinese activities of creating artificial islands continue with assertive behaviour against other claimants, Vietnam and Indonesia have emerged as responsible and mature nations desirous of resolving disputes peacefully and capable of facing Chinese coercion. The Chinese reaction to this agreement is not known so far. China may try to send its naval force to create problems near Natuna like in the past.

The SCS stakeholders, including the QUAD, should remain vigilant for possible Chinese actions and encourage such agreements so that the Chinese nine-dash-line claim becomes infructuous. And this is possible with the support of ASEAN. All these countries have approached the UNSC for the implantation of the PCA Ruling of 2016. A serious effort in that direction is needed by the International Community as peace and security of the SCS is essential for the achievement of the objective of a Free, Open, Inclusive Indo-Pacific.

Mega projects for Andaman and Nicobar need to be ultra-sensitive about ecology and tribes

The representation of nearly 100 former civil servants to President Droupadi Murmu against development plans on Great Nicobar Island needs to be given serious thought. Recall that last November the Union environment ministry had given in-principle clearance for the diversion of 130.75 sq km of forest land on Great Nicobar for a Rs 72,000 crore project that includes a trans-shipment port, an airport, a power plant and a greenfield township. But this would be likely catastrophic for the island’s sensitive ecology and indigenous hunter-gatherer tribes like the Shompen who are already listed as a ‘particularly vulnerable tribal group’.

The Andaman and Nicobar Islands have been on government’s development radar for some time now. In January 2021, the Island Coastal Regulation Zone of Great Nicobar was reduced. Subsequently, the Union territory administration de-notified 11.44 sq km of Galathea Bay Sanctuary on the island. This was followed by a special committee meeting to decide the extent of de-notification of the Onge tribal reserve on Little Andaman. While government claims that these moves will bring growth and employment to the islands, little attention is being paid to the fact that the region has some of India’s largest mangroves and that over half the species of butterflies, 40% of birds and 60% of mammals found here are endemic. All of this unique biodiversity could be lost forever.

Plus, even if we leave aside reclusive tribes like the Sentinelese that want nothing to do with the outside world, it is difficult to see the mega projects benefit major indigenous communities like the Nicobarese on account of their current socio-economic constraints. The projects would essentially cater to outsiders. True, there’s no denying that the islands are strategically important – as characterised by a 2019 Niti Aayog report – given that they lie across important sea lanes. But disregarding the ecological sensitivity of the region could see the making of another Joshimath-like catastrophe on a grander scale. Therefore, any future plans to develop the Andaman and Nicobar Islands need to seriously factor in the environmental impact on the region. Compensatory afforestation in Haryana or MP just won’t cut it

Glimpses of BBC’s Biased Adverse Reporting of India

I was not really surprised by BBC’s bias against India. I have followed the BBC since I was a child growing up in India and they have some good archival footage of some interviews with India’s leaders during and after Independence, but the BBC then and journalism was different.

My first personal experience with BBC in India, was quite an awakening — I discovered to my shock that it wanted to report on only sensational bad news in a country of 1-3 billion people. In 2013, I was in their bureau for an interview for my book.

I was asked to wait for a bit in their main reporting room where there were several reporters searching for what would make the headline news, with their stringers in various parts of India, via computer and phone. I happened to hear one who was rather loud and excited over the phone and was saying his story would make the headlines. The story was about how a young man was badly beaten up and was critical in hospital as he had taken his cows to graze in fields that belonged to a particular community.

I asked the reporter whether this was all that he could get from a country of 1.3 billion people. Isn’t there at least one big story about how someone was saved from certain death by a good Samaritan. His answer was classic and I have never been able to forget it.

“They only want to know about the rapes and lynchings and violence which makes Headline news,” he said.

I did some research and found out that BBC was established under a Royal Charter and is funded by a license fee charged to all British households, companies and organizations. But when it was established in 1922, it got financed by a royalty on the sale of BBC wireless receiving sets from approved domestic manufacturers. In the 1930s it started news from its colonies, including India.

In the summer of 1970, the BBC broadcasted two documentary films – Calcutta and Phantom India which caused outrage amongst the Indian diaspora and with the Indian government for prejudicial and negative depictions of India and was dispelled from India in 1972. It depicted only poverty and despair even though India had come a long way from when the British left India in poverty and despair in 1947.

In 1995, when the Charar-e-Sharif shrine was burnt down in Kashmir valley by terrorists, BBC aired footage of Russian tanks in Chechnya in its reportage, which created the impression that it was the Indian Army’s use of tanks that had damaged the shrine. Imagine BBC getting away with this kind of deception. In fact the BBC has consistently reported several such totally fabricated stories from Kashmir.

I do wish BBC had the guts to do a sensational piece on the treatment of Uighurs in China.

Then I met an Englishman in Nainital who came to see Jim Corbett’s home that had been bought by my husband’s grandfather. He told me that he had worked for BBC and said he was disgusted by them as they had done a false documentary on the Kaziranga Game Reserve where they gave a one-sided view of forest rangers killing poachers and had been banned from all Indian Game sanctuaries for 5 years. The BBC then gave an apology to the Indian Government for their biased reporting.

Why would they do this, I wondered. Why would they want to make India look bad? Is it a colonial hangover of losing the jewel in their crown?

Another case of BBC’s appalling reportage was when a young girl was gangraped and it shook India so much that it brought both men and women on to the streets in various cities. It was the Nirbhaya case. The UPA government responded to the mass uprising by bringing in a fast-track court for such heinous crimes. But that did not stop the BBC and Leslie Udwin, who calls herself a human rights activist, from interviewing one of the rapists in jail and trying to portray him as a victim by his saying he thought the girl deserved it. Had Leslie done a little homework she would have realized that Nirbhaya had got onto an unlicensed bus by chance. Instead she tried to promote Delhi as the rape capital of the world and some delinquents as stereotype of men in India.

When one connects the dots of even these few cases among hundreds of false reporting done in India by the BBC, one realizes how far down the journalism ladder this institution has gone.

Since the BBC has a relationship with the UK Government it should not be allowed to get away with this kind of yellow journalism. It is certainly bad for diplomacy and worse for journalism of the BBC kind.

Blasphemy Laws of Pakistan Are a Slur for Humanity

“Pakistan was to review its harsh blasphemy laws. It has made them even harsher,” according to a report from this month. “The National Assembly has unanimously passed an amendment to the laws that widens the net and makes punishment more stringent under these laws… The blasphemy laws are often misused in Pakistan to settle personal scores. It is also used to persecute its small minorities.” [Emphasis in the original]

Recently in Pakistan, however, an encouraging sign emerged: an interesting uproar on social media about a Christian female security officer who bravely stood up to a Muslim colleague threatening her with a false accusation of blasphemy .

Samina Mushtaq was working at her job with the Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) in Karachi when her colleague insisted that a car be allowed to be parked within the perimeter.

When she refused on the grounds that he did not have the necessary permission, he started intimidating and threatening her, and saying that he would accuse her of committing blasphemy and kill her.

Thankfully, Mushtaq recorded the entire conversation on her smartphone and the video went viral on January 5. It is likely that her quick thinking saved her life — and more than that, they have shone an important light on how brazenly Pakistan’s blasphemy laws are misused for personal agendas, even trivial ones.

It is to the CAA’s credit that they are taking action against Mushtaq’s colleague and have launched an investigation into the incident. This investigation needs to be thorough, impartial and concluded promptly rather than be allowed to drag on endlessly and eventually swept under the carpet. The CAA also needs to have the courage to take any necessary action against the man in question.

Mushtaq, too, must be brave, because Muslim leaders will no doubt put pressure on their Christian counterparts to persuade her to pardon her colleague so that the matter will be dropped and that she will not file a criminal complaint against him.

Ultimately, it is up to her, but there is a bigger issue at stake than the goings-on of the CAA and its employees: the constant misuse of the blasphemy laws against innocent Christians.

As Mushtaq’s case shows, this sword can be wielded at any moment, without warning, with potentially deadly consequences for the accused. It is not a laughing matter. The country’s legislators need to take it seriously and bring forward serious legislation that will finally put a stop to false accusations of blasphemy.

It is not as if we haven’t been here before. Sadly, we have been here many, many times and it is always the same story. A disgruntled Muslim does not get his (or her) way, so uses the blasphemy laws to take matters into his own hands and settle a petty dispute, all because he knows that he can do so with impunity.

Those who make false accusations do not care that innocent Christians may end up dead or in miserable prison conditions for years on end or be forced into hiding with their entire family, not knowing what will become of them, all the while in fear for their lives.

Worse, some are prepared to murder under the cover of religion and become — a hero. Often such criminals escape the law because their criminal acts are not just ignored, but supported and hailed by the public and the elites, with very few if these murderers ever being brought to justice.

This is a scenario that Tabita, a Christian nurse and gospel singer, knows all too well. She had been working at the Sobhraj Maternity Hospital in Karachi for nine years when, in 2021, her colleagues tied her up and locked her in a room after accusing her of blasphemy. Police officers took her into custody and after investigating, concluded that the charges against her were baseless; simply the result of a misunderstanding between colleagues. Despite being cleared of all charges, she was still forced to go into hiding, perhaps for the rest of her life.

The same year, Christian nurses Maryam Lal and Navish Arooj were accused of blasphemy for supposedly removing an Islamic sticker from a cupboard in Faisalabad’s Civil Hospital. Police registered a case against them despite it being known that the accuser had verbally abused both nurses and attacked Lal with a knife. Unsurprisingly, the accuser continues to work at the hospital and has been hailed a hero, while Lal and Arooj live in hiding.

In a similar case, three Christian nurses at the Punjab Institute of Mental Health in Lahore, were falsely accused of blasphemy. Sakina Bibi, Jessica Khurram and Treeza Eric were accused after one of the nurses shared a video of someone speaking about the Islamist Tehreek-e-Labaik Party in a staff WhatsApp group. Some Muslim nurses reacted by desecrating the hospital chapel, and threatening to convert it into a mosque. Peace was only restored after local Muslim and Christian leaders intervened. No action was taken against the Muslim nurses.

Again and again, we see the victims being treated as criminals by those in positions of authority while the perpetrators are let off scot-free and even hailed as heroes. All the while, politicians who actually have the power to change this state of affairs refuse even to discuss the matter in Parliament. When people such as M. P. Bhandara and Sherry Rehman dare to speak up, they receive the inevitable death threats. For Punjab Governor Salman Taseer, Christian Federal Minister Shahbaz Bhatti and human rights lawyer Rashid Rehman, these death threats were carried out.

Pakistan was genuinely shaken to the core by the vigilante lynching of Sri Lankan factory manager Piryantha Kumara in Sialkot over blasphemy allegations. Even Pakistan’s prime minister at the time, Imran Khan, called the murder “horrific;” a “day of shame for Pakistan;” and promised that he would personally oversee the investigation and that those responsible would be “punished with full severity of the law”. Yet, even though in that case six of the perpetrators were sentenced to death — a sentence that has not yet been carried out — here we still are with nothing done to change what truly is the shame of Pakistan. The law still is as it is: innocent people continue to be accused of blasphemy and killed.

Going back to Samina Mushtaq, thanks to her quick thinking, she is still with us and lucky to be alive. Christians need to be grateful for the way in which she courageously brought the truth about blasphemy to the forefront and stirred up a national debate. We need much more of it. Lawmakers need to change the laws before more unjust killings.

What having a ‘stiff upper lip’ means and how it became associated with Britain

The much-debated British phrase “stiff upper lip” has been brought into the spotlight once again with Nobel laureate Kazuo Ishiguro, known for his 1989 novel The Remains of the Day, recently speaking on how Britain’s particular brand of emotional coldness had a lot to do with the British empire.

Speaking to AFP following the release of the British drama film Living, whose screenplay Ishiguro wrote, he said the stoic expression of the Brits has dissolved and softened over the years. The drama, adapted from the 1952 Japanese film Ikiru, depicts a reserved bureaucrat in 1950s London who emerges from his shell only when his death is imminent.

What does ‘stiff upper lip’ mean?

According to the Merriam-Webster Dictionary, the phrase means maintaining a steady and determined attitude or manner in the face of trouble. The Macmillan dictionary defines it as a quality of remaining calm and not letting other people see what you are really feeling in a difficult or unpleasant situation.

The phrase has traditionally been used to describe a general attribute of British people in remaining resolute and unemotional when faced with adversity. Though it has faded to some extent with modern-day British people expressing their emotions quite openly, the trait has been kept alive in some ways, for instance by some members of the British royal family.

Why is ‘stiff upper lip’ closely associated with Britain?

The idea of the stiff upper lip can be traced back to Ancient Greece, to the Spartans, whose cult of discipline was a source of inspiration to the English public school system during the Victorian era. The concept reached England around the 1600s.

One of the first factors contributing to the formation of the trait was the French Revolution of 1789, which was a culmination of the on-and-off wars between France and England (later Great Britain) – from 1689 to 1815.

The contest began in the late 17th century, as England and other European states tried to contain the power and ambition of Louis XIV – who was publicly executed after the French National Convention convicted the king of high treason in 1793 – and ended with the defeat of Napoleon Bonaparte at the Battle of Waterloo.

The radical, political and societal uprising in France established the idea that the French had lost control and let their emotions get the better of them, a BBC report said, quoting Thomas Dixon’s book Weeping Britannia: Portrait of a Nation in Tears. Thus originated the idea that emotions were dangerous and needed to be restrained.

Also, the defeat of French emperor Napoleon led to the expansion of the British Empire, armed with a sense of superiority and emotional resolve. The stiff upper lip was then a concept of the upper and upper-middle classes and the military who were drilled to present that kind of front to their colonial subjects, in a bid to represent the ‘superior race’.

The concept featured in the works of British cultural icons: William Shakespeare’s plays, the poems of Rudyard Kipling and W E Henley and in the books of Charles Darwin and English author E M Forster, among others.

Britain’s emotional culture was further influenced by the two world wars, with the stoic attitude not just being limited to the upper class. Despite Britain emerging victorious in both wars, it had lost so much, socially and economically. However, a narrative was set for the government as well as the general public to demonstrate strength and bravery and not show emotions of fear and grief.

Has the idea of the ‘stiff upper lip’ continued over the years in Britain?

After World War 2, Britain saw its colonial rule collapsing and to keep up its labour force, the country brought in the British Nationality Act of 1948 that granted Commonwealth citizens the right to live and work in the UK. The law consolidated British citizenship by putting Britain’s colonial subjects on equal footing with those living in the British Isles and was likely made to try and avoid decolonisation.

This led to an influx of people into the country from across the world bringing with them varied cultures and slowly helping in dismantling the traditional stoic characteristic to a large extent. However, the royal family still kept the tradition with utmost sincerity.

One of the major events that later shook the stiff upper lip attitude off its roots was the death of Princess Diana in a car crash in 1997 which sparked an outpouring of public grief in the United Kingdom. The royal family was criticised by some for their reaction, as they did not display grief and put up a stiff front before the world. Diana, unlike other royal members, was outspoken and connected with the people, which is why then Prime Minister Tony Blair posthumously dubbed her “the People’s Princess”.

How has the royal family’s emotional culture evolved in recent years?

Late Queen Elizabeth II, Britain’s longest-reigning monarch, kept the stiff upper lip attitude alive until her death this September. In 2020, as the Coronavirus  pandemic ravaged the globe, the Queen in a rare televised address to the nation, invoked a war-time spirit of self-discipline and resolve to fight the virus. Even as she acknowledged the grief and financial difficulties the world then faced, she said everyone will be able to take pride in how they responded to this challenge.

“And those who come after us will say that the Britons of this generation were as strong as any. That the attributes of self-discipline, of quiet good-humoured resolve and of fellow-feeling still characterise this country,” the Queen said in her address.

However, the Queen’s third generation has publicly warned against “stiff upper lip”. The face of this movement has been Diana’s sons, Prince William and Prince Harry. In a rare interview with Canada’s CTV television in 2017, Harry spoke about his struggles in coping with the loss of his mother. Speaking with The Daily Telegraph later, he said that he “shut down all his emotions” for nearly 20 years, and had been “very close to a complete breakdown on numerous occasions.”

He described a long, painful process of refusing to face his sense of loss that only came to an end when he was in his late 20s and sought professional counselling to cope with the pressures and unhappiness. In the CTV interview, he said it is important to ask for help, saying “It is a sign of strength, it is a sign of bravery to ask for help.”

Harry, who served in the British army, also created the Invictus Games. Its aim is to use sports to help injured and wounded people in the military, and to motivate them on their path to recovery. Following his younger brother’s interview, Prince William warned British men that keeping a “stiff upper lip” by bottling up emotions was detrimental to mental health. “There may be a time and a place for the ‘stiff upper lip’, but not at the expense of your health,” William said in an interview with the Campaign Against Living Miserably (CALM), a charity dedicated to preventing male suicide.

William and his wife Kate lead a campaign called ‘Heads Together’ that encourages people to open up about mental illness and seek help.

Later in 2019, in a documentary aired by The Telegraph, Duchess of Sussex Meghan Markle revealed that she tried to “adopt this British sensibility of a ‘stiff upper lip’” in the face of press scrutiny and racism, but added that “what that does internally is probably really damaging.”

Her remarks came after Markle sued British tabloid The Mail and its parent company The Associated Newspapers because it published a private letter that Markle had written to her estranged father, Thomas Markle. Markle sued the paper for copyright infringement and invasion of her privacy.

This is Juncture When India and China Need to Allies for Better Future

Germany has been extremely hesitant for a long time and the German leaders tried their level best to avoid sending the Leopard tanks to Ukraine, but it seems that they have succumbed to the pressure from USA. Undoubtedly, this means prolonging and escalating the conflict with Russia in Ukraine. The German Chancellor, Olaf Scholz has decided to send at least 14 such Leopard tanks, and a similar numbers of Challenger tanks will be sent from UK.

With Sweden and Finland ever so keen to join the NATO alliance, the number of neutral states is decreasing. This will put additional pressure on India, as Washington is bent on getting Pakistan on its side, as well. After Imran Khan’s departure, the hurdle is removed for a better relationship between US and Pakistan. Washington did not listen to India’s objection to the sale of F-16 fighters to Pakistan and will continue with its sale ranging in millions of dollars.

India is busy aligning itself with as many countries as possible, including USA. But it is entirely in India’s and China’s interest to promote peace and stability in the region and explore the new possibility to increase mutual trade and ties when Europe seems to enter an era of constant destabilization.

China should drop its yearly incursions in the Himalayan region and rather focus on winning the hearts and minds of the Indians by inviting Indian students for further studies in China. Similarly, both countries are known for their famous cuisine and may be we can see an emergence of various new Indo-Chinese dish varieties.

With Pakistan flirting with USA, and its economy in dire straits, it is imperative for the leaders of India and China to create a new successful narrative of peaceful co-existence.

If China, India, and Russia forge an alliance of willing partners, a long-lasting growth period will emerge. The opposite scenario is only beneficial to colonizing forces who constantly seek new ways to destabilize the continent of Asia.

BBC’s recent focus on riots in Gujarat is another example of sinister attempts to plant discord between Hindu and Muslim communities of India. Freedom of media is utterly important in democracy, but if BBC was so keen on revealing the atrocities suffered by Indians, it could start by critizing the crucial role of Winston Churchill in causing famine in Bengal, India, when millions died. Or they could focus on the period of colonial subjugation that resulted in our present-day poverty and lack of self-reliance.

Similarly, regular attempts are made to conjure and construct military exercises and drills within India to irritate China. Provocations from both sides should stop, both countries are large enough and have enough territory in their possession. India and China should really start a multi-faceted dialogue, increase trade and co-operation to spread the benefit of technological prowess their young population is demonstrating.

The West will try to destabilize both India and China since they are in the middle of an insolvable war. It is incumbent on both Indian and Chinese leaders not to succumb to such flirtations. Let the Western countries realize that their constant provocation and NATO expansion was seen as a threat by Russia. No matter how hard they will try, this war is unwinnable for both sides.

Therefore, India and China should sit down and resolve their differences, and China being a stronger power, should stop encircling India. It sends an absolutely wrong signal to the Indian leaders. India, on the other hand, should get conscious of the incessant reversals of American foreign policy towards Pakistan, almost never taking into account the security needs of India.

If India, China and Russia stand together in their co-operation, the Europeans might gather courage to refuse overtures of false friendship from USA. America has been pressurizing Europe into getting more involved in a war which a growing number of people find unconvincing and not in their interest.

Gen Z’s Latest Fashion Aesthetic is the ‘No Pants’ Trend

Collage of Kylie Jenner, Bella Hadid and Hailey Bieber

There may be a new fashion trend to try this year: no pants. Yes, you read that right. After a year of 2000s trends making a comeback like wearing flared leggings (aka yoga pants) and UGGs, athleisure and Barbiecore making their way into our closets, celebs are now sporting the “no pants” look. 

What is the ‘no pants’ trend?

USA Today. You can either step out wearing booty shorts, a bodysuit as an entire outfit, men’s briefs with nothing on top or wearing underwear over sheer tights. The trend may be all thanks to designers and brands like Bottega, Miu Miu and Burberry, who showcased their own takes on the “no pants” look on the runway.

As Aiyana Ishmael, an editorial assistant for Teen Vogue explained to USA Today, Gen Z is always asking “what’s the next big thing? What’s the next viral moment?” And if you want to try the no-pants look, for experimentation and inspiration, look at the celebrities who rock the trend the best, she notes.

Here are ways some of the most-stylish Gen Z celebs have recently been spotted with no pants. 

Bella Hadid brought the off-duty model look to the sidewalk by sporting men’s briefs as shorts paired with a t-shirt and oversized leather jacket. We’ve been guilty of wearing white socks and mini UGG boots ourselves, so we think it pulls the look together. 

Kylie Jenner went for the sheer tights and no pants look during Paris Fashion Week:

The youngest Jenner sister went for a gray floor-length coat over her Loewe tank top. 

If you’re looking for a way to go pantless but in a less daring way, you can try an oversized sweater and pair mini shorts underneath,like Hailey Bieber: 

The model was seen in a more casual look repping a Drew House (her husband Justin Bieber’s fashion line) bright green hoodie, with sneakers and a black shoulder purse. 

So, we ask you the question: would you try the “no pants” trend?

Is There Thought Police on Canadian Horizon?

The College of Psychologists of Ontario wants to re-educate Jordan Peterson for criticizing Justin Trudeau on social media. Nurse Amy Hamm is presently before a disciplinary panel of the B.C. College of Nurses and Midwives for saying that biological sex is real. Numerous doctors have been sanctioned for expressing medical views contrary to official government COVID policies. Across the country, regulators are censoring, disciplining or ousting members of their professions who fail to comport with their political imperatives. A new standard of practice is emerging for Canadian professionals: be woke, be quiet, or be accused of professional misconduct.

The Law Society of Ontario led the way. In 2018 it required lawyers and paralegals to adopt and abide by a “statement of principles” (SOP) that acknowledged their obligation to promote equality, diversity and inclusion (EDI) in their affairs, both professional and personal. But before this ideological litmus test could be fully implemented, some Ontario lawyers stood up to the thought police. The time has come to discover whether they can do so again.

When the SOP requirement was first imposed, most licensees complied. But a determined group of 22 lawyers, known as “StopSOP” (Stop the Statement of Principles), ran for seats on the society’s governing body on the platform of repealing the SOP. It turned out that more Ontario lawyers opposed the measure when they had an option to vote against it confidentially and the StopSOP candidates won 22 of 53 seats at “Convocation.” Despite their minority position, they managed to get rid of the requirement.

But the SOP was only one small part of an aggressive identitarian agenda that remains in place. Incorporating the substance of the SOP into the Rules of Professional Conduct, tracking and publishing the racial makeup of each firm over 25 lawyers, and requiring licensees to take compulsory re-education programs in EDI are among the many items still on their list of things to do. Over the past four years, the presence of the StopSOP benchers has kept the law society’s activist agenda largely in check, but it is ready and waiting for the “troublemakers” to be vanquished in new elections this spring.

Once upon a time, professional regulatory bodies ensured competence and ethical practice. Your dentist should know how to drill teeth. Your real estate lawyer should be able to search title and not skim funds off your trust account. Protecting the public from incompetence and fraud has traditionally been the rationale for allowing the professions to regulate themselves.

But now competence is being reimagined through an ideological lens. Conformity of speech and opinion is the order of the day. The Canadian Medical Association’s Code of Ethics and Professionalism, for instance, requires physicians to express views that are “widely accepted” in the profession — and regulators, of course, have the power to determine what those might be. Patients and clients should not assume that their doctors, lawyers, accountants or psychologists are independent actors at liberty to provide informed, educated, professional opinions, rather than spokespersons for the official views of their professional overlords.

One would have hoped that law societies would at least observe the principles of due process in their inquisitions. Alas, it is not to be. In Peterson’s case, the College of Psychologists has directed him to undergo re-education even though a disciplinary hearing has not yet been held. That, to use the technical term, is putting the cart before the horse. Remedies and punishments are supposed to be imposed only after a matter has been adjudicated and an accused found guilty. And yet, the law society proposes to give its Proceedings Authorization Committee similar powers to require lawyers to submit to re-education — even if the committee concludes that there are no grounds for a disciplinary hearing. Failure to comply will itself constitute professional misconduct. The process is the punishment. Kafka would be proud.

No profession requires independence more than lawyers, who are the last line of defence against authoritarian orthodoxy. When Jordan Peterson and Amy Hamm are targeted for colouring outside the lines of approved groupthink, they must be able to turn to lawyers to defend their rights. If the lawyers are under the same thumb, their ability to do that job is compromised.

In his piece “The Suicide of the Liberals,” Northwestern University Professor Gary Morson describes how those confronted with the threat of revolution can be inclined to shrug it off as a temporary aberration. The pendulum is bound to swing back, they might say. “But how does one know there is a pendulum at all,” Morson asks, “rather than — let us say — a snowball accelerating downhill? … What meets no resistance does not stop.”

Once an institution is infected with the ideology of social justice, there is rarely a simple cure. Four years ago, Ontario lawyers voted to make the symptoms recede. But the infection is still present. The question in this year’s Law Society election is whether the healing will continue.

Obsolete laws must be removed before any legal reform is possible

PM Modi added his voice to many other voices when calling for a repeal of obsolete criminal laws and prison reforms to improve jail management. Linking repeal of redundant criminal laws with prison reforms is an important step. To contextualise the issue, it makes sense to get an overview of India’s prisons and then link it to the existing legal framework. India’s jails are horribly overcrowded. They are packed with largely young inmates (18-30 years), most of whom are yet to be convicted. NCRB’s prison statistics for 2021 showed that the occupancy rate was 130%, a 12-percentage-point increase over the previous year. In two states, Uttarakhand and UP, the occupancy rate was as high as 185%. The overcrowding is because 77% of India’s 5.54 lakh prisoners are undertrials. In other words, three of four inmates have not even been convicted. As many as 11,490 prisoners had spent more than five years in jail without a conviction.

The sorry state of India’s prisons has a lot to do with obsolete and irrational criminal laws. Consider three examples. Over 10% of the prison population in 2021 were undertrials for rape and dowry deaths. Both are heinous crimes that should lead to severe punishment. However, sexual assault laws do not differentiate between rape and false promises of marriage. Also, anti-dowry laws are framed in such a way that police can arrest multiple people for one crime. Plus, there’s plenty of anecdotal evidence that these laws are sometimes misused. About 25% of undertrials in 2021 were imprisoned under special and local laws – for crimes falling under the umbrella of liquor and narcotics. Prohibition laws are irrational and often lead to poorer citizens being jailed for long periods as India’s legal aid system is dysfunctional. There are other examples such as Section 292 of IPC, which was introduced during the British Raj to deal with obscenity, that have become tools to harass citizens. Another Raj-era obsolete criminal provision is the sedition law.

Prison reforms in India cannot be brought about by constructing more jails. The core problem is that there are far too many unnecessary provisions in criminal laws that deprive many citizens of liberty. They need to be repealed. Once that happens, prison reforms will follow. The political executive at the Centre and in states should initiate these changes.

Mystery of Havana Syndrome Explained

For some, it began as a loud noise, like the sound of grinding metal. Others heard something that sounded more like a giant swarm of cicadas. Then, the intense pressure to their ears and head kicked in, which caused headaches, nausea and vertigo. If the person experiencing this bizarre affliction tried to move – to “get off the x” – the noise and pressure would suddenly cease. But the physical symptoms would linger for days, and in some cases, years.

The series of incidents described above were first reported in Havana, Cuba in late 2016 by US spies and diplomats stationed there. Doctors who initially treated these patients could not come up with a diagnosis for the symptoms many continued to suffer from. Some just called it “The Thing.” 

In the years since, reported incidents have spread beyond Havana, to places like Vienna, London, Moscow and even in the vicinity of the White House. The medical community remains baffled by what “The Thing” is. Some question whether it is real at all, and have suggested it might be a case of widespread psychogenic illness – also known as hysteria.

In late 2018, some journalists teamed up to find out exactly what happened to these spies and diplomats. The resulting New Yorker piece – “The Mystery of the Havana Syndrome” – uncovered many new details about incidents, as well as the timeline of events that led up to the initial reports in Cuba. But years later, they – along with the rest of the world – are still asking: what is Havana Syndrome? Is it real? And if it is real, who – or what – is causing it? And perhaps the most frustrating question of all: why is it taking the US government so long to solve it? 

 New Yorker piece – “The Mystery of the Havana Syndrome” – uncovered many new details about incidents, as well as the timeline of events that led up to the initial reports in Cuba. But years later, the investigative journalists– along with the rest of the world – are still asking: what is Havana Syndrome? Is it real? And if it is real, who – or what – is causing it? And perhaps the most frustrating question of all: why is it taking the US government so long to solve it? 

In following the trail of clues, they uncovered some deeply-held secrets about the world of global espionage that could provide the key to finally solving the mystery. 

In the reporting, they travelled to Havana to visit the scene of several early incidents; visited London where two White House staffers reported Havana Syndrome symptoms in a hotel located just blocks from Buckingham Palace; paid a visit to Vienna, where the second largest outbreak of reported Havana Syndrome cases led to the dismissal of the local CIA station chief; and then retraced the steps of a national security official who reported an incident within shouting distance of the Oval Office. 

In 2013, an idealistic young speechwriter for President Barack Obama named Ben Rhodes set out to change the course of history, engaging in secret talks with the communist government of Cuba to mend fences between the two countries. In December 2014, he accomplished this goal when President Obama and President Raúl Castro jointly announced the restoration of relations between the United States and Cuba for the first time in 50 years. “It was the highpoint of my life,” Rhodes told. “My daughter was born on December 11th, and this was December 17th.” 

But Rhodes’s success also provided new opportunities for US spies. “Once you have that up close and personal access,” then-CIA Director John Brennan told us in a surprisingly candid interview, “it affords you new opportunities as far as your intelligence objectives are concerned.” In other words: the CIA saw the historic “rapprochement” as an opening to conduct more successful espionage in Cuba, a country with a reputation for being among the most difficult in the world for foreign spies to penetrate. 

A former CIA officer named Tony – a pseudonym for security reasons – stationed undercover in Havana spoke exclusively to us for the podcast. He said Cuban intelligence would regularly place guards outside his home and used camera surveillance to track his every movement. Sometimes, they’d even come into his home. “They’d defecate in your house, cut your internet lines, they would drain your water cisterns. They’d flatten your tires or do some sort of damage to your car.” 

In late December 2016, Tony experienced what he believed to be a new form of harassment. “This loud sound just blasted into my bedroom,” he explained. “And then the severe, severe ear pain started.”

Tony rolled off his bed to get away from the sound and pressure. But shortly thereafter, he began experiencing bizarre symptoms including headaches, nosebleeds and dizziness. Other CIA officers, as well as diplomats in the US embassy, reported similar incidents and health problems. Initially, the US government suspected that the Cubans were somehow involved in causing these health problems or knew about them. They reached out to the Cuban leadership to seek answers. President Castro himself denied any involvement. 

In August 2017, Tony, Tina and their affected colleagues were flown to the US and secretly taken to a medical facility at the University of Pennsylvania for treatment. The team there concluded that their ailments were in fact real – likely not the result of any mass psychogenic illness – and that the victims must have suffered from a form of traumatic brain injury, similar to a concussion. But what could cause a concussion without leaving behind any physical evidence? That remains unknown. 

But to Tony, the swiftness with which his physical condition devolved after that incident remains baffling. “I was at the top physical, psychological, emotional place I could have ever been in my life,” he told us. “I was just a force to be reckoned with and I was gung ho to do my job. And within six months, I was a zombie and nonfunctional as a human being.”

Advent of Anthropocene

In the next few weeks, a bunch of international geologists are expected to pick a spot to mark the birth of what some scientists are calling the Anthropocene, the latest epoch in our planet’s history, distinguished by the direct impact of human activities on Earth’s geology.

There is no consensus on the origins of the Anthropocene, although the current weight of opinion seems to lean towards the mid-20th century, notably the dramatic changes wrought by the “great acceleration” that followed World War II.

Anthropogenic climate change is among the various distinguishing features of this era, and its reach is far and wide. Who would have thought, for instance, that it was even contributing to the extinction of languages? Well, it so happens that some of the most linguistically diverse places on earth are also most vulnerable to rising sea levels.

On the Pacific island of Vanuatu, 110 languages are spoken among a population of around 320,000. Most of them will wither away as the islanders migrate to safer shores. At the current rate of loss, it is (optimistically) estimated that half of the world’s 7,000 living languages will have disappeared by the end of the century.

The Anthropocene may turn out to be short-lived.

Of course, colonialism in its malevolent forms has historically served as a more efficient means of diminishing linguistic and broader cultural diversity. Likewise, climate change is only one of the contributors to the startling diminution in biodiversity, with much of the loss of habitat attributed to human activities, eg, forest clearance, plastic pollution and overconsumption.

Any switch to renewables might not offer much of a panacea, given solar and wind farms are not necessarily conducive to the preservation of biodiversity. Amid predictions of the most devastating mass extinction event since the demise of the dinosaurs, a purportedly historic deal was reached last month at the biodiversity COP15 in Montreal, signed by 200 nations (excluding the US, as usual) to protect 30pc of the planet for nature by 2030, and to restore some ecosystems.

The trouble with such deals is that the initial exhilaration usually gives way to despondency when non-binding commitments go unimplemented. That is the problem with the better-known climate COPs.

The 27th iteration of the latter event, held in Sharm El-Sheikh last November, is a case in point. Its only notable achievement was a purportedly historic deal for the most relentless carbon emitters to compensate nations in the Global South bearing the brunt of climate change without having contributed much to it. In the wake of Pakistan’s horrific floods, Climate Change Minister Sherry Rehman was a prominent presence at Sharm El-Sheikh and a leading driver of this deal.

However, much like the $9bn flood aid promised to Pakistan in Geneva last week, there is no guarantee the commitments will be met. The dominant attendees did not even pay lip service to the seemingly lost cause of restricting global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius. That level could be breached as early as next year if the El Niño predicted for 2023 transpires.

Meanwhile, like clockwork, COP28 will be conducted in November, this time in Dubai, with its presidency gifted to the head of the Abu Dhabi National Oil Company who is also his nation’s special envoy for climate change and chairman of the board at Masdar Clean Energy. Such demonstrable conflicts of interest are common.

“It’s like a big tobacco CEO hosting a cancer conference,” British academic Bill McGuire commented in The Guardian. “It beggars belief that the UN thought it a good idea to allow an authoritarian petro-state to host such a critical meeting at the height of the climate emergency.” Late last year he described the annual climate summit as “a bloated travelling circus”. This week, equally appropriately, he called it “a carcass to which the fossil-fuel flies are attracted and buzz in ever greater numbers”.

The fossil fuel lobbyist numbers increased from 500 to 600 between COP26 in Glasgow and COP27. COP28 might carry the steady hijacking of the conference to its logical conclusion. Fossil fuel companies have been leading sponsors of the event in recent years, with the fairly obvious intention of stalling progress in efforts to steadily slow down further oil, gas and coal extraction by acknowledging the need to reduce emissions while thwarting the means to achieving this.

A scientific study published last week noted that Exxon scientists had predicted the trajectory of global warming caused by fossil fuels with remarkable accuracy since the 1970s, while the company continued to query climate science for decades.

Perhaps the biggest culprits, though, are Western governments beholden to vested fossil fuel interests. If the Anthropocene doesn’t last very long, fossil fuel companies and Gulf states will only be accessories to the crime.

Vivekananda’s Concern for Nature

We hardly find in the public domain Swami Vivekananda’s views on environmental pollution and change in the ecology as an obvious outcome of industrial growth and how to take care of these adverse impacts on society. Does this mean that he did not attach any importance to such a vital issue? Did he ignore this issue because society, in his time, was not much concerned about environmental degradation? In fact, neither of these two assumptions is true.

Vivekananda was very much concerned about nature and environment. His views and thoughts were so subtle that we could not capture them. But then, how to understand him on this very important subject? To get the answer, we must understand first the his views on the relation between God (creator), Universe (the creation), nature, human beings and the environment. This Universe is created by the God. Nature is an essential part of the Universe. He said, “All the various forms of cosmic energy, such as matter, force, intelligence and so forth, are simply the manifestations of that cosmic intelligence. Everything that you see, feel, or hear and the whole universe, is His creation. If we pay too much attention to take care of the world, we become materialistic. The nature is both internal and external. Not only does it comprise the laws that govern the particles of matter outside us and in our bodies, but also the more subtle nature within, which is the motive power governing the external. It is good and very grand to conquer external nature, but grandeur is to conquer our internal nature.”

He further said, “All nature is bound by law, the law of its own action; and this law can never be broken. If you break the law of nature, all nature would come to an end in an instant. There would be no more nature.” This means any work, any action, any thought that produces an effect will have its cause. Similarly, wherever there is a cause, an effect must be produced. This is true throughout the whole universe. Peace and poise are the precondition of orderly and sustainable eco-spiritual development. What is needed, according to him, is to maintain harmony between external nature’s organic complexity and the inner nature of human beings. This is possible only when we control our desire by improving our consciousness through spiritual practices.

With regard to our improved environmental conscience, His views are that desires can only manifest themselves in a proper environment. Only those desires will come out for which the environment is fitted; the rest will remain stored up. In this life, we have many godly desires, many human desires and many animal desires. By means of the environment, we can check our desires. If we practice improving our consciousness for the environment, only those actions which are suited to and fitted for the environment will come out. This shows that the power of environmental consciousness is the great check to control our actions against the environment.

According to Vivekananda, every living creature is linked to every other creature. They cannot be seen in isolation. They should be recognised as part of its totality, sharing with other living beings their limitations and destiny. This points to the fact that human existence depends on co-existence with the rest of creations of the universe. It implies that nature is not alien to humans; but an interconnected part of the universe that is continually being made and nurtured by God. This demands that human beings become responsible in taking care of the nature and the environment.

The global environmental crisis is fundamentally an ethical problem. It reflects the crisis in the human value system. On the other hand, the concept of materialism encourages an individual’s selfish gains desired from technological advancement. Unless human beings maintain a healthy natural environment and follow certain religious and ethical principles, other creatures on Mother Earth will suffer from the laws of harmony and equilibrium. The environmental crisis can, therefore, be captured in its real perspective only when a human being rethinks the relationship between God, universe and nature. This is what Swami Vivekananda propagated through his various writings and lectures.

He said that the structure of human being, the microcosm, corresponds exactly to the structure of the universe, the macrocosm. He went further and said that each part and each member of the human body has corresponding entities or realities in the universe. The breath of a human corresponds to the wind. The flesh, bone and marrow of humans correspond to the earth. The blood corresponds to the water. The energies to the fire. The ears to the ether. Each element possesses both material (gross) and spiritual (subtle) qualities. Each sense organ is composed of the same element, the quality of which is sensed by it.

With these explanations, he wanted to convey to the world that ‘Love is the most visible of all visible things.’ It is the force that is moving the sun, the moon, and the stars. Love manifests itself in men, women, and in animals, everywhere and in everything.

His interpretation of how to protect the environment can now be understood. He wanted to convey that unless we love nature, we cannot protect the environment. With a view to elaborate, he clarifies that there is a good deal of similarly between religious thought and modern science in this regard. Science has explained the gradual manifestation into the present form by the theory of evolution. The basic idea is that we are changing from one species to another, and that man is the highest species. To solve environmental problems, he advised that renunciation, nonresistance, and non-destructiveness are the ideals to be attained through less and less worldliness, less and less resistance, less and less destructiveness. No one can live in the world without resistance, without destruction, without desire. The world has not come to that state when the ideal can be realised in society. The progress of the world through all its evils is making it fit for the ideals, slowly but surely.

We must try our best to destroy ignorance and evil. We must earn that evil is destroyed by the growth of good. he emphatically said, “Progress of civilisation does not mean the successful accomplishment of the desired object by the justification of wrong means, i.e. by making the end justify the means.”

From these statements we can understand that he was not in favour of progress and growth of industrial units just to fulfil the evil desires at the cost of environment. He was very much aware of what we now call ‘carbon footprint’. He knew that the more we eat, more we would emit carbon dioxide. He suggested to take food that is substantial, nutritious, and digestible.

The food should contain the greatest nutriment in the smallest compass, and be at the same time, quickly assimilable; otherwise, it has necessarily to be taken in large quantity, and consequently will cause more emission of carbon dioxide. He was also in favour of drinking pure water after purifying it in an ecofriendly manner. For him “Impure water and impure food are the cause of all maladies.”

He advocated for purity of the water of Ganga. At his time, the Ganga was not polluted. His love and respect for Ganga would be evident from his utterances. “Do you remember the Ganga at Hrishikesh? That clear bluish water ~ in which one can count the fins of fishes five yards below the surface ~ that wonderfully sweet, ice-cold charming water of the Ganga. You remember that love for Ganga water, that glory of the Ganga, the touch of its water that makes the mind dispassionate, that Ganga flowing over the Himalayas. See what an atmosphere of holiness is here. The pure air of the Ganga ~ what an assemblage of sadhus ~ will you find anywhere a place like this?”

Ecological degradation caused by massive pollution of earth, water, air and space is severely threatening the very web of life. The secret of nature’s permanency lies in the cycle of life by which the various factors function in close cooperation to maintain the continuity of life.

Science and technology have opened up the possibilities of making human life richer and comfortable. But human beings are using science and technology to meet their self-interest at the cost of Nature. The result is the acute environmental crisis that we face today. In this context, Swami Vivekananda’s concept of nature was of respect and reverence for the earth and for all that exists there. Prosperity, progress and happiness of every person, every society and every nation depend heavily on the bounty of nature. Her bounties and resources are, therefore, not for one’s selfish exploitations. These are to be shared by all creations.

Swami Vivekananda wanted us to give emphasis on inter-disciplinarity and accessibility of environmental history. He emphasized that we should also think about environmental issues in a harmonious way. Any presupposition that there is a natural environment which is separate from the people who live in it is not correct.

Similarly, the concept that environment refers primarily or exclusively to the physical environment is equally wrong.

The environment, thus, cannot be understood as merely pretty trees and tigers, threatened plants and ecosystems ~ it is literally the entity on which people subsist, and on which their entire agricultural and industrial development depends. Human intervention may be successful in establishing a new and stable balance between society and nature, yet on other occasions, it may itself turn into the cause of ecological decline.

He believed that development without concern for ecological problems may result in increased human endurance and pain, poverty, and oppression.

Anti-American Sentiment Prevades Pakistan

USA has been the major supplier of arms to Pakistan, and before Pakistan became chummy with China, the US was the major source of strength for this failed state and its major prop, and yet the growing trend is anti-Ameriucan. Pakistan-US relations are on the mend. How far they will go and where they are headed is not yet clear, but the keenness to move forward is evident on both ends. However, one roadblock could possibly limit large-scale progress: anti-Americanism.

The fact is, in today’s world, no state relationship is sustainable without public support. A deep dive on anti-Americanism will, therefore, help Pakistan understand the facts of the relationship to avoid failed expectations and unfair blame in the future, and Washington to not repeat policies that have caused harm to both Pakistan’s interests and its own.

Not-so-right reasons

Anti-Americanism exists in Pakistan for both right and wrong reasons.

The latter first: While the United States has often treated Pakistan unfairly and even high-handedly, public anger against the US for not supporting Pakistan against India in the 1965 and 1971 wars, is misplaced.

The US, in fact, did not break any treaty commitments by not coming to Pakistan’s aid. The Mutual Defence Agreement of 1954 dealt primarily with the supply of military equipment to Pakistan on a grant basis. The US was of the view that Pakistan violated Article 1, paragraph 2, of the agreement by using the weapons for purposes other than what they were provided for.

The bilateral Agreement of Cooperation signed between the two countries in 1959 stated that in case of aggression against Pakistan by another state, the US would take appropriate action (in accordance with the US Constitution). This included the use of armed forces and was envisaged in the US Congress’s 1957 Joint Resolution to promote peace and stability in the Middle East in order to assist the Government of Pakistan at its request.

The 1957 Joint Resolution states only one eventuality of the US coming to the aid of a country under aggression and that is in the event of communist aggression. Regarding the US attitude towards the Central Treaty Organisation (CTO), it never perceived the treaty as a military alliance.

Another unjustified instigator of anti-Americanism in Pakistan is the myth that nothing happens in Pakistan without US approval. The reality is that in Pakistan, political dynamics have nearly always functioned fairly autonomously, and the primary — though not always the sole — stimulus for the rise and fall of governments has been domestic, not external.

Yes, the US has previously had the reputation of causing regimes to rise and fall. But reputation is not proof. The world has changed, for better and for worse.

There is no doubt that the US still acts to gain and maintain influence in other countries where its vital interests are at stake but it is no longer in the business of secretly making and breaking governments. Instead, it has gone to war, used the weapon of economic sanctions and supported mass movements for change that serve its strategic interests, all in full view.

The genuine reasons

There is no denying that there are genuine reasons for anti-Americanism as well. The elitist, army-led and feudal-dominated ‘organising’ idea of Pakistan has long had the US as its external pillar. To its credit, from 1954 to 1965, the US strengthened Pakistan’s defence capabilities and potential for economic development and helped launch the platform for progress. But the partnership with the US strengthened the army, enhancing its political profile in the country.

American aid and political support helped unrepresentative and inefficient governments sustain power who benefitted from the relationship at the expense of the people. The American connection thus became complicit in Pakistan’s troubled democracy, causing public contempt against the US. This added to the widely-held view that the US had not been a reliable ally.

And then came another thorn in the relationship — the nuclear issue where America’s attitude was viewed as discriminatory by the public and government alike. It piled yet another layer onto the existing anti-Americanism.

Meanwhile, the 1979 Iranian revolution and unfolding of decades-worth of Iranian-US tensions began feeding anti-Americanism across the Islamic world. Pakistani and Iranian anti-Americanism came to reinforce each other, providing the nucleus of a broader sentiment against the US in the Islamic world.

A decade of Jihad in Afghanistan during the 1980s made Pakistanis more vulnerable to fundamentalist Islamic rhetoric than ever. This came in the backdrop of the larger Islamisation project set forth by General Ziaul Haq. Thus, as the Cold War drew to a close, the vast majority of the public, particularly the intelligentsia, harboured varying degrees of anti-Americanism.

The bad breakup

With the imposition of Pressler sanctions in October 1990, this permeated to Washington’s most trusted ally — the army. The US had no reliable ally left in Pakistan.

The US response to the 9/11 tragedy, along with the ill-conceived war on terror, set in civilisational terms as a war of ideas, came to be seen as an attack against Islam by a vast majority of Muslims. As a consequence, anti-Americanism exploded uncontrollably.

Pakistan suffered greatly at the hands of the spill-over of the war on terrorism and the Afghanistan war. It came to threaten Pakistan’s stability — on one hand with the creation of the TTP, and on the other, by spreading anti Americanism among the wider population, making it vulnerable to radical influences.

The Pakistan Army had its own issues with the Afghanistan war. The war ended up creating an Afghanistan that was not consistent with Pakistan’s strategic interests. It resulted in an increasing amount of power and influence from India in Afghanistan, and India’s enhanced role in the region was attributed to Washington’s support.

My enemy’s friend

India’s growing relationship with the US, especially the nuclear agreement, and Washington’s refusal to give Pakistan the same deal, fostered perceptions that India and the US were opposed to its nuclear programme, among the army and general public alike.

Anti-Indian sentiments and anti-Americanism merged. Religious, nationalist rhetoric was co-opted by secular and liberal circles who affixed it to their existing unhappiness with the wars on account of how Pakistan was dragged into it by a dictator leading to a prolonged undemocratic rule.

So, democracy, Islam, honour, sovereignty and nationalism all came to provide a common platform — anti-Americanism — to a wide cross section of political opinions, religious beliefs, and social statuses.

Enter Imran Khan

After being in the political wilderness for years, Imran Khan realised he must first create a base in one part of the country. The opportunity came his way with the increased anti-American sentiment following the exponential rise in drone attacks, the failing Afghanistan war and its continued horrendous spillover in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa.

The consummate politician that he is, Khan tapped into anti-Americanism, Pashtun nationalism, resistance against a big power, and Islamism with a single stroke — support for the Taliban.

More than an expression of support for the Taliban, it was a symbol of opposition to America. He created a base in KP from where he could now expand his appeal to the rest of the country. He did so by stoking long-standing public anger and feelings of injustice at the hands of the country’s established political leadership, and a sense of victimhood, incited by America’s post 9/11 wars.

The strategy was to malign his political opponents and the system on one hand, and the US on the other, both in the worst possible terms. And then to connect his opponents and the US in a relationship that he described in the worst possible way — slavery.

It had a powerful appeal to the aspirations of the young, educated class and the Pakistani diaspora, especially in the West, whose increasing economic status was struggling to find social recognition due to the country’s negative image which they had hoped Imran would change.

Mostly well off, for them, the economy was not a priority, but the image, honour and nationalism. For the poor struggling for their survival, he tagged the “Riasat-e-Madina” label. So some he courted with hope, others with illusion and some with a choice of being better than his rivals.

Anti-Americanism not only helped him to come to power but also rescued him when he lost power. The cypher was a God-sent opportunity. Diplomatic language in the hands of a non-diplomat can be interpreted in diverse ways, and being a classified document, cannot be shared with the public.

An ideal situation for a politician to exploit its contents to political ends without being accused of falsehood. The document was seen as proof, validating his supporters’ long-held negative perceptions of America and giving unquestioned credence to Khan’s entire political rhetoric.

And by highlighting the army’s shared interests with the US, he implied its involvement in the alleged conspiracy, broadening his appeal among those opposed to its domination of politics. The strategy raised his stock enormously.

As we look to the future, people need to recognise for the good of the country that Pakistan has had serious problems of governance, social change, democratisation and development, for which we ourselves are primarily responsible. The US has not created these conditions but merely exploited them.

The bilateral relationship between Pakistan and the US needs to become normal if it is to move forward; and it should move forward. A strong relationship is beneficial to both parties. But this normality cannot be achieved without Pakistan itself becoming a normal country, and Washington shifting its focus of interest to the people, from the ruling elite.

Science vs religion

Like oil and water, science and religion are immiscible and belong to mutually exclusive domains without any interface. Whenever they have been attempted to be brought together, the result invariably has been confusion, conflict, and bloodshed, of which there are too many gory examples in history. Allow religion to explain the origin of theUniverse according to its own ideas, and you end up with corpses of men and women burnt at stakes.

In Tao of Physics, Fritzof Capra wrote that science does not need religion and religion does not need science, while a man needs both. I am not so sure. Again, in The DemonHaunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark, Carl Sagan wrote, “Science is not only compatible with spirituality; it is a profound source of spirituality.

When we recognize our place in an immensity of light-years and in the passage of ages, when we grasp the intricacy, beauty, and subtlety of life, then that soaring feeling, that sense of elation and humility combined, is surely spiritual.” If spirituality implies appreciating our own insignificance in the Universe and the resulting feeling of humbleness, then this has nothing to do with religion.

But leaving aside spirituality, religion and science have never been compatible. While science teaches us a systematic, rational way of exploring this universe to understand the laws of nature that guide life and non-life, religion has brought untold misery and suffering upon humanity throughout the course of history by claiming certainty in “information” and “facts” amenable neither to reason nor to observation.

Like oil and water, science and religion are immiscible and belong to mutually exclusive domains without any interface. Whenever they have been attempted to be brought together, the result invariably has been confusion, conflict, and bloodshed, of which there are too many gory examples in history.

Allow religion to explain the origin of the Universe according to its own ideas, and you end up with corpses of men and women burnt at stakes. Same with politics. Allow religion to rule a nation according to its own theories, and you end up with Afghanistan, Pakistan, or Iran where the laws of Sharia are more important than human life or human happiness.

Given the chance, religion would turn this world into a demon-haunted place in no time ~ in fact it has attained a remarkable degree of success in doing so. But what exactly is science, and what is religion? According to The Stanford Encyclopaedia of Philosophy, “One way to distinguish between science and religion is the claim that science concerns the natural world, whereas religion concerns the supernatural world and its relationship to the natural. Scientific explanations do not appeal to supernatural entities such as gods or angels (fallen or not), or to non-natural forces (such as miracles, karma, or qi).

For example, neuroscientists typically explain our thoughts in terms of brain states, not by reference to an immaterial soul or spirit, and legal scholars do not invoke karmic load when discussing why people commit crimes.” Science concerns itself with what is or can be observed and seeks an immediate answer. Religion claims the answer is either unknowable or explained only with the help of faith, that is acceptance of something whose existence is indeterminate.

Science claims to explain phenomena or mysteries only through the tested method of empirical inquiry which is a series of steps involving observation-hypothesis-experiment-inference-theory- prediction-testing. This process is indispensable, even where it may not succeed in explaining all observed phenomena, whereas religion takes recourse to God and finds it absurd that by studying STEM subjects (Science-TechnologyEngineering and Mathematics) alone, the concept of God can be reduced to irrelevance. Given the chance, it will subsume science too.

In fact, a great deal of effort has already been invested towards this end, to start a dialogue between science and religion that is actually an exercise in futility.

In 1998, the Harvard biologist Edward O. Wilson in his book, Consilience: The Unity of Knowledge, argued that knowledge is a unified system that embraces science, morality, and ethics as well. The aim was perhaps not to make science spiritual but to make religion scientific.

In the 1990s, with its multi-million-dollar grants, the John Templeton Foundation launched a magazine called Science & Spirit, “to explain what science cannot, and asking science to validate religious teachings”. The magazine died a natural death in 2009.

The Foundation also financed several documentaries like “Faith and Reason”, “Cybergrace: The Search for God in the Digital World” or “God & the Big Bang: Discovering Harmony Between Science & Spirituality”.

Scores of bestselling books written by eminent scientists followed, like Belief in God in an Age of Science (1998) by John Polkinghorne, a Cambridge physicist turned Anglican priest, The Language of God: A Scientist Presents Evidence for Belief (2006) by Francis Collins, Director of the Human Genome Project, or Return of the God Hypothesis: Three Scientific Discoveries That Reveal the Mind Behind the Universe (2021) by Stephen Meyer, Director of the Center for Science and Culture of the Discovery Institute which is the main organization behind the so-called Intelligent Design Movement, according to which the universe was created by an intelligent designer, the God almighty.

But physics explains the origin of the universe convincingly from quantum electrodynamics as arising from a vacuum fluctuation and biology explains the evolution of all life, starting with a chance molecule that learned to replicate itself. But both intelligent design and evolution cannot be true at the same time, hence the attempt to find a middle path ~ an absurd one at that ~ that God created the universe and left it to the laws of nature, also designed by him, to run it, without any further interference in its future course.

As the New York Times science journalist George Johnson wrote, thus “God becomes a metaphor for the laws that science tries to uncover.” On the question of faith, there are deep divisions among the scientists themselves. While Einstein’s God was one “who reveals himself in the lawful harmony of all that exists”, and not one “who concerns himself with the fate and the doings of mankind”, many scientists hold radically different views. Some, like the cosmologist Allan Sandage, wonder: “‘How is it that inanimate matter can organize itself to contemplate itself? That’s outside of any science I know”, while others, like the Oxford biologist Richard Dawkins, believe that pursuing God is a “waste” of time that never has “added anything to the storehouse of human wisdom”.

Believers in God hold that a grand unified theory to explain the universe in terms of a single theory that is the holy grain of science would be incomplete without the integration of faith and ancient wisdom in it, while others, like Christians, were outraged when the radiocarbon dating of the shroud of Turin suggested it as a medieval forgery and not the burial cloth of Jesus, feel that as science develops more sophisticated techniques, their religious beliefs will be vindicated.

Fortunately, the endeavour of all these new-age scientists to blur and finally erase the boundary between science and pseudoscience has not yet succeeded. Similar efforts are on even in our own country. Religion is essentially about worship, and worship means surrender.

Faith is necessarily blind and has to disregard evidence in order to reinforce and validate its belief system. Human life is full of misery and suffering ~ indeed it is a “flash of occasional enjoyments lighting up a mass of pain and misery” from which faith alone can provide a temporary deliverance. “Happiness is but only an occasional episode in the general drama of pain” that surrounds us, as Thomas Hardy said, and if surrender could mitigate even a little of that pain, it should be welcome.

Surrender can also be made more convincing when imbued with love and fear that a God is capable of inspiring in human minds. Finally, if the surrender can hold out the promise of something eternal, like an eternal deliverance from pain or from the endless cycles of birth and death, such an eternal vision becomes too tantalising to resist by most.

All that remains is to remind and reinforce these ideas continually through repetitive rituals, meaningless though they are, and the whole package becomes so overwhelming that few could emerge out of its enchanting aura to be able to see the world and reality with objectivity. After all, we still do not know how the objective reality conveyed to our brain through the senses acquires a subjective meaning in our mind, how the scent of a rose gets transformed into the memory of our first love, or a fading photograph brings back long-forgotten emotions.

Subjectivity rules the roost, everything else, even hard evidence, becomes mere speculation. Blind faith has no rival, and when blind faith masquerades as science, the conquest of the mind by religion becomes total, and all logic has been clinically erased. The evolution of life and that too on a tiny planet called earth that has just about the right conditions with the right values of fundamental constants among billions of such planets is an awesome mystery that the believers cite to establish intelligent design as the only explanation.

They ignore the fact that there are planets with all possibilities and ours happen to be the one with only just one of these permutations that made life ~ and God ~ possible. Logic and faith, like science and religion ~ are incompatible; if bring them together, there will be combustion and conflict.

But bring complexity to replace conflict, and the science-religion debate immediately acquires a political dimension ~ struggle between secular liberalism and traditional conservatism, authority versus individual liberty, herd mentality versus reason, and state versus individual. In each one of these struggles, rationality is the obvious victim that is left bleeding to die.

“The known is finite, the unknown infinite”, the British biologist Thomas Huxley wrote in 1887, “Intellectually we stand on an islet in the midst of an illimitable ocean of inexplicability. Our business in every generation is to reclaim a little more land.”

Before the last century, the vast unknown territory of inexplicability was ruled by religion.

But the last century has seen a tremendous explosion of scientific knowledge, and ever since, science has been reclaiming more and more territory from religion so that scholars started predicting a diminishing relevance and eventual disappearance of religion from human society.

While it is true that religion’s stranglehold has been remarkably weakened in most countries during the last half-century, except in the diehard Islamic states which stubbornly refuse to reform Islam, the resurgence of religion in our contemporary socio-political life negates the prediction of religion’s demise.

There is too much religion on the streets now that is increasingly intruding unto our lives. It is not the spirituality that Sagan had talked about, it is religion in its crudest original form – bloodthirsty, demanding total and unquestioning allegiance from its followers who would not shy away from spilling the blood of non-believers. While science continues to conquer ever newer frontiers and invents technologies that are revolutionising our society, a full transition to a scientific society is not possible without the complete displacement of religion.

From medicine to biotech, from electronics to telecommunication, from AI to nanoscience, the progress of science during the last 50 years has completely transformed the way we organize society, conduct business, and connect with people for ideation.

The paradox is that while we are exploring the frontiers of science and technology driven by limitless human yearning and thirst for knowledge, we are also reinforcing the prejudices, bigotry, and intolerance of contrary ideas and beliefs in our social and public life with renewed vigour and pride. Of course, there are many shortcomings and limitations of the scientific method.

Scientific knowledge alone is certainly not enough to make humans attain their full potential. The German philosopher Edmund Husserl argued against recurrent tendencies of applying the methods of natural science in the research of human affairs, which are essentially outside empirical scientific approaches.

The human values we live by, and questions of meaning and purpose, morality or ethics, etc. are not amenable to hypotheses, modelling, and mathematical equations. They rely on methods that are interpretive, speculative, and philosophical. This is always an epistemological problem in social sciences, and this is where religion is supposed to supplement the techno-scientific worldview of science to understand how Nature works her laws in the universe and in human society.

But Nature also includes her children and us humans, and her well-being depends on their activities. No one knows that better than us, especially at this juncture of time when the world is precariously poised between sustainability and irreversible devastation from uncontrolled human greed.

Religion was supposed to impart and promote morality, ethics, love, and compassion among humans to make them understand their symbiotic relationships with nature, with fellow beings, and with animals. Religion was supposed to teach humans to limit their greed, increase empathy towards others, and strike a harmonious balance with nature to make the world a better place for all to live. What it has done and the moral blindness it has promoted instead is for all to see and judge.

Religion today is relentlessly marching to colonize every aspect of our socio-economic and political life with increasing aggressiveness. Suffering has been trivialised by it, the pain has been glorified by it, killing has been sanctified by it and the tattered social fabric that has resulted is being flaunted with egotistical pleasure and pride.

Though it will be unfair to blame religion alone, it has to take a large share of the blame for this sorry state of affairs. It is propelling us energetically to forget our humanity and respect for those who do not share our faith and driving us towards an Orwellian world where intercultural understanding, the richness of culture and diversity, and the ideal of an inclusive and pluralistic society are strongly denounced in favour of a blind pursuance of faith as dictated by its self-proclaimed guardians and their bigoted followers.

The ideal of peace and harmony are receding at the speed of light as religion strives to regain the territory it has lost to science and is countering science with what can best be described as a pseudoscience that is carving out a niche for itself – and a wide one at that.

To quote Huxley again, “The question of all questions for humanity is that of the determination of man’s place in nature and his relation to the Cosmos.”

Religion derived sustenance from the concept that humanity was positioned proudly at the centre of God’s magnificent creation, the Earth, around which revolved everything, and humanity – the crowning achievement of God’s creation in his own image, the pinnacle of his divine handiwork, occupied the centre-stage on this earth.

Science would shatter the concept, but not before thousands of Giordano Brunos were burned at the stake for holding a contrary view.

In The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (1962), Thomas Kuhn convincingly explained how paradigm shifts take place in the history of science when one dominant worldview is replaced by another. He showed that scientific progress is like Darwinian evolution – a process of selection of one amongst all the competing theories that have the most predictive power puzzle-solving ability, a concept that was later supported by Bas van Fraassen in The Scientific Image (1980).

But each such major paradigm shift has shaken the edifice of religion from which it could never recover. Thus, when the geocentric Ptolemaic worldview was replaced by the Copernican worldview, man lost his centrality in the scheme of things. Till then, heaven was in the sky, hell was underground and God in heaven ruled all three while religion regulated the entry to heaven or hell.

Copernicus banished the earth from the centre of the Universe, and later Hubble displaced the entire Milky way from the centre of the universe, giving us instead an expanding universe of billions of galaxies in which neither is humanity at the centre of creation nor is the earth at the centre of the universe; in fact, the universe itself is one tiny dot in a multiverse of many universes.

Thus, God’s magnificent creation has been relegated to the position of a second-rate planet attached to a third-rate star, discarding religion’s medieval fancies. Today we are humbled by the immensity of the universe and mesmerized by the eternal silence of infinite space.

But for religion, the determination of man’s place in nature and his relation to the cosmos was not a question, it was an irrefutable truth questioning which meant inviting risk. Copernicus wrote De Revolutionibus Orbium Coelesticum on his deathbed in 1543, beyond the morbid reach of the Inquisition.

Galileo and Bruno were not that fortunate. Science established that neither does life enjoy any special privilege – countless worlds exist in deep space devoid of life, and countless species have become extinct in the course of evolution. We may be one someday, and going by our misdeeds on this planet, that day even may not be too far.

Darwin would finally dislodge humanity from the centre of the biological universe, giving it a lowly ancestor that was too humble compared to an almighty God to be a creator of such intelligence as possessed by man. Thankfully, the inquisition was dead, but prejudiced minds that shun logic were not. They are again back at the centre stage in force, flaunting scriptures, dictating how we should conduct ourselves, threatening to push us into a hell of ignominy and violence if we disobey.

Creationism is still being taught in many US public schools, despite the Supreme Court ruling to the contrary. Half the people in the USA still don’t believe in evolution, their share in India is unknown. But here, vigorous attempts are now on somehow bringing God inside the classroom in any guise, be it a hijab, or anything else.

Worship only makes you a slave. A slave forgets his reason, and his purpose for existence, and ultimately becomes an automaton to serve the master – Religion – and obey its commands without thinking.

Religion is not the source of spirituality, peace, morality, virtue, and ethics any longer. Its principles may be eternal, but its methods are gross. It has now become the source of violence, hatred, unconcealed greed, corruption, and a road to power.

Instead of breaking barriers, it is building them afresh, destroying the very roots upon which mankind has built civilizations through the millennia. Don’t expect the State to control religion and the street will always celebrate it with ever-ostentatious pomp and splendour. It is therefore for us citizens to shield our children from the corrupting influences of religion. It has no place in the fabric of the mind of civilized men and women, just as God has no place in the fabric of the space-time that science tries to untangle. We don’t need the ancient wisdom of the spirit to guide us, because religion which was supposed to imbibe it has lost its divinity. It is now for science to redeem religion.

Decoding Pak PM’s overtures to India

Pakistan Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif’s statement in a recent interview about Pakistan wanting better relations with India and its having learnt lessons from past conflicts has attracted a fair bit of attention. Perhaps this is because it stands in contrast to the invective that often emanates from political figures in Pakistan and is an adjunct to their domestic contestations. One could try and be even handed, and admit that such polemic sometimes flows in both directions.

It is, however, also true that PM Sharif was quick to qualify his statement and make it conditional by mentioning the need to resolve “burning issues” like Kashmir and referring to the persecution of minorities in India and flagrant human rights violations. Further qualifications and conditions were added by the prime minister’s office (PMO) in Islamabad indicating that talks could only follow a reversal of the legislative changes enacted by the Indian Parliament in August 2019.

Notwithstanding these conditionalities, the statement appears different, even unusual, given the wider context that Pakistan is embedded in today. Relations with India have been on a downward trajectory since the attack on Pathankot in mid-2016. To some extent with the mutual reaffirmation of the ceasefire on the Line of Control in February 2021, the relationship has stabilised; but the stabilisation is at a very low plateau. There are no high commissioners in place, trade stands banned and there is a virtual freeze on cross-border movement of people.

Much of this is on account of decisions taken by the government of Pakistan after the changes in the status of J&K in August 2019. The larger point is that even for a historically bad relationship, this is suboptimal.

Pakistan’s internal situation is even more grim with an absence of political coherence and an economy that is plummeting downwards. PM Shehbaz Sharif and the PLM(N) face an uphill battle against Imran Khan and the PTI. Behind all this is the brooding presence of its army. It is anybody’s guess how long Pakistan has before it tumbles into a general election. In this flux to expect an implementable India policy to emerge is unrealistic. It is unlikely that anyone in Pakistan seriously expected that such a statement would start a process of normalisation with India.

It cannot also be the case that PM Sharif’s statement was made with any expectation that India could help him or his government in its political or economic predicament. Both are a function of Pakistan’s domestic dynamic and there is little India can do to make a difference. If anything, the promptness with which Pakistan’s PMO put out its clarifications suggest nervousness over the possible domestic fallout by a declaration of wanting good relations or having “learnt lessons” from past conflicts.

So how really should we read this statement, and should we pay much attention to it? One explanation certainly can be that this is standard Pakistan deception —statements of good intention and sincerity are frequently made, but in practice older deviant behaviour continues and, in particular, support for terrorist groups. But given the current state of India-Pakistan relations and the deep history of mistrust, deception is now a weak instrument of policy, and its weaknesses are evident to both sides. After all, a point often overlooked is that India and Pakistan know each other too well to think that one can fool the other.

A variant of this explanation is that such overtures are the outcome of Pakistan’s current dire straits and the evident asymmetries with India so we should not be taken in. This too does not stand up to scrutiny. The ceasefire on the LoC, for instance, has served the interest of both countries as would other stabilisation measures.
It is possible then to take the statement for what it perhaps simply is: as an aspiration. Its conditionalities and provisos notwithstanding, and more powerful ones can be added from the Indian side too, it does flag the point that we cannot simply graduate out of the difficulties of our neighbourhood, so hopefully sooner, rather than later we will have to attend to them.

Aspiring for a more stable, even for a minimally ‘normal’ India-Pakistan relationship does not mean discounting the challenges and the dangers that exist. All Indian prime ministers, the present one included, have seen such an aspiration as integral to India’s own rise, while being fully cognizant of the risks. From time to time, leaders in Pakistan, and most notably and recently former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, have responded positively and this has opened up channels for creative diplomacy. We may not be at that stage yet, but it would be counterproductive to rule ab initio that such a stage will never come again.

Brazil and Argentina Are Launching a Common Currency At the Expense of the U.S. dollar

What happens when the biggest economies in South America agree to create a common currency and they invite the rest of Latin America to join? They create the second-largest currency bloc in the world, making up 5 percent of the global gross domestic product.

The Financial Times reported on January 21 that Brazil and Argentina will announce the creation of a common currency this week. Both sides are working to downplay expectations, but it is a highly ambitious project. To start off, the proposed “sur” currency will run parallel to the Brazilian real and the Argentinian peso. But the ultimate goal will be “inviting the rest of the region” to join the bloc, according to Argentine Economy Minister Sergio Massa.

Brazil and Argentina are the largest and third-largest economies in Latin America, respectively. That’s a lot of incentive for everyone else to join.

The CELAC forum on January 24 of the 33 nations of Latin America and the Caribbean states presents an excellent opportunity for the official announcement of plans for the new currency, as well as diplomatic discussions and proposals away from cameras. The meeting also comes after a wave of elections that have brought in a left-wing dominance in Latin America, the demographic most eager to introduce a common currency.

The plan is to use this common currency to integrate Latin America’s economies through trade. Trade between Argentina and Brazil surpassed $26 billion in the first 11 months of last year, a 21 percent increase on 2021. This common currency will almost certainly include Paraguay, Uruguay and Venezuela, the other members of the Mercosur trade bloc. But the world is also hungry for goods from the rest of South America, from Chile’s copper to Colombia’s oil to Brazil’s soy to Uruguay’s beef. The key is to find a way to exploit global demand while circumventing America’s reserve currency status.

“There are possibilities today in Latin America, given its strong economies, to find instruments which substitute dependence on the dollar,” said Argentina-based economist Alfredo Serrano. And now is the best time “because there are many governments that are ideologically similar” to those now in power in Latin America.

Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva promised while campaigning last year, “We are going to create a currency in Latin America because we can’t keep depending on the dollar.”

According to the Federal Reserve, 96 per cent of all trade transactions between 1999 and 2019 in the Americas used the United States dollar. The sur currency would lower that number significantly.

The goal is “to harmonize the payment systems of” Latin American countries in order “to carry out interbank transfers to any bank inside of the region in real-time and from a cellphone,” according to Ecuadorian economist Andrés Arauz.

There’s still a long way to go before reaching such levels of seamless integration. Creating a common currency is “the first step on a long road which Latin America must travel,” Massa said.

The United States is going to be left out in the cold as two gigantic trade blocs, Europe and Latin America, mesh together and begin calling the shots in world commerce. The EU is already a massive, united trade bloc. The creation and implementation of a common currency would make Latin America another.

Europe has a long history with Latin America. Their shared Catholic heritage is a powerful unifier. Half of all Catholics are in Latin America. Many Nazis found safe haven in South America after World War ii. German and European businesses have flourished in corporate and industrial Latin America for decades. And in 2019, Mercosur and the EU agreed to form the world’s largest free-trade area. Once fully realized, this deal will involve nearly 800 million people and generate over $21 trillion annually.

The circular economy: A €4.1 trillion opportunity

The ‘circular economy’ has become one of the most used phrases in business. It refers to all the work involved in recycling, reducing waste and creating new sustainable jobs.

The World Economic Forum cites figures from the consultancy firm Accenture, which says the job of introducing such changes could represent a market worth €4.1 trillion between now and 2030.

The International Labour Office estimates that transitioning to a circular economy could create six million jobs worldwide as companies get to grips with replacing traditional ways of making money by “extracting, making, using and disposing of”.

Circularity also brings with it the promise of efficiency. Accenture, predicts that car makers taking a circular approach to manufacturing could enjoy a 150% boost in profits.

So does the reality justify the buzz? In this edition of The Exchange, we talk to the people and players who believe the circular economy is a way to create sustainable growth and also generate profit.

I talked to the top management of a few major organizations where I know the top honchos. I talked to Nestle, the world’s biggest food and beverage company about how they are leading a worldwide transformation in recycling, sustainable job creation and waste reduction.

In France, I talked to what Renault claims is Europe’s first fully circular auto factory. And I also spoke to the Design Lead at the Ellen MacArthur Foundation, a charity that’s working to accelerate the transition to a circular economy.

Nestlé: The quest for harmless packaging

One famous company wrapped up in this quest for sustainability is Nestlé. The maker of Nespresso, San Pellegrino and Kit-Kat is the largest food and beverages company in the world. The 150-year-old firm has over a quarter of a million employees, and hundreds of factories and sells products in 186 different countries. So how can Nestlé make sure that business conducted on such a colossal scale doesn’t damage the planet?

“We have some really good examples today in the European Union where there’s a harmonisation exercise that’s starting today on labelling and bins as well as setting shared targets. And these types of examples of legislation give us hope that we can simplify participation for consumers as well as compliance for businesses,” said Jodie Roussell, Global Lead for Packaging and Sustainability, Nestlé

Global Lead for Packaging and Sustainability Jodie Roussell says headway is already being made.

“Our vision is that none of our packaging ends up in landfills or as litter,” she tells me from Lausanne. “In terms of reduction, we’re looking to reduce our use of virgin plastic, and we’re on track to reduce it by one-third by 2025. We have some really good examples today in the European Union where there’s a harmonisation exercise that’s starting today on labelling and bins as well as setting shared targets. And these types of examples of legislation give us hope that we can simplify participation for consumers as well as compliance for businesses, and focus on what’s most important, which is getting the right result and ensuring that no packaging ends up as litter or in landfills.”

Renault: Putting recycling at the heart of strategy

Another firm at the forefront of making circularity its main business strategy is French auto giant, Renault. Eleven million cars end their lives every year in Europe and the auto industry dumps massive amounts of waste, toxic chemicals and metals into landfills. Yet 85% of the materials used to make cars can be recycled.

At its Refactory plant just outside of Paris, Renault wants to turn the tide. Renault is presenting Refactory as the first European circular economy site dedicated to mobility. It launched the project two years ago and hopes it will generate 200 million euros in turnover by 2025. Nathalie Rey, Head of the Refactory Hub, Renault Group said:” Renault brings its knowledge in the industrial and circular economy, startups bring their agility and the way they want to innovate.”

Part of the project is a new workshop able to refurbish 150 old cars a day. From the mechanical elements to the paintwork, in less than a week, the cars look like new. They’re photographed and sold again.

In another building, 200 workers remanufacture over 1 600 different car pieces.

“Not only do we produce engines and gearboxes with the same quality requirements as the new ones by using refurbished materials coming from old engines,” says François Evrard, head of the Refactory Project at the Renault Group. “At the same time, it allows us by the cost reduction in the value chain to provide our customers with an alternative 30% cheaper than a new one.”

To federate an ecosystem around its brand, the group has just launched a start-up hub dedicated to the circular economy.

“The idea between Renault and the startups is to share all together,” says Nathalie Rey and continues “Renault brings its knowledge in the industrial and circular economy, startups bring their agility and the way they want to innovate.”

The Ellen MacArthur Foundation: Circularity by design

One of the main ways circularity can be efficiently applied is through design. The Ellen MacArthur Foundation is a London-based charity committed to promoting and developing the circular economy. Joe Iles is the Design Programme Lead at the foundation. He argues circularity needs to be in the first line of every design brief. He said: “It’s not just about treating the symptoms of an economy that’s broken or systems that are broken, but about designing by intention so that products and services and systems are circular, regenerative.”

He further said: “Everything around us is designed from the food that we eat to the clothes that we wear, the buildings that we live and work in, and the systems which provide those things that provide food or energy or mobility or medicine,” he explains. “And when we design, whether we know it or not, we’re really making decisions about how those things work. It’s not just about treating the symptoms of an economy that’s broken or systems that are broken, but about designing by intention so that products and services and systems are circular, regenerative. And what that means is when we engage in design, what’s the first line on the design brief? I believe it should be: ‘Does this creation, does this service fit within a circular economy?'”

Business in 60 seconds

Here are some of the headline stories from the business world this week.

• The World Economic Forum’s annual meeting takes place in Davos

More than 2,500 world leaders and business executives are gathering to discuss and debate topics under the theme, ‘Cooperation in a Fragmented World’. It also marks the event’s return to being held in January, after having been moved to the spring during the pandemic.

• Schlumberger posts its results for the fourth quarter

The oil drilling giant had a bumper year of earnings in 2022, as equipment sales surged on high oil and gas prices. The firm has cited the Middle East as a region that will drive the next phase of growth over the next few years.

• United Airlines releases its fourth-quarter earnings

The carrier has been seeing a sharp increase in bookings despite the growing risks of an economic recession. US airlines are enjoying the strongest consumer demand in three years. The reopening of travel and the strong dollar is encouraging more Americans to travel overseas, especially over the holiday season.

The takeaway

The global companies that make our food, clothes and cars have a gigantic responsibility: feeding the world affordably, giving people the products they love, creating new jobs and at the same time solving the climate crisis. It’s one of the biggest tests business has ever faced. And at a time when millions fear a lack of food, energy and security – boardroom leaders must surely do more to square the circle.

When an Empire Has an Identity Crisis

History repeats itself. And we see it today- as one of the most intangible yet crucial causes for Rome’s fall is bringing down America today. When the end of the Roman empire was nearing, it was clear that the end was near. The seemingly immortal empire was divided. It had suffered almost every imaginable humiliation. Barbarians attacked from every side. One emperor and his son had been killed by Goths, another had been captured alive—tortured to entertain foreign princes. Italy, the heartland of the empire, was invaded. Famine, plague, inflation and economic collapse were all undermining the empire. The problems seemed unsolvable.

Though the fall of Rome in the fifth century is familiar, this actually describes Rome in the 260s. It may have looked like the end, but Rome would endure for another 200 years.

Understanding Rome’s fall must go beyond cataloguing crises like barbarians, inflation and military defeat. Rome had suffered them all before and survived. Why did Rome survive them before but fail in the end?

To understand collapse, it is not enough to look at physical factors. A number of overlapping intangibles—identity, vision, patriotism—make all the difference.

These intangibles don’t show up as clearly in the historical record as a horde of Huns. But understanding them is critical. It would have been easy for fifth-century Romans to draw false comfort from the crises of the past: We survived problems then—we can do so again. That’s a common view in America: Yes, we’re divided—but it was worse in the Civil War. Yes, we have enemies—but Pearl Harbor was more dangerous. Yes, the economy is struggling, but America survived the Great Depression. We did it then, we can do it again.

But can we be sure? What makes the difference between successfully navigating stormy times or smashing on the rocks?

Restorer of the World

In the third century, a series of capable men turned the situation around. In 270 AD, Aurelian became emperor. He drove back the barbarians, rethought Rome’s military strategy, reformed its coinage, and reunited an empire that had been split in three for over a decade. No wonder the Senate voted him the title Restitutor Orbis—Restorer of the World.

Perhaps the most remarkable thing about Aurelian, though, is that he was not Roman.

Nor was his predecessor, Claudius Gothicus, who earned his name by turning back the Gothic horde. Nor was his successor, Probus, who finally brought peace to the empire. Nor was Diocletian, who restructured the Roman government, creating a new system of four co-ruling emperors to try and manage the new dangers. All these men were from the western Balkans.

For centuries, great Romans stepped forward and saved the nation from crises. When they dried up, its conquered peoples filled that role. This is extraordinary. Because in nearly every other empire in history, the best and the brightest of the conquered have striven for their independence. Imagine John Paul II propping up the Soviet Union, or Charles de Gaulle saving the Nazis, or Gandhi protecting the British Raj. Yet this is what these leaders who had been subjugated by Rome did.

If Rome had a single special power that contributed to its epic lifespan, you could say it was its ability to convince the people it conquered that they were Romans.

There was a vision and confidence behind it that motivated first Romans and then non-Romans to keep Rome alive.

The Envy of the World

Rome believed itself to be the best—and surprisingly, others agreed. Writing in the second century BC, Greek scholar Polybius concluded that Rome’s system of government was the best that man had ever invented. In 91 BC, in what was called the Social War, an alliance of Italian cities revolted from Roman rule. Why? They were outraged that Rome was denying them full Roman citizenship, with all its rights and duties. People were actually fighting to be included in this political system!

Roman citizenship was a status symbol. But it also came with political rights: protection from the worst injustices; participation in representative government.

The foundation of the constitution was that it was every Roman’s duty to kill any man who would set himself up as king. The result was more like rule by aristocratic landowners than a modern democracy, but for the ancient world, this was heady freedom. Rome stood for self-reliance, freedom, good order and justice. And others wanted in.

But the same Social War was the beginning of the end of this vision. The top Roman generals, Sulla and Marius, vied to smash the relatively democratic system and set themselves up as dictators. Within a few decades, the whole republican structure had fallen apart.

In time, this would raise a new question: If Romans weren’t free, what was the point of being Roman?

At first, Rome got by, by ignoring the change. Augustus Caesar remade Rome into an empire, but he didn’t call himself emperor. He preferred “Princeps”—first among equals. The Senate was still consulted. Augustus decided that the best way to rule independent-minded Romans was to pretend that they didn’t rule them. At that time, being Roman still gave a man political influence.

In 48 AD, Emperor Claudius decided that Gauls could become Roman citizens, hold office, and even sit in the Senate. Rome would conquer and Romanize a place, and once their culture and way of life had been sufficiently adopted, those people would share in, and even govern, the empire.

Even those outside the empire had a path to Romanness. Barbarians knocking on the doors could be admitted, provided they disarmed, allowed themselves to be divided into small groups, and spread throughout the empire.

But over time, the reason for being Roman, and the motivation for the empire, weakened. The political rights vanished. When Caracalla gave Roman citizenship to all free men in 212 AD, it mostly meant freedom to pay taxes.

Rome had once been a grand political experiment. But Aurelian was clearly not fighting for freedom. Instead, at best, this was about security and order: keeping Rome alive because Rome would keep you safe.

At the same time, the actual city of Rome faded into irrelevance. Aurelian closed down its mint. Diocletian didn’t even bother to visit the city for the first 19 years of his reign.

In fact, historians consider Diocletian’s reign the turning point, a shift away from the “Principate” of Augustus, where the emperor hid his power. This new phase was the “Dominate.” This kept people fighting. But with no deeper vision, the process of converting others into Romans stopped.

Claudius Gothicus admitted large numbers of defeated Goths into the empire. Instead of spreading them out, he kept them pretty much intact. Aurelian brought large numbers of Germans directly into the Roman army.

It helped buy the empire 100 years of peace. But Germans were being invited in larger and larger numbers, with fewer and fewer conditions. At one time, the empire had tried to break all bonds of loyalty to their old tribes and bring them in as individuals or families. Now, they didn’t have time.

The End

There were many causes for the fall: the arrival of Germanic tribes in numbers 10 times larger than anything Rome had experienced before; economic collapse; declining birthrates.

In 376 AD, the first disaster struck. Goths, fleeing the Huns, begged admittance to the empire. They were let in, in huge numbers. Yet rather than spreading out and resettling them, corrupt officials fleeced them and left them to starve. The Goths rebelled. Emperor Valens gave battle in 378 AD at Adrianople and lost. The barbarians were free inside the empire, and Rome lacked the soldiers to stop them. The Goths were then bought off by being allowed to settle in the empire—but not as Romans. They were allowed to keep their own military and political units, essentially becoming a Gothic nation inside the Roman Empire.

From then on, the attacks barely let up. Britain formally requested to leave. There was a 100-year drought of great leaders. No one even seemed to see the need or purpose of Romanizing the Goths. Rome was no longer a superpower.

So what caused the fall of Rome? You can focus on the military weakness, the Germanic invasions and economic turmoil. All of that is true and accurate. But it’s not the whole story.

Why weren’t these barbarians turned into Romans like the Gauls, Illyrans, Dacians and Greeks? Why were they antagonized by widespread corruption, instead of the austere ideals of earlier Rome? Why were there no Aurelians to win the impossible battles, and no Diocletian’s to reorganize the government system to deal with new threats?

Leo Tolstoy described an unknown factor “X,” which—along with all the material components of an army—made for success. “X,” he wrote, “is the spirit of the army, the greater or lesser desire to fight and to face dangers on the part of all men composing the army.” And often in war, it is this “X” that makes all the difference.

Empires also have their “X” factor. It lies in foundational questions. Is the empire worth dying for? Are its values worth imparting to the next generation and teaching to new immigrants? Is it worth setting aside individual ambitions in the name of the greater good? Will it succeed, and are bets on its future sure? When the answer to these questions is yes, the empire thrives. When it becomes no, it dies.

A nation needs some form of self-belief—that it can and should. Pride is usually negative. This kind of pride is listed alongside things like food supplies, military victories and freedom from diseases—things a nation needs for success.

Proverbs 29:18 confirms, “Where there is no vision, the people perish ….” The wording is significant: It does not say “the person perishes.” It is referring to people en masse—the tribe, nation or empire. For any of these to survive, the people must have a vision. They must see why they are there, and what makes them unique and worthwhile.

America began as the “shining city on a hill.” How many Americans still believe in that vision today? A large number actually believe America’s historic impact on the world has been for evil.

Do America’s young people have pride in their power? Will they sacrifice for the country? Do they have a vision of why it should be preserved—beyond because we all benefit? Are immigrants brought in in manageable numbers, such that they can have instilled in them the nation’s core values? Are we raising leaders who can bring success?

Rome’s history shows us how much these questions matter. Failures of vision, purpose and identity can be fatal.

Epilogue: A Counterfeit Empire

This is an empire that people of all races and nationalities can enter into and even play leading roles within. And Diocletian was right: An empire of a certain size requires more than one ruler.

Aurelian seemed to understand the large-scale problem that confronted Rome in his time: What moral vision could unify such a disparate empire, beyond merely so we can all keep benefitting from it?

His solution was religion. He attributed his victories to Sol Invictus—the unconquered sun. Himself an immigrant from Syria, Aurelian insisted that Sol Invictus was the one true god. Worshipping all the other many pagan deities in Rome was fine, but these were all merely aspects of Sol.

Aurelian died soon after and his religion never took root. But Constantine the Great took up the idea 50 years later. In 313 AD, he began pushing Christianity as the empire’s unifying religion. Conveniently, Constantine’s Jesus shared a birthday with Aurelian’s Sol Invictus. In fact, many were taught that Jesus was Sol.

This religion would infuse meaning to the Roman Empire. But it would also fundamentally change it.

Ancient Rome had no global vision. Yes, its conquests were wide-ranging, but Romans believed their spread had limits. Diocletian himself ascended to the throne after one emperor was reportedly struck by lightning while campaigning against Persia—the apparent victim of divine punishment for straying beyond Rome’s pre-ordained borders.

Perhaps without realizing it, Constantine introduced a vision of conquest without bounds. Spreading religion gave Rome a defining purpose, and also reason to conquer Persia and far beyond. More powerfully, it gave people a reason to be Roman and resurrect Rome, even if they had never set foot in the eternal city, never worn a toga, and never chatted with friends at the bath. Christians began to believe this empire was the Kingdom of God on Earth.

This new vision of Romanness was, perhaps, not practical or grounded enough to prevent Rome’s fall. But when it fell, resurrecting it became an effort not merely to restore peace and order on Earth; it became a divine mission. The Roman Empire was now the Holy Roman Empire. And in that sense, it survived. !

Rome was an ugly, evil empire. The stories of its origin are replete with rape and murder. It committed genocide and massacred with organized brutality almost unparalleled in history. Perhaps only Nazis ever killed innocents with quite the same industrialized detachment of Rome. Yet there is something admirable about the way men would sacrifice for an institution that at least brought a form of peace to the Mediterranean.

So many of the aspects of this Holy Roman Empire are counterfeit. Its limitless ambition,its desire to include people from other nations- all this is visible in the US today.

A Thought for Republic Day- Make Constitutional Functionaries Work as Originally Envisaged

Republic Day’s significance stems from the adoption of the Constitution. It replaced the British Raj legislation where the governor functioned as an agent of the colonial power vested with greater authority than the elected council of ministers. The Constitution, however, gave primacy to the legislative assembly and the political executive.

That did not prevent misuse of the office till a Supreme Court constitutional bench in 1994 reiterated the primacy of the legislature and narrowed the ground for dismissal of a government. The grey areas still allow a governor to make controversial calls on appointment of chief ministers. For instance, Maharashtra’s governor BS Koshyari, who recently stated that he wished to step down, swore in a short-lived government in 2019.

Telangana this year will witness an odd Republic Day. A report in TOI said that the K Chandrashekar Rao government has asked governor Tamilisai Soundararajan to hold a separate function. That Telangana will have two separate official R-Day events is thanks to the very public acrimony between the political executive and the governor.

It has also resulted in the stalling of at least eight bills, which are yet to receive the governor’s assent. Friction between the state government and the governor over withholding assent to bills cleared by the legislative assembly is also common to Tamil Nadu, Kerala and Chhattisgarh.

The current phase of conflicts between governors and the political executive stems largely from stalling of bills. Article 200 of the Constitution details the options of a governor when a bill is cleared by the assembly. However, it does not unambiguously lay down a deadline. Given that the Constitution is clear that the legislature has primacy, it’s bad form for governors to use this loophole to stall.

Similarly a conflict is brewing and despite all show of decency the battle between judiciary and executive is going on.

However, a highly competitive political system awash with animus is likely to frequently deviate from constitutional morality. Two fixes are needed. First, put a deadline on how long a governor can stall a bill. Second, make governors accountable to not just the central executive via the President but also the Rajya Sabha and the state government.

FeMoneyism: Two policy ideas for really empowering women

How do we make India a better place for women? Government schemes work slowly. What women need is a silver bullet that kills, or at least seriously wounds, the demon of discrimination. First, lower income tax rates for working women. When women pay lower income tax than men it will not only benefit women already in the workforce, it will also be a huge incentive for women who stay out of the workforce.

Every male-dominated family that doesn’t want their daughter or their daughter-in-law to work will know that they are missing out on a good thing. Money often changes attitudes faster than morality does. Plus, there will be no long-term revenue loss here as the lower income tax rates for women will be more than offset by an expanding tax base from working women.

The second set of incentives should be for parents who have daughters. Give parents a tax rebate for investments made in the name of daughters. Don’t put conditions on the kind of investment – that will be a dampener. Also, keep the lowest amount eligible for such tax rebate low, say, Rs 10,000, so that low-income households can participate. And put a ceiling on the highest amount, say, Rs 100,000, so that this scheme doesn’t distort investment decisions overall.

Further, offer the rebate even when a girl reaches legal adulthood, so that women can also benefit. The attraction of getting a tax rebate will override patriarchal impulses. And over time, such a corpus will give women, even those who don’t work, a measure of financial independence. For older women, the accumulated money represents the chance of personal freedom. To make a difference, you must think different.

Germany Pursues a Hidden Agenda With Russia

January 20 was supposed to be a day of unity for the West. Instead, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz was accused of lying, dividing the West, and failing to act.

European Member of Parliament Guy Verhofstadt wrote that Scholz is “incapable of making the right decisions.” Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki said, “Germany’s attitude is unacceptable.” United States Defense Secretary Llyod Austin had a “fierce exchange of words” with the head of the chancellory Wolfgang Schmidt, and National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan “read the riot act” to his German counterpart, Süddeutschen Zeitung reported. “Germany will never get over the shame of its cowardice on Ukraine,” the Telegraph concluded.

What happened? Germany is trying to block nations from sending weapons to Ukraine—and is lying about it.

Why? The answer to that question exposes a dark truth about German-Russian relations.

Officially, the German government claims it wants Ukraine to win. But Germany’s actions prove that the government is lying. “Why is Olaf Scholz acting the way he does?” EuroIntelligence asked. “We cannot go by what Scholz actually says because he is not telling the truth.”

Germany said it would send Leopard 2 tanks if the U.S. sent Abrams tanks. But the U.S. has explained that the Abrams tanks are too complicated and require too much maintenance. Germany also claimed that it can’t get Leopard tanks ready for Ukraine in time, so Poland said it could send its Leopard tanks over. If Germany was interested in giving Ukraine those tanks, that would have been great news; instead, it sparked controversy. Once again, Germany’s lies were exposed.

German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock claimed on January 22 that Germany would not block any countries from selling German tanks to Ukraine. But she doesn’t make the final decision, and Scholz hasn’t given approval. Thus the German government appears divided, and pressure on Scholz is growing.

The pressure may force Germany to approve these exports. But so far, Germany has done everything to delay and distract. There are many signs Scholz has no interest in breaking ties with Russia. The question is why.

The New Defense Minster

German Defense Minister Christine Lambrecht was forced to resign on January 16, largely because of her failure to boost Germany’s military strength and provide military aid to Ukraine. The next day, Scholz announced her replacement: Boris Pistorius. This decision was a signal that Scholz hasn’t changed his stance on Russia.

Pistorius has been the interior minister of Lower Saxony for nine years and has a reputation for getting things done. He’s also the only member of Scholz’s cabinet who has served in the military. But other people have more military experience than him, so why Pistorius?

You would think if Scholz were interested in helping Ukraine, he would look for the most pro-Ukrainian and most anti-Russian colleague possible. Yet Pistorius has a reputation for being pro-Russia. Consider these facts:

• His ex-girlfriend, as of last summer, is Doris Schröder-Köpf—the ex-wife of Gerhard Schröder, Germany’s former chancellor and Russian President Vladimir Putin’s best German friend.
• Pistorius took his school exit exams in English and Russian.
• In 2018, Pistorius called for a review of EU sanctions against Russia.
• He was a member of the German-Russian Friendship Group.

Scholz has been criticized for his lack of support for Ukraine. That’s a primary reason why Lambrecht had to resign. By appointing Pistorius, Scholz could come under even more pressure from the public and media. And yet he doesn’t seem to care, and that might even be an understatement. By appointing Pistorius, he has appointed someone who has connections to Putin himself.

This is a crucial juncture for Germany. It’s not just about the survival of Ukraine as an independent country. It’s also about Western unity in face of major global threats. If Germany can’t be trusted, how can the West stand united on anything of importance in the future? Germany’s chances of losing its Western partners—but it does not appear to care. Why?

The Industry

“So what is going on inside the German government?” EuroIntelligence asked. Its most convincing conclusion is that “Scholz is surrounded by, or talking to, people who want to reset German-Russian relations after the war.” German industry demands cheap gas to remain competitive and to ensure economic prosperity. EuroIntelligence thus believes to see in Germany a “fusion of foreign and economic policy with the explicit goal of maximizing corporate exports.” Russia’s war on Ukraine “is a major disturbance to Germany’s industrial strategy. A reset is the only plausible explanation we have why Scholz is hesitating.”

If that is the message Germany has been sending to Russia, the message has been well received. Alexander Sosnowski, one of Russia’s chief state television propagandists, wrote on Telegram that Russia welcomes Germany’s attempt to revive relations. Germany’s Bild headlined: “Russians Celebrate Scholz for Tank Blockade.”

The fact that political leaders in Germany are forced to act according to the will of the nation’s industry is clear when we dive much deeper into explaining the industry’s goals. The dream of German dominance did not die with Hitler. The German business empire was planning a Nazi comeback when it saw that World War ii was lost. It’s all documented for anybody to see!

Geopolitics

I believe that Germany’s leaders may have already agreed to a deal with Russia, a modern Hitler-Stalin pact where Germany and Russia divide countries and assets between themselves. This agreement would allow each to turn its sights on other targets. Any such deal that may have been struck between Germany and Russia is a precursor to war!

This is why Germany is cooperating with Russia. Economic reasons are a big factor, but there are geopolitical goals that go beyond dividing up Europe. Before going to war, Germany has always formed alliances—and often with Russia. In World War II, Germany knew it could not attack France or Britain without such a deal.

So if Germany is seeking yet another alliance with Russia, we have to ask what it gets from the deal. Giving up Ukraine only for cheap gas isn’t the kind of deal that Germany would make. There is more to it.

Former Defense Minister Karl-Theodor zu Guttenberg once gave insight into what else goes into the negotiations with Russian President Vladimir Putin. In a 2017 interview with Fox Business, he said that Germany tries to avoid “a deal” with Russia in which Putin gets “Syria and Ukraine in one basket.”

Russia is heavily involved in Syria and also in the Balkans—two regions that are very critical for Germany’s geopolitical goals. Ukraine is less significant to Germany. Could it be the two struck a deal giving Russia Ukraine and leaving Syria and the Balkans to Germany?

If you understand Germany’s long-term thinking, you will agree that the answer is yes.

In the short term, good relations with Russia will provide Germany with cheap gas. And that’s about how far analysts go. But Germany doesn’t trust Russia in the long term and seeks energy independence from it.

The Balkan region is a good transit route for energy resources, particularly natural gas. It has several key ports, such as the port of Durres in Albania, which can also support military operations. Access to the Mediterranean Sea connects Europe to major shipping routes and natural resources, including oil and gas. It also leads to key strategic choke points, such as the Suez Canal. If you have a strong military presence in the Mediterranean you can control a large part of global trade. The Balkan region would present Germany with a lot of geopolitical advantages.

But Russia is heavily involved in the Balkans and used to control the region. In two world wars, Germany sought control over the region but failed. But in the 1990s, Germany got its way. Yugoslavia was divided, and the door opened for Germany to dominate.

Russia, of course, would not give up the Balkans if Germany were to stand in its way of taking Ukraine.

But what good are the Balkans if you are faced with a hostile Middle East? That’s why Germany seeks to win over Syria—another region that Russia has a lot of control.

If you want your energy supply secured through the Middle East, you will need to control Syria to stabilize the region. Syria is at the crossroads of the Middle East and Northern Africa. Syria is also a major transit route for energy resources, particularly oil and natural gas, which is important for Germany’s energy security. But it also houses ports, such as the Tartus port, which is Russia’s only naval base in the Mediterranean, and the Khmeimim airbase, which Russia uses for military operations in the Middle East.

Russia doesn’t want its access to the Mediterranean and the Middle East threatened. But if it gets access to Ukraine it may be willing to negotiate. This is the deal Germany might have made with Russia. We don’t know the details, but we know it will lead to war.

 Russia will likely get control of Ukraine and Germany will get control of Syria. At the foundation of this outcome must be an agreement between Russia and Germany.

But what is Germany’s ultimate goal?If Germany were to cooperate with the United States, it would likely achieve economic prosperity at a much lower cost. So why is Germany choosing to befriend Russia?

Just as in the past, Germany knows it cannot open a Western front without being assured that Russia will stand by. Russia is also an enemy of the United States and is willing to cooperate on this common goal. The attack on the U.S. will not come from Russia but rather from Germany.