The Beat

THE BEAT

May 2021/ IIJNM Publication

FARMER FURY India’s Farm Crisis Hits Home

FROM THE

EDITOR’S DESK Hello, India’s farmers are agitating for the repeal of three farm-reform laws, particularly one that liberalizes agricultural marketing. But their protests have served to highlight a deeper truth: Indian agriculture is becoming increasingly unviable.

If 50% of our population must survive on an occupation that contributes just 15% of GDP, that survival must indeed be a miserable one. Farm incomes have seen a steady decline relative to almost every other sector of the economy, large tracts of arable land lie fallow and increasing numbers are being forced to migrate to the cities in search of work.

Our cover story looks at the causes of agrarian distress, the short-sightedness of the government’s plans to reform agriculture and the social and political consequences of neglect. When the biggest landowners across the country start demanding caste-based quotas for higher education and government jobs, something is very wrong.

The recent assembly elections were a rude shock to the BJP and its allies in the states. Barring Assam, where it held on to power but with a smaller majority, the party was battered in West Bengal, Tamil Nadu and Kerala. That shouldn’t have come as a surprise considering the BJP has repeatedly failed to translate prime minister Modi’s appeal in the 2014 and 2019 national elections into local-level gains across much of India.

The feared second wave of the Coronavirus has devasted India. Once again, the government had plenty of warning both from experts and the experience of the other countries. It could have built capacity, physical and personnel, invested in vaccines and enforced strict behavioural norms. But Narendra Modi decided to declare victory at the first opportunity and move on to more important things. He badly miscalculated.

We hope you enjoy reading these and other stories as much as we enjoyed reporting them.

Mahitha Owk THE BEAT | 1

CONTENTS Cover Story India’s Farm Crisis 3 No reason to grow

Focus 8

The Second Wave Predictable mess

Special Report 9 BJP Routed Imperial overreach

Politics 14 15

Kar Nataka Never-ending drama Party Adrift Congress goes missing

International 17 Plate Tectonics

India rubs up against China

Law 18

Police State Lethal statutes

Environment 19 Empty Oceans

Perils of overfishing

Health 20 Sports 21

Mood Meter Therapeutic journals Problems of Plenty Managing cricketers

Art 23 Theatre 24 Film 25 Painting 26 THE BEAT | 2

Cyber Wolves Moral policing the Net Common Touch Kuljeet’s credo Heavy Load I Care a Lot Limits to Learning Online workshops

COVER STORY

India’s Farm Crisis Hits Home Since the Green Revolution, government has pretended that Indian agriculture is in rude health. It’s in terminal decline, writes Kivleen Kaur Sahni

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nce in a decade comes a movement powerful enough to impact the social, political and economic fabric of a country. India is going through one right now.

For the past six months, farmers in northwest India’s breadbasket of Punjab, Haryana and western Uttar Pradesh have been protesting against three controversial agriculture-reform bills that they believe would benefit the corporate sector at their expense, by reducing their earning capacity and bargaining power.

They have blocked highways and railway tracks leading to the national capital, paralysed rural transport and agricultural markets and drawn global attention to the government’s efforts to shut them up. Despite the strongarm tactics, farmer unions have rejected the government’s offer to hold off implementing the legislation 18 months and demanded a repeal of the new laws.

As Bharatiya Kisan Sangh’s Punjab leader Harjeet Singh rhetorically asked our sister publication The Observer last November, “What are you giving the farmers? Are their costs ever repaid?”

At the heart of this protest is a generational distrust of the government among farmers. Despite employing roughly about 50% of the Indian population, agriculture contributes barely 15% to our GDP. Over decades, despite schemes to make agriculture more remunerative, farmers’ earnings have dropped and, along with it, the amount of land they till.

When dominant rural, land-owning communities across the country, whether Jats in Haryana, Marathas in Maharashtra, Kapus in Andhra Pradesh or LingayTHE BEAT | 3

ats in Karnataka (see story on page 7), start demanding caste-based quotas to access education and government jobs, it’s a sign that agriculture is in distress.

The World Bank estimates that with 157.35 million hectares, India has the world’s second-largest stock of arable land after the United States.

The country has aboveaverage levels of annual pre-

cipitation and the most diverse agroclimatic conditions anywhere.

Anywhere else, these would be the makings of an agricultural superpower.

Yet, India’s agricultural productivity is lower than every major agriculture exporter in the world, whether in the Americas, Europe or the

Asia Pacific.

India produces 106.19 million tonnes of rice per year from 44 million hectares of land. In 2013, the UN‘s Food and Agricultural Organization estimated India’s rice yields at 2.4 tonnes per hectare, placing us at 27th on a ranking of 47 countries. While India does better in wheat production, It rank 19th of 41 countries.

The problem is clearly not a shortage of land, water or labour. The reason we’re unable to make optimum use of our resources is because we criminally mismanage them. According to the latest agricultural census, the total area under farming has fallen from 159.6 million hectares in 2010-11 to 157.14 million hectares in 2015-16.

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hese were years of rapid economic growth, with India’s GDP increasing at over 6% a year in real terms. India’s agricultural decline closely tracks the increase in the proportion of small and marginal farmers during the same period, from 84.9% to 86.2% of the farming population. They collectively account for just under half of all cropped area.

The small size of operational holdings, whether owned or tenanted, makes then uneconomical to farm. If the farmer has saved seed, he cultivates. If not, he seeks work on other’s land leaving his own fallow. Uneconomical farm sizes preclude the possibility of credit, and with it the purchase of key inputs, whether seed, fertiliser or pesticides.

“Small farmers earn possibly just onetenth of what the large farmers earn,” says S. Mahendra Dev, director and vice

COVER STORY chancellor of Indira Gandhi Institute of Development Research (IGIDR), Mumbai.

For small and marginal farmers, he says, consumption is more than the income and therefore, they need to borrow to meet their consumption needs, and ultimately, fall into a debt trap.

“Technological interventions, like tractors or big harvesters, work better and are more feasible for large farms,” says A V Manjunatha, assistant professor at Institute for Social and Economic Change, Bangalore. “The productivity, then, from these pieces of land that use advanced technology, is much higher.“Small farmers are unable to invest in these technologies.”

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he Situation Assessment Survey of Agricultural Households 2013 found that the average monthly income of farmers was Rs.6,427 a month.

In 2016-17, a survey by the National Bank for Agriculture and Rural Development (NABARD) showed that average income had increased to Rs.8,931. That is an increase of just Rs.2,505 in the span of four years.

In a bid to abolish the feudal zamindari system and redistribute land to the tiller, India introduced extensive land reforms whose central aim was to prevent concentration of land ownership. But in the process, it also blocked the creation of more viable operational holdings.

Land-leasing laws in India discouraged, and in states like Kerala even prohibited the farmer, to rent land. They limited the farmer’s freedom to create scale.

It had wider consequences. As Shruti Rajagopalan writes in Mint, “Since the 1960s, when these laws were passed, the average size of land holdings has decreased, and the number of small (1-2 hectares) and marginal (0-1 hectare) landholdings has increased, mainly due to subsequent generations inheriting land and splitting up their share of land holdings.”

“The tenant lacks the security of tenure that she would have if laws permitted her and the landowner to freely write transparent contracts. In turn, this discourTHE BEAT | 4

ages her from making long-term investments in land and deprives her of potential access to credit,” says a report published by the government planning agency Niti Aayog in 2015.

With the increasing fragmentation of their land, poor returns and declining incomes, farmers who want to abandon agriculture and find alternative incomes are again stymied. Property laws prohibit farmers from selling farmland for nonagricultural uses. This leaves small farmers at the mercy of the big ones.

“While the apprehension of the government stands correct, there is also a chance that farmers would get a better price for their land if the industries are also bidding for it. This way they won’t depend only on big farmers as they do now,” says Mahendra Dev of IGIDR. The situation is made worse by the failure of successive governments at federal and state levels to build sustainable surface-irrigation systems. Rucha Deshmukh, a hydrogeologist at Advanced Center for Water Resources Development and Management, Pune explains that the lack of easy availability of surface water makes farmers increasingly dependent on groundwater.

Multiple aquifers are exploited in order to provide a continuous supply of water, she says. Groundwater, although renewable, gets depleted fast as the rate of extraction is exponentially greater than the percolation rate.

As NITI Aayog observed, “Depleting water levels are one of the major concerns for agriculture. In areas that are mainly dependent on groundwater for irrigation, we have seen a continuous decline in farmlands that were being cultivated.”

There has long been an argument over the most efficient scale of operations in agriculture. Smaller farms are seen as more efficient in their use of inputs like water, fertilisers and pesticides to produce a given yield.

But P.S. Vijayshankar, founder of Samaj Pragati Sahayog, an NGO based in Madhya Pradesh that works with the tribal

Bones of Contention The farm law reforms are focussed on three areas Marketing: Expands the right to sell from any place of production, collection and aggregation and bars states from restricting interstate commerce and levying fees.

Contracting: Provides a framework to regulate contract farming and a creates a three-level dispute-resolution mechanism.

Storing: Removes restrictions on the aggregation and storage of commodities. communities in the Narmada Valley to promote sustainable agriculture and water conservation, has his doubts.

“While the efficiency argument may be in favour of the small farmers, the truth, however, is that their scale is just not enough for sustainability and they need to come together, otherwise they can’t survive.”

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ijayshankar explains that the two big factors that can affect agricultural viability today are market prices and climate change. Rainfall patterns and the prices in the mandis are unstable. On their own, small and marginal farmers cannot deal with these two uncertainties.

It would appear that Indian agriculture is too large and diverse for a ‘one-sizefits-all’ approach to solve its problems.

Farm laws that allow flexibility of operations while safeguarding the livelihoods of small farmers have the best chance of success.

But time is of the essence. A recent report by McKinsey, a global management consultancy, estimates that agriculture can contribute $2 to $3 trillion in additional value to global GDP over the next decade. That is too big an opportunity for the Indian farmer to forego.

COVER STORY

“Individuals can be farmers, not companies”

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rotesting farmers have shunned political parties to ensure their platform includes the entire farming community. Nothing better underscores that principle than the support of the Bharatiya Kisan Sangh, the farmers’ wing of the Rashtriya Seva Sangh, parent body of the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party.

BKS Punjab chapter vice president Harjeet Singh spoke to The Observer's Jaskiran Singh. Excerpts:

We had raised some objections that a company cannot be a farmer, don’t register them as a farmer. What will happen is that you have already given them 1,000s of acres of our land, and now the subsidies and tax rebates that we get will be misused by them. Any individual can be a farmer, but a company should not be farmer.

Do you think political interests are misguiding farmers?

This protest has no political interests, the farmers are themselves in it. Farmers have different trade unions, all of them are in this. You tell me which minister is sitting in front? Who’s allowing Congress people or Aam Aadmi people to come here? No (politically affiliated) person is allowed on the stage. Basically, they are fighting for the people as this law affects both farmers and people. How can the farmers be misguided? They are literate people.

Will the reforms leave farmers at the mercy of corporates?

Since some time, corporate houses have been given airports and railway stations. So, farmers have doubts that our land is being prepared to be given to the corporates.

They will take our lands and sow crops. Let’s say they plant potatoes and store it, and then who will decide the price? Everything is in their hands then. Since all production will be theirs, they will sell it as they want. Any individual can be a farmer, but a company should not be a farmer.

THE BEAT | 5

MSP. Sugarcane is purchased by sugar mills on a contract farming basis. But you will see that farmers are always agitating that they have not been given their dues. Farmers already have bad experiences with corporates.

MSP is not only for Punjab, Haryana or UP. Wheat and rice are grown here but also in the south.

Corn is grown in Bihar and UP. Or cotton and other crops. Every state has MSP on their principal crops.

Farmers are affected everywhere.

So, if you make MSP a law, at least the crops won’t be sold below that particular price. If onions are being purchased at Rs.5 and companies sell it at Rs.50, the least you can do is give the farmers the worth of their crops.

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Are minimum support prices (MSP) the solution to low farm income?

Today, there are a lot of states which say they have MSP but farmers are not getting those rates. For example, if the MSP on wheat is about Rs.1,850, there are a lot of states where it’s purchased at Rs.1,500 or 1,200. We are asking that you make a law on MSP that you won’t purchase at price below it. Only then you will get the MSP benefit.

Look at sugarcane prices, it has

oday you give benefits to everyone, education benefits to students, LPG to people, people in government get money to have their clothes washed. What are you giving the farmers? Are their costs ever repaid? They too work hard, have to educate their children, even they want to go on a vacation.

Today only the costs of fertilser, water and electricity are compensated.

What lessons does Bihar hold?

In Bihar they finished off the mandis and now look at their condition.

Farmers with 2 or even 5 acres of land, today they come to Punjab, Haryana or Maharashtra to earn their livelihoods as laborers. They are farmers but actual farming survives only in Punjab and areas where MSP works.

COVER STORY

Pushing His Luck For all his political savvy, Narendra Modi clearly mistimed the farm reforms, says Mahitha Owk

Sukhbir Singh Badal (L) with Modi |

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Credit : Outlook

n September 2020, President Ram Nath Kovind gave his assent to three farm reform bills. No sooner had parliament passed the three bills than tens of thousands of farmers in Punjab and Haryana launched a protest demanding a repeal of the laws. In a matter of days, the government was rocked with dissension and a key partner walked out.

With elections in four important states scheduled just a few months away, why would prime minister Narendra Modi take such a risk? After all, agricultural reform has been on the back burner for decades. What was the urgency?

Says civil-right activist professor Parminder Singh of the Association for Democratic Rights, Amritsar, “I don't think Mr Modi misread the situation because he didn’t know about the resentment in Punjab. His overconfidence owes to his inexperience in dealing with mass protests.”

On 26th January, just after the Republic Day parade, farmers protesting at Delhi’s borders broke through police barricades and entered the Red Fort complex. It THE BEAT | 6

came as a shock to the government, which reacted with brute force. Many thought that would force farmers to accept the government’s offer to put the reforms on hold. But that clearly hasn’t been the case.

The bills were passed in parliament by a mere voice vote. That broke the ruling coalition government. The first party to walk out from the ruling National Democratic Alliance (NDA) was one of the BJP’s oldest allies, the Shiromani Akali Dal. Union food processing minister Harsimrat Kaur Badal, wife of Akali leader and former Punjab chief minister Sukhdev Singh Badal, resigned from the union cabinet.

Soon after, the Rashtriya Loktantrik Party (RLP), a constituent of the NDA in Rajasthan which has one seat in the Lok Sabha and three members in the state assembly, withdrew its support to the NDA. RLP chief and Nagaur MP Hanuman Beniwal said this happened when he was kept away from the Parliament on the pretext of the Covid-19 protocol. “Had I been present, I would have torn the Bills and

thrown them away,” he said.

Soon the reverberations were felt overseas once large expat Punjabi communities joined the protests. Canada’s prime minister Justin Trudeau his concern over the agitation saying, “I would be remiss if I didn’t start by recognising the news coming from India about the protest by farmers in the county. The situation is concerning.”

In the British parliament, MPs debated the government’s handling of the protesters and the targeting of journalists covering the protests. The external affairs miistry summoned the British high commissioner and has cautioned him not to interfere in the politics of another democratic county. But that had little impact on public opinion when celebrities like pop star Rihanna and climate activist Greta Thunberg too came out in support of the farmers.

Although the government has tried to persuade the farmers that the laws will have no impact on the minimum support price (MSP) of cereals like rice and wheat that form the mainstay of the farm economies of Punjab and Haryana, they remain suspicious.

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amodar Prasad Patakumura, a political analyst based in Hyderabad, says he doesn’t believe the farm laws will guarantee MSP. “All that the farmers are asking for is MSP. I think it’s good to have a mixed economy, but Modi’s government should understand what the farmers need, it is what really matters, if the mixed economy has to work.”

Home minister Amit Shah backtracked saying, “If farmer's organizations feel that even a single provision of law will not benefit them, the Narendra Modi government is ready to consider it with an open mind.”

COVER STORY

Of Quotas and Kings India’s experiment in affirmative action has been hijacked by brute economic and political realities, says Mahitha Owk

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he Supreme Court’s recent order denying the Maratha’s claim for reservation in higher education and government jobs, and its refusal to lift the 50% cap it had imposed in 1992 on all reservations, has sent shockwaves through the political establishment.

Across India, so-called upper castes have successfully fought to be recognized as ‘other backward classes’ or OBCs, a term to classify castes which are educationally or socially disadvantaged. Tamil Nadu is the champion in this regard. Having introduced a caste-based public employment law as early as 1927, by 1980 reservations in higher education and government employment had risen to 70%.

Says Jatin Baso, an activist with the Dalit Bhim Army in Uttar Pradesh, “The basis of reservation was to uplift the lower castes who were suppressed for centuries. Some say, what about higher castes who are economically backward? For them, we have economically weaker sections reservations (EWS).”

Sangapali Aruna, founder director of Project Mukti that advocates for women’s rights, an activist from Vishakhapatnam agrees, saying, “I am not against reservations that these communities are asking for, but there are many other pressing issues that need immediate attention. These communities are mostly land and business-owning communities and they have been perpetrating a lot of violence against Dalits, especially Dalit women. We need to first look into the power structure.”

Since 2005, Gujjars in Rajasthan have THE BEAT | 7

been demanding reservation in educational institutions and employment.

Many have died protesting. In Rajasthan, OBCs account for 21%, scheduled castes 16% and scheduled tribes another 12%.

Now Gujjar’s are asking for 5% of seats from the 21% OBC quota.

The Patels are Gujarat’s wealthiest landowners. They account for a quarter of the state’s 6 crore population and are recognized as an upper-caste community.

But they too have been demanding a quota of seats in higher education and share of government jobs.

They are considered a shudra community and although the government has conceded their demand, their agitation turned violent in 2016 when agitators burnt several carriages of a train.

They are many reasons why India’s agrarian, upper castes are asking for reservations. The first is the growing agrarian crisis, where farm incomes have steadily declined in comparison to almost any kind of urban employment. Second, is the poor level of education among rural youth which disqualifies the from finding jobs in the cities. Securing jobs in government using their political clout seems the obvious answer.

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Reservation and its discontents

| Credit: BBC

Jats are Haryana’s dominant agrarian caste and dominate the state’s political and economic life. Like many other communities demanding reservations, Jats now want to be recognized as OBCs. Their agitation in 2016 shut down the state and threatened Delhi’s water supply.

Kapus in Andhra Pradesh, who are also demanding a piece in the quota cake, are the land-owning community in Andhra’s rich east and west Godavari districts.

ays Aruna, “These communities are socially and economically in a good place and they can afford education in good schools unlike the people from backward communities.”

Baso suggests that the identification of the castes and granting them reservations should be based on the social and economic status of these communities within the state in which they reside.

Any system that privileges even a deserving community at the expense of others creates resentment. India’s caste-based reservation system has been under assault from day one; not so much through a direct attempt to abolish it but to include so many as to effectively undermine it.

Like so many noble ideas in India, affirmative action will linger on in name, hollowed out and debased by greed and caste politics.

FOCUS

Corona Central The second Covid wave has upended any pretense of managing India’s greatest pandemic ever, writes Mahitha Owk

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hen three million people swarm a riverbank in the belief that the holy waters will protect them from disease, how can any public health authority protect them? Or us from them? On April 11, the Maha Kumbh at Haridwar was held with no masks, no social distancing or any Covid19 protocol. Uttarakhand’s new chief minister sought to reassure us that the, “faith of devotees will overcome the fear of Covid-19.” But that’s precisely the problem.

Just over a year ago, something similar happened. The outbreak of Covid coincided with another large religious gathering, that time at Delhi’s Nizamuddin during the Tablighi Jammat congregation.

It was all over the news and much was made of a similar congregation spreading the virus in Malaysia. But clearly, we learned nothing.

India is now recording around 400,000 new cases a day, having overtaken Brazil to become the second-worst affected county . Says Dr Giridhara Babu, an epidemiologist at the Public Health Foundation of India (PHFI), Bangalore, “Based on the projections by several modelers, including Bhramar Mukherjee, professor of epidemiology at the University of Michigan, India will have nearly 1.8–3 lakh cases per day by May 1.” That prediction has long been surpassed.

In March 2020, the government announced a complete lockdown of the country with just four hours’ notice. PeoTHE BEAT | 8

ple assumed it had been planned. An investigation by the BBC's Jugal Purohit and Arjun Parmar, that included filing 240 applications under the Right to Information Act with multiple government agencies concluded, “Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi's government did not consult key ministries and states while imposing the world's strictest coronavirus lockdown a year ago.” It caused untold suffering to millions of migrant workers and tanked the economy.

The timing couldn’t have been worse.

India’s economy was already in a downturn. Mumbai-based Centre for Monitoring Indian Economy points out that the unemployment rate peaked at 23.5% in April 2020. But strangely, India opened up its economy just when infections were peaking. China, which experienced just a fraction of our caseload, opened up only after the infection rate hit zero.

The second wave has exposed the extent of the country’s unpreparedness.

India proudly announced its feat of vaccinating 100 million people in 85 days, against the 102 days it took China and 89 days the US. But in spite of being one of the largest manufacturers of vaccines in the world, India’s vaccination programme is today crippled by a shortage of vaccines. Says Rakesh P Kanyadi, director at Anglo-French Drugs and Industries, Bangalore, “India is facing a major crisis. Government should involve more pharmaceutical companies to manufacture vaccines if we want to vaccinate the

entire population in the country.”

The inoculation drive aims to cover 250 million people by July, but that sounds like another pipe dream. Worse, the government won’t admit it. States have been complaining about vaccine shortages but the government denies any shortage. But health minister Harsh Vardhan insists, “There is no shortage of vaccines and the government of India gives vaccines to every state. It is the job of states to provide vaccine doses at the vaccination centers in a time-bound manner with meticulous planning.” No matter that we now depend on vaccine grants from the US, Europe and Russia to meet even part of the inoculation target.

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n states like Delhi and Mumbai people are struggling to get medical oxygen. The demand is so high that a small 100-litre cylinder now costs Rs 8,000 and even that is no longer assured.

“We are facing this situation today due to lack of preparedness. Now companies like Reliance Industries, Tata Steel, Indian Oil and Bharat Petroleum are being pressed to manufacture medical oxygen, this should have been done long ago,” says Kanyadi.

With over 200,000 dead and counting, any democratically elected government would take responsibility for the catastrophe, admit to its failures and remedy them. Not this one. More than drugs, hospital beds or medical staff, it's accountability that's in short supply.

SPECIAL REPORT

A Flawed Strategy The BJP’s ‘win at all costs’ approach to elections backfires more often than it succeeds, says Ashutosh Acharya

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he recent assembly elections confirms a trend seen since the Bharatiya Janata Party’s sweep in the 2019 Lok Sabha polls. The party has repeatedly proved unable to translate prime minister Narendra Modi’s national appeal into even simple majorities in the states.

With the exceptions of Assam, Bihar, Tripura and Puducherry, the BJP has underperformed in every state it has contested. In the 2021 polls, the party was routed in West Bengal, lost the sole seat it had in Kerala and dragged its alliance partner, the AIADMK, into a humiliating defeat in Tamil Nadu.

In 2016, when BJP won the Assam elections, it came as something of a surprise that a majoritarian party from the Hindi belt could win an election fought around local identities. The BJP cleverly shifted the focus to the issue of illegal Bangladeshi migrants. It’s choice of Sarbananda Sonowal as party leader was astute. He was the petitioner in the case against the Illegal Migrants Act of 1983, which the Supreme Court held to be “the main impediment in the identification and deportation of illegal migrants." This time the party along with its allies won 75 seats in the 126-seat Assembly.

In Haryana, the BJP won just 40 out of the 90 seats in the Assembly after winning THE BEAT | 9

all 10 Lok Sabha seats in the 2019 Lok Sabha polls. The party had to tie up with Dushyant Chautala’s Jannayak Janata Party, its electoral rival, to form the government.

The caste and communal polarisation it relied on backfired as the lower castes and Muslims voted for the Congress and the JJP, which won 31 and 10 seats, respectively.

The BJP was outwitted in the crucial Maharashtra elections of 2019. The BJP-Shiv Sena alliance emerged as the victor, with the BJP winning 105 seats and the Shiv Sena another 56 seats in the 288-seat Assembly. Sharad Pawar’s Nationalist Congress Party won 54 seats and the Indian National Congress 44. But the BJP and the Shiv Sena fell out over a formula to rotate the chief ministership between them.

The alliance crumbled and Shiv Sena chief Uddhav Thackeray formed a unity government, Maha Vikas Agadhi, with the NCP and Congress to become chief minister.

The BJP had lost another major stronghold just months after Modi’s 2019 triumph.

In Jharkhand the BJP lost power to an alliance of the Jharkhand Mukti Morcha and Congress, winning just 25 seats in the 72seat house, and losing 12 seats it had won in 2014. In Andhra Pradesh the BJP drew a blank. In Odisha, it’s ally in the National Democratic Alliance (NDA), the Biju Janata

Dal won 113 seats in the 147-seat house, leaving the BJP with 23 seats as the junior partner.

In 2020, the BJP was humiliated in the Delhi Assembly elections, with the Aam Aadmi Party winning 62 seats in the 70seat Assembly and the BJP winning the remaining 8. The election was held against the backdrop of the nationwide agitation against the Citizen Amendment Act and the BJP made the issue a test of patriotism.

That too backfired.

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ihar was the one bright spot, where the NDA won a simple majority of 125 seats in the 243-seat Assembly. More significant, the BJP overtook it’s alliance partner, Nitesh Kumar’s Janata Dal United, to become the senior partner.

With its major strongholds of UP, Gujarat, and Uttarakhand going to the polls in 2022, the last major assembly elections before the crucial 2024 Lok Sabha election, the BJP’s strategy and performance will be keenly watched. The BJP is now infamous for its ‘win at any cost’ tactics, as we saw in Karnataka and Madhya Pradesh. But they don’t always work, as we saw in Rajasthan last year and West Bengal recently.

Now only time will tell if BJP will be able to retain the heartland.

SPECIAL REPORT

BJP overplays its hand The Trinamool Congress showed India how the BJP can be comprehensively defeated, says Abhisek Dutta

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est Bengal was governed for almost 33 years by the Communists before Mamata Banerjee’s Trinamool Congress (TMC) broke their hold. She’s now won a third consecutive turn to run the state, having staved off a ferocious campaign by the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) to break into the eastern citadel.

The state’s history has been replete with social and religious violence, mass migration, floods and cyclones, all of which have shaped its polity. But the Bharatiya Janata Party’s attempt to expand its empire in the East had taken Bengal’s politics into uncharted territory.

With the Left and the Congress reduced to a sideshow, it became a simple contest between the TMC and the BJP, which the TMC resoundingly won, 213 to 77 in the 294-seat Assembly.

The campaign has been marked by high drama, including a leak of TMC strategist Prashant Kishor’s conversation admitting to Modi’s powerful connect with the electorate, the Election Commission’s 24-hour ban on Mamata Banerjee and an accident that compelled her to campaign in a wheelchair.

Kishor accused the Election Commission of being ‘partial’ to the BJP, by spreading the election over 8 phases to allow prime minister Modi and home minister Amit Shah ample opportunity to extensively campaign; which they did despite a raging pandemic.

Mamata’s decision to contest from Nandigram was seen as a masterstroke to revive her firebrand image that she cultivated to such good effect when she drove the Tatas out of the state and restored land acquired for their ill-fated Nano project back to the original owners.

It was a gamble as she was taking on a THE BEAT | 10

popular Suvhendhu Das Adhikari, former TMC minister from Nandigram who had defected to the BJP. Adhikari beat her by just 1,956 votes.

But the BJP, having ridden the Modi wave in the 2019 Lok Sabha election to

parties have to conform to those.” In the end, however, it hardly mattered as most of them lost.

The BJP’s biggest challenge was its perception as a North Indian, Hindu-majoritarian party that Bengali intellectual

Mamata Banerjee: Bengal’s intrepid daughter | Credit: New Indian Express

win a record 18 out of 42 seats in the state, misjudged the mood of the electorate. As TMC spokesperson Niladri Chakraborty pointed out, “The Bidhan Sabha election is a different ball game from the Lok Sabha. It is impossible to win a vote in Bengal by empty speeches on bought media. People of Bengal know very well what our CM did for the state in the last 10 years and what Modi did in the last seven years with the country.”

The defection of several heavyweight TMC leaders to the BJP had boosted its prospects. But it also raised a question in the minds of the electorate about both the BJP’s lack of principle and its claim to represent “a real change” for the state.

BJP spokesperson Debjit Sarkar, sought to explain the party’s tactics saying, “Everyone is welcome to join the BJP. But it has its own philosophy, structure and system. Whoever is coming from other

society said has no place in the secular and spiritual imagination of Bengal. The BJP countered by tracing its lineage to Shyama Prasad Mukherjee, a Bengali politician and academic who was the founder of the Bharatiya Jana Sangh, the political parent of today’s BJP.

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t was one of the bloodiest electoral campaigns in the state’s history. BJP candidates were repeatedly attacked and the violence in Cooch Behar, where the police killed four civilians, marked a new low. Even after the results were announced, there have been violent incidents in several parts of the state, mostly where the BJP had won.

The BJP bet all it had, money, star power, law enforcement and electoral machinery to win the state. But it proved no match for the passion and energy of its most intrepid daughter, Mamata Banerjee.

SPECIAL REPORT

Mainstreaming Assam The BJP’s victory in Assam owes much to the grassroots skills of Himanta Biswa Sarma, it’s new chief minister, says Pooja Rajkumari

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way from mainland politics but ing with the party that supported them because there were 88 out of 126 seats always in the eye of the storm, on their turf. Although BPF supported available for them to contest, he said.

Assam has enjoyed a unique po- BJP in their policies in Assam, including Now all eyes are on the new chief minsition in Indian politics. The state’s long the CAA, they never wanted BJP to infil- ister, Himanta Biswa Sarma. Having been battle for its multi-ethnic, linguistic and trate Bodoland.” the right hand of Congress stalwart and cultural identity could have created a Yet the NDA coalition managed to se- longtime chief minister, the late Tarun roadmap for the rest of the country. cure a comfortable majority in the state Gogoi, for over a decade, and till a few But by re-electing the Bharatiya Janata with the BJP winning 60 seats, the Asom days ago to the BJP’s first chief minister Party (BJP) to a second consecutive term, Gana Parishad 9 and the UPPL bagging 6. Sarbananda Sonowal, he has finally got to even if the ruling alliance lost 11 seats to win The Congress won just 29 seats, its part- sit on the throne himself. His unanimous 75 in the 126-seat Assembly, Assam politics ners the Muslim All India United Demo- selection to the post was expected, espelooks to be turning increasingly mainstream. cratic Front 16 and the BPF just 4 seats. cially with his stellar performance as a In 2016, when health minister durthe BJP broke the ing the pandemic.

Congress’s 15-yearThe transition from long hold over Sonowal to Sarma Assam to form the was smoother than government, the expected, with the people of the state central party leaderhad high expectaship solidly behind tions. Yet, not much the move. changed. Numerowever, the ous regional parnew council ties sprang up in of ministers the wake of the Citannounced by Sarma izen Amendment did not include Act (CAA)-National Himanta Biswa Sarma on the campaign trail | Credit: NDTV Sonowal, so there’s Register of Citizens protests. While the BJP cleverly avoided Congress did not take its defeat lightly. some speculation he’ll be accommodated the subject altogether, the Congress and Bobbeeta Sharma, chairperson of the in the union government. The new cabiregional parties tried to discredit the gov- state Congress media wing blamed the net created history by appointing Ajanta ernment over the issue, but to little “disinterest” of the regional parties to Neog the first female finance minister of effect. come together and topple the BJP gov- the State. Neog, after being thrown The BJP’s decision to contest elections ernment. However, the regional parties out of Congress in 2020 for her "antiwithout their former ally Bodoland’s like Assam Jatiya Parishad (AJP) led by party" remarks, joined the SonowalPeople Front (BPF) was expected to hurt student-leader-turned-politician Lurin- led BJP. Another minister from the the BJP. But the party replaced the BPF jyoti Gogoi, and Raijor Dal, led by Akhil Congress, who defected to the BJP, with another regional party from the Gogoi who won a seat from jail, rejected Pijush Hazarika, has also been given a place in the cabinet as the Water ReBodoland region called the United Peo- the allegations as “baseless”. ple’s Party Liberal (UPPL). Subhrangshu RD spokesperson Devanga Saurabh sources Minister. The other nine minisSarmah, a scholar at Jawaharlal Nehru Gogoi said his party had not contested ters include new faces like Bimal Borah, University in Delhi, says that the BPF several seats to prevent a split of anti- Ranuj Pegu, Ashok Singhal, notable leaving the BJP alliance wasn’t unex- CAA votes. So, if the Congress had the Sahitya Akademi awardee UG Brahma pected. “BPF had always focused on stay- ability, it could have easily won a majority and veterans like Atul Bora.

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THE BEAT | 11

SPECIAL REPORT

Return of the Native The BJP alliance proved to be a millstone around the AIADMK’s neck and helped the DMK return to power in Tamil Nadu, says Sakshi Kaushal.

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or the first time in decades, in the absence of J Jayalalithaa and M Karunanidhi, elections to Tamil Nadu’s 235-seat assembly weren’t another Clash of the Titans. After them, the contenders for chief minister, MK Stalin of the DMK and Edappadi K. Palaniswami of the AIADMK, were pictures of modesty.

However, the caste calculus worked well for DMK-led alliance and helped it win two-thirds of the Assembly. Post-poll surveys have showed that support from Dalits, minorities and upper caste votes led to the party’s victory.

M.K. Stalin on the road to victory

nounced her retirement from politics. Superstar Rajnikanth’s sudden decision to abort his political career too brought the Palaniswami some cheer. But in a sense, MK Stalin’s win was inevitable; people wanted a change from the AIADMK’s 10-year rule.

“The problem with the BJP is that, after PM Modi came to power, he tried to impose Hindi on everyone in the country, which is not acceptable to most Tamilians. Hindi is not the national language of India,” says Hari Krishnan, an IAS aspirant in Tamil Nadu. He was also very sure

| Credit: News18

Despite the best efforts of the ‘national’ parties, the Congress and the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), to create an alternative narrative, Tamil Nadu has been ruled for half a century by the two Dravidian parties and their grievances. So, they contented themselves playing second fiddle to the sons of the soil. The AIADMK had given 20 seats to the BJP while the DMK had given its alliance partner Congress 25 seats, of which the two parties won 4 and 18 seats respectively.

Caste politics has helped AIADMK in the Coimbatore region, where its gamble of introducing 10.5% reservation for the Vanniyar caste, which has a strong presence in the west, paid off. DMK candidates were defeated in all the 10 assembly seats including Singanallur, THE BEAT | 12

where it had won in 2016. Although the AIADMK was able to perform well in western Tamil Nadu, Chennai, north, south and central regions were dominated by the DMK. Apart from these key contestants, the alphabet soup of smaller parties, mostly defined by caste, that didn’t join either alliances drew a blank: the Thevar AMMK (an AIADMK breakaway), Vaiko’s MDMK, actor Kamal Haasan’s new party MNM, and actor Vijaykanth’s DMDK. Palaniswami belongs to the Gounder community, a dominant land-owning caste.

“He belongs to a numerically significant caste, and thus other castes feel they are being left out,” said R Subash, political analyst in Chennai a few days before polling. “When Jayalalithaa led the AIADMK, the party didn’t have a caste identity. However, it is only after Palaniswami took over that the party got a caste identity, which is going to negatively affect them in this election,” he added. R Subash predictions have come true and the AIADMK was routed.

Palaniswami faced multiple challenges to his leadership, not least from the return of Jayalalithaa’s aide Sasikala, after a sojourn in a Bangalore jail in a disproportionate-assets case. After the BJP discreetly warned that her legal troubles were far from over, Shashikala an-

that DMK would win the election as there was a distinct anti-BJP sentiment in the state and AIADMK was allied with BJP.

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MK had the support of just a third of the scheduled castes and OBCs in the state, but it had support of the states’ Christians and Muslims minorities. This gave it a 3 to 4 percentage point edge over rivals AIADMK, Subash feels. Moreover, Tamil Nadu remains resistant to the communal polarization that has fueled the BJPs success elsewhere in the country. So Palaniswami’s alliance with the Hindu party of the ‘North’ has become a liability he couldn’t shed. But the AIADMK’s 65 seats in the House will ensure his leadership of the party and the opposition.

SPECIAL REPORT

Vijayan all the Way Strong leadership proved the decisive factor in the Kerala election, writes Arpitha Ajayakumar

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he Left Democratic Front (LDF) has broken the mould of Kerala politics by winning a consecutive term, eroding the ingrained anti-incumbency sentiment that has been the hallmark of the state’s electorate.

Since the 1970s, two coalitions have dominated Kerala politics. The Communist Party of India (Marxist)-led LDF and the Indian National Congress-led United Democratic Front (UDF) have taken regular turns to misgovern the state, forcing over half the working-age population to flee in search of work.

The present government of Pinarayi Vijayan has ruled since 2016. It won praise for tackling the Nipah virus efficiently and managing the aftermath of the floods that ravaged Kerala in 2018 and 2019.

But Covid tarnished that record.

After initial success in handling the pandemic, Kerala today has the highest rate of new infections among the five southern states and, in per capita terms, is one of the worst-affected in India.

Moreover, Capitan Pinarayi has had to navigate choppy waters, from allegations of involvement in gold smuggling and money laundering to accusations of favoritism. However, clearly all this was not enough to deter voters from giving him another spell in office.

The elections were equally about how the UDF failed to capitalise on Pinarayi’s stumbles. It was an opportunity to test Congress heir Rahul Gandhi’s political savvy and appeal to voters as much as his ability to pull together a winning coalition. Gandhi, who represents Kerala’s THE BEAT | 13

Wyanad constituency in the Lok Sabha, was perfectly positioned to lead but failed.

Die-hard Gandhi supporter and Kerala Pradesh Congress Committee (KPCC) executive member, Mambaram Divakaran put a brave face on it saying, “Rahul Gandhi is a great leader and even sitting in Delhi he takes care of the people in Wyanad.”

But the fact that the LDF increased its tally from 91 to 99 of the 140 seats in the assembly, winning a two-third majority, tells the true story. The UDF could seek some consolation that it won the remaining 41 seats, thus shutting the Bharatiya Janata Party out altogether.

The BJP sought to consolidate the Hindu vote over the Sabarimala Temple issue, after a court ordered lifting of a bar on the entry of women of child-bearing age into its precincts caused widespread anger. LDF lost some the Nair community’s votes over the issue but it more than made up by gains among lowercaste Ezhava voters.

A pre-poll survey conducted by Lokniti-CSDS showed that a clear 51% of respondents answered in the affirmative when asked whether the LDF should get another term, 27% said it shouldn’t and 22% were undecided. A similar poll in 2016 revealed that 49% did not want a second term for the UDF government while 42% supported continuance of the government.

Post-poll surveys clearly indicate wide public support for the development work done by the Pinarayi government. Ac-

cording to data compiled by The Hindu newspaper, 73% people polled were satisfied with the work done by the LDF government in comparison to just 59% people who said the same about the United Democratic Front.

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he government’s provision of free food kits during the lockdown was cited as a major positive and played a major role in winning public support. It also helped him emerge as the preferred candidate for chief minister in the poll with 36% favouring him over his predecessor Oommen Chandy, who had a 18% approval rate.

Kerala has never quite been able to live up to its promise. The state’s achievements in the education and healthcare sectors are cases in point, having failed to create either a modern economy or protect its people from the ravages of the Covid-19 pandemic. In this era of the strongman, Kerala’s voters probably think they’ll find salvation in the form of Pinarayi Vijayan.

POLITICS

The Price of Opportunism Riven with dissent against an ailing chief minister, BJP’s southern bastion of Karnataka is tottering, says Sindhu Nagaraj

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ince coming to power in 2019, the BJP government led by BS Yediyurappa has lurched from one crisis to another.

"They are trying to balance a lot of things at once,” says R Subhash, a political analyst in Bangalore. “And something will definitely fall apart. There are defectors on the one side, there are loyalists on the other, also there is a lot of dissent within the party itself.

All of this is coupled with scandals and controversies cropping up now and then, along with caste.”

Although it emerged as the single largest party in the 2018 Assembly elections, a post-poll alliance between the Congress and the Janata Dal (Secular) kept the BJP out of office. Using their well-tested carrot and stick tactics, the BJP weaned 19 ruling-coalition legislators to grab power.

But Yediyurappa found it hard to govern.

To create a cabinet, he had to walk a tightrope balancing the dissenters who broke the coalition government and BJP loyalists who have been in the party for decades. For reasons best known to itself, the BJP high command in New Delhi hung him out to dry.

So Yediyurappa ran a one-man government for 20 days before finally before he was allowed to appoint a cabinet. In December 2019, by-elections were held to seats vacated by the defectors and the BJP won 12 of them to secure a simple majority. But the rift in the party couldn’t be healed.

The massive floods that devastated north Karnataka in August 2019 would have tested any government that was in power.

But it also created unprecedented resentment against the party leadership in the region. Basangouda Patil Yatnal, a 57-year-old THE BEAT |14

Yatnal (L) has accused Yediyurappa (R) of nepotism

BJP MLA from Vijayapura city, has become a thorn in Yediyurappa’s side.

He has publicly criticised Yediyurappa’s autocratic style and nepotism. Last October, he predicted the fall of his government and, despite being reprimanded by the central leadership, has repeated that prediction regularly.

Yatnal has alleged that many defectors who were given plum portfolios in the cabinet reshuffle had blackmailed the chief minister Yediyurappa, who in power, to get what they want. Yediyurappa’s son Vijayendra, seen by many as the real power behind his ailing father, was alleged to have been involved in taking bribes from the defectors in exchange for plum portfolios.

Not long after this, another scandal erupted after an activist alleged that water resources and major irrigation minister Ramesh Jarkiholi sexually abused a woman with a promise of giving her a job. He immediately resigned as a minister saying that this is a conspiracy to bring him down. Caste plays a major role in Karnataka politics.

With Yediyurappa at the helm of affairs, one third of the cabinet is Lingayat dominated

- Credits: The News Minute | Bangalore Mirror

and that does not sit well with other dominant castes. A sub group, the Panchamasali Lingayat community, which accounts for 6570% of the Lingayats in the state, is demanding a larger share of the reservations.

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ecently, KS Eshwarappa, a senior minister accused Yediyurappa “authoritarian interference” in his department by sanctioning funds without his knowledge, creating a huge uproar in the party. As political analyst Subhash however points out, so long as BJP controls the federal government, the Karnataka party has little to worry about. They have money power, the federal law enforcement machinery and the services of the wily union home minister to count on.

But the Karnataka’s BJP’s real strength lies the fecklessness of its opposition. The state Congress is divided, the JDS is in a state of near collapse and, underlying it all, is a political culture driven by caste, sectarian and communal interests. So, for all the confusion, B. S. Yediyurappa, who has never completed a term in office before, might well hold his ground till the 2023 assembly elections.

POLITICS

Ruderless & Adrift The Congress Party has gone missing just when it’s most needed, says Ashutosh Acharya

Sonia and Rahul: India’s Grand Old Party has become increasing autocratic |

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he Indian National Congress has a long history of infighting and rifts within the party. But this time the crisis it faces is different. Till just 7 years ago Congress had no national rival, so ambitious politicians in its ranks had good reason to stay within. Now that the Bharatiya Janata Party has become India’s national party,holding 302 seats in the Lok Sabha and ruling 12 states on its own and 6 more with allies, Congress dissidents have more leverage. The defection of rising star Jyotiraditya Scindia to the BJP last year underscored the collapse of its leadership.

There were several occasions in the past year the Congress could have won back public confidence. From the antiCitizenship Act Amendment protests to the recent farmer agitation, the Congress has had plenty of opportunity to damage the BJP. But its leader Rahul Gandhi prefers to tweet about the issues rather than joining the protests on the ground.

Gandhi was in South Korea during the CAA protests and The Hindustan Times reported that party matriarch Sonia,“didTHE BEAT | 15

Credit: Kalinga Tv

n’t celebrate her birthday in 2020 due to the farmer protests”.

As historian Ramchandra Guha rightly asks, “Do the Gandhis think they are akin to royalty, so that the cancellation of one of their birthday parties becomes a mark of identification with their suffering subjects?”

The Covid-induced migrant crisis, precipitated by Modi’s hasty decision to lockdown India, would have been a feast for an opposition party anywhere else.

But Rahul and sister Priyanka Vadra’s tweets criticizing the government onlymade them seem as out of touch with the millions of displaced workers and their families trudging home as Modi himself.The recent Hathras rape and murder case was an opportunity to expose the collapse of governance in BJPruled Uttar Pradesh. Gandhi visited the victim’s family but he couldn’t make it resonate like the equally horrific Nirbhaya case did.

The BJP holds elections for every post, from top to bottom, every three years.

Theoretically, anyone can become BJP president. But elections to the Congress Working Committee (CWC), its top deci-

sion-making body, were held 27 years ago in 1994. It’s incongruous how India’s Grand Old Party, that led India to freedom from colonial rule and democracy, could have become internally so autocratic. A member of the Nehru-Gandhifamily has been president of the Congress for almost 51 years, with two short interregnums: Narasimha Rao was president for five years and Sitaram Kesri for two.

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JP presidents, by contrast, have never been related; the last three, Rajnath Singh, Amit Shah, and JP Nadda are from different states. Even after its massive victory in 2014 and in the state elections that followed, the BJP stuck with its internal election procedure. But the Congress decided to retain Sonia Gandhi as its president even after its rout in 2014. It was only in 2017 that she stepped down, handing over the reins to her son, Rahul.

Even though Congress performed well in state assembly elections under Rahul, the party faced its greatest defeat under him in the 2019 general elections, win-

ning just 52 seats. Worse, Rahul lost in the Gandhi heirloom of Amethi in the Hindi heartland, and if he hadn’t also contested from Wayanad in Kerala, he wouldn’t be even a member of the Parliament. But rather than analysing the reasons for the defeat, Rahul simply stepped down as the president and requested the CWC to ‘select’ a new leader. The CWC tried to persuade Rahul to continue as chief, but when that failed they nominated Sonia again as the president!

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n Vinay Sitapati’s Juggalbandi, there’s a story of how BJP’s now second in command Amit Shah had written a letter to then prime minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee sharply criticising India’s nuclear tests of 1998, saying it would force Pakistan to go nuclear and make a war to recapture Kashmir. He accused Vajpayee of a“greed for publicity”.

Vajpayee apparently invited Shah, then just a Gujarat MLA, to Delhi for discussing the matter.

By contrast, Congress spokesman Sanjay Jha was suspended in June 2020 for writing an opinion piece in the Times of India on how the Congress could reform itself. He was also suspended from the party on 14 July, 2020, minutes after he appeared in a debate on NDTV for “indulging in some anti-party activities.”

In his opinion piece, Jha had talked about Congress’ loss in the Delhi elections, about the need for elections to the CWC, the conflict between the Congress chief minister of Rajasthan Ashok Gehlot and his deputy Sachin Pilot. Writing about this episode in his recent book, The Great Unravelling, Jha says that “(If) raising red flags on serious fault lines within the party was an act of treachery, I am guilty of it.” He then goes on to say, “The Congress, legitimately, accuses the BJP of a lack of democratic culture, but encourages similar imperiousness internally.”

In August 2020, 23 senior leaders of the Congress including the then leader of the opposition in the Rajya Sabha, Ghulam Nabi Azad and several MPs, former union ministers and chief ministers, THE BEAT | 16

wrote a letter to Sonia saying that the Congress had not done an ‘honest introspection’ about the reasons for its 2019 election defeat. She responded later that month saying that she would step down as leader and suggested they find a new leader for the party. Other senior leaders like Gehlot and Salman Khurshid, sprung to her defence and argued that Mrs. Gandhi should stay on as the president.

“The fact that the Seemanchal voters voted for Mr. Owaisi in Bihar elections clearly shows that even the minority strongholds of Congress are not in our favour,” said Jha to The Beat, “We need a visible leader who should take the party forward, else we are giving a cakewalk to the BJP.” On being asked is there a chance of the Congress splitting, as it did in 1969, over internal dissent, he said, “No, there is no chance of division at all.

I believe the people who are demanding change are the real followers of the Congress ideology.”

The Radio Tapes which exposed the 2G scam of the UPA-2 government was one of the major reasons why the Congress lost popular support in the 2014 election. But very few people know about the Essar Tapes, which exposed underhand transactions and conversations during the NDA-1 era in the early 2000s.

The tapes are a record of corruption of many high-profile people, from a Supreme Court judge to top business magnates and union ministers.

This tape, released in 2016 by Supreme Court advocate Suren Uppal, contains alleged conversations of former and current top BJP leaders like Pramod Mahajan, Suresh Prabhu, Jaswant Singh and Piyush Goyal. This was an opportunity for Congress to expose the BJP and pay it back in its own coin. Corruption was the central plank of the BJP’s case against the Congress-led United Progressive Alliance in the 2014 election. But the Congress failed to utilize this against the BJP. The Congress had sought to blame Modi, then chief minister of Gujarat for the horrendous anti-Muslim riots in

2002. The BJP countered by accusing Congress of having orchestrated the 1984 anti-Sikh riots. In its weakness, the Congress has turned out to be the very definition of a loyal opposition.

In the CWC meeting of January 23, the leadership issue was the key focus. Sonia Gandhi formally resigned and the baton was once again passed to Rahul Gandhi, who has been the acting chief since August 2020. The polls for electing the Congress chief were then postponed till June. Azad was not happy with the decision. But as he’s retired from the Rajya Sabha and Mallikarjun Kharge, a Gandhi loyalist, is the new leader of opposition in the upper house, the Congress can be trusted to fall back to its default mode.

Ghulam Nabi Azad |Credit: The Indian Express

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ecent conversations in the All India Congress Committee have focused on it’s growing financial distress. A string of election defeats has left it in power in just a couple of important states, so it is difficult to finance itself. With absolutely no hope of winning even one of the 5 assembly elections currently underway, the Congress is broke and now a shadow of its previous self.

There’s growing resentment of Modi’s government’s capricious conduct of government, from demonetisation and the CAA, to the destitution caused to millions in the wake of the Covid lockdown and the farmer protests. India never needed the Congress as much as it does today. But the lights are out.

INTERNATIONAL

Plate Tectonics India’s pushback at China’s growing regional ambitions draws their disputed border into an emerging Great-Power conflict, writes Nishant Kumar

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ndia and China marked 2020 as the 70th anniversary of establishing diplomatic relations. They are the two major regional powers in Asia and in 2008, China became India's largest trading partner. But their border dispute has come to define their relationship.

The present crisis comes at a time of global churning caused by the Covid pandemic and three years after the Doklam standoff, which lasted for more than two months. The latest confrontation began when the Chinese sought to prevent Indian border patrolling of few customary points in Depsang, Hot Springs-GograKongkala, near the Galwan River, and around Pangong Tso Lake last April.

The clash in the Galwan Valley is the gravest military confrontation the two nuclear powers have faced in fifty years.

India in retaliation moved troops forward on its side of the line of actual control (LAC) to occupy south of PangongTso which has served as a bargaining chip in current border talks. But the border clashes point to a deeper distrust.

“The border crisis is because of Chinese perception of India’s closeness with US and US aggressively intervening in Asia like in South China Sea, Malabar Exercise and others,” says Abhishek ChoudTHE BEAT |17

hary, professor of international relations at Jawaharlal Nehru University, Delhi.

“India has always adopted a balancing strategy between China and the US even when both countries jointly worked against India’s interest, like in the 1971 India-Pakistan war. The perception of India-US working against the Chinese interest will further harm India-China relations and work as foundation for more ties with US.” As senior Chinese scholar Liu Zhongyi, at the Shanghai Institute of International Studies expressed it, “Presently, India and the United States have formed a de facto military alliance. Agreements like Logistics Exchange Memorandum of Agreement and Communications Compatibility and Security Agreement are laying the foundation for deeper military cooperation.”

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recent article published in the Chinese Communist Party’s mouthpiece Global Times however claimed that China was provoked by India’s decision to change the status of Jammu and Kashmir and Ladakh. China views India’s claims on Aksai Chin and Gilgit-Baltistan as an attack on its sovereignty and the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC), its flagship programme.

But, as Stanly Johnny writes in The Hindu, “China doesn’t see India as a swing state any more. It sees India as an ally-in-progress of the US. If India is what many in the West call the “counterweight” to China’s rise, Beijing’s definite message is that it is not deterred by the counterweight. This is a message not just to India, but to a host of China’s rivals that are teaming up and eager to recruit India to the club.” India’s membership of the Quad (an informal security allianc has confirmed China’s worst fears.

India in the recent years has been losing clout in its neighbourhood. As security analyst Brahma Chellaney writes in Project Syndicate, “By financing large projects including Hambantota Port in Sri Lanka, Chittagong Port in Bangladesh, Gwadar Port in Pakistan, Kyaukpyu Port in Myanmar and mega infrastructure in strategically located Maldives, China is making these nations financially dependent and extremely vulnerable to China’s unhindered strategic control.”

“Both deterrence and strategy have failed. By occupying territory on the Indian side, China put the onus of escalation on India if it wishes to restore the status quo,” observes Shiv Shankar Menon, former national security advisor and ambassador to China. “There are calls in India to review India’s one-China policy by developing relations further with Taiwan, to use the Tibet card and to agitate China’s Malacca dilemma.”

India fears a two-front war, provoked by cross-border terrorism from Pakistan and muscle flexing by China. India’s decision to strengthen it’s border infrastructure at the Darbuk-Shyok-Daulat Beg Oldie Road near the Karakoram Pass, where the three countries – India, China and Pakistan – rub up against each other, is the next challenge.

LAW

A Threat to Liberty As long as draconian laws persist on our statue books, no Indian can be safe from arbitrary arrest and detention, says Mahitha Owk

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t’s common knowledge that the Na- izenry, in contradistinction with an indif- presented before the nearest magistrate tional Security Act is routinely ferent or docile citizenry, is indisputably within 24 hours. abused. Between January 2018 and a sign of a healthy and vibrant democracy.”

Says lawyer Kode, “They don’t have the December 2020, the Allahabad High Sadly the opposite is true. According to jurisdiction to remand or try the suit in Court overturned 94 detentions in 120 National Crime Records Bureau data, Delhi. If the authorities who are suphabeas corpus petitions challenging pre- sedition cases increased from 47 in 2014 posed to protect the law are behaving in ventive detention under the NSA and re- to 70 in 2018. Assam and Jharkhand reg- such a way, then where are we heading? leased the detainees, an investigation of istered the most cases and many who Disha Ravi’s acts would not constitute police and court records conducted by protested against the Citizenship Amendment criminal conspiracy as she did not do an The Indian Express shows.

Act (CAA) were charged under the section. illegal act nor by illegal means hence this The recent arrest and release of enviSection 124A of the Indian Penal Code charge against her under 120B is not valid.” ronmental activist Disha Ravi in Banga- reads, “Whoever, by words, either spoken “According to Article 19 of the constilore for her support to tution, Disha Ravi’s fundaprotesting farmers illusmental right to express her trates the more common views in democratic India misuse of the penal code was injured. Article 19 lays to punish dissenting down the right to freedom of voices. She was charged speech and expression, right with criminal conspiracy, to assemble and form associsedition and promoting viations peacefully without arms,” olence. Granting her bail Kode adds. on February 23, the Delhi s YB Srivatsa, of the Court said a charge of conIndian Youth Conspiracy must be backed by gress sarcastically evidence and, to allege tweeted, “One Law for Disha sedition, there must be acRavi, one Law for Arnab tual violence or incitement Goswami who was caught to violence. sharing military secrets for Says Meedini Kode, a which he should be arrested Hyderabad based lawyer Disha Ravi was arrested for supporting farmers | Credit: Teen Vogue under OSA & NSA. Judiciary, Po“Disha Ravi shall not be liable for sedition as her actions did not trigger or written, or by signs, or by visible rep- lice & Media were least bothered. All Disha any violence. If her case is considered as resentation, or otherwise, brings or at- did was collate info on Farmer Protests in a sedition then whosoever expresses their tempts to bring into hatred or contempt, Word Doc! And she has been jailed.”

Much of India’s criminal law owes to its opinion against the government or does or excites or attempts to excite disaffecanything against the government should tion towards, the government estab- colonial history. But rather than revise be arrested.” lished by law in India, shall be punished the laws, successive governments in inAs the court observed, “The offence of with imprisonment which may extend to dependent India have expanded their sedition cannot be invoked to minister to three years, to which a fine may be reach as well as the power of the state to enforce them. The high court rulings in the wounded vanity of the governments. added; or, with fine.”

The difference of opinion, disagreement, The manner of Ravi’s arrest was no less Uttar Pradesh and Delhi have clearly divergence, dissent, or for that matter, arbitrary. She was arrested without a pointed to the danger these laws pose to even disapprobation, are recognised le- transit remand order from the Bengaluru citizen and society alike, but as long as gitimate tools to infuse objectivity in police. Article 22(2) of the Constitution they remain on the statute books, no state policies. An aware and assertive cit- says that a person arrested should be Indian can be safe.

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ENVIRONMENT

Emptying the Oceans Overfishing is driving multiple species to extinction and threatens the livelihoods of millions, writes Nidhi Kajaria

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ritish filmmaker Ali Tabrizi's latest documentary Seaspiracy has been criticised for dissing sustainable fishing, quoting outdated statistics and using out-of-context interviews.

But he got one thing right: Overfishing is the single biggest threat to marine life.

The global catch has increased from 18 million tonnes per year in 1950 to 100 million tonnes per year now. This steady rise in fish catches has left many species on the edge of extinction. India, the world's third-largest fish producer, is a significant contributor to this loss.

The reasons for overfishing go far beyond just growing demand. The way we fish and our pattern of fish consumption are incredibly wasteful. Of more than 100 varieties of edible fish caught by fisheries in India, we consume only 15 to 20 of them. “There is overfishing in the country because we are consuming only 20% of what's produced,” says Divya Karnad, a marine wildlife researcher and professor at Ashoka University, Sonepat. “The rest is either thrown away or sold at bargain prices,” she adds.

The markets of tier-1 cities, like Bangalore, have high demand for a few varieties, including pomfret, sardine and mackerel. According to Deccan Herald, the harvest of sardine and mackerel in

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Karnataka fell by 59% and 29% respectively in 2017-18 from the previous year.

In 2019, landings of the Indian mackerel further declined by 43%.

The techniques and equipment used to catch fish add to the problem. Stake nets, with small mesh sizes, when fixed between wooden frames underwater, trap all the fish, including juveniles of less than two grams, that are caught in the ebb tide. Most of the large fish are wiped out even before they can reproduce. The fisheries department has not issued licenses for fixed nets since the 1980s. Yet their use continues, widely and illegally.

Coastal states in India depend heavily on inland and marine fisheries for employment and revenue. According to the State Economic Review of 2018, fisheries and aquaculture contribute 9.2 per cent to the Gross Value Added from the primary sector. The inland fishing sector employs 2.38 lakh people, and the marine sector provides work to another 7.96 lakh. But many of these are involved in illegal and indiscriminate fishing.

Moreover, the overproduction of fish in the country goes unchecked because the government exempts fisheries from paying taxes on trawlers, fuel and other equipment.

Fish is a primary source of protein for one in every five persons across the

world. Consequently, curbing fish consumption will create huge nutritional problems, especially in poorer countries.

Karnad is the co-founder of In Season Fish, an initiative that makes people aware of the diversity of edible Indian fish. “Creating awareness about the diversity of fish available in a tropical country like India and asking people not to eat the same variety of fish throughout the year is the only solution left,” she suggests. This will help in reducing the excessive fishing of popular fish varieties.

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n 2019, the central government created the department of fisheries to promote strategies aimed at sustainable development of fisheries and aquaculture in both inland and marine waters.

At the same time, the government also announced the Pradhan Mantri Matsya Sampada Yojana (PMMSY) Scheme in its Atmanirbhar Bharat package, which aims to increase our current fish production from 13.4 million tonnes to 20 million tonnes by 2022-23.

With the looming threat that overfishing poses to our marine ecosystems, striking a balance between fish production and consumption, and looking for sustainable alternatives to commercial fishing is the need of the hour.

HEALTH

Art of the Journal Keeping a written or visual record of one’s innermost thoughts and feeling can be therapeutic, says Queeneerich Kharmawlong

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edical research shows that maintaining a journal or a diary of one's feelings and moods, the ups and downs in the course of a day and what might have caused them, can help a person struggling with stress, depression or anxiety. A record helps a person keep track of their reactions to situations and enables the professional treating them to discern patterns in their behaviour.

Neha Gori, pursuing her Masters in psychology, began journaling a year ago when she needed an outlet to express her feelings. “I think it’s a great way to cope with mental stress and manage your emotions in general. Flipping through old pages gives you insight, and you realise that bad times pass, and nothing is constant,” she says.

A therapeutic journal that records our feelings, sentiments, and memories is different from keeping a diary, which simply

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logs everyday activities. Journaling is insightful writing that helps people analyse their thoughts and feelings and helps us to focus on problems and fears and to maintain mental and emotional well-being.

“When we confront our fears and become more self-aware, we can communicate more effectively,” says Ridhi Thaker, a clinical psychologist, at Mansi Therapy.

She explains that writing down our thoughts connects us with our previously inhibited feelings and helps to manage anxiety, cope with challenges and fears.

“It cannot be a substitute for a psychiatrist, but it can be used as an alternative to other types of psychotherapy. It is fascinating how we can begin to recognise our negative self-talk, which is often automatic. It helps explain our encounters with anxiety and depression,” Thaker adds.

Journaling has no structure. Be it drawing, sketching, or writing, it can run freely. One can choose to share it with

others or keep it private. It does not have to be just in the form of words; it can be a poem, a song, images, or a story.

Journaling helps to track the mood of a person in the course of a day. She can reread what she wrote and think about and record her response to those words. In the process, she can gain insights into harmful, irrational or negative tendencies in her thought patterns. Recognising these patterns is the real value of journaling and can aid therapy.

Journaling should not turn the individual into a passive observer. One should live, act and think freely and not dwell on how one might record life’s experiences.

So, useful as it may be, it’s essential to moderate the time spent in journaling.

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n art journaling, the journal focuses more on graphic design than on words. Words may also be transformed into abstract representations.

One does not need to be an artist to do this, but it is beneficial to tap your artistic side.

A person can also make their journal by sound, and one does not need to be a professional to do it. Recording the art product, done in the form of a journal, is vital. It can be used as a reference to reflect onthe mental state.

“I have been journaling to improve my mental health and for the artistic aspect of it,” says Gori. Bottling up feelings can create a mental strain. Art journaling helps her release the tension. “You do not have to be artistically inclined to journal; anyone can do it however they like,” she says. Gori has shared her artwork through social media, creating a safe space for her to express herself. Journaling has been very therapeutic, she says, and it also gives her a sense of achievement on every page she finished.

SPORTS

Problems of Plenty Indian cricket has more talent than it can accommodate in its playing elevens. The challenge is to keep a deep bench motivated, writes Viransh Shah

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ith the bursting of Indian Premier League (IPL) 2021’s ‘biosafety bubble’ and the suspension of the tournament, the fate of the International Cricket Council (ICC) Men’s T20 World Cup slated to be played in India in October-November hangs in balance.

The second wave of Covid-19 that is devastating the country is likely to peak

by July, say leading epidemiologists, but that might not be enough to convince foreign teams to play in India.

The Board for Control of Cricket in India, the game’s governing body, has made a back-up plan to host the 16-team event in the United Arab Emirates and the decision on the venue will be taken by the ICC during its June meeting.

Nonetheless, Team India, who haven’t won since beating arch-rivals Pakistan in the inaugural T20 World Cup in 2007, will still be favorites to lift the cup. If the disastrous halt to IPL 14 and the problem of evacuating foreign players wasn’t THE BEAT | 21

problem enough, the Sunil Joshi-led selection panel now faces the unenviable task of picking a squad for the global event.

“You’d have never imagined the number of players that would’ve played for India six months ago. This has been the most positive thing to come out of the recent bubble, considering India had to travel with enlarged squads,” Indian head coach Ravi Shastri told The Times of India.

“Normally we would travel with 17-18 cricketers. But because of the quarantine laws, we had to go with 25-30 or more cricketers. So, as a result, you had to dig deep and pick your best,” he added.

In the past few months India has bolstered its bench-strength to the extent that even their ‘B’ team can rattle the opposition with ease. India’s success Down Under and at home against England, even when key players have been rested, is evidence that India has plenty of options at their disposal.

A total of 38 players played in the Aus-

tralia and England series across the three formats, many of them newly capped.

Their performance against the two strongest teams in the world would give Indian selectors tremendous confidence in the three World Cups lined-up in three successive years.

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ishabh Pant, who regained his form while scripting India’s successful run-chase at the Gabba in Brisbane, managed to cement his place back in the limited overs team after losing it to KL Rahul in February 2020 owing to lack of consistency and poor form.

T Natarajan became the first Indian to make his debut across all three formats in Australia, despite being included as just a net bowler. Natarajan’s inclusion fills the void of a potent left-arm seamer that India faced after Zaheer Khan and Irfan Pathan retired.

The Tamil Nadu pacer impressed with his variations and pace and came to

SPORTS India’s rescue by halting Australian sensation Marnus Labuschagne and Matthew Wade’s 113-run-stand that threatened to post an impossible ask for India. Natarajan dismissed both of them in successive deliveries.

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ndia was already missing the services of veteran seamer Ishant Sharma, who sustained a side strain in the 2020 IPL that ruled him out of both the Test series. To make matters worse, at various points in the Tests, injuries claimed all their frontline bowlers too.

Mohammed Shami fractured his right forearm in the Adelaide Test, Umesh Yadav left the field in the middle of the Melbourne Test following a calf-muscle injury, Jasprit Bumrah suffered an abdominal strain at Sydney and off-spinner Ravichandran Ashwin batted with a back strain to seal a draw for India.

It was in these circumstances that India found salvation in the form of Mohammed Siraj. Despite receiving news of his father’s demise, Siraj lead the Indian bowling unit in the decisive Gabba Test.

Siraj had only played two matches prior to that game, having made his debut in the Adelaide Test.

Watching him bowl on that pitch, it never looked like Siraj lacked experience.

With unsuspected intent and guile, he deceived the Aussies in the second innings to earn his maiden five-wicket haul with the figures of 5/73.

The England series unearthed another talent in the form of Axar Patel. The Anand-born, left-arm orthodox spinner had made his entry into the limited overs set-up back in 2014, but had to wait for his time to don whites for India.

An injury that Ravindra Jadeja suffered opened up a slot for a spinner in the Test side. After India collapsed against England in the first game at Chennai with a massive defeat of 227 runs, Axar Patel replaced Shahbaz Nadeem in the second Test. And rest is the history.

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age of 10.59. Along with fellow spinner Ashwin, he destroyed the opposition and wrapped up the 3rd Test at Ahmedabad Test within two days. Patel ended the game with 11/70, his career-best performance.

India’s domestic tournaments like the Vijay Hazare Trophy, Ranji Trophy and Syed Mushtaq Ali Trophy have made it possible for uncapped players to break into the IPL auctions. And the IPL, in turn, has become a platform for young boys to showcase their talent and vie for a place in the national team.

“You’d have never imagined the number of players that would’ve played for India six months ago.

This has been the most positive thing to come out of the recent bubble, considering India had to travel with enlarged squads” - Ravi Shastri Mumbai Indians’ duo of Suryakumar Yadav and Ishan Kishan are the latest examples of consistently high performances that opened the door to the Indian team. Both players notched half-centuries in their debut innings against England in the five-match T20I series.

Indian batting maestro Sachin Tendulkar credits the IPL for the success and development of the current Indian team and its bench strength, saying “Both Surya and Ishan are ready to play, because IPL’s introduction has helped the players.”

Today, there are at least three contenders for every single slot in the playing XI. For team management it represents a dual challenge: how to find the best combination of players for each format and for each game as well as how to keep those not selected motivated and

match fit.

For instance, Shikhar Dhawan and KL Rahul will be in contention for the opening slot to pair with Rohit Sharma at the top. Both batsmen have been in tremendous form in IPL 14, with Rahul enjoying a higher strike rate.

If the selectors prefer to go with the left-right combination of Rohit-Dhawan, Rahul’s case doesn’t end there, he will also have to contend against Rishabh Pant and Ishan Kishan for the wicket keeper-batsman’s place.

Yuzvendra Chahal is also under pressure for his dip in form. The leg-spinner has failed to live up to his early promise.

Chahal faces a stiff competition from Mumbai Indians’ young bowler Rahul Chahar, especially after his performance in the truncated IPL 14.

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hahar stepped up against England when India needed someone for a breakthrough. He sent back Dawid Malan and the destructive Jonny Bairstow to restore parity in the fourth T20I. India went on to win the game to survive the series at 2-2.

Suryakumar will feel the pressure when he sees himself against fellow Mumbaikar and Delhi Capitals skipper Shreyas Iyer in for a spot in the middle order. The pace battery is also under scrutiny when even India’s top bowler Jasprit Bumrah faces a challenge from Natarajan if he doesn’t perform well in the death overs.

Hardik Pandya, Jadeja, Krunal Pandya, Washington Sundar and Shardul Thakur will compete for the all-rounders’ places in the team. Ideally, India should play at least three all-rounders at 6, 7 & 8. This will allow management to select specialist bowlers and batsman for different pitches.

The stars from the IPL like Devdutt Padikkal, Yashasvi Jaiswal, Shahrukh Khan, Ravi Bishnoi and Mohammed Azharudeen could be the next big thing in Indian cricket. With so much talent on tap, captain Virat Kohli, Ravi Shastri and Sunil Joshi are truly spoilt for choice.

ART

Cyber Wolves Digital artists bear the brunt of the backlash from the Internet’s moral police, says Antara Gupta

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ew Delhi based digital artist, Sharanya, 17, was subjected to hate messages and threats nearly every day for three months. It was in retaliation for the digital art she posted on her page ‘paint and brush symphonies’ in July 2020, where she drew comparisons between Hindu goddesses and Indian woman. She pointed to a situation where, on one hand, a woman is worshipped while, on the other, a woman has to face the extreme privations of living in a patriarchal society.

“The intention behind it was to expose the hypocrisy of our society,” Sharanya explains. “Ironically, we worship so many female deities but allow the women of our country to be raped, killed, abused and trafficked.”

But her views didn’t sit well with some people who said her posts hurt their religious sentiments. “She could have shown women being mistreated in Islam as well but she chose to depict Goddess Durga. It is clear she is Hindu phobic,” argues Ashish Ballabh Pachori. He filed a cyber police complaint against her despite her taking the post down.

Despite apologizing repeatedly, neither did Pachori withdraw the police complaint withdrawn nor did the backlash subside. “I was traumatized and couldn’t eat or sleep,” recalls Sharanya. Eventually, she decided to file a police complaint against her tormentors. “The harassment drove me to finally speak up. I’m glad that I filed the complaint,” she says. Subsequently the cyber police dismissed the complaint filed against her, saying it was “baseless”.

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In another instance, digital artist Shreya (name changed on request) who has a page called ‘Smish designs’ faced a similar trauma. She was called names and was on the receiving end of death threats because of her feminist and social political art works. “A first information report was filed against me,” she says.

“Apparently my work hurt people’s religious sentiments. I was against some of

started getting really communal on those posts,” she says.

Both these artists refused to be cowed down by trolls but have chosen to deal with online harassment in their own way.

As Sharanya says, “A digital platform is a boon and curse at the same time. Yes, it attracts viewers, but at the same time I now know that my work will not resonate well with everyone. I have started calling people out if they bully me because of what I post. I have to stand strong.”

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the government policies so I was also branded as an anti nationalist.”

Her use of the tricolour of the Indian flag to convey her message seemed to inflame passions and provoked criticism and threat messages. “I wanted to quit. It wasn’t easy for me to continue. People

hreya however just reports and blocks comments and messages if she finds them offensive. “I don’t want to waste my energy and peace of mind for the people who invest their time in typing such comments,” she says. “I have a decent follower base. I am going to keep working on my art to depict socio-political events and feminism.

I am never going to let these comments affect me the way it used to.”

Says Kirti Wason, a social media expert and consultant in New Delhi, “A digital platform is all about the game of reach.

Digital art, unlike texts or tweets, is not as literal. Multiple meanings and intentions can be drawn out of it. The speed and reach of social media is undeniable. Other artists too face backlash for their work but social media is a platform where news doesn’t die easily. And that becomes the reason why these digital artists remain more vulnerable to such instances.” Digital harassment comes with the territory.

THEATRE

The Common Touch For Kuljeet Singh theatre is the most immediate way to communicate with the widest range of people, writes Kivleen Sahni

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hen reporter Pheroze L. Vincent interviewed him in 2013, Kuljeet Singh said the reason he can juggle the roles of teacher, theatrical entrepreneur and travelling performer is because he doesn’t sleep.

Vincent called him “The man who doesn’t sleep” in an article published for The Hindu. The name stuck.

Kuljeet Sir was the reason I fell in love with literature. He introduced me to the world of theatre and aesthetics, of rasa and Natya Shastra, of Baba Bulleh Shah, and Faiz Ahmed Faiz. In my third year at Khalsa College, where he had also studied, he quit teaching to expand Atelier theatre, a venture he started in 2004. I felt bad for the generations of students who would never experience his classes.

But years later, I had the opportunity to see two of Atelier’s performances in Delhi’s Akshara Theatre and it dawned on me what the world had gained instead.

Coming from a business background from Punjab, Singh was introduced to theatre at Delhi’s Khalsa College. At Ankur, the college’s theatre society, he recalls feeling the energy that told him that the stage was the place to be. “Theatre exists in getting immediate responses. You perform and the audience takes a deep breath, or claps, or laughs, there is some reaction which you are instantly getting.

This is the reason why a person like me does theatre,” he says.

Singh is not static, nor are his stories.

When he is doing Project Antigone, it is not Sophocles’ Antigone that he wants to look at. He is looking for today’s Antigone. “For me, she is not only a character, but she is also a sensibility and when you come across sensibility you cut across time and space. My Antigone lives in Delhi and defies tyranny,” he says. In his version, Crayon remarks, “Aacha THE BEAT | 24

Samay Aa Gaya Hai,” and the audience bursts into applause.

His vision of theatre also challenges everything one knows about the performing arts. He does not need high-end light or sound equipment to tell his stories. “I want to create a piece that can be performed on a stage, but also in people’s drawing rooms or balconies, or even in the streets.”

Atelier’s last production before the pandemic was Dastaan-e-Guru Nanak that combined the philosophical teachings of Guru Nanak and the tradition of dastaan-goi. Singh performed this piece in multiple places, the National Museum, a community centre in Rajouri Garden, the drawing-room of a person who managed to get together an audience of 30, and a roadside pandal in Tilak Nagar.

Singh laughs off the fear of doomsayers who think theatre is dying. “They have been saying this since the 1940s. It is not dead yet.” And the reason, he says, is the

immediacy which only theatre can provide. Now Singh wants to take theatre outside the confines of Delhi’s Mandi House. “Who says Mandi House has to be the centre? Yes, it is now. But let’s break that. Art should thrive with people, with them,” he says.

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ext year, he hopes to stage his first piece for the New Delhi fringe project in small auditoriums and non-conventional art spaces.

“Delhi has a population of more than 2 crore people, and if by travelling you are able to create even a 10% audience, that is more than 20 lakh people. Theatre has to reach out to people; it won’t work the other way around.”

With inspired performers like Kuljeet Singh around, the power of theatre will be hard to diminish. And maybe one day when a friend is staging Singh’s play in his backyard, and you post something about it on social media, maybe I’ll respond, “Hey, that’s my professor!”

FILM REVIEW

Dazed and Confused ‘I Care a Lot’ ironically doesn’t apply to the makers of this Netflix thriller, says Aayushi Parekh

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t’s one thing to cherry pick progressive themes and quite another to integrate them into a coherent storyline that can sustain a two-hour film. In a bid to haphazardly combine the multiple themes of feral capitalism, organised crime, feminism and sexuality, J Blakeson’s dark comedy I Care a Lot crumbles under its own weight.

Written and directed by Blakeson, the film hit India’s Netflix platform in 2021 with tremendous expectations riding on its back.

The film begins on a high note, establishing the character of Marla Grayson as a wily ‘entrepreneur’ who, extremely easily, dupes a judge into giving her custody of an old woman after having her declared “unable to care for herself”. Marla’s modus operandi is to have her ‘charges’ then placed in an assisted-living facility, where they are drugged and cut off from their families, allowing her to plunder their assets.

The trial in the first scene is almost effortless.

Moments later, the old woman’s son walks up to

Rosamund Pike as Marla Grayson (R) escorts |

Credit: Film Independent

And why not? You have Rosamund Pike, in her iconic look that reminds you of her character, Amy Dunne in Gone Girl. Then there’s Peter Dinklage of Game of Thrones fame, playing a thug driven by deep emotion.

The cat and mouse game between the two protagonists makes up the bulk of the film and provides what tension the film can claim. Except that it fails to arouse any emotion in the viewer.

The film speaks about the perils of guardianship, broken health and legal systems, feminism, sexism and lesbian relationships. If the plotline weren’t so casually constructed, the multitude of themes that it aims to hit may have been praiseworthy. Sadly, it’s not.

her outside court and spits on her face. To which Grayson’s replies he’s only hurt because a woman beathiminalegalcase.Marlaisanenigma;afeisty, ambitious, manipulative woman born and stuck in a flawed system. As someone wanting to watch an anti-hero shine through, her faux feminism seems like a cheap shot and takes away from the point of the film.

The introduction to the villain, Roman Lunyov, is also disappointing in many ways. Peter Dinklage is a seasoned actor who has proved his worthmanytimes.However,inthisfilm,asaruthless gangster, he’s an oddly spiky and childish character who just doesn’t seem to ring true. For a film that describes itself as darkly comic, there’s poor execution on both ends.

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The only saving graces of this film are its cinematography, some flawless transitions and decent editing, and most of all, a gripping background score. Heavy on action scenes, the soundtrack by Marc Canham keeps you hooked, even as the characters become predictably ugly, no matter how detached you get from them and the film itself.

With such a promising cast, the film had all the possibilities of standout performances, but poor character development and writing

backfires on this production. All that comes to mind is a monologue by Marla Grayson where she says, “I don’t lose, I won’t lose.”

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ike might have won the Golden Globes’ best actress award for her role as Marla but she doesn’t really leave as great a mark as her performance in 2014 as Amy Dunne, a character with similar traits to Grayson.

The trailer promised a far better story than what the film delivered. What was expected to be a great Netflix thriller turned out to be just another visually and audibly well-produced movie for television, to be watched and then forgotten.

PAINTING

Learning from Afar The lockdowns have given online-art education a huge boost but is it sustainable, asks Kivleen Kaur Sahni

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he founders of Art Rickshaw found themselves in a fix with the lockdown. How would they sustain themselves and remain accessible? But a few months in, the Kolkata’s art school’s online workshops are a hit in ways their offline counterparts only hoped to be. Devanshi Rungta, recalls the amazing response they received on their free, live sessions on Instagram and their Zoom classes.

Art became people’s confidante during the Coronavirus pandemic. People found themselves with a dearth of work and an abundance of time. Demand for online art workshops skyrocketed as those who longed to do something worthwhile waited for the invisible enemy to pass.

Some 2,000 km away, at the Art Canvas Design Studio in Baroda, the shift to online came as a blessing in disguise. “There is a significant difference between people’s engagement with technology before and after the lockdown. I wouldn’t have thought of going online if not for the pandemic as it would have been a much tougher process, technically,” says Aakansha Gore, who runs the studio along with her mother.

Over the past few months, her clientele has doubled. So much so, that even with the THE BEAT | 26

opening of her offline studios in January, her online clients are urging her to not to stop the classes. But she’s not sure. She wonders if online art workshops have reached a saturation point.

“There is a limitation to teaching art online.

It is very important for a person who is teaching art to see what the other person is doing in order to correct their errors. Based on my five years of teaching art, I know that people don’t understand (technique) until and unless you hold their hand and show them the right way to do a particular thing,” she explains.

Nidhi Agarwal, the founder of Book A Workshop, a micro-learning edutainment platform, is already seeing their numbers drop. “When we initially started, the art workshops were doing the best. But later workshops around film-making and marketing took over. I have seen a decline in the number of people attending art workshops.

Everything is opening up and people are now moving on to learn more about how they can build a better future or get a better job.”

Professor YS Alone of the School of Arts and Aesthetics, Jawaharlal Nehru University, Delhi says that for most people enrolling in an online art course during the pandemic, it

was a means to kill time. For him, practicing art in a digital environment is a meaningless exercise.

“Art training requires a practical process, which is only possible in a physical mode and not in an online environment. In a digital model, a teacher can only demonstrate a concept, but unless it is done practically, it will not be possible for the student to gain. Students who wish to engage with the art formally will engage in a serious, professional course and those who want to do it as a time pass activity, will opt for the digital,” he says.

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rtville, an art-training centre in Bangalore, conducts an art-facilitator programme for teachers. Roshan George, one of the facilitators, envisions an atmosphere where online and offline will coexist.

“If you want to teach students the skill of oil painting or sculpture, then yes it will be a challenge online,” she says. “But art is not just skill development. You also need to develop creative thinking ability, the art of visualization and observation and these are things that a student can learn online. Till things are not back to normal, and even after that, a mix of online and offline would be ideal.”

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Credit: Padmini Dhruvraj