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As liberal democracies, India and Australia can encourage free trade and help safeguard the Indo-Pacific, writes Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull India is the world’s most populous democracy and will, by 2030, be the most populous country, overtaking China. And it is young — there are more Indian 10-year-olds than there are Australians. With more than a dozen distinct languages, scripts and religions, India is multiculturalism on the grandest scale; unlike China, its only rival for scale, it had never existed as a single nation prior to its independence in 1947. And to sustain a vibrant modern democracy, surely India is one of the greatest political achievements of our times. Once you appreciate its size, you see its potential. Think of all those 10-year-olds who will one day be voting in India’s elections and who will also, one day, belong to India’s middle class, the engine of its booming economy. Put all that together and it’s easy to understand why India will p...

By pointing to gradual rate increases, the Fed reassures markets and policymakers The U.S. Federal Reserve has resumed normal monetary service by raising interest rates for the second time in three months. The Fed’s decision on Wednesday reflects its confidence in the continuing expansion and signals that its efforts to reflate the world’s largest economy are largely on track — with overall inflation seen to be stabilising around its longer-run target of 2% over the next couple of years. Significantly, Chair Janet Yellen stressed that policymakers expect the strengthening economy would warrant “gradual increases” in the benchmark federal funds rate to ensure that the monetary policy stance remains accommodative of growth, even as price stability is ensured. This emphasis on ‘gradual’ provides a degree of policy predictability that markets, for now, can broadly factor in two more rate increases of one quarter of a percentage point each for the rest of 2017 — especially when coupled w...

That police is a State subject complicates matters, but self-correction within the force is essential “Police reforms are going on and on. Nobody listens to our orders.” This is how a Supreme Court bench headed by Chief Justice J.S. Khehar reacted last week, while declining the plea of a lawyer demanding immediate action to usher in major police reforms in the country. The lawyer had earlier been permitted to implead himself in a pending PIL on the subject. It is sad that the highest court of the land is so helpless in the matter. Its anguish, however desperate and well-meaning it may have been, is understandable. It epitomises the pathetic state of affairs in public administration in the country, and it can only embolden our political heavyweights to brazenly halt the few contemplated reforms. While the National Police Commission (1977-79), set up by the Janata government that displaced the Congress government led by Indira Gandhi, kick-started reforms, the credit for keeping t...

Pakistan’s Defence Minister Khawaja Muhammad Asif, for all practical purposes, recently threatened Israel with a retaliatory nuclear attack, in response to a fake news report that the Israelis had said they would use nuclear weapons against Pakistan if it sent ground troops to Syria. Earlier, a man fired an assault rifle in a pizzeria in Washington, D.C. after reading online that it was involved in a child trafficking ring linked to Hillary Clinton. In India, a fake story said there was a GPS tracking chip embedded in the new Rs.2,000 note. Fake news — the deliberate creation of factually incorrect content to mislead people for some gain — is becoming an increasingly serious problem. And tackling it is imperative in a perpetually wired and click-happy world. Everyone with an Internet connection and a social media presence is now a content generator. Access to the web at all times on mobile platforms has raised expectations for real-time news and constant entertainment, and competition...

The State Bank of India’s decision to cut its marginal cost of funds based lending rate (MCLR) by 90 basis points is a timely nudge to borrowers, especially given the sharp slowdown in credit growth in the current fiscal year. The timing of the cut is not surprising, given that the country’s largest commercial lender is awash with funds held in current and savings account (CASA) deposits following the Centre’s decision to withdraw high-value banknotes and impose withdrawal curbs on account-holders. With demand across sectors having taken a knock in the wake of the resultant cash crunch, the SBI’s decision to reduce borrowing costs is likely to spur some credit-fuelled buying including in sectors such as automobiles. Latest data from the Reserve Bank of India show that growth in bank credit decelerated to 1.2 per cent in the April 1-December 9, 2016 period, compared with the 6.2 per cent pace witnessed in the comparable period in 2015. Deposit growth, on the other hand, almost doubled ...

The Supreme Court has grappled with the question whether a provision in electoral law that makes it a corrupt practice to use religion, race, caste or language as a ground for canvassing votes in an election is a bar limited to the groups to which candidates or their rivals belong, or whether it is a general prohibition on sectarian appeals. Section 123(3) of the Representation of the People Act, 1951, as amended in 1961, gave rise to this doubt. By a four-three majority, a seven-member Bench has ruled that it is a general prohibition on the use of religion or any other communal or sectarian value in the electoral arena. The minority favoured limiting the ambit of the sub-section to cover only candidates who sought votes on such grounds, or the rivals they wanted the voters not to back on similar grounds. That secularism is the bedrock of our democracy is undisputed. That the electoral process ought not to permit appeals to the electorate on these narrow grounds is equally beyond doub...

The daring escape of six prisoners, including the self-styled commander of a Khalistani militant group, from the Nabha Jail in Punjab is another wake-up call for the security establishment. This is the second major jailbreakin the country in the space of weeks involving high-profile prisoners jailed on terrorism charges. Both were well planned and executed. While the jailbreak by members of the Students’ Islamic Movement of India (SIMI) from the Bhopal Central Prison last month was planned inside and executed largely by the prisoners on their own, the incident in Nabha was aided by a group of armed men from outside wearing police uniforms. Shortly after the Bhopal jailbreak, all those who had escaped were gunned down in an alleged encounter. And a day after the Punjab incident, Khalistan Liberation Front chief Harminder Mintoo was nabbed in Delhi, while the alleged mastermind, Parminder Singh, was arrested in Shamli district in western Uttar Pradesh. Apart from Mintoo, the five others...

The clear mandate for the Grand Alliance of the Janata Dal (United), the Rashtriya Janata Dal and the Congress in Bihar is not only a vote for social welfare and economic development, but also a vote against all forms of divisive politics of communal hate and religious intolerance. Between the  Lok Sabha election of 2014  and this year’s Assembly election, politics in Bihar saw unprecedented churning, bringing together parties of different ideologies and social bases in the face of a rising tide of aggressive majoritarianism stirred up by the Bharatiya Janata Party. Indeed, for the BJP, its very success in last year’s Lok Sabha election in Bihar proved to be its undoing. As fringe elements allied to the party and within the Sangh Parivar misinterpreted the 2014 verdict as public endorsement of their hidden agenda, opposition parties realised that they stood no chance if they did not jointly resist this common threat. As a matter of fact, the seeds of the BJP’s defeat in Bi...

For a scheme meant to be used by the poorest of the poor in their leanest times, it is unconscionable that the government owes Rs.3,200 crore to beneficiaries of the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MGNREGS). Yet that is exactly where matters have reached with the ten-year-old scheme,  a fact the Supreme Court took notice of earlier this week.  The scheme was launched by the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government in its first term and delays in wage payments preceded the change in government, but matters have come to a head over the last year, resulting in a decline in the number of people participating. The number of households that got the legally guaranteed 100 days of work fell from 51.73 lakh in 2012-13 to 46.73 lakh in 2013-14 (under the UPA), and then dipped sharply to 23.24 lakh in 2014-15 (under the NDA). Funds sanctioned for the scheme show a similar steep decline under the NDA government, from Rs.27,484 crore in 2013-14 to Rs.17,074...

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On the eve of the 65th anniversary of the establishment of diplomatic relations between China and India on April 1, 1950, the Chinese Ambassador to India, Le Yucheng, in written answers provided to a set of questions posed by Srinivasan Ramani,  emphasised the need for a renewal of China-India ties in tune with the realities of the 21st century. Excerpts follow. Later, in an interaction in Chennai, the

If the West genuinely wants to fight terror and promote a peaceful future in the troubled West Asia region, it will have to confront its selective silence and dual standard on the serious challenges that threaten the region today.

For a country starved of successes at the individual level in world sport, Saina Nehwal’s feat of becoming the first Indian woman shuttler to reach the No.1 position in the world is a stupendous achievement. The 25-year-old Nehwal — a resident of Hyderabad — achieved this mark during the course of the 2015 India Open Super Series badminton tournament. Nehwal eventually won, defeating former world champion

The history of India’s socialist parties — from which the various Janata Parivar entities emerged — is one of splits and mergers. If in the past its leaders, opinionated, fractious, colourful and intensely political as they are, lined up behind Congress rebels to form Central governments in 1977 and 1989, some of them also boosted the numbers of BJP-led NDA governments in 1999 and 2014. In 1996, when the minority

For the Aam Aadmi Party which claims the rationale for its very being is ushering in more democratic and transparent governance, the  current troubles  at the top levels of the leadership present an existential threat. While Delhi Chief Minister and national convener of the party Arvind Kejriwal was able to easily win support where it immediately mattered — among the MLAs in Delhi and among the members of the national executive — the issues raised by the dissident duo of Prashant Bhushan and Yogendra Yadav would not go away quickly. What the AAP sees as problems in the Indian political system — corruption, absence of transparency and lack of accountability — now seem very much a part of its own self. A  series   of   exposés  have shown up the AAP as suffering from the very ills it attacks in other parties. From  horse-trading  and giving the party ticket to persons of  dubious background  to  autocratic decision-making  and ...

Forty years after returning as a Peace Corps volunteer to a village in Tamil Nadu, the writer finds religions in harmony, borrowing customs and cultural norms from one another The hotel manager was politely incredulous. Wouldn’t I like a car or an auto rickshaw to take me on a tour of Thanjavur’s rural areas? No, thank you. As a Peace Corps volunteer, albeit returning after 40 years, I was determined to get to my village in the traditional way — by bicycle. And in my village garb: a brightly coloured lungi. A few minutes later, I took off on the best bike the hotel could find, a rickety Raleigh that might have dated from my Peace Corps days. The old path through the rice paddies was now a motorable road, but with only the occasional motorcycle or tractor to disturb my peaceful ride into years past. Reality soon intervened. About the time the bike pedal fell off, a light rain began to fall. I was four miles short of Sholapuram, my destination, and the only shelter nearby was...

Since Independence, secularism is increasingly opposed to communalism, with the nation no longer central to its definition. Does this indicate the failure of the nation to demonstrate its plurality, and therefore secularism? One of the peculiarities of Indian political debate is that everyone claims to be secular while accusing others of not being so. Secularism’s hegemony as an idea was made clear by L.K. Advani, when he   coined the now famous term   “pseudo-secular” to describe his political enemies. But if secularism is so dominant

Recent orders of the Madras High Court have redefined the RTI Act — reducing its scope, expanding its restrictions and creating new grounds for denial of information The Madras High Court recently took a significant step to rectify its own order in a case dated September 17 by restoring Section 6(2) of the Right to Information (RTI) Act, 2005, to say: “An applicant making a request for information shall not be required to give any reason for requesting the information or any other personal details except those that may be necessary for contacting him.” However, in spite of the court deleting two paragraphs from its earlier judgment in  The Public Information Officer, the Registrar (Administration), High Court Madras v. The Central Information Commissioner & B. Bharathi  case, contradictions remain to the spirit of the RTI Act as “law.” The RTI Act allows for citizens’ access to information without anyone asking for it. Section 4 of the Act states that information o...