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Concocted narratives were taught in the country, which created a sense of inferiority among us,” Prime Minister Narendra Modi said marking the first Veer Bal Diwas in the Capital. “Any country with such a glorious history must be full of self-confidence and self-respect.
He underlined what he called the need to be freed from “the narrow interpretation of the past in order to move forward.That’s why the country has pledged to remove all traces of “slave mentality” during the Azadi ka Amrit Kaal.
Modi said that wherever there were faces of cruelty, these were overshadowed by the character of heroes. The Mughals possessed an army of millions, while the Veer Sahibzaade of Guru (the two martyred children) were armed with courage.
They did not bow down to the Mughals even though they were alone. This is when the Mughals walled them alive,” he said addressing the gathering at Major Dhyan Chand Stadium.
On January 9 this year, on the day of the Prakash Purab (birth anniversary) of the Sikh Guru Gobind Singh, the Prime Minister had announced that December 26 would be observed every year as “Veer Bal Diwas,” to mark the martyrdom of the 10th Guru’s young sons Baba Zorawar Singh and Baba Fateh Singh.
“Vishwa ka hazaaronvarshon ka itihaaskroortake ek se ek khaufnaakadhyaayon se bharahai (the history of the world is replete with horrific chapters),” the PM said, referring to events that led to the sacrifice of the young sons at the hands of the Mughals.
“But it is also true that whatever happened in Chamkaur and the battle of Sirhind was unprecedented,” he said, adding, “On the one hand was religious fundamentalism and the entire Mughal empire blinded with fundamentalism, and, on the other hand, were our guru our Gurus, teeming with the power of knowledge and penance, and India’s ancient value system (ek or dharmikkattarta aur us kattartameinandhiitnibadi Mughal sultanat, aur doosri or, gyaan aur tapasyamein tape huyehamare guru, Bharat kepracheenmanveeyamulyon ko jeenewaliparampara).”
Editorial page
Taliban, un-Islamic (Page no. 10)
(GS Paper 2, International Relations)
By the 1990s, 40 per cent of doctors in Afghanistan were women. Women also constituted 70 per cent of school teachers, 60 per cent of university professors and almost half of university students.
All this has now changed for the worse. Women literacy today is at a meager 14 per cent. The Taliban has proved us right by continuing with the highly regressive policies of the past regime (1996-2001).
Their Jim Crow-like decrees have not come as a surprise. Our worst fears regarding the US’s sudden withdrawal from Afghanistan have come true.
Their promises during the Doha deal of respecting human rights in general and women rights in particular have proved to be just empty words. The pretence is gone and the reality as anticipated by the Taliban’s critics is now setting in.
The western world led by the United States too has to be blamed for first handing over to the Taliban highly sophisticated weapons to fight the Russians.
After staying in Afghanistan for almost two decades, the United States meekly handed over power to the Taliban leaving Afghan women high and dry.
Women who occupied one-fourth of parliamentary seats and 6.5 per cent of ministerial positions in 2021 have been completely excluded from the interim government of Taliban.
Women, once again, cannot go out and work in most sectors. They are forced to cover their faces and must be accompanied by a male guardian. In November, Afghan women were denied access to public parks.
The Afghan women are the worst victims of the Taliban regime. The recent dictates from the totalitarian and arbitrary Taliban regime must have shocked the conscience of the world.
Last week, the Taliban cabinet took the indefensible and discriminatory decision of banning women from universities. For a pleasant change, not only the western world but even Islamic countries reacted sharply to it.
The United States’ spokesperson explicitly said that such decisions will further alienate the Taliban from the international community and deny them much-needed legitimacy in the comity of nations. Even the closure of secondary schools in March had a significant impact on American engagement with the Taliban.
Lower the barrier (Page no. 10)
(GS Paper 3, Economy)
After initially questioning the benefits accruing from free trade agreements India had signed over the years, the Narendra Modi government appears to have rethought its position on trade pacts.
Over the course of the last year or so, the government has been actively pursuing pacts with a wide range of countries. Trade pacts have been signed with Australia and the UAE, while negotiations are ongoing with the UK and the European Union, among others.
But as these talks enter a critical phase, non-tariff issues ranging from carbon emission norms and climate action to labour and gender balance standards are increasingly coming into focus.
Indian negotiators are concerned that their inclusion could provide partner countries with instruments to impose non-tariff protectionist measures, not allowing India to fully take advantage of the trade pacts.
Take, for instance, the issue of carbon emissions, which is gaining traction. Recently, the European Union reached an agreement on a carbon border adjustment mechanism which is meant to target carbon intensive products such as iron and steel, cement, aluminium and fertilisers.
This is applicable from October 2023. Under the framework, levies would be imposed on imported goods on the basis of the emissions during their production process.
As per the European Commission, the adjustment mechanism will “equalise the price of carbon between domestic products and imports”, and thus ensure that the EU’s climate objectives “are not undermined by production relocating to countries with less ambitious policies.” This will impose costs on Indian exporters, act as a barrier.
On similar lines, manufacturers of steel in India will be at a disadvantage when compared to those in the US where the process results in lower carbon emissions.
As reported in this paper, policy makers in Delhi have raised these concerns, arguing for the need to examine these issues “cautiously”. While negotiations must surely proceed with care, they must not be derailed over these issues.
The government must push ahead with these trade agreements. In fact, the domestic reform agenda must be aligned with ensuring that the benefits from these trade pacts can be maximised.
Ideas page
Take a hard look at Moscow (Page no. 11)
(GS Paper 2, International Relations)
This week, Russia marks two anniversaries — the 100th anniversary of the founding of the Soviet Union and the 31st anniversary of its dissolution.
Following the Bolshevik Revolution in November 1917, the Soviet Union was proclaimed on December 30, 1922. Until its dissolution on December 26, 1991, the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics as it was called, had an outsized influence in world affairs.
Moscow played a decisive role in defeating Nazi Germany in the Second World War, influenced revolutionary and progressive movements around the world, offered an alternative to the Western capitalist model, drove advances in science and technology, and shaped regional military balances until its sudden death in 1991.
India is among the few places in the world where the Soviet legacy endures with some strength. In Delhi, Vladimir Putin’s Russia continues to be valued as the heir to the Soviet Union and as a special strategic partner.
Putin’s aggression against Ukraine and his brutal bombing of its civilian population, which Moscow claims is an integral part of Russia, has hardly made a dent in the way the Indian political classes think about the crisis.
Although it has been reluctant to directly criticise Russian aggression, official Delhi is not blind to the fact that Putin’s “special military operation” has gone horribly wrong.
Delhi will inevitably find ways to adjust to the tectonic shifts in the world order triggered by Putin’s misadventure. But the Indian political and strategic communities must come to terms with the many complex factors that have contributed to Putin’s egregious errors in Ukraine.
On the left and centre of the Indian political spectrum, the Soviet Union has been viewed purely through the ideological lens of progressive politics — nationalist, internationalist, communist and anti-imperialist.
That lens, however, is detached from the history of Russia and the continuing struggles for its political soul. Within the strategic community, the conviction that Russia is India’s “best friend forever” leaves little room for a nuanced view of Russia’s domestic and international politics.
One is the religious and messianic impulses in Russian history and the deep-rooted pan-Slavism that have so neatly dovetailed with the post-Soviet image of Russia as the vanguard of global revolution. Russian internationalism is rooted in its traditional self-perception as the “Third Rome” and the successor to the Roman and Byzantine empires.
Explained
Hope, challenges and a lot of uncertainty (Page no. 13)
(GS Paper 3, Economy)
From reflation to recession in just a few months: 2022 began with hopes of a rebound in the global economy as pandemic fears receded, but the optimism was dashed early into the new year as Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine triggered the biggest land conflict in Europe since World War II — yet another black swan moment that fundamentally altered the global economic outlook.
The overhang of the war continues to cloud the outlook for 2023, with elevated food and fuel prices threatening to upend the fight against inflation.
Add to that worsening financial conditions in key economies, China’s uncertain post-pandemic path, and the prospect of a central bank-engineered downturn — a global recession seems imminent.
India may not be decoupled from all of this, even though it was bracketed with the better performing economies in 2022. Its relatively strong growth notwithstanding, the Indian economy is yet to recover a lot of ground lost due to Covid-19.
In its December ‘State of the Economy’ update, the Reserve Bank of India struck a sombre note, noting that the balance of risks is increasingly tilted towards “a darkening global outlook”, and emerging market economies (EMEs) appear to be “more vulnerable”, even though incoming data suggest that global inflation may have peaked.
In that backdrop, the expectation that global growth could average around 3% in 2022 seems to be a commendable achievement, given that the decks were almost fully stacked against this.
The year witnessed the highest global inflation in 50 years, the most aggressive monetary tightening cycle in nearly 40 years, the strongest US dollar in 20 years, and the weakest Chinese growth in over 45 years.
According to SajjidChinoy, JP Morgan’s Chief India Economist and Part-Time Member in the Prime Minister’s Economic Advisory Council, even two of these shocks would have been enough to tip the global economy into recession.
Forecasts by the IMF suggest that global growth is projected to slow from 6% in 2021 to 3.2% in 2022 and 2.7% in 2023 — the weakest growth profile since 2001, except for the global financial crisis and the acute phase of the pandemic.
Global food, energy and other commodity prices may have eased moderately over the past few months, but inflation continues to stay high and broad-based.
Global inflation, according to the IMF, is forecast to decline from 8.8% in 2022 to 6.5% in 2023 to 4.1% by 2024 — still high by most yardsticks.
The problem going into 2023 is the implications of stubbornly high inflation for the US Federal Reserve, especially the fact that the American labour market remains red hot, defying the impact of the Fed’s monetary tightening.
Prachanda is PM:New tie-ups in Nepal, concern in India (Page no. 13)
(GS Paper 2, International Relations)
Pushpa Kamal Dahal “Prachanda” was sworn in as Nepal’s new Prime Minister on Monday, after he switched sides to join hands with a bitter foe, the former prime minister Kharga Prasad Oli.
This is Prachanda’s third stint as the head of government in the 14 years since Nepal’s monarchy was abolished. Before joining mainstream politics in 2006, he had led the Maoist revolt in Nepal for over a decade.
Until Sunday, Prachanda was in a pre-election alliance with former Prime Minister Sher Bahadur Deuba. This five-party alliance, led by Deuba’s Nepali Congress, was the frontrunner after the November 20 elections, winning the largest number of seats in a fractured mandate. However, Prachanda walked out of the alliance at the last moment, after Deuba turned down his demand for the PM chair.
Within hours on December 25, Prachanda and Oli, who have been bitter adversaries, buried the hatchet, and drove together from Oli’s residence – through crowds of cheering supporters – to meet the President with a letter of support from 170 members of Parliament, well ahead of the 138-half way mark.
Their coalition is not just an alliance of two Communist parties – Prachanda’s Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist Centre) and Oli’s Communist Party of Nepal (Unified Marxist-Leninist).
A clutch of smaller parties, with at least one being pro-monarchy, are adding to the UML’s 78 seats and the Maoist Centre’s 32.
The other parties in the coalition are the brand new youth-centric Rastriya Swatantra Party, which has no clear political ideology but won an impressive 20 seats; NagarikUnmukti Party, an outfit led by murder convict Resham Chaudhary; Janamat Party led by C K Raut with its base in Eastern Tarai; and the Janata Samajbadi party.
But the biggest surprise is the support of the pro-monarchy Rastriya Prajatantra Party, which has 14 members. The party has been critical of the US, European Union and India for their ‘active’ involvement in Nepal ‘s transition to a federal and secular republic, from a unitary Hindu monarchy.