First Jury

A customized version of Jenga, being played in an architecture studio session.

Clad in formals, they come in a variety of sizes. Small, Medium, Large and XL. A particularly tiny one seems perplexed and serious. A gentle smile relaxes the kid and those eyes appear appreciative of the support. Another variety of support is 'Moral'. Which is nothing but presence, an active presence! Over cups of coffee and clatters of portfolios, the knitty-gritties flourish. Like everytime social butterflies, story-tellers, shy chipmunks, rational thinkers, budding rebels, lazy sloths, fresh couples and all formed the pack. Talks, discussions, motivations and a general energetic flow form order of the day. Marking is done, shop is now officially closed. In the afterhours, the extra class begins. The semester ends with general talks and discussions with students livid and enthusiastic... while the sun sets and a cold winter night takes over for some peace. Some new stories have started shaping up, amidst preparations of further routines.

Beef Over Beef

Farmers at work in Myanmar

The politicians in India are debating diet of nation, some of them with quite loose tongues (Sangeet Som, Manohar Lal Khattar, Assasuddin Owaisi, Mohammad Azam to name a few). Meanwhile, the filth elected by popular mandate has forgot that alternative to beef is pulses, with regards to protein content and as a staple component of Indian diet and at Rs 200/kg those are now costlier than beef. So, while beef is a politically ill-advised diet, pulses are no longer pocket friendly.

This brings us to focus of government in last 1 year and 6 months. Mr. Modi has been on a world tour attracting investment in Indian manufacturing sector, the Make In India programme and his passion for providing Facebook to every Indian is world famous. The effort has attracted investments, albeit it seems directed wrongly. The country needs to focus on infrastructure, but politicians (including Mr.Arun Jaitley) have forgotten the infrastructure is not only railways and roadways (Mr. Gadkari might, dreamily, relay whole Indian highway network and go gung-ho about it). It also includes support and networks for an agrarian economy, alternative energy schemes, housing schemes which are affordable. Clean India campaign is very praise-worthy and some impact is visible now-a-days. Yoga politics is a personal choice with little or no implication outside RSS shakhas.

The current vision and policy seems to be short-sighted and should, probably, be revised to focus on modernizing the farms of India. And modernization is not to be confused with mechanization. The entrepreneurs in India today are well placed to help develop alternative crop collection, storage, sorting and distribution systems and also market them. Replacing red-tape ridden food programmes of governments. With large, educated workforce, a big part of which are engineers, doctors, managers, agriculturists the focus ought to be on incensing them to work in creative endeavours like rural economy and not jumping into urban rat-race or chasing an unreal American dream, loaned by corporations.

There have been reports and observations of a collapsed real-estate sector. The reason for which are misplaced focus on developing luxury housing, ignoring the sustained demands for low-cost housing. An unsold inventory of nearly a million apartments indicates stagnation in demand of such projects and a bad case of hollow urbanization of a truly rural nation, such 'development' is resulting in loss of prime agricultural lands in Doab regions of Ganga and Yamuna and pressurising resources in other parts of India.

Ideas in this post might sound socialist, but are truthfully capitalist and rightist on any economic parameter and if India's right wing fails to steer it forward in those directions, that would be the true failure of the Indian mandate and the Modi government. The beef would be then with the rightist hope and missed opportunity of a global scale.

Half-Baked Federalism

A ribbon produced in support of Federation of Australia in 1899.

 India is a federation of states. A federation heavily biased towards central government. The idea of an extremely strong centre might have been historically important, but with growing economic and social integration of states within the federation, the nation should think of granting more autonomy to states, primarily within the constitutional provision and sometime even amending those provisions.

The autonomy of Jammu & Kashmir has been a question of debate. In retrospect, it seems, many are against it because it is available to that state only. Given similar autonomy to Maharashtra or Bihar or Punjab, they will hurriedly leap at it.

About 70 years into independence, the nation should essentially look into concepts like dual citizenship (domicile requirements in colleges are doing it indirectly). The federation should be strengthened by transferring more rights to states. And inhibiting abrogation of elected state governments (aka The President rule) other than in extreme situations.

Per my perspective, dual citizenship can help deal issues of large scale in-migration (and thus infrastructure mismanagement), child labour, labour abuse, human trafficking etc. States should be given authority to admit or deny citizenship on the basis of parameters like education, skill and may be patronage(in cases like that of Teesta Seetalwad, where she feels at risk in Gujarat - I don't buy into her arguments though).  Right to live, work anywhere should be subject to conditions. Essentially, citizenships should be looked into as something to be earned (an incentive of good education can be citizenship of Karnataka or for that matter Bangalore and so on). This will also make local electorate to force their representatives to develop infrastructure in their places rather seeking asylum in other states in squatter settlements in sub-human conditions (read slums of Delhi and Mumbai).

The states should also be strengthened monetarily and pseudo-states like Delhi should be avoided. The monetary strengthening requirement can be seen in begging and sanctioning of grants like the package Bihar got in a recent poll rally, in what can be seen as one of the filthiest display expected of a prime minister (will never achieve unbeatable Rajiv Gandhi, "jab bade ped girte hain..."). Revision of revenue share of states from 32% to 42% is one such step and essentially needs to be incorporated into policy and should not be dependent on mercy of a central government. We can't be sure if our next prime minister will come with experience of being a state chief minister (probably that should be made into an eligibility criteria for the post of PM) and thus would be as understanding of such federalist policies or not.

With limited knowledge of mine, I am able to highlight some of the goods that some of state reforms can bring about. Essentially there are more goods that can be achieved and there must be some flaws in suggestions I have mentioned, these should be ironed out and a better federation should be evolved.