| | | Good morning! | | The next few years are likely to see relations between the Centre and states not governed by the Bharatiya Janata Party deteriorate significantly, perhaps climaxing in the 2026 delimitation which will see northern states, most ruled by the BJP, benefitting at the cost of southern ones, mostly ruled by other parties, in terms of representation in the Lok Sabha. Relations are already at a low point, as evident in daily headlines on state governments trying to work around governors, and governors trying to work around state governments; efforts by the Centre and local units of the BJP to get central investigation agencies to probe cases in these states; and the Prime Minister and chief ministers routinely taking shots at each other. With the GST compensation cess period ending this June, expect relations to worsen. For five large states ruled by parties other than the BJP, Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh, Rajasthan, Maharashtra, and West Bengal, the contribution of this cess to their overall revenue in 2021-22 was between 10% and 16%. It was 32% for Delhi, ruled by the Aam Aadmi Party. States may have to cut their spending on "freebies", according to a report in BloombergQuint (the numbers above are also from that report). And that could result in more bad blood. Part of the BJP's successful election strategy is built around welfarism. Its continued ability to fund welfare schemes (including some that are in the so-called concurrent or state lists) and earn political dividends from this is likely to (justifiably) irk the states — and deal a further blow to fiscal federalism. Indeed, all freebie politics hurts fiscal federalism, as NK Singh, the chairman of the 15th Finance Commission, said last week. This week's fight over fuel prices — Prime Minister Narendra Modi criticised some states ruled by non-BJP parties for not cutting local levies on fuel, provoking a strong response — needs to be seen in this context. | | THINK As HT pointed out in an editorial, "it is difficult for either the Centre or the states to claim high moral ground. Also, it would be naive to see the issue without the larger context of the brewing political economy crisis in fiscal federalism, where non-BJP-ruled states are increasingly resorting to unsustainable populist schemes to counter the BJP's centralised welfare delivery narrative." Still, it is important to note that the Prime Minister's observation was factual — as is the counter about the Centre's share of tax revenue on fuel being more, and also largely in the form of cess and surcharge (thereby being outside what is called the divisible pool of revenue). A day after, the battle of "words and statistics" as HT termed it, was continuing. For those interested in all sides of the argument, here are some strands: 1. Fuel prices affect everyone, not just the rich. 2. Taxation on fuel increased sharply during the pandemic. 3. It's important to contextualise the debate on fuel tax. 4. And perhaps it's worth reviving the debate on getting fuel under the ambit of GST. | | THINK MORE The heat and dust of the fight over oil prices came amidst an actual heatwave in India, one with possible links to the climate crisis. India may have seen hotter days, but rarely in April, and rarely across such a huge swathe of the country (most states were affected, barring the northeastern ones, and some in the southern part of the peninsula). As temperatures crossed 45 degrees Celsius in some parts of the country, including Delhi satellite Gurugram, scientists on Thursday warned of an intensification of the heatwave over the weekend, but promised that a coming western disturbance would bring some relief early next week. The heat, and the build-up of a huge volume of methane in landfills, resulted in a huge blaze in the Capital's Bhalswa landfill this week, "shrouding the area in a toxic haze" HT reported. The fire at Bhalswa came shortly after a similar large fire in the Ghazipur dump, also in the Capital, and around the same time as a fire in a dump in Chennai's Pallikaranai marsh, a wetland with some interesting birds, but also a garbage dump. Yes, that's pretty much how it works. | | KNOW Talking of fires, edible oil and wheat prices in India are on fire, just as they are in other parts of the world. Indonesia's decision this week to ban exports of palm oil should worry India, which exports a lot of the commodity. Meanwhile, the rush to fill the gap in global wheat exports caused by Russia's invasion of Ukraine, has seen a sharp rise in not just wheat prices, but also purchases by private traders — and a corresponding dip in government procurement. India has expressed its desire and intent to plug the gap in global wheat exports , but as Roshan Kishore pointed out in his weekly column, Terms of Trade, this could result in a pushback from developed countries. | | LEARN That's a lot of heavy reading, so here's a bit of poetry for a quick respite (and there will be more poetry anon). "The woods decay, the woods decay and fall,
The vapours weep their burthen to the ground,
Man comes and tills the field and lies beneath,
And after many a summer dies the swan." That's from Tithonus by Alfred Tennyson, and the last line gave its title to Aldous Huxley's book, After Many A Summer, about a millionaire obsessed with immortality — so much so that he hires some researchers to understand longevity in animals. This week, our science columnist Anirban Mahapatra focused on longevity. He referred to a recent paper published in Nature that shows that "as a general rule, shorter-lived animals accrue mutations at a faster rate than longer lived ones". As he puts it, this is "an incredible correlation that immediately suggests that there's a mutational clock ticking away at different speeds in different animals but getting to roughly the same 'stroke of midnight' signaling end of life." | | | | OUTSIDE It's only natural to follow up all that talk of fire and heat (not fire and ice; I've given up waiting for the next book) with a bit of climate science. Looking at the latest IPCC report, Robinson Meyer writes in The Atlantic that "the energy-system models used in the most recent IPCC report tell us something else too: The path to avoiding the worst impacts of climate change requires something impossible. Well, not actually impossible, but exceptionally difficult to imagine." Or as the headline of that article says succinctly, "There's no scenario in which 2050 is normal." You're welcome. | | ELSEWHERE Umran Malik continues his march to the Indian team. A mystery over skeletons of soldiers in a well in Punjab is finally solved. The Congress becomes the only organisation in history to announce that they made someone a job offer — and that the person didn't accept. Nope, that wasn't a LinkedIn post. And a much-delayed Insacog report on genome sequencing of Sars-CoV-2 samples arrives and says there is nothing to worry about. | | WHAT I'M READING Poetry, of course. The Penguin Book of Indian Poets edited by Jeet Thayil. This is a book of magnificent scope, spanning decades and styles, bookmarked by pithy (but pointed) essays on the poets (and the times they live/lived in), and, like all good anthologies of verse, has an honesty that prose, no matter how well written, can never match. And it has some beautiful black-and-white portrait photographs of the poets by my former colleague at Mint, Madhu Kapparath, who, in many ways, is a poet himself. | | WHAT I'M LISTENING TO The month of May starts tomorrow, and, as things would have it, I am listening to three songs from Arcade Fire's new album, WE, which is out next week. Arcade Fire is the best contemporary rock act going, although anyone listening to their last album Everything Now will find that difficult to believe. But if the three songs are any indication, the band is back to playing the kind of lush pop-rock that characterised albums such as Funeral and Reflektor. This is also the last album featuring Will Butler, who left the band late last year, and it remains to be seen what the absence of his prodigious talent means for the band. For now, listen to the three songs from the album — and come back for more next week. | Please share your feedback with us What do you think about this newsletter? | | Were you forwarded this email? Did you stumble upon it online? Sign up here. | | | | | | Get the Hindustan Times app and read premium stories | | | | | | View in Browser | Privacy Policy | Contact us You received this email because you signed up for HT Newsletters or because it is included in your subscription. Copyright © HT Digital Streams. All Rights Reserved | | | | |
