| | | Good morning! | | There’s a popular meme featuring Tintin and Captain Haddock that you’ve probably encountered — the original panel is from The Crab with the Golden Claws, but it has been recaptioned with an exchange between Liz Lemon and Jack Donaghy in an episode of 30 Rock. “What a week, huh?” says Lemon. “Lemon, it’s Wednesday,” answers Donaghy. It’s only February 10, but what a year, huh? | | ONE Chanakya is a column that has been appearing (not as often as it should) in Hindustan Times, over the weekend, for years. The author, too, is identified as Chanakya. In my years as editor of the HT newsroom — six and counting already; Tempus Fugit and all that — there are only four people that have authored the column. Last weekend, Chanakya wrote a column on the Ram Mandir in Ayodhya, and what it says about “new India”. It stands apart from other commentaries on the temple, as Chanakya advertises in the preface. “The Narendra Modi of today is different from the Modi of 2014 who was, in turn, different from the Modi of 2002. And the India of 2024 is different from the India of 2014 that was, in turn, different from the India of 2000… Almost all the commentary around the opening of the Ram temple – the ones that are gushing as well as those that are hand-wringing – either ignores or is unaware of this. ” And then Chanakya goes on to hypothesise on “how the temple fits into the new India’s psyche” and how Prime Minister Narendra Modi “plans to leverage this huge national mobilisation”. “Winning the 2024 election is an answer that is both lazy and wrong,” Chanakya writes. | | TWO  If we are talking of elections, can talk of manifestos be far away? And if we are going to talk of manifestos, does it not make sense to look at the one pending promise in the Bharatiya Janata Party’s manifesto(s). That is the Uniform Civil Code (or UCC), and earlier this week, Uttarakhand became the first state to pass a bill that enables this. As Hindustan Times reported, the law seeks to “standardise laws governing marriage, divorce, inheritance and maintenance, and will subsume customary laws across faiths and tribes… and may serve as a template for other states”. My colleague Utkarsh Anand sifted through the 192-page bill on the day it was introduced — it was cleared the very next day — to understand its provisions and the legal context. His take: expect some legal challenges. The Uttarakhand UCC, he explained, “may be a test case for examining not only the sanctity of the objective behind UCC, but also the constitutionality of a bundle of provisions that can arguably be tested on the anvils of freedom to practice religious beliefs, right to privacy, and, most importantly, right to autonomy in personal matters.” India’s personal laws are crying for reform, a need flagged by Uttarakhand’s UCC, but as an editorial in Hindustan Times put it, perhaps we should “privilege equality over uniformity”. “…the focus instead should shift from uniform to equal, ensuring that no personal law is allowed to violate the basic rights guaranteed under the constitution,” the editorial said. | | THREE UCC will be a talking point in the summer’s general elections, as will be issues posing a challenge to India’s federal framework. I’ve referred to this in the past — indeed, the Hindustan Times newsroom has consistently, and elaborately covered this (even as far back as 2019 when no one else was talking about it). The issue is multi-dimensional: there’s a financial angle to it that involves GST, the tax devolution formula, as well as the constitution of the divisible pool; there is a demographic angle to it, involving a coming delimitation exercise that will increase the proportional representation of the Hindi belt in the lower house of Parliament at the expense of the southern states, which will effectively be penalised for getting their population under control; and there is a political angle to it, involving Centre-state relations, the increasing politicisation of the governor’s post; and this Union government’s multitude of welfare schemes (including many dealing with subjects in the state and concurrent lists) that bring electoral returns. The fiscal federalism aspect of this was in focus again this week because of protests by the southern states of Kerala, Karnataka, and Tamil Nadu (governed by the Left, Congress, and DMK respectively). For those who would really like to understand the looming fiscal federalism fracture, my colleague Roshan Kishore has a fantastic two-part explainer (Part 1 and Part 2). | | FOUR The government has already made it clear that another talking point in the national elections will be its handling of the economy. This week, it put out a White Paper comparing its decade in power (in terms of management of the economy), with the preceding decade (when India was ruled by the Congress-led United Progressive Alliance). If the big global challenge in that decade was the global financial crisis, the one in the more recent period was the Covid-19 pandemic. In addition, the 2020s have seen to worsening geopolitical crisis, in Europe (Ukraine-Russia), and West Asia (Israel-Hamas-Iran). The Narendra Modi government’s argument is that the economy was mismanaged under the UPA. There is substance in this argument — the financial system was crippled by the twin-balance sheet problem; the decade 2004-14 was marked by large corruption scandals; and the response to the financial crisis, while timely, ended up creating more problems than it solved. In contrast, the current government’s economic model (fiscal conservatism, business friendliness and self-reliance, and welfare) has worked. If India continues to be the fastest-growing major economy in the world, and if it is expected to grow by 7% in 2024-25 (according to the Reserve Bank of India’s latest projection), the third successive year of 7%-plus growth, then something is working. | FIVE As some of my favourite people would have said, now for something completely different. How will AI change our lives? How will the average day in 2030 look (the one thing we know about it for sure now is that it will be warmer, but that’s matter for another column)? HT Wknd asked one of the country’s top technology analysts — and when it comes to really bleeding-edge stuff, no one does it better — Kashyap Kompella to weigh in on this in a cover story beautifully designed by Anup Gupta and his team. That’s all folks. | | | | 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 | | | | |
