| | | Good morning! | | ONE Can a government violate its people’s human rights by not doing enough to combat the climate crisis? The European Court of Human Rights believes it can. Last week, the court said Switzerland had violated the rights of around 2,000 women “over the age of 64 who argued they were more vulnerable to extreme heatwaves caused by a warming planet”. As an article in The Parliament explains, the ruling sets a precedent for all 46 member countries in Europe, and serves as a guide for national courts hearing their own climate crisis cases. A week before the European Court’s ruling, India’s Supreme Court uploaded an order in the so-called Great Indian Bustard case that it had passed in the third week of March. The case was about the undergrounding of wires used to transmit the power being generated by solar projects in areas that also happen to be the sole surviving habitat of a species whose population has depleted to below 200. Indeed, depending on India’s plans for Narcondam (the defence ministry believes the island of strategic importance given its location), home to the Narcondam Hornbill (of which also there remain only a few hundred), the GIB may well become the first major endemic bird species to go extinct in our lifetime. When numbers of a species are as low as that of the GIB or the Narcondam Hornbill, I believe the way to go is the one recommended by the late great EO Wilson — setting aside half the Earth (land and seas) for other species. That may sound radical, but I have put this down so that I do not have to comment on the court’s own response to the challenge at hand. The more pertinent point about the order was that the court said that citizens have a right to be free from the adverse effects of the climate emergency as part of their right to life. This, too, is precedent-setting, and will likely influence the way the court rules in environment cases. | | TWO Friday marked the first phase of India’s general elections, where around a billion people are eligible to vote (about 700 million are expected to exercise this right). This is also the biggest phase in terms of seats (102). India’s national elections have become complex and elaborate affairs, and it can be difficult to separate the signal from the noise. The best way to do so is the HT Election App, which is part of the HT App on Android and iOS. Its live layer captures news, analysis, data stories, and special features, but it also has essays by top-notch historians and journalists on past elections — think Taylor C Sherman on elections in the new India; Srinath Raghavan on the Indira years; or Prashant Jha on the Modi years — with the coverage of each era (the app splits the history of elections into six) complemented by a data story by Roshan Kishore and his team. The real treasure, though, is the data layer, every single national elections across every single constituency, all searchable. All this is topped with a compendium of commonly asked questions on Indian elections, and news clips and images from HT’s own archives and videos from the public broadcaster. You can download it here. | | THREE What should you know about the first phase? It is the biggest in terms of seats, and the state which has seen the keenest battle, in terms of campaign intensity, although the outcome is likely to be anything but close, Tamil Nadu, went to polls in this phase. In 2019, the Congress and its allies together won 45 of the seats in the first phase, 47% of the 95 seats they would win overall. That perhaps explains the intensity of the campaign. If the BJP wants to increase its tally from 303 (its allies won another 48), this phase is perhaps the most crucial. The BJP and its allies together won 42 of these 102 seats in 2019. This time, the BJP is fighting 77 of the 102 seats. The Congress is contesting 56. | | FOUR The directional outcome of these elections seems a given, but further analysis isn’t as easy. Sure, there is a barrage of on-ground reportage, but much of this is noise (and colour), not, in the systems engineering sense, signal. It’s the reason why I have been saying for some time that understanding macro trends is probably the most important aspect of tracking national elections — the number of voters in every constituency is significant, and the issues tend to be national, not regional, although both identity and personality politics continue to play a part. Carnegie Endowment’s Milan Vaishnav and I chatted about this in an episode of his Grand Tamasha podcast (HT is a partner). My sense (with the caveat that the BJP is extremely good at course corrections): 303 could well be a ceiling for the BJP, not a base. | FIVE I liked True Detective’s fourth installment, Night Country, but for a nagging feeling that finally expressed itself after I read K Narayanan’s piece in Wknd on how detective shows (and books) are struggling to stay relevant. True Detective has it all — haunting and great music, excellent actors, and is the very definition of atmospheric — except for detection. The nature of crimes and technology have played a part in this, of course, as has “a voracious entertainment industry that simply wants another season released”. Narayanan’s solution: “People engage with this genre for two broad reasons: to be shocked by the crime or comforted by the idea of inevitable punishment. As it becomes ever-harder to shock, perhaps the way forward, for the murder mystery, is back, to a place of greater comfort.” | | | | Were you forwarded this email? 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