| | | Good morning! | | An apology and an announcement to begin the newsletter. I am sorry for playing truant through February, but the old format of the newsletter was beginning to grate. And so, here is my new weekly newsletter, which while still being rooted in the news, will seek to provide enough rabbit holes for the curious to explore. | | The art of the deal “The challenge is not to eliminate conflict but to transform it. It is to change the way we deal with our differences.” As I watched the conversation between Volodymyr Zelensky, Donald Trump, and JD Vance start to slide – it ended in a proper car crash – I was reminded of this line from the best book on negotiation that I have read, Getting to Yes by Roger Fisher. In our daily lives – not just at work, but at home, even elsewhere – we often find ourselves facing conflicts, big and small. Many smart people (including the late Roger Fisher) have built successful careers (and law practices) around conflict management. But what if the rules have changed? With the benefit of hindsight it’s easy to see the many ways in which Zelensky went wrong (for instance, sometimes, silence is a good negotiation technique), but position and interest-based negotiation strategies (Fisher recommends the second) may not work when one is dealing with someone with not just a gigantic perception of the self, but also on the right side of a stark power asymmetry. In such cases, it’s probably better to stop worrying about positions and interests, and start focusing on the man. Someone is going to have to write a new book. | | Billionaire solutions  I have no problems with rich people wanting to rescue animals but I believe their money may be better spent rescuing habitats. Let me elaborate with an example. Roughly 30 km from Delhi, and in the heart of Gurugram is one of the best bird habitats in northern India. In the right season, you can spot around a 100 species easily. And even in the wrong season, you can, with some effort, spot around 50. It isn’t Sultanpur. It isn’t a sanctuary or a protected area. It is a place called Chandu, and its mostly private farmland, although there are some commons too. It isn’t clear how Chandu became the bird hotspot it is – many rarities, including, most recently, the Little Gull, have been spotted there – but I have some theories. One, it is along the Central Asian Flyway (explaining why so many migratory species can be found here); two, it benefits from run-off from a near-by water treatment plant; three, it is mostly open farmland. These were the same reasons why Basai, even closer to Delhi than Chandu, was once a birding hotspot – before developers and development had their way with it. How unique is Chandu? It probably has more bird diversity than Bharatpur, and definitely more than Sultanpur. Most people do not realise how unique the experience of being able to see around 100 bird species, including many migratory and some rare ones, on a three-hour door-to-door excursion from central Delhi, or two-hour door-to-door one from Gurugram’s posh Golf Course Road, is. Imagine if someone were to buy up all the land, strike a deal with the farmers that they could continue to farm it as long as they kept it intact, and then just let it be. I say this because the biggest challenge to species is habitat destruction. The Dadri wetland in Greater Noida, where the Shiv Nadar University now stands, used to be like Chandu. I am aware the university had tried to do the right thing and worked on reviving some part of the wetland inside the campus, but the fact is that it sits on what used to a bigger wetland and seasonal waterbody, and from where there are at least two confirmed sightings of the Lesser Florican, a Schedule I species, which, to my mind, must have prevented anything from coming up on the land. But that was a decade-and-half ago. Conservationists will likely have a problem with the intervention I have suggested, just as many of them have a problem with Vantara, but I am all for setting up a fund in which billionaires, even non-billionaires, can buy units, with the money being used to buy up habitats, such as Chandu’s bird-rich farmland. | | Should some votes continue to have more weightage? That’s the big question on delimitation that faces India. It’s a topic on which this newsroom has written lots (and for long). Fiscal federalism, welfarism, delimitation… these are the real issues facing India. Milan Vaishnaw and Jamie Hinton wrote about the (then scheduled for 2026) delimitation of Lok Sabha constituencies in March 2019 as part of “India Elects 2019”, a collaboration between the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and Hindustan Times . One of the analytical charts accompanying the essay used the projected population for 2026 to estimate the number of representatives each province would send to the Lok Sabha. Based on these projections, it estimated that the house would have 848 members, with Uttar Pradesh electing 143, Bihar 79, Maharashtra, 76, West Bengal, 60, Madhya Pradesh 50, Rajasthan 50, Tamil Nadu 49, and Karnataka 41. Kerala would elect 20, as it does now. That means Kerala’s proportional representation reduces from 3.68% currently to 2.35%; Tamil Nadu’s from 7.18% to 5.77%; and Karnataka’s from 5.15% to 4.83%. In contrast, Uttar Pradesh’s proportional representation would increase from 14.73% to 16.86%, Bihar’s from 7.36% to 9.31%, and Rajasthan’s from 4.6% to 5.89%. The southern states (led by Tamil Nadu) do not want this; their opposition comes in the context of a deep distrust of the Centre. While the Goods and Services Tax is fundamentally a reformist concept, moving to it has meant the states giving up their sovereign right to tax; they do get a share of the revenue gathered by the Centre, but believe the formula is unfair to them. The states are also unhappy at the Centre’s welfarist schemes, many of which are in areas demarcated for the states under the Constitution; they know welfarism is a sure-fire way to win elections, but do not have the resources to match the Centre. Resolving this is going to require statesmanship, which is in short supply everywhere . Or we can just kick the can down the road? | | What about March 2020? Five years ago, this was the month that saw the real onset of Covid-19 in India. The first wave did not really peak till September-October of 2020, though the second wave, in 2021 was more brutal. The pandemic disrupted everything, and is likely responsible for the surge of protectionism, ultra-nationalism, and anti-science sentiment the world is seeing today. In a special issue to mark five years of the pandemic, HT Wknd (out in print tomorrow) takes a look at its impact on geopolitics, the global and Indian economy, education, science (and our relationship with it), work, and life. You can read it here . | | Isn’t 19/20 enough to establish a long-term trend? For well over a year-and-half newsrooms (albeit ones that worry about substantive issues such as the climate crisis) have been caveating articles about a particular month’s temperature breaching the Paris agreement’s threshold of 1.5 degrees Celsius over pre-industrial levels with a note that says that this doesn’t mean the threshold has really been breached because that would require a more long-term trend. Articles dealing with longer periods than a month – a quarter, half-year, and a year – have been similarly caveated. The latest climate data (which also shows Arctic sea ice at a record low) shows that 19 of the past 20 months have seen a breach of the threshold. Maybe it’s time to admit that the 1.5 degrees Celsius goal is dead . | | Eyes “American Politics has often been an arena for angry minds.” Thus begins The Paranoid Style in American Politics , an essay by Richard Hofstadter published in 1964. It is an essay that is especially relevant today, and not just in the US but around the world. Someone encountering the essay for the first time today is likely to have several “A-ha” moments. For instance, Hofstadter explains his use of the term paranoid by saying that “no other word adequately evokes the sense of heated exaggeration, suspiciousness, and conspiratorial fantasy that I have in mind”. Sound familiar? Anyone who takes the effort to read this should also take a look at Hofstadter’s book, Anti-intellectualism in American Life. Again, it doesn’t just pertain to America, and again, it remains relevant although it was published in 1963. Here’s a sampler: “There has always been in our national experience a type of mind which elevates hatred to a kind of creed; for this mind, group hatreds take a place in politics similar to the class struggle in some other modern societies. Filled with obscure and ill-directed grievances and frustrations, with elaborate hallucinations about secrets and conspiracies, groups of malcontents have found scapegoats at various times…. In the succession of scapegoats chosen by the followers of this tradition of Know-Nothingism, the intelligentsia have at last in our time found a place.” | Ears  (Source: Reprise Records) Neil Young is one of my favourite musicians, and not just because he wrote and sang 'After The Gold Rush', which remains the best song about the climate crisis (Legend has it that the song was originally composed for a dystopian movie about the drowning of California that was never made). One more of his lost albums was released in the form it was meant to be last week ( Oceanside Countryside , first recorded in 1977; first released, with the songs in a different order in 2024). The songs themselves are mostly familiar – they have appeared in other Young albums since – and clearly from his country rock phase (it is believed to be a companion album to Comes A Time ). If Young’s music talks to you – like it does to me – do give it a listen . | | | | 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 | | | | |
