The Hindu Editorial Analysis
06 May 2020

1) Dangerous drift: on encounter with terrorists near Handwara-


CONTEXT:

The deaths last Saturday of four soldiers and a police officer in an encounter with terrorists near Handwara town in Jammu and Kashmir’s Kupwara district, call attention to a difficult summer ahead.

It is unusual and disproportionate for just a couple of terrorists to take down five highly skilled and motivated soldiers in a firefight. The details on offer are sketchy(not clear), yet provide compelling(valid) evidence of an operation that went horribly wrong.

 

OPERATION GOING WRONG:

On Saturday afternoon, receiving intelligence that terrorists were present in a house in Changimulla village, five highly skilled and motivated soldiers reached the site which had a building and a cowshed adjoining it, and an intense firefight commenced(started). All the enemy fire came from the cowshed, not the building. Then there was a lull(silence) for more than an hour during which the team apparently decided to approach the house and use the vantage(point of advantage) of the upper floor to fire at the terrorists in the cowshed.

They entered the house and there was a fresh firefight but no communication from the Colonel and his team. Then it was noticed that their communication instrument was being used by the terrorists. That is when realisation came all was not well, and firing ensued(followed) all over again. This time when it was over, there were seven bodies.

RAMIFICATIONS ON MORALE AND OPERATING PROCEDURES:

The way this operation ended will have ramifications(consequence), on both morale and operating procedures, on future operations of this kind that go on all the time in this shadowy theatre of proxy war.

It is certainly a coincidence that has not gone unnoticed that though the encounter ended tragically, news or details of it did not percolate(spread), till well after Sunday’s fly past and show of solidarity.

(A proxy war is an armed conflict between two states or non-state actors which act on the instigation or on behalf of other parties that are not directly involved in the hostilities)

UNHEALTHY VACUUM:

It should be evident by now to most that changing the nomenclature and status of J&K has not addressed any of the underlying causes of unrest and angst(anger).

Neither has it deterred(prevented) Pakistan from its steadfast(constant) goals. Since the beginning of the year, in 127 days, as many as 55 terrorists have been killed in the region, roughly one encounter every two days.

In the unhealthy vacuum(gap) that New Delhi has created since August 5 last year, such encounters have done nothing other than aid(help) the impulse(urge) of the disaffected to embrace(use) arms.

CONCLUSION:

As the dangerous drift(divide) in J&K continues, New Delhi must realise it has reached the point of diminishing(low) returns and should look for ways to arrest this trend. Encounters in Kashmir are on the rise, taking a disproportionate toll(count) on security personnel.


2) The mark of zero: On containment of COVID-19 cases in Kerala-


CONTEXT:

With containment(action of keeping something harmful under control or within limits) strategies in place even before the first case of novel coronavirus was detected on January 30, Kerala appears to have finally hammered(hit) the curve flat.

On May 1, for the first time, the State reported zero new cases, and again on two consecutive days — May 3 and May 4.

 

UPPER HAND:

Zero fresh cases on three days in May appear to be more than a blip(error). If in April there were early signs of Kerala gaining an upper hand over the virus, its control became clear from the fourth week of April.

Since April 22, except on four days, the number of new cases reported has remained either the same or fewer than the number of recoveries. The small number of cases reported so far — 499 — demonstrates how excellent its containment efforts have been.

What is more remarkable is that 462 of those infected have fully recovered, including an elderly couple, aged 93 and 88 years, and there have been just three deaths — a case fatality(death) rate of 0.6% against the national average of 3.3%.

Kerala’s steps on the virus are easy to follow, but its success rate is difficult to repeat.

REASON BEHIND SUCCESS:

The containment success can be traced back to how Kerala did not wait for directions from the Centre but instead led from the front. When the number of cases increased to 12 on March 10, a day before WHO declared the coronavirus a pandemic, Kerala shut down all educational institutions and entertainment centres, banned large gatherings and appealed to people to avoid visiting religious places.

If it realised the merits of containing virus transmission by quickly tracing all the contacts during the 2018 Nipah outbreak, it repeated that to perfection this time.

Little wonder that on May 2, the ICMR lauded(praised) the State for the “unparalleled” containment and testing strategies and referred to it as the “Kerala model”.

But under no circumstances can the State lower its guard(be less careful) as the outbreak can resurge(increase again) by exploiting the weakest link, as was seen in the sharp spike in Singapore, in dormitories.

HEALTH-CARE INFRASTRUCTURE:

Kerala has very good health-care infrastructure in place, down to the primary health-care centres. But what sets it apart from the other States is the manner in which it followed textbook epidemiology(branch of medicine which deals with the incidence, distribution, and possible control of diseases and other factors relating to health) protocols to the tee, and beyond, and well before the ICMR advocated(suggested) them, as well as the entire health-care infrastructure working in tandem(together) despite being decentralised.

DECENTRALISAYION:

Political leadership, and the close and complete involvement of the government at all levels with the bureaucracy and local community have been a huge advantage.

The very different health-seeking behaviour and high literacy too have played a pivotal role in the war against the virus. While active involvement of all the stakeholders who complement each other especially during the crisis has worked in Kerala’s favour, these are not measures put in place to fight coronavirus but what has been a legacy of the State.

CONCLUSION:

It is a success born out of decades-old social revolution and development. This is also the reason why other States, even if they emulate the measures adopted by Kerala to fight the virus, may not be able to achieve the same level of success.

3) Boost wages to stimulate India’s growth-


CONTENT

Impoverishment(poverty) among English workers during the early years of the Industrial Revolution had prompted Leicester(city in England) framework knitters to frame this resolution in 1817: “… if liberal Wages were given to the Mechanics in general throughout the Country, the Home Consumption of our Manufactures would be immediately more than doubled, and consequently every hand would soon find full employment” (cited in E. P. Thompson’s The Making of the English Working Class, 1963).

CONTEXT:

One of the moving images from today’s India is of migrant workers suddenly feeling desolate(sad) in their places of work and desperate to return to their villages, in the aftermath of the COVID-19 outbreak.

The helplessness felt by the workers as seen from those images calls for nothing short of a radical(extreme) rethink. We need to plan for an economic growth driven by rising — and not stagnant — wages, and a development model that is dispersed(spread) far and wide across the country, and not centred in a few big cities.

 

PATCHY DATA:

Out of India’s total workforce of 471.5 million(47.15 Cr), only 12.3% are regular workers receiving some form of social security, while the rest are mostly casual workers or petty producers surviving under various degrees of informality (figures for 2018). A vast majority of migrant workers belong to the category of informal casual workers. Available data on the size of the migrant workforce in India are rather patchy(uneven).

According to the 2011 Census, there were 54.3 million persons (workers as well as non-workers) in the country who migrated from one State to the other. The ‘heartland’ States of Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Rajasthan and Madhya Pradesh accounted for 48.9% of these inter-State migrants, much higher than their combined share in India’s population (of 36.8%).

 

MIGRATION AT RAPID PACE:

Workers migrate from villages to urban centres as the growth of rural incomes has not kept pace with the rising numbers and aspirations of the young in the countryside. Those engaged in agriculture and allied activities as a share of the combined workforce in U.P., Bihar, Rajasthan and Madhya Pradesh fell to 49.1% in 2018 from 64.1% in 2005.

This meant that, between 2005 and 2018, 19.3 million persons left agricultural work in these four States alone and sought job opportunities elsewhere.

Workers’ shift out of agricultural occupations as well as out of their rural bases is set to accelerate, unless new economic opportunities are created in the countryside.

A majority of the workers who leave villages find themselves in the bottom rung of the urban economy, earning a precarious(uncertain) living as drivers, factory workers, security guards and domestic helpers. Their livelihoods are directly or indirectly linked to economic activities that cater(feed) to the demand from the relatively affluent(rich) in India and abroad (such as from industries producing sophisticated IT products).

 

WIDENING THE DEMAND BASE:

Even as they work long hours often under exploitative conditions, informal workers manage to earn and consume only very little. According to the official consumption-expenditure surveys (for 2011-12), the richest 5% accounted for as much as 64.4% of the value of overall consumption of durable goods (such as of furniture or refrigerators) in urban India. The share of the poorest 50% was only 13.4%.

The COVID-19 pandemic is set to cause long-term disruptions to the existing structure of demand dominated by the consumption of a privileged few. Economic activities have now been halted for weeks on end, and no end seems to be in sight for the downward slide in export demand, which began with the U.S.-China trade tensions.

Businesses in India and elsewhere are concerned that even after the lifting of the lockdown, they will have to operate at a fraction of their installed capacities due to the sagging(low) demand conditions.

 

WIDENING THE SOURCES OF DEMAND:

The crisis in the economy can be overcome only by widening the sources of demand, by raising the consumption of and investment for the poor. Consider, for instance, the setting up of industries linked to food processing or affordable housing in rural areas.

The multiplier effects of such investment will be huge. Food processing can help boost farmer incomes, reduce food spoilage, create rural employment and, above all, improve the availability of nutritious food to the needy.

Broadening the demand base requires policies that differ fundamentally from conventional economic ideas. The mainstream argument has been that firms should try to reduce costs by squeezing wages. But cutting wages will shrink markets further and deepen the crisis during a depression.

Instead, firms should assist in raising workers’ wages and incomes, and thereby, in enlarging the size of the markets. Even with higher wages, profit rates will not dip because the larger demand allows firms to utilise their capacities better.

INCREASE GOVERNMENT SPENDING:

For rejuvenation(action or process of making someone or something look or feel better, younger, or more vital) of demand, it is critical that governments increase spending on the economy, in areas such as infrastructure and innovation. Government spending can boost the “animal spirits” of the private investors, as had been suggested by John Maynard Keynes amidst the great depression of the 1930s.

The ideas of Keynes and his followers had helped to fuel(encourage) an unprecedented(never done or known before) economic boom in the U.S. and European countries for almost three decades after the end of the Second World War in 1945. A striking feature of this ‘golden age of capitalism’ was that the real wages kept rising, providing the much-needed succour(relief) to the working classes, who had long suffered due the war and the inequalities of the depression years.

WAY FORWARD:

Battered by an oppressive economic system and now by an unpredictable virus, India’s working classes deserve long-lasting relief and comfort. What is needed is a massive expansion in government spending, which will uplift workers’ skills as well as their incomes and purchasing power.

This will include investments in healthcare, education, roads, rural infrastructure, agricultural research, public transport, and so on — perhaps similar in scale and ambition to the post-war reconstruction efforts in western nations following the Second World War.

CONCLUSION:

A grave challenge to future growth are the ageing demographic structures in most parts of the globe. In such a context, the rising numbers of the young in India, especially in its northern and eastern States, offer a potentially new source of demand that could sustain the economy over the next few decades.

Lifting the wages and the spirits of the wearied(broken) Indian worker could just be the dose required to bring cheer to the Indian and the global economies.