Government of India vs. Foreign Celebrities
The Ministry of External Affairs "pushes back" against tweets from Rihanna, Greta Thunberg, and others.
Hi there, I’m Aman Thakker. Welcome to Indialogue, a newsletter analyzing the biggest policy developments in India. The aim of this newsletter is to provide you with quality analysis every week on what’s going on in India.
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On Farm Laws, It’s Government of India vs. Foreign Celebrities
This week, it’s been hard to escape the big story coming out of India: the comments on social media by a number of foreign celebrities, and the response of the Indian government.
However, it certainly wasn’t the week I expected when I sent out last week’s update. With analysts speaking largely positively about India’s Budget for the fiscal year 2021-2022 and positive reactions to India’s “Vaccine Maitri” campaign to provide 5.6 million doses of vaccines to 17 countries, I expected the Indian government’s PR machinery to highlight its successes across platforms. Instead, the week was dominated by the ongoing controversy regarding India’s farmer protests, and the global attention that it seems to be drawing.
In breaking down this story, I’ll take a slightly different approach than some other commentators. Rather than using politics as the main lens to understand what happened this week, I’d like to keep India’s domestic politics largely in the background, bringing it forward only when absolutely necessary and largely for context. Instead, I’d like focus on the government’s decision-making, and the specific steps and policies it has taken to deal with celebrity attention to its handling of the farmer protests, and their implications for governance.
Indian farmers have been protesting the passage of three acts, passed as ordinances, that aim to reform India’s agriculture sector. You can read a more in-depth analysis of these laws from this September 21, 2020 edition of Indialogue), but briefly, three acts are:
The Farmers' Produce Trade and Commerce (Promotion and Facilitation) Act, which is aimed at providing farmers the option to sell their produce outside of the mandis, or stores, that are regulated by the Agricultural Produce Market Committee, which are state-government bodies aimed at protecting farmers from exploitation.
The Farmers (Empowerment and Protection) Agreement on Price Assurance and Farm Services Act, which allows farmers to opt into contract farming should they chose. Under this mode, farmers would sign contracts with companies, who would purchase only specific produce in exchange for payment, and
The Essential Commodities (Amendment) Act, which allows great flexibility in stocking food produce, thereby assuaging fears that such stocking could lead to prosecution for hoarding of foodstuffs
While protests began in Punjab almost immediately after the drafts of the ordinances were made public, the protests have been gaining momentum. Media reports indicate that protests have been most prominent around Delhi in Punjab, Haryana and Uttar Pradesh. However, large-scale demonstrations were also reported in Karnataka, Tamil Nadu, Odisha, Kerala and several other states. While the protests had been peaceful, they became violent on January 26, India’s Republic Day, when a group of protestors participating in the “Kisan Parade,” which involved driving a large convoy of 200,000 tractors into Delhi, broke away from the group and entered the Red Fort in New Delhi, clashing with police and raising a Sikh religious flag on a flagpole in front of the fort.
In response, the government cut off internet access in several districts around Delhi where hundreds of thousands of protestors have gathered every day since at least November 2020. It also set up cement rails and barbed wire barricades at protest sites.
On February 2 last week, things came to a head with international pop star sent out this six-word tweet:
Her tweet was later followed up on by several other foreign celebrities, including climate change activist Greta Thunberg, as well as lawyer and niece of U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris, Meena Harris.
Ordinarily, these tweets would be noted by those within government, but not merit a response. That, however, was not the case this week.
On February 3, India’s Ministry of External Affairs, led by Minister S. Jaishankar, issued a page-long press release criticizing the “sensationalist social media hashtags and comments… by celebrities and others.”
However, the MEA did not stop here. It mobilized its own social media counter-campaign with its own social media hashtags, deploying several Indian celebrities to call upon Indians to solve their own differences and stand together against “external forces,” protect “India’s sovereignty,” and stop outsiders from dividing Indians. Minister S. Jaishankar celebrated this counter-campaign, saying it reflected a new India that would be unafraid to “push back” against “motivated campaigns targeting India.” A small selection of such tweets is here:
India has long been sensitive to non-Indian entities commenting on India’s affairs (although India’s own record shows it has commented often on the internal matters of other countries.) However, politics aside, it is hard not to escape three crucial policy implications when analyzing this episode: that the MEA has misdiagnosed the problem, that it has overreacted and made matters worse, and that the Modi government’s broader modus operandi of policymaking without consultation, or policy by jhatka, needs to be reassessed.
Firstly, the press release tries to misdirect the issue at hand, implying that celebrities should learn more about the farm laws before they issue their tweets. However, that’s fundamentally not what the international ire at India is about. It’s about the mistreatment of the farmers – ranging from the death of farmers from heart attacks and the cold while protesting at the Delhi border to the internet shutdowns denying farmers – Indian citizens – their rights. None of these facts are in dispute and are not propaganda – they have been well documented and sourced, with deaths reported publicly and the government’s orders to shut down internet access available online.
Secondly, the MEA has massively overreacted in issuing a statement against tweeting celebrities at a time when India continues to face legitimate national security concerns, chief among them that China continues to challenge India’s claims in the Western Sector of the Line of Actual Control by maintaining troops on Indian-claimed land and by denying Indian patrols into areas it has regularly patrolled in the past. The idea that foreign celebrities tweeting – even if in a coordinated fashion – represents a threat to Indian sovereignty is frankly illogical. Moreover, if the idea is to demonstrate a rising, confident India, such an overreaction to coordinated tweets from foreigners does the opposite – showing the Modi government in a panic and India as insecure.
Finally, if the Indian government wishes to highlight “democratic ethos and polity,” it should recognize the reaction to the passage of its farm laws as calling for a reassessment of the Modi government’s approach to governance, and stop making policy by jhatka. Jhatka, which roughly translates to suddenness, accurately captures many of the major governance decisions made by the Modi government since it came to power – demonetizing 86% of the currency with four hours’ notice, revoking the autonomous status for Jammu and Kashmir by mobilizing troops into the erstwhile state under pretense of a security concern, announcing a nationwide lockdown with only hours of notice, and passing farm reform bills with little consultation with farmer unions and industry groups, and with questionable parliamentary procedures which saw no individual counting of votes (and instead only a voice vote) in the Upper House of Parliament. These steps have been far more central to the erosion of India’s “democratic ethos and polity” than any tweets – by foreigners or by Indians.
In short, as I noted on Twitter as this played out last week:
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COVID-19 Vaccination Update (February 1-7)
On January 16, India launched it campaign to vaccinate its population against the virus that causes COVID-19. Since this, I’ve provided a weekly snapshot of India’s vaccination numbers each week in this newsletter.
This is the fourth week of India’s vaccination campaign. (You can see updates from Week 1 (January 16-17) here, Week 2 (January 18-24) here, and Week 3 (January 25-31) here.)
This week, beginning on Monday, February 1 and ending on Sunday, February 7, the total number of vaccinated people grew from 3,706,157 people to 5,803,617 people. This jump in number of people vaccinated puts India at having administered the third-highest number of doses, behind the United Kingdom (11.48 million) and the United States (36.82 million).
The breakdown of how many people were vaccinated each is included below. The data below also links directly to the original data released by the government, which includes a further state-by-state breakdown.
Monday, February 1: 14,509 beneficiaries
Tuesday, February 2: 170,585 beneficiaries
Wednesday, February 3: 188,762 beneficiaries
Thursday, February 4: 310,604 beneficiaries
Friday, February 5: 331,029 beneficiaries
Saturday, February 6: 220,019 beneficiaries
Sunday, February 7: 28,059 beneficiaries
If you have been following this section over the last few weeks, I wrote about how there is a gap in the data because the numbers released every day on the Press Information Bureau of the Government of India’s website only represent the data available at time of upload (usually between 5pm and 7:30pm), and is therefore provisional.
This week, if you add up the number of vaccinated people daily and add it to last week’s data of the total number of people vaccinated, that still leaves out around 833,893 beneficiaries.
This week, the government also released the state-by-state data of how many health care workers should receive the vaccine in each state and Union Territory of India, and, therefore, how many doses of vaccines are allotted to each state/UT for the first phase of India’s vaccination drive. That data is available here.
News Roundup
Nearly one-and-a-half year after the Government of India curtailed internet services, including 4G data services, in the Union Territory of Jammu and Kashmir, the spokesperson for the Jammu & Kashmir administration, Rohit Kansal, announced on Twitter that 4G mobile internet services would be restored in the UT.
The Japan Times reports that the United States has already proposed a virtual meeting of the leaders of the Quad countries - the United States, India, Japan, and Australia. The proposal comes two years after the first-ever meeting of foreign ministers of the Quad countries, and while India remains engaged in a stand-off with China in Eastern Ladakh.
The Fifteenth Finance Commission, constituted by the Government of India to provide recommendations on the devolution of taxes and other fiscal matters for Fiscal Years 2021-2026, released its report with 117 recommendations spanning four volumes. The full report is available, in English and in Hindi, here.
India hosted an Indian Ocean Region Defense Minister’s Conclave on February 4 on the sidelines of the Aero India exhibition. In total, the conclave saw the participation of representatives from 18 countries, including the Defence Ministers of Maldives, Comoros, Iran and Madagascar, the Ambassadors/High Commissioners from Australia, Kenya, Seychelles, Mauritius, Kuwait and Myanmar, among others. The aim of the conclave was to “promote dialogue in an institutional, economic and cooperative environment that can foster the development of peace, stability and prosperity in the Indian Ocean region.”
India’s Minister of Commerce and Industry, Piyush Goyal, co-chaired the first ever India-European Union High Level Dialogue on Trade and Investment on February 5, along with his counterpart, European Union Executive Vice-President & Trade Commissioner Mr. Valdis Dombrovskis. The dialogue was established following the 15th India-EU Leader’s Summit held in July 2020 and is aimed at promoting bilateral trade and investment relations.
Pranav Dixit of Buzzfeed News reports that “India’s government has threatened to punish employees at Twitter with fines and jail terms of up to seven years for restoring hundreds of accounts it has ordered the company to block.”
The Election Commission of India announced by-elections for three seats - two from Gujarat and one from Assam - in the Rajya Sabha, or the Indian Parliament’s Upper House. Elections to the Rajya Sabha are indirect elections, wherein the state legislatures choose representatives through proportional representation. The by-election for these seats will take place March 1, 2021.
The United States and India will hold the 16th edition of their Army-to-Army exercises Yudh Abhyas in Rajasthan between February 8 and 21. The exercise is aimed at enhancing cooperation and interoperability between the two armies and will focus on counter-terrorism operations under the United Nations mandate, per Hindustan Times.
The Modi government is slated to introduce a Bill to amend the Electricity Act, 2003 to set the ball rolling on abolition of power “distribution licence” and allow any company to supply electricity to an area, after necessary regulatory approval, thereby ending the monopoly of existing power distribution companies (discoms), which are mostly state-owned entities.
The Ministry of Commerce and Industry announced that the World Trade Organization had carried out a “Trade Policy Review” of India under the organization’s Trade Policy Review Mechanism. The Ministry noted that while the United States and the European Union had “flagged certain trade related issues, including increase in import duties” during the review meetings, India would continue to apply rates of customs duty while “keeping in view the overall economic and other policy objectives.”
The Ministry of New and Renewable Energy co-hosted the first ever India-Bahrain Joint Working Group on Renewable Energy on February 4. The meeting saw both countries agree on sharing experience, expertise and best practices, aas well as deeper cooperation between, both, government agencies and the private sector, on capacity building in the fields of solar energy, wind energy and clean hydrogen.
The Ministry of Home Affairs informed Parliament that the rules under the Citizenship Amendment Act, which was passed in December 2019 and should have been framed within six months of the Act coming into force, have not yet been framed. The Ministry confirmed that it has sought and received an extension from the Committees on Subordinate Legislation from the Lok Sabha and the Rajya Sabha Parliament, and now has until April 9, 2021 and July 9, 2021 respectively to frame the rules.
Five to Read
From cogent analysis to potentially big news that you should keep an eye on, here are a few commentaries and other pieces of writing that I found particularly enlightening:
Dr. S. Jaishankar, Minister for External Affairs, Government of India, writes: “As foreign minister, my view of [the Budget] is naturally a strategic one. It focuses on the impact of the budget on our comprehensive national power. Whether it is post-Covid recovery or setting future directions, it will determine India’s role in the emerging global order… If India is to step up to that challenge, it must create robust capacities at home. That can only happen when we make the investments necessary to build domestic strengths, modernise our infrastructure and upgrade our skills. All of that is facilitated by a larger enabling environment that provides basic necessities to all while promoting education, skills, employment and innovation. The 2021 budget addresses all these issues. By doing so, it ensures that the world can count more on India.”
Amit Cowshish, former financial advisor (acquisitions), Ministry of Defence, argues: “At best, [India’s Ministry of Defense] can be defined as a ‘siphonophore’ or an assembly of zooids, similar to myriads of marine species that clone themselves thousands of times in different forms and shapes, defying accurate definition… With seemingly little or no repository of institutional wisdom, the MoD appears to be perpetually astride a treadmill, busy reinventing the wheel of national security, seldom looking at, or learning any lessons from the past. It is astonishing that the MoD, which accounts for 15-16% of the federal government’s annual expenditure, has neither a viable financially comprehensive plan nor an enduring strategy to make optimum use of its large budgetary outlays to achieve intended outcomes. Astonishingly, it has no core inside it to either formulate such overarching proposals or oversee their implementation.”
Rupa Subramanya, distinguished fellow of the Asia Pacific Foundation of Canada, writes: “What is ironic is that Modi's stunning 2014 election victory was powered by widespread public disgust at the perceived nexus between government and big business, which resulted in a spate of corruption scams and tarnished the image of the previous government. While crony capitalism may be alive and well in Modi's India, it has not evoked public outcry, nor has any major scam come to the surface. What is more, India's new oligarchs position themselves as national champions, marshaling rhetoric that echoes Modi himself.”
Dr. Constantino Xavier, fellow at the Centre for Social and Economic Progress, New Delhi, argues: “It may be often tempting to describe India’s Myanmar policy as suffering from a dilemma between values and interest. There is no such confusion in practice: India’s interest in Myanmar has always been guided strategically by the centrality of democracy to ensure deeper ties… For the time being, New Delhi will, therefore, say what it can and do what it must — in public, India will push for democracy but in private it will pivot to engage with Myanmar’s new military regime.”
Akhil Bery, South Asia analyst at Eurasia Group, writes: “With the Serum Institute selling doses around the world, the door is wide open for India to play a constructive role in ensuring the world gets vaccinated, especially as higher income countries focus on taking care of their own citizens first. And, with India in competition with China in the immediate neighborhood, India can effectively use vaccines as a mechanism to pushback against Chinese influence.