The story of coronavirus pandemic management in India

At the time of writing India has become the second-worst affected country by coronavirus pandemic and the number of confirmed cases stands at 4,224,014. The daily rise in cases is slowly inching up towards 100000 cases a day with no signs of the infection slowing down despite almost 3 months of lockdown. While every other country has slowed down but India seems to have bucked the trend completely and continues on the n-1th wave. This blogpost aims to highlight what went wrong in India’s fight to contain the infection.

First, I would like to add that Coronavirus is a serious disease but in a country like India where more people die of dengue, malaria, TB, etc. India as a country responded with lockdowns because unlike the other diseases this disease afflicted the poor and the rich alike. The absence of treatment compounded the problem and the middle class and the elites of the country responded in a way never seen ever at least in India. 

The govt. for a change responded quite proactively by announcing a lockdown as a response to the pandemic to slow the spread of the virus. But what the government. Did before and after announcing the lockdown left a lot to be desired. Before the lockdown was announced travellers coming from abroad were allowed to go home without any tests or any need to isolate at home. This drove the first wave and spread the disease far and wide. Only thermal scanners were deployed in the airports to check for signs of increased temperature to detect infected patients. The govt. In terms of the looming pandemic, there was still wasn’t scaling up testing for covid19. So despite being proactive mover we failed to check the infections.

Once the lockdown was announced, the Govt. failed to properly indicate the length of the lockdown. All of a sudden millions of casual workers in Indian cities were left jobless and with limited means and uncertainty surrounding the length of the lockdown decided to take the journey back to their rural homes. But there was no transport available and the workers had to literally walk hundreds of kilometers and hardly practiced social distancing and to add on there was no rule yet on compulsory usage of face coverings. So there is no study which might indicate a few infected people in those huge crowds may have helped spread the disease to the hinterlands. Testing was negligible in the big cities so you can imagine what would be the state in the hinterland.

The testing in India was very lackluster, to say the least. India hit the milestone of 1 million tests a day only on 22 August 2020, some 147 days after the first lockdown was announced. So by the time, we might be testing enough the infection has spread wide and far. And one of the most puzzling things is that the govt. Even now doesn’t admit that community transmission is rampant and maintains there is no community transmission. With over 4 million cases I wonder how well the contract tracing is going on? I will give a few examples from states which despite not being ruled by the BJP have failed in performing any better than the central govt. The first would be Delhi. Delhi was staring at a gargantuan outbreak and daily around 4000 cases were being detected with around just around 10-15 thousand tests being conducted. There were stories of hospitals overwhelmed with patients and a lack of communication to family members of patients. The central govt. Intervened and the number of tests went up and more facilities were created to help manage the situation. Slowly things started improving but again the govt. became complacent, the number of tests remained stagnant around 20 thousand when testing needed to be scaled up significantly to make sure that the virus is contained well. Now Delhi is seeing a resurgence of numbers and the Delhi govt. Is scrambling to increase the number of tests and playing a blame game with the Central govt. 

The second case would be West Bengal. From 18 July onwards WB has been reporting cases around 2000 positive cases with 13 thousand odd tests and on 6 September the figure stands at 3thousand positive cases on around 44 thousand tests. During this intervening time, the number of cases has remained constant between 2 to 3 thousand despite the number of tests tripling.  On the outside, it seems WB has everything under control and the curve has been flattened very well but when you talk to people on the ground you get to hear stories and the backlog of test results, the state of hospitals be it public or private. Given a state with WB population (Around 91 million), the testing still remains very low. But the state govt. Even now has failed to scale up testing and keeps blaming the Central govt. For lack of tests. And this despite the fact that Indian test manufacturing companies are planning to export more than 10 million test kits.

The point I was trying to make is that the govt. Be at the state level or the central level has failed miserably to rise up to the occasion. The infection is widely widespread as indicated by the serological studies in the major cities indicating more than 30% of the population might have been infected already. And now the only way to control the infection is simply to test and isolate. There is no point anymore in contact tracing. The govt. Failed to scale up testing during the first 2 months of lockdown when it could have been effectively controlled. And this should be a lesson for us and put in proper operating procedures because this is not going to be the last epidemic and a good example would be the South Korean model. I am sure India will survive this pandemic not because we have amazing governance but rather we have always managed to survive for the last 74 years despite always being at the precipice and not just falling over.

The ‘act of god’ and the Indian economy

The ‘act of god’ and the Indian economy

India faced it’s first economic contraction ever in recorded history after independence. The Indian GDP fell by 23.4% in the April-June quarter. And guess what is the headlines in some of the widely watched Indian news channels: Who or what led Sushant Singh Rajput to commit suicide? To say the least it is bizarre. So in the next few paragraphs, I will explain why the heading and what a bioinformatician feels about the Indian economy.

Just a day before the Indian economic figures were announced, the Finance minister Shrimati Nirmala Sitharaman, an alumnus of the much-maligned Indian Jawahar Lal Nehru University declared that the contraction in the Indian economy is expected and the Govt. couldn’t do much given the current coronavirus pandemic and it is a ‘ACT OF GOD’. I found the statement amusing not because she was lying but it was an easy way of deflecting the responsibility from the ruling party. I am not much of an economist but the Indian economy was already in the doldrums as the growth had slowed down to around 4% in the previous quarter reflecting a wider malaise in the economy and the pandemic simply managed to make an already bad situation worse.

The response of the Indian govt has been very strange to the slowdown brought about by the pandemic. Worldwide the major economies even the Trump govt. Decided to put more money into the hands of citizens in the form of tax cuts and COVID-specific allowance along with tax cuts for corporates so that job loss is minimized along with trying to maintain the spending by the public. On the contrary the Indian govt. Decided to provide stimulus to corporate India in the form of tax breaks which will be incurred in the future so it hardly helped the companies with the cash situation while creating uncertainty over jobs being saved over time. Nobody knew what was exactly the govt stimulus except for the fact it touted some big numbers out of which hardly 10% was a real hard cash component and the rest was to be accrued over time. A confused policy left nobody any wiser and it led to the amazing numbers as we can see today.

Now I will talk about the supporters of the govt. Look at the image below which was shared widely over the social media and many of my ‘educated’ friends sent to me.

Looking at the image we would be like ‘ Wow, at least we are not the worst-performing economy’. But the image hides lots of things. First is that the USA is the hardest hit economy and the fall in GDP reflects that but again the figure for the USA has been annualized that is calculated as a prediction for the whole year based on the previous quarter which was actually around 10% when compared to the June-mar quarter. While the Indian GDP data was for the Apr-Jun quarter(2020-21) and was the fall based on the same quarter for the year 2019-20. So the comparison isn’t exactly apples with apples but gives a certain comparison. Only UK reflects the impact of coronavirus in an economy that had the highest deaths in the European Union and the uncertainty in the economy due to the looming BREXIT. So it is now clear that the Indian economy was the worst-performing amongst the 20 biggest economies of the world.

So what is the problem with the ruling NDA govt? The problem is that the govt. is not acknowledging the economic slowdown. Second is the govt is instead of reducing the tax burden on the citizens, the govt has been increasing taxes on Petrol and Diesel, the primary fuel of the economy despite historic lows in the global prices. And not only the BJP govt but also the non-BJP state governments. are also guilty of using taxes on fuels to mop up extra revenue due to shortfall in other areas of revenue collection. The supporters of the govt. are somehow ok with historical high fuel prices when the prices are the lowest in the global market which is surprising because once upon a time the same people were furious over the previous govt when they had tried to de-regulate fuel prices and make it based on global prices when the global prices were above 100$/barrel. The govt. Somehow doesn’t have its ears to the ground and joblessness and lack of new opportunities are building resentment in the large youth population of India. The only thing that is saving the ruling party in the elections is the lack of a credible face in the opposition ranks. The opposition needs a charismatic mass leader otherwise this govt. Will keep getting a free license to keep getting away with murder.

The next quarter will determine the real quantum of the economic slump in India. With the economy opening up and the surge of cases in COVID patients in India somehow I am a bit skeptical of the economic outlook. The govt. As usual, is managing the headlines in the major media outlets spectacularly. The only bit of positive news coming out of India right now is from the Indo-china border with the Indian armed forces flexing its muscles and thwarting the attempts by the Chinese PLA to alter the status quo at the disputed border. For a change, India has acted proactively after the setbacks in the past few months and it has taken the upper hand in the border skirmishes.

India and its Lockdown experiences

India decided to go on lockdown on 24th March when the number of cases of COVID19 patients stood at 200. For the first time, the Indian government took a step proactively to save lives and save the country from a pandemic. It was amazing when many of the western countries were debating lockdowns India had already done it.

So India did exceedingly well on the step one of the processes of containing COVID19 infection. But what followed the lockdown has exposed the deficiency in the Indian healthcare system run by both the central govt and the state govt. The second positive step was India slowly became a big manufacturer of PPE kits for healthcare workers. Given what was happening in Europe and the USA, it was deemed prudent India needed complete lockdown to tide over the crisis.

Today I will just focus on the lack of planning and failure of the govt and the elephant of a bureaucracy. The health bulletins by the Ministry of Health in India have been shambolic, to say the least, and from April end have been infrequent. In times of crisis, you would assume the government would be communicating on a regular basis. I currently live in Australia and have seen daily press conferences by the Prime minister, the health minister, and the Chief medical officer followed by the state premier, health minister, and chief medical officer. They are there not only to rattle off random numbers but also to take questions from the journalists and allay concerns of the public. While in India the PM chooses a televised address or a radio show to communicate while the health Minister randomly appears for press conferences.

The major mistake was a lack of testing. In India, the ICMR was made the nodal agency and it was thought that an agency led by doctors would do amazing. The government didn’t take into account the fact that a) it was run by doctors and b) They have no experience in administrative matters and how to cut through the bureaucratic clutter. Not once did I see a committee of epidemiologists being created by the government to model the disease spread. ICMR failed to stockpile enough testing kits or enable Indian manufacturers to get accredited testing kits and production up on time.

The first 25 days of the lockdown India was conducting barely 10000 tests a day. And even in the first week of May, there was a backlog of samples to be tested which stretched to 5-6 days. And now we are seeing an explosion in the number of cases. ON a daily basis we are getting 5000+ cases when we are almost 55 days into lockdown. It is clear we are in the community transmission phase of the disease but the Government refuses to use that term in any of the briefings. The govt. has decided to relax lockdown rules because the economy is in doldrums and it has caused a great humanitarian crisis in India which I will cover later.

Anti/Pro CAA protests in Northeast Delhi

A sad day indeed when a Policeman Rattan Lal and 4 civilians died in the clashes between Anti-CAA protestors, Pro-CAA protestors, and the Delhi Police. I will write what I feel and might be tagged many of the names people nowadays call and even be told I am not taking a stand. I am taking a stand just not taking any side.

The anti-CAA protestors mobilized and set up a protest near the Jafrabad Metro station and blocked the road 66. While protesting is a genuine form of dissent but I wouldn’t support the inconveniencing of the general public for protests. Blocking a road is bad at best. If you have to set up an additional site of protests go and lay siege on the India gate or where the PM stays or the parliament. Inconveniencing the general public is the best way to lose support for a cause and the anti-CAA protestors have shown utter disregard for the rest of the Indian citizens.

The protests were going on with Police trying to move them. But then a BJP leader Kapil Mishra gives a fiery speech in presence of Policemen, saying that the protestors would be removed if the police fail to do its job. The leader wasn’t arrested but allowed to roam around despite inciting crowds. What happened after that was appalling, to say the least. Videos shot by people show a different kind of images. Like the Police pelting stones, and beating up already injured people and forcing them to sing the national anthem while kicking them and saying things like ‘deta hu tujhe aazadi’. The police were also seen to be helping the ‘protestors’ trying to remove the protestors and doing nothing when a group was clashing with the other.

Another shocking image from the protests was a gun-wielding man shooting some rounds towards the police and was part of anti-CAA protestors. The argument of self-defense doesn’t allow anybody to just wield a gun and shoot. The anti-CAA protestors have misunderstood the support for the cause as the people being tolerant towards supporting the blocking of roads etc. Just beacuse people have been understanding of the blockade at Shaheen Bagh doesn’t give the anti-CAA protestors to block other roads. At the same time, the conduct of Delhi Police was bad, to say the least, and the way they allowed the pr-CAA protestors to go on a rampage was abhorrent.

The question isn’t about who started the violence first. The problem is a public road was being blocked in the name of freedom of expression and protest while another group of pro-govt. goons were allowed to go on a rampage while the police watched. In the end, 5 Indians died and till now neither the gunman has been arrested nor the politician inciting violence has been arrested.

Chernobyl is Phenomenal is it Time for a series on the Bhopal Tragedy?

A few years before Chernobyl happened, a disaster of similar proportions unfolded in the sleepy capital of the Indian state of Madhya Pradesh, Bhopal. In a pesticide manufacturing factory owned by the Union Carbide Corporation of the USA, on the night of 2nd December 1984, Methyl isocyanate (MIC) gas was accidentally leaked which resulted in immediate death of around 2500 people with another 8000 people dying within two weeks of the event and a further 8000 dying later due to after effects of the gas leak. More than half a million people were exposed to the gas and are still suffering from the aftereffects. Bhopal Gas tragedy is the worst industrial disaster of modern times. Just to put into perspective, the Chernobyl disaster affected around 200000 people.

So why do we never get to hear much in the popular media about the Bhopal Gas tragedy? Is it because the company behind the disaster was American. Why did the US govt. fail to extradite the people responsible for the disaster back to India for prosecution or failed to prosecute themselves. It is strange because in the US people file all kind of cases against leaders/govts. across the world and the federal US govt is more than happy to admit cases against the Iran govt. or the ex Libyan Dictator but not the management of a chemical company tells you a story of hidden agendas. The Indian govt. didn’t exactly cover itself in glory and let the perpetrators get away from India and helped in all ways to minimize the compensation to be paid by the company. Even the cleanup efforts have faltered and the groundwater is slowly being poisoned by the chemicals in the factory. The next few sections will focus on the tragedy itself and the apathy of successive Indian govts. and use of bribery as methods for companies to get away with crimes.
People woke up in the middle of a cold December night with burning eyes, coughing and a burning sensation in the throat. People woke up to gas seeping through the doors and ran out of their houses to see bodies of animals and people scattered on the streets with many others stumbling across already half blind by the gas fumes. The US chemical giant which was known as the Union Carbide which was later merged with Dow chemicals and now part of the US giant named DowDupont. The hospitals in the city were ill-equipped to handle so many people and they had no clue what they were up against.

Just a glimpse of the night is enough to send shivers down one’s spine. This wasn’t the first leak which happened in the chemical plant. There are at least 3 instances of chemical leakage happening being documented officially before the fateful night. I came across this archival report in The NewYork Times, and it beautifully lists out all the lapses on the part of the Union Carbide and how inept they were regarding safety. Going through the report would make you realize how safety standards were blatantly violated both by executives in the Indian plant and by visiting executives from abroad and in the headquarters. It is a story of malfunctioning machinery, inadequately trained staff, cost-cutting, and inadequate warnings even after the event had occurred all point to a murky picture.

The Congress govt. both at the Centre and the state was inefficient, to say the least. Also, the CEO of Union Carbide, Warren Anderson, who was arrested was allowed to go escape the country and the highest powers of the country including the PMO helping him flee. The govt response was non-existent for the first few hours of the Chief Minister of the state escaping to the outskirts of the city to escape the deadly fumes. Not much is known against the govt activity in the immediate aftermath of the event just tells us how bad the response to the deadly event was!

It’s been 35 years since the tragedy, the second and third generation survivors are fighting against an array of disabilities at a scale hardly ever seen anywhere. Incidences of congenital diseases have spiked making a whole generation disabled with many suffering from multiple disorders. Even after so many years, people are scarred by the incident and successive govts. have done nothing to alleviate the pain. The compensation paid by the company was around 480 million dollars. To put that into perspective the BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico amounted to a 21 billion dollar fine for BP. That tells you the story of how lives are thought to be dispensable in a country like India and command no value while in the western world even harm to livelihoods carries far more value. I leave you with some excellent articles which showcase the human cost of the disaster and the ineptitude of successive govts. in bringing the perpetrators to justice.

Is making rides free for women on public transport in Delhi is only a poll gimmick?

So the AAP govt. led by Arvind Kejriwal in Delhi proposed that all bus and metro travel will be made free for Delhi women. The rationale for the move are many according to the govt. and many pro-feminist campaigners. I heard during a debate on HTN channel where one of the key feminist campaigners Kavita Krishnan voicing her support for the move. Another rationale is that more women using public transport will automatically make public transport safer for women.

First, the whole idea of free travel is problematic especially in a country like India which is still a developing economy with a huge economy. Second, Delhi has a world-class metro which will definitely be going to breakdown given the increased load and the loss of revenue which is going to affect the functionality of the service. And I can just go on with the reasons but I will stick to just the financial implications. If the govt. is serious then instead of investing money to subsidize the public transport whose fares are already pretty low as compared to global standards, they should be strengthening the public transport by buying more buses. Delhi’s bus network has stagnated for years when the mandated bus strength should have been close to 11000, Delhi has just 7000 odd buses running and more than 10% of the buses are off road due to technical issues at any given time. The night service of buses in Delhi is one of the worst I have seen in one of the major world capitals.

I don’t mind subsidy for travel based on income category but making it free is suicidal. A 50% concession for people of certain economic criteria is still agreeable because I believe making service free for people opens the service to be misused. And making that again gender specific is not helping the cause of feminism much rather it will make people take up more extreme positions like what has happened to politics and it is going to harm the movement for equality. But AAP, if you are really serious invest the money in getting new buses, and the way you dismantled the whole bus rapid transit system in Delhi, please have a relook because having dedicated lanes on the road for buses/taxis are going to improve public transport and force people to make the shift. Right now other than the metro people especially in the middle class try to avoid the buses because they are usually overcrowded and always seem to be stuck in traffic snarls. So invest in providing good public transport first then if you are making money out of it then only try to bring down the fares.

The great Indian Dance of Democracy comes to an end.

So, as the trends are finalising, it is pretty clear that the BJP has managed to improve its 2014 tally and actually win more seats. This achievement is admirable more-so due to the fact that almost all the opposition parties came together, along with a significant chunk of the urban Indian middle class. But at the end it was all about a choice : the mildly successful Narendra Modi or rag-tag challengers including Mayawati, Rahul Gandhi etc. The PM aptly summed up the situation that everyday you will have a new PM. And we were reminded of the United Front days of the 90’s when we had 2 PM’s in about 2 years and 3 if you include Atal Behari Vajpayee’s 11 day govt.

The elections were close to call initially as I amongst many of my urban friends thought that BJP has reached the pinnacle and the only way they can now go is down. I went through the data of a few states and was checking the vote share. Uttaranchal, Delhi, Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh were the few states I checked amongst others like West Bengal, Kerala and Tamilnadu before the Election Commission site hung on me. The surprising part was the lowest vote share that BJP got was in UP which was 49.3% and rest of the states it was higher than 50%. In WB, Kerala and TN it where it had smaller or minimal presence it was different. But the real story is in the biggest states it had a vote share of 50% which was unprecedented.

Even the much vaunted candidate from Begusarai, Kanhaiya Kumar, the media Darling was a poor third when it came to fighting the BJP. In Bihar and Assam along with ots allies BJP had around 45% voteshare and in Odisha it still had 34%. In Gujarat and Maharasthra I am sure it would have got more than 40% given the amount of seats they have won or are leading in. This tells you that this election was less about voting for Modi but more of vote against the lack of opposition. The people aren’t blind and they noticed in the last 5 years the parliamnet hardly functioned, there were hardly any noticeable debates and the star PM candidate, Rahul Gandhi has a dismal parliamentary record.

The opposition failed to latch on idling economy, lack of new employment generation and farmer distress. Instead they focussed on matters like Rafale jets scam which to the majority of Indians didn’t mean much because that didn’t affect their lives and was rather important for national security. The reputations of the opposition leaders didn’t help. This election also led to the almost death of communism of India. Just think about it that in 2004 they had 54 seats and now they are down to 5 seats. The Aam Aadmi Party experiment is slowly dying and might not survive beyond the next Delhi assembly elections. The national alternative which AAP could provide and rise above the usual caste and religious based politics was lost to oppotunism.

And I heard numerous ground reports and realised that BJP won despite widespread discontent against the local MP’s and that was solely due to the tireless efforts of the PM and Amit Shah. This election also made a pitch for decoupling the position of PM to the MP’s and make it more presidential style so that the people can elect local MP’s they like instead of voting for the central candidate happens and the PM/president is elected based on his individual capabilities. All the best to next 5 years of BJP govt. and no matter who says wht, the democarcy won’t die so easily in India.

The election that will change India! Or is it just rhetoric?

I have been gone a bit too long. The Indian elections are at full swing and 4 phases are already over out of the marathon 7 phases. This is indeed an improvement from the 9 phases in 2019. Already there are reports of the electronic voting machines(EVM’s) malfunctioning. The Election Commission of India(ECI) has been pretty tardy when it comes to complaints about violation of the model code of conduct especially the PM himself. On others, they have taken some action but the major leaders have been left untouched. This election is unprecedented by the fact that the use of social media has taken gigantic proportions. The PM giving non-political interviews while the Congress president avoiding any kind off one-on-one interviews.

So if I am to believe the opposition this election is for the survival of democracy in the country. Their concerns aren’t unfounded. This has been the first time in my living memory I have read reports of CBI and ED raids on opposition leaders during the election campaign. Usually, the powers that be need permission from the ECI before conducting any raids. When the opposition complained, The ECI cracked the whip and the raids have almost stopped. Indeed that indicates that the Govt. of India was indeed trying to intimidate the opposition parties and that has led almost all the opposition parties to unite in a battle for survival. The GOI introduced the electoral bond system which has led to an increase in corporate donations in an anonymous fashion and the ruling party, the BJP has been cornered almost 90% of the donations. The BJP is garnering almost 85% of the funds raised by all political parties and spending them at an equally fast pace.

So come to the next question if all the corporate houses are keen on the return of the BJP is democracy in danger? Is this the last election India will ever see and we will have BJP rule in the foreseeable future? Here I beg to differ with many of my friends across the political spectrum. I will elucidate my points in the coming sections.

First, we have to look at the rise of BJP and what it means for the country in general. For almost the first five decades of our independence, we had only Congress-led govts. The opposition whenever formed the govt was more of a ragtag group of regional parties across the country. In 1998 for the first time, we had a stable non-Congress govt. But again the leaders who led the BJP govt. lacked the killer instinct where they didn’t put much emphasis on expanding across the country but rather focussed on stitching alliances. Then we had 10 years of Congress-led govt which led us to this phase of the rise of BJP, the national party. Under the Modi-Shah leadership, the BJP went on an overdrive to make BJP a truly national party. They poached leaders from across parties and the prime focus was east, north-east and the south of the country. The BJP was trying to shake off the tag of the north Indian party.

This steps by the BJP led to the current dilemma of the regional parties. They were being threatened by the BJP on their own turf. The BJP could strong-arm them since they had an absolute majority in the parliament and didn’t need anybody to survive. The masses who were already fed up with the Congress found a real alternative to vote for the central govt. They discovered that the regional parties led by the satraps were busy furthering their own interests rather than of the country as a whole. This led to all the regional parties trying to forge alliances because if they couldn’t survive this election it might actually lead to re-emergence of Congress and convert India to a bi-party system where the 2 major national parties vie to form the govt. The regional parties with literally no role in the center would slowly fade away.

This election will not lead to re-emergence of Congress party per se but will set it up for success in the next round of elections. The problem with the Congress is that they are smug in the knowledge that if any party has the reach and presence to challenge the BJP it is them. They have been tardy in stitching alliances with the regional satraps because it will reduce their already reduced national clout and will lead to a revival of all the regional parties who actually had their origins in anti-congress ideology. Even if the alliances did happen they were essentially ideologically incompatible because for Congress to revive they would need the regional parties to die as the BJP has made a solid base which they are holding on pretty comfortably.

Now comes the next question is this scenario good for the country? Yes in a way. The reason is that the rise of BJP across India has shown us one thing that the people of India are thinking beyond state identities and the Indian nationalism is peaking. The BJP is using that narrative to expand rapidly. So does that mean just because the BJP is using nationalism does it mirror the rise of fascism? Frankly, the answer is a resounding NO. The Indian public might be enamoured at present by the nationalist narrative and the religious narrative but if the benefits of economic growth don’t percolate down fast enough this govt will definitely get the boot. We always underestimate the power of the Indian public and forget despite the emergency imposed by Indira Gandhi in 1975, who was at the peak of her powers and popularity the Indian public rose up in defiance leading to the annulment of the same.

So to end this post, I would say No, Indian democracy isn’t at risk right now. And that coming from an anti-Modi person is something. The problem with our opposition right now is they are campaigning that vote for just about anybody, even if the person is a criminal but don’t vote for the BJP. And here all the parties are missing a trick. If I have to be a bi-partisan campaigner I would rather campaign that ‘ Don’t vote for the party but vote for the candidate’. If we do succeed in getting that message across the electorate we will have a different ballgame altogether. When the Aam Aadmi Party came into the picture that was the hope but in the heat of Indian politics, they also became just another political party. They forgot that successful revolutions are never instantaneous and the win in the Delhi elections just made them forget that. They have been doing some good work but their political choices have left much to be desired. They genuinely had a chance of becoming a pan-India political party but they squandered all the goodwill. So this Elections is more about India turning into a bi or tri-party system with other parties being decimated completely.

The issue affecting people like me: the funding for higher education and research

So I have made it to my second blog post. I decided my first genuine article needs to have a bit of research and I chose the area of higher education and research in general. I have often heard from my friends, many news sources and god knows who else with everybody telling me that the funding for higher education as well as research has been falling over the years especially after Modi Govt. came to power. I chose to for the first time have a look in the govt archives instead of news sources for information this time. The results were kind of surprising.

The Indian GDP has shown very good growth after the economic liberalization, especially after 1998 when finally after years of political instability NDA formed a stable Govt.

The Indian GDP bull run ( all values are from world bank data)

As evident in the graph above the story is nothing but rosy for the Indians. But then let’s see things in perspective. The economy size grew by approximately 68% between 1998 and 2004 which indeed was impressive ( The formula, unlike complex govt calculations, was simple final year GDP-base year GDP/ Base year GDP *100). During this time the NDA govt was so confident of winning the elections they started an India Shining campaign and poured crores of rupees advertising the same. But, the Indian population thought otherwise and kicked out the govt. So again using the same calculations the between 2004 and 2009 the economy grew by an astonishing 89% in size ( From almost 700billion to 1.3 trillion) and the Govt got re-elected. Mind you this amazing run was in the phase where the whole global economy was shrinking due financial crisis in USA and Europe so that makes the figures more impressive. Between the years 20019 and 2014 the Indian economy could grow only by 54% in size which not surprisingly led to the downfall of the UPA Govt. Now comes the juicy part between the years 2014 and 2017 ( World bank is yet to update data for 2018) the growth in Indian GDP by size was a paltry 26% and if I take the unofficial numbers for the year 2018 then it comes to around 39%. So the growth rate has indeed slowed down but not because India is faltering but the base size has increased so now the govt has to work twice as hard to maintain same levels of growth. But as we all know the govt is busy fudging the methodology to deliver mind-blowing growth rates.

I digressed a lot with the economic data but that wasn’t the main topic of my blog post.so here comes the graph of the money budgeted by the Govt for the Ministry of Science and Technology and The department of Biotech.

I chose these two ministries because I think they will be driving the research spend by the govt and these areas are going to decide if India will become a superpower. Military on imported arms and technology import can’t make a country superpower. Under the UPA govt’s. the Ministry of Science and tech funding grew from approx 1636 crores to 3571 crores. More than double but in almost 10 years while the economy grew at double the pace. This does reflect the apathy of the UPA govt towards research and development. Now let’s see the NDA figures which rose to 4470 crores in their full first-year budget and kept increasing but grew by just 50% over the UPA levels. Despite the growth being pretty poor it does keep pace with the rate of growth of the economy. So the misconception that the NDA govt. is cutting back on research funding isn’t entirely correct. It can be argued that they are as bad for research as the UPA and govts. in general. One thing I forgot to mention is many of the increases you see in the budgetary allocation is also due to the inflation and the increased salaries for scientists which essentially implies that our govts ignore research and development.

Let us analyze the Biotech data, shall we? Under the UPA the biotech funding rose from 458 crores to 1502 crores. And after that, it has increased to 2580 crores under the NDA. I don’t need to do the maths on these because as it is the numbers are very low. Biotech industry in India is driven primarily by the private sector and to be honest, no breakthrough research is happening there. If there is an area which requires more funding and better facilities, then it is biotech. The apathy of successive govts is visible on the field. The growth of funding in this area is too low and to become the next superpower I am sad to say we are not spending enough. To drive a lab in applied life sciences we need is more money to train the first level of scientists and provide enough funding for them to continue research either in the Private sector or mentor the ideas to commercialization. But that can only be achieved more domain experts are hired to run ministries rather than simply politicians. No matter how good a politician is they tend to focus on their vote-banks which is still undereducated and poor but job creation can only be achieved by investing in Science and not the other way round.

Now let us go the next thing I wanted to talk about. I have talked about how Govts have failed the scientific community but are we training the next generation of thinkers? I think that is the area we are lagging behind by quite some margin. You would be surprised to hear that India has the third largest higher education system in the world and still am complaining. Why for the last 60 years the previous govts did nothing but still managed to build the third largest higher education system and still here I am blaming the Modi Govt. Here I present the graph just to show the budgetary allocation over the last 8 years for perspective.

The picture above just reinforces my beliefs. No matter who is in power they don’t care about education. The problem in India right now is we have achieved considerable success in the primary education system but forgot that higher education is essential to develop a skilled population. If you just sit on social media you will realize the number of Indian students moving abroad for higher education. The numbers which might have been a trickle earlier have become a deluge. My own personal example from Galway which is a town of 70000 people in Ireland. In 2012 when I arrived, there were approximately 30 Indian students, in 2018 the number had jumped to over 400. In India getting into the higher education system is as competitive as anywhere else in the world. But with increasing educated students the pace in growth of seats in higher education have stagnated. The funding figures kind of attest to the fact that fundings haven’t grown significantly have any significant impact. Actually, most of the funding increases go in paying the salaries of the staff and if we adjust for inflation the growth has been almost nil.

So that ends my blog post. The key takeaway for me has been that this Modi Govt. hasn’t been better than the previous govts when it comes to higher education, research, and development funding. But the kind of campaign they run you would believe they are doing an immense job which in fact is untrue. They are in fact just as bad as the previous 60 years which they keep on blaming. The people of India might vote for him, hell I might vote for him just because I don’t see the alternatives to be any better. They could have done better and for that, they needn’t have looked any further than Delhi where the AAP govt which has invested big time on education and given the public sector education much-needed makeover. Adios till the next post.

P.S.: All the data you see here has been taken from the Ministry of Finance website and the GDP figures are from the World Bank website.

The Great Indian Circus nee elections.

So, another year, another election. The world’s largest democracy is going to polls and me being an Indian voter is sitting outside the country participating in online arguments with friends and trolls alike. I am made to understand that these elections will be like no other. Doesn’t it sound like just another superhero movie tagline? One side we have the greatest PM ever in the Universe, Mr. Narendra Modi and squaring up against him is the challenger Mr. Rahul Gandhi who, well has nothing to boast of other than being scion of the Nehru-Gandhi dynasty who is being assisted my multiple frenemies like the BSP, SP, TMC, Communists (Yes I know they are endangered the world over).

If I am to believe the current ruling party of India, The NDA govt. has been nothing short of being a success. They have overcome the severe mistakes which the previous Govts have made and managed to turn around the country and its economy. They have delivered what no other govt has been able to achieve like 100% electrification, improved highway infrastructure, increased access to public sanitation, higher GDP growth amongst others. One of the major changes in Indian foreign policy has been witnessed viz-a-viz Pakistan where the last few major terrorist activities have been met with a muscular response from India and with overwhelming International support.

If I am to believe the opposition this govt. has nothing but been a spectacular failure. Steps like demonetization, the GST (debatable), curbs on freedom of expression, militant nationalism, cow vigilantes, economic and unemployment data fudging, Corruption in defence deals amongst others. Apparently, the threat posed by the present combo of Amit Shah-Modi is so grave that all ofthe opposition has to unite to defeat the ‘fascist’ Govt. The opposition is literally on the mat due to the reduced political funding and increased use of govt agencies to pursue cases against the opposition leaders. The threat to their existence especially the smaller regional parties is immense because the BJP is trying to enter their turf which incidentally they got by the ceding of the space by the Congress.

The question is who is right: the Govt. or the opposition? The truth is the whole debate needs more nuance which is sadly missing from our political and media discourse. The media is divided between two distinct camps. The govt is in the habit of blaming the last 60 years for anything going wrong and claiming the credit for anything going right. The opposition led by Congress is in disarray simply because they are too varied to be one. Almost all the opposition parties were born out of hatred for the Congress and now all of a sudden they want the Congress to be their B team. The Congress is the only other party other than the BJP with a pan India presence is actually going slow on the alliances as they want to be relevant again in national politics which they can’t possibly achieve by ceding more space to the existing regional parties. So the conundrum for congress is whether to survive and become a challenger again or be part of a cog in the wider opposition wheel. The BJP, I will have to admit has increased its political footprint significantly by both organisational abilities and cashing in on disgruntled leaders from the Congress. Ofcourse not everything has been clean but then this is Indian politics and which we thought will change with the launch of Aam Aadmi Party which turned out to be well a disappointment but that is a different story for a different blogpost.

This is hopefully many of the blog posts I will be writing in the run up to the elections. I will try to be objective but I will bare my political positions here. I am pretty much in the anti-Modi camp but can’t bring myself to support the existing opposition so am more of a ‘NOTA’ guy. In the following weeks, I will try to pick one topic of interest and try to objectively research the same and tell you about the progress in the last 5 years and the time before that. Thanks for reading and keep sharing.