After Sending Indian Workers to Israel, Modi Now Says It's Unsafe to Be There; AAP Is Not Going Down Without a Fight
78% Indians bat for a pluralistic vision says Lokniti survey, Hindus need approval before converting to Buddhism, Sikhism, Jainism says Gujarat govt, climate change linked to rising stroke deaths
A newsletter from The Wire | Founded by MK Venu, Seema Chishti, Siddharth Varadarajan, Sushant Singh, Sidharth Bhatia, Pratik Kanjilal and Tanweer Alam | Contributing writer: Kalrav Joshi, with additional inputs by Anirudh SK
Snapshot of the day
April 12, 2024
Siddharth Varadarajan
After sending 64 Indian workers to Israel under a government-to-government scheme that will eventually lead to the stationing of over 6,000 construction workers from India in Israel in April and May, the Narendra Modi government has woken up to the fact that its citizens will be bang in the middle of a war zone. On Friday, the Ministry of External Affairs issued an urgent travel advisory warning Indians to stay away from Israel and Iran “in view of the prevailing situation in the region.”
The shocking thing about the MEA’s advisory is that first batch of Indian workers were flown to Tel Aviv on April 2, one day after Israel bombed the Iranian consulate in Damascus, Syria in violation of international law, killing several Iranian citizens including a senior commander of the Revolutionary Guards. Iran immediately vowed retaliation, which should have alerted the Modi government to the fact that the 64 workers being flown out were going to be in harm’s way.
NSA Ajit Doval recently boasted about how his Israeli counterparts had advised him to expect the unexpected. But here, the government and its top security advisers failed to even expect the expected.
Leaving aside the the threat to life and life of Indian workers, the labour agreement is also politically problematic. The Israeli government wants to bring a steady stream of workers from India on an “air shuttle” as it has shut off all access of Palestinians in the Occupied Territories to the Israeli economy. The proposed Indian labour draft will see the largest number of foreign workers to arrive in the country for the construction sector in a short time, the Israeli government has said. With their new deal, India and Israel are dusting off a time-worn strategy from the colonial archive: importing and exporting temporary labour to manage political and economic problems in one fell swoop. “Only ‘Hindu workers’ should apply” because the “Israeli government fears the potential for pro-Palestine solidarity among Muslim Indian workers.” “The Israel-India worker deal resembles British indenture”, write Michelle Buckley and Paula Chakravartty in a remarkable essay.
Among a list of topics Prime Minister Narendra Modi addressed in a rare ‘interview’ with Newsweek magazine was the border dispute with China. He said, or rather wrote, that the bilateral relationship was “significant” and that “we need to urgently address the prolonged situation on our borders so that the abnormality in our bilateral interactions can be put behind us”. China said it had taken note of Modi’s remarks and that border issues ought to be relegated to the sidelines of the India-China relationship. Opposition leaders also noted Modi’s statement: Jairam Ramesh said the PM was “at his cowardly worst” with Newsweek and criticised him for not addressing China encroaching into Indian land. Modi did not allow any supplementary questions. "PM Modi addressed Newsweek's written questions and followed up with a 90-minute conversation at his official residence", the magazine tells its readers. That is why the ‘interview’ does not have any questions at all. But Nilanjan Mukhopadhyaya, a biographer of Modi, decided to ask him some, and also pose some answers of his own.
Within 48 hours of securing a subsidy from the Union government, Aurobindo Pharma swiftly gifted Electoral Bonds to the BJP, reports the Reporters’ Collective. “The company had also donated to BJP within five days of its promoter P Sarath Chandra Reddy’s arrest in the alleged Delhi Liquor Scam. Reddy later got bail and turned approver against Arvind Kejriwal.”
As India gears up for the forthcoming general elections to the Lok Sabha, slated to commence from April 19, a group of 87 former civil servants under the aegis of the Constitutional Conduct Group (CCG) have accused the Election Commission of exhibiting “undue zeal” over the past month for “sitting silent while a politics of vendetta” is being practised to “deny opposition” the freedom to participate in the electoral process. Else, the bureaucrats warned, the “resulting anarchy” would make a “mess” of the entire electoral process. Eleven civil society organisations have also collectively penned a missive to the ECI, highlighting significant concerns about the role of technology regarding the integrity of the electoral process, and urgently appealed to the ECI to uphold the integrity of the upcoming elections. Their concerns pertain to online campaigning and surrogate advertisements, inadequacies in the voluntary code of ethics, the use of emerging technologies such as deepfakes, and voter surveillance. On the online campaigning and surrogate advertisements, the letter said he tECI must increase the accountability of political parties and digital platforms by adopting internationally acceptable, rights-respecting standards for regulating political expenditure on online ads and targeted campaigning.
“Will 2024 be a credible election? Western democracies, having flirted with technology, have mostly decided against surrendering the act of recording a citizen’s most profound political choice entirely to machines … In India too, tech is hurting the credibility of India’s polls, with electronic voting machines the next port of call for judicial scrutiny”. If the credibility of elections is under a shadow, it is serious, says Andy Mukherjee in Bloomberg.
Meanwhile, look out for the looniest of the so-called underwater voters awareness campaigns ahead. Bonus if you could guess which stunt awaits next.
More than five months after Ottawa withdrew more than two-thirds of its diplomats, the Canadian government has reduced the number of local staff at its missions in India due to a shortage of supervisory personnel to oversee them. In a statement to The Wire, the Canadian high commission’s media relations office said that the decision was taken in the aftermath of the withdrawal of the Canadian diplomats after New Delhi demanded “parity” over diplomatic representation as it lashed out at Ottawa’s allegations that Indian agents had been behind the killing of a Canadian national, Hardeep Singh Nijjar.
In the wake of the Nijjar allegation and accusations of a wider set of planned and actual assassinations abroad, India’s external affairs minister has repeatedly said targeted killings in other countries were “not the government of India’s policy”. But that hasn’t stopped PM Modi and Defence Minister Rajnath Singh of appealing for votes in the name of “killing the terrorists in their own homes”.
An unknown number of iPhone users in India and abroad were notified by Apple yesterday that their phones were potentially attacked by “mercenary spyware”, including the infamous Pegasus. In October, it warned a spate of opposition leaders and journalists of a potential spyware attack on their iPhones and more directly attributed the possibility to “state-sponsored attackers”. Its dropping this phrase comes after reports that it has been under pressure from the Indian government, The Hindu points out.
Apple farming is Kashmir’s biggest economic driver, employing millions. Now, a new railway project threatens these livelihoods and fertile agricultural lands, as the Modi government brings ‘development’, report Basit Paray and Arjumand Shaheen. “We aren’t even allowed to protest or raise our voice. We’re helpless”.
Rokibuz Zaman speaks to people affected by the violence in Manipur and reports a sense of pessimism. One displaced person living in a relief camp scoffed at political workers seeking her vote, asking where they were when “we were shivering at night and protesting for dal and rice”. One man said he would not vote unless he was able to go back to his home. Zaman adds that the state’s Kukis are reluctant to vote as the major candidates from the Outer Manipur constituency are all Nagas.
Meanwhile, the rating agency ICRA has downgraded the banking sector outlook to “stable” from “positive” due to decline in interest margins. The risks to the stable outlook include economic shocks, regulatory changes, higher interest rates, higher operating expenditure and expected credit loss (ECL) framework. The challenges in mobilising deposits, high interest rates and the increase in risk weights will slow down the pace of credit growth to 11.6-12.5 % in FY25 from 16.3 % in FY24, per a report put together by Karthik Srinivasan, Senior Vice President; Anil Gupta, Senior Vice President; and Sachin Sachdeva, Vice President. How does it gel with all the hype about the Indian economy?
The food ordering and delivering platform Swiggy has gamified health insurance for delivery workers, changing insurance tiers depending on a worker’s weekly performance. Varsha Bansal has an important story for Rest of World.
A Supreme Court division bench stayed PMLA proceedings against lottery baron Santiago Martin. His lawyers had argued that the trial in the predicate case – based on which the Enforcement Directorate commences proceedings under the PMLA – needed to complete first and that his acquittal in the case would automatically end the ED’s trial.
One has heard of the police donning ‘mufti’ but at the Kashi Vishwanath sanctum, the cops have gone ‘sadhu’.
78% Indians bat for a pluralistic vision: Lokniti
More than three in four Indians believe that the country belongs equally to citizens of all religions and not just to Hindus, the Lokniti program says citing data from a recent survey. 78% of respondents held this pluralist view as opposed to 11% who said India belongs to Hindus. College-educated people as well as townsfolk and city-dwellers were more likely to report this pluralist view, though high proportions of both unschooled (72%) and rural folk (76%) also did so. Lokniti also found that majorities of Hindus and Muslims held opposite views on what effect the Ram Temple would have on communal harmony; that people trust the Election Commission less vigorously now than in 2019; that a majority of those with an opinion on the matter said the opposition wasn’t serious about a caste census; and that a majority (46%) thought opposition leaders were joining the BJP to get investigating agencies off their backs.
Meanwhile, the saffron man continues New India’s way of ‘surveillance’.
Hindus need approval before converting to Buddhism, Sikhism, Jainism: Gujarat government
The Indian Express reports that Hindus in Gujarat who wish to undergo religious conversion to Buddhism, Jainism or Sikhism will need to seek their district magistrate’s prior approval under provisions of the Gujarat Freedom of Religion Act, the state home department said in a circular earlier in the week “after it came to the notice of the government that applications seeking conversion to Buddhism were not being dealt with as per rules”. “…it has come to notice that in applications seeking permission for conversion from Hinduism to Buddhism, procedure as per rules are not being followed. Moreover, sometimes, representations are being received from applicants and autonomous bodies that for religious conversion from Hinduism to Buddhism, prior permission is not required,” the circular stated.
Meanwhile, Gujarat has seen several mass conversion events in recent years where people belonging mostly to Dalit communities have embraced Buddhism. However, the lingering question remains: why does the Gujarat state home department or district magistrate want to know about anyone wanting to change their faith?
Australia’s Indian Diaspora calls for increased political representation
Australia’s Indian diaspora demands a seat at the table, echoing widespread frustration over its glaring absence in the country’s political sphere. Despite being Australia’s second-largest migrant group, they find themselves relegated to the sidelines of leadership roles. Criticism mounts against major political parties accused of offering mere tokenism, prompting urgent calls for substantive diversity in decision-making forums. A recent survey by the Australia India Institute underscores the community’s positive contributions, yet highlights the formidable glass ceiling obstructing their ascent. As aspirations clash with systemic barriers, the quest for equitable representation reverberates louder, challenging Australia's commitment to inclusive governance.
Study links climate change to rising stroke deaths in India
A groundbreaking study published in the journal Neurology has shed light on a concerning trend: deaths and disabilities resulting from strokes worldwide are increasingly tied to temperature fluctuations driven by climate change. Analysing global data spanning three decades, researchers discovered that in 2019 alone, over 520,000 stroke fatalities were linked to non-optimal temperatures. Disturbingly, India bore a significant burden, with nearly 33,000 deaths attributed to temperature extremes. Of these, approximately 55% were associated with higher-than-optimal temperatures, while 45% were linked to lower-than-optimal temperatures.
The Long Cable
The Aam Aadmi Party is not going down without a fight.
Ajoy Ashirwad Mahaprashasta
On April 10, 2024, Delhi minister and prominent Dalit face of the Aam Aadmi Party, Raaj Kumar Anand, resigned from the Kejriwal cabinet and party membership. Anand alleged that the AAP which emerged from the anti-corruption movement a decade ago and which had pledged to change politics is now “trapped in corruption”.
“The politics hasn't changed but the politician has changed,” Anand took a parting shot at the Delhi chief minister days after his arrest. His resignation came days after AAP’s two most-important Dalit faces in Punjab, Sushil Kumar Rinku and Sheetal Angural, joined the BJP, making similar allegations.
The setbacks for AAP came on the heels of the Enforcement Directorate pinning down almost the entire top leadership of the fledgling party in the alleged excise policy corruption case. Kejriwal was the latest in the series of arrests. Arrested earlier, AAP minister Manish Sisodia and Satyendra Jain are among AAP leaders still languishing in prison, waiting for their trial to begin. Rajya Sabha MP Sanjay Singh who was imprisoned for over six months recently got bail.
Nevertheless, Anand’s words may sound a little mighty of him, given that he himself had been one of the ED’s targets in November 2023, when the agency searched 12 premises owned by him or his business associates in Delhi, and later linked his role in alleged hawala payments to China and evasion of customs duty worth Rs 7 crore on imports.
Anand, like Rinku and Angural, may soon join the BJP, which will make him the 24th opposition leader facing a corruption probe to have switched over to the saffron camp. Speculation is also rife about the possibility of other AAP leaders.
Amidst such pressure, AAP’s second line of leadership – Sanjay Singh, Atishi Singh, and Saurabh Bharadwaj – have put up a brave face. The party has launched a campaign called “jail ka jawab vote se” in Delhi and Punjab, and hopes to swing BJP votes in its favour because of its dogged canvassing around the Narendra Modi government’s perceived excessive measures to shut down the opposition on the eve of Lok Sabha polls.
Almost every day, AAP leaders have trained their guns on the BJP. Days ahead of Kejriwal’s arrest, Atishi and Bharadwaj held press briefings to talk about the alleged threats that they have been receiving to withdraw from its alliance with the Congress or be ready for Kejriwal’s arrest. A couple of days ago, AAP leaders like Sanjay Singh told the press that the BJP was attempting to “break AAP” and its legislators who were allegedly offered crores of rupees to leave the party, even as they were warned about their subsequent arrest. Singh has now asked all his party MLAs to hit the ground to garner support for Kejriwal.
As the Delhi chief minister’s arrest has become AAP’s biggest talking point, the party has also firmly held ground in its commitment towards the Indian National Developmental Inclusive Alliance, the opposition front. In fact, the first INDIA rally that was organised in New Delhi should singularly be credited to AAP, which mobilised almost the entire crowd at the Ram Lila Maidan.
In two recent interviews, both Atishi and Singh told The Wire that AAP is committed to a united opposition, even if it means losing a little bit of space in their own strongholds. They said that their campaign will be anchored around BJP’s alleged corrupt practices in the context of the saffron party being the biggest beneficiary of the electoral bonds scheme.
Indeed, over the past few days, AAP has emerged as the most prominent opposition party to highlight the fact that BJP has received over 50% of the total donations made through electoral bonds since 2018. Its leaders have persistently spoken about the issue in their respective constituencies to project a lack of level-playing field in the upcoming polls.
At the same time, it alleged that Hyderabad businessman Sharath Chandra Reddy who is now out on bail in the excise policy case and whose statement as an approver led to Kejriwal’s arrest had donated Rs 52 crore to the BJP through electoral bonds, the first instalment (Rs 5 crore) of which was bought days after his arrest. The rest of the bonds were purchased by Reddy’s firm Aurobindo Pharma soon after he was released on bail.
AAP’s persistently aggressive canvassing against the Modi government, and a palpable sympathy towards the popular Delhi’s chief minister, has now forced the BJP’s hand and it is despeerately trying to poach AAP’s core voters. Dalits constitute 17% of Delhi’s population, according to a CSDS-Lokniti survey, and are divided in their support to AAP and Congress. With Muslims (14%) and Sikhs (3%) in favour of the INDIA bloc, there is a chance that Dalits unite under the INDIA bloc's umbrella. The BJP’s attempt to poach AAP’s Dalit legislators like Anand and and also, reportedly, Punjabi Khatri (5%) leaders like Raghav Chaddha, is clearly aimed at preventing a possible consolidation of all these communities against Modi.
The BJP, which garnered over 55% votes in Delhi in the 2019 Lok Sabha polls, should have been secure but its last-minute manoeuvres signal that they sense anti-incumbency, or even voter fatigue, on the ground. Whether or not the AAP-Congress combine will outsmart the formidable BJP, rich in terms of resources and official machinery, remains to be seen. It is clear, however, that AAP is not going down without a fight.
Reportedly
A lot is being said in the mainstream media about K Annamalai, civil servant-turned-BJP motormouth head of the state unit in Tamil Nadu. But it is former Coimbatore mayor Ganapathi Rajkumar, fielded the candidate for the Opposition-led INDIA, who is the man to watch. A doctorate in journalism, he has been calmly weaving his net in this ‘Manchester of the South.’ Coimbatore was a Left seat, in 2019, electing a Communist MP, but before that, has been a catchment area for the BJP too, post bomb blasts that had affected all kinds of balances in the city in 1999. LK Advani was the home minister then. Watch Ganapathi here.
Deep dive
A fusion of coconut and kosher: Bene Israel cuisine, which has roots in India’s North Konkan region, reveals how the identity of India’s largest Jewish community is a palatable marriage of both faith and community, writes Jane Borges in New Lines.
Prime number: 70% & 14%
A pioneering analysis of India’s top-selling protein powders reveals widespread quality, labelling, and claim discrepancies. Examining 36 brands, including those with herbal and dietary supplements, the study, published in Medicine, reports alarming findings: 70% mislabeled and 14% containing toxins.
Opeds you don’t want to miss
“It marks the collapse of India as a modern democratic nation and a firm entry into the territory of a banana republic, with an outer sense of calm barely concealing an inner dealing room where dirty jobs are done,” says Jagdish Rattanani on the scheme of electoral bonds that encapsulates the larger collapse the country finds itself into.
If the BJP gets only 200 seats and wants to remain in power, Modi will have to make way — either for a proxy of his choice, or for an internal rival, predicts Nilanjan Mukhopadhyay.
The Lancet editorial has expressed grave concern about Modi government’s poor track record on health these ten years and said that data and data transparency is critical for making decent policy decisions.
Is domestic politics damaging India’s Foreign Policy credibility? Suhasini Haider demonstrates the tensions caused by Katchatheevu, CAA and the controversial ‘Ghuske’ Diplomacy arguing why “election campaign rallies and media conferences are not the places to be making vociferous statements on sensitive foreign policy issues”.
As the RSS turns 100 in 2025, “it wants to render the de facto Hindu nation it has built into one that is de jure,” writes Hartosh Bal. “And if Modi wins a third term, he will do whatever he can to deliver.”
“What is crystal clear is that the BJP government in Manipur and the central government have turned a blind eye to all that has befallen the Kuki-Zo tribes of Manipur”. Patricia Mukhim quashes the tall (and outlandish) claims made by Modi with regard to the violence stuck northeastern state of Manipur.
Angshuman Choudhury on how the CAA rules have only deepened the arbitrariness and ambiguity baked into the amendment.
“The value a society and its laws place on protecting free speech is arguably most keenly felt where that speech takes a critical turn”. Abhinav Sekhri with a ten-year retrospective on free speech law in India.
“It is undesirable and tendentious on the part of educational institutions to ask students to internalise fanciful hypotheses and inadequately proven opinions,” writes GN Devy on why science takes knock — from NCERT to IITs.
Listen up
On Rocking our Priors, listen to Soumitra Jha on what prevents Hindu-Muslim violence and did India’s trade ever encouraged harmony?
Watch out
In an insightful interview to Nas and Ath, watch Dinesh Karthik talk about his batting approach and some indirect clues to what is ailing RCB at the moment in Indian Premier League (IPL) 2024. The banter with Nasser Hussain is a bonus.
Over and out
Cartoon scholar and cartoonist Gokul Gopalskrishnan on the Abu Abraham cartoon exhibition — a major retrospective showcasing 300 original works to mark his centenary year — hosted by Kerala Lalithakala Akademi in Kochi.
Amidst the glut of IPL matches and difficulty to keep track of super-subs, Osman Samiuddin asks a relevant question: What happened to MS Dhoni’s hair?
Archishman Raju remembers Rabrinath Tagore’s visit to China, which continues to remain important, then and now.
That’s it for today. We’ll be back with you on Monday, on a device near you. If The India Cable was forwarded to you by a friend (perhaps a common friend!) book your own copy by SUBSCRIBING HERE.