Soaring Bad Loans Show Bankruptcy Code is Itself Bankrupt; $5 Trillion Economy Deferred to 2027

Kerala & J&K daily-wage workers best-paid, ICHR plans history ‘rewrite’, BJP in Karnataka enabled voter data theft, India and US remember Bali differently, purged by Hitler, Tagore head survives

A newsletter from The Wire & Galileo Ideas | Contributors: MK Venu, Seema Chishti, Siddharth Varadarajan, Sidharth Bhatia, Sushant Singh and Tanweer Alam | Editor: Pratik Kanjilal

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Snapshot of the day

November 22, 2022

Pratik Kanjilal

The Indian Council of Historical Research has launched a project to “rewrite” India’s history — from the time of the Indus Valley civilisation till present day — using sources available in vernacular languages and scripts, to give “due credit” to dynasties which have been “missed out” and to “correct” texts that have been written in a “Eurocentric” way. The project titled ‘Comprehensive History of India’ will produce 12-14 volumes in three to four years. The first volume will be released in March 2023, said Umesh Kadam, member secretary of ICHR. He said the project will cover Indian history from the time of the Rakhigarhi site.

India has issued a detailed statement saying that in their meeting, Modi and Biden conducted a full review of the India-US relationship, but the US has only said that the two had met “very briefly” in Bali. It is unclear which of the two versions is correct.

A petition filed in the Madras High Court raises an intriguing question: if people earning less than Rs 8 lakh annually are considered by the government to belong to the economically weaker section (EWS) of society (and thus eligible for affirmative action), why should people earning between Rs 2.50 lakh and 8 lakh pay income tax as the rules currently demand? The Madras High Court has issued notice to the Centre.

The Supreme Court will hear on Friday an appeal by the National Investigation Agency against the bail granted to scholar-activist Anand Teltumbde in the Elgar Parishad case. Teltumbde, 73, is the third of the 16 arrested in the case to be released on bail. The poet Varavara Rao is out on medical bail, and the lawyer Sudha Bharadwaj has regular bail. The High Court, however, had stayed its Teltumbde bail order so that the NIA could approach the Supreme Court (they will be heard on November 25). The renowned scholar will not walk free until then.

Goldman Sachs lowered its forecast for India’s economic growth next year, anticipating lower consumer demand due to higher borrowing costs and fading benefits from pandemic reopening. GDP may expand by 5.9% in the calendar year 2023 from an estimated 6.9% this year, Goldman economists led by Andrew Tilton said on Sunday. CRISIL and ICRA have also brought down their projections for the current fiscal and the second quarter. CRISIL downgraded the growth forecast by 30 basis points to 7% and ICRA pegged economic expansion at 6.5% for the second quarter of FY 22-23. 

Executives at multiple recruitment firms have said that hiring by IT and e-commerce companies in the December quarter is 50% less than last year. Startups have laid off about 20,000 employees this year and as the festive season ends, consumer-focused firms are also struggling. 

India is now shooting for a $5 ­trillion economy only by FY27, and not FY25, the original target. Senior Finance Ministry officials, including Economic Affairs Secretary Ajay Seth and Chief Economic Advisor VA Nageswaran, and NITI Aayog CEO Parameswaran Iyer, made a presentation on the economic outlook to the parliamentary Standing Committee: “India may become a $5 trillion economy by 2026-27 if it grows at an average an­nual rate of 6.5% with inflation below 5%.” Growth is expected to be 6.5-7% this year and inflation could fall below 6% by the end of March. However, the rupee may continue depreciating against the dollar. Unemployment will fall with growth in economic activities, the presentation is believed to have said.

The RBI’s latest handbook of statistics on Indian states showed that in FY22, construction workers’ average daily wage in Kerala was more than three times that in the lowest paying states, Tripura and Madhya Pradesh. In Kerala, they earned Rs 837.3 a day, compared to Rs 250 in Tripura, Rs 267 in Madhya Pradesh, Rs 296 in Gujarat and Rs 362 in Maharashtra. J&K was the only other state above Rs 500, with an average daily wage of Rs 519. 

The number of cases against legislators is on the rise. UP recorded the maximum number ― 1,377 cases as of November 2022, followed by Bihar (546) and Maharashtra (482), a report filed in the Supreme Court yesterday stated. The total number rose from 4,122 in December 2018 to 4,974 in December 2021 and then to 5,097 in November 2022, a report by amicus curiae Vijay Hansaria and advocate Sneha Kalita shows. 

A study by New Delhi-based non-profit organisation, Toxics Link, has indicated that most of the popular brands of sanitary napkins sold in India contain harmful chemicals, due to the absence of mandatory rules limiting their use. Wrapped in Secrecy presents the search for volatile organic compounds in products.

India is unlikely to join ongoing negotiations for a multilateral deal on e-commerce at the WTO, notwithstanding a change in stance on data localisation and cross-border data flows. India maintains that attempts by developed countries to frame e-commerce rules outside the WTO framework could undermine it. And since its e-commerce policy is still evolving, it cannot constrain policy by binding itself to a set of rules.

The New Yorker has a long piece on “the Indian coal mine that razed a village and shrank a forest.” A company run by Asia’s richest man, Gautam Adani, is strip-mining tribal lands for fossil fuels. Forest-dwellers are fighting back.

The Archaeological Survey of India has submitted an affidavit to the Allahabad High Court and sought three more months to respond to whether scientific analysis of a stone fountain in the Gyanvapi mosque, which petitioners hold to be a Shivling, would damage the object.

A five-member committee appointed by the Karnataka government has finalised the image of the Goddess Bhuvaneshwari, the deity representing the Kannada identity, which will be used in all official programmes. The committee was headed by former Karnataka Lalithakala Academy Chairperson D Mahendra. The committee was constituted in September 2021 to come up with a defining image of the Naadadevi, revered by many in Karnataka as the ‘state goddess’, reports Deccan Herald.

Congress leader Rahul Gandhi yesterday said no action has been taken against the “real culprits” behind last month’s bridge collapse in Gujarat’s Morbi, in which 135 were killed, because they share a “good relationship” with the ruling BJP. Addressing an election rally in Rajkot, he said while watchmen were arrested and jailed, no action was taken against the real culprits.

A goods train derailed at Korai railway station in Odisha’s Jajpur district yesterday morning. Wagons ploughed into waiting passengers, killing at least three women and injuring seven, including a two-and-half-year-old child. 

Facebook and Instagram are the most common platforms for bullying young people, a poll conducted by 9,500 National Service Scheme volunteers from 24 universities and educational institutions in Assam has revealed. The poll, facilitated by UNICEF to support the Assam State Commission for Protection of Child Rights, also recorded that 95% of the state’s youth have mental health issues due to corporal punishment.

The Adani Group’s open offer to acquire an additional 26% stake in NDTV at Rs 294 per share has opened today and will close on December 5.

India has discontinued the Air Suvidha form, which was mandatory for international arrivals. Vaccinations remain compulsory for entering India.

Prema S Naraynasamy, 64, pleaded guilty to 48 charges, mostly of voluntarily causing hurt to her daughter’s domestic help Piang Ngaih Don in Singapore. She abused the girl from Myanmar until she died.

Author Khalid Jawed’s The Paradise of Food, translated by Baran Farooqi from Urdu, has won the fifth JCB Prize for Literature. The book, originally published as Ne’mat Khana in 2014, is the fourth translation to win the award and the first work in Urdu. The Paradise of Food tells the story of a middle-class joint Muslim family over a span of 50 years. Its narrator struggles to find a place for himself, out of place in his home and the world outside.

The Kerala Legislature Library has turned 101 and is now open to the public. The library has over one lakh books on various floors, and an enviable collection of archives, with most of the Assembly documents digitised and made available online.

Several world records in List A cricket were shattered when N Jagadeesan scored 277 for Tamil Nadu against Arunachal Pradesh at Chinnaswamy Stadium. This is the highest individual score in men’s List A cricket.

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Ruling BJP in Karnataka may have enabled voter data theft

There’s more evidence that the ruling BJP in Karnataka played a key role in enabling mass voter data theft in Bengaluru by the Chilume Educational Cultural and