TheJaggi

Eggs are back again on the national menu of heated public debates, this time because the new BJP government in West Bengal plans to give the job of providing mid-day meals to Akshaya Patra, an Iskcon affiliate, which does not serve eggs. This wasn’t the case when Mamata Banerjee was Chief Minister. The new BJP government wants to hand over the job to the Iskcon affiliate, which adopts dietary rules that are vegetarian and Vaishnavite. Akshaya Patra has a proven track record of providing clean and nutritious mid-day meals to millions of school children in various states, but it faces objections in some quarters because of its Hindu credentials. The issue is more political than just about raising the protein content in a child’s diet. Protein can be given in multiple forms, including through the use of soya and paneer in the food prepared. We need honesty in how we debate issues, but unfortunately this is lacking. People take hypocritical positions based on which political party or NGO t...

The film Satluj has drawn a lot of heated arguments from multiple sides of the political divide. The film features Diljit Dosanjh playing the lead role as Jaswant Singh Khalra, a human rights activist and Khalistani supporter who was killed by the Punjab police in 1995. Khalra discovered that many missing people were secretly cremated during the peak of the Khalistani violence in Punjab in the late 1980s and early 1990s, and the violent insurrection ended only when many police officers led by KPS Gill decided that the battle had to be fought by unconventional means - meaning without due regard to strictly legal remedies that involved capture and prosecution of terrorists under existing law. The controversy has revolved around two issues: one, whether the film should have been banned from over-the-top (OTT) channels, for which the answer is ‘no’. In today’s social media age, you cannot easily suppress anything, and suppression is often counter-productive. Two, critics said that the fil...

The glee with which some opposition politicians and “secular” commentators have received news about “ chanda chori ” at the Ayodhya Ram Mandir is nauseating. The theft has also prompted many other people to suggest a direct government role in running temples. While genetically Hinduphobic people are rubbing their hands in anticipation of potential fallout on the BJP, those who think that such theft needs a stronger government role in its prevention are barking up the wrong tree (See this oped in The Times of India by a former government secretary). Bringing in the government whenever something goes wrong is a bad solution, and not in tune with the basic idea that religious affairs are not the business of the state. The assumption that thefts happen only in Hindu temples is, of course, nonsense. From the Vatican to mosques and churches in multiple countries, including India, there has been no dearth of incidents involving not just theft, but also wrongdoing of several kinds, including ...

Priyank Kharge, Karnataka’s Home and IT Minister, believes that he has the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) on the ropes with his letter dated 13 June addressed to Mohan Bhagwat. In his letter, Kharge asked for the registration details of what is widely touted as the world’s largest NGO. In a politely-drafted letter to the RSS chief, a letter that had undertones of political menace, he requested “the RSS to depute its authorised office bearers to explain the legal grounds on which an organisation of such magnitude continues to function with anonymity and without being formally registered as a legal entity.”  One need not go into the politics of it too much. It is obvious that the dynast, son of Congress chief Mallikarjun Kharge, believes that he can open up new pathways for political progress by taking on the RSS - a project with which Rahul Gandhi too may agree. In fact, Rahul has repeatedly talked about the RSS as the ideological enemy to defeat , and even compared it to the Mus...

It is just over a month since the last round of state assembly elections ended, but we are already back in election mode. The two-and-a-half years left before the next round of general elections are announced will be intensely political and confrontational. There may be no respite. In 2027, we have the big contest in Uttar Pradesh, not to speak of Punjab, Uttarakhand, Goa and Manipur, followed later in the year by Himachal and Gujarat. In 2028, we will have Karnataka, Rajasthan, Chhattisgarh, Madhya Pradesh and, towards the end of the year, Telangana. Most of these are big states, and then there are the smaller north-eastern states of Nagaland, Meghalaya, Tripura and Mizoram. The stakes are sky-high for all parties, especially the BJP and Congress. And we cannot forget the presidential elections, for which the BJP seems reasonably well-placed right now. The election that will determine the immediate mood is Uttar Pradesh, where the BJP has to retain its majority for the third time and ...

By most non-political assessments, the 21 June National Eligibility-cum-Entrance Test (NEET), which is the entry point for a course in medicine, went off more or less without incident. Sure, some candidates were denied entry as they arrived late, one candidate was shown to have registered from Abu Dhabi when he wanted to write the exam in India, some others complained (after taking the exam) how hard some subjects were, but the exam went off without a major snafu. This “success” should worry us more than the failure of the previous one in May, when question-papers were leaked and the whole exercise had to be cancelled, leading to major tensions for the student community. Too many of our successes depend on a multi-stakeholder national effort, with even the armed forces being conscripted to pitch in this time, when such things ought to happen in the natural course through inherent institutional strengths.  Why should an entrance exam take Prime MInisterial supervision to work flawle...

One has said this before, and one must say it again: there is no rogue state more roguish than the United States of America. No global laws or rules apply to it, but all laws and rules it seeks to impose on the rest of the world will apply to everybody, unless the other party happens to have the power to say no. At this point, only China and Russia seem to have this ability. India’s first focus must be to achieve this degree of sovereignty based on underlying national economic and political power. India found out, again to its discomfiture, that the US will impose its will without even feigning to be diplomatic about it. After killing three Indians on a vessel that apparently did not comply with the US blockade on Iran, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio did not so much as express regret over the loss of lives. India’s relatively poor power position vis-à-vis the US is primarily the result of a few weaknesses and dependencies: One, our dependence on the vast US goods and service...

If you are an investor in shares or equity mutual funds, there are basically two approaches. One is the safety-first rule, where you spread your risks over a diversified list of shares or funds. In short, don’t put all your eggs in one basket. But if you have a higher risk appetite, there is Andrew Carnegie’s maxim: put all your eggs in one basket, and then watch the basket. The simple takeout is that diversification reduces risk, but also returns. Concentration increases risk, but offers higher rewards. None of this is about investment alone, but about every individual, state or organisation understanding the tradeoffs between risk and reward. If you are going to take huge risks, you must watch the basket very closely. Now, coming to the National Eligibility-cum-Entrance Test (NEET), which is the gateway to a course in medicine, the central premise about the concentration of risk in one examination is that the rewards in terms of reduced student stress are high: lakhs of students ...

Indians demonstrate the correctness of Murphy’s law repeatedly: if something can go wrong, it will. If it, miraculously doesn’t, we will find new ways to screw things up. While this is an unflattering view of the average Indian’s (and officialdom’s) chalta-hai attitude, let us step back and ask a different question: what is the single thread (apart from our own follies) that may (or may not) connect the NEET paper leaks, the CBSE exam paper mess (and denial-of-service attacks on the portal), the sudden appearance of the Cockroach Janta Party a few weeks ago, the Bangladesh and Nepal street protests of 2024 and 2025 that sent two incumbent governments packing, the crash of a Tejas aircraft during an airshow in Dubai last year and the endless delays in the delivery of engines for the Tejas programme by GE, the death of India’s first Chief of Defence Staff in a helicopter crash in 2021, and the failure of two PSLV launches - both carrying critical security and surveillance satellites -...

The Narendra Modi government, after 12 years in power, needs a significant (and non-cosmetic) makeover. While it has recovered after the 2024 setback by registering huge wins in West Bengal and Assam, following on the heels of Haryana, Maharashtra, Delhi and Bihar earlier, these political successes are not an end in themselves. Despite a good macroeconomic record so far, there is no guarantee that the government will be able to guide the economy through the current global and technological disruptions unless it has competent people manning the operations. It should work on the assumption that it may take only one major failure for the entire political narrative around its successes to start unravelling. The NEET paper leaks and the ongoing loss of public confidence in the CBSE exam results (which have been badly managed when new technology needs a prolonged period of testing) show that someone is either sleeping on his watch or not very competent. The needle of accountability points ...

Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman has said that she is willing to listen to investors on what they have to say about reducing taxes on long-term and short-term capital gains (LTCG and STCG). No harm in listening to anyone, but she would do well to listen to others as well, and not just equity investors who are any way mollycoddled in all tax jurisdictions. There are two things we need to understand. Capital infusion is vital for productivity and growth, so there is a case to be made for giving equity investment some preferential treatment on taxes. The question is how much preferential treatment. Long-term capital gains on equity are taxed at 12.5 percent and short-term at 15 percent provided the transactions are done through stock exchanges on which securities transaction taxes are paid. Now compare this to how debt is taxed. Debt is also capital, and it is taxed in the investor’s hands at his or her tax bracket. At the top end that means a gross tax of over 30 percent, when ...

In all the euphoria over the BJP’s massive win in West Bengal, the Modi government should not forget that good ties with Bangladesh are important. It’s not that New Delhi has been asleep at the wheel. Well before the West Bengal results were out, it had chosen Dinesh Trivedi – a politician – as its new envoy to Dhaka, signalling that ties with that country will be parsed through the political prism as well. After the disastrous tenure of Mohammad Yunus, who was at the helm as chief advisor to the interim government, the elections last February brought in a new majority government headed by Tarique Rahman of the Bangladesh Nationalist Party. From all indications, Rahman wants to improve ties with India, a country that surrounds it on three sides. Any improvement in Bangladesh’s economic situation depends on cooperation with India. Anti-India elements believe they can also tap American and Chinese investments for growth, but geography says something else. It is in India’s interests t...

There is an Indian story revolving around a king who asked his advisors to invent something where his feet would never get dirty when walking around. His advisors got into a frenzy, for a regal wish is like an order with the sword of Damocles hanging over their heads. One of the solutions was to cover the whole kingdom with leather so that no dirt would stick to His Majesty’s feet. But it was clearly expensive and impractical, for this would mean nothing would grow on the land beneath if it was covered fully with leather, or any other thing, for that matter. The ultimate logical solution was found in the invention of footwear. You wear it and your feet stay clean if you so desire. Today, when large language models (LLMs) are driving the pursuit of artificial intelligence (AI), or artificial general intelligence (AGI) to rival human intelligence, it appears that the solutions we are seeking are similar to covering the earth with leather in order to keep your feet clean. The query the mo...