India Today

from the editor-in-chief

Over the past few months, the Indian economy’s growth engines—from real estate to agriculture to exports and internal consumption—have coughed and sputtered to a halt. The economy is now in free fall. Figures recently released by the government have confirmed our worst fears. India’s GDP growth plunged to a 26-quarter low of 4.5 per cent in the July-September quarter of 2019-20 as manufacturing contracted, investments weakened and consumption demand fell. GDP growth stood at 8.1 per cent in the same period a year ago. In the first quarter of this fiscal, it was just 5 per cent, already the slowest in six years. The steep decline is now approaching a danger mark—3.5 per cent—the metaphorical ‘Hindu rate of growth’, a coinage of the economist Raj Krishna for India’s sluggish growth…

india today

CHAIRMAN AND EDITOR-IN-CHIEF: Aroon Purie VICE CHAIRPERSON: Kalli Purie GROUP EDITORIAL DIRECTOR: Raj Chengappa GROUP CREATIVE EDITOR: Nilanjan Das; GROUP PHOTO EDITOR: Bandeep Singh MANAGING EDITORS: Kai Jabir Friese, Rajesh Jha CONSULTING EDITOR: Ajit Kumar Jha (Research) EXECUTIVE EDITORS: S. Sahaya Ranjit, Sandeep Unnithan MUMBAI: M.G. Arun SENIOR DEPUTY EDITORS: Uday Mahurkar, Manisha Saroop HYDERABAD: Amarnath K. Menon DEPUTY EDITOR: Shweta Punj SENIOR EDITORS: Kaushik Deka, Sasi Nair, MUMBAI: Suhani Singh; JAIPUR: Rohit Parihar SENIOR ASSOCIATE EDITORS: Ashish Mukherjee MUMBAI: Kiran Dinkar Tare; PATNA: Amitabh Srivastava ASSOCIATE EDITORS: Shougat Dasgupta, KOLKATA: Romita Sengupta; BHOPAL: Rahul Noronha; THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: Jeemon Jacob ASSISTANT EDITOR: Zinnia Ray Chaudhuri PUNE: Aditi S. Pai PHOTO DEPARTMENT: Vikram Sharma (Deputy Photo Editor), Yasir Iqbal (Deputy Chief Photographer), Rajwant Singh Rawat (Principal Photographer), Chandra Deep Kumar (Senior Photographer); MUMBAI: Mandar Suresh Deodhar (Chief Photographer), Danesh Adil Jassawala (Photographer); KOLKATA: Subir Halder (Principal Photographer); CHENNAI: N.G.…

a perennial tear-jerker

High onion prices have returned to haunt the government. In Mumbai, onions are currently retailing at Rs 120 a kilo, compared with the Rs 10-30 a kilo they were sold at as recently as August this year. The main reason for these eye-watering prices has been the unseasonal rainfall in Maharashtra, one of India’s major onion-producing states, along with Andhra Pradesh and Karnataka. India, one of the top three onion-producing countries in the world, produced 23.5 million tonnes of onions in 2018-19. “This is becoming a frequent affair, with the prolonged monsoon damaging the crop and raising prices,” says Madan Sabnavis, chief economist with Care Ratings. Onion production takes place in three seasons in Maharashtra. The unseasonal rains destroyed the kharif crop, which was to be harvested in October-November. Rains have…

the pit stop at madrid

Two issues—carbon credits and funding to deal with the loss and damage caused by climate change—will dominate proceedings at the ongoing 25th Conference of the Parties (COP) in Madrid, Spain. Hovering over the COP are larger questions—the deep cuts in emissions climate scientists strain to emphasise are necessary to prevent an irreversible slide into extremely dangerous levels of warming and the more ambitious pledges that countries have to make next year to that end. Carbon credits work by commodifying and trading carbon dioxide notionally not emitted through improved industrial processes. One thorny issue at Madrid is whether the carbon credits accumulated by companies and countries under the Kyoto Protocol can be carried forward beyond 2020. The governments of India (which reportedly has 750 million CER credits) and Brazil argue that past…

the enduring relevance of the ‘gujral doctrine’

Improving ties with neighbours has been a leitmotif of Indian foreign policy under all governments. An optimal policy has to address many difficulties: our smaller neighbours feel threatened by our size, they bristle at any perceived violation of their sovereignty, draw in other big powers as a balancing strategy, play domestic politics around our supposedly ‘big brotherly’ attitude, expect generous treatment without any reciprocal obligation and are, besides, apprehensive about losing their identity because of our shared regional, ethnic, linguistic, religious and cultural links. Prime minister and foreign minister twice, Inder Kumar Gujralwhose 100th birth anniversary fell on December 4—while aware of these complexities, was the first to enunciate in September 1996 a neighbourhood policy that would modify India’s image from a regional hegemon to one of an accommodating neighbour acting…

“threats from non-state actors are real and imminent”

Eleven years ago, Lashkar-e-Taiba terrorists used the sea route to strike at Mumbai. A decade after the horrific attacks, Chief of the Naval Staff, Admiral KARAMBIR SINGH says that the threat of seaborne attacks remains just as great now, even as the navy is working with multiple stakeholders to counter them. In this interview with Executive Editor SANDEEP UNNITHAN, Singh speaks about the seaborne threat of Pakistan-based non-state actors, the navy’s modernisation challenges and more Q. On August 27, you said that the Jaishe-Mohammed (JeM) was training its cadre to carry out underwater attacks. Do you have intelligence about the presence of state actors involved in this? A. Intelligence regarding training of cadres by JeM for underwater attacks has been received on various occasions in the past. Such training would not be…