Former President Pranab Mukherjee, a veteran Congressman throughout his long public life served as Finance Minister, Home Minister, Defence Minister and Minister of External Affairs. No politician of his generation since, has matched Mr Mukherjee’s experience in government or in Parliament. As minister and MP, he was noted for his accessibility, courtesy and geniality both towards contemporaries and younger colleagues. He was liked and respected by all sections of the House. Mr Mukherjee, clearly distressed and disturbed by the falling standards of behavior in Parliament, became almost a lone voice for decorum, for reasoned debate and mutual respect.
As President Mukherjee, he brought his qualities to the fore in his last office as head of state. He offered counsel when it was sought, as Prime Minister Narendra Modi acknowledged in his moving private farewell letter to ‘Pranab Da’ the day after he had demitted his office. President Mukherjee kept his lines open to all parties, including the RSS which has a political and social face.
In the hothouse of contemporary Indian politics, where hatred and intolerance rules the roost, the RSS was cast outside the pale by the present Congress dispensation and the establishment left and various groupings of the radical chic whose propensity to denounce and defame are now a Pavlovian reflex. This is not say that the RSS and the Hindutva brigade are above criticism and censure. But the essence of democracy is surely the willingness and ability to argue forcefully for an alternative view of history, politics and society.
The Congress Party, which has a top heavy court of fawning courtiers, has taken on itself, on who to talk and what to say. Its high moral pretence is a sham. Its treatment of the late Narasimha Rao when he was prime minister was a disgrace, as the respected Senior Congress politician, Margaret Alva pronounced publicly.
The Congress leadership cold-shouldered Dr Abul Kalam for accepting the office of president from a BJP government, replacing him after his first tenure with the obscure Pratibha Patil, who duly disappeared from public life into anonymity after her first term.
India today is divided by every conceivable barrier. It is time to talk, and to do so dispassionately, yet firmly. Margaret Alva of the minority Christian community, defended Mr Mukherjee’s decision to address the RSS faithful at their bastion. He did so in conciliatory mode but firm. He set out the liberal, inclusive vision of Indian nationalism based on the freedom of thought and expression, recognizing the country’s ethnic, cultural and religious diversity, which has been its strength in times past and will assuredly be its rock in times to come. Multiple identities converge in resolute larger identity. We see its expression on cricket fields, battlefields, fields of diplomacy, commerce, industry, science, space, cinema, music, literary festivals and the like.
The manic desire to chasten everybody into a common shape reflects a deep, if unconscious sense of insecurity. Christians and Christianity, for example, send the Hindu fringe into a deep neurosis. The same people would like nothing better than an American green card or rights of settlement in the UK and Europe; they do so with little tangible fear of conversion, enjoying freedom under the law, a level playing field in education, the professions, business etc to better their prospects in life, which they have done frequently outstandingly well. It is time to grow up..
India was perceived through a glass, darkly in the early years of its independence. Dissolution was famously predicted by a host of doomsayers abroad. Look at the world as it stands, and where is Yugoslavia? It has disappeared as a single entity. The Arab world despite its shared faith, language and ethnicity is a house divided.
The lesson for India is thus abundantly clear: Pranab Mukherjee addressed his RSS audience with thought and clarity and self-belief. It was a robust performance. Congress leaders were reassured, but they had no reason to doubt the man’s good faith in the first place. Congress fears stemmed largely from a loss of confidence and a lack of direction. Aggression in the public sphere cannot hide the unsavoury truth that the thing to fear most is fear itself.
PM grasps reality of emerging world order
Prime Minister Narendra Modi appears to have made a shrewd assessment of an emerging world order based on diverse poles of power. The unipolar order, long the sustaing dream of the American political class and of European elites, has clearly had its day. The Trump Administration attempts to project and protect American global hegemony through wanton increases in defence expenditure, tariff wars and sanction regimes, have, instead undermined the sanctities of a largely discredited past.
The tectonic shift is clearly visible. President Putin’s recent visit to Austria was a diplomatic triumph. In Brussels, the President of the European Commission Jean Claude Juncker pronounced, ‘Russia bashing must be brought to an end.’ This appeared to trigger a seizure in the BBC’s Hard Talk host, Stephen Sackur, whose incontinent Russia-bashing during a incendiary conversation with a former US ambassador to Moscow left one awestruck at the depth of his rage. The decline of the West is no longer a fantasy conjured up by the German doomsayer Oswald Spengler. The scent of crisis is everywhere. Russia and Iran, with China for company, have become themes of the new dirge.
German anger at the undiplomatic posturing of the US Ambassador in Berlin, provoked some in the capital city to call for his expulsion. Times are a-changing.
It is against this canvas that Prime Minister Modi journeyed to Indonesia, Malaysia and Singapore, where he addressed the Shangri-La Dialogue on India’s policy in the Indo-Pacific region. He stressed close economic ties with ASEAN members, upheld the principle of free passage on the high seas, the subtext being contested waters of the South China Sea. In a word, India sought regional partnerships, and not containment, less so, confrontation to the table.
The Indian Prime Minister proceeded to China a little later for the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) comprising its founders, Russia, China, the Central Asian states, India and Pakistan as full members, with Iran, Afghanistan, Mongolia and Belarus given observer status.
The SCO is devoted to regional security, trade and investment. It would be correct to describe it as an offshoot of BRICS, acronym for Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa. In China and India, it has the two most populous countries on earth, China is the world’s largest economy after the United States, Brazil is the great power of South America, and South Africa the most industrialized in all Africa. Russia is a military superpower along with the United States, while India is the fastest growing of the world’s large economies. Where the SCO, deftly choreographed, was a picture of amity, the vaunted G7 in Quebec was one of discord. The US refused to put its signature to a joint communiqué, and President Trump’s departure for his Singapore Summit with North Korean President Kim Jong-un, was markedly abrupt.
Count on a gradual meltdown of the received global order and its arrogant underpinnings. Humpty Dumpty cannot be put together again. It is the coda fit for 21st century purpose.
India’s Artificial Intelligence Czar
Balaraman Ravichandran is India’s Artificial Intelligence Czar. Reinforcement learning is the cutting edge of Artificial Intelligence Research. MIT Technology Review placed it the top 10 technologies of 2017. A good many AI gurus aver that Reinforcement Learning (RL) will be the route to the summit of artificial general intelligence. RL is in a league of its own.
Professor Balaraman Ravichandran, of the Indian Institute of Technology – Madras, is amongst India’s foremost AI geeks, making him the most sought after voice in the deep RL technology. In RL, it is said, he is the country’s sole specialist. There are in all 100 AI experts in India, according to Global AI Talent Report 2018. Balaraman Ravichandran did his PhD at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst (USA), under Andrew Barto, one of the foundering fathers of RL. India’s ambitions in agriculture, education, healthcare and defence make this field an imperative for India’s future development and prosperity. AI was deployed this year to discover the whereabouts of 3,000 missing children, and also for the improvement of the country’s rail network. Science and technology constitute the platform for India’s rise.
