NC Suggestions: The Best Opinion Pieces Of The Day

• A betrayal in the Valley

Firdous Tak, in his column for The Indian Express, said that with the imposition of Governor’s Rule in Jammu and Kashmir, history has repeated itself. The mighty Union government has pulled the strings and the party governing the Centre has assumed powers, through the governor, by dumping a regional ally due to the distrust and difference in their respective approaches to the situation.

During the course of governance and despite a severe dent to its popularity, the PDP stood its ground with regard to the core issues, including reconciliation, dialogue and its repeated assertions that Pakistan has to be on board if the peace process is to succeed in Kashmir.

Democracy will be restored. The political system will be back on track. The institutions will resume their functioning. However, this Tuesday of July 2018 will go down in history as another day of betrayal and deceit. Kashmir will again be at the receiving end.

• Neither new nor undesirable

Critically analysing the Department of Personnel and Training’s (DoPT’s) move to allow lateral entry in government service, D Shyam Babu in a column for The Hindu says that our ceaseless search for the Holy Grail to fix the challenges of governance always leads us nowhere because the thing doesn’t exist. But what we find in the process is a counterfeit, of… well, nothing; it looks like a solution but it is, in fact, a problem. Good intentions, unless tempered by thoughtful deliberation and preparation, do not lead to good policy outcomes.

Once we unwrap the new policy, however, what we find is a little incongruence that can one day grow into a monster. Since the problem that the new policy seeks to fix remains vague, we cannot hope for whatever improvements promised. It is also a distant cousin to the ‘committed bureaucracy’ bogey of the 1970s.

Unless the government is mindful of the dangers, lateral entry can result in large swaths of higher bureaucracy being consumed by the ‘nation-building’ zeal at the cost of accountability.

• Arvind Subramanian’s Exit Shows us That Economic Policy-Making in India Is Still Too Centralised

Commenting on the Arvind Subramanian’s resignation as the chief economic adviser, Deepanshu Mohan writes for The Wire that it is a great loss for the domain of economic policy-making by econocrats (economists working as bureaucrats) within the Indian government.

Former RBI governor Raghuram Rajan and former NITI Aayog boss Arvind Panagariyawere the other two econocrats, who left to return to the US for undertaking academic roles at different universities. While it would be speculative to comment on the common links between these three departures, it is vital to acknowledge the contributions made by Subramanian during his term, and perhaps, understand the failure of the current government to retain some of its best policy minds.

At a time when the Modi government seeks to allow lateral entry into the bureaucracy to promote new talent and knowledge within public-policy making and implementation processes, it remains to be seen the extent to which ministers can actually ensure their intended objectives by ceding enough space to expert insights and giving them enough autonomy to independently function within India’s parliamentary democracy. The popular belief around the making of a policy, which unfortunately is still seen to be a prerogative of the politician alone, needs to change.

• India is losing the plot in the Maldives – and New Delhi’s self-goals and inflated ego are to blame

Manoj Joshi, in his column for Scroll.in said that Having small neighbours can be bothersome. Just ask India. It is frequently challenged by them, and it almost always flunks the test. Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, Nepal and now the Maldives. India’s strategic self-goals in the region have passed into legend. And they have been happening long before China entered the picture to queer the pitch further.

The ongoing tension with the Maldives is a manifestation of this. The problems have been around for nearly five years but peaked in February when the Maldives declared a state of emergency. Fresh tension emerged on June 4, when New Delhi barred a Maldivian MP, Ahmed Nihan, a close aide of President Abdulla Yameen, from entering India. Technically, as an MP, he has a visa enabling him to travel freely across SAARC countries. India has not yet explained its action.

India has maintained its primacy in the region, often through the use of soft power, by funding hospitals and educational institutions, and offering scholarships and training programmes. But it has not hesitated to militarily intervene when its interests were at stake. However, New Delhi has learnt over the years that direct intervention often comes at a price. Sometimes, it is worth playing the longer game rather than acting in haste. A self-confident policy anchored in a clear understanding of national interest goes far in comparison to knee-jerk reactions occasioned by ego issues.