Across the aisle: Ring out the old, ring in the new

A constituency has, on average, 250-300 polling stations. Hence, the chances of discovery of mischief are less than 1 per cent.

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In Tamil Nadu, the festival is called Bhogi. In other parts of India it is called Lohri.

The harvest is imminent, it is time to honour the bulls and the cows and the ploughs, and it is time to celebrate with the farm hands. Before we celebrate the new dawn, we must throw out the old — used clothes, broken farm implements and useless knick-knacks that accumulated during the year gone by. We make a symbolic bonfire of them on Bhogi day. The next day is Pongal or Sankranthi, the harvest festival. The jallikkattu (taming the bull) is part of the celebrations in Tamil Nadu

‘Ring out the old, ring in the new’ captures the spirit of harvest time. On the eve of the Lok Sabha elections, I asked myself what can be thrown out before we welcome the next government. I was able to list a few.

Muscular Approach

Firstly, we must abandon the muscular approach to complex problems that cannot be resolved through a show of the might of the State. In Jammu and Kashmir, the muscular approach has acquired an ominous dimension: it is muscular, militaristic and majoritarian, alienating a whole population and driving young men to embrace militancy. A fine young man, topper of the IAS batch of 2010, resigned from the service in frustration and despair. In the Northeastern states, the muscular approach accelerated the preparation of the National Register of Citizens (NRC) and left out, initially, 40,07,707 persons who found themselves ‘stateless’. The muscular approach is now forcing down the Citizenship Amendment Bill on the ethnic population because of misplaced concern for ‘persecuted minorities’ of other countries, notably Bangladesh. The muscular approach must go.

Secondly, we must repeal or re-enact laws that are unjust. Top of the list is Section 124A of the IPC that defines ‘sedition’. It must go lock, stock and barrel. The Armed Forces (Special Powers) Act that allows the use of force to ‘the point of causing death’ must be repealed or amended extensively. The Goods and Services Tax (GST) laws must be completely redesigned. If anyone claims to have understood the text of the Central GST Act (in what is passed off as legal English language), that person deserves to be admitted to the Bar without the need to pass a law examination! The anti-profiteering provision in GST laws must go. The Angel tax on start-ups must go.

Discriminating Against Poor

Thirdly, poorly designed and inherently discriminatory (against the poor) schemes must be scrapped and replaced by schemes that will deliver the intended outcomes. There is a long list: MUDRA loans, Swachh Bharat (Clean India) that builds toilets that are unused or unusable, Fasal Bima Yojana (Crop Insurance Scheme) that robs farmers and enriches the insurance companies, Kaushal Vikas Yojana (Skilling Programme) that is able to place only 28 per cent of the trainees, and Ayushman Bharat (Health for All) that is underfunded and excludes the poor who have no access to private hospitals. You can add to the list based on your experience of the schemes that concern you. The grave flaws in these schemes must go.