Category: Issue 7

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Issue 7

Taking from the Rich: Reddit, GameStop and the Consequences of Greed

Near the middle of 2019, a Reddit user, known as “Roaring Kitty” boasted his $53,000 investment in “GameStop” a declining video game company. GameStop bought and sold video games, and it isn’t hard to see why that kind of model seems unsustainable in the streaming and digital age. u/RoaringKitty made his post on a subReddit known as “r/WallStreetBets” henceforth known as WSB. Every commenter on WSB cried out that this investment was foolhardy, that GameStop was dying but u/RoaringKitty paid them no heed and continued to keep his investment there. Today, that $53,000 stake is worth $48 Million. How did this happen? 

To begin, we need to understand a few terms. 

What is a share? 

When a company is formed, it’s corpus consists of a set of discrete units. The owners of these discrete units are shareholders and become direct stakeholders invested in the company. In the case of GameStop, there are roughly 65 million shares up for grabs. 

What is a short? 

A short is a financial action one can take concerning shares. While the obvious way of profiting off of stocks is to buy some shares, wait for the prices to rise, sell and profit off of the differences, there is a means of profiting off of the fall in the price of a share. The way to do this is through “shorting”.

What one does is, when they anticipate that the price of a company’s shares is going to drop in value, they “borrow” shares from shareholders, sell them at current market prices, then once the price drops, they buy the shares back and “return” them, and keep the difference for themselves. Now, when one shorts a given company’s stock, it is legally required to eventually return the borrowed shares. This means they have to buy back the shares, regardless of what they cost. 

In the case of GameStop, hedge funds (financial institutions that profit through the buying and selling of stocks and shares) shorted 140% of GameStop’s shares. How do you short 40% more shares than those that exist? Well, that’s actually not too wild. Essentially, shares can be double-counted. Suppose I buy a share in GameStop and then lend it to a broker who intends to short it. This broker sells it to another customer, named say, Saman. Now, to Saman, this is just another share, there is no association with me, so she can further lend the share to someone else who could short it. This way, we can have over a 100% short interest. 

What did u/RoaringKitty do?

Now, u/RoaringKitty didn’t just brag about a weird investment, he noticed something nobody else did: GameStop wasn’t a dying company. GameStop had reasonably large cash reserves, they didn’t have much debt, and with the release of the new PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series, the chain of stores was doing alright. 

Roaring Kitty started talking about his investment on YouTube, Reddit, and TikTok, and people began to notice. Specifically, Michael Burry. Some of you might know him from Christian Bale’s portrayal of him in The Big Short, but for those who don’t, Burry was one of the first people to realize that there was a crisis imminent before the 2008 Economic Crisis and made a massive profit off of it. Burry, at last count, made a 1400% profit off of his investment in GameStop in just under 5 months. 

This discourse on GameStop’s financials, as well as public filings showing massive short interests from various hedge funds like Citron and Melvin Capital, became the seeds of a perfect storm. u/RoaringKitty mobilized r/WallStreetBets with the information that GameStop was viable fuelling thousands of members of the subReddit to buy millions of shares. This artificially drove the price of GameStop stock up hundreds of dollars and decimated the short position of various hedge funds. Melvin Capital lost nearly $4 billion throughout January. 

While initially, buying GameStop stock was sound financial advice, eventually anti-billionaire, anti-hedge fund rhetoric swept the subReddit, and users decided that keeping the stock was now a moral crusade to crush meddling Wall Street titans. You can find posts like this across the website describing their hatred for Wall Street money movers, and this no doubt fueled the stock buying. Eventually, various influencers, including Elon Musk joined the bandwagon, advocating to buy GameStop and crush the short sellers. Musk specifically dislikes shorting since firms have tried to short Tesla several times over the years. 

Robinhood, a free, fee-less trading platform began restricting trading GameStop stock, to avoid “volatility” in the stock market. Now, as surprising as it may sound, Alexandra Ocasio Cortez, Ted Cruz and Donald Trump Jr. all cried out that this was anti-competitive and anti-capitalist, you’d never expect to see the three of them agree on anything, let alone the free market. Robinhood was only the first of several services to restrict trading, an act that has led to several class-action lawsuits. This leaves a valuable question on the table, who gets to truly “regulate” the market? Why is social market manipulation “volatility” while a few billionaires doing it is a “hustle”? The actual nature of power within market structures has been exposed, and it cannot be allowed to fade from public memory. The “free” market is a selectively free market. 

Now, as trading continues it is to be seen which forces buckle first, the Redditors, or the hedge funds. As the value fluctuates, there are ripple effects across the industry. This entire incident is also provoking a series of questions about the power of social media. A user on Reddit mobilized millions of dollars through thousands of small traders, and apps like Parler managed to mobilize thousands to storm the US Capitol. While one shouldn’t conflate the two events, there needs to be cognizance of how these networks hold the power to organize people in ways that the people are not prepared for. But beyond that, the story is still unfolding, and we need to ask ourselves, who wins at the end of this? How do we even imagine “winning” in this scenario? And, where does this leave us? 

Vibhor is a third-year economics major, and frequent Redditor, with an interest in economic history, behavioural science and decentralised systems. He is a frequent critic of the free market and enjoys reading about market failure and similar shenanigans.

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Issue 7

Road to Recovery: A Conversation on Covaxin with Prof. Gautam Menon

What exactly do clinical trials for a new vaccine involve? 

The first step after a potential vaccine is developed is to try it out on animals to check that it is not toxic and that it leads to an immune response. If this step is successful, the next stage is to move to human trials, where these preliminary trials are called phase 1 trials.

In such trials, healthy volunteers (typically 20-50 in number) are injected with one of a range of possible doses of the vaccine, to determine the optimal and safe dose, starting from very small doses. Whether the vaccine elicits an immune response is also verified. In phase 2 trials, the immune response is examined further, and questions of side effects and safety are also explored in a larger group of volunteers, typically more than 100.

Finally, phase 3 trials involve administering the vaccine to a much larger group, often tens of thousands of people, selected to be representative of the population. These trials are called “randomized control trials”. In these trials, about half the participants enrolled are given a placebo, something that is harmless to the body, while the other half is given the vaccine. No one knows, not even the doctors administering it, whether the injection contains a placebo or the real thing.

In India, emergency use authorization has been granted to two vaccines: Covishield, made by the Serum Institute of India and Covaxin, made by Bharat Biotech.

Since Covaxin didn’t complete its phase 3 trials and publish them, what can we confidently say about its efficacy? 

At the moment we can say little since there simply is no data yet. In the much smaller phase-1 and phase-2 trials, the vaccine elicited a robust immune response, making antibodies against the virus. The vaccine was also shown to be safe in appropriate doses. It is based on an inactivated whole-virus vaccine platform which is well-understood. However, it is important to understand that efficacy—whether a vaccine works well at preventing you from getting the disease under ideal conditions—is not a simple and immediate consequence of immunogenicity, the ability of a vaccine to provoke an immune response. That is why we need phase 3 trials in the first place.

Is there a broader misunderstanding of immunogenicity and efficacy? What is the difference and why is it important? 

A vaccine should certainly provoke a response from the immune system. That’s central to how vaccines function. But whether it works in preventing people from getting the disease – protective immunity – is a harder question and there are a few things that could go wrong. One extreme case is that getting vaccinated might, paradoxically, increase your chances of severe disease, through what is called ADE or antibody-dependent enhancement. Another possibility is a vaccine-associated enhanced respiratory disease, in which antibodies induced by the vaccine bind with viruses and form immune complexes that clog the lungs. These are possibilities that a phase-3 trial should rule out.

How is Covaxin going to complete phase 3 trials?

What should happen, in principle, is the following: The scientists running the trial will wait till a certain number of people, a number pre-approved in the trial protocol, within the group that received an injection, are diagnosed with COVID-19. They then go back and check whether these people belonged to the group that was administered the placebo or the actual vaccine. If there are many more cases in the placebo group than the vaccine group than can be accounted for by chance, that suggests that the vaccine works in protecting against developing the actual disease.

The problem is that it may take some time to reach this stage of having a predetermined number infected with the disease. Since most people develop no or only mild symptoms of the disease, they may not notice they have been infected.

A second problem is that phase-3 trials are being done in a background where a good number of people have already been infected in the past, so are immune to the disease for at least some time, as far as we know. These people won’t develop the disease even if they encounter an infected person.  

Finally, currently in India, all this is happening in the background of a steadily decreasing number of new cases. This makes it harder to have new infections in the trial group.

Why aren’t people given a choice on which vaccine they would prefer? 

The government, which is, after all, making these vaccines available for free at this point, may have wanted to ensure that they did not appear to be favouring one over the other when granting emergency-use approval. Perhaps there is also an element of national pride in this, in that Covaxin is a fully indigenous vaccine while Covishield is the result of a collaboration with international groups, at Oxford University and the pharmaceutical giant AstraZeneca.

What, according to you, is the biggest health concern with not having any efficacy data on Covaxin? 

Whenever one is administering a vaccine to a healthy person, one would like to know that it has been worth it. Does the vaccine, for example, provide protection against the disease to more than 50% of the population it is administered to? A phase-3 trial, precisely because it is so large and planned as a randomised control trial, is a good way to ask this question as well as to look out for possible rare but serious side-effects of being vaccinated.

Would it have been a better move to rollout Covaxin after phase 3 clinical trial data was published? Why do you think it was encouraged over other alternatives? 

It would have been better to rollout Covaxin after the efficacy data became available, in my opinion. Data demonstrating good efficacy and safety, which could have taken another month or so to obtain, would have spoken for itself.

Of course, these decisions have to be made based on available information as well as projections for what might happen in the future, such as new variants that are more transmissible. There are certainly cases where granting emergency use authorisation might have been justified. This is why scientists as well as the lay public need to understand the basis on which these decisions were made.

The committee that approved Covaxin distribution may have had data that was shown to it that suggested that it was efficacious. We don’t know because neither the names of the committee members nor the minutes of their deliberations are available to us.

Transparency should always be a central consideration in such matters, especially since you will be vaccinating people who are healthy and you don’t want to compromise on safety.

Considering how the vaccination drive is going right now, do you think vaccine hesitancy is slowly eroding and that target numbers will be met? 

Yes, the numbers of those getting vaccinated each day are steadily increasing. That is a good sign. Unlike in the USA and some other developed countries, there is no strong anti-vaccination movement in this country and people are accustomed to large-scale immunization programs, such as the pulse polio campaign.

Do you think the vaccine rollout should’ve been critiqued more or less than it was by the Indian scientific community? What could have been different?

I think the sections of the scientific community that critiqued the Covaxin rollout did the right thing. Prof. Shahid Jameel of Ashoka University and Prof. Gagandeep Kang of the CMC Vellore, in particular, were sane voices in this, pointing out gently, but firmly, the need to stick to established procedure. One has to ensure that the public does not feel that they would be guinea pigs. Several fellows of the Indian Academy of Science also signed a document expressing their concern.

I was dismayed at the counter signature campaign, supporting the Covaxin rollout, from a group of 49 medical doctors and scientists. Their arguments made little sense to me.

Can anything be said about whether the current vaccine candidates can be effectively used for the new strains of the virus?

There is some encouraging news of the effectiveness of some of the international vaccines against the new strains, although perhaps not at the same level. Bharat Biotech has claimed very recently that its Covaxin was effective against the UK variant of the virus. Our understanding is rapidly evolving.

Do you think that the overall vaccine development process has changed in the course of the global effort in formulating a COVID-19 vaccine?

Absolutely. I thought, as many others did, that a period of 18 months to two years would be the minimum time required for a vaccine to be distributed. That we managed to do this in less than a year is a remarkable achievement. Without our ever-improving knowledge of both basic and applied science, this would simply have been impossible. Indeed, it would have been impossible even a decade ago.

I am, in many ways, proud of what India has achieved. The Serum Institute of India, located in Pune, is the world’s largest vaccine manufacturer. Bharat Biotech, the manufacturers of Covaxin, has a manufacturing plant that is the largest of its kind in the Asia-Pacific region. It is a respected company which exports therapeutics and vaccines across the world. India itself produces 60% of global vaccines. The Director-General of the WHO commented recently that “…the production capacity of India is one of the best assets the world has today”.

As an Indian, this does make me very happy.

Gautam Menon is Professor of Physics and Biology at Ashoka University as well as Professor of Theoretical Physics and Computational Biology at the Institute of Mathematical Sciences in Chennai. He works in biophysics as well as in, more recently, the modelling of  infectious disease.

We publish all articles under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noderivatives license. This means any news organisation, blog, website, newspaper or newsletter can republish our pieces for free, provided they attribute the original source (OpenAxis).

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Issue 7

“Mark as Read” to “Mark has Read”: Privacy Policies in India

There are three imponderables when it comes to Privacy: the definition of privacy in today’s data-is-the-new-oil world, how to balance the desires of the individual and the powers-that-be (government or local law enforcement), and how to actually implement and enforce these ideas, once we’ve come up with them. In short, it wouldn’t be too wrong to say that we don’t really know what we’re doing when it comes to privacy!

Further, there’s usually a dichotomy proposed between privacy and security: you can have privacy, but that means criminals/terrorists would be able to operate without the government being able to track them. So, if you want to have security from all these evil people, you must consent to let the government snoop on your data as well.

This is actually a common thing: to protect the population from the wiles of food producers, the government sets up certain standards that these producers must obey. The government may send inspectors to check upon the processes followed, and then punish producers who do not conform. Here, however, every single one of us is a producer.

Fortunately (or otherwise) this relentless production of data by individuals is mediated by companies like Facebook, who collate and process this data, profiting from the detailed profiles they build of us in the process. So, it might be possible to regulate things simply by applying the regulations on these corporations instead of at an individual level. But it also means that there are now two entities (albeit with somewhat different incentives) who may want to read what we write, i.e., the government and the corporation. One thing is very clear: individual-level policies are insufficient. Most people do not (and cannot be expected to) have a deep understanding of privacy issues – just like we don’t all have a deep understanding of food safety norms. Some kind of aggregated negotiation tactic, then, appears to be the only solution.

Given that the government (an entity interested in seeing our data) is the one representing the population in this negotiation, civil society must be extremely vigilant about what the details are. Many people (loosely) propose some structure of the following nature: private messages between individuals must remain secret, both from the government and the corporation. However, if the government comes to the corporation with a warrant, the latter must hand over the data. This last bit, of course, is impossible in an “end-to-end encrypted” system, where only the sender and receiver can read information.

WhatsApp’s recent change is an interesting nuance in this 40,000-ft view. Your private messages in WhatsApp are still end-to-end encrypted and unreadable to anyone but the parties directly involved: nothing has changed on that front. What many may not have noticed, is that WhatsApp actually makes two different apps: one for private use, and one for businesses. WhatsApp’s new policy allows them to look only at communications with these business accounts.

Note that WhatsApp could already look at the metadata: they would know, for example, that you had been chatting with a number of mattress companies (but might not know what kind of mattresses you were looking for). Facebook could then advertise mattresses on your feed. With this new policy, WhatsApp can share data about your interactions with business accounts, so that Facebook can find and suggest the exact kind of mattress you were looking for. As far as changes in privacy go, it’s actually rather minor. Your private messages are just as private as before.

As discussed above, even an end-to-end encrypted system can reveal a lot about one’s preferences and behaviour; this is actually the main difference between WhatsApp and Signal. They use the exact same set of encryption protocols; WhatsApp provides more services (e.g., it is rolling out payments in India), but retains metadata. Signal retains no metadata whatsoever. It just knows the time you last logged in and some other basic information, nothing more, and backups are encrypted. In either case, your actual chats are end-to-end encrypted and cannot be seen by anyone else; this is with the notable exception of backups: unencrypted backups (WhatsApp does not have an option to encrypt) can be read by Google or Apple (and thus by a government with a warrant).

Any state regulation on these encryption and privacy policies would be incredibly difficult, and that’s without getting into the international nature of the problem (what happens with software written in Germany that facilitates a chat between a Japanese citizen and an Australian citizen, with the latter physically residing in India?). I think the short answer is “non-starter”. 

Perhaps the nearest we can get is a set of minimum standards, some rules about consent, and privacy scores. Such consent rules are also hard to frame, e.g., “a corporation cannot access any data belonging to a user without direct, time-limited consent, with sufficient granularity (not all-or-nothing options)”, but we have a lot of good lawyers who I am sure can do a much better job of this than I! In the short term, however, the best idea is almost certainly privacy scores, calculated by an independent government agency, providing something like a star rating to companies operating in India: this could be one way to provide citizens with the information they need to choose what is right for them. 

Debayan Gupta is currently an Assistant Professor of Computer Science at Ashoka University, where he teaches a course on security and privacy as well as an introductory programming class. He is also a visiting professor and research affiliate at MIT and MIT-Sloan. 

We publish all articles under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noderivatives license. This means any news organisation, blog, website, newspaper or newsletter can republish our pieces for free, provided they attribute the original source (OpenAxis).

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Issue 7

The Cost of the Cure: Understanding the Implications of India’s COVID-19 Inoculation Drive

Union Minister Amit Shah’s bold call for a duel to challenge vaccine skeptics came exactly a week after the Indian government’s inoculation program against COVID-19 was launched on 16th January 2021. The ambitious plan aims to vaccinate 300 million healthcare and frontline workers in its first phase using the vaccine derived from the Oxford-AstraZeneca candidate AZD-1222, dubbed Covishield in India, and Covaxin, produced by Hyderabad-based biotechnology company, Bharat Biotech and the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR).

Despite initial optimism, the program has witnessed low turnout rates, due to widespread misinformation and safety concerns. The root cause of doubt about the program stems from the announcement by the Drug Controller General of India (DCGI) on 3rd January 2021, when Covaxin and Covishield were given emergency use approvals. While the approval for Covishield was unsurprising, given its established efficacy in all three phases of trials abroad, it was the seemingly hasty rollout of Covaxin that caused a stir. 

Criticism of the vaccine primarily focused on the absence of Phase 3 clinical trial data, since the trials have not yet concluded. The initial backlash against the approval of Covaxin was met with officials responsible for India’s COVID-19 response claiming that it would be used as a “back up”, in case of the need for extra doses given the emergence of the new UK strain of the virus. Moreover, it was also made clear that Covaxin would only be administered in “clinical trial mode”, where its recipients would be asked for their consent and proper monitoring for side-effects would follow. 

However, this stance towards the vaccine changed a few days later, when it was announced that both vaccine candidates will be treated at par with one another.  According to Dr Samiran Panda, a scientist at the ICMR, the circulation of the vaccine essentially implied a single-arm clinical trial, where a placebo wouldn’t be used and results wouldn’t be published under a peer-reviewed journal. Moreover, vaccine recipients would not have the option to choose between Covaxin and Covishield. It was this sudden change of positions that raised concerns. 

Consent, Choice and the State

The question about individual choice and consent is critical to the discourse around the inoculation mission. The lack of choice between vaccine candidates has affected turnout rates with only around 56% of eligible individuals getting vaccinated due to concerns among healthcare and frontline workers about the controversy surrounding its fast-paced rollout.

Ethical concerns regarding consent plague the program – should recipients, who aren’t willing participants of a research study, not be allowed to choose between two vaccines that differ in terms of proven efficacy and safety? Given the major difference between the vaccine candidates, how can consent retain its true value when it directly robs an individual of their agency to make personal medical decisions? Most crucially, should the state have the authority to directly or indirectly force the hand of citizens in making informed medical choices?

The decision of the rollout of Covaxin under current conditions seems even more dubious at a time when essential workers are invaluable and at the highest risk of contracting the virus. 

Shifting Positions and Unwelcome Surprises

The behaviour of the Indian state and its important bodies in relation to its treatment of Covaxin is also perplexing. The very approval of a vaccine that hasn’t yet completed Phase 3 clinical trials raises alarm. The third phase of trials is critical since it provides for the closest possible model of how a vaccine candidate will behave when administered to a large population.

The vaccine’s intended use has also been disputed. The DCGI had claimed that it would be administered in an open-label clinical trial to ascertain its efficacy against the UK strain of the virus. In direct contradiction, Bharat Biotech managing director Krishna Ella has stated that there was no “confirmatory data” indicating that Covaxin works against it, and has suggested that this form of vaccine circulation was sprung upon him by the government.

The sheer disconnect between the understanding of India’s major regulatory body and the vaccine manufacturer not only is a matter of concern but also sets a worrisome precedent. Moreover, the suggestion that Bharat Biotech was unaware of the government’s expectation of the vaccine’s use can also lead to long-lasting implications for public trust in regulatory bodies and affect state standards for treatment approvals in the future. 

 Vaccine Diplomacy and Anti-Nationals
The past year has been marked by governmental positions that encourage the idea of India as a major player in the global response against COVID-19. The consequence of the same is the attachment of national pride to India’s vaccine response.  Hence, in the face of concerns about the vaccine, critics of the vaccination program have been liberally deemed ‘anti-national’, an all-too-familiar narrative that conveniently sensationalizes every aspect of the matter except its core problems.
Given that Covishield is relatively cheaper than Covaxin, it is important to question the government’s decision to purchase and circulate a vaccine that is yet to produce Phase 3 trial data. Moreover, India has only exported doses of Covishield so far despite having purchased 3.85 million doses of Covaxin, which is peculiar given the government’s otherwise confident domestic narrative around the vaccine. These facts paint a murky picture – one where India seems to be balancing domestic needs and international ambitions, with the former placed in relatively more uncertain territory than the latter.It is necessary to establish that the crux of the concerns surrounding Covaxin pertains to the confusion around its intended usage, authorization prior to completing Phase 3 trials, and the issues of recipient consent and choice. A pandemic is the worst possible time to sow skepticism around medicine. At the same time however, it is important to recognize that the consequences of any missteps in approval or administration of treatments can trigger mass disillusionment from life-saving scientific treatments for years to come. Given as things stand in India, one can only wait and observe what unfolds.

Aarohi Sharma is a Psychology student at Ashoka University. Her academic interests primarily focus on the intersection of politics and psychology in society.

We publish all articles under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noderivatives license. This means any news organisation, blog, website, newspaper or newsletter can republish our pieces for free, provided they attribute the original source (OpenAxis).

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Issue 7

Museums of Democracy: How the Central Vista Project highlights the Importance of Curating History

This is primarily because any history we read, hear, or watch, is refracted, it is shaped by the person or thought process that is engaged in the exercise of compiling it. The difference between History with the capital ‘H’ and history as everything that happened in the past is crucial. The former is carefully picked out from the latter – a series of events  and artefacts chosen to tell a story. The historian then carefully selects these ‘chosen ones’ to help shape the narrative they wish to see furthered; a narrative that is intrinsically based on the politics of the day.

The question raised then is why should someone care about this act of selection now? The answer is simple, everyday instances like the renaming of roads, the demolition of buildings and the rebuilding of common spaces reinforce this act of selection. One such undertaking that makes one stop and think about this is the Central Vista Redevelopment Project.

The project aims to renovate 86 acres of land in New Delhi, including historical buildings like the Parliament House, the Rashtrapati Bhawan, and the India Gate. Moreover, the National Museum is also set to be taken down and rebuilt where the current North and South Blocks stand in the Central Secretariat. The area, associated with affluence and political power is commonly called Lutyens Delhi after the architects Edwin Lutyens and Herbert Baker who designed it when the capital was shifted to Delhi in 1911 under the British rule.

Ever since its announcement in September 2019 by the Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs, the project has come under scrutiny for violations of municipal and environmental law as well as change in land use. Following this, the Supreme Court gave it the green light in January 2021. Close to a month prior to January, Prime Minister Narendra Modi laid the foundation of a new Parliament building under a Hindu ceremony. The ceremony itself was allowed when the government reassured the court that no demolition or construction would begin until the final decision had been received. 

The focus of this article, however, is to draw attention to something that seems fairly inconspicuous at first but can have lasting impacts on how we associate our present with our past. The act of demolition and consequently rebuilding employs the historical process mentioned earlier – that of selection and by extension erasure of what gets chosen to be rebuilt and featured. With the National Museum for instance, the idea is that North and South Blocks will be able to house more historical artefacts. However, which artefacts are highlighted and how are questions that remain to be answered. 

The entire episode reminds me of something Susan Sontag said in relation to photography – “[To photograph] means putting oneself into a certain relation to the world that feels like knowledge – and, therefore, like power.” While she was talking about the act of framing something within photographic borders, the idea at its crux seems especially relevant here – when somebody controls the framing of the past, they wield power. Perhaps, therefore, the same self-reflectivity is required for the curation of renovated spaces.

While the words ‘heritage’, ‘redevelopment’ and ‘conservation’ paint rosy pictures in one’s mind about the building of new spaces, they actually point to the larger question of historical knowledge production. Buildings and architecture has always been used to assert power, symbolise progress and display grandeur. The act of rebuilding is not unique either, as history is replete with examples of the same. That being said, the question, especially with an edifice like the National Museum is its current housing of historical artefacts, and the process of curation that will go into the remade property. 

While the aforementioned already acts as a repository of history, the other buildings like the current Parliament House are receptacles of public memory of post-colonial India while themselves being colonial products. The Indira Gandhi National Centre for the Arts (IGNCA) is a prime example of a building set to be taken down which is associated with the memory of a former Prime Minister. Founded by Kapila Vatsyayan, it is a space where art has found expression during nationally significant events. Keeping the relevance of these in mind therefore becomes important as contemporary history may be memory for now, but it will not remain so for the coming decades. This highlights the importance of preserving not just historical remains but also elements of post-independence public memory that have not become canonical History yet.

Preserving public memory, if nothing else, can create context. They point to the uncomfortable understanding that even if features do not fit proposed narratives, they cannot be razed. For instance, the reason behind the decision to withdraw the candidature of colonial Delhi and Shahjahanabad as UNESCO World Heritage sites in 2014 has been traced by some to their legacies rooted in the Mughal period and the colonial era. While the legacies may cause discomfort to some, their significance cannot be dismissed.

The Central Vista Project sheds light on the importance of history and public memory. The fact is that the past cannot speak for itself. Whatever the past says, it does through the actors who consolidate it. The thing to keep in mind then in light of the project is this – demolishing heritage buildings should not open up the passageway to raze history.

Sanya is a student of History, International Relations and Media Studies at Ashoka University.

We publish all articles under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noderivatives license. This means any news organisation, blog, website, newspaper or newsletter can republish our pieces for free, provided they attribute the original source (OpenAxis).

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Issue 7

Pets of the Pandemic

Human beings, as one knows, are social beings; be it with a fellow human or an animal. This inherent quality along with the advancement of technology and media has facilitated the sociality of a person. In the era of the internet, we are up to date and in touch with more friends, family and acquaintances than ever before. However, the year 2020 took such a turn and brutally limited this inherent sociality to being social in a room and connected through a screen. One was not only isolated but in-person social interaction also meant putting oneself and the people around at risk.

With almost completing a year amidst the pandemic, conversations around mental health concerns have seen a significant rise that has a correlational if not causal relationship with the pandemic. It is not uncommon that the pandemic, quarantine and the lockdown harboured a lot of feelings of uncertainty, isolation and loneliness. While a person to person interaction might have been risky, a number of people turned to the companionship of a pet. 

Historically, humans have always been a part of a culture of integrating animals within their lifestyle as both parties have been present in close physical proximity. Traditionally, animals such as horses, cows, dogs, etc. were domesticated to acquire goods such as dairy, meat, security etc; thus, they had a use-value. While these animals were resourceful, over time, this culture of domestication branched out into what a layperson would see as keeping a ‘pet’ in present times. One could see the emergence of keeping pets for companionship, comfort and support. A variety of research sheds light on the human-animal interaction, and one such research explores this bond through the Pet Effect. This effect addresses the impact of the symbiotic relationship of love, affection that the pet and owner share, that significantly contributes to each parties’ physical, emotional and mental well-being. A survey was conducted in 2016, which reported that 74% of the 2000 pet owners, felt that there was a significant improvement in their mental and social well-being once they acquired a pet.

Hence, to seek comfort in these unprecedented times, various individuals who could afford to, adopted a pet. If one would’ve stepped into a park in May, one would have noticed a good deal of what are called the ‘Pets of the Pandemic’. With the lockdown pushing work culture from in-office to a work from home format, not only did a pet provide companionship but also a positive and meaningful presence within the home environment. Owners could now fully distract themselves from the uncertainty and invest in attending to their pet and also indulging in physical exercise by taking them out for walks.

While pets may have been the solution to our loneliness, many have chosen to ignore the  impact of the pandemic on our four-legged companions? Research suggests that for newly born and adopted pets, socialisation is crucial within their first three months. The environment that a pet spends time in plays an essential role in their development. However, due to the pandemic, various pets like dogs and cats have spent a large portion of their initial months indoors. This leads to exposing pets to two pertinent issues: difficulty in adjusting to new environments and socialising and developing separation anxiety. 

Gradual exposure to society and socialization is an important part of taking care of and training pets, especially for a puppy. This training ensures that the puppy grows to be a dog that is comfortable with other people, animals and new environments and does not develop unnecessary fears and phobias. 

Furthermore, stemming from the same environment is the issue of separation anxiety. Separation anxiety is often noticed in dogs and is described as the dog displaying distressed behaviour when its’ guardian is about to leave the house. Distressed behaviour could look different for each dog, however, some common indicators are agitation, being upset, uneasy or restless and seeming depressed. Dogs suffering from separation anxiety bark and howl when they are left alone or cause destruction in the house, often causing self-injury and in some cases, make an attempt to escape. 

When we are experiencing distressed, often restoring to a pet for comfort is extremely normal. With owners spending 24×7 time with their pets, the latter have become a coping mechanism for many. The line between this mutually beneficial relationship and co-dependency has blurred during the pandemic. So the most important question to raise is what happens once the guardians move back to their 9-5 in-office lifestyle? How does the pet respond to getting all the constant attention for almost 11 months to transitioning back to the time when they were not? How does the owner resort to separating themselves from their pet, and find other mechanisms to cope with stress?

These are questions that one is yet to answer. 

Vanishree is currently pursuing Psychology and Sociology at Ashoka University. Vani enjoys cooking in her free time. 

Picture Credits: Sunehra Bhatura

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Issue 7

Farm Bills 2020 and The Future of The Indian Economy

Thousands of farmers, mostly from Punjab, Haryana, and western Uttar Pradesh, have been protesting at several Delhi border points since the 26th of November 2020. Their demands are centred around the repealment of three recently passed farm bills. The bills are namely, Farmers’ Produce Trade and Commerce (Promotion and Facilitation) Bill, Farmers (Empowerment and Protection) Agreement on Price Assurance and Farm Services Bill, and Essential Commodities (Amendment) Bill. Unable to reach a consensus with respect to the terms of these bills, the central government has decided to postpone the implementation of the bill.

The discontent of the farmers and the inability of the government to meet their demands raises several questions about their validity and the causes for grievance. While the protests have received major media attention, this article will endeavour to shed light on the larger impact the bills could potentially have on the Indian economy.

The Indian agricultural sector has been the least efficient sector of the Indian economy. While over  42% of the country’s manpower is employed in the primary sector, it contributes to about 17% of the GDP, making it the most populated and least efficient wing of the Indian economy. Several factors contribute to the inefficiency of the industry, most of which the new farm bills aim to address. 

The Indian agricultural industry has had a grave imbalance over the last couple of years, in terms of surplus production as well as issues with Minimum Support Price (MSP). This imbalance has continued to plague the market. Farmers fear that with the three new laws, the government is signaling its movement away from the current patterns of procurement at MSP. This uncertainty and lack of trust is one the primary causes of the recent protests. 

Surplus stocks of wheat and rice have hindered the agricultural economy in India and also the environment. The continuous wheat-rice crop pattern, especially in North India, has resulted in dead and excess stock lying at FCI warehouses. Most of the surplus is mainly a result of MSP laws that have given farmers a guarantee of purchase at a fixed price. This has allowed farmers from green revolution states such as Punjab and Haryana to grow MSP crops like wheat and rice irrespective of the market demand. As per certain reports, nearly 89% of the rice produced by the farmers in Punjab and 85% in Haryana is procured by the government. Hence, farmers in Punjab and Haryana face no price risk and are incentivised to grow paddy and wheat that are going to waste in FCI godowns. The surplus production at highly subsidised rates leads to increasing government expenditure and wastage of resources. While the government has assured farmers that MSP will continue to be provided, its continued implementation will surely hinder economic growth. 

The APMC Bypass law introduced permits for trade in agricultural produce outside the APMC regulated mandis. Private mandis can be set up across the country where anyone can buy produce from farmers. In addition to this, the bill also includes contract farming laws that facilitate an agreement between farmers and buyers before sowing under which farmers are contracted to sell produce to buyers at a predetermined price. Both the AMPC bypass law and contract farming laws are designed to allow farmers to deal directly with buyers and eliminate middlemen, giving them more choices on whom to sell their produce to. The laws will also allow firms to dictate the crops that the farmers can grow, thereby eliminating the surplus issue and meeting market demands. Crop diversification will allow farmers to contribute more efficiently to the economy and could provide them with greater financial security. In addition to the economic benefits, crop diversification will make farms more environmentally friendly. Planting a variety of crops makes the soil healthier thereby reducing the need to use excessive amounts of fertilizer. It also ensures that crops are more resistant to disease and therefore require fewer pesticides.

If we view these laws through a simple high-school economic lens, they look great as more buyers usually means a better price for the seller. However, that may cease to be the case in a realistic scenario. There is a possibility that these laws may lead to the rise of oligopolies that dictate prices and bulldoze their way with the farmers. This fear of oligopolies controlling the market is a major concern for farmers and a crucial debate made by protestors. The bill in itself doesn’t do much to prevent the rise of oligopolies. It is peremptory that the government regulate these markets to ensure that farmers have a choice in buyers and are not forced to deal in an unfair market.

It is not uncommon for governments to subsidise agriculture.The agricultural industry continues to have the highest subsidies around the world. The government must switch their subsidy allocation. There needs to be a shift from spending money in the MSP system to increasing capital expenditure on infrastructure in machinery and irrigation facilities to help Indian farmers be more competitive in local and global markets. The solution to the economic and environmental challenges facing agriculture in Indian states points towards a shift from the current system to a revised one. The farmer’s bill while representing the first step towards this economic shift requires a second look to ensure that farmers continue to remain protected. 

Karantaj Singh finished his undergraduate in History and International Relations. He is now pursuing a minor in Media Studies and Politics during his time at the Ashoka Scholars Program. He enjoys gaming and comics in his free time.

We publish all articles under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noderivatives license. This means any news organisation, blog, website, newspaper or newsletter can republish our pieces for free, provided they attribute the original source (OpenAxis).

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Issue 7

Who is Deciding What You Watch? Fiction and Move Towards New Indian Censorship

Photo by Markus Winkler on Pexels.com

The term ‘controversy’ refers to a “public discussion and argument about something that many people strongly disagree about, think is bad or are shocked by.” But why is it relevant here? The makers and actors of the web series Tandav, released on Amazon Prime Video last month have found themselves apologizing to the public for allegedly “hurting religious sentiments.” But let me tell you, this cannot really be termed as a controversy. It is not the first time that the term has been used to emphasise on the reactions of a certain group towards a fiction released on OTT (Over-The-Top) platforms. Clearly, the Indian media loves the term when it comes to addressing the reasons behind a significant rise in moral policing. The question arises, what then qualifies them to be called a ‘controversy’? Not saying that the content of the series is perfect, it has its issues which need to be critiqued, but that isn’t the focus of this piece.

Why did Tandav self-censor?  

FIRs against the series have been filed in states of Uttar Pradesh, Mumbai, Bihar, and Bengaluru so far, starting with BJP MLA Ram Kadam filing a police complaint in Mumbai and UP’s BJP MP Manoj Kotak writing to the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting to ban the series and apologise for “hurting sentiments.” At this point, one could ask – was there a “public discussion and argument” about it? Certainly not. Then whose “sentiments” are those? Leaders from a particular political party and the Police in these states filing FIRs at such a portrayal is a function of the religious group that they seem to align with. These sentiments are individualistic or concerned with a fragment of political leadership and could not be equated with that of the entire Hindu population of the country. However, it seems to have concerned the overall cast and crew of the show. The maker, Ali Abbas Zafar and several actors took to Twitter to unconditionally apologize and thanked the I&B Ministry for their guidance and support in the matter. In addition to this, they at once agreed to drop those sections of the show. 

This kind of censorship commonly referred to as self-censorship by the makers of the show, even before a legal order was passed by concerned authorities to do so, could be perceived as resulting out of fear. This culture of fear and intolerance has been perpetuated by repeated threats issued by religious bodies such as the Karni Sena, a Rajput organisation that has continued to incite violence against several creations of the Hindi film industry. In this case, they have announced an award for Rs 1 crore to the one who would chop off the tongue of the makers, even when the cast and crew has repeatedly apologized online and self-censored. Noteworthy it is that the maker and lead male actors of the show, Saif Ali Khan and Mohd, Zeeshan Ayyub have Muslim identities. Considering the state of politics in the country under the ruling government with the recent Anti-CAA/NRC protests, it appears that religion has played a crucial role in majoritarian powers deciding what viewers can watch. UP Chief Minister, Adityanath’s media Chief Advisor’s tweet on the same, and FIRs by members of political parties against the maker reveal the religious biases of the party in question. It forcefully restrains dissemination of that particular thought which seems to act against their religious beliefs. These leaders’ take on the issue alongside the crew’s swift submission towards those claims are moralistic in nature. One could perceive their actions collectively to be sensitive to popular support, leaders in terms of political gains and crew in terms of monetary ones. These motives make Tandav “controversial.” What one requires is a public discussion regarding the moralistic standards upheld by these two sections of the society, the stances taken by them in lieu of their hidden motives, rather than controversialize the content and members associated with the show for their thoughts that led to their fiction. 

The New Surveillance State 

What’s missing here is a legal development, definitive to this case. What the Indian audience received as a legal outcome is the recent statement by Union Minister of the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting Prakash Javadekar, where he cites “a lot of complaints against some serials available on OTT platforms” and states that the Ministry will soon issue guidelines regarding them. This came after the Government brought films and audio-visual programmes over online platforms under the purview of the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting in November 2020. These guidelines would control the release of content on digital spaces, especially OTT platforms such as Netflix, Amazon Prime, Hotstar and more. This outright claim to control content on the web translates into control of a specific section of the internet by the Ministry. Considered to be in public interest, without involving the public in the conversation is quite ironic and diminishes the fundamental rights of the viewers, and furthers moral policing. The assumptions and predictions about the future of fiction on these platforms boils down to the question: who is deciding (quite literally) what we watch?

Fiction and Subversion of Imagination

“The web series ‘Tandav’ is a work of fiction and any resemblance to acts and persons and events are purely coincidental,” tweeted Ali Abbas Zafar, in the official statement by the cast and crew of Tandav. Fiction as a medium, is imaginary, that is, not based on true facts and/or events. And most Bollywood productions use this narrative art form to produce creative content for consumption by all sections of India’s population, complemented by its dissemination over OTT platforms. A consumer survey suggests that the most popular category of content watched in India on OTT platforms is movies and web shows. The form and platform together provides the creators with innate freedom to delve into issues that shape and reshape the society in diverse ways, borrow from society, and depict it  through dynamic, intense metaphors through storylines. Although content circulated are subject to healthy critique from viewers and rightly so, the move to assert control over their content under the discretion of certain leaders is oppressive and disrespectful to the viewer’s right to access multimedia, especially online. This act of taking decisions on behalf of the viewers, undermining creative freedom of the producers and digital space of the OTT platforms, restrains freedom of the consumers to access specific content and their right to critique. Earlier, the understanding of human life through fiction released over streaming platforms were not burdened by the jurisdictions of the Centre. When one proceeds to censor an imaginative art form, it is not only controlling the produced content, but at the same time the imagination itself. The angry FIRs by leaders upon depiction of Hindu deities in a certain light in a work of fiction attempts to curb the initial thought that goes into the writing process. This conscious effort to monitor ideas and stories before they are propagated infantilizes the viewers’ agency, and leads to subversion of thought.

The ‘fictional’ aspect now makes creations vulnerable to the guidelines. The imagination, ideas challenging the mainstream social structures, complemented by statements made by binary political leaders towards them inculcates fear and perpetuates it within the system at the same time. With the recent statement by Prakash Javadekar, it becomes certain that it is not ‘we’ who will in the future determine what ‘we’ want to consume online, at least in a ‘democracy’ like India. Till then, happy viewing!

Ariba is a student of English and Media Studies at Ashoka University.

We publish all articles under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noderivatives license. This means any news organisation, blog, website, newspaper or newsletter can republish our pieces for free, provided they attribute the original source (OpenAxis).

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Issue 7

Decoding the Union Budget 2021: Q&A with Professor Nishant Chadha

Q: There are a lot of worries about the Fiscal deficit for this financial year. Could you tell us the concerns around it and how the government plans to fund it? 

A: Very loosely put, the fiscal deficit is the difference between the government’s expenditure and its receipts. The concern that surrounds it is how do you fill up the gap between your spendings and receipts? Or if you borrow today, how do you repay it tomorrow, and will you have enough to repay it? 

And if we don’t borrow today, then how will we finance what we want to do? That is the same decision that any business or economic entity faces. Your borrowings are contingent on your belief that you can generate more income and pay off the debt later. Granted your activities are productive enough to cover the costs of borrowing. It’s the same logic that works for the government, but it can get a lot more complicated sometimes. 

The fiscal deficit is higher owing to the huge shock to the economy last year that resulted in low receipts and businesses shutting down.. So, where does the government get its revenue from? Now, since the government does not do any productive activity (like run businesses or earn profits from them), it essentially taxes other productive work, its citizens, businesses, etc. That is how it raises its revenue. Now, when you have an economic shock, especially one as large as the COVID-19 pandemic, your productive activity slows down as businesses aren’t creating much since they are not profitable. So, their tax revenues, which are the proportion of what they produce go down.

So that’s the reason why you have a higher fiscal deficit. Now, the question about concern is really about how optimistic we are about our future and about our ability to meet the government’s increased debt burdens. 

So the last part of the question you asked was how do you finance the fiscal deficit. One way is to disinvest. So you have wealth which you sell off and use the assets to finance expenditure.

The second way is that you go to people and borrow. So that’s the debt market. Typically, that’s the way the government fills the gap.

And the third way is by monetizing the fiscal deficit, which is essentially printing money. This is done by the RBI buying the government bonds and printing more money against that. So, it’s essentially just increasing the money supply. 

Q: Could you tell us something about the expenditure for the agriculture sector. A lot of reports mention that there isn’t a lot being done for the farmers, even against the backdrop of the protests. Can we observe an emerging pattern of inequality here? 

A: Yeah, I have an unpopular view about this. I think the only thing the government or the society can do for the farmers, is to ensure that we have fewer farmers. That is the only way out. 

So I think that agriculture adds about 14-15% to our GDP and employs about 45-48% of the people. That is where you have inequality. At the upper end, you have people who are in productive sectors like services but on the lower hand, people are tied to agriculture.

Increase in productivity with so many farmers is bad for the farmers, it is good for the consumers. So the only thing the government can do is, therefore, focus on moving people away from farming into value-added activities. Typically it would involve people moving to cities and into manufacturing or services. Our problem has been that we don’t have a manufacturing sector, so we have been unable to implement this transition. And it is a very difficult transition as services typically require the kind of skills and human capital that people in rural India don’t have. So now what happens? This is a structural feature and the government has two choices: either people’s income increases itself so that they are no longer poor and reliant on you or if they remain poor, you will have to pay to support them. And that is the essence of this distinction between growth and inequality discussion.

If you don’t do anything in terms of investing in people, if the skills don’t improve, if they don’t engage with other jobs, there’s nothing you can do. None of them are leaving agriculture or moving away from social security schemes. So where do you bring the money from? So to me, this expenditure needs to be balanced. This choice needs to be made. And the only way to have to be able to manage this is to invest in growth.

Q: So does the government have to invest in education training or similar programs to encourage having fewer farmers in the agriculture industry to increase labour productivity?  

A: See that is unfair. We all blame the government, but it is a difficult job to do. As I said, the government doesn’t engage in productive activities, but what it can do is enable the right kind of environment to generate productive activity. The bottom line is that businesses need to grow.

We need more of the right kinds of businesses and entrepreneurs, and more formality in our labour markets. The government’s job is to worry about why jobs are not being created. Now what they can do to resolve this is to encourage entrepreneurship and increased business activity so that people can start or grow businesses and hire more people. 

Now, what is the challenge here? Consider how in a lot of banks that you deal with, look at what has happened with the call centres. They’ve all been replaced by chatbots. Call centres are not really skilled jobs. You just have to talk to people. But they were a huge boost to India in some sense, because they moved a lot of people out of lower-middle-class backgrounds into a sort of middle class, but now they’ll all go away. Just like how mobile phones ran out the STD booths. This is a reality that we are going to run into very soon. So what should the government do now? Well, at the micro-level, they should essentially invest people with enough skills and create an environment which encourages business activity. 

So when we think about what the government can do in terms of job creation, I think over the long term, we need to be cognizant of the fact that by its own admission, this government is spending huge amounts of political capital on digitization but aren’t spending anything on creating it. The question is who will work in those areas? So if I look at the education of the labour force today in India, 28 to 30% or one-third of our labour force is illiterate. We don’t have the labour composition that can be a part of this economy that we are talking about. For example, mobile phone penetration in India is high, but only in absolute numbers. So it is a huge market for people. However, the government’s job is not to create huge markets, but to figure out what is happening to those people who don’t have mobile phones. How will they survive? 

The digital divide in this country is huge. So, what technology 4.0 we are talking about? We don’t even have automation of the basic kind right now. Most businesses in this country don’t have computers. We really need to understand the reality in which we exist.

We have this challenge in the long-term that we need to start acknowledging and addressing now, and then you hope that there is enough creativity and innovativeness in your country’s population, which will take care of itself. And I believe there is. The government’s job is just to create and keep creating the right environment and then hope for the best. 

There are things that they do in terms of job creation, for example, investing in infrastructure will create jobs, but they’ll create construction jobs. The whole world is moving towards, you know, having AI, ML and robots in construction and moving people away to more productive work. We are trying to create jobs where we have people moving from agriculture to construction. This is okay for now, but is this really what we want for the future? These are some hard questions that we need to answer.

Q: We also wanted to ask you about your expectations from the budget and whether or not they were met? 

A: Honestly, I think this is a fair budget and I’m quite okay with it. 

One of the things that I do like about the budget is asset monetization. There’s a lot of land that is lying around, which is not the government’s job to hold anyway. So, releasing productive assets and transferring them to other people in the economy who can use it better is a great idea. I would also like the Indian government to have a national social infrastructure pipeline at some point. 

And I really would like them to have a plan, (like the one that they have for capital expenditure they’re making on infrastructure, for example; in which they give a plan for three, five or 10 years) for education and health. I think now is the time to make commitments. India needs to start thinking about how they’re going to tackle this problem of a low level of education and skilling and increasing enrollment ratios in secondary education.

There is all this discussion around technology 4.0, but how are we going to do it? Our kids don’t even finish school. So what are they going to do? They just want to use YouTube. They become a market for others. Agreed, the mobile phone penetration is high in India, but that just increases the size of the market for somebody else, because the technology is not in the hands of producers or entrepreneurs, that technology is in the hands of consumers. So yes, we’re consuming technology a lot, but what are we doing with it? Or we are basically giving a huge market to Google and Facebook and YouTube.

And yes, we can replace TikTok with Tik Kik and PUBG with FAU-G. But that is not what we need to do. If you want to harness this technology, you need to turn these to as many people as possible, especially to producers and entrepreneurs.

We really need to have a plan for education and health, just like we do for other forms of investment because human capital is a form of investment, not expenditure. We really need to get our act together there.

Q: There’s a lot of information available about the budget. What would you recommend as a good, informative source for somebody who just wants to understand it? 

A: I would suggest that you just look at the budget documents, they are annotated along with footnotes explaining everything. You can just go to the website (www.indiabudget.gov.in).The best way to learn for yourself is to spend time on it and make your own judgments, that is what I would advise. 

Nishant Chadha is a Fellow and Head of Projects at the India Development Foundation, and a visiting associate professor of Economics at Ashoka University.

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Issue 7

The Biden-Harris Campaign: Representation or Presentation?

On 20th January, as Joe Biden was sworn in as United States of America’s 46th president, Democrats celebrated Donald Trump’s departure from the office while also rejoicing in Kamala Harris’ entry. Kamala Harris, the vice-president with several firsts, has been the talk of the news cycles ever since she was picked by Joe Biden as her running mate, after she suspended her own presidential campaign in August.  USA’s first woman, Indian-American, Asian vice president’s candidacy has added onto the world’s fixation with US politics because of the position and the power the country holds in global affairs. It is extremely important to acknowledge and appreciate Harris reclaiming space where women, especially black and other women of colour are constantly overlooked, silenced and shut — as also noted by Harris in her speech. This joy gets doubled when one looks at it as a victory that comes off at the heels of an administration that has  enabled white supremacy. 

Though Kamala’s Harris’ entry is a historical win for the United States of America in most means, people of the country are looking at Kamala Harris unidimensionally, and reducing her existence to only her identity:  Indians, both in USA and abroad, have been quick to claim her as their own, just like they have always been with every successful member of the diaspora, with remote links that root them back to the homeland. The internet is flooded with people from all over the world, especially Indians reacting to someone who “looks like them” making a place for herself in a majoritarian white-male office. From people calling her “Kamala Aunty” to Mindy Kaling claiming that her toddler does not see a difference between Harris and Kaling herself, Indians, mostly Hindu, out of which a significant portion is upper caste, immediately appropriated every aspect of Kamala Harris’ existence to make it their own. Many feminists are referring to Harris as “girlboss”, a term most commonly used to describe women in power, that has been criticised time and again for straying away from activism. 

Such a reductionary approach to a politician is definitely not new but it is dangerous as it tends to be used as a weapon by the candidates to mask their intentions and mislead the voters into buying a revisionist identity. Kamala Harris’ campaign is often seen focusing on Harris “going back to her roots”, whether it is making dosas with Mindy Kaling or talking about the importance of idlis and festivals in her mother’s house, time and time again we have seen Kamala Harris’ identity been marketed as an identity tool to appeal to a particular kind of vote bank — the upper castes from the Hindu diaspora through quick and lazy surface level tropes. Identity Politics, that is crucial for bringing forward a diverse panel to avoid trampling of minorities in the country, is increasingly being misinterpreted and reduced to a marketing tactic that caters to the “feel good” sentimentality without actually bringing any tangible change. 

Representation holds concrete value, however, only when the candidate reflects back onto the struggles of the community they claim to represent. There is nothing about Kamala Harris’ candidature that separates her from her white colleagues and opponents. . It is extremely hypocritical of Harris to bring up her “Jamaican roots” and talk about smoking pot as a youngster and claiming to be for the legalisation of the same. when she saw around 2,000 marijuana related convictions during her term in San-Francisco.  All this is just talk that profits off people’s struggles by giving them a false sense of relatability when in reality it is hollow, keeps stereotypes alive,while enabling divide and rule of the proletariat. This kind of playing on the sentiments of the voters also helps the public hold their representatives less accountable — the marketing strategies of the campaign are rolled out in such a manner that only diverts all attention to just one part of the candidate, their persona, completely taking away the focus from their policies and ideology.  

During the peak of Black Lives Matter movement in America, the Jamaican side of Kamala Harris’ identity was brought out time and again. She called herself a proud black woman, talked about her experience as a black student in college, told the public about the societies she was a part of in college that helped her get a deeper understanding of her community and its struggles, she calls herself a “progressive prosecutor”. However, if one looks at her past actions, we can see how during her term alone in California, more than ⅔ of the men killed by police officers were people of colour, of which a majority were unarmed. She was also responsible for holding black men longer in jails when they were eligible for release just to extract cheap labour out of them. It is disheartening to see an important movement that seeks to bring resolution to racial disparity in the country being twisted to fit a political campaign and agenda, when the candidate does not comply with anything that the movement stands for. Kamala Harris’ campaign runs in a similar manner to that of any big co-operative, where they take people’s real struggles, and capitalise on them under the false pretense of bringing forward a social change — like how brands do with LGBT struggles during the pride month.   

Kamala Harris has also constantly referred to herself as a feminist beacon, who purportedly understands women’s struggles when her activites have shown otherwise. Harris has not done much that aligned with the feminist movement, more so, she has been dangerous to the sex workers and the trans community alike. In 2008, Kamal Harris opposed the Proposition K, which was directed at decriminalisation of sex work and prevention of STIs. She argued that Proposition K unfurled “a welcome mat for pimps and prostitutes to come into San Francisco”. Her campaign completely ignores this past of Kamala, which had put women into danger and continues to show her as a feminist crusader and a “girlboss” who would bring a fresh perspective and voice into the US politics. She willingness of people to selectively see their candidates as it seems fit to them, makes it even more convenient for the campaign to do so. She also claims to be pro-decriminalisation of sex work but has not even commented to make amends to this action she undertook as an attorney general. 

The Democratic party during the Biden-Harris campaign has shown exactly what happens when neo-liberals twist the identity politics model, and reduce it to a weapon that centres itself around one aspect of an individual’s identity and uses it as a ladder while aligning with interests do nothing to dismantle a pre-existing model, all the while disillusioning the masses into believing that they would bring some concrete and effective change. 

Madhulika Agarwal is a third year English and Media Studies major who is interested in literature by children and for children. When she is not lamenting over her tiktok career that ended before it could start, she likes learning about animals and reading books with good art in them. 

We publish all articles under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noderivatives license. This means any news organisation, blog, website, newspaper or newsletter can republish our pieces for free, provided they attribute the original source (OpenAxis).