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Time of India
2 days ago
- Politics
- Time of India
Invisible India: How a nation of 350 million was erased from its own growth story
Debashis Chakrabarti is a political columnist, Commonwealth Fellow (UK), and internationally recognized academic whose career bridges journalism, policy, and higher education leadership. A former journalist with The Indian Express, he brings the precision of investigative reporting to his political analysis and scholarly work. He has served as Professor and Dean at leading institutions across the UK, India, Africa, and the Middle East, with expertise in media studies, political communication, and governance. LESS ... MORE At a government ration shop in Latehar district, Jharkhand, Meena Devi waits for her number to be called. The monsoon has been irregular this year—too little rain at first, then too much. The rice she receives today will stretch for five days if no guests arrive, if her husband finds work, and if the children don't fall sick. She's learned how to measure food by silence: the groan of an empty stomach before dawn, the clink of the last lentils in the tin. She doesn't know what 'PPP' stands for, or that somewhere in Delhi or Washington, her poverty is debated with the polish of PowerPoint slides. She has never heard of the $4.20 line that might mark her existence on a policy map. All she knows is that last year, she lost her job as a school cleaner, and her husband now digs earth for road work when it comes. They haven't seen a doctor in years—not for lack of illness, but for lack of choice. But according to India's official data, Meena is no longer poor. She has, by metric if not by miracle, escaped. This is not just a failure of arithmetic. It is the quiet, methodical erasure of millions like her—an entire stratum of Indian society written out of the story of national progress. The government claims that just five per cent of Indians live in 'extreme poverty.' It is a comforting figure, used in budget speeches, investment summits, and television debates—often intoned with pride, like a national anthem in data form. But the figure is a fiction. According to the World Bank's own recalibration, when one adopts the Lower-Middle Income (LMI) line of $4.20 per day—an amount that accounts for the barest threshold of human dignity—fully one in four Indians, approximately 350 million people, fall below it. To understand how we got here is to understand not only a statistical distortion, but a philosophical betrayal. For decades, the Indian state has deployed poverty lines not as tools of welfare, but as instruments of illusion—recalibrating thresholds to shrink the visible poor. In 2011, a firestorm erupted when the Planning Commission suggested that anyone earning more than ₹33 a day in cities and ₹27 in villages was no longer poor. The outrage was so immense that the numbers were quietly buried. But the line, in spirit, remained. Unindexed to inflation, outdated in methodology, and politically convenient, India's national poverty benchmarks today are frozen in time, indifferent to the transformations of cost and climate. Meanwhile, new techniques such as the Modified Mixed Recall Period (MMRP) were introduced under the guise of statistical precision. In practice, these methodologies captured sporadic spending while failing to reflect sustained deprivation. Even the Multidimensional Poverty Index (MPI)—which charts improvements in access to toilets, electricity, and clean water—offers a success story that, while real, is partial. A family may now have access to a latrine, but one hospitalization can still push them into destitution. Poverty is not a lack of sanitation alone—it is the daily terror of economic vulnerability. In India today, the poor are not so much lifted as they are masked. This statistical alchemy serves a purpose. It props up the narrative of an India marching forward, a digital superpower rising from the ashes of colonialism, its middle class swelling, its billionaires multiplying, its GDP graph reaching for the sky. But beneath the gilded ascent lies a darker ledger. According to recent studies, the top 1% of Indians control nearly 40% of the nation's wealth, while the bottom 50% shares less than 7%. These aren't simply figures; they're social contracts broken in silence. The spectacle of India's high-growth economy depends on keeping a vast population in low-cost precarity—as gig workers, bonded laborers, informal hawkers, or climate-ravaged farmers whose land no longer yields. It is tempting, in the language of policy, to say India stands at a crossroads. But that framing is generous. The road has been taken, the direction chosen. The dilution of labor protections, the retreat from universal health guarantees, the refusal to enact wealth taxes even during a pandemic—all these signal a deepening commitment to an extractive model, where inequality is not a byproduct of development, but its design. This economic vision is paired with an epistemological one—a belief that perception is policy, that to rename is to reform. And so poverty is not solved; it is statistically disappeared. What might once have qualified as a moral crisis is now repackaged as 'inclusive growth.' Even the language shifts. We no longer speak of the poor; we speak of 'aspirational India.' But the cost of this sleight of hand is borne daily by Meena and millions like her. Not only are they denied state support by virtue of exclusionary metrics—they are erased from public consciousness. When they protest, they are labelled anti-development. When they migrate, they become invisible workers. When they fall, the system calls it 'upliftment.' And still, the elite consensus holds. In boardrooms and newspaper columns, in policy white papers and television debates, India is celebrated as a global success story. Perhaps it is. But success for whom? There are precedents to this kind of data-backed denialism. In the 19th century, the British Raj used grain export figures to insist India was not starving—even as millions died in famines that were as much administrative as agricultural. Today's sedition is statistical, but no less deadly. It is a silence that kills not with bullets, but with budget lines. What is required now is not another policy adjustment or targeted welfare tweak. It is a reckoning. The $4.20/day dignity line must be adopted nationally, alongside a living, inflation-indexed poverty threshold based on actual costs of survival. Income precarity must be tracked alongside infrastructural access. And most importantly, the 350 million must be seen—not as collateral, but as citizens whose survival is not incidental to progress, but central to its legitimacy. India's moral future rests not in its GDP rankings, but in how it treats those it would prefer to forget. Growth built on erasure is not development. It is theft—systemic, sanctioned, and statistical. Facebook Twitter Linkedin Email Disclaimer Views expressed above are the author's own.
Time of India
16-06-2025
- Politics
- Time of India
Democracy under siege: Trump's war comes home to Los Angeles
Debashis Chakrabarti is a political columnist, Commonwealth Fellow (UK), and internationally recognized academic whose career bridges journalism, policy, and higher education leadership. A former journalist with The Indian Express, he brings the precision of investigative reporting to his political analysis and scholarly work. He has served as Professor and Dean at leading institutions across the UK, India, Africa, and the Middle East, with expertise in media studies, political communication, and governance. LESS ... MORE When the bootsteps of US Marines echo through the streets of Los Angeles—not in defence of the nation, but deployed against its own people—history shudders. What we are witnessing is not merely a flashpoint in American politics, but the tremor of a collapsing democratic compact. President Donald Trump has crossed a Rubicon, not in service of security, but in a calculated, authoritarian bid to redefine dissent as insurrection. This is not a drill. This is not merely political brinkmanship. A constitutional reckoning is underway—and the world is watching. The tanks are not just rolling—they are redrawing the map of American power In a stark echo of history's most troubling precedents, US Marines and National Guard troops now patrol not distant battlefields, but the streets of American cities. The pretext: a crackdown on protests following mass immigration raids, executed with mechanical cruelty. But peel back the rhetoric about 'national sovereignty' and 'foreign lawlessness,' and what remains is a naked attempt to militarize policy failure and crush democratic expression. In Los Angeles, over 2,000 troops, including 700 active-duty Marines, were stationed in proximity to protest sites. Their stated mission: to 'protect federal property.' But their real function was symbolic—the projection of raw power, of martial discipline, of command from above. Curfews were imposed, hundreds arrested, and images of troops 'accompanying' ICE agents into Latino neighborhoods sent a singular message: Dissent will be policed at gunpoint. Law and constitutional precedent: A republic rewritten This moment marks a historic constitutional rupture. Trump's move to federalize the California National Guard without the governor's consent defies established precedent and strikes at the core of American federalism. Governor Gavin Newsom's lawsuit, Newsom v. Trump, invokes the Tenth Amendment and the Posse Comitatus Act, which forbids the military from enforcing civilian law. And yet, federal troops roam Los Angeles with semi-automatic precision. What was once unimaginable—federal armed forces embedded in US cities amid peaceful protests—is now fait accompli. Legal experts warn this deployment could set a precedent as dangerous as it is durable, allowing future presidents to invoke vague notions of 'sovereignty' to sidestep governors, mayors, courts—even Congress. This is not law enforcement. It is executive imperialism. Political theatre masquerading as public safety President Trump's apocalyptic tone—accusing protesters of waving 'foreign flags' and bringing 'third-world lawlessness'—is less a diagnosis than a dramaturgical strategy. In invoking militarism while invoking patriotism, Trump is staging a pantomime of leadership for his base, wielding the US military not as a shield of the republic, but as a prop of the presidency. Let's be clear: the majority of protests were peaceful. Community leaders, clergy, and concerned citizens chanted 'peaceful protest' with their hands raised. But Trump did not seek de-escalation. He sought a show. Marines in flak jackets, helicopters buzzing overhead, police with rubber bullets—it is not governance. It is political theatre, laced with menace and intent. This is not about public order. It is about performance authoritarianism. Military strain: Morale collapses under orders Behind the stoic faces of America's uniformed services lies a brewing crisis. Soldiers have privately expressed alarm at their use against civilians. Reports from Seal Beach and downtown staging areas describe low morale, chaotic logistics, and profound unease about what they are being asked to do. The mission, ambiguously defined, leaves many service members caught in a legal and ethical limbo. Are they defenders of the nation, or enforcers of a presidency? Are they protecting property, or intimidating political opposition? We must ask: How long can the military endure being cast in this role before the institution itself begins to fray? Democratic erosion: The No Kings moment In a fiery, televised address, governor Newsom declared, 'Democracy is under assault.' It was not rhetoric—it was a tocsin. Across the nation, protests have erupted under the banner 'No Kings Day,' symbolically timed with Trump's birthday and echoing the Founding Fathers' rejection of monarchy. What we are witnessing is not a partisan rift. It is a populist, cross-ideological resistance to the corrosion of democratic norms. When the military is used to quell dissent, when judges are ignored, when governors are threatened with arrest, when immigrants are hunted and their allies imprisoned—what remains of the democratic edifice? A republic does not fall in a single day. It erodes—curfew by curfew, raid by raid, arrest by arrest. A global reckoning The United States has long cast itself as a global beacon of democratic liberty. But today, images of troops confronting children of immigrants, of curfews enforced by men in camouflage, of governors suing their president to defend basic rights—these are not the hallmarks of democracy. They are the symptoms of a failing one. From Paris to Pretoria, New Delhi to New York, global observers must now confront an unthinkable reality: the world's oldest constitutional democracy is no longer immune to authoritarian drift. The contagion of militarized populism has reached home. The final question This moment will enter history books—but how it is remembered will depend on what comes next. Will the courts restore balance? Will the military resist politicization? Will the people demand their republic back? The world must not look away. Because if America forgets itself—if it allows tanks in the streets to become the new normal—then the idea of democracy itself is at stake. This is not Los Angeles's crisis alone. This is everyone's fight. Facebook Twitter Linkedin Email Disclaimer Views expressed above are the author's own.
Time of India
04-06-2025
- General
- Time of India
Erasing Black history is erasing America's future
Debashis Chakrabarti is a political columnist, Commonwealth Fellow (UK), and internationally recognized academic whose career bridges journalism, policy, and higher education leadership. A former journalist with The Indian Express, he brings the precision of investigative reporting to his political analysis and scholarly work. He has served as Professor and Dean at leading institutions across the UK, India, Africa, and the Middle East, with expertise in media studies, political communication, and governance. LESS ... MORE 'Those who control the past control the future. Those who control the present control the past.' — George Orwell, 1984 When Donald Trump declared that he wanted to 'make America great again,' few questioned whose America he was referring to. But today, as he and his ideological allies attempt to erase the historical trauma and triumphs of Black Americans, it's become chillingly clear: this project of erasure is not just political — it's existential. The president's campaign to dismantle the teaching of Black history is no longer covert. Through measures like banning critical race theory, censoring educational curricula, and prohibiting books that centre on enslaved people's experiences, Trump is attempting to rewrite America's historical DNA — bleaching it of its multiracial struggles and resistance. A dangerous revisionism in the classroom Across states like Florida, Texas, and now others emboldened by Trump-aligned governors, educational boards are implementing directives that portray slavery as 'involuntary relocation' and the civil rights movement as an ideological dispute rather than a fight for justice. Even AP African American Studies has come under attack, accused of being 'woke indoctrination.' Scholars and historians have condemned these acts as a form of state-sponsored amnesia. The goal? To promote a version of American history that sanitises white dominance and expunges the enduring legacy of Black resistance is not mere revisionism—it is an assault on historical truth. It flatters whiteness not as fact, but as myth, while rendering invisible the generations who fought, bled, and built the moral conscience of this nation.' Erasing Black history is silencing Black futures Trump's cultural counter-revolution doesn't merely distort the past. It suffocates the intellectual space that Black youth need to understand their identity, heritage, and power. In doing so, it enacts a new form of disenfranchisement: psychological, educational, and political. This is a strategy not unfamiliar in history. 'If you can control a man's thinking,' wrote Carter G. Woodson in his seminal 1933 work The Mis-Education of the Negro, 'you do not have to worry about his actions.' Woodson, the architect of Black History Month, understood that historical erasure is never accidental—it is strategic. When the state systematically strips away stories of Black resistance and resilience, it does more than distort the past; it conditions the future. In place of empowered memory, it cultivates manufactured docility—history weaponised not to educate, but to pacify. We must ask: what happens to a generation deprived of its memory? The TikTok generation must refuse amnesia To Gen Z — who are reshaping activism through hashtags, viral videos, and digital resistance — the erasure of Black history is not just a policy shift; it is a threat to collective identity. Your bodies have marched in protests, your voices have called out injustice, and your creativity has birthed cultural revolutions — from Black Lives Matter to the global resonance of Juneteenth. You inherit not just a history of oppression, but a legacy of defiance — from Harriet Tubman's underground networks to James Baldwin's prophetic pens, from Fred Hampton's revolutionary visions to Beyoncé's unapologetic artistry. Now is the time to weaponise memory. If the state forbids certain books, read them louder. If your classrooms whitewash slavery, repaint it with truth. If they fear your knowledge, make it go viral. Black history is American history Let's be clear: what is under attack is not a niche academic subfield but the very soul of America. The attempt to delete the narrative of Black struggle and contribution is an attack on the constitution's promises, on democracy's foundations, and on the moral conscience of a nation. The United States cannot claim greatness while severing its ties to the history of Black labor, Black thought, and Black dreams. As Nikole Hannah-Jones rightly argued in The 1619 Project, it is from the shackles of slavery that America's founding contradictions are most visible — and from Black resistance that its promises are most vividly pursued. The choice is ours This is not just Trump's war. It is an orchestrated campaign to distort truth, erase historical memory, and undermine the very foundations of justice. And it will be won or lost not only in courtrooms and Congress, but in libraries, classrooms, living rooms, and on TikTok feeds. To young Black Americans: the future belongs to those who remember. Not because remembrance comes easily — but because the cost of forgetting is irreparable. Facebook Twitter Linkedin Email Disclaimer Views expressed above are the author's own.
Time of India
28-05-2025
- Politics
- Time of India
The siege of Harvard
Debashis Chakrabarti is a political columnist, Commonwealth Fellow (UK), and internationally recognized academic whose career bridges journalism, policy, and higher education leadership. A former journalist with The Indian Express, he brings the precision of investigative reporting to his political analysis and scholarly work. He has served as Professor and Dean at leading institutions across the UK, India, Africa, and the Middle East, with expertise in media studies, political communication, and governance. LESS ... MORE In the court, a University stands alone against Trump's war on truth In a nation gripped by political disinformation, bureaucratic overreach, and resurgent nationalism, it is a university, not a legislature, not a media outlet, not a corporate board—that has emerged as the most potent line of resistance. Harvard University—arguably the oldest and most venerated bastion of higher learning in the Western world—now stands at the epicentre of a constitutional reckoning, one that could reshape the boundaries of American democracy in the 21st century. Its lawsuit against the Trump Administration, recently admitted for hearing before the U.S. Supreme Court, is more than a battle over immigration status or administrative overreach. It is a clarion call against the creeping authoritarianism that threatens to suffocate the very ideals America was built upon. This is not just Harvard's moment of truth. It is America's. The Assault Cloaked in Bureaucracy It began, as many authoritarian encroachments do, not with tanks or tribunals, but with forms and files. Under the Trump Administration's now-declassified executive order, the Department of Homeland Security sought sweeping powers to collect and weaponize sensitive data from universities hosting international students. Harvard's refusal to comply in full—citing federal privacy protections, academic autonomy, and moral principle—was met with swift bureaucratic punishment: decertification from the Student and Exchange Visitor Program (SEVP). Thousands of student visas were rendered void overnight. The policy's cold logic was cloaked in the language of 'national security.' But its subtext was unmistakable: submission or sabotage. For Trump's America, institutions of thought are seen as institutions of threat—especially when they shelter immigrants, celebrate diversity, and challenge orthodoxy. Harvard's Defiance: A Constitutional Rebellion The Supreme Court has now agreed to hear Harvard v. Department of Homeland Security—a case that has ignited fierce academic, legal, and political debate across the globe. The university's petition does not merely contest procedural violations; it advances a radical proposition for our time: that the autonomy of knowledge-producing institutions must be constitutionally protected from executive coercion. Harvard's brief reads less like legalese and more like a philosophical declaration. It quotes Justice Brennan's defense of the 'marketplace of ideas' and reasserts the university's ancient right—enshrined since medieval times—to govern its own intellectual life free from political interference. This is no routine case. This is Harvard invoking the First Amendment, not for performative defiance, but for survival. Why Authoritarians Fear the University Throughout history, autocrats have instinctively feared universities. In their libraries lie contested histories; in their lecture halls, the courage to dissent. From Galileo's trial in the Papal courts to Tiananmen Square's student-led uprising, universities have always stood at the intersection of inquiry and insurrection. Trumpism—despite its electoral cloak—is no exception. Its visceral contempt for the university arises from a deeper existential threat: universities teach nuance, complexity, multiculturalism, and empirical skepticism. They cultivate a citizenry that thinks—precisely what autocracies fear most. By targeting Harvard, Trump is not just punishing a critic. He is seeking to delegitimize the entire infrastructure of critical knowledge, from climate science to constitutional law. Global Reverberations: What the World Is Watching The world is watching, and not idly. Harvard enrols more international students than any other university in the United States. Its Kennedy School has shaped policymakers from Liberia to Lithuania; its labs host Nobel laureates and biotech pioneers. The attack on its autonomy reverberates far beyond the Charles River. Canada, Germany, and the Nordic countries are already seeing a surge in applications from international scholars who once set their sights on Harvard or MIT. America's soft power, long sustained not by bombs but by books, is haemorrhaging credibility. Harvard's fight, then, is not parochial. It is planetary. The Stakes: Between Nightfall and Renaissance This case may well take its place alongside landmark rulings like Brown v. Board of Education and New York Times Co. v. United States in shaping the arc of American constitutional history. But its stakes are distinct: the right to question power, the liberty to host strangers, the moral imperative to pursue truth against the sirens of convenience. Should Harvard lose, the ruling will embolden a future in which federal agencies dictate campus discourse, where visas become levers of ideological conformity, and where intellectual freedom is bartered for bureaucratic favor. But if Harvard prevails, it will safeguard far more than its reputation. It will renew the very principle that knowledge must remain beyond the reach of the state's clenched fist. The Torch Must Not Be Passed to Shadows In the shadowed Gothic courtyards of Harvard Yard stands the statue of John Harvard, bearing a date etched a full century before the U.S. Constitution was conceived. It is more than a relic; it stands as a resolute reminder. The American republic was, in part, imagined in classrooms and debated in libraries long before it was codified in law. Harvard's defence, then, is not about elitism. It is about enlightenment. In taking its stand before the Supreme Court, Harvard reminds the world that the true strength of a democracy is not its economy or its army, but its ability to defend its thinkers—especially when they are inconvenient, foreign, or brave. If Trump's White House believed it could silence Harvard through administrative cruelty, it has badly misread history. Because when the torch of knowledge is under siege, even the oldest walls can roar. Facebook Twitter Linkedin Email Disclaimer Views expressed above are the author's own.
