| | | Good morning! | | It isn't quite Kipling's Great Game. Nor is it Neil Strauss's The Game (of course, I've read it, as I have Kim. Haven't you?) But every time there is an election in India — and it doesn't matter what the significance of it is; nor the magnitude — there's a game on. Elections bring out the best in the Bharatiya Janata Party — or they bring out the worst (it's just a matter of perspective). For those willing to look at it as cynically as some experts look at the Great Game, and Strauss looks at The Game — not that one should; elections have real consequences, as people around the world, and in India, well know — watching BJP during an election is almost as interesting as watching a gripping tennis match. Perhaps on clay. There was a time when elections to the Upper House of India's Parliament were staid, boring affairs. Not any longer. While the contest in Karnataka has been made interesting by a regional party fighting for relevance (the JDS), those in Rajasthan, Haryana, and Maharashtra have been by the BJP doing what it does best — playing the game (by supporting influential and wealthy independent candidates in the first two states, and trying its luck with its own in the third). So, how did these four contests play out? In Rajasthan, Ashok Gehlot ensured that the Congress staved off a challenge from the BJP and won three seats. In Karnataka, the BJP benefited from the fight between the JD (S) and the Congress, and won three seats. Counting in Haryana and Maharashtra was held up because of complaints from competing parties, although initial reports suggested that the results in both states were in keeping with the relative strengths of the parties, with the MVA in Maharashtra and the Congress in Haryana successfully holding off the BJP. | | THINK What do the results mean? They highlight the importance of strong local leaders, but they also highlight the BJP's ability to put up a fight even when the numbers are stacked against it. | | | | THINK MORE The next election of note will be the presidential one in July. The BJP-led NDA should be able to ensure its nominee is elected — it is around 18,000 votes short of what it needs — but it will be interesting to see who it names as its candidates. There's speculation that Draupadi Murmu or Arif Mohammad Khan could be its nominee, but the BJP has a long track record of surprising people with its choices (indeed, you could say that there's the political equivalent of cricket's famed commentator's curse playing out here; anyone whose name analysts and journalists speculate about is immediately out of the reckoning). For those interested in the numbers involved in the presidential poll, here's how they stack up. There's also been speculation on the Opposition's candidate for the presidential poll, and whether this election could see some sign of unity in a grouping that still remains fragmented. | | KNOW The only subject that has given elections a run for their money in news cycles, albeit, for the past 30 months, is Covid-19, and while, as the good book said, there's no cause for panic, there are some troubling statistics that are emerging: cases are rising again (the seven-day average of daily cases was 4,289 on June 9, up from 1,292 on April 1); there are around 95 million people who are late for their second shot of the vaccine (given the extent of delay in some instances, it's likely many among them will be no-shows); and almost 80% of those eligible for booster shots till June 8 had not taken them. The numbers are yet to translate into higher hospitalisations (and are unlikely to), but they are still worrying. There's clearly a mini-wave headed India's way — and it will hopefully push everyone to get boosted. | | LEARN The other number on the rise is inflation, and the Reserve Bank of India, earlier this week, raised the policy rate again (after doing so in an unscheduled meeting of its monetary policy committee in May), this time by 0.5 percentage points. With last month's increase, the central bank has tightened rates by 0.9 percentage points, although, at 4.9%, the policy rate remains below its pre-pandemic level. The increase means higher EMIs for home- and consumer-loan borrowers, but the more important question is: what is the state of the economy as RBI sees it? The answer: the excise duty cuts on fuel may have cooled inflation expectations, but there's no telling where demand is headed (although both the current situation index, and the future expectations index, constituents of the bank's consumer confidence survey, are up), nor how higher input prices will affect business confidence. Much, it is clear, will depend on oil prices. | | READ MORE The conwoman who showed she could do it better When domestic politics undermines strategy Have you met India's best distance runner? Rein in hate speech, but leave the politics out of it | | OUTSIDE Serendipity is sometimes also finding answers to questions you've never really posed (because you've likely never thought of them). Such as: what happens to containers that fall off ships? Kathryn Schulz answers that question in a recent issue of New Yorker. It happens more often than we think it does, and containers with all kinds of things inside end up at the bottom of the ocean, she writes. Like what? "…flat-screen TVs, fireworks, Ikea furniture, French perfume, gym mats, BMW motorbikes, hockey gloves, printer cartridges, lithium batteries, toilet seats, Christmas decorations, barrels of arsenic, bottled water, cannisters that explode to inflate air bags, an entire container's worth of rice cakes, thousands of cans of chow mein, half a million cans of beer, cigarette lighters, fire extinguishers, liquid ethanol, packets of figs, sacks of chia seeds, knee pads, duvets, the complete household possessions of people moving overseas, flyswatters printed with the logos of college and professional sports teams, decorative grasses on their way to florists in New Zealand, My Little Pony toys, Garfield telephones, surgical masks, bar stools, pet accessories, and gazebos". | | WHAT I'M READING  (Click to expand) Planning Democracy: How a Professor, an Institute and an Idea shaped India, by Nikhil Menon, an extremely well-researched (and lucidly written) book that can be read simply as a narrative on the life of India's greatest statistician, a chronicle of India's tryst with centralised planning, even as a story of the institutions that built India's India's statistical foundation. All three are particularly suited for the times — when data is being politicised, spun, even weaponised. | | WHAT I'M LISTENING TO Psychedelic rock that's kept pace with the times. Japanese band Kikagaku Moyo's Kumoyo Island, their latest album that released in May. It's funky. It's groovy. It's jammy (in the finest sense of jam bands, although the jams on this album are more concise than those in their earlier albums). It's fusion-y. And it's great fun. This is Kikagaku Moyo's finest album, and it's a pity it's their last. | Please share your feedback with us What do you think about this newsletter? | | Were you forwarded this email? Did you stumble upon it online? Sign up here. | | | | | | Get the Hindustan Times app and read premium stories | | | | | | View in Browser | Privacy Policy | Contact us You received this email because you signed up for HT Newsletters or because it is included in your subscription. Copyright © HT Digital Streams. All Rights Reserved | | | | |
