Math Anxiety in Indian Students: Factors and Interventions

From September to December of 2024, I had the privilege of participating in the course Education, Literacy and Justice as part of my continued engagement with the Lodha Genius Programme. During this course, I successfully completed a research project on an issue close to my heart: math anxiety among Indian secondary school students. I hope my findings will prove useful to educators, parents, and students in India.

Game, Set, Match: Saudi's Sportswashing Success

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The deserts of Saudi Arabia have come alive with sports. From its purchase of the Newcastle United football club, to the launch of the lavish LIV Golf series, to the millions of dollars it has poured into F1 racing, Saudi Arabia is quickly emerging as a world sports hub. But the deserts of this Kingdom, now embellished with swanky stadiums and expensive equipment, are the very deserts which witnessed the brutal murder of Jamal Khashoggi just six years ago. They are the deserts whose women suffer everyday, denied dignity, autonomy, and safety. They are the deserts where hundreds of Ethiopian asylum seekers were bombarded with explosives as they attempted to cross the Yemen-Saudi border.

This phenomenon, involving the use of sports to redirect public attention away from a government’s evils, is commonly called sportswashing. The term was coined by human rights campaigner, Gulnara Akhundova, to criticise the hosting of the European Games in Baku, Azerbaijan, in 2015. But the practice is centuries old. In Ancient Rome, dictators provided “bread and circuses,” or food and extravagant entertainment, to the common people to keep them pacified. In 1936, Hitler organised the Berlin Olympics to promote the Nazi regime, celebrating ideologies like Aryan supremacy and antisemitism on a global platform. In 2008, meanwhile, the Beijing Olympics served to divert attention from China’s transgressions in Darfur, Myanmar, and Tibet, as well as the country’s pollution problem. The Human Rights Watch contended that the true winner of the 2018 FIFA World Cup, held in Russia, was President Vladimir Putin. He used this event to legitimise his own reign, even as human rights abuses reigned across his country.

Now Saudi Arabia, too, has jumped on this bandwagon by investing its immense wealth in sports. And sportspeople, enticed by the Kingdom’s deep pockets, have readily followed. Cristiano Ronaldo became the highest paid athlete in 2023 when he left Manchester United to join the Saudi Arabian football club, Al Nassr. Soon after, Neymar Jr. joined Al Hilal, earning a hitherto unheard-of transfer fee. The same year, professional golfers Cameron Smith, Dustin Johnson, and Phil Mickelson faced massive backlash when they withdrew from the prevailing PGA tour to participate in Saudi’s LIV Golf series.

“We know they killed Khashoggi and have a horrible record on human rights. They execute people over there for being gay,” remarked Mickelson. “Knowing all of this, why would I even consider it? Because this is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to reshape how the PGA Tour operates.”

But not everyone supports this Kingdom’s sporting initiatives. Lina al-Hathloul, sister of women’s rights activist Loujain al-Hathloul, spoke out against the upsurge in Saudi’s popularity due to sports.

“The danger of sportswashing is that it’s the crown prince himself that we’re giving the money, influence, and power to,” al-Hathloul said. “We are empowering and normalising someone who has tortured and imprisoned people like my sister and al-Qahtani.”

Michael Page, deputy Middle East director at Human Rights Watch, added that athletes who performed in Saudi were contributing to the nation’s “strategy of whitewashing Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman’s abuses.”

Athletes collaborating with Saudi have been criticised not only by activists, but also by their former teammates. "In the end, it's a decision about money — and against football," German footballer Toni Kroos commented on the footballers who had joined the Saudi Pro League.

But while we are quick to point fingers at sportspeople who participate in these events, is it really their responsibility to uphold freedom and justice? How much of this burden can we place on an individual player?

A sportsperson’s purpose, if one exists beyond their individual goals, is the promotion of sports. It can be argued that Saudi Arabia’s government goes against everything sports stands for: diversity, inclusivity, and fairness. Yet when this state is throwing unprecedented opportunities to expand sports their way, which player can refuse? That argument is therefore null and void.

Each sportsperson, I believe, should simply sell their talents to the highest bidder. They cannot be held to a higher moral standard than the rest of society, and expected to make choices we deem correct, just because their achievements have catapulted them into stardom. They are famous for their athletic prowess, not their politics.

Instead, let’s turn to the people whom we have voted into power precisely for their politics!

Even as we criticise individual players, political leaders across the world openly support Saudi. The USA, a supposed champion of liberty, is Saudi Arabia’s second largest trading partner. The UK, meanwhile, shares a strong defence relationship with the Kingdom. Earlier this year, the two countries even began developing weapons, from precision-guided missiles to armoured vehicles, together. Canada, after standing against Saudi’s arrests of human rights activists in 2018, has gone back on its stance by re-establishing diplomatic ties with the erring nation. And India’s relations with Saudi have only deepened in recent years, with the inception of the Strategic Partnership Council and the launch of the India - Middle East - Europe Economic Corridor.

When entire governments are ready to excuse Saudi’s offences for their national gain, how can we expect better from public figures? Political matters are a nation’s, not an individual’s, responsibility. So the next time you take to Twitter to angrily renounce a celebrity’s personal choices, redirect your rage towards a more fruitful tool for change: elections. Be it human rights, sportswashing, or any issue that impassions you, why wait for a celebrity to advocate your stance? Use your own voice — your vote.

The New Struggle Against Slavery

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In 1981, Mauritania became the last country in the world to abolish slavery. The decree signified a global end to slavery — on paper. But is slavery really over? Not at all. A form of modern slavery known as human trafficking, the recruitment or movement of a person through force, fraud, or coercion for the purpose of exploitation, still persists today, and is even on the rise in Europe! While this nefarious activity is not restricted to a single demographic, migrants are at higher risk than most of being targeted by traffickers.

What makes migrants to Europe so vulnerable to trafficking?

Migrant smuggling is a distinct offence from trafficking, but the former often leads to the latter. Human smuggling involves assisting an individual who voluntarily seeks to gain illegal entry into a foreign country, generally by transporting them unlawfully across the border. This transgression is so common that in 2022, 1.08 million non-EU citizens were found living illegally in different parts of Europe. These smuggled individuals could be citizens of a third-world country, suffering from poverty and desperate to escape. To them, an EU passport is like a key to heaven. And they are willing to go through hell to obtain it.

Human traffickers are well aware of this desperation, and well willing to exploit it for their purposes. A common method of trafficking is seduction. Here, a trafficker, colloquially called a ‘loverboy,’ fabricates romantic relationships with his victims in underdeveloped regions, and persuades them to move elsewhere with him. Another powerful tool of coercion is religion. Traffickers may pretend to be a messenger of God, and trick the uneducated into trusting them. They can even use religion to instil fear, threatening their victims with divine punishment if they do not comply. They then lure victims away from their homes under the guise of rituals, pilgrimages, or missionary work.

The easiest way to entice an impoverished, unsatisfied youth, though, is with the promise of a better life. Traffickers tempt their victims into migrating illegally to a country with more jobs, higher salaries, offering their transport and assistance along the way. Some victims do not realise that their migration is illegal; some are aware of this but go through with it anyway, having no other viable options. What none of them realise, however, is the horror they will face at their destination.

So, what happens to these migrants when they reach Europe?

More than half of all trafficking victims in Europe are sexually exploited. The remaining aren’t much better off: they are forced into harrowing physical labour, organised begging, and even criminal activity on a daily basis.

Ali, an Egyptian citizen, was convinced by a trafficker to move illegally into France for work. The trafficker employed him in strenuous construction work, fed him inadequately, made him sleep in a container, and even physically abused him. While Ali eventually escaped thanks to the Comité Contre l'Esclavage Moderne (Committee Against Modern Slavery), thousands more like him are still stuck in these inhumane conditions.

Their problem is only exacerbated by their silence. According to Zita Cabais-Obra, a Filipino trafficking survivor, victims are afraid to report their traffickers for multiple reasons: “one, they don't want to denounce because they don't want to lose their jobs and don't put their families to hunger. Two, they are afraid because their exploiters are maybe powerful and protected.” An illegal migrant in a foreign nation also has every reason to fear authorities, and see them as threats, rather than the saviours they are meant to be. This further deters them from seeking the police’s help.

Fortunately, where there is a problem, there is a solution. In this case, more than one. Multiple United Nations organisations, national governments, and non-profit groups have devised their own strategies to fight human trafficking. In Europe, trafficking is a top priority of European Multidisciplinary Platform Against Criminal Threat (EMPACT), the EU's primary channel against organised crime. Between 2018 and 2021 alone, EMPACT identified 17,688 trafficked humans. Another body making strides against trafficking in the EU is the Council of Europe (COE). What makes the COE’s methods so effective? And could they bring about an end to human trafficking in Europe?

The COE’s Convention on Action against Trafficking in Human Beings has been operating since 2008, going beyond the minimum international standards against trafficking to ensure better treatment of victims. The Convention provides a series of rights to victims of trafficking: the right to

- identification as a victim,

- the COE’s protection and aid,

- a minimum recovery time of 30 days,

- a renewable residence permit,

- compensation for the damages they have suffered.

Another unique advantage of this Convention is its strong Monitoring and Evaluation (M&E) mechanism. To ensure that the Convention is successfully implemented, the COE has set up two bodies: the Group of Experts on Action against Trafficking in Human Beings (GRETA) and the Committee of the Parties. GRETA, composed of experts in human rights and trafficking, is tasked with supervising and reporting on each state’s implementation of the Convention. The Committee of the Parties, meanwhile, analyses GRETA’s findings to propose recommendations to countries to build on their work. GRETA’s annual reports, available here, showcase the efficacy of this Convention.

In view of the rise in human trafficking for labour, the Committee of Ministers’ (the COE’s decision-making body) recommendation on “preventing and combating trafficking in human beings for the purpose of labour exploitation” was adopted in September 2022. This document suggests a series of measures for states to improve upon, including their labour market regulation, complaint mechanisms, and the identification of trafficking victims.

Member states should also:

“define the parameters of labour exploitation, through either law or guidance, and adopt country-specific guidelines on the interpretation and application of labour exploitation rules,” allocate resources, such as specialised police units, specifically to deal with this form of trafficking, make sure that both their private and public organisations investigate the possible presence of human trafficking somewhere in their supply chains.

With its extensive guidelines and reliable M&E procedures, we can trust that the COE’s work will have a diminishing effect on human trafficking across Europe. The end to human trafficking may be far away, but documents like the Convention on Action against Trafficking in Human Beings bring us one step closer on the path towards it.

From Istanbul to India: Fighting Gender-Based Violence

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India is unsafe for women. It’s one of those self-evident statements that we’ve all heard, accepted, even propounded without much thought. But today, let’s pause to think about it. What makes an Indian woman more vulnerable to violence than women elsewhere across the globe? What does Indian law around gender-based violence lack when compared to international policies?

To make any comparison, we have to select a suitable standard. While the world has witnessed numerous multilateral attempts to bridge the gap between genders, uplift women, and promote an equitable global society, the Istanbul Convention stands out from among them. This document, negotiated by the 47 member states of the Council of Europe (COE), aims to eliminate gender-based violence in particular, and “create a Europe free from violence against women and domestic violence.” As it deals with a specific subset of discrimination, this Convention on Preventing and Combating Violence against Women and Domestic Violence cannot be objectively compared to blanket documents like the United Nations’ CEDAW or the Beijing Declaration. Fortunately, we can compare it to India’s legislation around gender-based violence. How are the two similar? Where do they differ? And what can each learn from the other?

What is a convention anyway?

Let’s begin with an introduction to the concept of a convention. A convention is an agreement between multiple states which, unlike resolutions or declarations, is legally binding. States not only sign, but ratify a convention, thereby consenting to be bound by its principles.

A convention is not, however, synonymous with a law. A convention merely lays down broad guidelines, which states can then implement in the form of relevant legislation. This must be kept in mind when comparing the provisions of the Istanbul Convention to their parallels in Indian law.

Indian law around gender-based violence

Under Indian law, the multifaceted matter of violence against women is dealt with in multiple documents. These include the Indian Penal Code, as well as more specific legislation like the Protection of Women from Domestic Violence Act of 2005 and The Immoral Traffic (Prevention) Act of 1956. The above laws are all substantive, i.e., directly defining both the rights and obligations of citizens as well as related crimes and their remedies, rather than procedural. They also deal with violence against women in particular, rather than women’s rights in general. (In this article, I will be focusing only on that subset of gender-based discrimination.)

Finally, note that these laws apply to India, a developing nation with a population that recently became the world’s highest, while the Istanbul Convention was drafted from the lens of richer, ‘first-world’ countries with populations comparable to those of our cities. Having established this context, let’s continue to the crux of this article: comparing Indian law to the Istanbul Convention.

The Istanbul Convention involves four key aspects: prevention, protection, prosecution and coordinated policies.

Prevention

Let’s begin with prevention. Governments bound by the Istanbul Convention must:

- train professionals in contact with victims,

- regularly run awareness-raising campaigns,

- include issues like gender equality and conflict resolution in teaching material,

- set up treatment programmes for perpetrators of domestic violence and sex offenders,

- work closely with NGOs with similar goals,

- and involve the media and private sector in promoting gender equality.

What preventive measures does India take against gender-based violence?

- Programmes like the Rashtriya Mahila Kosh, Swashkti project, Swayamsidha Project, and the Support to Training and Employment Programme are aimed at the socioeconomic empowerment of downtrodden women. These are based on the principle that women who are self-sufficient and independent of their abusers can free themselves from the cycle of domestic violence.

- Our government also educates underprivileged women on these issues through literacy and legal awareness schemes.

- Further, the Indian government cooperates with NGOs like Majlis Manch and Prerana working to empower women against male violence.

Clearly, Indian law dealing with prevention of violence against women is on par with the Istanbul Convention’s provisions on the same subject. One marked distinction, though, is the lack of rehabilitation for perpetrators of gender-based violence in India. In India, sex offenders are seen as monsters, undeserving of second chances. But what if this mindset, which prevents their rehabilitation, harms not just criminals but the society around them as well? Recent research suggests that offence-focused psychological treatment of sex offenders is effective in reducing both sexual and general reoffending. Rehabilitation of sex offenders could prevent their recidivism, reducing the likelihood of their victimising more women in the future. Perhaps it’s time for Indian legislators, therefore, to reevaluate their stance on rehabilitation as a preventive measure.

Another aspect that must be addressed is the monitoring and evaluation of already-existing preventive measures. In fact, the Rajya Sabha has even commented on the lack of information regarding the results of the Rashtriya Mahila Kosh: “Now more than 25 years have gone by, the Committee is not aware whether the Ministry has ever carried out any impact study or assessment concerning RMK. The Committee wishes that the Ministry should conduct an impact study/assessment of the RMK with regard to its efficiency; the extent to which it has been successful in meeting the desired goals; whether it could reach out to the intended beneficiaries across the country.”

Putting in place mechanisms to monitor and evaluate our preventive measures is just as vital to their success as establishing these measures in the first place.

Protection

The next pillar of the Istanbul Convention is protection. The convention urges that all victims of gender-based violence have access to clear and comprehensible information on available services. These services must include free, state-wide helplines operating at all hours, as well as easily accessible shelters and rape crisis centres.

In India:

- Victims can easily access services from domestic violence intervention to legal aid through the helplines available on the National Commission for Women’s website. Not only this statutory body, but multiple NGOs, too, put forth their own helplines for women in need.

- As for women’s shelters, the Ministry of Women and Child Development introduced the Swadhar scheme in 2001. With 318 Swadhar Shelter Homes across the country, the scheme provides victims with the primary requirements of temporary shelter, food, clothing and medical facilities.

- Additionally, Swadhar offers counselling, vocational training and legal aid to help women rebuild their lives.

Prosecution

What about prosecution? The convention defines and criminalises various types of violence against women. Ratifying states must now introduce new offences where they do not currently exist. Examples of such offences include:

- stalking,

- female genital mutilation,

- forced marriage,

- forced abortion,

- and forced sterilisation.

Furthermore, states must ensure that culture and tradition are not used to justify any of the aforementioned actions.

While most of the offences above are dealt with in our penal code, forced sterilisation remains a menace to India’s female population. These generally government-mandated operations are carried out on women of the lowest social strata in mass sterilisation camps with negligent doctors, unclean equipment and expired drugs, resulting in severe medical complications including death.

In 2014, for example, about 140 women were taken to sterilisation camps in Bilaspur, the largest of which sterilised 83 women within four hours. 13 women were killed and many more hospitalised as a consequence. Despite numerous such tragedies, the Indian government has neglected to introduce any definite law against forced sterilisation.

When it comes to the cultural justification of violence against women, India is a mixed bag. On one hand, India has taken strides in the protection of women by abolishing customs like Sati and the payment of dowry. On the other, a crime as heinous as marital rape goes unpunished as its criminalisation will supposedly “destabilise the institution of marriage” in India. Transgressions like marital rape must be recognised as the gross human rights violations they are before any action can be taken against them.

Integrated Policy Making

The final component of the Istanbul Convention is integrated policy making. The Convention advises lawmakers to involve law enforcement agencies, the judiciary, NGOs, child protection agencies and other appropriate partners in combating violence against women. This practice is being incorporated into the working of the Council of Europe’s member governments, as well as India’s.

Implementation on the ground

On paper, Indian laws surrounding gender-based violence aren’t that far behind their counterparts in the Istanbul Convention. So why the disparity in the actual implementation of such laws? Why is India considered so much more dangerous for women?

Part of this lack of safety stems from the ubiquitous root of almost every other nationwide issue: too many people sharing too few resources. The high population density of urban areas leads to overcrowding and a deficit of space, making women vulnerable to harassment and assault. This can often deter women from accessing public spaces altogether. Resources under strain from overpopulation barely reach rural areas, where the absence of basic amenities like sanitation endangers women. The absence of education, meanwhile, obstructs them from ever progressing past this danger. India’s judicial system is overburdened and inefficient, frequently delaying, and therefore denying, female victims their justice. Other problems like India’s deeply-rooted patriarchal attitudes and women’s economic dependence only serve to exacerbate the issue.

But while India definitely isn’t heaven for women, can some part of its hellish image be attributed to mere perception? A 2018 survey that ranked India as the world’s most dangerous country for women, skipping right over war-torn Syria and oppressive Saudi Arabia, was quickly exposed as fallacious. And this survey was conducted by none other than the widely-trusted Thomson Reuters Foundation! Rather than taking any data into account, the study relied wholly on the opinions of 548 anonymous experts. While it naturally does not provide legitimate information about the actual state of women in India, it does give us a valuable insight into the world’s perception of it.

To armchair academics who have never ventured into India, it may seem like a primitive place where women in saris toil away in servitude, not daring to open their mouths for fear of attack, with elephants roaming around in the background all the while. But the new India is nothing like that! Slowly but surely, we are making progress towards women’s empowerment alongside the rest of the world, including our friends in Europe. Indian women enjoy benefits like liberal abortion laws, generous maternity leave policies, and rights to residence in cases of domestic violence, which millions of women in more developed countries are denied.

When I began writing this blog, I myself believed I would find Indian law woefully lacking in comparison to the Istanbul Convention (I am going to blame my bias on those 548 anonymous experts). I stand corrected. India’s legislation around gender-based violence is nearly on par with the COE’s, and each has its own unique merits. More power to both!

O Captain! My Captain!: India’s 2039 Prime Minister

What if I told you I can predict who will be leading our country 17 years from now? The future Prime Minister is a man you’ve all heard of, albeit never in this capacity: former captain of the Indian men’s national cricket team, MS Dhoni. But how can I be so sure that Dhoni has what it takes to be our Prime Minister? Let me elaborate.

The Scoreboard

First, let’s find out: what does it take to win the position of Prime Minister of India?

The data of the 2019 Lok Sabha election shows that out of an eligible voting population of 880 million, only 612 million people actually voted. Further, the winning party (BJP) won just 37.7% of the latter number, or 231 million votes. In 2019, that was approximately the population of a single state, Uttar Pradesh, alone.

In India, states are divided into constituencies, each constituency corresponding to one seat within the Lok Sabha. Therefore, the party which wins the highest number of constituencies effectively gains control of the central government. Under this system, with just around 231 million votes across constituencies, the BJP now occupies 303, or 55%, of the 543 Lok Sabha seats. Therefore, the winning party of a general election need not have the support of the majority of India’s eligible voting population; just that of a moderately large minority of the actual voting population. To win an Indian national election, a party needs only 231 out of 1400 million, that is, 16% of the nation’s entire population to vote for it!

But while this data gives us an idea of the quantitative requirements to win an election, what about the qualitative ones? What qualities must a candidate aspiring to be Prime Minister possess himself?

The Player

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First, there are the virtues expected of any leader - integrity, humility and prudence - which MS Dhoni has exhibited time and time again throughout his cricketing career. Dhoni himself once said, “leadership is the capacity to translate vision into reality”: the capacity this ex-captain has demonstrated time and time again.

From selecting spinners to bowl in a historic tie-breaker against Pakistan during the 2007 ICC Men’s T20 World Cup, to promoting Rohit Sharma as an opener during the 2013 ICC Champions Trophy, Dhoni’s unusual yet ultimately ingenious decisions have led his team to numerous victories.

But this flair for leadership, though necessary, isn’t the only prerequisite to ruling a country. (After all, as our dear neighbour has proven, a successful cricket captain does not always make for a good Prime Minister!)

For Dhoni to stand a chance at prime ministership, the Indian population must see him not only as a successful sports captain, but as a capable politician as well. This begs the question: does Dhoni’s public image fit into that of a future Prime Minister?

I argue that it does.

Dhoni hasn’t proven his patriotism just by representing our country in the cricket stadium. After training with the Paratrooper Regiment for a month in 2019, Dhoni spent a few weeks the year after patrolling and performing guard and post duty in the then hazardous region of Kashmir. Photographs of his brief military stint are now plastered across the Internet. Coincidence? Or the greatest of this captain’s strategies so far?

Dhoni’s reputation also remains happily untarnished by any personal scandals or discredit to his character. His clean, inspiring image will win him the public’s support in his political career.

The All-Rounder

While these advantages alone might stand him in good stead for Prime Ministership, Dhoni also wields the power of representing multiple majorities. Hailing from Jharkhand, Dhoni naturally appeals to the highly populated Hindi-speaking belt of North India. The states and union territories whose official language is Hindi together consist of 226 constituencies, which translate to 40% of the seats in the Lok Sabha (including those reserved for Scheduled Castes and Tribes).

Further, could Dhoni be the first Hindi-speaking candidate to break the barrier of the south? Having captained the Chennai Super Kings to four Indian Premier League titles, Dhoni has won the admiration of a considerable section of the Tamil population. If he plays his cards right, this admiration may win him at least a handful of Tamil Nadu’s 39 constituencies, thereby setting him up as a Pan-Indian candidate.

Not only does Dhoni come from a linguistic majority, but a religious one, too. Of India’s fourteen Prime Ministers since independence, only one (Manmohan Singh) has been non-Hindu. Say what you will about secularism, but being a Hindu in a Hindu-majority country does prove an advantage when running for public office.

Similarly, only one (Indira Gandhi) of these fourteen past Prime Ministers has been female. In fact, our current Lok Sabha has the highest percentage of female MPs ever elected, at a mere 14.4%. Belonging to the dominating gender will make rising through the ranks in the political profession far easier for Dhoni.

Now that we’ve analysed the assets Dhoni already wields, what more does he need to run for Prime Minister?

An independent candidate has never become Prime Minister of India before, so it’s safe to assume that Dhoni will need to be backed by a party. But which national party is Dhoni most likely to join?

Team Selection

While Dhoni has never broken his silence on politics in the public forum, speculation about his affiliation with the BJP swirls regularly across the internet. Just last November, an image of Dhoni shaking hands with Amit Shah at an India Cements event went viral. More significantly, multiple BJP members have publicly praised Dhoni and recommended his transition into politics. For example, Subramanian Swamy, presently a member of the Rajya Sabha, stated in 2020: “M. S. Dhoni is retiring from Cricket but not from anything else. His talent to be able to fight against odds and his inspiring leadership of a team that he has demonstrated in cricket is needed in public life. He should fight in LS General Elections in 2024.”

But while others may consider the BJP the best fit for Dhoni, why should this party appeal most to him?

Let’s consider his other options.

The BJP’s leading competition, the Indian National Congress, has notoriously been dominated by the Gandhi family since independence. The party’s current president, Mapanna Mallikarjun Kharge, is only the sixth to take up this mantle through a democratic intra-party election, and the first non-Gandhi to do so in the last 24 years. While the Congress categorically refuses to name its prime ministerial candidate before polls, it’s safe to assume that the next will be someone with close ties to the Gandhi family, if not Rahul Gandhi himself. These exclusionary tendencies make it tough for an outsider to thrive within the Congress party.

Moreover, the present may be the least favourable time to join the Congress, which has been in a state of decline since its worst-ever performance in the 2014 national election, followed by a merely marginally better show in 2019.

So which other party could Dhoni potentially enter?

After the BJP and Congress, the party with the highest number of seats in parliament is the All India Trinamool Congress, headed by Mamta Banerjee. The party’s stronghold is in West Bengal, but even within this state, it has suffered severe losses to the BJP in recent years. Outside West Bengal, the party’s presence has diminished so greatly as to call its status as a national party into question after the 2019 election. Essentially, this party does not have the Pan-Indian quality required for its candidate to have a real shot at prime ministership.

The Aam Aadmi Party, while the new kid on the block, is making waves in Indian politics. Could Dhoni emerge as a national leader as the AAP emerges as a national party? Unfortunately, the AAP’s brand appears to be dominated by its original founder and current leader, Arvind Kejriwal. Kejriwal is as unlikely to tolerate a leader more popular than him as Dhoni is to play second fiddle to Kejriwal.

By sheer process of elimination, it makes the most sense for MS Dhoni to join the BJP. Assuming that Dhoni does join this party, what must he do next in order to be its prime ministerial candidate by 2039?

Team Dynamics

To prove himself within the party, Dhoni will have to work his way up from the grassroots like so many of its past leaders, from the respected Atal Bihari Vajpayee to our Prime Minister Modi himself. He can begin by representing an underdeveloped BJP constituency and demonstrating his ability to create change there. With the level of fame he commands, even small steps in the forward direction could be magnified to massive, prime ministerial proportions in the public eye.

He can also aspire for a prominent role in the Union Council of Ministers. This doesn’t necessarily have to be the Minister of Youth Affairs and Sports: just any position in which he can promote real, and more importantly, visible progress.

Finally, Dhoni must run for election to a state legislative assembly, or even the Lok Sabha. Running for a seat in the Lok Sabha directly would eliminate the possibility of competition from smaller state parties, and running from a constituency where the BJP is already well-established would further boost Dhoni’s chances. He can run from his home constituency, Ranchi, which is already under BJP rule. While the BJP won 43% of this constituency’s votes in the 2014 general elections, its presence rose to 57% in 2019.

If he can then show tangible development in this backward, yet resource-rich part of Jharkhand, Dhoni will be guaranteed the support of millions’ but more importantly that of Amit Shah and Prime Minister Modi in his future political endeavours.

Required Run Rate

If Dhoni has passed all these checkpoints by 2039, while maintaining his strong connection with the Indian population and forging new ones with higher-ups in the BJP, he will prove a worthy successor to Prime Minister Modi.

But can he win a national election?

Let’s assume the BJP retains its current share (303) of Lok Sabha seats. Now, add to this the votes that Dhoni himself will draw to the BJP. We can suppose that Dhoni will win the BJP the two Jharkhand constituencies it lost to the UPA alliance in 2019. Bihar, meanwhile, has 40 Lok Sabha constituencies. Again, Dhoni can win a significant portion of the seats lost to the Janata Dal and Lok Janshakti Party, say 11 of the 22.

While Tamil Nadu’s 39 constituencies are historically dominated by the DMK and AIADMK, let’s assume that Dhoni manages to win four more seats from this state. Let’s also say that Dhoni takes away four additional constituencies from the diminishing AITC influence in West Bengal. Under these conditions, the BJP will win 324 of 543, or 60% of Lok Sabha seats in 2039, paving a blazing path for Dhoni’s role as Prime Minister.

The Commentary Box

While Dhoni has miles to go to achieve prime ministership, all you have to do is leave me a comment sharing your opinion on my prediction.

Meanwhile, I will send this article to MS Dhoni requesting his response (along with many humble compliments: after all, I’d better get into the good books of our future Prime Minister!) and will let you know as soon as I hear back from him.

Don’t forget to return to this article 17 years from now, when I am (hopefully) proven right!

Police Encounters: Justice Served or Justice Denied?

Image source:https://www.deccanherald.com/specials/insight/goonda-raj-turns-encounter-raj-in-uttar-pradesh-759857.html

On the evening of November 17, 2019, a veterinary doctor, Disha, left home for her clinic in Gachibowli, Telangana. After parking her motorcycle near a toll plaza, she travelled the rest of the distance by cab. When she returned to find the rear tyre of her motorcycle punctured, she called her sister to explain that she had accepted the help of some truck workers to fix the problem. Six minutes later, the call was cut. The woman’s phone was switched off. A week later, her body was recovered, raped and burnt, from an underpass on National Highway 44.

When the police took four suspects into custody the next day, the public expected a long-drawn out trial hampered by bureaucracy and corruption, justice delayed and therefore denied. But justice, if it can be called that, was served much sooner. On December 6, the police disclosed the result of a “reenactment” of the crime conducted at Chatanpally: an altercation during which ten policemen killed all four suspects.

While the people of Telangana hailed the police as heroes for ridding the state of these alleged rapists, a Supreme Court-appointed inquiry into the killing yielded different opinions this May. The (Sirpukar) commission reported that the police’s assertion that they had fired in self-defence after the accused tried to escape was “unbelievable, and not backed by evidence” and recommended that the ten policemen present be tried for murder.

The situation as it stands today rekindles a debate that simmers only in the hearths of Indian homes: that of the morality of a fake encounter. So let’s settle this dispute by using the aforementioned example and asking ourselves these questions: why do fake encounters take place? What are their consequences, positive and negative? What consequences would arise from their absence? And together, our answers should tell us - is an encounter case ever justified?

Let’s start simply, with the why of the scenario. If anything about this case is clear-cut, it’s that the suspects were shot because they raped and murdered another human being. Under the reasonable assumption that they were guilty of this crime, what punishment did they deserve?

According to Section 302 of the Indian Penal Code, a murder must check off the three factors (intention to cause death, knowledge that the act may cause the death of another, and intent to cause such bodily injury as is likely to cause death) to warrant life imprisonment, and possibly even the death penalty at the court’s discretion. Combined with the rape of their victim, a crime so outrageous would undoubtedly have been punished with death… if the criminals weren’t minors.

Three out of the four rapists being children, two of them only 15 years old, their sentence would likely be much milder. Take the Nirbhaya case, when a 23-year-old woman died after five adult men and a minor brutally raped her in a bus in 2012. Four of the adults were sentenced to death, the fifth having died in prison, but the minor? Being 17 at the time, he was released after a mere three year stint in jail. The Juvenile Justice Act has since been modified, allowing for 16 to 18-year-olds charged with Heinous Offences to be tried as adults. Of course, this wouldn’t have made a difference to the fate of the two previously discussed 15-year-old delinquents.

While you and I undoubtedly want all four of these monsters to die a thousand deaths, we must resign ourselves to the fact that the punishment they received was harsher than at least two of them legally deserved.

So why did ten ordinary policemen feel the need to take such drastic action? “The Sirpurkar Commission is categorical that their actions have the stamp of approval of the government,” reports The Wire. “The legally puerile tactics they adopted in producing, manipulating and frustrating the process of inquiry reflect this approval.” The policemen had nothing to gain from an encounter killing; in all likelihood, they staged one under pressure from a local politician. Perhaps this politician had enough influence over lower courts to protect the policemen from sentencing there. But however flawed this debate may prove our justice system to be, our Supreme Court remains beyond the reach of bribery or extortion: once the case escalated to the notice of our highest tribunal, the politician likely cut their losses and left ten misguided policemen to the bleak fate they face today. All that mattered to the politician, anyway, was the temporary appeasement of their voting population, the Telangana public: because the Telangana public was apoplectic.

In 2020, Telangana reported the highest number of atrocities against women among the southern states. In 2021, the state’s rape rate shot up by 23%; and this count includes only the few reported incidents. The people’s fear and frustration culminated after the Disha case, with schoolgirls and elderly women alike flooding the streets to protest with the fervour of a people long denied justice and ready to fight for it.

If not for the police encounter, though, would they have received it?

Likely not. Data released by the National Crime Records Bureau of India (NCRB) in 2020 showed that over 75% of cases involving crimes against women in Telangana were still pending trial. Another 10,000 from the previous year were awaiting a mere preliminary investigation. The public’s response may have temporarily placed the Disha case under a spotlight, but this light would have soon faded with the next case of male violence, swallowed up by a new wave of victims screaming in vain for justice. And so, in the only plausible turn of events in which Disha’s assault would be avenged, the police took matters into their own hands.

While few may care for the rapists whom they killed, this event’s consequences reach further than the deaths of four brutes. The policemen’s ability to shoot four suspects dead in broad daylight, and their belief that they could get away with it, is evidence of a broader problem India faces. Across the country, members of the police force have repeatedly been driven by our overburdened, understaffed and consequently inefficient law system to administer justice themselves. Daya Nayak, Prafule Bhosale, Pradeep Sharma: these men have become household names for their proficiency in carrying out and covering up extrajudicial killings. “So what?” A regular Indian might ask. “Why should we stop them from providing justice to victims and preventing further victimisation of civilians?”

Because when we let a falsified encounter slide, we allow an ordinary person to play god. We give extra-human power to someone with very human flaws. How long until these flaws lead them to abuse their power? Take Sachin Vaze, for one. Assistant Police Inspector in the Mumbai Police, he played a role in the deaths of 63 alleged criminals through encounter cases. He was suspended for 17 years after the custodial death of Khwaja Yunus, but granted bail and reinstated in 2017. In 2021, he was dismissed permanently from the police force, this time for his involvement in the Antilla Bomb Scare and the murder of Mansukh Hiren. Countless such examples have proved, time and time again, that encounter specialists are as dangerous a solution to crime, as crime itself.

What, then, would the proper solution to a case like Disha’s be? I hoped that by the time I got around to writing this portion of my article, I would have an answer for you. Unfortunately, hours of pondering have left me with none. My education and - albeit basic - understanding of civics teach me to look forward to the conviction and punishment of ten policemen who brazenly trespassed upon the law. But as a girl, as an Indian, as a halfway decent human being - and I am sure most of my readers will agree with me - I applaud our police’s actions and pray that they do not face their consequences. I celebrate the deaths of four rapists, and hope that they burn in hell.

Shame, Shame, Period Shame

Source: https://www.theperiod.co/blogs/news/5-ways-sanitary-pads-are-killing-you

The Monthly Visitor. Aunty Flo. Code Red. Girl Flu. These bewildering turns of phrase are just four of the 5000 different euphemisms used across the globe in lieu of the word “period”. While this habit may surprise you, it’s merely the tip of the iceberg of efforts taken by society to dismiss and conceal the perfectly natural phenomenon of menstruation. In the Asembo community in Kenya, menstruating girls are considered unclean and forbidden from sleeping in their mothers’ homes. In India, 71% of adolescent girls are unaware of menstruation altogether until they experience it themselves. And as soon as they do, they are likely to be “excluded from social events, denied entry into temples and shrines and even kept out of kitchens,” according to a BBC News report. Even in a first-world country like the USA, a 2018 poll found that 42% of women had experienced period shaming, one in five by their own male friends.

But why are periods considered so shameful? After all, aren’t they a regular biological function undergone by almost an entire half of the world’s population? Perhaps the answer lies within that question itself; this half of the population, the female half, is the same one that has been excluded, disregarded and denied since time immemorial. If it were men who menstruated rather than women, wrote Gloria Steinem, “menstruation would become an enviable, worthy, masculine event: Men would brag about how long and how much.” Perhaps period shaming is just another way our patriarchal civilisation maintains control over females, preserving their place below males by condemning them for a process integral to their bodies.

And if you think the ramifications of this hackneyed idea extend only as far as the theoretical social status of women, think again! Period stigma manifests as a plethora of tangible problems. High taxation on products like pads and tampons (while less essential male purchases like erectile dysfunction pills often remain untaxed) hinders women in nations around the world from maintaining basic menstrual hygiene. The poorer they are, the more likely these taxes are to result in period poverty, an absolute lack of menstrual hygiene. The absence of menstrual products and education further impacts women financially by forcing them to stop attending schools or workplaces during menstruation.

As for their health, they are left vulnerable to health risks like reproductive and urinary tract infections. In rural areas, their seclusion from public areas can impede access to food and water, endangering their lives. Period shame takes a toll on women’s mental health, too, causing distress and depression. In Kenya and India, this degradation has driven girls as far as suicide.

In this era of feminism and social reformation, the time is ripe to end period shame. The first step, as in all widespread change, is education. Schools must begin to teach their students, girls and boys, about menstruation, presenting it as the natural bodily function it is and thereby normalising it. Schools, colleges and workplaces must also make sanitary supplies readily available to their female members. And as individuals, you and I can bring about similar change in simple, everyday ways. Let’s discard hushed whispers of “on the rag” in favour of confident, candid conversation about menstruation. Let’s replace artificial, obliging laughter at PMS jokes with open disagreement. Let’s stop shaming periods and start shaming period shame.