It's just been a month since I set up a proper website, and I've already received my first $ 500 in a side gig. The jobs started before I set up the website.
I help businesses automate their admin work if they already use Google Workspace products using App Script and Typescript.
WhatsApp marketing firm are dim a dozen who will help send messages via API. It's banks, food delivery, shipping companies... All send unsolicited WhatsApp messages and i think the government just uses one of the marketing agencies for it. Also, it's not against the meta rules as they aren't promoting any party but government communication.
I have used Firefox sync in my new Mac M3 and it flawlessly synced everything from my older mac, my Android phone, my Linux workhorse, and Windows machine. Really love firefox.
Fintech in India is hard by design. harder still when it involves cross boarder payments. I trust what they are saying about RBI regulations, not following them to the letter means death.
In case you are serious about understanding why it was pulled out and really care about the details for such an action, I highly recommend you check the Joint Committee on the Personal Data Protection report [1] the Press Release section where they released the 534 pages report on it.
Gist of it is - the committee recommended major changes across the board in all sections of the act so the IT Ministry would rework the bill and present it for discussion again in the parliament.
I know India looks like a lawless place because of the chaotic news coverage in the NYtimes but it is a democracy and most if not all government action have rational policy choices that presented in the Indian parliament. The loksabha proceedings (especially the question hour) is the best way to understand what goes on in India.
Edit: For those without a lot of time should check the point by point explanation and rebuttal for the recommendations here [2]
While that is true on rhetoric - on practice it is not. While 60% of bills went through parliamentary scrutiny prior to 2014 - the number today is just above 10%. Also Modi has the distinction of passing maximum bills without debate and bypassing the state senate altogether.
I also need clarification on what he means by Modi bypassing parliament to pass his own bills. That’s not how a parliamentary system works. Imagine Tony Blair bypassing the House of Lords and the House of Commons to pass his own bill. Or Obama bypassing the Senate and House of Representatives to pass his own bill. It’s a very strange claim to me.
Not GGP, but I assume they mean that bills were passed through parliament without any real debate or amendments, since the governing party holds a super majority.
The UK has done the same when having a party majority in the House of Lords and House of Commons.
In the US things are different. Even if there is a party majority in the Senate and House, the Filibuster is powerful enough to table the party majority’s bills.
Unfortunately, the way things proceed in India tend to be more crass - where the opposition often tries to physically prevent the tabling of controversial bills. We've had occasions where members grabbed papers off the Speaker's desk, and members routinely try to block proceedings by entering the well of the House and sloganeering. This leads to the Speaker adjourning the session and/or the opposition staging a walkout during the actual vote. It's not uncommon to see parliamentary sessions with only the treasury benches full for the vote.
Maybe India takes inspiration from her colonizers?
"How did the British Parliament become a place where the person speaking is constantly interrupted while the US Congress is one where the audience is quiet?"
Answer:
"It didn’t become such a place, it always was such a place. It started life as a collection of people sent by various towns to meet the King to petition him for some action or other. It was a totally formless group of individuals admitted to the King’s larger meeting hall when and if the King permitted. As such they would shout over each other in the attempt to get the King’s attention. Over the centuries it became more formalised and more structured, and a modicum of order imposed. But it has always had the character of a rowdy everybody against everybody discussion rather than an academic debate.
Famous Parliamentarians, particularly Winston Churchill, have enjoyed it being so and encouraged it. The width of the gangway is still two swords lengths, so they cannot engage swords across it, and the cloak rooms outside still have ribbons intended for you to hang your sword before entering the chamber. Parliament values its traditions of being a barely orderly town meeting."
I don't know how accurate that answer is, but it was the top comment in quora. Other sites show similar answers.
Makes sense that it's the system we inherited. For what it's worth, I'd rather have my representatives voice dissent loudly rather than compliance. I wish that dissent was channelled productively rather than show for the TV cameras, but alas, that's what we've got. I do think it's a superior system to the two party US system, especially for such a large and diverse nation like India. It desperately needs reform, though.
The party holds a simple majority (~ 55%) in the Lower House, while the alliance holds a near super majority (~ 63%) - the Indian system holds a super majority at 2/3rds of each house present and voting, not the total membership of the house.
The alliance does not hold the upper house, though they have a near simple majority.
1984: Rajiv Gandhi’s Congress Party got a super majority (77%)
1980: Indira Gandhi’s Congress Party got a super majority (65%)
1977: Indira Gandhi's Congress Party got a majority (56%)
1971: Indira Gandhi's Congress Party got a super majority (68%)
1967: Indira Gandhi's Congress Party got a majority (55%)
1962: Nehru's Congress Party at 73%
1957: Nehru's Congress Party at 75%
1952: Nehru's Congress Party at 74%
If the complaint is, "Supermajorities aren't a Democracy", then it must be agreed upon that India hasn't been been a Democracy under the Congress Party for 32 years out of the 75 years of independence.
> If the complaint is, "Supermajorities aren't a Democracy"
Is anybody actually saying that? For what its worth, I do think super majorities are corrosive long term for the multiparty Westminster style parliamentary systems. There is little incentive for compromise building or genuine debate on bills. It might even work if political parties had visible internal debate and discussion, and we can largely agree that this is not a thing in Indian political parties.
The original claim was that the senate was bypassed (non-democratic).
A majority in the Senate is democratic if democratically elected etc.
I'm not sure what this means - that the NDA government could bypass the Rajya Sabha for 90% (the number quoted in the original claim) of bills? That doesn't make sense. I don't see how that is even possible.
The only way that the Rajya Sabha can be effectively bypassed is by the Lok Sabha speaker certifying a bill as a Money Bill (famously, the Aadhaar Bill was a Money Bill). In that case the objections raised by the Rajya Sabha are non-binding on the Lok Sabha and can be rejected by the lower house, and is deemed to have passed after 14 days. I do not think that 90% of bills introduced by the Modi government were Money Bills. So how does the claim of 90% work?
>>Also Modi has the distinction of passing maximum bills without debate and bypassing the state senate altogether
I think this comment can be interpreted that way to some extent. Reads like one person has the power to bypass an entire legislative house. That's not the reality though.
I do agree with you that having supermajority for a long time is not a good thing. Unfortunately for India, that's how it has been historically (Congress for long periods of time and now it looks like BJP)
The three routes Mr. Modi government has chosen to bypass parliamentary scrutiny and oversight on the law it creates are by bypassing parliamentary committee or passing them through ordinances or as money bill:
A sad consequence of one political party having a majority in the parliament. Modi supporters tout it as a harbinger of efficiency bill passing when in reality it's just eroded democracy.
Thank you. The minority rights and individual rights are cornerstone, democracy does not mean majority act as Emperors. There has to be strong guaranteed equal rights to all individual and minorities that allows them equal opportunity and recourse.
Its foundation is that all agree what we should all have as rights were we to ever find ourselves the minority, and those become the principles we cannot break and we owe to each individual to uphold. Beyond that, majority can decide, hopefully not stupidly and still considering minority's input, as any good leader should do, consider all data points relevant to best decision making.
A majority in a parliamentary system still allows some room for debate and dissent since MPs are, in principle, representatives of their constituency and not of the party. However, in India, it is illegal for an MP to vote against the party line - that is grounds for their disqualification - due to the anti-defection law. Any debate is pure theatrics at this point and the party leadership is free to pass any law they want.
> in India, it is illegal for an MP to vote against the party line
That is not true at all. Anti-defection law is applied when elected officials run on a party and once elected decide to change their party affiliation. Not for individual bills.
The Anti-Defection Law can very much be applied if a legislator votes against a party whip, even for a bill. There are calls to limit its applicability only to votes on the government, but that is currently not the case.
Quoting from PRSIndia [1]:
Does the anti-defection law affect the ability of legislators to make decisions?
The anti-defection law seeks to provide a stable government by ensuring the legislators do not switch sides. However, this law also restricts a legislator from voting in line with his conscience, judgement and interests of his electorate. Such a situation impedes the oversight function of the legislature over the government, by ensuring that members vote based on the decisions taken by the party leadership, and not what their constituents would like them to vote for.
Political parties issue a direction to MPs on how to vote on most issues, irrespective of the nature of the issue. Several experts have suggested that the law should be valid only for those votes that determine the stability of the government (passage of the annual budget or no-confidence motions).
It's not a perfect system, but the provisions of the Anti-Defection Law tried to address what was a bigger issue in Indian politics - legislators changing sides for what turned out to be enormous sums of (undisclosed) money. In this climate, the incumbent party could bribe opposition members to prop up the government, and attempts to poach new legislators right after the elections reached ridiculous levels.
For what it's worth, while this does hinder a legislator from voting as per the will of their constituents even where they are at odds with the party line, within the Indian political system there are so many special interest parties that differ from each other in minor details of policy. In theory, the will of constituents could have been made manifest by voting for the policy adjacent party instead.
Again, it's not a perfect system, but it's attempting to fix the obvious issues that arose in India.
> In what way is this a functioning parliamentary system then?
You can ask other parliamentary systems the same questions. For example, the Australian Labor Party requires its members to pledge their support for the collective ui decisions of the caucus, which prohibits them from "crossing the floor" as well.
Just as importantly, the Anti-“Crossing the Floor” law was passed in 1985 by the Congress Party under the leadership of Rajiv Gandhi (Son of Indira Gandhi, Husband of Sonia Gandhi, and Father of Rahul Gandhi). India’s been functioning under that system for almost 40 years, and I doubt Rahul Gandhi and Congress Party will repeal that law when they come back into party. That’s because it’s their law. They wrote it.
Explicitly? No. At no point does a member sworn in as an MP have to then swear to affirm their party affiliation. In practice, however, the Anti-Defection Law deems anybody voting against the will of the party to have vacated their membership of the party, which can then be pursued to strip them of membership of the house.
Not at all. It's highly unusual for a politician to speak against the party line on a bill, if at all. The only time we ever see fracturing, if any, is around the elections, where dissatisfied members may break away or switch parties. It's not uncommon for people to switch allegiances if they were refused an election ticket as the party candidate, or for higher level politicians to form break away factions if refused the Chief Ministerial position, for example. The Anti-Defection Law allows breakaway factions only if at least 1/3rd leave en masse.
It's a feature of a multi-party parliamentary democracy - when a candidate is a representative of a party standing for any elections, and wins it, it is assumed that people voted for the candidate partly because of the electoral promises and visions of the party. Thus, if a party has made a promise to the electorate to enact some major law, and issues a whip in Parliament that all its representatives should support its passage, then they are legally bound to do so. They can still choose to abstain or even vote against it. But then the party can take action against them. (Note that this is only applicable when a party issues a whip, which democratic ones do only for laws it considers important.)
To be fair, in many parliamentary systems it is very unusual for any one party to have an absolute majority. In most such systems, the winning party of an election often only wins a plurality of votes, and has to woo other parties to govern - either through a coalition or just a minority government.
Sure, though the UPA was still short of even a simple majority in the Lok Sabha, and was held up by outside support from the Left Front. The BJP's simple majority in the Lok Sabha from 2013 onwards is the first time any single party has held a majority since the 80s.
Many countries operate like this. It's the downside of having a parliamentary system (which IMO is better than a presidential one).
Greece and Japan are good examples. Canada to a certain extent too in the past (with the LPC).
In a presidential democracy, if the Senate and House of Representatives is majority Democrats, then yes, the Democrats can do the same. Obama once had majority in House of Reps and Senate as well.
There is one thing that is different. The Filibuster is very powerful in the US. I’m not so sure the filibuster is a powerful tool in UK’s parliament and India’s Parliament.
> There is one thing that is different. The Filibuster is very powerful in the US. I’m not so sure the filibuster is a powerful tool in UK’s parliament and India’s Parliament.
The filibuster isn't a thing in the Indian system, but even in the US it can be broken by a super majority - which the governing alliance in India does have. Besides, the filibuster has rarely been used in recent times - more often than not, it's simply the threat of one.
> the committee recommended major changes across the board in all sections of the act
This bill was under discussion for 3 years. Every year the JCP keeps proposing new and different changes. After all this if you have 81/99 amendments, you have to question if it is nitpicking and stalling, especially when you have things like the Finance Bill and Farm Bill that get passed in record time.
This seems like a political decision more than anything. There is also the fact that the industry does not like this bill at all, there are some powerful corporations who entered the digital consumer space recently and would be seriously inconvenienced by this move.
Not everything is political. I can tell you this because I work with many of indian government departments very closely. The reservations JPC highlighted will be studied and after consultation with stakeholders it will tabled again.
FYI - The committee chairman and the IT Minister are from the same political party yet they disagreed and bill got pulled.
Here is a good premier on the JPC Recommendation [1]
India had universal suffrage in 1950 and has deep parliamentary traditions. India was a democracy before the US, France, UK, Spain and numerous other Western cradles of democracy.
US got universal suffrage in 1965 (Voting Rights act).
France was killing a million Algerians whom it ruled and were demanding self-determination in 1954-1962 and finally became colony free in 1977.
UK was running concentration camps in Kenya in the 1960s and free of its last colony in the 1980 approaching something like Universal Suffrage.
Spain was a dictatorship till 1979.
India is a diverse country with diversity within both the federal level and the state level. I have listed a subset of sources I and friends of mine from Indian policy backgrounds (IAS, IPS, MHA, etc) tended to trust. This is not a complete list, and shows my own regional biases.
Feel free to AMA me or discuss additional recommendations in this thread. I don't get much of an opportunity to discuss Social Sciences since I switched careers to the Tech world.
edit:
I will not dignify any flame-bait conversations. I will chat with people from any political camp, but only if they chat in a non-combative manner.
======================
General Journalism:
Most newspapers and news media channels in India are owned by Oligarchs supporting one party or the other.
The only Indian newspaper I've personally trusted is The Tribune (https://www.tribuneindia.com/) due to it's being owned by a non-profit foundation with a perpetual endowment created by a banking magnate back in the late 19th century.
Has a bit of a center-right leaning, but strong informed articles on Indian Defence Policy and Developmental News (I think they have some ex-MoD and IAS beats).
Has a center-left leaning, but a good source for articles on the negative ground realities that exist in various different regions of South Asia. Also surprisingly strong at Indian Foreign Policy (I think they have some ex-MEA beats)
Good long form journalism and analysis. Haven't noticed much bias one way or the other as they tend to publish ideologues from all spectrums of Indian politics.
Amazing articles and papers on South Asian Foreign Policy and Developmental Economics. Centrist/Institutionalist bias as it is staffed by ex-IAS and policymaker types
The Indian center is very different from the American center. Economically, the Indian center is closer to Bernie-Sanders than it is to Biden. The Indian left (academic and on the ground) is actually communist and the Indian right still tends to be fairly center-left (as far as the US goes) The social left-right dimension is its own thing, and does not map neatly onto similar intuitions in the west.
The last caveat is that Indian secularism is very different from western secularism.
_________
That being said, This is a good list.
> The Print
I am personally biased towards favoring 'The Print' more so than the other organizations. Shekhar Gupta leads an ideologically clear (socially liberal, economically liberal) media house, always quotes their sources and does well to separate reporting from opinion. I would not call it right leaning by any means.
> Caravan
I have mixed opinions on Caravan. At their best, they are great. But, they can vary between excellent left-leaning journalism to outright left-wing fear mongering. I'm sure you'll see some strong opinions thrown around about them, and both the positive and negative tend to be well deserved.
> Wire and OutlookIndia
I have a low opinion of both. I wouldn't go as far as to call them a rag, but I wouldn't defend them against those accusations either.
> Swarajya - but a strong source to understand BJP and Hinduvta politics from their perspective
Agreed. Won't go there for news, but serves a purpose.
A lot of Western commentators don't tend to realize that aspect of Indian politics, instead applying a federal American lens (though American politics is actually equally diverse as well).
To any Americans reading this thread, Indian politics is HEAVILY local party driven. BJP MPs from states like HP would have entirely different opinions or backgrounds from BJP MPs from a region like Purvanchal (Eastern UP). In additional, most elected officials in Indian politics don't really have party loyalty. They'll change parties at the drop of the hat (or start their own) if they feel their opportunity to climb up the political rungs are best served elsewhere. That is a MASSIVE reason the BJP/NDA+ won like a steamroller in 2019 - a number of up and coming INC politicians changed party affiliations because their upward potential was blocked by regional INC machines.
In addition, it is very common for regional political barons to split off from the national party and make their own regional party - this happened with the INC in West Bengal (Mamata Banerjee and the TMC), Uttar Pradesh (Mulayam Singh Yadav and the Samajwadi Party), Maharashtra (Bal Thackeray and the Shiv Sena - which itself split into 2 parties this week - and Tariq Anwar and the NCP) , and Andhra Pradesh (YSR Raja Reddy and the YSR Congress) to name a few states. Captain Amarinder Singh - the former Chief Minister (Indian equivalent of Governor) of Punjab - himself is rumored to be making a regional party in Punjab now as well after internal politicking in the INC forced him out of CMship.
That said, similar stuff will eventually happen to the BJP as well. I've heard rumblings at the grassroots level in Haryana, HP, and Jammu about discontent with local BJP acolytes and there is probably going to be a major shift in Indian politics over the next 10 years as a new generation of local parties form.
==========================
> The Print
Agree with you that they are not right leaning in any way. I labelled them as slightly center right due to their occasional support for certain pro-market reforms (ones that I do support by the way). Honestly, I probably could have called them centrist but the edit timer has run down on that comment.
> Wire and Outlook
I'm curious about your reasons for having a low opinion of them? I've had reservations about some opinions the Wire reports, but at least in the region my family is from they've been pretty even handed reporting on abuses of power that have occurred. W/ regards to Outlook I was debating whether to add them to this list, but I have read some quality articles from them on occasion.
This is golden. It's nice to see people add context to Indian politics on HN. All too often, even the most well-read American has a naïve understanding of Indian politics. You're doing God's work giving folks glimpses into the sheer difference, complexity and nuance of Indian politics.
> but the edit timer has run down on that comment
such is life.
> I'm curious about your reasons for having a low opinion of them?
I think part of it is because I only ever read them when someone tells me about how they mis-reported on something. So, it might be personal bias where I overtly hone-in on the mistakes they make. I don't read either OutlookIndia or TheWire enough to make strong claims about their caliber as journalism houses. But when I get linked to them, I make sure to get a 2nd opinion.
Haha thanks! To be fair, as someone who is Desi American, a lot of the incomplete reporting about India that happens in the Western newspapers is due to bad pay. The NYT pays reporters $12k a year/8.4lpa in Delhi NCR, while cable news channels like NDTV, Aaj Tak, etc would pay a similar level reporter around $14-17k/10-12 lpa while giving much more political power (and the opportunity to take cash for unbalanced reporting if they want). Ergo, all the good reporters either start their own new wave media orgs like The Print or The Wire, or they become acolytes for a party (all parties do this of course - ain't no saints in Indian politics, not even the Sadhus, Peers, Yogis, Maulvis, or Sants).
Yep, but having worked on the Hill, American politicians on both sides of the aisle are less douchey than the equivalent MPs I've interacted with in India and the UK.
The Print tends to lean more AAP or Shanta Kumar style BJP than Modi style BJP, Congress, etc. This is a reflection of politics and biases in the Delhi/Haryana/Punjab/HP/JK/Ladakh/Uttarakhand region in general.
There are different political dynamics there than - say - in Purvanchal/Bihar, Kutch/Western Rajasthan, Eastern Jharkhand/Western West Bengal, etc. My hunch is most Indian posters on here are probably going to be techie posters who grew up in ethnolinguistically mixed (mix of Indo-European and Dravidian speakers) Southern India cities like Bangalore or Hyderabad.
Also, both the posters you are responding to are trolls. Please don't feed 'em!
Kinda. A lot of Indian internet commentators tend to resort to antisemitic tropes without realizing the implications, due to a lack of awareness and a bit of cargo culting American political discourse on reddit or 4chan.
There is a regional bias to all of this discourse of course and it could be an upper level social sciences course unto itself.
The anti-semitism (presumably sourced in hatred for left-media-funding) among Indian right-wing internet trolls is so weird.
Historically, India has been one of the few safe-havens for multiple waves of Jews (Bene Israel, Cochin Jews, Portuguese Jews). The populace never saw an issue with enfranchising them (famous Silent actresses [1] or top military generals [2]). Both countries (esp. the Indian institutional right wing) have strong ties to Israel and both countries seem to be hated the same same groups of religious extremists in the middle east.
Even in the US, Indian immigrants seem to be cast into the same Jewish stereotypes of emphasis on STEM education, strong secular-religious identities and being generally discriminated against by Ivy-league admissions processes.
So, I'd assume that the default stance on the Jewish-Indian relationship would be one of mutual understanding; especially among the Indian right wing. On top of that, most Indians in India have never met a Jewish person. There simply isn't enough interaction to allow for real opinions about Jewish people to form.
This makes me wonder if these internet-trolls have all been radicalized by the same fox-news/4chan ecosystem despite both having nothing to do with India at large.
Off topic: Soros openly funds organizations with strong biases. But, idk why he is seen as a representative of the Jewish people. His funding patterns seem to be in-line with what rich-liberal-anglophones fund. It's a pretty diverse mix of western religions and ethnicities. Idk why it is always the Jews among them that tick these trolls off.
"It is a democracy" doesn't mean that it isn't also a frequently irrational cesspit. That doesn't necessarily mean it's any worse than at least two other superpowers, but it does mean it's not good. It's not due to the NYTimes coverage that the country seems the way it does, it's the exported culture (i.e. it is the face of IT-related international crime) and the types of incidents that can be found there (closing off an entire province full of normal people just because some of them do things you don't like is strictly barbaric, for example).
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