The Interview With Karan Thapar

In an interview to discuss the election results that were announced yesterday (the 4th of May) as well as what they mean for India as a whole and what they suggest about the BJP’s hold over the country, Yogendra Yadav, the National Convenor of the Bharat Jodo Abhiyan, has said he is deeply concerned, adding he doesn’t believe the Indian Republic has reasons to celebrate the outcome. “As a democrat, as someone who thinks about the future of the Indian Republic, I am deeply concerned. I don’t resent the winners. They have every reason to celebrate. But does the country, does the Republic, have reasons to celebrate? I am not sure.” Yogendra Yadav argues that the window that seemed to open with the Parliamentary election results of 2024, but was steadily narrowing thereafter, is now firmly shut. “The window of opportunity that opened in 2024 with the Parliamentary elections, suddenly a whiff of fresh air, suddenly the country looked more democratic than it appeared for a few years, and suddenly it seemed as if things could happen, could change, that window became narrower after Maharashtra and Haryana elections and particularly after the Bihar elections. I think it’s safe to say that the window is firmly shut today.”

Sir Keir Starmer the British Prime Minister’s real problem is that he has failed to transition from being a lawyer into a prime minister and senior politician and, as a result, lacks strategy and keeps going back on what he has said and done or acting inadvisably, such as with the appointment of Peter Mandelson as Ambassador to the United States. This is the verdict of former British Secretary of State for International Development and former Deputy Foreign Secretary Andrew Mitchell. Sir Andrew says that Starmer is now a Prime Minister with serious question marks about his longevity and his capabilities, many of which are recognized by the Labour Party, but who may not be easily removable from office because there is no clear contender to take his place. This means that the prime ministership of Britain, the future of the Labour Party government and of the country itself is surrounded by uncertainty and doubt.

The Editor-in-Chief of The Economist, Zanny Minton Beddoes, says the Iran war is a “strategic disaster” for President Donald Trump and the USA. She said: “I think this is along the line of Suez for the Brits. A very big geo-strategic misstep where the US has, I think, unambiguously lost from this. And it’s in a weaker position in the Gulf and it’s in a weaker position internationally.” Minton Beddoes said Trump should be thought of not as a conventional American President with a cabinet and advisors who speak their mind, debate and then come to agreed conclusions but as a King surrounded by courtiers who vie to tell him what he wants to hear. Minton Beddoes believes that there is a good chance the war could resume because, at the moment, both sides believe they have the upper hand and they are waiting for the other to give in.

As uncertainty about the talks that were supposed to happen between America and Iran continues, we ask can the Pakistan-brokered talks still happen? If they do how significant will that be? In these circumstances what can they deliver? What does the confusion of the last two days suggest about America and Iran? And where does the advantage lie? Those are the key issues Karan Thapar raises with the well-known and highly regarded Iran Project Director of the International Crisis Group, Ali Vaez.

There is confusion, concern and lack of clarity about the basis on which the government proposes to increase the number of seats in the Lok Sabha and the state assemblies. Will it be on the basis of the 2011 census, which is what the bills themselves suggest, or will it be a 50% proportionate increase in the Lok Sabha and all the state assemblies, which is what unnamed spokespersons have assured yesterday’s newspapers? And does a 50% proportionate increase make the bills more acceptable to the opposition? Or do they still have serious reservations? Those are the issues Karan Thapar raises with the Minister for Information Technology and Digital Services of the Tamil Nadu government, P. Thiaga Rajan.

In an interview to analyse and help the audience understand the two week ceasefire announced by the US and Iran in the Middle East war and the prospects for talks, which are said to start in Islamabad on Friday, India’s former Ambassador to the USA, Navtej Sarna, says Trump has backed off and the truth is this is a military defeat for the USA. Sarna said: “I don’t think Trump has pulled of anything, as I see it. I think he’s backed off. He’s backed off not only from his hugely exaggerated and bombastic comments of yesterday but he’s actually backed off from this entire conflict that was a war of aggression, a war of choice, launched by the US and Israel.”

The President of the All India Christian Council and Primate of the Good Shepherd Church of India, Archbishop Joseph Dsouza, has called the government’s proposed amendments to the FCRA Act, which was yesterday, at the last moment, deferred to the next session of parliament, “loot and theft of Christian institutions and their property”. He says this is “a Sangh Parivar agenda”. If passed in the next session of parliament, he says it will create an international storm with serious international repercussions for India. Archbishop Dsouza said: “This is a straight forward loot and theft of the Christian institutions and their properties through a legal amendment of a bill. Just as Prime Minister Manmohan Singh said years ago demonetization was organized loot and plunder, I say if this law is passed this will be the legalized loot of the Indian Christian community and the global Christian community.”

n an interview to explain the deep and serious concerns India’s transgender community has with the recently introduced Transgender Persons Amendment Bill, Prof. Aqsa Shaikh, Professor of Community Medicine at Jamia Hamdard University, points out that the key error the government has made in the amendment bill is to assume that gender lies between the legs of an individual whereas, in fact, it lies in the hearts and minds of individuals. As Prof. Shaikh puts it: “Gender cannot be reduced to anatomy or verified through physical examination: it is a deeply felt sense of self.” Prof. Shaikh points out that the amendment bill, which was introduced in the Lok Sabha on the 13th of March, is “a fundamental shift that undermines the core of what it means to be a transgender person in law. Under this formulation, tens of thousands of individuals who currently identify, and are legally recognized, as transgender may find themselves excluded. Their identities would not merely be ignored; they would be erased.”

In strong and outspoken criticism of Indian foreign policy, a former National Security Advisor, M. K. Narayanan, has said that Indian foreign policy is confused and argues that we are not as influential as we once were. India may be internally and economically a more powerful country than it has ever been but our capacity to influence events around the world and win respect for our views is not as great as it was 20-30 or 40 years ago. Mr. Narayanan said: “I think we are confused. I think India’s foreign policy has been confused for a very long time. I think this is one more instance of that kind. Somewhere down the line India still believes we are, or we have the ability, the capacity, to sort out the problems of other nations … I think this is part of the Indian belief that we are leaders of the global south, we are in a position to mediate, we have the authority or even the influence or the ability to sort out other people’s problems, etc. I think there is this misplaced understanding of where we stand in the world today … I certainly think that we are poorer in the eyes of the world today than we were when we were economically weaker … I think this is the quandary that we are in. We still stick to the idea that the world looks upon us as an important power broker. I think we need to get out of that comfortable area that we are in and realize that we are probably just one of the other countries in the world and no longer one that other countries look up to … if you really look at it you are not even a power to reckon with even in the region in which you are located. How then can you speak for the rest of the world? So we have problems ... That’s what I am trying to say: what India does does not seem to matter today to the same extent that it did when we were much weaker economically and militarily … At one stage India was the leader of the non-alignment movement. We are now talking of multipolarity, of this and that. Nobody is quite clear where India stands. Nobody is quite clear how India reacts to situations … I think that (once) people saw there was an intrinsic strength that India possessed and they were willing to listen. We still possess that intrinsic strength and probably have much more of it but you are not able to make people see how we stand and where we have the weight to pull … Internally perhaps today we are stronger than we have ever been, economically we are stronger than we have ever been. The question is we have not been able to transmit that to the world at large that we are now in a position to do things elsewhere.”

Kanwal Sibal, a former Foreign Secretary and former Ambassador to Russia and France and now Chancellor of Jawaharlal Nehru University, and Manoj Joshi, a Senior Fellow at the Observer Research Foundation and a highly regarded Strategic Affairs Analyst, discuss whether Donald Trump and Benjamin Netanyahu have underestimated Iran’s resilience and its capacity to retaliate and fight on. In particular, they analyze President Trump and his behaviour, the things he has said as well as the things he claims have taken him by surprise. For instance, Trump has claimed he didn’t realize Iran would retaliate by hitting American bases in the Gulf nor did he realize Iran would seek to block the Strait of Hormuz. But Iran had made it clear that if attacked it would retaliate on American bases in the Gulf and had been saying so for weeks before the war began. This is also what the Gulf countries feared. Trump’s own former Advisor, Nate Swanson, had written in February that if attacked Iran would block the Strait of Hormuz. So how come Trump didn’t know this? What does it tell us about him? His planning? The advice he gets? And his understanding of the Middle East?

Whilst as yet it’s too early to say how good or how inadequate is the new methodology for calculating GDP, which came into operation last month, India’s former Chief Economic Advisor, Arvind Subramanian, has pointed out that the old methodology, which came into operation in 2015, overstated GDP growth between 2011-12 and 2023-24 by 1.5-2 percentage points and between 2004-05 and 2011-12 it underestimated growth by 1-1.5 percentage points. He has identified two principal reasons for this. The first is errors and inadequacies in the way growth in the informal sector, which in this period was pretty close to 45% of the economy, was estimated. The second is the deflator. The old methodology used the wholesale price index which understated inflation and didn’t really capture prices in the services sector. So when economists would try to find answers to puzzles such as if growth is strong why is private investment so weak, why is FDI declining, why is capacity utilization, wage growth and employment growth so tepid, the real answer is that growth was not as strong as we thought. This also means that for most of the UPA years growth was underestimated whilst for the NDA years, starting 2014, it was overestimated.

In strong and outspoken criticism of the government’s refusal and failure to criticize the US-Israel strikes on Iran and the assassination of Ayatollah Khamenei, India’s former National Security Advisor and former Foreign Secretary Shivshankar Menon has said it is “inexplicable” and “sad”. He says this will not impress India’s BRICS partners and it “diminishes” the country’s reputation. Menon, who has also served as a former Ambassador to Israel and China and former High Commissioner to Pakistan and Sri Lanka, said: “I find our silences and our action quite inexplicable. Frankly. I mean not to have anything to say when a Head of State of a state you recognize and in your neighbourhood is assassinated by another country. By not signing the condolence book for five days and then sending the Foreign Secretary, not the Foreign Minister, not the Prime Minister. And to stay absolutely silent on the issues. Not to condemn the attack. And this is unfortunately part of a pattern. Not willing to call the Russian invasion of Ukraine an invasion. You are not willing to vote when Palestinians are being slaughtered in Gaza and on the West Bank. You abstain on voting at the UN. I find this very strange. And rather sad that a country like India with its traditions should end up absolutely mum.”

India’s former Foreign Minister, Salman Khurshid, says that Prime Minister Modi’s refusal to criticize the US-Israeli strikes on Iran and the killing of Ayatollah Khamenei have let India down. The strikes are a clear breach of the United Nations Charter and India’s silence is a break with its well-established tradition of speaking out and take clear positions in the interests of its strategic autonomy. Mr. Khurshid has also sharply criticized the timing of Prime Minister Modi’s visit to Israel, which happened roughly 36 hours before the US-Israeli strikes happened on Saturday. After explaining his view point, which is critical of the Modi government’s handling of this matter, Mr. Khurshid also answers questions about reasons why the government may have chosen silence rather than criticize and express concern about the strikes, which has been done by other leading BRICS members like Russia, China, Brazil and South Africa.