Private sector must help achieve 'hunger free' India: G20 Sherpa
Speaking at the launch of Malabar Group's expanded corporate social responsibility (CSR) initiatives, Kant praised the jewellery company's "The Hunger Free World" project, which aims to distribute 70,000 daily meals to underprivileged people in fiscal 2025-26.
"If there are more groups like Malabar Group, we are able to transform the world. It requires continued collaboration between government, civil society, private sector and individuals," said Kant, former CEO of government think tank NITI Aayog.
Around 119 million people in India remain undernourished, with women and children bearing the heaviest burden, he said.
The government provides free rations to 800 million people through distribution centres, but ensuring nutritious food remains crucial.
"It is not just about providing food, it is important to ensure nutritious food," Kant said.
"It is also very important that private sector takes over this responsibility at the local level."
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Hindustan Times
7 hours ago
- Hindustan Times
Could India have handled President Trump better?
The Narendra Modi government converted an economically disastrous idea such as demonetisation into a political win. It dealt with a brutal Covid-19 pandemic that took millions of lives and devastated livelihoods, yet emerged politically unscathed. The Modi government played with fire on land acquisition and farm laws, yet pulled back without getting burnt. And despite its limited success in pulling off a manufacturing revolution to generate jobs on scale, it has remained politically dominant and maintained its multi-class and multi-caste alliance. The Modi government confronted a serious national security crisis with a far more powerful adversary, China, and had to redefine the idea of normalcy for the sake of peace, yet it did not pay a domestic political price. India dealt with a highly polarised West-Russia landscape and a China that was either actively hostile or passively aggressive or absent, yet pulled off a spectacular G20 presidency. It had to secure its interests with diametrically different American administrations with almost opposing priorities, and yet it was able to be friends with the sitting administration while still having enough goodwill with the preceding power constellation. How did a government that has been so adept in dealing with the domestic and international landscape, and overcoming its own missteps and mistakes, fumble in reading the US? How did a government so sharp in reading danger signals not manage friction when there were clear possibilities of trouble with the US from earlier this year, but definitely from May 10 when Donald Trump claimed credit for the ceasefire? How is it that in over 90 days since then, India, with all its equities and power, has failed to shift the conversation or make enough inroads into Trump's world to find a meeting ground while keeping to its redlines? To be sure, it has been difficult to predict the US president's next move, but there are countries that have managed to get their (limited) way. Let there be no doubt about the severity of the crisis. India is worse off among all the regional competitors for investment, and in its own immediate neighbourhood in terms of access to the US market. This has implications way beyond trade, for suddenly, the signal to American capital about India is of uncertainty, despite the charms of its huge market and extensive talent pool. This puts under strain India's broader economic modernisation roadmap that hinges at least partly, if not substantially, on western investment and technology partnerships to boost manufacturing and generate mass employment. India is confronting repeated blows against its core strategic concerns: Trump appears more than willing to make long-term strategic concessions for a deal with China. Pakistan's comeback to the Washington DC theatre, even if it is only in the short-term as some pundits believe, is arguably on a more broad-based diplomatic, economic and strategic footing than even 2001 when it was driven by the narrow counter terror frame in Afghanistan. And, India is paying a price for US-Russia tensions in ways that it hasn't for decades. India is also staring at a crisis in the people-to-people relationship, given the challenges in getting student visas, the backlash against H1Bs in Trump's base and intense spurt in anti-Indian and anti-Hindu racist rhetoric from the White supremacist Right. The biggest crisis, of course, is there are no easy pathways out of it anymore. The more time has passed, the more rhetoric has got meaner, the more demands have escalated and become public, the less political space there is to make compromises. The Indian political and street mood is now, justifiably, furious at how the country has been treated by the US even as everyone realises the importance of that country and the bilateral relationship. There are structural factors at play, for core contradictions on trade openness and relationships with third countries have come to the fore. There are personality-centric issues at play, especially on the American side with a president who revels in sharpening contradictions with his own country's institutions, the international system, and allies and partners in the quest for political or personal or financial wins. And, there are unanticipated variables and events that have affected the chessboard. But none of this can take away from the fact that the government may have missed out on multiple opportunities to manage Trump. This is particularly striking since the political leadership has usually been alert in responding creatively in difficult situations, managing narratives, engaging with all kinds of interlocutors, unleashing diplomatic charm in the external domain or pre-empting rivals by appropriating political issues in the domestic domain, finding wins-wins when possible and framing compromises as wins when necessary. To be sure, as Pratap Bhanu Mehta has eloquently and wisely argued, the Trumpian project is an imperial project and dignity is essential. But avoiding being in the direct firing line of the imperial project was in national interest and the government's core diplomatic duty. And, yes, there may have been ways to do it without compromising on India's historic stance on third-party mediation, or on core interests of small farmers, or on Indian manufacturing potential. And, this was possible because a childishly transparent, vain and corrupt Trump world is always open to a better deal and packaging has always been more central to his politics than substance. To return to the puzzle then, what happened? A detailed empirical account will only emerge once the crisis passes, actors move on from their current roles, and files are declassified. And even a more specific discussion on who got what wrong and when and what could have been done need not detain us here. One school of thought is there was a problem with the personnel chosen to make judgments on the ground and offer advice. Another is that India may have genuinely misread the problem, or been unable to anticipate second or third order consequences of Trumpian rupture. A third suggests that there may have been a problem with the channels selected for execution of goals; India's adversaries and critics have been constantly in Trump's ear while India's perspective has failed to register a mark. It could well be a combination; the problems with personnel, judgment and execution, may have resulted in a problem in decision making. And, to be fair, all of this may have been exacerbated by domestic concerns, not just of the man (and woman) on the street, but the political Opposition. After 11 years, this is the biggest challenge facing Narendra Modi, and he may want to consider a reset. It could start with foreign policy but a full Kamraj-plan style reset across the party and government may not be a bad idea at this time, especially given the ambitious agenda the Prime Minister laid out in his Independence Day speech. This could bring fresh energy and ideas and shatter vested interests to help India prepare for the coming political, economic and strategic storms. For coming they are.
The Wire
16 hours ago
- The Wire
On India's 79th Independence Day, The Bharat Climate Forum Marks First-year Milestones, Propelling India Onto The Global Stage As A Climate Leader
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Economic Times
a day ago
- Economic Times
India should join Brazil in its efforts to create a new kind of multilateralism to offset Trump tariffs
Deal with the block After the two world wars, international order was built on the premise that states, even as they competed for advantage, could be restrained by rules and reciprocal obligations. Political scientists Robert Keohane and Joseph Nye called this 'complex interdependence', the idea that trade, finance, technology and institutions could bind countries so tightly that cooperation would be more profitable than coercion. While this was not a flawless premise, its core assumption reflected the new international economic order. The web of mutual dependence, anchored by multilateral institutions, acted as a brake on naked power, keeping the system from sliding entirely into a raw contest of force. This assumption is now under strain. Donald Trump's return to the White House and his weaponisation of tariffs have brought a brazen rejection of the earlier logic that underpinned the last half-century. Trump's latest tariff move against Brazil - a 50% levy that came into effect last week - was not about correcting deficits or defending industries as he trotted out them to be. It was a tantrum aimed at compelling Brazil to drop prosecution of Jair Bolsonaro for his role in the January 2023 assault on Brasilia. The message: sovereignty is negotiable if your economy depends on us. Brazil's response was a demonstration of how interdependence can be leveraged to defend, not erode, autonomy. Lula da Silva refused to seek a private settlement, calling such an approach a 'humiliation'. Instead, he took the case to WTO. Domestically, the Bolsonaro prosecution moved ahead without pause. Internationally, Lula began rallying BRICS to treat the episode as a test case for the credibility of a rules-based system. On Thursday, he announced that Brazil would host a virtual BRICS summit to discuss response to Trump tariffs. This confidence isn't improvised. Over the past two decades, Brazil has diversified its trade profile. China now takes 28% of its exports, compared with 12% for the US. Trump tariffs excluded key sectors like aircraft, energy and orange juice, limiting their impact to just over a third of export value. Economists estimate GDP hit at roughly 0.15 percentage points, with 2025 growth forecasts still above 2.3%. Over the last two decades, India's exports to fellow BRICS countries have increased, and it has signed major FTAs, signalling a widening of its commercial base. Yet, India's trade with its South Asian neighbours is between 1.7% and 3.8%. This missing regional integration is not only a lost economic opportunity but also a lost layer of strategic insulation. This is where the rhetoric of 'reformed multilateralism' must be matched by coordinated action. The challenge now is for others, especially India, to recognise that defence of sovereignty, preservation of multilateralism and reform of global governance are a single project that will succeed or fail together India's G20 presidency, Indonesia's Asean leadership, Brazil's stewardship of BRICS and 'Voice of the Global South' summit have all carried the banner of a fairer, more representative order. A rules-based system can survive only if states push back collectively when its norms are under India, and for other major actors in the 'global south', the lesson is not to imitate Brazil's tactics but to internalise the structural logic behind them. Sovereignty cannot be defended by rhetoric alone. It must be underpinned by robust institutions at home and by coalitions abroad. Brazil's resort to WTO may seem quaint in an era when great powers increasingly sideline multilateral bodies. But if the 'global south' does not use these institutions, reform them and defend them, then who will?What Lula has made clear is that defending rules-based order is not the same as defending status quo. The order we inherited was built with asymmetries, but it remains the only framework capable of constraining raw power if all parties insist on using it. As a country that bridges multiple alignments that are democratic but independent, it can help lead an emerging coalition that treats multilateralism not as a talking point but as an enabling like Brazil, also faces pressures on its ecological resources that will test its commitment to sovereignty in new ways. In a global economy where farm patents, seed control and biotech regulation can dictate the fate of rural livelihoods, defending biodiversity is no less strategic than defending maritime borders. A rules-based order must treat genetic resources, environmental stewardship and traditional knowledge as global commons managed by those who live with them, not as commodities to be seized under legal regimes written elsewhere. The crises in climate, trade and food security are intertwined. If emerging economies do not set their collective norms, they will find themselves perpetually reacting to norms imposed from abroad. What history will remember is not whether Brazil wins its specific tariff dispute, but whether this moment catalyses a broader shift in how emerging economies see themselves in the architecture of global power. Lula's defiance shows that it is possible to resist coercion without turning inward, that it is possible to resist without rejecting the idea of international challenge now is for others - especially for India - to recognise that defence of sovereignty, preservation of multilateralism and reform of global governance are not separate agendas any more. 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