 Welcome to Dispatchers from India Show by People's Dispatch, where we bring you news about the politics, economy and society of the country as well as what Indians have been talking about over the past week. Our first section is the news this week. Our first story here is about the GDP numbers of the gross domestic product numbers. The numbers for the first quarter of 2021 were released and here we mean the April to June period of this year. The numbers were in some senses a relief and the country's GDP growth was at 20.1%. Now, this was compared to the same quarter in the previous year which was disastrous. In April to June 2020, the GDP had contracted by 24.4%. Thus, the baseline for this year was very low to begin with. The fact that India's economy is a long way to go is clear from two facts. As the media outlets scroll pointed out, in terms of actual numbers, there was a 16.9% contraction in the April to June quarter as opposed to the previous three months. And now there's also the fact that the actual numbers of April to June 2021 were also 9.2% below the equivalent figures in the pre-pandemic April to June quarter. That's 2019. This means that the Indian economy is actually smaller today than it was two years ago. Besides, rural inflation means that even the growth in income of farmers has not helped much. Clearly, we have a long way to go before the Indian economy is back on track. Our next story is about a High Court verdict and this is the Allahabad High Court in the state of Uttar Pradesh. Now the judge suggested that the cow should be declared the national animal and that the protection of the cow should be a fundamental right for the Hindu community. This is a controversial topic in India because many sections of the Hindu community consider the cow a sacred animal, even as beef consumption also takes place in the country. The court made these claims noting the religious and cultural significance of cows while denying bail to a Muslim man who has been in jail since March for allegedly having slaughtered and slaughtered a cow. In recent years, there have both been laws that restrict the sale of cattle and vigilante actions by groups who have attacked and in some cases even kill people, mostly Muslims, for being involved in the sale of beef. In this case, the court even had some scientific observations. We talked to scriptwriter and stand-up artist Warren Grover on this issue. Cows have been much discussed in India in the last few years. Cow, the most gentle of animals, has become a symbol of aggressive majority in politics and often violent mob rule in India has been carried out in the name of the cow in the last few years. Now people have been routinely lynched over suspicions of carrying beef and the killings have been justified by majority. People in respectable positions of power and influence have repeatedly made unscientific claims about the magical powers of cows, cow dung, cow urine, cow milk, etc. Now recently a court judge even said that cows inhale and exhale oxygen, hence they should be given the status of national animal. I think if this statement is scientifically true, which it is not, the truth is that all animals actually inhale and exhale oxygen in some portion like the exhalation includes a large chunk of carbon dioxide also. But this judge kind of suggests that cows are the only animal that exhale oxygen and probably his belief is that cows exhale only oxygen and no other gas. So if this guy is and so he said that cows inhale and exhale oxygen and hence they should be given the status of national animal. Now if this statement is scientifically true, which it is not, then I would say not only national animal cows deserve to be given the status of a global animal. They could be our biggest weapon against climate change. But unfortunately the truth is cows are living in horrible conditions. The dairy industry, which is like very, very prevalent in India, the dairy industry much like the meat industry in America is built on cruelty against animals. So yeah, I mean cows may flourish as symbols for political gain, but sadly their real condition remains horrible. And finally every a September 5th, the birthday of Dr. Sarvapali Radhakrishnan, the second president of India is celebrated as Teacher's Day. Now as the name suggests, the day celebrates the contributions of teachers to the development of both individuals and societies. However, what happens with the education system of the country itself isn't shambles. We speak to Dr. Abha Dev Habib, a professor at Delhi University and a member of the Delhi Teacher's Forum, who discusses the adverse impact of the national education policy. This policy has been introduced by the central government. She also talks about the general state of teachers in the country. She has passed the NEP through the Parliament. There is an open university where 44 lakh students are enrolled, but we see that only the faculty number is 200-300. So you will see what student-teacher ratio is. So that we don't talk about the student-teacher ratio, so that we don't talk about infrastructure. The government is taking a model like this so that its input becomes less and the degrees will become paper degrees. So I think that if we celebrate one day, there is no impact on people's lives. And if the government really wants to become a Vishwa Guru, if the government really wants to celebrate teachers, then the reforms will have to be made. We now move to our infocus section, where we take a deeper look at some of the issues on the minds of Indians. Our first story, unfortunately, is about violence and hate. Now, India has always had a huge problem of violence stemming from inter-religious rivalry. In most cases, it's the minority communities, that's Muslims and Christians, who are at the receiving end. Now, this animosity between religions was stoked by the British during the colonial rule as part of their divide and rule policy. After independence, it is continued by various political forces which saw electoral benefit from this strategy. The Bharti Janta Party, the BJP, which is in power right now in the center, has as its ideological parent an organization called the RSS, which advocates the idea of India being a Hindu nation. Ever since the BJP came to power in 2014, many experts have pointed to a general sense of insecurity faced by religious minorities. This is also due to the fact that there have been many attacks, violence, intimidation, threats, etc. Over the past few weeks, yet again, there have been a few instances of such attacks on Muslims. Senior journalist Anindya Chakravarti analyzes these attacks and why society at large seems to not rise up in protest against them. The bigger question, of course, is why are these attacks on ordinary Muslims? More importantly, why is there such support for attacks on such people? These are poor people, ordinary people. These are underdogs. These are people you would normally feel sympathy for. What kind of mentality makes people happy when these people are attacked, beaten or humiliated? I have never been able to understand this from my own standpoint because when people say, Muslims have been appeased, they have been given a lot of support by the state, by the Nehruvian state, by Indira Gandhi, by the Gandhi's, the Nehru Gandhi family, by the Congress, then my instinct is to say what kind of rubbish is this? This is utter rubbish because around me I know that there are very few Muslims in positions of power, positions of authority, whether you look at the bureaucracy, whether you look at doctors, lawyers, you look at the various government organizations. Muslims are underrepresented and this is not just some kind of my own impression. The various commissions which have looked into it, the various assessments that have been done, studies that have been done, surveys that have been done have all said that this is true. This is what has been happening. Now, one reason why there is this angst on the ground, on the street is because ironically, the salary jobs have come down and you would say, why should that matter? It is not as if Muslims ever had salary jobs. Well, that is precisely the reason why Muslims have been relatively immune to the slowdown that has taken place in India, the economic slowdown that has taken place in India over the last 10 years and which has accelerated over the last five, six years. Overall, there has been a 1.7% drop in total number of employed in India between 2016-17 to 2019-20. Remember, this is despite population increasing. There has been a drop. If I look at Hindus, that drop is even bigger. It is 2.2%. This data is available for subscribers to CMI, useful data. When I look at the drop in numbers of those who are Muslim, employment numbers for those who are Muslim, it is just 0.1%. Why has that happened? Because Muslims take up occupations and professions which are not related to what is happening to the government space. So, when the state withdraws, when the government withdraws from the economy, salary jobs go down. When contractual jobs become easier to give, when there is a slowdown in the organized sector, what happens is that jobs are lost. Hate, however, is not only a product of politics. The economic situation on the ground may play a factor too. On this show, we have talked about how the pandemic has worsened the condition of many, with tens of thousands losing their lives and hundreds of thousands losing their jobs or suffering economic crisis. Let us take a look at how this factors into the politics of hate. Let us look at what happened in the second lockdown. Between April and May this year, Hindus saw just a 2.4% drop in employment while Muslims saw a sharp 14% decline. There was 14% drop. Again, as I said, lockdown comes. Those who have salaried or regular jobs are less likely to be thrown out immediately, but those who are dependent on providing daily services or have small businesses which depend on daily customers, they are affected the most. So, 14% drop. And when the lockdown opened, so let us look at the compare June and July, the upper caste Hindus continued to see a drop in employment. 8.1% drop between June and July for upper caste Hindus. But what happened to Muslims? Employment of Muslims increased between June and July by 36%. That is the dramatic increase. So, again, as the economy is more moving towards lower income, providing gig economy, service sector economy, employment, the skew of employment has changed completely. So, Muslims had adopted to already to self-employment mode of existence, which is low income. Remember, those who are self-employed earn about half of what those who are salaried earn. This is government data about half or even less than that. The Muslims being more in, you know, in tune with self-employment, having adopted it much earlier than Hindus, what has happened is that for an unemployed educated Hindu, often upper caste and intermediate caste, what happens is that they see that these Muslims have jobs, they're getting married, they're buying a new bike, they're roaming around wearing new jeans, they have work, they're earning, nothing has happened to them. Why are we unemployed? It is a great ground, a great ground to create hatred and enmity. It's a great ground to tell them that, look, the Muslims have jobs because they were appeased, the Congress government appeased them, worked for you and did not work for you, who are the majority. You are in a subjugated position not because of today, but because of what happened thousand years ago. You are in this position because of what happened when the Delhi Sultanate came, when the Mughals came and fake news spread through WhatsApp, through social media and on mainstream media news debates that helps create an atmosphere of hatred, anger, desperation, which then translates on the ground into one, organized attacks but support for those organized attacks, widespread support for those organized attacks. There are of course many elements to this phenomenon that it's of religious violence and the economy is just one of them. Nonetheless it remains to be seen if those in power can actually address these issues rather than promoting religious rivalry and violence for narrow political gains. We now move to the state of Tamil Nadu. The state is well known for its traditional silk garments which are extremely popular both in the country and even abroad. The hand-loom weaving sector in the state is primarily centered in regions such as Kanjipuram, Tiruvannamalai, Kumbakonam, Salem and Coimbatore. This story is of one family of weavers living in Kanjipuram district. Let's take a look at the conditions of those who work day and night to produce these expensive garments. Many people in Kanjipuram district of Tamil Nadu are engaged in silk weaving. As per various reports, there are around 60,000 silk weavers in the district out of whom 50,000 weavers work under the cooperative fold. The newslet team reached out to the family of Vetri Vail who has been involved in hand-loom weaving for years in Kanjipuram. I think it's a good idea to take a look at the quality of the silk weavers. I think we'll be able to make a living from there. How long have you been working here? How long have you been working here? We work five times a day. We work five times a day because we are at home. When we go to school, we work two times a day. Why don't you do silk weaving? We don't have to go to our parents to work. We have a lot of money at home. We have a lot of money at home. Meanwhile, here is Shiva Prakashan, a member of the hand-loom weavers union under the centre of Indian trade union's CITU. He's speaking to us about the various demands that hand-loom weavers have from the government. According to the same plan, hand-loom weaving is from around 20 to 25% to 27% of the material we make. The process of weaving from hand-loom is not purely the hands-loom weaving. There is a coot room, but the coot room weavers have all designed for the hands-loom weaving. Weavers have to weave hand-loom weaving separately. There is the hand-loom weaving process of hand-loom weaving. In the age of his youth, the government has to deliver the pension. The government has to talk to the government for the first time and give them the pension. The pension is being given to thousands of people. Even thousands of people are not giving much. It is our wish to increase the number of thousands. The government has to take care of the other people. Since the government plans to clear the pension, but the needs of the government are in vain. So only the government has to pay the pension. They have purchased the pension for the first time in the last 10 years. But the government has taken its course to pay the pension. We cannot provide any funds. The government has to pay the pension. We cannot give the pension to the government. Third or fourth person are not able to pay the pension because of our financial health issues. So it is because of that government has to pay 10,000 for the pension. They said that we have to put Raghataka Tambaryana Kooli as an attamana. We have not given any respect to the people who have been affected by this pandemic. When such a thing happens in the future, we will not be able to provide any relief. That's all we had time for this week. We will be back next week with more news and views from India. Until then, keep watching People's Dispatch.