Best of BS Opinion: A new migration survey offers hope for policymaking

Best of BS Opinion explains the need for a new migration survey, diplomatic challenges after Sheikh Hasina's death sentence, China's internal tremors, and governance lessons from Tesla and OpenAI

Hello, and welcome to Best of BS Opinion, our daily wrap of the Business Standard Opinion page.   The labour market has undergone a sea-change since the last migration survey was conducted nearly 15 years ago, but the foundational principles of that study and the policy understandings based on it have remained static, notes our first editorial. In such a situation, the government's proposal for a comprehensive migration survey is a welcome move. New data on migration and its reasons, remittances, and the lived experience of migrants would address a critical gap in policy making. It would also highlight trends of outward and inbound migration by state, as well as the consequences of moving out, besides providing a baseline for evaluating urban infrastructure, labour protection, and welfare portability.  A Dhaka tribunal has sentence former Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina to death for her crackdown on anti-government protests last year. While the tribunal was certainly politically-biased, Hasina's action leading up to and during the protests are equally demanding of investigation, and condemnation. Delhi faces a diplomatic impasse, warns our second editorial, as it tries to mend ties. While the death sentence makes extradition all but impossible, India's response to such requests are now doubly difficult. At the same time, there are attempts to wipe out the Awami League in Bangladesh, an upsurge in Islamist sentiment, and the return of gangwars. India must urgently find a pragmatic reconciliation with the new regime, while the latter must refrain from using the death sentence to needle India. 

 

  China currently appears at its strongest geopolitically but domestic political tremors are unmistakeable, writes Shyam Saran, drawing on signal from the 4th Plenum of the 20th Central Committee (CC) of the Communist Party of China (CPC) held last month. While the communique from the Plenum warns of dangers ahead, it also takes note of strategic opportunities. In such a situation, the main guideline for the new plan is to integrate development and security objectives. The key concern, however, remains the purge of senior military personnel. Within the PLA, serious opposition may be building up against the leader. If Xi Jinping is removed in the future, the instrument for that may well be embedded within the PLA.

  Tesla shareholders' approval of a $1 trillion compensation for Elon Musk is not a salary, but an aggressive performance-linked stock package. Supporters say it is an alignment of the Musk's incentives with Tesla’s ambitions, but they overlook that Musk is Tesla's  largest shareholder. But it raises questions of concentration of upside in one individual, the Board's proximity to Musk, and the precedent it sets. Meanwhile, Sam Altman-led OpenAI has done a full pivot from being a non-profit to a capped-profit to a fully for-profit organisation. In between, Altman was fired by the Board and then re-hired following protests from employees and investors. Both examples, writes Amit Tandon, highlight corporate governance issues that have implications here. India’s digital transformation — built on the public infrastructure of Unified Payments Interface, DigiLocker, and Aadhaar — offers a counter-model to both Tesla and OpenAI: Open, interoperable systems that scale up nationally and even globally, without corporate concentration.  Ruhi Tewari's book What Women Want: Understanding the Female Voter in Modern India could not have come at a more opportune time, writes Neha Bhatt, pointing to the record turnout of women voters in the recent Bihar Assembly elections. The election reaffirms the growing belief that the female political identity is one of the most compelling forces shaping India’s democracy. Tewari combines data with reportage to trace the journey of the female voter from the margins to the centre of public and political attention, and unpacks the motivations of the woman voter.