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1. Power of four: The Quad must be flexible to counter China’s many strategies across a wide range of issues

With India and Australia holding their first 2+2 ministerial dialogue, there’s no denying that the Quad continues to take shape as a security-plus platform. Earlier this year the group comprising India, US, Japan and Australia held its first leaders’ summit. In fact, militaries of the four countries participated in the Malabar joint naval exercise last year, while work is underway to produce and deliver a billion Covid vaccines through the group’s network by 2022.

Of course, an increasingly assertive China is the main factor bringing the Quad countries together. Beijing is clearly irked by what it sees as an Asian Nato. But external affairs minister S Jaishankar has done well to shoot down that nomenclature saying that the Quad looks to the future and doesn’t hark back to the Cold War era. It has been deliberately kept as a high-level diplomatic platform – notwithstanding a separate naval component – to prevent a return to the bloc politics of the past. There are two reasons for this. First, the four Quad nations need to get into the habit of working together. True, the Covid pandemic and the Galwan valley clashes between India and China last year have seen the group coordinate. But more is needed to achieve regular operational momentum.

Second, the Quad also needs to find the golden mean between security and civilian cooperation. After all, China represents a multidimensional systemic challenge. This is why the Quad working on Covid vaccines, open technologies and resilient supply chains is so important. Plus, as the global axis of power shifts partly from the West to the East, Quad democracies need to shape the Indo-Pacific as a free and open region. This will give Southeast Asian nations options to resist China’s strategy of weaponising economic interdependencies. In short, the Quad needs to be flexible to counterbalance China across a range of issues, be it Afghanistan or the South China Sea. If that worries Beijing, the Quad will be doing its job.

2.Gujarat makeover: BJP’s powerful central leadership detected a caste rumbling in its bastion, and took quick corrective action

.In picking Bhupendra Patel as Gujarat chief minister, BJP hopes to run the last lap before elections 15 months away by projecting a governance reset to voters. This knack for pre-empting anti-incumbency by spotting stirrings of unfavourable undercurrents felled CMs of Uttarakhand and Karnataka earlier. Despite five years as CM, Vijay Rupani’s low key style of functioning had outlived its utility and he was in danger of becoming a lightning rod for discontent. During the Covid second wave, horrifying sights of patients waiting outside hospitals for admission and frequent Gujarat high court strictures had marred Rupani’s record.

The dominant Patidar community, around which the Gujarat Hindutva project was initially anchored, was also bristling over non-accommodation in the two poles of the state BJP – CM and state president. Raghubar Das’s defeat in Jharkhand seems to have taught BJP that an unpopular CM is a risky proposition heading into elections. Even BS Yediyurappa, despite his firm base among Karnataka’s Lingayats, couldn’t resist the BJP high command’s logic for replacement beyond a point. The post-2014 BJP’s makeover into a mean election fighting machine that’s ferocious about protecting its governments means CMs are on a tight leash.

Gujarat has been BJP’s impregnable fortress for over two decades and powered PM Narendra Modi’s rise. BJP hasn’t lost assembly elections here since 1995 and has governed continuously since 1998. Yet 2017 did appear tricky before Modi’s appeal to voters and Congress’s weak booth level organisation won it for BJP on polling day. Cut to 2021, Congress is in further disarray. Its 7.5 percentage point vote share difference with BJP in 2017 state polls widened to 30 in 2019 general election. Defections have been frequent, and a generational shift in state leadership has lost momentum. But Rahul Gandhi is reportedly searching for a strong helmsman to replicate Ashok Gehlot’s 2017 Gujarat election management.

This coupled with AAP’s strong wooing of Patidars and Congress voters would have alerted the BJP leadership. Though any division of opposition votes should suit BJP. Bhupendra Patel’s anointment, like Basavaraj Bommai and PS Dhami, signifies that when defensive BJP, otherwise propping up non-dominant groups, switches seamlessly to rallying support among dominant castes. A crowded frontline of powerful Gujarat netas who are leading lights in the national BJP and Union Cabinet endows the CM-elect with the luxury of fronting a well-oiled political and administrative machinery. But the task of soothing Patidar discontent, responsible for his mentor Anandiben Patel’s exit, is perhaps his cross alone to bear.

3.Public health infrastructure prepares for festive season Covid spurt. But enforce masking too

The readying of around two lakh ICU beds, with nearly half of them supported by ventilators, signals that the public health infrastructure is preparing for a third wave. The festive season has begun with the Ganesh Chathurthi festival and economic activity is reviving rapidly and social interactions are also increasing. While vaccination is proceeding fast and many states are aiming to vaccinate all adults with at least a single dose in the next month or two, the air of inconclusivity around the coronavirus variants of concern in circulation signifies that the public health system must remain on high alert.

The rapid production of made in India ventilators has been one of the great strides made by India during the pandemic. Yet it also came to notice that there weren’t enough trained healthcare personnel to man them and flawed handling of these machines increased maintenance requirements. The ongoing focus on training to ensure smooth working of ventilators bodes well for the future too.The second wave was particularly deadly because the surge was as sudden as the dip. So it is for peak scenarios that the public health system must prepare for. Alternatively, there needs to be greater emphasis on masking in public. The messaging on masking has tapered off because caseloads are low now. But the virus is in circulation and could recoil rapidly if immunity drops.

With the effort GoI is putting into beefing up emergency health infrastructure, it must also amp up awareness campaigns on masking and create facilities for free distribution of masks. Erring on the side of caution this festival season will keep cases low enough to give time for the vaccination campaign to cover more of the populace.

4.Fifth Test fiasco

The England and Wales Cricket Board (ECB) declared that India had forfeited the match by refusing to play — meaning the series was tied 2-2

The chaotic and confused way in which the fifth and final match of the India-England Test series was called off, literally at the 11th hour at Manchester on Friday, made cricket a laughing stock. A day after the assistant physiotherapist of the Indian team tested positive for Covid, the Indian players were reluctant to take the field — after all, the previous week, head coach Ravi Shastri and two senior coaches too had been found infected. At this, the England and Wales Cricket Board (ECB) declared that India had forfeited the match by refusing to play — meaning the series was tied 2-2. Within a short time, however, ECB amended its statement and removed the word ‘forfeit’, clearly due to pressure from the Indian cricket board (BCCI). Finally, a BCCI statement said the two boards would try to find a window on their cricket calendars to reschedule the match, most likely in the summer of 2022.

In this confusion, a few important points were relegated to the background. How did the infection hit the Indian camp? The needleof suspicion points at an event to release a book by Shastri right before the  fourth Test in London — it was after this that Shastri and two fellow coaches developed symptoms and tested positive. The head coach’s act of indulging in a personal commercial activity by promoting his book in the midst of a pandemic needs to be investigated. Endangering the welfare of his team right in the middle of an important series by appearing maskless at a personal event held in public — in which the guests didn’t wear masks, too — is a serious breach of Covid guidelines issued by BCCI.Another aspect that needs to be looked at is the greed of the authorities: ECB was insisting on considering it a forfeiture by India because it feared losing insurance money; BCCI was insisting on postponing or cancelling the match because it feared that its cash cow, the IPL — scheduled to resume in Dubai on September 19 — could take a hit if star Indian players were infected and forced to skip it. Finally, it seems impossible to find an empty window to reschedule this match — cricketers are being made to play too much by their boards and T20 teams. Greed, on the part of Shastri and the boards, has been laid bare by the Manchester fiasco.

5.Gujarat: The BJP’s poll card

When a strong leader, with a mass base and a high degree of political control, leaves office, there is a vacuum

When a strong leader, with a mass base and a high degree of political control, leaves office, there is a vacuum. This vacuum is sometimes filled by another leader who is able to assert authority and win polls. But, often, the vacuum is hard to fill. And that is the story of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in Gujarat. The immediate trigger for Vijay Rupani’s resignation as chief minister (CM) lies in his government’s Covid-19 mismanagement, Patidar discontent, and internal organisational rivalries — all in the run-up to polls next year. Indeed, Bhupendra Patel’s elevation as CM makes it clear that the BJP is sending a signal to Patidars. But both Anandiben Patel’s resignation in 2015, and the change now, prove that the BJP’s real crisis is that it has not found a leader to fill the vacuum in Gujarat after Narendra Modi moved to Delhi.

Mr Modi closely tracks political realities in the state. His stamp over the current power transition is unmistakable. The party’s win in the state in 2017 was almost entirely due to his campaign, and his presence makes the BJP the front-runner in 2022 again. The switch from Mr Rupani to Mr Patel also shows that BJP’s central command has the ability to effect relatively smoother transitions, unlike the Congress. Be it in Uttarakhand (Trivendra Singh Rawat was replaced by Tirath Singh Rawat who was replaced by Pushkar Dhami) or Karnataka (BS Yediyurappa gave way to Basavaraj Bommai) or Assam (Sarbananda Sonowal left office for Himanta Biswa Sarma) or, now, Gujarat, organisational discipline, and Mr Modi’s word, prevail. The party is alert to feedback, decides when a leader is an electoral liability, and ruthlessly executes its decision.