Today’s Big Story
The death of an Indian student - Naveen Shekharappa Gyanagoudar - in Kharkiv on 1st March prompted the Government of India to escalate evacuations under Operation Ganga, launched to bring Indian citizens stranded in Ukraine back home. According to the Ministry of External Affairs, India will operate over 26 flights during the next three days from airports in Romania, Hungary, Poland, and the Slovak Republic (since the Ukrainian airspace is closed).
📯 What’s Going On?
Yesterday, Arindam Bagchi, official Spokesperson of the Union Ministry of External Affairs, said that 30 flights under Operation Ganga have brought back 6,400 Indians from Ukraine so far. Several union ministers have been deputed to countries neighbouring Ukraine so that Indian citizens who are able to cross the border can be brought home.
Jyotiraditya Scindia has been deputed to Romania and Moldova, Kiran Rijiju to Slovakia, Hardeep Singh Puri to Hungary and VK Singh to Poland.
However, over the past few days, viral videos of Indians being manhandled at Ukraine's border with Poland, have started raising questions about the government's response to the crisis and also led to criticism of Indian Embassies in Poland and Romania allegedly due to their lack of prompt action.
Amidst the election season in India, the government's handling of the Ukraine evacuation crisis has inevitably acquired a political edge.
🔍 What Does this Mean?
Many on the left argue that the Indian Embassy was not present at Ukraine's borders with other countries to help rescue stranded citizens who bore the entire cost and risk of travelling in a war zone to the nearest border (videos of their plight have flooded social media). They further argue that the GoI is instead milking this situation from a PR and messaging perspective to gain a political advantage in the ongoing state assembly elections.
Many on the right argue that in spite of multiple advisories issued by the Indian embassy, many students chose to stay put and now, through Operation Ganga the Indian government has been more responsive to the evacuation crisis than other countries such as China and USA.
"Many of the Union ministers have been seen greeting Indians coming back on rescue flights from inside the aircraft and interacting with the passengers onboard. Clippings and images of the same are being widely circulated in the media. Congress leader Manish Tewari urged Union ministers to stay from “sanctimonious homilies” and get on with their job of bringing back stranded citizens. He said it was the government's duty and it was not doing anybody any favour." - Hindustan Times
"While Kumar [evacuated student] thanked the government for its efforts to bring back Indian nationals from Ukraine, he said it could have been done better – a thought echoed by many students Al Jazeera spoke to at Delhi airport. “I will ever be grateful to the Romanian people because they were so helpful. Everything was done by the volunteers,” Rajarshi said. “Many people think that it was managed by the Indian embassy but it was not. It was totally done by volunteers organisations, NGOs of Romania.” - Al Jazeera
"These Indian nationals are being taken care of by the Government of India, at its cost, till they reach India under 'Operation Ganga'. An estimated 7,000 to 8,000 Indian nationals remain in Ukraine, mainly in the east of the country, for which efforts are being made by the government to bring them back as soon as possible," the Centre has said in its statement. - The Economic Times
"The Ministry of Civil Aviation said on Thursday that over 6,200 Indians have returned from Ukraine through special civilian flights and more than 7,400 Indians are expected to arrive in the next two days under the evacuation mission headed by the Centre. The Ministry of External Affairs and the Indian Embassy in Ukraine is issuing constant guidelines for the students who are stranded in high-risk areas such as Kyiv and Kharkiv. The embassy is also helping students cross the Ukrainian border into neighbouring countries such as Hungary and Poland so that they can get on a flight to India." - DNA India
💭 Why Should I Care?
Have Your Cake and Eat it Too
It can be argued that with regard to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, not many people expected things to move at the pace that they have. And although there have been several comparisons in the media between Operation Ganga and the 1990 airlifts of Indians from Kuwait during the Gulf War, the comparison is not exactly fair because ~170,000 people were evacuated over a period of 2 months and there was also an opportunity to use sea routes.
At the same time, the operation appears to be a calculated decision by the government - in damage control mode after several videos of Indian students stuck behind Ukraine’s borders went viral - to run a PR exercise in the garb of evacuating students from Ukraine and its neighbouring countries. In fact, the mayor of a Romanian city rebuked Jyotiraditya Scindia by saying “I provided food and shelter, not you” when Scindia started to sing praises of his party in front of stranded students.
Overall, the government was probably distracted by the elections and it appears that not enough attention was paid to early warnings from the US when President Biden said that the Russians were preparing to invade Ukraine. Ideally, our government should have started to put together a contingency plan after President Biden’s announcement, perhaps prioritizing the evacuation of students on the eastern side of the country.
And although advisories were issued to students by the Indian Embassy in Ukraine, there was a lack of coordination with Ukrainian universities which continued to operate, giving students the impression that this was not such a serious threat.
Have questions or comments about today’s newsletter?
🙋Ask Away!
And in case you’re interested to learn more…
This 19 minute podcast from The Quint, offering a peek into the operations to evacuate Indians caught between the Russia-Ukraine war
✨ Below the Fold
It turns out Ukraine is home to approximately 20,000 Indian citizens, a majority of whom (~18,000) are studying medicine at several of its universities. I had no idea Ukraine was such a popular study destination for Indians looking to become doctors! On the one hand, it sounds pretty great - the idea that you can get a degree in Ukraine, immerse yourself in a new country’s culture, come back to India and have your degree recognized (with a few caveats) and pursue your dream to build a career in medicine. But on the other hand, this also seems to speak to a largely broken education system in India and the growing urgency to re-imagine it.
TLDR; if you are a high-school or college student/know someone who is + have an idea to fix the education space in India, here’s a rad opportunity to build your idea out and get paid USD 500 for it!
I guess with this info, I can veritably wish you all a productive and happy weekend!
💌What are you talking about, reading, watching, cooking, listening to lately? Let me know. I’ll read every letter sent and maybe even write a below the fold post about it.
“Don’t ever let somebody tell you you can’t do something, not even me. Alright? You dream, you gotta protect it. People can’t do something themselves, they wanna tell you you can’t do it. If you want something, go get it. Period.”
– Christopher Gardner in the Pursuit of Happyness