Global problem, local solutions: on biodiversity (The Hindu)

Mains Paper 3: Environment
Prelims level: Dongria Kondh tribe
Mains level: Highlighting the global assessment of biodiversity

Context

• The Dongria Kondh tribe of Niyamgiri Hills are among the best conservationists in the world.
• Known for the spirited defence of their forested habitat against short-sighted industrialisation, they have through millennia evolved a lifestyle that is in perfect harmony with nature.
• Across India, there are scores of indigenous people who have managed to lead meaningful lives without wanton destruction of natural ecosystems.
• These tribes, along with marginalised communities living on the fringes of forests and millions of smallholder farmers, are the best hope that India has to preserve biodiversity and ensure food security.
• At a time when nature faces the threat of another mass extinction of species, their importance cannot be emphasised enough because they offer us solutions to avert an imminent meltdown.

Global assessment of biodiversity

• The first global assessment of biodiversity by a UN-backed panel, which released its report in May, held humans squarely responsible for the looming mass extinction of species.
• Without radical efforts towards conservation, the rate of species extinction will only gather momentum.
• The red flag comes close on the heels of a February report by the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO).
• A loss in biodiversity simply means that plants and animals are more vulnerable to pests and diseases, and it puts food security and nutrition at risk, the FAO said.

At a higher risk

• Although biodiversity loss is a global problem, it can be countered only with local solutions. There’s no one-size-fits-all approach.
• A solution that has succeeded in a temperate, wealthy nation may not be suitable for a country like India.
• Our tropical homeland is rich in biodiversity, but the imperatives of relentless economic growth, urbanisation, deforestation and overpopulation place it at risk more than many other places.

Active participation needed

• Nothing can be achieved without the active participation of communities that live close to nature farmers and forest dwellers.
• It is now obvious that intensive agriculture, exploitative forestry and overfishing are the main threats to biodiversity in India and the world.
• UN agencies are unanimous that the best way to correct the present course is to heed the accumulated wisdom of indigenous peoples, fishers and farmers.
• The situation with our forests is even more dire. Instead of evicting forest dwellers from their homes, we should be encouraging them to conserve and nurture their habitats.
• Pressure from industrialisation does not care too much about conservation and biodiversity. The same holds true for the overexploitation of our rivers and seas.
• For solutions one has to just look at the growing movement of zero-budget natural farming in Andhra Pradesh and Telangana, or the community-driven forest conservation initiatives in Odisha and the Northeast, to realise that there is hope for the natural ecosystem, if only we act on the advice of local communities.

No silver bullet

• There is no silver bullet to solve the problem of crop and biodiversity loss at the national level.
• The natural farming movement in Andhra Pradesh may not be suitable for, say, Punjab.
• Fortunately, India’s farmers and tribes are nothing if not innovative and they do have local solutions.

Conclusion

• Loss of biodiversity and the threat of species extinction along with the alarming changes wrought by global warming are the primary concerns of our times.
• Our best bet for survival depends on how well we address these issues.
• We can do that only if we put people at the centre of our actions.
• If we continue to ride roughshod over the people who are essential to revitalising nature, we do so only at our peril.

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Automated facial recognition: what NCRB proposes, what are the concerns (Indian Express)

Mains Paper 3: Science and Tech
Prelims level: National Crime Records Bureau
Mains level: Facial Recognition features and advantage

Context

• On June 28, the National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB) released a Request for Proposal for an Automated Facial Recognition System (AFRS) to be used by police officers across the country.

What is automated facial recognition?

• AFRS works by maintaining a large database with photos and videos of peoples’ faces.
• Then, a new image of an unidentified person — often taken from CCTV footage — is compared to the existing database to find a match and identify the person.
• The artificial intelligence technology used for pattern-finding and matching is called “neural networks”.
• Currently, facial recognition in India is done manually.

Are there any automated facial recognition systems in use in India?

• It is a new idea the country has started to experiment with.
• On July 1, the Ministry of Civil Aviation’s “DigiYatra” using facial recognition for airport entry was tried in the Hyderabad airport.
• State governments have also taken their own steps towards facial recognition. Telangana police launched their own system in August 2018.

What does the NCRB request call for?

• The NCRB, which manages crime data for police, would like to use automated facial recognition to identify criminals, missing people, and unidentified dead bodies, as well as for “crime prevention”.
• Its Request for Proposal calls for gathering CCTV footage, as well as photos from newspapers, raids, and sketches.
• The project is aimed at being compatible with other biometrics such as iris and fingerprints.
• It will be a mobile and web application hosted in NCRB’s Data Centre in Delhi, but used by all police stations in the country.

Why need AFRS?

• Automated Facial Recognition System can play a very vital role in improving outcomes in the area of Criminal identification and verification by facilitating easy recording, analysis, retrieval and sharing of Information between different organisations.
• While fingerprints and iris scans provide far more accurate matching results, automatic facial recognition is an easier solution especially for identification amongst crowds.
• The integration of fingerprint database, face recognition software and iris scans will massively boost the police department’s crime investigation capabilities.
• It will also help civilian verification when needed. No one will be able to get away with a fake ID.

Integration of databases

• NCRB has proposed integrating this facial recognition system with multiple existing databases.
• The most prominent is the NCRB-managed Crime and Criminal Tracking Network & Systems (CCTNS).
• Facial recognition has been proposed in the CCTNS program since its origin.
• The new facial recognition system will be integrated with Integrated Criminal Justice System (ICJS), as well as state-specific systems, the Immigration, Visa and Foreigners Registration and Tracking (IVFRT), and the Khoya Paya portal on missing children.

What are the concerns around using facial recognition?

• Cyber experts across the world have cautioned against government abuse of facial recognition technology, as it can be used as tool of control and risks inaccurate results.
• Amid NCRB’s controversial step to install an automated facial recognition system, India should take note of the ongoing privacy debate in the US.
• In the US, the FBI and Department of State operate one of the largest facial recognition systems.
• International organisations have also condemned the Chinese government on its use of surveillance cameras and facial recognition to constrict the rights of Uighurs, a mostly Muslim minority.

Way forward

• The NCRB, which manages crime data for police, would like to use automated facial recognition to identify criminals, missing people, and unidentified dead bodies, as well as for “crime prevention”.

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Losing steam: on impact of budget on markets (The Hindu)

Mains Paper 3: Economy
Prelims level: Angel tax
Mains level: Impact of budget on market

Context

• Many investors who were hoping for business-friendly reforms were not too impressed by the maiden Budget of the second Narendra Modi government.
• After a moderate negative reaction when the Budget was presented in Parliament on Friday, both the Sensex and the Nifty witnessed their biggest fall in over two years on Monday.
• The Sensex incurred a huge loss of 792.82 points while the Nifty shed about 250 points.
• Sectors such as banking, automobiles and power were the worst-hit, each witnessing a loss of over 3%.

Impact from Tax burden

• Investors were spooked by a variety of proposals made by Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman that are expected to increase the tax burden on them.
• These include the proposal to increase long term capital gains tax on foreign portfolio investors and to tax the buyback of shares by companies at 20%.
• The negative signal sent by the increased surcharge on people earning over ₹2 crore a year also weighed on markets.
• This tax on the “super-rich” is unlikely to make much of a difference to the government’s fiscal position.
• However, it does damage the image of the present government as a pro-business one and can affect fund flow into the country if the wealthy prefer to move to other countries.
• The proposal to raise minimum public shareholding in listed companies from 25% to 35% is also seen as an unnecessary intervention in markets.
• Global factors like strong jobs data coming from the United States which lowers the chances of an interest rate cut by the Federal Reserve, and the potential systemic risk posed by the troubles faced by Deutsche Bank may have also weighed on the markets.

Issues arising from global markets

• However, the losses experienced by western markets on Monday were nowhere as heavy as the losses faced by the Indian markets.
• The larger issue bothering the Indian investor may be the Budget’s supposed tilt towards populism as the government expands the size of its welfare projects instead of taking steps to revive private investment in the slowing economy.
• Apart from a few words from the Finance Minister on simplifying labour laws and relieving start-up investors from the regressive “angel tax”, the Budget was largely bereft of any major structural reforms that could instil confidence among investors.
• The trajectory of markets in the coming months will depend on the kind of reforms the government manages to push through, and on the actions of central banks across the globe.
• While the Reserve Bank of India looks to be easing its policy, any global liquidity tightening can affect foreign fund inflows.

Conclusion

• Despite lacklustre company earnings and other fundamental issues, markets in the past have been pushed up aggressively by the ample liquidity provided by central banks.
• But without enough reforms to strengthen the fundamentals that can back lofty valuations, it may be only a matter of time before markets begin to lose steam.

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Rising incidents of hate crimes point to the growing power of the lumpen (The Hindu)

Mains Paper 1: Society
Prelims level: Hate Crimes
Mains level: Rising hate crimes and its prevention

Context

• There have been marked by hate crimes two Muslim men beaten by mobs in Jharkhand and Mumbai, demanding they shout ‘Jai Shri Ram’, one so mercilessly that he died.
• Another man, a tribal, lynched in Tripura on suspicion of being a cattle thief.
• Most recently, 24 men accused of being cattle smugglers, beaten and made to shout ‘Gau Mata ki Jai’, in Rajasthan.

A rising graph

• Studies of hate crimes in India show that they have steadily risen over the past five years.
• Amnesty International India documented 721 such incidents between 2015 and 2018.
• Last year alone, it tracked 218 hate crimes, 142 of which were against Dalits, 50 against Muslims, 40 against women, and eight each against Christians, Adivasis, and transgenders.
• The more common hate crimes, they found, were honour killings that have sadly occurred for decades and ‘cow-related violence’, that was rare earlier but has become more frequent over the past five years.
• These facts are striking enough to concern any government.
• The Prime Minister expressed pain at the sickening murder of Tabrez Ansari in Jharkhand, but clearly far more is required.
• The Rajasthan administration is introducing a Bill prohibiting cow vigilantism, but that deals with only one hate crime.
• An omnibus act against all hate crimes, including hate speech, is required across India and should be a priority of the 17th Lok Sabha.

Constitutional Provision

• Germany, for example, amended Section 46 of its Criminal Procedure Code, dealing with sentencing in violent crime, to say the sentence must be based on consideration of ‘the motives and aims of the offender, particularly where they are of a racist or xenophobic nature or where they show contempt for human dignity’.
• We have a number of sections in the Indian Penal Code that can be used to punish or even prevent hate crime, but they are disparate and few policemen are aware of them.
• Those that are, fear to use them in areas whose political leaders mobilise through hate speech.
• Though some Indian analysts debate whether there is a correlation between hate speech and hate crime, worldwide data show that hate speech encourages or legitimises acts of violence and a climate of impunity.
• France has a draft Bill to prohibit hate speech, and Germany has already enacted one.

Court directives

• In 2018, the Supreme Court directed Central and State governments to make it widely known that lynching and mob violence would ‘invite serious consequence under the law’ (Tehseen S. Poonawalla v. Union of India and Ors).
• Then Home Minister Rajnath Singh told Parliament that the government had formed a panel to suggest measures to tackle mob violence, and would enact a law if necessary.
• The panel’s recommendations are not in the public domain, and acts of hate crime do not appear to have diminished in the year since Mr. Singh’s promise.
• In a May 2019 report, Human Rights Watch India pointed out that only some States had complied with the Supreme Court’s orders to designate a senior police officer in every district to prevent incidents of mob violence and ensure that the police take prompt action, including safety for witnesses; set up fast-track courts in such cases; and take action against policemen or officials who failed to comply.
• Those State governments that did comply, the report commented, did so only partially. In several instances, the police actually obstructed investigations, even filing charges against the victims.
• Whether it is political hate speech or police bias on the ground, there is little doubt that the national bar against hate crime has been lowered.
• On television, we see replays of hate speech and videos of lynching.
• Though the accompanying commentary is critical, repeated iterations normalise the hateful. Indeed, anchors themselves resort to invective far more often than before note how Kashmiris are routinely heckled and abused on talk shows.
• The print media too is failing. Several newspapers now publish triumphalist opinion articles, including comments to articles that are hate speech by any definition.
• Criticism of blatantly communal government actions such as extension of refuge and citizenship on religious identity has grown increasingly muted.

Key steps needed

• One of the policy issues that is high on the Modi administration’s list is dealing with incitement to violence through social media.
• But the focus is on hate in relation to terrorism, and it is unclear whether government policy will extend to cover hate crime.
• Important as it is to do so, the digital media is not the only offender. In fact, there are several obvious steps which would be easier to take and yield more immediate results than regulation of the digital media.
• Parliament could enact an omnibus act against hate crime, and the Home Minister could set benchmarks for policemen and administrators to deal with hate crime.
• The legislature and political parties could suspend or dismiss members who are implicated in hate crimes or practise hate speech.
• The electronic and print media could stop showing or publishing hateful comments and threats.
• Priests could preach the values of tolerance and respect that are common to all religions and schools could revitalise courses on the directive principles of our Constitution.

Way forward

• For a demographically diverse country such as India, hate crimes — including crimes of contempt — are a disaster.
• Each of our religious and caste communities number in the millions, and crimes that are directed against any of these groups could result in a magnitude of disaffection that impels violence, even terrorism.
• Far less diverse countries than India are already suffering the result of hate ‘moving into the mainstream’, as UN Secretary General António Guterres recently highlighted.
• We can still contain its spread if we act resolutely. Or else our political leaders might find the lumpen tail wagging their dog.

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The malaise of malnutrition (The Hindu)

Mains Paper 2: National
Prelims level: Malnutrition
Mains level: Malnutrition problems and prevention

Context

• A new report, ‘Food and Nutrition Security Analysis, India, 2019’, authored by the Government of India and the United Nations World Food Programme, paints a picture of hunger and malnutrition amongst children in large pockets of India.
• It raises moral and ethical questions about the nature of a state and society that, after 70 years of independence, still condemns hundreds of millions of its poorest and vulnerable citizens to lives of hunger and desperation.
• And it once again forces us to ask why despite rapid economic growth, declining levels of poverty, enough food to export, and a multiplicity of government programmes, malnutrition amongst the poorest remains high.

A trap of poverty, malnutrition

• The report shows the poorest sections of society caught in a trap of poverty and malnutrition, which is being passed on from generation to generation.
• Mothers who are hungry and malnourished produce children who are stunted, underweight and unlikely to develop to achieve their full human potential.
• The effects of malnourishment in a small child are not merely physical. A developing brain that is deprived of nutrients does not reach its full mental potential. A study in the Lancet notes, “Undernutrition can affect cognitive development by causing direct structural damage to the brain and by impairing infant motor development.”
• This in turn affects the child’s ability to learn at school, leading to a lifetime of poverty and lack of opportunity.

Key findings of the report

• Many studies over the last five years have exposed the failure of the Indian state to ensure that its most vulnerable citizens are provided adequate nutrition in their early years.
• India has long been home to the largest number of malnourished children in the world. Some progress has been made in reducing the extent of malnutrition.
• The proportion of children with chronic malnutrition decreased from 48% percent in 2005-06 to 38.4% in 2015-16.
• The percentage of underweight children decreased from 42.5% to 35.7% over the same period.
• Anaemia in young children decreased from 69.5% to 58.5% during this period.

An ambitious target

• The government’s National Nutrition Mission (renamed as Poshan Abhiyaan) aims to reduce stunting (a measure of malnutrition that is defined as height that is significantly below the norm for age) by 2% a year, bringing down the proportion of stunted children in the population to 25% by 2022. But even this modest target will require doubling the current annual rate of reduction in stunting.
• The minutes of recent meetings of the Executive Committee of Poshan Abhiyaan do not inspire much confidence about whether this can be achieved.
• A year after it was launched, State and Union Territory governments have only used 16% of the funds allocated to them.
• Fortified rice and milk were to be introduced in one district per State by March this year.
• But the minutes of a March 29 meeting showed that this had not been done, and officials in charge of public distribution had not yet got their act together.
• Or, as the minutes put it, “The matter is under active consideration of the Ministry of Consumer Affairs, Food and Public Distribution”.

Ways to removing malnutrition

• Anganwadis are key to the distribution of services to mothers and children. But many States, including Bihar and Odisha, which have large vulnerable populations, are struggling to set up functioning anganwadis, and recruit staff.
• The key to ending the tragedy of child nutrition lies with a handful of State governments: the highest levels of stunted and underweight children are found in Jharkand, Bihar, Madhya Pradesh, Gujarat and Maharashtra. Malnutrition is a reflection of age-old patterns of social and economic exclusion.
• Over 40% of children from Scheduled Tribes and Scheduled Castes are stunted. Close to 40% of children from the Other Backward Classes are stunted.
• The lack of nutrition in their childhood years can reduce their mental as well as physical development and condemn them to a life in the margins of society.
• Stunting and malnourishment starts not with the child, but with the mother.
• An adolescent girl who is malnourished and anaemic tends to be a mother who is malnourished and anaemic. This in turn increased the chances of her child being stunted.

The problem is access to food

• The famines are caused not by shortages of food, but by inadequate access to food. And for the poor and marginalised, access to food is impeded by social, administrative and economic barriers.
• In the case of children and their mothers, this could be anything from non-functioning or neglectful governments at the State, district and local levels to entrenched social attitudes that see the poor and marginalised as less than equal citizens who are meant to be an underclass and are undeserving of government efforts to provide them food and lift them out of poverty.
• A lot of attention has focussed on the government’s aim of turning India into a $5 trillion economy in the next five years.
• Whether this will achieved is a matter for debate. But these declarations only serve to obscure a larger reality.

Conclusion

• There is a large section of society, the poorest two-fifths of the country’s population, that is still largely untouched by the modern economy which the rest of the country inhabits.
• As one part of the country lives in a 21st century economy, ordering exotic cuisines over apps, another part struggles with the most ancient of realities: finding enough to eat to tide them over till the next day.

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Global problem, local solutions: on biodiversity (The Hindu)

Mains Paper 3: Environment
Prelims level: Dongria Kondh tribe
Mains level: Highlighting the global assessment of biodiversity

Context

• The Dongria Kondh tribe of Niyamgiri Hills are among the best conservationists in the world.
• Known for the spirited defence of their forested habitat against short-sighted industrialisation, they have through millennia evolved a lifestyle that is in perfect harmony with nature.
• Across India, there are scores of indigenous people who have managed to lead meaningful lives without wanton destruction of natural ecosystems.
• These tribes, along with marginalised communities living on the fringes of forests and millions of smallholder farmers, are the best hope that India has to preserve biodiversity and ensure food security.
• At a time when nature faces the threat of another mass extinction of species, their importance cannot be emphasised enough because they offer us solutions to avert an imminent meltdown.

Global assessment of biodiversity

• The first global assessment of biodiversity by a UN-backed panel, which released its report in May, held humans squarely responsible for the looming mass extinction of species.
• Without radical efforts towards conservation, the rate of species extinction will only gather momentum.
• The red flag comes close on the heels of a February report by the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO).
• A loss in biodiversity simply means that plants and animals are more vulnerable to pests and diseases, and it puts food security and nutrition at risk, the FAO said.

At a higher risk

• Although biodiversity loss is a global problem, it can be countered only with local solutions. There’s no one-size-fits-all approach.
• A solution that has succeeded in a temperate, wealthy nation may not be suitable for a country like India.
• Our tropical homeland is rich in biodiversity, but the imperatives of relentless economic growth, urbanisation, deforestation and overpopulation place it at risk more than many other places.

Active participation needed

• Nothing can be achieved without the active participation of communities that live close to nature farmers and forest dwellers.
• It is now obvious that intensive agriculture, exploitative forestry and overfishing are the main threats to biodiversity in India and the world.
• UN agencies are unanimous that the best way to correct the present course is to heed the accumulated wisdom of indigenous peoples, fishers and farmers.
• The situation with our forests is even more dire. Instead of evicting forest dwellers from their homes, we should be encouraging them to conserve and nurture their habitats.
• Pressure from industrialisation does not care too much about conservation and biodiversity. The same holds true for the overexploitation of our rivers and seas.
• For solutions one has to just look at the growing movement of zero-budget natural farming in Andhra Pradesh and Telangana, or the community-driven forest conservation initiatives in Odisha and the Northeast, to realise that there is hope for the natural ecosystem, if only we act on the advice of local communities.

No silver bullet

• There is no silver bullet to solve the problem of crop and biodiversity loss at the national level.
• The natural farming movement in Andhra Pradesh may not be suitable for, say, Punjab.
• Fortunately, India’s farmers and tribes are nothing if not innovative and they do have local solutions.

Conclusion

• Loss of biodiversity and the threat of species extinction along with the alarming changes wrought by global warming are the primary concerns of our times.
• Our best bet for survival depends on how well we address these issues.
• We can do that only if we put people at the centre of our actions.
• If we continue to ride roughshod over the people who are essential to revitalising nature, we do so only at our peril.

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Classroom and eye (Indian Express)

Mains Paper 2: Governance
Prelims level: Not Much
Mains level: The saturation surveillance in schools

Context

• The government in Delhi is on its way to becoming a role model for other state governments with its commitment to school education.
• It has diligently diagnosed and addressed maladies of the government school system, from poor infrastructure to the lack of support for students preparing for examinations.
• But its obsession with digital technology has now done it a disservice, for it is headed towards turning schools into panopticons, and students into compliant inmates.

Key benefits highlighted

• Classroom cameras will be made directly accessible to parents through a smartphone app, allowing them to track behaviour and milestones in real time.
• CM has brushed aside concerns about the privacy of children while inaugurating saturation CCTV coverage in the first of over 1,000 Delhi schools, arguing that they are sent to school to gain an education, learn discipline and become good citizens, and not for private goals.
• It is a matter of concern that a chief minister heading a “progressive” government seems to have so little idea of the value of privacy and the objectives of education.
• People are not educated in order to become well-programmed automata, fungible drones who can be plugged and played anywhere with equal facility.
• That was true only of the colonial era, when the three Rs were taught to children destined to become administrators and clerks, who could be sent anywhere in the world, from Bombay to Boston, and function equally well.
• Apart from this colonial interregnum, the objective of education has always been to nurture creative, sceptical minds which add to the sum of human knowledge by questioning received wisdom.

Limitations

• The identification of discipline with education is therefore counterproductive, and it would be impossible for children to be creative and individualistic in a classroom where they are constantly aware of the eye of the camera, through which a parent may be watching. Besides, classrooms do not only contain students.
• Teachers are, unsurprisingly, essential components of the teaching environment, and no one appears to have sought their consent to pervasive surveillance.
• The camera would discourage their creativity, too, and turn the classroom into a process-driven workshop.

Conclusion

• Much of what is learned in school is off the curriculum.
• Values are not picked up only from textbooks, but from role models like teachers, and classroom friendships teach the child how to navigate the world.
• How to be a good citizen, or to use the scientific method, are not curricular subjects, but are learned by usage, which calls for experimentation in a reasonably free atmosphere.
• Surveillance for security is useful in monitoring access, but to let it dominate the classroom is to open the door to a dystopia of compliance.

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Diluting the code (Indian Express)

Mains Paper 2: Polity
Prelims level: National Company Law Appellate Tribunal
Mains level: Constitutional framework of IBC

Context

• Last week, the National Company Law Appellate Tribunal (NCLAT) approved the resolution plan filed by ArcelorMittal for Essar Steel.
• But the two-member bench of the appellate tribunal modified the manner in which the proceeds from the sale would be distributed.
• Earlier, the resolution plan had proposed to pay financial creditors 92.5 per cent of their dues. But as per the order, both financial and operational creditors will recover 60.7 per cent each of their admitted claims.
• The judgement, which, in effect, places operational creditors at par with secured financial creditors at the time of settling claims, is likely to have far reaching consequences.

Constitutional framework of IBC

• Under the Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code (IBC), Section 53 deals with the distribution of proceeds from the liquidation of assets.
• It lists the hierarchy in which various claims against the firm would be settled. Under this waterfall mechanism, after the costs associated with the insolvency resolution process and liquidation are settled, dues owed to secured creditors and workmen have to be settled first.
• This is followed by discharging dues of employees, unsecured creditors and governments, in this particular order.
• After these claims have been settled, the balance is to be distributed among preference and equity shareholders, in that order.
• Thus the structure draws a clear distinction between the claims of secured creditors and operational creditors in the liquidation process, with the former having the first right.

Implications from this judgement

• However, the judgement draws a distinction between claim settlement in the resolution and liquidation process. It notes that as the case is not about “distribution of assets from the proceeds of sale of liquidation.
• The resolution applicant cannot take advantage of Section 53 for the purpose of determination of the manner in which distribution of the proposed upfront amount is to be made in favour of one or other stakeholders”.
• Creating this distinction is problematic.

Way ahead

• The consequences of this order stretch beyond this particular case.
• To argue that claims of financial creditors can be treated at par with operational creditors would muddy the waters as it loses sight of the basic distinction between secured and unsecured creditors.
• In fact, in its judgement on the constitutionality of the IBC earlier this year, the Supreme Court had justified the difference between financial and operational creditors, making a critical distinction between financial debts which are secured and operational debts which are unsecured.
• Reportedly, lenders in the ArcelorMittal/Essar Steel case plan to move the Supreme Court to appeal against the NCLAT decision. The Supreme Court would do well to clarify this issue.

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Solar irrigation can transform rural India (The Hindu)

Mains Paper 3: Economy
Prelims level: KUSUM Scheme
Mains level: Renewable energy resources requirement in Agricultural sector

Context

• The season of election promises is over, arguments have been won and lost on the hustings, but the problems are waiting to be solved.
• Agrarian distress is real and persisting, water is growing into an ever bigger human crisis, state power sector has once again managed to bring itself on the edge of the precipice, and the human and fiscal cost of the downward-spiralling nexus between energy, water, and agriculture is staggering.

About KUSUM scheme

• Impressive advancements and rapidly falling prices of solar technology and the recently announced KUSUM scheme of the Centre offer a promising solution.
• The KUSUM scheme has three components:
• (a) private sector led large-scale solar at sub-station;
• (b) off-grid solar irrigation and
• (c) grid-connected solar irrigation.
• Component (a) and (b) either do not solve the real problems of perverse nexus or only improve power supply but cause further damage to groundwater.
• Our analysis shows that Component (c) can potentially double the farm income, save groundwater, save subsidy for the State government, and generate jobs.

Political economy in a bind:

• More than 80 per cent of freshwater is used by agriculture, and more than 60 per cent of India’s irrigated agriculture is via groundwater. “Unmetered” and subsidised energy for agriculture has created a recurring fiscal pressure and burdened industry with cross-subsidy.
• Repeated bailouts of the State power sector reflect the way the state power sector has been managed and governed.
• Sixty five per cent of India’s rural population depends on 15 per cent of its GDP contributed by agriculture, growing at an annual average of less than 2 per cent.
• Average income of agriculture household in India is less than ₹9,000 per month of which only about half is contributed by farm income.
• India cannot address its water and energy economy without addressing agrarian distress and finding non-agriculture income options.
• Connecting the solar irrigation pumps to the grid to sell surplus electricity provides an additional source of income for the farmer which has been amply demonstrated by International Water Management Institute (IWMI)through a pilot project in Dhundi (Solar Power as a Remunerative Crop- SPaRC) and NDDB’s solar cooperative in Majkuva (Gujarat).
• In a recent pilot launched by Punjab (Pani Bachao, Paisa Kamao with which authors are closely associated) farmers have demonstrated a saving of about 30 per cent due to day time power supply and ability to optimise use of water.

Triple win

• A recent analysis carried by the authors on a few 11kV electricity feeders of Rajasthan shows that with grid-connected solarisation of pumps:
• (i) farmers would get substantial increase in their income that is climate resilient and counter-cyclical to agriculture, and get daytime, reliable, free power supply which reduces their production risk;
• (ii) recurring power subsidy to agriculture would get replaced by one-time capital subsidy; and
• (iii) Discoms would get cheap decentralised distributed generation that would reduce their network losses.

Drought premium:

• During droughts, the farmer can reduce the scale of agriculture and earn more money from the sale of power.
• The government would be well advised to pay a “drought premium” for sale of power thus encouraging the farmer to optimise the use of scarce water and adopt a de-minimis approach of using water only for drinking and to grow enough food and fodder for his family and his cattle.
• Drought premium also offers an instrument for direct delivery of drought relief into the bank accounts of farmers.

Why do we need an FPO/cooperative for this scheme?

• For grid-connected solar to work, the Discom must keep the feeder “on” during the day as against the current system of supply of four to six hours to contain subsidy.
• Yet, if a significant number of individual farmers are unable or unwilling to solarise, their power and water consumption would go up since power will be now available for almost 10 hours a day every day, and even subsidy burden on the government would increase.
• Illegal use and bypassing of meters could increase.
• Therefore, the scheme should be made available only if at least 70 per farmers participate (as done by Gujarat) and establish a Farmer Producer Company (FPC) or cooperative.
• The FPC would sign the PPA, aggregate power from participating farmers, maintain the feeder, and carry out energy accounting based on net meters at the farm and at the sub-station.
• Formation of FPC would check theft since stolen power belongs to the neighbour and not the government.
• Undoubtedly, formation of FPCs, mobilising farmers to participate, and finding debt and equity financing for farmers would be effort intensive but is the most sustainable model of doubling farm income with dignity, saving water, and eliminating anarchy in the agricultural power supply.

Costs of national scale-up

• India has about 21 million electric pumps.
• Focusing initially only on some large States to solarise 20 per cent of farm connections, capital subsidy from Central and State governments would be ₹35,000 crore each, farm loans of ₹35,000 crore and farmer equity of ₹11,000 crore which could be financed by banks against collateral of solar assets.
• Increasing the farm income of 4 to 5 million farmers by 30 per cent and putting them well on their way to doubling their farm income would be no mean achievement in five years.
• In addition, even excluding upstream manufacturing jobs in solar cells, this could generate about 50 million local job-days over five years.

Risks and challenges

• Risk of delays and defaults in payment for purchase of power by financially distressed Discoms can undermine this huge opportunity.
• The government can help catalyse the market by getting the national renewable trader (NVVNL) to buy power from FPCs and sell it to NTPC which can pool it into its large (270 billion kWh) market.
• Any cost differential could be underwritten by the Centre for the first few years to create a market.
• Due to pre-existing large stranded capacity, some Discoms may not be inclined to encourage additional generation.
• However, stranded-surplus could vanish in the next five to seven years before India reaches a disruptive scale of solarisation.

Mission to farmer dignity:

• The government should create a “KUSUM Mission” with adequately funded anchor organisation at the Centre and similar organisation in each participating State.
• These organisations should draw staff from agriculture, water, energy and financial sectors from the public, private, and civil society entities and should be led by a hand-picked leader with a clear target of achieving 20 per cent solar conversion within five years.
• NDDB’s expertise in engaging farmers and creating cooperatives would be handy in training these anchor organisations.
• Dynamism of private sector should be tapped to create FPCs.

Conclusion

• The agriculture distress, water crisis, and fiscal distress caused by the power sector, has set a fertile ground to take advantage of affordable solar and achieve two grand objectives of doubling farm income and improving India’s water security.

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The importance of democratic education (The Hindu)

Mains Paper 2: Governance
Prelims level: Not Much
Mains level: Define the democratic education and its significance

Context

• A persistent concern exists about democracy’s failure to fulfil our expectations.
• While our votes are forceful ‘paper stones’, effective in getting rid of governments we dislike, they are powerless to give us effective, efficient, good governments.
• Why tolerate those who strive to do more good for themselves than for the people, who have neither vision nor wisdom? Why have mediocre politicians who shun contact with people with ability and talent?

Better, wiser governments

• Some cynics may respond to this crisis of democracy by arguing the following: to achieve our national goals, we must assemble the best team to govern.
• Such a team cannot be elected by popular mandate but instead by those who have the intellectual wherewithal to select those fit for it.
• To such people, democracy which is committed to the principle of one person, one vote, and which extends franchise to all regardless of ability can never produce the best team.
• They might draw an analogy from cricket where we play to compete at the highest level and win something not possible if the best cricketers are not selected.
• But this is not achieved by popular vote. Instead, we rely on experts a selection committee consisting of experienced cricketers.

To reiterate the conundrum

• Democratically elected governments in our times are neither efficient nor wise.
• They show a propensity to fail at achieving their national goal a high quality of life for all people.
• Then why not abandon democracy?
• Or at least introduce an eligibility criterion, restricting the vote to those with formal education?
• Won’t education help in identifying the best political representatives?
• A democrat need not reject this argument. She may respond that this need not entail abandoning universal adult franchise but the distribution of education to all.
• This seems a decent solution. Sustainable democracies require a high rate of literacy. The more educated we are, it might be claimed, the better we become at choosing the best people to run our government.

A flawed argument

• Literacy and education by themselves do not create good citizens or yield mature democracies.
• Many are formally illiterate but are politically astute and even possess qualities of good citizenship.
• Conversely, many educated people are prone to being self-obsessed, undemocratic, and even authoritarian.
• Primary, secondary or even higher education by itself does not guarantee good citizenship.

Solution

• The solution then is not just education per se, but universal education of a certain kind, one that is focused on improving the quality of our democracy.
• Our current education system does not focus on education in democracy or what we might call democratic education.
• Nor does it build on elements of democratic culture embedded in our traditions.

Core elements

• What then are the core elements of democratic education?
• It requires the cultivation of democratic virtues. For instance, the ability to imagine and articulate a minimally common good.
• This requires that we distinguish what is merely good for me from what is the good of all. And since each of us may develop our own distinct idea of the common good, to find an overlapping common good.
• An ability to handle difference and disagreement and to retain, despite this difference, the motivation to arrive at the common good through conversation, debate, dialogue and deliberation.
• The ability to imagine and conceive a common good is inconsistent with what the Greeks famously called ‘pleonexia’, the greed to grab everything for oneself, to refuse to share anything, to not acknowledge what is due to each person, to have no sense of reciprocity or justice.
• It follows that the idea of the common good cannot be developed without some sense of justice. Democratic education requires training in not succumbing to pleonexia.
• Also crucial is a spirit of compromise, of moderation, and a willingness, within acceptable value parameters, of mutual give and take.
• None of this is possible without other general capabilities such as listening patiently to others, being empathetic to the plight of others, and having a commitment to continuing a conversation with people despite disagreement.

What then is democratic education?

• Conceived broadly, it is a historically specific enterprise, determined by the inherited vocabulary of specific political languages and the terms of debates in a particular community.
• It is designed specifically to enable conversation on issues central to a particular community, to strive for agreement where possible and to live peacefully with disagreement where it is not.
• In short, it involves social and historical awareness and key democratic virtues.

Conclusion

• Many of these understandings and virtues can be inculcated by a good liberal arts education.
• The 2019 National Education Policy recognises this but alas insufficiently.
• So, it appears relatively innocent of the more specific requirements of democratic education.
• Without proper democratic education, I am afraid we will continue to perpetuate bad democratic practices, allow unhealthy scepticism about democracy to grow and eventually imperil it.

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A shot at economic logic (The Hindu)

Mains Paper 2: International Relations
Prelims level: African Union
Mains level: Highlights of the African Continental Free Trade Agreement

Context

• The 12th Extra-Ordinary Summit of the African Union (AU) which concluded on July 8 at Niamey, the capital of the Niger Republic, saw 54 of 55 of its member states signing the African Continental Free Trade Agreement (AfCFTA) for goods and services.
• Of these countries, 27 have already ratified it. Actual cross-border free trade could start by July 2020 with an elimination of custom duties on 90% of the tariff-lines.
• If taken to its logical conclusion, this audacious project would eventually create an African Common Market of 1.2 billion people and a GDP of over $3.4 billion the metrics are comparable to India’s.
• The AfCFTA would be world’s largest FTA, and in a world dependent on African markets and commodities, it would have global impact.

Hurdles and optimism

• However, there are three main reasons to be sceptical about the viability of the AfCFTA.

Establishment of African Union

• First, the African Union (founded as the Organisation of African Unity in 1963) has been largely ineffective in dealing with the continent’s myriad problems such as decolonisation, underdevelopment, Islamic terrorism and the Arab Spring.
• The AU’s grand plans, including the Muammar Qadhafi-funded Africa Unity project, have been spectacular flops.
• It is, therefore, natural to take the AfCFTA, the AU’s most ambitious project so far, with a ladleful of salt.

Challenges to the AfCFTA

• Second, serious political, organisational and logistical challenges to the AfCFTA notwithstanding, the national economies in Africa are generally weak with a low manufacturing base.
• They also lack competitiveness and mutual complementarity. Only a sixth of Africa’s current total trade is within the continent.

Became countercyclical

• Third, the AfCFTA seems to be countercyclical to the ongoing global protectionist trends as seen in the U.S.-China trade conflict, Brexit and the stalemates at the World Trade Organisation and the United Nation Conference on Trade and Development.
• World trade is likely to grow only by 2.6% in 2019, a quarter of last year’s figure. Commodity prices are stagnant and globalisation is often being reversed.
• With Africa accounting for only 3% of global trade, can the AfCFTA defy the contrarian global tendencies?

Reasons to be cautiously optimistic

• Given the strong global headwinds including a cooling Chinese ardour for Africa, greater collective self-reliance through African economic integration makes eminent sense.
• Further, the AfCFTA can build upon the experience of the continent’s five regional economic blocks.
• While the AU Commission is not famous for efficient planning, it has prepared an extensive road map towards the AfCFTA with preliminary work on steps such as incremental tariff reduction, elimination of non-tariff barriers, supply chains and dispute settlement.
• In December 2018, it organised the first Intra-African Trade Fair in Cairo with 1,086 exhibitors signing $32 billion in business deals.
• A new breed of African transnational corporations such as Dangote, MTN, Ecobank and Jumia have continental ambitions.
• The logistical and financial networks across the continent are poor and customs formalities are foreboding, but these can be eventually overcome with stronger political will.
• Moreover, vigorous “informal” trade across porous national borders is already a fact of African life.

From the Indian angle

• Africa is already an important economic partner for India with total annual merchandise trade estimated at $70 billion or nearly a tenth of our global trade.
• India is Africa’s third largest trading partner. While India’s global exports have been largely stagnant, those to Africa have surged.
• For instance, exports to Nigeria in 2018-19 grew by over 33% over the previous year. Africa still has unfulfilled demand for Indian commodities, especially foodstuff, finished products (automobiles, pharmaceuticals, consumer goods) and services such as IT/IT-Enabled Service, health care and education, skilling, expertise in management and banking, financial services and insurance.

What India needs to?

• India needs to anticipate the AfCFTA’s likely impact on its interests and try to influence and leverage it to enhance India-African economic ties.
• In principle, African economies becoming more formalised and transparent would be in India’s interest.
• While local manufactured items and services may ultimately compete with Indian exports, Indian firms can co-produce them in Africa.
• If handled in a proactive manner, the AfCFTA is likely to open new opportunities for Indian stakeholders in fast-moving consumer goods manufacturing, connectivity projects and the creation of a financial backbone.
• India donated $15 million to Niger to fund the Niamey AU Summit.
• As the next step, New Delhi can help the AU Commission prepare the requisite architecture, such as common external tariffs, competition policy, intellectual property rights, and natural persons’ movement.
• It can also identify various African transnational corporations which are destined to play a greater role in a future continental common market and engage with them strategically.
• The cross-linkages of a three million strong Indian diaspora spread across Africa can also be very valuable.

Conclusion

• Finally, once the AfCFTA is accepted as beneficial game changer, the African elite could perhaps contemplate crossing another Rubicon: an India-African FTA.
• Before Africa was “discovered” by the West, it had a thriving overland trade.

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Don’t pick and choose (Indian Express)

Mains Paper 2: Polity
Prelims level: Industry-specific schemes
Mains level: Significance of the electric vehicle

Context

• The latest Union Budget has sought to do this in respect of certain “sunrise” and “advanced technology” sectors.
• Thus, it is proposed that global companies will be invited to set up mega-manufacturing plants for semiconductor fabrication, solar photovoltaic cells, lithium storage batteries and computer hardware.
• Such investments will be allowed income tax exemption against capital expenditures incurred.
• Equally significant is the focus on leapfrogging and making India a “global hub” for manufacturing of electrical vehicles (EV).
• Not only will the goods and services tax rate on EVs be reduced from 12 to 5 per cent, consumers will be provided income tax deduction of up to Rs 2.5 lakh on the interest paid on the loans taken to purchase these vehicles.

Persuasive arguments for such industry-specific schemes

• In 2018-19, electronic items accounted for $55.47 billion out of India’s total imports of $514.03 billion, next only to petroleum ($140.92 billion).
• Emphasis on greater domestic manufacture of the former, and giving a fillip to renewable energy and battery-powered vehicles in the case of the latter, certainly makes sense from a balance-of-payments standpoint.
• The East Asian tiger economies, China and Japan, have all used “industrial policy” via a mix of subsidies, tax breaks, directed bank lending and even import protection to achieve global leadership in core sectors.
• Japan’s steel industry, South Korea’s shipbuilders, Taiwan’s chip foundries and China’s solar panel or telecom equipment makers are products of such targeted government intervention.
• India’s auto industry the country’s exports of vehicles and components/parts added up to $14.28 billion in the last fiscal is equally the result of a phased manufacturing programme (PMP) that forced the likes of Suzuki to raise local content in their cars by developing a domestic vendor base.

But will such industrial policy work in today’s times?

• The idea of attracting “mega” investments in electronic manufacturing is old wine: There’s already a Modified Special Incentive Package Scheme from 2012, under which not a single project has taken off the ground.
• The success story of PMP is an exception that only proves the general rule at least in India about the government’s limited ability to promote select industries through a time-bound programme of incentives, without risking return of protectionism or capture by special interests.

Conclusion

• The government should stick to providing public goods (education, health, law and order, contract enforcement etc) and extend investment-linked deductions across sectors. The job of “picking winners” is better left to private industry.
• EVs are now 50-100 per cent costlier than regular vehicles.
• Continuous technology innovation will ensure they will, like solar power, get cheaper. And consumers will definitely buy when there is reliable charging infrastructure.

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Quota politics: on U.P.'s move to confer SC status on 17 backward castes (The Hindu)

Mains Paper 2: Polity
Prelims level: Backward castes
Mains level: Constitutional provisions on reservation status

Context

• The Uttar Pradesh government’s latest attempt to extend the benefits available to Scheduled Castes to 17 castes that are now under the Other Backward Classes (OBC) list has no legal basis and appears to be aimed at making political gains ahead of a round of by-elections to the State Assembly.

About the constitutional provisions

• It is fairly well- known that Parliament alone is vested with the power to include or exclude any entry in the SC list under Article 341 of the Constitution.
• Union Minister for Social Justice and Empowerment Thawar Chand Gehlot has clarified this position in Parliament, while suggesting that the State government follow due process.
• Uttar Pradesh has unsuccessfully tried to get some backward castes declared as Scheduled Castes in the past, once during the tenure of Mulayam Singh, and again during the rule of Akhilesh Yadav.

Implications from the previous verdict

• In 2016, a notification was issued stating that 17 castes were to be treated as Scheduled Castes.
• The matter reached the Allahabad High Court, but in an interim order in March 2017, the court observed that in case any certificates were issued on the basis of the notification, these would be subject to the outcome of the litigation.
• More than two years later, this order has been utilised by the Yogi Adityanath government to restore the proposal in an oblique manner.
• Though it is quite apparent that it is not a judicial directive, the State government has asked authorities in all districts to issue certificates to those from these castes.

Problem with this provision

• No doubt, these 17 castes comprise the most disadvantaged among the backward classes.
• Categorising the backward classes into two or three sections has been seen as one way to apportion the benefits of reservation among many social groups.
• In such an exercise, these castes may qualify for a compartment within the OBC quota.
• However, treating them as Scheduled Castes is beset with problems.
• For one thing, they may not qualify to be treated as SCs because they may not have suffered untouchability and social discrimination.
• What are the political motives?
• Given the legal limitations on the State government’s power to expand the SC list, it is not difficult to discern a political motive behind any move to confer SC status on sections of the OBC.
• When the Samajwadi Party was in power, one could say moving them to the SC list would have freed up more opportunities for the influential and politically dominant Yadavs in the OBC category.
• For the present BJP regime, the move could help carve out a vote bank from the newly declared SC groups.
• The Bahujan Samaj Party, which has opposed the move both in Parliament and outside, understands that new additions would shrink opportunities for the existing castes in the SC list. That is why its leader, Ms. Mayawati, has hinted that the reservation pie can be shared among more claimants only if its size is increased.

Conclusion

The U.P. government would be well-advised to avoid misleading vulnerable sections with the promise of SC status.

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Reclaiming the Indo-Pacific narrative (The Hindu)

Mains Paper 2: International Relations
Prelims level: Not much
Mains level: Indo-Pacific narrative

Context

• At the 34th summit of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) in Bangkok in June, its member states finally managed to articulate a collective vision for the Indo-Pacific region in a document titled “The ASEAN Outlook on the Indo-Pacific”.
• At a time when the geopolitical contestation between China and the United States is escalating, it has become imperative for the ASEAN to reclaim the strategic narrative in its favour in order to underscore its centrality in the emerging regional order.
• An awareness of the emergence of a great power contest around its vicinity pervades the document as it argues that “the rise of material powers, i.e. economic and military, requires avoiding the deepening of mistrust, miscalculation and patterns of behaviour based on a zero-sum game”.

Change in approach

• Despite individual differences and bilateral engagements ASEAN member states have with the U.S. and China, the regional grouping can now claim to have a common approach as far as the Indo-Pacific region is concerned and which the Prime Minister of Thailand, Prayuth Chan-ocha, suggested “should also complement existing frameworks of cooperation at the regional and sub-regional levels and generate tangible and concrete deliverables for the benefit of the region’s peoples”.

Code of Conduct in the China Sea

• Tensions continue to rise over the militarisation of this waterway; in June, a Philippine fishing boat sank after it was rammed by a Chinese vessel.
• It is hoped that the first draft of the code for negotiations will see the light by this year end.
• With these moves, the ASEAN is clearly signalling its intent to be in the driving seat as it seeks to manage the geopolitical churn around it.

In response to other major powers

• The release of the U.S. Free and Open Indo-Pacific (FOIP) strategy report in June — it focusses on preserving a “free and open Indo-Pacific” in the face of a more “assertive China” — was perhaps the final push that was needed to bring the ASEAN discussion on the subject to a close.
• Japan had already unveiled its Free and Open Indo-Pacific concept in 2016, while Australia released its Foreign Policy White Paper in 2017, detailing its Indo-Pacific vision centred around security, openness and prosperity.
• Prime Minister Narendra Modi articulated India’s Indo-Pacific vision at the Shangri-la Dialogue in 2018, with India even setting up an Indo-Pacific wing in the Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) earlier this year.

The framework

• The ASEAN is signalling that it would seek to avoid making the region a platform for major power competition.
• Instead its frame of reference is economic cooperation and dialogue.
• The fact that the ASEAN has gone ahead and articulated an Indo-Pacific outlook is in itself a seeming challenge to China which refuses to validate the concept.
• But the ASEAN’s approach is aimed at placating China by not allowing itself to align with the U.S.’s vision for the region completely.

India’s Response

• India has welcomed the ASEAN’s outlook on the Indo-Pacific as it sees “important elements of convergence” with its own approach towards the region.
• During U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo’s visit to India in June, India was categorical that it is “for something” in the Indo-Pacific and “not against somebody”, seeking to carefully calibrate its relations with the U.S. and China in this geopolitically critical region.
• As External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar has suggested “[and] that something is peace, security, stability, prosperity and rules”.
• India continues to invest in the Indo-Pacific; on the sidelines of the recent G-20 Summit in Osaka, Japan, Mr. Modi held discussions on the Indo-Pacific region with U.S. President Donald Trump and Japan Prime Minister Shinzo Abe with a focus on improving regional connectivity and infrastructure development.

Conclusion

• With the ASEAN finally coming to terms with its own role in the Indo-Pacific, the ball is now in the court of other regional stakeholders to work with the regional grouping to shape a balance of power in the region which favours inclusivity, stability and economic prosperity.

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Crimes that India’s statute books have failed to define (The Hindu)

Mains Paper 1: Society
Prelims level: Crimes against humanity
Mains level: Crimes against humanity and its effect in Indian society

Context

• Neither ‘crimes against humanity’ nor ‘genocide’ has been made part of India’s criminal law, a lacuna that needs to be addressed urgently.
• The case concerned the mass killing of Sikhs during the anti-Sikh riots in 1984 in Delhi — and throughout the country.
• The court categorically stated that these kind of mass crimes “engineered by political actors with the assistance of the law enforcement agencies” fit into the category of crimes against humanity (CAH).

About crimes against humanity

• Internationally, CAH are dealt with under the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court (ICC).
• They are defined as offences such as murder, extermination, enslavement, deportation, torture, imprisonment and rape committed as a part of “widespread or systematic attack directed against any civilian population, with knowledge of the attack”.
• India is not a party to the Rome Statute, which means that it is under no obligation at present to enact a separate legislation dealing with CAH.
• Even after ratification of the Genocide Convention (1948), India has not enacted it in domestic legislation.

Reasons for reluctance

• The most probable reason for India’s reluctance to actively participate in the negotiation process on a separate Convention on CAH, which started in 2014, could be the adoption of the same definition of CAH as provided in the Rome Statute.
• The Indian representatives at the International Law Commission (ILC) have stated that the draft articles should not conflict with or duplicate the existing treaty regimes.
• India had objected to the definition of CAH during negotiations of the Rome Statute on three grounds.

Statute on three grounds

• First, India was not in favour of using ‘widespread or systematic’ as one of the conditions, preferring ‘widespread and systematic’, which would require a higher threshold of proof.
• Second, India wanted a distinction to be made between international and internal armed conflicts. This was probably because its internal conflicts with naxals and other non-state actors in places like Kashmir and the

Northeast could fall under the scope of CAH.

• The third objection related to the inclusion of enforced disappearance of persons under CAH. It is pertinent here that India has signed but not yet ratified the UN International Convention for the Protection of All Persons from Enforced Disappearances as it would put the country under an obligation to criminalise it through domestic legislation.

Conclusion

• India’s missing voice at the ILC does not go well with its claim of respect for an international rules-based order.
• Turning a blind eye to the mass crimes taking place in its territory and shielding the perpetrators reflect poorly on India’s status as a democracy.
• It would be advisable for India to show political will and constructively engage with the ILC, which would also, in the process, address the shortcomings in the domestic criminal justice system.

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Ethics cannot be outsourced (The Hindu)

Mains Paper 4: Ethics
Prelims level: Not Much
Mains level: Ethical views and behavior

Context

• How effective is the office of the news ombudsman in this age of polarisation? Are news ombudsmen inherently liberal? Are they fair to conservative views?
• Some readers saw a liberal bias in my handling of complaints relating to a report in this newspaper on the food served by The Akshaya Patra Foundation.The Organization of News Ombudsmen and Standards Editors and the Columbia Journalism Review (CJR) in New York discussed these contentious issues at length recently.

Growing distance

• It was a distinguished panel. Todd Gitlin, Professor and Chair of the Ph.D. programme at the Columbia Journalism School, articulated the liberal view. John Carney from Breitbart News, a right-wing news and opinion website, sought more space for conservative voices.
• Mr. Gitlin argued that workers today spend all their time in soul-crushing conditions and therefore need stimulation.
• Their need for sensation is fulfilled by various media, which have fostered a society of disposable emotions and short attention spans. Such a society, he said, threatens to make democracy a sideshow.
• Mr. Carney said that liberals due to their biases refuse to grant a fair space for conservative viewpoints on a range of issues. Kelly McBride, the Craig Newmark Journalism Ethics Chair at The Poynter Institute, was brought in as a neutral voice.
• The issue was not resolved, but the discussion helped in realising the growing distance between the two strands of thought and the strain of this on the information ecology.

Is it possible to externalise this role?

• In the eyes of CJR, Public Editors and ombudsmen have historically stood as critical advocates for consumers of news, identifying blind spots that outlets can’t see themselves and operating as collectors of critical opinion when decisions go awry.
• CJR argued that the flameout of Public Editors in the U.S., which reached a point of despair in 2017 when The New York Times sent its last Public Editor packing, is the most visible sign of the growing distance between news organisations and the people they serve.
• To restore a sense of fairness, and to handle difficulties in journalism in an election cycle when issues are going to be contentious, and voices partisan and vicious, the journalism magazine has appointed four new public editors, for The New York Times, The Washington Post, CNN, and MSNBC.

A delicate balance

• While I understand the reasons that prompted CJR to have four public editors for these major U.S. media outlets, but not sure whether it will be effective.
• A news ombudsman is given unbridled access to the process of news-gathering. Post-publication of a story, he or she discusses with the Editor the thought process behind the decision to publish that story.
• Ombudsmen, editors and reporters share the ethical framework of journalism.
• But what the level of access the CJR-nominated Public Editors will have to the reporting and the editing teams of their respective news organisations.

Conclusion

• Further, to have a Public Editor is to have a self-regulation mechanism; hence, it would be better for publications to nominate a designated person with clearly formulated terms of reference, rather than have an external body.

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Mumbai’s tragedy (Indian Express)

Mains Paper 3: Disaster Management
Prelims level: Not Much
Mains level: Crisis management

Context

• Another Mumbai monsoon tragedy has yielded another high-level inquiry, this time to probe the circumstances in which at least 26 Mumbaikars died when a wall along a suburban hillock collapsed on two shanty colonies.
• A technical experts’ committee will also probe if the quality of construction and design of the wall along the slope was appropriate.

Highlighting the incident

• The first week of rains left thousands with flooded and damaged homes and vehicles.
• The suburban railway and bus transportation systems are counting their losses, running into crores, from flood water ingress.
• Thousands of underground water tanks in suburban residential colonies are contaminated, and municipal authorities are bracing for an impending round of viral and water-borne diseases.
• Incidentally, even as rains battered the financial capital earlier this week, a CAG report tabled in the Maharashtra state legislature slammed agencies for incomplete works on flood preparedness.
• After every major tragedy in Mumbai, inquiry reports point to blinkered urban planning and moribund municipal governance.
• The tiresome trope about Mumbai’s resilience almost appears to be its undoing the city that never stops returns to business as usual and long-term corrective measures are forgotten.

Background

• At least two near-stampedes on stations on the suburban railway system were reported this past week, almost as if 23 Mumbaikars headed to work never died in the September 2017 Elphinstone Road station stampede.
• After the 2005 deluge that claimed over 700 lives in the city after a 944 mm downpour in a single day, not only were large parts of a fact-finding committee’s recommendations never implemented, but 14 years and several hundred crores later, a project to rejuvenate the Mithi River, Mumbai’s mother drainage system, remains incomplete.
• But very recent lessons on sustainable development are already a hazy memory.
• Just last monsoon, the marooning of satellite towns, Vasai-Virar, following a three-day deluge suggested that the devastating results of Mumbai’s development trajectory were playing out in a suburb, not in a distant future.
• The peculiarity of Vasai-Virar’s relatively inexpensive housing market is the widespread construction on flood plains, reclaimed wetlands and former salt pan lands — all buffers against flooding.

Conclusion

• Corruption and incompetence in infrastructure planning and governance cannot be brushed under the climate change carpet.
• Various agencies responsible for Mumbai’s ramshackle systems must do both fix accountability for the dereliction and simultaneously mandate scientific sustainability studies to inform all development planning, zoning initiatives, real estate development and mass transit projects.

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Faint lines in water (Indian Express)

Mains Paper 3: Environment
Prelims level: Jal Shakti ministry
Mains level: Strategies taken towards crop diversification and saves to drinking water perspective

Context

• The FM has rightly spoken of a “focus on integrated demand and supply side management of water at the local level, including source sustainability and management of household wastewater for reuse in agriculture.

Background

• Historically, India has suffered from “hydro-schizophrenia”, wherein the left hand of drinking water did not know what the right hand of irrigation was doing.
• When the drinking water aquifer was also used to irrigate water-intensive crops, it led to an exhaustion of drinking water.
• The formation of the Jal Shakti Ministry is a positive first step in overcoming this problem.
• As the FM says, “This new Mantralaya will look at the management of our water resources and water supply in an integrated and holistic manner.”

Steps taken by the government

• The main water-related announcement in the budget is of “piped water supply to all rural households by 2024”.
• The FM has rightly spoken of a “focus on integrated demand and supply side management of water at the local level, including source sustainability and management of household wastewater for reuse in agriculture”.
• This is a very welcome departure from the earlier focus only on the supply side.

Certain preconditions

• We need a clear understanding of the aquifers to be used for water supply. The National Aquifer Management Programme and the Atal Bhujal Yojana are both pioneering initiatives but they have failed to take off, primarily because the requisite multi-disciplinary capacities are missing within government.
• Paradoxically, as groundwater has become India’s most important source, groundwater departments, at the Centre and in all states, have only become weaker.
• We need to urgently reverse this trend. We must also recognise that aquifer management at this unprecedented scale cannot be left to government alone.
• It demands a large network of partnerships with relevant stakeholders, across the board.
• We also need to ensure that the entire water supply system is operated and managed by local institutions led by women, adequately empowered to do so.
• They should decide upon tariffs for this water in a transparent and collective manner.
• Only then can these systems become sustainable and overcome historically inherited gender, caste and class inequities.

Priorities drinking water

• While drinking water is the first priority, we must remember that 90 per cent of India’s water is consumed in agriculture.
• Without reducing this number, we can never hope to meet the domestic water needs of rural and urban India. Irrigation is monopolised by a few water-intensive crops like wheat, rice and sugarcane, even in chronically drought-prone states.
• A small reduction in the area under these crops would go a long way in addressing India’s water problem.
• Any player in the stock market knows that to counter market volatility, we must diversify our stock portfolio. Farming faces an additional risk: Unpredictability of the weather.
• For such a risky enterprise to adopt monoculture is patently suicidal. But that is what policy has implicitly driven farmers to do.

Needs to incentivize crop diversification

• Farmers grow water-intensive crops mainly because these are the only crops with an assured market, thanks to government procurement or private purchase.
• We need to urgently diversify public procurement to include less water-consuming and more nutritious crops such as traditional millets and pulses.
• If we were to introduce them into the diets of the Integrated Child Development Services and Mid-day Meal Programs, globally the largest nutrition initiatives for children ever, we would create a large and steady demand for these crops, while also generating multiple win-wins.
• Greater water security, better soil health, higher, more stable net incomes for farmers and robust consumer health.

Way forward

• It also appears that the Department of Water Resources within the new Jal Shakti ministry has not yet had the time to shake-off its outmoded pattern of budgetary allocations and its silo-based approach to surface and groundwater.
• This is totally in conflict with the refreshingly bold pronouncements of the new Jal Shakti minister who seems fully committed to holistic, bottom-up river-basin management and river rejuvenation.
• It is also very strange to find that the watershed programme is not within the Jal Shakti Ministry, even though it is part of the PM Krishi Sinchai Yojana. Pathetically low allocations for this key programme are also a cause for serious concern.

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The macro does not gel with the micro (The Hindu)

Mains Paper 3: Economy
Prelims level: $5 trillion economy
Mains level: Strategies adopting towards $5 trillion economy

Context

• The maiden Budget presented by Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman was much looked forward to partly because she is the first woman to hold this post full time, an achievement for our democracy.
  Attention to detail
• Though her speech was perhaps a little combative, as she kept asserting the achievements of the first Narendra Modi government, it was nevertheless marked by even-handedness and attention to detail that is rare.
• The first was seen in the methodical way in which she ranged over the areas manufacturing, Gramin India, Shahari India, women, and the youth.
• One of the many instances in which the second was evident is in the elaboration of the proposed elimination of human interface in the conduct of scrutiny for taxpayers.
• However, there was a disconnect in the speech.
• At the outset, Ms. Sitharaman appeared to assert that India is headed towards becoming a $5 trillion economy by 2024.
• However, much of the rest of her speech was concerned with what this economy would look like there would be widely dispersed social and physical infrastructure; a low-carbon footprint; and housing for all, among other desirable things.
• We were not told how the country will get there. And getting there is important, for the things that have been promised need to be paid for and there has to be the income for this.

Improving ease of living

• The infusion of ₹70,000 crore into public sector banks would be a significant contribution to easing the liquidity situation caused by non-performing assets.
• It is mentioned that this will be accompanied by governance reforms, though we do not know as yet what form they will take, which alone will determine how significant they will be.
• The package for the financial sector also includes a time-bound public guarantee to commercial banks that acquire assets of the presently troubled Non-Banking Financial Companies (NBFCs).
• This should bring some stability to the NBFC sector, instability in which would ruin the lives of hundreds of investors and choke lines of credit outside the banking sector.
• In case it is found that the capital infusion is inadequate, the government can always increase it later in the financial year, but to have intervened at this stage of liquidity shortage is statesmanly.
• The proposals on taxation include changes in both tax liability and administration. The exemption limit on the income tax has been raised but the surcharge has now been increased on those in the highest two tax brackets.
• There is a balancing act here. Similarly, the upper limit for eligibility for the lowest slab of the corporate tax has been raised from ₹250 crore to ₹400 crore.
• This in line with the demands of India’s corporate sector but it may not be what is best for the economy at a time when the government needs as much revenue as it can garner to quicken it.

New era of tax administration

• However, the Budget may have initiated a new era with respect to the tax administration. Compliance is to be made easier for the taxpayer.
• There are to be pre-filled tax returns and less human interaction in the event of tax scrutiny.
• There will be ‘faceless assessment’ through the use of an electronic mode. Face-to-face encounters between inspectors and the assesses will be eliminated, with notices sent from a central Income Tax cell.
• Some similar simplification is to be done in the sphere of the Goods and Services Tax too. The Minister is right to speak of all this as a “paradigm shift” in the functioning of the tax department.
• While it is surprising that she equated the ease of paying taxes with the ease of living in India, which must take far more into account, it is the case that individuals have experienced powerlessness when dealing with the tax department.

Where the Budget fails

• This Budget’s failing is in not setting out the means by which the government is to take the economy to the aspirational $5 trillion level. Barring unforeseen productivity surges, we must assume that investment holds the key.
• At least the Economic Survey tabled earlier spoke of the importance of investment, even though it somewhat ideologically confined validity to private investment.
• The Budget has nothing to say on the matter. Perhaps it is believed that the very return of this government is sufficient to release the ‘animal spirits’ of private investors.
• However, this would amount to overlooking the history since 2014.
• In this period, though there has been macroeconomic stability and much attention has been paid to the ease of doing business, private investment has declined.
• These points to the limits to confining yourself to the supply side when you are interested in growth, which this government is doing.

Way ahead

• Moving to a $5 trillion economy by 2024 would require growing at a rate faster than the average that has been achieved since 2014.
• There is no mention in the Budget of public investment, stepping up of which would be essential even to stimulate private investment right now.
• Capital expenditure has been raised by much less than the actual increase in the past year.
• One way of seeing this Budget is that it is something good in parts.
• It describes with admirable practicality what we would like to see in India, from water connections to roads. But it is not convincing on how we can have the growth to afford them.
• We might say then that the macroeconomics does not gel with the microeconomics.

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Searching for reform signals (The Hindu)

Mains Paper 3: Economy
Prelims level: Union Budget 2019
Mains level: Key highlights and reforms

Context

• There were high expectations from the Budget to provide a clear road map for much-needed reforms, given that the government received an unprecedented electoral mandate.
• The GDP growth in the last quarter of 2018-19 was the slowest in the last five years, and considering that the capacity utilisation in manufacturing has already peaked, reviving the investment climate is critical to accelerate economic growth.
• The unemployment rate, which is 6.1%, is the highest in four decades.
• With the Economic Survey making a pitch for creating a virtuous cycle of saving and investment, there was hope that there would be far-reaching announcements in the Budget.

Balancing the books

• From that perspective, it is noteworthy that she has tried to show her commitment to the process of fiscal consolidation by keeping the fiscal deficit budgeted at 3.3%.
• The difference between the 3.4% budgeted in the interim Budget and this is mainly due to higher GDP estimates (₹93,168 crore) used in the denominator.
• The revenue is lower by ₹55,463 crore compared to the interim Budget estimate but this is offset by non-tax revenue estimated to be higher by ₹40,532 crore.
• Thus, there are not many significant departures from the estimates of revenue and expenditure presented in the interim Budget.
• The gross income tax revenue is estimated to be lower than the interim Budget by ₹90,000 crore, mainly on account of lower GST (₹97,857 crore) and individual income tax (₹51,000 crore).
• Despite taking lower estimates, the revenue estimates look far too optimistic in comparison with the pre-actuals given by the Controller General of Accounts.
• To realise the Budget estimates, the increase over the actual tax collected in 2018-19 in gross tax revenue will have to be 21.2%, net tax revenue must rise by 25.3%, and the non-tax revenue will have to increase by 27.2%.

Reforming labour laws

• The most important reform measure in the Budget is the proposal to streamline multiple labour laws into a set of four labour codes.
• Although the details are not yet available, it is hoped that the government will embark on the much-needed reforms in this area.
• This is a contentious issue that has been long debated.
• The Economic Survey too has referred to the need to make the factor markets less distorting and the disincentives these laws create in ensuring optimal sizes.
• Hopefully, the government will address this in the interest of increasing employment and exports of labour-intensive goods.

The reform front

• On the reform front, while much was expected, the Budget has been clearly disappointing.
• There are very few measures that can steer the economy to acceleration, leave alone changing gear to achieve the aspirational goal of achieving 8% growth to reach a $5 trillion economy by 2024.
• On the contrary, some of the measures take us back to the pre-reform era.
• Over the last three years, there has been a steady increase in import tariff in the name of ‘Make in India’, and with the U.S. coming hard on India by terminating India’s designation as a beneficiary developing nation under the key Generalised System of Preferences programme, it was hoped that there would be an attempt at lowering and reducing the expansion of the protectionist wall.
• The objective of ‘Make in India’ should be to make the economy competitive and not to dish out higher cost, inferior products to domestic consumers.
• By selective increases in customs duty and by varying the rates based on whether the item is an intermediate good, capital good and final consumer good, the Budget has caused the effective rate of protection on many items to be much higher than the nominal rates

Reform banking system

• One of the major initiatives needed at the present juncture is to reform the banking system.
• The Budget allocates ₹70,000 crore for the recapitalisation of public sector banks, but is silent on the urgently needed structural reforms including governance reforms.
• Nor are there any concrete measures to deal with the Non-Banking Financial Companies crisis apart from empowering the RBI to undertake the regulatory function.
• Not that everything has to be done in the Budget, but events have shown that there is a need to improve both the legal framework and governance system.
• Consolidation of public sector banks cannot serve the purpose of changing the structure of incentives and accountability.

Revive the investment climate

• The revival of the economy requires the revival of the investment climate.
• A recent OECD study has shown that corporate taxes in India are very high amounting to almost 48% when the dividend distribution tax and surcharges are taken account of.
• The Budget in 2015-16 promised to bring the basic rate down to 25%.
• This was implemented for companies with a ₹250 crore turnover in the 2018 Budget; the present Budget increases it to ₹400 crore.
• Although these companies cover 90% of the number of companies, their tax payment is less than 10-15%.
• If large investments have to be attracted, then the reduction should have been general and the scaffolding approach can only disincentivise the companies to grow bigger and better.
• This only discourages the companies from becoming larger.
• While the Economic Survey is eloquent about the need to transform the ‘dwarfs into giants’, the various measures taken in the Budget to incentivise the MSMEs amount to reiterating that ‘small is beautiful’.

Cooperative federalism

• The Finance Minister speaks about the rejuvenated Centre-State dynamic and commitment to cooperative federalism shown by the government during the last five years.
• At the same time, most of the measures taken to raise additional revenues are by way of cesses and surcharges.
• The increase in income tax for people with more than ₹2 crore and ₹5 crore is by way of additional surcharge.
• Similar is the case with additional tax on petrol and diesel. This is clearly to exclude the additional revenue raised from the divisible pool and deny the share of the tax to the States.
• Hopefully, the Finance Commission which is deliberating on the devolution will take note of the issue.
• On any case, such measures do not promote cooperative federalism.

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