Selected Articles from Various News Paper: Civil Services Mentor Magazine - May 2016

Selected Articles from Various Newspapers & Journals

War and possible peace in Syria

The agreement reached in Munich by major world powers, including the United States and Russia, to work towards a cessation of hostilities in Syria within a week is the most constructive step yet to find a political solution to the country’s civil war. For years, the world looked away when Syria was transformed 0into a geopolitical battlefield where several countries were involved, either directly or through their proxies, to maximise their interests. The war has nearly destroyed the country, triggering an unprecedented humanitarian crisis. A report released last week by the Syrian Centre for Policy Research paints a picture graver than what even the UN had estimated. About 470,000 people have been killed and 1.9 million injured since the crisis began in March 2011. Nearly 45 per cent of the population has been displaced, while life expectancy has dropped from 70 to 55.4 in five years. That a civil war in a small nation of about 23 million people was allowed to get this catastrophic, itself points to the failures of the international system.

The positive development in the Munich agreement is that both Russia and the U.S. have strongly come out for a cessation of hostilities. Russia is directly backing the regime of President Bashar al-Assad, while the U.S. and its allies, Saudi Arabia and Turkey, support the anti-regime rebels. To be sure, both blocs have different solutions to offer for the crisis. While the Russians want the regime to be sustained, with or without Mr. Assad, the Americans and their allies want Mr. Assad to go. Still, there is some common ground. Both Washington and Moscow are fighting the Islamic State. Despite its military intervention in favour of the Assad regime, Russia is consistently pushing for an eventual political solution. The U.S. has over the years mellowed its hardline stand. Though it still calls for Mr. Assad’s ouster, it doesn’t say when he should go. This common ground opens the possibilities for a ceasefire, which, if it is put in place successfully, could set the stage for serious negotiations. But even the implementation of a ceasefire faces serious challenges. Since the Russian intervention, the regime forces have made substantial advances on the ground. The weakening of rebel positions has upset their regional backers. Saudi Arabia and Turkey have announced they are considering sending ground troops to Syria. If they do that, Russia would be forced to expand their involvement, which would dangerously escalate the crisis. Another key question is whether President Assad, already emboldened by the military advances made, would be ready to make concessions. In an interview last week he vowed to retake the whole of the country by force. But after the near-total destruction of Syria, it is delusional to think of a military solution. If the U.S. and Russia are committed to the Munich agreement, they should put serious pressure on their allies and bring them to the table. That’s the only way forward for Syria.

State overreach on the campus

The Union government’s response to the recent developments at Jawaharlal Nehru University betrays a disquieting intent to create an atmosphere of fear amongst its students and teachers. The rationale for the police action was an event to mark the anniversary of the execution of Afzal Guru, a convict in the Parliament attack case, and it is alleged that slogans were raised against India’s sovereignty. However, unless there was actual incitement to violence, there really was no case for the police to swoop down on the campus, arrest students, and slap charges of sedition and criminal conspiracy on them. The Delhi Police seemed to have taken the cue from a remark made by Union Home Minister Rajnath Singh that “anti-national activities” would not be tolerated, and invoked the draconian pre-Constitution law of sedition. The arrest of Kanhaiya Kumar, president of the JNU Students’ Union, who belongs to the All-India Students’ Federation, an organisation known to be affiliated to the CPI, is quite inexplicable, except in terms of the theory that he was chosen for his political antipathy to the Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad, the RSS’s student wing. Neither his union nor the party to which it is affiliated supports separatism in Kashmir or opposes parliamentary democracy. The union has in fact disassociated itself from the views expressed by a small group of students who organised the event. Yet, an impression is sought to be created that Mr. Kumar and many other like-minded student activists in JNU are ‘anti-national’.
Once again, Section 124-A of the Indian Penal Code, which makes sedition punishable with life imprisonment, has been casually invoked despite the Supreme Court repeatedly cautioning that even words indicating disaffection against the state will not constitute the offence, unless there is a call for violence or a pernicious tendency to create public disorder. It is difficult to dismiss the police action as a routine or expected response by the state to reports of allegedly anti-national speeches. The JNU campus nurtures political opinion of all shades. It is a haven for legitimate dissent and a locus of inevitable differences. Its atmosphere should not be undermined by some to whom its intellectual space is an eyesore. In recent times, the suicide of a scholar in the University of Hyderabad roiled the student community across the country and created an upsurge against the ruling dispensation wielding its ideological influence on campus activities. The misconceived manner in which Afzal Guru was commemorated by a handful of JNU students should not be a provocation for tarring the students’ union with the brush of alleged anti-nationalism. The government should not sense in these developments an opportunity to suppress all dissent and seek to kill the ideological orientation of some student groups. Deviation from its own notion of nationalism cannot be treated as sedition. The line between dissent and treason may be thin to some, but the ability to distinguish between the two is a constitutional duty of the state. And given the history of its misuse and its incompatibility with a modern Constitution, Section 124-A of the IPC ought to be junked altogether.

Sedition and the government

The arrest by the Delhi Police, at the behest of the Home Ministry, of Kanhaiya Kumar, president of the Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) Students’ Union, on complaints of sedition, represents the latest deplorable attack on free speech by the Indian state. The move presents with vivid clarity the government’s pointed efforts at quelling any and every form of dissent. It also, through the invocation of Section 124-A of the Indian Penal Code (IPC), 1860, provides a stark reminder of the sheer depravity of some of our antiquated, colonial-era laws.

In the case of Section 124-A of the IPC, which defines sedition in wide, expansive terms, and punishes the act with imprisonment for life, the danger doesn’t lie merely in its abuse, or even in its potential for causing anti-democratic mischief. Unlike other provisions that might assume a pitiless character based on the nature of their usage, Section 124-A is intrinsically draconian. The problems in the clause are obviously apparent in its wordings, and the purpose that it unequivocally seeks to achieve: a suppression of all kinds of opposition.

Although sedition was originally a part of the IPC, as drafted by Thomas Macaulay, it was bizarrely dropped from the law when it was enacted in 1860. A decade later, the offence was introduced into the IPC as Section 124-A, following explicit recognition from the colonial government that the earlier omission was based on a mistake. The provision, as it reads today after some amendments, defines sedition as any action — whether by words, signs or visible representation — which “brings or attempts to bring into hatred or contempt, or excites or attempts to excite disaffection towards the Government established by law in India”. Tellingly, the section also contains a clarification to the effect that the word “disaffection” includes disloyalty and all feelings of enmity.

In 1942, for the first time, the courts in India raised pressing questions against the use of sedition as a weapon to chill all innocent forms of dissidence. Sir Maurice Gwyer, the chief justice of the Federal Court, ruled that “public disorder, or the reasonable anticipation or likelihood of public disorder, is the gist of the offence”. In so doing, he drew a necessity for a link between words uttered and actual threat of violence for maintaining a prosecution of sedition. But Gwyer’s ruling fell short of devising any rational test to determine how this link had to be drawn, as to how imminent an act of violence had to be for the state to prosecute a speech or expression. Nonetheless his reasoning gave to the offence of sedition an iota of legitimacy.

After the Constitution was adopted in 1950, it appeared Section 124-A would soon be denounced as an abhorrent relic of our colonial past. After all, efforts made by some members of the Constituent Assembly to include sedition as an express ground for limiting speech in Article 19(2) had been successfully resisted. Moreover, the reasoning adopted in the two earliest free speech cases decided by the Supreme Court — Brij Bhushan v. State of Delhi and Romesh Thapar v. Union of India — also pointed to the incompatibility of laws of sedition with the Constitution. In both these cases, efforts to ban publications on the purported threats that they posed to public safety were ruled unconstitutional, since the exception in Article 19(2), as it read then, was restricted to dangers to the security of the state. When the first amendment to the Constitution was introduced, to include public order as a specific limitation to free speech, Prime Minister Nehru was still categorical in his belief that the offence of sedition was fundamentally unconstitutional. “Now so far as I am concerned [Section 124-A] is highly objectionable and obnoxious and it should have no place both for practical and historical reasons, if you like, in any body of laws that we might pass,” he said, in Parliament. “The sooner we get rid of it the better.”
Yet, more than 65 years later, sedition continues to not only remain in the IPC, but also occupies a pride of place in the state’s arsenal. This is because, astonishingly, in spite of two different High Courts having found sedition unconstitutional, in 1962, the Supreme Court upheld Section 124-A, in Kedar Nath Singh v. State of Bihar . Here, the court adopted a flawed premise that the law was enacted in the interest of public order, which was by then one of the specifically recognised limitations to free speech. Although this ruling is in accord with elements of Gwyer’s reasoning, it is clear, as we saw earlier, that the colonial government thought of seditious speech as punishable on its own accord. They saw no requirement for the establishment of any link between such expressions and the maintenance of public order.

In the decades since Kedar Nath Singh , Indian free speech jurisprudence has gone through substantial change. The court has proceeded towards expounding something resembling a practical theory that distinguishes advocacy and incitement. In 1995, the court acquitted some men who had raised a number of seemingly incendiary slogans in the wake of Indira Gandhi’s assassination, on the grounds that there existed no link between the slogans and actual threats to public order. Last year, in Shreya Singhal v. Union of India , in declaring unconstitutional the notorious Section 66A of the Information Technology Act, the court ruled that speech howsoever offensive, annoying or inconvenient cannot be prosecuted unless its utterance has, at the least, a proximate connection with any incitement to disrupt public order.

Never waste a crisis

Finance ministers are judged unsympathetically on fiscal deficits and Mr. Jaitley is well aware of this. No finance minister wants to be remembered as the one on whose watch the government missed a target. And for Mr. Jaitley, who committed this sin by pausing on fiscal consolidation in his last Budget, it is time to seek redemption.

Yet, back on his table again this year is Keynesian advice: invest your way out of sub-8 per cent GDP growth to steer the economy to a higher trajectory.

The highest GDP growth rates in India’s history came under the United Progressive Alliance government. But the boom ended quickly when growth plummeted to sub-5 per cent in its dying years. GDP grew 7.3 per cent in the October-December quarter of 2015-16, slower than the upwardly revised 7.7 per cent in July-September. On February 29, when Mr. Jaitley will present the Budget, scrutiny will be greater than what he has had to face earlier. Among those cautioning Mr. Jaitley against this type of growth strategy is the Reserve Bank of India Governor Raghuram Rajan, who holds the key to lower lending rates. Mr. Jaitley knows that without Mr. Rajan’s support, spurring private investments and growth will be almost impossible. Fiscal credibility will also make it possible to sustain the current growth rate, and to convert potential into actual growth. Should Mr. Jaitley preserve it by keeping the fiscal deficit reduction targets as they are? Or should he spend now with the hope that public investments will generate so much growth that he will be able to recoup the lost fiscal space in the form of higher taxes?

Since the passage of the Fiscal Responsibility and Budget Management Act in 2003, governments have paused on the consolidation path four times. In 2008-09, the year the 6th Central Pay Commission award was implemented, the government’s fiscal deficit doubled to 6 per cent. Living beyond its means meant that the UPA government’s borrowings from the markets shot up to a little over Rs. 3 lakh crore by the next year, thereby playing a big role in distorting interest rates. The then Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee projected the fiscal deficit at 6.8 per cent of GDP in his Budget; this earned the epithet ‘Going for Broke’. It is the same old devil again this year.

Mr. Jaitley has budgeted Rs. 1.1 lakh crore for pay and pension hikes, slightly more generous than the 7th Pay Commission’s recommendations.

The challenge of this huge outgo can only mean one thing: unpopular reforms are now inevitable. If challenges are opportunities, finance ministers need the strong support of their prime ministers. Mr. Modi must lend his weight to the bold and massive disinvestment plan that Mr. Jaitley has proposed. It can bring in revenue and also deliver on the goal of ‘minimum government’. Why must the government own and run the Balmer Lawrie, a Mini-Ratna I public sector enterprise, under the Ministry of Petroleum and Natural Gas? It makes steel barrels, industrial greases, specialty lubricants and runs a corporate travel and logistics service. Mr. Modi will have to show political appetite for strategic sales of such profitable state-owned companies.

Success on the disinvestment front will only help the Finance Minister and the Prime Minister sell de-control of urea prices and other such expenditure-side reforms to their Cabinet colleagues and industry lobbies. The low-hanging fruit of higher taxes on petrol and diesel won’t yield sufficient revenue. Mr. Jaitley will have to clean up the clutter of tax incentives for the corporate sector to plug revenue leakages and to set the stage for lower tax rates, as was promised in the last Budget. The business lobby is bound to be unenthusiastic about giving up sops, but Mr. Jaitley will have to resist pleas for their retention. The tax-GDP ratio has fallen below 11 per cent. The only way to improve this is to widen the net. Mr. Jaitley could chip away at the growing impression of the government as being pro-rich, by taxing high salaries. Industrialists, a big support group of the BJP, are by and large facing tepid domestic and international demand and are carrying mountains of debt on their balance sheets. They will expect a rescue operation. The public sector banks with the exposure to these bad loans and stressed assets will need bailouts.

In the Finance Minister’s defence, Union Budgets cannot be one-time fixes. Annual allocations to States were broadly fixed by the 14th Finance Commission last year, which Mr. Jaitley can only build on to some extent. Mr. Modi doesn’t wait for the Budget to announce big-ticket schemes such as crop insurance or financial inclusion. But having said that, some measures such as fixing the fiscal deficit can be taken only during the Budget.
If the decision to disburse the 7th Pay Commission award will suffuse into the economy the missing feel-good factor, disinvestment and discretionary urea and leaky kerosene subsidies rationalisation would score on the parameter of reforms and control the fiscal deficit. The chief architect of the National Democratic Alliance government’s first budget was a bureaucrat: former Finance Secretary Arvind Mayaram. The prime mover of the second was an economist: Chief Economic Adviser Arvind Subramanian. The strategy this time ought to be one scripted by Mr. Modi and Mr. Jaitley.

Make cities clean and sustainable

Acentury ago, Mahatma Gandhi lamented that the Indian city was mostly a stinking den, and Indians as a people were not used to city life. The squalid urban landscapes of the 21st century, with mountains of garbage merely relocated to the suburbs to maintain “clean cities”, would seem to prove that not much has changed since then. The quest for clean cities has only grown more complicated, as steady urbanisation is putting pressure on a poorly prepared municipal administration system, and the more affluent consumers produce ever-higher volumes of trash. The neglect of social housing, sanitation and water supply has ensured that there is nothing like a truly clean, green and sustainable city. It would not be fair, of course, to dismiss the efforts of cities such as Mysuru, Chandigarh and Tiruchirapalli, which have scored the top three ranks in the competition organised by the Swachh Bharat Mission of the Ministry of Urban Development to choose the cleanest cities for 2015. In fact, with the high level of political will now being shown to address the problem of waste and filth, there has never been a better time for State governments to act. Beyond the cosmetic solution of removing waste to landfills or releasing untreated sewage into hidden waterways, however, the challenge is staggering — even with the 1.04 crore household toilets and five lakh community and public toilets to be built, the sewage treatment capacity in cities would have to be expanded by 63 per cent. The scenario is equally depressing for solid waste, since only 20 per cent of it can be treated scientifically at present.

The Centre’s decision, against this background, to ask fertilizer companies to sell municipal compost is among the more promising initiatives to stem the rising pile of trash. Cities can take a leaf out of international best practices, and encourage communities to create food gardens in every area possible using this resource. At the very least, reduction of garbage can be achieved if residents start segregating their waste at home, and municipalities acquire the systems to manage it. But there is a major policy disconnect here, since tonnage-based contracts issued by cities have created a vested interest in transporting waste to landfills, rather than to reduce it through rules that require segregation, composting and recycling. The imagery of the Swachh Bharat Mission, which currently dwells on citizen behaviour and the visual appeal of clean cities, needs to extend to waste reduction and recycling. Building the necessary infrastructure is easier today, since a variety of financial instruments are available, including Central funds, corporate sponsorship and the Swachh Bharat cess on services that alone will garner an estimated Rs.3,700 crore during 2015-16. Achieving sustainable clean cities will ultimately depend on the attention devoted to human development and environmental governance. Without inclusive city planning, affordable housing, water and sanitation, the trend of urbanisation can only add to the squalor that depressed Gandhiji in Varanasi. This is the bulwark on which cities can achieve cleanliness and good health.

The curious case of Justice Karnan

In the chronicles of aberrant behaviour by judges, Justice C.S. Karnan of the Madras High Court would occupy one of the most prominent spots. Few judges have by their conduct within and outside the court damaged the standing of the judiciary to this degree or exposed the helplessness of the system in dealing with over-the-top functioning. The judge now appears to have crossed all bounds, and his understanding of the law is such that he takes up the case of his own transfer to the Calcutta High Court and “stays” the recommendation of the Chief Justice of India. This is just the latest instance of his ways that have included, even as a sitting judge, his going into the court when a Division Bench was hearing a petition on the selection of judges and seeking to file an affidavit opposing the list of appointees recommended by the Chief Justice. His interaction with other judges in the High Court was found to be so offensive that 21 of them signed a petition of complaint and a Chief Justice of the High Court was constrained to send a formal communication to the Chief Justice of India seeking his transfer. To top it all, the Madras High Court registry had to file a petition in the Supreme Court of India after he had passed a suo motu order “staying” the recommendation of the Chief Justice of India transferring him and get his order stayed. That he has frequently raised the issue of his caste status — complaining to the National Commission for Scheduled Castes and even threatening to file criminal charges under the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes (Prevention of Atrocities) Act against chief justices and other judges — in justification of his conduct, has only served to trivialise the issue of caste discrimination and the genuine difficulties that Dalits face.
It is inconceivable that so long a rope would have been given to any judge in a well-ordered democracy functioning under the rule of law. It was almost two years ago that the Supreme Court condemned Justice Karnan’s conduct in seeking to argue in another court as “uncharitable and ungenerous, and … indecorous.” Yet, he was allowed to continue with his ways, each subsequent episode marking a new low. While his initial selection is itself testimony to the weakness of the collegium system of appointments, the Karnan episode has brought to light the inadequacies of the judicial system in keeping its own house in order. Impeachment is one option, but if a judge facing impeachment chooses to brazen it out rather than resign, it goes before Parliament where political considerations come into play. Short of impeachment, very few effective measures seem to be available. Even the remedy of transfer now being applied would only shift the problem to another high court, though by removing him out of his familiar circle of friends and supporters it may serve to mute it. The most that can be said of the transfer is that it is better than doing nothing.

Right step on savings schemes

The 25-basis points reduction in interest rates on short-tenure small savings schemes from April 1 may have come as a huge disappointment for countless savers. For the middle class, especially for millions of retired persons, these schemes are risk-free, and provide safe parking slots for their hard-earned money. The returns these schemes offer also help them balance their budget. Read in this light, the decision to pare the interest rates on these schemes, even if only by a small measure, is bound to put the National Democratic Alliance government at the Centre in an uncomfortable position vis-à-vis a crucial component of society, the middle class, which is considered the core constituency of the Bharatiya Janata Party. The decision, however, must be viewed in the context of the big picture that is emerging on the national economy. The Reserve Bank of India cut the key policy rate by a total of 125 basis points in 2015, and it has only been partially transmitted to end-borrowers. In fact, a little less than half of this reduction had been passed on by banks to their clients. The problem, in a way, lies in the peculiar predicament the banks find themselves in. It is easy to put banks on the mat for not passing on the rate reduction to customers. Already under huge stress, they can do so only if they could correspondingly cut their deposit rates. But there is a catch here. The deposit mobilisation exercise of banks often encounters competition from these small savings schemes. By reducing the interest rates on short-term savings schemes, the government has sought to erase the ‘return advantage’ they currently enjoy over similar-tenure government securities. Indeed, it has set the stage for a uniform interest rate regime — at least from a short-term perspective — and cleared a major roadblock for banks in cutting their deposit rates, and eventually the lending rates as well. Viewed from this perspective, the move is a welcome one.

By leaving the interest rates on long-term and certain special category savings schemes unchanged, the government has sent out the message that it has in mind the larger good of society as a whole, and that it is keen to encourage people to save for the future. A distorted interest regime is the principal cause for driving the economy into a costlier zone. For individuals, no doubt, the impact of the interest rate cut on small savings schemes could be immediate and visible in terms of lower returns on their savings. However, the effect of such a cut will have a cascading effect on the entire value chain, and will inevitably bring the cost structure down for the economy. Surely, that is the right way to go. The government has indeed done well to take this less-than-popular step.

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