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Sl. No. LIST OF CONTENTS PAGE NO.
1 THE HINDU NEWSPAPER IMPORTANT 1
ARTICLES 30.01.2017
2 THE HINDU NEWSPAPER IMPORTANT 17
ARTICLES 31.01.2017
3 THE HINDU NEWSPAPER IMPORTANT 30
ARTICLES 01.02.2017
4 THE HINDU NEWSPAPER IMPORTANT 46
ARTICLES 02.02.2017
5 THE HINDU NEWSPAPER IMPORTANT 57
ARTICLES 03.02.2017
6 THE HINDU NEWSPAPER IMPORTANT 69
ARTICLES 04.02.2017
7 THE HINDU NEWSPAPER IMPORTANT 82
ARTICLES 05.02.2017

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THE HINDU NEWSPAPER IMPORTANT
ARTICLES 30.01.2017
FRONT PAGE
Court stops Trumps travel ban order
VARGHESE K. GEORGE
A judicial order on Saturday night stayed the
deportation of people from seven Muslim-
majority countries who arrived in the U.S after
President Donald Trump barred their entry into
the country through an executive order on Friday.
The judicial order does not deal with the merit of
the executive order issued by Mr. Trump that
could be deemed unconstitutional as it effectively
sanctions religious discrimination.
Anthony D. Romero, Executive Director of
American Civil Liberties Union that challenged
the presidential decision in the court on behalf of
two travelers from Iraq who were detained at the
JKF airport in New York, said: "Our courts today
worked as they should as bulwarks against
government abuse or unconstitutional policies and
orders. On Week One, Donald Trump suffered his
first loss in court.
The New York court order extends to all of
America and provides relief to people in similar
situations but at least three more court rulings on
similar lines have been reported from other States
by Saturday night.
"World - a horrible mess"
"Our country needs strong borders and extreme
vetting, NOW. Look what is happening all over
Europe and, indeed, the world - a horrible mess!
Mr. Trump tweeted on Sunday morning.
As the world watched with dismay Mr. Trump's
extreme though not unexpected move, protests
erupted across America, particularly at airports
where travelers were detained. Sergey Brin a
Russian immigrant and cofounder of Google
was among the protesters at San Francisco
International Airport. "Welcome home,"
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protesters chanted at Washington's Dulles airport
as two Iranian permanent residents in the U.S,
aged 88 and 83, rolled out on wheelchairs after
being detained for hours. "We are all Muslims
now," said a placard at JFK airport.
Before the court order Mr. Trump said the travel
restrictions did not amount to a ban on
Muslims. "It's not a Muslim ban very strict ban,
and we're going to have extreme vetting, which
we should have had in this country for many
years," he said in the Oval Office, as he signed
another executive order, to prepare within 30 days
a blueprint for defeating the IS. "It's working out
very nicely. You see it at the airports, you see it
all over," Mr. Trump said.
What happened to his promise?
Mr. Trump has said he will help Christians in
Syria, but a Christian family of six that obtained
U.S visas after a 15-year process was possibly the
first victims of his travel ban. On immigrant visas
meant for siblings for U.S citizens, the family was
detained and put back on a plane to Doha when
they arrived at the Philadelphia airport on
Saturday. They were not allowed to speak to their
relatives and unaware of the legal options
available, agreed to board a return flight.
"This family was sent home despite having all
their paperwork in order," Charlie Dent, a
Republican Congressman from Pennsylvania,
said. "So this 90-day ban could imperil the lives
of this family and potentially others, and it's
unacceptable, and I urge the administration to halt
enforcement of this order until a more thoughtful
and deliberate policy can be reinstated."
But the more prominent among his Republican
colleagues who had during the campaign
appeared to be questioning Mr. Trumps
eligibility to be President are either silent or
favouring the travel ban. As the 'NoBanNoWall'
protests gripped America, House Speaker Paul
Ryan defended the Presidential order and Senate
Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has remained
silent.
Detainees include green card holders
Those detained or not allowed to travel to
American include holders of permanent residency
permits popularly called green cards students
and business people. One of the two Iraqis
detained in New York worked for the American
military as an interpreter. A CNN report said the
White House overruled the opinion of career
officials in the Department of Homeland Security
that legal permanent residents cannot be denied
entry into the U.S.
Lee Gelernt, an ACLU official argued the case in
New York said: This ruling preserves the status
quo and ensures that people who have been
granted permission to be in this country are not
illegally removed off U.S. soil.
Conflict of interest?
Mr. Trumps selection of seven countries that
figure in the list has also brought into focus
questions of conflicts of interests that have been
haunting his presidency from the word go. The
seven countries have not been the source of any
terrorism in the U.S while countries such as Saudi
Arabia, the UAE and Egypt that are connected to
incidents of terrorism in the U.S are not included
in the list. Several commentators have linked this
to Mr. Trumps business links while he has
business interests in Saudi Arabia, Egypt, the
UAE and Qatar, he has none in the seven listed
countries.
Oil spill in Chennai dooms turtles
Special Correspondent
A thick oily tide from the sea lapped at the coast
of several fishing hamlets in north Chennai on
Sunday, a day after two cargo ships, one of them
an oil tanker, collided off Kamarajar Port in
Ennore.
Several dead turtles and hatchlings coated with
the black oil were washed ashore and discovered
among the boulders.
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By afternoon, the spread of oil was seen on a 400-
metre long stretch, 40 metres wide, near the
Ernavur junction.
Of the two ships, M.T. Dawn Kanchipuram
coming from Mumbai with a full load of petrol
and diesel collided around 4 a.m. on Saturday
with an LPG tanker, M.T. BW Maple.
Since there was a spill from the oil vessel, the
Ennore Kamarajar Port authorities placed
containment booms around the ships.
The floating oil along the shore of north Chennai
came as a shock to the fishing villages, since the
Port authorities had said on Saturday that there
was only a thin sheen from the ships and it would
disappear soon.
Hundreds of residents watched oil swirling in the
waters.
Right beyond Cherian Nagar beyond Kasimedu
fishing harbour, we have been smelling oil. And it
has made breathing quite difficult. We feel as if
there is a taste of oil in our mouths and we smell
of oil, said a vendor at the beach at Bharathiyar
Nagar, where hundreds of residents gathered to
watch the spectacle.
The Port insisted it had nothing to do with the
collision. Officials of the Tamil Nadu Pollution
Control Board (TNPCB) visited Bharathiyar
Nagar off Ernavur junction on the Ennore
Expressway, where the spill was visible even in
the evening.
TNPCB engineers said samples had been
collected and the type of oil would be ascertained
after tests.
A team of experts from IIT Madras too were at the
spot.
We went up to the Kamarajar Port but could spot
the oil only at one location. It does not seem like
petrol or diesel but looks like lube or furnace oil.
The samples will be analysed, a TNPCB official
said.
A Pollution Response team from the Coast Guard
that had been alerted by the TNPCB reached the
spot and used oil mop skimmers and sponge-like
absorbents.
NATIONAL
Jats begin quota stir in Haryana
Seeking reservation in government jobs for the
community, members of Jat organisations on
Sunday started their agitation in most districts of
Haryana.
The call for the fresh stir has been given by some
Jat outfits, especially those owing allegiance to
the All India Jat Aarakshan Sangharsh Samiti
(AIJASS) headed by Yashpal Malik.
Members of the Jat community are staging
peaceful dharnas at Ramayan village near the
Hisar-Bhiwani railway track, Jolilath village on
Sonipat-Gohana road, Jassia village on Rohtak
Highway, Rasalwala Chowk in Jhajjar, Umrakheri
village near Panipat-Shamli road, Bala village
near Assandh road in Karnal, Malik told PTI.
The agitation in Yamunanagar, Panchkula and
Mewat districts of the State will begin from
January 31, Malik said, adding that the dharnas
are peaceful...we are not blocking rail or road
traffic.
Violence in last years Jat stir claimed 30 lives
and caused huge damage to property in the State.
Maximum alert
However, officials said Haryana this time has
been put on maximum alert. Section 144 has
already been imposed in sensitive districts
including Rohtak, Sonipat, Jhajjar and at other
places as a precautionary measure, they said.
The assembly of five or more people in about 500
meters from the national and state highways as
well as railway stations in the city has been
prohibited, officials said, adding that paramilitary
forces and state police personnel have been
deployed in sensitive areas to maintain strict vigil.
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We are fully geared up to deal with any situation.
Although the leaders of various agitating
organisations have promised to hold dharnas in a
peaceful manner, yet the administration is fully
geared up to maintain law and order, Additional
Chief Secretary (Home) Ram Niwas said.
Additional forces sought
The Haryana government had sought 55
companies of paramilitary forces from the Centre
besides deployment of 7,000 Home Guards in the
State. Some companies of paramilitary forces
have already reached Haryana, Niwas said.
Rapid Action Force has been deployed at Munak
canal, which was damaged by the protesters
during the 2016 February stir, officials said,
adding that central forces have been conducting
flag marches in some sensitive areas since
Saturday.
Rohtak and some of its neighbouring districts,
including Sonipat and Jhajjar, were the worst-hit
in last years violence, which had also affected
Delhi as protesters had cut water supply to the
national capital.
Deputy Commissioners and Superintendents of
Police have been directed to ensure that highways
and railway tracks are not obstructed and no
damage is caused to property, they said.
Haryana Chief Minister Manohar Lal Khattar
appealed to various organisations of the
community to maintain peace in the State, saying
the doors of his government are always open for
dialogue. PTI
SC cites Chola king in order
An ancient Chola king is the personification of a
perfect judge for the Supreme Court.
This king who ruled South India around 250 B.C.
has been the torch-bearer of the judges work
philosophy that nobody is above the law and all
are equal.
The legend of Manu Needhi Chozhan or Elara
the Chola king and how he had inspired
generations of judges was revealed in a recent
Supreme Court order dismissing a challenge to the
elevation of Justice J.S. Khehar as the countrys
44th Chief Justice of India in keeping with the
convention of seniority.
Usurped power
The order came on a petition filed by a group of
lawyers under the banner National Lawyers
Campaign for Judicial Transparency and Reforms
which had questioned Justice Khehars fairness
and eligibility to be the top judge. They alleged
the judge to have usurped the power to appoint
judges to the countrys constitutional courts
through his NJAC judgment.
Dismissing the allegation, a Bench of Justices
R.K. Agrawal and D.Y. Chandrachud drew a
parallel between the time-tested tradition of
justice administration practised by judges in
modern India and the ancient Chola kings sense
of justice without fear or favour.
The judges of all the courts, since its very
inception, have always maintained this great
tradition of the Chola king and are rendering even
justice to all concerned, whosoever he or she may
be, irrespective of the fact whether they are rich or
poor, and whether they occupy a high or a low
status in society, Justice Agrawal wrote.
When one enters the magnificent precincts of the
High Court of Madras which is a Chartered High
Court, he notices the statue of a man standing with
two wheels on either side with a calf and a small
child beneath each wheel, and a cow. He becomes
anxious to know the significance as to why and
for what purpose this statue is located near the
entrance of the High Court. The statue is that of
the ancient Chola King, Manu Needhi Chozhan,
also known as Elara, who ruled South India
around 250 B.C, Justice Agrawal observed in the
order.
Even justice
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The apex court narrated the legend of how Manu
Needhi Chozhan, who believed in even justice
towards friends and foes, had hung a giant bell in
front of his palace and announced that anyone
seeking justice could ring it and he will be heard.
One day, it so happened that a young calf had got
crushed under the wheels of his chariot, in which
his only son, young Prince Veedhividangan, was
going around the city. The mother of the calf,
which helplessly watched its little one die, walked
to the palace gates and rang the huge bell,
demanding justice from the king, the Supreme
Court order said.
The king, who came out, saw the cow and learnt
from his courtiers about the death of the calf
under the wheels of his sons chariot.
Unrelenting in his promise of justice, he ordered
his own son to be killed for his recklessness. The
prince was killed the same way the calf died,
crushed under the wheels of his chariot. The king
went through the same pain the cow had as he
witnessed his son die and thereby, being just at all
costs, the Supreme Court narrated.
How Manu Needhi Chozhan inspired
generations of judges was revealed in a Supreme
Court order
Atomic clocks on indigenous navigation satellite
develop snag
Madhumathi D.S.
NavIC, the indigenously built satellite- based
positioning system, has developed a technical
snag in the atomic clocks on its first satellite.
In the NavIC, a constellation of seven satellites,
one of the three crucial rubidium timekeepers on
IRNSS-1A spacecraft failed six months ago. The
other two followed subsequently.
A. S. Kiran Kumar, Chairman of the Indian Space
Research Organisation, confirmed the glitch in the
clocks but clarified that the satellite was otherwise
all right, and the rest of the satellites were
performing its core function of providing accurate
position, navigation and time. However, without
its clocks, the IRNSS-1A will give a coarse
value. It will not be used for computation.
Messages from it will still be used.
ISRO, he said, was trying to revive the clocks on
1A and readying one of the two back-up
navigation satellites to replace it in space in the
second half of this year.
There are some anomalies in the atomic clock
system on board. We are trying to restart it. Right
now we are working out a mechanism for
operating it, he told The Hindu .
He added, The problem is only with the clock
system of one spacecraft. The signals are all
coming, we are getting the messages, everything
else is working and being used, except the
stability portion which is linked to the clock.
Mr. Kiran Kumar said a minimum of four
working satellites was sufficient to realise the full
use of the navigation system.
NavIC has 21 atomic clocks on seven spacecraft.
How would the other clocks fare? Would ISRO
reconsider the supplier of its atomic clocks? Such
questions are not easy to answer. Generally any
[space] hardware is an issue. We have to find
ways of going around it, he said.
The troubled IRNSS-1A spacecraft was put in
space in July 2013 and has an expected life span
of 10 years. The seventh navigation satellite,
IRNSS-1G, was launched in April 2016.
The satellites of the Rs. 1,420-crore NavIC, short
for Navigation with Indian Constellation, and also
known as the Indian Regional Navigation Satellite
System, give precise information on position,
navigation and time (PNT) of objects or persons
to users on ground, sea and air.
The system has a restricted military component.
Similar glitches
Mr. Kiran Kumar agreed that the problem on
NavIC was similar to the atomic clock glitches
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that struck the European navigation constellation
Galileo.
On January 18, Jan Woerner, Director General of
the European Space Agency (ESA), which is
putting up the 26-satellite Galileo system, made
their problem public. Galileo has placed 18
spacecraft in space and is now deciding whether it
should launch the four satellites as planned this
year. He had also said they were in touch with
ISRO after nine of their clocks developed snags.
ESAs and ISROs clocks reportedly come from
the same Swiss company.
INTERNATIONAL
Think tanks divided over Trumps approach
towards China
Atul Aneja
The arrival of President Donald Trump at the
White House has triggered an intense debate
within Chinas influential think-tanks, with most
concurring that that the change of guard in the
United States poses serious challenges to China,
but also opens out new opportunities, including
likely support for the One Belt One Road (OBOR)
initiative.
At a more fundamental level, some analysts of are
of the view that that if Mr. Trump pursues the
mantra of American exceptionalism, it would
obstruct the betterment of Sino-U.S. ties.
The Americans claim they are exceptional, like a
city on a hill. But the world has changed and new
countries have emerged. But U.S. identity has not
changed. So the rise of China challenges U.S.
identity, Wang Yiwei, professor at Renmin
University told The Hindu .
Listing a variety of responses to Mr. Trumps
arrival among the Chinese think-tanks, the Hong
Kong based South China Morning Post quoted
Ting Gong, a researcher at the China Institute of
International Studies (CIIS) a think tank under
the Foreign Ministry as saying that Mr. Trump
was likely to be more supportive of Chinas One
Belt, One Road initiative than his predecessor
Barack Obama.
Yuan Zheng, a director of the U.S. Diplomacy
Research Centre at the China Academy of Social
Sciences (CASS), asserted that Mr. Trump
showed a clear tendency towards protectionism.
The new U.S. President was likely to adopt a
hardline approach in trade, demand for Beijing to
play by international rules and threaten it with
sanctions, SCMP said, quoting his paraphrased
remarks.
The Chinese establishment has opposed
Washingtons possible turn towards
protectionism. Liu Zongyi of of the Shanghai
Institutes for International Studies explained to
The Hindu that China believes that only by
opening up, globalisation and regional economic
cooperation can economic growth and social
development can be secured.
OPINION
Gandhi for our troubled times
Ramin Jahanbegloo
I once asked my students at Jindal Global
University about Mahatma Gandhis relevance in
todays India. Gandhi is only a name and an
image in India today, they commented coldly, as
if I had been taken in by a romantic view of India
which lived the Gandhian non-violence as a
Utopian dream far from the harsh reality of the
everyday life of Indians.
This may be true, I thought. Yet, even if there is
an ounce of truth in this argument, we need to be
reminded that Gandhi has been more appreciated,
read and practised seriously outside India than
among the last two generations of Indians.
Moreover, he remains a towering figure who
seems as fascinating as he was when he was
assassinated by Nathuram Godse. The impact of
his philosophy of non-violence in inspiring
leaders of the 20th century such as Khan Abdul
Ghaffar Khan, Martin Luther King Jr., Nelson
Mandela and Vclav Havel is the expression of a
momentous mode of political thinking that can be
invoked as a Gandhian moment.
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Explaining his universal appeal
Therefore, Gandhis success as a universal gadfly
goes far beyond his national stature as the
founding father of modern India. As such, his
universal message could be measured by his
immense impact on all forms of dissent against
unjust regimes this includes India in the
past half-century. As such, Gandhi has become a
part of the moral conscience of humanity. His
name and achievements symbolise a sense of
revolt against injustice. That is to say, a proper
appreciation of Gandhis relevance can only be
made against the backdrop of his civic philosophy
of dissent. Also, let us not forget that Gandhis
critique of modern civilisation in Hind Swaraj is
one of the greatest Socratic gestures of intellectual
self-examination in the history of modern political
thought. It is all the more necessary to point out
that Gandhis critical attitude toward modern
civilisation is an effort in asking the right
questions at the right time about whole inherited
ideas on thought and action. The Gandhian
audacity of asking questions on what the western
world presents as universal truths is, therefore,
tied to a specific historical context in which this
self-examination finds its meaning. As such, it
happens that Gandhi is a non-professional
philosopher who asks philosophical questions and
helps us to understand the implications of how
these ideas can change the world. In other words,
he is a public gadfly who does not conform
himself to any orthodoxy, western or Indian.
Such an attitude of mind is represented by
Gandhis Socratic revolution: self-examination
accompanied by a self-transformation of society.
Gandhis legacy also exemplifies another Socratic
aspect which is absent among most of the political
leaders today: courage. He believed that when
fighting injustice, the actor must not only have the
courage of his/her opinions but also be ready to
give his/her life for the cause. As writer George
Woodcock says, The idea of perishing for a
cause, for other men, for a village even, occurs
more frequently in his [Gandhis] writings as time
goes on. He had always held that satyagraha
implied the willingness to accept not only
suffering but also death for the sake of a
principle. Gandhis dedication to justice in the
face of death is an example of his courageous
attitude of mind as a Socratic gadfly. Further, one
can find in Gandhi a readiness to raise the matter
of self-suffering as public policy. He felt an
increasing loneliness in the role of the super-
satyagrahi which he had assumed. Loneliness is
one of the fundamental features of a Socratic
gadfly, who is always expected to take a position
independent of those in power and sometimes in
direct opposition to the opinions of the larger
society. As a matter of fact, Gandhis moral
power, like Socratess irony, masks an
autonomous individual who is often lonely
because of his attentiveness to the moral disquiet
within him. Gandhis nobility of spirit in the face
of populism is a timely reminder of how
imaginatively the act of dissent can become a way
of questioning, changing the world as well as
oneself.
A vision by creating possibilities
When confronted by mobs or public authority,
Gandhi did not adopt a policy of self-censorship.
He had no fear of the power of the state or of a
tyrannical crowd. It is this state of mind which we
can find as the underlying motto of Gandhis
political and intellectual life. Gandhi had no tragic
sense of politics, but he knew which battles to
fight and which ones to let go. In the manner of
Socrates, he was aware of the fact that philosophy
and the city need each other and benefit each
other, even if there is a distinction between the
concerned and critical gadfly and those playing a
role to preserve a corrupted power. That is why,
for both Socrates and Gandhi, the process of
dialogue and ceaseless questioning is considered
as the most dissenting and productive thinking of
gadflies in the public space. As such, Gandhi was
able to define a new vision of independent India
not by a nostalgic return to the past, but by
creating the possibilities of a critical public
culture in India.
The idea of struggling for truth and resisting evil,
after all, provides us with one of the most brilliant
examples of Gandhian critical thinking and public
questioning. Questioning in this context is the
non-violent process of speaking up against power
while withstanding tyranny and silencing. In other
words, Gandhis main concern is not with ahimsa
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as kindness and gentleness. He is talking of non-
violence as a brave act of dissent. My non-
violence is not merely kindness to all living
creatures, wrote Gandhi in his journal Harijan .
Ahimsa is the highest ideal. It is meant for the
brave, never for the cowardly. To benefit by
others killing and delude oneself into the belief
that one is being very religious and non-violent is
sheer self-deception. As a matter of fact, taking
into consideration Gandhis life, Satyagraha rests
on a philosophical belief that non-violence is a
struggle against wickedness and hypocrisy.
Moreover, it is the highest form of moral
intervention against falsehood and injustice in the
public space.
Leadership as a true form
Therefore, more than just being a historical
moment, questions which were addressed by
Mahatma Gandhi to his contemporaries find their
full relevance in our times of political populism
and moral hypocrisy. Though Gandhi propounded
no Platonic or Machiavellian theories of political
leadership, he personified a moral and dialogical
leadership behaviour widely acknowledged as a
true form of interconnectedness and service to
others. Undoubtedly, this is the true lesson of
Gandhis political life, where moral conviction
and sense of duty to others go hand-in-hand. He
strived to live a life in politics which promoted
moral values that transcended self-interest and
political arrogance. This idea of transformative
leadership as an ethic of freedom is a distinctive
feature of Gandhis political philosophy.
As such, in Gandhis ideal of democracy many of
his core beliefs and arguments such as moral
growth of the individual, the primacy of the
spiritual in non-violent action and the
interdependence of all departments of life came
together. But how did Gandhi expect these
principles to work in everyday life? He had come
to the conclusion that democracy, like any other
aspect of social and political life, would not
function in the framework of a meaningless
civilisation with no sense of ethics and
spirituality. In other words, his idea of democracy
is understood as a means to fulfil ones civic duty
as an individual participating in a community and
as an end to be attained through moral and
political resistance to all forms of centralisation of
power.
This is where Gandhis conception of democracy
becomes relevant to us and significant to
contemporary democratic theory. Needless to say,
Gandhis approach to politics in terms of
resistance and protest beyond a conception of
domination over others provides a potential
antidote to the contemporary crisis of democracy.
With this in mind, Gandhi can be said to be
oriented towards reinventing politics as a capacity
for self-realisation and self-transformation of
society. Maybe this is why each time I read a page
of Gandhi I am tempted to go back to my students
and ask them to revisit him as an invaluable
thinker and moral guide amid the great political
problems and the cultural confusions of India and
the world in which we live.
Ramin Jahanbegloo is Professor, Vice Dean and
Director, Mahatma Gandhi Centre for Peace
Studies, Jindal Global Law School, Jindal Global
University, India.
He was able to define a new vision of
independent India not by a nostalgic return to
the past, but by creating the possibilities of a
critical public culture in India
Fielding the finest
When the government appointed General Bipin
Rawat as the new Army Chief, it triggered
widespread debate as two of Gen. Rawats seniors
were superseded in the selection. The debate also
showed the importance of the appointment and the
trust the people have in the armed forces. Here I
must unequivocally emphasise that Gen. Bipin
Rawat is an outstanding officer who will certainly
lead the Army with distinction, just as the Army
would be proud of being led by him. I wish him
all the success. Having said that, let me also make
it clear that the two passed-over Army
Commanders have excellent records of service,
and as stated by the Defence Minister himself,
their not being selected does not reflect on their
performance. Gen. Rawats special operation in
Myanmar in 2015 and admirable performance as
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Vice Chief of Army Staff during the surgical
strike last year, among other achievements,
helped him clinch the position.
In careers spanning four decades or so, it is
inevitable that some will have more exposure to
certain conditions than others. This despite the
fact that officers above the level of Brigadier are
exposed to various sectors and operational
situations and acquire the experience and
qualifications to handle all kinds of assignments.
It would also be churlish to imagine rivalry
between the Infantry and the Armoured Corps just
because an infanteer has been nominated as the
Chief. At this high level, to which arm you belong
is not a crucial factor because all arms are equally
important and have their roles cut out. One can
never replace the other.
Service chiefs have to possess incisive vision and
have deep insights into the broader politico-
strategic complexities both at the national and
international levels. Exercising acumen at a
tactical level or having experience in one
particular arm cannot be a criterion for
appointment as the nations top military
commander. Therefore, in all fairness, it is
assumed that the government, even while
departing from the normal convention of going by
seniority, has taken the decision which in its
judgment is best for the nation. It is therefore time
to move on.
Seniority and merit
Notwithstanding that, people within and outside
the armed forces are concerned that the time-
tested principle of seniority should not be
overlooked unless merit is overwhelmingly in
favour of an officer lower down in the hierarchy.
The tricky issue here is, how does the government
weigh merit without playing favourites? An
apolitical ethos of the services has been one of the
strongest pillars of our democracy. Any
possibility of senior commanders currying favour
with the political leadership would therefore be
fraught with grave risks for the nation and its
military. Such a possibility must not be allowed to
influence the selection of the Army Chief. This is
an absolute sine qua non.
Appointment of Army Commanders
The appointment of Army Commanders has a
direct bearing on the selection of the Chief, as
service chiefs are selected from amongst them.
The changing nature of war today covers a
spectrum of conflict nuclear, information,
cyber, space, etc. It is inevitable, therefore, that
the Indian armed forces are going through
phenomenal changes in terms of modernisation of
weapons, combat systems, and strategic
application of military power. The Army
Commanders role in this entire gambit is pivotal.
Besides commanding all the forces across the
whole of Jammu and Kashmir, Rajasthan, the
Northeast, and other places, Army Commanders
also participate in national-level decision-making
over strategic, operational, training, equipment,
personnel administration and logistic and financial
issues. This is a huge set of responsibilities.
It is obvious then that we should introspect
whether we are selecting the most meritorious as
Army Commanders and fielding only the best
candidates for the selection of a Chief.
There are two criteria to be fulfilled to be elevated
to the position of Army Commander: an excellent
command of a corps, the highest operational
formation, and, in the interest of meaningful
stability and continuity in this key appointment,
eligible candidates must have two years of
residual service before appointment (more or less
similar criteria apply to the other two services).
With these criteria being satisfied, Army
Commanders are nominated in the order of
seniority. Those who do not fulfil these criteria
become ineligible and move out to other
appointments till their superannuation. At any
given time, there could be approximately 14
incumbent corps commanders and approximately
five or six more who may have just moved out of
their command and who would also be considered
to fill vacancies of four or five Army
Commanders annually. This would result in only
the best being selected.
Till now, the mandatory requirement of two years
of service and seniority at the time of vacancy has
resulted in routine elevations to the appointment
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of Army Commander, merit not being considered.
The logic was that all officers who had reached
that level were considered competent and there
was no need to introduce unnecessary competition
among them. But in light of contemporary
responsibilities and the increasing importance of
jointness and stretch of warfare, only the best are
needed as Army Commanders.
Need for reform
The existing policy is therefore anomalous,
wherein for promotion to this level the primary
criterion is not merit unlike for all other ranks.
Henceforth, the selection of Army Commanders
must be made only through deep selection.
We could consider reducing the stipulation of
tenancy of two years to 18 months (it is already
one and a half years in the Air Force and one year
in the Navy) to widen the number of eligible
candidates. As regards the selection process, the
three service chiefs (four when a Chief of Defence
Staff or permanent Chairman of Chief of Staff
Committee is introduced) could constitute the
selection board, with the chief of the service
concerned presiding. A final recommendation
could then be sent to the government for approval,
as in the cases of select ranks.
Some other suggestions, such as selection by a
triumvirate comprising the Prime Minister, Chief
Justice of India and Leader of the Opposition are
not relevant in a system so conditioned by
exclusive military insight and stringent
professional scrutiny at every stage. Military
chiefs cannot be selected by just going through
dossiers.
The time has come to introduce this pressing
reform in the process of selection of Army
Commanders. The present government is known
for its ability to take decisions. It would do well to
introduce this reform as it would make available
to it a very competent set of professionals from
which it can appoint its service chiefs. This will
also leave no requirement whatsoever to bypass
the seniority criterion, as all eligible candidates
will be exceedingly competent.
General Nirmal Chander Vij is a former Army
Chief and is currently Director, Vivekananda
International Foundation.
We could consider reducing the stipulation of
tenancy of two years to 18 months to widen the
number of eligible candidates
Choked by the Global Gag Rule
Alaka M. Basu
On his first day in office, U.S. President Donald
Trump reinstated what is known as the Global
Gag Rule, or the Mexico City Policy. This rule,
which was first introduced by President Ronald
Reagan in 1984 at the time of the International
Population Conference in Mexico City, has been
revoked by successive Democratic Presidents and
reinstated by successive Republican Presidents, so
Mr. Tumps action was not unexpected.
Very briefly, the Global Gag Rule states that U.S.
government funding cannot be given to
international NGOs, either directly or through
U.S. non-governmental partners of these NGOs,
unless these foreign NGOs sign an undertaking to
not provide abortion services or even information
or advocacy on abortion to their clients even in
countries in which abortion is legal and even with
money that does not come from the United States
Agency for International Developments budget.
Whenever this ruling has been in place, it has
severely handicapped a host of non-governmental
agencies in poor countries that provide family
planning information and services to women
because these agencies also often help women to
deal with unplanned and unwanted pregnancies in
countries where it is legal to do.
Not just about abortion
The U.S. government has every right to decide
how to allocate its foreign aid and if the present
one is against the use of tax dollars to promote
abortion, however tangentially, that is its
prerogative. But the international reproductive
health community is naturally upset at an action
that may be technically legal but is morally and
ethically questionable in that is penalises women
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and organisations in ways that go well beyond
abortion access in principle, the ruling can cut
off funds for crucial activities like HIV/AIDS
prevention, contraceptive access, sexuality
information, maternal and child health, and so on,
simply because the agencies that work in these
areas might give up working in them because of
restrictions from their funding sources.
Such impacts will be particularly strongly felt in
countries in Africa, where the unmet demand for
health, reproductive and contraceptive
information and services is high because
governments do not have the resources to meet
these demands.
What about India? According to the most recent
survey data available (National Family Health
Survey, 2005-2006), close to three fourths of
Indian women get their contraceptive services
from the government sector. But this is because
some 67% of contraceptive use in India is
accounted for by female sterilisation, which is
promoted primarily by the governments family
planning programme. For other temporary
methods of birth control, the non-governmental
sector (by which we actually mean a mix of
private and non-profit agencies) accounts for more
than half the contraceptive use. How this non-
governmental sector will fare under the Gag Rule
remains to be seen.
But there is more. Much of the assistance that the
U.S. government provides to India is through
what are called public-private/NGO partnerships
to address the problem on hand whether it is
urban health or school cleanliness drives or rural
child mortality. It is not clear how these
partnerships will play out under the new ruling.
Given that the Indian government is clearly not
opposed to abortion and that the Gag Rule does
not restrict aid to governments whatever their
stance on abortion, the net impact might be in fact
to strengthen the hand of a government that is
already clamping down on NGOs in the country
for its own reasons.
India could also experience other kinds of impacts
of this rule because there are several aspects of
sex and reproduction that the government refuses
to touch for politically reactionary reasons and the
NGO sector is all we have to address these. Sex
education for adolescents falls in this category. An
important part of such sexuality education
includes explaining all the available options for
birth control and if abortion is deliberately left out
of this list, a disservice will have been done.
On the other hand, fairness demands that we look
at the few positive features of the Gag Rule that
might be good for India and its people if they are
imposed on governments, NGOs and, through
them, on communities and families. The
Executive Order forbids aid to any entities that
support coercive abortions or involuntary
sterilisations both actions that pop their heads
repeatedly in India. Maybe USAID pressure will
give a fresh lease of life and publicity to efforts to
combat shameful practices ranging from tribal
women being forced by government hospitals to
undergo post-partum sterilisation (and sometimes
dying from the hurriedly and unhygienically
performed procedure) to pregnant women being
forced by their families to abort female fetuses. If
that happens, the Global Gag Rule might have a
small bright side to it.
Important caveats
Also worth keeping in mind is that the Gag Rule
only applies to the promotion of abortion as a
means of family planning, not abortion after a
sexual attack or abortion to save the life of a
pregnant woman. Moreover the ruling does not
apply to post-abortion care for women who have
post-abortion complications, legal or not. These
are important caveats and NGOs must not get
frightened off helping such women just because of
the rule. The fear unfortunately is that many
NGOs will either bow to the rule by leaving
abortion completely out of their ambit or will
retreat from family planning related work
altogether.
In any case, it is worth keeping in mind that India
does not have the same tradition of pro-choice and
pro-life arguments that polarise debates in the
U.S. and paying too much attention to what the
Trump administration decrees is not in our
interest; it will be even less necessary if the
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effective tradition of NGO activity in India can
count a little more on the active support and
encouragement of the government instead of
being hounded for imagined brushes with some
vague law or the other.
Alaka M. Basu, a professor in the Department of
Development Sociology at Cornell University, is
currently Senior Fellow, United Nations
Foundation.
The Gag Rule only applies to the promotion of
abortion as a means of family planning, not
abortion after a sexual attack
Simply the best
In times to come, 2017 will be remembered by
tennis fans as the year the Australian Open went
retro. For, it featured the big-stage revival of two
of the sports most storied rivalries. Roger Federer
was pushed to the limit by Rafael Nadals
relentless, shape-shifting style before the Swiss
maestros sublime artistry prevailed in a classic
his third win in nine Major finals over the
Spaniard, his 18th Grand Slam crown and his first
since Wimbledon in 2012. And Serena Williams,
playing sister Venus in a Major final after nearly
eight years, continued her dominance, capturing a
professional-era record 23rd title. The warm
nostalgia these great champions evoked was
accompanied by the thrill of the unexpected. Of
the four, only Serenas presence in the final was
unsurprising. The resurgence of the old guard
the first time in the Open Era that all four finalists
were over the age of 30 might have had
something to do with the faster courts in
Melbourne this year. Federer, among others,
certainly thought so. He said it kept points shorter
than normal and made fewer demands of the
body. He also felt that those who had started out
before 2005 had an edge they were more
instinctively attuned to the quicker movement of
the ball.
It takes singular skill and a certain ruthlessness,
however, to make capital of the smallest
advantages, and Federer and Serena, and to a
marginally lesser extent Nadal and Venus, did
precisely that. Federer, who missed six months
last year with an injury, knew he could not allow
Nadal time and space. With his opponent looking
in excellent physical condition, Federer could not
afford to be drawn into long, bruising rallies; he
had to dictate the tempo of play. This meant
taking the ball uncomfortably early, with a narrow
margin for error, and it required all of Federers
genius to pull it off. He also had to overcome the
psychological scars of past defeats to Nadal.
Federers nerve in big matches against his greatest
rival has been questioned before, but on Sunday
he displayed a calm resolve. Serena, too, had to
master her emotions against Venus, who is both
beloved sister and formidable threat. While her
explosive athleticism is the most apparent facet of
her game, Serenas underrated tennis intelligence
has contributed significantly to her capturing a
record 10 Grand Slam titles after turning 30. With
their triumphs in Melbourne, Federer and Serena,
both 35, managed what only a few of the greats
have. They quietened the voice of doubt that
speaks in every athletes ear a voice that grows
more persistent with age and raged against the
dying of the light.
Keeping safety on the rails
The preliminary finding of the Commission of
Railway Safety that the derailment of the Indore-
Rajendranagar Express near Kanpur in November
2016 that killed over 140 people was primarily
caused by carriage and wagon defects should
serve as a reality check for the Railway Ministry.
While sabotage is indeed a factor in some
derailments, bad railway performance is
responsible for the majority. The CRS report
merits serious consideration: it has specifically
identified a variation in the wheel gauges of two
coaches, and found carriages being run beyond
their useful life. This is not a rare instance where
inquiries have found the Railways seriously
deficient. In fact, the annual report of the CRS
Lucknow for 2012-13 cites failure of railway
equipment, derelict staff, rail fractures and, on
some occasions, non-railway factors to be
responsible for fatal accidents. The collision of the
Hubli-Bengaluru City Hampi Express with a
goods train that left 25 people dead, for instance,
was caused by failure of staff. The Kakodkar
committee on railway safety found that out of 441
derailments it analysed, only about 15% were the
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result of sabotage, while the majority were caused
by factors completely under the control of the
railway administration.
Indias Railways serves the vital function of
providing travel access to millions, and, as
Mahatma Gandhi wrote in his article Third Class
in Indian Railways, have the responsibility of
making it equitable and comfortable. It must also
be safe. The Railway Ministry is pursuing a major
safety initiative, the Rashtriya Rail Sanraksha
Kosh, with a non-lapsable corpus of Rs. 1,19,183
crore. Not only should such a fund be constituted,
given the past contribution of dedicated safety
funds to rail track renewal, it should be governed
by a transparent framework with public reporting
requirements. The Finance Ministry says the Fund
should rely mainly on internal resources, but there
is a strong case for higher gross budgetary support
to raise safety in a government-run transport
network that has a universal service obligation.
Replacing ageing and unsafe carriages with
modern Linke Hofmann Busch coaches is a five-
year-old Kakodkar panel recommendation, but
supply has not kept pace with requirement. Travel
demand has, meanwhile, continued to leap as
economic growth both needs and encourages
greater mobility. Raising the performance of the
Indian Railways needs a clear vision for both
service and financing, with zero tolerance for
accidents. Along with technologies such as
ultrasonic flaw detection to keep tracks safe,
Railway Minister Suresh Prabhu and his team
must look at ways to carry more passengers
safely.
Is past the key to future?
A.S. Panneerselvan
A decade before newspapers launched their
Internet editions, Milan Kundera published an
insightful book, The Art of the Novel , in which he
argued that chasing after the future is the worst
conformism of all. He termed the pursuit a
craven flattery of the mighty. He wrote: For the
future is always mightier than the present. It will
pass judgement on us, of course. And without any
competence. I was intrigued by this argument.
Early this month, Michael Rosenwald, a journalist
with The Washington Post , tried to find an
answer to a question that is hardly heard in
newsrooms and boardrooms: What if everything
weve been led to believe about the future of
journalism is wrong? In an exploratory essay for
the Columbia Journalism Review titled Print is
dead. Long live print, he has come up with some
conclusions that challenge a basic business
dictum: trend is a friend.
Preference for print and digital
Mr. Rosenwalds essay is based on some real
number-crunching surveys and three in-depth
interviews: with Roger Fidler, who first imagined
and created a prototype for reading news on a
tablet much before Apple invented the iPad; Iris
Chyi, a University of Texas associate professor
and new media researcher; and Michael Gerber
who launched The American Bystander , a
humour magazine that is available only in print. In
his assessment of the digital world, the reality, he
says, is this: No app, no streamlined website, no
vertical integration, no social network, no
algorithm, no Apple, no Apple Newsstand, no
paywall, no soft paywall, no targeted ad, no
mobile-first strategy has come close to matching
the success of print in revenue or readership. He
is not convinced about the basic assumption that
publishers have made about readers preference,
particularly younger readers preference, for
digital.
Though there are many strands in Mr.
Rosenwalds argument, I would like to share four
dominant ideas from his essay. The first is about
digital advertising. Mr. Fidler, in his interview to
Mr. Rosenwald, explained how the idea of
interactive advertising has not clearly panned out.
Readers are annoyed with and distracted by
intrusive advertisements, he said, so many block it
with browser extensions. Unlike print, which
offers a limited amount of advertisement space,
the infinite online space is driving down
advertisement prices and sending publishers
racing around a hamster wheel, Mr. Rosenwald
reasons.
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He draws his second point from Ms. Chyis
monograph, Trial and Error: U.S. Newspapers
Digital Struggles Toward Inferiority . Ms. Chyis
conclusion is stunning and may send shivers down
the spine for news organisations that have
invested the better part of their money in digital.
For her, the digital shift has been a disaster for
media organisations. She was unable to find any
evidence to conclude that online news will ever be
economically or culturally viable.
Time spent on reading news
The third significant point is about reach within a
given geographical area and the duration a reader
spends on a specific news product. Ms. Chyi
studied data collected by Scarborough for 51 of
the largest U.S. newspapers. Scarborough is a
market research firm owned by Nielsen. The
finding is that the print edition reaches 28% of
circulation areas, while the digital version reaches
just 10%. And more importantly, Pew Research
Center data reveal that readers who come directly
to news sites stay less than five minutes; those
from Facebook are gone in less than two minutes.
Citing Ms. Chyis research and the Pew findings,
Mr. Rosenwald argues that even among young
readers, interest in print persists. He draws our
attention to the Pew study that puts the percentage
of those who only read news via a computer: it
was 5% in 2014 and it remained 5% in 2015.
The fourth argument resonates well with me both
as a reader and as a Readers Editor. It is about the
quality of reading. He establishes how one skims
and jumps around online not just within individual
stories, but also from page to page and from site
to site. He then explains the immersive nature of
print reading that facilitates better comprehension.
He quotes from a 2013 study in the Newspaper
Research Journal that found that New York Times
readers recalled more stories and specific details
in print than they did online. The results,
according to the study, established the modern
role newspapers play in maintaining an informed
citizenry.
There is a Kundera-like intrigue in what Mr.
Gerber told Mr. Rosenwald: Theres this
assumption that online is inevitable, that it is like
the steam engine or something. Maybe it is. But
maybe its not. Maybe it cant be. In this age, fresh infusion of only Rs. 5,000 crore in the
when every political leader is on social media,
every institution is sprucing up its digital
presence, and a new device is hitting the market
every other day, is it unreasonable to suggest that
the tools for the survival of the news industry may
be in the past rather than in a technocratic future?
Can we afford to overlook facts in this call to look
at the relative strengths of print compared to
digital? We have often heard that the economy is
too important to be left to economists alone.
Journalism and informed citizenry are equally
important to be left to journalists and media
managers alone. Readers participation is central
to find a viable answer to this question.
readerseditor@thehindu.co.in
In this digital age, is it unreasonable to suggest
that the tools for the survival of the news
industry may be in the past rather than in a
technocratic future?
BUSINESS
FinMin may aid rail safety fund
Somesh Jha
The Finance Ministry has agreed to contribute
partially to a new dedicated railway safety fund in
the upcoming Budget to be presented on February
1. Train derailments have increased to a six-year
high of 74 till January 23 this year compared to 65
in 2015-16 and this may prompt the Railways to
bring back a cess on railway tickets to fund safety
efforts.
The dedicated rail safety fund is proposed to be
utilised for track improvement, bridge
rehabilitation work, rolling stock replacement,
human resource development, improved
inspection system and safety work at level-
crossings, among other things.
The Railway Ministry had requested the Finance
Ministry to create a non-lapsable safety fund
named Rashtriya Rail Sanraksha Kosh over five
years.
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However, the Finance Ministry is likely to grant a
upcoming financial year out of the initial
proposed corpus of Rs. 20,000 crore.
About Rs. 10,000 crore will likely be earmarked
from the Central Road Fund (CRF) that is
collected by levying a cess on diesel and petrol at
present for safety-related work.
Levy on tickets
The Railway Ministry, which was expecting an
annual budgetary support of Rs. 20,000 crore over
five years from the Finance Ministry for the
proposed Rs. 1.19 lakh crore safety fund, may
now be asked to fund the remaining Rs. 5,000
crore for the initial corpus from its own resources.
Now, it may either have to bring back a cess on
rail tickets to finance its share of Rail Safety Fund
or look to fund it from non-budgetary resources.
We were not seeking this fund immediately. We
were saying, over a period of time, over a five-
year period. On average around Rs. 20,000 crore
per year we were looking for as a support or as a
grant from the Ministry of Finance to take care of
this assets which were stressed so that we are able
to improve the safety scenario in Indian
Railways, Railway Board Chairman A.K. Mittal
had told the Parliamentary Standing Committee
on Railways in December 2016.
Budgetary support
The proposal to set up the Rashtriya Rail
Sanraksha Kosh fund has been agreed to, but we
are told that Rs. 5,000 crore will come as
budgetary support from the Finance Ministry and
Rs. 10,000 crore will flow into the fund from the
CRF that we already receive every year, a senior
Railway Ministry official said on conditions of
anonymity.
In 2001, when a Special Railway Safety Fund of
Rs. 17,000 crore was created, the Railways raised
Rs. 5,000 crore through safety surcharge on
passenger fare and the remaining Rs. 12,000 crore
came from the Finance Ministry.
Back then, the Railways levied a fee of Rs. 1 for
second-class ordinary trains and Rs. 2 for second-
class Mail or Express trains, per person.

For other classes, the surcharge on tickets had

ranged between Rs. 10 and Rs. 100 depending on
the class and distance of journey.

The Railways had asked for Rashtriya Rail

Sanraksha Kosh to be set up based on the
recommendations of a high-level safety review
committee under former chairman Atomic Energy
Commission Dr. Anil Kakodkar.

The Committee, which submitted its report in

2012, had projected an investment requirement of
Rs. 1 lakh crore on safety over five years. The
Centre has so far fully implemented 22 out of 87
partially or fully accepted recommendations made
by the panel.

Funds requirement

Bulk of the recommendations involved either the

introduction of some technology that was under
trial or improvement of the asset quality which
required money. That is why we have not been
able to fully implement the recommendations,
Mr. Mittal had told the Parliamentary Committee.
He also told the committee that since both the
Union and Railway Budgets will be merged for
the first time, Finance Ministry will be more
amenable to the Indian Railways request to fund
a substantial portion of the railway safety fund.
The Railway Budget a requiem
Parliament. At least this was the case until last
year. 2017 will go down in history as the first year
when the Rail Budget was subsumed in the
General Budget.
A separate rail budget has its genesis in the
recommendations of the Acworth Committee of
1920 when its chairman, Sir William Acworth,
pointed out the need for unified management of
the entire railway system and inter alia ,
recommended that the Finance department
should cease to control the internal finances of the
railway, that the railway should have a separate
budget of its own.

Vivek Sahai Separate convention

The Indian Railways (IR) is a behemoth
employing 1.3 million workmen, lifting more than
1 billion tonnes of freight annually and carrying
24 million passengers in its 12,000 passenger
trains each day. Only a few railway systems in the
world match or outdo these indices, but one factor
that no other railway had matched was that the
Indian Railways had its own budget - to be
presented every year on the floor of the
This was considered necessary because the
Railways revenues far outstripped the general
revenue and had the potential of masking small
yet important aberrations in the general budget of
the Government of India, if presented together. A
separation convention on September 20, 1924
dissociated the railway finances from the general
finances.

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In 1947, when Independence was achieved,
railway revenues were still 6% more than the
general revenue (see table). The Railway
Convention Committee headed by Sir
Gopalaswamy Ayyangar recommended,
separation of Railway finances from General
finance should continue. A resolution to this
effect was approved by the Constituent Assembly
on December 21, 1949. The revised convention
was to be effective for a period of five years
starting 1950-51, but continued for 66 years, just
as a few other constitutional provisions for
language and reservation have enjoyed an
extended life.
By the 1970s, the size of rail revenues had shrunk
and was about 30% the size of general revenues.
By 2015-16 it was down to 11.5% (see table). The
writing was on the wall; only the Railway Board
failed to read it. Many erudite scholars of
economics like Swaminathan S.A. Aiyar and
Bibek Debroy were now raising the pitch for
discontinuance of the rail budget.
Suicidal move?
Could the Indian Railways have avoided this fate?
It erred on two facets of its philosophy for growth.
First and foremost was its penchant for
subsidising the passenger fares from artificially
jacked up freight rates. The non-AC fares have
remained static for the past 12 years; this has been
nothing short of suicidal. Freight rates now are at
such high levels that road hauliers successfully
compete with Railways on grounds of being
cheaper. It is not surprising that the rail share in
the overall freight kitty is down from 89% in
1950-51 to less than 30% in 2014-15.
Secondly, the Railways themselves have been
withdrawing from their core areas of operations
and concentrating on peripheral items. They have
withdrawn themselves from all urban transport
activities. In the 1990s, if the IR had devised
innovative solutions like forming Special Purpose
Vehicles (SPVs) to catalyse construction of metro
lines, both the people of India and the Railways
would have benefited from it. Instead, in the
1990s, a situation was created, albeit unwittingly,
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which made transportation of petroleum products
cheaper by pipeline. At that time, movement of
petroleum products was the most profitable
business for the Railways and it had a lions share
of 75% in this sector. It is now down to 10%!
Is a retrieval from this quagmire feasible? Well, a
return to the halcyon days of having a separate
budget seems implausible. But, a retrieval of the
Railways financial health is quite within reach, if
due focus is laid on the core sectors of freight
operation and enhanced productivity of assets.
Gone are the days when the second floor of the
Rail Bhavan used to reverberate with frenetic
activities associated with budget preparations
Board Members closeted with the Minister having
parleys on fare revision, introduction of new
trains, and above all, balancing the budget.
Officers carrying the budget files in their own
hands, talking in hushed tones and finally sharing
halwa and chai with the Minister all this will
be missed in the hallowed corridors of this
pentagon-shaped headquarters of the Ministry of
Railways.
It will be harsh to contend that a separate rail
budget has not served the country well. In 1947,
the same administration controlled the areas in the
present day Pakistan and Bangladesh. Look at the
fate of those rail systems today and compare it
with Indian Railways. It was a separate budget
which kept IR on a graph of growth throughout.
On February 1, this year, when the Finance
Minister presents his General Budget, he will set
the tone for the relevance of IR in the countrys
ethos and future health. It will be instructive to see
how much time he devotes to the rail sector in his
speech.
(The author is former Chairman, Railway Board
and Distinguished Fellow, Observer Research
Foundation)
A separate budget was needed as the Railways
revenue far outstripped general revenue in the
1920s
 Aadhaar number printed on paper perfectly
valid: Centre

Special Correspondent

The Unique Identification Authority of India

(UIDAI) has cautioned people about sharing their
personal information with unauthorised agencies
for printing Aadhaar numbers on a plastic card,
while stressing that the Aadhaar letter, with its
cutaway portion or the downloaded version, on an
ordinary paper is perfectly valid.

Several agencies charge anywhere between Rs. 50

and Rs. 200, or more, for printing Aadhaar on a
plastic card in the name of smart card.

The Aadhaar card or the downloaded Aadhaar Krishnadas Rajagopal

card printed on ordinary paper is perfectly valid
for all uses. If a person has a paper Aadhaar
printout, there is absolutely no need to get his/her
Aadhaar card laminated or obtain a plastic
Aadhaar card or so-called smart Aadhaar card by
paying money. There is no concept such as smart
or plastic Aadhaar card, Dr. Ajay Bhushan
Pandey, CEO of UIDAI, said in a statement.
The UIDAI has also warned unauthorised
agencies that collecting such information or
unauthorised printing of Aadhaar card or aiding
such persons in any manner amounts to a criminal
offence punishable with imprisonment under the
IPC and, also, Chapter VI of The Aadhaar
(Targeted Delivery of Financial and Other
Subsidies, Benefits and Services) Act, 2016.
The UIDAI further said that if someone loses the
Aadhaar printout, they could download it for free
from the website. The printout of the
downloaded Aadhaar card, even in black and
white form, is as valid as the original Aadhaar
card sent by UIDAI, it added.
THE HINDU NEWSPAPER IMPORTANT
ARTICLES 31.01.2017
FRONT PAGE
Panel headed by Vinod Rai to oversee BCCIs
affairs {Governance}
The Supreme Court on Monday appointed a four-
member Committee of Administrators (CoA)
headed by former Comptroller and Auditor
General of India Vinod Rai to oversee the Board
of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI).
The others are former woman Test cricketer Diana
Edulji, historian Ramachandra Guha and IDFC
Ltd MD and CEO Vikram Limaye. The four will
function as the interim bosses of the BCCI and
run the day-to-day administration of the cricket
body till the Lodha reforms are fully implemented
and elections held.
A three-judge Bench headed by Justice Dipak
Misra did not heed pleas for fresh hearings by the
BCCI, its State members and non-State members
and took the step forward in the direction laid out
by the Justice R.M. Lodha Committee.
The BCCI CEO, who was in charge since the
Supreme Court ousted former BCCI president
Anurag Thakur and secretary Ajay Shirke in a
January 2 order for stalling the Lodha reforms,
was ordered to submit a report to the CoA
detailing the level of compliance achieved by the
BCCI and its members in adopting the Lodha
recommendations upheld by the court on July 18,
2016.

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The BCCI CEO has to submit the report to the
new committee within a week. After this, the
committee has been given four weeks to scrutinise
the compliance achieved and report to the
Supreme Court. The next date of hearing is March
27.
Let the Committee of Administrators find out
how many directions of the Lodha Committee
have already been complied with, what were the
impediments and report to us. Then we will see,
Justice Misra observed.
The Bench said the scrutiny would help in the
smooth implementation of the Lodha reforms.
The Lodha panel secretary and advocate Gopal
Sankaranarayanan was asked to give the BCCI
CEO a check-list of 16 timelines the panel had
prepared for the BCCI and State associations.
The CEO would consider this to prepare his
compliance report.
To be paid for services
At one point, BCCI counsel and senior advocate
Arvind Datar said the CoA should work pro bono
(for free without remuneration) in the tradition of
the former office-bearers of the cash-rich cricket
body.
Why do you want them to work pro bono?
Justice Misra, on the Bench with Justices A.M.
Khanwilkar and D.Y. Chandrachud, asked. Why
not? All office-bearers work for the love of
cricket, senior advocate Kapil Sibal, representing
some member State associations, retorted.
Mr. Sibal, we want a professional set of
administrators, Justice Chandrachud said. The
Bench advised the BCCI to come up with a
proposition of a respectable amount for the
Supreme Court to consider as payment to the
CoA.
Economy not in good shape, says Manmohan
{Indian Economy}
Special Correspondent
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A report released by the Congress here on
Monday on the state of the economy over the last
two years said job creation was low, exports
stagnant and credit growth lowest over decades
under the Modi government.
The report, Real State of the Economy 2017,
which comes a day ahead of the governments
Economic Survey, was released by former Prime
Minister Manmohan Singh and former Finance
Minister P Chidamabaram. A day before the
Economic Survey, we thought we should bring
out a document that sets out what we consider as a
dose of realism so that the country as a whole has
ways and means of finding or assessing where the
economy is..., Dr. Manmohan Singh said.
That the Indian economy is not in a good shape
is obvious. Even the International Monetary Fund
has projected that growth rate of India in this
current fiscal year will not be 7.6% but less than
6.6 %. Several other rating agencies have also
made similar projections.
Few jobs, low credit
Mr. Chidambaram said just 77,000 jobs were
created between July and September, 2016, of
which 50,000 had been created in the government.
Credit growth, now at about 5%, he added, was
the lowest in decades.
Optimism must stem from realistic assessment.
The NDA government tends to believe in an
exaggerated version, in an exaggerated picture, of
the economy, Mr. Chidambaram said.
Later, Congress leader Rajeev Gowda summarised
the key points of the report prepared by the
Congress research cell.
SC refuses govt. plea to stop hearing on judicial
vacancies {Indian Polity}
Legal Correspondent

The Supreme Court on Monday refused to heed
the Centre's plea to stop hearing a batch of writ
petitions on the yawning number of judicial
vacancies in High Courts across the country and
the delay in filling them, noting that "we cannot
run away from our own cause".
"They are projecting the cause of the judiciary.
What will happen if we run away from our own
cause?" Chief Justice of India J.S. Khehar asked
Attorney-General Mukul Rohatgi, representing
the Centre, on the petition filed by citizens.
Avoid parallel process
Mr. Rohatgi said the Supreme Court should deal
with the delay in judicial appointments in High
Courts on its administrative side and not lend its
judicial weight to public interest petitions filed by
individuals in a parallel proceeding like this.
But Chief Justice Khehar, flanked by Justice N.V.
Ramana, said the Supreme Court had already
decided to entertain the petitions, and having
decided to do so, it would not now back out.
"Once the petitions have been entertained,
whether to grant them or not... This question will
be answered by us in a formal order. We will give
the order. We cannot treat petitions like this at this
stage in a slipshod manner, Chief Justice Khehar
clarified to the government.
Mr. Rohatgi said all problems on the delay would
end if the draft Memorandum of Procedure (MoP)
was finalised. The government and the Supreme
Court Collegium, then led by Chief Justice
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Khehar's predecessor, Justice T.S. Thakur, had
serious differences on several issues regarding the
MoP draft, including that the AG should be
consulted on judicial appointments. The last draft
was handed over by the government to the
Collegium in August 2016 for finalisation.
It [the MoP] has been pending for the last six
months. Once work on MoP is finished, a large
number of problems would be over, Mr. Rohatgi
submitted.
To resolve issues
He said the Central government would work
together with the Supreme Court and the Chief
Justice towards this end and resolve all issues."I
have been instructed to say that any information,
any detail, any officer will be promptly brought
here..." Mr. Rohatgi assured the Bench.
But petitioner and advocate Ashwini Upadhyay
intervened, saying the delay in judicial
appointments was not the only demand in his
petition.
NATIONAL
Opposition questions timing of Union Budget
{Indian Polity}, {Indian Economy}
Special Correspondent
Opposition parties put on record their differences
with the government on tabling the Union Budget
on February 1, not just because of the coming
Assembly polls in five States but also because
economic data for the third quarter will not be
factored into the document.
Rise above party lines: PM
At an all-party meet called by the government,
Opposition leaders were united in questioning the
timing of the Union Budget, even as Prime
Minister Narendra Modi asked for Parliament to
rise above party lines and come forward for
discussion on various issues.
Parliament is a Mahapanchayat and I would
request all parties to allow the House to run, Mr.
Modi is reported to have said, according to
Parliamentary Affairs Minister Ananth Kumar.
Trinamool Congress and NDA ally Shiv Sena
kept away from the meet.
Some parties could not attend not just due to the
Assembly polls, but also local body polls in some
States, said Mr. Kumar explaining the absence of
these parties.
Mr. Kumar added that three ordinances re-
promulgated recently, including the Enemy
Property Ordinance will be tabled in Parliament
and Business Advisory Committees of both
Houses will schedule discussions on them.
The presentation of the Budget on February 1 is
not just unseemly in view of the polls in five
States but also that the economic data from the
third quarter will not be factored in. The Budget
exercise is therefore not scientific, said CPI(M)
general secretary Sitaram Yechury.
The TMC, later, released a statement saying that it
would be absent from the presentation of the
Budget as part of its protest against
demonetisation.
TMC to skip budget
The decision was taken after a meeting of the
Trinamool Congress Parliamentary Party at the
residence of West Bengal Chief Minister and
party chairperson Mamata Banerjee in Kolkata.
Members demanded a discussion on
demonetisation
OPINION
Dont speak, dont tell {Indian Economy}
Meera Nangia
Do you fear a run on the banks? This was the
question posed by some MPs in the Parliamentary
Standing Committee on Finance to Urjit Patel,
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Governor, Reserve Bank of India (RBI). Before
he could respond, former Prime Minister
Manmohan Singh intervened by saying, No, you
dont have to answer this question. Had the
Governor answered the question, he would
probably have listed out scenarios that could
result in a bank run. Since the 2008 global
financial crises, central bankers are actively
engaged in the issue of financial stability and pre-
emption of bank runs. The RBI too has been
bringing out half-yearly Financial Stability
Reports (FSR) since 2010, in which one section is
devoted exclusively to the commercial banking
sector. The reports contain sophisticated stress
tests that gauge the risk to the banking system
based on liquidity-cum-insolvency contagion
scenarios. These reports are reviewed by a
subcommittee of the Financial Stability
Development Council that functions under the
Finance Ministry.
Any professional banker would never deny the
possibility of a bank run. Banking is a risky
business. A bank lends out money received from
its depositors. The presumption is that all
depositors will not demand all their money back at
the same time. There is liquidity risk if the bank is
unable to repay on demand the money it has
accepted from the depositors. There is credit risk
if the bank is unable to recover its loans.
The central bank, as a regulator, ensures that a
bank is prepared to meet liquidity and credit risks.
The capital to risk (weighted) assets ratio (CRAR)
is a safeguard that the capital base of a bank is not
eroded. The statutory liquidity ratio (SLR) is a
safeguard that a bank is able to return deposits of
customers on demand.
Credit and liquidity risks
In order to further mitigate these risks, the RBI is
adopting international standards prescribed by the
Basel Committee on Bank Supervision and the
Financial Stability Board. It has directed banks to
give up forbearance in the classification and
reporting of non-performing assets (NPA) from
April 1, 2015.
In simple terms, this means that as banks stop
playing pretend, the loans that were earlier
classified as standard assets will now be
downgraded, leading to an increase in the loan
defaults. Excess provisioning will lead to a
decline in profits; in some cases even chipping
away bank capital. This declining trend is
discernible in the bank performance during 2015-
16. The ratio of gross NPAs to gross advances
increased sharply from 5.26% to 10.69% for
nationalised banks and marginally from 2.10% to
2.83% for private banks from March 2015 to
March 2016. According to the December 2016
FSR, as of September 30, 2016, the return on
assets for public sector banks was -0.1%, and
1.5% for private sector banks. Similarly, the
return on equity for public sector banks was -
1.5%, and 13.4% for private sector banks.
Credit risk covers possibilities of defaults by
individual borrowers and borrower groups. For
example, if because of borrower default, one bank
fails, it is likely to trigger a domino effect across
banks since banks have financial linkages with
each other besides exposure to the same big
borrower groups. However, a bank with adequate
CRAR would be able to withstand this credit
shock.
The December 2016 FSR reveals interesting
results of stress tests conducted using 10 different
scenarios based on the information of group
borrowers. The tests show that CRAR would fall
below 9% for two banks if there is default of the
top 1 borrower group; five banks if the top two
borrower groups default; 12 banks if the top five
borrower groups default and as many as 22 banks
if the 10 top borrower groups default.
A typical liquidity risk scenario covers
unexpected deposit withdrawals (10% withdrawal
in 10 days or a 15% withdrawal in 5 days) in
banks on account of loss of depositor confidence.
The December 2016 FSR analyses the liquidity
risk to the banking system on the assumption of
increased withdrawals of the uninsured 10%
deposits (presently these are 69% of total
deposits) and unutilised portions of 75%
sanctioned working capital limits. The tests show
that only 49 out of the 60 banks in the sample will
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remain resilient (by using their SLR and High
Quality Liquid Assets) in such a scenario. In case
of incremental shocks in an extreme crises, banks
will be able to withstand withdrawals of 15% of
deposits using their remaining SLR investments.
In other words, 11 out of the 60 banks will fail the
liquidity test! The report does not disclose the
names of these 11 banks.
Banks on the precipice
Incidentally, Viral Acharya, the new RBI Deputy
Governor, in a study titled State intervention in
banking: the relative health of Indian public sector
and private sector banks, concludes that the
Indian banking system needs radical reform and
recommends repealing the SBI Act, SBI
(Subsidiary Banks) Act, and Nationalisation Acts
1970, 1980. One of the scenarios studied assumes
the absence of regulatory forbearance on
restructured assets (as directed by the RBI with
effect from April 1, 2015). The results show that
in such a scenario the tier I capital of all public
sector banks slips below the mandatory 6.5% level
and four public sector banks become insolvent.
As anyone familiar with quantitative tests would
know that the stress tests are based on certain
assumptions and not foolproof in their replication
of reality. However, these tests do indicate that the
banking system is apparently not even prepared
for the withdrawal of 10% of depositors funds.
Perhaps, a more appropriate question for the RBI
Governor would have been, How are you
planning to prevent a bank run?
It is therefore not surprising that the RBI is
continuing with its cash withdrawal limit of Rs.
24,000 and managing perceptions by allowing
minor concessions to current account holders
(while ATMs continue to run dry). This, along
with the thrust on digital banking, is ensuring that
a large portion of the uninsured deposits remains
within the banking system, thus precluding the
possibility of a bank run.
Meera Nangia is an Associate Professor in
commerce at the University of Delhi. Her
doctorate was on the Indian banking system.
Quantitative tests indicate that the banking
system is apparently not even prepared for the
withdrawal of 10% of depositors funds
The hidden agenda of benevolence
{Governance}
G. Sampath
The idea of a universal basic income (UBI) has
been gaining ground globally. While Switzerland
held a referendum on it last year (it was voted
down), Finland introduced it earlier this month.
Media reports suggest that the government of
Indias flagship Economic Survey this year is
likely to endorse the UBI, setting the stage for its
introduction.
On the face of it, an unconditional basic income
for everyone seems a great idea. In the West, the
UBI is being discussed as a solution to two
problems: unemployment due to automation; and
growing social unrest caused by extreme
inequality and precarity. It is expected to solve the
unemployment problem by decoupling
subsistence from jobs, freeing human beings to
realise their true potential, preferably through
entrepreneurship. It would address the second by
supplying monetary resources to access the
necessities of life. This, in a nutshell, is the
popular understanding of the UBI. The reality,
however, is not so rosy.
The UBI debate in India has been a narrow one
restricted, for the most part, to financial viability.
Its advocates argue that it is a more efficient way
of delivering welfare, while its opponents hold
that the fiscal burden would be too much. What
hasnt received adequate attention is the politics
behind the UBI: who is pushing the idea? To what
end? And why?
The UBI evangelists
The most eloquent advocates of UBI today are
free-market enthusiasts the same lot branded as
neo-liberals for their advocacy of deregulation,
privatisation, and cuts in welfare spending. Their
guru, Milton Friedman, was an early advocate of
basic income. Outside the academic realm, the
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biggest champion of UBI is the global tech sector.
Silicon Valley billionaires such as Elon Musk, the
founder of Tesla Motors, and Facebook co-
founder Chris Hughes have publicly backed the
idea.
Could it be possible that the global financial elite
have finally sprouted a conscience? The reports of
the UBI pilot projects conducted so far offer a
clue. Invariably, they all present the same
conclusion: giving cash to the poor is better than
traditional welfare.
Of course, it would be wonderful if the problem of
inequality and poverty were solved for us by a
sudden moral awakening of the rich.
Unfortunately, the current enthusiasm for the UBI
is not the product of such a momentous
development.
Not an add-on benefit
The biggest myth about the UBI, partly
responsible for sections of the Left endorsing it, is
that it is a redistributive policy that would reduce
inequality. It is indeed possible to have a
redistributive UBI. But it would need to fulfil two
conditions: it must be funded by taxing the
wealthy; and the existing entitlements to the poor
must not be taken away. Such a UBI would
actually be a socialist measure that would increase
the bargaining power of the working classes by
giving them an income cushion.
But neither of these conditions is met by any of
the UBI designs being promoted today, either
globally or in India. The much-touted Finnish
experiment is restricted to the unemployed. It does
not cover all working individuals. And it only
replaces the already existing basic unemployment
allowance and labour market subsidy it is not
an add-on benefit.
In India, too, the UBI is not an add-on. On the
contrary, it is about giving in a different form
(cash), and under one umbrella, what is already
being given (in-kind and cash benefits) via
different channels.
Back in 2008, in an influential paper in the
Economic and Political Weekly titled The case
for direct cash transfers to the poor, Arvind
Subramanian, the present Chief Economic
Adviser of the government, along with economists
Devesh Kapur and Partha Mukhopadhyay, argued
that the Rs. 1,80,000 crore spent annually on
centrally sponsored schemes and assorted
subsidies should instead be distributed as cash
directly to 70 million households below the
poverty line. Put simply, the UBI in India is
nothing but the old wine of direct cash transfer in
a fancy new bottle.
Its objective remains the same: to eliminate the
public distribution system (PDS) and with it, the
food, fuel, and fertiliser subsidies. The same old
arguments for replacing the PDS with cash
transfers are now being trotted out in favour of the
UBI. The addition of the word universal signals
greater ambition but alters neither the substance
nor the motive.
But let us take the arguments in favour at face
value. What constitutes a basic income? Common
sense dictates that it should be whatever is
required to take care of basic life needs. A logical
equivalent for this figure would be the minimum
wage. The central governments move last year to
raise the minimum wage for non-skilled, non-
agricultural workers to Rs. 9,100 per month was
set aside following opposition from industry.
Perhaps Rs. 9,100 per month is too luxurious an
income to qualify as basic. The actual minimum
wage in India is around Rs. 4,800 per month.
Could we then expect at least this amount from
our UBI?
While different numbers have been bandied about,
there seems to be a broad consensus around the
Tendulkar committee poverty line of Rs. 33 a day.
This works out to a basic income of Rs. 1,000-Rs.
1,250 a month or Rs. 12,000-Rs. 15,000 a year.
But even this modest figure is estimated to cost
11-12% of the GDP. In contrast, all the
governments subsidies put together account for
only 4-4.5% of the GDP. This presents three
options: one, the government makes up the deficit
through additional tax revenue; two, it limits the
fiscal burden by shrinking the UBI coverage from
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universal to those below the poverty line; and
three, it further shrinks the amount being doled
out.
Given Indias narrow tax base, and a policy
mindset hostile to the idea of extracting more tax
revenue from the wealthy, we can rule out option
one. So the UBI we get, if we get one, would be
derived from a combination of the second and
third options, which means both U and B are
out of UBI, leaving us effectively with what we
already have: cash transfers.
Most critically, one aspect is taken for granted by
all the three options: the UBI will be funded
primarily by the money allocated for CSS and
subsidies. In other words, a basic income,
however paltry, would help strengthen the case for
the elimination or a significant roll-back of
programmes such as the PDS, midday meal
schemes, and the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural
Employment Guarantee Scheme (MGNREGS).
Why a UBI now?
There is no point reprising here the case against
direct cash transfers, which economists such as
Jean Dreze have made convincingly. It is
nonetheless fascinating to see the emerging
contours of a distinctive political project.
The Jan-Dhan Yojana set out to make every
Indian accessible to global finance. The Aadhaar
card set out to make every Indian identifiable and
enumerable as data the currency of global tech.
The high mobile penetration has connected every
Indian to the global digital network. An element
that was missing was consumer behaviour, which
the recent demonetisation sought to address, by
force-feeding cashless to a cash-dependent
population. The UBI fits perfectly in this scheme
of things, as it seeks to compress the whole gamut
of welfare benefits into one, and mount it on a
singular JAM (Jan-Dhan, Aadhaar, Mobile)
platform.
But why a UBI now? One explanation could be
the immense pressure on India in secretive free
trade negotiations. The developed nations have for
long wanted India to wind up its food security-
related provisions both state procurement of
foodgrains, and their subsidised distribution via
PDS. A UBI would pave the way for the
elimination of these measures, dealing a death
blow to food security and deepening farm distress.
Another is that the Indian state is stuck with
welfare commitments it cannot renege on without
political and legal consequences. The
efficiency/inefficiency argument for scraping PDS
and MGNREGS never acknowledges that these
are rights-based social entitlements with specified
outcomes and that is not accidental. Shifting
the welfare paradigm to UBI would loosen the
bonds of legal and social accountability. Under
the PDS, for instance, the state must provide a
specified quantity of foodgrains to the poor no
matter what. With UBI, it has the option letting
the payout slide behind inflation, as has already
happened with the old age and widow pensions.
In the final analysis, we need to answer a simple
question: is the UBI about reducing inequality and
poverty? If the answer is yes, then there are many
things the state could do at a fraction of what the
UBI would cost from enforcing the minimum
wage law, to releasing funds on time for
MGNREGS. But if a dispensation hostile to these
tried and tested anti-poverty measures develops a
sudden zeal to eliminate poverty through UBI, a
measure of scepticism is in order.
sampath.g@thehindu.co.in
If the UBI is about reducing inequality and
poverty, then there are many things the state
could do at a fraction of what it would cost
The enemy within {Political System}
Not ideological affinity, but prospects of power
and pelf determine the making and unmaking of
political alliances. The Shiv Sena is the closest to
the Bharatiya Janata Party in terms of ideology
and policies, but a parting of ways of the two
parties was always just around the corner.
Differences over seat-sharing for the polls to the
urban local bodies in Maharashtra were inevitable
as each party was seeking to expand its influence
at the expense of the other. Quite understandably,
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the Sena is yet to reconcile itself to its situation as
a junior partner of the BJP after the 2014
Assembly election, when it won fewer seats than
the BJP did after contesting alone following a
similar breakdown in seat-sharing negotiations.
Having headed the government in 1995, the first
time the alliance tasted power in the State, the
Sena greatly resents the role of a minor partner of
the BJP in the government. If the party does not
win back its support base, ceded mostly to the
BJP, it will not be able to reverse the power
equation within the alliance. The results of the
local body elections are significant in determining
this equation. They will in all probability lay the
basis for seat negotiations for battles with higher
stakes: the Lok Sabha and Assembly elections in
2019.
But embarrassingly for the two parties, the
campaign is at a pitch that cannot be brought
down. Both have indulged in name-calling and
traded corruption charges, even while remaining
partners in government. It is therefore difficult to
imagine there will be no long-term consequences
for the alliance in the run-up to the 2019 general
election. The Sena, which played down the
strident Marathi chauvinism of its early years in
favour of Hindutva nationalism, knows its support
base is vulnerable to poaching by the BJP. In
alliance or out of it, the Sena is always under the
threat of being subsumed within the BJPs own
political stream. Its efforts to expand beyond the
cities and major towns of the State had put the
Sena more in direct competition with the BJP than
in conflict with the Congress and the Nationalist
Congress Party. Unsurprisingly, the Sena
campaign for the civic bodies has grown to
include attacks on not only the failings of the
Devendra Fadnavis government but also the
record of the Narendra Modi government at the
Centre and its flip-flops on demonetisation.
However, the real test for the Sena and the BJP
will emerge after the dust settles, when they will
have to resume work as partners in government
following weeks of this hostile campaign. And
also possibly, deal with a changed power equation
within the alliance.
Can Trump reset ties with Russia? {International
Relations}
When I am President, Russia will respect us far
more than they do now and both countries will,
perhaps, work together to solve some of the many
great and pressing problems and issues of the
WORLD! Donald Trump tweeted on January 7,
weeks before he took over as the 45th President of
the United States. Throughout his campaign, Mr.
Trump praised Russian President Vladimir Putin
for his leadership. Mr. Putin was one of the first
leaders he reached out to after taking office. In a
telephone conversation on January 28, both
leaders promised cooperation in fighting
terrorism. Interestingly, Mr. Trumps offer to
rescript ties with the former Cold War rival comes
at a time when bilateral relations are at the lowest
level since the collapse of the Soviet Union. The
Obama administration imposed sanctions on
Russia for its military intervention in Crimea and
alleged interference in the U.S. election. The U.S.
intelligence community has repeatedly slammed
Moscow over a number of issues, from spreading
instability in the world to killing civilians in
Syria. So Mr. Trumps outreach stands in sharp
contrast with the policies pursued by his
predecessor(s). Why should he promise a reset in
the first place?
Why reach out?
One explanation, which gained currency in the
weeks after the presidential election, is that the
Russians have some leverage over the new U.S.
President. According to American media reports,
the Central Intelligence Agency has concluded
that Russia interfered in the U.S. election to help
Mr. Trump win. Another allegation is that Russia
possesses some compromising personal
information about Mr. Trump which it could use
to blackmail him. Irrespective of the merit of
these allegations, its hard to believe that the
President of the worlds most powerful country
would be loyal to a foreign government just
because it leaked information about his rival, or
he could be blackmailed over some secret
information.
For a logical explanation, one has to set aside
these theories of loyalty and blackmail and look
into the broader ideological and strategic contexts.
Mr. Trumps foreign policy-related statements
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from his early campaign days can be divided into
three broad themes: an ideological opposition
towards what he calls radical Islamic terrorism,
improving ties with Russia, and taking on China.
These three themes are somehow interlinked.
Mr. Trump has never shied away from asserting
his own, or his countrys, religious identity.
During the campaign, he had said he would fight
to bring Americans together as one people under
one god saluting one American flag. In the words
of Steve Bannon, Mr. Trumps chief strategist and
one of the most powerful voices in the
administration, the Judeo-Christian West is in an
outright war against jihadist Islamic fascism. The
early decisions of President Trump, including a
complete ban on visitors from seven Muslim-
majority countries, indicate that the
administrations world view and Mr. Bannons are
not entirely different. On the other side, in Mr.
Putins Russia, the Orthodox Church, sidelined by
the godless communists for decades, has made a
big comeback. So when Mr. Trump promises to
win over the Russian leadership in the fight
against the Islamic State, hes actually referring to
a possible ideological alliance between two
predominantly Christian countries against a
common enemy. By doing so, Mr. Trump may be
hoping to make advances in another direction
tackling China.
Mr. Trump believes Russia is no longer the U.S.s
principal global rival. In his world view, China is
rising to that stature. To be sure, Russia, with its
enormous land and natural resources and
strategically important geography and military
might, remains a key geopolitical power. But its
economy is inherently weak, a shadow of the
Soviet economic power. Though Russia retains
huge influence in its backyard, its doubtful
whether it alone could pose a long-term strategic
threat to the U.S. On the other side, China is an
economic powerhouse that wields enormous
influence around the world. But Chinas force-
projection capabilities are limited as its seafront
remains vulnerable. The U.S. has massive military
presence in the Chinese sphere of influence. But if
Russia and China come together which has
actually been taking place in recent years, be it in
trade and economic ties or the collaboration at the
United Nations on global conflicts that would
pose a potential threat to long-term American
interests. Mr. Trump would like to use his
overtures to Russia to drive a wedge between
Moscow and Beijing.
This is a strategy his predecessors used several
times in the history of American foreign policy. In
the 1970s, President Richard Nixon wanted to
exploit the differences in the Communist world
and overhauled Americas policy towards China.
In recent years, President Barack Obama seized
the opportunity in Ukraine to mobilise European
opinion against Russia and open a joint front
against Moscow. While his sanctions regime
didnt necessarily weaken Russias immediate
interests and capabilities, it actually drove a
wedge between Berlin and Moscow. Till the
Ukraine crisis, German-Russian relations were on
a high trajectory which Mr. Putin wanted to
convert into a strategic alliance. A German-
Russian-Eurasian alliance could potentially have
threatened the foundations of the unipolar world.
Mr. Trump would like to do to the China-Russia
partnership exactly what Mr. Obama did to the
Russian-German partnership.
Three hurdles
But there are three key problems: political,
geopolitical and strategic. One, Mr. Obama has
created enough hurdles for Mr. Trump in dealing
with the Russians. Mr. Trump already suffers
from a credibility problem after all the allegations
of his campaigns links with Russia. True, he
could lift the sanctions through executive orders,
but that will further alienate the powerful
Russophobic elements in the Washington
establishment from his administration.
Two, Russian foreign policy is historically shaped
by its deep insecurity. Its long border with
European and Caucasian sides has no physical
protection and is exposed to potential aggressions.
NATO keeps expanding to these areas, which
explains Russias adventures in Georgia and
Ukraine. Mr. Trump cannot win a sustainable deal
with Moscow unless he assures the Russians over
NATO. This means, Mr. Trump will have to
either give up on or rein in NATO. Both will have
consequences from Europe.
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Third, todays Russia is not the Russia of 2009
when Mr. Obama became the President and
promised a reset. Russia then was largely
confined to its backyard Eastern Europe,
Caucuses and Central Asia. But now Russia has
already spread its influence to other regions. Its
the dominant player in Syria, a strong ally of Iran
(one of the countries targeted by Mr. Trumps
Muslim ban order), and a shadow force in
Afghanistan where the Americans are fighting an
unwinnable war for over 15 years. Moscows
bargaining capacity is much higher now. It will
demand greater compromises from the U.S. for a
potential dtente. And how is Mr. Trump, who has
promised to put America first a euphemism
to restore the U.S.s slipped glory as the worlds
pre-eminent superpower going to address this?
Both sides may be testing the waters for now, but
ideological intentions, as history shows, are
unlikely to trump geopolitical realities. The fault
lines will start emerging as soon as they get down
to business.
stanly.johny@thehindu.co.in
Donald Trump would like to use his overtures to
Russia to drive a wedge between Moscow and
Beijing
As bigotry becomes policy {International
Policy}
American President Donald Trump implemented
his campaign promise of extreme vetting on
Friday when he announced that his administration
had banned, for 90 days via executive order,
travellers from seven Muslim-majority nations:
Iran, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria and
Yemen. Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Pakistan were
not on the list, perhaps owing to the close
economic and strategic ties that Washington, and
indeed the Trump Organization, have with some
of these nations although White House Chief
of Staff Reince Priebus indicated that Pakistan
may be put on the list, going forward. Mr. Trump
has placed on hold indefinitely the U.S.s asylum
programme for refugees from Syria, and
suspended entry of all refugees to the U.S. for 120
days. While he may have enthused his core
constituency of predominantly white, blue-collar
workers, beset with economic and racial
insecurities, his order sent shock waves at home
and abroad, and sparked fears that it could create a
recruitment bonanza for terrorists. Leading the
liberal counterattack, the American Civil Liberties
Union argued that Mr. Trumps order represented
constitutional and legal overreach. In response, a
federal judge in New York ruled that sending back
the travellers detained in airports may cause them
irreparable harm, and that the government was
enjoined and restrained from, in any manner and
by any means, removing individuals with valid
papers. Similar rulings came in Virginia,
Massachusetts and Washington State.
Mr. Trumps shock therapy for controlling
immigration begs the question whether the order
is constitutional. In 1965, Congress had
deliberately circumscribed presidential power in
this regard by stating that no one could be
discriminated against in the issuance of an
immigrant visa because of the persons race, sex,
nationality, place of birth... The order will
probably have a wider fallout in the economic
sphere already Silicon Valley firms have
scrambled to bring back their staff deployed in
affected countries, and CEOs including Googles
Sundar Pichai, Facebooks Mark Zuckerberg and
Microsofts Satya Nadella, have expressed
concern that the ban will affect their talent pools.
More broadly, Mr. Trumps order has done
irreparable damage to Americas reputation as a
melting pot of immigrants, a beacon for bright
minds and a humane force against authoritarian
excess abroad. No major attack has taken place on
U.S. soil in the past eight years. Ultimately, Mr.
Trumps insistence on preferential treatment for
Christian refugees makes a bogeyman of
Muslims, a retrograde action that will exacerbate
anti-Americanism worldwide.
How land use affects climate change {Climate
Change}
Sujatha Byravan
The interaction between people and land is as old
as human evolution. When early hunter-gatherers
started to settle down in the Neolithic transition
and practise agriculture, they began to change
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their relationship with land in a major way.
Starting with the Holocene, approximately 11,500
years ago, many plants were domesticated for
agriculture. These and the associated social and
technological changes led to dense human
settlements that then paved the way for the
formation of early cities. As is evident, even now
human interventions transform land, water and
local ecologies, and in doing so deeply affect the
availability of resources. Over the past half-
century or so, it has become clear that these
changes have so profoundly modified the earth
that a geological transformation to the
Anthropocene is now firmly in place.
Land use change lock-in
Land-use change takes place through human
activity in several ways. For example, in
Indonesia, about 500 sq km of forest area are
cleared each year, much of which is replaced with
oil palm plantations. Another pattern of changing
land use is seen in expanding cities. In many
countries, including India, cities are expanding
well beyond their formal limits, either along inter-
city corridors or in other directions. Various
forces shape these patterns of urbanisation,
transforming land use from agriculture and forests
into industry, residential and commercial
buildings and associated infrastructure, and
horticulture. Often the contested spaces of peri-
urban areas (outside city limits but not quite part
of the rural hinterland) become sites from which
groundwater is pumped and transported to the
city, where new industrial zones are developed,
where urban waste is dumped, and where
vegetables and other high-value crops are grown
for nearby urban centres.
These land-use changes are alarming for climate
change because they tell us how deeply locked
into semi-permanence they can be, just by
proliferating at a rapid pace. Cars are replaced on
average every decade or so and new breakthrough
vehicle technology may spread and change the
fleet in one to two decades. Coal power plants
may be replaced every four to five decades.
However, cities and urban tissue last over 500
years. Urbanising areas grow and expand in
different ways, parts of them planned, with other
portions of informality containing infrastructure,
homes, slums and industries, waterbodies and
marshlands.
In India, there are multiple patterns of urban and
peri-urban growth resulting in different
consequences for each region. For example,
whether infrastructure is able to guarantee some
degree of equity of access to services in cities
varies depending on both history and geography.
The suburban trains and excellent network of
BEST (Brihanmumbai Electric Supply and
Transport Undertaking) buses, for instance,
defined Mumbai early on in its growth. But in
some cities such as Hyderabad and Bengaluru,
expansion and infrastructure development took
place primarily outside the core areas with the
view to establishing and supporting public sector
companies such as HMT, Bharat Electronics
Limited, and the Defence Research and
Development Organisation, and later Information
Technology companies. They also serviced an
auto-led transport network and associated land-
use change. In fact, Chennai, quite intentionally,
set up industrial hubs for automotive and parts
suppliers. Gurugram, south of Delhi, is a
privatised Mecca for several kinds of industries
and has developed into a financial and industrial
hub. Similarly, the peri-urban areas of many other
cities New Town in Kolkata, Navi Mumbai,
and so on have each had their own version of
sprawl, or vast planned or unplanned spaces, that
have together extended a large footprint across
India.
Implications
The specific patterns of urban growth of a city and
its periphery have implications for poverty, food,
water, health, jobs and access to services. A city
can, therefore, based on its pattern of growth and
expansion, lead to particular lifestyles and
circumscribe a quality of life for its many
residents.
Interventions like converting agricultural land for
housing or industry, filling up ponds and building
housing complexes on lake beds, etc. impact
ecosystem services and climate adaptation. These
especially affect the poor who are largely reliant
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on ecosystems for their livelihoods. Keeping
water in the ground, in tanks and waterbodies is
regarded as a precaution for dry spells or
irregularity in precipitation. These measures can
improve resilience towards the possible effects of
climate change.
According to some scientists, unlike carbon
dioxide, the greenhouse gas whose effects last for
hundreds of years, land cover and land
management generate drivers in climate systems
that influence local and regional weather patterns.
This is largely due to changes in aerosols, carbon,
nitrogen and other gases along with the moisture
in the air, heat and light. The urban heat island
effect is understood readily, but this also affects
peri-urban regions of expansion.
This subject clearly requires more research to
provide guidance to policymakers. But we already
know that protecting waterbodies, conserving
groundwater, reducing our ecological footprint
and living in more compact communities are good
ways to address both climate change mitigation
and adaptation, which are about reducing
greenhouse gases and preparing to live in a
warmer world.
Sujatha Byravan is Principal Research Scientist at
the Center for Study of Science, Technology and
Policy, Bengaluru.
Interventions like converting agricultural land
for housing or industry and filling up ponds
impact ecosystem services
BUSINESS
Clues from the previous post-demonetisation
Union Budget of 1978 {Indian Economy}
TCA Sharad Raghavan
With just a day left for the presentation of the
Union Budget, a look at the one presented in
1978, immediately after the demonetisation
exercise undertaken that year, yields some insight
into a few of the problems that the Indian
economy currently faces.
Similar objectives
The stated objectives of the demonetisation effort
in 1978 were more or less the same as what Prime
Minister Narendra Modi announced on November
8, 2016 not counting the subsequent steady
change in the governments message from
eliminating black money to moving towards a
less cash economy.
The demonetisation of high denomination bank
notes was a step primarily aimed at controlling
illegal transactions, the then Finance Minister
H.M. Patel said in his Budget speech a month
after the demonetisation exercise. It is a part of a
series of measures which Government has taken
and is determined to take against anti-social
elements.
While the differing scales of the economy and
relative prevalence of high-value currency notes
ensure that there can be no comparison between
the demonetisation effort undertaken in November
2016 and the similar exercise conducted in 1978,
some of the economic conditions prevalent at that
time were indeed quite similar to what exist now.
Take for example, the poor state of private
investment in the economy at the moment. Back
in 1978, Mr. Patel said that there is also an
urgent need to increase individual and corporate
savings if increased investment expenditure is to
take place without any adverse pressures on
prices. This would require greater simplicity in the
lifestyle of those individuals who can save, and a
greater efficiency and a reduction in inessential
expenditure on the part of corporations.
This sounds quite similar to the current situation,
where private investment is languishing and the
government is encouraging people to put their
money in banks.
The government had in 1974 enacted the
Compulsory Deposit Scheme (Income Tax
Payers) Act which mandated that all those earning
more than Rs. 15,000 a year would compulsorily
have to deposit a certain percentage of that
amount in banks.
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Mr. Patel, in his 1978 Budget speech, increased
these limits significantly in a drive to force people
to save.
So, those earning between Rs. 15,000 and Rs.
25,000 would have to deposit 41% of their
income, up from the previous 4%. Those earning
between Rs. 25,001 and Rs. 35,000 would have to
deposit 11%, between Rs. 35,001 and Rs. 70,000
12% and those earning more than Rs. 70,000
would have to deposit 15%.
This, Mr. Patel had said at the time, would earn
the government Rs. 25 crore in that year itself.
The demonetisation exercise of 2016 has basically
been a compulsory deposit scheme, with the
government forcing people to place their cash in
banks and setting curbs on how much they can
withdraw. While increasing financial savings is
desirable, the sudden influx of funds is causing
problems for banks, according to economists and
bankers.
Swelling bank deposits
Already bank deposits post-demonetisation have
swelled and banks are finding it difficult to deploy
these resources as there is no demand, said D.K.
Srivastava, Chief Policy Advisor at EY India.
Unless there is a policy initiative to boost
demand, it would actually become a burden.
The lack of demand was a problem even Mr. Patel
had recognised at the time. One method he had
employed to increase private investment was to
encourage people to buy equity stake in new
companies so as to provide them with the funds to
invest further.
In order to stimulate such investment, I propose
to give a deduction in the computation of taxable
income of 50% of the amount invested in equity
shares of new industrial companies, Mr. Patel
had said in his speech. The maximum investment
in a year qualifying for this deduction will be
limited to Rs. 10,000.
While this would entail a loss to the exchequer,
the then Finance Minister candidly said that he
would cheerfully accept a much larger loss if it
results in stimulating larger investments. The
current government too could maybe consider
taking a similar view, accepting losses to itself in
an effort to stimulate private investment.
This could work in the current scenario, where
there is a need to encourage equity investments,
Mr. Srivastava added. But this must also be
accompanied by suitable policy measures to
reduce the cost of borrowing for companies.
Suryoday offers 9% on 1-2 year fixed deposits
{Sustainable Development}
Suryoday, a small finance bank that started
banking operations last week, will offer 9% on
fixed deposits with a maturity of 1 to 2 years, said
a top official.
Senior citizens will get 75 basis points (bps) more
on such deposits, R.Baskar Babu, managing
director and chief executive officer of Suryoday,
informed the media.
The announcement comes at a time when interest
rates are falling with large universal banks
offering no more than 7% on deposits of similar
tenure.
These banks typically offer 50 bps more to senior
citizens.
Our objective is to replace the existing
borrowing for which the weighted average cost is
12.5%, Mr.Babu said.
Suryoday, which was a micro finance institution
(MFI), has converted into a small finance bank.
As an MFI, it did not have access to public
deposits.
The lender also said it will offer 6.25% on savings
bank deposits of up to Rs. 1 lakh.
Deposit target
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We plan to mobilise Rs. 500 crore of deposits in
the first year of operations and Rs. 1000 crore by
the end of March 2019, he said.
As an MFI, it had a net interest margin of 11%
which will reduce to and stabilise at about 89%
in one year, Mr. Babu said.
THE HINDU NEWSPAPER IMPORTANT
ARTICLES 01.02.2017
FRONT PAGE
Note ban a radical measure: CEA {Indian
Economy}
Economic Survey pegs growth at 7.1% based on
pre-Nov. 8 data
The governments Chief Economic Adviser
Arvind Subramanian on Tuesday said there was a
sense of anxiety about the economys prospects
following demonetisation and stressed the need to
allay the fears of an overzealous tax regime in its
aftermath, even as he proposed the headline the
Chief Economic Adviser finally speaks on
demonetisation for breaking his silence on the
issue after 85 days.
Speaking soon after Union Finance Minister Arun
Jaitley tabled the Economic Survey for 2016-17 in
Parliament, Mr. Subramanian termed the move to
cancel the legal tender nature of high-value
currency notes a radical currency-cum-
governance-cum-social engineering measure to
permanently and punitively raise the cost of illicit
and unaccounted transactions or kala dhan (black
money).
Credit growth down
Bank credit growth has come down, two-wheeler
sales have come down. There will be an impact on
GDP. But the question is how much, he said.
Mr. Subramanian also stressed that it wouldnt be
appropriate to compare the Surveys forecast of a
quarter to half percentage point decline in growth
to projections made by other agencies, including
the International Monetary Fund, which has
scaled down its India growth estimate to 6.6%.
The Survey pegs economic growth in 2016-17 at
7.1%, but this is based mainly on information for
months before the November 8 demonetisation of
Rs. 500 and Rs. 1,000 notes. This is half a
percentage point lower than the 7.6% growth last
year, but the CEA warned that comparisons
attributing the difference in growth numbers to
demonetization alone would be foolhardy.
Costs to informal sector
Mr. Subramanian declined comment on the design
and implementation of demonetisation, but did
speak on the costs, and long-term benefits of what
was an unusual and unique monetary
experiment aimed at a structural break. It would
be fair to say that short-term costs include the
hardships and inconvenience faced particularly by
those in the informal sector.
After a temporary slowdown in GDP growth, the
Survey expects the economy to return to normal,
once the scrapped currency is replaced by March.
In the long run, tax revenues and GDP growth
would be bolstered on account of greater tax
compliance and a reduction in real estate prices.
Changes in H-1B visa on the anvil, says White
House {International Politics}
The White House said on
Monday it was working on changes in H-1B and
other guest worker visa programmes through
legislative and executive actions as part of
President Donald Trumps immigration reform,
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even as a Bill introduced by a Democratic
lawmaker proposed new restrictions on H-1B
visas.
These visa programmes are mandated by the
legislature and are widely used by Indian IT
companies to place skilled workers in the U.S.
Leaked draft
A leaked draft of an executive order under
consideration for presidential signature proposes
restrictions on the Optional Practical Training
(OPT) work, a job training opportunity available
for Science, Technology, Engineering, Math
(STEM) Masters from a U.S. university.
It also proposed to roll back the permission to
work now available to spouses of H-1B visa
holders and to replace the current lottery system
that selects the 85,000 annual H-1B visa
beneficiaries. This years selection process opens
on April 1. According to the draft published by
Vox.com, the Trump administration is also
planning to have federal inspectors regularly visit
the sites where guest workers are employed.
I think with respect to H-1Bs and other visas...
[it] is [all] part of a larger immigration reform
effort the President will continue to take through
executive order and through working with the
Congress There is an overall need to look at all
these programmes and you will see that both
through executive action and through
comprehensive legislative measures a way [is
being found] to address immigration as a whole
and the visa programmes, White House press
secretary Sean Spicer said on Monday.
New Bill
A new Bill introduced by Democrat Zoe Lofgren
proposes changes in the H-1B programme, to
make hiring of foreign workers expensive.
Trump administration also plans to have federal
inspectors visit sites where guest workers are
employed
NATIONAL
 SHRC for law to help children with disabilities board should be placed for further scrutiny, in
{Social Justice} case the complainant demands so, the SHRC
ruled.
Deformities due to medical negligence in focus
SC rejects plea to stay jallikattu law {Rights
The State Human Rights Commission (SHRC) has Issues}
ordered the government to make legislation, if
required, to ensure that children who are born
with disabilities either because of medical
negligence or any deficiencies in care in the
hospital are provided proper medical treatment.
Ignoring such children as the responsibility of the
parents alone constituted gross human right
violation, the SHRC has said.
Amendments
The government should examine if any Whether it is culture has to be debated: judge
amendments or additions are required in the
current legal clauses which provide for A few hours after the President gave his assent on
compensation to such children, it said. Tuesday to the Tamil Nadu amendments in the
Prevention of Cruelty Act of 1960 to allow
The SHRC gave the order in a case wherein a jallikattu, the Supreme Court refused to stay the
newborn, born at a private hospital at Edappal in new State law.
Malappuram district, was diagnosed with cerebral
palsy, allegedly following medical negligence. Allowing the Central government to withdraw its
January 7, 2016 notification permitting jallikattu,
Ensure relief a Bench of Justices Dipak Misra and Rohinton F.
Nariman declined the plea of NGO Compassion
The government should immediately provide
Unlimited Plus Action for an interim stay on the
relief measures to the family of the infant and
operation of the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals
make arrangements for further treatment of the
(Tamil Nadu Amendment) Act, 2017.
infant, the SHRC ruled.
It asked the organisation and other animal rights
The Health, Social Justice, and SC/ST
activists the basis of their challenge to the new
Departments and the District Collector should
State law.
fulfil their responsibilities, the order said.
Referring to the amendments made by the Tamil
The medical board could not determine the reason
Nadu Assembly to the 1960 Central Act, Justice
why the infant developed cerebral palsy.
Misra pointed out that the declared object of the
Antenatal care new legislation is the preservation of a particular
breed of bulls.
The complainant, however, said that she had gone
on all antenatal visits to the hospital correctly and They say that the new law is for the preservation
at no point did the doctor mention the possibility of a variety of bulls they call it [jallikattu] a
of the infant developing any congenital culture. This has to be debated, he observed.
disabilities.
Act violated
The Director of Health Services should also
decide whether the conclusions of the medical

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The basis of our challenge is that the State has
violated the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals Act,
1960, senior advocate Siddharth Luthra said.
Attorney-General Mukul Rohatgi told the
Supreme Court that jallikattu was a matter of
culture and that citizens had the right to take
measures to conserve their culture.
Mr. Rohatgi, appearing for the Centre, was
countering the allegation of animal rights activists
that Tamil Nadu had violated the Prevention of
Cruelty to Animals Act, 1960 and seeking an
interim stay on the new State law. He referred to
Article 29 (1) of the Constitution to back his
submission.
Then we have to decide on whether jallikattu
comes within the ambit of culture meant in
Article 29 (1) and whether this kind of a sport or
event or activity is safe Conservation of a
culture should not involve inflicting unnecessary
pain or suffering to animals, Justice Misra
responded. Mr. Rohatgi then referred to Section
11 (3) (e) of the 1960 Act which permits
slaughtering of animals for food.Mr. Rohatgi,
slaughtering for food comes within the purview of
doctrine of necessity. Section 11 (3) (e) permits
slaughter for food but also mandates that the
animal should be killed without inflicting upon it
unnecessary pain and suffering, Justice Misra
observed.
The courts permission for the Centre to withdraw
its January 7 notification has now rendered
infructuous the batch of writ petitions filed by
several NGOs and other animal rights
organisations against the notification last year.
The interlocutory applications filed by the NGOs
against the new Tamil Nadu law were part of their
2016 writ petitions.
The Bench has given them two weeks to file fresh
writ petitions challenging the Tamil Nadu
amendments.
The State government and others supporting
jallikattu in the current litigation were given four
weeks to file their counter-affidavits.
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Kathmandu meet to finalise SAARC budget,
agenda {International Relations}
Diplomats say the meeting is critical as it will
require consensus among members
Indian and Pakistani officials will meet to finalise
the budget and agenda of the SAARC during the
February 1-2 meeting in Kathmandu. The meeting
will mark the beginning of the annual calendar of
events of the organisation which failed to meet in
Islamabad for a summit and is in focus as it is the
first time high officials of member-countries will
meet since the cancellation of the summit.
Joint Secretaries in charge of SAARC affairs
from member-states will hold the annual
programming committee meeting in Kathmandu
to finalise budget for the SAARC secretariat and
the regional centres. The meeting is likely to take
stock of the present agenda and development
projects, said Pavan Kumar Dubey, official at the
SAARC Secretariat.
Mr. Dubey said SAARC had been performing its
routine administrative and developmental tasks
after members withdrew from the November 2016
summit objecting to cross-border terror from
Pakistan.
Nepals role
The Planning Committee meeting also indicates
the continuing role of Nepal as the Chair of
SAARC which was to have passed on to Pakistan
last November.
However, diplomats indicated that the meeting in
Kathmandu will be critical as it will require
consensus among members for finalising budget
of the organisation. We will have to build
consensus among all members for the agenda of
the organisation, said Mani Bhattarai, Joint
Secretary in charge of SAARC affairs in Nepals
Ministry of Foreign Affairs, indicating that both
India and Pakistan will play a crucial role in
meeting.
A senior Bhutan diplomat, however, told The
Hindu that the meeting of Kathmandu would have
to be followed by other meetings where more
coordination among SAARC members would be
needed.
India was also expected to hold a meeting but it
has declined to hold it for the time being, said the
diplomat, indicating that India-Pakistan
differences continue to be a major factor in the
organisation.
Following cancellation of SAARC summit in
Islamabad, India has boosted support to other
regional groupings like BIMSTEC and BBIN
which aims to engage most of the SAARC
members barring Pakistan.
INTERNATIONAL
New bill seeks to double H-1B salary
{International Politics}
A new bill introduced by Democratic
Congresswoman Zoe Lofgren proposing changes
in the H-1B visa programme seeks to raise the
minimum salary under the scheme to $1,30,000
from the current $60,000.
The legislation, if passed, could hit Indian and
American IT companies which use H-1B visas to
hire foreign skilled workers, including Indians.
Long-pending issue
A comprehensive immigration reform through
legislation, however, is a long-pending issue in
the U.S. and thrashing out a law that
accommodates all domestic constituencies in the
country is not an easy task. On H-1B alone, there
are at least four bills now, including the one
introduced by Ms. Lofgren.
She argues that while the proposed change will
allow companies to hire foreign talent when it is
locally unavailable, it plugs the loophole that
allows them to undercut local employees by
bringing cheaper replacements from abroad.
My legislation refocuses the H-1B programme to
its original intent to seek out and find the best
and brightest from around the world, and to
supplement the U.S. workforce with talented,
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highly-paid, and highly-skilled workers who help
create jobs here in America, not replace them.
She represents parts of Silicon Valley in the U.S.
House, as does Indian American Congressman Ro
Khanna, who also supports such restructuring of
the H-1B programme.
While the legislative route to immigration reforms
is fraught, an executive action could immediately
roll back presidential decisions that expanded the
scope of the original legislation, under George W.
Bush and Barack Obama.
Vox.com published the draft of an executive order
on immigration reform that awaits President
Donald Trumps signature.
The proposed order requires Department of
Homeland Security (DHS) to carry out site
visits at places where guest workers with L-1
visas are employed immediately. Within a period
of two years, the DHS will expand such
inspections to all sites where guest workers are
employed. L-1 visas are used for intra-company
transfers. It also requires the DHS to improve
monitoring of foreign students in the U.S.
STEM programmes
The document titled Protecting American Jobs
and Workers by Strengthening the Integrity of
Foreign Worker Visa Programs was one of the
six documents that Vox received from a source.
The outlet did not publish the documents until two
them turned out to be authentic. Since publication
last week, a third one also turned out to be
authentic the one on restricting travel from
Muslim majority countries.
The standard duration of Optional Practical
Training (OPT) jobs is one year, but with
extensions allowed by consecutive administrations
it can now extend up to three years for STEM
(Science, Technology, Engineering, Mathematics)
masters.
The Obama administration allowed the last
extension in May 2016.
STEM OPT extension is especially appealing to
Indian students, who are concentrated in masters
programmes in engineering and computer science.
Data from SEVP (Student and Exchange Visitor
Program) indicates that in 2016, 83% of Indian
students, 43% of Saudi Arabian students, 78% of
Iranian students, and 40% of Chinese students
were enrolled in STEM programmes, said Rahul
Choudaha, co-founder of InterEdge, a U.S.-based
provider of support services for international
students.
Rohingya refugees to be relocated on remote
island {Social Justice}
Bangladesh will push ahead with a controversial
plan to relocate tens of thousands of Rohingya
refugees from Myanmar to a remote island despite
warnings it is uninhabitable and prone to flooding.
The government has set up a committee
comprising state officials in the coastal districts,
ordering authorities to help identify and relocate
undocumented Myanmar nationals to Thengar
Char in the Bay of Bengal.
The committee will assist transferring both
registered and unregistered refugees from
Myanmar to Thengar Char near Hatiya island in
Noakhali district, according to an order issued by
the Cabinet Division last week and posted online.
Hatiya is situated on the estuary of the River
Meghna and is a nine-hour journey away from the
camps where the Rohingya have taken shelter.
Some 232,000 Rohingya Muslims both
registered and unregistered were already living
in Bangladesh before more than 65,000 stateless
Rohingya fleeing violence in Myanmars western
state of Rakhine began entering the country last
October.
Most of those who fled to Bangladesh live in
squalid conditions in refugee camps in Coxs
Bazar district, which borders Rakhine State and is
home to the countrys biggest tourist resort.
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Bangladesh has also asked its officials in the
border districts to identify the Myanmar nationals
who illegally infiltrated the country.
The island push came as members of Myanmars
state-appointed body headed by Kofi Annan,
tasked with finding long-term solutions for
Rakhine state, visited refugee camps in Coxs
Bazar.
The team also met with Bangladeshi officials at
Coxs Bazar, and was due to hold talks with
Bangladesh Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina before
their departure on Wednesday. AFP
Hatiya island is situated on the estuary of River
Meghna and is prone to flooding
OPINION
Drawing up a diet plan {Governance}
The welfare challenge lies in providing assistance
to needy households to ensure adequate diets
without creating conditions in which they opt for
inferior diets that are too heavy on cereals
With the Kerala governments decision to
implement the National Food Security Act
(NFSA) from April, the whole country will be
covered by the legislation. However, if we expect
the NFSA to improve Indias malnutrition
statistics, we may well be disappointed.
According to a study by Himanshu and Abhijit
Sen, even before the NFSA is fully implemented,
use of the public distribution system (PDS)
expanded sharply with proportion of households
getting PDS subsidy rising from about 25% in
2004-05 to 50% in 2011-12. However, decline in
child malnutrition has been far more modest.
A patchy record
While we still do not have nationwide data on
malnutrition, State-wise data from Annual Health
Survey/District Level Health Surveys of 2012-14
as well as National Family Health Survey IV of
2015-16 suggest only modest improvement in
child malnutrition since the National Family
Health Survey III of 2005-06. Proportion of
households receiving PDS subsidies in Rajasthan
increased by about 15 percentage points,
underweight declined by 3 percentage points;
neighbouring Madhya Pradesh experienced
similar increase in the PDS but a sharper decline
underweight (17 percentage points); another
neighbour Gujarat shows a drop in PDS use but
records a modest improvement in underweight
statistics (5 percentage points). The strangest case
is that of Andhra Pradesh where 59% of the
population received PDS subsidy in 2004-05
rising to 76 % in 2011-12 but underweight rate
seems to be stuck around 32% with hardly any
improvement.
Why do we see this disconnect? Critiques of the
PDS may point to leakages and suggest that
perhaps these subsidies are not reaching the target
beneficiaries. However, a large number of studies
have recorded improving performance of the PDS
and suggest this may be an overly cynical
assumption. Other critiques may argue that with
rising incomes, poverty has fallen in India and
regardless of the PDS, individuals may get
sufficient calories, making changes in PDS use
irrelevant to caloric intake. This also seems
somewhat of an overreach, given the entrenched
poverty in some sections of the country and
society.
A recently released report based on India Human
Development Survey of 2004-05 and 2011-12
suggests that the relationship between the PDS
and nutrition may be more complex. Jointly
organised by researchers from National Council of
Applied Economic Research and University of
Maryland, this is the first nationwide survey to
interview the same households at two points in
time. By matching households with similar
income, family size, land ownership and place of
residence, but one group with Below Poverty Line
(BPL) or Antyodaya Anna Yojana (AAY) card
and the other without these cards, this study is
able to compare apples to apples and examine the
role of the PDS in a quasi-experimental design.
The results suggest that access to PDS subsidies
changes the way people allocate their household
resources. When rice, wheat and other cereals are
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available cheaply, households try to get more of
their required calories from cereals and less from
milk, fruits and vegetables. Results show that
households with BPL/AAY cards consume a
monthly per capita average of 11.87 kg of cereals,
but only 2.77 litres of milk. In contrast,
households without BPL/AAY cards but at the
same income level, consume somewhat less
cereals (11.22 kg) but more milk (3.21 litres). One
would normally expect that the savings from
cereal purchase due to price subsidies would be
used to buy milk, fruit and nuts, but in an era
where school and medical costs are rising and
households face many other demands on their
purse, these savings seem to be spent on non-food
items. Food consumption forms 56% of household
budget in BPL/AAY households compared to a
slightly higher level (58%) in matched households
without access to PDS subsidies.
A prior study using the same data and a similar
matching procedure, published in a joint
NCAER/Brookings journal, India Policy Forum ,
found that households with a BPL/AAY card were
no better than households without PDS subsidies
when it came to child nutrition. This may well be
because access to cheap calories reduces
consumption of different foods and dietary
diversity is very important for balanced nutrition.
This does not mean that we should do away with
food subsidies. The NCAER report mentioned
earlier also found that for very poor households or
households that experience income declines of
20% or more between the two surveys, access to
the PDS is very important for preserving food
intake and dietary diversity. When faced with a
sharp income decline, households with BPL/AAY
cards reduce their cereal intake by 770 g per
capita per month, and maintain their milk intake.
In contrast, households who cant avail of food
subsidies reduced their monthly per capita cereal
intake by 930 g and milk intake by 280 milliliters.
Nudged towards better choices
The challenge lies in providing assistance to
needy households to ensure adequate diets without
creating conditions in which they opt for inferior
diets that are heavy on cereals. This is a particular
challenge for modern India where rates of
diabetes, high blood pressure and heart conditions
are on the rise. Indian immigrants in the U.S. and
U.K. also suffer from higher prevalence of these
conditions than the native-born. So it may be that
Indians have greater genetic predisposition for
these so-called lifestyle diseases, but it is also
well recognised that these diseases are
exacerbated by excessive consumption of
carbohydrates, amply available in cereals.
Cash transfers may be one way of dealing with
this challenge. They would allow households to
invest in better diets without circumscribing what
they consume. However, their success would
depend on the ability to effectively administer
transfers and reduce leakages. Moreover, how this
may affect grain markets remains unknown.
International research on cash versus in-kind food
subsidies presents mixed results, with the
effectiveness of cash transfers depending on the
institutional framework. Current debates on
Universal Basic Income tend to see it as an
additional component of social safety nets. But if
the mechanisms for effective administration of the
UBI are in place, it is possible to make a case for
replacing PDS by cash transfers on nutritional
grounds and this is well within the framework laid
down by the NFSA.
Sonalde Desai is Professor of Sociology at
University of Maryland and Senior Fellow at
National Council of Applied Economic Research.
Views are personal.
If the mechanisms for effective administration of
the UBI are in place, it is possible to make a case
for replacing PDS by cash transfers on nutritional
grounds
American carnage: Trumps road to ruin
{International Politics}
The Trump presidency in the U.S. is less than two
weeks old, but it is already clear that it represents
an unusually fierce assault on civic, political, and
moral values
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As a student of international politics, I can
certainly suggest various ways in which U.S.
President Donald J. Trump may be good for one
country or another. From the vantage point of
New Delhi, his focus on terrorism, his business
interests in India, and his radical indifference to
non-proliferation all present strategic
opportunities. From my perch in London, I also
understand why Theresa May, Prime Minister of
the U.K., is aggressively courting the Trump
administration. A trade deal with Washington
would bolster the governments hand in departure
negotiations with the European Union, and
American support for the North Atlantic Treaty
Organisation remains crucial to Britains interests.
This is all legitimate diplomacy, of course. If we
work with those who imprison journalists
(Turkey), shoot demonstrators (Iran) or ban
political parties (Saudi Arabia) feting their
leaders, welcoming their capital, and cooperating
with their soldiers and spies then its difficult
to make a strong case against engagement with a
man who earned the votes of nearly 63 million
Americans in a free and, barring Russian
involvement, largely fair election.
Not about geopolitics alone
But as citizens, as lower-case d democrats, as
those with myriad ties of culture, kinship, and
intellect with the United States and its institutions,
the geopolitical dimension is not the only relevant
one. The Trump presidency is less than two weeks
old, but it is already clear that it represents an
unusually fierce assault on civic, political, and
moral values, far in excess of that which might
have occurred under the most extreme
alternatives, from Bernie Sanders on the hard left
to Ted Cruz on the hard right. To call Mr. Trump
a fascist is to trivialise the term and insult those
who have lived under truly oppressive systems;
but to insist that the Presidents critics are
hysterical, motivated by partisan animus, or
crying wolf is to blind oneself to the evidence that
is rapidly mounting.
Most striking of all is the Presidents
extraordinary narcissistic personality disorder. Its
most recent manifestation is his protracted
obsession with the size of crowds at his
inauguration. Mr. Trump despatched his press
secretary to disseminate outright and easily
disproved lies (largest audience to witness an
inauguration, period), in the manner of the Iraqi
information minister who famously insisted that
American tanks, audible in the background, were
nowhere near Baghdad in 2003. He then spent
much of his speech to the Central Intelligence
Agency (CIA) boasting of this, and went on to
shut down the Twitter account of the National
Park Service after it circulated dissenting
photographs. Behaviour like this is better subject
to psychiatry than political analysis.
Then we come to the pathological fibbing. Mr.
Trump, who began his political career by insisting
that the U.S.s first black President was a Kenyan-
born Muslim, lies habitually and with disturbing
ease, about matters both trivial and serious. He
lied dozens of times in the past few weeks alone,
claiming falsely that mass voter fraud explains
Hillary Clintons higher number of votes, that the
U.S. did not accept Christian refugees, and that
his Muslim ban was comparable to the Obama
administrations suspension of visa waivers.
These alternative facts, to use the Orwellian
term coined by the Presidents adviser Kellyanne
Conway, are demonstrably untrue. If a President
lies on matters that can be fact-checked in
seconds, is he likely to tell the truth on less visible
matters of state? Moreover, when reporters call
out these lies, they are repeatedly attacked as
fake news, blacklisted and silenced at press
conferences, and warned in Mr. Trumps own
words that they will pay a big price. A
democracy cannot subsist on a diet of dishonesty.
Militarisation and politicisation
No less concerning is the damage being done to
American institutions. Last week, the entire senior
management of the State Department resigned en
masse, in an unprecedented move. Hundreds of
other diplomats are writing a dissent memo
like the so-called Blood Telegram from Dhaka in
1971 on the Muslim ban. This ban, they
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write, stands in opposition to the core American
and constitutional values. No surprise, then, that
Mr. Trump has filled only 33 of 700 critical
positions across the federal government.
Meanwhile, National Security Advisor General
Michael Flynn, who routinely tweets conspiracy
theories and led campaign chants of lock her up
targeting Ms. Clinton, is building up the most
military-dominated National Security Council
(NSC) staff of recent times. Eliot Cohen, a
prominent neoconservative scholar who wrote a
landmark book on the relationship between
politicians and generals and served in the George
W. Bush administration, warned: A serious civil-
military issue is emerging.
And atop this militarisation, there comes a
remarkable act of politicisation. On Saturday, Mr.
Trump issued another executive order that
removed the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
and the Director of National Intelligence as
permanent members of the NSCs apex Principals
Committee. In their place came Stephen Bannon,
his Senior Counselor and co-author of the
Presidents dystopian inaugural address as a
permanent member of the committee, alongside
the Secretaries of State and Defence. This move
shocked former Defence Secretary Leon Panetta
(Ive never seen it happen, and it shouldnt
happen) and George W. Bushs Chief of Staff
Josh Bolten, who had barred Mr. Bushs own
political adviser Karl Rove from NSC meetings.
More disturbing still is that Mr. Bannon is no
ordinary political flack. He was head of the far-
right, white nationalist website Breitbart News .
He has complained about the number of Asians in
Silicon Valley, cheered on a historic struggle
against Islam, and published misogynistic and
anti-Semitic headlines. It was surely Mr. Bannon
who deliberately excluded mention of Jews from
the White House statement on Holocaust
Remembrance Day on Friday like much else,
entirely without precedent.
Dealing without the dealmaker
Finally, we come to the pivotal role of Mr.
Trumps son-in-law, Jared Kushner. It is Mr.
Kushner, the President assures us, who will bring
peace between Israelis and Palestinians. When
British Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson sought
clarity on the scope of the Muslim ban, it was Mr.
Kushner, rather than the State Department, that he
called. If Mr. Trumps adult sons feel slighted,
they can take consolation from the fact that they
have been given control of a trust controlling their
fathers vast business empire which the President
refuses to divest from. As he still profits from it,
this creates permanent conflicts of interest in
foreign and domestic policy. Azerbaijan, Bahrain,
and Kuwait have all booked rooms at the Trump
International Hotel in Washington, D.C.,
effectively funnelling money to the President. Is
this the government of the worlds largest
democracy, or the Corleone family?
None of this is normal. Not the sweeping cruelty
of the Muslim ban, not the failed extortion of
Mexico, not the press secretary printing out
hostile tweets and flaunting them at a press
conference, not the Attorney General being fired
for upholding the law.
By all means, haggle with the self-professed
dealmaker. Perhaps hell stick to the agreement.
Perhaps, as in his business dealings, he wont.
Either way, do not delude yourself that everything
is fine. President Trump is not an authoritarian
leader. But the wall between populist demagogue
and budding autocrat is less firm than we would
like to imagine. It has been knocked down by
countless leaders, such as Hugo Chavez, Vladimir
Putin, and Recep Tayyip Erdogan. Like all
populists, they have brought economic ruin and
political turmoil. To quote President Trumps
inaugural: American carnage.
Shashank Joshi is a Senior Research Fellow of the
Royal United Services Institute in London.
If a President lies on matters that can be fact-
checked in seconds, is he likely to tell the truth on
less visible matters of state?
This land is their land {Rights Issues}
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Despite the new land acquisition law, questions of
resettlement and rehabilitation persist
The Bhangar violence in West Bengal recalls yet
again the intensity of conflicts over the acquisition
of land for infrastructure projects. These conflicts
continue despite the new and ostensibly improved
land acquisition law, with its higher terms of
compensation, social impact assessments, and
prior informed consent for projects involving the
private sector. But if the 2013 law was enacted to
comprehensively address opposition to land
acquisition, why do governments still get land
acquisition wrong?
Infrastructure projects are initiated for the greater
common good, but the people dispossessed by
them of their land, livelihood, and environment
rarely benefit from all their goodness. The scale of
the projects keeps growing. The information
regarding them is little or often not accessible at
all, and those affected discover the projects full
implications either by accident or by doggedly
exercising their right to information. Prior
informed consent remains a farce. There are no
clear procedures for establishing consent in the
case of private sector involvement and there is
complete exemption for state-led projects.
Compensation is often the proverbial fish bone
the inadequateness of compensating security of
land, livelihoods, socio-cultural lifeworlds, not to
mention the loss of environment and biodiversity,
have been discussed ad nauseam. The
impoverishment of large numbers of small and
marginal farmers and the landless is inevitable,
but the insecurity faced by large farmers once
compensation money dries up in conspicuous
consumption has also been documented widely.
The insider and the outsider
Agitators are portrayed by ruling governments as
being under the influence of outsiders when, in
fact, infrastructure paradigms, investors and
beneficiaries are always the outsiders. The state
asserts its sovereignty as the sole authentic
insider and moves in police troops to protect its
sovereign right from agitating locals. The outsider
trope is particularly irrelevant when it applies to
citizens of this country, but remains salient in
state attempts to delegitimise agitations against
land acquisition.
Dating from the struggles of the Narmada Bachao
Andolan (NBA) in the 1980s against the Sardar
Sarovar Project (SSP), the quality of state
intervention and discourse outlined above remains
uncannily familiar. This is despite the 2013 land
acquisition law, and extends across parties.
Thousands affected by the SSP were in fact on
dharna during the monsoon of 2016, marking 31
years of the NBAs struggle for justice for those
dispossessed by the project. At a height of 138.68
m now, only the reservoir gates of the SSP dam
remain pending before full submergence of the
upstream areas. The 2016 agitations saw relay
fasts by those already dispossessed and woefully
short of promised rehabilitation, and satyagraha
by thousands more facing submergence some
without promised resettlement and others not even
recognised as adversely affected. The year passed
with yet another assurance of just rehabilitation,
and the 2017 monsoon already looms ahead.
In bitter irony further downstream, residents from
22 villages affected by the Dholera Smart City
project protested against the denotification of
agrarian lands from the SSPs promised irrigation
canals in Ahmedabad district, Gujarat. The water
that was promised to peasants in Gujarat by the
construction of the SSP is now to be officially
diverted to supply real estate and infrastructure
projects for a city that, if developed, will destroy
the existing agrarian infrastructure and socio-
cultural and ecological lifeworld of the area.
The official endorsement of what constitutes
infrastructure is rooted in ideas of infrastructure
aiding capitalist circuits, increasingly created in
direct partnership with capitalist investors.
Existing agrarian and local infrastructure is
devalued, rendered backward, and considered in
need of improvement for greater economic growth
to accrue. Who benefits from these projects? The
thousands agitating in the Narmada valley at the
end of three decades bear witness to this trajectory
of economic growth and development. So do the
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residents of the Dholera villages who stand to lose
not just the promise of irrigation, but the very land
they survive on.
The agitations over Special Economic Zones
(SEZs) are other recent reminders. POSCOs
inability to set up a plant in Jagatsinghpur,
Odisha, as it had not yet obtained forest and other
clearances is a case in point. This came after 11
years of tenacious struggle by local residents
against the project. Similar agitations have
unfolded in Nandigram, Mangaluru, Maharashtra
and Goa, stalling projects or eventually pushing
out SEZS developed by corporate giants and
backed by state forces.
The Bhangar story
In the violence in Bhangar, the Trinamool
Congress that agitated against the high-
handedness of the Communist Party of India
(Marxist) in Nandigram and Singur claims the
people first agreed to part with 14 acres of land
and then outsiders created unrest. The local
residents, reportedly organised under the Jomi,
Jibika, Paribesh O Bastutantra Raksha Committee,
claim that they had no knowledge of the full
extent of the project. In negotiations with the
government and the Power Grid Corporation of
India Limited, they were informed only of a
power sub-station that would improve the power
supply of the area. They discovered belatedly that
on completion, the Bhangar sub-station would
receive power from the Sagardighi thermal power
plant and the Farakka unit that would then be
transmitted via high-tension wires to Kolkata, the
northeastern States and Purnea in Bihar. They
demand an environmental impact assessment to
ascertain the adverse impacts of the high-
transmission lines on the local population,
agriculture and ecology. Agitations have left two
dead, several arrested and many injured since
November 2016. The story unfolds in painfully
familiar tedium as state representatives claim that
land was acquired with consent, compensation
was negotiated with the residents, and outsiders
are instigating violent agitations.
Who pays for the losses of life, livelihood, peace
and well-being of the local residents during
months and years, sometimes decades, of
agitation? What of the loss to the exchequer, and
ultimately the Indian public, for all the effort
made to suppress agitations and democratic
principles by the states sovereign assertions over
the greater common good? Where does the state
source its sovereign power over citizens in a
democracy? Eminent domain is a colonial
doctrine imported by the colonial government to
India and retained by the independent Indian state
to institute capitalist development the sine qua
non of pre- and post-Independence development
in India. Who is the insider occupying the
sovereign powers of the state over citizens?
Preeti Sampat teaches Sociology at Ambedkar
University, Delhi.
Eminent domain is a colonial doctrine imported
by the colonial government to India and retained
by the independent Indian state
Demonetisations long shadow {Indian
Economy}
The Economic Survey presented on the eve of the
Union Budget has been dominated by a singular
action of the government. As Chief Economic
Adviser Arvind Subramanian stated, To deify or
demonise demonetisation that is the difficult
question the world is asking, to which the survey
tries to respond. Describing the November 8
decision to withdraw high-value currency notes as
a radical governance-cum-social engineering
measure aimed at punitively raising the cost of
illicit activities, Mr. Subramanian and his team
acknowledge the complexities in assessing its
potential impact as well as the lack of historical
precedent to make reliable predictions. The
Survey, however, emphatically asserts that while
there have been short-term costs to the economy,
which would need to be expeditiously addressed,
there will be long-term benefits. Real GDP growth
in the current fiscal, the Survey projects, will see a
likely reduction by one quarter to half a
percentage point relative to the baseline of about
7% as a result of the demand shock triggered by
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demonetisation. The Survey argues that any
comparison with last fiscals 7.6% pace would be
inappropriate as among the other factors that
influenced growth this year was that global oil
prices stopped declining, lessening the updraught
that soft energy prices lend to the economy. It
contends that the latest growth estimates of the
World Bank and the International Monetary Fund
the bank trimmed its forecast to 7% from 7.6%
and the IMF by 1 percentage point to 6.6%, both
citing demonetisation as reason reflect a higher
baseline assumption and ought to be compared
only on the extent of change in estimate.
Devoting a whole chapter to demonetisation, the
Survey recommends fast, demand-driven
remonetisation, further tax reforms, including
bringing land and real estate under the ambit of
the Goods and Services Tax, and reducing tax
rates and stamp duties. It cautions against tax
authorities turning overzealous. It flags the risks
that Brexit and the U.S. election result pose to the
world economic order, and to Indias economy.
The prospect of shifts in the direction of
isolationism and nativism could threaten the
global market for goods, services and labour. The
Survey conservatively projects growth for the
coming fiscal at 6.75%-7.5%, with a caveat that
lingering effects from demonetisation, oil prices
and the possible rise of trade protectionism could
jeopardise the forecast.
Crickets new order {Sports}
The Supreme Court has named a four-member
Committee of Administrators to run the affairs of
the Board of Control for Cricket in India as part of
a continuing judicial exercise to reform the way
the body is administering the game. While few
will sympathise with the BCCI office-bearers who
were removed for defying the courts well-
intended reforms, there is no escaping the feeling
that it should have found a way of reforming the
body without appointing its own administrators.
Only one of the four appointees has played
representative cricket, and it is arguable whether a
public auditor, a cricket chronicler or a financial
sector executive are the most suitable candidates
to administer a body that oversees a competitive
sport. In a country where there is no shortage of
cricket experts and where many have the
experience of having put bat to ball at some point
in their lives, it is a glib assumption that a
combination of eminence in some field and a
passion for the game are sufficient to run a
national sports body. The court could have asked
the Board to come up with suggestions to draw up
a committee of interim administrators from among
former players and administrators with an
established connect with the game. Also, by
appointing a panel of its own, the court has
rendered itself vulnerable to the charge of massive
judicial overreach.
There is an undoubted element of public interest
in the manner in which the highest court has
engaged itself with the games administration in
recent years. The objectives were laudable:
cleansing the administration; bridging the
credibility deficit built by reform-resistant
administrators; and revamping a system fraught
with conflicts of interest and unchecked
commercialisation. Last year, the court declared
that running cricket in India is a public function.
Many felt the intervention was needed to keep the
exploitation of crickets commercial potential
honest, and run the game in accordance with its
tradition and values. Then came the panel headed
by former Chief Justice of India R.M. Lodha and
its sweeping recommendations for reform. The
Supreme Court accepted most of the
recommendations and made them binding on the
BCCI. Thereafter, the reluctance shown by the
BCCI to accept the Lodha panel reforms led to its
president Anurag Thakur being held prima facie
guilty of contempt of court. The situation is ripe
for a new set of administrators and the next
election, which will be overseen by the four-
member committee, will throw them up. The big
question, of course, is whether this will amount to
a mere replacement of one set of office-bearers
with another, or bring about a real and systemic
change in the way cricket in this country is run.
Violations in India, penalties elsewhere
{Governance}
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British engineering giant Rolls-Royce recently
agreed to pay a $809-million fine (over Rs. 5,500
crore) for its corrupt practices in India, Russia,
China, Thailand, Nigeria and Malaysia.
In the U.S., on January 6, Mondelez International,
formerly known as Kraft Foods and of which
Cadbury is now a part, agreed to pay $13 million
to the U.S. authorities for paying an Indian agent,
who in turn may have bribed government
officials, for obtaining 30 different licences for
phase II of its chocolate factory in Baddi,
Himachal Pradesh. In October 2016, Cognizant
admitted to possible violations governing anti-
bribery laws of the U.S. in its operations in India.
In September 2016, Anheuser-Busch InBev paid
$6 million to settle corruption charges against one
of its Indian companies where it had only a
minority stake the Indian company in question
allegedly tried to buy off an employee who had
turned whistle-blower and was informing U.S.
authorities about its practice of using third-party
sales promoters to pay bribes to Indian
government officials. In 2012, Oracle paid a $2
million civil penalty in the U.S. to settle charges
arising from a slush fund in India used to pay
bribes.
It is almost an annual feature in the U.S. to see an
American corporation admitting to have violated
the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA) in its
Indian operations, and agreeing to pay huge
penalties. These could range from bribing
government officials to misleading accounting
practices in order to hide slush funds. A similar
parallel can also be occasionally seen in the U.K.,
as the Rolls-Royce case illustrates.
Paying for others sins
A scan of global anti-corruption jurisprudence and
its impact on ordinary Indians inevitably throws
up a robbing Peter to pay Paul scenario. An
aggressive global firm enters the Indian market,
realises that it is deeply corrupt, engages
middlemen to pay bribes to bureaucrats and
politicians, secures huge businesses and swells its
balance sheet. If caught, it apologises for the
mistake, and offers to pay financial penalties to
offset possible criminal trial and long jail terms
for its officials all in the home country, not
India.
An average Indian pays either by way of taxes
into government coffers that go into official
purchases made from that company, or from his
personal finances to buy its product. In those
purchases, the ordinary Indian pays more than the
legitimate market price because of corruption,
contributing a part of the kickback paid to the
middlemen who facilitate the companys business
in the Indian market.
Worse, when the company offers to pay a fine to
offset criminal proceedings, that average Indian
consumer would also partially contribute to it,
because it is from markets like India that such
foreign companies make their profits, part of
which would be used to pay off their governments
that uphold law.
To be fair, it is the effective implementation of
anti-corruption laws in the U.S., the U.K. and
most other developed economies that are forcing
global business giants to pay huge fines for their
questionable practices. It is a demonstration of the
effective implementation of laws of their
homelands, and caution to anyone from those
economies against bribing someone in countries
like India.
The troubling questions
What is worrying is the attitude of the Indian
government and its anti-corruption bodies to this
by-now-well-established global phenomenon. It is
not known if India gets a share of the fine
imposed under FCPA or other anti-corruption
laws in developed economies.
There is nothing on record to show that in the long
history of FCPA in the U.S., which came into
being in the post-Watergate period in the 1970s,
the Indian government has evolved any
mechanism to regularly follow FCPA filings, and
seek domestic remedy here in India. Nor is there
any assurance that agencies such as the Central
Bureau of Investigation (CBI) and Enforcement
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Directorate (ED) would take evidence from those
filings to pursue cases here against those involved.
Despite landmark judgments of the Supreme
Court to improve our anti-corruption architecture,
at least one loud nationwide movement against
corruption, and the issue of graft finding a regular
appearance in political rhetoric, it is a fact that
India does not have an effective anti-corruption
mechanism yet in place.
The CBI, ED and other agencies are only as good,
or as bad, as those political leaders in power.
Successive governments have deployed them for
political score-settling than for fighting big
corruption. At the highest levels, there is also a
clear link between the corrupt big sharks and
political funding.
The last significant reforms in the administration
of CBI and ED were ordered by the Supreme
Court in the Vineet Narain case of 1997, by which
it tried to bring some amount of autonomy to the
agencies, especially bringing in supervision by the
Central Vigilance Commission. However, the
agencies have remained caged parrots, as the
Supreme Court observed during the last
governments tenure.
It is no more just about autonomy of anti-
corruption agencies or enactment of the long-
pending Lokpal act. It is now troublingly also
about competence and accountability. Anecdotes
emerging from those investigated in recent times,
closure of cases and chargesheets, and the apex
court order ordering the CBI to probe its former
chief Ranjit Sinha, all point towards mounting
incompetence in Indian agencies, especially in
exploiting the digital databases across the world,
celebrating whistle-blowers and enforcing the law
with impartiality.
Unless urgent parliamentary oversight not
perfect, but the best among the available options
is brought on to federal investigation agencies,
nothing may change.
Unless parliamentary oversight is extended to
them, our anti-corruption agencies would continue
to face issues of competence and accountability
josy.joseph@thehindu.co.in
BUSINESS
Gandhiji said poverty is about dignity and self-
respect {Poverty}
Vikas Dhoot and TCA Sharad Raghavan
Chief Economic Advisor Arvind Subramanian,
who expects a transitional adverse impact on the
economy due to the demonetisation of high value
currency notes, spoke to The Hindus TCA Sharad
Raghavan and Vikas Dhoot on the Economic
Survey 2016-17.
You expect a slowdown of 0.25%-0.5% in the
economys growth rate in 2016-17, due to
demonetisation, which seems a bit conservative
in comparison to other forecasts
We have spelt out howWe have looked
carefully into the cash implications because it is a
liquidity shock to the system. But its a very
unusual thing because cash in terms of liquidity
has come down, but deposits have grown
enormously. So a lot is going depend upon how
much cash and other forms of money are
substitutable.
Interest rates have come down, the price of cash
has gone up and the price of other money has
come down. How it is all going to play out and
how much of it is in the informal and formal
sectors is to be seen.
Then there is the question of what is measured
and what is not measured. Remember, my
estimate is very clearly for recorded headline
GDP measurements. The impact on the informal
sector is not going to be captured fully because we
dont measure that in the way we measure the
economy.
So, our reduction is probably kind of middle of
the pack in terms of the others, maybe a little less.
But lets see how it pans out.
You have called demonetisation an unusual
and unique monetary experiment, for which
there is no model to measure its efficacy. But,
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before its announcement, how would you have
analysed its pros and cons?
I would have analysed it as I have analysed it
now. As they say, counterfactuals are for
historians. In the government, counterfactuals are
a luxury one cant afford.
You have expressed concern about the fears of
tax terrorism in the aftermath of
demonetisation.
I think we have to allay anxieties about over-
zealous tax follow-up in the aftermath of
demonetisation. There is a bit of a balance to be
struck. On the one hand, the whole purpose of this
is to say we are going to really go after the bad
guy, the penalties are punitive and strong. But on
the other hand, you dont want it to degenerate
into a trawling expedition that creates uncertainty
for the good guy.
You have revisited the twin balance sheet
problem (of banks with NPAs and indebted
corporates) but have identified corporates as
the bigger problem now
Weve always thought of it as a banking problem.
Its never been that. The ultimate problem is that
companies are not profitable and cant pay. That
is the root of the problem. It is as much, if not
more, a corporate problem as a banking problem.
The banking thing is a manifestation of an
underlying reality.
But as you have said, bankers are reluctant to
write-off debt for fear of showing favour to a
particular group. With banks awash with
money and credit growth slumping, do bankers
need an assurance to avoid a paralysis in bank
credit decisions?
We have been trying to provide assurance to
bankers, like with the oversight board. But its
hard. Can you imagine a middle level banker
writing off a prominent companys debt? Then the
guy says no no, I was promised assurance. Is
that enough? Its tough.
You have suggested a Public Sector Asset
Rehabilitation Agency So are you losing
confidence in the private sector asset
reconstruction companies (ARCs)?
The evidence is there. Nothing has prevented the
private ARCs from functioning. But what have
they done? Whatever agency comes will have to
deal with the debt of private and public
companies. Remember, most of the stressed debt
is with large private companies so thats what
makes it even more difficult.
Do we need a more aggressive approach to
implement your suggestion to privatise sectors
like aviation, banking and fertilisers?
This is something on which my thinking has really
evolved in the last one year or so. We have some
meta challenges in India. One of them is this
ambivalence towards the private sector and
private property rights in general. We have listed
all the manifestations of that fertiliser plants,
civil aviation, strategic disinvestment. You name
it, and there is ambivalence towards the private
sector.
That I think is a meta challenge because it is not
about saying oh, do strategic disinvestments. I
think society as a whole is not ready to accept it.
Its not a matter of one government saying do this,
and another government saying, do that. I think
its more about how do we shift ideas at a broader
level. What is the sense of shared diagnosis and
shared solutions. Its very easy to say why dont finance minister Arun Jaitley.
you privatise, but it has not happened for 45
years and its not seeming very easy. So the
question is why.
In some sense, what I am saying is that these meta
challenges require more fundamental and broader
shifts at the level of ideas. And how you get there
is not easy.
How did the idea to link the Universal Basic
Income (UBI) concept to Mahatma Gandhi
strike you?
I was asked to give a talk in the Sabarmati
Ashram on October 2. And it just struck me that
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this captures the heart of the UBI conflict. On the
one hand, it is a radical way to eradicate poverty.
And on the other hand, its not just about
eradicating poverty. Gandhiji said that poverty is
much more than imbibing a few more calories.
Its about dignity, self-respect, independence.
On whether the UBI could achieve that
Gandhiji the moralist would say you shouldnt
give uncompensated rewards (as it would harm
responsibility and efforts), Gandhiji the baniya
would say you should be fiscally conservative,
and then Gandhiji the astute politician would
realise that in India today, the programs quickly
become add-ons rather than replacing anything.
And if it becomes an add-on, then it is not viable.
Economic Survey wants modification of FRBM
Act {Indian Economy}
Special Correspondent
India has changed utterly over the last 13 years
since the Fiscal Responsibility and Budget
Management (FRBM) was enshrined in law for
prudent fiscal management and therefore, the
FRBM operational framework designed in 2003
needs to be modified to reflect the India of today
and even more importantly, the India of
tomorrow, according to the Economic Survey.
This suggestion assumes significance in the
backdrop of the N.K. Singh panel recently
submitting its report on revising the FRBM Act to
Fiscal policy principles
Noting that Indias economic experience shows
that the fiscal activism embraced by advanced
economies giving a greater role to counter-
cyclical policies and attaching less weight to
curbing debt was not relevant for India, the
Survey said Indias fiscal experience has
underscored the fundamental validity of the fiscal
policy principles enshrined in the FRBM Act.
The pre-Budget document pointed out that since
the 2008-09 global financial crisis, internationally
fiscal policy has seen a paradigm shift from the
emphasis on debts to deficits, arguing for greater
activism in flows (deficits) and minimising
concerns about sustainability of the stocks (debt).
Fiscal deficit rules
However, Indias experience has reaffirmed the
need for rules to contain fiscal deficits because of
the proclivity to spend during booms and
undertake stimulus during downturns, it observed.
It (Indias experience) has also highlighted the
danger of relying on rapid growth rather than
steady and gradual fiscal and primary balance
adjustment to do the heavy lifting on debt
reduction, the Survey said.
Even as these FRBMs basic tenets or the
fundamental validity of the fiscal policy principles
remain valid, the task of the FRBM
Review Committee (will be) to set out a new
vision, an FRBM for the 21st century.
The government has set a target for fiscal deficit
(the gap between expenditure and revenue for the
financial year) of 3.5% of GDP for FY17, a
lower target than the 3.9% set for 2015-16 which
was achieved. In value terms, the 3.5% is Rs. 5.33
lakh crore.
According to data released by the Controller
General of Accounts, fiscal deficit in the April-
December (2016-17) period was 93.9% of the
Budget target against 87.9% for the same period a
year ago. The April-December fiscal deficit in
value terms was Rs. 5.01 lakh crore.
In his Budget 2016-17 speech, Mr. Jaitley had
said: There is now a school of thought which
believes that instead of fixed numbers as fiscal
deficit targets, it may be better to have a fiscal
deficit range as the target, which would give
necessary policy space to the government to deal
with dynamic situations.
THE HINDU NEWSPAPER IMPORTANT
ARTICLES 02.02.2017
FRONT PAGE
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SMALL WONDER {Indian Economy}
Jaitley scripts a pragmatic Budget, mollifies
salaried class
Special Correspondent
Union Finance Minister Arun Jaitleys fourth
Budget, presented on Wednesday under the
shadow of demonetisation neither had monetary
aftershocks nor promised big bang reforms.
Yet, the Budget chose the pragmatic route to allay
the anxieties of the vulnerable in the aftermath of
demonetisation, announcing a rise in public
investments in irrigation and infrastructure, as
well as schemes like MGNREGA, while not
straying from the fiscal discipline path.
IT relief for majority
Mr. Jaitley granted considerable tax relief to
people in the lowest tax bracket with an annual
income of less than five lakh, halving the
minimum personal income tax rate to 5% from
10%. Effectively, those with an annual income of
4.5 lakh could have zero tax liability if they tap
the tax exemptions available for investments
under section 80 C of the Income Tax Act. An
additional 10% surcharge has been levied on
individuals with declared incomes between 50
lakh and 1 crore
The tax rate for medium and small enterprises,
with an annual turnover of up to 50 crore, has
been slashed to 25%. Significant sops have also
been announced for affordable housing that has
been granted infrastructure status.
In the first Union Budget to incorporate the
traditional Railway Budget, Mr. Jaitley admitted
that demonetisation has temporarily impacted the
economy, But he delivered follow-through
actions, including a ban on cash transactions of
over 3 lakh, in line with the recommendations of
the Special Investigation Team on Black Money.
Steps were also announced to cut the cost of
digital payments and discourage business
expenses over 10,000 being paid in cash.
Clean-up act
Pursuing the Budget theme of Transform,
Energise and Clean India, Mr. Jaitley promised a
tough new law to deal with big time offenders,
including economic offenders, fleeing the country
to escape the reach of law. The government, he
said, is considering legal changes to confiscate the
assets of such individuals.
As part of the effort to clean-up the political
system, the cash donation limit for political parties
from a single person was slashed from 20,000 at
present to 2,000, with the Minister asserting this
would bring transparency in electoral funding.
Changes have also been mooted to the Reserve
Bank of India Act to float electoral bonds that
people could purchase from banks and can be
redeemed by political parties who receive them.
While the bad bank for non-performing assets
recommended in the Economic Survey found no
space in the Budget, the FM permitted banks to
claim higher provisions for non-performing assets
in their tax computations. He also allocated
10,000 crore for recapitalisation of banks and
mooted a tax on interest receivables on actual
basis instead of accrual basis, which would help
bank balance sheets.
NATIONAL
Lost continent lies under Indian
Ocean {Geography}
Scientists have confirmed the existence of a lost
continent under the Indian Ocean island of
Mauritius that was left over by the break-up of the
super-continent, Gondwana, which started about
200 million years ago.
The piece of crust, which was subsequently
covered by young lava during volcanic eruptions
on the island, seems to be a tiny part of ancient
land that broke off from the island of Madagascar,
when Africa, India, Australia and Antarctica split.
We are studying the break-up process of the
continents, in order to understand the geological
history of the planet, said Professor Lewis
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Ashwal from the University of the Witwatersrand
in South Africa. By studying zircon, found in
rocks spewed up by lava during volcanic
eruptions, Mr. Ashwal and his colleagues have
found that remnants of this mineral were far too
old to belong to Mauritius.
Earth is made up of two parts continents,
which are old, and oceans, which are young. On
the continents, you find rocks that are over four
billion years old, but you find nothing like that in
the oceans, as this is where new rocks are
formed, said Mr. Ashwal.
Mauritius is an island, and there is no rock older
than nine million years old on the island.
However, by studying the rocks on the island, we
have found zircons that are as old as three billion
years, he said.
Rich record
Zircons are minerals that occur mainly in granite
from the continents. They contain trace amounts
of uranium, thorium and lead, and due to the fact
that they survive geological processes very well,
they contain a rich record and can be dated
extremely accurately. The fact that we have
found zircons of this age proves that there are
much older crustal materials under Mauritius that
could only have originated from a continent, said
Mr. Ashwal.
This is not the first time that zircons that are
billions of years old have been found on the
island. A study done in 2013 has found traces of
the mineral in beach sand.
Some concerns
However, this study received some criticism,
including that the mineral could have been either
blown in by the wind, or carried in on vehicle
tyres or scientists shoes.
The fact that we found the ancient zircons in
rock (six million-year-old trachyte), corroborates
the previous study and refutes any suggestion of
wind-blown, wave-transporteEd or pumice-rafted
zircons for explaining the earlier results, said Mr.
Ashwal.
He suggests that there are many pieces of various
sizes of undiscovered continent, collectively
called Mauritia, spread over the Indian Ocean.
According to the new results, this break-up did
not involve a simple splitting of the ancient super-
continent of Gondwana, but rather, a complex
splintering took place with fragments of
continental crust of variable sizes left adrift within
the evolving Indian Ocean basin, Mr. Ashwal
said.
The results were published in the journal Nature
Communications. PTI
Researchers found remnants of zircon that were
far too old to belong to the island of Mauritius
A Budget for sustainable growth {Sustainable
Development}
RAJIV KUMAR
This is a budget with three principle goals. It
wants to revive the flagging domestic investment,
which has threatened to turn turtle. It does this by
ramping up public capital capital expenditure by a
whopping 24.5% in the hope that it will crowd
in private investment; cutting corporate income
tax rate from 30% to 25% for SMEe with an
annual turnover of less than Rs. 50 crore; and
taking further steps in improving the ease of doing
business.
Secondly, it responds to the dire requirement for
urgently generating a large number of
employment opportunities for the increasingly
restive youth. The massive push to affordable
housing with its vast backward linkages in the
economy and high employment intensity will
contribute to achieving this goal. The special
package for textiles and some other labour-
intensive sectors will also help as will the
enhanced allocation to infrastructure sectors. The
tax relief for SMEs will also help.
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Third, it aims at cleansing the economy of black
money flows and illegal incomes, thereby sharply
squeezing the scope and space for the parallel
economy. Following the enactment of the Benami
Properties and Illegal Income Acts and
demonetization, the budget has announced a direct
attack on the fountainhead of political corruption
by reducing the amount of individual donations to
political parties to a paltry Rs. 2,000, as
recommended by the Election Commission. This,
as the finance minister remarked during his
speech, would create a new normal that would
attract global investor attention and put the
economy on a robust trajectory of rapid,
sustainable and inclusive growth.
These are commendable objectives and the Modi-
Jaitley duo should be complimented for refraining
from populist temptations, which would have
been rather strong in the face of impending
elections in five states.
New initiatives
The budget also has three firsts to its credit. By
presenting it on February 1, the Finance Minister
has ensured that the rather inefficient practice of
vote on account will be avoided and the finance
bill will now be approved by the end of the
present fiscal year. Second, the somewhat
spurious and dysfunctional distinction between
plan and non-plan expenditure has been done
away with, which will permit a clearer distinction
between the share of capital and revenue
expenditure. It is pertinent to note here that by
allowing fiscal deficit to rise to 3.2% of the GDP
in 2017-18 while bringing down revenue deficit to
1.8% (instead of 2% as recommended by the
FRBM committee), the FM has displayed
commendable sagacity and responsibility towards
the priority of promoting investment and
employment.
As its third new initiative, this budget has done
away with the colonial legacy of a separate
Railway budget.
The Modi-Jaitley duo should be complimented
for refraining from populist temptations
 Steps to block sexual videos on social
media {Social Justice}
The Centre on Wednesday told the Supreme Court
that budgetary allocations had been made to set up
a specialised central institutional mechanism to
block and curb sharing of sexual offence videos
on social networking platforms to check
cybercrimes.
A Bench of Justices M.B. Lokur and U.U. Lalit
asked the government to specify the structure and
functions of the agency or the institution sought to
be created and whether it would be under the
aegis of the CBI or the Ministry of Home Affairs.
Additional Solicitor General Maninder Singh
submitted that the mechanism would be equipped
to block offensive videos from being uploaded
and prevent the circulation of such material on
social networking platforms.
Internet majors like Google India, Microsoft
India, Yahoo India and Facebook, who were
issued notices by the apex court, said it was not
possible for them to auto-block content.
Budgetary allocations made to set up a
mechanism to curb sharing of such videos, SC
told
INTERNATIONAL
MPs highlight Brexit promises made to Indian
community {International Politics}
Vidya Ram
The efforts made to persuade U.K. voters of
Indian, Pakistani and Bangladeshi origin to vote to
leave the EU last year, with the suggestion that a
post-Brexit Britain might open up to
Commonwealth countries, have been highlighted
this week, as the House of Commons debated the
legislation that will enable the government to start
Brexit negotiations.
Two Labour lawmakers, Margaret Beckett, a
former Foreign Secretary and the MP for Derby
South, and Wes Streeting, the MP for Ilford
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North, raised the issue during the debate on
Tuesday afternoon. MPs were debating the second
reading of the Bill, which will then pass to the
Committee stage next week.
Both Ms. Beckett and Mr. Streeting campaigned
to remain in the EU and have constituencies with
a large South Asian-origin population. Mr.
Streeting said International Development
Secretary Priti Patel had made the case to his
constituents of Indian descent, of Bangladeshi
descent, of Pakistani descent that leaving the EU
would not only lead to future trade deals, but
would improve immigration to this country from
the Commonwealth.
Ms. Beckett concurred that this had happened.
She also questioned the ability of Britain to secure
a free trade deal with India, given the current
direction of the governments immigration policy.
I recall those in the leave campaign saying that
we could have trading arrangements with a whole
lot of other countries, and I am going to turn to
that now. India was cited as one example, but I
have the distinct impression that when the Prime
Minister discussed these issues with the President
of India, she may have been advised that far from
closing the immigration door, he would like to see
it opened wider, she said.
Feeling betrayed
My constituents feel betrayed, Virendra
Sharma, the Labour MP for Ealing, Southall, who
had campaigned for Remain, told The Hindu . He
said many constituents had believed suggestions
from the Leave campaign that exiting the EU
would give the country control of its borders,
providing it the leeway to ease rules for
Commonwealth citizens. This is certainly not
going to happenthey are making it harder and
harder
There are a lot of people, who would have voted
remain, voted leave after they were given the
wrong impression that there would be more scope
for immigrants [from India] to come here more
easily, he said.
OPINION
Politics trumps ideology {International Politics}
Pulapre Balakrishnan
Stating that the Budget represented the philosophy
of his government to Transform, Energise and
Clean India, the Finance Minister has presented a
Budget that is in many ways quite impressive. As
the details were not out even on the Finance
Ministrys website at the time of writing, it is not
possible to evaluate it fully in the sense of being
able to assess whether the Ministers claims on
revenue expectation, and therefore the deficit, are
credible. However, the budgetary allocations are
intelligent and do add up to a reasonable vision of
what the economy needs at the moment. In fact,
after having presented three quite lacklustre
Budgets in a row Mr. Jaitley appears to have
learned on the job. His presentation was
businesslike and knowledgeable and specific
about the interventions that he had in mind. It is to
be hoped that we are seeing the beginning of a
competition among our political parties to present
meaningful Budgets for the people of India,
Budgets without literary embellishment and
responsible in their approach.
Despite the reasonableness of many of the
allocations and some of the tax measures,
however, the Finance Minister started the Budget
speech with claims that are either untenable or
irrelevant. There is excessive credit taken for the
current macroeconomic stability in terms of a low
balance-of-payments deficit and inflation, both of
which reflect the slowing of growth in India. Now
the trope, often adopted by the Prime Minister
himself, that India is the sole bright spot in the
world economy is beside the point. Moreover, the
foreign exchange reserves that the Minister
alluded to were almost as high even when this
government had taken over in May 2014.
Surprisingly for a government that takes pride in
Indias cultural autonomy, there was reference to
the plaudits that management of the Indian
economy had received from the World Bank, the
United Nations Development Programme and the
World Economic Forum. But most noticeable was
his laboured effort to rationalise the
demonetisation. Spoken of as a measure to
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honour the honest, there was little reference to
the economic uncertainty that it has caused. The
benefits, it was blithely claimed, would come in
the train of events, with no specifics whatsoever
being outlined.
Impressive surprises
Whatever the opening rhetoric on the performance
of the Modi government so far, the
macroeconomic credentials of the Budget are
quite impressive, however. The highlight is a
greater than 25% increase in capital spending and
a substantial increase in the transfer to the States.
These indicate the need to stimulate the economy
and to cultivate a more healthy federal
relationship, respectively. It is with respect to the
increased capital expenditure, though, that the
Minister has shown himself to be quite
statesmanlike. It may be noted that the increase in
capital expenditure in his last Budget was less
than 4%. So we have a quantum leap here.
Clearly, the dip in the rate of growth even before
the quarter in which the demonetisation was
implemented has served to energise this
government. It seems there is nothing like a
slowing economy to concentrate the mind of a
political party in a democracy! But the politics
aside, the increase in capital expenditure is
impressive and can indeed contribute to an
improvement in the quality of life in India.
It is with respect to fiscal consolidation that there
has been a pleasant surprise. Despite the hectoring
by professional economists and his political rivals
to stick to the path of fiscal consolidation aimed at
capping the fiscal deficit at 3% of GDP, Mr.
Jaitley has shown nerve to step on the brake and
glide it down to 3.2% for now. While the exact
figure may be a point of discussion, it is to be
hoped that the fixation with a fixed target for the
fiscal deficit is now a thing of the past. The
Budget is to be balanced over the cycle, i.e.,
expanded as the economy slows and contracted as
it quickens, the rest is merely ideology.
The rural outreach
But it is not as if the Minister can walk away with
only the bouquets as far as fiscal management is
concerned. There could have been a greater effort
to trim the revenue deficit; at least a statement of
the intention of eliminating it altogether in the
future. A revenue deficit implies that we are
borrowing to consume. It is not surprising that
there has been little movement in this direction,
for the Modi government is no different from the
rest of the field when it comes to subsidies. But it
has done the right thing in raising the allocation
for the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural
Employment Scheme. The allocation of Rs.
48,000 crore for this employment guarantee
scheme is the highest in the history of this
scheme. Now, only the implementation remains. It
is important to ensure that beneficiaries receive
their full payment on time and that the
expenditure is targeted on asset-building to the
extent feasible.
Away from the fiscal balances, the Budget does
have a clear orientation. It is towards the rural
population, for which the allocation of Rs.
1,87,223 crore is higher by 24%. Specifically, the
allocation for rural sanitation is higher by 18%
and there is the impressive target of achieving
100% electrification by 2018. The benefits of the
latter would go disproportionately to rural India,
and this is overdue. There are also incentive
schemes for the attainment of open-defection-free
villages in the form of the supply of arsenic- and
fluoride-free piped water to them. Panchayati Raj
institutions are to receive assistance to raise their
level of human resource endowment and a special
fund for irrigation has been created, to be operated
by NABARD (National Bank for Agriculture and
Rural Development). Two claims on what the
Budget does for rural India, however, stand out as
either overambitious or vague. It is suggested that
agriculture will continue to grow by 4.1%. This
induces incredulousness as such a rate has not
been consistently attained in the country.
Secondly, there is a plan to lift 50,000 gram
panchayats out of poverty. We are yet to be told
how these will be chosen and, more to the point,
given an idea of the plan.
While the focus on rural India is welcome, it
could have been politically driven and may have
resulted in some loss of clarity on what is salient.
While the largest number of Indians do reside in
the rural areas, agriculture contributes to less than
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20% of the national income. One cannot help but
wonder what the government, through this
Budget, intends for the remaining 80%. After all,
it is not so long ago that the governments main
programme had been Make in India, a plan to
expand manufacturing, and one of Mr. Modis
first journeys upon election had been to the lair of
the global CEO in New York. Manufacturing
growth is important as it has a high elasticity of
employment generation and the poverty rate is
higher in urban India. Could it be that the
government smartly sensed that the technocratic
case for a high economic multiplier in fiscal
spending is also aligned with the biggest political
bang for the buck? Politics trumps ideology in
this Budget, and, for a change, that is welcome.
Pulapre Balakrishnan is Professor of Economics,
Ashoka University and Senior Fellow, Indian
Institute of Management, Kozhikode.
While the focus on rural India is welcome, it
could have been politically driven and may have
resulted in some loss of clarity on what is salient
A Budget few can quarrel over {Indian
Economy}
T.T. Ram Mohan
Some said it was a make or break Budget, one
that would use the potential gains from
demonetisation to give a decisive push to
economic growth. Others said it would be a
populist budget aimed at the upcoming elections
in Uttar Pradesh and elsewhere.
It has turned out to be neither. Finance Minister
Arun Jaitley has presented a dont rock the boat
Budget that is intended to reassure international
investors that India will continue to be a bright
spot in the world economy. In the climate of
uncertainty that shrouds the world economy and
the Indian economy alike, that seems sensible.
Foreign investors will be impressed with the
stability of the Centres finances. Mr. Jaitley has
met the fiscal deficit target of 3.5% for 2016-17 in
spite of exceeding the expenditure targets on both
the revenue and capital accounts. This is in
refreshing contrast to the past when the fiscal
deficit target was met through cuts in capital
expenditure.
Mr. Jaitley has managed his feat thanks to
buoyant tax revenues for the second year in
succession. Tax revenues have been boosted by
buoyancy in both direct and indirect tax revenues.
These have offset the shortfalls on account of
spectrum sale and disinvestment. Customs duty
has disappointed but excise duty and personal and
corporate tax have contributed significantly. The
government has taken advantage of low
international oil prices to raise the excise duty on
petroleum products.
The tax-to-GDP ratio has risen to 11.3% of GDP,
compared to the Budget estimate of 10.8%. This is
the first time since 2007-08 that the tax-to-GDP
ratio has crossed the 11% mark; it had stagnated
at around 10% since 2008-09. At the same time,
the expenditure-to-GDP ratio has declined over
the years. These are structural changes that will
boost confidence in the Indian economy.
Meeting revenue targets
For 2017-18, the fiscal deficit and revenue deficit
are projected to decline to 3.2% and 1.9%
respectively, compared to the targets laid out
earlier of 3% and 1.8% laid out in last years
budget. Investors will not mind these slippages,
given that the government is using the extra fiscal
space to enhance capital expenditure by 25.4%
over 2016-17.
The big question is whether Mr. Jaitley can meet
the revenue targets for the coming year. He does
not have the benefit of falling oil prices and
higher excise duties any more. And the target of
Rs. 72,500 crore for disinvestment looks
challenging when compared with receipts of Rs.
45,500 crore in 2016-17.
This is where the potential bonanza from the
demonetisation comes in. The bonanza may be
realised in several ways: extinguishing of some of
the liabilities of the Reserve Bank of India as
some of the demonetised currency does not come
back into the system, the extra taxes payable
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under the Income Disclosure Scheme, and tax that
could be recovered from income not declared in
some of the deposits that have come into the
banking system.
Prime Minister Narendra Modis instinct about the
demonetisation may thus turn out to have been
spot on. Its not just the long-term gains that will
be material. At a time when growth is faltering,
the demonetisation could hold the key to realising
more taxes and maintaining fiscal stability in the
immediate future.
Contrary to what many had forecast, Mr. Jaitley
has steered clear of populist giveaways in the run-
up to Assembly elections. There are no farm loan
waivers, no transfer of demonetisation gains to
Jan-Dhan accounts, no announcement of a
universal basic income. He has, however, made
bold to increase the allocation for the MGNREGA
by nearly 25%. The Congress party wont be
amused.
The Finance Minister has cut the personal tax rate
from 10% to 5% for individuals in the income
slab of Rs. 2.5-5 lakh. He has also offered a
uniform rebate of Rs. 12,500 to those in the higher
tax slabs. A surcharge of 10% is proposed on
those earning between Rs. 50 lakh and 1 crore.
The net loss to the exchequer on account of these
proposals is Rs. 12,800 crore. This might have
been avoided given the focus on increasing tax
collections but is, perhaps, excusable given the
improvement in the tax-to-GDP ratio.
Mr. Jaitley has disappointed those who had
expected a big bang reduction in the corporate
tax rate to 25%. Instead, he proposes such a
reduction for only companies with an annual
turnover of up to Rs. 50 crore. He has also not
yielded to the clamour to abolish the Minimum
Alternate Tax he has only allowed companies
to carry forward MAT credit for 15 years instead
of the 10 years allowed at present. At the same
time, he has cheered the markets by steering clear
of any change to the tax on capital gains.
The Budget has the predictable schemes and
initiatives aimed at particular segments: farmers,
the rural poor, youth. There are measures to
promote digitisation and affordable housing.
Following up on the Prime Ministers pledge to
battle corruption and black money, the Budget
limits to Rs. 2,000 the maximum amount of cash
donation that any political party can receive.
Whether this will materially change illicit
donations can be debated.
The growth picture
This is a Budget that few can quarrel over. But is
that good enough for a government that rode to
power on a promise of accelerating growth to over
8% and creating jobs? The Budget assumes
nominal GDP growth of 11.75% for 2017-18
which, according to the Economic Survey,
translates into real growth of 6.75-7.25%. This
will come on the heels of growth of under 7% in
2016-17. Voters are unlikely to be impressed.
As the latest Economic Survey points out, for
India to grow at 8% in the next decade, exports
would have to grow at 15%. Until a couple of
years ago, we could hope that export growth
would revive once the global economy gathered
steam. Now, we are faced with a more
fundamental constraint: the world, led by the U.S.,
seems to be turning its back on globalisation.
Taking growth up to 8% in the changed global
scenario will now require relying more on internal
sources of growth. There is only so much fiscal
space for increasing public investment. Private
investment is not picking up because leading
corporates are saddled with too much debt.
Public sector banks (PSBs) cant lend to those
who are creditworthy because they have a huge
load of non-performing assets and not enough
capital. The Budget does little about the paralysis
in banking. The proposed infusion of capital of
Rs. 10,000 crore for PSBs means nothing. There
is no initiative for resolving the non-performing
assets issue either.
It does appear that the government is reconciled to
growth in the region of 7-7.5% in the medium
term. Perhaps, it hopes to manage the political
fallout through a greater focus on redistribution.
At a time of global uncertainty, there is merit in
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this approach, but achieving efficiency in
redistribution remains a challenge.
T.T. Ram Mohan is a professor at IIM
Ahmedabad. Email: ttr@iima.ac.in
When growth is faltering, demonetisation could
hold the key to realising more taxes and
maintaining fiscal stability in the immediate
future
The message in the median {Indian Economy}
M. Govinda Rao
The Union Budget for 2017-18 has been presented
against the background of a difficult international
environment spiced with growing protectionism,
poor investment climate in the country due to the
stressed balance sheets of corporate and banking
sectors, and severe distress caused by the
demonetisation move. The quick estimate of
national income released by the Central Statistical
Organisation showed that even while the impact
of the demonetisation is not considered, the
growth rate of all sectors except agriculture and
public administration were slowing down. The
Economic Survey estimates that the decelerating
in growth due to the demonetisation is a quarter to
half percentage point. With much of the cancelled
banknotes returning to the banking system, the
hope of a windfall has evaporated and yet, there
were considerable expectations that the Budget
would initiate measures to revive the economy.
A premium on prudence
In many ways this years Budget had a number of
new features. Besides advancing it by a month to
complete the process of passing the Budget within
the financial year, the merger of the Railway
Budget with the main Budget helps to plan and
develop the transport sector as a whole. Second,
the abolition of the Plan and Non-Plan distinction,
which in fact was the recommendation of the
Expert Committee on Efficient Management of
Public Expenditure in 2013, helps to look at each
of the sectors in a holistic manner and avoids
distortions in allocating resources between
maintenance of existing assets and creation of
new assets. The Budget speech also refers to the
Outcome Budget being placed in Parliament. Of
course, it remains to be seen to what extent the
Outcome Budget provides a link between outlays
and outcomes.
The Finance Minister must be complimented for
sticking to the task of fiscal consolidation. There
was considerable apprehension that the Fiscal
Responsibility and Budget Management Review
Committee would provide a target range estimate
to provide greater flexibility to the Finance
Minister. The committee has done well to
recommend a continued path of consolidation to
reduce the overall debt-GDP ratio to 60% and
corresponding ratio of the Centre to 40%. More
importantly, the Finance Minister did not utilise
the escape clause to relax the target. In fact, for
2016-17, the revised estimate of fiscal deficit at
3.2% of GDP is marginally lower than the
budgeted, but that is mainly due to the change in
the GDP estimate. Although for 2017-18,the path
of adjustment required reducing the deficit to 3%,
in the prevailing situation perhaps the fiscal
deficit estimate unchanged at 3.2% should not be
grudged.
The Finance Minister must also take the credit for
resisting the temptation to increase measures to
increase consumption. There has been a clamour
for initiating economic revival by taking measures
to boost private consumption expenditures
through transfers or tax cuts. Apart from
providing for the announcements made by the
Prime Minister, the Finance Minister has refrained
from this. He has also not ventured into the much-
advocated universal basic income primarily
because it is not easy to cut subsidies and transfers
commensurately to release resources for the
purpose. At the same time, it must be stated that
he has done little to rationalise explicit subsidies
which at Rs. 2.7 lakh crore constitute 1.6% of the
GDP. In fact, subsidies claim as much as what has
been allocated to defence and are just a little
lower than capital expenditures. Food and
fertilizer subsidies alone constitute Rs. 2.4 lakh
crore.
In a situation where the growth scenario is
severely hampered by a poor investment climate,
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and has been sustained only by private
consumption which too has fallen sharply after the
demonetisation, it was hoped that the Budget
would make a substantial increase in capital
expenditures and that hope has been belied. Much
of the economic revival depends on the Union
governments spending on infrastructure. The
aggregate capital expenditure in 2017-18 as a ratio
of GDP is just about 1.8%, which is the same as in
2016-17 (revised estimate). In fact, even within
this, the capital expenditure under defence is
about 0.5% of GDP as much of it will be for
imported equipments, the impact of that on the
economy is negligible.
Mixed bag of tax sops
On tax proposals, the picture is mixed. Reduction
in the rates of tax for companies with less than Rs.
50-crore turnover to 25% from the existing 30%
brings in benefits to 96% of companies. At the
same time, very little has been done to rationalise
tax preferences and reduce the rate to 25% for all
corporates by 2019, which was promised by the
Finance Minister in the 2015-16 Budget.
Although some of the concessions such as area-
based exemption are likely to end in April 2017,
the concessions already given will continue for 7-
10 years. The point is, it is important to rationalise
the tax system and avoid loading it with several
objectives which only complicate the structure
and provide avenues for evasion and avoidance.
As far as personal income goes, the reduction in
the tax rate to 5% for individuals up to Rs. 5 lakh
income provides some relief. At the same time,
the scope of surcharge has now been expanded to
people with taxable income of Rs. 50 lakh to Rs. 1
crore at 10%; the present 15% surcharge on those
earning more than Rs. 1 crore will continue.
On indirect taxes, given that the Goods and
Services Tax (GST) is scheduled to be rolled out
in July 2017, some rationalisation in excise duty
could have helped to smoothen the transition.
There are 300 commodities exempt from excise
duties and the list could have been pruned.
Similarly, there are several rates of tax, some of
them specific, and these could have been aligned
to the rates decided by the GST Council. It would
also have been useful to increase the threshold for
service tax to Rs. 20 lakh, the threshold for GST
decided in the council.
The Finance Minister had to demonstrate that he
will continue to wage the war against black
money and take the bull by the horns by reducing
the limit for cash donations to political parties. In
a large country like this, it is not difficult to find
people to make surrogate donations. Thus, it is not
certain if the measure to cap individual donations
in cash at Rs. 2,000 is merely cosmetic.
On the whole, the Budget is like a curates egg
good in parts. The most important positive is the
fiscal prudence and perhaps the most
disappointing is the lack of measures to revive the
economy in the prevailing difficult global and
domestic environment.
M. Govinda Rao is Emeritus Professor, National
Institute of Public Finance and Policy, and Chief
Economic Adviser, Brickwork Ratings. Views are
personal.
Very little has been done to rationalise tax
preferences and reduce the rate to 25% for all
corporates by 2019
A fine balance {Indian Economy}
Coming within three months of the Central
governments purge of high-value currency notes
that has dampened economic activity, particularly
in the informal sector, it was imperative that
Union Finance Minister Arun Jaitley soothed
frayed nerves with Budget 2017-18. It was equally
critical that he provided a glimpse of a larger plan
to prevent regeneration of black money, the
original intent behind the demonetisation of Rs.
500 and Rs. 1,000 notes. He has managed to do
both to a fair degree, without resorting to the easy
options of blatant populism or spending his way
out of trouble in a slowing economy. Apart from
funding the sops announced a month ago by Prime
Minister Narendra Modi for vulnerable sections of
society, the Finance Minister has done his best to
further ease the pain of people most impacted by
the adverse effects of demonetisation. The tax rate
for small and medium enterprises with an annual
turnover of up to Rs. 50 crore, which are the
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bulwark of job-creation but end up paying higher
taxes than large companies, has been slashed to
25%. For corporates, though, there is no road map
on lower tax rates. In addition, halving the
personal income tax rate from 10% to 5% for
those in the lowest tax slab of Rs. 2.5 lakh to Rs. 5
lakh not only puts more money in the hands of
this segment, but is also an effective nudge to
bring more people into the formal tax net. All
other taxpayers have been given a benefit of Rs.
12,500 each.
There is a redistributive element to such sops,
with part of the revenue loss from these income
tax giveaways being funded by a 10% surcharge
on the income tax of those in the Rs. 50 lakh to
Rs. 1 crore bracket. Mr. Jaitley hinted as much,
saying the demonetisation has helped transfer
resources from tax-evaders to the government. He
disclosed that there has been a remarkable 34%
rise in advance personal income tax collections in
the first three quarters of 2016-17, after recording
single-digit growth in the previous two years.
Perhaps the note ban has put the fear of the law
into many tax- dodgers. Some logical next steps
have been taken, including a bar on cash
transactions of more than Rs. 3 lakh, a nudge to
businesses to make all payments over Rs. 10,000
digitally, and rationalising the costs of non-cash
payments. Granting infrastructure status to
affordable housing, together with a few changes in
the tax treatment to incentivise builders, and the
interest subventions already announced for low-
ticket home loans, could spur construction
activity, and thus job-creation. There is higher
allocation for MGNREGA, irrigation and
infrastructure projects.
With the Goods and Services Tax on the horizon,
Mr. Jaitley has refrained from tinkering too much
with indirect taxes. Although a high-level panel
that reviewed the Fiscal Responsibility and
Budget Management Act has recommended
deviations from fiscal deficit targets after far-
reaching structural reforms such as the
demonetisation, he has done well to refuse to
deviate from the fiscal consolidation road map
and alter Indias strong macroeconomic
fundamentals. There may be no big new schemes
or dramatic reforms; the big bang in this Budget is
the shift from unfettered populism. On the flip
side, the promise to confiscate assets of defaulters
such as Vijay Mallya who flee the country and,
separately, clean up electoral funding the most
potent root of corruption appear to be red
herrings at best. Provisions already exist to attach
assets of defaulters to recover dues. And reducing
the cash donation limit from any one source to
political parties from Rs. 20,000 to Rs. 2,000 is
meaningless as long as there is no cap on the
number of such people who can make donations
anonymously. More clarity is also needed on the
electoral bonds proposed to be issued to protect
donors from any adverse effects of baring their
political leanings.
With the railway budget subsumed by the overall
exercise for the first time, and against the
backdrop of a series of train accidents, there was
expectation that a strong programme on rail safety
would be outlined. The Rs. 1 lakh crore to be
devoted over five years for a safety fund, the
Rashtriya Rail Sanraksha Kosh, will have to
address the many imperatives identified by expert
panels such as the Kakodkar Committee. The
Railways have a long list of tasks, starting with
acquisition of advanced signalling for train control
and, as the Budget notes, elimination of level
crossings for smooth operations. Replacement of
carriages of old design with the better-engineered
Linke-Hofmann Busch coaches would cost at least
Rs. 10,000 crore. On the commercial side,
passenger tariffs are to be calculated taking into
account costs, social obligations and competition
from other modes of transport. The objective of
the countrys biggest organisation, however,
should be to use the higher capacities on identified
travel corridors to provide safe, comfortable and
affordable travel for all. This can be done relying
on a rise in revenues from integrated freight
solutions that the Budget has spoken of. Apart
from the dovetailing of the railway budget, the
abolition of the distinction between Plan and Non-
Plan expenditure and its early presentation, Union
Budget 2017-18 marks another break from
tradition. It is the first time Mr. Jaitley extensively
turned to poetry as he began his deftly crafted,
workmanlike Budget by referring to a season of
optimism. With just one more full-year Budget
likely before the 2019 Lok Sabha elections, the
Modi government must now put all its energy
behind implementing the legislative and
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administrative reforms it has promised, to
translate that optimism into visible change on the
ground.
Readying for the long road {Indian Economy}
Madan Sabnavis
The Budget for this fiscal year is a balanced one
which takes forward the work done in 2016-2017.
It has been drafted without causing any distortion
and the incremental changes that have been made
may add a delta to the growth process. It is what
would be called in economics a Pareto-optimal
state, which benefits some and hurts none.
The starting point of the Budget is the fiscal
deficit and to the credit of the government, it may
be said that by lowering the rate further to 3.2% of
GDP, the signal given is that the 3% mark will be
the destination. Hence, while it will debate the
possibility of moving to a model that affords
flexibility to the extent of plus/minus 0.5% of
GDP, for the time being it would be sticking to
the existing fiscal responsibility and budget
management target. This number also gels well
with the gross borrowing programme of the
government which has been put around Rs. 6.05
lakh crore, almost the same as last year. This
makes it neutral to liquidity in the system as well
as interest rates. The Reserve Bank of India can
now take its call on policy rates independent of
the governments borrowing programme. The
concern earlier was that there was untoward
pressure being put on the liquidity situation by
high government borrowing.
A positive impetus
The Finance Minister has given a little bit
everywhere. While the corporate sector would
have liked to see the tax rate lowered across the
board to less than the existing rate of 30%, it has
been selectively done. There is still the assurance
that in course of time the 25% mark would be
delivered. Households should be happy that the
income tax rate has come down effectively, which
should help in increasing their spending level
which was impacted quite decisively by the
demonetisation move invoked in November.
Further, as the Finance Minister has left the
indirect taxes slabs unchanged, the inflation
impact from the fiscal front would be neutral for
households, though once the Goods and Services
Tax (GST) is introduced there would be a
differential impact on prices of various goods and
services.
On the expenditure side, there has been around
11% growth in capital expenditure (capex) of the
government, which is higher than the overall
growth in the total expenditure for FY18 which
was 6.5%. The focus has once again been on
railways, roads and urban infra where the
spending in FY17 was also higher than what was
budgeted. This will have a positive impact on the
industries linked to these sectors such as cement,
steel, machinery, electric equipment, etc. Add the
thrust given to housing and these industries would
witness better prospects in the coming year.
However, this positive impetus must not be
overstated for two reasons. First is that the
amounts involved are not very large, and hence
while consumption will benefit from more
purchasing power in the hands of the public, it
would be on an incremental basis and
concentrated on specific goods. Second, for
investment too, a sum of around Rs. 30,000 crore
in incremental terms would be a fraction of the
overall GDP of the country and hence while the
impact would be positive, it may not be
significant. The private sector has to play a more
dominant role in enhancing investment, and this is
probably where the Budget could have provided
some focused benefits on corporate taxes to spur
investment. Until this happens, it is unlikely that
capital formation rate will get reversed.
An eye on the road ahead
The government, however, is not really betting on
a substantial pick-up in GDP growth this year and
hence these measures announced are in
conformity with the 11.75% nominal GDP growth
number assumed in the Budget, an implicit nod to
a GDP growth number of 6.75-7.5% as projected
by the Economic Survey. Hence, this year may be
looked upon more as a period of consolidation
when the economy gets used to the new
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environment, which will include the GST and the
remonetisation process.
A clue provided along the way in the Budget is
the expectation of another big disinvestment
programme this year. While it has become a habit
to target a high amount with the final realisation
being between 60-75%, the target of Rs. 72,500
crore is very high and assuming that it has been
thought through carefully, we could expect to see
a flurry of such ventures in the year. There has
been some talk of State public sector enterprises
also coming under this umbrella to the extent that
the Central government has shares in them. This
can be one of the biggest exercises this year and
can be a booster for the capital market. The routes
chosen would be critical and one would hope that
there are more public issues rather than buybacks
which are analogous to cash transfers from the
entity to the government.
Overall, the Budget has been generally positive
for the economy though expectations were much
higher. As long as capex is maintained and the
fiscal targets are adhered to, the Budget could be
said to have done what was expected. Taking a
cautious route is probably pragmatic considering
that post-demonetisation there is GST to contend
with, which requires several adjustments at the
government level too to ensure that the outcomes
are in accordance with the overall plan.
Madan Sabnavis is Chief Economist, CARE
Ratings. Views are personal.
This year may be looked upon more as a period
of consolidation when the economy gets used to
the new environment, which will include the
GST and the remonetisation process
THE HINDU NEWSPAPER IMPORTANT
ARTICLES
03.02.2017
FRONT PAGE
A.P. working on system to DNA-tag convicts
{Science and Technology}
Jacob Koshy
The Andhra Pradesh government plans to bring in
legislation that will allow the State police and
investigating agencies to collect and store DNA
samples in a centralised database. The move has
come in for close scrutiny, as the Centre first
prepared a draft bill on the issue in 2012, but the
legislation ran into severe opposition from
activists on the ground that it violated privacy. It
has since been on hold.
We would like to move quickly on this and are
consulting international experts to draft a State
law, Dwaraka Tirumala Rao, Additional
Director-General of Police, Andhra Pradesh, told
The Hindu over phone. We will likely have our
law [enabling this] before the Centre does.
In August last year, the AP government, in an
event attended by Chief Minister N. Chandrababu
Naidu, launched a DNA collection-kit developed
by IntegenX, Inc, a US company that enables
DNA to be extracted from saliva and blood
samples within a matter of two hours.
Focus on sex crimes
The reasoning is that a centralised DNA database
on convicts would help track repeat offenders in
sexual assault and rape.
Tim Schellberg, President, Gordon Thomas
Honeywell, a US-based firm that governments are
consulting on setting up DNA databases, said he
had held discussions with Andhra Pradesh and
several other State governments six months ago.
There were some meetings but a lot of work still
needs to be done, he said.
The Centres Human DNA Profiling Bill, 2015,
was prepared by the Department of Biotechnology
and the Hyderabad-based Centre for DNA-
Fingerprinting and Diagnostics but is yet to be
cleared by the Union Cabinet. Several
organisations and individuals, however, raised
concerns that the bill gave sweeping powers to
government to mine the database and use it for
purposes beyond just solving crime.
Global experience
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So far, about 70 million samples have been
collected in 54 countries over 20 years, and there
have been no instances of databases being
compromised, said Mr. Schellberg,
Other experts in Andhra Pradesh familiar with the
use of DNA databases for forensic purposes, said
State officials were relying on extremely
expensive technology and a database wouldnt be
useful without supportive Central legislation.
Technology exists that costs only about a fourth.
To prepare a database, one doesnt need a 2-hour
profiling kit, said a DNA-expert familiar with the
AP governments plans.
Also we need to first train people in collecting
DNA from crime scenes and storing them
properly. A database can come later, the expert
added.
NATIONAL
Bird lovers help scientists uncover secrets
behind evolution of beaks {Ecology}
Steph Yin
When the ancestors
of Darwins finches
arrived on the
Galpagos 2 million
years ago, they
gained access to a
world of new
morsels, untapped
by other animals. In a relatively short period, 14
species of finches evolved, specializing in
different diets through different beak shapes: short
for crushing seeds, sharp for catching insects, long
for probing cactus flowers and so on.
This rapid diversification in the presence of new
opportunity is called adaptive radiation. Studies of
small island bird and lizard populations describe a
fast burst of evolution, followed by a slowdown.
But broader research has failed to find this fast-
then-slow pattern of evolution on a global scale.
Adaptive radiation
An international team of researchers set out to
investigate this seeming paradox through a
particular trait: the shapes of birds bills.
Analysing more than 2,000 species of birds, the
researchers suggest in a report published in
Nature that even though evolution does not slow
down globally, the theory of adaptive radiation
holds up.
In the case of birds, it is not that evolution slows
over time, but rather it switches from generating
major changes in beak shape to producing smaller
iterations of the same basic shapes, said Gavin
Thomas, a professor of animal and plant sciences
at the University of Sheffield in Britain and an
author of the paper. In their study, Mr. Thomas
and collaborators collected 3D scans of bird beaks
from museum specimens representing more than
97 percent of present-day birds.
Through a website called Mark My Bird, they
asked the public to help mark out specific features
on the scans, including the tip, mid-line and
curvature of each bill.
By combining these beak shape measurements
with the latest DNA-based evolutionary trees, the
scientists were able to infer ancestral bill shapes
and rates of evolution going back more than 80
million years. Their data suggested that most of
the variation we see in beaks today evolved long
ago, in a relatively short period of time.
Very early on, in the first 20 million years or so
of modern bird evolutionary history, you develop
a wide range of bird morphologies, with all kinds
of extremes, Mr. Thomas said.
After this early proliferation, the scientists
believe, there was a switch to fine-tuned
evolution, which can still be fast-paced.
In Hawaii, a single ancestor exploded into at least
54 species of colourful songbirds called
honeycreepers. In Madagascar, 22 species of
vanga birds emerged. Catastrophes like volcanic
explosions possibly opened up opportunities for
local evolution as well.
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In these cases, we find high rates of evolution,
meaning when we compare sister species, they
tend to be very different from one another,
Thomas said. But often, the different bill shapes
that evolve are similar to those that already exist
elsewhere in the world.
Earliest variations
This explains how, even though beak forms
experienced the greatest increase in variation in
the early days of birds, rates of evolution stayed
relatively stable through time: Isolated groups can
still evolve rapidly, just without adding much that
is substantially new to the range of bill shapes
found around the world.
A remaining question is why bird beaks have not
diversified much beyond the same major forms,
said Luke Harmon, a professor of biology at the
University of Idaho who was not involved in the
research. It may be that genes constrain how birds
can develop, or that the niches birds could fill
with different beaks are already occupied by other
animals.
This is one of the first studies to build on these
huge trees of bird evolutionary relationships, and
to lay upon them the story of this key structure,
the beak, said Bhart-Anjan Bhullar, an assistant
professor of geology at Yale University who did
not participate in the research. New York
Times News Service
Good Samaritan Bill awaits Governors nod
{Public Policy}
Nagesh Prabhu
On an average, Karnataka records 30 road
accident deaths every day. But the Good
Samaritan Bill enacted by the State government
still awaits Governors assent to become law.
During the Belagavi session of the State
legislature, the government passed the Karnataka
Good Samaritan and Medical Professional
(Protection and Regulation During Emergency
Situations) Bill, 2016. The Bill aimed to provide
protection to Good Samaritans and ensure quick
medical aid for road accident victims and
encourage people to offer first aid to victims
without fear of legal wrangles.
In the absence of an established Emergency
Medical Services system in India, bystanders can
play a crucial role in ensuring timely help for
victims. However, bystanders often refrain from
helping due to the fear of legal and procedural
hassles. Karnataka is one of the top five States in
road accident deaths in India with over 10,800
people being killed in 2015 alone, and hence the
State government took the initiative to pass the
Bill. Sources in the State Law and Parliamentary
Affairs Ministry told The Hindu that the Bill was
sent to the Governors office for assent a few days
ago and he is expected to give his nod soon.
Saji Cherian, Director, Operations, SaveLIFE
Foundation, Delhi, said, The Koppal incident
reiterates the need for the State government to run
massive campaigns to make people aware that
they will be protected if they help road accident
victims.
INTERNATIONAL
Pakistan negligent on water dispute with India: storage on the western river. Pakistan continues to
Report {International Relations}
Mubashir Zaidi
A report by the United Nations Development
Programme (UNDP) has held Pakistan
responsible for its negligence in conducting a
sound analysis of water issues with India.
The report, titled Development Advocate
Pakistan, also says that a delay on the part of
Islamabad in presenting the case to the Indus
Water Commission or the World Bank caused
issues to linger on.
Indus Treaty under strain
The report, released on Wednesday, also warned
that an increase in stress on the basin since the
early 1990s has brought the treaty under strain. It
says that the treatys survival appears threatened,
although there is no exit clause. The treaty fails
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to address two issues: the division of shortages in
dry years between India and Pakistan, when flows
are almost half as compared to wet years, and the
cumulative impact of storage on the flows of the
River Chenab into Pakistan, the report stated.
Pakistan has gone as far as calling the treaty an
inefficient forum for resolving water issues,
asking for it to be included in the composite
dialogue. But India has expressed unwillingness
to discard the treaty.
Climate change, shrinking glaciers and changing
precipitation patterns highlight the need to address
issues of water scarcity and resources, says the
report.
During floods, for example, the majority of the
water runs into the rivers of Indus-Pakistan which
leaves the province of Sindh flooded. Such
negative setbacks to the economy will eventually
have dire consequences if not addressed, it
warns.
With control of the River Chenab through the
Salal dam, India has several plans under way for
development of hydro-power with enhanced water
face reduced flows from the Chenab owing to the
recent storage of water in the Bagliar dam, the
report remarks.
Pakistan has called the Indus Water Treaty an
inefficient forum but India is unwilling to
discard it
OPINION
First among allies? {International Politics}
Vidya Ram
The visits of U.S. presidents to Britain have often
been accompanied by public protest. In 1982,
when Ronald Reagan visited, tens of thousands of
people gathered to protest against his nuclear
policy. In 2003, thousands turned out against
George W. Bush, reflecting strong public
opposition to the war in Iraq, and the strategy of
the U.S. President and then British Prime Minister
Tony Blair. Still, the public outcry being seen
since the extension of an invitation for a state visit
to President Donald Trump is unprecedented. At
the time of writing, nearly 1.8 million people
U.K. residents and citizens had signed a
petition calling for the state visit not to take place,
while thousands took part in demonstrations
across the country to oppose the visit, and stand
against the travel bans and halting of the refugee
programme brought in by the new President.
Britains close relationship with the U.S. is of
course nothing new: as early as 1946 Winston
Churchill used the phrase special relationship to
describe the alliance between the U.S. and Britain
that he hoped would ensure the sure prevention
of war and the continuous rise of world
association. This and European Union (EU)
membership have been central to British foreign
policy over the past few decades. Inevitably, as
Britain embarks on the process of extricating itself
from the EU, its relationship with the U.S. has
gained more and more importance.
Brexit blowback
While Prime Minister Theresa May, in her recent
speech that finally set out the contours of Brexit,
pledged to be the best friend and neighbour to
Europe, theres little doubt that exiting will
fundamentally change Britains relationship with
the trading bloc, well beyond its access to the
single market. A recent clip of Ms. May standing
awkwardly by at an EU summit as other leaders
chatted to each other animatedly went viral,
symptomising to many the political isolation that
she faces even before Britain has triggered exit
talks.
Britains lack of success when it comes to forging
relations elsewhere has added to the pressure.
While it may be unsurprising that India has made
it clear that a free trade agreement with the U.K. is
unlikely to happen without a decisive loosening of
Britains immigration policy, a similar signal has
been sent by other countries such as Australia,
which is also keen to ensure greater access for its
workers to Britain.
In the immediate aftermath of the Brexit vote last
year, there were concerns that exiting the EU
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would leave the U.K. a decisively less attractive
partner for the U.S. This was certainly the
impression given by former President Barack
Obama who, in an intervention weeks before the
referendum took place, warned that Britain would
be at the back of the queue for any trade deal
with the U.S. should it opt to leave the EU. By
contrast, Mr. Trump expressed great admiration
for Brexit, often dubbing himself Mr. Brexit in
the course of his electoral campaign. Perhaps
unsurprisingly, the U.K. government was quick to
welcome the new U.S. regime, with Foreign
Secretary Boris Johnson criticising the global
whinge-o-rama that accompanied Mr. Trumps
election.
In defence of Trump
The recent political developments seem to have
done little to change its stance: Ms. May initially
declined to condemn the travel ban and only did
so several hours afterwards in the face of strong
public pressure. It fell upon Home Secretary
Amber Rudd to give a more candid assessment:
on Monday, when pressed, she told a
parliamentary committee that the travel ban was a
potential propaganda opportunity for the
Islamic State.
Nevertheless, the government has stood firm by
its plans to maintain a state visit, despite calls
from across the political spectrum Liberal
Democrat, Labour and even Conservative MPs
to withdraw the invitation until the travel ban was
rescinded. Some MPs questioned why Mr. Trump
had been invited on a state visit so soon after his
inauguration, whereas every other President was
invited only after at least a year in power. In a
letter to The Times , a former senior Foreign
Office civil servant advised that it would have
been far wiser for the Prime Minister to have
waited to see what sort of president he would
turn out to be before advising the Queen to invite
him. Now the Queen is in a very difficult
position.
This week, Ms. May defended Mr. Trump as the
democratically elected head of state of our most
important ally while Mr. Johnson said the U.S.-
U.K. relationship was overwhelmingly to our
benefit.
Still, the government has struggled to throw off
accusations that its appetite for post-Brexit trade
deals was clouding its foreign policy. I
understand the need for a trade deal with the
United States but we cannot on the basis of our
eagerness to get a trade deal shrink from speaking
truths to the most powerful man in the world,
said former Labour Party leader Ed Miliband
during an emergency debate on Mr. Trumps
policies on Monday. During Prime Ministers
Question Time in Parliament, another MP pointed
to Ms. Mays visit to Turkey just after a trip to the
U.S. Will it be the policy of post-Brexit Britain
to put arms deals before human rights abuses?
Continental drift
The governments policy is likely to do it few
favours, alienating it even further from its
neighbours in Europe: Mr. Trump has made clear
his opposition to the EU, while EU President
Donald Tusk has highlighted the threat he
believes the U.S. President poses to the bloc, as
did the European Parliaments chief Brexit
negotiator Guy Verhofstadt. There are also
concerns about the terms of any deal that Britain
would reach, with politicians fearful that Mr.
Trumps mixed messages on issues such as free
trade (after repeatedly rubbishing it, Ms. May said
he had agreed with her that he was 100% behind
NATO), and his continual emphasis on America
First, mean that whatever rhetoric he may have
employed during Ms. Mays visit wont prevent
him from negotiating a deal heavily skewed in the
interests of the U.S. It is notable that even during
his press conference with Ms. May in
Washington, D.C., when asked about Brexit and a
trade deal, he spoke of an America ripped off by
the world, and while raving about how fantastic
Brexit would be, steered clear of discussing the
prospects for such a deal. In fact, he spoke of how
difficult he had found EU bureaucracy and
regulations to work with in his business empire
suggesting that he would be looking for decidedly
more relaxed terms for any trade deal. This could
pose huge problems for Europes manufacturing
industry should it have to cater to weaker
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requirements from the U.S. while at the same time
attempting to trade with the EU, with its strict
regulations governing the quality of imports.
Concerns have centred on two issues in particular:
likely U.S. demands that the U.K. National Health
Service be opened up to American companies, and
that Britain relax food safety standards. Ms. May
has reacted saying the NHS is not up for sale and
will never be.
Would Britain have taken such a decisive stance
on U.S. relations had Brexit not been imminent?
Its impossible to say and a moot point: the
government looks all set to start the two-year
process of extricating itself from the EU after a
decisive win for its Brexit legislation in the House
of Commons this week. What is clear, however, is
that the willingness of the government to
cooperate with controversial administrations in its
quest for post-Brexit deals is going to be a
running theme as preparations to leave the EU
take shape.
vidya.ram@thehindu.co.in
There are concerns that Ms. Mays visit wont
prevent Mr. Trump from negotiating a deal
heavily skewed in the interests of the U.S.
A season to repair relations {International
Relations}
Nirupama Rao
The Chinese Ambassador to India, Luo Zhaohui,
recently put forward some suggestions for
improvement of bilateral ties between China and
India. The suggestions are timely since relations
between the two Asian giants have looked tired
and worn in recent months. The voices from the
gallery have been worrisome. Chinas obduracy
on Indias Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG) bid, its
incomprehensible stand on the listing of known
terrorist-progenitor Masood Azhar under the U.N.
Security Councils 1267 Committee, the
deployment of Chinese military and engineering
assets in Pakistan-occupied Kashmir and the
development of the China-Pakistan Economic
Corridor (CPEC) are all pointers to a complex and
tension-riddled relationship.
Absence of trust
On the CPEC, the Prime Minister himself,
speaking at the Raisina Dialogue in New Delhi,
implicitly criticised the Chinese actions saying,
Connectivity in itself cannot override or
undermine the sovereignty of other nations.
While the border areas between the two countries
have remained conflict-free, the Line of Actual
Control continues to be subject to conflicting
interpretations by both India and China and the
scene of intermittent transgression. Commentators
have suggested that Indias Tibet policy is also
being recalibrated, drawing conclusions from the
Dalai Lamas projected visit to Arunachal Pradesh
and his being seen at Rashtrapati Bhavan, sitting
beside President Pranab Mukherjee. As expected,
the nationalist Chinese media condemned it.
What did Mr. Luo say? The remarks were
obviously prepared as the Chinese do not speak
off-the-cuff in public spaces. He suggested a
friendship and cooperation treaty and a free
trade agreement (FTA) to boost bilateral relations
and joining of hands on Chinas One Belt, One
Road (OBOR) initiative, and added that the time
is ripe for both countries to reap some early
harvest outcomes (based on negotiations held so
far) on the unresolved boundary question.
That the Ambassador chose to make these
remarks at the newly-established Ji Xianlin Centre
for India-China Studies at the University of
Mumbai campus lent some symbolism to the
occasion. Ji Xianlin was one of Chinas foremost
modern Indologists and a protagonist of friendship
and civilisational understanding between India
and China.
Could the Ambassador's statement be part of an
effort within the Chinese establishment to review
relations with neighbours like India, given the
strategic uncertainties generated by the advent of
Donald Trumps administration in the U.S. and
his unabashed negativity towards China? Mr.
Trumps phone call with the Taiwanese President,
Tsai Ing-wen, before he took office; his
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proclaimed intention to impose punitive tariffs on
Chinese goods; and the new U.S. Secretary of
State, Rex Tillersons thinly disguised threats
against Chinas building of artificial islands in the
disputed areas in the South China Sea have all
generated concern in Beijing.
It is not known whether these ideas articulated in
Mumbai by the Chinese envoy have been
discussed at the government-to-government level
previously. It is possible that some of them,
particularly the early harvest concept relating to
the boundary, may have been broached in some
form or other by the Chinese side. Sectors of the
boundary, like Sikkim and the middle sector
(Uttarakhand/Himachal Pradesh), are by and large
free of the disputes that one sees in the western
(Jammu and Kashmir) and eastern (Arunachal
Pradesh) sectors. But solutions that segment the
border instead of ensuring an overall
comprehensive settlement of the boundary may be
difficult to accept, especially for India.
Devil in the detail
A treaty of friendship and cooperation between
the two countries recalls the 1954 Panchsheel
Agreement which essentially tied up the status of
Tibet but also outlined the Five Principles of
Peaceful Coexistence principles that became
empty words over the ensuing years as the
relationship slid into conflict and then took years
to revive. The 1993 and 1996 agreements on
peace and tranquility and confidence-building in
the India-China border areas reiterated the five
principles and also spoke of the non-use of force
and the concept of mutual and equal security.
While India need not spurn the latest Chinese
overture made by Mr. Luo, and would do well to
explore what the proposal entails, the devil is
always in the detail.
Given the state of bilateral relations, and the
extent of unresolved political and security issues
that bedevil the relationship, not to mention the
disparity in economic strength, a treaty of
friendship and cooperation may only be an
inventory of good intentions but not a
transformative document.
As for trade and economic relations, Mr. Luos
idea of an FTA is no doubt forward-looking.
Trade between India and China has grown to an
annual volume of $70 billion (2015-16). India has
made a strong pitch for Chinese investments
under Make in India in infrastructure
development, solar energy and smart cities.
Recent reports, however, also suggest security
hurdles faced by Chinese firms seeking to invest
in India. An FTA that is goods-centred will
obviously not benefit India given the huge trade in
goods imbalance that favours China. An FTA that
is comprehensive, covering goods and services,
cross-border investment, R&D, standards and
dispute resolution would be worth exploring. As
some Indian scholars have observed, An FTA
with China may have benefits that escape
quantification and transcend economics.
Connectivity builds the sinews of successful
diplomacy today. Our own region of South Asia
with its poor inter-country connectivity only
buttresses the poor state of diplomatic cooperation
in much of the subcontinent. The rigour of borders
and sovereignties has triumphed over any
consensus-building on connectivity and
cooperation beyond borders. Indias own reaction
to Chinas OBOR has been hedging and tentative,
mainly because of the CPEC through Pakistan-
occupied Kashmir. At the same time, India is a
part of the frontline membership of the Asian
Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB) that is
bolstering OBOR.
The Chinese have today chosen to disregard the
sovereignty issues surrounding the dispute
between India and Pakistan over the State of J&K,
despite the provisions of the 1963 China-Pakistan
Boundary Agreement which conceded the
disputed nature of the territory (in what Pakistan
now calls Gilgit-Baltistan but what India claims as
part of Jammu and Kashmir) covered under the
agreement. This is a crucial reason for Indias
reservations about OBOR. The Chinese are seen
by India to have acted in disregard of Indian
sensitivities on this matter, which is a cause for
legitimate concern.
Connectivity, connectivity, connectivity
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The question however is, whether despite this,
India should as a test of the Chinese approach, and
with reference to OBOR, explore the development
of connectivity between Tibet and India,
especially through the Sikkim sector into Bengal.
The old route between Lhasa and Kolkata via
Nathu La was the most easily traversed route
and may still be, despite the road networks
constructed by the Chinese in Tibet between
Tibet and mainland China, via land and sea, up
until the mid-20th century. This is a road that
provided for the transport of goods and services
between Tibet and the outside world through
India.
The case for its revival requires a serious
examination and should not be dismissed
cursorily. Nathu La is already the crossing point
for border trade between India and the Tibet
Autonomous Region. A true indicator of Chinese
positivity would also be approval for India to open
a Trade Office in Lhasa in place of the old
Consulate General that operated there until 1962.
An opening of ties between India and the Xinjiang
region of China is also worth examining.
Providing for air connectivity between Urumqi,
the capital of Xinjiang province, and New Delhi
as one of the OBOR linkages, for instance, would
help the promotion of people-to-people ties and
trade and commercial contact and could also help
open a new chapter in counter-terrorism
cooperation between India and China. The two
countries have a common interest in curbing
religious radicalism and terrorism. Kashmir and
Xinjiang, both contiguous neighbours, have
similar challenges posed by terrorism and
separatist movements.
New thinking necessary
India-China relations can definitely do with some
new thinking and new ideas, and from that point
of view, the Chinese Ambassador has done well to
articulate his outlook, however modest, on how
more bilateral cooperation can be promoted. The
long peace between the two countries, stretching
from the 1970s to the present day, deserves
preservation and not disturbance. It is entirely in
the self-interest of each country to ensure this.
Competitive coexistence, with a clear delineation
of areas of difference and how to manage them,
the promotion of business and people-centred
connectivity, and mutual confidence-building with
tension-reduction measures cannot do any harm.
The border problem, by virtue of its complexity
and size, will take its time to resolve.
Maturity of approach, and strategic patience while
each country is preoccupied with the demands of
internal and external equilibrium and balancing,
offers a constructive way forward. The modus
vivendi of the last few decades are easily
disturbed as recent events have shown. China as
the larger neighbour must take the initiative to
ensure that this trend is halted.
Its approach on NSG, Masood Azhar, the
activities in PoK, to name a few, have cast long
shadows on the relationship. China cannot expect
India not to pursue her legitimate interests in
ensuring the security of its periphery, and to
promote ties with countries like the U.S. and
Japan and ASEAN partners in the Indo-Asia
Pacific. All these countries have extensively
evolved and developed relationships with China.
Likewise, our cooperation with them need not
hinder a productive, comprehensive, open and
frank dialogue between India and China that is
aimed at preserving and promoting good contact,
communication and connectivity in diverse
spheres as also the peace on our shared borders of
the last few decades.
Nirupama Rao is a former foreign secretary and
ambassador to China.
A true indicator of Chinese positivity would be
approval for India to open a Trade Office in
Lhasa in place of the old Consulate General that
operated there till 62
Looking back to look forward {Indian history}
Devaki Jain
January 30, Martyrs Day, is gradually losing
significance just like some of the other days
related to our freedom struggle. There was a time
in the 50s and 60s when we truly mourned the
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assassination of Mahatma Gandhi. It not only
seemed monstrous, but it foreboded a kind of evil,
also that despite all the talk about non-violent
struggle, violence was in our blood. It created not
only shock and sorrow but also fear about Indias
future, her civilisation and ethic, and her fame for
a non-violent freedom struggle.
The day that shocked India
I was 15 years old when it happened. We were
living in Gwalior, as my father, M. A.
Sreenivasan, was the Dewan. On the evening of
January 30, 1948, his personal secretary rushed
into our house and said: Please stay indoors. We
are putting the house under security. My mother
asked: What is happening? He said: Gandhi
has been shot and a Hindu nationalist has shot
him. We fear that they may attack this house also
as Dewan Sahib has been against their
communally motivated activities.
Communal hatred and violence fuelled by the
Hindu Mahasabha and the Rashtriya
Swayamsevak Sangh, powerful organisations
whose anti-Muslim and anti-Gandhi stand had
won them considerable popular support, was a
common feature in Gwalior. It was well known
that these organisations had the sympathy and
support of some of the rulers in that region. These
groups hated Gandhis concern and support for
Muslims. When my father reconstituted the
Gwalior cabinet in 1946 and did not include their
representatives, among the banners festooning the
streets of Gwalior there were two that said:
Nehru ke agent Sreenivasan ko nikal do (Sack
Nehrus agent Sreenivasan), and Shanti ke
poojari Sreenivasan ko hata do (Remove peacenik
Sreenivasan). Hence the fear that our house
would be targeted.
In his memoir Of the Raj, Maharajas and Me ,
written in 1991 and published by Ravi Dayal, my
father recalls a visit by Dr. D.S. Parchure, a
medical practitioner and a prominent leader of the
RSS who came with Narayan Apte (a conspirator
who was later hanged) to express his anger against
the exclusion of RSS from the cabinet. You are
not a Hindu, his voice rose in anger, You are an
agent of Jinnah, You are a betrayer of
Hinduism, you and your Gandhi, We shall
finish you both. We have hand grenades.
Gandhiji had sent for my father, and the
appointment was on January 29, 1948 at 2.30 p.m.
at Birla House in New Delhi. My father had been
an effective negotiator, as the convener of the
Chamber of Princes. The negotiations were to
persuade and nudge the princes to join the
Republic of India.
When he returned, like most of sane India he was
distraught. In his memoir he remembers his
conversation:
Gandhiji asked me, Did you see a group of
people in front of the house?
Yes
Those poor people are from Bannu. They have
come all the way to see me. One of them was quite
angry with me today. He told me, Gandhi, you
should die. I said I will not die until my inner
voice says I should. And do you know,
Sreenivasan, what he said?
Gandhiji raised his hand in a characteristic
gesture and said, He said, My inner voice says
you should die!
I was aghast.
I pity them, he continued. I am sorry for them.
Would you not be angry if your house had been
burnt and looted, your women beaten up or
violated in your presence? he asked. They think
I am responsible, he continued calmly; I am full
of sympathy for them. I can well understand their
being so angry.
How could I have known that, on the very day I
was motoring to Delhi to meet Gandhiji,
Nathuram Godse and Narayan Apte were in
Parchures house in Gwalior on a secret quest,
and that they had travelled by that evenings train
to Delhi, carrying with them the pistol and the
bullets that killed the Mahatma as the police
found later?
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A day of reflection
It is time now for India not to remember this day
only as Martyrs Day but as a day to reflect on the
spirit of the freedom movement. There should be
much more discussion, public meetings, a kind of
eventful day that enables the new generation to
recall what was the politics, and who were those
who rebelled against it at that time, and what have
we landed in by forgetting those histories. Just as
we have endless panels on the bickering by
political parties or the fallibility of gigantic
corporates, we should have discussions on
January 30 invoking the history of the freedom
struggle. A two-minute silence on the day and
naming the road on which Birla House is located
Tees January Marg are not enough.
Devaki Jain is a feminist writer and economist.
Gandhis assassination showed that despite all
the talk about non-violent struggle, violence was
in our blood
H-1B visa in the spotlight {International
Relations}
There are disconcerting signals from the Trump
White House and Capitol Hill of likely changes to
the H-1B non-immigrant visa programme in the
U.S. for skilled workers in tech jobs. Indian IT
firms have been among the top recipients of the
65,000 such visas made available annually via a
lottery system, in some years garnering well in
excess of 80% of them. However, President
Donald Trump, driven by his campaign promise
of Buy American, Hire American, now has this
specialty occupation worker visa in his
crosshairs. Shares in Indian IT majors took a
nosedive last week when an unconfirmed draft
executive order leaked to U.S. media houses
appeared to call for reform of immigration rules
for skilled foreign workers that would raise the
salary eligibility for such visas to $130,000,
reverse the extensions granted by the Obama
administration to the Optional Practical Training
programme for foreign graduates in the U.S., and
institute a rigorous monitoring system for
companies employing L-1 visa holders, intra-
company transferees. Any hope that India Inc.
may have of such executive orders not gaining the
requisite support in Congress is likely to come to
naught: at least two bills with bipartisan backing
were introduced in the House of Representatives
last month, both urging tightening of conditions
for skilled-worker visas that are, in the
governments view, costing Americans jobs.
Notwithstanding the shadow of protectionism that
it would cast on the bilateral relationship with
New Delhi, this visa crackdown in the making
raises troubling questions for the U.S. tech sector
and the broader economy as well. Any significant
hike in the minimum salary levels for the
specialised jobs held by H-1B visa recipients will
hit not only Indian IT firms but also the tech titans
of Silicon Valley, including Microsoft, Google
and Facebook. This will inflict pain on the U.S.
economy. Similarly, unless skill-based criteria are
used in addition to wage-level restrictions,
numerous U.S. firms will struggle to fill mid-level
jobs with qualified Americans. Indian firms have
for years been the most rapidly growing investors
in the U.S. economy. If IT companies within this
group are impacted by onerous new restrictions,
they would likely prefer to entirely offshore their
operations to India. Ironically, that could lead to
job losses for American workers. While Mr.
Trump was elected into office campaigning for
economic revitalisation and job-creation for
Americans, his administration would be wise to
think through all the possible outcomes that could
result from ham-fisted policies in the immigration
space.
Neither transparent nor accountable {Indian
Economy}
In the public mind, political corruption is the
source of most forms of corruption. No doubt,
Finance Minister Arun Jaitley was seeking to
address this concern about the lack of
transparency and accountability in the funding of
political parties when he announced measures in
the Union Budget to cleanse the process of
making donations toward election expenses of
parties. But his proposals are doomed to fail, not
because they do not go far enough but because
they go in the wrong direction. The ceiling of Rs.
2,000 on cash donation by any individual to a
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party, slashed from the existing Rs. 20,000, might
inconvenience parties to some extent but is
unlikely to stop the disguising of huge, off-the-
books cash donations from corporate houses and
vested interests as small contributions from
ordinary party workers and sympathisers. All that
the parties will now have to do is find more
people to lend their names to these donations, or
better still, find more names of unsuspecting
people to be listed as cash donors. The proposal
does not disrupt the flow of illicit political
donations but only channels it differently, and will
not reduce the proportion of cash from
unverifiable sources in the total donations
received. If Mr. Jaitley was indeed intent on
getting the political class to truly account for their
donations, he should have placed a cap on the
amount a party may receive in cash as a donation.
In any case, the declared income is only a small
part of their funding, much of which is spent
during elections and mobilisation efforts without
coming under the radar of the Election
Commission or the Income Tax Department.
The proposal to allow donors to purchase electoral
bonds from banks against cheque and digital
payments to be given to registered political parties
for redemption, meant to cater to donors need to
remain anonymous to rival political parties, hardly
contributes to transparency. Indeed, donors should
not enjoy any anonymity, before tax authorities or
the general public. The absence of such
anonymity, of course, will bring down the level of
contributions from corporate houses and other
entities to parties, not such a bad thing. Far from
aiding transparency, the proposal only clouds the
funding process. The Budget makes it mandatory
for political parties to file returns within a time
limit, but in the absence of extreme penal
provisions compliance is likely to be low. Mr.
Jaitley, while raising visions of a crackdown on
illicit funding, seems to have left the issue
untouched in real terms. Half-measures will not
go even halfway in achieving the purpose of
bringing about transparency and accountability in
political donations.
Monumental mistakes {Art & Culture}
Rana Safvi
Without architecture, we cannot remember.
John Ruskin, The Seven Lamps of Architecture
When the British occupied Shahjahanabad (Old
Delhi), they remodelled the city and the Mughal
Red Fort to suit their convenience. Around 80%
of the buildings inside the Red Fort were
demolished to make way for military barracks.
Mansions and havelis were brought down to make
way for broader, new roads so that the British had
easy access for defence purposes, in case the
people decided to rebel against them again.
Perhaps everything would have got demolished
but for a horrified Charles Canning who tried to
preserve our heritage.
The Archaeological Survey of India (ASI) was
formed in 1861 by a statute passed into law by
Canning, with Alexander Cunningham as its first
Archaeological Surveyor, to excavate and
conserve Indias ancient built heritage.
Preserving heritage
In 1904, a Cambridge classics scholar, who was
the Director General of ASI, formulated the
Ancient Monuments Preservation Act, 1904
(modified on September 1, 1949). Since much
damage had already been done to our rich built
heritage, control over traffic in antiquities and
over excavation in certain places and checks for
mining, quarrying, excavating, blasting and other
operations of a like nature were put in place. The
aim of the Act was to preserve monuments as
archaeological ruin on an as is where is basis.
John Marshall also drew up a conservation
manual in 1922, which combined the best
conservation practices from around the world and
adapted them to the Indian context. It was one of
the most comprehensive documents written on
conservation at that time.
The job of the ASI, under the Ministry of Culture,
is to protect the cultural heritage of our nation.
The Ancient Monuments and Archaeological Sites
and Remains (Amendment and Validation) Act,
2010 was passed with provisions to protect
ancient monuments and antiquities and regulate
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all construction activity around them. It specified
a prohibited area, which meant that no
construction activity (erection or a building,
including any addition or extension thereto either
vertically or horizontally) could take place within
100 m in all directions of a monument. There was
another regulated area, which was 200 m beyond
the prohibited area where persons may undertake
construction, reconstruction, repairs and
renovation, but only after obtaining permission
from the competent authority on the
recommendation of the National Monuments
Authority.
Professor Syed Ali Nadeem Rezavi of the Centre
of Advanced Study in History, Aligarh Muslim
University, says, Any tinkering with its
provisions, especially the laws around its
maintenance and prohibitions in allowing any
encroachment or building around it, would create
loopholes to undo the watertight protection which
has been provided for them by law. Once you
allow constructions around it, the monuments can
be easily suffocated. We have already been
witnessing this in heritage cities like Delhi. He
also bemoans the destruction of many medieval
monuments such as Kos Minars, dams, barrages
and bridges in the path of development.
World heritage sites are listed as category A
monuments while other ticketed monuments are
category B. The most vulnerable are those marked
category C, around which dense habitation has
taken place. In many cases, a monument is all but
stifled as its surrounded by unchecked
construction.
The Culture Ministrys proposal
A few weeks ago, I had shared a coloured
lithograph from Syed Ahmed Khans 1847
seminal work on Delhi monuments, Asar-us-
Sanadid , on social media with the caption, Can
you identify this monument? Nobody could. The
lithograph showed the beautiful octagonal tomb of
Mubarak Shah Sayyid, the second ruler of the
Sayyid dynasty of Delhi, who died in 1434 A.D.
and was buried there in an area named after him,
Mubarakpur Kotla. However, sometime in the
past century, people from neighbouring villages
occupied this place. Today it is smothered by
multi-storey houses on all sides and barely has
room to breathe.
If I had found that with great difficulty, the search
for its companion mosque was even worse. Its
now a dump yard which has to be approached
through a narrow passage in one of the tenements
surrounding it. One jumps onto a rubbish heap to
get inside as its access has been blocked on all
sides by construction.
There are numerous other heritage sites which are
already under threat or have been destroyed even
when stringent rules were in place. What will
happen if these rules are amended to
accommodate future construction, as is the plan
being mulled by the Culture Ministry?
Priyank Gupta, a junior research fellow at the
Department of Ancient Indian History, Culture
and Archaeology, Gurukula Kangri
Vishwavidyalaya, Haridwar, says: Its going to
disturb the water table of the land and the ancient
sewage system of a monument. The ancient
foundation, which was built of wood, will be most
affected. Continuous vibration of heavy vehicles
will affect its strength. I asked eminent historian
Professor Irfan Habib what he thought. This is
against all recognised rules of conservation and it
should be opposed by all people who want to
protect our heritage, he said.
One of the monuments said to be affected by a
proposed elevated road within the prohibited area
is Akbars tomb in Sikandra, Agra. Syed Jamal
Hasan, who recently retired as Director of
Archaeology from ASI, said: Akbars tomb in
Sikandra has monumental importance as it was
here that we see the first example of a minaret in
north India in the gateway built by Jahangir. This
was later successfully copied by Shah Jahan.
Not only will the proposed elevated road hide the
tombs gateway but it will also damage the
structure during construction, and later because of
traffic within the 100 m prohibited zone. Do
development and our future have to be at the cost
of our past?
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Rana Safvi is a historian, author and blogger
documenting India's syncretic culture via its
history, monuments, cultural traditions and food.
A monument is all but stifled when its
surrounded by unchecked construction
BUSINESS
Centre to divest Rs. 11,000 cr. stake in PSU
insurers {Indian Economy}
The government plans to divest Rs. 11,000 crore
worth of stake in PSU general insurance
companies to meet the steep disinvestment target
of Rs. 72,500 crore next fiscal. Of the total target,
Rs. 46,500 crore will be mobilised through
minority stake sale and Rs. 15,000 crore from
strategic disinvestment. The goal of Rs. 72,500
crore is higher than Rs. 45,500 crore the
government has estimated to raise in the current
fiscal. A sum of Rs. 11,000 crore is budgeted from
the listing exercise. PTI
RBI cautions against virtual currencies {Indian
Economy}
The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) has cautioned
the users, holders and traders of virtual currencies
(VCs), including Bitcoins, about the potential
financial, legal and security risks. RBI advises
that it has not given any licence/authorisation to
any entity / company to operate such schemes or
deal with Bitcoin or any virtual currency. As such,
any user, holder, investor, trader, etc. dealing with
virtual currencies will be doing so at their own
risk,it said.
THE HINDU NEWSPAPER IMPORTANT
ARTICLES 04.02.2017
FRONT PAGE
SC upset as Maxis owner fails to turn up in court
{Telecommunication}
Krishnadas Rajagopal
A day after the Special Court discharged all
the accused in the Aircel-Maxis deal case,
the Supreme Court on Friday was in no mood
to forgive Maxis group of companies
controlling owner T. Ananda Krishnan and
three others named in the CBI charge sheet.
A three-judge Bench, led by Chief Justice of
India J.S. Khehar, found that the four Mr.
Ananda Krishnan, M/s. Astro All Asia
Networks Limited, M/s. Maxis
Communications and Augustus Ralph
Marshall, a director in Maxis and Astro
had not bothered to comply with its January 6,
2017, order directing them to show their bona
fide by entering appearance in court.
A visibly annoyed Bench found that neither
its proposal to pass a restraint order against
Aircel-Maxis from earning revenue on its
spectrum nor the advertisements published in
two Malaysian newspapers about its January
6 order had swayed the absconders to
comply with the due process of law.
Ban on spectrum sale
On January 6, the court had also stayed any
attempts by Aircel-Maxis to sell or transfer
spectrum allocated to it in November 2006.
This was based on an application by the
Centre for Public Interest Litigation, alleging
that Aircel-Maxis was attempting to quickly
sell off its allotted spectrum, which is a
precious natural resource belonging to the
people of India, to Bharti Airtel and Reliance
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Communications for thousands of crores, and
exit the market with huge sums of money.
He [Mr. Ananda Krishnan] does not care for
the law of this country. He does not care for
the Supreme Court of this country... then we
will punish him... we will see to it, Chief
Justice Khehar, flanked by Justices N.V.
Ramana and D.Y. Chandrachud, orally
observed during the hearing.
The trigger for the remarks came when senior
advocate Abhishek Manu Singhvi,
representing Aircel, contended that his client
should not be made to suffer financial loss for
the conduct of Mr. Ananda Krishnan and the
other three.
NATIONAL
Dwarf planet may have hidden ice volcanoes
{Geography}
The dwarf planet Ceres may actually host
many hidden ice volcanoes, besides the
only one recently discovered by a NASA
spacecraft, says a study.
Cryovolcanoes might have flattened out over
time and become indistinguishable
PMAY scheme may not take off soon {Public
Policy}
N.J.Nair
The indigent homeless in the State looking
forward for a shelter of their own will have to
wait to start house construction under the
Pradhan Mantri Awas Yojana.
As per available indications, the project for
constructing 24,300 houses with Central
assistance and a matching grant from the State
government will not take off this fiscal.
Technical glitches in clearing the applications
from the Centre are being cited as the main
cause for the delay in sanctioning the initial
tranche of assistance to the beneficiaries.
The beneficiaries were picked up by local
bodies from a database created on the basis of
a Socio Economic Caste Census conducted
earlier.
The database comprises grama panchayat-
wise details and the beneficiaries were
selected on the basis of the norms fixed by the
Centre. A field-level verification too was
conducted for confirming the veracity of the
lists.
As many as 24 panchayats had no
beneficiaries and the lists prepared in 36
others had been held up due to dispute over
the location of the families. For, the census
was conducted before the delimitation of local
bodies and on finalising the new boundaries,
some of the beneficiaries got shifted from one
panchayat to another. This mandated a geo-
tagging and re-verification too, the sources
said.
As per the project, the Centre will transfer the
initial quantum of funds to the bank accounts
of the beneficiaries on uploading the details
with photographs on the Union Home
Ministry website through a software Awas
Soft. The Centre had fixed the cost per unit at
Rs.1.20 lakh and offered to provide 60 per
cent of the cost. Panchayats had a tough time
uploading the details due to too many glitches
and it could not be completed within the
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stipulated time. Limited server capacity and
snags in software have virtually impeded the
process of furnishing applications to the
Centre.
INTERNATIONAL
China denies putting pressure on Pakistan for
Saeeds arrest {Security}
Atul Aneja
China on Friday signalled that it had not
imposed any pressure on Pakistan to put Hafiz
Saeed under house arrest. However, Beijing
has decided to send a top diplomat to
Islamabad following the detention of the
suspected mastermind of the Mumbai terror
attacks in 2008.
Asked to comment on news reports from
Pakistan that China had imposed pressure on
Islamabad which led to the Saeeds house
arrest, Chinas Foreign Ministry spokesperson
Lu Kang stated that Beijing supported
international cooperation on counterterrorism
with Pakistan, provided it is conducted with
Islamabads consent. China supports the
independent strategies made by Pakistan on
counterterrorism and engaging in
international cooperation on counterterrorism.
China supports the international community
in conducting cooperation on that and we
maintain that it must be based on mutual
respect, said Mr. Lu during his daily media
briefing.
An independent decision
Asked to elaborate, Mr. Lu stressed that,
China supports the Pakistani government in
independently making decisions on
counterterrorism and international
cooperation on counterterrorism.
Sections of the Pakistani media have been
reporting that China has been imposing
pressure on Pakistan to act against Saeed and
Masood Azhar, the head of the Jaish-e-
Mohammad (JeM) group, accused of
marshalling the Pathankot air base attack last
year.
Mr. Lu confirmed that a Vice-Foreign
Minister Cheng Guoping, who is in charge of
counter-terrorism, will shortly travel to
Pakistan to discuss counter-terrorism
efforts. Postings on the Chinese social media
suggest that there is an ongoing debate within
the Chinese establishment about re-calibrating
Beijings undiluted support to Pakistan on
issues related to terrorism.
OPINION
Encounter killings of another kind {Social
issue}
R. Krishna Kumar and Mohit M. Rao
In the nights here, silence is a perceptibly
heavy companion. Coffee and areca nut
plantations are shrouded in darkness, save for
the lights of planters homes and low-slung
kerosene lights that send out a warm glow
from the labour colonies. The rustle of leaves
in the slight wind hides the footsteps of a
young tiger. Unknowing of the dangers that
lie outside its birthplace, the feline has walked
out of the lush canopies of Nagarahole Tiger
Reserve; furtively moving along low hills and
between barbed-wire fences, across shallow
rivulets and streams, and eventually found a
precarious existence in the shadows of coffee
estates and abandoned rice fields.
It is barely three, and its lithe body hungers
for rabbits and wild boar that scurry across
the landscape. By the second week of
January, in the trail of small carcasses and
paw prints in the wet mud around the snaking
Lakshmana Tirtha river, the tiger had left
signs of its presence. Forest officials had
informed villagers, who retreated to their
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homes before dusk. After sunset, the young
tiger reigned over the plantations.
On the night of January 17, we can only
presume it had sighted prey in an abandoned
rice field beside the road at Bekkesudaluru in
South Kodagu (barely a few kilometres from
the Karnataka-Kerala border). The tiger
advances cautiously. Its eyes firm, it creeps
slowly forward, slips between the barbed-wire
fence and then the evolutionary instincts of
moving in for the kill suddenly give way to
stupefaction and panic. It grapples, but the
seemingly invisible force holding its forelimb
seems to tighten and dig into its skin. It
struggles through the night, but cannot
extricate itself from the wire that bound it to
the spot, and collapses in silence.
The next morning, Bekkesudaluru village has
woken up to the sight of the tiger that for the
past week had been part of transient
mythology. We know tigers have come
through our village. Some claim they have
seen them in the past fleetingly, others tell us
that their cattle have been attacked. But, this
is the first time the entire village has seen a
tiger here, says T.A. Machiah, a planter who
lives down the road. It looked so vulnerable.
It was breathing so slightly that we thought it
was dead, he adds.
By evening, under a dose of tranquillisers, it
was shifted to the Animal Rescue Centre near
Mysuru. Kept under observation, workers said
its trauma saw it reject much of the food
offered. The wound on its foreleg continued
to fester. On the third day, it gave up. A post-
mortem revealed that septicaemia (from the
wound) led to a collapse of its organ
functions. What the report also revealed was
that it had well-set cysts in its lungs and
intestines leading to theories that it may
have emerged out of the forests in search of
easier kills.
The inhuman trap
A fortnight later and a little downstream of
Lakshmana Tirtha river, forest watchers
Shivakumar and Udesha, and contract worker
Shivanna who is from the Jenu Kuruba
tribal community scour through the
confusing array of thickets and bushes. They
exhibit a panicky urgency, stopping every
now and then to jot down their GPS position.
Shivanna, however, knows it is futile to sift
through every clump and shrub. Instead, he
relies on traditional experience, and looks at
small forest paths used by wild boars and
rabbits and then glances quickly to see if the
fingerprints of human interference can be
seen. He suddenly becomes animated. Ive
found a snare, he shouts. The object of this
exercise the noose that has seen the death
of two of the seven tigers that have died since
January had been found.
Even at close glance, it is difficult to spot the
string of wire that the group had spent much
of their morning in search for. The copse of
bamboo hides the barbed-wire fence of the
neighbouring estate. The criss-crossing shade
and the dried creepers which have curled all
over hides a small loop of string dangling
from the lower wire.
Much like zip ties used to seal shopping bags,
the snare is a loop of wire often, clutch
cable from bikes or cars, or even telephone
wires in the form of a noose. When an
animal enters the noose, any slight weight on
the dangling string sees it tighten; the more
the animal instinctively struggles, the tighter
it gets.
The one found in this was small, perhaps set
for rabbits. But this is the sort that got the
Bekkesudaluru tiger. It put its paw in this, and
was stuck, says Shivakumar, who
photographs it, notes its GPS location and
time of discovery.
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Their three-hour, nine-km walk reveals five
more snares in their path along the river. In
the afternoon, the team found 30 more snares
in coffee estates along the river. They point to
a large snare, made of sturdy wire. This is
the sort that has killed the Kumatoor tigress.
Wild boars are strong, and so the locals use
telephone wires. Tigers, however, get stuck
and even they cant escape from this, says
Shivanna.
A death in Kumatoor
Uncertainty veils the story of the six-year-old
Kumatoor tigress, believed to have emerged
out of the Nagarahole forests and into
neighbouring estates. What is sure though is
that it was found dead on January 29 at
Kumatoor with its waist visibly constricted
and crushed by something seemingly out of a
medieval torture instrument.
Post-mortem revealed a broken spine. A snare
was involved, even though there was none
found close to the body. Forest officials
speculate it had been caught in a snare set for
boars accidentally, and the panicked killers
dumped the body nails, claws and skin
were left untouched ruling out the role of
poachers.
Villagers believe the tigers death was
prolonged painfully over weeks. Coffee
planter K. Subramani, in whose cousins
plantation the tigress was found, says: A
week ago, two heads of cattle were attacked.
Even though they were weak, the cattle
managed to gore the tigress (blood on the
horns) and scare it away. It was then seen
briefly on the road, where it had difficulty in
walking. The snare mark was already there.
Visiting the field where it died, there is a
patch of burnt wood, bones and skin the
tigress was eventually burnt to dissuade
extraction of its body parts. The patch is
isolated, and Subramani says the carcass was
discovered by chance when a planter formed a
small search party to look for his missing dog.
This is too far from the main road and
walking path for a group of people to carry
and dump the body of a large tiger. Also, look
at the bones of dogs strewn in the area. It had
clearly lived here for some time, he says.
The death set alarm bells ringing, and raised
memories of a decade ago when snares were
commonly used by poachers. With the death
at Kumatoor came the forest departments
resolve to weed out these traps.
Searching for snares
The hustle of activity is perceptible. Elephant
camps have been mobilised to aid the search,
while over 40 teams have been formed. Over
200 snares were found in the first two days
(January 31 and February 1). The primary
target is the wild boar, a source of food for
locals, while estate owners often furtively
encourage it as a way to deal with the crop
loss due to boar raids.
Consumption of wild boar meat has become
popular, even creating a lucrative market for
their trapping, says P.M. Muthanna of the
NGO Wildlife Conservation Society which is
working with tribals in the area. The
operations concentrated around Lakshmana
Tirtha river. Local knowledge has it that
rabbit and boar paths tend to go from the
estate (berry and fruit) towards the river
(water). Along with the rabbit and boar,
comes the chance of tigers and the snare
does not discriminate.
Estate workers say snares are a common
feature on the long lines of barbed-wire
fences that criss-cross the undulating
landscape of southern Kodagu. But who sets
them? There is no way to find out who has
placed the traps, and we do not want to
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antagonise locals whom we need for
conservation by interrogation or acting on
suspicion. We just hope that the practice will
die out soon, says a forest official.
Praveen Bhargav, co-founder, Wildlife First,
however believes the trend will continue as
long as unscientific ways of dealing with
crop loss continue. The recent government
order allowing hunting of wild pigs to reduce
crop damage may be a prime driver of the
spurt in snaring of late, he says.
A conservation quandary
Snares form a part of the larger narrative of
the intersections of the natural world and the
one created by man. The Kumatoor tigress
was the sixth tiger death since the dawn of the
New Year and the 13th in six months in
the Nagarahole-Bandipur Tiger Reserves. The
reserves, spread over 1,500 sq km, form an
integral part of the Nilgiri biosphere which
holds worlds single largest tiger population
estimated over at 570 tigers (in the 2014 tiger
census). Bandipur and Nagarahole hold more
than 221 tigers cumulatively. In terms of tiger
mortality, however, the two reserves have
taken a huge hit since 2010, with 68 deaths
the most recent being the carcass of a cub
found on Friday.
Protection against poachers and habitat
manipulation has seen the prey base increase.
With it increased the tigers, jostling for space.
Now, there are around 10 tigers per 100 sq.
km in the reserves the weak (injured or
older tigers and younger males) are pushed to
the periphery.
The journey of the tigress, given an abstract
name NHTL114 (a numeric based on the
camera trap position given by Wildlife
Conservation Society), is an indication of this
natural, cruel, inevitable cycle within the
park. Between 2008 and 2013, camera traps
had shown it within the Nagarahole reserve. It
had delivered two cubs, and as it aged, it
moved eastward towards Kabinidam
where, in November 2016, a popular photo by
a tourist had given way to the informal
moniker of Queen of Kabini.
Three weeks ago, villages beyond the forests
saw imprints of the tigress: pug marks, cattle
attacks. Fearing more attacks from the tigress
or retaliation from villagers, a large manhunt
was launched. On January 16, it was spotted
at a banana plantation. At 5 p.m., the first
round of tranquillisers was given, but the old
tigress still had the strength to walk away.
Another round in the dark when tracking the
tigress was difficult by midnight, the fourth
round had seen it collapse. It was shifted to a
cage, but by morning, it was dead. Post-
mortem showed that the tigress had lost its
canines, while the stomach was empty.
Unable to hunt in the wild, the peripheries
with its veritable buffet of slow-moving
livestock offered a lifeline.
On January 11 around the same time
trouble began with NHTL114 on the eastern
side of the park villagers spotted a tiger on
the prowl at Hebbala, some 15 km from
Nagaraholes western boundary. Camera traps
installed in the area captured images that
showed it was injured. The tiger was
estimated at 10 years close to the average
age life expectancy of tigers in the wild. But
the elusive feline managed to retreat unseen
into the estates. Its imprint surfaced on the
morning of January 17, when a cow was
attacked in the area. A tiger failing to kill a
cow shows it is severely injured, and needed
to be in estates and farms for easy prey, says
Kodagu District Conservator of Forests
Manoj Kumar.
The next day, a coffee estate worker standing
close to the cattle pen accidentally startled the
tiger. The bleeding worker was slashed across
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the face and body. A massive manhunt was
launched: 100 forest personnel, three
elephants trained in these tracking operations,
and even a drone whizzing above in the sky.
But the tiger was not found. On January 22,
its body was found in Nittur in an
uncultivated private property by the
Lakshmana Thirta river. Its canines were
broken, right eye gouged out, claws damaged,
and porcupine quills all over its mouth. A
perfectly-square patch of ash, half-burnt
bones, and hollowed-out wood mark the
cremation of the tiger that had kept at least
four villages and the forest department on its
toes.
Fearful co-existence
H.C. Puttaswamy of Haadnuru village,
bordering Bandipur, has almost literally seen
the jaws of death. A few years ago, he was
guarding his crops around 2 a.m. with
elephants and boars on his mind when a
tiger pounced on him. My friends who were
close by saw the attack and created a melee. It
was only then that the tiger released me and
ran. It took me three years of repeated
surgeries to recover, he says. The wounds
are visible, and the pain continues to shoot.
If at the time Puttaswamy was attacked tigers
were seen only sporadically at night, in the
past two years the felines are being spotted
more frequently. In November 2015, the
small village, which is set amidst a patchwork
of sugar cane and paddy farms, saw a brutal
mauling of a cattle-herder. In December 2013,
at least five persons were killed in separate
attacks due to tiger attacks in the belt.
As animals spill over from reserves, and as
farms and grazers inch closer to forests, there
is a simmering tension between man and
tiger. The feline is now in an environment
where anger is building up against wild boars
and elephants. Dynamites and pellet guns
have been used against elephants, while cases
of electrocution have been witnessed. The
presence of the tiger, however, is largely
tolerated accepted in this land of sacred
groves and mythologies around the big cat as
an inevitable part of living close to forests.
Earlier this year, Swamy, who rears livestock
at Gundathur village close to Nagarahole,
found mangled remains of cattle and all
signs pointed to NHTL114 that was lurking in
the area. Swamy bore witness to the
operations, and its death. There was no relief
for him. We did not want the tiger killed. All
we asked for was protection for us and
livestock, he says.
There is no way to find out who has placed
the traps, and we do not want to antagonise
locals whom we need for conservation
by interrogation or acting on suspicion....
A Forest official
All set for a big surprise {Political System}
Bhanu Joshi and Ashish Ranjan
Some distance from Ludhiana, as we walked
around in a village mostly inhabited by the Jat
Sikh community, two elderly brothers drove
up to the gates of their home in their rickety
white taxi van. The taxi had a sticker affixed
to its windshield, bearing the words Proud
Akali along with an image of weighing
scales (the unmistakable symbol of Shiromani
Akali Dal), and the home was adorned with
Akali flags. These were traditional Akali
voters.
We struck up a conversation with them, but it
soon took a surprising turn. One of the
brothers exclaimed in frustration, Ive
always voted for the Akalis, but Ive had it.
Im voting with jhaaru (broom, the symbol of
the Aam Aadmi Party, or AAP). We queried
further about the sources of frustration, but
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the answers were unfocussed. It was a general
frustration, with growing drug use,
corruption, and politics as usual, among other
things. This is a common experience. Across
Punjab, there is serious anger with the
incumbent government, and many will desert
the Akalis. But it is a form of anti-
incumbency that is quite difficult to analyse,
as very few can expound upon the reasons for
their frustration.
A different kind of politics
Strong anti-incumbency in Punjab is not, in
and of itself, surprising. Although the Akalis,
along with Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) as a
junior partner, won re-election as the
incumbent government in 2012, it was the
first time in 40 years the incumbent
government was able to do so. Cracks in the
support for the current government were
visible in 2014. While much of the country
was riding the Modi wave, the Akali-BJP
combine ceded a lot of electoral territory to
the Congress and the AAP.
But why are people upset? Despite some
economic stagnation, Punjab is noticeably
more well off than most of the rest of the
country from a development perspective. The
roads are largely paved and smooth
throughout the State, even in the villages, and
power cuts are basically a thing of the past.
Government welfare programmes have also
provided for effectively free electricity on
farm land and the popular atta-dal scheme
provides 5 kg of wheat per person per month,
for only Rs. 2 per kg to those in need. These
are the sorts of achievements that win parties
election after election in other parts of India.
Even the party faithful of the Akalis seem
genuinely baffled by their unpopularity after
the partys development record.
For much of the country, politics revolves
around whether large, tangible goods, such as
roads, can be delivered. But this singular
focus on delivery can lead to perverse
consequences. India has recently experienced
a striking rise in crorepatis among members
of Parliament (MPs), from around 300 in
2009 to over 440 in 2014. As political
scientist Milan Vaishnav has argued, many
voters are willing to vote for such candidates,
even if they have criminal backgrounds, due
to their superior ability to deliver benefits,
irrespective of whatever other baggage it may
bring.
This may once have characterised Punjabs
politics, but things have changed. Many
voters have grown tired of the alleged
corruption surrounding the ruling Badal
family and, rightly or wrongly, also hold them
responsible for the growing drug problem in
the State. Punjabs corruption is not akin to
the kind of corruption seen in other States
where government contracts and grants are
syphoned off by politicians. The Badal family
is seen as being personally invested in
promoting its own businesses and outsourcing
major public goods to friends and relatives.
The tolls on roads, a private bus network, a
cess on sand used for building houses are a
few examples of services being contracted out
to private players mostly linked back to the
Badals. It is also true that Punjab, at 31.4%
for 2015-2016, now has the second highest
estimated debt to gross state domestic product
(GSDP) ratio of non-special category States
in India according to the Reserve Bank of
India. But apart from the usual concern of
jobs, economic challenges in Punjab do not
seem to animate State politics.
Post-material politics
The Punjabi voter seems to be truly concerned
about politicians qua governance actors,
demonstrating a measure of post-material
preferences. It is no wonder that, outside of
Delhi, Punjab is the one State where the AAP
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has done well. The emergence of post-
material politics is not a simple question of
economic wealth; for instance, a wealthy
State like Maharashtra doesnt seem as
receptive to such concerns. Rather, these are
political preferences borne of the ideological
cross-fertilisation from a mobile Punjabi
public (especially with respect to Delhi), as
well as a highly entrepreneurial population
that is sensitive to the disruption caused by
low-quality governance. Consistent with this
principle, unlike the mixed reviews elsewhere
in India, Prime Minister Narendra Modis
demonetisation exercise was universally
panned by voters in our discussions,
irrespective of political leanings.
In the previous State election, in 2012, the
AAP had yet to come on the scene, so those
results are of little use in understanding
electoral dynamics in the upcoming Punjab
election. But the 2014 Lok Sabha election
results can provide insights because it was a
legitimately three-cornered fight between the
AAP, the Congress, and the Akali-BJP
alliance. Most analysts have focussed on
aggregate vote shares for the three
parties/coalitions in 2014, with the Akali-BJP
combine securing 35% of the vote, the
Congress 33%, and the AAP 24%. But these
percentages mask very close competition at
the assembly constituency (AC) level and
huge regional variation.
Extending the base
Parsing the 2014 results by AC segment, a
complicated picture emerges. The Akali-BJP
combine won 45 AC segments, the Congress
37, and the AAP 33. From this perspective,
the contest between the Congress and the
AAP was much closer. Much like the BJP at
the national level, the AAP did a good job in
converting its votes into seats in Punjab. This
is because its success was highly regionally
concentrated. Punjab can be broken into three
regions, Doaba, Majha, and Malwa. Malwa
with 69 ACs is the largest region, while
Doaba and Majha have 23 and 25 ACs,
respectively. The AAP won 31 of its 33 AC
segments in Malwa (and the other two in
Doaba). The relative success or failure of the
AAP will depend on whether it can extend
beyond the base it built in 2014; anecdotally,
the AAP seems to have done so.
In Kapurthala district, we talked to a carrot
farmer from the Kamboj Sikh community
next to his home, once again accoutred with
flags bearing weighing scales, but he was also
voting for the AAP. He summed up his views
with what seemed like a common refrain,
Theyre all the same; they are all corrupt. I
want a change. If I dont like what I see after
five years, Ill switch to someone else. This
sort of demand for wholesale change is
consistent with the governance-related
preferences described above, and the AAP
would seem to be the biggest beneficiary from
it. For instance, according to the Association
for Democratic Reforms, at least 87% of
candidates for each of the Akalis, the BJP,
and the Congress are crorepatis, while
significantly fewer candidates for the AAP
(63%) are crorepatis.
Political legacy
But in the next neighbourhood, in the same
village, we met a group of Scheduled Caste
Mazhabi Sikh voters. There were no AAP
posters or flags here, and the voters had
barely heard of the party. They described
themselves as a committed base of voters:
We have voted for the Congress ever since
Indira Gandhi was Prime Minister. It is the
only party that looks after the vulnerable.
Few people realise that Punjab has the largest
Scheduled Caste population in India, at 32%,
and many Scheduled Castes are viewed as
being a party of a committed core of Congress
voters. The AAP simply does not have the
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legacy or the reach of the Congress Party in
Punjab, and unless it significantly increases it
reach from 2014 with all communities, it will
find it difficult to defeat the Congress in this
election.
Punjabi voters are quite tight-lipped about
political preferences, and the 2017 Punjab
election may throw up a surprise. If there is
indeed serious anti-incumbency, the final
results will likely rest on how previous and
current supporters of the Akali-BJP combine
assess the other two major parties. Whether
sincerely moving away from the incumbent
coalition, or strategically voting for the
preferred party between the AAP and the
Congress, this mass of voters will have
decisive power in this election.
Bhanu Joshi, Ashish Ranjan and Neelanjan
Sircar, who also contributed to this article, are
all affiliated with the Centre for Policy
Research in Delhi.
Economic challenges in Punjab do not seem
to animate State politics. The Punjabi voter
seems to be truly concerned about politicians
qua governance actors
The stakes in Punjab and Goa {Political System}
Punjab and Goa go to the polls today,
heralding a multi-phase election schedule,
with three other States set to vote over the
next month. Punjab and Goa, where a hectic
campaign has been running for the past
month, are united by a common strand the
contest is not limited to the two national
parties, the Bharatiya Janata Party and the
Congress, or alliances with them, as has been
the case for some years. In Punjab, the Aam
Aadmi Party has sought to build on its strong
debut performance in the 2014 Lok Sabha
election when it won four out of 13 seats and
had leads in 33 of the total of 117 Assembly
segments. The presence of the AAP has
meant a three-way contest as the incumbent
Shiromani Akali Dal-BJP alliance seeks to
defend its record not just in the State but also
at the Centre over the demonetisation policy
and farmers issues. The AAP polled well in
rural and semi-urban areas in Punjab in 2014,
taking up issues that had been inadequately
addressed by the Congress and the BJP, such
as corruption, and drug consumption that has
devastated so many lives in the countryside.
For the Congress, the stakes are high as it
seeks to turn the tide after a string of losses in
Assembly elections in major States since
2013. In former Chief Minister Amarinder
Singh the Congress has perhaps its most
capable regional leader today, but it remains
to be seen how the anti-incumbency vote
splits.
Goa, on the other hand, is engaged in an
electoral contest that is more dependent on
local issues and variables than national ones.
But here too, the entry of the AAP has made
election forecasting difficult. The BJP is
projecting its record of providing a stable
government in a State prone to political
volatility, but its task has become more
difficult with the loss of its alliance partner,
the Maharashtrawadi Gomantak Party, to
another right-wing front. The Congress has
fielded its share of former chief ministers.
With compact and smaller constituencies
some of them have only about 25,000 voters
close contests are expected, with even
minor parties and independents having the
potential to influence the final result. It is no
wonder that heavyweights such as Union
Defence Minister Manohar Parrikar have been
deployed for local-level campaigning; the BJP
wants to leave nothing to chance. The
elections in Punjab and Goa go well beyond
mundane identity politics. Securing a clean
environment with regulations over mining in
Goa, and tackling agrarian problems and
narcotics use in Punjab, give the vote
immediacy, promising an electoral contest
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that has some focus on civic issues and is not
confined to patronage or identity.
Tarred by the oil spill {Ecology}
The destruction caused to a significant part of
the Chennai coastline from the oil spill that
followed a collision between two ships is both
tragic and ironic. A large quantity of oil was
released into the sea, affecting marine life and
livelihoods of coastal communities. What
makes the collision ironic is that it comes at a
time when there is steadily declining pollution
due to such incidents. Ship collisions are less
common today because GPS-based navigation
systems have made their operation much
safer. It is apparent that the first response to
the Chennai collision involving an LPG
tanker and the fuel carrier off the Kamarajar
Port was seriously deficient. The port initially
denied any significant environmental damage
from oil, but as the scale of the disaster began
to unfold, and a large number of dead turtles
and fish were washed ashore, it became
obvious that the spill had not been quickly
contained. Such failure calls into question the
efficacy of the National Oil Spill Disaster
Contingency Plan that is updated periodically
for all stakeholders, notably ports, under the
leadership of the Coast Guard. That the
removal of the coastal sludge depended in
large part on volunteers wielding buckets
does not inspire much confidence in the
protocol for mitigation.
An independent inquiry is vital to determine
whether the training and acquisition of
equipment to handle such accidents for all
agencies passed muster. Moreover, pollution
response equipment for all major ports and 26
non-major ports is funded to the extent of
50% by the Centre, casting a responsibility on
ports to contribute the other half and build the
capabilities to handle disasters. Obfuscation
of facts after an oil spill is counterproductive,
since the impact is prolonged; moreover, it
could erode the confidence of the
international community in the countrys
ability to fulfil its commitments within the
UN system to protect marine life and
biodiversity. Failure to safeguard marine
turtle and bird habitats, for example, is a clear
violation of the provisions of the Convention
on the Conservation of Migratory Species of
Wild Animals, and its specific memorandum
on the Indian Ocean-Southeast Asian region
to which India is a signatory. Considerable oil
pollution is caused not just by catastrophes
but through the discharge of ballast, sludge
and water used for the cleaning of tanks. On
the other hand, the efficacy of chemical
dispersants to degrade oil at sea remains
controversial. All this underscores the
importance of timely advice from agencies
such as the Indian National Centre for Ocean
Information Services, which is mandated to
forecast the course of an oil spill.
BUSINESS
Reformist Budget unveiled {Indian Economy}
Budget 2017-18, coming at a time of global
uncertainty, is a pragmatic, growth-oriented
and smart policy statement, taking forward
the reform agenda in a convincing and
progressive manner. Its stand-out features are
many and innovative.
Adhering to the path of fiscal prudence is a
key message reiterating the Governments
commitment to sound macroeconomic
management even when the situation calls for
enhanced public spending. The high emphasis
on infrastructure through big increase in
government expenditure, particularly
transport facilities and affordable housing, is
very welcome as it would kick-start a new
cycle of investment in downstream sectors.
Reduction of corporate tax for companies
with less than Rs. 50 crore turnover is another
pertinent measure that can greatly boost their
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competitiveness and encourage more job
creation.
Consumer demand can be expected to receive
a fillip with the higher allocation for rural and
agricultural sectors, as also halving of tax
rates at the lower end. The Budget has taken a
step towards public asset monetisation with
airport land in tier 2 cities, where the proceeds
can be used for upgradation of airports. This
is an innovative move, and will hopefully
gain pace in other sectors in time to come.
Institutional reform is evident in the abolition
of FIPB and listing of public sector
enterprises. The FIPB was rendered redundant
after continued liberalisation of FDI regime,
and the Finance Minister has promised further
opening up to foreign investments. The listing
of PSEs is evidence of governments effort to
add efficiency to their operations, besides
promising to raise resources.
Demonetisation goes a step further with the
stress on digitalisation and formalisation of
the economy, which will have benefits for tax
revenue and a better investment climate over
the longer term.
The Budget has also come out with an
innovative electoral bond to clean up political
funding, adding to the overall campaign
against black money.
Going forward, a few areas require closer
attention from the perspective of industry.
While we greatly appreciated the relief in
corporate tax rates for smaller companies, the
larger ones too need remedies to become
globally competitive. These companies
generate significant employment and we look
forward to lower tax rates as exemptions are
phased out.
Further, the National Innovation Fund was
announced earlier for boosting R&D. We
would like to see a shift in R&D spending
towards higher education institutes to bring it
on par with the global average expenditure by
universities, currently about 0.4% of GDP as
compared to Indias average of 0.04%. This
would also help to incentivise private sector
outlay on R&D to make India a source of
global innovation at a time when Industry 4.0
is rapidly converging on us.
There is one item in the Budget of
introduction of 10% surcharge on the incomes
between Rs. 50 lakh and Rs. 1 crore which we
feel is not in the spirit of rewarding the honest
taxpayer. The data on taxpayers mentioned in
the Budget speech was eye-opening and it is
important to expand the tax base.
Employment creation has been a central idea
of the Budget, and the inclusion of leather and
footwear for promotional attention at par with
the apparel sector is laudable.
CII would like to suggest that the provisions
regarding fixed term and flexible employment
and incentives for formal employment be
replicated across other employment-elastic
and employment-intensive sectors such as
automotive, food processing, and so on.
We also hope that the four labour codes
would be quickly actioned.
The Budget crucially reassures investors that
the strategic direction of the economy will
remain on course. The need of the hour is to
revitalise the critical drivers of growth of
private consumption and investment, boost
employment generation, create new
infrastructure and stabilise the economy at a
time of global turmoil.
The Budget delivers on all counts.
(The writer is president,Confederation of
Indian Industry.)
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Simpler rules may help MSMEs become
companies {Inclusive growth}
M. Soundariya Preetha
A majority of micro, small and medium
enterprises (MSMEs) in the country are
family owned businesses that are not limited
liability companies and so would not be able
to benefit from the Budget proposal to cut the
corporate tax rate for MSMEs with turnover
less than Rs. 50 crore, industry officials said.
Most of the MSMEs are family-owned
businesses and are hence partnership or
proprietorship firms,said D. Gandhi Kumar,
former president of the Federation of Indian
Micro and Small and Medium Enterprises.
Just 3% of the MSMEs are registered as
limited companies. And, only these will enjoy
lower tax according to the budget proposal.
More than 90% of MSMEs, especially micro-
units, are not private limited companies as
registered companies have to comply with
several norms and maintain a plethora of
documents, according to V. Sundaram,
president of Coimbatore District Small
Industries Association.
Not enough incentive
Though the micro-units risk losing their
competitiveness to corporate peers, the 5%
lower tax may not be enough incentive to spur
them to become limited companies, Mr.
Sundaram said.
The Centre could frame simpler rules for
micro and smaller companies, especially
family-owned firms, so that more MSMEs are
encouraged to become LLPs or limited
companies, said V. Lakshminarayanasamy,
vice-president, Indian Chamber of Commerce
and Industry Coimbatore.
THE HINDU NEWSPAPER IMPORTANT
ARTICLES 05.02.2017
FRONT PAGE
I was forced into a deal with India, Jayewardene
told U.S. envoy {Security}
Amit Baruah
Sri Lanka was forced into making a deal with
India as its own armed forces had twice
refused to take Jaffna, then President J.R.
Jayewardene has been quoted as saying in a
declassified document, nearly 30 years after
the Indian Peace Keeping Force (IPKF) was
deployed in the island nation.
Jayewardene told visiting American diplomat
Peter Galbraith that he had twice ordered his
troops to take Jaffna burn the place to the
ground and they had talked him out of it
on grounds of unacceptably high casualties.
A little over 1,200 Indian soldiers died in
IPKF operations against the Liberation Tigers
of Tamil Eelam in northern and eastern Sri
Lanka between 1987 and 1990. In May 1991,
former Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi, who had
signed the July 1987 peace deal with
Jayewardene, was assassinated by the LTTE.
In response to significant promises of
devolution of powers to the Tamil minority
and recognition of Tamil as an official
language, India agreed to provide military
assistance the IPKF to ensure peace
according to the 1987 Gandhi-Jayewardene
accord.
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A mad fellow
He [Mr. Jayewardene] made clear that he
shared the GOIS [Government of Indias]
implacable hostility toward Prabakaran,
calling the LTTE leader a mad fellow, a
declassified CIA document said about the
February 1988 conversation.
He stressed, though without obvious
bitterness, that none of his outside friends
would help him, so he had no choice but to
make a deal with India, the CIA document
read.
Interestingly, the then President opened up to
Mr. Galbraith and said he would hold
elections in the Tamil-populated northern and
eastern provinces in Sri Lanka. Polls were
finally held in November 1988.
Mr. Galbraith also provides an insight into the
relations between the IPKF and the Sri
Lankan Army (SLA), and the ground situation
in the Jaffna peninsula after being flown to
the area during his visit.
the IPKF and the Sri Lankan forces are
getting on well together, andthe situation in
Jaffna, while still far from normal, is
gradually improving, the American diplomat
said in an assessment.
Declassified CIA document quotes the leader
as saying IPKF was deployed in the island
nation because his army twice refused to
take Jaffna
NATIONAL
Central Pollution Control Board assessing oil
spill {Ecology}
Jacob Koshy

The Central Pollution Control Board (CPCB)
is analysing samples from the oil spill
resulting from a collision between two ships
off the coast of Tamil Nadu on Tuesday.
Clean-up operations are being coordinated by
the Coast Guard and involve several disparate
organisations; however the Union
Environment Ministry is expected to present a
status report on the damage done by
Wednesday.
A team from the Bengaluru office is
analysing samples, S.P. Singh, Chairman,
CPCB told The Hindu. The Ministry of
Defence is in charge of the oil spill
management plan and its being coordinated
by the Coast Guard. Assessment of any long
term environmental damage is being done by
the National Institute of Ocean Technology
(Chennai) and the Environment Ministry.
Mr. Singh did not specify when these
assessments would be complete. Preliminary
assessments said several species of fish and
turtle are believed to have been killed because
of the spill.
The Hyderabad-based Indian National Centre
for Ocean Information Services has estimated
that about 20 tonnes of oil may have leaked
when the vessels, M.T. BW Maple and M.T.
Dawn Kanchipuram , collided at 3.45 a.m. on
January 28 outside the Kamarajar Port.
About 43 kms of the Tamil Nadu coastline
may have been affected, the agency added.
The M.T. Dawn Kanchipuram , was carrying
32,813 tonnes of oil as cargo, though in a
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statement, Kamarajar Port authorities said it
was engine oil and not cargo oil, that had
leaked.
About 2,000 persons are involved in the clean
up operations and 54 tonnes of sludge
(mixture of oil, water, ocean material etc) was
removed till February 2, according to the
Press Information Bureau.
Over 90% of the work has been completed
and most of the residual work is expected to
be over in a couple of days, it said.
Lighter purse for arms deals {Security}
Dinakar Peri
A close reading of the defence Budget
numbers show that capital allocation for the
purchase of new weapons and platforms for
2017-18 is lower than in the present year.
In the coming financial year, India is also
likely to conclude some of the biggest Make-
in-India deals in defence sector.
For defence expenditure excluding pensions,
I have provided a sum of Rs. 2,74,114 crore
including Rs. 86,488 crore for defence
capital, Mr. Jaitley said in his Budget speech
on Wednesday.
On the face of it, when compared to the Rs.
78,586.68 crore capital allocation for this
year, it represents a 10% increase. However a
closer look at the Budget documents presents
a different picture.
Miscellaneous component
The defence Budget has various components
of revenue, capital, miscellaneous and
pensions. Of these the allocation for the
miscellaneous component has gone down
from Rs. 36,133.18 to Rs. 14,852.22. The
balance has been readjusted to revenue and
capital heads.
Stating this is a note at the end of the Notes
on demands for grants on capital outlay for
ministry for defence (Misc) it says: The
provisions relating to revenue and capital
expenditure of Defence Ordnance Factories,
Research and Development, Director General
Quality Audit (DGQA), Rashtriya Rifles and
National Cadet Corps have been shifted from
this demand to demands for grants of defence
services in BE 2017-18. Of this, the
combined allocation under the five heads in
the capital expenditure is Rs. 8,488 crore.
When deducted from the total capital
allocation for the services, the revised figure
is Rs. 78,000 crore which is in effect Rs.
586.68 crore less than last year.
In addition, there is annual inflation and
currency fluctuation to be factored in. The
capital budget includes payments for
committed liabilities which are payments for
weapons already contracted and remaining for
procurement of new systems.
Inflation does not affect the committee
liabilities. It is the exchange rate fluctuation
which affects that, said Amit Cowshish,
former Financial Advisor (Acquisition) in
Defence Ministry and Distinguished Fellow at
Institute for Defence Studies & Analysis.
On the overall defence allocation, he said that
it was a flat budget.
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INTERNATIONAL
U.S. suspends travel ban {International
Relations}
U.S. authorities on Saturday suspended
President Donald Trumps controversial ban
on travellers from seven Muslim-majority
countries, following a court ruling that
blocked its enforcement.
We have reversed the provisional revocation
of visas, a U.S. State Department spokesman
told AFP. The department had said some
60,000 travel visas had been revoked in
compliance with the Presidents recent
executive order. Those individuals with visas
that were not physically cancelled may now
travel if the visa is otherwise valid, the
official said.
OPINION
A clinical trial that isnt {Science and
Technology}
Usha Turaga-Revelli
The sweet, tiny white pills that even the
surliest of kids munches without a murmur of
protest are now curing the world of one of its
most deadly scourges: the HIV virus. Or so
claim homoeopaths at a government-run
homoeopathy hospital in Hyderabad.
In what they term as a clinical trial, a
homoeopathy drug is being administered to
people living with HIV (PLHIV) at the
Jayasurya Potti Sreeramulu Government
Homeopathic Medical College and Hospital
in Hyderabad. Doctors here are treating over
10,000 patients and claim eight patients have
already turned negative. They are awaiting
procedural clearance to declare that they can
cure HIV. Undivided Andhra Pradesh and
Telangana have the highest estimated number
of PLHIV at 3,95,000.
Meanwhile, the National AIDS Control
Organization (NACO) will be initiating legal
and administrative action against doctors for
misleading 10,664 HIV patients for
conducting a clinical trial without registering
it with Clinical Trials Registry India
(CTRI) and for not seeking permission from
NACO.
The drug being administered is made out of
the venom of the timber rattlesnake ( Crotalus
horridus) that is endemic to eastern United
States. The drug has been in use in
homeopathy for the last 200 years. It works
by inhibiting the enzyme reverse transcriptase
which helps convert RNA into DNA
thus preventing multiplication of the virus,
explains Dr. S. Praveen Kumar, Principal of
the medical college and the man behind the
discovery. A team of doctors from the
hospital and scientists from the Indian
Institute of Chemical Technology (IICT),
Hyderabad, held 16 meetings in two years and
came up with a regimen for the drug.
Every Thursday, hundreds of patients line up
for the pill and nearly a dozen junior doctors
hand them their dose after noting down
patient details, CD4 count (a predictor of HIV
progression) and viral load (the amount of
HIV in blood) from the reports. A total of
10,664 people have been registered for this
experiment.
Some patients believe the drug is helping. I
have been on ART (Antiretroviral Therapy)
for the last six years and started taking this
medicine four months ago. I feel better, have
a better appetite, says Jatavath Ramu from
Siddipet district of Telangana. But heres the
clincher: nearly 73% of these patients who
think they are being cured by homoeopathy
are taking ART, which keeps the viral load
down.
Miracle drug or not?
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How, then, does one determine that the drug
is working? We noticed a definite fall in
viral load, claims Dr. Kumar.
While the discovery was announced at the
World Homoeopathy Summit in Mumbai in
April 2015, the Telangana State AIDS
Control Society (TSACS) has not yet been
taken into confidence. Additional Project
Director, TSACS, John Babu refused to
comment on the cure saying this is a
serious matter that needs thorough
discussion. NACO officials in Delhi,
however, are initiating legal and
administrative action against doctors involved
in such trials. These fraudulent claims are
absolute rubbish. Across the world there is no
evidence of a cure for HIV. We will be
initiating a police complaint against the
institution and doctors involved, Dr. R.S.
Gupta, Deputy Director General, NACO, said.
But the possibility of a legal case against
them has not deterred the principal
investigators. There is nothing secret about
our work. The Commissioner, AYUSH
(Ayurveda, Yoga and Naturopathy, Unani,
Siddha and Homoeopathy), and the Principal
Secretary (Health) are quite aware of what we
are doing, asserts Dr. Kumar. At this point,
I would like to call it a treatment option rather
than a cure. Theres still time for that
announcement, says A. Rajender Reddy,
State AYUSH Commissioner.
Meanwhile, the homoeopathy clinic in
Hyderabad still sees almost a thousand
hopefuls lining up for the pills, their
confidence boosted by the fact that the
prescription is simple, the pills are sweet and
there are no apparent side effects, unlike the
toxic ART drugs.
Usha Turaga-Revelli is a freelance health
journalist. With inputs from Vidya Krishnan.
Across the world there is no evidence of a
cure for HIV... The trial was not registered
at the Clinical Trials Registry India.
Dr.R.S. Gupta, Deputy Director General,
NACO
Practising medicine, under fire {Science and
Technology}, {Environment}
Nishanth Arulappan
My family worried about me every time they
heard somebody exclaim: Nishanth has gone
to Yemen? Of all the places in the world to
work, why did he choose to go there? My
parents never told me this when I was there
but I got to know from others in the family
that this was the general mood.
Although Id worked in Yemen in 2014, it is
no longer the country I had known it to be. If
there is one song that sums up the reality of
Yemen it would be the lyrics of Civil War
by Guns N Roses: Look at your young men
fighting/Look at your women crying/Look at
your young men dying/The way theyve
always done before ....
Working with Doctors Without
Borders/Mdecins sans Frontires (MSF) in
Yemen from August-December 2016, and
keeping in mind core humanitarian principles
of neutrality, impartiality, and independence,
I practised medicine while watching the war
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tear apart this already poor and battered
country even further. The challenges were of
a different kind this time because of the
fragile and sensitive political situation.
Under siege
The distinction between civilian and military
objectives has hardly been respected in this
war. Since March 2015, supplies of critically
important life-saving drugs and food have
been strained. The prices of most essential
commodities have skyrocketed. Most schools,
hospitals, marketplaces, bridges, stadiums,
and university buildings have been reduced to
rubble. In the last 15 months, four MSF health
facilities, one of them in Hajjah, have been hit
by air strikes or projectiles.
I dont regret a single moment of my time
spent in Yemen. Why? I had the opportunity
to experience the resilience of the Yemeni
people. Markets were open, children tried to
go to some schools and university students
tried to write their exams even as fighter jets
were bombing the locality. Once while in
transit in the capital, I saw a wedding
procession with all the music and dancing.
Without warning, there was an air strike
nearby. There was a deafening sound, the
characteristic pressure wave and then dust,
rattling any loose windows left. The sound of
the fighter jets faded and then the music came
back again with the dancing, the revelry
continuing late into the night. The war has
raised the threshold of what is normal.
MSFs work in conflict areas is extensive and
intense. All our activities in Yemen are
funded by donors.
It has worked in Yemen since 1986, and
continuously since 2007. However, following
the current war, MSF has expanded its
projects to several areas where access to
quality medical care still remains a challenge.
Compelling stories
In 2014 we were treating conflict-related
injuries on a fairly regular basis twice or
thrice a week. But this time we were quite
close to an active front line, and were
receiving the war-wounded on a daily basis,
often not having enough space to
accommodate the rapid inflow of patients.
Some of the stories are, quite frankly,
unbelievable. The fact that a bullet chose a
particular trajectory, or decided to stay where
it is, made the difference between life and
death for many.
There was a 22-year-old woman, pregnant
with her second child. Drying clothes on the
roof one day, she suddenly felt sharp pain and
felt something in her upper back. A clinical
examination showed a minor entry wound in
the left upper back and a palpable, firm mass
on the other side of the spine. The bullet had
ignored the spine and the baby was
unaffected. We removed the bullet under local
anaesthesia and gave it to her husband who
promised to make it into an ornament for the
baby!
There was this man who came to the
emergency room in an irritable mood.
Imaging revealed that a bullet was lodged in
the left side of his brain, without affecting the
areas critical for survival. He was operated
later in the day and discharged a week later.
We also saw several patients struck by stray
bullets from shootings during weddings and
social gatherings so-called happy
shootings and who unfortunately did not
survive.
The main challenge for us was, and is, to
ensure that all actors in the war and area
respect the neutrality of medical facilities. It
requires continual dialogue from us to explain
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our principles to the political actors and needs
their understanding and cooperation to ensure
the smooth and efficient conduct of
humanitarian operations.
Medical facilities are protected under
international humanitarian law. But in a
conflict this is not the case. Sadly, it has
become a trend in investigative reports to
blame this on faulty intelligence or targeting
errors, and there is no real accountability or
prosecution of these incidents, some of which
amount most probably to war crimes.
As the war goes on, humanitarian needs in
Yemen grow by the day. Medical work is
needed to treat the wounded, and to advocate
on behalf of a people whose lives and dignity
may otherwise lie buried forever beneath the
rubble of this war.
I think we need more cities {Development and
Employment}
G. Sampath
Saskia Sassen is a renowned Dutch-American
sociologist, best known for coining the term
global city. She is the Robert S. Lynd
professor of sociology at Columbia University
and is the author of several books on
globalisation, migration, and the sociology of
urban development. In an e-mail interview,
Sassen discusses the current global trends
that are dominant in cities around the world
and what they mean for the people living in
those cities. Excerpts:
What would you consider to be the single
most important trend in urban real estate
markets around the world?
One clear trend is a vast and very visible
expansion of the luxury zone, for fancy
offices and fancy residences, accompanied by
an almost invisible expulsion of the working
classes and modest middle class families from
locations where they may have lived for
several generations.
What is driving this push towards
development of luxury zones?
Private investment. In fact, the levels of
investment in urban real estate are quite
stunning. The top 100 cities worldwide that I
studied together had investors acquiring
existing properties (not new construction) for
a total of $600 billion from mid-2013 to mid-
2014. This went up to over $1 trillion for the
next cycle, mid-2014 to mid-2015. Whats
happening here is that a building is also
functioning as a real estate asset, a deeply
financialised item. If you take all the real
estate that has been financialised worldwide,
according to Savills, a real estate firm, it
amounts to $217 trillion, and that is more than
the global GDP.
What does this transformation of living
spaces into financial assets mean for the
nature of the city?
Each city is different. But we see two
patterns. One is a massive expulsion of the
modest middle classes out of residential areas
that had long been theirs. They are displaced
to more distant parts of the city, and they do
not deserve this, for they had worked hard to
get a reasonable life in a nice part of the city
not too far away from their jobs.
Secondly, some of these cities become
monocultures. For instance, Lower Manhattan
years ago was full of artists from all over the
world. I used to be a performance artist and it
was a great time. Today, much of Manhattan
looks like a sort of monoculture of luxury
high-rise towers. And many of them are half
empty. With all this added density, it actually
deurbanises the city. We used to think that
density was enough to make a place a city,
but not any more.
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In cities around the world, we find a
paradoxical situation where a severe
shortage of affordable housing is being met
with increasing investment in luxury
housing projects, even as a substantial
quantum of housing stock lies vacant. How
does one make sense of this phenomenon?
I think in some of these cities it is about
buying urban land. One way of getting a
foothold on the land of a city is to buy or
construct a building. In many cities, if you
went and said I want to buy land in your city,
it would be a difficult proposition. It might be
far easier to construct or buy a building. The
law governing urban land is often much older
than the more narrowly contractual law
governing the purchase of a building. When
you think about the amount of capital in
search of a good investment, getting to own a
chunk of land in a highly regarded city is not
a bad investment.
More generally, I think the whole question of
land, urban and rural, has taken on a whole
new dimension over the last twenty years. It is
partly a function of escalating environmental
destruction in rural land, and rapid
urbanisation of the population on urban land
an urbanisation partly fed by the expulsion
of millions of small holders from their land.
So are we then building houses to serve as a
store of financial value rather than for
people to live in?
Yes, that is one feature for sure. There is a
vast quantity of underutilised capital at this
point. So it mostly makes sense to invest in
urban properties even if you do not really
need it. But the key value in play, in my
reading and it is not usually understood
this way is that you control a piece of
urban land.
It is estimated that by 2050, about half of
Indias population will live in urban areas,
compared to 32% at present. Is this push
towards urbanisation sustainable?
I think we need more cities, rather than to
keep expanding existing cities until they
become unmanageable. The problem one
that we dont like to discuss is that we
keep expelling the lower-income households
from their land to make room for a business
park, a mine, a water-grab operation, and so
on. So development expands and at the
same time produces massive displacements of
millions. People go to the city when it is the
only place left where they can put down their
bodies. This is a bad cycle. Once you are in
this cycle, it is not easy to get out. It is
necessary to first understand the vicious
cycle, and then it takes courage to act on that
understanding. That means mixing two very
different worlds the world of rich
developers, and the world of poor people and
the social organisations that help them.
What about the smart cities paradigm,
which India has embraced in a big way to
address its urban development needs?
My starting point when it comes to the smart
city is that, apart from the technological
features, it should mobilise the intelligence of
its residents. I think we have done more on
the technological side than in mobilising
peoples intelligence and imaginations via
digital tech. There is a disproportionate
presence of a few big corporates in the
provision of digital services, and they have
their own preferences, often ruled by
profitability. Yes, there is a rapid
multiplication of start-ups and there is a
strong social sector in India that aims at
developing tools for the disadvantaged. But so
much more is needed when it comes to
deployment of digital knowledge across a
whole range of actors and situations.
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In your work, you speak of the city as the
only space where the powerless can make
their powerlessness complex. But havent
cities always been dominated by the
powerful, with the only space available
for the powerless being to serve the
powerful in the roles assigned to them?
It is in cities that the powerless have, to a
large extent, left a cultural, social and
economic imprint mostly in their own
neighbourhoods, but eventually these spread
to a wider urban zone as ethnic food, music,
therapies, etc. None of this can happen in a
business park, regardless of its density for
they are privately controlled spaces where
low-wage workers can work, but not make.
Nor can this happen in the worlds
increasingly militarised plantations and
mines. It is only in cities that there is a
possibility of gaining complexity in ones
powerlessness because nothing can fully
control such a diversity of people and
engagements.
Three things you would like to see in the
urban development policy of a country like
India?
I would rather not answer this since I am not
an expert on Indian cities and governance
structures. Nonetheless, I will say that I am
shocked at the extraordinary amount of
wealth in your country, and the even more
extraordinary amount of deep poverty, with
regions that have no water, no modern
sanitation facilities. How is it possible that so
much wealth cannot be used in some way to
upgrade the lives of millions of the poor,
whose very existence has become degraded to
such an extreme? At the same time, I am also
struck by how the poor in India are so
dignified they do not become like the
drunks of Londons industrial cities described
by Dickens. On the whole, I think it is the
self-help organisations, devoted activists, and
the poor themselves who are helping to make
things better.
There is a massive expulsion of
the modest middle classes out of residential
areas that had long been theirs. They are
displaced to more distant parts of the city,
and they do not deserve this.
BUSINESS
Budget 2017: Education, skills and jobs {Indian
Economy}
Rana Kapoor
My hope of the future lies in the youths of
character, intelligent, renouncing all for the
service of others, and obedient good to
themselves and the country at
large.Swami Vivekananda
The increased focus on human capital
development in Budget 2017 to empower the
youth is indeed a welcome step. The several
key announcements in education, skills and
youth development shall have structural and
long term impact on quality of education,
availability of qualified manpower and
preparing the next generation for the hyper
age of automation and AI.
All aspects of human capital development
have been addressed in the Budget. The
provision to introduce measurement of annual
learning outcome in schools of 3,479
educationally backward blocks could be a
game changer in improving the quality of
elementary education. To ingrain the element
of innovation at the school level, an
innovation fund is to be created for secondary
education for ideation on solutions for
universal access, gender parity and quality
improvement. The quality of higher education
is sought to be improved through greater
autonomy for colleges based on quality
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metrics and accreditation. These efforts will
be further amplified by online courses
through the SWAYAM platform which will
offer at least 350 online courses.
In medical education and healthcare, the
Budget has made provisions for increasing
5000 PG seats to tide over the severe lack of
specialists in clinical practice. It has also
proposed to allow select private hospitals to
offer DNB courses in specializations and has
added to the provision of public sector tertiary
care through 2 additional AIIMS in Gujarat
and Jharkhand.
With a focus on streamlining regulatory
architecture and reorienting education
regulation towards academics and quality, the
Budget has emphasised on reforming the
UGC and has proposed a new authority for
conducting all entrance exams, thereby
freeing the CBSE and ICSE from the tedious
administrative exercise.
The skills ecosystem will be improved by
extending the Pradhan Mantri Kaushal
Kendras to more than 600 districts.
Separately, 100 India International Skills
Centres are proposed across the country to
make life easier for outbound immigrants
looking for soft skills and foreign language
proficiency.
The next phase for Skill India is envisaged as
Strengthening for Industrial Value
Enhancement (STRIVE) to be launched with
an additional budget of INR 2,200 crore.
STRIVE will focus on improving the quality
and market relevance of vocational training
provided in ITIs and strengthen the
apprenticeship programmes through industry
cluster approach.
Overall, the Government realizes that
Infrastructure and Social Sectors are two
pillars to enable balanced growth of the
economy. India was ranked 130th among 188
countries in the 2015 edition of the UNDP
HDI Index which broadly measures life
expectancy, education and per capita income.
This was despite the fact that real per capita
GDP has grown 6.2% during 1990-2014;
improving the education and health standards
are therefore imperative for raising living
standards of the population. This holds true
for an evolving world driven by new age
technologies, automation and digitisation. The
announcements in the Budget aim at creating
an enabling ecosystem for financing social
sector and channelising private sector capital
towards actualising the much needed change
in Indias socio-economic development.
(The author is founder,
Managing director and chief
Executive officer, Yes Bank)

BEST OF LUCK

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