THE HINDU – CURRENT NOTE 23 February
Maintain law, order on SYL canal issue: SC
•Even as Punjab denied any liability on its part to share water with Haryana, the Supreme Court on Wednesday stood firm by its decision to construct the Sutlej-Yamuna Link Canal and urged the neighbouring States to maintain law and order at any cost.
•A Bench of Justices P.C. Ghose and Amitava Roy raised concern about violence after reports that the Indian National Lok Dal, Haryana’s main opposition party, had asked its workers to gather on Thursday at Ambala and march inside Punjab to start digging the SYL canal.
Status quo
•The Supreme Court’s call for status quo in the inter-State water dispute came amidst Punjab’s affidavit that the Punjab Termination of Water Agreement Act of 2004 was still in force. It argued that a recent Supreme Court verdict that declared the 2004 Act as unconstitutional was only an opinion given by the court on a presidential reference and not a verdict as such to be complied as law.
•Haryana, represented by senior advocate Shyam Divan, submitted that the verdict allowing the SYL canal to be built has to be executed.
There’s poison in the air
Nearly a third of Indian cities have breached annual pollution limits mandated by the Central Pollution Control Board (CPCB) between 2011 and 2015, according to figures from the Union Environment Ministry-affiliated organisation.
The numbers — the latest available and updated in blocks of 4 years — sourced from 680 pollution-monitoring stations spread over 300 cities across the country, measure levels of particulate matter (PM 10), nitrogen dioxide (NO2), and sulphur dioxide (SO2).
94 cities crossed norms
While cities such as Delhi are usually the worst performers with regard to pollution spikes in winter, the CPCB data show that 94 cities spanning States from Andhra Pradesh to Jammu and Kashmir and Assam to Gujarat were guilty of breaching the annual, particulate matter limit of 60 micro-gram per cubic metre.
Delhi; Badlapur, Pune and Ulhasnagar in Maharashtra; and Kolkata additionally transgressed the NO2 levels.
While cities like Delhi, Mumbai and Pune measure PM2.5 levels, most lack the sensors required to gauge the presence of these minute particles that are considered more toxic than the more-commonly measured PM 10.
Monitoring and enforcing pollution limits was done by the State pollution control boards and the Centre could only send advisories, according to officials.
“The CPCB can only give guidelines on controlling air pollution, it is up to the States to implement them,” said D. Saha, Head, Air Pollution Monitoring, CPCB. He added that the agency only calculated average figures because there was tremendous variation within a year among cities, mostly on account of rainfall.
The numbers come on the back of international research reports attributing about a million deaths in India to air pollution. The Environment Ministry has said these mortality figures were “extrapolations without due scientific validation” but hasn’t countered with numbers of its own. It is, along with the Health Ministry, working on a study to assess ‘official’ mortality from air pollution.
Key directives by the Centre to the States to control particulate matter pollution include promoting public transport, improving fuel quality and fuel efficiency standards and banning burning of leaves, biomass and municipal solid waste.
Ageing with dignity
While India’s celebrated demographic dividend has for decades underpinned its rapid economic progress, a countervailing force may offset some of the gains from having a relatively young population: rapid ageing at the top end of the scale. This is a cause of deep concern for policymakers as India already has the world’s second largest population of the elderly, defined as those above 60 years of age. As this 104-million-strong cohort continues to expand at an accelerating pace, it will generate enormous socio-economic pressures as the demand for healthcare services and tailored accommodation spikes to historically unprecedented levels. It is projected that approximately 20% of Indians will be elderly by 2050, marking a dramatic jump from the current 8%. However, thus far, efforts to develop a regime of health and social care that is attuned to the shifting needs of the population have been insufficient. While more mature economies have created multiple models for elder care, such as universal or widely accessible health insurance, networks of nursing homes, and palliative care specialisations, it is hard to find such systemic developments in India. Experts also caution that as the proportional size of the elderly population expands, there is likely to be a shift in the disease patterns from communicable to non-communicable, which itself calls for re-gearing the health-care system toward “preventive, promotive, curative and rehabilitative aspects of health”.
Advocacy and information campaigns may be necessary to redirect social attitudes toward ageing, which often do not help the elderly enjoy a life of stability and dignity. As highlighted in ‘Uncertain Twilight’, a four-part series in The Hindu on the welfare of senior citizens, the ground realities faced by the elderly include abandonment by their families, destitution and homelessness, inability to access quality health care, low levels of institutional support, and the loneliness and depression associated with separation from their families. On the one hand, the traditional arrangements for the elderly in an Indian family revolve around care provided by their children. According to the National Sample Survey Organisation’s 2004 survey, nearly 3% of persons aged above 60 lived alone. The number of elderly living with their spouses was only 9.3%, and those living with their children accounted for 35.6%. However, as many among the younger generation within the workforce are left with less time, energy and willingness to care for their parents, or simply emigrate abroad and are unable to do so, senior citizens are increasingly having to turn to other arrangements. In the private sector, an estimated demand for 300,000 senior housing units, valued at over $1 billion, has led to a variety of retirement communities emerging across the country, in addition to innovations in healthcare delivery for this group. Yet the poor among the elderly still very much depend on the government to think creatively and come up with the resources and institutions to support their needs.
A foreign policy of cruel populism
•Just before he was inaugurated as the U.S. President, Donald Trump laid out some principles of what appeared to be his non-interventionist foreign policy. “We will stop racing to topple foreign regimes that we know nothing about, that we shouldn’t be involved with,” he said in North Carolina. “Instead our focus must be on defeating terrorism and destroying ISIS, and we will.” What Mr. Trump implied is that his administration would not conduct regime-change operations — such as against Iraq in 2003 during the George W. Bush administration — and certainly not indulge in nation-building outside the United States. He promised nation-building within the United States and to enhance the military “not as an act of aggression, but as an act of prevention”.
•The tenor of Mr. Trump’s statements suggested that the United States would have a much less interventionist foreign policy. It would not be overthrowing governments or struggling to rebuild them into a liberal, market-friendly paradise. The concepts of regime change and nation-building — so fundamental to the consensus within the U.S. since the 1990s — now seem to be in retirement. Mr. Trump’s main concept — America First — suggests that he would take the country into an isolationist period, with foreign adventures off the table and with the United States gradually pulling out of alliances such as NATO.
Misplaced targets
•The U.S. President’s agenda is part of the emergence of a cruel populism that has emerged across the West, inaugurated by the Brexit vote in the United Kingdom. The heart of this cruel populism is that the people of the West have been ignored by their ‘globalist’ leaders, who care more for free trade deals than for the haemorrhaging of jobs in their own homelands. In this they are correct. What makes them cruel is that rather than actually get to the heart of joblessness — which is partly due to unshared productivity gains through mechanisation — they offer a harsh cultural agenda to solve an economic problem. It is hatred of Muslims and other religious, sexual and ethnic minorities that focus the attention of Mr. Trump and France’s Marine Le Pen, Holland’s Geert Wilders and Germany’s Frauke Petry. They want to do such things as ‘de-Islamise’ their countries, ban minarets and secure their borders against refugees.
•Building walls against migrants — simple campaign fodder — will not address the economies of the West, which are fundamentally integrated with the rest of the world. The global commodity chain has enabled Western corporations to enjoy large profits as countries in the chain struggle to underbid each other on wages and regulations.
•To secure and control this global commodity chain, the West has used its vast military footprint — from bases to aircraft carriers — and it has used its military and political power to pressure countries to honour intellectual property rights and to fix currencies to advantage the global elites. No wonder, then, that the eight richest persons have as much wealth as the poorest half of the world’s population. This global 1%, with a majority in the West, has truly benefited from globalisation.
•Isolation from this global commodity chain would seriously threaten the reproduction of wealth for this small minority. It is unlikely that the cruel populists — for all their ranting against free trade regimes — would be able to move an agenda that undermines this global footprint. Their isolationism is more rhetoric than policy. Economic sovereignty is not possible for their states, which is why they strive for cultural sovereignty. Demagogy is the prize for this kind of populism. ‘Keep out the Muslims’ stands in for economic policymaking.
Inhumane intervention
•We have not entered into a period of isolation. Nor is the old doctrine of humanitarian intervention alive and well. It has certainly been set aside. Our new period, with the cruel populists in power, is defined by ruthless inhumane intervention. Bombs will fall, no doubt, but these will not be dropped to draw countries into the global order. Their purpose will be to encage areas seen to be lesser and inherently dangerous.
•The doctrine of humanitarian intervention came into its own in the 1990s, when the United States began to justify its military operations based on the idea of ‘human rights’. Wars against Iraq and Yugoslavia as well as designations of Iran, Iraq, North Korea, Libya and Syria as ‘rogue states’ set the terms for humanitarian or liberal interventionism. The general idea was that these states were holdouts against globalisation and that pressure against them — sanctions or armed force — was utterly justified. A notion of universal humanity guided this theory, since it was assumed that violence would tutor lesser societies into the global commodity chain. The idea of ‘regime change’ required the idea of ‘nation-building’ to complete its task. Not only would governments be overthrown, but they would be replaced by regimes that acceded to the neo-liberal policy slate and to the institutions of globalisation.
•The cruel populists do not accept the theory of universal humanity. For them, the world’s people are divided along the axis of culture — Christendom, on one side, against Islam, on the other. Mr. Trump has vowed to rebuild the U.S. military so that “no one will ever mess with us”. What is this military to be used for? “I would bomb those s******,” Mr. Trump said of the Islamic State and its oil infrastructure. “I’d blow up every single inch,” he said, so that “there would be nothing left”. But the use of force does not end there. “And you know what, you’ll get Exxon to come in there, and in two months — you ever see these guys? How good they are, the great oil companies. They’ll rebuild it brand new.” It is suggestive that Mr. Trump’s Secretary of State is Rex Tillerson, who ran ExxonMobil for 10 years. Would ExxonMobil re-build the oil infrastructure for Iraq? No. “I’ll take the oil,” Mr. Trump said brashly and against international law.
•The U.S. President’s instinctual militarism is evident with his appointment of Generals to his cabinet and his habit of continuing to call them by their military rank. These are not ordinary Generals. They have demonstrated a virulent anti-Muslim streak, which is in keeping with the cruel populism of the Trump agenda. Such prejudice blinds them from reality. Against all logic, Defence Secretary James Mattis said, “I consider ISIS nothing more than an excuse for Iran to continue its mischief.” That Iran and the Islamic State are fierce adversaries is of no consequence. For this General, they are both in the camp of Islam. War against them is instinctual. It will not be to draw the people in their societies into the global order. Inhumane intervention serves as a prophylaxis against the fantasy of cultural sovereignty.
Tackling the Islamic State
•Celebrated by historian William Dalrymple in his book Nine Lives as “a place where for once you saw religion acting to bring people together, not to divide them”, the Lal Shahbaz Qalandar, a Sufi shrine in Sehwan, Pakistan’s Sindh province, was the most unlikely place for conflict. Yet it was the target last week of a terrorist attack, for which the Islamic State (IS) claimed responsibility,) for, and which killed at least 80 people.
•Why was the shrine chosen as the site for savagery? Dalrymple’s description of the shrine as “a syncretic place” is a possible explanation. The IS is known for its intolerance towards all non-Sunnis, especially the Shias, and constantly looks for an opportunity to spoil any endeavour to forge inter-sect unity. There are reasons to believe that the Pakistani Taliban, from which many have defected to the IS, has collaborated in the Sehwan attack. Whatever be the case, the Sehwan attack confounds experts as it comes at a time when reports suggest a marked decline in the IS’s capacity to hold on to its territory in Iraq and Syria.
Attracting the youth
•Ever since it made its appearance a decade ago, the IS has concentrated on building its strength on the basis of brutality and an ability to attract volunteers from different parts of the world. At the height of its successes, the IS could boast of fighters from nearly 80 countries to fight for its cause. It is estimated that nearly 30,000 IS volunteers have gone to Iraq and Syria since 2011. In its early days, the IS built up its financial strength by attacking government treasuries. It also seized a few rich oil wells, especially in Iraq, to generate considerable wealth in order to meet its commitments towards funding the administration of its captured territories.
•However, a cause for consternation was the steady stream of volunteers that the IS could attract from the West. These were not merely young people from privileged and educated families; some even came with their families. They were given substantial wages and other perquisites. Some were offered sex slaves from a large pool of prisoners. This highlighted the IS’s depravity, which was cleverly concealed under a religious cloak.
Losing ground
•However, this was too good to last for long. In the past year, the IS has shown definite signs of wilting against the relentless onslaught of the U.S. and coalition forces. Added to this was the unusual alliance between Russian President Vladimir Putin and Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, which, though primarily directed against Syrian rebels, also targeted IS resources. Having lost nearly a quarter of its territory in Syria and Iraq over the course of a year, the IS is now engaged in a last-ditch attempt to retain Mosul in Iraq and Raqqa in Syria.
•As Peter Neumann, Director of the International Centre for the Study of Radicalisation at King’s College, London, said: “The appeal of Islamic State rested on its strength and its winning. Now that it’s losing, it’s no longer attractive.”
•A major reason for the IS’s reverses is its inability to retain the loyalty of its international recruits. The failure lately to pay them even a modest wage, which is due to the IS’s diminishing revenues, has been compounded by the fear psychosis among the volunteers. Many have returned home, no longer motivated, and others are reportedly packing their bags too. The influx into the IS is now said to be a trickle; the exodus is far higher.
•Some of the IS deserters are those disillusioned about the cause for which they had been fighting. They may never return. However, surprisingly, a larger number of those who have left the IS are still said to be determined to establish a Caliphate, even though they have returned home. This introduces a new dimension to the internal situation in a number of countries that had contributed a steady flow of volunteers.
•The situation is relevant to India too. There is no clear estimate of the numbers who had gone to fight or who have come back. We could invest our intelligence agencies with the required knowledge and wisdom to handle the complex situation.
•Where is the IS heading? Few observers would bet on its annihilation. It would perhaps do better than al-Qaeda, which lost its punch following the killing of Osama bin Laden. The IS is expected to be more enduring than its rivals because it is not personality-oriented. It has shown itself to be more pragmatic in opting for expansion in terms of geography, instead of sticking to mere ideology.
•Credible analyses by Western intelligence agencies point to the extensive fanning of IS cadres to various parts of the world. The small numbers arriving in each country make them difficult to be identified. Also, we have to contend with the strong mental reserves of each recruit who returns home.
•A few recent arrests in India confirm that the lure of the IS is still strong. It is in this context that the outfit’s extensive use of the Internet to disseminate its captivating propaganda material causes some worry. A few successful exercises have been carried out recently to build software that can quickly identify propaganda material and remove it from the Internet. Only time will tell how effective this counter-offensive has been.
A pit stop to change attitudes
•Both Ambedkar and Gandhi protested the practice of untouchability by encouraging upper castes to deal with their own waste. Last weekend, the Secretary of the Ministry of Drinking Water and Sanitation, Parameswaran Iyer, took up their call for action by emptying the decomposed waste from a twin-pit latrine in Warangal district, Telangana. Mr. Iyer deserves praise for calling attention to the fact that the problem of pit emptying must become central to India’s efforts to eliminate open defecation.
•It’s now well established that the history and continuing practice of untouchability plays an important role in explaining why there is so much open defecation in India. Studies find that many rural Indians associate emptying a latrine pit by hand with manual scavenging, work that Dalits have traditionally been compelled to do. Caste Hindus refuse to empty latrine pits themselves, and hiring someone else to do it is now expensive and complicated. This is in part because, thankfully, the exploitation and exclusion of Dalits is slowly being challenged in India, and many have abandoned degrading work.
When a pit fills up
•Rural Indians do not want to use the latrines promoted by the Indian government because these latrines require periodic manual pit emptying. They are afraid of the problems they will face when the pit fills up. For this reason, people want to use latrines with very large pits or tanks that take decades to fill. Yet, latrines with very large pits are expensive, so most rural families cannot afford them.
•The Indian government’s response to the problem of pit emptying is to promote affordable latrines with two pits. Having a second pit allows the contents of a full pit to decompose before being emptied. According to the Prohibition of Employment as Manual Scavengers and their Rehabilitation Act, which made the employment of manual scavengers illegal, emptying human waste that has decomposed in a latrine pit is not considered manual scavenging, and is therefore not illegal.
•The two-pit latrine design is a technical and biological solution to the problems of open defecation and manual scavenging, but it does not address the social consequences associated with pit emptying. When we asked families in rural areas whether they would empty a decomposed pit by hand, the resounding answer was “no”. Most believe that emptying even a decomposed latrine pit would be ritually polluting and would cause them to become outcaste.
•This is why Mr. Iyer’s public display of latrine pit emptying was a really important step forward. We hope that this effort will not stop with the Secretary and that it will kick-off many pit-emptying demonstrations by everyone — from celebrities to village leaders — across the country. The Prime Minister launched the Swachh Bharat Mission by sweeping the streets of Valmiki Colony in New Delhi on October 2, 2014.
•He called the mission a tribute to Gandhi’s work towards a clean India. If the Swachh Bharat Mission really wants to honour the legacy of Gandhi, though, it would do well to keep the focus on issues that Gandhi refused to shy away from: untouchability and manual scavenging. The challenge will lie in finding a way to combine photo ops with a real effort to change people’s minds how about where to defecate, who can empty latrine pits, and ultimately, how Dalits should be treated.
Centre doubles solar park capacity to 40,000 MW
•The Cabinet has approved the doubling of solar park capacity to 40,000 MW, which will entail an additional 50 solar parks to be set up at a cost to the government of ₹8,100 crore, Minister of New and Renewable Energy Piyush Goyal said on Wednesday.
•Mr. Goyal added that while most of the additional 50 solar parks, to be commissioned by 2019-20, will be 50 MW of capacity, the Centre is also considering smaller parks in Himalayan and other hilly states where contiguous land is difficult to acquire.
•“The solar parks and ultra mega solar power projects will be set up by 2019-20 with Central Government financial support of ₹8,100 crore,” according to a government statement. “The total capacity when operational will generate 64 billion units of electricity per year which will lead to abatement of around 55 million tonnes of carbon dioxide per year over its life cycle.”
•Mr. Goyal explained that the state governments will first nominate the solar power park developer (SPPD) and will also identify the land for the proposed solar park.
•The proposal will then be sent to the Ministry of New and Renewable Energy for approval, following which the SPPD will be sanctioned a grant of up to ₹25 lakh. Following this, the government will provide central funding assistance of ₹20 lakh per megawatt or 30% of the project cost, whichever is lower.
Nepal hydro project
•The Cabinet also approved a ₹5723.72 crore investment for the Arun-3 900 MW hydroelectric plant in Nepal.
•“We want to help our neighbours be power surplus just as we currently are,” Mr. Goyal said. “Financial closure of the deal is planned for September this year and the completion period is expected to be five years.”
•Towards this, the Cabinet has given its ex-post facto approval for the existing implementing agency, already incorporated in the name of SJVN Arun-3 Power Development Company (SAPDC) registered in Nepal as a 100% subsidiary of SJVN Limited for the implementation of the project, according to the statement.
•The project, located on the Arun river, is expected to provide any surplus power not used by Nepal to India.
Air pact with Greece
•The Cabinet gave its nod for signing an air services agreement between India and Greece, wherein both countries shall be entitled to designate one or more airline, which will have the right to establish offices in the territory of the other country for the promotion and sale of air services.
•“The designated airlines of the two countries shall have fair and equal opportunity to operate the agreed services on specified routes,” according to the statement. “The designated airline of each party can enter into cooperative marketing arrangements with the designated carriers of same party, other party and third country.”
•According to the route schedule, Indian carriers can operate to Athens, Thessaloniki, HerakIion and any three points to be specified later India, and the Greek airlines can establish direct operation to New Delhi, Mumbai, Bengaluru, Kolkata, Hyderabad and Chennai.
•Aviation security
•The Cabinet also gave its approval to the signing of a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) between India and Australia for the promotion and development of cooperation in civil aviation security.
•“The MoU will provide an opportunity to Indian aviation security authorities to share the expertise of their Australian counterparts and enhance the overall aviation security environment in India. The MoU will provide compliance of international obligation as well as enhance promotion in the area of security cooperation between the two countries.”
•An agreement between India and Poland on cooperation in the field of agriculture and allied sectors was also approved during the Cabinet meeting.
•“The agreement covers various activities in the field of agriculture and allied sector including exchange of information on the current situation in agriculture, the phytosanitary conditions of crops, threats posed by harmful organisms and the threats posed by animal infectious diseases,” according to the statement.
