THE HINDU – CURRENT NOTE 20 APRIL
NGT orders closure of industries near Bellandur Lake
Announces environment compensation for garbage dumping
•Banning the dumping of any kind of municipal solid waste around Bellandur Lake, the National Green Tribunal (NGT) on Wednesday directed immediate and complete shut-down of all industries around the water body.
•A bench headed by NGT Chairperson Justice Swatanter Kumar noted: “All the industries located in the vicinity of Bellandur Lake and discharging effluent are hereby directed to be closed. No industry is permitted to operate unless inspection by a joint inspection team is conducted and analysis of effluent is found to be within the permissible limits.’’
•The green panel ordered the State Pollution Control Board to seal industries violating its directions. It also announced an environment compensation of ₹5 lakh on anyone found dumping waste in and around the lake.
•NGT directed a committee comprising officials of BDA, KLCDA and UDD to oversee one-time cleaning of the lake in one month, including desilting, removal of all waste from the lake and surface cleaning. The bench directed all authorities to ensure that no untreated sewage enters the lake.
•Namma Bengaluru Foundation, at the forefront of the fight to save the lake, on Wednesday announced the formation of a 10-member committee — United Bengaluru for Bellandur — comprising the petitioners, local residents and experts to ensure implementation of the NGT’s directions.
Apology by Law Department
•Law Department officials apologised to the bench, which took exception to their interpretation of its May 4, 2016 order on buffer zones around lakes and drains. Officials from the UDD and BBMP promised to withdraw the circular based on the legal opinion that the NGT order was only prospective and not retrospective.
•UDD officials said they would await a clarification from the NGT on the nature of the May 4 order.
Nod for purchase of VVPAT machines
It can be seen by the voter through a screened window for seven seconds to check if the vote has been correctly recorded.
•“The Prime Minister had said two days ago that after the recent election results, an unnecessary issue has been raised [on EVMs]. He called it a manufactured controversy. Today, if after losing, you start blaming machines, machines don’t become bad,” said Defence, Finance and Corporate Affairs Minister Arun Jaitley, briefing reporters after a Union Cabinet meeting on Wednesday.
•“The Supreme Court in an order dated 8th October, 2013 had directed that [the] Government of India may provide required financial assistance for procurement of requisite number of VVPAT units for implementation in [a] phased manner. Overall, 16,15,000 machines are needed and if the order is placed in April 2017, then the machines can be delivered by September 2018,” Mr. Jaitley said.
•“Naturally, for all the elections thereafter, all polling booths will have a paper trail along with electronic voting machines. The Election Commission has been demanding this and the Union Cabinet has approved it after detailed deliberations,” the Minister said.
•Chief Election Commissioner (CEC) Nasim Zaidi had last year written to Prime Minister Narendra Modi on the issue, and had also urged the Union Law Ministry last week to urgently release funds, given the “prevailing environment”, to facilitate procurement of VVPAT machines for the conduct of the 2019 Lok Sabha elections.
•The EC had earlier informed the government that if the order for the machines was not placed by February, it would become difficult for the manufacturers to supply them by September 2018, to meet the requirement of the next general elections.
•Around 20,300 units were purchased in 2013, after the election conduct rules were changed to allow the use of VVPATs as an additional layer of transparency for the satisfaction of voters, on the basis of suggestions by political parties. While these units were deployed in select assembly and parliamentary constituencies, 67,000 more units were ordered in 2015, half of which have been supplied by now.
•The Commission had recently received a memorandum from 16 parties demanding that the paper ballot system be reintroduced for greater transparency. The Bahujan Samaj Party, the AAP and the Congress have alleged tampering of the voting machines. The Samajwadi Party has also raised doubts.
•Of the Rs. 3,173.47 crore approved by the government for these machines, about Rs. 1,600 crore will be allocated this year and the balance will be disbursed in 2018-19. Two public sector firms, Bharat Electronics Limited and Electronics Corporation of India, are entrusted with producing these machines. Both have indicated that they can deliver the order by next September if it is placed this month.
‘Our job is not to kill our people’
A-G defends the Army over panel reports on atrocities in insurgency-hit Manipur
•A day after the Supreme Court questioned its silence over judicial enquiry commission reports accusing its personnel of committing atrocities in Manipur during insurgency, the Army on Wednesday said its job was not to kill “our own country’s people”.
•The Army accused that the findings of the judicial probes may have been inadvertently “biased” as the judges who headed the inquiry commissions were locals. “The Army’s job is not to kill our own people,” Attorney General Mukul Rohatgi said in defence of the Army in the Supreme Court.
•Appearing before a Bench of Justices Madan B. Lokur and U.U. Lalit, Mr. Rohatgi submitted that the court should not shut its eye to the possibility that the judicial officers, who headed these commissions of enquiry, were local people and may have been guided by local apprehensions and factors.
•“This is our own country. If the Army is disbelieved, then the whole system will go haywire and cannot work. The inquiry officers may have been biased due to their local considerations,” he argued in a hearing that went on the whole day.
Rues trust deficit
•He rued the trust deficit apparent when insinuations are made that the Army is stage-managing deaths of innocents as armed encounters with insurgents.
•“The Army is operating in insurgency-prone areas of Manipur in difficult circumstances and it cannot be disbelieved. It cannot be said that I have stage-managed to kill my own people,” Mr. Rohatgi submitted.
•The arguments come in the backdrop of a curative petition filed by the Centre in the Supreme Court to urgently re-consider a July 2016 verdict, which ripped open the cloak of immunity and secrecy provided by the Armed Forces (Special Powers) Act of 1958 (AFSPA) to security forces for deaths caused during encounters in disturbed areas.
•The SC had held that “there is no concept of absolute immunity from trial by a criminal court” if an Army man has committed an offence. The curative petition argues that the judgment has become a fetter against security forces involved in anti-militancy operations in sensitive and border areas of the country.
‘No threat to visas for professionals’
•The Union government has defended its foreign policy oriented towards job creation, and indicated that the latest measures taken by Australia and the United States will not curtail visas for Indian professionals.
•A formal statement was issued on Wednesday after the two countries adopted measures that were likely to reduce the number of visas for IT professionals.
H1-B visas
•“Insofar as H1-B visas are concerned, the cap has remained at 65,000 since December 2004 when the H1-B Visa Reform Act of 2004 was enacted by the U.S. Congress,” said a statement issued by External Affairs Ministry spokesperson Gopal Baglay.
Clouds of prosperity
The monsoon forecast should galvanise the country to make the most of a good season
•The ‘normal’ monsoon forecast of the India Meteorological Department brings the promise of a year of growth and good health for India’s economy and ecology. If correct, India will have a second consecutive year of normal rainfall, after two years of drought. The prospect that 2017 will be a good year boosts the prospects of enhanced agricultural output, healthy reservoir levels, more hydropower and reduced conflicts over water. It will also test the efficacy of the expensive water management initiatives launched during 2014 and 2015 by the Centre and the State governments to harness rainfall and build resilience for future drought cycles. As the IMD’s experience shows, forecasting the all-India summer monsoon rainfall is fraught with uncertainties and has often gone off the mark. The dynamic model that it is using this year to make a forecast that includes an assessment of two phenomena — a possible late onset El Niño in the Pacific Ocean and variations in sea surface temperatures that create the Indian Ocean Dipole — will be keenly watched. Given that El Niño is expected only in the later part of the year when the monsoon is in its final stages, the expectation of normal rainfall is reasonable. A confirmation could come in June.
•When more than half the population is sustained by agricultural livelihoods, highly efficient water utilisation holds the key to higher farm productivity. In fact, preparing for drought remains a top priority today, in spite of a big increase in outlays for irrigation made over successive five-year plans. Data on five decades of grain output from 1951 show that the negative impact of drought on productivity is disproportionately higher than the positive effects of a normal or surplus monsoon. This underscores the need to help farmers with small holdings to look ahead. As agriculture scientist M.S. Swaminathan pointed out during the drought a couple of years ago, the focus has to be on plant protection, water harvesting and access to post-harvest technologies. The NITI Aayog has also been calling for ways to cut water use, since India uses two to three times more water per tonne of grain produced compared to, for example, China, Brazil and the U.S. The way forward is to create ponds, provide solar power for more farms, mechanise operations and expand drip irrigation coverage. Aiding small farmers with the tools and providing them formal financing can relieve their cyclical distress. The area under drip irrigation, estimated to be less than 10% of net area sown, can then be expanded. A normal monsoon will also relieve water stress in the cities if they prepare catchments and reservoirs to make the most of the season and incentivise residents to install scientific rainwater harvesting systems.
The case for mediated settlements
To reduce NPAs, creditors and debtors need sufficient immunity to hammer out sound commercial solutions
•The country’s banking sector is severely stressed with one-sixth of the gross advances of public sector banks (around Rs. 7 lakh crore) being non-performing assets (NPAs). Existing statutory remedies of insolvency, restructuring of companies, securitisation of debts yield much litigation but insufficient recoveries. The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) brought out a Corporate Debt Restructuring scheme for resolution of dues from the larger companies which account for 70% of the debt portfolio; despite it being a well-structured system, it has failed to deliver substantially. It, however, omitted from attention the smaller borrower with loans less than Rs. 10 crore.
•Now attention is focussed on the concept of a “bad bank”, which would purchase the large loans from the holding banks. The latter would then have better-looking balance sheets; however, the former will find recovery no less difficult. It would then sell off assets to private buyers, who see opportunities for profit-making rather than investment in the economic productive sense.
Roadblocks to settlement
•Two core aspects appear to be the major roadblocks. The first is the limiting aspect of direct negotiations between bank and debtor, which usually run on the lines of high demands by banks and low offers by the debtor. The smaller borrower especially is faced with an imbalance in negotiating strength and is thus denied feasible, even if unattractive, settlement terms. Larger borrowers in acute distress may face similar problems. Settlement terms can be onerous which, if breached, have consequences of closure of business and sale of property. A mediation approach, where an independent neutral engages with both parties, is more likely, practically and empirically, to lead to faster and better agreements. In joint and separate sittings with the mediators, this consensual, non-coercive and confidential process enables the parties to discuss options such as debt concessions, repayment schedules, interest reductions, perhaps even additional credit with safeguards.
•In face-to-face meetings between only creditor and debtor, the fuller gamut of settlement opportunities are not explored, because this would involve more information being exchanged or conditional concessions being made which borrowers fear will be seized upon by bank officers for enhancing demands and hard bargaining. Mediation reverses this; the process is designed to freely create, explore and refine options to yield a solution both amicable and sustainable. Moreover, in their separate meetings with parties, mediators can bring home to them the problems with their case should it proceed to litigation, the lack of worthwhile alternatives to reaching an agreement at the table, and also persuade them to take more reasonable and practical stands.
•Mediation is now well accepted in India, both legislatively and through extensive use by the courts. Agreements reached through this process are enforceable without difficulty. If the RBI sets up mediation panels consisting of bankers, accountants and experienced mediators, that will provide the required institutional framework and enhance trust and credibility in the process and personnel.
Freedom from fear
•The other major block, which paralyses decision-making in government and public sectors in India, is the fear of post-decisional retributive action by way of investigation and prosecution by multiple agencies such as the police, the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI), the Central Vigilance Commission (CVC), the Lokpal, etc. Once initiated, the spectre of lengthy criminal trials looms, accompanied by fear of arrest, denial of bail and public ignominy. Courts respond inadequately — they do not speed up trials or consider bail applications expeditiously or penalise unnecessary prosecution. This inhibits settlements which are in the best interests of the bank but involve some concession or latitude inevitable in reaching the best compromise.
•Freedom to take sound commercial decisions must be statutorily structured, else all our schemes will come to naught. One way is to create a high-level body before which settlement agreements can be placed for approval. This body will examine the settlement to see if it is commercially advantageous and is in the interests of the public sector financial institutions, taking all prevailing circumstances into account. Where it comes to an affirmative conclusion, that should provide complete immunity — from the police, the CBI, the CVC, the Lokpal and the courts — for the officers of the bank who have negotiated and recommended such solution. This is a better step than oversight committees which do not provide the backbone to take the commercial decision of beneficial compromise.
•Such a body needs to be headed with high authority, drawn from the top echelons of the judiciary, the RBI and public sector banks, serving or retired. It should be a multi-tier body when the number of cases increases, which will happen because once you offer mediated solutions with protection for sound decision-taking, then both banks and borrowers will know that it makes eminent sense to try this approach which essentially means no risk in trying for a settlement, and no risk in agreeing to it.
SPARK or an ember?
The proposal for an independent S&T authority needs more thought
•Earlier this year, top administrators in Indian science submitted a detailed project report to Prime Minister Narendra Modi. This paper has reviewed portions of the 48-page report, titled Vigyan 2030: Science and Technology as the Pivot for Jobs, Opportunities and National Transformation. And the report, in its assessment of the state of Indian science, is stingingly honest: “The stature of Indian science is a shadow of what it used to be… because of decades of misguided interventions. We have lost self-confidence and ambition and the ability to recognise excellence amongst our own. In a false sense of egalitarianism, we often chose the mediocre at every level.”
•One of its key recommendations is to have an independent science and technology authority that will have two parallel arms. One, a ‘discovery arm’ that can organise the expertise of various organisations across states and regions to solve a basic research problem. Two, a ‘delivery’ arm that will closely work with industry and evolve public private partnerships. Such an authority, the report envisions, will report directly to the Prime Minister. SPARK (Sustainable Progress through Application of Research and Knowledge), as the body is tentatively named, will be overarching yet have “light touch” governance.
Check out the past
•All very good, except that India already has bodies that were, in their wisdom, conceived as umbrella organisations that can pool the intellectual and technological resources of organisations and direct them towards specific missions.
•The Principal Scientific Adviser to the Government of India is one such office. The NITI Aayog, now essentially a policy think tank, and tasked with coordinating States and research agencies, is another. Though they have no dearth of eminent, experienced scientists, they haven’t substantially vaulted science and technology in the country either. The Council of Scientific and Industrial Research faces its own challenges of effectively translating its know-how. Scientific departments in India, from the Department of Atomic Energy to the Department of Science & Technology, have bureaucracies of their own. They battle the dilemma of having to take bold, expensive risks — that science by its very nature requires — and on the other hand, be accountable to the Finance Ministry. Not only does a new overarching body run the risk of “stepping on toes” but it will also be a challenge to exert solemn authority without being a cantankerous accountant. It must, somehow, marry commerce and knowledge without being commercial and ensure that good ideas — beyond the Indian Institutes of Technology and Science — don’t die out for lack of funds or recommendations from influential scientists. Any new idea, to rejuvenate the administration of science, must also ensure continuity. Very often, bold experiments are supported and incubated for a few years and by the exertions of individually-motivated leaders. A change of government and new leaders has frequently meant ‘new priorities’ and the infant-death syndrome for the bold experiment. Can SPARK have a legal structure that can have continuity and the purpose of its creation hard-wired into it? These are difficult questions that the council of science secretaries, who authored the report, must address.
The degree disease
An emphasis on quality in our research programmes, rather than the number of seats, will further scholarship
•In his remarkable book The Diploma Disease (1976), Ronald Dore captured the enormous surge for higher education in the South Asian region that resulted in the accumulation of degrees without much hope or opportunity for employment. The demand for quality higher education has only grown in the decades that followed, despite high unemployment figures. In Timepass (2010) Craig Jeffrey documents the dilemma in which young men in a small town in northern India find themselves. Equipped with double MA degrees, they languish in the university, in search of coveted ‘service’, waiting for something to happen and essentially passing time. This is the reality in the vast expanse of higher education in India: degrees aplenty, but limited opportunities for growth!
•The current outcry about the University Grants Commission (UGC) decision to curtail MPhil and PhD seats in universities perhaps needs to factor in this as well as what goes on in universities. We must recognise that while students enrol for research, some drop out due to compelling reasons such as employment. There are also some departments in Delhi University, for example, which have the dubious distinction of churning out dozens of mediocre PhDs each year.
The rigours of research
•Far from being an innocuous phenomenon, the number of students a supervisor is allotted is significant. The supervisor is critical to the student’s intellectual life and is called upon if a student seeks a job reference, participation in a conference or workshop, funding, a hostel seat, or action on any form of injustice. The supervisor is the student’s lifeline. In order to be efficient in her interaction with students, it is impossible for a professorial supervisor to deal with more than six-eight PhD students or one or two MPhil students at any given time. A professor also teaches and tutors other students, evaluates their essays and examination papers, and struggles to find time for research.
•The pursuit of doctoral research (in the social sciences) is ostensibly with a purpose to examine a problem with fine-tuned research, doing first-hand fieldwork, and making sense from different perspectives. The task of writing about it comes later. That is why doing research, in the social sciences at least, takes a phenomenally long time. It needs substantial commitment, abilities for meticulous data collection and analysis and, above all, the strength to persevere despite all odds. The MPhil degree, I may add at the risk of being pilloried, does not adequately prepare a student for all this.
•A good PhD programme must have compulsory coursework, and it is this coursework that prepares a student for doctoral research. It is a myth to assume, however much you might want to retain the MPhil, that it helps prepare students for research. The MPhil degree in itself also does not result in eligibility for a university position. It is passing the ubiquitous National Eligibility Test (NET) administered by the UGC, or State Level Eligibility Test (SLET) at the State-level, or completing a PhD degree that in fact ensures eligibility for a teaching position in the university system.
Mentoring serious students
•All students who register for the MPhil programme do not necessarily have their eyes set on doctoral research. While many students committed to research may at first seek entry into the MPhil programme, some of them also do so for other reasons, notably, waiting for admission to universities abroad, retaining a privileged hostel seat, or simply remaining in the university system. A reality check would tell us how many of them have their eyes set on an eventual PhD programme. It is those students who are serious about doing research, belonging to different categories and socio-economic backgrounds, whom one must nurture and help to grow, as researchers and scholars, in our efforts as educators.
•Retaining MPhil and PhD seats merely because we seek to keep vistas of opportunity open is not the reason we should do so. Such opportunities are increasingly more and more difficult to come by and we must be open to other avenues through which scholarship is to be supported, encouraged and developed. The pursuit of degrees alone does not necessarily nurture scholarship. It perhaps diminishes higher education far more rapidly. An emphasis on quality in our research programmes in a range of disciplines — rather than in the number of seats at our disposal — is the only way we can contribute to the growth of higher education and scholarship in this country.
•Let us first ensure this quality, outside Delhi and major Central universities, to ensure that students not only receive good education but also find themselves capable of having the skills for employment, and not necessarily in the university system alone.
State entities can seek loans overseas
Cabinet has allowed financially sound entities to borrow directly from ODA partners for projects
•Large infrastructure projects being executed by State government entities will find it easier to tap international funds from bilateral financing agencies, with the Cabinet enabling them to directly access funding from such agencies on the basis of a central government guarantee while keeping such loans off States’ books.
•“The funding arrangements that bilateral agencies such as Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA) provide, is either with State governments or central PSUs — State entities are not allowed,” said Finance Minister Arun Jaitley. “If any State entity needs funding for its projects, it has to approach the State government and any such funding would be included under the State’s borrowing limits set by the Fiscal Responsibility and Budget Management (FRBM law).”
•“So based on some conditions, a section of State entities with revenue of Rs. 1,000 crore or more, who are working on infrastructure projects worth over Rs. 5,000 crore, have been permitted to directly take money from such funding agencies on the basis of a central government guarantee,” he said.
Financially sound
•An official statement said that the Cabinet had approved policy guidelines to allow financially sound State government entities to borrow directly from bilateral ODA (Official Development Assistance) partners for implementation of vital infrastructure projects.
•“All repayments of loans and interests to the funding agencies will be directly remitted by the concerned borrower. The concerned State Government will furnish guarantee for the Loan. The Government of India will provide counter guarantee for the loan,” according to the statement.
•Citing the example of the almost Rs. 18,000 Mumbai Trans-Harbour Link project, where JICA is expected to lend more than Rs. 15,100 crore, Mr. Jaitley said Maharashtra’s development expenditure would go down to that extent as its quota for borrowing under the FRBM targets would be used up.
Welfare schemes
•“State Budgets also have pressure to spend on welfare schemes. If international funding is coming in, if that gets included in the FRBM calculations, then infrastructure projects will suffer,” Mr. Jaitley said, adding that projects like the Mumbai Trans-Harbour Link would now become possible.
•While the Mumbai Metropolitan Region Development Authority (MMRDA) has been allowed to borrow directly from JICA for the trans-harbour project, other state entities meeting the revenue and investment criteria could also utilise this financing route.
‘Ensure checks’
•“For getting infrastructure projects off the ground, this is obviously a good move,” said Amrit Pandurangi, senior director at Deloitte India. “But it must be used prudently for select projects in a State as taking such financing out of the FRBM framework could tempt States to borrow too much for all sorts of projects,” he added.
•“There need to be some checks in place to ensure that future governments aren’t saddled with too much long-term debt on terms that appear to be soft now, but could become costlier over the years if you factor in the forex risk on top of the inherent risks in long-gestation infrastructure projects,” Mr. Pandurangi said.
H-1B visa restrictions may lead to layoffs
Indian IT firms are among the biggest beneficiaries of the visa programme
•U.S. President Donald Trump’s plans to tighten visa norms for skilled workers could potentially hurt margins at India’s IT services providers and may lead to layoffs in the sector, according to industry analysts.
•On April 18, Mr. Trump signed an executive order calling for a review of the H-1B visa program and sought increased scrutiny to prevent its abuse. The U.S. move comes amid heightened curbs initiated by other nations including the U.K., Singapore and Australia, which has eliminated its 457 visa program.
•U.S. has been the key market for Indian IT firms, which have been among the biggest users of the H-1B visa program. The U.S. government recently said it received 199,000 H-1B visa petitions for 2018, 37,000 less than last year.
•While analysts ruled out any major immediate risk from the changes in the U.S. visa process, they said any sweeping reforms could pose a major risk in future and hurt IT companies’ margins.
Costs to rise
•Shiva Ramani, founder and CEO, iOPEX Technology said, “The visa curbs will increase cost of delivery leading to a margin fall. As a result IT firms can’t afford to have bench and there may be layoffs.”
•Infosys on Wednesday said it would work with U.S. policymakers and focus on hiring local talent.
•Industry lobby Nasscom said: “Nasscom member companies support efforts to root out any abuses that may be occurring in the H-1B system. Ours is one of the most highly regulated and scrutinized sectors in the economy, and Nasscom member companies abide by all applicable laws and regulations.”
•“The H-1B law cannot be changed through an executive order, and even a change in rules have to comply with the existing H-1B law,” Cyrus D. Mehta, managing attorney at New York-based law firm Cyrus D. Mehta and Partners, wrote in an e-mailed response.
•Vikram Shroff, Head of HR law practice at Nishith Desai Associates, said Indian firms had already started planning for a scenario of a restrictive visa regime. The U.S. order could pose some concerns at the time of renewals or extensions or for a change in employers.
•“Indian IT firms have been net job creators in the U.S.,” Shivendra Singh, vice-president and head, Global Trade Development at Nasscom said. “The fundamental issue has been shortage of skilled workforce.”
