THE HINDU – CURRENT NOTE 21 APRIL
India makes fresh bid to get Headley, Rana
NIA raises the issue with FBI deputy chief Andrew McCabe
•India has made a fresh request to the U.S. for the extradition of David Coleman Headley and Tahawwur Rana, wanted for their roles in the 26/11 Mumbai attacks.
•Andrew McCabe, Deputy Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), visited India earlier this month and met senior officials of the National Investigation Agency (NIA). The NIA, which is probing the conspiracy behind the 2008 attacks, raised with Mr. McCabe the pending requests for extradition of Headley and Rana. The NIA told him that its multiple requests for the custody of Rana went unanswered.
•Revising its demand, the NIA told Mr. McCabe that though Rana was convicted by a U.S. court of the charge of providing material support to the Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT), which was behind the attacks, he had not been tried for offences, registered in India, of forgery and criminal breach of trust.
•The ‘double jeopardy’ clause in the U.S. law prohibits punishment for the same crime twice. So, last year, India renewed its attempt at Rana’s custody on the ground that he was involved in the planning of an attack on the National Defence College (NDC) in Delhi and Chabad Houses (Jewish religious centres) in several cities.
Not tried in India
•“Since Rana has already been convicted by a U.S court, he cannot be tried for the same crime twice. We told the FBI official that we also have a case of forgery and criminal breach of trust registered against him, and he has not been tried for these crimes,” said a senior official of the Union Home Ministry.
•Mr. McCabe assured the NIA that its request would be looked into.
•Headley has been sentenced to 35 years in prison by a U.S court, and the ‘double jeopardy’ clause is one of the biggest impediments for the NIA to get him extradited.
•NIA officials said they were hopeful of securing his custody because the U.S investigation mostly centred on the death of six American nationals in the attacks and a large number of Indians were also killed.
•Rana, a school friend of Headley, is serving a 14-year term in the U.S. for providing material support to the LeT, but has not entered a plea bargain as Headley did. Rana was arrested in 2009. Though a U.S. District Court sentenced him in 2013, his jail term would include the period he had already served in prison.
•Rana, a Chicago businessman, helped Headley open an immigration firm in Mumbai with forged documents. It acted as a cover for him to do reconnaissance of targets that were attacked on November 26, 2008. Rana, a school friend of Headley from Pakistan, was convicted in 2013 and sentenced to 14 years in prison for providing material support to Pakistan based LeT, the terrorist group behind the 2008 Mumbai attacks.
•According to the FBI, after the 26/11 attacks, Headley visited India again in March 2009 for reconnaissance of the NDC in Delhi and Chabad Houses.
States to be consulted on BC panel Bill
Concern over erosion of rights
•A select committee of the Rajya Sabha looking into a Bill according constitutional status to the Backward Classes Commission, a cause close to Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s heart, will be inviting all State governments to depose before it, and hold meetings every Monday till the logjam over the Bill is resolved.
Members briefed
•In a meeting held last Monday, officials from the Ministry of Social Justice and Empowerment briefed the members of the select committee, headed by BJP MP Bhupendra Yadav, on the Bill.
•“We resolved after the briefing that since the area of concern most expressed over the Bill revolved around the structure of federal government, and rights of State governments to get names of communities added to the Centre’s OBC list, the committee should want to hear the view of States in the matter,” said a member of the committee. Under the new Bill, any addition to the Central list of OBCs will need to be cleared by Parliament.
Logistics pact with U.S. ‘almost done’
LEMOA gives mutual access to designated military facilities for refuelling and enables joint exercises
•In just about two days, India is expected to notify the operationalising of the Logistics Exchange Memorandum of Agreement (LEMOA) with the U.S.
•“It is almost done; it should be issued in a day or two,” a defence official familiar with the matter said here on Thursday.
•India and the U.S. concluded the logistics agreement, the first of the three foundational agreements between the two nations, last August.
Delayed work
•However, its implementation has been delayed, as India was unable to streamline administrative procedures to enable its operationalisation.
•LEMOA gives access to both countries to designated military facilities on either side for refuelling and replenishment in primarily four areas — port calls, joint exercises, training and humanitarian assistance and disaster relief.
•The other foundational agreements are the Communications Compatibility and Security Agreement (COMCASA) and the Basic Exchange and Cooperation Agreement for Geospatial Information and Services Cooperation (BECA).
•The notification includes designating the points of contact for the U.S. military to work with and setting up a common account for payments. The U.S., which has similar agreements with several countries, has already notified the details.
Ratification the next step
•After the notification, the U.S. is expected to formally ratify the agreement which will then operationalise the pact, the official stated.
•Several U.S. officials had stated in the past that the agreements were required for taking forward high-technology cooperation forward.
•Meanwhile, discussions are under way on the next one — the COMSCA — as the BECA is considered the trickiest of the three with India expressing serious reservations about the clauses as well as the need for it.
China’s Arunachal move ‘illegal’
India rejects neighbour’s attempt to rename six towns in the border State
•India on Thursday rejected China’s move to rename six towns in Arunachal Pradesh, giving them new Chinese names in its official record.
•“Assigning invented names to the towns of your neighbour does not make illegal territorial claims legal,” said Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) spokesperson Gopal Baglay. “Arunachal Pradesh is and will always be an integral part of India,” he added.
‘Clear evidence’
•Mr. Baglay was responding to questions about an announcement by the Chinese Ministry of Civil Affairs that said it would “standardise” the names of towns in Arunachal, which China refers to as ‘South Tibet’, as Wo’gyainling, Mila Ri, Qoidêngarbo Ri, Mainquka, Bümo La and Namkapub Ri respectively, on its version of the map that India contests.
•Going further, the Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Lu Kang even said that the names reflected, “China’s territorial claim over South Tibet is supported by clear evidence in terms of history, culture and administration.”
Dismisses claim
•The government dismissed China’s claim clearly on Thursday, with Urban Development Minister Venkaiah Naidu accusing Beijing of trying to “get some sort of publicity” from the notice on renaming towns.
•“We are an independent country, we are a sovereign country, Arunachal Pradesh is totally part and parcel of India and every inch of Arunachal’s land belongs to India. China has no business to name any of the districts,” Mr. Naidu said at a press conference on Thursday.
Escalation of tensions
•Beijing’s move is being seen as an escalation of tensions by China that has been angered by the government’s decision to allow the Dalai Lama to visit the Tawang monastery this month.
•In a series of statements, China reacted sharply to the Dalai Lama’s travels in Arunachal Pradesh, all of which is Indian territory that China continues to dispute.
•“This is definitely an upping of the ante by China,” said expert Alka Acharya, cautioning, “We will have to watch closely where this decision to announce new names would lead next.”
•When asked if the growing Chinese reactions on Arunachal Pradesh would have an impact on border talks between the two neighbouring countries, the MEA spokesperson said, “There is an established boundary mechanism that has made some progress. And we would expect that the boundary question would be addressed in a mutual and honourable manner.”
•Mr. Baglay added that China had not officially conveyed any decision on the ‘renaming’ to the Indian embassy or the MEA.
Next round of talks
•The next round of boundary talks between Chinese State Councillor Yang Jiechi and National Security Advisor (NSA) Ajit Doval is expected to take place later this year in Delhi, and Mr. Doval is expected to attend the BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa) group’s NSA-level meeting to be held in Beijing in July.
•External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj will attend the BRICS ministerial meeting before that in June.
India, EU likely to resume talks
Mogherini may discuss stalled trade pact; visit likely to open up ties with Italy
•The talks between India and the EU that were stalled in the backdrop of the Italian marines crisis are likely to kick-start during the April 21-23 visit of a high official of the European Union. The Ministry of External Affairs announced that the High Representative of EU, Federica Mogherini, will hold discussions with External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj on Friday.
•Announcing the visit, Ms. Mogherini said in her blog that she would hold talks with Ms. Swaraj after arriving from China where she has co-chaired the EU-China Strategic Dialogue. “We will prepare for the 14th EU-India summit, to be held in New Delhi this year,” she said about her meeting in Delhi.
•The visit of Ms. Mogherini, a senior Italian politician now with the EU, is significant as she is known to have adopted a hard position on the Italian marines case which turned into a difficult legal and diplomatic issue between India and Italy.
•Sources revealed that though Ms. Mogherini is likely to discuss the stalled trade pact between India and EU, the visit is also likely to open up India-Italy ties.
•“Senior politician Ivan Scalfarotto will be in Delhi during April 26-28 with a 200-strong business delegation. A high-level Indian delegation will be in Italy on May 10-12 for the joint economic commission meeting,” said a diplomatic source, confirming that the joint economic commission had not met during the past five years because of the marines issue.
Joint working groups
•He also indicated that both sides had also revived joint working groups on defence, and science and technology. The joint working group on terrorism also met in January this year. The visit of Ms. Mogherini is likely to open up long pending issues in EU-India ties.
•However, though bilateral India-Italy ties are expected to get a boost from her visit, India-EU ties would still have a long negotiation over the free trade agreement between both sides, reports suggest.
Market access
•The main issues are over duties and market access but additional points of disagreement have reportedly emerged over new clauses that would not allow international companies to rush to international arbitration without completing cases in Indian legal system.
•Following the cooling down of the marines issue, India had sent Ms. Swaraj to Rome last year where she had met her counterpart Paolo Gentiloni in the first high-level outreach since the marines crisis began in 2012.
Logistics pact with U.S. ‘almost done’
LEMOA gives mutual access to designated military facilities for refuelling and enables joint exercises
•In just about two days, India is expected to notify the operationalising of the Logistics Exchange Memorandum of Agreement (LEMOA) with the U.S.
•“It is almost done; it should be issued in a day or two,” a defence official familiar with the matter said here on Thursday.
•India and the U.S. concluded the logistics agreement, the first of the three foundational agreements between the two nations, last August.
Delayed work
•However, its implementation has been delayed, as India was unable to streamline administrative procedures to enable its operationalisation.
•LEMOA gives access to both countries to designated military facilities on either side for refuelling and replenishment in primarily four areas — port calls, joint exercises, training and humanitarian assistance and disaster relief.
•The other foundational agreements are the Communications Compatibility and Security Agreement (COMCASA) and the Basic Exchange and Cooperation Agreement for Geospatial Information and Services Cooperation (BECA).
•The notification includes designating the points of contact for the U.S. military to work with and setting up a common account for payments. The U.S., which has similar agreements with several countries, has already notified the details.
Ratification the next step
•After the notification, the U.S. is expected to formally ratify the agreement which will then operationalise the pact, the official stated.
•Several U.S. officials had stated in the past that the agreements were required for taking forward high-technology cooperation forward.
•Meanwhile, discussions are under way on the next one — the COMSCA — as the BECA is considered the trickiest of the three with India expressing serious reservations about the clauses as well as the need for it.
Closer to Brussels
Recent developments show that there is room for optimism in India-EU ties
•While traditionally focussed on economics and culture, today the EU and India are taking bold steps to also deepen the strategic dimensions of their partnership. This week’s visit to New Delhi of the EU’s High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy, Federica Mogherini, will likely witness a frank Indo-European dialogue on the changing global and regional security environments.
•While the EU and India share similar world views, especially on effective multilateralism, they have rarely found instruments to pursue objectives together and their relationship has stumbled over many impediments in recent years: stalled negotiations over the Free Trade Agreement, mutual recriminations on combating climate change, and divergent positions on Russia’s role during the Crimean crisis. As a result, the strategic partnership has been far from “strategic”.
•However, recent developments have shown that there is room for optimism. Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s visit to Brussels and the resumption of the EU-India summit in 2016, after a break of four years, marked a turning point. The summit saw a much stronger focus on security cooperation and the adoption of a joint declaration on counterterrorism.
•Pivoting around “principled pragmatism”, the EU’s new Global Strategy (2010) underlines the “direct connection between European prosperity and Asian security”. In their meetings, Ms. Mogherini and Foreign Minister Sushma Swaraj and National Security Adviser Ajit Doval should focus on converging foreign policy priorities into coordinated or common practices. Foremost is dealing with challenges in their shared extended neighbourhood, which stretches from Istanbul to Islamabad and from Moscow to Mauritius. This Eurasian arc of instability is of critical importance to Brussels and New Delhi’s aspirations to stabilise their regional peripheries.
•Afghanistan would be the logical starting point. Political coordination through an EU-India-Afghanistan trilateral, with regular security consultations to exchange assessments, could be the first step in this direction. The Indian Ocean region offers another potential area for cooperation.
•With uncertainty surrounding American commitments and the formidable rise of China, the EU and India will also have to stop ignoring the dragon in the room. Delhi is keen to counter China’s European offensive, including €50 billion worth of investments since 2000, a dialogue with the EU on the Belt and Road initiative, and the ‘16+1’ mechanism in eastern Europe. As Europe realises the costs of dependence on China, the EU must have a serious dialogue with India and other partners on how to pursue Eurasian connectivity plans that are truly multilateral and sustainable.
•Finally, the EU and India also have similar stakes in stronger international institutions and a liberal order that protects global commons cooperatively. If they agree to expand consultations on issues such as climate, trade and space, it is likely that Delhi and Brussels will find themselves agreeing far more times than usually expected.
Trading away our digital rights
India must first secure its digital sovereignty before it can begin global trade talks
•Global trade treaties are no longer just about reducing tariff. They represent a whole new global legal system supplanting national policy space and sovereignty, in the interest of global big business. With the digital phenomenon restructuring most social sectors, it is little surprise that global trade negotiations are now eyeing the digital area in an attempt to pre-emptively colonise it.
Who owns big data
•Big data is the key resource in the digital space. It is freely collected or mined from developing countries, and converted, or manufactured, into digital intelligence in developed countries, mostly the U.S. This digital intelligence forms a kind of “social brain” that begins to control different sectors and extract monopoly rents.
•Uber’s chief asset, for instance, is not a network of cars and drivers. It is digital intelligence about commuting, public transport, roads, traffic, city events, personal behavioural characteristics of commuters and drivers, and so on.
•To judge how the digital society is shaping, just extrapolate this situation to every sector; not only the regular commercial ones but also key social areas of education, health, agriculture, and, indeed, governance.
•It is important to frame who owns data and digital intelligence, and how their value should be socially distributed. Most key data required for policymaking is increasingly with global data companies. Would the society or government then buy data and intelligence even for crucial public purposes from these digital companies, when the data actually come from our various social and personal interactions over digital platforms? Does the ownership of the platform give corporations economic ownership of all the data so produced? Is ownership of data of sensitive sectors to be treated differently? These are key political economy questions that must be sorted out first.
Accessing the network
•Fronting for the global big business, developed countries make three key demands at digital trade talks. The first is a free and unhindered access to the “network” running throughout our society to mine social and personal data from every nook and corner. This includes full access to local networks, right to set up networks, no custom duties on digital goods, no requirement of local presence, no local technology use or technology standards commitments, and no source code transparency for digital applications that run through our social and personal spaces. Basically, India must give up its right to regulate digital technologies and networks within its territory.
•Such regulation is required to ensure an equal playing field, open standards, privacy and security-related protections, promoting local technology content and other positive discriminations, like for open-source software which is Indian policy for public sector use, and for economic and social protections. We are being asked to give up our technology or digital sovereignty even before we have been able to identify and institute our digital rights, policies, laws and regulation.
•The second demand in trade discussions is of ensuring completely free flow of data across borders, with no requirement of local storing, even for sensitive sectors like governance, banking, health, etc. Free global flow of data is a significant expression of self-declared ownership by global digital corporations over the social and personal data that they collect from everywhere, including India. The third key demand is the exclusion from future regulation of all services other than those already committed to a negative list, which will of course include e-versions of every sector.
•India has been resisting global digital trade negotiations. But attempts will be made to flatter its self-image of an IT or digital superpower to seek concessions. India’s global IT business relationships are largely B2B where the principal party is abroad, and owns the involved data.
•India has much native technical and entrepreneurial capabilities in the digital area, and to match them, a huge domestic market. Conditions are extremely good for developing strong domestic digital industry. But for this, India must stave off pressure for entering into binding global commitments that would forever kill any such prospects, apart from disabling Indian policymakers from appropriately regulating the digitisation of various sectors.
•The WTO ministerial in Argentina in December 2017 will be a key battleground for whether WTO should start negotiating digital trade issues. These issues also figure in the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership talks among ASEAN-plus countries (including India). India must resist any digital trade negotiations at this time. It has little to gain from them, and much to lose. It must first build its digital sovereignty — and digital rights — before it can begin negotiating a part of it in global trade talks.
Auctions may help private coal miners tap 100 million tonnes
CIL gears up to compete with private competition for the first time since 1973
•Private players will be able to bid for mines with about 100 million tonnes of coal reserves in the initial phase of auctions for commercial mining rights, a top Coal Ministry official said.
•The auction will follow a simple and transparent process for selecting eligible bidders, he said.
•“Today is certainly the right time for allowing commercial mining. The leverage of interested parties to disrupt the supply of coal is minimal, so the timing is right,” said Vivek Bharadwaj, Joint Secretary in the Coal Ministry, brushing aside concerns about the timing of the auctions expected to be held this year
•“The commercial miners will certainly find a way to service their own customers. I can tell you that the mines are not of just 70-75 million tonnes, they have an aggregate capacity of 100 million tonnes and if their mining plans are revised, it can go up further. Getting 10% share of the market will certainly make a huge impact on the total (coal) market,” Mr Bharadwaj said, addressing industry members at a coal conference hosted by Assocham.
•Public sector major Coal India Limited is gearing up to compete with private competition for the first time since 1973 when coal blocks were nationalised and will shut down all unviable mines in the coming years, the official added.
‘Positive disruption’
•Allowing competition in the commercial mining space will create a positive disruption in the market, the official said, citing the precedents of the BSE, State Bank of India and MTNL that once dominated the market but now compete with large new players in their respective sectors. While an Indian consumer can buy anything from petroleum to aeroplanes, the regulated commodity of coal has no retail market.
•“If commercial mining can create a market for coal, and I see no reason why there shouldn’t be one, then we can even have a coal price index,” Mr. Bharadwaj said, adding that till that happens, prices will have to be indexed on the basis of other countries’ data.
•The eligibility criteria for bidders will be kept simple and the auction process would be absolutely transparent, the official said, promising there would be no complicated norms specifying net worth or experience of the bidders and assigning weightage to different factors.
•Coal India is gearing up to meet competition from private miners and will shut down all unviable mining operations over the next couple of years, he said.
•“Coal India is closing 37 unviable mines this year. Going forward, they will close several more and in the next two years, you will have no unviable coal mining in Coal India,” Mr. Bharadwaj said. He, however, said the private miners must not try to become more efficient just by exploiting cheap labour.
•“Primarily, the cost structure of Coal India comes from its high labour costs.
•If the efficiency of the private sector is coming from exploitation of labour, that is not something to be proud of. If the worker isn’t happy, somewhere down the line, it will reflect on the firm’s bottomline,” the Joint Secretary said.
MPC warns of upside risks to inflation
One member mulled a rate increase
•While all the six members of the monetary policy committee of the Reserve Bank of India (RBI), that sets interest rates, voted in favour of a status quo, one member discussed the possibility of increasing the rate to achieve the 4% retail inflation target over the medium-term, according to the minutes of the meeting.
•In the first bi-monthly monetary policy review of 2017-18, the RBI decided to keep the policy interest rate unchanged at 6.25%. “I believe that a pre-emptive 25 basis points increase in the policy rate now will point us better at the target of 4% to which the Committee has committed explicitly,” said Michael Debabrata Patra, executive director in charge of monetary policy and a member of MPC, in a statement posted on its website.
•“It will also obviate the need for back-loaded policy action later when inflation is unacceptably high and entrenched. On balance, however, I vote for holding the policy rate unchanged in this bi-monthly meeting,” he said adding he would wait for more data.
•RBI governor Urjit Patel said that vegetable prices, which declined sharply during November 2016 to January 2017, seems to have stabilised but may rise in the coming months due to a seasonal pick up. “The outlook for inflation faces several other risks.”
