BJP choice takes Oppn. by surprise
Party’s parliamentary board picks Bihar Governor Ram Nath Kovind as presidential candidate
•BJP president Amit Shah on Monday declared Bihar Governor Ram Nath Kovind, 71, as the party’s candidate for the presidential polls, taking the Opposition by surprise. Mr. Kovind would also be the joint candidate of the National Democratic Alliance (NDA), headed by the BJP.
•The decision was taken at the party’s parliamentary board, presided over by Prime Minister Narendra Modi and attended by Mr. Shah and senior Ministers of the Union government.
•“Ramnathji has always spoken for the deprived sections, and has had a long career in speaking out for Dalits and oppressed sections,” said Mr. Shah, while making the announcement. The reference to Mr. Kovind’s attributes as the voice of the weaker sections and Dalits is a very strong signal of the BJP’s moves through the years to shed its upper caste image, and appeal to a wider section of society.
•He will be the second Dalit President India has had since the late K.R. Narayanan was elected to the office in 1997. As a party insider, having held many posts in both the Uttar Pradesh BJP unit and at the national level, Mr. Kovind will also be the first from the party fold to make it to the Rahstrapati Bhavan.
•BJP leaders said four sets of nomination papers had been prepared, with the Prime Minister, the BJP chief, Akali Dal leader Parkash Singh Badal and Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister N. Chandrababu Naidu as the first proposers. Union Parliamentary Affairs Minister H.N. Anantha Kumar, Minister of State for Parliamentary Affairs Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi and BJP chief whip Rakesh Singh arrange for the other signatures on these papers. The nomination papers will, in all likelihood, be filed on June 23.
A farmer’s son: PM
•Mr. Modi, who called Congress president Sonia Gandhi and former PM Manmohan Singh after the meeting, described Mr. Kovind as “a farmer’s son, who comes from a humble background” and who has “devoted his life to public service and worked for the poor and marginalised.”
•“With his illustrious background in the legal arena, Shri Kovind’s knowledge and understanding of the Constitution will benefit the nation. I am sure Shri Ram Nath Kovind will make an exceptional president and continue to be a strong voice for the poor, downtrodden and marginalised,” Mr. Modi tweeted after the decision of the parliamentary board meeting became public.
•Mr. Kovind, 71, has been associated with the RSS and causes related to Dalits. He was a member of the Rajya Sabha twice, from 1994 to 2006, before being appointed Bihar Governor in 2015. He was the general secretary of the Akhil Bharatiya Koli Samaj in Kanpur (the Koli community is mainly engaged in weaving), and the national president of the BJP Scheduled Caste Morcha. A trained lawyer, he became advocate on record in the Supreme Court in the 1970s. Mr. Kovind’s record within the BJP has been steady, if uneventful.
•His roots in rural Kanpur are also being seen as a way of bolstering the party among the Dalits of Uttar Pradesh. The State’s Saharanpur district has been the scene of violent clashes between the upper castes and the Dalits after the new BJP government took charge. This move will, BJP hopes, reinforce its recent successes in co-opting Dalit communities into its fold, the larger project of consolidation of a mass base that it envisages for itself.
•The move will also put several parties, including Bahujan Samaj Party and the Janata Dal (United) in a spot over how to oppose a candidate from the Dalit community, who has held high constitutional office before.
BRICS backs India’s fight against terrorism: Singh
Calls for a broad international counter-terrorism coalition
•India on Monday urged the BRICS to step up the fight against global terrorism, amid consensus within the group to back economic globalisation and speak with one voice to counter climate change. “On behalf of India, I pointed out that terrorism remains the most potent global menace and threatens global peace,” Minister of State for External Affairs V.K. Singh said after the first meeting of BRICS Foreign Ministers. “And terrorists cannot be differentiated by calling them good or bad,” he said.
UN convention
•Gen. (retd) Singh said the BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa) supported India’s call for early adoption of a comprehensive UN convention against international terrorism.
•A joint statement released at the end of the conference condemned “terrorism in all its forms and manifestations wherever committed and by whomsoever”. It also called for a “genuinely broad international counter-terrorism coalition” and underscored “the responsibility of all states to prevent financing of terrorist networks and terrorist actions from their territories”.
•The statement backed the Paris agreement on climate change — a reaffirmation that assumes importance after the U.S. pulled out of the pact. In view of the rise of economic nationalism in the U.S. and parts of Europe, the Ministers reiterated their support for more balanced economic globalisation, rejection of protectionism and renewal of their commitment to global trade and investment, conducive to an equitable, inclusive innovative, invigorated and interconnected world economy.
•Besides, the foreign ministers welcomed the second BRICS Consultation on UN Peacekeeping Affairs to be held in Beijing in July.
•Earlier Gen. (retired) Singh said that at his meeting with Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi, he said New Delhi looked forward “to strengthening its strategic partnership and mutual dialogue” with China.
Russia threatens to target U.S. warplanes over Syria
Halts military hotline after American jet shoots down Syrian aircraft
•Russia condemned on Monday the U.S. military’s downing of a Syrian warplane and suspended the use of a military hotline that Washington and Moscow have used to avoid collisions in Syrian airspace. Russia also threatened to target aircraft flown by the U.S. and its allies over Syria.
•The Russian military has halted cooperation in the past — notably after President Donald Trump ordered the launch of missiles against a Syrian air base in April — and it was not clear whether the latest action would be lasting. Nonetheless, it was the most recent example of the intensifying clash of words and interests between the two powers, which back different sides in Syria’s civil war.
•An American F/A-18 jet shot down the Syrian government plane south of the town of Tabhah on Sunday, after it dropped bombs near local ground forces supported by the U.S. It was the first time the U.S. military had downed a Syrian aircraft since the civil war began in the country in 2011.
•In response, the Russian Defense Ministry called U.S. attacks against the Syrian forces “military aggression” and announced that it would suspend cooperation with the U.S. intended to prevent airborne accidents over Syria. “All flying objects, including planes and drones of the international coalition, detected west of the Euphrates, will be followed by Russian air defence systems as targets,” the Russian Defence Ministry said.
Preventing clashes
•Weeks after President Vladimir Putin ordered Russian military forces to Syria in September 2015 to prop up the regime of President Bashar Assad, Russia and the U.S. signed a memorandum on preventing air incidents between the two countries.
•Since then, the agreement has been a crucial link that has allowed Moscow and Washington to coordinate their military actions in the region, in which Iran, Israel, Russia, Syria, Turkey, and the U.S. with its allies carry out attacks in pursuit of often competing aims.
•However, the agreement has also appeared to provide leverage for Moscow each time the situation has threatened to escalate.
•After Mr. Trump ordered the attack on the Syrian air base in April, Russia said it would suspend the agreement. But weeks later, the Russian and U.S. militaries continued to use the hotline, with the number of calls increasing, American officials said.NYT
India objects to BRICS supporting China’s BRI
Talks are on to find common ground
•India and China are working together to find common ground ahead of the BRICS summit in September, despite their differences over docking the Beijing-led Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) with the grouping in the future.
•The Hindu has learnt that at a conference of the political parties, think-tanks and civil society groups of the BRICS countries held in Fuzhou, Indian and Chinese delegates failed to arrive at a consensus that the five emerging economies should formally support the BRI. Brazil, Russia and South Africa are the other members in the BRICS grouping. The Fuzhou conference, organised by the Communist Party of China, is widely seen as an important component in framing the outcome of the BRICS summit, which will be held in the Chinese coastal city of Xiamen.
•The differences between the two delegations became evident when the text of the Fuzhou Initiative, released at the end of the conference, was changed, on the insistence of India.
‘Great significance’
•Paragraph 14 of the first document’s first version had commended “the Belt and Road Initiative proposed by China” for its “great significance for achieving development in developing countries…” However, since a consensus could not be achieved, the entire paragraph was dropped in the final version, which was finally adopted at the conference. A source privy to closed door deliberations, which resulted in recommendations for the BRICS summit as a separate “outcome” document, said that Indian side, nevertheless, expressed its willingness to support individual connectivity projects, provided they were not tied up with the BRI.
•India had boycotted last month’s Belt and Road Forum, hosted by China for promoting the BRI.
Legislation and legality
In the Aadhaar-PAN case, the Supreme Court has effectively held that policy goals override rights
•At one point in its recently delivered judgment, in Binoy Viswam v. Union of India, the Supreme Court described the dispute over Section 139AA of the Income Tax Act, 1961, as falling within a category of what “Ronald Dworkin calls ‘hard cases’”. The petitioners before the court had argued that the provision, which makes it obligatory on individuals filing income tax returns to link their permanent account numbers (PAN) to their Aadhaar, was unconstitutional as it, among other things, infringed a number of fundamental rights.
•The court, however, in declaring this case as “hard”, was effectively telling us that its abilities were somehow hamstrung by the nature of the dispute, that despite the strength of the petitioners’ arguments there existed principled reasons why it might be difficult for it to intervene. Unfortunately, this assertion flies in the face of American philosopher-jurist Dworkin’s ideas which the court sought to invoke.
•While at first blush, a quibble over this categorisation might seem a largely frivolous concern, seeing as it is made on apparently pedantic grounds, in reality the court’s mistake here goes to the root of why it got its decision inBinoy Viswam as it did, and why it so often fails to uphold critical civil liberties when faced with acts of governmental coercion.
Dworkin’s ‘hard cases’
•For Dworkin, “hard cases” are those disputes where “no settled rule dictates a decision either way”, and where, therefore, “it might seem that a proper decision could be generated by either policy or principle.” In other words, they encompass cases where there exists a particularly knotty controversy over deciding what the law really is, where an application of differing value judgments could plausibly result in contradictory identifications of the law.
•To illuminate this point, in his book, Law’s Empire , Dworkin cites McLoughlin v. O’Brian , a 1983 House of Lords case involving an automobile accident. Here, Ms. McLoughlin’s husband and four children were injured after their car was hit by a lorry. She only heard about the accident a few hours later, and when she drove to the hospital where the rest of her family was admitted, she was told that one child had died and the others were seriously injured. Ms. McLoughlin, as a result of these revelations, suffered a nervous shock, and she later sued the lorry driver whose negligence had caused the accident.
•This case, in Dworkin’s belief, was “hard” because there was no existing precedent where a person was awarded damages despite being absent from the scene of the accident. To decide such a case, Dworkin said, a judge must view “law as integrity”, that “propositions of law are true if they are derived from principles of justice, fairness and procedural due process, which provide the best constructive interpretation of the community’s legal practice.” In other words, a judge deciding such a dispute must test her interpretation by asking whether her decision could form part of a coherent theory that justifies the entire network of political structure and legal doctrine of their community.
•The issues in Binoy Viswam , however, called for no such Herculean interpretive exercise. Nor did it require the court to indulge in any lawmaking. The facts were simple enough, and the court, notwithstanding its assertions to the contrary, did not have to decide on the “wisdom of the Legislature in enacting a particular law”, but merely on its constitutionality. To do this, it only had to apply existing precedent to rule on whether Section 139AA violated one or the other of the fundamental rights guaranteed in Part III of the Constitution. Regrettably, the court’s answers to these basic questions are patently misjudged.
•Despite keeping arguments over privacy outside the scope of their submissions — given that a larger bench of the Supreme Court has been asked to rule on whether India’s citizens possess a fundamental right to privacy at all — there were a number of acute arguments that were made to show the court that Section 139AA violated the rights to equality, to practise any profession, and to personal liberty of the petitioners. However, each of these arguments was dismissed almost on the singular ground that the state has a legitimate interest in making classifications to effectuate its policy decisions. This might seem like an unexceptionable proposition. But in effectively holding that the government has the power to undermine rights to achieve policy goals (an ironic conclusion given that Dworkin, who the court relies on, championed rights as trumps) the court has accepted, sans reasons, sweeping conclusions drawn by the state.
Casting away concerns
•For instance, the court altogether rejected the contention that the Income Tax Act cannot make Aadhaar compulsory when the core legislation, the Aadhaar (Targeted Delivery of Financial & Other Subsidies, Benefits & Services) Act, 2016, makes enrolment in the scheme voluntary. The court did this by accepting as gospel truth the state’s arguments that the linking of Aadhaar and PAN can help eradicate the ills of tax evasion caused by a proliferation of black money. Several significant concerns highlighted by the petitioners, which showed that both biometric details and iris scans can be forged, were also swept aside without so much as a mention. As a result, the state’s argument was allowed to stand, in spite of the fact that almost no rational nexus has been shown to exist between the government’s purported aim of eradicating black money and the classification that Section 139AA makes in compelling individuals alone to secure a unique identity.
•The court showed a similar disdain in dismissing arguments made on the arbitrariness that is inherent in Section 139AA. The reasons supplied by the petitioners on why the linking of Aadhaar and PAN is capricious were wholly ignored. For example, the judgment failed to heed to the fact that the consequences of an invalidation of a person’s PAN might result in a virtual “civil death”, as the senior counsel Arvind P. Datar, who represented one of the petitioners, described the provision. Instead the court invoked the proposition that a legislation cannot be struck down on grounds of arbitrariness alone. To do this, it relied on the verdict from 2015 in Rajbala v. State of Haryana , ignoring, in the process, a mountain of earlier precedent where arbitrary state action, including by way of legislation, has been held as antithetical to the guarantee of equality.
•Now, it’s plain to see that even if Parliament represents the interests of the people, any legislation made by it is a product of the proclivities of the government in power. To check whether a legislation is arbitrary or not is not to question the wisdom of the legislature, but rather to examine whether the classifications that a law makes are rational and to scrutinise whether Parliament has exercised judgment by responding to reasoned analysis as opposed to the whims of motivated interest groups. Here, the court finds no need for such an inquiry because a legislation, it holds, cannot be subject to judicial review for being purely arbitrary.
•Arguments on how Section 139AA violates a person’s right to practise any profession or carry on any trade under Article 19(1)(g) also met with a similar fate. And this cloud has only the thinnest of silver linings — when a Constitution Bench eventually decides on whether Aadhaar as a collective policy infringes the rights to privacy and bodily integrity (if indeed such liberties are deemed as fundamental guarantees), there remains the possibility that Section 139AA may be rendered void.
•But, for now, we’re left with a deeply undesirable and unsatisfactory outcome: all those who already possess an Aadhaar card must integrate it with their PAN, regardless of whether they ever imagined having to submit to such a burden at the time of securing the identity, and where any person who files an income tax return after July 1 must have, at the least, applied for a unique identity. As to how this distinction is constitutionally sustainable, the court tells us little. Ultimately, this wasn’t a “hard case” to decide. But by getting its conclusions as it has, the judgment’s consequences are certainly likely to prove difficult, imposing, as they do, an unreasonable burden on our essential civil liberties.
An unpredictable voyage
The Prime Minister will be walking on thin ice when he visits the White House
•Prime Minister Narendra Modi will be on the most hazardous journey of his political-diplomatic life towards the end of June for his maiden encounter with U.S. President Donald Trump. Not only is Mr. Modi’s greatest achievement, the new heights India-U.S. relations had scaled in 2016, in jeopardy but also the White House itself is in turmoil with former FBI director James Comey’s testimony before the Senate Intelligence Committee and the Senate’s invitation to Mr. Trump to testify. The results of Mr. Modi’s visit could be as unpredictable as the personality of Mr. Trump, regardless of the charm offensive that the Prime Minister is capable of.
•India had identified several streaks in the personality of Mr. Trump, even in the days of the election campaign, which held out a glimmer of hope for better bilateral relations. Foremost among them was an indication that he would follow a policy of containment against China, in contrast to his predecessor Barack Obama’s policy of calibrated cooperation. Mr. Trump had called China a currency manipulator that had to be countered in the interests of the U.S. economy. But the moment the North Korea crisis became critical, he embraced China.
Targeting terror
•Another straw in the wind was Mr. Trump’s extreme antagonism towards the Islamic world, which found expression in the travel ban against designated countries. The stated reason for the ban was terrorism, but the worst exporters of terrorism, like Pakistan, were excluded. Later, Mr. Trump surprised everyone by making his first visit abroad to Saudi Arabia, where he gave many other Muslim-majority countries a sermon on terrorism without uttering a word of criticism on Riyadh’s human rights record. Further, another tranche of reimbursement was made to Pakistan for fighting terror in Afghanistan. Mr. Modi’s concerns over cross-border terrorism are not likely to get a sympathetic hearing in Washington.
•Mr. Trump’s business interests in India were another reason for optimism. But his ‘America first’ approach may well contradict Mr. Modi’s ‘Make in India’ and ‘Digital India’ initiatives. Even co-designing and co-production of defence equipment, which formed the basis of the new symphony in India-U.S. relations, may not stand Mr. Trump’s scrutiny by his own standards of what is considered to be in the U.S.’s interests.
•The litmus test of Mr. Trump’s goodwill towards India was to be his policy on the information technology (IT) industry, but it has failed because of the restrictions he has imposed on H-1B visas. Replacing Indian IT professionals with American ones will only hurt the U.S.’s business interests. In any case, it will take six to seven years for the U.S. to replace all Indians. This may be on the top of Mr. Modi’s agenda and a setback on this issue may sour bilateral relations.
•A reason for India’s likely disillusionment on these issues is that Mr. Modi is expected to seek a reinstatement of Mr. Obama’s architecture on India-U.S. relations, an edifice Mr. Trump is determined to demolish. He did not spare India even while disowning the Paris Agreement on climate change as he said that one reason for his decision was that India was demanding “billions and billions and billions” of dollars to implement the pact. The remarks were unwarranted as India has always been sensitive to the views of developed countries during climate negotiations.
Offering an arms deal
•The real test for Mr. Modi lies in whether he has anything in his bag to offer Mr. Trump to overcome these hurdles. His penchant for personal chemistry may be counterproductive with Mr. Trump. The experiences of Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and French President Emmanuel Macron in shaking hands with Mr. Trump have been disastrous.
•One way to handle the visit is to steer the discussion towards matters of primary interest to Mr. Trump. His visit to Saudi Arabia has shown that huge arms sales agreements are his weakness. Though we may not be able to match the Saudi figures, purchase of arms may help even if it contradicts our efforts to escape our reputation as the biggest importer of weapons. Mr. Modi will do well to collect the shopping lists of our service chiefs before boarding his flight. Since creating jobs in the U.S. is Mr. Trump’s first priority, a few good orders for U.S.-made weapons may gladden his heart.
•By the same token, Mr. Modi could look at the nuclear trade with the U.S., though he has embarked on an indigenous programme and also signed up for the next stage in Kudankulam with Russian President Vladimir Putin. Westinghouse has gone bankrupt and cannot build the six reactors we had contracted for with Mr. Obama. The solution to the liability law issue proposed by Mr. Modi, which earned him the reputation of a man of action, has not taken off at all. Of course, Mr. Trump’s views on nuclear trade with India are not known, even though the nuclear deal was the handiwork of fellow Republican George W. Bush.
Trump’s climate-change denial
•On climate change, Mr. Modi had a very good chance to be on the same side as Mr. Trump if India had supported a renegotiation of the Paris Agreement. It is no secret that Mr. Modi was not fully satisfied with the Paris Accord and had contemplated not ratifying it unless India got membership of the Nuclear Suppliers Group. The argument was that India would not be able to reduce greenhouse gas emissions unless it enhances its nuclear power generation. But Mr. Modi later vowed his allegiance to the Paris Agreement. An ambiguous line on Paris may have been to our advantage.
•With the liabilities outweighing the assets that he is carrying to Washington and the unconventional diplomacy of Mr. Trump, Mr. Modi will be walking on thin ice in the Oval Office.
•The first time he entered the Oval Office, its then occupant had begun by congratulating Mr. Modi on the welcome he had earlier received from the Indian community in the Madison Square Garden. Perhaps, Shalabh Kumar and his Hindu constituency may organise a matching performance to impress the current occupant. But for the inward-looking Mr. Trump, who has shown indifference to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and hostility towards the Paris Agreement and other international commitments, a massive gathering of Indian immigrants may well be a provocation.
•India should wish its Prime Minister well in his most difficult voyage. At this moment of a thorough reshaping of international relations, conflicting trends in recent elections in France and the U.K. and a decline of the post-Second World War dispensation, India simply cannot afford to lose out. Together with German and Chinese, a mixture of Indian English and Hindi must also prevail on the international stage.
End the violence
And take steps to empower the Gorkhaland Territorial Administration
•Longstanding issues such as the demand for a separate state of Gorkhaland in the Darjeeling Hills of West Bengal cannot be wished away with a magic wand. State Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee appears to think otherwise, as if charisma, short-term political tactics, and tokenism are enough. Ms. Banerjee had claimed to have solved the Gorkhaland issue after agreeing to the semi-autonomous Gorkhaland Territorial Administration in 2011, following a series of agitations by the Gorkha Janmukti Morcha. In the years since its establishment, little has been done on the ground to transfer many of the subjects to the body as was promised, rendering the notion of autonomous rule in the Hills rather moot. The hold of the GJM in the Hills was sought to be broken by reaching out to indigenous communities in the region through the creation of various tribal development boards. The GJM, on the other hand, believes that the GTA is just a stepping stone for the creation of a separate State. Legitimate grievances with the West Bengal government on transfer of powers to the GTA aside, the GJM, which has ruled the Authority, too has been guilty of lackadaisical administration. The party also mirrors Ms. Banerjee’s Trinamool Congress in Machiavellian tactics, such as dovetailing with the Bharatiya Janata Party in parliamentary elections alone so as to secure support for the statehood demand. The ad hocism and tokenism shown by these two political parties in West Bengal are responsible for the renewed violence in the Darjeeling Hills. For its part, the BJP is caught in a bind — it seems to be sympathetic to the statehood demand, allied as it is to the GJM in the Hills, but is afraid to articulate it openly as it has ambitions in the rest of the State.
•The proximate cause for the flare-up in the Hills was the State government’s announcement that Bengali should be compulsorily taught in all schools in West Bengal till Class X. Earlier this month the government had also held a cabinet meeting in the Hills after many years, drawing a sharp response from the GJM and other separatist political forces that saw this as a ploy to undermine the GTA’s authority. Ms. Banerjee later clarified that Bengali was optional in the hill district, but this was not enough to assuage sentiments as the GJM sought to use this point to ramp up agitations. The whipping up of passions in the Hills has coincided with the rise of Bengali chauvinism in the plains in the recent past. This polarisation does not portend well. The State government must reach out to the GJM and work out a way to transfer powers to the GTA as was promised in 2011. A signal in this direction will go a long way in tamping down the violent agitation. It should also abandon its wishful thinking that short cuts can solve the intractable Gorkhaland issue, which is culturally rooted.
Origins of us
And take steps to empower the Gorkhaland Territorial Administration
•Longstanding issues such as the demand for a separate state of Gorkhaland in the Darjeeling Hills of West Bengal cannot be wished away with a magic wand. State Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee appears to think otherwise, as if charisma, short-term political tactics, and tokenism are enough. Ms. Banerjee had claimed to have solved the Gorkhaland issue after agreeing to the semi-autonomous Gorkhaland Territorial Administration in 2011, following a series of agitations by the Gorkha Janmukti Morcha. In the years since its establishment, little has been done on the ground to transfer many of the subjects to the body as was promised, rendering the notion of autonomous rule in the Hills rather moot. The hold of the GJM in the Hills was sought to be broken by reaching out to indigenous communities in the region through the creation of various tribal development boards. The GJM, on the other hand, believes that the GTA is just a stepping stone for the creation of a separate State. Legitimate grievances with the West Bengal government on transfer of powers to the GTA aside, the GJM, which has ruled the Authority, too has been guilty of lackadaisical administration. The party also mirrors Ms. Banerjee’s Trinamool Congress in Machiavellian tactics, such as dovetailing with the Bharatiya Janata Party in parliamentary elections alone so as to secure support for the statehood demand. The ad hocism and tokenism shown by these two political parties in West Bengal are responsible for the renewed violence in the Darjeeling Hills. For its part, the BJP is caught in a bind — it seems to be sympathetic to the statehood demand, allied as it is to the GJM in the Hills, but is afraid to articulate it openly as it has ambitions in the rest of the State.
•The proximate cause for the flare-up in the Hills was the State government’s announcement that Bengali should be compulsorily taught in all schools in West Bengal till Class X. Earlier this month the government had also held a cabinet meeting in the Hills after many years, drawing a sharp response from the GJM and other separatist political forces that saw this as a ploy to undermine the GTA’s authority. Ms. Banerjee later clarified that Bengali was optional in the hill district, but this was not enough to assuage sentiments as the GJM sought to use this point to ramp up agitations. The whipping up of passions in the Hills has coincided with the rise of Bengali chauvinism in the plains in the recent past. This polarisation does not portend well. The State government must reach out to the GJM and work out a way to transfer powers to the GTA as was promised in 2011. A signal in this direction will go a long way in tamping down the violent agitation. It should also abandon its wishful thinking that short cuts can solve the intractable Gorkhaland issue, which is culturally rooted.
SAARC start-ups meeting to work out mutually beneficial ideas
It could help build linkages for similar thinking minds, says Nirmala Sitharaman
•India will host a summit for start-ups from SAARC nations later this year to tap the complementarities that ventures across South Asia may bring to the table, Minister of State for Commerce and Industry Nirmala Sitharaman said on Monday
•“I am going to work towards having a SAARC countries’ meet for start-ups,” said Ms. Sitharaman.
•“Many things are happening simultaneously. Probably with such an exchange, you will know the wheel need not be reinvented but at the same time, mutually beneficial ideas can be worked out,” she said.
•The eight-member South Asian Association for Regional Co-operation (SAARC) could also be a forum that helps build linkages for similar thinking minds and start-ups, Ms.Sitharaman said.
•Apart from India, the SAARC includes Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, Nepal, Maldives, Pakistan and Sri Lanka.
‘Exchange of ideas’
•A similar dialogue is also being organised by the Centre between German and Indian start-ups, Ms.Sitharaman said.
•“There will be an exchange of ideas between the two countries’ start-ups, so our entrepreneurs can stay in touch with what’s happening there and if there are some things their government has done, that we could replicate,” the Minister explained.
•Fresh steps are on the anvil to help start-ups, including a new credit guarantee fund and extending the exemption from labour law inspections for a period of five years instead of the current benefit of three years, Industrial Policy and Promotion Secretary Ramesh Abhishek said earlier.
Credit guarantee fund
•“The Finance Ministry has just last week approved a new Credit Guarantee Fund for start-ups, under which they would be able to get a loan of Rs. 5 crore each without collateral… We hope to take this up to the Cabinet for approval by the end of July,” Mr. Abhishek said.
•While 12 states had advised their labour departments to allow start-ups to submit self-certification for compliance with six major labour laws for a period of three years, the secretary said the Centre now decided to extend this period to five years.
•Almost 85% of the 1300-odd start-ups that had been recognised for such benefits by the Union government belong to nine States.
