📰 Diplomacy at work to end border stand-off with China
MEA strikes measured note on the situation at the Sikkim tri-junction
•Diplomatic channels are still being used to resolve the stand-off between India and China despite rising rhetoric from Beijing, the Ministry of External Affairs said on Thursday, continuing to strike a measured note on the situation at the Sikkim tri-junction that has entered the second month.
•“We have diplomatic channels, we have embassies in both capitals that are available and they will continue to be used,” MEA spokesperson Gopal Baglay said, repeating Foreign Secretary S. Jaishankar’s comments on Tuesday that India and China were a “factor of stability” in a turbulent world, and that Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Chinese President Xi Jinping had agreed not to allow “differences to become disputes.”
•“The Foreign Secretary’s speech underlines our approach. We are very sure of the approach we are taking on this issue,” Mr. Baglay said, refusing to be drawn out on comments from the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs that have repeatedly repudiated the MEA’s comments and have denied the contention that Mr. Modi and Mr. Xi had a substantial conversation on the sidelines of the G20, and Mr. Jaishankar’s statement that the stand-off mirrors previous such encounters.
•“[It] is utterly different in nature from the previous frictions between the two sides at the undefined sections of the China-India boundary,” Chinese spokesperson Geng Shuang said on Wednesday, again urging India to immediately pull its troops back and “properly settle this incident.”
No confirmation
•However, the MEA spokesperson didn’t confirm or deny if National Security Adviser Ajit Doval would travel to Beijing for a scheduled meeting of the NSAs of all BRICS countries on July 27-28, ahead of the BRICS summit in Xiamen in September that Prime Minister Narendra Modi will attend. Despite the tensions over the Doklam situation, the government has been sending Ministers and officials for the BRICS meetings on Agriculture, Education, Culture and Environment, held in China in June and July.
•Mr. Baglay also refused to respond to the state-owned China People’s Daily publishing a repeat of an editorial from 1962 just before the Sino-Indian War, saying that he wouldn’t “comment on opinions or editorials in the media.”
•However, India dismissed the Chinese spokesperson’s reference to the Kashmir issue unequivocally. “We have seen the report that they said Kashmir is central to peace and stability in the region. Our stand is absolutely clear. At the heart of the matter is cross-border terrorism perpetrated on the people of India, including the people of Jammu and Kashmir... As far as the Kashmir issue is concerned, we have been ready to have dialogue on all issues with Pakistan, but in a bilateral framework,” the spokesperson said.
📰 Tribunal prohibits dumping of waste near Ganga banks
Green Tribunal for ‘No Development Zone’ close to river
•An area of 100 metres from the edge of the Ganga between Haridwar and Unnao has been declared a ‘No Development Zone,’ with the National Green Tribunal (NGT) on Thursday prohibiting dumping of waste within 500 metres of the river.
•An environment compensation of Rs. 50,000 will be imposed on anyone dumping waste in the river.
•The NGT also directed the Uttar Pradesh and Uttarakhand governments to formulate guidelines for religious activities on the ghats of the Ganga and its tributaries.
•The order said: “Till the demarcation of floodplains and identification of permissible and non-permissible activities by the State government, we direct that 100 metres from the edge of the river would be treated as no development/construction zone between Haridwar to Unnao in Uttar Pradesh.”
Order on PIL petition
•Giving its verdict on a 1985 PIL petition of environment activist and lawyer M.C. Mehta — which was transferred to the NGT from the Supreme Court in 2014 — a Bench headed by NGT Chairperson Justice Swatanter Kumar said the authorities concerned should complete projects, including a sewage treatment plant and cleaning of drains, within two years. “The Uttar Pradesh government is duty-bound to shift tanneries, within six weeks, from Jajmau in Kanpur to leather parks in Unnao or any other place it considers appropriate.”
Supervisory panel
•The court also appointed a supervisory committee, headed by the Secretary of the Water Resources Ministry and comprising IIT professors and officials of the Uttar Pradesh government, to oversee implementation of the directions passed in its verdict. The committee is to submit reports at regular intervals.
•The Bench further noted that all industrial units in the catchment areas of the Ganga should be stopped from indiscriminate groundwater extraction.
•The green court reiterated its earlier order of a ban on mechanical mining in the Ganga and said, “No in-stream mechanical mining is permitted and even the mining on the floodplain should be semi-mechanical and preferably more manual.”
•“Such mining should be permitted only after a detailed and comprehensive assessment of the annual replenishment of sand and gravel in the riverbed and ensuring that the connectivity of the river is not distur- bed and that only a quantity less or equal to the annual replenishment is permitted to be removed from the riverbed or the banks,” it said.
📰 PM’s task force recommends scrapping 5-yearly job survey
Move comes amid criticism about the lack of adequate jobs
•The Prime Minister-appointed task force has recommended that traditional Employment-Unemployment Surveys carried out by the National Sample Survey Office (NSSO) every five years be scrapped.
•The panel has instead suggested a new periodic labour force survey to provide estimates of labour force, employment, unemployment, nature of employment and industry. To get more frequent employment trends data, an urban module of this survey will be updated every quarter. The recommendation comes amidst criticism about the lack of adequate jobs as well as a debate over jobs cuts in the economy.
•However, refuting criticism, the task force, headed by NITI Aayog Vice Chairman Arvind Panagariya, in the report has mentioned that “much of the recent debate on jobs in the media has relied on the estimates from the Quarterly Enterprise Surveys,” which has “severe limitations”.
•QES conducted by Labour Bureau measure employment in eight broad sectors of industry and services.
Seeking comments
•The Centre has sought comments on the recommendations made public on Thursday by July 23. A time use survey should also be conducted at three year intervals to provide data on time spent in various occupations and non-market activities, the panel said.
•“This survey will collect information on how individuals allocate their time over a specified time period, usually a day or a week.” The survey will help track how time spent by households has been changing and measure women’s participation in unpaid work. Centre can tap the GST Network database as a sample frame for a new annual survey of enterprises.
📰 Is CBI the handmaiden of the government?
The CBI has to be placed under an independent body to investigate cases without government interference
•The Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) acts largely at the behest of the government of the day and this becomes quite obvious from the things done and not done. Take the cases of Mulayam Singh Yadav or Mayawati. Whenever the government wanted to put pressure on them, the CBI was used to pursue the case of disproportionate assets against them. When the politicians came around, the case went cold. If you recall, it just went back and forth.
•It is in this context that we need to understand Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s statement in February warning the Congress Party: zabaan sambhaal kar rakho, warna mere paas aapki poori janam patri padi hui hai (Hold your tongue, I have your entire horoscope). What did he mean by the statement? The present government has even put pressure on the judiciary.
Its master’s voice
•Similar questions will be asked about the current raids on Lalu Prasad — specially the timing and the manner in which the raids are being conducted.
•I am not saying there is no case against Mr. Prasad, it is a 10-year-old case. What I am arguing is, whether the CBI acts or not depends on the political will of its master. In this case, there is a clear indication that the Modi government wants Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar to break ranks with Mr. Prasad. There are many such instances.
Air India case
•Take Air India, for instance. We have been arguing for the last six years about corruption in the Civil Aviation Ministry during Praful Patel’s tenure — which is also part of the book, The Descent of Air India , by the former Managing Director of Air India, Jitender Bhargava. But look what happened.
•Our petition dragged on for six years and only recently after the Supreme Court asked the CBI to take a view has the matter moved.
•The CBI has filed an FIR. But again, the circumstances under which action is now being taken raises question on the timing of the case.
Why not then? And why now? Is the move linked to pressurising Mr. Patel in any manner and if so, to what end?
•We can go as far back as the Bofors case to understand how the CBI has been used by successive governments to work for them.
•I could give you more examples. Take the case of former Chief Minister of Karnataka, B.S. Yeddyurappa, who had been chargesheeted by the CBI in the case involving donations made to his trust by miners who obtained contracts.
•The court has let off the former CM. Why didn’t the CBI appeal against the order? The silence is deafening.
Need for autonomy
•The movement against corruption, or the Lokpal movement, had made a plain argument when it sought the delinking of the CBI from the administrative control of the government. In that as long as the government of the day has the power to transfer and post officials of its choice in the CBI, the investigating agency will not enjoy autonomy and will be unable to investigate cases freely.
•Then again, there are instances of corrupt officers in the CBI who become pliable in the hands of the government. The CBI has to be placed under an independent body.
•Then again, there are instances of corrupt officers in the CBI who become pliable in the hands of the government. Who can forget the tenure of Ranjit Sinha?
•The CBI has to be placed under an independent body.
•The CBI, Income Tax Department and the Enforcement Directorate are three instruments which the government has used for political purposes and the pressure they apply is always by way of inaction. They act only when the government wants them to act.
📰 The Islamic State after Mosul
Like al-Qaeda before it, the IS is expanding its asymmetric reach as its territorial strongholds come under attack
•Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi declared the end of the ‘Caliphate’ late last month after his troops captured the Grand al-Nuri Mosque in Mosul from where Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi proclaimed himself the ‘Caliph’ of the world’s Muslims three years ago. The 12th century mosque, whose famed leaning minaret had been adorned with the black flag of the Islamic State (IS) since June 2014, was a symbol of power for the jihadists, so much so that they blew it away and retreated as the Iraqi troops closed in. Within weeks, Mr. Abadi was in Mosul to formally announce the liberation of Iraq’s second largest city.
•It’s no small achievement for an army which fled Mosul in droves when IS fighters marched in three years ago. The IS ruled the city with an iron fist ever since and expanded its influence beyond the city limits. The Iraqi army took months to recover from the humiliation it suffered and launched a counter-terror campaign with help from Iran-trained militias and the U.S. Air Force. They liberated small cities first, such as Ramadi and Fallujah, before finally moving towards Mosul in October last year. The Kurdish Peshmerga also joined in, while the U.S. carried out a massive air campaign. In nine months the IS lost Mosul, the jewel of its Caliphate.
•This is in line with the military setbacks the group has suffered in recent months. It has lost more than half of the territories it once held. Its propaganda blitzkrieg has taken a hit and even its ability to recruit new jihadists is under strain in the wake of battlefield losses. Its leader Baghdadi is either dead or on the run. But do these setbacks mean the IS is defeated? Has the 21st century ‘Caliphate’ run its course? The ground realities and a historical analysis of the evolution of the IS suggest otherwise.
Down but not out
•First, the IS’s proto-state is not completely destroyed yet and it will not be in the immediate future. Though it lost Mosul, the IS still controls swathes of strategic territories in Iraq. Hawijah, a city adjoining Kirkuk that has been with the IS since 2013, continues to pose challenges to the Iraqi troops. The city’s mountainous terrain makes it difficult for the counter-terror forces to move in.
•Besides Hawijah, the group controls Tal Afar, Salahuddin province and pockets in Anbar and Diyala. In Syria, it still controls Raqqa, its de facto capital which has been with the group since 2013, and Deir Ezzor, the largest city in the east. The battle to recapture Raqqa has just begun by the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) and will take time like other anti-IS battles.
•Second, there’s no guarantee that the IS won’t come back to the cities it lost. It had done so earlier. The geopolitical fault lines of West Asia, especially in Iraq and Syria, which helped the IS rise in the first place, remain unchanged. In Iraq, a greater challenge before the government is to win over the people in the north and west, mostly Sunnis, who distrust the Shia-dominated government. In Syria, the battle against the IS is more complicated than that in Iraq. In Iraq at least there is a consensus about what the legitimate force is against the IS. All players, from America and the Kurds to Iran and Shia militias, rallied behind the Iraqi government in the war. But in Syria, there’s no such consensus. Raqqa is being attacked by both the SDF and the government troops. The U.S. is supporting the SDF, while Russia is backing the regime. Turkey, another country that’s involved through its proxies in the civil war, is wary of the SDF because it’s led by the Kurdish rebels. So even if Raqqa is liberated, it is difficult to reach a consensus on who will eventually run the city. If chaos prevails, that would be good news for the jihadists.
•Third, the IS is fundamentally an insurgency that transformed itself into a proto-state. Now the proto-state is under attack, but the group can retreat to insurgency for its survival. The history of insurgent groups suggests that it is difficult to defeat them outright. Take the more recent examples of jihadist insurgencies. The Taliban regime was toppled and its fighters were driven out of Kabul in 2001 following the American invasion. Their leader, Mullah Omar, died while he was hiding. But does it mean that the Taliban were defeated?
•Al-Qaeda is another example. After the Taliban were toppled, al-Qaeda was also forced to flee to the mountains. Its leader, Osama bin Laden, was also killed when he was hiding in Pakistan. Still al-Qaeda made a comeback by mobilising jihadists in Africa, Syria and Yemen. A more specific example would be al-Qaeda in Iraq, which was almost defeated once, only to be morphed into today’s IS as a more vigorous, deadly force.
•The IS has already given enough indications that it will move back into insurgency if its proto-state was destroyed. In May 2016, Abu Mohammad al-Adnani, who was the second-most powerful leader in the IS till his death in an air strike in August that year, said in a long audio message released on the Web: “Whoever thinks that we fight to protect some land or some authority, or that victory is measured thereby, has strayed far from the truth.”
In insurgency mode
•In fact, the IS has changed its strategy after the ‘Caliphate’ came under attack. Instead of expanding its territories, the group became defensive at its core and unleashed a wave of terror attacks elsewhere in the world, from Paris to Brussels and Berlin to Dhaka. It has also established franchises in other countries. Boko Haram, Africa’s most dreaded terror outfit, has declared loyalty to the IS. In eastern Afghanistan, the IS has a branch — the Islamic State of Khorasan — which is directing the group’s operations in South Asia.
•The recent outbreak of a war in the Philippines, where armed jihadist groups that have declared loyalty to the IS have been fighting government forces, suggests that the IS is expanding its asymmetric reach when its core is under attack.
•All this suggests that the threat is far from over. The IS has already transformed itself into a globalised idea and outsourced its terror mission to groups and individuals who subscribe to its world view. So even if the IS core is destroyed, the IS insurgency, or an ‘al-Qaedafied’ Islamic State, will continue to pose security challenges.
📰 Inflation conundrum
Record low retail inflation posesa monetary policy dilemma for the RBI
•The latest Consumer Price Index data show headline retail inflation has decelerated to a record low of 1.54% in June. That the reading has slid below the 2% lower bound of the Reserve Bank of India’s medium-term target for CPI inflation, has understandably led to calls for the RBI to support economic growth by cutting interest rates. Economists, including Chief Economic Adviser Arvind Subramanian, have openly questioned the assumptions made by the majority of the members of the RBI’s Monetary Policy Committee with regard to prices and have urged a reboot of the policy rationale. Core inflation, which strips out the relatively volatile food and fuel prices, has also trended lower and eased below 4% for the first time in at least five years. And with the latest industrial output data from May reflecting weaknesses in key sectors like capital goods and consumer durables, the reasoning behind demands for monetary action that could help spur both investment and consumer demand is evident. Others have also flagged concerns about “deflationary trends” and the risks of relying too heavily on forecasting models. The voices exhorting the central bank to reduce interest rates are only going to grow ahead of its next bimonthly policy review at the beginning of August.
•For the six members of the RBI’s rate-setting panel, including Governor Urjit Patel and his deputy overseeing monetary policy, Viral Acharya, the data pose a conundrum that is going to test their sagacity. For one, the beneficial base effect will begin to reverse after peaking in July. Also, the majority of the risks to the inflation outlook that the committee’s participants had flagged collectively and individually at the last meeting in June, when they had opted to sit pat while retaining a neutral stance, are still largely relevant and yet to play out. The impact from the July 1 introduction of the Goods and Services Tax, for instance, will begin to feed into prices only over the coming months — based on the initial anecdotal trends in the prices of various services, there could be upward pressure on core inflation. Similarly, the payment of increased allowances under the Seventh Central Pay Commission’s award, which came into effect from the beginning of this month, could also start to transmit into price gains. As Mr. Acharya had pointed out at the last meeting, fiscally expansive measures taken by several State governments to address farmers’ demands for debt relief could pose a “tail risk” by triggering generalised inflation over time. And the restoration of the health of the banking sector, a key caveat for ensuring effective transmission of monetary policy, is as yet far from being close to a fruitful outcome. Ultimately, the RBI will have to weigh whether the current trend in inflation is likely to remain durable enough for it to make a move that doesn’t end up proving to be a costly error in the long run.
