📰 Seven species of grasshoppers found
•A small-granulated dark black and brown coloured pygmy grasshopper measuring about 9.07 mm revealed itself to the world in the forests of Chhattisgarh last month. Collected from moist deciduous forests in Korba district, the species was named Coptotettix korbensis. Scientists from the Zoological Survey of India, Sunil Kumar Gupta and Kailash Chandra, have published the details of the new species in international science journals Zootaxa and Annales de la Societe Entomologique de France .
•A few months ago another paper published in Halteres by the same authors brought to light a species of the short-horned grasshopper Epistaurus tinsensis. The species was collected from the Barnawapara Wildlife Sanctuary in Raipur.
•Slightly larger than the recently discovered species, Epistaurus tinsensis has a yellowish brown body with dense long silvery pubescence.
•Coptotettix korbensis and Epistaurus tinsensis are two new discoveries in 2017, but what is interesting is that seven species of grasshoppers have been discovered in the forests of Chhattisgarh in a span of just 20 months.
•The five others were discovered in 2016. Four of the new discoveries were pygmy grasshopper Euparatettix dandakaranyensis from Bastar district of South Chhattisgarh, Poekilocerus geniplanus and Hedotettix angulatus from Barnawapara Wildlife Sanctuary and Ergatettix subtruncatus from Durg district of Chhattisgarh. Heteropternis raipurensis, a species of short-horned grasshopper, was discovered from Raipur district.
Difficult terrain
•Both pygmy and short-horned grasshoppers belong to Orthoptera (an order of Insecta) and one of the major differences between them is pronotum (prominent plate-like structure that covers all or part of the thorax of some insects). This extended backwards to cover abdomen in the pygmy, which is not the case with the short-horned.
•Kailash Chandra, Director of ZSI, said the faunal diversity of the Chhattisgarh forests have not been explored earlier because of the difficult terrain and left-wing extremism.
•“We have collected a lot of specimens of insects from 2011 after we signed an agreement with the Chhattisgarh government. The seven discoveries are not all. There are a number of other findings lined up for publication in the coming months,” Mr. Chandra said.
•Mr. Gupta, who is behind the discoveries, said there are 1,033 species of Orthoptera in India, including 285 short-horned and 135 pygmy grasshoppers.
•“These discoveries are interesting as grasshoppers have economic and ecological interest. They form an important link in the food chain and their predators include reptiles, amphibians, and birds and help directly in the protection of endangered species of birds, reptiles, amphibians and fishes,” Mr. Gupta said.
•He added that new lizard species have also been discovered in Chhattisgarh.
•Mr. Chandra said that since 2011, ZSI scientists have explored six districts and eight protected areas and have updated the faunal diversity of the State.
📰 It’s a losing battle for privacy: SC
Hearing over, verdict likely this month
•The Supreme Court on Wednesday voiced apprehension over the possible misuse of personal data in public domain, saying the race to maintain privacy against the advent of technology was a losing battle.
•A nine-judge Bench led by Chief Justice of India J.S. Khehar wrapped up the marathon hearing of the reference on the question whether privacy was a fundamental right or not, and reserved its judgment.
•The verdict is expected to be pronounced before August 27, before the retirement of Chief Justice Khehar.
Formidable line-up
•A formidable line-up of senior lawyers and legal experts participated in the hearing and argued on the impact of a judicial declaration that privacy was a fundamental right.
•They included Attorney-General K.K. Venugopal, senior counsel Soli Sorabjee, Kapil Sibal, Gopal Subramanium, Shyam Divan, Arvind Dattar, Anand Grover, C.A. Sundaram, Rakesh Dwivedi, Additional Solicitor-General Tushar Mehta, Sajan Poovayya and lawyers Vipin Nair, Arghaya Sengupta and Gopal Sankaranarayanan.
•The Bench, which mooted the suggestion of framing “overarching” guidelines to protect private information in public domain, said there was a need to “maintain the core of privacy”.
•“We are fighting a losing battle of privacy. We do not know for what purpose the information will be used. This is exactly a cause of concern,” said the Bench, which included Justices J. Chelameswar, S.A. Bobde, R.K. Agrawal, R.F. Nariman, A.M. Sapre, D.Y. Chandrachud, S.K. Kaul and S. Abdul Nazeer.
Basic information
•Mr. Dwivedi, who argued on the last day of the hearing, submitted that providing basic personal information could not be covered under the right to privacy.
•However, the Bench highlighted the need to define privacy as India had become a “knowledge-based economy”, and had nearly 1.4 billion people whose personal information was in the public domain.
📰 Border peace must for China ties: India
Says no cut in troops in Doklam
•India on Wednesday said peace and tranquillity on the border was the “prerequisite” for bilateral ties even as military sources denied any withdrawal of forces from Doklam. The official response from the External Affairs Ministry came after China, in a detailed 15-page official statement, reiterated Beijing’s claim on the Doklam region, and indicated India had scaled down its operation.
•“India’s position on this issue and related facts have been articulated in our press statement of June 30, 2017. India considers that peace and tranquillity in the India-China border areas is an important prerequisite for smooth development of our bilateral relations with China,” the Ministry said.
•Military sources said there had been no reduction in the presence of troops in the Doklam. At least 300 soldiers and 30 tents continued to remain in Doklam, the sources said.
•In its June 30 statement, India said its forces had intervened in Doklam in the “tradition of maintaining close consultation on matters of mutual interest” with Bhutan.
•Indian actions followed after the Foreign Ministry of Bhutan said laying a motorable road by China in Doklam was a violation by China.
📰 India may have cut troops in Doklam, claims China
‘40 Indian soldiers still in our territory’
•The Chinese Foreign Ministry on Wednesday issued a 15-page statement, claiming that India has scaled down its forces in Doklam, but demanded that New Delhi pull back all its troops to end the military standoff in the area.
•“As of the end of July, there were still over 40 Indian border troops and one bulldozer illegally staying in the Chinese territory,” the Foreign Ministry said, pointing out that Indian troop presence in the Doklam, or Dong Lang, area near the India-China-Bhutan tri-junction had peaked to 400 personnel at one point.
‘We were building road’
•“On 16 June 2017, the Chinese side was building a road in the Dong Lang area. On 18 June, over 270 Indian border troops, carrying weapons and driving two bulldozers, crossed the boundary in the Sikkim Sector at the Duo Ka La (Doka La) pass and advanced more than 100 metres into the Chinese territory to obstruct the road-building, causing tension in the area,” the statement said.
•“In addition to the two bulldozers, the trespassing Indian border troops, reaching as many as over 400 people at one point, have put up three tents and advanced over 180 metres into the Chinese territory.”
•The Foreign Ministry said India had been informed in advance about China’s intent to start road construction in the area.
•“China did not cross the boundary in its road-building, and it notified India in advance in full reflection of China’s goodwill.”
•The Chinese side reiterated that India must unconditionally pull back its troops— a position Beijing has adopted since the beginning of the crisis. “The incident took place on the Chinese side of the delimited boundary. India should immediately and unconditionally withdraw its trespassing border troops back to the Indian side of the boundary. This is a prerequisite and basis for resolving the incident.”
📰 RBI cuts repo rate by 25 bps to 6%, lowest in over 6 years
Urjit Patel says banks have scope to cut lending rates
•As some of the upside risks to inflation have not materialised, the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) on Wednesday decided to cut the key policy rate or repo rate by 25 basis points (bps) to 6%, taking it to its lowest in six-and-a-half years.
•The action was in line with expectations, even as the RBI continued its neutral stance, saying future action would depend on incoming data.
•“Excluding the HRA [house rent allowance of the Seventh Pay Commission] impact, which will affect the CPI [consumer price inflation] cumulatively, headline inflation would be a little above 4% in Q4 as against 4.5% inclusive of the HRA,” RBI Governor Urjit Patel said at the post-policy media interaction.
•Mr. Patel expected banks to pass on the benefits to customers of those segments, which had not received the benefit of the rate-easing cycle.
•“I think there is scope for banks to reduce lending rates for those segments that have not yet benefited to the full extent of our policy rate cuts,” he said.
•Market participants said since RBI had indicated that inflation would rise from here, there was no scope for a further rate cut.
•The yield on the 10-year benchmark government bond rose 2 bps to 6.46% on Wednesday.
•“Given our expectation of both growth and inflation rising over the next six to 12 months, we expect a prolonged pause from the RBI,” Nomura said in a note to its clients.
📰 Illegal miners must pay back in full: Supreme Court
‘Cannot have their cake and eat it too, along with icing’
•Noting that “very powerful and vested interests or a failure of nerve” have thwarted the objective of the decade-old National Mineral Policy to prevent the theft of precious natural resources of the country, the Supreme Court on Wednesday directed that mining companies and leaseholders, who have engaged in mining activities without forest or environmental clearance, will have to pay the public exchequer compensation equivalent to 100% value of the minerals they extracted illegally.
•“The mining leaseholders cannot have their cake and eat it too, along with icing on the top,” a Bench of Justices Madan B. Lokur and Deepak Gupta observed in their judgment.
•The court gave the Centre a deadline of December 31, 2017, to announce a “fresh and more effective, meaningful and implementable policy.”
•“It is high time the Union revisits the National Mineral Policy,” the Supreme Court observed.
•The judgment was on the basis of a PIL plea filed by NGO Common Cause about the rampant illegal mining of iron and manganese ore in Odisha.
•Of a total of 187 mining lease holders in Keonjhar, Sundergarh and Mayurbhanj districts, 102 were found to have had no environmental or forest clearance. Yet these miners had illegally extracted minerals worth Rs. 17,577 crore over the years.
•The court observed that it must be the same or worse situation in other States.
•The court’s decision to lay down the law that miners should reimburse to the public the entire value of minerals they had extracted illegally comes despite the Supreme Court's own Central Empowered Committee's advice to reduce the compensation to 30% instead of a 100%.
📰 WCO to unveil norms for e-commerce trade
Customs body aims to address digital divide, illegal trade
•The World Customs Organization (WCO) will soon bring out guidelines on ‘cross-border e-commerce’, which will focus on preventing illegal trade as well as addressing the challenges stemming from the ‘digital divide’, according to the WCO Secretary General Kunio Mikuriya.
•In an interview to The Hindu on his recent India trip, Mr. Mikuriya said, “We are developing guidelines on e-commerce to see how best Customs can facilitate legitimate trade through that route.” He added, “We [the WCO] will address issues related to digital divide by looking into what is blocking e-commerce trade, and what kind of enabling environment is needed to support developing countries so that they benefit more from e-commerce.”
•Terming e-commerce as a “game changer” in global trade that is benefiting small firms and consumers, he said the new guidelines would, however, include provisions to prevent illegal trade and illicit financial flows. This would be ensured through measures that would help strengthen information exchange between Customs administrations of countries as well as collaboration with other government agencies.
Working groups
•The WCO has a Working Group on e-Commerce and four sub-groups. To develop guidelines on cross-border e-commerce, the work packages identified are: ‘trade facilitation and simplification of procedures’, ‘safety and security’, ‘revenue collection’, and ‘measurement and analysis’. According to the UN body ‘UNCTAD’, the value of online trade jumped from $16 trillion to $22 trillion between 2013 and 2015.
•“The continuous increase in online trading has raised questions regarding regulation, consumer protection, revenue collection and national security,” according to the WCO’s ‘Study Report on Cross-Border E-Commerce’ (March 2017). “These questions cannot be dealt with individually, but require a common, broad approach by the international Customs community, together with all relevant stakeholders as a whole.”
•The WCO said more sophisticated equipment was needed to combat illicit trading through low-value shipments in the postal, express and cargo streams.
•“Pre-arrival information on the consignment and the consignee could be of great importance in detecting and intercepting illicit trade. In addition, the improvement of non-intrusive inspection equipment and an increase in the number of trained staff could help to enhance the detection rate of illicit goods,” it said.
•In an article on e-commerce, the WCO’s Director of Compliance and Facilitation Ana Hinojosa pointed out that in many countries, there were de minimisthresholds that allow low-value packages to enter a country with little or no duties or taxes, and with much more simplified procedures.
‘Clever manipulations’
•“This has led to clever manipulations by either the shipper or the consumer to avoid the extra charges by splitting invoices, undervaluing the invoices or mis-declaring the items altogether,” wrote Ms. Hinojosa. Another type of manipulation used was to classify the item as something else or claiming a different country of origin for the product, to take advantage of better duty or tax rates, the WCO official said, adding that these distortions had had an impact on many countries’ revenue collection volumes. Therefore, “some countries... are re-evaluating their established thresholds due to the significant implications that the changes brought about by these growing volumes of low-value small packages are having on their fiscal revenues,” observed Ms. Hinojosa.
📰 Centre mulls ‘One Nation, One Licence’ in new telecom policy
Move may eliminate distinction between local, STD calls
•The Centre will consider including a ‘one-nation one-licence’ regime in the new telecom policy that is set to come out next year, Telecom Secretary Aruna Sundararajan said on Wednesday.
•The move, if implemented, is likely to remove the distinction between local and STD calls, as service providers will not need separate licences for operations in various parts of the country. A single licence would suffice.
Ease of doing business
•The Secretary, who met representatives from the industry, including operators, infrastructure providers, equipment makers and handset makers to discuss the new policy, assured them that the government was committed to bringing in changes that would enhance the ease of doing business. During the meeting, a representative from Bharti Airtel said it was time that bifurcations around the types of licences and geographical split (telecom circles and service areas) were done away with.
•“There will have to be a significant amount of rewriting and administrative reform in the Telecom Ministry so that we are able to actually move to some of the things like one nation (one network and one licence policy),” Ms. Sundararajan said.
•Creation of ‘one-nation one-licence’ policy across services and service areas, was also the one of the objectives of the National Telecom Policy 2012.
•“I am not saying that all this will be done overnight, but what I am saying is that we will endeavour to put it into the policy,” she added.
•“It will be our endeavour to see how we can secure for the industry a viable rate of return,” Ms. Sundararajan added.
•She added that the Department of Telecom would also come out with a White Paper that will spell out what the government wanted to achieve through the policy. The draft of the new policy is likely to be out by December, while the final policy is expected to be ready by March 2018.
📰 Banks should reduce rates for existing borrowers too: RBI
Governor Patel sees scope for more cuts in interest on loans priced off base rate
•With commercial banks having a tendency to reduce interest rates only for prospective customers in order to push new business, Reserve Bank of India (RBI) Governor Urjit Patel said he expected lenders to pass on lower loan costs to borrowers who had not received the full benefit of the reductions in the policy rate.
•On Wednesday, the RBI cut the policy repo rate by 25 basis points (bps) to 6%. A percentage point comprises 100 bps.
•The banking regulator noted that banks mainly reduced rates for segments where competition was high as in the case of home loans and personal loans.
•“The way to look at the transmission is to determine what has been the case since we started the easing cycle,” Mr. Patel said. “On new lending, the transmission has been much stronger, specially in those segments where there is lot of competition - housing loans, personals loans where the NBFCs also play a big part.”
•The central bank has reduced the repo rate by 200 bps since January 2015.
•While banks cut the marginal cost of funds based lending rate (MCLR) sharply in January — by up to 90 bps — the reduction in the base rate, which was the earlier loan pricing regime, was much lower. Since MCLR has been operational only from April 2016, a large proportion of loans are still linked to the base rate and such borrowers have not benefited to the extent of the new borrowers.
•“The loan portfolio that is tied with on account of base rate and liabilities of longer nature the transmission has been slower,” Mr. Patel said. “Given the liquidity conditions prevailing and that we have reduced the policy rate by a substantial amount since the easing cycle started, I think there is scope for banks to reduce” rates for borrowers who have not yet gained the full benefit of the RBI’s policy rate cuts, he added.
•The difference between the base rate and MCLR, for some banks, is as high as 90-100 bps.
•The RBI said it will address Base Rate rigidity to improve transmission.
📰 A judgment for the ages
The Supreme Court must define the contours of the right to privacy in a way that doesn’t undo it
•The government has pushed the Supreme Court into a dangerous exercise: drawing the boundaries of the right to privacy. It has set the bar so low that almost any ruling by the Supreme Court will be celebrated if it pays lip service to the right to privacy. However, as history has shown us, badly drawn contours will permit the government to exploit our rights for decades. Public debate needs to rise above the government’s low bar and engage with the more nuanced questions.
•This piece begins with addressing the argument that the right to privacy is an alien western idea, and explains why the right to privacy is necessary in India. It then addresses the government’s suggestion that the right to privacy can be replaced by a data protection act, by detailing how a data protection statute is much weaker than the fundamental right to privacy. It then addresses the third popular and fallacious question of why we need a right against our own government when we are happy to share our private data with foreign Web-based platforms.
India and the right to privacy
•After dispensing with the questions that are distracting citizens from the real issue in this case, this piece discusses the contours of the right to privacy. It argues that they must be reinforced on a case-by-case basis in this unpredictable information age. Anything less will render the increasingly critical human right to privacy meaningless.
•It is easy in a crowded country, where the feudal family structure prevails, to argue that we do not believe in privacy. This is not true. Indian cultural norms have their unique ways of protecting privacy. Additionally, when we became a democracy, we adopted certain constitutional safeguards. These safeguards include many rights derided as alien western imports — the rights to speech, equality, liberty and privacy. To shrug them off would be to shrug off democracy.
•We are not the only nation to struggle with what seems like an unfamiliar human right to privacy. Although elements of privacy, such as restrictions on the searching of homes, were in national constitutions, the right to privacy as a whole was not articulated in them. This articulation of right was recognised as an international human right in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights before it found its way to the national level. If the phrase is new to us, it is new to everyone. Democracies have adopted it because it is essential to preserving the balance of power between governments and citizens, as governments access information technology and big data.
•The government has offered to enact a data protection act in lieu of the right to privacy. This has unleashed the dangerous idea that a data protection statute is a substitute for a fundamental right to privacy.
Why it’s a fundamental right
•A data protection statute is flimsy in comparison to a fundamental right to privacy. It can be repealed or amended, and other laws can be written to prevail over it. The government can exempt itself so that we have rights against private companies but not against the government. In contrast, the fundamental right to privacy cannot be taken away or undermined by the government: every law and every action threatening that right can be challenged before the judiciary. If we have a strong fundamental right, the government will never be able to give itself the power to go through our emails, search engine history, cupboards, pockets or texts without having to justify its intrusions and searches to the judiciary.
•We have never needed a fundamental right to privacy more. The government is monitoring citizens closely, interlinking databases from transport and bank accounts to school enrolment and mobile phone connections. Recent news suggests that it will be adding data from our social media accounts to this. The consequences are terrifying. Interlinked databases can lead to comprehensive discrimination such that HIV-positive people, people with mental illness, terminal illnesses, divorces or marginalised community backgrounds are denied jobs, homes and medical care. At its worst, unrestricted monitoring of citizens can lead to identification and suppression of dissent in a manner reminiscent of Stasi Germany. With no independent information and no dissent, there is no democracy.
•The argument that government access to our personal information is justified because Facebook has it anyway is fallacious. Neither entity should have unrestricted access to this information. Governments are currently far more powerful than Facebook, with their control of the police, the army and other instruments of force, which is why human rights protect us from government power. However as online platforms amass power and influence, they pose a potential threat to human rights. Work is being done on ways to hold them also accountable.
Contours of privacy
•The potential contours of the right to privacy are really the critical question in the case before the Supreme Court. The court must guard against upholding the right but defining its contours in a way that undoes it. This was the court’s big mistake in its phone-tapping judgment, where it created such an ineffective oversight mechanism that it might as well have permitted the government to tap phones at will.
•There is no need to create new limits for the right to privacy if the Supreme Court rules that it may be read into the rights to life, liberty and speech as it has in the past, or read into any other fundamental right in the future. The judiciary can then continue applying the existing grounds of restriction from the Constitution.
•If the Supreme Court is to rule in a truly meaningful way this time, it will need to define the right to privacy in a manner that makes it difficult to undermine. It can outline the core of this right with examples, to ensure that privacy jurisprudence moves forward, not backwards. It can articulate clearly what cannot be excluded from the purview of the right to privacy, such as surveillance of communication, access to personal data, publication of personal information and the interlinking of databases of personal information.
•But most importantly, the court can acknowledge that it is impossible for judges in 2017 to comprehend the future threats to the right to privacy that technology will invent; it can give future Supreme Court judges the power to use its privacy principles to adjudicate these cases.
•Future judges will be confronted with the Internet of Things, big data, bio-hacking, algorithms and potentially even artificial intelligence, and a country in which a citizen is monitored down to her heartbeat. Technology is already able to predict our moods, political leanings, retail preferences, relationships and medical condition with eerie efficiency. This will only escalate. If we, the citizens of India, want to hold on to our power and agency, we will need the right to privacy to guard against this invasiveness.
📰 How to curb ‘invisible money’
Reforms suggested by the Election and Law Commissions must be given a chance
•The statement by Union Finance Minister Arun Jaitley recently that the Election Commission has failed to curb ‘invisible money’ in polls is remarkable. It is unusual for a senior Minister to make adverse remarks against a constitutional body in public. However, there are factual problems with his statement.
•The Election Commission (EC) works in accordance with Article 324 of the Constitution of India, the Representation of the People Act (RP Act), 1951 and the rules framed by the government thereunder, and various judgments of the Supreme Court and High Courts. The power to frame rules under the RP Act has not been given to the EC by successive governments, which includes the current one.
Action and reaction
•Most of the reform proposals by the EC have not been acted upon. It sent 22 proposals in 2004. In December 2016, it sent 47 proposals including those for “Election expenses and election petitions”, “Election campaign and advertisements”, and “Reforms relating to political parties”. The government’s actions, if any, are not available in the public domain.
•There are instances where the EC has recommended the same reform repeatedly only to have it rejected. There are also instances where the Supreme Court has directed reforms in its decisions, with the government and Parliament attempting to amend laws to prevent implementation of the judgments.
•Now to the electoral bonds the Finance Minister was referring to. To what extent these bonds will make ‘invisible money’ visible was explained by him after he presented the Budget. In the media interaction, he said: “These bonds will be bearer in character to keep the donor anonymous.” Since the reference to electoral bonds in the Budget speech was under the heading “Transparency in Electoral Funding”, it led some commentators to ask whether ‘transparency’ and ‘anonymity’ are the same. Given his statement on the EC, it appears as if ‘anonymity’ is expected to increase ‘visibility’.
•The other significant proposals that the Budget made were (a) to remove the limit of 7.5% on profits that a company can donate to a political party, and (b) to remove the requirement that the company making a donation to a political party disclose the name of the party and the amount donated. Whether these two proposals will reduce ‘invisibility’ or increase it is best left to a readers’ judgment.
•The Minister also said, “I asked political parties, both orally in Parliament and in writing, to offer a better suggestion to me… not one has come forward to date because people are quite satisfied in the existing system.”
•It should be obvious that political parties will have no objection to the electoral bonds system as it allows them to raise money with ‘anonymity’. But it is interesting that the Minister should ask this question to parties which stand to lose ‘invisible money’ if it is eliminated. So who else can or should the Minister ask? Logically, it is the Election Commission and the Law Commission of India which have both applied their minds to the issue repeatedly.
•It must be noted that the outgoing Chief Election Commissioner had expressed misgivings about electoral bonds.
•The Law Commission studied the issue in 1998-99 and presented its comprehensive assessment and proposals in its 170th report, titled ‘Reform of the Electoral Laws’. This paragraph captures the essence of its recommendations: “On the parity of the above reasoning, it must be said that if democracy and accountability constitute the core of our constitutional system, the same concepts must also apply to and bind the political parties which are integral to parliamentary democracy. It is the political parties that form the government, man the Parliament and run the governance of the country. It is therefore, necessary to introduce internal democracy, financial transparency and accountability in the working of the political parties.”
•If that is considered outdated, the Law Commission issued another report in March 2015 (its 255th) wherein it devoted 64 pages to “Election finance reform”. This also contains valuable recommendations to reform the election finance system, but then there has to be a willingness to do so. The willingness seems to be to ensure anonymity. There are also other indicators of the will of the government.
The RTI way
•A logical and simple way of introducing “financial transparency and accountability in the working of the political parties”, and recommended by the Law Commission, is to bring them under the Right to Information (RTI) Act, 2005. The Central Information Commission (CIC) had said in a full bench decision in June 2013 that six national political parties were indeed ‘public authorities’ under the RTI Act as they fulfilled all conditions specified in Section 2(h) of the RTI Act which defines ‘public authority’.
•Despite the June 2013 decision, these parties, including the ruling party now, refused to accept RTI applications, blatantly defying the unanimous decision of a full bench of the highest statutory authority to implement a law passed unanimously by Parliament. They did not even deign to respond to notices by the CIC, of non-compliance. Another full bench of the CIC expressed its inability to get its own “legally correct” decision implemented. It also referred to it as “an unusual case of wilful non-compliance”.
•When a petition was filed in the Supreme Court to get the decision of the CIC implemented, the government said in a sworn affidavit submitted to the Supreme Court that political parties should not be under the purview of the RTI Act. The petition is still pending in the Supreme Court.
•The stand of the government in the Supreme Court is further evidence of what the government is not willing to do.
📰 Space for a cut
The RBI reduces the policy rate whileflagging multiple concerns on the economy
•By cutting the policy repo rate by 25 basis points, the Reserve Bank of India has opted to play safe while nominally acceding to the clamour for softer lending rates. The Monetary Policy Committee’s majority decision (one member voted to keep rates unchanged, while another wanted a deeper cut) hinged on its observation that some “upside risks to inflation have either reduced or not materialised”, opening up “some space” for accommodation. Specifically, the bimonthly policy statement refers to the significant slowdown over the past three months in core inflation — retail price gains excluding those for food and fuel. It notes that the monsoon has so far been normal, and the initial roll-out of GST has been “smooth”. Yet, the six-member panel has chosen to retain the “neutral” stance, given that it expects the trajectory of inflation to rise from current lows amid a welter of uncertainties. The factors deterring a more abidingly benign view for the path that prices are likely to traverse bear repeating, given the inflation-targeting remit handed to the MPC: the RBI’s statement does just that. A conclusive separation of “transitory and structural factors” impacting price gains remains elusive. Prices of inflation-sensitive tomatoes and onions are spiking. Pressures may be building that could spur higher animal protein costs for consumers. The implementation of farm loan waivers by States and the “tail risk” that the fiscally expansive measures could pose to long-term price stability that RBI Deputy Governor Viral Acharya referred to in June, continue to be germane. And there is no clarity on whether and when State governments will implement salary and allowance increases following the Centre’s implementation of the seventh pay panel-related hikes.
•The MPC acknowledges there are moderating forces at work — a second successive normal monsoon that could check food costs and a stable international commodity price outlook — that could help keep the inflation trajectory favourable. On economic activity, the RBI has flagged multiple concerns. A poll of business sentiment in the manufacturing sector shows respondents expect a moderation in July-September from the preceding quarter. Also, the high levels of stress that continue to be reflected in the balance sheets of both lenders and corporate borrowers presage the unlikelihood of any uptick in new investment. With the underlying impulses for growth in industry and services weakening, the onus is now on the Centre and the States to take enabling steps, through policy measures and directed fiscal actions, to give a thrust for the revival of private investment. Surely, as Dr. Acharya cautioned in June, it will serve nobody’s interests if the rate reduction doesn’t have “the desired amplifier effects on the economy” and ends up only temporarily masking the true problems in the banking and real sectors.
