📰 Goa’s Ganpati festival: ecological concerns linger
Goa led the way when it came to banning plaster of Paris idols, but how successful has it been?
•Ganesh Chaturthi was once a more private festival. There was a rise in its popularity from the time of the warrior king Shivaji up to the ascendancy of the British Raj, but it was usually celebrated at a more intimate family level. But thanks largely (or wholly, according to some) to the freedom fighter Bal Gangadhar ‘Lokmanya’ Tilak, who saw it was a way or circumventing British rules about public gatherings, it became a much more public community event.
•Today, it is a festival on a grand scale, particularly in western India, and to some extent in the south, and increasingly celebrated in other parts of the country as well. The god is known by several names — Ganpati, Ganesh, Ganesha, Vinayaka, Binayak — and one whose worshippers cross caste divides.
•But one part of the festival’s rituals, as practised in modern India, has those of a greener mindset worried about environmental impact: the immersion.
•Unlike in olden times when idols were made of clay, today’s Ganeshas are usually gypsum plaster, calcinated hemihydrated calcium sulphate, more commonly known as plaster of Paris (PoP).
•PoP does not require the kind of hard-won skill that clay work requires. It is easy to cast in a mould, yields a smooth surface, dries quicker than clay, is friendlier to paint, and is much lighter (an important consideration when status-consciousness leads to larger idols) and the idols made with it are cheaper. But PoP does not dissolve readily, and it turns water hard.
•Aside from the base material, the bright paints and dyes most artisans use contain toxic chemicals like mercury, zinc oxide, chromium, lead, and cadmium. They poison water bodies and aquatic life, and they can cause cancer, respiratory ailments, skin infections when they make their way back to humans via the seafood we eat or the water we drink.
•Motivated by these concerns, organisations and individuals have been working to promote clay idols and natural dyes, as editions of this newspaper in Mumbai, Bengaluru and Tamil Nadu have reported.
•The government of Goa is ahead of them, though: its Department of Science, Technology & Environment banned the manufacture, import and sale of PoP idols in 2008. (It was implementing Section 5 of India’s Environment (Protection) Act, 1986.)
•Digambar Kamat, Chief Minister of the Congress government in power in 2008, recalls that there was “some movement” by environmentalists after Goa State Pollution Control Board (GSPCB) reports indicated that pollution of water bodies after the Ganesh festival was on the rise, but insists that the prime mover was his Environment ministry. Krishna Karapurkar, Deputy Manager, Marketing, of Goa Handicrafts, Rural and Small Scale Industries Development Corporation (GHRSSIDC), says that his organisation was one of the agencies that brought the issue to the notice of the government.
•How successful has the ban been? It is implemented via a multi-agency approach — the GSPCB, the GHRSSIDC, the Excise and Commercial Tax department, the Transport department, and the police are involved — and uses both carrot and stick.
•The state-owned GHRSSIDC incentivises Ganesh chitrashallas (as the manufacturing units are called) to not use materials harmful to the environment by giving them a subsidy of ₹100 per clay idol. Demand has been growing every year, Mr. Karapurkar said, with the number of subsidies going from around 37,000 (to 364 chitrashallas) in 2008, to over 53,000 (to around 500 chitrashallahs and artists) last year. He expects this year’s figure to cross 60,000.
•The enforcement end includes measures like flying squads patrolling the borders to stop PoP idols from coming in ahead of the festival. The Commissioner of Excise is empowered to check vehicles or attach them with the help of police. GHRSSIDC and GSPCB officials in tandem inspect registered chitrashallas and withdraw subsidies and licences consent if they flout the ban.
•Natalia Dias, senior legal officer of GSPCB’s Environment department says, “Adequate measures are underway, along with other departments, to ensure that these idols are not sold in the state.” Ms. Dias says that even if there is a suspicion of small quantities of insoluble material being mixed with clay, it is immediately reported to a District Magistrate, who directs collection of samples which are tested in GSPCB laboratories. But Ms. Dias was unable to name even one instance where this happened.
•The evidence indicates that the ban has worked. GSPCB’s annual report for 2014–15, released recently, says that results of analysis of samples from rivers and water bodies across the state before and after the festival revealed no increase in pollution. The report also said that GSPCB, at the directions of the National Green Tribunal, conducted a survey of chitrashallas to ascertain that no PoP idols are manufactured prior to the festival season.
•Citizens, though, are sceptical.
•Pandurang Nadkarni, a former chairman of Goa Board for Secondary and Higher Secondary Education, told The Hindu that the ban is a big joke. “Much ahead of the festival, around May, June, PoP idols come to Goa from neighbouring districts across the border in huge numbers.” Prerna Pawaskar, an environmental activist who, through her organisation Kalakriti, runs workshops teaching children to make clay idols, also dismisses the official claims, saying the market is flooded with PoP idols.
•Manoj Naik, from Madkai village, on the banks of the Zuari river, in Ponda, central Goa, has been making Ganesh idols since he was 10 and started apprenticing under his late grandfather, Fondu Divto. He and his family were among the earliest to switch totally to clay. They now make around 240 clay idols of various sizes, and charge from ₹900 for the smallest idols to ₹10,000 for the largest. He complains that the government subsidy takes a long time to get. Other artists echo this, and say the paperwork required is tedious. Anup Priolkar, a social worker in Bandora-Ponda, casts doubts on both the transparency and efficacy of the subsidy.
•And then there are the bootleg PoP idols taking business away. Mr. Naik says that while the ban is enforced strictly on the Goa-Karnataka border, a lot of idols come in from Maharashtra, particularly from Kolhapur. The entrepreneurs involved avoid the vigilance before the festival by simply bringing them in around June. Unscrupulous artisans in Goa just add a thin layer of clay to camouflage the idols, something laypersons wouldn’t be able to spot.
•One more factor this year is the new Goods and Services tax regime. Mr. Karapurkar of GHRSSIDC says that there is no GST on the idols. But the creators say that there is 28% GST on the price of paints, which they will have to pass on to the consumer.
•For the Remover of Obstacles, there seems to be a full wish-list still waiting for him in Goa.
📰 Artificial intelligence imperils India Inc jobs
The IT services industry alone is set to lose 6.4 lakh low-skilled positions to automation by 2021, according to reports
•When Vishal Sikka, the then CEO of Infosys and the now the vice-chairman, arrived in a driverless golf cart at the firm’s Bengaluru Campus recently, it showed the world how artificial intelligence or AI may become the new world order in the years to come.
•The software, ‘driving’ the cart, had been developed by Infosys together with IIT-Delhi. The vehicle can be used on a pre-determined route.
•“This is an example of the kind of things we are using to teach our employees,” said Mr. Sikka. “We built the autonomous systems in the cart to teach our employees to build autonomous driving technology.”
Impact on IT
•Technology leaders are drumming up the thought that the emergence of new technologies such as artificial intelligence (AI) and automation are going to be the new drivers of employment, especially for India’s $150 billion information technology (IT) industry that now employs about four million people.
•Over the past two years, Bengaluru-based Infosys, which crossed a revenue of $10.2 billion in the 2016-17 fiscal, has revamped the way it trains staff. Last quarter, the company completed training 3,000 people in AI technologies.“We are training our existing employees for these new skills,” said Mr. Sikka. He said with the advances in automation technology, more ‘commoditised’ jobs were going away and one had to move towards next-generation jobs and new areas of opportunities. In April, the firm also released next generation AI platform, Nia which, it said, tackles business problems such as forecasting revenues and understanding customer behaviour. The other applications include deeply understanding the content of contracts and legal documents, understanding compliance and fraud.
•Several miles away from the Infosys campus in Electronics City, former U.S. chief data scientist D.J. Patil, along with tech entrepreneur Nandan Nilekani, expressed concern over the impact of AI and automation on the jobs in the country, during a fireside chat event. Mr. Patil said in India, though there were large IT players, certain types of coding jobs were specially developed towards software testing or heavily around small, added features such as upgrading. “I am very concerned that those are the jobs that are going to be replaced by automated processes,” said Mr. Patil in an interview.
•The first chief data scientist to the U.S. Government, appointed by the Obama Administration, advised young professionals to prepare and train themselves in new technologies in areas such as artificial intelligence, cybersecurity and healthcare.
•Mr. Nilekani, who spearheaded India’s massive unique identification project, emphasised that young professionals needed to prepare for life-long learning and not be dependent on just getting a degree for the sake of employment. “Things are changing and... changing very rapidly,” said Mr. Nilekani. “The future is life-long learning, anytime, anywhere learning.”
Job losses
•Automation threatens 69% of the jobs in India, while it’s 77% in China, according to a World Bank research.
•“If it (automation) is not planned well and addressed holistically, it is a disaster in the making,” said K.R. Sanjiv, chief technology officer of IT services firm Wipro, during a discussion on the ‘rise of machines and future of human labour’ at a recent event organised by the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) in Bengaluru.
•“There is no doubt about that. It is going to affect 60%-70% of the current jobs. They will either get marginalised or totally eliminated,” he said adding the transition will happen in a decade and not in 50 or 100 years.
•This month, the company revealed that its strategic investment arm, Wipro Ventures, had invested an undisclosed amount in Vienna, Austria-based firm Tricentis. The firm offers a range of products and services to help companies automate testing of their software.
•Indeed, India’s IT services industry is set to lose 6.4 lakh low-skilled positions to automation by 2021, according to U.S.-based HfS Research. It said this was mainly because there were a large number of non-customer facing roles at the low-skill level in countries like India, with a significant amount of “back office” processing and IT support work likely to be automated and consolidated across a smaller number of workers.
•According to online professional training company Simplilearn, the era of digitisation and automation will create newer career choices for IT professionals. The new job roles that will dominate the IT workforce are within digital domains such as big data, artificial intelligence, Internet of Things (IoT), cloud computing and cybersecurity, according to the report “How Automation is Changing Work Choices: The Future of IT Jobs in India” released this month by Simplilearn.
•“While there is a risk to jobs due to these trends, the good news is that a huge number of new jobs are getting created as well in areas like cybersecurity, cloud, big data, machine learning and AI,” said Kashyap Dalal, chief business officer,Simplilearn, in a statement. “It is clearly a time of career pivot for IT professionals to make sure they are where the growth is.”
Drones, robots
•The impact of automation is not just limited to the country’s information technology industry but other areas as well such as agriculture. Tata Group is exploring use of automation to improve the lives of the workforce and bring in efficiency. Piyush Mishra, technology leader — food security, Tata Services, said that the group was working on a precision agriculture technology where an unmanned aerial vehicle or a drone can be used for aerial spraying on farms.
•“We wanted to see the challenges faced by farmers,” he said. “In addition to labour, it (spraying) has multiple impacts on farmer life — from health to efficiency and productivity,” said Mr. Mishra at the CII event. He said that Tata was also working in the area of soft-robotics, where, instead of using traditional robots, wearables and other techniques can be leveraged not to replace the workers on the factory floor but to assist them. “For example, enabling labourers to do more strenuous jobs with fewer energy inputs,” said Mr. Mishra.
•Companies like Skylark Drones, a Bengaluru-based startup is providing its unmanned aerial vehicles to enterprises for services such as land surveying, power line inspection and monitoring of construction, pipelines and crop health. “You can access places which you couldn’t enter earlier. You don’t have to put humans in situations which are life threatening,” said Mrinal Pai, co-founder,Skylark Drones, at the CII event. His co-panelist Arati Deo, managing director, Artificial Intelligence at professional services company, Accenture, said the need of the hour was planning ahead and making sure the talent pool has the skills that would be needed “as these systems (AI, automation) evolve.”
📰 70-ft Buddha statue to adorn tourist project in Ghantasala
‘Mahaparinirvana posture will be a major attraction’
•To develop Ghantasala village in Krishna district as one of the prime Buddhist tourist spots in the State, decks have been cleared for the construction of a Rs. 1.5-crore project here.
•“The new facility will be themed on the Mahaparinirvana of the Buddha. A two-storied structure in Buddhist architecture resembling a pedestal with a 100-ft wide and 70-ft high Budha in the Mahaparinirvana posture will be a major highlight,” said Executive Director of the AP Tourism Development Corporation Mallikarjuna Rao.
•Mr. Rao has worked on the design and architecture of the project which was released by Krishna district Collector B. Lakshmikantham on Saturday.
•On top of the two-storey structure will be an imposing statue of the reclining Buddha.
•This is a major iconographic and statuary pattern of Buddhism. It represents the historical Buddha during his last illness, about to enter the Mahaparinirvana. It shows Buddha lying on the right flank, his head resting on a cushion or on his right elbow, supporting his head with his hand. This pattern seems to have emerged at the same time as other representations of the Buddha in the Greco-Buddhist art of Gandhara.
•The two floors will house a Buddhist library, a meditation centre, an auditorium for spiritual classes, an exhibition hall for digital replicas of the Buddhist antiques exhibited in the Paris museum and monasteries.
•The project is coming up in a 2-and-half acre private land donated by a non-resident Telugu Gorrepati Ramanadha Babu on behalf of a Trust run in the names of his parents.
•Tenders for the project have been finalised, designs approved and administration sanction given. The work may start in a couple of weeks.
•In Buddhism , Mahaparinirvana means the ultimate state — everlasting, highest peace and happiness — entered by an Awakened Being (Buddha).
•Ghantasala, known as Katakasila in the ancient times, was a renowned Buddhist centre located near the coast. Ptolemy, the Greek geographer, had made a specific mention of an emporium of Kontakossyla in the region of Misolia (present Machilipatnam).
•The maha stupa was once encased with well decorated sculptured slabs like that of Amaravathi and had an ornate railing.
•Initially, the archaeological significance of Ghantasala was reported by Boswel in 1870-71 and the site was subsequently subjected to excavations by Alexander Rea which brought out the stupa architecture in detail.
📰 Death penalty stayed in sacrifice case
•The Supreme Court has stayed the execution of a couple, sentenced to death in a case of sacrificing a two-year-old boy.
•A Bench headed by Justice Dipak Misra admitted the appeal filed by the condemned prisoners, Ishwari Lal Yadav and his wife Kiran Bai, whose death penalty was confirmed by the Chhattisgarh High Court in the human sacrifice case.
•“Let the lower court records be called for. There shall be stay of the execution of the death sentence. Let the matter be listed before the appropriate bench in the week commencing November 28,” the Bench, also comprising Justices Amitava Roy and A.M. Khanwilkar, said.
•The case dates back to November 23, 2010 when Chirag, the two-year-old son of Poshan Singh Rajput, went missing.
•It was alleged that the two main accused, Yadav and his wife, used to practise black magic. Kiran Bai had allegedly asked her husband to get a child for sacrifice and the boy was kidnapped and killed in a gruesome manner.
📰 SC bats for personal liberty
Grants bail to former APSC Chairman
•Personal liberty cannot be compromised at the altar of what the state may perceive as justice, the Supreme Court has said while granting bail to former Assam Public Service Commission (APSC) chairman Rakesh Kumar Paul in a case of alleged corruption.
•A three-judge Bench headed by Justice Madan B. Lokur, in a majority ruling of 2:1, said Mr. Paul was entitled to ‘default bail’ and the trial judge should release him on such terms as may be reasonable. In the majority verdict, concurred by Justices Lokur and Deepak Gupta, the court said that “in matters of personal liberty, we cannot and should not be too technical and must lean in favour of personal liberty”. The apex court was hearing the plea filed by Mr. Paul after his bail pleas were rejected by the Gauhati High Court twice.
•He was arrested in November last year after an FIR was lodged against him under the Prevention of Corruption Act and a charge sheet was filed this January.
•In his dissenting verdict, Justice P.C. Pant held that the allegations did not disclose merely an economic offence but it showed a transgression of the constitutional rights of the victims of the crime.
📰 Patriot games at Attari-Wagah
Seventy years after 1947, it’s time to wind down the choreographed hostility at the India-Pakistan border
•“Louder,” the tough-looking Border Security Force (BSF) guard gesticulated to the cheering, flag-waving Indian audience at Attari on the India-Pakistan border as the shouts of “Jio jio Pakistan” from the Wagah side of the border, barely 100 metres away, briefly dominated the air. The hyper-charged crowds were only too happy to comply and shouted back, “Bharat Mata ki Jai”, drowning out the Pakistani “attack”.
•The older we become as nation-states, the less mature we seem to have become — the retreat ceremony at the Attari-Wagah border testifies to that. Over the past 70 years, the display of respective nationalisms at the border has become far more aggressive, dramatic, and hateful. The well-choreographed hurling of the slogans “Bharat Mata ki Jai” and “Jio jio Pakistan” at each other not only reduces the India-Pakistan relationship to a juvenile shouting match but, more importantly, encourages people to belittle and disrespect each other’s sense of nationhood in praise of one’s own. The retreat ceremony today is less of a celebration and more about denigrating the other. Does belittling each other’s nationhood make our respective nations any greater? ‘No’ should be the ideal answer, but not everyone would agree.
A choreography of hostility
•Following Partition, and the creation of the two states in 1947, the Wagah-Attari border, a short drive from Lahore and Amritsar, remained a trade and transit point between the two countries. During the heydays of India-Pakistan relations in the mid-2000s, it was decided to allow trucks to go to designated points on either side of the border for unloading cargo. Today, there is more formalised trade between the two countries than there is transit thanks to severe visa restrictions.
•The Attari border was managed by the Indian Army in the first few years after Independence and later managed by the Punjab Armed Police before the BSF eventually took over after its creation in 1965. When the retreat ceremony began in 1959, the joint Check Post was marked by a few painted drums, two flag masts and a rubble of stones astride the Grand Truck Road that stretches from Calcutta to Peshawar.
•During the early decades, the flag-lowering ritual was a low-key affair that had an almost negligible audience and spartan seating arrangements, a far cry from the grand infrastructure and pavilions that can accommodate as many as 10,000 people today.
•India’s 1999 victory over Pakistan in Kargil made all the difference, as well as the opening up of the Indian media space in the preceding years. Since Kargil, the Attari-Wagah border has become a tourist destination and consequently led to the expansion of infrastructure on both sides. Unlike the India-Pakistan wars of 1965 and 1971, when the ceremony was temporarily halted during the conflicts, it continued during the duration of Kargil. Given that Kargil was India’s ‘first televised war’, it also brought about several changes in the way we relate to war, peace and of course the ‘enemy’, Pakistan. Post-Kargil, the ceremony started reflecting carefully choreographed elements of hostility and resentment towards the enemy ‘other’ across the white line at Attari. A quick glance at post-Kargil films such as Gadar:Ek Prem Katha (2001), The Hero: Love Story of a Spy (2003), and LOC Kargil (2003) demonstrate how Kargil has influenced our notions of nationalism and the sources and definitions of national security threats.
•Over the years, the ceremony has become hostile and dramatised with the guards displaying intimidating gestures, stomping their feet and exchanging angry glares across the large iron gates, much to the delight of the cheering crowds. In 2010, BSF and Pakistan Rangers agreed to do away with some of the overt aggression, yet the angry gestures of stomping, thumping and glaring nonetheless remain an integral part of this theatrical ceremony.
Some niceties
•“Your excellency” is the salutation officers on either side use when addressing each other, irrespective of rank, and junior officers salute senior officers from the ‘enemy side’ if they happen to meet. There are ritualistic exchanges of sweets and occasional hugs between the BSF and Pakistani Rangers on special days such as August 14-15 and Diwali/Eid (ironically, there are often reports of increased firing on the Line of Control on such days). During times of tensions, this practice is often suspended.
•A BSF officer pointed out that not all gestures are as aggressive as they are perceived to be but are sometimes indications to the other side about the conduct of the ceremony and what to do next. If you travel to the other side on foot, what surprises you is not just the seamlessness of life on either side of the border but also the chit-chatting and familiarity between the ‘adversaries’ that one gets to see. Behind the stomping and angry glares then, there is a certain cordiality that exists on the Attari-Wagah border, and that in a sense is what makes it even more ironical, and a theatre of the absurd.
The commerce of patriotism
•The retreat ceremony today is not just a daily exercise in the display of nationalism and military vigour. Over the years, it has become a heady cocktail of Bollywood music, businesses flashing their tri-coloured advertisements, souvenir shops selling patriotic memorabilia, and LCD screens displaying the sponsors of the event. Nationalism is good business too.
•The whole event is electrifying. Hordes of school students enthusiastically waving the tricolour, BSF guards dressed in white sportswear getting around the venue and sloganeering over the loudspeaker, and men and women dancing to the tune of patriotic songs from Bombay cinema — ‘ Kandhon se milte hain kandhein’ , ‘ Yeh desh hai veer jawaanon ka ’, ‘ Dushman ke chakke chudade hum India walle ’, ‘Desh nu chalo desh mangta kurbaniyan ’. The drill on the Pakistani side is no different, only the songs and flag are.
•The Bollywood connection to the retreat ceremony doesn’t end there. Popular film actors are often seen at the venue promoting their films and connecting with the crowds, besides adding to the nationalistic atmosphere.
•Then there is Sarhad, the highway restaurant close to the Attari-Wagah border that serves both Pakistani and Indian cuisine, reminding you of the common architectural, cultural and culinary heritage of pre-Partition Punjab. Sarhad also displays murals narrating the story of pre-Partition bonhomie, Partition and its aftermath, and a potential future of borders without barriers.
•For those returning from the war of words at Attari, Sarhad plays soothing Coke Studio songs such as Gurdas Mann’s ‘ Ki Banu Duniya Da ’ (what will become of the world) — ‘ O Wagah de border te, raah puchdi Lahore’an de haye, raah puchdi Lahore’an de ’ (at the Wagah border, I look for roads that once took me to Lahore). War and peace, after all, is also a state of mind and it’s in our minds that both the retreat ceremony at Attari and the Sarhad restaurant seem to be persuasively engaging in radically different ways.
Seventy years on
•Seventy years after the violence of Partition, the India-Pakistan relationship today has been reduced to this: jointly-choreographed shouting matches and threats of apocalyptic nuclear wars. The retreat ceremony at the Attari-Wagah border, a well-rehearsed exchange of insults, is a constant, daily, reminder of our hostility towards each other as against the idea of each other’s nationhood, and the inhabitants of the two nations. Seventy years may not be a long time in the lives of two post-colonial nations, but the 70th anniversary of freedom is a good time to start accepting each other’s existence as sovereign independent entities. India needs to accept Pakistan’s tryst with its destiny and what it does with it, and vice-versa.
•Happymon Jacob is Associate Professor at the School of International Studies, JNU, New Delhi. Kaveri Bedi recently completed her PhD thesis on “Films as Sites of National Identity Formation: Exploring the Portrayal of India-Pakistan in Mainstream Hindi Films”
📰 India to raise visa issue in trade policy meet
Meeting to take place in October
•The Centre will, during the India-U.S. Trade Policy Forum (TPF) meeting likely in October, raise Indian industry’s concerns over the U.S. visa ‘curbs’ and the ‘delay’ in inking a bilateral social security pact (or totalisation agreement).
•In the TPF meeting, the premier forum to resolve bilateral trade and investment issues, the U.S. is expected to table its worries over India’s ‘restrictions’ on e-commerce as well as the ‘challenges’ faced by American innovative industries due to India’s ‘weak’ Intellectual Property Rights regime.
•In addition, New Delhi would take up the ‘non-tariff barriers’ by the U.S. that are hurting Indian agriculture, pharmaceuticals and other industrial exports, while Washington is likely to raise its concerns over India’s ‘excessively high tariffs’ on imports of many manufactured products as well as the $24.3 billion goods trade deficit that the U.S. had with India in 2016.
Discussions next month
•Ahead of the TPF meeting that will be held in Washington DC, Assistant U.S. Trade Representative (USTR) for South and Central Asia, Mark Linscott, will lead a U.S. official delegation to New Delhi in September for discussions on the TPF agenda and on framing the contours of the proposed ‘comprehensive review’ of bilateral trade relations, official sources told The Hindu .
•Prior to that, Mr. Linscott, Tanya Menchi, Deputy Assistant USTR for South and Central Asia, and Brendan Lynch, Director for India at the USTR Office, will participate in a round-table discussion on August 23 being organised by the advocacy body U.S.-India Business Council to take inputs for the TPF meeting and the comprehensive review of bilateral trade ties.
•There were doubts about the future of the TPF, especially following a U.S. government statement on August 15 mentioning that U.S. President Donald Trump and Prime Minister Narendra Modi had decided to ‘establish a new 2-by-2 ministerial dialogue that will elevate their strategic consultations.’ However, official sources said this meant that the ‘commercial’ track will be taken out of the India-US ‘Strategic and Commercial Dialogue’ (S&CD), and from now on take place independently. They said the TPF will be held as usual in October, as happens every year.
📰 BRO gets more financial powers
For speeding up strategic projects
•As part of efforts to improve the functioning of the Border Roads Organisation (BRO) and speed up works, the Defence Ministry has delegated administrative and financial powers right up to the level of Chief Engineer and task force commander.
Powers revised
•“In line with the aim to bring in transformational changes in the BRO, various powers of delegation have been revised … Enhancing the powers at all levels in the BRO, the Ministry of Defence has now approved that for both departmental and contractual mode of execution, a Chief Engineer of BRO can accord administrative approval up to Rs. 50 crore, Additional Director-General (ADG) up to Rs. 75 crore and Director-General (DG) up to Rs. 100 crore,” the Ministry said in a statement on Sunday.
•Earlier, a Chief Engineer in the BRO could give administrative approval of works up to Rs. 10 crore and ADG up to Rs. 20 crore for departmental works. For contractual works, all administrative approvals were given by the DGBR, who had powers only up to Rs. 50 crore.
•The BRO, engaged in road construction to provide connectivity to difficult and inaccessible regions, was brought under the control of the Defence Ministry in 2015. Completion of strategic border roads has been delayed as was highlighted on various occasions by the Comptroller and Auditor-General and the Parliamentary Standing Committee.
📰 Data shows new tax regime widely adopted
Transport and logistics sector has seen benefits
•The Goods and Services Tax (GST) is one of the biggest tax reforms in India. Though only a few weeks old, the latest tax is now firmly embedded in the millions of transactions happening all over the country every day, since the historic first of July, 2017, a watershed in Indian taxation history.
•The key to the successful implementation of the GST was through a consultative forum which worked towards consensus among States with diverse interests in a federal structure. The goal of GST, which is ‘one nation, one tax, one market,’ a shot-in-the-arm for the country’s ease-of-doing-business initiatives, is laudable.
•Disruptions are inevitable in the short term, but in the long term, GST is likely to achieve improvements in the system efficiency, simplification and rationalisation of taxes, and the shift of business activity from the unorganised to the organised segment. The resultant widening of tax base, along with traceability of transactions, is bound to add to the exchequer despite reduction in tax burden on the consumption of common goods.
Uniform interface, a first
•GSTN or the GST Network, cutting through traditional silos, has established for the first time a uniform interface for the taxpayer and a common and shared IT (information technology) infrastructure between the Centre and the States. A complex exercise involving the integration of the entire indirect tax ecosystem, the tax regime has brought all the tax administrations (Centre, State and Union Territories) to the same level of IT maturity with uniform formats and interfaces for taxpayers and external stakeholders. Commendable and unprecedented handholding has been seen, with the taxman engaging in conversation with enterprises, chambers of commerce and industry bodies such as the CII, right through the transition, and more continually through social media responses.
•The legacy image of the revenue officer or taxman is gradually shifting from being intimidatingly adversarial to being a persuasive guide and facilitator.
•Initial data streaming indicated widespread adoption of GST by trade and industry. New registrations approved in GST crossed a million before the end of the initial month, and about two lakh applications were in process. GST has impacted the transport and logistics sector: movement of trucks has increased; time required to cover distances has come down drastically, and pollution levels have come down with increased truck speeds.
•However, to reap the advantages of GST, concerns of business enterprises and industry sectors would need to be addressed. To name a few, the healthcare industry has sought that services be zero-rated rather than exempt so that providers can avail of input tax credit; hybrid vehicle manufacturers ask for 28% without cess; power distribution projects under various government programmes, earlier quoted inclusive of taxes as applicable then, are now subject to higher costs, and so these should be brought aligned to previous rates; and urgent intervention of the GST Council is requested towards huge losses to be suffered by units located in the exemption areas on account of non-availability of credit of excise duty which is inbuilt in the manufacturing cost of the opening stock of goods in the GST regime.
•Indian industry is hopeful that the Centre will look into the problems flagged by different sectors of industry and work to quickly resolve the same, ironing out interpretational issues.
•More important and imperative, even as we celebrate 70 years of Independence, is to leverage GST to effect ‘social reformation’, a transformation that would usher in greater transparency of supply chain, inclusiveness of MSMEs in business, wider dispersed development, accelerated employment and affordable quality living for economically weaker sections of the population.
📰 Corporate governance: Focus on SEBI
Market participants suggest a three-tier system for firms, with a supervisory board at the top
•The exit of Vishal Sikka as the chief of multinational IT giant Infosys brings forth the issue of corporate governance yet again. Market participants said the capital markets regulator, the Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI), needed to intervene in such matters to protect the interest of investors, especially he retail segment.
•“Our regulator should install a three-tier governing system for companies where a supervisory board is constituted and should lay down the framework for the functioning of the board of directors,” said Deven R. Choksey, MD, KRChoksey Shares & Securities. The board of directors, in turn, oversees the functioning of the executive management.
•“Multinationals like Google and Microsoft are governed in this manner,” he added. “Infosys has a strong pedigree. But ... promoters’ intentions were good but their approach was wrong.”
•“The supervisory board, comprising eminent personalities, will monitor performance as well as the value system for the company and this alone will create wealth for the company and keep it on the tracks,” he added.
•SEBI had constituted a committee on corporate governance under the chairmanship of Uday Kotak in June this year. The committee is expected to submit its report within four months. Market participants said that the Infosys issue too should be considered in detail by the committee.
‘Subjective views’
•“In India, corporate governance continues to see subjective interpretation,” said Dilip Bhat, Joint MD, Prabhudas Lilladher. “While India is moving towards internationally accepted norms of corporate governance, we are bound to see this kind of volatility. Particularly in this instance, extreme positions have been taken in terms of interpreting what corporate governance is,” he said.
•“Unfortunately, this had degenerated into an ugly battle played out with the media and as a result we are seeing whatever has happened,” said Mr. Bhat.
•Another view is that differences between stakeholders on the vision for the company caused the turmoil. “This has turned out to be a fight between a CEO who delivers financial performance quarter after quarter; and founders who have nurtured the company for more than three decades and are passionate about the founding values and ethics that they consider paramount,” said C.J. George, MD, Geojit Financial Services. “This is a fight between modern, free-market capitalism on the one side and the forces of ‘compassionate capitalism’ on the other,” he said.
•The governing board or a supervisory board, he said, would be an important top layer setting the direction for such companies. According to Mr. George, “The founders, perhaps, look at a quarter of a century while the market looks at the next quarter.”
📰 Railway Board member sent on leave
4 local officials suspended; ‘lapses in maintenance work led to Khatauli accident’
•The Railway Ministry on Sunday sent three top officials on leave, suspended four local level officials and transferred another official after prima facie finding lapses in the maintenance work that led to the derailment of the Puri-Haridwar Utkal Express in Uttar Pradesh on Saturday and claimed at least 24 lives.
•Secretary-level officer and Railway Board Member (Engineering) A.K. Mittal, General Manager (Northern Railways) R.N. Kulshrestha and Divisional Railway Manager (Delhi) R.N. Singh were sent on leave. The divisional engineer and senior divisional engineer of the railway section were suspended while the central track engineer of the Northern Railway was transferred.
•According to a former Railway Board Chairman, this is one of the rare instances when a Railway Board Member has been sent on leave.
No laxity: Suresh Prabhu
•The action comes after Railway Minister Suresh Prabhu said on Sunday that he “will not allow laxity in operations by the Board” and ordered the Railway Board Chairman to fix responsibility within a day of the accident. Senior Railway Ministry officials told The Hindu that welding work was under way near the Khatauli railway station in Uttar Pradesh, leaving a portion of the track without rails when the Utkal Express ran over it and derailed, as per the prima facie investigation.
•There were lapses at multiple levels in the track maintenance work, which was being carried out without taking due permission, before the accident on Saturday evening.
•The track maintenance work was routine and could have been carried out even a day later, according to a top Railway Ministry official.
•“It is prima facie found that there was a routine maintenance work going on related to welding of track joints near the Khatauli railway station. It was a normal maintenance work where you cut out a piece of track, put another one and weld it. The welding process takes about an hour.
