📰 Navy to get advanced choppers
•With expanding profile in the Indian Ocean Region, the Indian Navy is looking to add to its fleet dedicated helicopters for ‘Special Operations’. Some of the Naval Multi-Role Helicopters (NMRH) for which the tender was issued last week will be in this configuration.
•“Of the 123 NMRH to be procured, 33 will be dedicated variants for Special Operations,” a senior officer told The Hindu .
Strategic Partnership
•Last week, the Navy had issued the Request for Information (RFI) to global Original Equipment Manufacturers (OEM) for the procurement of 123 NMRH and 111 Naval Utility Helicopters (NUH). The procurement would be under the recently approved Strategic Partnership (SP) model of the Defence Procurement Procedure (DPP).
•Some of the 33 helicopters would be used for training Marine Commandos (MARCOS) and the rest would be based on shore as well as on frontline warships, the officer added.
•The helicopters would be twin-engine and weigh at least 12.5 tonnes. According to the RFI, the requirements include the ability to carry 12 fully equipped troops along with 400 Kg of equipment or eight fully equipped troops and one auto inflatable craft in a stowed configuration.
•In addition to special operations and commando role, the helicopters will also perform other roles like ferrying troops, maritime interdiction including anti-piracy operations, combat search and rescue operation, external cargo carriage, limited casualty evacuation (CASEVAC) and Humanitarian Assistance and Disaster Relief (HADR).
•The Navy currently has a few variants of Sea King helicopters in service. But they are of 1970s vintage and technologically obsolete. Several attempts to replace them have failed in the past.
📰 99% of demonetised notes returned, says RBI report
Confiscation of money was never the objective of the exercise: Arun Jaitley
•The Reserve Bank of India’s annual report has finally revealed that as much as Rs. 15.28 lakh crore of the high-value currency that was demonetised in November returned to the central bank.
•“Subject to future corrections, based on the verification process when completed, the estimated value of SBNs [specified bank notes] received as on June 30, 2017, is Rs. 15.28 trillion,” the RBI said in its report released on Wednesday.
Intense scrutiny
•The central bank was under intense scrutiny since January — after the window for depositing the withdrawn Rs. 500 and Rs. 1,000 banknotes had closed — for details on the extent of currency that was returned to the banking system in the wake of the government’s decision to withdraw high-value banknotes as a means to combat counterfeiting, black money and the financing of terrorist activities.
•The latest RBI data showed that 98.96% of the withdrawn currency — at the time of demonetisation the value of old Rs. 500 and Rs. 1,000 notes in circulation was Rs. 15.44 lakh crore — was deposited with the banks. Separately, the data showed that the share of newly introduced Rs. 2,000 banknotes in the total value of currency in circulation was 50.2% at end-March 2017.
•The final deposit figures could still rise since on June 20, 2017, the government allowed District Central Cooperative Banks to deposit the withdrawn notes that had been accepted by them from customers between November 10-14.
Talks with government
•The central bank also said it was in discussion with the government whether to accept the demonetised notes held by citizens and financial institutions in Nepal.
•Data in the annual report showed that only 89 million pieces of Rs. 1,000 were not deposited.
•As of March 2016, there were 6,326 million pieces of Rs. 1,000 banknotes in circulation. In 2016-2017, another 925 million pieces of Rs. 1,000 notes were supplied into the system by the currency printing presses.
•Finance Minister Arun Jaitley said on Wednesday that the confiscation of money was never the objective of the demonetisation exercise.
📰 Higher GST cess on luxury cars, SUVs gets Cabinet nod
GST Council may take final decision on increase at meeting on September 9
•Luxury cars and SUVs may become more expensive with the Union Cabinet approving an ordinance to raise the maximum compensation cess that can be levied over and above the 28% GST on such cars, from 15 % to 25%.
•However, these changes will not come into effect immediately. The final decision of whether the cess should be raised, and by how much, will be taken by the GST Council, whose next meeting is on September 9.
•“The Cabinet has approved an amendment to the CGST (Compensation) law in pursuance of the GST Council’s last meeting. After the implementation of GST, prices of vehicles had substantially come down, whereas smaller vehicles remained untouched,” Finance Minister Arun Jaitley said.
•Mr. Jaitley reasoned, “The object of any taxation policy can’t be that its impact is [that] luxury becomes cheaper and an essential item becomes more expensive. If at all relief has to be given, it is to be given to a common man’s item rather than a luxury item. A person who can afford Rs. 1 crore for a car can also afford Rs. 1 crore, 2 lakh.”
•The “enabling ordinance” will now be sent to the President for promulgation. Mr. Jaitley was non-committal if the issue would be taken up in the next GST Council meeting.
‘8-10% rise’
•Post the introduction of the new indirect tax regime, several carmakers, including makers of luxury cars and SUV who were one of the biggest beneficiaries of GST, had slashed rates to pass the benefits to the consumer.
•If the GST Council decides to increase the cess, luxury car prices may to go up by 8-10%, according to industry analysts. While Mercedes cars will be costlier by a minimum of Rs. 3 lakh, an Audi Q7 will see a price increase of Rs. 7 lakh, while an Audi A6 will be costlier by Rs. 5 lakh.
•Revenue Secretary Hasmukh Adhia said the categorisation of cars has not changed. “Earlier, those luxury cars where excise duties were levied at 27% or 30%..., the same categorisation is being followed. There is no intention of raising the tax rate on any car, other than those which were put in the luxury category and had high excise and VAT rates.”
•According to industry consultants, luxury cars, SUVs and ambulances will be impacted.
•Terming it an “unfortunate decision”, the Society of Indian Automobile Manufacturers (SIAM) said while the ordinance is an enabling clause, “it is clearly evident that the government’s intention is to increase the overall tax burden on many different categories of vehicles.”
•This will increase the post-GST price of many vehicle categories from pre-GST levels, it warned.
•“This is contradictory position of the Government that while on the one hand it has identified the automotive industry as a sunrise sector of Indian economy, [while] on the other hand it is being treated as a demerit product,” it said, adding that all the vehicles that were attracting 24% or 27% excise duty in the pre-GST regime may potentially attract higher tax under GST because of this decision.
•“The hike in total tax could be as high as 10% in some cases,” it added.
•Roland Folger, MD & CEO, Mercedes-Benz India, said if at all a review of the tax rate was required, it could have been taken after six months when the outcome of the GST regime would have been clearer. “…the hurry to implement the hike in cess is frankly quite surprising.”
•Mr. Folger added that the luxury industry is already highly taxed, which constrains its growth. With this proposed measure, the luxury car industry is going to “decelerate.”
•“…This decision, contradictory to the requirement of creating a sustained demand for the luxury car in this market, would rather affect the growth momentum adversely.”
‘Redraw plans’
•Echoing similar sentiments, Audi India Head Rahil Ansari said the increase in cess will force the firm “to hike our prices to levels higher than in the pre-GST period,” while also make them “redraw our plans for the Indian market based on future projections in this scenario.”
•He said this was bound to adversely impact sales by possibly a double-digit reduction and “will consequently reduce revenues for the company, dealers and perhaps also tax revenues for the Government.”
•While small in volume, the luxury car segment contributed about 10% to the Indian automobile market.
•Mr. Ansari further said if the GST Council decided on a 10% cess increase, it should “postpone the implementation for another 6-12 months to evaluate the real impact of the GST…This will surely prove that the overall effect with a lower cess percentage of 15% is generating higher tax revenues than expected.”
•Sridhar V, Partner at Grant Thornton India said, “The government is expected to come up with more clarity if it intends to have a couple of more levels of cess within the overall cess of 25%.”
•Rohit Suri, president and MD, Jaguar Land Rover India, said, “We earnestly hope that the Government and the GST Council will give due consideration to this matter and desist from raising the cess and putting a dampener on the positive momentum in demand that the industry had started to witness since July 1.”
📰 Govt. approves plan to deploy more troops on the frontline
57,000 soldiers to be redeployed; 65 recommendations to be operationalised
•The number of soldiers available for active combat with the Army is set to dramatically go up by over 57,000 in the wake of the Union cabinet accepting a slew of military reforms on Wednesday.
•The recommendations were made by a committee headed by Lieutenant General (Retd.) D.B. Shekatkar for enhancing combat capability and rebalancing defence expenditure of the Armed Forces to increase the teeth-to-tail ratio.
•“This committee had submitted around 99 recommendations. The Government, in consultation with the Indian Army, has been going through them, and the first batch of 65 recommendations were accepted yesterday [Tuesday]. All these have to be operationalised by the end of 2019,” Defence Minister Arun Jaitley said in the media briefing after the Cabinet meeting.
•Defence sources said that all these recommendations are related to the Army and the remaining 34 recommendations pertaining to the Navy, Air Force and Integrated Defence Staff (IDS) are likely to be taken up soon.
Navy reforms
•“The first phase of the reforms involves redeployment and restructuring of approximately 57,000 posts of officers/Junior Commissioned Officers (JCO)/ Other Ranks (OR) and civilians,” the Defence Ministry said a statement.
•The various areas of reform include optimisation of signal establishments, restructuring of repair echelons including base workshops, redeployment of ordnance depots, better utilisation of supply and transport echelons and animal transport units, closure of military farms and Army postal establishments in peace locations, and improving efficiency of the National Cadet Corps (NCC).
•Of these, the order for the closure of 39 military farms was issued in the beginning of August and would be completed in three months.
•The 11 member committee headed by Lt. Gen. Shekatkar was appointed by then Defence Minister Manohar Parrikar in May last year and the report was submitted to the Defence Ministry in December 2016.
•The statement added that restructuring by the Indian Army is aimed at enhancing combat capability in a manner that personnel will be used for improving operational preparedness and civilians will be redeployed in different wings of the Armed Forces for improving efficiency.
•The committee had suggested that, if implemented over the next five years, the recommendations can result in savings of up to Rs. 25,000 crore in defence expenditure.
📰 Powering aspirational India
Much more investment is needed to increase the use of low-carbon energy sources
•How much electricity is needed by India? To answer this, one approach is to follow a top-down econometric model whereby one examines growth in the economy, looks at the relationship between economic growth and energy requirements, and incorporates influence of technological and policy changes exogenously. The alternative is a bottom-up approach, whereby one estimates demand based on equipment saturations, efficiencies and usage.
•A simple method is to look around and draw conclusions. As per data for 2014 published by the International Energy Agency, average global per capita electricity consumption is 3030 kWh (kWh is colloquially known as a unit). The corresponding figure for India is about 805 units, and for developed countries of the OECD, it is 8,028. A majority of the OECD countries are in the temperate climate zone. Therefore, let us examine the scene around India: the corresponding figure for Singapore is 8,844, for Malaysia 4,646 and for Thailand 2,566. The projected global average per capita consumption by the middle of the century is 7,500 units. We can use this data to set a target which India can aim at.
Generation & projected need
•An emphasis on energy conservation and improvement in energy efficiency of industry and household gadgets will help in reducing electricity consumption, but bringing it down to below 5,000 units per annum to enjoy a standard of living enjoyed by citizens of OECD countries seems difficult. Assuming India’s population by the middle of century will be about 1.6 billion and transmission and distribution losses will come down to the lowest technically feasible value of about 7%, India must plan to generate about 8,600 Billion Units (BU) to provide 5,000 units per capita per annum to its citizens.
•The cumulative average growth rate of electricity generation in India for the period 2006-07 to 2015-16 was close to 6%. In 2016-17 generation by utilities was 1,242 BU. Data for generation from non-utilities is not yet available, but one can assume it to be around the same as in 2015-16, i.e. 168 BU. The total generation was thus 1,410 BU. Assuming a population of 1.3 billion, it translates to a per capita generation of 1,100 units. Thus, electricity generation projected for 2050 is six times the total generation in 2016-17 and in terms of per capita generation, it is about 4.5 times. India has a long way to go.
•The target of per capita availability of 5,000 units per annum is very modest because of several reasons. The percentage share of electricity in total energy consumption is increasing. As per estimates by the International Atomic Energy Agency, this share was 34.8% in 2015 for Middle East and South Asia, and is projected to increase to 52% in 2050. The Government of India has announced policy initiatives such as electricity and housing for all, accelerated infrastructure development, Make in India, electrification of transport, etc. which call for more electricity and on a reliable basis.
•Many have opined that we should return to a frugal way of living and consume less electricity. Can one expect the young in India to do that when electricity consumption is continuously rising elsewhere in the world? Aspirational India has a desire to work and live in air-conditioned spaces, reduce the drudgery of home work by using electrical appliances, entertain itself by deploying the best theatre system, commute in comfort in non-polluting transport and so on. Once basic amenities are available, an ordinary Indian will become an aspirational Indian.
•Human lives have become more productive because of electrical lighting and indoor climate control. Indoor heating for climate control increased productivity in countries in colder regions of the world and air-conditioning is doing that now in tropical countries, including India.
Using alternative sources
•Given this backdrop, we must maximise the use of low-carbon energy sources, i.e. hydropower, variable renewable energy (VRE), and nuclear power. Last year hydroelectricity generation was 122 BU; exploiting the additional potential will take time.
•A NITI Aayog report says India’s solar and wind energy potential is greater than 750 GW and 302 GW respectively. Assuming a load factor of 20%, this could generate 1,840 BU. All these numbers are rough estimates, but make it clear that the total possible generation from hydropower and VRE can at best be about a quarter of the projected requirement of 8,600 BU.
•Wherefrom will India get the rest of electricity? The share of electricity generated by nuclear power must be ramped up as soon as possible and large investments must be made in research and development in electricity storage technologies to derive full benefit from VRE sources. Until installed capacity based on low-carbon sources picks up, fossil fuels have to continue playing their role. Recent moves such as the Cabinet nod to the construction of 10 indigenous pressurised heavy water reactors, taking further steps for the construction of units 3-6 at Kudankulam, and completing all steps towards operationalisation of the nuclear cooperation agreement with Japan are all steps in the right direction.
📰 Rainbow of possibilities
The privacy judgment can be used to push for queer rights in spaces beyond the scrapping of Section 377
•In the week following the Supreme Court’s Justice K.S. Puttaswamy (Retd) v. Union of India decision, popularly referred to as the Right to Privacy judgment, a number of odes have been written to this momentous affirmation of core constitutional principles. Much has been made about the way in which the judgment demolishes the underlying assumptions of Suresh Kumar Koushal v. Naz Foundation (2013), which upheld the constitutional validity of Section 377 of the Indian Penal Code. These elements of the ruling will certainly strengthen the case for the Constitution Bench that is scheduled to sit and decide on theKoushalcase. But regardless of when it is heard by the court, the Right to Privacy judgment is a victory for queer persons as well: in terms of how it challenges the language of that prior decision, and further, in how it opens out the realm of possibilities for queer rights under the law.
The Koushal shock
•Looking first at the question of language: Section 377 is a vaguely worded law. The vagueness is purposeful — as Thomas Babington Macaulay once noted, the drafters of the Indian Penal Code were unwilling to insert anything into the text of the statute to promote discussion on “this revolting subject”. The subject in question was, of course, same-sex intimacy. The stated offence, as it has stood for more than 150 years, is “carnal intercourse against the order of nature”. Even as these words crystallise and sanction acts of homophobia and transphobia, they are, ultimately, vague.
•The Koushal decision, however, was a lot less vague in its contempt for members of the LGBT community. To unambiguously say that the rights of LGBT persons are not real constitutional rights, to brush aside the numerous evidence of violations placed before the court in favour of the merely “200 reported prosecutions over 150 years”: these were violent words. They hit with a greater force because of the space where they came from. The Supreme Court is the highest constitutional court of the country, an institution which is held in relative regard to the other branches of government despite its missteps. To hear these words from this court was the clearest rejection of equal citizenship that the queer community had faced.
•Koushal was indeed met with overwhelming critique, from civil society as well as from representatives of a range of political parties. However, at the level of constitutional discourse, the slights it had made stood largely unanswered. A different bench of the court made a partial corrective in 2014. The National Legal Services Authority v. Union of India judgment, while articulating a charter of rights for transgender individuals, also noted that Section 377, though associated with certain sexual acts, effectively targeted specific identities: a finding the Koushal court refused to make. This implicit critique was a gentle reprimand at best.
Righting a wrong
•With the Right to Privacy judgment, the court’s response to Koushal is anything but gentle. Justice D.Y. Chandrachud’s opinion, signed on by three other judges, has a section titled “Discordant notes”, which placesKoushalnext to what the judges officially recognise as its constitutional predecessor: the ADM Jabalpur v. S.S. Shukla decision of 1976. The habeas corpus case, as it is also referred to, infamously upheld the denial of basic fundamental rights during the imposition of Emergency and is widely understood to be one of the most shameful passages in the court’s history. To put Koushal in the same frame as this decision is to acknowledge the gravity of what it meant to uphold the criminalisation of millions of LGBT persons in India.
•Justice Chandrachud then takes on one of the more casually dismissive statements made in Koushal , where Justice G.S. Singhvi referred to the “so-called rights” of LGBT persons, emphatically noting that they cannot be construed as “so-called rights” but are real rights founded on sound constitutional doctrine. The Koushal judgment is also called out for relegating its constitutional responsibility with the claim that LGBT persons constitute a minuscule fraction of the population. The court reminds us of its own counter-majoritarian role, noting that the guarantee of constitutional rights does not depend upon their exercise being favourably regarded by majoritarian opinion.
•If the Koushal court’s violent words constituted a wound, the Puttaswamy court’s words are an attempt to heal those very wounds, to try and reverse some of the damage that came from this kind of judicial contempt.
Beyond decriminalisation
•At another level, the judges here don’t just challenge Koushal : they also allow us to imagine possibilities for queer justice beyond the limiting frame of Section 377. Even as the court does not make a holding on the constitutional validity of the section, it does find that sexual orientation is an essential attribute of privacy. The conclusion of Justice Chandrachud’s opinion goes on to hold that privacy includes at its core the preservation of personal intimacies and sexual orientation. Further, the court notes that the right to privacy recognises personal choices governing a way of life, that it is not lost or surrendered merely because an individual is in a public space. Reading these statements together can give us a sense of some of the ways in which the judgment can be used to push for queer rights in spaces beyond decriminalisation and the immediate threat of Section 377.
•First, to understand privacy as a recognition of personal choice allows us to think of justice for queer lovers who run away from home and are forced to return, often through the filing of habeas corpus petitions by their families. In many instances, persons who express the intent to leave their family will be challenged by a sitting judge in an open court and remanded to a government shelter home to “rethink” their choice. Proceedings in these kinds of habeas corpus petitions are illustrative of the wide discretion that courts have to interfere with personal decisions that queer persons take regarding with whom and where they want to live: the Puttaswamy court offers us a forceful constitutional articulation that could be used to challenge this denial of autonomy.
•This articulation of privacy as personal autonomy is also what might be used in dealing with the vast number of medical professionals across the country who insist on treating homosexuality as a disease, in many instances detaining queer persons in clinics and administering treatment against their will.
•Finally, a recognition that privacy is linked to autonomy and the navigation of space should allow us to think about the ways in which public spaces can be made safer for people who bear physical markers of gender nonconformity: whether it is public transport or an establishment space, how could this articulation of privacy protect, or provide a remedy when queer individuals are harassed for expressing their identity in a public space?
•With the Right to Privacy judgment, it is not justSuresh Kumar Koushalbut also these varied structures supporting queer persecution that have received a significant challenge.
📰 BRICS off the wall
How India and China repair ties at the Xiamen summit will determine the future of BRICS itself
•At Copenhagen in 2009, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, then Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao and other leaders of the newly formed BASIC group (with Brazil and South Africa) were sitting in a conference room, negotiating a statement on the failure of the climate change summit. The group of emerging economies had been bolstered by the formation of the BRIC group (Brazil, Russia, India and China, South Africa joined in 2010) with a declared objective of battling “Western hegemony”. The BASIC group had decided they would walk away from Copenhagen without a deal, unless the demands of emerging economies, which couldn’t afford the same emission cuts, were reflected. The scene, as described by Shyam Saran (then India’s chief climate negotiator) in a new book on Indian foreign policy, turned dramatic: with a knock on the conference room door, the U.S. team, led by then President Barack Obama and then Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, barged into the meeting. After much back and forth, Mr. Wen and Dr. Singh accepted an American compromise on the wording of the drafts, and the Copenhagen accord went ahead.
The power of five
•The event didn’t just change the course of international negotiations on global warming at the time, it heralded the arrival of emerging economies as a political force, and particularly the potential of the combined political clout of India and China. BRICS (BASIC was later disbanded) went from a modest 16-paragraph joint statement at Yekaterinburg in June 2009 to the more substantive 110 paragraphs that the five countries agreed upon in the Goa Declaration of October 2016, developing common positions not just on climate change but also on terrorism, energy, and world politics.
•Over time, it no longer met with sneers and references, like being called the “Bloody Ridiculous Investment Concept” by one investment banker, or the group of “paper tigers”, a reference to the fact that the term BRIC was coined in a paper by Goldman Sachs chief economist Jim O’Neill in 2001. The valuation of the BRICS grouping, that represents 40% of the world’s population and a quarter of its growth at $17 trillion, also did well, with more and more investment being driven into the five economies, mainly led by India and China. Not only did the BRICS countries better their positions in the World Bank and International Monetary Fund, they also struck a small blow against Bretton Woods institutions, and the BRICS New Development Bank set up in 2015 has already given out about $6 billion in loans for 23 projects across BRICS countries. This is no mean feat given the vast differences in size and political systems, and internal turmoil in BRICS countries.
From Doklam to Xiamen
•Despite all of these gains, the truth is that BRICS now faces its most challenging summit, not because of the West or the developed world, but because of growing differences between its two biggest members, India and China. And as Prime Minister Narendra Modi prepares to travel to Xiamen for the September 3-5 summit, it is important to see how the bilateral relationship and several other changes in geopolitics are now going to change the course of the BRICS engagement as well.
•The Xiamen summit follows a gruelling two and a half months during which the rhetoric between India and China — especially the latter’s — has been quite sharp. While diplomats smoothed out a victory over more hawkish elements by disengaging the troops at Doklam and obtaining a Chinese assurance that it would not continue its road construction at the tri-junction area, more heavy lifting will have to be done to restore the situation to pre-June terms. The bilateral tensions will no doubt spill over to the multilateral negotiations at Xiamen, especially given the negative atmosphere built up by state-run Chinese media these past few weeks.
•Beyond the bilateral issues over the boundary, Nuclear Suppliers Group membership for India, terrorism, the Dalai Lama and others, the rift over China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) is also likely to dominate discussions at BRICS, as it now underpins all of China’s other policies. India’s refusal to be a part of the BRI over sovereignty issues, coupled with its broader objections to the transparency and agenda of the project, was a cause for tensions before the Doklam stand-off, with some commentators even arguing that it precipitated the crisis. There is little doubt that China will aim to bring the BRI on the table for negotiations at BRICS, to win a statement of endorsement as it did at the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation last year. India will have to use considerable leverage with other members to ensure that its concerns prevail. However, it must be remembered that Russia and South Africa are important parts of BRI, and while Brazil is not, it is no less a recipient of Chinese investment, with a $20 billion Brazil-China infrastructure fund inaugurated this May.
Multiple challenges
•Another challenge for India is likely to arise from China’s plan for a “BRICS-Plus” or “Friends of BRICS” grouping, with Foreign Minister Wang Yi’s plan to include Pakistan, Sri Lanka and Mexico to an expanded version of BRICS. The suggestion of including Pakistan is something India has baulked at and won’t pass quite yet, but it wouldn’t want to be seen to be opposing China’s rationale of promoting “south-south cooperation” further.
•Meanwhile Russia, which was the prime mover for the grouping, has moved closer to China and away from India; this could affect the language of the joint statement, especially on issues like Afghanistan, on which BRICS members had previously been on the same page. Russia’s estrangement from the U.S. and Europe post-2014 and the Ukraine crisis in particular have increased its dependence on its east and south, mainly in the direction of the $300 billion Russia-China oil pipeline that China is funding. Russia’s shift on dealing with the Taliban is a strong signal of which way it is headed.
•The U.S.’s new Afghanistan-Pakistan-India policy, that builds India’s economic assistance into its own strategy for Afghanistan, will crystallise battle lines in the latest round of this age-old battle, with Russia, China, Iran and Pakistan ranged on one side, and India, the U.S. and NATO allies now on the other. In keeping with this, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov has called the U.S.’s Afghanistan policy a “futile course”, while President Vladimir Putin’s Afghanistan envoy Zamir Kabulov has warned against “putting too much pressure” on Pakistan. At both the BRICS conference in Goa last October, as well as the Heart of Asia summit in December, Russian officials cavilled at backing India’s strong language on terrorism emanating from Pakistan.
The road ahead
•Nevertheless, it is an indicator of the importance of BRICS that both Mr. Modi and Chinese President Xi Jinping appeared to have exerted enough pressure on officials to bring about the disengagement in Doklam a week before the summit at Xiamen. The Modi government must be credited for ensuring that it won peace at Doklam without building the outcome up as a defeat of China, which would have made their rivalry at BRICS that much more intense. In this, BRICS has fared better than two other groupings, SAARC and the Non-Aligned Movement, whose last summits India skipped, and appears to have abandoned. It remains to be seen how the two leaders use next week’s bilateral encounter to chart a road map to repair ties. This could provide a realistic understanding of where the road ahead leads for BRICS as well, and whether post-Xiamen it can still bear out the potential that was promised a decade ago in Yekaterinburg and Copenhagen.
📰 Managing embankments
Involving the communities would help minimise themisery in flood-prone areas
•Life had come to a standstill in the Ganga-Brahmaputra floodplains where large tracts of land were reeling under floods. Everywhere there were submerged houses, broken bridges, and wasted railway tracks. The fury of the waters in the Kishanganj and Katihar districts of Bihar had cut off the road and rail services in north Bengal, and consequently Northeast India’s connectivity by rail with the rest of India. On such occassions, schools routinely turn into relief centres and schoolchildren are forced to take a “flood vacation”. Access to water and sanitation is difficult. Open defecation is common, and the use of contaminated water leads to a peak in water-borne diseases. Agricultural land is either covered with sand or remains waterlogged.
No ‘safe’ area in the floodplains
•Further accentuating the misery is the failure of embankments — the gold standard for flood protection. An embankment is an uplifted earthen structure constructed along the river channel to artificially reduce the size of the floodplains by constricting floodwaters to a narrow stretch. The land outside the embankment is supposed to be safe from floods. However, embankment breach resulting in flooding the “safe” areas is routine. We need a paradigm shift in the way these embankments are managed. It is important to involve the community that is close to the embankment in its management. Only then can we break the build-and-forget mentality that currently rules the bureaucracy.
•Our study of over 100 villages in the Ganga-Brahmaputra floodplains found that villages in these areas are exposed to diverse water-related hazards depending on their location vis-a-vis an embankment. Those located inside the embankment are vulnerable to floods and riverbank erosion, and those outside, in the “safe” areas, are prone to extended periods of inundation. This takes place when the construction of an embankment causes the drainage lines to be blocked, the regulators in the embankments become dysfunctional, or when there is a backflow of the larger river in spate. The people in these “safe” areas suffer from a perennial fear of embankment breach, which is not entirely unfounded. In Bihar in 2008, there was a colossal embankment breach in the Kosi river basin. This year too, in parts of Assam, Bihar and West Bengal breaches have caused flooding. Only in a few cases have newly constructed embankments been able to protect villages located outside them from floods. Despite this, in flood-prone areas with no embankments, people still articulate the need for embankments.
•Till now, embankments have been managed by irrigation or flood-control departments. However, the communities near the embankments are best positioned to take care of them. The responsibility of embankment management could be devolved to the community, while the ownership right resides with the state. But this task of decentralisation will not be easy when society is fractured along the lines of caste, class, and religion. We must remember then that disaster is non-discriminatory and affects all.
•To incentivise collective action from the community, the state has to create an enabling institutional environment. The community-based organisations (embankment management committees) should be empowered to earn revenue from the embankments through levying tolls (as most embankments are also used as roads), and undertake plantation activities (and sale of the harvest). In areas where villages exist both inside and outside the embankment, their interests conflict. In such cases, efforts could be made to ensure that the former has a greater share of the revenue. This will dissuade them from causing a breach. While the irrigation or flood-control departments might issue tenders for periodic maintenance activity, the committees could act as a partner to partly implement the same, or act as a monitoring agency. Payment to contractors could be conditioned upon a joint inspection by the irrigation department and the embankment management committees.
•Promoting decentralised management systems is yet to be tested for embankment management, even as participatory irrigation and joint forest management are established practices. But if the past teaches us something, it is that build-and-forget cannot be an option for embankments. If we have to shift from reactive flood protection to year-round flood governance, we must design ways of embankment management in flood-prone areas. Participatory embankment management could be the way forward.
