📰 Attacks by cow vigilantes must stop, SC tells States
•Attacks on innocents by cow vigilantes must stop, the Supreme Court said on Wednesday.
•It ordered the States and the Union Territories to appoint nodal police officers in every district to crack down on such groups.
•BJP-ruled Haryana, Rajasthan, Maharashtra and Gujarat accepted the apex court’s suggestion to appoint dedicated officers in the rank of Deputy Superintendent of Police to prevent ‘gau rakshaks,’ as they call themselves, from taking the law into their own hands or becoming a law unto themselves.
•A three-judge Bench of Chief Justice of India Dipak Misra and Justices Amitava Roy and A.M. Khanwilkar was hearing an intervention by Mahatma Gandhi’s grandson, Tushar Gandhi, about the lack of responsibility and accountability shown by the Centre and State administrations as vigilante groups wreaked havoc and resorted to murder in broad daylight in the name of the cow.
Centre’s responsibility
•Dalits and Muslims have reportedly been at the receiving end of violence unleashed by lynch mobs, especially in the four northern States. The court exhorted the Centre to uphold its constitutional mandate under Article 256 and direct the States to act against the groups. It said the Centre could not remain silent, leaving everything to the States.
•The court directed the Centre to respond to a submission by senior advocate Indira Jaising, for Mr. Gandhi, that the government cannot wash its hands of its constitutional responsibility under Article 256. The Centre should reply to this argument in the spirit of “co-operative federalism.”
•The Centre has maintained that violence by ‘gau rakshaks’ was a ‘State subject’ and it had no role to play, though it condemned all forms of violence.
•“Non-violence is the founding faith of this country. The Centre cannot turn its back on the violence. The States have the responsibility to lodge First Information Reports against these vigilantes,” Ms. Jaising submitted.
•“You have to stop it [the violence],” Chief Justice Misra told Additional Solicitor General Tushar Mehta, appearing for the four northern States.
‘Do not politicise issue’
•But when senior advocate Colin Gonsalves raised the issue of communal violence supported by certain “groups” and the murder of Bengaluru journalist Gauri Lankesh, the court stopped him, saying he should not politicise the issue.
•Ms. Jaising said that most of the violent incidents had occurred on highways. The court directed the Chief Secretaries and Directors General of Police to take steps to protect the highways from vigilante mobsThe Centre must also indicate its views on this issue.
•Justice Khanwilkar wondered why no one had filed PIL pleas against the carcasses of slaughtered animals found strewn on roads and public places.
•The court posted the case for further hearing on September 22.
📰 Focus on ‘impactful’ Smart City projects: Centre
States asked to prioritise 370 schemes, to be completed at a cost of Rs. 30,000 crore
•In an obvious measure to grab eyeballs, the Housing and Urban Affairs Ministry has asked the State governments to push up implementation of “impactful” projects which will get people talking about the Smart City Mission.
•The Centre and the State governments together have identified 261 projects worth Rs. 32,600 crore under this category. Majority of these projects are in the first lot of 20 smart cities announced in January 2016. Projects have been shortlisted without any clear definition of what “impactful” means.
•“261 impactful projects have been identified in consultation with the States and circulated earlier vide letter dated August 16, 2017. These projects are expected to have visible and transformative impact on the various aspects of the lives of the citizens,” Secretary Durga Shankar Mishra writes in a letter addressed to all Chief Secretaries. All these projects have to be commenced by November 2017. The idea is to complete the projects in time for the next Lok Sabha polls in May 2019.
•The list of “impactful” projects varies from Museum of Urban History in Bhubaneswar, to Adventure Park in Udaipur, to rejuvenation of water bodies in Coimbatore, to 5 km-long heritage walk in Warangal, to conservation of built heritage in Thanjavur, to redevelopment of world-famous Manikarnika Ghat in Varanasi.
PPP projects
•Mr. Mishra, in his letter, has also urged the States to prioritise 370 projects to be completed at a cost of Rs. 30,000 crore, which are developed under public-private partnership.
•The Ministry has sent out this missive after the review of Smart Cities by Prime Minister Narendra Modi on August 30. He directed the Chief Secretaries to review the progress of projects on weekly basis.
•Since the list of first 20 smart cities came out on January 1, 2016, questions have been raised on the mission. For one, the Smart City is a misnomer, because only small pockets of the city are to be developed. The latest review of Smart City projects reveals that only 79 projects with total budget of Rs. 841 crore have been completed. Another 204 projects, with a budget of Rs. 7963 crore are under implementation.
•Projects worth Rs. 1.14 lakh crore are still on the drawing board stage.
•To accelerate work, the Ministry has now decided to award World Bank and AFD (Agence Francaise De Développement) funds on competitive basis.
•“The detailed guidelines with competition framework in this regard are under finalisation and would be circulated separately,” Mr. Mishra said in his letter.
📰 A case for universal medical care
The opposition to NEET is a smokescreen to hide inequalities and exploitation
•The purpose of medical education is to train medical personnel to handle the medical care needs of the country. It is obvious that any democratic government will try to elucidate what these needs are and tailor the education system to fulfil what is required. Right from the Bhore Committee (1946) to the Mudaliar Committee (1962) and the Shrivastav Committee (1975) to the Bajaj Committee (1986) and including the High Level Expert Group on Universal Health Coverage (2011), the question of what type of medical personnel the country should train has been examined. All these committees are unanimous in their opinion that the country needs a large number of basic doctors. It is not sufficient to state what type of doctors should be trained. It is necessary also to define where they will be employed and who will pay the bills. In short, medical education is the beginning of a process to produce a cadre of personnel who need to be deployed rationally to achieve the health goals of the country.
•The piecemeal approach to the problem of providing medical care in India, treating medical education as though it can be separated from medical employment, is responsible for the continuing crisis in medical services and admissions to medical colleges. Numerous commentators have remarked upon the skewed distribution of medical personnel with over 75% of doctors in urban areas where only a third of the people live. A large number of post-graduate doctors and super specialists are underemployed. The problem starts right at the stage of medical admission.
Semblance of quality
•Every country should seek to train persons with the best aptitude for a particular task. In doctors, intelligence and empathy are highly prized. It is difficult to measure empathy and most democratic countries use a test of intelligence as a screen to admit medical students because everywhere there are more candidates than seats available. In India, one can accept that because of centuries of deprivation, certain communities need affirmative action in the form of reservation. However, it is very difficult to accept that expensive private medical education is useful for the country. Permitting private medical education was clearly a concession to powerful pressure groups who sought to circumvent the difficult entry barriers to medical education by buying their way. These colleges are filled with the children of doctors, bureaucrats, businessmen and others who seek the social recognition that a medical degree bestows. Anybody with money, irrespective of aptitude, gained entry to some of these colleges. Every year the amounts illegally charged rose by leaps and bounds. Governments were complicit. This egregious state of affairs led to several persons approaching courts. Some semblance of quality has been sought to be restored by the National Eligibility cum Entrance Test (NEET). Private colleges can no longer admit whoever pays the highest even if the examination marks are very low. The rule of reservation is applied after the test scores are obtained. Therefore, it satisfies the need for affirmative action. Unlike marks in the twelfth standard, which can be only obtained once, NEET offers a candidate the chance of another attempt. What the syllabus should be and who should conduct the test can be negotiated.
•Inequality among qualified doctors is quite high. The economically well-off can aspire to better jobs, training abroad (still much sought after in spite of all nationalist talk), and generally adopt metropolitan lifestyles. Doctors from poorer backgrounds will need to struggle a lot more. All this can be changed if the government abolishes private practice, institutes universal medical care and becomes the employer of all medical graduates, similar to the National Health Service of the U.K. All medical graduates will be on the same level playing field. Patients will benefit a lot. The deprivation of patients in rural areas will vanish. Unhealthy competition for patients in urban areas will disappear too. No Central or State government has shown any interest in this obvious solution which will benefit the ordinary citizen and the vast majority of doctors from humble backgrounds. The opposition to NEET is a smokescreen to hide the real truth, the abysmal level of medical care services and the continued exploitation of poor patients and the doctors who serve them.
📰 Modi gives call to respect Myanmar’s integrity
‘We share concerns over extremist violence in Rakhine’
•India said on Wednesday that it shares Myanmar’s concerns over “extremist violence” in the Rakhine State, from where 1,25,000 Rohingya have fled to Bangladesh, with Prime Minister Narendra Modi urging all stakeholders to find a solution that respects the country’s unity.
•Mr. Modi, who held wide-ranging talks with State Counsellor Aung San Suu Kyi, said it was important to maintain the security and stability of the land and maritime boundaries of the two countries.
•The two leaders also vowed to combat terror and boost security cooperation.
•Mr. Modi’s first bilateral visit here comes at a time when the Myanmarese government, led by Nobel laureate Suu Kyi, is facing international pressure over the 1,25,000 Rohingya Muslims who have poured into Bangladesh in just two weeks after Myanmar’s military launched a crackdown in Rakhine. Mr. Modi, in his joint press statement with Ms. Suu Kyi after the talks, said India understands the problems being faced by Myanmar. He said it shares Myanmar’s concerns over “extremist violence” in Rakhine, especially the loss of innocent lives of the people and the security personnel. “When it comes to a big peace process or finding a solution to a special issue, we hope that all stakeholders can work together towards finding a solution which, while respecting the unity and territorial integrity of Myanmar, ensures peace, justice and dignity for all,” he said.
•His remarks came a day after Union Minister Kiren Rijiju said Rohingyas are illegal immigrants and will be deported from India.
•Mr. Rijiju had asserted that nobody should preach to India on the issue as the country has absorbed the maximum number of refugees in the world.
•After the Modi-Suu Kyi talks, 11 agreements were signed between the two sides in areas like maritime security, strengthening democratic institutions in Myanmar, health and information technology. Mr. Modi, in his statement, stressed on scaling up security cooperation, saying that being neighbours, the two countries have similar security concerns.
📰 India, China rebooting ties post-Doklam
Plan is to address points of friction before they develop into full-blown crises, but issues such as naming Azhar remain
•Jolted by the military face-off in the Doklam plateau, India and China are rebooting their ties, by opening new channels of official communication to address points of friction before they develop into full-blown crises.
•“The Chinese appear to have taken a strategic decision to reboot ties with India with a new and positive mindset following the Doklam crisis,” an official source, who did not wish to be named, told The Hindu .
•“After talks between Prime Minister Narendra Modi and President Xi Jinping on Tuesday, there is much anticipation that the quality of core communication between the two countries will greatly improve.”
•Yet, New Delhi has concerns that despite the fresh start in Xiamen on the sidelines of the BRICS summit, the leadership changes in China at the 19th party congress in October will impact the trajectory of New Delhi and Beijing ties. It is widely anticipated that Yang Jiechi, state counsellor and China’s special representative at the boundary talks with India, will retire.
•China’s apparent policy shift on international terrorism, as reflected in the BRICS statement, will be tested when the United Nations 1267 committee meets in October to discuss designation of Masood Azhar, the head of the Pakistan-based Jaish-e-Mohammad, as an international terrorist. China has so far resisted putting Azhar on the list of global terrorists, but there is some optimism now that Beijing may be ready to shift its stance on this issue, notwithstanding its special relationship with Pakistan.
•The new hands-on mechanism will supplement the already-existing periodically held “strategic dialogue”. It is expected to address concerns of an aspirational India and rising China in the region, including the Indian Ocean and the Asia-Pacific.
•Analysts say the thinking driving India’s Act-East policy and China’s Belt and Road Initiative is far from aligned. India’s Indo-Pacific doctrine is raising apprehensions in China that instead of pursuit of an independent policy, India is allowing itself to drift into a China-containment mode, with Tokyo and Washington as partners.
•India has its own concerns about Chinese intentions in the South China Sea and the South Asian neighbourhood, including Sri Lanka, Nepal and the Maldives.
Positive view
•During a media briefing on Tuesday after the meeting between Prime Minister Modi and President Xi, Foreign Secretary S. Jaishankar highlighted that the two leaders had “laid out a very positive view of our relationship.” They had held “a detailed discussion about the mechanisms which could help both countries really go forward in that direction”.
•On Tuesday afternoon, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Geng Shuang also underscored that India and China should “reinforce communication and coordination in international affairs and make the international order more just and equitable”.
•Notwithstanding the intent to break common ground, India continued to differ with China and Russia on accommodating the Taliban to restore calm in Afghanistan. Afghanistan was a major issue of discussion during Prime Minster Modi’s lengthy conversation with President Vladimir Putin on the margins of the summit.
📰 Mountains of garbage
Waste management rules continue to be ignored even a year after they were notified
•The collapse of a great wall of garbage in east Delhi’s Ghazipur area, sweeping people and vehicles into a nearby canal, is a stark reminder that India’s neglected waste management crisis can have deadly consequences. More than a year after the notification of the much-delayed Solid Waste Management Rules, cities and towns are in no position to comply with its stipulations, beginning with the segregation of different kinds of waste at source and their scientific processing. Neither are urban local governments treating the 62 million tonnes of waste generated annually in the country as a potential resource. They have left the task of value extraction mostly to the informal system of garbage collectors and recyclers. Improving on the national record of collecting only 80% of waste generated and being able to process just 28% of that quantum, requires behaviour modification among citizens and institutions. But what is more important is that the municipal bodies put in place an integrated system to transport and process what has been segregated at source. The Swachh Bharat programme of the Centre has focussed too narrowly on individual action to keep streets clean, without concurrent pressure on State and municipal authorities to move closer to scientific management by the deadline of April 2018 set for most places, and arrest the spread of pollution from trash.
•In the absence of stakeholders at the local body level, recoverable resources embedded in discarded materials are lost due to dumping. Organic refuse, which forms about 50% of all garbage, readily lends itself to the generation of compost or production of methane for household use or power generation. But it is a major opportunity lost. Organic waste that could help green cities and feed small and affordable household biogas plants is simply being thrown away. It is also ironic that while some countries such as Rwanda and Kenya have introduced stiff penalties for the use of flimsy plastic bags, India is doing little to prevent them from drifting into suburban garbage mountains, rivers, lakes and the sea, and being ingested by cattle feeding on dumped refuse. A new paradigm is needed, in which bulk waste generators take the lead and city managers show demonstrable change in the way it is processed. There has to be a shift away from large budgets for collection and transport by private contractors, to the processing of segregated garbage. As the nodal body for the implementation of the new rules, the Central Pollution Control Board should put out periodic assessments of the preparedness of urban local bodies in the run-up to the deadline. Without a rigorous approach, the national problem of merely shifting city trash to the suburbs, out of sight of those who generate it, will fester and choke the landscape. Considering that waste volumes are officially estimated to grow to 165 million tonnes a year by 2030, many more suburbs are bound to be threatened by collapsing or burning trash mountains.
📰 Development must be climate-smart
As the frequency of extreme weather events increases, urbanisation has to heed ecological principles
•Heavy rains this year from the southwest monsoon and accompanying floods have devastated people’s lives in parts of Mumbai, Chandigarh and Mount Abu (Rajasthan), all in the same period as Hurricane Harvey’s rampage through Houston. Mumbai is reported to have received 400 mm of rain within a matter of 12 hours while Houston received about 1,300 mm over several days with Harvey.
•Climate models have indicated with high confidence that climate change will lead to an increase in extreme rainfall events. According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Special Report on Extreme Events, global warming leads to “changes in the frequency, intensity, spatial extent, duration, and timing of extreme weather and climate events, and can result in unprecedented extreme weather and climate events”.
•For India, the average monsoon rainfall is expected to increase initially and then reduce after a few decades. Examining daily rainfall data between 1951 and 2000, B.N. Goswami, former Director of the Indian Institute of Tropical Meteorology, Pune, showed that there has been a significant increase in the magnitude and frequency of extreme rainfall events along with a decrease in the number of moderate events over central India. These changes interacting with land-use patterns are contributing to floods and droughts simultaneously in several parts of the country.
Understanding extreme events
•The main reason for understanding extreme events is to help policymakers, emergency responders and local communities to plan and prepare for them. Cities could be laid out to reduce flooding by following natural contours, drainage and tank systems. Emergency responders should be well prepared to transport and care for people who may become stranded during disasters. Insurance companies might also be concerned about underwriting places that are at perpetual risk in the future. Once an extreme event such as a heat wave or heavy rain occurs, people want to know to what extent a single event has been caused by climate change, that is, by greenhouse gases released through human activities.
•Research that tries to understand this relationship between anthropogenic climate change and extreme events in particular locations is called “attribution”. Is an extreme event, such as torrential rainfall or record storm surges, part of a natural cycle of variability or due to human-induced climate change? To what extent do poor preparedness and ecologically insensitive land-use worsen the impacts? According to much of the literature, it is easier to determine attribution for severe heat or cold waves. NASA scientist James Hansen earlier found, for instance, that the Texas heat wave of 2011 and the Russian heat wave of 2010 were due to climate change.
•Conversely, for rainfall simulation, climate models cannot mimic or simulate extreme rainfall such as the kind Chennai experienced in 2015. According to a paper by Geert Jan Van Oldenborgh and colleagues, the 494 mm rain in Chennai was a rare event, with less than a 0.2% chance of occurring in any given year. The Chennai flood of 2015 did not have a clear climate signature to show that it was due to warming of the earth. On the other hand, with regard to Hurricane Harvey, Michael Mann, a well-known climate scientist, wrote in The Guardianthat climate change made the impact much worse, because of higher sea surface temperatures and a blocking region of high pressure that kept the rain clouds over Houston for a long period.
Urbanisation and hydrology
•The actual patterns of flooding in Chennai, Mumbai and Houston, however, were due to several human-induced activities: rampant increase in built-up area across natural drainage channels, the diversion or damming of rivers upstream leading to sediment transport and siltation, coastal subsidence and other effects of development.
•Any rain that falls on soil or vegetation is mostly absorbed into the earth’s surface. Some of it slowly trickles into shallow or deep protected aquifers that make up what we call groundwater. The rest usually flows downhill along surface or subsurface stream channels. The spread of infrastructure such as roads, highways, buildings, residential complexes, tiled or asphalt-covered land obstructs rainwater from percolating into the soil. Often there are further barriers that block movement of water and increase flooding.
•In many parts of the world, construction in cities or in urbanising areas does not take into consideration the existing topography, surface water bodies, stream flows or other parts of terrestrial ecosystems. In much of India, urban growth over the past few decades has blithely ignored the hydrology of the land. In Chennai, for example, systematic intrusion into the Pallikaranai marsh and other wetlands by housing complexes and commercial buildings, slums along Cooum and Adyar rivers, and large-scale construction along the coast are just examples of the flagrant encroachment of the built environment that obstructs rivulets and absorption of rainwater into the earth.
•When it rains heavily, exceeding the capacity of the soil to absorb it and regular stream flows are blocked from proceeding into the sea, these heavily built-up areas get inundated. Satellite images from 15 or more years back show the existence of hundreds of lakes and tanks, and several waterways within the city’s boundaries.
•For decades, urbanisation has ignored ecological principles associated with water bodies, vegetation, biodiversity and topography. These are not ‘environmental’ issues to be disregarded or attended to only after we have attained ‘growth’. Rather, they are part and parcel of and integral to how we live and whether we prosper.
What is to be done?
•Development needs to be climate-smart, but also avoid social and institutional challenges such as moral hazard. If investments are made in places where severe impacts are likely, the government will end up bailing out those engaging in such risky activities. If the built environment and structures of financing and housing are ‘locked-in’ or get firmed up with regard to institutional arrangements, these can lead to further complications.
•Still, construction on existing lake beds and other waterbodies needs to be removed or redesigned to allow flood drainage along natural water channels. As the frequency of extreme weather events increases around the world, losses in rich countries are higher in terms of GDP, but in terms of the number of people at risk, it is the poor countries that suffer the most. Those who are the most vulnerable and the poorest end up bearing the brunt of the burdens of climate change and mal-development, which together operate to worsen impacts.
📰 ‘District-wise plan to help boost manufacturing’
‘Make In India’ to be re-evaluated, says Suresh Prabhu
•The new commerce and industry minister Suresh Prabhu on Wednesday outlined his priorities. They include firming up a district-wise industrial investment plan to help boost the share of manufacturing in the country’s GDP, as well as improving India's economic diplomacy to spur exports and investments.
•His priorities also include addressing challenges being faced by exporters owing to the Goods and Services Tax, integrating India's exports into the global supply chain, improving logistics to reduce transaction costs of exporters and bringing out an agricultural export policy.
‘Basis of decisions’
•Addressing reporters, Mr. Prabhu said he had held a meeting with ‘Invest India’ (the government's investment promotion and facilitation arm), and sought a district-wise plan for boosting investments in manufacturing and other sectors. “Ultimately every investor makes their investments in districts, and base their decisions on factors including the district’s human resources, natural resources and the law and order situation.” Noting that each district had core competencies, Mr. Prabhu said he would work with state governments to bring out a plan.
•The minister said there would also be a re-evaluation of the ‘Make In India’ initiative to find out more ways to revitalise manufacturing. He also called for laying emphasis not only on the ‘Make in India’ initiative but also on ‘Design In India’ for attracting investments.
📰 Centre sets up panel to suggest on new jobs
Task force to report by November
•The NDA government has constituted a new task force led by NITI Aayog vice-chairman Rajiv Kumar to recommend measures to increase employment by promoting labour-intensive exports.
•“While the Indian workforce has high aspirations, a majority of the workers are still employed in low-productivity, low-wage jobs in small, micro and own-account enterprises. An urgent and sustained expansion of the organized sector is essential to address India’s unemployment and under-employment issue,” the NITI Aayog said in a statement on Wednesday.
Key strategy
•“An important strategy is to enable a shift towards more labour-intensive goods and services that are destined for exports. Given the importance of exports in generating jobs, India needs to create an environment in which globally competitive exporters can emerge and flourish,” the Aayog noted. The committee has been asked to submit its report by November 2017.
