📰 Scientists map lunar water with data from Chandrayaan-1
NASA equipment that flew aboard the spacecraft gathered images
•Scientists, using data from an instrument which flew aboard India’s Chandrayaan-1 spacecraft, have created the first map of water trapped in the uppermost layer of the moon’s soil.
•The study, published in the journal Science Advances, builds on the initial discovery in 2009 of water and a related molecule — hydroxyl, which consists of one atom each of hydrogen and oxygen — in the lunar soil.
•Scientists from Brown University in the U.S. used a new calibration of data taken from NASA’s Moon Mineralogy Mapper, which flew aboard Chandrayaan-1 spacecraft in 2008, to quantify how much water is present on a global scale.
•“The signature of water is present nearly everywhere on the lunar surface, not limited to the polar regions as previously reported,” said Shuai Li, a former PhD scholar at Brown University.
•“The amount of water increases toward the poles and does not show significant difference among distinct compositional terrains,” said Mr. Li, who is now a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Hawaii. The water concentration reaches a maximum average of around 500 to 750 parts per million in the higher latitudes. That is less than what is found in the sands of Earth’s driest deserts, researchers said.
•“This is a roadmap to where water exists on the surface of the moon,” said Ralph Milliken, an associate professor at Brown.
•“Now that we have these quantitative maps showing where the water is and in what amounts, we can start thinking about whether or not it could be worthwhile to extract, either as drinking water for astronauts or to produce fuel,” said Mr. Milliken.
Solar wind impact
•The researchers said that the way water is distributed across the moon gives clues about its source. The distribution is largely uniform rather than splotchy, with concentrations gradually decreasing toward the equator.
•That pattern is consistent with implantation via solar wind — the constant bombardment of protons from the sun.
•Although the bulk of the water mapped in this study could be attributed to solar wind, there were exceptions.
•For example, the researchers found higher-than-average concentrations of water in lunar volcanic deposits near the moon’s equator, where background water in the soil is scarce.
•Rather than coming from solar wind, the water in those localised deposits likely comes from deep within the moon’s mantle and erupted to the surface in lunar magma, scientists said.
•The study also found that the concentration of water changes over the course of the lunar day at latitudes lower than 60 degrees, going from wetter in the early morning and evening to nearly bone dry around lunar noon. The fluctuation can be as much as 200 parts per million.
•“This raises the possibility that water may re-accumulate after extraction, but we need to better understand the physics of why and how this happens to understand the timescale over which water may be renewed,” said Mr. Milliken.
📰 Japan calls for ‘Free and Open Indo-Pacific Strategy’
Poses a challenge to China in the South China Sea
•Japan’s diplomacy with India during Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s latest visit, highlighted the country’s intensifying focus on the Indo-Pacific region and Tokyo’s evolving foreign policy.
•Speaking to the media, Japan government’s spokesperson laid out the overarching nature of the new concept, “Free and Open Indo-Pacific Strategy” that aims to prepare Japan to deal with the fast changing global and regional order and threats from China and North Korea.
•Spokesperson Norio Maruyama’s presentation before the media introduced the new Japanese strategy that will build peace pro-actively, based on “diplomacy that takes a panoramic view of the world map”.
•He stated that the strategy aims to create a “free and open” Asia-Pacific region which connects parts of eastern Africa, south Asia and southeast Asia with the western Pacific Ocean region and Japan.
•“Japan will expand infrastructure, development, trade and investment, and enhance business environment and human development from East Asia as a starting point, to the Middle East and Africa,” it stated.
•The ‘Free and Open Indo-Pacific Strategy’ rests on “two oceans” — Indian and Pacific — and “two continents” — Africa and Asia. It is understood that Japan is quietly challenging China’s aggressive plans in the South China Sea that pose a threat to the energy lane that sustains Japanese economy.
•The government of Shinzo Abe believes that connectivity between Asia and Africa through a free and open Indo-Pacific, is expected to support stability and prosperity of the region as a whole. Interestingly, a joint statement issued at the end of the visit did not mention ‘South China Sea’.
📰 Govt. committee to review exporters’ ‘$10 bn.-problem’
Panel headed by Revenue Secretary to review GST issues
•A government panel headed by the Revenue Secretary will meet on September 19 to resolve a ‘$10 billion-problem’ troubling India’s exporters and its potential adverse impact on jobs.
•Official sources told The Hindu that the Revenue Secretary-led ‘Committee on Exports’ — set up on September 12 to address exporters’ concerns over the Goods and Services Tax (GST) regime — would, among other things, take up the issue of “inordinate delay in refund of GST to exporters” and the consequent blockage of working capital that is severely affecting exporters’ liquidity and enhancing their tax burden.
Tax credit refund
•According to Ajay Sahai, director general and CEO, Federation of Indian Export Organisations (FIEO), “Exporters were expecting that the Integrated GST (IGST) refund or refund of input tax credit (ITC) would be available to them in August, 2017 for the exports made during July.” He added, “However, since the filing of (GST returns) GSTR-1,2 and 3 for July has been extended till October 10, October 31 and November 10, respectively, exporters will not be able to get the refund by November.”
•Mr. Sahai said since exporters would have to wait till around December (considering 15 days for issuance of acknowledgement and another seven days for getting provisional refund of 90% of the total refund claim) for availing refund of the GST on exports, it would mean that they would have to arrange funds from their own sources to pay GST for the July-October period. The blocked amount for the four months time is estimated to be about $10 billion, Mr. Sahai pointed out, adding that the situation could lead to huge job losses.
•“The government should trust the trade,” FIEO said in a representation.
📰 At home and in the world
Deporting refugees would run counter to India’s obligations under domestic and international law
•Over the past month, from Cox’s Bazar, in the south-east of Bangladesh, smoke can be seen billowing into the grey sky across the country’s border. Villages, home to the Rohingya community, in the fractious state of Rakhine in western Myanmar, are being mercilessly, horrifically burnt down. Nurul Islam, a 30-year-old farmer, who had fled to Bangladesh by boat, told The Economist that he left his home in Myanmar after the military blasted bullets on villagers and set their houses on fire. They separated the women and men, the magazine reported, and raped Islam’s 13-year-old sister Khadiza, proceeding to then mutilate her body.
•Despite living for centuries in Myanmar, the Rohingya, who are mostly Muslim, have been denied citizenship and have been rendered stateless. In February, a United Nations report had documented numerous instances of gang rape and killings, including of babies and young children, by Myanmar’s security forces. Now, the army’s viciousness, already unimaginably ghastly, has escalated even further.
Unfolding catastrophe
•By any account, the Rohingya are at the centre of a humanitarian catastrophe of terrifying proportions. On Monday, the U.N. human rights chief, Zeid Ra’ad al-Hussein, called on Myanmar to put an end to this “brutal security operation”. He termed the state’s actions against the Rohingya as “a textbook example of ethnic cleansing”. Some would go further. In October, 2015, a Yale Law School study warned that efforts were being made not merely to forcibly displace the Rohingya but towards committing the crime of genocide through the complete annihilation of the ethnic group.
•Repercussions of the violence in Myanmar are now being felt around the globe, particularly in nearby countries; in India, where scores of Rohingya are lodged — reportedly totalling 40,000 — it must come to us as a matter of shame that the state is so much as considering returning the refugees back to the jaws of not merely political persecution but of mind-boggling terror and savagery. Going by the statements made by the Union Minister of State for Home Affairs, Kiren Rijiju, quite regrettably, it appears India might find itself committing a grave error of substantial moral purport. Although he’s since backtracked from some of his assertions, Mr. Rijiju’s message, delivered over the course of the last week, remains deeply troubling. “They are doing it, we can’t stop them from registering, but we are not signatory to the accord on refugees,” he said, in one interview, when asked about the registration of Rohingya as refugees by the UN High Commissioner for Refugees. “As far as we are concerned they are all illegal immigrants. They have no basis to live here. Anybody who is [an] illegal migrant will be deported.”
•These threats are not only chilling on a humanitarian level, if translated into action, they would also constitute a contravention of India’s obligations under both domestic and international law.
The case in court
•Indeed, it is precisely such an argument that a pair of Rohingya refugees, Mohammad Salimullah and Mohammad Shaqir, have made in a petition filed in the Supreme Court. Their submissions rest on two broad planks: one, that any deportation would violate their fundamental rights to equality and to life, under Articles 14 and 21 of the Constitution, and, two, that any action by India in returning them to Myanmar would infringe international law, particularly the principle of non-refoulement.
•When the case comes up for hearing next, on September 18, in response, the government may expand on Mr. Rijiju’s statements. It could point out, first, that India is not bound to follow the principle of non-refoulement, since it is not a signatory to the 1951 U.N. Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees, and, second, that, in any event, any deportation would be saved by the exceptions to the principle, in that the Rohingya are guilty of committing crimes against peace and are a threat to India’s national security. On any close examination, however, these arguments ought to fail.
•The principle of non-refoulement is articulated in Article 33 of the 1951 Convention. It mandates that no state shall expel or return a refugee to “the frontiers of territories where his life or freedom would be threatened on account of his race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group or political opinion”. However, it allows for an exception in cases where there are “reasonable grounds” for regarding a refugee as a “danger to the security of the country.” What’s more, the Convention also excludes generally from refugee status individuals guilty of, among other things, committing war crimes or crimes against peace and humanity.
•Now, India is not a party to the 1951 Convention. But we need to heed the existence of sources of law that stretch beyond treaty obligations. These include norms of customary international law, where binding rules have been crystallised as a result of the practice of states. The principle of non-refoulement is widely regarded as one such rule. In fact, some scholars argue that the principle is so well enshrined that it constitutes a peremptory norm from which no derogation whatsoever is permitted. But even if one were to discount such arguments, there is no denying that non-refoulement is now nearly universally accepted as constituting a fundamental rule of international law.
•At least two high courts in India have expressly held that the country is bound to follow the principle. In their judgments respectively in Ktaer Abbas Habib Al Qutaifi v. Union of India (1998) and Dongh Lian Kham v. Union of India (2015) the Gujarat and Delhi High Courts have virtually incorporated non-refoulement into the guarantees of Article 21 of the Constitution. “[The principle’s] application,” wrote the Gujarat High Court, “protects life and liberty of a human being irrespective of his nationality. It is encompassed in Article 21 of the Constitution, so long as the presence of a refugee is not prejudicial to the law and order and security of India.”
A foundational principle
•Now, the Supreme Court in different cases has incorporated other principles of customary international law into municipal law, where there’s no local statute embodying rules to the contrary. There’s no reason why non-refoulement should be treated any differently. The Supreme Court can have little option but to recognise, as the Gujarat and the Delhi High Courts have done, that non-refoulement is a foundational principle that creates obligations under both domestic and international law alike.
•On arguments concerning national security, it might well be true that the state must be accorded an element of latitude in shaping its policies. But, in the absence of any material, the government cannot plausibly be arguing that each of the 40,000 Rohingya constitutes a threat to India’s safety, or that each of them is guilty of committing crimes against peace.
•Ultimately, the petitions filed by the Rohingya refugees are an important test of both the Supreme Court and the Indian state’s moral calibre. In an interview on Wednesday, Mr. Rijiju urged an end to the “chorus” branding India as a “villain,” for its apparent stand seeking to return the Rohingyas, a “calibrated design,” in his view, to “tarnish India’s image.”
•However, the present crisis goes beyond matters of mere perception. It goes to the root of what it means to be a civilised state, of treating every person, irrespective of constructs of citizenship, with equal care, compassion and respect.
📰 Can India ignore the Rohingya crisis?
Since the refugees have no home to return to right now, New Delhi must show some magnanimity
•Over 379,000 Rohingya have fled Myanmar to neighbouring Bangladesh. India should come forward to help the refugees. The reasons are threefold: maintaining a tradition of generosity, and economic and strategic factors.
A welcoming nation
•First, not only as a major power in the region but also as the largest democracy in the world, there are expectations that India should extend help to the fleeing Rohingya, at least on humanitarian grounds, and contribute to help resolve the conundrum. India has been historically known to be benevolent to refugees. During the late 1980s and early 1990s, it welcomed thousands of refugees from Myanmar. New Delhi not only provided basic necessities such as food and shelter but also provided refugees the necessary logistics to continue their pro-democratic movement from India.
•Another extant example of India’s magnanimity in welcoming refugees is the presence of approximately 120,000 Tibetan refugees, residing in different parts of India. From the first Indian Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru, to the incumbent, Narendra Modi, India has been providing all necessary assistance to the Tibetans, including the government-in-exile in McLeodganj, a suburb of Dharamsala in Himachal Pradesh. India is also a home for hundreds of thousands of refugees from Sri Lanka, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Bangladesh, internal refugees from Kashmir, and even some 40,000 Rohingya from Myanmar.
•It is understandable about the concerns in some quarters in India that the Islamist terrorist groups may expand their networks through some hard-line Rohingya. However, since the refugees have no home to return to, at least at the moment, New Delhi should reconsider the idea of deporting them. The question one should seriously ponder is, where the refugees would go if they are deported at a time when both the Myanmar and Bangladesh governments are refusing to accept them as citizens?
Projects at stake
•Second, peace and stability in the Rakhine state is important for India’s economic investment. During his September 5-7 visit to Myanmar, Prime Minister Modi said India shares Myanmar’s concerns over “extremist violence” in Rakhine.
•He also emphasised the need to bring about overall socio-economic development in the state by undertaking both infrastructure and socio-economic projects. The continued violence in Rakhine state is affecting India’s Kaladan Multi-modal Transit Transport project, aimed at developing transport infrastructure in south-west Myanmar and India’s Northeast. The project includes the construction of a deepwater port at the mouth of the Kaladan river in Sittwe, the capital of Rakhine state on the Bay of Bengal. Reconciliation between the Rohingya Muslims and the Rakhine Buddhists is necessary for peace to prevail. It is therefore in the economic interest of India to show its generosity and reach out to all peoples of the state.
•Third, it is understandable that India does not want a strained relationship with Myanmar at this juncture when New Delhi is exploring ways to enhance its presence and influence in Myanmar and the Southeast Asia region through its Act East policy. But this does not have to be at the expense of alienating or marginalising the Rohingya.
•When there are growing calls from the international community to the Myanmar government to end violence in Rakhine state and address the Rohingya conundrum, it would not be a wise strategic move for India to ignore them. While the government may take a conscious decision to publicly support Myanmarese leader Aung San Suu Kyi, at the same time it should gently prod her government to adopt a positive attitude toward resolving the Rohingya problem with the help of the international community.
📰 Good and simple tax
A course correction is essential to fixthe glitches in the GST regime
•India’s goods and services tax regime is nearing the end of its first full quarter since roll-out this July. Revenue collections from the first month appear robust, with just 70% of eligible taxpayers bringing in Rs. 95,000 crore. At this rate, the total tally could well surge close to Rs. 1.2 lakh crore. This would be significantly higher than the Rs. 91,000 crore indirect tax target for the Centre and the States on an overall basis. This initial trend will need to be corroborated by inflows for subsequent months, but with many more taxpayers registering in August, the GST appears to have begun well as far as the exchequer is concerned. If revenues remain healthy, the government would, over time, get the necessary fiscal room to rationalise multiple GST rates into fewer slabs and possibly lower levies as a stimulus. However, for businesses the going has been far from smooth, with firms of all sizes across sectors struggling to file their first set of returns under the GST due to significant glitches in the GST Network, its information technology backbone, and issues of connectivity. The government has extended the deadline for GST returns for the first month twice, with GSTR-3 now required to be submitted as late as November 10. A group of Central and State ministers has been tasked with resolving the GSTN’s challenges. To inspire confidence, this group must act not only expeditiously but also transparently — especially with regard to the GSTN’s operational capacity.
•However, as it stands now the delay in filing returns for the first, and therefore subsequent, months means that taxpayers expecting a refund from the authorities on taxes already paid (for example, by exporters) will end up waiting for almost four months (for the period of July alone). This is bound to crimp their working capital availability and create an unjust burden on their finances, impacting their ability to scale up production ahead of the high-turnover festive season. The problem is most acute for exporters, for whom the Council has now formed a special committee under the Revenue Secretary. Provided there are no further setbacks on these timelines, these procedural problems need to be resolved as soon as possible for industry to be comfortable with this switch-over. Amid all this, the GST Council has already changed the announced tax rates on over 100 products and services within about 75 days of the roll-out. An ever-changing policy landscape is hardly conducive for attracting investment. The fact that industrial output grew just 1.2% in July may not be a coincidence. Clearly, a lot of things were not thought through or tested (such as the GSTN) when the government opted for a July 1 launch for GST instead of the September 16 date that the constitutional changes made last year allowed. Admitting to the errors of judgment so far is essential for a genuine course correction.
📰 The new highways
Part of the cess collected on high-speed diesel and petrol may be used to maintain national waterways
•As acquisition of land for national and State highways becomes scarce and the cost of construction of roads, flyovers and bridges goes up, the government is now exploring using water as a means of public transportation.
Some challenges
•With the enactment of the National Waterways Act, 2016, the total number of national waterways is now 111. But providing infrastructure such as jetties, terminals, and navigational channels continues to pose a challenge.
•Hence, the government has proposed an amendment to the Central Road Fund Act, 2000. The Central Road Fund (Amendment) Bill, 2017 implants ‘national waterways’ into the 2000 Act.
•The Bill proposes using a part of the cess collected on high-speed diesel and petrol for the upkeep of the national and State highways for maintaining the infrastructure of the national waterways.
•The Ministry of Road Transport and Highways, which tabled the Bill in July 2017 in the Lok Sabha, said national waterways provide a cost-effective, logistically efficient and environment-friendly mode of transport, whose development as a supplementary mode would enable diversion of traffic from over-congested roads and railways. It is argued that the waterways project deserves better regulation and development across the country.
Finding the funds
•In order to suitably develop national waterways, sustainable source of funding is imperative as budgetary support and funds from multilateral institutions are inadequate.
•In a statement on objectives and reasons for the amendment, the Ministry said that “one of the sustainable sources of funding for the development of waterways is to earmark certain per cent of cess levied and collected on high speed diesel and petrol under the Central Road Fund Act of 2000”. It has proposed to provide 2.5% of the cess on high-speed diesel and petrol for the development and maintenance of national waterways. This would accelerate the development of national waterways by utilising the funds generated by way of cess. It also offers incentives and certainty for the private sector to invest in the inland waterways transport sector.
•At the current rates of levy of cess, about Rs. 2,000 crore per annum is estimated to be available for the development and maintenance of national waterways. The administration of the cess collected will also involve some expenditure. It is not possible to indicate the quantum of expenditure involved at this stage. However, the expenditure involved for this purpose would be met out of the budgetary provision of each year by the Ministry of Shipping, as approved by Parliament.
