📰 WHO releases new guidelines to manage obesity in children
Assessment of eating habits and counselling to be part of intervention strategy
•With increasing evidence that childhood obesity is a “global epidemic” affecting even the poorer nations, the World Health Organization (WHO) has released new guidelines on how trained professionals can better identify youngsters in need of help.
•India has the second highest number of obese children in the world after China, according to a study published in The New England Journal of Medicine in June this year. Doctors say identification of obesity in children is the main issue as often parents think a chubby child is a healthy child.
•The WHO guidelines titled “Assessing and managing children at primary healthcare facilities to prevent overweight and obesity in the context of the double burden of malnutrition” provides updates for the Integrated Management of Childhood Illness (IMCI). The guideline includes counselling, dieting and assessment of eating habits along with the usual weight and height measurements.
•H.P. Sachdev, former national president of the Indian Academy of Paediatrics, who is part of WHO’s guideline development group, told The Hindu, “In 2016, one half of all children overweight or obese lived in Asia and one quarter lived in Africa. Paradoxically, overweight and obesity is found in populations where under-nutrition remains common — the term ‘double-burden of malnutrition’ is sometimes used to describe these settings.”
•Referring to the guideline, Dr. Sachdev said that routinely providing supplementary foods to stunted and moderately wasted infants and children in primary health-care facilities is not recommended. “Early prevention is the need of the hour to avoid an entire generation from falling prey to heart ailments, hypertension and diabetic complications,” he said.
Sharing the message
•The Indian Medical Association (IMA) is disseminating the WHO guideline to all its members. IMA National President K.K. Aggarwal said that the prevalence of obesity in children reflects changing patterns towards unhealthy diets and physical inactivity. A study published in Paediatric Obesity says India will have over 17 million children with excess weight by 2025. Quoting the WHO document, Dr. Aggarwal said that urbanisation, increased income, availability of fast foods, educational demands, television viewing and gaming have led to a rise in the consumption of foods high in fats, sugar and salt and low physical activity.
•“While there have been major public health interventions to promote improved diet and patterns of physical activity in adults, the contribution of antenatal and young-child interventions to reducing the risk of obesity in later life have not been significantly reviewed. We are writing to all our doctors explaining the guidelines,” he said.
•Anjana Hulse, paediatric endocrinologist in Apollo Hospitals, said identification of obesity in children is a major challenge. “Parents feel the necessity to see a doctor only when their children develop complications. Most obese children develop early puberty, joint pain and find it difficult to exercise. This in turn results in metabolic syndrome and they end up with Type 2 diabetes,” she said.
📰 Passive euthanasia already a law, says govt.
Centre opposes legalising ‘living wills’
•Passive euthanasia, the act of withdrawing life support to a terminally-ill patient, is already the law of the land, the government told a Constitution Bench of the Supreme Court.
•The government pointed out that the Supreme Court itself, in 2011, had issued comprehensive guidelines allowing passive euthanasia in the tragic case of the bed-ridden former Mumbai nurse Aruna Shanbaug. In her case the staff of KEM Hospital took care of her till her natural death in 2015.
•The government said it was finalising a draft law on passive euthanasia called 'The Management of Patients With Terminal Illness – Withdrawal of Medical Life Support Bill', which was drawn up in line with the recommendations of the Law Commission of India that life support can be withdrawn for patients in persistent vegetative state (PVS) or suffering an irreversible medical condition.
•The Centre, however, objected to legalising the concept of ‘Living Will’ — an advance written directive to physicians for end-of-life medical care.
•It pointed out that this may lead to the abuse and neglect of the elderly, especially if they were financially well-off. The government pointed out that the living will was a concept which contradicts a person's instinctive urge to survive.
📰 SC ruling on age of consent today
Disparity between IPC and other laws
•The Supreme Court will on Wednesday pronounce its verdict on whether or not an exception to rape, sanctioned by the Indian Penal Code, that allows a man to have sexual intercourse with his wife aged above 15 is valid.
•A Bench of Justices Madan B. Lokur and Deepak Gupta will pronounce the verdict on the disparity between this exception to Section 375 (rape) of the IPC, which allows a husband to have sexual relationship with his 15-year-old wife, and the definition of ‘child’ in recent laws such as the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences Act, 2012, which includes any person below the age of 18.
•The court has repeatedly questioned the continued existence of this exception to rape when the other parliamentary laws have uniformly said that the age of consent of a girl is 18.
•It, however, had said that it did not want to go into the aspect of marital rape.
•The government had given a measured response during the hearing of the petition filed by an NGO, Independent Thought, submitting that doing away with this exception clause in the IPC would open a Pandora’s box on marital rape, which does not exist in India.
•It had referred to the concept of age of puberty among Muslims for the purpose of marriage, and said these aspects had been deliberated upon by Parliament before arriving at a conclusion.
Social evil
•However, the court had expressed its distress at how laws had not been able to stop the social evil of child marriage, especially in rural parts of the country.
•The NGO has contended that the exception clause was “violative of Articles 14, 15 and 21 of the Constitution to the extent that it permits intrusive sexual intercourse with a girl child aged between 15 and 18 years, only on the ground that she has been married.”
📰 India, U.K. to firm up defence links
Talks ahead of Modi-May meet in 2018
•India and Britain hope to agree on concrete measures to take forward their defence partnership by next year, ahead of the next meeting of the two Prime Ministers, India’s Defence Secretary Sanjay Mitra said during a three-day visit to the U.K. The meeting of the two leaders is widely expected to take place at the Commonwealth Heads of Government meeting in London in April 2018.
•Following Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s visit to London in 2015, the two countries agreed to hold regular dialogues, as part of the India-U.K. Defence Consultative Group. Since then, a step change in terms of depth had taken place in cooperation and dialogue in the area, Mr. Mitra said.
Wide-ranging dialogue
•Mr. Mitra has met with Michael Fallon, who heads the Ministry of Defence, and the department’s Permanent Secretary during his trip which focussed on meetings of the Defence Consultative Group.
•“The military community dialogue has been going well and there have been a wide range of visits that have been taking place at the level of chief of staff, and senior operatives … we have a road map going and we hope that by the time of the meeting of the Prime Ministers, we will have some meat on this,” he said, adding that talks had ranged from capability development, defence equipment and cybersecurity to counter-terrorism.
‘Make in India’ push
•India has pegged the defence sector as one of the major areas where the bilateral partnership could be expanded around the “Make in India” campaign. During Mr. Modi’s visit in 2015, the two sides agreed to move towards a new Defence and International Security Partnership that would “intensify cooperation on defence and security, including cybersecurity, and maritime security” pushing for joint working in key strategic areas.
•“We are very keen that U.K. firms participate in our ‘Make in India’ process and in our strategic partnership exercise that we’ve just begun,” the Defence Secretary said.
📰 GIFT City bourses to offer oil contracts
Trading in crude futures to start this month after SEBI permission to special financial zone’s exchanges
•The Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI) has allowed exchanges established in GIFT City to introduce crude oil futures contracts, trading in which is set to commence later this month.
•The inclusion of crude oil contracts at the International Financial Services Centre (IFSC) was one of the main demands by market participants who had wanted to be able to trade in the global commodity in dollar terms, with the added advantage of lower trading costs and also longer trading hours on Indian shores.
•Currently, BSE’s India INX and the NSE IFSC are the two operational bourses in the special financial zone in Gujarat. While India INX started trading in January, NSE IFSC went live in June. Further, exchanges in the IFSC offer trading facilities for 22 hours.
•Currently, bourses based in GIFT City offer trading in derivatives based on indices, single stocks — both domestic and overseas — currency and bullion. All contracts are settled in dollars in IFSC. “Ever since trading started in Gift City in January, there has been a strong interest by investor community but there was this big gap in the form of crude and INR-USD contracts,” said a person involved in the regulatory discussions. “At least one demand has been fulfilled and that will lead to a big push in terms of trading turnover,” said the person, who did not wish to be identified. India INX registered a daily average turnover of almost $37 million in September. It witnessed a record high turnover of $102 million on May 5.
‘Boost liquidity’
•“There is a lot of demand for crude oil contracts globally and the launch of such contracts in GIFT City will boost the liquidity,” said V. Balasubramaniam, managing director and CEO, India INX.
•India INX would offer two contracts — one with Brent crude as the underlying, and the other with WTI crude. The contract size has been fixed at 100 barrels each.
•Further, DGCX (Dubai Gold and Commodities Exchange) prices would be taken into account for ascertaining the settlement price of the contracts. DGCX is the biggest derivatives exchange in the Middle East.
•Trading interest in crude oil can be gauged from the fact that it is the highest traded commodity on Multi Commodity Exchange of India (MCX), the country’s largest commodity bourse in terms of market share.
•In the six-month period period between April and September, the average daily turnover in crude oil contracts on the MCX was Rs. 5,518 crore. In comparison, the average daily turnover in gold in the same period was Rs. 3,153 crore.
•Participants are eyeing INR-USD contracts settled in dollars as the next goal.
•People familiar with the development said that while regulators had expressed concerns about allowing rupee-dollar contracts in IFSC, “constructive discussions” were ongoing with all the stakeholders.
📰 ‘Focus should be on scaling up the use of innovations’
The newly appointed Deputy Director-General for Programmes at the WHO says her elevation reflects on the growing importance of India in global health diplomacy
•After a career in research and academia, Soumya Swaminathan’s recent elevation to the post of Deputy Director-General for Programmes (DDP) at the World Health Organisation (WHO) came as a surprise, even to her. “This was not planned at all,” she says. “In fact, I’ve always thought of myself as a researcher. I wanted to stay on in clinical research, even up to the point I became Director-General (DG) of the ICMR (Indian Council of Medical Research). Most of my experience has been with research, but because it has been in diseases like HIV and TB, I was able to observe the public health system very well, and the different aspects of health programmes.”
•She adds: “I’m very grateful to the Centre that they nominated me, but it’s an unusual path for an academic.” After a characteristic pause, she says: “Perhaps it’s a good thing. It recognises the importance of science and data and evidence as being central to policymaking. It has even given a big boost to medical researchers. In fact, I have had young medical students writing to me, even those who are applying next year for NEET (National Eligibility and Entrance Test), saying they feel inspired.”
•In her two years at the ICMR, a time when funding was enhanced by about 40% for the institution, Dr. Swaminathan was at the forefront of launching several key research initiatives. And thus, there are questions about how these will be shepherded as she moves on. Excerpts from an interview in Chennai:
What does this mean for the WHO, for you as the first Indian to be elevated so, and India at the WHO?
•Essentially, my selection is a recognition underlining the fact that India plays a role in global health and should be represented in the WHO, the highest decision-making body in public health. It reflects on the growing importance of India in global health diplomacy. Personally... it’s a challenge and a huge opportunity because the WHO has the convening power that no other body has, and the present Director-General, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, was selected by an overwhelming majority.
•Broadly, I’m completely in alignment with his priorities, which also reflect my belief that the involvement of patient voices and the community and civil society are extremely important for public health gains. Nothing can be achieved without this. Look at dengue, for instance. The government can only do so much because the dengue-carrying mosquitoes are breeding within and outside people’s homes. So, unless there is a mass movement to eliminate breeding sources, it is unlikely we can control dengue and other vector-borne diseases.
•The voice of the developing countries will be stronger with Dr. Tedros (from Ethiopia) as DG. I think the focus on populations from lower and middle-income countries is going to go up. It has been high, but now that the leadership is also from there, I’m sure it will make a lot of difference.
What will be your focus areas as DDG?
•The focus should be on bringing affordable, quality healthcare and scaling up the use of innovations. I believe that we can do a lot just by, perhaps, putting to use, bringing into public health, the various innovations that are happening mostly in the private sector, among entrepreneurs and start-ups in India. There is a huge amount of innovation in devices, diagnostics, sensors, and drug delivery systems. When we think of research and development, we usually think of a new drug or a vaccine, but there are many innovations that can impact public health delivery, which India and other middle-income countries will be generating in the years to come. One of the new aspects of work would be to look at how we look at all these innovations across the world, how we evaluate them, how we create some benchmarks and validate them, and work them into large-scale production and use. This would also go along with one of the priorities — access to medicines and the best treatments, and prevention strategies, to all citizens of any country.
•Also, balancing the needs and demands of intellectual property protection vis-a-vis access and equity in that access is going to be a challenge. The WHO is the only agency that can be central in that. There have been successes like the Medicines Patent Pool, but a lot more needs to be done, including drugs for non-communicable diseases, cancers, and vaccines which are now going to be developed for emerging infections.
•Emerging epidemics will have to be a key aspect. Vector-borne diseases are a serious concern for the entire developing world. Southeast Asia and South America have suffered from chikungunya, zika, dengue, and we don’t know what next. Vectors are very smart; they have been adapting themselves to the changing ecosystem. As urbanisation expands, the whole thing is going to spread. Again, science will have to provide the solutions.
Can issues that are unique to India be a part of the agenda too?
•Indeed. One area of attention to turn [to is] lesser known tropical diseases.
•There are several diseases now with elimination targets — for kala-azar, filariasis, and measles. There are also neglected diseases like snake bite which causes an estimated 50,000 deaths in India and is an important cause of death in both India and Africa. Snake venom manufacturing must be regulated, as also access to the right venom at the right time. Soil-transmitted helminths, or intestinal worms, have an impact on morbidity-causing anaemia and nutritional deficiencies. The government started deworming, but the problem was we targeted only children. Currently we are planning a study to see if deworming the entire population for a few years, instead of just children, will drive down infection with worms.
•One of the biggest areas of concern is Universal Health Coverage, a priority laid out in the National Health Policy. How are we going to reach large populations that do not have access to doctors? We need to factor in a bit of task-shifting, using available health-care providers, training community health-care providers, and launching health literacy campaigns.
•How much leverage does the WHO have with member nations?
•There are certain things that are binding — agreements that the countries have finalised and signed — for instance, the Framework Convention on Tobacco Control and the emergency health regulations. Most of the others are non-binding, more recommendatory in nature, but most nations take them seriously and find ways to implement them. For instance, for achieving the Sustainable Development Goals, there have been a number of guidelines drawn up and frameworks and indicators issued. Most countries are adapting them. HIV treatment is a good example. Only when the WHO said ARTs should be given in developing countries and launched the 3 by 5 Initiative that the programme was scaled up.
Will the WHO be able to regulate or influence national policies, not necessarily health, that would then have an impact on public health?
•Yes, for instance in the sector of non-communicable diseases. Recent surveys have shown that there are a large number of people in the prediabetic and prehypertensive stage. If you have 60 million people with diabetes, you also have 70 million prediabetics. Dr.V. Mohan’s data from Chennai, for example, shows very high conversion from the prediabetes to diabetes stage, and it has also started affecting the poor because the food choices available to them are limited to a carbohydrates-rich diet, as they cannot afford fruits and vegetables and the diversity of protein.
•I think some policy measures are being considered like labelling of food for high salt, sugar, and fat content; higher taxes on these products; some kind of package labelling to indicate whether it is a healthy choice or not. Micronutrient fortification — mandatory fortification of milk, oil, rice wheat and double fortification of salt — will help eliminate micronutrient deficiencies.
•At one level, we need to make these policy-level interventions and at another level, individuals should take responsibility for their actions. Community-level interventions — having enough open spaces and parks where people can walk safely, and urban planning... The WHO will now bring health into all policies and one sector is environment and health — we know climate change, air pollution, and heath are linked [On Tuesday, Dr. Tedros announced the setting up of a high-level commission on non-communicable diseases].
•The government has started with a screening programme, and many of them will be identified. But this is an area where lifestyle interventions will make a bigger difference. On the NCD front at least, certain validated Indian Systems of Medicine treatments and practices have proven to be effective from a preventive aspect. But there are other areas that we need to do more validation studies in. For instance, in the anti-dengue properties of certain herbal compounds. The ICMR is bringing together an ayurvedic college and an allopathic department to conduct a regular clinical study with a control group, and all parameters are being measured.
What next at the ICMR?
•Perhaps the ICMR all be known by more people globally, and hopefully this will bring in more funds. In the last two years, we have made a lot of plans for the ICMR, or rather, for health research in the country. One of my life’s ambitions would be to see research thrive in medical colleges in the country — that is not happening now. We need to bring focus into research even during the training stage. We are hoping it will take off in the next year or so.
•We have been a bit shy of big-ticket research programmes, but the good sign is that funding has increased over the years. When I took over, it was Rs. 750 crore; this year, it is Rs. 1150 crore. we are expecting it to go up. Salaries do go up, and the real increase may be less. Still, there has been a steady increase and if this continues, we can do the big things we are hoping to do in research.
•The WHO assignment comes with an initial contract for two years, but the term of Dr. Tedros is for five years and he can choose to keep his team members on. I will, of course, have to step down as DG, ICMR, and the process will be set in motion to find another head.
📰 Measuring judicial merit
In making collegium decisions public, the Supreme Court must also reason out its measurement of ‘merit’
•Indian judges wield power like no others. For, which other judiciary can boast a free hand in crafting policy on an almost daily basis, setting up booze free zones, mandating theatrical standing for the national anthem and even controlling a circus called cricket. However, what truly sets apart India’s higher judiciary is the enviable freedom to select its very own: through that cosy cabal of a clique that we call the “collegium”.
•This is a freedom ferreted out from a rather tortuous reading of the Constitution some decades ago when the Supreme Court decided that the collegium would predominate over judicial appointments, to the near exclusion of all other stakeholders. Since then the judiciary has zealously guarded this self-anointed power, and even struck down a parliamentary enactment (National Judicial Appointments Commission Act) that sought to substitute the collegium with a structure that might have tilted the balance in favour of the executive.
A controversial collegium
•Little wonder then that the collegium continues to court one controversy after another — the latest being the unfortunate transfer of Justice Jayant Patel, just as he was on the verge of taking over as the Chief Justice of the Karnataka High Court. Some attribute this “punishment” transfer to his role in the Ishrat Jahan case, where he ordered a CBI inquiry into an alleged “encounter” killing.
•All of this forces us to ask that eternally enigmatic question: how do we judge our judges? For this, we must have some measurable metric of merit, and a transparent one at that. One that is well reasoned and turns (in turn) on how well the judge in question “reasons”. In the Justice Patel case, one of the key demands by a local bar association which protested this seemingly arbitrary transfer was: pray, what are the “reasons”?
•Indeed, “reasoning” constitutes the chief raison d’etre for the public legitimacy of the judiciary. As a famous U.S. judge once noted, “The political branches of government claim legitimacy by election, judges by reason.”
•I was therefore struck when a recently appointed judge at the Delhi High Court publicly pronounced at a conference that judges need not give “reasons” for issuing intellectual property (IP) injunctions, since they know best and decide with “conviction”. This was a bit ironical, since just a few months prior to this conference, a former judge of the Rajasthan High Court had gone on record with his strong “conviction” that peacocks propagate their progeny not through sex, but through tears.
•Clearly there is much to be said for conviction. And to lowly “reason”, we must therefore return. Fortunately, the collegium has now decided to make its “reasons” public — at least, some of it. Last Friday, the apex court released resolutions pertaining to the selection of judges for the Kerala and Tamil Nadu High Courts.
•Given that the collegium has operated in a shroud of secrecy for more than two decades now, this is nothing short of revolutionary. Unfortunately, this path-breaking development for judicial transparency falls a bit short on some counts. For one, it does not detail the “metric” or methodology for measuring judicial merit. Rather, while assessing the quality of judgments penned by the candidate as a trial court judge, it simply states: “As regards Smt. T. Krishnavalli… Judgment Committee has awarded her Judgments as ‘Good/Average’.” And similarly for “Shri R. Pongiappan”.
•We are not told as to who or what this “Judgment” committee is. Or which “judgments” of the said candidates were being considered? Or even what counted as a “good” judgment, as opposed to an “average” one. Most problematically though, we’re left wondering how “average” judgment writing skills made the cut to one of the highest constitutional posts?
Legal legibility
•If we’re serious about judicial merit, we have to be more rigorous in our measurement, particularly on factors such as the quality of the “judgment”, i.e. how well the judge writes and reasons out her decision.
•To this end, we must begin with legal clarity or “legibility”. Access to law means nothing if it takes specialised legal genius to determine the essence of a ruling. Given the verbosity of some decisions, it is well-nigh impossible to locate the “ratio” of a decision (legal terminology for the operative part of a judgment). Illustratively, the Ayodhya verdict ran into more than 1,000 pages, guaranteeing that not many people in the entire country would have read it.
•One might be forgiven for thinking that this volubility encodes a great deal of insightful judicial analysis. Hardly. As Justice Ruma Pal, a former judge of Supreme Court, once lamented: “Many judgments are in fact mere compendia or digests of decisions on a particular issue with very little original reasoning in support of the conclusion.”
•Add to this frame the rather tortuous language and purple prose deployed by those that think themselves to be the next Justice Krishna Iyer in the making. And one can well understand why, when other jurisdictions are busy engaging in a critical analysis of the law, we’re still stuck with: what precisely is the law? In March this year, the Supreme Court castigated a High Court judge for rendering a decision in language so dense that it bordered on the mystical. But a quick search revealed that just a week ago, the very same judge issued another decision in similarly spirited language.
•If we are serious about judicial merit, we have to do better than this. Granted, the strength of judgment writing alone cannot be the sole criterion, and one has to also assess other attributes such as integrity, collegiality, work ethic, fairness, independence, etc. But these are not as readily amenable to empirical measurement as is “judicial reasoning”.
•The collegium resolutions do speak to some of these more subjective virtues, but again in a rather rushed and inscrutable manner. Sample this statement about a candidate’s supposed integrity (or lack of it): “As regards Shri A. Zakir Hussain (mentioned at Sl. No. 3 above), keeping in view the material on record, including the report of Intelligence Bureau, he is not found suitable for elevation to the High Court Bench.”
•And similarly, for a certain “Dr K Arul”.
•Just three lines disposing of Mr. Hussain and Dr. Arul. No mention of the quality of their judgments, what colleagues had to say about their collegiality, etc. But simply some undisclosed “material on record” and a secret IB report. The very same IB that allegedly ambushed one of our finest lawyers, Gopal Subramanium, and thwarted his chances of travelling to the apex court.
•In order to uphold constitutional values such as judicial independence, our judges were compelled to arrogate to themselves the power to pick their very own. At the very least, they must ensure that those that are picked are truly meritorious: and certainly above “average”.
Work in progress
•The latest move by the collegium marks a monumental milestone in our judicial history. While it needs to be applauded with all the vigour we have, we also have to be mindful that this is only the beginning, and much more remains to be done. To begin with, the collegium needs to make public its methodology for measuring “merit”. Institutional alternatives to the collegium make no sense, unless one first works out an optimal metric for measuring merit.
•Quoting from the superhero series Spiderman , a Supreme Court judge once said: “With great power comes great responsibility.” And “accountability”, if I might add.
📰 Is ‘deep sea fishing’ the silver bullet?
The Palk Bay conflict requires a multi-dimensional approach
•On September 8, the Tamil Nadu Fisheries University (TNFU) organised a one-day workshop in Chennai on deep sea fishing, the aim being to promote deep sea fishing as an alternative to trawling in the Palk Bay. Proponents of deep sea fishing argue that the lure of better catch in far-off seas and avoiding the risks of cross-border fishing in Sri Lankan waters will ensure its success. But is it as simple as that?
•Deep sea fishing has always been an integral part of the country’s Blue Revolution vision to exploit fishing resources to the maximum within the 200 nautical mile exclusive economic zone (EEZ). The present plan in the Palk Bay is to extract 2,000 trawlers from the bay and replace them with deep sea vessels that fish in the Bay of Bengal and Gulf of Mannar. The time period for this transition is three years (2017-2020), with 500 boats to be replaced in the first year alone. The Central and Tamil Nadu governments have committed Rs. 800 crore and Rs. 320 crore, respectively, to the plan. Each vessel will be fitted for tuna long-lining and/or gillnetting, and have a unit cost of Rs. 80 lakh. Of this unit cost, trawl owners have to only pay Rs. 8 lakh upfront and Rs. 16 lakh through a loan from the Pandyan Grama Bank. The balance Rs. 56 lakh will be a subsidy shared by the State and Central governments.
Complex issue
•The Palk Bay fishing conflict has figured prominently in high-level meetings between India and Sri Lanka. The origins of the conflict are complex and it is difficult to resolve. The main issue is what to do with the oversized fleet of Tamil Nadu trawlers that fish regularly in Sri Lankan waters, often damaging the boats and gear of small-scale Tamil fishers from the Northern Province of Sri Lanka. The Sri Lankan government has not only passed a legislation banning trawling but its navy has also been vigilantly patrolling the International Maritime Boundary Line, ‘capturing’ Indian trawl boats and fishers.
•The plan is to remove as many trawl vessels from the Palk Bay as possible. Prospective beneficiaries of the deep see fishing project should possess a registered, seaworthy trawl vessel of over 12m in length that must be scrapped or disposed of outside the Palk Bay. The disposed vessel should also have been physically verified. Equally important, new replacement tuna long liner boats cannot trawl or operate in the Palk Bay. The government is now creating a new deep sea fishing harbour at Mookaiyur, located just south of the Palk Bay in the Gulf of Mannar, where many of these vessels are likely to be berthed. Priority is to be given to owners who have had their boats apprehended or damaged in Sri Lanka. Beneficiaries are not allowed to sell their boats within five years of obtaining them though it is unclear how that will be enforced.
A slippery slope
•Administrators and scientists alike have raised questions. First, are there sufficient stocks of fish in the adjacent waters of the Bay of Bengal and Gulf of Mannar to make deep sea fishing economically viable for a large and new fleet of vessels? And do Palk Bay trawl fishers, who are used to one-day fishing, have sufficient skills and an interest for deep sea fishing?
•The Indian government report of the Working Group for Revalidating the Potential of Fishery Resources in the Indian EEZ suggests that oceanic regions have a maximum potential yield of 208,000 tonnes. Importantly, however, while the report highlights that oceanic stocks are not fully exploited, it does not state where the remaining oceanic stocks in the Indian Ocean exist nor whether this might be in the Bay of Bengal or the Gulf of Mannar. Moreover, the report warns that oceanic resources are transboundary and hence are targeted by a number of other countries too.
•In fairness, the authorities have taken note of training needs and are setting up special facilities in collaboration with the TNFU and the Central Institute of Fisheries Nautical and Engineering Training. Applicant trawl owners also expect to employ a few specialised workers from the operational deep sea fishing fleet of Thoothoor, at least for the initial period of operation. The question of what will become of trawl crews remains largely unaddressed, potentially jeopardising the local economy of the region.
•For trawl fishers, the main concern is whether deep sea fishing is a sound investment or not. Some fishermen have expressed doubts about the high operational costs of deep sea fishing and the loan repayment schedule imposed by the Pandyan Grama Bank. Therefore, they have been pressurising the government to minimise the applicants’ financial contribution.
Monitoring is important
•Whether deep sea fishing will reduce the Palk Bay fishing conflict depends entirely on the downsizing of the existing trawl fleet. On paper, the necessary safeguards are in place. But rules are not always followed. The government will have to ensure that remaining vessels are not upgraded in size or engine horsepower, as many trawl owners in the Palk Bay have been increasing their engine capacities surreptitiously, well beyond legal limits.
•Equally of concern is the Tamil Nadu Fisheries Department’s capacity to monitor, control and carry out surveillance (MCS) of the process of decommissioning. Regulations have always existed but have rarely been implemented judiciously. The deep sea vision, moreover, is monomaniacal with no other solutions to trawling offered. The Palk Bay conflict requires a multi-dimensional approach. Various other solutions such as buy-backs, alternative livelihoods and skill development need to be rolled out with a simultaneous focus on a strong MCS system. Only then can this intransigent fishing conflict be finally resolved.
📰 The wrong options
GST and demonetisation are not the structural reforms that will boostthe economy
•It has been well over three years since the government led by Prime Minister Narendra Modi assumed power at the Centre. Mr. Modi’s election promise of creating a “minimum government” that would liberalise the economy by cutting down the size of the government’s influence over the economy remains a pipe-dream. Instead, each passing day, the goods and services tax (GST) and demonetisation are being touted as big-bang reforms that, despite the short-term costs, will bring long-term economic benefits to the nation. To be sure, many, but not all, of the negative effects of demonetisation and the implementation of GST are likely to be transitory. But, contrary to the claims of many pundits, neither of these reforms will boost the country’s economic growth rate over the long run.
Unnecessary pain, no gain
•For one, demonetisation was nothing more than a temporary demand shock that brought the wheels of commerce to a halt. It is another matter that it failed to achieve its primary objective of mass confiscation of illegal wealth. GST, on the other hand, is a fiscal programme to increase the government’s ability to tax more citizens in the large informal economy, which also manages to kill the scope of tax competition between States. These are very different from actual positive tax reforms that aim to reduce the burden of taxes on citizens in order to boost economic growth. In essence, both GST and demonetisation are measures to increase, rather than reduce, the role of the government in the economy. Given this, the economic slowdown caused by these reforms will simply go down in history as having caused unnecessary pain to citizens without any gain to speak of.
•Support for so-called reforms like GST and demonetisation comes from the underlying belief that a government awash in tax revenues will be able to boost economic growth. Sadly, the fact remains that no country has ever taxed its way to prosperity. In fact, it is not the lack of sufficient tax revenues that has held back India, or any other country for that matter that has suffered the ill-effects of socialism, over the years. Instead, it is simply the lack of economic freedom which impedes ordinary individuals from seeking to improve their economic status without any interference from the state.
•What India needs, in other words, is not increased tax compliance among citizens, but pro-market reforms that will make the country a free and competitive marketplace. A government that allows free competition, without favouring special interest groups, either through pro-business or pro-poor policies, will also be sowing the seeds for improved living standards. As several scholars have pointed out, historically this is pretty much the only way countries have managed to free themselves from the shackles of poverty. In this regard, Mr. Modi, obviously, has done very little that is different from his predecessors; real structural reforms with long-term benefits have simply been ignored. It might be the reason why he has been forced to celebrate non-reforms as revolutionary programmes that will transform the economy.
