📰 Procedure to remove ECs vague, says petition in SC
‘It affects the top poll body’s functional autonomy’
•A petition was filed in the Supreme Court on Tuesday pointing out the vagueness in the procedure for removal of Election Commissioners, saying it affects the panel’s autonomy.
•The petition argued that the proviso to Article 324 (5) of the Constitution safeguards the Chief Election Commissioner (CEC) from arbitrary removal. The CEC can be removed from office only by the order of the President, just like a judge of the Supreme Court. However, the same constitutional provision is silent about the procedure for removal of the two Election Commissioners. It only provides that they cannot be removed from office except on the recommendation of the CEC.
•The petition filed by advocate Ashwini Kumar Upadhyay said the ambiguity on the removal procedure of the Election Commissioners might affect the functional independence of the EC.
•The CEC and the Election Commissioners have a tenure of six years, or up to the age of 65 years, whichever is earlier, and enjoy the same status and receive salary and perks as available to apex court judges. “The CEC and the Election Commissioners enjoy the same decision-making powers... However, Article 324(5) does not provide similar protection to the Election Commissioners,” the plea said.
•The petition, in short, seeks to provide Election Commissioners with the same protection against arbitrary removal as the CEC. The plea also sought direction to the Centre to provide an independent secretariat to the Election Commission.
📰 New U.S. policy is a ‘game-changer’, says Ashraf Ghani
Talks with PM, officials come ahead of U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson’s crucial visit
•India and Afghanistan discussed regional counter-terror efforts and enhancing New Delhi’s defence assistance to Kabul during a day-long working visit by Afghan President Ashraf Ghani to India. In contrast to previous bilateral summit meetings, no agreements were announced, but both sides expressed an appreciation for the U.S.’s new South Asia policy, even as Secretary of State Rex Tillerson continued his travels in the region, landing in New Delhi late on Tuesday.
Meets with Tillerson
•On Monday, Mr. Tillerson held talks with President Ghani at the U.S.-controlled Bagram Base outside Kabul, while on Tuesday he met the Pakistani leadership in Islamabad.
•Mr. Ghani’s talks with Prime Minister Narendra Modi, held against the backdrop of those talks, included several bilateral issues, the security situation in Afghanistan, as well as the dialogue process with the Taliban.
•“President Ghani exchanged thoughts with Prime Minister Modi following the new U.S. Strategy, agreeing that the strategy is an opportunity for lasting peace and stability in Afghanistan & South Asia; expansion of cooperation between the countries and the region,” the Afghanistan Presidential twitter handle said shortly after the leaders met, referring to Washington’s new policy of encouraging greater Indian involvement in Afghanistan’s development.
Defence support
•According to the Ministry of External Affairs, Mr. Modi and Mr. Ghani spoke about India’s security support as a strategic partner, including the training of Afghan personnel at Indian military academies.
•“The Indian side agreed to extend further assistance depending on the needs of the Afghan defence and police forces,” the MEA statement added, although officials told The Hindu no specific defence needs were discussed, Afghanistan has pending requests for ammunition and engineers to maintain aircraft and other hardware in Afghanistan as it transitions to newer acquisitions.
•When asked at an interaction later about Afghanistan’s expectations from India in defence areas, Mr. Ghani said the four Mi-25 Russian helicopters [gifted by India in 2015] were a “lifesaver”. “More helicopters will be welcome,” he added, with a smile.
•In a speech at the Vivekananda International Foundation (VIF), a think-tank, in Delhi, Mr. Ghani also called the new U.S. strategy a “game-changer” aimed at ensuring a regional approach to fighting terrorism, including making Pakistan act against “state sponsorship of sanctuaries” along the border with Afghanistan.
📰 We can’t let the India-Pakistan relationship be hostage to dispute: Husain Haqqani
The former Ambassador of Pakistan to the U.S. says the two neighbours must be friends before sorting out disagreements
• Former Ambassador of Pakistan to the U.S. Husain Haqqani left that position six years ago amidst controversy over a memo he was accused of orchestrating, urging U.S. help in preventing a military coup in Pakistan following the Abbottabad operation that killed Osama bin Laden. An advocate of civilian government in the country, he’s become a sharp critic of the Pakistani establishment. Mr. Haqqani is based out of the Hudson Institute in Washington, DC. Last year, he launched South Asians Against Terrorism and for Human Rights (SAATH), which earlier this month held a conference in London and issued a strongly worded statement condemning the “widening circle of repression” and attempts to mainstream extremist and terrorist organisations in Pakistan. His book, Re-imagining Pakistan, will be published in 2018. In this interview, he speaks about SAATH, Kashmir, and the impact of the recent change to U.S. policy on Afghanistan. Excerpts:
What is the need for SAATH? And what can it achieve?
• There are many voices in Pakistan and of Pakistanis living in the diaspora that can only be raised effectively outside Pakistan and we hope that these voices will start having a resonance back home. It is important that the discourse on Pakistan that has been streamlined and subject to specific parameters defined by the Pakistani establishment opens up. That people start asking questions that they are not allowed to ask.
• What we are worried about is that a hyper-nationalist discourse is being encouraged in Pakistan in the media and by silencing dissent. At the same time, we already have school textbooks that teach history in a particular way that only creates anger, bitterness, bigotry and hatred. Unfortunately, that process is also taking place in India now — that feeds off each other. The hardliners in India say all Pakistanis are terrorists; the hardliners in Pakistan say all Indians are out to destroy Pakistan. Somebody has to start telling people to talk rationally, and our purpose is to try and rekindle a rational discourse back home. We are not going to possibly affect day-to-day politics but we will affect the battle of ideas.
• Not all of us agree on everything. There are people, for example, among the liberal, progressive milieu of Pakistan who take a very hard line on subjects like Balochistan. They talk about independence. And others say what we need to do is reform Pakistan and not change its geography. I think the dialogue should include both for one simple reason: marginalising people does not solve the issue of identity ever. If Catalans can feel like Catalans after three centuries and if the Scots can reassert their identity after a union for almost three centuries, there is no way we can completely suppress Baloch identity. We would rather talk to them and let them say their piece while maintaining our view that it is better to reform Pakistan than to talk about drastic solutions. We really believe in a pluralist Pakistan.
What role do you envisage for other South Asian nations in SAATH?
•The region’s problems are interlinked. We hope we can get more Pakistanis on board first because Pakistan is the more difficult member of the South Asian community at the moment. Once we can get enough Pakistanis, then we can start bringing our Afghan, Indian, Sri Lankan, Bangladeshi and Nepali friends as well.
•South Asia is the least integrated region in the world. Half of Europe’s trade is within Europe and half of ASEAN’s (Association of Southeast Asian Nations) is within ASEAN. In South Asia, intra-regional trade is only 5% of the total trade of the countries in the region, which is abysmal.
What are your thoughts on the road forward for India and Pakistan?
•We can’t let the relationship be hostage to dispute. The approach should be ‘let us become friends first and discuss things we disagree about later’, whereas the Pakistani state has taken the position that it wants a resolution of dispute first and get to friendship later. That never works anywhere. Taiwan is considered a renegade province by China but that does not stop China from having $200 billion worth of trade with Taiwan, without conceding the legal status. Now the Chinese are invested in Taiwan and the Taiwanese are invested in China sufficiently enough for neither of them to have any reason to embark on conflict. That is the best model for Pakistan. Germany and France fought many wars including two World Wars. Both sides claimed Alsace-Lorraine, and in the end, they reached the conclusion that resolving this dispute over who this territory belongs to is going to become irrelevant when you are both part of the European Union.
What can India do to break the impasse?
•I think the Indian side can really help by constantly signalling to the Pakistani people that India has no conflict with the Pakistani people and make sure that the Pakistani people are no longer fooled by an establishment that no longer describes us as neighbours but as eternal enemies. If they can help change that psyche, then it becomes easier for those of us who advocate normalcy of relations to put more pressure within.
•In the end, Pakistan’s status as a semi-authoritarian state determines its policies. It’s a country where even when we have elected governments, they do not have a free hand. We have a diverse media, but we don’t have a free media. Our media is many, many voices saying more or less the same thing. That is a recipe for brainwashing people and the lines are very strictly drawn in Pakistan.
And on Kashmir?
•My basic point is that when something is too intractable, the sensible way to deal with it is to not insist on dealing with it before anything else. Then circumstances themselves present a solution. At the end of the day, it comes down to whether you have the will to resolve the problem or whether keeping the problem alive is more important to you than finding a solution. Both sides have contributed to the problem and both sides have made it difficult to resolve it, but a better approach might be to not insist on resolving it before we can have normal relations.
How significant was the recent Quadrilateral Coordination Group meeting on Afghan peace of the U.S., China, Pakistan and Afghanistan in Oman?
•I’m one of those who believes all talks are good. That said, unless there is flexibility and credibility in negotiations, nothing moves forward. Pakistan has a credibility problem with Afghanistan. We have promised many things that have not been delivered. Deep down the Pakistani deep state is still too suspicious and too bent upon chasing phantoms to reach a reasonable settlement. If Pakistan’s concern is that Afghanistan is going to be used by India against it in the case of war or to foment trouble, there are ways to resolve that. There can be an agreement between Pakistan and Afghanistan in relation to what Afghanistan can do in relation to India. But if you in your heart of hearts decide the only good Afghans are the Haqqani network and the Afghan Taliban, then it will be hard to resolve. General (Pervez) Musharraf destroyed Pakistan’s credibility because after 9/11, everybody assumed he’d genuinely taken a U-turn. Now he goes around telling people we did support the Taliban, but we did it for our own national interest. With all due respect, when you do something like that — you say one thing and a few years later you say another — you are creating a huge credibility gap that cannot be easily fixed.
You’ve been an advocate of a tougher U.S. line on Pakistan. What do you make of the changes in Afghan policy and the comments by the U.S. President following the rescue of the Canadian American family?
•The lack of trust between the U.S. and Pakistan was not created by a single tweet and it won’t be resolved by a single tweet. It’s a problem that has arisen over many years as a result of broken promises and unfulfilled expectations. Possibly on both sides. Pakistan has promised to help stabilise Afghanistan since 9/11, yet it has not yet fully clamped down on the Taliban, and the Haqqani network has already been described by former U.S. joint chief Admiral Michael Mullen as a veritable arm of the Pakistan army. It will take time for the Americans to believe Pakistan has turned a corner. On the other hand, Pakistan has a valid point: if the U.S. is going to be a virtual neighbour to Pakistan by having forces in Afghanistan and if it uses Pakistan as a corridor for supplying its troops, it has to listen to Pakistan’s perspective too.
•Pakistan’s interlocutors are not always clear with the Americans on what they want. They very easily accept what the Americans are saying because they depend on America so much. It’s my experience that aid clouds Pakistani judgment. And aid clouds American understanding of Pakistani motives because Pakistan ends up over-promising, which creates a trust deficit. So let both sides have a more realistic discussion.
•I personally feel that the desire to install a government of Pakistan’s choice in Afghanistan is overly ambitious and unrealistic. The best-case scenario for Pakistan is to come to an understanding with the government of Afghanistan that it won’t in any way let its territory be used against Pakistan, but Pakistan needs to spell out what Indian influence it is bothered by. India has been reasonable by saying ‘we will not put boots on the ground in Afghanistan’, and the other part of it is the fear of what I call intelligence games. There are inconsistencies in Pakistan’s argument on the subject... Pakistan has to explain to the Americans why they have so much fear of India’s alleged presence in Afghanistan when the only person they ever caught never came from Afghanistan.
Will these be the themes of your forthcoming book?
•I talk about how Pakistan’s discourse has been constructed around paranoia and an obsession with India. At the end of the day, Pakistan has to build a foreign policy that is not ideological but pragmatic. You can’t have an ideological view that so and so is out to destroy us. Pragmatically you have to say this action harms us — you can’t constantly base it on a view of ill intentions; you have to specifically identify the acts that harm you. And negotiate solutions in which those actions cease.
•It’s time for strong voices on Pakistan from Pakistan and from the Pakistani diaspora to point out what it is that needs to change in Pakistan. How it can be a country at peace with itself and its neighbour.
📰 Rs. 2.11 lakh crore for PSU banks to boost lending
Maximum allocation in current year, entire amount in 2 yearsGovt. equity in public sector banks to be diluted to raise fundsJaitley promises banking sector reforms will follow soonRecapitalisation of banks vital to revive growth, say economists
•The Centre on Tuesday unveiled an ambitious plan to infuse Rs. 2.11 lakh crore capital over the next two years into public sector banks (PSBs)saddled with high, non-performing assets and facing the prospect of having to take haircuts on loans stuck in insolvency proceedings.
•The move is vital for the slowing economy, as private investments remain elusive in the face of the “twin-balance sheet problem” afflicting corporate India and public sector banks reflected in slow bank credit growth.
•Several economists opine that the recapitalisation of banks — so that they can lend more freely and help revive private investment — is critical for revitalising India’s growth momentum at a time when the global economy is recovering.
‘Front-loaded funding’
•Financial Services Secretary Rajiv Kumar said on Tuesday that the Union Cabinet had approved the capital infusion plan for PSBs, adding that the funding pattern would be front-loaded.
•“The Government has decided to take a massive step to capitalise PSBs in a front-loaded manner, to support credit growth and job creation,” Mr. Kumar said at a press conference. “This entails mobilisation of capital, with maximum allocation in the current year, to the tune of about Rs. 2,11,000 crore over the next two years.”
•The Financial Services Secretary added that this would be funded through budgetary provisions of Rs. 18,139 crore and the sale of recapitalisation bonds worth Rs. 1.35 lakh crore. The balance would be raised by the banks themselves by diluting the government’s equity share.
•“Indiscriminate lending earlier by banks led to a high level of NPAs (non performing assets),” Finance Minister Arun Jaitley said. “And these NPAs were kept under the carpet. Now they have come to light because of the Asset Quality Review conducted by the Reserve Bank of India.”
•The capital infusion would also be accompanied by a series of banking sector reforms, Mr. Jaitley said, without providing any specifics, adding that the measures would be revealed in the coming months.
Cash-starved PSBs
•“The government’s capitalisation package for public sector banks will provide a strong booster dose of relief for the capital starved public sector banks,” Krishnan Sitaraman, Senior Director, CRISIL Ratings said. “CRISIL’s assessment of capital requirement for public sector banks to meet Basel III requirements is in the range of Rs. 1.4-1.7 lakh crore which will be met by the government’s relief package.”
•Mr. Jaitley said the nature of the recapitalisation bonds would be decided in the coming months, adding that the impact from the capital infusion on the fiscal deficit would be determined by the type of bonds and as to who the issuing authority would be.
•“The nature of the bonds will be decided in due course,” Mr. Jaitley said. “They will increase the lending capacity of the banks. The effect on the fiscal deficit will depend on the nature of the bonds and also how they are dealt with. Globally, the practice is to not include bonds in the fiscal deficit calculation. In India, we do include it.”
📰 Rs. 5.35 lakh crore for new road project
•The Centre on Tuesday announced a Rs. 5.35 lakh crore road construction package, called BharatMala Pariyojana, in a bid to spur the economy as private investment remains moribund. This follows the Cabinet nod to build 34,800 km of roads nationwide, including in border and coastal areas.
•“To further optimise the efficiency of movement of goods and people across the country, the government is launching a new umbrella programme. [The] BharatMala Pariyojana, to be implemented on an outlay of Rs. 5,35,000 crore, will generate 14.2 crore mandays of jobs,” an official statement said on Tuesday.
Integrated network
•The BharatMala project will include economic corridors (9,000 km), inter-corridor and feeder route (6,000 km), national corridors efficiency improvement (5,000 km), border roads and international connectivity (2,000 km), coastal roads and port connectivity (2,000 km) and green-field expressways (800 km). Further, the remaining road projects of 10,000 km under the National Highways Development Project will form a part of the programme.
•The government has identified new routes between economically important cities that would be 20% longer in terms of distance but take relatively less travel time. For instance, the shortest road route between Mumbai and Cochin at present is 1,346 km which takes 29 hours. However, the government has identified a 1,537-km route on this sector that will reduce the travel time by five hours.
📰 Complicated terms of engagement
The question of consent is one that must lie with the individual woman
•On October 17, the Supreme Court read down the marital rape exception for married girls between the ages of 15 and 18. The judgment is prospective in nature. Essentially, the court held that since sexual assault in marriage is already a crime under the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences Act, 2012 (POCSO), it is discriminatory and arbitrary to suspend the protection of the rape law for these underage married girls. The Supreme Court set aside the state’s argument that marriage presumes consent; that compulsory sex in child marriage is protected by customary or personal law; that husbands of child brides must have impunity from the rape law; or that poverty and lack of development means compulsory sex in child marriage must be de-criminalised.
Understanding the law
•The Supreme Court decision makes it clear that sexual consent can only be given by an adult woman of 18 years. In other words, consent to sex in underage marriage cannot be assumed by the husband nor can parents give such consent on behalf of the underage minor.
•POCSO privileges age to define to a child, wherein consent of a child is not a defence to sexual assault. Sexual consent is defined as an adult category. Hence, the argument that marriage presumes consent is not tenable in the law on sexual assault of children.
•The Prohibition of Child Marriage Act, 2006 prohibits the solemnisation of child marriages wherein a child means a person who if male has not yet completed 21 years, and if female not yet 18 years. Further, every child marriage, whether solemnised before or after the Act came into effect, can be made void by either the man or the woman within two years of attaining majority. Karnataka has passed a law making all child marriages void.
•Child marriage has historically cast a shadow over rape law reform in India. Child marriage is a specific form of customary practice arranged by parents or male community elders. These may be community marriages dictated by religious calendars or by caste customs. These are a distinct form of early marriages in which the consent of the patriarch of the family or elder determines the matrimonial fate of the child. The second species of marriage is found in different customary and personal laws wherein the age at which a girl can be married is lower than the legal age of marriage. The impetus for early marriages, across customary or personal laws, is to prevent young girls from falling in love and experimenting with illicit sex, which is seen to bring dishonour to male defined communities.
•This is a field of legal pluralism, where pre-marital sex rather than rape of young girls by their husbands is seen as a social problem. Of course, pre-marital sex is considered a social problem only when women or young girls experiment with sexuality before marriage — it is not a social problem for boys to engage in consensual sex at any age.
Onus on governments
•POCSO defines a child, (irrespective of gender) as a person under the age of 18 years, which prevents the “inducement or coercion of a child to engage in any unlawful sexual activity”. It mandates the Central and State governments to take all measures to ensure publicity to the provisions of the Act and obliges government officials to be trained in how to implement the Act. In other words, the brief of any government is to act to secure the best interests of the child. This includes child-wives hitherto protected by custom, since the Indian state acceded in 1992 to the UN General Assembly’s Convention on the Rights of the Child.
•The Supreme Court judgment rightly reversed the position that the jurisdiction of sexual impunity preventing husbands from being prosecuted for rape of child wives must lie with customary or personal law through the marital rape law exception.
•This sexual exceptionalism in state law has been defended by traditionalists who make an argument for de-criminalisation of compulsory sex within child marriage arranged by elders and dictated by custom, while approving the criminalisation of sex for unmarried girls up to 18 years to prevent pre-marital sex between young adults. They also find common cause with families who criminalise love affairs, by using state law against daughters.
•Feminists have critiqued the custodial violence of the family and the state towards women who marry of choice. And they have protested against familial and state violence towards transgressive daughters who often are imprisoned at home or in state institutions, if they consented to sex or marriage, against the wishes of their parents.
•At the same time, feminists have also insisted on bringing to the law a recognition of sexual assault of children, irrespective of gender. They have also gendered the notion of childhood. Feminists have also elaborated how adolescence is gendered.
Individual choice
•There are two broad responses to the age of consent. The first perspective that evokes the political economy of custom and law argues for a lowering of age of consent to 16. This, however, creates a conflict with the definition of the child under POCSO, unnecessarily pitting women’s rights against child rights. The second stance recommends a proximity in age clause in the age of consent provision to prevent the criminalisation of young people who are sexually active between 16 to 18 years, thereby suggesting a limited form of legal exceptionalism in the best interest of the child.
•Both these perspectives are guided by a recognition of the vulnerabilities of young adults to pressure at home to marry early and against their wishes. Sometimes, the home is a space of sexual and physical abuse or poverty and neglect from which marriage seems the only escape. However, if marriage is the only escape for scores of young girls, it is because the state almost never endeavours to realise education and social security for girls and women. And the burden of compulsory sex falls unduly on the young girl, now married, with or without her consent.
•The question of sexual consent is clearly one that must lie with the individual woman. Parents, elders, political parties, priests or vigilante groups should not be permitted to force women, adult or minor, into marriage or compulsory heterosexuality. This also means that young adults should not be forced into heterosexuality per se, if they are not sexually attracted to the opposite sex.
•The Supreme Court rightly holds that the ‘the girl child must not be deprived of her right of choice’. The right to choose, which is free and unfettered, includes freedom from parental pressure to marry early, freedom from forced marriages, freedom of choice of sexual orientation, and freedom to find self-fulfilment through study, work, profession, vocation or talent.
•Although the law offers a specific grammar of rights, forcing young persons into compulsory heterosexuality is not seen as a social evil. How then will equality be a lived reality, by and for women, sexual minorities and children?
📰 Bitcoin will crash
It has proved many of its critics wrong over the years, but its long-term prospects may not be too bright
•The price of bitcoin hit yet another lifetime high last week breaking the $6,000 mark for the first time across major exchanges. Many market experts now believe that the price of the digital currency could touch $10,000 very soon. Interestingly, the rise of bitcoin has also been seen as a serious challenge to national fiat currencies issued by central banks as well as physical gold.
•While bitcoin has indeed proved many of its critics wrong over the years, its immediate and long-term prospects may not be too bright. This is for at least two reasons. One, the volatility witnessed in the price of bitcoin against major national currencies like the dollar does not suggest that the private currency’s trading price is reflective of its fundamental value. The fundamental value of any money, as a medium of exchange that helps in the exchange for goods and services, usually exhibits a fair amount of stability as people are willing to accept it in repeated transactions; if so, trading prices that track them are likely to reflect the same kind of stability. Bitcoin’s extreme volatility could thus be a sign that many, if not most, bitcoin buyers purchase the currency solely for the purpose of gambling. It might, however, be that many bitcoin investors believe that the currency’s fundamental value as a medium of exchange could increase significantly in the future and are thus accumulating it now. This might justify bitcoin’s current price and volatility, but one will have to wait and watch to see if the thesis turns out to be true.
•Two, even if bitcoin were to hold some fundamental value as money, as it very well might if bitcoin speculators are right in paying its current price, the political risks facing the currency are simply too huge to allow its long-term survival. National fiat currencies like the dollar allow governments, through their central banks, to easily tax their citizens by printing a fresh supply of money whenever they need it. Bitcoin strikes at the root of this centuries-long monopoly power over money held by governments, and the consequences are unlikely to work out in bitcoin’s favour. In other words, it is hard to fathom governments voluntarily allowing market-based currencies like bitcoin to out-compete their own fiat currencies.
Market regulation of money
•When bitcoin will meet its end, of course, is very hard to say. Perhaps its future price might come to reflect its actual fundamental value as money, if it is indeed allowed by governments to survive in the fringes of the monetary system. It is another matter, however, whether governments are right to target bitcoin and other private currencies. A free market in money can bring in serious competition that can improve the quality of our money; either by reining in inflation or by making it more predictable. Speculative frenzies can indeed occasionally occur in such markets, as they do in fiat currencies issued by central banks already. But it is simply bad public policy to fully dismiss the market’s tremendous ability to regulate our money.
📰 Shedding light on Saubhagya
The electrification scheme needs to be thought through more carefully
•The Pradhan Mantri Sahaj Bijli Har Ghar Yojana (‘Saubhagya’) launched in September, which claims to ensure electrification of all willing households in the country, is too ambitious a project. While it makes grandiose promises to provide a free electricity connection to all willing Below Poverty Line households and to all others on a payment of Rs. 500 (which shall be recovered by the power distribution companies/power departments in 10 instalments along with electricity bills), it expects the poor to pay the bills without providing any subsidy to ease their burden. Even to the best of their abilities the poor would often not be in a position to pay regular electricity bills, which in turn could result in disconnection. The government has conveniently overlooked the fact that for the poor in some States, the inability to pay an electricity bill is a big impediment.
•This new scheme is just a way of refurbishing the Deen Dayal Upadhyaya Gram Jyoti Yojana (DDUGJY), the earlier scheme of rural electrification launched in July 2015, which aimed to electrify all un-electrified villages by May 2018.
Definition and the gap
•Under DDUGJY, the government managed to electrify 14,701 villages while 2,760 villages remain un-electrified; out of these, work is still in progress in a total of 2,611 villages. However, out of the 14,701 villages, only in 8%, i.e. 1,198 villages, do all households have connectivity. Even if we take into consideration the fact that so many villages have been “electrified”, the next point of contention is the definition used. According to the definition, a village is considered to be electrified if 10% households have an electricity connection and related basic infrastructure. Furthermore, even in these 10% of households, there is no promise of minimum hours of supply. The question we then need to ask is this: given that 90% of households may not have power supply and of those 10% with electricity not having a regular supply, can we still consider such a village to be electrified in a meaningful way?
•The objective of the Saubhagya scheme is to “provide energy access to all by last mile connectivity and electricity connections to all remaining un-electrified households in rural as well as urban areas to achieve universal household electrification in the country.” On the face of it, the scheme may only be able to plug the gaps and address the issues of entry barrier, last mile connectivity and release of connections, but it can guarantee neither regular electricity supply nor continuation of those connections in case of non-payment. A free electricity connection may provide some relief as far as the financial burden is concerned. However, expecting poor households to bear the recurring burden of bills as per the prevailing tariff of DISCOMs is unimaginable.
•Even if the programme is successful, hypothetically, and all households are provided a connection, there would still be the problem of regular supply. Industry estimates suggest that this scheme would potentially require an additional 28,000 MW and additional energy of about 80,000 million units per annum, which is roughly 7% of India’s current installed power capacity. There is a power shortage even at this moment leading to scheduled and unscheduled load shedding, often up to 10 hours or more. The problem is graver still in interior rural India. Considering the huge lapses as far as electricity availability is concerned, managing this additional demand would prove to be challenging. We should also not forget that the provision of providing one-two hours’ supply a day is not the same as provision of regular supply.
•In the past three years, we have seen a series of policies and promises urging us to ponder over the type of welfare politics India is witnessing. Symbolically, all such attempts have a lot of significance as far as the bid to secure popular support is concerned. However, there has been a lot of debate in the past over many of the government’s policies which it claims to be based on the primary goal of “ushering in development”. Nevertheless, it must be a cause of worry that the government has embraced the slogans of welfare politics without being able to deliver substantial and meaningful results. Irrespective of the poor track record as far as meaningful change is concerned, such policies have aided the government in building an image of being people-centric.
•Certainly, Saubhagya has some positives such as provision for households outside the reach of grid lines. However, our contention is that the policy has set a standard for itself without enough focus on its capacity to deliver results. The policy statement echoes the commitment to facilitate economic growth and social development, but we still need to ask whether this is another instance of messaging for an electoral purpose.
