📰 Navy to use U.S. aircraft launch system in ship
It will have to choose between two mechanisms for the second indigenous aircraft carrier
•The Navy is likely to go with an advanced catapult-based aircraft launch mechanism (CATOBAR) from the U.S. for its second indigenous aircraft carrier (IAC-II), which is on the drawing board. For some time, India has been exploring the possibility of installing the U.S. electromagnetic aircraft launch system (EMALS).
•“IAC-II will have a CATOBAR launch. However, the kind of propulsion is yet to be decided,” a senior officer said.The U.S. has offered India its latest EMALS technology, developed by General Atomics Aeronautical Systems Inc., which has just been installed on the Gerald Ford carrier.
•While the older generation of CATOBAR was powered by a steam catapult, EMALS uses an electric motor-driven catapult instead, which allows the launch of much heavier aircraft and also reduces the stress on the aircraft.
•However, the system is expensive, something that needs to be factored in.
•“EMALS will allow us to operate heavy surveillance aircraft in addition to heavy fighters,” another officer observed.
50 aircraft
•The Navy envisages the IAC-II to be around 65,000 tonnes and capable of carrying over 50 aircraft. While the Navy is keen on nuclear propulsion, which would give it unlimited range and endurance, its development in time seems doubtful.
•The two countries had set up a joint working group on Aircraft Carrier Technology Cooperation (JWGACTC) under the Defence Technology and Trade Initiative, which held several rounds of discussions.The group concluded its 4th meeting in New Delhi last Friday.
•India’s first domestic carrier, Vikrant, weighing 40,000 tonnes, is in an advanced stage of construction in Kochi and is scheduled to be launched by 2018-end. It works on a Short Take-Off But Arrested Recovery (STOBAR) mechanism similar to that in the present carrier INS Vikramaditya, with an angular ski-jump.
📰 INSV Tarini on second leg of circumnavigation
All-woman crew off to New Zealand
•Indian Navy Sailing Vessel Tarini set sail on Sunday morning from Fremantle, Australia, on the second leg of its global circumnavigation expedition with an all-woman crew of six.
•The vessel had reached Fremantle on October 23 after completion of the first leg of its maiden voyage and is now headed to Lyttelton, New Zealand. The crew is being led by Lieutenant Commander Vartika Joshi.
•“The crew had several engagements during its stay in Fremantle, including call-on meetings with Governor of Western Australia Kerry Sanderson AC and Deputy Mayor of City of Fremantle Cr Ingrid Waltham,” the Navy said in a statement.
•The crew interacted with a cross section of policy makers, political leaders, parliamentarians and military officers. “More than 200 students attended a presentation and interaction session with the crew at Perth Modern School on October 31, 2017,” it added.
•The voyage titled Navika Sagar Parikrama began from Goa in September and is to be completed in March. The distance will be covered in five legs, with stopovers at four ports — Fremantle (Australia), Lyttelton (New Zealand), Port Stanley (Falklands) and Cape Town (South Africa). The 55-foot sailing vessel, built indigenously, was inducted in the Navy early this year.
📰 Centre plans to set up more commercial courts
Essential to go further up in Ease of Doing Business rank
•Days after India jumped 30 positions in the World Bank’s Ease of Doing Business ranking, Law Ministry officials said the Union government proposed to establish commercial courts in districts to further improve the parameters.
•Legal remedy to commercial disputes and enforcement of business contracts are parameters of the World Bank ranking. In terms of ease of enforcing contracts, India jumped from 172 to 164. “Though the jump in the ranking sounds small, it is substantial given the diversities of laws in our country and the complex demography,” said an official of the Law Ministry familiar with the process.
Varying performance
•India’s performance has been varied within the legal framework. For example, the World Bank’s ranking marked “court system and proceedings in India” 4.5 out of a total of 5, but in management of cases, it was 1.5 out of 6. India also fared well in alternative dispute redress mechanism and scored 2.5 out of a total of 3 marks. “The government is proposing amendments to facilitate the establishment of commercial courts, at the district level, in places where the High Courts have ordinary original civil jurisdiction,” the official said. The specified value of commercial disputes would be brought down so as to expand the scope of commercial adjudication effectively and expeditiously.
📰 PSU banks may get Rs. 70,000 cr. via recap bonds in four months
Funding is part of Centre’s Rs. 2.11 lakh cr. recapitalisation plan
•The Finance Ministry may infuse about Rs. 70,000 crore through recapitalisation bonds in the NPA-hit public sector banks (PSBs) in the next four months, sources said.
•Last month, Finance Minister Arun Jaitley had announced a Rs. 2.11 lakh crore two-year road map for strengthening public sector banks. The plan included re-capitalisation bonds of Rs. 1.35 lakh crore.
•Currently, the government is finalising the structure of bonds and decision in this regard could be made by the end of this month.
•The Minister had said that there were multiple options before the government for recapitalisation bonds and the best ones would be explored.
•Once the structure is in the place, the Centre will front-load bond issuance and preliminary assessment indicates that it could be between Rs. 70,000 and Rs. 80,000 crore, sources said. However, nothing has been finalised yet, they said, adding the Ministry would get better picture of requirements of various banks after the second quarter results.
Rising NPAs
•Non-performing assets (NPAs) of public sector banks alone have increased from Rs. 2.75 lakh crore as on March 2015 to Rs. 7.33 lakh crore as on June 2017.
•Besides the bonds, the Minister announced banks would get about Rs. 18,000 crore under Indradhanush plan over the next two years.
📰 Decoding GST forms
•The Goods and Services Tax (GST) Council late last month extended the deadlines for filing GSTR-2 and GSTR-3 forms for July by a month each to November 30 and December 11 respectively. Here is a low-down on the forms:
What is a GSTR-1 form?
•This serves as the master form for all subsequent forms for the return period. GSTR-1 assumes that a business transaction that needs to be recorded on it involves a supplier and a recipient.
•The GSTR-1 deals with outward supplies. That is, it needs to be filled out by the supplier on a detailed basis, providing the invoice details of every transaction for the return period.
•Normally, the GSTR-1, for any month, has to be filled by the 10th of the subsequent month.
•The recipient’s form, detailing the inward supply, is to be auto-populated from the details provided by the supplier in his GSTR-1.
What is the GSTR-2 form?
•The GSTR-2 is to be filled by the recipient with details of all inward supplies. A subset of this, the GSTR-2A, is auto-populated by the supplier’s GSTR-1.
•Take the example of Company A supplying goods to Company B. Company A will log the details of the transaction in its GSTR-1. Company B will find these details auto-populated in its GSTR-2A.
•However, Company B will also have to provide other details — such as inward supplies from unregistered companies — to complete its GSTR-2. This has to be done by the 15th of the subsequent month. In case the recipient disagrees regarding the details in the GSTR-2A form, then he can communicate his concerns to the supplier who has the option to modify the GSTR-1 or leave it as it is.
Are there any other major forms?
•The GSTR-3 is simply an auto-populated form based on the details of the GSTR-1 and GSTR-2. It represents a consolidated monthly return and contains the tax liability along with the tax collected on outward supplies and tax paid on inward supplies by a registered person or company.
•There is minimal manual entry that goes into this. The GSTR-3 has to be filled by the 20th of the next month. The GST Council allowed companies to file a summary GSTR-3B form every month up to December to ease their compliance burden.
📰 Seize the opportunity: exercising a firm grip
The judiciary should now exercise a firm grip over criminal cases involving politicians
•On March 10, 2014, the Supreme Court passed an order in a case brought by the Public Interest Foundation. Various issues dealing with electoral reform were involved, including whether candidates for election should be disqualified only after conviction in a criminal case, or at the earlier point of framing of a charge sheet by a court. That issue was postponed for a more detailed hearing.
•However, Justice R.M. Lodha utilised the occasion to pass a succinct and categoric direction, hopefully the forerunner of a game changer for cleaner politics in India. In relation to cases against sitting Members of Parliament (MP) and Members of Legislative Assemblies, who have charges framed against them for serious offences specified in Section 8 of the Representation of the People Act, 1951, the trial should be conducted expeditiously, he said, in no case later than one year. If this was not possible, the Chief Justice of the High Court should be notified.
•Move the frame to the present. On November 1, 2017, Justices Ranjan Gogoi and Navin Sinha pick up the baton. They want to know how many of the 1,581 cases involving MLAs and MPs (as declared in their nomination papers to the 2014 elections) had been disposed of within the time frame of one year, and how many of these ended in conviction. The questions are as succinct as the previous order. The Central government will take six weeks to respond. It fairly states that it will cooperate in setting up special courts to try criminal cases involving political persons.
After the order
•Hardly any reports have filtered in about convictions following Justice Lodha’s order; it is likely that the answer to the court’s questions will show extremely low numbers, corresponding to a high degree of violation of the court’s order. This by itself is a serious concern affecting all branches of government. However, it makes it all the more desirable that the Bench now exercises a firm grip over this case and steers it to conclusion. This will be as great a contribution to governance in India as any other.
•Except perhaps for tainted politicians, the rest of India will acknowledge that those with criminal backgrounds cannot govern us. It is not just a few politicians, and not just any criminal background — out of the 542 members of Lok Sabha, 112 (21%) have themselves declared the pendency of serious criminal cases against them — murder, attempt to murder, communal disharmony, kidnapping, crimes against women, etc. These are the people who make laws for us. Furthermore, our ministers are largely chosen from MPs and State Assemblies. Crime and venality stalk the corridors of power. Those with criminal tendencies do not compartmentalise them. They also engage in corruption and infect the bureaucracy and the police. If virtually every aspect of public governance is tainted — from tenders and contracts to safety of buildings and roads to postings and transfers — lay the blame squarely on the decline and fall of political morality. Urgent judicial relief is therefore a necessity.
•It is also a real possibility. Few things stand in its way. The argument that we will be somehow breaching the law of equality by creating special courts to try this lot can be brushed aside; Article 14 permits classification based on criteria and nexus; MPs and MLAs form a distinct class and their early trial is a democratic must. They thus deserve to be given priority treatment (as they get in so many other instances). A shortage of judges can be overcome. The Constitution, under Article 224A, provides for the reappointment of retired High Court Judges as ad hoc judges. There is thus a large pool of judges of integrity and experience to choose from.
It can be done
•Special attention needs to be paid to two factors. One is the necessity of having prosecutors who are not attached to any political party. A directorate of prosecution, headed by a retired senior judge, who chooses prosecutors in turn vetted by the Chief Justice of the High Court, should be able to address this aspect. The other danger is that the main trial will be obstructed by interim orders. Experience has shown that political leaders are adept at finding legal counsel who file multifarious interim applications which stymie the trial; High Courts and the Supreme Court have sometimes failed to address these expeditiously. This needs to be avoided, and can be if Chief Justices have a superintending mission.
•One concern expressed is to find funds to create the infrastructure and staffing for the special courts. A government which comes up with ₹2.11 lakh crore to clean up bank balance sheets should have no difficulty in finding a fraction to clean up political criminal spread sheets. And if required, the Finance Minister can devise a ‘Swachh Politics Bharat Bond’. It is bound to be oversubscribed, many times over, by delighted citizens.
📰 Beyond big game hunting
Ahead of the Quadrilateral meeting, PM Modi must be cautious about bringing big powers into South Asia
•By accepting an invitation to join the Japan-proposed, U.S.-endorsed plan for a “Quadrilateral” grouping including Australia to provide alternative debt financing for countries in the Indo-Pacific, India has taken a significant turn in its policy for the subcontinent. Explaining the need to invite other countries into what India has always fiercely guarded as its own turf, Foreign Secretary S. Jaishankar was remarkably candid. “Our neighbours also feel more secure if there is another party in the room,” he said recently, giving examples of working with the U.S. on transmission lines in Nepal or with Japan on a liquefied natural gas pipeline in Sri Lanka. His words contain a tacit admission: that having India in the room is no longer comforting enough for our neighbours.
The Quad pivot?
•As Prime Minister Narendra Modi heads to the East Asia summit in the Philippines next week, where the first ‘Quad’ meeting is likely to be held, it is necessary that India analyse the impact of this admission on all our relations. It would also serve as a useful exercise to understand why India has conceded it requires “other parties” in the neighbourhood, even as it seeks to counter the influence of China and its Belt and Road Initiative.
•One reason is that as a growing economy with ambitious domestic targets, India’s own needs often clash with those of its neighbours. More connectivity will eventually mean more competition, whether it is for trade, water resources, or energy. Take, for example, the case of Bhutan, which is working, with India’s assistance, on its own goal of producing 10,000 MW of hydropower by 2020.
•Even as Indian and Chinese troops were facing off at Doklam on land claimed by Bhutan, a very different sort of tension was claiming the attention of the government in Thimphu. The first indicator came on May 8, when in his budget speech at the National Assembly, the Bhutanese Finance Minister warned that the external debt is about 110% of GDP, of which a staggering 80.1% of GDP (or 155 billion Nu, or $2.34 billion) is made up by hydropower debt mainly to India. In April, the International Monetary Fund’s world economic outlook had already put Bhutan at the top of South Asia in terms of the highest debt per capita, second only to Japan in all of Asia for indebtedness. The budget figures attracted much criticism for the Bhutanese government, and opposition taunts that Bhutan could become the “Greece of South Asia” forced Prime Minister Tshering Tobgay to appoint a three-member committee. In a government order he said that said the negative media, public perception and “absence of strategy” could even affect the “larger and more important relationship between Bhutan and India.”
•Among the committee’s findings were that Bhutan’s external hydropower debt financed by India at 9-10% rates was piling up, with the first interest and principal payments expected in 2018, and construction delays, mainly due to Indian construction issues, were taking the debt up higher. Above all, despite several pleas to the Ministries of External Affairs and Power, the Cross Border Trade of Electricity (CBTE) guidelines issued by India had not been revised, which put severe restrictions on Bhutanese companies selling power, and on allowing them access to the power exchange with Bangladesh.
•In the Power Ministry’s reckoning, relations with Bhutan took a backseat to the fact that India already has a power surplus, and its new renewable energy targets come from solar and wind energy, not hydropower. Moreover, given falling prices for energy all around, India could not sustain the Bhutanese demand that power tariffs be revised upwards. Eventually, it wasn’t until early October that Mr. Jaishankar visited Thimphu and subsequently the visit last week of King Jigme Khesar Namgyel Wangchuck began to address the problem that has been brewing for more than a year.
History of forgetting
•Another problem is what one diplomat in the region calls ‘India’s big game hunting attitude’: “India chases its neighbours to cooperate on various projects and courts us assiduously, but once they have ‘bagged the game’, it forgets about us. As a result, crises grow until they can no longer be ignored, and the hunt begins again.” Over the past decade, since the defeat of the LTTE, India passed up offers to build the port in Hambantota, Colombo, and Kankesanthurai, despite Sri Lanka’s pressing need for infrastructure. At the time, given India’s crucial support in defeating the LTTE, Sri Lanka was considered “in the bag”. With the U.S. and other Western countries also taking strident positions over human rights issues and the reconciliation process, Chinese companies stepped in and won these projects, for which Sri Lanka recklessly took loans from China’s Exim bank.
•New Delhi has changed its position on Hambantota several times, going from initial apathy, to disapproval of the Chinese interest, to scoffing at the viability of the project, to open alarm at the possibility of any Chinese PLA-Navy installation in Sri Lanka’s southern tip. Finally this year, upturning everything it has said, the government decided to bid for the Mattala Rajapaksa International Airport at Hambantota, a $205 million investment for the empty facility that sees an average of two flights a day. Even as a ‘listening post’, it is an expensive proposition, with some officials now suggesting a flight training school at Mattala to defray the cost. India is also hoping to win the bid to develop Trincomalee port with several projects. Clearly India is moving in now to build a counter to China in the neighbourhood, but it may be too little, too late and a little too expensive.
•India has also been ambivalent on tackling political issues in its region, often trapped between the more interventionist approach of the U.S., which has openly championed concerns over ‘democratic values’ and human rights in Sri Lanka, Maldives and Bangladesh, and the approach of China, which is to turn a blind eye to all but business and strategic interests. In Nepal, India lost out to China when it allowed a five-month-long blockade at the border, calling for a more inclusive constitution to be implemented by Kathmandu — but in the case of Myanmar, it lost precious ground in Bangladesh when Mr. Modi refused to mention the Rohingya refugee situation during a visit to Nay Pyi Taw. In both cases, India reversed its stand, adding to the sense that it is unsure of its next steps when dealing with neighbours on political issues.
Multiple rivalries
•Finally, it is important to note that while the government’s new plan to involve the U.S. and Japan in development projects in South Asia will yield the necessary finances, it will come at the cost of India’s leverage in its own backyard. India’s counter to China’s persistent demand for a diplomatic mission in Thimphu, for example, could be to help the U.S. set up a parallel mission there — but once those floodgates open, they will be hard to shut.
•In Sri Lanka, the U.S. and Japan will now partner in India’s efforts to counter China’s influence, but whereas India objected to Chinese naval presence in the Indian Ocean, it will not be able to object to an increase in U.S. naval warships and Japanese presence there. Writing about Myanmar in a new book, India Turns East: International Engagement and US-China Rivalry , the former French diplomat Frédéric Grare says the emergence of new players like the U.S., Europe and Japan has only increased multiple regional rivalries in the region.“This does partly benefit India, who is no longer isolated vis-à-vis Beijing,” he concludes. “But New Delhi’s political profile has consequently diminished.”
•Mr. Modi, who began his pitch for his “neighbourhood first” plan by inviting the neighbours to his swearing-in ceremony in 2014, must look before he leaps while inviting other powers, howsoever well-meaning, into the neighbourhood.
