📰 N.K. Singh is 15th finance panel chief
•The Centre on Monday announced that the Fifteenth Finance Commission would be headed by former Secretary to the government of India N.K. Singh.
•The panel, which is to make its recommendations for the five years beginning April 1, 2020, will include Shaktikanta Das, former Economic Affairs Secretary and Anoop Singh, adjunct professor at Georgetown University. “Dr. Ashok Lahiri, Chairman (non-executive, part time), Bandhan Bank and Dr. Ramesh Chand, Member, NITI Aayog shall be the part time members of the Commission,” the government said in a statement. “Arvind Mehta shall be the Secretary to the Commission.” The panel is tasked with looking into tax collections and how they are to be divided between the Centre and the States, the principles that should govern the grants in aid to the States and to review the levels of fiscal deficit, among other issues.
📰 Can’t force govt. to frame a law: SC
Bench disposes of a PIL plea to direct the Centre to bring out a standalone law against torture
•The Supreme Court on Monday said it respected the government’s “political compulsions” and would not compel it to ratify the UN Convention against Torture, or command it to frame a standalone anti-torture legislation.
•A Bench, led by Chief Justice of India Dipak Misra, refrained from passing any positive order on a public interest litigation petition filed by the former Union Law Minister Ashwini Kumar for a standalone anti-torture law. The court disposed of the petition almost a year after entertaining it.
•At the weekend, the judiciary faced a barrage of criticism for its “judicial activism.” At the Law Day and Constitution Day functions, Ministers said public interest litigation petitions could not replace governance and policy decisions of the executive.
•“How can we compel the government to make a law? Can we ask the government to ratify a treaty by way of a mandamus,” Chief Justice Misra asked Mr. Kumar. Justice D.Y. Chandrachud, on the Bench, said the government “has to take a political decision on whether or not it should ratify the treaty”.
•Mr. Kumar said the government had given a commitment to the international community to address torture, especially custodial torture. “We would be crossing judicial limits if we issue a mandamus to the government. We have to respect the political compulsions of the government,” Justice Chandrachud said.
•Mr. Kumar argued it was the duty of the court to fill the gaps in the written laws. “But it is a policy matter,” Justice A.M. Khanwilkar observed.
•Attorney-General K.K. Venugopal intervened to submit that the government was considering an anti-torture law. The Law Commission has recommended that the Centre ratify the United Nations Convention against Torture and frame a standalone anti-torture law, making the state responsible for any injury inflicted by its agents on citizens. The commission has said the state should not claim immunity for the actions of its officers or agents. “The State should own the responsibility for injuries caused by its agents on citizens ... while dealing with the plea of sovereign immunity, the courts will bear in mind that it is the citizens who are entitled to fundamental rights, and not the agents of the State,” the commission has said.
No ratification
•Though India signed the convention in 1997, it is yet to ratify it. Efforts to bring in a standalone law have failed. The National Human Rights Commission has been urging the government to recognise torture as a separate crime and codify the punishment in a separate penal law. The Supreme Court, while hearing Mr. Kumar’s petition, termed torture an instrument of “human degradation” used by the state. It was after the court’s scathing remarks that the government referred the question of a law on torture to the Law Commission.
•In its 273rd report handed over to the Law Ministry on October 30, the commission has proposed the Prevention of Torture Bill, 2017, which gives a wide definition to torture, not limited to physical pain but also including “inflicting injury, either intentionally or involuntarily, or even an attempt to cause such an injury, which will include physical, mental or psychological in nature”.
📰 Naga talks still on, panel told
No deadline can be set for conclusion of peace deal, says interlocutor
•Naga interlocutor R.N. Ravi told a parliamentary panel here on Monday that “no deadline” could be fixed for the Naga peace agreement and talks were on with at least five or six Naga groups other than the National Socialist Council of Nagaland (Isak-Muivah).
•Mr. Ravi is learnt to have told the parliamentary Standing Committee on Home Affairs that the NSCN-IM had been insisting that since it was the “legitimate Naga group”, negotiations should take place only with it but that was not the stand of the Government of India.
Framework agreement
•On August 3, 2015, Mr. Ravi had signed a “framework agreement” on behalf of the Union government with the NSCN (Isak-Muivah) group to end the decades-old Naga insurgency.
•The agreement was signed at the residence of Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
Open to all
•On Monday, Mr. Ravi who was asked to appear before the panel to explain the status of the Naga peace deal told parliamentarians that the “Government of India wanted to take all the Naga groups on board.”
•“All members wanted to know when the details of the framework agreement will be disclosed by the Centre? The Naga interlocutor said negotiations were still on and the Government of India was not comfortable with only one or two main groups such as the NSCN-IM coming on board, but wanted to take into the fold the other groups as well,” an MP who attended the meeting told The Hindu.
•The Centre recently gave a year’s extension to Mr. Ravi.
Nagalim plan
•The NSCN-IM has been fighting for ‘Greater Nagaland’ or Nagalim — it wants to extend Nagaland’s borders by including Naga-dominated areas in neighbouring Assam, Manipur and Arunachal Pradesh, to unite 1.2 million Nagas.
•Assam, Manipur and Arunachal Pradesh, all BJP-ruled States that have Naga populations have refused to part with even an inch of land to make the peace deal a success.
•The Centre is yet to spell out the details of the Naga agreement. An official said the Naga peace talks were delayed after the death of one of the leaders of NSCN (IM), Isak Swu, last year.
•Mr. Swu, 86, passed away on June 28 in a Delhi hospital.
•The other leader T. Muivah has been carrying on the negotiations on behalf of the group.
•The parliamentary panel that had met earlier to discuss the security situation in the Northeast States had asked Mr. Ravi to appear before it on Monday to discuss the Naga deal.
•The Centre and the NSCN-IM had earlier issued a joint statement that they were “closer than ever before to the final settlement and hope to conclude it sooner than later.”
📰 Views sought on data protection law
Centre releases white paper
•The government on Monday released a white paper looking into the scope of a data protection law, and opened up for public discussion till December 31, issues pertaining to its ambit, what constitutes personal data, what is sensitive data, and the international applicability of such a law.
•The B.N. Srikrishna committee, set up under the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology, in the white paper recommended that the law be applicable to all processing of personal data that takes place within India or by an entity that has a presence in India.
•However, the paper noted that it may be necessary to make the law applicable to all kinds of processing that the government may have a “legitimate interest in regulating” even though it may not be entirely based in India or may be carried out by non-Indian entities that do not have a presence in India.
•The committee set limits on this extended jurisdiction, though, saying that the law should not be so wide as to constitute an unnecessary interference with the jurisdiction of other countries or have the effect of making it a general law of the Internet.
•“For instance, the mere fact that a website (operated from abroad) is accessible from India should not be a reason for subjecting the website to Indian law,” the paper said. According to it personal data “ought to include any kind of information including opinions or assessments irrespective of their accuracy.”
📰 India eases bilateral transfer pricing norms
I-T department to allow APAs, MAPs with trade partners
•In a move that could further improve India’s ease of doing business rankings, the Income Tax Department on Monday issued a clarification saying that it would allow mutual agreement procedures (MAPs) and advance pricing agreements (APAs) with all countries, abandoning a stance that disallowed such agreements with major trade partners like France, Germany, Italy, Singapore and South Korea.
•India’s previously held stance was, if treaties with a particular country did not contain a ‘corresponding adjustment’ clause, then the Indian revenue department would not enter into bilateral advance pricing agreements or mutual agreement procedures with those countries. In other words, any transfer pricing disputes would be settled through domestic litigation instead of bilateral arbitration.
•It has now agreed to entertain such APAs and MAPs, regardless of whether that clause was in the agreement or not. APAs are meant to settle potential disputes in advance, while MAPs lay out the procedure to settle a dispute once it has happened.
•The Central Board of Direct Taxes has decided to accept “transfer Pricing MAP and bilateral APA applications regardless of the presence or otherwise of Paragraph 2 of Article 9 (or its relevant equivalent Article) in the DTAAs [double taxation avoidance agreements],” the Finance Ministry said.
‘Positive step’
•“India had taken a position earlier that if a tax treaty did not have the corresponding adjustment clause, then India would not entertain a bilateral APA or MAP with that country,” Rahul K. Mitra, partner and national head, Transfer Pricing & BEPS, KPMG India said.
•So, important trade partners, “treaties with whom did not have this particular clause, such as France, Germany, Italy, Singapore and South Korea, did not get the benefit of bilateral APAs or MAPs. That has now been rectified. It is a very positive step.”
•“A clarification of India’s stand on the matter clearly spells out that the Government is seriously examining the concerns raised by the MNEs (multi-national enterprises) and taking steps to resolve the same,” Nitin Narang, executive director — transfer pricing at Nangia & Co said in a note. “It also reinforces governments’ focus on improving India’s ranking on ease of doing business index.”
•According to Mr. Mitra, the new stance adopted by India is in line with the commonly accepted practices abroad.
•“For example, the OECD in its guidelines has said that if there is no corresponding adjustment provision, countries are competent to address these issues bilaterally through the general provisions of the MAPs,” Mr. Mitra explained.
📰 Govt. working on new ‘gas standards’
•The government is looking to prepare a unified testing methodology to ensure that all agencies that map air pollution use accurate instruments.
•The Council of Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR)-National Physical Laboratory (NPL) is in the process of setting up ‘gas standards’, or reference samples of Carbon Monoxide (CO), Sulphur Dioxide (SO2), Nitrous Oxide (NO2) and Particulate –Pb (lead), –As (Arsenic) and –Ni (Nickel).
•Currently, the National Ambient Air Quality standards specify the upper limits for pollutants and, based on this, the Air Quality Index — that grades air quality in cities from ‘Good’ to ‘Severe’ — is prepared for several Indian cities.
Devices not calibrated
•“However we have noticed several times that these measurement devices are not calibrated and errors creep in,” said D.K. Aswal, Director, National Physical Laboratory. “This month, we are ready with the standards for several pollutants.”
•Going ahead, he said, there would be talks with environment-monitoring agencies like the the Central Pollution Control Board (CPCB) to see if these can become reference standards for use by all private and public agencies that measure pollution levels.
•CPCB has prescribed guidelines for the maximum permissible levels of 12 gases and pollutants, depending on residential, rural or industrial locations. Standards for PM2.5 were laid out in 2009, though CPCB is now mooting a proposal to revise these standards, a senior official in the organisation hadtoldThe Hindu earlier this year.
•The NPL has also developed a custom air sampler that claims to measure PM2.5 levels far more accurately than existing devices.
📰 Cleaning up oil spills
Research on a chemical compound that repels water
•A chemical compound (Meisenheimer complex) synthesised through a simple, single-step process of mixing two chemicals at room temperature has been found to be highly effective in removing fluoride and metal ions such as lead, mercury, cadmium, copper, and iron from drinking water.
•The compound repels water by nature. A two-member team led by Professor Debasish Haldar from the Department of Chemical Sciences at the Indian Institute of Science Education and Research (IISER), Kolkata tested its efficiency in removing oil spills. A polystyrene sponge that absorbs water became a water-repelling material when coated with the compound and was able to absorb a wide variety of oils and organic solvents from water.
•“The compound has negative and positive charged parts and this helps it absorb metal ion pollutants and fluoride from water,” says Professor Haldar.
•“One gram of the compound was able to remove a large amount of lead (817 mg) and mercury (830 mg) from water and nearly half its weight of copper (451 mg) and iron (511 mg),” says Tanmay Das from IISER, Kolkata and the first author of a paper published on this in the journal ACS Omega.
•The researchers tested the efficiency of the compound to absorb different metals by passing water containing 50-100 parts per million (ppm) of metal solutions through two grams of the compound mixed in 60 grams of silica gel. The absorption capacity was extremely high at around 99%.
•To test the compound’s capacity to remove metal ions below the World Health Organisation’s limit, the researchers used the compound to treat water containing five ppm of copper, mercury, cadmium and iron. After 10 minutes of treatment, the concentration levels of the metals dropped to below 2 parts per billion (ppb), which is far below the WHO limit for these metals.
•In the case of fluoride, water with a high concentration of fluoride (10 ppm) was treated with the compound. After 10 minutes of treatment, the fluoride concentration dropped to 10 ppb. The silica gel filter containing the compound showed equal efficiency for three cycles and has to be recycled after the third cycle.
•“We are trying to commercialise it. We are already working with a company based in Chennai, which is testing the material. A water filter using our compound may become commercially available in a year’s time,” Professor Haldar says.
📰 Childhood foregone
It is a shame that the goal to eradicate child labour by 2025 seems elusive
•Two years after governments set a 2025 target to end child labour, delegates from 100 nations at a recent conference in Buenos Aires were told that they will miss the deadline. The implication is also that realising the objective could take well over 20 years after the expiry of the 2030 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).
•The International Labour Organisation (ILO) estimates that eight years from now, around 121 million boys and girls would still be engaged in various occupations. The present figure is around 152 million children aged 5-17. That is to say, only 31 million children are expected to be rescued between now and 2025 from conditions that deprive them for life of the fundamental ingredients of basic survival.
•Should countries resolve to reinvigorate their efforts to reach the target, they would be looking at a reduction each year of 19 million. That is close to five times the prevalent pace of decline. That would be a stupendous record of eradicating a practice inconsistent with modern democratic norms.
•That goal seems elusive at the moment on a number of indicators. Overall, there was a slowdown in the reduction of child labour, just one percentage point, during the four years until 2016. In contrast was the fall of three percentage points in the corresponding period up to 2012. More worrisome is that there was almost no progress with respect to the rescue of children under 12 years in the four years since 2012. Equally, the decline in child labour among girls was only half the proportion of that of boys during this period.
•The ILO points to four systemic failures that underpin the lack of progress. Foremost is the absence of national legislation to give effect to global conventions on the employment of children in hazardous industries, as well as on the minimum age of work. The fact that the two instruments have received the largest number of ratifications brings into sharp focus the lack of harmony between global commitments and domestic priorities. Relevant here is the research on the incoherency between laws that prescribe a minimum age for employment and those for completion of compulsory school education. It also means that the expansion of quality universal basic education has to extend beyond the fulfilment of statutory provisions.
•Complementing the legal inconsistencies is the lack of effective labour inspections in the informal economy. Around 71% of working children are concentrated in the agriculture sector, with 69% of them undertaking unpaid work in family units. A strong legal framework that mandates punitive action against errant firms and recruitment of youth and adults are important tools to guarantee the protection of children. Above all, it is inconceivable that these policies could be entrenched in the absence of strong collective bargaining mechanisms and effective social protection policies from the cradle to the end of their lives.
📰 A looming threat
All children diagnosed with TB must get paediatric fixed-dose combination drugs
•About 5,500 of over 76,000 children tested in nine Indian cities have been diagnosed with tuberculosis, 9% of them with multi-drug resistant TB (MDR-TB), highlighting the silent spread of the disease. Though the actual prevalence of MDR-TB among children in India is not known, the results from a limited number of children tested in this sample, under the Revised National TB Control Programme, is worrying. According to a 2015 study, of the over 600 children who had tested positive for TB in four cities, about 10% showed resistance to Rifampicin, a first-line drug. Since the incidence of TB among children is a reflection of the prevalence of the disease in the community at large, the high prevalence of both drug-sensitive TB and drug-resistant TB in children from these nine cities is a grim reminder of the failure of the health-care system to diagnose the disease early enough in adults and start them on treatment. Very often, children who test positive for TB have been in close contact with adults with the disease in the same household. With up to a couple of months’ delay in diagnosing the disease being the norm, there is a continuing threat of TB spreading among household contacts and in the larger community. In line with World Health Organisation guidelines, the RNTCP requires all household contacts, particularly children, of a newly diagnosed pulmonary TB patient to be tested and started on treatment if needed. Children below six years of age in the household of a newly diagnosed patient are required to be given the drug Isoniazid as a prophylactic even when they do not have the disease.
•A proactive approach to testing helps in early and correct diagnosis of all contacts and in cutting the transmission chain. Unfortunately, as several studies have shown, the RNTCP guidelines on contact screening are heeded mostly in the breach. The results from this limited study should now compel the government to take up contact screening more urgently. In 2010, WHO had revised the dosage of certain TB drugs for children. Fixed-dose combination (FDC) drugs that take into account the revised dosages for children were finally made available in late 2015. The FDCs are meant for treating children with drug-susceptible TB and cannot be used to treat children who require second-line drugs or who have MDR-TB. After more than a year’s delay, a few months ago India finally introduced FDCs in six States. The remaining States will be covered by the end of this year. Adherence to treatment will improve, and correct dosage for children weighing less than 25 kg will become easier when child-friendly FDCs become available throughout the country. Using the Xpert molecular diagnostic test to screen children with TB is a positive step and should be welcomed, but all the diagnosed children should be guaranteed paediatric FDCs. It would be unethical to deny them this lifeline.
📰 Sink your differences: on the executive-judiciary relationship
A touch of pragmatism is what the judiciary and the executive need at this juncture
•It is disconcerting that differences between the executive and the judiciary are emerging often in the public domain these days. By raising the question whether the judiciary does not trust the Prime Minister to make fair judicial appointments, and harping on the need to maintain the balance of power between the executive and the judiciary, representatives of the Union government have risked the impression that they are putting the judiciary on the defensive. Read between the lines and the executive’s profound dissatisfaction with the state of play in relations between the two wings is evident. Union Law Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad is undoubtedly entitled to hold the view that the Supreme Court’s 2015 verdict striking down the law creating the National Judicial Appointments Commission (NJAC) reveals the judiciary’s distrust in the Prime Minister and the Law Minister. His question whether an audit is needed to determine what has been lost or gained since the collegium system was created in 1993 is not without merit. However, it is debatable whether these issues should have been raised in public, that too in the presence of the Chief Justice of India and his fraternity. Chief Justice Dipak Misra seemed coerced into responding that the judiciary reposes the same trust that the Constituent Assembly had in the Prime Minister, and that the judiciary indeed recognised and respected the separation of powers enshrined in the Constitution. There was really no need for such a public affirmation of first principles in a democracy.
•However, it does not mean that major concerns over whether there is real separation of powers, whether public interest litigation has become an interstitial space in which judges give policy directives, and whether the country needs a better system than the present one in which judges appoint judges should be brushed aside. The present collegium system is flawed and lacks transparency, and there is a clear need to have a better and more credible process in making judicial appointments. It is clear that differences over formulating a fresh Memorandum of Procedure for appointments are casting a shadow on the relationship. It is best if both sides take a pragmatic view of the situation and sink their differences on the new procedure, even if it involves giving up a point or two that they are clinging to. For a start, they could both disclose the exact points on which the two sides differ so that independent experts will also have a chance to contribute to the debate. If it is the right to veto a recommendation that the government wants on some limited grounds, the Collegium must not be averse to considering it. Resolution of this matter brooks no further delay.
