📰 SC clears 12 special courts to try cases against politicians
Fast track courts across the country to dispose of 1,581 cases within a year
•The Supreme Court on Wednesday gave the green signal for the Centre’s scheme to set up 12 fast track courts to exclusively prosecute and dispose of 1,581 criminal cases pending against Members of Parliament and State Legislative Assemblies within a year.
•A Bench of Justices Ranjan Gogoi and Navin Sinha directed the Centre to forthwith allocate ₹7.8 crore to the States for setting up of the special courts.
•The States shall, in consultation with the High Courts concerned, make the courts operational by March 1, 2018, the Bench said.
•PIL petitioner and Supreme Court advocate Ashwini Upadhyay said 12 courts were not enough to try 1,581 cases and ₹7.8 crore was too little to prosecute “criminal” politicians.
•To this, Justice Gogoi responded that “12 courts are not the end of it. But let them start. It is very easy to blame, but to start something is difficult”.
•“The sum of ₹7.8 crore has been earmarked as the required expenditure for the setting up of 12 Courts and the Department of Expenditure, Ministry of Finance has granted in-principle approval to the said allocation. Having considered the matter, we direct the Union of India to proportionately allocate ₹7.8 crore to the different States in which the Special Courts are planned to be located. This should be done forthwith,” the Bench said.
Declared cases
•Immediately after such allocation, “the State Governments in consultation with the High Courts will set up the Fast Track Courts to ensure that the Courts start functioning from 01.03.2018. All necessary/required notification(s) shall be issued by the concerned/respective State Government(s),” the Supreme Court ordered.
•These 1,581 criminal cases were declared by politicians in their nominations during the 2014 general elections.
•Justice Gogoi said the scheme proposes to club the cases of several politicians together and have one court hear them. This way, the Bench expected a special court to finish at least 100 cases a year.
•The Supreme Court directed the High Courts, acting through the various trial courts, to trace out from the case records the criminal cases pending against politicians and transfer them to the special courts concerned for adjudication.
•The Supreme Court said the Centre’s scheme was “rudimentary” at this stage, but it would be open for modifications as and when the situation arises.
•“We further make it clear that what has been directed above is all very tentative at this stage and has been so done with a view to get the Court(s) operational and functional. As and when necessary changes are required to be made in the present directions or any additional directions are called for, the same will be issued, as may be required,” the Supreme Court recorded in its order.
•The Supreme Court scheduled the next hearing for March 7, 2018, by which time, it said, the fast track courts are expected to become operational.
•The order comes on a petition filed by Mr. Upadhyay for a life ban on convicted politicians from contesting elections. The court said it will consider the issue in the next hearing in March.
📰 Parsi woman allowed to perform last rites, SC informed
Goolrokh, represented by senior advocate Indira Jaising, has been arguing for her right to retain her religious identity, dignity and choice
•A Parsi Trust on Thursday informed a Constitution Bench of the Supreme Court that it will allow a woman, who married a Hindu under the Special Marriage Act, to pray at the Tower of Silence and take part in the ceremonies following the death of her parent.
•The five-judge Bench led by Chief Justice of India Dipak Misra took on record a memorandum submitted by the Valsad Parsi Anjuman Trust, which said that it would allow Goolrokh M. Gupta, the woman concerned, to perform the rites. The Trust said it came to the decision after consulting its high priest and in “deference” to the Supreme Court orders.
•The Bench was hearing a challenge by Goolrokh after the Trust barred her entry. Goolrokh, represented by senior advocate Indira Jaising, has been arguing for her right to retain her religious identity, dignity and choice.
•In the previous hearing, Chief Justice Misra had orally observed that a woman does not mortgage herself to a man by marrying him and that she retains her identity, including her religious identity, even after she exercises her right to marry outside her community under the Special Marriage Act.
•The court had prima facie observed that the Special Marriage Act of 1954 was seen as a statutory alternative for couples who choose to retain their identity in an inter-religious marriage.
•The court took on record the memorandum submitted by the Trust through senior advocate Gopal Subramanium, and said this was only being considered as an interim and immediate relief for Goolrokh and her family.
•The court said the larger questions of law regarding the religious identity of a Parsi woman and her right to marry outside her religion, among other issues, would remain open and be dealt with in the next hearing scheduled for the third week of January next year.
•The Bench, also comprising Justices A.K. Sikri, A.M. Khanwilkar, D.Y. Chandrachud and Ashok Bhushan, is deciding if a Parsi woman can keep her religious identity intact after marrying someone from another faith under the 1954 Act.
📰 Govt. looking at JVs in ordnance sector
Detailed performance audit under way
•The Defence Ministry is conducting a detailed performance audit of ordnance factories functioning under the Department of Defence Production, Defence Minister Nirmala Sitharaman said on Thursday.
•Speaking at the Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry (FICCI), the Minister said the government is examining the ordnance factories to explore ways to boost their productivity, including through possible joint ventures (JV) through possible Transfer of Technology .
•There are 41 factories under the Ordnance Factory Board (OFB) and there have been several demands to undertake reforms to improve their productivity and efficiency. In an effort to given greater role for the private sector, the Defence Research and Development Organisation has also asked to “identify patentable products that can be commercialised.”
•She said that the Centre is looking at organically grown industrial parks with inclination towards defence partnerships. To begin with, Chennai-Bengaluru and Mumbai-Pune-Aurangabad are being looked at as they have a large pool of start-ups that can help in defence manufacturing.
📰 Looking for balance in power
The Russia-India-China trilateral meet is New Delhi’s attempt to overcome challenges in ties with Moscow and Beijing
•A month after India was part of the ‘Quad’ discussion on the sidelines of the East Asia Summit in Manila involving Japan, Australia and the U.S., New Delhi hosted foreign ministers of Russia and China this week. The Russia-India-China trilateral held its 15th meeting in what can be construed as New Delhi’s attempt to get a semblance of balance in its ties with Moscow and Beijing.
Scope of talks
•The broader discussions, according to a joint communique of the 15th meeting, “took place in the backdrop of the political scenario in West Asia and North Africa, numerous challenges in putting the world economy back on the growth track, concerns relating to terrorism, transnational organised crime, illicit drug trafficking, food security, and climate change.”
•But what was perhaps interesting was Russia and China’s continued attempts to frame global and regional politics through a similar lens, and the growing divergences between India and them. Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov made it clear that he believes that India can benefit by joining China’s Belt and Road Initiative. “I know India has problems, we discussed it today, with the concept of One Belt, One Road, but the specific problem in this regard should not make everything else conditional to resolving political issues,” Mr. Lavrov said. Targeting India’s participation in the ‘Quad’, he also underlined that a sustainable security architecture cannot be achieved in the Asia-Pacific region with “closed bloc arrangements.” Chinese foreign minister Wang Yi also cautioned against “spheres of influence” and “cliques” by arguing that China opposed “hegemony and power politics and disagree with the sphere of influence and cliques and promote the democratisation of international relations.”
•China, meanwhile, continued to take an aggressive posture on Doklam and its aftermath. Mr. Wang said in a speech before his Delhi visit: “We have handled the issue of cross-border incursions by the Indian border troops into China's Donglang (Doklam) area through diplomatic measures.” Though he suggested that “China and India have far greater shared strategic interests than differences, and far greater needs for cooperation than partial friction,” he maintained that “through diplomatic means, the Indian side withdrew its equipment and personnel which reflected the value and importance of China-India relations and demonstrated sincerity and responsibility of maintaining regional peace and stability.”
Tension in the air
•The tensions in the trilateral framework are inevitable given the changes in the global geopolitical environment. The original conception of this framework was a response to a very different global environment. The proposal for a Moscow-Beijing-Delhi ‘strategic triangle’ had originally come from former Russian Prime Minister Yevgeny Primakov during his visit to India in 1998, when he argued that such an arrangement would represent a force for greater regional and international stability. This did not elicit as enthusiastic a response from China and India as Russia had perhaps hoped for. Thereafter, the three countries continued to focus on improving the nature of their bilateral relationships, maintaining a safe distance from the Primakov proposal. But, this idea of a ‘strategic triangle’ took a tangible form when former Foreign Ministers of Russia, China, and India — Igor Ivanov, Tang Jiaxuan and Yashwant Sinha — met on the margins of the UN General Assembly in New York in September 2002. Despite the fact that nothing concrete emerged out of that meeting, it represented the first major attempt by the three nations to deliberate on world affairs, and since then has become a regular feature of interactions among the three states.
•The three nations had very different expectations from this trilateral. Russia’s role was key as its loss of power and influence on the world scene was a major cause of concern for its leadership. There was a growing and pervasive feeling in Russia that it surrendered its once-powerful position on the world stage for a position of little international influence and respect. It is against this backdrop that Russia tried to establish itself as the hub of two bilateral security partnerships that could be used to counteract U.S. power and influence in areas of mutual concern. While Russia witnessed a downward slide in its status as a superpower since the end of the Cold War, China emerged as a rising power that saw the U.S. as the greatest obstacle, if it was to achieve a pre-eminent position in the global political hierarchy. As a consequence, China recognised the importance of cooperating with Russia to check U.S. expansionism in the world, even if only for the short term. In fact, American policies towards Russia and China moved the two states closer to each other, leading to the formation of a new balance of power against the U.S.
India’s stance
•India, on the other hand, had different considerations, as it was still far from becoming a global power of any reckoning. India saw in the trilateral a mechanism to bring greater balance in the global order as it believed that a unipolar U.S.-dominated world was not in the best interests of weaker states like itself, even as strategic convergence deepened between Washington and Delhi. Moreover, all three countries realised the enormous potential in the economic, political, military and cultural realms if bilateral relationships among them were adequately strengthened.
•As a consequence, the trilateral did not lead to consequences of any great import. It merely resulted in declarations which were often critical of the West, and of the U.S. in particular. Yet this was also a period which saw significant shifts in Indo-U.S. ties as bilateral relations expanded while Russian and Chinese links with the U.S. have witnessed a downward shift.
•The joint declaration of the recent trilateral meeting said: “Those committing, organising, inciting or supporting terrorist acts” must be held accountable and brought to justice under international law, including the principle of “extradite or prosecute.” It stopped short of naming Pakistan-based terror groups such as Lashkar-e-Taiba and Jaish-e-Mohammed, something that India would have liked in line with the most recent BRICS declaration.
•An arrangement that had started with an attempt to manage American unipolarity is now being affected fundamentally by Chinese resurgence. Both Russia and India are having to deal with the externalities being generated by China’s rise. While Russia is getting closer to China, India is trying to leverage its partnership with other like-minded states in the wider Indo-Pacific region. As a multipolar world order takes shape, India will have to engage with multiple partners so as to limit bilateral divergences.
•The Russia-India-China template comes with its own set of challenges. China’s Global Times, commenting on the recent trilateral, suggested that “the leaders of the three only meet with each other on international occasions,” adding, “this indicates it does not have high status in diplomacy and cannot bear more functions.” While this may be true, New Delhi’s continued engagement with the duo suggests that India is today confident of setting its own agenda in various platforms. Just as China engages with the U.S. on the one hand and with Russia on the other, a rising India is quite capable of managing its ties with Washington, Beijing and Moscow simultaneously. It will not always be easy, but in an age when the certitudes of the past are fast vanishing, diplomacy will have to tread a complex path.
📰 Revival risks: On economy woes
With prices rising and manufacturing slowing, the economy is still not out of the woods
•The Centre’s bid to dispel the pall of gloom over the economy has been helped in recent weeks by a sovereign rating upgrade from a global agency and a sharp improvement in India’s rank on a World Bank index for ease of doing business. More significantly, the economy clocked a growth of 6.3% in the second quarter of this year, after slowing for at least four quarters. But official data for the third quarter (October to December) so far suggest that the economy is still not entirely out of the woods and fresh headwinds, such as rising oil prices, could upset the fragile recovery. Manufacturing growth, driven by restocking by producers after the rollout of the goods and services tax, was a major factor in the second quarter growth pick-up. After two months of robust 4%-plus growth, industrial activity however slipped in October, with the Index of Industrial Production reflecting just 2.2% growth. October was a festive month but consumer durables production contracted by nearly 7%, mining was virtually stagnant, and manufacturing growth moderated to 2.5% from 3.8% last year. This coincides with exporters seeing a 1.1% slump in shipments in October, after growing at an average of over 13% in the second quarter. It is also borne out by the nearly 10% drop in GST collections that month compared to September. The IIP has now grown just 2.5% in the first seven months of 2017-18, compared to 5.5% in the same period last fiscal.
•If the spectre of slower growth with weak exports at a time when global trade is recovering is not worrying enough, with job creation still to pick up, the latest inflation data set too is cause for concern. Prices at the consumer level rose at the fastest pace in 15 months this November, with inflation touching 4.88%, up from 3.6% in October and just 1.5% in June. This reflects a broad-based price rise under way, although it is led by fuel inflation (at 7.2%, from 6.1% a month ago) and food inflation (4.4%, from 1.9% in October). Within food, rising onion and tomato prices pushed vegetable inflation to a 16-month high of 22.5%; inflation in egg prices quickened from 0.8% in October to 8% in November. While some of this food inflation could wane in the coming months, there is greater concern about the rise in core inflation (excluding food and fuel) and inflation imported through high global prices. On Tuesday, oil prices breached the $65 a barrel mark for the first time in over two years. The government faces difficult choices. Slashing fuel taxes could calm inflation, but it would hit revenue collections that are already uncertain owing to GST deadline extensions. Not doing so would leave less room for the central bank to lower interest rates. As the Economic Survey said, oil at $60-65 could hit consumption and public investment and dent private investment further. That is not a path to a sustained revival.
📰 Aadhaar linking: CJI frowns upon hyperbole
Justice Misra refuses to be moved by rhetoric against government action
•Heading a five-judge Constitution Bench, Chief Justice of India Dipak Misra refused to be moved by the “hyperbole and rhetorics” against Aadhaar linking, while observing that the Supreme Court had passed interim orders making Aadhaar voluntary before the Aadhaar Act came into existence in 2016.
•The Chief Justice's remarks came on the first day of the Aadhaar hearing after senior advocate Shyam Divan and advocate Vipin Nair for petitioners, argued that despite repeated orders passed by the Supreme Court since 2014, the various agencies and government ministries have gone ahead to issue a whopping 139 circulars making Aadhaar mandatory for nursery admissions to welfare subsidies to student scholarships to CBSE and NEET exams — even for getting a death certificate or treatment for HIV.
Consistent stand
•Mr. Divan argued that the Supreme Court had never flinched from its stand, taken consistently in its past interim orders, that Aadhaar should be “purely voluntary” till it took a decision on the constitutional validity of the Aadhaar scheme one way or the other. Mr. Divan said these circulars were issued regardless of the fact that challenge against Aadhaar was still alive in the Supreme Court.
•The series of government circulars making Aadhaar mandatory is in the teeth of the Supreme Court orders to continue Aadhaar as a voluntary exercise only for availing subsidies and “dimnishes the stature” of the highest court, Mr. Divan argued.
•Chief Justice Misra said the government circulars were issued under Section 7 of the Aadhaar Act.
•“It is not that your orders disappear the moment Parliament passes a law,” Mr. Divan countered.
•“So merely because these petitions were pending before this court, the government should have come to this court everytime before notifying under Section 7 of the Aadhaar Act?” Justice A.K. Sikri asked Mr. Divan.
•When Mr. Divan handed over news reports showing suffering among the non-Aadhaar holding marginalised people due to lack of access to welfare benefits, Chief Justice Misra said the court is not compelled to look into “newspaper reports and website writings”.
Rights abrogated
•Senior advocate Gopal Subramanium, for a petitioner, argued that orders passed by the Supreme Court, including one by a Constitution Bench of the court in 2015, emphasising on the voluntary nature of Aadhaar was under Articles 32 and 142, using the court’s fundamental and extraordinary powers in the Constitution.
•“The Supreme Court exercised judicial powers to insulate the citizen from parting with their fundamental right to privacy, dignity and voluntariness through state compulsion, force or coercion. Fundamental rights of the citizen cannot be abrogated by the Aadhaar Act or any kind of legislation. It is against the rule of law and sanctity of judicial orders,” Mr. Subramanium argued.
•How could the 139 circulars making Aadhaar linking mandatory override a judgment of a nine-judge Bench of the Supreme Court upholding privacy as a fundamental right? he asked.
•Justice D.Y. Chandrachud, who wrote the majority verdict in the privacy case, agreed that Aadhaar Act is concerned only with receipt or expenditure regarding subsidies, funds for which are sourced from the Consolidated Fund of India.
•Senior advocate Arvind Datar argued that the circulars issued under Section 7 of the Aadhaar Act have gone beyond mere subsidies. “In Chennai, Plus Two students require Aadhaar to attend their exams... you need Aadhaar to get a death certificate,” he submitted.
•Article 144 of the Constitution mandates the government to act in furtherance of Supreme Court orders, not against it, Mr. Datar said.
Data breaches
•Senior advocate K.T.S. Tulsi drew attention to reports that 210 central websites have been breached, exposing the personal data of consumers who had linked Aadhaar.
•“Privacy is in peril if data is parted to telecoms. There is no data protection law in place till date,” Mr. Tulsi argued.
•“Personal data given is not secured inherently. Data is not stored by the government, but outsourced to companies... American companies, who also supply to Pakistan. The individual has no remedy against data breach,” senior advocate Anand Grover submitted.
📰 WTO meet ends without consensus
Member countries fail to reach agreement on food security right, centrality of development
•The December 10-13 meeting of the World Trade Organisation’s highest decision-making body in this ‘city of fair winds’ ended becalmed with the WTO’s 164 members unable to reach a consensus on substantive issues such as the food security right of developing countries and the centrality of development in multilateral trade negotiations.
•However, the Ministerial Conference managed to salvage a commitment from member nations to secure a deal by 2019 on banning certain forms of fisheries’ subsidies.
•During hectic parleys, the U.S. blocked the demands of more than a 100 developing nations, including India and China, to implement their food security programmes without onerous conditions. Since all major decisions in the WTO need to be taken by ‘the membership as a whole’, even a single country can end up being the deal-breaker.
•India, for its part, thwarted attempts by several countries, both developed and developing, to initiate binding discussions on what they called the 21st century challenges to trade — including e-commerce, investment facilitation and proposed norms for small firms. This it did by refusing to budge from its position that members should first resolve outstanding issues (such as food sovereignty) of the ongoing Doha Round negotiations that began in 2001 with a ‘development agenda’ (for improving the trading prospects of developing nations), before considering ‘new issues’.
•“Despite our best efforts we could not meet the deadline on [permanent solution to the issue of] public stockholding [for food security purposes]. It’s not the first deadline we missed — but it is still disappointing,” WTO Director-General Roberto Azevêdo said in closing remarks. “We could not even agree on more detailed programmes in many areas. And I know that for many, especially the proponents, the disappointment is particularly bitter.”
‘Don’t give up’
•Responding to a question from The Hindu on how the WTO would handle this failure, especially considering that some member nations had failed to comply with certain decisions that were part of previous Ministerial Declarations, Mr. Azevêdo said: “It is disappointing that in some areas, particularly where we had a [Ministerial] mandate as you pointed out, we could not get that outcome. But we don’t give up. We just continue. This is the nature of the multilateral system.”
•“I remember the many times that we did not have outcomes. That didn’t mean we stopped. That also didn’t mean that because we didn’t get an outcome, we wouldn’t be able to have them later…The only way to get an outcome in these very difficult issues is when every side shows flexibility. You can’t expect to get everything you want, but you cannot also not engage,” he added.
•The meeting ended without a Ministerial Declaration as members could not agree on the centrality of development, which underlies the Doha Round, as well as special and differential treatment for all developing countries. However, but WTO spokesperson Keith Rockwell said it was not a precedent-setting development as far as the global trade body is concerned. The meeting of the WTO´s apex decision-making body had previously ended without the member nations being able to adopt a Ministerial Declaration in Seattle (1999), Cancun (2003) and Geneva (in 2009 and partly in 2011), he said.
📰 Income share of top 1% surged: report
‘Inequality rose substantially since implementation of 80s’ deregulation reforms’
•Income inequality in India rose rapidly since the 1980s to a situation where the top 10% of the earners accounted for 56% of the income earned in 2014, according to a new report by economists, including Thomas Pickety and Lucas Chancel.
•The report, titled ‘World Inequality Report,’ said inequality rose substantially since the 1980s following the implementation of the deregulation reforms by the government. “In 2014, the share of national income captured by India’s top 1% of earners was 22%, while the share of the top 10% of earners was around 56%,” the report said. “The top 0.1% of earners has continued to capture more growth than all those in the bottom 50% combined.”
•“Indian inequality was driven by the rise in very top incomes,” the report added. “The income share of India’s top 1% rose from approximately 6% in 1982-1983 to above 10% a decade after, then to 15% by 2000, and further still to around 23% by 2014. The latest data thus shows that during the first decade after the millennium, the share of national income attributable to the top 1% grew to be larger than that pertaining to the bottom 50%. By 2014, the national income share of the bottom 50% — approximately 390 million adults — was just two-thirds of the share of the top 1%, consisting of just 7.8 million people.”
‘Rising inequality’
•“An even stronger increase in the share of national income was experienced by the top 0.1% and top 0.01%, whose shares grew fivefold and tenfold, respectively, from 2% and 0.5% to almost 10% and 5%, between 1983 and 2014,” it said.
•According to the authors, this rising inequality is in sharp contrast to the trends seen in the 30 years following Independence, when income inequality was widely reduced and the incomes of the bottom 50% grew at a faster rate than the national average.
•“After independence, [the then Prime Minister] Jawaharlal Nehru implemented a set of socialist policies, with strict government control over the economy, with an explicit goal to limit the power of the elite,” the report said. “The policies implemented by himself and his followers, including his daughter Indira Gandhi, up to the late 1970s, included nationalisations, strong market regulation and high tax progressivity.”
•These measure, and others, the report said, had a significant impact on reducing income inequality.
📰 Haven’t declared Amarnath a silent zone, clarifies NGT
‘Only asked devotees to remain quiet in front of the shivling’
•The National Green Tribunal on Thursday clarified its orders on ‘maintaining silence’ around the Amarnath shrine and said that its previous order had not been “correctly reported in different quarters”.
•A Bench headed by NGT Chairperson Swatanter Kumar said the order passed by the Tribunal on Wednesday had “neither intended nor actually declared the entire area falling under the Amarnath Ji Shrine Board a silence zone”.
•“The only restriction that the Tribunal had placed and which is now reiterated to provide complete clarity is that the devotee or anyone standing in front of the Amarnath shivling shall maintain silence,” said the green panel Bench.
•Further, the Bench said the restrictions had been imposed keeping in mind the adverse effects that noise, heat and vibration can have on the natural formation.
One-way queue
•Additionally, the Bench directed that a one-way queue of visitors had to be maintained at the shrine.
•“On the last stairs, approximately 30 steps leading to the holy cave, it should be ensured that no person or pilgrim carries any material as it is already the practice of the Board,” said the Bench.
•The NGT has directed all the authorities, including the State of Jammu and Kashmir and the Amarnath Shrine Board, to comply with the orders.
📰 Revival risks: On economy woes
With prices rising and manufacturing slowing, the economy is still not out of the woods
•The Centre’s bid to dispel the pall of gloom over the economy has been helped in recent weeks by a sovereign rating upgrade from a global agency and a sharp improvement in India’s rank on a World Bank index for ease of doing business. More significantly, the economy clocked a growth of 6.3% in the second quarter of this year, after slowing for at least four quarters. But official data for the third quarter (October to December) so far suggest that the economy is still not entirely out of the woods and fresh headwinds, such as rising oil prices, could upset the fragile recovery. Manufacturing growth, driven by restocking by producers after the rollout of the goods and services tax, was a major factor in the second quarter growth pick-up. After two months of robust 4%-plus growth, industrial activity however slipped in October, with the Index of Industrial Production reflecting just 2.2% growth. October was a festive month but consumer durables production contracted by nearly 7%, mining was virtually stagnant, and manufacturing growth moderated to 2.5% from 3.8% last year. This coincides with exporters seeing a 1.1% slump in shipments in October, after growing at an average of over 13% in the second quarter. It is also borne out by the nearly 10% drop in GST collections that month compared to September. The IIP has now grown just 2.5% in the first seven months of 2017-18, compared to 5.5% in the same period last fiscal.
•If the spectre of slower growth with weak exports at a time when global trade is recovering is not worrying enough, with job creation still to pick up, the latest inflation data set too is cause for concern. Prices at the consumer level rose at the fastest pace in 15 months this November, with inflation touching 4.88%, up from 3.6% in October and just 1.5% in June. This reflects a broad-based price rise under way, although it is led by fuel inflation (at 7.2%, from 6.1% a month ago) and food inflation (4.4%, from 1.9% in October). Within food, rising onion and tomato prices pushed vegetable inflation to a 16-month high of 22.5%; inflation in egg prices quickened from 0.8% in October to 8% in November. While some of this food inflation could wane in the coming months, there is greater concern about the rise in core inflation (excluding food and fuel) and inflation imported through high global prices. On Tuesday, oil prices breached the $65 a barrel mark for the first time in over two years. The government faces difficult choices. Slashing fuel taxes could calm inflation, but it would hit revenue collections that are already uncertain owing to GST deadline extensions. Not doing so would leave less room for the central bank to lower interest rates. As the Economic Survey said, oil at $60-65 could hit consumption and public investment and dent private investment further. That is not a path to a sustained revival.
📰 Kalvari submarine a big step in defence preparedness, says PM Modi
First of six scorpene-class diesel-electric vessels commissioned into the Navy
•Prime Minister Narendra Modi formally commissioned the first of six Scorpene diesel-electric submarines into the Navy on Thursday. This is the Navy’s first modern conventional submarine in almost two decades since the INS Sindhushastra was procured from Russia in July 2000.
•“It is a matter of pride for me to commission this submarine. Kalvari’s induction in the Navy is a big step in defence preparedness,” Mr. Modi said, lauding the Mazagon Dock Shipbuilders Ltd (MDL) for undertaking the project to construct the six submarines with technology transfer from the Naval Group (Formerly DCNS) of France.
•The Scorpene submarines can undertake different missions including anti-surface warfare, anti-submarine warfare, intelligence gathering, mine laying and area surveillance, the MDL officials said. The second of the Scorpenes, Khanderi, was launched in January 2017, and is undergoing sea trials. The third, Karanj, is being readied for launch shortly. The rest are in various stages of outfitting. The project is expected to be over by 2020.
•Defence Minister Nirmala Sitharaman said peace in the Indian Ocean, the lifeline of global trade, “is better off with INS Kalvari and her follow on submarines.”
•INS Kalvari is manned by a team of eight officers and 35 sailors.
