📰 Haryana Assembly okays death penalty for child rape
Bill passed unanimously, CM expresses anguish over recent incidents of rape
•The Haryana Assembly on Thursday unanimously passed a Bill which provides for death penalty to those found guilty of raping girls aged 12 years or less.
•After Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan, Haryana has become the third State where the Assembly has approved the provision of capital punishment for such sexual offenders, the House was informed.
•The Criminal Law (Haryana Amendment) Bill, 2018, moved by the State’s Parliamentary Affairs Minister Ram Bilas Sharma, was passed on the last day of the budget session.
•The Bill was passed unanimously with INLD and Congress members also lending their support.
•A few Congress members put forth some suggestions, with senior leader Kiran Choudhary suggesting death penalty and harsher provisions for all rapists irrespective of the age of victims.
•“After Section 376-A of the Penal Code, the following Section shall be inserted, namely 376-AA,” the Bill stated.
•Under section 376-AA, in case of rape of a girl up to 12 years of age, there will be a punishment of death or rigorous imprisonment of not less than 14 years which may extend to imprisonment for life that is for remainder period of persons natural life, according to the legislation.
•A provision 376-DA has also been added after section 376-D of the penal code.
•Under section--376-DA, if a girl upto 12 years of age is raped by one or more persons constituting a group, each of those persons shall be deemed to have committed the offence of rape and will be punished with death or rigorous imprisonment for a term which will not be less than 20 years, but which may extend to life along with a fine.
•The Bill also provides for making the existing criminal laws related to other sexual offences more stringent.
•The punishment under Section 354 of the IPC (Assault or criminal force against woman with intent to outrage her modesty) will not be less than two years (earlier not less than one year) but may extend up to seven years (earlier up to five years).
Provision of fine
•The new additions also include provisions of fining the convict and any such fine will be paid to the victim.
•Chief Minister Manohar Lal Khattar, during his speech in the House, expressed anguish over recent incidents of rape in the State.
•He rejected charge levelled by some Opposition members that politics was the reason for bring the tougher law.
📰 Pakistan asks its envoy to return for ‘consultations’
Islamabad alleges ‘maltreatment’ of officials posted at High Commission in Delhi
•Pakistan on Thursday asked its envoy to return for “consultations” amid growing bilateral tensions over alleged harassment of its diplomats in India. Indian sources, however, indicated that Pakistan had not ensured the safety and security of Indian diplomats in Islamabad despite repeated requests.
•The envoy’s visit to the Pakistani capital for “consultations” was confirmed by Pakistan’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs Spokesperson Dr. Mohammad Faisal, who reiterated at a weekly briefing that officials and staff of the Pakistan High Commission in New Delhi were being subjected to different kinds of harassment for the past few days. “Our High Commissioner in New Delhi has been asked to come to Islamabad for consultations. Indian Deputy High Commissioner J.P. Singh was summoned to the Foreign Office and a strong protest was lodged at the maltreatment being meted out to the officials and families of the Pakistan High Commission in New Delhi,” the Spokesperson said.
•Indian sources, however, urged caution, emphasising that Pakistan had not withdrawn its envoy, High Commissioner Sohail Mahmood.
‘Their matter’
•“Consultations by any resident Ambassador or High Commissioner with their headquarters are matters for that country. We, of course, have no comments on the Pakistan High Commissioner,” said Ministry of External Affairs Spokesperson Raveesh Kumar.
•Mr. Mahmood, in an interview with The Hindu on Wednesday, had called for “sober reflection” on the current row, before returning to the Pakistani capital.
•While the consultations are not unusual, the fact that the Pakistan MFA issued a statement on calling him to Islamabad amid growing diplomatic tension, is significant.
•Over 500 Pakistani nationals including officials, staffers and family members are stationed at the High Commission in New Delhi. The Indian High Commission in Islamabad, however, is a ‘non-family’ posting for diplomats. Indian sources maintained that Pakistan has remained unresponsive to their safety-related concerns.
‘No satisfactory reply’
•“Over the last one year, we have repeatedly asked Pakistan to ensure safety and security of our diplomats posted in Islamabad but we did not receive satisfactory response. As a result we had to summon the Deputy High Commissioner of Pakistan Syed Haidar Shah on Saturday and issue him a note verbale (diplomatic note),” said a source, explaining the latest diplomatic fight. The row has intensified after Pakistani sources issued several videos showing their diplomats being stalked by security operatives on the streets of Delhi.
Harassment charge
•Both Indian and Pakistani officials have accused each other of similar harassments.
•An Indian source indicated that over the last several months, Pakistani security agencies have resorted to a series of measures like stopping local employees from reaching the mission and disrupting electricity supply that made normal life impossible.
•The Pakistani spokesman alleged that visitors and labourers were being stopped from going to the Pakistani mission in the Indian capital’s diplomatic enclave. As a result, the diplomats, their children and families were finding it difficult to stay in New Delhi, he claimed.Pakistan has complained to the Indian authorities, saying that it will become very difficult for its diplomats to perform their duties in New Delhi in the wake of such incidents.
📰 U.S. announces expanded sanctions against Russians
19 individuals, five groups on the list
•The U.S. slapped sanctions on 19 Russian individuals and five groups, including Moscow’s intelligence services, for meddling in the 2016 U.S. election and malicious cyberattacks, the Treasury Department said on Thursday.
•Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin said there would be additional sanctions against Russian government officials and oligarchs “for their destabilising activities”. Mr. Mnuchin did not give a time frame for those sanctions, which he said would sever the individuals’ access to the U.S. financial system. “The administration is confronting and countering malign Russian cyberactivity, including their attempted interference in U.S. elections, destructive cyberattacks, and intrusions targeting critical infrastructure,” he said.
•U.S. intelligence agencies have concluded that Russia interfered in the 2016 presidential campaign using hacking and propaganda, an effort that eventually included attempting to tilt the race in President Donald Trump's favour. Russia denies interfering in the election. U.S. Special Counsel Robert Mueller on February 16 brought charges against 13 Russian individuals and three Russian companies, accusing them of participating in a criminal and espionage conspiracy to tamper in the 2016 campaign.
False persona
•The indictment said Russians adopted false online personas to push divisive messages, traveled to the U.S. to collect intelligence and staged political rallies while posing as Americans.
•Those targeted by the new sanctions include the Russian nationals and entities charged by Mr. Mueller.
•The new sanctions also include Russian intelligence services, the Federal Security Service and Main Intelligence Directorate, and six individuals working on behalf of the GRU.
📰 Arresting the drift
India needs to re-engage with its ally Russia, which is getting closer to China and Pakistan
•Through the vicissitudes of the past 70 years since Independence, Russia has been a time-tested ally of India. Since the Soviet era, both countries have shared such amicable relations that the U.S. and its allies often registered their suspicions about India being a part of the Soviet camp during the Cold War, despite New Delhi’s affirmations that it was a leader of the Non-Aligned Movement.
•Although India has traditionally sought to maintain a delicate balance between superpowers and refrained from groupism for its own advantage, in recent years this position appears to have shifted in favour of finding new allies, based on India’s self-perception as an emerging power in the global system, and its calculations about the changing alignments of power across the world. This change has, to an extent, fuelled India’s interest in joining the Quad.
•In parallel to these creeping changes, India’s traditional equations with Russia have shifted, and Russia’s interest in getting closer to Pakistan and China has grown. Indeed Russia-Pakistan relations seem to be on an upward trajectory, with Russia signalling its support for Pakistan’s candidature to the Nuclear Suppliers Group. Joint military exercises between Russia and Pakistan, of the kind held in October 2017, are another major concern for India, given the long history of India-Russia defence ties and the depth of mutual trust that it has engendered between the two militaries.
•The question that the latest developments raise is this: what are the risks of allowing a historically close bilateral relationship with Moscow to become a relatively lower priority, and can India ever hope to attain the same level of trust with any another ally? The answers to both questions seem to be in the negative, namely that the risks are high and the odds of “replacing” Russian support quite low, at least for now. In line with this reasoning, the biggest fear in India’s foreign policy circles is that the ongoing shift in equations with Russia could lead to Russia drifting away from India.
•The immediate concern regarding this drift is that a Russia-China-Pakistan trilateral could emerge if India doesn’t play its cards well. It is easy to imagine that both China and Pakistan would be eager to support such an alliance as it could arrest India’s strategic momentum in the region and globally. Russia’s new Ambassador to India, Nikolay Kudashev, has taken charge at this critical juncture, a tough time for bilateral ties yet a positive opportunity to broaden areas of cooperation. If people-to-people contact between the two countries is promoted more, it could help ensure deeper linkages and fortify past associations. In sum, the risks of Moscow drifting away from New Delhi’s strategic sphere, into the arms of regional rivals, are high. The quickest remedy is to reengage with Russia with the specific aim of demonstrating that it is still an important friend of India.
📰 The strategy of conflict
India must work towards some understanding with Pakistan before the situation on the border spins out of control
•A little over two months into 2018, the violence on the Jammu and Kashmir (J&K) stretch of the India-Pakistan border has reached a new high: more than 633 ceasefire violations (CFVs) by Pakistan have been reported by New Delhi which have claimed the lives of 12 civilians and 10 soldiers. Many more have been injured and several civilian habitats along the border destroyed. Till the first week of March, Pakistan reported 415 CFVs by India which have claimed 20 civilian lives (there is no data on Pakistani military casualties).
•The calibre of weapons used on the border have also graduated from short-range personal weapons to 105 mm mortars, 130 and 155 mm artillery guns and anti-tank guided missiles. With the rising violence, casualties and upcoming elections in both countries, we may have a perfect recipe for escalation on our hands.
•The question we must ask ourselves at this point, then, is this: is this sheer mindless violence, or is there a strategy behind this violence? And if there indeed is a strategy, is it a carefully calibrated one and what are its likely outcomes?
Three strategies
•Ever since the ceasefire agreement (CFA) of 2003, New Delhi seems to have followed three broad strategies to deal with the violence on the J&K border. These three approaches — ‘talks over bullets’, ‘talks and bullets’, and ‘disproportionate bombardment’ — have identifiable costs and benefits associated with them.
•The years immediately after the 2003 CFA witnessed a great deal of calm on the borders with CFVs dropping to a minimum even though infiltration into J&K and sporadic, minor terror attacks against India continued to take place. There were no major terror attacks, and Kashmir was calm. Bilateral talks drastically reduced violence during that phase. This lasted roughly till 2008.
•Another phase when this strategy was evident was following Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s visit to Lahore. Thanks to the rapprochement achieved by his visit, the period from December 2015 to February 2016 hardly witnessed any CFVs, despite the Pathankot Air Force base attack in early January 2016.
•The benefits of this strategy, adopted mostly by the previous United Progressive Alliance government and briefly by the incumbent National Democratic Alliance government, are evident. Engagement with Pakistan and quiet on the border are strongly correlated. The downside, however, is that New Delhi feels that it tried the strategy of peace and talks several times in the past and failed to get a positive response from Pakistan. This has led to a great deal of bitterness in India.
•Failure of this strategy has been due to the periodic terror attacks carried out against India, infiltration into J&K and the rise of militancy in Kashmir, in all of which India sees significant contribution of the Pakistani establishment. While there are benefits of talks, they are neither consistent nor without political costs. Put differently, the costs of ‘talks over bullets’ strategy, in New Delhi’s calculation, seem to outweigh the benefits.
•The second strategy has been to engage in talks while proportionately responding to Pakistani provocations. The period from 2010 to 2012 seems to fall in this category. Consider this: the two sides engaged each other in talks during this time and CFVs reduced significantly — India reported 70 violations in 2010, 62 in 2011 and 114 in 2012. In 2010, the two Foreign Secretaries met in New Delhi, followed by the two Foreign Ministers meeting in Islamabad. In 2011, the two Foreign Secretaries met in Thimphu, and in 2012 the Indian and Pakistani Foreign Ministers issued a joint statement in Islamabad.
•While the talks went on, the firing on the J&K borders did not come to a complete halt. Both talks and firing persisted, though at moderate levels. The benefits of this game of proportionate response — ‘talks for talks and bullets for bullets’ — which went on without much fuss are clear: very little risk of escalation, fewer casualties and limited destruction.
•However, this strategy comes with major political costs. Hardliners and the opposition in India criticised the Manmohan Singh government of being weak, in particular when the beheadings of Indian soldiers took place in 2013, and reports indicated an increasing spate of what India refers to as BAT (border action team) operations by the Pakistan army. The political costs of not upping the ante against Pakistan seemed to outweigh its military benefits.
•The third Indian strategy is disproportionate bombardment of the Pakistani side using high calibre weapons while not showing any desire for talks, negotiations or concessions, and shunning Pakistani suggestions thereof. India’s reported rejection, in January, of a Pakistani proposal for a meeting between the two Directors General of Military Operations (DGMOs), saying it first wanted to see a drop in infiltration levels is a direct outcome of this strategy. The domestic component of this strategy also involves a great deal of politicisation of the Indian Army’s feats on or across the Line of Control, such as the surgical strikes against Pakistan in September 2016.
•CFVs since April 2016 and the current state of India-Pakistan relations are largely informed by this strategy. Despite the rising terrorist attacks inside J&K and the increasing CFVs, there has been hardly any dialogue (barring the meeting between the two National Security Advisors in Bangkok, which achieved precious little). India, according to Pakistan, violated the ceasefire 389 times from April to December 2016, and in 2017 over 2,000 times, with the trend continuing this year. India reported 449 violations by Pakistan in 2016, and 860 in 2017.
•The benefits of this disproportionate bombardment strategy are too obvious to miss. Its domestic political utility is enormous given the surprisingly few questions being asked of the government about the rising civilian and military casualties. The ‘we kill more than they do’ argument, combined with the ‘surgical strikes’ narrative, creates a powerful political discourse laden with potential electoral benefits for the ruling dispensation in New Delhi.
•There are inherent costs associated with this strategy. First, the disproportionate bombardment strategy could potentially escalate to worrying levels — a rising toll could reverse popular support for the current muscular approach. Second, more killing and destruction would also steadily shrink the space available for negotiated outcomes with Pakistan. Finally, the current media frenzy surrounding the border violence and the associated nationalist sentiments could become a worry for the government if and when it wishes to negotiate with Pakistan.
Pakistan’s three-fold strategy
•Pakistan seems to adopt a three-fold strategy on the J&K border informed by its conventional inferiority vis-à-vis India: keep the violence on the border carefully calibrated without upping the ante; seek meaningful talks on Kashmir to turn down the rhetoric on Kashmir and infiltration into J&K; propose tactical measures to reduce violence on the borders such as DGMO talks and reduction in the calibre of weapons, without giving up its claims and interests in Kashmir. In other words, Pakistan is looking for either conflict management vis-à-vis the J&K border or a major dialogue process to resolve the Kashmir issue.
•There is then a clear mismatch between the expectations and strategies of New Delhi and Islamabad/Rawalpindi. Whereas India is looking for an end to cross-border infiltration and Pakistani involvement in Kashmir in return for an end to shelling on the border, Pakistan is desirous of a resolution of or meaningful talks on Kashmir in return for calm borders and cracking down on anti-India terror groups in Pakistan. The two sides must therefore try and find a via media between these two differing sets of expectations if they wish to bring down the violence on the J&K border that is increasingly spiralling out of control.
📰 Media think they’re on a pulpit: CJI
•Chief Justice of India Dipak Misra said on Thursday that the press should not think they are “sitting on some pulpit.”
•The Chief Justice’s remarks on the state of the media came during the hearing of a petition filed by online news portal, The Wire, against a Gujarat High Court decision.
•The top judge said some of what the media put out amounted to “sheer contempt of court.”
•With specific reference to the electronic media, the Chief Justice said journalists behaved as if they had turned “popes or guardians overnight.”
•In a direct criticism of the press, the Chief Justice said: “They [the journalists] are sitting on some kind of pulpit... that is not real journalism.”
•“I don’t want to name any particular electronic media, but the way things have been vilified...,” he said.
•The Chief Justice said he had “never gagged the press,” but “they cannot write anything about anyone from their imagination.” He made it clear that his remarks were not in anyway connected to the case being heard.
📰 CoA curtails powers of BCCI officials
•The Supreme Court-appointed Committee of Administrators (CoA), steered by Vinod Rai, on Thursday issued fresh directives that conveyed to BCCI acting president C. K. Khanna, acting secretary Amitabh Choudhary and treasurer Anirudh Chaudhry that their role would henceforth be very limited in the matter of running the day-to-day administration.
•In short, the CoA told them to fall in line in discharging their duties. It cited the court’s January 2, 2017 order to supervise the BCCI administration with the ultimate aim of making the BCCI and its members implement the Justice Lodha Committee reforms in cricket. In its seventh status report submitted recently, the CoA has informed the court that the three elected office-bearers completed their three year term on March 1, 2018.
📰 Is active euthanasia the next step?
The right declared in ‘Common Cause’ extends to active euthanasia in certain circumstances
•Yes, the operative term in the question being “is”, and not “should... be”. If passive euthanasia is a guaranteed fundamental right, a rigid “active” versus “passive” euthanasia distinction (APD) is analytically unsustainable. In Common Cause v. Union of India , the Supreme Court expounded the basis of its 2011 ruling in Aruna Shanbaug v. Union of India , which permitted “passive” euthanasia, including “involuntary” passive euthanasia for mentally incompetent patients, in certain terminal cases. Ruling that Article 21 of the Constitution guaranteed the “right to die with dignity”, the court also issued interim guidelines to enforce individuals’ living wills in case of future incompetence.
Active and passive
•Aruna and Common Cause have incorporated the judicial APD evolved primarily by U.K. courts. In popular discourse, APD has become shorthand for an apparently axiomatic ethical and legal dichotomy between “killing” and “letting die”. But the ethical and jurisprudential underpinnings of the apex court’s rulings logically dictate that the right declared in Common Cause extends to “active” euthanasia in carefully circumscribed circumstances.
•Overall, judges and commentators recognise that in the context of euthanasia,ceteris paribus , there is no legally intelligible difference between deliberately “doing” (active) and “not doing or stopping to do” (passive) something that leads to death. Nor is there any articulable reason why “withdrawal” (as opposed to “withholding”) of current treatment isn’t an illegal “active” decision that hastens death from the underlying cause, much like a lethal injection that also accelerates imminent death. To quote Lady Hale of the U.K. Supreme Court inNicklinson v. Ministry of Justice , “Why does active assistance give rise to moral corruption on the part of the assister (or, for that matter, society as a whole), but passive assistance [does] not?”
•As a result, APD is a morass of legal fictions about intentionality and the “ultimate” causation of death, which don’t withstand scrutiny. More importantly, it may unjustly deny a recognised fundamental right to those who need assistance to access it. A tragic U.K. case showcased the dangers of treating APD as an axiomatic rule that overrides legitimate requests to exercise the right. Diane Pretty, while mentally competent, was in the terminal stages of incurable motor neurone disease, which left her completely paralysed from the neck down. Faced with the prospect of progressive suffocation as her breathing and swallowing muscles failed, Pretty required assistance to effectuate a dignified and bearable death in a manner and time of her choosing. To be clear, these inherent contradictions in APD are the inevitable outcome of fragmented rule-making by courts hamstrung by the lack of a comprehensive and coherent legislative and policy framework. APD is an elaborate and flawed judicial construct arguably necessitated by overarching policy concerns, namely, potential for abuse by unscrupulous individuals; the spectre of criminal prosecution of benign doctors and families; and the exercise of judicial restraint on a sensitive issue that warrants legislation embodying the democratic will.
•These dilemmas fall within the realm of Parliament, which must act to resolve them. As Justice D.Y. Chandrachud notes, “the meeting point between bio-ethics and law does not lie on a straight course,” and these complex issues “cannot be addressed without the legalisation and regulation of active euthanasia” (emphasis added).
•By emphatically erring on the side of self-determination and recognising passive euthanasia with certain safeguards as a fundamental right, Common Cause signals that APD’s days are numbered. Whether couched as “dignified death” or “bodily autonomy”, there is no reasonable basis for negating the right vis-à-vis a patient whose circumstances warrant assistance to exercise it.
📰 Credit tangle
The RBI’s omnibus ban on a legitimate financing instrument is not the solution
•A month after the Rs. 12,800-crore letters of undertaking (LoUs) fraud at Punjab National Bank came to light, the Reserve Bank of India has decided to ban such instruments as well as letters of comfort issued by bankers to businesses for international transactions. While the government has been in firefighting mode, unleashing all investigative agencies to probe the fraud, this is the first major step by the central bank on the issue, apart from asking banks to ensure there are no slip-ups between their core banking systems and the SWIFT mechanism used for international money transfers. LoUs are among the most popular instruments to secure overseas credit by importers — known as buyers’ credit in banking parlance — because of their attractive pricing. It is estimated that overall, bank finance for imports into India is around $140 billion, of which over 60% is funded through such buyers’ credit. Naturally, industry is unhappy with the RBI decision as this would raise the cost for importers, who will now need to rely on more expensive instruments such as bank guarantees and letters of credit. The move will also impact the competitiveness of exporters who import raw materials for their products.
•While the central bank had earlier blamed “delinquent behaviour by one or more employees of the bank” and failure of internal controls for the PNB-Nirav Modi fiasco, RBI Governor Urjit Patel has finally commented on the fraud. Mr. Patel said he had chosen to speak because the central bank also feels the anger and pain over the banking sector frauds that amount to “looting” the country’s future by “some in the business community, in cahoots with some lenders”. Reiterating that PNB’s internal systems failed to take note of the RBI’s warnings about such risks, Mr. Patel took on severe criticism about the RBI’s inability to detect the fraud. He stressed that the RBI didn’t have adequate powers to regulate public sector banks, and it could not remove any of their directors or liquidate such a lender, as it can in the case of private sector banks. He made an eloquent demand that the owner of public sector banks (that is, the government) must consider making the RBI’s powers over banks ‘ownership-neutral’ and say what could be done with these banks. The RBI’s stance is valid, as is its discomfort with knee-jerk reactions and the blame games since the fraud came to light. In the very same vein, its omnibus ban of LoUs will impact the $85 billion buyers’ credit market that was mostly conducted in accordance with the law of the land. If an individual or some failed systems of a bank were indeed to blame, why should bona fide transactions suffer? Perhaps the RBI could have tightened the norms for LoUs and introduced safeguards based on the latest learnings. It is still not too late to do that.
📰 U.S. challenges Indian export programmes at WTO
The move by U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer is broad and sweeping, in targeting the whole range of Indian export subsidy programmes.
•Turning the heat further on India on trade issues, the United States has challenged India’s export subsidy programmes at the World Trade Organisation (WTO). The move comes close on the heels of a string of statements accusing India of “unfair” trade practices, by President Donald Trump. U.S. Trade Representative (USTR) Robert Lighthizer said Washington has requested dispute settlement consultations with the Government of India at the WTO on the issue. Mr. Trump had threatened to raise duties on products from India.
•Unlike the many trade disputes between India and America that are sector specific or product specific, the new move by Mr. Lighthizer — a trade hawk closely in alignment with Mr. Trump’s nationalist economic policies — is broad and sweeping, in targeting the whole range of Indian export subsidy programmes.
•A statement from the USTR listed the Merchandise Exports from India Scheme; Export Oriented Units Scheme and sector specific schemes, including Electronics Hardware Technology Parks Scheme; Special Economic Zones; Export Promotion Capital Goods Scheme, and a duty free imports for exporters programme as distorting trade in a way that allows Indian exporters “to sell their goods more cheaply to the detriment of American workers and manufacturers.”
•“These export subsidy programmes harm American workers by creating an uneven playing field on which they must compete,” said Mr. Lighthizer. “USTR will continue to hold our trading partners accountable by vigorously enforcing U.S. rights under our trade agreements and by promoting fair and reciprocal trade through all available tools, including the WTO.”
•Mukesh Aghi, president of the United States-India Strategic Partnership Forum (USISPF), said the case would not alter the long-term trajectory of bilateral trade partnership. “As the relationship deepens, and volumes increase, disputes are natural. This is a normal dispute redressal mechanism that will run its course. Trade and defence ties between the countries will not be affected by this,” Mr. Aghi said.
•“The U.S. has been imposing countervailing duties in response to all these Indian programmes already. The decision to take this to the WTO is a political move and qualitatively different from countervailing duties… Here the U.S. is trying to get a WTO order that will force India to discontinue these programmes rather than responding to them through counter measures,” said Moushami P. Joshi, trade lawyer at Washington law firm Pillsbury, where she advises sovereign governments on WTO disputes. Ms. Joshi believes the move could be a response to the recent tariff increases in the union budget. “Though India is still below bound duties mostly, the increases have considerably impacted U.S. exports to India. This is has created a lot of consternation here,” she said.
•Richard M. Rossow, Senior Adviser and Wadhwani Chair in U.S.-India Policy Studies at the Centre for Strategic & International Studies agrees. “Trade ties have historically been testy, and are getting worse, at least from a government-to-government standpoint. Beyond anti-trade rhetoric from the Trump Administration, the government of India dramatically increased customs duties in nearly 50 product categories in its 2018-19 Fiscal Budget, which will certainly be another point of contention in future trade discussions,” he said.
•Mr. Rossow also thinks the latest move is different from other disputes. “The U.S. and India regularly use the World Trade Organization as a platform to resolve trade disputes. Per the WTO website, there appears to be 16 active cases, with the U.S. being the complainant in 6, and the respondent in 10. However, most of these disputes are for a product or group of products, and less about India’s larger policy programmes. That has changed with the current dispute initiated by the United States, which raises concerns about multiple wider trade programs issued by the Indian government,” he said.
📰 To seize and punish
Taking on fugitive economic offenders
•The Fugitive Economic Offenders Bill, 2018, which was introduced in the Lok Sabha this week, aims to provide for measures to deter fugitive economic offenders from evading the process of law in India. It is a deterrent for those offenders who continue to stay outside the jurisdiction of Indian courts. The larger objective of the proposed legislation is to “preserve the sanctity of the rule of law”.
•In its statement of objectives and reasons, the government refers to the “several instances of economic offenders fleeing the jurisdiction of Indian courts anticipating the commencement of criminal proceedings or sometimes during the pendency of such proceedings”. Fugitive businesspersons Vijay Mallya and Nirav Modi have resisted the jurisdiction of Indian courts.
•The absence of such offenders from Indian courts has several deleterious consequences, such as obstructing investigation in criminal cases and wasting the precious time of courts. In effect, it undermines the rule of law in India. Further, cases of economic offences involving non-repayment of bank loans impact the financial health of the banking sector and erode the government’s declared fight against corruption.
•The Bill adds teeth to the existing civil and criminal provisions, which have been rather inadequate in dealing with the problem. It is armed to ensure that fugitive economic offenders return to India to face action in accordance with the law. It defines a “fugitive economic offender” as an individual who has committed a scheduled offence or offences involving an amount of Rs. 100 crore or more and has fled abroad or refused to return to India to avoid or face criminal prosecution.
•The Bill works under the legal philosophy that the jugular for these fugitives would be their assets and properties in India. It contains provisions allowing the attachment of the property of a fugitive economic offender and proceeds of crime.
•The proposed law empowers authorities to survey, search and seize. Under this law, the competent authorities can confiscate the property and crime proceeds of a fugitive economic offender and disentitle him from putting forward or defending any civil claim for his assets. The burden of proof for establishing that a person is a fugitive economic offender or that a property is the proceeds of crime shall be on the authorities concerned. An appeal shall be to the High Court concerned against the orders issued by the Special Court.
📰 MoF declines 3% GDP allocation for defence
‘Rationalisation of expenditure is prime objective of govt.’
•The Finance Ministry has declined a recommendation from the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Defence to have a fixed allocation of 3% of GDP for the Defence Ministry, a report of the Committee has stated.
•“The recommendation of the Standing Committee for keeping a definite percent of GDP was referred to MoF for their consideration, the same was not approved by MoF,” the Ministry of Defence (MoD) said in its reply to the Committee.
•The Committee has on several occasions expressed favour for having a benchmark percentage of GDP earmarked for deciding on the allocation to the defence sector to continue modernisation.
Definite cost
•The MoF in its reply to the MoD said: “Since government resources come with definite cost, resource allocation is made among various competing priorities.
•Thus, defence expenditure as definite percentage of total government expenditure/GDP cannot be ensured considering the fact the resource allocations are made on need basis.”
•Finance Ministry further added that rationalisation of the expenditure is the prime objective of the government while finalising the revised estimates during mid-year review.
•The Vice Chief of Army Lt. Gen. Sarath Chand has deposed before the Committee that this year’s budgetary allocation has dashed their hopes, and the capital allocation does not even cater for the committee liabilities for the year.
📰 India likely to push for dropping ‘Asian premium’ on oil prices
‘Responsible price mechanism’ on Minister’s agenda in run-up to energy meet
•India is likely to lobby heavily for an end to the discriminatory “Asian premium” on oil prices and a “responsible” price mechanism, as it prepares to host a major conference for oil producing and consuming countries.
•Addressing a curtain raiser for diplomats of countries that are expected to send delegations for the International Energy Forum (IEF) April 10-12, Petroleum Minister Dharmendra Pradhan said India would become a “happening point” for energy after the conference, which would be close on the heels of the International Solar Alliance (ISA). Mr. Pradhan promised a “new roadmap” for the world during the IEF, especially given the oil price fluctuations.
•“We are all concerned about having a responsible price mechanism. We don’t expect low oil prices anymore, and we know what are the limitations and challenges for the long-run: a decrease in exploration and production activities, low capital expenditure environment,” Mr. Pradhan said.
‘Affordable prices’
•He added it was inevitable that low oil prices, as seen in recent years, would cause a “crisis”. “Simultaneously we must take care of the interests and aspirations of consumers in India and we need affordable energy prices,” he said. Key Oil Producing and Exporting Countries (OPEC) including Saudi Arabia, and Iran’s petroleum ministers, will attend the conference said officials handling the programme. The IEF represents 90% of world consumption and production of oil and gas. All 92 member countries of the IEF are expected to send delegations, with about 40 participating at a ministerial level.
•Since 2015, Mr. Pradhan has made repeated demands to the IEF countries to remove what is called the “Asian premium” on prices that was pioneered by Saudi Arabia, which distinguished consumers in Asia from the U.S. and European countries. However, the demands have met with little success and the issue is expected to be raised on the sidelines of the event, if not during the conference with Saudi Arabia and others.
📰 ‘RBI norms may push power projects worth ₹2.5 lakh crore into bankruptcy’
Banks have exposure of more than ₹1.75 lakh cr.; meeting called to discuss issue
•More than 50,000 MW of stressed power projects, worth more than ₹2.5 lakh crore, with bank exposure of more than ₹1.75 lakh crore, are likely to face bankruptcy proceedings as, among others, the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) had scrapped all loan restructuring programmes in February, according to industry sources.
•“About 50GW of operational capacity in private sector with total capex of about ₹2.5 lakh crore, having bank exposure of about ₹1.75 lakh crore may have to face bankruptcy proceedings if the underlying stress factors — resolution of change in law cases, coal supply and its restrictive usage policy and absence of power offtake agreements are not resolved quickly,” Ashok Khurana director general, Association of Power producers, told The Hindu.
•The government has called for a high-level meeting of all the stakeholders, including public and private sector power firms, lenders, coal suppliers and railways on Friday to discuss the gravity of the situation.
•“RBI guidelines will be one of the most important issues under consideration as it may lead to most of the power firms to file for bankruptcy,” said the CEO of private power firm who would be attending the meeting.
Payment by discoms
•“Discoms are owned by the government and they are not paying us in time,” Sanjay Sagar, MD, Jindal Power, told The Hindu.
•“Coal India, again owned by the government, is not supplying the required amount of coal. With the latest RBI notification, power firms will be classified as defaulters for no fault of theirs,” Mr. Sagar said.
•Of the 50,000 MW, about 12,000 MW have no power purchase agreements (PPAs) or coal linkages while 20,000 MW have coal linkages but don’t have long term PPAs. Another 11,000 MW of gas-based power plants are stranded for the want of gas while 9,800 MW coastal power plants of Tata Power, Adani Power and Essar Power are stranded due to lack of imported coal.
•The RBI had recently scrapped all loan restructuring programmes and it’s recent guidelines on ‘Resolution of Stressed Assets — Revised Framework’ mandates the banks to classify even a day’s delay in debt servicing as default.
📰 Trade deficit narrows to 5-month low
‘Global protectionist trends, crude prices impacting growth of exports and imports’
•India’s trade deficit narrowed to $12 billion in February, its lowest in five months, amid concerns that a global trade war could hit its exports because of U.S. President Donald Trump’s decision to hike import taxes on steel and aluminum.
•India’s merchandise exports are expected to touch $300 billion in the current fiscal year ending this month compared with $275.8 billion, mainly driven by a rise in commodity prices and strong demand in the U.S. and Europe.
•February merchandise exports were $25.8 billion while imports were $37.8 billion, Rita Teaotia, a top trade ministry official, told reporters on Thursday.
•In the first 11 months of the fiscal, merchandise exports rose 11% to $273.7 billion from a year earlier while imports climbed 21% to $416.9 billion, she said.
•New Delhi is worried that its exports could be hit in the coming months by Mr. Trump’s decision to impose tariffs of 25% on steel and 10% on aluminum.
•Prime Minister Narendra Modi is hosting a mini-ministerial meeting of members of the World Trade Organization next week expected to discuss the impact of Mr. Trump’s decision.
•India’s trade secretary said the country was disappointed by the U.S. decision ‘as it is against WTO rules’.
‘Slowing growth’
•“Exports were recovering but imports were growing even faster,” D.K. Srivastava, chief policy adviser at EY India said.
•“Now, the level of export and import growth has moved down, reflecting the change in the global economy towards more protectionist measures. The other factor could be that sometimes when global crude prices fall, then the demand for Indian exports also falls.”
•Export growth slowed to 4.48% in February compared with 9.07% growth in January. A government release said that in February, major commodity groups of export showing positive growth over a year earlier were “petroleum products (27.44%), organic & inorganic chemicals (30.41%), drugs & pharmaceuticals (13.92%), rice (21.29%), and electronic goods (29.71%).”
•On imports, it added that major commodity groups of import showing high growth “are petroleum, crude & products (32.05%), electronic goods (18.95%), machinery, electrical & non-electrical (23.04%), pearls, precious & semi-precious stones (15.86%), and coal, coke & briquettes, etc. (17.73%).”
📰 Antibiotic resistance: vultures wintering in India show pattern
E. coliin the wild birds became immune to some drugs within a few months
•Escherichia coli , a pathogen seen in over 90% of Egyptian vultures that migrate to northwest India to spend the winter, tend to show significant difference in resistance to antibiotics within a single season, a study has found.
•“The vultures were resistant to certain antibiotics when they arrived and developed resistance to certain other antibiotics when they left. Their sensitivity to certain antibiotics also changed within a few months,” says Pradeep Sharma from the College of Veterinary and Animal Science, Rajasthan University of Veterinary and Animal Sciences, Bikaner, Rajasthan. A team studied vultures that arrived in Bikaner in October 2011 and left in March 2012. The birds fed on cattle carcasses dumped in Jorbeer in Bikaner.
Spreads disease
•The findings of the study, published in the journal Infection Ecology and Epidemiology , are significant because migrating wild birds can spread drug-resistant pathogens and cause disease. The resistance to multiple antibiotics was as high as about 71.5% in E. coli collected from vultures. Resistance of 12-13 bacterial strains to 13 commonly used antibiotics was studied.
•“The diversity of E. coli community in vultures changed and became homogenised by the end of the wintering period. This is due to the environment that the vultures were exposed to — carcasses, garbage, and domestic animals,” says K.S. Gopi Sundar of the Nature Conservation Foundation in Udaipur and one of the authors of the paper.
Within a few months
•“There is not much difference in the percentage resistance to multiple antibiotics that are commonly used. What we found was a change in the pattern of resistance,” says Dr. Sharma, corresponding author of the paper. The study found a change in the resistance pattern of the E. coli within a single wintering season.
•The vultures that use human-dominated landscapes as part of their life cycle were likely to act as “reservoirs and melting pots of bacterial resistance”, the study said.
•The study also showed that vultures were able to incorporate and reflect resistance determinants at the site of wintering and during the period of sampling. “So guidelines to restrict antibiotic use in both humans and animals by one country or region alone will be inadequate when wild birds can spread drug-resistant bacteria,” says Dr. Sundar.
📰 Space travel causes changes to genes
Long-term effects found in Scott Kelly
•Space travel caused lasting changes to 7% of genes of astronaut Scott Kelly, according to a NASA study which compared his DNA to that of his identical twin brother, who remained on the earth.
•NASA’s Twins Study brought ten research teams together to accomplish one goal: find out what happens to the human body after spending one year in space.
•NASA has a grasp on what happens to the body after the standard-duration six-month missions aboard the International Space Station (ISS), but Scott Kelly’s one-year mission is seen as a stepping stone to a three-year mission to Mars.
•In 2017, ten teams had presented their preliminary findings at NASA’s Human Research Programme investigators’ workshop.
•Reports included data on what happened to Scott Kelly, physiologically and psychologically, while he was in space, and compared the data to Mark Kelly, as a control subject on the earth. At this year’s workshop, findings from 2017 were corroborated, with some additions.
•Researchers also presented what happened to Scott Kelly after he returned to the earth. By measuring large numbers of metabolites, cytokines, and proteins, researchers learned that spaceflight is associated with oxygen deprivation stress, increased inflammation, and dramatic nutrient shifts that affect gene expression.
•After returning to the earth, Scott Kelly started the process of re-adapting to gravity. Most of the biological changes he experienced in space quickly returned to nearly his preflight status. Some changes returned to baseline within hours or days of landing, while a few persisted after six months.
Telomere length
•Scott’s telomeres — end caps of chromosomes that shorten as one ages — actually became significantly longer in space.
•While this finding was presented in 2017, the team verified this unexpected change with multiple assays and genomics testing.
•A new finding is that the majority of those telomeres shortened within two days of Scott’s return to the earth. Researchers now know that 93% of Scott’s genes returned to normal after landing.
•However, the remaining 7% points to possible longer term changes in genes related to his immune system, DNA repair, bone formation networks, hypoxia and hypercapnia.
