📰 Big thaw on the Korean peninsula
The crucial unknown in the high-stakes diplomacy is Donald Trump’s idea of what an acceptable ‘deal’ is
•An unusual charm offensive is under way on the Korean peninsula and the unlikely architect is none other than the North Korean Supreme Leader, Kim Jong-un. During the last three months, he has played a deft political hand, a far cry from his rhetorical exchanges with U.S. President Donald Trump. Last year, Mr. Trump was threatening the “Rocket Man” with “fire and fury like the world has never seen”; the North Korean leader described him as a “dotard” and his military called his statement “as a load of nonsense”. Now the two leaders are planning a summit in May which according to Mr. Trump could lead to “the greatest deal in the world”.
•Since 2011 when Mr. Kim took over, North Korea has conducted four nuclear tests; the first two were conducted in 2006 and 2009. The sixth test, last September, had a yield more than six times the Hiroshima bomb. He has accelerated the missile programme, conducting nearly 80 tests, compared to an estimated 16 by his father Kim Jong-il between 1994 and 2011.
New Year message
•In his New Year address, Mr. Kim conveyed two messages — that the entire U.S. was within range and the nuclear button was on his table, and that he was open to dialogue with Seoul and could send a team to participate in the Winter Olympics being hosted by South Korea in February. Mr. Trump responded by tweeting that his “nuclear button” was “much bigger & more powerful”. But South Korea responded positively and reaffirmed willingness to talk with North Korea at any time and anywhere. Thereafter events gathered pace.
•Mr. Kim’s younger sister Kim Yo-jong attended the opening ceremony of the Winter Olympics, with the two Korean teams marching together. She conveyed her brother’s handwritten note to South Korean President Moon Jae-in even as she mesmerised South Korean audiences, and TV channels carried endless discussions about her clothes, hair style and whether she was pregnant.
•In early March, a South Korean delegation led by National Security Adviser Chung Eui-yong and intelligence chief Suh Hoon visited Pyongyang to explore the idea of talks. According to the officials, Mr. Kim indicated continuing restraint on nuclear and missile tests (last test was a Hwasong-15 in November with a range of 12,000 km), joking that Mr. Moon would not need to wake up early in the morning for emergency meetings, since North Korean missile tests were normally timed for dawn. According to the South Koreans, “the North Korean side clearly showed willingness on denuclearisation in the Korean peninsula if military threats to North Korea decrease and regime safety is guaranteed”. An April summit between the two Korean leaders was announced, and is now scheduled for April 27 at the Peace House in Panmunjom.
North Korean diplomacy
•The two South Korean officials travelled to Washington to brief Mr. Trump on March 8. It was announced that Mr. Trump had agreed to a summit with the North Korean leader in May.
•This will be the first summit meeting between the U.S. and North Korea. Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton have travelled to Pyongyang in 1994 and 2009, respectively, to meet Mr. Kim’s grandfather and father, respectively, but after their terms as U.S. President ended. There have been two earlier summits between the Korean leaders, in 2000 and 2007, though the outcomes proved to be shortlived. Mr. Moon has also mooted the idea of a trilateral summit though there has been no reaction to it from Pyongyang or Washington. In another surprise move, the North Korean leader, accompanied by his wife Ri Sol-ju, travelled by train to Beijing on March 25. It was Mr. Kim’s first foreign trip since he took over in 2011. Though described as an unofficial visit, it had the trappings of a state visit, complete with a guard of honour and a banquet with Chinese President Xi Jinping and his wife Peng Liyuan at the Great Hall of the People. The North Korean leader assured Mr. Xi that if South Korea and the U.S. responded with goodwill and took phased, synchronised measures, the issue of denuclearisation of the peninsula could reach resolution.
•China has long been North Korea’s political ally and economic lifeline, accounting for 90% of North Korea’s foreign trade. It has often resisted tightening of sanctions that could lead to the collapse of the regime. However, relations between the two countries have soured since 2013 when Jang Song Thaek, Mr. Kim’s uncle who was responsible for managing the China relationship, was purged. Missile tests when China was hosting the G20 summit in 2016 and the Belt and Road Forum in 2017 together with a nuclear test during the BRICS summit in 2017 were embarrassments for China. As sanctions tightened under successive UN Security Council resolutions, North Korea blamed China for ‘dancing to the tune’ of the U.S.
•However Mr. Kim realises that he needs help to handle U.S. pressure. His China visit acknowledges Mr. Xi’s extension in power beyond 2022; and for China, it reflects its pivotal role in any negotiations regarding North Korea. Mr. Xi has sent a personal message to Mr. Trump about his meeting with Mr. Kim while Politburo member Yang Jiechi is being despatched to Seoul. In Washington, recent appointments of John Bolton as National Security Adviser and Mike Pompeo as Secretary of State, both hardliners, raise the stakes for North Korea.
Reconciling objectives
•Mr. Kim’s objectives are clear — securing regime legitimacy, regime security and sanctions relief. A summit with Mr. Trump provides legitimacy as long as it begins a dialogue process leading towards diplomatic recognition. In 1992, despite North Korean reservations, China recognised South Korea and today it is one of the South’s largest partners and a major investment source. How South Korea and the U.S. deal with the move towards recognition will demand political creativity.
•Having achieved a certain threshold in its nuclear and missile capabilities, North Korea can afford a pause in testing in return for sanctions relief but ‘denuclearisation’ will only happen at the end of a long-drawn process which will involve discussions regarding the U.S. nuclear umbrella for South Korea, the presence of 23,500 American troops and converting the 1953 armistice into a peace treaty which will guarantee regime security.
•South Korea would like to ensure that it has a veto over U.S. decisions regarding North Korea and gaining operational control over its own military forces, both of which will require protracted negotiations. Meanwhile, Mr. Moon will do his utmost to maintain credibility in Washington and Pyongyang to keep his ‘sunshine policy’ on track. In Europe, the two Germanys recognised each other in 1972 (the U.S. recognised East Germany in 1974) as part of Willy Brandt’s ‘ostpolitik’, long before German unification was achieved in 1990.
•North Korea’s aggressive testing provided justification for the deployment of the THAAD missile defence system aggravating Chinese concerns. China would prefer lowering tensions though it is in no hurry to see Korean unification.
•The big unknown is Mr. Trump’s idea of what is an acceptable ‘deal’. Will a process towards eventual denuclearisation tempt him or will he reject it as ‘fake news’ and revert to relying on sanctions and military pressure as some of his advisers are inclined to? Major compromises will be needed for reconciling interests of all the key players for the high stakes summitry on the Korean peninsula to succeed.
📰 Sharing data across borders
Indian authorities may now have the opportunity to directly access data stored on U.S. servers
•Consider a scenario where a crime is committed in India and the suspect and victim are both Indian citizens. If the suspect used a U.S.-based messaging service to plan the crime, an Indian officer investigating would have to raise a request for data to the U.S. government where it is stored.
•Two weeks ago, U.S. President Donald Trump signed the Clarifying Lawful Overseas Use of Data Act (CLOUD Act), which will enable the U.S. government to enter into agreements with like-minded states for cross-border data sharing. This will allow law enforcement agencies from these states to directly obtain electronic data, held by communication service providers headquartered in the U.S., to combat crime. New Delhi, on the back of this development, will soon push for an India-U.S. data sharing agreement to serve the interests of its law enforcement and, more importantly, to make headway in the global cyber norms conversation.
•Today, to prevent, mitigate or prosecute even a routine crime, a police officer seeks timely access to electronic data. The data are often rendered inaccessible, largely due to two reasons. One, popular service providers increasingly store electronic communications in the cloud, breaking the data into “shards” and distributing the data across different countries. While these companies offer services in India, they do not store the data locally. Two, the current U.S. law prohibits service providers from disclosing user data to foreign law enforcement agencies.
•The passing of the CLOUD Act comes at a time when the problematic data gathering practices of Cambridge Analytica have occupied public discourse. The CLOUD Act, however, symbolises the other, less explored side of the coin — when user data are sought for legitimate security needs.
The current system is broken
•India in the first half of 2017 requested data from Facebook 9,853 times, of which only 54.3% were met. Over the years, requests from Indian law enforcement to American service providers have been on a steady rise.
•Companies like Facebook, however, can directly respond only to requests for “basic subscriber information” — that is, data that a user provides at the time of signing up for a service (name, email address, etc.). Indian law enforcement officials often point out that the police need access to more information on the user, such as the content of an online conversation, to further their investigations.
•The police need this information not only for traditional crimes with a cyber element, but also for more complex, transnational investigations. Cross-border crimes such as cases of online radicalisation would require agents to access data that are stored abroad.
•Currently, an officer in India would have to make a request for electronic data under the India-U.S. Mutual Legal Assistance Treaty to access content data held by a U.S. company. This process has often been criticised by the Indian police for being time consuming, sometimes even taking as long as three years, as well as being cumbersome and outdated.
A workaround
•Following years of negotiations between foreign law enforcement officials and the U.S. government, the latter has managed to find a workaround through the CLOUD Act. The law has been introduced to alleviate not just the concerns of other states but also its own, as was seen in the legal battle between the U.S. government and Microsoft over access to an email. With the enactment of the CLOUD Act, an Indian officer for the purposes of an investigation will no longer have to make a request to the U.S. government but can approach the company directly.
•However, to operationalise the new data sharing arrangement through a bilateral agreement, the U.S. establishment has introduced an important caveat. The U.S. requires the foreign states to share a common commitment to the rule of law and the protection of privacy and other civil liberties. India would be considered to satisfy these requirements based on a determination by the U.S. Attorney General.
•Among many commitments, to qualify for an executive agreement, India will need to ensure that its authorities collect, retain, use and share data as per an established procedure. In addition, Indian laws must provide for electronic data requests to be reviewed by a court or other independent authority. As of now, India falls short of these requirements. However, with the government looking to legislate on a new data protection law, this can soon change.
📰 ‘Court had no business to dilute Act’
SC guidelines would make it easier for the accused to escape arrest, says Centre in review plea
•In its review petition filed before the Supreme Court on Monday, the Centre said the court had no business to dilute the Scheduled Castes and the Scheduled Tribes (Prevention of Atrocities) Act and make it easier for accused persons to escape arrest.
•“In the given situation of continuing offences of atrocities against members of SCs/STs, it would be more significant and meaningful to affirm the reliance and trust of SCs/STs on the statute and not make it easier for the accused to get away from arrest by imposing a preliminary enquiry,” the government said.
•“The Narendra Modi government is firmly committed to the protection, safety, security and dignity of the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes,” Union Law Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad said echoing the view.
•The 89-page verdict by a Bench of Justices A.K. Goel and U.U. Lalit read down Section 18 of the Act to allow accused persons under the Act to apply for anticipatory bail.
•Section 18 barred persons accused of causing casteist injury and insult to Dalits from seeking anticipatory bail.
•Secondly, the judgment directed that an FIR should be registered only after a “preliminary inquiry” was held by a Deputy Superintendent of Police to check if the complaint was “frivolous”.
•Any deviation from the directions would automatically lead to the contempt of the Supreme Court, the Bench had warned.
•In its plea, the Centre said that of the 47,338 cases registered under the Act across the country in 2016, only 24.9% ended in conviction and 89.3% were pending by the year-end. Instead of being misused, the Act is weakly implemented.
Low conviction rate
•The low rate of conviction owed to delay in lodging the FIR, hostile witnesses and complainants, absence of proper scrutiny of cases by the prosecution before filing charge sheet and lack of proper presentation and appreciation of evidence by the court. Now, a preliminary enquiry would only reduce the rate of registration of cases, conviction, increase pendency and per se serve as a deterrent in filing FIRs, the government said.
•Objecting to the court’s reasoning that non-availability of anticipatory bail was violative of Article 21 (fundamental right to personal liberty), the government reminded that offences under the Act are “heinous crimes committed to humiliate and subjugate members of the SCs/STs with a view to keep them in a state of servitude.”
•Section 18 of the Act is its “backbone” as it enforces an inherent deterrence and instils a sense of protection among members of the SCs/STs.
📰 No delay in filing review plea: Ministers
•Union Ministers Ram Vilas Paswan and Thawar Chand Gehlot on Monday hailed the government’s decision to file a review petition against the Supreme Court’s ruling in the Scheduled Castes and the Scheduled Tribes (Prevention of Atrocities) Act, 1989.
•The court ruling was aimed at preventing misuse of the law. Under the existing provisions, merely filing a complaint under the Act empowers the police to immediately arrest an accused without preliminary investigation.
•The 11-day delay in filing the review petition was because of the long weekend, the Ministers said.
•“The decision was taken eight days ago. There was never any delay. The Supreme Court was shut due to multiple holidays,” Social Justice Minister Thawar Chand Gehlot said.
•Consumer Affairs Minister Ram Vilas Paswan also said that it was not a significant delay.
•“Eleven days is not a long time. The government can’t act in haste. They need to study the judgment. And anyway it is the Supreme Court order, not the government’s directions,” he said.
‘Cong. politicising issue’
•He also lashed out at the Congress. “Why is the Congress politicising the issue. It has always insulted Babasaheb Ambedkar and never allowed him to get elected to the Lok Sabha. Till 1990, it did not allow his portrait in Parliament. It did not even give him Bharat Ratna.”
•Mr. Paswan had earlier said the government needed to correct its perception of being anti-Dalit by publicising the work it was doing.
📰 Govt. tightens its grip on fake news
Norms for accreditation amended
•The Ministry of Information and Broadcasting headed by Union Minister Smriti Irani on Monday amended the guidelines for accreditation of journalists.
•Accreditation of a journalist (both television and print) can be cancelled/annulled if the news reported by them is found to be “fake”.
•“Noticing the increasing instances of fake news in various mediums, including print and electronic media, the government has amended the guidelines for accreditation of journalists,’ a press note from the Ministry said.
•On receiving complaints of "fake news", it will be referred to the Press Council of India (PCI) if it pertains to print media and to the News Broadcasters Association (NBA) if it relates to electronic media.
•Both the agencies will have to dispose of each complaint within 15 days.
•During the period of probe, the journalist's accreditation will be suspended.
•"While any confirmation of publication or telecast of fake news having been confirmed by any of these agencies, the accreditation shall be suspended for a period of 6 months in the first violation and for one year in the case of second violation and in the event of third violation it would be cancelled permanently," the Ministry said in a statement.
📰 Federalism and fairness
Unless the concerns of States are addressed, the fault lines in the Indian federation could deepen
•Federalism is once again the focus of political discourse in India. Karnataka Chief Minister Siddaramaiah set the cat among the pigeons when he highlighted Kannada pride by unveiling an official state flag last month. Then in a Facebook post on “Regional Identity & Federalism”, he advocated the need for States to have both financial and cultural autonomy.
•Since quitting the National Democratic Alliance, Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister Chandrababu Naidu has also been vocal in criticising the Central government for taxing the southern States to spend on the northern States.
•And also in March, the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam’s working president M.K. Stalin wrote to Prime Minister Narendra Modi and the Chief Ministers of 10 non-Bharatiya Janata Party-ruled States expressing concern over the terms of reference for the 15th Finance Commission. The Centre’s direction to use the 2011 Census instead of the 1971 Census for population data has riled the south. As the population in these States has stabilised, the concern is that their share of tax allocation would reduce.
•While “federalism” has become the catch-all term for these concerns, there are principally three distinct yet inter-related strands to the debate — a constitutional claim for autonomy; a demand for fairer distribution of taxes; and an assertion of linguistic and cultural rights.
Constitutional context
•In his Facebook post, Mr. Siddaramaiah asserted that while India became a “union of states with a strong center” in 1947, now “from a union of states, we are evolving into a federation of states”. This is indeed a strong claim to make as Article 1 of the Constitution declares India as a “Union of States”. Such phrasing was deliberate. On November 4, 1948, while moving the Draft Constitution in the Constituent Assembly, B.R. Ambedkar responded to the question as to why India is a “Union” and not a “Federation of States”: “The Drafting Committee wanted to make it clear that though India was to be a federation, the federation was not the result of an agreement by the States to join in a federation and that the federation not being the result of an agreement no State has the right to secede from it. The Federation is a Union because it is indestructible.” Hence, political scientist Alfred Stepan classified India as a “holding together” as opposed to a “coming together” federation. Unlike the federal form of government in the United States, which is described as an indestructible union composed of indestructible States, India is an indestructible union of destructible States. The units of Indian federation have undergone multiple transformations since 1947. This is because Article 3 of the Constitution empowers Parliament to create new States. While such a provision can be seen as giving the Union too much power, it has arguably been central to holding India together since it allows the federation to evolve and respond to sub-national aspirations.
•While its constituent units have changed, the relationship between the Union and the States has remained the same. Hence, from a constitutional perspective, it would not be accurate to say that India is moving from a union to a federation of States. However, after successfully “holding together” as a federation for over 70 years, the larger question is whether there is a need to reconsider the distribution of powers between the Union and the States. While the flexible nature of federalism under the Constitution has served India well, the continued existence of provisions such as Article 356 (President’s rule) goes against the grain of federalism. Any serious political movement around federalism should question the necessity of retaining such constitutional provisions which are vestiges of colonial rule.
A viable federation
•Over the last couple of decades there has been a shift in political and economic power from the Centre to the States. While some have felt that this trend would reverse after the formation of a Central government with a simple majority for the first time in 25 years, Prime Minister Narendra Modi has sought to assuage such concerns by invoking the idea of “cooperative federalism”. The 14th Finance Commission, in 2015, recommended raising the share of States in the divisible pool of Central taxes from 32% to 42%. However, beyond this measure, the Centre has not inspired much confidence regarding its commitment to federalism.
•States such as Karnataka have asserted their linguistic and cultural rights in the wake of the Centre’s interventions such as a promotion of Hindi. Now, the skewed terms of reference for the 15th Finance Commission have brought the south together in making a strong case for fiscal federalism. The Commission has been using the 1971 Census for population data to ensure that States that have been successful in family planning are not penalised. This came in the wake of the 42nd Amendment to the Constitution which froze the distribution of Lok Sabha seats among States for 25 years, which was extended for another 25 years, in 2001. This prudent political compromise is now being tested.
•Federalism is ultimately based on trust between its various constituent units. If a set of States perceive that their progress is being penalised, the viability of such a federation comes into question. While the southern States contribute to the nation economically, they don’t occupy a central space politically and are further marginalised culturally. Finally, unless the concerns regarding fairness are addressed from constitutional, financial and cultural fronts, the fault lines developing in our federation could deepen further.
📰 Cauvery again
The Centre is to blame for the disputegoing into another round of litigation
•It is unfortunate that the Cauvery dispute is once again before the Supreme Court, barely weeks after the final verdict. The Centre is to blame for the dispute going into another round of litigation. While Tamil Nadu has moved the court to initiate contempt proceedings against the Centre for not complying with the direction to frame a scheme to implement the water-sharing arrangement set out in the February 16 judgment, the Centre has sought three more months and some clarifications in the court order. It is difficult to believe the issue at hand is so perplexing that the Centre had no option but to come back to the court. It appears that it does not want to handle the issue until the Karnataka Assembly elections get over in mid-May. Political and electoral considerations appear to have dictated the Centre’s action. It is almost as if it believes that as long as the option of buying further time is available, it need not fulfil its legal obligations. It is unfortunate that just before the expiry of the court’s six-week deadline, the Centre came up with a petition asking the court to clarify whether the proposed scheme should be the same as that which the Tribunal had set out in its final award in 2007, or could be at variance with it.
•It is true that there is a divergence of opinion between Tamil Nadu and Karnataka on the proposed mechanism and its composition. While Tamil Nadu wants the ‘scheme’ envisaged by the court to mean nothing other than the Cauvery Management Board and the Cauvery Water Regulation Committee, mentioned in the Tribunal’s final award, Karnataka says there is no reference to a ‘board’ in the apex court’s order, and that the Centre could frame a scheme different from that described by the Tribunal. It contends that the apex court envisaged a ‘dispute resolution body’, and not the ‘management board’ favoured by the Tribunal. Against this backdrop, the Centre could have exercised discretion and come up with a scheme that would include an inter-State body to oversee the water-sharing. At the latest hearing, the Chief Justice of India, Dipak Misra, observed that the term ‘scheme’ mentioned in the judgment did not refer to only a ‘board’. He also assured Tamil Nadu that the court would ensure that it was not deprived of its share of Cauvery water. It is an indication that it is not the nomenclature but the nature of the relief that matters. It will be wise for all parties to remember that disputes are better resolved on the basis of equity and not prolonged on expedient considerations. The Centre’s actions should not amount to undermining the finality of the highest court’s judgment, and should be unwaveringly in aid of its implementation.
📰 Millets and wheat over rice and meat
A solution for India’s micronutrient deficiencies
•A shift to wheat, millets and maize from polished rice, to chicken and legumes from beef and eggs, along with leafy vegetables and coconut could reduce India’s micronutrient deficiencies and reduce greenhouse gas emissions, a study titled ‘Healthy, affordable and climate-friendly diets in India’ suggests. It was published recently in the journal Global Environmental Change .
•A team of researchers from Austria, the U.S. and India, headed by Narasimha D. Rao from the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis, Austria, used the National Sample Survey of Consumption Expenditure in India (2011-12) and the National Nutrition Monitoring Bureau to examine Indian diets. They found that while nearly three-quarters of Indians consume less than the ideal number of calories a day, and more than half have protein deficiency, the deficiencies of micronutrients were more prevalent: nearly nine in 10 Indians are iron-deficient, 85% do not meet the required intake of vitamin A, and two-thirds have zinc deficiency.
•Cost was clearly a concern as deficiencies were found to decrease as household incomes increased. Surprisingly though, urban households had increased deficiencies compared to their rural counterparts (apart from vitamin A), which the researchers attribute to greater diversity of cereals in rural areas. Having identified 32 representational diets each for north, south, east and west India, the researchers found that the rice-based diets of south and east India make the people in these areas more vulnerable to micronutrient deficiencies than people elsewhere.
•The researchers found that while those above the poverty line can make up for this nutritional inadequacy without their food budgets being affected much, nearly 160 million people below the poverty line cannot without exceeding their food budgets. The researchers try to address these concerns while proposing solutions.
•They suggest that the required micronutrients can be met by reducing the intake of rice (from 61% to around 40% of calorie share) and meat (expensive and with high greenhouse gas emissions) and replacing them with coarse cereals such as bajra and ragi, along with legumes, dark, leafy vegetables, and coconut. These dietary changes could also reduce agricultural greenhouse gas emissions in India by up to 25%, the study shows.
📰 Crisil, ICRA differ on stressed asset outlook
Credit quality remains point of debate
•Two major rating agencies — Crisil and ICRA — have painted differing pictures on stressed asset outlook. While the former said there had been an improvement in credit quality sustained through fiscal 2018, the latter claimed that pressure on credit quality persists.
•In its review of financial year 2017-18, ICRA said while there were more upgrades that the downgrades, these trends did not imply that the credit quality pressures on India Inc had subsided.
Volume of debt
•“When the above data is juxtaposed with the volume of debt that underwent a rating change and the number of notches by which the ratings shifted, a somewhat different portrayal emerges. The volume of the debt downgraded rose sharply to almost Rs. 3 trillion in FY2018, significantly higher than the debt of Rs. 1.7 trillion, downgraded in the previous fiscal,” ICRA said.
•Crisil, on the other hand divided the country’s credit landscape into two categories — ‘good one’ which is improving and ‘bad one’ that is with stressed assets worth Rs. 11.5 lakh crore, where resolution has begun.
•Crisil’s credit ratio, that is, the number of upgrades as compared to downgrades, continues to reflect the improvement in the ‘good loan-book’, though it has moderated from the levels seen in the first half. There were 14,023 upgrades to 8,393 downgrades in fiscal 2018.
•“Upgrades outnumbered downgrades in the good loan-book on the back of better financial indicators due to lower capital expenditure (capex) and record equity issuances,” Crisil said.
📰 Bond loss: RBI eases provisioning norms
To tackle sharp rise in bond yields
•The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) has decided to ease the provisioning norms for bond losses for third and fourth quarters of 2017-18.
•It has now allowed banks to spread bond losses, incurred in these two quarters, over four quarters.
•“It has been decided to allow banks the option to spread provisioning for mark-to-market (MTM) losses on investments held in AFS (available-for-sale) and HFT (held-for-trading) for the quarters ended December 31, 2017 and March 31, 2018. The provisioning for each of these quarters may be spread equally over up to four quarters, commencing with the quarter in which the loss is incurred,’’ the RBI said of the move aimed at addressing the systemic impact of sharp increase in the bond yields.
•The RBI, however, has set certain terms. Banks that use the option must make suitable disclosures in their notes to accounts/quarterly results providing details of the provisions for depreciation of the investment portfolio for the quarters ended December 2017 and March 2018 made during the quarter/year and the balance required to be made in the remaining quarters.
‘Little impact’
•“There won’t be much impact for the banks for the fourth quarter due to the relaxation as bond yields had softened during the end of the quarter.
•“Banks, if they choose, can reverse half of the provision made in third quarter as they can now spread it over four quarters,” said Karthik Srinivasan, group head, financial sector ratings, ICRA about the RBI’s move.
📰 Tragedy of errors
How the problem of Kashmir came to be
•Kashmir is not one but two problems. There is the problem ofKashmir between India and Pakistan and the problem inKashmir between the people and the Central government. The first is based on Pakistan’s challenge to the legality of the State’s accession to India; the second on the disaffection of the State’s population that has created a problem of legitimacy for the Indian Union. If the political elites had the sagacity to solve or at least manage the problem ‘in’ Kashmir, the problem ‘of’ Kashmir would have lost its salience over time. Unfortunately, they did exactly the reverse.
•It was essential that Kashmir’s special status be recognised in the Constitution because of the extraordinary circumstances surrounding its accession and because it defied the communal logic on which Partition was based. Unfortunately, Hindu communal forces, led by the Jan Sangh, began agitating from 1950 for the removal of Article 370. This had a major psychological impact on the Valley’s population and on Sheikh Abdullah who, in the face of considerable opposition, had convinced the Kashmiri Muslim elite that their fate was more secure with India than with Pakistan.
•Abdullah’s removal from power and imprisonment in 1953, on the suspicion that he was hobnobbing with the Americans to create an independent State, was a major blow to the legitimacy of Indian rule in Kashmir. The principal proponents of this idea, Karan Singh and Bakshi Ghulam Mohammad, had their own reasons — the first to avenge his father and the second to become the Chief Minister of the State — to promote Abdullah’s removal. They convinced the then Prime Minister, Jawaharlal Nehru, against his better judgment to do so. For two decades after that, New Delhi rigged elections and appointed its own proxies as Chief Ministers, eroding the Kashmiris’ faith in Indian democracy.
•The Indira-Sheikh agreement of 1975 augured a new beginning by reaching a compromise on the autonomy issue and bringing Abdullah back to power. Free and fair elections held in 1977 confirmed this outcome. Unfortunately, after Abdullah’s death in 1982, the Centre, and especially Rajiv Gandhi, actively destabilised Kashmir by forcing Farooq Abdullah, who had succeeded his father, to relinquish power. It then coerced the National Conference into a shotgun marriage with the Congress, thus drastically eroding the legitimacy of the National Conference, the moderate face of Kashmiri sub-nationalism, in Kashmiris’ eyes.
•The openly rigged 1987 election was the straw that broke the camel’s back. Undertaken to diminish the anticipated electoral performance of the opposition Muslim United Front (MUF), it had the opposite effect by forcing many disgruntled supporters of the MUF first to take to the streets and then, from 1990 onwards, to take up arms. Pakistan, unsurprisingly, fished in troubled waters by infiltrating ISI-trained terrorists into the Valley and by training Kashmiri militants to attack Indian forces. This mayhem further strained the Kashmiris’ relations with the Centre.
📰 GSAT-6A still eludes ISRO
Contact yet to be re-established with the delinked communication satellite
•Contact is still to be re-established with the delinked communication satellite GSAT-6A, according to an ISRO official.
•Engineers at the ISRO Master Control Facility at Hassan continued to try to hook up with it on Monday. “We must wait for Tuesday when it is expected to fly over India,” the official said.
•Apparently, the best efforts to reach Indian satellites can be made from the two inland MCFs — at Hassan and Bhopal — although ISRO has a handful of ground stations across the world to track its satellites.
Team set up
•A team led by former director of ISRO Satellite Centre P.S. Goel is to look into the latest anomaly and how to address it in future missions.
•GSAT-6A was sent to space on March 29 on ISRO’s GSLV rocket. However it stopped sending signals soon after the second routine orbit raising exercise was performed on March 31.
•It had then reached an orbit of around 36,000 km x 20,000 km and would be circling Earth every 18-20 hours.
•ISRO Chairman K. Sivan said on Sunday that his team was not yet giving up on the satellite, said to be important for strategic communications in remote areas and for the armed forces. “We hope to recover the satellite and will keep on trying to contact it,” he had said.
•If they cannot do so, the satellite will continue to go around Earth idly until it loses height and comes down one day.
