📰 Nepal tops in India's 'Neighbourhood First' policy: Modi
Modi and his Nepalese counterpart K.P. Sharma Oli jointly inaugurate a direct bus service between Janakpur and Ayodhya.
•Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Friday assured Nepal that it is at the top of India’s ''Neighbourhood First'' policy as he announced a ₹ 100 crore package to develop Janakpur - a sacred city for Hindus - while invoking mythological links between the two countries. Janakpur is believed to be the birth place of Sita, Lord Rama's consort.
•Speaking at a civic reception by the Janakpur Sub-Metropolitan City at Barhabigha ground in Janakpur, Mr. Modi briefly spoke in Nepali and Maithili. He began his address by chanting “Jay Siya Ram” slogan three times.
•In a speech that contained mythological references and symbolism, Mr. Modi said he had come to Janakpur not as a Prime Minister but as a pilgrim, amid applause.
•Mr. Modi, who is on his third visit to Nepal since assuming office in 2014, read out a verse from the Ramcharitmanas, which says ''one cannot remain isolated from the suffering of a friend and a true friend always helps his friend in the time of suffering.''
•“Whenever there has been a problem, India and Nepal have stood together. We have been there for each other in the most difficult of times,” said Mr. Modi, whose voice appeared hoarse apparently due to his hectic campaign in Karnataka Assembly elections.
Janakpur-Ayodhya bus service
•Mr. Modi, who earlier with his Nepalese counterpart K.P. Sharma Oli jointly inaugurated a direct bus service between Janakpur and Ayodhya — the two sacred cities for Hindus, said he was happy to link Janakpur with the Ramayan Circuit.
•“This circuit will develop religious tourism. It also will strengthen connectivity between the two nations,” he said.
•Mr. Modi also announced that two other circuits would also be developed for the promotion of the areas related to Buddhism and Jain religion in both Nepal and India, which would be instrumental in generating employment for the youths.
•Mr. Modi said Nepal and India could benefit if they cooperated and worked together for the promotion of five Ts: Tradition, Trade, Tourism, Technology and Transport. He underlined the need for linking Nepal and India through highway, I- way or Information, Railway, Trans way or electric connectivity, waterway and airway.
•“We are also trying our best to connect Nepal with waterways so that Nepal will be able to export Nepali goods abroad. If done so, Nepal will be able to reap benefits through international trade,” he said adding that his long cherished dream to visit Janakpur had now been fulfilled with the grace of Goddess Sita.
•Mr. Modi, who earlier offered special prayers at the famed 20th century Janaki temple, invoked mythological King Janak of Mithila and King Dashratha of Ayodhya and said they not only united Janakpur and Ayodhya but also united India and Nepal.
•“Nepal and India relations were started during the rule of King Janak in Treta Yuga and the bondage built by Sita during the period is still strong. It is this bondage which attracts people from Rameswaram to Pashupatinath, people from Lumbini to Bodhgaya and I was also attracted with the same bondage,” he said.
•He said Nepal and India not only shared border, aspirations, dreams and destination, but their happiness and challenge were also the same.
•“Nepal is the land of great sages like Yagyavalkya, Astavakra, Gargi, who used to debate on theology and social issues in the palace of King Janak,” he said, adding that Nepal had become the centre of spiritualism and philosophy.
Railway link
•Mr. Modi said India would build a railway link between Raxaul in Bihar and Kathmandu to facilitate people-to-people contact and movement of goods.
•He also thanked Mr. Oli and said the honour he received in Janakpur was for the entire people of India.
•Nepal's Defence Minister Ishwor Pokharel welcomed Mr. Modi at the function. Mr. Modi was wearing a Maithili kurta gifted by Mr. Oli.
•“Nepal and India are tied together by common culture, civilization and history,” Mr. Pokharel said.
•He expressed the confidence that the people-to-people relations between the two countries are being nurtured on the basis of brotherhood and equality.
•Mayor of Janakpur Sub-metropolitan City Lal Kishro Shah read out a felicitation letter in honour of Mr. Modi. He also handed over the symbolic key of Janakpur to Modi and gifted the picture of Janaki Temple as a token of love to him.
•Chief Minister of Province No. 2 Lal Babu Raut offered a huge garland weighing 121 kg to Mr. Modi on the occasion.
•Welcoming Mr. Modi, Chief Minister Raut said the “open borders between Nepal and India have been instrumental in connecting the peoples of the two countries.”
•He stressed need for linking the peoples of the Janakpur and India by establishing connectivity through air route, railway line and roads.
📰 Set up sexual harassment probe panels in courts: Supreme Court
Committees should be consituted within two months, High Court Chief Justices told.
•The Supreme Court on Friday asked Chief Justices of High Courts across the country to set up anti-sexual harassment at workplace committees in High Courts and district courts within two months
•A three-judge Bench, led by Chief Justice Dipak Misra, said the committees should be constituted in accordance with the mandate of The Sexual Harassment of Women at Workplace (Prevention, Prohibition and Redressal) Act of 2013 and the Vishaka case guidelines of the Supreme Court to protect women in workplaces
With promptitude
•The apex court asked Chief Justices and Acting Chief Justices of High Courts to constitute the committee with “quiet promptitude”. The court directed that the Registrar Generals of the High Courts should file compliance reports on or before July 15. The issue would be taken up suo motu by the apex court in case the committees were not constituted by the stipulated date.
•Assault on woman lawyer
•The order came in the backdrop of the alleged assault and manhandling of a woman lawyer by her male colleagues at the Tis Hazari courts in the national capital. She had appeared for a client while the lawyers were on a boycott.
📰 A time to think fast: on the US exit from the Iran deal
The U.S.’s exit from the Iran nuclear deal puts India in a spot on many counts
•American President Donald Trump’s decision to withdraw from the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), popularly called the Iran nuclear deal, is bound to have serious implications for the international system, and for India. To be sure, the least affected will be the U.S.; European Union countries will be moderately affected due to the business ties with Iran; and the most affected will be countries closer to the region, in particular India. Moreover, for a U.S. administration that has made it a habit of accusing other countries of “undermining the rules-based order”, this action has severely undermined the rules-based global order.
Unreasonable act
•Washington’s decision is unjustified and unreasonable for several reasons. For one, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) has consistently maintained that Tehran has complied with the strictures of the JCPOA without fail. Moreover, Iran has signed the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) which prohibits it from developing nuclear weapons, and has agreed to ratify the IAEA’s Additional Protocol five years from now which will grant IAEA inspectors wide-ranging access to monitor nuclear-related activities in Iran. And yet Mr. Trump has thoughtlessly undone the outcome of negotiations that went on for close to two years.
•Second, the argument that since the provisions of the JCPOA will become less strict over the years enabling Iran to move towards nuclear-weapon capability is not a credible rationale for undoing the deal. In fact, if indeed there are concerns about Iran potentially moving towards a nuclear option, efforts should be made to engage Tehran in negotiations rather than undo what has already been achieved. This is a classic case of throwing the baby out with the bathwater.
•With regard to Iran’s involvement in the various West Asian conflicts and “promotion of terrorism”, Iran is not the only country engaging in them. And in any case the way out, again, is diplomatic engagement rather than further unsettle an already volatile region.
The implications
•The global non-proliferation regime has taken a direct hit from the U.S.’s decision to renege on the Iran deal. It is important to understand that norms, rules, persuasion and good faith make up the moral foundation of the non-proliferation regime, and the inability of the great powers to abide by them will dissuade non-nuclear weapons states from signing on to or abiding by new or existing agreements, protocols or regimes. Second, even though Mr. Trump might think that playing hardball with Tehran will help him to extract concessions from Pyongyang, it is equally possible that the North Koreans will think twice before entering into any agreement with the untrustworthy Trump administration.
•Third, Washington’s unilateral and dictatorial withdrawal from the deal would create deep fissures in the time-tested but increasingly shaky trans-Atlantic security partnership. Not least because it implies potential secondary sanctions against those European companies which are engaged in business deals with Iran. Here again, the U.S. does not have much to lose given its almost non-existent business contacts with Iran.
•Besides, Mr. Trump’s Iran decision follows a pattern of similar unilateral steps — such as the withdrawal from the Paris climate accord and formal recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital. Let alone the loss of face suffered by European leaders and the financial losses by their countries’ firms, U.S. unilateralism has deep-running implications for the global security and governance architecture, and other multilateral arrangements and regimes. It is in this context that what French Foreign Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian said becomes significant: “The deal is not dead. There’s an American withdrawal from the deal, but the deal is still there.” The argument has found support in several global capitals.
•Hassan Rouhani, the moderate President of Iran, who negotiated the nuclear deal, might lose his standing in the country as hardliners pitch for more aggressive steps, including developing a nuclear weapon capability and more military engagement in the neighbourhood. The chief of staff of the Iranian Armed Forces, Maj. Gen. Mohammad Bagheri, has said that the “Iranian people never favoured the nuclear deal”. This is an indication of the hardline Iranian responses in the offing as and when sanctions are reimposed.
•Iran’s refusal to fall in line might prompt Israel and the U.S. to carry out attacks against Iran leading to Iranian counter-strikes against American allies in the region, or even Israel. This would further destabilise a region already reeling under terrorism, wars and internal conflicts. Americans, and the international community, should remember how the misguided military campaign against the Saddam Hussein regime in Iraq turned out to be a huge geopolitical disaster.
India’s Persian dilemmas
•While the U.S. has almost nothing to lose in reneging on the JCPOA, India has a lot to lose both economically and geopolitically, and it will take deft diplomacy to adapt to the changing alignments. A more unstable West Asia would ipso facto mean more difficult choices for New Delhi. More conflict in the region would adversely impact the welfare and safety of Indian expatriates in West Asia, leading to a sharp decline in the remittances they send home, and an assured hike in oil prices. Low crude oil prices had given India the much-needed economic cushion in the past few years — that phase of cheaper oil has now ended. Recall how the U.S. war on Iraq had a debilitating impact on Indian workers and the West Asian remittances. India also had to abandon the Iran-Pakistan-India pipeline in 2008 thanks to U.S. sanctions against Iran.
•The Narendra Modi government’s efforts to maintain a fine balance between India’s relations with Iran on the one hand and with the U.S., Israel and Saudi Arabia on the other will be seriously tested in the days ahead. The new warmth between Iran and India could attract American ire. What is even more worrying is that unlike the last time when the U.S. imposed sanctions on Iran, and India had to choose the U.S. over Iran, the geopolitical realities are starkly different this time. Not only are the Americans going it alone this time, but the the regional ganging-up against the U.S. and in support of Iran will be more pronounced this time around, making India’s ability to make a clear choice more difficult.
•India’s dreams of accessing Central Asia via Iran could also be dashed with the return of American sanctions against Iran. India’s projects in Iran’s Chabahar port have been widely viewed in New Delhi as a crucial plank of its Iran-Afghanistan-Central Asia strategy. With U.S. sanctions again tightening around Tehran, New Delhi may find it hard to continue with this project. As a matter of fact, thanks partly to India’s dilly-dallying on Chabahar during the previous round of U.S. sanctions against Iran, Iran had invited Pakistan to the Chabahar project. Some have even suggested a potential link between Chabahar and Gwadar in Pakistan.
•Given that there is little consensus around Mr. Trump’s withdrawal from the JCPOA, several of the dissenting parties might look for ways of thwarting U.S. efforts at isolating Iran. Such efforts, especially those led by China and Russia, both parties to the JCOPA, would have implications for the Southern Asian region as well. If indeed China manages to bring together a group of regional powers, including Russia, Iran, Pakistan and interested others, to counter Washington’s influence in the region, New Delhi might find itself in a corner.
📰 Ground Zero: Cauvery, the river in distress
The Cauvery has become a never-ending water-sharing dispute between Tamil Nadu and Karnataka. The Hindu follows the course of the river from its source to the sea and finds a riverine ecosystem in terminal decline
•The Sangam-era Tamil poetic work Pattinappaalai describes the Cauvery as an eternal river. “Vaan poithinam thaan poiyya malai kalaya kadarkaaveri ponal parandhu pon kolikkum” goes a line. Loosely translated, it means that even in the hot summer months, when the rain gods do not shower their mercy, the Cauvery, emerging from the hills of Coorg (Kodagu), continues to flow, helping to harvest gold from the land.
•But today, anyone touring the land from Tiruchi to Poompuhar in Tamil Nadu,where an ancient Tamil civilisation flourished, will find that the river is now a sea of sand, with rocks and bushes dotting the dry river bed. It is only during the monsoon season that any water can be seen flowing. Ask any farmer in the Cauvery delta in Tamil Nadu and he will tell you that the river has water only three to four months in a year.
•For the thousands of tourists and pilgrims climbing the 300 steps to the hilltop at Talacauvery, the Cauvery’s source in Kodagu, Karnataka, no mystical spout awaits. It is here that the river is believed to emerge as a perennial fount, and is worshipped as Kaveriamma by the Kodavas. But on top of the Brahmagiri Hills in Kodagu, only mud and stones greet the eye. In the temple at the bottom of the hill, the priest says that it is only during October, after the monsoon is over, that you get to see a water spout under the rocks.
Problems at the source
•Madikeri, the hill capital of Kodagu district, is surprisingly warm on an April morning. The Chief Conservator of Forests, Kodagu circle, S.S. Lingaraja, blames the rise in temperature on the rapid loss of tree cover due to reckless urbanisation in the town. “Last year, the State forest survey showed an overall increase in forest cover in Karnataka. Only in Shimoga and Kodagu districts had the forest cover shrunk,” he says.
•Lingaraja cites a 2009 report authored by B.R. Ramesh, M. Seetharaman and others, for the Institut Francais de Pondichery, which compared satellite images of forest cover in Kodagu since 1977 to show how the dense foliage outside protected areas has declined rapidly. The authors blame the doubling of land under coffee plantations, and developmental projects such as the construction of dams and roads, for the loss of 28% of the forest cover during the 30-year study period starting in 1977.
•Between 2013 and 2015, for instance, over 50,000 trees were cut in Kodagu to make way for high-tension power lines to Kerala. Says Colonel Muthanna, President of the Coorg Wildlife Society (CWS), “Now there is a proposal for a railway line between Mysuru and Kushalanagar, and another proposal for four national highways passing through the district. If these get approved, there will be disastrous consequences for forests.” In Madikeri, trees have been cut to make way for government buildings and hospitals. A Right to Information application by the CWS found that between 2005 and 2015, 2,800 acres of private land were diverted for commercial purposes such as construction of new resorts, hotels and offices. “Earlier, paddy cultivation was big in Kodagu, but now these are being reclaimed for real estate development. Paddy fields act as water sponges and help recharge underground aquifers,” says Roy Bopanna, Executive Director of the CWS. The activists are now demanding that the entire Kodagu region be declared a protected area and land conversion be restricted.
•The loss of forest cover and change in land use has meant a decline in rainfall levels, adversely affecting the inflow of water into the Cauvery and its tributaries upstream. An annual rainfall chart prepared by the Karnataka State Natural Disaster Monitoring Centre shows that Kodagu district, in 1960, recorded over 4,500 mm of rainfall but between 2010 and 2015, the annual rainfall did not cross 3,200 mm. In the event of a poor monsoon, coffee plantation owners meet their irrigation needs by drawing water from the river, starting in December. “Coffee plantations require sprinkler water irrigation to the tune of 250 cubic metres per hectare, as per the cultivation guide issued by the Central Coffee Research Institute. Kodagu has over one lakh hectares under coffee plantation. Do the math and you will see how much river water is being drawn for irrigating coffee plantations alone,” says Gopakumar Menon, founder-trustee of the Nityata Foundation, an NGO that works on riverine ecosystems.
•It is therefore hardly surprising that the flow of water in the Cauvery has declined upstream. S.C. Rangasamy, executive engineer of the Harangi Dam, says that post-December every year, there is a 40% drop in the flow of water coming from Talacauvery. He says that excessive withdrawal of groundwater using bore wells has caused a significant decline in the base flow of the river. “Kushalnagar is staring at an imminent drinking water crisis this summer,” he says. In March 2018, the local administration passed a government order restricting the withdrawal of groundwater except for drinking purposes. The order copy clearly states that according to an inspection carried out in the upstream areas, the flow of water in the Cauvery has virtually stopped there.
Inter-State dispute
•It is election season in Karnataka; yet the declining water level in the Cauvery has not come up as a major issue. Rather, the focus has been the Supreme Court’s decision concerning the distribution of the available Cauvery water between Karnataka and Tamil Nadu.
•The inter-State water dispute is over a century old. The fight is over an overexploited river basin where demand has far outstripped the supply of water (S. Guhan, 1993). Despite many attempts at resolving the dispute, neither the orders of the Cauvery Water Disputes Tribunal nor those of the Supreme Court have been implemented faithfully. Earlier this week, the court rapped the Centre for not framing a Cauvery ‘scheme’ despite the court’s orders.
•Political parties and farmers in Tamil Nadu have been pressing hard for the constitution of a Cauvery Management Board. According to the court, the Board’s mandate is to manage the distribution of water between the States during distress periods and control the schedule of release of water from the reservoirs. But given the complexity of the ecological crisis the river is facing, can the Board on its own fully resolve the ongoing water dispute? As environmentalists point out, the issue of rampant groundwater extraction, which directly impacts the flow of water in the river, has remained outside the purview of the Tribunal and the court. Disputes between the neighbouring States have escalated during periods of distress; only good monsoons have brought temporary relief in the past. With industries and the population expanding in Bengaluru, there is more pressure on the courts to ensure that Cauvery water is supplied to the city. Sustainable alternatives such as getting factories to use recycled industrial waste water and rainwater harvesting for domestic use have not been adequately explored. Bengaluru-based water conservationist S. Vishwanath says that in the Cauvery basin in Karnataka, at present only 23% of rainwater is harvested. In Tamil Nadu too, rainwater run-off flowing towards Kerala in the Cauvery basin has not been adequately tapped.
•Despite the court imposing restrictions on sugarcane cultivation in Karnataka, in Mandya district, which is part of the Cauvery-irrigated farm belt of the State, sugarcane fields abound. Mandya’s farmers said that have not got Cauvery water to irrigate their fields in the past three years. “We have sunk bore wells as deep as 1,000 ft to draw water for our crops,” says G. Chandrashekar, a sugarcane farmer in Chendre village. Darshan Puttanaiah is contesting the upcoming Assembly elections from Melukote constituency near here. He says that sugarcane is not the ideal crop for this region, but with big sugar mills coming up nearby, the local farm ecosystem has evolved around the cash crop, deepening the water crisis.
•In Bengaluru, engineers at the Inter-State Waters section of the Water Resources Development Organisation throw up their hands in resignation when asked about the implementation of the court order. “Karnataka has permission to irrigate only 40,000 hectares of sugarcane as per the February 16 court order. But farmers are growing much more than that. How are we to stop them,” an official asks.
•The Bengaluru-based environmental research organisation ATREE has documented how the Arkavathi, a major tributary of the Cauvery in Karnataka, has been sucked dry by farmers using deep bore wells. In the Cauvery delta districts of Tamil Nadu too, similar unsustainable farm practices are common. With the riverbed remaining dry for most of the year, farmers are reclaiming it for cultivation. In the 25-km stretch from Melur in Tiruchi to the Grand Anicut, there are several banana plantations and coconut trees on the riverbed, irrigated by motor pumps sunk deep into the river. P.R. Pandian, president of the Coordination Committee of All Tamilnadu Farmers Association, says that this practice is a common sight right from Mayanur in Karur district, where he saw some 150 bore wells drawing water illegally from the Cauvery riverbed.
•S. Nallasamy, a farmer leader from Erode, is critical of the Supreme Court decision allowing Tamil Nadu to draw an additional 10 tmc (thousand million cubic feet) of groundwater. “Indiscriminate withdrawal of groundwater is the reason why droughts keep occurring in the State,” he says. “Motor pumps installed by men can go hundreds of feet underground to draw up water, but can the roots of trees go that far?”
The rights of other species
•With the spotlight on the dispute between the two riparian States, not much attention has been paid to the various other life forms that the river sustains. Fishes, otters, birds and butterflies, too, need the Cauvery water.
•Though the Supreme Court has asked the Karnataka government to maintain 10 tmc of Cauvery water for environmental purposes, the State has not followed this directive. Officials at Krishnaraja Sagara Dam say that water is released from the dam only during the monsoon, when adequate inflow is available. On a hot summer afternoon at the Brindavan Gardens by the dam, families from Mysuru arrive to cool off by the numerous fountains sprinkling water to the flowers and grass. But downstream, at the Butterfly National Park near Srirangam in Tamil Nadu, forest officials are forced to pump out groundwater from the riverside to keep the place humid enough for the 98-odd species of butterflies.
Ecosystem under threat
•The Cauvery has been a cradle of human civilisation. But today, all along the course of the river the ecology stands devastated by human activity. The riverbed is heavily encroached on both sides in several stretches. In Tiruchi, for instance, large chunks of the riverbed have been taken over for construction of residential apartments and hotels.
•In parts of Kodagu, especially near Siddhapur, sand mining on the banks has widened the course of the river, reducing its pace. While sand mining on the riverbed was a major issue in Karnataka and Tamil Nadu until recently, judicial interventions and a concerted effort to switch to M-sand (manufactured sand produced from crushed granite) for construction has curbed this menace to a considerable extent. However, in parts of the Cauvery delta districts in Tamil Nadu, villagers continue to mine river sand using bullock carts. Over the years, such practices have reduced the water retention capacity of the river.
•Every waterfall, gorge and rapid on the Cauvery is sought to be captured for power generation. At Gaganchukki in Shivasamudram falls, the 115-year-old Seshadri Iyer hydroelectric project lies dormant. But even as the water levels in the falls were reduced to a trickle, in the forebay tank inside the power plant, water brimmed up to the edge. Environmentalists are worried that hydel power projects on the river may be diverting too much water into reservoirs, thereby affecting the natural flow of the river. In 2013, the South Asia Network on Dams, Rivers and People drew attention to how 98 mini-hydel power plants commissioned or allotted on the Cauvery basin were diverting drinking water meant for Bengaluru. The construction of dams on the river has had its own consequences. A Central Water Commission report in 2015 pointed out that sediment flow to the Cauvery delta has stopped due to siltation in the dams.
•Poompuhar, or Kaveripoompattinam, in Nagapattinam district of Tamil Nadu, where the Cauvery meets the sea, symbolises a civilisation in ruin. This is where you finally see some water in the river. But soon you discover that this is sea water entering the river from its mouth. A local resident complains that the State government, after having destroyed the natural sand bars at the mouth of the river, has dumped rocks along the shore to stem coastal erosion. But the rocks have not been helpful. Sea water ingress has been a major issue facing farmers in Nagapattinam, as the groundwater has turned saline at many places. About 25 km south of Poompuhar, in Tarangambadi (Tranquebar), much of the Masilamani Nathar Koil, a 14th century Pandiyan-era temple, has been swallowed by the sea.
•Kaveripoompattinam was once a busy port city, the capital of the Chola kings, where maritime trade prospered. But today, like the river after which it takes its name, the town is a shadow of its storied past. The Silappadikaram Art Gallery overlooking Cauvery’s confluence with the sea looks dilapidated. Musical instruments from the past lie silent on dusty shelves. Above the statues of Kannagi and Kovalan, the protagonists of the Tamil epic Silappadikaram, cobwebs dangle from the ceiling. Where a river is on its death bed, the civilisation it birthed also struggles to survive.
📰 India to help settle Rohingya back in Rakhine
Sushma Swaraj tells Myanmar authorities that prefabricated homes will be ready for refugees returning from camps in Bangladesh, underlining the need for a safe comeback.
•India on Friday urged Myanmar to ensure the safe return of Rohingya citizens now staying in refugee camps in Bangladesh.
•External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj took up the issue and promised India’s help during her two-day trip to Myanmar, where she sealed a landmark land border-crossing agreement with the country.
•“The External Affairs Minister also reiterated India’s readiness and commitment to helping the Government of Myanmar in addressing issues related to Rakhine state. The Minister ... underlined the need for safe, speedy and sustainable return of displaced persons to the Rakhine state,” the External Affairs Ministry said in a press note on Friday.
•The Minister informed Myanmar that India was on track to complete a project to set up prefabricated housing for the Rohingya population returning from their present camps in Bangladesh.
Pressure from Dhaka
•Bangladesh, in recent months, has repeatedly urged India to intervene and pressure Myanmar to take back its citizens who are living in difficult circumstances on Bangladeshi territory. Both Myanmar and Bangladesh are members of the BIMSTEC (Bay of Bengal Initiative for Multi-Sectoral Technical and Economic Cooperation) regional grouping, which is expected to hold a summit later this year.
•During the visit, the Minister met U Win Myint, President of the Republic of the Union of Myanmar, and held consultations with State Counsellor Aung San Suu Kyi and the Commander-in-Chief of the Myanmar Defence Services, Senior General Min Aung Hlaing. Both sides discussed security-related issues and the ongoing operation in the Rakhine province.
•Ms. Swaraj welcomed the Myanmar government’s commitment to implementing the Rakhine Advisory Commission’s recommendations.
•She said that India was in the process of implementing several projects to help various sections of the population in Rakhine state.
•India and Myanmar also concluded the Agreement on Land Border Crossing, which will allow people from both sides to cross the border with passport and visa for health and educational needs and tourism.
Training programme
•An agreement on training of Myanmar Foreign Service officers and another on assistance to the Joint Ceasefire Monitoring Committee were signed.
•The committee monitors the ceasefire implemenation between the government of Myanmar and ethnic militant organisations that was announced in 2015.
•Reflecting cultural ties between the two sides, Ms. Swaraj sealed a memorandum of understanding on restoration of earthquake-damaged pagodas in the famed Buddhist tourism centre of Bagan.
📰 Citizenship bill: Assam minister says protests unfounded
•The Assam government on Friday said protests against the Citizenship (Amendment) Bill of 2016 “at this juncture” are unfounded and that it will announce its official stand after the Supreme Court-monitored exercise to update the National Register of Citizens (NRC) is over by June 30.
•The BJP-led coalition government in Assam has been under pressure from regional ally Asom Gana Parishad and NGOs to “learn from its Meghalaya counterpart” and make its position on the “contentious bill” clear.
•“The protests are unnecessary since the JPC is hearing the views of stakeholders and has not submitted its report. The BJP-led government will never take a decision that goes against the people of Assam,” Chandra Mohan Patowary, Industries Minister and government spokesperson, said on Friday.
•“Meghalaya has taken a decision because it is not updating NRC. We have to honour the court and as such will make our stand clear once the NRC exercise, which is 80% through, is completed,” Mr. Patowary said.
•The apex court wants the final list of the NRC to be announced by June 30. A partial list was published on December 31 last year.
•The minister also came down heavily on the Congress for its “two-faced approach” to the citizenship bill. “The Congress had started it all with a Cabinet resolution in July 2014 for granting asylum to persecuted minorities in Bangladesh. The party is now opposing the bill in Brahmaputra Valley while supporting it in Barak Valley,” he said.
•Mr. Patowary deflected criticism of this government by saying that the BJP, with majority at the Centre, could have passed the bill but sought to get the views unlike the Congress that pushed through the now-defunct Illegal Migrants (Determination by Tribunal) Act of 1985.
•“The Congress did not think of taking the views of people in Assam on the IMDT Act that Sarbanada Sonowal got scrapped in 2005. But the BJP values the opinion of the people and formed the JPC. And until the JPC submits its report, protests against a future scenario are unfounded,” he said.
•The 16-member JPC headed by BJP parliamentarian Rajendra Agarwal, meanwhile, ended its two-day hearing in Meghalaya on Friday. “We have conveyed the government’s stand to the committee,” the state’s Chief Secretary Y Tsering said.
•“Everyone in Meghalaya has opposed the bill because of fear of cultural and demographic threat,” Assam MP Bhubaneswar Kalita, one of the JPC members, said.
Arunachal worry
•A delegation of All Arunachal Pradesh Students’ Union (AAPSU) that met the JPC in Meghalaya capital Shillong on Thursday cautioned that the frontier state would burn if New Delhi passes the citizenship bill.
•“This controversial bill will serve as a legal basis for furthering and legitimising the claims of Chakma and Hajong refugees as indigenous people and defeat the very purpose of the Bengal Eastern Frontier Regulation 1873 and various other regulations currently in force in the State,” AAPSU general secretary Tobom Dai said.
•The bill seeks to grant citizenship to the people from minority communities – Hindus, Sikhs, Buddhists, Jains, Parsis and Christians – from Afghanistan, Pakistan and Bangladesh after six years of residence in India.
•“As the Chakmas are Buddhists and Hajongs are Hindus, the bill if passed shall automatically make their claims more legitimate,” Mr. Dai said, adding the bill would also make the Buddhist Tibetans eligible for being a tribe in Arunachal Pradesh.
•The Chakma and Hajongs, displaced by the Kaptai Dam in erstwhile East Pakistan (now Bangladesh) and religious persecution, were settled in Arunachal Pradesh in the 1960s. Many Tibetans have also taken refuge in the state since the flight of the 14th Dalai Lama in 1959.
•“The Centre should respect the sentiments and aspirations of the indigenous communities and not vitiate the already fragile atmosphere in the Northeast,” Mr. Dai said.
📰 In a state of energy poverty: on the goal of 100% electrification
It is uncertain if the goal of electrifying all ‘willing households’ will mean universal access
•There is now 100% village electrification in India, an important milestone in the country’s development trajectory. At the time of Independence, while the major global economies were completing electrification, India inherited what K. Santhanam, a member of the Constituent Assembly, called a ‘virgin field for electrification’. In response to the regional imbalances in electrical development, led largely by the private sector, the Constituent Assembly set the ground for public sector-led electrification in the country. But despite dedicated public agencies, a planned approach, a sustained political mandate and continued public spending by the Centre and States, India has been considerably slow in reaching the milestone.
•Another important turnaround came last year when India claimed to be a net surplus and exporter of electricity (a scenario projected to continue for at least a decade). But do these developments mark an end to India’s energy poverty?
•India continues to harbour energy poverty; 31 million rural households and about five million urban households are still to be connected to the grid — the highest in any single country. At the same time, a significant portion of connected rural households is yet to get adequate quantity and quality of supply. The Central government has set itself an ambitious target of connecting all remaining households by the end of March 2019 and made budgetary allocations to cover the cost of electrification. As part of a Centre-State joint initiative on 24×7 ‘Power for All’, State governments have already committed to ensuring round-the-clock supply to all households from April 2019. The aspiration for access to clean, reliable and affordable power for all is not free from barriers and fallibility.
•Subnational endeavours and the Centre’s pump priming seem to have addressed the regional imbalances in electrical development which concerned India’s early planners. But regional imbalances in electricity access have persisted. Seven States (Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Odisha, Jharkhand, Assam, Rajasthan and Madhya Pradesh) account for 90% of un-electrified households. Coincidentally, these States are ranked poorly in social development indices and house about two-thirds of the population living below the poverty line. This concurrence between economic poverty and energy poverty will be a barrier to the goal of universal access.
Cost factor
•Who pays for the cost of supply will also be a critical driver. Electricity distribution companies (discoms) in these seven States are already highly indebted, accounting for 42% of accumulated debts of all discoms as on March 2016. Their debts account for 17% of accumulated liabilities of the States. Despite continued State subvention (except by Odisha), all these discoms have been consistently running at a loss, accounting for about 47% of the loss in electricity distribution business. State government subventions amounted to 10% of their cumulative gross fiscal deficit in 2015-16 and accounted for 40% of total subvention from all States. The losses of these discoms after subsidy add up to 19% of their gross fiscal deficits in the year. The fiscal space of these States and discoms seems to be constrained to accommodate additional subsidy. On the other hand, existing subsidised lifeline tariffs in these States appear unaffordable to the poor and certainly higher than in States with universal (or high) access. Had it been otherwise, households would have been connected as villages got supply.
•Given the context, it is uncertain whether the goal of electrifying all ‘willing households’ by March 2019 would translate into universal access to electricity. The assumption that a waiver of the connection charge and easing the connection process (but with no further rebate on lifeline tariffs) will make poor households willing to take up electricity connection is questionable.
Challenges in distribution
•The other major challenge is from distribution network capacity. Electrification in India has followed an approach of expansion, often driven by political considerations, without much emphasis on capacity augmentation and making the grid future ready. As a result, the distribution infrastructure is overburdened, as the demand has grown, causing a high level of technical losses and frequent breakdowns. The distribution network capacity in several States is inadequate to carry available electricity. Subsequently, discoms have been resorting to load shedding while their contracted generation capacities are underutilised. Adding new load to the existing fragile distribution network will only compromise the quality and reliability of supply. It could result in continued blackouts for the rural poor during peak hours.
•State strategy documents on 24×7 ‘Power for All’ highlight the need and quantum of augmentation required in distribution network capacity. While the Central government has come up with multiple schemes with budgetary allocations since 2001, the available funding support has been short of the growing requirement. Moreover, many States have failed to utilise the limited funding. Current allocations under the Deen Dayal Upadhyaya Gram Jyoti Yojana (DDUGJY) and Integrated Power Development Scheme (IPDS), to augment rural and urban distribution networks, respectively, are only a fraction of the requirement. Moreover, disbursement of these grants has been much slower, 17% under DDUGJY and 31% under IPDS, reflecting sluggish implementation.
•Low achievement of earlier electrification schemes has often been blamed on incompatibility and a lack of cooperation between the Centre and States. Given that six of the seven low access States as well as the Centre are run by a single political party (and allies), there seems to be a strong political consensus on the goal of universal access. Will this consensus translate into a sustainable political mandate, lasting beyond the political battle of 2019? Will power flow in villages? Will newly connected households stay plugged into the grid? It will depend on the ability of the Centre and States to generate required capital investments, timely upgradations in transmission and distribution networks and covering the costs of servicing less remunerative loads. Until then, the volume of dark homes (in absolute numbers) in a fully-wired country may remain as big as it was in the virgin field for electrification.
📰 Loss of innocents: on the wave of lynchings in Tamil Nadu
It is important to analyse such incidents to understand the underlying anxieties and the drift of trouble-making attempts
•Three recent incidents of lynching in Tamil Nadu, unrelated except for the mindless violence and brutality, are grim reminders of the power a mob can wield. While arrests have been made in all three cases, and warnings issued by law enforcement authorities, the incidents are a cause for pause. On Wednesday night, a mob in Pulicat, north of Chennai, beat up a 45-year-old homeless man. They woke him up as he slept on a bridge, beat him up and then hung him from it. Villagers justified this by saying they thought he was a child kidnapper. Earlier, about 240 km south of Pulicat, a 55-year-old woman, who had gone with her relatives to a village in Tiruvannamalai district in search of a temple, was beaten to death. Her companions were injured. While asking a villager for directions, she had shared chocolates with children playing nearby. Locals say they mistook this as the action of kidnappers trying to lure children, and chased the car the group was travelling in to thrash them. In end-April, a 30-year-old north Indian man died in a town in Vellore district after he was beaten up by residents who mistook him for a burglar. Such instances of mob madness require a firm response from the police, one that signals that those who dispense such ‘instant justice’ will be severely punished. Equally, there needs to be continued responsiveness on the part of the local administrations in dealing with anxiety and suspicion in local communities.
•The police say the trigger for the lynchings could be a rash of xenophobic messages circulating on WhatsApp warning that “north Indians” are looking to kidnap children in Tamil Nadu. They subsequently issued warnings that strict action would be taken against those who forward such messages, including by invoking the Goondas Act. At least one rumour-monger has been arrested. The social media, by its very nature, enables the unchallenged dissemination of unverified information, and its regulation presents a challenge to law enforcement. It is important to analyse such incidents to understand the underlying anxieties and the drift of trouble-making attempts. While fear-mongering is typically undertaken on social media, the counter-information campaign needs to be publicly broadcast and confidence fostered at the level of the police station so that residents feel free to approach the authorities to verify the messages or seek protection. But the signal must also be sent out in no uncertain terms that lynchings amount to murder or attempt to murder. Mobs are amorphous units that confer anonymity on perpetrators, emboldening them, on the spur of the moment, to collectively commit vile acts without a sense of individual guilt. The state needs to break this pattern through demonstrable action against perpetrators, and widely disseminate news of action taken against the guilty.
📰 Navy to opt for Big Data, AI in operational functioning
Focus on contemporary cybersecurity practices
•At the biannual Naval Commanders’ Conference which ended here on Friday, the Navy has finalised plans to incorporate Big Data Analytics and Artificial Intelligence into its operational functioning.
•According to an official statement: “In keeping with the Navy’s ethos of harnessing niche technologies, concrete plans to incorporate Big Data Analytics and Artificial Intelligence into the Navy’s operational functioning have also been formulated.”
Digital library
•The conference also saw the inauguration of a new digital library available across the Navy for “knowledge management and retrieval including archiving of critical data and information.” Besides, senior Admirals also discussed the issues of “security and hardening of naval data networks in keeping with contemporary cybersecurity practices.”
•According to a spokesperson, the first biannual Naval Commanders’ Conference of 2018 concluded on Friday after four days of intense deliberations on a wide range of issues.
•The conference was inaugurated by Defence Minister Nirmala Sitharaman, who said the Indian Navy was a “force to reckon with in the Indo-Pacific region.” She also assured the naval leadership that efforts to bridge critical capability gaps in ship-borne helicopters, fleet support ships and submarines would be progressed by the government.
•The spokesperson said the need for approval of the second indigenous aircraft carrier for the Navy was discussed at the conference.
•This project, along with the other shipbuilding projects already under way or in the pipeline including mine counter measure vessels, landing platform dock, anti-submarine shallow water craft, diving support vessels and survey vessels, are expected to provide a major thrust to the ‘Make-in-India’ initiative of the government, the Navy said.
📰 India to counter U.S. complaint on farm subsidies in WTO
Sources say charge is based on wrong assumptions
•A complaint lodged by the U.S. at the World Trade Organisation (WTO) against India’s farm subsidies is baseless, according to Indian diplomatic sources.
•The U.S. had filed a counter-notification at the WTO Committee on Agriculture on May 4, alleging that “based on U.S. calculations, it appears that India has substantially under-reported its market price support (MPS) for wheat and rice”, according to a statement issued by the U.S. Department of Agriculture on Wednesday.
•Indian diplomatic sources told The Hindu that the U.S. calculations were based on wrong assumptions. They added that India would officially respond at the WTO’s Committee on Agriculture meeting in June.
•In its 12-page document submitted to the WTO, the U.S. laid out its calculations of the value of India’s MPS programme for the four years between 2010-11 and 2013-14 using publicly available data.
•“India’s apparent MPS for wheat appears to have been over 60% of the value of production in each of the last four years for which India has notified data,” said the document. “Its apparent MPS for rice appears to have been over 70% of the value of production in each of the years.”
•For example, India notified the WTO that its MPS for rice in 2013-14 was just over ₹12,001 crore.
•That amounts to 5.45% of the total value of production, and well within the WTO’s permitted cut-off of 10%.
•However, according to the U.S. calculations, the value of India’s MPS for rice that year was more than ₹1.7 lakh crore, which would be 76.9% of the total value of production.
•One of the issues raised by the U.S. is that India’s notification “only reflect the national minimum support prices and do not include all state bonuses or other incentives that further increase the MSP provided to farmers.”
📰 Industrial growth slows to 5-month low
Economic growth seen to pick up from estimated 6.6 % in 2017-18
•India’s industrial output growth slowed to a five-month low of 4.4 percent in March, dragged down by smaller increases in mining, but the central bank is expected to hold interest rates in its next policy meeting amid growing inflation concerns.
•Economists surveyed by Reuters had forecast 5.9 percent growth in output compared with a downward revised 7.0 percent annual increase in February.
•Annual output growth was 4.3 percent during the fiscal year that ended in March 2018, lower than 4.6 percent in the previous year, data released on Friday by the Ministry of Statistics shows.
•Manufacturing, which contributes 78 percent of industrial output, grew 4.5 percent last fiscal year, up from 4.4 percent a year ago, as big companies adjust following teething troubles with a national Goods and Services Tax launched last year.
•The Reserve Bank of India, which is due to hold its next policy meeting on June 6, is widely expected to hold rates after having kept policy rates unchanged for the fourth straight meeting in April.
•The biggest risk that Asia’s third-largest economy faces is rising crude oil prices, which hit $78 a barrel on Thursday, their highest since November 2014 following prospects of new U.S. sanctions on Iran.
•India meets 80 percent of its oil needs from imports.
•Analysts said companies with significant transport costs could trim expansion plans as subdued rural demand hits economic growth. But foreign investors still have faith in India’s growth prospects.
•Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who is expected to try for a second term in general elections next year, has taken several steps to attract investments.
•On Wednesday, Walmart Inc announced plans to acquire a majority stake in India’s e-commerce firm Flipkart by paying $16 billion, the U.S. retailer’s largest-ever deal, a sign of confidence among investors in India’s growth story.
•Mr. Modi plans to spend 5.97 trillion rupees ($89.7 billion) on infrastructure in the 2018/19 fiscal year, more than three times what was allocated in 2014/15.
•The government expects the $2.5-trillion economy could grow more than 7 percent in the current fiscal year that began in April, up from an estimated 6.6 percent the previous year.
📰 Oil near multi-year highs on Iran sanctions
Other producers could increase output to meet the shortfall
•Oil prices steadied near 3-1/2 year highs on Friday as the prospect of new U.S. sanctions on Iran tightened the outlook for Middle East supply at a time when global crude production is only just keeping pace with rising demand.
•The U.S. plans to reintroduce sanctions against Iran, which pumps about 4% of the world’s oil, after abandoning a deal reached in late 2015 that limited Tehran’s nuclear ambitions in exchange for the removal of U.S. and European sanctions.
•The global oil market is finely balanced, with top exporter Saudi Arabia and No.1 producer Russia having led efforts to curb oil supply to prop up prices.
•Benchmark Brent crude was down 20 cents at $77.27 a barrel by 1155 GMT. On Thursday, Brent hit $78, its highest since November 2014. U.S. light crude was unchanged at $71.36, having touched a 3-1/2 year high of $71.89 on Thursday. Many analysts expect oil prices to rise as Iran’s exports fall.
•“The up-trend remains strong and intact,” said Robin Bieber, technical chart analyst at London brokerage PVM Oil Associates. Rainer Seele, chief executive of Austrian oil and gas company OMV, told German daily Handelsblatt that he expects prices to rise as the United States moves to reimpose sanctions.
‘Close to $80’
•“It is not yet clear which concrete sanctions the U.S. will impose. But I expect the price of North Sea Brent to be closer to $80 than $70 a barrel,” he Seele said in an interview. U.S. investment bank Jefferies said in a note on Friday that it expects Iranian crude oil exports to start falling in the next few months.
•“We expect that around October, Iranian exports will be down by 500,000 barrels per day (bpd) and eventually fall by 1 million bpd,” the bank said.
•There are signs, however, that other members of the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) will raise output to counter the Iran disruption.
•Jefferies said that OPEC has the capacity “to replace the Iranian losses” but added: “Even if physical supply is held constant ... the market will still be faced with a precariously low level of spare capacity.” Outside OPEC, soaring U.S. crude oil production could help to fill Iran’s supply gap. U.S. oil output reached another record high last week, hitting 10.7 million bpd.
📰 Nature enthusiasts spot rare butterflies unseen for decades
Precise location is being withheld till forest officials put in safety measures
•They look rather plain at first sight, but these butterflies are thrilling scientists and enthusiasts alike.
•A week ago, butterfly enthusiast Arjan Basu Roy photographed the black windmill butterfly Byasa crassipes in Arunachal Pradesh’s Dibang Valley in the Lower Dihang Valley district, where the controversial Dibang Dam is proposed to be built.
Few records
•So far the butterfly has been mentioned only in two books: the 10-volume Lepidoptera Indica, a book on India’s butterflies by the East India Company’s Frederic Moore in 1913, and The Fauna of British India written in 1939 by George Talbot.
•The butterfly has not been recorded in India ever since, said Krushnamegh Kunte, scientist at Bengaluru’s National Centre for Biological Sciences.
•It was a seven-hour-trek to sight a rare bird in the wild that led nature enthusiast David Raju to the even more uncommon scarce siren butterfly Hestina nicevillei in the Daranghati Wildlife Sanctuary in Himachal Pradesh in 2012.
•The species was being photographed for the first time in history, and being sighted for the first time in India since 1917.
•Only a few months ago did Raju post it on the online butterfly species repository, Butterflies of India.
•“It was a great feeling to know that it was a rediscovery for India,” said Raju, who works as a naturalist in Kanha, Madhya Pradesh.
•Both butterfly species are listed under Schedule I of India’s Wildlife Protection Act (1972), which ensures the insects the same protection as that given to tigers.
•Locations of butterfly sightings are usually made public in the Butterflies of India where both the species’ rediscoveries have currently been listed.
Protecting fauna
•However, the precise location of the black windmill is being withheld until the local police and forest departments have some safety measures in place to protect the insect from butterfly collectors.
•“Collecting of butterflies for sale as dead specimens is a big threat in the Himalayas and north-east India,” said Dr. Kunte, whose team runs theButterflies of India online portal.
•Nature enthusiast Balaji P. Balachandran had shot pictures earlier this year of the frosted duskywing Erynnis pelias – recorded only from south-eastern Tibet and western China till now – in Anjaw district in Arunachal Pradesh. Several more new records and rediscoveries in India will be published this year according to Dr. Kunte.
