📰 Protecting incarcerated women
In the case of non-violent women offenders, community service should be the default punishment
•Much of the discourse on prison conditions stops short of a practical agenda for major reforms. While one reason cited is a paucity of resources, the other is about a mindset that those in jail do not deserve better. Except for a few studies done outside India, most of the material on the subject is superficial, to put it mildly. In prisons across the world, overcrowding, brutality, a lack of sanitation and unacceptable standards of health care are standard.
•There is also no liberal mindset anywhere to set the ball rolling on how we can introduce clemency in incarceration. This is cause for concern given the growing aggressive nature of public discourse on treatment of offenders. How can one ignore strident demands for harsher criminal penalties and a higher rate of incarceration?
•We see this happen in India where there appears to be blind public frenzy without a thought being given to the truth being established by rigorous research and a recognition that draconian punishment does not necessarily deter a determined or an impulsive offender.
A case for compassion
•In this context, news that “46 children are behind bars in Odisha, for no crime of theirs” (The Hindu, May 19, 2018), must focus attention on the status of women prisoners and their children remaining with them during detention. I do not make a plea for a reprieve for women who transgress the law. What I advocate here is a less harsh response to women overstepping the law and some concessions with regard to detention before trial. Crime data show that there is a high rate of simple thefts among women prisoners. In the case of non-violent women offenders, community service should be the main option for reform. A jail term should be the last resort. Once detained, a woman prisoner not only deserves compassion but should also be given standards of facilities more liberal than for men. We may have to go a step further if a prisoner has children living with her in prison. It is the fundamental duty of the state to do everything possible to see to their physical and emotional needs.
On children
•In most parts of the world, including India, there are prisons exclusively for women. Tamil Nadu has some, with one recent estimate putting their current occupancy at 25%. Creches for children up to the age of 3 and nurseries for children up to 6 years are available. Older children are entrusted to relatives or voluntary organisations. There are no reliable reports on how well these are run.
•In the West, the U.S. has the most acute problem. According to a study (2010), several thousand children lived with their incarcerated mothers at one time, not a shocking number if one takes into account the magnitude of incarceration (2.3 million). The same study suggested that the U.S. has a third of all women prisoners in the world; about 60% of them have children under 18 years. When children are not with their mothers, contact can be difficult, because no extra consideration is shown to an incarcerated mother.
•The European Prison Rules have been modified to make treatment of prisoners in all member-nations more civilised. The World Health Organisation in particular has expressed concern over the reproductive health of women prisoners and the absence of maternal education during pregnancy.
Problems and solutions
•For criminal justice policy makers, there are now three challenges. That a conscious effort should be made to reduce female incarceration is the general consensus. However, there is a general lack of will arising from an assessment that any radical departure from the law and practices is not going to earn votes for a government. It is sad that there is such a lack of empathy despite research that women offenders are themselves victims of crime before they turn to crime. Therefore, there is a clear case for the award of community service to those women who have been jailed for non-violent offences.
•The second challenge is on protecting the children of women prisoners. The one thing common is that most of them do not have physical and emotional support. Many are single parent children, usually with their mothers. This is one more reason why many nations should adopt community service for female convicts who have had no record of violence. It would be an entirely different matter if such a convict commits an offence again after community service. In such cases she would be on a par with a male recidivist.
•The final challenge is in protecting women inmates from sexual/non-sexual violence and their forceful initiation into substance abuse while in custody. An all-female warden system is difficult as a small complement of male security staff is needed despite its attendant consequences. In this, technology can play a role.
•In the ultimate analysis, prisons can be made safer for women only by a mindset which is convinced that female offenders deserve compassion. When this will happen is anybody’s guess.
📰 Rajasthan seeks formation of Inter-State Basin Authority
The State is against integrated group of watershed agencies
•Rajasthan has sought establishment of an Inter-State Basin Authority with the powers to resolve disputes among different States on sharing of river waters. The desert State does not agree with a proposal to set up an integrated group of watershed agencies, which it says will not serve any meaningful purpose.
•Home Minister Gulab Chand Kataria said at the 13th meeting of the Inter-State Council's Standing Committee in New Delhi last week that since several Boards were already functioning for management of inter-State basin waters, there would be no utility for the integrated group of watershed agencies.
•The Boards include Bhakra-Beas Management Board for Indus basin, Upper Yamuna River Board for Yamuna river waters, Narmada Control Authority for Narmada river waters and the Madhya Pradesh-Rajasthan Chambal Inter-State Board for Chambal river waters.
•Mr. Kataria said the practice being followed for distribution of water on the basis of catchment areas of rivers went against the interest of a State like Rajasthan because it had very little such areas. “Rajasthan should be exempted from the rules framed on the basis of catchment areas,” he said.
More allocation sought
•While seeking allocation of more Central funds for expansion of forest areas to meet the national targets, Mr. Kataria sought a special status for Rajasthan in view of its “scattered environmental status” with the presence of the Aravalli hills range and the vast Thar desert. Rajasthan was geographically the biggest State in the country, he pointed out.
📰 States yet to decide on national anthem query
MHA circular had sought their views
•None of the States, including the 21 ruled by the BJP and its allies, has responded to the Centre’s letter seeking their opinion on playing of the national anthem in cinema halls and public places.
•The Union Home Ministry had written to the States seeking their opinion on the issue. It sent a reminder to all the States again this month.
•On December 5 last year, the Home Ministry notified the appointment of a 12-member inter-ministerial committee which would take a final call on the playing of the national anthem in cinema and public places. The panel, led by Special Secretary B.R. Sharma, is expected to give its report on the existing laws.
Six months
•The committee comprises Joint Secretary-level officers from 11 Ministries and departments of the Central government. It was expected to submit its report within six months.
•“We have sent two reminders to the State governments to give their opinion on playing of national anthem in cinema halls. Not one has responded so far,” said a senior government official.
•The Central government’s decision to set up the expert committee came after the Supreme Court in October last year observed that people “cannot be forced to carry patriotism on their sleeves” and it cannot be assumed that if a person does not stand up for the national anthem, he or she was “less patriotic.”
Suggest changes
•The committee is expected to give recommendations regarding regulations on playing/singing of the national anthem and suggest changes in the acts and orders relating to the Insult of National Honour Act, 1971.
•An earlier advisory of the Home Ministry said that audiences were not expected to stand if the national anthem was played as part of the film.
•Whenever the Anthem is sung or played, the audience shall stand to attention. However, when in the course of a newsreel or documentary the anthem is played as a part of the film, it is not expected of the audience to stand as standing is bound to interrupt the exhibition of the film and would create disorder and confusion rather than add to the dignity of the anthem,” it said.
📰 Looking for a new clarity
Protecting constitutional values requires an independent judiciary. For this, three issues need attention
•The Supreme Court, this past month, provided us with a useful reminder about its worth to our constitutional democracy. Its intervention in the imbroglio over government formation in Karnataka was flawless. The hearings conducted in the early hours of the morning may have been theatrical, but the court’s ultimate decision certainly helped avert a subversion of the Constitution. Yet, much as its decision here deserves appreciation, we must be careful not to allow any ascription of credit to veil the deeper wounds that afflict it, for a litany of problems continues to strike at the court’s independence.
•Three of these are especially salient. The first involves the rejection by the government of the collegium’s recommendation of K.M. Joseph, currently Chief Justice of the Uttarakhand High Court, for elevation to the Supreme Court. The second concerns the need for a systemic mechanism to deal with allegations of corruption in the higher judiciary. The third area of worry concerns the embroiled state of Chief Justice of India Dipak Misra, his position as the master of the roster, and the critical question of whether such powers ought to be vested in the hands of one individual.
Recurring problems
•At first glance, these issues might strike us as unique to the times that we live in, as examples of crises that will eventually pass. But, on closer examination, it becomes clearer that these are, in fact, recurring problems left unaddressed for decades. In trying to resolve the issues, therefore, we must ask ourselves how we got here. As A.G. Noorani recently wrote in Frontline magazine (“Crisis in Judiciary,” May 11, 2018): “We have not reached the nadir all of a sudden. The decline was long in process.”
•In his seminal book, America’s Unwritten Constitution: The Precedents and Principles We Live By, Akhil Reed Amar points to how the written constitution often invites us to heed what’s unwritten, which in turn, he writes, “refers us back in various ways to its written counterpart. Like the Chinese symbols yin and yang, America’s written Constitution and America’s unwritten Constitution form two halves of one whole, with each half gesturing toward the other.”
•India’s Constitution is possibly the longest written constitution in the world, but it too leaves much unsaid. Take, for example, Article 124. It states that judges of the Supreme Court shall be appointed by the President, after consultation with certain authorities, including the CJI. But it does not tell us how these consultations are to be made, or what criteria ought to be applied in deciding who becomes a judge.
Filling the voids
•Filling these voids, therefore, requires the building of conventions that nonetheless maintain a fidelity to the written word. In 1977, in Union of India v. Sankalchand Sheth, the Supreme Court sought to do precisely this, when it ruled that the word “consultation” can never mean “concurrence”. But yet it held in the same case that the President can depart from the CJI’s opinion, in making a transfer or an appointment, as the case may be, only in exceptional circumstances. And when the government does so, it must, wrote Justice V.R. Krishna Iyer, in his concurring opinion, be prepared to establish in court that it possessed “cogent and convincing reasons” for rejecting the CJI’s advice. As a result, in a bid to secure judicial independence, the court, as H.M. Seervai wrote, had read into the Constitution “a requirement which is not there, but which is implicit in the whole object of providing for consultation with the Chief Justice of India.”
•Unfortunately, though, the court has in a series of cases rendered the verdict in Sheth nugatory. The informed wisdom of Justice Krishna Iyer has been replaced by the undemocratic excesses of the “collegium system”. This method grants primacy to the judiciary (specifically to the CJI and his four most senior colleagues) in choosing its own members but allows government the power to reject recommendations on any ground whatsoever, with only one caveat: if the collegium were to re-recommend the same name, the government is obligated to accept the proposition.
•Now, in the present environment, for the immediate purposes, there is no doubt that the collegium must re-recommend Justice Joseph’s name, to protect at least a veneer of the court’s independence. But this still begs the question, what happens if the government vacillates in conforming Justice Joseph’s elevation even after such a re-recommendation?
•In all of this, therefore, one thing has become abundantly clear: the collegium system is simply unworkable. Its ills are plain to see. It’s not only opaque and inequitable, containing not a single constitutionally provided check or balance, but it has done nothing to either improve the judiciary’s independence or provide a seamless system of elevating well-qualified persons to the bench.
•Efforts to introduce a judicial appointments commission have already been scuttled, after the court struck down the 99th constitutional amendment. But the trend across liberal, constitutional democracies is towards such a commission. Hence, what we need now is a renewed debate on how to reshape the composition of a potential judicial appointments panel, which will preserve, in some regards, the judiciary’s primacy (which the Supreme Courtnow enjoins us to do), while also divorcing its membership completely from the executive.
•Simultaneously, as we make an endeavour to be rid of the collegium system, we must also work towards putting in place an independent mechanism to deal with allegations of corruption in the judiciary. The quandary on how to guard the autonomy of the court while ensuring judges remain accountable is age-old. The Roman satirist Juvenal famously asked, Quis custodiet ipsos custodes? (Who will guard the guardians themselves?) Impeachment, as Ronald Dworkin wrote in the context of American Presidents, is a “constitutional nuclear weapon”. It ought to be restricted only to the grimmest of emergencies. But, in India, absent any other apparatus to inquire into a charge of judicial corruption, it becomes the only viable option. We must, therefore, strive to find a device that will straddle our concerns for the judiciary’s autonomy with a necessity for greater fairness and transparency. Any claim made against a judge of dishonesty, howsoever trivial, must be investigated by a properly constituted panel, which ought to be granted a status separate from all three established wings of government.
Issue of the roster
•Finally, the CJI’s position as the “master of the roster” requires serious rethinking. The Constitution is silent on the administrative role that the CJI performs. The central authority that he now enjoys, in deciding which cases get to be heard by which benches, is essentially a product of custom (since codified into the Supreme Court Rules of 2013). But the framers could not have possibly envisaged the Supreme Court sitting in a multitude of panels of two and three judges. The court’s poly-vocal character has been built over a period of time and has now resulted in the CJI wielding enormous power over what might have been originally thought of as a simple managerial task.
•Any doctrine that looks to fill the gaps in the Constitution must conform to its basic idea of fairness; seeing the CJI as the master of the roster sans any concomitant accountability simply doesn’t fit with a proper constitutional imagination. Thus, there’s a burning need to define with greater clarity the precise role of the CJI, and to amend the existing framework of rules and regulations on how benches are to be created, and on how work ought to be divided between the different panels.
•The Constitution embodies a rousing vision. But it stands on brittle foundations. Protecting its text and its values requires an independent judiciary that is not only committed to constitutionalism but that is also democratically accountable. We cannot rely simply on good fortune to see us through today’s crises. To do so would amount to inviting an annihilation of our republican ethos.
📰 Talk it over: the Centre's role in J&K
The Central government must build politically on the cease-ops initiative in J&K
•Home Minister Rajnath Singh’s statement offering talks to the Hurriyat and Pakistan puts a seal on a series of moves by the Centre that signal a softer Jammu and Kashmir policy after two particularly violent years. His offer came a week into the Centre’s suspension of operations, with the condition that terror must end. Just a day earlier, Army Chief General Bipin Rawat had suggested the ‘cease-ops’ plan could be extended. This in itself was significant, as he had earlier taken a very tough line. Last year, launching what he called “Operation All-Out”, General Rawat had said the Army would look “helter-skelter” everywhere for terrorists and anyone sympathising with them. Statistically, the hardline policy saw successes, as more than 200 militants were killed in the period after the death of Hizbul Mujahideen commander Burhan Wani in July 2016, which had set off a wave of violence in the Valley. However, according to police estimates, 230 more young men picked up the gun during that time, many of them at funerals of militants. In fact, this became a cycle: as the level of disaffection among the population continued to grow, locals would gather in thousands at funerals, which became recruitment sites. In the past few months, however, the Modi government appears to have taken stock of its J&K policy and changed course rather dramatically. To begin with, the government authorised an interlocutor to speak with “all sections of society”, and he appears to have opened several conversations in the Valley, and nudged the government to declare an amnesty for first-time stone-pelters. Next, the Centre has taken care to back Chief Minister Mehbooba Mufti on a wide range of political issues, including replacing the Deputy Chief Minister, a post held by a BJP legislator. The cease-operations order, that came days before Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s speech in Srinagar, has also helped recast the narrative, and given a pause to the seemingly unending cycle of violence, funeral, encounters and recruitment.
•More needs to be done, and soon. To start with, the Centre must review actions by security forces that unfairly stifle ordinary life, such as cordon-and-search operations, restrictions on access to orchards during the fruit harvesting season, and suspension of Internet services. Second, it must act to rebuild the ceasefire on the border with Pakistan, and discuss the issue at a bilateral level. At the same time, it must be alert to all attempts at subverting the cease-ops initiative, which could come from Pakistan or from vested interests within J&K. Finally, the government should get its message out on its vision for a longer-term resolution to reverse alienation amid a polarised debate in sections of the media on the value of the ceasefire, which adds to the sense of anxiety in Kashmir. A window of opportunity has been created. The need now is to move quickly and seize it.
📰 The cost of deterrence
An arms race consumes resources that could have been used in welfare
•Earlier this month, India marked the 20th anniversary of the nuclear tests at Pokhran, which signalled its de facto status as the sixth nuclear power nation of the world. On May 28, 1998, just a fortnight after India’s tests, Pakistan responded with a similar nuclear test, marking its emergence as a rival nuclear power to India.
•On the occasion of this anniversary, while the development of South Asian nuclear capability has been analysed through the lens of India’s quest for nuclear power, it is also important to consider how the balance of strategic nuclear power has evolved over the past two decades.
•First, it is clear that Pakistan’s assertion of nuclear parity and India’s ‘no first use policy’ for its nuclear weapons provided Islamabad with the power of deterrence. ‘Deterrence’ in this context implies one side discouraging the other from undertaking an action by instilling a fear of disproportionate consequences. In the nuclear context, deterrence is a powerful force because of the overwhelmingly destructive nature of these weapons.
•Pakistan’s nuclear test in response to India was a case of the country deterring India from undertaking any major action, conventional or nuclear, against it, even if the situation demanded it. The December 2001 Parliament attack and the 2008 Mumbai terror attacks are two such instances where India’s potential for military action seemed to be have been deterred by Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal. It is difficult to say what course of action India could have taken on both these occasions had the two neighbours remained non-nuclear power states. Being a responsible state which values the life of its citizens, India couldn’t afford to risk a nuclear strike by Pakistan in the face of Indian escalation, especially as India likely believed Pakistan’s intention of using its nuclear arsenals, including “theatre nukes”. In this context, nuclear weapons programmes reduce the power gap between two unequal conventional weapon states. Under multiple game-theoretic scenarios, the deterrence effect of nuclear weapons makes nuclear war less likely.
•However, there is also the issue of responsible use. Some argue that a less responsible nuclear state is likely to intimidate a more responsible one by threatening to use nuclear weapons against the latter without fearing its own annihilation, in the event of a massive retaliation. To a certain extent, the argument goes, this reflects the value of life imputed by the government of the smaller nuclear power to its people.
•In building a nuclear arsenal, there is also the issue of cost, which, in the case of emerging countries such as India and Pakistan, is considerable. The past few decades of a nuclear South Asia have not only been a story of nuclear deterrence, but also of proliferation and an arms race that has consumed on a vast scale scarce resources that could arguably have been deployed for non-military, welfare purposes.
📰 No sanctions on Iran: Sushma
Minister meets Iranian counterpart, says India recognises only UN sanctions
•India will not accept sanctions imposed, or to be imposed, by the United States on Iran, External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj said on Monday. The remarks were a categorical rejection of Washington’s decision to withdraw from the six-nation Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) nuclear agreement and its plans to impose massive new sanctions on Iranian entities.
•Ms. Swaraj’s comments came just ahead of a meeting with Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif, who has been travelling to several capitals including Moscow, Beijing and Brussels, in an effort to salvage the agreement despite the U.S. move.
Not under pressure
•“Our foreign policy is not made under pressure from other countries,” Ms. Swaraj told journalists at a press conference. “We recognise UN sanctions and not country-specific sanctions. We didn’t follow U.S. sanctions on previous occasions either.”
•In a statement on May 13, U.S. National Security Adviser John Bolton said clearly that countries that “continue to deal with Iran could face sanctions”.
•Iran is India’s third largest oil supplier, and India has many areas of strategic engagement with Iran, including management of the Shahid Beheshti Port in Chabahar, co-development of the International North-South Transport Corridor to Russia, as well as bilateral trade of about $13 billion of which about $5 billion was in non-oil trade in 2016-17.
•Although the figures reduced in 2017, India has committed to increasing its offtake of oil from Iran this year, after President Hassan Rouhani and Prime Minister Modi held talks in Delhi in February.
•In a statement issued after Ms. Swaraj’s meeting with Mr. Zarif on Monday, the MEA said the Ministers had “positively assessed the implementation of decisions taken during the visit of President Rouhani to India… [including] in the areas of connectivity, energy, trade and promotion of people to people contacts.”
•“EAM conveyed that all parties to the [JCPOA] Agreement should engage constructively for peaceful resolution of the issues that have arisen with respect to the Agreement,” the statement added.
•Ms. Swaraj’s comments and the visit by Mr. Zarif to Delhi indicate the government intends to continue its engagement with Iran despite U.S. sanctions. However, Ms. Swaraj did not explain how India would hope to get around banking and insurance restrictions that may come about as the U.S. increases pressure on European banks which the India-Iran trade depends on.
📰 India, Pak. resume maritime dialogue
Agree on the need for improving exchange of information about the apprehension of fishermen
•In a sign of the efforts to improve India-Pakistan relations in recent months, the heads of maritime security agencies of both sides met after a gap of two years and agreed to work on improving exchange of information regarding fishermen apprehended by each other.
•The dialogue is significant as last year India had refused to participate in the talks following the controversy over the arrest of former Indian Navy officer Kulbhushan Jadhavby Pakistani agencies.
•However, in recent months there have been efforts from both sides to try and improve the bilateral engagement including restarting the Track II Neemrana Dialogue in April.
•“During the meeting, the Indian side reiterated the need for instituting Standard Operating Procedures (SOP) for immediate release and repatriation of fishermen who cross the International Maritime Boundary Line (IMBL) inadvertently as the issue needs to be approached in humanitarian context,” the Indian Coast Guard said in a statement.
•Further, both sides also agreed on the need for expeditious exchange of the information about the apprehension of fishing boats and fishermen.
•The meeting was chaired by Director General Indian Coast Guard Rajendra Singh and head of Pakistan Maritime Security Agency, Rear Admiral Zaka Ur Rehman.
•The dialogue is held annually as per the provisions of the Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) signed between the two agencies in 2005. To validate the SOPs for efficient conduct of rescue of distressed vessels/crew at sea, the two agencies also agreed to “conduct search and rescue communications exercises” between the rescue coordination centres.
•The two agencies also agreed to collaborate in preservation and protection of marine environment, and towards this agreed to “explore opportunities for cooperation in the field of oil spill response at sea in line with the MoU signed recently with the South Asian Cooperative Environment Programme (SACEP).”
📰 VVPAT glitches pose a new headache for poll panel
Spokesperson attributes them to extreme heat, placement under direct light and possible mishandling by polling staff using it for the machines for the first time
•Polling in the keenly contested Lok Sabha byelections in Kairana in Uttar Pradesh, Bhandra-Gondiya and Palghar in Maharashtra and Nagaland, besides several Assembly constituencies elsewhere, were marred by reports of malfunctioning of EVMs in many booths, especially in Kairana and Bhandra-Gondiya.
•The Election Commission responded to the reports saying that the claims of large-scale malfunctioning were an “exaggerated projection of reality”. But the Chief Election Officer, Uttar Pradesh also admitted in a statement that the commission received complaints of malfunctioning of VVPAT machines from 384 polling stations in Kairana following which replacement machines were used. This caused delays in polling in more than a few places.
•The VVPAT replacement rate, due to glitches in the machines that were deployed, was as high as 20.82% (way above the 5% limit seen as acceptable by the EC) in Kairana, 19.22% in Bhandara-Gondia and 13.16% in Palghar.
•The high rate of VVPAT malfunctioning contrasted with the relatively low failures in control and ballot units — only Bhandara-Gondia recorded more than a 1% failure rate among the PCs which polled. The failures were attributed by an ECI spokesperson to the fact that VVPATs were being used for the first time by polling staff (unlike the EVM itself), and the fact that these electronic devices were sensitive to extreme heat, placement under direct light and possible mishandling. Similar reasons were attributed to the substantive number of VVPAT failures that were reported in other Assembly elections held recently. In the Karnataka Assembly elections, 1,702 VVPAT machines developing glitches during polling and others during testing, overall close to 4.2% of all machines.
What is VVPAT?
•The VVPAT, or Voter Verifiable Paper Audit Trail, is an EVM-connected verification printer device. It allows voters to verify if their vote has indeed gone to the intended candidate by leaving a paper trail of the vote cast.
•It is an adjunct machine connected to the ballot and control units of the EVM. After the voter casts his or her mandate by pressing a button in the EVM, the VVPAT connected to it prints a slip containing the poll symbol and the name of the candidate. Slips from a randomly selected polling booth from each constituency are then matched with the EVM tallies during counting to check for the accuracy of the process.
•The VVPATs were added to bring in accountability to the voting process, with many parties questioning whether the EVMs were indeed malpractice or rigging-proof. EVMs, in use since 1998 in India, have been gradually upgraded with security features and the ECI has suggested that it has robust procedural and technical safeguards to prevent EVM-tampering and electoral malpractices such as rigging. The VVPATs were introduced in the past year and were universally used in the Assembly elections in Goa in February 2017. But the addition of the VVPAT has also increased the complexity of the otherwise simple single programmable chip-based device, rendering it more prone to glitches. The Technical Experts Committee of the ECI is tasked with finding remedial solutions in such situations.
📰 India, Bangladesh ocean scientists to work together
Scientists from Bangladesh Oceanographic Research Institute and National Institute of Oceanography, Goa will study India's Exclusive Economic Zone
•Ocean research scientists of the National Institute of Oceanography (NIO) would get an opportunity to work together with Bangladesh Oceanographic Research Institute (BORI) in areas where work has not been started in that country’s Exclusive Economic Zone(EEZ), said Director of NIO Sunil Kumar Singh here on Monday.
•He was addressing presspersons in the presence of a visiting delegation from Bangladesh led by Ashok Kumar Biswas, Director General, (BORI). The delegation was on a two-day visit to CSIR-National Institute of Oceanography, Dona Paula.
•Mr. Singh said that the visit was in connection with the recent Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) signed between the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) and Bangladesh Council of Scientific and Industrial Research (BCSIR), in Dhaka, towards a mutual co-operation between both the countries.
•The delegation visited CSIR-NIO to chalk out programme and plan towards training the manpower from Bangladesh for oceanographic research. “BORI is a new institute established three months back. They are going to start their research activity very soon. India has committed to help CHOGAM countries, Small Island Developing States (SIDS) countries and all Indian ocean countries,” said Mr. Singh.
•“We are going to help the new institute in all the aspects. Scientists from BORI will be visiting NIO on short and long-term duration to have training in oceanographic research and to have understanding of the subject. Similarly, NIO scientists will be visiting BORI to impart training in various fields of oceanography. It will not be limited to training, but we will be doing joint oceanographic research,” he said.
•“Bangladesh has got support since 1971 from Indian Government and have been getting full support from India since then. We feel that without India we will not be developed,’’ said Mr. Biswas.
•The delegation will also visit National Institute of Ocean Technology in Chennai.
📰 ‘Gaj Yatra’ honours Meghalaya’s elephant corridor effort
The initiative aims to secure 100 routes across the country for safe passage
•In 2014, villagers in Meghalaya’s Garo Hills set aside a part of their community-owned land to create village reserve forests, giving right of passage to elephants.
•In acknowledgement of that gesture, the Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change and the Wildlife Trust of India (WTI) on Monday rolled out the ‘Gaj Yatra’ from Tura, the principal town of Garo Hills.
People’s initiative
•’Gaj Yatra’, a “journey celebrating India’s national heritage animal”, aims at securing 100 elephant corridors across India. Four of these are in Meghalaya,including the Siju-Rewak corridor that some 1,000 elephants use to travel between the Balpakram and Nokrek National Parks in the State.
•“The campaign has aptly been launched in the Garo Hills, where the people have created community forests for human-elephant harmony and conservation of animals such as hoolock gibbon,” Vivek Menon, executive director of WTI, said after the four-day campaign was flagged off.
•The event involves taking an elephant mascot across districts frequented by jumbo herds for generating awareness among the people.
•Meghalaya Home Minister James K. Sangma said the ‘Gaj Yatra’ could go a long way in providing space for elephants to move. “There have been 14,700 cases of man-animal conflicts that may have occurred due to space constraint and less food available,” he said.
•He underlined the role of Nokmas, traditional custodians of the land, in supporting the move towards co-existence between man and animal and helping conservationists for the success of the initiative. Expansion of human settlements have resulted in fragmented elephant habitats in the Garo Hills, leading to conflicts.
📰 The Jan-Dhan Yojana, four years later
Indebtedness shows no signs of abating as a result of the government’s flagship scheme
•The Pradhan Mantri Jan-Dhan Yojana (PMJDY), one of the flagship schemes of the present government, was launched in August 2014. The ‘J’ in JDY is the ‘J’ in ‘JAM’ (Jan Dhan-Aadhaar-Mobile) through which the Economic Survey of 2015 claimed that “every tear from every eye” could be wiped. As the Narendra Modi government enters its fifth year, a critical evaluation of the scheme is in order, especially since this is one of the schemes through which the government is trying to battle its anti-poor image.
•The recently released World Bank Global Findex data show that 80% of Indian adults now have a bank account, which is being celebrated as the success of the JDY. While the increase in the proportion of adults having bank accounts is indeed impressive (80% in 2017 from 53% in 2014), 48% of those who have an account in a financial institution made no withdrawal or deposit in the past one year.
•Financial inclusion is not just about opening bank accounts, but also about using these accounts and providing access to formal credit. In fact, the major limitation of the JDY has been that while it has managed to get many people to open bank accounts, there is no commensurate increase in the use of these accounts, availability of formal credit, or savings in financial institutions, especially among the country’s marginalised and poorer sections.
Access to formal credit
•One of the ways in which access to credit can be assessed is the credit-deposit ratio, which tells us how much credit can be availed per ₹100 of bank deposits by a particular population group. The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) categorises the population into rural, semi-urban, urban, and metropolitan. We look at the first two regions specifically where one would expect the poorer beneficiaries to be present in larger numbers. Figure 1 shows that the credit-deposit ratio for the rural population increased from 41% in 1999 to 66.9% in 2016. However, much of the rise took place before the JDY was launched, particularly during the tenure of the United Progressive Alliance-1 government, when the credit-deposit ratio increased from 43.6% in 2004 to 57.1% in 2009. Since 2014, it has more or less stagnated in rural areas and has deteriorated slightly from 58.2% in 2014 to 57.7% in 2016 for semi-urban populations. Therefore, there is no sign, at least on this count, of increased access to formal credit that the PMJDY is supposed to have ensured for its beneficiaries.
•To get a more accurate picture of access to credit for poorer populations, we look at the data by credit size. The RBI provides figures for credit at a disaggregated level in terms of small versus large borrowers. Small borrowers are defined as those with outstanding loans under ₹2 lakh. And the picture here is no better. The share of small borrowers in total credit has also been falling during the Modi government (Figure 2). In fact, it has been falling since 2002. While the decline in the share during the 2004-14 period can be explained by the dramatic rise in corporate credit of large borrowers, there is no reversal in this trend even after the rate of growth of credit fell in general in more recent times as a result of rising non-performing assets and the debt overhang of public sector banks. Even in 2016, the best year under Mr. Modi on this count, it merely matches the lowest rates of growth witnessed during the crisis period of 2009-10. Based on these trends, it can be argued that there seems to be no increase in access to credit for the poor whether as a result of the JDY or otherwise. At best, the status quo has been maintained.
•To further probe access to credit for small borrowers, we look at these loans in two categories — agricultural credit and personal loans — which are more likely to be the ones which JDY beneficiaries will be using as against industrial or other loans. The data show that while the share of small agricultural credit has stagnated during this regime, that of the small personal loans, which covers home, vehicle, durable goods and so on, has fallen.
Dealing with money lenders
•Poor households in India, in the absence of access to formal credit, have to deal with moneylenders who charge exorbitant rates of interest. This is one of their biggest worries. A recent source that is available in this regard is the Household Survey on India’s Citizen Environment and Consumer Economy, 2016, which shows that while for the top 1% of the population, one in six are exposed to informal credit, within the poorest section of the population, the figure is four times as high, with two in three taking credit from informal sources. Access to bank accounts seems to have had little effect on their dependence on private money lenders.
•About the issue of money lenders, a study by the RBI in 2017 states: “We document high levels of unsecured debt, and perhaps more importantly, debt taken from non-institutional sources such as moneylenders. Such debt generates high costs for Indian households, and... is likely to lead to households becoming trapped in a long cycle of interest repayments. We note that this phenomenon has been well-documented over the decades, but nevertheless remains stubbornly persistent.” Therefore, it is not surprising that the report finds that nearly half of the households that take loans from moneylenders are not able to repay them in time, which is a typical condition for a debt trap.
•To conclude, the available evidence presented so far does not suggest that the precarious conditions of indebtedness that poor people of this country find themselves in has seen any signs of abating as a result of the JDY.
📰 The impact of environment on FDI
What are the variables that investment is dependent on?
•Is foreign direct investment (FDI) linked to easing environmental regulations? The pollution haven hypothesis, which theorises that global industries flock to places with low environmental regulation, was tested recently in the India by Vinish Kathuria, a Professor at the Indian Institute of Technology, Bombay. The findings were published in a study titled ‘Does environmental governance matter for foreign direct investment? Testing the pollution haven hypothesis for Indian States’ in the Asian Development Review. The results from 21 States show that environmental regulation has little impact on FDI, which is dependent on other variables of infrastructure and labour instead. In terms of policy, it would help India if it focussed more on these factors rather than on a blanket change in environmental regulation.
•To tabulate the impact of environmental regulation on industry, Kathuria looked at the pollution abatement expenditures of the manufacturing sector between 2002 and 2010. In theory, higher costs in dealing with pollution from an industry show stricter environmental norms being in place.
•Of the 28 States reviewed, 16 saw pollution abatement costs reduce (including Maharashtra, Gujarat, Tamil Nadu and Karnataka), while only in 11 States did the costs increase (undivided Andhra Pradesh, Odisha, Haryana, Madhya Pradesh and Kerala).
•Kathuria also looked at industrial composition, which previous studies had not dealt with. A State with a high number of chemical industries, for instance, will have higher environmental costs despite the level of environmental regulations. To adjust for this, Kathuria created a industrial-composition-adjusted abatement index using unit level data from the Annual Survey of Industries. The index shows that Chandigarh, Odisha and Karnataka have the highest environmental stringency, while Bihar, Delhi and the northeastern States have the lowest.
•FDI inflows were also compared to the control variables of per capita income of 21 States, manufacturing share of the State GDP, installed electricity generation capacity, transmission and distribution losses in the power sector (a reflection of industrial regulations), literacy, proximity to coast, and the readiness of a State to accept investments.
•The study’s statistical models employed showed a positive correlation with industrial and economic regulations, while the study notes: “Environmental stringency does not influence a foreign firm’s location decision when other infrastructure and market access-related factors are considered.”
📰 Closure must stand test of due process: experts
Sections 31A, 33A of Air, Water Acts arm the Executive with “coercive power”
•Legal experts are divided in their opinions over the decision of the Tamil Nadu Pollution Control Board to cut the electricity and shut down the Sterlite plant at Thoothukudi in Tamil Nadu.
•Noted environmental lawyer M.C. Mehta terms it as “fire-fighting” by the Tamil Nadu government, which had “slept for years” only to wake up after the recent bloodshed in police firing.
Tanneries closure order
•However, former solicitor general Mohan Parasaran said the Board flexed its “wide” powers under Section 33A of the Water (Prevention and Control of Pollution) Act of, 1974 and Section 31A of the Air (Prevention and Control of Pollution) Act, 1981 only after complying with the “due process requirements”.
•He compares this use of executive power to the closure of over 900 tanneries in Tamil Nadu. The government order was upheld by the Supreme Court in 1996 in the Vellore Citizens Welfare Forum verdict, which said though “industry is of vital importance to the country as it generates foreign exchange and provides employment avenues, it has no right to destroy the ecology, degrade the environment and pose as a health hazard”.
•But Mr. Mehta, who has initiated over half the environmental case laws in the Supreme Court and whom Supreme Court judge, Justice Madan B. Lokur, who heads the Green Bench, recently called an “experienced resource on environmental law”, said dearth of laws have never been a problem.
•“The same wide powers found in Sections 31A and 33A of Air Act and Water Act, respectively, are found in Section 5 of the Environment Protection Act, 1986. For that matter, the emergency clause of Section 133 of the Code of Criminal Procedure gives the area District Magistrate or Sub-Divisional Magistrate powers to pass a conditional order for removal of nuisance to our natural resources... It has always been the lacking of will,” Mr. Mehta said.
•Legal experts point to Delhi High Court’s detailed judgment, delivered by Justice S. Muralidhar, on the nuances of Sections 31A and 33A in the Splendor Landbase case, concerning the non-procurement of consent orders under the Air and Water Acts.
Teeth to executive
•Both 31A and 33A are not part of the original statutes, they were added on in 1988 by way of amendments. They are both almost identical in language though parts of two different statutes. Both provisions arm the Executive with “coercive power” to close, prohibit or regulate “any industry, operation or process”. They can also stop or regulate supply of electricity, water or any other service.
•Experts agrees that if the Tamil Nadu Board’s closure order is challenged in court, the test would be whether the principles of natural justice were observed by the Board before the exercise of such power. Justice Muralidhar, in the Splendor Landbase verdict, interprets the correct procedure for use of Section 31A and 33A to shut down an industry.
•For one, no “corrective steps” can be taken by a Pollution Control Board under Section 31A and 33A “without issuing a show cause notice and without giving an opportunity to the alleged violator to rectify the defects detected during an inspection of the premises carried out in accordance with the relevant rules.
•Experts say the State government has chosen to walk the tight-rope by employing Sections 31A and 33A. Any deviation from procedure would make the act of closure “vulnerable to invalidation on the grounds of arbitrariness and unreasonableness”.
•Experts point out that the Supreme Court has categorically held in its Indian Council for Enviro-Legal Action case judgment that a Pollution Control Board can order closure of any industry or stop basic facilities to it only if such a direction is necessary for effective implementation of the provisions of the Water or Air Act. That is the test ahead.
📰 EU proposes ban on straws, other single-use plastics
Move necessitated after plastic waste started showing up in the food chain
•The European Union proposed on Monday a bloc-wide ban on single-use plastics such as straws, cutlery and cotton buds while urging the collection of most plastic drinks bottles by 2025.
•The set of proposals are part of a growing EU drive to rid the environment of plastic waste which has begun showing up in the food chain. “Plastic waste is undeniably a big issue and Europeans need to act together to tackle this problem,” EU First Vice President Frans Timmermans said.
No deadline set
•“Today’s proposals will reduce single-use plastics on our supermarket shelves through a range of measures,” Mr. Timmermans added. The proposals call for banning banning plastic cotton buds, cutlery, plates, straws, drink stirrers and balloon sticks, but it did not set a deadline.
•These items must all be made from sustainable materials instead, according to the plan which must be approved by the 28 EU member countries and the European Parliament. Member states must reduce the use of plastic food containers and drinks cups, by promoting alternatives for sale or ensuring they are not offered free.
•Producers must contribute to the costs of waste management and will be offered incentives to develop less polluting alternatives. For example, it calls for producers of plastic fishing gear to cover the cost of waste collection from port reception facilities.
Sustainable alternatives
•Member countries must collect 90% of single-use plastic drinks bottles by 2025, through deposit refund schemes, for example. The plan calls for producers to clearly label products and inform consumers how the waste should be disposed of.
•The proposals, plus one in January for all plastic packaging in Europe to be recyclable by 2030, follows China’s decision to ban imports of foreign waste products for recycling.
