📰 India, Seychelles talk of ‘mutual welfare’ on Assumption Island project
The statement is the first from the PM since the Seychelles parliament last week refused to ratify an Indian naval base plan on the island.
•India and Seychelles will ensure mutually beneficial steps regarding stalled plans for a military base at the island of Assumption, Prime Minister Narendra Modi. Speaking at Hyderabad House here at the end of a bilateral meeting with visiting Seychelles President Danny Faure, Mr. Modi announced several initiatives for the strategically located country that included the grant of a major Line of Credit (LoC) for purchase of defence hardware.
•“On the project of Assumption island, we have agreed to work for the welfare of each other,” said Mr. Modi, welcoming the visiting President.
Crucial for defence
•The statement is the first from the Prime Minister since the National Assembly of Seychelles last week refused to ratify the naval base that India has been planning to build on the island of Assumption to provide a foot- hold in the western Indian Ocean.
•The island has been at the centre of high profile maritime diplomacy between India and Seychelles, which was boosted with Prime Minister Modi’s 2015 visit.
•In his remarks, President Faure also stated that both sides remain engaged on the issue. “(We) will continue to work together, bearing each other’s interest in mind,” said Mr. Faure.
•It is not clear how both sides would take the project forward in the absence of a parliamentary ratification.
Security cooperation
•However, India made it clear that its security and strategic cooperation will go ahead with Seychelles by declaring a major Line of Credit for the defence sector.
•“I am happy in announcing a $100 million Line of Credit for Seychelles that it can use to buy military hardware from India for building its maritime capacity,” said Mr. Modi, elaborating that India and Seychelles have convergence of views on the geostrategic importance of the Indian Ocean region.
•He also declared that both sides would intensify cooperation to carry out hydrographical studies of the maritime region and have declared exchange of necessary oceanic maps between two sides.
•India also gifted a Dornier aircraft to Seychelles. “This will reach on time to participate in the June 29 National Day of Seychelles,” said Prime Minister Modi.
•“We have expressed our strong desire to elevate our bilateral relation to a comprehensive partnership of greater strategic partnership,” said Mr Faure.
•India also declared that India will remain committed to Seychelles’ development.
•“India is ready to finance three civilian infrastructure projects in Seychelles under Special Grant. Government House, New Police Headquarters and the Office of the Attorney General is included in this,” declared Prime Minister Modi.
•India will remain committed to capacity development of Seychelles.
•“India will send officials to Seychelles to support the country for projects that it decides for itself,” Prime Minister Modi said.
•President Faure expressed his country’s appreciation of the Indian moves and said that his country will soon be celebrating the 250th anniversary of the arrival of the Indian origin people to the archipelago.
•The Prime Minister also thanked the visiting President for gifting two large Aldabra turtles that are unique and are known to live for centuries.
Six agreements
•Both sides sealed six agreements including one that will twin Panjim in Goa with Victoria of Seychelles.
•President Faure arrived in Gujarat on 22 June and has travelled to Goa before reaching Delhi on Sunday.
📰 Centre may miss NRC deadline
A source said the Centre might move the Supreme Court to extend the deadline for the publication of the final draft from June 30 to July 8.
•The Centre will send more armed police forces to Assam as the deadline for the final draft of the National Register of Citizens (NRC) nears. A senior Home Ministry official said the State had requested additional forces, which were being sent as per the “assessment and availability.” The situation was not alarming but these were precautionary steps.
•A source said the Centre might move the Supreme Court to extend the deadline for the publication of the final draft from June 30 to July 8. “The State is affected by floods and there are several areas where the enumeration has been impacted. We need more time to complete the process.” As per the court direction, the Registrar-General of India is to publish the final list on June 30 to segregate Indian citizens from those who illegally entered the State from Bangladesh after March 25, 1971.
•“When the first draft was published on December 31, there were no law and order incidents reported. We have made adequate arrangements and forces would be on standby for the publication of the final draft,” said the official.
•“There are concerns in the State that those names that do not appear in the list cease to be Assamese citizens. There is another stage of claims and objections. If anyone has been excluded they can avail this option,” said the official.
•He explained that after the claims and objections have been rejected, the trial of such subjects would be held at Foreigners Tribunals. “There are around 100 such Tribunals in the State and till now we have not received any request from the Assam Government for creation of new ones,” said the official.
•The final draft will be put up at over 3,000 government “seva kendras” and be also be available on the website of RGI.
•The exercise to update the NRC is being carried out in Assam following a decision in 2005 after a series of meetings between the Central and State governments and the All Assam Students’ Union (AASU) in an attempt to document the bona fide Indian citizens living in Assam.
•When the NRC was first prepared in Assam in 1951, the State had 80 lakh citizens.
•A six-year agitation demanding identification and deportation of illegal immigrants was launched by the AASU in 1979. It culminated in the signing of the Assam Accord on August 15, 1985 in the presence of then Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi.
📰 Erdoğan’s day: On Turkey polls
Turkey’s President breezes through the election and will now wield enhanced powers
•Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s re-election as President of Turkey comes as no surprise. With this, his authoritarian grip will be further consolidated; in the new term, he will acquire the sweeping executive powers given to the presidency through last year’s referendum. With Mr. Erdoğan’s Justice and Development Party (AKP) and its allies also winning the parliamentary election, his control over the government is untrammelled. The elections were held in a state of emergency, imposed in July 2016 following a coup attempt. One presidential candidate, Selahattin Demirtaş of the pro-Kurdish Peoples Democratic Party (HDP), contested from prison. The outcome, which was expected, is a big setback to the secularist Republican People’s Party, the main Opposition. Its candidate, Muharrem İnce, who ended up with 30.7% of the vote compared to Mr. Erdoğan’s 52.6%, had promised to bring back a system of checks and balances over presidential power by strengthening civil liberties and restoring a constitutional democratic order. Mr. İnce had attempted a new compact between Turkey’s secular vote bank and religious conservatives, in an attempt to overcome the distrust between the statist-secularists and Islamic parties that has polarised Turkish politics since the days of Mustafa Kemal Atatürk. The rise of the neo-Islamist AKP and the consolidation of Mr. Erdoğan’s power drew from the backlash against the statist-secularists and the economic growth in the first decade of AKP rule.
•A faltering economy, characterised by plunging foreign direct investment, high inflation and a depreciating lira, had given the Opposition some hope of taking the fight to Mr. Erdoğan. But the President’s polarising personality and his party’s wide organisational reach, coupled with the perception that he was the right person to revive economic growth, helped him retain power. His electoral victory will embolden his regime to continue its authoritarian policies against critics, a greater worry now in the face of his newly acquired powers. His victory is likely to see Turkey continuing with its belligerent role in the West Asian neighbourhood. For minorities such as the Kurds, the silver lining is the fact that Mr. Demirtaş’s liberal-democratic HDP managed to win more than 10% of the vote to secure entry into Parliament. In contrast to Mr. Erdoğan’s triumphalism as the results trickled in, Mr. İnce was graceful in defeat and promised to work as an Opposition force for a more democratic Turkey. A stable, democratic and pluralist Turkey is essential in a neighbourhood that continues to be blighted by ethnically driven civil wars. As things stand, Mr. Erdoğan’s victory signals another hyper-nationalist, authoritarian turn.
📰 Reduce, segregate: On plastic ban
We need substitutes for plastic, incentives to re-use, and better waste disposal
•Maharashtra’s ban on several consumer articles made of plastic, introduced after a three-month notice period to industry and users, is an extreme measure. It is naturally disruptive, and Mumbai, famed for its resilience in the face of urban challenges, is trying to adapt quickly. Today, stemming the plastic tide is a national imperative. India hosted this year’s World Environment Day and Prime Minister Narendra Modi made a high-profile pledge, to international acclaim, that it would do away with all single-use plastics by 2022. This goal is not yet backed by an action plan so that State governments and local bodies can be in sync. Worldwide, the problem has got out of hand, with only 9% of about nine billion tonnes of plastic produced getting recycled. India has an uninspiring record when it comes to handling waste. It has patchy data on volumes, and even less on what it recycles. This lackadaisical approach is at odds with its ambitious goals. Quite simply, if the Centre and the States had got down to dealing with the existing regulations on plastic waste management and municipal solid waste, a ban would not even have become necessary. Specifications for the recycling of different types of plastics were issued two decades ago by the Bureau of Indian Standards.
•To address the global concern that the bulk of India’s plastic waste — estimated officially at 26,000 tonnes a day — is being dumped in the oceans, there has to be an effort on a war footing to segregate it at source. The Urban Development Secretary in each State, who heads the monitoring committee under the rules, should be mandated to produce a monthly report on how much plastic waste is collected, including details of the types of chemicals involved, and the disposal methods. Such compulsory disclosure norms will maintain public pressure on the authorities, including the State Pollution Control Boards. But segregation at source has not taken off, as there is little awareness, official support or infrastructure. Even bulk generators such as shopping malls, hotels and offices do not abide by the law. Priority, therefore, should be given to stop the generation of mixed waste, which prevents recovery of plastics. Companies covered by extended producer responsibility provisions must be required to take back their waste. In parallel, incentives to reduce the use of plastic carry bags, single-use cups, plates and cutlery must be in place. Retailers must be required to switch to paper bags. Potentially, carry bag production using cloth can create more jobs than machines using plastic pellets. What needs to be underscored is that plastics became popular because they are inexpensive, can be easily produced and offer great convenience. But, as the UN Environment Programme notes, their wild popularity has turned them into a scourge. Consumers will be ready to make the switch, but they need good alternatives.
📰 At the crossroads: on mob violence
Two images frame our choice today, police standing by indifferently or rescuing the victim and thereby the mob
•This is about footage and photographs of two events, like two strips of memory; cuttings from everydayness. One of them, from Hapur in Uttar Pradesh this month, shows a vigilante group hunting for alleged cow slaughterers and smugglers. It is a blood sport. The mob picks up Sameyddin, a 65-year-old man, and forces him to confess. It then drags a 45-year-old, Qasim, like a sack before it lynches him. He begs for water as he is being beaten up, but the mob refuses.
•What is even more terrifying than the violence is the indifference of the policemen in front of the crowd. They don’t seem to care, barely registering the event. An apology from the authorities is an ironic addition to the unbelievable tableau.
•The second incident occurred in May, at Ramnagar in Uttarakhand’s Nainital district. A Hindu woman and a Muslim man get isolated in a temple. The mob drags the man out, hitting him at random. A policeman stands up to the mob, protecting the victim with his body. The crowd around waits in anticipation. All that stands between them and their target is the Sikh policeman.
Chronicling violence
•Two videos, two fragments, two vignettes of violence. How does one react to the chronicler of violence? Every interpretation is an act of risk, and a mediation on violence demands nothing less.
•Marshall McLuhan, the philosopher of communication once claimed pithily that ‘the medium is the message’. McLuhan’s comments may have become textbook clichés but even now the original power of the insight seeps through. We realise more and more that how we communicate determines what we communicate. We sense this as we watch the video.
•Violence in India today is always communicated as a video strip; a piece of gossip floating in digital time. Today we feel that the video as a fragment embodies us best. The video presents voyeurism combined with the open bleakness of an anatomy class. The irony is that an instrument that recorded family marriages has now become the archive for the collective violence of the time. Between video and selfie, we write today’s history. Mob violence is the new serial of our time.
•We have to theorise a little about the video before we analyse the two fragments more specifically. It is not merely that the video/photograph captures every act of public violence, it also makes the private public. The image links violence as an act of production with violence as consumption. It is almost as if it attempts to create a new idea of the social. The old idea of the social around the family or state sounds tired and empty, even stale. The new social is quick to form and quick to dispense. It is represented by the mob. Today the social, or the sense of the collective, is constituted around the mob and its violence.
Understanding the mob
•Three terms then become critical: the mob, the spectacle and the spectator. It is as if the mob has taken over history and myth, combining the worst of nature and culture. There is no equivalent of the hero in history, as in the warrior or the satyagrahi. There is no concept like class or state, just the mob waiting for a random trigger. The mob’s double is the crowd. There is little to choose from — one plays the perpetrator and the other the spectator. Both are hungry for the spectacle. The only reminder that we live in a society subject to constitutional rules is the policeman. The policeman too can merge into the background and play the spectator indifferent to spectacle. His indifference, his boredom have an edge as he sits as if waiting for his favourite serial. The victim, by the very label Dalit, Muslim or woman, is the only social category; the scapegoat marked for violence. The indifference of the police in the video appears both surreal and slapstick. It spooks justice, the concept of duty, the Constitution as they let the violence go on. Of course, it all occurs in U.P. but U.P. could be any place on earth. The lynch mob has not only overtaken law and order but also overwhelmed history and civics. The only humanity might be with the victim, in his vulnerability, in his desperation to communicate, in his scream, in his powerlessness, protests against brute force and against the fact that law, morals, language, rules, prayer are all helpless. A god might listen out of pity or even habit, but not a mob. Depraved human behaviour makes savage animal behaviour look tame. Animals rarely demand excess, but excess is the first signal of the mob.
•Violence today lacks a sense of myth or even metaphor. There is no sense of the epic to the events — banality literally dogs them. It is as if it is in the Hobbesian world that the digital domain finds expression. The history of man with the mob in control is ‘nasty, brutish and short’. The body is devoid of any sense of sacrament. It is dispensable. The Indian cosmos is like a butcher’s shop, and it is no longer Picasso or Goya who are relevant. One remembers the Norwegian painter Edvard Munch. His painting, ‘The Scream’, is more relevant as it captures violence and sheer primordiality of pain. It captures the brutality, the sheer barbarism of man against man.
Making sense of it
•The two events in a way create a fable, an Indian version of The Good Samaritan. The Good Samaritan as a story does not only belong to the Bible. Like all great religious tales, it is universal, producing vernacular variations everywhere.
•The fable asks, who is the stranger, the other? It answers, the other is an extension of the self. Society, it argues, cannot be made of similarity and uniformity but it crucially needs difference and the celebration of difference to keep society alive. As the South African philosopher A.C. Jordan advised, “One needs to reinvent the stranger constantly to keep society alive.” Gagandeep Singh, the policeman at Ramnagar, plays the good Samaritan. At a time when police brutality is at its prime as in Thoothukudi, Tamil Nadu, the policeman and the citizen become “others” to each other. To this we add the distance between a fundamentalist mob and its victim. When a policeman like Gagandeep Singh rescues a victim, the fable of the Good Samaritan is enacted once again.
•The first picture, from Hapur, displays the standard indifference of society to its other. Citizenship and authority come alive when the other becomes part of the creative self. Society in this fable is born when one creates civility. Gagandeep Singh’s act shows that society has to care to continue. The two pictures become ‘before’ and ‘after’ pictures of one narrative. It is up to us as seekers of meaning to read it. One exemplary act shows what is possible with a bit of courage and a touch of patience. The policeman protects the victim but does nothing to imitate the crowd. It is also a reminder that a social contract does not come alive because of formal rules. It comes alive when someone is ready to sacrifice for it.
•We need a new testament for our society to keep exemplary events alive beyond constitutional clichés. Our law and order history must capture it in a more memorable way. This is the ethical and narrative challenge of our time.
📰 An unequal platter
It is time the government finds a sustainable solution to the malnutrition crisis
•Development is about expanding the capabilities of the disadvantaged, thereby improving their overall quality of life. Based on this understanding, Maharashtra, one of India’s richest States, is a classic case of a lack of development which is seen in its unacceptably high level of malnutrition among children in the tribal belts. While the State’s per capita income has doubled since 2004 (the result of sustained high economic growth), its nutritional status has not made commensurate progress.
A comparison
•A comparison of nutrition indicators for children under five years, using the third and fourth rounds of the National Family Health Survey (NFHS) 2015–2016 and 2005-06, shows this: though stunting has declined from 46.3% to 34.4%, wasting rates have increased from 16.5% to 25.6%. Further, the underweight rate (36%) has remained static in the last 10 years. This is worse than in some of the world’s poorest countries — Bangladesh (33%), Afghanistan (25%) or Mozambique (15%). This level of poor nutrition security disproportionately affects the poorest segment of the population.
•According to NFHS 2015-16, every second tribal child suffers from growth restricting malnutrition due to chronic hunger. In 2005, child malnutrition claimed as many as 718 lives in Maharashtra’s Palghar district alone. Even after a decade of double digit economic growth (2004-05 to 2014-15), Palghar’s malnutrition status has barely improved.
Results from a survey
•In September 2016, the National Human Rights Commission issued notice to the Maharashtra government over reports of 600 children dying due to malnutrition in Palghar. The government responded, promising to properly implement schemes such as Jaccha Baccha and Integrated Child Development Services to check malnutrition. Our independent survey conducted in Vikramgad block of the district last year found that 57%, 21% and 53% of children in this block were stunted, wasted and underweight, respectively; 27% were severely stunted. Our data challenges what Maharashtra’s Women and Child Development Minister Pankaja Munde said in the Legislative Council in March — that “malnutrition in Palghar had come down in the past few months, owing to various interventions made by the government.”
Scant diet diversity
•Stunting is caused by an insufficient intake of macro- and micro-nutrients. It is generally accepted that recovery from growth retardation after two years is only possible if the affected child is put on a diet that is adequate in nutrient requirements. A critical aspect of nutrient adequacy is diet diversity, calculated by different groupings of foods consumed with the reference period ranging from one to 15 days. We calculated a 24-hour dietary diversity score by counting the number of food groups the child received in the last 24 hours.
•The eight food groups include: cereals, roots and tubers; legumes and nuts; dairy products; flesh foods; eggs; fish; dark green leafy vegetables; and other fruits and vegetables. And 26% and 57% of the children (83% put together) had a dietary diversity score of two and three, respectively, implying that they had had food from only two/three of the eight food groups.
•In most households it was rice and dal which was cooked most often and eaten thrice a day. These were even served at teatime to the children if they felt hungry. There was no milk, milk product or fruit in their daily diets. Even the adults drank black tea as milk was unaffordable. Only 17% of the children achieved a minimum level of diet diversity — they received four or more of the eight food groups. This low dietary diversity is a proxy indicator for the household’s food security too as the children ate the same food cooked for adult members.
•Such acute food insecurity in tribal households is due to a loss of their traditional dependence on forest livelihood and the State’s deepening agrarian crisis. Besides these, systemic issues and a weakening of public nutrition programmes have aggravated the problem. For example, 20% of tribal families did not receive rations (public distribution system) in Vikramgad (in Palghar) as they did not have a card.
•Analysis of the State’s Budget shows that the nutrition expenditure as a percentage of the State Budget has drastically declined from 1.68% in 2012-13 to 0.94% in 2018-19, a pointer to the government’s falling commitment to nutrition. It is no wonder then that our survey data show that nutrition schemes are not having the desired impact.
•It is time the government looks at the root cause of the issue and finds a sustainable solution for tackling malnutrition. This is possible only when the state focusses on inclusive development by creating employment opportunities for the marginalised which would improve their purchasing power and, in turn, reduce malnutrition.
📰 Uniquely placed
The Finance Commission must heed the Northeast’s challenges
•The 15th Finance Commission (FC) is in the process of figuring out a fair formula for the distribution of net tax proceeds between the Union and the States, and among States.
•The 14th FC had adopted a formula-based tax devolution approach, apart from grants-in-aid for local bodies, disaster relief, and post-devolution revenue deficit grants. The share of devolution to the States was enhanced to 42% from 32%, which gave the States considerable flexibility. However, it dispensed with sectoral grants for elementary education, the forest sector and renewable energy sector, among others. No State-specific grants were recommended. The assumption was that a higher level of devolution would offset other requirements.
•The devolution formula, therefore, is central to the approach of resource transfers. The 14th FC accorded 27.5% weight to the population (of which 17.5% was of the 1971 population), 15% to area, 7.5% to forest cover and 50% to income distance. Larger States with larger populations have a greater requirement of resources. Income distance was adopted as a proxy for fiscal capacity, and forest cover was given weightage for the first time, underscoring ecological benefits.
A distinct entity
•The Northeast represents a distinct entity for developmental planning and has a special category status. Low levels of human development indices, a low resource base, and poor connectivity and infrastructure pose a different challenge which must be taken into account in the devolution formula.
•Central Ministries earmark 10% of their allocations for the Northeast. By the same logic, 10% of tax proceeds could be earmarked for vertical devolution to the region. A number of centrally sponsored schemes have been rolled out where the obligation of State share is huge, adding to revenue expenditure. Sometimes the real burden (as in the case of Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan) is far more than the mandated 10%. Many centrally sponsored schemes are discontinued midway, and the burden of employee salaries falls on the States. Maintenance of assets, such as rural roads under the Pradhan Mantri Gram Sadak Yojana, require huge expenditure, especially in hilly States. A 20% cost disability was allowed by the 13th FC while allocating grants for road maintenance.
•The 13th FC acknowledged the different position of the Northeast while arriving at the formula for horizontal devolution. Its twin guiding principles were equity and efficiency. It accorded 47.5% weight to fiscal capacity distance. Per capita GSDP was taken as a proxy for fiscal capacity, but States were divided into two groups, general and special category States, given that the average tax to GSDP ratio was higher for the former. Three-year per capita GSDP was computed separately in these two groups, weighted means of tax to GSDP ratio obtained, and per capita tax revenue was assessed for each State. Fiscal distance was thereafter calculated on estimated per capita revenue with reference to the highest State, which was then multiplied by the 1971 populations to arrive at the share of each State. There was much merit in this approach, which was in contrast to the 14th FC which used per capita GSDP as an indicator of fiscal capacity uniformly for all States.
•The revision of the base year to 2011-12 by the Central Statistics Office from 2004-05 also created complications. Arunachal Pradesh, for instance, saw a sudden spike in per capita GSDP. This was primarily on account of the fact that 73% of the GSDP was calculated on the allocation method as compared to 34% earlier. This saw a jump in gross value added in mining, construction, electricity, etc., even with a negligible industrial base.
Comparing apples with apples
•The Northeast also bears a disproportionate burden of natural disasters every year on account of rainfall. The 14th FC disaster relief grants bore no correlation with vulnerability but were ad hoc extrapolations of previous allocations. The Energy and Resources Institute has computed an index of vulnerability of all States. The disaster vulnerability index is highest for the Northeast; this needs to be factored in while allocating grants. The region also has the highest forest cover and represents the largest carbon sink nationally. Allocating 10% for forest cover would encourage States to preserve the forests.
•The Terms of Reference of the 15th FC also mention performance-based incentives based on improvements in GST collection, Direct Benefit Transfer rollout, etc. This would definitely infuse a spirit of competition. However, the performance of the Northeastern States must be benchmarked with other Northeastern States so that apples are not compared with oranges. The challenge for the Commission, as one member said, is “to strike a balance between those who need and those who perform”.
📰 A TB vaccine for diabetics?
A study that promises safe treatment for type-1 diabetes
•The century-old tuberculosis vaccine called BCG (Bacillus Calmette–Guérin) might lower blood sugar in diabetes patients several years after they get the shot, a small but path-breaking study, published in npj Vaccines, suggests.
•In the study, “Long-term reduction in hyperglycemia in advanced type 1 diabetes”, three patients with type-1 diabetes received two jabs of the BCG vaccine. Three years later, another six patients received the same treatment. When the trial investigators, led by immunologist Denise L. Faustman from Massachusetts General Hospital in the U.S. followed these patients for five years after that, they found a sustained drop in a marker for high-blood sugar called HbA1c. Also, none of the patients experienced hypoglycaemia, or dangerously low blood sugar, a potentially life-threatening side-effect in patients taking insulin. Given the patent-free status of BCG, the study promises a safe and inexpensive treatment for type-1 diabetes, if replicated in larger clinical trials.
•Even though the BCG vaccine doesn’t work very well against childhood TB, it protects against leprosy, sepsis among babies, and leishmaniasis. It is also the first approved immunotherapy against bladder cancer. In a previous phase 1 trial, Faustman and her colleagues gave the BCG vaccine to three patients, finding that the patients produced more pancreatic insulin. Also, they had more of a type of immune cell called Regulatory T cells (Tregs), which protect against autoimmune diseases. Type-1 diabetes is an autoimmune illness in which insulin-secreting pancreatic cells are destroyed by the body’s own immune system. But although BCG seemed to have regenerated the pancreas in the phase 1 trial, the team found little improvement in their patients’ HbA1C levels.
•This is why they continued the trial, hoping the vaccine would impact blood sugar over a longer period. The npj Vaccine study shows that the vaccine can lower blood sugar over a five- to eight-year period.
•While the researchers don’t know why the vaccine takes so long to impact HbA1c, they have an idea about how it does so. Using mice, the researchers showed that the vaccine changed how glucose was metabolised in the body, from a process called oxidative phosphorylation to another called aerobic glycolysis. Plus, BCG also increased the numbers of Tregs. While Tregs help type-1 patients a little, it is the switch to glycolysis which extracts more sugar from the bloodstream, which seems to be behind the improvement in HbA1c.
📰 Centre cannot guarantee power supply to all villages, says official
State-level distribution companies should ensure power availability; Centre can only connect villages and households to grid, says senior Power Ministry bureaucrat.
•While it is the Centre’s responsibility to connect households and villages to the power grid or provide them alternative sources of electricity, it cannot guarantee the supply of electricity to them, Arun Kumar Verma, Joint Secretary in the Power Ministry, said here on Monday.
•The actual supply is the responsibility of the power distribution companies in each State, the official told The Hindu.
•The Centre has claimed 100% electrification of all villages and 83% of all households across the country. It has said that all households will be electrified by the year end.
Discrepancies in claims
•However, an analysis by The Hindu has found several discrepancies between the actual and the on-paper status of electrification.
•In some cases, the electrification infrastructure such as cables and transformers were stolen days after they were installed, leaving the target village unelectrified in reality but connected on paper. In other cases, electricity was supplied for just a few hours a day.
•“It is not our job to go and check every village whether the infrastructure is still there or if they are getting electricity supply,” Mr. Verma said.
•“That has to be done by the State governments and the distribution companies (discoms). But we are aware that access to electricity also means consistent supply.”
•“We are on track to meet the 24x7 power for all deadline by March 2019, in which case not only will all houses be electrified but they will also get electricity through the day,” Mr. Verma said.
Rampant power cuts
•Despite the government pegging India as a power surplus nation, almost every State in the country reels under power cuts, especially during peak summer. This, according to power sector analysts, is because discoms are still very inefficient, with the costs they incur in the transmission far outweighing revenue. Government data show discoms across the country, on an average, lose ₹0.22 a unit of electricity supplied.
•However, the Power Ministry has claimed that this situation is improving rapidly under the Ujwal Discom Assurance Yojana (UDAY), with Power Minister R.K. Singh recently saying that discom losses have drastically reduced to ₹17,352 crore in 2017-18 from ₹51,096 crore in the previous year.
More to achieve
•Sector specialists however, say that while the performance of discoms is improving, they are still not at the performance level to supply electricity 24x7. The only hope of the utilities is continued assistance from the State governments.
•“On their own, the many of the discoms right now are not ready to provide 24x7 power, for two reasons,” Amrit Pandurangi, senior director, infrastructure, Deloitte India, said.
•“The first is their financial health. Most of them are not financially capable to do this. Secondly, only some of the discoms have the infrastructure to supply good quality power on a sustained basis. But if the respective State governments continue to give financial support and assurances to the discoms, then this could definitely improve.”
📰 $4.5 trillion investment needed for infra: FM
India eyes AIIB funds for 9 projects
•The country will need more than $4.5 trillion in investments over a decade to create infrastructure but the cost of such investments will be a challenge, Finance Minister Piyush Goyal said at the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank’s (AIIB) annual meeting on Monday.
•At the same time, the Minister added that finding funds required for such investments will not be a deterrent.
•“Infrastructure creation requires $4.5 trillion in investments over the next 10 years,” Mr. Goyal said while speaking at the AIIB governor’s seminar on mobilising funds for infrastructure.
‘Cost of finance rising’
•Interest rates are rising globally as well as domestically, raising the cost of finance, Mr. Goyal said. India is the second-highest equity investor in AIIB and also the largest recipient of funds from the multilateral agency that started operations in January 2016. India has picked up 28%, or $ 1.4 billion of the AIIB’s total funding for seven projects.
•Later at a press conference, the Finance Minister said the country is looking forward to investments in nine more projects with a funding of $2.4 billion from the Beijing-headquartered agency. “There is a good pipeline of projects that is under consideration with AIIB,” he said.
•On Sunday, AIIB approved an equity investment of $100 million in India’s National Investment and Infrastructure Fund’s (NIIF) and is considering a further investment of $100 million in the future.
•When asked about India’s concern over AIIB’s funding in the China Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) that passes through Pakistan-Occupied-Kashmir (PoK), Mr. Goyal said ‘one cannot dictate’ as to what projects a multilateral agency should invest in.
•“These are independent organisations …not Chinese-led or American-led... it is always a multilateral institution,” he said.
•Pointing out that India was the largest beneficiary of AIIB funds, he said those funds are deployed in both the public and the private sectors.
•When asked if India is planning to make more investments in AIIB, economic affairs secretary S.C. Garg said at this point such investment was not required.
📰 ‘Anchor bank for PSB consolidation put on hold’
Classification of banks into three categories mooted
•The concept of having 5-6 anchor banks and merging weaker banks with them to drive consolidation among public sector banks (PSBs) has been put on the back-burner. Instead, an alternative proposal is before the Finance Ministry, according to T.N. Manoharan, chairman, Canara Bank.
•“The major hurdle comes in the form of culture when it comes to integration. Instead, one of the suggestions made to the Finance Ministry is classifying banks into three categories,” he said.
•One is a universal bank which does all kinds of banking, including corporate lending. The second type includes national retail banks that would focus only on retail lending. Regional retail banks constitute the third type. Mr. Manoharan and Shyam Srinivasan, MD and CEO of Federal Bank, were speaking on the topic ‘Banks-from the brink.’ The Canara Bank Chairman also said Finance Minister Piyush Goyal was keen on the concept of a ‘bad’ bank and if it went through, it would help public sector banks to start afresh.
Infra projects
•“Contrary to public perception that bad loans are due to wilful defaulters and indiscriminate lending, it is only a small segment,” said Mr. Manoharan. “The real issue is commercial banks lending to big infrastructure projects, which got into problems,” he said.
•Mr. Srinivasan said that the phase of recognition of bad loans was over and now, the focus was on recovery.
📰 Toxic air is causing malnutrition in trees
Trend in Europe alarming: study
•Besides affecting human health, air pollution is also causing malnutrition in trees by harming a fungi that is important for providing mineral nutrients to tree roots, finds a new study.
•Mycorrhizal fungi is hosted by the trees in their roots to receive nutrients from the soil. These fungi provide essential nutrients like nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium from soil in exchange for carbon from the tree.
•This plant-fungal symbiotic relationship is crucial for the health of the tree. However, high levels of the nutrition elements like nitrogen and phosphorus in the mycorrhizae changes them to act as pollutants rather than nutrients, the findings showed.
Falling leaves
•The signs of malnutrition can be seen in the form of discoloured leaves and excessive falling of leaves. “There is an alarming trend of tree malnutrition across Europe, which leaves forests vulnerable to pests, disease and climate change,” said lead researcher Martin Bidartondo from Imperial College London. “Processes in soil and roots are often ignored as studying them directly is difficult, but it is crucial for assessing tree functioning.”
•The study, published in the Nature, examined 40,000 roots from 13,000 soil samples at 137 forest sites in 20 European countries for a period of 10 years to determine the fungi’s tolerance to pollution.
•The researchers noted that ecosystem changes can negatively affect tree health. Further, they found that the characteristics of the tree — species and nutrient status — and the local environmental conditions like the atmospheric pollution and soil variables were the most important predictors of which species of mycorrhizae fungi would be present and their numbers. These also proved to have a large impact on the fungi.
•The researchers suggested that the results should be used to design new studies into the link between pollution, soil, mycorrhizae, and tree growth.
