📰 Nawaz Sharif sentenced to 10 years in jail
Daughter Maryam and son-in-law Safdar also sentenced to seven years and one year in jail respectively.
•An anti-corruption court in Islamabad on July 6 sentenced former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif to 10 years in prison. His daughter Maryam Nawaz was sentenced to seven years in jail and and son-in-law captain (retired) Safdar awarded one-year jail term.
•The court also imposed a fine of £8 million on Mr. Sharif and £2 million on Ms. Maryam.
•The Sharifs’ lawyers said they would challenge the ruling in High Court.
•Accountability Court judge Mohammed Bashir also rejected an application from the Sharifs to postpone the announcement of the verdict as Mr. Sharif is currently with his wife Kulsoom Nawaz in London who is on ventilator for the past three weeks.
•“In the interest of justice, the announcement of order in the titled reference may be postponed for a minimum of seven days period,” the applications by the Sharifs stated.
•Mr. Sharif had vowed to return to the country once his wife’s health improves.
•Mr. Sharif was disqualified as Prime Minister in July 2017 by the Supreme Court following a challenge to his office by Opposition leader Imran khan on the basis of publication of the Panama Papers, which alleged that the Sharif family stashed away assets in London through offshore companies Nescoll and Nelson. The companies are owned by Mr. Sharif’s son Hussain Nawaz. Assets in question are four expensive flats in London worth over £200 million.
•Mr. Hussain Nawaz admitted ownership of the flats but denied that they were purchased through corruption money. He never appeared before the accountability court despite several notices. He has been declared a proclaimed offender.
Sharif defiant
•Sharif, referring to the imprisonment handed to him, said that he has been punished because he tried to turn the course of Pakistan’s 70-year history. “I promise that I will continue this struggle until Pakistanis are not free of the chains that they are kept in for saying the truth,” Press Trust of India news agency quoted a defiant Sharif as telling reporters in London. “I will continue my struggle till the people of Pakistan are not freed of the slavery imposed on them by some generals and judges.”
Removed as head of PML-N
•Mr. Nawaz Sharf, a three-time Prime Minister, was removed as head of the Pakistan Mulsim League-Nawaz (PML-N) by the Election Commission following his disqualification by the Supreme Court.
•The Supreme Court disqualified him as not being truthful in his tax returns by not showing a salary as board of chairman of a Dubai-based company. But it instructed the Accountability Court to complete the probe on his assets in six months. The Accountability Court judge sought three extensions from the apex court before completing the probe last week after more than nine months.
•The PML-N has termed the trial political victimisation.
•Pakistan is going to the polls on July 25. The convictions are a huge setback to the ruling PML-N, which has accused the country’s powerful military establishment of conspiring against the party by forcing its candidates to switch sides and join the Opposition or contest elections as independents.
•The PML-N held a meeting in Lahore to discuss the court ruling and reaction to it. The party is now headed by Mr. Nawaz Sharif's brother Shahbaz Sharif.
‘A black ruling’
•Mr. Shahbaz Sharif termed the accountability court ruling a black judgment. “People will always remember this judgment as black and controversial. We will fight in higher courts to reverse this judgment. The timing of the judgment is an attempt to influence the upcoming elections,” he said at a press conference in Lahore. He said Mr. Nawaz Sharif had served the country three times as Prime Minister and what he got in return was a black judgment.
Imran Khan welcomes ruling
•Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf chief Imran Khan welcomed the court ruling and termed it a historic judgment, which would serve as a deterrent to corruption in the country. "Sharif brothers [indulged in] corruption for decades and destroyed the institutions. For the first time, a powerful person has been sentenced, which is unprecedented," he said at a rally in Swat.
📰 Delhi standoff over control of ‘services’ continues
Kejriwal labels the stalemate a ‘dangerous precedent’.
•Swift developments related to the interpretation of the recent Supreme Court verdict on the separation of powers between the elected Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) Delhi government and the Lieutenant-Governor unfolded here on Friday.
•The issue of ‘services’ continued to remain the bone of contention with neither side willing to relent on the right to exercise control over bureaucrats, mainly those belonging to the All India Services cadre, posted in the capital.
•Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal, who took several back-to-back decisions and cleared multiple proposals during the day announced he had now sought time from Union Home Minister Rajnath Singh to discuss the issue of Services.
•The CM’s meeting with L-G Anil Baijal, to whom he had written on Thursday seeking time to discuss the verdict’s implications on Delhi’s administration, took place in the afternoon.
•Though both the CM and the L-G described the 25-minute meet as a cordial one, Mr. Kejriwal, within minutes of its conclusion, held a press conference where he accused the Centre of being part of a ‘conspiracy’ to ‘paralyse’ the Delhi government on the issue of control of the ‘Services’, in alleged contravention of the SC verdict.
•Terming it a ‘dangerous precedent’ Mr. Kejriwal said a government at the Centre allegedly choosing to function against Supreme Court orders would lead to ‘anarchy’ in the country.
📰 Supreme Court judge defends verdict on SC/ST Act
Everyone has the right to seek protection from arrest, says Justice Goel on his final day in office
•Supreme Court judge, Justice A.K. Goel, in his farewell speech on Friday justified his controversial March 20 verdict which overrode the written law to grant anticipatory bail to those accused of Dalit atrocities.
•The judgment led to widespread violence and protests across the country leading to several deaths. The Centre had to finally return to the Supreme Court for a review.
•The 89-page verdict by a Bench of Justices A.K. Goel and U.U. Lalit had read down Section 18 of the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes (Prevention of Atrocities) Act of 1989 to allow accused persons under the Act to apply for anticipatory bail. Section 18 barred persons accused of causing casteist injury and insult to Dalits from seeking anticipatory bail.
•Justice Goel defended the verdict that he had authored for the Bench on his last working day while speaking to a crowd of Supreme Court judges, former judges and lawyers. He said that a judge does not normally speak about his judgment, but he would do so as he is a “free man” now.
•He said the courts should “wind up” if they are unable to protect the fundamental rights of due process, life and liberty. A person cannot be denied his right to seek protection from arrest under any law.
•Justice Goel said his judgment was intended to protect an innocent man, falsely accused under the Dalit Atrocities Act, from going to jail.
•He recalled how Justice H.R. Khanna had defied the written law of the time to protect innocents from arbitrary arrest. He said he had the same thought while writing the judgment.
•Justice Khanna’s lone dissenting voice, while the fellow members of the Bench supported the government’s policy of arbitrary arrests during the Emergency years, is written in the Supreme Court annals as a historic episode of judicial courage and independence.
•Justice Khanna was superseded as Chief Justice of India by the Indira Gandhi government, due to which he resigned.
•“His (Justice Khanna) minority view at the time is now the majority view,” Justice Goel said.
•“An innocent should not be punished. There should not be terror in society... We do not want any member of the SC/ST to be deprived of his rights. We only want an innocent not to be punished,” Justice Goel had told the government.
📰 Govt. deploys 800 IAS officers for village outreach
Teams fan out to 117 districts to ensure delivery of Central welfare schemes
•A battalion of Central government IAS officers has been drafted to ensure on the ground implementation as the Centre races to saturate 117 “aspirational districts” with seven flagship social welfare schemes by Independence Day.
•Prime Minister Modi is scheduled to meet 2.5 lakh beneficiaries of these schemes in Jaipur on Saturday, and has pointed to this campaign as a model for future implementation of welfare delivery.
Questions raised
•However, questions are being raised about Centre-State relations under this model, in an election year.
•At least 800 Deputy Secretaries, Under-Secretaries and Director-level officers, drawn from Ministries as diverse as Defence and Urban Affairs, have been assigned about 75 villages to visit, as part of the Extended Gram Swaraj Abhiyan (EGSA) from June 1 to August 15. In total, 49,178 villages — most with a majority SC/ST population — are being targeted.
•The Hindu spoke to officers from the on-ground teams, as well as with senior officials from the Ministries of Rural Development, Panchayati Raj, and the Department of Personnel and Training, which are jointly coordinating the drive.
•“Mostly, we are sent out in teams of two to four people,” explained a deputy secretary, who did not want to named.
•Over the two-and-a-half month period, these Central officials are being absorbed into EGSA duty for at least 15 working days.
•In each village, the Central team convenes a meeting of villagers and beneficiaries along with a State government or district official, a lead bank representative and local officials from the agencies responsible for enrolling people into the schemes.
•“We monitor the scheme, get feedback...If there are any hurdles, we can sort it out on the spot,” said a director-level IAS officer, who disclosed that central officers could direct the local representatives to give immediate sanction for gas cylinders, bank accounts or electricity connections.
•The teams can also directly input the day’s progress into a data system. “You can track it live on the EGSA dashboard,” said a senior official of the Rural Development Ministry, pointing to egsa.nic.in.
•Senior Ministry officials also make direct daily calls to a section of District Collectors to monitor progress, while third-party observers for each district —mostly from NGOs or academia — have been drafted in to do random checks of villages and report back to the Ministry.
•One IAS officer said while most State officials were cooperative, some are not happy with the direct involvement of central officials. Two officers said their work load back in Delhi had been put on hold while they were on the field.
•“These are central schemes although the implementation is being done by States. Government of India wants to see total saturation. To ensure this happens, it’s better to depute our own officers,” an IAS officer said, explaining the rationale of the exercise.
•The rate of enrolment during the duration of the scheme has been the most impressive in the Saubhagya scheme, which offers power connections to each household, and in the Indra Dhanush Missions to vaccinate children and pregnant women, but the RD Ministry is confident of meeting its targets.
•“By August 15, we would have reached 65,000 villages [including a target from a similar drive in May]. That is 15% of the rural population,” said a senior Ministry official. “A lot of such initiatives have to be done in campaign mode. Saturation targets create pressure.”
•Addressing the NITI Aayog Governing Council earlier this month, Prime Minister Narendra Modi had said the Gram Swaraj Abhiyan has emerged as a new model for implementation of schemes.
•However, the large-scale involvement of Central officers raises questions about the viability of such drives, and about roles in a federal democracy.
📰 ‘Alternative cereals can save water’
Study urges farmers to make the big switch from rice and wheat to cereals
•If Indian farmers were to switch from growing rice and wheat to ‘alternative cereals,’ such as maize, sorghum, and millet, it could reduce the demand for irrigation water by 33%. This could also improve nutritional availability to consumers, according to an analysis by researchers from the U.S.-based Earth Institute, Columbia University and Indian School of Business, Hyderabad.
•For their analysis, the scientists considered water as well as cereal-production data from 1996-2009. Because actual water consumption data was not available, they used a proxy — Crop Water Requirement (CWR), which is the product of the water required by a crop and the harvested area — to calculate water consumption in every district in this period.
•In this time, cereal production grew by 230%. Although the combined production of alternative cereals was larger than that of wheat in the 1960s, their relative contribution to the cereal supply has steadily dwindled.
•Yet, alternative cereals disproportionately account for the supply of protein, iron, and zinc among kharif crops. At the same time, total CWR demand for Indian cereal production increased from 482 to 632 km3 per year during the study period. “This increase has been driven almost entirely by a doubling of consumptive blue water demand (refers to water extracted from irrigation) for wheat during the rabi season and modest increases in cropping frequencies and cropland extent,” says the report.“Not surprisingly, the largest increases in consumptive water demand occurred in Punjab and Haryana.”
•The nub was that rice is the least water-efficient cereal when it came to producing nutrients, and was the main driver in increasing irrigation stresses.
Better production
•Replacing rice with maize, finger millet, pearl millet, or sorghum could save irrigation and improving production of nutrients such as iron by 27% and zinc by 13% , according to the report in this week’s edition of the peer-reviewed Science Advances. In some districts, however, the shift in cereals translated into a reduction in calorie content.
•This week India announced a 50% hike, or ₹ 200 per quintal, in the minimum support price for paddy — the key kharif crop — along with several other crops. Though hikes were also announced for alternative cereals, some of which were included in the analysis, the government doesn’t procure these crops like it does rice and wheat. It mainly uses these procured cereals to meet obligations under the Food Security Act.
•For those eligible, India is mandated to provide 5 kg of foodgrains per person per month at subsidised prices of ₹ 3/2/1 per kg for rice/wheat/coarse grains.
•Our replacement scenarios also demonstrate that Efforts at improving “Alternative cereal production can help distribute nutrient production across the country and reduce the impact of a single local climate shock to national grain production,” the study said.
📰 Plan for central pool of documentary proof
It will help in sharing of evidence
•A proposal for creating a centralised pool of documentary evidence for expeditious sharing of actionable information on economic offences between various Central investigating agencies is pending consideration with the government.
•The recommendation has been made to overcome the existing procedural and legal hurdles in sharing of evidence between the probe agencies like the Central Bureau of Investigation, the Enforcement Directorate, the Income-Tax Department and the Special Fraud Investigation Office.
•As proposed, documentary proof gathered by the respective agencies would be stored at one place and its certified copies made available for the purposes of investigations and use as evidence in the court of law. Such an arrangement would require relevant amendments to the legislation governing each agency in terms of evidence collection.
•Endorsing the idea, Navneet Rajan Wasan — who retired as Director-General of Bureau of Police Research and Development and has served in the Central Bureau of Investigation and the National Investigation Agency — said there should be a robust and transparent system of sharing information. It should have necessary backup of the law.
•Stating that it would require use of data analytics for extracting relevant information, Mr. Wasan said such a mechanism could prove to be fruitful as agencies had been usually cagey in sharing evidence for various reasons.
•Therefore, many a time, it becomes a time consuming exercise and delays investigations.
📰 The new trade order
There is little sign that Donald Trump will be turned from his protectionist path by appeals on the virtues of trade
•Since the start of the year, U.S. President Donald Trump has lashed out at allies and adversaries alike on trade. Often, as with India, the U.S. has pushed for enhanced security cooperation at the same time it declared trade relations a national security threat. The belligerence has left many baffled.
Some pointers
•A first question is why the Trump administration is launching its trade wars. There are at least three possible explanations worth considering: an actual casus belli, as with complaints about Chinese practices; a phantom casus belli, as in the preoccupation with meaningless bilateral trade deficits; or, finally, it might just be a straightforward desire to block trade.
•The evidence seems to point to the last possibility — simple protectionism. While the U.S. has significant concerns about Chinese economic practices, such as China’s aggressive approach to acquiring intellectual property from American businesses, the administration has been unable to focus its demands on these practices. When, a year ago, China offered a deal to address its steel overcapacity, Mr. Trump reportedly rejected the deal in favour of pursuing tariffs. Nor has the White House been able to prioritise among its global trade concerns. The discord with trading partners such as the European Union and Canada has undercut the possibility of presenting a united front on China complaints.
•Further, the Trump administration’s tariff justifications can shift rapidly. In May-June, the Trump administration extended steel and aluminium tariffs to Canada, among other countries. Ostensibly, the rationale was a threat to U.S. national security. Yet, at the G7 meetings later that month, Mr. Trump seemed to explain the aggressive U.S. stance by citing Canada’s protective dairy regime.
•There is ample evidence that Mr. Trump places a high priority on bilateral trade deficits, which he seems to equate with profit and loss statements. In May, hoping to assuage the President’s concerns, Chinese Vice-Premier Liu. He came to Washington to offer increased Chinese purchases of U.S. goods as a means of resolving the looming tariff threat. The Trump administration initially struck a deal, then reversed it roughly a week later. Countries with which the U.S. runs a trade surplus have also not been immune from trade attacks; Canada is a prime example.
•This then leaves the simpler explanation that Mr. Trump is fond of tariffs and believes that American industry will do better behind a wall of protection. He has been neither coy nor inconsistent about such feelings. When he first announced his intention to apply steel and aluminium tariffs in March, his press secretary was asked about the surprise policy move. She replied, “This is something, frankly, the President has been talking about for decades.”
Within the system
•The U.S. prides itself, however, on its political system of checks and balances. Even with a protectionist President, how can one individual recraft a country’s long-standing trade position so dramatically? The puzzle deepens when one looks at the U.S. Constitution, which assigns the power to apply tariffs to Congress. And where are international protections against capricious protectionism?
•Domestically, Congress has tried to shift responsibility for trade on to the Executive Branch ever since it engaged in an ill-fated bout of protectionism in 1930. The underlying presumption was that individual members of Congress were more likely to succumb to protectionist pressures from their narrower constituencies, while the President was more likely to consider the broader national interest. Most domestic legislative safeguards, therefore, protected against a president being more liberal than Congress might desire; there are relatively few protections against a President who is more protectionist. Over the years, the legal authorisations for a President to apply protection accumulated, largely unused. Thus, the steel and aluminium tariffs were justified under an obscure provision of the Trade Expansion Act of 1962, a law granting national security powers from the midst of the Cold War. The upshot is that a protectionist President has ample tools at hand.
•Turning to the global trading system, the burgeoning trade war demonstrates its limitations. The General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade and World Trade Organization were never designed to block a major world power from running amok. They relied, instead, on the principal players in global trade respecting the system. Trade disputes were anticipated, of course, but they were intended to be sincere cases of disagreement about rules and acceptable practices. The WTO Dispute Settlement Mechanism cannot act quickly enough to address the mounting spats about trade protectionism emanating from the U.S., a major reason why countries around the world have not waited for verdicts from their WTO complaints and have instead proceeded with retaliation.
What lies ahead
•Finally, we can ask: what comes next for the global trading system? In the near term, we are likely to see escalation. U.S. tariffs on $34 billion of imports from China took effect on July 6. China has promised equivalent retaliation. Mr. Trump has promised to retaliate against that retaliation.
•The Trump administration also announced its intention to use its national security justification for tariffs on the auto sector. There are reports that Mr. Trump wants such tariffs in place before the U.S. mid-term elections in early November. While such a move would be qualitatively similar to the action against steel and aluminium trade, it would be quantitatively much more significant, given the magnitude of the autos trade. Europe has threatened retaliatory tariffs worth $300 billion should the auto tariffs proceed.
•There is little sign that Mr. Trump will be turned from his protectionist path by earnest explanations of the virtues of trade, though there have been valiant attempts both from the private sector and from members of Congress. If there is to be a change in the U.S. position, it is likely to come from an active reassertion of congressional authority over trade policy. At the moment, that still appears unlikely, but the pressures are mounting.
•Even if the President has trumpeted his passion for protection for years, many in the U.S. assumed he was exaggerating. It is only in the last month or two that the effects of both protection and retaliation have begun to be felt. While some businesses have been helped, many more have been hurt. For example, while there are roughly 140,000 Americans who work in steel production, there are about 2 million who work in industries that use steel as a major input. Those latter industries are beginning to cry for help, along with farmers who are seeing sales lost to retaliatory barriers. Stories such as the relocation of production of Harley-Davidson motorcycles have called into question the President’s claim that protection would revive American manufacturing.
•All this has led to a deeply conflicted Republican Party, which holds a majority in both houses of the legislature. Traditionally, Republicans have been the more pro-business, pro-trade party and members of Congress running for re-election this November were planning to mount a campaign based on unity, tax cuts, and good stewardship of the economy.
•Now those candidates need to decide whether or not to act against their President’s trade measures. If they choose to, they have the power to legislate and block the President’s trade belligerence, at the cost of enraging him. If they choose not to, they will likely disappoint their constituents. Their choice is likely to determine the next turn in Mr. Trump’s trade war.
📰 A political ploy: on the hike in MSPs
The hefty hike in MSPs will not benefit all farmers — agri-reforms are essential
•The Centre has cleared a hike in the minimum support prices (MSPs) for the kharif summer crop, ranging from a modest 3.7% increase for urad to as much as a 52.5% for the cereal ragi over the previous season. The NDA government says this ‘redeems’ its promise of assuring farmers a price at least 150% of the cost of production. The Commission for Agricultural Costs and Prices is said to have gone by this cost-plus-50% principle, in line with the farm sector strategy announced in this year’s Budget. While making calculations, it relied on estimates of input costs actually paid by farmers and the imputed value of unpaid family labour engaged in the field. Yet, the final hikes announced for some crops are even higher – with the MSP for bajra pegged 97% over estimated costs. On an average, the MSP hike notified for 17 kharif crops is about 25% higher and constitutes the biggest hike since 2013-14. All in all, the announcement is an olive branch to farmers who over the past year spearheaded widespread protests over the rural distress. With less than a year to go for the general election, the NDA government has clearly opted to reverse the abundant, inflation-weary caution it had exercised while fixing MSPs. In fact, soon after assuming office in 2014, it had even admonished State governments for granting bonuses over and above the MSPs.
•Given that the MSP mechanism is primarily enforced through official procurement only for wheat and paddy, mere announcement of prices for other crops is unlikely to suffice in ensuring farmers get those returns. Anticipating this, the Budget had promised that Niti Aayog would work with the Centre and States to put a fool-proof mechanism in place so that farmers get adequate remuneration if market prices slip below the MSP. This could be through government purchases or a gap-funding mechanism whereby the difference between MSPs and market prices is transferred to farmers. Little is known on the status of this endeavour, or the Centre’s procurement strategy for this year. As things stand, the impact of these hikes on consumer price inflation is expected to vary between 0.5% and 1% by the end of 2018-19. On the other hand, the Centre’s fiscal arithmetic may not be too adversely affected if its outlay on procurement is around ₹15,000 crore, about 0.1% of GDP. But these costs could mount based on the procurement strategy and the new mechanism for MSP enforcement. While rural incomes may rise from this farm-friendly gesture, concomitant reforms to free agricultural markets are vital to prevent a distortionary effect on farmers’ choices on account of MSPs. Easing onerous stockholding limits under the Essential Commodities Act and avoiding frequent curbs on farm exports are key.
