📰 July 30 NRC list only a draft: Rajnath
‘People left will get chance to appeal before Tribunal’
•Home Minister Rajnath Singh said on Sunday the National Register of Citizens (NRC) for Assam, to be published on July 30, was only a “draft” list. He added that even after the NRC was finalised, there was no question of putting anyone in detention centres as they could appeal before the Foreigner’s Tribunal.
•Mr. Singh’s statement comes amid apprehensions expressed by several groups in Assam that the NRC was being used by the government for “religious polarisation” and that several residents would end up in detention centres if their names did not figure in the draft list.
•“The NRC is being updated in Assam in accordance with the Assam Accord signed on August 15, 1985. The entire process is being carried out as per directions of the Hon’ble Supreme Court which is constantly monitoring the process,” Mr. Singh said.
•He said the NRC exercise is being carried out in an impartial, transparent and meticulous manner and will continue to be so. “At every stage of the process, adequate opportunity of being heard is given to all persons. The entire process is being conducted according to law and due procedure is being followed,” he said.
•The Home Minister added that every individual would get justice and will have sufficient opportunity for all remedies available under the law.
•”Government wants to make it clear that the NRC to be published on July 30 is only a draft. After draft publication, adequate opportunity for claims and objections will be available. All claims and objections will be duly examined. Adequate opportunity of being heard will be given before disposal of claims and objections. Only thereafter, final NRC will be published,” the statement said.
•The Citizenship Rules provide that any person who is not satisfied with the outcome of claims and objections can appeal in the Foreigner’s Tribunal. “Thus, there is no question of anyone being put in a detention centre after the publication of NRC,” he said.
•He said the State Government has been asked to ensure that law and order is maintained and no one is allowed to take law into their hands and all possible arrangements are made to ensure safety and security for all. “There is no reason for panic or fear. No person will be allowed to be harassed,” the Minister said. As per directions of the Supreme Court, the Registrar General of India (RGI) is to publish the final draft list on July 30 to segregate Indian citizens living in Assam from those who had illegally entered the State from Bangladesh after March 25, 1971.
📰 Sunlight and shadow: on amendments to the RTI Act
The government must roll back amendments that weaken the RTI Act
•As a law that empowers the citizen, the Right to Information Act, 2005 quickly struck root in a country saddled with the colonial legacy of secretive government. The move by the NDA government to amend the far-sighted law aims at eroding the independence of the Information Commissions at the national level and in the States. The proposed amendments show that the Central government seeks control over the tenure, salary and allowances of the Chief Information Commissioner and Information Commissioners at the Centre, and the State Chief Information Commissioners. Such a change would eliminate the parity they currently have with the Chief Election Commissioner and Election Commissioners and, therefore, equivalence with a judge of the Supreme Court in matters of pay, allowances and conditions of service. The Centre will also fix the terms for State Information Commissioners. This is an ill-advised move and should be junked without standing on prestige. If at all, the law needs to be amended only to bring about full compliance by government departments and agencies that receive substantial funding from the exchequer, and to extend its scope to more institutions that have an influence on official policy. The Supreme Court has held the right to information as being integral to the right to free expression under Article 19(1)(a); weakening the transparency law would negate that guarantee.
•In its rationale for the amendments, the Centre has maintained that unlike the EC, Information Commissions are not constitutional bodies but mere statutory creations under the law. This is a narrow view, betraying an anxiety to tighten the hold of the administration on the Commissions, which even now get little official support to fill vacancies and improve efficiency. A recent public interest petition filed in the Supreme Court by the National Campaign for People’s Right to Information pointed out that the Central Information Commission has over 23,500 pending appeals and complaints, and sought the filling up of vacancies in the body. In many States, the Commissions are either moribund or working at low capacity owing to vacancies, resulting in a pile-up of appeals. The challenges to the working of the law are also increasing, with many State departments ignoring the requirement under Section 4 of the Act to publish information suo motu. The law envisaged that voluntary disclosure would reduce the need to file an application. Since fines are rarely imposed, officers give incomplete, vague or unconnected information to applicants with impunity. Proposals to make it easier to pay the application fee, and develop a reliable online system to apply for information, are missing. These are the serious lacunae. Attempts were made by the UPA government also to weaken the law, including to remove political parties from its purview. Any move to enfeeble the RTI Act will deal a blow to transparency.
📰 Dealing with the Taliban hand
In the U.S.’s battle against the Taliban, Pakistan holds the trump card
•Less than a year after U.S. President Donald Trump unveiled his new Afghanistan policy, last August, it lies in tatters. It is fraught with implications for New Delhi, none of them heart-warming. Mr. Trump had made New Delhi happy when he had summed it up succinctly; he had studied the situation for eight months “from all angles” and had come up with the solution. His Afghan policy was going to be robust. As he put it, “We are not nation-building again. We are killing terrorists.” He blamed Pakistan for giving safe haven to “agents of chaos” and later cut off security assistance to Taliban’s greatest benefactors and backers.
Reaching out
•Even six months ago, at the end of January, Mr. Trump said, “We are going to finish what we have to finish in Afghanistan.” The implication was that he was going to stay the course. He had declared: “We don’t want to talk with the Taliban. There may be a time, but it’s going to be a long time.” Now the next thing we know, about 17 years after invading Afghanistan to rid it of the Taliban, the white flags are out, and the U.S. is setting the stage for direct talks with the very enemy it vowed to vanquish. True, we have to weigh this against previous attempts at dialogue with the Taliban which ended in failure. The problem is that this time the U.S. may want the talks to succeed, which means handing Afghanistan over to the Taliban and their chief backers, the Pakistanis, beribboned and gift-wrapped.
Taliban on the rebound
•Even so, the new American move comes at a time when the Taliban ranks have swelled since the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation pulled out in 2014 and they seem to be surging ahead in many parts of the country. It comes after the U.S. stopped releasing figures for the territories or populations under Taliban control, or the numbers of their fighters. It comes at a time where the data and assessments on the strength and the combat capabilities of the Afghan military and police are no longer readily available, amidst reports of severe erosion of their fighting capabilities. It comes when the UN grimly noted — late last year — rising opium production. Citing the latest Afghanistan Opium Survey figures (released by the Afghanistan’s Ministry of Counter Narcotics and the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime) it said that opium production in Afghanistan had increased by 87% to a record level of 9,000 metric tons in 2017 compared with 2016 levels. The area under opium poppy cultivation had also increased to a record 328,000 hectares in 2017, up 63% from 201,000 hectares in 2016. It comes at a time when a strategy that relies mostly on counter-terrorism operations — the vastly reduced number of troops (less than 15,000) are mainly on security assistance and training and other hand-holding assignments — is not paying sufficient dividends. It comes after Afghan President Ashraf Ghani literally sued for peace, saying that he was prepared to recognise the Taliban — previously referred to as terrorists — as a legitimate political group, offered to release Taliban prisoners. and proposed dialogue, a suggestion that was quickly and contemptuously spurned. The intervention in Afghanistan has never looked quite so ramshackle.
Pakistan’s game and India
•It has not resulted in many critical primary military and strategic objectives being realised, the denial of safe havens (mostly in Pakistan) to the Taliban, the reduction of their fighting capability, and to effectively dis-incentivise Pakistan’s zeal and ability to nurture the Taliban. The opposite has happened. Rawalpindi correctly surmised that the longer it was able to play the game of running with the hare and hunting with the hounds, the less stomach the endlessly gullible Americans would have to continue sinking troops, money and shrinking political capital into another quagmire. It has also helped Pakistan that the American President, no stranger to U-turns, has turned spectacularly fickle so far as Afghanistan is concerned. He has more than half his term left, which leaves plenty scope for him to change his mind again.
•All the same, if the talks with the Taliban proceed apace, it does not matter so much where the talks will be held or how much control the Pakistanis are able to exert over their wards during the talks. What matters is this: what the Taliban, and thus more importantly, Pakistan, are able to wrest from the negotiating table. Withdrawal of the remaining international troops will be the main aim. At the end of it, the Taliban and other Pakistani proxies, who have orchestrated a string of deadly attacks on Indian interests with a view to deter New Delhi, will have the run of what passes for a country; a nation that has not yet been built. Where would that leave New Delhi?
•The American move comes when there is pressure to limit any kind of engagement with Iran, which would have been a logistical pivot for further inroads into Afghanistan. Already, with the exit of Hamid Karzai, the strategic comfort that New Delhi had in Kabul stands diminished, and by extension, the kind of intelligence operations New Delhi may have had the option to conduct with deniability. Pakistan’s aim will be to reverse all the gains India has made at great cost over the years in Afghanistan. With strategic depth in Afghanistan that Pakistan has dreamt of becoming a reality, Islamabad will have more room to incubate and move around the various anti-India groupings, including those active in Kashmir, as was the case earlier, especially in Lōya Paktiā. With the prospect of the Taliban slouching towards Kabul to be born again, most of New Delhi’s bets may be off.
📰 Watershed development projects lagging behind badly
Parliamentary Standing Committee says only 10% of projects complete
•Irrigation projects of the Pradhan Mantri Krishi Sinchai Yojana (PMKSY) may have taken the spotlight in the Prime Minister’s speech during Friday’s no-confidence motion debate in the Lok Sabha. However, a less well-known but vital component of that scheme is watershed development, which is lagging behind badly, according to a Parliamentary Standing Committee (PSC) report.
•When the report was first tabled last July, not a single one of the 8,214 projects sanctioned between 2009 and 2015 at a cost of Rs. 50,740 crore had been completed, said the Standing Committee on Rural Development. In its response, the Department of Land Resources (DoLR) had updated that 849 projects in 11 States were completed by October 2017, but admitted that 1,257 projects had not even completed the initial step of preparing detailed project reports (DPRs) at that point, although no new projects were sanctioned after 2015-2016.
‘Lethargic’
•Having taken into account the government’s response and action-taken report, the Committee submitted its final report to Parliament last week. Terming the pace of development of the scheme as “lethargic”, the Committee urged the DoLR to “go all out on a war footing scale for the expeditious completion of the remaining projects.”
•What exactly is watershed development? “It’s all about making running to water stop and standing water to sink inside,” was the succinct definition offered by Dr. Ch Radhika Rani, who heads the Centre for Agrarian Studies at the National Institute for Rural Development and Panchayati Raj (NIRD&PR), an autonomous institution under the Ministry of Rural Development. “It is the only option for rainfed areas... for water conservation and recharge, and to prevent soil degradation.” Within the site of a watershed development project, a ridge is identified and structures such as check dams, percolation dams, ponds and channels are built from the ridge to the valley.
•Projects take four to seven years to complete, according to the scheme’s guidelines. In the long-term, results are impressive, said a senior official of the Rural Development Ministry, pointing to a May 2018 evaluation study of MGNREGA’s (Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act) water and land management projects, a chunk of which are implemented in convergence with the PMKSY’s watershed component. About 78% of beneficiaries saw an increase in the water table, while 66% also reported benefiting from better availability of fodder, thanks to such water conservation works.
•Unfortunately, such long-term results are “not immediately visible,” says Siraj Hussain, a former Agriculture Secretary and current fellow at the Indian Council for Research on International Economic Relations, explaining what he feels could be one reason for the slow pace of the PMKSY’s watershed management schemes. “You may not see a lot of concrete permanent structures. It’s not easy for States to claim visible success and impact, so there is a reluctance to provide resources.” He added that the 2016 change in funding patterns from a 90:10 Centre-State ratio to 60:40 had also contributed to a slowdown.
Delays in coordination
•K. Krishna Reddy, Associate Professor, Centre for Natural Resource Management at the NIRD&PR, is responsible for training many of the State-level watershed development coordinators. “From 2015 onwards, this programme has been in convergence mode and that is the challenge on the ground,” he says, explaining the lag in implementation. Apart from DoLR and NREGA, the Ministries of Water Resources and Agriculture, including the Animal Husbandry and Fisheries departments, all play a role, and coordination on the ground takes time, he says.
•“The idea of convergence is good but, in practice, government departments work in separate silos,” agrees Dr. Ch Radhika Rani. “Despite huge government investments, watershed development benefits are not becoming sustainable in the long-term because, while the physical structures may get built, the governance structures are missing.”
•She explains that when the groundwater table increases as a result of watershed management projects, farmers in the area go for water-intensive crops like paddy and sugarcane and drain it again. “The government can implement a project through its agencies or through an NGO, but once they finish, who remains to sustain it?” If local Panchayati Raj leadership and watershed user associations are not strengthened and empowered, any benefits will be cyclical and short-term only, she warns.
📰 Army to get artillery guns from September
Import from South Korea to be inducted from September
•From September, the Army will be inducting two types of artillery guns into its arsenal. These will be the first induction of heavy artillery since the Swedish Bofors guns imported in the 1980s.
•The Army will start taking delivery of the K9 Vajra-T tracked self-propelled artillery guns from South Korea in September and the first regiment of 18 guns is expected to be ready by the third quarter of 2019. At the same time, it will also receive four M777 ultra-light howitzers from the U.S.
•“The Army will get 10 guns this year from September. All the 100 guns will be delivered by November 2020,” a defence source said.
•In April 2017, the Indian engineering conglomerate Larsen & Toubro (L&T) and Hanwa Techwin of South Korea signed a contract to manufacture the K9 Vajra-T guns. The K9 was shortlisted by the Army after extensive trials and the deal is worth about ₹4,500 crore for 100 guns.
•K9 Vajra-T is a 155-mm, 52-calibre self-propelled artillery gun with a maximum range of 40 km, customised from the original K9 Thunder gun. The fire control system has been customised for desert conditions to the requirements of the Army.
90 to be readied in India
•The first 10 guns will be imported from South Korea and the rest manufactured by L&T in India.
•The M777 induction process is progressing on schedule after a brief delay. The Army will shortly resume user trials after which it will take formal delivery. “We will get four guns this year from September,” the source said.
•In November 2016, India signed a deal for 145 M777 ULHs with the U.S. under the Foreign Military Sales programme at a cost of $737 million. The M777 is a 155-mm, 39-calibre towed artillery gun and weighs just four tonnes, making it transportable under slung from helicopters.
📰 IBC eyes UN model for cross-border norms
Existing sections seen as inadequate
•The government is looking at the possibility of adopting a United Nations legal model for cross-border insolvency cases as it works on strengthening the insolvency resolution framework, according to a senior official.
•The Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code (IBC) has sections pertaining to cross-border insolvency matters but are yet to be made operational. The Insolvency Law Committee, headed by Corporate Affairs Secretary Injeti Srinivas, is studying the feasibility of introducing cross-border insolvency provisions. “The committee is looking at the adoption of the United Nations Commission on International Trade Law model on dealing with cross border insolvency,” he said in the ministry’s latest monthly newsletter.
•He also noted the existing Code provides for two sections — 234 and 235 — relating to cross-border insolvency, which allows the Centre to enter into an agreement with a foreign country for enforcing the provisions of the Code, which is considered insufficient and time-taking.
•An official said in case the UN model is adopted for cross-border insolvency matters, then sections 234 and 235 could be dropped from the Code as they pertain to only bilateral pacts.
📰 What is the GDP deflator?
It is a more comprehensive measure of inflation
•The GDP deflator, also called implicit price deflator, is a measure of inflation. It is the ratio of the value of goods and services an economy produces in a particular year at current prices to that of prices that prevailed during the base year.
•This ratio helps show the extent to which the increase in gross domestic product has happened on account of higher prices rather than increase in output.
•Since the deflator covers the entire range of goods and services produced in the economy — as against the limited commodity baskets for the wholesale or consumer price indices — it is seen as a more comprehensive measure of inflation.
Real vs nominal
•GDP GDP price deflator measures the difference between real GDP and nominal GDP. Nominal GDP differs from real GDP as the former doesn’t include inflation, while the latter does.
•As a result, nominal GDP will most often be higher than real GDP in an expanding economy.
•The formula to find the GDP price deflator:
•GDP price deflator = (nominal GDP ÷ real GDP) x 100
WPI, CPI
•A consumer price index (CPI) measures changes over time in the general level of prices of goods and services that households acquire for the purpose of consumption.
•However, since CPI is based only a basket of select goods and is calculated on prices included in it, it does not capture inflation across the economy as a whole.
•The wholesale price index basket has no representation of the services sector and all the constituents are only goods whose prices are captured at the wholesale/producer level.
•Changes in consumption patterns or introduction of goods and services are automatically reflected in the GDP deflator. This allows the GDP deflator to absorb changes to an economy’s consumption or investment patterns. Often, the trends of the GDP deflator will be similar to that of the CPI.
•Specifically, for the GDP deflator, the ‘basket’ in each year is the set of all goods that were produced domestically, weighted by the market value of the total consumption of each good.
•Therefore, new expenditure patterns are allowed to show up in the deflator as people respond to changing prices. The theory behind this approach is that the GDP deflator reflects up-to-date expenditure patterns.
•GDP deflator is available only on a quarterly basis along with GDP estimates, whereas CPI and WPI data are released every month.
📰 An index to determine the value of coal blocks
With the coal sector opening up for commercial mining, changes are round the corner, including a revenue-sharing model with States
•Major changes in the coal block auction system have been suggested by the high-powered committee set up last year to review the current process.
•The recommendations, submitted this month, rest on four tenets — ensuring transparency and fairness, equity, early development of coal blocks and simplicity of implementation of the recommendations. These suggestions coincide with the opening up of the coal sector for commercial mining.
•The proposed changes aim at introducing flexibility in the number of bidders, penalties for defaulting on milestones (and revoking bank guarantees), project execution, and relaxation to captive miners to sell some of the coal in the market. The panel has recommended developing a Coal Index for determining the value of blocks and a revenue-sharing model with the States. Currently, the valuation is on the basis of the notified price of Coal India Ltd.
•The committee has suggested scrapping the current practice of cancelling an auction if the number of bidders drop below three, saying that a single-bid should be accepted if biddings failed to find eligible bidders, provided the offered price was benchmarked to the reserve price. In the previous auctions, majority of the blocks could not be allocated as the number of eligible bidders was less than three.
•The number of milestones are now eight versus 20 earlier, with the panel suggesting that only a default in achieving critical milestones should attract penalty against the earlier penalty for each default.
Shift from current system
•If accepted, the changes would mark a major shift in the current system which was put in place after the cancellation of 204 coal-block allocations and introducing a system of auctioning the mineral blocks. Triggering euphoria and intense competition since their introduction, the e-auctions failed to sustain interest after several blocks were taken at high prices. Even companies which bought the blocks found it cheaper to import coal to meet their requirements rather than developing the mines.
•There were no takers for subsequent blocks, forcing the Centre to do a rethink. The Expert Committee to ‘report on the challenges faced by the current auction system and recommend changes’ was headed by Pratyush Sinha with bureaucrats, ex-bureaucrats and one ex-chairperson each from the SBI and the Union Bank. Jayanta Roy, senior VP and group head — corporate sector ratings, ICRA, said production from the captive mines which were auctioned had remained lower than their pre-auction output. “Aggressive bids by some of the bidders during auctions, subsequent decline in coal prices in international markets as well as in e-auctions, and weak financial health of some of the coal-block winning companies are other reasons for slower ramp-up of production from these mines,” he said.
•Absence of end-use condition in the guidelines is a significant positive for commercial miners, who were not eligible to participate in the coal-mine auctions conducted in 2015, he said. However, given the issues related to land acquisition and regulatory clearances, production levels from private commercial miners are not expected to rise significantly in the short- to medium term, he said.
