📰 Reality check: On simultaneous polls
Simultaneous polls pose too big a legal and logistical challenge to be implemented now
•Chief Election Commissioner O.P. Rawat’s view that it is not possible to hold simultaneous elections to the Lok Sabha and the State Assemblies soon is a realistic assessment of the humongous task ahead of the Election Commission before it can embark on such an ambitious venture. Mr. Rawat has, in particular, ruled out the possibility of holding elections to the Lok Sabha this December along with polls to the Assemblies of four States. In addition to the basic requirement of a legal framework under which the extension or curtailment of the term of any Assembly is constitutionally permissible, simultaneous elections would demand a massive increase in the number of electronic voting machines (EVMs) and voter-verifiable paper audit trail (VVPAT) units. Mr. Rawat has pointed out that altering the term of an Assembly needs an amendment to the Constitution. Moreover, ensuring the availability of VVPATs everywhere poses a logistical challenge. Mizoram is due for elections in December, as the term of the Assembly ends on December 15. This will be followed by Chhattisgarh, Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan, with the terms of their Assemblies ending on January 5, 7 and 20, respectively. A new batch of VVPAT units is expected only by the end of November, and it takes a month for first-level checking, rendering the possibility of using them in the next round of elections remote. The logistics are bracing, too. Simultaneous elections will require the use of 24 lakh EVMs, needing the procurement of 12 lakh EVMs and an equal number of VVPAT units, according to its estimate. These figures ought to give pause to the clamour to hold simultaneous Assembly elections with the next Lok Sabha polls.
•It goes without saying that a wide political consensus, as well as legislative cooperation from various parties at the Centre and in the States, is required for holding simultaneous elections. It is natural that parties that control legislatures constituted in recent months or years would resist any curtailment of their tenures, while those in the Opposition may prefer simultaneous polls if it means Assembly elections being advanced. Bharatiya Janata Party president Amit Shah has written to the Law Commission favouring simultaneous polls, giving a fillip to the idea. The crux of the argument in favour of the concept is that the country is perpetually in election mode, resulting in a lack of adequate focus on governance. The second contention is that scattered polling results in extra expenditure. The question before India is, in order to address these two issues, can legislature terms be curtailed without undermining representative democracy and federalism? Given the procedural and logistical challenges that holding of simultaneous elections pose, it would be far more productive for political parties to focus on basic electoral reforms and find ways to curb excessive election expenditure.
📰 Sovereignty and sensitivity: on India-Bhutan relations
Given concerns over Indian influence, New Delhi must exercise caution in the run-up to Bhutan’s elections
•In the larger scheme of things, highway markers — the reflective stickers on railings that guide traffic on Bhutan’s steep mountain roads — should not be a big issue. But when the Border Roads Organisation, which helps build Bhutanese roads under Project Dantak, decided in July to make those markers in shades of the Indian tricolour, it raised red flags among the Bhutanese on social media. Citizens were worried that this was an attempt by India to impose its flag on their countryside. This wasn’t a first. In April last year, the Department of Roads had to remove a board which read “Dantak welcomes you to Bhutan” at the Paro international airport. And on the Thimphu-Phuentsholing arterial highway, another board that credited the “Government of India” had to be painted over. Eventually, in the recent case, which was covered by the national weekly The Bhutanese, the Minister for Public Works stepped in, and the stickers were changed to blue and white.
•The incident was a blip in India-Bhutan relations, but it is a clear indicator of heightened sensitivities in the Himalayan kingdom as it heads to its third general election. The National Assembly of Bhutan was dissolved and an interim government was appointed this month ahead of the election, which will be completed by October-end, marking 10 years of democracy in Bhutan.
Sovereignty and self-sufficiency
•The People’s Democratic Party, led by imcumbent Prime Minister Tshering Tobgay, enters the elections with a visible edge, even if it may not be able to better its landslide victory in 2013, when it won 32 of the 47 seats. At his party’s first rally on August 4, Mr. Tobgay touted the 8% GDP growth in favour of his party, which has been fuelled by a construction and tourist boom in Bhutan. He can also take credit for stabilising the rupee-ngultrum crisis that he had inherited, as well as for economic reforms including lifting the import ban on cars. However, Mr. Tobgay has been unable to curb the national debt, owed mostly to India for hydropower loans, as he had promised to do in his last campaign.
•Attacking Mr. Tobgay over a perceived “pro-India” stance will be part of the Opposition’s messaging. At its first rally, on July 29, the Druk Phuensum Tshogpa (DPT) party president, Pema Gyamtsho, said that “sovereignty, security and self-sufficiency” were the DPT’s top priorities. Crucially, this election comes after the 73-day India-China stand-off in 2017 in the Bhutan-claimed area of Doklam. Even though public commentary on the tensions has been frowned upon, Mr. Gyamtsho’s statement advocates a Bhutanese foreign policy that is less dependent on India. Another party in the fray, the Bhutan Kuen-Nyam Party, which has drawn large crowds at its meetings and derives some backing from a respected religious figure in eastern Bhutan, has a similarly worded campaign manifesto title: “For a self-reliant Bhutan: our concern, our responsibility”. Clearly, though Mr. Tobgay has called the raising of “sovereignty” issues by the Opposition as scaremongering, the concerns over India’s or any other country’s presence in Bhutan’s domestic and foreign policy are not being dismissed.
•Given this, India must step lightly and thoughtfully around the upcoming election. The Manmohan Singh-led United Progressive Alliance government’s decision to cut cooking gas subsidy just before the 2013 elections in Bhutan has often been shown as proof of Indian interference, especially by the DPT party that lost that election. Since then, the Narendra Modi government’s actions, indicating a preference for one party (for example, Sheikh Hasina’s Awami League in Bangladesh) or antipathy for another (such as for Mahinda Rajapaksa’s Sri Lanka Freedom Party), have been noted closely in Bhutan. The government would be best advised to keep high-profile visits at an arms length from the election process, especially given that there will be several such visits after the National Assembly is chosen. Mr. Modi is expected to visit Thimphu once a new government is in place, and Bhutan’s King Jigme Khesar Namgyel Wangchuck is expected for a state visit this year too.
Revisiting policies and issues
•The ensuing months may also be a useful interlude to revise India’s Bhutan policy and address several issues that have come up in the past few years — for example, the hydropower projects where delays in constructing and commissioning in Bhutan by Indian companies have led to the country’s burgeoning national debt. Although the government agreed to raise tariffs for the original hydropower plant in Chukha (by about 30 paisa per unit) in February this year, other tariffs will need to be renegotiated too. In addition, India’s power-surplus status and the advent of other renewable energies like wind and solar power will make it more difficult for Bhutan to ensure that its hydropower sector becomes profitable. And unless India finds ways to help, it will be accused of the same sort of “debt-trapping” that China is accused of today. India also needs to focus on policing cross-border trade better. The goods and services tax still hurts Bhutanese exporters, and demonetisation has left lasting scars on the banking system.
The China question
•The biggest issue between India and Bhutan will remain how to deal with China. The Doklam crisis has brought home many realities for the Bhutanese establishment. The first is that Doklam, which has long been discussed as part of a possible “package solution” to the Bhutan-China border dispute, could become a point of India-China conflagration, with Bhutan becoming a hapless spectator in the middle — again. Experts point out that China’s actions since last June, to build a permanent military presence above the stand-off point, mean that Bhutan has a much reduced advantage in any forthcoming negotiations on the issue. “We will continue to discuss Doklam de jure, but the situation has changed drastically de facto,” said one Bhutanese expert. After Mr. Modi’s Wuhan outreach and several meetings with Chinese President Xi Jinping, Bhutan too has decided that there is little point in avoiding engagement with China. China’s Vice Foreign Minister Kong Xuanyou’s July visit to Thimphu was an outcome of this stance.
•Interestingly, these issues are reminiscent of the situation in September 1958 when Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru undertook the arduous three-week journey by yak across the Chumbi Valley to meet Bhutan’s second king, Jigme Wangchuck. The trip took place amidst rising tensions with China, even as it gave special clearance for the delegation to cross into Doklam. As former Foreign Secretary Jagat S. Mehta wrote in his book, Negotiating for India: Resolving Problems Through Diplomacy: “The running anxiety during the 1960s for Bhutan was to steer its external relations with China by giving neither provocation nor the impression of getting into a bear hug of dependence with India. Both could jeopardise [Bhutan’s] autonomy.”
📰 ‘Ganga stretches in Bengal unfit for bathing’
While the Centre claims that its Namami Gange project has achieved considerable success
•A recent map published by the Central Pollution Control Board (CPCB) has revealed that water in nearly a dozen major stretches of the Ganga in West Bengal is so polluted that it is even unfit for bathing. The development comes at a time when the Centre has claimed that the Namami Gange project, with a budget of ₹20,000 crore, has achieved considerable success.
•The graphic map which marks the areas where the water of the Ganga is unfit for bathing with red dots shows that the pollution level in 11 major stretches of the Ganga spread across five districts and Kolkata is so high that it is even unfit for bathing. Apart from Kolkata (Garden Reach), the other affected stretches of the Ganga are located in the districts of Howrah (Uluberia, Shibpur), Hooghly (Tribeni, Serampore), North 24 Paraganas (Palta, Dakhineswar), Nadia (Nabadwip) and Murshidabad (Gorabazar, Behampore, Khagra).
Dissolved oxygen
•The CPCB guidelines, upon which the map is based, states that water is fit for bathing when the amount of fecal coliform bacteria, found mainly in human faeces, is not more than 2,500 most probable number (MPN) per 100 ml, dissolved oxygen is not more than 5 mg per litre, bio chemical oxygen demand is less than 3 mg per litre and the pH level-measurement of how acidic the water is, is between 6.5 to 8.5.
•Apart from West Bengal, the water of the Ganga is also unfit for bathing in States such as Uttar Pradesh and Bihar. The map further reveals that Uttrakhand remains the only exception with 11 stretches of the Ganga being fit for bathing along with Ara town in Bihar.
•The map was published after the National Green Tribunal (NGT) asked the National Mission for Clean Ganga (NMCG) authorities to set up display board along the banks of the Ganga at a gap of 100 km to indicate whether the water was fit for bathing or drinking.
•West Bengal Pollution Control Board (WBPCB) chairman Kalyan Rudra told The Hindu that “West Bengal is located at the downstream of the Ganga it receives all the pollutants which accumulates in the river from States in the upstream.”
•Mr. Rudra, a renowned river expert, also pointed out that coliform bacteria, mainly found in sewage, is a major cause for concern due to its large presence in the Ganga. He said making intensive use of sewage treatment plants was the most effective way to deal with the issue.
“No proper mechanism”
•Sources in WBPCB revealed that most of the sewage treatment plants in Bengal were not being utilised properly as “no proper mechanism” has been developed to bring sewage to the treatment plants.
•State Irrigation Minister Somen Mahapatra said that he was not aware of the map published by the CPCB.
•Anil Gautam, faculty member the People's Science Institute in Dehradun, said that “with rainfall the pollution level in the Ganga seems to be a little lower due to increase in flow of water. Once the monsoon comes to an end the quantity of pollutants will be even higher.”
•Former member of the National Ganga River Basin Authority Ravi Chopra argued that it was not only the Ganga, but almost all the rivers of the country were in a “terrible condition.” He refuted the Centre’s claim that considerable progress has been made in cleaning the rivers under the Namami Gange project.
📰 For better slum policies
Studies show that socio-economic distress is brewing in slums
•India’s rapid urbanisation has been proceeding apace for decades, but policy solutions have been shots in the dark. For the thousands who come to the cities every day, cheap housing in slums is often the springboard to better lives. However, studies show that these migrants often get stuck in a vicious cycle of debt and socio-economic stagnation.
•First, India must get its numbers right as there are no concrete figures on these temporary and semi-permanent settlements. Slums have a fluid definition and legal pedanticism leads to exclusion of people. The 2011 Census estimated 65 million people in slums, a marked shortfall from the UN-HABITAT’s 2014 estimation of 104 million.
•Current slum policies primarily focus on housing, relocation or in-situ development of multi-storey complexes, which free up swathes of prime real estate. But in doing so, they miss out on the brewing socio-economic distress in slums. This was revealed in two projects conducted in Bengaluru and which could apply to other Indian cities too.
•A long-term, multi-institutional survey by researchers from the Netherlands, the U.S. and a local NGO, Fields of View, reveals that over 70% of families in slums live in debt. The difference between their monthly earnings and expenses is less than ₹1,000 leaving them vulnerable in case of educational, vocational, social or health emergencies. Moreover, with no access to formal financial systems, any borrowing comes from private money lenders at high interest rates. For many, even water and electricity are disproportionately more expensive as they are forced to rely on the grey market rather than on formal, subsidised channels.
•The cumulative effect is that residents end up staying in the same slums for an average of 21 years, according to a seven-year exploratory study helmed by Duke University, U.S. Seven out of 10 households have stayed in slums for at least four generations. These families earned only marginally more than “newer” migrants. When families did move out of their slums, it was towards “cheaper,” worse-off slums. This is in contrast to the rapid upward mobility among other urban sections. Disturbingly, both studies show that there is little upliftment despite better education levels. This is perhaps due to the rapidly changing profile of entry level jobs. Undergraduate or technical certificates can only provide low-paying jobs. Much like their parents, the youth earn less than their more-educated peers who don’t live in slums.
•A case can be made for a nuanced slum policy, rather than a one-size-fits-all approach. In many established slums, political patronage has produced concrete houses, title deeds, piped water and regularised electricity. Here, economic opportunities and employment are key. On the other end, slums resembling tented refugee camps need housing and basic amenities. Until these nuances are considered, ambitious but slow-to-implement housing schemes will do little for the welfare of slum dwellers.
📰 Half of farm households indebted: NABARD study
Their annual income may just be enough to repay what they borrowed; Telangana, A.P., Karnataka top the list with over 70% indebted families
•More than half the agricultural households in the country have outstanding debt, and their average outstanding debt is almost as high as the average annual income of all agricultural households, according to a recent survey by the National Bank for Agriculture and Rural Development (NABARD).
•The NABARD All India Rural Financial Inclusion Survey 2016-17 covered a sample of 1.88 lakh people from 40,327 rural households. Only 48% of these are defined as agricultural households, which have at least one member self-employed in agriculture and which received more than ₹5,000 as value of produce from agricultural activities over the past year, whether they possessed any land or not.
•NABARD found that 52.5% of the agricultural households had an outstanding loan on the date of the survey, and thus were considered indebted. For non-agricultural households in rural India, that figure was 10 percentage points lower, at only 42.8%.
Higher liability
•Agricultural households reporting any outstanding debt also had a higher debt liability compared with non-agricultural ones.
•The average debt of an indebted agricultural household stood at ₹1,04,602 in comparison to ₹76,731 for indebted non-agricultural households.
•According to the survey, the average annual income of an agricultural household is ₹1.07 lakh. That is barely ₹2,500 more than the average outstanding debt of indebted farm households.
•The survey found that only 10.5% of agricultural households were found to have a valid Kisan Credit Card at the time of the survey. The scheme aims to give farmers credit from the banks with a simplified and flexible single-window procedure. Households who had the card utilised 66% of the sanctioned credit limit, the report said.
•The biggest reason for taking loans among agricultural households was capital expenditure for agricultural purposes, with a quarter of all loans taken for this purpose.
•While 19% of loans were taken for meeting running expenses for agricultural purposes, another 19% were taken for sundry domestic needs. Loans for housing and medical expenses stood at 11% and 12%, respectively.
•While all classes of farmers had debt, the highest incidence of indebtedness came from those owning more than two hectares of land. In that category, 60% of households are in debt.
•Among small and marginal farmers owning less than 0.4 hectares, slightly less than 50% of the households were in debt. Those with more land were more likely to have multiple loans.
•“This may be attributed to the fact that these economically better-off households are more eligible for taking loans as they have enough assets to serve as security against the loans taken,” the survey report said.
State figures
•The southern States of Telangana (79%), Andhra Pradesh (77%), and Karnataka (74%) showed the highest levels of indebtedness among agricultural households, followed by Arunachal Pradesh (69%), Manipur (61%), Tamil Nadu (60%), Kerala (56%), and Odisha (54%).
•Looking at loans taken between July 2015 and June 2016, the survey found that farm households took less than half their loans from commercial banks. While 46% of the loans were taken from commercial banks, and another 10% from self-help groups, almost 40% were taken from non-institutional sources such as relatives, friends, moneylenders and landlords.
•While loans from relatives and friends may be free of interest and reflective of social integration in communities, the survey noted that “a sizeable 11.5% households exhibited dependence on local moneylenders and landlords, which exposes them to exploitation by having to pay exorbitant interest. The persons resorting to local moneylenders often include, either the illiterate or extremely poor ones which are not eligible for loans from formal institutions, or the households that do not have social networks that can help them in times of need.”
📰 India building new fighter jet
First flight of Advanced Medium Combat Aircraft expected in 2032
•The Advanced Medium Combat Aircraft (AMCA), India’s next indigenous fighter, is expected to make its first flight by 2032. Development work on the jet is under way.
•“The AMCA will feature geometric stealth and will initially fly with two GE-414 engines. Once we develop our own engine, it can be replaced with that. We expect the first flight in 2032,” a defence source said.
•“There are two major ways of making a military platform stealthier. One is geometric stealth and other is material stealth. In geometric stealth, the shape of the aircraft is designed at such angles so as to deflect away maximum radar waves thereby minimising its radar cross section. In material stealth, radar-absorbing materials are used in making the aircraft which will absorb the radio waves thus reducing the radar footprint. The AMCA will initially be based on geometric stealth, we can look at material stealth at a later stage,” the source said.
•The Indian Air Force has given land to the Defence Research and Development Organisation to set up facilities for the project.
•The plan is to build on the capabilities and expertise developed during the development of the light combat aircraft (LCA) and produce a medium fifth generation fighter aircraft.
•“Apart from the technologies developed from the LCA project, the new fighter programme is important as technologies coming in through that will flow into the AMCA project,” another official source said.
•The aircraft will be powered by the same GE-414 engine on the LCA Mk-2 variant which is in the design phase.
•A GE-414 produces 98kN thrust compared to 84kN thrust of the GE-404 engine which is on the LCA Mk1.
•At Aero India 2016, DRDO officials had stated that the basic design configuration has been frozen after wind tunnel testing and there are three critical technologies that need to be developed -- stealth, thrust vectoring and super cruise.
•This is India’s only fifth generation aircraft programme following the decision not to go ahead with the fifth generation project with Russia.
📰 Drones to space Internet, IISc incubates start-ups
Most of the start-ups are based on moonshot ideas, including drones to transport organs and devices for diagnosing diseases
•Better known for his former role as the programme director and chief designer of India’s indigenous light combat aircraft (LCA), 75-year-old Kota Harinarayana is the founder-chairman of General Aeronautics, an Indian Institute of Science (IISc) incubated start-up. The start-up designs and makes unmanned aerial vehicles or drones focused on security and civilian applications. One application is to use these drones to transport organs faster than ambulances for organ transplant procedures to save lives.
•“For organs, especially the heart, the life is very limited after it is harvested from the donor,” says Dr. Harinarayana. “But the road transport takes a long time as a result of which quite often when the organ reaches to the recipient, it is in unusable condition.”
•General Aeronautics is among a growing number of start-ups incubated by the Society for Innovation and Development (SID) housed on the IISc campus in Bengaluru, which aim to commercialise innovations that can have a direct impact on society.
Moonshots
•Most of the start-ups are based on moonshot ideas. These include drones to transport organs, satellites that provide Internet connectivity in rural areas and devices that help doctors to detect and diagnose diseases like cancer.
•“The risk is high. When they come to us with a proposal, our job is to make sure that while it may look like a moonshot idea, it is actually doable,” says C.S. Murali, chairman, STEM Cell, SID, IISc. “Our vision is to really help commercialise science and technology for the societal benefit through start-ups,” says Mr. Murali, who brings business expertise from his long years in the tech and venture capital industries.
•The incubator, tucked away in a discreet corner of IISc’s verdant campus, connects these deep science start-ups with customers and investors and even helps in writing the business plans. What differentiates the SID facility, says Mr. Murali, is that it also supports the young ventures with business and technical mentorships from the institute’s faculty and provides access to its sophisticated equipment.
•“We proved that we can bring academia, research and development [organisations] and industry together and achieve a world-class product,” says Dr. Harinarayana of General Aeronautics. The company is also working with IISc to develop ‘Life Box’ a device which can keep the heart harvested from the donor in good condition and increase its preservation time by maintaining various parameters such as temperature. The box would be transported to the recipient for transplant using a drone.
SpaceX challenger
•“Our whole concept was only on the paper... IISc believed in it and incubated us,” says Neha Satak, who along with Prasad HL Bhat co-founded Astrome, a space technology company which could potentially compete globally with tech entrepreneur Elon Musk’s SpaceX. Astrome’s goal too is to solve the problem of connectivity by beaming high bandwidth Internet from space.
•Astrome is developing a technology that it says would cut the cost of Internet access through satellites by 12 times. It plans to launch 200 satellites in the next few years to low-earth-orbit to beam reliable Internet to people living in small towns and villages. The firm says its Internet would be available in all developing countries and along major sea and air routes.
•Reliable Internet connectivity, says Astrome, has the potential to bridge the rural-urban economic divide and revolutionise healthcare and education.
Fighting cancer
•Another start-up SIAMAF Healthcare has built a technology for the staging and treatment of breast cancer. Its first product is MafPro, an ultrasensitive hand-held magnetic probe which offers “unprecedented quality and value of care benefits” to patients, doctors and hospital administrators, according to the company. “Our device can tell how far cancer has spread and that provides enough information to the doctor to make a proper diagnosis,” says Subhasis Sarangi, founder of SIAMAF. A physicist and biomedical engineer working at St. John’s Research Institute, Dr.Sarangi says the device has successfully completed initial laboratory and animal validation. Head and neck cancer, melanoma, colon cancer and lung cancer sufferers are also likely to benefit from this technology, according to Dr.Sarangi.
•His peer Vinay Kumar’s venture PathShodh Healthcare is leveraging the bio-sensing technology for point-of-care devices aimed at providing ease-of-diagnosis and better management of chronic diseases. PathShodh has introduced first of its kind handheld device with the capability to measure multiple biomarkers specifically targeting diabetes and its complications, kidney disease, anaemia and liver-related ailments. For instance, its phone-sized device is able to test eight different parameters related to diabetic management and early detection of complications such as kidney failure. “Most of these tests are available in big pathology labs [and] we can cut the cost by 70% which these labs are charging,” says PathShodh’s co-founder Dr .Kumar. He aims to “democratise diagnostics” as this device can be taken to remote areas and it can store thousands of test reports which can be transferred via Bluetooth or the mobile network. The venture which has already filed eight patents in different countries including the U.S. and U.K. intends to deliver its diagnostic products to medical professionals, institutions and channel partners worldwide.
•SID is also incubating Mimyk which works on developing immersive medical simulation technologies and combines hardware and software to create such platforms. Simulations can improve the result of surgeries as “doctors can practice them before performing them on patients as well as visualise the operative procedures in real time while actually conducting them,” says Shanthanu Chakravarthy, co-founder of Mimyk. Its technology was developed through a collaborative research and development activity carried out at the various IISc labs.
Challenges
•Most of these ventures have received grants and funds from government-run organisations such as Biotechnology Industry Research Assistance Council (BIRAC) and the State government’s Department of Information Technology, Biotechnology and Science & Technology and niche investors.
•However, at a time when e-commerce companies are raising billions of dollars, many of the founders said “scaling up” is a challenge as most of big mainstream venture capital investors shy away from investing in deep science start-ups. “The mindset of the investors has to change… [and] not only focus on e-commerce but also on intellectual property and technology-led companies,” says Sondur Madhan Babu, co-founder and CEO of Mymo Wireless, an indigenous fifth-generation wireless [5G] technology provider. Despite generating a revenue of $2 million last year and expecting to touch $4 million by next year, Mymo found it a challenge to raise venture capital. Mymo which was co-founded by Madhan Babu along with Sondur Lakshmipathi had been earlier licencing its technology to multinationals. It now wants to make its own powerful 5G chipset modules and take on large players like Qualcomm and China’s Huawei, but the firm requires a total funding of about $7 million. Mymo says compared to the technology provided by these multinationals its 5G chipset modules would be much cheaper, faster and would consume very less power to run gadgets ranging from phones, smartwatches to the Internet of Things (IoT) devices. “The entire technology for the chipset module to operate is ready on the table,” says Mr. Madhan Babu.
•Mr. Murali of SID points out that not every company would succeed as they incubate high-risk and high-reward firms. “But the impact that they can create if successful is tremendous,” he says.
