📰 Now, marriage certificate must for official work
In view of increasing cases of broken marriages in Meghalaya; women forced to fend for themselves
•The State government in matrilineal Meghalaya has made it mandatory for married people to produce marriage certificates for all official purposes.
•The government has also decided to deny government jobs and benefits to men who have abandoned their families and are not providing for maintenance of their children. Some of these men live with other women.
•The step, officials said, has been taken in view of increasing cases of broken marriages and women being forced to fend for themselves and their children.
•A notification in this regard was issued by B. Syiemlieh, Under Secretary to the State’s Department of Excise, Registration, Taxation and Stamps. In a letter to a local NGO named Maitshaphrang, he said all government departments have been asked to ensure that individuals, if married, are made to submit copies of their marriage certificates for all official purposes.
•Michael N. Syiem, the NGO’s convener, had in a memorandum to the Chief Minister pointed out that the abandonment of families by men lead to a spike in school dropouts and juvenile crimes. He sought implementation of the Meghalaya Compulsory Registration of Marriage Act, 2012.
Fight for maintenance
•“The government’s order cannot stop divorce, but marriage certificates will help abandoned women fight for the maintenance of their children after their husbands abandon them,” Mr. Syiem said.
•He said most marriages in the Khasi society are not registered, and this makes it difficult for abandoned women to fight for the maintenance of their children.
•“We are happy with the government’s move that has come after 30 years of fighting,” he added.
📰 SC allows rights activists to remain under house arrest
If dissent is not allowed, democracy will burst under pressure, says judge
•The Supreme Court on Wednesday ordered the Pune police to place the five well-known rights activists they detained in a countrywide crackdown on Tuesday under house arrest, and that too, in their own homes.
•The court was hearing a petition filed by five eminent persons — Romila Thapar, Devaki Jain, Prabhat Patnaik, Satish Deshpande and Maja Dharuwala.
‘Safety valve’
•A three-judge Bench, led by Chief Justice of India Dipak Misra, lashed out at the “sweeping round of arrests,” observing that democracy could not survive without dissenting voices. “Dissent is the safety valve of democracy. If dissent is not allowed, democracy will burst under pressure,” Justice D.Y. Chandrachud, on the Bench, said.
•Poet Varavara Rao was picked up in Hyderabad, Sudha Bharadwaj in Faridabad, Vernon Gonsalves in Mumbai, Arun Ferreira in Chhattisgarh and Gautam Navlakha in Delhi.
•Ms. Bharadwaj and Mr. Navlakha are already under house arrest in pursuance of an order of the High Court concerned. The Supreme Court extended their house arrest till September 6, the next date of hearing. In its interim order, the Bench, also comprising Justice A.M. Khanwilkar, directed that Mr. Rao, Mr. Gonsalves and Mr. Ferreira, if arrested, should be placed under house arrest in their homes.
•It further ordered the Centre, Delhi Police Special Cell, and the State of Maharashtra to respond to the petition before September 6.
•The petitioners said the basic rights of liberty and life are at stake when the government uses the draconian Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act against peace-loving activists.
•The hearing saw Additional Solicitor General Tushar Mehta, for the government, object to the maintainability of the petition in the Supreme Court. He said the petition was filed by ‘strangers’ who are not remotely connected to the arrests of the activists in the Bhima-Koregaon violence case.
•“Petitioners have come to court because somebody else was arrested. Those accused are before the regular courts... Your Lordships
have to first hear us on the maintainability of this petition,” Mr. Mehta submitted in a hearing which began well past the usual court hours.
have to first hear us on the maintainability of this petition,” Mr. Mehta submitted in a hearing which began well past the usual court hours.
•“But they (the petitioners) are on a wider issue here... Their problem is quelling of dissent,” Justice Chandrachud responded to Mr. Mehta.
•The petition said the police action on August 28 was an “attempt to browbeat, intimidate and silence the dissenting voices and human rights activists in the country.”
📰 The crackdown on civil society
With the raids and arrests, activists are being penalised for their unwavering vigilance
•It is a truth universally acknowledged that the modern democratic state, armed with technologies of surveillance and control, possesses the kind of power that has never ever been exercised by any other state in history. In a democracy, the individual transits from subject to citizen. Yet there is no one more vulnerable and more helpless than our rights-bearing citizen if the, otherwise, democratic state decides to terrorise, kill and drill fear and trepidation in the mind of the body politic. The other dominant institution of our times, the market, is completely amoral. It is supremely indifferent to human suffering. It has neither sympathy nor room for citizens exploited by the state, and by its own need for resources, labour, and profit.
A vital sphere
•The only sphere that stands between the individual and the omnipresent and omnipotent state is civil society. In this figurative space, individuals come together in webs of associational life. Associations have the capacity to challenge the brute power of the state through petitions, protests, dharnas and ultimately judicial activism. Given unresponsive political parties, citizens can access centres of power and privilege only through a vibrant civil society.
•Civil society is, of course, a plural sphere, and all manners of associations find space for themselves here, from football clubs to reading groups to film fan societies. Each democratic association is important, but we cannot deny that civil liberty and human rights groups are an essential precondition for human well-being. Some Indian citizens were randomly and arbitrarily imprisoned during the Emergency (1975-77) and the fundamental rights of others were truncated. It is, therefore, not surprising that in the aftermath of the Emergency, the civil liberties movement made a dramatic appearance on to the scene of Indian politics. The movement which developed into, or acted in concert with, the human rights movement took on an extremely significant task, that of protecting the fundamental right to life and liberty granted by the Indian Constitution.
•Every political revolution in the world has begun with the rights to life and liberty. These two rights lie at the core of other rights that have been developed and codified as critical for human beings. The two rights stretch from the right not to be tortured or killed, to the right not to be arrested and imprisoned by the lackeys of the state without due cause. The right to life is a basic right, but our lives do not mean anything if we are incarcerated for no rhyme or reason.
•In the decades that followed, human rights groups have become the custodian of the Fundamental Rights chapter of the Indian Constitution. They have investigated cases of arbitrary imprisonment, custodial deaths, deadly encounters and coercion of any citizen who dares to speak up against the state or dominant groups. These organisations have carefully documented the causes and the triggers of communal and caste violence, and established an excellent archive on the abuse of power by governments. They have asked questions which few Indians have had the courage to ask. And above all, they have protected the rights of vulnerable sections of our own people, the Adivasis, the Dalits and Muslims.
•Civil liberty and/or human rights activists are lawyers, academics, journalists and public minded citizens of India. What matters is their very human concern for the poor and the disadvantaged, the dispossessed and the vulnerable. What matters is that civil society activists protect the moral conscience of our society. Not all civil society groups do so, some are in the sole business of getting funds from the state or others. Not all sections of the media do so, they are often cowered down by their corporate bosses, and the lure of fame and lucre. Unhappily, the majority of Indians keep quiet when their own fellow citizens are tortured by the police, stripped of access to resources and livelihoods, lynched, exploited by corporate India, and neglected by the mainstream media. Human rights activists shoulder the fight for the rights of the oppressed.
The turf wars
•Their role is crucial for democracy because today we are ruled by a government that openly defies ethics and morality, that casts itself in the mould of realism, and that is supremely indifferent to the plight of millions of its citizens. We are ruled by leaders who dismiss the need for civil society because the cadres and the front organisations of its ideological backbone, the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, seek to dominate the space between the individual, the market and the state. The consequences are serious. Over 10 years ago, during UPA I, we were speaking of the right to food, to employment, to education, to information and to land. We theorised that India was moving towards a social democratic state vide civil society activism. Today there are few organisations that articulate the right not to be lynched, or who struggle for the right to life and liberty. Human rights activists are among these few organisations. They have courageously taken on the challenge posed by corporates, a ruthless state and its venal police, and the cadres of right-wing organisations that specialise in violence.
•Activists have been penalised for their eternal vigilance, which, as Irish lawyer-politician John Curran said in 1790, is the price we pay for liberty. The government and right-wing organisations have pursued and terrorised human rights activists. On August 28, lawyers, poets, academics and activists known for their defence of the dispossessed were targeted by the Maharashtra police. The houses of Sudha Bharadwaj, Varavara Rao, Vernon Gonsalves, Arun Ferreira, Gautam Navlakha, Anand Teltumbde and Stan Swamy were raided, and some of them imprisoned.
•The reasons for the harassment of these warriors in the cause of justice are unsubstantial and unconvincing. The police simply cannot establish that their speeches at the Elgar Parishad meeting in Pune in December 2017 incited the violence unleashed on a Dalit gathering at Bhima-Koregaon on January 1, 2018. It was earlier reported that the peaceful gathering was attacked by activists belonging to two Hindu right-wing organisations: Shiv Pratishthan led by Sambhaji Bhide, and Hindu Ekta Manch led by Milind Ekbote. Mr. Ekbote, committed to Maratha/Hindu supremacy, was arrested in March 2018. Soon he was cleared by the police and the Maharashtra government. Now a completely different set of agents has been brought in and charged with urban Maoism, a term that has neither a history nor a geography. It is simply silly.
Boomerang effect?
•This is the latest blow inflicted on civil society by a party that wishes to see only its own organisations dominating the space of associations. The attempt might just rebound on the party. The well-known Italian theorist Antonio Gramsci, jailed by the Mussolini government in the 1920s, set out to answer a crucial question. Why had a revolution occurred in semi-feudal Tsarist Russia, and not in the Western capitalist world as predicted by Marx? He concluded that revolutions only happen when the government directly and unashamedly exercises brute power, as in Russia. They do not happen in countries which possess civil societies, for here projects of domination and resistance can be played out. Citizens just do not need to revolt. Is there a lesson our rulers need to learn from this piece of profound wisdom?
📰 Shock arrests: on activists' arrest
While targeting prominent activists, the police have to prove they are not just stifling dissent
•If the arrest of five prominent activists by the Pune police in a coordinated operation across four States has resulted in such indignation, it is because of the widespread suspicion that this is part of an orchestrated crackdown on political dissent. The intervention of high courts and later the Supreme Court has given rise to the hope that they will not be put away without sufficient basis, and that the case for proceeding against them will be properly scrutinised. The focus will now be on the next hearing of the Supreme Court, but the dramatic development — which has come months after some Left-leaning activists were arrested in a case relating to the Bhima-Koregaon violence — has raised a fundamental question. Namely, whether the arrests were the culmination of a legitimate probe into a Maoist plot, as the police claim, or whether this is yet another clumsy failure to distinguish between those who indulge in or actively support violent activity, and those who attempt to understand or empathise with the social conditions that breed extremism and insurgency. It is nobody’s case that activists or intellectuals are above the law, but the Maharashtra police carry the enormous burden of proof, having accused the activists of doing much more than inciting the violence that broke out in Bhima-Koregaon, near Pune, this year. What began as a controversy over allegedly provocative speeches made at a Dalit conference relating to the 200th anniversary of an iconic battle site has inexplicably morphed into a larger conspiracy involving the CPI (Maoist).
•Human rights activists, particularly those working in conflict-prone areas, have been harassed and even arrested on the suspicion of being in league with extremists. While action against them routinely makes the headlines, the bald truth is that successful prosecutions are rare. Charges such as sedition, waging war against the government and promoting disaffection against the state rarely end in conviction. One reason for the failure is that prosecuting agencies typically believe in guilt by association; they confuse empathy with incitement and compassion with collaboration. Also, cases are often filed with utter disregard for the principle that charges such as ‘unlawful activities’ and ‘terrorist acts’ should not be invoked in the absence of actual acts of violence or incitement to violence; mere verbal expression of support cannot and should not be the basis for arrest. The Pune police claim that the five who have now been arrested were raising funds for the Maoists, and indulging in unlawful activities; that they had a nexus with other unlawful groups and, ominously, were plotting to “target high political functionaries”. Given the sweeping allegations of unlawful activity and the enormity of implicating them in unverified assassination plots, the burden of proof on the police is extremely high. Unless proven, it will only confirm suspicions that the law has been bent with the sole purpose of targeting dissent.
📰 Challenges at BIMSTEC
Many of the elements that made SAARC hostage to political rivalry can re-emerge in Kathmandu
•The Bay of Bengal Initiative for Multisectoral Technical and Economic Cooperation (BIMSTEC) summit in Kathmandu this week, which Prime Minister Narendra Modi is scheduled to attend, will be another milestone for India after the BRICS-BIMSTEC Outreach Summit hosted by it in 2016, as the grouping has gradually emerged as a key vehicle to take forward India’s regional, strategic and economic interests.
Stagnation of SAARC
•Two major factors have driven India’s interests in the BIMSTEC forum. A key reason for India to reach out to its BIMSTEC neighbours has been the stagnation of the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC). This limited both the scope of India’s growing economic aspirations as well as the role it could play in improving regional governance.
•This, however, did not stop India from revitalising the SAARC grouping when opportunities emerged. Two recent instances underscore its failed attempts. At the 18th SAARC Summit in Kathmandu, in 2014, India proposed the SAARC Motor Vehicles Agreement. However, this could not progress due to resistance from Pakistan. This compelled Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, and Nepal (BBIN) to sign the BBIN Motor Vehicles Agreement in 2015. As Prime Minister Narendra Modi said in Kathmandu, regional integration in South Asia would go ahead “through SAARC or outside it, among all of us or some of us,” keeping the doors open for those outside to join when they felt confortable to do so. Pakistan also opted out of the ambitious SAARC Satellite project proposed by India, leading to a change in its name to the South Asia Satellite. There is a tendency in some quarters to see India’s interests in BIMSTEC as part of its strategy to isolate Pakistan and position BIMSTEC as an alternative to SAARC. The above instances suggest otherwise.
•The main motivation for India to push BIMSTEC is thus not Pakistan; rather, it is in the country’s interest to ensure that the region does not lag behind and that an unstable neighbourhood does not drag its growth. India’s desire to link South Asia to the economically dynamic Southeast Asia is also part of this strategy.
•The rationale behind making the BIMSTEC mechanism work is to reassure South Asia that the region can work together to achieve common goals with India playing its due role.
A few challenges
•There will be challenges for India from both within and outside. These will pose policy dilemmas. India is currently the largest contributor to the BIMSTEC secretariat’s budget. India’s annual contribution was Rs. 2 crore (or 32% of the total secretariat budget) for 2017-18. With the secretariat planning to strengthen its capacity by increasing human resources and the number of officials representing each member state, India may need to consider allocating more resources. India’s generosity would be a key test of its commitment to the subregional grouping.
•Another issue would be for India to counter the impression that BIMSTEC is an India-dominated bloc, a problem that it faced for a long time in SAARC. In reality, the suspicion was mutual in SAARC — while India was wary of the smaller neighbours ‘ganging up’ against it, the smaller neighbours were worried that closer integration might lead to India’s domination.
•Today, most of the smaller neighbours are more willing to engage so as to benefit from India’s economic rise. Nonetheless, for internal political reasons, the same issue may re-emerge and pose hurdles in the progress of BIMSTEC. To moderate such suspicions, India will need to show sensitivity to the concerns of smaller neighbours.
The China question
•Another strategic challenge for India is that China has long desired to be part of the SAARC grouping. Some SAARC members also have their own interests in bringing China into the equation: they want it to balance India’s dominance. China has observer status in SAARC. When this was given, it only increased the demand to make China a full member of SAARC.
•India will have to carefully navigate the emerging regional geopolitics, as many of the elements that made SAARC hostage to political rivalry and turned it into a defunct mechanism can re-emerge in BIMSTEC.
📰 Two plus two to tango: A look at what the upcoming India-U.S. dialogue means
India will host the inaugural round of the two-plus-two dialogue with the United States on September 6.
What is the purpose of the 2+2 dialogue next week?
•The India-U.S. “2+2” dialogue will see the External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj and Defence Minister Nirmala Sitharaman meet U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and Defence Secretary James Mattis on September 6 in Delhi. The purpose is to get four key policymakers on the same page. This stems from the idea that India-U.S. ties are increasingly strategic, and in recent years, there have been concerns that while military ties and exercises have increased rapidly, diplomatic convergences aren’t keeping pace. Conversely, despite close diplomatic exchanges, key defence agreements have not yet been completed. Several deals and high technology purchases require U.S. Congress clearance too, so it was felt necessary for the defence and diplomatic arms of Delhi and Washington to meet. The talks will also review the U.S.’s South Asia policy on Afghanistan and its Indo-Pacific strategy, both of which give India centre stage.
Why is it taking place now?
•The idea for the meeting was discussed when Prime Minister Narendra Modi visited Washington in June 2017 and was subsequently announced by U.S. President Donald Trump. However, scheduling the four principals, each of whom has independently busy schedules, has been difficult. The two sides were finally able to agree on a date in April 2018 in Washington, but the meeting was put off after former Secretary of State Rex Tillerson was fired. Another date in July was cancelled at the last minute as Mr. Pompeo had to fly to North Korea instead. Officials hope the September date in Delhi will prove “third time lucky” and end commentary that the U.S. administration was not giving the meeting due priority.
What are some of the achievable outcomes from the visit?
•Ahead of the talks, a senior U.S. official said the 2+2 will discuss how to “operationalise India’s status as a major defence partner”. Apart from discussions on various defence purchases ranging from missile systems (NASAMS-II) to helicopters (24 Sikorsky MH-60 Romeo maritime helicopters) to drones (predator-B), the two sides are expected to sign the Communications Compatibility and Security Agreement (COMCASA) that has been pending for some years due to objections in India over sharing critical information. U.S. restrictions on defence purchases from Russia under the new CAATSA law will also be on the table for talks. Reports indicate that India may also be prepared to set up a direct hotline on Defence between Ms. Sitharaman and Mr. Mattis. Cooperation on fighting terrorism is expected to be a major issue for discussion and India is likely to push for the UNSC designation of Jaish-e-Mohammad chief Masood Azhar as a terrorist. Mr. Pompeo will fly into Delhi directly from Islamabad, and his engagement with the new Pakistani government will be watched closely. The U.S. is also likely to push for India’s support in its campaign against Iran, although its demand that the Modi government cut its Iranian oil imports have thus far not borne fruit.
Will trade issues come up?
•Trade is increasingly seen as a “strategic” issue in India-U.S. ties, and many of the economic irritants in the relationship are expected to be discussed, including the U.S. demands on lowering tariffs and subsidies, India’s impending action at the WTO against the U.S., the Reserve Bank of India’s “data localisation” order, and price caps on medical devices. India is also awaiting Mr. Trump’s response to an invitation to visit India sometime later this year or early next year, possibly even for the Republic Day parade.
📰 Anti-lynching measures: social media sites to be held responsible
Panel says they need to act in a ‘time-bound’ manner against fake posts
•A panel headed by Union Home Secretary Rajiv Gauba, which deliberated on measures to check incidents of lynching, submitted its report to a Group of Ministers headed by Home Minister Rajnath Singh.
•From May-June, more than 20 people were lynched based on fake posts or rumours floating on various social media platforms.
•The panel deliberated on such incidents and is learnt to have come to the conclusion that social media platforms also needed to act in a “time bound” manner.
•A senior government official said social media platforms — Facebook, WhatsApp, YouTube and Twitter — would be made accountable for not blocking such malicious posts/videos when brought to their notice and “FIR could be lodged against their country heads” for non-compliance of government orders and they could be prosecuted under law.
Talks with stakeholders
•The committee of secretaries, headed by Mr. Gauba, held consultations with a cross-section of society and other stakeholders before submitting its report to the GoM.
•The GoM will now submit its recommendations to Prime Minister Narendra Modi for a final decision, a Home Ministry official said.
•The panel report will now be discussed by the GoM whose members are External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj, Transport Minister Nitin Gadkari, Law Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad and Social Justice and Empowerment Minister Thawar Chand Gehlot.
•“We have stepped up engagement with social media platforms. There is a provision in law which enables government to issue orders to remove objectionable content, block websites etc. Law enforcement agencies should be able to step up the act and monitor more proactively,” said the official.
•He added that the social media platforms were given a report showing their compliance with the various government orders. “Compliance should be timely, they have agreed to better it. Some countries employ NGOs and volunteers who proactively surf the Internet. We have created a portal where people can report such videos and content and that can be forwarded by the National Crime Records Bureau [the nodal body] to States concerned for appropriate action,” the official said.
•Last month, the Home Ministry issued advisories to States and Union Territories following Supreme Court’s directives to check incidents of lynching.
Special task force
•The Centre asked them to appoint an officer in each district at the level of Superintendent of Police, set up a special task force to gather intelligence, and closely monitor social media contents to prevent mob attacks on suspicion of being child-lifters or cattle smugglers.
📰 Over 99% of demonetised notes were returned: RBI
Their total value was Rs. 15.31 lakh crore, shows report
•The Reserve Bank of India’s annual report for 2017-18 said more than 99% of the Rs. 500 and Rs. 1,000 notes withdrawn from circulation in November 2016 had been returned to the central bank.
•According to the report, after verification and reconciliation, the total value of the Rs. 500 and Rs. 1,000 notes as on November 8, 2016, the day before the note ban came into effect, was Rs. 15.41 lakh crore. The total value of such notes returned from circulation is Rs. 15.31 lakh crore.
•RBI data showed that the value of banknotes in circulation increased by 37.7% over the year to Rs. 18.04 lakh crore as at end-March 2018.
More 500 notes
•With more Rs. 500 notes having been pumped into the system over the last one year, the share of Rs. 2,000 notes by value declined to 37.3% as on March 2018, compared with 50.2% a year earlier. The share of Rs. 500 notes, in terms of value, increased from 22.5% to 42.9% in the same period.
•“The share of newly introduced Rs. 200 banknotes in the total value of banknotes in circulation was 2.1% at end-March 2018,” the report said.
📰 Cabinet clears ₹1,600-crore mission to map coasts
O-SMART to include warning systems, desalination plants
•India is set to get more disaster warning systems along its coasts. While it already has a tsunami warning system in place, the new systems will keep an eye out for “tsunamis and storm surges,” according to an official release.
•The system is part of a programme called O-SMART (Ocean Services, Technology, Observations, Resources Modelling and Science) that is being piloted by the Union earth sciences ministry. It was cleared by the Cabinet Committee on Economic Affairs on Wednesday, at an outlay of ₹1,623 crore.
•O-SMART will provide economic benefits to a number of user communities in the coastal and ocean sectors, namely, fisheries, offshore industry, coastal States, defence, shipping, ports, etc.
•Other key missions under O-SMART include, according to the press release, strengthening of Ocean Observations and Modelling, strengthening of Ocean Services for fishermen, setting up marine observatories for monitoring marine pollution, setting up Ocean Thermal Energy Conversion Plant (OTEC) in Kavaratti, acquiring two coastal research vessels, continuation of ocean survey and exploration of minerals and living resources, technology development for Deep Ocean Mining and manned submersibles and the setting up six desalination plants in Lakshadweep.
📰 How not to do an environmental assessment
An urban redevelopment project must apply for approvals in an integrated manner
•The “redevelopment” projects of Delhi which have been in the news are caught up in legal tangles. In these, it is the ones related to their environmental approvals that stand out. This article outlines three ways in which these projects have used the Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) process to subvert the right of citizens to a better environment. A case in point is the approval process for the “World Trade Centre” in Nauroji Nagar in south Delhi.
•EIA reports are a critical component of India’s environmental decision-making process in that they are supposed to be a detailed study of the potential impacts of proposed projects. Based on these reports, the Environment Ministry or other relevant regulatory bodies may or may not grant approval to a project. The EIA reports are also important to define measures that the project could take in order to contain or offset project impacts. To ensure that they are an accurate account of scientific facts and observations, the law mandates the engagement of an accredited independent EIA consultant to undertake the study.
A case of no ethics
•The EIA reports of the redevelopment projects are an exercise in the worst possible research practices and ethics. The consultant for the Nauroji Nagar project has used material from copyrighted papers, webpages and other EIA reports. It even mentions that the water quality study was undertaken in 2015, one year before the project was commissioned to NBCC. It cites eight water quality monitoring locations for the study which are situated in Tamil Nadu.This content can be traced back to the EIA report of Tamil Nadu Minerals Ltd. which was prepared by the same consultant. Another example is the text under “Hydrogeology of PIA District” on page 42 of the EIA report. This is a carbon copy of material from a copyrighted book (2015) titled “Management of Water, Energy and Bio-resources in the Era of Climate Change: Emerging Issues and Challenges”.
•Such research practices in EIAs continue unabated because of the Environment Ministry’s failure to come down heavily on this. In the end, it is citizens who have to bear the brunt.
Gaps and errors
•There are many instances of missing or misleading information which understate the potential impact of these projects. For example, the EIA’s ‘Terms of Reference’ (ToR) for Nauroji Nagar, which is essentially a commercial project, fail to mention the word “commercial”. Instead, it states that the project is for the “modernization” of government residential colonies. The NBCC’s “World Trade Centre” that is proposed to be built at this site has been called “a commercial complex” by the EIA report. The ToR requires the EIA report to include a detailed traffic impact analysis, but this is missing. The report is also oblivious to the many archaeological and cultural heritage sites that will be affected by the construction. Other examples are: A “Table 3-20: List of animal species in the study area” on page 76 lists the names of trees, while common plankton has been listed as fish species on page 81.
•The EIA Notification 2006 says that “deliberate concealment and/or submission of false or misleading information or data…” can lead to a rejection of the application or cancellation of the approval. But it is unlikely that the Ministry will pursue this line against these projects as it would mean stopping the project of the more powerful Ministry of Urban Development.
No public hearings
•EIA-based approvals for most projects also involve the process of conducting public hearings in order that the views and opinions of people who are likely to be affected can be taken on board before a decision to approve the project is made. In a world that is challenged by environmental degradation and social conflicts, scholars have upheld public participation to be a “threshold condition” for development.
•Yet, it is disappointing that the government has generously exempted real estate projects from holding consultations. Since Delhi’s “redevelopment” projects were approved without public consultation, any problems raised now by citizens, such as those about the EIAs, will be rendered “post facto”. Nauroji Nagar has already been razed to the ground — homes, trees and all.
•Citizen action and litigation has forced the project proponents and the Ministry of Urban Development to state that they will revise their plans to reduce or prevent tree felling. But this response is neither adequate nor legally acceptable. The Delhi High Court that is hearing this matter must ensure that these redevelopment projects reapply for approvals as a single integrated one, and in accordance with the law.
📰 Power play: on troubles of the power sector
The government should address the troubles of the power sector, but IBC must hold
•The Allahabad High Court on Monday dismissed a plea from private power producers seeking relief from an RBI diktat to banks to take cognisance of a stressed loan if repayments were missed even by a day. The RBI decision, of February 12, requires banks to complete insolvency resolution proceedings within 180 days of defaults. Monday also marked the deadline for several cases in which loans were declared bad due to this regulation. Across the banking system, about 70 firms with loans of around ₹3.8 lakh crore outstanding were expected to face insolvency proceedings. Thirty-four of the troubled accounts are from the power sector and constitute nearly 54% (or ₹2.02 lakh crore) of banks’ exposure in these cases, according to the credit rating agency ICRA. A Power Ministry report suggests these power producers have planned generation capacities of 39 gigawatts, and are in trouble. This is due to a variety of factors: fuel shortages due to cancellation of coal block allotments or lack of supply linkages; absence of power purchase agreements signed by State discoms; and cost overruns due to delayed clearances. The promoters argued in court that most of the hurdles faced by the power sector were due to external factors and so they should be spared the insolvency stick.
•Several bankers and even the government have expressed reservations about the RBI directive. With regard to the power sector, in particular, the worry among bankers is that a credible resolution plan may be difficult to construct unless key structural issues such as fuel supply and State discoms’ financial woes are fixed. To be fair, the power sector has been facing some of these issues since UPA-II. The UPA government had set up a project management group in the Cabinet Secretariat to steer stalled big-ticket investment projects out of regulatory landmines. The NDA government did its bit too, including an overhaul of the process for coal block allotments and the UDAY scheme to rev up State discoms’ finances. But the utilisation rate of power plant capacities has been stagnant at around 60%, indicating that more needs to be done by policymakers. Nonetheless, it is heartening that the High Court refused to entertain any obfuscation of the RBI’s regulatory powers or of the sanctity of the Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code to deal with stressed assets. This should trigger a consolidation in the sector, possibly with deep haircuts for banks. Granting any relief would have led to pleas for exemption from other sectors too. The government should display greater urgency in tackling systemic issues in different sectors, but there should be no deviation from the IBC path it has embarked on to fix the banking stress, that is hurting the entire economy.
📰 A people’s campaign to rebuild Kerala
A new approach is needed that enhances the sum total of man-made, natural, human and social capital
•The material loss due to the Kerala floods has been estimated at ₹26,000 crore, but beyond this there has been an immense loss of natural, human, and social capital for which no estimates are available. There is no doubt that the short-sighted attempts in building man-made capital (buildings in hilly forests, encroachments on wetlands and rivers, and stone quarries) while ignoring the attendant degradation of natural, human and social capital have played a significant role in exacerbating the problem. The immediate task in the State is relief and rehabilitation, but it is crucial to simultaneously identify the root causes of the havoc.
The root causes
•These root causes prevail throughout the Western Ghats and, indeed, the rest of the country. The first is the flouting of laws that have been established to safeguard natural capital. The Shah Commission inquiring into illegal mining in Goa observes that mining beyond permissible limits has caused serious damage to water resources, agriculture and biodiversity. Second, we have been ignoring serious degradation of human capital in terms of health and employment. In the case of the Plachimada panchayat in Palakkad district, overuse and pollution of water resources by the Coca Cola factory has resulted in losses to the tune of ₹160 crore. Third, scientific knowledge and advice has been continually disregarded. In the case of the proposed Athirappilly hydroelectric project, an analysis by the River Research Centre showed that the project document had seriously overestimated the availability of water. The data examined showed that the likely power production in no way justified the costs of construction and running of the project. And fourth, there has been serious erosion of social capital. For instance, Anoop Vellolippil, a staunch anti-quarry activist engaging in a peaceful demonstration, was killed when he was pelted with stones by those allegedly employed by quarry owners at Kaiveli in Vadakara Taluk of Kozhikkode district on December 16, 2014.
The right of local communities
•Therefore, it is imperative that we abandon business as usual. We cannot just focus on man-made capital; we must enhance the sum total of man-made, natural, human and social capital. The new regime that we must usher in while keeping this in mind must acknowledge that it is local communities that have a genuine stake in the health of their ecosystems and an understanding of the working of the same. The current system of protecting natural resources through negative incentives in the hands of a coercive and corrupt bureaucracy must give way to positive incentives that can be monitored in a transparent fashion by all concerned citizens. Our Western Ghats panel proposes several such incentives — for example, payment of conservation service charges for protecting important elements of biodiversity such as sacred groves (called Sarpa Kavus in Kerala), and payment towards soil carbon enrichment by switching to organic farming.
•Turning over a new leaf then, the Kerala government must reassure its people that it will no longer continue the policies of development and conservation by exclusion, and that it will respect the right of local communities to decide what kind of development they want and what kind of conservation measures they would like to see put in place.
•To accomplish this, the government must implement the 73rd and 74th constitutional amendments in letter and spirit. It must empower local bodies at the ward, gram panchayat, and town and city levels to prepare reports on the status of the environment and to decide on how a substantial portion of the budget should be spent on the basis of these reports. It must set up Biodiversity Management Committees of citizens and empower them to document the status of the local ecosystems and biodiversity resources, and regulate their use. They must be given powers to levy collection charges for access to biodiversity as well as to intellectual property relating to community knowledge. In particular, it must accord the Biodiversity Management Committees a central place in the preparation of environmental impact assessments and ensure that these assessments begin to reflect the true state of affairs instead of being the uniformly fraudulent documents that are being submitted today. It must fully implement the Forest Rights Act and empower not only tribals, but all traditional forest dwellers to control, manage and market non-timber forest produce. It must stop distortion and suppression of all environment and development-related information and begin uploading information suo moto on websites, as the Right to Information Act demands. It must initiate building a public and transparent database on environmental parameters drawing on the environment status reports, People’s Biodiversity Registers, community forest management working schemes, and environmental education projects undertaken by students.
•Equipped with this information and all pertinent documents such as from the Western Ghats Ecology Expert Panel, the Kasturirangan Committee, and the Oommen V. Oommen Committee, the State government should ask local bodies about the levels of ecological sensitivity in different parts of the landscape on the basis of topography, hydrology, land use and vegetation, regardless of ownership of the land. The local bodies should provide suggestions on appropriate management regimes for regions of different levels of sensitivity. The government should begin to proactively use modern technologies, including smartphones, in a user-friendly manner so that all the inputs from the various local bodies are transparently available to all citizens. Citizens can then assist in the task of integrating all this information and come up with appropriate conservation and development plans that are properly fine-tuned to locality- and time-specific ecological and social conditions.
A sustainable and safe future
•This will be a broad-based inclusive approach to conservation and development, and will be in the spirit of the People’s Plan Campaign of the 1990s in Kerala, which was spearheaded by the State Finance Minister, Thomas Isaac. I urge Mr. Isaac to renew the spirit of the People’s Plan Campaign rather than seek to bury it. Only then can the people of Kerala rebuild nature and society and assure for themselves a sustainable and safe future. I fervently hope that the Kerala government embraces such a progressive approach, so that we will be much better equipped in the years to come to moderate, if not fully prevent, the kind of havoc that visited Kerala recently.
