📰 Tamil Nadu Cabinet recommends release of Rajiv Gandhi assassination case convicts
The Cabinet decides to recommend release of Murugan, Santhan, A.G. Perarivalan, Jayakumar, Ravichandran, Robert Payas and Nalini Sriharan.
•A meeting of the Tamil Nadu Cabinet, chaired by Chief Minister Edappadi K. Palaniswami, on Sunday evening recommended to Governor Banwarilal Purohit that all seven life convicts in the former Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi assassination case be released under Article 161 of the Constitution.
•The decision followed the Supreme Court’s observation last week that the Governor shall be at liberty to decide on the remission application of Perarivalan, one of the convicts, “as deemed fit.” The convicts — Nalini, T. Suthendraraja alias Santhan, Sriharan alias Murugan (Nalini’s husband), A.G. Perarivalan alias Arivu, Robert Payas, S. Jayakumar alias Jayakumaran, and Ravichandran alias Ravi — have been in jail for over 27 years. Santhan, Murugan, Payas and Jayakumar are Sri Lankan Tamils.
On Perarivalan’s plea
•Briefing journalists after the two-hour Cabinet meeting, Fisheries Minister D. Jayakumar said that though the Supreme Court’s direction came on Perarivalan’s plea, the other six convicts had also pleaded to the Governor and the State government for remission of their sentences. The official communication about the Cabinet resolution would be sent to the Governor on Sunday itself, Mr. Jayakumar said.
•Political leaders, including DMK president M.K. Stalin, welcomed the decision.
•Asked if the decision would stand scrutiny, Mr. Jayakumar said, “The Governor will have to accept recommendations of the Council of Ministers. There is nothing to reject.”
•Article 161 empowers the Governor to grant pardons and to suspend, remit or commute sentences of any person convicted of any offence against any law relating to a matter to which the executive power of the State extends.
•To a question on the contention that the State government could not decide on a case investigated by a Central government agency, the Minister said, “Whatever it may be, law is only interpreted by the authority concerned — the Supreme Court, the highest in hierarchy. The Supreme Court’s direction is clear.”
•Asked about the duties and responsibilities of the State government and those of the Governor on such issues, Mr. Jayakumar said: “Governor represents the State.. He is the Executive [head] for the State. Whatever decision is taken by the government, it will be implemented, executed and issued by the Governor.”
•On the opposition in some quarters to the decision to recommend the release of persons convicted in the assassination of a former Prime Minister, Mr. Jayakumar said: “See, the CBI undertook the investigation. That is past. What is present that is important.”
•According to Mr. Jayakumar, the entire Tamil people supported the release of the convicts. “It was only based on their sentiments, the Cabinet in 2014 (headed by Jayalalithaa) passed a resolution to release them. We have been reflecting the sentiments of the Tamil people,” Mr. Jayakumar said, listing the efforts taken towards their release since.
•On whether the Governor, a Central government appointee, could go against the stand of the Centre in this issue, Mr. Jayakumar reiterated, “Governor has to accept the decision taken at the Cabinet meeting.”
•Rajiv Gandhi was assassinated by a LTTE human bomb Dhanu at an election rally in Sriperumbudur near Chennai on the night of May 21, 1991. Fifteen other persons, including nine policemen, were killed in the explosion and 43 people were injured. The Special Investigation Team into the assassination had chargesheeted 41 accused, of whom 26 were tried. A dozen LTTE operatives, including one of the masterminds Sivarasan and his accomplice Shuba, committed suicide. Three were declared absconders.
•While the trial court awarded death penalty to all 26 accused, the Supreme Court released 19 of them and upheld capital punishment for Nalini, Murugan, Santhan and Perarivalan, and commuted the death sentence to life in the case of three others.
•In April 2000, Governor Fathima Beevi commuted Nalini’s death sentence, while the remaining three black warrant prisoners obtained a reprieve from the Supreme Court in February 2014 citing inordinate delay by the President in deciding on their mercy petitions.
📰 U.P. Bill to restore anticipatory bail clause referred to President
Assembly had on August 30 approved the Bill; it was revoked during Emergency
•A crucial Bill that will pave the way for the re-introduction of the provision of anticipatory bail, which was revoked over 40 years ago in the State during the Emergency, has been referred for Presidential assent.
•Uttar Pradesh Governor Ram Naik has referred the Code of Criminal Procedure (Uttar Pradesh Amendment) Bill, 2018, to the President, a Raj Bhavan communique said on Sunday.
•The State Assembly had on August 30 approved the Bill that aims at restoring the provision of anticipatory bail in the State. The proposed legislation will have to be sent to the Union government for final approval, as it proposes amendments for the State in Section 438 (anticipatory bail) of CrPC.
•“Under the Section 438 of the CrPC, imposing conditions or riders before such bail, has been left to the discretion of the court. However, in the U.P. amendment, we have made certain riders mandatory like the accused would have to be present for interrogation whenever required by police, the accused will not threaten anyone directly or indirectly involved with the case and that the accused will not leave the country without the permission of the court,” a Home Department official said.
•One of the proposed amendments is that it will not be necessary for the accused to be present during the hearing for the anticipatory bail. Apart from U.P. and Uttarakhand, all other States have the provision of anticipatory bail, an official said. “There will be no anticipatory bail in cases where the punishment is death sentence and also cases under the Gangster’s Act.”
Another amendment
•Another amendment is that the court would have to decide on the application for anticipatory bail within 30 days of filling of such an application. “West Bengal has this provision,” the official pointed out.
•The provision was repealed in U.P. by then Chief Minister Hemwati Nandan Bahuguna in 1976 during the Emergency, to rein in protests against the Congress.
•In 2009, the State Law Commission had also made a recommendation for re-introduction of a modified bill. The next year, a Bill in this regard was cleared by the Assembly and sent for the Centre’s approval, but it was put on hold.
•The then Mayawati government had passed a Bill that year and sent it to the President, but it was sent back a with suggestions for some modifications. In an application pending before the Supreme Court, the State government had given an assurance in July this year that the provision would be re-introduced.
📰 Too close for comfort? On the India-U.S. 2+2 meeting
Dialogue with the U.S. should not define India’s strategic future or its other bilateral relationships
•The India-U.S. 2+2 meeting on September 6 between the Defence and Foreign Ministers of the two countries appeared to be a singularly one-sided affair. Washington was calling the shots, and New Delhi was trying to wriggle out of U.S. pressure without much success. The inaugural round of the 2+2 Dialogue is therefore ‘advantage U.S.’ While carefully analysing the outcomes of the talks and the future direction of India-U.S. relations, it is difficult to get overjoyed by heart-warming American phrases like “India is a consequential emerging partner” or Washington naming and shaming Pakistan. Let’s look at the bigger, more nuanced and consequential picture.
Buy American
•Behind the carefully-constructed narrative of strategic rationales and geopolitical calculations underpinning India-U.S. relations, the American team came to New Delhi with an unambiguous sales pitch. Not that there wasn’t any strategic rationale to the high-level meeting, but the underlying American sales pitch was remarkable. Consider the U.S.’s insistence that India should bring down its oil imports from Iran to ‘zero’ in deference to the restrictions imposed by its unilateral withdrawal from the Iran nuclear deal. The U.S. also recommends that India buy American oil to make up the deficit. As a matter of fact, U.S. oil exports to India have more than doubled in the past year, thanks to the U.S. sanction fears, thereby helping a booming domestic crude oil industry. Notably, at the 2+2 meeting, the Indian side did not manage to get a waiver for importing Iranian crude.
•Second, Washington seeks to impose the punitive provisions of a U.S. federal law called Countering America’s Adversaries Through Sanctions Act (CAATSA) on countries dealing with Russian defence and intelligence sectors, making it difficult for India to buy the much-needed S-400 missile system. For a country with close to 60% of its weapons systems originating from Russia, this would be a huge setback. Again, it’s clear the U.S. would like India to buy its weapons instead. There is still no clarity on whether India’s request for a “one-time waiver” was granted by the U.S. to buy Russian weapons at the 2+2 meeting; the joint statement is silent on this. If such a waiver was indeed not granted, it must be considered a major set-back.
•In the run-up to the 2+2 meeting, the U.S. also put considerable pressure on India to reduce the bilateral trade deficit, which is in India’s favour, by buying more American goods.
Key security agreement
•During the 2+2 meeting, the two countries also signed the Communications Compatibility and Security Agreement, or COMCASA. The agreement is one of three considered to be “foundational” for a viable India-U.S. military relationship. In 2016, India and the U.S. had signed the Logistics Exchange Memorandum of Agreement (LEMOA), allowing their militaries to replenish from the other’s bases. The third, the Basic Exchange and Cooperation Agreement for Geo-spatial Cooperation (BECA), is yet to be negotiated. It is necessary to take stock of the national security implications of these agreements.
•The argument in favour of signing COMCASA is that it “will facilitate access to advanced defence systems and enable India to optimally utilise its existing U.S.-origin platforms”. India’s U.S.-sourced P-8I and C-130J aircraft had to use low-tech communication equipment as the U.S. could not provide India with such technologies due to domestic legal restrictions, unless India signed COMCASA. Moreover, in the absence of COMCASA, and the attendant high-tech equipment, the interoperability between Indian and U.S. forces would be severely hampered.
•While there is some merit in this argument, given that the India-specific COMCASA is not a public document, we do not know the scope of the agreement. Therefore, the government needs to clarify several concerns. For one, there is the issue of visits by U.S. inspectors to Indian bases to carry out inspections on the COMCASA-safeguarded equipment sold to India.
•Since we do not know how intrusive this inspection would be, it is useful to look at the language from a similar agreement signed between the U.S. and South Korea in 2008: “DoD [U.S. Department of Defence]-provided COMSEC [Communications Security] equipment and materials, including keying materials, will be installed and maintained only by authorized US personnel… For purposes of performing required maintenance and periodic inspections, authorized and duly identified US personnel will be permitted timely access to DoD-provided COMSEC equipment and material. DoD will, in cases when time and circumstances permit, notify MND [Republic of Korea’s Ministry for Defence] in advance in those instances when access by authorized US personnel is considered necessary.” (Emphasis added.)
•No doubt, South Korea is a U.S. military ally, which India is not. So one hopes that the provisions of inspections would be less intrusive. But there is no getting away from the fact that COMCASA will apply end-use monitoring and reconfiguration restrictions on India as well. In any case, by signing COMCASA and by agreeing to reduce the purchase of Russian weapon systems (in line with CAATSA), India has implicitly accepted the extraterritorial application of U.S. law on itself. While it is true that the original End-Use Monitoring Agreement (EUMA) was agreed to between India and the U.S., in 2009, New Delhi has now taken the application of U.S. federal law on India to a completely new level. EUMA had reportedly ensured that U.S. inspectors would stay away from Indian bases: is that ensured under COMCASA as well? Moreover, did India push for a U.S. presidential waiver for receiving COMSEC equipment and materials without having to sign COMCASA?
•There is also a related concern whether the installation of U.S. communication systems would compromise the secrecy of Indian military communication systems. Most importantly, it might also be useful to debate the utility of such India-U.S. agreements since, at the end of the day, the two countries are not likely to be deployed alongside each other in a conflict situation. The argument here is not that India should not make use of American assistance in strengthening its national security, but there should be more clarity on what it entails.
Balancing China
•Even though the “Joint Statement on the Inaugural India-U.S. 2+2 Ministerial Dialogue” did not explicitly mention China, the section on the Indo-Pacific region implicitly referred to it. There is no denying the fact that the “China threat” is one of the major talking points between Washington and New Delhi today. While China is indeed a challenge, there is only so much India-U.S. cooperation can do to address that challenge for India. India is an Asian country, with several Southern Asian security challenges, and its ability to meet those challenges with the help of an offshore (and declining) superpower is at best limited, and counter-productive at worst.
•The India-U.S. relationship shouldn’t be allowed to define India’s geopolitical character, strategic future or the limits of its other bilateral relationships. In a world that is far more chaotic than ever since Independence, India must keep its options open and be multi-aligned, even as the U.S. forms a key part in that scheme of things.
📰 Section 377: A greater transformation
In reading down Section 377, the Supreme Court has showed the way to deepen democracy
•In its decision in Navtej Singh Johar v. Union of India last week, the Supreme Court has finally struck down the colonial-era law criminalising homosexuality and the lives of LGBTQ persons. In a 493-page verdict, with four concurring judgments, the court traversed the protections of fundamental rights in the Constitution to find that the provision violated the rights of LGBTQ persons to dignity, equality, privacy and expression.
‘Personal matters’
•The judges were unequivocal that Section 377 of the Indian Penal Code cavalierly intruded into a zone of intimate decision which is entitled to constitutional protection. As Justice D.Y. Chandrachud put it, “the choice of a partner, the desire for personal intimacy and the yearning to find love and fulfilment in human relationships have a universal appeal.” And: “the state has no business to intrude into these personal matters. Nor can societal notions of heteronormativity regulate constitutional liberties based on sexual orientation.”
•The opinion of the Chief Justice of India, Dipak Misra, invoked Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Arthur Schopenhauer and John Stuart Mill to stress the right to develop one’s individuality against the demands of social conformity. In the context of LGBTQ persons — where the struggle is often to assert one’s personhood in an isolating, ostracising environment in which heterosexuality is the norm — this constitutional protection given to intimate choices against the dictates of societal conformity cannot be overstated.
•The judges were also clear that the guarantee of equality at its heart was the guarantee of equal citizenship. The criminalising ambit of Section 377 violated this guarantee as it “singles out people, by their private choices” and “marks them as less than citizens — or less than human”.
A stereotypical morality
•The harm of Section 377 was not just that it prohibited a form of intimate and personal choice but that it encoded a stereotypical morality which has deep-ranging social effects. As Justice Chandrachud put it, Section 377 “perpetuates a certain culture”, based on “homophobic attitudes” which make “it impossible for victims to access justice”. The right not to be discriminated against on grounds of one’s sexual orientation is violated by the prejudicial stereotypes about the LGBTQ community fostered by Section 377. It is for this reason as well that Section 377 was read down by the judges.
•This constitutional guarantee of the right to develop one’s personhood and the right to equal citizenship is firmly anchored in the notion of constitutional morality, as referenced by Justices Misra, R.F. Nariman and Chandrachud. The denial to LGBT persons of the right to dignity is incompatible with the morality of the Constitution. As Justice Chandrachud put it, “there is an unbridgeable divide between the moral values on which it [Section 377] is based and the values of the Constitution.”
•The idea that majority opinion should prevail over the right to dignity and liberty of the minority was explicitly rejected. As Justice Nariman put it, “it is not left to majoritarian governments to prescribe what shall be orthodox in matters of social morality.”
•By explicitly setting out the Court as a guarantor of minority rights, regardless of the opinion of “popular or legislative majorities”, the Court has signalled its determination to defend the Constitution. In a time when lynchings have become the order of the day and government remains a mute spectator, the role that the judiciary has to play in safeguarding the right to life of minorities of all stripes and hues cannot be overstated.
•The logic of Navtej Singh Johar is anchored within what both Justices Misra and Chandrachud called “a transformative Constitution”. According to Justice Misra, “the purpose of having a constitution is to transform society” to “embrace therein” the “ideals of justice, liberty, equality and fraternity”. The mandate to transform society in allegiance to the Constitution is a task vested in the state, the judiciary and the citizen.
Continuing task
•It is in this sense that we have to understand the work still to be done after this remarkable judgment. If a law has taken root in the social, cultural and legal consciousness, the challenge of extirpating the prejudice which the law has fostered is still immense. One has to only think of the prejudice and violence Denotified Tribes still face at the hands of the state and society even after the colonial-era Criminal Tribes Act was repealed in the late 1940s.
•It is this immense task of combating the prejudicial attitudes encoded in Section 377 which has to continue. Justice Nariman was cognisant of this challenge and mandated the Union of India to give “wide publicity to the judgment” and conduct “sensitisation and awareness training for government officials and in particular police officials in the light of observations contained in the judgment”.
•The implications of a transformative Constitution are wide ranging and its power can be harnessed by inter-caste, inter-religious and same sex couples, all of whom are battling a form of social morality which is at odds with the Constitution. In fact Justice Chandrachud called “the right to love not just a separate battle for LGBTQ individuals but a battle for us all”.
•The court, through this decision, has harnessed the transformative power of the Constitution and amplified a way of thinking rooted in the values of respect for dignity, equality and fraternity. If this way of thinking, rooted as it in the struggle against forms of discrimination perpetrated by a conservative social morality, becomes more widely accepted, India will be less of a majoritarian democracy and more of a form of constitutional democracy.
📰 Bail over jail: on due process
The chain of arrest, custody, and remand must be linked only by due process
•The power of arrest is an extraordinary one, conferred on the police to be employed with discretion and deliberation, not as a tool of oppression and harassment at the hands of prosecuting authorities or the government of the day. The Supreme Court has emphasised that arrests should never be a reflexive response to an allegation of an offence, or even its commission. The law that empowers the police to arrest people without warrants (Section 41 of the CrPC) is reasonably stringent, demanding that some conditions be met, including that such arrests be carried out to prevent commission of further offences, tampering of evidence, and influencing of witnesses. Unfortunately, a power that affects the liberty of citizens and which can ‘bring humiliation… and cast scars forever’, as the Supreme Court noted in Arnesh Kumar v. State of Bihar (2014), continues to be used in a cavalier way. Recently, Tamil Nadu has attracted attention in this connection, particularly for the heavy-handed treatment of those opposing the Chennai-Salem eight-lane highway project. The latest in a slew of unjustified round-ups and arrests was Swaraj India Party’s chief, Yogendra Yadav; ironically, he was on nothing more than a fact-finding mission to meet farmers affected by or opposed to the project.
•Mr. Yadav was let off, but in most cases arrests without warrant follow a dishearteningly familiar course, with the accused sent to custody after the police oppose bail. In this prosecutorial ecosystem, jail succeeds in trumping bail almost every time and magistrates, who are empowered to refuse remand and grant bail, continue to issue orders mechanically. Tamil Nadu was witness to another high-profile example of this recently, when a student was arrested and remanded to 15 days judicial custody (before eventually being let off on bail) for political sloganeering on an aircraft; the complaint was filed by the BJP’s State president. The dilemmas over maintaining the right balance between individual liberty and the interests of society invariably become more acute when the charges against the accused, well-established or otherwise, are serious. The recent and shocking arrests of activists, over their alleged links to Maoists, have focussed attention on the severe restrictions on bail when booked under the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act. The prosecution has 180 days to file a charge sheet, a period during which bail is routinely denied. And after the charge sheet is filed, bail is extremely difficult to secure, dependent as it is on the accused establishing his or her innocence, a reversal of the usual burden of proof. If the Supreme Court decides that justice will be secured only by its intervention in the case, it will probably be forced to invoke its extraordinary powers under Article 142 of the Constitution, another reminder of the need to break the customary chain of arrest, custody and remand.
📰 Why not Dalit?
The government advisory on the use of the word shows its intent to further marginalise the community
•In pre-Independence India and after 1947, during the several unyielding movements for justice for Dalits, multiple terms have been used to convey the idea of the caste system which B.R. Ambedkar described “as an ascending order of reverence and descending order of contempt.” We have been seeing the “descending order of contempt” for thousands of years manifested in the worst manner possible in the practice of untouchability.
Terms over the years
•The many movements launched by social reformers and activists against the caste system and against untouchability have used terms such as Antyajas, suppressed castes, pariahs, depressed castes, Dalits, Harijans, Ati Shudra and Adi Dravida. Jyotiba Phule is credited to have used the term Dalit. Even Mahatma Gandhi accepted the term Dalit when he wrote in 1927 that “from now on, we will describe Antyajas too as dalit.” Explaining that “the term was first used by Swami Shraddhanand”, Gandhi added that “Swami Vivekananda chose an English word having the same meaning. He described the untouchables not as ‘depressed’ but as ‘suppressed’ and quite rightly. They became, and remain, what they are because they were suppressed by the so-called upper classes.”
•In 1931, many people disapproved of the use of the word Dalit. Mahatma Gandhi wrote in an article, “Use Another Name”: “Formerly the name Antyaja was not felt as expressing contempt. The names Dhed and Bhangi were disliked. I think the term ‘Dalit’ was first used by the late Swami Shraddhanand. Now it seems that name also is not liked. The real explanation is that as long as the poison of untouchability exists in our society, any name that may be given will probably come to be disliked after some time. Hence the right thing to do is to get rid of that poison.” He added: “Though it is thus necessary to attack the root cause, if a better word than Antyaja or Dalit occurs to anyone he may send it to me.”
•In the absence of a better word, Dalit has been the preferred word in the movements for justice for Dalits till now. It is well known that the term Harijan was coined by someone who was a victim of untouchability. He suggested that Gandhi use it to describe the so-called untouchables. That term was widely used during the freedom struggle and many, including Ambedkar, considered it humiliating and patronising. In 1946, Gandhi received a complaint from someone who wrote, “From the psychological point of view, I think the name ‘Harijan’ instils into the minds of the people to whom it is applied a feeling of inferiority, however sacred that name may be. This feeling is very difficult to wipe out from them — to whatever extent they are advanced — if they are always called ‘Harijan’. Similarly if a man in the street is asked about a ‘Harijan’, the first thing he will speak of is ‘untouchability and the Depressed Class’.”
•Gandhi responded to that question by writing an an article, “What is in a name?”, in which he said: “The name ‘Harijan’ has sacred associations. It was suggested by a Harijan as a substitute for Asprishya (untouchable), Dalita (depressed), or for the different categories of ‘untouchables’ such as Bhangis, Mehtars, Chamars, Pariahs, etc.” He added: “The Government officers put them in a schedule and, therefore, called them the Scheduled Classes, thus making confusion worse confounded.”
A term that denotes pain
•The historical narrative conveys the point that many terms have been generated in the movements against caste. The British government did not prefer one term over another even as it put certain castes in a schedule and called them Scheduled Castes. Now, the confusion has become more pronounced with the Bharatiya Janata Party-led National Democratic Alliance government issuing an advisory to the media saying they “may refrain” from using the word Dalit, based on an order by the Nagpur Bench of the Bombay High Court. Previously, the Madhya Pradesh High Court had stated that it would “have no manner of doubt” that the government would “refrain from using the nomenclature ‘Dalit’ for the members belonging to Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes as the same does not find mention in the Constitution of India or any statute.” This has caused hurt among the Dalits, who feel that the term is not offensive or violative of any law, and that such an advisory is not based on sound reasoning.
•My book, Marx and Ambedkar — Continuing the Dialogue, co-authored with N. Muthumohan, discusses the Dalit question extensively. Gail Omvedt’s Dalits and the Democratic Revolution deals with Dalit issues. Can the government dare to dictate terms used in books, and in public discourse and analysis?
•‘Dalit’ had become the preferred term in Maharashtra during the 1970s. The word Harijan is not used now (the government issued a circular to officials in 1982 saying they should not use the term while describing members of the Scheduled Castes). The word Dalit denotes the pain of all those who suffered because of the caste system; it defines their identity to launch struggles based on Ambedkar’s slogan: Educate, Organise and Agitate. The government’s advisory indicates its anti-Dalit posture. The term Dalit, used by Jyotiba Phule, Swami Shraddhananda, Gandhi, and Ambedkar, cannot be dismissed by an executive order. In fact, the seven-judge Bench of the Supreme Court in S.P. Gupta v. President of India (1981) had observed that society is “pulsating with urges of gender justice, worker justice, minorities justice, Dalit justice and equal justice between chronic un-equals.” In using the term “Dalit justice”, the Constitution Bench of the Supreme Court validated the use of the term Dalit. It is painful to state that what the present government is trying to do was not done even during British rule. Such an advisory sounds strange when no such demand has been made by any Dalit organisation or leader, and when the term is used by the Supreme Court.
•Such an advisory at a time when the term Dalit is empowering Dalits in their relentless fight against the increasing levels of atrocities against them, and at a time of heightened Dalit consciousness in the country, only signals the intent of the government to further marginalise the community, which is being asked to conform to the identity determined by the government. This is unacceptable. The government should withdraw its circular and challenge the order passed by the Bombay High Court in the Supreme Court.
📰 China denies CPEC backing as ‘debt trap’ for Pakistan
Foreign Minister Wang says on Pakistan visit that only four of the 18 projects use concessional loan
•China has rejected accusations that its financial backing for the China PakistanEconomic Corridor (CPEC) was a “debt trap” that could compromise Islamabad’s sovereignty.
•China has billed the Gwadar to Kashgar corridor as the flagship of China-led Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) — a comprehensive giant connectivity project in Eurasia.
•Mounting a robust defence of its no-strings-attached backing for CPEC, China’s visiting state Councilor and Foreign Minister, Wang Yi, asserted during an Islamabad press conference on Saturday that among the 22 projects within the framework of CPEC, 18 of them are directly invested or offered aid by the Chinese side, and only four of them used China’s concessional loan.
70,000 new jobs
•He stressed that nine of these projects have already been completed and 13 are under construction.
•The Chinese state Councillor clarified that only $19 billion had been invested in the CPEC, which had generated 70,000 new jobs. Pakistan’s growth rate is expected to be pushed by 1% or 2%.
•During the first phase, CPEC’s focus has been on energy and infrastructure projects. It was now up to the Pakistani side to drive the trajectory of the “next phase” of the undertaking, Mr. Wang said.
•An editorial in the Dawn newspaper said Mr. Wang’s visit offered a “good opportunity for the government to clarify all issues with the Chinese authorities regarding CPEC, and its own thinking on the project’s future”.
•During his talks in Islamabad, Mr. Wang has apparently got solid support for CPEC from the Pakistan’s military — an institution that is known to play a decisive role in critical decision-making.
Army assures support
•Gen. Qamar Javed Bajwa, Pakistan Army chief, assured Mr. Wang that the military will “guarantee” the smooth development of CPEC, the state-run Xinhua news agency reported.
•“[Mr.] Wang said that the Pakistani military is the protector of the China-Pakistan friendship, and the bilateral military relations are an important part of the all-weather strategic cooperative partnership between the two countries and a symbol of their high political mutual trust,” Xinhua said.
•Gen. Bajwa also reassured Mr. Wang, Pakistan’s commitment to firmly fight the East Turkistan Islamic Movement (ETIM) as part of its counterterrorism effort. The ETIM was founded by Uyghur separatists whose stated goal is to establish East Turkestan as a separate state in Xinjiang.
•In talks on Afghanistan, Mr. Wang spotlighted the undiminished relevance of the trilateral China-Pakistan-Afghanistan dialogue as a platform to align perceptions between Islamabad and Kabul.
•The Chinese state Councillor said that Pakistan-Afghanistan ties had started improving, which highlighted the continued importance of uninterrupted dialogue among the three.
•Last year, at the inaugural meeting of the trilateral mechanism in Beijing, Mr. Wang had offered Afghanistan’s possible participation in CPEC. China has also apparently agreed to train an Afghan mountain brigade without putting any boots on the ground in Afghanistan.
📰 Heritage tag for 2 irrigation facilities in Telangana
Sadarmatt anicut across river Godavari in Nirmal district and Pedda Cheruvu in Kamareddy district chosen
•A meeting of the International Executive Council, the highest decision making body of International Commission on Irrigation and Drainage (ICID), at Saskatoon in Canada last month has accepted Telangana government’s nomination of Sadarmatt anicut across river Godavari in Nirmal district and Pedda Cheruvu in Kamareddy district in the ICID Register of Heritage Irrigation Structures.
•The plaques presented by the council for the two over-century-old irrigation facilities were received by the Member Secretary, Indian National Committee on Surface Water as Indian representative at the meeting. The chairman of the committee has invited irrigation officials from Telangana to take them in New Delhi soon.
Sadarmatt anicut
•The HIS award is a deserving recognition to this irrigation facility which has provided precious water for paddy crops in its designed ayacut of 13,100 acres in present day Khanapur and Kadem mandals since its construction in 1891-92. It has also served as a picnic spot for people from an area which may not be as vast its catchment area of nearly 40,000 sq miles but is spread over old undivided Adilabad, Karimnagar and Nizamabad districts.
•The anicut, which is English word for Telugu’s ana-katta, meaning a rainfall bund, was built by Nawab Ikbal-ud-Dowla who bore the tile of Vicar-ul-Umrah Bahadur in 1891-92 about 50 km downstream of the Sri Ram Sagar Project (SRSP) and is chiefly fed by Sawrnavagu stream after the construction of SRSP. C.E. Wilkinson was the Taluqdar then and J.J.
•Ottley was the engineer and Khanapur was a jagir of the Nawabs during the rule of the Nizam of Hyderabad.
•Sadarmatt bund is 437.4 m long on its left flank and 23.8 m on its right flank. The left canal is 21.5 km long while the right canal is 10 km and the distributory is 12 km in length irrigating 5,700 acres, 3,400 acres and 4,000 acres respectively.
•The maximum flood discharge at the anicut is 7.76 lakh cusecs. Over 4 tmc ft of water is utilised.
Pedda Cheruvu
•The Pedda Cheruvu (big tank in Telugu) located on the outskirts of this district headquarters town is spread over an area of 618 acres and was built in 1897 during the rule of Mir Mahaboob Ali Khan, the sixth Nizam of Hyderabad State. It has a 1.8-km-long tank bund and 145-metre weir and three sluices. It’s catchment area is spread over 68.97 sq. km. and total flood flow is 8,860 cusecs.
•With a capacity of 0.175 tmcft it provides water for irrigation to over 900 acres in Kamareddy, Sarampally, Narsampally and old Rajampet.
•It also provides drinking water for residents of the area. Womenfolk play Bathukamma during the Navaratrotsavalu on its bund and immerse them in its waters. It is a picnic spot for residents of the area who come to its bund for relaxation and have a panoramic view of nature. Consequently, the Government wanted to develop it as a tourist spot by creating the necessary infrastructure.
•Moreover, this tank was taken up under the second round of Mission Kakatiya to be developed as a mini tank bund with an estimated outlay of ₹ 6.6 crore. Eighty per cent of work is done and the remaining will be completed very soon, according to K. Bansilal, Executive Engineer (Irrigation), Kamareddy.
📰 ‘Pondicherry shark’ spotted near Kakinada
Efforts are on to bring down trade in such species, says forest official
•Field biologists from the EGREE Foundation have spotted ‘Pondicherry shark’, an endangered species protected under the provisions of the Wildlife(Protection) Act, near the Kumbhabhishekam landing point in the city.
•This is for the third time they are spotted in the East Godavari River Estuarine Ecosystem region after 2007 and 2016. Scientifically known as Carcharhinus hemiodon, it belongs to the Carcharhinidae family with a growth of 3.3 feet.
•Field biologists Mahesh Babu and Ganesh Pallela, during their routine survey, spotted it on Saturday and Sunday and sent the details to Anil Mohapatra, scientist from the Zoological Survey of India, for confirmation. They got a positive response. Zoologists have been trying to trace it in the other parts of the country since 1979.
•Known as ‘Pala Sora’ in the local parlance, the Pondicherry Shark is on the verge of extinction even according to the conventional fishermen. They, however, are unaware of its conservation status which is on a par with the tiger. “The two we have found are of the length of 1.5 feet and 2.4 feet respectively and they are not fully grown. We doubt weather the fisher folks are selling the fish whenever they trap it,” they say.
Scientific info
•The only scientific information available about the species comes from 20 specimens collected from fish markets across the Indo-Pacific region. It is identified by its black tips of dorsal, pectoral and Tai fins. The front teeth are distinctly serrated at the base and smooth at the tip.
•Divisional Forest Officer (Wildlife) Anant Shankar, also the additional CEO of the EGREE Foundation, says the department in association with the foundation is working with the fishing communities and various line departments in bringing down the trade in such species. “Conservation of such species is only possible through community mobilisation and stewardship,” he says.
📰 Cloudy forecast: on climate change
Developed countries, especially the U.S., need to commit funds to limit climate change
•The conference of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change in Bangkok last week, that was to draft a rulebook for the Paris Agreement ahead of a crucial international conference in Poland in December, ran into predictable difficulties over the issue of raising funds to help poorer nations. Some developed countries led by the U.S. — which, under the Trump administration, has rejected the agreement — are unwilling to commit to sound rules on raising climate finance. Under the pact concluded in Paris, rich countries pledged to raise $100 billion a year by 2020 to help developing countries reduce their greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and aid populations to cope with extreme events such as floods, droughts and storms. Obstructing the transition to a carbon-neutral pathway and preserving the status quo is short-sighted, simply because the losses caused by weather events are proving severely detrimental to all economies. By trying to stall climate justice to millions of poor people in vulnerable countries, the developed nations are refusing to accept their responsibility for historical emissions of GHGs. Those emissions raised living standards for their citizens but contributed heavily to the accumulated carbon dioxide burden, now measured at about 410 parts per million of CO2 in the atmosphere, up from 280 ppm before the industrial revolution.
•There is international pressure on China and India to cut GHG emissions. Both countries have committed themselves to a cleaner growth path. India, which reported an annual CO2 equivalent emissions of 2.136 billion tonnes in 2010 to the UNFCCC two years ago, estimates that the GHG emissions intensity of its GDP has declined by 12% for the 2005-2010 period. As members committed to the Paris Agreement, China and India have the responsibility of climate leadership in the developing world, and have to green their growth. What developing countries need is a supportive framework in the form of a rulebook that binds the developed countries to their funding pledges, provides support for capacity building and transfer of green technologies on liberal terms. If scientific estimates are correct, the damage already done to the West Antarctic Ice Sheet is set to raise sea levels; a 2° Celsius rise will also destabilise the Greenland Ice Sheet. Failed agriculture in populous countries will drive more mass migrations of people, creating conflict. A deeper insight on all this will be available in October when the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change releases its scientific report on the impact of a 1.5° C rise in global average temperature. This is the time for the world’s leaders to demonstrate that they are ready to go beyond expediency and take the actions needed to avert long-term catastrophe.
📰 IAF prepares to induct Rafale jets
Pilots being sent to France again for training; ₹400 crore sanctioned for readying bases
•Though the Rafale jet deal has been caught in a political firestorm, the Indian Air Force is quietly readying infrastructure for the new fleet and training its fighter pilots to fly the aircraft.
•Official sources said the IAF was sending a batch of pilots to France by the year-end. A team has already undergone training and it will go for another round, sources said.
•A number of IAF teams have visited France to help Dassault Aviation, the manufacturer of Rafale, incorporate India-specific enhancements on board the aircraft.
•India had inked an inter-governmental agreement with France in September 2016 for procurement of 36 of these jets at a cost of around ₹58,000 crore. The delivery of the jets — capable of carrying a range of potent weapons and missiles — is scheduled to begin from September 2019.
•According to sources, Dassault Aviation has started test flight of the jets to be supplied to India, and the company has been told to strictly adhere to the timeline for delivery. The Rafale jets will come with various India-specific modifications, including Israeli helmet-mounted displays, radar warning receivers, low-band jammers, 10-hour flight data recording, infrared search and tracking systems and so on.
First squadron at Ambala
•Sources said the first squadron of the aircraft will be deployed at the Air Force Station in Ambala, considered one of the most strategically located bases of the IAF. The India-Pakistan border is around 220 km from there. The second squadron will be stationed at the Hasimara base in West Bengal.
•Officials said the government had already sanctioned around ₹400 crore to build shelters, hangars and maintenance facilities in the two bases.
•In July 2017, Air Chief Marshal B.S. Dhanoa, during his visit to France, flew a Rafale jet at the Saint-Dizier airbase to gain first-hand experience.
