📰 SC sets January 2019 to fix a date for Ayodhya hearing
We have our priorities; appropriate Bench will take decision, says CJI Gogoi
•A three-judge Bench of the Supreme Court, led by Chief Justice of India Ranjan Gogoi, on Monday ordered the volatile Ayodhya dispute appeals to be listed in January 2019 before an appropriate Bench to fix a date for hearing.
•When parties sought an early hearing, the court said the decision when to start hearing the appeals would be in the realm of discretion of the “appropriate Bench” before which the matter would come up in January.
•“We have our own priorities... whether hearing would take place in January, March or April would be decided by an appropriate Bench,” Chief Justice Gogoi remarked orally.
•Chief Justice Gogoi repeated that all that the court has ordered now is for the appeals to be posted in the first week of January before a Bench, that too, “not for hearing but for fixing the date of hearing.”
Proximity to elections
•Last year, in the initial stages of hearing of the appeals, senior advocate Kapil Sibal, appearing on the side of certain Islamic bodies and private appellants, had suggested in court that the Ayodhya hearings be posted after July 15, 2019, post the general election.
•Mr. Sibal, along with senior advocates Dushyant Dave and Rajeev Dhavan, had pegged the Ayodhya dispute as not just any other civil suit. They flagged how the case covered religion and faith, and dated back to the era of King Vikramaditya.
•The case, they said, was probably the most important case in the history of India, which would “decide the future of the polity.”
📰 Modi, Abe back ‘free Indo-Pacific’
Defence ties dominate summit talks
•India and Japan outlined a vision for strengthened bilateral relations at the 13th annual summit here on Monday.
•Enhanced strategic and defence cooperation dominated the talks between Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his Japanese counterpart, Shinzo Abe.
•Japan’s formulation of a “free and open Indo-Pacific” received a central place in the vision statement issued at the end of the talks, with both sides stressing their “unwavering commitment to it.” The concept is usually seen as a response to China’s growing dominance in the region.
•Speaking to the press after his talks with Mr. Abe, Mr. Modi said the India-Japan bilateral relationship was invested in upholding the rule of law and democratic values.
•Tokyo talks stress democratic values
•Prime Minister Narendra Modi stressed that ties with Japan were invested in upholding the rule of law and democratic values.
•He was speaking at a press conference after a summit with his Japanese counterpart, Shinzo Abe.
•These are the very catch phrases that underlie the new security architecture that Japan and the United States are trying to put in place to counter China. The vision statement specifically mentioned the willingness of both countries to “expand concrete cooperation with the U.S. and other partners”.
Freedom of navigation
•It also referred to the necessity of ensuring the freedom of navigation and the importance of upholding the UNCLOS (United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea), a set of conventions that China has been accused of flouting in the South China Sea.
•Mr. Modi and his Japanese counterpart, Shinzo Abe, further announced the start of negotiations on an Acquisition and Cross-servicing Agreement, a logistics-sharing pact, that would allow Japanese ships to get fuel and servicing at Indian naval bases. Once signed, Japan’s Maritime Self-Defence Force will be able to secure access to Indian naval facilities in the Andaman and Nicobar islands, which are strategically located close to the western Malacca Straits, a choke point for much of Japan and China’s trade and fuel imports. A new Foreign and Defence Ministerial Dialogue, termed 2+2, was also announced to supplement an already formidable array of bilateral dialogue mechanisms that include the Annual Defence Ministerial Dialogue, Defence Policy Dialogue and the National Security Advisers Dialogue.
•On the economic front, the two countries have agreed to a Bilateral Swap Arrangement that would allow their central banks to exchange local currencies for up to $75 billion. This is substantially more than the $30 billion currency swap arrangement announced between China and Japan.
•Mr. Abe told the press that 57 Japanese companies had committed to investing 320 billion yen in India, which is expected to create at least 3,000 new jobs. Mr. Modi said that he was convinced that the 21st century could be an Asian century only with a strong India-Japan relationship at its core.
📰 Stop the war: on Saudi-led attack and 'pre-famine' conditions in Yemen
The Saudi-led attack in Yemen must cease, and with it the humanitarian crisis
•While Saudi Arabia is struggling to salvage its image in the aftermath of the murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi inside its consulate in Istanbul, another human rights crisis triggered by its actions confronts the kingdom. According to the United Nations, the war on Yemen, waged by a Saudi-led coalition for over three years with American support, has pushed 14 million people, about half of the country’s population, into “pre-famine” conditions. So far, Saudi Arabia has had a free run in Yemen. Despite mounting criticism of his handling of the attack on one of the poorest Arab countries, Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, the main architect of the war, has evaded international pressure to cease hostilities. During the course of the war, the humanitarian crisis in Yemen has progressively worsened. Saudi Arabia started the attack in March 2015 after Shia Houthi rebels captured parts of Yemen, including the capital city Sana’a. Riyadh saw the Houthis as Iranian proxies and was worried they would establish stable rule in its backyard. For the sake of legitimacy, the Saudis claimed they were fighting on behalf of the globally recognised government of Yemen, led by President Abdrabbuh Mansour Hadi who is reported to be residing in Riyadh. But the war has reached a bloody stalemate as the Houthis still remain powerful in northern Yemen and the government controls the southern parts, including Aden.
•The conflict has already killed over 6,000 civilians and injured 10,000 more. Unable to defeat the rebels militarily, the Saudi coalition has imposed a blockade on the country, worsening Yemen’s food and medicines scarcity. Half of the country’s medical facilities are not functional. And at least 22 million people are in need of humanitarian assistance, of whom 14 million are extremely dependent on aid for survival. Besides, there was a deadly cholera outbreak in the country that has affected at least 1.1 million people. None of this has deterred Saudi Arabia from continuing to pound Yemen. It hasn’t eased the blockade even after the UN warned of a famine. The international community, which has rightfully criticised Riyadh over the Khashoggi case, failed to act while Yemen was being methodically destroyed. This war has to stop. If Saudi Arabia has geopolitical concerns about Iran’s growing influence, it should address them directly with Tehran, not by punishing the people of Yemen. It must immediately cease the bombing campaign, lift the blockade and allow food and medicine supplies into Yemen. This will clear the way for talks between the Yemeni government and the rebels. The obvious lesson of the last three years of this disastrous conflict is that there is no military solution to the Yemen crisis. The sooner this is heeded, the better it will be for Yemen’s people.
📰 The great game in West Asia
Turkey has used the Khashoggi murder to sharpen the battle lines with Saudi Arabia
•Saudi dissident journalist Jamal Khashoggi’s murder has clearly exposed the brutal nature of the Saudi Arabian regime. It is ironic that the murder of one journalist has succeeded in doing what the killing and starving of innumerable Yemeni civilians have not been able to achieve. His assassination, in the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul, Turkey, has also exposed the Turkish-Saudi rivalry that was largely hidden from public view. Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s recent statement in the Turkish Parliament calling the killing “pre-meditated murder”, a claim now accepted by the Saudis themselves, plainly laid the blame at the door of the Saudi regime.
•The Turkish press has over the past few weeks made public the goriest details of the murder. It is clear that the Turkish political elite is relishing the embarrassment this case has caused the Saudi regime. Ankara has had an uneasy relationship with Riyadh for several years. But the rise of Saudi Arabia’s reckless Crown Prince, Mohammed bin Salman, who has brazenly flaunted Saudi power, has increased Turkey’s anxiety that the Saudis intend to dominate the Arab world to the exclusion not only of Iran but of Turkey as well.
The American factor
•Turkish apprehension has been amplified by the clear signal sent by U.S. President Donald Trump over the last two years (which included making Riyadh the destination of his first foreign trip) that Saudi Arabia had become the kingpin of America’s policy toward West Asia. Ankara perceived the increasing Saudi importance to the U.S. as downgrading of Turkey’s role in America’s West Asian policy, especially since it coincided with a downturn in Turkish-U.S. relations. Turkey’s relations with the U.S. came under strain because of major differences in their approach to the Syrian Kurds. The U.S. militarily supported the Kurdish YPG militia in the fight against the Islamic State, while Turkey, which considers the YPG an extension of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), vehemently opposed such a move. Turkey’s decision to buy the S-400 anti-missile defence systems from Russia has also added to the tensions.
•The visible U.S. tilt toward Riyadh has further fuelled the existing differences between Saudi Arabia and Turkey. Their disagreements were augmented by the outbreak of the Arab Spring in 2011. Turkey enthusiastically welcomed the overthrow of authoritarian governments while the Saudi regime, feeling vulnerable itself, strongly opposed them. Matters came to a head when a military coup in Egypt in 2013 led to the overthrow of Egypt’s President Morsi, who belonged to the Muslim Brotherhood. Turkey had applauded Mr. Morsi coming to power as a vindication of the moderate and constitutionalist Islamist model that the Justice and Development Party (AKP) represented in Turkey and an indication that the Brotherhood was headed in the same direction.
•On the other hand, Saudi Arabia was, and is, intensely apprehensive of constitutionalist and moderate Islamism that uses popular political mobilisation as its main strategy to gain power since it directly challenges the Saudis’ absolutist Islamism. This is the basis of the visceral Saudi animosity towards the Brotherhood. It was not surprising that the Saudis embracedEgypt’s General Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, in 2013, and immediately granted $2 billion to the military regime to save it and also Egypt’s tottering economy.
The Qatar angle
•Other differences have also came to the fore in the past couple of years. Saudi Arabia imposed a blockade on Qatar in 2017, principally to punish it for its cordial relationship with Iran, with which it shares the world’s largest natural gas field. Qatar also has close relations with Turkey and hosts a Turkish military base. The Emir of Qatar had sent a contingent of soldiers to provide security to Mr. Erdoğan during the failed military coup in 2016. Consequently, Ankara, alongside Tehran, has supported Qatar — flying in essential supplies to break the blockade and further reinforcing Turkish military presence in Qatar.
•Turkey’s pro-Qatar stance also reflects the difference in Riyadh’s and Ankara’s policies toward Iran. While wary of Iranian ambitions and at odds with it on the Syrian conflict, Turkey is interested in keeping its relations with Iran on an even keel because Iran is a major supplier of energy. Also, Ankara and Tehran face a common threat from Kurdish separatism. Therefore, while Saudi Arabia is locked in a series of proxy wars with Iran, Turkey has been careful not to take sides in this regional cold war.
•Until recently Turkey and Iran were on opposite sides in the Syrian conflict, with Iran supporting the Assad regime politically and militarily and Turkey acting as the principal conduit for weapons supplies to the opposition. However, recent moves amounting to a rapprochement among Ankara, Moscow and Tehran indicate that a modus vivendi has been worked out between Iran and Turkey on defining their spheres of influence in Syria. This has upset the Saudis for it relieves the pressure on Iran in the Fertile Crescent and allows it to concentrate its energies on contesting Saudi ambitions in the Persian Gulf and in Yemen (where the Saudis are engaged in a bloody battle with the Iranian-supported Houthis).
•These pre-existing differences between the two countries as well as genuine anger at the heinous crime in Turkey’s leading city have provided Ankara both the high moral ground as well as the opportunity to discredit the Saudi regime — especially the Crown Prince whom Mr. Erdoğan detests — and to drive a wedge between Saudi Arabia and the U.S.
📰 India, Japan sign $75 billion currency swap agreement
Pact aimed at bringing greater stability to forex and Indian capital markets
•India and Japan signed a currency swap agreement worth $75 billion during Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s visit to Japan, the government announced on Monday.
•“The Prime Ministers of India and Japan, building on great friendship between the two countries and to further strengthen and widen the depth and diversity of economic cooperation, agreed during Prime Minister Modi’s visit to Japan, to conclude a Bilateral Currency Swap Agreement for an amount of $75 billion,” the Indian government said in a statement. A currency swap typically involves the exchange of interest and sometimes of principal in one currency for the same in another currency. Interest payments are exchanged at fixed dates through the life of the contract. It is considered to be a foreign exchange transaction and is not required by law to be shown on a company's balance sheet.
•“This swap arrangement particularly reflects the depth of mutual trust and understanding, personal relationship and warmth between the two leaders built over many years,” the statement added.
•The currency swap agreement, the government said, was an important measure in improving the confidence in the Indian market and that it would not only enable the agreed amount of capital being available to India, but it will also bring down the cost of capital for Indian entities while accessing the foreign capital market.
‘More stability’
•“The swap arrangement should aid in bringing greater stability to foreign exchange and capital markets in India,” the government said. With this arrangement in place, prospects of India would further improve in tapping foreign capital for country’s developmental needs. This facility will enable the agreed amount of foreign capital being available to India for use as and when the need arises.
📰 ICF rolls out Train 18, the NextGen Shatabdi
The 16-coach, Indian-made trainset was completed in Chennai in a record 18 months
•The gleaming, blue-nosed train standing at Chennai’s Integral Coach Factory (ICF) has a cone-shaped frontage, similar to a bullet train. The new train comes fitted with amenities on a par with the best in the world — from on-board Wi-Fi to GPS-based passenger information system, ‘touch-free’ bio-vacuum toilets, LED lighting, mobile charging points, and a climate control system that would adjust the temperature according to occupancy and the weather.
•What ‘Train-18’ doesn’t have, however, is a locomotive to pull the coaches — it is a self-propelled, semi-high-speed trainset that will soon replace the box cars of the inter-city Shatabdis.
•The much anticipated Indian-made trainset was unveiled to the public by Indian Railway Board chairman Ashwani Lohani on Monday at the ICF. Train 18 will undergo the mandatory safety checks before being inducted into the Railways in the coming months.
•Speaking at the launch function, Mr. Lohani said Train 18 will be a game- changer for the Indian Railways. He said it can reach a maximum speed of 160 km per hour. The train can both accelerate and pull to a stop rapidly, thereby consuming much less energy, he added.
•S. Mani, general manager of ICF, said the train was completed in a record time of 18 months after it was conceived in 2016. About 80% of the design, technology and manufacture of Train 18, a predecessor to ‘Train 20’, is Indian. The coaches in the fully air-conditioned train are linked with advanced bridge plates, leaving the train free of the shaky gangways Indian train travellers are used to.
📰 Children under 15 at serious risk from polluted air: WHO
93% of world’s 1.8 bn children in this age could suffer neuro-development deficits
•Every day about 93% of the world’s children under the age of 15 (1.8 billion children) breathe polluted air that puts their health and development at serious risk, the World Health Organisation (WHO) said in a new report that puts into numbers the devastating impact that air pollution is having on the global population’s health.
•Tragically, many of these children die, with as many as six lakh estimated to have perished in 2016 alone due to complications from acute lower respiratory infections caused by dirty air, according to WHO’s report.
•The report on air pollution and child health released on the eve of the WHO’s first ever global conference on Air Pollution and Health on Tuesday reveals that when pregnant women are exposed to polluted air, they are more likely to give birth prematurely, and have small, low birth-weight children.
•Air pollution also impacts neurodevelopment and cognitive ability and can trigger asthma, and childhood cancer. Children exposed to high levels of air pollution may be at greater risk for chronic diseases such as cardiovascular disease later in life, the WHO said.
•“Polluted air is poisoning millions of children and ruining their lives,” said Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, WHO Director-General. “This is inexcusable. Every child should be able to breathe clean air so they can grow and fulfil their full potential.”
Breathe rapidly
•One reason why children are particularly vulnerable to the effects of air pollution is that they breathe more rapidly than adults and so absorb more pollutants. They also live closer to the ground, where some pollutants reach peak concentrations — at a time when their brains and bodies are still developing.
•In addition, newborns and small children are often at home. If the family is burning fuels like wood and kerosene for cooking, heating and lighting, they would be exposed to higher levels of pollution.
•“Air pollution is stunting our children’s brains, affecting their health in more ways than we suspected,” Dr. Maria Neira, director, Department of Public Health, Environmental and Social Determinants of Health at WHO, said in a release accompanying the report.
•“WHO is supporting implementation of health-wise policy measures like accelerating the switch to clean cooking and heating fuels and technologies, promoting the use of cleaner transport, energy-efficient housing and urban planning. We are preparing the ground for low emission power generation, cleaner, safer industrial technologies and better municipal waste management,’’ Dr. Neira added.
📰 Missionaries of Charity gives nod for adoption
Ties up with nodal agency CARA
•Three years after the Missionaries of Charity (MoC) decided to stop giving children in its homes up for adoption, it has agreed to join hands with the country’s nodal agency for adoption.
•The development follows a meeting between Sister Mary Prema Pierick, the head of the organisation and Mother Teresa’s successor, and Minister for Women and Child Development Maneka Gandhi at the latter’s office on Monday.
•“I requested them to come back into the CARA system of adoption so that children in the 79 MoC homes can go into family care. Sister Prema agreed to my request... so children in the MoC homes can be onboarded into CARINGS expeditiously,” Ms Gandhi said on Twitter.
•In October 2015, soon after the Central government announced new rules for adoption and made it mandatory for all homes to be linked to the Child Adoption Resource Authority(CARA), which would be the only body in the country authorised to process adoptions, the Missionaries of Charity sought de-recognition of its homes.
•Without specifying the reasons for its decision, the MoC had said in a press statement that complying with all the provisions of the new regulations would be difficult for the organisation.
•CARA CEO Lt Col Deepak Kumar, welcoming the decision, said, “children in various homes of the Missionaries of Charity will now be linked to a Specialised Adoption Agency (SAA) and details of children would be available on our website.
📰 Time to talk: on Centre-RBI differences
The Centre-RBI face-off is not healthy. They must resolve their differences in private
•The simmering tensions over the last few months between the Reserve Bank of India and the Centre found spectacular release over the weekend through a public speech by Deputy Governor Viral Acharya. “Governments that do not respect central bank independence,” said Mr. Acharya, “will sooner or later incur the wrath of financial markets, ignite economic fire, and come to rue the day they undermined an important regulatory institution.” These are very strong words and raise the question: why? This is not the first time that the RBI has had a run-in with the mandarins at North Block, and it will not be the last. India has had Finance Ministers who got frustrated enough to say that they would “walk alone” in driving the economy, and RBI Governors responding that the Centre would still be thankful that the central bank exists. Indeed, disagreements between Mint Street and North Block over setting benchmark interest rates have been common over the years. What is different this time, though, is that the disagreements, none of which are insurmountable, appear to be over regulation per se. There are three issues on which the Centre seems to have irked the RBI. It has refused to accept Governor Urjit Patel’s point that the RBI is hobbled by lack of adequate powers in regulating public sector banks. The second is the tussle over the RBI’s burgeoning reserves, a piece of which the Centre is eyeing to bridge its fiscal gap. The RBI resents this. The last is the attempt by the Centre to set up an independent payments regulator, which the RBI sees as encroachment of its turf.
•For its part, the Centre has several grouses, the chief among them being over an RBI circular of February 12 which redefined NPAs and revised the framework for resolution. It is also upset that the central bank is not doing enough to ease the ongoing liquidity squeeze through extraordinary measures. These are issues that could be easily addressed by sitting around a table, but the fact that they haven’t done so points to a complete breakdown of communication between the RBI and the government, something that bankers have been privately acknowledging for some time now. A certain amount of creative tension is systemically in-built given their different perspectives: one is short-term and political; the other is long-term and technical. Such tension is good for the economy. Yet, that is no excuse to spar over turf or make statements aimed at pressuring the other side into acting in a particular manner. The current row is definitely worrying given the backdrop of economic turmoil, globally and domestically. The Centre and the central bank must talk behind closed doors and resolve their differences as mature entities, as they have done so many times in the past.
📰 ‘Divided’ board signals strained RBI-Centre ties
Only 3 out of 20 items on agenda discussed in 8 hours, no consensus reached
•The Reserve Bank of India’s October 23 board meeting was a stormy affair that lasted about eight hours in which 20 items were on the agenda for discussion. However, only three were discussed, albeit without arriving at a decision.
•One of the issues discussed was the prompt corrective action (PCA) framework of RBI — which is essentially certain restrictions that the banking regulator has imposed on banks due to worsening capital, asset quality and profitability. If a bank breaches a particular threshold on any of these parameters, restrictions are imposed.
Capital norms
•According to sources, some board members were in favour of diluting the risk threshold relating to capital. They argued that capital norms for Indian banks were a lot stringent than what the Basel norms prescribed, such as 9% capital adequacy ratio as compared with the 8% requirement of Basel norms. However, RBI officials argue that the non-performing asset provision norms for Indian banks are less stringent than what Basel proposes. Presently, there are 12 banks, 11 in the public sector and one in the private sector, that are under the PCA framework.
•At present, the RBI board has 18 members including Financial Services Secretary Rajiv Kumar and Economic Affairs Secretary S.C. Garg. The four deputy governors are also on the board.
•The other issue was pertaining to the norms for stressed asset classification as mandated by the RBI in its February 12, 2018 circular. In that circular, RBI had scrapped all existing restructuring norms and asked banks to start resolution process if loan repayment was overdue even for a day. Some of the board members opposed the circular.
•Also, there was the contentious issue of RBI’s surplus transfer. While the government wants more funds transfer from RBI by dipping into contingency reserves, the central bank has not been agreeing to this proposal.
•RBI deputy governor Viral Acharya had highlighted the differences between the RBI and the government, arguing that the latter was impinging on the autonomy of the central bank. “Governments that do not respect central bank independence will sooner or later incur the wrath of financial markets, ignite economic fire, and come to rue the day they undermined an important regulatory institution; their wiser counterparts who invest in central bank independence will enjoy lower costs of borrowing, the love of international investors, and longer life spans,” Mr. Acharya had said.
•A day after Mr. Acharya’s comment, Finance Minister Arun Jaitley, without naming any institution, said the country was higher than any institution and it was the elected who were accountable.
