📰 Delhi offers $1.4 bn aid package to Male
Both sides agree to coordinatemaritime policing
•India on Monday declared a financial package of $1.4 billion for the Maldives. The plan was being prepared over the last month and was formally declared at the press conference attended by President Ibrahim Mohamed Solih of the Maldives and Prime Minister Narendra Modi. Both sides also agreed to coordinate maritime policing activities in the Indian Ocean region.
•Announcing the financial package, Mr Modi said both sides are connected by mutual faith in democracy and development.
•“Cooperation between our countries is necessary for maintaining stability in the Indian Ocean region and we are willing to take our relationship to its fullest potential,” said Mr. Modi, conveying his best wishes for the ambitious development plans for the Maldives.
•The financial assistance will be in the form of budgetary support, currency swap and concessional lines of credit for development programmes. The package comes as Maldives is facing a debt of $3.2 billion with China. It is expected to boost Male’s global financial standing.
•Mr. Modi conveyed that India will support the Maldives in its human-centric development plans. Both sides agreed to increase bilateral cooperation on countering piracy, and terrorism.
📰 Madras HC bans online sale of medicines, directs Centre to notify rules
Pharmacies will be entitled to sell medicines online only after obtaining licences under the rules that were now in the draft stage and yet to be finalised, rules judge.
•The Madras High Court on Monday directed the Central government to notify the statutory rules related to online sale of drugs and medicines by January 31, 2019 and banned online sales till then.
•Justice Pushpa Sathyanarayana held that the pharmacies in the country would be entitled to sell medicines online only after obtaining licences under the rules that were now in the draft stage and yet to be finalised.
•The judgement was passed on a writ petition filed by the Tamil Nadu Chemists and Druggists Association represented by its secretary K.K. Selvan seeking a ban websites that facilitate online sale of drugs until the Centre brings into force a legal framework for permitting such sales.
•Arguing the case for the petitioner, senior counsel AR.L. Sundaresan said that it was a matter of serious concern that online sale of drugs listed in Schedule H, H1 and X of the Drugs and Cosmetics Act of 1940 were rampant in the country though there was a specific legal bar on selling such medicines without the prescription of medical practitioners.
Colonial era Act
•In its affidavit, the petitioner association said, the Drugs and Cosmetics Act was enacted during the colonial era and much before the advent of online trade. Though several amendments had been made to the law over the last 78 years, so far no provision had been introduced in it permitting online sale of drugs and medicines.
•“As per the Drugs and Cosmetics Rules of 1945, it is not permitted to ship, mail or provide door delivery of the prescribed medicines... Yet, drugs of scheduled and non scheduled category are available online on different websites and distributed across the country. As on date, there are more than 3,500 such websites,” it claimed.
•Nevertheless, since the Internet had now changed the way people lived, worked and even shopped and also because of enormous growth of e-commerce, many websites had begun to use the medium for sale of medicines too. However, it was questionable as to whether the drugs sold online were safe and non-hazardous, the association said.
Draft rules
•On August 28 last, the Centre had come up with draft rules, named the Drugs and Cosmetics (Amendment) Rules of 2018 for permitting sale of drugs through e-pharmacies. Suggestions had been called for from various quarters before finalising the rules and the petitioner association too had submitted its views.
•“While so, online sale is being happily carried on by several websites in violation of the existing statutory rules... Despite repeated representations made to respondents 1 to 5 [Centre and drug control authorities], the online sale of drugs have not been restrained. There are even advertisements in leading newspapers with heavy discounts,” the affidavit read.
📰 LPG scheme to cover all poor people
•The Union Cabinet on Monday approved the expansion of the Pradhan Mantri Ujjwala Yojana, which aims to provide deposit-free LPG connections to all poor households.
•So far, the scheme targeted the poor and underprivileged so listed in the Socio-Economic and Caste Census, 2011.
•Following the Cabinet decision, poor people will be able to opt for the scheme even if they so far were not eligible, after furnishing the required identification documents and an affidavit saying that they do not have an existing LPG connection.
•“The mandate of the scheme was to provide LPG connections to eight crore households,” said Minister of Petroleum and Natural Gas Dharmendra Pradhan.
•“Of that, we would have achieved six crore at the end of 2018. So we have the funds to provide connections to the remaining two crore as well.”
•Separately, in an answer in the Lok Sabha, Mr. Pradhan said the LPG coverage stood at 89.5% as of December 1, 2018. As on December 12, more than 1.03 crore LPG consumers had voluntarily surrendered their subsidy under the ‘Give It Up’ campaign.
📰 HC ban: E-pharmacies mull legal recourse
Push for early publication of rules to help regulate the online medicines market
•The next step for the online drug industry, in the light of the Madras High Court judgment banning the sale of medicines online, would clearly be legal – an appeal against the verdict.
•Prashant Tandon, CEO, 1mg, who is also part of India Internet Pharmacy Association (IIPA) said: “The legal process will take its course and we will be making sure that our model is understood well and the court clarifies the order.”
•There are compliant players, such as the members of the IIPA, who want to confirm if the order applies to those only in violation of the Drugs and Cosmetics Act, he added.
•Pradeep Dadha, founder and CEO, Netmeds.com said: “We would be filing an appeal and taking the required recourse available under the law. The benefits of affordable and accessible medicines through our services have been appreciated by customers across the country.”
•Earlier, the Delhi High Court had also banned the sale of drugs online.
•While Judge Pushpa Sathyanarayana’s final order did allow the ban to be deferred until the companies have had time to appeal the High Court decision (until December 20) the key aspects of the judgment have made anxious online companies that are part of one of the fast-growing segments in the country.
•Some estimates put the total number of online pharmacies at 250, with at least 50-60 of them termed as ‘large players.’ Mr. Tandon said the industry is currently valued at about “Rs. 1500 crore, and growing.” The country’s overall drugs and medicines retail market, incidentally, is valued at over Rs. 1.3 lakh crore annually.
•The attraction of the online pharmacy, for many, is the fancy discounts that are available, up to 60%, besides free home delivery and sometimes, other value-added services.
•It is the Drugs and Cosmetics Act, 1940, that regulates the import, manufacture and distribution of medicines in the country. While it regulates sales of drugs, it was not clear, as the online pharmacy trade emerged, whether the existing rules under the Act would be applicable to the portals selling medicines.
•It was in order to address this specific issue, that the Union Ministry of Health and Family Welfare published draft rules in September, seeking to amend the Drugs and Cosmetics rules regarding the distribution or sale, stock, exhibit or offer for sale of drugs through e-pharmacies. While currently no provisions exist for the registration of any of these online pharmacies, the new rules mandate all e-pharmacy holders be registered with the Drugs Controller General of India (DCGI), and the State drug regulator. Periodic inspection of the premises too will be on the cards.
•Online portals cannot sell narcotic drugs, tranquillisers and Schedule X drugs, and cannot advertise their services, as under the Drugs and Cosmetics Act. Under the new rules, complete information on the medicines will have to be provided by the e-pharmacy holders, and a 24/7 helpline should be made available.
•The top-level Drugs Technical Advisory Board also recently approved the draft rules to allow the operation of e-pharmacies.
•Meanwhile, DCGI S. Easwara Reddy had said late last week on television that the draft rules have nearly been finalised and would be “published within the next couple of weeks.” Soon, a list might be available of all registered online pharmacists.
•“So we are hopeful that the rules should be notified soon: even the crux of the Madras HC judgment is that the government must notify rules at the earliest in a time-bound manner. No one wants the patients to suffer and they want them to get quality meds across the country,” Mr. Tandon added. He said all members of the IIPA do ensure that all orders come with prescription, and the request is forwarded to vendors partnered with them, which they are expected to duly fulfill.
•Dharmil Sheth, co-founder of Pharmeasy, said the priority would be to make clarifications to the court. “The Central Drugs Standard Control Organisation has already spoken extremely positively about the online pharmacy model (in the counter to the petition at the Madras High Court) and we hope the draft is released soon so that there is continuous supply of medicines to millions of families which are now dependent on online platforms for purchasing monthly medicines.
•“And these families are spread across the country - right from tier one cities to a small taluka in a remote area.”
📰 IAF plane takes to the air on blended bio-fuel
India joins a league of select nations to have developed, tested and certified the process
•For the first time, an An-32 transport aircraft of the Indian Air Force (IAF) flew with blended bio-jet fuel produced from Jatropha oil, unlocking the possibility of gradually expanding it to the entire service at some point. This has the dual benefit of reducing the carbon footprint as well as usage of fossil fuels.
•“The maiden IAF flight of December 17, 2018 was flown by highly qualified test pilots from the Aircraft and System Testing Establishment (ASTE), under the supervision of Air Officer Commanding, Chandigarh,” Wg. Cdr. A Shrivastava, Research Fellow at the Centre for Air Power Studies, wrote in an article published on the think tank’s website.
•He said India had thus joined a league of select nations to have “developed, tested and certified” a single step Hydro-processed Renewable Jet (HRJ) process to convert non-edible oil into biofuel for use on military aircraft.
•“IAF carried out extensive engine tests on the ground. This is now followed by flight trials using 10% bio-jet blended Aviation Turbine Fuel (ATF),” IAF said in a statement.
Cleared last week
•Air Chief Marshal BS Dhanoa had earlier announced that the IAF intended to fly the An-32 with 10% bio-jet fuel at the Republic Day flypast on January 26 next year.
•This bio-jet fuel technology was developed by the Indian Institute of Petroleum (IIP) under the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) in 2009 and tested between 2011 and 2013. Following extensive evaluation, including performance ground runs on the aero-engine since 2018, the Centre for Military Airworthiness and Certification (CEMILAC) cleared the trial flight last week.
•Wg. Cdr. Shrivastava stated that the IAF was funding the entire testing and certification programme and also providing its aircraft and engine test facilities.
An uphill task
•According to the article, on completion of the entire testing process on An-32 aircraft and notification of new standards for blended fuel, the IAF may decide to examine and certify the use of bio-jet fuel on other fixed and rotary wing aircraft, including fighters.
•However, scalability of bio-fuel usage is an uphill task due to availability and supply chain issues. While several studies have been undertaken to promote its use in various sectors, commercial usage of bio-fuel usage has a sketchy history in India. It needs policy intervention to incentive the entire supply chain, from production of the crops to its distribution.
•Giving an estimate of the challenge, the article states that the IAF would require over 3,000 Kilo Litres of bio-fuel annually just for operating the AN-32 fleet with a 10% mix.
📰 NOTA: Not a decisive factor
It is misleading to say that NOTA determined the Assembly election results
•Ever since voters have been provided the ‘None of the Above’ (NOTA) option if they do not want to vote for any of the candidates in the fray, political parties now cite many voters having chosen NOTA as a reason for losing an election. This may be true in very close contest, when voters are in small numbers and the margin of victory and defeat is rather small. But overall, there has hardly been any election in India where NOTA has been instrumental in altering an electoral verdict.
What the data show
•In the recent round of elections to five State Assemblies (Telangana, Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh, Mizoram and Chhattisgarh), where the margin of votes between the main contenders, the Congress and the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) was narrow —for example only 0.1% in Madhya Pradesh and about 0.5% in Rajasthan — the BJP cited NOTA voting as among the main reason for its defeat. However, had the Congress been in the BJP’s position, it too would have blamed NOTA. Thus NOTA is a convenient political scapegoat. Even voters have started to believe that NOTA has become a very important factor in Indian elections.
•In the recent State Assembly elections, the results indicate a decline in NOTA votes in four States, Telangana being the only exception. The decline was from 1.9% to 1.4% in Madhya Pradesh; 1.9% to 1.3% in Rajasthan; 3.0% to 1.9% in Chhattisgarh; and 0.6% to 0.4% in Mizoram. In Telangana, there was a marginal increase from 0.7% to 1.0%. The data show no bigger attraction for NOTA in these five States in the last five years. It is the same in States other than these five which have gone to the polls in recent years.
•In the 2014 Lok Sabha elections, only 1.08% voters opted for NOTA nationally. There was hardly any significant NOTA vote except in Puducherry where 3% voters opted for it and 2.8% in Meghalaya. In a number of States, the NOTA votes were in the range of 1-1.5% of the total votes polled. When the average size of a Lok Sabha constituency is about 27 lakh voters, it is difficult to imagine that a small percentage of votes could alter electoral outcomes in a large number of constituencies.
•It is widely believed, and true to some extent, that NOTA could be a useful tool (such as in a local body election) if constituencies are smaller in size, with fewer voters. But this is still not seen as a viable option among voters even in a State Assembly election. The preference for NOTA in Assembly constituencies reflects the trend of the 2014 Lok Sabha elections. An average Assembly constituency in a State in the Hindi heartland has about 4-5 lakh voters; a small number of voters opting for NOTA will hardly affect the overall electoral outcome. There may be instances of a significant number of constituencies where NOTA votes may be higher than the margin of victory, but, normally, such seats are also divided between various political parties in proportion to their share of victories.
•There was such a situation in these Assembly elections. In Madhya Pradesh, there were at least 23 Assembly constituencies where NOTA votes were more than the margin of victory. Of these, 10 were won by the BJP while 12 went to the Congress. The Burhanpur Assembly seat was won by an independent. In Rajasthan, in the close contest between the Congress and the BJP in 16 Assembly seats, NOTA votes were higher than the victory margin, but these seats were evenly distributed between both parties. Of these 16 Assembly seats, eight went to the BJP and seven to the Congress. An independent candidate won the Marwar Junction seat by 251 votes. In Chhattisgarh, there were eight such Assembly seats, with three going to the BJP, two to the Congress and three to the Janta Congress Chhattisgarh.
Previous election
•In the 2013 Assembly elections in Rajasthan, even when the BJP led the Congress by 12% votes there were 11 Assembly seats where NOTA votes were more than the victory margin (six went to the BJP, three to the Congress and two by National People’s Party). It was not different in Madhya Pradesh in the same year when the BJP led the Congress by 8% votes . Of the 26 Assembly seats where NOTA votes were higher than the victory margin, 14 went to the BJP, 10 to the Congress, one to the Bahujan Samaj Party while the Sehore seat was won by an independent. Even in Chhattisgarh, that year, of the 15 Assembly seats where NOTA votes were more than the victory margin, eight went to the BJP and seven to the Congress. So can we say that NOTA is more important in these elections compared to the past?
📰 Making every citizen an auditor
Various steps need to be taken to strengthen social audits
•“A good auditor is a good listener” said President Ram Nath Kovind during his recent speech at the 29th Accountants General Conference. “You will not only see the accounts in their books, but also listen to their accounts,” he said. It is only when this conception is accepted that audits will return to their democratic roots, and social audits in India will get the space and attention they deserve in becoming an integral and robust part of the formal audit process.
•Social audits show how people’s participation in the planning, execution and monitoring of public programmes leads to better outcomes. They have strengthened the role of the gram sabha. Social audits were first mandated by law in 2005 under the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA). Subsequently, Parliament, the Supreme Court and many Central ministries mandated them in other areas as well. As efforts are being made to extend social audits to new areas, it is important to look at how well they are actually implemented based on parameters specified in the auditing standards jointly pioneered by the Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) and the Ministry of Rural Development. The National Institute of Rural Development and Panchayati Raj recently conducted a study comparing ground realities with the specified standards, and identified key issues that need to be addressed.
Many shortcomings
•There can be no effective audits if the auditing agency is not independent. Following a sustained push from the Rural Development Ministry, the CAG and civil society organisations, social audit units (SAUs) have been established in 26 States (Rajasthan, Haryana and Goa are yet to establish them). More than 5,000 full-time staff have been appointed. A 30-day rigorous training programme has been designed, and more than 4,200 people have been trained. However, the study identified certain shortcomings. The governing bodies of most SAUs are not independent. Some SAUs have to obtain sanction from the implementation agency before spending funds. More than half the States have not followed the open process specified in the standards for the appointment of the SAU’s director. Some States have conducted very few audits and a few have not conducted any. Several do not have adequate staff to cover all the panchayats even once a year.
•For the period 2016-17 and 2017-18 (till November), only 13 SAUs registered grievances and/or detected irregularities. These have identified a significant misappropriation amount of ₹281 crore. However, the action taken by the State governments in response to the social audit findings has been extremely poor: only 7% of the money has been recovered and only 14% of the grievances have been redressed. Adequate disciplinary action against people responsible for the irregularities has also not been taken.
The way forward
•In 2017, the Supreme Court mandated social audits under the National Food Security Act (NFSA) to be conducted using the machinery that facilitates the social audits of MGNREGA. Social audits of the NFSA have failed to take off due to lack of funds. Like the Rural Development Ministry, the Ministry of Consumer Affairs, Food and Public Distribution should give funds to the SAUs and ask them to facilitate the social audits of the NFSA.
•Social audit units should have an independent governing body and adequate staff. Rules must be framed so that implementation agencies are mandated to play a supportive role in the social audit process and take prompt action on the findings. Also, a real time management information system should track the calendar, the social audit findings and the action taken, and reports on these should be made publicly available.
•Social audit processes need mentoring and support as they expand into newer programmes. As the President said in his speech: “The social audit to account whether the money was spent properly, and made the intended difference, is mostly conducted by the scheme beneficiaries. Here the CAG as an institution could partner with local citizens and state audit societies to train them, build capacities and issue advisories on framing of guidelines, developing criteria, methodology and reporting for audit.”
📰 Transgender Bill passed in Lok Sabha
•The Transgender Persons (Protection of Rights) Bill, 2016, which aims at defining transgender people and prohibiting discrimination against them, was passed with 27 amendments in the Lok Sabha on Monday.
•The Bill was introduced in the House two years ago.
•The amendments moved by the government and those by some Opposition members were considered.
•Kakoli Ghosh Dastidar of the Trinamool Congress said the Bill was hastily drafted and the different clauses in it were inconclusive. “First we have to define what transgender means....This Bill has to be returned,” she said.
‘Ready for discussion’
•Parliamentary Affairs Minister Narendra Singh Tomar said the government was ready for any kind of discussion.
•Union Social Justice and Empowerment Minister Thawar Chand Gehlot said the Bill had been sent to a standing committee and the government had accepted 27 amendments. The Bill was complete and there was no need for more discussion, he said. Its objectives include protecting the interests of transgender people, defining the term “transgender”, giving them recognition and setting up a national transgender council.
•Shashi Tharoor of the Congress said the Bill was flawed and failed to define discrimination.
📰 New triple talaq Bill introduced
•A fresh Bill to make the practice of triple talaq among Muslims a penal offence was introduced in the Lok Sabha on Monday to replace an ordinance issued in September.
•Under the proposed law, giving instant triple talaq will be illegal and void and will attract a jail term of three years for the husband. The Muslim Women (Protection of Rights on Marriage) Bill, 2018 will supercede an earlier Bill passed in the Lok Sabha.
•As the Bill faced resistance in the Rajya Sabha, the government promulgated the ordinance.
📰 Hot air at Katowice
Key issues of concern for the poorest and developing nations were diluted or postponed
•“Until you start focussing on what needs to be done, rather than what is politically possible, there is no hope,” said Greta Thunberg, a 15-year-old activist from Sweden who shook the United Nations gathering at Katowice, Poland, with her plain speaking. But what she said should not happen is exactly what happened at the recently concluded 24th meeting of the Conference of the Parties (COP24) to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. While there was some progress on the process by which the Paris Agreement of 2015 would be implemented, key issues of concern for the poorest and developing nations were diluted or postponed.
•The 1.5 Degree Report, which was produced by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change in October 2018, showed that the earth is close to a climate catastrophe. This report was not suitably acknowledged as an evidence-based cause for alarm by the U.S., Saudi Arabia and Russia, however. These countries wanted the report “noted” but not “welcomed”. Arguments on word choices stalled the meeting at various stages, especially with the U.S. present with its large team of lawyers. While the U.S. is getting out of the Paris Agreement, formally by late 2020, it still took part in deciding (or rewriting) the rules for many agreed items of the Paris Agreement.
•The summit aimed to establish guidelines for implementing and reporting on the Paris Agreement. Countries were looking to establish an enhanced transparency framework to monitor, verify and report actions taken in a systematic, standardised manner. As reported in their Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs), all countries would carry out mitigation. But adaptation is a significant portion of many developing countries’ plans. Transparency — what would be done to reduce emissions, how countries would measure and report progress, and how much support industrialised countries would provide — was an important aspect of the discussions. This will inform stocktaking of progress on the Paris Agreement and how much more is needed to cut emissions and raise ambition.
•Funds were also required from rich countries for the losses and damages borne by poor nations. While this meeting was not about loss and damage per se, this item will take greater precedence as warming effects intensify. Technology transfer and capacity building support are also issues of importance to vulnerable countries and poor, developing countries that need help to transition from high to low carbon economies.
Disregard of equity
•There is little to no finance available for poor and developing nations. The details on funding and building capacity have been postponed. References to “equity” in the draft rule book were erased by the U.S. delegation, leaving one Indian negotiator to remark that they would have to go back to the original language of the Convention if differentiation between the developed and industrialised countries is purged from the text. Article 9 (the provision of financial support to developing countries from industrialised nations) was ignored; instead, there was an emphasis on carbon markets and insurance mechanisms. Finance was not even considered until the Africa Group of Nations forced open the issue by boycotting the discussions. Still, with name-calling from Switzerland and backtracking from the U.S., there was a lot of tension at the negotiations.
•In spite of these problems, a single rulebook for all countries has been produced and will serve as a foundation for more detailed rules and structures. Many international civil society groups expressed utter dismay over the disregard of equity. Poor and developing countries whose greenhouse gas emissions have been low or negligible will bear the brunt of warming effects. Whether or not funds will be replenished even for the implementation of the current NDCs is unclear. Funds for finance, better terms for new technologies to be transferred to developing and vulnerable countries, and economic and non-economic support for loss and damage and their equitable moorings in the text have been eliminated, minimised or footnoted. Yet, the need for ‘ambition’ was loudly proclaimed by many actors. How can there be ambition without support?
Sowing confusion
•One should remember that the European Union, Australia, Switzerland and Japan did not disagree with the U.S. when “equity” was wiped from the text; in fact, they consented. So, simply pointing to the U.S. as the ogre would be incorrect. And corporations have had a significant role to play in the drafting of the text in climate agreements. A Shell Corporation executive boasted recently about the role that the company had played in writing parts of the text of the Paris Agreement, especially Article 6, which is about market mechanisms and carbon credit. Text from the company’s straw proposal is part of the Agreement, according to The Intercept. American historian of science Naomi Oreskes and others have shown the methods by which those with vested interests have funded scientists and politicians to challenge climate change, thereby sowing confusion.
•Local and state-level action that keeps climate change at the centre and fully incorporated into “good development” is the most critical policy perspective nations can adopt. As long as people and governments treat climate and environment as marginal to development, and well-being as marginal to GDP growth, climate change impacts will strain and tear every weak stitch of the world’s economic and development fabric.
•There is hope in youth action in various parts of the globe, from Europe to Australia to the U.S. The farmers’ protests in India are but a symptom of a development-as-usual crucible gone wrong. Ms. Thunberg is not alone, and perhaps our strongest prospect is to get behind this future generation. As she said: “If solutions within the system are so impossible to find, maybe we should change the system itself.”
