📰 A national register of exclusion
There are few parallels anywhere else of the state itself producing statelessness in the manner that it is doing in Assam
•By requiring long-term residents of Assam to prove their citizenship by negotiating a thicket made up of bewildering and opaque rules and an uncaring bureaucracy, the Indian state has for the past two decades unleashed an unrelenting nightmare of wanton injustice on a massive swathe of its most vulnerable people.
Distressing cycle
•The official presumption that they are foreigners has reduced several million of these highly impoverished, mostly rural, powerless and poorly lettered residents to a situation of helplessness and penury. It has also caused them abiding anxiety and uncertainty about their futures. They are required to persuade a variety of usually hostile officials that they are citizens, based on vintage documents which even urban, educated, middle-class citizens would find hard to muster. And even when one set of officials is finally satisfied, another set can question them. And sometimes the same official is free again to send them a notice, starting the frightening cycle afresh.
•On February 2 and 3, I was in Guwahati listening to heart-breaking accounts from 53 people from 13 districts of Assam. This was as part of a people’s tribunal on the National Register of Citizens (NRC), along with Justice Venkate Gopala Gowda, Colin Gonsalves, Monirul Hussain and Sanjoy Hazarika. What emerged were numbing stories of unyielding official bias and arbitrariness, of the denial of elementary “due process” and, above all, the complete absence of public compassion. Even old men frequently broke down as they spoke of all that they had endured.
•It emerged that the names of many persons were dropped from the draft NRC only because of minor differences in the spelling of Bengali names in English in different documents. We encountered several instances where the variation of a single letter, for example between Omar and Onar, was enough to rule that a person is a foreigner. Likewise, the rural unlettered are typically vague about their dates of birth. A person could be excluded from citizenship if she told the tribunal that she was 40 when her documents recorded her to be 42.
Tougher on women
•Women are especially in danger of exclusion from the citizenship register. Typically, they have no birth certificates, are not sent to school, and are married before they become adults. Therefore, by the time their names first appear in voters’ lists, these are in the villages where they live after marriage, which are different from those of their parents. They are told that they have no documents to prove that they are indeed the children of the people they claim are their parents. There were cases of being excluded from citizenship on this ground alone.
•Impoverished migrant workers often travel to other districts of Assam in search of work, as construction workers, road-builders and coal-miners. In the districts to which they migrate, the local police frequently record their names as illegal immigrants from Bangladesh. The police then mark them out as illegal immigrants. They receive notices from foreigners’ tribunals located in districts where they might have worked years earlier, far away from their home districtsthey have to travel to for every hearing, adding further to their costs.
•The NRC is not the only institution through which the state challenges them to prove their citizenship. A second process began in the mid-1990s when the then Chief Election Commissioner T.N. Seshan, as a one-time measure, directed officials to identify “doubtful voters” by marking a “D” against their names on the voters’ list. This would temporarily bar them from voting or standing for elections, until an inquiry was completed.
•But this temporary measure became permanent. The power was vested permanently with junior officials who could doubt the citizenship of any person at any time without assigning any reason. Those with the dreaded “D” beside their names had no recourse for appeal under the rules, with years passing without any inquiry. The “D” also debarred them from being included in the draft NRC.
•A third process empowers the Assam Police to identify anyone it suspects to be a ‘foreigner’. Again, all that the police claim in most cases is that the person was unable to show them documents establishing his or her citizenship. People consistently deny that the police even asked them from documents. Why would they not show them these, when they all know the dangers of not allaying the suspicions of the police?
Opaque processes
•All cases referred by the police are heard by Foreigners’ Tribunals (FTs). Earlier, retired judges were appointed to these tribunals. The Bharatiya Janata Party government has appointed many lawyers (often members of the ruling party or the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh) who have never been judges. There are now FTs in which not a single person has been declared an Indian citizen over several months. Many allege that both the police and presiding officers in FTs work to fulfil informal targets to declare people foreigners.
•Even if a person finds her name in the NRC, the police can still refer her case to an FT; an election official can even deem her to be a “D”-voter. Article 20 of the Constitution includes as a fundamental right that “no person shall be prosecuted and punished for the same offence more than once”. But this principle has been waived for FTs. We found that even after an FT had confirmed a person to be an Indian citizen, another FT and often the same FT can again issue notice to the same person to prove her legitimate citizenship once more. A person is never be allowed to feel secure that the state has finally accepted that she is an Indian citizen.
•In this way, the sword permanently hangs low over their heads. Who will be challenged before which institution to prove that they are Indian citizens? Will they or their loved ones be stripped of their citizenship rights, and by processes that are opaque, unreasonable and discriminatory?
•No person in any one of the testimonies that we heard was given legal aid by the state, which is bound to deploy lawyers paid by the state to fight their cases in the FTs and higher courts. People instead spoke of panic spending, of enormous amounts of money to pay lawyers, as well as for costs of travel of witnesses who they bring with them to testify in their favour. For this, they have had to sell all their assets or borrow from private moneylenders. The large majority of them are poorly educated and very impoverished, doing low-paid work such as drawing rickshaws, or working as domestic work or farm labour.
•With the entire burden of proving citizenship on their shoulders and the arbitrary and opaque multiple forums to which they are summoned, people deprived of both education and resources are caught in a Kafkaesque bureaucratic maze from which they find it hard to emerge.
•Trapped at the crossroads of history, their destinies depend on institutions that treat them with undisguised hostility and bias. There are indeed few parallels anywhere in the world of the state itself producing statelessness on the scale and in the manner that it is doing in Assam.
The Interim Budget makes clear the class hierarchy in the Modi government’s scheme of populism
•Interim Budget 2019 has sought to make amends for all the wrongs of almost five years of the Narendra Modi government. For example, the debilitating impact of demonetisation on the informal sector that employs nearly 90% of the workforce had long been suspected on the basis of anecdotal evidence. The findings of the National Sample Survey Office’s surveys — leaked last week after they were approved by the National Statistical Commission — show that unemployment rose to a 45-year high in the demonetisation year. The note ban, these findings suggest, has caused severe distress.
Some social security
•To reach out to the segment worst hit, the Interim Budget announced the Pradhan Mantri Shram Yogi Mandhan for unorganised sector workers with monthly incomes of less than ₹15,000. With a token allocation of ₹500 crore, a direct benefit transfer of ₹3,000 a month as old-age pension has been proposed. Pensioners will receive the payments once they attain the age of 60. To be eligible, workers will have to start contributing ₹55 every month from the age of 18. Those over 29 will have to contribute ₹100 every month. The government will match these contributions. The scheme targets workers in sectors such as leather, handloom and construction which took a body blow from demonetisation.
•A possible inference can be that the Modi government does not expect — nor is it promising — upward mobility for this class to better quality jobs over the span of their working lives.
For the farmer
•The Modi government’s tenure has been marked by acute rural distress. Among the reasons to which it can be ascribed are legacy farm sector policy issues which no government has addressed in a meaningful way. In this, Mr. Modi’s government has been no different. The minimum support prices and procurement policies it followed were more ineffective than is normal. In fact these policies reversed some of the corrections made by the previous United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government in the terms of trade for agriculture. The Modi government has also failed to respond adequately to the back-to-back droughts of 2014 and 2015. The import-export policy errors it made added to the gluts caused by bumper harvests in 2017 and 2018, which further depressed market prices and increased farmer losses.
•The non-farming classes did profit to an extent from these policy failures. Falling food prices spelt losses for farmers but benefited kitchen budgets in middle-class households that had suffered from severe inflation under the UPA.
•The Interim Budget offers farmers a peace offering in the form of income support of ₹6,000 a year, or ₹500 a month, financed fully by the Central government. The Pradhan Mantri Kisan Samman Nidhi (PM-KISAN) — inspired by Telangana’s Rythu Bandhu — targets only landed farmers who own up to 2 hectares, while bypassing landless cultivators, the most vulnerable class in the agriculture sector.
•In handing out these fiscal giveaways, Mr. Modi has bitten the bullet by reaching out to a class of voters who are traditionally not a constituency of the BJP. But these giveaways suffer from the same populist, rather than reformist, approach seen earlier with demonetisation which was planned as a big bang intervention to downsize the black economy, and the design and implementation of the Goods and Services Tax (GST). These measures, which were not thought through properly, led to perverse consequences.
The downside
•In a similar way, the PM-KISAN scheme is likely to encourage further fragmentation of already much fragmented landholdings. Farming households holding larger land parcels will try to split holdings to try to qualify for the benefits under the scheme. Had the scheme been dovetailed with a replacement of the highly distortionary fertilizer subsidy with a direct benefit cash transfer, not only would a long-pending reform have been accomplished but the income support offered to farmers could have been nearly twice as much as has been announced. Bureaucrats had made a case for adding the fertilizer subsidy as a cash component to the income support, but Mr. Modi showed no appetite for the reform.
•Even so, the Interim Budget leaves no doubt about which class of voters Mr. Modi is most eager to please. The gifts showered on the middle class outstrip those to the poorer sections who have borne the brunt of demonetisation and an incompetently designed GST. The income-tax rebate for individuals drawing incomes of up to ₹5 lakh will leave nearly ₹1,000 a month more in their wallets. This is twice the amount farmers will receive from the PM-KISAN scheme.
•And, middle class Indians will not, unlike unorganised sector workers, have to wait till they are 60 to receive the rebate or the other tax benefits announced, such as on fixed deposits and two self-owned houses.
•There was something for the rich too. The most positive, and the only reforms-oriented announcement, was reserved for them — a promise of a complete digitalised experience in their dealings with the income-tax department. This could end the excessive harassment and the tax terror that have been unleashed in the past couple of years.
Compromising economics
•Finally, apart from making clear the class hierarchy in Mr. Modi’s scheme of populism, the Interim Budget provides evidence, if any more was needed, that Indian electoral politics is dependent even more now on schemes involving handouts and fiscal goodies. That the need to spend money on the voting classes is felt by successive governments confirms that no serious gains from economic reforms are reaching the non-rich. Politicians appear to be compromising good economics with increasing ease and relish.
📰 Visa crackdown: On Indian students’ arrest
Students should be made aware of the risks of falling afoul of U.S. immigration laws
•The arrest of 129 Indians on the charge of wilfully violating immigration laws to stay and work in the United States sends a stark message to youth looking for better prospects abroad: their efforts should begin with due diligence and strictly follow the letter of the law. In the sting operation carried out by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, which threatens to encompass many more Indians in the ‘University of Farmington’ case, the contentious issue is whether they fell victim to unscrupulous recruiters who offered to secure an I-20 student document that allowed them to undertake paid work using the provision for Curricular Practical Training, or knowingly engaged in fraud. Going by the indictment of eight recruiters of Indian origin, they knew they were violating U.S. immigration law when they enrolled students using fraudulent and unlawful means, and their profits included negotiated referral fees paid into their accounts by undercover agents. The prosecution has alleged that each student who enrolled in the ‘university’ was aware that there would be no classes, credit scores or academic requirements, and the intention was merely to “pay to stay” and gain access to employment. These statements are, of course, subject to scrutiny during the trial of the alleged recruiters. The Ministry of External Affairs has made the correct distinction between students who may have been duped and the recruiters. Students who are eligible to pursue studies at an authorised university in the U.S. should, therefore, get a further opportunity and not be subjected to summary deportation or humiliation. It must also not prejudice the prospects of such students who may apply in future for legal entry.
•The University of Farmington case in Michigan is not the first instance of Indian students falling foul of U.S. immigration laws, although it stands apart as a racket exposed by a sting operation. Others such as Tri-Valley University and Herguan University were degree mills run by individuals that used false claims and documents to enable youth to unlawfully stay in the U.S. and, in many cases, pursue employment. These trends reinforce the need for good communication that would help students identify credentialed institutions that meet the requirements of the Student and Exchange Visitor Program, and highlight the serious nature of visa fraud. If the averments in the Michigan case are correct, the prospect of working in America attracted many of the 600 students who were recruited. This should serve as a reminder to India’s policymakers that access to higher education, job-creation and raising of living standards to meet the aspirations of youth must receive priority. Talk of an impending demographic dividend is meaningless without creating opportunities at home.
📰 America has lost the Afghan war
Once U.S. troops leave, the Taliban is sure to challenge Kabul one way or the other
•The Remnants of an Army, a famous oil on canvas by the 19th century artist Elizabeth Butler, is a lasting image of the First Anglo-Afghan War (1839-1842). It depicts William Brydon, a medical officer in the British Indian Army, arriving in Jalalabad from Kabul on horseback in 1842. Both Brydon, who was wounded, and his horse look exhausted. Brydon was the only survivor of the 16,000 soldiers and camp followers who were retreating from Kabul after the British invasion went awry.
•One hundred and thirty-seven years later, the Soviet Union sent troops to Afghanistan to bolster its client communist regime. A decade passed before the Soviet troops too withdrew in ignominy. And again in 2001, the U.S., the sole superpower of the post-Soviet world, sent troops to Afghanistan launching its ‘War on Terror’. Now, after 17 years of the war, with the U.S. and the Taliban agreeing ‘in-principle’ to a framework for peace that would provide the Americans a face-saving exit from Afghanistan, it’s hard to miss the echoes from history.
Repeating mistakes of the past
•Afghanistan has historically been a difficult place for external invaders, thanks to its complex tribal equations and its rugged mountainous terrain. It’s a classic example of a country whose geopolitical destiny is defined by geography. The British Empire sent troops to Afghanistan in 1839 as part of the ‘Great Game’. They feared that the Russians would take over Afghanistan and be at the border of India, “the jewel in the British Crown”. To pre-empt that, they conquered Kabul, toppled the Emir of Afghanistan, Dost Mohammad Khan, and installed their protege Shah Shujah Durrani in power. When the invasion became unsustainable in the wake of the violent resistance by tribal fighters, mainly the faction led by Dost Mohammad’s son, Akbar Khan, the British decided to withdraw. But while withdrawing, all their troops but Brydon were massacred, and Dost Mohammad went on to recapture Kabul.
•The Soviets made the same mistake. They sent troops to Afghanistan after an intra-party coup in the country. The Soviets were wary of Hafizullah Amin, who captured power after assassinating Nur Mohammad Taraki, the leader of the 1978 communist coup. In December 1979, Leonid Brezhnev deployed troops to Afghanistan. The Soviets staged another coup, murdered Amin, and installed Babrak Karmal, a Moscow loyalist, as President. Given their defeat in the Vietnam War and their loss of Iran following the 1979 Revolution, the Americans saw the Soviet intervention in Afghanistan as an opportunity. They began supporting the mujahideen, the tribal warriors who were fighting both the communist regime and its Soviet backers, with help from Pakistan and Saudi Arabia, which were worried about the expansion of communism to the Muslim world. A decade later, the Soviets realised that the occupation had become unsustainable and pulled back.
•When the U.S. decided to attack the Taliban regime in Afghanistan in 2001, President George W. Bush said the ‘War on Terror’ would not end “until every terrorist group of global reach has been found, stopped and defeated”. This was a tall order. The U.S. toppled the Taliban quickly and Afghanistan eventually got an elected government under President Hamid Karzai. But after 17 years of fighting, the war has reached nowhere. Since 2009, when the United Nations started documenting the casualties of the war, nearly 20,000 Afghan civilians have been killed in conflict and another 50,000 wounded. The U.S., which has spent some $877 billion on the war, has lost at least 2,000 military personnel in Afghanistan since the war began.
An unsustainable war
•And what did it get in return? The Taliban, which retreated in 2001, is on the comeback trail. Some estimates suggest that nearly half of Afghanistan, mostly the mountainous hinterlands, is now controlled by the Taliban. In the east, a small cell of the Islamic State is well-entrenched and has carried out a series of sectarian attacks in recent months, killing hundreds of Hazara Shias. The government is grappling with chronic corruption, and regional satraps call the shots outside Kabul.
•U.S. President Donald Trump has made it clear many times that he wants to bring American troops back home. Yet he decided to send more troops to Afghanistan in 2017 to step up the fight against the Taliban. Since then, the U.S. has carried out large-scale air operations in Afghanistan, but it has failed to arrest the Taliban’s momentum. The group continues to hold sway in rural Afghanistan and retains the capability to strike anywhere in the country. Just since 2014, Afghanistan has lost some 45,000 soldiers in battle. Amid mounting losses and an inability to break the stalemate in the conflict, the Americans, like the British Empire in the 19th century and the Soviets in the 20th century, seem to have realised that the first major war of the 21st century is no longer sustainable.
The role of the Taliban
•The question is, what next? The U.S. says it has got assurance from the Taliban that the group won’t provide a safe haven to terror groups in Afghanistan. It will also push for a ceasefire and intra-Afghan talks. But the fact remains that the U.S. has already conceded a lot to the Taliban. The Taliban said it would not talk to the Afghan administration; it does not acknowledge the government’s legitimacy. The Americans accepted this and held direct talks with the insurgents, who negotiated from a position of strength. The U.S. has also agreed, in principle, to pull out troops, the biggest Taliban demand, without any clear agreement on the future role of the Taliban. This shows how desperate the U.S. is to get out of Afghanistan, a war it has lost badly. It will be exiting on terms largely dictated by the Taliban. It would be naive to say that the Taliban fought the war for 17 years only to reach an agreement with the Americans. It fought for power, which it lost with the arrival of American troops in 2001. And it’s certain that once the Americans leave, the Taliban will challenge Kabul one way or the other.
📰 Wrong on the Rohingya
Deportation of refugees is legally and morally problematic
•In Januarys, the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) called for a report from India on the deportation of a group of Rohingya refugees to Myanmar in October 2018. India’s repatriation of the refugees contravenes international principles on refugee law as well as domestic constitutional rights.
Global framework
•Refugee law is a part of international human rights law. In order to address the problem of mass inter-state influx of refugees, a Conference of Plenipotentiaries of the UN adopted the Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees in 1951. This was followed by the Protocol Relating to the Status of Refugees in 1967. One of the most significant features of the Convention is the principle of non-refoulement. The norm requires that “no contracting State shall expel or return a refugee in any manner whatsoever to the frontiers of territories where his life or freedom would be threatened on account of his race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group or political opinion.” This idea of prohibition of expulsion lies at the heart of refugee protection in international law.
•It is often argued that the principle does not bind India since it is a party to neither the 1951 Convention nor the Protocol. However, the prohibition of non-refoulement of refugees constitutes a norm of customary international law, which binds even non-parties to the Convention. According to the Advisory Opinion on the Extraterritorial Application of Non-Refoulement Obligations, UNHCR, 2007, the principle “is binding on all States, including those which have not yet become party to the 1951 Convention and/or its 1967 Protocol.”
•Article 14 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights provides that everyone has the right to seek and enjoy in other countries asylum from persecution. Moreover, Article 51 of the Constitution imposes an obligation on the state to endeavour to promote international peace and security. Article 51(c) talks about promotion of respect for international law and treaty obligations. Therefore, the Constitution conceives of incorporation of international law into the domestic realm. Thus the argument that the nation has not violated international obligations during the deportation is a mistaken one.
Domestic obligations
•The chapter on fundamental rights in the Constitution differentiates citizens from persons. While all rights are available to citizens, persons including foreign citizens are entitled to the right to equality and the right to life, among others. The Rohingya refugees, while under the jurisdiction of the national government, cannot be deprived of the right to life and personal liberty.
•The Rohingya are “among the world’s least wanted and most persecuted people,” according to a BBC report. In Myanmar, they are denied citizenship, the right to own land and travel, or to even marry without permission, says the report. According to the UN, the Rohingya issue is one of systematic and widespread ethnic cleansing by Myanmar.
•Therefore, the discrimination that the Rohingya face is unparalleled in contemporary world politics. In National Human Rights Commission v. State of Arunachal Pradesh (1996), the Supreme Court held: “Our Constitution confers... rights on every human being and certain other rights on citizens. Every person is entitled to equality before the law and equal protection of the laws. So also, no person can be deprived of his life or personal liberty except according to procedure established by law. Thus the State is bound to protect the life and liberty of every human-being, be he a citizen or otherwise...”
•India lacks a specific legislation to address the problem of refugees, in spite of their increasing inflow. The Foreigners Act, 1946, fails to address the peculiar problems faced by refugees as a class. It also gives unbridled power to the Central government to deport any foreign citizen. Further, the Citizenship (Amendment) Bill of 2019 strikingly excludes Muslims from its purview and seeks to provide citizenship only to Hindu, Christian, Jain, Parsi, Sikh and Buddhist immigrants persecuted in Bangladesh, Pakistan and Afghanistan. The majority of the Rohingya are Muslims. This limitation on the basis of religion fails to stand the test of equality under Article 14 of the Constitution and offends secularism, a basic feature of the Constitution.
•The American philosopher Ronald Dworkin argues that if we claim international law to be law, we must understand it as part of the greater morality. In such a conception, the deportation of refugees by India is not only unlawful but breaches a significant moral obligation.
📰 Emission levels rising faster in Indian cities than in China
Study analysed link between population density and emissions from vehicles across the districts in the country
•Urbanisation is accelerating greenhouse gas emissions from vehicles in India at a faster than in China.
•On an average, an Indian emitted about 20 kg per capita while commuting for work, with the highest (140 kg CO2) in Gurugram district (Haryana) and the lowest (1.8 kg CO2) in Shrawasti district (Uttar Pradesh), says a study that analysed the link between population density and emissions from transport, across India's districts.
•The experience in most developed countries was that urbanisation led to a reduction in emissions — more urbanisation meant shorter distances between the workplace and home and thereby, a preference for public transport. However this didn’t effectively apply to developing countries, the authors argue.
•In China a 1% increase in urbanisation was linked with a 0.12% increase in CO2 emissions whereas, in India, it translated into 0.24% increase in emissions, said the study, to be published in the peer-reviewed journal Environmental Research Letters.
•India’s CO2 emission grew by an estimated 4.6% in 2017 and its per-capita emission was about 1.8 tonnes. In spite of being the 4th largest emitter, India's per capita emissions are much lower than the world average of 4.2 tonnes. But those emissions have been growing steadily, with an average growth rate over the past decade of 6%, according to data from the Global Carbon Project.
•Fuel price hikes aren’t always a solution to curb emissions, the study says.
•With a ₹1 increase in diesel price, commuting emissions decreased by 11% in some districts whereas it only fell by about 3% in low-income districts. “Given these districts have least commuting emissions and low socio-economic status our study finds limited support for increasing gasoline prices as a strategy to mitigate commuting emissions,” say the authors Sohail Ahmad and Felix Creutzig, who are at the University of Glasgow and the Mercator Research Institute on Global Commons and Climate Change, Berlin, respectively. “In total, India's transport patterns are very climate friendly, and much better than those of Europe and the United States. We find that some districts are mostly relying on three-wheelers for short commuting distances, while others are highly urban, rich, and rely on cars,” Creutzig said in an email.
•The mean commuting distance (among commuters) is 5.9 km, with the lowest 1.3 km in Longleng district (Nagaland) and the highest 14 km in Dharmapuri district (Tamil Nadu).
•Delhi had the highest commuting emissions per capita — a factor that also contributed to its high level of pollution — and the national capital region had 2.5 times higher commuting emissions than Mumbai, Kolkata, Chennai, Bangalore, and Hyderabad. “Delhi’s higher socio-economic status and heavy reliance on private travel modes led to higher commuting emissions than in other megacities,” the report noted.
•Because there were several instances of districts with similar population density but varying per capita emissions, a “simple-minded densification” was an inappropriate policy for reducing commuters’ GHG emissions and India would do well to focus on electric vehicles and and efficient public transit system. This to however ought to be tailored to a region’s geographical context, the authors contended.
📰 The danger of cash transfers
It might incentivise the state to shirk its constitutional responsibility of providing basic entitlements to all
•With the general election around the corner and NSSO data revealing that the unemployment rate has hit a 45-year high, there is a spike in concern for the economic security of the people. Several recent proposals — whether the Congress’s pre-emptive announcement of a minimum income guarantee scheme, or the Interim Budget’s promise of a range of income transfers to farmers (albeit as low as ₹3 per day for a family of five) and a pension scheme for workers aged over 60 years in the unorganised sector, or the government’s announcement of a 10% quota for the “economically weaker sections” in the general category — might appear promising but raise questions about their impact on the working poor.
•If uplift of the poor is a priority, why not provide decent employment opportunities, minimum wages and social security to all workers? Why not spend on universalising access to, and provision of, basic public services to all? Why, contrarily, are there periodic cuts in social sector spending, including on public education and primary health; amendments in labour laws in favour of corporates; and privatisation and contractualisation even within the public sector?
•In this context, cash transfers to the “poor” — also subject to gross exclusionary errors of identification — do not ensure accessibility, affordability or even sustained economic security given falling real wages. The scheme also doesn’t indicate where that money would be spent by the beneficiaries. More importantly, the concern is that these cash transfers could replace, rather than supplement, existing schemes that provide subsidised goods and services. This would imply that citizens could be left at the mercy of private, for-profit players to avail even basic services. This might incentivise the state to shirk its constitutional responsibility of providing basic entitlements to all.
•Case studies around Direct Benefit Transfers have shown that they play an instrumental role in dismantling existing welfare schemes like the Integrated Child Development Services and deprive ASHA and Anganwadi workers of their wages. These workers have been pillars in creating an ecosystem for ensuring nutritional security to women and children. Even in Europe, wherever guaranteed basic income has been implemented, provision of services has increasingly moved towards greater privatisation.
•Finally, it is surprising that the same government that earlier opposed cash transfer schemes as “doles” is now advocating them. Politically the scheme seems to be the most viable option now, given the unemployment catastrophe. Hurried income transfers before the election could be considered as ‘cash for votes’, but the larger danger entails the state’s diminishing accountability towards its citizens, of upholding their rights to basic entitlements and to work.
📰 PM-KISAN: Aadhaar must for second instalment
Unique identification is not compulsory for first transfer
•Farmers who wish to avail themselves of benefits under PM-KISAN, the new income support scheme announced in the Union Budget, must have Aadhaar identification to get the money from the second instalment, which would be paid by July 2019. However, this would not be compulsory for the first instalment expected to be disbursed by March 31, before the Lok Sabha polls.
•In a letter to the Chief Secretaries of all States and Union Territories, Agriculture Secretary Sanjay Agarwal spelt out guidelines for the States, which would have to do the lion’s share of work in actual implementation of the scheme, especially since the first transfer is due in less than two months.
•States have been told to prepare a database of beneficiaries — small and marginal landholder farmer families in all villages — including whether they belong to SC/ST, bank account, mobile and Aadhaar details.
•For transfer of the first instalment, Aadhaar number “shall be collected wherever available”, wrote Mr. Agarwal. An alternate list of identification documents has also been provided, as options.
•“However, for transfer of subsequent instalments, Aadhaar number shall have to be compulsorily captured,” the secretary wrote.
Land records
•States have also been told to update their land records, as that would serve as the basis for determination of landholding for beneficiaries. However, the secretary also said that the cut-off date for determination of ownership of land (as per land records) under the scheme was already over; the cut-off date was February 1, 2019. “Changes thereafter in land records shall not be considered for eligibility of the benefit to the new land holder for next 5 years,” Mr. Agarwal wrote, clarifying that transfer of ownership on account of succession would, however, be allowed.
•The situation is slightly more complicated in the northeastern States, as land ownership rights in the region are community-based, making it difficult to identify beneficiaries. An alternate implementation mechanism would be developed by a committee including the State governments, as well as the Union Ministry of Development of North Eastern Region, Land Resources ministry and Agriculture ministry, the official wrote.
•States would be given a maximum of 0.25% of funds transferred to beneficiaries in the first instalment to pay for their administrative expenses in the implementation of the scheme. That amount would drop to 0.125% for all further instalments.
📰 China-Japan frontline sees a ‘cold peace’
Officials cite Chinese intrusion into Japan’s ‘territorial waters’, but peace prevails
•From their forward base in Ishigaki, a part of the Okinawa chain of 150 islands, large ships of the Japanese coast guard, all gleaming white, keep a tight round- the-clock vigil on a group of islands, 170 km away.
•Their mission is to ensure that Japan maintains its hold over these small but strategically significant islands in the East China Sea. The Japanese call them Senkaku, and designate them as sovereign territory.
•According to the Japanese argument, in the late 19th century, about 200 nationals pioneered a settlement in these uninhabited islands. Over there, they established a business of gathering albatross feathers, which were used for making warm clothing. China, they say, contested Japanese sovereignty only after 1968, when a UN body cited the possibility of oil reserves in the area.
•On the contrary, China as well as Taiwan point to documentary evidence suggesting that China held the territory before the onset of the First Sino-Japanese War. Consequently, Japan has been accused of seizing this territory, which should be returned, in tune with practice after the Second World War, when imperial Japan gave back captured territories to their original owners.
•Analysts say that the intensity of claims by Tokyo and Beijing may also be driven by the significant strategic location of the Senkaku/Diaoyu islands.
Military objective
•At the Sasakawa Peace Foundation in Tokyo, Special Research Fellow Susumu Takai asserts that China’s real military objective is the Miyako strait, and establishing a hold on Senkaku islands would be a step in that direction.
•Though in international waters, the 250 km wide passageway between the Miyako and Okinawa islands is seen as a major choke-point through which China’s People’s Liberation Army Navy can channel into the West Pacific, dominated by the U.S. Navy. “China’s real intention is not just to dominate but control the Miyako strait,” observes Mr. Takai.
•In anticipation of a worst-case scenario, the Mayor of Ishigaki, Yoshitaka Nakayama, acknowledges that some additional ground troops of the Japan Self Defence Forces (JSDF) have been deployed on the Miyako island. Besides, defences of some other nearby islands such as Yonaguni, which is only 108 km from Taiwan, have been reinforced. Miki Iwao, President of the Ishigaki branch of Yaeyama Defence Association — an organisation that links the Army and civil society — points out that the JSDF needs to plug the military gap between the mainland Kyushu island and the Okinawa island chain.
•At the Ishigaki coast guard office, Rear Admiral Hiroyasu Hanai, explains the ground rules, which ensure that a cold peace continues to prevail along the Senkaku/Diaoyu frontline, despite the escalation of Chinese forays in the area since 2012. “When the Chinese coast guard ships intrude into our territorial water, our ships sail alongside them,” he said during a power point presentation aboard one of the ships.
•“Both sides then blare their positions on the islands over loudspeakers. On the electronic scroll bar on the side of the ships, the audio message is reinforced in writing,” says Mr. Hanai.
•Under the Japanese coast guard protocol, Chinese fishing vessels which enter territorial waters are warned to refrain from further entry. “Chinese fishing boats routinely heed the warning and go away,” the Japanese commander observes.
•However, there is zero-tolerance for “political activists” that come aboard boats in the area, to loudly demonstrate Chinese claims over the islands. “There was an incident seven years ago when our ships had to run into the boat full of activists. They were finally chased away with water cannons,” the Admiral said.
📰 Centre may relax angel tax norms for start-ups, sets up panel
Agrees to raise exemption threshold to ₹25 crore; networth, I-T returns ceiling to be lowered for investors; start-up’s definition to be amended
•The government on Monday decided to set up a five-member working committee to look into the angel tax issue and come up with guidelines in one week. It also agreed to implement some key changes requested by start-ups regarding the issue.
•The ‘angel tax’, as it is commonly called, is a tax on the excess capital raised by an unlisted company through the issue of shares over and above the fair market value of those shares. This excess capital is treated as income and taxed accordingly. This tax most commonly affects start-ups and the angel investors who back them. The decisions were taken during a meeting between officials of the Department for Promotion of Industry and Internal Trade (DPIIT), including its Secretary Ramesh Abhishek, officials of the Central Board of Direct Taxes (CBDT), including Member Akhilesh Ranjan and Joint Secretary Rajesh Bhoot, and representatives of the start-up community.
•According to a January 16 notification, start-ups whose aggregate amount of paid-up share capital and share premium after the proposed issue of share does not exceed ₹10 crore are eligible for exemption from the tax.
•The Hindu has learnt that during the meeting, officials representing the government agreed to raise this limit to ₹25 crore. They also agreed to amend the definition of a start-up to include companies that have been in operation for up to 10 years rather than the previous limit of seven years. On the investor side, the notification had said that the angel investor should have filed income tax returns of at least ₹50 lakh for the year preceding the year in which the investment was made and have a net worth of ₹2 crore. This, according to a source who attended the meeting, would be modified to be ₹25 lakh and ₹1 crore, respectively.
‘Can’t scrap tax’
•“The ask was for scrapping the angel tax,” the head of a start-up who attended the meeting told The Hindu. “To that, the response from Akhilesh Ranjan was that it could not be scrapped as money laundering was a major problem. There was a network of 200 shell companies and they have been under control since 2012, so it cannot be scrapped.” “However, during the meeting they agreed to three of our requests, which had to do with the size of the start-up, the duration of its operation, and the income of the angel investor,” the company official added.
•These agreements could still result in an ‘inspector-raj’, where start-ups would have to apply to the DPIIT and the CBDT each time they find an investor, Sachin Taparia, founder and chairman of LocalCircles said.
•The government, for its part, was concerned about how to differentiate genuine start-ups from companies set up for money-laundering purposes. “Money-laundering companies will fail the time-test,” Mr. Taparia, who was also at the meeting, said.
•“The government should ask for documents from each of the 15,000-16,000 start-ups registered with it, including two years’ monthly expenses, employee details, employee details. This will immediately weed out the money laundering companies as they will not be able to provide these details.”
•In addition, the start-ups made the point that this database of genuine companies could be shared with the CBDT, thereby allowing it to exempt these companies from angel tax scrutiny in the first stage itself.
•“The panel formed is to look into how to go ahead with this,” Mr. Taparia added. “The CBDT was very open to this idea. They have decided to issue a fresh notification with all the rule changes in a week.”
📰 ‘Obesity-linked cancers on rise in young adults’
Study says diet, exercise are key to reducing body weight
•The risk of developing obesity-related cancer is increasing in successive generations, along with increasing rates of obesity, according to a new study.
•Researchers studied the incidence of 30 of the most common cancers, including 12 that are obesity related, from 1995 to 2014 in people ages 25-84 — more than 14.6 million cases. The study was published is in Lancet Public Health .
•Using five-year age cohorts, they found that for six of the 12 obesity-related cancers (multiple myeloma, colorectal, uterine, gallbladder, kidney and pancreatic) the risk for disease increased in adults in the 25- 49 age bracket, with the magnitude of the increases steeper with younger age.
•For example, compared with people born in 1950, those born in 1985 had a risk of multiple myeloma 59% higher, and a risk of pancreatic cancer more than twice as high at comparable ages.
•At the same time, incidence decreased for smoking-related and infection-related cancers.
•The senior author, Ahmedin Jemal, a scientist with the American Cancer Society, said that diet and exercise are of course essential in reducing obesity rates, but that interventions by health care professionals are also needed.
•“Primary care physicians should regularly assess body weight,” he said.
•“Only a third of obese patients actually get a diagnosis of and counselling for obesity.”
