📰 Migration in Bengal delta driven by livelihood issues, gender disparity
Most migrants are in the age group of 20-30 years
•Economic reasons are the precipitating factor for migration in the Indian Bengal Delta that comprises the Sunderbans reveals an international study titled Deltas, Vulnerability and Climate Change: Migration and Adaptation (DECMA).
•The study also points out that there is huge gender disparity when it comes to those migrating from the region.
•The study which covers 51 blocks of districts of South and North 24 Parganas reveals that 64% people migrate because of economic reasons, unsustainable agriculture, lack of economic opportunities and debt; 28 % of the migration from the region is for social reasons and about 7% for environmental reasons like cyclones and flooding.
•The study, held between 2014 and 2018 focusing on three deltas Ganga Brahmaputra Meghna Delta (India and Bangladesh) Volta (Ghana) and Mahanadi (India) looks into the aspect of climate change, adaptation and migration in these deltas.
•Professor Tuhin Ghosh, the India country head for DECMA says people surveyed during the study could not relate to reduced agricultural productivity, increased salinity and change in rainfall pattern as environmental reason for their migration. Only in cases of extreme events like flooding and cyclones resulting in loss of livelihood, did the locals say their migration was due to environmental reasons, he points out.
•When it comes to migration in the Indian Bengal Delta, the study finds a huge gender disparity, with men outnumbering women by almost five times. It shows that of the people migrating 83% are men and only 17 % are women. While most of the men migrate due to economic reasons, women do so, driven by mostly social factors.
•The DECMA report also finds that most migrants both in case of men and women are young, in the age group of 20-30 years.
•Professor Ghosh, who is associated with the School of Oceanographic Studies, Jadavpur University says that in the Sunderbans there are villages where most of the men have migrated for work and the responsibility of the family and agriculture falls on the women.
•“Even though the women are doing all the work back home, they have little freedom to take decisions on their own and have to consult their men over telephone for any major decision,” he says.
•In terms of the destination of migrations, the study finds that 51% of migration from the Indian Bengal Delta is to other areas of the State particularly to the city of Kolkata, 10% to Maharashtra, 9% to Tamil Nadu, 7% Kerala and 6% to Gujarat.
•It shows that 57% of migration is seasonal, where people move once or twice a year; 19% is circular where those migrating move thrice a year irrespective of reasons and 24% permanent where people intend to stay for at least six months in the place they are migrating to.
•According to experts behind the study, one of the reasons for migration is failed adaptation in the areas which are under stress due to climate change.
Vulnerable areas
•In the study, experts also map the climate change hot spots and highest risk areas of Sunderbans based on an analysis of climate change hazards. The areas of Gosaba, Basanti, Kultali, Sagar, Kakdwip, Namkhana, Canning and Mathurapur (all in South 24 Parganas) have high levels of agriculture dependency and so are sensitive to climate hazards such as flood and salinity.
A charter designed by civil society organisations, workers’ collectives, and the urban poor reimagines our cities
•While agrarian distress has slipped into the pre-election discourse as an important political subject, it is imperative to ask why the urban question is no less political. India’s cities are grappling with acute urban livelihood issues relating to jobs, housing, migration, living conditions, mobility, sanitation, climate change and sustainability.
•A group of civil society organisations, workers’ collectives, and over two lakh urban poor across India have been deliberating on a citizens’ charter of demands for inclusive and just urban development — words that most governments have only been paying lip service to.
•The charter, which enjoys endorsements from 12 political parties, conceives of “just and liveable cities for all” as an alternative to “smart cities”. The latter tend to adopt techno-centric models of urbanisation facilitated by unelected entities, such as special purpose vehicles that are dependent on private investments. This often results in the participative planning process of urban local bodies (ULBs) being bypassed. On the contrary, the charter pushes for autonomy of the ULBs, capacitating them with funds for proper staffing, regularisation of municipality workers, and entrusting them with decentralised decision-making powers.
•It is appalling that despite occupying only about 5% of urban land, slum dwellers in cities are labelled as encroachers. These people, who constitute 30% of the population in cities, often live in subhuman conditions without basic services. The charter looks at housing as a fundamental right and proposes to confer land titles on slum dwellers. It proposes a zero-eviction policy, in situ slum upgradation programmes that focus not on the number of houses built but also on ownership rights and service provision. It proposes that self-built houses by city dwellers be recognised.
•The majority of these residents constitute urban ‘informal’ workers (about 20 crore people) who have migrated due to rural distress, and termination of contracts and mass lay-offs in industries. The charter advocates universal minimum social security (as a portable scheme for the benefit of migrant workers), which includes healthcare, maternity, insurance, pension benefits, and fixing universal minimum wages. It welcomes the proposal for a National Urban Employment Scheme, recognising the right to work. It also emphasises the need for gender-friendly cities and infrastructure. And given that cities contribute more than 60% to India’s GDP, it advocates that a minimum of 5% of this GDP be used for the development of urban areas, up from the current 1%, through Central schemes.
•We must reimagine our cities by rejecting inequalities, unjust designs, and unsustainable growth, and redefine the urban agenda from the lens of the working poor, with participative planning at its heart.
📰 Pinaki Chandra Ghose set to be India’s first Lokpal
Justice Ghose, who retired from the Supreme Court in May 2017, is a member of the NHRC.
•Former Supreme Court judge and current member of the National Human Rights Commission (NHRC), Pinaki Chandra Ghose, is likely to be India’s first anti-corruption ombudsman, or Lokpal, after his name was cleared and recommended by the high-level selection committee chaired by Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
•“His name has been finalised,” said a top official involved in the selection process. Sources in the government said the names of other Lokpal members had also been decided.
•Other members of the committee are Chief Justice of India Ranjan Gogoi, Lok Sabha Speaker Sumitra Mahajan and eminent jurist Mukul Rohatgi.
•Leader of the Opposition in the Lok Sabha Mallikarjun Kharge, who is part of the committee, did not attend the meeting after he was invited as “special invitee.” Mr. Kharge had refused to attend earlier meetings too, protesting against his being invited as a “special invitee.”
•The government was prompted to make the selection after the Supreme Court set the February-end deadline.
•The Lokpal Act, which was passed in 2013 after a nationwide anti-corruption movement, provides for setting up of Lokpal at the centre and Lokayuktas in the States to probe corruption complaints against top functionaries and public servants, including the Prime Minister and the Chief Ministers.
•Mr. Ghose was appointed as judge of the Calcutta High Court in 1997 and went on to become Chief Justice of Andhra Pradesh before his elevation to the Supreme Court in 2013.
📰 Only 26% of rural toilets use twin-leach pits, finds survey
Waste disposal from other toilets could turn into health and environmental nightmare
•Over the last year, a government advertisement featuring film actors Akshay Kumar and Bhumi Pednekar has been preaching the benefits of the “do gadde” or twin-pit latrines, which would create valuable farm manure from human excreta. “Shauchalaya ka ashirvad,” proclaims Mr. Kumar in the advertisement produced by the Centre’s flagship sanitation scheme Swachh Bharat Abhiyan.
•This month, with the scheme claiming to be on the verge of completing toilet construction for all rural households, a government-commissioned survey shows that just over a quarter of rural toilets use this twin-pit system. The waste from the remainder of rural toilets could create a new sanitation nightmare — harmful to health and the environment, and even pushing a new generation into manual scavenging.
•Under the twin-pit system, two pits are dug with honeycombed walls and earthen floors which allow liquid to percolate into the surrounding soil. When one pit is filled and closed off, waste flow is transferred to the second pit, allowing waste in the first pit to be converted into manure after a year or two. The Hindu’s analysis of raw data from the National Annual Rural Sanitation Survey 2018-19, shows that just 26.6% of rural households use the recommended twin-pit system to dispose of excreta from their toilets. Septic tanks are the most popular option, with 28% of toilets connected to a septic tank with a soak pit and 6% to a tank without a soak pit.
•The twin pit has been promoted by the Ministry of Drinking Water and Sanitation as well as the World Health Organisation as an in-situ sanitation system which claims to bypass thorny issues such as caste purity, as owners will be dealing with manure, not excreta.
•With the government intensively promoting twin pits over the last two years, it is unsurprising that the highest ratio of twin pits are found in States which have only recently completed toilet construction.
•Jharkhand, which is second on the list, with almost 58% of its toilets connected to twin pits, was declared open defecation free (ODF) only late last year. “Our focus was on quality construction and twin-pit technology,” said State sanitation secretary Aradhana Patnaik, explaining why a delayed ODF status had resulted in better system.
•Uttar Pradesh, which tops the list with 64% of toilets with twin pits, had made the technology mandatory for anyone who wanted to avail the government’s ₹12,000 subsidy to build toilets.
Sludge management
•For the more than 70% of toilets without twin pits, a faecal sludge management system is desperately needed. “How is the faecal sludge going to be emptied, transported and treated? That has to be an immediate priority,” said V.K. Madhavan, chief executive of Water Aid India, and a member of the expert group that supervised the NARSS survey. “It’s not enough to connect [the toilet] to a drain if it is simply emptied out into local land or ponds. It will lead to large-scale pollution of groundwater,” he warned.
•A 2018 survey of 30 cities and towns in Uttar Pradesh by the Centre for Science and Environment found that 87% of toilet waste is dumped into water bodies and farm lands.
•An on-site sanitation system such as a septic tank has to be emptied and cleaned out every two or three years. “Who will actually do the work, in our social context? The government is looking at technology and entrepreneurship solutions for these second order problems, but manpower is a key issue as well,” said Mr. Madhavan. The same Dalit communities which have traditionally been forced into manual scavenging are likely to end up in sanitation work to clean these tanks and any newly built rural sewerage systems.
📰 Sea trials of ocean surveillance ship evoke good response
HSL readies to hand over vessel to Navy for missile tracking
•The sea trials of India’s first and most prestigious missile tracking ocean surveillance ship built at the Ministry of Defence-owned Hindustan Shipyard Limited have received an encouraging response, highly reliable sources said.
•Sources told The Hindu that after successful harbour trials, HSL is now conducting a series of sea trials to prove the ship’s resilience for any type of situation. It will be handed over to the Ministry of Defence shortly, the sources said, declining to specify a timeline.
•The ship, being built under the direct supervision of the Prime Minister’s Office and the National Security Adviser, is being referred to as yard number VC 11184.
•“It will get a formal name to be chosen by the Navy once it is inducted into the naval fleet,” an HSL official said.
Confidential project
•The ship, a highly confidential project, was taken out of the covered dock for harbour trials during the weekend. The hull for the ship, which will provide a shot in the arm to the strategic weapons programme including Indian Ballistic Missile Development Programme, was laid on June 30, 2014. The ship was built at an estimated cost of over $231 million.
•It has a displacement capacity of over 10,000 tonnes with carrying capacity for a complement of 300 crew members and a helicopter. It has a primary X-band and two secondary S-band scanned array and missile tracking antennas.
Turnaround
•HSL, set up in 1941, has achieved a turnaround. The yard is all set to record a net profit for four year in a row.
•It is now in the process of finding out a consultant for construction of five Fleet Support Ships at a cost of ₹9,500 crore. Meanwhile, it has also started the process of designing two Diving Support Vessels for submarine support. The project will cost ₹2,050 crore.
•Visakhapatnam is the headquarters of the submarine arm of the Navy, Marine Commandos. A Naval Alternate Operational Base is under development at Rambilli near here to dock Arihant-class nuclear-powered submarines being built at the Ship Building Centre, also located in the city.
📰 Balakot air strikes: When key naval assets were put on alert
Aircraft carrier, submarine were ready as India-Pakistan tensions mounted.
•As tensions between India and Pakistan mounted, India put its key naval assets, including the aircraft carrier INS Vikramaditya and nuclear submarines, on operational alert, the Navy said in a statement on Sunday.
•“The major combat units of the Navy, including the Carrier Battle Group with INS Vikramaditya, nuclear submarines and scores of other ships, submarines and aircraft swiftly transited from exercise to operational deployment mode as tensions between India and Pakistan escalated,” it said.
TROPEX link
•The deployment came amid the largest war game of the Navy, Theatre Level Operational Readiness Exercise (TROPEX 19), which began on January 7 and which was planned to be concluded by March 10. However, the terrorist attack in Pulwama on February 14 “led to the rapid redeployment of the Navy for operations in the North Arabian Sea,” the Navy said.
•The announcement is in contrast to the assertions of senior government officials that India did not undertake any escalatory mobilisation after the Balakot air strikes. They had consistently referred to the strikes as “non-military pre-emptive counter-terror strikes” and had accused Pakistan’s government of whipping up “war hysteria” in order to mislead the international community. At the briefings held on February 28 and March 4 and 16, the officials stressed that the Indian military had carried out no military operation post February 27, and denied reports from Pakistan that an Indian submarine had been deployed in the Arabian Sea near Pakistan.
•The Navy said the availability of a large number of combat-ready assets in the theatre of operations for TROPEX allowed it to “expeditiously respond to the developing situation in synergy with the three services.” “The overwhelming superiority of the Indian Navy in all three dimensions forced the Pakistan Navy to remain deployed close to the Makran coast and not venture out in the open ocean,” the Navy said.
•Navy chief Admiral Sunil Lanba will preside over the debrief of the TROPEX in Kochi on Monday. About 60 ships of the Navy, 12 ships of the Coast Guard and 60 aircraft had taken part in the exercise. It began with a tri-service amphibious exercise in the Andaman and Nicobar Islands. This was followed by the largest coastal defence exercise, ‘Sea Vigil,’ on January 22 and 23, with the participation of all 13 coastal States and UTs along with all maritime stakeholders.
📰 Second Scorpene submarine ready for induction
Khanderi was launched in January 2017 and has since been undergoing a series of trials
•The Navy is set to induct the second Scorpene submarine Khanderi by early May, a defence source said. The remaining submarines in the series are in advanced stages of manufacturing and trials.
•“Khanderi has completed all trials and is in the final stages of acceptance. It is expected to be commissioned into the Navy by end April or early May,” the defence source said. Khanderi was launched into water in January 2017 and has since been undergoing a series of trials.
Ready for trials
•Another source stated that the fourth submarine Vela is ready to be launched into water for trials around the same time depending on the ocean tide.
•Mazagon Dock Limited (MDL), Mumbai, is manufacturing six Scorpene submarines under technology transfer from Naval Group of France under a 2005 contract worth $3.75 bn. After a series of delays in the project, the first submarine of the class Kalvari joined service in December 2017. The entire project is expected to be completed by 2020.
•The third in the Scorpene series Karanj which was launched in January last year is in advanced stage of trials and could be ready for induction by year end.
•The last two submarines Vagir and Vagsheer are in advanced stages of manufacturing on the assembly line. The fifth submarine is in the final stages of being booted together. The ‘Boot Together’ is where the five separate sections are welded together to form the submarine.
•Kalvari is the first modern conventional submarine inducted by the Navy in almost two decades.
•In addition, the Navy currently operates four German HDW class submarines and nine Russian Kilo class submarines.
•The Navy had last inducted a conventional diesel-electric submarine, INS Sindhushastra, procured from Russia in July 2000.
📰 Christchurch massacre: a wake-up call
The attack on mosques is a wake-up call on the anti-immigration, white supremacist cult
•New Zealand was shaken to its core on Friday when at least 49 people were killed by a gunman in two mosques in Christchurch. Brenton Harrison Tarrant, the suspect, livestreamed the massacre on social media after releasing a white supremacist manifesto that called for removing the “invaders” and “retaking” Europe. The 27-year-old Australian, who the authorities said was not on any intelligence watch list, apparently travelled to New Zealand to carry out the attack. His targets were clearly Muslims, who make up less than 1% of New Zealand’s population. The manifesto and the symbols he carried suggest that he was influenced by far-right terrorists and their anti-Muslim, anti-immigration and anti-Semite ideology. He came in military fatigues, wore neo-Nazi emblems and was listening in his car to a song devoted to Bosnian war criminal Radovan Karadžić. The manifesto lauds Anders Breivik, the Norwegian far-right terrorist who killed 77 people in 2011 and released a 1,518-page racist manifesto. He saw President Donald Trump as a “symbol of renewed white identity and common purpose”.
•Right-wing racist terror, which has largely been on the fringes in the post-War world, is emerging as a major political and security threat, especially in white-majority societies. In recent years, mosques in Germany and France have been targeted; in Britain an MP was stabbed to death; and in the U.S. a synagogue was attacked, leaving 11 people dead. In most cases, the attackers were obsessed with immigration and the far-right ideas of Euro-Christian white racial purity, which is fundamentally not different from the ideology of the Nazis. The language these attackers use resembles that of mainstream anti-immigrant politicians in Western countries, such as Mr. Trump, who wanted to ban Muslims from entering the U.S.; Viktor Orbán, the Prime Minister of Hungary, who wants to defend “Christian Europe”; or Italian Interior Minister Matteo Salvini, known for his hardline views on migrants. Besides, a number of far-right parties known for their Islamophobic, white nationalist views are either in power in Europe or are on the rise, be it the Freedom Party of Austria, the AfD of Germany or the National Front of France. While they and their leaders set the broad contours of anti-immigrant, anti-Muslim and anti-Semitic politics as part of their nationalist narrative, neo-Nazis such as Breivik and the Christchurch shooter are killing common people. Societies worldwide should wake up to the growing danger right-wing racist terrorism poses, and not view it as mere isolated, irrational responses to Islamist terror. It has to be fought politically, by driving a counter-narrative to white supremacism, and by using the security apparatus, through allocation of enough resources to tackle all threats of violence.
📰 Nehru, China, and the Security Council seat
Today’s policymakers fail to understand Nehru’s eminently sensible approach
•Finance Minister Arun Jaitley recently said that India’s first Prime Minister, Jawaharlal Nehru, was the “original sinner” who favoured China over India for permanent membership in the UN Security Council. His assertion obviously refers to Washington’s feeler sent to New Delhi in August 1950 through the Indian Ambassador in the U.S., mentioning the American desire to remove China from permanent membership of the UNSC and possibly replace it with India. The allegation that Nehru refused to take this suggestion seriously and thus abdicated India’s opportunity to become a permanent member of the UNSC is the result of the critics’ inability to comprehend the complexity of the international situation in the early 1950s and the very tentative nature of the inquiry.
The Asian landscape
•This episode took place in August 1950. The Cold War was in its early stages, with the two superpowers in eyeball-to-eyeball confrontation that threatened nuclear catastrophe. The People’s Republic of China, which had just emerged from a bloody civil war and was seen at the time as the Soviets’ closest ally, was prevented from taking its permanent seat in the UNSC because of American opposition premised on Cold War logic. Furthermore, war was raging in the Korean peninsula, with U.S. and allied troops locked in fierce combat with North Korean forces supported by China and the Soviet Union.
•Nehru was trying to carve a policy that ensured India’s security, strategic autonomy and state-led industrialisation in these very dangerous times. He was well aware of the fact that pushing China out, as the U.S. wished to do, was a recipe for perpetual conflict that could engulf all of Asia. To him, the Korean War appeared a forerunner to more such conflagrations in Asia that could even turn nuclear. The U.S. had dropped nuclear bombs on Japan only five years ago and many observers believed it would not hesitate to do so again in an Asian conflict, especially since nuclear deterrence had not yet become a recognised reality. Nehru did not want India to get embroiled in hazardous Cold War conflicts and become a pawn in the superpowers’ great game risking its own security.
•Nehru’s approach to China was dictated by realpolitik and not wishful thinking. He understood that peace could not be assured in Asia without accommodating a potential great power like China and providing it with its proper place in the international system. Moreover, China was India’s next-door neighbour and it was essential for New Delhi to keep relations with China on an even keel and not fall prey to the urgings of outside powers, the U.S. foremost among them, which were following their own agendas that had nothing to do with Indian security interests.
A combustible context
•The so-called American “offer” to India of a permanent seat in the Security Council replacing China was made in this combustible context. To be precise, it was not an offer but merely a vague feeler to explore Indian reactions to such a contingency. The U.S. intended it to be a bait to entice India into an alliance with the West against the Sino-Soviet bloc, as it was then known, and lure it into becoming a member of the “defence” organisations it was setting up in Asia to contain presumed “Communist expansionism”.
•The enticement, as the correspondence between the then Indian Ambassador in Washington, Vijaya Lakshmi Pandit, and Prime Minister Nehru makes clear, was suggested during her conversations with U.S. Secretary of State John Foster Dulles and Ambassador-at-large Philip Jessup. When Pandit informed Nehru of these feelers, he responded, “India because of many factors is certainly entitled to a permanent seat in the Security Council. But we are not going in at the cost of China.” In September 1955, Nehru stated categorically in the Lok Sabha: “There has been no offer, formal or informal, of this kind… The composition of the Security Council is prescribed by the UN Charter, according to which certain specified nations have permanent seats. No change or addition can be made to this without an amendment of the Charter.”
•Nehru refused to consider the American feeler not because he was a wide-eyed Sinophile but because he was well aware that all Washington was interested in was to use India for its own ends. Had India accepted the American bait, it would have meant enduring enmity with China without the achievement of a permanent seat in the UNSC. The Soviet Union, then China’s closest ally, would have vetoed any such move since it would have required amendment of the UN Charter that is subject to the veto of the permanent members.
•It would have also soured relations between India and the Soviet Union and made it impossible to establish the trust required to later build a close political and military relationship with Moscow that became necessary once the U.S. entered into an alliance relationship with Pakistan. The Indo-Soviet relationship paid immense dividends to India during the Bangladesh war of 1971.
•Mr. Jaitley and other critics of Nehru’s eminently sensible decision not to fall into the American trap would do well to analyse the decision in the particular strategic and political context in which it was made and not allow their current political preferences to dictate their amateurish conclusions.
📰 India, Maldives agree to cooperate on defence, development, health
Sushma holds bilateral talks with country’s top leadership
•India and the Maldives on Sunday discussed measures to strengthen ties and agreed to collaborate in the fields of defence, development cooperation, capacity building and health as External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj held talks with the country’s top leadership, including her Maldivian counterpart Abdulla Shahid.
•Ms. Swaraj arrived here on Sunday on a two-day visit, the first full-fledged bilateral trip from India to the island nation after the government of President Ibrahim Mohamed Solih came to power in November last year. Ms. Swaraj and Maldivian Foreign Minister Shahid reviewed progress on important bilateral issues, including implementation of agreed outcomes of President Solih’s visit to India last year, External Affairs Ministry Spokesperson Raveesh Kumar tweeted.
•Ms. Swaraj also called on the Speaker of the Parliament of Maldives, Qasim Ibrahim, and reiterated India’s commitment to supporting the country in its path of peace, development, prosperity and democracy.
•She unveiled a plaque dedicating the renovated IGM Hospital to the people of Maldives in the city of Male. IGMH is the first and largest government health-care facility in the Maldives, built with Indian assistance.
•Ms. Swaraj will call on President Solih on Monday.
📰 Pollution: 6 States told to submit action plan
NGT says each State will be liable to pay ₹1 crore environment compensation on failing to submit plan
•The National Green Tribunal (NGT) has directed six States to submit by April 30 action plans for bringing air quality standards within the prescribed norms, failing which they would be liable to pay environment compensation of ₹1 crore each.
•A Bench headed by NGT Chairperson Justice Adarsh Kumar Goel ordered the Chief Secretaries of Assam, Jharkhand, Maharashtra, Punjab, Uttarakhand and Nagaland governments to submit their plan within the stipulated time.
•“We direct Chief Secretaries of the States in respect of which action plans have not been filed to forthwith furnish such action plans,” the Bench, also comprising Justices S.P. Wangdi and K. Ramakrishnan, said.
₹25 lakh for deficiency
•The States, where action plans are found to be deficient and deficiencies are not removed till April 30, will be liable to pay ₹25 lakh each and the timeline for execution of the action plans is six months from the date of their finalisation, the Bench said.
•It said that budgetary provision must be made for execution of such plans.
•The tribunal warned that if action plans are not executed within the specified timeline, the defaulting States will be liable to pay environmental compensation and may also be required to furnish performance guarantee for execution of plans in extended timeline as per recommendations received from the Central Pollution Control Board (CPCB).
•“The CPCB is directed to update the number of cities. If on parameters applied, there are other cities, not included in list of 102, they may be also included,” the NGT said.
•The direction came after the CPCB informed the green panel that out of 102 cities, action plan has been received from 83 cities, while 19 have not submitted it.
•The tribunal will take up the matter for further consideration on July 19.
‘Carrying capacity’
•Concerned over the threat posed to limited natural resources due to their overuse, the tribunal has directed assessment of carrying capacity of 102 cities, including Delhi, where the air quality does not meet the national ambient air quality standards.
•The concept of “carrying capacity” addresses the question as to how many people can be permitted into any area without the risk of degrading the environment there.
•The tribunal had said the Ministry of Urban Development in coordination with the CPCB, Ministry of Transport, authorities such as Planning Commission and States, may carry out such study with the assistance of experts in the field.
•It had said that it is undisputed that air pollution is a matter of serious concern and large number of deaths take place every year in the country on account of air pollution.
•The NGT had said that Delhi is over-polluted and figures quite high in the ranking of most polluted cities and there is no study about the capacity of the city with respect to the extent of population which can be accommodated and number of vehicles which can be handled by its roads.
📰 Lapse and collapse: on Mumbai's pedestrian bridge accident
Mumbai’s creaking public infrastructure must be urgently upgraded
•The pedestrian bridge that collapsed at Mumbai’s Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj Terminus, leaving six people dead and several injured, underscores the irony of India’s race to development on creaking urban infrastructure. It was only in September 2017 that there was a stampede at Mumbai’s Elphinstone bridge that left at least 23 people dead, an incident that officials blamed on heavy rain and overcrowding on the rickety structure. Beyond such acute disasters, there is the chronic toll of eight people, on average, dying every day on the city’s railway tracks. This is a dismal image for a metropolis that generates so much wealth, but cannot guarantee the safety of its public infrastructure. In the first response to the CST incident, the Maharashtra government and the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) have launched action on the contractor who carried out repairs on the bridge five years ago, the structural safety auditor who had certified the bridge to be in ‘good’ condition among a total of 39 bridges, and some civic body officials. Such steps may serve to mollify public anger, and no one would argue against efforts to fix accountability for lapses. However, far-reaching administrative reform is necessary to raise public confidence in the way government works. It is extraordinary that the BMC is wiser after the fact, and has determined that the quality of repairs performed on the CST bridge was not ‘up to the mark,’ since it collapsed within six years. It has also closed several busy footbridges, virtually confirming prolonged neglect of maintenance.
•In a city where eight million passenger trips are made daily on an overburdened railway system, besides other modes of transport, the highest policy priority should be to raise levels of safety. In the wake of the bridge disaster, the municipal corporation must explain how much of its annual budget of ₹30,692 crore for the coming year will go towards improving facilities and safety for the majority of its citizens who ride trains and buses or walk. Mumbaikars badly need a new deal in the form of a modernised bus system, with expansion of services that can be funded through a levy on private vehicles or on fuel. The move to privatise BEST bus services may result in greater pressure on other systems, reducing access and adding to the stress faced by citizens. Mumbai’s experience should serve as a warning to all fast-expanding Indian cities governed by municipal systems that have low capacity and capability to create people-friendly infrastructure. Distortions in urban policymaking in recent years are all too evident, marked by support for loosely defined smart cities and personal vehicles, at the cost of basic interventions that will make the commons more accessible — roads, pavements, pedestrian facilities and public transport. The safe mobility of people must be prioritised.
📰 The problem is jobs, not wages
There is obfuscation over both the existence of a jobs crisis and the diagnosis of it
•It is well established that India is staring at a massive jobs crisis. Every single survey points to jobs as the biggest issue concerning voters, especially the youth. Yet, the Prime Minister and the government steadfastly refuse to even acknowledge this issue, let alone address it.
•India’s jobs crisis is an economic issue, not a political one. India is not unique in experiencing rising joblessness and, consequently, income inequality. Many developed and developing nations are grappling with this problem, too. Such a crisis requires acknowledgement of the issue first, then a vibrant public debate on solutions to tackle the crisis, and finally, a coordinated implementation of ideas. Instead, there is much obfuscation over both the existence of a jobs crisis and the diagnosis of it.
Demand and supply
•The latest in this obfuscation is the notion that India does not have a jobs crisis but a wages crisis. According to this argument, every Indian youth who wants a job can get one, but not the wages she wants. This is a banal argument. This is akin to arguing that every Indian who wants to buy a house can buy one but just not at the price she can afford. What determines the price of a house? Apart from external factors such as taxes, the price of a house is simply determined by the demand for houses versus the supply of houses. Similarly, what determines wages for an employee is the demand for such skills versus the supply of such skills. Wages are not determined by some external factor that is removed from labour market conditions. It is entirely a function of the labour market. In economic parlance, wage, or the price of labour, is an endogenous variable and not an exogenous one.
•Let us understand this through the Prime Minister’s favourite example of frying pakodas, which is apparently an evidence of the plentiful jobs that we are creating. The wages for a person frying pakodas is determined by the demand for pakodas in the economy and the supply of pakoda fryers. If the wages for pakoda frying are very low, it can only mean that there are far more people willing to fry pakodas for a job than there is demand for pakodas. Hence, their wages continue to be low. In other words, the economy is not creating enough opportunities for the large number of unemployed people other than to fry pakodas at minimum wages. Of course, a person frying pakodas in a five-star hotel will get paid higher than a roadside pakoda fryer, presumably because her skill and productivity level are different. But for that same skill level, the wages of a person are determined largely by the demand for such skills and the supply of people with such skills. If demand is higher than supply, wages automatically rise;
if not, they remain stagnant. To understand the unemployment issue as a wages problem shows ignorance.
•Even if we grant the outlandish assertion that India has a jobs bounty but wages are not rising, this points to a labour market failure. Are we then saying that workers need to get unionised more and demand higher wages since the price of labour is not commensurate? It is a facile argument.
•The proponents of the argument that there is a wage crisis and not a jobs crisis would do well to go back to economic history and study the work of Arthur Lewis, the Nobel Prize-winning economist from the West Indies. Lewis, in his seminal work in 1954, showed how in economies such as India and China, which have an “infinite supply of labour”, there tends to be a two-sector economy — the capitalist sector and the subsistence sector. His summary finding was that the living standards of all citizens in such two-sector economies are determined by the wages of the people in the subsistence sector. If there is demand for labour and skills in the capitalist sector, then the endless supply of labour from the subsistence sector will transition, and wages will ultimately rise only when the demand for labour exceeds the supply of labour in the subsistence sector.
•The harsh and simple reality of India’s jobs situation is that we are not creating as many jobs as we need to. There can be many reasons for the lack of our ability to generate enough jobs but at the very least, we must first acknowledge this problem. Calling this a wages crisis and not a jobs crisis is neither helpful nor sensible. It is very critical that we don’t bury our heads in the sand and pretend that there is no jobs crisis but only some wage crisis, induced by labour market distortions. There could well be labour market failures too, but it is not a sufficient explanation for the jobs crisis.
Formalising the economy
•The proponents of the ‘there is a wage crisis’ argument also go on to say that the largely informal nature of India’s economy leads to low productivity and hence keeps wages low. So, their solution for higher wages is to embark on a mission to explicitly formalise India’s economy. Again, economic history tells us that formalisation is an outcome of economic development, not a cause. No large market economy in history has embarked on an explicit economic policy for forced formalisation. The U.S. had its large share of ‘petty retail traders’ before World War II, which then paved the way for large-scale organised retail with advancements in transport infrastructure, technology and rising income levels. The U.S.’s economic policymakers did not wake up one morning and say, “The informal mom-and-pop retail industry is bad, so let’s formalise it by ‘demonetising’ the entire economy.”
•India’s economic commentary today carries a ‘blind men and an elephant’ risk. It has a tendency to claim absolute truth based on limited subject experience. There is no need to complicate the state of India’s jobs market. The simple truth of it is that we do not produce enough jobs.
📰 New hydro policy to help meet renewables target
Reclassifying ‘hydro’ takes renewable capacity to 120 GW
•While the government’s decision to re-classify large hydroelectric projects as renewable energy will certainly help the sector, the move will also go a long way in meeting the targets set by it for the sector, according to analysts.
•Earlier this month, the Union Cabinet approved a new hydroelectricity policy that, among other things, included large hydro projects within the ambit of renewable energy.
•Prior to the policy, only small hydro projects of a capacity of less than 25 MW were treated as renewable energy. Large hydro projects were treated as a separate source of energy.
•India’s renewable energy sector had an installed capacity of 75,055.92 MW as of February 2019, according to data with the Central Electricity Authority. This made up about 21.4% of the overall energy mix, with the rest coming from thermal, nuclear and large hydro sources.
•With the inclusion of large hydro in renewable energy, the energy mix changes drastically.
•Renewable energy capacity would now be 1,20,455.14 MW or 34.4% of the overall energy mix.
No additional resources
•It must be noted that this is a purely cosmetic change. No additional resources have been created through this policy. It is a reclassification of existing capacity.
•The policy has meant a drastic change in the renewable energy mix as well. Whereas earlier, wind energy contributed nearly 50% of all renewable energy capacity, it will now make up only 29.3%. Similarly, solar energy’s share will fall from 34.68% to 21.61%. The hydro sector, however, will see its share grow from just over 6% to over 41%.
•“The policy has been in the works for quite some time,” Sabyasachi Majumdar, senior vice president and group head — corporate ratings, ICRA said. “There has to be an ideal thermal, hydro and renewables mix. Each of the three sources has its own pluses and minuses. Hydro is one of the few sources where you can get peaking power.
Huge imbalance
•“There has been a huge imbalance in the thermal-hydro mix for the last few years because of a sharp growth in thermal and complete stagnation in hydro.
•“The basic idea is to ramp up hydro because it provides grid stability which a renewable source like wind and solar do not. The key reasoning seems to be providing grid stability and a better energy mix.”
•Other analysts, however, say that the government has additional reasons for bringing in such a re-classification, which have more to do with the renewable energy targets it set for itself.
•“As you know, we are still pretty far from reaching the 175 GW renewable energy target by 2022,” a sector analyst said on the condition of anonymity.
•“This has been quite a high-profile target because the government has been trumpeting it at every chance. It will look bad if it fails to reach it.
•“So, apart from the good to the sector, one main reason for the re-classification of hydro as renewables is to add all that capacity to the renewable energy kitty.”
Impact on PSUs
•Other commentators pointed out that another benefit from the policy could be the effect on the stock prices of State-run hydroelectric companies such as NHPC and SJVN at a point when the government is looking to sell its stake in these companies.
•NHPC, however, has formally denied that it has been approached by any company looking to buy stake in it.
📰 A bond that’s not worth its weight in gold
Preference for physical gold, need for demat accounts, lock-in period are all deterrents to the Sovereign Gold Bond Scheme
•Indians’ cultural preference for physical gold, coupled with a lack of incentives on the supply side have meant that the Sovereign Gold Bond (SGB) Scheme, launched in late 2015, is yet to take off in any significant way.
•The government had announced the SGB scheme in November 2015 in an effort to wean people away from purchasing physical gold and encouraging them to buy gold bonds instead. The idea was to help reduce the quantity of the yellow metal imported every year, thereby reining in a rising current account deficit.
Elevated imports
•Instead, gold imports have remained at elevated levels. India’s total gold imports stood at 968 tonnes in 2015-16, the year the SGB scheme was introduced. It fell to 780 tonnes the next year but rose again to 955 million tonnes in 2017-18, according to CMIE data. The latest data from the Ministry of Commerce shows that gold imports in the April-December 2018 period stood at about 750 tonnes.
•The SGB scheme, and the other gold schemes the government had introduced, such as the Gold Monetisation Scheme, have all fared fairly poorly compared with their targets over the years. Budget data and information provided to the Lok Sabha shows that the government’s gold schemes in total earned ₹3,451 crore in 2016-17, the first full year of their implementation. The following year, they earned a paltry ₹1,894 crore against a budgeted ₹5,000 crore.
•The government had estimated it would collect ₹5,000 crore each in 2018-19 and 2019-20 but experience has shown that the actual collections have invariably been lower.
•Some analysts said the poor response to the SGB scheme is because people prefer physical gold, while others argued that the design of the SGB Scheme is faulty and so, people are not attracted towards it.
•“You have to look at it from the perspective of the buyer,” said Arvind Sahay, chairperson, India Gold Policy Centre, IIM Ahmedabad. “If I am an individual, I have the option of putting my money in a fixed deposit, corporate bonds, equity, mutual funds, exchange traded funds, liquid funds, and also the option of buying a gold bond.” There is no ‘must-have’ reason, to buy a gold bond, he said.
Needs push from sellers
•“Until it reaches a stage where people consider it a necessary part of their asset allocation, the demand for gold bonds will not increase,” he said. “From the supply side, there has to be a push from the people selling the bonds, be it the government or authorised dealers. On both sides, there has been insufficient motivation to get gold bonds and other gold-related products to some scale.”
•Demand for gold in India is primarily in the form of jewellery. The argument is SGBs don’t provide an alternative to that but only to those looking for investment options.
•“Most investment in gold is done by Indian women,” said Anantha Padmanabhan, chairman, The All India Gem and Jewellery Domestic Council. “It is a status symbol. When it comes to SGBs, this provides another option for those who are investing in equity, ETS, etc. Physical demand is not shifting to SGBs. That is not happening and can’t happen in a country like this. A common Indian will like to see physical gold and won’t trust the paper.”
•“You have to understand buyer behaviour,” Mr. Sahay added. “Every year, you have close to 800 tonnes of consumption of gold and 60% of that is as jewellery. And about 70% of this 60%, about 340 tonnes, is bought as wedding jewellery. The second large part of jewellery purchases are gifts outside of weddings. Now, this too will not be bought as bonds.”
•Apart from buyer behaviour, the other factor dissuading people from buying gold bonds is the method of purchase and the lack of education about the procedure and the benefits of gold bonds over physical gold.
•“I don’t think the SGB Scheme has been very successful primarily because penetration of demat accounts is still not enough,” Rachit Chawla, founder and CEO, Finway Capital, an investment advisory and wealth management firm, said. “Either you need a demat account to buy, or you need to do KYC to buy through a fund house. People think that buying a SGB involves a lot of formalities and is very difficult.”
•The reality, however, is different, he explained. Once obtained, demat accounts allow the person to buy gold bonds at the click of a button, and the KYC procedure is also not onerous and can be done online.
•“But education is missing not only to the extent of how easy it is to invest, but also [as to] what advantages gold bonds have over physical gold,” he said. “There are festivals where people buy gold out of emotion. If they can be educated that buying a gold bond is the same as buying a gold coin, that will have an impact. They are safer and highly liquid; our CAD will also come down.”
•The annual interest on gold bonds provides a higher return than physical gold, which usually comes with associated making costs. The bonds are also far safer since they are in digital or paper form rather than physical gold, which suffers the risk of impurity and wear and tear.
Design criticised
•The third set of problems with the SGBs is the way the scheme is designed, since it not only does not allow the purchase of gold on tap, but it also comes with a lock-in period post-purchase.
•“The first issue with the scheme is the non-availability on tap,” Chirag Mehta, senior fund manager, alternative investments, at Quantum Mutual Fund, said. “If somebody wants to buy gold, they want to buy it at that particular time itself. That is possible in SGBs only when buying through exchanges. The issue also is that there is a lock-in for five years before which the bonds cannot be redeemed.”
•The consensus view is that the aim of the Sovereign Gold Bond scheme — to divert people away from physical gold — is pretty much doomed from the start because of Indians’ cultural affinity for gold jewellery. That said, there are a number of changes such as removing the lock-in and allowing gold bonds to be sold on tap that the government can do to at least spur the scheme on from where it is languishing at present.
📰 A viable alternative to open-heart surgery
TAVR offers lower risks of disabling strokes and death
•The operation is a daring one: to replace a failing heart valve, cardiologists insert a mechanical replacement through a patient’s groin and thread it all the way to the heart, manoeuvring it into the site of the old valve.
•The procedure, called transcatheter aortic valve replacement (TAVR), has been reserved mostly for patients so old and sick they might not survive open-heart surgery. Now, two large clinical trials show that TAVR is just as useful in younger and healthier patients.
•It might even be better, offering lower risks of disabling strokes and death, compared to open-heart surgery. Cardiologists say it will likely change the standard of care for most patients with failing aortic valves.
•In open-heart surgery, a patient’s ribs are cracked apart and the heart is stopped to insert the new aortic valve.
•With TAVR, the only incision is a small hole in the groin where the catheter is inserted. Most patients are sedated, but awake through the procedure, and recovery takes just days, not months, as is often the case following the usual surgery.
•The results “shift our thinking from asking who should get TAVR to why should anyone get surgery,” said Dr. Howard Herrmann, director of interventional cardiology at the University of Pennsylvania.
•The studies are to be published in the New England Journal of Medicine and presented Sunday at the American College of Cardiology’s annual meeting.
•The Food and Drug Administration is expected to approve the procedure for lower-risk patients. As many as 20,000 patients a year would be eligible for TAVR, in addition to the nearly 60,000 intermediate- and high-risk patients who get the operation now.
•“This is a clear win for TAVR,” said Dr. Michael J. Mack, a heart surgeon at Baylor Scott and White The Heart Hospital. From now on, “we will be very selective” about who gets open-heart surgery, said Dr. Mack, a principal investigator in one of the trials.
