📰 African cheetahs to prowl Indian forests
SC lifts seven-year stay on proposal; forms committee to monitor progress
•The Supreme Court on Tuesday lifted its seven-year stay on a proposal to introduce African cheetahs from Namibia into the Indian habitat on an experimental basis.
•The plan was to revive the Indian cheetah population.
•In May 2012, the top court had stalled the plan to initiate the foreign cheetahs into the Palpur Kuno sanctuary in Madhya Pradesh, fearing that they may come into conflict with a parallel and a much-delayed project to reintroduce lions into the same sanctuary.
•The court was also worried whether the African cheetahs would find the sanctuary a favourable clime as far as abundance of prey is concerned.
•However, on Tuesday, a Bench led by Chief Justice Sharad A. Bobde was nudged by the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) to take the plunge and go ahead with its plans to bring the African cat to India.
•But the Bench made sure that the right precautions are taken. It set up a three-member committee, comprising former Director of Wildlife Institute of India Ranjit Singh, DG of Wildlife Institute of India Dhananjay Mohan, and DIG, Wildlife, Ministry of Environment and Forests, to ‘guide’ the NTCA. Chief Justice Bobde, speaking for the Bench, directed the committee to file a progress report every four months.
Best possible habitat
•The court made it clear that a proper survey should be done to identify the best possible habitat for the cheetahs. Every effort should be taken to ensure that they adapt to the Indian conditions. The committee would help, advise and monitor the NTCA on these issues. The action of the introduction of the animal would be left to the NTCA’s discretion.
•Officials at the NTCA told The Hindu that the court order notwithstanding, the actual process of translocation might be long-drawn.
•The cheetah does not breed well in captivity and requires vast stretches of grassland, and access to adequate prey to thrive. “There are eight to nine identified sites in India but the best one is in the Kuno Palpur sanctuary. However, we still have to make it suitable for the cheetah,” a source said. The purported gains from introducing the cheetah would include tourism, improvement of grasslands and global recognition for successfully reviving the animal in India. The hearing came on an application filed by the NTCA.
India must make labour laws simple to make them effective
•Indian Staffing Federation (ISF), the apex body representing the staffing/temping industry in the county, has asked the government to make labour codes a reality and get them operational from April this year.
•India currently had 44 Central, 387 State labour laws, 67 Central and 1,333 State labour filings and 674 Central and 26,484 State labour compliances.
•“Simplification, rationalisation, digitisation of labour laws should be operational on an immediate basis to make them comprehensive, effective, easy to comply,” said the ISF.
•To de-congest cities and create more jobs across tier II and tier III cities, the ISF has also asked the government to ensure optimum utilisation of budgetary allocation towards infrastructure and development.
Focus on urbanisation
•“The government should focus on urbanisation, smart cities and infrastructural development on top priority to etch a comprehensive growth trajectory of the country.
•“Tier II and III cities and semi-urban areas need to have clear and focussed development to help generate employment opportunities within them.
•“This will put more money in the hands of people and consumption will improve,’’ said Rituparna Chakraborty, president,ISF.
•As per ISF, it is critical for the government to bring back positive sentiments in the domestic market, through necessary budgeting and policy initiatives, thereby unshackling the full potential of country’s high employment sectors such as telecom, e-com and automobiles.
📰 Trump to unveil his West Asia peace plan
In Gaza, thousands of Palestinians protest against the proposal; Netanyahu calls it ‘deal of the century’
•U.S. President Donald Trump on Tuesday proposed creation of a Palestinian state with capital in eastern Jerusalem, dependent on Palestinians taking steps to become self-governing, as part of a peace plan to end decades of conflict in the region.
•Senior administration officials said that under Mr. Trump’s proposed West Asia peace plan, the U.S. will recognise Israeli settlements on the occupied West Bank.
•In exchange, Israel would agree to accept a four-year freeze on new settlement activity while Palestinian statehood is negotiated.
•“Today, Israel has taken a giant step toward peace,” Mr. Trump said as he announced the plan at the White House with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at his side, saying he also sent a letter about it to Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas.
•“This is a historic day,” Mr. Netanyahu said, comparing Mr. Trump’s peace plan to former President Harry Truman’s 1948 recognition of the state of Israel. “On this day, you became the first world leader to recognise Israel’s sovereignty over areas in Judea and Samaria that are vital to our security and central to our heritage,” he added, using the Biblical names for the West Bank.
Skepticism over deal
•The absence of the Palestinians from Mr. Trump’s announcement is likely to fuel criticism that the plan tilts toward Israel.
•U.S. officials said they were braced for initial Palestinian skepticism but hoped that over time they will agree to negotiate.
•Mr. Trump has endorsed a proposed map outlining the two states, the officials said. The Palestinian state would be double the size of land that Palestinians currently control and would be connected by roads, bridges and tunnels, the official said.
•Meanwhile, thousands of Palestinians demonstrated in Gaza and Israeli troops reinforced positions near a flashpoint site between the Palestinian city of Ramallah and the Jewish settlement of Beit El in the West Bank.
📰 Examining the slowdown
That the Indian economy is facing a structural consumption slowdown is not borne by facts
•Setting aside the gloomy projections based on short-term economic trends, what does long-term and comparative evidence reveal about the health of the Indian economy? After the 1991 economic reforms, the Indian economy reached a higher growth plateau of 7% compared to a prior rate of 3.85%. India witnessed a high growth momentum during 2003-04 and 2010-11 with a period average of 8.45% (GDP with base 2004-05) or 7% (base 2011-12). The momentum lost steam in 2011-12 and 2012-13, gradually picked up again gradually to reach the 8% mark in 2015-16, and then started falling consistently to reach 6.63% in 2018-19. This trend suggests that India’s current growth challenge has a structural dimension as it began in 2011-12.
•Despite these fluctuations from 2011-12, on average, India clocked a growth rate of 7.07% from 2011 to 2019, a decent figure compared to China’s and the world’s economic growth rates. Whereas, like India, the growth of the world economy was fluctuating since 2011, China’s growth declined consistently from 10.64% in 2010 to 6.60% in 2018.
Household investment
•Why couldn’t India’s growth momentum be sustained after 2010-11? To answer this, an in-depth analysis of trends in five key macroeconomic variables — consumption, investment, savings, exports, and net foreign direct investment (NFDI) inflows — was done for two different periods: 2003-04 to 2010-11 and 2011-12 to 2018-19. The results reveal that compared to 2003-2011, investment and savings rates and exports-GDP ratio declined in the 2011-2019 period. The investment rate declined from 34.31% of GDP in 2011-12 to 29.30% in 2018-19, caused mainly by the household sector and to some extent by the public sector, but not the corporate sector. The slump in the domestic investment rate in the 2011-2019 period was compensated by increased NFDI inflows. On average, NFDI inflow was 1.31% of GDP during 2011-2019 compared to 0.89% during 2003-2011.
•The decline in household sector investment justifies the package of measures introduced by the Central government to revive the housing sector. The questionable policy, however, is the steep cut in the corporate income tax rate from 30% to 22%, aimed at boosting private investment. Given that the corporate investment rate has not eroded severely during 2011-2019, one wonders if the tax cut would help economic revival. A part of the largesse offered to Corporate India could have been used to spur rural consumption.
Savings and consumption
•The savings rate declined almost consistently from 34.27% of GDP to 30.51% between 2011 and 2018. This was also caused by a significant fall in the savings of the household sector in financial assets. Corporate savings did not fall. The fall in household financial savings is alarming and needs to be arrested. Savings are required to meet the requirements of those who want to borrow for their investment needs. Lower household savings imply lesser funds available in the domestic market for investment spending.
•The decline in household savings has pushed up private final consumption expenditure consistently from 56.21% of GDP in 2011-12 to 59.39% in 2018-19. This suggests that economic growth during 2011-2019 was powered by consumption, not investment. In contrast, during 2003-2011, growth was powered by investments. Thus, the popular view that economic slowdown was caused due to a slowdown in consumption demand needs to be re-examined. There is no concrete evidence to suggest that the economy is facing a structural consumption slowdown.
•India’s exports-GDP ratio declined from 24.54% to 19.74% during 2011-2019. The decline started from 2014-15, coinciding with a similar trend in the world export-GDP ratio. However, the drop in India’s exports was significantly larger than the world, a cause for concern. The exports- and NFDI-GDP ratio has deteriorated sharply and consistently in China after 2006. This, together with the consistent fall in China’s GDP growth after 2010, proves that the Indian economy is doing better than China.
📰 Restructuring or bureaucratic overkill?
While reorganising the Railway Board is an unexceptionable step, recasting the recruitment system is problematic
•The Railway Minister’s announcement, in December, in conveying the “historic decision” of the Union Cabinet to restructure the Railway Board, was like the proverbial curate’s egg, good in parts. The proposed changes at the Board level: re-designating the Chairman as Chairman and CEO, reducing the number of Railway Board members excluding the Chairman, from the existing eight to four and rationalising their responsibilities on functional lines and the induction of four members, from outside the Railway hierarchy in an advisory capacity are all, prima facie, unexceptionable. So also, the long overdue upgrading of 27 posts of General Managers to that of Secretary to the Government of India.
A single cadre
•The same cannot be said of the breathtakingly audacious proposal to recruit officers/managers to a single service or cadre to be called Indian Railways Management Service (IRMS) for which the Union Public Service Commission (UPSC) will conduct a separate competitive examination — also replacing the existing system of recruitment through the Civil Services Examinations and Engineering Services Examinations into the eight organised services within the Railways (excluding the Medical and Security Departments). A Committee of Secretaries will work out the modalities of implementing the proposal.
•The ostensible reason for this “mega merger” is to counter “silo” mentality and inter-departmental rivalries that sometimes adversely impact the working of the Railways. It is unbelievable that this is the consensus solution that emerged after a two-day conclave with more than 1,200 senior managers, to combat departmental rivalries. If there is some method in this proposed “madness”, it is not apparent yet. Meanwhile, it is necessary to disabuse certain impressions created by the Minister’s media briefing and also flag a few troubling questions that the move raises.
•The Minister’s assertion that Railway officers are constrained to function within departmental silos right through their service except at the level of the Chairman Railway Board is a bit of a stretch. A majority of Railway managers of all departments serve in one of the 68 operational Divisions of the Railways, particularly during the first 15 to 20 years of their service. So even at present the ethos of coordinated working and a broad exposure to departments other than one’s own is inherent in the system.
•Further there are non-silo “general management” posts at various levels, meant specifically to provide interdepartmental coordination such as Additional Divisional Railway Manager, Divisional Railway Manager, Additional General Manager and General Manager, numbering in all about 175, to which officers who have been assessed to have the necessary competence and temperament are appointed. It is out of this cohort of officers that the future Railway Board Members, including the Chairman, emerge.
•What is the nature of this beast called inter-departmental rivalry? It is not as though the officers of the various departments are constantly working at cross purposes. In that case the Railways could hardly function. On the contrary, a strong sense of camaraderie and mutual respect, in general, pervades day-to-day working among the various departments. Also departmental rivalry varies amongst departments over a wide range, from the relatively more prevalent, say between the Mechanical and Electrical Departments because of the nature of the functions performed and the turf they cover (which tend to overlap) to almost negligible say between service departments such as Personnel or Stores vis-à-vis other departments. There is also the temporary, situation-specific inter-departmental rivalry, say after a major Railway accident if the cause is not obvious. This usually involves three to four departments directly involved in train operation.
•For a malady that significantly afflicts only a few departments is there a justification to overhaul the recruitment procedure, the results of which may become apparent only after more than 25- 30 years, when those recruited through the new scheme reach senior positions? What happens during the intervening period and how will the existing personnel be integrated into the new system?
More questions
•The new recruitment procedure appears to target the wrong problem: that of disparity in promotional prospects between departments in a particular recruitment year. It needs emphasising that departmental rivalry is not a seniority problem but domain-related. A longer stint in a particular department or discipline is the basic requirement for developing domain expertise. Being humans not robots, this also generates a sense of allegiance, belonging, ownership, professional pride and loyalty to that department, which in turn could sometimes transform into ‘empire building’. These, and not seniority, are the predominant factors that influence a manager’s outlook or decisions, in the context of departmental rivalry.
•The word “silo” usually has a negative connotation implying blinkered vision. The positive side of the same concept is “specialisation” or “domain expertise”. Incidentally, the Ministry has subsequently clarified that the UPSC will be conducting the examination keeping in view the requirements of managers for different services or engineering disciplines (departments). In which case, how does the new system differ from the existing one, except by way of a common recruitment examination?
•Is the purpose of the new scheme to create a clone of the Indian Administrative Service within the Railways, with managers flitting across various departments every few years like rolling stones gathering no “inter-departmental rivalry moss” and no expertise either? Who will then man the posts in the Research Designs and Standards Organisation and in the training establishments or function as technical members in accident investigations or in high value tender committees? Is this the grand plan the Minister has in mind for preparing Indian Railway managers to meet the challenges of the future? Questions abound.
•A single management cadre cannot make the functions performed by the different departments in the Railways to disappear. Some measure of departmental rivalry will always be there under the best of circumstances and in fact may even be beneficial as a means of “competitive tension”. It is the job of those charged with the coordinating function at various levels to ensure that departmental rivalry does not get out of hand. That it sometimes does is a reflection of the failure of leadership at that level. That is the issue that needs to be addressed. “Silolessness” carried to the extreme can only lead to apathy, neglect and chaos. It is wise to hasten slowly. As a first step, the merger between the Mechanical and Electrical disciplines, already proposed at the apex level, should be implemented down the line.
