📰 Will stand by decision on Art. 370, CAA: Modi
PM says these decisions were necessary in national interest
•Despite international pressure, the government will continue to stand by its decision to revoke Article 370 in Jammu and Kashmir and introduce the Citizenship (Amendment) Act (CAA), Prime Minister Narendra Modi asserted on Sunday.
•He said the country had “awaited” these decisions for many years. “In national interest, these decisions were necessary,” Mr. Modi said at an event in his parliamentary constituency Varanasi.
•“Despite the various international pressures, we stand by these decisions and will continue to stand by them,” Mr. Modi said. The country was now taking decisions that were always left behind in the past, he added.
•The Prime Minister’s tough talk assumed significance in view of protests against the CAA in various parts of the country.
Launches projects
•In Varanasi, Mr. Modi launched projects worth Rs. 1,250 crore. He unveiled the statue of Deendayal Upadhyay, which, at 63 feet, is the largest statue of the leader in the country, as per the government. The Prime Minister also dedicated to the nation the Pandit Deendayal Upadhyaya Memorial Centre.
•Mr. Modi flagged off the third corporate train, Mahakaal Express, which links three Jyotirling pilgrim centres — Varanasi, Ujjain and Omkareshwar.
•Earlier in the day, Mr. Modi attended the closing ceremony of the centenary celebration of Jagadguru Vishwaradhya Gurukul at Jangamwadi Mutt and released the translated version of ‘Shri Siddhant Shikhamani Granth’ in 19 languages. He also launched the ‘Shri Siddhant Shikhamani Granth’ mobile app.
•Citing certain key decisions of his government, Mr. Modi referred to the trust set up for the construction of the Ram temple in Ayodhya and said it would work “rapidly.”
•He said that after setting up of the trust, the work on the construction of ‘Ram dham’ would start fast and added that his government had also decided to transfer 67 acres of land to the trust.
•He also inaugurated a 430-bed superspeciality government hospital.
•Mr. Modi said that in the past few years, Rs. 25,000 crore worth developmental projects had either been completed or were going on at a fast pace in Varanasi.
📰 India rejects Guterres mediation offer
Concerned about Kashmir: UN chief
•The government has rejected the latest offer by UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres to mediate between India and Pakistan on the Kashmir issue, saying that it would only discuss the matter bilaterally.
•Speaking in Islamabad at the beginning of a four-day visit to Pakistan, Mr. Guterres had said he had offered his offices and was “ready to help if both countries agree for mediation.”
•In a response late on Sunday evening, the Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) official spokesperson said, “The issue of [Jammu and Kashmir] that needs to be addressed is that of vacation of the territories illegally and forcibly occupied by Pakistan. Further issues, if any, would be discussed bilaterally. There is no role or scope for third party mediation.”
•The spokesperson added that India hopes the UN Secretary General would “emphasise on the imperative for Pakistan to take credible, sustained and irreversible action to put an end to cross-border terrorism against India.”
•Mr. Guterres was speaking to journalists in Islamabad ahead of a conference on Afghan refugees hosted by the UNHCR and the Pakistan government, which will be inaugurated by Pakistan Prime Minister Imran Khan on Monday.
Kartarpur visit
•Mr. Guterres will also travel to the Kartarpur gurudwara and see the pilgrim corridor with India, which he described as a “unique experiment in cross-border ties”.
•Asked about the situation in J&K, he said he was “deeply concerned” and called on India and Pakistan to “de-escalate, both militarily and verbally”.
📰 ISRO making preparations to launch GISAT-1 in March first week
•Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) is preparing to launch GISAT-1, a new earth observation satellite, in the first week of March.
•GISAT-1 — Geo Imaging Satellite — will be the first of two planned Indian EO spacecraft to be placed in a geostationary orbit of around 36,000 km. It will apparently be in a fixed spot looking over the Indian continent at all times.
•All Indian EOs have been placed so far in a 600-odd-km orbits and circle the earth pole to pole. GISAT-1 will be launched from Sriharikota satellite launch centre. “With this satellite, which has high-resolution cameras, we can keep a constant watch on our borders, monitor any changes in the geographical condition of the country, etc.,” said Alok Kumar Srivastav, Senior ISRO scientist and Deputy Director, U R. Rao Satellite Centre, Bengaluru.
•About the ambitious Chandrayaan-2 project, he said that after the failed lunar landing of the project owing to technical reasons, ISRO has planned to repeat the project. “The government has already approved the [Chandrayaan-3] project. We are working on it. We are planning to re-launch the project within a year. I am hopeful that this time we will be successful in our endeavour to land our rover near the lunar southern where no rover has landed so far,” he said.
•ISRO is expected to develop its own space station within a decade. “ISRO scientists are making every effort to develop our own space station. Hopefully, in the next ten years, India will have its own space station like the U.S. and China,” Dr. Srivastav said. To achieve this gigantic target, preparations are already under way at ISRO. He said ISRO has planned to first send two unmanned spacecraft within a couple of years, and later a crewed mission in the third phase.
•“Our astronauts are already undergoing training in Russia. After the completion of their training, they will be part of the first manned mission. The success of the mission will open new avenues for the setting up of our own space station, which will be possible within a decade from now,” he said.
•On whether life exists anywhere else in the universe besides on earth, Dr. Srivastav said that as a space scientist, he was enormously hopeful that life existed in some or the other form somewhere in the galaxy. “We are searching for them, and possibly they are searching for us, and hopefully some day we will meet.”
📰 WWS proposal fails to find favour
Board rejects it after public protest
•The Wayanad Wildlife Sanctuary (WWS), though home to more than half the number of tigers present in Kerala, may not be notified as a tiger reserve as the proposal lacks public support.
•The attempts of the Kerala Forest Department to push forward the proposal for notifying the sanctuary as the third tiger reserve in the State came a cropper at the recently held State Wildlife Advisory Board. Citing the public resistance against the earlier attempts, the board rejected the proposal.
•The ‘Status of Tigers in India’ report released last year had estimated the tiger population of Wayanad as between 75 and 80 individuals. Periyar Tiger Reserve, the first one in Kerala, has an estimated population of 30 to 35 big cats, whereas Parambikulam, the second reserve, has a population of 20 to 25 tigers.
•Piloting the Wayanad proposal, the department officials pointed out that more than half of the tiger population in the State was found in Wayanad. There were five tiger reserves in the neighbouring States that share boundaries with Wayanad, they said.
•The arguments of the officials that the notification would ensure financial aid from the Centre and the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA), better conservation and management of the tiger population and help generate more employment opportunities failed to impress the State authorities.
•Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan, who chaired the meeting, flagged the issue of human-wildlife conflicts in the district. Referring to the public protests that were staged in Wayanad earlier against the proposal, Mr. Vijayan expressed concern over the possible impact of the proposal. Any such proposal should be implemented only after holding wide public consultations, he said.
•Cattle lifting by the ailing tigers and their straying into human habitations had often triggered widespread public protests in the district. The department had to backtrack from its earlier attempts to notify the reserve following stiff public resistance. There were speculations that the notification would bring in stringent restrictions on development activities in the district, though the department tried to counter the campaign.
•C.K. Saseendran, the legislator representing the Kalpetta Assembly constituency, highlighted the public resistance against the proposal and suggested that the proposal should be taken forward only after dispelling the public concern.
•Each year, the NTCA supports the tiger reserves by funding the proposals put forward through its Annual Plan of Operations. The authority also supports the reserves for implementing the tiger conservation plan.
•While Periyar gets an annual support of around ₹9 crore, the Parambikulam gets around ₹6 crore from the authority.
📰 India inks 14 MoUs with Russia for defence support, spares
They cover modern T-90 tanks, Pechora air defence systems
•In a step forward towards addressing the issue of regular spares and support for Russian military equipment with the armed forces, 14 MoUs were signed between Indian and Russian companies for setting up joint ventures covering a range of equipment from modern T-90 tanks to legacy Pechora air defence systems.
•The MoUs were signed during the 5th India Russia military industry conference held during the Defexpo 2020 in Lucknow. They come under the Intergovernmental Agreement (IGA) on joint manufacturing of spares in India signed last September for mutual cooperation in manufacturing of spares, components, aggregates and other material related to Russian or Soviet-origin arms and defence equipment.
•Lack of timely spares and support has been a constant issue faced by the military, a major part of which consists of Russian defence hardware.
•“The first ‘Request for Proposal’ for manufacturing of parts in India under the provision of IGA was also handed over by the Navy to the identified Indian industry,” the Defence Ministry said in a statement. The conference was co-chaired by Dr. Ajay Kumar, Defence Secretary and Oleg Ryazantsev, Deputy Minister of Industry and Trade of Russia.
•One important MoU was signed between the Bharat Dynamics Limited and the Almaz Antey of Russia for exploring the feasibility of a joint venture in India for the production of various sub systems of “air defence missile systems like Tunguska, Kavadrat, the OSA-AKA, Pechora air defence system as well as the Shilka self-propelled air defence gun system”.
•There are also agreements on emerging technologies — Artificial Intelligence, Internet of Things, blockchain and robotics based on Russian technologies under the proposed Indo-Russian Joint Venture ICT Center of Excellence.
📰 Madhya Pradesh grapples with spiralling neonatal deaths
Staff crunch, low community referrals major factors: National Health Mission
•Madhya Pradesh has recorded the highest percentage of newborn deaths of 11.5% against the total admissions to government-run sick newborn care units (SNCUs) in the past three years across the country, a rate ominously spiralling since 2017, according to the National Health Mission (NHM). The country’s average is 7%.
•Although admissions of neonates (under 28 days) in the State have dropped from April 2017 to December 2019 — remaining lower than West Bengal, Rajasthan and Uttar Pradesh — the percentage of deaths at 12.2% surpassed Bihar’s last year. Meanwhile, West Bengal, where 34,344 neonatal deaths occurred in the period, the most in the country, the declining percentage of deaths from 9.2% in 2017 to 8.9% in 2019 coincided with a slump in admissions.
Several factors
•Staff crunch, low community referrals, absence of a special neonatal transport service to health centres, reliance on units in cities as last resort and the non-availability of enough units to cater to increasing institutional deliveries had contributed to the spike in the percentage of deaths, said Dr. Saloni Sidana, Additional Mission Director, NHM State unit.
•“We have just half of the required staff nurse strength at the units across the State. For instance, in the Jabalpur unit, there are only 14 against a required 22 nurses,” she said. “Recently, 700 nurses were recruited.”
•The crunch is magnified as only one against the required five (82% shortfall) of surgeons, gynaecologists, physicians and paediatricians is available at hospitals. While 4,074 doctors were in position in March 2019, 18,422 more are required, reveals the NHM data.
•“Reasons for neonatal deaths are more clinical than other child deaths,” said Dr. Vandana Prasad, community paediatrician and of the Public Health Resource Network. “The younger the baby is, more specialised intervention is required.”
Time crucial
•As the units are located at hospitals with the delivery load of more than 3,000 infants per year, mostly in District Headquarters, transporting neonates on time is crucial as they may succumb to fatal diseases within hours. “Although there is a dedicated service to transport pregnant women to hospitals from remote areas, there is none for neonates, who are mostly dependent on the 108 ambulance service,” said Dr. Sidana.
•Moreover, she added, with increasing institutional deliveries in the State (80.8% as per the National Family Health Survey-4, 2015-2016), the number of neonatal care units, being optimally utilised, had not been increased proportionally.
•There was no system of continuity of care, said Dr. Prasad. She added, “The health of children and mothers is not tracked in a systematic way by one platform, and services are often given randomly.”
•The major challenge, however, remained community referrals, significantly aided by ASHA workers — only one in ten sick neonates born outside a hospital is taken to an SNCU. “This is due to the absence of transport, inability to identify a disease by parents, and lack of awareness,” said Dr. Sidana.
Abysmal sex ratio
•Madhya Pradesh has also recorded an abysmal sex ratio in admissions — of 663 (number of girls admitted against 1,000 boys) in the three years against the country average of 733, though its sex ratio was 931 as per the 2011 census. “In almost three fourths of the cases relating to boys, more admissions can be attributed to the prevailing bias against the girl child in society,” said an NHM official, requesting anonymity, “While other cases can be attributed to better immunity among girl children to combat diseases.”
•In Bhopal, the capital city of Madhya Pradesh, one in every five children admitted to a unit died in the three years — the highest death percentage of 19.9% in the State, ten times above the NHM’s mandated key performance indicator of below 2%. Meanwhile, in 31 of 51 districts, mostly tribal and having low nutrition and maternal health levels, have a death percentage of more than 10.
Urban areas higher
•“Urban areas report a higher death percentage as they offer tertiary care, and admit several serious cases from peripheral districts,” said the official, who stated that several districts had under-reported deaths, too. “In order to improve neonatal mortality rate, many notorious units admit fit patients, only to discharge them within hours. If we go by actual figures, Madhya Pradesh has a death percentage of close to 15%,” the official said.
•The case of underreporting is illustrated by the NHM’s Child Health Review 2019-2020, which spotlights 43 districts where government officials didn’t report more than 50% of deaths of children under five, to falsely jack up their score.
•Sachin Jain, of Vikas Samvad, a non-profit in Bhopal, said, “More than 70% neonatal deaths occur within the first week, most within 48 hours. When the first week passes, the probability of survival increases. Therefore, when the number of institutional deliveries are increasing, the child is the unit’s responsibility. Blaming everything on the community and lack of awareness is a convenient way out for the NHM.”
Neonatal mortality
•According to the Sample Registration System, neonatal deaths in India mainly occur owing to premature births and low birth weight (35.9%), pneumonia (16.9%), birth asphyxia and birth trauma (9.9%), other non-communicable diseases (7.9%), diarrhoea (6.7%), congenital anomalies(4.6%) and infections (4.2%).
•Under the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals, each country, including India, has aimed to bring down neonatal mortality to at least 12 per 1,000 live births. In 2018, it stood at 23 for India.
📰 Accord drives divide in Assam’s Bodo domain
Signatories to the third Bodo Accord appear to have unsettled signatories to the second accord of February 2003
•The third Bodo Accord signed with a set of extremist groups more than a fortnight ago appears to have unsettled another set of extremists who signed the second accord in February 2003 and went on to rule the Bodoland Territorial Council (BTC).
•The Centre had on January 27 signed the peace accord with all factions of the National Democratic Front of Boroland (NDFB) and two other organisations, including the All Bodo Students’ Union (ABSU). The signatories subsequently announced their political ambitions with Pramod Boro suddenly quitting as the ABSU president.
•The elections to the 40-member BTC are expected in April.
‘Cannot accept’
•The political ambitions of the leaders of ABSU and NDFB appear to have rubbed the Bodoland People’s Front (BPF), which has been ruling BTC since 2003 and is a partner in the Bharatiya Janata Party-led coalition government in Assam, the wrong way.
•“The new accord merely changes the name of BTC to Bodoland Territorial Region (BTR) and gives us nothing. We cannot just accept this accord, we will not even use BTR as part of our vocabulary,” BTC chief Hagrama Mohilary said at a party meeting in Kokrajhar district’s Parbatjhora area on Saturday.
•Mr. Mohilary’s outburst attains significance ahead of the BTC elections, where the ABSU has often sided with rival parties of the BPF, such as United People’s Party Liberal. Moreover, he was a witness to the January 27 accord-signing in New Delhi along with Assam Chief Minister Sarbananda Sonowal and Finance Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma.
•The BTC chief, who headed the now-disbanded extremist group Bodo Liberation Tigers, has also been critical of Mr. Boro. “He used to say he would never become a politician and contest elections. He lied when he was with ABSU, he will lie more if he comes to power,” Mr. Mohilary said.
Boro retaliates
•The former ABSU president retaliated by saying Mr. Mohilary has lost the trust the people of BTC had reposed in him. “The people are desperate for a change in leadership that has foresight and is honest about serving them,” Mr. Boro said at a welcome ceremony for the new accord signatories in Baksa district’s Musalpur area on Sunday.
📰 ‘We are not growing at the rate needed to reach the $5 trillion target’
Former Planning Commission Deputy Chairman says steps taken by the government are not going to succeed in reviving private investment
•Reaching a $5 trillion economy will require a GDP growth of 9% and revival of private investment, which the Union Budget does not address, says former Planning Commission Deputy Chairman Montek Singh Ahluwalia . His latest book, Backstage , offers an insider’s view of how economic policies were formulated during the UPA tenure.
From a ‘Hindu rate of growth’, we are talking about a $5 trillion economy by 2024-25. Is it possible in this time frame?
•To reach the $5 trillion target by 2024-25, the economy has to grow at something close to 9% starting with 2019-20. [But] We are going to end the year 2019-20 with growth below 5%. The economy may have bottomed out and next year, growth will be somewhere between 5% and 6% on optimistic assumptions.
•But with that pace of recovery, we will not get to $5 trillion in 2024-25. We must acknowledge that we are not growing at the kind of growth rate needed to reach that target. We will get to $5 trillion ultimately, but not by 2024-25.
Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman recently said there were green shoots and the economy was not really in trouble. You, too, have said the economy may have bottomed out.
•Bottoming out just means that next year will be better than 4.5%. You could claim to have bottomed out if growth next year is above 5%. But it would be wrong, on that basis, to say the economy is not in trouble. What people are now looking for, is a quick and strong recovery.
•What we are likely to get is a rather slow recovery. And there is no evidence of an early return to 8%-plus, which is what we need.
Many experts have said the focus of the government has been wrong — instead of pushing consumption, focus has been on the supply side.
•For a cyclical revival, you have to look at the demand side and I don’t think the actions taken so far will actually have the impact that is expected on the demand side. I think the key areas on the demand side are reviving investment and reviving exports. I don’t believe that the steps taken are going to succeed in reviving private investment.
•Private investment is subdued because of a lack of animal spirits. Investors, who have the capacity to invest, are not able to get credit from the banks. Banks are not extending credit because they are very cautious. Some people have also talked of a fear factor depressing investment. Many people say that our tax laws have become so complex and cumbersome, and we are also criminalising certain aspects of tax avoidance, that people are discouraged from adopting a high profile and are trying to cover their tracks. I don’t think there is anything in the Budget that changes all this.
These days, there is a lot of questioning about the reliability of our data. What is your view on this?
•It is worrying that there is a widespread perception that we are not adopting totally transparent methods of producing and clearing data. We did change the method of calculating Gross Domestic Product [GDP]. And the way it’s calculated, the negative impact of demonetisation on the informal sector was not reflected in GDP growth. There have been other instances when survey [NSSO] data have been held up and trashed.
You have seen several Prime Ministers from close quarters. Who do you think was the most decisive and also a quick decision-maker?
•That is very difficult because each Prime Minister operated in a different political and economic context. Indira Gandhi’s decision to go in for imported wheat seeds was a highly controversial decision at the time, but we wouldn’t have had the Green Revolution now.
•I worked directly in the office of Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi, and he was the first to signal the need for getting ready for the 21st century. He said in Parliament that we could not expect to be competing with other countries if we were working with systems that were 20 years out of date.
•Under Prime Minister Narasimha Rao’s government, very dramatic changes were made. He gets full marks for backing his Finance Minister [Dr. Manmohan Singh], who orchestrated a broad-ranging reform programme. Prime Minister [A.B.] Vajpayee continued the reforms and also brought in privatisation.
•In the case of the UPA 1, the coalition by itself didn’t have a majority and had to depend on the Left for outside support. And of course, Dr. Singh was not the political head of the Congress. Nevertheless, working within those constraints, in the first seven years of the UPA, we saw a growth rate of 8.4%, which had never been seen earlier. The Indo-U.S. nuclear deal was a very bold decision by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh taken in the face of opposition.
If you were to advise this government on key issues, what will you tell it to do?
•In my book, I have outlined a number of ideas which I think should be on the future agenda. The bottomline is that the government should outline a credible action plan to get the economy back to 8% growth as quickly as possible.
•Reviving private investment and rejuvenating public sector banks is critical. We also need to bring about much-needed reform in GST. In all this, we need the widest possible consultation, listening to expert opinion outside the government.
•But to do this, we need to be realistic. If we feel we are on track to hit the $5 trillion target, nothing more needs to be done. The trouble is we are not. The problems are very clear. We have to get the GDP growth up to 8% as quickly as possible. Unless we do this, we will not be able to generate the jobs we need. We also need to improve our export performance which has actually deteriorated.
📰 Perverse zeal
The NSA’s misuse to suppress political dissent is a blot on India’s democratic credentials
•The detention of Dr. Kafeel Khan under the National Security Act (NSA), within days of his being granted bail, betrays the perverse zeal with which the Uttar Pradesh government is hounding the suspended government doctor. His arrest, at Mumbai airport, was in connection with an allegedly inflammatory speech he had made on the contentious Citizenship (Amendment) Act at Aligarh Muslim University in December 2019. The Special Task Force of the U.P. police accused him of promoting enmity through his speech. It was obvious that the flawed approach that treats criticism of government policy as though it is some anti-national activity was at work. Although he was granted bail, he was not immediately released. A few days later, the NSA was invoked against him, ostensibly to prevent him from acting in a manner prejudicial to public order. The paediatrician from Gorakhpur was sought to be blamed when oxygen shortage in the BRD Medical College Hospital led to nearly 60 children dying in 2017. After he had spent months in jail, an internal inquiry absolved him of the charges of negligence and corruption. However, the State government said he had not been given a clean chit. A fresh departmental inquiry was ordered against him for “spreading misinformation” about the probe report, and some alleged “anti-government” remarks during his suspension.
•That the authorities invoked a stringent preventive detention law meant only for booking those whose activities constitute an imminent threat of violence shows that they are not content with prosecuting him. If they were under a bona fide belief that his speech was provocative, they could have filed a charge sheet and let the court decide if it attracted Section 153A of the Indian Penal Code (IPC). The resort to preventive detention as soon as a person is granted bail, with the perverse purpose of continuing his imprisonment, is not uncommon in the country, but the practice is condemnable. It normally indicates mala fide targeting by the administration concerned, and one does not need to look beyond the case of Dr. Kafeel himself to conclude that the latest instance of the resort to the NSA is aimed at inflicting disproportionate punishment on him for expressing political dissent on a supposedly forbidden subject. It is regrettable that the police and the bureaucracy appear to act in wanton disregard for basic rights. The relentless hounding of Dr. Khan is a blot on the country’s democratic credentials. Taking the cue from growing opinion, most recently articulated by Justice D.Y. Chandrachud of the Supreme Court, that protest and criticism directed at government policy do not amount to being anti-national, officials should pause before they are seen as enablers of the excesses of an authoritarian dispensation. To invoke the NSA in cases where sections of the IPC would suffice is to undermine its efficacy as a tool to protect national security.
