📰 SC voices concern over deforestation
The court was hearing a plea challenging cutting of old trees for an overbridge in West Bengal
•Deforestation is so rapid that before anyone knows everything will be lost, Chief Justice of India Sharad A. Bobde said on Tuesday, voicing concern over the loss of green cover.
•A three-judge Bench, led by the the Chief Justice Bobde, was hearing a petition challenging the cutting of heritage trees in West Bengal to create space for an over-bridge in an accident-prone area of a highway.
•Advocate Prashant Bhushan, for the petitioner, agreed that in another 50 years, the effects of climate change might take a turn for the worse.
‘Greed and profit’
•Chief Justice Bobde did not hold back while condemning humanity’s tendency to abuse natural resources for greed and profit.
•“I understand you don’t have the brains to build new ones [water conservation systems], but you are also destroying what is there,” said Justice Bobde.
•The court said the green cover must be preserved.
•“People are not willing to explore alternatives. There could be a way to create a path without cutting trees, though it might be a little more expensive,” Chief Justice Bobde said with the reference to the over-bridge project.
A tree’s value
•The Bench even considered taking on board economists and environmentalists to estimate the value of a tree, factoring in the value of the quantum of oxygen it emits in its lifetime.
•“When you cut a heritage tree, imagine the value of the oxygen the tree produced all these years. Compare it with how much you would have to pay for the equivalent amount of oxygen if you have to buy it from somewhere else,” Chief Justice Bobde had observed at an earlier hearing.
•Mr. Bhushan had suggested a change in the alignment of the project or even an underbridge.
•Senior advocate A.M. Singhvi, for West Bengal, had said the State had discussed the issue for 18 months before deciding on cutting as few trees as possible.
We will look after Indian nationals as our own, says envoy
•China appreciates the support and solidarity that India has extended in its fight against COVID-19, Beijing’s envoy said on Tuesday. At a press conference, Sun Weidong said China and India had been in close contact to deal with the threat, and promised that Beijing would look after Indian nationals in China as its own.
•“Virus is borderless and a common threat to everyone in the world. Facing this common challenge, we need to strengthen cooperation, enhance mutual understanding, show solidarity, and jointly overcome difficulties,” Mr. Sun said emphasising that the threat from the virus would be defeated by the joint efforts of China and the global community. He said kind gestures from common people in India had left a lasting impression on him.
•The envoy said the infection was “preventable, controllable and curable” and that China had acted in a decisive manner to deal with the public health crisis. The embassy here had established a “contact mechanism” with the Health Ministry of India for regular updates.
•On February 9, Prime Minister Narendra Modi wrote to President Xi Jinping extending India’s assistance to fight the outbreak. External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar had spoken to his counterpart, Wang Yi, and sought an objective evaluation of the crisis. “We appreciate and thank the solidarity and support rendered by India,” the envoy said.
Economic impact
•Elaborating on the multi-layered measures activated by Beijing, he highlighted the roles played by President Xi and Premier Li Keqiang in setting up emergency measures. He acknowledged that the health crisis had made a “certain impact” on the Chinese economy but described the setback as “local, temporary and limited”.
•“So far there is no report of infection for the Indian citizens in China,” he added.
•The envoy said both China and India were facing similar public health challenges and there was “huge potential” for collaboration. “We are ready to explore opportunities with India for cooperation in areas of public health and science,” the ambassador added.
📰 Trump’s visit may seal helicopter deal
Defence pacts likely during U.S. President’s visit
•The deal for 24 MH-60R Multi-Role Helicopters (MRH) for the Navy, which is likely to be announced during the visit of U.S. President Donald Trump, is lined up for the final approval of the Cabinet Committee on Security (CCS) on Wednesday, official sources said.
•“The deal is before the CCS for final approval which is meeting on Wednesday. We are hopeful that it will be cleared,” a defence source told The Hindu .
•All procedural requirements for the deal have been completed, he added.
Trade deal unlikely
•The 24 Lockheed Martin-built helicopters, worth $2.4 billion, are being procured through the Foreign Military Sales route of the U.S. government.
•Mr. Trump will visit India on February 24 and 25. With no headway in the talks for a trade deal, there are expectations that a few big-ticket defence deals will be announced.
•There are several big-ticket deals in the pipeline. These include six Boeing P-8I long-range surveillance aircraft and 13 BAE Systems-built 127-mm MK-45 naval gun systems worth around $1 billion for the Navy, six AH-64E Apache attack helicopters for the Army, 30 armed drones for the three services and a tactical air defence system for Delhi.
•However, these are at various stages of procurement.
•“Apart from the deal for MH-60R helicopters, an announcement is possible on P-8I and Apache,” a second official source said.
•In the last few years, India has signed two foundational agreements: the Logistics Exchange Memorandum of Agreement (LEMOA) and the Communications Compatibility and Security Agreement (COMCASA) and the Industrial Security Annex (ISA), which is part of the General Security of Military Information Agreement (GSOMIA) signed long time ago.
•The last agreement, Basic Exchange and Cooperation Agreement for Geo-spatial Cooperation (BECA), is under discussion.
•“BECA is some time away from conclusion,” a third official said.
•Apart from defence cooperation, of particular interest will be any progress in Indo-Pacific cooperation, especially the upgrade of the 2015 U.S.-India Joint Strategic Vision for the Asia-Pacific and Indian Ocean Region.
MRH shortage
•The Navy is facing an acute shortage of MRH, with several warships operating with empty helicopter decks. These helicopters are being procured as replacement for 15 Sea King Anti-Submarine Warfare helicopters de-inducted in 1991 and one Sea King 42B MRH lost in accident.
•The MRHs in service, Sea King 42Bs, were inducted in the 1980s and are in need of replacement.
•Given the urgency, the U.S. is likely to take some MH-60R helicopters from its newest aircraft carrier, USS Gerald Ford , which is undergoing upgrades.
•“We are hopeful of getting four or five MH-60s from USS Gerald Ford once the deal is signed,” a Navy official said.
📰 Foodgrain production set to touch a record high
Abundance of late monsoon rains resulted in larger-than-expected harvests
•Total foodgrain production is projected to scale an all-time high of almost 292 million tonnes in 2019-20, propelled by record production of both rice and wheat, according to the Agriculture Ministry’s second advance estimates released on Tuesday.
•Production of several crops, including rice and major pulses, was lower than targeted in the kharif or the monsoon season. However, the abundance of late monsoon rains resulted in cumulative rainfall that was 10% higher than the long-period average for the season.
•This helped farmers rake in rabi or winter harvests that were larger-than-expected in almost all crops.
•Thus, the estimate for total foodgrain output of 291.95 million tonnes is more than six million tonnes higher than the 285.21 million tonnes produced in 2018-19.
Higher rice output
•The Agriculture Ministry expects rice production to reach 117.47 million tonnes, slightly higher than the 116.48 million tonnes produced in the previous year. Wheat, which is only grown in the rabi season, will see a major surge in production at 106.2 million tonnes in the current year, from the 103.6 million tonnes in 2018-19.
•Despite the government’s drive to encourage millets and nutri-cereals, production failed to match targets this year, with the estimate pegged at 45.24 million tonnes.
•Pulses production was also estimated to come in lower-than targeted 23 million tonnes, although it was still higher than the previous year’s harvest. Most pulses are dry land crops, grown on land without irrigation and the delay in monsoons in many areas hit kharif harvests although rabi production improved.
•It was a similar story with oil seeds. Production was estimated at almost 342 million tonnes, higher than last year but still lower than the target for this year. Sugarcane is the only major crop where this year’s estimated production of 3,538 million tonnes was significantly lower than last year’s output of 4,054 million tonnes.
📰 It’s time to empower mayors
Elections to urban local bodies should take placeon non-party lines
•The spectacular victory of the Aam Aadmi Party in the Delhi Assembly election is seen as a reiteration of voters’ confidence in the leadership of Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal, even though several factors together contributed to the poll outcome. This development may again give rise to the demand for a ‘strong mayor’ helming urban local bodies (ULBs), as the role of the Delhi Chief Minister is treated on a par with the role of a mayor of a municipal corporation. With electoral politics in India becoming increasingly personality-centric, the idea of an empowered mayor may find many takers.
Indirect elections
•In the last six months, Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Rajasthan and Tamil Nadu decided to have indirect elections of ULB chiefs. In Chhattisgarh and Rajasthan,the Congress won in a majority of ULBs after effecting the change. In fact, according to one estimate, the system of direct election of mayors is in vogue only in two States — Uttarakhand and Jharkhand.
•The larger issue at hand is the quality of urban governance. It is unrealistic to expect a high quality of governance as long as political parties have a complete grip over the way civic bodies function. It is time policymakers and political leaders began to seriously contemplate party-less elections to ULBs. This idea is not new. It has been debated at the All India Mayors conference. But due to the unwillingness of parties to examine the concept, the idea has not taken off.
•Already, in a majority of the States, the election for the posts of presidents and councillors of gram panchayats is done on non-party lines. At least in respect of rural local bodies (RLBs), there is some justification for the presence of political parties as, otherwise, caste alone might determine votes. But in ULBs, the caste factor remains subdued, especially during elections. Besides, there is no sound rationale for holding polls for ULBs on party lines as these bodies neither legislate nor frame policies. Also, there is no scope for any political ideology to play a role in the affairs of ULBs. The main task of the bodies is to handle problems concerning sanitation, water supply and solid waste management. Even in the area of water supply and sewerage, the role of the municipal corporations of Chennai, Bengaluru and Hyderabad has got reduced as there are entities exclusively for this purpose. Delhi too has a Jal Board, headed by the Chief Minister.
•Protagonists of the party system may point out that there has been a tradition of political leaders heading ULBs. They may also argue that the participation of political personalities in elections to ULBs cannot be prevented. But the reality is that the calibre of the political leadership is in short supply and the issues concerning ULBs have undergone a sea change over time. According to the 2011 Census, there are about 8,000 towns in India. There are at least 50 cities or urban agglomerations with more than a million people, says the 15th Finance Commission. These cities face challenges of pollution, ground water depletion and sanitation. There are also inter-State disparities in the level of urbanisation and in the urban poverty ratio. ULBs don’t have finances, a problem ignored by the elected representatives.
Parties have nothing to fear
•There is also political justification for why elections to the ULBs should take place on non-party lines. Under the present scheme, Chief Ministers do not want strong ULB chiefs to emerge, especially if the person happens to be from his or her party. This explains why parties prefer indirect elections. On the contrary, if the polls are held on non-party lines with direct elections for chiefs of ULBs, a new crop of leaders will emerge outside the political class. Well-educated and well-qualified youngsters will be encouraged to take part in the election process. More importantly, municipal elections are bound to become cheaper as there will be no need for competitive spending by nominees of rival parties. Even if some successful mayors emerge in the process and want to take on established parties in the Assembly or Lok Sabha polls, this will be a herculean task for them, so parties have nothing to fear. In fact, parties stand to gain, as MLAs may not be villified for all the wrongdoings of local bodies.
•Questions will be raised about the credentials of candidates for the post of mayor. State Election Commissions can prescribe qualifications for mayors, over and above the existing ones, to address them. The issue of cohesion between mayors and councils will also be raised. This remains a major problem but committed individuals, if elected, can easily thrash out this issue. ULBs can have meaningful empowerment only if the concept of non-party elections is adopted. This is a prerequisite for the implementation of the ‘strong mayor’ model.
📰 Powering the health-care engine with innovation
There is potential for private care providers, innovators and start-ups to be partners in the Ayushman Bharat scheme
•It has been close to 18 months since the Prime Minister, Narendra Modi, launched the country-wide implementation of Ayushman Bharat-Pradhan Mantri Jan Arogya Yojana (PM-JAY), or the national health protection scheme; the initial momentum has been very encouraging. The scheme is currently being implemented in 32 of 36 States and Union Territories. It has provided 84 lakh free treatments to poor and vulnerable patients for secondary and tertiary ailments at 22,000 empanelled hospitals, countrywide. Under PM-JAY, there is one free treatment every three seconds and two beneficiaries verified every second.
Expanding the supply side
•As the scale of this scheme grows, a key area of focus is to expand the secondary and tertiary hospitals empanelled under PM-JAY and ensure their quality and capacity while keeping the costs down. At present, there is one government bed for every 1,844 patients and one doctor for every 11,082 patients. In the coming years, considering 3% hospitalisation of PM-JAY-covered beneficiaries, the scheme is likely to provide treatment to 1.5 crore patients annually. This means physical and human infrastructure capacity would need to be augmented vastly. Conservative estimates suggest the we would need more than 150,000 additional beds, especially in Tier-2 and -3 cities. While a comprehensive long-term strategy will focus on expanding hospital and human resources infrastructure, an effective near-term approach is needed to improve efficiencies and bridge gaps within the existing supply and likely demand. A strong, yet under-tapped lever for accelerating health system efficiency and bridging these gaps is mainstreaming innovation in the Indian health system.
Transformative solutions
•India’s burgeoning entrepreneurial spirit combined with a systematic push for the development of a start-up ecosystem has led to a plethora of innovations in health care. It is estimated that there are more than 4,000 health-care technology start-ups in India. Today, start-ups are working to bring innovative technologies and business models that leapfrog infrastructure, human resources, cost-effectiveness and efficiency challenges in Tier-2 and -3 cities. Artificial Intelligence platforms that aid in rapid radiology diagnoses in low resource settings, tele-ICU platforms to bridge the gap in high-skilled critical care personnel, centralised drone delivery of blood, medicines and vaccines to reach remote locations cost-effectively and reliably are all no longer just theoretical ideas. They are real solutions that are ready to be tested on the ground and potentially implemented. It is high time for transformative solutions to make their way into our hospitals, especially in Tier-2 and -3 cities, to turbocharge the way health care is delivered at scale.
•This mainstreaming of health-care innovations, is lined with challenges at every step. The friction in their path to market often stems from multiple reasons.
Addressing the constraints
•One challenge is non-uniform regulatory and validation standards. Regulatory requirements, specifically for biomedical start-ups, are still evolving in India. As a result, hospitals often rely on foreign regulatory certifications such as FDA and CE, especially for riskier devices and instruments. In addition, it is difficult for a start-up to understand the minimum necessary validation requirements in order to qualify for procurement by hospitals. Lack of standards in this area leads to a huge variation in validation requirements at States and hospitals, forcing the start-up into a spiral of piloting studies. The government is now pushing ahead to overhaul Indian med-tech regulatory standards and product standards which will help bridge this trust-deficit.
•Another problem in promoting start-ups is the operational liquidity crunch due to a long gestation period. Health-care start-ups spend long periods of time in the early development of their product, especially where potential clinical risks are concerned. The process of testing the idea and working prototype, receiving certifications, performing clinical and commercial validations, and raising funds, in a low-trust and unstructured environment makes the gestational period unusually long thereby limiting the operational liquidity of the start-up.
•Another hurdle is the lack of incentives and adequate frameworks to grade and adopt innovations. Health-care providers and clinicians, given limited bandwidth, often lack the incentives, operational capacity, and frameworks necessary to consider and adopt innovations. This leads to limited traction for start-ups promoting innovative solutions.
•Start-ups also face procurement challenges in both public and private procurement. They lack the financial capacity to deal with lengthy tenders and the roundabout process of price discovery. Private procurement is complicated by the presence of a fragmented customer base and limited systematic channels for distribution.
•To accelerate this process of mainstreaming innovations within the hospital system in India, we need to focus on identifying promising market-ready health-care innovations that are ready to be tested and deployed at scale. There is a need to facilitate standardised operational validation studies that are required for market adoption, to help ease out the start-up procurement process such that these solutions can be adopted with confidence. This, in effect, will serve the entire ecosystem of health-care innovators by opening up health-care markets for all. A strong theme in mature health-care systems in other parts of the world is a vibrant and seamless interface between hospitals and health-care start-ups. Through Ayushman Bharat, India has the unique opportunity to develop a robust ecosystem where hospitals actively engage with health-care start-ups by providing access to testbeds, communicating their needs effectively and adopting promising innovations. Start-ups can be effective collaborators for the most pressing health-care delivery challenges faced by hospitals, as opposed to being mere suppliers of technology or services.
•We believe that the launch and expansion of Ayushman Bharat-PM-JAY is a watershed moment for the Indian health-care service delivery ecosystem. The government has taken a big step by rolling out world’s largest and most ambitious publicly funded health-care assurance programme. We are now calling out to private sector health-care providers, health innovators, industry and start-ups to become equal partners in this movement. The dream of an accessible, affordable and high-quality health-care system for all, will be achieved when we work in alignment to complement each other and jointly undertake the mission of creating an Ayushman Bharat.
📰 In U.S. trade action, an Indian counter-strategy
Indian interests would be well-served by maintaining a reasonable level of tariff protection
•Last week, the United States officially designated developing and least-developed countries for the purposes of implementing the countervailing measures provided by the Agreement on Subsidies and Countervailing Measures (ASCM) of the World Trade Organization (WTO). According to the ASCM, developing countries are allowed to grant higher levels of subsidies as compared to the developed countries before countervailing duties (CVD) can be imposed.
•The agreement stipulates that any countervailing duty investigation for a developing country must be terminated if the subsidies granted are found to be de minimis , which is defined as less than 2% of the value of imports of the product being investigated. For a developed country the de minimis is 1% of the import value of the investigated product. The United States’s annual exercise of designating developing, and least developed countries has assumed importance for India this year: it has been dropped from the list of developing countries. In other words, in its future countervailing duty investigations, the U.S. would treat India as a developed country.
India as target
•Under the WTO rules, any country can “self-designate” itself as a developing country. In fact, the WTO does not lay down any specific criteria for making a distinction between a developed and a developing country member, unlike in the World Bank where per capita incomes are used to classify countries. But despite this clearly laid down criteria in the WTO rules for making a distinction between developing and developed countries, the United States Trade Representative (USTR) employed an arbitrary methodology that took into consideration “economic, trade, and other factors, including the level of economic development of a country (based on a review of the country’s per capita GNI) and a country’s share of world trade” to exclude India from list of designated developing countries.
•This is the second instance in less than a year, when the U.S. has refused to extend to India the benefits enjoyed by developing countries under the multilateral trade rules. On May 31, 2019, U.S. President Donald Trump had announced that India would be taken off the list of beneficiary-developing countries under its scheme of Generalised System of Preferences (GSP). The GSP is a special window provided by the U.S. and several other developed countries, through which they import identified products from developing countries at concessional rates of duties. Importantly, GSP confers non-reciprocal benefits, implying that the developed countries cannot expect reciprocal market access from the beneficiary developing countries. Yet, the U.S. denied GSP benefits to India arguing that India was unwilling to offer better market access to its products.
•Excluding India from the lists of developing countries for the purposes of using countervailing measures or denying benefits of GSP are but two of the more recent initiatives that the U.S. has taken to challenge India’s status as a developing country in the WTO. Over the past years, the U.S. has been arguing that the emerging economies, especially Brazil, China and India, have performed much better that those in the developed world and therefore they should no longer enjoy the slew of benefits that they have as developing country members of the organisation.
The impact
•What are the benefits that developing countries enjoy in the WTO and what could the potential impact of the exertions that the U.S. is making to deny India the status of a developing country be? Potentially very large, for India would then lose the ability to use the special and differential treatment (S&DT) to which every developing country member of the WTO has a right. In short, S&DT lessens the burden of adjustment that developing countries have to make while acceding to the various agreements under the WTO. Besides, when the WTO finalises an agreement in a specific area, developing countries are allowed longer implementation periods. This measure helps developing countries to introduce a new agreement in phases and are thus required to deploy resources beyond their capacities. S&DT has been particularly beneficial for India in two critical areas: one, implementation of the disciplines on agricultural subsidies and, two, opening up the markets for both agricultural and non-agricultural products.
•The WTO Agreement on Agriculture (AoA) provides an elaborate discipline on subsidies. Subsidies are classified in three categories; but two of these are virtually outside the discipline since the WTO does not limit spending on these categories of subsidies. The discipline exists in case of price support measures (minimum support price) and input subsidies which is the more common form of subsidies for most developing countries, including in India. For developing countries, spending on price support measures and input subsides taken together cannot exceed 10% of the total value of agricultural production. In contrast, developed countries are allowed to spend only 5% of their value of agricultural production.
Shifting to DBT
•India is a major user of price support measures and input subsidies, and given the constraints imposed by the AoA, the government has spoken about its intention to move into the system of direct benefit transfer (DBT) for supporting farmers. A shift to DBT is attractive for India since there are no limits on spending, unlike in case of price support measures and input subsidies. Further, faced with on-going farm distress, the government has had to rework its subsidies’ programme in order to extend greater benefits, especially to small and marginal farmers.
•However, implementation of DBT in agriculture has several insurmountable problems. Targeting potential beneficiaries of DBT seems difficult at this juncture for a number of reasons, including inadequate records of ownership of agricultural land on the one hand, and the presence of agricultural labour and tenants on the other. This implies that in the foreseeable future, India would continue to depend on price support measures and input subsidies. Given this scenario, the government needs the policy space to provide adequate levels of subsidies to a crisis-ridden agricultural sector, and therefore it is imperative that continues to enjoy the benefits as a developing country member of the WTO.
Issue of tariffs
•The issue of market access, or the use of import tariffs, is one of the important trade policy instruments. It has some key provisions on S&DT, which the developing countries can benefit from. The most important among these is the undertaking from the developed countries that they would not demand reciprocal tariff cuts, and this reads as follows: “The developed contracting parties do not expect reciprocity for commitments made by them in trade negotiations to reduce or remove tariffs and other barriers to the trade of less-developed contracting parties.”
•Over the past two years, the government of India has been extensively using import tariffs for protecting Indian businesses from import competition. With increasing use of tariffs, almost across the board, India’s average tariffs have increased from about 13% in 2017-18 to above 17% at present. The 2020-21 Budget has enhanced the level of protection of the domestic players in several key sectors, thus pushing the average tariffs even higher. Developed country members of the WTO have generally maintained very low levels of tariffs, and, therefore, India’s interests of maintaining a reasonable level of tariff protection would be well served through its continued access to S&DT, by remaining as a developing country member of the WTO.
