📰 China says Indian trade curbs are against WTO principles
‘Additional barriers violate principle of non-discrimination’
•India’s recent policy to curb opportunistic takeovers of domestic companies goes against the World Trade Organisation (WTO) principles, the spokesperson of the Chinese Embassy here said on Monday.
•This is the first response from the Chinese side after the Ministry of Commerce and Industry in an April 17 decision imposed restrictions saying companies from countries that share borders with India can invest “only under the government route”.
•“The additional barriers set by Indian side for investors from specific countries violate the WTO’s principle of non-discrimination, and go against the general trend of liberalisation and facilitation of trade and investment. More importantly, they do not conform to the consensus of the G20 leaders and Trade Ministers to realise a free, fair, non-discriminatory, transparent, predictable and stable trade and investment environment, and to keep our markets open,” said Counsellor Ji Rong, spokesperson of the Chinese Embassy.
•The official pointed at the Chinese investments in various sectors of the Indian economy. He said China's overall investment as of December 2019 was above $ 8 billion and it had driven key sectors like telecom, infrastructure, automobile and household goods in India. The revision was meant for sectors and enterprises other than defence, space, atomic energy and sectors and activities “prohibited for foreign investment”.
•It was understood that the Indian decision was a response to the news of an incremental purchase of shares in HDFC by the People’s Bank of China.
•The Chinese spokesperson invoked the principle of free market economy and said, “Companies make choices based on market principles. We hope India would revise relevant discriminatory practices, treat investments from different countries equally, and foster an open, fair and equitable business environment”.
•The statement said the new policy was clearly going to impact future investment from China.
The traditional gender role that women play distinctly affects them in global crises as seen in numerous examples
•The world has suddenly woken up to the reality of a virus ravaging it.
•While catastrophes affect people at large, the economical, sociological and psychological impact that each catastrophe has on women is profound. Data indicate the need to address this during and after these catastrophic episodes.
Crises and gender
•In the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami, the coastlines of countries in the region, including India, were affected and more than 2,00,000 people were killed or listed missing; a fourth of them were women. The traditional ‘care giver’ role that women play has much to do in explaining this. Women stay around looking for their loved ones in order to see them safe. Besides this, women lack many life skills such as swimming and climbing.
•During tsunami recovery phases, aid organisations and governments house the homeless in camps where women face many difficulties including abuse by men. Gender-skewed tsunami deaths resulted in a disproportionate gender ratio where men largely outnumbered women. Women also faced hygiene challenges in these camps due to inadequate sanitation facilities.
•In the United States, which has a high incidence of tornadoes, families headed by women are affected the most. Women often are engaged in sector-specific employment which when impacted result in unemployment. Women are also engaged in post-calamity care, missing job opportunities. An economic slowdown also leaves women with additional wage cuts, on a paradigm where pay disparity between genders is a norm.
•In Kerala, after the floods in 2018-19, thousands were housed in relief camps. Experts observe that relief measures focus on livelihood and assets, compelling aid agencies to focus on restoring livelihoods. Flood-destroyed kitchens forced women to cook in the open air with whatever they were left with. There was considerable added domestic work by women, which went unnoticed.
Issues faced in the pandemic
•Coming to the current COVID-19 pandemic, its impact on both genders is beyond the mere death statistics. According to World Health Organization data, around 70% of the world’s health workers are women, 79% of nurses are women. Health workers in general are highly vulnerable and not ensuring their safety is a high risk that can severely impact the health system. India has a million-plus accredited social health activist (ASHA) workers who are an integral part of its health system. ASHAs, who work at the ground level, are reporting incidents of attacks while on COVID-19 duty. Stringent action against their tormentors is needed to ensure their professional safety.
•In many households where both partners work, the work from home (WFH) concept is now common. The entire family is now together within the limited space of their dwellings. As traditional roleplay is still prevalent in most sections of Indian society, the equal division of household responsibilities among couples is still distant. Women from all strata face substantial additional household work. Alongside this is the fear of job loss and reduced income which can create mental pressure on women, in turn affecting their physical well-being.
•The lower income groups are already facing job losses and anxiety is leading to domestic tensions and violence against women. A large number of daily wageworkers resort to alcohol consumption. The ban on alcohol sales, as a part of the national lockdown, is contributing to domestic tensions, leading to women abuse.
•Hormone-induced depression among women is another key point that needs to be understood and acknowledged. Women are twice as likely to face depression when compared to men. Premenstrual syndrome (PMS) among re-productive age groups, pregnancy-related depressive conditions, postpartum depression (PPDs) among new mothers as well as premenopausal and menopausal symptoms are common, interfering in every day life and relationships. The lockdown is adding more intensity to these conditions. These are not discussed as women are trained to follow the ‘culture of silence’. Awareness among men about these conditions women experience is low.
•Even in these disruptive times, women’s safety should become a priority. Be it domestic violence, women’s depression and anxiety-related matters, or their safety while at work, all these issues need to be addressed and responded to. According to 2015-16 National Family Health Survey, around 30% of women in the age group 15 to 49 years face domestic violence. A recent report highlighted how the National Commission for Women has received 587 complaints relating to crimes against women from March 23 to April 16, out of which 239 were related to domestic violence.
•Assigning ASHA workers to specifically address women’s welfare during this pandemic, setting up exclusive cells to quickly address domestic violence and women’s health-related issues, including men in conversations, and even online counselling for alcoholism in men are not difficult to implement. Steps such as roping in non-governmental organisations, psychology students, teachers and volunteers and also using technology platforms would help speed action. What is important is to develop a culture of including women’s safety in the planning phase itself irrespective of whatever the nature of the crisis is.
On helplines
•Gender parity needs to be a conscious act and this observation is related to those who answer helplines. When only women attend these calls, we are reinforcing the stereotypical ‘care-giver’ role of women. Instead, we need to have a well-trained and gender-inclusive team which can handle such calls well.
📰 Takeover fears
A nuanced approach on Chinese investments using automatic route may have been better
•The government’s decision to ban foreign direct investments (FDI) through the automatic route from neighbouring countries that share a land border with India has raised eyebrows. This is mainly because the move is seen as aimed at Chinese investors who could exploit cheap valuations in the depressed economic conditions post-lockdown to pick up equity interest in select companies. India is not alone in this fear of “opportunistic takeovers”, as Press Note 3(2020 Series) of the Commerce Ministry described it. Italy, Spain, France and Australia have already taken similar action to protect their businesses from foreign (read Chinese) investors fishing for distressed entities in need of cash in the post-COVID-19 scenario. China’s investment in India has been on a sharp upcurve in the last five years. According to a Brookings India study, the total current and planned investment by Chinese entities is over $26 billion. Chinese capital is invested not just in brick-and-mortar industries but in technology and fintech start-ups where Alibaba and Tencent have funded a host of Indian names such as Paytm, Swiggy, Ola, Zomato and BigBasket. It is quite possible that a move to curb or control Chinese investment in Indian companies was always on the cards and that COVID-19 was a good excuse to pull the trigger. There has always been unease over the fact that there is a thin line that divides the state sector from private enterprise in China and several companies there trace linkages back to the security apparatus of that country.
•So, while the decision to introduce a layer of government approval is probably valid in the current circumstances, the government could have adopted a more nuanced approach. Greenfield investments should have been kept out of the purview as they do not pose a threat of takeover of existing business; to the contrary, they create new capacities and businesses in the country. A distinction should also have been made based on the class of investors: venture capital funds are financial investors who may not necessarily be interested in taking over and running a business. While the FDI route has been plugged, it is not clear what happens to investments that come through the market route. SEBI has already sent out missives to custodians asking for details of Chinese holdings in listed entities. How will this be regulated? And again, what happens to FDI that comes in through entities registered in countries that do not share a land border with India but which may trace their beneficial ownership to China? And, now that the wall has been raised, approvals should be quick for investment proposals in the technology start-up space, where cash burn is high and existing investors are often tapped for a top-up investment.
📰 The occasion to revisit the sovereign’s role
There has to be a discourse on redefining the state’s involvement in India’s political, economic and social life
•Let us make no mistake. COVID-19 is forcing a paradigm shift. We are unlikely to return to a pre-coronavirus homeostasis after the war against it is won. No section or sector is going to remain untouched and unaltered by the devastation the novel coronavirus is now unleashing. The virus is going to stay around for a while. Its annihilation in the near future is not on the cards. Vaccines are going to be slow in coming; therefore, its taming is not immediate. A second wave of outbreak is a realistic probability.
•Unlike other threats to humanity such as global warming and a nuclear armageddon, this threat is now, not in the future; it is here simultaneously for everyone, not for someone else and somewhere else; its casualties are around us, not in far away battlefields or polar regions and coastal areas. No country can rescue another; it is each one fending for itself.
Defining moment
•COVID-19 threatens to push the world into a deep recession. If the lockdown continues, the world economy will contract by as much as 6% according to the International Monetary Fund. If it is not extended, the loss of human lives could be of unacceptable proportions. The global community will be fortunate if it does not spiral into depression. Both demand and supply contractions are likely to be severe. They are not going to be short-lived. Political systems, economic architectures and cultural mores are on trial. Work patterns, production and distribution practices are up for redefinition. Denial and wishing away unpleasant, yet probable, realities by governments, global organisations and public intellectuals will only compound economic, social, political and human costs. We must now be quick in seizing lessons from the present crisis and get ready to embark on measures to build a new paradigm of life, work and governance.
•The enlarged economic role of the state in the aftermath of the Second World War came under major assault since the 1980s. Leaders who asked ‘where is society?’ rode to power on ‘cut the damn government down’ ticket. Systems that were putative alternatives to capitalism fell into disgrace. Entrepreneurs heading unicorns and ‘soonicorns’ have become the new demigods. Minimum governance became the mantra. India too willy-nilly signed up to this creed. But COVID-19 is beginning to challenge the political economy of this creed. Very soon the full scores of the performance of state and non-state actors in the COVID-19 stress test will be available across the globe. The Indian state will also have to give answers as far as its report card is concerned.
The retreat of the state
•India embarked on the path of trimming the role of the state, initially, with such caveats as ‘safety net’ and ‘reform with a human face’. Gradually, those caveats fell by the wayside. The lurch became sharp, unapologetic and full-throated. The Indian state’s role in health care, education, creation and maintenance of infrastructure and delivery of welfare has shrunk or become nominal, half-hearted, inefficient, and dysfunctional. Of course, it is true that it did not give a great account of itself in these sectors even before the 1991 departure. Disappointment with the dismal performance in its economic and administrative functions in the backdrop of a changing global ideological ecosystem encouraged a sharp de facto downsizing of the Indian state’s role. Its retreat from vital functions and abdication of its social responsibility have gained acceptance and legitimacy among the articulate upwardly mobile. While retreat and abdication found influential and forceful evangelists, selective retreat had few advocates.
•This departure, however, was not vigorously interrogated. When it was, it was limited to the broad ideological opposition from the left which defended the discredited position of the Indian state occupying the commanding heights of the economy. Supporters of the departure, on the other hand, had little engagement in giving shape to the new policy. Nor did they worry about calibrating the architecture of the emerging role for the state. As a result, ‘private sector’ became the new holy cow in place of the ‘state sector’. What made matters worse is the culture of a simplistic and shallow discourse of public policy that took hold in civil society. It mindlessly privileges the agenda of corporates. It transacts in the idiom of stock exchanges and international rating agencies.
Lost voices
•Therefore, those with no social media handles, who cannot organise annual ‘thought’ conclaves, who are incapable of highlighting their problems with impressive presentations are rendered voiceless. Today, those who bear the brunt of the consequences of shrunken and unresponsive state are the farmer and farm labour, the migrant worker, the unemployed, those in the unorganised sector, the rural poor, and the small entrepreneur. They are paying the highest price for the necessary but unbearable lockdown. They are either stranded far away from home, or confined to their homes with no work and incomes, unsupported by the state. Underfunded public health systems are unable to serve them. Tips on how to beat lockdown blues, how to work from home, use Zoom, spend quality time with family that fill our pullouts are irrelevant for them. But the dominant strand of public discourse is out of its depth. It has no time for these concerns. Worse, this discourse can be gamed from time to time. And the alternative discourse is too feeble to draw the attention of the government to the grave implications of COVID-19 for the weak in our society.
Time for tough questions
•But the state’s first responsibility is the marginalised. They are also the crucial part of our economy. They lubricate its wheels and generate demand. Announcing stimulus packages that address the supply side alone without beefing up the demand side will be self-defeating to corporates. Prioritising the needs of corporate entities will lead to convulsions in our body politic in the wake of COVID-19. The state is in danger of forfeiting legitimacy if it does not ensure the survival and revival of the marginalised sections.
•This is the appropriate context to revisit the political economy of the Indian state and its role. The country should begin a vigorous discourse on redefining every aspect of its involvement in our collective political, economic and social life. The relation between the state and economy, its role in allocating resources and addressing questions of inequality, its duty to provide basic human needs, the extent of the market’s role in providing services such as health, education, civic amenities, and the responsibility of the state and private enterprise towards deprived sections, need urgent attention.
•We should re-examine the efficacy of our political structures too: the equation between citizens and government and what its implications are for individual freedom, privacy and national security; the equation between legislature and executive; the balance of administrative and financial power between provinces and the union on the one hand and provinces and local bodies on the other. The way we elect our representatives to legislatures must also come under the lens. The issue of atrophied local authorities and enfeebled legislatures needs attention. For, they are at the coalface, delivering the state to the citizen. The way legislatures are elected and governments are made and unmade must be scrutinised. Our outrage at the power of big money in our electoral system has not arrested its growth. The role of serving and retired members of higher judiciary ought to be a part of the debate.
•We had an opportunity for intensive debate when the Justice Venkatachaliah Commission submitted its report in 2002 (to review the working of the Constitution). We missed it. The opportunity that COVID-19 provides should not be squandered. The Indian state should be strong so that the weak in our society can lean on it. Our rishis told us: durbalasya balam Raja. The strength of the weak is the Sovereign. Not the market.
📰 Nurturing air power to meet rising demand
Indian airlift capability will be increasingly called upon for humanitarian aid and disaster relief
•In early April, Pakistan Air Traffic Controller sent a laudatory message to Air India for operating special flights to Frankfurt with relief material and evacuated European nationals. This is indicative of the important role of Indian air power, which has been particularly visible in the last two months. Air power is the total aviation capability of a nation, military and civilian put together.
•Soon after the novel coronavirus began spreading, Air India evacuated Indian nationals from Wuhan, China. India’s flag carrier has since continued its yeoman service by evacuating Indians from other countries as well as foreign nationals from India on the request of their embassies. C-17 Globemasters and IL-76 aircraft of the Indian Air Force (IAF) have been on the job too. While going where national interests require them to, they are also showcasing Indian air power subtly. This was seen recently when India’s Consulate staff from Herat in Afghanistan were evacuated by a C-130 Super Hercules aircraft in secrecy. Incidentally, 58 IAF aerial assets (transport aircraft and helicopters) are carrying out internal COVID-19-related tasks like transporting medicines, equipment and medical samples for evaluation from inaccessible areas. While the civilian fleet is an important adjunct, it’s the IAF’s aerial assets that constitute the potency in national airlift capability. This piece is about the importance of nurturing India’s air power assets.
Rescue efforts
•Recent history is witness to their untiring work in building brand India. In 1957, and then in 1978, the IAF was sent to Sri Lanka for flood relief efforts, as it was to Bangladesh in 1991 after the cyclone. Following the Indian Ocean tsunami of December 2004, 30 transport aircraft and 16 helicopters flew round the clock in India’s island territories; two IL-78 aerial refuelling tankers were stripped of their fuselage fuel tanks overnight and the aircraft pressed into relief. In addition, six Mi 8 helicopters were sent to help Sri Lanka.
•In the international academic circuit, however, the Berlin airlift is quoted as the gold standard for an air logistics campaign. True, it was staggering — 2.3 million tonnes of load were transported into West Berlin between June 1948 and September 1949. However, a modern-day airlift of greater proportions has not been heralded as much. Following Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait in 1990, Indian nationals were flown out via Amman. Air India, along with IL-76s of the IAF, flew home 1,11,000 Indians (some documents say 1,76,000) in 488 flights from Amman to Mumbai in just two months. Translated to tonnage, that is almost 10 million tonnes! It’s true that the circumstances were different, but this brought to fore the airlift capability of India’s air power. And only Air India was used. The civil airline fleet has grown manifold, and when required, more, literally all, aircraft can be requisitioned.
•The IAF transport fleet was in the forefront to retrieve casualties from Kabul following the 2008 bombing of the Indian embassy. The only delay then was the clearance from Islamabad to overfly Pakistan. The Uttarakhand flash floods in 2013 saw what was perhaps the biggest helicopter evacuation in history, with 23,892 pilgrims evacuated in only a week. At any given time during that calamity, there were 54 helicopters of all types, of which 45 were from the IAF. The trajectory of the COVID-19 infestation in India is still unknown, so the IAF will surely be called into action many more times.
•The IL-76 fleet of 10-odd aircraft has been around for almost four decades now. The same is true for the short haul An-32s, which number 100. While these will soldier on for a few more years, it is the fleet of the eleven C-17s that will shoulder the responsibility of national tasks. In some humanitarian assistance and disaster relief (HADR) tasks, the C-130J Super Hercules have also been pressed into service. While there is no doubt that emergency situations demand all hands on deck, the temptation of using these aircraft with their superb short-field operations capability, but whose primary role is covert special operations, needs to be really thought through. Utilising their flying hours for sub-optimal tasks would be operationally and financially unviable. The helicopter fleet is well placed with around 250 Mi-17 series helicopters, about 80 ALH Dhruv, and 15 new Chinook heavy-lift machines. The Chetak/Cheetah fleet will be around for a few more years and will be indispensable for narrow valleys and high-altitude operations. With the capability of a C-17 to carry a Chinook in its hold, Indian air power can, quickly, come to the aid of friends in the neighbourhood, and at some distance too. The foresight exhibited by the civilian and military leadership in the past to equip the IAF with these assets, as a result of which India can confidently claim to be a regional HADR provider, is now bearing fruit. The same far-sightedness is required to meet the challenges of the coming decades.
Challenges
•The biggest challenge is that all of India’s medium- and heavy-lift assets are foreign sourced, except the Dhruv and Chetak/Cheetah helicopters. The IL-76 and An-32, which have been the IAF’s workhorses, will be phased out soon and so will the short haul Avros. Finances will have to be found for their replacements. Planning for this must happen now. Despite the fact that the latest parliamentary committee report has adversely commented on the funding for capital acquisitions in FY-2019-20 being just 65% of projections, the government has to take a call. As India takes on a greater regional leadership role and as climate change results in an increase in the frequency and number of natural calamities, the demands on Indian air power for HADR will mount, including from countries in the neighbourhood. The requirements for internal law and order and air maintenance airlift for the Army for forward areas, both of which are substantial, will also continue. Increased utilisation of airlift assets would mean higher maintenance requirements, and since most are foreign sourced, they will have to be sent abroad for major servicing. This will result in reduced aircraft availability for long durations.
•If we look at India’s forward planning, the scene isn’t very rosy. The COVID-19 crisis will demand massive financial resources to be transferred to the social sector for the next few years — and rightly so. The GDP’s downward trend may only get steeper as manufacturing, agriculture and employment take a hit. The Ministry of Defence will need all its persuasive powers to generate the required monies from the scarce resources with the Finance Ministry, if Indian air power’s HADR capability is to be in the forefront of its military diplomacy. There is no other alternative considering the intense ongoing geopolitical power play in the region. We also need to spare a thought for Air India: where would Indian air power be without it in times of calamities?
