📰 U.S. pushing relations to the brink of a new Cold War: China
Foreign Minister says Beijing is open to international probe led by the WHO
•The United States is pushing relations with China to “the brink of a new Cold War,” China’s Foreign Minister said on Sunday, rejecting Washington’s “lies” over the coronavirus while saying Beijing was open to an international effort to find its source.
•Keeping up the worsening war of words with Washington over the pandemic and a Beijing move to tighten control over Hong Kong, Wang Yi said the United States had been infected by a “political virus” compelling figures there to continually attack China.
•“It has come to our attention that some political forces in the U.S. are taking China-U.S. relations hostage and pushing our two countries to the brink of a new Cold War,” Mr. Wang told reporters during a press conference at China’s week-long annual parliamentary session.
Long-standing friction
•Long-standing friction between the two powers over trade, human rights and a range of other issues have been pushed to new heights since the virus outbreak.
•Mr. Wang did not identify what “forces” he was referring to, but U.S. President Donald Trump has led world criticism of China’s initial response to the pandemic, which has caused more than 3,40,000 deaths and economic carnage worldwide.
•Mr. Trump and members of his administration have said China covered up the emergence of the virus late last year and bungled its initial response.
•Washington’s criticism has been widely seen in the United States as an attempt by Mr. Trump to divert attention from the White House’s own COVID-19 failures.
•Mr. Wang took an apparent swipe at the U.S. struggles to contain the virus, which has now infected more people in the United States than anywhere else. “I call on the U.S. to stop wasting time and stop wasting precious lives,” Mr. Wang said. He said China was “open” to international scientific cooperation to identify the source of the novel coronavirus, but stressed that any investigation must be “free of political interference”, based on science and led by the World Health Organization.
•The WHO has called on Beijing to invite the UN body in to investigate the source, but Mr. Wang did not indicate if foreign scientists would be invited to come to China. “Some political figures in the U.S. rush to label the virus and politicise its origins, stigmatising China,” Mr. Wang said, adding that an investigation must “oppose any presumption of guilt”.
•Most scientists believe the virus jumped from animals to humans after emerging in China, possibly from a market in the central city of Wuhan where exotic animals were sold for meat.
•Governments including the U.S. and Australia have called in recent weeks for an investigation into the exact origins of the virus.
Global response
•China has proposed instead that the “global response” to COVID-19 should only be assessed when the pandemic is over. WHO members on Tuesday adopted a resolution, tabled by the European Union, at the UN body’s first virtual assembly to review the international handling of the pandemic, but it does not single out China. “Aside from the devastation caused by the novel coronavirus, there is also a political virus spreading through the U.S.,” he said. “This political virus is the use of every opportunity to attack and smear China. Some politicians completely disregard basic facts and have fabricated too many lies targeting China, and plotted too many conspiracies.”
•The introduction at China’s legislature on Friday of a proposal to impose a security law in Hong Kong to suppress the semi-autonomous city’s pro-democracy movement also has drawn U.S. and world condemnation.
•But Mr. Wang defended the plan, saying it must be implemented “without the slightest delay”, adding that months of often-violent Hong Kong protests last year against China’s growing influence in the financial hub had “seriously endangered China’s national security”.
Income support serves a purpose,but the farm sector needs a lot more
•The Rajiv Gandhi Kisan Nyay Yojana launched by Chhattisgarh last week aims to supplement the income of the State’s 18 lakh rice, maize and sugarcane farmers by Rs. 10,000 to Rs. 13,000 per acre, through direct cash transfers. Besides the Centre’s PM-KISAN scheme that provides Rs. 6,000 to farm families owning less than five acres of land, Telangana, Odisha and Andhra Pradesh have similar cash transfer programmes for farmers. For balancing the interests of the consumer and the farmer, India has an extensive Minimum Support Price (MSP) regime which works in combination with the PDS. But the efficiency of neither MSP procurements nor the PDS is uniform across the country. The Centre says it fixes MSPs at 1.5 times the cost of production for farmers, but this calculation is not free of controversy. Last year, several States including Chhattisgarh and BJP-ruled U.P. and Haryana questioned the Centre’s MSP calculations. Though food is a universal necessity, those who produce it languish at the bottom of the economic pyramid.
•These income support schemes target land owners, and bypass tenants and labourers. In Chhattisgarh, there is preliminary evidence that tenants managed better rates from owners last year after the government gave incentives over and above MSPs to farmers. The State is now designing a cash transfer scheme for landless labourers, according to Chief Minister Bhupesh Baghel. But these interventions are only palliative and cannot address the underlying problem, which is the non-remunerative nature of farming. A more market-driven approach has often been proposed as the solution, and the agriculture-related components in the Centre’s response to the economic crisis caused by the pandemic appear to toe that line. However, many previous arguments about the agriculture economy have been rendered questionable by the pandemic. The food supply chain crisis in the U.S. is instructive. Considered supremely efficient, it ended up with wasted produce and unmet demand as the pandemic erupted. India’s agricultural management must take into account such fresh learning from the pandemic, and vulnerabilities arising out of supply chain-dependent food security. The list of pre-existing morbidities in the agriculture sector is also long, including messy land records, unscientific and unsustainable crop patterns, market linkages that make the farmers vulnerable to exploitation by officials and middlemen, inadequate irrigation, adoption of technology, conflict with wildlife, and changing weather and climate patterns. For now, the Centre must announce the MSPs for the current season at the earliest — late announcements have added to the uncertainties for the farmers in recent years. The creation of a buoyant agriculture sector will take much more, and those efforts must be made on a war-footing.
📰 Failing to perform as a constitutional court
The Supreme Court ignored migrant workers when they most needed protection
•As India, along with the rest of the world, grapples with the public health crisis caused by COVID-19, it faces many unique challenges. The most acute problem is faced by migrant labourers: they have no work, no source of income, no access to basic necessities, no quality testing facilities, no protective gear, and no means to reach home. Every day, we hear of migrant labourers walking hundreds of miles, many dying in the process. The saddest is the apathy shown by the institutions meant to look out for their interests. I refer here to the Supreme Court, which has failed to satisfactorily acknowledge that the fundamental rights of migrant labourers have been violated, and ignored these workers when they most needed protection.
•Undeniably, the state must ensure that adverse consequences of this pandemic are minimised. But any duty performed by the arms of the state, even during emergency, must always be bounded by constitutional propriety, and respect fundamental rights. The judiciary becomes the all-important watchdog in this situation.
No relief for workers
•In this lockdown, enough and more evidence points to fundamental rights of citizens having been grossly violated, and especially those of vulnerable populations like migrant labourers. But instead of taking on petitions questioning the situation, the Supreme Court has remained ensconced in its ivory tower, refusing to admit these petitions or adjourning them. By effectively not granting any relief, the Court is denying citizens of the most fundamental right of access to justice, ensured under the Constitution. In doing so, it has let down millions of migrant workers, and failed to adequately perform as a constitutional court.
•In one of the strictest lockdowns in modern India, the Centre issued many directives, but designated the States as the implementing authorities. But the issue of migrant labourers is inherently an inter-State issue, and States have had to tackle it both internally as well as inter-se. Who will guarantee safe transport for the return of migrant workers? When in quarantine, who will grant them a sustenance allowance, or look after their health issues, or look after needs besides food? Who will ensure job loss compensation? Who will conduct regular and frequent testing? Only the Supreme Court can enforce accountability of the Centre in these matters.
•In rejecting or adjourning these petitions, the Court has made several questionable remarks: the condition of migrant labourers is a matter of policy and thus, does not behove judicial interference; or, governments already provide labourers with two square meals a day, so what more can they possibly need (surely, ‘not wages’); or, incidents like the horrific accident where migrant labourers sleeping on railway tracks were killed cannot be avoided because ‘how can such things be stopped’. Equally, lawyers have been castigated for approaching the Court ‘merely’ on the basis of reports. But the Court has rarely insisted on such formality: its epistolary jurisdiction (where petitions were entertained via mere letters) is the stuff of legend, so its reaction here, during an emergency, seems anomalous.
•Many of the so-called excuses of the Court have been tackled by previous judgments, notably the question of policy and non-judicial interference. There are numerous judgments where it has laid out matters of policy: for instance, the Vishaka guidelines on sexual harassment in the workplace; the right to food; and various environmental protection policies. In these cases, the Court formulated policies and asked the States to implement them. Today, there is an unfortunate presumption discernible in the Court’s response that the government is the best judge of the situation. In believing thus, the Court seems to have forgotten that the Constitution does not fall silent in times of crises. Similarly, nothing prevents the Court from monitoring the situation itself directly, especially regarding the state’s obligations: it could easily direct bureaucrats to collect empirical data on the ground, as it has done before.
•One is struck immediately by the lack of compassion or judicial sensitivity in handling this situation, and it prompts two observations. First, the Court is not merely rejecting or adjourning these petitions; it is actively dissuading petitioners from approaching the courts for redress because the Court determines that it is the executive’s responsibility. Ordinarily, the Court would have at least nudged petitioners towards the High Courts, but here, even that choice is not available — the Court is practically slamming the door shut.
•Second, there is the matter of how the Court is treating such public interest litigations. PILs are a specific instrument designed to ensure the protection of the rights of the poor, downtrodden and vulnerable, and “any member of the public” can seek appropriate directions on their behalf. This lies at the heart of the PIL. The concept of a PIL is to be non-adversarial, but the Court is treating these as adversarial matters against the government. PILs, in fact, ought to be a collaborative effort between the court and all the parties, where everyone comes together in seeking a resolution to the problem. Today, we find ourselves with a Supreme Court that has time for a billion-dollar cricket administration, or the grievances of a high-profile journalist, while studiously ignoring the real plight of millions of migrants, who do not have either the money or the profile to compete for precious judicial time with other litigants.
Role of High Courts
•At this stage, I must acknowledge the stellar role being played by some High Courts, even though governments have tried to discourage them on grounds that since the Supreme Court is not interfering, High Courts need not do so either. At least four High Courts (Karnataka, Madras, Andhra Pradesh and Gujarat) have started asking questions about migrant rights. This is almost a replay of what happened during Emergency, where High Courts boldly stood up and recognised violations, but were overruled eventually by the Supreme Court. The Madras High Court, for example, has quashed criminal defamation cases against media houses, stating that democracy cannot be throttled this way. Contrast this with the Supreme Court’s reaction to the bizarre claim of the Solicitor-General who argued that the exodus of workers was due to fake news: the Court seemed to have accepted this, and media houses were advised to report more responsibly.
•In such times, High Courts come across as islands of rationality, courage and compassion. However, in truth, the subject matter of migration is inherently an inter-State issue, not an intra-State one. This is a time when the apex court must intervene and monitor the calamitous situation, instead of taking the government’s word as gospel. Justice Brandeis’ words quoted by Justice H.R. Khanna in ADM Jabalpur ring especially true in these times: “Experience should teach us to be most on our guard to protect liberty when the Government’s purposes are beneficent … [the] greatest danger to liberty lies in insidious encroachment by men of zeal, well-meaning but lacking in due deference for the rule of law.”
📰 Hardly the 1991 moment for agriculture
The reforms in agricultural marketing are no more than reiterations of earlier pronouncements
•The announcement of reforms in agricultural marketing by Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman, in May, has been hailed by some as the “1991” moment for agriculture. While it does not mean much on the ground, it has successfully managed to deflect attention from the pittance offered by way of fiscal support to the agricultural sector, as a part of the grand fiscal package announced by the Prime Minister. Even then, the reforms are no more than reiterations of earlier announcements.
•The three reforms regarding agricultural marketing were the reforms in the Agricultural Produce Marketing Committee (APMC) Act, the Essential Commodities Act, and on contract farming. All of these have been in discussion for almost two decades, with the APMC Act having already seen substantial reforms in many States. The first comprehensive model act on APMC was proposed during 2003, and since then, similar efforts to push for more reforms have been proposed in 2007, 2013, and as late as 2017 by the present government.
APMCs and changes by States
•The main argument against the APMC Act is that it creates barriers to the entry and exit of traders and makes the sale and purchase of agricultural produce compulsory for farmers as well as traders. Some of the criticism regarding the functioning of the APMC is valid, to which State governments have been responsive; as many as 17 State governments having amended the APMC Act to make it more liberal. In fact, the regulations and the functioning of mandis vary a great deal across States. Kerala does not have an APMC Act and Bihar repealed it in 2006. But several others such as Maharashtra, West Bengal, Odisha, Gujarat, and Andhra Pradesh deregulated fruits and vegetables trade, allowed private markets, introduced a unified trading licence and have introduced a single-point levy of market fee. Tamil Nadu has already reformed its APMC with no market fee. Several others such as Jharkhand, Himachal Pradesh, Uttarakhand, Haryana and Rajasthan have undertaken one or more of these reforms. Many States have introduced direct marketing of farm produce, examples being the Uzhavar Sandhai (Tamil Nadu), the Rythu Bazaar (Andhra Pradesh and Telangana), the Raitha Santhe (Karnataka), the Apni Mandi (Punjab) and the Krushak Bazaar – Odisha).
•Despite these reforms, APMC mandis continue to be vilified for all the ills plaguing marketing infrastructure and the low prices received by the farmers for their produce. The problem with mandis is not the regulation per se and the structure of mandis but the political interference in the functioning of the markets. These are more obvious in case of large mandis specialising in commercial crops and fruits and vegetables, where production is regionally concentrated. But even with these deficiencies, APMC mandis continue to play an important role in providing access to market for farmers.
The Bihar example
•But did the reforms lead to a better outcome for farmers in those States where the reforms were undertaken? The best example is Bihar. The general argument in favour of reforms is that it will allow private investment in marketing infrastructure as well as provide more choices to farmers, leading to better prices received by farmers. In the case of Bihar, while no investment came in building market infrastructure, the loss of revenue due to the repeal of the APMC also led to deterioration of existing infrastructure (of the 54 market yards) in the State. The revenue collected from the APMC earlier was used not only for the modernisation of these market yards but also for the laying of roads and construction of other infrastructure to provide farmers better access to markets. But after the repeal, there have been no takers for these market yards, with no investment in creating private mandis . On the other hand, it has led to proliferation of private unregulated markets which charge a market fee from traders as well as farmers, and without any infrastructure for weighing, sorting, grading and storage. Even in other States where there is deregulation to allow private traders, there is hardly any investment to create market spaces let alone provide other facilities. There is also no evidence that farmers have received better prices in private mandis outside the APMC.
•While there have been instances of collusion and corruption in the running of the APMC, they continue to provide essential services to farmers. However, the vilification of APMCs has allowed the government to escape the responsibility of creating marketing infrastructure for millions of farmers. As against the recommendation that a regulated market should be available to farmers within a radius of 5 km (a corresponding market area of about 80 sq. km), currently regulated markets cover 457 sq. km. There are more than 7,000 regulated markets and 20,000 rural markets when the need is at least twice these figures. Most of the existing ones require investment in upgradation of infrastructure.
•Even the argument that the only bottleneck for farmers not receiving remunerative prices is due to the APMC Act is flawed. More than 80% of farmers, most of whom are small and marginal farmers, do not sell their produce in the APMC mandis . For a majority of farmers, prices received are more a function of the demand for agricultural commodities than access to markets.
•A good example is the case of decline in milk prices, pointed out by the Finance Minister herself. Despite the presence of cooperatives and private dairies, the collapse of milk prices reflects the decline in demand in the economy, not the distortions in private markets. While it may have exacerbated during the national lockdown following the COVID-19 pandemic, the fact that demand was declining even before the lockdown is now well known.
Decline in demand
•For much of the period during the last two years, terms of trade have moved against agriculture, with agricultural commodity price inflation actually being negative for a large part of the last two years. With underlying weakness in demand and obsession with inflation targeting through fiscal and monetary policies, most agricultural commodities have seen a sharp decline in demand and, consequently, prices received by farmers. The argument for choice of markets is only valid as long as there are buyers with purchasing power in the market. No amount of marketing reforms will lead to higher price realisation for farmers if the underlying macroeconomic conditions are unfavourable to agriculture and farmers.
Increase fiscal spending
•Even before the lockdown, the primary task of the government, especially the Finance Ministry should have been to increase fiscal spending to revive demand in the economy. This has become even more necessary after the sharp decline in incomes, job losses and decline in demand following the lockdown and expected contraction in economic activity for the year ahead. With international prices also showing declining trend, the urgency is to protect the farmers from the decline in commodity prices.
•As against these, the announcement of these reforms without a draft and without proper consultation with States or other stakeholders is nothing but a smokescreen to deflect attention from the core issue of fiscal support by the government to support farmers’ income. If the government is serious in providing remunerative prices to farmers, it needs to increase fiscal spending to create demand in the economy. These, rather than the hollow announcements of reforms, will go a long way in ensuring higher incomes to farmers.
📰 The need for a million worksites now
Averting a humanitarian disaster in India calls for an explosion of NREGA work in the next few weeks
•The abominable plight of migrant workers in recent weeks has invaded television screens and stirred the nation’s conscience. Alas, this is just the tip of the wave of hardships that is sweeping through the country. The situation looks increasingly alarming in the light of a series of surveys conducted by Azim Premji University (APU) and other institutions. The APU survey, for instance, found that 74% of the respondents (thousands of poor households scattered over many States) were “consuming less food” today than before the lockdown. Another survey, conducted by Farzana Afridi and her colleagues in low-income neighbourhoods of Delhi, found that 80% of the respondents had not earned any income during the lockdown, 90% reported “financial stress”, and about half were too anxious to sleep at night.
Some support from PDS
•Thankfully, the Public Distribution System (PDS) is preventing the worst. The same surveys show that an overwhelming majority of poor households (86% according to the APU survey) are currently receiving food rations. The doubling of food rations for three months was a good move on the part of the central government — there is every reason to extend it beyond the end of June. The PDS, however, leaves out 500 million people, including many who live in poverty. Further, even for those who are covered, the PDS is little more than a protection against hunger. It cannot ensure adequate nutrition, let alone a decent standard of living.
•To cope with the crisis, poor households urgently need a chance to earn cash beyond small mercies. Unconditional cash transfers are not easy to use for this purpose, because there is no simple way of identifying those in need, and covering everyone would amount to spreading the money very thin. Universal basic income is a nice idea, but when you do the maths, anything practical tends to reduce the “basic income” to a pittance. India’s National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (NREGA) offers an obvious alternative, at least for rural areas: employment on demand at basic wages.
Unprecedented demand
•The demand for NREGA work is stronger than ever. This is not surprising: most people would prefer to do some work and earn a little than to sit idle with empty pockets. This huge demand contrasts with the resilient indifference of rural workers towards NREGA in recent years, due to low wages and erratic payments. Wages are still low, and payments are still far from timely and reliable; what has changed is that for most workers today, there is nothing better on the cards.
•We had a telling experience of this renewed demand for NREGA work in a number of deprived villages of Latehar district (Jharkhand) in the last few days. In this area, the idea of work on demand is still alien to most rural workers, so few of them take the initiative of applying for NREGA work. But whenever we helped people to prepare work applications, men and women from almost every household in the village flocked to the spot with their job cards to fill the forms.
•Without assistance, however, most workers would find it difficult to submit work applications. The sad truth is that except in areas where rural workers are relatively empowered, work applications (reflected in “e-muster rolls”) are not generally initiated by the workers themselves. Instead, they are initiated on their behalf by others, who have a stake in activating NREGA works: for instance, landowners who want some work done on their land, middlemen who take cuts at various steps, government officials who are under pressure to meet targets, and village heads who wish to please or serve their constituency. In other words, NREGA works attract the workers, and not the other way around. That, at any rate, is how it tends to work in the poorer States.
•In the old days (good or bad), workers were allowed to turn up at the worksite and enrol on the spot. That made things easier for them: applying for work was a right, not an obligation. But now, it has become an obligation: no-one can be employed unless his or her name has been entered in advance in the e-muster rolls. Most workers have no idea how to go about this.
•This is one reason why the scale of NREGA works remains very low in many States in spite of a huge demand for employment. This situation calls for large-scale opening of NREGA works on a proactive basis. Every village needs at least one major worksite, where a good number of people can work at short notice (with adequate distancing precautions). Ideally, workers should be allowed to enrol at the worksite. Further, large-scale employment generation should continue throughout the monsoon, the hardest period of the year for poor people in large parts of rural India. Averting a humanitarian disaster in the next few months calls for a veritable explosion of NREGA work.
•Much can be done to facilitate this: expanding the list of permissible works, hiring more gram rozgar sevaks (employment assistants), simplifying the implementation process, mobilising para-teachers for work application drives, and so on. And of course, top-down orders to expand the scale of works could work wonders. NREGA is not supposed to be top-down, but it does have a long history of top-down orders, and after all, this is an emergency.
Switch to cash payment?
•It is also worth considering a return to cash payment of NREGA wages, at least as an option for the duration of the crisis. This would not only help to ensure timely and reliable payment of wages, but also spare workers the ordeal of extracting their wages from overcrowded banks or business correspondents. Further, cash payment of wages would act as a tremendous incentive for rural workers to demand NREGA work, whatever it takes.
•The idea of a return to cash payment of wages is likely to horrify those who trust digital payments to eliminate corruption. But recent experience suggests that this trust is misplaced. The digital payment system has merely changed the modalities of corruption in NREGA: the crooks used to fudge the paper records, now they fudge the electronic records. The latter may or may not be harder to fudge than the former depending on the circumstances. Even if cash payments are a little more vulnerable to leakages, that may be a tolerable price to pay in an emergency, to protect workers from the hazards of NREGA’s byzantine payment system. These include a payment rejection rate of 4%, according to official data, and the tyranny of “Qwicy”, as the Know Your Customer (KYC) process is known in rural Jharkhand. Of course, the possible hazards of a hasty switch to cash payments also need to be considered.
The NREGA budget
•Funds are not an immediate concern since the NREGA budget for 2020-21 has been raised to Rs. 1-lakh crore or so. But more is likely to be required to meet the tremendous demand for NREGA work. It is important to ensure that funds never dry up: this happened every year in the last few years, leading to huge wage arrears. NREGA is supposed to be a demand-driven programme with an open-ended budget; nothing in the Act authorises the government to impose a budget cap.
•These are some of the issues that arise in activating NREGA for crisis relief. The main thing is to provide work aplenty and pay wages at speed. This is a matter of life and death.
