📰 India will never be a part of an alliance system: Jaishankar
‘Global shifts opening spaces for middle powers like India’
•Non-alignment is an old concept today, but India will never be a part of an alliance system, according to External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar.
•Speaking about the consequences of global shifts, including the United States and the assertiveness of China, he said they were opening spaces for middle powers like India, Japan, the European Union and others.
•“Non-alignment was a term of a particular era and geopolitical landscape. One aspect was independence, which remains a factor of continuity for us,” Mr. Jaishankar said at a virtual conference organised by CNBC-TV18 on the “Geopolitics of opportunity: as the world rebalances, how should India capitalise?”
•“The consequence of repositioning of the United States, that the big umbrella is now smaller than it used to be, has allowed many other countries to play more autonomous roles. It doesn’t affect us as much because we were never part of an alliance system and we will never be. But countries who depended more on the U.S. are finding they have to take a call themselves on many issues,” he noted.
•India must now take more “risks”, as the world expected it to take a more proactive stance on the “big issues” of the day, including connectivity, maritime security, terrorism, climate change and terrorism, he stated.
•While he didn’t comment on the ongoing tensions over the Line of Actual control (LAC), the Minister said that India had moved slowly in comparison to China on the economic front, and that China’s economy was now five times that of India’s despite them being the same size in 1988.
•“In comparison with China and with South East Asia, we could have done better. We didn’t intensively industrialise and push manufacturing, we opened up much later, a full decade and a half after China, and then didn’t commit to full reforms the way China did,” Mr. Jaishankar said, speaking with Singapore-based academic C. Rajamohan and businessman Sunil Munjal.
Innovations in managing the COVID-19 pandemic can help India revolutionise care delivery and related outcomes
•On July 10, the Director-General, World Health Organization (WHO), Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, acknowledged the success of Mumbai’s densely populated Dharavi slum in containing the COVID-19 pandemic. Mumbai, Delhi, Chennai, Ahmedabad and Bengaluru are among India’s major metropolitan agglomerations and are also the current foci of the pandemic within the country. This points to both the speed and the scale of the epidemic moving within densely populated areas as well as success in the way sustained municipal efforts and community participation can together blunt the spread of the virus. The case of Dharavi is an example.
Opportunity to act
•On the previous day, nearly 100 days after the first 14-hour janata curfew day on March 22, the Minister of Health highlighted how 49 districts out of the 733 in India accounted for 80% of the nearly eight lakh cases, with eight States accounting for 90% of all the incident cases. Since then, the overall case numbers have moved steadily past the million mark and India is now third in global case standings. Despite this position, and the daily accretion of new infections that are upwards of 30,000 in the past few days, the distribution of cases also presents itself as the world’s biggest opportunity to intervene and blunt the global toll of the epidemic.
•Taking the given numbers at face value, there are on average roughly 250 cases per district in about 700 districts; many of these districts may be closer to having no cases, while others may be at a significantly higher incidence. Be that as they may be, the low numbers in a large number of districts present officials the opportunity of stemming the epidemic and preventing morbidity, mortality and economic distress in a significant way.
Key steps at ground level
•The first step towards this would be to disaggregate the COVID-19 tracking mechanisms and the national level tables and graphs that are updated daily. Instead, there should be 733 district-level versions, where each one is updated and reported on a daily basis, at the district level. State and national summaries are important but are not as critical as ensuring the accuracy and timeliness of district-level tracking. The first output of such disaggregation will be to see, with great relief, the number of districts with extremely small or no incidence numbers. In order that they retain their low incidence status, such districts should be supported with all comprehensive testing kits and contact tracing know-how. The earlier scheme of designating districts as green, yellow and red will be strengthened with this disaggregated reporting.
•A significant step in this direction would be to encourage District Magistrates (as they are already empowered), to use the full range of social support schemes available in support of the District Health Officer and team, to be able to prevent anyone from facing situations of hunger or economic distress. In addressing an epidemic, if better household nutrition and income outcomes can be obtained, then these would be a huge win — this has been an aim but on this, there has been widely variable achievement.
•The testing capacity in the district can be scaled up dramatically by coopting the science departments of every college and university. Thus, chemistry and zoology-allied departments such as microbiology and biochemistry can lend their laboratory services to carry out basic polymerase chain reaction (PCR)-based tests. This will require administrative imagination and collaboration from the Indian Council of Medical Research, the Department of Biotechnology as well as the University Grants Commission. Such a step can create the equivalent of the rush, as seen in the late 1990s, for information technology/computer training among students for better job prospects. Despite all the current uncertainty, one thing is certain — health care will be a reliable career opportunity (from the laboratory to the bedside, and all points in between and beyond). Not using emerging talents in educational institutions in tier 2 and tier 3 towns in many districts in India would be a wasted opportunity, both in terms of training and nurturing ambitions.
On testing
•For those who point to the complexity of current testing protocols, and difficulty in coopting college-level infrastructure and staff, it would be good to look at rapid innovations that have been surfacing within the past 12 weeks globally. It will not be very long before testing could become a self-administered process. One has to look at recent insights into using saliva as the start point for testing rather than using a nasopharyngeal swab for sampling.
•Increased testing is not only necessary, indeed, it will be the single biggest contributor to stemming the tide of morbidity and mortality in India and the rest of the world. Wherever testing has been constrained, incidence rates have risen. Epidemics are not to be treated as law and order situations with policing. Lockdowns, without on-demand testing, are administratively easy-to-administer exercises. But they are harsh, with possibilities of multiple collateral damage at the community and economy levels.
•Freely available, quality assured testing, even without lockdowns, can achieve far more — they inspire confidence among the population, encourage early treatment seeking behaviour, and at a public health level, enable the understanding of disease dynamics within the community. Imaginatively expanding testing by coopting all colleges and technical institutions (till individual level test kits become available) represents the best opportunity to prevent the epidemic from becoming a surge in over 80% of the Indian population.
Chance for biotech
•Besides providing opportunities in the health-care and biotechnological spheres for young minds, the emphasis should also be to encourage innovators and entrepreneurs to bring out and scale up their products without making compromises on the standards or rigor of evidence needed for regulatory and manufacturing approval. India is the pharmacy to the world, and with a coordinated effort, the COVID-19 crisis can provide the Y2K equivalent for India’s biotech and biopharmaceutical enterprises. At the moment, the world is increasingly looking at personalised diagnostics and therapeutics.
•If with a positive test report, COVID-19 positive individuals were able to monitor their own oxygenation status at home, along with basic fever management medicines, and based on predetermined cutoffs, were able to seek and obtain care at oxygen equipped care facilities, we would both be building on expanding the network of monitoring exponentially, and addressing morbidity earlier in its course. This requires two bold administrative leaps: ensure every positive diagnosis report is also delivered along with a pulse oximeter and phone number to call and report status on; and ensure that there would be enough oxygen-equipped beds in every nook and corner of the country.
•Both are industry-supporting leaps. The availability of oxygen and its measurement in individuals have health and economic impacts, and the earlier both are made at significant scale, the better the outcome for a large number of individuals who just need additional oxygen support to make it to the other side of a COVID-19 illness.
•For the roughly 3% to 5% of people who will need more than oxygen support, we need to ensure that our doctors, nurses, laboratory personnel and floor workers in hospitals are protected with everything they deserve — personal protective equipment to safety at home, and salaries on time. In tandem, critical engagement from Indian biopharmaceutical and biotech companies should be encouraged to produce validated and affordable antiviral drugs and monoclonal antibodies.
•India’s general health-care spending has been far below optimal. But if innovations to help manage the current crisis are suitably capitalised on, they can enable India to move far ahead in health-care delivery and related outcomes. COVID-19 is both a crisis and an opportunity for health-care reform as well as understanding the interplay of health outcomes with social and economic support interventions, and limitations of law enforcement in managing epidemics.
📰 Big reform on the wrong track
The planned privatisation of some services of the Indian Railways could impact maintenance, operations and welfare
•The Indian Railways is the lifeline of India. With its vast network across the length and breadth of India, it is not just a mere transporter of passengers and goods but also a social welfare organisation.
•While the addition of more trains with high technology coaches to meet passenger expectations is a welcome feature, it is the way of privatising these trains that is the problem.
•The Railway Board says the “objective of the initiative was to introduce modern technology rolling stock with reduced maintenance, reduced transit time, boost job creation, provide enhanced safety, provide world class travel experience to passengers, and also reduce demand supply deficit in the passenger transportation sector”. But this is a step which will lead to dual control and split responsibility, resulting in higher fares, depriving the common man of travel by these trains, and repercussions in terms of maintenance and operations.
•The United Kingdom and Japan have privatised their rail systems completely and not partially, but most countries have retained their rail networks for public convenience.
•In India, the selection of private parties using the tendering process is now under way and proposes two-stage competitive bidding. While short listing will be based on financial capacity (with sharing of gross revenue), the selected parties can fix fares by themselves. These parties have to pay fixed haulage charges, energy charges based on actual consumption, and a share in gross revenue through the bidding process.
•The main criterion is procurement of coaches by the concessionaire and form them into rakes of 16 coaches each, with maintenance at 10 major stations from where the trains will operate to their destinations. For maintenance, existing depots and yard facilities at different stations will be made use of. But this will result in conflict as it is a daily exercise. Only where adequate facilities are not available, the concessionaire has to invest in creating the required facilities. The project entails a total investment of Rs. 30,000 crore by private enterprises. The cost of investment at each of those stations varies from Rs. 2,300 crore to Rs. 3,500 crore.
Fixing responsibility
•According to the project information memorandum issued by the Railway Board, railway crew will work the trains (151 trains in 109 routes) which will be maintained by the private investor. All the other infrastructure (track and associated structures, stations, signalling, security and their daily maintenance) owned by the Railways will be fully utilised in running trains. Thus, the responsibility of the private investor ends with investment in the procurement and maintenance of coaches. Train operation, safety and dealing with every day problems rests with the Railways. In case of an unfortunate event, how do we fix responsibility when the coaches are owned by the investor but operated by the Railways and its staff? Provision of an independent regulator to resolve disagreement, discords and disputes will not solve day-to-day problems of dichotomy unless the basic issue is resolved.
•Coaches in India are not of international standard (ICF Design – 1955 Swiss design or LHB Design (German 2000 design). At the time of introduction, these technologies were 20 years old. There have been sea changes in coach designs and the Indian Railways should go in for state-of-the-art coach designs using ‘transfer of technology (ToT) with world leaders. Our coach building units are capable of building such train sets with ToT.
Speed and changes
•While raising the maximum running speed to 160 kmph is welcome measure, accomplishing this in the timeframe given will be difficult. Nearly all trunk routes in the existing network are speed limited to 110 kmph (maximum speed); very few permit speeds of upto 120-130 kmph. To raise it to 160 kmph, as proposed, there has to be track strengthening, elimination of curves and level crossing gates and strengthening of bridges. It also calls for track fencing especially in densely populated areas. Also, from the timings for different trains given by the Railway Board there is no appreciable reduction in transit time for most trains when compared with the timings of the fastest train now operating on that route. This requires a critical review.
•It is surprising to note in the proposal that the Railways or government have no role in fixing passenger fares. This is an unacceptable situation. On the contrary, full liberty is being given to the concessionaire to unilaterally fix fares for these proposed trains that are on a par with air and airconditioned bus fares. It will be beyond the common man’s reach. Fare concessions extended to several categories of people will not be made available by the private investor. The very objective of commissioning the Railways as a public welfare transport organisation is defeated.
•In the private sector, operations are run with an eye on staff costs which can endanger safety. Also, the private investor is not bound to follow reservation regulations in employment, in turn depriving employment opportunities for those who are on the margins of society.
•In this context, the message of the then Prime Minister, after Independence, and at the time of the inauguration of the Central and Western Railways is apt: “The Railways are and will continue to be our greatest national undertaking. They deal intimately with scores of millions of people in the country and have to look after their comfort and convenience. They deal also with a very large number of employees whose welfare should always should be their concern.”
•There should be no need for the government to take a dual role of a facilitator as well as a participant. In the case of the metro railway services (Hyderabad, for example), an ideal PPP project, the concessionaire is solely responsible for daily maintenance, operation, passenger amenities and staff issues. The State government steps in when it comes to land, power, permissions, law and order, etc. Fare determination is in consultation with the government.
Think IRCTC
•Instead of a private entrepreneur, who would be new to the job, why not entrust this to the Indian Railway Catering and Tourism Corporation, a government undertaking which has gained experience in running the Tejas Express trains? There will be ‘unity of command’ in maintenance, operation and passenger services under the single administration of the Railways and its undertaking. As per the Eligibility Conditions specified in “Request for Qualification (RFQ)” Para[graph] 2.2.1(b), Public Undertakings such as the IRCTC are eligible to participate in tendering for this project. Para[graph] 2.2.3 stipulates operation & maintenance experience in maintaining rolling stock. The IRCTC is well-suited for this role.
•When the government of India is prepared to invest over a lakh-crore rupees to introduce the Bullet train on a single sector and which would cater to the elite, why not invest in the IRCTC, a government undertaking, in the new project, which will serve crores of people across the country?
•This project of privatisation of trains should not result in the common man being deprived of travel facilities. We wish to reiterate that the Indian Railways is a strategic resource for the nation and provides a vital public good. Hence, it should not be judged solely on its profit-generating capability or market-based return on investment.
