📰 Farmers’ protest | India summons Canadian High Commissioner; issues demarche over Trudeau’s remarks
External Affairs Ministry told that such actions, if continued, would have a “seriously damaging” impact on the bilateral ties.
•Comments from the leadership and other members of the Canadian government regarding the ongoing farmers agitation is “unacceptable interference” in India's affairs, the Ministry of External Affairs said on Friday. This message was conveyed to the Canadian High Commissioner Nadir Patel by senior Indian diplomats after he was formally summoned to the ministry and handed over a demarche in this regard.
•“The Canadian High Commissioner was ..informed that comments by the Canadian Prime Minister, some Cabinet Ministers and Members of Parliament on issues relating to Indian farmers constitute an unacceptable interference in our internal affairs. Such actions, if continued, would have a seriously damaging impact on ties between India and Canada," said the Ministry of External Affairs in a statement that summed up the contents of the demarche issued to the Canadian High Commissioner.
•Friday's comment is tougher compared to the previous official statement issued on December 1 when India had avoided naming Prime Minister of Canada even though Prime Minister Justin Trudeau had expressed concern about the condition of the farmers in his Gurupurav message.
•Mr Trudeau's coalition partner Jagmeet Singh of New Democratic Party has made several public comments about the farmers agitation. In his message he had praised the farmers saying they are opposing “privatisation”. “As millions of farmers walk towards the Indian capital, they walk with this spirit (of Guru Nanak)”, Mr Singh had said on November 30. Another MP Jack Harris had criticised India's handling of the protests and said “We are shocked” during the police action against the farmers.
•The December 1 statement from the MEA had merely described the Canadian messages as “ill-informed”. However Friday's demarche says the comments from the Canadian authorities “have encouraged gatherings of extremist activities in front of our High Commission and Consulates in Canada that raise issues of safety and security.”
•The farmers agitation in India have found a strong echo among the Indo-Canadian community many of whom came from the north Indian plains. Various cities in Canada have witnessed drive by protests and gatherings by Indo-Canadians against the police action on the farmers near Delhi.
•“We expect the Canadian Government to ensure the fullest security of Indian diplomatic personnel and its political leaders to refrain from pronouncements that legitimise extremist activism,” said the MEA in its statement.
Regulator strengthens audit norms for urban cooperative banks, non-bank lenders in moves to bolster financial stability
•The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) on Friday announced the introduction of risk-based internal audit norms for large urban cooperative banks (UCBs) and non-banking financial companies (NBFCs), as part of measures aimed at improving governance and assurance functions at supervised entities.
•The RBI also moved to harmonise the guidelines on appointment of statutory auditors for commercial banks, UCBs and NBFCs in order to improve the quality of financial reporting.
•Observing that the growing significance of NBFCs and their interlinkages with different parts of the financial system had made it imperative to enhance the sector’s resilience, RBI Governor Shaktikanta Das said, it had been decided to put in place transparent criteria for the declaration of dividends by different categories of NBFCs.
Systemic risk potential
•“Further, the current regulatory regime for the NBFC sector, built on the principle of proportionality, warrants a review,” Mr. Das said. “It is felt that a scale-based regulatory approach linked to the systemic risk contribution of NBFCs could be the way forward,” he added.
•The RBI would remain strongly committed to preserving the stability of the financial sector and would do whatever was necessary, the Governor asserted.
•“While we are constantly focussed on strengthening the regulations and deepening our supervision, financial sector entities like banks and NBFCs should also give highest priority to quality of governance, risk management and internal controls,” Mr. Das stressed. “They are the first line of defence in matters relating to financial sector stability,” he said.
•With a view to deepening financial markets, regional rural banks would be allowed to access the liquidity adjustment facility (LAF) and marginal standing facility (MSF) of the RBI, as also the call/notice money market.
Secure digital payments
•To significantly improve the ecosystem of digital payment channels with robust security and convenience for users, the RBI has proposed to issue Digital Payment Security Controls directions for the regulated entities.
•“These directions will contain requirements for robust governance, implementation and monitoring of certain minimum standards on common security controls for channels like Internet and mobile banking and card payments,” he said. Justifying the RBI’s action on HDFC Bank, he said there was a need for all banks and financial entities to invest more in their IT systems so that public confidence was maintained.
•On an RBI panel’s recommendation that corporates may be allowed to open banks, Mr. Das said, “The report of the internal working group is now in the public domain. We will receive comments. After getting comments from various stakeholders we will examine the whole matter and take a considered decision. That is how it stands”.
•He also indicated that the crisis at Punjab & Maharashtra Cooperative Bank (PMC) appeared headed for an early resolution based on a positive response from prospective investors.
📰 China turns on ‘artificial sun’
The nuclear reactor is expected to provide clean energy
•China successfully powered up its “artificial sun” nuclear fusion reactor for the first time, state media reported on Friday, marking a great advance in the country’s nuclear power research capabilities.
•The HL-2M Tokamak reactor is China’s largest and most advanced nuclear fusion experimental research device, and scientists hope that the device can potentially unlock a powerful clean energy source.
•It uses a powerful magnetic field to fuse hot plasma and can reach temperatures of over 150 million degrees Celsius, according to the People’s Daily -- approximately ten times hotter than the core of the sun.
•Located in Sichuan province and completed late last year, the reactor is often called an “artificial sun” on account of the enormous heat and power it produces.
•Chinese scientists have been working on developing smaller versions of the nuclear fusion reactor since 2006.
📰 Trust deficit: On MSP and the need for a legal guarantee
Apart from the fresh amendments, the Centre must consider a legal guarantee for MSP
•The Samyukta Kisan Morcha, a federation of around 500 farmer organisations, has resolved to intensify its agitation against three farm laws hurriedly enacted by the Centre. After dismissing the protests as ill-informed and motivated initially, the Centre has offered to make some changes to the laws, but the farmers have now called for a Bharat Bandh on December 8. Thousands of farmers camping on the outskirts of the national capital are sceptical of the government claim that these laws would make agriculture more lucrative and secure by allowing market forces to play. The fear that the new regime will dismantle the system of procurement under Minimum Support Price (MSP) and leave farmers at the mercy of corporations is real. Responding to concerns, the Centre has suggested safeguards to prevent land alienation via contract farming; strengthening the State-run mandi system and ensuring its equal footing with private buyers through equalising taxes; allowing grievance redress in civil courts rather than just in the offices of Sub-Divisional Magistrates; and ensuring proper verification of private traders. It has not, however, offered a legal guarantee of MSP and the question of power subsidies also remains contentious.
•The Narendra Modi government has a declared policy of ensuring farm prices that are at least 50% more than the input costs. This has remained more an intent than reality, and the discussion has also been muddled by the government’s refusal to include rental value of the land in input costs. Agriculture has to remain environmentally sustainable and remunerative for farmers. Significant challenges have emerged with regard to these benchmarks, though India has ensured substantial food stock and a robust distribution mechanism that covers the entire country. There is a strong case for reworking the incentive structures and cropping pattern in order to account for changes in water availability and changing dietary requirements. The problems faced by farmers are by no means the same across India. But a sense of hostility from the state and market is now pervasive. Changes in land acquisition laws and the general thrust towards industrialisation together with the pressure on agriculture subsidies have increased the feeling of vulnerability of farmers in recent years. The abrupt changes in the sector brought in through the three laws have aggravated the trust deficit of the government. The combative attitude of the government and the Bharatiya Janata Party towards criticism worsened it further. Food security is considered a component of national security by all countries. The Union Agriculture Minister has said the government has no ego. The Centre must strive for reaching an agreement with the farmers that addresses their concerns.
📰 A regressive agenda, a new low in governance
The U.P. ordinance not only violates guaranteed fundamental rights but is also in conflict with existing personal laws
•In November 2020, even as the COVID-19 case tally in the State of Uttar Pradesh went past the half-a-million mark in total, its government promulgated an ordinance to combat the perceived threat of “love jihad”, a pejorative term used by the religious conservatives to describe inter-faith relationships and marriages. The Uttar Pradesh Prohibition of Unlawful Conversion of Religion Ordinance 2020 must be criticised for setting up multiple barriers to inter-faith marriages and providing expansive powers to District Magistrates under the guise of prohibiting “unlawful conversions”. But the real and lasting impact of the ordinance must be measured in terms of the communal disharmony it sows and outright denial of agency to young women and men. It is trite that the law, in its present form, is regressive, ultra vires and must be consigned to the bin of legislative history.
Upholding a right
•The government of Uttar Pradesh drew strength from a judgment delivered recently in the Allahabad High Court by Justice Mahesh Chandra Tripathi in Priyanshi @ Km. Shamren and Others v. State of U.P. and Another 2020. Here, while refusing a prayer for police protection by a woman who had converted from Islam to Hinduism, the High Court observed that conversion “just for the purpose of marriage is unacceptable”. Fortunately, the effect of this observation was short lived, as another numerically superior two-judge Bench of the same High Court declared this to be bad law.
•Setting down the correct position in the case of Salamat Ansari And 3 Others vs State Of U.P. And 3 Others 2020, the Allahabad High Court held that “neither any individual nor a family nor even the state can have an objection to the relationship of two major individuals who out of their own free will are living together”. In doing so, the High Court has upheld the right of a person to live with a person of his/her choice irrespective of religion professed by them as something which is intrinsic to the right to life and personal liberty, guaranteed to every person under Article 21.
Aiding social change
•Historically, intermarriages — be it inter-caste or inter-faith — have been advocated as an effective tool to break social barriers and repair societal divisions. Babasaheb Ambedkar and Periyar E.V. Ramasamy placed a premium on intermarriage as much as they did on inter-dining. In Annihilation of Caste, B.R. Ambedkar argues that inter-dining had not been successful in killing the spirit of caste and that the “real remedy is intermarriage”. Similarly, in his book, Women Enslaved (translated by G. Aloysius), Periyar traverses further to say that “no third person has any right to constrain or decide” the coming together of two people. Periyar sought to provide and protect the agency of women in making life choices as a pathway to achieve a liberal society. The Self Respect Conference held in Chengalpet, Tamil Nadu, in 1929 passed resolutions allowing women to file for divorce and to remarry. Periyar recast marriage as “life partnership agreements” wherein the two partners would come together on equal terms, and conducted thousands of self-respect marriages. In 1967, the Government of Tamil Nadu amended the marriage laws to allow self respect marriages within the Hindu Marriage Act.
•The most reliable statistical data shows that less than 5% of Indians have intercaste marriages and less than 3% have interfaith marriages. In spite of being a rare phenomenon in society, interfaith relationships have attracted a disproportionate amount of attention of the right-wing political class. Lawmakers in the Bharatiya Janata Party have actively spearheaded communal campaigns and stoked fear on this issue across the country. The bogey of “love jihad” plays right into hands of those with communal and patriarchal mindsets. It is no less crime to stop an inter-faith marriage than it is to abet an “honour killing”.
The Kerala instance
•In 2017, the High Court of Kerala had cautioned against the use of the term “love jihad” to refer to interfaith marriages. In the controversial ‘Hadiya case’ (Shafin Jahan v. Asokan K.M., 2018), the Supreme Court of India was called to assess the allegation that Hadiya (born Akhila) was deceived into marrying a Shafin, a Muslim man. In this case, the Court held that “The strength of the Constitution lies in the guarantee which it affords that each individual will have a protected entitlement in determining a choice of partner to share intimacies within or outside marriage” and laid emphasis on the point that the “right to marry a person of one’s choice” is integral to Article 21. It would seem that these observations and diktats have not persuaded the government of Uttar Pradesh to see constitutional sense while promulgating the said ordinance.
•Various sections of the ordinance are in outright violation of the Constitution of India. For instance, Section 12 of the ordinance flips the burden of proof onto the person who has converted or caused conversion of religion to establish and prove that there was no force, fraud, misrepresentation, undue influence, coercion or allurement involved. Any conversion for the purpose of marriage can be declared void under Section 6 of the ordinance. Under Section 3 of the ordinance, the scope of which the aggrieved person may lodge a complaint against any conversion of religion is expansive to include parents, brother, sister, or any other person who is related to him by blood, marriage or adoption. Read cumulatively, this ordinance invades privacy, deepens communal divides, advances patriarchy and eliminates agency.
•As such, the ordinance is a manifestation of an exclusionary and regressive agenda, which presents a new low in governance for the government of Uttar Pradesh and therefore, must be allowed to be part of the modern political discourse. Not only does the ordinance violate fundamental rights guaranteed by the Constitution, but it is also in conflict with existing personal laws. While playing to the ‘Hindu Rashtra’ gallery, the government of Uttar Pradesh has abandoned all semblance of secularism and constitutionalism.
📰 The many layers to agricultural discontent
The Farm Acts that are the focus of the farmers’ protest bear variously on the different strata of the farming community
•At a kisan rally in Bareilly, Uttar Pradesh on February 28, 2016, Prime Minister Narendra Modi spoke of his vision of doubling the income of India’s farmers by 2022. Subsequently, several central leaders and even official committees have reiterated this tall promise. Probably, one of the measures that the Union government proposed to sub-serve this end was in the form of the three Farm Bills in September 2020 — by liberalising access to agricultural markets, removing existing barriers to storage of agricultural produce, and facilitating contract-farming. In the process, the regulatory role the state played hitherto with regard to these issues was watered down to a great extent. While these measures have been defended on the basis of slogans such as ‘One Nation, One Market’, they appear to be more directed to scoring brownie points in the ‘Ease of doing business’ index (the present regime has scored impressively well here in the last couple of years). Probably, more policy measures were in the offing to sub-serve this objective.
The response
•Paradoxically, organised farmers’ bodies are not in sync with the reasoning of the government. It is necessary to point out that a wide spectrum of the political Opposition in Parliament offered strong resistance to these Bills; some State governments even enacted their own Bills that were largely directed against the key provisions of the central farm Acts even though the constitutional status of these enactments is highly dubious. One of the oldest members of the ruling National Democratic Alliance (NDA), the Shiromani Akali Dal, walked out of the alliance in protest against these Bills.
•Even if we set aside the complex and multi-pronged challenges that rural India confronts today, there is a substantial body of studies that demonstrates how the vagaries of the market and the role of the middlemen reinforce agrarian distress in India. Although a body of piecemeal legislation and regulative processes have been put in place over the years in response to these issues — these include a few Pradhan Mantri yojanas — several key concerns of farmers have gone unattended.
States have a pivotal role
•However, these issues and the relation across them vary remarkably across the different regions of India and in terms of the different produce. While we can debate the constitutional provisions with regard to the respective domains of the State and the Union with regard to agricultural marketing, there is little doubt that issues affecting the farming community have a far greater bearing on the States relative to the Centre. Ideally, given its immediacy, the States are the apt agencies to respond to a host of concerns faced by the farming community, which includes agricultural marketing. While enacting the Farm Bills, the Centre extended little consideration to the sensitivity of the States, leave alone consultation, although some of them made their opposition to the Farm Bills quite explicit.
•The three Acts that are the focus of the farmers’ agitation, and which farmers have demanded be repealed, bear differently on the different strata of the farming community and in different regions.
APMC as cushion
•In the very high-stake and large-scale farming in Punjab and Haryana, for instance, weakening the Agricultural Produce Market Committee (APMC) system by subjecting it to competition — and its resultant bearing on Minimum Support Price (MSP), particularly on crops such as rice and wheat — is seen by the farmers as a threat to an assured sale of their produce at a price.
•This system provides a cushion, wherein the farmer can anticipate the cost of opting for these crops and tap the necessary supports through channels he has been familiar with. Subjecting this system to the vagaries of a competitive market, including storing and contracting of the produce, where he would eventually be beholden to the large players, including monopolies, are prospects that a farmer detests even though he is aware that the middleman is not a saint. While elsewhere in the country the dependence on the APMC system is variegated, and where several States have redefined the role and place of this system over the years, there is widespread apprehension that the measures proposed by the Farm Acts in addition to the existing agrarian distress, are only going to make the lot of the farmer even more precarious. All across the country, the farming community is prone to sympathise with the demand to scrap the new laws, as they have little to offer to them in a positive sense.
Movements and an evolution
•But the way the three Farming Acts were enacted, tends to crystallise a common sympathy across the farming community in India. Initially, there were ordinances that were passed when there was little urgency for these measures. After three months, when they were brought as Bills before the Houses, there was hardly any consultation with farmers’ organisations. They were rushed through the Houses of Parliament by paying little heed to the issues they raised. Farmers in India, have now shown that the saying, ‘they cannot govern themselves. They have to be governed’ is way off the mark. India’s farmers are a constituency deeply aware of their interests and challenges before them and are sensitive to developments elsewhere.
•In this context it is important to recall the powerful farmers’ movements that sprouted across India from the 1970s, led by such iconic leaders as M.D. Nanjundaswamy, Sharad Joshi, and Mahendra Singh Tikait, which claimed to speak not merely for farmers but to the rural segment as a whole. Even though they were clearly directed by the concerns of the relatively better-off farmers, they attempted to reach out to the farming community as a whole. There were major differences within these movements, and a few stances of some of them were definitely archaic and poorly thought over, but they presented a platform for discussion and debate beyond their immediate concerns.
•The organisations that these movements set up have undergone much change and a split today. But they have also learnt much in the process. While in some parts of the country the class and caste divide are still sharp, in other places, farmers’ organisations have not shied away from critically engaging with class, caste and gender concerns, although it has not made a substantial difference to the prevailing configuration of these relations. The very fact that a social reality is widely accepted provides space for policy intervention. The Farm Bills have ignored that the rural is a vibrant space in India, with ‘elective affinities’ binding its vast expanse.
The farming strata
•Clearly, the rich farmers — those with large holdings and produce for the market — are spearheading the present stand-off against the Farm Bills, as it affects them very deeply. But farming distress is shared in common by the different strata within the farming community, even though it has a differential impact on them.
•It is important to bear in mind that the rich farmer has also reinforced his position enormously in the rural over the years after the Green Revolution and farmers’ movements of the 1970s. They have also invested their surplus in agri-business and clearly hold access to the wider economic and institutional domains. The lower strata of the farming community is invariably beholden to the rich farmer not merely for employment but also to access resources and services. There is very little autonomous organisation of the former in much of the country except caste. Therefore, when the die is cast on issues such as the Farm Acts, there is little doubt where the lower strata of the farming community would throw in their lot with.
