📰 Cabinet nod for public WiFi networks
PM-WANI will enable public data offices as hotspots, which could even be kirana and tea shops
•The Union Cabinet on Wednesday approved a proposal for setting up public WiFi hotspots across the country via public data offices or PDOs, which could even be a kirana shop or a paan shop.
•The move, aimed at helping accelerate the uptake of broadband Internet services, will not require the PDOs to get a license or pay a fee.
•The public WiFi Access Network Interface, which will be called ‘PM-WANI’, was first recommended by the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) in 2017. This will involve multiple players, including PDOs, Public Data Office Aggregators (PDOA), app providers, and a central registry.
•PDOs — comparable to a PCO or a cybercafe — will establish, maintain, and operate WiFi access points and deliver broadband services to subscribers, while the PDOAs will be aggregators of PDOs and perform functions such as authorisation and accounting. The app provider will develop the app to register users and discover PM-WANI compliant WiFi hotspots nearby. The details of all three will be maintained by the registry.
First such study of absorbed lipid residue in pottery
•A new study has found the presence of animal products, including cattle and buffalo meat, in ceramic vessels dating back about 4,600 years at seven Indus Valley Civilisation sites in present-day Haryana and Uttar Pradesh.
•The study, which was published on Wednesday in theJournal of Archaeological Scienceand conducted as a part of the Two Rains project of the University of Cambridge and Banaras Hindu University, analysed the lipid residue in pottery found at the ancient sites.
•About 50-60% of domestic animal bones found at Indus Valley sites come from cattle/buffalo, the study said. “The high proportions of cattle bones may suggest a cultural preference for beef consumption across Indus populations, supplemented by the consumption of mutton/lamb,” it said.
•The lead author of the study, Dr. Aksheyta Suryanarayan, said in a statement by the Cambridge University Department of Archaeology: “Our study of lipid residues in Indus pottery shows a dominance of animal products in vessels, such as the meat of non-ruminant animals like pigs, ruminant animals like cattle or buffalo and sheep or goat, as well as dairy products.”
•She said the analysis of lipid residues involved extraction and identification of the fats and oils that were absorbed in the vessels.
•“Lipids are relatively less prone to degradation and have been discovered in pottery from archaeological contexts around the world. However, they have seen very limited investigation in ancient ceramics from South Asia,” she said.
📰 The road taken: On Chennai-Salem greenfield highway
Salem greenfield highway may now be a fait accompli after SC verdict
•By upholding notifications intending to acquire agricultural land for the proposed Chennai-Salem greenfield highway, the Supreme Court has both paved the way for completing the land acquisition process and sought to ensure that environmental clearances are obtained before its construction. It has ruled that it will be premature to expect the authorities to obtain environmental approvals at the stage of identifying the land linked to the proposed alignment of a highway, but, once the land was notified for acquisition and surveyed for feasibility, they would have to apply for all statutory clearances. It would be at the stage of entertaining objections that questions such as whether the project was truly a ‘public purpose’ could be dealt with. However, the land could be taken over and construction begun only after the competent authorities give their clearances, along with measures for mitigating and remedying possible environmental damage. The judgment of the Madras High Court, which had taken a nuanced position in favour of environmental protection, agriculture and preservation of rural livelihoods over the economic benefits of a new highway on virgin land, has been set aside in the process. The High Court had shown greater sensitivity to possible livelihood and ecological concerns. It had favoured early judicial intervention, relying on judgments from the U.S. that spoke out against letting projects advance to such a stage that there is irreversible commitment of resources.
•The three-judge Bench has now ruled that the High Court was wrong in holding that clearances under environmental and forest laws were required even before the initial land acquisition notice. It goes on to uphold the Centre’s power to notify any stretch of land, including greenfield land, and not merely a pre-existing road, as a national highway. As part of a growing body of jurisprudence on sustainable development, the top court had laid down in Karnataka Industrial Areas Development Board (2006) a general principle that in future, before acquiring land for development, the possible adverse environmental impact should be “properly comprehended” and the acquisition done in a way that did not impair it. In a departure from this dictum, it now says the statutory framework governing highways and the process laid down for acquiring land for highway projects did not provide for a prior clearance requirement. The Court’s line of reasoning based mostly on development-centric statutes is something of a disappointment when it could have taken, even at this stage, a holistic view of the need for sustainable development. True, it has left open the question whether the clearances obtained after the lands were notified for acquisition are valid; and the principle that construction of the highways cannot begin without such clearances also stays. But it is not inconceivable that the Court’s position may have rendered the project a fait accompli.
📰 The reality of an India at the crossroads
Faced with the perception of the country becoming a ‘diminishing democracy’, policymakers must take note of the drift
•Individual events are often an indicator of broader trends. Any vision of the future is again significantly linked to what is taking place in the present. For now, most if not all, of what is taking place does not seem to hold out any great promise for India.
•Policymakers need not take public opinion as the sole indicator of what is likely to happen, but it is important to acknowledge public fears and reassure people, especially in periods of uncertainty. Increasingly, in recent weeks, India has begun to resemble a war zone, but neither any reassurance nor any attempt at building a ‘consensus’ addressing current concerns is taking place.
•Meanwhile, the world press is replete with stories of India’s ‘diminishing democracy’ in which, apart from the organs of state, even India’s highly regarded criminal justice system and the courts have come in for a share of criticism. This is beginning to shake the confidence of even the most die-hard supporters of Indian democracy, who are beginning to look inward to try and ascertain if Indian democracy is more fragile than is apparent.
State of economy, world ties
•India cannot afford to ignore the reality of the situation in which it finds itself. The Indian economy is in recession, and is among the worst performing among major nations. Among key currencies, the Indian Rupee is one of the very few which is depreciating, while the Euro, the Australian and Canadian Dollars, the South Korean Won and the Swiss Franc have become much stronger recently. India also claims to be among the worst affected by ransomware attacks. Meanwhile, India is turning increasingly protectionist, coming up with banal explanations to explain this away, contrary to conventional wisdom.
•In the meantime, the atmospherics surrounding India’s external relations are quite depressing. China remains intransigent and has made known its unwillingness to reach a reasonable settlement of the Line of Actual Control dispute. India-Pakistan relations could hardly be worse and China has chosen at this moment to sign a new Military Memorandum of Understanding to boost the China-Pakistan relationship. India’s forays in its Near Abroad in West Asia are yet to yield results, even though, on the surface, relations with the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and Saudi Arabia are better. The reality, nevertheless, is that India does not have enough traction to be able to manoeuvre between different power centres in West Asia which are at various times in conflict. Consequently, India will find it increasingly difficult to steer between the Scylla of Saudi Arabia, the UAE and Egypt on the one hand and the Charybdis of Turkey, Qatar and Iran on the other.
Signs of rigid policies
•Far more serious, however, are concerns being voiced about India’s democratic credentials both within the country and abroad. India might well claim that the numbers of terror attacks have reduced, levels of Maoist violence have come down, and the situation in India’s Northeast is much better than before, but many people across India are seeking proper answers to the question as to whether India is forfeiting its democratic visage for a more doctrinaire and a more rigid set of policies. In August-September last year, this issue had briefly surfaced when Delhi decided to dilute Article 370 of the Constitution, and restructure Jammu & Kashmir (J&K) and Ladakh into two Union Territories. It possibly passed muster at the time as something that was already included in the ruling party’s manifesto.
•Concerns, however, began to be felt soon after, in the wake of the clampdown in Kashmir, and the incarceration of almost the entire top leadership of the Peoples Democratic Party and the National Conference party. The anti-Citizenship (Amendment) Act protests across the country thereafter seemed to confirm such fears. Compounding this situation lately has been the attempt to impose a sort of ‘guided democracy’ in J&K, through the instrument of elections to the District Development Council, in the course of which the Opposition Alliance has been smeared with epithets such as “unholy global gathbandhan” working against the national interest, etc.
Electoral wins at any cost
•What is evident today is that every election — whether to State Assemblies, District Councils, or even local panchayats — are turning into conflict zones, leading to extremely tense situations. In many instances, they have become tinderboxes for communal, caste, political and other forms of violence. Winning at any cost has become the sole motif of certain parties, especially India’s principal political party. While States such as West Bengal and Uttar Pradesh feature prominently in the media in relation to cases of communal and political violence, the reality today is that no State is exempt from this pattern of aggressive electioneering.
•Apart from political polarisation, arousing feelings of majority versus the minority have become the stock-in-trade of some parties in elections. Encouraging majoritarian attitudes obscuring ground realities, has hence, become a pernicious trend. The recently conducted elections to the Greater Hyderabad Municipal Corporation was a classic example. Employing majoritarianism as a tactic, incidentally leading to a polarisation of votes, did produce electoral dividends — but it comes at a high cost. Such tactics cannot but have serious consequences for India as a secular democratic republic.
•The coarsening of India’s democratic fabric is again well-evident in several other areas. Constitutional protection and principles of natural justice as also freedom of the individual, all seem to be coming under strain lately. One bizarre aspect is the current campaign against ‘Love Jihad’, a term which finds no mention in any lexicon. On the pretext that ‘Love Jihad’ is a euphemism for conversion, and some States have taken legal steps to prevent it. New laws have also been enacted to enforce this diktat. All this despite the existence of judicial pronouncements declaring the inherent right of any individual to choose whom to marry, irrespective of caste, religion or creed.
•Equally worrisome is the extent to which India seems to be regressing when it comes to the treatment of political prisoners in jails. The plight of Jesuit priest, Father Stan Swamy, a victim of Parkinson’s disease, which made the headlines is only one instance. Many other cases have come to light, demonstrating an increasingly indifferent and disdainful approach towards political prisoners, especially those perceived to oppose the prevailing order. Labelling dissenters as urban naxals and the like, and being indifferent to their plight when in custody, marks a sharp decline from past democratic practices.
Social media clampdown
•India may not be the leading country when it comes to disinformation threats, but under the label of fighting fake news and the social media’s pernicious use of fake news, India is beginning to clampdown on social media platforms and enact draconian laws towards this end. Kerala, a Left bastion, even sought to introduce an ordinance mandating a jail term for any offensive social media post, making the police the arbiter to determine the nature of social media abuse. Fortunately, this has been withdrawn, but the genie is out of the bottle and quite a few States appear to be contemplating similar measures against fake news.
Farmers’ protest
•If the perception that India is becoming an illiberal democracy where dissent is at a discount needs any reinforcement, one has only to look to the groundswell of protests against the new Farmers’ Bills. This has galvanised a very substantial segment of farmers across the country and also provided an opportunity to Opposition parties to combine and back the nationwide Bharat Bandh by farmers on December 8. This is yet another instance of imposing a measure without due discussion and acceptance by those affected. The most vivid images flashed across India today are those of farmers from the Punjab and nearby environs, laying a near siege to the National Capital.
•The farmers’ protest has become a cause célèbre today. Initially, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau expressed sympathy with the Punjab farmers, but adding further grist to this was the joint letter signed by 36 British Members of Parliament to the U.K. Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab and the comment by Stéphane Dujarric, Spokesperson for the Secretary General of the United Nations that “people have a right to demonstrate peacefully, and authorities need to let them do so”. The Indian diaspora in the West is currently backing the farmers’ movement. Far more than how matters turn out is the impression this conveys of an India that is intent in pursuing its pre-determined course of action, paying little heed to peoples’ demands and protests, much in the nature of autocratic and dictatorial regimes rather than a democracy.
📰 Thousand days of nutrition, and a billion dreams
The single greatest threat that blocks the promise of India at a foundational level is malnutrition
•How far India goes in realising its billion plus dreams over the next decade or two will be determined by how well it nourishes the physical well-being and mental potential of its people, particularly its children. If one has to pick the single gravest threat that blocks the promise of this young nation at the foundational level, it has to be arguably malnutrition.
•Malnourished children tend to fall short of their real potential — physically as well as mentally. That is because malnutrition leaves their bodies weaker and more susceptible to illnesses. In 2017, a staggering 68% of 1.04 million deaths of children under five years in India was attributable to malnutrition, reckoned a Lancet study in 2019.
Heavy burden
•Children who survive malnutrition do not do as well as they could. Without necessary nutrients, their brains do not develop to the fullest. No wonder then, they end up performing poorly at school than they otherwise would. Malnutrition places a burden heavy enough for India, to make it a top national priority. About half of all children under five years in the country were found to be stunted (too short) or wasted (too thin) for their height, estimated the Comprehensive National Nutrition Survey, carried out by the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare with support of UNICEF three years ago.
•The country has been making progress on nutrition for the last two decades, but it was after the Prime Minister launched the Prime Minister’s Overarching Scheme for Holistic Nutrition (POSHAN) Abhiyaan in 2018, that a holistic approach to tackle malnutrition started gathering momentum. Under it, the government strengthened the delivery of essential nutrition interventions so that more children have the right start in life for optimum growth, health, development and a prosperous future.
Post-COVID challenges
•As the flagship programme (POSHAN Abhiyaan) completes 1,000 days this week, it is time to renew our commitment to nutrition for two reasons. First, because it conveys the deeply symbolic value of the first 1,000 days from conception of a child till the child turns two years old, marking the most crucial period for nutrition interventions in a lifecycle, which once missed could result in irreversible damage to the child’s physical and mental well-being. Second, focus on nutrition is critical as COVID-19 threatens to derail the gains India has made in nutrition in more than one way.
•For one, COVID-19 is pushing millions into poverty, reducing incomes of many more and disproportionately affecting the economically disadvantaged, who are also most vulnerable to malnutrition and food insecurities. Second, pandemic-prompted lockdowns disrupted essential services — such as supplementary feeding under anganwadi centres, mid-day meals, immunisation, and micro-nutrient supplementation which can exacerbate malnutrition.
•It is in this challenging backdrop, leaders from academia, civil society, development partners, community advocates and the private sector have come together as part of ‘commitment to action’ to seek and support the government in a six-pronged action that can save and build on the advances India has made in nutrition. These clear action points include commitments around sustained leadership, dedicated finances, multi-sectoral approach and increased uninterrupted coverage of a vulnerable population under programmes enhancing nutrition.
•One reason POSHAN Abhiyaan succeeded in galvanising action so fast was because it was led by the Prime Minister himself. That example must be sustained so that leadership of food and nutrition security rests with the Prime Minister at the national level, a Chief Minister at the State level, a district magistrate at the district and panchayat at the village level. This was already imperative for POSHAN Abhiyaan to succeed, but it has now become critical as COVID-19 compounds an already complex challenge.
•In terms of policies, vision, strategies, India already has some of the world’s biggest early childhood public intervention schemes such as the Integrated Child Development Scheme, the mid-day meal programme, and Public Distribution System. India needs to ensure coverage of every single child and mother, along with 12 months of Poshan Maah (Nutrition Month), 52 weeks of breastfeeding weeks and 365 days of take-home ration.
Financial commitments
•To ensure this, the country needs to retain its financial commitments for the nutrition schemes it already runs and earmark additional funds to preserve nutritional security in vulnerable communities, particularly women and children in slum areas, migrants, the population in tribal areas and districts with malnutrition rates.
•Pandemic spurred challenges have also negatively hit other proven underlying drivers of malnutrition. For instance, economic insecurities often force girls into early marriage, early motherhood, discontinue their schooling, and reduce institutional deliveries, cut access to micronutrient supplements, and nutritious food which largely tend to be perishable, all of which may worsen malnutrition. Accelerating efforts to address these will be needed to stop the regression into the deeper recesses of malnutrition.
•However, to truly grasp the depth and breadth of the COVID-19-caused nutrition crisis, the country must track nutrition indices through data systems. Evidence generated through data will also serve well to track the positive impact of POSHAN Abhiyaan, and course correct on the long journey to a well-nourished India. It takes time for nutrition interventions to yield dividends, but once those accrue, they can bring transformative generational shifts. Filling in the nutrition gaps will guarantee a level-playing field for all children and strengthen the foundations for the making of a future super-power.
📰 Why quarterly growth numbers are not robust
Official figures on GDP overestimate growth as they are based only on limited organised sector data
•Analysts are surprised that GDP has contracted by only 7.5% in real terms in the second quarter of 2020-21 while it had declined by 23.9% in the first quarter. This welcome news has raised hopes of a quicker economic revival if there is no second wave of COVID-19 in the winter months. Whether or not this comes about depends on how correctly the quarterly numbers reflect the state of the economy. Doubts on this score have been raised at several levels.
•The Ministry of Finance, based on high frequency data, such as freight traffic, electricity consumption, GST collections and recovery of core sector production from the lows, has argued that the economy is rapidly recovering. The government’s press note announcing the Q2 GDP numbers also has a similar table. While all this is fine, there is less satisfactory news that is not contained in official pronouncements.
Methodological issues
•In the press release, points 9 and 10 suggest that the full extent of data usually used to project quarterly growth rates were not available and so “some other data sources” were used. It admits that “these were clearly limited” and states that estimates are “likely to undergo revisions”. This was also stated in the press note when the Q1 numbers were announced. It is not clear why in spite of the economy unlocking since June, the data are still limited or why alternative data had to be used.
•Be that as it may, there are two implications of these statements. First, the data of Q1 and Q2 are not only not comparable with each other but also with the data for 2019-20. The shortcomings in the data cannot be rectified later since if the data were not available/ not collected, they cannot be obtained later. So, there cannot be certainty about the speed of economic recovery.
•Second, the method of calculation of quarterly growth rates was already flawed. Are these flaws getting aggravated due to the lack of routine data? The biggest flaw is that almost no data from the unorganised sectors, except for agriculture, are available to calculate the contribution of this component of the economy to the GDP. It was implicit in the method of estimation that this component could be proxied by the data from the organised sectors of the economy. This was never a good assumption. After the shock to the economy due to the lockdown, this is even less valid. Demonetisation in 2016 had already disrupted this link between the organised and the unorganised sectors. Now the disjuncture is much greater.
Impact of a shock on estimation
•The non-agriculture unorganised sector was disproportionately impacted by demonetisation. This was a result of the fact that this sector consists of tiny units that work with cash. So the cash shortage impacted it far more than the organised sector which uses formal money markets, like banks, and can use digital transactions. So, the proportionality between the two sectors was disrupted. Further, small units with little capital exhaust it quickly if they are shut down even for a week. So, they find it difficult to restart.
•The effect was that the unorganised sector declined while the organised sector recovered. The trend was further aggravated by the implementation of the flawed Goods and Services Tax (GST) which favoured the organised sector, and demand shifted from the unorganised sector to the organised sector. It was not that the unorganised sector became formalised; it just withered.
•The growth of the organised sector since demonetisation has been at the expense of the unorganised sector. The higher growth rate of the economy actually masks the decline in the unorganised sector. For instance, higher GST collections reflect the growth of the organised sectors. As former Finance Minister Arun Jaitley had famously said, 5% of the units pay 95% of the GST. Clearly, growth of the economy has been much less than that what is implied by the official GDP numbers.
•The lockdown has aggravated this tendency of overestimation of GDP. A lockdown implies a voluntary shutdown of economic activity (but for production of essentials). It impacted both the organised and unorganised sectors of the economy. Most small and tiny units exhausted their working capital and are finding it difficult to revive. But this is not captured in official data which are based on limited organised sector data — the high frequency data quoted by the official agencies.
•In many instances, the organised sector is doing well at the expense of the unorganised sector. For instance, e-commerce has grown rapidly at the expense of brick-and-mortar stores since demand has shifted due to people’s fear of going out. So, while trade has declined, data will indicate growth since it is available only from e-commerce and big stores. In fact, the higher the growth shown in official data, the more it signals the collapse of small retail stores.
•All sectors of the economy have an organised and an unorganised component. For instance, one can buy branded Parle biscuits or from a local bakery. In the textile sector there are the branded items and the ones produced in power looms and handlooms. The capacity utilisation in this sector is reported to be about 70% to 80%. While the larger units started operations, the smaller ones are languishing due to lack of working capital. So, if the data are taken only from the larger units, there would appear to be normalcy and the decline of 20% to 30% will not be captured.
Not all data are captured
•As the lockdown was eased, more of the organised sector was able to restart business but not the unorganised sector. Many businesses in the organised sector too have not been able to recover to last year’s level, such as education, health, hotels, airlines, travel and tourism. This has a knock-on effect on all kinds of small producers. Further, employment is hit and that means demand in the economy also does not recover and especially for the produce of the unorganised sectors. Much of this is also not captured since the data used are from the large units and the corporate sector data from the stock markets. In brief, the quarterly growth numbers are not robust and now more so due to the shock of the lockdown. So, while the economy is recovering, it is difficult to say how quickly because of non-comparability. The impression being created of a return to normalcy masks the crisis persisting in the lives of large sections of the citizenry.
📰 Too many cattle robbing rhinos of nutrition in ‘Mini Kaziranga’
•Too many cattle are robbing the one-horned rhinos of Assam’s Pobitora Wildlife Sanctuary, referred to as ‘Mini Kaziranga’ for similar features, of their nutritious food.
•This has been confirmed by the death of two rhinos whose alimentary canals had a high load of worms because of nutritional stress caused by dry reeds and other such “junk food” of the wilderness, veterinarians said.
•One of the factors behind the crisis of nutritional grass in Pobitora is the competition from some 10,000 cattle that graze on the fringes of the sanctuary measuring 38.81 sq km on paper but with only 16 sq km for an estimated 102 rhinos to inhabit.
•Non-rejuvenation of nutritious grass due to change in flood pattern has also combined with the expansion of woodland in the sanctuary, leaving the rhinos with less than 8 sq km of grassland to feed on.
•“Our team that conducted autopsy found bad quality food and high load of worms that made the rhinos, one a calf and the other old, die of weakness. This is a serious problem compounded by the grazing cattle, about 2,000 of which have become resident herds, moving out only if the sanctuary is flooded,” Kushal Kowar Sarma of Guwahati’s College of Veterinary Science said.
•Amit Sahai, Assam’s Principal Chief Conservator of Forest (Wildlife), said Pobitora was not facing a food crisis per se, but malnutrition because of non-availability of grasses that were palatable and nutritious to the rhinos.
•“We have constituted an expert committee comprising leading veterinarians and rhino experts. The panel has been given a month to assess if malnutrition or any pathogenic problems caused the deaths and come up with a prescription for us to work on,” he told The Hindu.
•The Forest Department, he added, had also asked the Morigaon district authority to contain the population of the cattle that had provided an unhealthy competition to the rhinos as well as some 100 wild buffaloes of the sanctuary.
