📰 Keep infrastructure development away from politics: PM
Modi flags off first train on 315-km section of eastern dedicated freight corridor
•Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Tuesday urged that infrastructure development should be kept away from politics and alleged that the previous government did not show the required seriousness and urgency to communicate with the States, resulting in delays in implementation of projects.
•Mr. Modi was speaking after flagging off the first train to run on the 351-km New Bhaupur-New Khurja section (both in Uttar Pradesh) of the Eastern Dedicated Freight Corridor (EDFC). He also inaugurated the operation control centre for the EDFC at Prayagraj via videoconference.
•The newly opened section has been built at a cost of ₹ 5,750 crore and has been funded by the World Bank. It passes through Kanpur Dehat, Auraiya, Etawah, Firozabad, Hathras, Aligarh and Bulandshahr districts, covering the important industrial areas of Aligarh, Khurja, Firozabad and Agra. The entire eastern corridor is over 1800-km long and will run from Ludhiana in Punjab to Dankuni near Kolkata, traversing Haryana, Uttar Pradesh, Bihar and Jharkhand.
•Meanwhile, the Operation Control Centre (OCC) will act as the command centre for the entire route length of the Eastern DFC for controlling and monitoring all systems, including train operation and power supply system.
•The Prime Minister blamed the ‘work culture’ of the previous government for the delays in implementation of the dedicated freight corridor project that was approved in 2006.
•“Till 2014, not even one km of the track was laid. Even the money allotted for this was not used properly. After 2014, when the project was relooked at, the budget increased by 11 times or by more than ₹45,000 crore,” he said. After the formation of the NDA government in 2014, as a result of constant monitoring and meeting with the stakeholders, about 1,100 km of the work got completed in the next few months, he claimed.
•“Be it our farms, industries or markets, they are dependent on freight movement and the railways have always played a huge role in this,”he said. Dedicated freight corridors were needed in India as currently passenger and freight trains ran on the same track and sometimes passenger trains were stopped at stations to give way to freight trains. This not only led to delay of passenger trains, but also for freight trains due to lower speeds and frequent stops, which increased the cost of freight movement,” he noted.
Punctuality of trains
•“With these corridors, we can improve the punctuality of passenger trains. In addition, freight trains can run three times faster, and will be able to transport twice the amount of freight as these tracks can run double-decker trains... Since freight trains will reach on time, this will bring down the transportation costs, leading to reduction in cost of various goods,” he observed.
•The negative impact of political indifference towards infrastructure impacted the entire railway system. Earlier the focus was just on increasing the number of trains to get votes, but no investment was made on tracks on which they running, he pointed out.
•“A country's infrastructure is not the ideology of any party, but the path of development of the country. If political parties want to compete, they should compete on infra quality, speed and scale,” he stressed.
•“I want to mention one more mentality that we often see during protests and agitations. This mentality is to hurt the country’s infrastructure and property. We should remember that this infrastructure does not belong to any politician or a party, but to the country and its citizens. While expressing our democratic rights we should not forget our responsibility towards the nation,” he added.
Two-day exercise begins in seven districts with volunteers
•The dry run to test preparedness for the roll out of the COVID-19 vaccine kicked off on Monday in four States across the country — Assam, Andhra Pradesh, Gujarat and Punjab.
•The two-day end-to-end dry run was carried out in Krishna district of Andhra Pradesh, Rajkot and Gandhinagar in Gujarat, Ludhiana and Shaheed Bhagat Singh Nagar (Nawanshahr) in Punjab and Sonitpur and Nalbari districts in Assam.
•Intended beneficiaries of each State who had registered on the Co-WIN app were on Monday sent SMSes informing them about the time and place of their “COVID-19 vaccination” under a mock drill to administer the shots at designated centres.
•A detailed check list was prepared by the Union Health Ministry and shared with the four States to guide them in the dry run, said the Ministry.
•In Gujarat, the actual field visits will begin on Tuesday, said State immunisation officer Nayan Jani. The dry run began on Monday in Rajkot district, Rajkot city, Gandhinagar district and Gandhinagar city, Mr. Jani told media persons.
•“The actual (potential) vaccine shots will not be administered to people during the dry run,” he said.
•The Punjab government successfully completed the exercise at 12 sites of two districts.
•Punjab Health Minister Balbir Singh Sidhu said the UNDP and the WHO, the State’s immunisation partners, supported the Monday exercise. In Ludhiana, seven centres have been set up at various hospitals. Health officials in Ludhiana and Nawanshahr said for each centre, 25 persons from those registered online were selected for the dry run.
•Assam health officials said they focussed on software efficacy and will carry out the physical part of the drill involving 300 people in two districts.
•“Today’s dry run was mostly related to the Co-WIN software and encountered some bottlenecks during the software arrangement for selection of vaccine sites, vaccinators and the beneficiaries, generating messages for each of them for informing them to come on a particular date and time when the vaccine arrives,” said Lakshmanan S, director of the National Health Mission, Assam.
•Andhra Pradesh’s two-day exercise will be conducted at five session sites, including public and private medical institutions, with 25 dummy beneficiaries (healthcare workers) at each site for two hours.. The sites selected are Government General Hospital, Vijayawada; Public Health Centre (PHC), Uppuluru; Purna Heart Institute, Vijayawada; PHC,Penamaluru; and Urban PHC, Prakash Nagar, Vijayawada.
•District Collector A. Md. Imtiaz, who inspected the arrangements at Prakash Nagar UPHC, said each session site had five vaccine officers and three rooms. “The entire process of registration, vaccination and observation was enacted to identify any flaws in the system,” he said.
📰 Granting bail is the rule
The refusal to grant bail deprives individuals of liberty by confining them in jails without trial and conviction
•Discussions on bail reform usually arise when exceptional cases capture public attention. However, bail reform must begin by addressing two key facets of the criminal justice system: judicial discretion and monetary surety bonds.
Judicial discretion
•The power to grant bail is a discretionary power vested in judges and it is meant to be exercised liberally. The Supreme Court has consistently reiterated that “bail is the rule, jail is an exception”. The primary purpose of bail is to ensure the accused person’s compliance with investigation, and subsequent presence at the trial if they are released after arrest. The refusal to grant bail deprives individuals of liberty by confining them in jails without trial and conviction.
•At present, the power to grant bail is exercised sparingly. Subordinate courts even routinely reject bail for specific offences like minor excise offences. It is pertinent to note that a majority of those policed under excise laws belong to marginalised communities. Without grant of bail by the lower courts, the accused persons are required to approach the High Court or the Supreme Court. Consequently, most accused persons remain incarcerated as undertrials for extended periods of time. Two-thirds of India’s prison population comprise undertrials from Dalit, Adivasi and Other Backward Classes communities, often accused of minor offences.
•The pendency of bail applications has particularly increased during the pandemic — both due to the shutting down of courts and the exacerbation of arrests for minor offences by the police. Despite the Supreme Court’s orders to decongest prisons, arrests for minor offences continued unabated, according to a study of pandemic policing in Madhya Pradesh by the Criminal Justice and Police Accountability Project (CPAProject).
•The system of bail typically requires sureties to furnish a bond for some property valued at the amount determined by the concerned judge. The bail amount in subordinate courts, even for petty offences punishable by less than three years, is a minimum of ₹10,000. In cases of bail before the High Courts and the Supreme Court, this amount usually exceeds ₹30,000. However, even this amount is a rare mercy. For instance, a 14-year-old minor’s surety for four cases of theft and house breaking was set at ₹2 lakh by the sessions court in Bhopal. This is a form of injustice when a majority of citizens are landless with meagre incomes. A report by Azim Premji University highlights that even among regular wage workers, 57% Indians earn less than ₹10,000 per month. Official data from the Socio-Economic Caste Census pegs rural landlessness at 57%, and this is higher if you are Dalit or Adivasi. Therefore, those without assets, even when granted bail, end up languishing in jails or incur debt by paying others to stand as fake sureties to secure their freedom. A bogey of middlemen has also emerged due to these high bail amounts. This economy of exploitation receives scant attention in discussions of reform. The grant of bail on a personal bond without sureties i.e., release on one’s own guarantee without any monetary amounts, although permissible in law, is rare.
•In the 1978 Supreme Court case of Moti Ram v. State of Madhya Pradesh, Justice V. R. Krishna Iyer identified the issue of unreasonably high sureties as a human rights problem. The court then suggested that surety amounts be determined by considering relevant variables such as the socio-economic location of the accused person.
Preposterous bail conditions
•During the lockdown, the Gwalior Bench of the M.P. High Court deemed it fit to impose peculiar conditions while granting bail to certain applicants. These included installing a non-Chinese LED TV at the District Hospital, registration as a “voluntary COVID-19 warrior” and donating money for COVID-19 relief. This continued despite the Principal Bench of the High Court stating that bail orders requiring the deposit of cash amounts are “unjust, irregular and improper”.
•Bail indiscretions by judges of lower courts and High Courts have passed by with little accountability or oversight by the apex court. Even when not ridiculous, bail conditions can transgress personal liberty and are often paternalistic. Courts introspect little about standards of liberty, reasonableness and proportionality when deciding bail matters. A report by the Centre for Law and Policy Research recommends the creation of checklists to address individual discretion while deciding bail applications. Yet, the reflection of our society’s inherent caste and class biases in judicial decisions is likely to persist even with checklists. The legacy of Moti Ram has been honoured more in breach than in its spirit.
📰 Dealing with India’s two-front challenge
A politically-guided doctrine and comprehensive military capability are needed to deal with the China-Pakistan threat
•Till recently, any mention of a two-front war evoked two contrasting opinions. India’s military was firmly of the view that a collusive China-Pakistan military threat was a real possibility, and we must develop capabilities to counter this challenge. On the other hand, the political class in general and the mainstay of the country’s strategic community felt that a two-front threat was being over-hyped by the military to press for additional resources and funds. They argued that historically, China has never intervened militarily in any India-Pakistan conflict and that the economic, diplomatic, and political ties between India and China rule out any armed conflict between the two countries. As a result, Indian strategic thinking was overwhelmingly focused on Pakistan and the security considerations emanating from there.
Intrusions change things
•In the Indian military’s thinking, while China was the more powerful — and therefore strategic — foe, the chance of a conventional conflict breaking out was low. The reverse was true of Pakistan, with a greater likelihood of conflict along the western border possibly triggered by a major terror attack emanating from Pakistan. The Chinese intrusions in Ladakh in May this year, the violence that resulted from clashes between the Indian Army and the People’s Liberation Army, and the deadlock in negotiations have now made the Chinese military threat more apparent and real. The direct result of this, then, is the arrival of a worrisome two-front situation for New Delhi.
•Even if the current India-China crisis on the border is resolved peacefully, China’s military challenge will occupy greater attention of Indian military planners in the months and years to come. This comes at a time when the situation along the Line of Control (LoC) with Pakistan has been steadily deteriorating. Between 2017 and 2019, there has been a four-fold increase in ceasefire violations. Some media reports had indicated that Pakistan had moved 20,000 troops into Gilgit-Baltistan, matching the Chinese deployments in Eastern Ladakh.
China-Pakistan military links
•For sure, the Sino-Pakistan relationship is nothing new, but it has far serious implications today than perhaps ever before. China has always looked at Pakistan as a counter to India’s influence in South Asia.
•Over the years, the ties between the two countries have strengthened and there is a great deal of alignment in their strategic thinking. Military cooperation is growing, with China accounting for 73% of the total arms imports of Pakistan between 2015-2019 (https://bit.ly/37V6FWq). In his remarks on the (recently concluded) Shaheen IX Pakistan-China joint exercise between the Pakistan Air Force and People’s Liberation Army Air Force, the Pakistan Chief of Army Staff said, “The joint exercise will improve combat capacity of both air forces substantially and also enhance interoperability between them with greater strength and harmony.”
•It would, therefore, be prudent for India to be ready for a two-front threat. In preparing for this, the Indian military needs to realistically analyse how this threat could manifest itself and the type of capabilities that should be built up to counter it.
•In a two-front scenario, the larger challenge for India’s military would come if the hostilities break out along the northern border with China. In such a contingency, there is a likelihood that Pakistan would attempt to take advantage of India’s military preoccupation by limited military actions in Jammu and Kashmir (J&K), and attempt to raise the level of militancy in Kashmir.
•It is unlikely that Pakistan would initiate a large-scale conflict to capture significant chunks of territory as that would lead to a full-blown war between three nuclear armed states. In such a contingency, the damage to Pakistan’s economy and military far outweighs the advantages of capturing some pieces of ground. Pakistan would prefer the low-risk option of pursuing a hybrid conflict that remains below the threshold of war.
Dilemmas for India
•A two-front conflict presents the Indian military with two dilemmas — of resources and strategy. Ashley J. Tellis, in his 2016 article, “Troubles, They Come in Battalions: The Manifold Travails of the IAF” (https://bit.ly/3hoZ3i7) estimates that about 60 combat squadrons are needed to deal with a serious two-front threat. This is double the number of squadrons currently with the Indian Air Force (IAF). Obviously, it is neither practical nor feasible to build a level of capability that enables independent war fighting on both fronts.
•A major decision will be the quantum of resources to be allocated for the primary front. If a majority of the assets of the Indian Army and the Indian Air Force are sent towards the northern border, it will require the military to rethink its strategy for the western border. This is the second dilemma. Even though Pakistan may only be pursuing a hybrid war, should the Indian military remain entirely defensive? If it does so, it may encourage Pakistan to continue with its actions in J&K with a level of impunity and even raise the level of its involvement on the western front. Adopting a more offensive strategy against Pakistan could draw limited resources into a wider conflict.
•It is impossible to define with any certainty the contours of a two-front conflict and how it would actually play out. However, what is certain is that the threat cannot be ignored and therefore we need to develop both the doctrine and the capability to deal with this contingency. Developing a doctrine will require close interaction with the political leadership. Any doctrine that is prepared without a political aim and guidance will not stand the test when it is actually to be executed.
•Capability building also requires a serious debate, particularly in view of the fact that the country’s economic situation will not permit any significant increase in the defence Budget for the foreseeable future. There is too much focus on major platforms such as aircraft, ships, and tanks, and not enough on future technologies such as robotics, artificial intelligence, cyber, electronic warfare, etc. The right balance will have to be struck based on a detailed assessment of China and Pakistan’s war-fighting strategies.
Diplomacy is crucial
•Diplomacy has a crucial role to play in meeting the two-front challenge.
•To begin with, New Delhi would do well to improve relations with its neighbours so as not to be caught in an unfriendly neighbourhood given how Beijing and Islamabad will attempt to contain and constrain India in the region. The government’s current engagement of the key powers in West Asia, including Iran, should be further strengthened in order to ensure energy security, increase maritime cooperation and enhance goodwill in the extended neighbourhood. New Delhi must also ensure that its relationship with Moscow is not sacrificed in favour of India-United States relations given that Russia could play a key role in defusing the severity of a regional gang up against India. Even as the Quad, or the quadrilateral security dialogue (India, Australia, Japan and the U.S) and the Indo-Pacific seem to form the mainstay of India’s new grand strategy, there is only so much that a maritime strategy can help ease the Sino-Pakistan pressure in the continental sphere.
Outreach to Kashmir
•Politically, the stark military reality of a two-front challenge, one that is likely to grow stronger over the years, must serve as a wake-up call for the political leadership in New Delhi, and encourage it to look for ways to ease the pressure from either front. Easing pressure on the western front requires political will more than anything else. From a long-view perspective, therefore, a well-choreographed political outreach to Kashmir aimed at pacifying the aggrieved citizens there would go a long way towards that end.
•This could also lead to a potential rapprochement with Pakistan provided, of course, Rawalpindi can be persuaded to put an end to terrorist infiltration into Kashmir. It is important to remember that China, a rising and aggressive, superpower next door, is the bigger strategic threat for India, with Pakistan being a second-order accessory to Beijing’s ‘contain India strategy’. New Delhi would, therefore, do well to do what it can politically to reduce the effect of a collusive Sino-Pakistan containment strategy aimed at India.
•Lt. Gen. Deependra Singh Hooda (retd.), a former northern army commander, and Happymon Jacob, an associate professor at Jawaharlal Nehru University, recently co-founded the ‘Council for Strategic and Defense Research’, a New Delhi-based think tank.
📰 Reforms with the future and farming needs in mind
If the Farm Acts are implemented in the right spirit, they will usher in the transformation of the rural economy
•The major objections and fears relating to the new Farmers’ Produce Trade and Commerce (Promotion and Facilitation) Act and the Farmers (Empowerment and Protection) Agreement on Price Assurance and Farm Services Act (https://bit.ly/3mPmCBD and https://bit.ly/34Ov7H6) are that the Agricultural Produce Market Committees (APMC) will be eventually closed, the Minimum Support Prices (MSP) will be stopped, corporates will take over agriculture trade, and farmers’ land will be taken over by powerful corporates.
The sides to the debate
•Some experts and farmer leaders feel that these apprehensions and fears are imaginary, unrealistic and a part of deliberate narrative created to stop reforms in agriculture and prevent India from modernising agriculture and becoming a global power in agriculture. Those who oppose these Acts have focused mainly on threats and adverse effects and refrained from talking about the potential benefits of the new Acts; they are also ignoring the reasons for changing the regulatory system of agriculture. Another set of reputed experts such as Kaushik Basu have reiterated their support for changing archaic laws in agriculture but opposed the new Acts.
Basis for reforms
•There are quite a few major reasons for undertaking the reforms in agriculture (https://bit.ly/3nYjqVN). The gap between the agri-income of a farmer and that of a non-agriculture worker increased from ₹25,398 in 1993–94 to ₹1.42 lakh in 2011-12. There is widespread feeling of agrarian distress. Aggregate food demand has fallen short of domestic production necessitating the export of a large quantity to prevent domestic prices from falling very low. We are already sitting on excess stock of 60 lakh tons of sugar and nearly 72 million tons of extra buffer stock of wheat and rice which is causing a huge drain on fiscal resources.
•India’s agri-exports are getting difficult to push, imports are turning attractive as domestic prices are turning much higher than international prices. Rural youth including farmers’ children are looking for jobs outside agriculture and there is a serious problem of unemployment in the countryside. There are numerous instances of market failure to the detriment of producers and consumers. This is turning farmers to look at the government for remunerative prices through MSP for most agricultural products.
•Indian agriculture production and the market are not moving to the next stage of development. The growth rate in agriculture is driven by heavy support through various kinds of subsidies and output price support. Net revenue receipt of the Central government is below 9% of GDP. If farmers are to be ensured remunerative prices for their produce through procurement at MSP, as per the demand put up by the protesting farmers, these costs and losses and subsidies will take away most of the tax revenue of the central government. Such facts need to be shared with the farmers’ leaders. I do not think they will ask for something which will lead to a collapse of the fiscal system of the government.
•The way forward then for ensuring remunerative prices to farmers is through increased competition for sale of their produce, development of modern value chains, value addition, export, and processing as a part of rural economic revitalisation.
•There is also a need to understand that the APMC has nothing to do with payment of the MSP. Crops other than paddy, wheat and cotton are selling at prices below the MSP in the APMC mandis of Punjab on an almost regular basis. The necessary and sufficient conditions for the MSP are procurement by the government, with or without the APMC.
•Experience shows that even after fruits and vegetables were de-notified from the APMC, they continued to arrive at APMC mandis in large quantities while farmers got additional options. The threat to the APMC comes from the action of States to use these mandis for extra revenue generation. The protesting farmer leaders have raised a genuine concern to keep the level-playing field for the APMC and private players, and the Agriculture Minister has shown agreement to address this fully.
Some of the criteria
•Another provision of the New Trading Act under attack is the simple requirement of a PAN card for a trader. Protesting farmers favour stringent criteria and registration for traders in a trade area. As in the existing provisions, after having a PAN card, even a farmer can go for trading, his son can do agri-business and other rural youth can undertake purchases of farm commodities for direct sale to a consumer or other agribusiness firms. If a stringent criteria such as bank guarantee, etc. are included in the registration of traders then agriculture trade will remain in the hands of the trading class and the spirit of the new law to facilitate farmers and rural youth to become agribusiness entrepreneurs will be lost.
On contract farming
•The experiences of contract farming which is already going on in various pockets in India show the critics and protesting farmers are mixing contract farming with corporate farming. The new Act intends to insulate interested farmers (especially small farmers), against market and price risks so they can go in for the cultivation of high-value crops without worrying about the market and low prices in the harvest season. The Act is voluntary and either party is free to leave it after the expiry of agreement. It prohibits the farming agreement to include the transfer, sale, lease, mortgage of the land or premises of the farmer. The Act will promote diversification, quality production for premium price, export and direct sale of produce, with desired attributes to interested consumers. It will also bring new capital and knowledge into agriculture and pave the way for farmers’ participation in the value chain.
•The policy reforms undertaken by the central government through these Acts are in keeping with the changing times and requirements of farmers and farming. If they are implemented in the right spirit, they will take Indian agriculture to new heights and usher in the transformation of the rural economy.
