📰 Prime Minister Narendra Modi inaugurates 450-km Kochi-Mangaluru natural gas pipeline
Govt. has concrete plan to move towards gas-based economy, says PM Modi
•Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Tuesday said that as part of efforts to making India a natural gas-based economy, 10,000 more CNG (compressed natural gas) stations would be opened and several lakh PNG (piped natural gas) household connections given in the coming days.
•Inaugurating the 450-km Kochi-Koottanad-Mangaluru LNG (liquified natural gas) pipeline through video conferencing on Tuesday, Mr. Modi said the facility was part of his government’s “one nation-one gas grid” policy. The government has a concrete plan to move towards a gas-based economy that would be cheaper, convenient and environment-friendly, he said.
•The Prime Minister said the government would make substantial investments in coal and gas sectors. The plan was to increase the share of natural gas in the energy sector from the present 6% to 15% by 2030.
•Mr. Modi said the government had definite plans for the future to make the country energy-sufficient and reduce expenditure on foreign exchange through diversification of energy requirement. Focus was being given to increase ethanol production so as to increase ethanol content in petrol to 20% from the present 5%. The world’s largest hybrid energy plant (wind and solar) was coming up in Gujarat. The electric mobility sector too was being encouraged. Through these, alternative, cheap and pollution-free fuel and energy would be made available to people, he said.
•Giving out statistics on efforts to boost alternative energy sector, Mr. Modi said while 15,000 km of LNG pipeline was laid between 1978 (when the first inter-State pipeline was commissioned) and 2014, work on 16,000 km of new pipeline that started in 2014 would be completed in the next four years. As against 900 CNG stations between 1992 and 2014, 1,500 new stations were built thereafter and the numbers would increase to 10,000 soon. As against 25 lakh PNG connections till 2014, 72 lakh PNG connections were given till date. The Kochi-Mangaluru pipeline would provide another 21 lakh PNG connections.
•Union Minister for Petroleum and Natural Gas Dharmendra Pradhan, in his introductory address, said the new pipeline would have international importance, wherein the carbon footprint would get substantially reduced. Stating it was a classic example of cooperative federalism, Mr. Pradhan congratulated the Kerala and Karnataka governments for their support.
•Kerala Governor Arif Mohammed Khan, Karnataka Governor Vajubhai Vala, Kerala Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan, Karnataka Chief Minister B.S. Yediyurappa, Union Minister for Coal and Parliamentary Affairs Pralhad Joshi, Minister of State for External Affairs V. Muraleedharan and others were present.
In majority opinion, top court says change in land use under DDA Act is proper
•The Supreme Court, in a majority judgment, on Tuesday, gave its go-ahead to the multi-crore Central Vista redevelopment project, which proposes to build a new Parliament three times bigger than the existing 93-year-old heritage building and modify the use of 86.1 acres of land, home to India's power corridor in the national capital.
•In their majority opinion, Justices A.M. Khanwilkar and Dinesh Maheshwari said the court cannot order the government to desist from spending money on one project and use it for something else. They said the government did not act against public trust.
•They brushed aside allegations that the government committed foul play and illegally carved out the Parliament project from the Central Vista project.
•The proposed Parliament House has a built-up area of 65,000 sq.m and is scheduled to be completed in 2022, in time for the 75th Independence Day celebrations and the Global G-20 summit. The Central Vista project aims for an “integrated administration block” and “synergised functioning” of ministries presently spread across 47 buildings in the region, and in particular, Central Secretariat block.
•The majority opinion said the project did not involve any “radical” change in land use. The proposed change in landscape would not limit “recreational spaces” for the public.
•It dismissed notions that the project was “sui generis” (unique) and deserved a “heightened judicial review”.
•“The right to development is a basic human right and no organ of the state is expected to become an impediment in the process of development as long as the government proceeds in accordance with law,” Justice Khanwilkar wrote.
•Justice Sanjeev Khanna, in a separate dissent, upheld the project bid notice, award of consultancy and the order of the Delhi Urban Arts Commission, but concluded that the Centre did not take the public into confidence about the changes proposed for Central Vista, an area, which in post-Independent India, “inspires and connects common people to the citadels of our democracy”.
•Justice Khanna said public consultation was neither sensible or meaningful. He quashed the land change notification and referred the project back to the Heritage Conservation Committee to ensure better public participation.
•He said the “access of the common people to the green and other areas in the Central Vista would be curtailed/restricted”.
•Justice Khanna also disagreed with the majority view and set aside the environmental clearance given by the Ministry to the Parliament building project.
•“The public should be provided not only with information about the draft scheme but also an outline of realistic alternatives and indication of main reasons for the authority’s adoption of the draft scheme,” Justice Khanna noted.
•Justice Khanwilkar, however, maintained there was nothing “clandestine” about the project. He said a personal communication was sent to all the 1,292 objectors.
•The proposal was placed before the parliamentary committee, chaired by the Lok Sabha Speaker and constituting MPs of major national political parties, at the inception stage itself. The Lok Sabha Secretariat had approved the budget estimate and concept plan.
•But Justice Khanna pointed out that the SMS and emails of the public notice of hearing was sent out at the “last moment”. Objectors did not get reasonable time to orally state their point of view.
•The various facets of the project under challenge in court included the change in land use in the Central Vista under the Delhi Development Act, 1957, the permissions and approvals granted by the Central Vista Committee, the Delhi Urban Arts Commission (DUAC) and the clearance/no-objection for construction of a new Parliament House under the Environment Protection Act, 1986.
•The petitioners had also alleged that the government failed to take prior permission/approval of the Heritage Conservation Committee (HCC) under the Unified Building Bye-Laws of 2016.
•The majority view held the Centre’s exercise of power to change the land use under Section 11A(2) of the Delhi Development Authority Act, 1957 was “just and proper”. Justice Khanwilkar said the environment clearance was valid.
•The land use change met the present need for better governance and proper development in the National Capital, Justice Khanwilkar maintained.
•“The proposed changes fully gel with the vision of the Master Plan including the Zonal Plan. Basic principle behind the Master Plan is to tread the path of development... Section 11A(1) empowers the Authority to make modifications in the master plan or the zonal plan,” Justice Khanwilkar wrote.
•But Justice Khanna pointed out that the area has several heritage buildings like the Parliament House, National Archives, North Block, South Block as well as the Central Vista precincts which are specifically graded as Grade-I.
•“Central government could not have notified the modified the land use changes without following the procedure and without prior approval/permission from the Heritage Conservation Committee... The local body i.e. NDMC should have approached the Heritage Conservation Committee for clarification/confirmation and proceed on their advice,” Justice Khanna said.
•The majority opinion found no infirmity in the “no objection” given by the Central Vista Committee, saying it was done after an “elaborate process”.
•However, Justice Khanna said four independent representatives were missing at a crucial meeting held on April 30, leaving only the government’s men in attendance.
•“Thus, the contention that the meeting was a premeditated effort to ensure approval without the presence and participation of representatives of professional bodies is apparent and hardly needs any argument,” Justice Khanna concluded.
•Justice Khanwilkar upheld the approval given by the DUAC for the Parliament building. He said the DUAC’s mandate was limited to advice on the overall aesthetic quality of the region. The majority judgment found the allegations of favouritism in the selection of consultant as baseless.
•The majority opinion held that as regards the new Parliament building project, the concern of heritage conservation did not arise directly.
•The court, however, took note of the concerns raised that the new Parliament is proposed to be built in a vacant space adjacent to existing Parliament House. It said the HCC was free to consider the proposal in accordance with law.
•This did not prevent the court from upholding the “prior approval” accorded by the HCC before processing the proposal for change of use of the listed heritage building/listed precincts.
•It went on to distinguish between ‘prior approval’ and ‘prior permission’ of the HCC under the Building Bye Laws of 2016.
•“The stage of prior permission is the stage when actual development/redevelopment work is to commence and not the incipient stage of planning and formalisation of the project, including the new Parliament,” the court said.
•The court said the government should obtain prior permission of the designated Authority - Commissioner, MCD, Vice Chairman, DDA and Chairman, NDMC - before the actual development/redevelopment work, if it has not already obtained it.
📰 Pune command centre to track vaccine movement across 41 key locations
Cool dollies, express lanes and pre-alerts to ensure seamless movement at airports
•A command and control centre set up at the Centre’s aviation cargo wing, AAICLAS, will monitor the movement of COVID-19 vaccines across a network of 41 airports, with Pune — where vaccine manufacturer Serum Institute of India is located — as the hub.
•The 41 airports or cities where transportation efforts will be focused include Karnal, Mumbai, Chennai and Kolkata, each of which has a Government Medical Stores Depot (GMSD) of the Central government’s Ministry of Health and Family Welfare. Once vaccines dispatched by the manufacturers arrive at these four big depots, they will be further distributed across 37 State depots.
•Thereafter, they will be sent to district depots and finally to primary health care centres, Secretary of Ministry of Health and Family Welfare, Rajesh Bhushan, said at a press event on Tuesday.
•Each of these centres have a temperature tracker which will upload temperature data on a central server for real time monitoring.
•The AAICLAS — the Airports Authority of India Cargo Logistics and Allied Services Company Limited — will be the nodal body for co-ordinating air transportation of the vaccines among various stakeholders of the aviation sector. It is in the process of finalising a standard operating protocol “to ensure co-ordination among different supply chain stakeholders for maximising shipping capabilities,” CEO Keku Bomi Gazder told The Hindu.
•The SOPs focus on ensuring temperature sensitivity and seamless movement of vaccines within the airport. They will ensure that a consignment doesn’t take more than 30 minutes from the moment it enters a cargo terminal till it is loaded onto an aircraft and not more than six minutes after being offloaded from an aircraft at the destination airport and shifted to an insulated van outside the airport.
•Various airlines, and officials of the AAICLAS, Bureau of Civil Aviation Security, Indian Air Force as well as Serum Institute of India will be meeting at Pune airport on Wednesday to discuss manpower and infrastructure requirement following which corrective measures will be taken, Airport Director, Kuldeep Singh Rishi said. The airport in Pune belongs to the IAF.
•Airports such as the Indira Gandhi International Airport have state-of-the-art temperature controlled zones with separate cool chambers ranging from +250C to -200C. Cool dollies or mobile temperature-controlled facilities help in movement of temperature sensitive cargo between terminals and aircraft to ensure an unbroken cold chain. Terminals also have charging points to handle temperature-controlled containers.
•“The role of the vaccine supply chain would be to ensure effective vaccine storage, handling, severe temperature control in the cold chain; and maintenance of adequate logistics management information systems. The airports and carriers for the vaccine have to be equipped to handle large capacity of vaccine and store them for last mile delivery,” Ketan Kulkarni, CMO & Head - Business Development, Blue Dart, told The Hindu in an email interview.
•Due to the sensitivity of the shipments, technology will also play a vital role in ensuring vaccines remain efficacious throughout the supply chain.
•“Overall visibility on relevant data for everyone involved must be improved so as to identify potential bottlenecks and deterrents,” added Mr Kulkarni.
•”Customers, both airlines and the freight forwarders are being sensitised to send us their pre-alerts and planning, to enable us to expedite movements accordingly. To ensure speed, we have created a separate lane for movements of Covid Vaccine at Export and Import warehouse and dedicated delivery and acceptance gates for immediate handling,” says Celebi Aviation's India CEO, Murali Ramachandran.
📰 Asian Waterbird Census commences in A.P.
At least two dozen sites are being covered under the two-day exercise
•The two-day Asian Waterbird Census-2020 commenced in Andhra Pradesh on Tuesday under the aegis of experts from the Bombay Natural History Society (BNHS), covering at least two dozen sites, including Coringa Wildlife Sanctuary, Kolleru Lake and Krishna Sanctuary.
•BNHS Assistant Director P. Sathiyaselvam, S. Siva Kumar and BNHS Andhra Pradesh coordinator K. Mrutyunjaya Rao trained amateur birdwatchers on Tuesday on technical aspects of the bird census and challenges, enabling them to conduct the task on their own.
•Dr. Sathiyaselvam, who had previously explored the avian diversity in the Godavari estuary, has presented a demonstration on the 90 species of birds sighted in the Godavari estuary and finalised 12 sites being covered in the census.
•“There is a need of more birdwatchers in the State, as their critical inputs on the wetlands and waterbirds will help design the conservation plans of the respective sites in future,” said Dr. Sathiyaselvam.
•On the endangered Indian Skimmer, Dr. Sathiyaselvam admitted that more study was still required to establish that the species breeds on the Kakinada coast, which supports a great number of Indian Skimmer.
•In Godavari estuary, the Kumbabhisekham mudflat, the wetland opposite the Coromandel industrial area and other Important Bird Areas (IBAs) are being covered.
•The birdwatchers from Visakhapatnam, Rajamahendravaram and Kakinada have been roped into the census in the Godavari estuary.
•In Kolleru Lake and Krishna sanctuaries, the forest department employees are conducting the census. In-Charge Ranger (Wildlife-Kakinada) Sunil Kumar was present.
📰 An Indian gift helps Sri Lanka’s COVID-19 fight
The free ambulance service, launched in 2016, proves crucial in the country’s response to the virus
•Less than five years after its launch, an India-funded free ambulance service is playing a vital role in Sri Lanka’s COVID-19 response, according to health sector officials.
•“Over the last few months, the ‘1990 Suwa Seriya’ Emergency Ambulance service has doubled its efforts, attending not just to medical emergencies, but also helping us transfer COVID-19 patients, including those with co-morbidities, to hospitals swiftly,” said Dr. Sunil de Alwis, Additional Secretary, Medical Services, Ministry of Health. For this, the service coordinates with the Health Ministry, Public Health Inspectors, and the Epidemiology Unit to ensure that coronavirus patients are able to access treatment at the right hospital, without losing time.
•On Sri Lanka’s request, India provided a grant of $7.56 million for the Suwa Seriya [vehicle or journey for good health] service, launched first in 2016, in Sri Lanka’s Western and Southern Provinces, with 88 ambulances.
•In the next couple of years, the ‘1990’ service was expanded to cover all nine provinces in the island, with a fleet of 297 ambulances — Sri Lanka purchased them from Tata Motors — with an additional Indian grant of $15.09 million. It is India’s second largest grant project in the island, after the housing project of more than 60,000 houses, with a nearly $400 million grant.
•The idea of launching such an ambulance service came not at any high-level bilateral discussion. It was a proposal made by Harsha de Silva, then a junior Minister and now opposition parliamentarian, after an ordeal he experienced while trying to hospitalise a friend who sustained serious injuries in a road accident. “Sri Lanka didn’t have a pre-hospital emergency ambulance service until 2016. That experience taught me how crucial an ambulance can be in such situations. When I heard India was offering a grant, I immediately made this proposal to then Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe,” Mr. de Silva, an MP with the main opposition party Samagi Jana Balawegaya (SJB, or United People’s Front), told The Hindu.
•The grant, he recalled, was in the context of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s visit to Sri Lanka in March 2015, the first bilateral visit by an Indian Prime Minister to the island nation in some 25 years. “PM Modi addressed the Parliament, and when I had a chance to meet him at the lobby, I briefed him about this proposal, and he immediately said we will do it,” Mr. de Silva said. “The Indian side put forward only one condition. That after the launch and the initial phase, the government of Sri Lanka must take over the ambulance service and run it. We readily agreed.”
Resistance to service
•Following bilateral deliberations and paperwork, the service was launched about a year later. Not without resistance, though.
•Some, including nationalist groups and an influential trade union of government doctors, vehemently opposed the “Indian ambulance”, on grounds that Sri Lankan health workers would lose jobs to Indian counterparts, quality, and national pride.
•After setting up the service, New Delhi and Colombo organised training for Sri Lankan emergency medical technicians, working in the ambulances, at the GVK EMRI in Hyderabad. So far, all the 709 technicians, who work round the clock in the ‘1990’ ambulances, have been trained in India. “The hands-on training in India has really helped our emergency medical technicians. They now undergo other refresher programmes periodically,” said Sohan de Silva, CEO of the 1990 Suwa Seriya Foundation, a semi-government, not-for-profit organisation functioning under the Ministry of Health. The Foundation has 1,400 staff members, including medical technicians and drivers, operating the service.
•After the initial partnership in training and operations, India exited the scene, even as Sri Lanka’s health sector began owning it. “While we have a sticker saying ‘This is a gift from the people of India with the Indian flag on each ambulance, there is no Indian connection in the running of this service now,” Mr. Harsha de Silva said. “It is Sri Lanka’s, run entirely by Sri Lankans.”
•Despite meeting initial resistance, the service gradually gained popularity, more apparent after COVID-19 struck. In March, when Sri Lanka’s first wave of the pandemic struck, the 1990 call centre noticed a surge in calls — from about 5,300 a day to 9,000. It meant that the ambulances were attending to at least 500 more cases than the daily average of 1,050. Sri Lanka contained its first wave of the coronavirus effectively, but the second wave since October has proved rather challenging. Infections have been spreading fast, resulting in a rapid increase in both, the number of cases and fatalities over the last three months. During this time, the number of COVID-19 fatalities rose from 13 to 215, while the number of infections went up from 3,300 to over 45,000.
•“Attending to COVID-19 cases isn’t easy, as all the staff have to be in full PPE and disinfect the vehicle after every hospital transfer,” Dr. de Alwis said. “But we are really happy with this service and greatly appreciate the Indian assistance. In fact, it would be wonderful if India can help us expand this service even more,” he said, speaking of plans to include mental health into the ambit of the ambulance service. A systems-driven approach in running the service has been key to its success, especially during the Covid-19 pandemic, officials noted. The response time of an ambulance in capital Colombo is 8.30 minutes. But in that time, the caller – often the patient’s relative – gets at least three calls from the 1990 service. “We need to reassure the patient party that our ambulance is on its way and will soon attend to their needs Eight to ten minutes is a long time in a crisis,” said Sohan De Silva. The systems now in place, in his view, have kept overhead costs low. “On an average, the cost per case s less than LKR 5,500 (roughly ₹ 2,160).
📰 The dark step of writing hate into law
The new marriage laws put state power and the law behind majoritarian communal biases, boosting regressive mores
•Chaudhary Charan Singh, the former Prime Minister, made a proposal to Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru in 1954. As a Minister in the Uttar Pradesh government, he wanted Nehru to pass a law so that jobs as gazetted officers could only be for those who wanted to or had married outside their caste (https://bit.ly/3oc4ALv). Nehru turned the proposal down because this struck at the exercise of the free will of individual citizens in India.
Setting a precedent
•It is an indicator of the distance travelled since; that Charan Singh’s State (Uttar Pradesh) has an ordinance which criminalises inter-faith marriages. The U.P. government’s focus is firmly on ‘protecting’ Hindu women from marrying Muslim men. It does this under the pretext of regulating religious conversions.
•The law in U.P. has already set a precedent for other States ruled by the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) such as Madhya Pradesh. In another BJP-ruled State neighbouring U.P., namely Uttarakhand, a routine press release from the Social Welfare department highlighted a scheme incentivising inter-faith and inter-caste marriages. This threatened the communal world view being rapidly ushered in through a series of so-called ‘Freedom of Religion’ laws in BJP-ruled States. The press release was seen so out-of-step by the State government, that an inquiry was ordered by the Chief Minister.
•In 1872, the colonial state drew up a law after it received petitions from Keshub Chandra Sen of the Brahmo Samaj demanding that people of different backgrounds be allowed to marry according to their ‘rites of conscience’. The Special Marriage Act, in 1954, took this further in independent India by taking away the colonial law’s requirement to renounce religion. However, it still allowed intrusion by the state, unlike under personal laws, by demanding notices to be put up in advance. This was done to ensure there were no living spouses or minors being married, but this clause was misused by communal social groups to stop such unions (https://bit.ly/3okStM4).
•In BJP-ruled States, there are many other recent ‘laws’ — on slaughter of cattle, marriage, and religious conversions — which taken together, target Muslims, both by denying them shared social spaces and their rights as equal citizens of the republic. It also destroys the long-standing fraternity in everyday lives that has long defined India. The ordinance by U.P., the Uttar Pradesh Prohibition of Unlawful Conversion of Religion Ordinance, 2020, and the Madhya Pradesh Freedom of Religion Bill, 2020 are particularly vicious on at least four counts.
Fundamentally wrong
•Under the Constitution, it is the individual citizen who has and exercises rights and obligations. But these new laws treat religious communities, instead of individual citizens, as basic entities. By taking away the agency that the Indian Constitution allows each individual to exercise, this fundamentally distorts the framework of our republic.
•For those who argue that the Constitution does address communities when speaking of minority rights and untouchability, it is to only acknowledge and overcome social discrimination because that impedes the ability of those citizens to exercise their rights as individuals. By seeing the world as split between ‘Hindus’ and ‘Muslims’, a khap-ian universe, a fundamental modern characteristic of the guarantee of autonomy to all Indians as individuals is broken.
Violate privacy, choice rights
•Second, these laws blatantly violate the Right to Privacy, which the Supreme Court of India in a much-lauded judgment in 2017, decreed to be fundamental. The level of state interference in a civil union, which is a solemnisation of a relationship between two individuals, breaches the basic structure of the Constitution.
•Third, the provisions impede the exercise of an individual’s right to choose her faith without seeking state sanction. Under these new laws, everyone — from the police, local administration and communal groups and families — are given ample time to interfere and deny the individual, without any locus to do so. In matters of change of profession, nationalities, electoral choices and even political parties, no such interference is brought into play. The ruling by the Supreme Court (1977), which upheld earlier restrictions to convert by the States of Madhya Pradesh and Odisha (https://bit.ly/394c4tv), said it did so to penalise “conversion by force, fraud or by allurement. The other element is that every person has a right to profess his own religion and to act according to it. Any interference with that right of the other person by resorting to conversion by force or allurement cannot, in our opinion, be said to contravene Article 25(1) of the Constitution of India, as the article guarantees religious freedom subject to public health (https://bit.ly/2LjX8zm)”. By making “propagation” contentious, the 1977 ruling pushed back freedoms in Article 25, so the mass conversion of Dr. B.R. Ambedkar to Buddhism could invite a jail sentence! Instead of rescinding the 1977 ruling, these laws further criminalise an individual’s choice of faith.
•Fourth, the basis of the new law is deeply patriarchal. The nightmare that India traversed in the 1920s, with competitive communalism fanning charges of Hindu betis in North India being taken away like cattle, are being relived now. The pernicious myth of ‘love jihad’ where adult women are seen as property, is not just a pamphlet or WhatsApp message. It is now the law. We saw a brief preview in 2017 of the dark consequences of the ‘Prohibition of Unlawful Conversion of Religion Ordinance, 2020’ when the law confronted Hadiya, a 25-year-old health professional from Kerala, for her marital choice a year after converting to Islam. This law targets Muslim men, but is also a living hell for Hindu women.
Cost of inaction
•It is with good reason that India is said to have effected a social transformation, thanks to the values spelt out and written into the law of the Republic. The Constitution offered high principles to aspire for, which Indians may never fully live up to. But that may have been the intention, to set high standards and ensure we were always jumping just a little bit, to be better. All laws should meet that brief. However, these new laws do the opposite; they put state power and the law itself behind majoritarian communal biases which empower regressive social mores governing marriage and fellowship. Inter-religious marriages may be less than 2.5% of all marriages, but the promise they hold goes beyond numbers. They reaffirm the fundamental constitutional premise of all citizens being equal, besides promoting the ideals of freedom and fraternity.
It is diabolical
•To fan rumours of ‘love jihad’ even as the government confirmed in Parliament that there was no evidence of it, is diabolical. But more than that, it is downright dangerous as it seeds mistrust, and changes fundamental and basic ground rules that all plural democracies must live by. It is for the court to suo motu strike these laws down if it wants to preserve the basic structure of the constitutional edifice.
•In September 1935 when Hitler enacted the Nuremberg Race Laws, it was fear of the Mischling or the German-Jewish children of ‘mixed’ descent that haunted the Nazi mind obsessed with purity. At 50% Jew and 50% Aryan, they were a threat to Nazi ideas. Closely linked to preventing such marital and sexual unions was the Nazi belief in dodgy eugenics. The tragedy was that these laws were not protested enough when they were enacted. They ended up guiding Nazi racial policy for the remaining decade of the Reich (https://bit.ly/2JMo5LL).
•We must never forget the price a society and a country pays for writing hate into law.
📰 An arbitrary directive
The Centre’s directive to the Bengal government goes against the norms governing deputation of officers
•Recently, the Centre and the West Bengal government were engaged in a tussle. The Centre directed the State government to relieve three IPS officers on Central deputation; the State government refused. The Centre’s move followed the incident that took place in early December when BJP president J.P. Nadda’s convoy travelling from Sirakol to Diamond Harbour in West Bengal was attacked by stone-throwing protesters carrying Trinamool Congress flags. The three IPS officers in question had been posted as in-charges of the police district, range, and zone where the incident took place. The Centre’s directive not only reeks of vengeance but goes against the norms governing deputation of officers to the Centre.
•To apportion blame on the three IPS officers for the attack without even a perfunctory inquiry goes against the norms of justice. It is impossible to identify a potential miscreant in a crowd that gathers on the road when a leader passes by. In case the powers that be felt that the three officers should be penalised for dereliction of duty, a formal inquiry followed by penal action, if necessary, would have met the ends of justice.
•Ostensibly, the Centre’s decision was taken to teach the officers a lesson that they were at its mercy, as the Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) is the controlling authority for all IPS officers. The three officers have been posted to the Indo Tibetan Border Police (ITBP), the Sashastra Seema Bal (SSB) and the Bureau of Police Research and Development (BPRD).
The process for deputation
•In normal course, officers willing to be deputed to the Centre are asked to apply through the States. A panel of selected officers is prepared after which they are deputed to various Central Armed Police Forces (the Central Reserve Police Force, the Border Security Force, the Central Industrial Security Force, ITBP and SSB) and even to Central Police Organisations like the Intelligence Bureau, the Central Bureau of Investigation, the Research and Analysis Wing, the National Investigation Agency, and BPRD. It is important to note that the officers are selected after their dossiers are scrutinised and not nominated as the MHA has done with respect to the three officers. Even when the officers opt for Central deputation, they give their choice of the organisation where they would like to serve. Selection is done strictly on merit, based on their annual performance reports.
•When officers are forcibly deputed to Central organisations, they go with the perception that they have been deputed on grounds of inefficiency or as a punishment. Demoralised officers who become victims of political manipulations cannot be expected to give their best.
•According to a MHA memorandum of April 2000, “the two-way movement of officers from State to Centre and back is of mutual benefit to the States and Government of India on the one hand and to the officers concerned on the other.” How far it would benefit demoralised officers who are forced to join Central organisations is anybody’s guess. The message that goes out to personnel of Central organisations is that these organisations are dumping grounds for those unwanted in the States or those whom the Centre wants to penalise for any transgression.
A proposal to reduce CDR
•The Central government is already working on a proposal to reduce the Central Deputation Reserve (CDR) of IPS officers from 1,075 to about 500. This is being done as most States are not willing to spare officers to serve on Central deputation. In 2019, only 428 officers were working on Central deputation against the strength of 1,075. Most officers avoid Central deputation as they enjoy better perks and powers in the States. On the other hand, Central deputation could mean a posting in the Northeast or in a Left Wing Extremism-affected State. Hence, when there is already a proposal to slash the strength of the CDR, the Centre’s insistence that the three officers should be relieved appears farcical.
•Since the States are bound to oppose tooth and nail such arbitrary directives by the Centre, such orders are best avoided.
📰 Changing contours of India-U.K. ties
The two countries have a shared past and need to chart a different shared future
•Prime Minister Narendra Modi has made many sudden and surprising decisions: some felicitous, others disastrous. Among the former were invitations to leaders of the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation to attend his 2014 swearing-in and his visit to Lahore in 2015; among the latter were demonetisation and the ‘Namaste Trump’ spectacle last February. Yet to be defined in either category is his startling invitation to British Prime Minister Boris Johnson who, due to the ravages of COVID-19 mutations in the U.K., has expressed his inability to attend a truncated version of India’s Republic Day parade this month. Mr. Johnson is a colourful and controversial character, often portrayed in the British media as a clown, but no one can doubt his capacity for manoeuvre and staying power.
Choosing a chief guest
•The nomination of a chief guest for the Republic Day parade is the Prime Minister’s exclusive gift, and he or she is not known to consult others in or outside the Cabinet. American President Donald Trump was Mr. Modi’s first choice for January 2019 but the honour eventually fell to Mr. Trump’s alter ego, Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro. Mr. Modi’s selections are revealing: U.S. President Barack Obama in 2015, French President Francois Hollande in 2016, the Crown Prince of the United Arab Emirates in 2017, the ASEAN leaders in 2018, South African President Cyril Ramaphosa in 2019, Mr. Bolsonaro in 2020, and Mr. Johnson for 2021. With 193 countries in the United Nations, the Prime Minister’s choices have mostly been leaders identified with the Western camp. Besides this, the invitation to Britain was the sixth to that country, more than to any other nation.
•India has a shared past with Britain and needs to chart a different shared future, now that Britain has left the European Union (EU). One joint enterprise will be as members of the UN Security Council where Britain has permanent status and India holds a non-permanent seat this year and next. And this year, Mr. Johnson will be hosting India as an invitee to the G-7, and the UN Climate Change Conference.
•There is much in common between Mr. Modi’s recent invitees, Mr. Bolsonaro, Mr. Trump and Mr. Johnson. All their countries have been ravaged by the virus and each of them has been infected with COVID-19. They are all populist nationalists advocating ‘make my country great again’ and ‘my country first’. Their brand of democratic politics is self-centred and impervious to criticism.
•Mr. Johnson propelled himself to British national politics through leadership of the Brexit campaign in 2016, and to the prime ministership by leading a revolt against his predecessor Theresa May who had promised a friction-free Brexit. He has now delivered one that is tariff- and quota-free and allegedly “takes back control over our money, borders, laws, trade, and our fishing waters,” but has potential for friction both with the EU and domestically. Brexit will never cease to divide Britain and already causes tension between Whitehall and two of the devolved regions, Scotland and Northern Ireland.
•Mr. Modi visited the U.K. in 2015 when six major agreements were concluded. It is unlikely that any assessment has been made of the implementation of those accords, but in contemporary diplomacy, it is common for a raft of new treaties to be superimposed on existing ones even where there is insufficient progress.
A fortuitous invite
•From Britain’s point of view, Mr. Modi’s invitation to its Prime Minister was fortuitous because Brexit necessitates that every effort be made to seek commercial advantage in Asian countries with high growth rates. India has been fruitlessly negotiating a trade agreement with the EU since 2007, during which Britain was considered the main deal-breaker. The EU wanted duty reductions on autos, wines and spirits and wanted India to open financial sectors such as banking and insurance, postal, legal, accountancy, maritime and security and retail. India, as always, sought free movement for service professionals.
•The same obstacles with post-Brexit Britain will arise, because the export profile of both countries is predominantly services-oriented. In response to free movement for professionals, Britain will refer to its new points-based system for immigrants, while after withdrawing from the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership, India is cautious about negotiating any new trade agreement, and will place greater stress on aspects related to country of origin and percentage of value addition in exports. Therefore, when the time comes for a discrete agreement with Britain, the two countries may settle for a limited one perhaps covering pharmaceuticals, financial technology, chemicals, defence production, petroleum and food products.
Close relations
•India-U.K. links are substantial. One and a half million persons of Indian origin reside in Britain, 15 of them are Members of Parliament, three in Cabinet and two holding high office as Finance and Home Ministers. Before COVID-19, there were half a million tourists from India to Britain annually and twice that figure in the reverse direction. Around 30,000 Indians study in Britain despite restrictive opportunities for post-graduation employment. Britain is among the top investors in India and India is the second-biggest investor and a major job creator in Britain. India has a credit balance in a total trade of $16 billion, but the level is below India’s trade with Switzerland, Germany or Belgium.
•In one aspect of his invitation to Mr. Johnson, Prime Minister Modi was remarkably prescient. In November last year, when the invitation was extended, there were short odds against Mr. Johnson continuing as Prime Minister beyond March this year. With the EU-British trade agreement concluded in the dying hours of 2020, the betting now is that Mr. Johnson will lead his Conservative Party into the next election in 2024 as Prime Minister.
•Mr. Modi would now be well advised to cut back further on Republic Day celebrations, in recognition of the country’s sufferings during the past year.
📰 Shock treatment will not work in agriculture
Post-1991, changes in industry caused a second de-industrialisation; the results in agriculture are likely to be no different
•Almost all sections of people including farmers agree that the Agricultural Produce Market Committee (APMC)-mandi policies for agricultural marketing, initiated in the 1960s for a few crops, have outlived their utility and the system needs a new policy in the face of the agricultural sector’s growth slowdown, the crop-composition not widening, and investments in land not happening.
•Recently, the government of the day has opened up the output market with the aim to let market forces improve efficiency and create more value for farmers and the economy. These laws state that farmers are now free to sell all their products anywhere and to anyone beyond the physical premises of APMC markets. Additionally, the laws promote contract farming through establishing partnerships between farmers and food-processing companies, and also permit unlimited hoarding of food except in special circumstances.
What farmers want
•Three main suggestions were put forth by farmers when we recently made enquiries with them: one, their produce prices should be the cost of production plus a reasonable mark-up; two, fluctuations in prices should be minimal; and three, there should be little or no interface with legal or administrative officials — they are not comfortable dealing with the “sahibs and the police”. All these farmer concerns have been ignored in the way the current laws are drafted. Additionally, as the old laws are being repealed, they said that there is a need for a wider view of the sector to include more crops. Thus, if the government encourages farmers to move from wheat to vegetables, markets for the latter should address all the above three aspects.
New markets are an unknown
•The first law of the Minimum Support Price-mandi is a known devil, but the new markets will be an unknown ghost with no control over them by anyone. Thus, while “malpractices” in mandis are known and local leaders (Members of Parliament, Members of the Legislative Assembly, panchayats) are often brought in to vent farmers’ anger or arbitrate in difficult situations, malpractices in the new systems are neither forecast-able nor is there any authority to report to. Next, while the government says that the mandi-MSP system will continue, the question is, for how long? If the alternative traders offer better prices, farmers will go there and not to the mandis (as is already the case, highlighted in the recent media article by Gurcharan Das; https://bit.ly/3928m3R). What happens after two to three years when the regulated mandis become weaker or begin to shut down due to lack of business?
•There are many issues here. Traders could reduce the prices on more than one pretext, such as finding faults with the product; declining to buy on the pretext of glut (a wait and watch strategy); defaulting on payments, and so on. Since traders are few (at least locally) they can form cartels, while farmers many: this is imminently possible. The farmers are further handicapped by the fact that they come from long distances with loads of several quintals/tonnes of produce on hired tractors; going back owing to the transport cost incurred is not an option for them. Their situation worsens when their cash needs are immediate, which is the case for the small farmers who constitute 90-plus% of those who sell at the mandis at MSP.
Advantage corporate buyers
•The second law has somewhat similar issues. The corporate-buyers might just not buy the full quantity of the product on one or another pretext or delay payments;and if farmers complain, the corporates have access to a battery of lawyers, the fine print in contracts, the advantage of language, and, above all, the capacity to wait it out.
•In both the above cases, the problem is of contracts between unequals: whether it is traders or corporates, they are far fewer and with deeper pockets,and they will deal with (poor/little-educated) small farmers (about 85% have two or less hectares of land), resulting in unequal outcomes.
•The other issue is in regard to different regions and crops. Many proponents of the agri-marketing laws maintain that farmers from outside the wheat-rice belts in northern India are not protesting. Evidently so, since the country is diverse with some 15 agroclimatic zones and has over 50 crops grown.
Issues and farmers’ reactions
•We also forget that farmers protest against policies in areas where they hail from: like in eastern India, farmers revolted in 1860 against indigo-farming, Mappilas revolted in 1921, or even the Warli Adivasi Revolt of 1945. More recently, in the 1970s to 2010s, Sharad Joshi led agitations for the farming sector mainly in Maharashtra, or farmers in Tamil Nadu had protested demanding Cauvery water. There are many more examples. Farmers protest against problems that affect them: they are not a homogeneous lot.
•If in 2020 a new policy is being formulated, why is it (ironically) uniform for all farmers, all land and all crops, of opening up the markets; markets which are almost fully opaque, unequal and having imperfect information? What happens to the semi-arid areas and the farmers therein, where crop outcomes are uncertain? What happens to small and marginal farmers who have little to market and are largely inarticulate? How will risk be mitigated if farmers move from wheat-rice cultivation to more volatile crops such as vegetables and fruits, or pest-prone crops such as cotton? Or what happens to landless labourers who have migrated from far away to work in fields (such as from Bihar to Punjab)? Should there not be a comprehensive policy in regard to the agricultural sector rather than a “shock treatment” for agri-markets alone?
Expert recommendations
•The so-far neglected problem of stagnation and high input prices in agriculture can be addressed through a systematic approach proposed in the M.S. Swaminathan Commission and/or the Ashok Dalwai Committee. Typical examples are transitions being worked out for farmers to move out of water-soaking paddy crop in Punjab-Haryana to other crops; say, in five years, they would reduce the area under paddy by 25-30%, and the loss they incur in the short run, will be compensated for by the government. This could, for example, also be done for sugarcane in western Maharashtra.
•Shock treatments do not work anywhere, be it agriculture, industry or the economy. Many an industry, post-1991, shut down due to “shock treatment” then, resulting in a second de-industrialisation and the loss of hundreds of thousands of industrial jobs. The results in agriculture are likely to be no different in the face of shocks.
