📰 India seals Myanmar border amid strains over refugee crisis
Mizoram Chief Minister Zoramthanga talks to Myanmar Foreign Minister Zin Mar Aung as Centre checks influx.
•Mizoram Chief Minister Zoramthanga held a virtual meeting on Sunday with Foreign Minister of Myanmar Zin Mar Aung amid the ongoing military crackdown following the February coup, even as India has sealed all entry points along the border with the southeast Asian neighbour and is closely monitoring to prevent any Myanmar nationals from entering the country.
•“Had a fruitful meeting (online) this morning with Zin Mar Aung, Hon'ble Foreign Minister, Myanmar. Our thoughts and prayers are with Myanmar in these trying times,” Mr. Zoramthanga said on Twitter. He had earlier written a letter to Prime Minister Narendra Modi urging intervention so that “political refugees” from Myanmar are given asylum to give food and shelter in the country.
•The tussle between the Centre and State over the issue has created a tough time for New Delhi and security agencies in handling situation on the ground, according to multiple officials.
•In the letter dated March 18, Mr. Zoramthanga said the people residing on both sides have close linkages. “India cannot turn a blind eye to the humanitarian crisis unfolding in front of us in our own backyard,” he had said.
•The letter comes after a series of exchanges between the State and the Centre over the handling of the refugees. Stating that whole of Myanmar is in turmoil and “innocent hapless citizens are being persecuted” by the military regime who are supposed to be their guardians and protectors, Mr. Zoramthanga said the “Myanmar area bordering Mizoram is inhabited by Chin communities who are ethnically our brethren with whom we have been having close contacts throughout all these years even before India became independent.”
•Following the February 1 coup when the Myanmar military overthrew the democratically elected government, around 300 Myanmarese nationals including many policemen have crossed into India and sought refuge.
•There is considerable support and sympathy among the people of Mizoram over the situation in Myanmar as many have relations across the border, a government official stated adding, it was a very emotive and sensitive issue in the State.
•India and Myanmar have an arrangement called Free Movement Regime (FMR) which allows locals on both sides to go upto 16 km across the other side and stay upto 14 days. Thousands of Myanmarese nationals visit regularly for work and to meet relatives. In March 2020, FMR was suspended due to COVID-2019 and no one has been being allowed since. The fallout of this, officials said, was that there has been an increase smuggling across the border as the livelihood of people has been disrupted due to the pandemic.
•On February 26, the State government had issued a Standard Operating Procedure (SOP) to Deputy Commissioners detailing how the refugees are to be handled. This was subsequently revoked after directions from the Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA).
•After the MHA directive, no one is being allowed to enter India from Myanmar and the Assam Rifles, which is the border guarding force there, is keeping a close watch, said a second local official. However, the border is porous and unlike the Bangladesh border, over 60% of which is fenced, the Myanmar border is unfenced and completely blocking it not possible given the tough terrain. Mizoram shares a 510 km long border with Mizoram.
•All the refugees who have come in earlier have been housed in camps along the border by the local administration and security forces have no direct access.
•For central agencies and Assam Rifles on the ground, it is a tricky situation in maintaining a delicate balance in executing the MHA orders and maintaining the cordial relations with the States agencies and the locals, the official added.
•In a letter to the four States bordering Myanmar dated March 10, MHA said State governments have no powers to grant refugee status to any foreigner and India is not a signatory to the United Nations Refugee Convention of 1951 and its 1967 Protocol.
📰 Junk inefficiency: On vehicle scrappage policy
Scrappage policy can work if incentives are confined to fuel-efficient vehicle replacements
•The much-awaited vehicle scrappage policy announced by the Transport Ministry, coming after the move for a green tax on ageing and polluting automobiles, promises economic benefits, a cleaner environment and thousands of jobs. Although it will take until April 1, 2022 for vehicles belonging to the government and the public sector to be scrapped, another year thereafter to identify junk heavy commercial vehicles through mandatory fitness checks, and finally other vehicles by 2024, it is a constructive road map. It will be no easy task, however, to put in place a credible system of automated fitness checking centres with help from States to assess whether commercial and private vehicles are roadworthy after 15 and 20 years, respectively, as the policy envisages. Equally important, enforcement will be key to get them scrapped once they are found unfit for use and to stop them from moving to smaller towns. States must also come on board to provide road tax and registration concessions, while the automobile industry is expected to sweeten the deal with genuine discounts on new vehicles. Transport Minister Nitin Gadkari, who has had limited success with enforcement of the amended Motor Vehicles Act of 2019 because States are not entirely on board, has the difficult task of ensuring that the scrappage plan gets their support, and the backing of manufacturers who stand to benefit from a spurt in demand. Heavy commercial vehicles, which contribute disproportionately to pollution — 1.7 million lack fitness certificates — pose the biggest challenge. Many of these cannot be replaced quickly in the absence of financial arrangements for small operators, who have opposed the new measures.
•Vehicle scrappage and replacement is seen internationally as a route to rejuvenate COVID-19-affected economies by privileging green technologies, notably electric vehicles (EVs), and also as an initiative to achieve net zero emissions by mid-century under Paris Agreement commitments. India’s automobile ecosystem is complex, with dominant, legacy motors spanning fossil-fuel driven vehicles and a nascent EV segment. The industry’s share pre-COVID-19 was about 7.5% of GDP with significant downstream employment, but it also imposes a fuel import burden. The Centre has to arrive at a balance and have incentives that reward manufacturers of vehicles that are the most fuel-efficient. Failure to prioritise fuel efficiency and mandate even higher standards and enhance taxes on fuel guzzlers will only repeat the mistakes of vehicle exchange programmes abroad, where full environmental benefits could not be realised, and taxpayers ended up subsidising inefficiency. Ecological scrapping, as a concept, must lead to high rates of materials recovery, reduce air pollution, mining and pressure on the environment.
📰 Rising poverty: On pandemic-induced disparities
With the spurt in COVID-19 cases, the nascent economic recovery is under threat
•A new study by the Pew Research Center estimates that the COVID-19 pandemic has had a disproportionately deleterious impact on living standards in India and China in 2020, with the sharp economic contraction in the former pushing as many as 7.5 crore people into the ranks of the poor (those who earn $2 or less a day). In contrast, the figure is about 10 lakh in China, whose economy slowed but continued to post growth. In absolute terms, the number of poor in India is posited to have swelled to 13.4 crore, reversing the gains made in the preceding nine years when the country cut the number of poor by more than three-fourths to an estimated 7.8 crore in 2019. In China, the population of the poor likely inched up to 40 lakh, matching the 2019 level. Similarly, the numbers of India’s middle class — those with a daily income of $10.01–$20 — are projected to have shrunk by 3.2 crore to about 6.6 crore, compared with the number this income cohort would have reached absent the pandemic. Here again, China likely experienced just one-third the level of contraction, with the population of those deemed as middle income set to have narrowed to 49.3 crore compared with the pre-pandemic projection of 50.4 crore.
•The Pew assessment, which is based on an analysis of the World Bank’s PovcalNet database, does, however, acknowledge the multiple assumptions that inform the study. These include varying base years for income/consumption figures — with India’s from 2011 and 2016 for China. Still, the study serves as a stark reminder of the economic disparities, both within India and at a comparative level with its northern neighbour. The latest report once again spotlights the widening inequality in India, exacerbated by the pandemic, as the lower income populations have disproportionately borne the brunt of job and income losses in the wake of the multiple lockdowns. The fiscal policy response to redress this massive increase in precarity has also been underwhelming, especially when viewed from the perspective of the pre-pandemic tax cuts that the government handed to corporates in an attempt to revive private investment and rekindle growth. That the National Rural Employment Guarantee scheme has been seeing record levels of demand is testimony to the struggles those in the rural hinterland have been facing in finding gainful employment since the onset of the pandemic. With the number of COVID-19 cases once again rising disconcertingly across the country, there is a clear and present danger that not only could any nascent economic recovery be stymied even before it gains traction but that the number of those sliding into poverty could jump dramatically. The policy responses to the rising wave of infections could well test the government’s ‘lives versus livelihoods’ playbook to the hilt.
📰 How to treat unpaid work
There are many ways in which women’s burden at home can be reduced by the government
•Women everywhere carry a disproportionately higher burden of unpaid work, namely, unpaid domestic services as well as unpaid care of children, the old and the disabled for their respective households. Though this work contributes to overall well-being at the household level and collectively at the national level, it is invisible in the national database and particularly in national policies.
•This work is repetitive, boring and frequently drudgery — a 24-hour job without remuneration, promotions or retirement benefits. It restricts opportunities for women in the economy and in life. Women do this job not necessarily because they like it or are efficient in it, but because it is imposed on them by patriarchal norms, which are the roots of all pervasive gender inequalities. This unequal division of unpaid work between women and men is unfair and unjust and it deprives women of equal opportunities as men.
•For political parties to recognise this work is a positive development, and the demand for wages for housewives has emerged from this concern. However, its implementation may create problems such as affordability of the government and calculation of the amounts. Women may not be eager to enter the labour maket. More important, these wages may confirm unpaid work as women’s work only, which would deny opportunities to women in the wider world. Payment of pension to old women (60+ years) may be a better idea to compensate them for their unpaid work.
What the government could do
•What governments could do is recognise this unpaid work in the national database by a sound time-use survey and use the data in national policies. Also, they could relieve women’s burden of unpaid work by improving technology (e.g. better fuel for cooking), better infrastructure (e.g. water at the doorstep), shifting some unpaid work to the mainstream economy (e.g. childcare, care of the disabled, and care of the chronically sick), and by making basic services (e.g. health and transportation) accessible to women. Also, they could redistribute the work between men and women by providing different incentives and disincentives to men (e.g. mandatory training of men in housework, childcare, etc.) and financial incentives for sharing housework. These measures will give free time to women and open up new opportunities to them.
Unpaid work and the economy
•What is critical is to understand the linkages between unpaid work and the economy. The household produces goods and services for its members, and if GDP is a measure of the total production and consumption of the economy, it has to incorporate this work by accepting the household as a sector of the economy.
•At the macro level, unpaid work subsidises the private sector by providing it a generation of workers (human capital) and takes care of wear and tear of labour who are family members. The private sector would have paid much higher wages and earned lower profits in the absence of unpaid work. Unpaid work also subsidises the government by taking care of the old, sick and the disabled. The state would have spent huge amounts in the absence of unpaid work. Unpaid work is a privately produced public good which is critical for the sustenance of the mainstream economy. This work, therefore, needs to be integrated with the mainstream economy and policies. It will be up to public policies then to improve the productivity of unpaid workers, reduce their burden, and tap their potential in development, as the household could also be an important economic sector.
•By excluding this work from the economy, macroeconomics shows a clear male bias. It is not surprising that many economists call economics “a wrongly conceived discipline” that is narrow, partial and truncated. There is an urgent need to expand the purview of economics not only for gender justice but mainly for moving towards a realistic economics.
📰 Doubling down on a resilient India
For leading companies with global ambitions, the rewards of investing in this complex country are worth pursuing
•Asia watchers observing China are, above all, missing the real economic shift at play — that this is India’s economic decade. Despite CEOs and investors alike having faced years, if not decades, of false starts in the subcontinent, it is undeniable that almost every major global company is either contemplating or operating on the assumption that India is a key part of their growth story.
FDI inflows
•Google, Facebook, Walmart, Samsung, Foxconn, and Silver Lake have been just a handful of the firms that made big ticket bets on India in 2020. As a result, even as India experienced one of the world’s sharpest economic contractions, it also saw the fastest growth in Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) inflows among all the major economies last year. India’s $60 billion-plus tally for new annual FDI equity inflows was its largest-ever haul and a milestone in the agenda of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government in its second term.
•That India should emerge as a leading destination for FDI might strike some observers as an unexpected outcome. It is certainly one that deserves parsing.
•Indeed, a significant share of India’s FDI inflows arose from foreign investments directed solely at Reliance Jio. Meanwhile, India’s latest FDI totals still lags behind the highest tallies in other markets such as China and Brazil.
Adapting to the Indian market
•Three decades after its economy was liberalised, India remains a complex and challenging place to do business. Frequent shifts in the policy landscape and persistent market access barriers are standard complaints levied against India by the business community. Meanwhile, the Modi government’s push to build a “self-reliant” India has also rattled skittish investors and smaller companies that lack the resources to navigate on-the-ground hurdles.
•Still, leading corporate investors see the Indian market differently. They recognise that doing business in India — or any emerging market for that matter — comes with inherent risks but that adaptation in approach is critical to success. Most importantly, they have the vision to understand that these are risks worth taking given the scale of the India Opportunity.
•Four core dynamics drive this calculus and explain why multinational companies are making India an essential part of their growth story.
•First, sheer demographics. What India offers through its nearly 1.4 billion people and their growing purchasing power is uniquely valuable for multinationals with global ambitions. No other country outside of China has a market that houses nearly one in six people on the planet and a rising middle class of 600 million. Failure to compete for a share of Indians’ wallets is not just a missed strategic opportunity; it’s borderline malpractice at the boardroom level.
•Second, shifting geopolitics. Rising U.S.-China competition is redefining the global landscape for investment and manufacturing, forcing multinationals to rethink their footprints and production hubs. Savvy countries such as Vietnam have capitalised on this opportunity to great effect, but India is finally getting serious about attracting large-scale production and exports. Major multinational companies such as Samsung have invested billions in the Indian market, and manufacturers such as Cisco, Nokia, Ericsson, and Flex are reportedly weighing new investments that take advantage of fresh incentive programs.
•Third, rising digital connectivity. Cheap mobile data have powered a revolution across India’s digital economy and connected an estimated 700 million Indians to the Internet. As Mr. Modi has said, more than 500 million Indians still remain offline, and the rise of these ‘next gen netizens’ is a key reason why leading global tech companies are investing in India and weathering acute policy pressure. Domestic Indian companies have also demonstrated their ability to innovate and deliver high quality services at scale. The partnerships and FDI flows linking multinationals and Indian tech firms will continue to unlock shared market opportunities for years to come.
•Fourth, national resilience. Despite facing the scourge of the novel coronavirus head on, India has managed the pandemic better than many of its western peers and restored economic activity even before implementing a mass vaccination programme. These are remarkable developments, and yet they speak to India’s underlying resilience even in the face of historic challenges. This ethos will serve India well as it navigates the complex challenges of the 21st century, and global investors are clearly taking note.
Value creation
•Of course, unlocking opportunities in the Indian market cannot take the form of a one-way wealth transfer, and companies should not expect a warm welcome without continuously demonstrating their commitment to India. Successful companies do this by placing shared value creation at the heart of their business strategy. They tie corporate success to India’s growth and development. They forge enduring partnerships and lasting relationships, elevate and invest in Indian talent, align products with Indian tastes, and ultimately tackle the hardest problems facing India today.
•Charting a path forward in this dynamic growing market will require corporate executives to make new commitments and navigate choppy waters. But for leading companies with global ambitions and a willingness to make big bets, the rewards of investing in the Indian market are substantial and well worth pursuing.
📰 Is the sociable house sparrow finally making a comeback?
The friendly bird, whose population has been declining in cities for decades, has found an ally in citizen-led movements across various States
•About two decades ago, the chirp of house sparrows was a familiar sound in urban neighbourhoods. Over the years, the little bird has vanished from cityscapes due to a lack of nesting sites and food, and a rise in apathy of people.
•These birds are now getting a helping hand from bird lovers and citizen groups across the country.
•According to conservationist Mohammed Dilawar, the decline in the population of sparrows began much earlier, but it was not until the early 2000s that the need for its conservation was stressed upon.
•“About 15 years ago, we realised that we had to start a life-saving project for sparrows if we wanted to hear the chirp again. So we started reaching out to people and authorities to campaign for the bird,” says Dilawar, founder and president of Nature Forever Society (NFS) who has been working relentlessly to save house sparrows.
•“In the past decade or so, we have been somewhat successful in this mission. The campaign to save the sparrow has grown beyond organisations and become a citizen-based movement across cities,” he adds over call from Nashik.
•Apart from its base in Mumbai and Nashik, NFS has city coordinators in New Delhi, Hyderabad and Bengaluru who work at local levels to empower the citizens. Coordinators work towards spreading awareness to create an ecosystem of bird feeders, nests and sources of food for house sparrows in residential localities as well as schools.
•Nin Taneja, the Delhi coordinator of NFS, shares, “A couple of years ago, when I was teaching schoolchildren about birds found in our neighbourhood, I saw how a majority of them struggled to identify the house sparrow which used to be such an integral part of our lives once. It was a sad state of affairs.”
•She reached out to schools and social organisations in the city to create awareness on ways to create the primary environment for sparrows to thrive again. According to her, many urban neighbourhoods are witnessing a comeback of the birds.
•The movement to save house sparrows has spread its wings in semi-urban regions as well. In Odisha, the Rushikulya Sea Turtle Protection Committee has been spearheading a campaign to bring back sparrows in 10 districts of the State.
•“The campaign started way back in 2007 when we began by distributing earthen pot bird nests to homes in Purnabandha village in Ganjam district of Odisha. Over the years, we have made nests out of coconut husk and plywood, and distributed them across 10 districts in Odisha. Now the sparrow population has increased significantly,” says Magatha Behera, who with Rabindranath Sahu is heading the sparrow project in the region.
•In Visakhapatnam, documentary filmmaker V Arjun Kumar in association with city-based NGO Green Climate has made a film on sparrow conservation, charting the need to save the species as well as ways to create an ecosystem to make the bird thrive.
The next step
•While sustaining the citizen movement is important, creating an environment where birds thrive naturally is the only way to secure the future of many such neighbourhood birds. “With this in mind, we have started our phase two — to create large-scale habitats of native plant species. This is an ecological cycle. The native species bring in insect population which in turn helps support the young ones of species like the house sparrows,” says Dilawar.
•Research done by Dilawar’s team indicates that a majority of plantation projects undertaken about 10 to 15 years ago have brought in non-native species in regions across the country. “Our objective is to change that approach, through a scientific understanding of what native plant species are,” he adds. He started the Native Plant Research Conservation Centre in Nashik, which now has over 450 species native to the region, and has helped create 30 high-density urban city forests that are critical for the habitat of birds.
