📰 Update photos of prisoners released on parole, Centre tells States
Make use of ‘ePrisons’, ‘Interoperable Criminal Justice System’ database: Home Ministry
•The Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) has advised the States to update recent photographs of prisoners released on parole/furlough/premature release in the ‘ePrisons’ and ‘Interoperable Criminal Justice System’ database to generate immediate alerts and facilitate easy tracking in the event of their violating the law.
•In an advisory sent to Chief Secretaries, the MHA said the States and the Union Territories were advised to review the existing practices and procedures governing grant of parole, furlough and premature release to inmates, as per provisions under the Model Prison Manual, 2016, and guidelines issued by the Home Ministry, the National Human Rights Commission and the Supreme Court. It was also advised that in order to ensure that the inmates released on parole, furlough and premature release etc. do not violate law, systems must be put in place for monitoring and follow-up of each such case.
Generate alerts
•Taking into account the importance of initiating timely action in the event of any inmate absconding/escaping from custody/prison, it was considered necessary to have recent photographs of the prisoners updated in the system and also generate immediate alerts which would enable tracking of such inmates by the law enforcement agencies. The ‘ePrisons’ and ‘Interoperable Criminal Justice System’ platforms could be deployed to address such issues.
•Prison departments were told to update the details of any escape from the prison/custody on ‘ePrisons’ on a real time basis. Quick availability of this information would facilitate police and other authorities concerned in nabbing the escapee/absconder. States/Union Territories should leverage ‘ePrisons’ application for updating the profile of inmates on a regular basis, the advisory said.
•The MHA called for appropriate systems to be put in place for monitoring and follow up of each case of an inmate released on bail, parole, furlough and premature release etc. so that they do not indulge in criminal activities. “Any person who either attempts to escape from prison or absconds from custody should not be considered for grant of bail, parole or furlough.”
Joint drives
•State police and prison authorities should launch special joint drives to apprehend any escapee/absconding inmate on a mission mode by forming special teams. Advances in technology should be deployed to generate alerts of such escapes from prisons on systems like ePrisons, ICJS and Crime and Criminal Tracking Network & Systems (CCTNS) platforms enabling authorised users to access the information instantly across the country.
Gene editing helps create resilient, high-yield rice without foreign DNA: Indian Agricultural Research Institute
•Even as the Centre investigates allegations that unauthorised genetically modified (GM) rice was exported to Europe, it is yet to decide on a research proposal from its own scientists which would allow plants to be genetically modified without the need for conventional transgenic technology. Unlike the older GM technology which involves the introduction of foreign DNA, the new proposal involves the use of gene editing tools to directly tweak the plant’s own genes instead.
•Scientists at the Indian Agricultural Research Institute are in the process of developing resilient and high-yield rice varieties using such gene editing techniques, which have already been approved by many countries, and they hope to have such rice varieties in the hands of the Indian farmers by 2024. However, the proposal for Indian regulators to consider this technique as equivalent to conventional breeding methods, since it does not involve inserting any foreign DNA, has been pending with the Genetic Engineering Appraisal Committee for almost two years.
•The IARI has previously worked on golden rice, a traditional GM variety which inserted genes from other organisms into the rice plant, but ended trials over five years ago due to agronomic issues, said Director A.K Singh. India has not approved any GM food crop for commercial cultivation.
Newer technologies
•The Institute has now moved to newer technologies such as Site Directed Nuclease (SDN) 1 and 2. They aim to bring precision and efficiency into the breeding process using gene editing tools such as CRISPR, whose developers won the Nobel Prize for Chemistry in 2020.
•“In this case, you are just tweaking a gene that is already there in the plant, without bringing in any gene from outside. When a protein comes from an outside organism, then you need to test for safety. But in this case, this protein is right there in the plant, and is being changed a little bit, just as nature does through mutation,” said Dr. Singh. “But it is much faster and far more precise than natural mutation or conventional breeding methods which involve trial and error and multiple breeding cycles. It is potentially a new Green Revolution.”
•A research coalition under the Indian Council of Agricultural Research (ICAR), which includes the IARI, is using these techniques to develop rice varieties which are drought-tolerant, salinity-tolerant and high-yielding. They could potentially be ready for commercial cultivation within three years, said Dr. Singh.
•However, the draft guidelines for such gene-editing techniques have been stuck with GEAC for almost two years. In a letter to Prime Minister Narendra Modi last year, a group of senior scientists calling themselves the India Agriculture Advancement Group (IAAG) expressed concern over the “inordinate delay”.
•A senior official said the guidelines had been submitted to GEAC in January 2020, after an extended public consultation and expert review process under the aegis of the Department of Biotechnology and approval from its Review Committee on Genetic Manipulations.
No foreign DNA
•“The SDN 1 and SDN 2 categories of genome edited plants do not contain any foreign DNA when they are taken to the open field trials,” said the IAAG letter, which argued against further consultation with State Governments. Signatories include the former heads of the ICAR, the National Academy of Agricultural Sciences and the Indian Institute of Science.
•“The U.S., Canada, Australia and Japan are among the countries which have already approved the SDN 1 and 2 technologies as not akin to GM, so such varieties of rice can be exported without any problem,” said Dr. Singh. The European Food Safety Authority has also submitted its opinion that these technologies do not need the same level of safety assessment as conventional GM, though the European Union is yet to accept the recommendation, he said.
📰 Pakistan retained on terror financing watchdog FATF’s ‘greylist’ again
Prove investigations targeted terror groups, Financial Action Task Force tells Islamabad.
•The Financial Action Task Force (FATF) on October 21 retained Pakistan in the ‘greylist’ yet again, observing that it needed to further demonstrate that investigations and prosecutions were being pursued against the senior leadership of U.N.-designated terror groups, which include Lashkar-e-Taiba, Jaish-e-Mohammed, al-Qaeda and the Taliban.
•At a press conference, FATF president Marcus Pleyer said Pakistan remained under increased monitoring.
•“The Pakistan Government has two concurrent action plans with a total of 34 action plan items. It has addressed or largely addressed 30 of the items. Its most recent action plan from June this year, which largely focussed on money laundering deficiencies, was issued after the FATF’s regional partner APG, that is Asia Pacific Group, identified a number of serious issues,” said Dr. Pleyer.
•Stating that overall Pakistan was making good progress on the new action plan, in which four of the seven items had been addressed or largely addressed, Dr. Pleyer said regarding the earlier action plan, which focussed on terrorist financing issues and dated back to June 2018, Pakistan was still assessed to have largely addressed 26 of the 27 items.
•The FATF also announced the ‘greylisting’ of Jordan, Mali and Turkey, following the conclusion of the Plenary session.
•At the previous Plenary in June, the FATF had kept Pakistan in the list of “jurisdictions under increased monitoring” owing to its failure in prosecuting the top operatives of the Security Council-designated terror groups.
•“The FATF recognises Pakistan’s progress and efforts to address these CFT [Combating the Financing of Terrorism] action plan items and notes that since February 2021, Pakistan has made progress to complete two of the three remaining action items on demonstrating that effective, proportionate and dissuasive sanctions are imposed for TF [Terror Financing] convictions and that Pakistan’s targeted financial sanctions regime was being used effectively to targeted terrorist assets,” it had said.
•The FATF had asked Pakistan to work on the remaining recommendation by demonstrating that terror financing investigations and prosecutions targeted senior leaders and commanders of the U.N.-designated terrorist groups.
•It had advised that Pakistan should continue to work to address its six strategically important deficiencies, which included enhancing international cooperation by amending the money-laundering law and demonstrating that assistance was being sought from foreign countries in implementing the UNSCR 1373 designations.
📰 Engaging the Taliban: On India and the Afghan rulers
India and regional powers should ensure that the Afghan rulers respect their people’s rights
•India’s participation in a meeting of 10 nations with Taliban officials in Moscow and the signing of a joint statement that recognised the “new reality” in Afghanistan signal a decisive shift in the country’s approach towards the Islamist group. India had earlier taken a strong position against any kind of engagement with the Taliban. In recent months, when the Taliban were making steady advances towards Kabul, India had established contacts with the Taliban’s political office in Doha, Qatar, but this is the first time India met a top Taliban delegation, which included Deputy Prime Minister Abdul Salam Hanafi, and, according to a Taliban spokesperson, promised to send aid. India has vital interests in Afghanistan. Over the 20 years, it has made investments worth billions of dollars which it would want to be protected. Last time the Taliban, which have close ties with anti-India terrorist groups such as LeT and the JeM, were in power, India saw a rise in violent incidents in Kashmir as well as the hijacking of an Indian plane to Kandahar. Now the Taliban say they will not allow Afghan soil to be used by any terrorist organisation. It is in India’s interest to make sure that the Taliban walk the talk. It would also not like to see an isolated Taliban being a Pakistani satellite. To meet these goals, given the new reality in Afghanistan, engagement with the Taliban looks a strategic necessity.
•But this is a policy that needs to be pursued more through regional diplomacy than bilateral engagement. Bilaterally, India does not have much clout with the Taliban. But Afghan’s new rulers, who are struggling with an economy on the brink of collapse, are keener this time to engage with regional powers. So the Moscow 10, which includes China, Pakistan, Iran and the Central Asian republics, has some leverage. These countries also have shared interests in seeing the Taliban severing its terror ties and Afghanistan being stabilised. If not, instability could, once again, spread beyond Afghanistan’s border. For this, the Taliban should be ready to open up their government, share power with other political and ethnic communities, and start respecting the fundamental rights of Afghans. The last 40 years of Afghanistan’s history are a brutal example of what could go wrong if one party or group tries to amass all powers in its hands. Despite these historical precedents, the Taliban have shown little readiness to change their ways. In the joint statement, India and the others asked the Taliban to keep their commitment on forming an inclusive government and ensure that their territory is not being used by terrorist groups. These calls should not end with the statements. While India and other regional countries should help Afghans during this period of economic miseries, they should also use their collective economic and political clout to mount pressure on the Taliban to make political concessions at home.
📰 Responding to adversity with achievement
India’s success in its landmark vaccination drive belongs to Team India, demonstrating that democracy can deliver
•India has completed vaccination of 100 crore doses on October 21, 2021, in just about nine months since starting vaccination. This has been a tremendous journey in dealing with COVID-19, especially when we recall how things stood in early 2020. Humanity was dealing with such a pandemic after 100 years and no one knew much about the virus. We remember how unpredictable the situation appeared then, as we were faced by an unknown and invisible enemy mutating rapidly.
The scale and trust
•The journey from anxiety to assurance has happened and our nation has emerged stronger, thanks to the world’s largest vaccination drive.
•It has been a truly bhagirath effort involving multiple sections of society. To get a sense of the scale, assume that each vaccination took just two minutes for a health-care worker. At this rate, it took around 41 lakh man days or approximately eleven thousand man years of effort to reach this landmark.
•For any effort to attain and sustain speed and scale, the trust of all stakeholders is crucial.
•One of the reasons for the success of the campaign was the trust that people developed in the vaccine and the process followed, despite various efforts to create mistrust and panic. There are some among us who only trust foreign brands, even for simple every day necessities. However, when it came to something as crucial as the COVID-19 vaccine, the people of India unanimously trusted ‘Made in India’ vaccines. This is a significant paradigm shift.
•India’s vaccine drive is an example of what India can achieve if the citizens and the Government come together with a common goal in the spirit of Jan Bhagidari. When India started its vaccination programe, there were many people who doubted the capabilities of 130 crore Indians. Some said India would take three to four years. Some others said people will not come forward to get vaccinated. There were those who said there will be gross mismanagement and chaos in the vaccination process. Some even said that India will not be able to manage supply chains.
•But just like the Janata Curfew and subsequent lockdowns, the people of India showed how spectacular the results can be, if they are made trusted partners.
•When everyone takes ownership, nothing is impossible. Our health-care workers traversed hills and crossed rivers across difficult geographies to vaccinate people. Our youth, social workers, health-care workers, social and religious leaders, all deserve credit for the fact that India faces minimal vaccine hesitancy when compared to even developed nations.
An equitable scheme
•There was a lot of pressure from different interest groups to give preferential treatment to them in vaccination. But the Government ensured that, like our other schemes, there is no VIP culture in the vaccination drive either.
Preparing early
•In early 2020, when COVID-19 was rampaging across the world, it was clear to us that this pandemic will have to be eventually fought with the help of vaccines. We started preparing early. We constituted expert groups and started preparing a road map right from April 2020.
•Till today, only a handful of countries have developed their own vaccines. More than 180 countries are dependent on an extremely limited pool of producers, and dozens of nations are still waiting for the supply of vaccines, even as India has crossed 100 crore doses! Imagine the situation if India did not have its own vaccine. How would India have secured enough vaccines for such a large population and how many years would that have taken? It is here that credit should be given to Indian scientists and entrepreneurs for rising to the occasion. It is due to their talent and hardwork that India is truly Aatmanirbhar when it comes to vaccines. Our vaccine manufacturers, by scaling up to meet the demands of such a large population, have shown that they are second to none.
•In a nation where governments used to be known as a roadblock impeding forward movement, our Government has instead been an accelerator and enabler of progress. The Government partnered with the vaccine makers right from day one and gave them support in the form of institutional assistance, scientific research, funding, as well as accelerated regulatory processes. All Ministries of the Government came together to facilitate the vaccine makers and remove any bottlenecks as a result of our ‘whole of Government’ approach.
Logistics, the platform
•In a country of the scale of India, it is not enough to just produce. Focus has to be on last mile delivery and seamless logistics. To understand the challenges involved, imagine the journey taken by one vial of vaccines. From a plant in Pune or Hyderabad, the vial is sent to a hub in any of the States, from where it is transported to the district hub. From there, it reaches a vaccination centre. This entails the deployment of thousands of trips taken by flights and trains.
•During this entire journey, the temperature has to be maintained in a particular range which is centrally monitored. For this, over one lakh cold chain equipments were utilised. States were given advance notice of the delivery schedule of the vaccines so that they could plan their drives better and vaccines reached them on the pre-decided days. This has been an unprecedented effort in the history of independent India.
•All these efforts were complemented by a robust tech platform in CoWIN. It ensured that the vaccine drive was equitable, scalable, trackable, and transparent. This ensured that there was no scope for favouritism or jumping the queue. It also ensured that a poor worker could take the first dose in his village and the second dose of the same vaccine in the city where he works, after the required time interval. In addition to a real-time dashboard to boost transparency, the QR-coded certificates ensured verifiability. There are hardly any examples of such efforts not only in India but also the world.
An example of team work
•In my Independence Day Address in 2015, I had said that our country is moving ahead because of ‘Team India’ and this ‘Team India’ is a big team of our 130 crore people. People’s participation is the biggest strength of democracy. If we run the country through the participation of 130 crore Indians, our country will be moving ahead 130 crore steps every moment.
•Our vaccination drive has yet again showed the power of this ‘Team India’. India’s success in its vaccination drive has also demonstrated to the whole world that ‘democracy can deliver’. I am optimistic that the success achieved in the world’s largest vaccination drive will further spur our youth, our innovators and all levels of Government to set new benchmarks of public service delivery which will be a model not only for our country but also for the world.
📰 Will privatisation take off after the Air India sale?
The first PSU sale in 18 years is a positive sign but the window of opportunity may be short
•Earlier this month, the Tata Group emerged as the winning bidder for Air India, the debt-laden national carrier. In this year’s Budget, the government unveiled a bold new disinvestment policy that envisages a bare minimum presence of government-owned businesses even in the strategic sectors. The government is also pursuing the sale of its entire stake in public sector firms such as BPCL, Shipping Corporation of India, IDBI Bank, two other public sector banks and one general insurance company this financial year alone. Given India’s recent disinvestment record, this is an ambitious target. Ashok Chawla and Arvind Mehta discuss the implications of the sale of Air India for the future of India’s public sector, in a conversation moderated by Vikas Dhoot. Edited excerpts:
How did things come to such a pass at Air India? What do you think stalled previous attempts to initiate reforms or even sell the airline?
•Ashok Chawla: About three decades ago, Air India was one of the world’s premier airlines. Then it slowly but steadily went into a spin. While an attempt was made in the early 2000s to see if it could be sold based on the recommendations of the then Disinvestment Commission, that didn’t move very far. Then, the Civil Aviation Ministry took the view that it would be good if two airlines — Air India and Indian Airlines — were merged. The merger took place in 2007 with a lot of euphoria but slowly it came to pass that such mergers are easy on paper but don’t work without cultural and operational synergies. The financial bills of the airline kept getting bloated and the model of a full-service airline became difficult to handle in the domestic sector with low-cost airlines coming in and overtaking Air India in a price-sensitive market. Air India could never recover. We are now told it was losing ₹20 crore each day, which is the ultimate nadir for the airline.
•Arvind Mehta: I was part of the transaction team that was looking at the divestment of Air India and Indian Airlines in 2001. There were many factors that kept playing out. There was strong buyer interest, including from a corporate house which did not have aviation experience. There was muddying of the waters by some private airlines that feared competition if the transaction went through. To cut a long story short, in the ensuing confusion that happened amid lobbying of various kinds, there was also advice that the enterprise value of the airlines would increase if there was a merger, so when the divestment takes place, later you will get a better value. The government agreed and put the sale on the back burner. When the merger finally happened much later, it led to greater losses instead of better value.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi had said in 2014 that the government had no business to be in business. But over the last seven years, no public sector unit (PSU) sales materialised. Would the Air India sale, the first such transaction in 18 years, break the recent taboo associated with disinvestment in our political economy?
•Ashok Chawla: It’s certainly a long-awaited positive signal regarding the public sector, and more so for domestic and foreign investors. In the last 18 years, irrespective of the government in power, there’s been share sales or transfer of shares from one pocket to the other but no genuine privatisation. There is euphoria and expectation, but as one can appreciate in all such matters, the proof of the pudding is in the eating. So, the euphoria needs to be tempered a bit. While the broad policy is there, once you get into the details, one doesn’t know whether there will really be a fairly robust pipeline of public sector entities which are up for offer with a symmetry between what the government offers and what the investors are really interested in. Second, there is the parallel track which the government is pursuing for fiscal mathematics, which is the monetisation track. If you push the disinvestment and monetisation tracks aggressively, then the issue of whether there is adequate appetite and capacity on the other side of the table will arise. Third, we have to appreciate that the process of disinvestment is long-drawn and complicated. It was the case even in the first round 20 years ago and not much has changed in that regard. Finally, I think there is the elephant in the room which one cannot ignore — what is the window of opportunity? The general elections are coming up in 2024. So, the window of opportunity for either this kind of disinvestment or for monetisation is, at best, 18 to 20 months. So, whatever the government can do with that to fulfill its broad objective of actually pulling back from business where it does not need to be in business, let’s hope it is able to do a fair amount... That would really be a welcome step for the stakeholders, the economy and the people at large.
Between 1999 and 2003, the National Democratic Alliance privatised 17 firms. Can we look at a similar streak in the window we have before the next Lok Sabha polls?
•Arvind Mehta: In the [Atal Bihari] Vajpayee era, the commitment to privatisation was very strong. It started with the loss-making Modern Foods, then Balco, IPCL, the share sale of Maruti which gave controlling interest away... there was a momentum building up. But when the government finally came to the BPCL sale, the pushback started happening with many in Parliament questioning the sale of a profit-making central PSU, whereas you could possibly have a reason for doing it for loss-making PSUs. With that kind of pushback, there was a loss of momentum. And then, of course, the philosophy of divestment became entirely different with a coalition government supported by the Left. The real value I see in this Air India sale now is that again, there is clarity of thought. The government feels that whether it’s a loss-making or a profit-making Central PSU (CPSU), it is willing to make a strategic exit. That the DIPAM (Department of Investment and Public Asset Management) has found a mechanism for the strategic sale of a loss-making unit like Air India is also a positive, because it’s easy to sell something like BPCL that will attract buyers based on its enterprise value and profits. I hope that many other loss-making units that are continuously bleeding the taxpayers also find strategic buyers through the right sweeteners.
We have heard the usual criticism from trade unions and Left parties on the Air India sale. But do you fear that hiving off profitable PSUs will again attract a wider groundswell of Opposition criticism?
•Arvind Mehta: There is the possibility that as and when profitable PSUs are sold, there will be stronger ideological battles and questions about why there is a need to sell the family silver, something which is giving good dividends, etc. It’s far more difficult to justify those kinds of sales; it would be easier to justify the loss-making sales.
•Ashok Chawla: There will be the usual noises when profit-making enterprises are sold, but if the government clearly articulates its policy on what it wants to sell and what it wants to retain, I think the general consensus across the political spectrum would be that the public sector need not occupy the commanding heights of the economy. While people may object for the sake of objecting, as long as the process is run in a very transparent manner, I think there will not be too much objection.
Should some sectors like coal be a no-go area for divestment, even though the government has said it will retain bare minimum presence in strategic sectors? Should people be worried that one or two groups may get a lot of assets under their control as is happening, for instance, in airports and ports?
•Arvind Mehta: The previous Finance Minister, Arun Jaitley, made a famous comment about the Air India sale. He had said that if you wait too long, there will be no airline left to sell. But yes, there is a role for certain kinds of countervailing mechanisms in a calibrated fashion… We shouldn’t do any fire sales and there has to be a watch on the market appetite. We don't want those kinds of sales which happened in certain countries where oligarchs came and just lapped up all the public sector assets and then became billionaires at the cost of the social good.
Of th 17 PSUs that were privatised, not a single sale was undertaken where the Cabinet Minister was in charge of a PSU with operations in their home State, as per a study. Do you expect such tendencies to crop up this time round?
•Ashok Chawla: I guess that’s been the case in all the major economic moves to some extent. But 2021 is very different from 20-30 years ago. It’s not much of a problem now because the political resolve is strong. The whole process will get further energised if it isn’t perceived as something the government wants to do because it doesn’t have money. The perception is that the government is pressed to the wall; that it is trying to push privatisation and monetisation because ‘paisa nahi hai (there is no money)’ and it needs money for welfare programmes. With DIPAM under the Finance Ministry, unlike earlier when disinvestment was a separate ministry, it sends a signal about balancing the books. There should be a separate ministry or commission which reports directly to the Prime Minister’s Office. That will make things far simpler for the mechanics of implementing disinvestment plans, and minor political issues of whether a particular minister is happy or unhappy will not really come to the surface. The focus should now be totally on efficiency, productivity increases, not the fiscal focus on balancing the books.
•Arvind Mehta: For a strategic sale, it used to always be difficult to convince the concerned ministry in charge of a PSU to come fully on board, because for them, it was a sense of loss. There would always be various reasons they would give for why it’s not the appropriate time. They had no problem with part share sales as long as ownership control did not go out of the ministry’s hands. So, that kind of a problem always remained and that’s why I said strategic sales are far more difficult than part sales of shares. But I think the mood has changed now. The Prime Minister has said that the government has no business to be in business. He has made it clear that he doesn’t want to see IAS officers and others running a PSU and being changed from time to time. I think that kind of mindset earlier where a ministry could try and sabotage a strategic sale... I don't think we are going to see that kind of resistance in this time period. But what worries me actually is the narrative that goes out that the government is doing the sales because it needs to cover its fiscal deficit. That narrative is very damaging because then in the public perception, it is simply a sale of the family silver. So, I would be happier with a narrative that does not talk about the monetary aspects so much but is one that simply says that we are convinced that society is better off by having this not being a government-run entity anymore.
📰 The poor conditions of protectors
Despite the onerous nature of their duties, the police are a neglected lot
•In December 2020, Deputy Commandant Vikas Kumar of the Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF)’s elite unit, CoBRA (Commando Battalion for Resolute Action), was seriously injured when an IED planted by Maoists went off in Sukma district, Chhattisgarh. He succumbed to his injuries the next day.
•A month earlier, in Chintagufa area of Sukma, Assistant Commandant N. Purushottam Bhalerao was seriously injured along with nine other commandos when an IED went off during an anti-Maoist operation. Bhalerao succumbed to his injuries.
•In April this year, two police constables — Omkar Raika and Pawan Chaudhary — of the Rajasthan Police were shot dead by suspected drug smugglers when they were carrying out routine checks of vehicles at checkpoints in Bhilwara district.
Paying tributes
•In memory of these and other colleagues killed, all the police forces of the State and Centre observe October 21 as Police Commemoration Day. This year, tributes were paid to 377 personnel who lost their lives in the line of duty between September 1, 2020, and August 31, 2021. As the CRPF is deployed in the highly disturbed areas of Jammu and Kashmir, the Northeast and the Left-Wing Extremist-affected States, the highest casualties (82) were seen in this force. The Indo-Tibetan Border Police (ITBP), which guards the border from Ladakh to Arunachal Pradesh at forbidding heights, lost 54 of its personnel, while the Border Security Force lost 47 personnel. Among the State Police forces, Chhattisgarh, which is combating the Maoist menace, lost the most personnel (32) followed by J&K (17) and Karnataka (17).
•October 21 is observed as Police Commemoration Day as it was on this day in 1959 that a pitched battle was fought against the Chinese in Ladakh close to the border. The Chinese opened fire killing 10 CRPF personnel. They took seven as prisoners, while three escaped. The incident went down in the history of the forces as an example of unflinching loyalty to the nation, dedication to duty and daring of the highest order.
•Year after year, a contingent of the police comprising personnel of all ranks from all States and paramilitary forces of the country visit Hot Springs to pay homage to those who lost their lives that day. A memorial at the spot is testimony to the sacrifices made by our forces. On it is etched the famous epitaph by John Maxwell Edmunds: “When you go home/ Tell them of us/ And say/ ‘For your tomorrow,/ We gave our today’.” A company of the ITBP stands guard here even today in the extreme cold, guarding the border within visual distance of Chinese soldiers deployed across the border.
Don’t let sacrifices go in vain
•Despite the onerous nature of their duties, the police are a neglected lot. They get paid low salaries, have a poor quality of life and are often deprived of basic facilities. Yet they risk their lives to protect citizens. The morale of the paramilitary personnel is not of the desired level. Those who cleared recruitment exams in 2003 but joined the force in 2004 or later are not eligible for pension under the old norms. Canteen and medical facilities are dismal. Items sold through the Central Police Canteens are not exempted from GST. It is high time the government takes note of the grievances of the police and paramilitary personnel and not let their sacrifices go in vain.
•There are notable variations in the ex-gratia amounts given to the next of kin of the police who are killed. While certain States like Delhi and Tamil Nadu pay ₹1 crore, several other States dither to pay even half that amount. The Centre and the States need to bring about uniformity in the amount paid. While the Centre pays ex-gratia to the families of the Central Armed Police Forces which may be short of ₹1 crore, the balance should be borne by the States as ₹1 crore is reasonably sufficient to see the family through hard days. Care should be taken to ensure that the next of kin are not deprived of a decent living. Payments from the public exchequer need to be made judiciously.
