📰 Duty cuts, stock limits helped curtail edible oil prices: Govt.
No plan to extend PMGKAY beyond Nov. 30: Food Secretary
•The prices of most major cooking oils dropped about ₹5-10 a litre in Delhi and as much as ₹20 in some other cities in the run-up to Diwali, Food Secretary Sudhanshu Pandey said on Friday, giving credit to the stabilisation of global prices as well as measures such as duty cuts and stock limits. However, the national average retail prices for cooking oils showed little change, and mustard oil, which is only produced domestically, continued to see rising prices.
•“International edible oil prices remain high, but have stabilised over the past week. Interventions by the Central Government along with the State Governments’ proactive involvement and the cut in wholesale prices by major private players have led to retail prices cooling down much more than the international market,” Mr. Pandey told journalists.
•Apart from the cuts in duties and cesses, the Centre had used stock limits to help control prices of both edible oils and pulses this year, using the provisions of the Essential Commodities Act. The amendments to the Act, which were passed by Parliament last year but suspended by the Supreme Court in January due to opposition by farm unions, would not have allowed the imposition of stock limits given the current rate of price hikes.
‘COVID-19 a major factor’
•“These are extraordinary times. These are not normal times. Global commodity prices are extremely high. COVID-19 is a major factor, disrupting supply chains, closing down industry. There is insufficient labour in the oil production industry in many countries. Given the extraordinary circumstances, it is right to invoke this,” stated Mr. Pandey, explaining why the Government had chosen to use the same legal provisions it had sought to remove through last year’s amendments.
•The retail prices of most major cooking oils were 35-45% higher than a year ago. However, a clear decline in prices was seen in Delhi from the beginning of the week till Diwali eve, with prices falling ₹5-10 a kg over the three-day period. Some smaller centres saw greater declines, such as the ₹18 a kg fall in palm oil in Aligarh and the ₹20 a kg fall in sunflower prices in Meghalaya. Nationally, the palm oil prices fell about ₹1.45 a kg, while soybean oil increased the same amount.
•Mustard oil, which accounted for 11% of the domestic consumption basket, saw a ₹2.29 a kg increase in prices, although Mr. Pandey hoped that the 12-15% increase in mustard acreage this winter would cool down prices once the harvest comes in.
Free ration scheme
•With regard to Pradhan Mantri Garib Kalyan Anna Yojana (PMGKAY), Mr. Pandey observed that there were no plans to extend the free ration scheme introduced as COVID-19 relief last year beyond November 30.
•“As the economy is also reviving and the OMSS [or open market sale scheme] is also exceptionally good, there is no proposal from the department for extension,” he noted.
•PMGKAY was rolled out in March 2020 as part of the first COVID-19 relief package, and has been extended twice since then. It provides five kg of free foodgrain a month to the 80 crore beneficiaries of the National Food Security Act, who are already eligible for subsidised grain.
📰 Lung function hit by stubble burning: study
Over 3,000 persons tracked in two-phase study across six villages in Punjab
•Pollution from stubble burning significantly reduced lung function and was particularly harmful to women in rural Punjab, says one of the largest studies of its kind in India, correlating the effect of air pollution on health.
•The study was conducted in six villages of Patiala, Punjab and spanned two phases: The first was in October 2018 and again the following summer from March to April 2019 and the second phase was undertaken in the same villages during late Oct-Nov, 2018. The latter is the period when crop burning peaks and the two timeframes were considered to measure the change in air quality during both periods. Close to 3,600 participants, from 10-60 years of age were included in the study.
•While the links between particulate matter pollution and respiratory health are widely documented, there have been limited studies in India that have clearly linked the impact of poor air on lung health.
High PM2.5 levels
•It emerged from the study that the concentrations of PM2.5, the category of unburnt carbon particles considered most harmful to respiratory health, was found to increase more than twice between the two phases, from 100 g/m3 to 250 g/m3. Incidentally these are around 10-15 times the WHO prescribed air quality standards though the permissible standards by India’s Central Pollution Control Board (CPCB) are higher.
More symptoms
•During the crop residue burning period, a two to three-fold increase was noted in most of the respiratory symptoms including wheezing, breathlessness on exertion, cough in morning, cough at night, skin rashes, runny nose or itchiness of eyes etc. across all age groups (10-60 years). The highest number of respiratory complaints were reported by the elderly population (>40-60) and the lowest in the younger age group(>10-18) during crop burning period, the study’s authors note.
•There was decline in lung function with increase in PM2.5 concentration across all age groups even after controlling for several other exposure variables, such the influence of cooking fuel, ventilation, distance from road etc. The authors reported a 10-14% decline in lung function in men and nearly 15-18% decline in women across all age categories.
•The study, authored by researchers at The Energy Resources Institute (TERI), Delhi has contributions from experts from All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS), Delhi, and the Punjab Agricultural University. The findings, which have not been peer reviewed as yet, appear on the website of the CPCB, which has supported the study.
📰 Keeping the faith: On WHO approval to Covaxin
Following WHO approval, Bharat Biotech must prioritise global supply
•Following months of speculation, the World Health Organization (WHO) has granted Emergency Use Listing (EUL) to Covaxin, manufactured by Bharat Biotech. This now allows the vaccine’s better availability in many more countries, particularly via global groupings such as Covax. One of WHO’s key aims is to have at least 40% of people in all countries vaccinated by the year-end — a tall order as the latest estimates suggest that only around 1% of people in low-income countries have received their jabs. Seventy countries are yet to vaccinate 10% of their populations, and 30 countries — including much of Africa — have vaccinated fewer than 2%. In Latin America, only one in four of the population has received a vaccine dose, according to The British Medical Journal. Covaxin is an indigenous, inactivated whole-virion vaccine that has been developed based on well-established protocols. This has meant that it was put on the regulatory speed belt at nearly every stage, the most significant being its emergency approval by India’s drug regulators without any published phase-3 efficacy data. The ostensible reason for the haste was that India needed a low-cost indigenous vaccine that could be quickly administered to many.
•Though Bharat Biotech has years of experience in producing crores of vaccines, the scale of quickly ramping up Covaxin supply has so far been beyond its capacity. In no month, since July, has Bharat Biotech actually delivered on its promised supply of vaccine, and even after over 107 crore shots have been administered, only around 12% have received Covaxin; many in India have been vaccinated with Covishield. Moreover, before the Centre agreed to take over 75% of the public supply, Covaxin offered no cost advantage — and in some instances was costlier — than Covishield. Bharat Biotech however moved to quickly get WHO’s approval for its vaccine under its emergency listing process, in July. But unlike the rapid-fire clearance by India’s Central Drugs Standard Control Organization, WHO’s evaluation process has turned out to be considerably more involved. WHO cleared the AstraZeneca (Covishield) vaccine in four weeks but that Covaxin has required over 20 weeks — especially in a climate where much of the world is desperate — raises several questions. Bharat Biotech is no novice to WHO’s clearance process and would surely be aware of all the requirements. While Covaxin’s EUL may now ease foreign travel for a fraction of Indians, there is a real need to know why, in spite of Bharat Biotech’s claims that it had furnished the required data whenever demanded, this approval took the time it did. With Covaxin close to being approved for children there will be significant demand now for this population segment; however, the company must work to improve its manufacturing supply and contribute to a larger share of the vaccines globally administered.
📰 Charting a trade route after the MC12
An upbeat global trade scenario provides an ideal setting for Trade Ministers to correct iniquitous rules and provisions
•The World Trade Organization (WTO)’s 12th Ministerial Conference (MC12) is being convened in Geneva, Switzerland at the end of this month, a year-and-a-half after it was scheduled to be held in Kazakhstan (June 2020, but postponed due to the novel coronavirus pandemic). The MC12 is being held at an important juncture when the global trade scenario is quite upbeat.
The outlook
•Recent WTO estimates show that global trade volumes could expand by almost 11% in 2021, and by nearly 5% in 2022, and could stabilise at a level higher than the pre-COVID-19 trend (https://bit.ly/3EQTO55). The buoyancy in trade volumes has played an important role in supporting growth in economies such as India where domestic demand has not yet picked up sufficiently. Therefore, these favourable tidings provide an ideal setting for the Trade Ministers from the WTO member-states to revisit trade rules and to agree on a work programme for the organisation, which can help maintain the momentum in trade growth.
•But above all, the MC12 needs to consider how in these good times for trade, the economically weaker countries “can secure a share in the growth in international trade commensurate with the needs of their economic development’, an objective that is mandated by the Marrakesh Agreement Establishing the World Trade Organization.
•Does the run-up to the MC12 provide any evidence that the global trading system can be slightly less iniquitous than it has been? The answer lies in the possible outcomes in some of the areas that are currently witnessing intense negotiations. These include adoption of WTO rules on electronic commerce, investment facilitation, and fisheries subsidies. But there is one issue that surmounts all others, namely, the WTO’s response to demands that technologies necessary for producing vaccines, medicines, and other medical products for COVID-19 treatment should be available without the restrictions imposed by intellectual property rights (IPRs).
IPRs and vaccine issue
•From the very outset of the COVID-19 pandemic it had become clear that IPRs protected using the provisions of the WTO Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) are formidable barriers to ensuring equitable access to vaccines. Pharmaceutical companies controlling the global markets have used monopoly rights granted by their IPRs to deny developing countries access to technologies and know-how, thus undermining the possibility of production of vaccines in these countries. The involvement of developing countries in vaccine production could have increased supplies of affordable vaccines to the low-income countries. Availability of vaccines remains a critical problem in these countries even after a year since the first dose of COVID-19 vaccine was administered. Recent statistics show that until now, a mere 4.1% of the population in low-income countries have received at least one dose of the vaccine (https://bit.ly/3mKDk8G).
•To remedy this situation, India and South Africa had tabled a proposal in the WTO in October 2020, for waiving enforcement of several forms of IPRs on “health products and technologies including diagnostics, therapeutics, vaccines, medical devices … and their methods and means of manufacture” useful for COVID-19 treatment. By doing so, barriers created by IPRs to timely access to affordable medical products could be removed. This proposal, supported by nearly two-thirds of the organisation’s membership, was opposed by the developed countries batting for their corporates. However, after the Joe Biden Administration in the United States lent limited support to the India-South Africa proposal, there was a glimmer of hope that WTO members would agree to lift restrictions on access to technologies for COVID-19 vaccines and medicines; at least by the MC12. The unfortunate reality of the current discussions is that an outcome supporting affordable access to COVID-19 vaccines and medicines looks distant. A further confirmation of this possibly came from the WTO Director General, Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, when in her recent musings on the MC12 in The Economist, she was completely silent on this issue.
Fisheries, e-commerce
•Although discussions on fisheries subsidies have been hanging fire for a long time, there is considerable push for an early conclusion of an agreement to rein in these subsidies. However, the current drafts on this issue are completely unbalanced as they do not provide the wherewithal to rein in large-scale commercial fishing that are depleting fish stocks the world over, and at the same time, are threatening the livelihoods of small fishermen in countries such as India.
•In recent months, the proposal by the members of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development and the G-20 members to introduce global minimum taxes on digital companies has made headlines. But in the WTO, most of these countries have been investing their negotiating capital to facilitate the expansion of e-commerce firms. Discussions on e-commerce are being held in the WTO since 1998 (https://bit.ly/302dkgf), after the adoption of the Ministerial Declaration on Global Electronic Commerce wherein WTO members agreed to “continue their … practice of not imposing customs duties on electronic transmissions”. The more substantive outcome was the decision to “establish a comprehensive work programme” taking into “account the economic, financial, and development needs of developing countries”.
•Fast forward to the discussions in 2021, and a key focus of the 1998 e-commerce work programme, namely “development needs of developing countries”, is entirely missing from the text document that is the basis for the current negotiations. On the negotiating table are issues relating to the liberalisation of the goods and services trade, and of course guarantee for free flow of data across international boundaries, all aimed at facilitating expansion of businesses of e-commerce firms. In fact, the decision on a moratorium on the imposition of import duties agreed to in 1998 has become the basis for a push towards comprehensive trade liberalisation — a perfectly logical way forward, given that the sole objective of the negotiations on e-commerce is to facilitate expansion of e-commerce firms.
Divisions over investment
•Complementing the current focus of the WTO to promote the global interests of oligopolies is the initiative for the adoption of an investment facilitation agreement. Inclusion of substantive provisions on investment in the WTO has been one of the more divisive issues. In 2001, the Doha Ministerial Declaration had included a work programme on investment (https://bit.ly/3bJSeWw), but it was soon taken off the table as developing countries were opposed to its continuation because the discussions were geared to expanding the rights of foreign investors through a multilateral agreement on investment. An investment facilitation has reintroduced the old agenda of concluding such an investment agreement. The proponents have been careful not to load the agenda by seeking substantial commitments from the Government to promote the interests of foreign investors, but it should be clear even to the uninitiated that the ultimate objective is to bind host governments into a multilaterally agreed commitment to comprehensively protect investor interests.
One-sided negotiations
•Besides the bias in favour of global oligopolies, the current negotiating processes in the WTO are fundamentally flawed. The negotiations on e-commerce and investment facilitation are being conducted not by a mandate given by the entire membership of the WTO in a transparent manner that are also consistent with the objectives of the WTO. Instead, these negotiations owe their origins to the so-called “Joint Statement Initiatives” (JSI) in which a section of the membership has developed the agenda with a view to producing agreements in the WTO. This will then be offered to the rest of the membership on a “take-it-or-leave-it” basis. This entire process is “detrimental to the very existence of a rule-based multilateral trading system under the WTO”, as India and South Africa have forcefully argued in a submission against the JSIs early this year (https://bit.ly/2ZXN5XV).
📰 The right time for India to have its own climate law
The country’s existing laws are inadequate in dealing with climate change; India’s situation is also unique
•As the world watches the United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP26, from October 31 to November 12, 2021), the most important climate summit in years at Glasgow, Scotland, India has said it wants to be a part of the climate solution.
The Indian proposals
•Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced, on November 1 at Glasgow, a ‘Panchamrit solution’ which aims at reducing fossil fuel dependence and carbon intensity (reduce one billion tonnes of total projected carbon emissions by 2030), and ramping up its renewable energy share to 50% by 2030. Glasgow is important as it will call for practical implementation of the 2015 Paris Accord, setting the rules for the Accord. And as the world recovers from the biological and environmental stresses of the COVID-19 pandemic and natural disasters, climate change has also become personal.
•Union Minister of Environment, Forest and Climate Change Bhupender Yadav has reasserted the call for the promised $100 billion a year as support (from the developed world to the developing world) but as we consider new energy pathways, we must also consider the question of climate hazard, nature-based solutions and national accountability.
•This is the right time for India to mull setting up a climate law while staying true to its goals of climate justice, carbon space and environmental protection. There are a few reasons for this.
Current laws and gaps
•Which law covers climate? First, our existing laws are not adequate to deal with climate change. We have for example the Environment (Protection) Act (EPA), 1986, the Air (Prevention and Control of Pollution) Act, 1981 and Water (Prevention and Control of Pollution) Act, 1974. Yet, climate is not exactly water or air. Which law would cover the impacts of a cyclone, for instance or work to reduce future climate impacts? And neither are we ready to tackle environmental/climate violations. The Environment (Protection) Act is grossly inadequate to deal with violations on climate. Clause 24 of the Act, “Effect of Other Laws”, states that if an offence is committed under the EPA or any other law, the person will be punished under the other law (for example, Code of Criminal Procedure). This makes the EPA subordinate to every other law.
•Second, there is a need to integrate climate action — adaptation and mitigation — and monitor progress. Comprehensive climate action is not just technological (such as changing energy sources or carbon intensity), but also nature-based (such as emphasising restoration of ecosystems, reducing natural hazard and increasing carbon sinks.)
•Finally, India’s situation is unique. Climate action cannot come by furthering sharpening divides or exacerbating poverty, and this includes our stated renewable energy goals. The 500 Gigawatt by 2030 goal for renewable, solar or wind power for example (of installed power capacity from non-fossil sources), can put critically endangered grassland and desert birds such as the Great Indian Bustard at risk, as they die on collision with wires in the desert.
Create a commission
•A climate law could consider two aspects. One, creating an institution that monitors action plans for climate change. A ‘Commission on Climate Change’ could be set up, with the power and the authority to issue directions, and oversee implementation of plans and programmes on climate.
•The Commission could have quasi-judicial powers with powers of a civil court to ensure that its directions are followed in letter and spirit. It should be assisted by a technical committee which can advise the commission in the discharge of its functions as well as guide various private and public agencies in meeting their climate-related obligations. As an example, the commission could look at agencies or institutions that have a disproportionate impact on climate or environment, and suggest lower energy pathways that are adhered to.
Tracing carbon footprints
•What, for example, is the carbon footprint of a single activity from start to finish? We have the Bureau of Energy Efficiency, but we also need overall carbon efficiency that looks beyond electronics. How could intelligent interventions be made for reduction of footprints, along with common sense, and practical public health interventions which are unaccounted for so far? In a recent case in the National Green Tribunal it was revealed that the National Thermal Power Corporation did not even cover coal wagons with tarpaulin on railways, decades after environmental clearances were granted in 1999, in Chhattisgarh. In 2020, the Supreme Court passed an order directing for the wagons to be covered within a month’s time. There will be eventual emissions by coal use. But there is also the issue of respirable coal dust that is spewed into the air through irresponsible transportation.
•As of now, many environmental mediations remain glaringly haphazard. The ban on plastic bags in Delhi is a failure because plastic bag substitutes were never really pushed at scale by the understaffed environment department. A plastic bag ban to succeed in one State requires a similar commitment from neighbouring States. A nation-wide intervention here, led by a Climate Commission, considering substitutes at scale for plastic-based products (which are derived from petroleum) and looking at both innovation and implementation, would be useful.
Need for accountability
•Second, we need a system of liability and accountability at short-, medium- and long-term levels as we face hazards. This also means having a legally enforceable National Climate Change Plan that goes beyond just policy guidelines. Are climate vagaries acts of god, or do certain actions exacerbate them? In an order of the National Green Tribunal in 2016, the court examined the damage caused when floods occurred in 2013 in Pauri, Uttarakhand. When Srinagar dam (Uttarakhand) opened its sluice gates, muck created 8-foot tall deposits, destroying property and fields.
•While muck is not hazardous, the handling of the dam — especially in a mountainous area in the face of climate events — created serious damage. The court held the damage was not an ‘Act of God’ and invoked the Principle of No Fault liability. The Alaknanda Hydro Power Company was asked by the Tribunal to pay more than ₹9 crore in damages. But all this was after the disaster. A Climate Commission could ideally prevent such gross negligence in fragile areas and fix accountability if it arises.
•We have an urgent moral imperative to tackle climate change and reduce its worst impacts. But we also should Indianise the process by bringing in a just and effective law — with guts, a spine, a heart, and, most importantly, teeth.
