📰 Lok Sabha passes Bill to link electoral rolls with Aadhaar
Modi government “compromising” authority of Parliament, say leaders
•Amid vociferous protests from Opposition members, the Lok Sabha on Monday passed a Bill to link electoral roll data with the Aadhaar ecosystem without any substantial discussion.
•Union Law Minister Kiren Rijiju, while moving the Election Laws (Amendment) Bill, 2021, told the House that the linking of the electoral roll with a person’s Aadhaar was “voluntary”, but went on to quote a report of the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Law and Justice to assert that the process would “purify” the rolls.
•The manner of passing the Bill, barely two hours after it was introduced in the Lok Sabha and in the midst of an uproar, led Opposition members to accuse the Narendra Modi government of “compromising” the authority of Parliament.
•In a departure from the norm, even Congress leader in the House Adhir Ranjan Chowdhury was seen throwing bits of papers towards the Well of the House in protest.
•BJP member Nishikant Dubey alleged that the Congress and Trinamool Congress members were opposing the Bill as they relied on “illegal Bangladeshis” as their vote banks. Hitting back at Mr. Dubey, NCP member Supriya Sule said the BJP should first clarify the allegation about a Minister in the present Council of Ministers being a Bangladeshi national.
•Opposing the passage of the Bill, Mr. Chowdhury said, “What is the tearing hurry to pass the Bill? It should be sent to the Standing Committee.”
•Responding to him, the Law Minister said the provisions were extensively discussed by the parliamentary panel on law and justice and it also gave a unanimous report. “We have not brought this in a dictatorial way,” Mr. Rijiju told the Opposition members.
•While Trinamool members Kalyan Banerjee and Mahua Moitra were agitated over the government pushing through the Bill, parties that are friendly to the government — the Biju Janata Dal and the YSR Congress — also urged it not to pass the Bill in the din.
•At the time of introduction, several members, including Manish Tewari and Shashi Tharoor of the Congress, Asaduddin Owaisi of the All India Majlis-E-Ittehadul Muslimeen and N.K. Premachandran of the Revolutionary Socialist Party, opposed the Bill.
•The Bill allows electoral registration officers to ask for Aadhaar numbers of applicants who want to register as voters to establish the identity of the applicant. It also seeks to allow the officers to ask for the Aadhaar number from “persons already included in the electoral roll for the purposes of authentication of entries in electoral roll, and to identify registration of name of the same person in the electoral roll of more than one constituency or more than once in the same constituency”.
•At the same time, the Bill makes it clear that “no application for inclusion of name in the electoral roll shall be denied and no entries in the electoral roll shall be deleted for inability of an individual to furnish or intimate Aadhaar number due to such sufficient cause as may be prescribed”.
•People who cannot furnish their Aadhaar numbers will be allowed to present other documents to establish identity.
•The Statement of Objects and Reasons of the Bill states that Section 23 of the Representation of People Act, 1950, will be amended to allow linking of the electoral roll data with the Aadhaar ecosystem “to curb the menace of multiple enrolment of the same person in different places”.
Qualifying dates
•The amendment to Section 14 of the RP Act, 1950, will allow to have four “qualifying” dates for eligible people to register as voters.
•As of now, January 1 of every year is the sole qualifying date. People who turn 18 on or before January 1 can register as voters. Those turning 18 after that have to wait for a whole year to register as voters.
•Now, “January 1, April 1, July 1 and October 1 in a calendar year” will be the qualifying dates in relation to the preparation or revision of the rolls.
•The amendment to Section 20 of the RP Act, 1950, and Section 60 of the RP Act, 1951, will allow the elections to become gender neutral for service voters.
•It will also help replace the word “wife” with “spouse”, making the statutes “gender neutral”. This seeks to redress any discrimination against male spouses of women armed services employees.
India must redouble efforts towards Central Asia to counter the ‘Great Game’ rivalries
•The third India-Central Asia Dialogue convened by External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar on Sunday is one in a series of timely connections to the region by New Delhi this year, spurred in some measure by events in Afghanistan. The dialogue has been held a month before leaders of all five Central Asian Republics (CARs) come to New Delhi as chief guests for the Republic Day celebrations, and a month after National Security Adviser Ajit Doval’s “Regional Security Dialogue” with his CAR counterparts to discuss Afghanistan. Among the issues discussed on Sunday were extending “immediate” humanitarian aid to Afghanistan, increasing trade, and improving connectivity. It is significant that the CAR Foreign Ministers chose to come to New Delhi, an indicator that India’s outreach to Central Asia, a region neglected by South Block for several decades, is being reciprocated. The joint statement, that they share a “broad regional consensus” on Afghanistan, is apt, given that, like India, all the Central Asian neighbours of Afghanistan worry about the threat of terrorism, radicalisation, narcotics, and refugees. However, unlike India, most of the CARs maintain bilateral talks with the Taliban regime; Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan have reopened missions there. Trade between India and Central Asia has long languished below $2 billion, with all sides keen to grow this. In addition, India’s $1 billion Line of Credit for projects in Central Asia, and connectivity initiatives such as Chabahar port, the International North-South Transport Corridor and the Turkmenistan-Afghanistan-Pakistan-India gas pipeline were all part of the dialogue.
•While the strengthening of India-Central Asia ties and a revival of their traditional, historical and cultural links are much needed, it is also important to recognise the geopolitical cross-currents that complicate such efforts. While Russia continues to wield influence in the CAR governments, China’s Belt and Road Initiative and $100 billion trade (by some estimates) have made it a central figure in the region. The U.S. has also been seeking a foothold in the region, especially after Afghanistan. Meanwhile, India’s land connectivity to Central Asia is hampered by Pakistan which is building strong links and transit trade agreements with each of the CARs. The alternative route, via Iran’s Chabahar, has received a setback after the Taliban takeover of Kabul, and the development of the Indian-managed Shahid Beheshti terminal there continues to suffer due to the threat of American sanctions. While India has strengthened ties with other parts of Asia, it must now redouble its efforts towards Central Asia if it is to counter the ‘Great Game’ rivalries playing out in the region, and reclaim its shared history with countries that are an important market, a source for energy, and also a bulwark against the threats of extremism and radicalisation.
📰 The sustained attack on federalism
Steps by the Union government have undermined the principles of federalism, especially fiscal federalism
•B. Pocker Sahib, a Muslim League member from Kerala in the Constituent Assembly, was prophetic when he outlined his concerns about the possible impact of centralisation of powers. In 1948, he said: “Now after we have won freedom, to do away with Provincial Autonomy and to concentrate all the powers in the Centre really is tantamount to totalitarianism, which certainly ought to be condemned.” Today, amid the pandemic, some elements of this statement resonate quite strongly with the States with some of them raising complaints about the Union government’s anti-federal moves.
•Prior to the pandemic, a series of steps by the Union government undermined the principles of federalism, especially fiscal federalism. This manifested in the increasing monetary share of the States in Centrally Sponsored Schemes (CSS), the terms of reference of the 15th Finance Commission, imposition of demonetisation without adequate consultation with the States, institutionalisation of the Goods and Services Tax (GST), outsourcing of the statutory functions under the Smart Cities Mission, a delay in transfer of GST compensation, ‘One Nation One Ration’, etc.
Pandemic and federalism
•Besides tightening the purse strings of States, administrations also witnessed an onslaught on the principles of federalism during the pandemic. States were curtailed in aspects relating to COVID-19 management such as procurement of testing kits, vaccination, the use of the Disaster Management Act, and the unplanned national lockdown. Ironically, Union Ministers used the ‘health is a State subject’ argument to counter criticism when the second wave caught the government unprepared.
•Several other policies initiated by the Union government in the recent past have also led to the weakening of States’ autonomy. These include the farm laws; the Banking Regulation (Amendment) Act of 2020; the Government of National Capital Territory Amendment Act, 2021; the Indian Marine Fisheries Bill, 2021; the Draft Electricity (Amendment) Bill, 2020; the Dam Safety Bill, 2019; the National Education Policy of 2020; and the Draft Blue Economy policy. The creation of the Ministry of Co-operation and the Reserve Bank of India directives on cooperatives are being perceived by the States as measures to strangulate a sector that is still struggling to recover from the devastation of demonetisation.
•These coercive policies, coming on top of the pandemic-induced economic shock, have worsened the fiscal situation of State governments. The impact of COVID-19 on fiscal federalism deserves to be understood in greater detail, and tax collection is a good place to start. Enlarging the non-divisible pool of taxes in the form of cess in petrol tax and instituting the Agriculture Infrastructure and Development Cess have resulted in a situation where the Union continues to exclusively benefit from tax collection. As the economic commentator Vivek Kaul said, the share of non-divisible pool cess and surcharge in total taxes collected by the Union government jumped from 12.67% in 2019-20 to 23.46% in 2020-21. On December 6, 2021, the Union government informed Parliament that its share in the total contribution of the petroleum sector to the exchequer for 2020-21 was 68%, which left only 32% to the States. In 2013-14, the Union:State share was almost 50:50.
•The story is the same with GST. During the pandemic, the Union government repeatedly violated the compensation guarantees to the States under the GST regime. Delay in paying the States their due worsened the impact of the economic slowdown. The crisis was aggravated in July 2020, when the Union government proposed borrowing as an option to address the shortfall in GST compensation. Most States, forced by economic pressure, had to accept the proposal. In effect, this meant that they were not only getting the share of GST collections due to them, but were now forced into debt which they would have to service. The GST compensation period expires in 2022, and despite multiple requests from the States, the deadline has not been extended. The Comptroller and Auditor General found that the Union government, in 2018-19, wrongly retained ₹47,272 crore of GST compensation cess in the Consolidated Fund of India — money that was supposed to be transferred to the States. It is also pertinent to recollect that the 2021-22 Budget Estimates indicate that the States’ share of Union tax has reduced to 30% against the mandated 41% devolution prescribed by the 15th Finance Commission.
•Cash-starved States have been seeking non-tax avenues to generate funds to sustain their programmes. And at this point, the Union government issued a clarification that funding to the Chief Minister’s Disaster Relief Funds will not be considered as CSR expenditure, unlike the case with PM-CARES. This was followed by decisions like the suspension and transfer of the Member of Parliament Local Area Development (MPLAD) funds to the Consolidated Fund of India. This led to a major crisis situation for most States and resulted in demands for increasing borrowing limits under the Fiscal Responsibility and Budget Management Act (FRBM), from 3% to 5%. The Union government decided to increase FRBM borrowing limits, linking it to the performance of States in fulfilling certain conditions — implementation of the One Nation, One Ration policy, ease of doing business reforms, urban local body/utility reforms and power sector reforms — making it difficult for the States to perceive this as an addressal of their concerns.
Some solutions
•These policy misadventures call for research and introspection on federalism. Is it time for another State-centric committee like the Rajamannar Committee to study Union-State relations? States should, as recommended by the National Commission to Review the Working of the Constitution, demand the creation of a formal institutional framework to mandate and facilitate consultation between the Union and the States in the areas of legislation under the Concurrent List. State governments could also consider deploying human resources to support them in preparing responses to the consultations initiated by the Union, especially with a focus on the federalism angle. Instead of reaching out to each other only during crisis situations, Chief Ministers should try to create forums for regular engagement on this issue. Former Kerala Finance Minister Thomas Isaac had rallied Finance Ministers from different States during the initial stages of discussion on the terms of reference of the 15th Finance Commission. Similar efforts are required. This would be crucial in the advocacy of major demands like the extension of GST compensation to 2027 and inclusion of cess in the divisible pool of taxes.
•Federal flexibility — or the lack of it — is going to play a crucial role in shaping the future of our democracy. The Union government needs to invest resources towards facilitating effective consultation with States as a part of the lawmaking process. It is critical that the Union establishes a system where citizens and States are treated as partners and not subjects.
📰 Amid vaccine booster talk, context matters a lot
While discussions are essential, India should decide its COVID-19 booster dose policy based on local evidence and data
•Nearly four weeks since Omicron (B.1.1.529) was designated as a variant of concern (VoC), evidence points to its spreading faster than other variants. This is most likely as a result of the ability of the mutated spike protein to bind better to the receptor. It could also be because the virus is able to re-infect previously infected individuals, and infect vaccinated individuals better than other variants. The initial data indicate a lower severity of disease by Omicron. However, that remains to be confirmed as cases accumulate and we develop a better understanding of how the virus behaves in vaccinated and unvaccinated individuals.
•Laboratory studies using samples from individuals vaccinated with vaccines made on different platforms, including mRNA, vectored and inactivated vaccines, have reported that the neutralising antibodies are 25 times or much greater times less effective against Omicron than the ancestral strain. Another study from the United Kingdom has reported that two doses of the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine (Covishield in India) have limited effectiveness for prevention of symptomatic infection by Omicron, but after a booster dose of an mRNA vaccine, effectiveness goes up to 71%.
•Even before the emergence of Omicron, over 80 countries had introduced or planned to introduce booster doses, but the designation of Omicron as a VoC accelerated the process, with countries expanding booster doses for additional age groups or introducing a booster into the immunisation programme, the most notable being South Africa. Alongside, the vaccine manufacturers, particularly those with rapid-response platforms such as mRNA and viral-vectored vaccines, have already begun the vaccine formulation targeted to provide better protection against Omicron.
•In India, for the last few months, there has been a demand for COVID-19 booster dose for various population sub-groups. Government-appointed expert committees have been reviewing the need for a booster in India. The start of booster doses in many countries at intervals as short as three months since the start of COVID-19 vaccination in India — and a greater vaccine supply than demand are the arguments being made to support the introduction of booster doses in India. The demand has grown louder with the emergence of Omicron. However, does a new variant make a clear case for the introduction of boosters in India? The answer is not easy, if a scientific approach of basing decisions on data is followed.
•The situation is similar to the use of convalescent plasma therapy (CPT) in India. In the early months of the pandemic, CPT was recommended based on plausibility but without any scientific evidence. Later, even when studies reported that it had no or a very limited role in COVID-19 management, it continued to be recommended, using anecdotal evidence from treating physicians or ‘expert’ opinion. There seems to be a similar push for COVID-19 boosters in India, playing out in newspapers and TV debates, but there is no evidence of waning immunity from India to support this approach. Often, selective studies/evidence are/is being quoted, to support the argument one wishes to make; 21 months into the pandemic, any decision on boosters should be based on cumulative scientific evidence examined comprehensively.
Effectiveness of vaccines
•On the one hand, pre-print research papers — yet to undergo essential peer scrutiny as a standard part of the scientific process — are being used to argue the case for booster vaccination while on the other, there is a recognition that data from India on vaccines being used in India are very limited. Does the absence of evidence on waning of immunity with Indian vaccines really mean that vaccine immunity is not waning?
•For all vaccinations, antibodies rise and then fall. They may fall to undetectable levels, but if they rose at all, then an immune response was made. Should there be a cut-off of the level of antibodies that exactly equated to protection from disease, that would be helpful for tracking the sufficiency of protection. But there is no such correlate of protection for SARS-CoV-2. Data indicate that in general, higher levels of neutralising antibodies indicate greater chances of protection from severe disease and infection, but there is no magic number above which there is assured protection. And this situation is further complicated by variants where antibodies may have different activity against each variant.
•Neutralising antibodies are considered functional antibodies; they are the antibodies that block the virus from entering host cells, but there are also many other antibodies that can be found in binding assays that measure whether antibodies can stick to the cognate protein of the virus. The levels of some of these binding antibodies parallel neutralising antibodies, both high or both low, but again there is no cut off that predicts anything about whether the person with high antibodies is truly protected or not.
•A recent report on Omicron has good news about another arm of the immune system, showing that T-cell immunity was largely maintained. The spate of laboratory studies further shows that natural infection and vaccination with two doses was approximately equivalent to two doses and a booster. Most of these data are from the mRNA and viral vectored vaccine combinations. We still have a lot to learn about Omicron and the performance of other vaccines in different populations and subpopulations, particularly those in India. It does appear clear that without boosters, protection against infection is likely to be less, but in public health terms, how much this may matter for health-care systems in India remains unquantifiable and unpredictable at this time.
•While the evidence on the benefit of boosters is emerging, we also need to worry about the populations that are unvaccinated or partially vaccinated in India and in the world.
A comparison
•Offering booster doses will have individual benefit, to a variable extent against different variants. However, when at the global level, vaccines continue to be in short supply, this comes at the cost of a potentially larger benefit for more individuals who still await their primary two doses.
•In this backdrop, the decisions on who gets boosters, when and with which vaccine has to be based upon a public health approach, determined by evidence and science.
•Second, since every country needs vaccines and access is variable, global access to the first two shots need to be prioritised over boosters for healthy adults. Yes, boosters might ultimately be needed for everyone, but at the moment, we need to immediately consider boosters only for subgroups such as the immunocompromised (often referred to as additional dose as part of an extended primary immunisation schedule) and those at the greatest risk. In India, we must plan and execute real world effectiveness studies at scale in the general population, particularly for those vaccines that have been or will be used mainly or initially in India, so that we can develop an evidence base for decisions on boosters for the general population. This must happen in parallel with increasing the two dose coverage in all adults to the highest possible levels.
•Third, we should not be surprised by reports of reinfections and breakthrough infections or of absence of antibodies after natural infection and vaccination, particularly when commercial tests are used. This is expected both because of the design of the tests and as vaccines for mucosal infections, as for SARS-CoV-2, rarely prevent all subsequent infections, but generally continue to protect against severe disease for a longer period.
•Fourth, in the context of Omicron, India has an opportunity to plan and implement testing and tracking that will enable an understanding of variant-specific and waning immunity with different vaccines, if we capture infection and vaccination history in people who are affected by this variant.
•Fifth, this is an opportunity to review the performance of the vaccine programme and identify the population groups to be prioritised for completion of primary immunisation. It is time for the Government to analyse and use the integrated data from its multiple platforms for decision making.
Every setting is different
•India needs a road map that includes COVID-19 testing, provision of care, financial protection, and enhanced science communication with the general public to ensure sustained adherence to COVID-19 appropriate behaviours, and other measures for protection against disease to decrease further disruption by the pandemic. Discussions on boosters are essential, but it is important that India makes its decisions based, as far as possible, on its own data. High seropositivity, as shown in the fourth round of the National Sero-Prevalence Survey, different vaccines from the rest of the world, a different experience with the variants, all indicate that India should not blindly follow the path adopted by other countries and it should determine COVID-19 booster dose policy for the general population based on local evidence and data. In epidemics and pandemics, context matters a lot.
