📰 People can soon invest in infra projects: Gadkari
Minister says SEBI nod awaited to allow investments of at least ₹1 lakh in projects
•The Union government is awaiting approval of the Securities Exchange Board of India (SEBI) for enabling common citizens to invest at least ₹1 lakh in infrastructure projects under a new model for asset monetisation, Road Transport and Highways Minister Nitin Gadkari said on Friday.
•“Most of the pension funds and foreign investors are investing in the projects. But we should take the cooperation of Indian people, particularly those who can invest minimum ₹1 lakh in road projects, for which we have already developed a new model. We are awaiting approval from SEBI so that the common man can invest in NHAI (National Highways Authority of India). We are trying to give him an assured income of 7.5% to 8%,” Mr. Gadkari said at the “Countdown to Budget 2022” event organised by The Hindu BusinessLine, in association with BoB Financial, the credit card arm of Bank of Baroda, and Hitachi India.
•“My interest is to give benefit to the poor people of this country, who can invest in their economy, because in India we have problems in pension, insurance and share economy. For that reason, if small people can invest in infrastructure and get 7.5% to 8% interest, it can be a great thing for them to contribute to infrastructure development and at the same time benefit from that,” the Minister said.
•Speaking about the upcoming Union Budget, Mr. Gadkari said he was hopeful that the proposals will expedite the growth of the Indian economy to make it the largest economy in the world.
Advice to industry
•Mr. Gadkari said that Indian industry and entrepreneurs should seize the opportunity arising from the “problems” facing China and “go for more exports” riding on the back of talent, availability of raw materials, power, and good infrastructure, to make the economy strong.
•Stressing that agriculture was the “most important priority” of the government, he outlined several initiatives taken, which will create more jobs in rural, tribal and 120 aspiring districts.
Ethanol production
•India’s ethanol production is currently 400 crore litres. This year, it’s likely to go up to 550 crore litres as against a basic requirement of 4,000 crore litres.
•The government, Mr. Gadkari said, was working on biofuel and alternate fuel to save on India’s huge oil import bill, besides acting as a bulwark for the greening of the automobile industry.
Flex engines
•“We have taken a decision to use flex engines in two, three and four wheelers,” Mr. Gadkari said. Flex engines can use petrol or bio ethanol, which will reduce the demand for petrol, he said, adding that automobile manufacturers are in a position to launch flex engine vehicles in the market.
•The turnover of the automobile industry is ₹7.5 lakh crore, of which ₹3.5 lakh crore are exports. “Within five years, the size of this industry will grow to ₹15 lakh crore, and this is the industry which is giving the maximum employment potential and revenue to the States and Centre. So, this can be a great driving force behind the growth of India, and the automobile industry is the future. I am expecting the Indian automobile industry to become the No. 1 manufacturing hub in the world,” he said.
•On vehicle scrappage, the Minister said that the country needs at least one scrapping centre in each district and two-three centres in some of districts.
•The most important part of the scrapping policy is that it will reduce the import of aluminium and copper. “By scrapping, we can get steel, aluminium and copper at very low rates by which we can reduce the cost of components by 25-30%. That is a great advantage to Indian automobile industry,” Mr. Gadkari said.
States have rightly raised questions about proposed rule changes on IAS, IPS deputation
•That the wrong remedy could exacerbate an ailment and not cure it is a well understood adage. This holds true for the Union government’s (Department of Personnel & Training – DoPT) proposals to amend Rule 6 related to deputation of cadre officers of the IAS (Cadre) Rules 1954. Reports have shown that the deputation from States to the Union government has been uneven. Some States have not nominated officers for deputation adequately to work with the Union government; in this, West Bengal (11 out of the 280 officers are on central deputation), Rajasthan (13 out of 247) and Telangana (7 out of an authorised strength of 208) stand out. This has led to vacancies across Union government ministries. Numbers accessed by The Hindu show that actual deputation as a percentage of the mandated reserves fell from 69% (2014) to 30% (2021), suggesting that there is merit in the DoPT’s identification of shortages in deputation being an issue. But does this necessitate the rule changes proposed by the DoPT, which include acquiring overriding powers for the Union government that will do away with seeking approval from the States for transferring IAS and IPS officers?
•Two of the rules are particularly problematic — in case of any disagreement between the Union and State governments, the States shall give effect to the former’s decision “within a specified time”. And in some “specific situations”, States would have to depute certain cadres whose services are sought by the Union government. These changes amount to arm-twisting States and unwilling bureaucrats to be deputed to serve the Union government and also presenting a fait accompli to States for “specific situations” which have not been defined and prone to misinterpretation and politicisation. These proposed changes have unsurprisingly raised the hackles of State governments. As governance responsibilities during the pandemic have shown, States are quite dependent upon the bureaucracy, and deputation to the Union government should not be done at the cost of State requirements. Also, the Union government must address the key question of the reluctance of capable civil servants to be deputed away from the States. Reports have indicated that civil servants have found the top-down culture in Union government offices to be stifling and prefer the relative autonomy at the State level. There is clearly a need for a more qualitative approach that tackles such work culture issues. Besides, a State-by-State look at deputation that disincentivises those States which depute officers much below the mandated numbers to the Union government by adjusting future cadre strength reviews by the Union Public Service Commission should also address the shortage problem. These steps are better than any rule changes that amount to fiats striking at federalism.
📰 The ground rules of ‘the one land of many’
Today, some in positions of power in India seem to be questioning those rules — which makes it crucial to reaffirm them
•This month we celebrate another Republic Day, the 72nd anniversary of the entry into force of our Constitution. In so doing we reaffirm the essence of Indian nationalism, reified in a constitution adopted after almost three years of debate, and in the process implicitly salute the ‘idea of India’ that emerged from both the nationalist movement and its institutionalisation in the Republic.
A gift and a vision
•The idea of India as a modern nation based on a certain conception of human rights and citizenship, vigorously backed by due process of law, and equality before law, is a gift of the Constitution. Earlier conceptions of India drew their inspiration from mythology and theology. The modern idea of India, despite the mystical influence of Tagore, and the spiritual and moral influences of Gandhiji, is a robustly secular and legal construct based upon the vision and intellect of our founding fathers, notably (in alphabetical order) Ambedkar, Nehru, and Patel. The Preamble of the Constitution itself is the most eloquent enumeration of this vision. In its description of the defining traits of the Indian republic, and its conception of justice, of liberty, of equality and fraternity, it firmly proclaims that the law will be the bedrock of the national project.
•To my mind, the role of liberal constitutionalism in shaping and undergirding the civic nationalism of India is the dominant strand in the broader story of the evolution and modernisation of Indian society over the last century. The principal task of any Constitution is to constitute: that is, to define the rules, the shared norms, values and systems under which the state will function and the nation will evolve. The way in which the ideals embedded in that document were implemented and evolved, in a spirit of civic nationalism, through the first seven and a half decades of India’s independence, have determined the kind of country we are.
To shape a new citizen
•Every society has an interdependent relationship with the legal systems that govern it, which is both complex and, especially in our turbulent times, continuously and vociferously contested. It is through this interplay that communities become societies, societies become civilisations, and civilisations acquire a sense of national and historical character. The Chairman of the Drafting Committee of the Constituent Assembly, Dr. B.R. Ambedkar, not only understood this but explicitly hoped the Constitution would help shape a new kind of citizen. ‘I do not want that our loyalty as Indians should be in the slightest way affected by any competitive loyalty,’ said the great constitutionalist, ‘whether that loyalty arises out of our religion, out of our culture or out of our language. I want all people to be Indians first, Indian last and nothing else but Indians.’
•This was a greater challenge than it might have been in another country than India. It was not just the elements he mentioned — religion, culture and language — that divided Indians and seemed to fly in the face of an idea of shared citizenship. There was, as Ambedkar knew all too well, the dark shadow of caste and social hierarchy. ‘In politics we will be recognizing the principle of one man one vote and one vote one value. In our social and economic life, we shall, by reason of our social and economic structure, continue to deny the principle of one man one value. How long shall we continue to live this life of contradictions?’ Ambedkar famously asked.
Incorporating the underclass
•Ambedkar’s eloquent assault on discrimination and untouchability for the first time cogently expanded the reach of the Indian idea to incorporate the nation’s vast, neglected underclass. Ambedkar — a product of Columbia University and the London School of Economics, and principal of the prestigious Government Law College in Bombay — was deeply troubled by the iniquities of the caste system and the fear of many Dalits that national independence would merely lead to the social and political dominance of the upper castes. As an opponent of caste tyranny, and a nationalist, he believed that Dalits must support India’s freedom from British rule but that they must pursue their struggle for equal rights within the framework of the new constitution that he had a major hand in drafting.
•Despite his own pessimism, Ambedkar’s solution has worked. As I had pointed out in this space, the most important contribution of the Constitution to Indian civic nationalism was that of representation centred on individuals. The establishment of a constitutional democracy in post-colonial India involved an attempt to free Indians from prevailing types of categorisation, and to place each citizen in a realm of individual agency that went beyond the immutable identity conferred by birth. In the process the Constitution transcended all those identities that both defined and divided Indians.
•The Constitution provided a legal structure to an implicit idea of India as of one land embracing many. It reflected the idea that a nation may incorporate differences of caste, creed, colour, culture, cuisine, conviction, consonant, costume, and custom, and still rally around a democratic consensus. That consensus is around the simple principle that in a democracy under the rule of law, you do not really need to agree all the time — except on the ground rules of how you will disagree. The reason India has survived all the stresses and strains that have beset it for three quarters of a century (and that led so many in the 1950s and 1960s to predict its imminent disintegration), is that it maintained consensus on how to manage without consensus. Today, some in positions of power in India seem to be questioning those ground rules, and that, sadly, is why it is all the more essential to reaffirm them now.
The rule of law
•Indian nationalism is thus the nationalism of an idea, the idea of what I have dubbed an ever-ever land — emerging from an ancient civilisation, united by a shared history, sustained by pluralist democracy under the rule of law. What knits this entire concept of Indian nationhood together is, of course, the rule of law, enshrined in our Constitution.
•The struggle for Indian independence was, after all, not simply a struggle for freedom from alien rule. It was a shift away from an administration of law and order centred on imperial despotism. It is from this that the idea of ‘constitutional morality’ was born, meaning a national commitment to pursuing desirable ends through constitutional means, to upholding and respecting the Constitution’s processes and structures, and to doing so in a spirit of transparency and accountability, free speech, public scrutiny of government actions and legal limitations on the exercise of power. This was how freedom was intended to flourish in India.
The Constitution’s spirit
•Of course, Ambedkar realised it is perfectly possible to pervert the Constitution, without changing its form, by merely changing the form of the administration to make it inconsistent with the spirit of the Constitution. Ambedkar argued that constitutional morality ‘is not a natural sentiment. It has to be cultivated. We must realize that our people have yet to learn it. Democracy in India is only a top-dressing on an Indian soil which is essentially undemocratic’. He insisted that the Directive Principles — an unusual feature of the Indian Constitution not found elsewhere — were necessary because although the rules of democracy mandated that the people must elect those who will hold power, the principles confirmed that ‘whoever captures power will not be free to do what he likes with it’.
•To recall these basic principles today is to recognise how far we are currently straying from them, and the dangers inherent in the present government’s practice of paying lip-service to the Constitution while trampling on its spirit. This Republic Day, as we gear up to commemorate the 75th anniversary of our Independence a little over six months later, we must remind ourselves of, and rededicate ourselves to, the ideals that lie behind the Constitution whose entry into force we all celebrate on January 26.
📰 Setting sail for a powerful India-German partnership
The Indo-Pacific, with India as its centrepiece, features prominently in Germany’s foreign policy outreach
•A military vessel probably will not be your first thought when it comes to Germany’s role in India. Nonetheless, against all COVID odds and with due health precautions in place, the German Navy frigate Bayern landed in Mumbai on Thursday, January 20, 2022. A port call (picture) which might be business as usual for India with regard to many other friendly countries is, on close inspection, a remarkable step for Indo-German relations.
The setting of a new order
•Germany has realised that the world’s political and economic centre of gravity is, to a large degree, shifting to the Indo-Pacific region, with India as a key player, strategic partner and long-standing democratic friend at the hub. Here is where a significant part of the future international order is being shaped. The visit of the Bayern shows that we are not just talking. Here is a concrete outcome of the Indo-Pacific Policy Guidelines that Germany adopted in autumn 2020 and the European Union’s Indo-Pacific Strategy published last year. So why did we come up with such guidelines at this particular time?
•Germany is determined to contribute to buttressing the rules-based international order at a time when it is exposed to grave challenges. For Europe, just like for India, it is vital that trade routes stay open, that freedom of navigation is upheld and that disputes are resolved peacefully on the basis of international law. India is a maritime powerhouse and a strong advocate for free and inclusive trade — and, therefore, a primary partner on that mission.
The challenges
•The Indo-Pacific, with India as its centrepiece, looms large in Germany’s and the European Union’s foreign policy. Why? The Indo-Pacific region is home to around 65% of the global population and 20 of the world’s 33 megacities. The region accounts for 62% of global GDP and 46% of the world’s merchandise trade. On the other hand, it is also the source of more than half of all global carbon emissions. This makes the region’s countries key partners in tackling global challenges such as climate change and sustainable energy production and consumption.
•As much as India, Germany is a trading nation. More than 20% of German trade is conducted in the Indo-Pacific neighbourhood. This is why Germany and India share a responsibility to maintain and support stability, prosperity and freedom in this part of the world. Europe’s key interests are at stake when championing a free and open Indo-Pacific.
•The Bayern’s seven-month journey in the region is coming full circle in India. Even before its first port call, the Indian Navy “greeted” the Bayern on the high seas and our troops undertook a joint passing exercise — a strong and warm Indian welcome for Germany to the region. After having visited Japan, Australia, Vietnam, Singapore and other countries in the region, Mumbai is the last station before the Bayern sets course to return to Germany. Our message is one of cooperation and inclusiveness. But inclusiveness does not mean blind equidistance. We will not stand by when the multilateral order is challenged and when attempts are made to try to place the law of power over the power of law. The Bayern participated in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and European Union missions Sea Guardian in the Mediterranean Sea and Operation ATALANTA — formally European Union Naval Force (EU NAVFOR) Somalia — in the Arabian Sea. On her way from Tokyo to Busan, she helped monitor United Nations sanctions against the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea.
A chance for coordination
•After 16 years of Angela Merkel’s chancellorship, Olaf Scholz took the helm of the German government in December 2021. During their inaugural conversation, Prime Minister Narendra Modi and he agreed that as major democracies and strategic partners, India and Germany will step up their cooperation to tackle common challenges, with climate change on top of the agenda.
•No global problem can be solved without India’s active involvement. This year, Germany will hold the G7 Presidency, and from December 2022, India will assume the same role for the G20. This is an opportunity for joint and coordinated action.
•I am particularly confident about one aspect of our relations: Germany cooperates with India to the tune of €1.3 billion a year in development projects, 90% of which serves the purpose of fighting climate change, saving natural resources as well as promoting clean and green energy. No country receives more such support from Germany than India. What world leaders agreed upon at COP26 in Glasgow, Germany and India are putting into practice. Together we work on a sustainable path for India’s growth that will benefit both our countries. For example, we have been supporting the construction of a huge solar plant in Maharashtra’s Dhule (Sakri). With a capacity of 125 Megawatt, it serves 2,20,000 households and generates annual CO2 savings of 155,000 tons.
•As India celebrates 75 years of independence, this visit sends a signal of friendship and cooperation. We are setting sail for a powerful partnership, in calm waters and heavy seas alike. And hopefully, we will exceed your expectations, every once in a while.
