📰 648 police stations lack phone link
257 do not have vehicles and 143 do not have wireless sets, says parliamentary panel
•As many as 648 police stations in the country do not have telephones, a report by a parliamentary panel tabled in the Rajya Sabha on Friday said. Uttar Pradesh, one of the largest States, did not have phone connection in 75 police stations, while Jammu and Kashmir had 79 police stations without telephone connection. In Punjab, the number stood at 69.
•Other than this, the largest shortfall was found in North-East States — 141 police stations in Assam, 54 in Arunachal Pradesh, 64 in Manipur, 62 in Meghalaya and 36 in Nagaland did not have telephone connection. The report said that 257 police stations did not have vehicles and 143 did not have wireless sets. The report was drafted by the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Home Affairs.
HC order accepting national security bogey to shut down channel is concerning
•The Kerala High Court judgment upholding the Government’s revoking the broadcasting permission given to Malayalam news channel MediaOne is plainly wrong. The I&B Ministry did not renew the channel’s permission to uplink and downlink signals after the Union Home Ministry declined security clearance. The company and some employees challenged the action. The court seems to have endorsed the Government’s stand that it was a national security issue and, therefore, there was no need to observe the principles of natural justice. The Government claimed there were sufficient reasons, even though they were not disclosed. It is unfortunate that the court chose to accept the submission of documents in a sealed cover and agree with the authorities that there were intelligence inputs that warranted the denial of security clearance, without the petitioners being shown the contents. The court’s decision goes against emerging jurisprudence that any restriction on fundamental rights must not only be reasonable, as permitted in the Constitution, but also withstand the test of proportionality. In this case, broadcasting involves the inter-connected rights concerning media freedom, freedom to disseminate information and the freedom to consume information. All these fall under the framework of freedom of speech and expression. The court seems to have accepted the restriction without examining its reasonableness in any way. It has negated not only the channel’s right to broadcast but also its viewers’ right to know.
•It is astounding that the court dismissed the precedent set in a recent case that national security cannot be used as a pretext to avoid any judicial examination of restrictions imposed by the state. Raising the spectre of national security did not give a free pass to the Government, the court had noted in the case involving allegations of the use of Pegasus, a spyware, against citizens. By claiming that it was in a case that involved the ‘right to privacy’ and not germane to the MediaOne case, the judge seems to have erred. The need for circumspection against the bogey of national security being raised to deny or curtail fundamental rights is a general principle, and not confined to a particular right. Further, it is plainly unacceptable that the much-derided form of ‘sealed cover’ justice is being used as an aid to adjudication. Even though courts recognise that the scope for judicial review in matters of national security is limited, any claim that a particular action was based on that ground ought to be substantiated by the Government, even if it is reluctant to disclose all details. If this practice of using confidential intelligence claims to revoke the permission given to a channel to operate is encouraged, freedom of the media will be in great peril.
📰 An MSP scheme to transform Indian agriculture
A decentralised plan would aid price stabilisation, offer income support, and also cope with the indebtedness of farmers
•The ongoing struggle of farmers is not for political power. It is a struggle to transform Indian agriculture and the livelihoods of the farming majority which are in ruins in most parts of the country. The compulsion of our time is to give a new direction to a peaceful peoples’ movement to generate momentum in small peasant agriculture, which in turn could give real content to our democracy. Setting aside false promises of doubling the farmers’ income by the Government or pretending that market-friendly reforms will do the trick, we propose a different way of designing a minimum support price (MSP).
A background
•The massive solidarity (despite deeply divisive social faultlines) seen in the recent farmers’ movement has already shaken the Himalayan arrogance of the Government. Maintaining that solidarity is essential, which means MSP must look especially into the requirements of farmers and the landless. MSP could serve, in principle, three purposes — price stabilisation in the food grains market, income support to farmers, and also as a mechanism for coping with the indebtedness of farmers.
•The price stabilisation policy for food grains in India evolved over time, first with the Essential Commodities Act in 1955 to counter price rise due to speculative private trading and then MSP in the 1960s. A buffer stock policy with the public storage of food grains for market intervention was developed over time to involve different kinds of mechanisms such as: setting cost-based minimum procurement price; paying the difference between procurement price and market price; storing the procured surplus for sale through the Public Distribution System (PDS) at issue price, and market intervention to stabilise price when deemed necessary. These induced farmers to shift to a high-yielding varieties cropping pattern during the Green Revolution, while ensuring food security for citizens. This task required interlinking procurement, storage and distribution with more centralised investment and control of each of these tasks.
Partial coverage
•The procurement and PDS from the Green Revolution period provided assured price incentives for rice, wheat and sugar (the flagships of the Green Revolution), but left out some 20 crops now under discussion for MSP including millets, coarse cereals, pulses and oilseeds. As a result, this partial MSP coverage skewed the cropping pattern against several coarse grains and millets particularly in rain-fed areas. The area under cultivation of rice and wheat from the time of the Green Revolution till recently increased from 30 million hectares to 44 million hectares and nine million hectares to 31 million hectares, respectively, while that of coarse cereals plunged from 37 million hectares to 25 million hectares. Although part of the diet of many people across the country, these left-out crops (grown mostly in rain-fed conditions) were not made available in ration shops. Almost 68% of Indian agriculture is rain fed and the crops grown in these regions are usually more drought resistant, nutritious and staple in the diet of the poorer subsistence farmers. This has been a particularly vulnerable point of our food security system; greater coverage of all 23 crops under MSP is a way of improving both food security and income support to the poorest farmers in rain-fed regions.
Economic cost
•The centralised mechanism for ensuring distribution of the procured stock of rice and wheat at MSP entails bringing the procured grains to centralised Food Corporation warehouses. Here they are milled, made ready for consumption and sent back to each district/province, and from there to villages/slums/wards for distribution through fair price (ration) shops at an issue price fixed by the government which is below the market price to make it affordable for poor households.
•The total economic cost involving subsidy for selling below market price along with procurement costs, distribution costs of freight, handling, storage, interest and administrative charges along with costs borne due to transit and storage losses would be around ₹3 lakh-crore. Sugarcane comes under a separate category because all this is organised through private sugar mills and is often plagued by delays.
•If price is charged in a range according to harvest conditions, the total economic cost will vary within a price “band”.
As a band
•MSP has to be conceived as a list of some 23 crops with a more flexible arrangement. Each crop within a band of maximum and a minimum price depending on harvest conditions (i.e. higher price in a bad and lower price in a good harvest year in general) will have its price set in the band. The price of some selected coarse grains can be fixed at the upper end of its band to encourage their production in rain fed areas. In this way, the objectives of income support to farmers, price stabilisation and food security and inducing more climate-friendly cropping patterns can be combined to an extent. Wide coverage of MSP through income support to farmers would generate massive positive economic externalities through raising industrial demand especially for the unorganised sector. This will help in extending solidarity among farmers and non-farmers while creating a chain reaction of demand expansion through multipliers for the whole economy.
•For estimating the additional cost of a wider MSP; of the total grains produced some 45%-50% is for farmers’ self-consumption and the rest is marketed surplus. This marketed surplus sets the upper bound of total procurement cost from which must be deducted the net revenue recovered through the PDS (if all these crops are sold through ration shops). Our preliminary estimate puts it in the range of ₹5 lakh-crore, far less than the ₹17 lakh-crore estimated by the government. It is of the same order of magnitude as DA to public sector employees (less than 5% of the population, and the total tax break and income foregone announced in the Budget for a handful of industrial houses (₹3 lakh-crore), not to speak of a wilful default of bank loans by a handful of borrowers (well over ₹10 lakh-crore). This expenditure will benefit more than half the population directly and another 20%-25% of the population indirectly in the unorganised sector — over 70% of India’s citizens.
•A real breakthrough in the recurring problem of agricultural debt can be made by the linking of selling of grains under MSP to provision of bank credit particularly for small farmers. The farmer can get a certificate selling grains at MSP which would be credit points proportional to the amount sold; this will entitle them to a bank loan as their right, and calibrate the fluctuations between good and bad harvest years by storing the certificates for later use. This mechanism would go a long way not only in addressing the indebtedness in the farming community but also has the virtue of great administrative simplicity in disbursing bank loans.
•It needs emphasising that how effectively such an MSP scheme could be implemented would depend largely on decentralising the implementing agencies under the constitutionally mandated supervision of panchayats. The near miracle we have witnessed in organising and unifying the farmers’ movement across caste, class and gender through the panchayat and maha-panchayat system in Punjab, Haryana and West Uttar Pradesh raises hope that they will turn their attention to decentralising the MSP implementation mechanism. The movement enabled massive and effective mobilisation through these decentralised bodies. Therefore, they are capable of doing it again.
📰 Local job laws that raise constitutional questions
State laws that limit the rights of out-of-State citizens go against the idea of India being one nation
•The Supreme Court of India will soon hear a petition to remove the stay on the Haryana State Employment of Local Candidates Act, or the Haryana Act, that reserves 75% of jobs in the private sector in the State for local residents. The Act applies to jobs that pay up to ₹30,000 per month, and employers have to register all such employees on a designated portal. The Government may also exempt certain industries by notification, and has so far exempted new start-ups and new Information Technology Enabled Services (ITES) companies, as well as short-term employment, farm labour, domestic work, and promotions and transfers within the State. The Act was enacted in February 2021, and brought into effect in January 2022. Last week, the Punjab and Haryana High Court admitted a petition challenging the constitutionality of the Act, and stayed the implementation until it heard the case. The petition in the Supreme Court is by the Haryana government to remove the stay.
At the core of the issue
•Other States such as Andhra Pradesh and Jharkhand have passed similar Bills. The Andhra Pradesh legislation has been challenged in the Andhra Pradesh High Court. These Acts raise several constitutional questions. The Supreme Court will first have to decide whether it will wait for the High Courts to decide the respective cases (and then hear any appeal), or whether it will draw the cases to itself as similar substantial constitutional issues are pending across High Courts.
•There are at least three important constitutional questions that arise from this Act. First, Article 19(1)(g) of the Constitution guarantees freedom to carry out any occupation, trade or business. There may be reasonable restrictions “in the interests of the general public”, and in particular related to specifying any professional or technical qualifications, or to reserve a sector for government monopoly. This Act, by requiring private businesses to reserve 75% of lower end jobs for locals, encroaches upon their right to carry out any occupation.
•In 2002, in the T.M.A. Pai Foundation case, the Supreme Court stated that private educational institutions have autonomy in their administration and management. In 2005, in the P.A. Inamdar case, it said that reservation cannot be mandated on educational institutions that do not receive financial aid from the state, as that would affect the freedom of occupation. In 2005, the Constitution was amended to allow reservation in private educational institutions for socially and educationally backward classes and Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes. Note that this amendment applies to admissions in private educational institutions and not to jobs in the private sector.
•Second, the provision of reservation by virtue of domicile or residence may be unconstitutional. Article 16 of the Constitution specifically provides for equality of opportunity for all citizens in public employment. It prohibits discrimination on several grounds including place of birth and residence. However, it permits Parliament to make law that requires residence within a State for appointment to a public office. Note two points here. This enabling provision is for public employment and not for private sector jobs. And the law needs to be made by Parliament, and not by a State legislature.
Point of a ‘special case’
•There have been several cases related to public employment. For example, the Supreme Court, in 2002, ruled that preference given to applicants from a particular region of Rajasthan for appointment as government teachers was unconstitutional. It said that reservations can be made for backward classes of citizens but this cannot be solely on account of residence or domicile. In 1995, Rules in Andhra Pradesh that gave preference to candidates who had studied in the Telugu medium were struck down on grounds that it discriminated against more meritorious candidates.
•The third question is whether 75% reservation is permitted. In the Indra Sawhney case in 1992, the Supreme Court capped reservations in public services at 50%. It however said that there may be extraordinary situations which may need a relaxation in this rule. It gave examples of far-flung and remote areas, where the population may need to be treated in a different way. It also specified that “in doing so, extreme caution is to be exercised and a special case made out”. That is, the onus is on the State to make a special case of exceptional circumstances, for the 50% upper limit on reservations to be relaxed.
•This question has arisen in several cases later. Telangana (2017), Rajasthan (2019) and Maharashtra (2018) have passed Acts which breach the 50% limit. The Maharashra Act, which provided reservations for Marathas was struck down by the Supreme Court in May 2021 on grounds of breaching the 50% limit. It stated that the 50% limit is “to fulfil the objective of equality”, and that to breach the limit “is to have a society which is not founded on equality but on caste rule”.
Affects equality
•The Haryana Act does not further “caste rule” as it is for all residents of the State irrespective of caste but it breaches the notion of equality of all citizens of India. Again, note that all these cases relate to either public employment or to admissions to educational institutions, while the Haryana Act is about private sector employment. However, one may contend that any reservation requirement imposed on the private sector should not be higher than the limits on the public sector.
•Over the last three years, three States have enacted laws that limit employment for citizens from outside the State. These laws raise questions on the conception of India as a nation. The Constitution conceptualises India as one nation with all citizens having equal rights to live, travel and work anywhere in the country. These State laws go against this vision by restricting the right of out-of-State citizens to find employment in the State. This restriction may also indirectly affect the right to reside across India as finding employment becomes difficult. If more States follow similar policies, it would be difficult for citizens to migrate from their State to other States to find work.
Another fallout
•There would be adverse economic implications of such policies. Other than potentially increasing costs for companies, there may also be an increase in income inequality across States as citizens of poorer States with fewer job opportunities are trapped within their States. There may also be serious consequences to the idea of India as a nation. Can people across States imagine themselves as citizens of one nation if they cannot freely find work and settle down across the nation? The courts, while looking at the narrow questions of whether these laws violate fundamental rights, should also examine whether they breach the basic structure of the Constitution that views India as one nation which is a union of States, and not as a conglomeration of independent States.
