📰 Bill introduced to ban financing of weapons of mass destruction
Legislation will empower Centre to freeze financial assets of people involved in such activities
•External Affairs Minister (EAM) S. Jaishankar on Tuesday introduced a Bill in the Lok Sabha that seeks to ban funding of weapons of mass destruction (WMD) and empowers the Centre to freeze and seize financial assets of people involved in such activities.
•Amid sloganeering by Opposition members over repeated fuel price hikes, Mr. Jaishankar introduced the Weapons of Mass Destruction and their Delivery Systems (Prohibition of Unlawful Activities) Amendment Bill, which also fulfils India’s international obligations pertaining to WMDs.
•The earlier law of 2005 regarding WMDs and their Delivery Systems (Prohibition of Unlawful Activities) only banned their manufacture.
•“In recent times, regulations relating to proliferation of weapons of mass destruction and their delivery systems by international organisations have expanded,” Mr. Jaishankar said in the statements of objects and reasons of the Bill.
•The Minister noted that the United Nations Security Council’s targeted financial sanctions and the recommendations of the Financial Action Task Force have mandated against financing of the proliferation of WMD and their delivery systems.
•“In view of the above, there is a need to amend the said Act to provide against the financing of proliferation of weapons of mass destruction and their delivery systems so as to fulfil our international obligations,” he said.
•The Bill seeks to insert a new Section 12A in the existing law which states that “no person shall finance any activity which is prohibited under this Act, or under the United Nations (Security Council) Act, 1947 or any other relevant Act for the time being in force, or by an order issued under any such Act, in relation to weapons of mass destruction and their delivery systems”.
•The Bill would give the government powers to “freeze, seize or attach funds or other financial assets or economic resources owned or controlled, wholly or jointly, directly or indirectly, by such person; or held by or on behalf of, or at the direction of, such person; or derived or generated from the funds or other assets owned or controlled, directly or indirectly, by such person”.
Those attempting ‘Hindi imposition’ must note that language should be an instrument of opportunity, not of oppression
•The Union Home Minister Amit Shah’s statement recently, saying that Hindi should replace English as the “link language” and that the Government’s work will increasingly be in Hindi, has set the proverbial cat among the Southern pigeons. The “Hindi-Hindutva-Hindustan” ideology that he represents has historically been impatient with the notion of Indian multilingualism, which it sees as a babel undermining national unity rather than the proud showcase of diversity that our constitutional nationalism celebrates. It has been a long-standing policy plank of the Hindutva movement that Hindi, the language of the northern and central Indian States, where the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has sunk its deepest roots, should be the ‘national language’ of India. BJP MPs have frequently risen in the national parliament to demand that their preference be made law.
Part of ‘Hindi promotion’
•Mr. Shah’s is only the latest salvo of several efforts by the Modi government to promote Hindi. These include: the imposition of Hindi names on Central government programmes and schemes (Swachh Bharat Abhiyan, Pradhan Mantri Fasal Bima Yojana, and the like) instead of translations or ‘neutral’ English labels; a ‘parliamentary committee’s proposal to make the use of Hindi mandatory for MPs and Union Ministers; making Hindi a compulsory subject for Central Board of Secondary Education schools across the country; re-lettering milestones on national highways in Hindi instead of English’; the use of Hindi in airport announcements; the Central government issuing media advertisements in Hindi, and launching ‘promotional campaigns exclusively in the Hindi script’, even when the words used may be from different Indian languages; and the practice of renaming well-known occasions or festivities only in Hindi or Sanskrit, such as Teacher’s Day as Guru Purnima.
•The latest controversy has revealed two essential truths about our country. The first is that, whatever the Hindi chauvinists might say, we do not have one “national language” in India, but several. The second is that zealots have an unfortunate tendency to provoke a battle they will lose — at a time when they were quietly winning the war.
Missing the point
•Hindi is the mother tongue of some 50% of our population; the percentage has been growing thanks to the spectacular failure of population control in much of North India. It is not, however, the mother tongue of the rest of us. When Hindi speakers emotionally decry the use of an alien language imposed on the country by British colonialists and demand that Hindi be used because it speaks for “the soul of India”, or when they declare that “Hindi is our mother, English is a stranger”, they are missing the point twice over. First, because no Tamil or Bengali will accept that Hindi is the language of her soul, and second because injecting anti-English xenophobia into the argument is utterly irrelevant to the issue at stake.
•As Rajaji sagely cautioned the Hindi chauvinists of his era, the opposition to English is counterproductive: ‘Xenophobia is an outmoded form of patriotism. It is a sign of immaturity to feel shame in using a world language in our high affairs. Over and over again the inescapable injustice of imposing Hindi is sought to be covered by a cry against the foreign character of English. …Is not just and fair dealing by all the geographically distributed people of this great country as important at least as national pride?’ Dr. B.R. Ambedkar, too, had expressed the view that the utility of a single language nationwide in the administration and the justice system required the continuation of English as a matter of practical convenience.
•Rajaji also gave short shrift to the argument that Hindi was a language of the Indian masses while English was used only by the deracinated elites: ‘When the Hindi protagonists are speaking of the masses they are obviously thinking of the masses of the Hindi area only; they ignore the masses in non-Hindi India who are no less in number.’ Nationalism, he feared, was being used to conceal the naked self-interest of the Hindi-speakers of the north: ‘Love of oneself may easily masquerade as love of language, and love of language as love of country. Let us not deceive ourselves or others with chauvinistic slogans.’
•But deluding ourselves is a favoured pastime in New Delhi. The issue is quite simple: all Indians need to deal with the government. We need government services, information and support; we need to understand easily what our government is saying to us or demanding of us. When the government does so in our mother tongue, it is easier for us. But when it does so in someone else’s mother tongue with which we are less familiar than our neighbour, our incomprehension is intensified by resentment. Why should Shukla be spoken to by the Government of India in the language that comes easiest to him, but not Subramaniam?
•The de facto solution to this question has been a practical one: use Hindi where it is understood, but use English everywhere, since it places all Indians from all parts of our country at an equal disadvantage. English does not express Subramaniam’s soul any more than it does Shukla’s, but it serves a functional purpose for both, and what is more, it helps Subramaniam to understand the same thing as Shukla.
•Ideally, of course, every Central government document, tax form or tweet should be in every one of India’s languages. Since that is not possible in practice — because we would have to do everything in 23 versions (22 and English) — we have chosen to have two official languages, English and Hindi. State governments complement these by producing official material in the language of their States. That leaves everyone more or less happy.
It is about efficiency
•The Government’s requirement that Hindi be privileged in official work actually militates against the interests of efficiency. Obliging a Keralite bureaucrat in Delhi to read and write file notations in Hindi to be submitted to a superior officer from Odisha makes no sense, since neither man would be using a language with which he is at ease. Obliging both to digest a complex argument by a U.P.-ite subordinate writing in his mother tongue is unfair to both. Both may write atrocious English, for that matter, but it is the language in which they are equal, and it serves to get the work done. Language is a vehicle, not a destination. In government, it is a means, not an end. The Hindi-wallahs fail to appreciate that, since promoting Hindi, for them, is an end in itself.
•In the five decades since the promulgation of the ‘three-language formula’, implementation has largely failed across the country, for two divergent reasons. At an ideological level, in States such as Tamil Nadu, the question of being required to learn a northern language such as Hindi has always been contentious, with anti-Hindi agitations a recurring episode in the State since 1937. In the northern States, there is simply no demand for learning a southern language, and so no northern State has seriously implemented the three-language formula.
Vehicle of entertainment
•The irony is that the Hindi chauvinists should realise they were winning the war. The prevalence of Hindi is far greater across India today than it was half a century ago. This is not because of Mr. Shah’s (or even the Vice-President, M. Venkaiah Naidu’s) imprecations or the assiduous efforts of the Parliamentary Committee on the Promotion of Hindi. It is, quite simply, because of Bollywood, which has brought a demotic conversational Hindi into every Indian home. South Indians and north-easterners alike are developing something of an ease and familiarity with Hindi because it is a language in which they are entertained. In time, this alone could have made Hindi truly the national language.
•But it would become so only because Indians freely and voluntarily adopt it, not because some Hindi chauvinist in Delhi thrusts his language down the throats of the unwilling. The fact is, its vocabulary, gender rules and locutions do not come instinctively to everyone: native speakers of languages such as Malayalam that do not use gender can understand why a woman must be feminine but are genuinely mystified as to why a table should be feminine too. If you have grown up with Hindi at home, it is a matter of instinct for you that it should be “ desh ki haalat acchi hain” rather than “ desh ka haalat bura hain”, but for the rest of us, there is no logical reason to see anything feminine about the national condition.
Fear of an agenda
•Imposition is rarely a good policy in a democracy. But the real fear is far more fundamental: that the advocacy of Hindi is merely the thin end of a more dangerous wedge — the ideological agenda of those in power who believe in a nationalism of ‘one language, one religion, one nation’. This is anathema to those Indians who grew up and believe in a diverse, inclusive India whose languages are all equally authentic. The Hindutva brigade’s attempts to impose cultural uniformity in India will be resisted staunchly by the rest of us; the opposition to Hindi is based on our fear that such cultural uniformity is really what the advocacy of this language is all about.
•Still, if we watch enough Bollywood movies, we will pick some Hindi up one day. Just do not tell us that we must, or else. Language should be an instrument of opportunity, not of oppression.
•The quest for uniformity is always a sign of insecurity, and the BJP’s majoritarianism has gone to the point where it threatens to undermine the very social fabric that has held the country together since Independence.
•It is time to let sleeping dogmas lie.
📰 India and the U.K.: Crafting a new legacy
Despite the challenge posed by the war, the India-U.K. relationship has been on an upward trajectory
•The war in Ukraine has brought unexpected changes in the world as global powers seek to recalibrate their foreign policies. India’s position has been in the spotlight in recent days with New Delhi hosting diplomats and dignitaries from various countries. On March 31, the U.K. Foreign Secretary, Elizabeth Truss, visited New Delhi as a part of a wider diplomatic push. She had visited India last October. Ms. Truss met with External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar and also participated in the inaugural edition of the India-U.K. Strategic Futures Forum, a Track 1.5 Dialogue.
Areas of cooperation
•Despite the challenge posed by the Ukraine crisis, the India-U.K. relationship has been on an upward trajectory, exemplified by the conclusion of a Comprehensive Strategic Partnership on May 4, 2021. The agreement also established a 2030 Roadmap for India-U.K. relations, which primarily outlines the partnership plans for the bilateral relationship. During her visit to New Delhi, Ms. Truss emphasised countering Russian aggression and reducing global strategic dependence on Moscow by underlining the importance of democracies working cohesively to deter aggressors. Furthermore, she highlighted the importance of developing deeper ties between Britain and India in the Indo-Pacific which would not only result in job creation, but also foster security in the region. She also furthered talks on defence-related trade and deepening cyber security and defence cooperation between the two countries. A new joint cyber security programme is set to be announced, which aims to protect online infrastructure in India and the U.K. as both parties attempt to carry out joint exercises to combat threats from cyber criminals and ransomware. India and the U.K. also plan to hold the first Strategic Tech Dialogue, a ministerial-level summit on emerging technologies.
•Additionally, the U.K. and India have agreed to strengthen their cooperation in the maritime domain as the U.K. will join India’s Indo-Pacific Oceans Initiative and become a major partner on maritime security issues in Southeast Asia. In 2021, HMS Queen Elizabeth and the Carrier Strike Group took part in a military exercise with the Indian Navy in the Bay of Bengal before proceeding to exercise with the navies of Singapore, Malaysia, and Thailand. India is a key strategic partner for the U.K. in the Indo-Pacific both in terms of market share and defence, as was underscored by the signing of the Defence and International Security Partnership between India and the U.K. in 2015. The U.K. is a regional power in the Indo-Pacific as it possesses naval facilities in Oman, Singapore, Bahrain, Kenya, and British Indian Ocean Territory.
•The U.K. has also confirmed £70 million of British International Investment funding to support the usage of renewable energy in India, which will help in building renewable energy infrastructure and developing solar power in the region. In January, India and the U.K. managed to conclude the first round of talks for an India–U.K. Free Trade Agreement. The negotiations reflected shared ambitions to secure a comprehensive deal between the fifth and sixth largest economies in the world as technical experts from both sides covered over 32 sessions encompassing 26 policy areas. The first round of negotiations laid the groundwork for subsequent rounds which were held in March 2022. India and the U.K. are expected to meet this month in New Delhi with the expected possibility of signing an early harvest deal. New Delhi has sought easy market access for Indian fisheries, pharma, and agricultural products besides duty concession for labour-intensive exports. For Britain, a successful conclusion of an FTA with India would provide a boost to its ‘Global Britain’ ambitions as the U.K. has sought to expand its markets beyond Europe since Brexit. Britain has been trying to seize opportunities in the growing economies of the Indo-Pacific to cement its place on the global stage as a serious global actor.
New areas of cooperation
•Amid a renewed optimism about the trajectory of the India-U.K. relationship, British Prime Minister Boris Johnson is expected to visit India at the end of April. Mr. Johnson and Prime Minister Narendra Modi last met on the sidelines of the COP26 in Glasgow in November 2021 where both leaders focused on the India–U.K. Climate Partnership. During his visit, negotiations on the FTA are expected to gain further impetus as the 2030 Roadmap aims to double bilateral trade between India and the U.K. by 2030.
•Both India and the U.K. are serious in overcoming legacy issues and engaging in robust dialogues to promote cooperation on strategic and defence issues both in the Indo-Pacific as well as at the global level. The newer areas of cooperation — namely, fintech, market regulation, sustainable and green finance, and cyber security — have emerged as the new frontiers of this engagement. The notable success of the collaboration with Oxford-Astra Zeneca and the Serum Institute of India in producing Covishield vaccines in India has been just one of many instances of potential successful cooperation. The forthcoming visit of Mr. Johnson to New Delhi signifies the importance of India’s role in the dynamically changing global order as New Delhi prepares itself to host multiple foreign leaders in the upcoming months and the G20 presidency in 2023.
A unique moment
•As India seeks to carve out a new role for itself in the evolving global order as a ‘leading power’ and the U.K. recalibrates its strategic outlook post-Brexit, this is a unique moment in India-U.K. ties. The top leadership in the two nations remain committed to building a lasting partnership and in the process, older issues like Pakistan have become marginal in the bilateral discourse. New geopolitical realities demand a new strategic vision from London and New Delhi. It is time to seize the moment and to lay the foundations of a partnership that can respond adequately to the challenges of the 21st century.
📰 State of adolescent learning
ASER highlights the dismal picture of online education
•Over the last few decades in India, there has been a massive government drive to push for universal enrolment, extending to secondary as well as primary school children. Successive Annual Status of Education Reports (ASER) have shown that this drive has been largely successful for both age groups, with high enrolment rates even during the pandemic. Despite two years of COVID-related school closures, the increase in unenrolled 11–14-year-olds has been marginal, while the number of out-of-school 15–16-year-olds has actually fallen, for both boys and girls. This indicates that schools have been able to retain children beyond primary school. This is remarkable, because children are now enrolled beyond the age of compulsory education, and enrolment rates show almost no gender disparity. But enrolment is only one piece of the puzzle.
Absence of formal learning
•Although efforts have been made by parents, teachers and governments, learning at home through online education during the pandemic has been far from successful for these children. ASER 2020 and 2021 brought to light a dismal picture of access to technology-based learning resources. Even though over 70% of children in Classes IX to XII had a smartphone at home, only about 35% of them could use it for studies at all times, while 17% could not use it at all. In the absence of formal schooling, family members often assumed the task of teaching. The ASER reports show adolescents did not fare well — older children received less learning support as compared to younger ones.
•Additionally, some children — especially older girls — faced competing demands due to financial stress and increased requirement of care work at home. Even in 2017, ASER had reported that almost 90% of female youth aged 14-18 did housework on a daily basis, compared to three-fourth of male youth. According to the Building Back Better report by UNICEF, school closures exacerbated girls’ and women’s unpaid care work, limiting the time available to learn at home. During COVID-19, girls might have had to replace the work done by the missing caregiver, or simply because of gendered expectations. ASER 2021 data hints at the same. When asked if any child in the household above 12 years of age had started helping out more with household chores since the lockdown, almost two thirds of the respondents reported in the affirmative. In all age categories, girls were more likely than boys to be taking on this additional burden. For example, about three quarters of 15-year-old girls had started helping out more with chores since the lockdown, a figure which was more than 10 percentage points higher than 15-year-old boys.
Gender disparity
•Gender disparity at home may have been aggravated in the pandemic, but it is not new. ASER 2017 had found that 14–18-year-old youth’s aspirations were gendered, with most male youth mentioning ‘Army/Police’ and ‘Engineer’, while female youth preferred ‘Teacher’ and ‘Doctor/Nurse’ as their occupation. The kind of work children did during lockdowns shows that they are exposed to gendered expectations from a young age. A study using ASER, India Human Development Survey and National Family Health Survey data suggests that long before the pandemic, gender disparity had started spilling over into learning outcomes too. The study found that female disadvantage persists in mathematics learning outcomes over the last decade, and shows no signs of disappearing. The study correlates this finding with “regressive household practices” that limit the autonomy of women (such as veiling of the face by women, and the practice of women eating after men), and finds that female disadvantage in mathematics learning is higher where there is higher prevalence of such practices.
•All of this points to an eminent need to integrate gender sensitisation modules into curricula for adolescents’ education. School-based gender sensitisation programmes can play a transformative role in ensuring that all children get an equitable environment to grow. For example, an attitude change programme in Haryana run by Breakthrough and evaluated by the Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab (J-PAL) showed promising results, with participants exhibiting gender-equitable behaviours even two years after the programme ended. It was centred around interactive classroom discussions about gender equality in secondary schools. Scaling up such programmes for all schools and States could help bring about more gender-progressive views among communities.
•With schools reopening, a gender-equitable environment for their growth should be prioritised. As the world begins to recover from the effects of the pandemic, this is an opportunity to rebuild better — one which should not be missed.
📰 In pandemic shock, critical lessons for MSMEs
Apart from suitable government policies, the managements of small businesses must think of financial safety nets
•Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises (MSMEs) are critical for achieving the overall objectives of economic development. The sector is a significant contributor in terms of industrial output, employment generation, and the share in gross domestic product and export. But despite many initiatives by governments since Independence, the sector has been facing challenges in its quest for survival and growth. The COVID-19 pandemic has further exposed the vulnerability of the MSME sector. During the pandemic, this sector was among the worst hit on account of the demand and supply shocks caused and the measures taken later to curb the spread of infection. The sector is still struggling to survive and recover from the pandemic-induced shocks.
The pandemic’s deep impact
•Let us focus on the impact of COVID-19 on MSMEs. A recent study (by the writers) — as a primary survey of 225 small firms located in the National Capital Region (NCR) and Uttarakhand — observed that the turnover of around 90% of small firms had declined in FY2020-21. Around 53% of firms faced more than a 50% decline in their turnover. Around 29% of firms reported a collapse of their businesses. Around 53% observed a decrease in demand while around 36% faced erratic supply of raw materials.
•The main reasons for a fall in turnover included restriction/s on economic activities and mobilities; decrease in demand; shortage of raw materials; restriction on trade; slow recovery of markets; payment delays and labour shortage, among others. These firms faced a 25% reduction in their employment particularly in the informal workers’ segment that stood at around 47%. Major challenges faced by firms in their revival included delayed payment issues; reduced demand; a lack of financial resources; supply chain disruptions; increased cost of production; lack of skilled workers and, most importantly, business uncertainties.
•Although most of the firms were aware about the initiatives under the ‘Atmanirbhar Bharat’ package, only half of them found it to be of any help. Given the lack of demand and business uncertainties, firms did not find it rational to avail of financial assistance available under the ‘Atmanirbhar Bharat’ package. A majority of firms suggested that the Government should have been more focused on creating a revival of demand for products and services.
Lessons for resilience
•Nevertheless, not all firms have suffered due to the pandemic-induced recession. Around 10% of firms under the study had either a rise in their turnover or reported no change. The key sectors these firms operated in included human health activities; manufacture of pharmaceuticals, medicinal, chemical and botanical products; food and beverage service activities; and manufacture of apparels, etc. The owners of these firms also reported that they tried to quickly adapt to the use of e-commerce platforms and even switched to other business activities that had demand — i.e., production of masks, sanitizers, home delivery of products, etc. They exploited the opportunity using their own savings to invest in the areas that offered new opportunities. This highlights that a firm’s resilience depends upon its financial resources and ability to invest in new technologies or new business opportunities. The firms that suffered, unlike the large firms, lacked financial planning for business uncertainties in order to overcome vulnerable shocks.
Planning ahead
•COVID-19 is neither the first pandemic nor it is going to be the last. Even during the first two decades of this century, the world went through some other pandemics, viz. SARS in 2002-04, H1N1 influenza in 2009/Swine flu influenza in 2009, MERS in 2012 and the Zika virus in 2015-16. COVID-19 has been the worst among them. Apart from the pandemic, there were also other factors such as a sudden change in government policies, wars, and natural catastrophes such as floods and drought, etc. which caused business uncertainties and affected small businesses. Further, the bulk of MSMEs are in the informal sector which lack registration and the necessary financial documents to avail such benefits. These firms are at great risk of shutting down after a large-scale disaster or economic shock. Therefore, there is a need to develop a mechanism for MSMEs which should help rescue them from shutting down and support their revival during business uncertainties caused by economic shocks.
•In order to make the MSME sector resilient we propose the provision of emergency funds for small businesses that should be made mandatory from the beginning. Similar to the public provident fund, the Government can initiate what is called an ‘Uncertainty Corpus Fund for Small Businesses’. This fund can be used to meet the financial needs of small firms during business uncertainties. It may be linked with the turnover of firms — a firm could maintain a certain fraction of its turnover to meet the needs of this fund. Although it would be a ‘forced saving’ it would still be very useful for MSMEs during business uncertainties caused by economic shocks. The Government should encourage small firms by assuring them a lucrative return on the investment through this fund. Further, the Government may also contribute to the corpus fund as a fraction of the contribution of MSMEs for firms up to a certain limit of turnover.
•Another measure can be the ‘Small Business Insurance Scheme’ which can be similar to term insurance. There are lessons to be learnt from the crop insurance scheme. As there are more than 6.4 million MSMEs in the country, there is huge market potential for the insurance sector, if such a scheme is framed properly. In order to encourage firms to invest in such an insurance scheme, the Government may pay an initial premium or a fraction of the premium on behalf of such enterprises particularly micro enterprises and own account enterprises.
Gaps in the Budget
•Although Budget 2022-23 seeks to lay a foundation and a blueprint to steer the economy over the (Amrit Kaal) next 25 years, it has failed to bring in any plan/ideas that makes the MSME sector resilient. The proposed financial measures suggested above, namely, an ‘Uncertainty Corpus Fund for Small Businesses’, and ‘Small Business Insurance Scheme’, can help MSMEs become resilient and sustain their growth during business uncertainties caused by economic shocks. It could enable small firms to meet their working capital requirements, in particular retaining their workforce, and investing in new technology or new business opportunities to cope with uncertainties. In terms of planning, MSMEs can be on a par with large firms. It would boost the confidence of small firms during normal business times and make them more competitive by giving them a sense of security in times of an abnormal business cycle. It would also be of great help to the Government in a time of crisis as the Government can focus on addressing demand issues which is one of the biggest challenges faced by an economy during a shock.
