📰 Mechanism to process unorganised workers’ accident claims in the works, says Ministry
A senior official of the Ministry said discussions were on to link the e-Shram portal with the Pradhan Mantri Suraksha Bima Yojana
•Top functionaries of the Union Labour and Employment Ministry said last week that the Ministry was working on a mechanism to process accident insurance claims by unorganised workers registered on the e-Shram portal, which has seen over 27 crore registrations so far.
•The portal was launched six months ago with the aim of creating a national database of unorganised workers and to facilitate social security schemes for them. Among the promises made at the time was that the workers would be eligible for ₹2 lakh as accident insurance.
•A senior official of the Ministry said discussions were on to link the e-Shram portal with the Pradhan Mantri Suraksha Bima Yojana, the Centre’s existing accident insurance scheme. The scheme would allow the workers to get the direct benefit transfer (DBT) through the e-Shram unique ID number. The official added that the unique IDs on the e-Shram portal carried the same series from the Employees Provident Fund Organisation’s (EPFO) universal account number (UAN).
•Another functionary said that a “mechanism for disposal” of the claims was in the works. At the time the portal was launched in August 2021, the Ministry had estimated that there were 38 crore unorganised sector workers in the country. According to the Ministry functionary, an analysis of the registrations so far was being carried out and a new campaign to get more workers to register would also be planned.
•In her Budget Speech 2022-2023, Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman had announced the linking of four portals _ the National Career Service, e-Shram, UDYAM (for those interested in starting MSMEs) and ASEEM (Atmanirbhar Skilled Employee Employer Mapping). The Labour Ministry announced on April 20 that the inter-linking of the NCS and e-Shram portals had been completed recently.
•“This linkage has enabled unorganised workers registered on e-Shram to seamlessly register on NCS and look for better job opportunities through NCS. So far, more than 26,000 e-Shram beneficiaries have registered on NCS and have started benefiting from this linkage,” the Ministry had said in a statement.
•Mills are procuring raw jute at prices higher than what they are selling them at after processing. A September 30, 2021, notification mandated that no entity would be allowed to purchase or sell raw jute at a price exceeding ₹6,500 per quintal
•The cyclone Amphan in May 2020 and the subsequent rains in major jute producing States aggravated the crisis.
•Bangladesh provides cash subsidies for varied semi-finished and finished jute products. Hence, the competitiveness emerges as a challenge for India to explore export options in order to compensate for the domestic scenario
The story so far: Member of Parliament (MP) from Barrackpore constituency in West Bengal, Arjun Singh, met Textile Minister Piyush Goyal on Saturday to apprise him about issues concerning jute farmers, workers and the overall jute industry. Mr. Singh later said in a tweet that the meeting was very positive and expressed hope that the issues would be resolved soon. The Barrackpore MP had earlier written to West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee, seeking her intervention into the “arbitrary decision” of capping the price for procuring raw jute from the mills. He was referring to the Office of the Jute Commissioner (JCO)’s September 30 notification mandating that no entity would be allowed to purchase or sell raw jute at a price exceeding ₹6,500 per quintal.
•Mr. Singh had also written to Chief Ministers of other jute producing States as Assam, Tripura, Odisha and Bihar, seeking their intervention.
•The West Bengal BJP vice president, in a letter, mentioned that the operations of 20 jute mills in his constituency, with lakhs of people dependent on them, were adversely affected with many forced to shut down and many others on the verge of closure.
•A mill executive on the condition of anonymity told The Hindu, “We have been held hostage it seems.” He said that of approximately 60 mills operating in the State, 15 had shut down because of the crisis.
What is the problem?
•In simple words, mills are procuring raw jute at prices higher than what they are selling them at after processing. Let’s understand the mechanism first. Mills do not acquire their raw material directly from the farmers, but instead through intermediaries. As a standard practice, the middlemen charge mills for their services, which involves procuring jute from farmers, grading, bailing and then bringing the bales to the mills.
•The government has a fixed Minimum Support Price (MSP) for raw jute procurement from farmers, which is ₹4,750 per quintal for the 2022-23 season. However, as the executive stated, this reached his mill at ₹7,200 per quintal, that is, ₹700 more than the ₹6,500 per quintal cap for the final product. Though the Union government has come up with several schemes to prevent de-hoarding, the executive believes the mechanism requires a certain “systematic regulation”.
What happened to supply?
•What made the situation particularly worrisome recently was the occurrence of Cyclone Amphan in May 2020 and the subsequent rains in major jute producing States. These events led to lower acreage, which in turn led to lower production and yield compared to previous years. Additionally, as the Commission for Agricultural Costs and Prices (CACP) stated in its report, this led to production of a lower quality of jute fibre in 2020-21 as water-logging in large fields resulted in farmers harvesting the crop prematurely.
•Acreage issues were accompanied by hoarding at all levels – right from the farmers to the traders.
Where is jute used?
•Bulk of the final jute produced is used for packaging purposes. The provisions of the Jute Packaging Material (Compulsory use in Packing Commodities) Act, 1987 or the JPM Act mandate that 100% production of foodgrains and 20% sugar production must be packaged in jute bags. The share of jute used for sacks, therefore, increased from 67.9% for the TE (TE: Triennium Ending or three years ending) 2010-11 to 78.3% in TE 2020-21. On the other hand, jute used for manufacturing other products (such as furnishing materials, fashion accessories, floor coverings or varied applications in paper and textile industries) has declined from 15.5% to 9.7% during the same period.
•As per the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO), India is the largest producer of jute followed by Bangladesh and China. However, in terms of acreage and trade, Bangladesh takes the lead accounting for three-fourth of the global jute exports in comparison to India’s 7%. This can be attributed to the fact that India lags behind Bangladesh in producing superior quality jute fibre due to infrastructural constraints related to retting, farm mechanisation, lack of availability of certified seeds and varieties suitable for the country’s agro-climate. What also does not bode well for India is that jute acreage competes with crops as paddy, maize, groundnut, and sesame. The increased availability of synthetic substitutes is further bothering the demand for jute domestically.
•Further, as the CACP report stated, Bangladesh provides cash subsidies for varied semi-finished and finished jute products. Hence, the competitiveness emerges as a challenge for India to explore export options in order to compensate for the domestic scenario.
What is at stake?
•As the jute sector provides direct employment to 3.70 lakh workers in the country and supports the livelihood of around 40 lakh farm families, closure of the mills is a direct blow to workers and indirectly, to the farmers whose production is used in the mills. West Bengal, Bihar and Assam account for almost 99% of India’s total production.
📰 The Delhi dual governance conundrum
•The status of Delhi being a Union Territory under Schedule 1 of the Constitution but christened the ‘National Capital Territory’ in 2014 put the dynamics of the relationship between the State and the Central Government under severe strain.
•The Supreme Court ruled that the L-G shall act as a facilitator rather than anointing himself as an adversary to the elected Council of Ministers. At the same time, the Court ruled that the NCT of Delhi cannot be granted the status of a State under the constitutional scheme
•After the Constitution Bench laid down the law on the broad issues involved, the contested questions were listed before a two-judge Bench. While one Judge found that services were totally outside the purview of the Government of NCT, the other held that officers below the rank of joint secretary are under the control of the Government of NCT.
•Delhi has been the flashpoint of innumerable power struggles but 2015 was a momentous year in the history of the metropolis. The country’s two main political parties failed miserably in an election to see who controls the National Capital Territory. The Aam Aadmi Party swept the election, winning 67 of the 70 seats. However, in the absence of statehood for Delhi, there has been a prolonged confrontation on the relative powers of the territorial administration and the Union government.
Dilemmas of dual governance
•The status of Delhi being a Union Territory under Schedule 1 of the Constitution but christened the ‘National Capital Territory’ under Article 239 AA, engrafted by the Constitution (Sixty-ninth Amendment) Act, 2014, put the dynamics of the relationship between the elected Council of Ministers in Delhi and the Central Government under severe strain. The Administrator of Delhi, renamed as the Lieutenant Governor (L-G) under the aforementioned amendment, crossed swords with the elected government on multiple issues, including control over agencies, namely the Anti-Corruption Bureau, the Civil Services and the Electricity Board. The issues pertaining to the power to appoint the Public Prosecutor in Delhi and to appoint a Commission of Enquiry under the Commissions of Enquiry Act, etc. were vexed legal questions necessitating interpretation of the Constitution.
•Though the Delhi High Court decided in favour of the Central Government relying on the status of Delhi as a Union Territory, on appeal by the NCT, the Supreme Court referred the matter to a Constitution Bench to decide on the substantial questions of law pertaining to the powers of the elected government of Delhi vis-a-vis the L-G.
•The five-judge Bench opened a new jurisprudential chapter in the Administration of NCT by invoking the rule of purposive construction to say that the objectives behind the Constitution (Sixty-ninth Amendment) Act shall guide the interpretation of Article 239AA and breathed the principles of federalism and democracy into Article 239AA, thereby finding a parliamentary intent to accord a sui generis status in distinction from other Union Territories.
•The Court declared that the L-G is bound by the “aid and advice” of the Council of Ministers, noting that the Delhi Assembly also has the power to make laws over all subjects that figure in the Concurrent List, and all, except three excluded subjects, in the State List. The L-G ought to act on the “aid and advice” of the Council of Ministers, except when he refers a matter to the President for a final decision.
•Regarding the L-G’s power to refer to the President any matter on which there is a difference of opinion between L-G and the Council of Ministers, the Supreme Court ruled that “any matter” cannot be construed to mean “every matter”, and such a reference shall arise only in exceptional circumstances. L-G shall act as a facilitator rather than anointing himself as an adversary to the elected Council of Ministers. At the same time, the Court ruled that the National Capital Territory of Delhi cannot be granted the status of a State under the constitutional scheme.
Split verdict on services
•After the Constitution Bench laid down the law on the broad issues involved, the contested questions were listed before a two-judge Bench. The Court unanimously held that while the Anti-corruption Bureau belongs to the province of the Centre, the Electricity Board under Government of NCT is the Appropriate Authority under the Electricity Act of 2003. While it held that only Central Government has the power to constitute enquiry Commission under the 1952 Act, the power to appoint Public Prosecutor is vested with Government of NCT. While one Judge found that services were totally outside the purview of the Government of NCT, the other held that officers below the rank of joint secretary are under the control of the Government of NCT.
Back to the Constitution Bench?
•This split has resulted in the present hearing before a three-Judge Bench presided over by the Chief Justice, in the course of which the Solicitor General sought reference to a Constitution Bench. This has been opposed by the Government of the NCT of Delhi, whose counsel argued that forming another Constitution Bench to decide the matter would amount to a “review” of the earlier Constitution Bench ruling. The 3-Judge Bench has reserved its orders on the question.
•It is germane to remember the observation of Justice Ashok Bhushan penned as part of the Constitution Bench decision on NCT (2018) that, “From persons holding high office, it is expected that they shall conduct themselves in faithful discharge of their duties so as to ensure smooth running of administration so that rights of all can be protected.”
•Unless the stakeholders recognise this axiomatic precept, Delhi would continue to be under administrative and political distress.
•The 2021 amendment to the Government of National Capital Territory of Delhi Act,1991, is a pointer to the possibility that the tug-of-war will not end. The aforementioned amendment is also under challenge before the Supreme Court.
📰 Ending AFSPA
AFSPA should go entirely because ofthe impunity it offers armed forces
•It augurs well for the future that Prime Minister Narendra Modi has given the first authentic indication that the operation of the Armed Forces (Special Powers) Act (AFSPA) may come to an end in the whole of the north-eastern region, if ongoing efforts to normalise the situation bear fruit. Mr. Modi’s remark that a good deal of work is being done in that direction, not only in Assam but also Nagaland and Manipur, may be rooted in his keenness to demonstrate the level of progress achieved in the region under his regime; but it will bring immense relief to the citizens, nevertheless. Areas notified as ‘disturbed areas’ under AFSPA have been progressively reduced in the last few years, mainly due to the improvement in the security situation. About a month ago, the Union Home Ministry reduced such notified areas considerably in Assam, Nagaland and Manipur. There was a substantial reduction in Assam, where AFSPA was removed entirely in 23 districts and partially in one. In Nagaland, after the removal of the law from 15 police stations in seven districts, it remains in areas under 57 police stations, spread across 13 districts. Areas under 82 police stations are still notified under the Act in Manipur, even though 15 police station areas were excluded from the notification from April 1. Mr. Modi, who spoke at a ‘peace, unity and development rally’ in Diphu in Assam last week, cited “better administration” and the “return of peace” as the reasons for the removal of AFSPA in these areas in a region that has seen insurgencies for decades.
•AFSPA was revoked in Tripura in 2015 and in Meghalaya in 2018. It is not unforeseeable that other States will also be excluded from its purview at some point of time. It is convenient to link the exclusion of an area from AFSPA’s purview with reduction in violence by armed groups, improvement in the security situation and an increase in development activity, but what is important is the recognition that the law created an atmosphere of impunity and led to the commission of excesses and atrocities. It was hardly four months ago that 15 civilians were killed in Mon district in Nagaland in a botched military operation. Therefore, alongside the gradual reduction in the areas under the Act, there should be serious efforts to procure justice for victims of past excesses too. On the political side, it is indeed true that much headway has been made in moving towards a political solution to some of the multifarious disputes in the region, in the form of peace accords, ceasefire and creation of sub-regional administrative arrangements. The removal of AFSPA from the entire region will be an inevitable step in the process. But irrespective of the security situation, AFSPA should not have allowed such impunity to the armed forces.
📰 Funding woes haunt Indian science
NRF could be a game-changer by its intent of democratisation of the knowledge base
•Far back in time, science, like monasticism, attracted people who were singularly driven by a passion for seeking the truth. Largely ignored by the rulers and the state machinery of those days, science was either supported by the enlightened and munificent elites or by the investigators themselves from their personal funds. The times have changed since, and we have never had so many people supported by the state, whose purported purpose of work is to understand the world better. Thus, knowledge generation of the natural world has become a highly competitive endeavour among the nations and science funding has often been touted as a marker of social advancement.
India’s R&D expenditure
•With very little participation from the private sector in the country that includes some of the richest by global standards, curiosity-driven basic research in India is primarily sustained by direct funding from the government. Still, it remains static in India and hovers between a paltry 0.6 to 0.8% of GDP over a decade, way below the United States, China, Japan, the European Union countries and South Korea. While India’s global R&D expenditure remains static at 1-3% of the global total, the U.S. and China accounted for 25% and 23%, respectively. This trend of under-funding is also reflected in the low proportion of qualified researchers available in India, considering its huge population.
•The World Bank statistics indicate that India had 255 researchers per million people in 2017 — a minuscule fraction for its size and population, in contrast to 8,342 per million in Israel, 7,597 in Sweden and 7,498 in South Korea. Compared to 111 in the U.S. and 423 in China, India has only 15 researchers per 1,00,000 population.
•The budgetary allocations over the last several years show a consistent downward trend. Much of the total of the funding available goes to DRDO, Department of Space and Atomic Energy, leaving only 30 to 40% for agencies such as Indian Council of Agricultural Research (ICAR), Council of Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR), Department of Science and Technology (DST), Department of Biotechnology (DBT), Ministry of Earth Sciences (MoES) and Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR); it is from this last-mentioned allocation that the extra-mural research from the individual investigators are supported. The current financial year (2022-23) is no exemption, borne out by the budgetary allocations for scientific research. The Union Ministry of Science and Technology has earmarked Rs. 14,217 crore in the 2022-2023 Union Budget — a drop of 3.9% from last year; the DST and DBT are supposed to receive Rs. 5,240 crore and Rs. 2,961 crore, respectively.
•While the funding trend remained frozen between 2011 and 2018, the number of universities jumped from 752 to 1,016, and doctoral degrees escalated from 10,111 to 24,474, which means that the available number of people required to do scientific work as a career option enlarged exponentially.
•Probably realising this demand from the new generation of researchers from the universities, the 2021-22 budget offered Rs. 10,000 crore ($1.37 billion) every year starting from 2021, over the next five years, for a new funding agency called the National Research Foundation (NRF). This agency is expected to boost university science research, as well as the work in social sciences. The journal Nature in its editorial dated February 9, 2021, in a somewhat euphoric tone, called it “a ground-breaking change”, giving the fullest credit to the then Principal Scientific Adviser K. Vijay Raghavan for seeding this idea to the point of fruition.
•This newly proposed idea is also in tune with what is being stated in the National Education Policy 2020: "The NRF will provide a reliable base of merit-based but equitable peer-reviewed research funding, helping to develop a culture of research in the country through suitable incentives for and recognition of outstanding research, and by undertaking major initiatives to seed and grow research at state universities and other public institutions where research capability is currently limited”.
The NRF’s importance
•Despite the announcement of the NRF and a huge fund infusion in the science budget, the 2021 budget speech had also expressed the intention of investing about Rs. 4,000 crore over five years for deep-ocean research and biodiversity conservation; and promised to four centres for virological research and a commitment to developing hydrogen energy. Planned to be an autonomous body and therefore less bureaucratic, the NRF was expected to bring thousands of colleges and universities under its ambit. As most of the country’s scientific research is being conducted by government laboratories and a few premier institutes, this new forum was thought to be a game-changer by its intent of democratisation of the knowledge base. But it is anybody’s guess why the current-year budget was eloquently silent on this initiative of the last financial year, which is yet to be approved by the Cabinet. Such a lack of continuity in government policy towards science funding is a huge deterrent to achieving the fullest potential in scientific research in India.
•Gallup poll of sorts among the researchers would surely nail the biggest hindrance in Indian science — the financial bureaucracy, again a legacy of British colonial governance. To unleash the fullest potential of Indian science, a vibrant and responsive financial system is required. Such a system should be autonomous and more participatory, and less bureaucratic — a problem also compounded by the fact that the finance person is made more accountable to the ministry rather than the secretary of the department. It is widely felt that it is often less difficult to have a project approved than to have funds periodically released. A corollary question is how to regain the autonomy of scientific institutions in financial management that has undergone considerable erosion. India must choose to break the bureaucratic barriers that exist in the government departments and develop innovative ways to help basic research flourish.
•India cannot aspire to be a global leader in scientific research if enough funds are not injected into basic research by committing to raise the R&D spending to at least 1% of the GDP. It is also important for the private sector to chip in. But for that to happen, the government should incentivise the private players by giving them tax breaks, etc. The promise to set up NRF, independent of political interference, and the related financial commitment needs to be realised. Another option is to upgrade the SERB (Science Engineering Research Board) to play the role assigned to the NRF. There are a lot of cues to be obtained from China on how it managed to become a world leader in scientific research. For all this to achieve, a foremost requirement is a dynamic R&D ecosystem, which India lacks today.
📰 Invigorating the Ayush industry
Its integration into mainstream systems will give wider acceptance to traditional systems of the country
•The global market for herbal medicine was valued at $657.5 billion in 2020. It is expected to grow to $746.9 billion in 2022. In China, the traditional medicine industry had total revenue of $37.41 billion in 2018, according to an IBISWorld report. In fact, the Healthy China 2030 plan forecasts that the value of traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) market may reach $737.9 billion within China and globally by 2030.
•The growth of the TCM industry in China is attributed to the immense attention the sector has received in the country. In 1982, the Constitution of China gave full recognition to TCM. Since 2009, there has been continuous support for TCM in health policies. China has focused upon developing quality infrastructure for TCM to co-exist with modern medicine under the same roof.
The NAM scheme
•In India, the National Ayush Mission (NAM) was launched in 2014 by the Department of Ayush, Ministry of Health and Family Welfare, to promote Ayush systems and address the needs of the sector in a comprehensive way. Providing cost-effective services, strengthening educational systems, quality control of drugs and sustainable availability of raw materials are the main objectives of NAM. The industry is projected to reach $23.3 billion in 2022, according to a Research and Information System for Developing Countries (RIS), 2021, report. The Indian herbal medicine market is worth $18.1 billion.
•The Indian Ayush sector has grown by 17% between 2014 and 2020. Related segments such as plant derivatives grew by 21%, plant extracts by 14.7%, and herbal plants by 14.3% during the same period.
•Under the ‘Medicinal Plants’ component of the NAM scheme (2015–16 to 2020–21), the cultivation of prioritised medicinal plants in identified clusters/zones is being supported. Cultivation of plants on farmer’s land, establishment of nurseries with backward linkages, post-harvest management with forward linkages, and primary processing, marketing, etc., are all covered under the scheme. For the cultivation of plants, subsidies at 30%, 50% and 75% of the cultivation cost for 140 medicinal plants are being provided. So far, approximately 56,396 hectares are under the cultivation of medicinal plants, as per the Ministry of Ayush.
•Further, last year Union Ayush Minister Sarbananda Sonowal announced that medicinal plants will be cultivated on 75,000 hectares of land. The Ministry of Finance has also announced a Rs. 4000-crore package under the Aatmanirbhar Bharat Abhiyaan for the promotion of herbal cultivation.
•There is no doubt about the potential of the sector and the above measures will surely help. However, the Ayush sector requires a multi-dimensional thrust, ranging from initiatives at the institutional level, massive awareness and promotion of cultivation of medicinal plants by farmers, to trade-related interventions and quality focus measures.
SMPBs to be strengthened
•The National Medicinal Plant Board (NMPB) implements the medicinal plant component of Ayush through state bodies—State Medicinal Plant Boards (SMPBs). The organisational structure of SMPBs needs to be strengthened. They should have experts for conservation, cultivation, R&D, herbal garden and nurseries, IEC and marketing and trade of medicinal plants. On the trade front, developing comprehensive databases on Ayush trade, products and raw materials is needed. To date, most ISM (Indian System of Medicine) products, herbal products and medicinal plants products are not identified under specific HS (Harmonised system) codes. Expansion of HS national lines to accommodate various features of traditional medicine and medicinal plant products based on existing requirements is required to provide more comprehensive trade data on Ayurvedic products.
•Prime Minister Narendra Modi laid the foundation of the WHO-Global Centre for Traditional Medicine in Jamnagar on April 19, 2022. This will be the first and only global outpost centre for traditional medicine across the world.
•NITI Aayog has already constituted a committee and four working groups on integrative medicine, with more than 50 experts across the country, to provide deeper insights and recommendations in the areas of education, research, clinical practice and public health and administration. Considerable progress has been made by the committee for the finalisation of the report. Integration of Ayush systems into mainstream systems will certainly give wider acceptance for traditional systems of the country.
•The Ayush industry in India can provide cost-effective healthcare to people across States. It has all the ingredients of success, to co-exist with the modern health systems, as a choice-based system of traditional medicine.
