📰 Doses of statecraft to meet India’s challenges
It is clear that grand strategy, grand simplifications and higher measures of security are not the answers
•The war in Europe, involving Russia and Ukraine — with Kyiv being backed by western powers and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) — and the political turmoils in South Asia dominate newspaper headlines today. This has pushed the debate on India’s many internal security problems on the backburner. This is unfortunate, for many long-standing security problems have a propensity to wax and wane and seldom seem to go away.
Limitations of a security vigil
•While the country’s security agencies do maintain a tight vigil, what is seldom realised is that security agencies can only deal with the immediate threat. Long-term solutions require the use of statecraft. Additional doses of security whenever a situation arises are at best a temporary solution. This does not amount to problem solving. To change the mindsets of both the authorities and those challenging the existing order, it may be first necessary to admit that more and more security has its limitations. The next step is even harder, viz., to admit that the forces threatening the state have lately become nimbler in adopting new technologies and modes of warfare.
•In many countries, both the authorities and security agencies are beginning to acknowledge the importance of resorting to statecraft as a vital adjunct to the role played by the security agencies. Statecraft involves fine-grained comprehension of inherent problems; also an ability to quickly respond to political challenges. It further involves strengthening the ability to exploit opportunities as they arise, and display a degree of political nimbleness rather than leaving everything to the security agencies. In short, it entails a shift from reposing all faith in the security establishment to putting equal emphasis on implementation of policies and programmes. In effect, it shifts the emphasis to formulating strategies that favour political deftness, strength and agility, after the initial phase.
Upheaval in Kashmir
•Two prime examples which provide grist to the above proposition are the prevailing situation in Jammu and Kashmir and the continuing problem involving Maoists. While Jammu and Kashmir has been a troubled region ever since 1947, the situation has metamorphosed over the years — at times tending to become extremely violent followed by spells of near normalcy. No proper solution has emerged to a long-standing problem.
•The ongoing violence in Jammu and Kashmir which started almost 18 to 20 months ago is an instance in point. Political angst over the revocation of Article 370 of the Constitution is possibly one of the reasons for local support being available for the current crop of Jammu and Kashmir militants. A majority of them are believed to be home-grown militants, though backed by elements from across the border in Pakistan. Irrespective of the reasons for the latest upsurge in violence, what is evident is that Jammu and Kashmir has again become the vortex of violence, specialising currently on targeted killings of outsiders, mainly Kashmiri Pandits.
•Migrant Kashmiri Pandits returning to Jammu and Kashmir have, no doubt, been given certain concessions, including government jobs. This might have acted as provocation, but what is equally disturbing is the targeted killings of police personnel, many of whom were on duty while some others were on leave. Information filtering out of government vaults suggests that terrorists may have infiltrated the official machinery. They also appear to have access to data banks of the police and security agencies. All this is leading to an atmosphere of uncertainty. Concerns exist that this year’s Amarnath Yatra (beginning end June) could well be one of the targets of the militants. If this were to happen, it might well result in a crescendo of violence, leading to large-scale upheaval across Kashmir.
•Evidently, the doctrine of containment pursued by the Jammu and Kashmir police and security agencies is not having the desired effect. Security analysts believe that a sizeable segment of the new cadres fall into what they perceive as ‘unpredictable’, and this further aggravates the situation. The history of Jammu and Kashmir is replete with instances where a sizeable presence of such ‘unpredictable’ elements has tilted the scale in favour of greater violence. What is also disturbing is that strategies intended for one set of militants can seldom be applied to newer elements, making it more difficult to contain the spread of violence. In Jammu and Kashmir today, as also elsewhere, there is no all-in-one grand strategy to deal with the situation. The missing ingredient is statecraft which alone can walk in step with the changing contours of a long-standing problem.
The Maoist shadow
•While problems seem to be mounting for the security establishment in Jammu and Kashmir as of now, across several heartland States of India, the police face a different kind of threat. Of all the strands of the militancy in India, Maoists or Naxalites stand apart as being the only ones with strong ideological underpinnings. Notwithstanding its ideological veneer, Maoists/Naxalites nevertheless tend to indulge in mindless violence carrying out brutal killings. The original Maoist leaders in Bengal, Andhra Pradesh and Kerala (in the late 1960s and early 1970s) who were inspired by Charu Mazumdar who talked of a ‘Spring Thunder over India’ (followed by his claim to have lit a spark to initiate a ‘prairie fire’) have since been replaced by lesser leaders with few ideological pretensions.
•The combination of ideological ideation and brutal killings has often confused and confounded the police, intelligence and security establishments of the States and the Centre. In that sense, the Maoists represent the biggest challenge to the idea of India. While railing against the use of State violence, and from time to time displaying a willingness to hold peace talks with both the State and Central governments, the Maoists have seldom displayed a commitment to peaceful ways. New adherents, thanks to its ideological underpinnings, are meanwhile readily available, and this further perplexes the authorities who often tend to claim ‘that Maoism is on its last legs’. More than any other militant or violent movement in the country, curbing the Maoist menace will require considerable doses of statecraft, as many of the purported demands of the Maoists find an echo among intellectuals in the cities and the ‘poorest of the poor’ in the rural areas.
In Punjab and the North-east
•The need to use statecraft to deal with quite a few other internal security problems — some of which have lain dormant for years — is also becoming more manifest by the day. In this category may be included the resurgence of militancy by pro-Khalistan groups in the Punjab, which could spill over into Haryana and Himachal Pradesh. The recent discovery of ‘sleeper cells’ in the Punjab clearly indicates the potential for the revival of a pro-Khalistan movement — which once ravaged large parts of the Punjab. While pro-Khalistani sentiment is present in pockets in the United Kingdom and in Europe, it has not been in evidence in India for some time. Hence, the recent attack by pro-Khalistan elements on the headquarters of the Punjab Police Intelligence wing in Mohali was a rude shock to the security establishment. The incident appeared to be like a warning shot ‘across the bow’ by the Babbar Khalsa International, which has the backing of Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence — a reminder that militancy in the Punjab has not been permanently extinguished, and will need deft statecraft to nip it in the bud.
•In India’s North-east, more specifically in the States of Assam and Nagaland, there are again incipient signs of trouble which, for the present, may need use of statecraft rather than the security forces. In Assam, the United Liberation Front of Asom–Independent (ULFA-I) is trying to revive its activities after a long spell of hibernation. Currently, the ULFA-I operates from Myanmar, and its fortunes have been on a steady decline in the past decade. However, latest reports indicate that ULFA-I has embarked on a recruitment drive which will need to be curbed before matters get out of hand. Likewise in Nagaland, where the National Socialist Council of Nagalim (I-M) has recently initiated a fresh push for a solution of the ‘Naga political issue’, the situation is pregnant with serious possibilities. Both instances merit the use of statecraft so that the situation does not get out of hand.
A threat in the South
•In the South, intelligence and police officials appear concerned about a likely revival of Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE)-sponsored activities in Tamil Nadu. This stems from a possible revival of LTTE-sponsored militancy in Sri Lanka following the recent economic crises and uncertainty there. Security agencies in India believe that an attempt could be made to reach out to elements in Tamil Nadu to revive the spirit of the 1980s. This situation again needs deft statecraft to prevent a resurgence of the past.
•Hence, it should be evident that statecraft is critical in finding lasting solutions to a host of problems that continue to afflict India. India faces several challenges today, but the answer to this is neither grand strategy nor grand simplifications nor resort to higher doses of security. India must navigate its way through a complex set of circumstances and situations, and suitably manage crises which might otherwise undermine peace and stability. A properly structured set of policies, having liberal doses of statecraft in addition to a proper set of security measures, is the best answer to India’s needs, now and in the future.
What India lacks — and needs — is data which can hold the local vision of education and local actors accountable
•When the children of the poor cannot read and write, when they do not play and dance in school, can the poor speak and demand change? We gather data on enrolments, retention, learning, infrastructure, and teacher training to understand the state of our public school system. But is data enough to inspire transformative change?
The case of Rajasthan
•The case of Rajasthan is intriguing. Media writings in recent years have variously highlighted the marked fall or improvement in learning outcomes, depending on the dataset being referred to — the Annual Status of Education Report (ASER) which is led by the non-governmental organisation, Pratham, or the National Achievement Survey (NAS) which is led by the National Council of Educational Research and Training (NCERT). According to ASER 2019 data, Rajasthan was among the bottom five States in learning levels, while in NAS 2017, Rajasthan was among the top performers. Valid as this debate is, it has limited resonance for the ultimate end-user of a government school, i.e. the parent. Much like the Public Report on Basic Education (PROBE) in India of 1999 which highlighted the very poor state of government school infrastructure — shocking the education community in India — these debates do not involve school users.
•Data on school education is collected to measure and monitor, fix flaws and reward achievements at the State and the national levels. Its end users are school administrators, government agencies, researchers, and civil society activists. Despite near consensus among policymakers and those who produce the data, that parents are one of the key constituencies of school data, and intense efforts to disseminate data among them, it is rarely used by poor parents. For them, schooling is about examination outcome, which is a proxy for learning, English language skills and a chance for secondary and graduate level degrees. Data on school infrastructure at the district level, or learning levels at the State level cannot galvanise the masses; at worse it can come across as a descriptor of the way things are in a government system — immutable, and hopeless.
One form of a vision
•To inspire transformation, data has to be linked with a vision of school education which addresses the anxieties and aspirations of parents, and is actionable at the level of governance closest to them, i.e. the local administrative and political system. The poor will speak when the data speaks to them and they can speak to the authorities empowered to act.
•A national-level policy is just one form of an inspiring education vision. Ideally, it should encompass the essence of the vision of the people. And the vision will manifest itself differently at the national, State, district and local levels and exist in both policy and non-policy forms — for example, in the workings of say panchayat schools, when it focuses on learning and personality development among migrant children, or non-governmental organisation programmes strengthening teacher capacity for multilingual classrooms. Presently, there is no vision of education below the national level, least of all at those which engage the marginalised.
•The district and school development plans introduced in national-level programmes such as the District Primary Education Programme (DPEP) and Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan (SSA) have largely remained administrative practices. They were not representatives of parent-school consensus on what schooling means. Community-based consultative bodies such as the school management committees and parent-teacher committees could not become platforms to facilitate this.
Balancing objectives
•A locally rooted education vision is one that emerges from social and political consensus on why a child needs a school education. Is it to reach college? Is it to get a job after school? Is it for personality development? Is it to be an active citizen? What does a top-class government elementary school mean? This vision has to be led by local political actors and become a central part of local politics which involves both formal actors such as political party workers, and non-formal ones such as community leaders. This does not mean that ideas, practices and policies from the national level are discarded as irrelevant and elitist. Elite ideas are not necessarily elitist. On the one hand, a vision of schooling will balance immediate, tangible, popularly understandable objectives such as reading, writing as well as livelihood relevant skills and knowledge. On the other, it will include long term and abstract objectives such as peer connections, negotiating social diversity, and curiosity for new knowledge and experiences.
•There is nothing about the poor that suggests that they cannot imagine schooling beyond basic livelihood to include art and culture. It is the skill and dynamics of local politicians and politics, respectively, to uphold such a vision and ensure its implementation through contestation.
•Presently, our school education is de-politicised, except for a few aspects such as history curriculum, language of instruction and so on. These energise national politics. Not local level contestations where some of the issues are rather settled, parents want English language competency for their children, and what they learn in history is not as worthy as maths.
The right data
•It is only when data is connected with a locally developed and politically owned vision of school education that it will move beyond the administrator and the activist. Social welfare is about people, and their participation has to be simple, intuitive and energetic. If the right systems of governance and authority are designed and tools to engage with them are made available, the poor will speak up. What we lack and need is data which can hold the local vision of education and local actors accountable as much as the one we have right now, which focuses on the national one. Why should a 30-year-old parent in Bundi district in Rajasthan care whether her district had contradictory results on learning surveys of ASER and NAS? The data we collect assumes that she does not need to. It is not her business.
📰 Of lungs, trees and sin stocks
Large corporate enterprises themselves are making efforts to reduce the harm of tobacco consumption
•The second Global Adult Tobacco Survey estimated that 28.6% of all adults in India used tobacco in 2016-2017, second only to China. The survey said 42.4% of men and 14.2% of women used tobacco — both the smokeless form, i.e. chewing tobacco, and smoked form, i.e. cigarettes and ‘bidis’.
•In 1987, the World Health Organization (WHO) marked ‘World No Tobacco Day’ to bring attention to the ill-effects of tobacco. ‘Poisoning our planet’ is the theme for May 31 this year, in an effort to highlight the ill-effects of tobacco on the environment.
Harm to health and environment
•In 2021, smoking killed about 8 million people. But tobacco is not just a bane on human health. According to the WHO, 600 million trees are chopped down annually to make cigarettes, 84 million tonnes of CO2 emissions are released into the atmosphere, and 22 billion litres of water are used to make cigarettes. In addition to the environmental costs of production, cigarette butts, packaging, plastic pouches of smokeless tobacco, and electronics and batteries associated with e-cigarettes pollute our environment.
•India, the world’s second largest producer of tobacco, produces about 800 million kg annually. Most efforts to counter the tobacco epidemic have been directed at creating awareness about the ill-effects of tobacco. These have borne fruit. Over 90% of adults in India, across strata, identify tobacco as being harmful. Additional gains in overcoming the ill-effects of tobacco are therefore unlikely to come from more awareness campaigns alone. While several campaigns have also dealt with finding alternative livelihoods for tobacco farmers, an issue that sometimes goes unnoticed is deforestation.
•About 6 million farmers and 20 million farm labourers work in tobacco farming across 15 States (Central Tobacco Research Institute). Although farming of tobacco only contributes to 1% of GDP as per one study, the direct health expenditure on treating tobacco-related diseases alone accounts for 5.3% of total health spending in India in a year (WHO). Despite this, farming of tobacco cannot be stopped without serious economic consequences and/or social disruption.
•Thankfully, there are market-based solutions. The forestry community has devised solutions and instruments to incentivise the reduction of deforestation through the use of carbon credits. With the surge in new commitments to zero carbon from the international commodity sector, companies are putting pressure on their supply chains to transition to sustainable practices and reduce deforestation. Companies like Unilever, Amazon, Nestlé, Alibaba, and Mahindra Group are pledging to cut emissions and are poised to invest an estimated $50 billion in nature-based solutions such as carbon sinks. This is driving new interest in sourcing from sustainable landscapes and buying high-quality forest carbon credits. The revenue from this is many times higher than the earnings from selling tobacco leaves.
•Cigarette companies themselves appear to be changing. In 2016, one of the largest cigarette companies pledged to begin transitioning its customers away from tobacco to smoke-free products. By 2019, it reported it was spending 98% of its research and development budget to back up this goal. Though first met with scepticism, this strategy of transitioning to ‘socially responsible bottom-lines’ is picking up speed. The rise of environmental, social, and governance (ESG) managers has helped. By looking at exposure to child labour, wasted energy and water, and diversity in management ranks, ESG managers say they have a clearer sense of a company’s long-term survival options.
Better than before
•Some companies have shown much greater levels of disclosure than their competitors. These statistics don’t necessarily show how good the companies themselves are, but rather how much less harmful they are than they used to be. In a way, these so-called front runners are helping sin stocks get recognition for doing less harm than before by quantifying the pace of change. By transitioning to safer nicotine delivery systems, and moving away from tobacco, cigarette companies are potentially lowering the risk of their customers dying from cancer.
•So, all is not grim. While there are problems in the business of tobacco and cigarettes, there are options, solutions and global movements being undertaken by the largest corporate enterprises. Educating potential consumers to not consume tobacco, supporting consumers in their journey to quit, and incentivising industry to help consumers and the planet will protect not just our lungs, but also the air we breathe.
📰 India’s changing goal posts over coal
Is India’s ambition to phase out coal-based power generation and switch to a natural gas-based energy production, viable?
•Coal consumption needs to come down as the power sector in India accounts for 49% of total carbon dioxide emissions, compared with the global average of 41%.
•As of February 2022, the installed capacity for coal-based power generation across the country was 2.04 lakh MW. This accounts for about 51.5% of power from all sources. Natural gas has been dubbed as the transition fuel.
•As per a letter by the power Ministry, Coal India, the country’s largest supplier of the dry fuel is set to import coal for the first time since 2015. The aim of the exercise is to avoid a repeat of the power outage crisis that India faced in April.
•The story so far: In April, Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman said India’s transition away from coal as a fuel for power would be hampered by the Russia-Ukraine war. “One calculation which I think we had in our mind was that the transition [away from coal] ... will be enabled by natural gas,” she said, adding that “lowering dependence on coal, and the speed with which we want to get out of it, will now be challenged.”
Why is the ‘move away from coal’ so important?
•The threat of global warming looms over the planet, promising to bring about unprecedented natural calamities.
•An effective way to keep the danger at bay is to cut the use of fossil fuels — coal, natural gas and oil. About 80% of the world’s energy requirements are met by these three fuels. They have likely brought on the climate crisis we now face, as they trigger the emission of carbon dioxide. However, the worst culprit of them all is coal, which emits nearly twice as much carbon dioxide as natural gas and about 60% more than oil, on a kilogram-to-kilogram comparison. Combusting coal also leaves behind partially-burnt carbon particles that feed pollution and trigger respiratory disorders. The consequence of these chemical reactions gains great significance because, the power sector in India accounts for 49% of total carbon dioxide emissions, compared with the global average of 41%.
What is the extent of India’s dependence on coal?
•As of February 2022, the installed capacity for coal-based power generation across the country was 2.04 lakh megawatt (MW). This accounts for about 51.5% of power from all sources. This compares with about 25,000 MW of capacity based on natural gas as fuel, or a mere 6.3% of all installed capacity. Renewable power accounted for 1.06 lakh MW or 27%.
•Coal-based power stations are retired periodically which happens all the time. But is not fast enough nor are new additions being halted. And with good reason – coal is still inexpensive compared with other sources of energy.
•For FY20, for example, India added 6,765 MW power capacity based on coal as fuel. But only 2,335 MW was retired. According to the IEA’s Coal Report 2021, India’s coal consumption will increase at an average annual rate of 3.9% to 1.18 billon tonnes in 2024.
•So, it is not easy to shift away from coal overnight. As the World Coal Association CEO Melissa Manook put it while on her India visit recently, “Coal will still be a significant contributor in the energy sector even in 2040!”
How has war made India’s move away from coal difficult?
•Natural gas has been dubbed as the transition fuel in India’s plans to move away from coal. The international cost of natural gas has zoomed in the recent past from a level that was considered already too high to be financially viable. On May 17, 2022, the price per MMBTU of gas was ₹1,425, compared with ₹500 in April, 2021.
•Even back in November last, well before the war made things difficult, the government put in place a committee to ensure that natural gas prices remained stable. Of the 25,000 MW of gas-based power plants, about 14,000 MW remains stranded, or idle, because they are financially unviable.
•While renewable energy sources are cheaper than coal, their ability to generate power consistently is subject to the whims of nature — the wind and the Sun. Coal can give you power on demand. Storage technologies are still not mature enough to help renewable energy sources become reliable generators of power.
Is there a coal availability crisis that is exacerbating our problems?
•It appears that the pent-up demand returning in the economy which was in a pandemic-induced stupor for a while has caught policymakers off guard. From having asked States only recently to stop importing coal, the power Ministry urged States earlier this month to step up coal imports as the private sector would take till about 2025 to produce significant amounts of coal.
•As per a letter by the Ministry, Coal India, the country’s largest supplier of the dry fuel is set to import coal for the first time since 2015. The aim of the exercise is to avoid a repeat of the power outage crisis that India faced in April — the worst in more than six years. Following the issue of the letter dated May 28 to all state utilities, officials at the States and the Centre, including to the Coal Secretary, the central government has asked States to place import tenders on hold with a view to cut procurement costs using government-to-government channels.
•An internal power Ministry presentation is said to point to a 42.5 million tonne (MT) coal shortage in the quarter ending September on the back of high demand for power supply. The shortage is 15% higher than earlier anticipated. Domestic supply of coal is expected to be 154.7 MT, compared with the projected requirement of 197.3 MT. The previously anticipated shortage was 37 MT. The projections for requirements for the year ending March are 3.3% higher than earlier anticipated at 784.6 MT. Without imports, utilities are likely to run out of coal supplies by July.
