📰 Bring the shine back on government jobs
Instead of expanding contractual employment, we should seek to bolster public services
•In 2019, an Indian citizen died of suicide every hour due to joblessness, poverty or bankruptcy, according to the National Crime Records Bureau. About 25,000 Indians died of suicide between 2018 and 2020, said the Union government in the Rajya Sabha in February this year. Several unemployed people in India resort to protests — thousands burnt railway coaches in January 2022 over alleged flaws in the railways recruitment process and more recently, India saw protests over the Agnipath scheme.
A culture of hire and fire
•For those employed in government, the situation is not much better. In May 2022, Haryana terminated the services of over 2,000 contractual health workers (nurses, sweepers, security guards, paramedical staff) who had been hired during the pandemic. In Delhi, hundreds of nurses, paramedical staff, lab technicians and other contractual workers have been terminated by Ram Manohar Lohia Hospital, Lady Hardinge Medical College and others. After banging utensils to thank them, we have fired them.
•Additionally, over 8,300 panchayat and rural development contractual staff in Assam staged protests in February 2022. They said they had been in a contractual state for 12-14 years and had not been given bonuses, allowances, pension or pay revisions. In April 2022, some 200 contractual workers of Chhattisgarh’s state electricity department were canned-charged and arrested. Being a public servant has rarely mattered less.
•The problem is two-fold. First, vacancies in the government are not being filled at a sufficient pace. There were over 60 lakh vacancies in the government across all levels in July 2021. Of these, over 9.1 lakh were in the Central government, while about 2 lakh vacancies were in PSU banks. Additionally, there were over 5.3 lakh vacancies in the State police, while primary schools were estimated to have some 8.3 lakh vacancies. The government has sought to push for recruitment of 10 lakh people in a mission-mode over 1.5 years. However, this would fall short of the size of the problem. We need greater ambition on this front.
•Second, where vacancies are being filled, they are notably skewed towards contractual jobs. In 2014, about 43% of government employees (about 12.3 million) had non-permanent or contractual jobs, with about 6.9 million working in key flagship welfare schemes (Anganwadi workers, for instance) with low wages (in some cases, lower than the minimum wage) and little, if any, social security cover, as per the Indian Staffing Industry Research 2014 report. By 2018, the share of government employees in this category had risen to 59%. For Central Public Sector Enterprises, the share of contractual (and non-permanent) employees increased from 19% to 37% (reaching 4,98,807 in March 2020), with permanent employees dropping in share by 25%. Consider select PSUs. ONGC had contractual employees form over 81% of its staff in March 2020. Some States have sought to take this further — in 2020, while the pandemic led to mass unemployment, the State government in Uttar Pradesh sought to amend recruitment for Group B and C employees (of which there were about 9 lakh in 2020 in U.P.), with a push for increasing contractual employment (for a five-year period), with such employees not offered allowances and typical benefits. Post the five-year period, a pathway to regularisation was offered, only if the workers could pass a rigorous performance appraisal; if they did not pass, they would be dismissed. Any dependent of a deceased employee, if appointed to such posts, would also have to go through similar appraisals. In 2013, the Supreme Court ruled that a contractual employee for a government department was not a government servant. If most government employees have contractual terms, will a public ethos continue to exist?
•Instead of expanding contractual employment, we should seek to bolster public services. For the past few decades, we have been under-investing in public goods — as witnessed by the COVID-19 crisis, our healthcare system simply does not have the capacity to provide adequate healthcare support to citizens under normal conditions, let alone a pandemic. Expanding public service provisioning will also lead to the creation of good quality jobs, along with skilled labour, offering us social stability. A push for enhancing public health would lead to the creation of societal assets; having more ICU beds in the first place would have ensured that the COVID-19 crisis could have been managed better. A push for a universal basic services programme with public healthcare would also help supplement insurance-based models like Ayushman Bharat. Such spending, however, will eventually lead to an increase in consumer demand and have strong multiplier effects, while generally improving the productivity and quality of life in India’s cities and villages.
Job opportunities
•Consider renewable power generation. There is significant potential for job creation (for example, in rooftop solar power generation, manufacturing of solar panel modules and end-use servicing). Meanwhile, on the waste management front, there is significant scope for expanding waste-water treatment capacity, with the building and management of treatment plants for sewer waste and faecal sludge treatment plants leading to generation of jobs. Encouraging solid waste treatment practices (such as dry waste collection, micro-composting) could create about 300 jobs per year in a city municipal corporation. A push for adopting electric vehicles and encouraging green mobility would require significant manpower, leading to the generation of ‘green jobs’. In addition, we must continue to encourage urban farming, with significant job potential in permaculture, gardening and nursery management. Perhaps another avenue of selective PSU reform could also be considered — a PSU with greater autonomy, with the government retaining control via a holding firm, can also be subject to the right incentives. Surely, Indian PSUs could aspire to be as large and efficient as the Chinese ones.
•Government jobs have lost their shine. We need to attract talent to the government. Rather than downsizing or simply avoiding the cost of pensions and benefits, one should right-size government. Our public services require more doctors, teachers, engineers, and fewer data entry clerks. Reforms advocated by the Administrative Reforms Commission should be our initial step. This is the time to build capacity for an efficient civil service that can meet today’s challenges – providing a corruption-free welfare system, running a modern economy and providing increasingly better public goods. Improved public service delivery, through better compensation, should be our ethos. ‘Jai Jawan, Jai Kisan’ used to be a driving motto for the government of the day. Instead, treating them as dispensable seems to be the norm.
Judicial intervention should strengthen anti-defection law, not undermine it
•Time is of the essence when it comes to executing political manoeuvres to reduce a government to a minority. Dissident legislators need time to gather enough numbers to vote out the regime. Ruling parties need to close the window of opportunity soon, often using the threat of disqualification for defection. It is in this backdrop that judicial intervention in matters relating to disqualifying lawmakers for defection takes place — either buying the dissidents time or allowing disqualification proceedings to go on unhindered. By its order granting time until July 12 to dissident Shiv Sena legislators in the Maharashtra Assembly to reply to the Deputy Speaker’s notice under the anti-defection law, the Supreme Court has effectively made it possible for them to actualise their objective without the threat of disqualification for now. It is doubtful whether the Court should have done this in the face of a specific bar on judicial intervention in disqualification proceedings at any stage prior to final adjudication under the Tenth Schedule. In 1992 (Kilhoto Hollohan vs Zachillhu), a Constitution Bench, while upholding the validity of the anti-defection law, held that the Speaker’s decision was subject to judicial review, albeit on limited grounds. It also made it clear that this should take place after a final decision, and there can be no interim order, except if there is an interim disqualification or suspension.
•The Deputy Speaker’s grant of just two days for the MLAs to reply may have occasioned the intervention; but it is doubtful whether the Court should concern itself with the question now, when it can be decided after their possible disqualification. There are Court judgments that say compliance with natural justice is not based on the number of days given, but on whether sufficient opportunity was given before a decision. Based on a conclusion in Nabam Rebia (2016) that a Presiding Officer should not adjudicate any defection complaint while a motion for his own removal is pending, the dissidents sent a motion to get the Deputy Speaker removed. After he rejected it, the rejection has also been questioned in court, thus raising a jurisdiction question on the adjudicatory power of the Deputy Speaker, who, of necessity, has to decide disqualification questions in the absence of a Speaker. Motions to remove a Presiding Officer should not become a ploy to circumvent disqualification proceedings. If courts countenance manoeuvres to pre-empt a decision on whether legislators camping in another State and questioning the Chief Minister’s majority have incurred disqualification by “voluntarily giving up membership” of their party, they undermine the anti-defection law and render nugatory rulings by Constitution Benches. When defection is seen as a serious menace by the Constitution, courts should not act in furtherance of it. The duty to protect those wrongly disqualified is important, but so is calling to account defectors whose motives are suspect.
📰 A problematic provision
Instead of disenfranchising only certain classes of prisoners, the law prohibits anyone in confinement from voting
•In States with bicameral legislatures, seats in the Legislative Council are filled following an indirect election in which members of the Legislative Assembly cast votes. On June 20, the members of the Maharashtra Legislative Assembly were scheduled to convene at the Vidhan Sabha to elect the members of the Vidhan Parishad. Nawab Malik and Anil Deshmukh, who are in prison in connection with money laundering offences, approached the courts with a prayer: despite their incarceration, they should be temporarily released to cast votes in the election, so that they may discharge their duty as sitting MLAs. Their prayer was rejected, first by a special Judge under the Prevention of Money Laundering Act, then by the Bombay High Court, and finally by the Supreme Court.
The yardstick for disenfranchisement
•Interestingly, before dismissing the applications, the apex court observed that it is open to reconsidering the legal provision, Section 62(5) of the Representation of the People Act, 1951, which prevented the two MLAs from casting their votes. In the past, the Supreme Court has observed that the intent of this provision is to maintain the integrity of elections by excluding ‘persons with criminal background’ from participating in them. Ideally, this objective can be achieved through a provision which disenfranchises persons who have been convicted of certain kinds of grave offences.
•However, Section 62(5) does not use conviction as the yardstick for disenfranchisement; it uses confinement. As a result, undertrial prisoners (who constitute over 75% of India’s nearly 5 lakh prisoners) cannot vote. Neither can persons detained in civil prison for failing to repay a debt. But remarkably, a person who has been convicted for a criminal offence and has managed to secure bail can vote. If the objective is to keep criminals away from elections, this is an anomaly. Indeed, it appears that as a result of a poor choice of words, an otherwise well-intentioned law has snatched away the right to vote from an undertrial who is presumed to be innocent and from a civil offender, but has granted it to a criminal convict (out on bail) whose guilt has been determined.
•This puts Section 62(5) in direct collision with Article 14 of the Constitution (equality before the law to all persons). Whenever a law treats two groups of persons unequally, it must satisfy a set of basic tests under Article 14 to be valid: the distinction created by the law must be based on coherent differences between the two groups of persons, and these differences must have a rational link with the objective that the law seeks to achieve. Section 62(5) treats a group of people differently by stripping them of the right to vote. What sets this group apart from those allowed to vote is their confinement in prison. This has no rational link with the purported object of the law, i.e., keeping criminals away from the electoral process.
•As alternatives, the provision could have disenfranchised persons convicted of certain heinous offences or those sentenced for a minimum duration. In the U.K., for instance, only convicts sentenced to prison for four years or more cannot vote. In Germany, only persons convicted of certain political offences are disenfranchised. Where the law formerly restricted all prisoners from voting (Canada, for instance), constitutional courts intervened and struck it down for being arbitrary and disproportionate.
•Section 62(5) has survived many challenges before the courts. Each time, the courts have lauded the objective of weeding out criminal elements from the electoral process, but have stopped short of examining whether the provision, in the manner in which it is worded, can claim to achieve this aim. In a welcome move, while dismissing Mr. Malik and Mr. Deshmukh’s bail applications, the Supreme Court observed that it is open to reconsidering the constitutionality of the provision. The reason for this shift is that the voters who were deprived in this instance were not seeking to act as ordinary citizens but as constitutional functionaries. Through the MLAs’ votes, the residents of their constituencies indirectly exercise their franchise in the election to the Vidhan Parishad. By preventing the two MLAs from casting their votes, the court has inadvertently stripped all their constituents of their franchise.
•Finding fault with Section 62(5) for only this reason would be missing the forest for the trees. As a result of its sweeping nature, the provision suffers from a deeper malaise. The question cannot be whether the voter is an ordinary citizen or an MLA, but whether the voter, given their conduct, deserves to participate in the electoral process or not. A constitutional inquiry into Section 62(5) with the former question as its only basis is set for failure. The apex court must re-examine the issue in the totality of its circumstances and Parliament must replace the provision with a tightly worded version disenfranchising only certain classes of prisoners.
📰 The G7 plan to counter the Belt and Road initiative
How is the Partnership for Global Infrastructure and Investment going to enhance development in low and middle income countries?
•On June 26, U.S. President Joe Biden along with his G7 allies unveiled the Partnership for Global Infrastructure and Investment (PGII), largely seen as a counter to China’s multi-trillion dollar Belt and Road Initiative (BRI).
•All PGII projects will be driven by “four priority pillars that will define the second half of the 21st century”. Tackling the climate crisis and ensuring global energy security, bolstering digital information and ICT networks, promoting gender equality and equity, and lastly, to build and upgrade the global health infrastructure.
•A PGII project has been announced in India. On the other hand, India has stayed away from China’s BRI, being wary of Beijing’s aim to increase its influence in the Indian Ocean Region.
•The story so far: On June 26, U.S. President Joe Biden along with his G7 allies unveiled the ambitious Partnership for Global Infrastructure and Investment (PGII), announcing the collective mobilisation of $600 billion by 2027 to deliver “game-changing” and “transparent” infrastructure projects to developing and middle-income countries. The PGII is being seen as the G7’s counter to China’s multi-trillion dollar Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) to build connectivity, infrastructure, and trade projects in Asia, Europe, Africa, and Latin America.
What is the PGII?
•The West has been sceptical of the BRI, since it was launched in 2013 by President Xi Jinping, as it was considered to be part of China’s larger strategy to increase geopolitical influence in Asia and other developing countries. The U.S., along with G7 partners the U.K., Japan, France, Canada, Germany, Italy, and the European Union (EU), had in 2021 announced the launch of the Build Back Better World (B3W) with the aim of narrowing the $40 trillion infrastructure gap in the developing world. PGII is therefore, a relaunch of Mr. Biden’s B3W plan.
•The factsheet put out by the White House described the PGII as a “values-driven, high-impact, and transparent infrastructure partnership to meet the enormous infrastructure needs of low and middle-income countries and support the United States’ and its allies’ economic and national security interests”. The G7 members aim to collectively mobilise $600 billion by 2027 to invest in sustainable and quality infrastructure projects in developing countries, including India, and strengthen global supply chains. Mr. Biden announced the country’s pledge to channel $200 billion in grants, public financing, and private capital over the next five years for the PGII. European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen declared Europe’s pledge of mobilising 300 billion euros for the partnership over the same period.
What kind of projects will the PGII undertake?
•All PGII projects will be driven by “four priority pillars that will define the second half of the 21st century”. First, the G7 grouping aims to tackle the climate crisis and ensure global energy security through clean energy supply chains. Second, the projects will focus on bolstering digital information and communications technology (ICT) networks facilitating technologies such as 5G and 6G internet connectivity and cybersecurity. Third, the projects aim to advance gender equality and equity, and lastly, to build and upgrade global health infrastructure.
•Mr Biden announced the flagship projects for PGII that have either commenced or are set to begin. The U.S International Development Finance Corporation (DFC), along with the G7 nations and the EU are disbursing a $3.3 million technical assistance grant to build a vaccine facility in Senegal, having a potential yearly capacity of manufacturing “millions of doses of COVID-19 and other vaccines”. Ms. Leyen said that the European Commission’s Global Gateway initiative is also undertaking projects supporting the PGII such as mRNA vaccine plants in Latin America and a fibre-optic cable linking Europe to Latin America among others.
•In India, the U.S. DFC will invest up to $30 million in Omnivore Agritech and Climate Sustainability Fund 3, an impact venture capital fund that invests in entrepreneurs building the future of agriculture, food systems, climate, and rural economy in India.
How does it compare to China’s BRI?
•The Belt and Road project was started to revive connectivity, trade, and infrastructure along what was China’s ancient Silk Road. China had announced a two-pronged approach of building a Silk Road Economic Belt on Land and a maritime 21st century Silk Road. The project initially aimed to strengthen connectivity with Southeast Asia but later expanded to South and Central Asia, Africa, Europe, and Latin America, with Mr. Xi saying it would “break the bottleneck in Asian connectivity”.
•The G7 meanwhile has specifically touted the PGII as a values-based plan to help underfunded low and middle-income countries meet their infrastructure needs. PGII has laid focus on climate action and clean energy, while China has built large coal-fired plants under BRI along with solar, hydro, and wind energy projects. While the G7 has pledged $600 billion by 2027, Morgan and Stanly estimate that China’s overall funding for BRI by that time could reach $1.2 to 1.3 trillion dollars with the actual funding being higher. Under the PGII, large private capital will be also mobilised while China’s BRI is majorly state-funded.
•Besides, the BRI was also launched at a time when China’s local construction firms were short of projects in developed Chinese provinces. Studies have shown that 89% of the contractors participating in BRI projects are Chinese. According to Engineering News Record’s 2019 data, seven out of the world’s 10 biggest construction contractors based on foreign revenue were Chinese. Large number of Chinese workers are employed in BRI projects; for instance 1.82 lakh were working in Africa by late 2019.
•While G7 leaders emphasised ‘transparency’ as the cornerstone of PGII projects, the BRI has faced criticism for making countries sign confidential tenders for extending massive loans, leaving countries indebted to China. For instance, after the BRI’s flagship $62 billion China-Pakistan Economic Corridor, Pakistan owes Beijing a large proportion of its foreign debt.
•China builds BRI’s projects by extending large, low-interest loans to countries that have to usually be paid over 10 years. There have been cases of debt-saddled countries failing to repay on time. Sri Lanka, for instance, had to cede its key Hambantota Port on a 99-year lease to China. Mr. Biden has said meanwhile, that PGII aims to build projects through grants and investments.
•A PGII project has already been announced in India but India had opted out of China’s BRI, being wary of Beijing’s aim to increase its influence in the Indian Ocean Region by roping in Pakistan as a major BRI recipient.
📰 Remembering the ‘Plan Man’ of India
Revisiting the country’s statistical inheritance from P.C. Mahalanobis assumes importance in today’s data-driven world
•Today, June 29, is national ‘Statistics Day’, in ‘recognition of the contributions made by Prof. Prasanta Chandra Mahalanobis’, the ‘Plan Man’ of India; it is also his birthday. It was P.C. Mahalanobis, who established a strong statistical culture in India and nourished it diligently through his lifelong endeavours. Incidentally, June 28 also marked 50 years since his passing. Revisiting the life of India’s statistical inheritance from P.C. Mahalanobis is of utmost importance as various kinds of concerns regarding data collection, its publication, and data quality have emerged in recent years.
•Mahalanobis certainly believed data to be instrumental in efficient planning for national and human development. Planning in the newly independent nation in the 1950s was largely based on the data obtained from various surveys. His fairytale-type success story is due to the blending of his talent with his dedication that thrives into perfection. The socio-political situation and Jawaharlal Nehru’s reliance on Mahalanobis certainly helped.
Ties with Tagore
•At the centenary of Rabindranath Tagore’s Visva Bharati University — which Mahalanobis was instrumental in shaping in its most difficult formative years — it might be very interesting to discuss the relationship between two of the greatest Bengali stalwarts, i.e., Tagore and Mahalanobis. Tagore treated Mahalanobis as a close confidant, despite an age gap of 32 years, and they shared a three decades long friendship. Mahalanobis explained to Rani, his future wife: “It will be wrong to say he [Tagore] is my Guru…, ‘I love him’ is the right expression.”
Chancing upon statistics
•Young Mahalanobis came to know about statistics, the subject, ‘by chance’ when, in 1915, his voyage to India from England was delayed. However, it is possible that Tagore was instrumental in bringing Mahalanobis, a professor of physics at Calcutta’s Presidency College, into formal statistical activities, when, in 1917, he introduced him to the scholar and educator, Brajendranath Seal, who asked Mahalanobis to analyse the examination records of Calcutta University. It was perhaps Mahalanobis’s first statistical venture with real-life data.
•Seventeen-year-old Mahalanobis first met Tagore at Santiniketan in 1910. Then, as Satyajit Ray wrote, “When Rabindranath came to London in 1912 with his translation of Gitanjali, Prasantachandra, Kedarnath [Chattopadhyay] and my father [the Poet and writer Sukumar Roy] were present. He [Sukumar] mentions gathering in Rothenstein’s house more than once in his letters.”
•The bonding between Tagore and Mahalanobis, however, was strengthened. In 1919, when Tagore had written a public letter to Lord Chelmsford, the Viceroy of India, protesting the Jallianwala Bagh massacre and renouncing knighthood, he asked Mahalanobis to read it first. Mahalanobis accompanied Tagore on many of his international visits, mostly in the 1920s. He often documented the details of such trips with rigour. With a statistician’s perfection, Mahalanobis wrote a series of essays titled ‘Rabindra Parichay’ (‘Introduction to Rabindra’) for the prestigious Bengali magazine, Probashi. He also wrote a book, Rabindranath Tagore’s Visit to Canada in 1929. When Tagore met Einstein in 1930, Mahalanobis was also with him. In fact, Einstein asked Tagore about a young scientist named Bose. Tagore was surprised as Jagadish Chandra Bose, Tagore’s friend, was certainly no longer a young man. Mahalanobis then informed Tagore about Satyendra Nath Bose, another doyen, who would be ever-remembered for Boson, at least.
•Mahalanobis introduced Tagore to cinema when, in 1917, he took Nitin Bose, the father of cinema technique, to Bolpur. At the request of Tagore, Nitin Bose photographed a dance recital of girls. The 17-minute film was processed in an improvised lab in Mahalanobis’ laboratory at Presidency College. Mahalanobis, at the Presidency College during that period, was a mixture of physicist and statistician. More precisely, a physicist was turning into a statistician, slowly but steadily. His physics background certainly helped shape his statistical ideology and perfection, which, in effect, yielded trustworthiness in his surveys, methodologies, and analyses.
•Mahalanobis established the Statistical Laboratory within the Baker Laboratory at Presidency College. Tagore also visited the Statistical Laboratory several times. In fact, it was Tagore who coined the Bengali word, ‘Rashibijnan’ for ‘Statistics’, and there is little doubt that this was only due to the bonding between Tagore and Mahalanobis. In 1933, Mahalanobis founded Sankhyā, the Indian Journal of Statistics. In the first issue of the second volume of Sankhyā, Tagore depicted Statistics as “the dance steps of numbers in the arena of time and space, which weave the maya of appearance, the incessant flow of changes that ever is and is not”.
At Visva Bharati
•Mahalanobis, of course, helped Tagore immensely in his dream project — the founding of Visva Bharati. He not only served as a joint secretary of Visva Bharati for 10 years from the beginning but he was also a member of the governing body, executive council, academic council, and the agricultural board. Also, Mahalanobis’ contribution to preparing Tagore’s life calendar is astonishing. He even corrected some errors here and in also the bibliography prepared by the famous Bengali writer, Prabhat Kumar Mukhopadhyay. When Tagore modified his writings, he wanted to destroy the earlier drafts. Mahalanobis, however, preserved them – a clear conflict between the attitudes of a poet and a statistician. Detailing and perfection were an inherent nature of Mahalanobis. These were also reflected in his surveys and data collection.
•Tagore’s dance drama, ‘Basanta’ (meaning ‘Spring’), had a premier at the Calcutta University institute auditorium on Mahalanobis’ marriage day. Tagore attended the marriage ceremony after the show. He presented them with the manuscript of ‘Basanta’. Such a special bonding with the poet, certainly, did supply Mahalanobis with a different kind of light — that would help him create a rich statistical legacy for the country, and a trustworthy system of data collection and analyses. The system worked nicely for a few decades even after his demise.
•There is little denying that data, in general, is on an ever-expanding pathway and is growing exponentially. Statistics, the subject, is also changing amid a wave of data science. One needs to adopt, for sure. Attempts such as transforming the Planning Commission to NITI Aayog or merging the National Sample Survey Office (NSSO) with the Central Statistical Office (CSO) to form the National Statistical Office (NSO) may not be enough though. One certainly misses a person of the stature of Mahalanobis at the helm of the system. Also, the Mahalanobis-type innovation, dedication, and diligence are dearly missed.
