📰 Bihar free of Naxal presence; the fight is in the last stages in Jharkhand, says CRPF chief
Hotbeds of left-wing extremism have been cleared in three States, says Kuldiep Singh; Operations Octopus, Double Bull, Thunderstorm and Chakarbandha led to the arrest or surrender of 592; Maoists using improvised grenade launchers
•Kuldiep Singh, Director-General, Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF), said on Wednesday that Bihar was free of left-wing extremism now and security forces had made inroads into areas in Jharkhand that were once inaccessible due to the presence of Maoists.
•Mr. Singh said the fight was in its final stages, and the number of districts affected by violence stood at 39, down from 60 in 2010. He said the number of most affected districts, accounting for 90% of the violent incidents, had reduced from 35 in 2015 to 25 in 2021. These districts are mostly in Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand, Odisha, Maharashtra, Telengana and Andhra Pradesh.
•Mr. Singh said that considerable success was achieved in 2022 in Bihar, Jharkhand and Chhattisgarh as the CRPF launched Operation Octopus, Operation Double Bull, Operation Thunderstorm and Operation Chakarbandha in the three States. The operations led to the arrest or surrender of 592 Maoists.
Security camps
•“Barring stray elements or extortionists, we can say that Bihar is completely free of Naxals. In Jharkhand too, we reached the top of the Budha Pahar area for the first time on September 5. This was an area under the control of the Maoists so far, we have established a security camp there and road construction has also started,” Mr. Singh said at a press conference. He said that in Chakarbandha in Bihar, an area of 8x7 km had been cleared of Maoist presence and in the Budha Pahar area, around 4x3 km had been cleared. A helicopter landed in Budha Pahar for the first time in September.
•The officer said that since 2019, a unique policy has been adopted against Maoists and in the past four years, the Union Home Ministry had provided ₹4,000 crore to the CRPF to purchase the latest weapons and equipment. The CRPF was one of the largest Central armed police forces deployed in the affected States.
•Mr. Singh said that in all, 20 forward operating bases or security camps have been established in Jharkhand and 11 bases had come up only in the past six months.
•Union Home Minister Amit Shah tweeted, “For the first time, permanent camps of security forces have been established by successfully evacuating Maoists from the inaccessible areas of Budha Pahar, Chakrabandha and Bhimabandh.” The Minister said the Ministry’s “zero tolerance” to terrorism and left-wing extremism would continue, and the fight would intensify.
•Mr. Singh said Maoists were using improvised grenade launchers to target security camps in Chhattisgarh. “The grenade launchers are assembled locally in a factory. The camps were attacked 28 times by the launchers this year,” he said.
•He said in Jharkhand, security forces recovered a U.S.-made rifle but Maoists mostly used country-made weapons or those snatched from security forces.
📰 The ambit of fraternity and the wages of oblivion
•‘These principles of liberty equality and fraternity are not to be treated as separate items in a trinity. They form a union of trinity in the sense that to divorce one from the other is to defeat the very purpose of democracy,’ said B.R. Ambedkar in the Constituent Assembly, in 1949.
•It is often forgotten that ‘fraternity assuring the dignity of the individual and the unity and integrity of the Nation’ is, along with Justice, Liberty and Equality, among the basic values inscribed in the Preamble of the Constitution of India whose first line asserts, ‘We, the People of India’ have solemnly resolved to ‘secure’ to all the citizens of India.
The responsibility of the individual citizen
•B.R. Ambedkar provided its rationale with remarkable foresight: ‘We must begin by acknowledging the fact there is a complete absence of two things in Indian society. One of these is equality’ and as a result of it we would enter into ‘a life of contradictions’ on January 26, 1950.
•However, practical adherence to this commitment was given shape only by the Forty-Second Amendment (1976) in Article 51A (e) on Fundamental Duties.
•It makes it the duty of every citizen of India ‘to promote harmony and the spirit of common among all the people of India, transcending religious, linguistic and regional or sectional diversities.
•Significantly, the responsibility for bringing this about does not rest with the state but seems to be the responsibility of the individual citizen. We, therefore, need to comprehend the meaning and relevance of this pious wish. How has it become a political principle of relevance?
•A poet summed it up neatly: Unka jo aqeeda hai who ahl-e-sayaaasat jaanen; Mera paigham mohabbat hai, jahaan tak pahunche (The politicians’ creed, the politicians know/ (Mine is the message of love, be it heard afar)
•The idea of fraternity is based on the view that people have responsibilities to each other. It was defined after the French Revolution in the following terms: ‘Do not do to others what you would not want them to do to you; do constantly to others the good which you would wish to receive from them.’ The vagueness of the definition suggests that, despite its place in the revolutionary slogan, the idea of fraternity was not clearly understood. It is generally seen as an emotion rather than a principle.
•In the Indian context however, as understood and articulated by B.R. Ambedkar, there is a sense of the imperative in the emotion. This is reflected in the wording of this section of the Preamble where the dignity of the individual and the unity of the nation both necessitate this emotion, and thereby lend a sense of urgency to it. It thus becomes an essential ingredient of citizenship that can be evaded or neglected at the cost of the concept itself.
The shape of inequality
•An aggravating factor, often overlooked, is the shape that inequality takes in different segments of our society. It is economic on one plane; on others it is regional, caste and religious. Some are spelt out, others understated, still others assumed. Sociologists have identified nine categories of people who are determined to be socially and/or politically and/or economically excluded. These particularly include Dalits, Adivasis, women and religious minorities.
•Recent studies on religious minorities who constitute around 20% of India’s population have traced discrimination relating to them to perceptions that relate to the very origins of thinking that brought about the partition of August 1947. They argue that violence was not merely accidental but integral to the foundation of the nation and that the need for fraternity coexisted with the imperative need for restoring social cohesion in segments of society.
•Much blame for the haste displayed by decision-makers has been written about on the basis of the documentation made available subsequently and, at this distance of time, its validity cannot be dismissed altogether.
•A primary concern of the Constitution-makers related to cohesion and integration of the units of the new Republic formally described as ‘A Union of States’. In the words of Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel, ‘the inspiration and the stimulus came from above rather than from below and unless the transplanted growth takes a healthy root in the soil, there will be a danger of collapse and chaos.’ This was amplified by V.P. Menon as the integration ‘of the minds of the people’.
•In a speech in the Constituent Assembly on December 22, 1952, B.R. Ambedkar dwelt on what he called ‘Conditions Precedent for the Successful Working of Democracy’. He listed these as: absence of glaring inequalities; presence of an opposition; equality of law and administration; observance of constitutional morality; avoidance of tyranny of majority over minority; a functioning of moral order in society, and public conscience.
•Over time, uneven development has characterised the States of the Indian Union. Regional and linguistic diversity characterises them. And so does uneven economic development and progress, resulting in uneven levels of education, employment, social cohesion and contentment.
Question for the leadership
•Seventy-five years on, a candid assessment of the state of the Republic makes us cogitate on evidence of regional diversity, assertion of linguistic identity and emergence of diverging political orientations. While the first two are physical and social realities, the third is a product of thriving diversity. Each is real, each is also disconcerting from the viewpoint of federal governance hitherto practised, and each seeks accommodation in a divergent framework.
•Where does this take fraternity? Article 51A(e) of the Constitution does not differentiate between citizens on any of the categories mentioned above and makes it an all-encompassing duty. Its ambit therefore is universal; its observance, by the same logic, has to begin at the base of the ladder of citizenship rather than the top but does not spare the leadership from the obligation to promote and practise it.
•Has this been done in practice? How often have social and political leaders of opinion promoted fraternity, incidentally or specifically, locally, within the region or nationally? The record is depressing; hence the ease with which non-fraternal patterns of behaviour seem to emerge in our society. Does this promote national integration, rhetoric apart? Was the bloodshed of 1947 (‘10 million or one in every 35 persons in the subcontinent’) a forerunner of lesser ones that followed?
•India and China appear to be mending fences, gingerly. Relations have been icy since China launched multiple incursions across the Line of Actual Control (LAC) in eastern Ladakh in mid-2020. After years of inconclusive military talks and halting “disengagement” from sites of confrontation, the rivals made inching progress last week. They completed disengagement in an area known as Patrolling Point 15 (PP15), pulling troops back to create a demilitarised buffer zone, and their leaders met in person at the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation summit in Samarkand.
•The tentative conciliatory steps between two nuclear-armed rivals are important; but they also carry risks, especially for India.
•Despite the latest round of disengagement, the LAC remains deeply unsettled. Observers have pointed out that the buffer zones produced by the crisis inhibit India’s ability to patrol its own territory. And India and China have tacitly agreed to postpone settlement at two other confrontation sites, including a particularly tactically valuable area known as Depsang. The buffer zones and Depsang’s status both suit China’s objectives because they limit India’s military activities near the LAC, which analysts judge had partly motivated China’s initial incursions in 2020.
•Similarly, the military threat on the border is not only undiminished, but has actually grown over the course of the crisis. The reinforcements that each side deployed since 2020 have not returned to garrison. Even if future rounds of talks continue “disengagement and de-escalation,” and reduce those forces, returning to the status quo ante is now impossible. Both sides have raced to build permanent military infrastructure near the border, to help them surge forces to the border. Unsurprisingly, China seems to have outpaced India in building these roads, helipads, and communications nodes.
•China still claims Arunachal Pradesh as its own, and just as it has pressed its maritime claims once its growing capabilities permit, its military build-up may portend increasing pressure in coming years. Even without a deliberate attack, the increasing capabilities and mobility on both sides of the border means that a crisis can more quickly escalate to a large military stand-off anywhere on the LAC, and possibly even trigger a conflict.
Strategic implications
•As vexatious as the tactical picture may be on the border, the strategic implications are more dire. For over two years, the land border has become the overwhelming priority in India’s military competition with China. India has reassigned one of three originally Pakistan-facing Strike Corps to the China front. It has deployed its newest artillery, fighter jets, and drones to the China border.
•At the same time, India has not significantly improved its capabilities or posture in the Indian Ocean region. Granted, a suite of impressive new capabilities — from cruise missile-equipped fighters and U.S.-origin naval helicopters to a brand-new indigenously-built aircraft carrier — are inching towards fruition. But these programmes were all initiated before the border crisis, when the Indian military was incrementally modernising its capabilities for the Indian Ocean.
•Whether or not by design, this must delight Beijing. As India and China jostle for security and influence in Asia, the contest in the Indian Ocean will inevitably intensify. Their respective capabilities to project military force across the Ocean, to coerce or defend smaller regional States, and to establish an enduring strategic presence there, will determine the Asian balance of power. With the border crisis, China seems to have successfully fixed India’s gaze to the land border, at the expense of that more consequential competition over the Indian Ocean.
•Disengagement at PP15, and especially continued “disengagement and de-escalation,” has the potential to ameliorate this strategic trap. A progressively less urgent threat will tempt New Delhi to de-emphasise military readiness on the border. This could be a golden opportunity for Indian planners to work towards long-term military modernisation and political influence across the Indian Ocean region. But a likelier and riskier outcome is that decision makers will prioritise other, more politically salient issues, like gaining quick wins in the campaign for Atmanirbharta in defence industry — which may come at the expense of modernisation.
•Paradoxically, then, a cooling crisis on the border may teach India the wrong lesson: that the short-term expedient of greater readiness is enough to see off the Chinese threat. In fact, and especially for the strategic prize of the Indian Ocean region, the challenge posed by China cannot be met without long-term growth in Indian national capacity. That, in turn, requires coherent strategic assessments and the political will to balance readiness with modernisation.
📰 Rules for identifying criminals
What do the recently notified rules of the Criminal Procedure (Identification) Act, 2022 state? Is there scope for misuse?
•On September 19, the Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) notified the rules governing The Criminal Procedure (Identification) Act, 2022. The Act was passed in March by the Parliament. Until rules are notified, an Act cannot be implemented or come into force.
•The National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB) under MHA will be the one-stop agency for storing and preserving the data of arrested persons. The State governments can also store the data, but it shall provide compatible application programming interfaces for sharing the measurements or record of measurements with the NCRB.
•The notified rules state that samples of those detained under preventive Sections such as 107, 108, 109, 110, 144, 145 and 151 of the CrPC shall not be taken unless such person is charged or arrested in connection with any other offence punishable under any other law.
•On September 19, the Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) notified the rules governing The Criminal Procedure (Identification) Act, 2022. The Act was passed in March by the Parliament. Until rules are notified, an Act cannot be implemented or come into force. The legislation would enable police and central investigating agencies to collect, store and analyse physical and biological samples including retina and iris scan of arrested persons.
What is the legislation about?
•The Act seeks to repeal the Identification of Prisoners Act, 1920, which is over 100-years-old. The old Act’s scope was limited to capturing of finger impression, foot-print impressions and photographs of convicted prisoners and certain category of arrested and non-convicted persons on the orders of a Magistrate.
•The Statement of Objects and Reasons of the bill when it was introduced in Parliament said that new ‘‘measurement’’ techniques being used in advanced countries are giving credible and reliable results and are recognised world over. It said that the 1920 Act does not provide for taking these body measurements as many of the techniques and technologies had not been developed then. The Act empowers a Magistrate to direct any person to give measurements, which till now was reserved for convicts and those involved in heinous crimes. It also enables the police upto the rank of a Head Constable to take measurements of any person who resists or refuses to give measurements.
•As per the rules, “measurements” include finger-impressions, palm-print, footprint, photographs, iris and retina scan, physical, biological samples and their analysis, behavioural attributes including signatures, handwriting or any other examination referred to in Section 53 or Section 53A of the Code of Criminal Procedure, 1973 (2 of 1974). Though it has not been specified, analysis of biological samples could also include DNA profiling.
What about concerns that the Act will be misused?
•When the Bill was debated in Parliament in March this year, the Opposition members termed it “unconstitutional” and an attack on privacy as it allowed the record of samples of even political detainees.
•However, the rules notified on September 19 state that samples of those detained under preventive Sections such as 107, 108, 109, 110, 144, 145 and 151 of the CrPC shall not be taken unless such person is charged or arrested in connection with any other offence punishable under any other law. It can also be taken if a person has been ordered to give security for his good behaviour for maintaining peace under Section 117 of the said Code for a proceeding under the said Sections.
•The rules do not mention the procedure to be adopted for convicted persons.
Who will be the repository of the data?
•The National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB) under MHA will be the one-stop agency for storing and preserving the data of arrested persons. The State governments can also store the data, but it shall provide compatible application programming interfaces for sharing the measurements or record of measurements with the NCRB. The rules state that the NCRB will issue Standard Operating Procedure (SOP) for collection of measurements which would include specifications of the equipment or devices to be used, specifications and the digital and physical format of the measurements etc. The rules said that in case any measurement is collected in physical form or in a non-standard digital format, it shall be converted into standard digital format and thereafter uploaded in the database as per the SOP. Only authorised users could upload the measurements in the central database in an encrypted format.
What are the provisions for destruction of records in case a suspect is acquitted?
•The procedure for destruction and disposal of records are yet to be specified by the NCRB. The rules state that any request for destruction of records shall be made to the Nodal Officer who is to be nominated by the respective State Government. The nodal officer will recommend the destruction after verifying that such record of measurements is not linked with any other criminal cases.
📰 What ails the current approach to Ayurveda and what needs to be done
Valuable observations on health need to be delinked from outdated theories, implausible conjectures and superstitions. A dispassionate sifting through of the contents of Ayurveda’s ancient treatises is a prerequisite for their prudent practical use
•The National Medical Commission has proposed to integrate modern medicine with other branches such as Ayurveda and Homeopathy by establishing departments of Integrative Medicine Research in medical colleges. In this article dated July 11, 2022, G.L. Krishna elaborates on the need for a reform in the practice and teachings of Ayurveda.
•Ayurveda, India’s traditional medicine, has been in practice for close to three millennia. Even today, this ancient system serves the health-care needs of millions of Indians. The adaptation of a traditional knowledge-system for current use comes with its challenges, which, if dealt with lackadaisically, can endanger the welfare of its users. A few challenges that the Ayurveda establishment has for long failed to skilfully address are discussed here.
Speculations versus facts
•Ayurveda’s ancient treatises, for obvious reasons, cannot be expected to retain relevance in their entirety. They contain useful portions alongside obsolete ones. Therefore, a dispassionate sifting through their contents is a prerequisite for their prudent practical use. Valuable observations relating to health promotion and illness management need to be carefully sifted from outdated theories, implausible conjectures, and socio-religious superstitions.
•An example would make this point clear. While documenting its observations on the benefits of physical exercise, an Ayurveda classic notes: “A sense of ease, improved fitness, easy digestion, ideal body-weight, and handsomeness of bodily features are the benefits that would accrue from regular exercise.” These observations are as valid today as they were 1,500 years ago when they were first documented. But, such continued validity cannot be claimed for the physiological and pathological conjectures the same text contains.
•On urine formation, for instance, the text posits that tiny ducts from the intestines carry urine to fill the bladder. This simplistic scheme of urine formation has no role for the kidneys at all. Needless to say, this very outdated idea can have no place in current medical education except as an anecdote from history. Placing such conjectural ideas side by side with modern physiology and implicitly equalising the truth value of both is a serious malaise that has been plaguing the current approach to Ayurveda. Teachers of Ayurveda physiology have the unenviable job of constantly grappling with the difficulty of reconciling ancient speculations with established scientific facts.
Factors responsible
•Two main factors — one theoretical and the other epistemological — have led to this sad situation. The tridosha theory of Ayurveda is a rough-and-ready model that the ancients devised to systematise their medical experience. Clinical features of illnesses and therapeutic measures to manage them were all classified on the basis of this heuristic model. In the absence of a cogent understanding of the biological processes underlying health and illness, speculations on these topics were also woven around the same model. The theory thus has aspects that are heuristically tenable alongside those that are merely conjectural. Recasting the theory in a way that retains the relevant aspects while jettisoning the obsolete parts is a priority area in Ayurvedic research. The research centres under the Ministry of AYUSH (Ayurveda, Yoga and naturopathy, Unani, Siddha, and Homeopathy) have remained oblivious to this important work and their omissions have resulted in retaining the theory, lock, stock, and barrel. Consequently, outdated pathophysiological conjectures have become fossilised in the current approach to the subject.
•The other factor that has been instrumental in choking the renewal of Ayurveda is the widespread belief among its academics that ancient texts, by virtue of their being divined by sages in deep yogic states, retain timeless relevance. This notion of epistemic superiority has its roots in the hugely influential memorandum on the Science and Art of Indian Medicine authored by G. Srinivasa Murti. The memorandum formed part of two reports: of the Usman Committee (1923) and later, of the Chopra Committee (1948). The flawed idea, antithetical to the yukti-vyapashraya (reason-based) character of classical ayurveda, has kept the field from demystifying its theories and achieving the reforms long overdue. In short, the belief in epistemic superiority has dethroned ancient medical writings from being revisable scientific treatises into being dogmatic scriptures.
•A century ago, P.S. Varier of the Arya Vaidya Sala Kottakkal noted that the “ Sareerasthana (section on body structure and function in the Ayurvedic classics) must firstly be revised and made clearer and the remaining parts must be suited to it ( sic). Secondly, after this, the other important works should also be corrected. Necessary additions must be made either by translations or by collaboration with experts in portions still deficient.” Ironically, Varier’s submission also forms part of the Usman Committee report alluded to earlier. His suggestions though appear to have fallen on deaf ears. More recently, scholars such as Debiprasad Chattopadhyaya and Priyavrat Sharma have also drawn attention to the myth of epistemic superiority that has rendered Ayurveda texts non-revisable. But the Ayurveda establishment and its research centres have stayed intellectually inept to address the issue. What can enhanced funding do in a field that lacks a vibrant intellectual resource?
A renewed plea to reform
•A recent article in the Indian Journal of Medical Ethics has renewed the plea to reform and update Ayurveda. Titled “Confessions of an Ayurveda Professor”, the article is authored by Kishor Patwardhan, a faculty member of Banaras Hindu University, Varanasi. Prof. Patwardhan has candidly admitted that the anatomy and physiology contained in the Ayurvedic classics is mostly outdated and that the official approach to this subject is misguided. He has also disclosed the ecosystem-influences that made him adopt a wrong approach to the subject and the ill-effects this approach has had. While implicitly retracting his book Human Physiology in Ayurveda, he has called for a thorough change in the curriculum.
•This article also points out the flawed approach of making ancient concepts sound relevant by super-imposing current scientific findings upon them. In addition to resulting in a travesty of truth, such misinterpretations in a practical field such as Ayurveda carry the risk of leading to dangerously wrong clinical choices. While petitioning for a scientific scrutiny of Ayurveda’s foundational theories, the professor hopes that Ayurveda students get to unreservedly study current anatomy and physiology.
The basic truth
•The Ministry of AYUSH must wake up and take cognisance of the points made here. Academics drawing handsome salaries from government-run AYUSH institutes need to see how sinful it is to hand over an unprocessed proto-science to gullible youngsters and then mislead them into believing that it is a super-sophisticated advanced science. As a medical system, Ayurveda is valuable immensely for its observations, only marginally for its theories, and not at all for its speculations. The sooner the establishment comes to terms with this basic truth, the better.
📰 Trade tactics
Foreign trade policy revamp comes amid stuttering growth in key markets
•The Government will release a new foreign trade policy in the coming week, that could include measures to help push up goods and services exports as well as rein in the runaway import bill. The current trade policy was introduced in 2015. When its five-year term ended a week after the national lockdown to curb the pandemic, it was extended for a year considering the extenuating circumstances. However, the old policy’s extensions beyond March 2021, especially the current six-month stretch that drags its end-date to September 30, are not as understandable. Beginning the new policy in the middle of a financial year, unlike the traditional clean slate in a new fiscal year, is not ideal. Moreover, exports have been one of the few growth engines firing up the post-COVID recovery, so putting off a policy to bolster outbound shipments was baffling. Enunciating India’s strategy to cash in on a world seeking to become less dependent on China would also enable exporters (and importers) to plan their investments ahead. Last January, a WTO-compliant export incentive scheme was kicked off to refund domestic taxes to exporters, but the rates were only notified months later with a few sectors left out. Despite this completely avoidable uncertainty, goods exports touched a record $422 billion in 2021-22.
•This year, the Government expects goods exports to hit at least $450 billion, but growth has slipped to the low single digits over July and August, while imports have been over $60 billion each month since March. A global growth slowdown and recession fears in Europe and the U.S. do not augur well; and though order books are still full, many buyers are seeking to defer deliveries. The new policy will have to find ways to provide a leg-up to exports and address some of industry’s key concerns, including a buffer against rising interest rates. With revenues buoyant, it is also time to reconsider the stance to exclude key growth sectors such as pharma, chemicals, and iron and steel from the duty remission scheme. Having decided to keep away from the trade track of the Indo-Pacific Economic Framework for now, assertions that the Government has ‘no bandwidth’ left for new free trade pact negotiations though more countries are wooing it, and is seeking to slow talks with the Gulf Cooperation Council, are unnecessary. If there is a genuine constraint, a solution must be sought, perhaps, by roping in economic policy makers with residual bandwidth. But surely, there are better ways to drive home India’s rising clout than by driving away potential partner countries, however small.
📰 The failure of fire safety norms
The Secunderabad accident has brought back focus on illegal building structures
•The horrific fire accident on September 12 in Secunderabad, Telangana, in which eight guests of a hotel were asphyxiated, was just one among several occasions when debate on illegal structures gets stoked, only to die away eventually in the humdrum of urban life.
•Leaders, right from the mayor of the city up to the Prime Minister of the country, expressed sorrow over the mishap. For the common public, the accident and the whole line-up of regret to ex-gratia, was just a deja vu from six months ago, when 12 persons, all of them daily wage labourers from Bihar, died in a fire accident at Bhoiguda, another part of Secunderabad.
•In the recent incident, fire erupted in the basement of the structure, and the plumes of smoke enveloped the hotel in the upper floors, choking the guests. The basement was unauthorised, as also the top floor of the building, both of which represented gross deviations from the plan sanctioned by the civic body.
•A report by the Regional Fire Officer pointed out several irregularities, including absence of set-back spaces and escape routes, defunct fire-fighting equipment, spiral staircase around the elevator shaft, basement utilised illegally for commercial purposes, and absence of smoke management and emergency lighting. The building has been thriving for the past 8-9 years, under the protection offered by the Building Regularisation Scheme (BRS), 2015.
•Since 1998, the era of the joint State of Andhra Pradesh, the BRS has become a hope for deviant builders to circumvent the norms, and a pretext for successive governments to make money under the justification of ‘fait accompli’. The standard defence had been that the builder would go scot-free in case of any action, while the innocent occupants of the building would have to suffer for no fault of theirs.
•This went on till 2016, when the BRS announced by the Telangana State government the previous year was challenged in the High Court. The process then came to an abrupt halt, not before 1.13 lakh property owners submitted their applications seeking regularisation. The owner of the ill-fated building at Secunderabad where the fire occurred, was one of the applicants to the scheme. Though the process has been since stalled, the authorities have not taken any action against the deviations, except charging the owners double the normal amount of property tax and power bills.
Seeking safety clearances
•Applicability of fire safety norms is another gap through which several builders escape. As per the Telangana Fire Services Act, 1999, only residential buildings above 18 metres’ height and commercial buildings above 15 metres’ height are obligated to seek fire safety clearances. Almost all commercial establishments where fire mishaps took place in recent past did not fall into the category. The Secunderabad building, inclusive of all deviations, was one such. It was never inspected by the fire services until the accident.
•Amendment to the law to encompass commercial structures for fire safety inspections, irrespective of their height, will go a long way in ensuring compliance.
•A 2016 clause introduced into building norms was instrumental in preventing several fire mishaps in the making, by stipulating mandatory 10% mortgage of the constructed space of any multi-storeyed building with the municipal authorities as indemnity for compliance with rules. The clause, if extended to all commercial buildings irrespective of their size, could save many lives in the future.
•Enforcement is another key aspect with failure by the civic authorities writ large. Much fanfare preceded the launch of the Enforcement, Vigilance and Disaster Management (EVDM) wing four years ago, as an adjunct to the Greater Hyderabad Municipal Corporation (GHMC). After initial buzz against lack of fire safety in hospitals and pubs, the wing has been now reduced to slapping penalties against illegal flexi banners and boards.
•Special task forces were formed at zonal level of GHMC over a year ago, with the express mandate to crack the whip against illegal structures. Since then, enforcement has become nobody’s baby. Complaints against illegal structures go unheeded across various grievance platforms of the GHMC and the Municipal Administration. Continuance of such anarchy, incentivised by frequent regularisation offers, puts a big question mark on the very relevance of building norms.
📰 Shrinkflation
Shrinkflation refers to the tampering of a product while maintaining retail price
•Shrink inflation is when a product downsizes its quantity while keeping the price the same. For example, reducing the scoops of ice cream in a container or reducing the number of chips in a packet would count as shrinkflation. In other words, shrinkflation occurs when goods shrink in size but consumers pay the same price. It occurs when manufacturers downsize products to offset higher production costs but keep retail prices same.
The effect of inflation
•The effects of inflation on consumers' daily lives are numerous. Rent, food, gas, and other living expenses are some of the ways inflation negatively impacts consumers. Shrinkflation deceives consumers into believing that the brands they buy are not affected by inflation, since container and vessel sizes are reduced by very small amounts, saving manufacturers more money in the long run. From toilet paper to yogurt and coffee to corn chips, manufacturers worldwide are quietly shrinking package sizes without lowering prices.
•Shrinkflation occurs when materials or ingredients used to make products become more expensive and when there is intense competition in the market. As a result, instead of raising prices, they might just give you less of the product so as to maintain their profit margins. Companies think that they can keep profits rolling in by keeping the change under the radar — all while the consumer is unaware.
•Shrinkflation can occur in different ways. It’s not just the weight that will be compromised as it is not uncommon for companies to look for alternative options. If consumers are aware that the quantity is constantly declining, they would switch or change brands. To prevent this, a product can reformulate or remove ingredients while maintaining its price. For example, Cadbury Dairy Milk stopped using foil which it used to prevent chocolate from losing its quality and flavour in order to save expense. Though downsizing products reduces costs for manufacturers, it is an unfair practice toward consumers. It can lead to a loss of trust if companies fail to properly communicate with them. Shrinkflation can lead to customer frustration and deterioration of consumer sentiment towards a producer’s brand. However, it is quite common nowadays for producers to practise shrinkflation.
Various implications
•In the event of shrinkflation, it is more difficult to accurately measure price changes or inflation. Price points become misleading when the basket of goods cannot always be measured by considering the product size. Tackling shrinkflation means tackling inflation. In India especially, inflation is a complex phenomenon caused by several factors, such as demand-pull factors, cost-push factors, and structural factors. Therefore, we need a mix of macroeconomic policies to manage demand and supply, as well as address structural rigidities in the economy. In India, the Right to Information has been recognised as a consumer right under the Consumer Protection Act, 2019. This means that the consumer has the right to know the quality, quantity, potency, purity, standard, and price of goods. Therefore, the Central Consumer Protection Authority needs to bring some guidelines to inform consumers when the weight of a product is reduced, instead of letting consumers be fooled by companies.
