Editorials - 09-05-2022

The winds of change that have started from Saudi Arabia may just be embracing Indian Islam

A few days after Ram Navami and Hanuman Jayanti celebrations and a little before Jummatul Alvida (last Friday of Ramzan), the Yogi Adityanath government in Uttar Pradesh swung into action. Quoting a judgment of the Allahabad High Court, inMotilal Yadav vs The State of Uttar Pradesh , the government, in an even-handed manner, removed around 10,900 loudspeakers from various places of worship, with the initial focus being on the Chief Minister’s constituency (Gorakhpur), the Prime Minister’s constituency (Varanasi), besides Lucknow and Allahabad.

The early reports revealed that most places of worship, mosques and temples, were flouting the court order and using loudspeakers either without legal permission or above the prescribed decibel level. Within a couple of days, the campaign extended to towns in western Uttar Pradesh — Agra, Meerut, Ghaziabad, Muzaffarnagar, etc. In Agra, 756 loudspeakers were removed from various places of worship. At one go, around 90% of mosques and 85% of temples were found to be at fault.

A surprising response

The government action was met with a considerably mature response. There were no threats to hit the roads or approach the Supreme Court. There were no calls for rallies or even whispers of discrimination or appeasement. The lack of opposition from religious leaders and clerics surprised many. Maybe the images of destruction in the wake of bulldozer visits in neighbouring Delhi and Madhya Pradesh had had an effect. While the response from some Hindu priests was muted, the Muslim community was divided in its response.

For the past few years there has been a silent churning within the community on certain key issues such as the use of loudspeakers for ‘azaan’ (prayer call), use of public roads for Friday prayers, etc. A section has been volubly in favour of perpetuation of these concessions in a pluralist democracy, pointing to similar prayers and celebrations of other communities. That section involved in constant one-upmanship with the majority community is, however, fast losing numbers. A significant section has been on an introspective mode, preferring to do the right thing by law and religion. It is this section which found fairness with the government’s decision to ban or limit the loudspeaker usage in places of worship of all religions or curtailing public space for prayers. Drawing from the traditions of the Prophet, they reiterate that it is incumbent on the community to follow the law of the land, and one’s action should not discomfit others.

Then and now

The largely educated section, aware of the tenets of faith too, points out that at one time, the use of loudspeakers could be understood or allowed, as back in the 1960s and the 1970s, there were severely limited ways of communication. Mobiles were nowhere on the horizon; landline phones were rare and many houses did not even have a clock. One had to book an HMT wrist watch for weeks in advance. There were instances where a passer-by or neighbour dropped in just to ask the time. In Ramzan, the believers were often woken up by wandering mendicants, singing hymns and knocking at each door to remind them of time forsuhoor (pre-dawn) meal. However, those challenges ended many decades ago. In the age of Internet, mobiles and Islamic Apps on phones, it is no longer necessary for a muezzin to blare out the prayer invitation five times a day on a loudspeaker. In fact, many regular worshippers download Apps on their mobile which remind them of prayer time with ‘azaan’.

Interestingly, the ‘azaan’ on loudspeakers has often divided the community. Back in the 1960s and 1970s, the supporters of the Tablighi Jamaat, then beginning to have an international following, opposed the use of loudspeakers for the purpose of inviting the faithful to prayers. The largest Muslim organisation pointed out that the Prophet preferred the use of a high mound or hill for a person to climb and give out the prayer call. It may be recalled that back in the seventh century, shortly after Muslims had reached Medina from Mecca, the Prophet had to devise a way of inviting people to the mosque five times a day. Some of his companions suggested a bell could be rung to invite people for prayers. Others suggested a horn could be blown. A few others wanted a fire to be lit atop a hill as a mark of prayer time.

The Prophet turned down the suggestions as they were either being followed by Christians and Jews or were considered impractical. Finally, he asked Bilal, a Black manumitted slave, to learn the words suggested by Abdullah Ibn Zaid, a companion. Beginning with ‘Allah-u-akbar ’, the words together gave the complete text of the prayer call which Bilal was asked to pronounce from the top of the hill. In a strong statement for egalitarianism, the first ‘azaan’ was thus pronounced by a Black man without the sound of a drum or any other instrument or aid. This idea of the Prophet to call people from a height later led to the construction of tall minarets in mosques over the next many centuries. To this day, most medieval mosques in India, including the Jama Masjid in Delhi, have tall and robust minarets which a muezzin is supposed to climb to give the prayer call. It is this tradition which the Tablighi Jamaat wanted to maintain.

Competing calls

Much of it, however, changed from the 1970s, and by 1990s, mosques in Muslim neighbourhoods were seen to be competing in a game of higher volume for their respective ‘azaans’. Spurred on partly by the Babri Masjid-Janmabhoomi movement from the late 1980s, many mosques made it a status symbol to employ multiple loudspeakers pointing at different directions for the sound to travel all across. Many temples, incidentally, did the same, some even using loudspeakers forPrabhat pheris at dawn. In old cities of Hyderabad, Ahmedabad, Lucknow and Delhi with a sizeable Muslim population, it became almost impossible to respond to a solitary ‘azaan’ in peace as multiple mosques issued the same invitation at the same time, leading to more cacophony than spiritual rejuvenation. It is this noise, particularly at dawn (Fajr ) and dusk (Maghrib ) time that invited the attention of environment lovers who pointed out the health hazards due to increased noise pollution.

Incidentally, the situation is the same in much of the subcontinent. In Karachi and Lahore in Pakistan mosques use high volume on their loudspeakers; often one finds more than one ‘azaan’ call at the same time. In Bangladesh too, prayer calls are made on loudspeakers. It is not unusual to hear a prayer call from a mosque in either Pakistan or Bangladesh while watching a cricket match from either country. Recently, we had the unique spectacle of Australia cricket captain Pat Cummins tweeting about the experience of listening to ‘azaan’ in the mountains of northern Pakistan.

There is change

In Saudi Arabia and Malaysia, however, the winds of change have started to blow, with the authorities in both countries limiting the use of loudspeakers in masjids. Back in 2010 in Malaysia, Islamic authorities had issued a fatwa banning the use of loudspeakers for reading theKoran beforeFajr prayers in the morning. In 2015, an advisory was used to discourage the use of loudspeakers fortazkirah or religious narration.

In the summer of 2021, Saudi Arabia’s Ministry of Islamic Affairs put out an order for all loudspeakers to be set at only a third of their maximum volume. The Kingdom permitted the use of loudspeakers at this volume for extending invitation to prayer and forIqamah (second call at the commencement of prayer) and asked mosques not to use external amplifiers to broadcast their prayers in the neighbourhood. Similarly, the Kingdom asked the faithful not to use loudspeakers when they recite theKoran in the masjid as it was disrespectful to the book.

The winds of change that started from Saudi Arabia may just be embracing Indian Islam.

ziya.salam@thehindu.co.in



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Universities need greater funding, autonomy, and tolerance of activities by students and faculty

Are Indian universities under deliberate siege? Spending on higher education (as a % of government expenditure) has stagnated at 1.3-1.5% since 2012. Meanwhile, the Ministry of Education continues to push higher education institutions to increase their intake capacity by 25% (in a push to implement the 10% quota for economically weaker sections), while the Ministry of Finance has sought to ban the creation of new teaching posts (Mohanty Basant Kumar, September 2020). At the central level, student financial aid was cut to Rs. 2,078 crore in FY 2022-23 from Rs. 2,482 crore in FY 2021-22; allocations for research and innovation were down by 8%, reaching Rs. 218 crore. Our once-great institutions of learning are beset by multiple crises – a financial crunch at the university level, a deficit in research opportunities for faculty, poor infrastructure and learning outcomes for students; with any protests hit hard by police brutality and campus repression. Is an apathetic, bureaucratic state preventing universities from blooming?

Cash-strapped institutions

Investments in university infrastructure have shrunk. Most Indian universities and colleges have overcrowded classrooms, poor ventilation and sanitation, and unsatisfactory hostel accommodation. The Higher Education Financing Agency (HEFA), which provides funding for all infrastructure loans to institutions, saw its budget reduced from Rs. 2,000 crore in FY 20-21 to Rs. 1 crore in FY 21-22. Instead, universities have been forced to take loans, but have few avenues to tap into.

Even day-to-day running costs are hard to meet. The University Grants Commission (UGC) was allocated Rs. 4,900 crore in FY 2022-23 versus Rs. 4,693 in FY 2021-22, but stifled cash flow has led to delays in salary payments for deemed/central universities. Hence, most universities are running on a deficit — Madras University saw an accumulated deficit of over Rs. 100 crore, forcing it to seek a Rs. 88 crore grant from the State government (Raman A. Ragu, March 2022). Twelve colleges of Delhi University have seen a financial shortfall, with allocations by the state reduced by nearly half (for example, Deen Dayal Upadhayaya College was allocated Rs. 28 crore versus a requirement of Rs. 42 crore in 2021). Faculty members have faced salary delays for months, with salaries coming in weeks later (examples include Shri Lal Bahadur Shastri National Sanskrit University, Delhi University, Visva-Bharati University, Nagaland University and Jharkhand University (Mohanty Basant Kumar, February 2021; Ara Ismat, November 2020). This has led to cuts in discretionary spending – many colleges in Delhi are unable to afford subscriptions to basic databases and journals. There is an urgent need to increased funding, along with establishing dedicated funding streams for infrastructure grants/loans and financial aid. Universities can also be freed up to utilise other revenue streams such as start-up royalties and advertising.

Research grants have also shriveled up. Grants under the UGC’s minor and major research project schemes have declined from Rs. 42.7 crore in FY 2016-17 to Rs. 38 lakh in FY 2020-21 (Mohanty Basant Kumar, February 2022). India has over 1,040 universities, but just 2.7% offer PhD programmes, given paltry funding and poor infrastructure. The National Research Foundation (NRF), to improve research infrastructure in universities, has not yet been approved, and may have a limited budget ($5-6 billion spread over five years). Clearly, funding for research needs to rise significantly, with institutions like the NRF supplementing (and not replacing) existing schemes (including those from the Ministry of Science). Funding should also be allocated to enable course-based research experiences for undergraduates.

Fall in standards

Meanwhile, academic standards and processes are not being maintained. Examination paper leaks have become common – the Hindi examination of the National Eligibility Test of the UGC, which enables post-graduate students who pass to teach in State and Central colleges, was leaked in June 2021. Candidates have anecdotally highlighted examination centre operators charging Rs. 3 lakh per candidate to help them pass (Baruah Sukrita, July 2021). More recently, Veer Narmad South Gujarat University rescheduled exams for select B.Com and B.A courses after a paper was leaked. Such institutions have failed to protect the sanctity of their examinations. Improving this will require a decentralised approach, with universities allowed to take decisions on academic programmes, promotions, cohort size, etc.

India’s universities have historically been bastions of free expression and a hub of nationalism. The Central Hindu College (Delhi), inaugurated by Madan Mohan Malaviya, was a centre for political debate during the freedom struggle, with students and teachers joining the Quit India movement, and involved in the defence of Rash Behari Bose and Lala Har Dayal in 1915. Students from the college were also involved in helping resettle partition refugees in 1947. Queen Mary’s College, Chennai, is noted to have witnessed multiple pro-Quit India Movement protests. Students involved in these would often be detained on Marina Beach road penitentiary. More recently, students from Jawaharlal Nehru University, Banaras Hindu University, Delhi University, and Jamia Millia Islamia were associated with the anti-corruption movement, led by Anna Hazare. This delicate balance between the right to free expression and nationalism has been fostered across political regimes, with the leadership aware of the role of universities in strengthening democracy and civil society. And yet, of late, institutional apathy has given way to repression. Police action against students of select universities (JNU, Jamia Millia, for instance) for campus protests, along with arrests and incarceration, have cast a pall on free expression in campuses. Students and faculty members are routinely castigated as ‘anti-national’, among other epithets. We need to embrace tolerance for a diversity of views in our campuses – our students have formative experiences there and must have the space to define themselves as individuals. If free expression is not fostered, how will our universities champion critical thinking?

India’s higher education institutions exist in a funerary state. This is reflected in global rankings – there are just eight Indian universities in the Top 500 in the QS World University Rankings. The National Education Policy (2020) has sought to foster critical thinking and problem solving, along with social, ethical and emotional capacities and dispositions. Enabling this will require an encouraging ecosystem, with greater funding, autonomy and tolerance of universities (and activities by students/faculty). Without this, talented Indian citizens will continue to escape abroad, while policymakers lament India’s brain drain.

Feroze Varun Gandhi is a Member of Parliament, representing the Pilibhit constituency for the BJP



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Departures from substantive and procedural justice need deep scrutiny as the fallout could severely imperil governance

Centrality of justice in human lives is summed up in a few words by the Greek philosopher, Aristotle: “It is in justice that the ordering of society is centred.” Yet, a vast majority of countries have highly corrupt judiciaries.

Judicial corruption takes two forms: political interference in the judicial process by the legislative or executive branch, and bribery. Despite accumulation of evidence on corrupt practices, the pressure to rule in favour of political interests remains intense. And for judges who refuse to comply, political retaliation can be swift and harsh. Bribery can occur throughout the chain of the judicial process: judges may accept bribes to delay or accelerate verdicts, accept or deny appeals, or simply to decide a case in a certain way. Court officials coax bribes for free services; and lawyers charge additional “fees” to expedite or delay cases.

A distinction

Our focus here is on the functioning of and erosion of trust in the lower judiciary comprising high courts, and district and sessions courts. A distinction between substantive and procedural justice is helpful. Substantive justice is associated with whether the statutes, case law and unwritten legal principles are morally justified (e.g., freedom to pursue any religion), while procedural justice is associated with fair and impartial decision procedures. Many outdated/dysfunctional laws or statutes have not been repealed because of the tardiness of legal reform both at the Union and State government levels. Worse, there have been blatant violations of constitutional provisions. The Citizenship (Amendment) Act (December 2019) provides citizenship to — except Muslims — Hindus, Buddhists, Sikhs, Jains, Parsis and Christians who came to India from Pakistan, Bangladesh and Afghanistan on or before December 31, 2014. But this flies in the face of secularism and is thus a violation of substantive justice. A striking example of tortuous delay in the delivery of justice is the case of Lal Bihari. He was officially declared dead in 1975, struggled to prove that he was alive (though deceased in the records) and was finally declared alive in 1994 (Debroy, 2021). Thus, both departures from substantive and procedural justice need deep scrutiny. Alongside procedural delays, endemic corruption and mounting shares of under-trial inmates with durations of three to five years point to stark failures of procedural justice and to some extent of substantive justice.

Under the different regimes

All was not well with the lower judiciary under the United Progressive Alliance regime. According to Transparency International (TI 2011), 45% of people who had come in contact with the judiciary between July 2009 and July 2010 had paid a bribe to the judiciary. The most common reason for paying the bribes was to “speed things up”. There were “fixed” rates for a quick divorce, bail, and other procedures (Banerjee, 2012). The Asian Human Rights Commission (AHRC) (April 2013) estimates that for every Rs. 2 in official court fees, at least Rs. 1,000 is spent in bribes in bringing a petition to the court.

There is a scarcity of evidence on bribes and malfeasance under the National Democratic Alliance (NDA). A few broad-brush treatments are, however, worrying. Freedom House’s ‘Freedom in the World 2016 report for India’ states that “the lower levels of the judiciary in particular have been rife with corruption” (Freedom House 2016). The GAN Business Anti-Corruption Portal reports that, “[t]here is a high risk of corruption when dealing with India’s judiciary, especially at the lower court levels. Bribes and irregular payments are often exchanged in return for favourable court decisions” (GAN Integrity 2017).

Allegations of corruption against High Court judges abound. For example, Tis [Tiz] Hazari District Court Senior Civil Judge, Rachna Tiwari Lakhanpal, was arrested in September 2016 for allegedly accepting a bribe to rule in favour of a complainant in a case. Such examples are indicative of the widespread malaise of corruption in the lower judiciary. Worse, there are glaring examples of anti-Muslim bias, often followed by extra-judicial killings by the police. Anti-Muslim bias alone may not result in erosion of trust but if combined with unprovoked and brutal violence against them (e.g., lynching of innocent cattle traders) is bound to.

Case pendency

According to the National Judicial Data Grid, as of April 12, 2017, there are 24,186,566 pending cases in India’s district courts, of which 2,317,448 (9.58%) have been pending for over 10 years, and 3,975,717 (16.44%) have been pending for between five and 10 years. As of December 31, 2015, there were 4,432 vacancies in the posts of [subordinate court] judicial officers, representing about 22% of the sanctioned strength. In the case of the High Courts, 458 of the 1,079 posts, representing 42% of the sanctioned strength, were vacant as of June 2016. Thus, severe backlogging and understaffing persisted, as also archaic and complex procedures of delivery of justice.

Extreme centralisation of power in the Centre and a blatant violation of democratic values under the NDA have had disastrous consequences in terms of violent clashes, loss of lives, religious discord, assaults on academic freedom, and suppression and manipulation of mass media. Exercise of extra-constitutional authority by the central and State governments, weakening of accountability mechanisms, widespread corruption in the lower judiciary and the police, with likely collusion between them, the perverted beliefs of the latter towards Muslims, other minorities and lower caste Hindus, a proclivity to deliver instant justice, extra-judicial killings, filing first information reports against innocent victims of mob lynching — specifically, Muslim cattle traders while the perpetrators of violence are allowed to get away — have left deep scars on the national psyche. It may seem far- fetched but it is not, as these are unmistakable signs of abject failure of governance.

Our analysis reinforces this concern. While trust in the judiciary is positively and significantly related to the share of undertrials for three to five years under total prisoners, it is negatively and significantly related to the square of share of under-trials. However, the negative effect nearly offsets the positive effect. So, while trust in the judiciary marginally rises with the proportion of undertrials until the threshold (0.267) is reached, it decreases beyond that point as the proportion of under-trial inmates rises.

In sum, erosion of trust in the judiciary could severely imperil governance.

Vani S. Kulkarni is with the Department of Sociology, University of Pennsylvania, U.S.; Veena S. Kulkarni is with the Department of Criminology, Sociology, and Geography, Arkansas State University, U.S.; and Raghav Gaiha is with the Population Aging Research Centre, University of Pennsylvania, U.S.



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India, like the Chinese and Singapore governments, can earn much more from government investments

The Government of Singapore Investment Corporation (GIC) invests internationally in equities. It owned shares worth about Rs. 1.09 lakh crore at the end of March 2022 in India alone. Around the world, GIC investments amount to about Rs. 55 lakh crore. GIC is the eight largest wealth management fund in the world. The money doubled in real terms in the last 20 years. This money is also used by the government for public welfare. Another arm of the Singapore government, Temasek Holdings, has investments worth Rs. 22 lakh crore. Their investments dwarf some aspects of the Indian economy itself: the Indian government’s budget expenditure for 2022-23 is Rs. 39.45 lakh crore. The Singapore government’s investments are many times that.

China is doing the same. The Municipal Government of Hefei invested $787 million to acquire a 17% stake in Nio’s core business and shortly after that exited making a profit of 5.5 times its investment. By 2017, Chinese government-owned companies had invested Rs. 67.5 lakh crore in overseas companies. This is about 27% of India’s GDP.

Only disinvestment

Meanwhile, in India, we are disinvesting. The total market value of Indian government holdings is only Rs. 13 lakh crore, far less than China or even Singapore. Overseas holdings through these companies is negligible. The Navratna PSUs are performing well, but are being sold. Instead, can they invest overseas and increase their wealth as China is doing? In China, one company, the China National Petroleum Corporation, has assets of over $600 billion. There is no move there to disinvest. Perhaps the Chinese government wants to use the economic clout of its PSUs for its global ambitions. As China increases its global influence, India is bartering away one source of such influence – its ability to invest overseas and create greater economic clout.

The prevailing ideology that the government has no business to be in business is used to justify disinvestment. The real reason is the growing government deficit. Some key corporate investors are waiting in the wings to gain full control of India’s natural resources through these disinvestments. It is like killing the goose that laid the golden eggs. For instance, the total dividend earned by the Indian government through PSUs is Rs. 50,000 crore. If India learns from the Chinese and Singapore governments, it can earn much more from government investments as well. India uses a western ideology about government-owned companies, but forgets that what the West preaches is for others and what it practices is in national self-interest. The world’s list of top asset-holding PSUs includes the U.S., Israel and the European Union counties. But there are none from India.

India has allowed the baggage of inefficient PSUs to cloud its thinking. While the smaller and loss-making ones need to be disinvested, the profitable ones can be reformed. The only problem in India is archaic rules governing PSUs and political interference. There is excellent talent in the PSUs. Other talent from the private sector can also be brought in. Salaries for key top personnel should be in line with worldwide best practices, along with real accountability. The success of enterprises and startups shows that there is abundant managerial talent, which needs to be harnessed in national interest.

Learning lessons

If we avoid the smoke screen of ideology, there are many reasons for learning from other countries, notably Singapore. The first is national and public interest. The source of wealth has shifted from land to natural resources, to the industrial sector and now to the knowledge economy. Assets are largely in the financial markets today. There is enough and more wealth to be made there as wealth funds, well-known international investors and some other governments around the world are doing. If the Indian government invests like Singapore, that will give it much more funds than disinvestment ever can. Meanwhile, ownership remains intact. A few caveats are required. Singapore invests in long-term assets, and does not take risky decisions. Another powerful reason is managing government finances. India is raising taxes by the week, especially on diesel and petrol. The only avenue for revenue generation seems to be taxes. However, markets, wealth management and dividends are not explored. If markets create wealth, why can’t the government create it and use it for creating prosperity for the public?

India is capable of doing this if we look for talent from our financial markets rather than from the government only. The example from the 1980s in telecom, recent examples of Aadhaar, and the creation of a government platform called ONDC to increase marketing power of ordinary kirana stores shows how private sector talent can be harnessed for public good. There are well-known entrepreneurs and wealth managers in the stock markets. The government can surely use their talent for the greater public good.

Trilochan Sastry is Professor, IIM Bangalore



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Several questions have arisen about the need to create the district of Alluri Sitharamaraju

On April 24, around midnight, the Konta Area Committee of the banned CPI (Maoist) set fire to a private bus, after asking the 40 passengers in the bus to alight, on the National Highway near Sarivela in Chintoor agency area of the newly created Alluri Sitharamaraju district of Andhra Pradesh. As this incident took place despite the Maoist movement in this part of the region being at its lowest ebb, questions have arisen about the need to create this district.

The recent exercise of bifurcation and re-organisation of districts by the State government has led to the number of districts growing from 13 to 26. Alluri Sitharamaraju, which has a high tribal population and low population density, was created after carving out areas from the districts of Visakhapatnam and East Godavari. It is now the second largest district in Andhra Pradesh after Prakasam.

A number of issues persist in this district. According to conservative estimates, 80% of Alluri Sitharamaraju is said to be forested. area. The terrain comprising steep hills of the Eastern Ghats is difficult to navigate. About 50% of the district is yet to be connected by roads and communication lines. Every year, viral fever, dengue, chikungunya, typhoid and malaria affect the population. Deaths from these diseases are high as there are inadequate medical facilities in the region. Primary health centres and community health centres are far flung. There are several media reports about pregnant women and infants dying on their way to the nearest health centres, after being carried on makeshift ‘dolis’, as ambulances have no access to hundreds of villages in the district. The availability of good quality drinking water has been an issue in agency areas. Many villages continue to depend on polluted perennial streams. To make matters worse, the 11 mandals of Paderu, the administrative headquarters of the district, have gained notoriety in recent times for being the hub for ganja cultivation.

Since the late 1980s, the Maoists have enjoyed considerable sway in this area. Today, though the movement is far from powerful, there is fear that it could be revived as the district shares borders with Chhattisgarh, Telangana and Odisha, all of which are said to be part of the ‘Red Corridor’. The district is under the control of J. Satish Kumar, Superintendent of Police, who has four Additional Superintendents to man the vast district, with 30 police stations and five armed police outposts.

Alluri Sitharamaraju is rich in minerals. It contains reserves of bauxite and laterite and abundant reserves of semi-precious stones. But a small hint of mining can stir a hornet’s nest. The case of Niyamgiri in Odisha shows that overnight, with the patronage of the Maoists, a place can easily turn into a war zone.

While numerous issues already plague the region, carving out such a big district is detrimental to the basic idea of bringing administration closer to the people. The distance from Rampachodavaram to Paderu is around 240 km, it is 210 km from Chintoor to Paderu and 274 km from Yatapaka to Paderu. Travel from these areas to the district headquarters takes six to 10 hours. The district has 22 mandals with 11 carved out of Visakhapatnam and seven out of Rampachodavaram and four out of Yatapaka of East Godavari. Many serving and former bureaucrats have joined the people of Rampachodavaram and Yatapaka to suggest that a separate district be created out of their region with Bhadrachalam as the district headquarters. This will not only reduce travel time and solve logistical issues, but also ensure that the Adivasis get special care.

sumit.b@thehindu.co.in



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Proposed Constitution Bench hearingshould end the wrangling over NCT’s status

The complexities of the law governing the National Capital Territory (NCT) of Delhi will once again be under elaborate judicial focus. In what will be the third round of litigation in the dispute between the Union government and the Government of the NCT of Delhi, a Constitution Bench will embark on interpreting a couple of phrases in Article 239AA, which confers a unique status for Delhi. It would indeed seem unnecessary for another Constitution Bench after five judges had rendered an authoritative pronouncement in 2018 on various questions that arose from Article 239AA. However, the Chief Justice of India, Justice N.V. Ramana, has made it clear that the reference to a five-member Bench will be strictly limited to the interpretation of a couple of phrases that were not examined by the earlier Bench, and no other point will be reopened. Broadly, the 2018 verdict, through three concurring opinions, had ruled that Delhi was indeed a Union Territory, but the Lieutenant Governor, as the Administrator appointed by the President, should act as per the aid and advice of the Council of Ministers, in areas in which legislative power was conferred on Delhi’s Legislative Assembly. Under Article 239AA, except for police, public order and land, the Delhi Assembly can make law on all other matters in the State and Concurrent Lists ‘insofar as such matter is applicable to Union Territories’. The mandate of the hearing is to declare what this phrase means, and whether it is one more limitation on Delhi’s legislative, and by extension, executive powers.

The 2018 ruling limited the Lieutenant Governor’s domain by making it clear that not every decision required his concurrence. It had cautioned against the notion of representative democracy being negated, if legitimate decisions of the Council of Ministers were blocked merely because the Lieutenant Governor had a different view. The Lieutenant Governor’s power to refer “any matter” on which he disagreed with the elected regime did not mean he could raise a dispute on “every matter”. It is perhaps because of the underlying message that an unelected administrator should not undermine an elected administration that the Centre badly wanted a fresh reference to another Constitution Bench. It is indeed true that a split verdict by a two-judge Bench on the question whether ‘services’ fell under the Union government’s domain or the NCT government has flagged the absence of a determination in the Constitution Bench verdict on the question whether Entry 41 of the State List (services) is within the NCT’s executive and legislative domain. Entry 41 is not one of the excluded areas of legislation by the Delhi Assembly, but it has been argued that there are no services under the Delhi government and, therefore, it was not a matter applicable to the NCT at all. Settling this remaining question should give a quietus to the endless wrangling between the Modi government at the Centre and the Kejriwal regime in Delhi.



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As the Asiad is put off, athletes haveto rework preparations and priorities

In recent times, sport seemed to be breathing easy despite COVID-19’s long shadow. Yet, a surprising full stop has sprung up in a multi-disciplinary continental event with the postponement of the Asian Games at Hangzhou in China. That Shanghai has witnessed an outbreak which led to the enforcement of strict restrictions has obviously forced a rethink within the Chinese landscape. Scheduled to be held in September, the Asian Games needs a fresh window and the speculation is that like the Tokyo Olympics, which suffered a year’s postponement and was held in 2021, the Asiad too may spill over into 2023. In the current year featuring the World Championships, which was to be followed by the Commonwealth Games, the Asian Games was expected to be the big climax. This benchmark has now vanished, and athletes and sports bodies have to alter plans. Sportspersons train to gradually reach the ‘zone’ or the ‘peak’, when they maximise their chances of winning a coveted medal. It is linked to a monitored blend of training, nutrition and rest while the eye is locked on the event dates. However, a last-minute change scuppers even the best-laid plans and demands a recalibration from the concerned athlete, coaching staff and sports associations and nations.

The latest development offers a mixed bag for India, which finds better success rates in the Asiad and Commonwealth Games, unlike in the Olympics. But cutting across the varied spectrum of Indian sport, the indefinite postponement is seen both as a blessing and a curse. With the Asian Games serving as a qualification event for the Paris Olympics in 2024, Hockey India was initially mulling over fielding a second-string team at the Commonwealth Games and sending across its main squad for the Asiad. The apprehensions were centred around the difficulty of peaking twice in a year within a few months. But with China postponing the marquee event, a full-strength hockey outfit can now be sent to Birmingham for the Commonwealth Games. The same relief applies to other athletes too as they now have to focus only on the World Championships and Commonwealth Games. But for the 30-plus athletes eyeing a swansong, it would be difficult to stretch every sinew in the next year too. Runner Jinson Johnson, gold medallist in the 2018 Asiad, may have to train for an additional season. There are other complications as in the boxing calendar, 2023 competitions are the yardstick for Olympic qualification. An Asiad in that cycle would affect preparation. China had its reasons for the postponement, and the sporting world will need to rework preparations and priorities.



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Saigon, May 8: American Navy jets struck at a military base and training camp about 24 km west of Hanoi to-day, the American Command announced. Radio Hanoi said two of the planes were shot down, but the Command denied it. The command announced the raids within hours of a Hanoi broadcast which charged that the actual targets were dikes and agricultural areas in the Red River delta south of Hanoi. By Hanoi’s account it was the fifth day of major raids above the demilitarised zone (DMZ). A U.S. Command spokesman said: “Tactical aircraft of the U.S. Navy to-day struck military targets approximately 24 km west of Hanoi. There were no B-52’s involved in the strikes. The tactical aircraft hit military targets which included storage facilities, barracks and training facilities which are helping to support the communist invasion across the DMZ. All U.S. aircraft returned safely from the strikes. No further details are available.” Highly reliable sources in Hanoi said American aircraft to-day attacked five provinces around the North Vietnamese capital.The sources said the official announcement was being withheld while the authorities tried to assess the damage, and a communique would be issued later.



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Prime Minister Indira Gandhi ended her two-day election tour of West Bengal with an attack on the Marxist idea of “one-party rule” to the exclusion of other non-communist parties.

Prime Minister Indira Gandhi ended her two-day election tour of West Bengal with an attack on the Marxist idea of “one-party rule” to the exclusion of other non-communist parties. Addressing rallies in North Bengal, she said the CPM-led government’s highhanded approach should be seen from this perspective. The Marxist Party branded her as “authoritarian” only to hide its “anti-democratic character”. In which communist country was there in existence a multiparty system as in India, she asked and then observed: “Marxism and democracy cannot go together.” The Prime Minister said that the Marxists commended certain countries as models for India. But, now these very nations were beset with insoluble problems providing the relevance of the “Congress pattern of development”, free from communist and capitalist systems. She accused the CPM of “wrecking democracy in West Bengal under the guise of protecting it”.

Britain’s Message

British High Commissioner to India, Sir John Thomson, met Foreign Secretary M K Rasgotra in New Delhi on Saturday and delivered to him a message from the British Government on the Falkland Islands crisis. In the message, Britain is believed to have underscored its stand that implementation of any ceasefire must be unambiguously linked to Argentine withdrawal from the Islands.

Zia’s Offer

Pakistan President General Ziaul Haq on Saturday offered to lift the nearly three-year-old curbs on political activities if the number of political parties was reduced to two or three major ones, Radio Pakistan reported. Speaking to journalists at Rawalpindi, General Zia said the future political setup of the country would be based on Islamic tenets.



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WHO’s excess mortality data stretches credulity. Yet, there’s no need to be prickly, India has its task cut out

The World Health Organisation’s (WHO) report on excess mortality due to Covid-19 has pegged the India figure at nearly 10 times the official toll at 47.4 lakh. As an analysis in this newspaper showed, this raises several questions. India’s death toll of 5.23 lakh so far is, most possibly an undercount, but the WHO’s data suggests that over 90 per cent of deaths in India have gone unreported. Even the base number of expected deaths (in a no-Covid scenario) for the year 2020 which the WHO has used in its report is almost nine lakh more than the average number of deaths recorded each year in India for the last 15 years. Still, the WHO estimates reflect similar numbers by many other agencies and are based on well-established mathematical models. How effective are these in getting close to what actually happened, capturing the several variables of a pandemic given India’s size and diversity — from high urban population-density Kerala to rural settings in other states — will always be open to question.

Counting the Covid dead is not a mere academic exercise. This effort is crucial to addressing the shortcomings of public health facilities and framing responses to future medical emergencies. It is also a vital part of the endeavour to heal the wounds of those who have suffered in the past two years. The Covid compensation exercise, under the watchful gaze of the Supreme Court, will, hopefully, encourage families to report their loss. Accurate information is paramount to the process, especially when, in a sharply polarised discourse, even science is contested. In the first month of the first pandemic year, an oft-quoted study said up to three million Indians could die by mid-April 2020. The author has since then back-tracked and acknowledged that his assumption of mortality rate was a little off the mark. The WHO’s record on Covid hasn’t been much to write home about. Its own study concluded that crucial time was lost in the fight against the virus because the global health agency delayed the announcement of an international emergency. It spent weeks persuading China to allow a team of international scientists to visit Wuhan after the outbreak. It then swung to the other extreme late last year after the relatively-less virulent Omicron began to infect people worldwide. Instead of educating the world about the nature of this new variant, it rang needless alarm bells.

That said, it would be, well, unscientific, to be prickly and attribute sinister motives to the WHO. Barely days ago, its Director-General Tedros Ghebreyesus and Prime Minister Narendra Modi launched the WHO Global Centre for Traditional Medicine in Jamnagar, that will play a key role as a “global repository” of traditional medicine practices across the world. What the WHO’s Covid death estimates underline is the need for India to further strengthen its death recording system, finetune its accuracy and transparency. In fact, the success of India’s vaccination programme has been facilitated by distribution and supply-chain processes on the ground, from the shop-floor to the primary health care centre, backed by a robust digital architecture of reporting and recording. Given the rapid digitalisation of social systems, this should translate to strengthening the Civil Registration System and Sample Registration System as well, the two main tools for recording births and deaths. Let the WHO and experts do their job, the Centre and state governments should do theirs.

This column first appeared in the print edition on May 9, 2022, under the title ‘Who’s counting’.



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For now, though, the consolation is that there is little to no inflation in pulses, sugar, onion, potato and most summer vegetables. To that extent, food inflation isn’t yet “generalised” in India.

A considerable part of the RBI’s statement accompanying its last week’s exceptional monetary tightening measures focused on the challenges arising from food inflation. That problem, till recently, was largely confined to edible oils (from soaring international prices even prior to the Russia-Ukraine war) and the likes of onion and tomato (due to unseasonal heavy rains). But now there is fear of food inflation getting “generalised”. The Food and Agriculture Organisation’s food price index has shown a 29.8 per cent year-on-year increase for April. Moreover, all commodity group price indices have posted huge jumps: Cereals (34.3 per cent), vegetable oils (46.5 per cent), dairy (23.5 per cent), sugar (21.8 per cent) and meat (16.8 per cent). Simply put, food inflation is already rising across-the-board globally — because of supply disruptions from the war, dry weather in South America, high crude prices inducing greater diversion of corn, sugar, palm and soyabean oil for bio-fuel, and so on.

The transmission of the above global inflation to domestic food prices basically depends on how much of a country’s consumption/production is imported/exported. Such transmission is evident in edible oils and cotton, where up to two-thirds of India’s consumption and a fifth of its production are imported and exported, respectively. The same is starting to happen in wheat. Till two months ago, the country seemed set to harvest a bumper crop and also surpass last year’s all-time-high exports. But with the heat wave from mid-March severely impacting yields, both public stocks and overall domestic availability are under pressure, even as open market prices have risen to export parity levels. Not surprisingly, the Centre has decided to slash wheat allocations and offer more rice under its flagship free-grains scheme. Export demand is, likewise, helping maize trade well above its minimum support price (MSP). But that, alongside higher oil meal prices, will also push up livestock feed costs and, in turn, translate into inflation in milk, egg and meat.

For now, though, the consolation is that there is little to no inflation in pulses, sugar, onion, potato and most summer vegetables. To that extent, food inflation isn’t yet “generalised” in India. Sugar is one commodity where retail prices haven’t gone up much, despite record exports by mills. The reason for it is production also hitting a historic high. In short, while global food inflation is a reality, the only way to contain the effects of it getting “imported” is to step up domestic production. That would call for early announcement of kharif MSPs with credible procurement plans for oilseeds and pulses; ensuring timely availability of seed, fertiliser, crop protection chemicals and credit by actively engaging the industry; and not resorting to knee-jerk export bans or stocking controls, which will only disincentivise producers.

This column first appeared in the print edition on May 9, 2022, under the title ‘Eye on the plate’.



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Aakash Joshi writes: A wedding function to a party adrift, shrinking him suits its politics

Just for a minute, let’s forget about his name. A leader of the Congress went to a party as part of a friend’s wedding celebration. The BJP — which has six times the number of Lok Sabha MPs than the Congress, and rules in several more states — and its social media warriors went into overdrive. The wedding guest’s morality was questioned, and many accused him of working against the national interest by attending a social function with the Chinese envoy. The latter accusation, like much of what is said on the internet, turned out to be false.

The reason for the overreaction is not just that a politician went to a nightclub. It makes sense only because that politician is Rahul Gandhi.

The images from the club came at a bad time for the Congress: The party’s eight-year-long crisis was underlined once more with Prashant Kishor deciding not to help with its revival late last month. And at pivotal political moments in recent times — when the Punjab Assembly election campaign kicked off in December 2021 or when the Congress took out a peace march during the 2020 Delhi riots — Rahul Gandhi has been missing in action, often on trips abroad.

Yet, his style of working is not, in essence, the business of either the BJP or the government. Rahul holds no public office of concern to anyone but the voters of Wayanad constituency. Why, then, has India’s most dominant political force been obsessed with a diminished leader from the Opposition?

For the Hindutva Right’s political juggernaut, the obsessive demonisation of Rahul Gandhi yields dividends. Yet, this constant targeting isn’t just a matter of tactics and political convenience. For all his faults, the leader represents — in however shrunken a manner — a significant ideological and political challenge to the RSS-BJP.

Rahul Gandhi’s denigration taps into popular discontent. That many political leaders — including a substantial number from the BJP — are dynasts does not detract from the fact that the descendants of Nehru appear to have a stranglehold on the party of the freedom struggle. Just as the House of Windsor is the lynchpin of Britain’s ossified, regressive class structure, the Nehru-Gandhis have come to signify a lack of social mobility for the youth — the fact that descent, not achievement is enough to guarantee a career in politics.

For the BJP, especially since the ascent of Narendra Modi, Rahul Gandhi provides the most convenient juxtaposition to further a cult of personality. The PM is self-made, hard-working, openly and almost militantly Hindu, always present, a nationalist. Rahul (in the Right’s view) is a dilettante politician, a descendant, eschews responsibility, is of mixed heritage, holds up “pseudo-secularism”. Despite the fall in Rahul Gandhi’s popularity, it is useful for the BJP to present him as the alternative on the national stage to strengthen the TINA factor. Would the BJP leadership compare as favourably with Mamata Banerjee — a politician risen from the streets — or even M K Stalin or Jagan Reddy, who are both sons of leaders but do not have either the “elite” or “outsider” tag? Rahul Gandhi’s demonisation by the ruling forces has as much, if not more, to do with his background as it does with his political failures.

And that background — and Rahul himself — still carries with it an alternative idea that can challenge the BJP’s “New India”.

On the ideological front, it appears at first glance that the RSS-BJP’s dominance is verging on the hegemonic. Regional parties and leaders that challenge the BJP electorally in the states have competing interests and lack coherence at the level of ideas. The Congress too appears ill-equipped to battle the BJP. After all, senior leaders have jumped ship, and its “soft Hindutva” tactics show a poverty of ideas. Yet, the Congress remains — in however vestigial a form — the only party with a national presence that can rival the BJP. As Suhas Palshikar argued (IE, April 30), the “Congress space” is still relevant, even if the Congress seems to be less so. It is the centrism of the “Congress space” that can act as an ideological glue to sustain a national coalition of non-BJP parties.

Unfortunately, that space — a liberal, federal idea of India — seems to be of no concern to many Congress leaders. Too many are willing to back the BJP line on issues like the Ram Mandir and J&K’s constitutional status. Not enough have either national name recognition or a mass base. It is in this regard that Rahul Gandhi presents a potent challenge.

Unlike, say, a Jyotiraditya Scindia, he cannot be poached. He cannot abandon the Congress and the ideals it once represented — Rahul cannot abandon Nehru’s secularism or Indira Gandhi’s “garibi hatao” because to do so would be to deny his raison d’etre as a politician. In that sense, he is perhaps one of the few significant implacable foes for the BJP that stands in the way of a “Congress-mukt Bharat”. Best, then, to keep the focus on the name.



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Rajeswari Sengupta writes: RBI's surprise move raises questions over its objective. Its mandate is to target inflation, not shore up rupee

The Reserve Bank of India normally makes policy announcements in line with a well-defined schedule. But on May 4, it unexpectedly tightened monetary policy, increasing its policy interest rate and reducing liquidity in the banking system. Markets were taken aback by the announcement with the 10-year government bond yield jumping by 25 basis points to reach 7.38 per cent. Why did the RBI do this? Even after the governor’s careful explanations, the answers remain unclear.

At one level, the answer is obvious: Inflation pressures are rising. Since the last MPC meeting of April 8, headline CPI (consumer price index) inflation has gone up from 6.1 per cent to 7 per cent, and the forthcoming inflation numbers are expected to be even worse. Clearly, the RBI had to respond. So, it raised the policy repo rate by 40 basis points to 4.4 per cent and increased the cash reserve ratio by 50 basis points to 4.5 per cent.

This explanation, however, does not seem entirely adequate because nothing fundamental has changed since the last policy meeting. Even back then, it was obvious that inflation pressures were rising — the wholesale price index (WPI) was already in double digits, inflation in the US and Europe was increasing, commodity prices were spiking due to the Russia-Ukraine war, and supply chain constraints were tightening as China imposed severe lockdowns to deal with a resurgence of the Covid-19 pandemic. But the RBI did not think that these pressures warranted policy tightening.

What made the RBI change its mind? Under the inflation-targeting framework, the central bank’s thinking is typically revealed by its inflation forecast. If it projects that inflation will be above target for some time, it implies that the central bank is concerned about rising prices and will be taking action to bring inflation down. In the last policy review, the RBI projected that inflation would moderate at 5 per cent by the end of the fiscal year, somewhat higher than the 4 per cent objective, but not unduly so, thereby explaining why it saw no need to tighten at that time.

Presumably, the RBI now thinks that the inflation pressures will either be more intense or more durable than it had earlier expected. And the RBI felt that its policy stance was now “behind the curve”, meaning that urgent action was needed to quell these pressures. Otherwise, it would have waited till the next MPC meeting on June 8 to increase the repo rate. But it is impossible to know whether this was really the motivation as the RBI didn’t release a revised inflation forecast — and because other explanations are also possible.

One possibility relates to the exchange rate. The US Federal Reserve was expected to announce a 50 basis point increase in interest rates later that day. So, it is possible that the RBI wanted to jump ahead of this announcement by announcing its own 40 basis point rate increase, maintaining (more or less) the interest differential against the US dollar and thereby keeping the dollar-rupee exchange rate relatively stable.

It’s not obvious why exchange rate stability would be a priority for the RBI. After all, its legal mandate is to achieve an inflation target, not an exchange rate. But the RBI does seem determined to limit the rupee’s depreciation. The April 8 statement highlighted that India’s foreign exchange reserves had increased to $607 billion at the end of 2021-22. In contrast, the May 4 statement mentioned that India’s foreign exchange reserves now amount to $600 billion — a decline of $7 billion. Clearly, the RBI has been intervening in the foreign exchange market to stem the rupee depreciation. So, it appears plausible that the unexpected increase in the policy rate was done to defend the currency against further depreciation pressures.

There are, then, two potential explanations for the RBI’s sudden move. Both have rationales, but both also have costs. Consider the first possibility that the RBI has now radically revised its inflation forecast (without, of course, releasing the same). Inflation targeting works best if monetary policy is predictable, with interest rate actions being announced on a regular schedule, based on clearly-explained inflation forecasts. On the contrary, sudden moves convey the message that the RBI is getting worried that it is no longer in control of the inflation situation, which is hardly a reassuring signal to send to the markets.

Next, consider the possibility that the RBI wanted to keep the exchange rate stable. The problem is that India is facing an adverse terms of trade shock in the form of rising oil prices, which is putting pressure on the current account deficit. If the RBI allowed the exchange rate to depreciate in response, this would alleviate the current account deficit. Perhaps more importantly, depreciation would help the nascent recovery by ensuring that exports can continue to grow, despite the difficult international circumstances. And there is the additional problem that targeting the exchange rate violates the RBI’s legal mandate.

The RBI now faces a difficult task in the months ahead. At the broadest level, it needs to address the costs of its surprise announcement by reinforcing the credibility of the inflation-targeting framework. Specifically, it will need to focus — and be seen to be doing so — squarely on its inflation target, rather than the exchange rate or any other objectives. And it will need to convince the public that it is actually trying to get inflation under control.

To do this, it will need to continue to tighten policy, but in a gradual, predictable and transparent manner.

This column first appeared in the print edition on May 9, 2022, under the title ‘Question of timing’. The writer is associate professor of Economics, IGIDR



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M Y Tarigami writes: In the first place, the exercise was carried out under the J&K Reorganisation Act, 2019 and not in accordance with the Delimitation Act, 2002, which called for the 2001 census to be used as the basis for remapping poll constituencies.

The Delimitation Commission formed to remap the electoral constituencies in Jammu and Kashmir submitted its final report after two years. The Commission’s recommendations clearly reflect that the panel has gerrymandered the territorial constituencies to advance the electoral aspirations of the ruling party.

In the first place, the exercise was carried out under the J&K Reorganisation Act, 2019 and not in accordance with the Delimitation Act, 2002, which called for the 2001 census to be used as the basis for remapping poll constituencies.

This is not the only anomaly. In 2002, the Constitution of India was amended, deferring the delimitation of the constituencies until the first population Census is undertaken after 2026. Accordingly, the J&K Assembly amended the state constitution through the 29th Amendment deferring the delimitation process till 2026. The Delimitation Commission was set up under the Delimitation Act of 2002 — however, it has re-drawn the constituencies in accordance with the provisions of the J&K Reorganisation Act 2019, which increased the number of seats by seven without any basis and criteria.

The Commission considered the 2011 Census for delimiting the territorial constituencies. However, there was scant regard for the population, a cardinal parameter for any delimitation process.

According to the 2011 Census, the population of the Kashmir region is 68,88,475; Jammu has a population of 53,78,538; and Ladakh, which is now a separate Union territory, has 2,74,289 people. The Commission has allocated six extra seats to Jammu and only one to Kashmir. With this, Jammu will have 43 seats and Kashmir 47 in the assembly of 116 seats.

In effect, this means that with 44 per cent of the population, Jammu will get 48 per cent of the seat share, while Kashmir, with 56 per cent of the population, will get only 52 per cent share in seats. This arrangement is designed to create a disparity in regional representation.

The people as well as the political leaders in the region are unable to comprehend what, if any, objective criteria were employed by the Commission for this bizarre apportioning of seats. Despite the objections of various political parties, including the associate members, the panel went ahead with its pre-determined plans, riding roughshod over the aspirations of the people.

In 2002, when the J&K government placed a moratorium on the delimitation of assembly constituencies until 2026, it was accepted that the process must take place in step with the rest of the country. The freeze was also upheld by the Supreme Court. But the BJP, which tom-toms that it has “integrated” J&K with India, has done the opposite by using a different yardstick for the delimitation of seats in J&K.

Thus, a malodour hangs over the entire exercise. Ever since the central dispensation read down the special constitutional provisions of J&K and broke the region into two Union territories, it has been making unceasing efforts to change the electoral demography of the region.

The BJP government went ahead with the delimitation process despite a clutch of writ petitions challenging the Jammu and Kashmir Reorganisation Act, 2019, pending before the Supreme Court, under which the entire delimitation exercise was carried out.

The BJP’s dismal electoral performance in the region has spurred it to go for an early readjustment of poll boundaries. Despite fielding its candidates on multiple seats, the party has never been able to bag a single seat from the Valley. During the 2020 district development elections, the party took a drubbing in the Valley.

The recommendations of the Delimitation Commission are completely in line with the BJP’s policy of creating an electoral autocracy in J&K as most of the seats were carved out in Hindu-dominated areas. The overhauling of the existing territorial boundaries of the constituencies has significantly brought down the electoral representation of Muslims in the Jammu region. For example, Doda was allotted an additional seat, taking the number of total assembly segments in this Chenab Valley district to three. But of them, two seats are carved out of Hindu-dominated areas despite the district having a Muslim population of over 53 per cent.

The Commission’s assertions that it had taken the topography terrain and accessibility into account are without reason. The panel has recommended the merging of the Jammu division’s Rajouri and Poonch districts with the Anantnag Lok Sabha seat, thus carving out an Anantnag-Rajouri parliamentary constituency. But there is almost no geographical connectivity between the two regions as they are separated by the Pir Panjal mountains.

The historic Mughal road, which is the shortest route connecting Poonch and Rajouri districts via Shopian to the Valley, remains shut for at least six months a year. Shopian, on the other hand, which is comparatively nearer Rajouri has been made part of the Srinagar Lok Sabha constituency. Moreover, these separate regions do not share common aspirations, as they are culturally and linguistically distinct. This peculiar readjustment of poll boundaries is beyond comprehension.

The BJP government has pursued divisive politics in J&K by pitting one region against the other and creating cleavages between communities. It has been manipulating and manoeuvring the situation to its advantage since August 5, 2019. The J&K Reorganisation Act modified the law of enfranchisement of J&K. Voting rights for the state assembly, which were restricted to only permanent residents, have been extended to non-state subjects. The redrawing of poll constituencies is of a piece with all this. It will deepen the communal and regional divide in J&K and is bound to disempower the people and will have deleterious effects on the political landscape of Jammu and Kashmir.

This column first appeared in the print edition on May 9, 2022, under the title ‘Dividing lines’. The writer is the former CPI(M) MLA from J&K. He is the Convenor and Spokesperson of the People’s Alliance for Gupkar Declaration



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Ashok Gulati and Ritika Juneja write: Fear mongering over wheat production must not push the government towards an export ban, especially on cereals the prices of which are at an all-time high

The RBI team led by Governor Shaktikanta Das must be complimented for raising the repo rate by 40 basis points (bps) and the cash reserve ratio (CRR) by 50 bps with a view to tame inflation. High inflation is always an implicit tax on the poor and those who keep their savings in banks. The real value of their savings gets depreciated with every round of inflation as interest on deposits is often far below the inflation rate. So, controlling inflation is an important mandate of the RBI. The question that arises is: Will the increases in the repo rate and CRR control inflation, especially food inflation? The short answer is, “not yet”. Our assessment of the situation is that the RBI has been behind the curve by at least by 4-to 5 months, and its optimism in controlling inflation in the earlier meetings of the Monetary Policy Committee was somewhat misplaced. If the RBI has to make up for lost time, it will have to repeat this feat of raising repo rates and CRR by at least three more times in this fiscal year (FY23) to mop up excess liquidity in the system. Even then, it may be difficult to rein in food inflation, which is surging faster than the overall consumer price index (CPI).

The reason for this is simple. Food prices globally are scaling new peaks as per the FAO’s food price index. The disruptions caused by the pandemic and now the Russia-Ukraine war are contributing to this escalation in food prices. India cannot remain insulated from this phenomenon. While on the one hand, it has opened opportunities for Indian farm exports, on the other hand, it has posed challenges as import prices of edible oils and fertilisers surge.

Let us focus here on cereals, which have the greatest weight in India’s food CPI. For the first time in the history of Indian agriculture, cereal exports have already crossed a record high of 31 million metric tonnes (MMT) at $13 billion (FY22), and the same cereal wonder may be repeated this fiscal (FY23). Among cereals, wheat exports have witnessed an unprecedented growth of more than 273 per cent, jumping nearly fourfold from $0.56 billion (or 2 MMT) in FY21 to $2.1 billion (or 7.8 MMT) in FY22 (see figure). Commerce and Industry Minister Piyush Goyal is upbeat on agri-farm exports, which overall have crossed $50 billion for the first time in FY22. On wheat, while the government has set a target of 10 MMT for exports in FY23, Goyal in a recent interview said that it may go even up to 15 MMT. This has raised fears amongst many about whether India can export 10 to 15 MMT in the face of the scaling down of the production estimate of the current crop from 111 MMT to 105 MMT due to the heatwave, and the massive drop in procurement in the ongoing season due to higher market rates compared to MSP. However, there is very little talk about rice exports, which have crossed 20 MMT in FY22 in a global market of 50 MMT. That’s a much bigger wonder than wheat.

Some of the concerns on the wheat front are genuine, and we need to realise that climate change is already knocking on our doors. With every one degree Celsius rise in temperatures, wheat yields are likely to suffer by about 5 MMT, as per earlier IPCC reports. This calls for massive investments in agri-R&D to find heat-resistant varieties of wheat and also create models for “climate-smart” agriculture. We are way behind the curve on this. But we are way ahead of the curve in distributing free food to 800 million Indians, with a food subsidy bill that is likely to cross Rs 2.8 lakh crore this fiscal out of the Centre’s net tax revenue of about Rs 20 lakh crore in FY23. Can Goyal, who is rightly upbeat on agri-exports also rationalise the public distribution system and PMGKAY, as food minister, targeting only those below the poverty line for free or subsidised food and charging a reasonable price, say 90 per cent of MSP, from those who are above the poverty line. The bottom line is: He has to effectively target the massive food subsidy and save resources for the higher import bill on edible oils and fertilisers. Inflation in edible oils has been running amok — to double digits — for a long time, and there has been no relief for consumers on that front.

In the wake of likely lower production and procurement of wheat this year, Goyal has done well to substitute more rice in the PMGKAY, and may also do so in NFSA allocations. We would suggest giving an option to beneficiaries to receive cash in their Jan Dhan accounts (equivalent to MSP plus 20 per cent) in lieu of grains. This is permitted under NFSA and by doing so, he can save on the burgeoning food subsidy bill.

Goyal also needs to ward off any fear-mongering over wheat that can push him towards an export ban. That would be the worst thing he could do. It would be an anti-farmer move. The problem with our earlier policymaking has been that it is heavily biased towards protecting the consumers in the name of the poor by suppressing prices for farmers through choking markets — through imposing stock limits on traders, putting minimum export prices or outright bans on exports. He must avoid that route, and let agri-exports flourish. Indian farmers need access to global markets to augment their incomes, and the government must facilitate Indian farmers to develop more efficient export value chains by minimising marketing costs and investing in efficient logistics for exports.

This column first appeared in the print edition on May 9, 2022, under the title ‘The cereal wonder’. Gulati is Infosys Chair Professor and Juneja is consultant at ICRIER



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Amarjeet Sinha writes: There has been a pro-poor thrust in government programmes that involved building trust through community mobilisation

A recent World Bank Report has shown that extreme poverty in India more than halved between 2011 and 2019 – from 22.5 per cent to 10.2 per cent. The reduction was higher in rural areas, from 26.3 per cent to 11.6 per cent. The rate of poverty decline between 2015 and 2019 was faster compared to 2011-2015.

In an earlier article (‘A greater ease of living,’ IE, November 20, 2019), I had argued that poverty has reduced significantly because of the current government’s thrust on improving the ease of living of ordinary Indians through schemes such as the Ujjwala Yojana, PM Awas Yojana, Swachh Bharat Mission, Jan Dhan and Mission Indradhanush in addition to the Deendayal Antyodaya Yojana-National Rural Livelihood Mission and improved coverage under the National Food Security Act.

While debates on the World Bank’s methodology continue to rage, it is important to understand how poverty in rural areas was reduced at a faster pace. Much of the success can be credited to all government departments, especially their janbhagidari-based thrust on pro-poor public welfare that ensured social support for the endeavour. It will nevertheless be useful to delineate the key factors that contributed to the success.

First, the identification of deprived households on the basis of the Socioeconomic and Caste Census (SECC) 2011 across welfare programmes helped in creating a constituency for the well-being of the poor, irrespective of caste, creed or religion. The much-delayed SECC 2011 data was released in July 2015. This was critical in accomplishing the objectives of “Sabka Saath, Sabka Vikas”. Since deprivation was the key criterion in identifying beneficiaries, SC and ST communities got higher coverage and the erstwhile backward regions in Bihar, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, Uttar Pradesh, Jharkhand, Odisha, Chhattisgarh, Assam, Rajasthan and rural Maharashtra got a larger share of the benefits. This was a game-changer in the efforts to ensure balanced development, socially as well as across regions. Social groups that often used to be left out of government programmes were included and gram sabha validation was taken to ensure that the project reached these groups.

Second, the coverage of women under the Deendayal Antyodaya Yojana and Self Help Groups (SHG) increased from 2.5 crore in 2014 to over 8 crore in 2018 as a result of more than 75 lakh SHGs working closely with over 31 lakh elected panchayati raj representatives, 40 per cent of whom are women. This provided a robust framework to connect with communities and created a social capital that helped every programme. The PRI-SHG partnership catalysed changes that increased the pace of poverty reduction and the use of Aadhaar cleaned up corruption at several levels and ensured that the funds reached those whom it was meant for.

Third, Finance Commission transfers were made directly to gram panchayats leading to the creation of basic infrastructure like pucca village roads and drains at a much faster pace in rural areas. The high speed of road construction under the Pradhan Mantri Gram Sadhak Yojana created greater opportunities for employment in nearby larger villages/census towns/kasbas by improving connectivity and enhancing mobility.

Fourth, the social capital of SHGs ensured the availability of credit through banks, micro-finance institutions and MUDRA loans. The NRLM prioritised livelihood diversification and implemented detailed plans for credit disbursement. New businesses, both farm and non-farm livelihoods, were taken up by women’s collectives on a large scale with community resource persons playing crucial handholding roles, especially with respect to skill development. Fifth, in the two phases of the Gram Swaraj Abhiyan in 2018, benefits such as gas and electricity connections, LED bulbs, accident insurance, life insurance, bank accounts and immunisation were provided to 6,3974 villages that were selected because of their high SC and ST populations. The implementation of these schemes was monitored assiduously. The performance of line departments went up manifold due to community-led action. The gains are reflected in the findings of the National Family Health Survey V, 2019-2021.

Sixth, the thrust on universal coverage for individual household latrines, LPG connections and pucca houses for those who lived in kuccha houses ensured that no one was left behind. This created the Labarthi Varg. Seventh, this was also a period in which a high amount of public funds were transferred to rural areas, including from the share of states and, in some programmes, through extra-budgetary resources.

Eighth, the thrust on a people’s plan campaign, “Sabki Yojana Sabka Vikas” for preparing the Gram Panchayat Development Plans and for ranking villages and panchayats on human development, economic activity and infrastructure, from 2017-18 onwards, laid the foundation for robust community participation involving panchayats and SHGs, especially in ensuring accountability.

Ninth, through processes like social and concurrent audits, efforts were made to ensure that resources were fully utilised. Several changes were brought about in programmes like the MGNREGS to create durable and productive assets. This helped marginal and small farmers in improving their homesteads, and diversifying livelihoods.

Tenth, the competition among states to improve performance on rural development helped. Irrespective of the party in power, nearly all states and UTs focussed on improving livelihood diversification in rural areas and on improving infrastructure significantly.

All these factors contributed to improved ease of living of deprived households and improving their asset base. A lot has been achieved, much remains to be done. The pandemic and the negative terms of trade shock from the Ukraine crisis pose challenges to the gains made in poverty reduction up to 2019.

This column first appeared in the print edition on May 9, 2022, under the title ‘Welfare that changed lives’. The writer is a retired civil servant with 38 years in the social sector. Views are personal



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The appearance of Khalistan flags and graffiti outside the Himachal Pradesh legislative assembly complex has set off alarm and HP police have moved to seal off all inter-state border crossings to nab those behind the incident. The developments have also kicked off a political blame game amid the state preparing for elections later this year.

The politicking over national security is unhelpful. Rather, this is a time for coordination between police forces of all neighbouring states to identify those behind this incident and study whether there are underlying conditions, if any, for Khalistan groups to find renewed traction in Punjab or elsewhere. For this, Himachal and Punjab police must collaborate and improve their intelligence gathering and sharing mechanisms. Already, HP police have trained their sights on the banned Sikhs for Justice group and booked its leader under UAPA.

Unfortunately, politics over inter-state policing has hit a new low after the controversial arrest of Delhi BJP leader Tejinder Singh Bagga by the Punjab police and the confrontation between Haryana, Delhi and Punjab police that ensued. Relations between the AAP government in Punjab and the BJP governments in the neighbourhood are also rocky.

The upcoming elections where BJP, Congress and AAP are fancying their chances in HP will worsen the name-calling. Political parties must recall the huge cost India and Punjab paid until the Khalistan insurgency was defeated in the early 1990s. Attempts to foment fresh trouble must be nipped in the bud.



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The Supreme Court’s decision last year to hear pleas that the sedition law no longer passes constitutional muster was based on a strong concern about the “enormous power of misuse” of the law. But in its written submission to the court on Saturday, GoI has forcefully argued that the 1962 Kedar Nath judgment is “a good law”, “needs no reconsideration”, and the remedy for any abuse lies in preventing it on “a case-to-case basis”. In arriving at this position, GoI seems to sidestep the issue of how Section 124A IPC has become so synonymous with arbitrary application that abuse of law is now its default rather than fringe condition.

Between 2016 and 2019, for example, the number of cases filed under Section 124A rose by 160% even as the rate of conviction dropped to 3%. In one telling instance, a sedition case was so insubstantial that the Allahabad high court told the state and the police that, “the unity of India is not made of bamboo reeds which will bend to the passing winds of empty slogans. The foundations of our nation are more enduring.” In fact, instead of protecting these foundations 124A arguably weakens them. It discourages dissent, the safety valve of democracy. Questioning and critiquing are critical to keeping various democratic institutions responsive to citizen needs and holding them accountable.

GoI’s argument that the challenge to the 1962 constitution bench’s verdict should be decided by a larger bench originates in virtuous theory and praxis, and this may well be where the case is headed. But as for the “needs of the state” that it is defending, subsequent stringent legislations such as the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act, 1967 and the National Security Act, 1980 make an 1870 colonial and anti-Independence law superfluous.

What has to be recognised is that a law which has “withstood the test of time” is not by definition a good law. World over and in India progress has happened and continues to do so by overturning juridical traditions that fall out of step with evolving societal mores. Petitioners are right to say that there has been a sea change in jurisprudence since 1962. A sedition law whose vague language invites arbitrary and frequently motivated application, which is expedient for police or the state but oppressive for many citizens, is more than ready for binning. SC must rid India of a law the country doesn’t need.



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The decision to postpone the 2022 Asian Games, which was supposed to be held from September 10-25 in the Chinese city of Hangzhou, has taken the international sporting fraternity by surprise. While the current surge in Covid cases in China has been cited as the reason for the postponement, it is unlikely to be the sole factor. After all, China did host the Beijing Winter Olympics earlier this year in an extremely strict bio-bubble. And similar arrangements were planned for the Asian Games. Therefore, it’s quite possible that the latter was postponed because it was too close to the 20th Chinese Communist Party Congress and it would look bad for the Chinese leadership if the event turned into a super-spreader fiasco.

But what about India, which aspires to host major international sporting events? The Indian Olympic Association has confirmed it is interested in hosting the Olympics, while the Delhi government has said it aims to stage the Games in 2048. However, the infrastructure needed for such mega events remains elusive.

After all, bidding and hosting the Olympics, Asian Games or Commonwealth Games are expensive propositions. While countries like China do it for prestige, others like the UK and Australia see them as investments in domestic development. India is caught between the two – it grapples with budgetary constraints on the one hand, while poor execution results in marginal development gains. This is precisely what happened after the 2010 Commonwealth Games with all the upgraded infrastructure – from the Shyama Prasad Aquatic Complex to the velodrome at Indira Gandhi stadium – falling into disrepair and underutilisation. Add to this corruption and nepotism in various sports federations, and India’s overall sporting depth simply doesn’t make the mark. True, India will host the International Olympic Committee session in 2023 and it’s hoped this will open doors to hosting major events. But without a concrete and realistic action plan to boost overall sporting infrastructure and culture, little can be expected.



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The rules have been amended to provide banking licences on tap. But no licence for a universal bank has been issued since these were framed. The regulatory suspicion against corporate ownership of banks goes back to an era when they were nationalised.

India's bank credit growth is regaining its trend, led by lending to consumers, small businesses and farmers. Banks will again be lending half of every additional rupee earned by Indians at home or abroad. This ratio remains low by international standards, and the evolution of Indian banking is responsible for it. The pandemic collapsed credit demand. But even before that, GoI had to pump taxpayer money into the banks it owns to make them capable of lending after having accumulated a mountain of bad debt. Banks are in better shape to lend now. There are, however, not enough of them to go around, as Ajay Piramal noted at the ET Awards ceremony last weekend.

Infrastructure is an area where a large part of incremental credit must flow for an extended period. The gestation for highway, port and railway projects made it difficult for banks to finance them and shadow banking took over the role. Non-banking financial companies (NBFCs) worked in a less regulated environment till a series of defaults brought the bigger ones on a par with banks in terms of provisioning and disclosure requirements. Now, they have less reason to remain in the shadows when they can access cheap deposits as banks. HDFC, the country's largest mortgage lender, has announced its merger with its sister bank. Other NBFCs will be nursing similar banking ambitions.

The rules have been amended to provide banking licences on tap. But no licence for a universal bank has been issued since these were framed. The regulatory suspicion against corporate ownership of banks goes back to an era when they were nationalised. But for banking to grow these fears need to abate further. India has had mixed results with both corporate and government ownership of banks. GoI is on course to widen the public ownership of its banks in an effort to improve governance. A similar logic of diluted promoter holdings could well be the answer to corporate ownership. The corporate bond market remains underdeveloped, and banks have to take on the extra load of feeding the economy's credit needs.

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The commission must work with local authorities in Delhi and NCR in designing heat action plans. Many measures to deal with heat stress can help limit pollution. Combining expertise and effort will be an effective way to improve living conditions in the region. And this is the right time to do it.

Air pollution in the National Capital Region (NCR) is not a seasonal problem. The Commission for Air Quality Management (CAQM) in NCR and adjoining areas is enforcing a Graded Response Action Plan. This is a welcome change in approach. To improve air quality, the focus must be on limiting pollution at source.

Poor summer air quality is a serious public health issue. It exacerbates the adverse health impacts of heat. With Delhi-NCR experiencing repeated heatwave conditions, reduced pollution will have multiple benefits. Unlike the September-October season, pollution in the summer months is driven by dust. Recognising the seasonal variations in drivers of NCR's pollution load is critical to an effective pollution control plan. Road, construction and demolition dust account for 42% of PM10 (particulate matter with diameters of 10 micrometres and smaller) and 34% of PM2.5 in Delhi, and 38% (PM10) and 31% (PM2.5) in other NCR cities and towns. Controlling dust will reduce the region's pollution load, which, in turn, will reduce harmful secondary pollutants, or volatile organic compounds, formed when dust particles combine with chemicals, gas and moisture. CAQM must broaden the scope of solutions beyond mechanised sweeping. Alternatives include improved road design, creating road dividers and implementation of pollution control rules, particularly in construction. Greening public spaces will help reduce dust and mitigate heat.

The commission must work with local authorities in Delhi and NCR in designing heat action plans. Many measures to deal with heat stress can help limit pollution. Combining expertise and effort will be an effective way to improve living conditions in the region. And this is the right time to do it.

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A court-ordered survey of a section of the Kashi Vishwanath Temple-Gyanvapi Masjid complex in Varanasi has sparked off yet another controversy. What persuaded a local civil court to order the videography and inspection of the religious site was a demand to collect triable evidence as to whether Hindu religious structures were partially razed to build the 17th-century mosque. The plaintiffs, five Hindu women, have asserted their constitutional right under Article 25 to worship in the mosque area, where they say, various visible and invisible deities existed.

The court entertained the civil suit despite a Constitution bench of the Supreme Court (SC) unequivocally delineating the contours of the 1991 Places of Worship Act, when it ruled on the Ayodhya land dispute in 2019. The Act laid down that a religious place will retain the same character it had on August 15, 1947 and that no suit or legal proceedings can be initiated in this regard. The Ram Janmabhoomi-Babri Masjid dispute was specifically kept outside the applicability of the Act and hence, the trial in the Ayodhya case could proceed. The 2019 verdict by the top court cemented into the sphere of Indian constitutional jurisprudence the principle of “non-retrogression” of rights as it underscored that it is not open to raking up all kinds of disputes, pertaining to the religious nature of a place of worship, at any time. The non-retrogression principle holds that the government may extend protection beyond what the Constitution requires, but it cannot retreat from that extension once made. In preserving the character of places of public worship, Parliament has mandated that history and its wrongs shall not be used as instruments to oppress the present and the future, highlighted the apex court.

The Constitution bench was emphatic that the Act is a constitutional basis for healing the injustices of the past by providing confidence to every religious community that their places of worship will be preserved. However, the civil court has accepted the plaintiffs’ argument that it is imperative to first ascertain the “religious character” of a place of worship before ascertaining the protection available under the Act. The approach of the civil court – and another petition filed in the Allahabad high court, yet to be heard, on opening 20 rooms in the Taj Mahal to check for the presence of Hindu idols – is fraught with the perils of not only opening a Pandora’s Box of unending disquiet between communities but also negating the objective of the Places of Worship Act. Further, it falls foul of the principle of non-retrogression, which the SC has termed a foundational feature of fundamental constitutional principles.



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The National Health Authority plans to extend health insurance coverage under the Ayushman Bharat Pradhan Mantri Jan Arogya Yojna (ABPM-JAY) to gig workers who earn between 15,000 and 25,000 per month, Mint reported on Monday. This scheme, if operationalised, will be a much-needed, welcome step because the Indian economy is moving from permanent employer-employee relationships to on-demand employer-employee relationships, and many employees cannot access health coverage since they fall in what the Niti Aayog calls the “missing middle” category.

ABPM-JAY, which was launched in 2018, provides hospitalisation cover to the bottom 50% of India’s population. Around 20% of the population is covered through social health insurance, and private voluntary health insurance is primarily designed for high-income groups. The remaining 30% falls in the “missing middle,” a broad category of 400 million Indians who work in agriculture and non-agriculture sectors and are positioned between the deprived poorer sections and the relatively well-off who can access insurance products.

The need to cover this “missing middle” is essential because the nature of their work is often subject to occupational hazards. Without insurance coverage and a robust public health system that forces them to make out-of-pocket expenditures, even a small health-related incident can create a significant financial burden and impoverish families. Health insurance can provide financial protection against such health shocks, which may have inter-generational impacts because households try different coping strategies— reducing food consumption, pulling children out of school, dissaving, borrowing, and selling assets— to offset unexpected health-related expenditures.

The increasing cost of quality health care combined with greater need and demand for health with increasing incomes, higher life expectancy, and epidemiological transition towards non-communicable diseases have made health coverage imperative. Therefore, along with developing products that target the “missing middle”, the government must also invest in awareness building on insurance products, identify these new customers, and devise a strategy that focuses distinctly on the segment. No one can be left behind when it comes to basic needs such as health and education.



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With India’s withdrawal from the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP), the economic integration agreement of East Asia in 2019, the Government of India signalled that global economic engagements were not among its priorities. Reinforcing this policy stance was the adoption of Atmanirbhar Bharat Abhiyan in 2020 and the call, vocal for local. Just over a year later, the government’s stance regarding its global economic engagements changed dramatically; not only did it revive several long-stalled free trade agreement (FTA) negotiations with partners such as the European Union and Australia, but it also initiated FTA talks with new partners, including the United Kingdom. While announcing this change in policy stance, commerce and industry minister Piyush Goyal said, “We are at a very positive momentum in terms of FTAs”.

An articulation of the “positive momentum” was that by late-2021, India was negotiating eight FTAs. The first of these negotiations was successfully concluded in early 2022 when the Comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreement (CEPA) with India’s third-largest trade partner, the United Arab Emirates (UAE) was forged. In April, India signed an Economic Cooperation and Trade Agreement (ECTA) with Australia, an “early harvest agreement”, designed as the stepping-stone towards a Comprehensive Economic Cooperation Agreement (CECA) between the two countries.

The India-UAE CEPA marks a departure from India’s past FTAs in three significant ways. First, the negotiations were concluded less than three months after being initiated in end-September 2021. This is remarkable given that FTA negotiations involving India have generally been long drawn. Second, the agreement covers the widest array of subjects, including digital economy and government procurement, which have never been included in any bilateral trade agreement that India has negotiated thus far. The third and the most important aspect is that market opening commitments that India has accepted in this agreement, especially in the goods sector, is the most extensive of any FTA signed by the country. When CEPA is fully implemented (after 10 years), India would have eliminated tariffs on almost 85% of its tariff lines and reduced tariffs significantly on another 5%. Consequently, India’s average tariff rate, which was over 14% when the India-UAE CEPA was signed, would be reduced to 3.4%. The UAE, on the other hand, has agreed to eliminate tariffs on 99% of its tariff lines when CEPA is fully implemented.

India’s first FTA with a trade partner from the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) should provide momentum to its exports of textiles, leather, footwear, pharmaceutical products and medical devices, and automobiles, among others. For a start, CEPA should help in reversing the decade-long declining trend in the two-way trade between India and the UAE, setting the stage for increasing bilateral trade between the two countries to over $100 billion within five years.

Apart from these direct benefits, CEPA could provide an impetus for strengthening India’s economic relations with other countries in the Gulf by providing momentum to discussions for a possible FTA with the Gulf Cooperation Council, the blueprint for which was agreed upon between the two sides in 2004.

Although the India-Australia ECTA is being seen as the first step towards an eventual comprehensive trade agreement, the two countries have taken huge strides towards liberalising bilateral trade in goods. Australia has agreed to eliminate tariffs on 98% of its tariff lines when the agreement becomes effective, while the remaining tariffs will be eliminated within five years. In contrast, India has committed to eliminate tariffs on 69% of its tariff lines, while almost 30% of its tariff lines are in the exclusion list. Through these commitments, India will reduce its average tariff rate from 14% to just over 6%.

Although these commitments look conservative, in effect, India has agreed to provide significant market access by agreeing to immediately eliminate tariffs on 85% of imports from Australia, worth almost $ 9 billion over the period 2018-20. India has agreed to eliminate tariffs on a number of products of export interest to Australia, including sheep meat, wool, barley, cotton, hides and skins, and certain metallic ores and has slashed tariffs on lentils, almonds, oranges, mandarins, and pears.

India expects its bilateral trade with Australia to double within the next five years. This could happen if India is able to increase its exports of pharmaceuticals and cotton and textiles, in which Indian producers are competitive, and in electronics products, such as mobile phones, which have lately seen robust increase exports.

From the government’s renewed embrace of FTAs it seems obvious that the scepticism against FTAs that the government nursed earlier is passé. This is largely due to the robust export performance since early 2021. With exports exceeding the psychological threshold of $ 400 billion for the first time in 2021-22, the government expects that Indian industry will make the most of market access opportunities offered by FTAs, including those in the pipeline.

In the past, India had failed to increase its exports to the Association of South East Asian Nations (ASEAN), Korea, and Japan, its major FTA partners, triggering downbeat sentiments against FTAs in general. This was because once FTAs were concluded, the government and the businesses did not develop adequate strategies for utilising the opportunities these agreements had offered. Consequently, the export thrust expected from FTAs were never realised. Hopefully, lessons would be learnt from the past failings.

Biswajit Dhar is professor of economics, Jawaharlal Nehru University The views expressed are personal.



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ENIAC, the world’s first programmable general-purpose computer, introduced in 1945, weighed an astounding 30 tonnes. Much of the bulk was contributed by the 18,000-odd vacuum tubes, which were the large, fragile, energy guzzling electronic circuits that performed the machine’s computational tasks.

With advancements in technology, vacuum tubes were replaced by transistors, and later by integrated circuits, commonly known as chips, where multiple transistors, mostly made from pure silicon, were mounted into a single semiconductor wafer. The chip’s evolution has followed Intel cofounder Gordon Moore’s observation, that the number of transistors in a chip would double every year. This would exponentially increase their computing power, while making them smaller and cheaper.

We now even have chips with billions of components embedded in them, each no longer visible to the naked eye. Miniaturising of the increasingly powerful chips drives the creation of smaller, smarter electronic devices, and the growth of the mobile internet. They remain the primary building block of all hardware in our digitised economy.

The global semiconductor manufacturing ecosystem is extremely complex and interlinked. Supply chain disruptions since the onset of Covid-19 resulted in a steep drop in chip production and supply. This caused a dip in the manufacturing of all devices, appliances and equipment ranging from automotives, space satellites, household, defence and health care equipment across the globe. The chip shortage played a decisive role in the pandemic-induced economic contraction.

After a brief period of recovery, the ongoing conflict in Ukraine is again creating conditions that may interrupt the global chip supply. This is because Russia is the supplier of nearly 40% of the world’s palladium, a critical raw material in chip production, and Ukraine supplies 70% of neon, a gas used in a process called photolithography that fabricates integrated circuits. Taiwan, seen by many military and geopolitical analysts to be a future theatre of great power conflict, accounts for over half the global chip supply and over 90% of the market share for the most advanced chips. In recent times, the United States (US), China, and the European Union (EU) have been making concerted efforts to diversify their chip supply chains, and decrease their dependency on this crucial yet vulnerable ecosystem. For instance, the EU proposed the European Chips Act, seeking to mobilise $49 billion of public and private investments into semiconductor technology and applications, with the stated aspiration of doubling their global market share to 20% by 2030. The US is working on its own Chips Act to boost domestic manufacturing, and has convinced Taiwan’s Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC) to build a $12 billion facility in Arizona, aiming to produce cutting edge 5 nanometre chips by 2024. India announced an ambitious semiconductor sector road map against this highly competitive and volatile backdrop at the end of last year. The initial response has been very positive, with three consortiums with requisite credentials showing interest in setting up fabrication facilities.

The Congress-led United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government also had earlier envisioned, and cleared two consortiums for setting up indigenous chip manufacturing units. Both the projects struggled to take off the ground, mainly because of their inability to raise the then required funds of 63,000 crore. This could again turn out to be a major challenge, as the government’s $10 billion ( 76,000 crore) support, spread over six years, would still require participating entities to raise even higher amounts to complete the capital intensive projects.

The fabrication plants would also have to be supported by a very diverse secondary ecosystem of packaging, testing, and design units. India does have a strong foundation required to create these, with most of the global chip companies already having their research and development innovation centres here, and with the country contributing over 20% of the world’s chip design engineers.

The government has also conceptualised a Chips-to-Startups (C2S) programme that will create a talent pool of 85,000 high skilled engineers, equipped to support the domestic industry. This initiative will have to be much more effective than the long-running Skill India programme for us to have a fair chance to meet the stated goals. A fabrication facility would also need uninterrupted power supply, and could use up millions of gallons of ultra-pure water. Despite these challenges, the strides we have made in sectors including IT, space, biotech and vaccine industries show that with political will and private participation, India can thrive in globally competitive environments.

At the moment, our semiconductor demand is fully met through imports, and the consumption is projected to cross $110 billion, even higher than our current oil imports, by 2030. Domestic production would greatly ease our trade deficit. Microchips will remain an unavoidable mainstay in every electronic device including critical defence, space and communication equipment. Indigenous products greatly reduce the threat of backdoor espionage, a very common, and difficult-to-discern practice in the global hardware market. Successful execution of our semiconductor policy is, therefore, vital for India to achieve its long-term economic, security and strategic objectives with autonomy.

Anil K Antony is a tech entrepreneur, public policy commentator, and works on the Congress’s digital initiatives The views expressed are personal



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During the recent visit of the European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen to India, the European Union (EU) and India decided to relaunch negotiations for long-pending economic agreements between the two sides. Both wish to enter into three economic treaties — a trade agreement, an investment protection treaty, and an agreement on geographical indications. These three treaties will create an overarching regulatory framework under international law, overseeing the deepening of the India-EU bilateral economic relationship.

While the India-EU trade agreement attracted considerable attention, the same cannot be said about the investment treaty negotiations. The EU is one of the largest foreign direct investors in India, having invested $88.32 billion from April 2000 to March 2021. India’s bilateral investment treaties (BITs) with several European countries signed in the 1990s played an important role in attracting European investment to India.

However, in 2017, India unilaterally terminated its BITs with several European countries. Consequently, European investment in India made after the repudiation of these treaties does not enjoy protection under international treaty law. This has understandably made European investors jittery about their investments in India, given the capriciousness of India’s regulatory ecosystem. The absence of an investment treaty also means negligible protection under international law for Indian investment flowing to Europe. Therefore, an investment treaty between the two sides assumes importance.

However, there are certain challenges due to the difference in the stated positions of the two sides on several issues related to investment protection under international law. First, the EU investment treaty practice illustrates its keenness to include the most favoured nation (MFN) provision — a key non-discriminatory standard — in its investment treaties.

However, India is averse to including the MFN provision in investment treaties. India’s antagonism towards the MFN rule is evident from the fact that India’s Model BIT and the recently signed investment treaties do not contain the MFN provision. India believes that the MFN provision can be abused by foreign investors to borrow beneficial treaty provisions from third-country BITs. However, not having the MFN provision makes foreign investment vulnerable to discriminatory treatment.

Second, the EU’s practice is to include in its investment treaties the fair and equitable treatment (FET) provision — an important substantive protection feature that enables foreign investors to hold States accountable for arbitrary behaviour. The FET provision is missing in India’s Model BIT and the recent investment treaties that India has signed.

Third, the EU has been batting for a multilateral investment court (MIC) to reform the existing arbitration-based investor-State dispute settlement (ISDS) system. The ISDS system is plagued with concerns such as lack of transparency, systemic bias in favour of investors, and lack of an appellate mechanism. MIC, which will have tenured judges, can arguably overcome these problems. Yet, India’s official position on MIC is unknown. India hasn’t contributed to the ongoing negotiations towards establishing a MIC, which is perplexing for a country that champions a rules-based global order. The EU, in all likelihood, will insist on including an investment court system in the treaty, which might not be acceptable to India.

Overall, India’s new investment treaty practice gives primacy to the State’s rights over the rights of the foreign investors, whereas the EU treaty practice is more balanced. This difference in perspective will be a bone of contention between the two sides.

Notwithstanding these differences, the silver lining is that the treaty practice of both India and the EU validates the desire to design an investment treaty that safeguards the regulatory space of the host State.

But preserving the regulatory space should not be at the cost of protecting foreign investors under international law. India should dilute its rigid position and align with the EU’s balanced investment treaty practice to make an agreement possible. An India-EU investment treaty will not only bring benefits to both sides but also demonstrate the combined will towards strengthening a rules-based international order.

Prabhash Ranjan is professor and vice-dean, Jindal Global Law School, O P Jindal Global University The views expressed are personal



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Prime Minister Narendra Modi chaired a high-level meeting to review heatwave management and monsoon preparedness last week and asked states and Union territories (UTs) to prepare heat action plans as a standard response at all levels. This direction on preparing heat action plans is significant. It’s the least India can do to prepare itself for severe heat stress which will continue to rise in the coming years.

But are heat action plans enough to deal with a crisis of this scale where millions of people are exposed to uninhabitable conditions for days together? HT’s data team reported on May 3 that 49.4% of India’s work force including agricultural labour works outdoors, irrespective of temperature and other meteorological considerations.

States and the Centre were not prepared for an unprecedented spring heat wave this March and April which affected large parts of South Asia in India and Pakistan. Apart from issuing health advisories and heat wave warnings, not much could be done to reduce people’s exposure.

Firstly, state and district heat action plans need to prioritise care and shelter for the poorest who may not afford a paid leave on extremely hot days. Perhaps even consider a heat allowance for those affected giving them an option to stay home on severe heat wave days.

Heat action plans of course should be pre-emptive and kick in even before a heat wave spell sets in next time, based on India Meteorological Department’s advance forecasts. The Ahmedabad heat action plan provides a template on inter-agency coordination, capacity building of officials, and details on how to maintain links with hospitals; water and power utilities; schools etc to implement the action plan.

Coordination with power and water utilities will be key to prevent or reduce the number of fatalities linked to heat stress. India saw major outages and load shedding in different parts of the country during the latest heat wave spell. That may have been detrimental for the health of infants, the elderly and those with co-morbidities. The heat action plans need to ensure power is supplied during hot days without fail.

But the impact of the March and April heat wave is not known yet. Considering its impact on a very large area over northwest, east and central India, the Centre and the National Disaster Management Authority should have by now released the details on deaths, impacts on labour, agriculture and other sectors. To put action plans in place, it’s also important to understand the magnitude of the impact of these heat extremes.

Heat action plans however are an emergency response. They cannot be our only strategy to deal with heat extremes. Our policies on infrastructure and development need to incorporate rising temperatures and vulnerability of various regions in the country.

For instance, several parts of central India suffered severe heat waves as temperatures peaked to above 45 degree C last month. This region also has large contiguous forests and rich biodiversity and massive reserves of coal and iron ore. Business Standard reported on May 7 that India plans to reopen 100 coal mines to meet the spike in power demand. A senior official is quoted saying India is expected to increase output by up to 100 million tonnes in the next three years by reopening closed mines. Reopening mines and opening new coal blocks under forests would definitely accentuate heat stress in central India.

Perhaps, the government needs to consider impacts of such major infrastructure projects in ecologically important areas and assess them through the climate lens. In fact, it is not just mines; the government need to consider very cautiously the impact of any large project involving forest diversion. Ease of business may be an important issue for the economy but so is our increasing vulnerability to climate impacts.

I read most minutes of the Forest Advisory Committee meetings which deal with proposals of forest diversion for various infrastructure projects. Rarely do they consider issues such as micro-climate impact on local people of forest loss. These are emerging concerns that also need FAC’s consideration.

The Centre for Science and Environment, in a briefing note on May 6, highlighted that extreme heat can lead to thermal discomfort inside buildings which can have adverse health outcomes related to sleep disorders, irregular blood pressure, respiratory and cardiovascular diseases, mental health disorders, and pregnancy-related complications, among others as per World Health Organization’s Housing and Health Guidelines. Other than the public health risk, heatwaves are bound to upset the energy budget as they cause a surge in electricity demand due to increased use of air conditioners. It is of utmost importance to prevent energy lock-in in our new buildings and also retrofit older buildings to withstand the warming environment and reduce energy consumption, CSE researchers said.

Urban heat island effect in cities is also an imminent crisis as built-up areas increase. In Delhi, Yamuna Sports Complex for example recorded maximum temperatures over 46 degree C on a couple of days last month when other stations recorded maximum temperatures that are 2-3 degree C lower. This is because of the lack of foliage, green spaces around the sports complex. These islands need to identified to make interventions that cool them down.

For now, states in northwest and central India need to prepare immediately for another heatwave spell. “Harsh heat will build in Southern Asia (again) in the coming days. Pakistan will break 50°C (122°F) in places. This follows a very hot March and hottest April on record. The heat really is relentless. Very hot also for large parts of India,” tweeted Scott Duncan, a Scotland based meteorologist. IMD has also warned of a 2-3 degree C rise in maximum temperatures over south Punjab, south Haryana-Delhi, Rajasthan and north Madhya Pradesh during next 4 days and said several pockets are likely to experience heat wave to severe heat wave conditions.

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On Saturday, United Liberation Front of Asom-Independent (ULFA-I), a banned terror outfit which aims to create an independent Asssam, killed two young men from the state for allegedly acting as spies for the police with the aim of passing on information that could lead to deaths of senior functionaries of the outfit.

Dhanjit Das, in his early 30s, a former cloth store salesman from Barpeta district and Sanjib Sarma, a 19-year-old from Baihata Chariali (close to Guwahati) were killed at 8 am in an undisclosed location (probably Myanmar) with a single shot each from very close range. Both men, who had joined the outfit in March this year, had been pronounced guilty earlier in the week by ULFA-I’s lower judicial council and sentenced to death.

A notice issued by the outfit informing about the deaths claimed Dhanjit had fled from a camp on April 24 and was captured by ULFA-I a day later. It stated that during interrogation he confessed to have been sent by senior Assam police officers to infiltrate the terror group and prod newly recruited cadres to surrender and hand over supporters/well wishers of ULFA-I to Assam police.

The outfit claimed that Sanjib Sarma had confessed about joining ULFA-I on directions of police officers and with the greed for money and intention of passing the outfit’s internal communications to police using modern technology so that ULFA-I commanders and cadres could be eliminated.

On Saturday, ULFA-I also released a video in which the two youths were seen admitting to have acted on behalf of the police and against ULFA-I.

“It is true that both have been executed. Both of them had confessed to have worked under instructions of Assam police officers and tried to infiltrate and damage our outfit. Hence, we had to take a tough decision against our own wishes and sentence them to death as per rules of our outfit’s constitution,” ULFA-I chairman Paresh Baruah told some Assamese news channels over phone on Saturday evening.

He claimed this was not the first instance of Assam police sending “spies” to ULFA-I camps to get recruited as cadres and later pass on information to their handlers. Baruah cited examples when some senior police officers (who are now retired) had sent youths to kill him and his family members.

Police officials said while there used to be reports of executions of ULFA-I cadres and sometimes senior functionaries in 1990s for alleged violations of the outfit’s constitution, such incidents had not been reported in recent years. As expected, the killing of the two youths sparked reactions on social media with some deriding Baruah for targeting Assamese youths while few others pointing fingers at Assam police for using vulnerable civilians as decoys and sending them on dangerous and life-threatening missions.

“Assam police doesn’t send spies to different places and their jurisdiction is limited only within the territory of the state. So, there can be no question of the state police sending people to another country (to act as spies). The claims made by ULFA-I about police sending youths to infiltrate the outfit are one-sided and without any evidence. Therefore, there’s no point discussing about such claims,” Assam Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma, who handles the home portfolio, commented after news about the killings spread.

Senior Assam police officers remained tight-lipped on Saturday about the ULFA-I claims and allegations. But on Sunday, DGP Bhaskar Jyoti Mahanta talked to journalists and rubbished the banned outfit’s allegations.

“Assam police carries out different kinds of operations as part of our duty, but has anyone ever heard of such claims about employing spies in the force’s history? Ever since it came into being, ULFA-I has killed hundreds of innocents, but Assam police will never use youths to act as spies against the outfit. It’s their internal matter and has nothing to do with Assam police,” he said.

Insurgency in Assam started in April, 1979 with formation of ULFA—as an offshoot of the anti-foreigner’s agitation against inflow of illegal immigrants to the state from Bangladesh (former East Pakistan). The stated aim of the outfit was to create an independent Assam.

In February, 2011, ULFA split into two groups—one group led by chairman Arabinda Rajkhowa that decided to give up its violent past and sit for talks with Centre without any condition and another led by Paresh Baruah, which decided against talks and rebranded as ULFA-Independent. It still maintains that sovereignty should be on the agenda for the outfit to sit for peace talks.

Since the new BJP-led government under Himanta Biswa Sarma took charge in Assam in May last year, there have been indications both from the government and the outfit that they could sit for peace talks.

Citing Covid-19, ULFA-I declared unilateral ceasefire in May 2021 (which still continues). The move was seen as precursor to peace talks. But now with the outfit accusing police of sending infiltrators in the guise of cadres and the death sentences given to Dhanjit and Sanjib, the process could hit a roadblock.

Significantly, the killings on Saturday took place three days ahead of first anniversary of the BJP-led government in Assam and less than 48 hours prior to union home minister Amit Shah’s two-day trip to the state to take part in the celebrations. While ULFA-I accuses Assam police of planting spies, the state force would receive the President’s Colour (for exemplary service in the past 25 years) from Shah’s hands at a ceremony in Guwahati on Tuesday.

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There was a time when the inauguration of a new Confucius Institute (CI), which Beijing says is part of its global Chinese language and culture-learning programme, could be a fairly high-profile event.

Like in 2009 when then Vice-Premier, and rising political star, Li Keqiang inaugurated one at the University of Canterbury in Christchurch, New Zealand.

More than a decade later, the Communist Party of China’s (CPC) programme now seemingly maintains a lower profile as it quietly expands in African countries while number of CIs fall in the United States (US).

Two recent events brought the focus back on the CIs.

The first was the chilling and globally condemned suicide attack that killed four people including three Chinese teachers outside the University of Karachi’s CI on April 26.

The deceased Chinese nationals were identified as the CI director Huang Guiping and his associates, Ding Mupeng and Chen Sai; another injured Chinese national was identified as Wang Yuqing.

The second development was in India. A report in The Indian Express on April 29 said New Delhi had instructed all universities with existing CIs (three at last count) or planning to set up new ones will need mandatory clearances under the Foreign Contribution (Regulation) Act (FCRA), which tracks foreign funding for individuals and NGOs. The Indian government’s decision was said to be a follow-up of the call to review the centres, which was taken weeks after Indian and Chinese soldiers clashed in eastern Ladakh in 2020, first reported by HT.

Beijing hasn’t reacted to New Delhi’s call to scrutinise the centres but, if it does, the response would be on the lines that the Indian government has “politicised” China’s efforts to bridge the gap in language, culture and people-to-people communication between the two countries.

A lofty argument, no doubt, but that’s not how critics look at the Chinese outreach.

What CIs do, what they don’t do

A primary criticism of the centres is this: The CIs and the Confucius Classrooms – the first attached to universities, and the second usually to schools and local language centres – are part of China’s well-moneyed propaganda machinery to spread CPC’s doctrine among the young, and manipulate opinions into a pro-CPC narrative.

In the process, the attempt is to eradicate any opinion that’s critical of China: The aim is to stifle free conversations inside foreign classrooms, among young, foreign minds on the politics of Taiwan, Tibet, the Tiananmen massacre, treatment Muslim minorities in Xinjiang, human rights and the Communist party’s historical mistakes.

Instead, the focus is on China and the CPC’s successes like the country’s poverty alleviation programme and building of infrastructure, and international projects like the Belt and Road Initiative.

Possibly as a response to the criticism, in the middle of 2020, it rebranded Hanban, the Chinese name for the National Office for Teaching Chinese as a Foreign Language (NOCFL), under which CIs functioned since its inception in 2004.

A superficial attempt at restructuring

After the rebranding, the CIs now have a dual support and governance structure comprising the Chinese International Education Foundation (CIEF), affiliated to the civil affairs ministry and the Centre for Language Education and Cooperation (CLEC), which is part of the education ministry.

It’s unclear if the change in structure was a deliberate ploy to further obfuscate the official affiliation of CIs though it all ends up in one deep well.

Interestingly, it was the CIEF, which in the aftermath of the Karachi university CI terror attack, released 500,000 yuan ($75,660) as relief to the victims and their families; Its website mourns the victims. According to the CIEF website, by the end of 2019, 550 Confucius institutes and 1172 Confucius classrooms had been established in 162 countries around the world; the first CI was set up in South Korea in 2004.

Expectedly, despite the rebranding, criticism continues.

According to Rachelle Peterson, from the New York-based National Association of Scholars (NAS), the CIs provide a steady supply of material presenting Chinese culture and language, which are only within the confines of the CPC’s preferences.

Lack of reciprocity is a problem too.

The original Hanban website mentioned that “…benefiting from the UK, France, Germany and Spain’s experience in promoting their national languages, China began its own exploration through establishing non-profit public institutions which aim to promote Chinese language and culture in foreign countries in 2004: these were given the name the Confucius Institute.”

CIs are attached to universities abroad but China does not extend similar access to foreign language institutes – say, Alliance Francaise -- to open at a Chinese university.

So, the Indian Council for Cultural Relations cannot open an outreach programme at Peking University, teaching Indian languages, culture, and yoga but a CI can be opened at Mumbai University.

The backlash against CIs in western countries have also grown because the attempt is to equate the CPC with China – a rosy picture of China and its progress in the last decades is intrinsically linked with the Party, leaving no room for any critical thought.

The rebranding hasn’t really allayed suspicions about what lies beneath as the 27 universities now affiliated with CIEF, and which supplies teachers and funding, are fully Chinese state-funded and under the CPC.

It’s highly unlikely that all established CIs across the world are up to something sinister though several concerns have been highlighted.

“CIs generated legitimagte concerns about academic freedom and independence due to their direct support from, and admitted role as a soft powwer instrument for China’s party-state,” wrote Jamie P Horsley, Senior Fellow, Paul Tsai China Center, Yale Law School wrote last year for Washington-based Brookings Institution.

Horsley, however, pointed out that multiple investigations into US-based CIs, including by the Senate, have produced no evidence that they facilitate espionage, technology theft or any other illegal activity.

It’s also true that CIs will ever engage with foreign students on anything that’s not entirely in line with the CPC’s narrative.

Thousands of CI students across the world surely have positive experiences to share but many among them will also have stories to tell about the hard boundaries within which their classes were held.

A 2019 report “Hybrid Threats: Confucius Institutes” by NATO’s strategic communications division says, “institutions like these should not automatically be viewed as hostile”. Strict administrative and financial due diligence by host universities, however, should be carried out. “Such organisations must be treated solely as sources for language and cultural exchange; the lack of academic freedom precludes any claims to wider expertise.”

Three universities in New Zealand renewed their contracts with rebranded CIs in 2020.

A new paragraph was inserted into the new agreements, according to a report by the news website, stuff.co.nz.

The paragraph stated that the agreement does not affect, or in any way limit, the universities’ autonomy or academic and intellectual freedom, including its research, teaching and operations. Confucius himself would have found that reasonable.

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Almost half of the world and India’s bird species are undergoing population decline. And the main reason for it is biosphere degradation and not the climate crisis and extreme weather, a new scientific report has found, making it clear that human attempt to take over their land is hastening bird extinction.

The State of the World’s Birds, in its latest and comprehensive review, published this week, found that approximately 48% of existing bird species worldwide are known or suspected to be undergoing population decline. This is compared to trends in 39% of species remaining stable, just 6% showing increasing population trends, and the fate of 7% still unknown, the report said.

“Avian diversity peaks globally in the tropics and it is there that we also find the highest richness of threatened species,” Alexander Lees, Senior Lecturer at Manchester Metropolitan University, and lead author of the study, said. “We know a lot less about the fortunes of tropical bird species than we do about temperate ones, but we are now witnessing the first signs of a new wave of extinctions of continentally-distributed bird species which has followed the historic loss of species on islands like the Dodo.”

The study involved scientists from Manchester Metropolitan University, Cornell University, Birdlife International, the University of Johannesburg, Pontifical Xavierian University and Nature Conservation Foundation, India. It found deterioration in the conservation status of the majority of bird populations at temperate latitudes, with threatened species were mostly concentrated in the tropics, which host the richest avian diversity.

The story of decline in India

In case of India, the report found, that the decline in bird populations was higher than the global average with around 50% of the populations falling strongly. The report said in case of forests, the decline was 60%, in wetlands 55% and in grasslands 50%. However, in north America and Europe, the bird population has remained the same or has witnessed marginal decline due to improvement in habitats and wetlands, the report said.

“Bucking these negative trends have been many wetland bird species in North America and Europe, where wetlands have experienced a net gain in bird abundance of 13% since 1970 (based on summing abundance estimates across species). This has been driven by a 56% increase in waterfowl populations in this period, associated with wetland restoration and management for hunting. In Europe, there have been similar increases, especially associated with thermally sensitive warm-dwelling species,” the report said.

The study said, with “sufficient confidence for 146 species” in India, that nearly 80% were found to be declining (50% of these declining strongly), while just over 6% had stable population trajectories, and 14% of species exhibited increasing population trends.

And the reason for the decline is the land-use change, especially in the wetlands and forested areas, where rampant mining and construction activity has been allowed in the past 30 years or so, the period of the decline identified.

The study has pointed out that the loss of habitat in Northeast and some other Himalayan regions as a reason for decline in bird population in India. It also said that for some species such as the Great Indian bustard, power lines represent the most significant threat. The GIB is found in western Rajasthan and Kutch region of Gujarat and the Supreme Court is hearing a petition to protect the bird species from the threat power lines and wind mills cause to them. The Supreme Court had sought an action plan to save them from Gujarat and Rajasthan governments.

Global trends

At a global scale, at least 50% of forest-dependent birds in South Africa are experiencing range declines, avian abundance in Costa Rica has declined over 12 years and abundance of forest interior species in one South America has declined over 35 years. BirdLife International’s latest assessment of all birds showed that 1,481 species (13.5% of 10,994 recognized extant species) are currently threatened with global extinction.

More threatened bird species are found in tropical than in temperate latitudes with hotspots for threatened species concentrated in the tropical Andes, southeast Brazil, the eastern Himalayas, eastern Madagascar, and Southeast Asian islands. All countries and territories host at least one globally threatened bird species, and ten have more than 75, with Brazil and Indonesia heading the list at 171 and 175, respectively, the study said, adding that 55% of threatened species are endemic to single countries or territories.

Seventy species have improved in status sufficiently to qualify for lower categories of extinction risk since 1988, almost entirely owing to successful conservation actions, the report said. However, 391 species that have deteriorated in status sufficient to qualify for higher categories of extinction risk during this period, resulting in an overall decline in the Red List Index of International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN). The decline in population is expected to continue with contemporary economic growth, consumption patterns, and energy mix.

The threats

Although the decline in the bird populations may not be uniform across the world, the reason for it is.

According to the report, the degradation of the wildlife habitats and loss of bio-diversity because of human consumption is the biggest reason for birds losing their homes. “Land-cover changes driven by human activities have been occurring for millennia and are likely to have reduced total bird abundance by between a fifth and a quarter since pre-agricultural times,” the report said. It added that 20th and 21th century habitat loss was imperiling more species with close to 1,370 species directly impacted by land use changes.

The report identified biosphere changes as a reason for threat to 2,250 species, agriculture practices to 2,100 species, climate to 1,100 species, invasive species to 1,000 species and natural system modifications to another 800. Pollution, the study said, impacted around 500 species and human interference about 400.

However, the report said that the climate crisis was emerging as a driver for change in bird communities and is a particular concern for tropical montane, polar, and migratory species.

However, in places, where the site based conservation has improved, the survival rate for 76% of the threatened bird species has gone up. There are close to 13,000 important bird and biodiversity areas identified for threatened species across the globe covering 6.7% of land and 1.6% of oceans (totaling 3.7% of earth’s surface area). Of these 127 biodiversity areas have been identified as Alliance for Zero Extinction sites as they hold the last remaining population of one or more of the 185 Critically Endangered or Endangered bird species, the report said.

However, in India, most of the biodiversity rich areas are not in best of green health. India has lost about 1.5 lakh hectares of forest land between 2000 and 2020 for developmental projects such as mining and hydro power in the best bird habitats like the ones in Western Ghats, Hasdeo Arand in Chhattisgarh and north-east India. Between 2015 and 2020, the government allowed diversion of about 55,000 hectares to projects, according to a statement made in Parliament in March 2022. About 30% of wetlands have been lost in India in the past 30 years due to illegal construction, unsustainable urbanisation, agriculture expansion and pollution, as per estimates of Wetland International South Asia released on 13 August 2021.

Protecting bird homes

The Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) has proposed conserving 30% of land, sea and freshwater ecosystems for threatened bird species and wildlife. However, at a recent meeting of all signatories to the convention there was no consensus on the draft to achieve the goal. The Wildlife Conservation Society in a statement slammed the countries for lack of “ambition” to combat the biodiversity crisis that harms all.

“Biodiversity is in crisis, ecosystems are collapsing, and, without further action, we could experience another pandemic of zoonotic origin, and we call on all governments to exercise more political will, leave narrow interests at home, and come together between now and Kunming (China) to adopt a strong, ambitious, meaningful GBF (Global Biodiversity Framework)—for the sake of our planet, and all of humanity,” said Susan Lieberman, WCS Vice President of International Policy. The countries would be meeting again in second part of 2022 to discuss the framework that provides for 20-point charter to protect biodiversity.

The report clearly shows that the birds are losing their homes because of excessive developmental activity and encroachments, especially on the water bodies. If the trend is not reversed quickly, many birds, who provide several ecological services to humans, will go extinct, creating an imbalance in nature, which would be difficult to fill. Humans need to save bird habitats for themselves, not birds.

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Talib Hussain Khan, a block development officer, has been locked up in a college hostel in Kashmir’s Anantnag district for the last seven months. The one time that he was allowed to step out was on April 22, when he and other members of Panchayati Raj institutions were herded in buses and taken to Jammu where Prime Minister Narendra Modi addressed them to mark the national Panchayati Raj Day. He and hundreds of other sarpanches (village heads) and block and district-level officers, joined a convoy with a prayer on their lips.

Khan, who has 18 panchayats in his block, was not even allowed to go home – some 16 km from the college hostel – on Eid. The festival is important but fearing a threat to their lives, the administration did not allow him to make the journey home. “Earlier, separatists use to be put under house arrest but now it’s us. We are soft targets,’’ says Khan.

At least four sarpanches were killed in the run up to the PM’s rally in Samba, Jammu on April 24. It was Modi’s first visit to Jammu and Kashmir since the Centre revoked the state’s special status and cleaved it into Union Territories in August 2019.

According to Shafiq Mir, Chairperson, All J&K Panchayat Conference, “Whenever there is any political activity, the panchayats are targeted. The militants consider us to be representatives of the government but the same government has not empowered us. If it had, the people would have come out in our support.”

Jammu and Kashmir has 40,000 panchayat members and the process of electing them started within two months of the hollowing out of Article 370, when the Valley was under unprecedented security. High profile visits and elections usually see a spike in violence and the panchayat members are easy targets. According to Mir, 28 have been killed over the last ten years and about 45 injured.

The insecurity on the ground

“I put my life on the line and contested in 2019. At the time, several promises were made to us but neither have I got any security, nor do government departments help me with development work,” says Aijad Ahmed Sheikh, a sarpanch from South Kashmir’s Shopian district.

He was attacked by “armed gunmen” the same year and made to spend four days in a police station. “Imagine, that was the government’s way of securing me,” he says, adding, “Of what use am I when I get little help for the development projects I propose. My own people in the village think I’m a government stooge and the government only thinks of me when they want to fly the tricolor.” Sheikh says he visited Delhi to meet Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leaders but returned empty handed.

Families of police and government employees get a “martyrdom package” if they are killed in the line of duty but members of the panchayati raj institutions are neither beneficiaries of any pension or social welfare schemes. The administration usually ends up keeping the under-threat panchayat members locked up in hotels and hostels. Meetings are held from time to time with senior officials but quoting intelligence reports, the members are advised to stay locked up.

Anees-ul-Islam, a sarpanch who is also the in charge for all members from South Kashmir, says at least 500 to 600 were kept in hotels and not allowed out even for Eid. According to him, many are willing to resign but fear that their resignations will upset the administration. “We are already being targeted by militants and the fear is that we might be targeted by the administration. The fear of the Public Safety Act being slapped is real. Why do you think there are no protests in Kashmir?” he asks.

Several sarpanches HT spoke with said they are unable to visit their villages and monitor development works. “We should be visible 24X7 tending to various works like improving roads and bridges and improving water and electricity supply, but what should we do when we can barely visit out areas twice a month, that too under police protection?” says one of them.

The members – often showcased as evidence of grassroots democracy and paraded in front of envoys in Srinagar and Delhi – are an extremely unhappy lot. A lot of them contested as independents in 2019 when the under-detention mainstream leaders boycotted the process. That year, according to the government’s own data, more than 60% of the seats went uncontested. By-polls were held again the subsequent year.

Politics of 370

Mainstream parties such as the National Conference and People’s Democratic Party – which joined hands to form an umbrella group, the People’s Agenda for Gupkar Declaration (PAGD) and seek the restoration of Article 370 – fought the District Development Council elections in 2021. Together, they swept the polls – even though the BJP emerged as the single largest party.

The parties, however, have not been able to entirely secure the panchayat members because the UT is largely administered by New Delhi. Just before Eid, the National Conference, headed by former chief ministers Farooq and Omar Abdullah, tried to focus attention on the plight of the sarpanches. Sharing messages from several captive members who sought his help to go home for Eid, he tweeted, saying, “On the one hand, @PMOIndia addressed them in Jammu and on the other, the police holds them captive.”

Similarly, Mehbooba Mufti, who heads the PDP, tweeted after the killing of a sarpanch on April 15. “There seems to be no end in sight to the bloodbath in Kashmir. Yet, nothing seems to move the GOI enough to change its approach towards J&K.”

The police, unwilling to come on record, say they just don’t have the manpower to secure 40000 members of the Panchayati Raj Institution. The members themselves are not sure of what to do. They earn a pittance and end up becoming soft targets. While block development officers are paid R15,000 a month, each sarpanch gets a salary of 3,000 a month and panch’s only 1,000.

The fear now is that with the delimitation exercise nearing completion, elections will be conducted this year for the newly constituted Union Territories. All contestants – including those already members of the Panchayats — will become fresh targets again. The problem is exacerbated by the fact that successive governments over the decades have linked voter turnout with normalcy.

The already under-threat Sarpanch, Aijaz Ahmed Sheikh, sums up the siege mentality. When asked if would participate in the panchayat elections due in 18 months, he says, “I’ll think about it if I stay alive for the next year and a half.”

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