#3editoriales

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Why it’s important to get to the bottom of the Delhi violence - editorials

North-east Delhi was incident-free on Thursday, as people picked up the pieces of their lives and livelihoods after the worst communal violence Delhi has seen in at least three decades. While it would be too much to expect political parties not to politicise the issue — narratives and counter narratives are already at play — it is imperative that the home ministry, the National Security Adviser (whose entry seems to have played a major part in normalising the situation), Delhi Police, other law enforcement agencies, and the state government work together to answer key questions that could shed light on just what happened. Given that both the pro- and anti-Citizenship (Amendment) Act (CAA) groups whose clash sparked off the communal riots were extremely well organised — the pro-group was bussed in from neighbouring states, according to one theory; and both appear to have been well-armed — some of these questions have to do with the identity of the individuals and the organisations behind the protests, and the source of funding and arms. Were local leaders of political parties involved? As a corollary, it is also important to get to the underlying motives. Was the motive, as some believe, to embarrass the Narendra Modi government during the visit of United States President Donald Trump? If so, who was behind the effort? Or was it to vitiate the situation in the national capital? And who could gain from that? There are other questions as well. For instance, on the role of hate speech in inciting the riots. While this may not have lit the spark, did it, for instance, heat things up to the extent that a fire was inevitable? Or on the role of the unresolved and open-ended protests against the CAA (with protesters sticking to their stand, the home ministry not keen on engaging, the courts, deferring both the larger issue of the law and the smaller one of a protest at Shaheen Bagh on a public road)? Some hard questions will also have to be asked about gaps in the police’s intelligence-gathering and risk-assessment processes, and their near- glacial pace of response to initial skirmishes. After all, it is becoming clear that a better and faster response on Saturday, when the clashes started, may have prevented events of Monday and Tuesday, which saw the most casualties. Many of these are tough questions. Some are inconvenient. But we owe it to the 37 dead as of Thursday evening (across both Hindus and Muslims), the hundreds of injured, and the thousands whose livelihoods have been affected to ask them — and then, to sincerely try and answer them. Read the full article

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Should the State pay for treatment of rare diseases? - analysis

The Supreme Court of India categorises the “rarest of the rare” cases for possible imposition of the death penalty. Of late, courts have dealt with a different category of “rarest of the rare”, and it is in the context of diseases. The commonality among both the categories is the decision between life and death. And the disease in question is known as the orphan disease. What would cause a disease to acquire the moniker “orphan”? In the world of rare diseases, it connotes diseases that are even rarer than rare. In the United States, it is a disease that afflicts less than one in 200,000 people. In India, we don’t have a definition of orphan diseases just yet, and the ministry of health and family welfare proposes to task the Indian Council of Medical Research with the project of defining this category of disease, in its new draft policy on rare diseases. Orphan diseases present multiple challenges to the public health system. Pharmaceutical companies don’t have satisfactory commercial incentives to develop treatments because the small number of patients does not present an opportunity to recoup their research and development costs. For this reason, where treatments have been developed, the price of the treatments is astronomical. For instance, for the treatment of Gaucher’s Disease, only three companies in the world manufacture lifesaving enzyme-replacement therapy, which costs anywhere between ~7 lakh to ~10 lakh per dose, with each patient requiring a dose every one or two months. The treatment is lifelong, and the inability to receive it could mean death. The question then is, does the State have an obligation to pay for it? Over the past few years, this agonising decision, the one between life and death, has entered courtrooms in India. In the case of Mohd Ahmed v. Union of India & Ors, the Delhi High Court held that the right to life under Article 21 of the Constitution includes the right to health, and “because someone is poor, the State cannot allow him to die”. The court found a breach of the patient’s constitutional rights and ordered delivery of State-sponsored treatment. Similar cases are pending a final decision in Karnataka and Kerala. More recently, the Delhi High Court revisited the issue, in cases filed by patients suffering from rare diseases, against the Employees State Insurance Corporation (ESIC). The HC ruled that the administrative circulars seeking to exclude genetic diseases were issued by the ESIC in a manner contrary to the ESIC Act. Once again, patients received treatment through court orders. The Supreme Court (SC) has long held that Article 21 imposes an obligation on the State to preserve life. In the cases of Parmanand Katara v. Union of India and Paschim Bangal Khet Mazdoor Samity v. State of West Bengal, the SC emphasised the fact that providing adequate medical facilities for people is an essential part of the obligations undertaken by the government of a welfare State. As things stand today, there has been no dilution of the principles laid down in these judgments. A plea to the contrary was made to the HC in the Mohd Ahmad case and summarily rejected. So where are we at, as a country, in our position on State-sponsored treatment for rare diseases? Until earlier this month, the government did not have any official policy on the matter. Having nowhere to turn to, patients suffering from orphan diseases, knocked at the doors of the courts.On January 13, the ministry of health and family welfare released the National Policy for Rare Disease, inviting comments from the public by February. The policy takes positive steps towards data collection, identification of diseases, dissemination of information and prenatal counselling and screening. It also provides for treatment for up to ~15 lakh for rare diseases that only require one-time treatment. However, diseases incurring a recurrent cost to the public exchequer such as Gauchers, Hurlers Syndrome (MPS I), Hunters Syndrome (MPS II) find themselves excluded from treatment under the policy altogether, citing resource constraints. It is likely that the draft policy, if finalised in its current form, will find itself the subject of legal challenge. It is also likely that it will once again fall to the courts to make the agonising decisions that have come to be associated with the rarest of the rare diseases.Shyel Trehan is an advocate who practises in the Delhi High Court, and the Supreme Court of India. She is a graduate of National Law School of India University, Bangalore, and Columbia Law SchoolThe views expressed are personal Read the full article

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Shikara is a tale of loss. It is not a story of hate, writes Vidhu Vinod Chopra - analysis

On Friday, I walked into a packed theatre for one of the first screenings of my latest film, Shikara. Three hundred people, most of them Kashmiri Pandits, stood up and applauded. But one lady at the back screamed that the film wasn’t representative of her pain. She wanted more. I was accused of commercialising the tragedy of a community which was exiled 30 years ago. I have spent many days thinking about what she said. And I realise that what she wanted was more hate. She wanted a film that demonised Muslims, and that sowed even more animosity and bloodshed. In fact, one of her issues with the film was that Muslim actors were playing Pandit characters. After a week of shrill accusations, controversy and introspection about what I could have done differently, I have come to the conclusion that I am not that storyteller. I will never peddle hate for profit. I started working on Shikara 11 years ago in 2008. This film was made as a tribute to my mother. She came to Mumbai from Srinagar for a week to attend the premiere of Parinda and could never return. She briefly went with me to Kashmir during the shoot of Mission Kashmir in 1999. She visited her home which had been looted by the militants. Everything was gone. Despite seeing her house ransacked, she kept saying that it will be fine one day. She hugged the neighbours and left with the hope, that some day, she can return. She died in exile in 2007. I am my mother’s son, and when I was making this film, the predominant thought in my mind was that my film should not incite violence. My ambition was to represent the reality fully, but without provoking the viewer to feel vengeful. So in the January 19, 1990 sequence, the militants who come to burn the Pandit homes are in the shadows. I purposely did this because I believe that violence is faceless. I hoped to begin a conversation with Shikara and I am happy to say that this has happened. I have received countless messages and emails from Kashmiri Pandits thanking me for bringing their story to the world. I feel fulfilled. As for the haters, I have only thing to say – as Munna put it so beautifully in Lage Raho Munnabhai – Get Well Soon! Vidhu Vinod Chopra is a film director, screenwriter and producer. His films include Parinda, 1942: A Love Story, the Munna Bhai series, and most recently, Shikara The views expressed are personal Read the full article

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Delhi-Colombo ties are on the right path | HT editorial - editorials

Sri Lankan Prime Minister Mahinda Rajapaksa sent out a message by choosing India as the destination for his first trip abroad after assuming office, and also struck the right notes in New Delhi by saying the changes made by the Indian government in Jammu and Kashmir last year were the country’s internal affair. Mr Rajapaksa also discussed cooperation in counterterrorism with his Indian counterpart, Mr Narendra Modi, and ways to take forward the use of two lines of credit totalling $450 million offered by India last year. However, Mr Rajapaksa sought to strike a balance between Sri Lanka’s ties with India, and those with other regional players, such as China and Pakistan, describing India as a “relation” and the others as friends. He also noted Pakistan’s help in the war with the Tamil Tiger rebels and China’s help in rebuilding Sri Lanka after the war, which ended when the Sri Lankan Army launched a massive offensive under Mr Rajapaksa’s leadership.Mr Modi used Mr Rajapaksa’s visit to raise India’s concerns about the incomplete process of reconciliation and the devolution of powers to Sri Lanka’s Tamil minority, saying the government in Colombo must rise to the occasion to meet the Tamil people’s expectations for equality, justice, peace and respect by implementing the 13th amendment to the constitution, which envisages giving more powers to Tamil-inhabited areas of the island nation. Mr Rajapaksa and his brother, President Gotabaya Rajapaksa, however, have shied away from committing to the full implementation of the 13th amendment. The Sri Lankan president has even said there couldn’t be full devolution of powers against the wishes of the Sinhala majority and Mr Rajapaksa, while speaking to a section of the Indian media, too, ruled out any resolution in the Tamil-inhabited areas that isn’t acceptable to Sri Lanka’s majority community. Clearly, both sides will have to do some manoeuvring to ensure they reach common ground on this touchy issue. Read the full article

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India’s police force is under stress - analysis

The year 2019 ended on a stressful note for the Indian Police, battling a number of agitations over the Citizenship (Amendment) Act, 2019 (CAA), and the National Register of Citizens (NRC) across the country. The police also had to answer an array of questions about that methods of handling the protests. Violent incidents in Uttar Pradesh (UP) led to a police clampdown at a number of places, while in Delhi, police action in Jamia Millia Islamia and inaction in Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) came in for widespread criticism. In Hyderabad, the death of four rape accused in a police encounter generated a heated debate over instant justice and a criminal justice system that suffers from inordinate delays. The dawn of 2020 again saw the police embroiled in another debate, with the transfer of the Bhima Koregaon case from the Pune police to the National Investigation Agency (NIA). The fall-out of these incidents broadly indicates the nature of impending challenges before the police in 2020. The experience of 2019 will also be vital for the police in shaping its responses in the future. First, agitations over the CAA and the NRC are distinct from the usual over-specific and localised issues. Second, these are in the glare of arc lights with TV channels and reporters thronging the area. Third, the police are stationed not at designated venues of protest. Fourth, rabble-rousing from CAA supporters and critics in a politically charged environment is adding fuel to the fire and increasing animosities. The police are in a quandary over agitations such as the one in Shaheen Bagh. It is predominantly women of all ages helming this protest, visiting the site daily in large numbers. Since the occupied area is a public place, lakhs of commuters and residents are affected, and numerous appeals have been made to the protesters to vacate the premises and shift to one of the designated sites for such protests, with little success. Similar protests have come up at other places too.How do the police tackle these situations in metros, under the constant gaze and scrutiny of the media and public? Ideally, those making volatile comments should be booked and the protesters moved to designated sites. This is not possible since the courts have asked whether the volatile statements are inflammatory enough to cause an immediate conflagration. The public sit-ins have become so huge that any police action runs the risk of injuring unarmed protesters. Given the circumstances, the police can only keep a watchful eye to maintain peace.Providing security in such a politically-charged and sensitive environment is another challenge. It is difficult to screen people at such gatherings where hundreds visit the site every day and even the organisers are not aware of who exactly is in the crowd. When vandalism takes place against public property with attacks on policemen, the protesters blame outsiders. On January 30, a young man, who is pro-CAA, fired at the crowd of protesters at Jamia, injuring one. The police were blamed for inaction, even complicity. The time has come for monitoring such sites with drones and CCTV cameras powered by mobile vans.Responding to college unrest in the present circumstances is another challenge, when the debate about police entry into campuses continues. The Delhi Police were criticised for using excessive force inside Jamia after entering the campus, allegedly in hot pursuit of a violent mob. The same police were inactive, waiting outside JNU’s gates, while masked attackers created mayhem inside the campus. The new template for action has to be enforced — for the police to take action within a campus on information of a cognisable offence and not wait for any permission.Mending the broken criminal justice system still remains a real challenge in the future. Even after seven years, the Delhi gang rape victim’s mother waits for justice. Smart lawyers, aided by lengthy judicial processes, have managed to delay the hanging till now. Other cases of heinous crimes against women continue to suffer due to shoddy investigation, poor forensic facilities, a below-par prosecution system and inordinately long judicial procedures. Kangaroo justice is no answer to this, yet instances abound where this is resorted to. The four rape accused in Hyderabad fell to police bullets in an encounter when they allegedly attacked the police. The public lapped it up amid cautionary advice from jurists and courts.Finally, the police have to brace themselves for many more dogfights between the Centre and the states over sensitive cases such as the Bhima Koregaon one, with severe adverse implications. The case registered during the Bharatiya Janata Party regime in Maharashtra by the Pune Police was ready to be charge-sheeted when the new government denounced the investigations for targeting activists of the Left and liberal persuasion. The transfer of the case by the Centre to the NIA is a sign of things to come. The police leadership now has to ensure that it prepares a solid case which cannot be chopped and changed later by other dispensations. It will also have to counter political machinations. Police autonomy appears the only solution to this imbroglio, but alas, police reforms still remain a chimera.Yashovardhan Azad is former IPS officer and Central Information CommissionerThe views expressed are personal Read the full article

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Climate crisis: Budget makes the right moves - editorials

The Union Budget, which was presented on February 1, creditably took into account one of the most pressing challenges of our time — the climate crisis. With the implementation of the Paris Agreement commitments beginning on January 1, 2021, finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman made a concrete push for solar energy and clean air and signalled the end for old and polluting thermal power plants. While the environment ministry’s budget is proposed to be increased by nearly 5% to ₹3,100 crore over the ₹2,955 crore in the last year, the allocation to the ministry of new and renewable energy has been proposed to be increased by 10.62% from last year. The government also announced the expansion of the KUSUM scheme to enable about two million new farmers to install standalone solar pumps. Importantly, the finance minister also emphasised on enabling farmers to use their barren lands for installing grid-connected solar pumps. These steps are welcome. India is a climate-vulnerable country, and the nation must opt for a greener economic path if it wants to avoid the deleterious effects of changing climate, and also to meet the 2030 Sustainable Development Goals. However, the budget, many experts feel missed out the replenishment of the much-needed National Adaptation Fund for Climate Change. The fight against the climate crisis will be a long-drawn affair. But, as the minister said, India has submitted its Nationally Determined Contribution, under the Paris Agreement, on a “best effort” basis, bearing in mind the development imperative of the country. She also promised that the government is committed to taking actions in various sectors to reduce fossil fuel consumption. This promise to stay the course is commendable, considering India’s needs to grow and pull people out of poverty. Read the full article

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Budget 2020: Tactics over strategy - analysis

One way to understand the budget presented on Saturday is to focus on three key themes — the fiscal deficit, tax, and expenditure.The estimates presented in the 2019-20 budget were unrealistic, because the actual tax collections in 2018-19 had been much lower than those used as the basis. The corporate tax cut was also subsequently announced. Therefore, tax revenues were expected to fall short.The conflict over the Reserve Bank of India’s economic capital came to a head at an opportune time, yielding additional non-tax revenue. The 15th Finance Commission also gave a relief by reducing states’ share of centre’s tax collection by 1 percentage point. However, the shortfall in tax revenue and disinvestment receipts was much larger.Seeing these difficulties and expecting them to continue, the government has invoked the escape clause in the Fiscal Responsibility and Budget Management (FRBM) Act, and allowed itself additional fiscal deficit of 0.5 percent of GDP in 2019-20 and 2020-21. The statement to justify this is comprised of three short paragraphs, saying that the deviation is because of “the structural reforms such as reductions in corporation tax”. Overall, expenditure increased from 12.2 percent of GDP in 2018-19 to 13.2 percent of GDP in 2019-20 – the first fiscal expansion by Union government in recent years.Two points need to be considered regarding the deficit estimates.First, the government has now made it a norm to rely on extra-budgetary resources (loans from small savings fund to public sector enterprises; public sector enterprise bonds repaid by government) to finance its expenditure. Until last year, these seemed to be measures to avoid invoking the escape clause of the FRBM Act. This year, the government has invoked the escape clause, but it has also made the reliance on extra budgetary resources more formal. In 2019-20, ₹1.51 lakh crore were budgeted for Food Corporation of India (FCI) for food subsidy, but the revised estimates show only ₹75000 crore. The FCI is borrowing the remaining amount (and more) from small savings. This practice of putting the subsidy on budget at the beginning of the year, but giving less was going on since 2016-17. In 2020-21, the budgeted amount itself is less, and it is now a norm that loans from small savings will fund the food subsidy bill, among other things.Second, even the relaxed fiscal deficit targets will not be easy to meet. In 2020-21, the budget projections of gross tax revenues are ambitious, given the continuing slowdown and recent experience. The budgeted disinvestment and spectrum auction receipts are very ambitious. The state of the telecom sector does not support robust proceeds from spectrum auctions. Big ticket strategic disinvestment could help meet the target.While tax collection has been disappointing in recent years, tax disputes have been rising. Income tax collection under dispute increased from ₹2.2 lakh crore at the end of 2017-18 to about ₹4 lakh crore at the end of 2018-19. Corporation tax collection under dispute had increased from ₹3.07 lakh crore in 2016-17 to ₹3.99 lakh crore in 2017-18.Perhaps this is encouraging the government to change its approach. The FM expressed the intent to make the tax system more taxpayer friendly by empowering the taxpayer through a charter, reducing conflict with taxpayers, and other measures. This is a good step. However, the announcements in the budget are only a modest beginning.While the taxpayer’s charter appears to be a good move, the amendment to the income tax act says that the tax authorities will adopt and declare a charter. This is a principal-agent problem. If the Parliament or the Minister want to empower the taxpayers, they must give the basic charter in an instrument that cannot be changed by the very tax authorities whose discretion the charter will limit. This is more important because the division between tax policy and tax administration is not sharply defined in India. Further, a charter needs to be backed up by systems to enforce it. Otherwise, it is just a few nice, but ineffective, words.The scheme to reduce the number of disputes waives interest and penalties for those who settle. However, this only focuses on the symptoms of the problem. The amnesty will benefit those who think they are going to lose in the dispute, while those who think they are right are likely to continue the dispute, especially if the amounts are large. Even though it will lead to a reduction in the number of disputes, and might also benefit some hapless taxpayers who are tired of the dispute, the amnesty is asymmetric in the wrong way. Therefore, it is not clear whether it serves public interest. Disputes are symptoms of the problem, and not the problem.Building a tax administration that is both effective and fair is a big challenge for any country. While the government has expressed its intent, it should begin by reforming the tax laws and making structural changes to tax authorities.Looking at the expenditure decisions in the budget, two things are becoming clear.First, while the government has reformed the mechanisms of expenditure — of procurement processes and scale up of direct benefit transfer — it has little imagination to strategise on expenditure allocation. It seems to assume that every social and economic problem is amenable to a small government scheme. Experience tells us that such schemes keep piling up, and are easier to start than to close. Since there is no expenditure strategy, strange decisions are taken. In a difficult time as this, allocation to MGNREGS has been cut substantially. Second, some of the decisions taken during the previous tenure of the government are showing their consequences. A consequence of one rank one pension is that between 2015-16 and 2020-21 (budgeted), the average rate of increase in defence pensions is 17.3% per annum, while that for non-pension defence expenditure is 7.6%. Similarly, the cash transfer to farmers (PM-KISAN) is now a permanent part of the budget — about 2.5% of total budgeted expenditure.Overall, one can say that in spite of its political capital, this government prefers tactics and operations to strategy when it comes to the economy. Suyash Rai is a fellow at Carnegie IndiaThe views expressed are personal Read the full article

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Introduce the cheetah, with caution and guidelines | Opinion - analysis

In 2013, the Supreme Court (SC) delivered a judgment on lions in India. The judgment directed that the wild lion population confined to Gir in Gujarat should be given a second habitat in Madhya Pradesh within six months. This was to ensure the population’s survival in the case of catastrophic events. The same judgment also said a separate proposal to “reintroduce” cheetahs to India should not go ahead as cheetahs from Africa, available for the reintroduction, were not the same as the Asiatic cheetah, which became locally extinct in India after Independence. The 2013 judgment is considered a landmark because it laid out several progressive tenets, including the “species-best-interest standard”—stressing that policy should implement what is best for a wild species rather than what was best for people.Seven years later, the SC, in a January order, has said that cheetahs from Africa can be brought into India, an active move to associate cheetahs with India once again. This is interesting on two counts. First, the January judgment frames the introduction of the African cheetah as an “experimental basis in carefully chosen habitat”. This is new for conservation; an experiment which works towards de-extinction of a species gone for decades, rather than gradually setting up tones for “natural progression”. Second, the cheetah order comes in the shadow of the fact that the 2013 order on lions was never followed.The 2013 judgment hinged on the alien-ness of the African cheetah, as the subspecies is different from the Asiatic one. The Asiatic cheetah is now found only in Iran, which has too few cheetahs to send any to India. The new judgement stresses that bringing African cheetahs will not be a “reintroduction”, but an introduction. This is a bringing forth rather than a bringing back; an act that seeks to address extinction through a next-best substitute. The cheetah is considered part of Indian culture; the word chitra standing for variegated patterns. It is also the first notably Indian animal that went extinct in recent memory (other animals that went extinct from India were the pink-headed duck and Sumatran rhino, but they were not as well-known as cheetahs.) Thus, the cheetah inhabits a cultural box which is outside of purely scientific conservation. The question now is: What should be the species best-interest standard for cheetahs? Any move to address extinction is complex, and it becomes even more layered when it comes to large carnivores.The cheetah should not be brought to India if certain issues are not addressed. Equally, bringing the cheetah to India can address problems typical to carnivore conservation and neglected habitat. The question of habitat is important as we have shown a historical skew towards protecting lush green forests. The cheetah is a creature of drier, more neglected spaces — grasslands and thorn forest. Not looking particularly green nor with dense canopy cover, both grasslands and thorn forest have been burnt, cleared, converted into industrial zones or decreed as wasted areas. Bringing the cheetah to India should have a minimum requirement of setting up a grassland policy. Sites in discussion for cheetah colonisation include Nauradehi sanctuary in Madhya Pradesh or the Shahgarh landscape near Jaisalmer; but we shouldn’t consider cheetah introduction as a tightly-managed “experiment” only in these sites.Instead, a new grassland policy should address issues with grasslands sites specifically, and thorn forest more broadly. Grasslands need grazing policies and protection against conversion; and thorn forests need protection from being mined or sold. Both grasslands and thorn forests are legitimate, living ecosystems with iconic species such as the Great Indian Bustard, caracal and the Indian wolf but the fact that these species are declining is because their habitat is not valued. Conserving cheetahs will also mean dealing with conflict with people outside and in protected areas. While the relatively small cheetah is unlikely to have negative encounters with people, it may eat livestock. The model of co-existence with a carnivore constantly needs innovation and fine tuning. Studies show that where authorities are responsive in compensating kills or damage, there is less conflict with carnivores. Creating effective and quick conflict-resolution models should benefit the Indian wolf which shares a similar habitat. We also need to strengthen responses to invasive threats like domestic dogs forming packs and attacking wildlife, particularly outside protected areas. Some would say India should focus on the species it has; especially the ones that are in neglected areas like grasslands. Yet, if we admit that conservation is also cultural, bringing cheetahs to India — with a grassland policy and innovation in place — may be the shot of conservation optimism that grasslands and degraded forests need. What we don’t need is patriotism through animals; but what we still do need are new ways of seeing places that don’t look impressive to us. Neha Sinha is with the Bombay Natural History Society The views expressed are personal Read the full article

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‘Destruction of wetlands will lead to water, food and climate insecurity’ - analysis

Today is World Wetlands Day, which marks the date of the adoption of the Convention on Wetlands on February 2, 1971, in the Iranian city of Ramsar on the shores of the Caspian Sea. The 2020 theme Wetlands and Biodiversity is an opportunity to highlight wetland biodiversity, its status, why it matters and to promote actions to reverse its loss.Dr Ritesh Kumar, director, Wetlands International South Asia, speaks to Hindustan Times, on why wetlands are important and the state of wetlands in India. KumKum Dasgupta: Ten more Indian wetlands have been declared Ramsar sites. What is the importance of such a declaration?Ritesh Kumar: The designation of these 10 wetlands highlights their importance for conserving global biological diversity. As a global mega-diverse country, this is India’s contribution to conserving the global good. By designating wetlands to the Ramsar List, India commits to their wise use through the maintenance of ecological character. KD: Why it is important to save wetlands? What kinds of challenges do they face?RK: India has witnessed a rapid degradation of its wetlands. In the last three decades alone, nearly one-third of natural wetlands have been lost to urbanisation, agriculture expansion and pollution. The loss of wetlands in urban areas has been more rapid. Data from 26 cities and towns show that since 1970s, for every one square kilometre increase in built up area, 25 ha of wetlands has been lost. An ecosystem health assessment of wetlands under the 100 days programme of the Government of India indicated that one in every four wetlands had low to very low ecosystem health and faced high to very high threat. As wetlands degrade, so does their ability to make societies water, food and climate secure, and conserve the diversity of life. Wetlands loss needs to be seen not just as a biodiversity crisis, but as a development crisis, which could lead to more water, food and climate insecurity for society. A transformed response to address rapid wetlands degradation and loss would be to pursue the integration of wetlands, and their wide-ranging values, within developmental programming at various levels. KD: The environment ministry notified new wetland rules in 2017. But draft rules don’t mention anything about a national regulator and don’t list specific activities prohibited in these ecologically sensitive areas. Your comments? RK: The revision of the Wetlands (Conservation and Management) Rules, 2017, is to bring the role of state wetlands authorities to the fore for wetlands conservation. As the Rules have been framed under the Environment Protection Act, the ultimate responsibility rests with the ministry of environment, forest and climate change. KD: How important is community involvement to save wetlands?RK: Communities engage with wetlands in various ways – from seeking livelihoods to spiritual fulfilment. The values community hold for wetlands are expressed in diverse ways. It is important to integrate community linkages in wetlands management planning, and incentivise community stewardship. This is crucial as over 85% of wetlands in India are in the form of village ponds and tanks. Read the full article

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HT Editorial| Deepening India-Brazil ties

India’s interest lies in expanding relations with other regional powers and, therefore, it is appropriate for the Brazilian president, Jair Bolsonaro, to be Republic Day chief guest. Brazil has been a close multilateral partner in Indian foreign policy after the Cold War. It has been India’s closest partner in BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa), and cooperated in dealing with the climate crisis, Security Council reform and South-South cooperation. Many of these have been aspirational, and stronger on joint statements than tangible results. One reason for this is the lack of economic and strategic links between tier-two powers. Mr Bolsonaro’s visit seeks to address this gap. In a world marked by increased geopolitical rivalry and reduced multilateral cohesion, many two-tier nations are strengthening relations. The most striking example in the Indian context has been the deep relationship that has emerged with Japan. This is also why New Delhi has countries like France, Indonesia and Australia on its strategic list in the coming years. Brazil, overwhelmingly dominant in South America, is an obvious country for India to seek a closer engagement with. While geography limits security cooperation, unusually for a Latin American leader, the Brazilian president has expressed concerns about China’s rise. India could also take some development lessons from Brazil. This is an emerging economy that has implemented universal health care, successfully adopted genetically modified crops and navigated the process of urbanisation. Mr Bolsonaro has made deeply objectionable statements about women and climate. His government is responsible for policy changes that have caused extensive destruction of the Amazon forests. This cannot be endorsed, but it also cannot be the basis for determining inter-State relations. A mature foreign policy is driven by interests. Brazil holds elections. Its people are best placed to judge the quality of their president. India will seek to persuade the Brazilian leader, despite his climate scepticism, to ratify the International Solar Alliance. New Delhi’s primary interest is that the Brazilian leader takes business seriously and wants to use economics to add muscle to the bilateral relationship. Brazil needs to be more to Indians than just football. Read the full article

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Taxing that extra bottle can wait

The commerce ministry has suggested, as part of its Budget recommendations to the finance ministry, that people be allowed to buy just one litre (or a bottle) of liquor at duty-free shops when they enter India, down from the current two litres. It also wants to bar the purchase of cigarettes at duty-free shops for people entering India. Both measures are ostensibly aimed at minimising the quantum of non-essential imports, and also adopting the prevailing rules in some other countries. The United States and Singapore, for instance, allow only one litre of liquor to be bought into the country, although the latter also allows a litre of beer and a litre of wine in addition. Singapore bars the purchase of cigarettes at duty-free shops by people entering the country, although the US allows the purchase of up to a carton. But it isn’t clear why the ministry has made the suggestion on limiting duty-free liquor purchases now; nor is it clear how much revenue the government foregoes because of the sale of liquor in duty-free shops. While applicable only to the minority of Indians that travels abroad, around 50 million by some estimates (and this probably includes some amount of duplication), the move is likely to be hugely unpopular. Unlike the 1990s and perhaps even the 2000s and part of the 2010s, it isn’t as much about availability now as it is about prices. And for many Indians travelling abroad, especially on pleasure, the duty-free shopping bargain, especially for liquor, is definitely part of the whole experience. Unfortunately, the suggestion — it is still that — reflects a focus on minutiae that does not help the government’s image. There are more pressing problems that the commerce ministry needs to address, starting with ways to revive India’s export growth. Taxing that extra bottle can wait. Read the full article

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The limits of the US-China deal | HT Editorial - editorials

The long-awaited United States (US)-China trade deal has arrived. But has it? A relatively shallow “phase one” agreement was reached by the two countries. The most substantive issues, notably technology and subsidies, were barely touched. The sense is that US President Donald Trump and his Chinese counterpart, Xi Jinping, would like a temporary truce to their economic confrontation. With US presidential elections formally kicking off next month, Mr Trump would like China to resume buying agricultural products. US farmers, who lost their largest export market, have been vociferous critics of the tariff war. Mr Xi has his own concerns, notably an economy whose slowdown is exacerbated by tensions with the US. The strength of the agreement can be best judged by the fact that neither side will change a single law or regulation. Instead, there is a series of ad hoc decisions to lower some tariffs, buy a few things and water down punitive rules on both sides. For example, the US removed China from its “currency manipulator” list, Beijing made another unenforceable promise to not steal technology and US financial companies received some access concessions. All of these measures are reversible. The main accomplishment has been that President Trump will be able to claim to US workers that he scored over China on the trade front. All of this means the US-China trade war will resume at some point down the road. Much of what the US is demanding goes right to the heart of China’s State-dominated economy. Beijing’s domestic economic structure is fundamentally not about free markets and the private sector; it is shot through with State subsidies and controls. India, itself a victim of subsidised Chinese exports, has been quietly supportive of the US’s efforts to constrain China’s predatory economic practices. It will probably hope a similar symbolic victory will be enough to bury its own, much less acute, trade difficulties with the US. But the US-China struggle’s negative impact on the World Trade Organisation’s future is a source of long-term concern. Read the full article

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Disentangling the threads of a broken criminal justice system - analysis

After not publishing the annual Crime in India Reports for almost two years, the National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB) recently cleared its backlog, by sharing reports for both 2017 and 2018 in the past month. Considering how voluminous and complex these documents are, it is encouraging to find newspapers — including this publication — take the effort of presenting the information in a digestible manner, spurring debate and discussion. To a large extent, these efforts end up spurring criticisms and laments about one thing — that the Indian criminal justice system is being crushed under its own weight, with delays now plaguing all the units that make up this system. The conversations following this output of data have been largely predictable — get more judges, more courts, and stricter timelines in place, and things will get better. These investments in the system’s infrastructure will surely help. However, it is foolhardy to think that a pendency level of almost 25 million cases at the trial court level is being caused only because of poor infrastructure.In a new paper (written and published before the NCRB released its data for 2017 and 2018), I argue that a fair share of the blame for India’s long-standing crisis of pendency in the criminal justice system lies in how our system is being operated. Or, put another way, we have millions of cases pending in trial courts not because we have a perfect system which is broken, but because the system itself is being worked in ways that are bound to cause delays. As it stands, the Criminal Procedure Code 1973 has many funnels in place. These kick-in from the investigation stage itself, to test whether a given case really deserves to go to trial or not. The funnels vest discretion in the individual officers, be it police officers or the magistrates, who decide whether or not there is sufficient basis to proceed further with a case at each stage. This makes sense. Trials are long-drawn procedures, which come at significant costs for taxpayers, and also cause great hardship to persons who are accused without credible material. Under this mindset, it does not make sense to send every case for trial, and it is accepted as a bitter truth that some guilty people are bound to escape the law, for there is no perfect system.A close look at the NCRB data suggests that the manner in which the criminal justice system is being run is almost entirely contrary to the manner in which the statute is designed. The funnels have been rendered redundant, with the police filing chargesheets in almost every case, and the judges treating trials as the default procedure. Consider the latest NCRB numbers. For Indian Penal Code (IPC) offences, police file chargesheets in almost 70% of cases, and judges take up trials in a staggering 89% of the total cases that they disposed off. It is hardly a surprise, then, that almost 50% of these trials end up in acquittals (and, since this is an average figure, it masks what are wildly varying rates of acquittal for specific offences).My preliminary research in this area, based on experiences in Delhi, suggests that the answers for “why trials?” are complex. At the level of police investigations, one factor appears to be the distrust of police discretion, leading them to recommend most cases for trial. The situation in courts is different. Here, a long-drawn trial ends up being the rational choice for all actors in the system, where these actors are guided by different connected considerations. For instance, an accused person knows the conviction rate is low and is happy drawing a matter out; in the case of an indigent defendant, legal aid lawyers may be driven to opt for trial, since in many States they are paid on an appearance basis. At the same time, when parties are interested in settling a dispute, they are often barred from doing this at the level of the trial court itself and have to go before the high court. Judges and prosecutors may be driven to opt for trials because of more bureaucratic tendencies. Judges are hard-pressed to “manage” their caseload, and thus may simply avoid hard decisions to maximise the disposal of cases on a daily basis. Similarly, even though the prosecutors are given the discretion to, say, recommend withdrawal of what they think are bogus chargesheets, ultimately they are also part of a bureaucratic structure, where every step they take requires prior permissions and many explanations. Ultimately, the easier choice is to simply go with the flow. To a certain degree, trials are supposed to be cumbersome, taxing, and time-consuming, for, at the end of the day, an individual’s liberty is at stake. Thus, to argue that the law should “make trials faster” to reduce delays is, frankly, wrong. What that leads us to are farcical procedures, which end up being set aside in appeals and compounding injustice. Rather, we need to shift the conversation to ask why have the filtering processes been abandoned, and why are there so many trials happening in the first place? Abhinav Sekhri is a Delhi-based lawyer. The paper referred to appears in volume 15(1) of the Socio Legal ReviewThe views expressed are personal Read the full article

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The Railways is finally out of the shadow of the British - analysis

On December 25, 2019, the Union Cabinet approved an organisational restructuring of the Indian Railways (IR), including the Railway Board (RB), the apex body of the organisation. These organisational changes have been talked about for a while. Committees led by Prakash Tandon (1994), Rakesh Mohan (2001), Sam Pitroda (2012), and most recently, Bibek Debroy (2015), had made related recommendations to reform the IR.To understand why these reforms were necessary, one needs to understand the existing work process of the IR. The organisation still carries the British legacy of departmentalisation. The eight key departments — accounts, civil, electrical, mechanical, personnel, signal and telecom, stores and traffic — are integrated vertically, and have their own hierarchies. Each department works in silos, with reporting staying within the department. They also hire individuals who specialise in one particular function and rise through the ranks as super-specialists in one particular department. This same system, where there are task owners but no process or project owners, extends right up to the RB.Thanks to this silo-approach, cross-functional or transformational projects often get caught in conflicts. In such an environment, bringing about any meaningful change is difficult. For instance, take the case of the Vande Bharat Express. The train was designed and built by the Integral Coach Factory at Perambur, Chennai, under the Make in India initiative. But it took time to scale-up because of inter-departmental conflicts. Even for relatively small things such as the ownership of diesel locomotives, there were turf wars among departments. Then there is the case of total electrification of IR, which is facing blockades due to a turf war. The inter-departmental rivalry has resulted in a shortage of loco-pilots who are experienced in operating electrical locomotives. These inter-departmental issues were leading to three problems. One, the IR cannot take up mega projects at a pace that gives it market advantages. Second, there are frequent time and cost overruns. Third, much time in the IR bureaucracy is spent in resolving routine conflicts. The government has now grouped eight Class A services into the Indian Railways Management Service (IRMS). This integration will make IRMS officers “Railways specialists” rather than accounting or traffic specialists. They will be given cross-functional experiences; they will learn about IR as a whole, and protect the interests of the IR, while taking ownership of complex projects, rather than executing siloed tasks.These changes, the government hopes, will also lead to faster decision making as each project will have single-point ownership. Faster implementation of projects will eventually lead to cost savings. There will be opportunities within the organisation, allowing qualified employees to rise through the ranks more efficiently, and take greater responsibility in the progress and development of the IR.The reorganisation of the RB is also transformational. In the new setup, the RB will have a chief executive officer (CEO), with four members looking after finance, infrastructure and rolling stock, and operations and business development. The CEO will manage the human resource through a senior official. The RB will also have a few independent members. The selection to the top posts will be open, with no departmental vetoes on any roles.These changes were preceded by few other decisions taken by minister Piyush Goyal. Fifty RB officers have been already shifted to field roles to strengthen operations. Last year, the IR said it had seen no passenger deaths, a first of its kind occurrence in over 166 years of IR history.The IR is proposing to undertake Rs 50 lakh crore investment over the next 12 years to modernise the IR service and bring world-class operating safety, customer service and train speeds to India. Such investments also requires a motivated, efficient and driven execution engine. The introduction of the IRMS and the reorganisation of the RB from departmental lines to functional lines will bring to the table the critical execution capacity to make the most of the ambitious investment plan. Creating functional specialisations will eventually lead to the emergence of home-grown IR specialists. Aashish Chandorkar is a public policy analyst based in PuneThe views expressed are personal Read the full article

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Analysis | Is India heading into a stagflation? - analysis

India’s retail inflation rose to a nearly 64-month-high of 7.35 per cent in December, rising well beyond the Reserve Bank’s tolerable limit of four per cent (plus, minus two per cent), according to official data released on Monday. On the other hand, the Central Statistics Office has estimated GDP growth in 2019-20 to fall to five per cent. High inflation and slow growth have led economists to wonder if India has entered what is known as a phase of stagflation, or stagnant growth coupled with high prices.Here’s the lowdown on what this could mean for the larger economy:What has driven the large inflation spiral? Well, largely food prices. Vegetable price inflation at 60.5% year on year has contributed 3.7 percentage points to the headline inflation of 7.4%. “Prices of other food items have also increased, which bears close monitoring, but higher vegetable prices are exaggerating the headline,” says economist Sonal Varma of Nomura Securities, a brokerage firm. Going forward, what will inflation look like? Most economists expect inflation to remain high in January as well. According to Varma, supply-side pressures are likely to ease after quarter one, with headline inflation falling closer to 4.5-4.7 per cent in the second and third quarter and sharply lower to 2-2.5 per cent in the fourth quarter. Therefore, this surge in inflation looks transitory.Is the current spiral driven by demand-side or supply side factors? At the moment, prices have risen due to supply-side shocks from food, oil and gold, which face an upside risk. There is no sign of what economists call demand-pull inflation.For instance, even though core inflation (inflation of goods other than food and fuel) picked up in December, it is trending on a more modest level of 0.28% on a three monthly moving average basis (i.e at an annualised 3.4%). How will policymakers respond? According to Nomura, the RBI will extend its pause i.e. continue to steady with key interest rates, while maintaining an “accommodative stance”. The government’s plans to slow expenditure to contain the fiscal deficit will likely have an impact on growth in quarter one because the GDP has been kept going by public spending alone. Analysts such as Varma expect “a sub-par recovery in GDP growth to 5.5% in 2020 versus 4.9% in 2019”. The stagflationary phase looks transitory, Nomura Securities said in a note. Read the full article

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Delhi elections: How will the competition play out? - analysis

Notwithstanding the small size of its Vidhan Sabha (70 seats), the upcoming elections for the city- state of Delhi are the cynosure of national political interest. It has been so since 2011, when the city became the centre of the Anna Hazare-led protests against corruption — a movement that led to the formation of the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP). In two subsequent rounds of assembly elections in 2013, and then in 2015, the party established itself as a political start-up of urban professionals, with a clean image. In the 2015 assembly elections, the AAP won 67 of the 70 seats, ending both a 15- year old reign of the Congress, and challenging an established base of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). But this victory came with its dilemmas. The AAP could do nothing to challenge the ascendance of the BJP at the Centre, on an anti-corruption political agenda similar to its own, in two consecutive Lok Sabha elections in 2014 and 2019. Also, although Arvind Kejriwal became the face of a more-or-less collegial leadership of the AAP in its early years, Narendra Modi’s face as a national leader had greater pan-India appeal. The same electorate that put Kejriwal in power with such a massive mandate was unwilling to accept his jibes about Modi. The lessons from Delhi were pointing to a structural transformation in the electoral arena. First, the voter was looking at credible issues being at the forefront of electoral promises; pork-barrel politics or monetary offerings were not influential enough. The structures of patronage based votebanks that worked as a “fixed asset” for the Congress were now passé. Second, citizens could vote differently for different levels of government, even within the same limits of geography. At the very least, the city now had an assertive citizenry at the base — this writer found that in elections between 2013-15, older politicians, such as the Sajjan Kumar-Ramesh Kumar duo, had little traction. Given these changes, how is the political competition likely to play out this time? Are local issues likely to hold sway, or will the more nationalistic issues matter more? What is the broader political significance of the battle and its likely signals for national politics? As far as political competition is concerned, foremost in the minds of the electorate, is the question of whether the incumbent AAP will manage to hold on, with its focus on concrete delivery and local issues. Some of the strongest achievements of the government have been with respect to taking on water mafias in unauthorised colonies, and improving the performance of government schools. In areas like Sangam Vihar — Delhi’s largest unauthorised colony — it was the land mafia that doubled up as the water mafia, and private tankers extracted heavy rents for meagre supplies for 15-20 minutes every fortnight. The colony now has a more regular, the AAP cadre-supervised supply of tankers, and pipelines are being laid out for secure water to households. So, the issue is not just about ownership documents to those living in unauthorised colonies, which the BJP hopes to leverage, but the long and arduous process of connecting them to pipelines and civic amenities, that Kejriwal’s government seems to be inching towards. This may well help the AAP gain the trust of the underclasses. Similarly, the promise of free electricity for 200 units is not simply a freebie as the BJP campaign would have us believe. It is coupled with the party’s personal assistance in case of complaints of exaggerated electricity bills. Another notable achievement is that of improvements in infrastructure, and quality of education in the 1,000-odd government schools. A clear outcome of their enhanced performance is the improved pass percentage.Even more, alignment with world-class ideas on teacher training and learning outcomes has helped the government school model conform to global norms in this area. Over 200 teachers were sent to Singapore — another city- state with globally acclaimed high learning levels on Programme for International Student Assessment tests. As a result, flipped classrooms, computer-aided classrooms, revised and friendly curricula, even swimming pools in some schools, are concrete achievements. For the BJP, the electoral competition is pegged around its nationalistic legislation based changes — the nullification of Article 370 in Jammu and Kashmir and its special status, and now the Citizenship Amendment Act. The party is relying on the charisma of Narendra Modi, who is an able communicator, and makes direct appeals that are considered credible by the electorate. The trouble is, however, that the party’s record of local municipal governance, through its councillors, is dismal. And the nationalistic legislations of late have stirred protests where the local actions of the city police, which reports to the Centre, have been criticised. The outcomes may not signal any political realignment at the Centre, where the BJP is firmly in control. But as voters deliberate on elections in this city-state, they may transform the nature of the political arena further. In that case, they may ask for concrete deliveries rather than be shown the might of the State that simply legislates but has a delivery deficit. Manisha Priyam is associate professor, National Institute for Educational Planning and Administration The views expressed are personal Read the full article