📰 Sri Lanka won’t do anything that will harm India’s interests: Gotabaya Rajapaksa
Newly elected Sri Lankan President Gotabaya Rajapaksa said ahead of his visit to New Delhi that he wanted to work very closely with both India and China
•Days ahead of his first State visit abroad, to New Delhi, Sri Lanka’s newly-elected President Gotabaya Rajapaksa has said his government will not do anything that would threaten India’s security.
•“We don’t want to do anything which will threaten the security of India... Our involvement with China is purely commercial,” he told the Indian website Bharat Shakti, in his first interview to foreign media since becoming President a week ago.
•President Gotabaya is scheduled to visit New Delhi on November 29, following an invitation from Prime Minister Narendra Modi. External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar was the first senior foreign official to meet the newly-elected President in Colombo, to hand over the PM’s invitation, hours after Mr. Gotabaya assumed duty.
•Reiterating his “neutral” foreign policy vision, Mr. Gotabaya said, “we don’t want to get in between the power struggles of superpowers. Further, commenting on his predecessor government’s agreement with China on the southern Hambantota Port — the Sirisena-Wickremesinghe administration leased it to China for 99 years — Mr. Gotabaya said: “I am not afraid to say, that was a mistake.”
Thaw in relations
•The newly-elected Sri Lankan President’s visit signals a full circle in diplomatic ties between New Delhi and the Rajapaksas in the last decade — with relations shifting from close cooperation to heightening tensions and now, to what appears a thaw.
•Mr. Gotabaya is well-known in New Delhi’s power corridors, particularly due to his role in the “troika” — a three-member team with his brother Basil Rajapaksa and senior bureaucrat Lalith Weeratunga — that held frequent discussions with Indian counterparts during the final years of the civil war that ended in 2009. The troika engaged on behalf of then President Mahinda Rajapaksa, who has now been appointed Prime Minister of a caretaker government by his younger brother Mr. Gotabaya.
•The dynamic would change post-war. Many in South Block associate Mr. Gotabaya’s tenure as Defence Secretary under his brother’s presidency, with Sri Lanka allowing Chinese naval warships to dock in Colombo in 2014, despite India voicing serious concern. Following the strain, the Rajapaksa brothers, at different points, even accused the Indian establishment of playing a role in “regime change” in the island in 2015.
•However, the friction seemed to reduce in the subsequent years. Mr. Modi, who visited Sri Lanka in March 2015 — months after Mr. Mahinda was defeated —and later in May 2017, and more recently this June, after the Easter terror attacks, met Mr. Mahinda Rajapaksa each time.
•The shift in relations was further evident during Mr. Mahinda’s visit to New Delhi in September 2018 when he, along with his son parliamentarian Namal Rajapaksa, met Mr. Modi. Both sides put out multiple photographs and messages around the visit, that was closely watched by political analysts.
Indian projects’ fate
•Meanwhile, New Delhi’s list of pending India-assisted projects in Sri Lanka looms. It figured in different bilateral meetings over the last few years, including in the October 2018 meeting between PM Modi and then PM Wickremesinghe in New Delhi, when the former “expressed concern” over the delay in the projects.
•India is keen on projects, including an LNG terminal in Kerawalapitiya near Colombo, a 50-100 MW solar power plant and development of an oil tank farm in the eastern district Trincomalee and the East Container Terminal at the Colombo port.
•While development and security have dominated bilateral talks over the last few years, New Delhi’s recent remarks that India “expects” Mr. Gotabaya to take post-war reconciliation forward to ensure, peace, dignity and justice for the Tamil people has sparked heightened interest in India’s foreign policy strategy with the new Rajapaksa administration.
The Constitution’s durability arises from the basic commitment and experience its makers showed even in the 1940s
•At 69 and stepping into 70, India’s Constitution is one of the world’s oldest and most enduring. At the time of its birth, constitutional experts the world over did not expect our Constitution to survive very long. One of its most incisive critics was Sir Ivor Jennings, the world’s then leading expert on constitutional law.
Premature analysis
•In 1951 the University of Madras invited Jennings to deliver a series of lectures on the just born Indian Constitution. Alladi Krishnaswamy Iyer, one of the chief architects of the Constitution, attended them and stayed through all his lectures which Jennings delivered in parts on three successive days. Alladi also made elaborate notes. Jennings began his address by summing up India’s Constitution in one cynical sentence: “Too long, too rigid, too prolix.” Over the course of three lectures, Jennings elaborated on his views. He focused on some primary aspects: The Constitution’s rigidity and its superfluous provisions; fundamental rights and directive principles of state policy; and, finally, key aspects of India’s federalism. Jennings finally handed down a largely unfavourable verdict. India’s Constitution, he declared, was “far too large and therefore far too rigid”, too caged by its history, and too unwieldy to be moulded into something useful through judicious interpretations. Overall, his judgment was that the Constitution would not endure.
•Alladi was distressed and distraught. He started writing a series of articles to counter Jennings’ diatribe and to point out why the Constitution of India would be an enduring document of governance. However, destiny snatched away his mortal remains before he could complete the rejoinder. Posterity however proved him right.
•In the 1960s, the same Sir Ivor Jennings had been commissioned to write a new Constitution for Sri Lanka then known as “Ceylon”. Despite all precautions taken in its drafting, that Constitution lasted about six years.
Findings of a key study
•The endurance, lasting appeal and effectiveness of our Constitution is brought home to us in full force when we peruse a work of the University of Chicago titled “The Lifespan of Written Constitutions, by Thomas Ginsburg, Zachary Elkins, and James Melton” on the longevity of constitutions the world over. The study encompassed the constitutional history of every independent state from 1789 to 2006. The study identified a “Universe of 792 new constitutional systems”, of which 518 have been replaced, 192 still in force, 82 have been formally suspended ultimately to be replaced.
•The study discloses that constitutions, in general, do not last very long. The mean lifespan across the world since 1789 is, hold your breath, a mere 17 years.
•The estimates show that one half of constitutions are likely to be dead by age 18, and by age 50 only 19% will remain. A large percentage, approximately 7%, do not even make it to their second birthday.
•The study also discerns noticeable variations across generations and regions. The mean lifespan in Latin America (the source of almost a third of all constitutions) and Africa is 12.4 and 10.2 years, respectively. And 15% of constitutions from these regions perish in their first year of existence. The study however found that constitutions in western Europe and Asia, on the other hand, typically endure 32 and 19 years, respectively. The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) countries have constitutions lasting 32 years on an average. Finally, unlike the trend of improving human health, the life expectancy of constitutions does not seem to be increasing over the last 200 years. Through the World War I years, the average lifespan of a constitution was 21 years, as against only 12 years since. Constitutions, are most likely to be replaced around age 10 and age 35. However, the risk of replacement is relatively high during most of this period, and it appears constitutions do not begin to
crystallise until almost age 50.
•So, what do constitutions the world over generally do? The study finds that their most important function is to ring fence and then to limit the power of the authorities created under the constitution. Constitutions also define a nation and its goals. A third is to define patterns of authority and to set up government institutions.
•The study shows that there are primary mechanisms by which constitutional changes occur: formal amendments to the text and informal amendments that result from interpretive changes; that constitutional lifespan will depend on: occurrence of shock and crisis such as war, civil war or the threat of imminent breakup; structural attributes of the constitution, namely its detail, enforceability and its adaptability; structural attributes of the state.
•The study also finds that the specificity of the document, the inclusiveness of the constitution’s origins, and the constitution’s ability to adapt to changing conditions will be an important prediction of longevity. Constitutions whose provisions are known and accepted will more likely be self-enforcing, for common language is essential to resolving coordination problems. Constitutions, that are ratified by public reference enjoy higher levels of legitimacy.
•Constitutional durability should increase with the level of public inclusion both at the drafting stage and the approval stage.
•That the primary mechanism through which a constitution is interpreted is a court empowered with powers of constitutional judicial review.
Explaining India’s stability
•It points to India being an example of the fact that fractionalised environments produce constitutional stability precisely because no single group can dominate others. Public ratification produces a more enduring constitution in democracies — but not in autocracies. Longer constitutions are more durable than shorter ones which suggest that specificity matters.
•In conclusion the study points out that constitutions work best when they are most like ordinary statutes: relatively detailed and easy to modify.
•The drafting committee of the Constitution headed by Dr. B.R. Ambedkar did not have the benefit of such an advanced study to guide its workings. However, one is deeply impressed with the fact that a distinguished group of seven members of the drafting committee and equally eminent members of the Constituent Assembly worked together and applied practically all yardsticks the study now declares as being indispensable to impart durability to a constitution. What is noteworthy is the fact that inclusiveness during the formative years of the Constitution-making debates; specificity of the provisions that produced an excellent balance between redundant verbosity and confounding ambiguity; fundamental rights and judicial review being made sheet anchors of the instrument; a workable scheme for amending the constitutional provisions which the current study found among others important to ensure longevity of Constitutions, were all applied even in the 1940s by our Constitution makers. And all this happened when there was no erudite study to guide them on the path of Constitution-making.
•All that our founding fathers and mothers had to guide their work was their strong commitment to the welfare of our nation and their own experience during the long years of the freedom struggle.
•Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes was indeed right when he observed: “The life of the law has not been logic. It has been experience.”
📰 Helping 10-year-olds to read by 2030
India has been successful in increasing access to school, but now the focus must shift to quality
•For most children, turning 10 is an exciting moment. They are learning more about the world and expanding their horizons. But too many children — more than half of all 10 year olds in low- and middle-income countries — cannot read and understand a simple story. We are in the middle of a global learning crisis that stifles opportunities and aspirations of hundreds of millions of children. That is unacceptable.
•In October, we released data to support a new learning target: by 2030, we want to cut, by at least half, the global level of learning poverty.
Missing possibilities
•Learning to read is an especially critical skill: it opens a world of possibilities, and it is the foundation on which other essential learning is built — including numeracy and science. Wiping out learning poverty (defined as the percentage of children who cannot read and understand a simple story by age 10) is an urgent matter. It is key to eliminating poverty in general and boosting shared prosperity. It is key to helping children achieve their potential.
•But over the last several years, progress in reducing learning poverty has been stagnant. Globally between 2000 and 2017, there has only been a 10% improvement in learning outcomes for primary school-aged children. If this pace continues, 43% of 10-year-olds will not be able to read in 2030.
•The good news is, the children who will turn 10 in 2030 will be born next year. If we work urgently, there is an opportunity to reverse this trend.
•The target we have set is ambitious but achievable — and should galvanise action toward achieving Sustainable Development Goal (SDG4) — ensuring quality education for all. It will require nearly tripling the rate of progress worldwide, which can be done if every country can match the performance of the countries that made the most progress between 2000 and 2015.
•Several countries are showing that it is possible.
The India example
•In India, the Right-to-Education Act has been successful in increasing coverage and access to school education but now there is an urgent need to shift the focus to quality. The decision of India to join the Programme for International Student Assessment and the merger of schemes under Samagra Shiksha are encouraging signs that India is moving in this direction.
•In Kenya, the government’s national reading programme has more than tripled the percentage of grade two students reading at an appropriate level. This was accomplished through technology-enabled teacher coaching, teacher guides, and delivering one book per child.
•In Vietnam, a lean, effective curriculum ensures that the basics are covered, there is deep learning of fundamental skills, and all children have reading materials. Learning outcomes of Vietnamese students in the bottom 40% of the income ladder are as high, or higher, than the average student in high-income countries.
•The challenges of reducing learning poverty will differ between countries and regions. In some countries, access to school remains an enormous problem — 258 million young people were out of school globally, in 2018. In other countries, children are in classrooms but are not learning. By setting a global target, the World Bank can work with countries to define their own national learning targets. Cutting learning poverty in half by 2030 is only an intermediate goal. Our ambition is to work with governments and development partners to bring that number to zero.
•As the largest financier of education in low-and middle-income countries, the World Bank will work with countries to promote reading proficiency in primary schools. Policies include providing detailed guidance and practical training for teachers, ensuring access to more and better age-appropriate texts, and teaching children in the language they use at home.
Creating the right classroom
•The World Bank is also working with governments and development partners to improve entire education systems, so advancements in literacy can be sustained and scaled up. That means making sure children come to school prepared and motivated to learn; teachers are effective and valued and have access to technology; classrooms provide a well-equipped space for learning; schools are safe and inclusive; and education systems are well-managed.
•An ambitious measurement and research agenda supports these efforts and includes measurement of both learning outcomes and their drivers, continued research and innovation, and the smart use of new technologies on how to build foundation skills.
•The learning crisis not only wastes the children’s potential, it hurts entire economies. It will negatively impact future workforces and economic competitiveness — as the World Bank’s Human Capital Index shows that, globally, the productivity of the average child born today is expected to be only 56% of what it would be if countries invested enough in health and education.
•Eliminating learning poverty must be a priority, just like ending hunger and extreme poverty. It will not be easy, but we cannot back down from the challenge. We owe it to the children all over the world to set our sights high, so they can too.
📰 Central GST collection at ₹3.26 lakh crore in FY20
Direct tax mop-up below half-way mark
•The Central GST collection so far this fiscal stood at ₹3.26 lakh crore, or about half of the government’s target for 2019-20, Parliament was informed on Monday.
•“The Budget Estimates for Central Goods and Services Tax (GST) for 2019-20 has been fixed at ₹6,63,343 crore.
•“The actual net GST collection for the Centre till October 2019 in current fiscal year is ₹3,26,490 crore,” Minister of State for Finance Anurag Singh Thakur said in a written reply to the Lok Sabha.
•He said the shortfall or excess in the collection of GST with respect to Budget Estimates, if any, is calculated after completion of financial year.
Shortfall in collections
•The Minister was responding to a question on details of the shortfall in GST collection until October this fiscal against the Budgetary projections.
•On direct taxes, the Minister said that for 2019-20, the Budget Estimate was ₹13,35,000 crore. Between April-October, 2019, the net collection of direct taxes was ₹5,18,084 crore.
