📰 ‘Centre won’t dilute Article 371’
NDA govt. committed to preserving cultures, traditions of northeast, says Shah
•Union Home Minister Amit Shah on Thursday allayed fears in the northeast that Article 371 would meet the same fate as Article 370. He was speaking at a public meeting at the 34th Statehood Day celebrations in Itanagar.
•His visit was marked by protests in Arunachal Pradesh and China, which claims the State as part of southern Tibet. Students of the Rajiv Gandhi University led the protest related to the Citizenship (Amendment) Act, 2019 (CAA) at Mithun Gate, less than a kilometre from Indira Gandhi Park where the Statehood Day programme was held.
‘Misinformation spread’
•“Misinformation was spread after the abrogation of Article 370 that Article 371 will also be scrapped… It will never happen and nobody can do it,” Mr. Shah said, asserting that the NDA government was committed to preserving and protecting the unique cultures and traditions of the northeast inhabited by various ethnic groups.
•While Article 370 had special provisions for Jammu and Kashmir, Articles 371-A to 371-J have certain provisions for Nagaland, Assam, Manipur, Andhra Pradesh, Sikkim, Mizoram and Arunachal Pradesh besides Maharashtra, Gujarat, Goa and Karnataka.
•Mr. Shah said the northeast was only geographically connected to the rest of India till 2014, when the NDA government began to integrate the region emotionally. “The region used to get importance earlier only on political grounds but Prime Minister Narendra Modi has changed the trend,” Mr. Shah added.
•“The Modi government wants the entire northeast to be free of militancy, inter-State boundary conflicts, law and order, drug menace and other problems. When we seek votes in 2024, the northeast will have been free from all problems,” the Home Minister said.
Implementation subject to final judgment in civil appeals by three States
•The Supreme Court on Thursday passed an interim order allowing an application by the State of Karnataka to notify the Mahadayi Water Dispute Tribunal’s award.
•The implementation of the award would, however, be subject to the final judgment of the Supreme Court in the civil appeals filed by Karnataka, Goa and Maharashtra, challenging the allocation of water from the Mahadayi river among them.
Don’t oppose
•Neither of the two States — Goa and Maharashtra — opposed the plea made by Karnataka to publish the August 2018 tribunal award in the official gazette.
•A Bench led by Justice D.Y. Chandrachud listed the petitions for final arguments in July.
•Advocate General Prabhuling Navadgi, senior advocates Shyam Divan and Mohan Katarki, and advocates Nishanth Patil and V.N. Raghupathy represented the State of Karnataka.
•The tribunal had allocated 13.42 TMC water (including 3.9 TMC for diversion into the depleted Malaprabha river basin) from the Mahadayi river basin to Karnataka.
•Maharashtra was allotted 1.33 TMC water while Goa was given 24 TMC in the final decision of the tribunal. The United Progressive Alliance (UPA)-2 government had constituted the Mahadayi Water Disputes Tribunal in 2010.
•The Karnataka government had petitioned the tribunal seeking the release of 7.56 TMC of water for the Kalasa-Banduri Nala project. The Kalasa-Banduri Nala (diversion) project, which will utilise 7.56 TMC of water from the inter-State Mahadayi river, is being undertaken by Karnataka to improve drinking water supply to the twin cities of Hubballi-Dharwad and the districts of Belagavi and Gadag.
•It involves building barrages across Kalasa and Banduri, the tributaries of the Mahadayi river, to divert 7.56 TMC water to the Malaprabha river, which fulfils the drinking water needs of the twin cities.
📰 Economy needs more monetary stimulus, says Shaktikanta Das
Minutes of meeting show ‘accommodative’ stance favoured
•Reserve Bank of India (RBI) Governor Shaktikanta Das, stating he had observed certain ‘green shoots,’ also acknowledged that the economy needed a further monetary stimulus, thus indicating the central bank was open to cutting interest rates. These are the minutes of the monetary policy committee (MPC) meeting held early in February.
•The six-member MPC unanimously voted for status quo at the February policy review on the back of an uptick in inflation. The MPC decided to continue with the ‘accommodative’ stance.
•“While the macroeconomy needs further monetary stimulus, the inflation outlook continues to be uncertain,” said Mr. Das. The RBI had reduced interest rates by 135 basis points (bps) between February and October of 2019 before pressing the pause button in the next two policy reviews — in December and February 2020.
•“Considering the overall evolving growth-inflation situation, it would be prudent to continue the focus on growth in the context of the expected moderation in inflation,” Mr. Das said, adding he was for maintaining ‘accommodative’ stance as long as necessary to revive growth.
Testing trade-offs
•Deputy Governor Michael Debabrata Patra described the present situation as a tunnel of testing trade-offs and cautioned it may be a while before light was sighted. “.. the MPC has entered what I call the tunnel of testing trade-offs (TTT) and it may be a while before the light at the end of the tunnel is sighted,” Mr. Patra said.
•Mr. Patra said he was for persevering with the accommodative stance till growth revived on a durable basis.
•“Monetary policy will complement the fiscal impulse and boost it going forward,” he said.
•Chetan Ghate, an external member of the MPC, highlighted the need for structural reforms as fiscal and monetary stimulus, so far, have been unable to revive economic growth.
•“If growth hasn’t revived with a 135 bps cut in the policy rate, and a tax stimulus amounting to 1.2% of GDP, then the need of the hour is more structural reform,” Mr. Ghate said. Economic growth is estimated to slow to 5% for 2019-20.
•He cautioned that fiscal deficit uncertainty may require the MPC to accept tighter-than-desired monetary conditions to ensure commitment to the medium-term inflation target.
•Another external member Pami Dua cautioned on inflationary pressures due to disruptions in the supply of Chinese imports following the spread of COVID-19 which may exert pressure on prices of goods imported from that country.
📰 Losing a nation, in seven acts
A Turkish journalist’s recent book on her country’s descent into ‘dictatorship’ has a troubling message for India
•Are we losing our country? This is the question that Ece Temelkuran, a Turkish journalist and writer, suggests that we should be asking ourselves. In her recent book, How to Lose a Country , she describes how her homeland was stolen from her by what she considers the dictatorship of Recep Tayyip Erdoğan. Subtitled “The seven steps from democracy to dictatorship”, the book outlines a saptapadi that Indians have become intimately familiar with over the past six years. In fact, Ms. Temelkuran’s main point is that this is now a global trend.
•The story begins with the creation of a movement that claims to be of and for the “real people”, the authentic owners of the nation unjustly marginalised in the past by assorted conspiracies. This is followed by an assault on rationality and on language, where new meanings are thrust upon old terms and argument is replaced by aggressive slogans. The third step is a shedding of all shame and decency on the part of leaders, who then teach their followers to do so as well, all in the name of an authentic indigeneity.
•After this comes the dismantling, or co-option, of all the institutions that are intended to act as checks and balances on executive power, including the judiciary, the media and the Constitution. The fifth step is the designing of new citizens, who will be pre-calibrated to the new normalcy that has been speedily established, shrugging off the weight of history. The sixth step is the reduction of all liberal and secular thinking persons to a stage of irrelevance and despair where they can only “laugh at the horror” that their country has become. The seventh and last step, of course, is when the new rulers build their own country, having crushed all possible sources of resistance to their agendas.
How the liberals react
•Ms. Temelkuran emphasises that the early steps in this journey are marked by confident expectations of the liberal establishment that the disturbances are temporary, and the built-in safeguards in the system will take care of the threats. But this confidence soon gives way to helpless disbelief expressed in incredulous exclamations: “They can’t do this!”, “How did they get away with that!”, and so on.
•Ms. Temelkuran persuasively argues that, in the last two decades, this sequence has been repeated in countries as different from each other as Hungary, Brazil, the United States and Turkey (to name a few), and it is currently under way in the United Kingdom.
•India finds no mention in Ms. Temelkuran’s book, which is mainly addressing Anglo Americans and Europeans. But the resemblance to our recent history is uncanny. We can argue about the exact sequence, and about the relative importance or distinctiveness of this or that step, but the overall trend is striking in its similarity. Oddly enough, this book is useful precisely because it is saying nothing new, nothing that we do not already know. It is merely holding out a mirror, and there is something helpful about seeing our own experiences reflected back to us as part of a larger phenomenon. This relativising of what we are accustomed to thinking of as uniquely Indian draws attention to three features of our recent history that we may otherwise neglect.
•The first is that this journey towards an authoritarian communalism is flagged off by neoliberalism and the values it promotes. This may sound disappointingly formulaic, part of the same tired left-wing rant that most people have stopped hearing long ago. But think about it. Today, large sections of our population are convinced that some minorities ought to be legally deprived of citizenship. Could we have arrived at this point if neoliberalism had not discredited social welfare as an idea? Whatever its faults, welfarism did assume that citizens are connected to each other not only by communitarian but also by civic-national ties. Neoliberalism cut the ties that connected individuals to each other and to the state, thereby undermining our secular-social bonds. Or, to take an opposite example, think about why neoliberalism seems self-evidently opposed to things like reservation.
•The second feature on which a lot has been said already is the unique role of the media in India. As the world has been repeatedly told, India has more than 400 news channels that broadcast news 24X7, far more than any other country on earth. But what is remarkable here is not so much the giant medium, but the invisible, yet incredibly effective, work that has gone into creating an audience that is primed for the message before it even arrives. The stunning swiftness and reach of the new social media are often credited with — or blamed for — the spread of bigotry. This is unfair, for most of that credit belongs to those who tutored the addressees to receive the message without the slightest trace of scepticism. This is no mean achievement in a country where, until yesterday, people prided themselves on their scepticism and wore their cynicism on their sleeves. The same suspicious lot are now eager consumers of the most crudely concocted fake news and alternative facts.
A fundamental disconnect
•The final feature concerns the composition and positioning of the opinion-making classes, or of intellectuals in the broad sense. There are two related but distinct aspects to this. The first is the degree to which a left-of-centre perspective has monopolised the more formal and institutional parts of the intellectual world. This has meant that, taken as a whole, our intellectual class was never really outside the sphere of state power, but very much an insider. This is in spite of the sharp disagreements and antipathies that may have separated specific persons or groups from particular political parties or leaders. In fact, even during the Emergency, when a large number of politically active persons including some intellectuals was actually imprisoned, there was never a fundamental disconnect between the corridors of power and the opinion makers. Today, we have a clear split — a major section of the media and many bureaucrats, artists, performers and other such public persons are completely identified with the power centre to the extent that they have no autonomous identity left. On the other side of the divide is that segment of the intellectual class that is completely cut off from the power centre and has been made its target. This latter segment is struggling to come to terms with its unprecedented, total and aggressive exclusion from the power centre.
•The other aspect is the relative scarcity of right-wing intellectuals. This ought to be a matter of concern for liberals and leftists because it denies those in power the benefits of moderation and refinement in the pursuit of their agendas. It also ensures that the politics of resentment plays out in extreme ways that damage institutions and cause irreparable harm to the intellectual ecosystem.
•But the immediate message conveyed by How to Lose a Country is that it is imperative to act at once, before the saat phera s are over, and we are bound over to an authoritarian regime.
📰 Gearing up to fight the next big viral outbreak
Indian States should regularly test their preparedness to not just diagnose and treat diseases, but also to prevent them
•India is ill-prepared to deal with the new strain of coronavirus (SARS-CoV-2) that is causing worldwide panic. Policymakers must take forceful action to prevent the spread of the new virus and heed the urgent warnings of global public health professionals about new pathogens. The consequences of not doing this will be dire for all densely populated countries.
•The World Health Organization (WHO)’s Global Health Security Index finds that no country is adequately prepared. It assesses 195 countries across six categories — prevention, early detection, rapid response, health system quality, standards, and the risk environment. India is ranked 57th. That the country scores around the global average is no comfort, because the global average is a low 40.2 out of 100, and India’s score is 46.5. (For the record, the U.S. is ranked first and China 51st).
4-point health agenda
•The prospect of new outbreaks puts four items on the health agenda in the spotlight that require both immediate and longer-term action: early detection and prevention; better collaboration across health service providers; more investment in health systems, outcomes, and education; and better care of the environment and biodiversity, which directly affects people’s health safety.
•That Thailand is ranked sixth in the Health Security Index — the highest ranking for an Asian country — says a great deal about the country’s track record in disease prevention, early detection, and rapid response linked to investments in its public health system. When the deadly Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS), also caused by a coronavirus, broke out in 2015, Thailand quickly notified the WHO of its first confirmed case and acted transparently to arrest the spread — in stark contrast to delayed notification by China’s officials of the recent outbreak.
•The influenza A (H1N1) outbreaks since 2009 in Rajasthan, Maharashtra, Tamil Nadu and other States have acutely underscored the need for better detection, awareness of symptoms and quarantining. The Pune-based National Institute of Virology has been designated as a WHO H5 reference laboratory. Yet, clearer protocols for all three types of surveillance are needed in all States, and these protocols need to be communicated to health professionals at all levels and the public in local languages.
•One lesson of the 2008 global financial crisis was the need for countries to conduct regular stress tests on their financial systems, an exercise that has proved valuable. Countries need to do the same for their preparedness to deal with health emergencies. Each State in India should do this to expose crucial gaps in areas such as adequacy and supply of diagnostic equipment, health facilities, hygienic practices, and prevention and treatment protocols. Alarming scenes of queues of desperate shoppers trying to buy hand sanitisers, face masks and other protective products in Hong Kong and China highlight the need for strong supply chains for products that people need during health emergencies. China is realising, at a chilling cost to the safety of its health workers, the difficulty of ensuring enough supplies so that it can avert panic buying.
•This is where partnership can come in — partnerships between private and public sectors, and between countries — that can sustain supply chains and bolster the medical capacity of countries struggling to cope. In Asia, collaborative approaches exist, for example, for combating tuberculosis, AIDS and malaria. But more is needed to tackle health emergencies on the scale of recent outbreak, particularly on funding. There could be an emergency loan facility, with a “deferred drawdown option” as the World Bank uses for disasters, natural or health, that can help augment own resources in times of a public health catastrophe.
•But the best defence of all is to invest more, and more efficiently, in health and education to prepare populations and strengthen health services. Health expenditure by the government in India is less than 1.5% of Gross Domestic Product, which is low for a middle-income country. Spending at that level limits, among other things, the availability of health professionals during crises. According to WHO, India has only 80 doctors per 1,00,000 people.
Investing in education, health
•Kerala’s experience in 2018 with the deadly Nipah virus showed the value of investing in education and health over the long term. The availability of equipment for quick diagnosis, measures to prevent diseases from spreading, and public information campaigns all helped to keep the mortality rate from the Nipah virus relatively low. Having capable public health professionals helped in the information exchange with WHO and other international bodies.
•One of the many dimensions of new pathogens that is getting increased attention is the link with environmental degradation. The interaction between particulate matter from pollution and viral respiratory tract infections, especially in the young and the elderly, as well as the malnourished, has been increasingly noted in epidemiological studies. Many of the highest air pollution readings are being recorded in Indian cities.
•India’s health status is being worsened by climate shocks. An HSBC study of 67 countries ranks India as the most climate-vulnerable one because of the impact of severe temperature increases and declines in rainfalls. The effects of such occurrences are magnified by the high density of the country’s population, the sheer number of people in harm’s way, and the high incidence of poverty. Research is increasingly connecting global warming to vector-borne viruses.
•The recent outbreak in China — with the SARS-CoV-2 having believed to have emanated in a market where wild animals were sold — highlights the biodiversity link. Nearly two-thirds of known pathogens and three-quarters of newly emerging pathogens are spread from animals to humans. This dangerous trend for disease spillovers from animals to humans can be traced to increased human encroachment on wildlife territory; land-use changes that increase the rate of human-wildlife and wildlife-livestock interactions; and climate change. Protecting the precious biodiversity should be a priority.
•More outbreaks are likely in the future; the best response is better preparedness.
📰 ART of life
The Assisted Reproductive Techniques Bill is a much-needed complement to Surrogacy Bill
•Sometimes, the leash follows the dog, but given the importance of control, the sequence can seem insignificant. It only matters that there remains a good hold over the circumstances. No matter then, that the Assisted Reproductive Techniques (ART) Bill, which was cleared by the Union Cabinet this week, came after the Surrogacy Bill that it should have preceded. Together, the ART Bill; the Surrogacy Bill; the amendment to the Medical Termination of Pregnancy Act; and the older Pre-Conception and Pre-Natal Diagnostic Techniques Act present a bouquet of legislation that will have a positive impact on the reproductive rights and choices of women in India. The ART Bill to regulate clinics offering fertility treatments has been long in the works, and was first presented publicly way back in 2008. ART measures help couples unable to conceive naturally to bear children with the aid of state-of-the-art technology to achieve pregnancy, leading to safe delivery. India has a rich history of employing ART, though the initial years went officially undocumented at that time. In the late 1970s, only months after the birth of Louise Brown, the first ‘test tube baby’, Kolkata-based doctor Subhas Mukherjee announced the birth of the world’s second test tube baby. Subsequently, the industry saw phenomenal growth, as infertility rates went up. A market projection (by Fortune Business Insights) said the size of the ART market is expected to reach $45 billion by 2026. Among Asian countries, India’s ART market is pegged at third position. A lack of regulation and the consequent laxity in operations drove a lot of traffic from other nations to India. This, in turn, along with the relatively low costs, led to the mushrooming of ART clinics across the country. Undoubtedly, this also led to a plethora of legal, social and ethical issues.
•It is at this juncture that the ART Bill has seen a fitting revival, egged on by legislators who facilitated the passage of the Surrogacy Bill in the Rajya Sabha. It seeks to regulate and monitor ART procedures, and mandates the establishment of a National Board and State Boards to lay down rules for implementation, and also honours a long-pending demand — creation of a national registry, and registration authority. While the rules will handle the bells and whistles, the Bill already sets a comprehensive framework to operate on. Most significantly, the Bill recommends punishment, even jail time, for violations of the provisions. Since it does impinge on surrogacy too, the government must now work on ensuring synchrony in both Bills. Having come this far to ensure the reproductive rights of women, the state now has the thriving ART industry on a leash, and the Bill is its best chance to eliminate exploitation in the field.
