LIST OF NEWSPAPERS COVERED

DECCAN HERALD

ECONOMIC TIMES

HINDUSTAN TIMES

INDIAN EXPRESS

PIONEER

STATESMAN

TELEGRAPH

TIMES OF INDIA

TRIBUNE

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CONTENTS

BACKWARD CLASSES 3-5

CHILD WELFARE 6-8

CIVIL SERVICE 9-10

COMPUTERS 11-12

CORRUPTION 13-15

EDUCATION 16-21

ELECTIONS 22-24

HEALTH SERVICES 25-26

INTERNATIONAL TRADE 27-31

POLITICS AND GOVERNMENT 32-35

PRIMEMINISTERS 36

PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION 37-42

REFUGEES 43-44

TRANSPORT 45

WATER SUPPLY 46

WOMEN 47-48

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BACKWARD CLASSES

ECONOMIC TIMES, DEC 27, 2017SC, ST to protest job shifts

NEW DELHI: Scores of men and women converged at the Ramleela Ground here to protest against privatisation and outsourcing of jobs, terming these "threats" to the reservation policy. The rally was organised by the All India Confederation of SC, ST Organisations. Even after Independence, socio-economic conditions of the people belonging to SC, ST and backward communities have not changed much, president of the organisation and BJP MP Udit Raj said. Members from UP, Bihar, Haryana, Gujarat, TamilNadu, Delhi and many other states participated.

STATESMAN, DEC 27, 2017Creamy layer syndromeAK Ghosh     

The Mandal Commission report, which revived the “Varna system” though in a different form, received an impetus with the Supreme Court upholding the Constitutional validity of the 27 per cent quota for the Other Backward Classes (OBC)in central higher educational institutions. The division of caste was not complete, however. The Bihar chief minister recently declared that government departments that outsource jobs would introduce reservations, as in government organisations. The Karnataka chief minister wants 70 per cent of the jobs reserved.

However, the rationale of keeping out the “creamy layer” has been debated for quite some time. Euphemistically speaking, those with family income above Rs 250,000 a year make up the creamy layer. Also, children of doctors, engineers, chartered accountants, actors, consultants, writers, bureaucrats, defence officers of colonel and equivalent rank or High Court and Supreme Court judges, all Group A and B officials are to be included in the list.

Reservations for OBCs, introduced in 1993, have often triggered stronger controversies than quotas for SCs and STs. From the powerful Marathas in Maharashtra to the influential Patels in Gujarat and the dominant Jats and Gujjars in North India or Kapus in Andhra Pradesh, all are intent on grabbing the opportunity. On the surface, however, it seems rather fair to reserve 49.5 per cent of government jobs and seats in educational institutions for STs, SCs and OBCs who constitute 61.5 per cent of the population. But going by the data, it appears that OBCs have already dominated the whole quota pool. Between 2004 and 2013, the share of OBCs in A, B and C grade jobs in the central government rose to 17.31 per cent, whereas between 2003 and 2013, the share of SCs grew to 17.3 per cent from 14.18 per cent; for STs, it grew to 7.59 per cent from 5.01 per cent.

The slab of less than Rs 2.5 lakh was fixed in 2004, and it has of late been revised to eight lakh. However, the concept of creamy layer in reservation has sometimes been termed as unconstitutional as there is no mention in the Constitution. Also, neither the Constitution nor Dr Ambedkar wanted such provisions to continue for long because the aim of the state is to establish

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an egalitarian social order at the earliest where these differences will not exist and the former weaker sections will join the mainstream of national life. Even Jagjivan Ram admitted that permanent privileges “would make people think that it (SC) is a community of incompetent and inferior people”.

Though the Mandal Commission was called a “Backward Class Commission”, its report does not define the term “class” and assumes, rather unwittingly, that class means caste. So the principle of reservation in educational institutions, based on caste, is impervious to the sweeping changes that have taken place since the inception of the Constitution. If the same caste is categorised differently   in different regions, the concept of creamy layer seems to be    illusory.

To separate the creamy layer from the rest will always be an arduous task. There will be a mad rush to declare oneself as a citizen who is not a member of the creamy layer. In fact, the progress made by the beneficiaries of reservation so far is yet to be reviewed, but it is well known that the number of castes in the OBC list has been increasing. Institutions of higher learning were expected to increase seats by 54 per cent over three years so that the general category seats did not suffer. It is open to question how effectively the infrastructure of the premier institutions is streamlined with efficient faculty members.

Though Jawaharlal Nehru had set up the Kelelkar Commission in 1953, his understanding of the danger of social fragmentation and his realistic awareness of the fact that merit cannot for ever be subordinated to the accident of birth prompted him to shelve a report that apparently listed some 2399 allegedly disadvantaged groups. Numbers were not specified, but it was assumed that only 930 of these groups comprised 115 million people nearly 54 years ago. The Commission failed to formulate any objective criteria for identifying backward classes and this was the reason why the government rejected its recommendations.

The demographic impact of the Mandal Commission report, which identified about 3000 socially and educationally backward castes and communities, must be infinitely greater. Between 1953 and 1978, the number of backward castes ought to have shown a decline to reflect the impact of the development programmes. The Mandal Commission concluded that 52 per cent of the country’s population was backward and accordingly argued in favour of 52 per cent reservation.

True, the reservation announced stopped short of violating the Supreme Court order not to exceed 50 per cent, but the Court did not specify that half the seats in all educational institutions and half the employment vacancies be earmarked as of right to those who might rank low by birth in the traditional hierarchy. On the contrary the Supreme Court had warned that the “supposed zeal” of reformers could destroy “the ideal of supremacy of merit, efficiency of services and absence of discrimination”. It had also observed that while quotas should not exceed 50 per cent, “how much less than 50 per cent would depend on the relevant prevailing circumstances in each case”.

Both VP Singh and Arjun Singh rushed in where Nehru had feared to tread. It bears recall that Ramkrishna Hegde’s government in Karnataka had rejected the Venkataswamy Commission’s report because the Vokaligga community just would not be deprived of the backward label. The Chinappa Reddy Commission had applied the economic criteria to remove 32 communities,

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including both Vokaliggas and Lingayats, from the backward category and scaled down the percentage of reservation from 50 to 38.

Instead of caste being on the decline, it is becoming part of the Indian psyche, thanks to the reservation policy. As a result of the creamy layer policy, many will remain deprived of the opportunity to improve their economic status because seats in higher education institutions will be allotted to others of his own caste through a lower academic benchmark. The soft corridor of admission will deprive the talented students belonging to the same caste. This is bound to spark resentment, threatening to tear apart the social fabric, and serve as a potentially explosive threat to social cohesion.

There is no denying that the politics of backwardness has damaged the social fabric, resulting in fragmentation along caste and communal lines ~ “Jathwads within Jathwads”, as Rajiv Gandhi once described it. It has also encouraged politicians to fish in the troubled waters of divisiveness at the expense of national integration.

Historically, caste has been the curse of our country. Our society is already divided as it is. The government should perform better than to divide it further on caste lines by singling out the euphemistically termed “creamy layer”.

(The writer is former Associate Professor, Dept. of English, Gurudas College, Kolkata)

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CHILD WELFARE

STATESMAN, DEC 30, 2017The neglected child

We are guilty of many mistakes, but our worst crime is to abandon children. We thus neglect the fountain of life. Many of the things that we need can wait; the child cannot not least because his bones, his blood, and his senses are in the formative stage of development.

The recent signal on the health profile of Indian children, which was largely unnoticed, is cause for alarm. More than a fifth (21 per cent) of the children suffering from “wasting” (an insufficient weight-to-height ratio). The country slipped three places to 100 in the 2017 Global Hunger Index (GHI) of 119 countries. Incidentally, India fell 45 notches from its rank of 55 in 2014.

The dismal health of Indian women and children is primarily due to the lack of food security. It can be in place when all the people at all times have physical, economic and social access to safe, adequate and nutritious food that meets their dietary needs for a healthy and active life. Food security is measured along a continuum, from the most severe state of starvation to acute hunger, followed by chronic persistent hunger, and finally “hidden hunger”. Considerably less investment is required to maintain adequate nourishment for children than is required to treat undernourished children.

India has the world’s highest number of moderately and severely underweight children. Among those below five, one in three (35.7 per cent) is underweight, one in three (38.4 per cent) is stunted and one in five (21 per cent) is wasted. This is worse than many sub-Saharan countries. Overall, our country accounts for more than three out of every 10 stunted children globally. This is largely on account of a lack of nutritious food, poor care and feeding practices and inadequate water, sanitation, and health services.

Many children are born to anaemic and malnourished teenaged mothers. Indeed, 33.6 per cent of Indian women are chronically undernourished and 55 per cent are anaemic. In addition, feeding practices among such mothers are poor and the environment they live in with their children are appallingly unhygienic. However, the public health programmes generally overlook infants in the first two years of their lives, when malnutrition can afflict the child. Indeed, malnutrition in the first two years of life can cause permanent mental and physical damage.

Breast-milk helps to protect infants against infection. As it turns out, most children are given water and most spend their first few years subsisting on a diet that is poor in terms of protein and vitamin. Children cannot grow reasonably tall on such a restricted diet. Moreover, research in other countries has shown that supplementary nutrition given in the first two years of life can improve a child’s IQ by 10 per cent.

It is not merely the lack of nutrition that results in stunting; the environment plays a significant part as well. Common enteric infections, which are generally due to lack of hygiene or sanitation, can affect the system’s ability to absorb nutrients. Thus, even if the child has access to nutritious

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food, the body may not be able to absorb the nutrition. Also, diarrhoea among children in the poverty-stricken areas during the first two years of life has been linked to an eight cm reduction in height and a ten IQ point decrease if the child is between seven and nine. India’s programmes to feed children in school have multiplied over time, but by the pre-school age it is too late to prevent stunting and damage to the intellect that occur by the age of 2. India runs the largest child feeding programme in the world, but it is inadequately designed, and has made an innocuous dent among sick children.

According to the development economist, Jean Dreze, the most serious nutrition challenge in India is to reach out to children under three years of age ~ “It is well known that if a child is undernourished by age three, it is very difficult to repair the damage after that.” The cost of failure ~ both in human and economic terms ~ are huge. Pervasive long-term malnutrition erodes the foundations of the economy by destroying the potential of millions of infants. Children stunted on account of malnutrition run the risk of earning 20 per cent less as adults. Many of them may even turn out to be mentally challenged.

A package of basic measures ~ including programmes to encourage mothers to exclusively breastfeed their children for up to six months, fortifying basic foods with essential minerals and vitamins, and increased cash transfers with payments targeted at the poorest families ~ may yet turn the tide. India boasts two robust national programmes to tackle malnutrition ~ the Integrated Child Development Service (ICDS) and the National Health Mission ~ but these do not reach enough people. The delivery system is also inadequate and plagued by inefficiency and corruption. Some analysts estimate that 40 per cent of the subsidised food never reaches the intended recipients

Child mortality in India generally occurs from “treatable diseases”, such as pneumonia, diarrhoea, malaria and birth complications. The child may eventually die of a disease, but that affliction becomes lethal if he/she is malnourished and unable to resist the ailment. The staff of ICDS attributes part of the blame for malnutrition on parents who neglect their children. Grinding poverty compels most women to leave their babies at home and work in the fields during the agricultural season.

A critical factor behind malnutrition is the failure of malnourished adults to choose nutritious food. One survey by the economists Duflo and Banerjee has found that, overall, the poor in developing countries had enough money to increase their food spending by as much as 30 per cent, but this money was spent on alcohol, tobacco, and festivals. Progress is still slow and the political will patchy, but there are signs that a new approach is being evolved.India’s official think-tank, NITI Aayog, has drafted a National Nutrition Strategy that aims at eradicating malnutrition from the country by 2030. With this objective in view it has set certain targets ~ 1) To reduce under nutrition in children (0-3 years) by 3 per cent per annum until 2022; 2)To reduce the prevalence of anaemia among young children, adolescent girls and women in the reproductive age group (15-49 years) by one-third of the NFHS 4 levels by 2022.

Some other recommendations are for programmes to promote breastfeeding for the first six months after birth, universal access to infant and child-care including ICDS and crèches, provision to provide bi-annual critical nutrient supplements and programmes aimed at de-

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worming children. As regards, maternal care, the strategy proposes that the government provide nutritional support ~ in particular, adequate consumption of iodised salt ~ to mothers during pregnancy and lactation.

In order to consolidate its efforts towards tackling the challenge of malnutrition, the government has approved the National Nutrition Mission (NNM). With a budget of Rs 9046 crore over a period of three years, the mission is expected to benefit 10 crore people. Through this programme, the government seeks to reduce stunting, malnutrition and low birthweight by 2 per cent every year.However, these policies can only reap the desired benefits

The writer is the author of Village Diary of a Heretic Banker. He has spent

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CIVIL SERVICE

DECCAN HERALD, DEC 27, 2017No promotions, foreign postings for officers who not submit asset details

IAS officers not submitting details of assets by January-end will not get vigilance clearances needed for promotions and foreign postings.

The government warning came as there were instances in the past wherein IAS officers gave a miss to the mandatory filing of assets' details.

The Department of Personnel and Training (DoPT) has written to central government departments, states and union territories asking them to ensure submission of Immovable Property Returns (IPRs) by IAS officers working with them by January 31, 2018 - the submissions are to begin from January 1.

"In view of the DoPT's instructions dated April 4, 2011, it is reiterated that failure to ensure timely submission of IPR would result in denial of vigilance clearance," the letter said.

As per 2011 instructions, those who do not submit details on time would be denied vigilance clearances and will not be considered for promotions and empanelment for senior-level posts in the government of India.

An online module has been designed for the purpose of filing of the IPR. Officers have the option of uploading the hard copy of the IPR by January 31.

STATESMAN, DEC 27, 2017PSU employees in Punjab now entitled to pension benefits    

In a major relief for the hundreds of government employees in Punjab, the state’s Finance Department on Tuesday made it clear that the benefits of pension scheme applied before 1 January, 2004 will be implemented to those who were recruited between 1 January, 2004 to 8 July, 2012.

An official spokesperson of the state Finance Department said that the employees working with Public Sector Institutions (PSIs) and Autonomous Institutions (AIs), which have implemented the New Pension Scheme (NPS) from 9 July, 2012 will be benefited from the move.

The spokesperson further added that those PSIs and AIs where new defined contribution pension scheme was not implemented for some reason, since 1 January, 2004, must implement this scheme from July 9, 2012 as per the instructions of the state Finance Department.

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The correspondence in this regards has been issued to the heads of the departments and the concerned parties, added the spokesperson.

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COMPUTERS

HINDUSTAN TIMES, DEC 31, 2017Parliament house panel seeks federal body to tackle cyber attacks

The draft report said that the authority should be at par with the Space and Atomic Energy departments and report directly to the Prime Minister’s Office.

Saubhadra Chatterji 

A parliamentary panel is set to recommend the creation of a federal authority amid growing

apprehensions of hacks, cyber attacks, and data breaches even as the government pushes ahead

with its vision of Digital India and as more financial transactions happen electronically.

The draft report of the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Finance said that the authority

should be at par with the Space and Atomic Energy departments and report directly to the Prime

Minister’s Office.

The new body, which will develop “comprehensive security standards, (a) technical guidance

roadmap and institutionalise a comprehensive risk management framework”, should have an

adequate budget to undertake the complex and challenging task, the panel added, according to

documents seen by Hindustan Times.

A part of this job is currently performed by the Indian Computer Emergency Response Team

(CERT-In), an office within the ministry of electronics and information technology. It is the

nodal agency to deal with cyber security threats.

“There is an immediate need for such a high-profile body. Apart from having generic policies

and agencies, the country needs vertical body, which will only look at specific issues related to

critical infrastructure. This is a right step in right direction,” said Pawan Duggal, cyber law and

security expert.

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As per an estimate by the RBI, 16,468 cyber crimes related to ATMs, credit and debit cards and

net banking took place in 2015-16, up from 13,083 the previous year. The country has witnessed

a boom in digital transactions after Prime Minister Narendra Modi scrapped Rs 500 and Rs 1,000

currency notes in November 2016.

The panel, headed by Congress’ Veerappa Moily, has also pitched for a “sound data protection

law” to ensure that users and individuals have control and ownership of the data they have shared

with foreign or domestic entities. The report is likely to be tabled in Parliament during the

ongoing winter session.

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CORRUPTION

STATESMAN, DEC 28, 2017Three verdictsTuktuk Ghosh 

Through December CBI, Special Courts have been in the news. Verdicts handed down in infamous scams spanning two decades have triggered a political maelstrom. In the backdrop of the setback to the BJP in the Gujarat elections, the impact is stunning. It may not be in the same league as the demonetisation experience of 2016 year-end but it promises to hand out many unpleasant surprises going forward.

To begin with the latest of these verdicts, on 23 December, Shivpal Singh, Special CBI Judge, convicted Lalu Prasad, the still-in-the-saddle RJD head honcho and 15 others for fraudulently withdrawing Rs. 89 lakh earmarked for the Animal Husbandry Department from the Degaru Treasury between 1991 and 1994 and sent them to Birsa Munda Jail, Ranchi. The sentencing would take place on 3 January 2018. This was Lalu’s second conviction in the fodder scam, the first having been in September 2013, for illegal withdrawal of Rs 37.7 crore from the Chaibasa Treasury, which carried a five- year prison sentence, consequent disqualification from the Lok Sabha and debarment from contesting elections for six years after completing his jail sentence. However, the Supreme Court granted him bail in December 2013, after only two months behind bars. There are four more cases which according to a May 2016 Supreme Court directive are to be decided by February 2018.

Predictably, while swearing by the mantra of respecting judicial verdicts and the rule of law, the well-orchestrated reaction of the RJD painted Lalu as a hapless victim of political conspiracy, vendetta and vile upper caste machinations , as a man who had to be fixed because of his principled stand against the scourge of communalism and his potential to disrupt the 2019 general elections. The frenzied tweetathon to his 3.5 million followers verged on the delusional. “Had people like Nelson Mandela, Martin Luther King, Baba Saheb Ambedkar failed in their efforts, history would have treated them as villains. They still are villains for the biased, racist and casteist minds. No one should expect any different treatment”. It was alleged that the verdict was deliberately pronounced on Saturday to pre-empt filing a bail petition during the ensuing break for the courts over Christmas and New Year.

It was a diluted throwback to June 1996 when Lalu was first sent to Beur Jail, Patna. Then he was the undisputed messiah of the backward castes and his party capitalised on his pilgrimage to prison as an attack on the honour of the underprivileged masses. Lalu was able to place his home-bound, stately illiterate wife, Rabri Devi in the Chief Minister’s gaddi and rule the State with supreme ease by proxy. The fact that it took the opposition ten years to dislodge him from power and that he bounced back in the 2015 state elections with the trophy of the largest single party in the Assembly is proof that Lalu’s culpability has been overlooked by sizeable sections. This is precisely what the cynical, power-crazed RJD is seeking to again harness in its favour.

Riding precariously on this bandwagon, the Congress has come out with a strangely convoluted statement. It says that since the fodder scam broke in the 1990s, it has had an alliance with the

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RJD which was part of UPA I and the Mahagatbandhan. According to the underlying warped logic, criminal cases and political tie-ups are two distinct issues. This is not one of your typical foot-in-the -mouth gems of the many spokespersons of the Congress. The only niggling problem is that some people do remember it was Rahul Gandhi, now president of the invigorated Congress, who had torn ~ in public ~ the Ordinance brought in by the UPA II Government under Dr Manmohan Singh, with the exclusive agenda of saving the convicted Lalu from disqualification. And Rahul loves to preen about having his heart in the right place, unlike suit-boot wallahs who can only come up with hollow jumlas of na khaayenge aur na khane denge. It is evident, much filth has flown down the already polluted Ganga and now it is power at any cost, scruples be damned. Rank opportunism reigns.

The same sickening obsession with getting the better of political opponents came through strongly in the utterly shocking 2G scam verdict of 21 December. The case had, along with others, come to symbolise the worst of crony capitalism that allegedly flourished under the UPA regime, fueling popular fury and sweeping it out of power in 2014. O P Saini, Special CBI Judge, delivered a “historic” verdict holding that there was no criminality or conspiracy in spectrum allotment and acquitted all the accused. A scam was created by some people “by artfully arranging a few selected facts and exaggerating things beyond recognition to astronomical levels”. He held that the former Telecom Minister, A Raja of the DMK, did no wrong and pinned the blame on multiple Government agencies from Dr. Manmohan Singh’s PMO, to the Ministries of Law, Finance as well as senior DoT officials. Saini also came down heavily on the CBI for its extreme shoddiness. Analysts and stakeholders are still in a daze trying to get their collective heads around the implications of such an extraordinary verdict. This is no closure.

Be that as it may, given the dismissal of all charges, the DMK and its key actors in the saga, A. Raja and Kanimozhi, both of whom had served time in Tihar Jail, were expectedly jubilant and received a rapturous welcome from party leaders and cadres. But for the Congress to jump in at this juncture and pillory the BJP for spreading lies about the scam and demand an apology from Vinod Rai, the former C&AG on whose report of presumptive loss to the exchequer the investigative and judicial proceedings were based, was outright disgraceful. It was shameless politicising of a judicial process, yet incomplete, only to attempt to show the present Government in a poor light. So much for high principles it unceasingly tom-toms.

While the Congress and other political parties have come out all guns blazing in support of their leaders embroiled in the fodder and 2G scams, it cannot escape disappointing notice that there has been no comparable reaction to the indictment ~ and a three- year prison term ~ for the IAS officer, former Coal Secretary, H C Gupta in the Coalgate scam by Bharat Parashar, Special CBI Judge on 13 December. There were a few angry, distressed tweets by colleagues. Disturbingly enough according to unconfirmed accounts, some of these had to be deleted under pressure.

Very interestingly, the judgment had underscored that neither was it alleged by the prosecution nor any such evidence was available to show that Gupta obtained allocation of coal blocks for accused companies by any corrupt or illegal means! As Anil Swarup, HRD Secretary, Government of India sums it up with tremendous effect, “If we hound the honest, society and

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administration will be left with either dishonest performers or dishonest non-performers. The choice is ours”.

Clearly, the political class has voted overwhelmingly to band together. Supporting the tainted is kosher in the craze for power. For upright civil servants, no such impregnable shield is available. They are condemned to perish.

(The writer is a retired IAS officer and comments on governance issues.)

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EDUCATION

TIMES OF INDIA, DEC 28, 2017Minimum attendance must for JNU studentsMohammad Ibrar 

NEW DELHI: For the first time, the Jawaharlal Nehru University made minimum

attendancemandatory for its students from the coming winter session. A circular issued by the

university administration said that the decision was taken at the recently held 144th academic

council (AC) meeting. Several students and teachers, however, opposed the decision calling it

arbitrary, claiming that the issue never came up during the meeting.

The circular, notified to the deans and chairperson of the schools and centres of the university,

asked them "to maintain an attendance record of all students", including that of MPhil and PhD.

It also mentioned that a "detailed guideline will be circulated" after receiving recommendations

of a committee. Speaking to TOI, assistant registrar Sajjan Singh said the "committee will soon

come out with the guidelines on attendance".

Meanwhile, several teachers claimed that "the mandatory attendance issue was not passed by

either the AC or the executive council". AC member Ranjani Mazumdar said that "when the

issue was raised in the AC it was opposed by many. The vice-chancellor then said he would set

up a committee to look into the matter and the committee would submit a report to the schools

and centres. This process is still on," she said.

Criticising the decision of the administration, Mazumdar said that "JNU is primarily a graduate

school driven by research students. How can we have attendance for research students? They are

supposed to pursue research not be available for an attendance register."

JNU Rector-1 Chintamani Mahapatra, however, said that "research scholars do research in

periodic consultation with their supervisors. Attendance not only means class attendance, but

periodic meetings between PhD scholars and supervisors". Many research scholars have also

opposed the move to make attendance compulsory.

A statement released by the JNU Student's Union (JNUSU) claimed that "the attendance system

was not even part of the agenda of the last AC meeting and the 'item no.8' — which the recent

circular mentioned — has nothing to do with attendance at all". The statement also mentioned

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that it was "absurd to impose compulsory attendance on campus which has always been rated the

best university."

The ABVP, too, condemned the decision and said that "the JNU administration is not in sync

with the technological evolutions and paradigm shifts in debate on how education should be

parted."

INDIAN EXPRESS, DEC 27, 2017Delhi govt to audit accounts of city’s private schools

This decision comes five days after the Delhi High Court put a stay on the government circular,

which had, as an interim measure, allowed schools to increase their fees by up to 15%.

Written by Shradha Chettri 

Now, with the government deciding to audit schools’ financial accounts, it is likely that in this academic session there will be no fee hike.

The Delhi government will audit the financial accounts of all 1,700 private schools in the city

before they increase their fee citing implementation of the Seventh Pay Commission. This

decision comes five days after the Delhi High Court put a stay on the government circular, which

had, as an interim measure, allowed schools to increase their fees by up to 15%.

Now, with the government deciding to audit schools’ financial accounts, it is likely that in this

academic session there will be no fee hike. Sources said the decision was taken Tuesday in a

meeting attended by CM Arvind Kejriwal, Education Minister Sisodia among others, after

complaints by parents about schools “indiscriminately increasing fees”. Last year, the Delhi

government had audited the accounts of 150 schools built on government land after they had

made a proposal to increase the fees.

“This time, the accounts of all private schools will be audited. During our last audit, we had

found that the schools were siphoning off funds to the parent trust and in the name of

development fee, they were constructing school buildings. Whereas the rule says that the money

collected can be used only for the functioning of the school, furniture and equipment. We had

received complaints from various quarters, following which this decision was taken,” said Atishi

Marlena, advisor to Sisodia.

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A CA under the supervision of the DoE will audit the accounts in the next three months. Private

school principals said the government should complete the audit so that they can pay their

teachers. “We have done what the government asked us to do, but why this deficit trust with

private schools? Until we increase the fees we cannot pay teachers,” said Ameeta Mulla Wattal,

principal, Springdales School, Pusa Road.

TRIBUNE, DEC 30, 2017Govt to introduce ‘Schools of excellence’, says SisodiaIt’ll create a model of good education: Edu Minister

In a bid to raise the bar of quality education, the Delhi Government today decided to introduce a new type of school named “School of Excellence” from the next academic year in the national Capital.

The buildings for having the “School of Excellence” are ready in Rohini, Sector 17, Madanpur Khadar Phase-II, Khichripur, Kalkalji and Dwarka Sector 22, announced Deputy Chief Minister Manish Sisoida today following a Cabinet meeting, chaired by Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal.

These schools would impart education through English and the admission process for nursery to class five and, class nine and 11 would start from next year, said Sisodia while noting that through these “Schools of Excellence”, the government will create a model of good education.

The Aam Aadmi Party government aims to open at least one school of this format in every zone, in each of the 29 zones of Delhi.

In Delhi, there are three categories of government-run schools— Rajkiya Vidalaya, Pratibha Vikas Vidalya and Sarvodaya Vidalya. Admissions to Pratibha Vidalaya, take place through entrance tests while in Sarvodaya and Rajkiya Vidalaya, there is no such condition, said Sisodia who also has the education portfolio.

He said for admissions from nursery to class five, the neighbourhood criteria will be followed while entrance tests will be conducted for classes nine and eleven for neighbourhood students.

Sharing the details, a department official said they will be fully functional schools with classes

from nursery to class XII. There will be three sections from nursery to class V with a maximum

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of 25 students in each section whereas in classes VI to X, there will be two sections with a

maximum 40 children each.

TRIBUNE, DEC 30, 2017Universities of tomorrowBharat H DesaiFor a place at the global high table of knowledge, India must value its scholarsBharat H Desai

PRIME Minister Modi, in his convocation address at Patna University on October 14, 2017, unveiled the idea of promoting 10 universities each in the public and private sectors by removing all controls; to enable them to compete for providing world-class education. A handsome funding of Rs 10,000 crore — over a period of five years — was promised, with the hope that they could find a place among the top 500 universities in the world. ‘Don’t you think that we should erase this slur and change the situation?’ he asked. 

It is a first such concrete initiative in education pronounced at the highest level. Several studies and committees have underscored the deep-rooted inertia and mediocrity of leadership in a large number of our universities. The crucial question, however, remains: Will the promise of monetary bounty revitalise universities? Can monetary reward compensate for the serious crisis of competent leadership in most of our institutions of higher learning?          

Our struggle for designing universities of tomorrow suffers from several structural fault-lines. We do not seem to understand the idea of a “university” as a living system that provides the backbone for a nation’s knowledge economy. Universities have been “grounded' to such an extent that it remains a dream to have one of the 800 universities figure in the top 500 universities in the world. It is a painful reality that barring some rare exceptions, we do not have a culture/system to value world-class contribution of scholars who chose to work in India amid the decay and mediocrity. 

Apart from funding, we require an enabling environment, positive mindset, value for scholarship and “balanced” scholars as trailblazers to head our institutions. We need to reverse the trend that pushed some of our best scholarly talent to go abroad. Many emerging private universities have been tapping the “hidden” talent struggling to survive in public-funded institutions.    

What does it take for Indian universities to become world class? The mantra of “knowledge first” must pervade in all spheres of our society. We need to learn from our past knowledge tradition and also draw from the best in the world. We need concerted efforts to overcome systemic

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inertia. It is rare to have an idea or a proposal sent by a scholar to the President of India, as visitor to a central university, get an acknowledgement, not to talk of an invitation to make a presentation. It indicates a lack of valuation for scholarship and the difficult times we live in. Though an ancient Indian adage proclaims that a “scholar is worshipped everywhere”, we have created a system where they are pushed to the corner and given scant respect in decision-making. It has become fashionable among bureaucrats to use the pejorative phrase: “don’t be academic”. It is no wonder then that no Indian university finds a place among the top 200 in the world.     

The change that we are seeking must start at the top of the ladder. This calls for the Prime Minister to take the lead to regularly interact with scholars and “thought” leaders. Such scholarly interface will send the right signals to the bureaucracy, political class and society.     

The time has come to change the nomenclature of the Ministry of Human Resource Development (MHRD) back to the “ministry of education”. We need to club “culture” with “education”, as it plays a vital role in promoting knowledge traditions. It is also necessary to make a long-term investment in all the institutions of higher education. It must be given top priority in fund allocations (apart from secondary and tertiary education). If we invest in only 20 institutions, the prevailing decay and mediocrity in others will endanger such islands that we seek to create. Thus the Central and the state governments not only need to play a vanguard role for educational infrastructure, but also promote genuine private universities to build centres of excellence. We need to ensure that key advisory positions within the governmental apparatus are manned by outstanding scholar-professionals. When we seek the universities of tomorrow to stand tall in the global knowledge league, they need to be provided with genuine autonomy, excellent infrastructure and funding; all unimpeded by any bureaucratic and political interference. 

Along with a robust architecture for a new Ministry of Education and Culture, as part of the agenda for “reform of UGC”, we need to give a decent burial to the UGC and replace it with a forward-looking, highly professional regulator that may be called “Bharat Action in National Yearning for Advancement of Knowledge (BANYAN) Aayog”. In fact, the entire rejuvenation effort needs to be carried out under the umbrella of the “National Mission on Excellence in Higher Education” (2018-2028). We need to gravitate towards institutionalisation of a robust process and tradition, wherein irrespective of the party in power, only the best scholars are entrusted with heading our universities, IITs, IIMs andinstitutions of national importance. 

The Prime Minister needs to take an initiative as Chairman of NITI Aayog to sit with all chief ministers to discuss and work out a mechanism for a new culture for universities to excel and desist from political interference in the appointments of Vice-Chancellors and heads of

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institution. It will save the universities from being vandalised by people with political patronage and provide us the first building block for realising our dream of world-class universities. 

If we are desirous of catching up with the best in the world, we cannot invest in, and set free, only a handful of universities from regulatory control, as such islands would be engulfed by mediocrity. It is time the Prime Minister gives personal attention to lay the ground work for a crucial knowledge base, not only for societal progress (“vikas”), but also provide a robust basis for India to sit on the global high table. Thus, uplifting India into the global knowledge league must become part of the vision and institutionalisation of a culture for “New India”. It is a knowledge-based society that will liberate us from our current ills. It will also place India in the global orbit to promote international law-based order as well as become part of a global solution provider.    

The writer is Chairman of Centre for International Legal Studies, JNU 

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ELECTIONS

STATESMAN, DEC 31, 2017BJP’s Gujarat experienceRaghu Dayal   Modi election campaign Gujarat

The Bharatiya Janata Party won the two “matches” ~ Himachal Pradesh and Gujarat ~ one, a clean sweep with an innings defeat inflicted on the main Opposition party, the other event in Gujarat turning out to be somewhat of a close fight. For Gujarat, a lacklustre performance by the BJP in the power-play (phase I) brought the man of the match Modi to play a cameo in the slog overs (phase II campaign blitzkrieg). He swung the match, overcoming the initial jitters that created a flutter, the stock market Volatility Index fluctuated in step with the score-board. Eventually, the BJP scored 99 not out, winning a rare sixth straight term in the state.

The rescue man, Prime Minister Narendra Modi told party MPs how the Gujarat election turned out to be a tough fight, far from param sukh (all comfort) that he had felt about election prospects in the state, when queried by a journalist a few weeks earlier. The urban areas (Ahmedabad, Vadodara, Surat, etc.) helped the BJP sail through, while the Patidars’ domino effect almost ejected the party from its traditional Saurashtra strongholds. Almost three-fourth of seats in the Saurashtra region comprised the rural belt, where the Congress scored high. The BJP could muster only 23 of the 54 seats in Saurashtra. Its tally in 2012 was 35.

The salience of the Gujarat experience will, no doubt, be duly grasped by the ruling party for the ensuing 2018 battle in Karnataka, Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh and Rajasthan, also in the four other North-eastern states ~ Tripura, Meghalaya, Mizoram and Meghalaya, preceding, of course, the vital 2019 general election.

Essentially it is the states and local bodies such as municipalities which actually deliver. And that is where the governance structure flounders most. The BJP needs to do serious soul-searching for the performance audit of the states and local bodies under its flag, identify successful practices in each entity… to be universally replicated. Simultaneously, the laggards should be made to urgently put their house in order in respect of selected schemes and programmes to yield the desired outcomes.

Obviously, the topmost priority for the states as also the Centre is to tackle the rural sector, particularly, the agrarian disaffection. It is shameful that farmers’ distress has been allowed fester, with hundreds of them snuffing out their own lives. How do the central as well as state governments, that pamper all their staff with frequent salary hikes and a slew of perquisites, besides insulating them with periodical inflation-indexed DA increases, leave kisans to face the devastating vagaries of nature? These include the erratic weather, rainfall, floods, market volatility, escalating input costs, and unstable trade regime. While the rural economy is sought to be provided a booster dose of investment in roads, water, electricity, and irrigation, the Prime Minister’s personal promise of doubling farmers’ income by 2022 requires a concrete action plan for farm modernisation, diversification and value addition of crops, logistics infrastructure, development of food processing, cold chain, besides fair price, and an effective insurance

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regime. Loan-waivers, now made a populist prescription, has been debunked by experts as no panacea.

It is a salutary development that people in urban as well as rural areas are increasingly aspiring for good education for their children. The generally deplorable state of infrastructure in government schools exacerbated by the dearth of teachers, apart from their incompetence and lack of commitment, compels families to increasingly opt for private schools which, in turn, become commercial ventures. Engineering and specialised courses in private institutions are enormously expensive. Skill-sets, generally outside the school curriculum, do not help the youth gain employability. Similarly, healthcare for most people has emerged as a serious concern. Inadequate facilities in ill-equipped and poorly maintained government hospitals compel people to look for private sector healthcare which has acquired notoriety in fleecing the hapless clientele. The Government needs to urgently and holistically address these two vital issues. It must step in first to transform the upkeep and maintenance of schools and hospitals, provide for essential infrastructure, and innovatively optimise their capacity, and, then, plan for time-barred expansion in these crucial sectors as the principal national agenda.

The Prime Minister, given his great political acumen, is not unaware that what was dubbed as the Modi tsunami in 2014 was a young, aspiring and impatient India voting for a rupture with the past, to sweep away the cobwebs of bureaucratic and political lethargy, and unleash country’s creative energies. He moved fast and, as some believe, extended the canvas too wide. He has had too much on the plate. He unveiled an avalanche of development projects and schemes, which perforce entail long gestation. For him, the long-term vision can ill afford to preclude short-term fixes.

For good effect countrywide, Modi needed to ensure some high visibility programmes to fructify by 2020. Instead of too many schemes, he needed to showcase few beneficial projects executed in good time. In this context, he may recall the fervour with which he said it was Maa Ganga who had called him to Varanasi (in 2014) and that he would pull her out of the filth. In spite of his full support, the flagship Namami Gange project languishes in lethargy and inertia as it has for 30 long years. With proper leadership and effective oversight, Ganga cleaning by 2019 itself could well have ensured credibility at home and beyond, instilled confidence and enthused people, generating enormous goodwill across the country and communities.

Ultimately, good governance is India’s most important requirement, and that’s where the country has floundered; deficient delivery has been India’s Achilles’ heel. No high level mega scam may yet be attributable to Modi sarkar, the haftas and the daily persecution of citizens continues unabated. Aam aadmi clutching at the hope of achchhe din looks confused.

The country’s civil service, a leviathan with immense powers, remains obese and bloated, alienated from the people. There is no change in the attitude of those who constitute the mai baap sarkar. In most states, almost three-fourth of all government employees are parasitical support staff, unrelated to any public service, while key public services such as education, healthcare are starved of people From a culture of sloth, the country needs to move to a habit of hard work, to raise productivity and generate wealth. As suggested by numerous expert bodies, a 30 per cent reduction in the size of the government, making the structure horizontal, merging

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grades/categories, pruning the current 5-6 administrative layers to not more than two will help move things much faster and make Doing Business easy.Politics demands deft perception management. With his unique communication and marketing skills, infinite energy and ubiquity, capacity to take bold and disruptive decisions, Modi would keep bonding with the electorate, more so the youth and the disadvantaged. He will need to transcend himself from being only an astute politician, to rise and leave a stamp of statesmanship. Closely under his watch, ministers and senior officers need to often go where action is, to listen to people, understand their concerns, explain to them the real intent behind the policy framework, letting them feel that the government cares.

Nasty, atavistic manifestations of intolerance, myriad fringe elements among obscurantists masquerading as the Hindutva brigade often vitiate the environment, damage social harmony, and divert attention from the development agenda. They don’t realise how perilous their diverse reactionary overtures are, much like how Pakistan has been radicalised, virtually rendering it as a failed society. Modi needs to unequivocally signal his disapproval of all these divisive tendencies. His oft-repeated slogan of sabkaa saath, sabkaa vikaas must carry clear conviction through the party and the state. He must be wary of Margaret Thatcher’s warning that those who stand in the middle of the road get run over.

The writer is Senior Fellow, Asian Institute of Transport Management and former CMD, Container Corporation of India

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HEALTH SERVICES

INDIAN EXPRESS, DEC 30, 2017Ayurveda, homoeopathy docs can take bridge course to practise allopathy: BillThe Bill, introduced in Lok Sabha on Friday, by Union Health Minister J P Nadda, seeks to

overhaul the structure of medical educationWritten by Abantika Ghosh 

In a controversial provision, the National Medical Commission Bill 2017 envisages allowing

Ayush practitioners (Ayurveda, Yoga and Naturopathy, Unani, Siddha and Homoeopathy) to

practise modern (allopathic) medicine after clearing a bridge course. The Bill, introduced in Lok

Sabha on Friday, by Union Health Minister J P Nadda, seeks to overhaul the structure of medical

education, introduce a medical exit examination and bring an end to the Medical Council of

India.

It envisages a “joint sitting” of the (National Medical) Commission, the Central Council of

Homoeopathy and the Central Council of Indian Medicine at least once a year “to enhance the

interface between homoeopathy, Indian Systems of Medicine and modern systems of medicine”.

These three will decide “approving specific bridge course that may be introduced for the

practitioners of homoeopathy and of Indian Systems of Medicine to enable them to prescribe

such modern medicines at such level as may be prescribed”.

The meeting will also finalise, the Bill says, by an affirmative vote of all members present and

voting, approvals for “specific educational modules or programmes that may be introduced in the

undergraduate course and the postgraduate course across medical systems and to develop bridges

across various systems of medicine and promote medical pluralism”.

Calling for reform of the Medical Council of India, the Bill says that a 25-member commission

selected by a search committee headed by the Union Cabinet Secretary will replace the elected

MCI. A medical licentiate (exit) examination will be instituted within three years of its passage

by Parliament. A medical advisory council that will include one member representing each state

and union territory (vice-chancellors in both cases); chairman, University Grants Commission,

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and director of the National Accreditation and Assessment Council will advise and make

recommendations to the NMC.

Four boards dealing with undergraduate, postgraduate medical education, medical assessment

and rating and ethics and registration will regulate the sector. Replacing the MCI with a new

regulatory structure was necessitated by allegations of corruption dogging the council ever since

the much publicised arrest of its then chief Ketan Desai in 2010. In a chapter on corruption in

MCI, the Parliamentary Standing Committee for Health and Family Welfare writes: “…the

President, MCI during evidence before the Committee admitted that corruption was there when

there was sanctioning of medical colleges, or increasing or decreasing seats. The Committee has

also been informed that the private medical colleges arrange ghost faculty and patients during

inspections by MCI and no action is taken for the irregularity. The Committee has also been

given to understand that MCI is proactive in taking action on flimsy grounds against Government

Medical Colleges which are 100% better.”

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INTERNATIONAL TRADE

TRIBUNE, DEC 28, 2017On the road to bankruptcyG ParthasarathyCountries ‘benefiting’ from China’s ‘largesse’ will end in a debt burden

CHINA’S much-touted “Silk Roads” and “Maritime Silk Routes” trace their origin historically to its trade across Central Asia and the Indian Ocean. Interestingly, silk constituted a relatively small portion of Chinese trade, though it gave an exotic content to what was primarily commercial activity, in which China was the principal beneficiary. The Maritime Silk Route across the Indian Ocean was first set during the course of seven expeditions between 1404 and 1433 by a Chinese naval fleet headed by Admiral Zheng He, a Mongolian Muslim eunuch, appointed by Ming emperor Yongle. During the course of these expeditions to Indonesia, Malaysia, Sri Lanka and Calicut, Zheng brought back kings and princes to “kowtow” (genuflect) before the Ming emperor.

 Indonesia has ensured that it responds cautiously to Chinese inducements and avoids getting closely drawn into a Chinese embrace. Beijing, however, seems to have drawn Sri Lanka into its spiders’ web, taking advantage of the island’s economic vulnerabilities. One has to recall what Admiral Zheng did to the hapless island-nation after a visit to Calicut in 1406, to “get the Buddha’s tooth relic”. He returned to Sri Lanka in 1411 with a large army to take revenge for an earlier perceived insult. Parts of the island were plundered and the Sri Lankan king, Vira Alakeswara, taken back to Nanjing to kowtow before the emperor, together with the holy relic. The king was replaced by a “malleable” ruler. While the humiliated king was returned to his people a few years later, the relic was returned six centuries later in 1960, by PM Chou en Lai, as a gesture of “goodwill”, Chinese style. Chinese trade was historically as exploitative as trade by the British East India Company!

 Colombo is, nowadays, full of hoardings of China’s “magnanimity”, manifested in its “assistance” in infrastructure, industrial and construction projects. Beyond the Galle Main Road in Colombo is the $1.4 billion Port City Project to be filled with Chinese built, owned, or managed, luxury apartments, golf course, theme park, hotels and office buildings. All these projects will soon become part of Sri Lanka’s mounting official debt burdens and accentuate the already unbearable debt burden Colombo has accumulated, from earlier Chinese “aid”. The main instruments of this aid and plunder of natural resources are the China Communications Construction Company and its subsidiary, the China Harbour Engineering Company. World

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Bank has blacklisted both these companies across the world because of their corrupt practices, including bribery. The only well executed and profitable Chinese-built project in Sri Lanka is the Container Terminal in Colombo.

Apart from the crushing debt burden of the Colombo Port City Project, Chinese projects located in President Rajapakse’s own constituency, Hambantota, have imposed an unsustainable debt burden on Sri Lanka. Given Western aversion for his regime and Indian doubts about the project’s viability, President Rajapakse welcomed Chinese “assistance” to develop his constituency. He sought and obtained Chinese “support” to heavily finance projects ranging from the Hambantota Port to a power plant, an airport, an industrial park, a cricket stadium and a sports complex. All these investments have proved uneconomical. Hardly any ships visit Hambantota Port, barely one aircraft lands at the airport daily and the sports facilities remain unutilised, even as local opinion was outraged by the proposed construction of an industrial park. Sri Lanka has been spending 90 per cent of government revenues to service debts. 

Unable to repay its debts to China, Sri Lanka has been forced to convert Chinese investments into equity in Hambantota, giving the Chinese partial ownership of the port. Following discreet Indian expressions of concern, Sri Lanka has retained operational control of the port, ensuring that Chinese submarines and warships do not freely berth there. Some pre-emptive action has also been taken to ensure that the eastern port of Trincomalee does not become the next port of interest for Chinese strategic ambitions, thanks to a timely initiative of Petroleum Minister Dharmendra Pradhan. The Indian Oil Corporation has established a business presence in Sri Lanka for progressive involvement in the use of Trincomalee for import and processing of petroleum products. It is imperative to build on this by constructing a modern petroleum refinery on equitable terms in Trincomalee.

China’s Belt and Road Initiative in Myanmar is primarily concentrated on developing the Bay of Bengal port of Kyaukpyu and connecting it to its neighbouring Yunnan province by oil and gas pipelines and road and rail networks. But, Myanmar is wary of overdependence on China, among other reasons, because of Beijing’s insatiable quest for environmentally damaging energy projects and its yearning for access to precious metals and stones. Myanmar may, however, find it difficult to resist Chinese pressures on such projects unless India, Japan, South Korea, the US, the EU and neighbouring ASEAN countries make a coordinated effort to strengthen economic relations with it. A similar approach would be needed to China’s approach to construction projects in Nepal and Bangladesh.

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 China’s “all-weather friend” Pakistan is also facing problems in implementing the much-touted CPEC. Despite high-level meetings, important projects like the Diamer-Bhasha Dam located in Gilgit-Baltistan, in POK, are stalled because of disagreements on financial terms set by the Chinese. There are also differences on implementing the railway projects based out of Peshawar and Karachi, apart from a series of road projects. Moreover, there is very little transfer of technology and knowhow, and minimal local participation in Chinese construction projects. Beijing has, after all, to utilise its vast surplus labour force and construction machinery and materials, abroad as its unprecedented domestic construction projects at home are completed.

Questions are now being raised in Pakistan about where resources will come from to repay the over $50 billion debt that will accrue from CPEC projects, where local participation is minimal. Moreover, Pakistan will soon be unable to credibly claim that it exercises its sovereignty in places like the Gwadar Port, which is all set to become a Chinese-run military base, close to the strategic Straits of Hormuz. Writing in the respected Dawn newspaper, columnist Khurram Hussein perceptively observes: “In reality, the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor is about allowing Chinese enterprises to assume dominant positions in all dynamic sectors of Pakistan’s economy, as well as a ‘strategic’ direction that is often hinted at, but never fleshed out.”

STATESMAN, DEC 26, 2017WTO comes a cropperPK Vasudeva     

The World Trade Organisation’s (WTO) 11th Ministerial Conference (M11) during December 10 to 13 December in Buenos Aires, Argentina, ended in an impasse as the US reneged on the commitment to give a permanent solution on public stockholding for developing countries. It also objected to any reference to the Doha development mandate in the proposed Ministerial Declaration, which was something that was not acceptable to India and many other developing and least developed countries.

Food is a WTO perennial because global rules on agriculture are pretty much the definition of double standards. In one corner is India, whose 2013 National Food Security Act guarantees cheap rice and wheat to two-thirds of its population by buying from farmers at a guaranteed price. Studies suggest tens of millions of people have been brought out of poverty by the law. In the other corner, the US and EU believe the scheme is ‘trade distorting’, and hence must be scrapped.

It’s bad enough to demand the end of a life-saving food policy, but it’s even worse when you reflect that the EU and US protect their own agricultural sectors to the tune of billions of dollars a year through subsidies. This protection doesn’t count as ‘trade distorting’ however, because those countries wrote the rules which say it isn’t.

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Meanwhile, in a strongly-worded statement India has blamed “a major country”, which civil society groups term as the USA, for derailing the whole process of finding a permanent solution to the public food stockholding issue.  “India is surprised and deeply disappointed that despite an overwhelming majority of Members reiterating it, a major member country has reneged on a commitment made two years ago to deliver a solution of critical importance for addressing hunger in some of the poorest countries of the world. This has the potential to irreversibly damage the credibility of the WTO as a Ministerial decision of all countries present in Nairobi has not been honoured”.

New Delhi, however, said that it managed to protect all its defensive interests. “The US position on a permanent solution led to a collapse of the agriculture negotiations. When there could be no agreement on agriculture, the possibility of an overall declaration also declined. But our food security remains protected as the peace clause is intact,” said Commerce Minister Suresh Prabhu at the meeting.

On public food stockholding, the critics felt the current proposal is far worse than the Peace Clause which itself suffered from several problems in terms of onerous notification requirements, restriction on staple crops which itself is undefined, and that the relevant subsidies do not distort trade or adversely affect the food security of others. “These almost impossible notifications and safeguard conditions have been retained in this text. In addition, higher standards are proposed on safeguards as footnotes, which say such stocks cannot be “exported directly or indirectly”. Again this condition, especially related to indirect exports, is impossible to meet. Overall the text on Domestic Support is biased against developing countries, while going easy on the developed countries.

The biggest takeaway from MC 11 was the commitment from members to secure a deal on fisheries subsidy which delivers on taking commitments for paring illegal, unregulated, unreported (IUU) subsidies by 2019, said Susana Malcorra, Argentinean Minister and chair of MC 11. Members also pledged to improve the reporting of existing fisheries subsidy programmes. “Buenos Aires will be remembered as the fisheries conference. It is here that the talks that were deadlocked for 15 years got moving,” she said.

Pushing back a commitment on curbing IUU subsidies to 2019, despite a number of members eager to have an interim solution with immediate cuts, is a victory for India. The country  now has more time to ensure that there are adequate safeguards in place to protect artisenal fisheries.

A work programme on e-commerce was also adopted at the MC 11 which was exactly like the one proposed by India with the old work programme continuing and a two-year continuation of the moratorium on e-commerce linked to the continuation of one on Trade Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) and non-violation complaints.

During MC11, India stood firm on its stand on the fundamental principles of the WTO, including multilateralism, rule-based consensual decision-making, an independent and credible dispute-resolution and appellate process, the centrality of development, which underlies the Doha Development Agenda (DDA), and special and differential treatment (S&DT) for all developing countries.

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In addition, members took a number of other ministerial decisions, including extending the practice of not imposing customs duties on electronic transmissions for another two years, and commitment to continue negotiations in all areas. “Development and inclusiveness must remain at the heart of our work. They certainly remain at the core of my priorities in everything we do,” WTO DG Roberto Azevedo said at a press conference at the ministerial meeting.

Ministers expressed their disappointment over the lack of progress, and gave their commitment to move forward on the negotiations related to all remaining relevant issues, including advance work on the three pillars of agriculture (domestic support, market access and export competition) as well as non-agricultural market access, services, development, TRIPS, rules, and trade and environment.

“We have not achieved any multilateral outcomes,” European Union Trade Commissioner Cecilia Malmstrom told a news conference. “The sad reality is that we did not even agree to stop subsidising illegal fishing.” The system requires unanimity among all 164 member-countries.

She said the United States was partly to blame, but other countries also held up progress. “Procedural excuses and vetoes from one member or another, cynical hostage taking, have led to the sobering result of today,” Ms. Malmstrom added.

WTO Director-General Roberto Azevedo said that WTO members needed to do some “real soul searching” about the way forward and realize they cannot get everything they want.

Commerce Minister Prabhu  said on 19 December that WTO must incorporate emerging issues if it wants to remain relevant in the changing times and India will organise a “mini ministerial” meeting (30-40 members) of the multilateral body within a few weeks to help realise this objective. “We are in the next few weeks going to organise a major conclave in India wherein we want to bring in the top countries of the world,” Prabhu said.

The idea behind the mini-ministerial was that WTO must also focus on some of the very relevant issues of the world today. “If you say that we are going to discuss only those issues, then probably WTO will be a very good historical institution, which will have a very good place in some of the good regions of the world,” he said.

(The writer is author of World Trade Organisation: Implications for Indian Economy. He is retired Professor of International Trade and can be approached at vasu022@gmail.com)

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POLITICS AND GOVERNMENT

PIONEER, DEC 27, 2017JAI RAM THAKUR TAKES OATH AS HIMACHAL CM

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Jai Ram Thakur   on Wednesday was sworn in as the Himachal Pradesh Chief Minister at a ceremony here attended by Prime Minister Narendra Modi and BJP President Amit Shah among others. Governor Acharya Devvrat administered the oath of office and secrecy to Thakur, who is turning 53 on January 6. This will be his maiden term as Chief Minister. The swearing-in ceremony was held amid beating of drums and playing of 'shehnais' at the historic Ridge with Union Ministers and Chief Ministers of BJP-ruled states in attendance, along with more than 30,000 party supporters from across the state, mostly dressed up in traditional attires. Five-time legislator Thakur, who rose through the ranks and is known for his humble, clean and low-profile nature, ahead of the ceremony said his top priorities would be restoring law and order situation, to do away with the VIP culture, to review all decisions of the previous  Congress government in past three months and to minimise wasteful expenditure. Thakur's family members, comprising his 80-year-old widowed mother, who belonged to a remote village in Mandi district, attended the ceremony.

DECCAN HERALD, DEC 27, 2017Vijay Rupani sworn-in as chief minister of Gujarat

Vijay Rupani was today sworn in as the chief minister of Gujarat for the second consecutive term after the BJP won the recently-held Assembly elections in the state.Rupani, 61, and his deputy Nitin Patel were administered the oath of office and secrecy by Governor O P Kohli at a grand ceremony in Gandhinagar.Prime Minister Narendra Modi, BJP president Amit Shah and chief ministers of various BJP-ruled states attended the ceremony. Before the swearing-in ceremony, Rupani, sporting an orange-coloured jacket, and Patel greeted the chief ministers of BJP-ruled states who came to attend the ceremony.Rupani and his wife also offered prayers at the Panchdev Mahadev temple here before the swearing-in ceremony. With 99 MLAs, the BJP has a simple majority in the 182-member Assembly, 16 less than its 2012 tally of 115.

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The opposition Congress, which had won 61 seats in 2012, managed to increase its tally to 77. The strength of the Congress and its allies in the new House is 80.Rupani and Nitin Patel were elected as the leader and deputy leader, respectively, of the BJP legislature party at its meeting on December 22.

HINDUSTAN TIMES, DEC 26, 2017The unholy alliance of Muscle Power and Money Power is weakening Indian democracy

During my five and half years in the Election Commission of India (ECI), I witnessed the growth of “money power” as a hydra-headed monster. Equally distressing is what I could call “muscle power”. In both the 15th as well as the present Lok Sabha, almost 30% of the members have one or more criminal case registered against them

Navin B Chawla 

While I was certainly privileged to have conducted the democratic world’s largest election in

2009, I was also well placed to see the many fault lines that were beginning to fracture our

democracy. Many of these negative forces have already weakened the country’s democratic

structure so much that I sometimes wonder whether we can ever hope to realise the aspirations of

our freedom fighters, who sacrificed so much to gain independence from colonial rule. Sadly,

foreign domination has been replaced in some measure by our home grown oligarchy that

possesses both “money power” and “muscle power”. This has swept away everything that

Gandhiji stood for when he said, “I understand democracy as something that gives the weak the

same chance as the strong.”

During the early elections, the statutory limits on individual and party funding were, by and

large, adhered to. In the afterglow of the Independence movement many politicians were able to

keep their expenses under control. During the 70’s and 80’s elections started to became more

expensive as the structure of politics changed into a more fragmented polity. This period also

witnessed the arrival of a new set of politicians for whom the freedom movement was just a

passing phase of history and who had little or no respect for democratic values. Political funding,

too, became more obscure. For instance, donations made to political parties enabled

contributions of amounts below Rs. 20,000 to remain undeclared.

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During my five-and-a-half years in the Election Commission of India (ECI), I witnessed the

growth of “money power” as a hydra-headed monster. No sooner that we cut off one head than

others would appear to replace it. The 2009 Thirumangalam by-election in Tamil Nadu gained

both national and international notoriety for the “novel” methods developed by parties to bribe

voters. This “Thirumangalam” formula has sadly been replicated everywhere and

ingeniousmethods have been developed to beat the statutory limits of expenditure which is Rs 70

lakh for the General Election and up to 28 lakh for an Assembly seat. In a rare unguarded

moment a former Maharashtra Minister let slip that he had spent Rs.8 crore on his 2009 election,

when the prescribed limit at that time was Rs.40 lakh. The ECI issued a notice to him. He

quickly recanted and said he was “misquoted”. As is common knowledge, politicians across the

board spend far above the statutory ceilings making sure that they are not caught in the process.

Equally distressing is what I could call “muscle power”. In a recent book, When Crime Pays,

Milan Vaishnav argues that the combination of “money power” and “muscle power” have

become important determinants in winning elections. In both the 15th as well as the present Lok

Sabha, almost 30% of the members have one or more criminal case registered against them.

What is even more distressing is that half of these are for heinous offences such as murder,

attempt to murder, extortion, rape, dacoity and kidnapping. During the course of my meetings

with officials, both civil and police, I found that the actual percentage of criminality is higher

because I am told that many cases had been hushed up or in some way settled in favour of the

local musclemen/politicians. Till the 1980’s many mafias would support candidates from

outside, with the hope that upon his victory, the candidate would “look after” their interests. It

was only a matter of time before they decided that they were better off contesting elections

themselves.

I have made an analysis of the results in the recently-concluded elections in Gujarat and

Himachal Pradesh. In Himachal Pradesh, according to their self-declared affidavits, 61 out of a

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total of 338 contesting candidates have criminal cases registered against them. This represents

18% of the total. More interestingly, the number of candidates with criminal records who won

are 22 out of 61, a whopping 36%! Not surprisingly, 67% of the winning candidates with

criminal records are crorepatis.

Meanwhile, in Gujarat, there were 253 candidates with criminal cases out of a total of 1819

contesting candidates. This represents 14% with criminal records. The number of winning

candidates with criminal records was 47 out of 182, or almost one in four. 81% of the winning

candidates with criminal records are also crorepatis. It is interesting to note that out of 47

winners with criminal antecedents, 38 are crorepatis.

A possible solution may lie with the Election Commission convening a meeting of all recognised

political parties to hammer out a solution to exclude all candidates with criminal antecedents

from being nominated by them as candidates. If the model code of conduct could be agreed upon

by political parities amongst themselves, the exclusion of alleged criminals, particularly those

whose have committed heinous offences, could also emerge by political consensus.

Navin B Chawla is India’s 16th chief election commissioner and conducted the 2009 general

elections

The views expressed are personal

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PRIMEMINISTERS

TRIBUNE, DEC 27, 2017Being PMModi has to find time for the business of office

Prime Minister Narendra Modi attended a Metro inauguration ceremony on Monday. It was his third in the country this year —after Hyderabad and Kochi — and third in New Delhi since assuming office. All three events in the Capital were the opening of a new line. Whether the most important person in the country has a fascination for travel or inaugurations is hard to say, he has not held back from demonstrating India’s progress in various modes of transport — ferry, seaplane or rail. Each time, though, the same question has arisen, does a Prime Minister do himself credit by letting himself be distracted by such events? It was one thing for the then Prime Minister, Atal Behari Vajpayee, to open the Metro service in Delhi for the first time, but adding lines to it may hardly be worth the time of such a high office. Modi attacked the Opposition saying they “do not look at these projects from the angle of development but only… politics.” That may be true, at least to the extent of the debate over the Delhi Chief Minister not being invited to the ceremony. But the breakdown of communication between the state and the Centre that it demonstrated has some material fallout. Proposals from Delhi to roll back the hike in Metro fares were stonewalled by the Centre; the result is that daily Metro commutes have gone down by 3 lakh. The consequences for traffic management are obvious. In contrast, the Khattar government in Haryana was more prepared to put aside the BJP-AAP political differences, and held a meeting with the Delhi CM on the issue of stubble burning.

While in politics a certain amount of credit seeking is natural, the Prime Minister needs to

understand he is the chief facilitator of consultations across all channels and barriers in the

country. Demonetisation and GST were examples of what happens when we don’t take others on

board. Moreover, consultation is a long and arduous process that requires time, labour and

patience. And that requires for the chief negotiator to be available in office, not Metro platforms.

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PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION

INDIAN EXPRESS, DEC 30, 2017Changing chalta hai Indian Administrative Services can lead the charge. If it reinvents itself, its effects will ripple

through the system, galvanise change.Written by Gulzar Natarajan , Duvvuri Subbarao

In his Independence Day address last August, the prime minister decried the “chalta hai” culture

in the nation and called upon the people, especially the youth, to embrace a “badal sakta hai”

attitude. The prime minister hit not just the right button, but exactly the right button. Yet, in a

nation inured to platitudes from leaders, this one too might get lost in the flood. That will be a

pity. If acted upon, the prime minister’s message has the potential to profoundly change the

quality of everyday life of Indians.

So, what is the “chalta hai” attitude? We all know it; after all, we experience it all the time as we

go about our everyday lives. Yet it is difficult to define it. Perhaps a phrase will better capture its

essence: “It’s okay. Don’t sweat. This is India. We are like that only.” It is a mindset that not

only accepts but internalises tardiness, lack of a work ethic, ineptitude, indifference, inefficiency,

indiscipline and even corruption and crime. Some societies, notably the Japanese, are zero

tolerance; we are the exact opposite.

Our public toilets are filthy; it’s okay. We cut corners in everything we do; it’s okay. We don’t

give way to an ambulance on the street; it’s okay. We are pathologically incapable of standing in

a queue, being on time or keeping a promised delivery schedule; it’s okay. We build world class

expressways and look on nonchalantly as people drive on the wrong side. Our nonchalance

extends to deeper issues. Fifty children die for want of oxygen in a Gorakhpur hospital; 22

commuters die in a stampede on a suburban railway bridge; 30 people die in the rioting that

follows the arrest of a godman. We accept all this and move on. Someone blatantly puts a bounty

on the head of an actress who essayed the lead role in a movie that allegedly distorted our

history. We shrug that off as par for the course.

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Moving from “chalta hai” to “badal sakta hai” means a cultural change which, by its very nature,

is a long haul. It needs a people’s movement; the government can at most be a catalyst. The

purpose of this article is not to put forward a citizen’s charter for that. We are attempting

something less ambitious but important: How can the IAS fraternity begin acting on the prime

minister’s exhortation by setting an example?

Many people will find the very idea of the IAS leading the fight against “chalta hai”

preposterous. The IAS is, in fact, seen as the embodiment of all that is wrong in the country. It is

at centre of the callousness, venality and corruption that define our governance. To believe that

the IAS will fight to bring down a system that it carefully built and nurtured over the years to

further its narrow self-interest is simply ludicrous.

Regrettably, this report card of the IAS is not without basis. But it wasn’t always like this. When

the service was instituted soon after Independence, its mission was clear — nation building.

Whether it was agricultural development, implementing land reforms, building irrigation

projects, promoting industry, expanding and improving health and education delivery,

implementing social justice or enforcing the rule of law, the IAS was seen as the delivery arm.

The IAS officers led this effort from the front and laid the foundations of an impressive

development administration network, earning for the service a formidable reputation for

competence, integrity and for being a change agent.

But that reputation began eroding, starting in the mid-1970s. The IAS lost its ethos and its way.

Ineptitude, indifference and corruption crept in. The service still attracts some of the best talent

in the country and young recruits come in with sharp minds and enthusiasm to be change agents.

But soon, they become cogs in the wheels of complacency and acquiescence, build a stake in the

status-quo and resist change. Today, the stereotypical view of an IAS officer is one who puts

self-interest ahead of public interest.

Unfortunately, this stereotype is amplified by fringe elements in the service who have gone off-

track. The entire service gets tainted by their misdeeds. In order to lead this transformation from

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“chalta hai” to “badal sakta hai”, the IAS must regain its moral stature. That effort must begin at

home — with an introspection on where and how the service lost its ethical moorings and what

should be done to reverse the degradation. Just as individuals have character and personality, so

does the IAS as a service. The service has to focus on reinventing both its character and its

personality.

On the character front, the service must adopt and conform to an honour code that upholds and

prizes competence, commitment, pecuniary and professional integrity. This will happen not by

mouthing shibboleths. It will happen only by each and every IAS officer internalising the ethos

of the honour code and conforming to it no matter the provocation or the temptation to infringe

it. It means championing change, pursuing public good with passion and professionalism, acting

without fear or favour, accepting challenges, no matter how daunting, and letting actions and

results speak for themselves. It means reviving the old esprit de corps where officers stand up for

each other in order to uphold public good. It means shunning ostentation, luxury and frills.

On the personality front, the IAS must adopt and adhere to a code of conduct of work ethics and

behaviour. This means diligence and application, punctuality, disciplined work habits,

willingness to learn, accepting responsibility for mistakes with humility, going to meetings well

prepared, communicating clearly and effectively and being courteous and humble. Yes, it also

means being properly attired and well groomed.

Once the IAS begins on this mission of reinventing itself, its effects will ripple through the

system, galvanising change across the administrative hierarchy. It will soon find that it is well on

its way to bringing out a transformation from “chalta hai” to “badal sakta hai” in the larger

society.Natarajan is a serving IAS officer and Subbarao, a retired IAS officer, both of the Andhra Pradesh cadre

TRIBUNE, DEC 29, 2017The rising cost of governanceNirmal Sandhu

Punjab’s vote politics leads to institutional losses

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EVERY time the Punjab Cabinet sits down to take decisions, people end up losing jobs, money, or institutions. Last week it took decisions which have serious financial consequences. The focus is on levying taxes rather than curbing tax evasion, recovering dues, plugging leakages or cutting wasteful government expenditure. 

After deciding to close down some 800 rural government schools the government plans to shut State-owned thermal plants. Institutions, including those providing education and healthcare, are crumbling due to lack of financial support. 

The second decision was to tax cable connections and DTH services. The need to replenish the coffers is understandable but taxes are partly used to fund politics of appeasement and extravagance, which has brought Punjab to its present condition.

The third decision was to establish a directorate to tackle industrial and vehicular pollution, stubble burning, climate change and environmental clearances. It appears the successive Punjab governments had been functioning all these years without a mechanism to enforce the green laws and protect the environment.

The Congress leadership has been called upon to manage a sputtering economy with an empty treasury, a mountain of debt and high public aspirations. Like his predecessor, Parkash Singh Badal, Capt Amarinder Singh does not respect the recognised rules of governance and fiscal discipline. He too uses the State money for political benefit and personal projection, though his aberrations are relatively minor like diverting funds meant for livestock improvement to hold polo matches in Patiala, or not routing market fee and rural development collections through the consolidated fund to escape an audit scrutiny.

Maybe he needs a better set of advisers than those who have got the job for no reason other than enjoying his goodwill or assisting him in an election. Together, they end up taking irrational decisions — like setting up a new commission here or a directorate there, or just closing this or that organisation to save money. Used to a life of luxury, Congressmen have doubled the reimbursement limit for MLAs’ treatment in hospitals outside the State. 

After the idea of having a liquor corporation invited ridicule, they now plan to set up this high-sounding directorate of environment and climate change. On the face of it, the directorate plan seems sensible. Who does not want to control pollution or prepare the State to face the challenge of climate change? 

But the new environment saviours seem to forget that the State already has a well-stocked department of science, environment and technology and a state council of science and

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technology. Then there is a pollution control board, whose head is shifted every time it takes on a polluting industry. 

How a new directorate would be different from the existing arrangement is hard to understand. Climate change handling does not require day-to-day, 5-to-10 work. If the present setup does not show the desired results, an outside expert with credible credentials can be assigned the task. Or an environment chair can be set up in some university.

Anyway, politicians in Punjab do not listen to expert advice — be it on free power, paddy cultivation or loan waiver. They do what is in their personal or political interest. In his previous term as Chief Minister the Captain had brushed aside Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s advice on discontinuing free power. 

The royal descendant’s sudden interest in things like environment and climate change is interesting. When air pollution politics played up recently, he contemptuously shrugged off suggestions of stopping stubble burning, saying the State could do little without Central aid. 

His government has remained unbothered by the deteriorating quality of water, soil or air in the State. The shorter point is: make do with what you have without adding to the present unmanageable administrative flab. The State has more administrators at the top than it needs or can afford.  

Then there is a decision to set up a commission for empowerment of farmers. Again, if Congressmen are unaware what farmer protests are all about or what can be done to rejuvenate stagnant agriculture, ask someone knowledgeable, consult some professor in PAU or read the voluminous reports of Dr MS Swaminathan. Yet another commission for farmers would produce little more than a monthly salary bill.

  Very quietly the Finance Minister keeps pushing tax hikes or new taxes midway, clearly indicating that sufficient advance planning had not gone into budget-making, unless it was a conscious but not-so-clever ploy of delivering tax blows later in the year to avoid budget-time howls of protests. 

In August the government had hiked the market fee and the rural development fee by 1 per cent to mop up Rs 900 crore. Now it has imposed an entertainment tax on cable and DTH connections. This is despite calculations of a 14 per cent increase in the year-on-year Central tax devolution. Politician-run businesses usually treated kindly. Builders have got an unexpected tax relief.

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The decision on thermal plants has provoked protests. The power employees did not act to save their jobs when politicians announced free power and financially ruined their institution — and the State. They kept quiet when their colleagues colluded in power theft. 

The power subsidy does not much benefit small farmers. A survey shows that 81 per cent power subsidy beneficiaries are medium and well-off farmers. The Akalis spent Rs 715 crore on renovating the Bathinda plant and the Congressmen are closing it down. No protests when non-professional decisions are taken. The money earmarked for power subsidy could have been used to upgrade machinery and create additional power capacity.  

No better literate, but Haryana politicians do not engage in free power politics and the State’s power utilities are among those thriving. They cut supplies to areas where theft and non-payment of bills are rampant. Gujarat offers an example of how to manage the power sector. Its power companies make profits while supplying round-the-clock power to households and assured eight-hour supply to farms. That is because Gujaratis pay for it. Punjab’s politicians and their loyalists at key positions lack the nerve to take hard decisions. 

After bringing the State to a situation where it is now, the political class needs to have a rethink on competitive pandering of vested interests and electoral constituencies. Those who understand and resist the trade-off of freebies for votes are in minority. That is a pity. Punjab requires a long-term vision to rise from the morass it has sunk into.

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REFUGEES

TELEGRAPH, DEC 27, 2017The most unwanted peoplePinak Ranjan Chakravarty 

The Rohingya issue has affected bilateral relations between Bangladesh and Myanmar. Almost a million refugees have fled across the border into Bangladesh. The crisis has drawn in neighbours - China and India - and other major powers. Human rights groups and various countries have accused Myanmar of 'ethnic cleansing'. While Bangladesh is receiving aid from some countries and global humanitarian organizations, it does not want the refugees to settle permanently in its territory. The recent agreement is the first step towards this objective and is modelled on an earlier agreement in 1992-93, when Rohingya refugees had fled to Bangladesh after a bout of violence against them.

The agreement deals with the terms for the return of the refugees. It has a provision for a joint working group and the repatriation of refugees was expected to begin soon. There is no clarity on timelines; the agreement merely says that repatriation will be concluded in a speedy manner. A Myanmar government official has indicated that repatriation can start after Bangladesh completes documentation and begins handing it over to Myanmar.

It is clear that Myanmar wants to deflect international pressure and has opted for the bilateral route. The details of the criteria for the return of the refugees have not yet been spelt out. Nor is there any clarity on the legal status of Rohingyas upon return or any guarantee that they will not be subjected to further violence. China's foreign minister, Wang Yi, has said that it would be better not to internationalize the issue. Beijing's mediation effort with the three-step formula is meant to leverage the Rohingya crisis for its own objectives.

The Myanmar military has been accused of atrocities, including mass rape and killings, during counter-insurgency operations against Rohingya militants in northern Rakhine last August. Aung San Suu Kyi, the state counsellor and Nobel Peace Prize winner, under international pressure and caught between international and domestic opinions, has tried to navigate between them.

Statements by Myanmar's army chief indicate that the military will restrict the numbers which may eventually be allowed to return. The Rohingyas are referred to as Bengalis in Myanmar and considered illegal immigrants. Myanmar's 1982 Citizenship Law did not give them full citizenship rights. There is opposition from the largely Buddhist population in Rakhine to their return. Myanmar's official media continue to refer to the Rohingya militants and the Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army as "Bengali terrorists" and Suu Kyi has guardedly referred to unchecked Muslim immigration swamping a largely Buddhist nation. The radical Buddhist clergy in Myanmar, too, backs the military in its defiance of international norms.

China, initially, supported Myanmar but later busied itself in mediating between Bangladesh and Myanmar when it realized Bangladesh was unhappy with its partisan posturing. China's principal strategic objective in Myanmar is to obtain access to the Bay of Bengal. It already has a gas and a separate oil pipeline running from the port of Kyaukpyu to Kunming, the capital of China's Yunnan province. It plans to build a special economic zone and a mega port at Kyaukpyu.

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India also had to change track from its initial ambivalence after the magnitude of the crisis became apparent and Bangladesh, a friendly neighbour, expressed its anguish at India's lack of a clear position. Both China and India have interests in Myanmar where the military remains the power centre. This explains the Indian reluctance in condemning the violence. India, however, had to quickly shift policy gears to find ways of assuaging Bangladesh's feelings. Humanitarian aid to the Rohingya refugees and behind-the-scene engagement with the Myanmar military became the two prongs of this changed policy.

India has engaged the Myanmar military for joint exercises and training. India needs its cooperation in dealing with Indian insurgent groups which have camps in Myanmar and for progress in two connectivity projects - the Kaladan multi-modal project, which connects Mizoram with the port at Sittwe, the capital of Rakhine province, and the trilateral highway project, linking India with Myanmar and Thailand. These projects are crucial to the success of India's Act East Policy.

Western powers did not consider sanctions. Only after the visit of the American secretary of state to Myanmar recently has there been talk of "accountability" and specific sanctions against military authorities involved in the violence. The pope, during his recent visit to Myanmar, avoided using the term, Rohingya, because of the country's opposition. At the Manila Summit, the statement of the chairman of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations did not refer to the Rohingya issue. The Asean is worried about a cleavage developing between its main Muslim-majority countries - Indonesia, Malaysia and Brunei - and largely Buddhist countries - Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar, Thailand and Vietnam. The Organisation of Islamic Cooperation, the flag-bearer of Islamic countries, has again proven to be quite incapable of resolving the issue.

The Rohingyas have become the world's most unwanted people and the future looks quite bleak. Myanmar is unlikely to take back most of the refugees and Bangladesh will have to resettle them in new refugee camps and hope other countries will ease the burden by accepting some refugees.

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TRANSPORT

DECCAN HERALD, DEC 27, 2017Traffic rule violators may have to spend time in surgical OPDs as community serviceAjith Athrady

Traffic rule violators may have to spend some time with road accident victims at surgical Out Patient Departments (OPDs) of hospitals to understand others' pain.

The Ministry of Road Transport and Highways is proposing community service for offenders. The violators of traffic rules may be compelled to spend time in surgical OPDs with road accident victims, the ministry informed the parliamentary panel which vetted he Motor Vehicle (Amendment) Bill.

"If a person spends time with road accident victims in the OPD, it will sensitise him/her to follow traffic rules and how rule-breakers cause danger to others' lives," said an official in the Road Transport Ministry. Spending time in OPDs is apart from paying fine for breaking rules.The ministry will bring out detailed rules about the types of traffic offences that would attract community service.

The ministry informed the Rajya Sabha select committee, which vetted the Motor Vehicles (Amendment) Bill, 2017, about its plan to bring changes to the existing system. The committee, in its its report tabled in the Rajya Sabha last week, said these stringent rules will help improve road safety and bring down accident rates.

Road Transport Minister Nitin Gadkari hopes to get Upper House's nod for the bill, which was already passed by the Lok Sabha. The long-pending bill proposes to overhaul traffic and road safety issues and stipulates stringent punishment to errant drivers.

According to a report on road accidents prepared by the ministry, drivers' fault was the single-most important factor responsible for road accidents (84%) in 2016 in the country.

The government also proposes to make provisions for two drivers for heavy commercial vehicles which run more than 500 km and regulate the speed of vehicles. The Road Transport Ministry also proposes to enhance punishment for drunk driving up to seven years, in line with the proposed amendments in IPC. At present, drunk drivers causing death are booked under section 304A (causing death due to negligence) and face two-year jail term or fine or both.

The government also plans separate rules for bringing uniform standards for breath analysers.

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WATER SUPPLY

PIONEER, DEC 27, 2017DELHIITES TO PAY 120% FOR CONSUMING WATER ABOVE 20K LITRE A MONTH

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The Delhi Jal Board (DJB) on Tuesday approved a combined 20 per cent hike in water and sewer charges in the national Capital for consumption above 20,000 litres a month.

However, the DJB will not charge households consuming up to 20,000 litres a month, in line with the subsidy scheme of the Arvind Kejriwal Government, which was a key poll promise of the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP), an official said.

The new rates will come into force in February, 2018.

In 2015, days after coming to power, the AAP Government had hiked water tariff by 10 per cent for consumers falling in the same category, keeping with an annual automatic 10 per cent rate hike mechanism put in place by then Sheila Dikshit Government in 2009.

However, in 2016, the Government decided against following the auto mechanism and put another hike on hold.

The current hike comes three months after Kejriwal took over the ministerial portfolio of water after the removal of Kapil Mishra. It will effectively lead to a rise of Rs 28 per month for consumers crossing the 20,000 litres limit, DJB vice chairman Dinesh Mohaniya,  the AAP MLA from Sangam Vihar, said.

“No change in water tariff in Delhi for households using up to 20,000 litres per month for third consecutive year. Above 20,000 litres, a 20 per cent combined hike on water and sewer charges was approved in the Delhi Jal Board meeting,” Delhi Government spokesperson Nagendar Sharma tweeted.

The DJB has been providing up to 20,000 litres of water free of charge to domestic consumers.

For domestic users who consume between 20,000 litres and 30,000 litres of water per month, the service charge is Rs 219.62 and the volumetric charge is Rs 21.97 per 1,000 litres.

Customers who use over 30,000 litres a month pay Rs 292.82 in service charge and Rs 36.61 per 1,000 litres in volumetric charge.

WOMEN

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STATESMAN, DEC 25, 2017Girl in search of learningArgha kr Banerjee 

Peace in every home, every street, every village, every country ~ this is my dream. Education for every boy and every girl in the world.

~ Malala Yousafzai

In her autobiographical memoir, I am Malala, Malala Yousafzai initiates her journey on a rather perturbing note. In the chapter ‘A Daughter is Born’, she doesn’t forget to mention: ‘When I was born, people in our village commiserated with my mother and nobody congratulated my father.’ She goes on to add: ‘I was a girl in a land where rifles are fired in celebration of a son, while daughters are hidden away behind a curtain, their role in life simply to prepare food and give birth to children.’

Malala’s observation is not only an issue of concern in the circumstance of Pakistan, but it also rings true in the context of the entire Indian subcontinent as well. Sadly though, even today, in most parts of the country, the birth of the girl child is not welcome. Malala’s candid observation is symptomatic of a greater socio-cultural malady in the subcontinent that needs to be redressed with utmost urgency.

The exigency is a desperate one, more so, as there seems to be an inherent social resistance that thwarts the successful implementation of various social welfare schemes specifically directed towards women’s welfare and empowerment of the girl child. In stray cases of success of certain schemes, the overall bleak scenario seems to drown and obscure the silver lining. Yet one has to be an incorrigible optimist and strive for the turn of the tide.

As Malala laments in her autobiography, right from her birth, she had been perceived as a liability, being subject to inequity, prejudice and subjugation at each and every stage of her early life. The instance of Malala underlines the enormity of the problem both in the rural and the urban sector of the Indian subcontinent.

Inevitably, it cannot be denied that gender prejudice lies at the root of neglect of the girl child, especially as regards crucial issues like education, health care and financial empowerment. Reversal of this deep rooted social bias is of strategic significance in the state’s fight for empowerment of the girl child.  Her overall security and upbringing is precious; not only for today but for the future as well. To take care of the future of women’s empowerment it is imperative to ensure the security and upbringing of the girl child of today. Against the onslaught of the predominantly all male set-up, there is very little choice for the hapless victim except to haplessly surrender to its whims and fancies of the patriarchal society. Along with the scourge of abject neglect and apathy, comes the looming spectre of abuse and exploitation of the girl child in her growing-up period.

Discrimination against the girl child, an integral part of Indian society, operates in a vicious manner in multiple ways. Be it urban or rural, the birth of a girl child is not only unwelcome, but

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unfortunately seen as a burden. As a consequence of such a flawed perception, cases of female infanticide continue to be reported from different parts of the country on a regular basis, even today. This has a direct bearing on the sex ratio. The shocking condition of the sex ratio can be easily perceived from observations made on the census of India website: ‘Like the sex composition of the total population, the sex composition by age groups is vital for studying the demographic trends of the young population, its future patterns and particularly the status of the girl child.’

The report further states that ‘at the census 2001, sex ratio of the population in the age group 0-6 years has been registered as 927 in India, declining from 945 in 1991 and 962 in 1981’. ‘The decreasing sex ratio in this age group’ as the report adds, ‘has a cascading effect on population over a period of time leading to diminishing sex ratio in the country.’ The website warns in its report that ‘one thing is clear ~ the imbalance that has set in

at this early age group is difficult to be removed and would remain to haunt the population for a long time to come.’ An alarming ratio reflects a host of other social maladies which further exacerbates the plight of the Indian girl child in the short term and frustrates the much cherished distant dream of women’s empowerment in the long run.

With due candour, it must be admitted that the central and the state governments are leaving no stone unturned to improve and recover the situation. Besides the resounding recent success of the West Bengal government’s Kanyashree Prakalpo, the nation has witnessed a spate of several other social welfare schemes to alleviate the position of the girl child. Most notable among these include but are not necessarily limited to Beti Padho, Beti Bachao or the BPBB scheme, the Kasturba Gandhi Balika Vidyalaya project, the Ladli Laxmi Yojana of the Madhya Pradesh government, the Sabla, Dhanalakshmi, Kishori Shakti Yojana, and the Sukanaya Samriddhi Yojana among several others.

For a definite change for the better, the society requires a paradigm shift in its attitude that underlines the needs of the girl child. In this context, the key to success lies in systematically breaking the myths and typecasts that revolve around gender issues. Education in itself has a key role to play. One should understand that the importance of educating the girl child is not only confined to long-term financial empowerment and autonomy, but that it paves the way for better empowered homemakers, sisters, mothers and grandmothers.

Education, irrespective of age, would aid women in increasing their self-esteem, carving out an affirmative, positive self-worth that would definitely go a long way in augmenting their confidence levels in life, making them conscious that they are entitled to equal participation and share in all issues of life.

In her memoir, Malala Yousafzai describes her conversation with Barack Obama in the White House: ‘It was quite a serious meeting. We talked about the importance of education…I told him that instead of focusing on eradicating terrorism through war, he should focus on eradicating it through education.’

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