LIST OF NEWSPAPERS COVERED

BUSINESS LINE

ECONOMIC TIMES

HINDU

HINDUSTAN TIMES

INDIAN EXPRESS

STATESMAN

TELEGRAPH

TIMES OF INDIA

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CONTENTS

CIVIL SERVICE 3-5

DISTRICT ADMINISTRATION 6-8

ECONOMIC AND SOCIAL DEVELOPMENT 9-17

EDUCATION 18-21

INTERNATIONAL ECONOMIC RELATIONS 22-24

MASS MEDIA 25-27

POLITICS AND GOVERNMENT 28

POVERTY 29-32

PRIMEMINISTERS 33-35

RAILWAYS 36-39

TAXATION 40-42

WOMEN 43-46

WILD ANIMALS 47-50

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CIVIL SERVICE

HINDUSTAN TIMES, AUG 2, 2016PM Modi urges young IAS officers to interact fearlessly with superiors

Prime Minister Narendra Modi told young IAS officers on Tuesday not be overawed by hierarchy and to be frank and fearless in their interaction with senior officers over the next three months.

Addressing the IAS officers of the 2014 batch at the inaugural session of assistant secretaries, Modi asked the young officers to use the next three months to enhance their skills and learning, far beyond what they had imbibed during their training so far.

Prime Minister’s Office (PMO) had started a system to attach IAS officer just out of the training academy as assistant secretary in the central government for three months before they go back to the states for their first field posting. The idea behind the plan was to give young officers a sense of the decision-making process in Delhi.

As part of this scheme, a group of IAS officers is attached with a particular department under the watchful eyes of the department secretary, who is required to mentor them.A PMO statement said Modi also advised them to remain sensitive to their circumstances and surroundings to be able to effectively connect with the people of India.

ECONOMIC TIMES, AUG5, 2016PM Narendra Modi asks 172 IAS officers to study centre, state sites

NEW DELHI: Prime Minister Narendra Modi has asked the 172 IAS officers on a special 3

month central stint as 'assistant secretaries' to study six central government websites each as well

as the website of their own state cadre to assess how userfriendly they are and whether all

services are offered online on the same. ET had earlier reported that the assistant secretaries have

been asked to focus on projects like Direct Benefit Transfer, egovernance and usage of space

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technology in governance during their stints that started from August 1. Post the Prime Minister's

interactive session with the 172 officers on August 2, the Centre has now said that the officers

should also evaluate the 'Digital Space' in central ministries as well as state governments/union

territories. "It has been decided that assistant secretaries have to evaluate and analyse the

structure, presentation, content and user friendliness of the website of the ministry or department

to which they are posted and also websites of their allotted state cadre. Further, in order to give

wider perspective, it is proposed that each assistant secretary may also study the websites of five

other different departments, other than the one he/she is posted," says the latest order. The

assistant secretaries will assess if the websites are updated regularly, if all services provided by

the department are provided online through the website and how informative the website is about

the department's programmes, schemes and achievements. Regarding their respective state

websites, the officers will assess whether the Centre's websites of the ministry/department are

"organically linked" to the state/UT websites, whether the state's website is linked to the district

levels and whether services are being provided online and if information about the various

schemes and latest progress and achievement on them are available on the website.

TIMES OF INDIA, AUG 7, 2016Minimum pension of retired central government staff goes up by 157%HIGHLIGHTS

Retired central government employees will now get a minimum pension of Rs 9,000, up 157.14 per cent from the current Rs 3,500.

The ceiling of gratuity has also been enhanced from the existing Rs 10 lakh to Rs 20 lakh. There are about 58 lakh central government pensioners.

NEW DELHI: Retired central government employees will now get a minimum pension of Rs 9,000, up 157.14 per cent from the current Rs 3,500, following the implementation of the 7th Pay Commission 's recommendations.

The Ministry of Personnel, Public Grievances and Pensions has notified acceptance of pay panel's recommendations for the pensioners.

The ceiling of gratuity has also been enhanced from the existing Rs 10 lakh to Rs 20 lakh. The Commission had also recommended the ceiling on gratuity to be raised by 25 per cent whenever Dearness Allowance rises by 50 per cent, a proposal which has been accepted by the government.

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There are about 58 lakh central government pensioners.

The amount of pension shall be subject to a minimum of Rs 9,000 and the maximum pension would be Rs 1,25,000--which is 50 per cent of the highest pay in the government, an order issued by the Ministry said.

The highest pay in the government is Rs 2,50,000 with effect from January 1, 2016.

The maximum limit of retirement gratuity and death gratuity shall be Rs 20 lakh, the order said.

The ceiling on gratuity will increase by 25 per cent whenever the dearness allowance rises by 50

per cent of the basic pay, it said.

Top Comment

Stop all benefits and pensions to our MPs MLAs etc as they have learned the trick to do nothing

and be an MP for 5 to 10 years and reap all benefits until they die . Instead of being a huge

burden on... Read MoreRene Fernandez

There has been a substantial increase in payment of ex-gratia lump sum compensation for civil

and defence forces personnel, payable to the next of kin.

A payment of Rs 25 lakh, from existing Rs 10 lakh, will be given in case of death occurring due

to accidents in course of performance of duties and those attributed to acts of violence by

terrorists, anti social elements etc.

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DISTRICT ADMINISTRATION

FINANCIAL EXPRESS, AUG 4, 2016District gazetteers: A national asset to base plans on for the future

This will provide useful inputs about the base on which a district wishes to build and plan for the

futureBy: Bibek Debroy 

The “old” means gazetteers published during the colonial period, beginning in 1870s and supplementary volumes added till 1930s. (Reuters)

Since new districts are created all the time, by sub-dividing existing districts, the number of

districts keeps changing. It is 686 now. It used to be 640 in the 2011 census and 593 in the 2001

census. Districts vary widely, in population, as well as area. Thane in Maharashtra may have (in

2011) a population of 11.1 million, Dibang Valley in Arunachal Pradesh has a population of

8,004. Incidentally, area-wise, Dibang Valley is the largest district in Arunachal. Kachchh in

Gujarat may have a geographical area of 45,650 sq km, Mahe in Puducherry has an area of less

than 9 sq km. In understanding districts and their socio-economic profiles, I have always

wondered why much more use is not made of district gazetteers. They are a treasure-trove of

information. “Their great importance is clear from the fact that the prime minister of India in his

speech in the Lok Sabha (April 28, 1965) quoted from different Gazetteers to corroborate the fact

that the Rann of Kutch formed a part of India. So the Gazetteers, whether it is District

Gazetteers, or State Gazetteers or Indian Gazetteers, are indeed of a national asset. The

documentation centre of some foreign countries have spent a large sum of money on

microfilming the entire series—old and new—of Gazetteers.”

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The “old” means gazetteers published during the colonial period, beginning in 1870s and

supplementary volumes added till 1930s. The “new” means post-Independence gazetteers. Some

states (such as Maharashtra and Tamil Nadu) started publishing newer versions of these

gazetteers, even after Independence. This was important enough for preparation of gazetteers to

become a national project in 1957. Therefore, all states should have published gazetteers and

should have gazetteer departments. The former is probably true. The latter is not invariably true,

since there may be gazetteer units under some other department. All districts have websites.

Anyone who has visited these websites knows quality of information given varies widely from

district to district, even within the same state. I don’t understand why states don’t prescribe a

template, indicating minimum information a district’s website must contain. Thus, from these

websites, you will not necessarily know whether that particular district has ever had a district

gazetteer. When the states have gazetteer departments and they have an internet presence, you

will get a complete list of gazetteers published and sometimes, even the texts. Searching the

internet, my listing of best states includes Haryana, Karnataka, Maharashtra, Punjab and UP. By

“best”, I mean district gazetteers being available on the internet. Other states have no doubt

published “new” gazetteers, but they are probably more concerned with selling the “old” and the

“new”, not offering them free. The quote I gave you is from the UP site. Of those five states, I

think the sites are best organised for Maharashtra, Karnataka and UP.

Article 243ZD of the Constitution mandates district planning. “There shall be constituted in

every State at the district level a District Planning Committee to consolidate the plans prepared

by the Panchayats and the Municipalities in the district and to prepare a draft development plan

for the district as a whole.” It is true success of district planning has varied from state to state,

despite existence of guidelines and a manual on integrated district planning since 2006-08. I

think district gazetteers provide useful inputs about the base on which a district wishes to build

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and plan for the future. Development is a dynamic process and I am not suggesting it is static.

But district gazetteers give us some sense of the foundation and legacy. There is a lot of focus on

states. Since there are significant inter-district variations within the same state, which state-level

Human Development Reports also bring out, there should be even greater focus on districts, with

emphasis not just on Union-state fiscal devolution, but also intra-state fiscal devolution.

Whatever be the indicator used, between 70 and 100 districts will be “backward”. That’s where

deprivation is centred and development marginalised and that list of 70-100 has been more or

less unchanged since 1947. They have no doubt advanced in absolute terms. But in relative

terms, they still remain “backward”. At one level, if the criterion is relative, that some will be

“backward” is tautological. It isn’t as if this problem hasn’t been recognised. The 1960

Committee on Dispersal of Industries identified 100 backward districts. Thirty six years later, in

1996, the EAS Sarma Committee also identified 100 backward districts. The reason the issue

isn’t purely tautological is because there is almost perfect correspondence between the backward

list of 1960 and the one of 1996. One would have understood had there been some churn in the

rankings. These districts are the ones in Rashtriya Sam Vikas Yojana’s backward districts

initiative, with a concentration (more than 5 districts) in undivided Andhra Pradesh, Jharkhand,

Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra, Tamil Nadu, UP, West Bengal and Assam. Track inadequate

progress towards MDGs, or identify problem districts from the perspective of SDGs. Those

districts will figure again. At some level of generalisation, you will notice three points about

these “backward” districts. First, they tend to be bypassed by national highways. Second, they

tend to be bypassed by railway networks. Third, any inter-linking of rivers will benefit these

considerably. Hence, my question about “old” gazetteers. Were these districts always

“backward”, or did colonial transport (and land) policy accentuate backwardness? Transport

connectivity is usually a prerequisite for development.

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ECONOMIC AND SOCIAL DEVELOPMENT

STATESMAN, AUG 3, 2016Twenty-five years after 1

Govind Bhattacharjee

In the history of independent India, July 1991 was perhaps the most eventful month in terms of significance and impact. While we had attained our political independence in August 1947, it was only in 1991 that we could finally make an irrevocable break with the past. The government initiated major steps to attain the country's economic independence from the stifling state controls that had impeded the nation’s growth for decades.

It was in July 1991 that we had finally buried the disastrous legacy of Nehruvian socialism that had restricted the nation to a Hindu rate of growth since independence and kept its people mired in endemic and abject poverty. It flaunted a socialistic pattern of society whose commanding heights were guarded by the sentinels of a public sector defined by cronyism, patronage, pilferage and inefficiency. As the name of Jairam Ramesh’s book To the Brink and Back: India's 1991 Story correctly suggests, we came back from the brink of disaster, from being perilously close to becoming a failed state.

Since the mid-1980s, the country had been sinking deeper and deeper into an economic quagmire primarily because of the almost relentless worsening of its balance of payments position, triggered by an overvalued currency. The Gulf War exacerbated the crisis by swelling the import bills. The scarce forex reserves dwindled. Nehruvian economics of deficit financing led to escalating fiscal deficits which rose to 8.4 per cent of GDP by 1990-91. Inflation ranged over 12 per cent and internal debt alone rose to 53 per cent of the GDP. The country's external debt increased to $72 billion from only $20.5 billion in 1980, making India the third largest debtor nation after Brazil and Mexico. By June 1991, foreign exchange reserves had declined to only $600 million, or only two weeks equivalent of imports. The prospect of defaulting on its external balance of payment obligations was looming ominously.

To escape the humiliating prospect of sovereign default, a desperate Government had to secure an emergency loan of $2.2 billion from the IMF by pledging almost its entire stock of 67 tons of gold reserves as collateral. To complete the humiliation, IMF insisted on physical transfer of this gold, and RBI had to airlift 47 tons of gold to the Bank of England and the remaining 20 tons to the Union Bank of Switzerland. While this gold was being transported to the airport, the carrier van broke down, creating widespread panic. As a chartered plane ferried the precious cargo to

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London during the last 10 days of May 1991, an outraged nation and its hapless leaders were jolted out of their deep slumber after 44 years.

The Chandra Shekhar government, that presided over this crisis, collapsed shortly afterwards, and on 21 June 1991, P V Narasimha Rao took over as Prime Minister, with Dr. Manmohan Singh as his Finance Minister. What followed has made the country what it is today. As the New York Times had reported on June 29, 1991, “Mr. Rao, who was sworn in as Prime Minister last week, has already sent a signal to the nation Rs as well as the IMF Rs that India faced no “soft options” and must open the door to foreign investment, reduce red tape that often cripples initiative and streamline industrial policy.”

It has been revealed that irrespective of the Government that was to assume power, the reforms would nevertheless have been launched at that point in time. The then Chief Economic Advisor, Mr Deepak Nayyar, and Mr Singh’s predecessor, Mr Yashwant Sinha , had confirmed that any Finance Minister would have read the same Budget speech in June 1991. Dr Singh was fortunate to have his name inscribed in golden letters in the annals of India’s destiny. As he had said in his budget speech that year quoting Victor Hugo that “no power on earth can stop an idea whose time has come” and asserting that “the emergence of India as a major economic power in the world happens to be one such idea. Let the whole world hear it loud and clear.”

In that momentous month of July of 1991, the rupee was devalued by 7 per cent and again by 11 per cent within the first three days. On 9 July, the Prime Minister addressed the nation, highlighting the need for reforms and promising to remove the cobwebs that hindered the economy. A New Industrial Policy and a path-breaking Budget defining the course of reforms the country would pursue were presented together on 24 July. In singing paeans to Dr Manmohan Singh as the architect of India’s economic reforms and the man who brought the country from the brink, we often forget that it was actually Prime Minister Rao, also the Industry Minister, who was the real architect of liberalisation. It was his industrial policy that had actually freed the economy from the suffocating Licence and Permit Raj architecture of the Nehruvian socio-economic philosophy and polity, built around a complex labyrinth of licences, permits and controls. That paradigm dictated every facet of our production and distribution, setting up entry-barriers at every stage, and built a strong bias towards state ownership of the means of production. It viewed all private enterprises with extreme suspicion, and believed in the domination of public sector over every economic activity. It abhorred international trade and erected tariff barriers to prevent India’s integration into the global economy which in its myopic vision was capitalist and hence repugnant. It had infinite trust in the wisdom of its redoubtable bureaucrats and Planning Commission members to control and direct the market forces towards growth.

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The defined objectives of the New Industrial policy were to liberalise industry from all regulatory devices such as licences and controls, enhance support to the small-scale sector, increase the competitiveness of industries, ensure the running of public enterprises on business lines and to ensure rapid industrial development in a competitive environment.

The cornerstones of this policy were: (1) abolition of all industrial licensing, irrespective of the level of investment except for certain industries related to security and strategic concerns; (2) De-reservation of industries for the public sector and allowing the private sector in all spheres save three Rs arms and ammunition, atomic energy and rail transport; till then, the public sector had exclusive reservation over as many as 17 sectors; (3) Disinvestment of the public sector and their restructuring by giving them more autonomy, closing sick units and reducing government stake in them to 26 per cent or less; (4) Free entry to foreign direct investment (FDI) and foreign technology for modernisation, and providing products and services of international standards, through a new FDI policy; and (5) Abolition of MRTP clearance for large industries and liberalising industrial location approvals.

(To be concluded)

STATESMAN, AUG 4, 2016Twenty-five years after - II

Govind Bhattacharjee

There were many other facets of the reforms process, and each of these contributed to the creation of a competitive industrial climate, built around the private and not the public sector by unleashing their immense energy, innovation and entrepreneurship to create wealth and jobs for millions, and by attracting financial capital from across the seven seas. The most pronounced and visible impact of the economic reforms unveiled in July 1991 has been a drastic fall in our poverty ratio, a dramatic improvement in our growth rates and a miraculous increase in the inflow of foreign capital and consequent building up of our foreign exchange reserves. Forex reserves worth $356 billion in May 2015 was way ahead of $1.2 billion in June 1991, just as the nearly 9 per cent growth achieved in 2010-11 was far above the Hindu rate of growth we had been forced to live with for four decades after independence. But far more impressive is the fact that today the poverty rate by any measure would range around 20 per cent compared to nearly 50 per cent in 1991. That means at least 300 million people have escaped poverty because of the reforms. India of 2016 is far more integrated in the global economy and indeed it is an economic force to reckon with in today’s world. Stagnation and despair of the 1990s are things of the past, today it is aspiration and growth. We have indeed left our dismal past well behind us, and all

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political dispensations universally agree that the reform process that was set off in 1991 is irreversible.

Reforms have influenced all key economic areas from industry to fiscal and monetary policies, external trade, foreign investment, finance and capital markets. But there is still an unfinished agenda in terms of education, health, labour, employment, land and agriculture. Agriculture employs 55 per cent of our population but generates only 16 per cent of GDP, and nearly 660 million people are thus living on an average per capita income of about Rs 30,000  -- a meagre Rs 2500 per month, far below the national average. Our Human Development Index is among the lowest in the world, as are our educational standards and health indicators. Delivery of public services remains abysmal in quality and outreach. We need to address these concerns and areas now on a war footing, in order to take advantage of the demographic dividend to avoid a demographic disaster. We can no longer afford gradualism and incrementalism. With prospect for growth accelerating, enacting GST will indicate that we are keen on having a tryst with destiny very soon, but GST will be only a beginning of the second wave of reforms that will truly transform India into a global economic powerhouse.

As the 19th century philosopher Pierre Joseph Proudhon had said, “The life of man is a battle, that of society a perpetual reformation.” We have to continue to reform with ever greater commitment.(Conclud

TELEGRAPH, AUG 2, 2016Putting life into India - This country's economy holds some interesting mysteries

Writing on the wall - Ashok V. Desai

I must say I was surprised to read that Kaushik Basu, once my friend and neighbour, had been succeeded as chief economist of the World Bank by Paul Romer, whom I admire as an inventive economist. I do not mean that the World Bank is no place for inventive economists. But it is a sort of cooperative of countries, responsible to its members and financiers. It has to be careful with its money; hence it is rather conservative. A job with it would be lucrative; but it would not call for brilliance. Paul Romer is always roaming across the intellectual world looking for new ideas and new applications. I did not think that bank lending policies would interest him. True, he could roam the entire world, in person, and discover all kinds of fascinating facts and correlations; but that would be a side benefit. Most of the time he would have to read boring reports and sit in boring meetings. Why on earth did he take such a job?

I was not the only one Romer surprised; as he says, he surprised himself. As he says, intellectual excitement comes from a chance to learn; and when one is handing out loans for the uplift of millions of poor people, one cannot take risks and experiment to learn. But then he

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thought of two colleagues in the Stern School of Urban Management he headed in New York University; they had worked in the World Bank and come out with lots of wisdom. Since he would be working with experienced people in the World Bank, he thought they would prevent him from making mistakes, and that it might give him too a chance to collect wisdom.

Anyway, now that Romer has taken the plunge, the government of India should make full use of the opportunities created by his appointment. One of his bright ideas is charter cities. Basically, it involves three things. First, a country should divide itself up into provinces centred on its major cities. Second, it should look round the world and find the best run countries. Third, it should give fixed-term - say, 20-year - contracts to the best governments to run each of its cities. That way, it will have a number of simultaneous experiments in government. Over time, it can see which of them is more successful and transfer less well-governed cities to the better administrators; and it can learn from the experiments and improve its own governments.

The Indian government has a number of plans which can be combined with the charter city plan. One is smart cities. Their basic idea is rather elementary: that they should be equipped with communication channels for internet. But this is too limited; our cities need to be improved in many dimensions apart from communications -water, power, transport, education, health and so on. We should get the World Bank to cover all these in a smart city programme. Second, the government has an ambitious plan to develop ports. These too are cities; they too need the same infrastructure improvements as other cities. They too should be included. And finally, Suresh Prabhu is looking for both ideas and money for the railways; they can be integrated into the plans for smart cities.

Next, India has been growing fairly well for the past quarter century; but it has not had a growth driver. Information technology served as one for a quarter century from the 1980s onwards, but only in the south. Trade liberalization brought new activity to the ports after 1991, but only to some ports. There has been no driver for the entire country. Schumpeterian theory, now over a century old, posits that growth is driven by innovation; but India has an undistinguished record of innovation or imitation. That is where it lost out to China in the last quarter century. India built up an enormous education industry which even attracted some students from abroad; but its output of new knowledge is negligible. Romer has, in a sense, renovated the theory of innovation; he calls knowledge nonrival goods. He should be asked to set up a project to work out how India can be turned into an intellectually vibrant country.

At a basic level, we know what has gone wrong: Indian universities specialize in rote learning, and Indian professors are not good at creative thinking. It is not just them; India has a vast network of laboratories and research institutes funded by the government, which are on the whole intellectually unimpressive. That is not true of those who man them; many of the researchers are individually good, and perform brilliantly in foreign environments. It is the environment that is wrong, not the people. How can this be repaired? How can India be made a magnet for bright people? How can they be made productive? Maybe, if we get Romer involved, we will get answers in a few years.

India has been growing at a decent pace for a third of a century. Just why is not clear; but having been lucky for so long, it will probably continue to grow well in the coming decades.

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Our problem is not growth, but quality of life and work. We are aware of this; that is what our obsession with poverty is about. But there is considerable intellectual poverty in the way we have approached it. We have turned it into a problem of foodgrain distribution. It is not just that the poor eat too little wheat and rice; they work in poor conditions, they migrate to cities in a haphazard manner, migration is splitting families, too many migrants are living in slums without access to power, water and so on. Analysing their condition in terms of traditional development economics is no longer helpful; it is not giving us solutions. Here too, we need intellectual innovation. I do not know whether it can come from Paul Romer; but he will see the problem, and he will have the resources in the World Bank to look internationally for solutions.

So his appointment is a rare opportunity for India; what India needs to do is to convince him that it offers him a big enough intellectual laboratory. We should shed some of our complacency and see how poorly we understand our economic situation; if we can then share our bemusement with Paul Romer, he may be able to help us organize our rescue. Big problems require great minds; we should be looking for them across the world and attracting them to India. Paul Romer is one among the best economists who have devoted themselves to problems like ours. If we engage his interest, he can contribute much to our quest for solutions. We are not simply a land of mystics; our economy holds some interesting mysteries. We should use them to beguile good minds. Not everyone can be a good doctor; but we can attract good ones if we exhibit our intriguing ailments. It is a misfortune to be the world's biggest poor country; but for those who specialize in treating such misfortunes, India is a country of enormous opportunity. By happy accident, Paul Romer has involved himself in poverty treatment; let us become his guinea pig par excellence.

FINANCIAL EXPRESS, AUG 4, 201625 years of reforms: How inner govt working has resisted change

Though there are some bright spots, the inner functioning of government has resisted changeBy: Nirvikar Singh 

Looked at from the perspective of what needs to be done and how it is to be achieved, the prime minister’s recent guidance to NITI Aayog on the need for innovation, harnessing of technology, bringing in more talent, and transformative policy reforms is a good starting point.

India is not the same country it was 25 years ago, and the economic reform process deserves

much of the credit. What has been achieved? India’s growth rate has gone up, and the standard

of living of the vast majority of its people—including non-income measures of well-being—has

improved significantly. It is difficult to establish the counter-factual scenario of where exactly

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India would be now without economic reforms, but one can assert with some confidence that it

would be much worse off.

The paradigmatic economic reforms were liberalisation of international trade and —later—

foreign investment, and reducing the myriad controls on industry. This was a government

versus market story, and one that was being played out in many parts of the world in the 1990s.

Some other examples of reforms included introducing a modern stock exchange in a matter of

months in the early 1990s, and overhaul of the income tax structure. The latter was part of what

has been a 25-year process of modernising the entire tax system, hopefully, soon reaching one

end-point with the introduction of the GST. Another key reform was in telecoms, where the

nascent software industry benefited from the liberalisation of the sector, although its genesis lay

in benign neglect from the government, rather than reform or support. The upgrading within the

software industry, along with the various spillovers into information-technology-enabled

services, belied early derision from leftist academics that this would be a sector of “techno-

coolies.” Indeed, this was the first time in the modern era that India was doing something

world-class on a large scale, and this changed attitudes and perceptions at home and abroad.

There are many more economic successes associated with the reform period, but also many

unrealised gains. Banking, electric power, and agriculture and manufacturing very broadly, are

examples of incomplete or insufficient reforms, so that the progress in these areas has not only

been well below potential, but has created bottlenecks and constraints for other parts of the

economy. For example, electric power remains erratic and expensive for small businesses, and

they have difficulty getting bank finance for growth, especially in the form of working capital.

The lack of true industrial dynamism has meant that job creation has been far short of potential

throughout the reform period.

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Perhaps the area where progress has been the most limited is in governance. This issue goes

beyond the government versus market balance, to the quality of government action and public

service delivery. In many ways, the inner functioning of government has resisted change,

whether it is accounting and budgeting, internal communications and decision processes, or

hierarchies and promotions. Again, there are bright spots, but the fundamentals do not seem to

have changed. The reform period saw massive national efforts in public health and school

education, as well as a massive increase in employment-based income support. These were

necessary initiatives to make growth more inclusive, but the implementation was far short of

achieving the avowed goals.

In the context of governance, the parallel process of decentralisation through empowering local

governments has been another aspect of reform, this time political, and motivated by different

factors than economic reform. Again, the implementation has left decentralisation short of its

potential, although there has been much progress. Essentially, the structure of the

decentralisation did not ensure enough fiscal capacity for local governments, and the

development of organisational capacity has also been relatively slow. Here, the change in

approach taken by the 14th Finance Commission—along with the winding up of the Planning

Commission—by giving states more flexible funds, opens up space for them to do a better job

of decentralising to the local level. Ultimately, however, this process will require a fundamental

shift in how citizens engage in the political process at the local level, particularly in towns and

cities.

Political and social change can take time, but there are many smaller economic reforms that can

be implemented quite quickly. Some of this is possible because there has been a significant shift

in thinking in India. My conjecture is that this is not so much a change in thinking among a

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given set of people, but rather that a new generation of Indians have grown to adulthood with

the sense that they have choices, that they can shape their lives outside existing pathways, and

that they can express themselves more freely than before. In this context, the vast multiplication

of media outlets and information sources, both conventional and those based on the Internet,

represents a potent new avenue for communicating new ideas. Of course, the proliferation of

content does not guarantee quality or depth. This brings one back to modes of citizen

engagement, and the process of education, both for imparting general and specific skills, and

for giving young people the tools of critical thinking and the values to guide them.

Looked at from the perspective of what needs to be done and how it is to be achieved, the prime

minister’s recent guidance to NITI Aayog on the need for innovation, harnessing of technology,

bringing in more talent, and transformative policy reforms is a good starting point. What needs

to be added to that perspective is the need for greater organisational innovation as well,

especially in governance.

The author is professor of economics, University of California, Santa Cruz

Yes No

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EDUCATION

HINDU, AUG 3, 2016UGC amends anti-ragging regulations

The changes are incorporated in the Curbing the Menace of Ragging in Higher Educational Institutions (third amendment), Regulations, 2016, which have come into force.

Harassing a student from the north-east on the basis of ethnicity or a Bihari student on the basis of regional background can now lead to expulsion or rustication, among other punishments, in higher educational institutions.

The University Grants Commission has amended its anti-ragging regulations to include physical or mental abuse on grounds of ethnicity, caste, religion, colour, regional background, linguistic identity, nationality and sexual orientation. Earlier, ragging was defined as teasing and physical or psychological harm of different kinds.

“There are plenty of complaints of such harassment on campuses. They range from the use of a particular derogatory word to address students from the north-east to the seemingly innocuous ‘Bihari’ or ‘Bhaiyya’ being disparagingly used for students from Bihar and Uttar Pradesh,” an official of the UGC told The Hindu. “All these can now be seen as coming under the ambit of ragging and can attract punishment.”

Publicity

The Human Resource Development released Rs. 5-crore to the UGC in the last financial year to publicise this, sources say. The publicity material includes an FM Radio message on calling a student “rustic” (ganwaar) to a film featuring cricketer Virat Kohli, said an official. Posters and messages have also been dispatched to universities and colleges to spread awareness.

Wider meaning

Officials said the UPA government had set the ball rolling after an Arunachal Pradesh student, Nido Tania, died of injuries he suffered in an assault at a market in south Delhi.

The changes are incorporated in the Curbing the Menace of Ragging in Higher Educational Institutions (third amendment), Regulations, 2016, which have come into force.

Ragging now means not just physical or mental hurt caused to a fresher. It covers “any other student” too, meaning a senior student inflicting harm on another senior student is also ragging. The rules kick in if the harm is caused anywhere on a campus or even in a campus transport

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facility. The anti-ragging committee of the institution can debar violators from classes, fellowships and examinations, withhold results and order suspension from hostel, rusticate and even order expulsion from the institution, depending on the severity of the offence.

HINDUSTAN TIMES, AUG 5, 2016India must regain its lost glory in higher educationC Raj Kumar

The newly-appointed Union minister for human resource development, Prakash Javadekar, has a number of issues to address for revamping the higher education sector. On February 29, Union finance minister Arun Jaitley announced in his budget speech that an “enabling regulatory architecture will be provided to 10 public and 10 private institutions to emerge as world-class teaching and research institutions”. If we are serious about building world-class universities, we need to address the following:

Autonomy and Regulation: The first and most important reform for world-class universities is to free them from the shackles of academic bureaucracy and from all forms of external intervention that impedes their growth and evolution. The existing regulatory framework makes universities function like mediocre departments within the government structure where decision-making is hierarchical, frustratingly slow and lacks the vision and imagination for institution building. It is necessary that the transformation to world-class universities be led by the HRD ministry in collaboration with the Niti Aayog. The Niti Aayog, tasked with the agenda of transforming India, is well suited to undertake this responsibility.

Funding and Resources: World-class universities do not come cheap. Every aspect of it, be it the recruitment of faculty, funding for research, support for research centres, creation of incubation centres, development of physical infrastructure, use of technology, provision for holistic learning and student experiences on campus and beyond, and international opportunities for students — all require significant funding. It would be naïve to think that we will be able to establish world-class universities without a radical re-examination of our funding framework and the resources that we make available for our universities. Every year, we recognise that higher education funding is less than what it should be and that its percentage of GDP needs to be higher. The resources that are required for establishing world-class universities and nurturing them in a sustainable manner would be several-fold higher than other universities. Individual and corporate philanthropy needs to be significantly promoted with a range of incentives including a taxation structure that favours philanthropy in higher education.

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Faculty and Research: Most Indian universities have not fully understood and appreciated the central role played by outstanding faculty members in leading their research agendas. Faculty and research is the fulcrum on which world-class universities are built. The need for recruiting the top-most faculty members and providing attractive compensation and benefits is a norm in all world-class universities. There cannot be a standardised system of faculty salaries in which all members, regardless of their qualification, academic performance, academic standing, research work and publication record need to be given same salaries because of their years of work experience, or for that matter seniority. It will be a futile exercise to promote research and scholarship in universities and encourage faculty members to take research seriously without an equally important public policy commitment to have a better faculty-student ratio. This can help in reducing the teaching responsibilities so that they engage in research and knowledge creation.

The historical evolution of knowledge systems in India has provided a great civilisational heritage for us to build and nurture world-class universities. We need to introspect why we haven’t yet played a leadership role and take steps that will enable us to attain a prominent position in higher education.

C Raj Kumar is founding vice chancellor, OP Jindal Global UniversityThe views expressed are personal

HINDUSTAN TIMES, AUG 5, 2016SDMC will make school inspections regular, effectiveVibha Sharma

To keep a tab on the quality of education in the municipal schools, South Delhi Municipal Corporation (SDMC) has decided to conduct regular inspections. However, to make this exercise more effective, inspectors will not visit the schools in their zones. Rather, they will be sent to other zones. For example, the school inspectors deployed in west zone will visit the schools in central zone and vice versa. The decision was taken at a recent meeting of the education committee.

SDMC has four zones — central, south, south-west and west. Each zone has about eight school inspectors who visit schools once in a week in their respective areas. But, it was observed that the problems at these schools were often ignored by them. Hence, the agency decided to send inspectors to other zones. This inspection would be carried out once in a fortnight.

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Yashpal Arya, chairman of the education committee, said, “The decision was pending for some time as we were waiting for the newly appointed teachers to join. We gave them some time to settle at work. The initiative will help in removing the anomalies in the education system and getting an actual report about the schools’ status.”

The school inspectors are responsible to verify the maintenance, cleanliness and infrastructure in schools. They are also supposed to authenticate the quality of the mid-day meal and the education imparted to the children. Besides, examining the surroundings is also the job of a school inspector. “They submit their reports to the deputy director (education), who discusses it during the education committee meeting held each month,” said an official from the education department.

According to Arya, the inspectors will especially keep an eye over the schools where the performance of students is declining. “We will not consider the teachers of such schools for SDMC awards. Teachers should work hard with children to ensure they perform well in classes,” he said.

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INTERNATIONAL ECONOMIC RELATIONS

STATESMAN, AUG 1, 2016Future of BRICSArunabha Bagchi

Our Prime Minister has just completed another of his numerous visits abroad, this time with a low-profile trip to Africa. The most important was his visit to South Africa, a member of the BRICS group of large emerging economies, and including Russia. As has now been repeated umpteen times, the grouping of Brazil, Russia, India, China as BRICs was coined by the then chairman of Goldman Sachs Asset Management, Jim O'Neill, in 2001 who characterised them as countries with enormous growth potential and promising markets for finance capital. This general prognosis for the future took a concrete turn when these countries met on the margins of the United Nations General Assembly session in 2006 to launch a new economic group. They are holding annual summits since 2009, and with South Africa joining them in 2011 the group is now referred to as BRICS.

In their annual summit in Brazil in 2014, this new group of countries with high growth rates posed a direct challenge to the hegemony of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank by announcing a Contingency Reserve Arrangement, with an initial capitalisation of $ 100 billion to be utilised, if necessary, by the BRICS countries, and the "New Development Bank," also with a capital of $ 100 billion open to all members of the United Nations. As India prepares for the eighth annual BRICS summit at Panaji, Goa, in October, many western analysts are preparing to write the obituary of this South-South challenge to the total dominance of the West in world affairs. The Nobel Laureate economist Michael Spence, in his book, The Next Convergence, published in 2011, predicted that BRICS would replace the West as the main drivers of the global economy, with their combined GDP to exceed more than half of the whole world. He also predicted that they would grow by endogenous demand created by an increasing middle class and their internal trade would make them less dependent on the demands from the West. But right after his book was published, BRICS economies started to falter.What happened?To start with the fundamentals, macroeconomic indicators of the BRICS bloc are widely divergent. This is in sharp contrast to the G-7 countries, and points to the vulnerability of BRICS as a coherent economic group. Initially this divergence actually strengthened the ties among the BRICS group, as real growth driven by exports using cheap labour achieved its zenith in China. The oil and mineral rich countries of Brazil, Russia and South Africa played on the insatiable demand of the China's growth engine by massively exporting to that country. Despite enjoying

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the same cheap labour advantage, India could not compete with China on the global market and grew by incentivising the middle class for consumer-led growth.

The banking crisis that has crippled the West since 2007 did not affect the BRICS group much as their banks were relatively isolated from the global financial capital, and also due to prompt counter-cyclical measures adopted by them. China alone had a $ 586 billion stimulus programme, larger than the $ 787 billion stimulus of the United States if we take into account their relative economic strengths. By 2011 the effects of those stimulus measures were wearing thin in all the BRICS countries with inflation picking up and growth dramatically slowing down. Brazil grew at 1.5 per cent in 2012, down from 5.3 per cent in 2010; Russia at 2.9 per cent from 4.9 per cent, China at 7.2 per cent from 9.8 per cent and India at 4.5 per cent from 8.9 per cent. Matters became worse in the following years, except for India, with Brazil registering two consecutive years of negative growth and Russia's economy in total disarray with the collapse of oil prices and European sanctions as protest against Russia's annexation of Crimea and helping the rebel forces in Eastern Ukraine to fight against the government in Kiev. The situation in Brazil was made worse by the political chaos there.

The elephant in the room has always been China. Its unprecedented 10+ per cent growth rate for a stretch of thirty years has now come down to less than 7 per cent last year. There were several factors. The anaemic economies of the West could not sustain China's massive export growth any longer. Secondly, the investment led growth of China was not sustainable forever, and efforts were underway by the state planners to stimulate domestic consumption. This is always a slow and painstaking process, with accompanying disruptions in the economy. Thirdly, this investment-led growth caused many inefficient allocations in infrastructure projects. Finally, as a consequence, banks are saddled with huge non-performing loans. This last phenomenon has hit Brazil the hardest, as the economy became too dependent on export of raw materials to China. China's slow growth reduced its demand for energy, resulting in the collapse of oil prices worldwide. This, in turn, caused havoc to the Russian economy that is heavily dependent on its oil and gas industry. The oil price dip has helped India though, as it is largely dependent on imported oil to run its growing economy. Still, investment in India is yet to pick up, despite all-out efforts by the Modi government during the last two years.

The greatest difficulty of BRICS, however, is incoherence of their international politics, something economists ignore in their belief that their specialisation is a stand-alone scientific discipline. It is not very dissimilar from the problems faced by SAARC. If we analyse the G-7 group of the rich countries, we see that they are from Western Europe, or dominated by their descendants as in the US and Canada. The only exception is Japan that seems to be an honorary member of the club. Their common undeclared purpose is to hold on to their dominance of the

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whole world, economically, politically and militarily, even after de-colonisation. They have one leader, the United States of America, whose unquestioned authority is accepted by them all.For BRICS, Brazil and South Africa are geographical anachronisms. The real strength lies potentially in the huge contiguous landmass covered by Russia, China and India, stretching all the way from the Arctic to the tip of the Indian Ocean. China wants to play the role of the United States in this group, but the racial and cultural differences with Russia and India are too large to make it acceptable to them. Even if China and Russia agree to a modus vivendi, the situation between China and India is far more complex. India suffered a crushing defeat in the 1962 border war with China. We have a border dispute with China over thousands of miles in the Himalayas, with China claiming a large part of our territory, and now posting soldiers in the disputed region of Kashmir at Pakistan's behest. In her understandable ambition to be a world superpower, along with the United States, China has every reason to be Pakistan's all-weather friend. It checks India's ambition to extend its influence to Central Asia and undermines the possibility of India forming an axis with Russia to thwart China's influence in that mineral rich region. China's projection of power in the South China Sea is being indirectly challenged by India by forging closer ties with Vietnam and undertaking joint naval exercises with the US and Japan. India's loud diplomacy over membership of the Nuclear Suppliers' Group has been openly sabotaged by China. The Chinese always had low opinion about our elites because of their propensity to copy and serve the ruling foreign powers throughout our history.

Our elites of the modern age would love to play second fiddle to the Anglophone world and must be relishing the result of the Brexit referendum. This may give them some role, albeit servile, in the changing world order. It is this attitude that leads political analysts in the West to ignore India as a civilizational force on the world scene.

Our possible total embrace of the US is viewed with great concern by Russia, a country that bailed us out on many occasions in the past by using its veto in the United Nations. Russia is also unhappy for steadily losing their market share of military hardware bought by India. It is difficult for BRICS to perform optimally given these geo-strategic imperatives. It still has potential to continue as a modest counterweight to the Western economic domination. Let us hope it does not become as meaningless as SAARC in the future.

The writer is former dean and emeritus professor of applied mathematics, University of Twente, The Netherlands.

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MASS MEDIA

INDIAN EXPRESS, AUG 7, 2016Arun Jaitley for freehand to ministers, bureaucrats on social media

DoPT’s draft rules bar officers from criticising government on social websites

Arun Jaitley, Finance Minister

Highlighting the power of social media, finance minister Arun Jaitley credited pressure of public

opinion in creating unanimity for passage of legislations relating to bankruptcy and Goods and

Services Tax. Speaking at an event to mark two years of MyGov.in, the government’s citizen

engagement platform, Jaitley also batted for a freehand to ministers and bureaucrats to express

themselves on social media for a transparent functioning of government.

Jaitley’s comments follow the issuance of draft service rules by the Department of Personnel and

Training (DoPT) that propose to allow bureaucrats to participate freely on social media websites

like Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn but bar them from criticising the government.

The draft rules bar officers from making “criticism of government” on television, social media or

any other communication application by any means, including a “caricature”.×

“In the final decisions of the government, you should talk in one voice and it should be one

decision,” Jaitley said. “But one strong asset which the social media has provided you is that

before you reach that one decision there are multiple opinions which come.”

Social media provides alternate viewpoints, criticisms, comments and suggestions, he said.

“Therefore, in a transparent government system, I see nothing wrong in civil servants expressing

themselves freely, ministers expressing themselves freely,” he said, but added that eventually the

decision has to be one.

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Social media has done great service, Jaitley said. “In the last few days … we have passed two

important laws which are being discussed worldwide — GST and bankruptcy law. Both these

laws were passed through unanimous decisions.”

“Public pressures” and “pressure of public opinion” built through social media and news media

were behind this unanimity, he said, adding that the print, electronic and social media played an

important role in opinion formation.

Speaking about advantages of social media, he said previously only big metropolitan cities were

looked at for opinion or suggestions but today with the advent of social media, opinions are

freely available from schools, colleges, tier II, III cities and even downwards.

Talking about ways to propagate about government schemes like crop insurance, Jaitley said

government should not leave any form of media as it has limited cost but unlimited advantages

like a wide reach.

The minister said all media should be used to help schemes reach the last mile. “If there is a way

to use social media, then the help of local administration is also important,” he said.

“There was a time when we did public rallies, then came radio, television media and then came

social media whose cost is low and impact is more,” he said, adding that it empowers all and

increases accountability.

Also present at the event was Union Minister of IT, Law and Justice Ravi Shankar Prasad, who

said the user base of the government’s citizen engagement platform should touch at least 10-15

crore, given that the country has 103 crore mobile phone users.

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“The country is changing. Digital democracy is the essence of India and Digital India is the

destiny of India. MyGov is the biggest platform of Digital India,” Prasad said.

Prasad said suggestions that come on myGov, even if they contain criticism, should be taken

positively.

The event culminated with Prime Minister Narendra Modi conducting his first ever “townhall” in

the evening. A new PMO app that will enable mobile users to connect with the Prime Minister’s

portal was also launched at the event. 

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POLITICS AND GOVERNMENT

TELEGRAPH, AUG 5, 2016Vijay Rupani to be Gujarat CM

Ahmedabad, Aug 5 (Agencies): The Bharatiya Janata Party sprang a surprise by choosing Vijay Rupani as the new chief minister of Gujarat to succeed Anandiben Patel, who resigned on Wednesday.

Rupani, the BJP state unit’s president, will be sworn in on Saturday.

Rupani emerged as the choice for the top slot at the legislature party meeting attended by BJP chief Amit Shah and Union Minister Nitin Gadkari, though it was widely speculated that the mantle would fall on Nitin Patel.

Nitin Patel would serve as the state’s deputy chief minister.

Rupani would be tasked with leading the party in the assembly polls due next year, overcoming the multiple challenges faced by it in the home state of Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

Anandiben Patel announced her decision to resign through a Facebook post last week, saying she thought it fit to step down since as she will turn 75 this November, the age cap set by Prime Minister Narendra Modi in the central and the state ministries.

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POVERTTY

HINDU, AUG 2, 2016The dynamic nature of povertyhttps://www.googleadservices.com/pagead/aclk?sa=L&ai=CUsO83t22V8veC4KfvgSsxqnoBbn3_7lGzdy_oNoBwI23ARABIL2DvxNg5cLkg6QOoAGToLTHA8gBAakCFVEwfCwMUD6oAwGqBK0BT9C_RxayRl0HtVwLFEUZC2jD0qo-58MtWhAW17bCkuGX48m9T9O8XcUgrS7gcE-iUIOkOZkdxvtVN_MPqFVqFKA4PDFvDTT1-wDnaGSL1EhFp9ikQMFZMe1GancqkiRJzwQ5WK6up1MQx1MTnSznUcxytPuxLK7Gde76-3iHG5I520Hoj2l9NjwwonR6i_VS-AoQhFK_aANrCMdqGhJx4NtmOdLRJYaKG73coaGIBgGAB9XfyzioB4HGG6gHpr4b2AcB&num=1&cid=CAASEuRoGVSCLAYWBunTzLQWCXypeQ&sig=AOD64_26ItTwCqJmRKOzBxjw5FcVxH1EfA&client=ca-hindu_sit SONALDE DESAI

AMIT THORAT http://www.thehindu.com/opinion/lead/the-dynamic-nature-of-poverty/article8929309.ece - comments

We need to rethink social safety nets in India’s growing economy so that they can also focus on the accidents of life rather than solely on the accidents of birth.

Sometimes the grand narratives of the Left and the Right do not seem to have any relationship with the lived experiences of ordinary Indians. For the past two decades, the Left has tried to expand social welfare programmes for the poor in the country by highlighting the growing disparities between the rich and the poor. The Right, on the other hand, points to the growing burden of politically driven welfare policies and emphasises the need for economic growth to alleviate poverty and improve the lives of the poor. These grand narratives often obviate the fact that the concept of poverty today is fundamentally different from that of poverty three decades ago, and that safety nets need to be tailored to meet the needs of a society in transition.

Complicated data

For example, most of our anti-poverty policies rely on identifying the poor by using Below Poverty Line (BPL) Censuses conducted approximately once every 10 years. In 1993-94, when half the Indian population fell in the BPL category, it was easier to identify the poor — they lived in rural landless households in underdeveloped districts such as the Dangs and Bastar and often belonged to the Scheduled Castes (SC) or Scheduled Tribes (ST). Even if all the above identification strategies failed, we still had a 50 per cent chance of being right in identifying the poor. Today, however, when one in four rural Indians and one in six urban Indians is poor, our chances of being wrong in identifying the poor are far greater.

Data from the India Human Development Survey (IHDS) point to another trend. This survey, conducted by the University of Maryland and the National Council of Applied Economic Research (NCAER) for the same households at two points in time, viz. 2004-05 and 2011-12, is the first large panel survey in India. Results from the survey show that if BPL cards had been

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handed out in 2004-05 on the basis of the household’s average consumption expenditure, 25 of the 38 Indians who would have received these cards in 2004-05 would have been out of poverty by 2011-12. On the other hand, of the 62 Indians who were not eligible to receive BPL cards in 2004-05, nine became newly poor in 2011-12. Thus in 2011-12, 66 per cent of the BPL card-holders would have already moved out of poverty, while 40 per cent of the poor would not have had a BPL card.

Spreading the net wide

Once we recognise that poverty is dynamic in nature, and that as per our conventional definition of poverty, poor households may move out of poverty and the non-poor may become poor over a period of time, we are forced to question the veracity of our fundamental assumptions about poverty. Perhaps poverty occurs not simply due to the accident of birth or as defined in terms of where and in which family people are born, but also due to the accident of life caused by the occurrence of disease, disability and unemployment. Achieving this recognition entails a complete transformation in our mindset.

The second concern about our approach to poverty is that we want to cover the maximum number of people, consequently diluting the support that we are able to provide the poor. Empirical data point to a strange paradox. Ironically, in spite of a decline in poverty, the proportion of the population receiving welfare benefits has risen sharply. The IHDS shows that between 2004-05 and 2011-12, the proportion of the population deemed to be poor fell from 38 per cent to 22 per cent. But the proportion of households receiving any of the benefits under different government schemes, such as old age pension, widow pension, and the Janani Suraksha Yojana, or scholarships and other benefits, grew from 13 per cent in 2004-05 to 33 per cent in 2011-12. The proportion of households buying cereals from the Public Distribution System (PDS), which was intended to provide subsidised foodgrains to the poor, grew from 27 to 52 per cent. Further, the newly initiated Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA) provided employment to 17 per cent of the households, signifying a substantial increase from the almost negligible participation in erstwhile public works programmes. Thus, the proportion of households covered by all these schemes taken together grew from 35 per cent to 68 per cent of the total population over the period under study.

Despite this massive expansion in the coverage of welfare programmes, the incomes and subsidies accruing from them still account for a relatively small proportion of the overall household budget. In 2004-05, the transfers and subsidies under the above schemes accounted for an average of Rs.3,129 per recipient household per year, which had increased to Rs.6,017 in constant terms in 2011-12. This amounts to only about Rs.100 per person per month in 2011-12. Moreover, since incomes also grew over the period between the two surveys, the average proportion of the household income accruing from benefits grew only marginally from 11 per cent to 14 per cent for all the recipients. Thus, while the burden of these programmes on the

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public exchequer may be huge, their impact on households is relatively limited.

Today, the number of welfare schemes has proliferated beyond belief. During fieldwork in 2012, the authors discovered that 131 schemes were in operation in one of the study districts. However, most of the supposed beneficiaries had never heard of these schemes. The IHDS found that less than 2 per cent of the households had registered their daughters under the widely touted girl child-protection schemes. The more the number of schemes, the greater is the likelihood of leakage and inefficiency. Moreover, our country has the tendency to initiate schemes without setting aside enough funds to successfully implement them, thereby almost willing them to failure.

Unintended consequences

A third problem is that we often fail to think of the unintended consequences of our policies. The Rashtriya Swasthya Bima Yojana (RSBY) covers hospital costs but not outpatient services. Consequently, many patients delay treatment until the severity of their medical conditions forces them into hospitalisation, which, in turn adversely affects their health and increases public expenditure. Similarly, the focus on cereals in the PDS encourages people to obtain most of their calories from cereals and reduces dietary diversity.

This situation begs the question: Is there another way of providing social safety nets that would circumvent these problems while genuinely taking care of the people’s needs? Fundamentally restructuring social safety nets necessitates meeting three key challenges: identifying those in need of assistance in the context of rapid economic changes; efficiently delivering this assistance to prevent unintended consequences which may pervert the very purpose of social safety nets; and ensuring that this assistance is meaningful rather than simply tantamount to applying a bandage to a cancer. Each of these challenges needs to be addressed through a pragmatic approach devoid of the burden of any ideology.

One strategy could be to start with simple and limited goals while attacking the problem more potently to make a meaningful dent. It would make sense to divide social safety net policies into three categories: first, provision of back-up manual work at below market wages to those who are able to work; second, provision of insurance against catastrophic events such as health-care emergencies or crop failure that push people into poverty; third, provision of cash support, say in the form of old age pension, to people who are no longer able to work.

MGNREGA offers an excellent model for employment programmes in rural areas, which could be expanded to urban areas. High wages paid under this programme may encourage people to work for MGNREGA instead of resorting to other forms of employment, though since this is not a desirable outcome, the wages offered must be below market wages. However, for them to have a noticeable impact, these employment programmes must be universally available for the

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promised 100 days. The number of crop and health insurance programmes is growing but a better framework is needed to prevent cost escalation, as has been observed in the United States. While old age and disability pension schemes exist, they need to provide a greater level of benefits and offer easier access. But for all these programmes to work, we must first recognise the need for drastically revamping our traditional policies in a growing economy so that they can also focus on the accidents of life rather than solely on the accidents of birth.

Sonalde Desai is Professor of Sociology, University of Maryland and Senior Fellow, NCAER. Amit Thorat is Assistant Professor of Economics, Jawaharlal Nehru University. Views are personal.

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PRIMEMINISTERS

TELEGRAPH, AUG 3, 2016An absolute authority - The failures of former prime ministers

CommentaraoS.L. Rao

Writings about past prime ministers tend to focus on their achievements, and, at times, touch on their failings. Here, I propose to look only at their mistakes and their failings. Thus, I shall not dwell on Jawaharlal Nehru's essential role in building and respecting democratic institutions in India and crafting an extraordinary foreign policy that insulated India from the rivalry of the Great Powers; Lal Bahadur Shastri's role in leading India to victory in war against Pakistan; Indira Gandhi tackling a massive refugee influx due to the atrocities committed by the Pakistan army in East Pakistan and supporting East Bengali insurgents to create their own nation of Bangladesh; Rajiv Gandhi initiating the information technology revolution and taking the first hesitant steps towards economic reforms; P.V. Narasimha Rao dramatically changing India's economic direction from State control towards market economy; A.B. Vajpayee offering friendship to Pakistan and beginning the process of public sector disinvestment and Manmohan Singh getting India accepted as a nuclear power and so ensuring uranium supplies.

What emerges is that India has never taken easily to a democratic cabinet form of government. The prime minister's opinions are final. There is little dissent even in the cabinet. When the party in power has an authoritarian prime minister and few talented ministers, as is the case with the present Bharatiya Janata Party government, mistakes are made and decisions are often rolled back.

Since Independence, India has been plagued by frequent demands by Pakistan for a United Nations-monitored plebiscite in Jammu and Kashmir that was committed to by Nehru. Jammu and Kashmir was to choose between acceding to India or to Pakistan. Pakistan tried wars and 'civilian' infiltration to win Jammu and Kashmir. India defeated all of them. India then declared that Jammu and Kashmir was an integral part of India. Without the offer of a plebiscite, the rancour in Pakistan might have been less. In taking the dispute to the UN after removing Pakistani invaders from much of Kashmir in 1948, Nehru coloured Pakistan's

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perceptions of India for decades.

It is said that in 1955, the then Great Powers offered Nehru a permanent seat for India in the new United Nations security council. He asked it to be offered to China instead. For decades since, China has used its veto in the security council to obstruct many matters of interest to India.

India has since Nehru's time hesitated to use the recognition of Taiwan, which China regards as its integral part, as a counter in other negotiations with China.

When China overran Tibet, India recognized Chinese sovereignty over Tibet. If that had not been so categorical, India could have used Tibet as a bargaining counter with China in the later years.

In the war with China in 1962, India was ill-served by belligerence and poor leadership. The army was ill-equipped due to Nehru's appointment of his close friend, V.K. Krishna Menon, as defence minister. Menon deprived the army of essential supplies for a war at high altitude. General P.N. Thapar was asked to lead the army at war, superseding other officers. This is said to have led to India's comprehensive drubbing.

Indira Gandhi persuaded Prime Minister Nehru when she was made Congress president to dismiss the first elected communist government in Kerala. This led to a spate of dismissals of state governments by her and her successors in later years. It was controlled only when the Supreme Court intervened to prevent this misuse of a constitutional power.

The mystery of Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose's death or disappearance is unresolved. Bengal police files suggest that his family was under surveillance till 1972.

Indira Gandhi is widely believed to have put the Indian economy back by 20 years by her policies. Her leftist orientation severely strained India's relations with the United States of America. She was inherently suspicious of other politicians and hungry for power. This reflected itself in the nationalization of banks and insurance to control all financial resources, the regulation of private enterprise in every step, and the stifling of entrepreneurship and innovation. She made the Indian economy inefficient and uncompetitive in the global economy. Even the Green Revolution, which she initiated under C. Subramaniam, had little follow-up by her or by her successors.

She led the war that led to the dismemberment of Pakistan and the formation of Bangladesh. Millions of Bangladeshis illegally entered and settled in India, creating a Muslim vote bank for her party.

During the Simla negotiations, after the stunning defeat of Pakistan's army in the war, she chose not to settle the Kashmir dispute, once and for all. Z.A. Bhutto immediately initiated a nuclear programme (by theft). Pakistan could send soldiers into India and yet escape retaliation by brandishing the nuclear threat.

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She surrounded herself with sycophants and imposed the Emergency to keep power in response to an unfavourable court verdict. An 'extra-constitutional' authority - her son, Sanjay - exercised vast powers over the government. She tampered with the integrity of the democratic institutions (judiciary, legislature and state governments) that her father had nurtured. The Congress party was converted into a family business, which it still is. This has had severe adverse effects on the governance of India.

Narasimha Rao presided over the demolition of the mosque at Ayodhya, considerably heightening communal tensions in future years. His tenure witnessed the unseemly 'cash for votes' scandal in which money was paid in return for MPs' votes in Parliament.

Rajiv Gandhi presided over India's first major defence scandal (Bofors). The jeep purchase scandal by Menon under Nehru was small. The purchase of Bofors guns siphoned off big sums. It is still unresolved. Blatant use of connections by Snamprogetti represented by Ottavio Quattrocchi in contracts for new fertilizer plants was another landmark event.

Rajiv Gandhi also badly mishandled the threat to Sri Lanka by the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam. He initially sided with the Tamils. Then he responded to Sri Lankan pleas for help and sent the army to root the LTTE out. The Indian army returned in ignominy.

He passed a law to reverse the Supreme Court order on payment of alimony to a Muslim woman, Shah Bano. He thus halted the progress to reverse gender-discriminatory Muslim personal laws. He initiated the Ayodhya temple agitation by breaking the lock in the Babri Masjid to allow worship there by Hindus.

Succeeding him were the miscellaneous prime ministers - V.P. Singh, Chandra Shekhar, H.D. Deve Gowda and I.K. Gujral. They presided over the decline of the Indian economy at a time of a world crisis caused by shortage and rising prices of crude oil.

Manmohan Singh's term was of 10 years. For the second time in our history (after Indira Gandhi with her son, Sanjay), India experienced the subjugation of the prime minister's authority and leadership by an unelected person, the Congress president. It was more blatant than in Sanjay Gandhi's case since his authority was limited unlike that of Sonia Gandhi. Indira Gandhi exercised prime ministerial decision- making powers. In the case of Prime Minister Singh, it is alleged that confidential files were sent from the Prime Minister's Office to the Congress president to take decisions.

The Singh tenure saw the biggest scams in Indian history. Ministers and officials were found to have made vast sums of money by favouring select firms and giving away government-owned natural resources. More than one cabinet minister had to resign.

Vajpayee's tenure witnessed no big failures. He could have struck a Kashmir deal but for Pervez Musharraf's vacillation.

Indian democracy panders to a single leader like the prime minister (unless he or she surrenders leadership to an external authority). Such democratic institutions as legislatures

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and the cabinet, and now the independent fourth estate, are ignored or subverted with 'loaves and fishes'. We must find ways to moderate such an unbridled exercise of power by a prime minister. We need ministers who are talented and prime ministers who would listen to all views.

The author is former director-general, National Council of Applied Economic Research

RAILWAYS

BUSINESS LINE, AUG 4, 2016Don’t merge rail and general BudgetsAARTI KHOSLA

Doing so will reduce the Railways to just another government department, whereas it needs to be run along commercial lines

The merger of the Railway Budget with the General Budget is once again making a buzz. It is learnt that the Railways Minister has accepted the recommendations of the Bibek Debroy committee.

Agreed, a practice started 90 years ago should be reviewed. It may be relevant to recall the factors that led to the separation in 1925.

The Railways were in bad shape at the turn of the last century. The 36,735-mile route was pulling in different directions. There were state lines worked by the state, state lines worked by guaranteed or independent companies, company lines worked by companies, and lines belonging to the princely states. The Railways failed to meet the demand from passengers as well as trade. The facilities were utterly inadequate. Goods rotted on the platforms as there were no wagons or locomotives to move them. Overcrowding and waiting for days at stations was quite common. The main reason for such a state of affairs was the non-availability of funds for expansion, development, and repairs and maintenance.

A question of funds

Even though the railway revenue formed a major portion of the government revenue, the Railways were starved of adequate funds. In times of bad harvest and trade, when the revenue fell, the budget allotment to the Railways was the first casualty.

The cut in expenditure was exercised even during the currency of the year resulting in suspension of works in progress and disbanding of staff. Late in the year if the financial situation improved, the finance member with equal suddenness encouraged the Railways to spend more, leaving them little time in which to do so. The system was further battered by World War 1,

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leading to a clamour from the public — as represented in the Imperial Legislative Council urged through repeated resolutions moved in 1914, 1915, 1917, and 1918 — for the appointment of a committee to enquire into the desirability of adopting direct state management of the Railways and emancipating the utility from the finance department of the government.

In November 1920, a ten-member (three Indians) committee was appointed with Sir William Acworth as chairman to “go into the whole question of railway policy, financial and administration”. The committee collected evidence and came to the conclusion that Indian Railways “cannot be modernised, improved and enlarged so as to give to India the service of which it is in crying need at the moment until the financial methods are radically reformed” and the essence of that reform according to the committee was complete separation of the Railway Budget from the General Budget and its reconstruction in a form “which frees a great commercial business from the trammels of a system which assumes that the concern goes out of business on each 31st of March and starts de novo on 1st of April”.

This, then, was the beginning of the separation. Speaking in the Assembly while presenting the Budget for 1924-25, the finance member of the council reminded members that “I know of no reform which offers greater benefits to our finances and Railways alike than a definite separation”. This would enable the Railways to spend money according to the real needs of the system unimpeded by the vagaries of the Budget figures and the requirements of the Budget accounting. The separation started with the Budget of 1925-26.

Populist exercise

The practice of paying dividend to the general revenues on the capital invested from there continues but the Railways since then have been responsible for earning and spending their own money. Of course they do have to look for budgetary support from the general exchequer as the money earned has never been enough to meet their needs. One reason for this has been their inability to raise fares and freight commensurate with the rising cost of transport.

This politicisation of the Railways came along with Independence and India embracing parliamentary democracy. As a result, the Railway Budget over the years has become more a populist than a commercial exercise. The autonomy envisaged was fettered by not raising passenger fares in line with rising costs. Indeed, passengers are being subsidised by goods traffic.

The Budget has also become an instrument in the hands of several railway ministers to build their vote-bank. All this affected the finances so that today, the Railways do not have adequate funds for expansion, development or replacement of worn-out tracks or rolling stock. Besides, there was the impact of Partition and World War 2.

During all these years of independence, though major landmarks were achieved, Indian Railways still lagged behind in expanding and modernising its network for want of adequate funds. In 1950, we had 54,600 km of track. To this we could add hardly 11,000 km in all these years. China had just 22,161 km in 1950. Today it has over 1 lakh km. Our Shatabadis and Rajdhanis

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and even the latest Gatiman Express run at a maximum speed of 160 kmph. China has already achieved a speed of 300 kmph with the Beijing-Guangzhou bullet train service.

It is not that our engineers are not capable of reaching those targets. It has always been the constraint of funds. Internal resources were never enough. The budgetary support from the general revenues was always limited. External borrowings through the Indian Railway Finance Corporation could is also restricted. So the emancipation envisaged in the separation of railway finances from general finances was, to a great extent, diluted by inherent flaws in our political system.

Parallel problems

While merging the budgets will remove this snag, it will also create parallel problems. The railway revenue will become part of the general revenue but so will the expenditure. In the event of shortfall in revenue or gross receipts in the general budget, will the finance ministry carry out the cuts in Railway expenditure? Certainly not.

There are some regular costs such as staff salaries, fuel, stores and equipment that cannot be guillotined. The sacrificial lamb could again be the modernisation and expansion. The constraint in raising passenger fares would be the same with the finance minister presenting the General Budget as with the railway minister presenting the Railway Budget.

The merger will only make the Railways become one more government department; it will lose its commercial character. There is also a contradiction in the approach of intellectuals who were engaged in studying the organisation. On the one hand, they talk of privatisation of the Railways and on the other, they suggest merging the entity fully into the system, subverting its commercial nature which requires separate treatment of its finances.

It would be better to leave the current nature and character alone and concentrate on strengthening, modernising and expanding the Railways so that it can meet the demands and challenges of transporting mind-boggling numbers of people and goods across the length and breadth of this country.

The writer was executive director of finance, Railway Board

(This article was published on August 3, 2016)

INDIAN EXPRESS, AUG 2, 2016From eight cadres to two: Railways to merge Group A service cadres

The proposed move, which will streamline the recruitment process, will be significant for the

much-talked of restructuring of the national transporter.

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Written by Avishek G Dastidar 

After decades of inter-departmental rivalry among eight Group A service cadres, Indian

Railways may finally get just two unified cadres — technical and non-technical — by the next

year.

The proposed move, which will streamline the recruitment process, will be significant for the

much-talked of restructuring of the national transporter.

The Railway Board under minister Suresh Prabhu is ready with a Cabinet note to get the nod

from the government to merge Civil Engineering, Mechanical, Electrical, Stores and Signalling

into a single cadre of Indian Railways technical service. Similarly, Traffic, Personnel and

Accounts Service will be merged into the non-technical category. This will be the first serious

attempt to address “departmentalism” in the Railways through a major reform.×

Recruitment will be done through exams conducted by the UPSC. The move will not have

financial implications for the government and is not expected to face opposition at the highest

level.

The Railways is likely to approach the Cabinet later this month with the proposal. If cleared,

fresh recruits in 2017 will be inducted into two categories.

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TAXATION

TIMES OF INDIA, AUG 5, 2016Rock star reform: GST, when implemented, will be at par with dismantling the licence raj in the 1990s Abheek Barua

There’s enough reason to cheer passage of the constitutional amendment bill enabling GST in the

Rajya Sabha. It will permit the introduction of a single goods and services tax for the entire

country. Before we get too carried away, however, here’s a quick reality check. We won’t see a

new set of tax rates tomorrow or even in the next three months.

This is merely the beginning of a long journey that would culminate (by passing another set of

bills) in the actual choice of a single tax rate. It’s unlikely to be a smooth journey. The easiest

part would be to clear the new amendments to the bill in the Lok Sabha, but then comes the more

arduous process of getting it passed by at least 15 of the 31 state legislatures.

This might entail another set of negotiations and bargaining. AIADMK, to take an example, is

clearly not happy with the very idea of constitutional amendment and the fate of the bill in the

Tamil Nadu legislature hangs in balance. There could be problems in Maharashtra. One can think

of other pockets of possible turbulence. These will be have to be navigated carefully.

Once all this is done and dusted, we might get a glimpse of the new tax rate and structure only

towards the end of this year. The Centre promises to implement the new tax regime in April 2017

but a delay is quite possible.

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A number of economists and tax experts are already unhappy with the blueprint of GST that

seems to get states’ approval. In the pristine world of textbooks unsullied by the demands of

politics, a good tax is one that is low and covers the widest possible base. However states have

already negotiated for a number of exemptions on items like petroleum, electricity duties,

alcohol and stamp duties on property.

These are heavy hitters on the revenue front and excluding them from the taxable pool would

logically push up the rate that will ensure that the transition from the current to the new regime

keeps revenues neutral (the RNR or revenue neutral rate).

In the world of economics where controlled experiments are not possible, the only guide to the

success of a new policy is international precedent. New Zealand introduced a GST in 1986 that

followed the copy book with low RNR and minimum exemptions. This led to a quick pop in

GDP growth and revenue buoyancy. Canada’s GST introduced in 1991 was riddled with

exemptions and riders. Canada saw a sustained dip in GDP growth right after the introduction.

If we are to take these examples seriously, projections by some thinktanks of a lift in the growth

rate by 1.5-2% for India on the back of a single market might appear a little far-fetched. Inflation

in other GST adopters has shown a steep jump. It is logical to infer the higher the RNR, the

bigger the inflation impact.

Thus finance minister Arun Jaitley’s and GST council’s challenge going forward would be to

hold down the actual GST rate to a level that actually helps rather than hurts the economy.

Revenue losses for states will be compensated by the Centre and the finance minister will have to

ask states to take a leap of faith along with him.

However, in focussing too much on GST’s technical dimensions, one might miss the woods for

the trees. India’s federal structure has many positives but when it comes to taxes, federalism has

created a deeply fractured market. The long queues of trucks at octroi posts – a common sight on

India’s highways – with truckers waiting for hours if not days to pay entry taxes is perhaps the

most compelling image of what’s wrong with India’s tax structure.

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Besides, a small tax base created by a plethora of exemptions coupled with the need for cash to

keep the government machinery running has meant high indirect tax rates both for the Centre and

states. This has hurt ease of doing business not just in producing but in trading in the domestic

market. High indirect tax incidence has eroded India’s competitive edge as a production hub and

curbed expansion of domestic markets.

It is likely that the GST Bill when implemented will have many flaws and inefficiencies. But it

would be the first serious attempt to fix the many problems of India’s tax regime virtually with

one stroke. As a reform measure, it will be at par with the dismantling of the ‘licence-permit’ raj

in the early 1990s.

I wouldn’t get terribly hung up, as an economist, on its flaws or immediate impact. There is a

risk we will go Canada’s way and see a dip in growth. We might see a temporary rise in inflation

and the central government’s deficit might bloat to accommodate revenue losses of states. But

after these initial niggles and the political point scoring that will likely follow, the fundamental

change in operating environment is bound to be good for business and trade.

States are known to take a while to buy into new structures that threaten to hurt their interests.

This was exactly what happened with state level VAT introduced roughly a decade ago. As states

see the benefits, exemptions could decrease and the tax rate could go down. To use words

popular in the media, this is indeed a ‘game changer’ and ‘rock star’ reform.

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WOMEN

HINDU, AUG 3, 2016A tricky debate on abortion

K. KANNANIt might be more prudent to look at counselling instead of rushing through a law liberalising abortion.

Recently, in a case before the Supreme Court, a woman successfully obtained direction for medical termination of pregnancy (abortion) after 24 weeks on a plea that she was raped by her boyfriend on the false promise of marriage. In another case, the Delhi High Court intervened directing medical examination for fitness for abortion responding to the poignant tale of a 16-year-old kidnapped by unknown persons, sexually abused by them for two years, and finally found abandoned near the Delhi University campus. The orders in both cases were beyond the permissible period in the Medical Termination of Pregnancy Act (MTP Act). There is an outcry for change in law for easy availability of the option to abort without court intervention. Does it discard patient autonomy and impose unnecessary restrictions? Can a woman have the right to seek abortion at any time she pleases? Should the state have a say in an intimate matter of what a woman wants to do with the foetus?

Abortion is an exception

In India, the transition from a regime of proscription against abortion by treating it as a criminal offence liable for punishment under the Indian Penal Code (IPC) to legitimising the practice as a health and family planning measure through the enactment of the MTP Act of 1971 had been fairly easy, unlike in the West, where the movement towards legalising abortion has been tumultuous involving major heated public debates.

According to the IPC the offence falls under ‘Offences Affecting the Human Body’, and provides that causing a miscarriage with or without consent for a purpose other than saving the life of the woman is punishable. The MTP Act makes for a quantum difference in approach, as if by a legislative sleight through a non-obstante clause, by decriminalising abortion without bringing an amendment to the IPC or abrogating the penal provisions. The MTP Act sets some limitations regarding the circumstances when abortion is permissible, the persons who are

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competent to perform the procedure, and the place where it could be performed. Outside the ring of protection that the Act draws, the IPC still operates.

It is common knowledge that abortion is possible within 12 weeks at the option of the pregnant woman and within an extended period of 20 weeks with the permission of a Medical Board consisting of not less than two persons. In both cases, the freedom of choice of a woman is limited to a situation when (i) continuance of the pregnancy would involve a risk to the life of the pregnant woman, or of grave injury to physical or mental health that includes rape; or (ii) there is a substantial risk that if the child were born, it would suffer from such physical or mental abnormalities as to be seriously handicapped. But the latter limitation does not apply to the termination of pregnancy by a registered medical practitioner in case he is of the opinion, formed in good faith, that it is immediately necessary to save the life of the pregnant woman. Most foetal abnormalities are said to be capable of being detected around 20 weeks and a law that allows for abortion in the second situation mentioned above therefore caps the limit to that period. There are strong ethical objections to the idea of abortion per se as well as to aborting a child with disability.

The MTP Act does not address any ethical issues, but in legal regimes that do not allow abortions, the moral standpoint is that medical termination of pregnancy results in the death of a living being. The fundamental question is: what makes killing a human being wrong? We may then consider whether these characteristics, whatever they might be, apply to the earliest stages of human life in the womb. Explanations that have roots in religion include the traditional Christian doctrines such as that all humans are made in the image of God or that all humans have an immortal soul. In Roe v. Wade (1973), the U.S. Supreme Court decided by a 7-2 majority that an implied constitutional right to privacy, whether based on the Fourteenth Amendment’s concept of personal liberty or in the Ninth Amendment’s reservation of rights to the people, was sufficiently broad to encompass a woman’s right to terminate her pregnancy — but it again set limitation for States to declare the outer limit to carry out the procedure.

Issue of avoiding disability

The more critical decisions are the ones where the child in the womb is diagnosed to have some mental or physical deformities and the mother decides to terminate the pregnancy. Not only can we then ask ourselves if we want a child, but with genetic information we can ask ourselves: do we want this particular child? This reframes the nature of the parenting relationship, making our parenting conditional upon the child meeting certain criteria. The issue now swings from health concerns to avoiding disability. Within this understanding of disability, genetic technology then becomes a tool not for promoting community health but a mechanism of social control for avoiding the appearance of difference.

Apart from the point of view of health and avoidance of disability, with modern notions of individual liberty, many a pregnant woman believes that apart from her, no one else will have a

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right to decide about what she wishes to do with the foetus. In today’s society, some pregnant women deny the biological fact that they are mothers until their baby is born. Late-term abortion is justified as a form of self-defence to get rid of involuntary servitude and a form of slavery caused by pregnancy. Instances of partial-birth abortion performed on foetuses with chromosomal abnormalities, performed under the guise of reducing suffering, threaten the best interests of the mother and infant. The Supreme Court courted the issue in Suchita Srivastava v. Chandigarh Administration (2009) as an issue of eugenics, while declining to accede to the state’s request for abortion for a 20-year-old inmate of a state-run protection home who was a rape victim and was mentally retarded, having a mental maturity of a nine-year-old. The court reminded: “Empirical studies have conclusively disproved the eugenics theory that mental defects are likely to be passed on to the next generation.”

It is also suggested that an alternative for parents faced with the decision to terminate their pregnancy is a perinatal hospice. A perinatal hospice recognises the value of bringing these infants to term by treating them as beings conceived with a tangible future. This alternative is preferred because of post-termination psychological distress and because biblical teachings emphasise the dignity and worth of each foetus.

If the pregnant woman has not attained the age of 18, or if she is a lunatic, the statute allows a surrogate decision to be taken by the guardian. This was found to be not inviolable by the Madras High Court in V. Krishnan v. G. Rajan alias Madipu Rajan and The Inspector of Police (Law and Order (1993) when a Division Bench of the Madras High Court considered the case of a minor girl who married an adult man without her family’s consent and got pregnant. Her father approached the High Court for permission to abort, and the High Court ruled after eliciting the desire of the pregnant girl that she was capable of understanding the world as well as the consequences of the pregnancy. The court said that if termination of pregnancy was to be ordered against the girl’s will, it would harm her mental health and might also affect her physical health. The court asserted that it was her fundamental right to have a child having become pregnant. Suchita Srivastava, referred to above, was another instance where a mentally retarded woman who was a victim of rape and who bore a child of the watchman who mis-guarded the safety of a hapless resident of a protection home was permitted to retain the foetus against the petition from the state for termination of pregnancy.

A search for the middle path

Perhaps the right of a woman to choose what to do with the foetus has to be balanced with the right of the foetus to survive. It is only that a foetus does not have the ability to exercise an option while the person who carries it does. There could be no two opinions that a victim of rape shall be allowed the choice to abort. But why should the choice be made at a time when the foetus is viable and termination of pregnancy carried out at a belated stage could imperil the safety of the mother and the life of the foetus? In the V. Krishnan case, elopement against parental wishes, framing a case of rape against the man in whose company the minor girl was,

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and the petitioner’s eagerness to subject his daughter to abortion against her will were the harsh realities.

Again, why should a child born with disability be eliminated without devising an inclusive approach of dignity to even a child with disabilities? In Germany, the law permits abortion after mandatory counselling and a three-day waiting period. Rather than criminalising abortion, German law focusses on counselling, employment security, social welfare, and financial support to persuade pregnant women to give birth to their children. In this way, German law successfully achieves some degree of protection for the unborn by obtaining voluntary recognition of personal responsibility and respect for the personhood of the unborn. Shall we give greater emphasis to counselling instead of rushing through a law liberalising abortion?

Justice K. Kannan is a former judge of the Punjab and Haryana High Court and presently Chairman of the Railway Claims Tribunal, Delhi.

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WILD ANIMALS

INDIAN EXPRESS, AUG 1, 2016Cow democracy: How protection of cow has come to mean oppression of Dalits

In the present mood, one can go to the TV debate, even critique Narendra Modi but not gau

mata. If one does that, he/she may come out with his/her skin peeled.Written by Kancha Ilaiah Shepherd

Hundreds of members of low-caste Dalit community take a pledge not to remove cattle carcass. (AP Photo/Ajit Solanki)

India is a unique country. This is the only nation in the world to have passed laws that protect

one animal and its progeny even if it means the death of human beings, Dalits and Muslims. The

first incident of the killing of Dalits when they skinned a dead cow took place during Atal Bihari

Vajpayee’s rule, in Jhajjar. Now in theNarendra Modi regime, the beating of Dalit men for

skinning a dead cow that was killed by lions in Gujarat and of women for possessing buffalo

meat in Madhya Pradesh, is part of the spreading narrative. Abusing Mayawati is also part of the

same pattern. If Dalits are part of the nationalism professed by the Sangh Parivar, why have there

been so many incidents in the short period of their rule? Is Dalit skin equivalent to cow skin?

Where lie the roots of this ideology?

Thanks to B.R. Ambedkar and the Dalit movement, the unique status of this social force that

constitutes about 200 million people is known all over the world. When birth-based

discrimination against these groups was sought to be taken to the United Nations Organisation

Conference against Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia in 2001, in search of a global

solution to the problem of untouchability and caste discrimination, there was huge opposition

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from upper caste forces. The then NDA government strongly resisted the effort (I was part of the

team that made the effort), arguing that this problem would be solved by using constitutional

tools, within India.

At that time, the non-Hindutva upper caste intellectuals, considered to be liberals, argued that

taking the caste and untouchability issue to the UN is morally unethical and politically anti-

national. The main opposition party, the Congress, also argued on similar lines.×

Sadly, the Congress itself initiated enactment of cow protection laws in different states that have

negative implications for Dalit and Muslim livelihoods. But the Congress did not implement

such laws forcefully as long as it was in power at the Centre and the direction to the states was to

wink at them. The police must have also been given a direction to go slow on the

implementation. Not that there were no “gau raksha” minded officers who did not book cases

with the help of cow protection squads. There were some, but they were few and far between.

The serious implementation of the Congress cow protection laws with some newBJP cow

protection laws started during NDA I. A new ideology called “skin for skin” (like eye for eye), if

Dalits skinned a dead cow, took shape. The underlying message: A dead cow’s skinning is

equivalent to the skinning of living Dalits. The first major case of “skin for skin” was that in

Jhajjar, Haryana. On October 15, 2002, five Dalits were killed for skinning a dead cow. Till

today nobody knows what happened to those who killed the Dalits.

Under NDA 2, the gau raksha programme assumed force because now the BJP is in full control

of the levers of power. This time gau raksha means Dalit bhakshan. In state after state, very

strong laws of cow protection have been brought in, affecting Dalit and Muslim economy and

employment.

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The Sangh Parivar networks deploy a large number of private armies as gau raksha samitis with

full powers and weapons to implement the programme. They are provided resources that help

these armed squads run after the suspects with lathis to beat them up. In fact, if Dalit youth skin

the dead cow as part of their economic activity, the “Start Up” teams of gau raksha beat them till

their skin peels off. Several such incidents have been reported in the last two years. The cow has

become a metaphor for the strategy of skin for skin.

If anyone opposes these private squads, they will be dubbed as anti-gau mata and anti-Bharat

mata. These new codes of abuse have impacted civil society. I encounter BJP spokespersons on

English TV channels, who deny the link between the gau raksha force and the democracy raksha

party. Their English-speaking spokespersons are soft, sometimes sophisticated too, but those in

other languages shout and scream and generally win the argument. The TV owners are happy.

The more they shout, the more TRPs they get. In the process, Dalit bhakshan is guaranteed. In

the present mood, one can go to the TV debate, even critique Narendra Modi but not gau mata. If

one does that, he/she may come out with his/her skin peeled.

The skin for skin approach is dreadful. But the gau rakshaks believe that gau mata democracy is

like that only. It is our culture and heritage, they say. Indian democracy itself is conceptualised

by gau mata, they say. If Ambedkar were alive and were to oppose these laws of cow protection,

he too would have been declared “anti-gau mata” and therefore, “anti-Bharat mata”.

One can see Modi is a changed person ever since he embarked on his prime ministerial

campaign. He focused his campaign around development and Sabka Sath, Sabka Vikas. That was

the reason why many Dalits and Muslims also voted for him. How is it that private squads roam

so freely after he became prime minister?

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BJP spokespersons argue that the country was run with “no PM” during the 10 years of the UPA

regime, and that now every citizen will be safe under “our” strong PM (he is PM of the Dalits

and Muslims too). But where is the strong PMO when such skin for skin ideology is in operation

on a daily basis? Yes, vikas is the PM’s agenda. But is it the agenda of the whole Sangh Parivar?

The parivar network was never trained in the issues and vocabulary of economic development.

Except for a small English-educated section, they were trained to do gau raksha, desh raksha,

varna raksha. Some Non-Resident Indian ideologues imported from the West know what it is

because they have some training in vikas raksha in the West — particularly in the US. But the

foot soldiers of the Sangh Parivar were never taught about human raksha as the key link in

development.

The moment a Parliament session begins, the programme of skin for skin, the abuse of Dalits,

begins from its ranks, reflecting the training of decades. At least now, when the abused have

voted them to power, is it not possible to re-train the Sangh’s cadre to respect humans more than

animals?

(This column first appeared in the print edition under the title Cow Democracy)The writer is professor and director of Al Beruni Centre for the Study of Social Exclusion and Inclusive Policy, Maulana Azad National Urdu University, Hyderabad.

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