Population
no hurdle
Interestingly,
population has not posed an impediment to Sikkim, a State with a population of
around 6,00,000 and Andhra Pradesh that has a population of 84 million.
Further, most States that have recorded high levels of saturation include high
per capita income States, among them Delhi, Goa and Sikkim.
Eight
States which record a saturation rate of less than 10 per cent include Bihar,
Uttar Pradesh, Arunachal Pradesh, Chhattisgarh and Jammu and Kashmir. All these
States have per capita income (per capita State domestic product) lower than
the national average of Rs. 68,757 in 2012-13. Additionally, according to the
Human Development Report 2011, Bihar, U.P., Chhattisgarh ranked lowest on the
Human Development Index.
Ageing dams not being decommissioned, reveals International
Rivers report
A
report by International Rivers, an NGO campaigning against destructive dam
projects worldwide, has highlighted the absence of policies regarding
decommissioning of old dams in India.
“Ageing
dams are a serious concern in India. The report reviews the lifecycle of dams
and its relation to the safety of the riverine system and downstream areas.
These concerns should be introduced in mainstream policy debates,” said Bharat
Lal Seth, South Asia Program Coordinator, International Rivers.
‘Dam
Planning under the Spotlight: A Guide to Dam Sanctioning in India’, has
reintroduced the debate around decommissioning of old dams which, it says, is
crucial for restoration of damaged ecology.
Dams
have a lifespan which, according to the U.S., is between 30 and 50 years. After
completing their lifespan, dams have to be evaluated to check whether they need
to be decommissioned.
India
with more than 5,100 large dams is the world’s third largest dam builder. Dam
decommissioning for the Mullaperiyar dam in Kerala and the Dumbur dam in
Tripura has garnered much attention.
The
International Rivers report states: ‘Estimates reveal that [in India] around
100 large dams are more than 100 years old and more than 400 large dams between
50 and 100 years.’
Urmi
Bhattacharjee, the author of the report states: ‘The Central Water Commission
(CWC) and the Central Electricity Authority (CEA) are of the opinion that a dam
is a permanent structure that does not need to be decommissioned, even though
many old dams have developed leaks and fissures.’
Ms.
Bhattacharjee told The Hindu that in reply to an RTI application filed
in October 2012 regarding information on the dams that need to be
decommissioned, the CEA had said : ‘There is no information available on dams
that need to be decommissioned.’
Dam
decommissioning in the U.S.
The
reply also stated: ‘There is no information on when a dam is considered fit for
decommissioning.’
CWC
officials in the dams and research wing said decommissioning is not feasible
since it is not cost-effective, Ms. Bhattacharjee added. While at the
international level, dam decommissioning is already underway and attempts to
revive riverine ecology and farming, it remains to be an unexplored area in
India.
Another
report released in 2013 called ‘(Planning for) Dam Decommissioning as an
Environmental Priority’ mentions that around 1,000 dams in the U.S. have been
decommissioned so far.
The
report, authored by Dr. Latha Anantha who is a member of River Research Centre,
Kerala, states that economic and dam security reasons as well as ecosystem
restoration are among the major reasons for which dam decommissioning should be
considered important.
As
dams grow old, the cost of repair increases. Dr. Anantha mentions that when
cost of repairs exceeds the earnings from the power produced by the dam, then
decommissioning should be given a serious thought.
Tiger census from November 17
The synchronised phase one data collection for tiger census
will begin simultaneously in the four Southern States – Tamil Nadu, Andhra
Pradesh, Kerala and Karnataka – on November 17. The data of the
tiger census would be released by December 2014. The population of tigers in
the country increased from 1,411 in 2006 to 1,706 in 2010.
Probe agencies should not sit in judgment over policy, says
Manmohan
Prime
Minister Manmohan Singh said here on Monday that investigating agencies were
increasingly enquiring into administrative decisions and policy matters and
counselled police organisations against labelling the “decisions taken with no ill-intention
within the prevailing policy” as criminal conduct.
The
statement comes days after the Prime Minister’s Office issued a release
defending Dr. Singh’s approval of the Coal Ministry’s decision to overturn a
screening committee’s recommendation and accommodate Kumar Mangalam Birla’s
company Hindalco, granting it an additional coal block. The allocation is now
under the Central Bureau of Investigation scanner.
Dr.
Singh was speaking at the opening of a three-day international conference on
“Evolving Common Strategies to Combat Corruption and Crime,” organised by the
CBI as part of its golden jubilee celebrations.
The
Prime Minister said cases of administrative decisions and policy making matters
required great care in investigations. “While actions that prima facie show mala fide intent or pecuniary
gain should certainly be questioned, pronouncing decisions taken with no
ill-intention within the prevailing policy as criminal misconduct would
certainly be flawed and excessive.”
Dr.
Singh advocated drawing lines of confidence between probe agencies and honest
executive functionaries to ensure that “public servants are not paralysed in
taking effective decisions based on their own sound judgment and on the
apprehension of an ill-informed inquiry or investigation”. Outlining that
“protection of the honest” is a facet of Article 14 of the Constitution, he
said keeping this in view only the Prevention of Corruption Act (Amendment)
Bill, 2013, was introduced in Parliament to amend a provision that presently criminalises,
even in the absence of any mens
rea(guilty mind), any action of a public servant that secures for any
person a pecuniary advantage. Earlier, speaking at the conference, Dr. Singh
referred to the recent Gauhati High Court judgment pronouncing the institution
of CBI as unconstitutional. He said, “This is a matter that will undoubtedly
have to be considered also by the highest court in the land. The government
will do all that is necessary to establish the need for the CBI and its
legitimacy, and protect its past and future work.”
Centre plans fresh headcount of Jats
The
Centre plans to undertake a fresh survey to identify Jats in six States, taking
into account variants in their surnames, for taking a call on including the
community in the list of other backward classes (OBC) and bringing them within
the ambit of reservation for Central jobs.
While
the Centre is under pressure to announce Central reservation for the Jats ahead
of the 2014 general elections, there has been opposition — from the National
Commission for Backward Classes — in the absence of any official survey on the
community’s backward status.
The
panel deems that Jats are members of a relatively well-off community and do not
deserve inclusion in the job quota.
As
a prelude to the Socio Economic Caste Census (SECC), the fresh headcount is
aimed at identifying the community’s numbers in each village and municipality
in Haryana, Himachal Pradesh, Gujarat, Uttar Pradesh, Rajasthan and Madhya
Pradesh. Simultaneously, the Indian Council for Social Science Research (ICSSR)
will, on the NCBC’s directions, conduct a study on the socio-economic status of
Jats in these States.
“During
consultations over the issue of reservation for the community, it was pointed
out that, owing to the different spellings of common Jat surnames and [the use]
of ‘gotras’, […] there is ambiguity on the numbers. It has now been decided
that a pre-SECC survey will be carried out in six Jat-dominated States. The
surveyors will visit each house to verify the caste of the people irrespective
of how they spell their names and their gotras,” said a senior official in the
Social Justice and Empowerment Ministry.
The
use of ‘gotra’ as surnames was flagged during a recent meeting of the Group of
Ministers (GoM) headed by Union Finance Minister P. Chidambaram. The GoM’s
recommendations will be put before the Cabinet, which will then allow the
survey to be launched.
“This
new survey will address all these issues that have led to confusion in
identifying the community members. Even those households that were visited by
the ICSSR enumerators will be called on again and the data of the two surveys
will be compared and collated to arrive at the correct socio-economic condition
of the community as well as for arriving at the correct numbers,” the official
said.
Referring
to the issue of reservation for the community, Rajasthan Jat Mahasabha
president Raja Ram Meel said in Jaipur: “I wholeheartedly support the Centre’s
move to introduce reservation for Jats. We are happy that the decision would
benefit the Jats of Bharatpur and Dholpur districts in Rajasthan, who are
deprived of the benefit as of now. Jats in Uttar Pradesh, Delhi, Haryana and
Madhya Pradesh, who deserve the quota in jobs and education, will get immense
benefits.”
Wildlife police stations to deal exclusively with rhino poaching
Assam
will set up four wildlife police stations to exclusively deal with the problem
of rhino poaching and other wildlife crimes. The jurisdiction of these special
police stations would be over the Kazairanga National Park, the Manas National
Park, the Rajiv Gandhi Orang National Park and the Pabitora Wildlife Sanctuary.
The
decision to set up the police stations were taken during a meeting convened by
Assam Environment and Forest Minister Rakibul Hussain here on Monday to discuss
measures to deal with rising incidents of poaching of rhinos in the State.
Open separate bank accounts: EC
The
Election Commission has issued instructions asking candidates to open a bank
account exclusively for election expenditure. The account should be opened at
least a day before the date candidates file their nominations. The account
number should be communicated in writing to the Returning Officer of the
constituency at the time of filing the nomination. The account can be opened
jointly with the candidate’s election agent.
Ancient microcontinent discovered
The
age data of the rock samples collected by the researchers showed that the peak
of continental building in the exotic Coorg block occurred around 3.1 billion
years ago. The studies indicated that the crust building might have also
involved partial recycling of basement rocks as old as 3.8 billion years. The
team comprising M. Santosh from India, now working at the China University of
Geosciences, Beijing, Q.Y. Yang from the same university, E. Shaji from the
Department of Geology, University of Kerala, T. Tsunogae from Tsukuba
University, Japan, and Ram Mohan and M. Satyanarayanan from the National
Geophysical Research Institute, Hyderabad, has published the discovery in Gondwana Research , an international journal on earth
science with particular focus on the origin and evolution of continents.
According to the paper, the Coorg block, a continental fragment sandwiched
between the Dharwar craton (a craton is a piece of a continent that has been
stable for over a billion years) in the North and several younger crustal
blocks to the South, is composed dominantly of a suite of arc magmatic rocks.
“Considering the age of the rocks from the periphery of the Coorg block, the
microcontinent could have got wedged with peninsular India around 1.2 billion
years back in time,” says Dr. Santosh, the lead author. “This exotic
microcontinent could have come from any of the cores of the earliest
supercontinent Ur. The possible sources are Madagascar or Africa.”
The
study revealed that the Coorg block was unaffected by major tectonothermal
(geological episodes that shape rock formations) events in the rest of southern
India.
Redefine concept of development: Pranab
There
was need to define the concept of development in a wider perspective and there
should be no confrontation between environment considerations and development
requirements, said President Pranab Mukherjee . For this, the country needed to
find innovative ways based on scientific knowledge and mathematical
understanding.
“There
is need to make our children aware of the nexus between problems like unchecked
population growth and energy crisis, depletion of natural resources, pollution
of the environment,” he said while inaugurating the 40th Jawaharlal Nehru
National Science, Mathematics and Environment Exhibition for Children, 2013 at
the Epica Gardens here at Saramsa on the occasion of National Education Day.
The President paid tributes to Maulana Abul Kalam Azad, the first Education
Minister of independent India, whose birth anniversary on November 11 is
commemorated every year as National Education Day.
“It
was Maulana Azad who had woven the fabric of a secular, liberal, modern and
universal education system,” Mr. Mukherjee said, quoting the national leader’s
address on January 16, 1948, where he categorically stated that it is the
birthright of every individual to receive basic education, without which he or
she cannot fully discharge duties as a citizen. The event, with focus on
‘Science and Society’, was jointly organised by the Ministry of Human Resource
Development and the National Council of Education Research and Training.
Opinion polls: the way forward
The
debate around the latest proposal to ban opinion polls is an opportunity in
disguise. Beneath the familiar acrimony of partisan debates, a much-needed
middle ground has emerged quietly. All we need is a group of stakeholders —
pollsters, researchers, media heads and political leaders — to come together to
turn this possibility into a reality. The time is now.
On
the face of it, the debate was anything but rational. This was a familiar
parade of tired and untested arguments for and against opinion polls, depending
on who hoped to benefit from them in the next few weeks or months. Yet this
political posturing and opportunism have had a positive outcome. They have
ensured that a flat-footed ban on pre-election opinion polls is unlikely to
happen soon. There is thus a window of opportunity for a saner policy
intervention.
Systematic
collection of views
This
new intervention has to begin by recognising three basics. First of all, we
must recognise that systematic collection of public opinion is a must in modern
democracies. Since elections are not a private act, citizens wish to, and need
to, know how others are making up their mind. Survey based tracking of the mood
of the electorate performs that crucial role. In an unequal country like India,
where a tiny but voluble elite is used to passing off its voice as public
interest, scientific sample surveys of public opinions are one of the few ways
in which the voice of the poor and the disadvantaged gets registered. All
things considered, this is a better method to monitor the popular mood than
anything else that exists. This creates a widespread need for this information
among politicians, the media and people at large. That is why opinion polls and
their use to track the electoral race are here to stay.
Second,
it is precisely because opinion polls are the least inaccurate way of assessing
the electoral race, making this information public affects the race itself. Of
course, you do not win elections by leading in opinion polls; nor does a
negative election forecast seal your electoral fate. But it does influence the
race in small and, possibly, crucial ways. We do not have conclusive research
on this point but the available evidence suggests that there is a small degree
of ‘bandwagon effect’ of opinion polls. A party that is seen to be leading in
the polls gets some additional support from fence-sitters. This small
difference could be decisive in a close contest. More than the voters, opinion
poll-based forecasts do affect the morale of party workers and supporters. This
makes a big difference during the campaign. The shrill denunciation of opinion
polls by political parties is often an illegitimate expression of this
legitimate anxiety.
Finally,
opinion polls in India have not lived up to the highest standards of professional,
rigorous and non-partisan polling. The problem is not that opinion poll-based
forecast has been inaccurate. On balance, the record of Indian polls has been
quite impressive. While exit polls and post-poll survey based projections have
done better than pre-election polls, all forms of polls have proven to be a
better guide to electoral prospects than any drawing room or news room gossip.
The
real problem with Indian opinion polls, barring some honourable exceptions,
lies with their non-transparency and non-professionalism. Unfortunately, there
is very little understanding among the common people or even mediapersons of
what the polls can and cannot deliver. Pollsters make matters worse by making
excessive claims, nothing short of black magic. A general unwillingness on the
part of polling agencies and the media to share even basic methodological
details about their polls compounds the problem. Most polls get away by
announcing the most perfunctory methodological information and making vague
claims about the representative nature of the survey. There is thus no way of
telling a rogue poll from a professional effort. In the last few years, the
proportion of rogue polls has increased. At least some of these, thankfully
still a minority, appear to have been cooked inside a room or a studio.
Appropriate
intervention
Thus,
whatever the motives of the Congress and the BSP, there is some point in
demanding an intervention in the business of opinion polls. The real question
is: what would be the most appropriate and efficacious intervention?
Unfortunately, most of the reformers have little patience and understanding to
address this question. A call for a complete ban on pre-election polls, or a
ban beginning the day of notification that amounts to the same thing, reflects
the knee-jerk response that has come to dominate much of our policymaking.
Unfortunately, many well-meaning democratic reform activists and the Election
Commission itself have lent their weight to this ill-considered proposition.
Banning pre-election opinion polls is a remedy worse than the disease it seeks
to cure. There already exists a ban on publishing the findings of polls
beginning 48 hours before polling and till the last voter has cast her vote.
This is a reasonable restriction, enough to safeguard against manipulations. A
full ban for the entire duration of campaign may not stand judicial scrutiny.
It is hard to see how such a ban could be presented as a “reasonable
restriction” of freedom of expression guaranteed under the Constitution. Besides,
it would be very hard to implement. It could either exist only on paper, like
the ban on smoking in public places. Or, worse, it could drive all the credible
and law-abiding agencies out and leave the field open for rogue polls of
fly-by-night operators. In all likelihood, it would open a black market of
information where confidential polls and rumours will replace transparent and
accountable polling.
Besides,
a ban is only a measure of last resort, when all other methods have been tried
and found wanting. The amazing thing about the Indian debate on opinion polls
is that there has been little effort to explore alternatives to a ban,
alternatives that have been successfully used all over the world. The present
juncture offers us an opportunity to explore this mature and intelligent
response, rather than the ill-informed and knee-jerk demand for a ban. What we
need is a regulatory framework for election-related opinion poll — comprising a
code of conduct, mandatory disclosures and independent inquiry — to be enforced
by an independent agency. Such a framework exists in most of the older
democracies and has worked reasonably well.
Disclosures
Here
is a suggestion, then, about regulating rather than banning opinion polls.
Every election-related poll, or any opinion poll for that matter, must be
required to make the following disclosures: the ownership and track record of
the organisation carrying out the survey, details of the sponsor; sampling
frame, sample size and the exact technique used to draw the sample; the social
profile of the achieved sample; where, when and how were the interviews
conducted; the exact wording of the question and sequence of questions asked;
raw vote shares reported in the survey and how they were converted into vote
estimates and seats forecast.
Besides
this proactive disclosure, the polling organisation should be required to
supply some additional information on demand. This second-order disclosure
could include providing basic tables for some key variables. Finally, in case
of dispute or challenge, the polling organisation should be required to open
its unit level data (raw data file) for in-camera examination by a committee of
experts. There could be a provision for strictures and sanctions against those
who violate these norms.
Who
would formulate these regulations and implement them? Ideally, it should be
self-regulation by pollsters and media organisations. An organisation like the
News Broadcasters Association or the Press Council of India can take the
initiative in this respect. Failing this, the Election Commission could take up
this responsibility. What matters is the existence of a regime of mandatory
disclosures rather than an agency in charge of implementing it. Once in place,
such a mechanism would help the public tell the difference between a genuine
and rogue poll and incentivise transparent practices. That would be a
significant step forward in democratic public culture. After all, public
opinion polling is too valuable and consequential to be left to politicians, or
pollsters.
An opportunity to free CBI
Earlier
this year, the Supreme Court described the Central Bureau of Investigation as a
‘caged parrot’. Far from setting it free, the Gauhati High Court sought to
exterminate it. The court’s judgment holding that the CBI is not a legally
constituted police force has been stayed by the Supreme Court for now. The
absence of a clear legal link between the establishment of the CBI and the
Delhi Special Police Establishment Act, 1946, the law under which the agency
has been functioning for half a century, is indeed an irresistible point of law
that was bound to be raised by someone some day. However, the moot question is
whether the High Court ought to have taken such a hyper-technical view and
struck down the Union Home Ministry Resolution of April 1, 1963, by which the
agency was formed. While there could be some merit in the contention that the
CBI’s legal basis was somewhat unclear, the High Court could have highlighted
any legal infirmity it found and sought the government’s views on how it could
be cured — instead of invalidating the CBI’s very existence. The Supreme Court
will have to decide whether to accept the CBI’s legality as a fact established
by five decades of existence and functioning with judicial recognition, and how
any infirmity, if that exists, is curable.
The
Special Police Establishment (SPE), formed in 1941 under the War Department to
curb corruption, got statutory status under the Delhi SPE Act, 1946. Its work
was transferred to the CBI as soon as it was formed in 1963 by a Resolution.
The High Court has now said it was a mere executive instruction with no
sanction from the Cabinet or assent from the President. It has been generally
assumed that the CBI is synonymous with the SPE, and the High Courts and the
Supreme Court have passed orders from time to time transferring to it sensitive
investigations from out of the hands of State police departments. The
constitutional basis for the CBI’s formation is traceable to Entry 8 in the
Union List, ‘Central Bureau of Investigation and Intelligence’, but the High
Court did not find it good enough. Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has promised
to do everything necessary to establish the agency’s legality and protect its
past and future work. It may be an opportune moment to provide a firmer
statutory framework for the CBI, one that grants it the functional autonomy
that the Supreme Court mandated in the Vineet Narain case in 1997. The Lokpal
Bill, stalled due to political bickering despite being passed in the Lok Sabha,
also provides for measures to insulate graft investigation from interference
and envisages an independent role for the CBI under the Lokpal’s supervision.
Strengthening this bill and ensuring its early adoption would be the right
course.
The challenge in Maldives
In
ordering a stay on the run-off round of polls to choose a new President, the
Maldivian Supreme Court has unwittingly precipitated a constitutional crisis
which will have far-reaching implications. A new President had to be sworn in
by November 11 according to the Constitution, and, as Speaker of the People’s
Majlis, Abdulla Shahid, has correctly pointed out, Article 107 of the
Constitution stipulates that a presidential term is for five years. There is no
provision to extend it. President Mohamed Waheed’s term — he was anointed in
controversial circumstances on February 7, 2012 — ended on the night of
November 10. The Supreme Court, which earlier had taken inordinately long to
decide on the fairness of the first round of polls held on September 7 (which
it finally annulled), went even further on November 9, and, in direct conflict
with the Constitution, extended the term of the President till a new President
is sworn in. Again, as the Speaker, who belongs to the aggrieved Maldivian
Democratic Party, the largest party in the country, points out, according to
Article 262, to amend the term of office of the President Article 107 would
need to be revised and approved by a three-fourths majority of Parliament, and
prior to being ratified by the President must receive majority support in a
public referendum. On his part, Dr. Waheed, a former international civil
servant conversant with legalities that are involved in his decision to stay on
till November 16 (without pay), has contended that the Constitution is silent
on a way forward. Hence to avoid a constitutional void, he submitted the issue
to Parliament for a constitutional solution.
The
plea that disrupted the second round of polls on Sunday has its merits — that
one political party will not have enough time to be able to tell its supporters
which way to vote. This was known earlier too, but was not brought up by any
candidate in the several meetings they attended. From the sequence of events
since September 7, it is clear that coalition partners in the Waheed
government, which includes the party founded by former President Maumoon Abdul
Gayoom after he returned to the country, the Progressive Party of Maldives, are
not keen on holding the second round of polls. And, from the polling pattern it
is very clear that the deeply divided country will vote to elect the MDP’s
Mohamed Nasheed President as and when a second round is held. Surely, that is
no reason to subvert the entire process. Elections must be held on November 16.
The process of healing and rebuilding the fractured democracy cannot wait any
longer.
Khurshid favours result-oriented initiatives at Asia-Europe
Meeting
With
consensus emerging on bringing about a change in the working methods of ASEM
(Asia-Europe Meeting), India sought result-oriented initiatives by agreeing to
work with like-minded ASEM members in areas with potential for tangible
cooperation. Speaking at the biggest international gathering of the year with
over 30 Foreign Ministers attending, External Affairs Minister Salman Khurshid
said here on Monday that the aim should be to take ASEM “into homes and offices
of people across Asia and Europe and allow us to bring in members of civil
society, business, media and Parliaments as our partners in strengthening it as
a bridge between the two continents.”
In
this respect, he referred to a meeting of senior officials that recommended the
setting up of a Working Group on Press and Public Awareness Strategy and
another on devising a road map for the 20th anniversary celebrations of ASEM in
2016. During his address, Mr. Khurshid reiterated his hope that discussions
over the next two days will move ASEM beyond a “declaratory political dialogue,
towards tangible deliverables and concrete action in a more determined manner.”
Inaugurating the 11th ASEM Ministerial, Vice President Hamid Ansari wanted
ASEM, as a forum for dialogue between the East and the West, to be “relevant in
situational terms.” Explaining the concept, he pointed out that the
international community is facing the twin challenges of sluggish economic
growth and more sophisticated non-traditional security threats.
Dialogue
is necessary because as the economic slowdown continues, emerging economies
that were previously seen as the engines of economic growth have been compelled
to take tough decisions they can ill-afford, given the enormity of their
developmental needs. The increasing sophistication of non-traditional security
threats needed higher levels of comprehension and cooperation which can only be
accomplished by dialogue.
“Therefore,
we should endeavour to take it beyond being a forum for political dialogue
only, make it reach out to the people of Member States and create wider
stake-holding amongst economic partners and civil society. We should invest its
outcomes with tangible deliverables,” he advised.
Mr.
Ansari also drew attention to the inherent advantages of ASEM in meeting some
of these hopes. It has an unparalleled edge in terms of membership, capacity,
economic influence, intellectual depth, strategic expertise and political
leadership.
Developing world’s firm ‘no’ to market-based mechanism
Poland,
the hosts for the U.N. Climate talks this year, and the EU came in for some
harsh opposition from many developing countries, including India, for promoting
the idea that the talks must deliver a new carbon market mechanism even before
countries make their emission reduction targets.
Carbon
markets help developed countries take credit for reduction of emissions carried
out by poor countries by paying for the actions. The costs of paying the
developing countries works out much lower for the rich nations in comparison
with undertaking such actions in their highly developed economies.
The
proposal that the Warsaw talks conclude the basic framework for a new
‘market-based mechanism’, which had the backing of Poland, the host country
holding the presidency and leading the talks, found a strong reaction from a
host of developing countries including India.
An
Indian negotiator speaking with The
Hindu said, “This is putting
the cart before the horse. We don’t know what kind of emission reduction
targets the developed countries will take and the current targets are much
lower than those required we all know but here they are pushing for creating
another loophole. This is not acceptable.”
The
source said that the Polish presidency had been informed by the Like Minded
Developing Countries, of which India and China are key members, that they would
not permit such a mechanism to be put in place before commitments of the
developed countries are put forth and are sufficiently high to show their
seriousness.
The
lead negotiator for Bolivia Dr. Rene Orellana publicly criticised Poland for
pushing business interests at the climate talks. Another source in the Indian
delegation said that the Polish deputy environment minister visiting Delhi days
before the Warsaw talks had also requested that India agree to the setting of
new market mechanisms by the end of the two weeks of negotiations but was told
that India would not agree to the move.
Lines
drawn by the Union Cabinet last week also bar the Indian delegation from
allowing the markets for carbon trade to come through .
Poland
as hosts have come up for criticism from the environmental lobby in Europe as
well for promoting interests of the coal industry — the main stay of its energy
source — and opening the U.N. climate talks to greater influence from the
industrial lobbies. India too had registered its protest against the
involvement of businesses in consultations that have traditionally been held only
between country representatives.
More ultra mega solar plants on anvil
With
states like Madhya Pradesh making rapid strides in solar energy generation,
more than four ultra mega solar power plants can come up in the country,
according to Tarun Kapoor, Joint Secretary, Union Ministry of New and Renewable
Energy. “Our objective is to bring down the cost of solar energy to Rs.5.50 per
unit, and this can only be possible through ultra mega solar power plants. We
already have finalised plans for four locations, and now with states like
Madhya Pradesh coming up rapidly, we can set up more such plants,” Mr. Kapoor
said. Each of these plants will have capacity of 4,000 MW, and are being
implemented under the Jawaharlal Nehru National Solar Mission.
He
said that the first ultra mega solar plant would come up near Sambhar Lake in
Rajasthan, followed by the second one in Gujarat. Two more such plants would
come up at Kargil and Ladhak with a capacity of 2,000 MW and 5,000 MW,
respectively.
“The
first phase (1,000 MW) of the Rajasthan ultra mega plant will be ready for
commissioning in three years. The basics of this phase is to be in place in
three months, and it is being set up through the EPC route through a joint
venture of six public sector companies led by BHEL. For the balance 3,000 MW
capacity, we will invite tenders from five or six developers who could take up
projects of 500 MW each,” Mr. Kapoor said at Intersolar India, an industry
summit, here.
“We
have not finalised the model for the plant in Gujarat but land has been
allotted. We have identified land for the projects in Kargil and Ladhak where
solar radiation is the best,” he added.
Madhya
Pradesh, on Monday, announced that the largest solar plant in the country had
come up in the state eight months ahead of schedule. From a mere 2 MW capacity
in April 2012, the State would reach 2,000 MW capacity by 2015. “Through our
unique solar policy, we have attracted developers from all over. India’s
largest solar project, the 130 MW AC and 151 MW DC, is now commissioned at
Diken village in Neemuch. We wanted to do it and then announce,” said SR
Mohanty, Principal Secretary, Madhya Pradesh.
“In
the last quarter, a total of 191 MW solar capacity came up. Out of that, 153 MW
came up in Madhya Pradesh, thus we had 80 per cent of the share,” Mr. Mohanty
said.
Post-Taliban Afghanistan, 12 years on
Exactly
12 years ago, on November 13, 2001 — just two months after the assassination of
Ahmad Shah Massoud and the al Qaeda strikes in New York and Washington D.C. —
Massoud’s forces entered Kabul after Taliban fighters fled the city the
previous night. This came on the heels of desperate diplomatic efforts to
prevent the Northern Alliance from occupying Kabul and taking over the reins of
government.
Why
did the United States and its allies go to Afghanistan? U.S. troops went there
to get rid of the al Qaeda leadership, and combat terrorists with a global
reach. Operation Enduring Freedom was launched against terrorist entities and
the states that harboured them. That was the reason for targeting the Taliban
regime.
Intense
operations
The
United Nations Security Council mandated an International Security Assistance
Force for the security of Kabul and its environs on December 20, 2001. ISAF has
since been supported by 49 U.S. allies and partners. At its high point in 2011,
there were 1,40,000 ISAF troops in Afghanistan, including 1,01,000 Americans,
not counting contracted private security personnel.
After
such impressive marshalling of forces and intensified military operations, Afghanistan
continues to remain among the greatest security challenges of our times. What
happened?
A
2009 Senate Foreign Relations Committee report blamed the 2001 Pentagon
leadership for the “lost opportunity” of preventing Osama bin Laden’s flight
from Tora Bora to Pakistan. Centcom Commander General Tommy Franks turned down
a CIA request for a battalion of Army Rangers to assist a rag-tag force
tracking bin Laden. Concurrently, in late November 2001, Pakistani planes were
allowed to airlift from Kunduz hundreds of Islamabad’s advisers and troops,
presumably along with some of the Taliban’s and al Qaeda’s leading cadres. A
year or so later, the U.S. shifted its attention to Iraq, leaving the Afghan
and Pakistan tasks unfinished.
The
U.S. and NATO initially believed that a strong Afghan Army was not required,
since the Taliban and al Qaeda fighters had dispersed without a fight — as for
those who fled, Pakistan would take care of them. Afghans are still reaping the
consequences of this initial neglect. The blunder of sub-contracting to
Pakistan the management of the Taliban resulted in the outfit’s fighters being
nursed, nurtured and re-infiltrated into Afghanistan from 2005.
Since
then, Afghanistan has become an arena for experimentation in social and
political engineering. The military campaign was first cast as a war against
terror, then as a counter-insurgency operation. The advantages gained by the
surging American troops and more muscular military action were defeated by the
announcement of the exit strategy.
Opportunity
lost
As
for building Afghan capacity, little was done for several years. U.N.
representatives on the ground advocated a ‘light’ international footprint. Rich
countries were initially parsimonious in their commitments. In early 2002,
Afghanistan was a relatively clean slate on which anything could be written, so
long as the country’s well-wishers took account of its regional strategic
space. But that was not to be.
Paradoxically,
after the Taliban recovered, regrouped and re-equipped itself in its safe
havens and brought violence back to Afghanistan, a stepped-up civilian effort
followed. The Afghanistan Compact, put together in London in January 2006, made
nation-building the main focus of the future international effort. Its
conceptual flaw was the vision to transform Afghanistan into the image of its
benefactors.
The
instruments used to achieve this, such as the Provincial Reconstruction Teams,
bypassed Afghan institutions and indigenous impulses. Afghan political leaders
complained that the parallel structures created by the PRTs undermined their
government. Between 2001 and 2009, the Afghan government incurred an
expenditure of $5.7 billion through its own budget and institutions, compared
to $41 billion committed for assistance to Afghanistan during the same period.
Extent
of fraud
Audits
point to the fact that contractor profits and consultant fees absorbed a
substantial part of the international assistance. The 2008 U.S. Commission on
Wartime Contracting reported that fraud alone could account for as much as $12
billion spent in Afghanistan and Iraq. Some of this actually funded terrorism
and insurgency in Afghanistan. “Every year, nearly $500 million flow into the
Taliban kitty from western sources,” the former ISI Chief, Asad Durrani wrote
recently. This was mainly by way of protection money.
Moreover,
all three pillars of Afghanistan’s transformation — security, governance and
development — were undermined by the growing security deficit. Increasing
Taliban attacks immobilised the fledgling state structures at all levels and
undermined Afghan growth and development. As Asadullah Khaled, former Kandahar
Governor and former head of the National Directorate of Security, told me on my
first visit to Kandahar in February 2008: “It is not that the Taliban is
strong; it is that we are very weak.”
The
picture in Afghanistan today is bleak: worsening security, ubiquitous Taliban
presence, poor coordination between donors and the government, a slowing
economy, and increasing insecurity. A complete exit of ISAF would be a
catastrophe for the country, the region and the world. Such an exit would
dampen the ongoing development effort, undermine the impressive social and
economic gains achieved with so much effort and sacrifice, embolden the enemies
of progressive change in Afghanistan, and possibly even lead to a reversal to
the ancien regime of 2001, with serious security
implications worldwide.
So,
where do we, the world community, go from here on Afghanistan?
The
international community should not abandon Afghanistan. It should not encourage
the country’s partition or leave it to the mercy of those who are not
accountable to the Afghan people. It should avoid acquiescing on exclusive
rights over Afghanistan of any single power, or group of outside powers. The
global community should abjure extra-territorial demands, defined in terms of a
veto over decisions that Afghans themselves must make. Afghanistan’s neighbours
should guarantee its independence and sovereignty rather than engage in acts
that subvert them.
A
return to status quo ante should be avoided. Terrorist networks
in the region, with their cult of suicide bombings, are ever more closely tied
to al Qaeda and its associates. Their membership is more dispersed, diverse,
and numerous than it was in 2001. Their restitution in Afghanistan might well
lead to the unravelling of the state system in Pakistan, creating for India and
the world an even bigger security challenge than the one we face today.
We
must strive to make Afghan security sustainable by supporting its security
apparatus and dismantling the infrastructure of terrorism, both within the
country and its border regions. Terrorism and insurgency have never ceased
anywhere in the world where support, sustenance, and safe havens for terrorists
and insurgents have been available in the contiguity.
On
development, the world should abandon the idea that it can come from outside.
An environment should be created in which Afghanistan can develop itself.
Afghan voices should be heard and space allowed for national leadership. We
must work towards desirable outcomes, without tangling in processes internal to
Afghanistan.
Afghanistan
will be economically sustainable when it becomes a trade, transportation,
energy, and minerals hub in the region. The Afghan leadership had hoped to join
SAARC six years ago, and that Afghanistan would soon become a land bridge
linking Iran and Central Asia to China and the Indian subcontinent. The
templates and action agendas for dismantling trade and transit barriers, and
encouraging freer movement of goods, services, investments, peoples, and ideas,
are already in place. It is the inability to operationalise them that prevents
Afghanistan’s sustained stabilisation.
Hard
task
In
spite of multiple international back channels and the efforts of the Afghan
High Peace Council, talks with the Taliban have not made much headway. Key
players within the Taliban and Pakistan’s state structures are yet to be
convinced that they should abandon their campaign to seize power by violence.
It is a hard act to fight and talk simultaneously. While a lasting and
permanent solution with them on board will be difficult, without them it will
be impossible. Efforts for peace, re-integration, and reconciliation with the
reconcilable must, therefore, continue.
Afghanistan’s
fragmented polity needs to look at reconciliation — between and among
ethnicities, between Afghanistan and its neighbours, and between the government
and those elements of the armed opposition ready to embrace democracy and the Afghan
Constitution, respect human rights, and end ideological and organisational
links with al Qaeda and its associates. As Rumi, the great Afghan Sufi sage
said in his Masnawi 800 years ago: “Believe in God, yet
tie the camel’s leg.”
A crucial milestone
The
19th Conference of the Parties to the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate
Change (CoP 19), which began on Monday in Poland, marks a crucial milestone
towards negotiating an effective global warming treaty. At CoP 19, the fault
lines remain the same: industrialised countries would like to see a significant
cut in global greenhouse gas emissions (GHG), while developing nations are
prepared to reduce their carbon footprint only with financial and technical
assistance from the West. Negotiators have given themselves two years to
connect the dots on a comprehensive agreement when they meet in Paris in 2015.
Predictably, this deadline has proven tough to meet. Most countries agree that
it would be unrealistic to have the treaty prescribe the quantum of emission
cuts. There seems to be broad support for the “bottom-up” approach, which would
involve countries submitting voluntary commitments assessed and monitored for
compliance by the treaty’s guardians. Even so, the devil is in the detail: the
EU, for instance, will push for legally binding commitments to halve GHG
emissions by 2050 in comparison to 1990 levels. The U.S. wants a mix of
“legally and non-legally binding commitments.” The Obama administration has
said it has no plans to ratify the Kyoto Protocol which imposes a binding
emissions cut on developed countries.
For
its part, India wants to retain the Kyoto Protocol’s preferential treatment of
developing countries. Along with BASIC group members Brazil, China and South
Africa, India has based its negotiating position on the principle of equity.
New Delhi has made its climate commitments contingent on “mitigation actions”
which would entail assistance to it in the form of “finance, technology
transfer and capacity building measures”. The challenge for Indian negotiators
at CoP 19 will be to secure these demands without being billed as a holdout to
the treaty. India has already faced flak, rather unfairly, for its objection to
bringing hydrofluorocarbons under the Montreal Protocol, as opposed to the
UNFCCC. Meanwhile, fissures have shown up in the BASIC’s negotiating line as a
whole. Last month, South Africa suggested the new treaty must include binding
carbon cuts for all parties. The imperative of climate change — what with
several natural disasters this year, and the atmospheric concentration of
carbon dioxide having crossed 400 parts per million — is no doubt lending
urgency to negotiations. India’s climate diplomacy must be aimed at dispelling
the notion that it is reluctant to tackle global warming. Meanwhile, it must
ensure Indian industry affordable access to western technology to meet our
commitments effectively.
The rupee’s continuing troubles
The
rupee is in trouble, yet again. The currency has been sliding in the last five
trading sessions, to close at Rs.63.71 versus the dollar on Tuesday. A
convergence of unfavourable factors appears to be behind the renewed fall in
the currency after the relative stability of the last few weeks. The immediate
trigger was the positive news emerging from the U.S. The global economic engine
last week reported a better-than-expected 2.8 per cent growth in the third
quarter ended September. This was immediately followed by encouraging non-farm
payrolls data which showed that more jobs were added in October than expected.
These data have set off fears that the Federal Reserve might start the tapering
of its $85 billion monthly bond-buying programme as early as in December or
January. Foreign institutional investors have turned net sellers in the
domestic market in the last few trading sessions. It is not coincidental that
since November 6, the day the rupee lurched into its latest turbulence, FIIs
have sold $438.50 million in the debt market. The return of fears over tapering
is strengthening the dollar against other Asian currencies as well, as global
fund flows head back to the U.S. in anticipation of rising bond yields.
There
are a couple of domestic factors too that seem to be working against the rupee.
The most important of these is the partial closure of the special window that
was opened by the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) for oil companies to buy their
dollars directly from the central bank. With apparent stability prevailing over
the last few weeks, the RBI pushed back into the market almost half of the oil
companies’ dollar requirements, causing demand for the greenback to rise. Also,
a couple of special measures initiated by the central bank at the peak of the
crisis to support the rupee by attracting dollar inflows, such as the swap
window for foreign currency deposits, are supposed to close by the end of this
month. These factors, along with the possibility of the Federal Reserve
starting the tapering process, point to a period of weakness ahead for the
rupee. The RBI may well find itself forced to extend some of the supportive
measures put in place earlier. What is heartening though is that there has been
a perceptible improvement in the external account since the last round of
volatility a couple of months ago. Trade data for October, the latest
available, show acceleration in exports and a significant fall in imports; if
these trends sustain, the current account deficit, which was acting as a drag
on the rupee during the last spell of volatility, could be around $60 billion
or 3-3.2 per cent of GDP. Yet, this may not be enough to support the rupee if
FIIs decide to take their money back to the U.S.
Don't force developing nations to review their voluntary
emission cuts, says India
India,
China and other countries in the Like-Minded Developing Countries (LMDC) group
on Tuesday formally took the position that the new climate agreement must not
force developing countries to review their voluntary emission reduction
targets.
Setting
itself up in direct confrontation with developed countries, the LMDC made it
clear that it was not in favour of doing away with the existing differentiation
between developing and developed countries when it came to taking
responsibility for climate action.
The
new agreement is to be signed by 2015 and the on-going talks in Warsaw are
expected to draw out elements of this agreement. A general consensus has
emerged that the new agreement would permit each country to volunteer its
emission reduction target. The European Union (EU), backed by other allied
groups, has demanded that there should be a process of reviewing targets of all
countries and seeing if they collectively add up to the level that keeps global
temperature rise below 2 degree Celsius. Any gap, the EU suggests, should then
be distributed among all countries, rich or poor, based on several parameters
which are sometimes called the Equity Reference Framework.
The
U.S. wants similar consultations but only ‘peer pressure,’ and not compulsion,
to convince countries to do more in case the global target is not met.
Both
methods break the differentiation between the developed and developing
countries and set up an agreement where it is best for developed countries to
offer lower targets initially and then get the responsibility of filling the
‘emission gap’ distributed evenly among all nations.
Finance-technology
link
It
also allows the existing linkage between provision of finance and technology by
developed countries to developing ones and the latter’s targets to be weakened.
The
LMDC’s position on Tuesday officially countered these two proposals.
The
LMDC said, “We do not see any role for a two-step process in the ex-ante
process for review of efforts of developing countries.
Any
framework which seeks to determine for developing countries what they should
contribute in any future regime goes against the principle of equity and common
but differentiated responsibilities based on historical responsibility.”
The
LMDC noted that the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) under
which the new agreement is to be signed requires the developed countries, and
not developing countries, to take the lead in fighting climate change .
“Flawed
equity”
“The
application of equity reference framework only uses the word equity but
basically redistributes the burden of fighting climate change more on the
shoulders of the developing countries,” said a delegate from the LMDC countries
speaking to The Hindu anonymously.
The
LMDC group plans to submit a more detailed proposal along the lines of this
position in the next couple of days. Environment and Forests Minister Jayanthi
Natarajan, in an interview to The
Hindu,had accepted that the circumstances of different countries had
changed since the signing of the UNFCCC and the Kyoto Protocol and that the
obligations under the 2015 agreement should be based on both the principle of
common but differentiated responsibilities and respective capabilities, and not
just the latter.
The
Union Cabinet, too, cleared the mandate for her and her team of negotiators to
ensure that this happens at the Warsaw talks.
The
LMDC statement on Tuesday reflected this position countering the predominant
narrative from the EU and the U.S. that the emission cut obligations should be
based on existing capabilities of the respective countries.
Court: police can’t dodge FIR if cognisable offence is disclosed
The
police must compulsorily register the First Information Report on receiving a
complaint if the information discloses a cognisable offence, and no preliminary
inquiry is permissible in such a situation, the Supreme Court ruled on Tuesday.
If
the information does not disclose a cognisable offence but indicates the
necessity for an inquiry, “a preliminary inquiry may be conducted only to
ascertain whether a cognisable offence is disclosed or not,” said a
Constitution Bench of Chief Justice P. Sathasivam and Justices B.S. Chauhan,
Ranjana Desai, Ranjan Gogoi and S.A. Bobde.
Interpreting
Section 154 of the Cr.PC, the Bench said it was mandatory for the police to
register an FIR on receipt of a complaint. Since conflicting judgments had been
given by courts on the issue, the matter was referred to the five-judge Bench
for an authoritative ruling.
Writing
the judgment, the CJI said: “In cases wherein preliminary inquiry ends in
closing of the complaint, a copy of the entry of such closure must be supplied
to the first informant forthwith and not later than a week. It must also
disclose reasons in brief for closing the complaint…”
The
Bench said: “The police officer cannot avoid his duty of registering offence,
if cognisable offence is disclosed. Action must be taken against officers who
do not register the FIR if the information received by him/her discloses a
cognisable offence. The scope of preliminary inquiry is not to verify … the
information but to ascertain whether it reveals any cognisable offence.”
The
Bench said the type of cases wherein a preliminary inquiry was to be conducted
would depend on the facts and circumstances of each case. The cases in which
preliminary inquiry might be made included matrimonial/ family disputes; commercial
offences; medical negligence/corruption; and cases wherein there was abnormal
delay in initiating criminal prosecution, for example, over three months of
delay in reporting the matter without satisfactorily explaining the reasons.
“These are only illustrations and not exhaustive of all conditions which may
warrant preliminary inquiry. While ensuring and protecting the rights of the
accused and the complainant, a preliminary inquiry should be made time-bound,
and in any case it should not exceed seven days.”
As
the General Diary/Station Diary/Daily Diary was the record of all information
received at a police station, all information on cognisable offences, whether
they resulted in registration of an FIR or led to an inquiry, must be
mandatorily and meticulously reflected in it, the Bench said.
Compulsory
registration of the FIR was to ensure transparency not only in the criminal
justice delivery system but also “judicial oversight.” It was the first step in
“access to justice” for a victim. “While registration of an FIR is mandatory,
arrest of the accused immediately thereafter is not at all mandatory. It [FIR]
upholds the ‘Rule of Law’ inasmuch as the ordinary person brings forth the
commission of a cognisable crime to the knowledge of the state. It also
facilitates swift investigation and sometimes even prevention of the crime. In
both cases, it only effectuates the regime of law,” the Bench said.
China gives ‘decisive’ role to the market
Leaders
of the Communist Party of China (CPC) on Tuesday concluded a key meeting on
economic reforms with an agreement to give the market a more prominent role in
driving growth in the world’s second-largest economy.
A
communiqué issued after the four-day, behind-closed-doors meeting said the
market would be given “a decisive role in allocating resources”. This will
reflect, analysts said, a more prominent role for the market, which was
officially designated as playing only “a basic role” when the country launched
economic reforms in 1992.
While
no specific details have, as yet, been outlined regarding areas where further
market reforms will be implemented, policy measures are expected to be
announced in coming weeks.
The
communiqué called for “decisive results” in “key sectors”, to ensure that a
“procedure-based and effective framework” for growth was in place by 2020. To
this end, the document said the CPC would set up “a central leading team for
comprehensively deepening reform”, which would be placed in charge of
“coordinating reform” and “supervising the implementation of reform plans”.
At
the four-day meeting, which took place amid tight security in a military-run
hotel in west Beijing, the 376 members of the CPC’s Central Committee approved
a blueprint for reforms to lay the foundation for growth in the next decade,
even as the government grapples with a slowing economy and the challenge to
transform the three decades-old, State investment-driven, growth model.
The
weekend meeting was the third sitting, or plenum, of the new Central Committee
which took over in November of last year, following a once-in-a-decade
leadership change. Historically, third plenary meetings have been used to
introduce economic reforms, most famously in 1978 when the plenum under the
then leader Deng Xiaoping gave the push for China to launch market reforms and
close the chapter on Maoism.
China’s
new leaders had, in recent weeks, raised expectations for bold moves by drawing
parallels with the 1978 meeting, and declaring that the session would herald
“unprecedented” reforms.
Property
rights
Two
areas where there had been particular attention were reforming property rights
in rural areas to give farmers the right to sell their land, and to reform the
influential and wealthy State-owned Enterprises (SOEs).
The
communiqué said the property rights protection system “will be improved”, and a
unified land market for urban and rural areas will be set up, suggesting
restrictions on selling farmland may be loosened.
While
China’s urban property market has boomed since the 1990s after the government
opened up the market, the continuing collective ownership of rural land, which
can only be leased by farmers, has been seen as slowing down urbanisation and
widening the urban-rural income gap. Local governments, which derive most of
their revenues from land sales, have opposed giving titles to farmers.
“Farmers
currently cannot trade land in the market, so lots of land is lying idle,”
Oliver Meng Rui, Professor of Finance at the China Europe International
Business School in Shanghai, told The
Hindu.
He
said there were “two motivations” behind land reform. “One is to let farmers,
once they trade land, to get financial benefits. The other is to increase
supply of land and cool down the real estate market.”
On
the reform of SOEs, the communiqué only said State-run companies would be made
to “adhere to modern corporate practices” — a possible indication, Mr. Rui
said, of getting more State-run firms to publicly list on the stock market in
the future.
In
China, SOEs control monopolies in vital sectors, holding total assets worth $
7.35 trillion. Reforming SOEs has been seen by many economists here as a key
step in the government’s objective of transforming the State investment-driven
model and boosting innovation industries.
Murky
ties
Officials
acknowledge that many State-run enterprises have emerged as hotbeds of
corruption, holding murky ties with elite Party families and other interest
groups. According to a survey conducted this week by the Party-run Global Times , 30 per cent of respondents viewed
“vested interest groups” as posing the biggest obstacle to reforms. Another
45.4 per cent blamed local governments for blocking Central policies.
Beyond
economic reforms, the document highlighted the leadership’s focus on
maintaining social stability, announcing the setting up of a State Security
Committee to “safeguard state security” and “effectively prevent and end social
disputes” though it did not detail what specific role the newly set up body
would play.
The
document also acknowledged the need for judicial reforms “to ensure
independence and fairness in prosecuting bodies and courts”, amid growing calls
to overhaul the Party-controlled courts system to address rising unrest at the
grassroots, often triggered by land disputes involving local governments.
A range of wetlands needed for bird conservation: study
Preventing
human depredation and maintaining a range of agricultural wetlands, from small
village ponds to large lakes, is essential for bird conservation, according to
research carried out by two Indian ornithologists.
K.S.
Gopi Sundar of the International Crane Foundation and his wife, Swati Kittur of
the Nature Conservation Foundation, have examined how wetlands of various sizes
dotted across the landscape in south-western Uttar Pradesh could be sustaining
diverse bird species.
“There
has been an assumption that conserving a few large wetlands would suffice to
protect the majority of wetland-associated bird species,” Dr. Sundar told this
correspondent. “We decided to empirically examine how far this was true.
The
agricultural wetlands were typically small and isolated, with the overwhelming
majority coming under the common lands that were overseen by local panchayats,
point out Dr. Sundar and Ms. Kittur in a paper published in Biological Conservation recently. Although often only
seasonal, such wetlands served to meet many human needs, including the recharge
of groundwater, water supplies for agricultural and household use, grazing for
livestock as well as providing vegetation and aquatic fauna that could be harvested.
Using
satellite imageries, the two of them identified close to 12,000 wetlands in six
south-western U.P. districts. They then picked a random sample of 28, which
varied in size from 0.06 hectares to over 30 hectares, for detailed study.
The
various species of birds at each of these sites were surveyed during January
and February this year. During this period, migratory birds would have
completed their journey to India and not begun their return migration.
“We
found that wetlands of all sizes, occurring at differing densities on the
landscape, are necessary for retaining a large number of bird species,” said
Dr. Sundar.
Their
survey identified 99 bird species that made use of the wetlands. Some, like
storks and cranes, preferred the larger wetlands. But about half the species
were found only in smaller patches of water.
Protecting
large wetlands would therefore only assist a few species that showed clear
preferences for such sites but “will not help achieve conservation of the
majority of the species on the landscape,” observed Dr. Sundar and Ms. Kittur
in their paper.
Preventing
all human use of such wetlands was not essential for bird conservation, their
paper noted. “Despite prolonged and very high human pressure on the wetlands,
Uttar Pradesh’s agricultural wetlands support a high number of bird species.
The observed species richness is the highest known for agricultural wetlands in
any landscape in south Asia.”
Human
misuse of these wetlands was often illegal. That included draining or filling
the wetlands and converting them for other activities. Since the vast majority
of wetlands in U.P. are tiny and isolated, they could be converted relatively
rapidly and required urgent conservation attention, the paper added.
As
local communities usually had a strong interest in maintaining the wetlands,
supporting local institutions and enforcing existing legal provisions could
help protect these water bodies, Dr. Sundar remarked.
New policy for traders in Punjab
hrough
its new “Traders' Policy” the Punjab Government has sought to reduce the
interface between the taxation department and dealersby introducing procedures
of self assessment and voluntary disclosures of violation. It also provides to
free small traders from paying value added tax (VAT), while they would be
provided a social security net.
The
policy was announced by Deputy Chief Minister Sukhbir Singh Badal after
felicitating 198 highest tax paying traders and manufacturers in the State.
Indian Oil Corporation, Markfed and HPCL-Mittal Energy Limited walked away with
top three positions by paying Rs.2,367 crore, Rs.458 and Rs.375 in tax
respectively. Mr. Badal also holds the portfolio of Excise and Taxation.
Commenting
on the dealers' profile, Mr. Badal said that in the previous fiscal 97 per cent
of the Rs.14,544 crore revenue came from just 900 trading entities.
Of
the total 2.35 lakh registered traders in the State, nearly 92,000 did not pay
any tax while another 46,374 paid less than Rs.1,000 annually. He said that
while 10 companies paid Rs.4,135 crore of the total levies, the State
government collected Rs.7,713 crore from the trade of just 10 commodities.
To
deal with the discrepancies, Mr. Badal announced that the government would
notify a one time voluntary disclosure scheme with no questions asked, while
the traders would be allowed to make a self assessment and lump sum payments.
Such practice was already in force on a select few commodities like bakery
products, plywood and brick kilns.
The
government would also go ahead with single stage taxation at the manufacturing
level, which would free the subsequent traders from complex accounting and
taxation procedures.
Mr.
Badal said that while traders who were caught evading tax could invite
stringent penalties of up to 500 per cent of the levy as fine, the Excise and
Taxation Department officers and staff found indulging in corruption or
harassment would face dismissal from service.
Tightrope walking
Policymaking
on the basis of a sound economic rationale, overriding practical political
realities and social concerns, would be particularly difficult in an election
season. The controversy that has broken out over the Finance Ministry’s
proposal to slash budgetary support for social sector schemes and the
opposition that it is generating from within the government and the coalition
exemplifies the problem. The Finance Ministry’s hand is forced by the need to
keep the fiscal deficit under check in an environment of slowing economic
growth, low tax revenues and rising subsidies. About three-quarters of the
budgeted fiscal deficit for the whole of 2013-14 was already reached in the
April-August period, which means that the Finance Ministry has little choice
but to go for “savage” cuts in the remaining months of this fiscal year.
Falling tax revenue growth — direct tax collections grew by 11.58 per cent in
the April-October period as against the targeted 19 per cent — leaves the
government little room for manoeuvre. A breach of the fiscal deficit target
will most likely attract a downgrade of the country’s sovereign rating, which
will push up borrowing costs for Indian companies abroad and put off
prospective foreign investors.
The
across-the-board cut in expenditure has obviously affected flagship welfare
schemes of the UPA such as the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment
Guarantee Scheme and the Indira Awas Yojana, sparking protests from within the
government. Rural Development Minister Jairam Ramesh has asked what is so
“sacrosanct” about the fiscal deficit target. A close look at the numbers,
however, shows that the Rs.2,000-crore cut in allocation to MGNREGS, for
instance, accounts for just over 6 per cent of the budget allocation of
Rs.33,000 crore for 2013-14. Second, the general elections will be a vote on
the performance of the government over its entire term, not just on what
happens in the final six months. Still, the pressure on Finance Minister P.
Chidambaram to loosen the purse strings will be tremendous. Mr. Chidambaram
will have to balance between pleasing fellow ministers and partymen and ensuring
that there is no harm caused to the economy in the process. This is easier said
than done in the current environment when most, if not all, the economic
indicators are flashing red. In the short run, there are only two ways of
freeing up resources to increase welfare spending. Prune subsidies further on
petroleum products such as diesel and cooking gas and push hard to increase
non-tax revenues from disinvestment and the sale of spectrum. If the first will
alienate urban voters, the second might not yield substantial amounts in the
present environment. Clearly, there is a lot of tightrope walking to be done in
the months ahead.
A question of accountability
Two
recent events have focussed attention on the relationship between the political
executive and public servants. At the international conference on corruption
organised by the Central Bureau of Investigation on November 11, Prime Minister
Manmohan Singh urged that if there was no evidence of wrong-doing, there should
not be any presumption of criminality. He also said that Section 13 d (3) of
the Prevention of Corruption Act, introduced when P. Chidambaram was the
Minister for Personnel two decades ago, would be removed. This Section extends
the concept of corruption to any loss to the government by the action of public
servants.
On
October 30, the Supreme Court of India, on a public interest litigation plea by
several retired senior civil servants, ruled in favour of greater order and
transparency in transfers and posting. It directed the formation of a Civil
Services Board of senior civil servants to decide on transfers and postings and
a fixed tenure for postings. It also directed civil servants not to accept oral
orders from their superior officers or Ministers, and to ensure that the orders
are reduced in writing before they are carried out.
The
judgment has been welcomed by the media, the bureaucracy and those who deal
with the government and its institutions. The reaction from the political
executive has been muted and, from some quarters, negative, with one spokesman
saying the power of transfers and postings should continue with the political
executive. There have also been comments from think tanks that the judgment
would be difficult to implement, given that the Central as well as State governments
would be involved, and that the Supreme Court should not have ventured so deep
into the realm of executive jurisdiction.
Behind
these two events is the recognition of the development of a malaise that is
affecting governance and the way the business of government is transacted. Even
more deeply, there appears to be a debate between what is right and who is
right.
Pre-Independence
legacy
The
permanent civil services are a pre-Independence legacy. There was always to be
a gap between administrators/implementers and politicians. The former were
professionals who were expected to advise on policy, and implement the
government’s programmes and projects. The relationship was one based on mutual
trust and respect of one another’s role. Those of us who joined the services in
the 1960s took this relationship for granted, and were able to function freely,
with respect and close coordination with Ministers. This has changed since the
1980s. The growth of regional parties and the fragmentation of the national polity
brought to power groups which had the short-term objective of retaining power,
and lesser respect for established rules and regulations. There was increasing
pressure on civil servants to do as they were told, under threat of transfer
and administrative action. In some States, there was little respect for office
or tenure, and officers lived in constant anxiety over the next transfer. The
recent case of the suspension of a young officer in Uttar Pradesh, and actions
against an officer in Haryana are visible examples of political highhandedness.
Officers were given oral orders that were often not backed by rules. In the
event of an investigation, the officers had to face culpability. In the last
decade, the excesses have extended to several sectors that are now facing
investigation and criminal action.
The
Supreme Court judgment is a welcome reprieve that attempts to set the
boundaries for political intervention in administration. The directions on
written orders, fixity of tenure and the establishment of a Civil Services
Board are based on the earlier recommendations of the Hota committee and the
Administrative Reforms Commission reports of 2009. These recommendations were
not implemented by the government, and the Supreme Court verdict draws upon
them and directs implementation. However, it is not going to be easy to
implement the instructions, for several reasons.
Disjoint
in governance
First,
there is a serious disjoint in governance between the political hierarchy and
the administrative machinery. The 2G case, coal and mining scandals, the
Commonwealth Games and other incidents have clearly demonstrated that there has
been considerable erosion of fair processes in the last decade. Criminal
investigations will determine where the malaise lies: but it is quite apparent
that the subversion of due process to the advantage of a select few has
originated at the level of the political executive. Only investigations will
reveal whether the civil service participated in the wrong-doing. It is also
clear that in several instances, rules have been flouted, earlier norms
overturned, and protests marked on files ignored. There is now lack of trust
and fear among senior bureaucrats, who feel they have no safety net against
illegal action, and that they are victimised if they do not toe the political
line.
The
Prime Minister’s assertion at the anti-corruption seminar on November 11 that
in effect, a loss to the government and the country does not necessarily
constitute wrong-doing indicates the direction of future political
decision-making. If this is the mindset, there is no way the Supreme Court
judgment will change the behaviour or attitude of those in power. It is no
surprise that a Congress spokesperson has reacted strongly to the judgment, and
declared that transfers are a tool to control the bureaucracy.
Second,
it is equally true that there has been some politicisation of the civil
service. In several States, officers close to a regime are unwanted during the
next regime. Such close political proximity is possible only through
compromises in decision-making as well as in ethical standards. The politician
may well turn to these instances to justify his position. There is also
considerable corruption at the operating levels. Fixity of tenure in lucrative
jobs, as promised by the court, is but a guarantee to continue to exploit the
benefits of the position. It will become a double-edged sword. If there is
collusion between the interests of the political executive and the civil
service, the Supreme Court judgment will result in an increase in wrong-doing,
not a curb on it. There is enough evidence at the lower levels of
administration that this is true.
Third,
there is the ultimate question of accountability. As long as wrong-doing goes
unpunished, the politician will continue to believe that getting voted back to
power is sufficient proof of innocence, and that the civil service should not
be a bottleneck. Recent Supreme Court judgments on the Representation of the
People Act as well as the close monitoring of 2G and other cases have shifted
the focus to courts, and no political party is comfortable with that. We are
faced with the ultimate question of whether, in a democracy, the rule of law
can be interpreted in favour of those in power at a particular time. If yes,
the Supreme Court judgment will have no effect.
The
time is now ripe for a much more fundamental debate, on whether the rules of
business that applied to a colonial regime are any longer relevant. Even in the
United Kingdom, where these rules originated, they have been given up in favour
of a joint decision-making process that makes the Minister in charge solely
responsible for the actions. Watchdogs are effective and retribution is swift
and deterrent. The vertical hierarchy of notes and orders prevalent in India
shifts responsibility in a manner that makes accountability difficult — it is
time to change that. If not, as predicted by Hamza Alawi two decades ago, the
state would be under the control of the political and industrial class, aided,
to some extent, by the bureaucracy, and all to the detriment of the nation and
the citizens.
No easy answers to cool retail inflation, says FM
As
retail inflation crossed the double-digit mark, Finance Minister P.
Chidambaram, on Thursday, said the government was looking at various
suggestions to cool prices but there were no easy answers to the problem.
“The
RBI and the government are trying a number of measures to cool inflation... We
are looking at various suggestions that we have got. I am open to suggestion
but I am afraid that there is no easy answers to cool retail inflation,” he
said while addressing investors here.
The
CPI inflation, measured by movement in the retail prices of food items, soared
to a seven-month high of 10.09 per cent in October. The wholesale price-based
inflation, too, shot up to 8-month high of 7 per cent in the same month.
He
attributed the rising inflation to the high fiscal deficit incurred by the
government to neutralise the impact of global financial meltdown of 2008.
The
Minister further said that although the government had offloaded five lakh
tonnes of wheat to contain the price rise, it would not cool prices of fruit,
vegetable, milk and eggs.
Mr.
Chidambaram said his foremost priority would be to contain fiscal deficit and
current account deficit (CAD).
The
fiscal deficit in the current financial year, he added, would be brought down
to 4.8 per cent of the GDP, from 4.9 per cent in 2012-13.
As
regards the CAD, the Minister said he would endeavour to bring it down to below
$56 billion, a figure which was given by RBI Governor Raghuram Rajan on
Wednesday.
CAD
soared to a record high of $88.2 billion or 4.8 per cent of the GDP in 2012-13.
The
government had initially proposed to bring down CAD to $70 billion. Later, it
improved the estimates in view of declining gold imports and rising exports.
“...
the trough that we hit in the first quarter of 2013-14 is clearly a direct
result of high fiscal deficit, a very high CAD, and inflation which is
stubborn, high and unacceptable. We need to deal with them, we cannot wish them
away. There are no easy answers,” Mr. Chidambaram said.
The
problem of inflation remained, he said, adding that there were three numbers to
look at, which were core inflation, WPI and retail inflation.
“The
RBI has a mandate. The mandate is to control inflation without killing growth.
Monetary policy does not have impact on food inflation, I am sure (RBI)
Governor also knows that,” he said.
The
Minister said WPI inflation between 6 and 7 per cent, was “high, worrisome but
something that can be addressed.’’
“There
are no easy answers to that (retail inflation). Demand obviously is very high.
There is not enough production of fruit, vegetable milk or eggs.... inflation
remains stubborn.”
Oceans turning hot, sour and breathless
Greenhouse
gases are making the world’s oceans hot, sour and breathless, and the way those
changes work together is creating a grimmer outlook for global waters,
according to a new report from 540 international scientists.
“The
world’s oceans are getting more acidic at an unprecedented rate, faster than at
any time in the past 300 million years,” the report said. But it’s how this
interacts with other global warming impacts on waters that scientists say is
getting them even more worried.
Scientists
already had calculated how the oceans had become 26 per cent more acidic since
the 1880s because of the increased carbon in the water. They also previously
had measured how the world’s oceans had warmed because of carbon dioxide from
the burning of coal, oil and gas. And they’ve observed that at different depths
the oceans were moving less oxygen around because of the increased heat.
But
together “they actually amplify each other,” said report co-author Ulf
Riebesell, a biochemist at the Geomar Helmholtz Centre for Ocean Research in
Germany. He said scientists were increasingly referring to the ocean’s future
prospects as “hot, sour and breathless.”
The
26-page report released by the United Nations and several scientific research
organisations brings together the latest ocean science on climate change,
related to a major conference of ocean scientists last year.
Lower
oxygen
For
example, off the U.S. Pacific coast, the way the ocean is becoming stratified
and less mixed means lower oxygen in the water, and the latest studies show
that means “80 per cent more acidification than what was originally predicted,”
said study co-author Richard Feely of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric
Administration’s Pacific Marine Environmental Lab in Seattle.
The
theory is that species like squid can only live in waters at certain
temperature, acidity and oxygen levels, and the sweet spots where the factors
combine are getting harder to find, according to Mr. Feely and Mr. Riebesell.
“The
world ocean pH already has gone from 8.1 to 8.0. It’s considered a 26 per cent
increase in acidity because scientists measure hydrogen ions for this. But
computer models predict the world will hit 8.0 in the next 20 to 30 years and
7.9 in about 50 years,” Mr. Riebesell said. At those levels, shells of some
molluscs, like clams and mussels, start corroding, he said.
Ten
percent of the world's reefs have been completely destroyed. In the
Philippines, where coral reef destruction is the worst, over 70% have been
destroyed and only 5% can be said to be in good condition. What has happened
to destroy so many reefs? Human population has become very large, and earth
is warming.
There
are two different ways in which humans have contributed to the degradation of
the Earth's coral reefs, indirectly and directly. Indirectly, we have
destroyed their environment. As you read earlier, coral reefs can live only
in very clear water. The large population centers near coasts has led to
silting of reefs, pollution by nutrients that lead to algal growth that
smothers the coral, and overfishing that has led to increase in number of
predators that eat corals.
Warming
of the ocean causes corals to sicken and die. Even a rise of one degree in
the average water temperature can hurt the coral. Due to global warming, 1998
was the hottest year in the last six centuries and 1998 was the worst year
for coral.The most obvious sign that coral is sick is coral bleaching. That
is when either the algae inside die, or the algae leave the coral. The algae
are what give coral its color, so without the algae the coral has no color
and the white of the limestone shell shines through the transparent coral
bodies. People have been noticing coral bleaching since the turn of the
century, but only since the 1980s has it gotten really bad.
The
warmer water and more nutrients also encourages the growth of harmful algae
on top of the coral,
which kills it, because it blocks out the sun. Without the sun, the zooxanthellae cannot perform photosynthesis and so they die. Without the zooxanthellae, the coral polyps die too. This algae is usually eaten by fish, but because of
over fishing, there aren't enough fish left to eat all the algae. And the
pollution we dump in the ocean is just what the algae needs to grow and be
healthy, which means covering and eventually killing the coral reefs.
The
direct way in which humans destroy coral reefs is by physically killing them.
All over the world, but especially in the Philippines, divers catch the fish
that live in and around coral reefs. They sell these fish to fancy
restaurants in Asia and to fancy pet stores in the United States. This would
be OK if the divers caught the fish carefully with nets and didn't hurt the
reefs or take too many fish. But the divers want lots of fish and most of
them are not very well trained at fish catching. Often they blow up a coral
reef with explosives (picture below) and then catch all the stunned fish
swimming around. This completely destroys the reefs, killing the coral polyps
that make it as well as many of the plants and animals that call it home. And
the creatures that do survive are left homeless.
Another way that divers catch coral reef fish
is with cyanide. Cyanide is a poison. The divers pour this poison on the
reef, which stuns the fish and kills the coral. Then they rip open the reef
with crowbars and catch the fish while they are too sick from the poison to
swim away. This poison kills 90% of the fish that live in the reef and the
reef is completely destroyed both by the poison and then by being ripped
apart.
All
this may seem a bit depressing, but there are many groups in the world
dedicated to saving the coral reefs. These groups work to educate people about
the destruction of coral reefs. They lobby the United States Congress as well
as the governments of other nations, trying to convince them not to buy fish
that have been caught by destroying coral reefs. They encourage governments
to crack down on pollution, both into the ocean and into the air, which
causes global warming. They encourage visitors to coral reefs to be careful
not to harm them. They even build artificial reefs to replace the reefs that
have been destroyed. If you want to learn more about these groups, visit some
of their websites, like the Coral Reef Alliance, Reef Relief, and the Planetary Coral Reef Foundation.
Some
people help coral reefs by convincing governments to treat them with care.
Other people help coral reefs by studying them. One way that people learn
more about coral reefs is by slicing open dead ones and looking inside. The
inside of a coral reef looks a lot like the inside of a tree (picture below)
and the lines mean the same thing. A person who studies tree rings is called
a dendrochronologist. " Dendro " means tree, " chron "
means time and " ologist " means person who studies, so
dendrochronologist means person who studies trees through time.
Dendrochronologists count the number of rings in a slice of a tree to see how
old the tree was when it died. There is one ring for each year the tree
lived. The dendrochronologist also looks at the size of the rings. A thick
ring means that that year there was lots of food and it was a good year for
the tree. A thin ring can mean that there was a drought that year or maybe
the tree was sick. In the same way, oceanographers can look at the rings in a
slice of coral and see how old the coral is and which years were good years
and which were not. The more we know about coral the better we will be able
to protect them for years to come.
|
Appropriate support
The
government announced recently minimum support prices (MSP) for wheat and a few
other rabi (winter) crops. What distinguishes the latest announcement from
previous ones are, first, it has come well in time, and secondly, the
government, on this occasion, has not followed the usual course of bowing to
populist pressure and raising the support prices beyond what was warranted by
any economic logic. Because of delayed announcements in earlier years, farmers
had been unable to derive the benefits of the signals that the MSP mechanism
sends out. This year, however, the announcement was made right at the start of
the sowing season for the winter crops — usually end-October. Therefore farmers
can look at the MSP to decide on matters such as crop selection, whether
diversification is feasible, and so on. The government too stands to benefit.
The MSP mechanism can be calibrated to encourage farmers to diversify away from
water-intensive crops to pulses and oilseeds. It is a moot point whether those
objectives will be achieved this time, but the government cannot be accused of
not trying.
The
striking feature of the latest MSP announcement relates to wheat, the most
important winter crop. In a sharp departure from the past, the MSP of wheat has
been raised by just Rs.50 a quintal to Rs.1,400. The increase is the second lowest
over the entire two terms of the UPA-I and UPA-II governments and is
particularly noteworthy because it comes on the eve of elections in important
States and general elections next year. Election-eve compulsions would normally
have influenced the government to substantially increase the minimum support
prices. Hikes in the MSPs of other winter crops such as barley and
rapeseed-mustard are on the low side. The fact that high food prices are behind
the persistently high headline as well as retail inflation has weighed with the
government. The time has come to look at the MSP mechanism in its entirety.
Over the years it has become the procurement price, thereby setting high floor
prices for private trade which will continue to have a prominent role alongside
the public distribution system even when the National Food Security Act becomes
fully operational. The “bonus” awarded by some State governments over and above
the MSPs, however, complicates the picture as it will drive the procurement
prices even higher and leave very little for private trade. The fact that
government godowns are overflowing with food stocks when cereal inflation is
high is proof that all is not well with the government’s farm sector
intervention, of which the MSP is an important component.
The divide that never was
Over
the past month, the Congress and the Bharatiya Janata Party have laid competing
claims to the legacy of Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel, Home Minister and Deputy
Prime Minister in Independent India’s first government headed by Jawaharlal
Nehru.
The
slugfest has not just led to the appropriation of Patel by both sides; it has
brought under scrutiny the relationship between Nehru and Patel. The BJP’s
charge has been that Patel was denied his due under Nehru, and indeed that the
Nehru-Patel relationship was an uneasy one, marked by deep differences and
distrust. The presumed historic injustice to Patel is one of the reasons
Narendra Modi has undertaken to build the ‘statue of unity’ on the river
Narmada — a statue of Patel intended to be the tallest in the world. Speaking
at a ceremony to commemorate the Sardar’s 138th birth anniversary, Mr. Modi
remarked that India would have been a different and better country had Patel
been the first Prime Minister in place of Nehru.
For
his part, Lal Krishna Advani has quoted from different books to make the claim
that there were irreconcilable differences between Nehru and Patel on sending
troops into Hyderabad in 1948 and that, at one point, Nehru called Patel a
“communalist.” There have also been veiled suggestions from the BJP that Nehru
did not pay proper homage to Patel on the latter’s death on December 15, 1950.
The
BJP has relied on one set of documents to paint Nehru as something of a villain vis-à-vis Patel. The insinuation is that Nehru
constantly quarrelled with Patel and usurped the latter’s rightful place in
history. The unstated sub-text is that perhaps Patel himself resented Nehru’s dominance
of India and its history.
What
is the truth? Nehru and Patel often disagreed, and furiously so. But such was
the beauty of the relationship that they rarely kept a secret from each other.
They wrote to each other almost every other day, expressing their doubts and
differences honestly and openly, and concluding in the end that their mutual
affection and regard outweighed any difference they felt with regard to state
policy. In their letters, the two great men agonised over the rumours
surrounding their relationship and the constant attempts to create a divide
between them.
A
tribute
The
regard and affection Patel felt for Nehru are best captured in the tribute he
paid Nehru on the latter’s 60th birthday which fell on November 14, 1949. This
forms part of a volume, Nehru:
Abhinandan Granth , put
together by an editorial board consisting of such men of eminence as Rajendra
Prasad, Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan and Purushottamdas Tandon.
In
the tribute, Patel talks of “our mutual affection that has increased as years
have advanced.” Further, “ ... it is difficult for people to imagine how much
we miss each other when we are apart and unable to take counsel together in
order to resolve our problems and difficulties. This familiarity, nearness,
intimacy and brotherly affection make it difficult for me to sum him up for
public appreciation, but, then the idol of the nation, the leader of the
people, the Prime Minister of the country, and the hero of the masses, whose
noble record and great achievements are an open book, hardly needs any
commendation from me ...”
On
Nehru being chosen Prime Minister, Patel says: “… it was in the fitness of
things that in the twilight preceding the dawn of independence he should have
been our leading light, and that when India was faced with crisis after crisis,
following the achievement of our freedom, he should have been the upholder of
our faith and the leader of our legions. No one knows better than myself how
much he has laboured for his country in the last two years of our difficult
existence …. As one older in years, it has been my privilege to tender advice
to him on the manifold problems with which we have been faced in both
administrative and organisational fields. I have always found him willing to
seek and ready to take it ...”
Patel
then emphatically dismisses all suggestions of a great divide between the two:
“Contrary to impressions created by some interested persons and eagerly
accepted in credulous circles, we have worked together as lifelong friends and
colleagues, adjusting ourselves to each other’s point of view as the occasion
demanded and valuing each other’s advice as only those who have confidence in
each other can ...”
“Idol
of the nation;” “hero of the masses;” “upholder of our faith and the leader of
our legions” — these are Patel’s own words for Nehru, and he said all this in
November 1949 — well after the crisis of Hyderabad which Mr. Advani quoted to
underscore their differences.
Within
an hour of Patel’s death on December 15, 1950, Nehru made a statement to
Parliament which said: “… [E]arly this morning, he had a relapse and the story
of his great life ended. It is a great story, as all of us know, as the whole
country knows, and history will record it in many pages. But perhaps to many of
us here he will be remembered as a great captain of our forces in the struggle
for freedom and as one who gave us sound advice in times of trouble as well as
in moments of victory, as a friend and colleague on whom one could invariably
rely, as a tower of strength which revived wavering hearts when were in trouble
… I who have sat here on this bench side by side with him for these several
years will feel rather forlorn and a certain emptiness will steal upon me when
I look to his empty bench ...”
As
the country begins to commemorate Nehru’s 125th birth anniversary, surely there
is a need to clear the air regarding his relationship with Patel, his lifelong
friend and guide.
India scores a win in Warsaw on emission cuts affecting farmers
India
has scored an early victory at the negotiations here, ensuring that the talks
remain focused on adapting agricultural practices to climate change and not on
costly emission reduction measures that would impact farmers directly.
India
found wide-ranging support from other countries, including the entire G77+China
bloc and, surprisingly, the United States.
The
developed countries, especially the European Union, have for several years been
keen on ensuring that climate negotiations focus on reducing emissions in the
agricultural sector.
India,
China and a large number of African countries have countered this by pointing
out that emission reduction efforts in the agricultural sector would affect
farmers — who constitute a large percentage of the population, and are often
the poorest, in the developing world. They also argue that the effort to reduce
emissions should be focused on fossil-fuel-based activities that spew out
carbon dioxide — the greatest contributor to global warming by far. As
paddyfields and livestock are some of the biggest causes of emissions, emission
reduction in the sector has major implications for India and China.
The
Indian delegation and other developing countries were taken by surprise on the
first day of the Warsaw meet when the elected chairs of the talks announced that
there was a plan to have a formal decision adopted on the agriculture sector by
the end of the two weeks of negotiations.
Many
objected, noting that such a plan had not been approved by the countries
earlier and should not even be on the agenda of the talks. They pointed out
that the countries had agreed only to an exchange of views in a workshop, a
format in which only reports are generated and no formal decisions are adopted.
Fast-forwarding
the talks to bring out a decision at Warsaw on the agricultural sector,
including on the emission reduction front (very often referred to simply as
mitigation), would have opened a Pandora’s box, leading to emission reduction
targets being set particularly for the agriculture sector in 2015, when the new
global agreement is to be signed.
Significant
Indian intervention supported by many other countries ensured that the talks
remained focused on adaptation and only a report on this specific matter is
produced for the countries to discuss in future.
“It’s
the emphatic realisation and thrust on adaptation in agriculture, given the
diversity of needs and concern of poor countries, that was realised by one and
all,” said Ravi S. Prasad, one of the lead negotiators for India, explaining
how many countries came together on the issue.
While
the door has not completely been shut on mitigation in agriculture, the window
that was surreptitiously opened this year has been firmly bolted down.
The
Indian government had mandated its delegation to ensure that mitigation in the
agricultural sector does not find space at the negotiations. In the three days
here, the delegation has secured the one redline it came here with. The
decision on this took two days of closed-door talks and is likely to be
announced officially at the end of the week.
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