Brief of newspaper articles for the day bearing
relevance to Civil Services preparation
- GS PAPER 2
- Frame national policy for relief to rape victims: SC {Judiciary}
- SC allows Italian marine to go home {Foreign Policy}
- India, China agree to advance ongoing boundary negotiations {Foreign Policy}
- Reaching the last village {Governance}
- Bloc, stock, and barrel {Foreign Policy}
- Watch the follow through {Foreign Policy}
- G7 discusses economy, terror {Foreign Policy}
- India’s poor institutional memory {Governance}
- Express Edit: Waiting to take off {Governance}
- GS PAPER 3
- Birth pangs of payments banks {Indian Economy}
- India to seek WTO panel to rule on U.S. visa fees row {Indian Economy}
- China slowdown ‘a significant risk’ for global economy: Rajan { Economy}
GS PAPER 2
[1] Frame national policy for relief to rape victims: SC
SC verdict on rape victims:
- The Supreme Court asked the Centre to frame a uniform national policy to financially compensate rape victims, while terming the Nirbhaya Fund a mere “lip service”.
- There was too much dichotomy and contradiction among States regarding compensation schemes for rape survivors.
- SC issued notice to the Centre, States and Union Territories on the question of effective implementation of Section 357 A of the Code of Criminal Procedure.
- This provision mandates States to co-ordinate with the Centre to prepare a scheme for providing funds to compensate and rehabilitate victims or dependents.
- The victim compensation scheme has been notified only in 25 States.
What is Nirbhaya fund?
Click here
[2] SC allows Italian marine to go home
News:
- With the Centre endorsing his plea to return to Italy on ‘humanitarian grounds’, the Supreme Court allowed Italian marine Salvatore Girone to go home.
- He will have to return if an international tribunal decides that India has jurisdiction to try the marines for the deaths of two Kerala fishermen in 2012.
- The decision to let Mr. Girone go was taken after the Supreme Court was informed that the tribunal may give its verdict only by December 2018.
- SC laid down conditions for releasing Mr. Girone, including that he continue to remain under the jurisdiction of the Supreme Court and report to the local police station in Italy once every month.
- Also, the Italian authorities will keep the Indian embassy informed.
Salvatore Girone’s future now hinges on tribunal verdict
- The court said it would cancel the relief granted to him, if he was found to be using his liberty to influence witnesses in the case or tamper with the evidence.
Envoy’s responsibility
- Besides, the Italian Ambassador will take the responsibility of ensuring his return within a month in case the tribunal rules in favour of trial in India.
- In his plea, Mr. Girone had sought the court’s lenience to go back to his country till the tribunal decided the jurisdictional dispute.
- He has not been able to leave India, apart from a few brief intervals, since the alleged crime.
- The tribunal is adjudicating only on the limited question of whether India or Italy has the jurisdiction to try the two marines.
- The Supreme Court had suspended all court proceedings in India during August 2015 after Italy moved the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea.
[3] India, China agree to advance ongoing boundary negotiations
News:
- Cordial and clear discussions on sensitive issues marked India-China talks on Thursday during President Pranab Mukherjee’s visit to Beijing but no significant change in divergent positions was realised.
- The two leaders “agreed to strengthen cooperation in the peaceful uses of nuclear energy”.
- The two leaders discussed ways to strengthen cooperation in “investment, trade and tourism”. Chinese officials also showed interest in India’s flagship schemes such as ‘Digital India’ and ‘Make in India’ and in possibilities of investment in the Smart Cities project.
- Specifically, China has also agreed to accommodate more Indian tourists (seven batches or around 400 people this year) to visit Kailash Mansarovar via the Nathu La pass into Tibet.
- The two leaders also agreed to advance the ongoing boundary negotiations under the ‘Special Representatives’ mechanism, and at the same time resolved to take actions to maintain peace and tranquillity in the boundary regions.
[4] Reaching the last village
As per the 2011 Census, there are 6,40,930 villages in India, of which around 6,00,000 can be regarded as inhabited.
Census’s definition of urban area:
- If a settlement is under a municipality, corporation, cantonment board or a notified town area committee, it becomes a statutory town and is hence urban.
- Another definition of urban is linked to demographic characteristics: If in a population size of 5,000, 75 per cent of the male working population is engaged in non-agricultural pursuits and the population density exceeds 400 people per sq km, this becomes a Census town, regardless of whether it is a statutory town or not.
- This reclassification — a deviation from the traditional notions of urbanisation, which we link to the natural rate of growth in urban areas or rural-urban migration — also results in urbanisation.
- In fact, between 2001 and 2011, a large chunk of increased urbanisation was because of Census towns and not statutory ones.
Urban outgrowth and village:
- When a village (or hamlet) is physically contiguous to a town and possesses urban features; it is then treated as an urban agglomeration.
- Therefore, anything other than a statutory town, Census town or urban agglomeration is a village.
- In that sense, the village is residual, regardless of its population size.
- The population can be 10,000 people or it can also be 100 people. ‘
National Capital Territory villages:
- Only 222 villages according to 2011 census in the (National Capital Territory)
- There is a process for transition to the “urban”, but that hasn’t yet occurred for these 222 villages.
- There is a notification, land is acquired by the DDA and during the transition from a panchayat to municipality, there is understandable speculation on the land.
- You can thus find one side of a road that is “urban” and an opposite side still “rural”, like the area near Masoodpur village.
Reason:
- At one level, there is a governance issue.
- Use of the word “village” too loosely, across a very heterogeneous category.
- For Census purposes, we have in mind a revenue village but there may be many clusters of habitations/hamlets within the same revenue village.
- Inside forest areas, there may be non-surveyed villages. Just as we have habitations as sub-categories of villages, we have gram panchayats as categories higher than villages. Therefore, we have something like 2,50,000 gram panchayats.
- Delivering public goods and services in a village with a population size of 10,000, where there is a gram panchayat, is relatively easy.
- Delivering it in a village with a population size less than 200 is much more difficult.
- Delivering it in every habitation within the village is even more difficult.
- I forgot to mention that some villages with small population sizes are in difficult geographical terrain.
- How has this changed? The only decent answer we have seems to be from the ICE (income and consumption expenditure) 2014, undertaken by PRICE (People Research of India’s Consumer Economy).
- This tells us an expected story of greater integration of larger (population sizes more than 5,000) villages with the mainstream, primarily because of better transport connectivity.
- The radius of development, so to speak, is getting larger, but there are still the smaller villages.
[5] Bloc, stock, and barrel
Issue
- India-European Union relationship.
Lack of activity in India-European Union relationship
- The proximate causes for the talks being stalled (about free trade deal)for four years were the Italian marines case and the temporary ban, in 2015, of 700 generic drugs from India.
- However, a fundamental lack of understanding and a deficit of knowledge regarding the potential gains from the relationship, on both sides, has made the dynamic less productive than it could be and more vulnerable than it ought to be.
Is this pause a bad thing?
- Not necessarily.
- If both sides were to utilise this time to introspect on the benefits of the relationship — monetary and non-monetary, trade and beyond, and also to understand each other better.
- And, especially in the EU’s case, to understand itself better — the next time they approach one another it is likely to be with greater pragmatism and with a more accurate sense of the potential value of the relationship.
Understanding the EU
- EU is confusing to its external partners.
- As, it is a supranational association of countries, which has jurisdiction and decision-making power over its member states in some areas (commercial and competition policy, for instance), joint jurisdiction with members in others (for example, foreign and security policy is coordinated by the EU but the actual framing and execution is left to its members) and no jurisdiction whatsoever in others.
Does EU understands itself?
- The Eurozone crisis and more recently, the migrant crisis, have strained intra-union relationships. The migrant crisis has also questioned the commitment member states have to the humanistic founding values of modern Europe as well as their ability to coordinate a process to meet their international protection obligations.
- The Europe question is being asked explicitly in Britain, which will hold a referendum next month on whether or not to remain in the EU.
- These crises have tested the EU’s raisons d’être(reason of its existence).
Understanding India
- A second factor that has impacted the pace of development of Indo-EU relations is the fact that the EU is grappling with how India functions.
- The EU establishment is road-mapping the interaction between State and Central governments, how and where policy is formed and implemented.
- It is also learning from its member states that doing business directly with State governments in India is often the way forward.
- Consequently, the EU has been engaging India partly through partnerships with Indian States.
- The Agenda for Action-2020, which emerged from the March 30 talks in Brussels and sets the strategic agenda between India and EU for the next five years, emphasises sub-national and business-to-business linkages.
Strong bilateral relationships with the parts
- Thirdly, India’s strong bilateral relationships with the parts, i.e. several EU member states, such as France, Germany and the U.K., have affected the relationship with the whole.
- In the case of the above three countries the partnership extends to support for India’s bid for permanent membership of the UN Security Council.
- These strong partnerships have meant that the India-EU relationship has a tinge of complacency and lack of ownership about it.
Road ahead
- At a time when India is juggling its relationships with the United States, Russia and China, an India-EU dynamic could be an important element in the country’s multilateral approach to the world.
[6] Watch the follow through
Issue
- After the recent visit by PM Modi, Iran policy needs follow through to establish a partnership with significant implications, both bilateral and regional.
2003 New Delhi Declaration
- It provided the strategic underpinning in terms of shared regional and global interests and addressed all aspects of bilateral cooperation — energy, connectivity, education and training, and science and technology with special reference to information technology.
- Both countries also established a framework for enhancing defence cooperation.
- The growing isolation of Iran under Western sanctions and India’s negative vote in the International Atomic Energy Agency in 2005 had put the New Delhi Declaration in hibernation.
- It remain valid today, especially long-term energy cooperation as well as developing Chabahar port for enhancing connectivity to Afghanistan and Central Asia, which were revived during the recent visit.
Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA)
- The Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) known commonly as the Iran deal, is an international agreement on the nuclear program of Iran reached in Vienna on 14 July 2015 between Iran, the P5+1 (the five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council—China, France, Russia, United Kingdom, United States—plus Germany),and the European Union.
- The agreement (JCPOA) between Iran and P5+1 on Iran’s nuclear programme and the corresponding easing of sanctions, concluded last year, has provided the long-awaited opening.
Sanctions
- Prior to January 16 this year, the Western sanctions regime was largely harmonised, but there are now growing gaps.
- The U.S. has lifted “secondary nuclear-related sanctions” .
- But its unilateral sanctions linked to terrorism and missile proliferation remain.
- So does its general trade embargo with exceptions for export of Iranian carpets and pistachios and U.S. exports of medicines, communication equipment, and commercial passenger aircraft and related parts and services.
- Other countries (India) can resume normal trade with Iran, but financial transactions have to bypass U.S. territory even if the transactions are denominated in U.S. dollars.
- Further, the U.S. still retains about 200 Iranian entities on a prohibited list and transactions with these will attract American sanctions.
Other players
- Iran too is looking east for partners.
- Traditionally, India, China and Japan have been major buyers of Iranian crude.
- Chinese President Xi Jinping was in Tehran in January just after sanctions were eased and Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe is expected later in 2016.
- Before sanctions kicked in, China-Iran trade was of the order of $50 billion; the target for 2026 is $600 billion.
- China has assured Iran of a welcome in the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation and a 25-year framework for a strategic partnership.
- Train journey from Yiwu to Tehran can be done in a fortnight, shrinking the maritime travel period from Shanghai to Bandar Abbas by a month.
- It demonstrates the attraction of the Chinese ‘One Belt One Road’ initiative.
- The challenge for the Modi government therefore will be to ensure timely implementation of the Chabahar project.
- Japanese interest in working together on Chabahar is a welcome sign and needs to be explored further.
- Indian government has to deliver on project implementation because Iran today is a country in a hurry, with no dearth of suitors from east or west.
[7] G7 discusses economy, terror
News
- Group of Seven (G7) leaders voiced concern about emerging economies and terrorism at a summit in Japan .
Key points
- They all agreed on the need for flexible spending to spur world growth but the timing and amount depended on each country.
- Britain and Germany have been resisting calls for fiscal stimulus.
- G7 leaders voiced the view that emerging economies are in a severe situation, although there were views that the current economic situation is not a crisis.
- Other summit topics include terrorism, cyber-security and maritime security, especially China’s increasing assertiveness in the East and South China Seas, where Beijing has territorial disputes with Japan and several Southeast Asian nations.
G7
- The Group of 7 (G7) is a group consisting of Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the United Kingdom, and the United States.
- The European Union is also represented within the G7.
- These countries are the seven major advanced economies as reported by the International Monetary Fund.
[8] India’s poor institutional memory
Issue
- There is lack of learning curve across the system.
- States and cities continue to try to reinvent the whole learning process, either because they do not know what others have learned, or because of the ‘not invented here’ desire to show off one’s own smartness.
Development and learning
- Development is the result of enterprises and institutions in a country learning to do new things they have not done before.
- The faster they learn, the faster the country develops and grows.
- Insights can be found by comparing countries that have progressed at different rates. If one has gone further than another in the same time, starting from similar conditions, what enabled it to learn and develop faster?
Case study
- China and India, the two billion-plus Asian giants, provide a good comparison to extract hypotheses about country-level learning.
- Both countries, with similar size economies and similarly poor, started on their journeys of development in the middle of the last century.
- Without doubt, China has developed and grown much faster than India.
- Its economy is now five times the size of India’s and China is far ahead of India in human development indicators too: health, education and reduction of poverty.
- The Chinese state seems to be more deliberate in its approach to learning.
- When a single, authoritarian, political party runs the country everywhere, the centre can manage political promotions and ‘organizational learning’ across the system.
Can we apply Chinese methods in India?
- Chinese methods cannot be copied in India, a nation with greater political variety and social diversity.
- Since top-down directives cannot work in India, its leaders must find other ways to remove the learning disabilities within a complex system.
- For this, Indian leaders should address systemic issues like the poor ‘institutional memory’ within the Indian government.
Institutional Memory
- New governments and ministers want to show they are different from their predecessors.
- They ignore whatever little (or much) their predecessors had learned.
- Within the government, senior officers are moved around frequently—for political reasons, or for advancing their own careers.
- Therefore, even if there are records ‘on file’ of what went on before, there is very little transmission of ‘tacit’ knowledge of complex issues.
- This deeper learning is lost in the changes.
- Though it will be hard on their egos, ministers and government functionaries should be required to extensively debrief their predecessors.
- Before they announce a new scheme to show how smart they are, and tweet to show how stupid their predecessors were, they should be required to humbly learn, for the sake of the country, how to make ongoing schemes work better.
Localization of governance
- India is a very large and diverse country, which at long last may be realizing that it cannot be managed from the centre.
- The states, whether or not they and the centre are ruled by the same party, must have the freedom to develop their own appropriate solutions.
- Cities and villages must become more capable of self-government.
- Among the many benefits of localization of governance is the opportunity for many different solutions to emerge.
What India needs to do?
- Incredible India needs platforms for distilling and sharing learning across the country, among states, cities and villages, and across ministerial silos too.
- Indeed, this is the charter of the NITI Aayog, which has replaced the Planning Commission, which for too long tried to plan and manage India’s development from the centre.
- The NITI Aayog is on a very steep learning curve.
- Learning platforms are not merely websites and portals.
- Effective learning platforms must have processes for transmission of tacit knowledge too.
- India, with its scale and its diversity, and for the speed with which it must now learn to catch up with others, must create the world’s most dynamic learning system.
[9] Express Edit: Waiting to take off
Issue
- Critical analysis of the functioning of the government for the past two years.
Highs
- Cobwebs in the infrastructure sector were removed, for example, coal and telecom spectrum auctions were made transparent and the persistent backlog in environment clearances done away with.
- In the very first year, the government took a leap forward in fiscal federalism by accepting the Finance Commission’s recommendations to part with a larger (42 per cent) share of taxes with states and lend them flexibility in spending based on their priorities and unique needs.
- Simultaneously, the Central government embarked on a big public expenditure programme in key infrastructure sectors such as roads, highways and railways. These have an enormous multiplier effect.
- States too have taken the cue and continue to chart a capital expenditure plan that can spur growth.
Lows
- FDI inflows have been good, but for the recovery to be meaningful and sustainable, it is imperative that private investment, moribund now, picks up pace.
- It is time for the government to reflect on why all the “ease of doing business” and Make in India programmes, MUDRA, Start-Up India action plan and Stand-Up India schemes are not resulting in a critical mass of activity for the economy.
- What is at stake is the future of India — with millions entering the work force very year, who may be skilled under government schemes but fail to get a job given that the private sector is hardly investing.
GS PAPER 3
[1] Birth pangs of payments banks
News:
- 9 months ago RBI announced names of 11 applicants who had won “in-principle” approval to start payments banks, three have backed out.
- Tech Mahindra this week became the latest to drop its plans, and joined Cholamandalam Investment in citing ‘competition’ and a ‘long gestation period’ as key considerations in reaching the decision.
- That a corporate entity, which initially evaluated the business to be attractive enough to apply and was prepared to compete with other players to win a ‘coveted’ licence, could have cited competition as a reason to withdraw is intriguing.
What are the limitations?
- While it is true that this experimental banking licence would allow licensees limited scope to earn attractive interest spreads since they are prohibited from lending loans, the constraints of the business model were already known.
- Similarly, given the banking regulator’s focus on extending a remittances and payments network to unbanked and far-flung rural areas, it was understood that this new breed of niche banks would take more than a few years to establish standalone profitability.
- So, the argument of a long gestation period also wears thin. The logical surmise is that after the first flush of excitement at the prospect of winning a ‘banking licence’ — albeit a watered down one — they have realised that catering to a customer base that largely comprises low-income households, farmers and the migrant workforce may not be such a rosy proposition after all.
- For the RBI, the experience of having its chosen applicants develop cold feet must be disconcerting, given the time and effort invested in the process.
- Its disappointment is reflected in Deputy Governor S.S. Mundra’s recent comment that some kind of a processing fee could be considered as a levy on those withdrawing their applications.
- But central bankers too need to do some introspection.
- For one, the ground has shifted in the months since the RBI released draft guidelines for the payments banks in November 2014.
- The National Payments Corporation of India recently introduced its Unified Payments Interface that is expected to alter the way payment transactions are conducted.
- Also, commercial banks are now aggressively pushing their own mobile application-based offerings, eroding the potential that payments banks had for the banked and technology-savvy segment.
- Ultimately, though, it is in everybody’s interest to see a pared down field of banks unveiling their payments services when the licences are finally issued, especially if the goal of widening financial inclusion is to be sustainably met over the long term.
[2] India to seek WTO panel to rule on U.S. visa fees row
News:
- India will soon ask the World Trade Organisation (WTO) Dispute Settlement Body to establish a panel of experts to adjudicate its dispute with the U.S. over the increase in visa fees, government.
- This follows the failure of India and the U.S. to arrive at an amicable solution during the consultations.
- India’s decision — to seek the setting up of the panel — is likely to be announced after Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s June 7-8 visit to the U.S. According to WTO norms, if consultations fail, the complaining country can ask the settlement body to appoint a panel.
WTO rules:
- As per the WTO rules, India notified the WTO Secretariat on March 3 that it has “initiated a WTO dispute proceeding against the U.S. regarding measures imposing increased fees on certain applicants for two categories (H-1B and L-1) of nonimmigrant temporary working visas into the U.S., as well as measures relating to numerical commitments for some visas.”
- According to India, the measures appear to be inconsistent with the U.S. commitments under the General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS), the WTO stated.
IT sector
- India said the visa fee increase is “discriminatory” against Indian firms as these (H-1B and L-1) are the same categories that are most extensively used by Indian service suppliers, especially in the information technology sector.
- India, during the consultation process, categorically stated that the Obama administration’s rationale of using the visa fee hike to raise revenue (in this case, to finance a biometric tracking system and healthcare requirements of the 9/11 terror attack victims) and Washington’s “implicit justification” of this move could “open a Pandora’s Box”.
- India warned that the U.S.’s decision to continue with the implementation of the visa fee increase could result in other nations deliberately raising customs duties on goods to increase revenue for their domestic programmes.
- This is because the applied duties on many goods in several countries are much lower than the duty levels on those goods they have legally committed — or bound — in the WTO, giving them ample room to increase their ‘applied ’duties up to the ‘bound’ level.
‘Protectionist’
- Such ‘protectionist’ actions will in turn further hurt global trade, which is already going through a major slowdown owing to weak demand in many markets.
- “The visa fee increase can be equated with hikes in tariffs.
- It will hurt the very trade liberalisation process ironically being championed by the U.S. itself”.
- During the talks, the U.S. denied that there was anything in its legislation specifying that the visa fee hike is applicable only to Indian companies.
- The U.S. said there was nothing discriminatory in the legislation against Indian information technology companies, adding that since the visa fee increase is general in nature, it was not violative of any WTO rule.
- As per WTO norms, member countries are not allowed to normally discriminate between their trading partners.
- Washington also informed that the visa fee hike was part of a legislation (the Consolidated Appropriations Act, 2016), and therefore it would not be possible to make any changes without addressing the legislation as a whole.
- Indian IT industry body Nasscom said the financial implications of the visa fee increase for the technology sector would be around $400 million a year.
[3] China slowdown ‘a significant risk’ for global economy: Rajan
Issue
- RBI Governor has cautioned about a “sharp” slowdown in Chinese economy which,remained a “significant risk” for the global economy.
Key Points
- A sharp contraction in China’s imports over the past year, had already led to spill-overs through the trade, confidence, tourism and remittance channels and SAARC nations had not been able to avert its impact.
- Bad loans in the banking system are likely to grow over current levels and in addition there might be serious weaknesses in the shadow banking system, which could feed back to banks.
- Leaving aside the Goods and Services Tax (GST) reform, a number of other significant reforms have taken place to revive growth, including the recent passage of the new Bankruptcy bill, which is likely to speed up the resolution of distress tremendously.
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