the hindu, yothe telangana movement is already 40 (and more) years old; and it still hasn’t quite...

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ContentsTHE HINDU .......................................................................................................................... 1

No deal on Parchin; Iran-P5+1 talks to Continue ........................................................................................................................... 2The New Approach ................................................................................................................................................................................ 3Polio free does not Mean Paralysis Free ............................................................................................................................................ 5Formula to Identify “Inviolate” Forest Areas where Mining will be Banned .............................................................................. 7Fast growth, Limited Results ................................................................................................................................................................ 8Work to begin in Ladakh on World’s Largest Solar Telescope ................................................................................................... 1 2A Setback ............................................................................................................................................................................................... 1 4For an India-led Security Architecture in South Asia .................................................................................................................... 1 6Intemperate Comments ...................................................................................................................................................................... 1 7About China .......................................................................................................................................................................................... 1 9How Good Economics can Fuel Populist Politics .......................................................................................................................... 2 0Prudent Economic Decision .............................................................................................................................................................. 2 1Pushing Africa Aside in Mali .............................................................................................................................................................. 2 2India, Bangladesh sign Extradition Treaty ...................................................................................................................................... 2 3

YOJANA MAGAZINE........................................................................................................ 24Good Governance at Glance ............................................................................................................................................................... 2 5Governance and Development .......................................................................................................................................................... 3 0Conceptual Framework of Good Governance................................................................................................................................. 3 3Anti - Corruption measures in India ................................................................................................................................................. 3 4Evolution of Bank Regulation in India ............................................................................................................................................ 3 6Strengthening and Restructuring of ICDS Scheme ......................................................................................................................... 3 6CensusInfo India Software Launched ............................................................................................................................................... 3 8Rural Business Hub Scheme ................................................................................................................................................................ 3 9

KURUKSHETRA ................................................................................................................ 41Vision 2022 ........................................................................................................................................................................................... 4 2New Law of Manual Scavangers ........................................................................................................................................................ 4 4Draft Water Policy 2012 ................................................................................................................................................................... 4 5eToilet India’s First Electronic Public Toilet ................................................................................................................................. 4 6MGNREGA and Social Audit .............................................................................................................................................................. 4 7

PRESS INFORMATION BUREAU .................................................................................. 48National Sample Survey Office ......................................................................................................................................................... 5 2Survey undertaken/ launched ............................................................................................................................................................ 5 2MPLAD Scheme .................................................................................................................................................................................. 5 3Coordination and Publication (CAP) ............................................................................................................................................... 5 4Twenty Point Programme (TPP) ................................................................................................................................................... 5 5PM’s Global Advisory Council of Overseas Indians Meets at Kochi ........................................................................................ 5 6National Electric Mobility Mission Plan Launched Today ........................................................................................................ 5 7Aligning ‘National Investment Fund’ Operation to Enhance ‘Disinvestment Policy’ ......................................................... 5 8Executive Committee on Climate Change constituted ................................................................................................................. 5 8Þ Wildlife Management-Huge Challenge ......................................................................................................................................... 6 0

SCIENCE REPORTER ...................................................................................................... 61New Bird Species in India ................................................................................................................................................................... 6 1New Lease ofLife for Northern River Terrapins ........................................................................................................................... 6 2Wild Ass National Parke .................................................................................................................................................................... 6 2

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Gist of

THE HINDU

⇒ NO DEAL ON

PARCHIN; IRAN-P5+1 TALKS TO CONTINUE

U.N. experts returned from Tehran onFriday without sealing a long-sought deal onParchin.This could restart suspicion that Iranworked on atomic armsand add to doubts aboutsuccess of the upcoming Iran-P5+1 talks.Herman Nackaerts, who headed the team ofInternational Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA)experts, said the two sides would meet again inthe Iranian capital on February 12. But even ifthose talks make progress, they will come too latefor an Iran-P5+1 meeting, tentatively scheduledfor the end of this month.⇒ POLITICS OF TELANGANA

It took 40 (and more) years for the Teluguspeakers of Madras Presidency to make theTamils see the sense of the demand for AndhraPradesh. The Telangana movement is already 40(and more) years old; and it still hasn’t quiteachieved what it aimed for. Before the GeneralElections of 2004, the Telangana Rashtra Samitiallied with the Congress, which informallypromised it would concede the TRS’ maindemand, while formally stating that it wouldcreate a States Reorganisation Commission ifvoted to power. The Congress alliance came topower in 2004, but a new SRC did not materialise.This led to a renewal of the protests, whereupon,

in December 2009, the then Home Minister, P.Chidambaram, promised that the demand forTelangana would soon be granted. But he quicklybacktracked. More recently, the Bharatiya JanataParty has said that it would create a Telanganastate within 100 days of coming to power at theCentre. As with the Congress in 2004, thispromise may be opportunistic rather thanprincipled — intended only to gain votes and seatsfor its alliance. Writing as both historian andcitizen — is that while linguistic states werenecessary in the first, early, stages of Indianindependence, it may now be time for a furtherreorganisation of states. The proponents ofTelangana, Vidharbha, and Gorkhaland all havea robust case.Their regions are well defined in anecological and cultural sense, and have historicallybeen neglected by the more powerful or richerparts of the State. Likewise, Uttar Pradesh is fartoo large to be administered as a single unit.Breaking it up into three or four states would leadto more effective and focused governance.

After 65 testing years of independence,there need no longer be any fear about the unityof India. The country is not about to Balkanise,nor is it about to become a dictatorship. The realproblems in India today have to do with the qualityof governance. Smaller states may be one wayto address this problem.

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⇒ PHILANTHROPY IN INDIA

In India, philanthropy is an ancient andvenerable tradition. Apart from directly helping thepoor and the underprivileged, people have alwaysoffered money to religious organisations, whichin turn run orphanages, hospitals, and educationalinstitutions. Even the poor are engaged inphilanthropy by devoting a proportion of theirincome directly or indirectly to the needy.

In the last century, the trusts created bysome prominent families formally organisedgiving, both by setting up institutions linked to thetrusts, and by offering assistance to unaffiliatedorganisations. Formal giving thus transformedIndia’s institutional landscape, leading to thecreation of some of the country’s finest institutions.

The phenomenal increase of wealth in Indiaover the last few decades has reinvigoratedphilanthropy. Although, our economic, social,political, and environmental problems continue toworsen, “new” philanthropists can play a criticalrole in improving the human condition in oursociety⇒ THE TARGET AREAS

Philanthropy in India has a number oftargets: poverty, social and economic inequity,injustice, health, education and the environment,to name a few. Indeed, problems in these sectorsare enormous and complex, and progress in theirresolution calls for focused and sustained efforts.However, our deteriorating environment anddeclining natural resources receiveproportionately less attention than other areas.

Unfortunately, our present environmentalproblems are acute and worsening. Air quality isdeclining, water is becoming scarce, land is beingdegraded, soils are losing their organic matter, andbiodiversity is diminishing. We have a huge and

unique biodiversity. At the beginning of the lastcentury, perhaps 50 per cent of our land area wascovered by natural habitats. Today, it is less than20 per cent. The value of biodiversity andassociated ecosystem services, when translatedinto monetary terms, exceed the total annualGross Domestic Product. The ecosystemservices include water regulation, carbonsequestration, and provision of pollinators foragriculture, enemies of insect pests, and a vastrange of products. They offer spiritual andaesthetic enrichment — yet they are universallytaken for granted, considered “free” by society,and suffer benign neglect.

With ongoing climate change, it is the stateof the environment that will determine the fate ofhuman societies in the 21st century, and notmerely our ability to clothe, feed, find shelter,combat disease and educate ourselves.

Diminishing biodiversity and degradation ofhabitats exact a heavy toll on rural communities,for whom local ecosystem resources sustainlivelihoods. There are hundreds of millions of suchpeople in our country. The Naxalite movementthat has spread over much of India represents along and bitter struggle of indigenous peoples forrights over their environmental assets, andfrustrations over a development process goneawry. Yet, with a few exceptions, the ecosystemsthemselves, or the people dependent upon them,do not appear to be on the radar of “new” Indianphilanthropy.⇒ THE NEW APPROACH

An implicit goal of philanthropy is socialtransformation: the engagement of civil society toresolve complex problems when the state or itsagents lack resources or the means to bring aboutchange. One can try to transform society oneself,




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or one can support new institutions that will befully qualified for and engaged in the process oftransformation. A diversity of institutions, oftenwith overlapping missions, enriches ideas andapproaches to address problems. India’s vastgeographic scale, its ethnic and cultural diversityand its aspirations as a model pluralistic societyalso require a diverse array of institutions, but therecord of the “new” Indian philanthropists increating and supporting new and emerginginstitutions, with a few exceptions, has not yet beenstellar.

While a few older foundations, such as theTata Trusts, have been run as purely donoragencies, the approach of the “new” Indianphilanthropists has been more ambivalent,indicating a sense of wanting to fix thingsthemselves. More often, foundation resources aredevoted to direct implementation of specificprojects dear to the heart of the founder. In severalcases it is the attempt to alleviate poverty, improvehealth, or primary education in particular areas.More recently, such projects have taken the shapeof private universities. These are all noble causes,clearly worthy of support, and it is to the creditof the “new” philanthropists that such initiativesfor the betterment of society are increasing at arapid pace.

Lacking for the most part, though, are grant-making programmes that benefit specialistinstitutions and organisations that can foster newideas and innovations. The contrast with thesituation in the United States, where professionalsrun the private foundations and income isdisbursed in the form of grants is instructive. Thesystem fosters a diverse array of ideas,institutions, and approaches to flourish andcompete. The thousands of grantees —institutions and individuals — become agents oflong-lasting change. The good news is that many

“bright stars” on the institutional skyscape in Indiaare young, innovative environmental organisationsreceiving good support from some “new”philanthropists. As philanthropy and its vibrantnon-governmental organisations mature in India,hundreds if not thousands of such stars will shine— together forging a better environment and ajust society.⇒ Y.V. REDDY TO

HEAD 14TH FINANCE COMMISSION

The government, announced the constitutionof the 14th Finance Commission under thechairmanship of former RBI Governor Y. V.Reddy. The five-member panel is to submit itsreport by October 31, 2014. Apart from itsrecommendations on the sharing of tax proceedsbetween the Centre and the States which willapply for a five-year period beginning April 1,2015, the Commission has been asked to suggeststeps for pricing of public utilities such aselectricity and water in an independent mannerand also look into issues like disinvestment, GSTcompensation, sale of non-priority PSUs andsubsidies. Apart from Dr. Reddy in the chair, othermembers of the Commission are former FinanceSecretary Sushma Nath, NIPFP Director M.Govinda Rao, Planning Commission MemberAbhijit Sen and Former Acting Chairman ofNational Statistical Commission Sudipto Mundle.

The Commission, the Finance Minister said,would review the state of finances, deficit anddebt levels of the Centre and States, keeping inview, in particular, the fiscal consolidation roadmaprecommended by the 13th Finance Commission.

Besides, the 14th Finance Commissionwould suggest measures for maintaining a stableand sustainable fiscal environment consistent withequitable growth.





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⇒ RANGARAJAN PANEL SUGGESTS AVERAGE OF

GLOBAL PRICES FOR GAS

The Prime Minister-appointed RangarajanCommittee has suggested mandating a price ofdomestically-produced natural gas at an averageof international hub prices and cost of importedLNG instead of the present mechanism of marketdiscovery.

The panel, in its report made public,suggested first taking an average of the U.S.,Europe and Japanese hub or market price and thenaveraging it out with the netback price of importedliquefied natural gas (LNG) to give the sale priceof domestically-produced gas.The panel headedby C. Rangarajan, Chairman, Economic AdvisoryCouncil to the Prime Minister, said the PSCprovided for arm’s length pricing and priorgovernment approval of the formula or basis forgas pricing, subject to policy on natural gas pricing.“The committee recommended deriving one pricefrom “the volume-weighted netback price toproducers at (LNG) exporting country well-headfor Indian imports for the trailing 12 months.”⇒ POLIO FREE DOES NOT

MEAN PARALYSIS FREE

Identifying children who suddenly displaymuscle weakness, often not moving one or moreof their limbs as a result, forms the cornerstoneof polio surveillance. Such children could have“acute flaccid paralysis” (AFP) that issymptomatic of polio, a disease caused by a virus.But AFP can also arise for other reasons,including infection by non-polio pathogens.

No child in India has been diagnosed withpolio for nearly two years now and all theindications are that the virus responsible for it isno longer circulating here. However, the

country’s polio surveillance system has indicateda sharp increase during recent years in the numberof non-polio AFP cases.ALARMING DATA

Data published by the World HealthOrganisation show that close to 8,000 non-polioAFP cases were identified in India during 2003.They went up to over 12,000 the following year,more than 26,000 in 2005 and crossed 40,000 by2007. In 2011, there were more than 60,000 non-polio AFP cases.

A good polio surveillance system ought topick up all AFP cases among children so that theycan be screened for poliovirus infection. Onaverage, only about one child out of every 200children carrying the poliovirus develops AFP.Such cases must be identified so that appropriateimmunisation measures can be undertaken.

India’s polio surveillance shows that thecountry is polio-free. But it also indicates that thecountry now has the world’s highest rate of non-polio AFP cases. According to data published inWHO’s Weekly Epidemiological Record ,India’s annualised non-polio AFP rate for 2011stood at 15.06 per one lakh children below 15years of age, compared to a global rate that yearof 5.48. Moreover, most of the country’s non-polioAFP cases occur in just two States — Bihar andUttar Pradesh. They accounted for about 61 percent of the 53,000-odd non-polio AFP casesidentified in the country in 2012, according to datafrom WHO’s National Polio Surveillance Project.As a result, the two States have far higherannualised non-polio AFP rates than other States— around 34 for Bihar and about 23 for UttarPradesh. The rate for the country as a whole isslightly over 12.


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⇒ INTERNET TAX, A FLAWED IDEA

“We’ve become the bad gatekeepers,”lamented Sunil Mittal, CEO, Bharti Airtel. “Whensomebody watches YouTube on a mobile and endsup [with a] big bill, he curses under his breath attelecom operators. But YouTube is consuming amassive amount of resources on our network.Somebody’s got to pay for that.”

What Mittal suggested at the Mobile WorldCongress in Barcelona last year, and is gainingrapid popularity with service providers around theworld, was an “inter-connect charge”, aneffective Internet tax that would force companiessuch as Google and Facebook to pay networkoperators a levy similar to the termination fee thatnetworks pay one another to complete a voicecall. This growing clamour for an Internet tax wasobliquely backed by the Government at a U.Nconference, held last month.

The advantages for both telecom operatorssuch as Airtel, and the Government (which toomight look to levy a similar tax) are immediate andobvious. Telcos, which dole out huge investmentfor spectrum and network infrastructure, will beable to get a bigger slice of what goes tocompanies such as Google. This is exactly thenew source of revenue that operators, which aresuffering from shrinking revenue and rising costs,have been waiting for.⇒ UNDERWATER

MISSILE TAKES OFF SUCCESSFULLY

India achieved a major milestone byestablishing underwater missile launch capabilitywhen K-15 missile, code-named B05, wassuccessfully test-fired off the Visakhapatnamcoast. The 10-metre-high Submarine-LaunchedBallistic Missile (SLBM), lifted off from a

pontoon as it was ejected by a gas generator, roseto an altitude of 20 km and reached its full rangeof 700 km before splashing down in the watersof the Bay of Bengal with single-digit accuracy.

With the completion of developmental trials,the missile is now ready for integration with INSArihant, the indigenously-built nuclear-poweredsubmarine. In the coming years, India will havefour nuclear-powered submarines. BesidesArihant, a nuclear-powered submarine is beingbuilt at the Visakhapatnam Naval Dock Yard andthe hulls of two other submarines are underfabrication in Vadodara, Gujarat. India is the fifthcountry to have underwater missile capability.The other nations are the United States, France,Russia and China. On the development of the K-4 missile with a range of 3,000 km, he said thatas was done in the case of the Agni family ofmissiles, a series of underwater K-series missileswould be developed.

Once integration was completed, Arihantwould carry 12 nuclear-tipped missiles, eachweighing six tonnes. The submarine would bepowered by an 80 MWt (thermal) reactor thatuses enriched uranium as fuel and light water ascoolant and moderator. Meanwhile, sources in theDepartment of Atomic Energy said the 80MWtreactor would be commissioned in May or June2013 as various tests were under way. “Theharbour trials of Arihant would begin when theon-board reactor goes critical and starts producingsteam.” For the tests under way, the steam wasbeing produced from an external source from theland.

The hypersonic Shourya missile is the landversion of the K-15 missile and the trials of thesystem have been completed. Shourya can belaunched from canister too and the Army is


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thinking of placing orders for the missile. A DRDOofficial, who watched the K-15 launch on Sundayfrom a nearby ship, called the missile “a deadlydeterrent,” which would be armed with a nuclearwarhead. Home-grown GPS ‘Gagan’ likely by2014. India will launch this year the first of itsseries of navigation satellites required to provideregional navigation service, independent of theU.S.-controlled GPS (Global Positioning System).

Europe, Russia and China were eitherhaving or evolving their own navigation servicesindependent of the GPS. The Indian SpaceResearch Organisation too was planning to evolveindigenous navigation service to provide enhancedand more precise navigation. To provide thisservice, to be christened ‘Gagan,’ India neededto launch a number of satellites and the first ofthis series, the Indian Regional Navigation SatelliteSystem (IRNSS), would be launched by the PSLVC-22 rocket, probably in the second half of thisyear. After all the required satellites werelaunched, India would be in a position to providenavigation service through ‘Gagan’ probably in2014.⇒ FORMULA TO IDENTIFY “INVIOLATE” FOREST

AREAS WHERE MINING WILL BE BANNED

In what seems to be a successor to thecontroversial “no-go zone” concept, mining andother harmful non-forestry activities could soonbe completely banned from forest areas identifiedas “inviolate”, using a formula created by a high-level Environment Ministry panel.

Wildlife sanctuaries, tiger reserves, nationalparks – as well as a buffer zone of one km aroundsuch protected areas – compact patches of verydense forest, the last remnant of a forest type andforests very near perennial rivers will all beautomatically placed within the inviolate zone,

according to a report of the Committee toFormulate Objective Parameters for Identificationof Inviolate Forest Areas.

The panel was formed in the wake of thedemise of the “no-go zone” approach,conceptualised by the former EnvironmentMinister, Jairam Ramesh, which identified denseforest areas in nine major coal fields where forestclearances would be denied. Following intensepressure from the mining industry and the CoalMinistry, a ministerial group headed by then-Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee vetoed theidea. However, in September 2011, the group ofMinisters suggested that “identified pristine forestareas, where any mining activity would lead toirreversible damage, should be barred from anykind of non-forest activity.” Accordingly, theEnvironment Ministry, now headed by JayanthiNatarajan, formed a panel to formulateparameters to identify such “inviolate” forestareas.

The panel submitted a report in July 2012,but the Ministry only made it public on Thursday.The next step is to actually prepare geo-referenced maps of inviolate areas using thisformula. Apart from the automatic exclusionsmentioned earlier, the formula calls for scoring offorest areas based on six principles: forest type,biological richness, wildlife value, forest cover,landscape integrity and hydrological value. Thecountry will be divided into grids of one squarekilometre each, which will be scored, mostly usingexisting data. An average score above 70, out ofa possible 100, will also be declared inviolate.⇒ RECYCLE GREY WATER

UN-Habitat has commenced a new globalconsultation to reiterate the crucial role ofwastewater management in the water cycle and








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explore policy options for a sustainable future.These consultations have also become necessaryto set a future goal for water use, particularly forthe years following 2015, which is the target yearfor the Millennium Development Goals. For India— a severely water-stressed region — this offersan opportunity to reflect on its policies and drawlessons from best practices across the world. Thecore challenge facing the country is the yawninggap between demand for water and the severelyconstrained supply.

From 813 billion cubic metres — the figurefor 2010 — demand is set to reach 1,093 BCMby 2025. Conventional resources alone cannotmeet this steep increase. There is a pressing needto explore alternative sources. In this context,policymakers have done well to promote waterharvesting to improve supply. But they have utterlyfailed when it comes to reusing water. Industrialscale recycling would help, but it could beexpensive. On the other hand, the oftenoverlooked building level reuse of grey water —wastewater from kitchen sinks, showers andlaundry fixtures — is a more effective strategyto pursue.

According to a Centre for Science andEnvironment estimate in 2011, kitchen use,shower and laundry consume more than 70 percent of the 920 litres of water supplied perhousehold per day. Building systems seldom trapthis wastewater for non-potable use such as toiletflushing, fire fighting and gardening. Instead, theydrain it out along with sewage, burdening thesystem. More important, the precious water islost. In contrast, countries such as Japanextensively recycle water and successfully tideover their water deficit. Through a combinationof strategies involving small treatment plants and

closed loop water supply at building level, Japanreuses more than 53 million litres of water everyday. In addition, innovative bathroom fixturesconduct used sink water directly to the flush tankof the toilet and save about 22,000 gallons everyyear.

Recycling needs changes to plumbingarrangements in a building, but it is not hard toimplement or monitor. What is missing is the willand regulatory framework. Cities such as Nandedhave amended their building rules to makewastewater treatment in large buildingscompulsory, but such provisions are present moreon paper than in practice. If policymakers areserious about increasing water use efficiencythrough recycling — a goal set by the NationalWater Mission — buildings should be compelledto meet most of their non-potable waterrequirement through grey water reuse.⇒ FAST GROWTH, LIMITED RESULTS

Yet, in a recent essay, the eminenteconomists Amartya Sen and Jean Drèze pointedto an important problem with equating India’seconomic performance with its GDP growth rate.They noted:

“There is probably no other example in thehistory of world development of an economygrowing so fast for so long with such limitedresults in terms of broad-based social progress.”Sen and Drèze were referring to the fact that forabout 32 years now (since 1980), India hasaveraged annual GDP growth rates ofapproximately six per cent — whereas, thenation’s ranking in terms of the HumanDevelopment Index has remained unchangedover that period: we were ranked an abysmal 134in 1980, we were ranked exactly that in 2011. In1980, about 80 per cent of our population subsisted








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on less than two dollars a day, and thatpercentage has declined by as little as five per centsince then.

Comparable growth rates sustained oversimilar lengths of time have utterly transformedsocieties in the 20th century: South Korea,Taiwan, Singapore, and large parts of China, tomention the most prominent ones. They havegone from largely poor, illiterate and agrariansocieties to middle class, literate, urbanised andindustrial societies with standards of living vastlysuperior to ours. Whatever may be said aboutIndia, it is obvious that no structural transformationof our largely poverty-stricken economy hasoccurred and what is more, none seems verylikely in the immediate future.

Not only have three decades of high GDPgrowth gone unaccompanied by a societaltransformation, we seem to have regressed oncertain fronts. For instance, while India rankedeither first or second in 1980 within South Asia(defined here as comprising India, Pakistan,Bangladesh, Nepal, Sri Lanka, and Bhutan) onmost yardsticks such as life expectancy, femaleliteracy, infant mortality, maternal mortality ratio,improved sanitation, child immunisation, and meanyears of schooling, today we are ranked eitherfifth or last among the South Asian nations on thesesame yardsticks. Ironically, the only indicator inwhich we have done well is in the rate of GDPgrowth per annum.

A country like Bangladesh, whose annualGDP growth rate has averaged about half that ofIndia’s over these years, has done vastly betterin terms of translating that growth to the qualityof life for its poor, its young, and its females. Onmost yardsticks that matter, Bangladesh nowoutperforms India. That 30 years of more than

twice the much-disparaged “Hindu” rate ofgrowth has left us at the absolute rock-bottom ofthe world tables in terms of malnourished children(44 per cent at the last count — significantly morethan that anchor of all things sorry and sad aboutthis world, sub-Saharan Africa whose percent ofunderweight children is 25 per cent) should tellus that there is something seriously amiss aboutlooking at the annual growth rate of the GDP tomeasure the well-being of a society.⇒ ON DEMOGRAPHIC DIVIDEND

The Goldman Sachs report argued that bythe year 2050, if Brazil, Russia, Indian and Chinagrew at a certain rate per annum, they would beamong the world’s six largest economies in termsof overall size.

This does not tell us anything about eitherper capita incomes (in terms of which thesecountries would remain well behind the moreaffluent nations) or the quality of life of themajority of people therein. The report based itsprojections mainly on something called the“demographic dividend.” In simple terms, “young”societies like India and China have adisproportionately large percentage of people inthe workforce relative to those outside it. The sizeof the working-age cohort is central to the overallattractiveness of an economy from theperspective of an investment bank like GoldmanSachs because it is likely to be in the market forall sorts of goods — homes, automobiles,appliances, electronics, cosmetics, fast-food, etc.The working-age cohorts’ employment earnings,moreover, can support a social security net forthose who have retired and now have to subsiston pensions and savings.

On a comparative yardstick, India’sdemographic profile was seen by the BRIC report




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as most favourable because this ratio of workingto non-working populations would remain infavour of the former well into the 21st century inour case.

In the euphoria over the BRIC report (itwas the basis for the disastrous “India Shining”campaign of the Bharatiya Janata Party; the sameprojections were echoed in speeches by PrimeMinister Manmohan Singh, Union FinanceMinister Chidambaram, Deputy Chairman of theCentral Planning Commission Montek Ahluwalia;and they were quoted ad nauseam in themainstream media) certain basic facts wereglossed over.

Firstly, the GDP is a statistic from within thefield of National Accounts whose very definitionindicates its limited ambit: it is the total marketvalue of all final goods and services produced ina country in a given year. In other words, it is astatistic that measures the quantity, not the qualityor content, of economic activity in a society.When a country liberalises — either domesticallyas India began to do in 1980 or across itsinternational borders as we began after 1991 —the increased volume of production, investment,trade and market exchanges will inevitably resultin an increase in the GDP.

To infer from the growth in GDP anyconsequences for societal welfare is not logical.The GDP’s precursor was devised during theDepression of the 1930s as western governments(in Britain and the United States most prominently)tried to get a handle on the basic statistics of thedifferent sectors of their economies in order toplan state policies to get them out of recession andon to growth. Simon Kuznets and John MaynardKeynes, both pioneers in its creation andmeasurement, warned against confusing GDP

with anything other than a measure of the sumof economic activity of a society, and especiallyagainst confounding it with societal welfare.Something like the Exxon Valdez disaster inAlaska will inevitably increase the GDP as themassive clean-up means billions of dollars will bespent, whereas the environmental impact of thatdisaster did nothing to diminish the GDP of theU.S. as damage to nature is rendered anexternality. On the other hand, the positive impactof people in a community bartering or exchangingservices (“I’ll baby sit for you this week while youfix the leak in my roof”) goes unregistered on theGDP metric.

Secondly, the BRIC report emerged notfrom an academic body or a policy think-tank. Itcame from an investment bank that was interestedin getting people to put their money into a newlycreated “Emerging Market” fund. Creating abuzz about these economies, and finding somehard nugget or fact that seemed to suggest theirfortunes were on the rise, is an inevitable part ofthe marketing of such funds. The “demographicdividend” argument offered a perfect empirical“fact” of just this sort.

The extrapolations into the future(projections were made as far as 2030 and even2050) by a firm that could not foresee (and wasin fact a substantial culprit in) the financial crisisthat engulfed the world economy barely four yearslater were essentially meaningless. It wasmoreover a tautological argument in the sense thatgiven the overall size of the BRIC economies itwas inevitable that their GDPs would over timeend up being among the largest in the world. Thegreater the buzz Goldman Sachs could createabout the BRIC economies, the likelier the“success” of their Emerging Market funds in the

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short run, which added to their profits as the firmmade money off every transaction therein.

The Goldman Sachs report should havebeen assessed as advertising copy rather than asunbiased prognostication about the future of theworld economy. (By the late 2000s, as the BRICeconomies with the exception of China failed toperform to expectations, Goldman Sachs hadalready lost interest in them and had startedpromoting MIST, another emerging market fundbased on Mexico, Indonesia, South Korea andTurkey. The analogy to advertising sloganeeringrather than economic analysis should be obviousto anyone here.)

Thirdly, for India (or any society) to realiseits demographic dividend, at least three factors arecritical: its youth need (a) quality education, (b)good health, and (c) jobs that pay a decent wageand enhance their intellectual and other skills. Thestory of India’s post-independence developmenthas been one of failure across all three of thesesectors, and the picture has not improved post theeconomic liberalisation initiated in 1991. Recentstudies have confirmed what every Indianalready knows: the quality of public education atthe primary and secondary levels has beenabysmal. In large part this is because since 1947we have emphasised tertiary education for anarrow middle-class and elite, and underinvestedin primary and secondary education for themasses.

We have already seen that with the highestrate of malnourishment of children below the ageof six in the entire world, and a public healthinfrastructure that exists more on paper than onthe ground, especially outside the cities, largesegments of our populace are not in good health.The difficulty of getting clean water, theunavailability of toilets, and decrepit or non-

existent sewage systems, have also meant highincidence of preventable diseases like cholera,typhoid, and dysentery. And when it comes tojobs, recent decades of high growth, especiallysince 2000, have been accompanied by eitherstagnation or even decline in the absolute numbersof those employed in the organised sector of theeconomy.

Unlike Korea or Taiwan or China (all threeof whom also had a thoroughgoing land reformthat eliminated landlordism and other feudalholdovers) whose growth was concentratedinitially in relatively labour-intensive sectors suchas manufacturing, ours has been skewed heavilytowards skill- and education-intensive sectors likeInformation Technology, pharmaceuticals, andbusiness process outsourcing.

The performance in these sectors has beenstellar in terms of exports and their contributionto the GDP, but not in terms of their ability togenerate large numbers of jobs. Twenty yearsafter the onset of the phenomenal IT boom, evenwith the most expansive definition of its ambit, thissector only employs about nine million Indianswhile India produces about 13 million newentrants into the job market every year .⇒ 140 COUNTRIES

AGREE ON TREATY TO LIMIT MERCURY USE

• Delegations from some 140 countriesagreed to adopt a ground-breaking treatylimiting the use and emission of health-hazardous mercury, the U.N. said, thoughenvironmental activists lamented it did notgo far enough.

• The world’s first legally binding treatyon mercury, reached after a week ofthorny talks, will aim to reduce globalemission levels of the toxic heavy metal,also known as quicksilver, which poses








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risks to human health and theenvironment.

• “This was a herculean task ... but wehave succeeded,” Achim Steiner, U.N.Under-Secretary General and head ofthe U.N. Environment Programme(UNEP), told reporters in Geneva.

• The treaty has been named the MinamataConvention on Mercury, in honour of theJapanese town where inhabitants fordecades have suffered theconsequences of serious mercurycontamination.

• The text will be signed in Minamata inOctober and will take effect once it hasbeen ratified by 50 countries —something organisers expect will takethree to four years.

• Mercury is found in products rangingfrom electrical switches, thermometersand light-bulbs, to amalgam dental fillingsand even facial creams. Large amountsof the heavy metal are released fromsmall-scale gold mining, coal-burningpower plants, metal smelters and cementproduction.

• “It is quite remarkable how muchmercury in a sense has entered into usein our lives.... We’ve been creating aterrible legacy”

• The treaty sets a phase out date of 2020for a long line of products, includingmercury thermometers, blood pressuremeasuring devices, most batteries,switches, some kinds of fluorescentlamps and soaps and cosmetics. It,however, provides exceptions for somelarge medical measuring devices whereno mercury-free alternatives exist.

• Switzerland and Norway, which initiated

the process a decade ago, had along withJapan pledged an initial $3 million to getthings started.

• Once up and running the treaty willprovide funds to help transition awayfrom mercury-linked products andprocesses through the U.N.’s GlobalEnvironment Facility (GEF), andprobably also a second mechanism,organisers said.

⇒ WORK TO BEGIN IN LADAKH ON

WORLD’S LARGEST SOLAR TELESCOPE

• Work on the world’s largest solartelescope is likely to commence in theLadakh region of Jammu and Kashmirby the end of this year.

• Once ready, it would be one of the fewsolar telescope facilities in the world witha capability to do both day and nightastronomy. It would also fill the longitudegap between Japan and Europe.

• The innovative design and backendinstruments would further enableobservations with an unprecedented highspatial resolution that would providecrucial information on the nature ofmagnetic fields.

• Satellites in low earth orbit face greaterrisk as during periods of heightened solaractivity, the earth’s upper atmosphereswells up slightly in response to the extraheating, which in turn increases the rateof decay of these satellites.

⇒ WHY A NATIONAL WATER FRAMEWORK LAW

The idea of a national water framework lawmooted by the Central government has run intostrong opposition from the Chief Ministers ofseveral States. The aim of this article is to clarify









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the issues involved for the information of thegeneral public.⇒ ALAGH COMMITTEE

That draft was not adopted by the Ministryof Water Resources, but it did accept the idea ,picked up the term ‘framework law’, and set upa new committee to draft the law under thechairmanship of Dr. Y. K. Alagh. That committeehas presumably not yet concluded itsdeliberations, but meanwhile the idea of a nationalwater framework law appears to have beenmentioned at a Conference of Water ResourcesMinisters as well as the recent NDC meeting, andhas drawn a negative response. That response isregrettable. A national law on water is verynecessary, and it must be a framework law.

Why is a national law on waternecessary? There are several reasons.

(1) Under the Indian Constitution water isprimarily a State subject, but it is anincreasingly important national concernin the context of:(a) the judicial recognition of the right

to water as a part of the fundamentalright to life;

(b) the general perception of animminent water crisis, and the direand urgent need to conserve thisscarce and precious resource;

(c) the severe and intractable inter-useand inter-State conflicts;

(d) the pollution of rivers and other watersources, turning rivers into sewersor poison and contaminatingaquifers;

(e) the long-term environmental,ecological and social implications ofprojects to augment the availabilityof water for human use;

(f) the equity implications of thedistribution, use and control of water;

(g) the international dimensions of someof India’s rivers; and

(h) the emerging concerns about theimpact of climate change on waterand the need for appropriateresponses at local, national, regional,and global levels.

It is clear that the above considerationscast several responsibilities on theCentral government, apart from those ofthe State governments. Given these andother concerns, the need for anoverarching national water law is self-evident.

(2) Several States are enacting laws onwater and related issues. These can bequite divergent in their perceptions of andapproaches to water. Some divergencesfrom State to State may be inevitable andacceptable, but extreme and fundamentaldivergences will create a very muddledsituation. A broad national consensus oncertain basics seems very desirable.

(3) Different State governments tend toadopt different legal positions on theirrights over the waters of a river basinthat straddles more than one State. Suchlegal divergences tend to render theresolution of inter-State river-waterconflicts extremely difficult. A nationalstatement of the general legal positionand principles that should govern suchcases seems desirable.

(4) Water is one of the most basicrequirements for life. If national laws areconsidered necessary on subjects suchas the environment, forests, wildlife,biological diversity, etc., a national law








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on water is even more necessary. Wateris as basic as (if not more basic than)those subjects.

(5) Finally, the idea of a national water lawis not something unusual orunprecedented. Many countries in theworld have national water laws or codes,and some of them (for instance, the SouthAfrican National Water Act of 1998) arewidely regarded as very enlightened. Theconsiderations behind those nationalcodes or laws are relevant to India aswell, although the form of a water lawfor India will clearly have to be guidedby the nature of the Indian Constitutionand the specific needs andcircumstances of this country.

However, the framework law was intendedto be justiciable in the sense that the laws passedand the executive actions taken by the Central andState governments and the devolved functionsexercised by PRIs would have to conform to thegeneral principles and priorities laid down in theframework law (on the basis of a nationalconsensus), and that deviations can be challengedin a court of law. The point will become clearerif we think of the proposed national waterframework law as something like the DirectivePrinciples of State Policy, but different in the sensethat it would be justiciable.⇒ A SETBACK

This also explains why the Centre wasunable to persuade the State governments toaccept the idea of a national water frameworklaw. The manner in which the Centre put forwardthat idea at the Water Resource Ministers’Conference and the NDC must have givenindications of the underlying desire to strengthen

the hands of the Centre. In fact, though theMinistry uses the term ‘framework law’, what ithas in mind is not really a framework law but aconventional operational one. This must have setthe alarm bells ringing in the minds of the ChiefMinisters.⇒ RESERVE BANK EASES

RULES FOR FII INVESTMENT IN DEBT

• The Reserve Bank of India (RBI),notified the enhanced limit of investingin government securities (G-Secs) byforeign institutional investors (FIIs) andlong-term investors by $5 billion to $25billion from $20 billion.

• It also hiked the investment limit incorporate bonds by these entities by $5billion $50 billion from $45 billion.

• Long-term investors include SEBI-registered sovereign wealth funds(SWFs), multilateral agencies,endowment funds, insurance funds,pension funds and foreign central banks.

• The RBI also relaxed some investmentrules by removing the maturityrestrictions for first time foreigninvestors on dated G-Secs. Earlier it wasmandated that the first time foreigninvestors of G-Secs must buy securitieswith at least three-year residual maturity.“But such investments will not be allowedin short-term paper like Treasury Bills,”the RBI added.

• Further, the central bank has alsorestricted foreign investors from buyingcertificates of deposits and commercialpaper.

• In the total corporate debt limit of $50billion, the RBI stipulated a sub-limit of$25 billion each for infrastructure andother than infrastructure sector bonds.









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In addition, qualified foreign investors(QFIs) would continue to be eligible toinvest in corporate debt securities(without any lock-in or residual maturityclause) and mutual fund debt schemes,subject to a total overall ceiling of $1billion.

• “This limit of $1 billion shall continue tobe over and above the revised limit of$50 billion for investment in corporatedebt,” the RBI added.

• As a measure of further relaxation, it hasbeen decided to dispense with thecondition of one year lock-in period forthe limit of $22 billion (comprising thelimits of infrastructure bonds of $12 billionand $10 billion for non-residentinvestment in IDFs) within the overalllimit of $25 billion for foreign investmentin infrastructure corporate bond.

• The residual maturity period (at the timeof first purchase) requirement for theentire limit of $22 billion for foreigninvestment in the infrastructure sectorhas been uniformly kept at 15 months.The five-year residual maturityrequirement for investments by QFIswithin the $3 billion limit has beenmodified to three years original maturity.

⇒ A MOMENT OF TRIUMPH FOR WOMEN

The Report of the Committee onAmendments to Criminal Law headed by JusticeJ.S. Verma is our moment of triumph — thetriumph of women’s movements in this country.As with all triumphs, there are always someunrealised possibilities, but these do not detractfrom the fact of the victory.

Rather than confining itself to criminal lawrelating to rape and sexual assault, the committee

has comprehensively set out the constitutionalframework within which sexual assault must belocated.

Perhaps more importantly, it also draws outthe political framework within which non-discrimination based on sex must be based andfocuses on due diligence by the state in order toachieve this as part of its constitutional obligation,with the Preamble interpreted as inherentlyspeaking to justice for women in every clause.

If capabilities are crucial in order thatpeople realise their full potential, this will be anunattainable goal for women till such time as thestate is held accountable for demonstrating acommitment to this goal. Performance audits ofall institutions of governance and law and orderare seen as an urgent need in this direction.

The focus of the entire exercise is onprotecting the right to dignity, autonomy andfreedom of victims of sexual assault and rape —with comprehensive reforms suggested inelectoral laws, policing, criminal laws and theArmed Forces (Special Powers) Act, 1958, andthe provision of safe spaces for women andchildren. Arguing that “cultural prejudices mustyield to constitutional principles of equality,empathy and respect” (p.55), the committee, ina reiteration of the Naaz Foundation judgment,brings sexual orientation firmly within the meaningof “sex” in Article 15, and underscores the rightto liberty, dignity and fundamental rights of allpersons irrespective of sex or sexual orientation— and the right of all persons, not just women,against sexual assault.

Reviewing leading cases and echoing thecritique of Indian women’s groups and feministlegal scholars — whether in the case of Mathuraor even the use of the shame-honour paradigm








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that has trapped victim-survivors in rape trials andin khap panchayats , the committee observes:“…women have been looped into a vicious cycleof shame and honour as a consequence of whichthey have been attended with an inherent disabilityto report crimes of sexual offences against them.”In terms of the definition of rape, the committeerecommends retaining a redefined offence of“rape” within a larger section on “sexual assault”in order to retain the focus on women’s right tointegrity, agency and bodily integrity. Rape isredefined as including all forms of non-consensual penetration of sexual nature (p.111).The offence of sexual assault would include allforms of non-consensual, non-penetrativetouching of sexual nature.

Tracing the history of the marital rapeexception in the common law of coverture inEngland and Wales in the 1700s, the committeeunequivocally recommends the removal of themarital rape exception as vital to the recognitionof women’s right to autonomy and physicalintegrity irrespective of marriage or other intimaterelationship.

Marriage, by this argument, cannot be avalid defence, it is not relevant to the matter ofconsent and it cannot be a mitigating factor insentencing in cases of rape. On the other hand,the committee recommended that the age ofconsent in consensual sex be kept at 16, and otherlegislation be suitably amended in this regard.⇒ FOR AN INDIA-LED

SECURITY ARCHITECTURE IN SOUTH ASIA

India’s neighbours often cite the‘Bangladesh War’ and the IPKF involvement inSri Lanka to justify their apprehensions aboutIndian strategic interests and military reach in theregion. In this, they do not acknowledge that it

was not Indian plotting that caused the BangladeshWar, but Pakistan’s own failings; and that theIPKF went to Sri Lanka at the request ofPresident J.R. Jayewardene, to be withdrawnequally fast, again at the express wish of hissuccessor President Ranasinghe Premadasa. ButIndia’s smaller neighbours are not as concernedabout the reach, if any, of outside powers in theregion.

In this sense, the neighbourhood’s concernsabout India are distinct from India’s ownconcerns. For India, the disputes with China —and Pakistan, too — are real, and not justtheoretical. In this context, there is somesubstance in the demand by the Indian strategiccommunity that smaller neighbours should sharetheir security arrangement details with it,particularly if these involved powers from outsidethe region.

Ultimately, it is India that has to face thesearrangements, if it came to that. Indian concernson this score, at the official level in particular, areclearly independent of New Delhi’s recognitionof the sovereign right of individual nations in theneighbourhood to do business of their choosingwith partners of their choosing.

None of India’s smaller neighbours has thecapacity to ward off extra-territorial security/military intervention. India alone is capable of this.

Hence, the expectation that smallerneighbours should keep India informed andupdated about their concerns and arrangementson the geo-strategic front. The ideal, of course,would be for these countries to resist thetemptation of inviting extra-territorial players intothe region and providing them with political andstrategic space. Be it the Hambantota port in SriLanka or the GMR issue in Maldives, or Chinese-









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funded civilian projects in either of these countriesor other South-Asian neighbours of India, thestrategic community in India is often over-heatedwith the perception that they have all donebusiness with China behind the New Delhi’s back.⇒ BRICS COUNTRIES AGREE TO

COLLABORATE ON HEALTH ISSUES

Recognising that multi-drug resistanttuberculosis (TB) is a major public health problemin Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa(BRICS) due to its high prevalence and incidencemostly among the marginalised and vulnerablesections of society, the health ministers of thesecountries on Friday agreed to collaborate andcooperate for development of capacity andinfrastructure to deal with the disease.

Adopting Delhi Communique at the end ofthe two meeting of BRICS nations, the healthministers resolved to reduce the prevalence of TBthrough innovation for new drugs/vaccine,diagnostics and promotion of consortia oftuberculosis researchers to collaborate on clinicaltrials of drugs and strengthening access toaffordable medicines and delivery of quality care.

The Ministers also agreed to adopt andimprove systems for notification of TB patients,availability of anti-TB drugs at facilities byimproving supplier performance, procurementsystems and logistics and management of HIV-associated tuberculosis in the primary health care.They resolved to share experience and expertisein the areas of surveillance, existing and newstrategies to prevent the spread of HIV, and inrapid scale up of affordable treatment.

Importantly, the nations committed tostrengthen cooperation to combat malaria throughenhanced diagnostics, research and developmentand to facilitate common access to technologies

developed or under development in the BRICScountries.

These nations will also focus on the researchand development, manufacturing of affordablehealth products and capability to conduct clinicaltrials while emphasising on the importance ofchild survival through progressive reduction in thematernal mortality, infant mortality, neo-natalmortality and under-five mortality, to achieveMillennium Development Goals. BRICS is aplatform of nations with developing economiesrepresenting 43 per cent of the world’spopulation.⇒ JUDICIARY’S ASSAULT ON DEMOCRACY

The judgment delivered on September13, 2012 by Justice Swatanter Kumar, on behalfof himself and Justice A.K. Patnaik, belongs toan impressive lineage of Supreme Court rulingswhich create havoc and confusion in institutions— and even in the conduct of examinations —of which its judges were blissfully unaware. Thatthis one called for a complete overhaul of thesystem of the Central Information Commission(CIC) and the many States’ InformationCommissions is the least of its blemishes. Whatis of graver import and long-term consequenceis that it is a wanton and reckless assault onparliamentary democracy.⇒ INTEMPERATE COMMENTS

Proceedings for its review had to be haltedbecause its author Justice Swatanter Kumarretired last month and was immediately appointedChairman of the National Green Tribunal; but notbefore delivering intemperate comments duringthe review proceedings. Like almost all SupremeCourt judgments, this one is rich in florid prose,disdainful of brevity and is animated by a desireto legislate.








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A good copy editor would have reduced its107 pages to one-third. The issue before the courtwas simple. Section 12 (5) and (6) of the Rightto Information Act, 2005 prescribe, respectively,qualifications and disqualifications of the CIC andInformation Commissioners. S. 15 (5) and (6)replicate them for their counterparts in the States.Briefly, the petition contended that the criteria foreligibility did not specify the qualifications orconsultation with the judiciary. They performjudicial or quasi-judicial functions and should,therefore, have judicial experience. The Act mustalso prescribe a mechanism for consultation withthe judiciary for such appointments.

S. 12 (6) of the Act which states thedisqualifications is simplicity itself. “The ChiefInformation Commissioner or an InformationCommissioner shall not be a Member ofParliament or Member of the Legislature of anyState or Union Territory, as the case may be, orhold any other office of profit or connected withany political party or carrying on any business orpursuing any profession.” How anyone canpossibly object to these bars passescomprehension.⇒ THE SHALE

REVOLUTION’S SHIFTING GEOPOLITICS

The shale energy revolution is likely to shiftthe tectonic plates of global power in ways thatare largely beneficial to the West and reinforceU.S. power and influence during the first half ofthis century. Yet most public discussion of shale’spotential either focuses on the allegedenvironmental dangers of fracking or on how shalewill affect the market price of natural gas. Bothdiscussions blind policymakers to the true scaleof the shale revolution. The real impact stemsfrom its effect on the oil market. Shale gas offers

the means to vastly increase the supply of fossilfuels for transportation, which will cut into therising demand for oil — fuelled in part by China’seconomic growth — that has dominated energypolicymaking over the last decade.

There are two major factors in play here.First, the same shale extraction technology ofhorizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing can beemployed whether the rocks are oil-bearing orgas-bearing. We have already seen over half amillion barrels of oil a day flowing from theBakken field in North Dakota.

The recent Harvard-based Belfer Centerreport — “Oil: The Next Revolution” — suggeststhat shale oil could be providing America with asmuch as six million barrels a day by 2020. TheUnited States imported only 11 million barrels ofcrude oil a day in 2011. Given the potential foroffshore and conventional domestic oil production,this would suggest that by 2020, America couldbe near energy independence in oil. However,many supporters of energy independence miss akey point:

The major geopolitical impact of shaleextraction technology lies less in the fact thatAmerica will be more energy self-sufficient thanin the consequent displacement of world oilmarkets by a sharp reduction in U.S. imports. Thisis likely to be reinforced by the development ofshale oil resources in China, Argentina, Ukraineand other places, which will put additional pressureon global oil prices.

The second factor is the potential to usenatural gas for transportation. Some analystssuggest that this will only be a realistic prospectfor fleet and long-haul road transportation. But theyare overlooking the immense advantage thatnatural gas has as a transportation fuel in America









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and Europe, which have both developed a naturalgas infrastructure in urban areas that takes pipednatural gas into homes, offices and supermarkets.Once gas is cheap and widely available, it ispossible to consider dealing with the “last mile”problem of providing home refuelling kits soconsumers can fill up natural-gas powered carsin their own garages.

The incentives to develop shale oil andnatural gas are very great. But so far, the UnitedStates has only experienced the first stage of lownatural-gas prices and the reimportation of energyintensive industries such as chemicals and steelbecause of low gas prices.

The next stage of the shale revolution’simpact is going to be felt as major stimulus getsunder way from lower oil prices. More broadly,the shale revolution will grant the United Statesa greater range of options in dealing with foreignstates. For the Europeans, the shale revolution isalso largely positive.

A greater variety of gas supplies fromliquefied natural gas originally destined for theUnited States has been dumped in Europeanmarkets; by 2020, shale gas in the form ofliquefied natural gas is likely to begin arriving inEurope in significant quantities, and there is alsothe prospect of some domestic shale gasbecoming available. Europe will also benefit fromthe second stage of the shale revolution as oilprices come under pressure.

However, American self-sufficiency in oilis of greatest concern to the European Union. Thedanger is that the United States will no longerhave any direct interest in ensuring supply flowsout of the Gulf. At the very least this will meanthat Washington is likely to demand greaterEuropean investment in its own energy security.

One option for the European Union is to developnatural gas transportation as an energy securityhedge. This would also increase pricing pressureon oil producers.⇒ ABOUT CHINA

China has even greater incentives todevelop its shale gas resources. According to theU.S. Energy Department’s Energy InformationAdministration, the country’s recoverableresources are larger than those of the UnitedStates at 36 trillion cubic meters. The maingeostrategic reason for Beijing to develop shalegas for transportation is that the U.S. Navycontrols the Pacific and most Chinese oil arrivesby tanker. Large-scale use of natural gas fortransportation would protect China from much ofthe effect of a U.S. blockade.

By contrast, the outlook for Russia andSaudi Arabia seems bleak. As the decadeprogresses, shale will be developed worldwideand natural gas infrastructures will beconstructed. It is difficult to see how the marketswill avoid dropping oil prices. Geopolitically, theshale revolution strengthens the United States,reduces China’s energy dependence, generatesa major global stimulus, which takes the Westerneconomies off the fiscal rocks, while potentiallydestabilising both the Russian Federation andSaudi Arabia. The incentives for the West andChina to develop shale-based fossil fuel resourcesare so great that they will continue to press aheadwith them⇒ BIOINITATIVE REPORT

The recently released BioInitiative Report2012 (BIR-2012) on standards forelectromagnetic radiation is a perfect clone of asimilar report published in 2007. According to








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many responsible agencies it is biased andunscientific. BIR-2012 claimed that the evidencefor risks to health from wireless technologies andelectromagnetic fields (EMFs) has substantiallyincreased since 2007. The studies alleged a linkbetween cell phone radiation and brain tumours.Agencies such as the World Health Organization,UK Health Protection Agency and theInternational Commission on Non IonizingRadiation Protection (ICNIRP) do not support theconclusions.⇒ A SELF APPOINTED GROUP

The BioInitiative Working Group whichprepared the report originated as a self appointedgroup from a mini symposium during the annualmeeting of the Bioelectromagnetic Society in 2006and has no official status. BIR 2012 gave a shotin the arm of anti cell phone tower radiationenthusiasts and sellers of protective screens, and‘talisman’ against electromagnetic radiation!⇒ FINANCIAL STABILITY REPORT

The latest Financial Stability Report (FSR)of the Reserve Bank of India, the sixth in theseries, is a half yearly assessment by an expertcommittee of the outlook for the stability andresilience of the financial sector. The report alsosuggests policy actions that are needed to containthe risks to stability. Compared to the previousreport, the threats to financial sector stability haveincreased. While the environment of global anddomestic macroeconomic instability remainsunchanged, there is a realisation that the highlyunconventional tools relied upon by governmentsand central banks across the world at thebeginning of the crisis are losing some of theiredge and effectiveness.

Despite all of this, financial markets in Indiahave remained largely stable. But the corporatesector’s ability to service its debt has been falling

since 2009-10. Some infrastructure companieshave substantially increased their leverage. Theseand a few other factors are responsible for theincreased stress on the asset quality of thebanking system.

A large number of loans have beenrestructured recently. The banking sector on thewhole has remained resilient to credit, market andliquidity risks and is capable of withstandingmacroeconomic shocks given their comfortablecapital adequacy. However, new provisioningnorms require banks to tie up a larger amount ofcapital to take care of distressed assets. In thecontext of the imminent shift to Basel III norms,some banks may face challenges in mopping upadditional capital.⇒ HOW GOOD

ECONOMICS CAN FUEL POPULIST POLITICS

The total subsidy on petroleum products in2011-12 was close to Rs.70,000 crore. Withpetrol prices already marked to market, cookinggas subsidy pruned by capping the number ofsubsidised cylinders per connection and nowgradual elimination of diesel subsidy, thegovernment has probably freed up at leastRs.50,000 crore in the coming fiscal for spendingon its social programmes which are politicallymore rewarding. Imagine the ballast that this willprovide for the government to dish out the lolliesin the approach to elections in 2014!

If the economy picks up, as is the generalexpectation, then the government will havegreater elbow room to spend on the social sectorprogrammes that proved so rewarding for theUPA in the last general elections in 2009. So, thereis obviously a larger game-plan that is beingplayed out; diesel deregulation is only one part ofthat. Of course, there is going to be the inevitablepolitical opposition to the move in the short-term









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but that can be managed. We should also notforget that the government has attempted tomollify consumers by increasing the number ofsubsidised cooking gas cylinders per connectionto 9 a year from 6 and by reducing petrol pricesby a marginal 25 paise a litre.⇒ PRUDENT ECONOMIC DECISION

Even so, the fact is that the decision couldn’thave come at a better time for the economy. TheReserve Bank of India has been impatient withthe government for not carrying out necessaryfiscal corrections and the ratings agencies haveput India on watch for a possible downgrade. Thetwin deficits have kept the markets nervous andthe rupee under pressure. Small wonder then thaton Friday the rupee shot up by 69 paise to closeat a two-month high versus the dollar.

The RBI will announce its quarterlymonetary policy later this month but it will beinteresting to note how it views the diesel priceadjustment. Will it be seen as a step towardsfiscal consolidation (and hence add to theargument for cutting rates) or will it be seen asan inflationary move (and hence work against arate cut)? Though it might not help prune the fiscaldeficit this year materially, the decision to freediesel prices will be seen by rating agencies as asignal of the government’s determination to reinin the fisc. And hopefully, put off any chances ofa downgrade too.⇒ COMPETITION IN OIL INDUSTRY

In the oil industry, the move is likely tounleash competitive forces. This is of courseassuming that the government does not chickenout from its policy of gradually increasing retailpump prices till the subsidy is wholly eliminated.There have been at least two occasions in the pastwhen deregulation of petroleum products were

announced but not carried through. For a start,we could begin to see competition in the bulkconsumers segment where the oil companies nowhave the freedom to charge market prices.Reliance Industries and Essar, the two largeprivate players, can charge a price lower than thatof the oil companies and cut into the bulk suppliesbusiness. These two companies own large, state-of-the-art refineries that can process crude oil ofinferior grades which are cheaper than that usedby the national oil companies.

There is also Shell which has the licence toretail petroleum products and has been keepinga symbolic presence the last few years. The realcompetition, of course, will begin when retailprices are fully linked to the market. That is whenthe national oil companies will feel the full impactand consumers begin to reap the benefit.⇒ FUEL-PRICING FLAW

Finally, the decision will also correct aserious flaw in fuel pricing because of which theupper-classes that drive high-end saloons andSUVs powered by diesel engines enjoyed subsidywhile the middle-classes driving petrol cars andtwo-wheelers ended up paying free-marketprices. The elimination of artificial price differencebetween petrol and diesel will probably be thebiggest gain from the government’s decision. Andit will, hopefully, restore the balance betweenpetrol and diesel passenger cars which was tiltedtowards the latter.⇒ ISRO LINES UP SARAL FOR

FEBRUARY, RESTORED GSLV FOR APRIL

• The Indian Space Research Organisation(ISRO) has slated its first launch of theyear — ocean study spacecraft SARAL— for February 14.

• It will herald the 8 to 10 missions,








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including satellites and launch vehicles,which ISRO has planned this year,

• Flights of the GSLV rocket would beresumed and the first of the navigationalspacecraft would be sent up, an ISROofficial told The Hindu .

• Along with the 450-kg Indo-FrenchSARAL, the Polar Satellite LaunchVehicle (PSLV) will put into orbit six smallexperimental satellites built by westernuniversities for a fee.

• SARAL would be one of the very fewsuch ocean-centric satellites and a vitalcog in studying sea surface heights andother aspects, the official said.

• It would be similar to ISRO’s Oceansat-2, but with an altimeter (named ‘Argos’here) to measure heights.

• In October 2012, NASA relied onOceansat-2 to get finer details ofHurricane ‘Sandy’ that wreaked havocon the eastern U.S.

• SARAL is short for S atellite with ARgosand ALtiKa, the two main devices on itwhich have been provided by Frenchspace agency CNES. Besides buildingthe spacecraft, ISRO will launch andoperate it through its life.

• SARAL will come up two months laterthan the earlier planned fancy date of12-12-12.

• The December launch was put off tocomplete a few tests and validations, theofficial said.

• Around April this year, ISRO expects toresume flying the GSLV rocket. TheGSLV-D5 will lift the communicationssatellite GSAT-14 into orbit.

• ISRO had put the GSLV programme onhold after it suffered two successive

failures in April and December 2010. Thelapses were analysed and correctionsmade, the official said.

⇒ PUSHING AFRICA ASIDE IN MALI

In the last few months, the U.N. SecurityCouncil had placed Mali at the centre of itsagenda, while co-opting the concerns and counselof West African states along the way. Last year,the council adopted Resolutions 2056, 2071 and2085 — each facilitating progressively toughmeasures — to tackle this conflict. The U.N.’sefforts, which France has now upended, wereaimed at bringing African stakeholders on board.In July 2012, the UNSC emphasised dialoguebetween various stakeholders in Mali, whileacknowledging the sovereign authority of Mali’sinterim government.

The Economic Community of West AfricanStates (Ecowas) mediated this dialogue, ofteninteracting with fringe elements such as AnsarDine, the Islamist group that has now coalescedwith other Tuareg outfits in northern Mali.Negotiating and sustaining an agreement isfeasible only if there is a mechanism to enforceits terms. The Ecowas and the African Union(AU) had therefore requested the SecurityCouncil’s blessings for an African-led stabilisationforce in Mali.

In late 2012, the AU and Ecowas maderepeated appeals to the council to help deploy theAfrican-led International Support Mission to Mali(AFISMA). In pursuit of their endeavour, Africanstates drew up a Strategic Concept for theResolution of the Crises in Mali as well a Conceptof Operations that dealt with logistics, intelligencegathering, and even issues of internaldisplacement and humanitarian aid. The SecurityCouncil considered this blueprint, along with the









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U.N. Secretary General’s ground report whichhighlighted the importance of a political settlementin Mali. As an important and responsible supra-regional actor, France could have helped bridgedifferences among Ecowas members and providefinancial assistance as well as training to AFISMAat this stage, as the UNSC urged members to do.Then, Defence Minister Jean-Yves Le Drianadvertised a hands-off approach, specificallysuggesting France would not be directly involvedin the intervention. Now, he is contemplating atroop deployment that could reach 2,500 innumber.⇒ EBIZ PORTAL LAUNCHED

As part of the UPA Government’s NationaleGovernance Plan, the Commerce and IndustryMinistry, on Monday, announced the launch of aneBiz portal aimed at providing Government-to-Business (G2B) services for India’s investor andbusiness communities. The portal was launchedby Commerce and Industry Minister AnandSharma at the CII Partnership Summit here. Theportal was developed by Infosys in a public-private partnership (PPP) mode. Infosys has beenselected as the concessionaire/ projectimplementation partner, and is responsible for thedesign, development, implementation andmaintenance of the eBiz solution.

The online single-window concept wasvisualised to enable businesses and investors tosave time and costs and improve the businessenvironment. The project aims to create abusiness and investor-friendly ecosystem in Indiaby making all business and investment-relatedregulatory services across Central, State and localgovernments available on a single portal, therebyobviating the need for an investor or a businessto visit multiple offices or a plethora of websites,”he said. eBiz will create a 24x7 facility for

information and services, and will also offerjoined-up services where a single applicationsubmitted by a customer, for a number ofpermissions, clearances, approvals andregistrations, will be routed automatically acrossmultiple governmental agencies in a logicalmanner. An in-built payment gateway will alsoadd value by allowing all payments to be collectedat one point and then apportioned, split and routedto the respective heads of account of Central /State / parastatal (a quasi-governmentalorganisation, corporation, business, or agency)agencies along with generation of challans andMIS (management information systems) reports.⇒ INDIA, BANGLADESH SIGN

EXTRADITION TREATY

India and Bangladesh on Monday signedtwo landmark agreements to extradite criminalsand terrorists and liberalise the visa regime.

However, refusal provisions have been builtinto the extradition treaty, which India waited forlong. If extradition of someone poses a threat tonational security, either country may refuse thedeportation request. No political detainee will bebrought within the purview of the treaty. If acontroversy arose during an extradition process,officials explained, the matter would be settled asper the laws of the country concerned. The otheragreement provides for a friendlier visa regimefor Bangladeshis. Businessmen will be given afive-year, multiple-entry visa. Those travelling onmedical grounds will get a two-year, multiple-entry visa, extendable for one more year. Threeattendants of a patient will also be entitled to visa.Until now, India has been granting Bangladeshitourists visas for up to six months and has allowedone person to accompany a patient. Earlier in theday, the Bangladesh Cabinet approved theextradition treaty at its regular meeting presided








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over by Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina. TheIndian Cabinet approved it on January 24.

The signing ceremony was attended by theInternational Affairs Adviser to the Prime

Minister, Gowher Rizvi, State Minister for HomeShamsul Haque Tuku, Bangladesh HighCommissioner to India Tariq A. Karim and IndianHigh Commissioner Pankaj Saran.








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⇒ GOOD GOVERNANCE AT GLANCE

No theory of governance would beintelligible unless it is seen in the context of itstime. In the beginning of the 21st century, it hasbecome evident that those who want minimalgovernment are having an upper hand against theadvocates of the paternalist welfare state.

An efficient, effective and democraticgovernment is the best guarantor of social justiceas well as an orderly society. Similarly, there isalso emphasis on the fact that the administrativesystem has to be country specific and areaspecific taking in view not only the institutions ofgovernance and its legal and regulatorymechanisms but also its market, its civil societyand cultural values of the people. The principalresponse of the state, therefore, would be tofacilitate, to enable, and to coordinate. Neither themarket nor the civil society can perform this roleas effectively as the government and thus theycannot become substitutes for the government.

India is not excluded from this global debateor transition from socialist order to capitalistgrowth models. Fortunately, the Indian Statedoes not have the monopoly of the public sphere.The civil society is increasingly more concernedwith public sphere issues and governmentintervention is considered necessary to providewelfare schemes to cover social safety needs,

upgrade health-care to protect children, and helpprovide opportunities for women and theminorities.

India’s political leadership, policy makersand business brains are actuated by a strongdesire to make the country an economic super-power in the 21st Century. The imperatives ofdemocracy, however, are forcing Indian politicalleadership to look deeper into the causes ofpoverty, inequality and suffering of the commonman.Good Governance

Citizens all the world over look up to thenation-state and its organs for high qualityperformance. It is necessary that citizens areallowed to participate freely, openly and fully inthe political process. Good governance isassociated with accountable political leadership,enlightened policy-making and a civil serviceimbued with a professional ethos. The presenceof a strong civil society including a free press andindependent judiciary are pre-conditions for goodgovernance.

What is ‘good’ governance in the Indiancontext? The central challenge before goodgovernance relates to social development. In hisfamous ‘tryst with destiny’ speech on 14 August1947, Jawaharlal Nehru articulated this challengeas ‘the ending of poverty and ignorance and

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GIST OF YOJANA MAGAZINE26

disease and inequality of opportunities’. Goodgovernance must aim at expansion in socialopportunities and removal of poverty. In short,good governance, as I perceive it, means securingjustice, empowerment, employment and efficientdelivery of services.Securing Justice

There are several inter-related aspects ofsecuring justice including security of life andproperty, access to justice, and rule of law.Threats to Peace

The most important public good is theensurance of security especially security of lifeand property. The Indian nation-state is aware ofcomplexities of the situation and the need is toshow greater determination and be relentless insupport to its instruments of law and forces ofdemocracy and social cohesion to defeat theelements of terror, insurgency and naxaliteviolence.Access to Justice

Access to justice is based upon the basicprinciple that people should be able to rely uponthe correct application of law. In actual practicethere are several countervailing factors. Somecitizens do not know their rights and cannot affordlegal aid to advocate on their behalf. The mostsevere challenge relates to complexity ofadjudication as legal proceedings are lengthy andcostly and the judiciary lacks personnel andlogistics to deal with these matters. Systematicsolutions are, therefore, needed for strengtheningaccess to justice. At the same time ad hocmeasures are required to provide immediateassistance to the needy citizens.Rule of Law

The concept of good governance is

undoubtedly linked with the citizens’ right of life,liberty and pursuit of happiness. This could besecured in a democracy only through the rule oflaw.

The rule of law is expressed through theaxiom that no one is above the law. One has toclearly understand that the rule ‘of’ law isdifferent from the rule ‘by’ law. Under the rule‘by’ law, law is an instrument of the governmentand the government is above the law while underthe rule ‘of’ law no one is above the law not eventhe government. It is under this framework thatrule of law not only guarantees the liberty of thecitizens but it also limits the arbitrariness of thegovernment and thereby it makes governmentmore articulate in decision-making. The rule oflaw as Dicey postulated is equality before law.This is secured through formal and proceduraljustice which makes independent judiciary a veryvital instrument of governance.

In our constitutional system, every personis entitled to equality before law and equalprotection under the law. No person can bedeprived of his life or personal liberty exceptaccording to the procedure established by law.Thus the state is bound to protect the life andliberty of every human being. The courts have thefinal authority to test any administrative action onthe standard of legality. The administrative orexecutive action that does not meet the standardof legality will be set aside if the aggrieved personbrings an appropriate petition in the competentcourt.

A necessary corollary of this phenomenonis called ‘judicial activism’. A large number ofPublic Interest Litigations (PILs) are filed in HighCourts and the Supreme Court against the apathyof the executive. This has served us admirably








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but it has also highlighted the need forcircumspection and self-restraint on the part ofthe judges in performance of this task.

Another matter of significance in thecontext of good governance relates to the factthat there are virtues of ‘judicial creativity’ but thisphenomenon must not stifle ‘executive creativity’particularly of officials working at grassroots levelfor they are in day-to-day contact with citizensand interact with them in myriad ways.Empowerment

An empowering approach to povertyreduction needs to be based on the conviction thatpoor people have to be both the object ofdevelopment programmes and principal agencyfor development.

Our Constitution is committed to twodifferent set of principles that have a decisivebearing on equality. First, is the principle of equalopportunities to all and the second, the principleof redress of educational and socialbackwardness. The question is, not only of theextent to which reservation in Governmentemployment can really change things for thebetter, but how it could be used, in order to benefitthe socially, educationally and economicallybackward ones.

In providing protectionist regulations ingovernment employment, no special care wastaken for the poor students since the Constitutiononly recognized “educational and socialbackwardness” and not economic backwardnessas a norm to be applied in formulation ofpreferential policies in government employment.

The Supreme Court in a landmarkJudgment (Indira Sawhney & Others Vs. Unionof India and Others) delivered on 16.11.1992,

while upholding the reservation of 27 percent ofvacancies in the civil posts and services in theGovernment of India in favour of other backwardclasses (OBCs), provided for exclusion of sociallyadvanced persons/sections among themcommonly known as “the creamy layer”. TheSupreme Court further directed the Governmentof India to specify socio-economic criteria forexclusion of “the creamy layer” from the OBCs.Subsequently, the children of persons holdingeminent positions in Government and also of richfarming families were made ineligible fromreservation in services. Recently, the Governmentof India has stipulated that sons and daughters ofpersons having gross annual income of Rs. 2.5lakhs per annum and above would be excludedfrom reservation of services.

Today India has 3.3 million electedrepresentatives in Panchayats in nearly half amillion villages out of whom over one million arewomen. Direct elections have also brought intothe village national life and consciousness aboutstrengths of democracy and the need fordemocratic behaviour in terms of the Constitutionof India. The print and electronic media inparticular have strengthened this process.Employment

Generation of gainful employment for theyouth is the most challenging task facing India’spolitical economy.

The need is to prepare the youth with sucheducation that would help them acquire vocationalskills and mastery over new technology, includinginternet. This would make the youth employablein the job-market and also help those who wantto work on their own. In addition, there is animperative requirement to pay special attention togeneration of employment opportunities in








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agriculture, expand area of coverage of ruralemployment guarantee schemes, and acceleratethe pace of implementation of Bharat Nirmanschemes and several other programmes.Similarly, it would be essential to encourageprivate sector partnership and support movementof self-help groups and micro-financinginstitutions.Capacity Building

Capacity building at all levels of anorganization is widely perceived as the mostimportant approach to achieve quality of servicesand customer’s satisfaction.

In a federal democracy, decentralization ofpower is viewed as necessary to empower peoplein rural and urban areas to improve their lot. Theempowerment of the local levels of administrationwould foster confidence and enable moreindividuals even outside the bureaucracy to comeforward to handle community needs and enhancepublic good effectively without hesitancy or theneed of approval by higher level authorities.

The most crucial element in capacitybuilding is leadership. Good leadership aimed atimprovement of organizational culture is integralto capacity building. Capacity building demandsstaff to behave responsibly and produce desiredand agreed upon results. It means a collegiateeffort in which an individual or an organizationcould be made accountable and responsible forany action that they take. Access to information,participation, innovation and accountability areneeded to build an environment for capacitybuilding.Other Major Challenges toGood Governance

At the obvious risk of generalization, I wouldlike to refer to criminalization of politics and

corruption as major challenges to goodgovernance.Criminalisation of Politics

The criminalisation of the political processand the unholy nexus between politicians, civilservants, and business houses are having abaneful influence on public policy formulation andgovernance. Political class as such is losingrespect. It is true that public is not a mutespectator to this phenomenon nor is the media.The process of judicial accountability hassucceeded in sending several legislators andministers to jail. But new methods have also beendevised to fiddle away with the processes of law.Criminals facing prosecution get out on bail andeven go scot-free. It is necessary to debarcriminals from contesting elections. It isimperative, therefore, to amend Section 8 of theRepresentation of the People’s Act 1951 todisqualify a person against whom the competentjudicial authority has framed charges that relateto grave and heinous offences and corruption.

DO YOU KNOW?

What are Non Performing Assets?Non Performing Assets (NPAs) are the

debts for which the bank has not received anyinterest or principal repayment for an extendedperiod of time. Since no income accrues to thelending institution from these debts, these areclassified as NPAs. We can say that NPA refersto loans that are in jeopardy of default.

If a loan instalment is not paid to a bank orfinancial institution for three months continuously,it is considered NPA and the bank records it asNPA in its book of accounts. NPAs create burdenon the financial institutions and hence they are








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often good indicators of the health of a financialinstitution.

What is Digital Signature?The digital counterpart of the handwritten

signature is Digital Signature. Just as a paperdocument is authenticated with handwrittensignature, digital signature authenticates theidentity of the owner of the document in the digitalworld. It gives the assurance about the sender ofthe document as also the fact that the documenthas not been altered. Digital Signature is a kindof stamp which is very difficult to duplicate andforge. The Information Technology Act, 2000requires the use of Digital Signatures to ensuresecurity and authenticity of all electronically fileddocuments.

Digital Signature certificates (DSC) can bepurchased from Certification Agencies (CAs)approved by the Controller of CertifyingAuthorities. Currently MTNL CA, TCS, IDBRT,Safetycrypt (Sat yam), nCode Solutions, NIC, ande-Mudhra are the authorised CertificationAgencies for individuals in India. The DigitalSignature Certificates (DSCs) generally have avalidity of one year or two years and are legallyadmissible in a court of law.

What does the PAN Number represent?Permanent Account Number (PAN) is a ten

digit Alpha-numeric number issued by the IncomeTax department. The purpose of allotting PAN isto link financial transactions of an individual orfirm with the Income Tax department. PANfacilitates linking of the various documents suchas Income Tax Return, Tax Deduction at Source(TDS), Tax Arrears and Refund to an individualand acts as an identifier. It is an importantmechanism to check tax evasion and to broadenthe tax base.

However, the ten Alpha-numeric digits ofthe PAN have a specific meaning. We can takea sample PAN and find out what various digitsand numbers stand for-First three characters-Alphabetic series running from AAA to ZZZwhich is randomly allocated.; Fourth Character-Status of the PAN-holder. Here, P stands forIndividual, F stands for Firm, C stands forCompany, H stands for HUF, T stands for Trustetc.; Fifth Character- It is the first letter of thesurname of the PAN holder. If a person changesthe surname after marriage or for any otherreason, the PAN does not change.; Sixth to ninthCharacter- These are sequential numbers runningfrom 0001 to 9999. This is also allocatedrandomly.; Tenth Character- It is the alphabeticcheck digit which is generated by applying aformula to the preceding nine numbers and digits.

What is Cheque Truncation & How itworks?Cheque Truncation System (CTS) is used

by the banks to stop the movement of a physicalcheque from the bank where it is presented to thebank which had issued it. Under this system, anelectronic image of the cheque is transmitted tothe drawee branch along with the necessaryinformation inputs like Magnetic Ink CharacterRecognition (MICR) code, date of presentationand details of the bank presenting the cheque.

The new system of Cheque Truncation willcut the time that was earlier consumed in thephysical movement of cheques from presentingbranch to the drawee branch. At present, theoutstation cheques take around seven days to getcleared. Once the system is in force in the wholecountry, it will take one or two days to clear acheque. The settlement cycles of the bank willalso be drastically reduced. There will be no fear








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of loss or damage to the cheque in physicaltransfer. Alteration in cheque is not accepted inthis system.⇒ GOVERNANCE AND DEVELOPMENT

• As the State withdraws from directdelivery governance would need toestablish a regulatory framework for thefunctioning of the economic and socialsectors; and also lay down theinstitutional framework, the incentive anddisincentive mechanisms and fiscalstructures for civil society institutions tofunction, like decentralised, localinstitutions of Government,Cooperatives, NGO’s and newer ‘mixed’forms of similar organisations.

• Non-renewable resource scarcities willbe far more severe particularly ofresources, like water, quality land, andenergy and sustainability concerns willbe acute.

• There will be a much greater emphasison the rights of individuals and groups,including participatory forms of decisionmaking. This in turn will demand greaterfairness and self-restraint in the use ofGovernment Power. Related to it will bedemands on transparency and right toinformation .

• There will be the demand for protectingvulnerable groups, either the historicallyunderprivileged, or the victims ofmarketisation, oncerns for human rightsand particularly of specific groups suchas women, children, the minorities, theadivasis, the mentally and physicallychallenged.

• On the flip side modern technology willbe seen as providing cutting edge

knowledge based solutions to emergingscarcities or problems, and thereforegreater use of information technology,biotechnology, systems networking, thenew materials and strategic managementresponses.

• Thoughtful groups will see securityconcerns becoming more acute, arisingfrom socio-economic politicaldichotomies and resultant tensions asalso the more basic issues of energysecurity, food and water security andinstitutional dimenrions of addressingthese.

⇒ CONSTITUTIONAL AND LEGAL PERSPECTIVES:HUMAN RIGHTS AND ENVIRONMENTAL LAW

The Constitutional and legal dimensions ofPublic administration determine the powers,functions and accountability of the government.A major change in the evolution of civil servicesin India occurred with the adoption of ademocratic constitution incorporating the ideas ofrule of law, guaranteed rights and parliamentarygovernment. The 73rd and 74th Constitutionalamendments envisage a further change in thesame direction. Services under the Union and theStates find a prominent place in the constitutionitself. An autonomous Commission with vastpowers for recruitment to the services is anotherimportant aspect which emphasises its role inconstitutional governance.

Looked at in the above context we need tounderstand the significance of rule of law and theconcept of limited government under a writtenfederal-type Constitution. The values of theconstitution written into Preamble, Fundamentalrights, Fundamental Duties and DirectivePrinciples have to become part of the system. As








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an instrument of governance the provisions of theConstitution and its interpretation by courtsconstitute a point of reference to all governmentaction. These are subject to judicial review whichis the foundation of rule of law under a schemeof constitutional government.

The primary agency of the government toprotect human rights, more particularly of weakersections of society is the bureaucracy becausethey are the enforcers of the law. The Court stepsin only if the executive fails to implement the lawsor implement it contrary to law and selectively.

A constitution which proclaims secularismand social justice based on equal protection of thelaws puts a heavy burden on government, bothat the central and state level. Hence theimportance of constitutional perspective.

Another dimension which conditions thefunctioning of civil society in modem times is theprofusion of laws, national and internationalrelating to economy, ecology, technology andinternational treaty obligations. The change in theconcept of property from something tangible toforms which are intellectual and intangible broughtalmost a revolution in the laws of trade andcommerce.

Intellectual property law and trade relatedintellectual property rights have become criticalin economic governance globally. Added to thisis the revolution in information andcommunication technology which threw up a newlegal framework for doing business within andoutside government. Globalisation is happeningnot only in relation to market but in respect of allconceivable aspects of organised life to the fastchanging legal climate in all these mattersinfluencing both policy development andadministration.

Yet another legal dimension impingingpublic governance at all levels is the jurisprudenceof sustainable development. There are today legalparameters in the use of administration whichhave to be accommodated within sustainablelimits. These are some of the significant legalperspectives which are critical for civil society inthe future.⇒ E-GOVERNANCE:NEED FOR A BOTTOM-UP APPROACH

On its journey to Improve services forcitizens, the government has undertaken severalsuccessful e-governance initiatives such asMCA21 (to improve the speed and certainty inthe delivery of the services of Ministry ofCompany Affairs), online submission of incometax returns, Passport Seva Kendra (PSK), etc.Also, to roll out all the planned 1,100 e-governanceservices by 2014, the government is making hugeinvestment - up to Rs 40,000 crore. Thisinvestment will cover the cost of all kinds ofhardware and software that will be required forcapacity building.

‘At your service’ or Mee Seva isGovernment of Andhra Pradesh’s window to itscitizens. Nearly 6,000 Mee Seva Counters areservicing over 50,000 requests ‘per day, which aregeared to handle 100,000 transactions a day. Ithas converged all National e-GovernanceProgramme (NeGP) initiatives in rendering G2Cservices in a fast and secure way thus ended the“tyranny of ink signatures”. Back-end applicationsinteract with database and pull out information andfront-end application receives the citizen’s requestand communicates with departmental application- therefore gives a single view of the citizen. Itinvolves departments like revenue, registration,municipal administration, education and other








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service delivery channels. Reduction in cost,increase in storage, flexibility, information accessfrom anywhere and no worries about keepingsoftware up to date are but few considerationsthat encouraged Government of Maharashtra topioneer a MahaGov Cloud.

Implemented in State Data Centre, it isbeing used by departments for website andapplication hosting. Out of 42 governmentdepartments, 25 are already on the cloud thathosts 70 different applications. Using feature ofthin provision of storage and memory, resourcesare efficiently utilized and allocated as per therequirement and performance. It is helping theSDC team to manage planned maintenancewithout requiring any downtime of the application,thus has increased procedural efficiencies.⇒ APPLICATION OF E-GOVERNANCE FOR

(INCLUSIVE DEVELOPMENT

The Fig. shows how a transition is feasiblefrom ‘open doors to open hearts’ , with theapplication of ICT. The application of e-governance can create an open dooradministration and transparent government. Todescribe the designing message for ruraldevelopment through e-governance, it isconsidered that it should have citizen-centricservices and dependable. In this system, theselection of appropriate (dependable,maintainable and cost-effective) technologies forrural connectivity and information processingsolutions should focus on the betterment ofsociety. However, we should keep in mind thatthe inequity of economic condition of rural massesshould not create any hindrance to access theirrequired information, which is considered one ofthe basic constraints in any participatorydevelopment.

RURAL E-GOVERNMENT INITIATIVES

It aimed at facilitating the District RuralDevelopment Agency (DRDA) in the monitoringof exercise of poverty alleviation programmesthrough Computer based Information System. Tilldate your version of CRISP application softwarepackages have been developed. Rural soft 2000allows online monitoring of processes right fromthe desktop of monitoring agencies at Centre andState and enables a common man to accessinformation using a browser based interface.

National E-Governance Action Plan(2003): National E-Governance Action Plansuggested a list of core policies: (1) Overall vision,mission strategy approach. (2) E-Governancetechnology architecture, framework andguidelines. (3) Human Resource Strategy. (4)Policy for front end facilitation counters, kiosks,integrated service centres. (5) Policy on back-enddepartment automation.

State Wide Network Area Project(SWAN): This project aims at providing highspeed, high connectivity network connectingoffices at block level for faster access toGovernance serivices.⇒ CORRUPTION, PARTICIPATORY

DEVELOPMENT AND GOOD GOVERNANCE

Corruption is one of the most seriousconsequences of poor governance. A countrywith widespread corruption invariably has lowinvestment rates, poor economic growth andlimited human development. There are fewcountries in the world, like as Indonesia, Kenya,Angola, Madagascar, Paraguay, Nigeria,Bangladesh, and India - where it pervades everycomer of public life. The public will find the costof delivering this service inordinately high.Corruption has no positive effects. It hits the poor








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hardest, it makes a mockery of financial systemsand it actively works against the legitimacy of thestate. Poverty, development, growth andinvestment - all suffers at the hands of corruption.Its effects are extremely damaging, far reachingand all pervasive. For India, the world’s largestdemocracy, it is a painful irony that despite a goodfoundation of democratic institutions, she has ascore of only 2.7 out of 1 0 in 2002, was ranked71st out of 102 countries for corruption. As perTransparency International’s CorruptionPerception Index (2005), India scored 2.9 out of10. Since then, her ranking has kept falling. Asurvey conducted by Transparency Internationalcites India as far worse than China and refers toher as a country where bribery and corruption areamong the worst in the world. In a developingcountry, resources are always scares and demandgreater than supply. The recipients of publicservices are mostly the poor, illiterate, ignorant andweak. Thus it is the ordinary men who suffer mostfrom misgovernment and corruption. In India,even the highly educated lack the power toprotest. There is no accountability or transparencyamong public servants. It is difficult to definecorruption. There is no consensus on the definitionof corruption, because what is perceived to be acorrupt activity is based on a society’s acceptanceand level of tolerance. Corruption is generallydefined as a kind of illegitimate favor forimmediate or future personal gain for doing anofficial work which one is supposed to do free ofcharge and objectivity. In most of the developingcountries, corruption is like a virus. It has infectedalmost every social and economic activity.⇒ CONCEPTUAL FRAMEWORK OF

GOOD GOVERNANCE

The philosophy of good governance has itsorigin dated back to the early days of human

civilization. The description of Indus Valley andVedic civilizations bear the details of the concept.Today the term ‘Governance’ has come tooccupy a central place in the developmentdiscourse. Among the several developmentstrategies governance is considered as animportant element. There are many means ofachieving good result in governance. Traditionaltexts such as Upanishads and in later periodKautilya’s ‘Arthashatra’ delinate many methodsof achieving the good results with has gained newmomentum after the collapse of the totalitarianstates in East European countries and the cry fordemocracy in several developing countries ofAsia, Africa and Latin America.

The term government and governanceappear synonymous in dictionary. Governmentrefers to formal and institutional processes whichoperate at the level of nation state to maintainpublic order and facilitate collective action. It isa formal institution of the state with their monopolyof legitimacy, coercive power. It refers to variousforms of political system or the manner in whichstate exercises its power in utilizing socio-economic resources. Governance signifies newprocess of governing or changed condition ofordered rule of new method by which society isgoverned. Rhodes defined governance in eightways. They are minimal state, governanceaccording to private enterprise model, new publicmanagement, good governance, a socialcybernetic system and a series of self organizedsocial network. The Commission on GlobalGovernance defines governance as “governanceis the sum of many ways individuals andinstitutions, public and private manage theircommon affairs. It is a continuing process throughwhich conflicting and diverse interests may be








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accommodated and cooperative action taken.Governance is the creation of structure or anorder, which cannot be extremely imposed but isthe result of the interaction of multiplicity ofgoverning and each others influencing actors.”The Human Development Report, 2002 has givena new perspective to governance by terming it asdemocratic governances, which is essential forbetter human development.⇒ ANTI - CORRUPTION MEASURES IN INDIA

Indian democracy has taken variousmeasures for anti - corruption in public life.Government of India set up Special PoliceEstablishment (SPE) in 1941, to investigate casesof bribery and corruption. On April, 1963, theCentral Bureau of Investigation (CBI) was setup. The CBI plays a supplementary rule to thestates police forces. The cases which essentiallyand substantially involve central governmentemployees or their officers, or certain stategovernment employees are referred to the CBI.CBI can also take up cases against employeesof statutory bodies or public undertakingsestablished and financed by the government inIndia.

Two types of vigilance organizations at thedepartment level exist: a) the AdministrativeVigilance Division of Home Affairs and b) theVigilance Units in the respective ministers anddepartment and their counterparts in the publicsector undertakings.

The Administrative Vigilance Division wasestablished in 1955. It assumed the overallresponsibility and provided the necessary drive,direction and coordination to ensure sustained andvigorous action by individual ministers anddepartments. The Central Vigilance Commission(CVC) consists of three directorates, viz,

Directorate of general compliant and redness, theCentral Police organization and the Directorateof Vigilance. It undertake an enquiry into anytransaction in which a public servant is suspectedor alleged to have acted for an improper purposeor in a corrupt manner. It also investigates intoany complaint against a public servant who hasexercised or refrained from exercising his powersfor improper or corrupt purposes. Apart from thisCentral Vigilance Commission (CVC) there is aState Vigilance Commission (SVC) in each state.The state vigilance commission deals with matterswithin executive powers of the state concerned.At the Divisional level, a Divisional VigilanceBoard has been set up. At the District level,District vigilance Officer heads the vigilanceorganizations. The Administrative ReformsCommission recommended in 1966 the adaptionof the Ombudsman type of institution in India. TheCongress government under Mrs. Indira Gandhiproposed to set up the institution of ‘Lokpal ‘atthe central level, but the bill lapsed in 1971. Thisbill introduced in Parliament in many times in 1977,1985, 1989, 1998, 2001 and in a strong form in2011. Government of India drafted the bill andtabled in Lok Sabha in 2011. But this bill eventoday is hung due to the unwillingness of ourparliamentarians. The government of Indiaintroduced Public Procurement Bill in Lok Sabhato check corruption and ensure transparency inpublic procurement. The bill seeks to regulatesaward of government contracts of over Rs. 50lakh with the object of ensuring ‘transparency,accountability and probity’.

The bill of objects and reasons will codifythe basic norms to regulate public procurementand provide for deferring bidders found engagedin corrupt practices. The bill also provide for Jail








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term ranging from six month to five years forpublic servants found guilty of demanding andaccepting bribes from bidders of governmentcontracts.⇒ FEATURES OF GOOD GOVERNANCE

• Good education facilities offered by thegovernment having greater employability,

• Development of basic infrastructures likeroads, bridges, power, telecom, airport,irrigation and transport

• Creating new employment opportunitiesin the government and private sectors,

• Effectiveness and efficiency of workingof government and its staffs,

• Good business environment with free-market economy,

• Reducing inequalities in the societythrough positive discrimination in favourof poorest of the poor

• Providing total freedom of speech, ofreligion, of work and attitude of non-interference by government.

• Provision of more concessions to citizensand free from bias,

• Good business environment and• Citizen centric services.

⇒ MAJOR INITIATIVES

Recently two major initiatives have beentaken up in India for empowering common manand effective functioning of governance whichinclude Right to Information and E-Governance.⇒ RIGHT TO INFORMATION

The Right to Information Act has beenenacted on 12th October, 2005 which marks asignificant shift in the Indian democracy andushered a new era of empowerment of commonman in India. Through this act one can examine,

audit, review and assess the government worksand decisions to ensure that these are consistentwith the principles of public interest, integrity andjustice. The greater the access of the citizen tothe information, the greater would be theresponsiveness of the government to communityneeds. Right to information therefore promotesopenness, transparency and accountability inadministration by making the government moreopen to public scrutiny. Without information, thecommon man cannot adequately exercise hisrights and responsibilities or make informedchoices. So Right to Information is the mosteffective instrument to check corruption wherethe citizen has the right to take the initiatives toseek information from the state and therebyenforce transparency and accountability.⇒CHALLENGES TO GOOD GOVERNANCE IN INDIA

While evaluating India’s stand amongstother countries of the world, it is revealed thatIndia is compared favourably with manydeveloping countries though it has long way to goto attain the level of developed countries. Thecriminalization of politics and corruption are twomajor challenges of good governance in Indiawhich need to be addressed on urgent basis.

The corruption has virtually spread in almostall aspects of public life. The person lying on thestreet is left to struggle incessantly with corruptionthroughout his life. Corruption is relatively inherentin terms of client public puzzle, harassed byopaque rules and procedures, excessive delay indisposal of public matters. It not only averts thebenefits of globalization to reach the common menbut also denies transparency, accessibility andaccountability, confuses rules and procedures,proliferate mindless control and poorcommitments at all levels. Hence, there is








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foremost need to check corruption at all levelsthrough raising public consciousness and strongcommitments not to make dishonest compromiseswhich would put down the moral values and ethicsof life.

India being the largest democratic countryin the world is struggling hard to emerge as worldclass leader in the fields of social and economicdevelopment. However, the nexus of crime andpolitics is so strong that the common citizens ofthe country have no stand to say or exert theirrights. In order to prevent such misuses on May2, 2002, the Supreme Court of India has given ahistoric judgement following the public interestlitigation (PIL) led by an NGO that, everycandidate contesting an election to Parliament,State Legislatures or Municipal Corporations hasto give true declarations of candidate’seducational qualifications, criminal charges andfinancial records. Though, many commissions andcommittees have been framed to bringimprovement in the situation, these reformativemeasures are just a drop in the ocean. So a newbeginning is necessary to amelioratecriminalisation from politics and the seriousnessof matter should be properly worked out. Theeducated youngsters should be encouraged toenter into Indian politics and these young leadersshould be properly nourished by the patrioticcommitments and abide by the core principles ofdemocratice governance.⇒ EVOLUTION OF BANK REGULATION IN INDIA

A robust regulatory framework prerequisitefor the development of banking system. Prior to1949, the banking companies, along with othercompanies, were governed by the IndianCompanies Act, 1913. This Act, however,contained very few provisions specifically

applicable to banks. There were also a few adhoc enactments, such as the Banking Companies(Inspection) Ordinance, 1946, and the BankingCompanies (Restriction of Branches) Act, 1946,covering specific regulatory aspects. There wasno separate legislative framework for regulationof the banking system.

In March 1949, a special legislation, calledthe Banking Companies Act, 1949, applicableexclusively to the banking companies, waspassed. This Act was renamed as the BankingRegulation Act in March 1966. The Act vestedin the Reserve Bank, the responsibility relating tolicensing of banks, branch expansion, liquidity oftheir assets, management and methods of working,amalgamation, reconstruction and liquidation.Various amendments in several provisions of theAct were made from time to time addressing theevolving imperatives of the banking sectordevelopments.

The overarching philosophy underlyingbanking regulation in India has been to ensure thatthe growth of the financial sector remains inalignment with the growth of real sector and thatthere is a harmonized development of real andfinancial sectors. While recognizing thesignificance of innovation for efficient allocationof resources and increased competition, theregulation adopted a measured appraoch, strikinga balancebetween costs of misadventures anddenefits of growth. In recognition of Indianregulatory approach, RBI was awarded the 2012Dufrenoy Prize for facilitating responsibleinnovation in finance.⇒ STRENGTHENING AND

RESTRUCTURING OF ICDS SCHEME

The integrated Child Development Services(ICDS), scheme run by the Ministry of Women








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and Child Development, is all set for a majorstrengthening and restructuring with an accent onconvergence of the scheme with nodal ministriesand Panchayati raj Institutions. There werevarious reasons why the need for strengtheningand restructuring was felt. The rapiduniversalisation did not match the human andfinancial resource. There were also severalprogrammatic gaps absence of building andfacilities at the Aanganwadi level shortage ofquality human resource. There was also aninadequate focus on children under the age ofthree and early childhood education. The A WCswere perceived as merely feeding centres. Therewas inadequate convergence and lowinvolvement of states in programme planning.

There were also several operational gapslike insufficient accountability, irregularity in thefunctioning of A WCs and fund transfermechanism marked with delays, weak concurrentmonitoring and a single Aanganwadi worker ateach AWC burdened with non-ICDS functions.

The ICDS is going to be set in a missionmode with institutional mechanisms at the centralstate, district and block level as well as adequatehuman and financial resources being linked toaccountability and outcomes. It will be in missionmode as is the case with other flagshipprogrammes like National Rural HealthMission(NRHM) and Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan.

A senior official in the ministry said that theywere putting up the entire thing in the publicdomain. There would be programmatic change,managerial intervention and institutional changes.The reforms have been planned on these lines andthey would give a certain flexibility to the stateso that they submit their annual plan based ontheir local needs. The state could suggest any

innovation or funding or any pilot to be done.One of the major weakness of ICDS was

that there wasn’t any support for the functioningof Aanganwadi Centres (AWCs). This is goingto be addressed through the restructuring. Astrong convergence with other programmes likeNREGA and NRHM and is being envisaged. Forinstance water and sanitation problems will besolved by convergence with the water andsanitation department. The official added that overthe next five years, they had a target to fill up themaximum gaps. They were experimenting forsetting up A WC cum day-care centres. About70,000 A WCs are going to be converted intocreche day care centres. The focus is hence goingto be redefined, the official added. Additionalworkers will be sent into nearly 200 districts,which would be high-burden districts. Forinstance, if a district had burdened with undernutrition, it would get more workers. On a clusterof three to four A WCs would be a link worker.There would be a decentralized approach, stateswould be left free to devise their own strategies.

The focus will be on making ICDS a vibrantinstitution. The accent would be on pre-school nonformal education, the age group of 3-6 years. Theministry is taking steps for policy finalization,quality and standards. This, coupled with trainingand capacity building of workers, would improvethe situation. There would be an interface withparents and elders for focus on early childhoodeducation. The ICDS has come under fire forsiphoning off of funds and not letting them reachthe concerned beneficiaries. The official assertedthat they had a social audit in place to check this.The effort was being made to take measures tostop this corrupt practice. There would bevigorous monitoring and more communitymobilization. The infrastructure would be








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developed to make the services more child-friendly. More space would be provided and playfacilities would be enhanced for the children.Even the curriculum would be revised to make itmore child friendly.

There is a plan to roll out Strengthened andRestructured ICDS in three years beginning with200 High Burden districts in the first year 2012-13; additional 200 districts in second year (2013-14) including districts from special category Statesnamely Jammu & Kashmir, Himachal Pradeshand Uttarakhand and North East Region andremaining 243 districts in the third year (2014-15)of the 12th Five Year Plan. The financialimplications during 12lh Five Year Plan isestimated at Rs. 1,23,580 crore. Programmatic,management and institutional reforms will beinitiated with widened and revised package ofservices to focus on under-3 children, maternalcare, and Early Childhood Care Education(ECCE) as per the broad framework forimplementation with necessary changes infinancial norms/allocations and outcomes alongwith flexibility to the States with scope forinnovations. There will be continuedimplementation of ICDS Scheme in 12th FiveYear Plan and ICDS in Mission mode.

For greater focus and reaching childrenunder three and pregnant and lactating mothers,a package of six services has been redesignedwith new components. There will be newchildcare and nutrition counselling services. Therewill be increased investment in infrastructure andchildcare facilities. To enhance nutritional impactadditional nutrition counselor will be added to theAWCs. States will be given flexibility to providecommunity based care to moderately and severelyundernourished children. The mission mode willallow improved growth monitoring and

community participation through use of jointMother and

Child Protection Cards. It ensures a betterhealth care by ensuring a continuum of care fromfamily to A WC to community to health sub-centres and so on.lt will strive to improve thequality of early leaning through a comprehensivetraining and curriculum framework. Theobjectives of the ICDS mission would be toinstitutionalize essential services and strengthen.structures at all levels. It will also enhancecapacities at all levels. Other objectives includeensuring proper inter-sectoral response, raisingpublic awareness and participation, and creatinga data base and knowledge base of childdevelopment services.

ICDS introduced in 1975, has beenuniversalised mainly after 2005-06 and finally in2008-09 through 7076 approved Projects and 14lakh A WCs across the country. Theuniversalisation, however, did not match with theconcomitant human and financial resources as aresult of which programmatic, management andinstitutional gaps have crept in. This necessitatedthe strengthen and restructuring of ICDS.⇒ CENSUSINFO INDIA SOFTWARE LAUNCHED

The CensusInfo India Software has been launchedby Dr. C. Chandramouli, Registrar General &Census Commissioner, India.

The specially developed CensusInfo IndiaSoftware is an innovative and flexible databasetechnology used for the dissemination ofPopulation and Housing Census results.

The software has been developed by the UnitedNations Statistics Division, in partnership withUNICEF and UNFPA, to help countries disseminatetheir census results at any relevant geographical








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level, on CD-ROM and also on the web.CensusInfo India on Houses, Household Amenitiesand Assets based on Census 2011 data providesaccess to the dataset on a number of indicators atState and District level.

The user is able to extract information quite easilyand generate charts and maps depicting the data.This powerful data dissemination tool would notonly reduce the burden of statistical drudgery, but

at the same time would make using census data anenjoyable experience.

RURAL BUSINESS HUB SCHEME

The Rural Business Hubs (RBH) Scheme aims atsynergistically linking the strengths of rural areas/producers with industry and marketingorganizations so that rural products reach widermarket and benefits of value addition are shared.








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GIST OF KKURUKSHETRA40

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Sanitation is an integral component of publichygiene and health care. In India, 736 million[71.7%] people out of total population of 1027million, lack basic sanitation facilities resulting inhigh mortality and morbidity. Sanitation in broadterm refers to disposal and management of solidwastes, wastewater, human and cattle excretaetc. in such a way that it does not affect adverselydomestic personal hygiene. Sanitation is a forhuman health. It contributes to clean and improvedenvironment, social development and generatessignificant economic benefits.

Human excreta, among all forms of wastes,are the principal sources of many enteric diseasesand almost cause 80% of the diseases indeveloping countries. Studies reveal that over 50types of infections can be transmitted fromdiseased persons to healthy ones by various directand indirect routes from human excreta. Humanexcreta are the most hated object and anythingconnected with the latrine is considered so defilingthat in India in the past, one was expected to takea bath immediately after coming out of the toiletand before entering into the kitchen due to religioustaboos. Sanitation has, however, been seen as amatter of individual understanding and initiativerather than a collective responsibility of thecommunity. Investment to promote environmentalsanitation in this fast changing socio-culturalbackground is accorded the low priority.

A UN study in 2010 observed more peoplein India having access to a mobile phone than toa toilet. India’s mobile subscribers totaled around894 million at the last count, enough to serve morethan half of the country’s 1.2 billion people. Butjust 366 million people [30.5%] had access toproper sanitation.

A recent UNICEF report says 638 millionpeople [54%] defecate in the open in India asagainst just 7% each in Brazil and Bangladesh.Only 6% rural children below five years in Indiaused toilets and about 50% of all Indians regularlywash their hands with soap after contact withexcreta. Union Minister for rural developmentShree Jairam Ramesh has called for making India“an open defecation free” country by 2017.

Finance: Experts have observed thatGovernment spending on sanitation and drinkingwater is grossly inadequate. According to theCenter for Budget and GovernmentAccountability, Government spending under theseheads declined from 0.59% of GDP in 2008-09to 0.54% in 2009-10 and further to 0.42% in2010-11.Union Minister for rural developmentShree Jairam Ramesh has acknowledged that,“investment in sanitation and drinking wateris as important as investment in defense”. Hefurther adds “you can invest in missiles andtanks, in alrcrafts, but if you don’t have clean

Gist of

KURUKSHETRA









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drinking water, if you don’t have sanitationthen the population is not going to be healthy.More investment in these sectors will result intobetter health of the people”. The budget for2012-13 has increased allocation by 27% for ruralsanitation and drinking water from Rs. 11,000crore in 2011-12 to Rs.14,000 crore. A majorinitiative would be to strengthen Panchayatsacross the country through Gram PanchayatSashaktikaran Abhiyan and capacity building ofpanchayats.

Government of India’s first socio-economiccensus and comprehensive population survey,2011, reveals developments on certain basicamenities to sustain human life. The number ofhouses increased from 250 million in 2001 to 330million [132%] in 2011 whereas Government’sbiased policy and enhanced purchasing power ofmillions in urban and metropolitan centersfacilitated them easy access to state-of-the-arttechnologies and consumer goods, due to complextransition process experienced during post-marketeconomy, in sharp contrast to a large number ofrural households lacking access even to the mostrudimentary facilities as per Census 2011. Forexample, while rural households [167,826,730]accounted for 68.03% of total 246,692,667 HHsonly 17.9% rural HHs have access to treatedsource of tap water as against 62.0% urban HHsand 62.5% rural HHs depend upon firewood forcooking as compared with 20.5% urban HHs. Itis shocking that only 30.7% rural HHs havelatrine facilities as compared to 81.4% urbanHHs. Of this, as high as 63.2% rural HHs havetoilets with no drainage as against meager 18.2%urban HHs and just abysmally as insignificant as2.2% rural HHs have piped sewer system ascompared with 18.2% urban HHS.

⇒ VISION 2022

India as an emerging economy and targetingdouble digit annual growth will have to resolve theproblem of open defecation and providing toiletfacilities with piped sewer system for disposal ofhuman waste from the long-term perspective.Indeed neither the Government, nor localauthorities or beneficiaries can bear the totalcapital costs and recurring operations andmaintenance costs of sewerage system. For thispurpose, vision 2022 may need to be initiatedfocusing on sharing national and internationalexperiences and best practices with developedcountries. This could be through mobilizingfinancial resources from international financialinstitutions, viz. World Bank, Asian DevelopmentBank etc.; harnessing technical expertise,technologies and equipment from reputedinternational professional agencies; formulatingperspective plan to be implemented in phases tocover all cities and villages progressively in 10years in a mission mode.⇒ WOMEN’S ROLE IN PROMOTING SANITATION:SOME STUDY-BASED REFLECTIONS

As far as the scenario of rural sanitation isconcerned, the access to water supply andsanitation services is still largely inadequate.While the overall Indian scenario reflects that anestimated 55% of all Indians or close to 600 millionpeople still do not have access to any kind of toiletbut in rural areas, the scale of the problem isparticularly daunting, as 74% of the ruralpopulation still defecates in the open. Despite aninvestment of more than Rs. 6 billion andconstruction of over 9 million latrines in ruralareas, rural sanitation grew at just 1% annuallythroughout the 1990s and the Census of 2001found that only 22 per cent of rural households








GIST OF KKURUKSHETRA 43

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had access to a toilet, with combined rural andurban coverage as 36.4 %. (UNICEF 2008)ROLE OF WOMEN IN PROMOTING

RURAL SANITATION: STUDY-BASED

OBSERVATIONS FROM WEST BENGAL

Almost one out of two persons live without a toiletin India. In rural West Bengal, percentage of usingsanitary latrine/toilet is very less. Women often facemajor problems if there is no toilet at home havingto wait until nightfall to relieve them-selves. This isrisky behaviour as it exposes them to multiplehealth hazards and also snake bites, harassmentand even rape. In one of the recent micro-levelstudies conducted by the author himself covering50 rural households of Birbhum district of WestBengal - with an aim to explore the role of womenin promotion and management of rural sanitation,which brought into light the followingobservations-

(1) Women always play the decisive role inpromotion and proper management ofhousehold-levelsanitation in a family

(2) In absence of a toilet at home, womenand young girls suffer the most, whichalso make them vulnerable to differentdiseases

(3) Interestingly it was also found thatwomen from 65% of the selectedhouseholds, happily invested their moneyearned from self-help-group (SHG)activities while installation of theirhouse-hold toilets

(4) Compared to men, women pay moreattention towards basic sanitation andhygiene principles, which we apply in ourdaily life

(5) Children from female-headed familieswere found much more conscious andconcern about personal hygiene normsthan that of male-headed families

(6) Strategies of Total Sanitation Campaign(TSC) would have been much moreeffective to ensure full-sanitationcoverage in rural areas, if the gendercomponent had been given much morepriority

The study-result also exhibits that ruralwomen have always been the key educator ininculcating the sense of personal hygiene amongtheir children and at the same time they werefound to be much more interested in sanitation-related issues in comparison to their malecounterpart, which ultimately ensures a better andsafer environmental sanitation within a ruralcommunity.

Studies indicate that in absence of asanitary latrine at home, it is the women’s dignitywhich is found to be at stake especially in ruralIndia. Rural women suffer more than men fromthe indignity of being forced to defecate in theopen, at risk of assault and rape. Women,generally being responsible for the home and forchildren and other dependents, are most affectedby a lack of sanitation, and by the indignity of livingwithout sanitation. The study conducted by Mitikand Decaluwe (2009) in South Africa shows thatwomen, in particular, spend a considerableproportion of their time in the household’scommon sanitation related activities such asfetching water, harvesting fodder, and collectingfirewood especially in rural areas of developingcountries. They further suggested and concludedthat for ensuring the success and sustainability ofany sanitation programme women must be givenenough space and opportunity to take active partin it. While the study by lIahi (2000) suggests thatwomen has always been a better manager incomparison to their male counterpart in the









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context of promoting the state of household levelsanitation. Reddy’s (1999) study conducted inrural Haryana reveals that even illiterate womenperforms the role of a hygiene educator in betterway than that of the literate male members of thesame family; and this is more evident in thecontext of rural parts of Haryana and AndhraPradesh. Narayan (1995) while studying 121Rural Water Supply and Sanitation projects ofIndia found that women’s participation is amongthe crucial variables associated with sanitationproject’s effectiveness. Without the effectiveparticipation of women it is not possible to ensuresustainability of any sanitation programme. At thesame time he has found that at household levelmore 70% of the sanitation related activities arecarried out by women, so they must beconsidered as the key player in ensuring successof any rural sanitation programmes or projects.⇒ NEW LAW OF MANUAL SCAVANGERS

On June 17, 2011, Prime MinisterManmohan Singh referred to manual scavengingas “one of the darkest blots on [India’s]development process” and asked all stateMinisters in the country to pledge to eliminate thisscourge from every corner of India in the nextsix months, by the end of 2011. Governmentwas duty bound to enact a new comprehensivelaw for total emancipation of sanitarycomprehensive law for total emancipation ofsanitary sewerage cleaning and septic tankcleaning Within a time frame. Tamil NaduAssembly on September 10, 2011, acknowledgingthe fact that old law 10 too weak and needs to bereplaced with a new central laws binding all Statelegislatures, was prompt to pass a unanimousresolution urging the Union of India to enactsuitable amendments to the 1993 Act by

modifying certain clauses to make itcomprehensive and unambiguous, inter alia,widen the definition of manual scavenging,appointment of implementing authorities, powerof executing authority to prevent environmentpollution.

The law must strengthen publicaccountability mechanisms and shift the focus tohuman dignity from mere sanitation andautomatically binding on all State Governments.On March 12, 2012 Ms Pratibha Patil, thenPresident of India, while addressing theParliament promised for social justice and said,“her Government will introduce a new Bill inthe Parliament for eliminating manualscavenging and insanitary latrines. This willalso provide for proper rehabilitation ofmanual scavengers in alternative occupationsso that they are able to lead a life of dignity”.A similar commitment was made to the SupremeCourt four days later. The bill was proposed tobe introduced in the monsoon session of theParliament, which also came only after the matterwas brought before the Supreme Court followingan order of the Madras High Court that thepersonal appearance of high dignitaries, includingthose in the Prime Minister’s Office, might berequired if the Center failed to amend the law.The 1993 Act defined a manual scavenger as “aperson engaged in or employed for manuallycarrying human excreta” whereas the definitionof scavenger in the 2012 new bill is elaborate,inclusive and includes a person engaged oremployed for manually cleaning, carrying,disposing of, or otherwise handling in anymanner, human excreta In an unsanitarylatrine or in an open drain or pit into whichthe human excreta from the insanitary latrine









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is disposed of, or on a railway track”.However, the scope of definition saying that“excreta with the help of such devises andusing such protective gear, as the CentralGovernment may notify in this behalf, shall notbe a manual scavenger” is just sufficient tocontinue the demeaning practice. Besides,cleaning railway tracks should be included.⇒ DRINKING WATER

• In 2008 while urban areas witnessed96% improvement in respect of accessto safe drinking water sources, ruralareas have yet to satisfy with 73%improvement.

• According to the Joint MonitoringProgram of the orld Health Organizationand UNICEF, the use of improvedsanitation coverage in rural India hasincreased to only 21% in 2008. Besides,65,000 villages are still “no source”villages and estimated 200 million peopleaccess unhygienic water.

• Number of villages are not only deprivedof having a dependable source ofdrinking water but many others have, also,been experiencing impact of hazardouschemicals in the aquifers of groundwater.A high proportion of the rural populationin India obtain their drinking watersupplies from shallow and private boreholes, which suffer to a much greaterextent from the impact of chemicalfertilizers and pesticides as well as otherelements injurious to health viz. fluoride,nitrate, chloride, arsenic, sulphide, iron,zinc, chromium and salinity.

• Already the Government and otheragencies have identified 185 locations/districts throughout the country wheretheses pollutants cause harmful effects.

The gravity of the problem can best beunderstood from the fact that [i] fluorideis present in 37 districts of nine States[ii] salinity [inland] in 12 districts of fiveStates [iii] salinity [coastal] in 11 districtsof four States [iv] nitrate in 68 districtsof 12 States [v] chloride in 17 districts offive States [vi] arsenic in four districtsof one State [vii] sulphide in threedistricts of one State [viii] iron in 26districts of seven States [ix] zinc in sixdistricts of three States and [x]chromium in one district.

⇒ DRAFT WATER POLICY 2012

The draft on water policy, among others,suggests that [i] the Government may withdrawfrom its role as a service provider in the watersector [ii] communities and the private sectorshould be encouraged to play the role of serviceprovider [iii] Government should abolish all formsof water subsidies to the agricultural and domesticsectors [iv] subsidies and incentives should beprovided to private industry for recycling andreusing treated effluents [v] people displaced bylarge water projects should be made partners andgiven a share in the benefits comparable to theproject-benefitted families. The policy suggeststhat the cost of rehabilitation and compensationto the project affected families be partly borne bythe project-benefited families through adequatepricing of water.

Approach predicted on realizing the coststhat go into supply of water can only distortaccess and prices in the long run, affecting lessaffluent citizens. For example, the State shouldexit the service provider role and become aregulator is only a step away from abandoning theequity objectives. Evidently, private partnershipimposes the burden of extra costs.









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In 2005, a World Bank documentrecommended that’ if India is to have sustainableeconomic growth, the role of the Indian waterstate must change from that of a builder andcontroller to creator of an enabling environmentand facilitator of the actions of water users largeand small”. The document, inter alia, suggested‘stimulating competition in and for the market forirrigation and water and sanitation services.⇒ ETOILET INDIA’S

FIRST ELECTRONIC PUBLIC TOILET

Through this unique product, the companyhas attempted to address the inherent challengesof public sanitation. In a perfect situation, a publictoilet should have the capabilities to address wastemanagement, effective water usage andsustainability as core challenges among variousother issues. eToilet is positioned as the perfectsolution which addresses all these effectively; itis cost effective, appropriate and suitable for thegeographic and demographic patterns of anylocation. It is working on a mission to have allIndian Cities with modern sterilized publicsanitation system. To further improve UrbanSanitation Infrastructure, such projects with hugesocial relevance are inevitable.⇒ GLOBAL WATER SHORTAGE

The amount of water in the world is finite.A third of the world’s population lives in water-stressed countries now. By 2025, this is expectedto rise to two-thirds. There is more than enoughwater available, in total, for everyone’s basicneeds. The UN recommends that people need aminimum of 50 liters of water a day for drinking,washing, cooking and sanitation. In 1990, over abillion people did not have even that. Providinguniversal access to that basic minimum worldwide

by 2015 would take less than 1% of the amountof water we use today. But we’re a long wayfrom achieving that. The total domestic waterdemand in 1995 and 2025 under the threescenarios. Total domestic demand under CRI is60 cubic kilometers in developing countriesincluding India. Urbanization and rapid growth inurban population can dramatically increase percapita use of freshwater. Fast population growthwith accelerated urbanization, combined withscare water supplies means that the governmentsall over the world often cannot supply enoughwater to meet demand.⇒ WATER SCARCITY IN INDIA

In India the pumping of underground wateris now estimated to be double the rate of aquiferrecharge from rainfall. The International WaterManagement Institute, the world’s premier waterresearch group, estimates that India’s grainharvest could be reduced by up to one fourth asa result of aquifer depletion. In a country adding18 million people per year, this is not good news.

In addition to population growth,urbanisation and industrialisation also expand thedemand for water. Industrialisation takes evenmore water than urbanisation. Some 70 per centof the water consumed worldwide, including boththat diverted from rivers and that pumped fromunderground, is used for irrigation, while some 20per cent is used by industry, and 10 per cent forresidential purposes. In the increasingly intensecompetition for water among sectors, agriculturealmost always loses. The 1,000 tons of water usedin India to produce one ton of wheat worthperhaps $200 (Rs. 10,000) can also be used toexpand industrial output by $10,000 (Rs.5,00,000), or 50 times as much. This ratio helpsexplain why, in the American West, the sale of




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irrigation water rights by farmers to cities is analmost daily occurrence. In India, overall waterdemand will increase from 552 BCM to 1050BCM by 2025, which will require the use of allthe available water resources in the country(World Bank 1999). Of the present water usage,92% is devoted to agriculture, with roughly 3%used in industry and only 5% for domesticpurposes like drinking water and sanitation (WRI2000). Demand from the industrial and domesticsectors is expected to increase with the growingpopulation urbanization and industrialization.⇒ MEASURES TO OVERCOME WATER CRISIS

• Protection of forests, soil and waterresources.

• Promotion and coordination of traditionaland environment friendly technologies inagriculture and water conservation.

• Water conservation measures fromdomestic level

• Ensure recharging of groundwater tomeet increasing dependability ongroundwater

• Rainwater harnessing •Improvement of irrigation technology toavoid overuse and loss in waterconveyance

• Good network of data collecting centres• Improved observation standardization of

data •Free access to data in websites,especially remote sensing data, forresearchers

• More facilities for research, includingcomputers and broadband Internet

• Adequate training for the staff inmeteorological and water resourcesdepartments

• Better international cooperation inresearch and technology permanent

mechanism to monitor climate changeimpacts

• Region wise, in-depth study of the waterbalance

• Develop better institutional capacity forwater resources management

• Special task force and special funds forthe extreme climate conditions - emphasis on urban hydrology

• Conservation and managementstrategies to cope with any extremes inwater balance

• Fostering an awareness of water as ascare resource and its conservation asan important principle - through NGOs

• New management approaches - empowering people for equitable shar-ing of water, creating a political will and good governance, and developing and sharing knowledge and technology to improve water resources management

• Control of all water resources by theCentral administration to avoid disputes.

⇒ MGNREGA AND SOCIAL AUDIT

Social audit is a process in which, details ofthe resources, both financial and non-financial,used by public agencies for developmentinitiatives are shared with the people, oftenthrough a public platform such as the Gram Sabhain rural India. Broadly, the process of social auditinvolves following three components: a)availability of information b) organising thebeneficiaries/people and c) scrutiny of theinformation by the beneficiaries / people. Socialaudit is seen as a means of promoting (i)transparency (ii) participation (iii) consultation andconsent (iv) downward accountability and (v)redressal of grievances in public matters.

The Social Audit Unit shall be responsible to:(a) build capacities of Gram Sabhas for

conducting Social Audit and for this









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purpose identify, train and deploy suitableresource persons at village, block, districtand State level, drawing from primarystake holders and other civil societyorganizations having knowledge andexperience of working for the rights ofthe people.

(b) prepare Social Audit reporting format,resource materials, guidelines andmanuals for the Social Audit process.

(c) create awareness rights and entitlementsunder MGNREGA .

(d) facilitate verification of records withbprimary stakeholders/beneficiaries andwork sites/assets created.

(e) facilitate smooth conduct of Social Audit,Gram Sabhas for reading out andfinalizing decisions after due discussions.

(f) host the Social Audit Report including theAction Taken Report in the publicdomain.

(g) act as a liaison agency with civil societygroups and NGOs on issues oftransparency and accountability.

⇒ “SWABHIMAAN” –THE FINANCIAL INCLUSION CAMPAIGH

In order to further extend the reach ofbanking to the rural hinterland, banks wereadvised to provide appropriate banking facilitiesto habitations having population is excess of 2000by March, 2012 using various models andtechnologies including branchless banking throughBusiness Correspondent Agent (BCAs). ThisFinancial Inclusion Campaign named“Swabhimaan” was formally launched by theGovernment in February, 2011. Banking facilitiesto 74,194 such villages have been provided andabout 3.16 crore financial accounts have beenopened under this Campaign by end of March,2012. Further, in terms of Finance Minister’sBudget Speech 2012-12 it has been decided toextend the “Swabhimaan” campaign tohabitations with population of more than 1000 inNorth Easter and hilly States and to otherhabitations which have crossed population of2011. Accordingly about 45,000 such habitationshave been identified to be covered under theextended “Swabhimaan” campaign.








GIST OF PRESS INFORMATION BUREAU 49

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As mandated by the Article 280 of theConstitution, the Government has constituted theFourteenth Finance Commission consisting of Dr.Y.V.Reddy, former Governor Reserve Bank ofIndia, as the Chairman and the following fourother members, namely: -

1. Prof Abhijit Sen Member, MemberPlanning Commission (Part Time)

2. Ms. Sushma NathFormer Union Finance Secretary Member

3. Dr. M.Govinda RaoDirector, National Institutefor Public Finance and Policy,New Delhi Member

4. Dr. Sudipto MundleFormer Acting Chairman,National Statistical Commission Member

Shri Ajay Narayan Jha shall be theSecretary to the Commission. The Commissionshall make its report available by the 31st October,2014, covering a period of five years comme-ncing on the 1st April, 2015.

The Commission shall makerecommendations regarding the sharing of Uniontaxes, principles governing Grants-in-aid toStates and transfer of resources to local bodies.

Terms of Reference and the matters thatshall be taken into consideration by the FourteenthFinance Commission in making therecommendations are as under:—

(i) the distribution between the Union and

the States of the net proceeds of taxeswhich are to be, or may be, dividedbetween them under Chapter I, Part XIIof the Constitution and the allocationbetween the States of the respectiveshares of such proceeds;

(ii) the principles which should govern thegrants-in-aid of the revenues of theStates out of the Consolidated Fund ofIndia and the sums to be paid to the Stateswhich are in need of assistance by wayof grants-in-aid of their revenues underarticle 275 of the Constitution forpurposes other than those specified in theprovisos to clause (1) of that article; and

(iii) the measures needed to augment theConsolidated Fund of a State tosupplement the resources of thePanchayats and Municipalities in theState on the basis of the recommen-dations made by the FinanceCommission of the State.

The Commission shall review the state ofthe finances, deficit and debt levels of the Unionand the States, keeping in view, in particular, thefiscal consolidation roadmap recommended by theThirteenth Finance Commission, and suggestmeasures for maintaining a stable and sustainablefiscal environment consistent with equitablegrowth including suggestions to amend the FiscalResponsibility Budget Management Acts

Gist of

PRESS INFORMATION BUREAU








GIST OF PRESS INFORMATION BUREAU50

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currently in force and while doing so, theCommission may consider the effect of thereceipts and expenditure in the form of grants forcreation of capital assets on the deficits; and theCommission shall also consider and recommendincentives and disincentives for States forobserving the obligations laid down in the FiscalResponsibility Budget Management Acts.

In making its recommendations, theCommission shall have regard, among otherconsiderations, to –

(i) the resources of the Central Government,for five years commencing on 1st April2015, on the basis of levels of taxationand non-tax revenues likely to be reachedduring 2014-15;

(ii) the demands on the resources of theCentral Government, in particular, onaccount of the expenditure on civiladministration, defence, internal andborder security, debt-servicing and othercommitted expenditure and liabilities;

(iii) the resources of the State Governmentsand the demands on such resources underdifferent heads, including the impact ofdebt levels on resource availability in debtstressed states, for the five yearscommencing on 1st April 2015, on thebasis of levels of taxation and non-taxrevenues likely to be reached during2014-15;

(iv) the objective of not only balancing thereceipts and expenditure on revenueaccount of all the States and the Union,but also generating surpluses for capitalinvestment;

(v) the taxation efforts of the CentralGovernment and each State Governmentand the potential for additional resourcemobilisation to improve the tax-Gross

Domestic Product ratio in the case ofthe Union and tax-Gross State DomesticProduct ratio in the case of the States;

(vi) the level of subsidies that are required,having regard to the need for sustainableand inclusive growth, and equitablesharing of subsidies between the CentralGovernment and State Governments;

(vii) the expenditure on the non-salarycomponent of maintenance and upkeepof capital assets and the non-wagerelated maintenance expenditure on planschemes to be completed by 31st March,2015 and the norms on the basis of whichspecific amounts are recommended forthe maintenance of the capital assets andthe manner of monitoring suchexpenditure;

(viii) the need for insulating the pricing of publicutility services like drinking water,irrigation, power and public transportfrom policy fluctuations through statutoryprovisions;

(ix) the need for making the public sectorenterprises competitive and marketoriented; listing and disinvestment; andrelinquishing of non-priority enterprises;

(x) the need to balance management ofecology, environment and climate changeconsistent with sustainable economicdevelopment; and

(xi) the impact of the proposed Goods andServices Tax on the finances of Centreand States and the mechanism forcompensation in case of any revenueloss.

In making its recommendations on variousmatters, the Commission shall generally take thebase of population figures as of 1971 in all caseswhere population is a factor for determination of









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devolution of taxes and duties and grants-in-aid;however, the Commission may also take intoaccount the demographic changes that have takenplace subsequent to 1971.5.

The Commission may review the presentPublic Expenditure Management systems in placeincluding the budgeting and accounting standardsand practices; the existing system of classificationof receipts and expenditure; linking outlays tooutputs and outcomes; best practices within thecountry and internationally, and make appropriaterecommendations thereon.

The Commission may review the presentarrangements as regards financing of DisasterManagement with reference to the fundsconstituted under the Disaster Management Act,2005(53 of 2005), and make appropriaterecommendations thereon.

The Commission shall indicate the basis onwhich it has arrived at its findings and makeavailable the State-wise estimates of receipts andexpenditure. The Commission shall make itsreport available by the 31stOctober, 2014, coveringa period of five years commencing on the 1stApril, 2015.

FM Statement on Current Account Deficit(CAD); Confident to Finance the Cad ithoutDrawing Upon Reserves; Appeal to the Peopleto Moderate the Demand for Gold as IT Leadsto Large Imports of Gold

The text of the Union Finance Minister ShriP.Chidambaram’s Statement about CurrentAccount Deficit (CAD) is as follows: I havespoken about the Current Account Deficit (CAD)on a number of occasions. The Current AccountDeficit, for the first half of the current year(2012-13) stood at US$ 38.7 billion or 4.6% ofGDP.

The main contributors to the CAD were:–• Exports recorded a sharp decline of

7.4%, while imports recorded a smallerdecline of 4.3% leading to widening ofthe trade deficit. Of the imports, goldimports amounted to US$ 20.25 billion.

• This was partly made up by an increasein services exports of 4.2% and,consequently, surplus in services whichamounted to US$ 29.6 billion.

• Remittances of US$ 32.9 billion.Notwithstanding the widening of the CAD,

the positive aspect is that the CAD was financedwithout drawing on reserves. This was mainly dueto adequate inflow of FDI (US$ 12.8 billion) andFII (US$ 6.2 billion). In addition, externalcommercial borrowing amounted to US$ 1.7billion. The net result is that we have not drawnon the foreign exchange reserves and, in fact,there is a marginal accretion of US$ 0.4 billion tothe foreign exchange reserves. As would beevident, gold imports constituted a substantialchunk of the imports and is a huge drain on theCurrent Account.

Suppose gold imports had been one half ofthe actual level, that would have meant that ourforeign exchange reserves would have increasedby US$ 10.5 billion. I would therefore appeal tothe people to moderate the demand for gold whichleads to large imports of gold. I may add that wemay be left with no choice but to make it a littlemore expensive to import gold. This matter isunder Government’s consideration. While theCAD is indeed worrying, I think it is within ourcapacity to finance the CAD, thanks to FDI, FIIand ECB. I would like to once again underscorethe crucial importance of FDI and FII. As I havesaid before, attracting foreign funds to India hasbecome an economic imperative. I am confident









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that even if the year ends with a slightly largerCAD than last year, we would be able to financethe Current Account Deficit without drawing uponreserves.

YEAR END REVIEW-2012

NATIONAL SAMPLE SURVEY OFFICE

(NSSO) The National Sample SurveyOffice (NSSO) under the Ministry of Statistics& Programme Implementation is responsible forcarrying out surveys on socio-economic aspectsof Indian Economy by collecting data fromhouseholds and enterprises located in villages andin the towns with a view to update data base forsound planning for development andadministrative decisions. Towards this end andobjective of the organization, the majorachievements during 2012 are as follows: SURVEY UNDERTAKEN/ LAUNCHED

(i) The field work of two sub-rounds of NSS68th round on Household ConsumerExpenditure & Employment andUnemployment was completed duringthe year and the field work for NSS 69thround, a six month duration survey, onDrinking Water, Sanitation & Hygieneand Housing Conditions (includingslums)started in July 2012 and now hasbeen completed.

(ii) Agricultural Statistics Survey on Samplecheck on area enumeration andsupervision of crop cutting experimentsunder the scheme for ‘Improvement ofCrop Statistics (ICS)’ for the agriculturalyears 2011-12 and 2012-13. While theSurvey for 2011-12 is completed, theSurvey for 2012-13 will continue up toJune 2013.

(iii) Regular price collection surveys in ruralareas for compilation of Consumer PriceIndices for Rural and AgriculturalLabour by Labour Bureau and in urbanareas for Consumer Price Index (Urban)by Central Statistics Office (CSO).

(iv) Assistance to Department of IndustrialPolicy & Promotion (DIPP) in collectionof wholesale prices from selected units/factories for compilation of WholesalePrice Index.

(v) The data collection work of AnnualSurvey of Industries for 2010-11 and2011-12.

NEW INITIATIVES UNDERTAKEN

(i) All India Periodic Labour Force Survey(PLFS) is in progress in 3 States viz,Gujarat, Himachal Pradesh and Orissa.The primary objective of the survey is tomeasure the dynamics in labourforce participation and employmentstatus in the short time interval of 3months.

(ii) Experimentation of use of Hand-helddevices / gadgets for data collection inthe socio-economic surveys in the field.

(iii) Use of RDBMS system of dataprocessing.

(iv) Data entry at field level in NSS 68th and69th rounds in the states of Goa, Jammu& Kashmir, Sikkim and Puducherry.

REPORTS RELEASED

(i) 96th issue of the NSSO Jour-nal‘Sarvekshana’.

(ii) Reports/ Results based on NSS rounds.

NSS 66TH ROUND

(a) Informal Sector and Conditions ofEmployment in India









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(b) Nutritional Intake in India (c) Household consumption of various goods

and services in India (d) Energy Sources of Indian Households for

Cooking and Lighting (e) Employment and Unemploy-ment

Situation Among Social Groups in India(f) Household Consumer Expendi-ture

Across Socio-Economic Groups(g) Home based workers in India

NSS 67TH ROUND (a) Key Results of Survey

onUnincorporated Non-AgriculturalEnterprises (Excluding Construction) inIndia

(b) Operational characteristics ofUnincorporated Non-agriculturalEnterprises (Excluding Construction) inIndia

NSS 68TH ROUND

(a) Provisional Results of HouseholdConsumer Expenditure Survey, NSS 68thround (July 20011 - June 2012)

SOCIAL STATISTICS DIVISION

The Social Statistics Division released fivepublications namely, Manual on DisabilityStatistics, Manual on Labour Statistics (I),SAARC Social Charter-India Country Report2012, Women and Men in India 2012, Children inIndia 2012 – A Statistical Appraisal. The Ministryhas constituted two national awards viz,Prof.C.R.Rao award for young Statistician andProf.P.V.Sukhatme award for life timeachievement in Statistics for Indian national inalternate years. In 2012, Prof.P.V. Sukhatmeaward was jointly awarded to Prof. S.P.Mukherjee, ex Professor, Calcutta University andProf. Jayant Vinayak Deshpande ex Professor,

Pune University. The award carries a prizemoney of Rs.5 lakhs, a citation and a momento. MPLAD SCHEME

• Objective: The Member of ParliamentLocal Area Development Scheme(MPLADS) was launched in December,1993 to provide a mechanism for theMembers of Parliament to recommendworks of developmental nature forcreation of durable community assets andfor provision of basic facilities based onlocally felt needs. The annual MPLADSfunds entitlement per MP under thescheme has been enhanced from Rs.2crore to Rs.5 crore w.e.f. 2011-12.

• Nauture of the Scheme: under thescheme funds are released in the formof Grant-in-aid as Special CentralAssistance directly to the Districts. TheMinistry of Statistics and ProgrammeImplementation has prescribed a set ofguidelines for implementation andmonitoring of the scheme. The guidelinesare revised from time to time to make itmore responsive to the local needswithout compromising the basicprinciples of the scheme. The Guidelinesof November, 2005 have been revisedand the revised guidelines have beenissued in August, 2012. As many asreform circulars on guidelines have beenissued in this year till date.

• Impact: With a view to assess theimplementation of the scheme for mid-course correction, a mechanism ofphysical monitoring of MPLADS worksin selected Districts by an independentInstitution has been put in place. Thirdparty monitoring of MPLADS works in208 Districts have been completed during









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the period 2007 to 2011 by NABCONS.Currently third party physical monitoringhas been assigned to M/s AFC Ltd. Andis underway in 100 Districts.

• Physical and Financial Progress of theScheme since inception:

• Rs. 26960.25 crore has been released(including release of Rs. 1962 crore upto 30.11.2012 during the financial year2012-13 since inception of the Scheme.As reported by the Districts, anexpenditure of Rs. 24070.88 has beenincurred under the Scheme. Thepercentage utilization over release of89.28

• So far 13,87,151 works have beensanctioned and 12,382,87 works beencompleted. Percentage of workscompleted to sanction is 89.27.

COORDINATION AND PUBLICATION (CAP)• For Five year Plan 2012-17, the Ministry

has been allocated Rs. 3709 croresexcluding Member of Parliament LocalArea Development Scheme(MPLADS).

• Under India Statistical StrengtheningProject (ISSP), Ministry has signedMOUs with 13 States and released Rs.130.86 crores.

• An MOU was signed with EURO STATfor statistical cooperation.

INFRASTRUCTURE & PROJECT

MONITORING DIVISION (IPMD)

The Infrastructure & Project MonitoringDivision (IPMD) monitors the implementation ofCentral Sector Projects (costing Rs. 150 croreand above) in 14 Infrastructure Sectors as wellas the performance of 11 key infrastructuresectors.

As per the latest Report for the month ofSeptember, 2012 there are 566 such ongoingCentral Sector Projects (costing Rs. 150 croreand above whose original cost of implementationwas about Rs. 7,90,572.38 crore and anticipatedcompletion cost likely to be Rs.9,23,573.57 crore.This reflects a cost overrun of 16.8%. 46.5% ofthe Projects i.e. 263 Projects are delayed, withthe average time overrun being about 17.3 monthsfor all projects and 37.1 months for the delayedproject.

The infrastructure performance recordedpositive growth during the year 2012-13(April- September) over the corresponding periodof the previous year in various sectors such aspower generation (4.8%), Production ofcoal(8.1%), Production of finished steel (2.0%),cement (7.4%), refinery (5.4%), up-gradation ofHighway by NHAI (38.8%), goods traffic carriedby Railways (4.8%), passengers handled atInternational terminals (2.6%) of the airports andnet addition in switching capacity of telephoneexchanges (59.1%). The negative growth over theperformance with respect to the previous yearwas observed in some sectors namely fertilizers(6.0%), crude oil (0.7%) & natural gas (12.5%),& up-gradation of Highway by State PWD andBorder Road Organisation(BRO) (9.3%), cargohandled at major ports (3.3%), Cargo handled atairport –[Export (1.6%) & import cargo (9.2%)]and passenger handled at domestic terminals ofthe airports (3.1%). RECENT INITIATIVES

To facilitate resolving of various extraneousissues/bottlenecks such as land acquisition,encroachments, delay in issue of clearances andshifting of utilities, etc. Which are increasinglyhaving a bearing on the implementation of Central










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Sector Projects, all States have been requestedto constitute Central Sector Projects CoordinationCommittees under the Chief Secretaries in whichconcerned PSU s in the State, the concernedDepartments of State Government and Agenciesetc. are also represented.

Recognizing the importance of ProjectManagement in the improving the projectimplementation, this Ministry is supporting variousinitiatives in promoting the Project Managementdiscipline and training. Five-day training for publicsector employees in project management is beingorganized by this Ministry once in each quarter.Over 200 executive have benefitted from it.

The Review meeting on the implementationof Projects in the state of Odisha have been takenup, by the Hon’ble Minister with the IOCL,RVNL, MCL & NHAI. The minute have beencirculated for taking necessary action to allconcerned.

Field visits to various project sites of JNPT,MbPT, NHAI & IOC etc. have been taken tounderstand the constraints and appropriatesuggestion were made to resolve the same. TWENTY POINT PROGRAMME (TPP)

The Twenty Point Programme (TPP) waslaunched by the Government of India in the year1975 and has been restructured thrice in 1982,1986 and again in 2006. The restructuredprogramme, known as Twenty Point Programme(TPP) – 2006, became operational with effectfrom, 1st April, 2007. The TPP-06 is meant to givea thrust to schemes relating to poverty alleviation,employment generation in rural areas, housing,education, family welfare & health, protection ofenvironment and many other schemes having abearing on the quality of life, especially in the ruralareas. The Twenty Point Programme (TPP) –

2006 consists of 20 points with 65 items whichare monitored on annual basis. Out of the 65 items,20 items are monitored on monthly basis also onthe basis of progress report submitted by stateGovernment. UT Administrations and concernedCentral Nodal Ministries. Performance of 15 ofthe 20 items is monitored against pre-set targetswhich are fixed by concerned Central NodalMinistries.

The Ministry releases a Monthly ProgressReport (MPR) on implementation of monthlymonitored items. During the financial year 2012,MPR’s have been released for the months ofOctober, 2011 to September, 2012 respectively.In addition to MPR, an Annual Review Report onTPP- 2006 covering progress of implementationof all items during the year under TPP-2006 is alsoreleased. During 2012, Annual Review Report for20010-11 has been released.

In order to strengthen the monitoring of theimplementation framework of schemes/programmes covered under TPP-06 TPP Divisionof the Ministry has been mandated to undertakeMonitoring and Impact Assessment Studies onselected programmes/schemes covered underTPP-2006. So far, the Ministry has undertakentwo Impact Assessment Studies. First relates toimpact of MGNREGA in 3 selected districts ofNorth Eastern States namely Mon (Nagaland), ,Saiha (Mizoram), Dhalai (Tripura), The secondstudy related to rehabilitation of Disabled personsunder Deendayal Disability Rehabilitation Scheme(DDRS) in the States of Delhi, Karanataka,Madhya Pradesh and West Bengal.

Twenty Point Programme was last revisedin 2006 which came into operation in April 2007.Since then, the priorities of the Government haveshifted from 10th Plan to 11th Plan to 12th Plan.










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Beside these the Government has taken initiativesin the form of “Bharat Nirman” and otherFlagship Programmes. In order to accommodatethese policy changes and thrusts, the Ministry hasinitiated a proposal to revamp the TPP.

Ministry of Statistics & PI also undertakesreview meeting at National and State levels aspart of monitoring and consultation mechanism.Two National Review Meeting of TPP-06 havebeen successfully held so far on 28.10.10 and11.11.11 respectively. These review meeting areheld to review the overall progress of schemes/programmes so to improve the implementation ofschemes/ programmes covered under TPP. Thesemeetings addressed the core issues with StatesGovts/UT Administrations and with concernednodal Ministries viz. State –wise performance ofprogrammes and Schemes covered under TwentyPoint Programme , variation in reportedperformance figures by States/UTs and furnishedby Central Nodal Ministries. Delay in reportingof monthly performance figures, Constitution ofTPP Monitoring committees at State, District &Block levels and their meetings at regular interval,Target fixation approach taken by central nodalministries, suggestions for revamping of TPP-2006, need for a single portal of TPP, difficultiesfaced by the implementing agencies in theimplementation of schemes/programmes andsuggestion for dropping obsolete schemes/programmes and inclusion of new schemes inview of the Bharat Nirman and new flagshipprogrammes of Govt. of India.PM’S GLOBAL ADVISORY COUNCIL OF

OVERSEAS INDIANS MEETS AT KOCHI

The Prime Minister Dr. Manmohan Singhchaired the fourth meeting of the Global AdvisoryCouncil of Overseas Indians on 8 January 2013

at Kochi. Thirteen eminent Overseas Indians fromacross the world attended the meeting. ShriVayalar Ravi, Minister of Overseas IndianAffairs; Shri Anand Sharma, Minister ofCommerce and Industry; Shri SalmanKhursheed, Minister of External Affairs; ShriM.M. Pallam Raju, Minister of Human ResourceDevelopment; Dr. Montek Singh Ahluwalia,Deputy Chairman, Planning Commission; andsenior officials of Government of India alsoattended the meeting.

The Eminent Overseas Indians presentincluded Shri Karan F.Bilimoria, Shri SwadeshChatterjee, Ms. Ela Gandhi, Lord KhalidHameed, Dr. Renu Khator, Shri KishoreMahbubani, Shri L.N.Mittal, Lord Bhiku ChotalalParekh, Shri Sam Pitroda, Tan Sri Dato’ AjitSingh, Mr. Neville Joseph Roach, Prof. SrinivasaSR Varadhan and Shri Yusuffali M.A.

During the meeting, the participantsexchanged views on key international issues andtheir implications for India, including the globaleconomic situation; developments in West Asiaand the Gulf region; energy security; and trendsin the Asia Pacific region. The members alsogave their perspectives on strengtheningengagement between India and the OverseasIndians as well as between India and variouscountries in the bilateral sphere. Prime Ministerthanked the members for their perspective andconstructive suggestions.

Prime Minister’s Global Advisory Councilof Overseas Indians was constituted in 2009 andmeets annually. Its objective is to draw upon theexperience and knowledge of eminent OverseasIndians in diverse fields from across the world,to develop a comprehensive agenda forengagement between India and the Diaspora.










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NATIONAL ELECTRIC

MOBILITY MISSION PLAN LAUNCHED TODAY

The Hon’ble Prime Minister today unveiledthe National Electric Mobility Mission Plan(NEMMP) 2020 in the presence of Shri PrafulPatel, Minister for Heavy Industries & PublicEnterprises and Shri Montek Singh Ahluwalia, Dy.Chairman, Planning Commission. The ceremonywas attended by eminent leaders from theautomotive industry, academia and researchinstitutes, officers of stakeholder Ministries,National Manufacturing CompetitivenessCouncil.

The principal end objectives of the NationalMission for Electric Mobility (NMEM) areNational energy security, mitigation of the adverseimpact of vehicles on the environment and growthof domestic manufacturing capabilities. TheNEMMP 2020, the mission document for theNMEM that was approved by the NationalCouncil for Electric Mobility (NCEM) on 29thAugust, 2012, sets the vision, lays the targets andprovides the joint Government – industry visionfor realizing the huge potential that exists for fullrange of efficient and environmentally friendlyelectric vehicle (including hybrids) technologiesby 2020.

The NEMMP 2020 is a well researcheddocument and relies on in-depth primary databased study conducted jointly by the Governmentand the Industry which indicates that high latentdemand for environmentally friendly electricvehicle technologies exists in the country. As perthese projections, 6-7 million units of new vehiclesales of the full range of electric vehicles, alongwith resultant liquid fuel savings of 2.2 – 2.5million tonnes can be achieved in 2020. This willalso result in substantial lowering of vehicular

emissions and decrease in carbon di-oxideemissions by 1.3% to 1.5% in 2020 as comparedto a status quo scenario.

However, in view of the significant barriersthat exist today for these frontier technologies, theglobal experience indicates that this is an areawhere Governments need to focus their effortsand provide support that is necessary for creationof the eco system and viable self sustainingbusiness in the near future. This includes providinginitial impetus through demand support measuresthat facilitate faster consumer acceptance ofthese expensive newer technologies. In addition,Government will also need to facilitate automotiveR&D and put in place charging infrastructure. Itis estimated that the Government will need toprovide support to the tune of Rs 13000 – Rs14000 Crore over the next 5-6 years. The industrywill also need to match this with a much largerinvestment for developing the products andcreating the manufacturing eco-system.

The NEMMP 2020 projections also indicatethat the savings from the decrease in liquid fossilfuel consumption as a result of shift to electricmobility alone will far exceed the support providedthereby making this a highly economically viableproposition. Therefore on all counts encouragingthe faster adoption of hybrid & electric vehiclesand their manufacture in India is a wise investmentfor our future generations.

NMEM is amongst the most significantinterventions of the Government that promises totransform the automotive paradigm of the futureby lessening the dependence on fossil fuels,increasing energy efficiency of vehicles and byproviding the means to achieve ultimate objectiveof cleaner transportation that is compatible withsustainable renewable energy generation. This










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Intervention will also help encourage the IndianAutomotive Industry to shift to newer, cleanertechnologies so that it builds its future competitiveadvantage around environmentally sustainableproducts, high end technologies, innovation andknowledge.

The implementation and roll out of theNEMMP 2020 will be done through variousspecific schemes, interventions, policies that arecurrently under formulation and will be consideredby the Government in the near future.

ALIGNING ‘NATIONAL INVESTMENT FUND’OPERATION TO ENHANCE

‘DISINVESTMENT POLICY’

The Cabinet Committee on EconomicAffairs today approved the following:

(i) The disinvestment proceeds with effectfrom the fiscal year 2013-14 will becredited to the existing “public account”under the head National Investment Fund(NIF), and they would remain there untilwithdrawn/invested for the approvedpurposes.

(ii) The NIF will be used for the followingpurposes:(a) Subscribing to the shares being

issued by the Central Public SectorEnterprise (CPSE) including PublicSector Banks (PSBs) and PublicSector Insurance Companies, onrights basis so as to ensure that 51percent ownership of theGovernment is not diluted.

(b) Preferential allotment of shares ofthe CPSE to promoters as perSecurities and Exchange Board ofIndia SEBI (Issue of Capital andDisclosure Requirements)

Regulations, 2009 so thatGovernment shareholding does notgo down below 51 percent, in allcases where the CPSE is going toraise fresh equity to meetits capex programme.

(c) Recapitaliztion of PSBs and PublicSector Insurance Companies.

(iii) Fund Managers presently managing theNIF will stand discharged of theirresponsibility from the date the funds andthe interest income are transferred to thefund.

The NIF was constituted by the CabinetCommittee on Economic Affairs on 27th January2005. The objectives structure and administrativearrangements, investment strategy were notifiedin November, 2005, and the NIF startedfunctioning from October, 2007. As on31st August 2012 the corpus in the NIF consistedof Rs.1814.45 crore, comprising thedisinvestment proceeds of Power GridCorporation of India and the Rural ElectrificationCorporation Limited done during 2007-08. Thiscorpus is presently invested through three PublicSector fund managers (SBI, LIC and UTI MutualFunds).EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE ON

CLIMATE CHANGE CONSTITUTED

The Prime Minister has decided to constitutean Executive Committee on Climate Change toassist the Prime Minister’s Council on ClimateChange. The Executive Committee on ClimateChange would focus on the following tasks:

1. Assist the PM’s Council on ClimateChange in evolving a coordinatedresponse to issues relating to climatechange at the National level.










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2. Regularly monitor the implementation ofthe eight national missions and otherinitiatives on Climate Change.

3. Advise the PM’s Council on ClimateChange on modifications in theobjectives, strategies and structure of themissions, as may be necessary.

4. Co-ordinate with various agencies onissues relating to climate change.

The Chairman of the Executive Committeeon Climate Change will be the Principal Secretaryto the Prime Minister and Secretary, Ministry ofEnvironment and Forests will be the Member-Convenor. Other members of the Committeeinclude Cabinet Secretary, Finance Secretary,Secretary, Planning Commission, Secretary,Ministry of Power, Secretary, Ministry of New& Renewable Energy, Secretary, Ministry ofUrban Development, Secretary, WaterResources, Secretary, Department of Science &Technology, Secretary, Department of Agriculture

& co-operation, Secretary, Department ofAgricultural Research & Education, Secretary,Department of Earth Sciences, Secretary,Ministry of Coal, Secretary, Ministry of Petroleum& Natural Gas, Secretary, Department ofEconomic Affairs. The Chairman of ExecutiveCommittee on Climate Change may invite anyother officer/Expert to the meetings as may benecessary. The PM’s Council on Climate Changeand the Executive Committee on Climate Changewould be serviced by Ministry of Environmentand Forests. The Prime Minister’s Council onClimate Change was constituted in 2007, in orderto co-ordinate National Action for Assessment,Adaptation and Mitigation of Climate Change.The National Action Plan of Climate Change(NAPCC) was released by the Prime Ministerin June 2008. Under the NAPCC, with theapproval of PM’s Council on Climate Change,eight national missions are being implemented.









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Gist of

SCIENCE REPORTER

WILDLIFE CONSERVATION

India’s wildlife is passing through anextremely critical period, Almost all the protectedareas and species are under human-relatedpressures in some way or the other. Commonspecies such as House Sparrow, Black Drongo,and Indian Roller are becoming uncommon, Thecountryside that used to harbor Indian Fox, Jackal,and Blackbuck in large numbers is becomingharsh to them. The destruction deplorablycontinues, at times, at an alarming rate, Thedepletion of the wildlife can be attributed largelyto deforestation and inroads of human civilizationinto the forest areas, Despite a growingappreciation of wildlife, the explosive growth ofthe human population has led to soaring demandfor food, timber and housing, which has led to thedestruction of India’s natural habitats and of thebeautiful wildlife heritage, Laws exist to protectthe wildlife from slaughter and to regulatepoaching, but unfortunately, the legal measuresdo not fully serve the desired purpose. The Indianlandscape, once a broad mosaic of naturalhabitats ideal for wildlife, is now left with onlyscattered tracts of suitable ‘wildland’, Thisdeteriorating condition calls for efficient wildlifemanagement plans,⇒ WILDLIFE MANAGEMENT-HUGE CHALLENGE

Wildlife management and the challenge of

conserving especially large mammals is complexand dynamic, involving ecological, economic,institutional, political, and cultural factors and anyattempt to solve these issues must take them intoaccount. Realistically, no single agency,organization, or institution will be able to solvewildlife conservation issues alone, No single planor strategy can be completely comprehensive andcorrect, Recognizing these opportunities and theneed to build strong partnerships with landmanagers, researchers, citizens, governmentofficials, and adopting integrated wildlifemanagement should be the way forward, It isimportant to look at the following areas to bringabout practical and tangible changes in wildliferelated matters.

Identifying the gaps: A collectivecapacity is still sorely lacking due to an enormouslist of gaps and needs, These need to be identified- from global to national to local and frominternational conservation organizations to localcommunity groups to governments to researchinstitutions.

Training and capacity building: Trainingand capacity building are needed for individualsand institutions at all levels dealing with all aspectsof wildlife conservation, including thedevelopment and implementation of institutionalprocedures and principles, site-specificprogrammes and processes, and governing laws









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and policies, Training programmes are especiallyessential at local levels to ensure the effective useof facilitation techniques and increasedawareness of resources, best practices, tools,processes, and approaches for effective running.

Training should target forest managers,researchers and protected area officials who mayhave to deal with challenging wildlife questions,There is also heightened need to indulgeconservation organization staff who may bemanaging conservation wildlife programmes forprotected areas or regions, but do not have acomplete set of skills or expertise to address thecomplex, multidisciplinary nature of wildlifemanagement.

Creating coexistence: Wildlife relatedorganizations, community leaders, and othergroups and institutions should share experiencesand lessons learned to enhance and refine theapproach and incorporate more “out of the box”thinking and application in the work.

In the Indian system of wildlifemanagement. adaptive management and appliedresearch play an important role where wildlifeinteractions need to be informed by a moresystematic understanding, use, and application ofbiological, social, and cultural knowledge andnorms, Adaptive management in terms of wildlifeprotection needs to be more responsive todisagreements; more proactive in using research,best practices, and other resources; and moreassertive in learning about, developing, andimplementing solutions.

Meraj Anwar, Senior Project Officer,WWF-India, feels, “Wildlife management shouldinclude social, cultural, historical, biological,ecological, political, historical, economic, andgeographical components and should be made

and reviewed, along with any action plans, by allstakeholders. Training, expert facilitation, andapplied research focused on wildlife relatedissues, causes, effects, and solutions will improveoverall management efforts. More effectivemonitoring and evaluation of all aspects of wildlifeconservation need to occur and should be fedback into management and research plans.”

Sufficient funding: Funding is veryessential when it comes to biodiversityconservation or wildlife conservation per se.Nachiketh Sharma, Wildlife Researcher atCenter for Ecological Science, Indian Institute ofScience, Bangalore, feels, “There is a clearrelationship between the amount and reliability ofconservation funding available, and the extent andquality of wildlife protection and restoration thatcan be carried out.” Funding is needed at local,national, and global levels. Local funding isessential to ensure that “best practices” are beingdeveloped and implemented soundly andeffectively, and that multidisciplinary, multi-tactic,and comprehensive programmes are givenadequate support to ensure the best chance ofsuccess. At the global level, funding is needed toensure that the progress and lessons learnedlocally are appropriately made available to thewider community. Globally informed anddeveloped resources, exchanges, innovations, andefforts require funding to ensure that local effortscontinue to act with state-of-the-art knowledgeand practice.

Committed research and researchers:With these research and applied managementstrategies in wildlife, it is vital to understand therole of core scientific research and researchersin wildlife. It is perhaps, one of the key areas thatis often neglected.









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⇒ NEW BIRD SPECIES IN INDIA

A new species of bird belonging to the familyRallidae has been discovered in the Great NicobarIslands, the largest Island of Nicobar Group. Thecredit for the discovery of this new species ofCrake previously unknown to science goes to thescientist of the Zoological Survey of India(Andaman & Nicobar regional centre) Mr. S.Rajesh Kumar and Mr. C. Ragunathan. The newsof this amazing discovery was published in the 17June 2102 issue of Bulleting of the Oriental BirdClub (OBC). Professor Parmela Cecile CecileRasmussen, a renowned American Ornithologistand an authority on Indian birds, has confirmedthe discovery of this new species of bird. PamelaRasmussen is known the world over as thecoauthor of the acclaimed Birds of South Asia:The Ripely Guide (Volume 1 and 2).

Post Independence this is the third instanceof the discovery of a bird species in India. Thefirst bird species to be discovered in independentIndia was in the year 1948 when India’s birdmanLate Dr. Slim Ali and American ornithologist LateSidney Dillon Ripley reported the discovery of anew bird species Rusty-throated Wren babblerSpelaeornis badeigularis from the Mishmi Hillsof Arunachal Pradesh. Salim and Ripley had gota Single dead female Specimen of the bird. Thespecies was reported again by Americanornithologists Ben King and Julian P. Donahue inthe year 2006.

The second instance of a discovery of anew species of bird in India was in the year 2006.Raman Athreya, a professional astronomer andan amateur ornithologist, reported the finding ofa new species of Liocichla, an Asian babbler nearEaglenest wildlife sanctuary in western ArunachalPradesh. It was named Bugun liocichla(Liocichla bugunorum) after the local Buguncommunity. A live bird was successfully nettedin 2006. After a period of six years another new

species of bird has been discovered in India, S.Rajeshkumar found a single Croke at GovindNagar tsunami shelter on the east coast of GreatNicobar on 21 November 2011. The bird wasobserved foraging for insects in the open for aboutfifteen minutes at a range of four meters andprovided good views. As he photographed the bird,it was silent throughout the encounter and whendisturbed instead of taking flight ran away quicklyand hid up a steep slope. For convenience the newfound croke is being called the “Great Nicobarcroke”, The bird will not be scientifically namedtill a type specimen (normally a dead bird) iscollected.

When a new species is described a deadindividual is preserved in a museum as the ‘typespecimen’, which proves the existence of thespecies and displays the features that distinguishit from other species. The newly discoveredGreat Nicobar croke is about the size of an adultWhite-breasted waterhen with a thick bill andfairly short tail.⇒ NEW LEASE OF

LIFE FOR NORTHERN RIVER TERRAPINS

The Northern River terrapin 8atagurbaska is now restricted to parts of North-easternIndia (Orissa and the Sundarbans region of India),part of Sundarbans in Bangladesh and possiblyMyanmar.

It is a critically endangered species. Thereare no known active nesting sites and nopopulation data exists for this species but it is clearthat wild populations have crashed with onlyremnant survivors remaining (Brian D. Horne,TSA 2011 Magazine). These rate terrapins arefeared extinct tint the wild because for the pastfew years there has not been a single sighting.Only a few remnants have been recorded fromvillage ponds of the Indian and BangladeshSudarbans where people keep turtles as pet anda source of eggs. In November 2010 a wild male









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was seen slaughtered at a market in Dhakaproviding evidence of a few remaining speciesin the wild but the picture in the Indian part ofthe Sundarbns is much more grim.⇒ WILD ASS NATIONAL PARKE

Little Rann of Kutch, situated in the TharDesert of Gujarat, was established in January1972 as a sanctuary for the last population ofIndian wild ass (Equus hemionus khur), locallyknown as khur. The only other two subspecies ofwild asses live in the high arid plateaus of Tibet.Around 150 kilometers off Ahmedabad, the wildAss Wildlife Sanctuary covers an area of roughly5,000 square kilometers. The climate of the regionis extreme with May being the hottest month. Theaverage temperature during this time is around31°C. January is the coldest month with anaverage temperature of 11°C. During themonsoon, the whole region becomes flooded withrainwater. They are slightly bigger than a donkey,and are fast and strong like a horse. Few animals

in the animal kingdom can match the wild ass interms of speed and stamina. They are capable ofmarathon runs at a pace of about 24 kilometersper hour for as long as two hours, reaching a topspeed of 70 kilometers per hour over shortdistances.

The khur inhabits hills during the monsoon,and in the dry season descends and forages alongthe edge of the Little Rann, where it frequentlyraids cultivated fields during darkness. Apart fromthe wild ass, the region is inhabited by other wildanimals also much as the chinkara, desert fox,jackal, desert cat, carracal, nilgai, wolf, blackbuck,and striped hyena.

The Khur was given full legal protection in1952. The other threats to this last refuge of theIndian Wild Ass are from vehicular traffic thatdamages the fragile ecosystem, cutting trees tomake charcoal, and extensive illegal salt miningoperations that are eating into the sanctuary andcausing pollution.









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