The petition has also been sent to Mallikarjun Kharge President, Indian National Congress, Sitaram Yechury Secretary-General, Communist Party of India (Marxist), Arvind Kejrival National Convener, Aam Aadmi Party, D Raja General Secretary, Communist Party of India (CPI) , M. K. Stalin President, Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK), Dr. Farooq Abdullah President,  Jammu & Kashmir National Conference,  Hemant Soren President, Jharkhand Mukti Morcha (JMM) , Sharad Pawar President, Nationalist Congress Party (Sharadchandra Pawar), . Akhilesh Yadav National President, Samajwadi Party (SP), Uddhav Thackeray President, Shiv Sena (Uddhav Balasaheb Thackeray), G. Devarajan President- All India Forward Bloc, Dipankar Bhattacharya National General Secretary, Communist Party of India (Marxist–Leninist) Liberation, Jose K. Mani Chairman, Kerala Congress (M), Thol. Thirumavalavan President, Viduthalai Chiruthaigal Katchi , Vaiko General Secretary, Marumalarchi Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (MDMK), Mehbooba Mufti, President, Jammu and Kashmir Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), P. J. Joseph Chairman, Kerala Congress, K.M. Kader Mohideen National President, Indian Union Muslim League, Hanuman Beniwal President, Rashtriya Loktantrik Party, E. R. Eswaran General Secretary, Kongunadu Makkal Desia Katchi, requesting their urgent intervention in staying ‘anti-democratic’ new criminal laws slated to come into effect from July 1.

The petition calls for a Joint Parliamentary Committee (JPC) scrutiny of the hurriedly passed through laws – ‘Bharatiya Nagarik Suraksha Sanhita, 2023’, ‘Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita, 2023’, and ‘Bharatiya Sakshya Adhiniyam, 2023’ and also urges legal expert consultation, and a meaningful debate on the proposed reforms in parliament.

According to the Petition, the signatories have urged the political parties to seize the chance to steadfastly defend the fundamental values enshrined in the Indian Constitution and would do every effort to protect the democratic rights.

“Sadly, as the situation stands now, there is a grave threat that is hanging over the nation in the form of three new criminal laws, namely, which were hurriedly pushed through Parliament on 20th December 2023 without a debate. “

“These laws are scheduled to come into effect from July 1, 2024…. the major concern is that the amendments made in the then existing laws are such that they are mostly draconian in nature. They deal exclusively with matters of life and liberty and criminal harm that can be caused to an individual in other multiple and various ways.

“They also (adversely affect) deal with civil liberties of citizens more particularly in the matter of freedom of speech, right to assembly, right to associate, right to demonstrate, and their other civil rights, which can be criminalized as part of the law and order provisions of these three laws. “Essentially, these new criminal laws would equip the government with adequate power to hollow out our democracy and transform India into a fascist state – should the government choose to deploy the new laws to their fullest extent.

“The proposed new laws would enable the government to dramatically scale up arrest, detention, prosecution and imprisonment of law abiding democratic opponents, dissidents and activists.

“Some of the chilling features of the new Criminal Code as requiring special attention are:

(1) The criminalisation of legitimate, lawful, non-violent democratic speech or action as ‘terrorism’;

(2) The broadening of the offence of sedition in a new and more vicious avatar (what could be called “sedition-plus”);

(3) The expansion of the potential for “selective prosecution” — targeted, politically-biased prosecution of ideological and political opponents;

(4) The criminalisation of a common mode of political protest against government through fasting;

(5) Encouraging the use of force against any assembly of persons;

(6) Exponentially enhancing ‘police raj’ by criminalising “resisting, refusing, ignoring or disregarding to conform to any direction given by [a police officer]”;

(7) Enhancing handcuffing;

(8) Maximising police custody during investigation;

(9) Making the recording of a FIR discretionary for the police;

(10) Dialling up the pain of imprisonment;

(11) Compelling all persons (even those not accused of any crime) to provide their biometrics to the government; and

(12) Shielding of some of the Sangh Parivar’s activities.

Related:

Ensure stay on new ‘anti-democratic’ criminal laws: 2,900 citizens’ Letter Petition to Chandrababu Naidu

Madras Bar Association urges return to original names of India’s criminal laws: Bharatiya Nyaya Samhita

The post 3695 citizens’ petition political leaders of India Alliance, several NDA partners: Ensure stay on new ‘anti-democratic’ criminal laws appeared first on SabrangIndia.

• Rs 18,000 as assured monthly income for farmers or 2.8 times their current average, increase official markets, storage and refrigeration
• Refresh the 27-year-old national education policy, ensure 97% of students who enroll in school stay on till high school, instead of 79.2% who currently do.
• Reform labour laws, so 40 million small enterprises that hire fewer than ten workers can expand.
• An independent environment protection agency that can clean up poisoned water and toxic air in India’s cities, 14 of which occupy the top 20 spots globally of cities with worst air.

These are some suggestions for the National Democratic Alliance (NDA), as it prepares for its second consecutive term in office, according to experts and IndiaSpend research.

With 42% of India’s land area declared as drought hit, the farm crisis may deepen, and so our recommendations focus on making farming more rewarding, while simultaneously getting millions off the land, at a time when the country faces its worst unemployment in 45 years.

For jobs to be created, experts recommend a raft of labour reforms, so that small, unorganised enterprises, which currently employ 92% of India’s workforce, can expand without bureaucratic interference or requirements.

For this workforce to be more qualified, we recommend a revamp of the education system, the failure of which begins by failing to retain about three-fourths of students till high school and continues in a quality of education that leaves millions unprepared for employment.

Our other focus is on quality of life, which is related to labour productivity: India’s cities have some of the world’s most toxic air, and about 70% of the nation’s water is polluted and 600 million–according to a 2018 government think tank report–face “high-to-extreme” water stress.
Our eight-sector analysis:

Agriculture: Infrastructure, incomes

• Investing in more storage and refrigeration facilities in a country where a third of farm produce spoils for lack of them.
• Increase mandis–markets authorised to sell farm produce–from 7,600 to 42,000 nationwide, so that there is one within a radius of 5 km.
• Government needs to make farmers aware about its own programmes, such as crop insurance, which will be of use only if they are told about crops that need insurance.

One of the major suggestions to make agriculture more remunerative is to re-calculate what is called the minimum support price (MSP) to farmers, the price at which the government buys farm produce. But, as food-policy analyst Devinder Sharma pointed out, even if that is done, no more than 6% of farmers would benefit. He is right; this 2015 report backs that datum.

Sharma recommended “assured income packages” to farmers, worth Rs 18,000 per family. The income package, he said, should arrive as a top-up over the monthly average income a farm family gets by district. The average income of an Indian farmer is Rs 77,976 per year, or Rs 6,498 per month, according to 2017 data, which the government wants to double by 2022.

It its 2019 election manifesto, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has promised a Rs 25 lakh crore agricultural investment, 75% more than the budget for 2018-19. Between 2012 and 2015, India  invested no more than 0.4% of gross domestic product (GDP) on agriculture, which supports 60% or 770 million people.

There are many ways to direct this investment: increase irrigation access from the current 35% of farms–the BJP manifesto promises irrigation to all farms by December 2019, an impossible task; or improving storage and refrigeration facilities in a country where 30% of produce is spoiled according to a 2013 report.

Harvest and post-harvest loss of India’s major agricultural produce were estimated at Rs 92,651 crore in 2016, as three of five components–pack houses, ripening chambers and reefer vehicles–in the cold chain remained almost entirely without funding, IndiaSpend reported on August 11, 2016.

New investment can also be directed at the expansion of mandis, or farm-produce markets, which are supposed to offer fair prices and immediate returns to farmers, said Sharma, from 7,600 to 42,000 nationwide, so there is one in a radius of 5 km instead of the 464-km average gap that currently separates each.

The government does need to provide “assured and stable prices” for vegetables, such as onions and tomatoes, and agricultural extension and information, said Madhura Swaminathan, a professor at the economic analysis unit of the Indian Statistical Institute.

“We need to make the farmers aware about new technologies and schemes,” said Swaminathan. “A scheme like crop insurance will benefit people only if they are informed about which crops need insurance. And the government needs to intervene at the right time to stabilise prices.”
“Now that the BJP government is elected in most of the states, it should carry out key marketing reforms (remunerative prices to farmers,
electronic trading facilities, boosting agro-processing facilities and crop insurance),” said Sukhpal Singh, professor and chairperson, Centre for Management in Agriculture at the Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad.

Economy: Jobs, cities, reforms

• 100 new cities that will absorb millions of people moving out from agriculture.
• Create jobs in the infrastructure and services sector through the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MGNREGS) instead of doling out money.
• Reform land and labour laws, remove inherent conflicts in them, so that industries can hire more workers.

India’s unemployment rate is at a 45-year high, according to National Sample Survey Office (NSSO) data, released on June 1, 2019.
Unemployment is highest among educated people, 17% among women and 20% among men of whom did not have a job in rural areas, according to the NSSO data.

“The biggest issue before us is unemployment,” said Anupam Manur, Economic Research Fellow at Takshashila Institution. “We need at least 14-15 million jobs annually, but we are able to create only 1.5 million jobs. That is a huge gap.”

The unemployment rate for rural male youth (aged 15-29) rose from 5% in 2011-12 to 17.4% in 2017-18; for rural women in the same age group, it rose from 4.8% in 2011-12 to 13.6% in 2017-18, according to the NSSO data.

A majority of the people seeking employment will come from rural India, whose cultivators and agricultural labourers account for more than half of India’s workforce and contribute to no more than 16% of GDP. These millions will need to be accommodated in new cities, and older cities will require infrastructure expansion.

“We have more people doing agriculture than we need, and it’s a form of disguised unemployment,” said Manur. “The solution is urbanisation and industrialisation.”

The BJP manifesto promises, for instance, metros in 50 cities and piped cooking gas in major tier 1 (more than 100,000 people) and tier 2 (50,000 to 99,999 people) cities, of which there are 34, Manur suggested that the government might need to create 100 new cities.

That will not be easy with land difficult to acquire: Despite the supposed focus on infrastructure projects, 453 projects were stuck due to land-acquisition problems, the Economic Times reported on December 13, 2018.

These challenges emerge at a time of slowing investments, declining growth and rising bad debts.

Gross non-performing assets (NPAs) in Indian banking were Rs 8 lakh crore and Rs 10.3 lakh crore, in March 2017 and March 2018, respectively, IndiaSpend reported in February 2019, as the share in NPAs of large borrowers rose.

“We are witnessing growth due to consumption and government spending and not due to investments,” said Manur. “This is not sustainable.”
The government needs to create jobs in the infrastructure and service sector through the MGNREGS programme instead of doling out money, said R S Deshpande, former director, Institute for Social and Economic Change, a think tank in Bengaluru.

Deshpande said conflicts between land and labour laws require resolution. “Our labour laws [discourage] organisations from becoming big,” he said. “In a country that has so many hands, these organisations choose to be capital intensive and work with more machinery to avoid the labour laws.”
 

Sources: Bharatiya Janata Party, 2019; IndiaSpend research

Sanitation: Beyond declarations and claims

• Households that did not get government subsidies to build toilets should now get them
• Beyond certifying villages, towns and states as being free of open defecation, the government must now focus on getting people to use toilets
• Focus on educating citizens on toilet pits, that they fill up in five years, not two months, and that anyone can empty them, not just scheduled castes

More than 99% of Indian households now have toilets and 30 states and union territories have been declared “open-defecation free” (ODF), according to the Swachh Bharat Mission (SBM)–Gramin or rural website. The mission to clean India added 91 million toilets over five years to 2019, increasing toilet access from 39% of the population to 99%, the government has claimed.

“Now is the time for the government to promote use of toilet now that bulk of the construction is done,” said Aashish Gupta, research fellow at the Research Institute for Compassionate Economics, a think tank, which found in a 2019 study that despite an increase in the construction of toilets, 44% of people in north India still defecated in the open.

It is almost certain that by October 2019, the national SBM deadline, India will be declared ODF. But many households clearly do not have toilets, working or otherwise, in areas declared ODF, as FactChecker reported in 2018 (see here and here). A third of households in 120 villages declared ODF in Gujarat did not have access to toilets, the government auditor, the Comptroller and Auditor General, reported in September 2018.

The government needs to acknowledge that sanitation is “a continuous process” and continue with programmes that educate citizens on building and using toilets. “We know that states like Rajasthan and Madhya Pradesh, which have been declared open-defecation free, have no SBM activities going on,” said Gupta.

There are concerns about how toilet pits will be emptied, for instance. In Uttar Pradesh, the government has been “fairly successful” in communicating that the pits get filled in five years and not in two months as people thought, said Gupta.

“It is time that they (government) show that the pits can be emptied by anyone,” said Gupta, referring to a stigma that forces scheduled castes to do the job. “It would great if (Prime Minister) Modi can empty a pit, reducing the stigma, and spread the message of safe decomposition of sludge.”

Health: More money, better use of money

• Find funding to increase public healthcare spending from 1.4% of GDP to 2.5% of GDP
• Improve utilisation of central healthcare funds by the states: Only 32% of National Health Mission funds were spent over five years to 2016.

The biggest challenge for the new government would be finding funding for healthcare, said Oommen C. Kurian, public health fellow at Observer Research Foundation, a think tank.

“It is widely known that our public healthcare funding should be increased to at least 2.5% of GDP, but over the last decade governments have only been able to reach 1.3% to 1.4% of GDP,” he said.

This funding is important because India has the world’s highest population of stunted children–short for their age–and the country’s failing primary healthcare and overburdened tertiary care are ill-equipped to handle the crisis of childhood malnutrition, leaving India unable to fulfil its national potential, IndiaSpend reported in January 2018.

“Until the federal government in India takes health as seriously as many other nations do, India will not fulfil either its national or global potential,” said a November 2017 editorial published in the Lancet, a medical journal.

“This is the bottom line: if you walk into the future economy with 40% of your workforce having been stunted as children, you are simply not going to be able to compete,” Jim Yong Kim, president of World Bank, said on his visit to New Delhi in June 2016.

Another challenge for the government is to improve the utilisation of central funding to states, a proportion of which returns unutilised.

National Health Mission (NHM) funds unspent by states over five years to 2016 increased by 29%, according to a 2017 audit by the government’s auditor, the Comptroller and Auditor General, which also reported delayed transfers and misallocation of these funds. The NHM, launched in 2005, is India’s largest health programme aimed at providing universal access to healthcare. One of its primary missions is to improve maternal and child health and control communicable and non-communicable diseases.

India accounts for 17% of global burden of maternal deaths, non-communicable diseases made for 61% of deaths in 2016, communicable diseases such as leprosy and malaria are yet to be controlled and 55 million Indians slipped into poverty in 2011-12 because of health catastrophes they could not afford.

“Health is a state subject, so there has to be a broader consensus between Centre and states involving all major political parties when it comes to healthcare,” said Kurian.

For example, despite agreeing to be part of Pradhan Mantri Jan Arogya Yojana, the insurance arm of the Ayushman Bharat initiative, many states over the last few months since its launch in September 2018 have opted out due to political reasons, “This causes unnecessary delays and  impacts access, especially of the poorer households,” said Kurian.

Some 2.4 million Indians die of treatable conditions every year, the worst situation among 136 nations studied for a report published in The Lancet in 2018.

Poor care quality leads to more deaths than insufficient access to healthcare–1.6 million Indians died due to poor quality of care in 2016, nearly twice as many as due to non-utilisation of healthcare services (838,000 persons), IndiaSpend reported in September 2018.

Women: More state support

• Women in rural areas must get access to education, skilling and digital and financial literacy.
• The government must increase the budget for shelter homes and court infrastructure.
• Women must feel safe in their work spaces and on their commute to work

The unemployment for rural women aged 15-29 rose 8.8 percentage points over six years to 2018, according to 2019 NSSO data. For educated rural females, the unemployment rate ranged from 9.7% to 15.2% between 2004-05 and 2011-12, rising to 17.3% in 2017-18.

The share of women in the paid workforce has been declining across major sectors over the 11 years to 2015, according to a September 2018 report published by the Centre for Sustainable Employment, an arm of the Azim Premji University. In agriculture, the share of women dropped by six percentage points from about 35% in 2004 to 29% in 2015. It dropped by four percentage points in manufacturing, from 26% in 2004 to 22% in 2015.

The government must step in to stop the decline in women’s participation in the workforce, said Jayati Ghosh, professor of economics at Delhi’s Jawaharlal Nehru University. Her suggestions include: improving work conditions, more public-sector employment, increase minimum wages and improve rural- and urban-employment schemes.

“At 17% of GDP, the economic contribution of Indian women is less than half the global average, and compares unfavorably to the 40% in China, for instance,” said Annette Dixon, World Bank South Asia vice president in March 2018. “India could boost its growth by 1.5 percentage points to 9 percent per year if around 50% of women could join the workforce.”

That can happen if the government make extra efforts. Experts cited two barriers to the decline of women in the workforce: attitudes and infrastructure gaps.

“Safe transport, decent working conditions and emphasis on decent employment should be the focus of the government,” said Aparna Sivaraman, programme officer at the Public Affairs Centre, a Bengaluru think tank. “Additionally, women in rural areas must be provided access to education, skilling, as well as digital and financial literacy. This actionable knowledge will help them to access and be part of better employment opportunities.”

Education: Arresting drop-out rates, improving quality

• Increasing enrollment in higher education to match the rate at school level
• Increased funding for state public universities, which cater to over 50% of students
• Larger budgets and support for the education of marginalised communities, children with special abilities and higher education of women.

One of the government’s foremost challenges is to make sure that Indian children stay in schools, experts said. In 2015-16, 97% of children were enrolled in a primary school, according to government data. This rate, called the gross enrollment rate, drops to 79.2% in grades IX and X and to 56% by grades XI and XII.

“The government should primarily focus on ensuring that children get to complete their education along the entire continuum from preschool till the higher-secondary level,” said Puja Marwaha, CEO of Child Rights and You, an NGO working for child rights.

“Unless we get students to stay in schools until higher education, we will not be able to utilise the demographic dividend to the fullest,” said Antara Sengupta, research fellow at ORF.

India’s demographic dividend is the world’s largest population of young people aged 15 to 24–241 million or 18% of all Indians–and is ahead of China’s 169.4 million, according to a 2017 report by the United Nations (UN) department of economic and social affairs.

Yet, India’s expenditure on higher education as a percentage of its total budget has remained largely stagnant, hovering around an average 1.47% over 12 years to 2018-19, the UN report said. Over 70% of 18- to 23-year-olds in the country are not enrolled in a higher educational institute, according to the All India Survey on Higher Education, 2017-18.

Education has been strongly linked to poverty alleviation. On average, one year of education is associated with a 10% increase in wage earnings, said a 2014 United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO) report. It also protects the working population from exploitation by increasing the band of opportunities, improves health, reduces income disparities and drives economic progress, said the report.

To expand education, government also needs to extend the Right to Education to include pre-primary classes (nursery and kindergarten) and higher secondary classes (grades IX to XII), said Marwaha. The extension of the RTE Act to include children from ages three to 18 is stated in the New Education Policy, 2019, submitted to the education ministry by a policy committee on May 31, 2019. The policy was released to get feedback from the public. After getting feedback from general public, and after consulting state governments, the policy will be finalised by government, a press release from the ministry said.

This policy, when passed, will replace the National Policy on education, which was framed in 1986 and modified in 1992. A new, comprehensive policy with “clear, set goals” is important to set the roadmap for educational reforms, said Sengupta.

India also needs to improve the quality of state public universities, where 50.7% of students study, said Sengupta.  

Marwaha also emphasised the need for inclusive education. The new government needs to focus on resources and support for traditionally marginalised groups, such as girls, children from dalit, adivasi and others and also for children with special abilities.

India also needs to address the gender gap in higher education, said Sengupta. No more than a third of students in India’s top universities are women, the Times Higher Education (THE) Survey reported in May 2019, among the lowest ratio in a group of 20 countries that feature more than 10 universities in THE’s world university rankings.

Forest and lands: Protect local rights and the law

• Recognise and protect the authority of gram sabhas (village councils) to govern community forest resources with the full participation of women.
• Fund gram sabhas to manage forests that are mostly handled by forest departments.
• Do not transfer forest land by violating the law and rights of gram sabhas; respect their free, prior and informed consent.

The Forest Rights Act, which legalised the land rights of forest-dwellers in 2006, is critical to the rights and livelihoods of at least 200 million Indians–as much as the population of Brazil–of whom 90 million (45%) are tribespeople, IndiaSpend reported on March 20, 2019.

This is why it should be the new government’s priority to implement the FRA. Individual and community rights of scheduled tribes and other traditional forest dwellers, including the rights of women, particularly vulnerable tribal groups–with the lowest development indices–displaced communities, nomadic and pastoralists should be settled, said Tushar Dash, a member of Community Forest Resource–Learning and Advocacy (CFR-LA), a network of nonprofits working on the FRA.

The BJP government has been criticised for not protecting the rights of tribespeople during court hearings that led to a February 2018 Supreme Court order that forest dwellers whose claims had been rejected by respective state governments be evicted. The order was later put on hold.

The order dilutes and undermines the FRA, said Dash. The government should, on priority, review all land-title claims under FRA to ensure that 1.8 million “wrongful rejections” are corrected and land rights restored, he added.

At least 40 million hectares of forest land–more than 50% of India’s forest area, larger than the area of Uttar Pradesh and Chhattisgarh combined–is governed by the FRA and issues related to the rights and livelihoods of forest-dwellers and tribespeople. At least 170,000 villages, a fourth of all Indian villages, are eligible for rights under FRA, we reported.

Environment: A new regulator for many crises

• The government should set up an independent environmental regulator or independent environmental protection agency, divorced from the environment ministry, a conscience keeper of sorts.
• The government must simplify laws governing coastal and ocean issues and consider them together.

The one very important step that the new government should take is a complete overhaul of India’s environment ministry, said Sanjay Upadhyay, an environmental lawyer and founder of the Enviro Legal Defence Firm (ELDF), India’s first environmental law firm.

“We have been talking about an independent environmental regulator or independent environmental protection agency for a long time now, which is above the ministry and has a conscience-keeper role,” said Upadhyay. “Closed-door, non-consultative, officialdom-driven image of the environment governance in the country will have to be changed.”

Eight of 10 Indians breathe toxic air, which killed 1.2 million Indians in 2017–more than the death toll caused by tuberculosis, diarrhoea, pneumonia and malaria the same year. More than 100 Indian cities have been identified by the government to be India’s most polluted, yet the crisis deepens.

In 2019, after three years of deliberations, the government announced a flawed national programme that lacks clear sectoral targets and timelines to reduce air pollution by 20-30% by 2022, a promise made in the BJP manifesto.

The issues of air pollution in Indian cities and the pollution of water bodies need “urgent attention and action”, said Upadhyay.

India’s water is similarly in crisis, with 70% of it polluted, at a time when 600 million face “high-to-extreme” water stress, according to June 2018 report from Niti Aayog, a government think tank.

Another crisis has been unfolding along India’s coastline of 7,500 km–nearly three-and-a-half times the distance between Ahmedabad and Kolkata–divided almost equally on the east and the west of the country. Along it are nine states, two union territories (UT) and two island territories. Of the country’s 1.28 billion people, 560 million, or 43%, live within these coastal territories.

Millions living on India’s coasts are threatened, as India has lost 33% of its coastline to erosion in 26 years between 1990 and 2006, according to a report released in July 2018 by the National Centre for Coastal Research (CCR) in Chennai, which is mapping changes to India’s shoreline.
India’s coasts are under attack both from man-made activities–such as growing construction, damming of rivers, sand mining and destruction of mangroves–as well as natural causes linked to climate change such as rising sea levels, according to the CCR report.

“Till now we have been tinkering with government notifications here and there, but that is not enough,” said Upadhyay, urging “a holistic approach”, starting with the simplification of the Coastal Regulation Zone Act, which has been amended 76 times over 17 years to 2018.

India’s environment must be better protected, but environmental clearance procedures need to be made simple. “Compliance has to become cheaper than non-compliance,” said Upadhyay. “Currently, it is the other way round. Unless you make compliance cheaper and more broad-base people are going to find other ways of bypassing the process.”

Courtesy: India Spend

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New Delhi: Prime Minister Narendra Modi addresses in Lok Sabha on Feb 7, 2019.

The current, 16th Lok Sabha with the BJP-led National Democratic Alliance (NDA) in power, has seen the second highest (16%) loss of working hours. Yet, it managed put in 20% more productive hours than the previous UPA-II government.

These findings come from the recent statement of work released by the Lok Sabha and a study of the functioning of the current Lok Sabha term by the non-profit PRS Legislative Research.

‘Scams’ were the most frequent reason for house disruption during the two most recent Lok Sabha sessions, according to an IndiaSpend analysis of Lok Sabha records of session proceedings.

The Opposition provides significant checks and balances to the working of a government. Parliamentary democracy works on the basis of consensus reached after discussions on legislative matters. However, the Indian parliament appears to be spending more time dealing with disruptions than completing legislative work, our analysis of Lok Sabha records shows.

On average, Lok Sabhas that have completed five-year terms have worked for 2,689 hours. (The Lok Sabha can be dissolved before its full term if the ruling government loses its majority.) The Lok Sabha under UPA-II worked just 1,350 hours–half the average. The current NDA regime logged in 1,615 hours of work–20% more.

The first, second and third Lok Sabhas were the most productive and worked for more than 3,500 hours on average, according to PRS analysis.

During the fifth Lok Sabha, the Indira Gandhi-led Congress government (1971-1977) imposed a national emergency in 1975 and postponed elections. This extended term logged the most working hours, more than 4,000.

Why the last two Lok Sabhas saw the most disruption

In three instances, the Opposition disrupted Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s speech. The first time was in February 2015, during his pre-budget motion of thanks, when the PM had criticised the previous government’s poverty eradication programme, the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme, for its “failure” to build sustainable assets.

The second time, during the 2016 winter session, the Prime Minister had alleged that the Opposition favoured black money, and disruption ensued. The last disruption was during the 2018 budget session when remarks were “made by the Prime Minister about the former Prime Minister”, Lok Sabha records said.

Source: Ministry Of Parliamentary Affairs, 2018

For the present NDA government, the budget session of 2018 (January-April) was the most disrupted and the least productive for both houses of parliament since 2000, according to PRS. The house lost 127 of 161 or 79% of sitting hours.

Many Members of Parliament gave notices to move a no-confidence motion against the government during the 2018 budget session. However, the motion was not admitted due to disruptions. The reasons for disruption were varied–“Issue regarding the Andhra Pradesh Reorganization Act, Punjab National Bank scam and Cauvery water, Supreme Court verdict regarding Scheduled Caste and Scheduled Tribes”, as per Lok Sabha records.

This session cost the exchequer Rs 190 crore ($27 million), according to an analysis by The Financial Express. As an example of what Rs 190 crore can achieve, this was the amount allocated to the Telangana state government by the central government in 2017-18 under the Pradhan Mantri Awas Yojana (Prime Minister’s Scheme for Homes). (The Telangana government was asked to return this money after it failed to implement the scheme.)

Scams, inflation, Lokpal bill during UPA-II
IndiaSpend further looked into the details of the time lost and the reasons for interruption using a 2018 report of the ministry of parliamentary affairs.

As mentioned earlier, the UPA-II government faced the most opposition in the house in the history of India’s parliament. Scams related to financial irregularities in the Commonwealth Games, coal block distribution and 2G spectrum sale; inflation; and the Lokpal Bill (to create an anti-corruption ombudsman) were the top reasons.

Source: Ministry Of Parliamentary Affairs, 2018

The most unproductive Lok Sabha session during the UPA-II government’s tenure was also the budget session (February-March 2013). Of the 163 hours available, 146 were lost to issues related to “Price hike in petrol, Plight of Tamils in Sri Lanka, Terrorist attack in Srinagar, Killing of Tamil fishermen by Srilankan (sic) Navy, Interference in the functioning of the CBI. Coalgate Scam, Incursion by Chinese in Ladakh, Bribery for promotion in Railway Board, Law and order situation in UP”, Lok Sabha records said.

Delays and adjournments in all the 14 sessions of the previous Lok Sabha during the UPA-II government cost the exchequer an estimated Rs 199.9 crore, ($28 million) an earlier IndiaSpend analysis from 2013 had shown. About 800 hours were lost to disruptions and forced adjournments. Rs 200 crore was the amount allocated to the Ministry of Personnel that year to improve training facilities for bureaucrats.

(Tewari is a PhD Scholar at TISS, Mumbai and IndiaSpend contributor, and Salve is a senior analyst with IndiaSpend.)

We welcome feedback. Please write to respond@indiaspend.org. We reserve the right to edit responses for language and grammar.

Courtesy: India Spend

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The Lok Sabha on Monday (August 6, 2018) unanimously passed a Bill to reverse the effects of a Supreme Court order concerning certain safeguards against arrests under the SC/ST law. The amended ‘Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes (Prevention of Atrocities) Amendment Bill, 2018’, now rules out any provision for anticipatory bail for a person accused of atrocities against people from SC or ST communities, as it stood before the revision. Ram Vilas Paswan, part of NDA, and a Dalit, not only thanked the Prime Minster but used the occasion to also criticise the Congress. To emphasise that the Congress party is anti Dalit, he raked up the elections in which Congress had contested against Ambedkar (decades ago). That Ram Vilas Paswan’s own allegiance to Ambedkar ideology is also strongly under cloud, given that he is allying and empowering the BJP, a party that proudly carries its agenda of converting the Indian Republic into a Hindu Rashtra, is one aspect. Related to this is the fact that the Hindu Nation was anathema for Ambedkar and what he stood for, embodied in the Indian Constitution that showcases social justice, secularism and democracy.
 
Paswan has been well described as a Mausam Vaigyanik, (Scientist predicting weather). A man and a politician who, to remain in power, not just twists and turns the argument, but is prepared to make ideological compromises. His own ideology reflects a  hunger for power. His words and political stance do not matter much except on the electoral chess board. 

Electoral Battle Between Ambedkar and Congress: Paswan’s depiction gives a very selective presentation of the relationship. While he does point out this fact, he omits to mention that  Ambedkar was not a member of Congress party any time. Also that it is the same Congress party in whose government he was made the Cabinet minister, earlier. Paswan needs a historical memory jog: not only was Ambedkar Minister in the first Indian Cabinet, he was also made the Chairman of Drafting Committee of Indian Constitution, in which Babsaheb played a pivotal role. To cap this it was he who was requested to draft the Hindu Code Bill, a major step to reform the family laws towards a gender just society.
 
RSS Major Opponents of Ambedkar and the Constitution: While the likes of Paswan, hankering after power today, do mouth Ambedkar’s name, they deliberately omit mention of the fact that the major opposition  to the Indian Constitution as drafted by him, the major opposition to Hindu Code bill came from the stable of RSS, the parent organization of the party, in whose alliance he is today enjoying the perks of power. One can even say that Paswan’s political ally, the BJP’s agenda,  of a Hindu Rashtra is polar opposite to the dream of Indian nationhood that Babasaheb Ambedkar stood for: the dream of Liberty, Equality and Fraternity, the dream of secular democratic India. The RSS has never hesitated in criticizing the Indian constitution, calling it Western; the BJP has never severed its umbilical cord to the Hindu nationalist RSS. Lately from within BJP itself from top down, Hindu nationalism is being propagated and practiced. Aggressively. Attacks on dalits, among other marginalised sections, go hand and hand with this hegemonic notion.
 
On the eve of the 2014 general election Narendra Modi, the Prime Ministerial candidate himself pronounced that he was born in a Hindu family; he is a nationalist, so he is a Hindu nationalist. Another minister in the Centre, Anant Kumar Hegde has stated that the BJP is there, in power, to change the Indian constitution and that a secular identity should not be used by the people. To cap it all the UP Chief Minster Adityanath Yogi stated that Secularism is the biggest lie of Independent India. 

The BJP itself is very consciously walking the tight rope, balancing phrases and actions as for as Dalits are concerned. On the one hand, the power-lust of some dalit leaders like Paswan, Udit Raj and Ramdas Athwale are used to give a pro-Dalit veneer to BJP’s actions, on the other hand likes of Hegde and Yogi are forthright about their political agenda. It is also true that for the sake of electoral equations even the BJP has to pay obeisance to Ambedkar, despite having and agenda totally opposed to his political ideology.
 
On the ground, the impact of BJP-NDA, of which likes of Paswan are members, has affected Dalits and their life situation and culture in a very serious way. While these hegemonic forces are, trough ‘social engineering’ trying to woo a section of Dalits through manufactured icons like Suhel Dev and Shabri Mata among others, they have unleashed policies which affect the Dalit livelihood, in a very adverse way. The merciless beating of Dalits in Una, which Paswan dismissed as a minor event, the emotive issue of Holy cow has affected the livelihood of dalits in a big way. We also remember that it is during this period that institutional murder of Rohith Vemula and the anti dalit attack at Bhima Koregaon has tormented the Dalit community no end. Even the Modi Government, did try, first, to dilute the Atrocities Act, only once they saw a serious opposition to their move, were they compelled to retreat simply for electoral calculations.
 
While the BJP pays tribute to Ambedkar on the one hand , at the same time it presents Lord Ram as the central icon of its politics. What Ambedkar has said about Lord Ram in his various writings like ‘Riddles of Hinduism’ is well known. It is a sharp and scathing indictment of what he sees as Hinduism and its icons. For the BJP, while it is important to garland Babasaheb; it is of no consequence to them to take forward the agenda of social justice.

The latest attempt to selectively present the electoral battle between Congress and Ambedkar too, is a deliberate ploy to undermine the efforts which the national movement and Mahatma Gandhi-Congress achieved to fight against untouchablity in particular. 

We have miles to go as far as Babasaheb’s dream is concerned. But one thing aspect we cannot afford to forget is what  Ambedkar pointed out: Hindu Raj will be a big tragedy for Dalits of the country. 

It is too much to expect that the likes of Paswan will realize their folly of allying with the BJP-RSS whose very agenda is inherently anti-Dalit, as they are blinded by a lust for power!
 

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New Delhi: 24 eminent personalities have compiled their observations on the last four years under NDA governance with Narendra Modi as the Prime Minister. The book ‘Dismantling India- A 4 year Report’ was launched on Saturday at Constitution Club, New Delhi.
 
The book said that that the difference between earlier governments and the present government is that, the latter has reached the 50 per cent mark of the 14 points which qualify fascism. Warning the masses that if it comes to power again in 2019, fascism would reach its peak.
 
The compendium has articles by many known social activists and politicians like Mani Shankar Aiyar, Admiral L Ramdas, Harsh Mander, Kavita Krishnan, Ashok Vapeyi and more.
 
The report is edited by activists John Dayal, Leena Dabiru and Shabnam Hashmi. All the speakers agreed that “spaces of dissent” were receding, with dissenting institutions and oppositions coming under increasing attack. It was also observed how the word ‘Anti-national’ was being used to suppress dissent be it from the opposition or students.
 
Gauhar Raza, scientist and poet, said that Modi government “is attacking the scientific institutions in such a way that the country is be taken back many years.” “The government is not only propagating unscientific and irrational views, but it has slowly reduced the publication of scientific journals,” he said in a report by Counterview.
 
Current affairs commentator Subhash Ghatade added that the right-wing, “which used to work covertly” has become out in the openly defiant. “The trishuls have changed into swords. The hatred seeded deep inside the common man is at its height. In Ranchi, RSS met to devise various mechanisms to win 2019 election via social media,”, Ghatade said, adding, it is doing so because it has “failed in getting promises fulfilled so they will polarize communities,” the report added.
 
Supreme Court advocate Usha Ramanathan, speaking on Aadhaar, said that the ruling party, when in opposition, strongly advocated against Aadhaar, but when it came to power, it “not only took U-turn but implemented Aadhaar in such a way that created havoc in the country.”
 
Farmers’ leader Vijoo Krishnan said that, through the 2013 land ordinance Act, farmers’ land was sought to be protected, within six months of coming to power, NDA brought in a land ordinance to change its provisions. “Massive protests were organized and they had to pull back the ordinance. Now they have implemented these land acquisition bills through the BJP ruled states”, Vijayan said, regretting, “In Odisha, 92 per cent of acquired land is lying un-utilized.”
 
Well-known feminist Kavita Krishnan said the worst kind of attacks on women autonomy and rights are taking place under the present government and that triple talaq stance is just a ploy to criminalise Muslim men. “The government has diluted many laws related to women. The fight by women rights group on triple talaq led to the Supreme Court giving its verdict, but the government is now bringing a law, which will give powers to police and state to criminalize Muslim men.” The report said.
 
“Noted Hindi poet, essayist and literary-cultural critic Ashok Vajpeyi said that onslaught on India’s cultural institutes has begun with the appointment of such people as their heads who don’t have any experience on culture. He added, Hindutva is nothing but a big threat to Hinduism, and if Hindu leaders wish to protect their religion, they must fight Hindutva,” the report added.
 
Referring to the mob lynching and cow vigilantism, the report alleges that the government, party and the Sangh Parivar have actually “triggered” the alienating hate campaigns in the country during last four years – also making use of the internet, smartphones and other apps.
 
The report, supported by a series of tables recording the four years of Modi rule, includes the list of hate speeches he and his party members delivered since they came to power in 2014.

The book can be bought here- https://www.amazon.in/Dismantling-India-4-year-Report/dp/9387298396/

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We found that 19 of the 23 programmes were indeed renamed versions of older schemes, as Tharoor claimed. Here’s our analysis:
 
Claim 1: Pradhan Mantri Jan Dhan Yojana=Basic Savings Bank Deposit Account
 
Fact: True
 
Basic Savings Bank Deposit Account (BSBDA) was a no-minimum-balance service with all facilities of a normal banking account except that withdrawals were limited to four a month, according to this Reserve Bank of India (RBI) circular dated August 17, 2012. The accounts came with an automated teller machine (ATM)-cum-debit card too.
 
The BSBDA accounts were also meant for beneficiaries of government programmes, according to this answer in the Rajya Sabha (upper house of Parliament) on December 13, 2012.
 
Under the Pradhan Mantri Jan Dhan Yojana (PMJDY), launched on August 28, 2014, an accident insurance cover of Rs 1 lakh, overdraft facility up to Rs 5,000 after six months and a life insurance of Rs 30,000 were added to BSBDA accounts.
 
Unlike BSBDA, PMJDY accounts had a credit limit of Rs 1 lakh because of which pension reimbursements were getting rejected, The Financial Express reported on September 8, 2016.
 
While BSBDA covered only villages with above 2,000 population, PMJDY has been extended to all areas–rural as well as urban.
 
“They are more or less the same. All accounts opened prior to August 28, 2014, were BSBDA. Since then, they have all become PMJDY accounts. It’s only a change of nomenclature,” Prem Singh Azad, deputy general manager, Allahabad Bank, who is involved in the bank’s financial inclusion programme, told IndiaSpend.
 
Claim 2: Beti Bachao, Beti Padhao Yojana=National Girl Child Day programmes
 
Fact: True
 
The Congress-led United Progressive Alliance (UPA)-I declared January 24 as the National Girl Day in 2008-09 and several objectives associated with previous continuing programmes were adopted as targets.
 
Beti Bachao, Beti Padhao Yojana (BBBPY), launched in January 2015 under the ministries of women and child development, health and family welfare and human resource development, was a consolidation of old programmes scattered across schemes and ministries under the UPA government.
 
For instance, the girl child education programme of BBBPY was a repackaging of older education schemes such as the Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan, according to this February 2016 report by the Centre for Development and Human Rights, a research and advocacy organisation in New Delhi.
 
Similarly, BBBPY’s objectives of improving the child sex ratio and reducing school dropout rates among girls were already present in the UPA’s Dhanalakshmi and Sabla schemes, respectively. Dhanalakshmi was later discontinued as states already had better schemes in place.
 
Claim 3: Swach Bharat Abhiyan=Nirmal Bharat Abhiyan
 
Fact: True
 
In September 2014, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)-led National Democratic Alliance (NDA) government approved a proposal that Nirmal Bharat Abhiyan scheme be restructured into Swachh Bharat Abhiyan, according to this government release.
 
Nirmal Bharat Abhiyan was the new name adopted for the Total Sanitation Campaign on April 1, 2012 under UPA-II, according to the Abhiyan’s guidelines.
 
Total Sanitation Campaign was the new name given to the Central Rural Sanitation Programme–launched by the Congress in 1986–in 1999, according to the drinking water and sanitation ministry’s website.
 
Claim 4: Sardar Patel National Urban Housing Mission=Rajiv Awaas Yojana
 
Fact: True
 
“The government is shortly going to launch a comprehensive programme named Sardar Patel National Housing Mission by merging and improving existing urban housing schemes,” The Pioneer reported on October 10, 2014, quoting Housing and Poverty Alleviation Minister Venkaiah Naidu.
 
A parliamentary committee, headed by Biju Janata Dal member Pinaki Mishra, had even asked the government in December 2014 how merely changing the name could accelerate implementation, The Telegraph reported on December 30, 2014.
 
Claim 5: Pradhan Mantri Awaas Yojana (Gramin)=Indira Awaas Yojana
 
Fact: True
 
A parliamentary standing committee report–submitted on August 31, 2016–pointed out that Congress’s Indira Awaas Yojana was “rechristen[ed]” Pradhan Mantri Awaas Yojana (Gramin).
 
The “Guidelines”, “Scheme Allocation” and “FAQs” on the Pradhan Mantri Awaas Yojana (Gramin) website still open Indira Awaas Yojana documents.
 
Claim 6: Deen Dayal Upadhyay Gram Jyoti Yojana=Rajiv Grameen Vidyutikaran Yojana
 
Fact: True
 
The UPA’s Rajiv Grameen Vidyutikaran Yojana was “subsumed” under Deen Dayal Upadhyay Gram Jyoti Yojana, according to this government release on July 23, 2015.
 
Claim 7: Atal Mission for Rejuvenation and Urban Transformation=Jawaharlal Nehru National Urban Renewal Mission
 
Fact: True
 
NDA’s urban development minister Venkaiah Naidu had said on assuming office that they would replace Jawaharlal Nehru National Urban Renewal Mission (JNNURM) with their own urban renewal schemes, The Hindu reported on May 29, 2014.
 
Subsequently, Atal Mission for Rejuvenation and Urban Transformation (AMRUT), smart cities Mission and Pradhan Mantri Awaas Yojana (Urban) were launched on June 25, 2015.
 
JNNURM was launched on December 3, 2005, for an initial period of seven years and then extended for two years up to March 2014, according to this Rajya Sabha answer on December 6, 2012.
 
A comparison of some key objectives of the two programmes shows that under the NDA government, the targets of UPA’s umbrella programme have been spread over several schemes.
 
The “sectors covered under JNNURM and [AMRUT and other urban development programmes] overlap significantly,” according this March 2016 report by PricewaterhouseCoopers, a global consultancy .
 
“[V]arious urban sector components [that] were earlier addressed through a single mission (JNNURM) … have now been split across missions [such as AMRUT, Smart Cities Mission and Swachh Bharat Mission],” the report said.
 
 

 
Claim 8: Pradhan Mantri Krishi Sinchayee Yojana=Accelerated Irrigation Benefits Programme
 
Fact: Unclear
 
Three older programmes– Accelerated Irrigation Benefits Programme of the water resources ministry, Integrated Watershed Management Programme of the land resources ministry and the On Farm Water Management of agriculture and cooperation department–were merged to create the NDA’s Pradhan Mantri Krishi Sinchayee Yojana, according to Yojana’s website.
 
As government websites (click here, here, here, here and here) do not reveal when exactly the programme was launched in 1996, it is difficult to check this claim, as three prime ministers–Congress’s P.V. Narasimha Rao (till May 16), BJP’s Atal Bihari Vajpayee (May 16-June 1) and Janata Dal (Secular)’s H.D. Deve Gowda (June 1 onwards)–governed India during 1996.
 
The watershed management programme goes back to the late 1980s when the country was mostly under Congress’s rule.
 
Claim 9: BJP’s neem-coated urea=Congress’s neem-coated urea
 
Fact: True
 
Neem-coated urea was included in the Fertiliser (Control) Order of 1985 in 2004, according to government-owned National Fertilizers’ website, and was notified on June 2, 2008, according to this government communication.
 
It was finally included in the 1985 Order through an amendment on February 6, 2017.
 
Claim 10: Soil Health Card scheme=National Project on Management of Soil Health and Fertility
 
Fact: True
 
A soil health card was “added” to the National Project on Management of Soil Health and Fertility, according to the Outcome Budget 2015-16 of the agriculture and cooperation department.
 
The centre would earlier provide support to states for issuing soil health cards under the central scheme, according to Lok Sabha (lower house of Parliament) answers (click here and here).
 
Under the UPA government, soil health cards were also issued under the National Mission for Sustainable Agriculture, one of its several organic-farming programmes, according to the Outcome Budget 2015-16. This scheme was also merged with NDA’s renamed Soil Health Card programme.
 
Claim 11: Paramparagat Krishi Vikas Yojana=Rashtriya Krishi Vikas Yojana and other programmes
 
Fact: True
 
“Some existing components … have been clubbed together as a cluster based programme and named Paramparagat Krishi Vikas Yojana,” according to the Outcome Budget 2015-16 of the agriculture and cooperation department, FactChecker reported on July 22, 2015.
 
Claim 12: Pradhan Mantri Matritva Vandana Yojana=Indira Gandhi Matritva Sahyog Yojana
 
Fact: Unclear
 
The ministry of women and child development’s website does not use the new name–Pradhan Mantri Matritva Vandana Yojana–for the maternity benefit programme (see the latest release dated May 19, 2017) but archives releases under the Indira Gandhi Matritva Sahyog Yojana under the same head.
 
A senior ministry official was quoted as saying the name had been changed, Hindustan Times reported on May 25, 2017.
 
Claim 13: Atal Pension Yojana=Swavalamban Yojana
 
Fact: True
 
Even as the Modi government folded Congress’s Swavalamban Yojana–a pension scheme for unorganised sector workers launched on September 29, 2010–under its Atal Pension Yojana, the features of the two schemes remain the same, according to this comparison by the Rajiv Gandhi Institute For Contemporary Studies, a think tank in New Delhi.
 
Claim 14: Pradhan Mantri Jan Aushadhi Yojana=Jan Aushadhi scheme
 
Fact: True
 
The decision to launch the Jan Aushadhi scheme, a programme to supply unbranded medicines at lower prices, was taken on April 23, 2008. The first store under the scheme was opened on November 25, 2008, according to the Bureau of Pharma PSU in India, established under the department of pharmaceuticals on December 1, 2008, to coordinate the scheme through government-owned companies.
 
The scheme is now called Pradhan Mantri Bhartiya Janaushadhi Pariyojana, according to this Lok Sabha answer on March 14, 2017.
 
Claim 15: Pradhan Mantri Fasal Bima Yojana=Comprehensive Crop Insurance Scheme
 
Fact: False
 
The 1985 Comprehensive Crop Insurance Scheme concluded in 1999, according to this report of the agriculture and cooperation department.
 
Claim 16: Make In India=National Manufacturing Policy
 
Fact: True
 
The Make In India website not only summarises the scheme as Congress’s “National Manufacturing Policy” but even the broken download link unsuccessfully directs you to a 2011 document of the older policy.
 

 

 
The features of the National Manufacturing Policy and Make in India remain the same, shows a comparison on Twitter on February 13, 2016, by Amitabh Dubey, a political analyst at Trusted Sources, which provides investment research on emerging markets.
 
 

Claim 17: Digital India=National eGovernance Plan
 
Fact: True
 
The National eGovernance Plan is “now subsumed under Digital India”, according to this government release on November 30, 2016.
 
Both the Congress (click here and here) and the BJP schemes talk about building infrastructure for delivering government services electronically.
 
Claim 18: Skill India=National Skill Development Programme
 
Fact: True
 
Previous skill development programmes were relaunched as Skill India with new branding, according to this government release on July 15, 2015.
 
The older programmes–National Skill Development Corporation and National Skill Development Fund (launched in 2009), and National Skill Development Agency (launched in 2013)–were brought under a new department of skill development and entrepreneurship on July 31, 2014, according to this government release. The department became a ministry on November 9, 2014.
 
Claim 19: Mission Indradhanush=Universal Immunisation Programme
 
Fact: True
 
Mission Indradhanush is the new name for special immunisation weeks, which were being  conducted in areas of low immunisation under the Universal Immunisation Programme, FactChecker reported on July 23, 2015.
 
Claim 20: Deen Dayal Upadhyaya Grameen Kaushalya Yojana=National Rural Livelihood Mission
 
Fact: True
 
“The Deen Dayal Upadhyaya Grameen Kaushalya Yojana … is a part of the National Rural Livelihood Mission,” according to the programme website.
 
Claim 21: PAHAL=Direct Benefits Transfer for LPG
 
Fact: True
 
Launched on June 1, 2013, the “Direct Benefit transfer of LPG scheme PAHAL (Pratyaksh Hanstantrit Labh) [was] re-launched in 54 districts on November 15 ,2014 in the 1st phase and will be launched in the rest of the 622 districts of the country on 1.1.2015,” according to this government release on December 31, 2014.
 
Claim 22: BharatNet=National Optic Fibre Network
 
Fact: True
 
The National Optic Fibre Network, approved on October 25, 2011, aims to provide “Broadband connectivity to Panchayats”.
 
BharatNet merely repeats the claim: “to digitally connect all the Gram Panchayats (GPs) and Villages of India”, according to this September 2016 Indian Institute of Technology-Bombay report on the second phase of the programme.
 
Claim 23: Sagarmala=National Maritime Development Programme
 
Fact: False
 
The programme was originally announced by former prime minister Atal Behari Vajpayee on August 15, 2003, during the BJP-led NDA’s first stint in power, Frontline reported in March-April 2004.
 
When the Congress-led UPA came to power, it launched its own National Maritime Development Programme even as Sagarmala lapsed, according to this Lok Sabha answer on August 3, 2009.
 
The NDA revived the original programme on March 25, 2015.

Courtesy: factchecker.in
 

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The report was released on Friday, May 12th at the Indian Social Institute in New Delhi. This is the third edition of the annual flagship publication of CES.

The India Exclusion Report reviews exclusion with respect to four public goods, one each in the areas of the social sector; infrastructure; land- labour, natural resources and legal justice. For 2016 Indian Exclusion Report, the topics chosen were, pensions for the elderly, digital access, agricultural land, and legal justice for under-trials.

The report termed Dalits, Tribals, Muslims, and Elderly and Disabled as worst hit by the continuous exclusion from the four chosen fundamental public services.

“The headline of this and indeed every exclusion report so far has been that the evidence is consistent that for virtually every public good that we examine, it is always the same sets of peoples who are excluded,” writes Harsh Mander, who has edited the report in its introduction.

“These are the historically oppressed group of women, Dalits, Adivasis, Muslims, persons with disabilities and casual informal workers and the poor. This report only confirms these findings, and illuminates the multiple ways in which even the democratic state in the Indian republic has failed these oppressed peoples and not assured them equitable access to the public goods essential for them to lead lives of dignity,” he writes.

The report has found that the pattern of land distribution reflects the socioeconomic hierarchy — large landowners invariably belong to the upper castes, cultivators to the middle castes, and agricultural workers are largely Dalits and Adivasis.

“The rate of landlessness was highest among Dalits at 57.3%. Among Muslims, it was 52.6%, and 56.8% of women-headed households were landless. Around 40% of all those displaced by “development activity” were Adivasis,” reads the report.

“Land reform efforts have not benefited Dalits, women or Muslims significantly. Land allotments to SC/ST households were often only on paper, as allottees were forcefully evicted or not allowed to take possession,” the report further adds.

The report has taken a dig at PM Narendra Modi on job creation which was one of Prime its prime election promises.

“Yet more than halfway through his tenure, there are almost no jobs available. Job creation has fallen to levels even below those that the preceding UPA government plunged to,” notes the report.
The report also notes the rising rich-poor gap in the country.

The report further notes that the Digital India, which aimed to cover 1,00,200 panchayats under Phase 1 by March 2014 – added only 48,199 panchayats by April 2016 out of which only close to 6,000 panchayats have internet access.

Regarding the legal justice, the report has proposed that state governments, prison departments and jail authorities must work together, and adopt certain reform measures, to make the custodial system more open and less exploitative.

While reacting to the report, Adivasi activist and political leader Soni Sori in conversation with TwoCircles.net said, “Yes the report indicates the reality of Adivasis.The discrimination with them is not only in these four parameters but many others also.”

“Adivasis don’t get pension and legal justice is out of bounds for them. We have seen it many times; a tribal picked up by police and thrown in lockup for weeks without an FIR,” she added.

National Campaign for Dalit Human Rights (NCDHR), General Secretary, Paul Diwakar said, “The continuous exclusion of Dalits from public goods can be attributed to the fact that they are not at power block. At policy designing and implementation, Dalits don’t have any say and there is lack of accountability involved.”

“So, instead of having policies which are pro disadvantaged sections, they frame general polices,” he told TwoCircles.net.

According to Navaid Hamid, President, All India Muslim Majlis-e-Mushawarat, the findings of report aren’t surprising.

He said, “The government of India which usually calls for sabka-saath and sabka-vikas should spell out the reasons why there is still such exclusion of Muslim in provision of public goods.”

This article was first published in twocircles.net.
 

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Faith based banking in a country which has secularism enshrined in its constitution! Does not it sound anachronous?

Well, as far as the present dispensation at the Centre led by BJP is concerned – which has an altogether different take on secularism – it does not seem to think so. And that’s why it has gladly accepted the proposal by the Saudi Arabia based Islamic Development Bank (IDB) – an international investment organisation – to start its operations here.

In fact this proposal is considered a positive outcome of PM Modi’s visit to Saudi Arabia sometime back (April 2016). Although a date has not been announced when the Bank would start its operations here, all the formalities regarding its launching have been completed and even the city for its first branch in India has been identified. Ahmedabad would see the first branch of this Bank.

We are also told that India’s state-owned Exim Bank would extend around US $100 million as credit to IDB to facilitate exports to its member countries. The bank – which has 56 Islamic states as its shareholders, while Saudi Arabia holds around a quarter of its shares, UAE is its fifth biggest shareholder – also plans to contribute towards medical treatment of rural poor in India. It plans to donate 350 medical vans as part of its social initiative

How is India which is definitely not part of the Islamic World being considered by IDB to start its operations? The deciding factor is its 180 million-strong Muslim population which has made it an attractive place for the IDB to set its shop here. The Reserve Bank of India has already given a green signal to this proposal sometime back and paved the way for Sharia-compliant, interest free or Islamic banking in the country. In fact in late December last year itself an RBI committee on ‘Medium-Term Path for Financial Inclusion’ headed by Deepak Mohanty had recommended that there should also be “interest free windows” in existing banks.

The main argument put forward by the committee was that globally interest-free banking, which is also known as Islamic banking has witnessed a significant increase, especially in the wake of the financial crisis. Islamic finance assets have seen a ten-fold increase from a decade ago and today are estimated at around US Dollars 2 trillion.

It had explained that the “central concept in interest-free banking and finance as justice” is supposed to be achieved mainly through the “sharing of risk”. Under it different stakeholders share profits and losses and charging interest is prohibited.

Explaining the key elements which give interest free banking a distinct identity it had talked of the following:
 

Remember, till date interest-free banking has witnessed a lukewarm response in India. During the UPA regime, RBI had clearly declined to move further on the issue. In fact, in the year 2007 the RBI working group under the then executive director, Anand Sinha, had recommended that India must not permit Islamic banks to operate in the country. It had emphasised that current regulations do not permit the model.

However, internally a debate was already on within the banking establishment about the prospects of such a scheme. A report published in the April-June 2005 issue of RBI Legal News and Views outlines the fact that “interest-free banking is an attractive proposition gaining currency all over the world and so it was time India introduced it:
 

What are the regulations which seemed to obstruct the establishment of Islamic banking?

The Banking Regulation Act (1949) has provisions which clearly prohibit operation of banks on a profit-loss basis (5b); they also forbid what is known as murabaha, or, the buying, selling, or barter of goods (8), impede ijara, or, bar the holding of immovable property for a period greater than seven years (9), and requires the payment of interest (21).

The idea to start Islamic banking in India received a fresh boost when the National Minorities Commission, then under the chairmanship of Wajahat Habibullah, asked the finance ministry to take a relook at it. It is a different matter that RBI, then under the governorship of D Subbarao, again declined to move further on the issue, once again underlining the fact that existing banking rules do not allow interest free banking.

Towards the end of UPA II regime, the scenario witnessed a change with the RBI allowing a non-bank finance company in Kerala to start its operations in Sharia-compliant mode. Looking back one also discovers that ‘The Raghuram Rajan Committee on Financial Sector Reform (2008)’ had also considered interest-free banking,

It was the same period in which a petition was filed in the Kerala High Court challenging the operations of this finance company on the ground that a “[f]inancial services company set up with government participation which would follow the canon law of a particular religion is a clear instance of the state favouring a particular religion”. (Dr. Subrahmaniam Swamy v. State of Kerala represented by chief secretary and others, W.P. (C) No. 35180 of 2009, High Court of Kerala, Ernakulam).

A counter-affidavit was filed by TP Thomas Kutty, the then deputy general manager (Projects) of KSIDC which argued that the establishment of such an institution is “aligned to industrial development in Kerala”. It also stated that it is basically meant to target untapped Gulf money which could only be invested in a Shariah-compliant bank. Although the high court initially stayed the government move broadly concurring with views of the petitioner, in its final decision it dismissed the petition observing that “although the institution was based on the principles of a religion, its motive was not to propagate the religion and the state’s participation in it was purely based on commercial prospects.” (The Times of India, February 4, 2011, p. 1).

2.
As of now, barring some rabid rightwing commentaries there is not much discussion in the mainstream media about introduction of ‘faith based banking’ in the country. Instead we witness purely economic arguments being put forward supposedly to justify this debatable move. It is being argued how leading multinational banks are also engaged in tapping this ‘market’ and introducing products suitable for Islamic banking or how worldwide it is growing at a faster rate vis-a-vis standard banks. Sample this report which appeared in a publication:
 

Would it suffice if the debate continues in similar fashion, where rabid right-wingers – who have no qualms equating Islam with terror, challenge it on similar grounds – or at the other end of the spectrum economists singing paeans to its advantages of attracting hitherto untapped funds? Perhaps there has to be a third way to look at the whole phenomenon.

And it should begin by raising broadly three categories of questions:

It is important to note that the very idea of Islamic banking and promoting it as a parallel to conventional banking – which is being portrayed as un-Islamic – and which has caught the imagination of a section of god-fearing Muslims, is a clear manifestation of shifts in Muslim politics the world over. One can look at the debates in colonial India between Muslim scholars when modern banking was being introduced and a section of the ulema who objected to it on the basis of their understanding of Islamic principles. In his important intervention on the subject Ather Farouqui tells us (Islamic Banking in India at the Service of Pan-Islamists, MAINSTREAM, VOL L, NO 11, MARCH 3, 2012):
 

He also quotes,
 

A major exception to the unfolding discourse seemed to be Maulana Abul Ala Maududi (1903-79) founder of Jamaat-e-Islami. For him Shariah-compliant financial practices were part of the larger project of Islamism who sought to overwhelm every aspect of the state and society by the medieval norms enshrined in Shariah law. The idea had not many takers till late sixties or early seventies which received a boost by Saudi oil wealth in the 1970s.

According to Sadanand Dhume,
 

Dhume’s article which was written when SBI had initiated a Sharia-compliant fund (end of 2014) also poses few basic questions which cannot be brushed aside easily. He asks:
 

3.
Faruoqui’s article also discusses the experience of Islamic countries. According to him in Saudi Arabia, banks are involved in charging and paying interest. The only difference from other modern/conventional banking is that they ‘employ semantics’; instead of using the term interest they use the terms profit-loss sharing. Looking at the fact that it is an oil-rich economy, banks there rarely face losses and the depositors ‘share the profits’ which is not considered ‘riba’ (usury).

The most interesting case vis-a-vis Islamic banking pertains to Pakistan. Here few years back Islamists demanded to overhaul the conventional/modern banking system for an end to the interest paying system. The Federal Shariat Court also ruled in favour but the government did not take it up in the legislature. When the matter went to Supreme Court, it set aside the judgement and the matter is still pending. Ather Farouqui writes,
 

Providing details of judicial intervention he further tells us that Pakistan’s Supreme Court in a judgement (PLD 2000 SC 225) held that the country’s current interest-based system needs to be replaced with one that is Shariah-compliant, but when a review petition was filed (PLD 2002 SC 801) this judgement was suspended and the courts forwarded it to the Federal Shariat Court for reconsideration, which is still pending there. The challenge to deal with the issue is not theological; it is pure economic.

Unlike Saudi Arabia, Pakistan is not oil-rich and is dependent on international aid like its many other third-world counter-parts. And thus the ulema may cry hoarse about replacing an interest-based economy with a Shariah-compliant one, but for Pakistan to remain part of international financial system it will have to service the debts from time to time and it cannot be done if its economy fully switches to interest free regime. Justice Wajihuddin Ahmed clearly spelled it out in PLD 2000 SC 780–1. (Excerpted from Islamic Banking in India at the Service of Pan-Islamists, MAINSTREAM, VOL L, NO 11, MARCH 3, 2012)

4.

Last but not the least one also needs to look at the claim that Islamic banking would augment financial inclusion of those (Muslims) who have remained aloof from conventional banking systems for various reasons. It is true that a huge section of the Muslim population has been left out of the ambit of banking services. Sachar commission had rightly noted,
 

This financial exclusion could be considered a culmination of various factors. It has to do with the fact that majority of the population is poor and engaged in informal sector. It is also because of a certain mindset prevailing in the banking sector, which has categorised Muslims and Muslim-dominated areas as “negative zones” (which is documented in the Sachar report) and also for reasons of faith.

It is worth noting that because of educational backwardness of a large number of Indian Muslims or the stranglehold of Islamist thinking even among a section of the educated ones, this particular issue of bank interest has become a live issue among the community. A measure of it can be had from a report of the Reserve Bank of India itself (April-June 2005 issue of RBI Legal News and Views) which has rather prompted it to revisit its earlier policy of not having anything to do with Islamic or interest free banking,
 

An important fallout of this thinking is that a number of ‘Islamic banking’ organisations have come up in areas where the population is predominantly Muslim where unscrupulous elements – who are able to derive support from a section of the clergy – are able to hoodwink the ordinary Muslim masses in very many ways. For example, the simplest way in which they do this is by gathering monies from gullible masses, investing a significant portion of the same in conventional commercial banks, and use the interest for personal aggrandisement and return the original amount back to the investors when needed or demanded without any addition.

The Milli Gazette has time and again reported activities of another type of fraudsters who had robbed ordinary Muslims of their precious savings under the name of ‘Islamic investment’.
 

Four years later it reported about another incident:
 

Perhaps one needs to revisit the claim that Islamic Banking would prove to be an antidote to financial exclusion of Muslims from conventional banking. As the above examples – which have been randomly selected – demonstrate, there is a greater possibility that it can instead become a new vehicle for further squeezing them of interest (from their hard earned money) or in worst cases of the money itself.

To conclude, the not so silent introduction of Islamic Banking in India has once again exposed BJP’s double standards.

There was a time when BJP attacked the Congress for its tendency to equate secularism with pandering to the concerns of the most orthodox elements among Muslims. It had even coined a term for it: ‘appeasement’. If one goes to the kernel of the argument regarding Islamic banking one can similarly see that, stripped of financial complexities, at its core this is what it represents. Yet today the BJP is going gaga over it and has no qualms in becoming a pall bearer of Maududi’s worldview, rather vindicating the oft repeated dictum that fundamentalisms of various kinds feed on each other.
 

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That’s the question which Dr S Faizi, an environmental expert has raised in a letter dated May 11, 2016 addressed to Prime Minister Narendra Modi. The protest missive to the PM has been prompted by a letter from the Union home ministry to the Kerala government informing the letter that the President has been ‘pleased to withhold’ assent to the Plachimada Coca Cola Victims Compensation Claims Tribunal Bill 2011.

The Bill was passed by the Kerala Assembly, unanimously, following the exhaustive report of the multidisciplinary High Power Committee that investigated the massive damages caused by the American company in Plachimada village, in order to elicit compensation from the recalcitrant company for the poor victims. Faizi was a member of the high power committee as an environmental expert.

The enactment of this Bill was a critical contribution in enforcing a legal regime for the sustainable management of the scarce natural resources of the country as a public resource as underlined by the recent Supreme Court judgment in the G2 scam and to remedy the deprivations suffered by the victims.

“I express my profound concern about the government action refusing Presidential assent for the Bill and at the same time express my hope that the American multinational shall be brought to justice in spite of the government’s proactive support of the unrepentant company,” said Faizi in his letter.

Full text of Faizi’s letter:

To
Shri Narendra Modi
Honourable  Prime Minister
New Delhi

Subversion of the Plachimada/Compensation Bill is a glaring breach of the national interest

Honourable Prime Minister,

Can a government elected to protect India’s national sovereignty compromise on its duty by letting go a foreign multinational that has devastated a whole village of the country, consistently disregarded the statutory authorities and callously breached numerous laws of the land?

As expert member of the Plachimada High Power Committee established by the Kerala government I was shocked to see the letter from the Home Ministry to the Kerala Govt  informing that the President has been ‘pleased to withhold’ assent to the  Plachimada Coca Cola Victims Compensation Claims Tribunal Bill 2011.

The Bill was passed by the Kerala Assembly, unanimously, following the exhaustive report of  the multidisciplinary High Power Committee that investigated the massive damages caused by the American company in Plachimada village, in order to elicit compensation from the recalcitrant company for the poor victims. This was by way of upholding Article 21 of the Constitution and in line with the polluter pays principle, and covering entirely State subjects (II under the VII Schedule), namely,  health, agriculture, labor, animal husbandry, groundwater etc. The Plachimada Bill is in fulfillment of the State's obligation in terms of Article 21 as interpreted by the Supreme Court and based on the polluter pays principle that has become an integral part of our jurisprudence. The enactment of this Bill was a critical contribution in enforcing a legal regime for the sustainable management of the scarce natural resources of the country as a public resource as underlined by the recent Supreme Court judgment in the G2 scam and to remedy the deprivations suffered by the victims, and in pursuance of Article 39b of the Constitution. It fills an important legislative gap and complements the  Green Tribunal Act 2010, which puts a time bar of five years for filing cases for compensation.

The desperate Cola company has challenged the Bill, through ‘legal opinion’ of their lawyers, arguing that the Kerala Assembly had no legal competence to enact the Bill as they didn’t have any valid points to raise. It is unfortunate that the Solicitor General was repeating the arguments of the Cola company, far more vigorously than the company lawyers, which were unfounded and invalid as explained in the responses submitted to the Home Ministry by the Kerala govt and myself. It was the pro-Cola interest of the UPA Home Minister Mr Chidambaram that held up the Bill from being passed on to the President for a good four years. There were intense lobbying by the Cola company and US officials of various kinds against the Bill. Yet the UPA did not have the brazenness to decline Presidential assent, but your government was too quick to act in favour of the American multinational, undermining the national interests and the Constitutional provisions.

The Cola company was challenging and threatening the High Power Committee, right from the time the HPC was established by the Kerala government, and their latest challenge was the legislative competence of the State Assembly to enact the Bill, it is the misfortune of the country that our Solicitor General is repeating a multinational company’s desperate arguments. His arguments in the ‘Ex Parte Opinion’ dated 5.11.14 constitutes an ominous challenge to the State’s powers to enact legislation on subjects in the State list to address violations of Article 21 of the Constitution, does not even refer to the replies submitted to the Home Ministry when such arguments were raised by the Cola lawyers Mr K K Venugopal and Mr Feli S Nariman in their respective legal opinions in 2011 itself. Here I am attaching, for your information, the reply I had submitted as expert member of the High Power Committee.

The gratuitous advice to approach National Green Tribunal by both the UPA and your Solicitor General is only an alibi. The company was ordered closed by the State Pollution Control Board in March 2004 and as per the NGT Act (Section 15.3) the victims should have filed the case latest by March 2009, with a grace period of six months. But the NGT Act was passed in June 2010, and NGT became operational only next year May. How could have the Plachimada victims approach the NGT that was non-existent within the time bar the law has set. The Plachimada Bill was an excellent complement to the NGT filling the temporal gap, and ensuring natural justice to the poor victims of a remote village. And your government has sabotaged it.

Like Mr Chidambaram, your government also undermines the endorsement of the Bill by all the related ministries at the Centre, namely, the ministries of agriculture, rural development, water resources, food processing industries and the Department of Justice under the Ministry of Law. Beyond categorical approval, some ministries have in fact recommended to take stronger measures than the contents of the Bill. Yet you have chosen to sabotage the Bill, in favour of American corporate interests. This rejection of the Bill also serves a blow to the time tested Center-State relations; it is deeply worrying that the Solicitor General and the government are challenging the legislative competence of the State to enact laws on subjects listed under II of the Seventh Schedule of the Constitution.

It would be pertinent to see how the US, the home country of the Cola company, has handled the British Petroleum for accidentally spilling oil in the Gulf of Mexico. The US President ordered the payment of US $ 20 billion and the company paid the amount without serious resistance, unlike the Cola company. Our government, whether NDA or UPA, has an important lesson to learn from US- on how to protect the genuine national interest.
I express my profound concern about the government action refusing Presidential assent for the Bill and at the same time express my hope that the American multinational shall be brought to justice in spite of the government’s proactive support of the unrepentant company.

With the best regards

Sincerely,

S Faizi

See Faizi's 2011 letter to former home minister PC Chidambaram here.

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