Monthly Archives: August 2018

Former CAG Vinod Rai. File photo

Singapore, January 17

Former Comptroller and Auditor General of India (CAG) Vinod Rai has suggested that the IAS officers should be given training in specialised areas, like infrastructure and education, have a fixed tenure of three years and not be replaced frequently to allow them to deliver in the country’s progress.

He also said that the Indian civil service still attracts the “very best” of the people as it provides them “substantial” opportunities that have opened up within the country.

“I make a strong recommendation that there is a strong need to train civil servants in specialised areas, which are among other sectors of the economy which require specialised civil servants,” Rai said while responding to a question after delivering a lecture on “The Indian Civil Service: Has it Delivered?” at the Singapore’s Institute of South Asian Studies on Tuesday.

Rai is a distinguished visiting research fellow of the Institute and a former IAS officer who served as the 11^th CAG of India, between January 2008 and May 2013.

He was appointed as the interim president of the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) by the Supreme Court of India in January last year.

“Specialise the civil servants, give them a tenure of at least three years and stop their frequent replacements.

“Frequent replacements of civil servants, as it has been happening, affect their performance as they do not have enough time to settle into a job,” Rai said.

Replying to another question, the former CAG said that what the civil service is expected to deliver today is far more complex than it was earlier. “Sixty years ago was very fundamental.”

The former CAG also said the Indian civil service is definitely attracting talent which is, if not the best, is the very best or near the very best today.

This is because the opportunities that have opened up within the country are “very substantial”, he pointed.

Noting that the 2016 batch of civil servants had 11 people from the prestigious Indian Institute of Management (IIM), he said, “They must have been the best for getting into IIM. It (civil service) still attract the best”.

Rai also said that if given an opportunity, he would join the civil service, as it gives fulfilment in serving and not the compensation or distraction of political interference in bureaucracy. PTI

THE unprecedented press conference by top four judges of the Supreme Court and the allegations levelled by them against Chief Justice of India Dipak Misra have brought to the fore the much talked-about chinks in the top judiciary over a range of issues, including the manner in which the CJI allocated cases to his brother judges in his capacity as “master of the roster”. Justice Chelameswar chose to  describe the press conference as “an extraordinary event” in the history of the nation and the judiciary; he and his three senior colleagues felt compelled enough to go public as they failed to convince the CJI about the measure to check the “less than desirable” things that had happened in the past few months. The four judges argued Justice Misra had gone against the well-settled and time-honoured conventions guiding the CJI in deciding the roster and allocation of cases to brother judges.Despite taking the extraordinary step, the four judges, to their credit, were restrained, though they conceded that damage had already been done to the judiciary’s image “to some extent”. The issue of CJI’s authority to decide the roster had been in the news since November last when a two-judge Bench headed by Justice Chelameswar referred a petition alleging bribing of judges to procure favourable orders in medical college admissions to a Constitution Bench of the top five judges. Within a day, another Constitution Bench headed by CJI Misra effectively overturned it, asserting that the CJI was the “master of the roster”. They had a similar bone to pick with the CJI over how the memorandum of procedure for the appointment of judges was dealt by a two-judge of a three-judge Bench when it was decided by a Constitution Bench of five judges.Democracy functions through institutions and the judiciary is an important pillar of our constitutional democracy, enjoying people’s confidence. But the manner in which things have unfolded in the past one year in the Supreme Court have undermined the citizen’s confidence. If the seniormost judges in the collegium could not sort out their differences on certain issues, they could perhaps have called a Full Court of all the judges to evolve an institutional mechanism to deal with such situations. Washing dirty linen in public may not help much. The jury is still out.

Soon after the civil war in Nepal, India lost its plot since it was unable to unify the pro-India Nepali Congress and the Madhesis. Now as the leftist government leans towards China, it has joyfully grasped the moment.

Nepal is the first casualty in India”s Neighbourhood First policy.

Maj-Gen Ashok K Mehta (retd)For India, Nepal is geo-strategically the most important country, the crown jewel of the Indian subcontinent and the buffer between India and China through which pass the main avenues to the strategic Indo-Gangetic plains — India’s heartland. King Prithvi Narayan Shah, founder of the modern Nepal, had called Nepal a yam between two boulders. Traditionally, Nepal has both swayed with the wind and maintained equidistance in its relations with its neighbours. The intensity of India-China proxy war in the region picked up with Prime Minister Modi taking power. Having a China-friendly government in Nepal is breaking India’s bastion. After softly needling China on clarifying the Line of Actual Control, confronting PLA along LAC and giving a long rope to the Dalai Lama, including his visit to Tawang, in 2015, a Beijing think tank thinking aloud said China would punish India. One of the likely places for retribution is Nepal where India has been the dominant power since decolonisation, a privileged position Beijing has envied. India has had a hand in every major political change in Nepal — dethroning Ranas and restoring monarchy; introducing multiparty democracy; brokering the deal between political parties, Maoists and the monarchy; and ironically, dismantling monarchy. The only transformation in which India was outmanoeuvred by the Nepalese political class was in drafting the new constitution and provincial mapmaking, reflecting India’s failure in enabling the Indian-origin Madhesis of the Terai plains (derogatorily called Indian agents) to be duly and proportionately empowered in an inclusive constitution. But dominance of the hill people — the Khas-Aryas — has prevailed and India was presented a fait accompli. Instead of gracefully welcoming the constitution, indelicate and inelegant measures were adopted in unsuccessfully enforcing constitutional change which led to the infamous India-inspired Madhesi-executed blockade which caused immense hardship for the Nepalese people and fuelled unprecedented anti-India sentiment and ultra-nationalism. The blockade also pushed the leftist KP Oli government towards China, which joyfully grasped the moment.Meanwhile, Prachanda-led Maoists, the flagbearers of the transformation of Nepal from constitutional monarchy to a secular, democratic and inclusive republic, having lost ground finally joined the India-supported Nepali Congress-led government hoping to cut their rival leftist Unified Marxist Leninist (UML) party to size and emerging as the numero uno leftist party. In dislodging the Left government, which included the Maoists, New Delhi saw an opportunity to teach the China-backed Oli a lesson. Prachanda once sold on China, but after being out of power for seven years, admitted that India was more important for Nepal than China. He would later switch sides to stay in power.Initially, when the Maoists were waging war against monarchy, Beijing treated the Maoists with scorn. It would mock them as anti-state rebels, miscreants and hijackers of Mao’s fair name. Once Prachanda came to power, China announced eloquently that “we have now rediscovered the ideological affinities with Maoists.” The election after the civil war, won by the Maoists supported by the mainstream left parties, was a turning point in China-Nepal relations, the former jettisoning its policy of non-interference in internal affairs of Nepal. China spread its tentacles across Nepal, politically, culturally and economically as it enlarged its strategic space.So, when India first tried to break up the Oli-Prachanda coalition in the early 2016, Beijing formed a phalanx of resistance, but months later, Prachanda on being offered premiership by the Nepali Congress, deserted Oli and aligned withthe India-backed Nepali Congress led by Sher Bahadur Deuba. Soon, Prachanda would again change his mind. In one of the only secrets kept in the history of modern Nepal, the Leftists —the UML and Maoists — encouraged by China had worked underground and established a Left alliance to fight the provincial and federal elections as allies even as Maoists were in government. Prachanda ditched Nepali Congress and India by returning to Oli.The Left Alliance won not only the national elections but also six out of seven provinces where it will form the government. Earlier, in 2017, it had won the local government elections held after two decades. Everything in Nepal seems to be going for the UML: the people, media, anti-India nationalism and China’s deep pockets. Soon after the civil war, India began losing the plot, unable to fully unify the pro-India Nepali Congress and the Madhesis and keep them together. The geopolitical landscape had changed so drastically beyond India’s comprehension that it continued to rely on its antiquated roti-beti-khoon mantra. Even Modi’s magic moments of 2014 in Nepal of veni,vidi, vici were lost.Next month, Oli or Prachanda will head the first Left alliance government with China’s backing. Fortunately, the constitution bars any no-confidence motion being presented for the first two years which will allow the two parties to work on their merger and ensure a measure of political stability. This would subordinate the Maoists who fought the civil war and spearheaded the revolutionary agenda to the UML, a bitter pill to swallow for the agents of change. India has, for the present, lost its bastion in the Himalayas, trying to preserve its Madhesi leverage with a ‘half-baked’ plan that lost the goodwill of the majority hill Nepalis and fuel was added to fire through inept diplomatese. But kingmaker Prachanda’s penchant for surprise is still around.For India, Nepal is the first casualty in its Neighbourhood First policy, a rap that the Chinese will relish.

THE most welcome part of the new two-layer Aadhaar security system is the choice offered for the first time since the Modi government tried to gang press citizens into linking the card to every conceivable purpose and service. The government opted for this high-voltage digital exercise after its first reflex action of coercion against the reporter and The Tribune failed to quell apprehensions about breach of personal data and privacy. However, offering citizens the choice not to share their unique IDs for verification purposes is too little and too late. Too late because millions have already shared their personal details with service providers; and too little because the government is yet to figure out how to eliminate the vulnerability, if that is at all possible, from the linking of several databases to Aadhaar.Virtual ID, therefore, will neither attack the root of the problem nor enhance the ease of use of the barely literate, now susceptible to the allure of the middlemen, to navigate the new rigmarole. Security and impregnability of digital systems can never be fully assured and, even if they are, humans will still form the weakest chain. The government’s weak footing on the technical front has been compounded by its authoritarian approach that fortified suspicions about its actual intentions; right from the time the government opted to spurn political consensus by converting the legislation into a money bill to bypass the Rajya Sabha. Before the expose about data vulnerability, the coercion-laden obsession to link Aadhaar had begun to grate on the nerves of citizens and consumers. Banks and mobile companies repeatedly held out deadlines which clearly militated against the grain of a Supreme Court order to preserve its voluntary nature until it took a view on its violation of privacy; information protection laws are in their infancy and no match to the rapacity and ingenuity of companies profiting from data commodification. As a nation, we are yet to achieve a closure on the right balance between the imperatives of national security and the right to privacy. This band-aid solution fails to address the technological and moral issues behind making it the single-source reference point.

Will North India continue to have frozen borders when it needs to break out of isolation?

Nostalgia about past links can’t roll back layers of accumulated antipathy and misgivings.

Sandeep Dikshit

THE New Year generally brings good tidings. And an opportunity beckons to the people of North India, boxed in by the frozen international frontiers of China and Pakistan, to return to their natural trading habitats of Central Asia, China and beyond.It will not be easy for India to take advantage of the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC). Successive Prime Ministers have hung back after promising to open the blocked borders of Punjab, Kashmir, Himachal and Ladakh, that compelled these people to change their mode of correspondence with the wider world: from their customary land-based caravan routes to sea-dependent lines of communication.Narendra Modi had promised to be different. A few months after taking over as Prime Minister in 2014, he declared in Tokyo, “I am a Gujarati. Being a Gujarati, money is in my blood…commerce is in my blood. Businesses do not need concessions. They only need the correct environment to flourish in.”This is all coming true for the people of Gujarat, as PM Modi himself underlined during the just-held state Assembly elections: Gujarat will be the major beneficiary of the Rs 88,000 crore Bullet Train loan from Japan; the first Japanese industrial park will also come up in Gujarat on the back of a $35 billion Japanese credit to improve infrastructure.North India, however, still awaits the Modi touch. From times immemorial, the Punjabi, the Ladakhi and the Kashmiri were connected to Central Asia, China, and even Russia, by trading caravans. Old-timers in the souks and bazaars of Kashghar and Samarkand can still point out an “Indian street” that retains the imprint of customs and architecture from the lands across the Indus.However, nostalgia about past links cannot easily roll back layers of accumulated antipathy and misgivings. The British had fed their paranoia about a Russian expansion by drawing firm, inviolable borders around colonial India, and arm-twisted Afghanistan into following suit; the volume and extent of trade came to be supervised by the colonial master to suit his manufacturing preferences back home as well as tailor it to the empire’s foreign policy. The violence of 1947 dealt the final blow to trans-regional trade. The residual civility that remained in cross-border movement such as a joint India-Pakistan passport vanished after the hostilities of 1965.Several political upheavals later, all attempts to make international border lawfully porous have run into dead-ends of suspicion and hostility; it did lead to restoration of some old trading routes in the divided Kashmirs and Punjabs, besides Sindh-Rajasthan. These few linkages, however, are hostage to the state of play in India-Pakistan relationship. They are a perfunctory exercise; sans the appendages of modern trading systems such as letters of credit, bank guarantees (BG), etc. Any concession to modernity is the scrupulous, painful but hi-tech scanning of a handful of people and a predetermined volume of goods permitted by either state to cross the border.In order to unlock the borders with China, Modi — the Gujarati with “money in my blood” — needs to first dismantle the colonial-imperialist baggage inherited by a substantial section of the policy-making elite about bigger powers in the neighbourhood. These suspicions have been reinforced by the continuing fiction in Indian strategic circles about China’s “creeping cartographic aggression” despite available evidence that there is no need for it to do so after capturing 60,000 km of Indian territory in one fell blow in 1962.To be fair, the hostile and unbending position on CPEC was bequeathed to it by the UPA government: New Delhi’s objection to the CPEC running through disputed Kashmir could be a riposte to the periodical Chinese hue and cry over developmental projects in Arunachal Pradesh, disputed between India and China since the 1962 war. Modi, the pragmatist that he is, would by now have realised that these are exercises in futility.At some stage India has to reconcile with the situation on the ground: Chinese objections have not stopped Japan from encouraging Asian Development Bank to undertake road construction projects in Arunachal Pradesh; Indian companies are happily constructing a caravan of dams on the tributaries of the Brahmaputra. The Twitterati may have hauled them on the coals, but the Abdullahs, son and father, were factually right when they said that India cannot win over the “other” Kashmir by military means. Once a territorial conquest is ruled out, it is better to make the best of the available opportunity rather than continue whistling in the dark.  India’s objections over the CPEC running can be understood from the need to formally footnote a protest in the long-running Kashmir dispute file. But it does not serve any other purpose; on the contrary, the hostility damages the prospects of India becoming a stakeholder in another China-backed project in the east — the Bangladesh-China-India-Myanmar (BCIM) corridor — that will unlock the potential of the North-East which is boxed in by rigid international borders, just like Punjab, Kashmir and Ladakh.India is trying to provide an alternative to the BCIM in the east by aligning with the US and Japan to build the “Pacific Corridor”. But India has limited stamina and influence to fashion an alternative to CPEC while India’s land route from Iran’s Chabahar port to Afghanistan can hardly compare or compete with CPEC.And last week, a new spectre was looming for South Block if it fails to take an early call on leveraging CPEC for geopolitical advantage: Afghanistan too is keen on signing up with CPEC. It will render India’s Chabahar link futile, perhaps to the secret delight of Iran as well because it is wary of getting caught up in India’s confrontationist anti-China/Pakistan narrative about this route.Modi, who has “commerce in his blood”, should realise these futile confrontations sap a nation’s collective energy without providing any concomitant returns. For North Indians, the shadow games between intelligence agencies have failed to improve their lot; it is debatable whether their exertions which have come at the cost of livelihood potential of people, have kept the borders completely inviolable. India desperately needs new breakthroughs in international trade to keep its economy ticking at a decent rate at a time when software exports have peaked and traditional markets face stagnation or recession.Modi the statesman is yet to make an appearance. Perhaps this could be the opportunity for him in the New Year?

sandeep4731@gmail.com

The Survey said measures to boost it resulted augmenting of the road length to 57.17 million km from 33.73 million km in 2001. File

New Delhi, January 29

India will need about USD 4.5 trillion in the next 25 years for infrastructure development, of which it will be able to garner about USD 3.9 trillion, the Economic Survey said.

“The Global Infrastructure Outlook reflects that rising income levels and economic prosperity is likely to further drive demand for infrastructure investment in India over the next 25 years.

“Around USD 4.5 trillion worth of investments are required by India till 2040 to develop infrastructure to improve economic growth and community well being,” the Survey tabled by Finance Minister Arun Jaitley in Parliament today said.

It said the current trend shows that India can meet around USD 3.9 trillion infrastructure investment out of USD 4.5 trillion.

“The cumulative figure for India’s infrastructure investment gap would be around USD 526 billion by 2040,” it said … The Global infrastructure outlook shows that the gap between required infrastructure investment and current trend of investment is expected to be widened over the year,” it said.

The Survey stressed the need to fill the infrastructure investment gap by financing from private investment, institutions dedicated for infrastructure financing like National Infrastructure Investment Bank (NIIB) and also global institutions like Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB) and New Development Bank (erstwhile BRICS Bank).

Stating that there was massive underinvestment in the sector, it attributed the causes behind this to “collapse of Public Private Partnership (PPP) especially in power and telecom projects; stressed balance sheet of private companies; issues related to land & forest clearances.”

Terming road transport as a dominant mode of transport in India which contributes significantly to the national economy, the Survey said measures to boost it resulted augmenting of the road length to 57.17 million km from 33.73 million km in 2001 while the vehicles grew by four times to 229 million during the period.

Also, it emphasised that India’s road density at 1.66 km/sq km of area is higher than that of Japan, USA, China, Brazil and Russian Federation while surface road length was 61 per cent of the total road lento, much lower than the UK, Korea, Russia and China.

It also highlighted that as on September 2017, out of the 1,263 total ongoing monitored projects across sectors, there are 482 projects in Road Transport and Highways with a cost of Rs 3,17,373.9 crore. Of these, 43 projects face cost overruns and 74 projects time overruns.

About railways sector, the Survey said that it is facing stiff competition from other modes of transportation and the government is initiating various transformative measures to keep railways on track.

About Metro rail, it said there are 425 km of Metro rail systems operational in the cities of Delhi, NOIDA, Gurugram, Kolkata, Mumbai, Chennai, Bengaluru, Hyderabad, Jaipur, Lucknow and Kochi and another about 684 km are under construction in various cities by December 2017.

About civil aviation, it said, “Provision of Rs 4,500 crore for revival of 50 unserved and underserved airports/air strips has been taken up with budgetary support of government to be completed by December 2018.”

On shipping, the Survey said, “In 2017-18, projects with an investment of around Rs 10,000 crore and capacity addition of about 80 MMTPA are targeted for award. Of these, 15 projects involving an investment of around Rs 3,159 crore and capacity addition of 18 MTPA have already been awarded.”

Listing Bharatmala and Sagarmala as important initiatives for highways and shipping sectors respectively, the Survey said under Sagarmala ports master plans have been finalised under which 131 port capacity expansion projects with project cost of Rs 85,346 crore have been identified for implementation over next 20 years.

The Survey said all-India installed power generation capacity has increased substantially over the years and reached 330860.6 MW as on November 30, 2017.

About logistics sector, the Survey highlighted that “the Indian logistics market is expected to reach about USD 215 billion in 2020, growing at a CAGR of 10.5 per cent”.

For the telecom sector, it said under phase II of Bharat Net to connect 1.5 lakh gram panchayats with high speed broadband is likely to be completed by March 2019. PTI

Prime Minister Narendra Modi addresses the World Economic Forum. Reuters

Davos, January 23

Narendra Modi became the first Indian prime minister to address the World Economic Forum (WEF) here today during which he talked about “serious” challenges and “grave concerns” facing the world, including terrorism.

Climate change and terrorism are grave concerns before the world, Modi said, while asserting that terrorism is dangerous but what is equally dangerous is the “artificial distinction” made between ‘good terrorist’ and ‘bad terrorist’.

Speaking at the plenary of the WEF annual summit, Modi also said it is painful to see some youngsters getting radicalised, adding that India’s position on the menace of terrorism is well known and he would not like to elaborate on that.

“Let us create a ‘heaven of freedom’, where there is cooperation and not division, fractures,” Modi told the gathering.

He also emphasised that a predictable, stable, transparent and progressive India is good news in an otherwise uncertain global environment.

The prime minister, who arrived here yesterday, said issues of peace, security and stability have emerged as serious global challenges.

He also noted that the last time when an Indian prime minister came here in 1997, India’s GDP was a little more than USD 400 billion, but now it has increased more than six-times.

Referring to WEF’s theme of ‘Creating a shared future in a fractured world’, he said the Indian philosophy of ‘Vasudhaiva Kutumbakam’ (the world is one family) has become more relevant in today’s time to address fissures and distances in the world.

Asserting that India is proud of its democracy and diversity, Modi said the country has always contributed towards global peace and believes in the values of integration and unity.

Touching upon the issue of climate change, he urged the world to think about what can be done to mitigate this threat while emphasising that caring for the environment is a part of India’s culture. PTI

Marking a break from the convention, the prime minister and defence minister of India did not attend the Army Day function, held at the residence of the Chief of Army Staff (COAS).

The ‘at-home’ function held by the Indian Army to celebrate Army Day is when all Army personnel – retired and current – as well as important members of the government such as the Prime Minister, the President, the Defence Minister and more all gather at the residence of the COAS to meet and celebrate the contributions of the Indian Army. Some media, and other invited persons, are also usually present at the event.

On 15 January, the country celebrated Army Day, as tributes and salutations poured in honouring the armed forces for their valour and sacrifices.

Army chief General Bipin Rawat addressed a gathering of army men, and distributed posthumous awards to the martyrs.

The festivities of the day had culminated with the function at the COAS’ house. While senior army personnel, dignitaries and various members of the government had graced the ‘at-home’ function, the absence of the prime minister and the defence minister at the event did not go unnoticed.