Becoming best friends,indo-nepal

On Nepal, Modi has much to be satisfied about. But the challenges begin now.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi made every effort to be seen as Nepal’s best friend — a commoner, a pilgrim, the guardian of a Nepali in need, and less of a prime minister of a big country. By the time he left Nepal, he had won the hearts and minds of the Nepalese, imprinting deeply the idea that he alone has the will and ability to transform Nepal into a prosperous country. His repeated emphasis on India’s respect for Nepal’s sovereignty, and the message that missed opportunities of the past and failed promises should not act as speed-breakers in “our future journey to prosperity together”, were perhaps aimed at looking ahead at the future, not harping on the past.

Modi knew that all these personalities he projected would consolidate his image and goodwill in a country where India is perceived as a neighbour with a big gap between promise and delivery — and, of late, a neighbour that involves itself more in Nepal’s internal politics, and pursues a policy of “divide and rule”.

Modi brought along with him Jeet Bahadur Saru Magar — a Nepali boy that he had a chance meeting with in Ahmedabad about 16 years ago and adopted — ostensibly to “reunite” him with his family that was discovered two years ago, at Modi’s initiative. Jeet had come to Nepal two years ago, soon after the family was discovered, and was in constant touch with them. But Modi’s decision to bring Jeet along, get his entire family to Kathmandu, pose with them for a photo-op and give them gifts, generated such publicity that this affair appears to have paid him the biggest dividend of his Nepal visit.

“Years ago, I came here as a pilgrim. And anyone who comes to Nepal once, will always belong here [sic]” he said in Nepali, before he began his extempore speech in the parliament. By projecting the image of a benevolent guardian and a devotee of Shiva — from Somnath to Pashupatinath, via Vishwanath — he could easily establish a bond with a predominantly Hindu Nepal, a country with a potential for religious tourism.

Jawaharlal Nehru disapproved of then President Rajendra Prasad’s wish to go to the renovation ceremony of the Somnath temple in the early 1950s on the ground that it would set a wrong precedent in a secular country. But almost 60 years later, Nehru’s successor took pride in offering special worship at the Pashupatinath temple and spending an hour there as a devotee, somethingnone of India’s prime ministers before Modi had done. That the new Indian prime minister is a commoner and “someone like us” was the general feeling in Nepal.

Was it all only part of diplomacy? Nobody in Nepal seems to believe that, at least for now. But then Modi , the prime minister, was much at ease in delivering the messages he wanted to — that Nepali politicians must rise above partisan politics in making the constitution. While he sent across the message that India would be happy if Nepal wrote a federal, republican constitution, he also said “that must bring poor and rich, rural and urban, hill, mountain and Terai together”. That was a clear disapproval of the identity-implying caste- and ethnicity-based federalism — a common agenda of the Maoists and Madhesi parties — something India had lent its support to earlier. His emphasis was more on linking the country and its people with its diverse geography, culture and socioeconomic strata than wedging a divide on caste and ethnic lines. He also maintained his silence on whether India wishes Nepal to be a secular or a Hindu nation.

A quiet warning and praise for Maoists for switching to “Buddha from Yuddha” — from war to peace — also showed that Modi was cautiously optimistic about their contribution to the constitution-writing. “The entire world is looking at you. Your success will discourage many who believe weapons can bring about change” — the hidden message was more obvious. The consequences of Nepal, which has already bungled one chance, not having a constitution on time would be enormous.

After all, an orderly society, guided by a constitution alone, will provide the stability that is the pre-requisite for business and investment — Modi’s clear focus. The 5,600 MW Pancheshwar project, which remained stalled for 18 years after the agreement, will see its work start within a year. He assured the Nepali side that India will not want Nepal’s electricity or power for free: “We will buy it, and that alone will change the face of Nepal… We will provide power to you now, but 10 years hence, you will remove our darkness,” he said, hinting India will move fast on the implementation of projects now.

Modi returns to New Delhi with much to be satisfied about. But the challenges begin now, as the promises enter the delivery phase. More than that, the hope that Modi has generated will have to confront the image of the Indian government’s bureaucracy and intelligence, largely blamed for the poor implementation of past projects and for getting involved in Nepal’s internal politics. The bureaucracy will not refute the allegation. But it cannot be wished away so easily. The challenge lies in getting it to perform as per decisions reached at the political level on both sides. Modi’s probation in Nepal begins now.

A story of the clean energy fund

It shows the gap between bureaucratic intent and practice. It speaks of excessive reliance on generalists in technical matters.

The finance minister announced in his budget speech that he would enhance the resources of the “clean energy fund” by doubling the cess on coal production from Rs 50 per tonne to Rs 100 per tonne. This fund was set up in 2000 to incubate, encourage and develop innovation in clean energy. A few days after his speech, I read that a significant percentage of the funds would be allocated to cleaning River Ganga. I asked a senior finance ministry official at an “on the record” gathering of CEOs whether this report had substance. I also asked why the fund was being managed by the finance ministry, and not the ministry of non-conventional and renewable energy. The latter, after all, had the domain expertise.

The answer was honest and revealing. The official said the “clean energy” fund covered more than just clean energy. It supported all projects related to the environment. He implied that “environment” is a capacious term under whose umbrella many seemingly unrelated projects can take shelter. He agreed that the finance ministry did not have domain expertise, but said that a specialist was always invited to the meeting. I found the answer to be revealing in two respects. It threw into relief two avoidable inefficiencies of bureaucratic governance — the disjunct between captioned intent and actual practice, and the skew in leadership on technical matters towards generalists over specialists.

The budget has evoked varying responses. Supporters have dug deep to locate nuggets that bear positively on growth, inflation, fiscal prudence and jobs. Critics have belaboured the absence of grandstanding reforms and the reversal of regressive policies like retroactive taxes. Both can bring logic and substance to their argument. Both make valid points. Both miss a central reality. The FM had 45 days to prepare the budget. He could do little more than signify a directional shift. Further, the budget is not the only forum for pronouncing on reforms.

It can be done at any time and through any medium. It would not surprise me, for instance, if the prime minister made a major statement on reforms from the ramparts of Red Fort on August 15. The point is that the budget was presented so early in the government’s tenure that it is wrong to use it as the touchstone to judge its commitment to reforms or for that matter, its arithmetic for evaluating the macroeconomics. What is not wrong is to evaluate the efficiency of the management of budgetary resources and the extentto which the FM will correct the institutional and leadership weaknesses that have in the past led to avoidable losses. It is in this context that the narrative on the clean energy fund is relevant.

The clean energy fund has never been constrained for money. In 2001, it had Rs 1,066 crore. This grew to Rs 3,350 crore in 2012 and Rs 8,648 crore in 2013 because of the increase in domestic coal production and imports. Now, with the doubling of the cess, the fund will be even more flush. With this level of resources, India should have been at the forefront of clean energy research. That it is not is due to the money not being deployed for the purpose intended. It was not allocated to universities, laboratories and companies engaged in researching clean energy technologies like coal gasification, fuel cells, energy storage, carbon capture and sequestration and concentrated solar. Instead, it was diverted to the consolidated fund and/ or used to support projects that were long past their technical due date. There were three reasons for this disconnect between intent and practice. One, the government was not really serious about clean energy research.

It wanted simply to generate additional revenues. A tax on a polluting industry for the purpose of cleansing the environment got it what it wanted and at the same time affirmed its green credentials. Two, there was institutional confusion. Five ministries were engaged in clean energy research — the ministries of power, coal, petroleum, non-conventional and renewables, and heavy industry. Each had some domain expertise but none had exclusive charge. As a result, and perhaps also because the money was raised through an indirect tax, the fund was placed under the purview of the Central boards of taxes and excise. The result — and this is the third reason — there was a lack of specialist leadership. The chairman of the fund was a finance ministry official with limited, if any, knowledge or understanding of the clean energy sector. As a result, there was no cutting-edge initiative.

The clean energy fund is not the only example of a case where stated intent diverged from practice. A cess has been levied for years, for instance, on oil and gas production to finance the development of the petroleum industry. The fund is captioned the “oil industry development bond”. It was always intended that OIDB funds be managed by the ministry of petroleum. The fact is that other than an initial disbursement, the funds have been kept in the finance ministry. It could be argued, of course, that there is no financial downside to the government taking funds from one metaphorical pocket to fill another. This would be an erroneous argument. There are significant negatives in adopting a cavalier approach to disbursement. Every time a project or programme is created, people are mobilised, expectations are raised and resources are deployed. The wilful non-implementation of projects creates waste and inefficiency. It leads to avoidable losses. Similarly poor and ignorant leadership also wreaksdamage. In today’s connected and complex world, such leadership can push the economy off the rails. Our system still looks to “generalist” career civil servants to provide leadership for even the most technical of subjects. It does not encourage lateral entry into senior executive positions. This has created an imbalance that needs to be corrected, for even the most gifted of generalists do not have the bandwidth to keep pace with the dynamism of technical innovation and change.

The PM has talked of maximum governance. The touchstone by which I would judge the FM is what he does to improve the management of resources. This requires him to bridge the gap between intent and usage. It requires the placement of the right people in the right job at the right time. It requires him to ensure that the mistakes that have been made in the management of the clean energy fund are not repeated.

Rape and reality

The gulf between statistics and substance is not easily bridged. The number of rape cases registered in the country may conceal the reality in two significant ways. First, only a small proportion of the rapes are reported at all. Secondly, a significant number of rape cases relate to consensual sex but have been criminalised by circumstances. The Hindu’s six-month investigation into cases of sexual assault in Delhi has revealed that four of ten cases arose out of complaints by parents of girls who had eloped with boys. Another 25 per cent involved breaches of promise by men that they would marry their partners. And rape as it is conventionally understood, either by strangers or those known to victims in their family or neighbourhood, was seen only in 162 out of 583 cases registered in Delhi in 2013. Such cases resulted in a higher rate of conviction. The association of rape in the popular imagination with predators lurking in dark lanes to prey on vulnerable women has led to a general belief that better policing and more stringent laws will be the solution. While it is entirely appropriate that women’s safety is given high priority, it is equally important to identify the strands of patriarchy discernible in the resort to complaints of rape at the instance of parents who disapprove of relationships, especially if these are inter-caste or inter-religious. If denial of freedom of choice to women in love and marriage is one issue, the disavowal of women’s agency is another.

Accounts gathered from complainants, lawyers and judges reveal that the protestations of women that they had consented to the act or eloped with the accused are disregarded so that provisions relating to statutory rape and abduction can be invoked to appease angry parents. Conviction is indeed inevitable if the girls involved are below the statutory age of consent. While some sympathetic judges used to exercise their discretion to hand down mild sentences, the much-strengthened penal law applicable since last year has made longer prison terms inevitable for statutory rape. This places a question mark on the wisdom of recent legislation raising the age of consent from 16 to 18, thereby criminalising teenage sexual activity. There is no balancing provision to distinguish sexual abuse of a minor, which ought to be dealt with sternly, from consensual sex between couples of a proximate age group. While making the country safer for women, society must move away from the inherent patriarchy behind the phenomenon. That means greater inter-generational dialogue and display of sensitivity by police officers and judges. Scripted FIRs, mechanical resort to rape provisions and pressure on women to disown relationships are not the way.

NASA creates space engine like none other

In what could be a game changer in space exploration, NASA has successfully tested a “microwave thruster system” that requires no propellant to generate thrust.

The engine appears to produce propulsion through electricity and nothing else.

In a test paper, NASA scientists said they recorded about 30-50 micro-Newtons (mN) of thrust from an electrical propulsion test article, harnessing subatomic quantum particles.

Testing was performed on a low-thrust torsion pendulum that is capable of detecting force at a single-digit micronewton level, within a stainless steel vacuum chamber with the door closed but at ambient atmospheric pressure.

This means that NASA may be able to create an inexpensive low-thrust, long-term technology with virtually no cost.

The discovery can also reduce the cost of maintaining orbital stability of satellites and interstellar travel.

“This unique electric propulsion device is producing a force not attributable to any electromagnetic phenomenon, and is potentially interacting with quantum vacuum virtual plasma,” NASA said in the test paper.

The US space agency now plan to run further tests to validate its findings.

NASA’s Messenger spacecraft, sent to study the Mercury 10 years back, will observe the planet at lower altitudes.

This is likely to result in exciting scientific discoveries, NASA said in a statement as Messenger completed 10 years on Sunday. Mercury is the planet closest to the Sun.

The aim of the spacecraft blasted off Aug 3, 2004 from Cape Canaveral, Florida, was to take the small satellite dangerously close to Mercury’s surface — paving the way for an ambitious study of the planet.

The spacecraft has so far travelled 7.9 billion km including 15 trips around the Sun and flybys of Earth once, Venus twice, and Mercury thrice before it was inserted into orbit around its target planet in 2011, the statement added.

“We have operated successfully in orbit for more than three Earth years and more than 14 Mercury years as we celebrate this amazing 10th anniversary milestone,” said Andy Calloway, Messenger Mission Operations manager from Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory (APL).

After Mariner 10, Messenger is only the second spacecraft sent to Mercury.

Mariner flew past Mercury three times between 1974 and 1975 and collected data on less than half the surface.

Messenger took advantage of an ingenious trajectory design, lightweight materials and miniaturization of electronics — all developed in three decades since Mariner 10 flew past Mercury.

The mission has rewritten scientists’ understanding of the planet “and given us plenty of surprises”, NASA added.

Sunderbans mangrove trees losing capacity to absorb CO2: study

The vast mangrove forest in the Sunderbans is fast losing its capacity to absorb carbon dioxide, one of the main greenhouse gases, from the atmosphere due to rise in the salinity of water, rampant deforestation and pollution, a study has found.

The mangrove forest, marsh grass, phytoplanktons, molluscus and other coastal vegetation in the world’s largest delta are the natural absorbers of carbon dioxide (CO2), according to the study.

The stored carbon in the plants is known as “Blue Carbons”. The absorption of CO2 is a process which contributes to reduction of the warming of the earth and other ill effects of climate change.

The research study, “Blue Carbon Estimation in Coastal Zone of Eastern India — Sunderbans”, was financed by the Union government and headed by noted marine scientist Abhijit Mitra.

The report took three years to prepare and it was submitted to the government last year.

The scientists involved in the study have sounded an alarm bell, especially in the central Sunderbans, one of the three zones into which the forest was divided for the study, the other two being western and eastern.

“The situation is quite alarming, especially in the central part. The capacity of the mangrove forest, especially the Byne species, to absorb carbon dioxide has eroded to a large extent. This will affect the entire ecosystem of the area,” Sufia Zaman, a senior marine biologist who was a part of the team, told PTI.

According to Mitra, the study was conducted mainly on the Byne species of mangrove. There are 34 other species of mangroves found in the forest including Keora and Genwa.

In the central part of Sunderbans near Matla, the capability of Byne trees to absorb carbon was 22 tonnes per hectare, whereas the scenario is a bit different in the eastern Sunderbans where the capacity of Byne to absorb carbons is near about 35 tonnes per hectare,” Mitra said.

Mitra felt that the situation was fraught with danger because less absorption of CO2 from the atmosphere meant higher proportion of CO2 in the atmosphere which traps heat.

Comparing the situation with mangrove forests in Indonesia and Vietnam, Mitra said, “In Indonesia, the absorption capacity of carbons is 114 tonnes/hectare whereas in Vietnam the quantity is 80—90/tonnes per hectare.”

Going into the reasons for the scenario in the Sunderbans, a UNESCO world heritage site, Mitra said, “One of the main reasons is a sharp rise in the salinity of water in Matla river.”

“The mangroves grow on fresh water, but because of lack of fresh water the height of mangroves has come down substantially, reducing its capacity to absorb carbons,” he said.

He points out that as fresh water is available in eastern Sunderabans, the trees there are taller.

Owing to deposition of silt at the confluence of the Vidyadhari and Matla rivers, fresh water is unable to enter the Matla river, giving rise to its salinity, he says.

“The other reasons are shrimp farming, mushrooming of brick kiln industry and deforestation which together have added to the reduced growth of Byne mangroves,” Mitra said.

He explained that the situation was better in the eastern Sunderbans where there was less human incursion as well as in the western part which was fed by a regular supply of fresh water from the Hooghly river.

According to Mitra, if steps are not taken to remove the silt deposits at the meeting point of the Vidyadhari and Malta rivers, the situation may get worse. He suggested dredging of the channel and afforestation besides checking shrimp farming.

New Bill in Lok Sabha to give SEBI more teeth

The Securities Laws (Amendment) Bill, 2014, aims to empower capital market watchdog Securities and Exchange Board of India (Sebi) by giving powers such as authority to seek call data records.

A Bill to further empower the Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI) to check fraudulent investment schemes, to call for documents on entities under probe and provide for constitution of special courts to expedite the cases was introduced in the Lok Sabha.

It is essentially a Bill that was conceived by the UPA government. An ordinance to empower SEBI to deal with ponzi schemes was promulgated thrice during the previous UPA regime. However, a Bill to replace the ordinance could not be done in Parliament.

The Securities Laws (Amendment) Bill, 2014, aims to empower capital market watchdog Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI) by giving powers such as authority to seek call data records. It was introduced by Minister of State for Finance Nirmala Sitharaman as, she said, Finance Minister Arun Jaitley was unwell and could not attend the House.

The objects and reasons listed by the government on the Bill said, “To protect the interests of investors and to ensure orderly development of securities markets, it has become necessary to enhance the powers of the Board”.

Once the bill becomes an Act, SEBI would have powers to call for information “not only from the people or entities associated with the securities market but also from persons who are not directly associated with the securities market”. Besides, the capital market watchdog would get increased powers to crack the whip on illegal investment schemes.

“Further, in view of large pendency of cases, it is necessary to constitute Special Courts for prosecution of offences under the securities law to provide speedy trial,” the government said. It envisages that any unregistered scheme having a corpus of Rs.100 crore or more would be deemed as a collective investment scheme.

Instead of First Class Judicial Magistrate, the Magistrate or Judge of such designated court in Mumbai — as notified by the Central Government — would have jurisdiction to issue an order “for the seizure of books, registers, other documents and records”.

The uncanny Indian voter

The repertoire of tricks the Indian voter has performed has kept political parties on their toes, necessitating the formation of new strategies and agendas

The Congress’ win in three Assembly seats in the by-election in Uttarakhandcame as a surprise to the observers and analysts of Indian elections. Just when we were settling down to talk about the way the Narendra Modi-led government has been performing, the Indian voter is posing new questions about how to make sense of the choices and patterns that are emerging and changing in electoral processes. The relation that voters share with politicians and political parties seems similar to the one between Tom and Jerry — each trying to outplay the other. The repertoire of tricks that the Indian voter has performed has kept political parties on their toes, necessitating the formation of new strategies and agendas to serve the needs of the voters.

Large voter turnout

To begin with, elections in India have witnessed a relatively large voter turnout (well over 60 per cent) just when we were beginning to discuss the apathy in the political system and the endemic suspicion of the politician as a public figure. Even as voters express their inability to get substantive benefits from the ruling elites, and complain about rampant corruption across all the parties, they have turned out in bigger numbers to beat this mood. The formalism of the electoral process — electoralism — is supplanted by the enthusiastic participation of the average voter. Even in States such as Chhattisgarh, which has seen abject neglect and sustained presence of the Maoists (who have been giving an all-out call to boycott elections), voter turnout has been very high. Added to this, when economic reforms began to be implemented and the policy frameworks of all political parties began to look very similar, the voter changed gears and moved from registering anti-incumbency to pro-incumbency.

From bargaining benefits by voting out the existing government, the voter found a more sustainable bargain in voting in the incumbent governments. They managed this through a significant shift in the policy framework of all major political parties. All parties that began with an exclusive growth-centric rhetoric, led by the Congress in 1999, began to campaign and contest elections on a welfare agenda by 2004. This trend was further entrenched in the 2009 elections which the Congress fought on the basis of implementing the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act. In 2014, the party attempted to repeat this feat by formulating a massive Food Security Bill; yet the voter chose to vote the party out and elect a government led by Mr. Modi. This government hardly spoke about new welfare programmes, but focussed on ‘minimum government, maximum governance.’ This led to a debate on whether the voter needs economic opportunities, empowerment and dignity instead of doles. Voters who were disillusioned with the Congress for poor implementation of welfare programmes chose a government which promised higher growth and better governance. But even here the voter made an interesting differentiation between the party and the personality: the vote was for Mr. Modi and not the Bharatiya Janata Party. They felt that the BJP is as ineffective as the Congress but it was on Mr. Modi that they ostensibly laid their trust, since he was prepared to take responsibility. In the facelessness that the neoliberal order presents, Mr. Modi was the visible face. This could well be the reason why voters were angry with the Gandhis; it’s not that they rejected dynasty rule as is commonly perceived.

Even as we try to understand the effects and contours of the Modi wave, the post-poll surveys in Delhi suggested that the BJP might not perform well or keep its vote share intact if elections to the Delhi Assembly are held. Among other choices, the voter has consistently maintained a difference in voting for general elections and Assembly elections. Even in States that witnessed simultaneous elections to Parliament and Assembly, they voted in different measure. This was clear with the rise and the fall of the Aam Aadmi Party. While the AAP came to power in a dramatic fashion, it suffered a whitewash in the Parliamentary elections. The AAP is now finding reasons for this sudden disillusionment with its politics. Giving up power, the way it did in Delhi, did not have the desired effect of impressing the voter. Instead, voters read Arvind Kejriwal’s choice to run away from responsibility as his inability to govern. The BJP, therefore, is in two minds whether or not to stake claim to form the government in Delhi. Will forming government be seen as taking responsibility or will it be seen as an attempt to benefit from the existing mood? What will be the long-term effects on the party and image that Mr. Modi has so carefully cultivated?

It is, perhaps, for the first time that we are witnessing a party that won by a massive majority suddenly under pressure within a short duration. The BJP’s win is also significant because it caused a tectonic shift in the electoral pattern. Just when pundits were writing off national parties and single-party governments at the Centre, and declaring that coalition governments are here to stay, the voter opted for a single party with a massive majority.

Short-lived euphoria

However, there is already talk of the waning Modi effect. Are parties beginning to wilt under the hype they have created? This also seemed to be the case with the AAP. The euphoria generated died out rather quickly. While the Congress seemed to be a party that churned out new welfare policies but failed to implement them effectively, the BJP, which promised effective implementation, seems to have no new ideas — at least till now. The big picture of governing a country of this size and diversity is certainly missing in what we have witnessed over the last two months. Mr. Modi himself seems to be struggling to find a new persona that is different from his aggressive posturing during the campaign days. The question really is this: how will the BJP counter the hype it created? Will it be able to sustain the promised shift from sectarian mobilisation to pure governance? Or are we set to witness a combination of high-intensity growth policy with low-intensity communalism? The anointment of Amit Shah as party president and Ram Madhav, a pracharak and long-term spokesperson of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh which always claimed to be only a cultural organisation, as its general secretary, could be some signs towards this incumbent combination by the BJP. Given the speed and alacrity with which the voter is engaging with the political process, political parties certainly need ideas and policies that can effectively make a difference to everyday lives.