India formally signs Trade in Services & Trade in Investments Agreement with ASEAN for IAS MAINS

India has formally signed the Trade in Services & Trade in Investments Agreement with ASEAN. The Services Agreement will open up opportunities of movement of both manpower and investments from either side between India and ASEAN. Nine out of ten ASEAN countries have signed the same. Philippines is completing its domestic procedure and it is expected to sign soon. It may be mentioned that India-ASEAN Agreement on Trade in Goods was signed in 2009 and became effective from 2010. The Trade Agreement has boosted the total trade between India and ASEAN substantially in the past four years. It may be noted that this Agreement on Services & Investment was scheduled to be signed in Nay Pay Taw, Myanmar, during the ASEAN Economic Ministers (AEM) meeting on 26th August, 2014. However, in view of the launch of Prime Minister’s Jandhan Yogana for inclusive banking, the Minister of State (Independent Charge) Commerce and Industry Smt. Nirmala Sitharaman (who was in-charge of the launch of the scheme) could not attend the AEM. She, however, deputed the senior officers from the Ministry of Commerce who attended all the important meetings and consultations on her behalf. The Minister reiterated the deep historical, cultural and economic ties with ASEAN-India values its economic partnership with ASEAN. The signing of the agreement in Services & Investment is reflective of India’s deep commitment to have a strong institutional architecture for economic ties with ASEAN. As part of this economic vision, India is also part of the RCEP negotiations which presently being discussed between ASEAN and its six partner countries. Key features of the Trade in Services Agreement: • The Trade in Services Agreement with the ASEAN contains all features of a modern and comprehensive agreement on Services and is in line with the other bilateral agreements that India has signed so far. Some of the important Articles contained in the Agreement are ones on transparency, domestic regulations, recognition, market access, national treatment, increasing participation of developing countries, joint committee on services, review, dispute settlement and denial of benefits. • Both India and ASEAN Member States have taken GATS plus commitments in various Services and modes of supply. Each ASEAN Member State has tabled individual schedule of commitments which are equally applicable for India and other ASEAN Member States. India on the other hand has tabled three schedules of commitments one for Philippines, one for Indonesia and one for the remaining eight ASEAN Member States. It was also agreed by India that in order to increase participation of the least developed countries no additional requests would be tabled to the CLMV countries (Cambodia, Lao, Myanmar and Vietnam). All the three schedules tabled by India are well within the existing autonomous regime of India. • A brief annex on Movement of Natural persons (one of the key areas of interest for India) has been included in the Agreement. This Annex defines Business Visitors, Intra Corporate Transferees (Managers, Executives and Specialists) and Contractual Service Suppliers. This will help provide commercially meaningful market across in ASEAN for our professionals, including those from the IT/ITeS sector. Independent professionals have not been defined in the Annex.

Ministry of Environment, Forests & Climate Change constitutes High Level Committee

Ministry of Environment, Forests & Climate Change constitutes High Level Committee Committee to review acts administrated by the Ministry Suggestions invited from stakeholders through Ministry’s website

A High Level Committee (HLC) has been constituted by Ministry of Environment, Forests & Climate Change to review the following Acts administered by the Ministry of Environment, Forests & Climate Change. (i)                Environment (Protection) Act, 1986 (ii)              Forest (Conservation) Act, 1980 (iii)             Wildlife (Protection) Act, 1972 (iv)            The Water (Prevention and Control of Pollution) Act,1974 (v)              The Air (Prevention and Control of Pollution) Act,   1981 The composition of the Committee is as follows:- (1)             Shri. T.S.R. Subramanian, Chairman (2)             Shri Viswanath Anand, Member (3)             Justice (Retd.) Sh. A.K. Srivastav, Member (4)              Shri K.N. Bhat, Member The terms of reference are as follows:- (i)                   To assess the status of implementation of each of the above Acts vis-a-vis the objectives; (ii)                 To examine and take into account various court orders and judicial  pronouncements relating to these Acts; (iii)                To recommend specific amendments needed in each of these Acts so as to bring them in line with current requirements to meet objectives; and (iv)               To draft proposed amendments in each of the above Acts to give effect to the proposed recommendations.

UKPCS-2010(PRE) GENERAL STUDY PAPER ANALYSIS

The children the PM couldn’t speak to

More than four years after the RTE was passed, the state has no handle on the numbers of out-of-school children.

The recently released report of the Global Initiative on Out-of-School Children, based on a situational analysis of India, opens a Pandora’s box on data and methodological issues that plague the estimation of out-of-school children in India. As the report reveals, there is a multiplicity of definitions, sources of data and methods of estimation in use, but none that can be relied on to capture the full extent of the problem. As a result, it is not clear how many children are actually out of school, who they are, where they reside and why they are not in school. Unfortunately, no worthwhile effort is being made to move towards achieving that clarity or finding a solution for the millions who continue to remain beyond the pale of formal schooling.

Since the passage of the Right to Education Act, which mandates that every child in the age group of 6-14 years must be in school as a matter of her fundamental right, the estimation of out-of-school children has assumed greater significance. But, despite the legal ramifications, there is still no appropriate definition of an out-of school child or a standardised method of estimating the number.

Information on out-of-school children is collected either from schools or through household surveys. The first set relies entirely on data from school registers or information supplied by teachers. The margins of error in this method are self-evident. But the larger problem lies in the method of estimation, or the lack thereof. For instance, the DISE (district information system for education — now the official data collector on education) provides a net enrolment ratio by collecting data on the number of students enrolled in different age groups. The difference between this and the number estimated to be in the relevant age group can then “be considered” as not enrolled. The number of dropped-out children is calculated separately from the difference in enrolment of a cohort over two consecutive years. Besides the inaccuracies involved, there is in effect no actual estimate of out-of-school children.

Household surveys, on the other hand, rely on different definitions of dropout. While the National Family Health Survey uses figures for the officially dropped out, others account for those who have not attended school on “any day in the past two months”, and states across the country vary in their interpretations, ranging from seven days of continuous absence (Karnataka) to three months of continuous absence (Gujarat). The Child Tracking Surveys (CTS) — the latest in the list — employ teachers to collect this information using an undefined methodology. In the final analysis, therefore, it isanybody’s guess how many children are in fact “out-of-school”. In addition to the lack of clarity or accuracy of data, the problem is made worse by the fact that all this information (barring the CTS) is available only at aggregate levels. At the village, panchayat or block level, these records are neither maintained nor systematically tracked. How, then, can the government, which is under legal obligation to ensure that every child is “in school”, do so, when it does not even know the scale or scope of the problem? In order to address the problem of out-of-school children with any seriousness, there are some basic issues that need to be addressed. The first deals with the coverage of out-of-school children. While there is no ambiguity about a child being “never enrolled”, there are several categories of never-enrolled children that are systematically left out. For instance, children of migrant and nomadic families; street and homeless children; children engaged in labour; children in conflict with the law or in need of care and protection; and increasingly, children living in conflict zones. These “invisibilised” children may never get to school unless focused efforts are made to recognise them and count them in. The second issue relates to the understanding of who a dropped-out child is. Recently, the government of India declared that a dropped-out child is one who is absent for 45 days, but without clarifying whether it covers continuous absence or not. However, the question is, does this measure really capture the scope of the problem? The reality is that many children are “regularly irregular”, attending school for a few days at a time and then remaining absent the next few. Scores of other children attend for only some part of the school day, leaving after the midday meal is served. But none of the current measures captures these facts. Can these children be considered as being “in school”? Further, the DISE does not capture attendance data, basing its estimates on enrolments alone. And the states that are collecting data on dropouts based on attendance do not use them to update their enrolment records — only for organising “special training” — circumventing the issue of estimating the out-of-school yet again. Under the RTE Act, the state’s obligation is clear: regular attendance and retention, not just enrolment. How can the government continue to hide behind inappropriate definitions and shy away from accurate estimations? The third issue is the absence of a reliable database at the local level. Under the RTE, the responsibility of tracking children has been given to the panchayats, but with no resources or corresponding capacities created to do so. Instead, it is the teachers who have been asked to conduct the CTS. The fact that they might have an incentive to under-report or that this task adds to their burden of non-teaching duties and might not lead to accurate estimates has been completely ignored. Besides, this information is not in the public domain, so no one knows which children have been included and which have not - In order to track children, the community must be involved in the creation and use of information. At present, the data regime is too remote to be able to initiate change on the ground. More than four years after the RTE was passed, the state has no handle on the numbers of children who are being denied their fundamental right to education, let alone strategies on how to get them into school and keep them there. In light of the publicity given to the prime minister’s address to children in school, can we spare a thought for those who did not get to hear the PM on Teachers’ Day? Can one hope that the PM will acknowledge those less fortunate and initiate appropriate steps towards recognising the problem in its entirety and making a commitment towards overcoming it? - 

Simpler government

I had written a piece on ‘Unclogging India’ (IE, July 7), to which I received an unusual number of empathetic responses. People from different walks of life wrote to tell me how they had connected with the article and why unclogging India should indeed be an important theme for the new government. Simplifying government processes by using technology and removing redundancy will be a big win. Poor government processes pervade our lives, whether it is getting a driving licence, an electricity connection or a passport. Let me illustrate with a recent experience.

Recently, I had to apply for a new passport as I had run out of pages on my old one. I needed to apply under Tatkal so that I could get my new passport in four days. I put all the required paperwork together, including bank statements, society letter, electricity bills and a letter of good character from a government servant. As a result, I did get my passport under the Tatkal scheme speedily, despite an initial hiccup with my past police verification. Apparently, the police constable who had been entrusted with the task of completing my police verification the last time around had not found me at home when he had visited and so had put in an incomplete report. The passport officer overruled his comment and issued my passport expeditiously under Tatkal.

He did tell me to ensure that my passport verification was completed, or a passport renewal would not be possible under Tatkal in future. Given that I run out of pages in my passport every two years, I was eager to complete my police verification. To my relief, a police constable came to my house on a Saturday, when I was around, and completed a preliminary check for my verification. The constable who came to my apartment was polite and got through a set of questions in less than 15 minutes and left. However, he left me with a photocopied letter that identified a set of documents I needed to take to the police station to complete my police verification within three days. If I did not get this done in three days, the police station would return the file, which would render my police verification incomplete. What was daunting was the set of original documents they sought, together with two photocopies of each.

Twelve documents were required in all. I managed to gather seven and went to the police station, where again the inspector was very helpful and, other than asking me to provide some copies of pages of my earlier passport, completed my police verification, to my immense relief

however, examine the entire process and documentation required. First, in a digital world, to take two paper copies of each document is quite unnecessary. Scanning can substitute needlessly cutting trees. Second, the passport office had already taken scanned copies of many of the same documents a day before; the same documents were reviewed again by the police. Third, many of these documents were repetitive — phone bill, electricity bill, society letter and bank passbook were all required to provide proof of my address. Why so many? Why is one of these documents not sufficient? Imagine the simplification possible. The Aadhaar card that 700 million Indians already have has biometric proof of identity. The only other thing that might be needed is proof of address. If everyone were to provide their Aadhaar number for, say, a mobile connection, with or without proof of address, the telephone operator could pinpoint the person’s exact location at all times that the phone is on. Do we even need an address proof? Further, data storage within government itself can be simplified. If there were a central database for the government, or even just the ministry of external affairs and the home ministry, documents would not be required twice and worse, not be stored twice in different locations. The process begs simplification that will both save cost and cut harassment. Sticking with the passport analogy, India is the only country where, after you pass through immigration, there is another person to check whether your passport has been stamped or not. Immigration takes no time but you queue to show whether your passport has been stamped! We remain one of the least attractive countries to start a business in, citizens struggle to obtain basic public services. Narendra Modi, on the campaign trail, had mentioned he would not introduce a new law without taking out 10 bad existing procedures. In line with this, he should ask every ministry to identify, within the first six months, 10 mindless processes for review. Achhe din require widespread government simplification.

This parrot can’t be set free,cbi

Competence and accountability are bigger issues for the CBI than independence.

The bird does not, any longer, seem to be as caged as it was so famously made out to be last year. It is now clear that no curbs were placed on the bird when it decided to nest freely with whoever it wanted. Whether these meetings enhanced the bird’s new-found freedom or placed it in some other cage, this time by “non-state” actors, will hopefully be known sooner rather than later. But it is clear that it may not always be a good idea to let all such birds fly free.

The issue of the Central Bureau of Investigation’s freedom and autonomy has engaged the courts, civil society and the media for long. It acquired extra urgency in the last few years, when high functionaries of the government were accused of corruption and eventually investigated by the CBI, sometimes under the direct supervision of the Supreme Court. The suspicion in the public mind about the CBI’s freedom in pursuing investigations against public servants stems from the predictable behaviour of the agency in turning the switches against many accused on or off, in tune with the change in composition of the Central government.

The serious-minded in both the media and civil society, however, have little faith in the impartiality of the CBI, although, paradoxically, all of us, including sometimes even the judiciary, keep demanding that every case be handed over to the CBI. Since we have little patience to follow up on the cases so investigated, we lose interest until another high-profile matter surfaces. Taking advantage of our exaggerated dependence on it, the CBI loses no opportunity in creating an impression that it would perform better and reach a higher degree of excellence if only its director were vested with more powers, nobody in government spoke to it, no citizen bothered it with RTI queries and all its funding requests were met, no questions asked. The media has played a stellar role in hyping the CBI’s lack of freedom, in tandem with the courts’ occasional observations.

What is the truth behind this widely held assumption? Is the lack of freedom rooted in deliberate government design or in the CBI’s architecture itself? How much freedom is good for any investigating agency like the CBI? I have some idea about the relationship the government has with the CBI, having worked in the department of personnel and training (DoPT), the administrative ministry. I renewed my knowledge when I heard appeals against the CBI as chief information commissioner. It is no exaggerationclaim that no one in the DoPT ever discusses with any CBI officer the cases it is investigating, formally or informally. There is no arrangement for this. If the minister in charge discusses such matters with the CBI at any level, that must be informal and cannot carry the force of the government. After the Vineet Narain judgment, the CBI director is appointed on the recommendation of the Central Vigilance Commission (CVC) for a fixed tenure of two years, irrespective of the date of retirement, and no government can sack him until he is caught in a flagrant act of misconduct. All other senior officers are also appointed on the recommendation of the CVC, and again for fixed terms. Once appointed to the CBI, all officers work under the full control of the director, totally insulated from government, as there is simply no need for any contact. Even in the matter of its budget, the CBI enjoys the same freedom and operates under the same discipline as any other government agency. In other words, unless CBI officers willingly, for reasons best known to them, accede to abide by any unlawful request or pressure from anyone in government, there is no institutional mechanism to compel the agency to abide by the wishes of the government. The CBI is a Central police organisation like the IB, CISF or BSF. IPS officers are posted to senior posts in these bodies on deputation from various state cadres. There is a perpetual crisis in getting an adequate number of such officers. The reduced levels of recruitment to the IPS all through the 1990s has made it all the more difficult to get mid-level officers to man key supervisory positions. The CBI’s own cadres do not go higher than the mid-level, if that. They mostly work as inspectors, deputy superintendents and superintendents of police, that is, the key positions for investigative work. I understand that there has been no direct recruitment to the CBI at the DSP level for more than two decades now — such posts are now being filled only by promotion and, consequently, affecting the quality of manpower at this critical level. Although the CBI increasingly investigates more cases involving corporate finance, international taxation, company law and banking, its manpower continues to be much less multi-disciplinary than one would expect. In most states, the police are rarely called upon to deal with such matters and, hence, the competence of the IPS officers drawn from such states in these areas would be limited. Like most government departments and agencies, the CBI thus has serious issues of competence. To aggravate the situation, every other day, new investigations are thrust on it from myriad sources, including the courts, as if it has infinite capacity at its command. Competence, or lack of it, is a bigger problem than independence. An incompetent officer is more likely to fall prey to pressures than one who is diligent and knowledgeable. When we speak of the CBI’s independence or autonomy, we have only some corruptministers or politicians or civil servants or PSU officers in mind. We forget that, in all cases of corruption, there are far too many non-state actors who orchestrate the fraud. How do we insulate the CBI from them? If the government will have no control and be only a witness or spectator — and if citizens cannot access any information, since the CBI stands exempted from the RTI by a government notification — the only way to keep tabs on its functioning would be through what has been unfolding in the media over the last few days. This is unseemly and demoralising for the rank and file in the CBI. Because of its very nature, the CBI needs to be strictly accountable. It cannot be let loose, sometimes on innocent and unsuspecting public servants to ruin them, and other times on the guilty only to botch up the cases against them either for lack of competence or due to complicity. In our contempt for the corrupt politician and desperation with the civil servant, we should not remove all the bars of the cage and let the bird fly free. Both government and citizens must exercise adequate supervisory control over the CBI and its officers, not so much the detail of how it investigates but rather how it conducts itself and, more importantly, what work ethic it adopts and how competently and often it succeeds in bringing the guilty to book — and if there is any accountability of its officers for any failure to do so. The courts cannot supervise it all the time, and they should not. The present controversy can be a good moment to begin these reforms -

Can poverty ever be abolished?

The poor, as the Bible tells us, are always with us. Here we are 150 years since the Victorians discovered the problem of poverty, which, they believed, could be eliminated—we are still measuring poverty, urging ourselves to eradicate it and devising policies to do so effectively. India has had an ongoing National Sample Survey of family expenditure wherein there is a poverty level based on a calorific count standard (later augmented by Suresh Tendulkar) which gives us the head count of poverty. Yet every time the poverty standard is published in terms of rupees per capita per day, there is a storm in the media and people appear to be shocked at how low that number is. Despite careful and continuous measurement which tells us that the headcount may now be down to below 22%, people in public life resist the conclusion. Estimates of poverty rate in India can range from 22% up to 80% depending on whether you take Tendulkar (29.8% in 2009, 21.9% in 2013), World Bank (32.7% in 2009) or Arjun Sengupta (77%) as you’re measuring rod.

The World Bank tells us that if we fix $5 as our standard, then 96% will qualify as below the poverty line. In its recent report, the Asian Development Bank (ADB) concluded that poverty in Asia has been underestimated. The real poverty line, according to the report, is not $1.25 PPP but $1.51 PPP, which takes the poverty rate from 20.7% to 30.5% for 2010. If you give more weightage to food as against non-food prices while constructing the poverty line, there are extra 141 million poor. If you adjust the poverty standard for vulnerability, you add another 11.9 percentage points and 418 million. Adding all these factors, Asia’s poverty rate goes up to 49.5%—1.75 billion people. The poverty line is income-elastic; as per capita income rises, so does the poverty line. In any society, where the poverty line is income-elastic, it would be difficult to reduce the poverty count, much less abolish poverty altogether.

It may also be argued that the issue here is not that of poverty but of inequality. A society with a lower degree of income inequality may end up with a lower headcount than another even at the same per capita income. Indeed, the European Union defines poverty in terms of people below 60% of median income and extremely poor if below 40%.

The non-abolition of poverty is not bad news. It is good news because it reflects our ambition that the poorest among us get a growth dividend as we do who are above the poverty line. Maybe we should track the poverty numbers under each generation’s definition going back to what we wanted to achieve in the previous generation. We can then ask whether we have succeeded not by our standards but by the last generation’s. It may be (and I am only guessing) that by the Dandekar/Rath standard of R15 per month per capita as of 1971, poverty headcount is less than 10%.

Even so, a sharp upward revision as the one proposed by the ADB in its latest report is disconcerting. Has poverty gone up in Asia over the last two or three decades of historically high growth rate or has only our poverty line? Should the ADB not have asked the question I put above in reverse? Was poverty in Asia higher on the triple standard now introduced—basic plus higher weightage for food prices plus an insistence on low vulnerability—50 years ago than it is now?

The ADB standard then says in terms of the original Roosevelt norm that for a household to be classified as non-poor it must have a level of income/expenditure high enough to accommodate all shocks (the ADB press release lists “natural disasters, financial crises, illness or other negative shocks”) which can be reasonably anticipated. To define the poverty level as the ADB wants to do, imply that to be non-poor, an individual or a family or a household must have a permanent income above a certain level defined by consumption needs under all possible conditions of uncertainty.

Another way to put it is that the ADB finds the median income as the poverty line since half the Asia’s population is below it. If that is the case, perhaps the ADB should move to median income as the cut-off line of poverty as of now just as the European Union sets 60% of median income as its benchmark. But is it reasonable to set the poverty standard which is something of a minimum at that level?

The problem of measuring poverty must not become an obstacle in doing something about it. If we had sustained growth of employment for the millions trapped in low productivity jobs, we could get them a livelihood which will protect them from poverty. That is all we need.