India's GDP likely to grow by 5.6% in FY15: World Bank In the following years, the GDP growth is likely to rise further to 6.4% and 7% in FY16 and FY17, respectively

India’s gross domestic product (GDP) is likely to expand by 5.6 per cent this financial year as reforms gain momentum. The growth is expected to accelerate as proposed measures such as the goods and services tax (GST) will give a boost to manufacturing, a World Bank report said on Monday. In the following years, GDP growth is likely to rise further to 6.4 per cent and 7 per cent in FY16 and FY17 respectively, it said.

“India’s economic growth is expected to rise to 5.6 per cent in FY15, followed by further acceleration to 6.4 per cent and 7 per cent in FY 2016 and FY 2017,” said the World Bank report. India’s growth is likely to accelerate towards its high long-run potential and implementation of GST as well as dismantling of inter-state check posts can significantly improve the global competitiveness of Indian manufacturing firms.

“Implementing the GST will transform India into a common market, eliminate inefficient tax cascading, and go a long way in boosting the manufacturing sector. The transformational impact of reform, particularly if enhanced by a systematic dismantling of inter-state check posts, can dramatically boost competitiveness and help offset both domestic and external risks to the outlook,” said Denis Medvedev, Senior Country Economist, World Bank, India.

The incumbent government is positive on reforms and this is good, said Onno Ruhl, World Bank Country Director in India.

“With economic reforms gaining momentum, long-term prospects for growth remain bright for India. To realise its full potential, India needs to continue making progress on its domestic reforms agenda and encourage investments. The government’s efforts at improving the performance of the manufacturing sector will lead to more jobs for young Indian women and men,” said Ruhl.

Growth has rebounded significantly due to a strong industrial recovery. Capital flows are back, signalling growing investor confidence as inflation has moderated from double digits, exchange rate has stabilised and financial sector stress has plateaued, said the update.

Bold proposals on climate deal

The bold proposals that form the European Union’s (EU) new climate deal set the tone for the best bargain for a global agreement in Paris next year. The decision to cut greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions by 40 per cent by 2030 is ambitious in comparison with the 8 per cent reductions on a 1990 baseline under the Kyoto Protocol. The EU was the lone participant from among the industrialised nations. Last week’s move follows through on the offer made at the 2013 Warsaw United Nations Conference on Climate Change where countries agreed to make voluntary GHG emissions curbs in a post-Kyoto scenario. The mainstay of the overall EU strategy would be the much-touted emissions trading system (ETS). It currently covers over 11,000 power and industrial plants and airlines and about 45 per cent of the total GHG emissions within the bloc. Sectors within the ETS would contribute 43 per cent reductions and those outside 30 per cent by 2030. Other decisions include non-binding commitments to raise the share of renewable sources to 27 per cent in the total energy consumption and an equal proportion to the deployment of energy efficient technologies. The EU deal is subject to similar commitments that may be made by other countries at the Paris summit next year.

With some national capitals from Poland to Portugal pleading special circumstances and others pushing to expand caps into new sectors, the deal was significant for the distance covered than what remains to be done. The European Trade Union Confederation, which represents about 60 million workers, has criticised the targets as too low, that potentially could take away a million jobs created in a low-carbon economy. At the same time, with an eye on the 2015 climate summit, the Prince of Wales’s Corporate Leaders Group backed by over 50 companies representing 4.5 million employees worldwide have advocated a robust EU climate and energy policy. This is a sign of convergence of interest between industry and employee bodies that would be crucial to clinch a global pact in Paris. The record of the Kyoto Protocol shows that countries with a pre-existing high technology base did not achieve the highest emissions reductions, perhaps in view of their lock-in effects. It was the transitional economies of the states of the former Soviet Union that registered impressive reductions. Here may be a lesson for emerging economies such as India to make strategic decisions with an eye on opportunities for the future. The failure of the Copenhagen 2009 summit would undoubtedly temper expectations among EU leaders about a global deal. But Washington has travelled some distance since then and climate sceptics are on the back foot these days. There is thus real potential for progress.

Schools in grave danger

With public schools not performing and private schools teaching students to compete rather than learn, India’s primary sites of education are at risk

The Rajasthan government recently decided to close down more than 17,000 schools, the Maharashtra government decided to close down about 14,000 schools and the Odisha government is closing down 195 schools because of low attendance by students. These are not stray incidents, but indicate the decline of the public education system.

The problem with the private school system can be illustrated with an example. Recently, a parent described to me what teachers in his son’s school said to him regarding the child’s poor performance in studies. Science, social science and English teachers in the school asked him, the father, to solve the problem! Are “incomplete work or misbehaviour... during school hours... not the responsibility of the teachers to handle?” the perplexed man wondered. “If my son misbehaves in [the] house or does not read or write what we tell him to, we as parents handle it. We do not take it up with the teacher. Why [do] teachers nowadays take up everything with the child’s parents,” he asks. He opines that the “teacher has to be responsible for reading and writing and the parent has to be the facilitator by buying books, pens and pencils.”

This is a trend that persists in middle and upper-end private schools and is now catching on in lower-end schools too.

The decline of public schools

Public schools are dying out simply because they don’t perform. The problem began in the late 1950s and 60s when there was growth in the number of schools, but no adequate attention was being paid to infrastructure and availability of trained teachers. In most States, teachers were paid meagre salaries and administration was inefficient. A large number of teachers in States like Rajasthan were untrained. All this affected the quality of education. Teachers lost motivation and became disgruntled.

Some governments started devolving the job of teacher administration to the Panchayati Raj in the late 1950s. This brought in the local politician, who interfered with teachers’ transfers. This and other factors such as a lack of facilities in schools, low salaries and irregularity in disbursement of salaries caused the problem of teacher absenteeism in States like Rajasthan. This led to the growth of a self-centred attitude in newly emerging teacher unions, who began to think of their own welfare first and foremost without giving much thought to the functioning of schools or the quality of education. One can hardly blame them for this attitude.

“The lack of understanding of what education demands and the flawed policies of the past have resulted in the closing down of schools today”

Rather than seriously addressing the problems, education planners and administrators devised quick-fix and inexpensive initiatives to address the growing demand for education. Some important factors that contributed to this mindset were the demand for more schools, the lack of financial and other resources, the pressure of democratic polity to be seen as addressing the problems, and a lack of concern. This mindset can be clearly seen in all the programmes initiated after the 60s — non-formal education, Shiksha Karmi, the District Primary Education Programme (DPEP), and Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan (SSA). At each stage these initiatives were critiqued, and obvious problems in conceptualisation and planning were clearly indicated by many educationists. But they also found their advocates who built a certain kind of rhetoric to support them and advanced that rhetoric as examples of educational change.

The idea of school

One fundamental problem in these initiatives is that they undermine the very concept of school. Schools have an objective — learning — and the process demands both teachers and students to be engaged. There is a time and place set aside for the exploration of ideas in a sustained and coherent manner, and for the development of intellectual rigour and mental discipline. All this is not possible without careful selection of what is to be learnt and a sound judgment on how to teach. Therefore, the school as an organised space demands professional knowledge, deep sensitivity towards the intellectual and emotional needs of the children, and pedagogical judgment on the part of teachers. When all these are pitted against each other, the idea of school is distorted. This is precisely what our education system has been doing for the last five decades.

For example, the non-formal education scheme spent crores of rupees, and was implemented throughout the country from the late 1960s to the early 1990s. The scheme completely discarded the ideas of professional knowledge in teaching, teacher training and educational planning and thus sent a signal throughout the country that anyone can teach. It also discarded the idea of well-equipped separate spaces for schools; thus paying little heed to the need for any infrastructure. It ignored the intellectual demands of both teachers and students. Overall, it devalued education, the teacher, and the idea of school.

By the time the failure of this flawed scheme was realised, many innovators were ready with other initiatives such as Shiksha Karmi in Rajasthan. The DPEP was almost ready to be launched. The balance between professional knowledge, intellectual rigour, sensitivity to the child and infrastructural needs was never restored in any of these programmes, including SSA. This apparent lack of understanding of what good education demands and the flawed policies of the past have resulted in the closing down of schools today.

Methods of learning

Meanwhile, the private sector stepped in to cash in on parental anxiety regarding the state of education. Private schools are growing at a phenomenal rate now. Some analysts think that while the public education system is deteriorating, the private system is going from strength to strength.

This false perception is perhaps deliberately created. Private schools function for profit; this fact itself counters the idea of a caring school. A good school is where knowledge is cherished, where intellect is developed, where there is sensitivity towards the child and where there are adequate resources. Maximisation of profit prompts the owners to emphasise on competition rather than conceptual learning. Children in private schools are forced to learn by rote — and this undermines the value of understanding. Actual learning demands conceptual clarity, and is difficult and time consuming. Private schools naturally encourage the first method. In other words, they impoverish the very idea of learning to dilute the demands for a good school.

However, the most damaging aspect of the private schooling system is that private schools do not want to take responsibility for the moral growth and behaviour of the child. Their ideal is to turn themselves into consultant agencies. If a child has moral and behavioural problems, these schools will call the parents to solve the problem. For academic weaknesses they advise private tuitions. In either case, they abdicate the responsibility of an educator. Their own job thus becomes minimised, which suits better margins of profit.

The twin maladies of losing children in government schools and minimising the idea of school in the private sector are putting our schools in grave danger. We as a society seem to be far from realising that civilisations depend on education and schools are primary sites of education. If schools die, civilisations deteriorate. Unless we recognise the need for rigour in understanding, planning and implementation in education, we will be unable to arrest this downward trend and our schools will either close down or transform into consultancy services, leaving the space open for tuition shops. Of course, this turning around will demand appropriate political and economic decisions.

Civilian supremacy and defence reforms

India should not wait for another crisis to recognise the pressing need for higher defence reforms. There are sufficient studies, reports and recommendations that the government can depend on while planning the restructuring process. It can also consider an Act of Parliament to offset the existing resistance to defence reforms

Prime Minister Narendra Modi should appoint a defence minister — a full-time one — and demonstrate a great deal of administrative acumen and political will if he is serious about his declared intent to strengthen India’s national security and defence preparedness. Indeed, the absence of a full-time defence minister is merely symptomatic of a larger set of serious structural problems being faced by the country’s higher defence management today, which is in urgent need of innovative reforms and radical restructuring. Mr. Modi’s address to the Combined Commanders Conference in New Delhi on October 17 found no mention of structural reforms in higher defence management whereas his predecessor did mention it from time to time even though the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government had sidestepped implementing the crucial reforms.

The disturbing reality today is that in the absence of a full-time defence minister and by not introducing defence reforms, it is the civilian bureaucracy — having generalist IAS officers whose expertise in defence matters is questionable — that has a major say in the country’s defence planning and decision-making. This needs to change.

Committee recommendations

The demand for reforms in India’s higher defence management is a long-standing one and has grown in strength ever since the Kargil Review Committee (KRC) recommended a number of reforms. In 2000, the then National Democratic Alliance (NDA) government appointed a Group of Ministers (GoM), with four task forces on intelligence reforms, internal security, border management, and higher defence management, to review the country’s defence preparedness in the light of the KRC’s recommendations. Many of the recommendations made by the GoM were only partially implemented. And the most important one, of creating the post of Chief of Defence Staff (CDS), was ignored.

“It is the civilian bureaucracy that has a major say in the country’s defence planning and decision-making. This needs to change.”

As a result, it has been widely perceived over the past decade or so that the country’s defence sector needs further restructuring. In response, the UPA government appointed a task force on national security under the chairmanship of Mr. Naresh Chandra in 2011; it submitted its report a year later. Although classified, some of its content has been leaked to the press. Many of its recommendations were not to the liking of the Ministry of Defence (MoD) and the Defence Minister. As a result, the UPA government lost an opportunity to introduce crucial reforms. The report was to have been taken up by the Cabinet Committee on Security in February this year — after the government sat on it for no less than one-and-a-half years, but it was too late by then as the UPA government felt that it should not take key national security decisions in its final days in office. It’s now the turn of the NDA government to act.

Key issues

One of the key issues that should be addressed by the Modi government is the GoM’s recommendation to appoint a five-star military officer to serve as the Chief of Defence Staff (CDS) who then will be the single-point military adviser to the government. The CDS will chair the meetings of the Chiefs of Staff Committee (CoSC) and smoothen the process of military planning, streamlining budgetary requisitions and effecting coordination between the three services. This proposal was earlier shot down by the MoD as it feared that a “super general” would bypass the civilian bureaucracy in defence decision-making. There has also been opposition to the idea from within the military, by the Indian Air Force (IAF). The Chandra committee, being cognisant of the bureaucratic opposition to the CDS proposal, watered down the authority of the CDS and instead recommended the creation of a four-star permanent chairman of the CoSC. According to reports, this chairman, to be appointed on a two-year tenure on a rotational basis among the three services, will not only coordinate various inter-service issues but will also be in charge of the country’s tri-Service Commands: the Strategic Forces Command (SFC) dealing with India’s nuclear forces and the Andaman and Nicobar Command (ANC). This too was put on the back burner after opposition from the MoD.

Another issue is the creation of tri-service theatre commands. While the future of warfare lies in joint planning and operations, the Indian defence establishment has ignored it. As a result, the country’s defence planning is deeply reflective of service-specific strengths, weaknesses and visions. Issues that should be addressed jointly by all three services are hardly ever the priority of any of the services. Without a common leader, each service chief tends to be the spokesman of his own service. The primary concern is about a protection of autonomous turfs, and not in promoting jointness as it is bound to challenge claims of autonomy. The IAF’s opposition to the establishment of tri-service theatre commands is one such example.

Building expertise

The other area of concern is the absence of synergy among the various arms of the state dealing with defence and national security: the armed forces, the MoD, the Ministry of External Affairs and the Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO). An attempt at synergy was made in 1986 when the Directorate General of Defence Planning Staff (DGDPS) was formed, but it never got anywhere because civilian officers were not keen on working in the DGDPS which functioned under the CoSC. Post-Kargil, the KRC report had proposed the integration of the armed forces headquarters with the MoD, as doing so would have led to more cohesion in the country’s defence planning. Instead, the government created the Integrated Defence Staff (IDS) — run by three-star officers and with hardly any role in the defence decision-making. It does not fulfil any of the intended purposes. In June this year, Union Defence Minister Arun Jaitley laid the foundation stone of the IDS building in New Delhi. He emphasised the need to develop “synergy between the services to achieve optimum force application”. But the IDS, Mr. Jaitley should know, is a stillborn institution and cannot contribute to synergy among the forces.

The GoM and Chandra committee reports strongly recommended the posting of military officers to important posts in the MoD to improve defence planning. Generalist IAS officers who spend one or two years in the MoD are unlikely to understand the highly complex nature of defence issues and strategic planning. This is the result of an unhealthy tendency in the government to prioritise routine administrative management over strategic planning based on specialised domain knowledge. It is time the government realised the need for specialised knowledge and expertise in the MoD. This can be taken care of by encouraging civilian officers to build expertise in strategic affairs and involving the services in strategic decision-making.

Standing committee reports

It is not as if politicians are unaware of what ails India’s higher defence structures. Various defence related parliamentary standing committee reports have not only supported reforms but have often expressed displeasure over the lack of their implementation by the MoD. In 2007, one such report, on the CDS, said that “the Government should take the GoM’s recommendations as well as this Committee’s concern in this matter seriously and take the final decision on CDS at the earliest.”

In 2009, another standing committee on defence (SCD) said that it is “of the considered view that the creation of an additional post of Chief of Defence Staff (CDS) to act as Chairman of the CoSC is essential to ensure optimum level of jointness among the different wings of the Armed Forces and to provide single-point military advice to the Government.” Parliamentary committees have also been critical of the Defence Ministry’s unwillingness to implement the required reforms. The second SCD report of the 15th Lok Sabha said: “Merely writing letters even from the level of the Defence Minister is not sufficient. There is an urgent need to use the various fora of interaction with the leaders of the political parties … The Committee expects the Ministry to take the effective steps as suggested above so that the institution of CDS is set up expeditiously.”

The Defence Ministry’s favourite excuse for not carrying out defence reforms is that there is no political or inter-service consensus on what shape the reforms should take. The reality is that it has never been serious about creating such a political consensus, and it will remain a pipe dream. The lack of inter-service agreement on defence reforms is not difficult to overcome. Today, there is clear consensus among the services on the issue of the CDS even though such consensus has still to be arrived at on the issue of tri-service commands.

The other excuse is that keeping the military out of decision-making strengthens civilian supremacy over the armed forces, a flawed argument for a number of reasons. One, while civilian supremacy should imply the supremacy of the political leadership, in India it translates into the overlordship of the civil services over the armed forces given that political bosses hardly have any time to manage defence related issues. As a result, the defence secretary, a generalist IAS officer, is the one who advises the minister on defence issues besides “managing” the armed forces. Second, since generalist bureaucrats in the Defence Ministry are not experts in the defence sector, they are either reluctant to carry out reforms whose importance they don’t understand, or actively obstruct them fearing the loss of the authority they have traditionally enjoyed. Creating a special cadre of defence specialists is one way to overcome this problem.

India should not wait for another crisis to recognise, all over again, the need for higher defence reforms. There are already sufficient studies, reports and recommendations that the government can depend on while planning the restructuring process. The government could also consider an Act of Parliament to offset the existing resistance to defence reforms

India’s gender gap rank worse than last year

It ranks 114 out of 142 countries in World Economic Forum’s 2014 gender gap index

India has performed poorly in removing gender-based disparities, ranking 114 out of 142 countries in World Economic Forum’s 2014 gender gap index, scoring below average on parameters like economic participation, educational attainment and health and survival.

India slipped 13 spots from its last year’s ranking of 101 on the Gender Gap Index by the World Economic Forum. India is part of the 20 worst-performing countries on the labour force participation, estimated earned income, literacy rate and sex ratio at birth indicators.

On the other hand, India is among the top 20 best-performing countries on the political empowerment subindex.

The index was first introduced by the World Economic Forum in 2006 as a framework for capturing the magnitude of gender-based disparities and tracking their progress. The index benchmarks national gender gaps on economic, political, education and health criteria.

On the criteria of economic participation and opportunity, India was ranked 134. Its female to male ratio in labour force participation was 0.36. The disparity in estimated earned income was high with females earning USD 1980 compared to USD 8087 earned by their male counterparts.

On educational attainment, India ranked 126 with female to male ratio in literacy rate at 0.68. India was the second-lowest performing country on health and survival, ranking 141 just ahead of Armenia.

However, on political empowerment subindex, India ranked an impressive 15. It is the highest-ranked country on the years with female head of state (over the past 50 years) indicator. There is also some evidence from India to suggest that women in local government roles make decisions with better outcomes for communities than men do when charged with budget decisions. They also appear to be more competent representatives than men, obtaining more resources for their constituencies despite having significantly lower education and relevant labour market experience.

The report said that India has the highest difference between women and men on the average minutes spent per day on unpaid work—a difference of 300 minutes. It is also among the countries with the highest difference in the female and male percentage of total R&D personnel. India has one of the lowest percentages of firms with female participation in ownership.

Govt aims to make $15-bn IoT industry in India by 2020 Internet of Things is a network of inter-connected devices that can be accessed through the Internet

The government is working on an ambitious plan to create $15 billion 'Internet of Things' industry in the next six years. Internet of Things, or IoT, can be loosely described as a network of inter-connected devices that can be accessed through the Internet.

For instance, with IoT, street lights will automatically go off when they sense no traffic on the roads and consequently save power. Another application could be a smart band that will automatically alert physician when body vitals go to abnormal levels.

"Among other things, IoT can help automate solutions to problems faced by various industries like agriculture, health services, energy, security, disaster management etc. Through remotely connected devices," the draft IoT policy document says.

Some of the proposed concepts under the policy include development of tools to monitor quality of water flowing in taps and levels in reservoirs, smart environment to monitor quality of air, technology to monitor changes in body vitals and send alerts to hospitals.

Human role will be limited to setting up parameters for alerts and other activities expected from the objects.

The policy has the objective "to create an IoT industry in India of $15 billion by 2020. This will also lead to increase in the connected devices from around 200 million to over 2.7 billion by 2020."

The number of internet-connected devices (12.5 billion) surpassed the number of human beings (7 billion) on the planet in 2011, and by 2020, Internet-connected devices are expected to number between 26 billion and 50 billion globally, the draft policy document said.

The proposed policy is in line of government's plan to develop 100 smart cities in the country, for which Rs 7,060 crore has been earmarked in the current year's Budget.

Devices or objects under IoT, will be connected seamlessly on networks and communicate with least human intervention. The IoT policy excludes phones, tablets and personal computers.

The Department of Telecom has already floated a draft policy on technical communication among machines but is yet to finalise guidelines.

To boost IoT, the government has plans to fund creation of resource centres and test-beds as a common experimental facility to conduct experiments with an allocation of Rs 18 crore as 100% fund with Rs 1 crore for each partner and Rs 3 crore for nodal agency over a period of five years.

The government will set up incubation centres that are proposed to be called National Centre of Excellence in partnership with IT industry body NASSCOM and other industry associations at an estimated cost of Rs 35 crore for 5 years to execute a centre with capacity of 40 people

Defence purchases need speeding up Govt must prioritise defence acquisitions

Between 1986 and 2000, the Indian navy commissioned 14 submarines. In the 14 years since, it has added just onesubmarine (a nuclear-powered one leased from Russia). The next new submarine will not come before 2016. When the first batch of six Scorpene submarines is fully delivered by 2021, it will be two decades after they were ordered. And by the time the new batch of six submarines that has just been approved is delivered, the pre-2000 submarines will have been phased out of service. In 2030, therefore, India will have 12 diesel-electric submarines and perhaps two or three nuclear submarines, making for a total of 15, compared to the 24 that were deemed desirable in a plan approved in 1997. The tragic state of India's defence preparedness is more than evident in these numbers.

The principal problem has been that no submarines were ordered between the late 1980s and 2001, in part as a fall-out of defence acquisition scandals. A subsidiary problem has been delays in local manufacture. As a matter of fact, the home-made Arihant nuclear submarine, which was launched more than five years ago, is yet to start sea trials; so its commissioning is some way off. What is true of the navy's submarine fleet is true of the army and the air force, whether it is night-fighting capabilities or a proper air defence system. The air force's strength is barely two-thirds of the 40 squadrons it should have, even as the order for seven squadrons of Rafale multi-role fighters is still awaited.

The Modi government has been trying hard to play catch-up. Three months before the latest orders for Rs 80,000 crore worth of equipment, an order for Rs 21,000 crore worth of hardware had been approved - for supply ships, light helicopters, transport aircraft and anti-tank weaponry. Most of these were to be made in India, and the transport aircraft reserved for the private sector (a unique reversal of the usual reservation that is done for the public sector). The stress on indigenous manufacture fits well with the government's "Make in India" thrust, and a greater role for the private sector has been facilitated by raising the limit on foreign investment in the defence equipment sector from 26 per cent to 49 per cent. These initiatives are to be welcomed, and could help reduce delays in equipment delivery. However, it should be noted that all the equipment orders are decisions by the Defence Acquisitions Council. There is a lot of ground to be covered after this before firm orders are approved by the Cabinet, and the need now is for urgency in the selection process and negotiations that must follow.

The new government is also putting stress on something that its predecessor woke up to only belatedly - the need to improve border transport infrastructure, both road and rail. Because India's total defence spending is well short of the level (three per cent of its gross domestic product) recommended some years ago by the National Security Advisory Board, there are limits to how much can be done in double-quick time. What is clear, though, is that defence acquisitions will have to be at high speed for some time to come.