Nuclear Power Programme

The Government is committed to implement the third stage of Indian Nuclear Power Programme, after an adequate nuclear installed capacity has been reached based on Fast Breeder Reactors to be set up in the second stage.  On account of non-existence of any fissile isotope in naturally occurring Thorium (unlike that existing in Uranium), commercial utilisation of Thorium, on a significant scale, can begin only when abundant supply of either Uranium or Plutonium resources are available.  Upon the launch, followed by a significant growth of a thorium based nuclear programme in this manner, it could be possible to maintain the achieved level (without much further growth) of nuclear power programme with thorium alone, without additional demands on uranium or plutonium resources. Therefore, considering the meager domestic uranium resources in the country, it is feasible to start a significant commercial level Thorium based reactor programme in our country only after an adequate inventory of Plutonium becomes available from our Fast Breeder Reactors, comprising the second stage of Indian nuclear programme.  Accordingly, the utilisation of Thorium as a practically inexhaustible energy source has been contemplated during the third stage of the Indian nuclear programme, which can be reached after a few decades.                         Substantial work has been carried out in the areas of research on technologies for utilisation of Thorium in nuclear fuel cycle, and on the development of an Advanced Heavy Water Reactor (AHWR), to serve as a technology demonstrator for use of thorium based fuel on a large scale.         The details are given below: Projects initiated in the last five years: Project Location Capacity (MW) Completion Cost (`crore) Kakrapar Atomic Power Project Units 3&4 (KAPP 3&4) Kakrapar, Gujarat 2 X 700 11459 Rajasthan Atomic Power Project Units 7&8 (RAPP 7&8) Rawatbhata, Rajasthan 2 X 700 12320   The details of Nuclear Power Projects planned for start of work in the XII Five Year      Plan are given below : Project Location Capacity (MW) Indigenous Reactors Gorakhpur Haryana Anu Vidyut Pariyojana (GHAVP 1&2) Gorakhpur, Haryana 2 x 700 Chutka Madhya Pradesh Atomic Power Project (CMPAPP 1&2) Chutka, Madhya Pradesh 2 x 700 Mahi Banswara, 1 & 2 Mahi Banswara, Rajasthan 2 x 700 Kaiga 5 & 6 Kaiga, Karnataka 2 x 700 Fast Breeder Reactor (FBR 1&2) Kalpakkam, Tamil Nadu 2 x 500 Advanced Heavy Water Reactor (AHWR) Location to be decided       300 Reactors with Foreign Cooperation Kudankulam Nuclear Power Project (KKNPP 3&4) Kudankulam, Tamil Nadu 2 x 1000 Jaitapur Nuclear Power Project (JNPP 1&2) Jaitapur, Maharashtra 2 x 1650 Kovvada, 1 & 2 Kovvada, Andhra Pradesh 2 x 1500 Chhaya Mithi Virdi, 1&2 Chhaya Mithi Virdi, Gujarat 2 x 1100

Increase in Emigration of Unskilled Workers

The Minister of Overseas Indian Affairs and External Affairs Smt.Sushma Swaraj said in a statement regarding ‘Increase in Emigration of Unskilled Workers’laid on the table of the Lok Sabha today thatthere is no sharp increase in the emigration clearance granted to semi-skilled/unskilled workers during the last three years i.e. 2011-12, 2012-13 and 2013-14 which was 55949, 60501 and 57085 in those three years, respectively. Complaints have been received from Indian workers on the alleged cheating by recruitment agencies/agents offering placements abroad from time to time. Complaints received are generally in the nature of non-providing the promised employment/change of employment or condition of employment to the disadvantage of emigrants unilaterally by the Foreign Employer, non-payment/ delayed payment or underpayment of salaries, long working hours, inadequate living conditions, physical harassment, non-renewal of visa and labour card on time, refusal to pay for the medical treatment, denial of leave and air-ticket to the hometown on completion of contract period, forcible custody of Passport and Visa, refusal of leave or ‘exit/re-entry permits’/‘final exit visa’ etc. Details of complaints received on the alleged cheating by recruitment agencies/agents offering placements abroad during the last one year, State-wise is at Annexure. Ministry of overseas Indian affairs has introduced a plan scheme on skill development for overseas employment, namely, SwarnapravasYojana in the current 12th Five year Plan. The scheme has been formulated to imbibe skill and expertise to potential migrants to prevent exploitation of these workers in the destination countries. The scheme will adhere to thebroad objectives of skill development in India, as envisioned by the National Skill Development Policy, 2009. For the 12th Five year Plan thetotal project cost envisaged is Rs137 crores and budgetary allocation for 2014-15 is Rs. 20 crore. MOIA has been mandated to train 5 Million people by 2022 under this scheme. The key objectives of the scheme are as under: Position India as a preferred source country for skilled and trained workers in select sectors that face skill shortages in the international labour market, and in which India enjoys competitive advantage Diversify destination-country base with focus on geographies/countries that will experience significant labour supply gaps & skill shortages and are of strategic interest to India Enhance employability of Indian Youth abroad and move them up the wage-chain by providing training and certification which will be internationally recognized Indian Missions have an exclusive wing to look into matters relating to Indian workers. Whenever a complaint is received from any Indian worker abroad or his family in India or any other source, the Indian Mission immediately initiates action to resolve the issue by getting in touch with the foreign employer/local authorities and emigrant worker concerned, if required visit labour camps and actively pursue the matter to its logical conclusion. Whenever necessary, the complainant is also provided counseling and accordingly referred to concerned labour office/court, Immigration and Police authorities etc. The Missions also provide interpreting services to the Indian complainants. For redressal of grievances of emigrants, Indian Workers Resource Centre (IWRC) at Dubai, UAE, has been established which is a 24X7 toll free multilingual helpline and also provides free legal, psychological and financial counseling to distressed Indians. Other Missions also have helpline/help desks to attend to grievances of Indian nationals. Indian Missions also actively interact with local Indian Communities in their socio cultural programmes so as to seek their help in times of emergencies and to redress the grievances of Indian workers. Indian Community Welfare Fund (ICWF) has been established in the Indian Missions for on-site welfare of emigrants, which include offering food and accommodation like shelter for short term to Indian workers in distress, air-ticket at Government cost for repatriation to India, transportation of the mortal remains, initial legal assistance and emergency medical help and organizing awareness camps at prominent worker accommodation sites. Ministry has launched a soft-ware module in the Ministry’s website in which dependents of deceased emigrant can make entries relating to deceased emigrants and the concerned Indian Mission immediately acts on such requests in order to facilitate transportation of mortal remains. The Ministry has also been keeping a close watch over this issue through this module.

Exhaustion in Lima The confused outcome of climate-change talks reflects the complex fault lines that divide countries on this issue

The latest round of the global negotiations on climate change ended last Sunday in the usual fashion, with the host country, Peru, brokering a decision by exhaustion nearly two days after the scheduled end of the conference. All those who came with a defensive agenda expressed their satisfaction with the outcome, those with a positive agenda tempered their disappointment with the hope that the outcome left room for improvement in the next round and non-governmental organisation activists registered their dissatisfaction in a variety of ways, including, this time, the desecration of a heritage site.

This confused outcome reflects the complex fault lines that divide countries on this issue. Apart from the usual North-South divide, there are fault lines within each of these groupings. In the developed world, the United States, Europe, Australia and Japan have very different agendas on what they expect of each other by way of climate action, though they may be united on what they want from the developing world. Within the developing world, too, there is unity on what they want from the developed world, but wide differences on their expectations of what their developing country allies must bring to the table.

The climate negotiations were not a North-South battle when the process began in 1990. At that time, the main fault line was between those who were sceptical and those who were convinced about the reality of human-induced climate change. The other fault line was between the United States and Europe, which was about burden sharing, but couched in terms of differences in the urgency for immediate action because the United States policy was heavily influenced by the presence of a climate sceptic, John Sununu, in the White House as chief of staff to Bush the Elder. The patient scientific consensus building of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has put this behind us and climate scepticism is restricted to some eccentric conservatives.

There was hardly any demand for action by developing countries at that time in 1992. Nobody at that time anticipated the phenomenal growth in Chinese gross domestic product (GDP), resources use and carbon emissions. The Indian economy was on a sick list and did not look like emerging as a major carbon emitter. Most developing countries were only lightly engaged in the climate negotiations. India and Brazil were exceptions, and they played a central role in writing in some crucial principles like common but differentiated responsibility, the role of historical responsibility and the primacy of development requirements - principles that today the developed countries find irksome and whose defence seems to be the principle plank of India's climate diplomacy.

 

 

 

The convention signed in 1992 remained a framework of aspirations and did not involve any hard obligation to contain carbon emissions. The Europeans then pushed for a protocol to the convention with hard obligations on the developed countries to reduce their emissions. The mandate for negotiating such a protocol came from the 1995 Berlin meeting of the parties to the convention, a meeting which was chaired by the then German environment minister, Angela Merkel, and reached fruition at Kyoto in 1997.

The Kyoto Protocol required hard targets for emission reduction by the developed countries. The 2012 goals on emission reductions for the countries who were to be a party to the protocol came out of a negotiating process that can only be described as a bazaar bargain. They were not rooted in any principle-based calculation of who should do how much. The assigned goals only embody what had to be accepted to secure that country's commitment. Thus, Russia, for instance, ended up with a carbon quota they would not use even in 2050 because they refused to sign unless they got that and their adherence to the protocol was necessary if it had to come into force even if the United States did not ratify.

The developing countries were not required to contribute to the mitigation effort. However, indirectly they, especially India and China, did participate in the protocol through the clean development mechanisms that allowed mitigation obligations to be met by buying carbon credits from developing country entities who undertook actions that would reduce carbon emissions below a business-as-usual base.

The situation changed when the time came to negotiate targets for the second commitment period of the Kyoto Protocol, which was to run from 2012 to 2020. The growth in emissions from China and other developing countries became the largest element in the current accumulation of greenhouse gases. The developed countries walked into a major economic crisis in 2008 and were increasingly concerned about the growing economic power of China. The United States, under Congressional pressure, made participation by China and India a precondition for its participation in any globally negotiated mitigation effort.

Hence, at Bali in 2007 and at Durban in 2012, the parties to the convention broadened the mandate to rope in the developing countries into the mitigation effort but also agreed to a bottom-up and more or less voluntary indication of national action as the basis for the global agreement.

The moot question is how principles like common but differentiated responsibility can be enforced in such a bottom-up, voluntary scheme with a very light global review process. We also need differentiation not just between developed and developing countries but also within the very diverse group of developing countries . We cannot accept the Chinese metric of specifying a peaking year as most calculations suggest that even with a major effort directed at energy efficiency and non-carbon energy sources, our emissions will continue to increase even beyond 2030. But we can make credible commitments on the carbon intensity of growth.

India has to protect its core national interests, which include the need for rapid growth, expanding energy access and energy security. But they also include protection from climate change risks as India's development and the well-being of its population would be seriously affected if the climate negotiations fail to reduce the risk of global warming going much beyond the accepted two degrees Celsius limit. We have a good story to tell on energy efficiency and renewables. The question we need to ask is whether our stance will force major polluters to also come up with a convincing programme for their contribution to the global mitigation effort, or will our negotiators remain satisfied with their defence of principles and the deferral of effective action.

Power Grid Corp nominated for largest transmission line

The government has awarded a critical power transmission corridor project, connecting power-starved southern states to thermal power rich, western India, to Power Grid Corporation. This has been done by "nomination", shunning private sector investment through an auction.

Officials in the Central Electricity Authority (CEA), Power Finance Corporation and Power Grid confirmed the development.

They added the decision was based on requests by the southern states that the central government award to Power Grid, the high voltage direct current transmission lineconnecting Chhattisgarh and Tamil Nadu.

The ministry of power had put up eight transmission contracts with a total investment of Rs 53,000 crore for rate-based global competitive bidding in September.

Later, it decided to allot the largest project of Rs 26,820 crore to the state-owned transmission company and central transmission utility.

The Central Electricity Regulatory Commission (CERC) had in 2011 ordered the power transmission projects to be awarded through rate-based competitive bids, as was the case with generation projects.

"In the annual power ministers' conference in New Delhi on September 9, the southern states requested the central government to allot the project to Power Grid. Especially Tamil Nadu, which wants this project to come up as soon as possible. It has been insisting on giving the project to Power Grid," said a senior government official.

R Viswanathan, Tamil Nadu's minister for electricity, prohibition and excise, in his speech at the conference, said, "To evacuate the power available with the pithead power stations in Chhattisgarh, work on the line from Chhattisgarh to Tamil Nadu needs to be entrusted to Power Grid, in view of its expertise and implementation capacity."

Government officials said Power Grid was the only company with expertise in such lines.

They cited the recently commissioned Raichur-Solapur transmission line. This 760 kV-460 km line, the first one connecting the southern region with western India, was commissioned this year in February.

Executives at private power companies, however, said there were several companies in India like Alstom, Siemens and Larsen & Toubro which offered high voltage direct current transmission lines. The Adani group, too, has installed a 500 kV (2,000 MW capacity) line from Mundra to Mohindargarh in Gujarat.

Companies in the race for the project are irked at this 'unlawful' move. Reliance Power, Tata Power, Sterlite Energy, Lanco and Larsen & Toubro were planning to bid for this project.

Power sector experts said the decision could have been taken due to the size of the project.

The Raigarh-Pugalur line will have a capacity of 6,000 MW and cover 2,000 km.

"Nomination of power transmission projects is against the National Tariff Policy and the Electricity Act, apart from the CERC regulations. Tariff-based bidding was introduced to make the sector cost-efficient and ensure timely delivery. This is a setback to power plants in Odisha and Chhattisgarh and consumers in Tamil Nadu who could have availed cheap power at the earliest," said an executive with a private transmission company.

A senior CEA official said the other seven projects would be allotted through bidding. The cumulative cost of these projects is less than the one awarded to Power Grid.

Power transmission was opened to the private sector in 2010, with the award of the western regional system strengthening project to Reliance Infrastructure and the east-north interconnection line to Sterlite Energy.

Uttarakhand to launch cluster farming

At a review meeting of the agriculture department held on Tuesday at Bijapur Guest House (the chief minister's residence) here, Chief Minister Harish Rawat called for concerted efforts to promote farming in hilly areas and bring an effective agriculture policy in this regard.

The chief minister instructed the department to identify villages where farmers can grow vegetables and pulses.

"The farming should take place in cluster formation," Rawat said. To promote cluster farming, the chief minister made a budgetary provision of Rs 1 crore.

Special incentives will be given to farmers who promote water harvesting. To attract farmers, specialised agriculture programmes should also be started, Rawat said.

He asked the department to organise agriculture fairs or melas, where new farming techniques can be shared with farmers.

Special training sessions should also be held for farmers on regular basis, he said. All those farmers who are keen to promote farming in their villages should also get rewards, Rawat added.

The government must bring changes in the agriculture insurance schemes in order to make them more attractive. Five per cent of shares of the Terai Seed Corporation will be given to farmers as a special incentive. All the mandis have also been asked to reserve shops for organic farming. Farmers will also get subsidy to purchase power tillers and power weeders in the ratio of 80:20.

The farming of buckwheat, locally known as mandua, will also be promoted in the region.

NEW AGRICULTURE POLICY

| To promote cluster farming, the chief minister made a budgetary provision of Rs 1 crore
| The chief minister instructed agriculture department to identify villages where farmers can grow vegetables and pulses
| Special incentives will be given to farmers who promote water harvesting
| Farmers will also get subsidy to purchase power tillers and power weeder in the ratio of 80:20
| All those farmers who are keen to promote farming in their villages to get reward
| The government must bring changes in the agriculture insurance schemes in order to make them more attractive, the CM says

India must call the US' bluff on patents

A spectrum auction last month ended with over Rs 61,000 crore (about $10 billion) bid for the 900 MHz and 1800 MHz bands. Everyone seems upbeat: the government at high bids, and operators at staking out spectrum so that they can continue offering their services. The public at large seems enthused. Is there reason for good cheer? Consider some of the outcomes and the likely consequences.

Outcomes

• Dominant operators, namely, Bharti Airtel, Vodafone and Idea, have won enough spectrum to continue building their businesses. So has a new potential contender, Reliance Jio.
   
• Winners must pay the amounts they've bid, in addition to making further investments in networks. Their financial compulsion will be to increase prices to amortise a payment of nearly Rs 18,300 crore, followed by the remainder to be paid in 10 annual instalments after a two-year moratorium. Competition will provide a countervailing effect against price hikes. The annual payment by all operators after two years will amount to about Rs 4,400 crore. To put this in perspective, Bharti's profits for FY 2013 were around Rs 5,000 crore and Idea's around Rs 800 crore.
   
• This perpetuates the approach of operators paying first for the right to use spectrum, then dividing available spectrum for their mutually exclusive use. The corollary is that unless operators choose to share some of their infrastructure, as some do for mobile towers, each operator must invest in its own infrastructure. In the absence of voluntary infrastructure sharing to the extent permissible, multiple investments are needed to build parallel networks. This is comparable to railways or transportation companies setting up multiple countrywide railroad and road networks, each for their own exclusive use. The result is a very capital-intensive approach requiring much more investment, while not being sufficiently remunerative.

Consequences

• To the extent that there are front-loaded government charges, operators have less capital for network investments.
   
• Resource constraints result in service deprivation in low-potential areas, as is prevalent now. In other words, urban areas may be well served, but not less densely populated rural areas where the majority reside. It is for the same reason that metro cities are better served by airlines or transportation services: the profit potential is higher.
   
• The lack of amenities in rural areas means there is continuing demographic pressure to migrate to cities. The overwhelming societal need for the provision-of-urban-amenities-in-rural-areas ("PURA") is entirely sidelined. Yet, these are the amenities people need most for economic empowerment, productivity and better living conditions.

Contrast this with Sweden's approach to broadband, for instance. Sweden is a pioneer in the use of 700 MHz for broadband. A loosely translated quote from Sweden's information technology minister reads: "A hundred years ago, it was the ability to build good railways, good roads and good physical infrastructure that laid the foundation for jobs and growth. Today it is also about fast enough build-out of good mobile telephony."1 India is short on both, but constraining the capital available for investment in broadband only aggravates our existing handicap of inadequate physical infrastructure. The need is for more capital to be invested in broadband networks, not less, as well as for policies that reward service delivery from such investments.

Another instance of constructive intervention, and that too in a developed metropolis, is the London Enterprise Panel's approach, because London's broadband is considered insufficiently competitive. Funds "will be invested where the market is failing (particularly where this is proving a barrier to business growth)".2

In India, the efficient 700 MHz and 800 MHz bands have not yet been assigned except for limited 800 MHz spectrum for CDMA. These bands are most effective for broadband in rural and semi-urban areas. However, auctions and high reserve prices militate against their effective deployment at low cost, thwarting an apparent remedy for our deficient coverage. Also, GSM operators have just bid aggressively in the recent auction to survive, and are loaded with debt. Only the financially strong Reliance Jio, which has not bid as much, can offer high bids. Vodafone may also be able to do so. So, one problem is reduced bidding capacity, but a bigger problem is reduced investment capacity: the higher they bid, the less likely they are to provide countrywide broadband quickly at reasonable prices

.Petroleum levies
Petroleum levies comprise another range of high government charges on critical inputs. In 2006, the taxes on petrol amounted to 52 per cent of the retail price, and on diesel, 30.4 per cent with Rs 45 to the dollar, (Delhi price: Rs 45/litre when Brent crude was $65/barrel). Tax collections now amount to around 30 per cent for petrol and 18 per cent for diesel, with Brent crude at around $110/barrel, and petrol in Delhi at Rs 74/litre. While the percentages collected are lower, the amounts collected are about 70 per cent higher than in 2006 because of the increase in the price of crude oil at a time when the economy is slumping.

There is a rationale for collecting reasonable charges to cover construction and maintenance, environmental impact mitigation and waste disposal (clean-up), and to provide incentives. But it's time our governments stopped being extractive, and rationalised charges based on objectives and policies in the public interest. Governments and politicians should be addressing these, instead of doles and giveaways. The aim should be to maximise life-cycle benefits, which can be optimised by reducing short-term capture in favour of longer-term accruals from growth, and from policies designed to deploy productive infrastructure including applying the principle of common carrier access

India exported $94 billion illegal capital in 2012: Study

The total illicit financial outflows from India between 2003 and 2012 were $439 billion —$94.8 billion of that in 2012 alone — shows a study by Global Financial Integrity (GFI), a Washington DC-based research and advisory organisation.

On the list of the world’s biggest exporters of illicit financial flows from 2003 to 2012, India currently ranks fourth — after China, Russia and Mexico, in that order. Compared with the previous rankings, India and Malaysia have switched positions in terms of cumulative illicit financial outflows, with India moving to the fourth spot and Malaysia to fifth. This was due to a continuation of India’s upward move, which began in 2009, and Malaysia’s downward move, which began the next year. To put the figures in perspective, the $439 billion of outflows come to about 23 per cent of India’s gross domestic product in 2013 ($1.87 trillion).

GFI President Raymond Baker said: “The most troubling... is the fact that these outflows are growing at an alarming rate of 9.4 per cent a year —twice as fast as global GDP,” adding “it is simply impossible to achieve sustainable global development, unless world leaders agree to address this issue head on”.

The study estimates illicit financial outflows from two sources: As a result of deliberate trade misinvoicing, and due to leakages in the balance of payments (known as illicit hot money narrow outflows).  According to the study, while trade invoicing accounted for 77.8 per cent of illicit flows from all developing countries over the period, this number was 85.3 per cent for Asia.

The report says it is likely the repatriation and surrender requirements create strong incentives for exporters to under-invoice exports as a way to circumvent these requirements. While the report provides an estimate of illicit flows, it is difficult to say with certainty what is the exact quantum of funds currently stashed abroad. That is because many allege a substantial portion of these illicit outflows are routed back into the country, often via tax havens. But Aman Aggarwal, director, Indian Institute of Finance, disagrees.

India ranks fourth among the world's biggest exporters of illicit money, the study says