HC quashed the appointment of Anil Kumar Yadav as the chairman of Uttar Pradesh Public Service Commission

The Allahabad high court on Wednesday quashed the appointment of Anil Kumar Yadav as the chairman of Uttar Pradesh Public Service Commission, holding it as “illegal” and rapped the Samajwadi Party government for having “breached its constitutional duty” by appointing him without carrying out a proper inquiry with regard to his “integrity and competence”.

While setting aside the appointment of Yadav as the UPPSC chairman, a division bench of the court comprising chief justice D.Y. Chandrachud and justice Yashwant Verma held that the same was “arbitrary”, “illegal”, “ultra vires of Article 316 of the Constitution” and effected “without application of mind, ignoring suitability and availability of other candidates”. Yadav, who took over in April 2013, was selected from among 83 candidates who had submitted their biodata before the state government for the post.

The order was passed while disposing of petitions filed by advocate Satish Kumar Singh and several others earlier this year. The petitioners had alleged that Yadav’s appointment was made ignoring facts like his being named in cases under Section 307 of the Indian Penal Code (attempt to murder) and the Goonda Act registered in his native district of Agra.

It was, however, submitted by Yadav that he has been acquitted in the cases while the high court made it clear that it was passing Wednesday’s order “without going into the merits of allegations of criminal antecedents of the respondent”.

Moreover, the petitioners had alleged that Yadav, who was posted as a lecturer at Chitragupta Degree College in Mainpuri district prior to his current assignment, had falsely claimed in his biodata that he was the principal. The court, while perusing materials placed on record, noted with displeasure that Yadav had concealed the fact that though he was promoted to the post of principal many years ago, his promotion was challenged in the high court and subsequently set aside and that the Special Leave Petition he filed in the Supreme Court was also turned down.

Moreover, the court pointed out a number of improprieties in the selection process, which included the fact that Yadav’s biodata was “sent to the state government through fax from an office of the Samajwadi Party”.

issues with nuclear power

As Britain, the U.S. and Russia debate the revamping of their nuclear deterrence systems, India needs open and democratic discussion on its arsenal and capability

Jeremy Corbyn, eternal rebel and newly elected leader of Britain’s Labour Party, declared recently on a radio news programme that there were no circumstances in which he could fire a nuclear weapon. Mr. Corbyn’s personal views are not new: he has campaigned all his political life against nuclear weapons. However, as Leader of the Opposition, and theoretically the man who would find himself in control of the ‘nuclear button’ if he became Prime Minister, his renunciation of the nuclear option has prompted considerable national engagement with the future and purpose of Britain’s nuclear deterrent. This discussion has found focus in the renewal of ‘Trident’, the basis for the U.K.’s current nuclear deterrence posture, but inevitably encompasses a wider discussion about Britain’s global role. However, while this is a domestic debate about Britain’s future, the larger discussion could resonate beyond Britain. And India could do worse than take note.

What is at stake is the continuous at-sea deterrence provided by the Trident system of four nuclear submarines and their accompanying missiles and warheads. Since 1969, at any given time, one submarine has been out at sea, one boat undergoing maintenance and the other two in port or on training manoeuvres. Now a decision on the future of this generation of submarines is due, as they will reach the end of their working life in the late 2020s. If Britain wishes to continue its reliance on nuclear deterrence, then new warheads will also need to be considered in the coming decade. The bill for all of this is in the region of £20 billion for the boats and another six billion for the warheads (Ministry of Defence figures).

The Trident’s future — to keep like-for-like, modify, or scrap altogether — has been discussed for the better part of this century. An independent cross-party inquiry into nuclear defence policy concluded in a July 2014 report that, on balance, despite there being no obvious current and emerging threats that might lend themselves to a nuclear solution, Britain needed to keep its deterrent.

The report did not move mountains. Then again, neither could the rival camp gain much traction. Opposition to Trident ranges from calls for the complete abolition of nuclear weapons globally and for Britain to fulfil its Article VI disarmament obligations under the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (and Mr. Corbyn is a prominent proponent of this view) to those calling for a debate on whether Britain needs such an expensive, continuous deterrent with as many subs and missiles at a time of aggressive spending cuts to the conventional defence bill. These positions bookend a range of other views.

Buried in this security debate is some fairly fundamental soul-searching about Britain’s place in the world. What lies unsaid is the fear that this nuclear armoury may be all that is standing between Britain and relegation to a has-been global power. Those in favour of continuity also point to Britain’s NATO obligations and the effect that nuclear renunciation may have on the U.K.’s relationship with the U.S.

Indian experience

In these last two respects, India is at the other end of the spectrum. The exact importance of nuclear weapons in India’s rise is debatable, but few dispute that the country’s nukes play some role in its global ambitions. As for what sort of deterrence India needs, there is, of course, a discussion to be had on whether the threats India currently faces — terrorism, insurgency or difficult neighbours, to name a few, are best served by the current (not entirely clear) deterrent setup. And how, if at all, this might change in the future.

After all, India’s nuclear policy is not a subject of popular debate, nor indeed one on which the Leader of the Opposition might wish to stake a position. The British at least know what they are critiquing in examining whether a Cold War nuclear apparatus is still relevant. Half a century on, we Indians may not be in a similar position to knowledgeably engage with a middle-aged arsenal. India has now been a declared possessor of nuclear weapons for over 15 years. Yet, beyond assurances that our deterrence rests on the possession of a triad of nuclear assets and a doctrine of ‘no first use’, we know very little. Numbers of warheads, numbers of missiles, costs involved — all these factors are jealously guarded. This may be acceptable in a young, growing armoury (though that is debatable), but in the long run, such oblivion is unhelpful. At some point, however, some spring-cleaning is in order. Britain is not the only one looking at a hefty bill for the next generation of deterrent — the U.S. is embarking on a $348 billion, decade-long modernisation drive and one-third of Russia’s military budget is earmarked for nuclear modernisation.

Not for all time

Given the nuclear company we keep in our neighbourhood, and given the current international environment where the nuclear contours of relations between Russia and NATO appear to be acquiring a sharper edge, it is imperative that we get familiar with the limits of deterrence. Especially as most of India’s current threats will not admit to a nuclear solution. Until 1998, it was enough that deterrence rested ultimately on the vague threat of possible nuclear retaliation. After Pokharan II, the ‘possible’ and the ‘vague’ have gone; we are left now with assured ‘massive’ retaliatory destruction. If that is the case, then have we the right kit at our disposal? Too much, too little, just right? Will this continue to be the case decades down the line when this generation of delivery systems and warheads reach the end of their life?

Seventy years of non-use should not blind us to the nature of this ultimate guarantor. In Britain, this unpalatable fact is highlighted by knowledge of the final delegation of nuclear command. Democratic discussion on India’s nuclear deterrent will not threaten the country’s regional or global position, let alone its survival. It might even build consensus on what sort of country and strategic future we want. Let’s talk.

Deconstructing corruption in India

Deconstructing corruption in India
It is possible that, if streamlined and predictable, some forms of corruption may act like efficient taxes
What is the architecture of corruption in India? Has it increased or decreased since the opening up and liberalization of the Indian economy in the early 1990s?

Data on corruption and the black economy is hard to come by, is mostly invisible, and is hotly debated.

The popular notion is that corruption has increased, since larger sums are involved than in the past. A dispassionate analysis, however, needs to make five kinds of corrections to the little data available.

First, definitional. Corruption involves misuse of sovereign power for personal gain. A broad definition would include use of state assets, such as official cars, gadgets, stationery and premises for personal use, through conflating the distinction between what is private and what is public. This distinction is however relatively modern, and still to crystallize fully in developing societies.

A narrower definition centres on a conscious intent to misappropriate, and involves third-party transactions: accepting consideration, in cash or kind, for services ordinarily available from the State as a matter of right, or for their accelerated/preferential/wrongful access.

Second, while there is a close connection between the two, a heuristic distinction needs to be made between black money, which evades taxes imposed by the State, and gains from corruption, which is use of State power for personal enrichment.

Third, a distinction needs to be made between petty bureaucratic corruption, at the level of the humble traffic cop, patwari, tax official, and high corruption, involving a nexus between politicians and bureaucrats. This nexus is unequal, with most of the gains accruing to the former. Also, the latter’s participation may be active or passive.

Petty corruption has a direct, palpable and experiential impact on the life of the common citizen. High corruption has an indirect, but nevertheless equally powerful, impact through foregone growth, quality of life, inflation and a larger public debt burden. It is difficult to determine which form of corruption is more rampant.

Fourth, the data needs to be adjusted for inflation, as a large nominal increase need not mean an increase in real terms. Thus an illegal gratification of Rs.10 in 1990 may actually exceed a Rs.100 gratification today.

Fifth, corruption is a financial flow, distinct from the current stock of ill-gotten wealth, the lagged outcome of past corruption, and the returns thereon, minus what has been consumed. If the annual flow exceeds consumption, which is likely, the stock of corrupt wealth would grow over time. Some of this stock is indistinguishable from what we call black money. But a good portion falls outside the ambit of black money, comprising, for instance, gains from rapid appreciation of land value.

Estimating data largely invisible or non-existent is a daunting exercise. Only the very bold and optimistic venture to even try. Unsurprisingly, debates surrounding both black money and corruption are steeped in polemic, with large, unverifiable and contestable numbers flying around.

While numbers are hard to come by, and even harder to verify, it can nevertheless be assumed that incentives in the political and administrative systems have remained pretty much the same. What has changed quite dramatically since 1990 is the structure and trend growth of the Indian economy. Levels of financial flows, and along with them corruption and black money flows, have therefore risen. The economy is also much more open today. Incentives and drivers in the economic system have changed.

With the economy becoming much more tradable, the capacity of the tradable sector to absorb illicit demands has reduced with the imperative to remain globally competitive. The burden of corruption has consequently shifted from the tradable—from the so-called licence, quota permit Raj—to the non-tradable sectors, such as construction, utilities, and other infrastructure, including real estate.

Unsurprisingly, the execution of infrastructural projects has suffered as a result, leading to declining productivity and economic growth, and a weaker fisc as contracts are renegotiated and land-use patterns changed to the disadvantage of the State. Whereas in Western economies, the real estate bubble was inflated by easy monetary policy, financial deregulation and leverage, in India it stems from the compulsion to park large proceeds from corruption and black money. Since the same sources fund political activity, this bubble will be difficult to prick.

The correlation between corruption and economic growth—positive, inverse or idiosyncratic—is, however, by no means clear. In India it may hinder growth, but then, think China, with its putative combination of institutionalized corruption and high growth rates. It is ranked lower (100) than India (85) in Transparency International’s global Corruption Perceptions Index, but much higher (90) than India (145) in World Bank’s Ease of Doing Business Index. Howsoever morally repugnant, it is entirely possible that, if streamlined and predictable, some forms of corruption—speed money—may act like efficient taxes. Like Tolstoy’s unhappy families, corrupt societies are corrupt in their own way.

The Indian economy is now growing at a faster clip than what it was in the early 1990s, generating larger surpluses relative to what is required for subsistence. It is this surplus that comprises the fodder that feeds corruption in societies with flawed value systems and low self esteem. If, as argued, incentives in the political and administrative system is unchanged, it is likely that both the flows and stock of corruption proceeds may have increased in real terms since the early 1990s.

Uniform Civil Code must for national integration

Uniform Civil Code must for national integration

Union Law Minister D V Sadananda Gowda has asserted that a common code is necessary for national integration. However, the issue requires discussions with all stakeholders, including various personal law boards, to evolve consensus.

The Supreme Court had recently asked the central government to come to a conclusion regarding framing and implementing the Uniform Civil Code.
Even the high courts of Kerala and Karnataka, in their judgments dealing with some marriage laws, had already said that a common code was needed.
What does Article 44 say?

Article 44 of the Constitution says that there should be a Uniform Civil Code. According to this article, “The State shall endeavour to secure for the citizens a uniform civil code throughout the territory of India”. Since, the Directive Principles are only guidelines, it is not mandatory to use them.

What is uniform civil code?

Uniform civil Code is a proposal to have a generic set of governing laws for every citizen without taking into consideration the religion.

Current situation:

Currently, there are personal laws based on the scriptures and customs of each major religious community. They are separate from the public law and are applied on issues like-

Marriage
Divorce
Inheritance
Adoption and maintenance
Arguments against the implementation of a Uniform civil code:

India being a secular country guarantees its minorities the right to follow their own religion, culture and customs under Article 29 and 30. But implementing a Uniform Code will hamper India’s secularism.

Neutrinos: Oscillations and open questions

Textbooks of particle physics, even in the 1990s, used to describe the neutrino as a particle which had no charge or mass. So if neutrinos have no charge or mass, how does one detect them?

In fact, Austrian physicist Wolfgang Pauli, who postulated the existence of this particle, is said to have written in a letter: “I have done a terrible thing. I have postulated a particle that cannot be detected.”

These textbooks had to be corrected soon, as, through independent experiments in Japan and Canada, it was shown (in 1998 and 2001) that the neutrinos do indeed possess a small mass. This discovery is what has led to the researchers, Takaaki Kajita and Arthur B McDonald, being awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics this year.

Metamorphoses

Neutrinos come in three flavours — electron neutrino, muon neutrino and tau neutrino — the names indicating that they are associated with processes involving the electron or its close cousins the tau particle or the muon.

The two groups, working in Super Kamiokande detector near Tokyo and the Sudbury Neutrino Observatory (SNO) in Ontario, Canada, made this discovery indirectly, by observing that on their route to the earth, the neutrinos undergo a change from one type to the other, through a process called neutrino oscillations. This process cannot take place if the neutrinos had no mass.

The Super-Kamiokande detector became operational in 1996 in a zinc mine some 250 km from Tokyo, and is deep inside at a depth of 1,000 metres below the ground. It is built to detect Cosmic neutrinos — those that are produced through cosmic radiations that fall on the earth from all directions. The Sudbury Neutrino Observatory, on the other hand, is built to study Solar neutrinos — neutrinos created deep within the Sun.

In 1998, the Super-Kamiokande first detected that there was a difference in the number of muon neutrinos falling on the detector from above and those incident from below after passing through the mass of the globe. One explanation for this puzzle was that the muon neutrinos were “oscillating” into a different type. They further suspected that the muon neutrinos were actually changing into Tau neutrinos. This was corroborated by the Sudbury Neutrino Observatory, which was built to study electron neutrinos coming from the Sun, and which in 2001 detected a difference in the number between what was calculated and what was observed.

Theoretically explaining this puzzle meant making a big dent in the so-far accepted Standard Model of particle physics, because it meant that the neutrino had to have a small mass.

Open questions

Even today, while the difference between masses of the three types of neutrino are known, the absolute mass of the lightest is not, as Prof. McDonald said over the telephone to the Nobel committee and the press.

Another question is about the hierarchy of masses of the three flavours. Would the electron neutrino be heavier than the Tau and muon neutrinos, or is it the other way around?

Every particle known so far has a unique antiparticle. For instance, the antiparticle of the electron is the positron, and that of the proton is the anti-proton. Similarly, would neutrino have an antiparticle which is different from itself or is each neutrino its own antiparticle?

The Nobel Prize has given a boost to neutrino hunters across the globe as they gear up to pursue these questions.

What India should learn from Angus Deaton

A day before the Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences was announced, Mint listed three Indian economists—Avinash Dixit, Jagdish Bhagwati and Partha Dasgupta—who have for long been contenders but have not won the prize. Although the decision of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences this week will only prolong their wait, the eventual winner, Angus Deaton, has India connections that should not be ignored.

Deaton is a familiar name for anybody who has followed the heated debates about poverty, inequality and under-nutrition in contemporary India, especially after the 1991 economic reforms. Deaton has taken an active part in these debates, many of which have been featured on the pages of the Economic & Political Weekly, and has edited a fine book that collected some of the best academic work on Indian poverty. On a lighter note, Jean Drèze, his co-author in many papers, seems to be a lucky mascot as far as the Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences is concerned. He has also co-authored numerous works with Amartya Sen, the only Indian to have won the prize so far.

But on a serious note, what is the message Indian policymaking can take from Deaton’s research?

The Nobel Committee has noted Deaton’s contributions in building a bridge between theory and data, and individual and aggregate economic behaviour. His work, according to the committee, has helped economic policy and modern economic research.

One of Deaton’s main efforts has been to disabuse the economics fraternity of the belief that there exists a silver bullet to formulate policies or judge their effects. The fallibility, according to Deaton, is not due to lack of sophistication of technique, but due to the diversity—or heterogeneity, as economists would call it—which prevails in human society. Deaton’s research comes at a time when there is a clear attempt to roll out methods such as randomized control trials as the be-all and end-all of policymaking, in place of older methods such as centralized planning or the World Bank/International Monetary Fund-style structural adjustments that seek to fix the big picture.

Deaton is also an example of how effective policymaking requires that economists do not become prisoners of their own research. He was an active participant in the poverty estimation debate that erupted after the findings of the 55th Round of National Sample Survey data were released in the early years of the previous decade, and he undertook a sophisticated and detailed empirical analysis of NSSO data and price indices to recalculate poverty headcount ratios in India. These rigorous endeavours, however, have not prevented him from critiquing the non-transparent and complicated poverty estimation procedure in place currently and calling for delinking of poverty estimates—which in his own words are mere statistical tools for comparison—from all welfare entitlements.

In his intellectual pursuits, Deaton has joined issue with economists on both the Right as well as the Left ends of the spectrum. His critique of Arvind Panagariya’s thesis explaining less-than-normal heights of Indian children in comparison with those in much poor countries like Sub-Saharan Africa to genetic factors is an example of the former while the debate between Deaton-Drèze and Utsa Patnaik about the growing wedge between calorie intake and poverty headcount ratios is an example of the latter.

As a logical corollary of his arguments, Deaton has been underlining the need for better nutrition-monitoring arrangements in India, and has regularly pointed out the inadequacy of current indicators. The government could pay heed to his advice on this issue and at least release detailed findings of the Rapid Survey of Children, titbits of which have appeared in the media on the basis of leaks.

The majority of today’s economists seek refuge in even more complicated modelling and theory to solve the growing conundrum of mismatch between theory and reality in economics. Deaton is unambiguous in a 2009 paper: “Technique is never a substitute for the business of doing economics”. Deaton’s Nobel should be an occasion to bring back the social in economic sciences.

The richest 1% of Indians own 53% of the country’s wealth,

The richest 1% of Indians own 53% of the country’s wealth, according to the latest data on global wealth from Credit Suisse. The richest 5% own 68.6% of the country’s wealth, while the top 10% have 76.3%. At the other end of the pyramid, the poorer half of our countrymen jostles for 4.1% of the nation’s wealth. As Deng Xiaoping put it so pithily, “It is glorious to be rich.”

What’s more, things are getting more and more glorious for the rich. Data from Credit Suisse show that India’s richest 1% owned just 36.8% of the country’s wealth in 2000, while the share of the top 10% was 65.9%. Since then the richest have managed to steadily increase their share of the pie, as the chart shows. This happened during the years of the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) government from 2000-04, during the first United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government backed by the Left, during the second UPA tenure and now in the first year of the Modi government; the share of the top 1% has now crossed 50%. The colour of the government has been no impediment to the steady rise in the riches of the wealthy.

The chart shows that the difference between the share of the top 1% and that of the top 10% was 29.1 percentage points in 2000, but is down to 23.3 percentage points in 2015. In other words, the top 1% is eating into the share of the next 9%. The richest are growing at the expense of the relatively well-off. Between 2010 and 2015, the share of the poorer half of the population shrank from 5.3% to 4.1%.

According to Credit Suisse, India’s wealth increased by $2.284 trillion between 2000 and 2015. Of this rise, the richest 1% has hogged 61%, while the top 10% bagged 81%. The other 90% got the leftovers.

The share of India’s richest 1% is far ahead than that of top 1% of the US, who own a mere 37.3% of the total US wealth. But India’s finest still have a long way to go before they match Russia, where the top 1% own a stupendous 70.3% of the country’s wealth.