Employment rises 34% to 12.7 crore in 8 years to 2013

 The number of employed people in the country grew by 34.35 per cent to 12.77 crore in eight years to 2013, according to the sixth economic census.

Employment in urban parts increased by 37.46 per cent to 6.14 crore in 2013, whereas in rural areas the growth was 31.59 per cent to 6.62 crore compared to 2005.

The proportion of women in total workforce rose to 25.56 per cent in 2013 from about 20 per cent in 2005. In urban areas, the proportion of female workers was 19.8 per cent and 30.9 per cent in rural areas.

Maharashtra has the maximum number of employees at 1.43 crore, followed by Uttar Pradesh at 1.37 crore, West Bengal at 1.15 crore, Tamil Nadu 1.08 crore and Gujarat at 90.63 lakh.

Among union territories, Delhi has the maximum number of employees at 29.84 lakh followed by Chandigarh at 2.38 lakh and Puducherry at 2.17 lakh in 2013.

The country's population was over 121 crore in 2011, according to 2011 census.

The economic census does not include employment in agriculture, public administration, defence and compulsory social security services activities.

When asked about employment scenario, National Statistical Commission Chairman Pronab Sen said, "The growth in employment at 34 per cent in eight years period is a good rate. That means that it had grown at an annual rate of over 4 per cent when the population is growing at 2 per cent."


Census officials noting down details.

The number of establishments or firms increased by 41.73 per cent to 5.84 crore in 2013 over 2005 level. The number of firms grew by 45.57 during eight years to 2.34 crore in urban areas. Such firms grew by 39.28 per cent to 3.5 crore in rural areas during the period.

Intervention, evasion, destabilisation

If Libya, Syria and Iraq are coming undone and Ukraine has been gravely destabilised, it is the result of interventionsby big powers that claim to be international law enforcers when, in reality, they are lawbreakers

Big powers over the years have targeted specific regimes by arming rebel groups with lethal weapons, thereby destabilising some states and contributing to the rise of dangerous extremists and terrorists. The destabilisation of Ukraine, Syria, Iraq and Libya, among other states, is a result of such continuing geopolitical games.

It is the local people who get killed, maimed and uprooted by the interventions of major powers and their regional proxies. Yet those who play such games assume a moral posture to rationalise their interventionist policies and evade responsibility for the consequences of their actions. Indeed, they paint their interference in the affairs of other sovereign states as aimed at fighting the “bad” guys.

Cold War echo

Take the blame game over the downing of Flight MH 17, which was shot down by a surface-to-air missile (SAM), allegedly fired by eastern Ukraine’s Russian-speaking separatists, a number of whom have clearly been trained and armed by Russia. Russia’s aid to the separatists and Washington’s security assistance to the government in Kiev, including providing vital intelligence and sending American military advisers to Ukraine, is redolent of the pattern that prevailed during the Cold War, when the two opposing blocs waged proxy battles in countries elsewhere.

Today, with the Ukrainian military shelling rebel-held cities and Russia massing heavy weapons and troops along the frontier, the crisis threatens to escalate to a direct U.S.-Russia confrontation, especially if Moscow directly intervenes in eastern Ukraine in response to the worsening humanitarian crisis there. The United Nations says the fighting in eastern Ukraine has uprooted more than 230,000 residents. Over 27,000 of them have taken sanctuary in Russia.

After the MH 17 crash, U.S. President Barack Obama was quick to hold Russia and its President, Vladimir Putin, guilty in the global court of opinion over the downing and to spotlight Russian aid to the separatists. Through sanctions and diplomacy, Mr. Obama has steadily ratcheted up pressure on Mr. Putin to stop assisting the rebels. Yet, Mr. Obama has had no compunction in gravely destabilising Syria through continuing covert aid to “moderate” militants there. The aid is being channelled through the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and the jihad-bankrolling oil sheikhdoms.

Regime-change strategy

Mr. Obama set out on the mission of regime change in Syria by seizing the opportunity that opened up in 2011, when popular protests broke out in some cities against President Bashar al-Assad’s autocratic rule. The detention and torture of a group of schoolchildren, who had been caught scribbling anti-government graffiti in the city of Deraa, led to protests and demands for political reforms and a series of events that rapidly triggered an armed insurrection with external assistance.

From bases in Turkey and Jordan, the rebels — with the clandestine assistance of the U.S., Britain and France — established a Free Syrian Army, launching attacks on government forces. Washington and its allies simultaneously mounted an intense information war demonising Mr. Assad and encouraging officers and soldiers to desert the Syrian military and join the Free Syrian Army.

It is clear three years later that their regime-change strategy has backfired: Not only has it failed to oust Mr. Assad, it has turned Syria into a failed state and led to the rise of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant — a brutal, medieval organisation seeking to establish a caliphate across the Middle East and beyond. With radical jihadists now dominating the scene, the Free Syrian Army has become a marginal force, despite the CIA continuing to train and arm its members in Jordan.

Had Mr. Obama, British Prime Minister David Cameron and French President François Hollande not embarked on this strategy — which helped instil the spirit of jihad against the Assad regime and opened the gates to petrodollar-financed weapons to Syrian jihadists — would murderous Islamists be in control of much of northern Syria today? It was this control that served as the staging ground for the rapid advance of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant into Iraq. This group now is in a position to potentially use water as a weapon through its control of the upstream areas along the Euphrates and Tigris rivers in Syria and Iraq, including important dams.

By inadvertently turning Syria into another Afghanistan — and a threat to regional and international security — the interveners failed to heed the lessons from the CIA’s funnelling of arms to the Afghan mujahideen (or self-proclaimed “holy warriors” of Islam) in the 1980s. The funnelling of arms — partly financed by Saudi Arabia and some other oil sheikhdoms — was a multibillion-dollar operation against the Soviet forces in Afghanistan that gave rise to al-Qaeda and monsters like Osama bin Laden and Mullah Mohammad Omar, chief of the Taliban who remains holed up in Pakistan. It ranked as the largest covert operation in the CIA’s history.

Now, consider a different case where a regime-change strategy spearheaded by the U.S., Britain and France succeeded — Libya. The ouster of Col. Muammar Qadhafi’s government through U.S.-led aerial bombardment in 2011, however, ended up fomenting endless conflict, bloodletting and chaos in Libya.

The virtual crumbling of the Libyan state, more ominously, has had major international implications — from the cross-border leakage of shoulder-fired SAMs from the Qadhafi-built arsenal, including to Syrian jihadists, to the flow of other Libyan weapons to al-Qaeda-linked groups in the arid lands near the Sahara desert known as the Sahel region. Nigeria’s Boko Haram extremists have also tapped the Libyan arms bazaar.

The weapons that Qatar and, on a smaller scale, the United Arab Emirates shipped to Libyan rebels with U.S. approval, including machine guns, automatic rifles and ammunition, have not only destabilised Libya but also undermined security in Mali, Niger and Chad. These weapons had been handed out like candy to foment the uprising against Qadhafi.

There cannot be better proof of how the toppling of Qadhafi has boomeranged than the fact that the U.S., whose ambassador was killed in a 2012 militant attack in Benghazi, the supposed capital of the Libyan “revolution,” has now shut its embassy in Tripoli, citing increasing lawlessness. The predawn evacuation of its entire embassy staff to Tunisia, with U.S. warplanes providing air cover, represented a public admission of defeat.

The plain truth is that it is easier for outside forces to topple or undermine a regime than to build stability and security in the targeted country. With neighbourhoods becoming battlefields, Iraq, Syria and Libya are coming undone. Another disintegrating state is Afghanistan, where Mr. Obama is seeking to end the longest war in American history.

Marginalisation of U.N.

Such is the United Nations’ marginalisation in international relations that it is becoming irrelevant to the raging conflicts. To make matters worse, the U.N. Security Council’s five permanent members, although tasked by the U.N. Charter to preserve international peace and security, have helped spark or fuel regional conflicts and aided the rise of insurgent groups through their interventionist and arms-transfer policies. These five powers — all nuclear-armed — account for more than 80 per cent of the world’s official exports of conventional weapons and most of the unofficial transfers. Chinese arms, for example, have proliferated to a number of guerrilla groups active in Africa and Asia, including insurgents in India’s northeast.

The only mechanism to enforce international law is the Security Council. Yet, its permanent members have repeatedly demonstrated that great powers use, not respect, international law. They have a long history of ignoring international rules when these conflict with their plans. In other words, the international law enforcers are the leading lawbreakers.

Mr. Obama, in toppling Qadhafi through the use of air power, and Mr. Putin, in annexing Crimea, paradoxically cited the same moral principle that has no force in international law — “responsibility to protect.” Indeed, the transition from the 20th to the 21st centuries heralded the open flouting of international law, as represented by the bombing of Serbia, the separation of Kosovo from Serbia, and the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq. Against this background, it is scarcely a surprise that, despite the continuing rhetoric of a rules-based international order, the world is witnessing the triumph of brute force in the 21st century.

If the Security Council is to act more responsibly, its permanent members must look honestly at what they are doing to undermine international peace and security. This can happen only if the Council’s permanent membership is enlarged and the veto power abolished to make decision-making in that body truly democratic.

World's first malaria vaccine to hit markets soon

The world's first malaria vaccine will be available in the market by next year. 

Pharma company GSK has submitted a regulatory application to the European Medicines Agency (EMA) for its malaria vaccine candidate, RTS,S. 

RTS,S will be exclusively for use against the Plasmodium falciparum malaria parasite, which is most prevalent in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA). 

Around 90% of estimated deaths from malaria occur in SSA, and 77% of these are in children under the age of 5. 

Data from the phase III vaccine trial programme conducted at 13 African research centres in eight African countries (Burkina Faso, Gabon, Ghana, Kenya, Malawi, Mozambique, Nigeria, and Tanzania) including over 16,000 infants and young children have also been included to support the filing. 

Results from a large-scale Phase III trial showed that over 18 months of follow-up, children aged 5-17 months at first vaccination with RTS,S experienced 46% fewer cases of clinical malaria, compared to children immunized with a control vaccine. 

An average of 941 cases of clinical malaria were prevented over 18 months of follow-up for every 1,000 children vaccinated in this age group. 

Severe malaria cases were reduced by 36%; 21 cases of severe malaria were prevented over 18 months of follow-up for every 1,000 children vaccinated. 

Malaria hospitalizations were reduced by 42%. 

RTS,S aims to trigger the body's immune system to defend against the P falciparum malaria parasite when it first enters the human host's bloodstream and/or when the parasite infects liver cells. The vaccine is designed to prevent the parasite from infecting, maturing and multiplying in the liver, after which time the parasite would re-enter the bloodstream and infect red blood cells, leading to disease symptoms. In the phase III efficacy trial, RTS,S was administered in three doses, one month apart. 

Trials showed that the vaccine effectively protected young children and infants from clinical malaria up to 18 months after vaccination. 

GSK said "Over 18 months of follow-up, RTS,S was shown to almost halve the number of malaria cases in young children (aged 5-17 months at first vaccination) and to reduce by around a quarter the malaria cases in infants (aged 6-12 weeks at first vaccination)". 

GSK has vowed to sell the vaccine at cost price plus 5%, which it said would fund further research into tropical diseases. The new results are from a study of 15,000 babies and children in seven African countries. 

The submission will follow the Article 58 procedure, which allows the EMA to assess the quality, safety and efficacy of a candidate vaccine, or medicine, manufactured in a European Union (EU) member state, for a disease recognised by the World Health Organization as of major public health interest, but intended exclusively for use outside the EU. 

This assessment is done by the EMA in collaboration with the WHO, and requires products to meet the same standards as vaccines or medicines intended for use in the EU. 

The EMA submission is the first step in the regulatory process toward making the RTS,S vaccine candidate available as an addition to existing tools currently recommended for malaria prevention. To-date there is no licensed vaccine available for the prevention of malaria. 

If a positive opinion from the EMA is granted, the WHO has indicated a policy recommendation may be possible by end of 2015. 

A positive opinion from the EMA would also be the basis for marketing authorisation applications to National Regulatory Authorities (NRAs) in SSA countries. 

Dr Sophie Biernaux, head of the Malaria Vaccine Franchise, GSK said "This is a key moment in GSK's 30-year journey to develop RTS,S and brings us a step closer to making available the world's first vaccine that can help protect children in Africa from malaria".

The real threat to WTO

Aside from war and migration, observed the Nobel prize winning economist, Thomas C. Schelling, “trade is what most of international relations are about. For that reason, trade policy is national security policy.”

One of the few economists to take any serious academic interest in national security issues, and known for his analysis of nuclear deterrence from a game theoretic perspective, Schelling made these observations in 1971 to a United States Congressional Commission on “National Security Considerations Affecting Trade Policy”.

While economists like to believe that trade policy is defined by rational calculus, the wielders of power and policy have always known that trade policy is integral to a nation’s strategic policy. The transatlantic powers created a post-war trading regime under the auspices of the General Agreement on Trade and Tariffs (GATT) designed to serve their geoeconomic interests. This was sought to be democratised, though only partially, with the World Trade Organisation (WTO), creating not just a “rules-based” trading system but also a disciplinary mechanism to enforce those rules.

India correctly took the view that it had a “strategic stake” in such a multilateral rules-based system, and successive governments have worked hard with the West through the WTO. The current impasse in the WTO has in fact been created by the dilution of Western commitment to that regime, and not by developing-country intransigence, much less India’s.

In the current stand-off on India’s stance on its food security policy, Western powers are pretending as if they are the upholders of fair play and India the spoiler. The fact is that major trading powers have never shied away from being spoilers in multilateral trade talks whenever it has suited their national interest. It should be recalled that the US and EU have readily deployed non-economic weapons to threaten their trade partners whenever their economic interests have been threatened. When Japan emerged as a competitive global exporter, building a huge trade surplus vis-à-vis the transatlantic economies, the US deployed domestic laws, Special and Super 301, to get Japan to adopt “voluntary export restraints” (VERs). The EU “single market” was created in the early 1990s as a conscious response to Japan’s rise.

Hence, it would be churlish for the West to criticise the Indian government for giving primacy to domestic politics in external trade negotiations. The real threat to the WTO-based multilateral trading system has come in recent months from the US initiative to enter into WTO-plus plurilateral agreements, namely, the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) and the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP).

While a plethora of such agreements around the worldhas virtually sidelined the WTO, the TPP/ TTIP challenge is the biggest threat so far to a rules-based development-oriented multilateralism. This assessment came through clearly at a recent conference on “Trade and Flag: Changing Balance of Power in the Multilateral Trading System”, organised by the Geoeconomics and Strategy Programme of the International Institute of Strategic Studies (IISS).

The TPP and the TTIP have been cooked up as a “geoeconomic” response to China’s emergence as a “mega-trader”, while being touted as defining a new “gold standard” for international trade. While Japan has reluctantly joined the TPP, most major emerging economies, especially the BRICS economies — Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa — remain outside TPP-TTIP.

It is against this larger “Great Game” in global trade that one must view India’s current stance. True, the shadow of domestic politics, and public concern about food inflation and food security, loom large over the Narendra Modi government’s stance, which is but a continuation of the view taken by the Manmohan Singh government.

However, it is also clear that this is not the only factor shaping Indian official thinking on trade policy. There seems to be an assessment that the transatlantic powers are digging their heels in on market access, trade liberalisation and weakening the WTO’s “rules-based” trading system. Perhaps India is not the target of their actions and China is. But India would suffer collateral damage and, so far, the US has not provided any assurance that India would not be a victim of the unintended consequences of a US-China trade war.

Differences over trade come against the background of several other differences that have dogged US-India relations during the tenure of President Barrack Obama. These issues ought to be ironed out when US Secretary of State John Kerry meets India’s new political leadership.

Regrettably, Kerry’s remarks on WTO and India, on the eve of his arrival in New Delhi, are not particularly helpful. He said on Tuesday, “India must decide where it fits in the global trading system. Its commitment to a rules-based trading order and its willingness to fulfil its obligation will be a key indication.” It could well be argued that the US too must come clean on its commitment to a “rules-based” system that is fair to developing economies.

The impasse in Geneva will get sorted out when Washington DC’s intentions behind TPP/ TTIP are better explained and the US wins the confidence of developing countries. The US must address Indian concerns that it may abandon the WTO and pursue a trade agenda inimical to India once it gets the trade facilitation deal through. For its part, India must reform its food security system and its agricultural economy as a whole, and ensure they are WTO-compatible. For now, however, the US and India must resist quarrelling on this issue and revive their relationship.

What can perhaps change the game and revive trust between India and the US is a revival of the larger strategic engagement between the two democracies that was initiated by US Presidents BillClinton and George Bush. Obama has not been able to retain that trust with India. Prime Minister Modi has made a new beginning. It remains to be seen whether Kerry is able to  win back New Delhi’s trust and affection, restoring balance to a wayward relationship.

Ten years 25 miles later

Last Sunday, the Nasa Mars rover, Opportunity, broke the record for off-Earth driving, previously held by the moon rover, Lunokhod 2, which was launched by the former USSR in 1973. Not only has Opportunity driven 25 miles, it has heralded long-term robotic presence on the surface of another planet.

While life continued on Earth, on July 27, unknown to most outside the mission team, Opportunity completed a spectacular drive on Mars, surpassing 25 miles, and in the process became the vehicle to drive the longest distance outside Earth. Opportunity landed on Mars in January 2004, with the objective of surviving 90 days and driving one kilometre. Ten years and 40 km later, Opportunity is still trooping forward on Mars, continuing its mission to explore an unknown world, to feast its eyes on landscapes that no human has seen before and to leave its wheel tracks where no vehicle has driven before. Opportunity shows some signs of ageing, but for the most part, it is functional. In fact, its solar arrays are clean and the energy generated by the arrays is comparable to the first year of the mission.

Opportunity landed at Eagle Crater, but it has driven far beyond to Endeavour Crater. It is trying to track down the signs of clay minerals in the western rim of Endeavour Crater seen from orbit by CRISM, a spectrometer on board the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter. Clay minerals help scientists figure out questions related to water and to the hospitality of past environments for life on Mars.

The longest road trip that I have been on was two days long, when I drove from Washington DC to Florida. But Opportunity has been on the road for 10 years, exposed to the sun, winds, dust and radiation. It has been witness to the change in seasons, the regional dust storms on Mars that obliterate the sun and the freezing temperatures of five Martian winters. And of course, as it drove, Opportunity has seen the wonderful vistas of Mars — from Martian sunsets to iron meteorites, from cirrus clouds to the spectacular world of Martian rocks — that have been viewed for the first time through its microscopic imager. Throughout the roadtrip, Opportunity has had no physical repairs. It has never had the luxury of swapping some old parts for new, no new lubrication for the wheels, no new battery or motherboard for the onboard computer.

In the broader scheme of things, courtesy five orbiters, four rovers and one lander, we have covered significant ground in Mars exploration over the last 18 years — since the Mars Global Surveyor landed on that planetin 1996. We have confirmed the presence of ice at the Martian poles and evidence of liquid water in the past. Spirit and Opportunity, together with Curiosity, have set the stage for the next rover mission, Mars 2020, which will likely have the capability of looking for biological evidence related to life and a mechanism to generate oxygen on Mars. We have made huge strides in obtaining geologic, chemical, mineralogic and atmospheric data from Mars, which have greatly helped scientists understand the geologic and atmospheric evolution of that planet. Mars has transitioned from a distant object to an accessible planet that is inundating us with new data every day from two rovers and four orbiters.

Behind Opportunity lies a team that has developed and operated the vehicle. The team has battled incredible odds to operate a vehicle about 200 million km away. From landing on Mars to driving across it, it has been a journey into an unknown parameter space from an engineering standpoint, which calls for customisation, iterative learning and reworking. A strategic mistake in preparing for the long term or an oversight in planning a single observation on Mars has the potential to cause irreversible damage to the rover. For more than 3,735 sols (or Martian days), the team has commandeered activities that have balanced the requirements of science, the adventurism of trying something new and the conservativeness of not taking irrational risks.

Going beyond the ceremonial with NEPAL

Given Nepal’s scepticism over renewed engagement with India, Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s visit to the Himalayan nation should focus on the doables

The much discussed issue — the lack of high-level political engagement between India and Nepal — was back in focus with the three-day official visit of Sushma Swaraj, India’s External Affairs Minister, to Kathmandu. Although the foreign minister’s visit to Nepal during this period every year is almost a calendar event, its most important part was the revival of the Joint Commission (JC) after 23 years, and preparation for Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s upcoming visit to the country in early August after 17 years. The visit also demonstrated India’s desire to re-energise India-Nepal relationship in line with the Modi government’s efforts to breathe new life into India’s neighbourhood policy. Besides, it conveyed to the people of Nepal the primacy that the new government attaches to Nepal in its foreign policy.

Although India and Nepal have shared cordial and friendly ties without much tensions, there was a perception in Kathmandu that New Delhi no longer took the Himalayan country seriously. According to many observers in Nepal, this was evident from the one-way, high-level political visits from the Nepalese side during the last decade, which mostly went unreciprocated from the Indian side. Therefore, with the revival of the JC and talk of Mr. Modi’s visit to Nepal, there is a lot of hope in Kathmandu about a possible upswing in bilateral relations.

Most important, Ms Swaraj’s visit took place during a critical phase of political transition in Nepal — when the country is struggling to generate a political consensus to conclude the protracted exercise of drafting a new constitution. The second Constituent Assembly (CA) has so far not been able to address contentious issues like the nature of political system and federalism, like the first CA.

Competing narratives

Against this backdrop, there are mixed reactions in Nepal about India’s role in the constitution writing process. One narrative holds that since India facilitated the peace process in November 2005, it has a moral responsibility to ensure the successful conclusion of the process; India should not keep aloof at this crucial juncture when the differences among various political actors on the two contentious issues of federalism and nature of governance are widening. Some civil society groups believe that India should reuse its influence (as it did in 2005), and act as a ‘negotiator’ to resolve the political deadlock, and take the process forward.

The second narrative is that India continues to interfere in the internal affairs of Nepal and supports the efforts of the status-quoist forces to override the progressive elements, and adopt an antediluvian constitution without a consensus, through a majority. This may lead to unnecessary chaos and confusion and decelerate the process of transition. The advocates of this view also allege that India is doubly guilty of not letting any third country help the Nepalese political forces overcome the present crisis.

Although the first narrative acknowledges India’s efforts in 2005, and wants India to play the role of an honest mediator, the advocates of such a point of view are in a clear minority in Nepal. The inertial view of India as an overpowering bully, conspiring to micro-manage Nepal’s internal politics with the ultimate aim of establishing an acquiescing government in Kathmandu, persists.

Ms Swaraj began her trip by chairing the third JC. She also met President Ram Baran Yadav, Prime Minister Sushil Koirala and the Opposition leaders of Nepal. For the first time after 23 years, the high-level bilateral meeting covered a wide range of issues concerning both the countries. The JC discussed over six dozen bilateral issues and addressed most of them.

According to the joint statement, both the countries agreed to: update the Treaty of Peace and Friendship 1950; promote greater collaboration and cooperation in security related issues; cooperate in the agricultural sector and set up an agriculture university with Indian support; enhance bilateral trade and investment by relaxing the rules of origin requirements; simplify and streamline transit and customs related procedures; eliminate Technical Barriers to Trade and make Sanitary and Phyto Sanitary-related measures less stringent and lift quantitative restrictions on the export of Nepalese products to India; finalise the text of a Power Trade Agreement; work towards an early completion of the construction of the 132 kV Kataiya-Kusaha and 132 kV Raxaul-Parwanipur Transmission Line Projects; relax the requirement of Indian content for the road projects included in the $250 million LoC; and deepen cooperation in the tourism sector by connecting major tourist spots in Nepal and India.

During the meeting, India also agreed to construct an international cricket stadium at Pokhara; continue the Goitre Control programme; provide technical support for early operationalisation of the Bharat-Nepal Maitri Emergency and Trauma Centre, and increase scholarships for Nepalese students for higher studies in India.

Significantly, during her meeting with the Opposition leaders, Ms Swaraj gave the assurance that steps would be taken “to ensure continued discussions at the political level on bilateral issues, while underlining the need for building an atmosphere of trust between the two neighbours.” The Nepalese delegation reiterated its country’s support for India’s permanent membership in the United Nations Security Council and expressed similar views on major international issues affecting the developing countries, and the desire of the Nepalese leadership to work in close coordination with India in the international forum.

Given India’s poor record on the delivery front, there is scepticism in Kathmandu that, although the JC covered a wide gamut of issues, the outcome of the meeting is more ceremonial than real. Most of the pledges made by India in the joint statement are a reiteration of promises made by it over the years. Except for the construction of a stadium in Pokhara and the decision on deepening cooperation on tourism, nothing seems new in the statement.

Significantly, as per media reports, Nepalese officials made it clear during the talks that “there should be a political consensus in Nepal before a bilateral deal could be reached.” The negotiating parties also failed to set a timeline for completing the negotiations for Project Development Agreement and the Power Trade Agreement (PTA).

Trust deficit

Thus, despite the revival of the JC, trust deficit exists. And many issues agreed upon during the meeting would either be delayed, given the illusive consensus among the Nepalese political parties, or might not materialise at all. In fact, a meeting of the top three political parties on July 27 failed to take any decision over PTA, which was expected to be signed during Mr. Modi’s visit to Nepal. Given the lack of consensus among the Nepalese political parties on India’s role in the water and infrastructureprojects in Nepal, New Delhi may find it difficult to translate its promises in the joint statement into reality.

However, there were some positive developments on the Nepalese side. For the first time, perhaps, no controversial news has appeared in the Nepali media about an Indian leader’s visit (so far). There may, thus, be an appetite in Kathmandu to break fresh ground with India, although cynics in Nepal would caution that the anti-India lobby is reserving its venom for Mr. Modi’s visit.

It is important to ask whether India could have done better. The foreign minister could have picked up some doable issues to ensure the goodwill of the Nepalese people as well: for example, issues like declaring special trains for the Nepalese people from Delhi and Bangalore to the India-Nepal border; the exemption of Nepalese students and patients from paying in U.S. dollars during their treatment in Indian hospitals, and educational institutions; setting up India information centres in remote areas; setting up cold storage and grain storage in hill regions and marketing facilities for agro-based products; renovation of airport infrastructure in Nepal, especially the Terai region; vocational training institutes for women; easy transfer of remittance from India to Nepal through banking channels; joint research on the Himalayan eco-system and prevention of river pollution; and speeding up the completion of the Amlekhganj-Raxaul oil pipeline with Indian assistance.

Similarly, on tourism, we could have been more innovative, and proposed the linking of major tourist spots starting from those in northern India to Kailash Mansarovar in Tibet via Nepal — connecting Bodhgaya, Saranath, Kasi Bishwanath, Janakpur, Lumbini, Vindhyabasini & Mankamana in Pokhara, Pashupatinath and Muktinath.

One hopes some of these issues will figure during Mr. Modi’s upcoming visit to Nepal on 3-4 August. Focussing on the doables is a much better option.

Seeking a level playing field,controversy over csat

Does the new aptitude test introduced in the Civil Services prelims give a head start to English-speaking candidates and those from technical background?

Much has been made about India’s growing aspirational class, especially after it led the Bharatiya Janata Party to power at the Centre. Now it is a section of this aspirational class that is out on the streets, protesting against the Civil Services Aptitude Test (CSAT), conducted by the Union Public Service Commission (UPSC). The protesters, who are civil services aspirants from rural areas, have found this compulsory paper discriminatory. They argue that the test does not offer a level-playing field to candidates who are not fluent in English.

Introduced in 2011, CSAT tests comprehension, interpersonal skills including communication skills, logical reasoning and analytical ability, decision-making and problem-solving, general mental ability, basic numeracy, data interpretation and data sufficiency besides English comprehension skills (of class X level). While the “English language comprehension skills of Class X level” is a big deal for candidates from regional language-medium schools and colleges, central to the debate is the technical nature of CSAT.

This paper replaced the objective type “optional subject’’ which, along with the test on General Studies (GS), constituted the Preliminary Examination (Prelims) for over three decades. The old Prelims module was formulated as per the recommendation of the Committee on Recruitment Policy and Selection Methods (the Kothari Committee), which gave its report in 1976.

The Preliminary Examination, as per the Kothari Committee, was to be a screening test to identify serious candidates and “broaden the base of recruitment’’ so as to rid the services of the “elitist’’ tag it had acquired since its pre-Independence incarnate as the Indian Civil Services.

Read: UPSC issue figures in Rajya Sabha

Advantage engineers?

Till 2011, candidates could choose their “optional subject’’ for the Prelims from 23 listed subjects for this paper of 300 marks. The GS paper carried 150 marks. Under the new scheme, GS and CSAT are of 200 marks each.

Candidates from the humanities stream maintain that engineering students — particularly those from the Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs) — have a head start in CSAT because many of its components are part of their core training for four years.

This is somewhat borne out by what Ashish Tewari, professor of Aerospace Engineering at IIT Kanpur, wrote in an in-house publication on the issue of “Administrative Services as a Career Option for IITians’’ in 2000 when more and more products of the premier education system were taking the CSE. In some years, they constituted 40 per cent of those who cleared the exam; that too in the higher ranks.

In his article, Prof. Tewari said: “The Joint Entrance Examination [for IITs] endeavours to select 18-year-olds with superior analytical abilities … The JEE is tailored to provide challenging problems, most of which require some independent thought for solution in a timely manner … At the Institute, the Under Graduate curriculum aims to hone the problem solving abilities…’’

“This is what we are pitted against,” is the refrain of those opposed to CSAT, who argue that there is no gainsaying that the components are of Class X level as these skills are seldom imparted in government schools where the stress is on learning by rote. “Earlier, aptitude was tested for 15-20 marks in the GS paper but now, an entire paper carrying half the total marks of the Prelims is on aptitude. This takes many of us out of the race at the first stage itself,” is what they say.

“CSAT is now forcing many an aspirant to take coaching for even the Prelims,” said a candidate who did not want to be named for fear of being victimised, adding, “even then we are at a disadvantage because our language skills are not so good compared to those who have had an English-medium education, and ‘think-and-speak English’ as you people put it.”

Former Union Minister Y.K. Alagh — who headed the Committee which recommended CSAT in 2001 which was later picked up by the Second Administrative Reforms Commission in 2008 — told The Hindu: “The teaching shop industry will be redundant in the new set-up once experience is there and if the CSAT is well implemented. The new system is very recent and not fully understood. The CSAT has not been fully implemented in the sense of questions which are rural-urban neutral. UPSC has to ensure that.’’

According to him, CSAT should be structured to test capabilities. “The English requirement is no longer that of an essay of the Macaulay type but working conversation knowledge of the type in a foreign language teaching programme. To say that in the 21st Century, a child who has no understanding of bazaari angrezi is an ideal candidate for the Civil Services is not just ridiculous but pernicious.”

While aspirants concede that a working knowledge of English is necessary, their contention is that the nature of questions asked in CSAT is difficult to comprehend with their limited English language skills. While all components — barring the questions on English comprehension — are available in Hindi as well, those from the Hindi-medium complain that technical terms are translated literally, making them difficult to comprehend. A case in point is “laptop” which is mentioned as godhsur in Hindi.

Festering since 2011, the protests over CSAT intensified this year, primarily because of hopes that the new government may be more inclined to overturn a decision of its predecessor. Also, the batch profile of the 88th Foundation Course at the Lal Bahadur Shastri National Academy of Administration (LBSNAA), Mussoorie, shows a widening in the urban-rural divide, fuelling apprehensions among those already crying foul over CSAT.

In the 269-strong batch, 27.13 per cent had a rural background. In the 86th Foundation Course — for CSE 2010 — the rural background component was 29.3 per cent. While this drop is being attributed to CSAT, the profile of batches in the previous decade shows a significant drop in rural candidates even when the old Prelims format was in place. So, the reasons for this dip could lie elsewhere.

Not due to CSAT alone

Similarly, their use of data from UPSC annual reports to show a drop in the number of students taking the Mains examination in languages other than English as a result of language medium students failing because of CSAT does not stand scrutiny. There has been a downward trend over the past several years with English becoming the more preferred language for taking the examination.

If anything, CSE 2012 saw the number of students opting for Hindi in the Essay paper of the Mains go up to 1,956 from the earlier four year-low of 1,682 in 2011. The same trend cuts across Kannada, Tamil and Telugu; the three languages flagged by the protesters in one of their petitions.

With the admit cards now being issued for the Prelims and the government informing Parliament that it would not intervene to make UPSC stop the process, many aspirants are now working overtime to crack CSAT with the intention of going to court subsequently to at least seek a scaling of marks so that humanities students do not suffer. If nothing works, they may go for the jugular and seek the cancellation of UPSC’s notifications of CSE 2011, 2012 and 2013.