Rank & Pension

The nation is presently in the grip of OROP (One Rank One Pension) fever. Several army veterans are fasting unto death; passions are ignited while invectives fly thick and fast. Emotion is being invoked much more than logic and facts, often misleading the people. Ex-Servicemen complain of inadequate pension due to truncated service and limited job opportunities after compulsory early retirement. No one doubts the truth of any of these grievances, but the issue is more deep-seated. The conjecture on the impact of OROP varies from the extremely conservative to the wildly fanciful, while skirting the precise nature and magnitude of the problem.

OROP implies uniform pension to persons retiring in the same rank with the same length of service irrespective of their dates of retirement. It implies bridging the gap between the rates of pension of current and past pensioners, and also their equalisation in respect of future enhancements in the rates of pension. One should dispel the myth that OROP is an army-specific problem. All paramilitary forces and 99 per cent of the civilian government employees are victims of an unjust system of pension. Barring a handful that has the privilege of retiring at a fixed scale, normally at the top, whether in the army or in the civil administration, all employees suffer from this discrimination.

Pension drawn by any government servant including defence personnel consists of two elements: a basic pension which is fixed at the time of retirement and a relief thereon as and when successive DA instalments are released by the Government based on the consumer price index and the rate of inflation. Central Pay Commissions (CPC) are constituted every 10 years. With every CPC award, enhancement in pay-scales and revised rates of pension are automatically passed on to the past pensioners whose basic salaries at the time of retirement are revised and re-fixed in the new scale of pay and new pension determined accordingly. While some benefits of revision are passed on to retired employees, the problem arises due to the bunching of several old pay-scales into a smaller number of scales in the new pay structure. There would be no disparity in pension if the number of pay-scales and their intermediate stages remained the same. This was the case with the pay-scales of defence forces, which were different from those of civil servants, till the Second Central Pay Commission (CPC) awards (1966-76).

The armed forces enjoyed the OROP till 1976, i.e. before the third CPC (1976-86) took an ex parte decision against the scheme and applied the civilian pension rules to the armed forces pensioners as well. This was the genesis of discrimination between the past and present pensioners. The Third CPC compressed 36 running pay-scales prevalent in government service to only 19 by merging several previous scales into single running scales in the revised pay structure. When a number of pay-scales are merged into a single running pay band, pensions drawn by all “pre-existing pensioners”, who had retired at the old scales, are fixed at the lowest of the pay band into which these old scales are merged. This is where the problem arises and disparity kicks in between the past and the present pensioners. An officer who is scheduled to retire shortly will obviously draw a higher pay than the same-rank official who had retired 10 years ago.

With the Fourth and Fifth CPC awards, the number of pay-scales again proliferated to 34, but the problem was really aggravated when the 6th CPC (2006-16) reduced it drastically to only nine running pay-bands (PB) by introducing a number of fixed grade-pays within each band; these grade pays did not affect the pension. For example, 26 pay-scales were converted into four PBs, accommodating within a single pay-band (PB-4) a scale of Rs 37,400 - Rs 67,000 of all officers from the level of Lt. Colonel to Major General, making all of them, irrespective of their years of retirement or rank, draw the same basic pension of Rs 18,700 fixed at the lowest of PB-4, and hence less than anyone retiring presently at a higher level within this PB with higher or lower rank. This anomaly also applies to the civilian employees. All past retirees would therefore stand to suffer monetary losses which will amplify with every successive CPC awards, with ever-widening disparity between present and past pensioners.

The resentment of defence forces on the ground of unequal pension is thus understandable, but there is another reason for their sensitivity to this. For armed forces, equality in service has two components, rank and length of service. Rank signifies command, control and responsibility. A soldier is attached to his rank and is allowed to retain it even after retirement. Differential pensions to soldiers retiring in the same rank with equal years of service also create social inequality between them, apart from financial inequality. Nearly 85 per cent of the armed forces personnel retire below the age of 40; this is necessary to keep our fighting forces young. Even officers retire between 52 and 54 depending on their rank, while all civilian employees retire at the age of 60. A larger service-span allows the civilians more time to rise in the hierarchy and receive higher pension. Such advantages are denied to the armed forces. Though jobs are reserved for ex-servicemen, opportunities are limited. Given the hardships and peculiarities of service conditions of the armed forces, they obviously cannot be equated with civil servants.

For the armed forces personnel, OROP is imperative. Which is why all political parties and five Prime Ministers have been in favour of it, but the demand still remains unaddressed, due primarily to bureaucratic apathy if not disinclination. Bureaucrats, who have to decide on such matters, do not stand to lose; almost every bureaucrat reaches the fixed apex scale of Rs 80,000 at which there is cent per cent equalisation of pension, whereas only the army commanders and the Vice-Chiefs of defence forces draw the apex scale. The fact that multiplicities of committees have had to address the issue is in itself a testimony to the inherent difficulties.

On the government’s side, the major impediment is, of course, financial. In 2011, the Controller General of Defence Accounts had estimated the additional annual liability on this account at Rs 3000 crore. Today it is estimated to be about Rs 8300 crore annually which may increase to Rs 10000 crore, if the impending Seventh CPC awards are factored in, taking the base year of 2011 for fixing pension, and rolling it out from January 2015. Both points have been contested by army veterans, who want a continuous ‘rolling’ adjustment of all past pensions with present values which is unrealistic. Given that 60,000 soldiers retire every year, it will be an administrative nightmare to adjust the pensions of some 30 lakh existing defence pensioners on a running basis. Instead, the government’s proposal of adjustment once every five years in place of once in every ten years for civilians appears reasonable. The financial implication is probably being exaggerated by bureaucrats and ministry mandarins.

The Central government’s total pension expenditure during 2012-13 was Rs 69,479 crore, of which defence pension was Rs 43,368 crore and civil pension Rs 26,111 crore. Both have increased almost equally during the last five years. Factoring in the likely impact of the Seventh CPC, the total pension liability may increase to Rs 88,000 crore. Compare this with the Union Government’s subsidy expenditure of Rs 257,179 crore in 2012-13, of which food subsidy was Rs 85,000 crore, fertiliser subsidy Rs 65,808 crore and petroleum subsidy Rs 96,880 crore. Given the falling price of petroleum in the global market, there is some cushion to absorb the excess expenditure of Rs 18,000 crore that OROP is likely to impose, provided the Government curtails subsidy, disinvests its PSUs and implements economic reforms with urgency. If the fiscal deficit of Rs 4.95 lakh crore in 2012-13 did not throw the economy out of gear; the additional burden imposed by OROP will not unsettle it either. The nation should not be seen haggling with veterans who have sacrificed their lives to secure our borders.
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Eleven states in India have 'special category' status. This extra-Constitutional status, introduced for the first time in 1969, was granted by the National Development Council, composed of the prime minister, Union ministers, chief ministers and members of the erstwhile Planning Commission. These 11 have hilly and difficult terrain, lowpopulation density, a sizeable share of the population as tribals, strategic location along the borders, economic and infrastructural backwardness, and a non-viable nature of state finances.

Bihar does not satisfy all the criteria. Yet, Chief MinisterNitish Kumar has been demanding the status for a while. The story is similar to "reservation", introduced constitutionally, initially for 10 years, and only forScheduled Tribes (ST) and Scheduled Castes (SC). The demand for the extension of special category status to other states is similar to the demands for the extension of reservation to groups other than SC and ST.

Special category states enjoy a number of benefits such as excise and income tax concessions, an earmarked 30 per cent of the normal central Plan assistance and 90 per cent of such assistance as grants (compared to only 30 per cent for other states). Given that 11 per cent of normal central plan assistance was allocated to Bihar during the Eleventh Plan according to the Gadgil-Mukherjee formula, it is difficult to see how Bihar can be declared to be special category without augmenting the earmarked 30 per cent of normal central Plan assistance.

At a public rally in Arrah on August 18, Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced a Rs 1.25-lakh-crore special package for Bihar for building infrastructure. Bihar badly needs such infrastructure as roads, railways, airport, refinery and power plants. Bihar Vidhan Sabha elections are due before year-end, and the opposition ascribes electoral motives behind the announcement. Leaving the politics aside, it brings the question of regional disparities in India into sharp relief.

In terms of regional disparities, India in a way is a mini-Asia, but with less accentuated differences. In Asia, in 2012, according to the Asian Development Bank (ADB), smaller countries such as Singapore, Hong Kong, Brunei Darussalam, South Korea and Taiwan had per capita gross national income between $21,620 and $54,040. These high-flyers had per capita income more than 20-50 times that of the Asian countries at the bottom of the ladder. At the bottom were Afghanistan, Nepal, Cambodia, Tajikistan and Bangladesh with per capita income between $690 and $1,010. Furthermore, economic performance of conflict-affected countries, such as Afghanistan, was poor. Though Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand and Manipur, for example, are not Afghanistan, the law and order problems in these states nevertheless appear to be taking its toll on economic performance.

In India, among all the states or Union territories, smaller ones like Goa, Delhi, Sikkim, Chandigarh and Puducherry are at the top, with per capita net state domestic product (NSDP) at factor cost at current prices between Rs 1,43,677 and Rs 2,24,138 in 2013-14, more than 1.9 times the all-India per capita net domestic product (NDP) of Rs 75,420. In the same year, Bihar, Uttar Pradesh, Manipur, Assam and Jharkhand, at the bottom of the ladder, had per capita NSDP between Rs 31,199 and Rs 46,131, less than 61 per cent of the all-India NDP.

Of course, disparities across countries can be expected to be more than across regions within a country. Within a country, generally, with free mobility across regions, people can be expected to migrate from poorer to richer areas and reduce disparities in the process. Furthermore, countries in a continent may emulate each other's policies to some extent, but unlike states within a country, do not operate under the same central policy regime. Yet, there are lessons to be learnt from the regional disparities across countries in Asia.

Since 1973, ADB has been focusing on its relatively backward member countries with the Asian Development Fund (ADF). To the poorest of ADB member countries, to "bridge the development gap", the ADF provides grants, as well as loans for 32 years with a grace period of eight years and interest of 1 per cent and 1.5 per cent during the grace and amortisation period, respectively. ADF-recipient status in Asia and special category status in India appear to be somewhat similar.

Prima facie, there is no overwhelming evidence that grant of the special category status has delivered accelerated development in these 11 states. Similarly, the relatively poorer ADF countries are growing slower than the rest in Asia and falling further behind the non-ADF countries. Seven economies - China, India, Indonesia, Japan, Republic of Korea, Thailand and Malaysia - continue to lead Asia's march to prosperity.

There are three lessons from the ADF that appear relevant for addressing regional disparities in India. First, law and order and conflict resolution constitute priority number one for growth. The extremely low project success rate in Afghanistan has been a frustrating experience for development practitioners. Peace-building and state-building are preconditions for better development outcomes. Little can be expected in a state where the government is unable to perform its basic functions effectively.

Second, interventions for promoting regional integration often provide very high returns. A case in point is the Greater Mekong Subregion (GMS) Cooperation Program. Increasing connectivity through physical infrastructure and the transforming of transport corridors into economic corridors across borders; and improving competitiveness through efficient facilitation of cross-border movement of people and goods and the integration of markets, production processes, and value chains provide rich returns for poor countries. Lao PDR and Cambodia in GMS are good examples. It appears that often moving people to jobs in a planned way is easier than moving jobs to people.

Third, successful implementation requires the local authority's buy-in into policies and ownership of projects. Throwing money without a home-grown conviction about the need, for example, for a road, school or hospital, does not deliver the appropriate outcomes. There is need to help the relatively backward states or countries, but only in the appropriate way.

Number of trees halved to 3 trillion in the world

There are just 3.04 trillion trees in the world, data from the first spatially continuous map of forest tree density suggests. The estimate of the ratio of trees per person is 422:1.

Though 3.04 trillion trees is an “order of magnitude higher” than previous estimate, the number of trees cut down each year is a staggering 15.3 billion and the global forest cover loss is approximately 192,000 sq. km per year. As a result, the global number of trees has reduced by as much as 46 per cent since the start of human civilisation. These are some of the results of a study published today in the journalNature.

As per the study, a tree is defined as a “plant with woody stems larger than 10 cm diameter at breast height.”

Of the 3.04 trillion trees in the world, the tropical and subtropical forests have the highest number of trees at approximately 1.39 trillion (nearly 43 per cent), followed by boreal regions (0.74 trillion trees accounting for 24.2 per cent) and finally the temperate regions at 0.61 trillion trees (21.8 per cent). While the tropical forests have the highest number of trees, they have also witnessed the highest rate of tree loss.

Though the tropical forests have the highest number of trees, the tree density is highest in the forested regions of the Boreal and Tundra regions, the study notes. In the northern latitudes the deficient moisture and low temperatures allow only the stress-tolerant coniferous tree species to establish. The coniferous tree species, by default, reach highest densities.

Till date, scientists have relied on satellite images to provide estimates of global forest area. As a result, it was not possible to know the number of trees. For this study, T. W. Crowther, the first author from Yale University, Connecticut, U.S. and others used nearly 4,30,000 ground-sourced measurements of tree density from all the continents except Antarctica to generate a global map of forest trees.

Forested areas were found even in regions that are generally regarded as being bereft of them — deserts, tundra and grasslands.

Though warmth and water availability led to an increase in tree density, a negative relationship was found in many regions. For instance, in the case of flooded grasslands and tropical dry forests, the benefits of water availability did not result in increased tree density. This was because the forested land was put to agricultural use.

“The negative relationships between tree density and anthropogenic land use exemplify how humans contend directly with natural forest ecosystems for space,” they write. “Although the rates of forest loss are currently highest in tropical regions, the scale and consistency of this effect across all forested ecosystems highlight how historical land-use decisions have shaped natural ecosystems on a global scale.”

A dense forest greatly influences a vast array of biotic and abiotic processes, and the current data helps in providing insights into ecological dynamics. The data is also critical in guiding local, national and global reforestation/afforestation measures.

Chasing black money, with UN help

Provisions in the UN Convention Against Corruption can help immensely in the recovery of black money. The convention should be of great value to countries where natural wealth has been plundered and whose governments need these resources to reconstruct their societies

The promise made by the Bharatiya Janata Party-led National Democratic Alliance in the run-up to the general election in 2014, that if it won it would bring back all Indian black money, estimated in billions of dollars and stashed in foreign banks, has remained unfulfilled. The explanation is that the matter is complicated and embroiled in the domestic laws of several countries.

After the party and the coalition won, the move to create a special investigative team of former judges and current regulators to find the concealed assets, estimated to be as much as $2 trillion, and the revelation of some names of Indian offenders have not led to much. Neither the details of the efforts made nor the responses of the countries concerned are in the public domain. The names, which have been revealed in bits and pieces, are mostly of relatively unknown people, who in turn have denied that their money is black. The reason for this impasse is that the holding countries are extremely reluctant to part with black money and they have used every conceivable argument to block its release. Even the countries requesting for information should share a part of the blame because they have not been transparent in their efforts for political reasons.

A convention of value

All this reminds me of the tough negotiations on the subject in Vienna, Austria, in 2003 as a vital part of the United Nations Convention Against Corruption (UNCAC), and which were very revealing. The outcome was not very satisfactory from the point of view of the countries, mostly the developing ones, which had sought a framework to locate and return these assets to their legitimate owners. But there exists a body of provisions in the convention, extracted through hard negotiations, which can be applied to recover black money. If implemented in good faith, the convention should be of immense value to countries where corrupt high officials have plundered natural wealth, and where new governments badly need these resources to reconstruct and rehabilitate their societies. The then Secretary General of the UN, Kofi A. Annan, expressed the hope that “it makes a major breakthrough by requiring Member States to return assets obtained through corruption to the country from which they were stolen.”

The rich countries hit upon the idea of UNCAC to castigate the developing countries for misusing aid money through corrupt practices. [UNCAC complements another instrument, the United Nations Convention against Transnational Organized Crime, and introduces a comprehensive set of standards, measures and rules that all countries can apply in order to strengthen their legal and regulatory regimes to fight corruption.] They wanted to introduce conditionalities of good governance to block aid to certain countries and to limit aid to others. In a strong reaction, the issue of black money being held by certain developed countries was brought in to show that the keepers of black money were as guilty as those who had deposited it abroad. When a debate on the issue became inevitable, Austria, for instance, sought to chair the related working group on assets held abroad and this was conceded. But the working group made no progress as Austria and Switzerland stuck to the position that their internal laws were supreme. Finally, India, as the Chairman of the Preparatory Committee, was asked to chair the group and a breakthrough was achieved after days of tough negotiations.

Principle of asset recovery

As the chairman of the working group, I was confronted with the issue of reconciling the legitimate interests of the countries (which demanded the return of their assets illegally amassed abroad by their citizens) with the legal and procedural safeguards of the countries that had a vested interest in retaining the assets in their banks. While the first group of countries clearly argued that the assets should be returned as soon as their ownership was established, the second group of countries had concerns about protecting the rights of the depositors and the assurances of secrecy given.

The first breakthrough came when the group established asset recovery as a “fundamental principle” of the convention. Then it was only a matter of laying a framework, in both civil and criminal law, for tracing, freezing, forfeiting and returning funds obtained through corrupt activities. The provisions finally accepted were for supporting the efforts of the countries to recover the assets and for sending out a message to corrupt officials that they would not have a safe haven where they could stash away the fruits of their corrupt practices.

What the convention accomplished — and the credit for this goes to both sides — was that legal obstacles should be tackled with international cooperation rather than by domestic laws. Though the two sides took extreme positions initially, the need for compromise and cooperation became clear in the spirit of the whole convention, which was designed to end corruption around the globe. Both sides realised, as we plodded on, that without the clauses on assets recovery, the entire convention would fall.

An important sticking point was the insistence of the assets holding countries that it was not enough for the countries making claims to establish that the assets belonged to them. They had to establish also that the assets were illegally obtained before they were transferred to a foreign country. These countries said that it would be difficult to obtain ironclad evidence to prove this because of the very nature of the accretion of assets by people in power. For instance, most of them were dictators who did not leave any trace of evidence of the methods they had used. The eventual compromise was that the assets could be transferred back if the receiving country was the legitimate owner of property acquired through or involved in the commission of offences established in accordance with the convention.

Some of the relevant provisions of the convention are crucial to the question of recovery of assets. It provides that each state party shall take such measures as may be necessary to permit its competent authorities to give effect to an order of confiscation issued by a court of another state party. It also provides for the provisional freezing or seizing of property where there are sufficient grounds for taking such actions in advance of a formal request being received.

The countries that hold assets have been given special responsibilities such as enhanced scrutiny of accounts deposited by those entrusted with prominent public functions to detect suspicious transactions. They are also required to share information with the competent authorities of another state, when necessary, to investigate, claim and recover proceeds of offences.

The UN, through its Office on Drugs and Crime, which leads the fight against illicit drugs and international crime, has been given the responsibility to implement the convention, particularly its assets recovery provisions. But how effective UN assistance is in legal battles in which the holding countries have a vested interest is uncertain. The negotiations showed that they would not part with these assets easily and that they would fight tooth and nail legally before any assets were returned.

Many legal treatises have been written on the provisions of the convention, but the convention was made possible by a political compromise wherein the developed countries obtained a strong convention against corruption in return for conceding that illegally obtained wealth deposited abroad would be returned to its legal owners. In fact, many developing countries signed and ratified UNCAC because of its assets recovery provisions.

Refining India’s approach

In the case of India, difficulties may have arisen not in establishing that the sums amassed abroad belong to India, but in proving that the assets were illegally obtained. Our authorities may do well to use the records of the debate in Vienna to prove the strength of the argument by many countries that proof of illegality of acquisition should not be insisted upon. Strictly speaking, this had no relevance to the issue of the return of assets as long as it was evident that they belonged to the countries claiming them. This condition was accepted only because of the insistence that banking regulations in many countries would not permit the return of assets without this.

The actual recovery since the adoption of the convention has fallen far short of expectations. Only $276.3 million of assets were recovered in 2006-2009 and $147.2 million in 2010-2012 as against the estimated $20 billion to $40 billion stolen every year. In view of this, the parties to the convention have set up a working group to assist in the implementation of the assets recovery provisions of the convention. A working paper prepared for its next meeting in early September this year has listed a large number of legal issues, which need to be addressed. These include the domestic management and disposal of seized and confiscated assets and the management of the return and disposal of assets recovered in the context of international corruption cases. These are the same issues which remained ambivalent at the time of the negotiations.

But the unspoken truth is that the countries making the requests are not inclined to expose the depositors by revealing the modalities of corrupt practices and the countries that have been requested have a vested interest in not returning the assets to their rightful owners. A disconnect persists between national commitments and the actual behaviour of countries at the international level.

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Panagariya for law reform by executive measures

Chief Ministers from Opposition parties must also want development-friendly reforms to win their elections’.

Reforms to some important laws such as the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act are feasible through executive action, NITI Aayog Vice-Chairman Arvind Panagariya told The Hindu in an exclusive interview.

He was responding to a question on possible reforms aimed at achievinga double-digit GDP growth rate the government could undertake if continuing disruptions in Parliament impeded its legislative agenda. “A variety of avenues to reforms exist,” Dr. Panagariya said.

One way to make land acquisition less time-consuming, forinstance, was for the States to adopt the Tamil Nadu government’s strategy. Since land was on the Concurrent List, Tamil Nadu inserted a Statespecific schedule, Fifth Schedule, into the 2013 Act. The State legislation listed in this schedule is exempt from the Act.

Edited Excerpts:

If the Union government dilutes the provisions of its land acquisition Bill, and with the ordinance on it having lapsed, industry is likely to feel let down. What would be your recommendation to the government and the States on the way forward?

The issue is not industry being let down, but setback to job creation and poverty alleviation. Rapid growth during the 2000s has given rise to an aspirational India. Many among the poor, including marginal farmers and landless agricultural workers, now seek superior economic opportunities. Job creation at decent wages for these groups requires rapid growth in not just agriculture but also industry and services. The 2013 Act undermines such growth.

One way to make land acquisition less time-consuming is for the States to proceed with their own amendments to the 2013 Act under Section 254(2) of the Constitution. Tamil Nadu has already done this; its amended law has been in force since January 5, 2015. The amendment inserts a State-specific schedule, Fifth Schedule, into the 2013 Act as it applies to Tamil Nadu. State legislation listed in this schedule is exempt from the Act. Other States could follow the Tamil Nadu path or adopt an alternative amendment along the lines of the Central Ordinance with good prospects for Central approval.

What should be a pro-reforms government’s strategy in the face of disruptions in Parliament? Are non-legislative decisions an option that can deliver more than incremental results, especially for achieving double-digit growth rates?

A variety of avenues to reforms exist. First, with rare exceptions, parties would ultimately come together to pass legislation critical to national interest. Politics may reinforce the good intentions since Chief Ministers from Opposition parties must also want development-friendly reforms so as to win their elections. Second, in cases such as the GST [Goods & Services Tax], perceptions and interests of States differ, making consensus more difficult. But progress can still be made through compromises. Third, there are subjects such as land leasing and marketing of agricultural produce on which State Assemblies can pass legislation on their own. Fourth, subjects such as land acquisition and labour laws are on the Concurrent List, where the States can amend the laws as long as the Central government approves them. Finally, reforms to some important laws such as the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act are feasible through executive action.

How is the NITI Aayog developing as an organisation and moving away from the Planning Commission way of doing things? What changes are this bringing about on the ground?

At the outset, let me say the Planning Commission as we remember it was a 64-year-old organisation while we are barely seven months old. So we are still in our infancy and must go through our share of teething pain. This being said, within the short period of our existence, we have made considerable progress along multiple dimensions.

We are on the last lap of completing the draft of the mid-term appraisal of the 12th Plan. This is a large-scale exercise. We are at a similar stage in completing the drafts of two task forces, one on poverty elimination and the other on agricultural development. Three sub-groups of Chief Ministers on Centrally sponsored schemes, Swachch Bharat, and skill development would soon wind up their reports. An expert committee on innovation and entrepreneurship will shortly be submitting its report to guide our work on AIM and SETU [Atal innovation Mission and Self-employment Talent Utilisation]. Work on the National Energy Policy, electronics industry and harmonisation of regulatory policies across different infrastructure sectors is moving apace. We have launched a new website as also a very exciting web utility called Indian Energy Security Scenarios (IESS) 2047 Version 2.0.

A key initiative of Prime Minister Modi is cooperative, competitive federalism. Accordingly, we are working with the States both proactively and in response to requests from them. We have suggested to the States reforms such as repeal of myriad redundant state laws; streamlining laws and associated rules and regulations; modernising land leasing laws; and updating and digitising land records. We have also kicked off a major study aimed at assessing the ease of doing business in different States as perceived by enterprises.

We are also in the process of restructuring the institution. One aspect of this exercise has involved the movement of extra staff from the NITI Aayog to other parts of the government and is nearly complete. The other aspect, building the NITI Aayog into a think tank, is a more daunting task. It requires bringing new talent into the institution. Spotting and recruiting this talent within the existing rules and regulations of the government has its challenges.

Remember that we still have only two Members — an economist and a scientist — compared with eight in the Planning Commission at the time the Prime Minister announced its closure.

What is your view on the whether India should give up on insisting that rich countries should pay for climate change mitigation and instead share some of the burden? If it is ok to ask for reparations for past colonial crimes, surely paying for past carbon sins is also ok? What would be your advice for India’s stance in Paris?

Let me first mention our contribution to cutting carbon emissions: we heavily tax petrol, diesel and coal; we have successfully expanded our forest cover and continue to do so despite land shortage; we have invested heavily in public transportation; and we are committed to an ambitious renewable energy programme. Add to this the fact that our lifestyle is far less energy-intensive than most other countries.

The next point is that we have made these efforts notwithstanding the fact that we are a low fourth emitter in terms of total emissions. On the basis of 2012 data, our carbon emissions are just one-fifth of the largest emitter, China, and one-third of the second-largest emitter, the United States. In per-capita terms, our emissions are tiny and we do not even appear on the top one hundred list.

Coming to your main question, morally and intellectually, there is something very wrong with the argument that developed countries, which have been historically the largest emitters, should not only be exempt from having to pay for the past damage but also be rewarded for it by being allowed a larger share of the carbon space instead of having to share it equally with the rest of the humanity.

Quite apart from the moral case, there is ample legal precedence within the United States domestic laws for compensation for the damage caused by past actions even when the connection between the actions and the damage was not known at the time the actions were taken, as illustrated by the United States Superfund Act of 1980. So, in my personal view, while we must make every possible contribution to the greening of the planet, especially when these contributions are also consistent with our national objectives, there is no reason to shy away from seeking greater carbon space to facilitate our growth and development or from seeking redress for the past damage in the form of finance for, say, adaptation, mitigation and access to patented green technologies.

(Arvind Panagariya is a Columbia economist and NITI Aayog Vice-Chairman, who is also one of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s key advisers on policy matters).

Risky portents in Manipur

The crisis in Manipur stems from the demand to stop ‘outsiders’ from buying land in the State, in a context where the local population, predominantly the Meiteis, harbours fears of being marginalised. The valley constitutes only 10 per cent of the State’s geographical area and Meiteis constitute about 50 per cent of the population there. The long-standing demand has been to introduce a system similar to the Inner Line Permit (ILP) in other northeastern States, or some similar stipulation, to stop in-migration. But for this to be effective, the State needs to identify the ‘outsiders’ first. But that is a complex issue anywhere in the northeastern region as the borders are largely porous and the Government of India has not done enough to check the passage of people across them. One reason this was not done was to protect the state’s own interest: for a long time now, a section of the immigrants have been engaged to counter local insurgent groups. But as the demand for an ILP escalated, a cut-off year of 1951 was determined in the new Bills passed on Monday in order to identify outsiders. However, one of them, the Protection of Manipur People’s Bill, and two amendments, have been opposed by the tribal organisations, which claim control of the Manipur Hill districts. These are chiefly groups of Kukis, Mizos and Chins. They feel insecure as many of them who came to Manipur after 1951 or whose lineage may not meet the list of criteria set out in the Bills, could now be legally identified as ‘outsiders.’ Many of them also believe a rumour that the two amendments would be valid in the Manipur Hills districts, which is untrue.

The issues might not have escalated had the State government consulted the Hill Areas Committee before passing the Bills in order to clear any misunderstanding. Neither the organisation that had led the pro-ILP movement nor any of the tribal organisations was approached for any kind of dialogue. The pro-ILP movement was mostly confined to the Valley districts, while the people in the Hills isolated themselves, assuming and arguing that they were protected from outsiders under existing laws. As the tensions grew in the absence of dialogue, political groups added fuel to the fire to try and topple the Congress-led government and invite President’s Rule. Hence, it is not any genuine fear of becoming marginalised but realpolitik that is playing out in the hills of Manipur. But from any perspective, this is a dangerous portent for all the northeastern States. The Centre and the State need to come forward quickly to engage the people and figure out a solution to the crisis in order that it won’t go out of control.

The case against death penalty

The Law Commission of India has taken a historic step by declaring that the abolition of the death penalty must become a goal for India. It has recommended, for a start, the scrapping of the death penalty for all crimes except terrorism-related offences and those that amount to waging war against the state. The Commission’s report on the death penalty declares deterrence to be a myth, based on extensive research. It makes a clean break with the ‘rarest of the rare’ principle that was laid down inBachan Singh vs State of Punjab (1980): that judgment noted that the application of the death penalty would remain arbitrary and judge-centric and hence would be constitutionally unsustainable. It has attempted to raise the level of discourse on the death penalty by observing that opposition to it amounts to objecting to the taking of lives, and not to all punishment as a concept. Retributive justice is important, it notes, but it must not descend to the level of vengeance, as numerous Supreme Court decisions that refer to “the conscience of the people” seem to indicate. It has sought a return to the notions of restorative and reformative justice, and urged a change in tenor, in such a manner that victims are not made to think that the death penalty is the only, best or ultimate form of punishment. Most crucially, it has placed the death penalty in the context of India’s flawed criminal justice system, noting that even safeguards such as the right to appeal and mercy petitions do not provide foolproof protection from miscarriage of justice, given the uneven and error-prone application of relief.

But the Commission has not gone far enough. By creating an artificial distinction between terror cases and others despite admitting that there is no penological justification for doing so, it has created an unfair hierarchy of crime and justice. It notes the death penalty is no deterrent for even a terrorist. Some of the most egregious instances of miscarriage of justice that it cites as an indictment of India’s criminal justice system relate to terrorism-related cases; the 2002 Akshardham temple attack case, for instance, in which the death penalty was imposed by the trial court and confirmed by the High Court, was based on what the Supreme Court later ruled was wholly fabricated evidence. The concerns such instances raise about the death penalty disproportionately affecting the poor and marginalised are more sharply in evidence in terrorism cases — 93.5 per cent of those on death row in terrorism cases are Dalits or those from the religious minorities. By holding itself back from recommending a total abolition, the Commission has put the ball in Parliament’s court. The government and the principal opposition are unlikely to support such an abolition at this point. It can only be hoped Parliament will complete the good work the Law Commission has begun.