A flawed rescue act

A flawed rescue act
The banking regulation ordinance puts its seal of approval on corporate subsidy at the cost of public banks

The buck stops with the Reserve Bank of India (RBI)! This is the crux of the Banking Regulation (Amendment) Ordinance of May 4, 2017, which empowers the RBI to take decisions on the settlement of non-performing assets (NPAs) and a consequent cleaning up of bank balance sheets.

With this direct intervention in the decision-making domain of banks, the RBI is now rewriting the script for the Indian banking system. Surprisingly, despite the severity of the NPAs crises, the business of banking is very much in demand. The RBI recently granted bank licences to 23 applicants which included Aditya Birla Nuvo, Reliance Industries, Tech Mahindra and Vodafone M-pesa and Airtel. These corporates need to invest ₹100 crore each to gain entry into the banking sector. Ironically, the RBI has assigned public sector banks the role of lambs awaiting sacrifice at the altar of development and financial sector reform.

Banks in India are in possession of ₹6,11,607 crore worth of NPAs as of March 31, 2016. According to a recent Credit Suisse estimate, there could be a default on 16-17% of total bank loans by March 31, 2018. The current food and non-food credit stands at approximately ₹75,00,000 crore. This would translate to about ₹12 lakh crore of NPAs. This is equivalent to approximately 75% of the demonetised (₹500 and ₹1,000 notes) currency in the entire Indian economy during November-December 2016. The ordinance correctly acknowledges the unacceptably high level of stressed assets in the banking system. Indeed, banks are sitting on a huge pile of scrap.

Corporate borrowers

Most of these bad loans are the result of largesse by public sector banks to large corporate groups, given without any consideration to the principles of sound lending. Hence, the resultant inability of the banks to recover either interest or the principal sum lent.

In India, corporates rely on banks as the main source for funds. The February 2017 International Monetary Fund (IMF) report states that 65.7% of Indian corporate debt as of March 31, 2016 is funded by banks. The December 2016 Financial Stability Report states that large borrowers account for 56% of bank debt and 88% of their NPAs. A recent Credit Suisse report highlights the inability of top Indian corporates to make timely interest payments by stating that about 40% of debt lies with companies with an interest coverage ratio of less than 1. The 2017 IMF report also states that about half of the over all debt is owed by firms who are already highly indebted (debt-equity ratio more than 150%). These borrowers are simply not earning enough to meet their interest commitments.

The Reserve Bank cannot feign ignorance of or express surprise at the crises facing the banks. As stated in the August 2016 Financial Sector Assessment Program (FSAP) report: “The Reserve Bank is aware that group borrower limit in India is higher than international norms. However, it also needs to be recognized that some of the major corporate groups are key drivers of growth of the Indian economy. As the corporate bond market is not yet matured in India, bank financing is crucial for such corporate groups”.Thus, granting loans to corporates that lacked capital as well as expertise (in sectors that were once the sole preserve of the government) was obviously a decision made at the behest of the RBI and the government with little regard to the best interest of the bank. Being a corporate entity itself, the bank should have aimed at maximising the wealth of its equity shareholders and customer-depositors whose money the bank lends.

Corporate borrowers are a privileged lot whose loans are not backed by sufficient value of security. A glance at the share prices of borrower companies is a useful exercise.

How much less?

A resolution implies settling for less but the dilemma for the banker is ‘how much less’. “Haircut” is the seemingly benign term for a waiver of a part of the loan without inviting criticism of poor financial discipline! Herein lies the reason for the difficulty of closure on resolution. The ordinance puts its seal of approval on corporate subsidy at the cost of survival of public sector banks.

If the writing off of ₹36,359 crore worth of agricultural loans in Uttar Pradesh was bad economics, then the resolution of corporate NPAs is much worse. The former can still find justification as a welfare measure that benefits 21 million small farmers but there can be no justification for rewarding the top 30 corporate groups for their poor business acumen.

The 2017 Economic Survey rightly referred to NPAs as the festering twin balance sheet problem. It is eerie that while banks are being coerced into resolution and imminent insolvency, bailouts from State governments and public sector undertakings are being considered to fix corporate balance sheets. It appears to be designed to send public sector banks into autoimmune, self-destruct mode.

It was for the sake of development that the RBI encouraged banks to lend to corporates. Now, for the same reason, resolution is being thrust on banks. Ostensibly, the RBI is ensuring financial stability in the banking sector. But who are these beneficiaries of financial stability? Is it the majority equity shareholder, the government (using taxpayer money) whose worth is going to be wiped out? Is it the customer whose money is lent by the bank? Is it the elite corporate borrower who passes his losses to the banking system? Or is it the new bank waiting for the collapse, ready to acquire a readymade set of customers and good assets? Will the ghost of Lady Macbeth come to haunt the RBI and the government?

Say no to GM mustard

Say no to GM mustard

There are formidable social, economic and environmental reasons why it should not be cultivated

The manner in which the Genetic Engineering Appraisal Committee (GEAC) recently cleared the proposal for genetically modified (GM) mustard is extraordinary to say the least. It makes a mockery of the commitment in the Bharatiya Janata Party manifesto that “GM foods will not be allowed without full scientific evaluation on the long term effects on soil, production and biological impact on consumers”. The Prime Minister had delighted consumers by lending his weight to the promotion of organic food. On the other hand, GM and organic are completely incompatible.

The alluring promises of higher yield and lower pesticide usage which induced many, including myself as Textile Secretary to the Government of India in the 1990s, to welcome Bt cotton have now been belied. Despite increased fertilisers and irrigation, the expectations of enhanced cotton yield have not been realised. Most of the countries that have higher cotton yields than India do not grow GM cotton. The package of promises sold to us did not reveal all of this. If I had an inkling of the future at that time, Bt cotton would not have been introduced in India.

Yields as a touchstone

We would now be foolish in accepting the yield promises of the GM variety of mustard, a crop which is an integral part of every Indian’s food. Ab initio the yield claims on which GM mustard has been cleared are not even remotely reliable — being based on comparisons with 30-year-old cultivars, and not on more recent high-yielding hybrids. The highest yields in mustard are from the five countries which do not grow GM mustard — U.K., France, Poland, Germany and Czech Republic — and not from the GM-growing U.S. or Canada (see graph based on FAO data). If India is desirous to increase its mustard yield rapidly and safely, this can be done by adopting the practice of System of Mustard Intensification, for which successful trials have been done in Bihar through a World Bank project. Results showed higher yields and better income. All this without the spraying of any toxic herbicides, which is the undisclosed story of GM mustard.

GM mustard’s yield increase claims have been successfully challenged now, prompting the crop developers and regulators to retract on that front — it is another matter that many reports continue to claim that GM mustard will increase yields.

Gaps in evaluation

There have been numerous severe deficiencies in the evaluation process of GM mustard. The risks to health, environment and agriculture have not been evaluated even through those inadequate tests which were conducted at the time of Bt brinjal examination, though mustard is far more extensively grown and consumed than brinjal.

HT (herbicide tolerant) GM crops have been condemned by a number of medical professionals and other scientists for increasing chemical herbicide use, leading to serious health conditions — at all stages, but most worryingly at the foetal stage. A scientific report from Argentina found a fourfold increase in birth defects and a threefold increase in childhood cancers in HT soya areas. Shockingly, the GEAC has conveniently omitted to have any herbicide-related studies. A small committee was constituted to “examine” the safety dossier — the tests that were done and the deliberations of GEAC were shrouded in secrecy. After a scathing order from the Central Information Commission, the GEAC made a sham of public consultations, through an opaque and perfunctory eyewash process.

The U.S. is a prime example of a country which has galloped into the GM mode of agriculture. Studies have shown a strong correlation between growth of GM crops, the herbicides they promote, and diseases such as acute kidney injury, diabetes, autism, Alzheimer’s and cancers in the past 20 years in the U.S. Seventeen of the 20 most developed countries — including Japan, Russia, Israel and most of Europe — refuse to grow GM crops. An unacceptable marketing trick, that of promotion of a “swadeshi” GM, is being used to break down resistance to GM crops in India’s vast market, ignoring that safety concerns are the same — swadeshi GM or not.

Losses and pernicious effects

The GEAC had itself rejected a similar HT GM mustard proposal by Bayer in 2002. The same reasons apply now. A herbicide-tolerant crop promotes constant exposure to a single herbicide — which eventually results in weeds becoming resistant. Over 20 species of weeds in the U.S. are now resistant to Monsanto’s glyphosate-based herbicide. As desperate farmers tried to control these “superweeds”, there was a tenfold increase in use of glyphosate in 16 years.

Glyphosate has been declared to be a “probable human carcinogen” by the World Health Organisation. The glufosinate-based herbicide to which the proposed GM mustard is tolerant will also have adverse impacts on health.

If GM mustard is now introduced, who will lose? Every Indian who consumes mustard in any form, as s/he will also consume the herbicide residues on it; the millions of poor women who depend on weeding to support their family who will be displaced; the bee keepers whose honey will be contaminated; farmers whose yields will fall eventually as bees die out; and the Indian nation, which will find that it has lost its seed diversity and the international competitive advantage of its non-GM mustard and honey.

A recent report, not by activists but by the United Nation’s Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food, sums up the end game when it says: “Recent mergers have resulted in just three powerful corporations: Monsanto and Bayer, Dow and Dupont, and Syngenta and ChemChina. They control more than 65 per cent of global pesticide sales. Serious conflicts of interest issues arise, as they also control almost 61 per cent of commercial seed sales. The pesticide industry’s efforts to influence policymakers and regulators have obstructed reforms and paralysed global pesticide restrictions globally.” Their business model ensures that no matter who produces a GM seed, they profit.

The main advantage trotted out in favour of GM mustard is increased yield — there is sufficient evidence that this claim is a myth. As against this alleged advantage, there are formidable social, economic and environmental reasons which cry out against GM mustard — examination of these has been hardly done by the GEAC. As the PR agencies work overtime to push for GM mustard, one can only hope that the Environment Minister, the Prime Minister and the Supreme Court will act in concert to protect Indian consumers, and farmers from the potentially irreversible destruction of an important Indian crop.

National Conference of Micro Missions

National Conference of Micro Missions of National Police Mission being organised by the BPR&D Conduct survey of States and Districts on Policing index: 

Shri Amitabh Kant, Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of NITI Aayog (National Institution for Transforming India), has advocated conducting a survey on the status of Policing in various States. Inaugurating the 1st National Conference of Micro Missions of National Police Mission (NPM) here today, Shri Kant said the Bureau of Police Research & Development (BPR&D) should come out with the survey of State Police, including at district-level, based on various parameters including outcomes, to bring about change in policing. Stating that economic development and internal security have a symbiotic relationship, he said the police will also have to act as an instrument of social change.

Laying out a survey of districts based on four development indices, - Health, Eductaion, Poverty & Roads, Shri Kant pointed out it is apparent that the districts lowest in the combined index are concentrated in the Northern and Eastern parts of the country. These very 100 districts lowest on the development index pose the gravest challenges to security and law and order, he added.

Shri Kant said as India aims to accelerate the growth rate from the present 7.6% annually to 9-10% for the next three decades or more, it will be marked by a demographic profile consisting of a majority 72% youth population and witness a huge amount of urbanization. For the economy to pick pace India will also have to take the share of womens contribution to GDP from the present 17% to 40% share in the developed world economies, he added.

Shri Kant also deliberated on Out of Box Ideas to reform the current policing framework in the country. He gave various examples to state the heightened competitiveness being demonstrated by various State Governments in terms of Ease of doing business. He further laid stress on adoption of similar competitive spree amongst different Departments of the Government including the Police.

He also emphasized on areas which could revolutionize the current police functioning across India. These included:

Improve Citizen-police interface

Improve the condition of Police Stations

Improve judicial system

Improve rate of conviction

Provide healing touch to victims

Ensure extensive & pragmatic use of technology

Shri Kant gave references of international police departments to exemplify emphatic use of technology in crime investigation and prevention. Prudent use of Social Media & Data Analytics can help in gathering information, tracing suspects and identifying crime trends, he added. Shri Kant also unveiled the National Police Missions Compendium on Projects, which shares insights on various Micro Mission Projects being carried out under the aegis of NPM.

Speaking on the occasion, Dr. M. C. Borwankar, DG, BPR&D, said the eight Micro Missions under the NPM have been redesigned to include at least 25% young Officers of the level of Superintendents of Police. Shri Parvez Hayat, ADG, BPR&D also graced the occasion. Dr. Nirmal Kumar Azad, IG, Director, NPM is the Conference Secretary.

The two-day Conference is being organised by the Bureau of Police Research & Development (BPR&D), under the Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA). The Conference aims to review, share learnings and trace the journey of NPM ever since its inception in 2008. It witnesses participation of representations of all eight Micro Missions. Nobel Laureate Shri Kailash Satyarthi will grace the Valedictory function tomorrow. 

Biodiversity. But what is it?

Biodiversity is one of the less well-described aspects of environmental change when it comes to metrics for guiding, enforcing and refining efforts to sustain it

International Biological Diversity Day fell on 22 May in the UN calendar of commemorative days. This decade—until 2020—is the Decade on Biodiversity by the same measure.

Biodiversity is a good thing to call attention to. It helps regulate climate, air, soil, hydrology and other parts of our context that we’d like to keep within habitable ranges. It provides food, fuel, and shelter and maintains the ongoing supply of such material goods. The diversity within the genetic “portfolio” of the plants and animals around us is an important source of insurance against the stress of accelerating environmental change. Biodiversity contributes to inspiration, mental health and stress reduction. Pretty much all of the good things in life trace back to biodiversity “ecosystem services” one way or another.

But we need to do more than admire and commemorate it. We need to start measuring biodiversity and its evolution more effectively: comprehensively enough to inform local politics, decision-making, and trade-offs; and comparably enough for enforcing international treaties and targets.

Biodiversity conservation is a cause that people can get behind. Changes in the composition and range of animal, plant and other species are some of the most widely recognized aspects of environmental disruption.

Studies from the Himalayas to the Peruvian altiplano find that alterations in plant and animal patterns are one of the first forms of environmental change that people in rural areas notice. For those of us in the more insulated urban world, the general threat to biodiversity is visible in mainstream media. The perils of letting bees go extinct, for example, have shown up on blogs with titles like “Why Bee Extinction Would Mean The End Of Humanity”. TV shows, school curricula, magazines, and best-selling non-fiction have helped convey findings about species loss from academic science to a wide audience.

The economically damaging and uncomfortable effects of biodiversity loss are visible on political and corporate time-scales. These are not invisible emissions or ephemeral changes in temperature here and there. Biodiversity is more like air quality—there is potential for constructive politics.

We also have an international infrastructure for maintaining biodiversity. The Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD), a legally binding treaty to conserve biodiversity has been in force since 1993. Nearly all countries have ratified it (notably, the US has signed but not ratified).

But we need to be more precise about biodiversity in order to make the most of these institutions. Biodiversity is one of the less well-described aspects of environmental change when it comes to metrics for guiding, enforcing, and refining regional and global efforts to sustain biodiversity. “National biodiversity monitoring programmes differ widely, most data sets are inconsistent, and few data are shared openly,” write A. Skidmore and colleagues in a 2015 comment paper in Nature. National submissions to the CBD are often incomplete: containing information on animals and plants but missing fungi, for example. There are no doubt many reasons that we missed the 2010 CBD targets for halting biodiversity and seem poised to miss the 2020 targets but R. Hill and co-authors identify “delayed feedback and insufficient information flows” as significant factors in a 2015 Global Environmental Change article.

Biodiversity has various dimensions: the number of species represented, the heterogeneity of the species, and the “evenness” with which different species are represented (more concentrated populations with many members of one species and few of another are less “diverse” than ones with less concentration, even if the overall species counts match).

The first, the crudest, is the most commonly available metric. The second and third dimensions, however, are probably the most important for understanding the sustainability of the non-human communities around us. L. Santini and colleagues point out another challenge in their 2016 paper in Biological Conservation: commonly used summary indices for biodiversity offer incommensurate and sometimes inconsistent messages about changes in biodiversity over time. We are flying blind and cross-eyed.

Traditionally structured international efforts to measure biodiversity are moving slowly. The Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) of the UN has long recognized the value of biodiversity for food security, but the first report on The State Of The World’s Biodiversity For Food And Agriculture, will only be coming out later this year. The Intergovernmental Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services , established in 2012 in the hopes of producing a biodiversity equivalent of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change series, had to cut its 2018 budget by a third and postpone three reports after donations from the 126-member nations failed to keep pace with the work programme. Scientific publications on new species have increased since the Global Taxonomy Initiative was initiated in 1998 as part of the CBD, but M. Costello and co-authors in a 2013 Nature article estimate that just 1.5 million of the 5+/- 3 million species on the planet have been named.

New forms of international scientific collaboration, information technology-fuelled citizen science, advances in remote sensing as well as free dissemination of some publicly funded datasets, and a rise in private philanthropic interest are picking up some of the slack. But will these be too little, too late?

3rd interview transcript of ukpcs 2012 exam (interview question of ukpcs) by samveg ias

NASA names new space bacteria after APJ Abdul Kalam

NASA researchers discovered a new bacteria on the filters of the International Space Station and named it Solibacillus kalamii to honour the late president

In a great news for India, scientists at National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) have named a new organism discovered by them after the much-loved A.P.J. Abdul Kalam.

Till date, the new organism—a form of a bacteria—has been found only on the International Space Station (ISS) and has not been found on earth!

Researchers at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), the foremost lab of NASA for work on inter-planetary travel, discovered the new bacteria on the filters of the International Space Station (ISS) and named it Solibacillus kalamii to honour the late president, who was a renowned aerospace scientist.

Kalam had his early training at NASA in 1963 before he set up India’s first rocket-launching facility in the fishing village of Thumba in Kerala. “The name of the bacterium is Solibacillus kalamii, the species name is after Dr Abdul Kalam and genus name is Solibacillus which is a spore forming bacteria,” said Dr Kasthuri Venkateswaran, senior research scientist, Biotechnology and Planetary Protection Group at JPL.

The filter on which the new bug was found remained on board the ISS for 40 months. Called a high-efficiency particulate arrestance filter or HEPA filter, this part is the routine housekeeping and cleaning system on board the international space station.

This filter was later analysed at JPL and only this year did Venkateswaran publish his discovery in the International Journal of Systematic and Evolutionary Microbiology. According to Venkateswaran, even as it orbits the earth some 400 kilometres above, the ISS is home to many types of bacteria and fungi which co-inhabit the station with the astronauts who live and work on the station.

Venkateswaran said even though Solibacillus kalamii has never been found on earth till date, it is really not an extra-terrestrial life form or ET. “I am reasonably sure it has hitch hiked to the space station on board some cargo and then survived the hostile conditions of space,” explained Venkateswaran.

Naming the new microbe after Kalam was natural to Venkateswaran and his team. “Being a fellow Tamilian, I am aware of the huge contributions by Dr. Kalam,” he said. New bacteria are usually named after famous scientists.

Venkateswaran is part of a team which is asking that eternal question “are we alone in the universe?” Towards that, his responsibilities include monitoring the bug levels on the ISS and he also has to ensure that all spacecraft that fly to other planets are free of terrestrial bugs.

One of his big jobs was to ensure that NASA’s Mars Curiosity rover—the massive car-sized almost 1000 kg buggy—was totally sterile when it left earth. By international law, this extreme hygiene is required else other planets could get contaminated by bugs that reach the Martian or other planets hidden on human satellites.

Today the ISS is the size of a football field and its construction started with a launch in 1998 and as of now it is the largest human-made object orbiting the earth. Weighing about 419 tonnes, it can house a maximum of six astronauts and has costs roughly $150 billion.

Till date, 227 astronauts have flown to the space station. This makes the space station actually a very dirty place and maintaining hygiene is critical so that humans can live on it with ease. On the space station all the air and water is recycled, being a completely closed environment there is a rapid build- up of moulds and bacteria on the station. These not only have to be cleaned but monitored to ensure that they do not corrode the walls of the space station and do not turn hazardous to the astronauts.

Venkateswaran’s main job is to monitor the environment of the space station so that harmful bugs do not proliferate. He heads the ‘Microbial Observatory’ on the ISS projects to measure microorganisms associated with compartments owned by the US.

According to NASA, he also directs several research and development tasks for the JPL—Mars Program Office, which enables the cleaning, sterilisation, and validation of spacecraft components. He directs several NASA competitive awards on the microbial monitoring of spacecraft and associated environments for the Exploration System Mission Directorate, closed habitats like ISS or its earth analogues for the Human Exploration and Operation Mission Directorate. But is the new bug of some use.

“These spore formers tend to withstand high radiation and also produce some useful compounds protein wise which will be helpful for biotechnology applications,” Venkateswaran said. His team has not characterised the bacteria fully but he hints that the new bug could be a key source for chemicals that can help protect against radiation damage.

Missing the coastal growth opportunity

Coastal Regulation Zone norms are an example of a top-down, heavy-handed, legislative diktat from Delhi that ignores local dynamics

India has a significantly large coastline measuring close to 7,517km, covering large swathes of territory across nine states and four union territories. The total population of all the coastal districts in India is around 171 million, which makes up 14.2% of India’s population. Contrasting this with China, where the coastal population stood at 590 million in 2010, roughly half the population of the country, India’s coastal regions have witnessed tepid growth in terms of size and economy.

Burdensome laws, accompanied by the onerous rules and regulations they impose, restrict economic activity in the entire country. The coastal regions suffer from the additional liability of having to comply with far-fetched coast protection norms originating under the Environment (Protection) Act (EPA). Passed under the powers conferred on the Central government by Section 3 of the EPA, the Coastal Regulation Zone (CRZ) rules were first notified in 1991 and were further amended in 2011.

As per the norms created by the Central government, a CRZ is the land area from the high-tide line to 500m inland. There is a long list of proscribed activities within this zone, such as the setting up of new industries, expansion of existing industries, establishment of fish processing units, warehouses, land reclamation, etc. Although the norms carve out exceptions within these prohibited activities for certain undertakings, such as building ports or reconstructing dwelling units for local communities, it interestingly carves out a singular exception for the development of a greenfield airport proposed at Navi Mumbai. The regulation is replete with such curious exceptions to some specific cases, which raise questions pertaining to the criteria that was followed to determine permissible and non-permissible activities.

The peculiarity of the CRZ directives is further evidenced from the universal allowance granted to areas adjoining bays, estuaries, backwaters, lagoons and other tidal-influenced water bodies. For areas falling under this category, the regulated zone extends only 100m inland from the high-tide line. As a result, many developers, entrepreneurs and builders have been asking the coastal zone management authorities to declare the water around the coastal land area within their project plans as bays or tidal-influenced water bodies. Some have approached several high courts for such declaration to avail the benefits of a smaller regulated zone.

Going even further with the regulatory tangle created by these CRZ guidelines, the norms demarcate the zones into different numbered categories—CRZ I, CRZ II, CRZ III and CRZ IV. This demarcation, it seems, is based primarily on the level of previous construction or developmental activity that’s been conducted in a region now within the regulated zone of either 500m or 100m. Another set of permissible and impermissible activities are also listed under these defined demarcated zones. Supplementary arbitrary exceptions have also been carved out for the city of Mumbai, and the states of Kerala and Goa, based on the above- mentioned demarcated zones, unusually leaving out other coastal states and districts.

The multiplicity of definitions, exceptions, permissible and impermissible activities not only lead to high regulatory and legal expenditure in obtaining project clearances, there is all-round confusion in implementation as well. The execution of the CRZ rules falls within the domain of several coastal zone management authorities created by the state governments for this purpose. The authorities have to prepare coastal zone management plans based on the complicated regulation which also lists the guidelines that the authorities must follow in preparation of the plans. Most authorities are themselves unaware of the implementation scheme and a significant number of cases concerning clearances and bay designation are sent to the Central government for clarification. This not only creates uncertainty, it also increases the time taken for permissions, burdening the firms with high compliance outlays.

The CRZ norms are another example of a top-down, heavy-handed, legislative diktat from Delhi that ignores local dynamics and the diverse needs and realities of states. Regulations like CRZ create significant entry barriers for firms unable to negotiate the myriad, complex guidelines or lobby for rent-seeking special concessions from the government. Restrictive market entry adversely affects economic development and consumer welfare, increases prices owing to high costs and constrains technological improvement.

Even though the CRZ rules stand amended as on 6 January 2011, the new rules have done little to ease the regulatory burden imposed on a wide array of economic and development activities that may be pursued in coastal regions. The Central government must assert its political will and rescind these regulations, leaving the task of administering coastal zones to the already created state coastal zone management authorities. State governments in coastal regions will be better suited to devise laws concerning coast development, given their substantial political interest in the matter and superior knowledge of state goals as well as needs. The Central government must restrict its role to advising state governments on the prospective benefits and costs of any regulation that the states propose.