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There is “clear evidence of significant improvement” in the growth of children who are given eggs as part of mid-day meals, with girls in Class 8 gaining up to 71% more weight than their peers who were not served eggs, as per a study commissioned by the Karnataka government covering over 4,500 students in two districts.
The Body Mass Index (BMI) of children, both boys and girls, improved due to the introduction of eggs, and to some extent bananas, states the study.
It refutes observations of another Karnataka government committee, on the National Education Policy, 2020, which said that serving eggs and meat in midday meals can cause “lifestyle disorders”.
Under the three-month-long study, between December 2020 and March 2021, on the impact of mid-day meals on the growth and nutrition of children, the authorities served eggs (and bananas as an alternative) to students in Yadgir, which is a backward district, while those in Gadag were provided regular vegetarian meals with milk.
Noting that there are no such previous studies on the impact of mid-day meal or any other supplementary nutrition programme in India, the report says the findings underline the need for additional protein and calories in all districts of Karnataka, particularly in the Kalyan region which is among its most backward in terms of socio-economic status and education.
The two chosen districts were similar in terms of socio-demographic profile of the students, dietary diversity and consumption pattern of food.
Since there is no significant difference in these aspects, comparison for the purpose of the study is justified,” the report states.
It also points out that bananas, for all their benefits, cannot be a substitute for eggs, and urges authorities to explore alternative “protein rich vegetarian items.
Editorial Page
Let’s debate freebies (Page no 10)
(GS Paper 2, Polity and Governance)
In recent weeks, several arms of our polity have expressed concern over the culture of “freebies” in electoral politics.
The prime minister, in a thinly disguised attempt to delegitimise welfare announcements by political opponents, has called for an end to the “revdi” culture.
The Reserve Bank of India, in a report published in June, linked the precarious state of state finances to “freebies”, particularly power subsidies, and last week, the Supreme Court, waded into the debate, recommending the creation of an expert body to examine the matter.
In response, an important, although not new, debate has unfolded, including in these pages, on what constitutes good and bad freebies, their economic rationale and fiscal consequences.
But this discussion hesitates to seriously engage with politics. Ultimately, the determination of what is a good or bad freebie is and always will be a political choice.
A constructive debate must necessarily locate itself in the underlying political, economic and institutional context in which these so-called freebies are a feature of our electoral politics.
This is important because the terms of the current debate, as framed by the highest offices of this country, effectively delegitimise a democratically forged political bargain.
The prime minister invoked the “revdi culture” to alert young voters of a “dangerous” political development that is trying to “buy the people by distributing freebies to them”.
In the Public Interest Litigation filed in the Supreme Court, the petitioner has argued that “irrational freebies… is analogous to bribery”.
This view was echoed by the Solicitor General, Tushar Mehta, in his submission to the Supreme Court, who argued that “populist freebies distort the informed decision-making of the voter”.
The problem with this framing is that it commodifies the electoral process and strips voters of their agency. Voters, in this framing, are passive, unsophisticated actors who can be bought and therefore there is a need to be vigilant.
A Disruption-mukt Parliament (Page no 10)
(GS Paper 2, Polity and Governance)
Towards the end of the Monsoon Session of Parliament, it was heartening to see deliberations in both Houses on important issues as well as key bills.
However, it wouldn’t be wrong to question the “disrupt-and-devour-attention” drama during much of the session. The inability of Parliament to transact any business and the lack of serious deliberation must be a matter of grave concern for all.
In a deliberative democracy, Parliament works as a special purpose vehicle for the legislative scrutiny of bills, grievance redressal and debate on policies and related governance issues.
Its failure to transact business is a sad commentary on three aspects — Members of Parliament, the presiding officers as well as the rules and regulations that define the functioning of both Houses.
Let’s start with the first. For any parliamentarian, it is extremely disappointing to be unable to speak in the House for which he or she has — in most cases —given notice and come prepared.
And when this happens too often, their enthusiasm evaporates. This reflects in the quality of interventions as a majority of them, as observed often, bring precious little to the table.
In such a situation, members are often tempted to make a popular intervention than a substantive one. Such interventions often appear as formulaic speeches heard in university-level elocution competitions.
An adequate amount of fire, a bit of humour, some poetry, some emotional appeal and one or two philosophical quotations – it’s all mostly ornamental. This certainly impacts the quality of debates negatively.
When it comes to bills, on several occasions, Opposition members argue vehemently that for better scrutiny the bill is sent to the relevant standing committee.
However, a close look at the percentage of members attending the meetings of these committees —their duration, quality of deliberations and also the outcomes — makes one doubt the sincerity behind their demands. Sadly, all this amounts to noise creation rather than any sincere desire to scrutinise the bills.
Idea Page
What east can teach west (Page no 11)
(GS Paper 2, International Relation)
The news from India’s western frontier with Pakistan is rarely positive. There is little expectation of change as we celebrate the 75th anniversary of Independence and mark the partition of the Subcontinent.
The persistence of cross-border terrorism, the conflict over Kashmir, the militarisation of the frontier, little connectivity, poor trade relations and no formal inter-governmental negotiations paint a bleak picture of the India-Pak border.
The inability of successive generations of Indian and Pakistani leaders to bring a closure to Partition in the west makes the talk of a “100-year war” credible.
The only trend that can counter this pessimism is the good news from India’s eastern frontier with Bangladesh — that it is indeed possible to transcend the bitter legacies of Partition and build a mutually-beneficial relationship.
If we can do it in the east, where the sources and consequences of Partition were far more complex, it should not be impossible to normalise the western frontier — hopefully well before 2047.
In contrast to the talk of a 100-year war between India and Pakistan, Prime Ministers Sheikh Hasina and Narendra Modi have proclaimed a “sonali adhyay” or “golden chapter” in bilateral relations.
Cynics would discount that rhetoric; pessimists continue to see the cup as half empty. But there is no question that the bilateral relationship dominated by endless contentions at the turn of the millennium has transformed into a very productive partnership.
For both Delhi and Dhaka, the reinvention of the bilateral relationship has been one of the most significant successes of their recent foreign policies.
The work on rebuilding ties began in earnest in 2010, when Sheikh Hasina came to India after taking charge of Bangladesh as prime minister for the second time in 2009.
Hasina and Prime Minister Manmohan Singh embarked on an extraordinary effort to address most bilateral problems—including border settlement, river water sharing, cross-border terrorism, market access to Bangladeshi goods, and connectivity.
Chalta h regulation (Page no 11)
(GS Paper 2, Polity and Governance)
Last month, the Union Ministry for Health & Family Welfare published a new Bill to replace the colonial-era Drugs & Cosmetics Act, 1940.
This proposed Bill was written by a drafting committee of eight bureaucrats headed by the Drug Controller General of India (DCGI) and included a senior bureaucrat who has since been arrested on suspicion of corruption.
While most of the new Bill is a copy of the old legislation, some of the proposed revisions treat drug quality as a divisible concept, wherein it is presumed that a drug will work even if it fails on certain quality parameters.
Either a drug passes all quality standards laid down by a government body called the Indian Pharmacopoeia Commission (IPC), which publishes the standards in a publication called the Indian Pharmacopoeia (IP), or else the drug fails in treating patients.
Historically, since 1940, drugs failing quality testing in accordance with standards published in the IP have been declared Not of Standard Quality (NSQ), making the manufacturer liable for minimum imprisonment of one year and maximum imprisonment of two years and a fine of Rs 20,000 with special exceptions.
The rationale for criminal punishment in cases of drug quality is simple: Unlike other products, quality issues in the manufacture of drugs have direct implications on the health of citizens.
The new approach proposed by the government can be described as a chalta hai approach to regulation, aimed at accommodating the pharmaceutical industry’s demand to “decriminalise” some of the offences under the existing law.
Section 56(e) of the new Bill proposes lowering punishments for drugs that have been declared NSQ due to any of the 43 defects listed in the fourth schedule of the Bill.
For such defects, manufacturers are liable for lower imprisonment of one year and a fine of Rs two lakh, while for defects that do not fall within the fourth schedule, the manufacturer is liable for a higher punishment of up to two years imprisonment and a fine of Rs five lakh.
Explained Page
What it will take to fulfill India’s solar power dream (Page no 15)
(GS Paper 3, Environment)
Solar photovoltaics (PV) has driven India’s push towards the adoption of cleaner energy generation technologies. From less than 10 MW in 2010, India has added significant PV capacity over the past decade, achieving over 50 GW by 2022.
By 2030, India is targeting about 500 GW of renewable energy deployment, out of which ~280 GW is expected from solar PV. This necessitates the deployment of nearly 30 GW of solar capacity every year until 2030.
However, there are challenges that need to be overcome for the sustainability of the PV economy. Indian solar deployment or installation companies depend heavily on imports, as India currently does not have enough module and cell manufacturing capacity.
A typical solar PV value chain consists of first fabricating polysilicon ingots which need to be transformed into thin Si wafers that are needed to manufacture the PV mini-modules. The mini-modules are then assembled into market-ready and field-deployable modules.
India’s current solar module manufacturing capacity is limited to ~15 GW per year. The demand-supply gap widens as we move up the value chain — for example, India only produces ~3.5 GW of cells currently.
India has no manufacturing capacity for solar wafers and polysilicon ingots, and currently imports 100% of silicon wafers and around 80% of cells even at the current deployment levels.
Also, out of the 15 GW of module manufacturing capacity, only 3-4 GW of modules are technologically competitive and worthy of deployment in grid-based projects. India remains dependent on import of solar modules for field deployment.
The government has identified this gap, and is rolling out various policy initiatives to push and motivate the industry to work towards self-reliance in solar manufacturing, both for cells and modules.
Key initiatives include a 40% duty on the import of modules and 25% duty on the import of cells, and a PLI scheme to support manufacturing capex.
Also, it is mandatory to procure modules only from an approved list of manufacturers (ALMM) for projects that are connected to state/ central government grids; so far, only India-based manufacturers have been approved. While this will certainly help to motivate industry, the major challenges are related to size and technology.
RBI’s surveys, what they reveal (Page no 15)
(GS Paper 3, Economy)
The trade data details what goods (only goods, and not services) India imported and exported in July. It presents this in value terms (in Indian rupees or US dollars).
Many of you might recall how towards the end of March this year the government had celebrated India’s exports breaching the $400 billion mark — a record — in the 2021-22 financial year.
The government had asserted that this jump in exports was a result of “a detailed strategy”, which targeted specific countries for specific exports and made the necessary “course correction.”
In short, ExplainSpeaking had alerted that “between the pincer effect of lower (global) growth and higher inflation (which reduces people’s purchasing power), the global demand for Indian goods is most likely to suffer in the coming year.”
Here’s what has happened in the four months since then. Barring April, in each of the last three months — May, June and July — India’s trade deficit (that is, the excess of imports over exports) hit an all-time high in each passing month.
The trade deficit has risen so sharply that just in the first four months of the current financial year, it is already equal to the full-year trade deficit of 2020-21 and more than half of the trade deficit in 2021-22.
Many analysts now expect India’s Current Account Deficit (CAD) — read this piece to know the link between the trade deficit and CAD — to balloon from 1.2% of GDP in 2021-22 to around 4% (of the GDP) in 2022-23. This spike in the trade deficit has been one of the key reasons why the rupee has lost value against the US dollar.
Since mid-May, when the Monetary Policy Committee (MPC) was forced to hike interest rates in an off-cycle meeting, the RBI has reprioritised its focus from boosting growth to containing inflation.
Following in the same path, RBI raised the repo rate — the interest rate at which it lends money to the banking system — by 50 basis points (bps). Since May, repo rates have gone up by 140 bps (or 1.4 percentage points).
However, given the fact that RBI expects inflation to be 6.7% for the current financial year (April 2022 to March 2023), most analysts expect another 50 bps hike in the repo rate later in the year. At 5.4%, already the repo rate is at the pre-pandemic level. Another 50 basis points would take it close to 6%.
What is Taiwan’s ‘porcupine strategy’ to fight back if China attacks (Page no 15)
(GS Paper 2, International Relation)
China on Thursday (August 4) launched aggressive and unprecedented military exercises near Taiwan in response to US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s visit to the island that Beijing claims as part of its territory.
As the long-range, live-fire drills began with China’s Eastern Theatre Command firing several ballistic missiles, Taiwan said that it was “preparing for war without seeking war”. What is Taiwan’s strategy to fight back in case China attempts to occupy it by force.
The “porcupine doctrine”, which was proposed in 2008 by US Naval War College research professor William S Murray, is a strategy of asymmetric warfare focused on fortifying a weak state’s defences to exploit the enemy’s weaknesses rather than taking on its strengths.
It is about building defences that would ensure that Taiwan “could be attacked and damaged but not defeated, at least without unacceptably high costs and risks”, Murray wrote in the Naval War College Review.
Dr Zeno Leoni, a lecturer at the Defence Studies Department of King’s College London, identifies three defensive layers in the porcupine approach. In an article published on the website of King’s College London last year, he wrote: “The outer layer is about intelligence and reconnaissance to ensure defence forces are fully prepared.
Behind this come plans for guerrilla warfare at sea with aerial support from sophisticated aircraft provided by the US. The innermost layer relies on the geography and demography of the island.
The ultimate objective of this doctrine is that of surviving and assimilating an aerial offensive well enough to organise a wall of fire that will prevent the Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) from successfully invading.
While the outer surveillance layer would work to prevent a surprise attack, the second one would make it difficult for China to land its troops on the island in the face of a guerrilla campaign at sea using “agile, missile-armed small ships, supported by helicopters and missile launchers”, Dr Leoni wrote.
Even once Chinese boots were on Taiwanese ground, the island’s mountainous topography and urbanised environment would give defenders an advantage when it comes to hampering the progress of an invasion.
Economy
Electricity Amendment Bill faces Opposition protests, sent to House panel (Page no 17)
(GS Paper 2, Polity and Governance)
The Electricity (Amendment) Bill, 2022, has been sent to the standing committee for consultation with stakeholders amid the Opposition calling it an encroachment into states’ powers and hurting the federal structure.
Provisions of the Bill have been opposed by a number of Opposition-ruled states, including those aimed at allowing customers to have the option to choose electricity suppliers — just like one can choose telephone or internet service providers.
The legislation seeks to create competition in the retail segment of the power distribution sector and proposes that a discom (power distribution company) can use other power distribution licensees’ network.
It seeks to amend Section 42 of the Act to facilitate non-discriminatory open access to the distribution network of a distribution licensee.
It also proposes to amend Section 14 of the Act to facilitate the use of distribution networks by all licensees under provisions of non-discriminatory open access with the objective of “enabling competition, enhancing efficiency of distribution licensees for improving services and ensuring sustainability” of the power sector.
The Bill also seeks to strengthen payment security mechanism and give more powers to regulators. “It has become necessary to strengthen the regulatory mechanism, adjudicatory mechanism in the Act and to bring administrative reforms through improved corporate governance of distribution licensees,” according to the Bill.
After the Electricity (Amendment) Bill was introduced in the lower House of Parliament by Power Minister R K Singh, Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal tweeted to call the proposed legislation “dangerous”, saying it “will benefit a few power distribution companies.
Kejriwal tweeted in Hindi: “Electricity Amendment Bill is being brought in Lok Sabha. This law is very dangerous. With this, instead of improving the power problem in the country, it will become more serious. People’s suffering will increase.