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The 17th edition of the PravasiBharatiyaDiwas (PBD), or the day for Non-Resident Indians (NRIs) that is commemorated annually on January 9, was marked by the Central government with events in Indore, Madhya Pradesh.
The programme began on January 8, when the Youth PravasiBharatiya Divas was held. On Monday, the inaugural day of the event, Prime Minister Narendra Modi will deliver a keynote address.
External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar and Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan are also expected to address the gathering. A push for tourism is also being made in connection with the event in Madhya Pradesh, which will go to polls later this year.
A High-Level Committee on Indian Diaspora, headed by jurist and Parliamentarian LM Singhvi, had recommended in January 2002 that the government must renew and strengthen linkages of overseas Indians to their place of origin, and with each other.
The committee recommended that a PravasiBharatiya Bhavan should be set up to emerge as the focal point for networking between India and its overseas Indian community; and as a suitable place which to commemorate the stories of the Indian Diaspora. The idea of a day to have the government recognise the community flowed from this, and was held in 2003.
January 9 was selected as it was the date when Mahatma Gandhi returned to India from South Africa in 1915. Over the years, he has often been described as the first non-resident Indian of the most famous NRI by various politicians, including PM Modi and Congress leader Rahul Gandhi.
Since 2015, the centenary year of Gandhi’s return, the format was revised for the meeting to be held once every two years. Since the pandemic, this will be the first in-person meeting.
This year’s theme is “Diaspora: Reliable partners for India’s progress in Amrit Kaal”. Over 3,500 diaspora members from nearly 70 different countries have registered for the PBD Convention, according to its press release.
The Special Guest of Honour is Suriname President ChandrikapersadSantokhi and the Chief Guest is Dr. Mohamed Irfaan Ali, President of Guyana.
An award called The PravasiBharatiya Samman Award is given out as part of the programme. The award is to commemorate the contribution of the Indian diaspora to create a better understanding of India abroad, support India’s causes and work for the welfare of the local Indian community.
Army’s rightsizing plan: Veterans at training institutes and cross-skilling (Page no. 3)
(GS Paper 3, Defence)
Roping in veterans with expertise in specific areas for its training institutions on contractual basis, cross-skilling technical trades, outsourcing several services at its static units — these are part of the Army’s planned manpower optimisation exercise aimed at sharpening its tooth-to-tail ratio (the number of military personnel it takes to supply and support a combat soldier).
The exercise, scheduled to be implemented in phases in the next five years, will see the chopping of the “tail” element of every arm of the force, and not just the supporting arms and services.
The official said work on the planned reform is underway, as part of which every arm and service of the force has been tasked with preparing and submitting plans detailing their rightsizing plans.
A final decision will be taken subsequently, based on the inputs and the existing shortage of manpower in the 12.8-lakh strong Army.
With recruitments suspended for two years due to the Covid-19 pandemic, the estimated shortfall at present is about 1.25 lakh soldiers.
The 40,000 vacancies released to recruit Agniveers under the government’s Agnipath scheme last year will not be adequate to match the annual retirement rate of approximately 60,000 soldiers.
First recommended by the committee of experts under Lt Gen D B Shekatkar (retd) in its report in December 2016, the Army’s rightsizing plans have gathered pace in recent months.
This is because of an increased focus on the creation of a leaner force and sharpening of its combat edge amid changing dynamics of modern warfare.
Another senior defence official toldthat there are plans to employ veterans with expertise in certain military subjects in Category A training institutions on a contractual basis.
Category A training institutions include the Dehradun-based Indian Military Academy, the Army War College and the Infantry School in Mhow, among others.
As share of renewables increases in grid, Govt explores storage options (Page no. 3)
(GS Paper 3, Environment)
To operationally sustain a huge monthly addition of an average 1,000 megawatt — almost five times the amount of power a 250 MWe nuclear plant produces — from non-fossil fuels or renewables to the electricity grid, policy makers are of the view that India needs to urgently work on developing viable energy storage options.
In India, which is the world’s third largest producer of renewable energy, nearly 40 per cent of installed electricity capacity comes from non-fossil fuel sources.
This green push has resulted in a sharp 24 per cent reduction in emission intensity of GDP between 2005 and 2016, but it has also thrown up challenges of a grid being increasingly powered by renewables.
Even as the Lithium-ion storage battery option for grid application is now being ruled out as unviable, at least for now, an emerging policy resolve is that solar and wind-based generation cannot continue to be pushed down to struggling electricity distribution companies or discoms.
The renewables challenge is compounded by the fact that SECI (Solar Energy Corporation of India Ltd) — the state-owned company conducting solar auctions — has locked a number of contracts involving green developers in rigid PPAs (power purchase agreements) with no scope for innovation, according to sectoral experts.
Energy storage is needed alongside green energy sources to primarily balance out the variability in renewable generation – electricity is generated only when the sun shines or when the wind blows.
This is not always in sync with the demand cycle. Storage can help tide over this shortcoming associated with renewables.
For procurers such as state-owned discoms, renewables are not always a viable option precisely due to these vagaries in the generation trends, which means they still have to depend on thermal or nuclear generation for meeting base load demand.
There are two alternatives being considered by the government now: hydrogen and hybrid generation models blended with off-stream pumped storage.
In 2023, as the hidden challenges of RE (Renewable Energy) transition are likely to manifest more concretely, the government is making a renewed push on both technologies.
A policy for stepping up green hydrogen production and tapping into its potential as a fuel has just been cleared by the cabinet. The Union Ministry of Power has also wrapped up a survey of all pumped hydro sites and hydro PSUs have been given a target of taking up pumped hydro schemes.
The Ministry of Power has also written to the Union Coal Ministry to consider the option of opencast mines as potential sites for pumped hydro in the future.
Editorial page
The Gimmicks of Commission (Page no. 10)
(GS Paper 2, Education)
The University Grants Commission is proposing new guidelines to allow the entry of foreign universities in India. Any good-faith effort to reform higher education ought to be welcomed.
But before you applaud this latest pantomime on higher education and mistake it for a genuine revolution, ask a few probing questions. These so-called reforms, like so much that emanates from the UGC, are being carried out under false premises.
Very few are like NYU Abu Dhabi, but almost all of them received massive subsidies from the home government. Several high-profile ones like Yale–NUS have been “reabsorbed.” More than 30 per cent of foreign campuses receive some form of subsidy, and the better the institution, the more subsidy it requires.
This reform will apparently allow for the repatriation of money to the home institution. Now here is the blunt truth about universities.
If you want to build a top-class university in India, it will have to integrate teaching and research. This is a financial black hole requiring continual support not derived from fees alone.
Any private institution that is for profit that seeks to skim money off education can never build a world-class university since a top-class university requires continual reinvestment.
Now, what kind of an institution looks to repatriate “surpluses?” The same kind that in India seeks profit.
The UGC boldly declares that it will ensure that the qualifications of the faculty assigned to India will be the same as those of the faculty in the parent institution.
A lot turns on how you interpret the term “qualification”. If it simply means formal equivalence of qualifications (PhD from a good institution, etc.) then most institutions are on par.
But if it means faculty who are exceptional (which is what the top institutions claim they have), then there is no cost advantage to moving to India.
Land and capital costs are not cheap. But if you are going to define equivalence as something close to those who have been through the tenure processes of the top-ranked universities, they have no economic or lifestyle incentives to spend a lot of time in India unless either their salaries are matched or exceeded. This makes running campuses in India with the same “standard” prohibitively expensive.
Let us think about regulatory trust. Would you invest millions of dollars in a regulatory system that is unreliable, to say the least? There are at least 30 to 40 entrepreneurs in India who could (financially, at least), single-handedly create slightly lower-cost, world-class alternatives to Western institutions.
Taming defiant bugs (Page no. 10)
(GS Paper 2, Health)
Antimicrobial resistance (AMR), often also called antibiotic resistance, is a global health challenge and a looming public health crisis.
The WHO has declared it as one of the top 10 health threats facing humanity. Microorganisms (bugs) are everywhere with some being helpful like the yoghurt-making lactobacillus and some being harmful like the typhoid-causing salmonella.
Antimicrobials, chemicals or molecules that kill harmful bugs, are the backbone of modern medicine. Improperly used antimicrobials create selective pressure on bugs.
The bugs most vulnerable to the drugs die quickly, while the most resilient ones survive, replicate and become superbugs. AMR occurs when superbugs develop and antimicrobials stop working.
Reversing AMR and or finding solutions for it is a tall order since we are up against natural selection — Darwinian evolution, the process by which we evolved.
The Covid-19 pandemic has given us a painful reminder of what it means to have no vaccine or medicine to tackle an emerging pathogen. AMR is bad news on a similar scale except it’s a silent killer.
Covid has also taught us that in a global crisis government, industry and society can come together and work together to find solutions.
Tackling AMR and coming up with solutions means navigating complex domains of science and society to develop cross-disciplinary solutions.
AMR national action plans (NAPs) have been implemented in several surveyed economies including India for human health. However, the development and implementation of antimicrobial plans for animals and the environment that equally impact AMR hasn’t been adequate.
Some recipes for reducing and potentially reversing AMR can be implemented by each one of us individually or collectively at the ground level.
The first prescription is prevention. Disease prevention and wellness are key to public health and thus preventing infections whenever and wherever possible is equivalent to averting resistance.
We need to spearhead sanitation drives, ensure a clean water supply and support hospital-driven infection-control programmes. Reducing AMR also requires prescribing antimicrobials judiciously and only when they are absolutely needed.
There is also a need for more cohesion within management strategies. Coordination across the animal industry and environmental sectors to prevent the unnecessary use of antibiotics in farms — this nurtures drug-resistant organisms in our food supply — is necessary.
Vaccines are also a powerful tool to prevent infections and have the potential to curb the spread of AMR infections. However, immunisation programmes are not comprehensive and exhaustive yet for many infectious diseases.
A second prescription closely connected with prevention is the development of robust surveillance systems that allow us to detect resistant pathogens of all kinds in the environment and hospitals that would eventually allow containment.
Ideas page
This is not a bailout (Page no. 11)
(GS Paper 3, Environment)
As India starts its G20 presidency, all eyes are on a crucial point mentioned in the final decision text of the recently concluded COP27 — a “just transition and just energy transition partnership (JETP)”.
While an energy transition to renewables typically focuses on requisite technology and finance, a “just” energy transition argues for people-centric measures, one that reduces the negative impact of energy transitions on communities.
The JETP combines technology, finance and people to help facilitate this transition. The G7 countries signed an $8.5 billion JETP deal with South Africa at COP26 in 2021, followed by a $20 billion deal with Indonesia and a $15.5 billion deal with Vietnam in 2022.
There are now strong murmurs that the G7, led by the US and Germany, is courting India for a similar partnership.
A JETP for India has to be tailored to the country’s needs and not be a hand-me-down. A blinkered desire of the developed world to phase out coal use from the developing world without factoring in country-specific needs gives the same warning signs that erstwhile IMF-led deals did.
As economist Joseph Stiglitz has argued, the conditions that IMF required for lending such as fiscal austerity, trade liberalisation, open capital markets and so on, were often counterproductive and devastating for the local population. We analyse why a JETP for India cannot be a neo-IMF bailout on terms dictated by the G7.
India isn’t staring at a financial crisis of the kind it saw in 1991 before liberalisation. The country’s current bargaining position needs to be acknowledged.
A look at the terms of the deal that South Africa has signed suggests that the country was in dire need of foreign capital infusion. For South Africa, the JETP terms dictate no new investment in coal-based power plants and reducing the coal-based power generation fleet.
Just focusing on a coal phase-out could impose unforeseen challenges on the already weak South African power system and the livelihoods that depend on it, not unlike the IMF bailouts.
The $8.5 billion support is meagre compared to what the country needs and most of it comprises loans at regular rates of interest.
India, however, has little need for capital with such tight terms.
It has already unleashed significant equity investment in its renewable energy generation sector. This growing momentum of private equity into renewables reiterates that any further investments cannot be made with stringent conditions.
Explained
Sovereign Green Bonds (Page no. 13)
(GS Paper 3, Economy)
The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) announced that it will, for the first-time, issue Sovereign Green Bonds (SgrBs) worth Rs 16,000 crore, in two tranches of Rs 8,000 crore each in the current financial year. The RBI said it will issue 5-year and 10-year green bonds of Rs 4,000 crore each on January 25 and February 9.
Green bonds are bonds issued by any sovereign entity, inter-governmental groups or alliances and corporates with the aim that the proceeds of the bonds are utilised for projects classified as environmentally sustainable. The framework for the sovereign green bond was issued by the government on November 9, 2022.
Over the last few years, Green Bonds have emerged as an important financial instrument to deal with the threats of climate change and related challenges.
According to the International Finance Corporation (IFC), a World Bank Group’s institution, climate change threatens communities and economies, and it poses risks for agriculture, food, and water supplies.
A lot of financing is needed to address these challenges. It’s critical to connect environmental projects with capital markets and investors and channel capital towards sustainable development – and Green Bonds are a way to make that connection.
Green Bonds offer investors a platform to engage in good practices, influencing the business strategy of bond issuers. They provide a means to hedge against climate change risks while achieving at least similar, if not better, returns on their investment. In this way, the growth in Green Bonds and green finance also indirectly works to disincentivise high carbon-emitting projects, as per the IFC.
In August last year, the government said it stands committed to reduce Emissions Intensity of GDP by 45 per cent from the 2005 level by 2030, and achieve about 50 per cent cumulative electric power installed capacity from non-fossil fuel-based energy resources by the same year.
In line with the commitment to significantly reduce the carbon intensity of the economy, the Union Budget 2022-23 made an announcement to issue Sovereign Green Bonds.
The country’s climate actions have so far been largely financed from domestic resources and it is now targeting generation of additional global financial resources.
The issuance of the Sovereign Green Bonds will help the Indian government in tapping the requisite finance from potential investors for deployment in public sector projects aimed at reducing the carbon intensity of the economy.
Imbalance in fertiliser use (Page no. 13)
(GS Paper 3, Economy)
2022 saw global prices of fertilisers go through the roof, in the run-up to and post Russia’s invasion of Ukraine on February 24.
Those have since eased considerably.
Landed prices of urea imported into India (cost plus freight) are ruling at around $550 per tonne, as against $900-1,000 average in November-January 2021-22, when global demand for food and plant nutrients surged with the lifting of Covid lockdowns by most countries.
Landed per-tonne prices have, similarly, come off their peaks for di-ammonium phosphate or DAP (from $950-960 in July 2022 to $690-700 now) and its intermediates/raw materials: Phosphoric acid ($1,715 per tonne in July-September 2022 to $1,175), ammonia ($1,575 in April 2022 to $900-975), sulphur ($500-525 in April-June 2022 to $180) and rock phosphate ($300-310 in October-November 2022 to $275).
Only prices of muriate of potash (MOP) have stayed elevated at $590 per tonne since the war’s start, more than doubling from $280 till November 2021.
This isn’t surprising, given that Russia and its neighbouring ally Belarus together account for roughly 40% of global production and exports of MOP.
The cooling of international fertiliser prices tallies with movements in world food prices. The United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation’s Food Price Index hit 159.7 points in March 2022.
From that all-time high, the index — which is a weighted average of global prices of a representative basket of food commodities over a base period value, taken at 100 for 2014-2016 — has fallen for nine consecutive months.
The December 2022 number of 132.4 points was below even the year-ago value of 133.7 points, and the lowest since the 129.2 points of September 2021 (see graph).
The first is to significantly improve overall availability: No major shortage of any fertiliser, except MOP, has been reported during the ongoing rabi cropping season.
This wasn’t really the case in kharif 2022 and rabi 2021-22, when soaring international prices and the post-war supply disruptions had made it difficult for companies to contract imports of both finished fertilisers and inputs for domestic manufacture.
That situation has changed. Augmented fertiliser availability, coupled with good soil moisture conditions, has helped boost area sown under rabi crops, especially wheat, mustard, maize and masur (red lentil).
World prices cooling off should, secondly, translate into a reduction in the Centre’s fertiliser subsidy outgo. The Narendra Modi government had budgeted Rs 105,222.32 crore for 2022-23, but the actual outgo could touch Rs 230,000 crore, over and above the Rs 153,658.11 crore spent in the previous fiscal.
Village Defence: The return of J&K’s system of armed civilians (Page no. 13)
(GS Paper 2, Polity and Governance)
After militants killed six people in two days in the Upper Dangri village of Jammu and Kashmir this Sunday and Monday, locals have demanded that they be provided weapons to take on attackers.
Responding to the demands, Lt Governor Manoj Sinha on January 2 assured the people that they would get a Village Defence Committee (VDC) on the lines of those in Doda district.
The same was echoed by Director General of Police Dilbagh Singh, who visited the village, on the outskirts of Rajouri town, after the twin attacks.
The VDCs were first formed in the erstwhile Doda district (now Kishtwar, Doda and Ramban districts) in mid 1990s as a force multiplier against militant attacks.
The then Jammu and Kashmir administration decided to provide residents of remote hilly villages with weapons and give them arms training to defend themselves.
The VDCs have now been renamed as Village Defence Guards (VDG). The new scheme to set up VDGs in vulnerable areas of J&K was approved by the Union Ministry of Home Affairs in March last year. Like a VDC member, each VDG will be provided a gun and 100 rounds of ammunition.
Both VDG and VDC is a group of civilians provided guns and ammunition to tackle militants in case of attack until the arrival of security forces.
Under the new scheme, the persons leading the VDGs will be paid Rs 4,500 per month by the government, while others will get Rs 4,000 each. In the VDCs, only the Special Police Officers (SPOs) leading them were provided a remuneration, of Rs 1,500 monthly. The SPOs, the lowest rank in the J&K Police, used to be retired army, para military or police personnel.
A minimum of 10-15 ex-servicemen, ex-policemen and able-bodied local youth were enrolled in each VDC on a voluntary basis. On an average, at least five of them were provided .303 rifles and 100 rounds each, through the district Superintendent of Police. The allotment of weapons could go up depending on the credentials of the volunteers, total population of a village and its security requirements, as assessed by the district magistrate and SSP concerned.
The militancy that began in Kashmir in the early 1990s had spread to the adjoining Doda district by mid 1990s. The demand for arming the civilian population first rose after the massacre of 13 people in Kishtwar in 1993.
As the killings increased, prompting the migration of Hindus from villages to nearby towns, the Home ministry in 1995 decided to set up the VDCs so as to stop this exodus, coming after Kashmiri Pandits were forced to flee the state in the early 1990s.
Economy
Asset monetisation pace slows, may miss the target in FY23 by a wide margin (Page no. 15)
(GS Paper 3, Economy)
After achieving the target for the first year rather comfortably, the Centre’s ambitious National Monetisation Pipeline (NMP) may miss the goal in FY23 by a wide margin as railways, telecom and petroleum sector slip on their goals.
As against the FY23 NMP target to generate Rs 1.62 trillion in revenues and investments, officials indicted that the shortfall could be about Rs 50,000 crore.
Railways, which is the biggest component of the Rs 6 trillion NMP in the four years through FY25, telecom and petroleum sectors are seen the worst performer while mining would be doing the heavy lifting for the second consecutive year.
With the end-of-the-year position not looking good, the railways’ target has been reduced to about Rs 30,000 crore for FY23 from Rs 57,222 crore while the target for “coal and other mining” have been increased to about Rs 37,500 crore from Rs 6,060 crore.
Coal and other mining had yielded upfront revenues and capex to the tune of Rs 58,000 crore in FY22 against the target of Rs 3,394 crore. In FY23 also, the actual achievement of the coal and other mines monetisation by way of revenues in upfront premium, annual royalties and investment by private players are expected to be higher than the revised target.
Finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman has asked officers to find out from different ministries how much they would achieve and whether the shortfalls would covered next year or not and the reasons for not meeting targets.
Last year, a sum of about Rs 1 trillion was raised through the monetisation route as against the target of Rs 88,200 crore thanks to mining sector. Railways collected just Rs 800 crore via monetisation through redevelopment of one railway station and some railway colonies in the last fiscal year as against the target of Rs 17,810 crore.
According to the NMP, railways need to monetise 120 stations, 30 trains and 1,400 km track, among others in FY23. But, it has achieved little so far.
Officials are concerned that other ministries are taking a leaf from railways non performance and doing little for the cause of asset recycling to generate a much needed investment cycle.