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The Reserve Bank of India will call a special meeting of its Monetary Policy Committee (MPC) after October 12 to discuss a report it will have to submit to the Union government explaining the reasons for the average retail inflation remaining above the upper tolerance limit of 6 per cent for three consecutive quarters.
The Union government, in consultation with the RBI, fixes the inflation target for the central bank every five years. It had fixed it at 4 per cent plus/ minus 2 per cent (upper limit 6 per cent, lower limit 2 per cent) for the period August 5, 2016 to March 31, 2021, and retained it for the next five years ending March 31, 2026.
With the political class over years realising that inflation or price rise hurts the poorest the most and also adversely impacts growth in the long run, the Union government decided to provide a statutory basis for implementing inflation targets by the RBI.
A monetary policy framework was signed between then RBI Governor RaghuramRajan (on behalf of the RBI) and then Finance Secretary Rajiv Mehrishi (on behalf of the President) on February 20, 2015. The RBI Act, 1934, was amended in May 2016, giving effect to this framework agreement.
The framework agreement requires the RBI to submit a report to the Union government if it is in breach of the inflation targets for three consecutive quarters. In eight years, this will be the first time the RBI would have let retail inflation slip beyond the upper tolerance limit of 6 per cent for three straight quarters.
The average retail inflation in January-March 2022 and April-June 2022, according to data released by the National Statistics Office, was 6.34 per cent and 7.28 per cent, respectively. In July this year, it stood at 6.71 per cent. The data for August and September is scheduled to be released on September 12 and October 12, respectively.
While the RBI will be fully informed about retail inflation for all three quarters only by October 12, the CPI-based inflation is expected to remain above the 6 per cent upper limit in the July-September quarter too.
In its August 5, 2022, monetary policy statement, the RBI’s retail inflation outlook for July-September was 7.1 per cent. For the next two quarters, it was 6.4 per cent (October-December 2022) and 5.8 per cent (January-March 2023), respectively.
The City
Rohingya have to be dealt with by Centre, says Sisodia (Page no. 3)
(GS Paper 3, Internal Security)
Delhi Deputy Chief Minister Manish Sisodia wrote to Union Home Minister Amit Shah, saying the elected government of Delhi was not kept in the loop about the decision to send Rohingya refugees to EWS flats in Bakkarwala, and that it was opposed to any permanent or temporary houses being given to “Bangladeshi Rohingya” in Delhi.
The letter comes a day after Union minister HardeepPuri tweeted that Rohingya “refugees” would be provided housing and police protection in Delhi. The Ministry of Home Affairs, however, said the illegal immigrants couldn’t be moved and are to be deported soon.
Officials told The Indian Express that the FRRO, which comes under the MHA, had written to the Delhi government, asking for a space to create a detention centre to shift the Rohingya refugees. After several meetings, held over a year, it was decided that the NDMC would provide the EWS flats at Bakkarwala.
Sisodia, in his letter, wrote that the elected government was neither taken into confidence nor informed of the move. “I am shocked… In Delhi’s Home Department, police-related decisions are taken by the Centre.
Officers from the Centre as well as the Delhi Police were present in the meeting held on July 29, which was chaired by the Delhi Chief Secretary. The file was to be sent directly to the L-G, not keeping the elected government or ministers in the loop.
He also said that if the decision to move the Rohingya to Bakkarwalawas taken without the knowledge of the Centre, an enquiry should be ordered.
It should be investigated who in the Centre, along with Delhi government officers, was taking this decision keeping the elected government of Delhi out of the loop, and at whose behest.
Earlier, during a press conference, when asked if the Delhi government is against giving flats to the Rohingya or against having the refugees in Delhi at all, Sisodia said, “Rohingya and illegal occupants, who are living in the country violating the rules of the country, have to be dealt with by the Centre.”
Govt. and Politics
Eye on China, Jaishankar says Quad will benefit Indo-Pacific (Page no. 6)
(GS Paper 2, International Relations)
The entire Indo-Pacific region will benefit from the Quad and any reservations to the activities of the four-nation bloc is possibly a “unilateralist opposition to collective and cooperative endeavours”, External Affairs Minister S
Jaishankar said on Thursday, in an apparent reference to China’s objection.
The Quad, or Quadrilateral Security Dialogue, comprising India, the US, Japan and Australia was set up in 2017 to counter China’s aggressive behaviour in the Indo-Pacific region.
Speaking at the prestigious Chulalongkorn University here on ‘India’s Vision of the Indo-Pacific’, Jaishankar said the Quad is the most prominent plurilateral platform that addresses contemporary challenges and opportunities in the Indo-Pacific.
It has, in recent years, been meeting at the highest level. We had a summit in Tokyo a few months ago, and that itself is an indication of how substantive its work has become.
We are confident that the entire Indo-Pacific region will benefit from (the Quad’s) activities. And that is validated by the growing recognition of its importance in the international community.
If there are reservations in any quarter, these stem from a desire to exercise a veto on the choices of others. And possibly a unilateralist opposition to a collective and cooperative endeavours,” Jaishankar underlined without naming any country.
China’s foreign ministry has repeatedly opposed the Quad grouping.
It has said that the Indo-Pacific strategy “cooked up” by the US, in the name of “freedom and openness”, is keen on forming “cliques”. China claims that the grouping intends to “change China’s surrounding environment”.
Talking about the Indo-Pacific, Jaishankar said India envisages it as free, open, inclusive, peaceful and built on a rules-based order.
We consider the Indo-Pacific as a region that extends from the Eastern shores of Africa to the Western shores of America,” he said. “Over the years, this region has seen strong and sustained economic growth spreading across the Pacific rim, Southeast Asia, South Asia, the Gulf region and the East and Southern Coast of Africa. More integration and more collaboration will only add to prosperity and progress.
Editorial Page
Is this how justice ends (Page no. 10)
(GS Paper 2, Governance)
Let us make no mistake about it. The approval by the Gujarat government panel for the remission of sentences of 11 men convicted of raping BilkisBano, the murder of a three-year-old child, and participating in the murder of 13 others, is not just a travesty of justice. It is also a dangerous political dog-whistle. The government may yet reconsider its order.
The Supreme Court may, if approached, overturn it although it gave permission for the remission application to be considered. But the damage has already been done. “Is this how justice ends?” BilkisBano’s poignant question pierces through the carefully constructed facades of the Indian republic.
The haunting force of this question has no answer. The fact that the force of this question is not even being felt widely is a testimony to a moral numbing of the republic, and its blatant communalisation.
It is important not to let lawyerly arguments get in the way of understanding what is at stake in this remission. Unfortunately, in the Indian justice system, the way in which bail, punishment and remission are practisedis shot through with wide discretion.
Some rape cases, most notably Nirbhaya, attracted the death penalty; several other heinous cases like this one have not. We could argue whether remission can be granted under a policy that existed in 1992 and has since been repealed; whether the Centre’s guidelines that remission not be granted in the case of heinous crimes should apply to this case.
We could argue about what a just sentence in a case like this should be. And there may be a larger debate to be had about penalties and sentencing.
But this exercise of discretion is not that. This grant of remission may be enabled by these legal technicalities. But it looks like this is about a state government exercising discretionary power to subvert justice, and send a political signal.
The BilkisBano case was so horrific that even hearing about it produces a deep cognitive and imaginative loss, and an emotional disorientation.
The crime was so graphic, the facts corroborated so many times. But we still recoil at the thought of the kind of brutality that involved rape of a pregnant woman, smashing a child to death, massacring a whole family, all by your neighbours.
Against this background, what BilkisBano achieved was nothing short of miraculous. She fiercely exercised her agency, showed indomitable courage, against great odds: A hostile political environment, a threatening society, a broken justice system, and economic deprivation. She let justice, not the crime, define her. And in a supreme act of patriotism, reposed more faith in the Indian Constitution and its institutions than its custodians ever have.
The Idea Page
I-day speech to women’s work (Page no. 11)
(GS Paper 1, Women Related Issues)
Many argue that women’s burden of childcare and domestic work is the most important factor disadvantaging them in the labour market, both globally and in India.
This “care work burden” or “motherhood penalty”, as some call it, is seen to underlie gender gaps in wages, lifetime earnings, career choices, and upward mobility.
In India, women’s low labour force participation rate is also often explained in terms of the constraints imposed by childcare and domestic tasks, which fall mainly on them due to social norms.
But is this unchanging? I believe it is time to reassess this argument in light of notable demographic shifts, especially over the last decade, and concentrate our attention more fully on the demand-side constraints that women face (such as a dearth of suitable jobs), and barriers beyond households, especially the lack of safe transport, secure living spaces, and harassment-free workplaces.
Globally, for instance, total fertility rates (TFR) have fallen to replacement levels or below both in high-income and many middle-income countries. In India, as per the 2019-20 National Family Health Survey-5, the TFR is at 2.1 (replacement level) with only five states (Bihar, Jharkhand, Manipur, Meghalaya, and UP) having TFRs above 2.1.
Moreover, childlessness is growing. In the UK, 50 per cent of women who turned 30 in 2020 had not had children, and many will never have any.
In the US, too, childlessness is rising. In India, the figures while very low, also show a slow rise, from 2.4 per cent childlessness among women born in the 1940s to 5 per cent among those born in the late-1970s (‘Increasing childlessness driven by higher female education in India’, Koyel Sarkar and Thomas Baudin, N-IUSS, May 23, 2022).
With few children, the time women spend in childcare will fall. And even if the intensity of care per child increases, especially as middle-class women focus on “quality time” and more extra-curriculum activities for kids, there are limits to this rise.
Some argue that the burden of elder care will replace that of childcare, given ageing populations. But, will it? Most people no longer live with their elderly parents, either in developed or developing countries.
In the US, only 18 per cent of households were multigenerational in 2021 (Pew Research Centre survey). In the UK, 7 per cent of households were multigenerational in 2013-14. In India, only 16 per cent of families are deemed joint by the 2011 census.
In other words, the evidence does not suggest that eldercare is replacing the burden of childcare for most women, although this could vary by economic class, with poorer women being more burdened than middle-class ones.
Among the latter, a growing number of elderly people live on their own, with children moving to other cities or abroad. They typically support parents financially, rather than via hands-on care.
Demographically, therefore, we can expect a decline in the extent to which childcare will restrict women’s labour market options in the future. Although we need more research, there is already emerging evidence of this.
A 2019 study by John Bonggarts et al. (Population Studies) of 58 middle and low-income countries found that a fall in fertility and hence fewer children at home was linked with a significant increase in the percentage of women employed.
Drawing lines in high seas (Page no. 11)
(GS Paper 2, International Relations)
What explains Sri Lanka’s U-turn on the docking of the Chinese ship Yuan Wang-5 at Hambantota? Days after it asked Beijing to defer the visit of its research ship to Hambantota port citing security considerations, Colombo reversed its decision, in apparent disregard of Indian concerns. New Delhi had protested the Chinese vessel’s visit, deeming it detrimental to India’s security.
One explanation for Colombo’s change of heart is that the visiting Chinese ship is not classified as a warship, and therefore, does not warrant being barred entry in a Sri Lankan port.
As a space and satellite tracking ship ostensibly, the YW-5 poses no direct threat to India’s “unity, integrity and security” — at least not in a way violative of the 1987 Indo-Sri Lankan Accord, which calls upon the two countries to prevent foreign activity in their respective territories that could pose a threat to the other.
The other possibility is that Sri Lanka authorities succumbed to pressure from China, a key developmental partner for Colombo.
Sri Lanka’s initial refusal to allow the docking of the Chinese ship had upset Beijing, with Chinese officials lashing out at Colombo for its “senseless attempts” to prevent what they saw as mere “replenishment” of a research ship.
Having fully achieved its ambition of becoming a “maritime great power”, China, Admiral Prakash pointed out, was entitled to scientific research activity.
Not only was India’s objection to visit of the YW-5 not in keeping with the provisions of the UNCLOS (that permits unfettered freedom of navigation on the high seas, and acknowledges a foreign warship right to berth at a foreign port with prior consent), New Delhi’s stand, he averred, is unmaintainable in the face of China’s possession of Hambantota port for a period of 99 years.
Moreover, electronic snooping by foreign ships, aircraft and satellites, he noted, is a regular affair today. With precautionary policies and procedures in place, there was seemingly little in the YW-5’s visit that materially threatened Indian interests.
It seems there are two ways to construe the possible hazards posed by the YW-5. One is to indeed acknowledge that in an age of transparency, surveillance at sea is a legitimate activity.
Admiral Prakash is right to observe that friendly and hostile forces carry out snooping in the Asian littorals regularly, with regional states keeping track of foreign surveillance in their waters.
The other way to view the Yung Wang 5’s deployment, however, is to see it in the context of China’s evolving Indian Ocean strategy — not to physically dominate the region, but to create a permissive environment for its military activities. China rarely demonstrates naval power in the Indian Ocean; its approach is aimed essentially at expanding stakeholdership in the littorals through a gradual expansion of quasi-military presence.
In the Bay of Bengal and Andaman Sea, China has been sending not warships, but survey and research vessels, as a way of marking presence in the region. Beijing’s gameplan is to demonstrate to India and other Bay states that Chinese activities in the littoral are in keeping with China’s rising global heft.
It has sought to reassure states that unless necessitated by operational reasons, it would desist from deploying warships in foreign ports.
Strides in the Gulf (Page no. 11)
(GS Paper 2, International Relations)
About the Aligarh Muslim University’s (AMU) proposal to confer an honorary Doctor of Letters (D.Litt) degree on the crown prince of Saudi Arabia, Mohammad Bin Salman for his exemplary services to global affairs, and to augment India’s efforts to forge deeper links with the Gulf region.
A few weeks ago, Prime Minister Narendra Modi, in his first overseas visit after completing eight years in office, visited the United Arab Emirates (UAE) to offer condolences on the demise of Sheikh Khalifa bin Zayed Al Nahyan, the former UAE President.
Earlier, speaking at the centenary celebrations programme of AMU in December 2020, PM Modi exhorted the AMU community to further invigorate India’s relations with the Islamic world. He said, “In the last 100 years, AMU has worked to strengthen India’s relations with many countries of the world.
The research done here on Urdu, Arabic and Persian languages, on Islamic literature, gives new energy to India’s cultural relations with the entire Islamic world.”
These developments have prompted me to analyse India’s blossoming relations with countries of the Gulf region through a contemporary lens, and review AMU’s role in strengthening India’s links with the region.
PM Modi has surpassed all his predecessors in investing more energy and resources in cultivating ties with the Gulf countries. His efforts stand out on five counts.
First, he has put his personal imprint on efforts to improve relations with the region through more than a dozen visits so far.
Second, by substantially expanding India’s canvas of engagement — from simple trade-economic-energy relations to strategic relations in the spheres of space technology, defence, counter-terrorism and cyber-security — India’s stake in the security and stability of the region has risen.
Third is the cultivation of relationships within the region across binaries vis-à-vis Israel. A testament to this is that while India’s ties with Israel have been on the ascent, PM Modi became the first Indian PM to visit Palestine and receive its highest civilian award in recognition of his “contribution to promote relations between India and Palestine”.
Fourth, with the void created by the gradual downsizing of the role of the US in the region, India, for the first time, is being seen as a credible player with a role in the promotion of regional peace and security in the region.
The statement of the Prime Minister of Palestine in November 2021, seeking India’s “well-established and distinguished” role in the region, demonstrates this.
For a Muslim minority India to be seen as an effective interlocutor in a conservative Muslim region heralds a transformation in the outlook of these countries towards India.
Fifth, India’s greater impetus to viewing the Gulf countries as its “maritime neighbours”, has led to the recasting of India’s neighbourhood policy in two ways — “sea” is as important a variable as “land” in as much as “shared values” are as important as “geographical proximity” for a neighbour.
Explained Page
Megalodon (Page no. 15)
(GS Paper 3, Environment)
Using fossil evidence to create a three-dimensional model, researchers have found new evidence about the life of one of the biggest predatory animals of all time — the Megalodon.
According to the new study published in the journal Science Advances, the Megalodon could “completely ingest, and in as few as five bites,” a prey as big as the killer whale.
According to the study, the Megalodon was bigger than a school bus at around 50 feet from nose to tail. In comparison, the great white sharks of the present can grow to a maximum length of around 15 feet.
Using their digital model, the researchers have suggested that the giant transoceanic predator would have weighed around 70 tonnes — or as much as 10 elephants.
Megalodons roamed the oceans an estimated 23 million to 2.6 million years ago.
Using a previously established relationship between speed and body mass, researchers calculated that the Megalodon had an average cruising speed faster than sharks today. According to the research team, the Megalodon had the ability to migrate across multiple oceans.
The technique was used as the Megalodon’s skeleton is made of soft cartilage that doesn’t fossilize well. Using fossils that were available, including mainly teeth and a rare collection of vertebrae that has been with a Belgium museum since the 1860s, computer modelling was used to reconstruct the entire body of the extinct and largest known macropredatory shark.
An India Blockchain Platform (Page no. 15)
(GS Paper 3, Science and Technology)
There is an old saying: “Building the road is the first step to becoming prosperous”. In recent years, India has made a significant effort to become a digital society by building a large citizen-scale digital public infrastructure.
The Government of India and Reserve Bank of India (RBI) have been promoting simplification and transparency to increase the speed of interaction between individuals, markets, and the government.
With the commencement of the Digital India mission in 2015, our payments, provident fund, passports, driving licences, crossing tolls, and checking land records all have been transformed with modular applications built on Aadhaar, UPI, and the India Stack.
It is well established that digital infrastructure should be designed based on principles of availability, affordability, value, and trust. The invisible rules underlying technology can be made visible using design principles, legislative frameworks, governance frameworks, and public engagement.
But when we look at the current digital ecosystem, it’s identified that existing different digital infrastructures are not interconnected as a design; a technical integration is required to make them conversant and interoperable.
Today, information has to travel across multiple systems to complete the interaction, and rely on private databases, which makes the validation of data more complex as the network grows, driving up costs and creating inefficiencies.
It is becoming increasingly essential for developing nations to iteratively build innovative solutions on top of existing digital infrastructure.
We need resilient platforms, which may be based on the Web 3.0 architecture of tomorrow, even when we know it may take some more time to get these platforms capable of scaling and solving the current challenges in a cost-efficient manner.
The Web 3.0 architecture establishes a new version of the Internet protocol incorporating token-based economics, transparency, and decentralisation.
It is critical to understand that Web3 is not only the cryptocurrencies, but also NFTs or non-fungible tokens, representing physical assets or digital twins.
A user can access all ecosystem benefits using a distributed token where they can show proof of ownership, tax history, and payment instruments.
Since the Web 3.0 ecosystem is less zero-sum, user lock-in is not the primary goal for new companies, and key operations can be encoded in “smart contracts” that are auditable, immutable, and easier for an early adopter to complete.
A blockchain-based infrastructure can provide all of these attributes without the need of trusting any particular actor to verify a ledger’s history. The blockchain records could be visible, compiled, and audited by the regulators in real time.
How human gave monkeypox to pet dog (Page no. 15)
(GS Paper 2, Health)
The first case of human-to-animal transmission of monkeypox has been reported in a dog, according to research published in the medical journal The Lancet on August 10.
Following the news, the United States public health agency, the Centres for Disease Control (CDC) and Prevention, has updated its prevention recommendations on infected persons having pets at home.
Detected in a Paris hospital, the infected dog showed symptoms such as lesions on the skin, specifically “mucocutaneous lesions, including abdomen pustules and a thin anal ulceration”. It is unclear right now if dogs can further spread the disease to other dogs or humans.
In India, eight cases of monkeypoxhave been reported so far. Globally, monkeypox cases have topped 35,000 since May this year, when the disease was first reported outside its endemic areas of a few countries of Central and West Africa. The WHO has said at present, a majority of the cases being reported are from Europe and the Americas.
According to The Lancet, the dog would sleep on the same bed as two men who were non-exclusive sexual partners and shared the household together.
The men had been detected with monkeypox in late May this year after they showed symptoms of fever, headaches, and anal ulcerations.
Around 12 days later, the dog began showing symptoms, and was soon tested. The men said they had taken care to prevent their dog from contact with other pets or humans since the onset of their own symptoms.
While it has not been understood yet how exactly the transmission happened in this case, among humans monkeypox spreads through close contact with anyone infected with the virus, through infectious rashes and bodily fluids.
The vast majority of cases in the current outbreak have been concentrated among men having sex with men (MSM).
Advisories issued by governments and health agencies have cautioned against the sharing of bed linen or clothes with infected persons.
In endemic countries, only wild animals (rodents and primates) have been found to carry the monkeypox virus, The Lancet report said. Infection among domesticated animals, such as dogs and cats, had not been reported till now.
Given only one case has been reported so far, The Lancet has called for further investigation on secondary transmissions via pets.
However, the CDC has suggested certain precautions, saying it is possible that people who are infected can spread the monkeypox virus to animals through close contact — petting, cuddling, hugging, kissing, licking, sharing sleeping areas, and sharing food.
Those who have monkeypox symptoms or have recently tested positive need to avoid close contact. If the pet has not been in close proximity to the owners, they can be shifted to another place until the recovery happens, or around 21 days.
Economy
Windfall tax revision: Levy on crude cut, diesel sees hike (Page no. 17)
(GS Paper 3, Economy)
In line with the moderation in global crude prices and drop in refining margins, the Centre undertook the third review of its recently imposed levies on fuel and cut the tax levy on domestic crude oil production to Rs 13,000 per tonne from Rs 17,750 a tonne.
The windfall tax on diesel, however, was hiked to Rs 7 a litre from Rs 5 a litre, and tax on export of aviation turbine fuel (ATF) was retained at Rs 2 a litre after being scrapped in the second review earlier this month, as per a Finance Ministry notification.
Export of petrol will continue to attract nil tax. The changes will be effective Friday.This is the third review undertaken by the Finance Ministry after imposing the levies on fuel initially on July 1.
With an aim to address the issue of fuel shortage in the country, the government on July 1 had imposed a special additional excise duty on export of petrol and diesel. Cesses equal to Rs 6 per litre on petrol and Rs 13 per litre on diesel were imposed on their exports.
The Centre also imposed a cess of Rs 23,250 per tonne (by way of special additional excise duty) or windfall tax on domestic crude being sold to domestic refineries at international parity prices.
In the first review conducted on July 20, the government cut the cesses and levies on diesel and aviation turbine fuel and removed the cess on exports of petrol.
The Rs 6 a litre export duty on petrol was scrapped, the tax on the export of diesel and ATF was cut by Rs 2 per litre each to Rs 11 and Rs 4, respectively. The tax on domestically produced crude was also cut to Rs 17,000 per tonne. The ministry is undertaking a review every 15 days for the windfall tax on fuel.
On August 2, as part of the second review, the export tax on diesel was cut to Rs 5 a litre and that on ATF scrapped, following a drop in refinery cracks or margins. But the levy on domestically produced crude oil was raised to Rs 17,750 per tonne in line with a marginal increase in international crude prices.
Starting June, fuel pumps across the country have been reporting fuel shortages, leading to their closure. The situation of fuel shortage at pumps peaked during the middle of June, resulting in the government issuing a statement on the matter. The statement assured of enough fuel available in the country and asked oil marketing companies to ensure their fuel pumps remain open.
Global crude prices had risen and domestic crude producers were making windfall gains. Private oil marketing companies were exporting petrol and diesel to foreign countries like Australia for better realisation.
The shortage of fuel at retail outlets was because oil marketing companies were not willing to sell fuel at a loss since fuel prices have not increased despite rising crude and depreciating rupee – these two factors had led to oil marketing companies losing Rs 20-25 per litre on diesel and Rs 10-15 per litre on petrol.