The lure of the exotic and esoteric

If “wonderful discoveries happening in biology” had acted as a trigger for Nobel Laureate Venkatraman Ramakrishnan to switch from physics to chemistry, the nearly matured and well-established field of chemistry failed to enthuse Yoshinori Ohsumi, and he shifted to biology. Autophagy — a fundamental process for degrading and recycling cellular components — was known long before he ventured into the field, but it was his paradigm-shifting research that revealed the importance of this fundamental process that comes into play every other minute. His seminal work helped reveal that vacuoles in yeast and lysosomes in human cells are not just garbage bins but recyclers and fuel producers. Right from the stage of embryo development to countering the negative effects of ageing, autophagy plays an important role. As in the case of many Laureates, Dr. Ohsumi’s initial years were more than frustrating, but he prevailed. His approach to science is an antithesis to what is generally seen in today’s young researchers, and that precisely is what helped him break new ground and bag the Nobel Prize this year — only the third Laureate since 2010 to not share the Prize for Physiology or Medicine with others.

But lysosomes and other cellular bodies would be severely impacted if molecular machines in our body failed to work synchronously to carry materials around in a cell and for several other functions. Though not as elegant as the molecular machines at work inside us, the work done by Jean-Pierre Sauvage, J. Fraser Stoddart and Bernard L. Feringa, the winners of the Nobel Prize in Chemistry, has set the ball rolling in the endeavour to realise Nobel Laureate Richard Feynman’s dream more than 50 years ago of building very small machines. Though very primitive at this point in time, science will see one of the biggest revolutions when the cogs and cranks of their work are finally put together to build machines on a nanoscale; nanomachines will find applications in diverse fields, from medicine to electronics. Much like the nanomachines of tomorrow, David J. Thouless, F. Duncan M. Haldane and J. Michael Kosterlitz’s theoretical explanations for exotic states of materials by using topological concepts will give birth to a completely different class of products. This year’s Nobel-winning physicists, they predicted the exotic behaviour that other scientists later found at the surface of materials and inside very thin layers, such as superconductivity and magnetism in extremely thin materials. Physicists are now looking beyond the ordinary to find new and exotic phases of matter that change in a stepwise fashion.

Leading the divided nations

The United Nations Security Council’s broad consensus in nominating António Guterres for the post of Secretary-General is an auspicious start to what could be a more assertive UN in wrestling with the many crises of the world. Last week, 13 of the 15 members of the Council, including the five veto-wielding permanent members, sent the name of the former Portugal Prime Minister to the General Assembly for final approval. If the Assembly passes his nomination, then as the UN’s ninth Secretary-General Mr. Guterres will have to expediently attend to a number of pressing issues, including the worsening international refugee crisis and the scourge of terrorism, both in part linked to the debilitating Syrian war. His experience as the UN High Commissioner for Refugees will come in handy as he goes about negotiating to find shelter for and rehabilitate refugees from Syria, who at last count numbered well above four million worldwide. At the UNHCR, Mr. Guterres is said to have focussed on organisational reform and innovation by taking funding out of the headquarters and pushing more money out to the field. It is clear that he is passionate about the cause of refugees; he has frequently appealed to the international community over the migrant crisis and has vowed to continue being their spokesman.

An equally challenging agenda point facing Mr. Guterres is to find creative ways to bridge the chasm between Western powers on the one hand and Russia and China on the other. Ironically, owing to his very commitment to address the refugee crises, he may be considered an “activist”. This could be a recipe for stasis, if not disaster, in any campaign to broker a peace deal in Syria. Mr. Guterres can ill afford such obstructionism. As an institution, the UN is frequently accused of being “bloated and bureaucratic”, and has come under fire over allegations of sexual abuse by its peacekeepers in the Central African Republic. Although he has a reputation for being an instinctive strategist, Mr. Guterres will have to hand-pick a capable team of advisers. But has he already struck bargains with China or Russia over who will get some key political posts? Will he stay true to his promise, made earlier, to ensure that the higher echelons of the UN have 50 per cent women employees? That goal, set 20 years ago by the UN, is far from being met. In fact, Mr. Guterres’ own candidacy came as a disappointment for some, given that there were no fewer than seven women in the race and not one of them even came close to winning.

The ground beneath our feet

India needs a different approach to grow its economy and must remove bottlenecks so that foreign investors can operate in the country just as its own corporates expand their global footprint, Singapore Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong said during his India visit last week. His remarks may appear out of sync with the official discourse on India’s recent economic performance, especially the liberalisation of foreign direct investment and record inflows clocked since the Modi government was sworn in. Mr. Lee’s concerns, however, don’t stem from FDI policy per se, but two intertwined reform showpieces of the NDA — one abandoned after hot pursuit in its first year and another that remains a work in progress. These are amendments to the land acquisition law and improvements in the ease of doing business, respectively. Indian officials told business leaders accompanying the Singapore Prime Minister that they are free to invest in India if they can, on their own, acquire the land to set up shop on. As Mr. Lee pointed out, that makes investing in India virtually impossible — industrial parks that Singapore had proposed in the past remain non-starters. The Centre may not be used to such public plain-speaking, even from Western leaders with longer reform wish lists, but it must take the Prime Minister’s cue for introspection and course correction.

Modernising India’s land laws was high on the government’s agenda in 2014-15; an ordinance was promulgated thrice to effect necessary changes till Parliament could pass a law. Global investors were assured that land acquired under the ordinance would be safe from any subsequent changes to the law. But the Centre wilted in the face of Opposition resistance. A model land-leasing law formulated by the Niti Aayog was mooted for States to adopt instead, but a billion-dollar plant is unlikely to come up on leased foundations. Since then, a proposed nuclear plant has moved out from Gujarat owing to land acquisition problems, India’s largest FDI proposal from South Korea’s Posco is all but off, and job creation has hit a five-year low. India moved up 12 places in the World Bank’s Ease of Doing Business index last year and may rise further. But the index is only based on speed of paperwork in Mumbai and Delhi, where there is little space for big new industries; such rankings don’t directly translate into more FDI. The Prime Minister has set a target for India to reach the top 50 ranks in the index, but getting a construction permit online is no good if large tracts of land cannot be provided job-creating investment. If the idea to bury the land reform was to secure farmers’ votes and, in the process, alternative jobs are not created for the young and those who want to move out of agriculture, castles in the air are all that will be built.

A Nobel push for peace in Colombia

In a long year of war and strife, it is a silver lining that the Nobel Committee in Oslo was spoilt for choice in deciding upon the recipient of the 2016 Peace Prize. A landmark nuclear deal brought a peaceful closure to Iran’s purported nuclear weapon ambitions and paved the way for better relations between Tehran and the West, making the key negotiators leading contenders for the Prize. The yeoman efforts of the White Helmets of Syria, a group of local volunteers in Aleppo In a long year of war and strife, it is a silver lining that the Nobel Committee in Oslo was spoilt for choice in deciding upon the recipient of the 2016 Peace Prize. A landmark nuclear deal brought a peaceful closure to Iran’s purported nuclear weapon ambitions and paved the way for better relations between Tehran and the West, making the key negotiators leading contenders for the Prize. The yeoman efforts of the White Helmets of Syria, a group of local volunteers in Aleppo and other parts of war-ravaged Syria who help rescue people injured or stranded in bomb attacks in war zones, merited recognition. But the ending of one of the longest-running civil wars was the achievement that got the highest recognition by the Committee. The Nobel Peace Prize for 2016 has beenawarded to Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos after his government painstakingly concluded negotiations by signing an accord with the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), winding down hostilities in a 52-year-old civil war. The accord, signed on September 26, 2016, provided for the disbanding of FARC militants and for the rebels to join the political process as a routine political party, besides conceding demands by FARC to address inequities in Colombia’s rural areas through development programmes and land distribution. FARC also agreed to dismantle drug production facilities in areas in its control which had helped finance the war against the Colombian government. This was a landmark accord that provided an opportunity not just for peace but also for better prospects in the war against drug production and trade in Colombia.

Merely a week after the accord, the government received a setback as its attempt to get the accord ratified through a referendum failed. About 50.23 per cent of the voters who turned out (the turnout was less than 40 per cent) voted against the peace agreement. Both the government and FARC have ruled out a return to war despite this setback, and even the advocates of the “no” vote, including former President Álvaro Uribe, have sought fresh negotiations for what they deem to be a better accord. The Nobel committee recognises that despite the setback there is the need for a broad-based dialogue to further the peace process. In doing so, it has provided Mr. Santos the persuasive pulpit he had lost following the referendum. The award should enable his government to seek a renewed accord that does not militate against the previous one and seals a durable peace. The Peace Prize is a testimonial to the patience required to bring about closure to complex, long-running conflicts. In this case at least, it is well-deserved. other parts of war-ravaged Syria who help rescue people injured or stranded in bomb attacks in war zones, merited recognition. But the ending of one of the longest-running civil wars was the achievement that got the highest recognition by the Committee. The Nobel Peace Prize for 2016 has been awarded to Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos after his government painstakingly concluded negotiations by signing an accord with the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), winding down hostilities in a 52-year-old civil war. The accord, signed on September 26, 2016, provided for the disbanding of FARC militants and for the rebels to join the political process as a routine political party, besides conceding demands by FARC to address inequities in Colombia’s rural areas through development programmes and land distribution. FARC also agreed to dismantle drug production facilities in areas in its control which had helped finance the war against the Colombian government. This was a landmark accord that provided an opportunity not just for peace but also for better prospects in the war against drug production and trade in Colombia.

Merely a week after the accord, the government received a setback as its attempt to get the accord ratified through a referendum failed. About 50.23 per cent of the voters who turned out (the turnout was less than 40 per cent) voted against the peace agreement. Both the government and FARC have ruled out a return to war despite this setback, and even the advocates of the “no” vote, including former President Álvaro Uribe, have sought fresh negotiations for what they deem to be a better accord. The Nobel committee recognises that despite the setback there is the need for a broad-based dialogue to further the peace process. In doing so, it has provided Mr. Santos the persuasive pulpit he had lost following the referendum. The award should enable his government to seek a renewed accord that does not militate against the previous one and seals a durable peace. The Peace Prize is a testimonial to the patience required to bring about closure to complex, long-running conflicts. In this case at least, it is well-deserved.

If “wonderful discoveries happening in biology” had acted as a trigger for Nobel Laureate Venkatraman Ramakrishnan to switch from physics to chemistry, the nearly matured and well-established field of chemistry failed to enthuse Yoshinori Ohsumi, and he shifted to biology. Autophagy — a fundamental process for degrading and recycling cellular components — was known long before he ventured into the field, but it was his paradigm-shifting research that revealed the importance of this fundamental process that comes into play every other minute. His seminal work helped reveal that vacuoles in yeast and lysosomes in human cells are not just garbage bins but recyclers and fuel producers. Right from the stage of embryo development to countering the negative effects of ageing, autophagy plays an important role. As in the case of many Laureates, Dr. Ohsumi’s initial years were more than frustrating, but he prevailed. His approach to science is an antithesis to what is generally seen in today’s young researchers, and that precisely is what helped him break new ground and bag the Nobel Prize this year — only the third Laureate since 2010 to not share the Prize for Physiology or Medicine with others.

But lysosomes and other cellular bodies would be severely impacted if molecular machines in our body failed to work synchronously to carry materials around in a cell and for several other functions. Though not as elegant as the molecular machines at work inside us, the work done by Jean-Pierre Sauvage, J. Fraser Stoddart and Bernard L. Feringa, the winners of the Nobel Prize in Chemistry, has set the ball rolling in the endeavour to realise Nobel Laureate Richard Feynman’s dream more than 50 years ago of building very small machines. Though very primitive at this point in time, science will see one of the biggest revolutions when the cogs and cranks of their work are finally put together to build machines on a nanoscale; nanomachines will find applications in diverse fields, from medicine to electronics. Much like the nanomachines of tomorrow, David J. Thouless, F. Duncan M. Haldane and J. Michael Kosterlitz’s theoretical explanations for exotic states of materials by using topological concepts will give birth to a completely different class of products.This year’s Nobel-winning physicists, they predicted the exotic behaviour that other scientists later found at the surface of materials and inside very thin layers, such as superconductivity and magnetism in extremely thin materials. Physicists are now looking beyond the ordinary to find new and exotic phases of matter that change in a stepwise fashion.

Stamping down on prejudice

The revival of the HIV and AIDS (Prevention and Control) Bill, 2014, and the Union Cabinet’s approval for provisions that make discrimination against people living with the virus punishable, are positive steps. Such laws, however, can only deliver benefits within the overall constraints imposed by an underfunded public health system. Where the legislation can make some difference, with active monitoring by HIV/AIDS support groups, is in ensuring that acquiring the infection does not mean an end to education, employment, access to housing and healthcare due to discrimination. The success of the anti-discrimination aspects hinges on the readiness of governments to accept the inquiry findings of ombudsmen, to be appointed under the law, and provide relief. Since the new law is intended to both stop the spread of the disease and help those who have become infected get antiretroviral therapy as well as equal opportunity, it will take a high degree of commitment to provide effective drugs to all those in need. In August, the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare put the number of people getting free treatment nationally at 9,65,000, of which 53,400 are children. This must be viewed against the most recent estimate last year, that 2.1 million people live with HIV in India, of whom 7,90,000 are women. Regional variations in access to diagnosis and treatment must be addressed.

The legislation and the structure of complaints redress that it proposes should provide some relief to thousands of families that face discrimination in admitting children to school, an infected individual getting a job, or treatment in hospital. Unlike many other diseases, however, HIV/AIDS has received global attention and funding, thus building up pressure on governments to come up with supportive policies. Communities will now have the opportunity to ensure that the strongest element of the prospective law, assuring confidentiality of HIV status, is enforced. A breach could invite imprisonment and a fine. Yet, the proposals approved by the Cabinet fail on one important count: the insurance industry is allowed to use actuarial calculations to limit access to products to people with HIV. The Centre’s initiative is palpably weak, since a universal system would not discriminate against people with any form of illness, and would fully embrace the goal of health and welfare for all. National AIDS Control Organisation data for 2015 indicate that while there is an overall decline in HIV prevalence among visitors to antenatal clinics, there was a rise in nine States. The government must get down to business and close such gaps.

Chief Minister in a hurry

Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar will clearly leave no stone unturned in giving his prohibition policy a legislative punch. Within days of the Patna High Courtstriking a blow to the “total prohibition” regime in the State, the government notified the Bihar Prohibition and Excise Act, 2016, and approached the Supreme Court to challenge the High Court order. The haste throws some light on Mr. Kumar’s political strategy, which is aimed at distinguishing himself in a crowded landscape. Prohibition was his main campaign outreach to women voters in the 2015 Assembly elections. Having won the votes of women in earlier elections on schemes such as bicycles for schoolgirls, prohibition gave his Janata Dal (United) an added moral aura — he was fighting a no-holds-barred election against his former ally, the BJP, and he was fighting in alliance with Lalu Prasad’s Rashtriya Janata Dal. In the event, he was returned to the Chief Minister’s post, but with the RJD getting a greater number of MLAs than the JD(U). Mr. Kumar’s natural claim to the big post draws from his personal credibility, seen to be more potent than his party’s. This connect with a wide cross-section of the public, as a politician empathetic to aspirations for a dignified, socially and educationally empowered life, had him in the fray for a larger national role during his BJP-allied days, and so too in his current anti-BJP politics.

The prohibition plank, with its Gandhian overtones and empathetic message to women, gives Mr. Kumar a chance to arrogate to himself the mantle of a moral campaigner nationally. In the immediate term, it allows him to set himself apart from the RJD’s rougher politics, and change the subject soon after his government found itself emitting the wrong message on law and order, particularly when Mohammad Shahabuddin was briefly out on bail. By attempting to overcome the High Court order, Mr. Kumar may have underlined his assertiveness, but he has, in the process, missed the opportunity the court gave him to reconsider the harsh punishments outlined in the previous law, with all the questions they pose for civil liberties, as well as the very architecture of the legislation. The prohibition regime forces the deployment of the police to seal the State’s border, and away from more mindful policing within, which was the change Mr. Kumar’s long chief ministership promised. The punishment worked into the current law gives the police greater opportunity for rent-seeking. This may alienate the very constituencies that keep him in the running for a role larger than his party’s electoral footprint.

Disquiet over Cauvery’s flows

When the Cauvery Water Disputes Tribunal (CWDT) proposed the setting up of a Cauvery Management Board, it did so for very good reasons. During monsoon deficit years, the pattern of flows in the different sub-basins will not match the schedule of water deliveries worked out on the basis of normal year readings. The CMB was conceived as a body that would monitor the storage position in the Cauvery basin and the trend of rainfall, and assess the likely inflows for distribution among the States. The tribunal was emphatic in its final award: the CMB is integral to the resolution of disputes, between Tamil Nadu and Karnataka and also Tamil Nadu and Puducherry and Tamil Nadu and Kerala, over the schedule of releases for irrigation downstream. For the Central government to now oppose the setting up of the CMB, taking cover under Article 262 of the Constitution and the provisions of the Inter-State River Water Disputes Act, 1956 that forbid the Supreme Court from intervening in inter-State water disputes is little more than a streak of twisted logic. Indeed, the Section of the 1956 Act that gives the orders of tribunals set up by the government under it the same force as an order of the Supreme Court is being invoked not to strengthen the orders of the Cauvery tribunal but to subvert one of its crucial recommendations. The Supreme Court’s direction to the Centre to constitute the CMB was in keeping with the tribunal order, and not in contravention of it, as the government was trying to make it appear.

The fact that the Centre did such a hasty U-turn on the CMB while making its submission in the Supreme Court suggests that political factors may have been at play. The Assembly election in Karnataka, where the BJP has high stakes, is less than two years away. In contrast, Tamil Nadu, where the BJP has no real base, has recently concluded its election. If there is a good legal argument against the setting up of the CMB, it is that a larger, three-judge Bench of the Supreme Court is already seized of the matter. Tamil Nadu’s plea to constitute the CMB had been clubbed along with the main appeal filed challenging the 2007 final award of the CWDT. In the short term, the Supreme Court’s acceptance of the suggestion that a “technical team” visit the Cauvery basin and report back on the ground realities seems to be the only certain way of depoliticising the dispute. But any long-term solution will necessarily have to be on the basis of the well-thought-out recommendations of the CWDT, and the mechanism provided for the sharing of waters in a year of distress.

Cricket’s ranking put to the Test

India’s ascent to the number one position in Test rankings offers some cause for cheer given the tumult off the field, with the R.M. Lodha Committee and the Board of Control for Cricket in India still sparring over administrative reform. India’s 178-run victory over New Zealand in the second Test at Kolkata, paving the way for a series triumph, secured the lead billing. This is the fourth instance of India securing the top slot in the International Cricket Council’s rankings since it was introduced in 2003. It is significant that out of the four stints, irrespective of the time frame, three have been over the past year. For a squad evolving from the pangs of transition and with big shoes to fill, from those of Sachin Tendulkar to those of Anil Kumble, it has done remarkably well. The combined numbers of the playing XI at Kolkata were 28.54 years in age and 27.54 in the average number of Tests played — for such a young team to register dominance, under Virat Kohli’s captaincy, is no mean achievement. When India first secured the number one ranking in 2009, it was a team packed with contemporary greats, including Tendulkar, Rahul Dravid, V.V.S. Laxman, Virender Sehwag, M.S. Dhoni, Zaheer Khan and Harbhajan Singh.

In contrast, the current line-up is a work in progress, with cricketers still working out their natural slot in Tests. Kohli and R. Ashwin remain the pivots, while Murali Vijay, Ajinkya Rahane and Wriddhiman Saha have established their staying power as Test cricketers. The emergence of opener K.L. Rahul is a good sign, especially given India’s traditional dilemma in finding batsmen capable of seeing off the new ball. These men form the core that can take India forward. However, much remains to be done. The opening combine is yet to firm up, and Cheteshwar Pujara and Rohit Sharma need to re-establish their solidity. The bowling remains over-reliant on Ashwin. These shortcomings should be sorted out over a long home season in the course of which India will host England, Australia and Bangladesh. The first two will offer keen competition, unlike what India encountered against the West Indies and New Zealand. For now, there is the third Test at Indore, and a 3-0 sweep against New Zealand would give India confidence for the rest of the season. As for the team displaced from the top position in the ICC ranking, Pakistan, its short-lived reign poses a question about the difficulty in grading Test teams. Pakistan plays most of its matches away from home, and therefore does not enjoy a similar advantage. Nonetheless, the dominance of the two subcontinental teams in the ICC ranking affirms the strength of South Asian cricket.

Bolstering growth amid risks

The Monetary Policy Committee’s decision, at its maiden meeting, to cut the benchmark repurchase (repo) rate by 25 basis points held no surprise for markets. What had been on watch was the language of the policy statement, the extent of consensus in the committee and the manner in which the new Reserve Bank of India Governor and chairman of the MPC, Urjit Patel, presented the central bank’s positions. Articulating the main concern that informed the newly constituted rate-setting panel’s rationale for reducing interest rates, Mr. Patel said the global demand environment was clearly looking far bleaker than previously anticipated, with the forecast for world economic growth set to be downgraded further. The focus, he signalled, therefore needs to remain on supporting the domestic economy through an accommodative monetary stance. That the MPC has opted to lay primacy on ‘supporting growth’ while keeping its sights firmly trained on the RBI’s central remit to target a medium-term retail inflation objective of 4 per cent, within a band of plus/minus 2 per cent, bodes well. Decision-making by committee is never easy, and given the short time the MPC had since its constitution last month, the lucidity of the policy statement shows its six members have hit the ground running. While the minutes of the meeting — that will reveal each member’s arguments — will become available on October 18, all six voted for the rate cut. The decision reflects the broad consensus that the risks to growth from global uncertainty and financial markets volatility remain high, especially ahead of the U.S. presidential election, and that a rate stimulus was warranted given the recent slowing in retail inflation.

Even as it expects an improvement in the outlook for food inflation on the back of increased sowing and supply management measures undertaken by the government, the MPC has been cautious in flagging the risks to the trajectory for price gains. In the panel’s opinion, the main factors that could play a contributory role in furthering a fresh ‘cost spiral’ would be the higher house rent allowances mandated by the Seventh Pay Commission, the increase in minimum wages and the possible spillovers through minimum support prices. Multiple factors augur well for the outlook for both the industrial and services sectors. But the worsening trade demand could offset the gross value added (GVA) momentum, the MPC noted, while retaining the RBI’s GVA growth forecast of 7.6 per cent. That the panel has made a decisive start to rate-setting through deliberation is clear; how it weathers harsher domestic and external challenges, should they emerge, remains to be seen.

The elusive peace in Colombia

Colombia has missed, narrowly, an opportunity to end its five-decade-long civil war. Had a majority of the electorate voted ‘yes’ in Sunday’s referendum on a peace agreement reached between the government of President Juan Manuel Santos and the guerrillas of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), it would have immediately set in motion the process of disarming the rebels. But the accord was rejected by a razor-thin majority, throwing the future of peace — and war as well, which both the government and the rebels had declared over — into uncertainty. It is not difficult to understand popular anger against FARC. The rebel group is accused of massacres, trading in illegal drugs and running extortion rackets. Over 52 years, the conflict has claimed 220,000 lives and displaced about six million people. A dominant section of Colombia’s political class, led by former President Álvaro Uribe, was actively campaigning for a ‘no’ vote. Mr. Uribe had charged President Santos with handing Colombia over to FARC. The main criticism is that “justice” is being sacrificed for achieving “peace”. Under the terms of the current agreement, most of FARC’s rank and file would be allowed to lead civilian lives. The leadership will be judged in special tribunals with reduced sentences.

With all its imperfections, this was the best opportunity in decades to end a war in which both sides have committed terrible crimes. While the atrocities committed by FARC are well-documented, government troops and the army-backed right-wing paramilitaries stand accused of excessive use of force, turning the Colombian countryside into a war zone. Where President Santos differed from his predecessors was in the realisation that there was no military solution to this conflict, leading to negotiations with the rebels four years ago with Cuba’s mediation. The ‘no’ vote doesn’t necessarily mean that the country will be pushed back into war. Both President Santos and FARC chief ‘Timochenko’ have said they would continue efforts to make peace. But it is not clear what options they have but to renegotiate a fresh deal and put it to another referendum. That means the government and the rebels may have to go through another round of tortuous talks. While reaching a new agreement has its own challenges, it is plausible for both sides, having established goodwill and trust over the past four years of negotiations, to look for creative diplomatic solutions to end the war for good. The Colombian government should also try to win over the opposition, which would strengthen its appeal to the public for a deal. The alternative to peace is to send FARC back to the jungles and risk a potential resumption of the war.

Clinching the N-deal with Japan

India has completed agreements for civil nuclear cooperation with 11 countries so far, including the U.S., Russia, Australia, Canada and South Korea, but the upcoming agreement with Japan could be the most significant. Japan is the only country to have been the victim of a nuclear attack, and its decision to sign an agreement with India, a country that has not signed the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT), would be a first. Reservations in Japan against nuclear energy have hardened after the Fukushima accident. Tokyo’s support to the deal so far is therefore an indication of the importance it accords to relations with India. For India, the civil nuclear agreement with Japan is especially important for the message of trust it would convey to Nuclear Suppliers Group members in a year the country hopes to have its admission accepted. Japan’s support at the NSG has been particularly marked. In fact, India and Japan share many multilateral platforms, including membership of the G-4 group that is knocking at the UN Security Council’s door for reform. Beyond symbolic reasons, Japanese nuclear energy technology and safety parameters are widely considered to be cutting-edge, and many critical parts needed for Indian reactors are made by Japanese manufacturers. These will not be available to India until the agreement is done. Although India has even considered trying to manufacture them locally, there won’t be alternatives to Japan for several years. Even the U.S. civil nuclear deal, that is yet to be actualised, is contingent on the deal with Japan, given that the current discussions for six reactors in Andhra Pradesh are with Westinghouse, which is owned by the Japanese company Toshiba.

It may appear baffling why the deal has taken so long to negotiate. The main sticking point has been India’s refusal to sign the NPT, as it considers the treaty unfair to the developing world. This is why New Delhi is keen on ensuring that in the haste to seal the deal by the time Prime Minister Narendra Modi visits Japan this winter, it doesn’t give in to pressure to adhere to anything more than its own self-declared moratorium on testing. The Japanese insistence on a “nullification” clause that the agreement would cease as soon as India tests, will be judged with this balance in mind. Particularly post-Fukushima, Japanese manufacturers will also be expected to be more generous with India on the liability issue, given their own experience with the enormous cost of cleaning up. As always, and even more so than with the India-U.S. agreement, the devil will be in the detail of the final draft.

No short cuts in Maharashtra

The immediate provocation for the series of rallies in the name of Maharashtra’s numerically dominant Marathas might appear to be the rape and killing of a 14-year-old girl in Ahmednagar district. All the three accused so far in the case are Dalits. While the protesters have demanded justice for the victim, their rallies have been used as a pretext for Marathas to reiterate a long-standing demand for reservations under the Other Backward Classes category and for scrapping the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes (Prevention of Atrocities) Act of 1989. The Marathas’ demand for reservations mirrors similar ones made recently by Patidars and Jats in Gujarat and Haryana, respectively. As with Patidars and Jats, the demand for inclusion in the OBC quota is fuelled by anxiety about relative economic backwardness among a large cross-section of Marathas. Their inability to move up the economic ladder and the lack of adequate opportunities in a sluggish agrarian economy have been key factors in the agitations for reservations. Yet, the demand for reservations for Marathas, traditionally seen as “upper castes”, goes against the spirit of affirmative action that has guided eligibility for quotas in Central and State lists. Marathas are a dominant caste and play a central role in electoral politics as well as the political economy of the State. In any case, it has been judicially established that economic criteria alone cannot be taken as determinants of backwardness. The Bombay High Court had stayed an order by the previous Congress-NCP government for 16 per cent reservations for Marathas in educational institutions and jobs over and above the almost 50 per cent quota for SC/STs and OBCs put together.

The other key demand in the Maratha agitations, for the scrapping of the POA Act, seems to be clearly directed at perceived Dalit assertion. Such demands have been voiced in the past too by political groups representing landed backward classes in States such as Tamil Nadu. The implementation of the POA Act has been sketchy across India, and Maharashtra is no exception. Conviction rates remain low, even if reporting of crimes against SCs and STs and their registration have increased, as a result of increasing awareness among Dalits and Adivasis of their legal options. Indeed, there is a case for better implementation of the Act, certainly not for its scrapping. It is therefore disturbing that political parties are trying to appropriate the seemingly spontaneous protests for any electoral dividends. The Devendra Fadnavis-led government would be well-advised to address the State’s agrarian distress and need for more job creation, instead of opting for short cuts such as expanding reservations, which in any case may not ultimately pass judicial scrutiny.

In black and white++ Income Disclosure Scheme

The Centre’s move to mop up black money from the economy by giving taxpayers amnesty to declare undisclosed past income by paying tax on it at an effective, slightly high rate of 45 per cent has yielded a surprisingly positive dividend. The four-month window granted for evaders to come clean opened sluggishly, but eventually over 64,200 assessees disclosed undeclared assets worth at least Rs.65,250 crore. Stern warnings from the Prime Minister himself about tough action and possible jail terms for those who failed to declare their ‘cartloads’ of black money may have added punch to the Finance Ministry’s pitch. The haul is considerably higher than the Rs.4,164 crore in assets and black money held abroad disclosed under a similar arrangement with a higher tax rate in 2015. This time, the tax department rightly focussed on demystifying and propagating the scheme, so potential beneficiaries were reassured that they would not be persecuted. The almost Rs.30,000 crore in taxes being raked in provides a cushion for the Centre on the fiscal deficit management front since it hadn’t set any explicit revenue expectations from the scheme.

The final stocktaking is still on, so the record collections under this scheme, vis-à-vis similar endeavours in the past, could rise further. The Centre, however, must not consider this the end of its campaign on black money. To put things in context, the average undisclosed income per taxpayer under the scheme stands at Rs.1.01 crore; and though the disclosures are nearly double those in the last income amnesty scheme (around Rs.33,700 crore), nearly two decades have passed since then, making comparisons misleading. The tax department is aware that Rs.65,250 crore is just the tip of the iceberg — it had sent seven lakh letters to suspected evaders based on information on about 90 lakh high-value transactions that took place without PAN card details. The tax department must crack down on such evaders and spruce up its data-mining methods to expand the country’s shallow tax base. While the department’s efforts have revealed undisclosed income of over Rs.58,000 crore in the last two and half years, and more is being pursued from tax havens where Indian holdings have come to light, all of this is akin to treating the symptoms without addressing the root cause. If the Centre is serious about attacking India’s thriving black economy, it needs to be bold and, for starters, make electoral funding transparent, curb the misuse by the wealthy of tax-free income sops for farmers, and encourage cashless transactions.

OPEC’s roll of the dice

The agreement reached at the extraordinary meeting of the Organisation of the Petroleum Exporting Countries, in Algiers, to trim the cartel’s collective output by about 700,000 barrels a day, in an effort to balance supply and demand in the global oil market, caught markets by surprise. It was well-acknowledged that the group needed to take decisive action to staunch the two-year-long slide in global crude prices, that saw Brent prices more than halve from about $103 a barrel in end-August 2014 to $45.45 a barrel on September 1 this year. Still, it was unclear if there could be a meaningful consensus on production cuts among disparate member-countries — which included the small-yet-prosperous West African country of Gabon, crisis-hit Venezuela, and fractious West Asian nations such as Iran and Saudi Arabia. That the 56-year-old grouping arrived at an agreement, albeit after leaving a decision on country-specific production targets to November, reflects just how desperate the situation had become for most oil-producing economies. The output cut, announced for the first time in eight years, is a tacit admission by the group’s largest producer Saudi Arabia that its ‘pump-at-will’ approach has hurt its economy as much, if not more, than the pain it may have caused North American oil producers, including U.S. shale interests, that the policy largely sought to target.

While the big U.S. shale producers have resiliently hung on and even begun investing in new acreage this year, Saudi Arabia found itself with a huge hole in its budget. A fiscal deficit of 16 per cent of GDP in 2015 that is projected to slightly narrow to about 13 per cent this year forced spending cuts, including on wages and fuel subsidies. This year the kingdom was driven to make its first overseas borrowing in more than a decade, a five-year $10 billion loan. With the economy’s growth set to slow to about 1 per cent in 2016, it had few options but to return to the main fuel of its economic engine, crude oil. Given the country’s involvement in conflicts across the region, both openly as in Yemen and tacitly as in Syria, its rulers have possibly realised the need to squeeze more revenue out of every barrel of oil. OPEC reportedly made a concession to Iran in order to win its involvement in the deal by exempting it from immediate production caps. With demand growth for petroleum slowing far more rapidly than previously predicted, the success of the production curbs in reviving oil prices will significantly hinge on cartel discipline — something that has often been lacking in the past.

Taking the road less dusty

The likelihood of at least 600,000 deaths being caused annually in India by fine particulate matter pollution in the air is cause for worry, even if the data released by the World Health Organisation are only a modelled estimate. The conclusion that so many deaths could be attributed to particulate matter 2.5 micrometres or less in size is, of course, caveated, since comprehensive measurement of PM2.5 is not yet being done and the linkages between pollution, disease and deaths need further study. What is not in doubt is that residents in many urban areas are forced to breathe unhealthy levels of particulates, and the smallest of these — PM10 and less — can penetrate and get lodged deep in the lungs. The WHO Global Burden of Disease study has been working to estimate pollution-linked health impacts, such as stroke and ischaemic heart disease, acute lower respiratory infection and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease. Data on fine particulates in India show that in several locations the pollutants come from burning of biomass, such as coal, fuel wood, farm litter and cow dung cakes. In highly built-up areas, construction debris, road dust and vehicular exhaust add to the problem. The Prime Minister launched an Air Quality Index last year aimed at improving pollution control. The new data, which the WHO says provide the best evidence available on the terrible toll taken by particulates, should lead to intensified action.

A neglected aspect of urban air pollution control is the virtual discarding of the Construction and Demolition Waste Management Rules, notified to sustainably manage debris that is dumped in the cities, creating severe particulate pollution. The Environment Ministry has highlighted the role that debris can play as a resource. Municipal and government contracts are, under the rules, required to utilise up to 20 per cent materials made from construction and demolition waste, and local authorities must place containers to hold debris. This must be implemented without delay. Providing cleaner fuels and scientifically designed cookstoves to those who have no option but to burn biomass, would have a big impact on reducing particulate matter in the northern and eastern States, which are the worst-hit during winter, when biomass is also used for heating. Greening the cities could be made a mission, involving civil society, with a focus on landscaping open spaces and paving all public areas to reduce dust. These measures can result in lower PM10 and PM2.5 levels. Comprehensive measurement of these particulates is currently absent in many cities, a lacuna that needs to be addressed.

The return of Hekmatyar

The peace agreement reached between the Afghan government of President Ashraf Ghani and warlord Gulbuddin Hekmatyar speaks volumes about the current situation in the country. Hekmatyar is not the type of leader a legitimate government may like to make peace with. The “butcher of Kabul” faces charges of killing thousands of Afghans during the U.S.-backed anti-Soviet jihad in the 1980s and the civil war in the early 1990s. He fell out with his American patrons during the civil war involving different mujahideen groups, and turned against the U.S.-led coalition troops after their 2001 invasion of Afghanistan. But even after being declared a “global terrorist” by the U.S. in 2003, and his militia, the Hezb-i-Islami, being placed on the UN list of foreign terrorist organisations, Hekmatyar, now believed to be living in Pakistan, continued to fight the Afghan government and the coalition troops. Over the years his influence has dwindled, but he still commands a sizeable group of rebel soldiers who can continue to irritate Kabul. But why should the Afghan government negotiate a peace deal with a weakened warlord who faces charges of war crimes? Under the agreement, Hekmatyar will be made part of all government decisions and actions. Besides, the Hezb-i-Islami fighters will be integrated into the Afghan armed forces and Mr. Ghani will request the UN to remove the terrorist tag.

One plausible explanation is that the Afghan government is desperate to find a breakthrough in the 15-year-old civil war. Mr. Ghani’s previous attempts to reach out to the Taliban have come to nothing. Despite the recent setbacks to their leadership, the Taliban now control more territories than ever since they were ousted from power in 2001. They have demonstrated the capability to strike any location they choose to. By reaching a peace deal with Hekmatyar, Mr. Ghani is sending the message to the Taliban that peace between warlords and the government is not impossible, provided the former are ready to shun violence and work within the Afghan Constitution. The President may also be hoping that if Hekmatyar rallies the various political and militant factions of the Hezb-i-Islami behind the government, it would strengthen the regime’s position in the long term. But it is a gambit. The accord is unlikely to have any immediate impact on security as the Taliban are still at war. The deal could be counterproductive politically as well because of Hekmatyar’s record — having him associated with the government could dent its legitimacy. But for Mr. Ghani, presiding over a regime grappling with infighting, incompetence, lack of resources and massive security challenges, there are not too many easy choices that are without risk.