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GST inches forward
Checks and balances |
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More pay for legislators
Issues involved in Somali piracy
Our wedding present
CORPORATE FOOD SAVIOURS
Time to bury Golden Rice
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GST inches forward
The
Union Cabinet’s nod to the amended goods and services tax (GST) Bill is just a baby step toward an ambitious tax reform. The Bill will become a law only if there is a consensus among political parties and states since it requires Constitution amendment. The BJP-ruled states as also Haryana and Andhra Pradesh are cool to it, fearing loss of revenue and autonomy to levy taxes. The Prime Minister recently linked the BJP opposition to the GST to the arrest of Gujarat’s former Home Minister Amit Shah. The GST, set for an April 2012 rollout, will simplify India’s indirect taxes. It will replace multiple taxes like the Central Sales Tax, the value added tax (VAT) and local levies and surcharges imposed by the Centre and states at various stages of production, movement and retail of goods. Under the new regime only one tax – GST — will be levied at the retail level. This will curb needless litigation, delays and tax evasion. Production costs and tax burden will fall, resulting in lower prices. Manufacturing will become more competitive. The government can help firms it wants to by issuing tax refunds, which makes the system more transparent and less corrupt. Some 120 countries have adopted the GST model. But states are not for it yet. They want to keep the power to tax oil, alcohol and tobacco. Punjab does not want to give up its tax on agricultural produce. If state levies are permitted, this would defeat the chief goal of the GST, which is to introduce uniform tax rates countrywide and treat India as a single market. With the GST, petrol, diesel and liquor will not have varying prices in states. There are also differences over the GST council, which is meant to settle disputes, and the Union Finance Minister having the veto power over the state GST. But these are not insurmountable problems, especially when the Centre is ready to absorb the states’ revenue loss, if any.
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Checks and balances Many TV viewers will agree that there is a need for self-regulation among the private channels, just as a dash of less regulation would do a world of good to the government monopoly, Doordarshan. While the number of private television channels has increased in leaps and bounds, boundaries between news and entertainment sometimes become blurred.
There have also been complaints regarding what is broadcast on entertainment channels. It is in this backdrop that the government’s plan to set up a 13-member National Broadcasting Content Complaints Council, to be headed by a retired Supreme Court or High Court judge, must be seen. The proposed regulator would have members from the media and the entertainment industry, including civil society, and would address complaints referred to it in a time-bound fashion. The TV industry controls a powerful medium and was expected to evolve a mechanism what would allow for self-regulation, without government intervention. The National News Broadcasters Association (NBA) has proved fairly effective in regulating the news channels while the TV entertainment industry needed a system of checks and balances. The I&B Ministry has come in for criticism for intervening and changing the scheduled timings of controversial shows like ‘Bigg Boss’ and ‘Rakhi Ka Insaaf’. It had also, in response to complaints from public figures, suspended the telecast of Fashion TV and AXN for some time. By evolving a consensus on the proposed council, the I&B Ministry has taken the right route. Now the government must ensure that this proposal becomes a reality soon. The proliferation of private TV channels has resulted in uneven content, and there have been instances where the private channels aired programmes that were found to be vulgar by people, who agitated against them. The I&B Ministry is hampered by lack of legislation through which it can intervene in such situations. It derives its authority from the provisions of Section 20 of the Cable TV Networks (Regulation) Act, 1995, which is clearly inadequate in the changed circumstances. The need for regulation is clear, as is that for an impartial, transparent and effective regulator.
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More pay for legislators In these times of rampant inflation, it is but fair that legislators in Haryana must get a reasonable amount by way of salaries and perquisites if they are to be held legitimately accountable for the misuse of office and corruption. In that context the assembly decision to hike their salary to Rs 20,000 from Rs 10,000 now and to increase their annual account for petty expenses to Rs 2 lakh from Rs 1 lakh can hardly be faulted.
This hike will raise their total monthly emoluments to Rs 62,000 which is still rather low considering that they have also to nurse their constituencies. Strangely, salaries for MLAs in Haryana were introduced only last year by the Hooda government, 44 years after the formation of the state. Until then, legislators were entitled to allowances only which included a constituency allowance, compensatory allowance, DA and a sum for secretarial expenses. They also received a travel reimbursement allowance which was Rs 12, raised to Rs 15 a kilometre last year. It was as though there was a tacit acceptance that they could resort to other, often dubious, means to raise resources for themselves. It is indeed no secret that in sharp contrast to the modest salary and allowances, people in general have seen the coffers of most legislators swell rapidly and disproportionately. The unholy nexus between politicians, bureaucrats and businessmen with help from criminals in some cases is too well known to need reiteration. Use of clout by politicians and doling out of favours result in a “you scratch my back, I scratch yours” syndrome. Corruption indeed takes a heavy toll with a huge chunk of money from public projects lining the pockets of the politician and the babu. The Hooda government has done well to raise salaries and allowances of MLAs. It may be worthwhile to raise these further and to then clamp down on governmental corruption, with sharp accountability being introduced down the line. Corruption is eating into the vitals of the nation and the sooner there is meting out of deterrent punishment the better it would be for the country and its people.
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We must learn to live together as brothers or perish together as fools. — Martin Luther King, Jr.
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Issues involved in Somali piracy
Amidst a frenzy of media attention, Prime Minister V.P. Singh buckled and sent two of his ministers, Mr Inder Kumar Gujral and Mr Arif Mohammed Khan, to Srinagar. Despite strong warnings from Chief Minister Farooque Abdullah and indications that Rubaiya Saeed would not be harmed, the government meekly caved in to the demands of the kidnappers, releasing detained terrorists. The entire Valley erupted with calls for “Azadi”. India continues to pay a heavy price for this act of abject surrender. On December 31, 1999, the last day of the twentieth century, India released three arrested terrorists, Maulana Masood Azhar, Omar Saeed Sheikh and Mushtaq Zargar to secure the release of passengers of the hijacked IC 814 in Kandahar. Maulana Masood Azhar returned to a hero’s welcome in Pakistan and founded the Jaish-e-Mohammed. He masterminded and executed the attack on our Parliament on December 13, 2001. Omar Saeed Sheikh remitted $ 100,000 through a bank in Dubai to the mastermind of the 9/11 terrorist attacks, Mohammed Atta. He was thereafter involved in the execution of American journalist Daniel Pearl. Mushtaq Zargar, a psychopath, runs the Al-Umar Mujahideen from Muzaffarabad. During negotiations with the hijackers of IC 814, India was often urged to meet the demands of the hijackers, citing the precedent set by the Rubaiya Sayeed kidnapping. An important factor pressuring the government to yield to the demands of the hijackers was the irresponsible coverage by some of our television channels, focusing attention on the demonstrations organised by emotional relatives of the passengers. In recent days sections of the audio-visual media have sought to whip up public hysteria by demanding direct negotiations with Somali pirates and even “flexibility” and readiness to pay ransom to them, who were threatening to kill four Indian sailors, working in an Egyptian ship and held captive. Relatives of those held by the pirates were mobilised. They asserted that if government leaders could make billions through scams like the 2G spectrum scam, they should have no hesitation in paying a few millions as ransom to the pirates. The media, of course, had no time or inclination to study the complexities of the issues involved, or the accepted international practice that governments will not negotiate directly with pirates. These negotiations are invariably between ship owners and pirates, with governments playing a discreet role behind the scenes. Responding to Indian media frenzy, Egypt’s envoy in New Delhi Khaled el-Bakly bluntly stated: “Egypt is doing all it can. I am on the phone every day, talking to Cairo. But please understand it is prohibited under international law to negotiate with pirates. All that the Egyptian government can do is to persuade the owner of the vessel to negotiate with the pirates.” Sadly, there appears to be very little appreciation and even less understanding in India about the international challenges that Somali piracy poses. There are navies of 21 countries ranging from those of the US and its NATO allies to Russia, China, India, Japan, Pakistan, Singapore, Malaysia and Saudi Arabia actively collaborating, to deal with Somali piracy. The UN has been actively involved, with Security Council Resolution 1838 of October 5, 2008, authorising ships to pursue pirate vessels into Somali territorial waters. India was among the first to deploy naval vessels to deal with piracy on November 23, 2008. Moreover, pirate vessels coming close to our shores have been challenged and attacked, with pirates killed or taken prisoner. The efficacy of the policy of not negotiating with pirates directly has been demonstrated. While pirates continue holding 53 Indian sailors captive, they released 124 sailors since 2008 without our compromising vital national interests or international obligations. Even the CIA appears persuaded that dealing with Somali pirates is not an easy affair. Pirates recently killed four American nationals when their demands were not met. Apart from the fact the writ of the Somali government does not even extend across its capital Mogadishu, studies by the IMO, the WFP and the UN show that there are several other factors that result in poverty-stricken Somalis finding piracy lucrative and rewarding. The livelihood and catch of Somali fishermen has been destroyed by uncontrolled fishing by foreign trawlers and by dumping of toxic waste across the Somali coast. Moreover, piracy has led to a new class of wealthy people, wielding power and patronage across Somalia. As of December 11, 2010, it has been estimated that Somali pirates use 35 captured ships for their activities and hold 650 sailors hostages. The time has, perhaps, come for intelligence agencies across the world to come together to work out strategies to covertly eliminate pirates and their patrons in Somalia even while undertaking measures to see that Somali fishermen are not deprived of their traditional livelihood. Apart from the media frenzy on being “flexible” with Somali pirates, there has been recent carping on why not enough has been done to evacuate India nationals from the troubled countries like Egypt and Libya. Complaints from well-heeled Indian tourists holidaying in Egypt about having to pay some excess fare for being repatriated to India from Cairo in specially chartered aircraft received sympathetic media coverage. While one can understand the Indian taxpayer footing the bill for abandoned workers stranded in the Gulf, it is ridiculous to expect the Indian taxpayer to pay for repatriation of tourists or professionals who seek employment abroad. While India completed repatriation of all its nationals wishing to come home from Libya on March 12, most Chinese nationals evacuated from Libya are still in makeshift transit camps in Libya’s neighbourhood. One hopes that norms will be evolved for positioning armed guards in Indian maritime vessels to ward off pirate attacks. Legislation should also be enacted to give the Navy powers to seek out, capture and kill pirates in international waters. One of the major reasons why the relatives of the passengers of IC 814 took to the streets in New Delhi was the less-than-sensitive handling of them by the Ministry of Civil Aviation. Similarly, the relatives of sailors of pirated ships have been forced to move from pillar to post because the Ministry of Shipping has no guidelines or machinery to sensitively handle the distraught relatives. Norms and procedures should be devised to ensure that this is not repeated in future.n
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Our wedding present
During
my days in the Indian Navy and mercantile marine we were mostly on the move and there was no steady social and stable interaction with friends ashore. Regular attending of marriages, birthdays and other social public functions commenced only after we arrived to settle down in Chandigarh after leaving Mumbai. After a month of our arrival we had an invitation for attending a reception being held in Hotel Mountview, Chandigarh, of our niece. We had not attended a Punjabi marriage for decades and were not therefore familiar with modalities regarding offering marriage gift to the couple. My wife and I both were novices in this case. Giving cash or a suitable gift item were the only two alternatives. We had brought a duty-free bone-china tea-set from Germany and decided to present it to the newly wed couple. Arriving in the reception hall with a gift in hand, we looked around to assess as to how it was to be delivered. We observed that none of the guests present in the hall were holding any gift. Discreetly I advanced towards my aunt who resided in Chandigarh and was chatting close by. We hinted about guests being seen without any wedding presents in their hands. She smiled and intimated us that all those guests had probably brought currency notes in small envelopes to be quietly handed over to the parents of the newly weds during the reception programme. Thus my wife was the only lady in that crowd holding a gift box containing a fragile bone-china tea-set. Soon she was feeling embarrassed and uneasy and decided to get rid of the package at the earliest. We spotted the bride’s mother near the entrance and after conveying our blessings for the newly weds handed over the package to her. The contents of the gift package were not known to her. She thanked and promptly handed it over to his son for safe custody. Her busy son in turn asked a bar man to keep it safe. The bar man was already having a tray containing glasses in one hand. He balanced himself with the package in his other hand. Just then one of the guests standing near us asked the same bar man for another drink. The bar man dropped the package on the hard floor while executing the order. We were visibly embarrassed to see our fragile wedding present falling near our feet and felt sorry indeed for this mess inadvertently created by us. We helped him in lifting the package and keeping it on the bar table promptly, worrying whether the bone-china pieces inside the package were still intact or not ! For future, we have decided to use paper currency only for any shagun ceremonies.n
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CORPORATE FOOD SAVIOURS Seventeen corporations belonging to the consumer industries community of the World Economic Forum have announced their intention to enter the food business in the name of the poor. The alliance includes the world’s biggest life science corporations like Monsanto, Syngenta, DuPont and BASF, the world’s largest food commodities traders like Archer Daniels Midland, Bunge and Cargill, processed food giants like Kraft Foods, Nestlé and PepsiCo, global retailers like Walmart and Metro in addition to diversified transnational corporations like SABMiller, Unilever, Yara International, Coca-Cola and General Mills. These colossal entities that control the food chain starting from the genetically modified (GM) seed, fertilizer and pesticide to the grain and finally to the cakes and biscuits in large retail stores hope to become the saviours of global agriculture and the defenders of food security. Without a shred of embarrassment, they assert that their project works to “advance market-based solutions to agricultural sustainability”. They call it the New Vision for Agriculture, and they have hijacked all the clichés of food security to portray their intent: “… over the past two years, food security and economic crises have highlighted both the urgent need and the potential for developing sustainable agricultural systems”. Or “Nearly one billion people — one out of six globally — lack access to adequate food and nutrition” . Their mantra to feed the 9 billion people expected to be on the planet by 2050 is to increase agricultural productivity through investment, innovation and the right policy framework! The sustainable agriculture growth they profess to initiate is to be achieved by market-based solutions. It’s quite another matter that the poor are barely linked to the market except as consumers because they have nothing to sell and little means to buy with. The crisis of food is exemplified in India by the twin tragedies of rotting grain in buffer stocks and families suffering from endemic hunger. Almost a billion people in Asia and Africa are plagued by hunger even as large food stocks are traded in international markets by the very people who are the stewards of this New Vision of Agriculture, the Cargills, the Archer Daniel Midlands, the Bunges and so on. The alliance claims that it seeks a “win-win” approach that leverages and multiplies each party’s investment. Revealed here is the real face of the New Vision for Agriculture, its corporate face that has little do with sustainable agriculture or solving the problem of hunger and malnutrition, but everything to do with cornering resources like land and water as well as public sector finances and make it work to earn big profits for themselves. For instance, this New Vision for Agriculture has struck a deal in that part of Tanzania, (the south) which has bountiful water, good soils, favourable climate and a good infrastructure linked to regional and international markets. In short, ideal conditions for commercial agriculture. This is not the area that needs help because the conditions there are favourable anyway. It’s the sub-Saharan countries that need a leg up to improve agriculture, food security and nutrition but the New Vision for Agriculture is not going there. What the New Vision proposes in Tanzania reads more like the land grab that is taking place all over Africa than any activity with the philanthropic intent of solving hunger. Land grabs are rampant in the favourable, fertile parts of Africa, where African governments and foreign corporations are striking unholy deals to corner large tracts of land belonging to small farmers. This is being leased out to produce food to be shipped out, not solve hunger at home. By its own candid admission, the New Vision project proposes to involve itself only with profitable, modern commercial farming and agri-business. This too not everywhere but only in selected areas and only with crops with high market potential. According to current planning, the project leaders will identify “profitable, scalable agricultural and services businesses, with major benefits for smallholder farmers and local communities”. The politically correct categories of smallholder farmers and local communities are mentioned at appropriate places (although not too often). It is alleged the proposed projects will bring them major benefits, though how this will happen is not spelled out. The New Vision does not plan to establish anything in areas that require improvement but build only on existing operations mobilising and leveraging both public and private-sector investments into those opportunities that are viable. No talk here of investing in improving the viability of those units that are not so viable! As part of their food security programme in Vietnam, the New Vision for Agriculture has made plans to develop coffee, tea, fish, fruit, vegetables and grain commodities for regional and global markets. A task force has been set up to oversee implementation. Members of the task force include Bunge, Metro, Cargill, Cisco, DuPont, Nestlé, PepsiCo, Monsanto and Unilever. The current crop of New Visions and Alliances against Hunger look like con jobs. Curiously though, neither the crops selected to alleviate food insecurity nor the strategy to achieve this goal seems to strike the involved governments as the slightest bit incongruous. It says something about the state of affairs in the food domain that this in your face brazenness has not met with howls of protest from international agencies or national governments. On the contrary, even India, with its massive food security issues, is rushing to partner in this exercise. Shouldn’t we be doing something to stop this blatant exploitation? Isn’t anyone in any government thinking? The writer is the Chief Editor of Gene News, published by the Gene Campaign Foundation
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Time to bury Golden Rice Golden Rice, which is genetically modified (GM) ostensibly to address the lack of Vitamin A in predominantly rice diets, is still in the research pipeline.The levels of beta carotene (the precursor of Vitamin A) were fairly low in the first generation of Golden Rice, causing justifiable skepticism about its utility . A second round of research has succeeded in increasing the beta carotene content but the rice is still not ready for release to farmers. At first it was caught up in a tangle of patents which threatened to block its release, then Syngenta Corporation, which owns the Golden Rice technology, decided to set up a humanitarian board to give the Golden Rice genetic material to developing countries for free. According to the terms framed at that time, developing countries could crossbreed the Syngenta Golden Rice lines with their own varieties to produce varieties suited to local conditions. The humanitarian board had originally declared that countries could use the genetic material of Golden Rice to conduct research in their own way, using research protocols developed by them. The varieties developed locally by such research projects would be made available to small farmers free of charge. It was also mentioned that the farmers who cultivated Golden Rice, could use and reuse seed for further plantings according to the prevailing custom. Big farmers, on the other hand, would be able to cultivate Golden Rice only after paying a licence fee. A few years ago, Syngenta changed the terms and conditions according to which the genetic material of Golden Rice could be used by researchers, ignoring the earlier conditions set up by the humanitarian board. Syngenta now has much greater control over the technology after new contracts were signed with all research institutions that were involved in Golden Rice research. Syngenta has laid down stringent conditions, which do not allow researcher partners the freedom to operate in the way they want, as was negotiated earlier. Research partners, for example, have now been denied the flexibility to design their research according to the methods established in their laboratories. They are allowed to do genetic transformation only by using one particular method, the Agrobacterium method. The new contract demands that only those Golden Rice lines that have been genetically modified by Syngenta can be used further by breeders/researchers. The humanitarian board has demanded that all existing transgenic lines developed individually by the different research laboratories so far have to be destroyed. Regrettably, partner institutions have complied with this. So progress on Golden Rice is held up and it continues to hang in limbo. The larger question today however is , does anybody really need a genetically engineered Golden Rice with its tangle of patents and it baggage of environmental and health safety concerns? There are so many other naturally occurring beta carotene rich foods that are easily available, which are safe and inexpensive. ICRISAT had announced a Golden Millet on which research is slow but it’s a potential product. In the meantime, scientists have developed Golden or Orange sweet potato and Golden Maize, both rich in beta carotene. The Golden sweet potato, selected from natural populations of sweet potato, is a wonder crop loaded with vitamin A. It is being widely promoted in Africa where people are in need of this crucial micronutrient for better health. In Africa, white or yellow types of sweet potato that have very little vitamin A are generally eaten. The Golden sweet potato varieties have been conventionally bred by scientists in Uganda and Mozambique in collaboration with the International Potato Center (CIP) in Lima, Peru. . These new golden/orange varieties are not only rich in vitamin A but are also drought tolerant, virus resistant and high yielding. They have been a hit with children and women so their consumption has gone up, making a significant contribution to the Vitamin A intake in the diets of this vulnerable population. Whenever Golden Rice is finally developed, will it be safe to eat? How much will it cost? One of the problems with GM crops is their high cost because most of the technologies needed to develop them are patented and licence fees have to be paid to the patent holders. In addition, there is a cost to conducting bio-safety tests to rule out that GM crops are not dangerous for health and do not have damaging impacts on the environment. This makes them expensive. Given the current stand off with the owners of Golden Rice and the far more attractive developments with Golden maize and Golden sweet potato, it is time to bury Golden Rice and stop wasting time and money on it. The far more sensible approach for those genuinely interested in improving nutrition is to promote the cultivation the Golden maize and Golden sweet potato that are already developed. — S Sahai
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