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Economic Survey
2013
As water levels dip, Maharashtra begins switching off lights
Farmers from drought-affected area of Solapur protest outside the Mantralaya in Mumbai on Wednesday. — PTI |
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‘Fiscal atrophy’ afflicts health
sector
Khurshid evasive on vote against Lanka at UNHRC
PAC flays MoD’s budgeting process
MNS, NCP workers clash in Mumbai
JPC on copter deal: UPA upstages BJP
Cops push elderly couple off train; woman dead
CJI wants judges’ strength doubled in lower courts
Varun Gandhi acquitted in hate speech case
Govt has no plan to reduce juvenile age
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Call for agriculture reforms to achieve 4%
growth
Tribune News Service
New Delhi, February 27
The farm sector achieved 3.6 per cent growth during the 11th Five year Plan (2007-12) - higher than growth of 2.5 and 2.4 per cent during ninth and 10th Plans but lower than expectations of 4 per cent growth target. Therefore, in the face of stiff challenge of feeding its growing population, the Survey has sought urgent reforms to boost crop yield and private investment in infrastructure to motivate farmers.
One of the key concerns voiced by the Survey is poor yield in the Indian farms and declining per capita availability of foodgrains. Even though India is one of the leading global producers of major crops like paddy, wheat, the comparison in terms of yield is “not credible”. “Agriculture production can be substantially increased if we address this yield gap by adopting technological and policy interventions. Improvements in yields hold the key for India to remain self-sufficient in foodgrains and also make a place for itself in many agricultural crops and products in the international market,” it says. The Survey says that India was at a juncture where reforms were urgently required to achieve greater efficiency and productivity in agriculture. It calls for stable policies where markets play an appropriate role, stepping up of private investment in infrastructure, revamp in the public distribution system (PDS), improvement in the food price and food stock management and a predictable trade policy is adopted for agriculture. These initiatives need to be coupled with skills development and better research and development (R&D) along with improved delivery of credit and seeds. It also seeks “urgent attention” on efficient management of food stocks, timely offloading of stocks, and a stable and predictable trade policy. The Survey says that current crop insurance system needs to be refined to cater to unavoidable climate conditions or pest epidemics. “Climate change and extreme weather events with greater intensity and frequency can have serious implications for our agriculture sector and create greater instability in food production and thereby farmers’ livelihood,” it says.
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As water levels dip, Maharashtra begins switching off lights
Mumbai, February 27 With dams in many parts of the state running low, water supply to power plants is getting gradually reduced, say officials of the Maharashtra Electricity Generation Company (MAHAGENCO). "We have shut down all units of the Parli power project as there is not enough water for cooling," a MAHAGENCO official said. The thermal power plant has a capacity of 1,130 MW and officials of the power utility bravely tried to keep the plant partially functional till earlier this month as the Khadka barrage ran dry. Last fortnight, Chief Minister Prithviraj Chavan announced that all six units of the plant have been shut down for want of water. Similar problems have been reported from the state's Chandrapur district where MAHAGENCO operates a 2,340 MW thermal power plant. Power generation at this plant has been scaled down as there is not enough water for cooling. According to district officials, water for the plant may be completely shut down as the summer progresses forcing it to completely shut down as well. Worse still is the case of hydel projects in Maharashtra, which depend entirely on water stored in dams to generate power. Eight hydel projects, including the Koyna power station, which generate nearly 2,200 MW power too face shut downs as the demand for water from the villages in catchment areas of the dams rises with the approaching summer. "As of now nearly 20-25 per cent of Maharashtra's power capacity is threatened by shortage of water," says an official of MAHAGENCO. State government officials, however, say they are trying their level best to ensure that there is no load-shedding in the state this summer. "We have avoided load-shedding so far due to demand management," Chief Minister Prithviraj Chavan told reporters. However, the government is unlikely to have much leeway in the coming weeks as villagers in many parts of the state are holding protests against the diversion of water for purposes other than drinking. Banners have come up in many places saying the water in the dams would suffice for drinking for the next six months, if diversion to industries and power units is halted completely. Data from MAHAGENCO shows that the state is already facing a power shortfall of 2,300 MW as despite several industrial units across the state being forced to shut down.
Summer of woes
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‘Fiscal atrophy’ afflicts health
sector
New Delhi, February 27 But the ground situation paints to a sorry picture. The combined central and state expenditure on social services as a proportion of total expenditure increased from 22.4 per cent in 2007-08 to 25.1 per cent in 2012-13 and the spending on education among all the social services also increased over this period from 43.9 to 46.6 per cent. However, the combined general spending (centre and states) on health has fallen over the past five years from 21.5 per cent to 19.2 per cent. The UPA is far from keeping its 2004 promise of spending 6 per cent of the GDP on education and 3 per cent of the GDP on health. The latest Economic Survey shows that expenditure on education as a proportion of the GDP has increased from 2.59 per cent in 2008 to 3.31 per cent in 2013; that on health has increased very modestly from 1.27 per cent in 2008 to 1.36 per cent in 2013. It's nowhere near the targets that were sought to be achieved. "India's expenditure on health as a per cent of the GDP is very low as compared to many emerging and developed countries. Unlike most countries, in India, the private sector expenditure on health as a percentage of the GDP is higher than the public expenditure and was in fact double in 2010. Despite this, the total expenditure on health in India as a percentage of the GDP is much lower than many emerging nations and is the lowest among BRICS. That's a concern," says the survey. The UN Human Development Report 2012 had also revealed that India did well on the Human Development Index when ranked on the basis of income and growth, it slipped several points when ranked on the basis of life expectancy and education.
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Khurshid evasive on vote against Lanka at UNHRC
In his reply to the debate in the Rajya Sabha on the plight of Tamils in Sri Lanka, Khurshid made it clear that Colombo must ensure equality, dignity and justice for the Tamil minority. Dissatisfied with the minister’s reply, members belonging to the DMK, a key constituent of the UPA government, the AIADMK, and the Left staged a walkout from the House, expressing outrage over the recent appearance of pictures showing the cold-blooded killing of LTTE chief V Prabhakaran’s 12-year-old son Balachandran
allegedly by the Sri Lankan forces. Referring to the killing of Prabhakaran’s son, Khurshid said India could not “adjudicate” on the truth behind the incident and apportion the responsibility on anybody for the “very moving, very tragic and very sad” incident. “That is why we are engaging with Sri Lanka.... Accountability should be there.... Whether it should be imposed from outside or come from within.... Honestly speaking, accountability is necessary, accountability is inevitable but accountability must come from within,” the minister said. “There is no future unless there is reconciliation, there is no future unless there is accountability,” he said but
added that India cannot impose a timeline on Sri Lanka for it. On demands by members that India should vote with the US resolution in the UN against Sri Lanka, he said: “What point we make in the UN can’t foreclose today. We will make position keeping this debate in mind. After taking position we will disclose here.”
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PAC flays MoD’s budgeting process
Chandigarh, February 27 Parliament’s Public Accounts Committee (PAC), in its report tabled yesterday, has taken the MoD to task for recurring unauthorised expenditure running into several thousand crores of rupees over the past eight years in addition to budgetary provisions and supplementary grants.
The PAC report pinpointing excess expenditure comes in the backdrop of the Finance Ministry imposing a Rs 10,000,000 crore cut in the capital acquisitions for the three services earlier this year on the pretext that fiscal adjustment was necessary since the economic situation was grim. According to the report, the MoD incurred an excess expenditure of Rs 4,239 crore in 2010-11, Rs 2,615 crore in 2009-10 and Rs 743 crore in 2008-09. Excess expenditure since 2003-04 has been observed. According to the MoD, higher sanction of dearness allowance than anticipated, accretion of two new formations, additional expenditure of disaster relief operations, contractual obligations and procurements, enhanced maritime deployments, unforeseen obligatory payments, land acquisition, enhanced or early deliveries of equipment, modernisation projects, significant increase in pension, revised requirement or adjustment of funds of funds were among reasons for excess expenditure. Observing that reasons were not compelling enough for incurring excess expenditure as many of them could have been anticipated well in advance and factored into budgetary provisions, the committee held a crucial ministry like the MoD insensitive and continuously wanting in its budgetary exercise, requiring serious introspection. “Recurring wide variations between the budgetary provisions and the actual expenditure by an important ministry over such long periods has led the Committee to arrive at the conclusion that the estimation of requirement of funds is still done in a haphazardly manner devoid of sound budgetary presumptions,” the report said. “The existing budgeting mechanism still suffers from various loopholes which are nullifying the attempts of the government to enhance accuracy level of their budgetary projections to achieve the desired improvements. The persistence of such a pernicious trend is bound to further deteriorate the fiscal discipline leading to financial ad-hocism, and maladministration,” the report added. The Committee has stressed on the need to overhaul the budgetary mechanism drastically, introduce and implement IT and e-governance in financial administration and fix responsibility against the budget controlling authorities in case their estimation go awry leading to excess expenditure. The MoD has been taken to task for recurring unauthorised expenditure running into several thousand crore rupees over the past eight years in addition to budgetary provisions and supplementary grants.
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MNS, NCP workers clash in Mumbai
Mumbai, February 27 “There is a limit to abusive language. How can anyone digest the language used by him,” NCP spokesman Nawab Malik wondered. However, MNS officials defended the violence. “The NCP workers attacked our leader’s convoy. They should not forget that their homes are in Mumbai. We know how to deal with them if they interfere with our leader,” MNS spokesman Ram Kadam
said. Thackeray, who has been on a tour of drought-hit areas of
Maharashtra, has been drawing youths in large numbers at NCP strongholds much to the discomfiture of the
Pawars. In his speeches, Thackeray has blamed Pawar, who was in charge of the state's irrigation department for many years, for the drought. Last night, after Thackeray's remarks on Pawar at
Ahmednagar, NCP workers damaged the stage on which the speech was made. The MNS leader's convoy was also stoned by NCP workers. The MNS today retaliated by attacking offices of the NCP in different parts of Mumbai and Nashik where it has a strong presence. State police said NCP offices have been attacked in
Ahmednagar, Nanded, Akola, Yavatmal, Parbhani, Thane and other places. In Pune where both parties have a strong presence attempts were made set an NCP office afire. According to police a number of vehicles have been damaged in the group clashes in different parts of
Maharashtra.
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JPC on copter deal: UPA upstages BJP
New Delhi, February 27 Today the Congress-led United Progressive Alliance turned aggressive and got the motion approved in the Rajya
Sabha, where the Government does not have the numerical superiority and amid walkout by members belonging to the BJP and the Trinamool Congress. A divided Opposition worked in favour of the ruling coalition with assistance for parties like the BSP and the Samajwadi Party that support the Government from the outside, with Congress crediting Parliamentary Affairs Minister Kamal Nath for the move. Having declared that it has nothing to hide, the government decided to upstage the Opposition and hold it in poor light for walking away now after holding it responsible for stalling Parliament on JPC into 2G Spectrum that resulted in the 2010 winter session being washed out. As for the
CPM, the issue presented its members with an awkward situation since on its demand for a court -monitored probe, the Government said it fell in the realm of the judiciary. Explaining as to why the CPM agreed for a
JPC, its Polit Bureau member Sitaram Yechury said while there is no rationale behind a parliamentary probe since the issue did not involve any policy issue, but the “centrality of the Constitution is that Members of Parliament are representatives of the people, who are supreme”. Now that the BJP has rejected the idea of JPC describing it is a diversionary tactic, it has to be seen how the Government explains if the principal party in the Opposition refuses to join the panel.
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Cops push elderly couple off train; woman dead
Lucknow, February 27 This only a day after Railway Minister Pawan Bansal assured security for women while travelling in trains. Sub-inspector Ram Chandra and constable Subhash of the GRP have been booked under Section 304 of the IPC. The shocking incident occurred at 10 am at Muzzafarnagar railway station. The woman was hit by a train moving on a parallel track and died instantly, while her husband Rajeshwar Tyagi suffered minor injuries. The couple, in their 70s, was on its way to Saharanpur to attend the last rites of a close relative. Recounting the horror, Rajeshwar said they were roughed up and thrown out of the moving Shatabdi Express by the GRP policemen after they found out that they had boarded the wrong train. While holding valid tickets to Saharanpur by an express train they had unknowingly boarded the Shatabdi Express which does not halt there. The accused told the couple that the train did not go to Saharanpur and insisted that they get off the train at once. When the elderly couple refused as the train had started moving, the accused opened the door of the train and pushed them off. The body has been sent for autopsy.
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CJI wants judges’ strength doubled in lower courts
New Delhi, February 27 In a letter sent out yesterday to the CJs, the CJI has also asked them to take urgent steps to fill the existing vacancies of judges as part of efforts to render “timely justice” to litigants. Citing the ghastly rape and murder of a physiotherapy student in Delhi recently and other forms of violence across the country, the CJI said “the judiciary has responded” by carving out special courts from the existing strength of judges in the subordinate judiciary to fast track trial in such cases. “This by itself may not suffice as more than three crores cases are pending in courts” which only had a sanctioned strength of 18,871 judges to deal with them, Justice Kabir pointed out. Going by the present strength of judges, the judge-population ratio worked out only to 15.47 per 10 lakh persons against the requisite ratio of 50 per 10 lakh as suggested by the Supreme Court in its March 21, 2002, judgment in a case filed by the All India Judges’ Association and others, the CJI noted.
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Varun Gandhi acquitted in hate speech case
Lucknow, February 27 The case was filed on the basis of the FIR lodged at Sadar Kotwali in Pilibhit on March 17, 2009, by the Pilibhit district administration against Gandhi for spreading enmity under Sections 153A and 188 of the IPC and 125 of the Representation of People Act. The second such case against him will come up for hearing on March 1. The case second was filed on the basis of the FIR lodged against him on March 17, 2009, at Barkhera police station for delivering an inflammatory speech at a public meeting on March 7, 2009. Gandhi has refuted charges on several occasions alleging these were part of a campaign to malign him. He claimed in the first instance he was referring to a bad character while the second tape had been doctored.
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Govt has no plan to reduce juvenile age
New Delhi, February 27 Women and Child Development Minister Krishna Tirath told the Rajya Sabha that what happened in Delhi in December last year where a juvenile was involved in the brutal gang rape and death of a young woman was a “rarest of rare crime”. The minister said taking the incidence as an example to reduce the age of juveniles by undertaking an amendment in Juvenile Act would not be fair to the country’s children, who constitute 42 per cent of the population. The minister said there are 44 crore children in the country and if one looked at crimes committed by children, around 01. per cent were found to be indulging in acts some of which were “heinous”, some “serious” and some “non-serious”. Tirath was of the opinion that if a hungry child, who is less than 18 years, commits a crime like stealing a ‘roti’ or money, it would not be fair to send him to the policy custody. Therefore, replying to a question on suggestions for amending the Act, she said, the government was “not yet ready to reduce the age of juveniles”.
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hot summer as the state government has decided to conserve water for drinking and cut down supply for industrial purposes, including power generation.
It was one of the rare occasions in Parliament when the ruling coalition eagerly pushed for a joint Parliamentary probe into the VVIP helicopter deal while the
BJP, the principal party in the opposition, disfavoured it. Over the last three decades, be it the joint panel that looked into the Bofors gun-payoffs during Rajiv Gandhi's time; the Stock market scandal when Narasimha Rao was the Prime Minister; the Securities scam of the Atal Bihari Vajpayee regime; or the ongoing inquiry into the 2G Spectrum allocation issue, creation of all these JPCs were propelled by a vociferous Opposition and its stalling of the proceedings of Parliament.
Lucknow, February 27
It has emphasised putting in place a strategy for farm development in the eastern and northeastern regions amid saturation in crop yields in Green Revolution belt, especially in Punjab and Haryana. “The concerns here (in Green Revolution belt) are land and water degradation due to soil erosion, soil salinity, water logging and excessive application of nutrients,” it said. 
New Delhi, February 27
The clashes broke out after both Thackeray and Maharashtra's Deputy Chief Minister Ajit Pawar of the NCP criticised each other at public meetings. While Pawar wondered if an urbanite like Thackeray could ever understand the problems of farmers, the MNS leader retorted by saying how a rural politician like the NCP leader could understand the real estate prices of Mumbai and
Pune.