The Hindu Editorial Analysis | 26th Oct ’19

Table of Contents

Activists cry foul as govt. notifies RTI rules

‘Information Commissions will function like caged parrots’
Activists on Friday decried new rules under the Right to Information Act that have reduced the tenure of Information Commissioners from five years to three, saying the changes would affect their independence. The government had notified the rules on Thursday. The Right to Information (Term of Office, Salaries, Allowances and Other Terms and Conditions of Service of Chief Information Commissioner, Information Commissioners in the Central Information Commission, State Chief Information Commissioner and State Information Commissioners in the State Information Commission) Rules, 2019 notified by the Ministry of Personnel, Public Grievances and Pensions set the tenure of Information Commissioners at three years and gave the government the discretion to decide on “conditions of service” for which no express provisions are made in the rules.
The Chief Information Commissioner’s salary has been fixed at ₹2.5 lakh and an Information Commissioner’s at ₹2.25 lakh.

‘Violation of procedures’

Reacting to the notification, activist Anjali Bharadwaj of the Satark Nagrik Sangathan said the government had amended the RTI Act in July and had not issued the prescribed rules for nearly three months after the amendment received the President’s assent on August 1. She said the rules had been drafted and promulgated in a “completely surreptitious manner in flagrant violation” of the procedures laid down in the Pre-Legislative Consultation Policy of 2014.
“The policy requires all draft rules to be placed in the public domain for comments/suggestions of people. The draft was not available in the public domain and no consultations were held with members of the public,” the citizens’ group said in a statement.
Among new rules, the government has been given the “power to relax” their provisions, which raised “serious concerns that the government could potentially invoke these powers to determine different tenures for different Commissioners at the time of appointment”, she said.

ICICI Bank exits GST Network

MUMBAIICICI Bank has exited the GST Network, a company which facilitates collection of goods and services tax, by selling its entire 10% stake to 13 State governments for ₹1 crore.
The stake transfer will be completed by the end of March 2020, ICICI Bank said in a filing with the exchanges.
ICICI Bank has exited the company following the government’s decision to make GST Network into a public sector entity last year. The Centre will own 50% stake in the GST Network and the rest will be held by States on a pro-rata basis, in the new structure.
Goods and Services Tax Network (GSTN)
The GSTN software is developed by Infosys Technologies and the Information Technology network that provides the computing resources is maintained by the NIC. “Goods and Services Tax Network” (GSTN) is a nonprofit organization formed for creating a sophisticated network, accessible to stakeholders, government and taxpayers to access information from a single source (portal).
The portal is accessible to the Tax authorities for tracking down every transaction, while taxpayers have the ability of connect for their tax returns.
The GSTN’s authorized capital is ₹10 crore (US$1.4 million) in which initially the Central Government held 24.5 percent of shares while the state government held 24.5 percent.
The remaining 51 percent were held by non-Government financial institutions, HDFC and HDFC Bank hold 20%, ICICI Bank holds 10%, NSE Strategic Investment holds 10% and LIC Housing Finance holds 11% .
However, later it was made a wholly owned government company having equal shares of state and central government
Goods and Services Tax (GST) is an indirect tax (or consumption tax) imposed in India on the supply of goods and services. It is a comprehensive multistage, destination based tax: comprehensive because it has subsumed almost all the indirect taxes except few; multi-staged as it is imposed at every step in the production process, but is meant to be refunded to all parties in the various stages of production other than the final consumer and as a destination based tax, as it is collected from point of consumption and not point of origin like previous taxes.
Goods and services are divided into five different tax slabs for collection of tax – 0%, 5%, 12%, 18% and 28%. However, petroleum products, alcoholic drinks, and electricity are not taxed under GST and instead are taxed separately by the individual state governments, as per the previous tax regime. There is a special rate of 0.25% on rough precious and semi-precious stones and 3% on gold.
In addition a cess of 22% or other rates on top of 28% GST applies on few items like aerated drinks, luxury cars and tobacco products. Pre-GST, the statutory tax rate for most goods was about 26.5%, Post-GST, most goods are expected to be in the 18% tax range.
The tax came into effect from July 1, 2017 through the implementation of One Hundred and First Amendment of the Constitution of India by the Indian government. The tax replaced existing multiple flowing taxes levied by the central and state governments.
The tax rates, rules and regulations are governed by the GST Council which consists of the finance ministers of centre and all the states.
GST is meant to replace a slew of indirect taxes with a federated tax and is therefore expected to reshape the country’s 2.4 trillion dollar economy, but not without criticism.
Trucks’ travel time in interstate movement dropped by 20%, because of no interstate check posts

Mains Question

A huge responsibility of running a govt, elected representatives have, it must be given to people having a record of a dedicated social life, commitment and character of honesty, but many times parties give tickets, people choose criminals with serious charges.
How it’s a failure of this whole system ?
Explain what are the consequences of it and bring out solutions for the problem.
A delayed imperative The move to revive BSNL and MTNL and merge them comes at a crucial time for the industry The Cabinet’s approval this week for a plan to revive the loss-making public sector telecommunications providers Bharat Sanchar Nigam Ltd. (BSNL) and Mahanagar Telephone Nigam Ltd. (MTNL) has come not a moment too soon. From having been monopoly providers of telephone connectivity, the state-run telcos have had to contend with sweeping change since the opening up of the industry to private players and entry of wireless telephony in the 1990s. In just over two decades, the mobile phone revolution has catapulted India to the second rank in terms of wireless subscribers, with only China ahead. But the radical transformation of the industry landscape — wrought by the runaway growth in user numbers, rapid technological advances, and bruising competition — has come at a substantial price. The private sector saw the relatively older, large firms using mergers and acquisitions to consolidate as smaller rivals found themselves unable to cope with bitter tariff wars and the capital costs of bidding for spectrum and upgrading their technologies. BSNL, for its part, was saddled with the legacy of having been a large-scale provider of jobs as well as state-mandated connectivity to remote corners of the country. It is in the fulfilment of the state’s social objectives that the public sector enterprises (PSEs) racked up substantial costs, which the Centre’s revival plan aims to help address.
The proposal includes the allotment of critical spectrum to the two PSEs for offering fourth-generation wireless services, including broadband. The Centre will fund the spectrum’s cost through an infusion of ₹20,140 crore of capital while also bearing the related GST levy of ₹3,674 crore. And besides providing a sovereign guarantee on ₹15,000 crore of long-term bonds, which would help the firms restructure debt and partly fund expenses, the government will extend budgetary support of ₹17,169 crore for ex-gratia payments on a crucial voluntary retirement scheme. A lot will hinge on this VRS plan given that BSNL’s workforce of over 1,65,000 employees end up cornering about 75% of the telco’s total income. The Cabinet has also given an ‘in-principle’ nod for the two PSEs to merge, a move that would add market heft to the merged entity. A successful revival of BSNL will have far-reaching implications for the industry, this at a time when two of the three surviving private players are faced with not only sliding market share but a government bill of about ₹75,000 crore following the loss of a legal challenge. The reach of its network, especially in remote parts, makes BSNL a “strategic asset” that has national security implications given its role in serving the armed forces and responding to natural disasters. The revival plan, even if years late, is a clear recognition by the government of this indisputable fact.
India’s foreign policy is undergoing a series of fundamental transformations in terms of its underlying narratives, processes and desired endgames. There is a conscious and consistent effort to break with the past, no matter how the outcomes might look eventually.
What could potentially make this change last longer than initially thought is that Prime Minister Narendra Modi has the mandate, the capability and the willingness to effect major changes and re-conceptualise the country’s external security orientation. And yet, one must ask: Does this really mark a fundamental policy shift or does it just amount to a slew of opticsfriendly acts that are well-choreographed but not visionary?

Taking risks

One of the most striking features of the Modi government’s foreign policy is its propensity for risk-taking — quite unlike most previous governments barring perhaps that of Indira Gandhi. Armed with a clear majority, the government is keen to play offensive, undoing the decades-old defensive Indian strategic behaviour. New Delhi’s actions at Doklam; its surgical strikes against Pakistan in 2016 after the Uri terror attacks; and the Balakot air strikes in the wake of Pulwama attacks this February — notwithstanding the questionable material outcomes in all these cases — are examples of this new-found offensive streak and risk-taking tendency.
The August 5 decision by the Central government on Jammu and Kashmir (J&K) to read down Article 370 was also a risk-ridden move. When previous governments engaged in offensive behaviour, they couched it in normative language. Today, speech is act too.
A high-pitched rhetoric around Pakistan, J&K and terrorism complements the Modi regime’s propensity for risk-taking even as these themes remain the mainstay of its foreign policy. There are unfailing invocations to these themes in almost all forums where India is represented as well as in bilateral meetings with countries ranging from the U.S. to New Zealand.
In an overstated manner, then, terrorism and Pakistan have come to dominate our foreign policy pursuits, instead of other forward-looking and system-shaping narratives. One wonders whether this unrelenting obsession would require compromises by the government in its negotiations with other countries in return for their pro-India stance, which is rapidly running out as days pass by.
The fixation with terror, Pakistan and J&K also means that the country’s valuable political and diplomatic capital as well as its accumulated goodwill in the comity of nations would have to be spent on tactical goals.

Clarity at the cost of nuance

Mr. Modi’s foreign policy, for the most part, has displayed unprecedented doses of clarity, though often at the cost of nuanced approaches to complex issues. New Delhi appears, and certainly claims, to know what it wants, is willing to pursue it doggedly, and to pay the associated costs. In politics and foreign policy, there has traditionally been some distance between rhetoric and reality, but in this case, rhetoric seems to closely resemble reality. While past governments tried to balance their rhetoric and reality — for instance, when it comes to India’s relations with Israel — the present government’s policy resembles its rhetoric, with on occasion rhetoric forcing policy choices. A clear example of this rhetoric-reality match is found in India’s ties with the U.S. — the two are unprecedentedly close and despite its nativist leanings, the present regime seems to offer no excuses or qualifiers for getting so close to a superpower, for it knows that hardly any challenges are posed to its foreign policy pursuits in the domestic sphere. Consequently, there is little talk of ‘strategic autonomy’.
However, too much clarity tends to blur out some much-needed nuance. Take, for instance, New Delhi’s apparent inability to play a noteworthy role in the emerging Afghan geopolitics at a crucial time such as this. It is imperative, as many commentators have pointed out, to engage the Taliban, which is bound to be a dominant actor in Afghanistan in the days ahead. And yet, New Delhi is unable to reach out to the group thanks, at least partly, to its hyper-ventilating and un-nuanced positions on extremism and terrorism. How can India talk to the Taliban and at the same time remain adamant that it won’t engage the many militant groups or even the pro-autonomy voices in J&K?
India’s foreign policy has traditionally been, for the most part, couched, if not always practised, in a normative grammar. It desired to practise a normative foreign policy, often struggled to match its rhetoric with its actions, and more often seemed uneasy with the mismatch. As a consequence, New Delhi often refused to act with determination; the use of raw power for political outcomes was tempered with normative language when it did act; and deliberate ambiguity was deployed when this posed a moral dilemma. This moral sheen has seemingly come off now, by design.
New India’s foreign policy has not only given up the Nehruvian normative angst but has even shunned the pretences of normative behaviour. Economic and military power today are seen as tools to gain advantage vis-à-vis others, be it neighbours or the larger international system. To that extent, there is a strong link between internal and external posturing, unlike in the case of most previous governments which made a deliberate attempt to be internally liberal and externally realist.
Weighing domestic costs
Foreign policy, for the Modi government, is a two-level game, to paraphrase political scientist Robert Putnam. While traditionally, foreign policy has had little impact on domestic political outcomes, today, given the manner in which external behaviour has been domestically politicised, the leadership seems to weigh the domestic costs while making foreign policy decisions. More to the point, foreign policy decisions are often undertaken to cater to domestic opinion. To that extent then, audience costs will continue to determine Mr. Modi’s foreign policy choices.
Being cognisant of the domestic political implications of foreign policy behaviour in the age of mass communication and social media is understandable. But the flip side is that it leads the leadership to a commitment trap as well as binds its hands when the external circumstances demand a change in behaviour.
Domestic politicisation of foreign policy also instils a ‘winner-takes-all’ mentality in the ruling dispensation, thereby shrinking the domestic space for consensus building. Looking similar to the Opposition, which domestic consensus building in a way leads to, doesn’t help the government in the eyes of the public but looking different does win it brownie points. This is already making the Opposition irrelevant, and decision making is centralised.

Is there, however, an underlying vision to India’s new foreign policy? For instance,
Does India’s hyper-activism on the foreign policy front enable it to be a system-shaper and a global rule-maker or is it still a ruletaker?
What, in that sense, are the big foreign policy achievements of this government à la, for instance, the India-U.S. nuclear deal of the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) vintage?
Are membership of the Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG) or the UN Security Council in the offing? Or
Has our diplomacy resolved any of our key conflicts?