Centre and state alliance
- The Centre will release over ₹95,000 crore in one stroke to States this month, Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman announced on Monday, after meeting with Chief Ministers and State Finance Ministers to discuss the state of the economy and to sustain the recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic.
- After all, no amount of central policy fixes will suffice to revive the country’s long-somnolent investment cycle without States working in tandem.
- The Government set aside the spate of recent confrontations with States over revenue, GST compensation concerns, and their fears about ‘encroachment’ on their powers, to initiate an economy-focused dialogue independent of Budget consultations and GST Council machinations.
- Its ready acceptance of States’ request to expedite the sharing of taxable revenues as in the case of GST compensation for this year is a token of the faith it seeks to imbue.
- While most States have positive cash balances, access now to double the funds than usual will help them ramp up capital expenditure.
- The cash flow could also help several States catch up on their capex targets, on which hinges an additional borrowing limit of 0.5% of their Gross State Domestic Product
- The Centre and States need to combine forces to make it an easier and swifter journey through red tape for potential.
- Closing this somewhat informal channel for dialogue with the States, outside the framework of NITI Aayog and the National Development Council, would be a wasted opportunity with embedded economic costs.
THE HINDU
China and USA virtual meet
- As much as the virtual summit meeting between Presidents Joe Biden and Xi Jinping, spotlighted multiple points of continuing strategic dissonance between the U.S. and China, it equally appeared to underscore in their minds the need for them to find common ground on contentious issues including trade and tensions surrounding Taiwan and the South China Sea.
- At the top of the policy agenda that is causing bilateral friction is trade. After the bruising trade war with China prior to 2020, under a Trump White House, relief came in the form of the Phase 1 Trade Agreement, which requires that China buy $380 billion worth of American goods by the end of 2021.
- That has not happened, according to some analysts, in part owing to a shortfall in orders from Beijing for Boeing aircraft in view of the aviation slowdown.
- Yet, compromise may not be far away in this space, as the U.S. Trade Representative hinted that the Trump-era practice of permitting exemptions for certain goods from trade tariffs may be resumed.
- On Taiwan’s independence, while the U.S. post-summit readouts suggest that Washington is adhering to its long-standing policy in this matter that it acknowledges but does not recognize Beijing’s claim over Taiwan under the One China policy
- Both sides will have to be even-handed in managing their conflicts on trade and regional tensions or else risk these issues spilling over into the global arena and disrupting the fragile ongoing recovery in economic growth and public health.
THE HINDU
The All-India Presiding Officers’ Conference (AIPOC)
- The All-India Presiding Officers’ Conference (AIPOC) ended here on Thursday with the delegates failing to reach a consensus on whether the Speaker’s powers under the anti-defection law should be limited, while reiterating an earlier resolution that there should be no disruptions during Question Hour and the President’s and Governor’s address to the House.
- Lok Sabha Speaker Om Birla said the report of the committee headed by Rajasthan Speaker C.P. Joshi to review the anti-defection law was placed before the presiding officers, but there was no consensus.
- Birla said there was a need to increase the number of sittings of legislative bodies.
- The Speaker also called for drastic changes to the functioning of Standing Committees, including changes to their rules. He said presiding officers should evaluate the work of the committees once a year and make them more accountable to the people.
- Birla said the tradition of Zero Hour should be started in all State legislatures to give members the chance to raise urgent matters pertaining to their constituencies.
- Increasing disruptions referring to the issue of increasing disruptions, the Speaker said the matter would be discussed with leaders of all political parties.
- He added that the work of creating a single platform for all legislatures would be done by 2022. Prime Minister Narendra Modi had said in his speech to the conference on Wednesday that “one nation, one legislative platform” should be realized.
THE HINDU
SC on POCSO
- The Supreme Court quashed a Bombay High Court decision to acquit a man charged with assault under the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences Act (POCSO) solely on the grounds that he groped the child over her clothes without “skin-to-skin” contact.
- “The act of touching a sexual part of the body with sexual intent will not be trivialized and not excluded under Section 7 of the POCSO Act,”.
- Section 7 mandates that “whoever with sexual intent touches the vagina, penis, anus or breast of the child or makes the child touch the vagina, penis, anus or breast of such person or any other person, or does any other act with sexual intent which involves physical contact without penetration is said to commit sexual assault”.
THE HINDU
Reform in agriculture
- “I apologize to you, my countrymen, that despite my Government’s good intentions, there may have been something lacking in our tapasya [penance] that we could not convince some of our farmer brothers of the intentions of these laws which were as pure as the light from a lamp,” By Indian PM
- “Reforms” in agriculture, advocated by economists after 1991, were focused on dismantling the institutional support structures in Indian agriculture that were established after the 1960s.
- These support structures in prices, subsidies, credit, marketing, research and extension were instrumental in India’s achievement of food self-sufficiency between the 1960s and the 1980s.
- In agricultural marketing, the focus of attack was the mandis governed by the Agricultural Produce Market Committee (APMC) Acts passed by State Assemblies.
- It was argued that if India needs to diversify its cropping pattern into export-oriented and high-value crops, mandis need to give way to private markets, futures markets and contract farming.
- The APMC Acts discriminated against farmers by not allowing them to interact directly with the big corporate buyers and exporters.
- So, the APMC Acts must be amended so that any private market or rural collection centre can freely emerge anywhere without approval of the local mandi or the payment of a mandi tax, and so that contract farming can be popularized.
- Similarly, the advocacy for the amendment to the Essential Commodities Act, 1955 rested on the view that private corporate investment can be incentivized into storage and warehousing if stock limits are relaxed for traders.
- It was a long-held constitutional consensus in India that agricultural marketing was the legislative arena of State governments.
- Thus, in 2003, the Union government prepared a Model Act on agricultural marketing and sent it to States for passage in State Assemblies.
- This was followed by the preparation and circulation of two other Model Acts, in 2017 and 2018.
- In 2020 Union government invoked Entry 33 of the Concurrent List to intervene into matters in Entry 14, Entry 26 and Entry 27 of the State List.
- The farm laws even interfered with Entry 28 of the State List, which were not subject to Entry 33 of the Concurrent List.
- Thus, to begin with, the farm laws were reasonably and justifiably argued to be unconstitutional.
THE HINDU