LIST OF NEWSPAPERS COVERED

BUSINESS STANDARD

DECCAN HERALD

HINDU

INDIAN EXPRESS

STATESMAN

TELEGRAPH

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CONTENTS

CHILD WELFARE 3-6

CIVIL SERVICE 7-9

DEFENCE, NATIONAL 10-12

ECONOMIC AND SOCIAL DEVELOPMENT 13-17

ENVIRONMENT 18-20

FLOODS 21-23

HEALTH SERVICES 24-26

POLITICS AND GOVERNMENT 27-29

PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION 30-32

PURCHASING 33-34

TRANSPORT 35-38

URBAN DEVELOPMENT 39-43

WOMEN 44-46

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CHILD WELFARE

HINDU, DEC 21, 2015Big questions for our generationBARKHA DEVA

The manner in which crucial laws are being amended will end up eroding rights that have deep consequences on the lives of our children and us as citizens of a thriving democracy. All because the state hasn’t been able to deliver what it was mandated to do.

The last few months have seen an alarming trend of crucial laws being amended, or sought to be amended, in a manner that will end up hurting the very cause that they were envisaged for — to protect rights that have deep ramifications on the lives of our children and us as citizens of a thriving democracy. All because the state has not been able to deliver what it was mandated to do.

The most recent, and probably the one that must concern us all the most, is the law upheld by the Supreme Court: the Haryana State government’s amendment of the Haryana Panchayati Raj (Amendment) Act, 2015. The amendment was ostensibly an attempt to promote education and sanitation by mandating that candidates for Panchayat elections had to be both literate (Class 10 in the general category, Class 8 for Dalits and Class 5 for Dalit woman) and have a toilet in their homes.

While the courts have upheld the amendment, and their decision must be based on the correct interpretation of the law, we could well be at a dangerous inflexion point in our democracy — as such reasoning could extend itself to the next two levels of our democratic institutions (Legislative Assemblies and Parliament) if we are not careful.

We seem to be forgetting that the Constituent Assembly of India had debated the issue of universal adult suffrage extensively and finally decided to give Indians this strongest tenet of modern-day democracy. It took a measured decision that education, gender, economic status or religion cannot restrict an adult Indian’s ability to vote or stand for election.

So, while 100 per cent literacy and sanitation are definitely objectives that the State and national governments must strive towards, the fact that the state has failed to provide the same must not be remedied by taking away the political voice of a citizen of this country.

Impacting learning outcomes

The next and closely related case in point are the amendments to the path-breaking Right to Education (RTE) Act. While the Act’s implementation has been a bit of a mixed bag as poor learning outcomes set alarmbells ringing for policymakers, there is no denying that the Gross Enrolment Ratio (GER) has seen a steady upswing across the country. At the elementary level

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(Class I-VIII), the GER is up to a remarkable 95 per cent, with girls seeing an incredible score of 100.6 per cent (2013-14). The news is even more heartening for Scheduled Caste students, with the GER for both boys and girls at a whopping 102.8 per cent for the year 2013-14. When traditionally marginalised sections of society see such significant change, thanks to a piece of legislation, there is reason to celebrate.

Yet, a key and egalitarian aspect of the RTE, the “no detention policy”, that may at least partly be responsible for these off-the-charts GER numbers, is being questioned by some experts, bureaucrats, political parties and governments. The idea behind the policy was that children should not face the psychological and emotional trauma of examinations till Class VIII. Those pushing for dropping the “no detention policy” argue that this has perpetuated poor learning outcomes and essentially postpones the inevitable, burdening the school system from Class IX onwards.

It is a view that led the Delhi and Rajasthan governments to amend the RTE, but it does not take into consideration that as a part of the no-detention policy and the RTE, children’s learning outcomes were meant to be measured via a system called the Continuous and Comprehensive Evaluation, or CCE. The CCE required teachers to track each student’s progress and tailor lessons to student capabilities and provide remedial learning opportunities for students who needed help.

If more States and the Centre adopt this amendment, we will be back to children as young as five undergoing the stress of examinations and trauma of being kept behind if they fail. Activists point out that the biggest effect of this step would be on children from poor families, with chances of them dropping out of the system. So, not only could we be reversing the progress we have made in the GER numbers, largely because the state did not ensure effective implementation of the CCE and the RTE Act, but also end up reducing the chances of children from such families later standing for Panchayat elections in, say, Haryana.

Rehabilitating juveniles

The third is a more emotionally charged debate: amendments to the Juvenile Justice (Care and Protection of Children) Bill, 2015 adopted by the Lok Sabha this May and expected to be taken up by the Rajya Sabha in the current session of Parliament. The most contentious amendment to this Bill proposes that the minimum age for a child to be placed in the adult criminal justice system should be lowered from the current 18 years to 16 years for certain crimes. This is supported by certain sections of society which have literally been baying for blood, post the horrifying Nirbhaya rape case. Ill-informed arguments have muddied the discourse to make the average citizen believe that juveniles committing crimes do not really face any punishment today, whereas the truth is that the juvenile justice system actually provides an alternative system for trial and punishment of juveniles in keeping with their age, physical and emotional status.

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There is extensive research to prove that transferring children to the adult justice and prison system does not reduce crime, and in fact increases recidivism as it exposes these children to hardened criminals. Experts also believe that the human brain is not completely developed till one is in one’s mid-20s and young adults are actually more susceptible to peer pressure, and relatively unstable in emotionally charged situations. Globally, most progressive countries and their judicial systems have taken cognisance of such research, a case in point being the state of Connecticut, in the U.S., which has recently seen a move to raise the age of juvenility. There is also extensive research to prove that more rehabilitative juvenile justice systems have repeatedly been found to lead to lower re-arrest rates than the adult system, and, therefore, result in lowering overall crime numbers.

While National Crime Records Bureau data indicates that children from the marginalised sections of society will suffer the most (as over 55 per cent children in the juvenile justice system come from families from the lowest income bracket) if these amendments pass, they could also end up impacting a number of young boys in consensual relationships, as they may face incarceration in the adult prison system if their partner’s parents decide to file a case against them under the proposed law.

It is strange that the very state which has not been able to ensure the effective implementation of the envisaged ecosystem for rehabilitating children through various institutions (child welfare and selection committees, juvenile justice boards, special juvenile police unit, etc.) established under the Juvenile Justice Act, 2000 (and therefore has in some way contributed to the rise in crime?) is now trying to “remedy” the situation by actually worsening it.

Children at work

And finally, let’s look at the much ignored issue of child labour in India. There are reportedly 43 lakh children who are forced to work in our country and the proposed amendments to the Child Labour (Prohibition and Regulation) Amendment Bill is meant to strengthen the legislative framework that prohibits their employment. But will it?

Children under the age of 14 are currently banned from working in hazardous industries but the government proposes to drastically reduce the number of industries considered hazardous from 83 to 3. Under the garb of family-run enterprises, children will also be allowed to work in industries like zari, bangle and carpet making, brick kilns, diamond cutting and, arguably, even scavenging.

The truth is that a number of these industries rely on the small nimble fingers of children and perpetuate a system that thrives on bonded labour, or at best very poor wages. The government argues that these amendments are being made in response to the socio-economic realities of the country and to allow children to learn traditional crafts after school hours.

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Even if we were to say for a moment that this was not a specious argument trotted out by those who want to perpetuate the existing system, a sobering study points out that while combining school and work is a reality for poor children in India, the likelihood of children who work for over three hours dropping out of the school system is estimated to be as high as 70 per cent. In a country where the trafficker passes off as a “Mama” or a “Mausi”, where is the question of the state actually being able to monitor the number of hours a child actually works, even if he is actually working in the family enterprise?

And once again it will be the girl child who will be the first to be pulled out of school and put into the workforce, as will children from the economically weaker and marginalised sections of society — the very children most at risk and whom the Act is largely designed to protect.

Not only will these amendments not help eliminate child labour, but they will also, in all likelihood, deny our children their rights under the RTE Act, possibly creating the perfect preconditions for some of them to take to juvenile crime.

Will we be the generation that will preside over a system where the state dropped the ball — and our children and we paid the price for it? Under the garb of doing right by them?

(Barkha Deva, a commentator on the intersects between politics, governance and policy, is Associate Director at the Rajiv Gandhi Institute for Contemporary Studies. These are her personal views and do not represent the views of the RGICS or its trustees.)

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CIVIL SERVICE

STATESMAN, DEC 16, 2015Pay panel bonanzaBharat Jhunjhunwala

There is no denying that a great country can only be built on the bedrock of good governance. And, governance is provided by Government servants, the difficulty being that their basic character or attitude to work does not meet the requirements of good governance. The Manu Smriti says, “Employees appointed by the king are mostly takers of property of others and cheats; from them the King should protect the people” (7.123). Likewise Kautilya says in Arthasastra: “Just as it is impossible not to taste the honey or poison that finds itself at the tip of the tongue, so it is impossible for a government employee not to eat up a part of government revenue. Just as it is not possible to find whether the fish moving under water is drinking water or not, similarly it is not possible to find out how much money the government employees have embezzled” (2.9). Establishing good governance with government servants of such character is like trying to win a war riding on a wild horse.

A half-way solution to this predicament is to employ such persons as government servants who have a relatively honest character. This presupposes  higher pay. The Government had explicitly asked the Seventh Pay Commission to consider efficiency and productivity while recommending the salary structure. But the Commission has virtually ignored this issue, saying that such matters are best dealt with by an Administrative Reforms Commission. As far as the Commission is concerned, efficient and inefficient government servants are entitled to the same salaries.

Government servants are employed to “serve” the people. This principle has been turned on its head in our country. The World Bank had conducted a study of the average salary of government servants and its ratio to the average income of the citizens of various countries. The ratio of income of the government servant to that of the citizen was 1.4 times in the United Kingdom. The ratio in some other countries was as follows: Indonesia 1.0, China 1.2, United States 1.4, Korea 1.5, Argentina 1.9, Singapore 2.9 and Malaysia 2.9. In comparison, for the average income of the government employee in India the ratio was 4.8 times -  the highest among all major countries. There was a decline in the ratio in Indonesia, Argentina and Korea between 1995 and 2000 while it remained unchanged in China, England, Malaysia and United States. The global tendency is for the salary of government employees to be brought down closer to the incomes of the people. Not in India. The ratio has increased from 3.6 to 4.8 in the same period. This has already further increased due to the implementation of the Sixth Pay Commission and is now slated to increase further. The poor citizen is paying taxes to pay hefty salaries to Government servants appointed to serve him!

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The Commission has recommended an increase of 23 per cent in the salaries on the reasoning that the government servants are entitled to a comfortable standard of living. The objective is laudable. But the question is whether the farm worker drawing Rs.6,000 per month is not entitled to “comfortable” living? Should the government servant be entitled to comfortable living if the farm worker is  deprived of the same entitlement?

The Commission has said that the burden of this increase will be less than the burden imposed by the Sixth Pay Commission, whose recommendations had led to an increase in revenue expenditures of the Government by 4.32 per cent. The Seventh Pay Commission has patted itself on the back saying its recommendations will only lead to an increase in revenue expenditures of 4.25 percent. Say, the previous doctor had given the wrong medicine to the patient. The new doctor is saying he has given less of the same wrong medicine. The  mistakes of the past Pay Commissions ought to have been rectified.

There are two types of services that the government provides. Some services can only be provided by the government while other services can also be secured by individuals directly from the market. The first category of services is called public goods. These include currency, defence, police, judiciary, highways, ports, electricity distribution, land records, etc. A citizen cannot obtain these services from elsewhere even if he is willing to pay for these. The second category of services is called  “private goods”. These include health, education, culture, and the like. These services can be obtained by the individual directly from the market.

The difference in the two services was once explained by Rabindranath Tagore   “Government existed in ancient India in the form of kingship. But there is a great difference between the Western state and our kingship. The West has handed over all responsibilities to the State. India has done that only partially. The respectable people in society provided education of knowledge and morality without wage payment. The king was expected to assist and honour them but only partially. Generally this was the work of every householder. If the king stopped assistance, or if there was social upheaval in the society, even then the provision of education was not interrupted.”    Tagore suggested that society should, in the main, make arrangements for providing education with its own resources without seeking assistance from the government.The consequence of the government’s entry in the segment of  “private goods” is plainly visible. A teacher in a government school draws a salary of Rs.30,000 per month and only 50 per cent of the students taught by him pass the exams. A teacher in a private school draws a salary of Rs.8,000 a month and 90 per cent of the students taught by him pass the exams. Government servants employed in providing what they call the  “public goods” are indispensable. But we have spawned a huge army of government servants in providing the  “private goods”. The Pay

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Commission should have suggested lower salaries to government servants providing  “private goods”.

The Government must reject the Seventh Pay Commission Report. It must appoint a fresh Commission with the Terms of Reference explicitly providing for aligning the salaries of the public servants with the average incomes of the citizens of the country. Unrest is brewing. A friend of mine in Kolkata says the next war will not be with Pakistan or with the Maoists. The next war will take place between the common man and the Government servants. This schism in the polity must be dealt with now before it becomes intractable.

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DEFENCE, NATIONAL

INDIAN EXPRESS, DEC 21, 2015Service chiefs write to Parrikar, express concern about 7th Pay Commission’s recommendations

The defence services feel that the pay commission has erred in comparing defence expenditure

on salaries with expenditure on operation and maintenance by the armed forces.Written by Sushant Singh 

In a rare move, the three service chiefs — Army Chief General Dalbir Singh, Air Chief Marshal Arup Raha and Navy Chief Admiral Robin Dhowan — have sent a joint memorandum to Defence Minister Manohar Parrikar expressing concern about the Seventh Pay Commission’s recommendations. They have sought an expert committee, with representatives from the armed forces, to redress the grievances identified by the defence services.

Defence ministry sources said Parrikar has already had an informal interaction with the three

service chiefs, and a detailed presentation on all the issues raised in the joint memorandum will

be held this week.

The memorandum, sent last week, follows another complaint made by the armed forces to the

defence ministry last month on military personnel who seek premature retirement being excluded

from the ambit of One Rank One Pension (OROP) scheme.

The pay commission cells of the three defence services have listed some common grievances

after a detailed study of the 900-page report. Members of these cells said that prima facie, the

report has used incorrect and irrelevant data, leading to wrong analysis and skewed

interpretation.

They claimed that almost all proposals submitted to the pay commission through a joint services

memorandum have been rejected without providing any justification, or without even mentioning

them. They pointed out that the pay commission, on the other hand, has mentioned the proposals

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of all other categories of central government services, analysing and commenting on each of

them in detail.

“The Seventh Pay Commission has glossed over the core anomalies of the Sixth Pay

Commission, which had put military personnel at a disadvantage. Those have not been resolved,

making the situation worse,” said a senior military official.

Wrong pay fixation of military officials, particularly in the ranks of Lt Colonel, Colonel and

Brigadier, at a scale much lower than their civilian counterparts, has been identified as a major

issue because a bulk of military officers serve in these three ranks for the longest part of their

career. The services also believe there is a disparity in grant of allowances to military personnel

vis-à-vis civilian officials.

The defence services feel that the pay commission has erred in comparing defence expenditure

on salaries with expenditure on operation and maintenance by the armed forces. They feel that

the pay commission did not undertake a similar exercise for the civil services and the central

armed police forces.

“Had the pay commission done that, it would have been an eye-opener to the nation to know in

how little amounts the armed forces which constitute 30 percent of the central government

employees live, survive and function effectively by efficient management of resources as

compared to their civilian counterparts,” the military official argued.

Wrong pay fixation of military officials, particularly in the ranks of Lt Colonel, Colonel and

Brigadier, at a scale much lower than their civilian counterparts has been identified by the

defence forces as a major issue because a bulk of military officers serve in these three ranks for

the longest part of their career. The service headquarters also believe that there is a disparity in

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grant of a large number of allowances to military personnel vis-à-vis civilian officials. Even

hardship and field area allowances extended to central armed police forces have not been offered

to the armed forces, they say.

According to a senior military official, “the traditional parity with civilian employees, which had

been under attack by successive pay commissions against the interest of armed forces, has been

further accentuated by the Seventh Pay Commission, in contravention of its terms of reference.

Its recommendations have brought the armed forces even below all other uniformed services of

paramilitary forces”.

The armed forces believe that the grant of Non Functional Upgradation (NFU), where a

government official gets his pay increments even if he is not promoted in rank, has been made

applicable to the military personnel in a superficial manner. NFU was granted to all the civilian

officials in the Sixth Pay Commission and the armed forces have been demanding it since.

“Take the issue of disability allowance. The civilian employees have been getting a percentage

of the basic pay as disability allowance since 1996. It was extended to us in the Sixth Pay

Commission. Now it has been taken back and military has been reverted to a slab-based thing,” a

senior military official said.

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ECONOMIC AND SOCIAL DEVELOPMENT

BUSINESS STANDARD, DEC 16, 2015NITI Aayog paper calls for 'judicious' use of Essential Commodities ActSanjeeb Mukherjee 

Centre may appoint panel under NITI Aayog to review urban censusNITI Aayog likely to draw the line on poverty

Months after Central, state governments cracked down on pulses hoarders for violating the

Essential Commodities Act, a paper floated by the NITI Aayog has called for ‘judicious’ use of

the Act to make private investments in agriculture marketing and storage attractive.

The paper, based on the discussions a NITI Aayog task force had with a wide range of experts

and stakeholders, also favoured selective use of genetic modification technology in pulses and

oilseeds after necessary safeguards. It also favoured freeing urea imports.

The task force is headed by NITI Aayog vice-chairmanArvind Panagariya with Bibek Debroy,

Ramesh Chand,Ashok Gulati and host of secretaries from the ministries of agriculture, land

resources, water resources, and fertilisers as members.

In October, the Centre amended the Essential Commodities Act to enable imposition of stock

limits on pulses sourced from imports, stocks held by exporters, and those used as raw-materials

by licensed food processors and large departmental retailers.

The amendment was done to help states governments intensify their anti-hoarding operations

against pulses traders after retail prices touched as high as Rs 200 a kg. Around 130,000 tonnes

of illegally stored pulses were seized from traders.

However, the move was criticised in some quarters on the grounds it would discourage

investment in storage if buyers are not allowed to store a certain quantity.

The paper titled Raising Agriculture Productivity and Making Farming Remunerative for

Farmers, which would be put on public domain for comments, has also called for replacing the

existing minimum support price (MSP) system in some crops with ‘price deficiency payment’,

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which would compensate growers directly as and when they fall below a certain threshold limit.

OTHER RECOMMENDATIONS OF THE TASK FORCE Seed replacement ratio should be accelerated and raised to 33 per cent for high yielding varieties and

100 per cent for hybrids Fertliser subsidy should be paid directly to farmers Urgent need to revitalize the National Agricultural Research System Food processing should be turned into a major export industry APMC Acts should be modified to support a well-functioning system of contract farming Special attention should be given to Eastern and NE states as farmers there face depressed prices

“This approach would help prevent unwanted stocks and spread price incentives to producers in all the regions and all crops,” the paper said. It said MSP might still be used for need-based procurements.

The paper advocated the need for creating a vibrant land lease market and said that NITI Aayog should prepare ‘model land leasing Acts’ that can be used by various states to reform their existing provisions. It also called for starting a land bank to be held by a private agency.

In case of natural disaster, the government should immediately transfer a minimum specified sum into the bank accounts of farmers to provide instant relief without waiting for insurance claims, the paper said. On crop insurance products, the paper said the government should provide a diverse set of insurance products.

TELEGRAPH, DEC 23, 29015Politics and productivity - Between a growing and a scorched economy

CommentaraoS.L. Rao

Many analysts and commentators now regard India as the fastest growing economy in the world. The decline in the Chinese economy has made India the cynosure. India has to choose between needed reforms now for faster growth or a 'scorched' economy resulting from the Congress's policies analogous to the centuries-old 'scorched earth' tactic of military defence, that denied all local assets to an invading army.

India benefited from the collapse in crude oil prices. That has considerably moderated inflation. The import bill has declined sharply. In spite of the decline in the economies of China and Europe, and the consequent fall in our exports, the balance of payments are, after many years, not a worry. The statistical 'jugglery' in estimating the gross domestic product has perhaps added almost 1 per cent to growth figures. Even recognizing this, India's GDP growth is better than of most other countries.

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Yet, food price inflation has become a burden on the poor. The excessive rains in parts of India (particularly the south) and drought in others (for example, Vidarbha), have caused high prices and, at times, poor availability of pulses, vegetables, fruits, and so on. Rural incomes are adversely affected. There is little growth in the numbers of urban income-earners.

While private investment expenditure has risen, it is not of high magnitude. The real estate market is glutted, but developers are holding on to their stocks without reducing prices. In spite of a decline in interest on home loans, there is no rise in demand. Decline in real estate off-take, huge sums locked up in stranded assets in private and public investments in electricity undertakings, and in private investments in other infrastructure, have further weakened the balance sheets of nationalized banks.

Public investment has risen and will rise farther as government programmes for roads, railways, ports, metros and other infrastructure get under way. The pay commission bonanza to Central government servants will spread to states. There will be a rise in consumer expenditures (already visible in car sales and bank lending for them). Manufacturing output is rising, but slowly. Wages and employment are unlikely to have shown increases.

Thus India is in a relatively sweet spot compared to many other countries. But many legislative and administrative actions are necessary before India can benefit from the situation.

Private domestic and foreign investors must actually invest instead of merely stating intentions to do so. Funds availability for investment must increase greatly as must their diversity of sources. Banks need considerable recapitalization. Presently, the banks are an important source for capital investments. Governments (Central and those of the states) must cease to be bottlenecks. Permissions must be accelerated for all government clearances and they must come quickly, together and not over a lengthy period. These include environment and forest clearances, building clearances, pollution clearances, factory clearances, and so on.

Industrial development, urbanization, education and skills development are the only ways to reduce the excessive pressure of population on agriculture and rural India, resulting in its poverty. The migration of populations from rural to urban areas must increase even faster. This calls for many actions. Easier acquisition of land for industry is an essential precondition. Land will be required for new urban conglomerations as well. The living and working conditions in urban areas must improve if investors are to come in and bring in new technologies. Presently, Indian cities are filthy, with heaps of garbage, public defecation, clogged drains, potholed roads, unreliable electricity supplies, inefficient public transportation, lack of safety for women, poor quality of education at all levels, with faculty shortages and often of poor quality. Health services are also poor, especially for lower income groups. Social welfare schemes must be streamlined to limit benefits to desired beneficiaries. They must not leak to many others, and also not be stolen by bureaucrats and politicians. Direct bank transfers are an answer and need secure identification of beneficiaries and opening bank accounts for them.

India has no large factories with large numbers employed in labour-intensive manufactures like garments and leather. Bangladesh and Sri Lanka have much larger ones. Our limitation is rigid labour laws. They have to become flexible and allow easy expansion and reduction of

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employees, depending on market conditions (with suitable compensation).

These are only some of the areas in which action must be taken by governments at the Union, state and local municipal levels. People's attitudes to work, accountability, bribery and corruption, and habits like public defecation, must also change. Only then can we take full advantage of the favourable circumstances in which India is placed just now. We can then look forward to accelerated economic growth and employment. However, these favourable circumstances will not last forever. We must take advantage of them without dithering. The prime minister has a programme for almost every one of the items for action to be taken mentioned earlier. Many are being implemented.

Sadly, politics has entered the scene. This Bharatiya Janata Party government has, on the whole, a poor quality of ministers. They rarely initiate action and follow through. Their experience in getting legislation through parliamentary committees and getting them voted for is limited. The prime minister is a great crowd-puller and orator. He is, however, poor in the real world of political exchange. He has to learn to create and interact with many networks of politicians from other parties. The prime minister has, for 18 months, treated the main Opposition party, the Congress, with arrogance and derision. He has now realized that he needs to pass legislation to get reforms through. He needs their support.

Meanwhile, the principal but minuscule opposition, the Congress, after being electorally decimated has no vibrant leadership or ideas. What it has are its old shibboleths. Its strategy, exemplified by Rahul Gandhi, seems to be of preventing the BJP from getting any policies legislated that might give it electoral credit. Indeed, it is a policy of scorching the economy to prevent policies that would be of benefit to the the BJP and the country. The Congress plan would be to take the credit for cleaning up when it comes to power (it hopes) in 3 years.

The spate of investigations and charges against Congress leaders in recent months was to be expected. But owing to its poor political common sense, like the Janata Party in 1977, the BJP's timing has been appalling. It needs the Congress to pass key legislation and its first three years should have focused on passing legislation for which it should have developed harmonious relationships. These accusations should have been pursued closer to the time of the next general elections. The only recourse now is for the BJP governments to frame legislation in a manner that the Congress can also take credit.

The Congress must also be awakening to the unsympathetic media comments on its disruption of Parliament, especially after the court ordered the trial of the Gandhis. The Congress should subdue its hysterical responses.

It is clear that the survival of the Gandhi family's power is a higher priority for the party leadership than the immediate good of the nation. The economy can move faster even without the Modi government passing new Central legislation. Friendly state legislatures can get Central approval for legislation on concurrent subjects and begin reform in those states (for example land law changes, labour law reforms). What will be left are the major items like the goods and services tax which need parliamentary approval and even changes in the Constitution. The economy will grow faster but not as much as it could have. The Congress

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will not gain. The BJP will and can point to the Congress preventing faster growth. The Congress must choose between scorching the economy, as the Gandhi family wants, and India's accelerated growth.

The author is former director-general, National Council of Applied Economic Research

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ENVIRONMENTTELEGRAPH, DEC 22, 2015Climate change and India- Short-sighted positions will bring the country grief

Writing on the wall - Ashok V. Desai

In an earlier column I looked at the pattern of rainfall in the southwest monsoon just gone by. Rain throughout India has been below normal, more so in regions which normally receive low rainfall. Of these, central India has the least canal irrigation and most rain-dependent agriculture; that is where the effects of water deficiency will be felt most, including a fall in foodgrain output. India will need to import more rice than the rest of the world can spare. There is a serious danger that the government will find it impossible to deal with the fall in foodgrain output.

After I wrote the column, the east coast was hit by a severe tsunami which killed people, destroyed assets and disrupted transport and communications. The tsunami was followed by the Paris conference on climate change. All governments were represented there; almost all of them promised to bring down their emission of greenhouse gases, which are known to make the world warmer. Unsurprisingly, the sum total of the promises falls short of what is necessary to prevent a further rise in global temperature, which is already one degree higher than the average between 1850 and 1900. If the 200 countries gathered there were to reach an agreement, they had to make many mutual concessions. India and some other countries asked to be compensated for taking preventive action, in money as well as in technologies; no agreement was reached on their demand. And all the promises are non-binding; there is nothing to ensure that they will be kept.

This outcome is a consequence of the fact that global warming is an externality for many countries: it will depend on total emissions of the relevant gases, on which few countries have much influence, and a country like India can tell itself that its own emissions will have only a small proportion of the heating effect. This is a typical case of an external diseconomy. India has also led developing countries in arguing that their share of the total gases emitted historically is small, that industrial countries have got rich by emitting most of the gases released in history, and that it is unfair of them to ask poor countries to cut down emissions before they have removed their poverty. However reasonable these arguments may sound to us Indians, they will ensure that corrective action will be inadequate, and that we, along with the rest of the world, will suffer the consequences.

What will those consequences be? Very little research has been done on them in India, and even less of it is in the public domain. The Tatas funded an institute of energy research in the 1974, with R.K. Pachauri as director. Not much later, Pachauri stopped taking help from Tatas, and removed their name from the institute's name. It has been generously funded by the government and other donors and has built up a large infrastructure. On the urgent problems that face India - how to meet its rapidly increasing energy requirements, and how to reduce the global warming impact of India's energy consumption - the institute's contribution has been limited. It has

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certainly not led or informed public debate.

Looking beyond India, one of the most interesting studies comes from CICERO - Centre for International Climate and Environmental Research - in Oslo, Norway, together with UNEP GRID-Arendal, also from Norway, and International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development, based in Kathmandu. They produced a Himalayan Climate and Water Atlas. They concentrated on the basins of five rivers - Indus, Ganges, Brahmaputra, Salween and Mekong. According to their research, temperatures will rise by 1-2 degrees - in some places by as much as 4-5 degrees - by 2050. Monsoons will get longer and more erratic. There will be fewer showers, but their intensity will increase. So will the frequency of extreme events such as floods and droughts, and they will become more extreme and more disastrous - unless we get better prepared. Glaciers will continue to melt in most of Hindu Kush. Combined with monsoon rains, this means that more water will flow down the rivers in summer, when there are no agricultural operations to use it. The onset and end of monsoons and the rain they bring will also become more variable. Hence there will be more unexpected floods and droughts. The atlas was launched at the Conference of the Parties 21 in Paris. Now the scholars want to turn their research towards finding solutions for the South Asians who will be affected, in cooperation with the affected countries and their institutions.

We should welcome their ambition. But there is an obvious solution: when India faces droughts and its foodgrain production drops, it can import grains. That is what it did throughout the 1950s. But there was a difference: it could import grains year after year because the United States of America produced more than it consumed. Next time, it may not be the US. It could be the European Union, which actually pays farmers for not producing anything. The subsidy, called direct transfers, is given for all kinds of laudable reasons, such as to young farmers, or for following environment-friendly practices; but it is ultimately a subsidy for not using farmland to grow anything. Africa also probably has much land that could be used for grains.

These countries may grow foodgrains if they are guaranteed a stable market in India; but they will not do so if they are told that India may import millions of tons in a year when its crops fail, and nothing in other years. No rational farmer is going to grow grains for India if he thinks he may be able to export once in a blue moon.

Those are the terms India is offering to the world in the negotiations in the World Trade Organization: that its objective - and right - is food security. To achieve it, it will produce almost all that it consumes, even if the cost is greater than the cost of imports, and will not guarantee international access to its foodgrain market.

So in one international forum, India has argued for the right to burn as much fossil fuel as it likes, and contribute increasing quantities of greenhouse gases designed to cause extreme climatic events, including droughts in India; in another forum, India insists on taking away any incentive it could give to the rest of the world to grow grains for India. The stance in one forum contradicts the one in the other.

India will get away with this, for it is a sovereign nation and no one in the world can stop it from axing its own foot. But the government that takes these contradictory positions on behalf

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of India is working against India's interests. This has nothing to do with its political orientation. The positions were worked out under the previous, Congress government. Both the major parties agree on them. But that does not make them any less short-sighted and anti-national.

There may be other solutions. For instance, India may create a special agricultural free trade area with the EU; or like Japan, it may trawl the oceans and eat fish by the billion. But it had better find a solution - fast.

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FLOODSSTATESMAN, DEC 20, 2015No laughing matter

Sam RajappaWater is a gift of nature. Nature has been overwhelmingly kind to Chennai and its surrounding districts of Kancheepuram and Thiruvallur in 2015. In the second half of November and the first two days of December there were excessive rains. Instead of treating it as nature’s bounty to the parched people of Chennai, the government of Tamil Nadu declared it a disaster and wanted Prime Minister Narendra Modi to declare it a national calamity. The Oxford Dictionary describes disaster as “sudden or great misfortune.” Rainfall is anything but misfortune. If a disaster it was, it was entirely the making of the government of Tamil Nadu.

Instead of storing the surplus waters for leaner years, the government opened the flood gates of storage tanks and lakes surrounding Chennai on the night of 1 December when all the three rivers, the Kosasthalayar, the Cooum and the Adayar, meandering through the northern, central and the southern parts of the city respectively, were in spate without any prior warning to the people. Estuaries of the three rivers that open into the Bay of Bengal had not been dredged properly and the free flow of water into the sea was obstructed, causing unprecedented floods in the city and forcing it to close down. Hundreds of people drowned while five million people were affected. Loss to property is estimated at Rs. 840 billion. 

Greed and corruption that dominate governance are the root cause of this misfortune. Instead of conserving nature’s gift, the government would rather let the water into the sea, pump it back to giant desalination plants that dot the coastline, and sell it to people as drinking water for a price, unmindful of environmental degradation involved in the entire process and suffering inflicted on the people.

Chennai gets its rain from the north-east monsoon which normally sets in by the middle of October and lasts till the end of December. There was ample warning from the Meteorological Department that the monsoon this year was going to be heavy. There was specific advance warning about very heavy rainfall in the week beginning 29 November. Even the quantum of rain was forecast. The government slept over it. 

The Chemarambakkam reservoir, the largest supplying drinking water to Chennai, was filling up fast and the Public Works Department engineers were agitated. They dared not open the sluice gates without the green signal from the Chief Minister who is out of bounds to such mortals. If the bund of the reservoir breached, thousands of people would be washed away into the Bay of

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Bengal. Out of desperation they wrote to the Chief Secretary on 29 November to obtain the Chief Minister’s permission to release water from the Chembarambakkam reservoir in a regulated manner to avoid flooding of the city. The Chief Secretary can approach the Chief Minister only through a Special Adviser to the CM. 

For the safety of the reservoir, maximum water level should be kept two feet below the FTL (full tank level). By the time the maze of bureaucratic red tape was cut, it was past midnight of 1 December and the water level has crossed the threshold by 1.4 ft. The city was caught in incessant rain and the Adayar was already in spate. The surplus waters of Chembarambakkam were let into the swollen Adayar without any warning to the people living downstream and the city of Chennai was deluged, killing in its wake 280 people that night.

Six years ago, a group of experts submitted a detailed report titled “Chennai City Development Plan-2009,” suggesting rehabilitation of the city’s waterways to ward off threat of floods to the Corporation of Chennai. The purpose of the plan was to guide development of the Chennai Metropolitan Area through the year 2026. The origins of this report lie with the establishment of the Jawaharlal Nehru Urban Renewal Mission in 2005 by the government of India to provide funding for urban development. Chennai was one of the 63 eligible cities. As part of the funding application process, Chennai prepared a City Development Plan and sought and received assistance from the Asian Development Bank’s City Development Initiative for Asia Programme and jointly supported by the German, Swedish and Spanish governments. The purpose of the document was to make Chennai a prime metropolis which will become more livable, economically vibrant, environmentally sustainable and with better assets for the future generations. It suggested a participatory review of the Chennai Corporation’s City Development Plan and to submit its investment programme to JNNURM funding. 

Another suggestion was to strengthen institutional development within the government, non-governmental agencies and civil society to identify, prioritise and plan infrastructure projects. The overall goal was to improve the social, economic and environmental conditions for all the residents of the CMDA. Those involved in preparing the report envisaged with prescience what could befall Chennai if its recommendations were not implemented. Neither the Tamil Nadu government nor the Corporation of Chennai heeded the warning and the people of Chennai suffered the consequences in the first week of December.

The banks of the three rivers that flow through Chennai have been encroached by slums and regularised by either the DMK or the AIADMK government in the last 48 years that Tamil Nadu was ruled by the two parties alternately. Flood plains which give the rivers room to overflow have been converted into real estate. Chennai airport sits on the flood plain of the Adayar and its

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second runway was built over the river much against opposition from airline crews. What they predicted came true early this month and the airport had to be closed down for five days. 

The Cooum, which flows through central Chennai, was blocked by tonnes of garbage, much of it in plastic form, thrown into the river by all and sundry without let or hindrance. The Elevated Expressway from Madras Port to Maduravoil is being constructed over the Cooum. Phoenix Mall, the largest in the metropolis, sits right on the Velachery lake bed. World class, multi-specialty MIOT Hospital is perched on the banks of the Adayar. Chennai’s Mass Rapid System, a concrete monster, runs above the Buckingham Canal, the longest man-made drain. 

Major private universities in the city had been allowed to come up on marshes, water bodies or flood plains, mostly on encroached land. The posh high rise MRC Nagar, described as the Manhattan of Chennai, has blossomed in the prohibited Coastal Regulation Zone near the high tide line and the estuary of the Adayar. All this constitutes a recipe for disaster.

Having been Chief Minister of Tamil Nadu for three terms with her due share along with Muthuvel Karunanidhi of the DMK in making Chennai a “water-tight city” with no escape route to expel flood waters, J Jayalalitha, cocooned in her Poes Garden residence without getting her feet wet in the floods and facing criticism for the deluge, released an audio message via WhatsApp in an attempt to silence critics. 

“This is your dear sister Jayalalitha speaking. I am very distressed at the thought of the troubles you all are facing as a result of unprecedented rains in the past 100 years. Do not worry. This is your government. (The government took a rain holiday when people needed it most!) You have given me the strength to battle any situation and win. I am always for you and I will always be with you. Very soon I will rescue you from this sorrow and will ensure you attain growth and resilience. This is a promise…..I will bear all the burdens that befall you. I do not have a separate life of my own. I do not have relatives. I have absolutely no self-interest. You are everything to me. My home and my heart is Tamil Nadu. I have dedicated my lifetime to serving you all simply due to you all calling me Amma. I have even forgotten the name my parents have given me. I will reiterate that this government is one that has successfully won against natural disasters (sic). Whatever troubles come, trust that this mother’s hands will always wipe them away. Thank you.” In their struggle for survival amidst gathering gloom, Jayalalitha’s message gave the people room for some derisive laughter.

The writer is a veteran journalist and former Director of The Statesman Print Journalism School.

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HEALTH SERVICES

INDIAN EXPRESS, DEC 21, 2015Cure the doctorHealthcare in India is a leading cause of poverty. The medical profession must own its share of the blameWritten by Vikram Patel 

According to a report, the cost of healthcare is driving millions of Indians into poverty.

Earlier this month, The Lancet published a paper calling for a radical transformation of the

architecture of India’s healthcare delivery system if it is to achieve the government’s vision of

assuring health for all. The paper documented India’s progress on major health indicators in the

past decade, but also its many deficiencies. The most disturbing indicator of these deficiencies is

the observation that the cost of healthcare is driving millions of Indians into poverty. Let us

pause to consider the implication of this statement.

In a country where the primary goal of economic development is to help raise people out of

poverty, healthcare is driving millions into poverty. Whereas, in other countries, investment in

healthcare is recognised as a route to promote growth by enhancing their citizens’ capabilities to

be productive, healthcare in India is now one of the leading causes of poverty. We are, in simple

terms, out of step with the rest of the world, not only the developed countries whose ranks we

aspire to join, but also with other countries like ours.

It is common to lay the entire blame, or at least the lion’s share, for this on the government. This

is certainly true to some extent, but the reality is that many sectors must share this blame, not

least the medical profession, of which I am a member. In most countries, the medical profession

plays a central role in working with the government and civil society towards improving access

to affordable, quality care. In India, though, the medical profession is adrift from any alignment

with this vision and is, if anything, increasingly seen as being complicit in perpetuating our

abysmal health care system, and as an obstacle to a progressive one.

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Hardly a day goes by without us being reminded of how corruption of the basic values of

respecting patient rights and promoting an evidence-based practice has reduced our professional

standards to those where doctors effortlessly associate with crooked politicians and police

officers. Consider some stories that illustrate this: Illegal payments for approval of and admission

to private medical colleges; falsification of faculty records to meet the criteria for recognition of

these medical colleges; unethical and irrational practices of unnecessary procedures, diagnostic

tests and hospital admissions with a commercial incentive; kickbacks in cash or kind from

companies or other physicians for prescriptions or referrals; fraudulent billing for insurance

payments; lack of attention to quality of care leading to catastrophic health outcomes following

routine surgical procedures; collusion with pharmaceutical companies to run “health camps”

whose primary goal is to create markets for the company; and collusion with families to promote

sex-selection.

While much of this corruption lies in the private sector, now the dominant force in healthcare

delivery in India, it is equally the case that corruption is also evident in the public sector.

Consider absenteeism to run illegal private practices and the lack of basic dignity in healthcare,

both frequent observations in the public system. It would be fair to say that the reputation of my

profession has collapsed since I was a medical student in the 1980s.

While many of my colleagues may argue this is unjustified, I doubt if any will deny that a radical

revision of our healthcare system will need to be accompanied by a radical revision of the

medical profession itself. This reform would need to begin from the very nature of the training

our medical students receive, so as to prepare them not only to work in specialised urban

hospitals but also in primary care in villages and towns.

The reform would need to extend further, much further, to regulate the quality of care delivered,

to make costs of care completely transparent in the spirit of the Right to Information Act, and to

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hold doctors (and hospitals) accountable for wilful lapses. The most formidable challenge to this

goal has been the complete squandering of the golden opportunity afforded to our profession for

self-regulation through the Medical Council of India, which is itself accused of grand levels of

fraud and has singularly failed to achieve its mandate to uphold the high standards of medical

education and quality of care. Any reform must begin with a root and branch re-engineering of

this moribund body. Ironically, while we have failed to effectively regulate ourselves, our

profession has also mounted a robust opposition to independent efforts to regulate us, for

example through the clinical establishments act. This leaves an increasingly disgruntled patient

community to resort to the consumer protection act and the criminal courts to hold us

accountable. This procedure only poisons the precious relationship between our profession and

the community we serve.

Whereas the erosion of many fundamental values, such as that of providing scientifically

grounded care in an environment of respect and dignity, will require a significant revision of

training and continuing professional development, attending to commercially driven malpractices

is more amenable to immediate action with potentially profound impact on impoverishment due

to healthcare. The Jan Swasthya Abhiyan recently demanded that “all payments of kickbacks and

commissions” be declared as illegal and compliance beThe writer is a psychiatrist with the Public Health Foundation of India and the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine. He was lead author of The Lancet paper, ‘Assuring health for India’s people’

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POLITICS AND GOVERNMENT

STATESMAN, DEC 19, 2015Pakistan’s nemesisBhopinder Singh

Amidst the unforgivingly rugged and desolate swathes of desert lands and the craggy Sulaiman Mountains lies Baluchistan, the largest province of Pakistan (occupying 44 per cent of national land mass but only 5 per cent of the population). With a recorded history dating back to 7000 BC in the pre-Indus valley civilization era, the Baluch are a hardy stock of fiercely tribal and restive people who see themselves as ethnically and historically distinct from the majority Punjabis, Sindhis and the equally feudal Pathans. After the British Raj, the integration of the four princely States of Makran, Kharan, Las Bela and Kalat was anything but smooth -the Khanate of Kalat held out as an independent state from 15 August 1947 to 27 March 1948, before reluctantly acceding to Pakistan (after being reportedly spurned by the Indian Congress to come to its rescue to avoid joining the dominion of Pakistan).

The seeds of disillusionment and animosity existed at the time of Pakistan’s independence itself, with the feared alienation and subjugation of the proud Baluchs manifesting in the first wave of insurgency with the Kalat-based Baluchs by 1948. Four more waves of armed insurgency were to follow, each backed by a strong socio-economic rationale mixed with quasi-nationalistic sentiment that was often mired in internal squabbles and dissensions within warring Baluch ranks, led by the irreconcilable ‘Sardars’ or ‘Khans’ of the various tribes. The loyalty to the tribe and its revered Sardar would usually take precedence over a composite Baluch cause -something that the British first, and then the resident governments and military men of Islamabad routinely exploited.

As a national issue, Baluchistan was always brushed aside and deprioritized with Kashmir holding the mainstream imagination and emerging as a unifying cause celebre. Then it was Bangladesh (East Pakistan till 1971) in the 1960s and 70s and now it is the cold war residue of the Talibanized curse spanning both sides of the Durand line on the Af-Pak border. Baluchistan usually got relegated to issues of secondary priority. It was virtually squeezed and posited against each and every possible neighbour, be it the ‘domineering’ Punjabis to the West, the counter-sectarian Shia Iran to the East or the demographically threatening Pathans to the North. The Baluch was left with no international benefactor or sympathiser and so each and every uprising was met with free hands and heavy boots of the Pakistani military to quell local insurgencies. With the military perceived as an extention of the Punjabi-Pathan domain, the return of military rule in 1999 with General Musharraf at the helm of affairs was the trigger for the fifth and ongoing round of violent insurgency.

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So besides the warring past for territorial survival, ethno-linguistic uniqueness, tribal belligerence and perceived subjugation by the “others’’, all socio economic indicators back the Baluch accusations of economic slavery and exploitation of its natural resources since Pakistan’s independence.

Underdevelopment of infrastructure, education and civic amenities, inequitable sharing of the natural gas revenues that power the rest of Pakistan and yield a pittance for Baluchistan itself, and the most recent contentious issue of the development of the strategic Gwadar port by the Chinese (seen to supplant the interest of Pakistan at the cost of further encroaching into Baluch territory) are seen as symptomatic of Pakistani disdain for Baluch sensibilities to deliberately ensure that it remains the poorest and the most deprived province.

What compounded the grievances was the parallel and enhanced visibility of Pakistani military boots on ground in the form of new bases and the standard practice of inexplicable ‘sudden disappreances’ of any protesting Baluch people, who either remained undiscovered or were to be found in remote mass graves across the desolate, harsh lands. With little or no support for the Baluch inequity and insensitivity, either within Pakistan or internationally – the human rights violations went on unabated and unreported. It took the death of the charismatic Nawab Akbar Shahbaz Khan Bugti in 2006, the Tumandar  (Titular head) of the Bugti tribe in Kohlu, in a deliberate military operation to flare up Baluchi sentiments beyond levels of irreconcilability, well beyond tribal fiefdoms and amongst the educated Baluch middle class in urban Karachi and Quetta (the provincial capital).

Bugti was a revered figure and a former minister and governor of Baluchistan – his death led to the armed revival of the private militias of the restive Bugtis, Mengals and Marris to activate themselves within their own geographical turf to seek either complete independence by armed insurgency or greater autonomy. This has paved the way for the third active front for the Pakistani military besides its traditional deployment against India on the LOC and its aggressive commitment in the Khyber Pakthunkhwa area of Pakistan Army’s operation Zarb-e-Azb, in the Taliban infested areas of multiple denominations and hues.

Today, Baluchistan is a homegrown insurgency that bleeds Pakistan internally and threatens to disrupt its economic and infrastructural progress, affect international relations (e.g. when the Chinese workers were abducted and killed at the Gwadar site) and stretch its political and military commitments beyond sustainability – this when it itself seeks to champion human rights issues in Kashmir.  

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Convenient political allusions to the “India-hand” in Baluchistan have drawn a blank so far. Way back in 2006, Senator Mushahid Hussain Sayed (as the Pakistan Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman) had made fantastic claims of RAW agents in the Indian consulates in Afghanistan training up to 600 ferraris (Baluch dissidents) in the use of handling explosives, firearms and insurgency training – however, beyond rote accusations no hard proof was ever presented at any international forum to substantiate the official line.

Geographical distance and localised nature of conflict mandates no logicality, feasibility or strategic value of Indian support. The Baluch uprising feeds on its own historic dynamic of alienation and continuing disillusionment amongst the Baluch -the families and scions of the tribal Sardars either direct the insurgency from Western capitals or the barren hinterlands. Either way, making common ground with any regional power is physically, strategically and intrinsically counter-productive.

Going forward, the silent usurping of all powers by the Pakistani military vis-à-vis the political classes will perpetuate the Baluch divide and increasingly, the ominous specter of Balkanization of Pakistan looms large. Flirting and patronising ‘Strategic Assets’ in the form of trans-border insurgent groups is now reverse-haunting the Pakistan establishment. The middle class and intelligentsia are slowly tiring of the Kashmir bogey and its implications for the common Pakistanis -literally the political chickens are coming home to roost across the Pakistani landscape.

Baluchistan is a home grown creation borne of the internal contradictions of the genealogical concept of Pakistan – a nation based on commonality of religion. It is a self-goal that can potentially combust Pakistan internally, it has had no international backers or even sympathizers for the gross human right violations. It is gradually slipping into Pakistan’s own version of the envisaged picture of Kashmir vis-à-vis India.

The writer is Lt Gen PVSM, AVSM (Retd), Former Lt Governor of Andaman & Nicobar Islands & Puducherry.

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PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION

TELEGRAPH DEC 21, 2015Hedgehogs and foxes- Why the BJP won't change

Mukul Kesavan

Wildtiere vor Landschaftshintergrund by Johann Friedrich Grooth

As we approach the second commemoration of Good Governance Day, there's a nice irony to the fact that this proudly 'Hindu' regime set out so resolutely last year to secularize Christmas.

That a Bharatiya Janata Party-led government should publicly try to colonize Christmas wasn't surprising; what caught some commentators out was the speed with which the BJP and its affiliates began to ride their ideological hobby-horses. Within six months of coming to power, Narendra Modi's ministers, his members of parliament and the foot soldiers of thesangh parivar had begun performing adaptations of their greatest hits with the practised skill of a touring repertory company.

There were the clever ghar wapsi skits that offered a solution to the pressing problem of India becoming a Hindu-minority nation. Mohan Bhagwat gave us an insight into inclusiveness, Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh-style, when he declared that Christians and Muslims were apna maal, literally 'our material'. The venerable sanghi idea that Hindus are India's natural citizens while the others need to be naturalized, was memorably summarized by Sadhvi Niranjan Jyoti in her pithy distinction between Ramzadas andhar****das. Even the RSS's ancient hostility to Mahatma Gandhi was reheated and served up by Sakshi Maharaj when he suggested that Nathuram Godse belonged in India's nationalist pantheon. In the skirmishes in Trilokpuri, BJP leaders dabbled in 'controlled polarization'. And then, towards the end of the year came Good Governance Day, the notional nativity of Jesus Christ rebranded as the actual birthday celebrations of Atal Bihari Vajpayee and Madan Mohan Malaviya. In this, if nothing else, the new regime rejected myth for history.

Symbolic though it was, Good Governance Day was a turning point in the career of Modi's government. It marked the moment when it became clear that the prime minister and his party were going to run the government from the further reaches of the majoritarian Right. Or to put it another way, it was the point when it became hard for Modi's 'centrist', 'reformist', even 'liberal' supporters to plausibly argue that the Hindu strongman of Gujarat had mutated into an inclusive prime minister.

It was the gratuitousness of the provocation that made it clear that the BJP couldn't help itself. Putting minorities in their place wasn't an optional extra for the BJP; it was its reason for being. A rational government of the centre-Right, one committed to getting its legislative agenda on the economy passed as smoothly as possible, given its weakness in the Upper House, might have deferred its culture war provocations till the heavy lifting of real governance was done. A government which really believed that it had been elected by a newly 'aspirational' India might have focused on meeting its - presumably material - aspirations. The trouble was that this vision

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of the BJP as the Indian equivalent of Germany's Christian Democrats and Modi as our answer to Angela Merkel was a fiction that lived only in the minds of op-ed commentators.

The BJP won an absolute majority in Parliament last year because a third of India's electorate endorsed Modi and everything that he stood for. It wasn't as if the independent swing voter held her nose delicately and decided I'll vote for his economic dynamism despite the pogrom of 2002. Much more likely she saw his summary way with Muslims as a sign of the same decisiveness that made Vibrant Gujarat possible. Modi's great triumph in 2014 was that he was elected on his own terms without conceding an inch of ground to his critics. He understood this mandate rather better than his anglophone enablers did.

This is why, despite the fiasco of Good Governance Day, the BJP continued on its majoritarian way. It is the reason why the lynching at Dadri saw BJP ministers and chief ministers and members of parliament say vile and stupid things about a tragedy that occurred on another party's watch for which the BJP would, in the normal course, have borne no responsibility. And yet responsible members of the party and the government courted infamy. They couldn't help themselves; it's who they were. It was also what they thought their voters wanted. It's why the prime minister remained silent.

Isaiah Berlin made a famous distinction between writers. Some writers were possessed by a single idea; they were hedgehogs. Others knew many things and refused to reduce the world to a single idea. These were foxes. The same distinction is useful for classifying political parties. The BJP knows one thing: India is a Hindu rashtra in the making and its entire being is committed to the realization of that ideal. The Congress (before it became a debased dynastic rump) was a fox; it believed that India was various and flirted with a range of ideas to encompass that plurality.

One reason why journalists and writers are reluctant to abandon the idea that Modi's general election victory was down to 'aspiration' rather than his charisma as a Hindu strongman is that letting go of aspiration seems to imply that a plurality of India's voters voted for a majoritarian agenda. But the two aren't irreconcilable; it's possible to want a better life for yourself without worrying too much about the fate of Muslims or Christians. The BJP understands this; there's a reason why there were no Muslim MPs in the BJP's absolute majority.

We use euphemisms and half-truths to understand electoral victories because it seems monstrous to imply that a large section of an electorate might vote out of prejudice. But it shouldn't be hard to grasp that in times of serious turbulence, discontent with the ruling dispensation is more easily alloyed with prejudice. We see this happening in the Republican primaries in the United States of America where Donald Trump has refashioned himself into a lightning rod for bigotry.

We see it happening in France where the National Front lost the recent regional elections only because parties of the Left supported parties of the centre-Right to keep out the extreme Right. If Marine Le Pen were to win the next French presidential election, France will have its Modi moment. The margin will define the mainstream and commentators will explain to us at some considerable length why this represented disillusion with elites who couldn't control borders,

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couldn't manage the economy and who bent over backwards to appease aliens who weren't socialized into being French. The fact that Le Pen's stock in trade used to be racism and bigotry will recede, discreetly, into the background.

The BJP, with Modi or without, is a hedgehog. The goal of a Hindu rashtra is its reason for being, the master-idea that sustains it. The BJP's cadres, its rank and file, agitated for Modi's elevation as the party's prime minister designate in 2013 not because they were interested in his economic blueprints but because they believed he was the One who embodied the majoritarian ideal in a way that might galvanize the electorate. They were right. In what world would a majoritarian party, led by a polarizing leader, back away from its core beliefs after they were endorsed by the electorate in a general election?

In May 2014, the BJP led by Narendra Modi thought, with some justification, that its time had come. The absolute majority that this hedgehog had worked tirelessly for had arrived. No longer was it constrained by unruly coalitions; it could be itself. Being itself meant ghar wapsi and har****das and Godse and Good Governance Day and Amit Shah, the grotesque equivocations over Dadri and Modi's sly insinuations about the Hindu poor losing their reservations to members of 'another community'.

A year ago, Good Governance Day announced that majoritarianism in action was the BJP's Plan A. This was the BJP in all-conquering mode, before the rout in Delhi. After that defeat people wondered if the BJP would recalibrate and what that Plan B might look like. On the road to Bihar that happened to run through Dadri, it turned out that there was no Plan B. Bihar was treated to variations on cow-slaughter and Muslim-lovers and the BJP's unwavering commitment to its People.

The BJP was routed again but the party knows that there's a constituency for its big idea. In good times and in bad, Hindu rashtra is the only idea it will ever broadcast. Narendra Modi will sideline majoritarianism at the same time as Marine Le Pen deletes racism from the ideological repertoire of the National Front... namely never. Hedgehogs don't retire their defining ideas. They live by them.

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PURCHASING

BUSINESS STANDARD, DEC 16, 2015From Jan 1, PAN mandatory for transactions above Rs 2 lakh

Quoting PAN for cash transactions over threshold may be mandatory: Jaitley Govt won't reveal disclosures under black money window Direct tax mop-up shortfall to be 40,000 cr in FY16: Adhia Won't let bad elements in tax dept ruin investment climate, says Adhia Out-of-court deal with Vodafone, Cairn a possibility: Adhia

In a bid to curtail domestic black money flow, the finance ministry on Tuesday

announced mandatory furnishing of permanent account number (PAN) for all transactions above

Rs 2 lakh through all payment modes with effect from January 1, 2016. This is a relaxation from

an proposal to make PAN mandatory for sale and purchase of items above Rs 1 lakh.

"We have received a lot of representations. We will give breathing time to taxpayers," said

revenue secretary Hasmukh Adhia.

Accepting the recommendations of the special investigation team on black money, finance

minister Arun Jaitley had in the 2015-16 Budget proposed to make PAN details mandatory for

all sale and purchase of Rs 1 lakh and above. However, it met with resistance from trade and

industry associations that argued the lower limit would affect business.

"The government has received numerous representations from various quarters regarding the

burden of compliance this proposal will entail. Considering the representations, PAN will be

required for transactions of an amount exceeding Rs 2 lakh regardless of the mode of payment,"

Central Board of Direct Taxes (CBDT) said in a statement on Tuesday.

Besides, the ministry rationalised monetary limits for certain transactions requiring mandatory

quoting of PAN. The monetary limits for sale or purchase of immovable property has been raised

from Rs 5 lakh to Rs 10 lakh, and that for hotel / restaurant bills raised from Rs 25,000 to Rs

50,000. Sale or purchase of shares of an unlisted company has been raised from Rs 50,000 to Rs

1 lakh.

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In line with the government's thrust on financial inclusion, opening of a no-frills bank account such as Jan Dhan will not require PAN. The requirement of PAN applies to opening of all bank accounts including in co-operative banks .

Installation of cellphone and telephone connections will not require quotation of PAN anymore.

In a Facebook post in October, finance minister Arun Jaitley had said that a bulk of black money was still within India, and there was a need to change the national attitude so that plastic currency becomes the norm and cash an exception. "The government is working with various authorities to incentivise this change," he had said.

The government had provided a three-month compliance window that ended on September 30 to target black money stashed abroad; it saw declarations worth only Rs 4,147 crore.

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TRANSPORT

INDIAN EXPRESS, DEC 16, 2015An odd policyThe odd-even car proposal is being enforced in Delhi without any evidence or cost-benefit analysisWritten by Dinesh Mohan 

Mahatma Gandhi had said, “Action in the absence of knowledge can be dangerous and worse

than no action at all”. This sage advice is ignored by most Indians. In the face of a serious

pollution problem prevalent in most Indian cities, especially the smaller towns, we pretend that it

is only the people in Delhi who are suffering. And then, without a serious debate about the

evidence available before us, or indeed, without any cost-benefit analysis, we want to implement

drastic solutions.

We are now preparing for the eventuality that on any given day, only odd- or even-numbered

cars will operate in Delhi. Before such a policy is implemented, it would be logical to ask the

following questions:

Do we know how many cars and motorcycles registered in Delhi are on the roads every day? Has

any city succeeded with such a policy? Are we sure how much each pollutant will be reduced if

this policy is implemented? What is the proportion of vehicles that will have to be exempted by

this law? Do we have the technology and the policing capability to enforce this law?

Unfortunately, the Delhi government and most of the NGOs pushing for this policy do not have a

clue about the actual numbers. The first auto fuel policy committee, led by R.A. Mashelkar,

published a report in 2002, which showed that the actual number of motorcycles and cars active

on Delhi roads was about 65 per cent of the registered numbers. From the political establishment

to the media to the researchers, everyone ignored this aspect of the report. In 2013 and 2014,

researchers from IIT-Delhi conducted similar surveys in Delhi, Rajkot and Visakhapatnam and

discovered that the actual number of vehicles operating in these cities was about 50 to 55 per

cent of the registered vehicles. These results have been published in special reports, international

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journals and newspapers. The Central and state governments were also informed, but no action

was taken. It appears that because of the one-time registration system, no vehicle ever leaves the

registration records.

The studies also indicated that the car and motorcycle fleet in Delhi was one of the youngest, had

one of the highest fuel efficiency values, and was driven for a shorter distance annually

compared to those in European cities. The most recent census data indicates that, in Delhi, only

13 per cent of the work trips use cars as compared to Singapore where the share of cars is more

than 30 per cent — and that is in spite of the excellent public transport facilities and hard

restrictions on car ownership in Singapore.

It is no one’s case that car-use should not be minimised in Delhi. But in order to do so, we must

first know the facts as well as the international policy experience to better evaluate our options.

An impression has been created that many cities have been successful with such policies. The

fact is that not a single city in the world has succeeded in enforcing the odd-even policy over any

length of time. Beijing is the most often discussed example. But even in China, this policy was

successfully implemented only around the Olympic Games. Only a few cities in the developing

world have experimented with this idea — and all have failed. The results of the policy were

unintended. For instance, it led to increased sales of motorcycles and cheaper, used cars by

people wanting to own both odd and even numbered vehicles. This resulted in more accidents

and increased pollution. It also led to a greater use of false number plates. Moreover, everyone

demanded exemptions, including the elderly, the disabled and even those claiming to have an

important occupation, like doctors.

We do not even have a reliable estimate about the expected reduction in the small particulate

matter (PM2.5) as a result of this policy. As of now, there are only two scientific studies that

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give us somewhat reliable estimates for the proportion of PM2.5 emitted by the transport

vehicles in Delhi.

S. Guttikunda’s modelling studies estimate this to be less than 20 per cent of the total. Pallavi

Pant and her associates conducted a study around the heavily travelled Mathura Road and

estimated the contribution of the road traffic exhaust to be 18.7 per cent and 16.2 per cent in the

summer and winter seasons respectively.

A thought exercise can be conducted by taking an exaggerated version of these estimates at 30

per cent. In most cities where studies have been done, freight and delivery vehicles contribute at

least 30 per cent. These will have to be exempted and so will all the taxis, emergency vehicles

and other municipal services. This would mean that less than half of the vehicles polluting the

city would be affected (15 per cent of pollution) by such an odd-even policy. Of these, half of the

vehicles will be allowed on the road and, therefore, the most optimistic estimate of PM2.5

reduction will be around 7 per cent. We also know that when vehicle-use is restricted, other

vehicles travel more every day. This leaves us with an estimated pollution reduction of less than

5 per cent.

However, we do have an enormous public health problem at hand and people want something to

be done. The global evidence suggests that the best policy is restricting car-use. This can be

achieved by enforcing stricter parking restrictions at all locations, including offices, and by

making people pay for the parking. This should be accompanied by lifting the restrictions on the

auto-rickshaws and taxis plying in the NCR region.

In addition, all taxes affecting taxi and auto-rickshaw operations should be replaced by an

engine-size-based annual pollution tax imposed on all private vehicles and used, in turn, to fund

public transport. The above measures will lead to a greater public demand for the provisioning of

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safer and more convenient public transport facilities. In turn, it would also incentivise walking

and bicycling in the city, and cleaner air.

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URBAN DEVELOPMENT

STATESMAN, DEC 22, 2015Chaotic Capital-IShantanu Basu

India’s National Capital Region must rank somewhere at the bottom of the global list of least livable cities. Its sewage system doesn’t work; nor has any effort been made to cut down the 400 per cent wasted water. Its pavements are broken or slovenly laid; the edges of the sidewalks are invariably broken and huge holes dot nearly all major arterial roads. Delhi’s 80,000 municipal sanitation workers are erratically paid and when they are paid, there is precious little supervision over them.

Builders cock a snook at the law as they stack construction materials on roadsides while the road itself is the mixing ground for mortar and passage of heavily overladen lorries on throughfares that were constructed for smaller vehicles. Government and private utility contractors dig up roads even as they are freshly macadamized and leave debris without any repair. There is no concept of underground cables and electricity drains. Developers, including CPSUs, seldom cover trucks of sand, etc. that they carry to building sites or rubble that they carry away.

Never are trees on public land trimmed for greater foliage at a lower height, nor is wild growth along sidewalks, ever removed. Except for the fruit trees planted by the British in Lutyens’ zone and Chankyapuri, Delhi has mostly wild and deformed neem and banyan trees with sparse foliage. They have rendered streets dangerous for pedestrians. Delhi’s new LED street lights have been overshadowed. Drinking water is hardly potable; treated water is mixed with unfiltered bore well water (with a generous dollop of chlorine thrown into tanks and mobile tankers) and supplied to households whose underground reservoirs become breeding grounds for sand and worms. In most parts of the city, sewage and potable water lines run parallel within a few inches of each other. Sewage pipes are of 1950s and 1960s vintage and cannot take the pressure of 4-5 apartments on a land plot where there were two previously. Garbage disposal is limited to large municipal vats that are cleaned once a day while garbage lies in the open for the better part of the day.

Delhi’s fresh food markets and huge choice of eateries have virtually no sewage evacuation system even as many generate animal waste as well. Unauthorized businesses operate out of residential premises where waste from basement kitchens, washrooms and pantries seep into potable water lines.

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No wonder roads are caving in. Disposal of hazardous substances, notably from medical institutions, is another grey area.  Industrial waste is often burnt or simply dumped alongside severely fractured roads.

The less that is said of Delhi’s unruly traffic the better. The lane in South Delhi, where I live, ‘boasts’ of about 65 cars/SUVs spread over about 35 households, about half of whom are superannuated people with just one car. Most houses have no parking within the premises. The net result is that the owners of these vehicles jostle for parking space in the evening in a lane that can accommodate no more than 30 cars on both sides. How would municipal sanitation workers even clean such areas?

Government offices in Delhi are among the major polluters. With steady, but mostly unproductive, accretion in the numbers of secretarial babus, government buildings are the next largest slums and generators of waste. In North Block on Raisina Hill, a single room has been re-numbered as 1A-F to accommodate up to 15-25 additional personnel. Udyog, Krishi, Rail, Shastri, Nirman and many other bhavans fare no better. Even after the PMO issued a circular to clean these premises in 2014, old records and junked staff vehicles were hurriedly shifted beyond public view.

Delhi boasts India’s largest fleet of vehicles. It also has the largest network of roads. With a land area of about 1500 sq. km, the city has 86 lakh motor vehicles, i.e. 5733 vehicles per sq. km. Of these, more than half are two and three-wheeled ones.

To support these, there are numerous service stations, new and used vehicle and accessory dealerships, roadside repair garages, roadside eateries that provide food to workers, tobacco outlets, etc. Public transport is limited to the Delhi Metro running along major arteries with CNG-powered feeder buses in short supply.

The worst sufferer of waste disposal is the Yamuna River. On a recent visit to this river in a boat to immerse my father’s ashes, I was forced to hold a kerchief to my nose. I had never seen such a dense shade of black. There were human bones littered along the burning Nigambodh ghat, dhobis washed their clothes and people dived into that water for gold shavings and jewellery from the cremated bodies. The crematorium at Lodhi Road is far worse and its haze spreads over Lutyens’ Delhi too.

India’s national capital is absolutely unfit to bear its sobriquet, indeed even unworthy of human habitation beyond its airport and Raisina Hill. Delhi is India’s most deserving case for rehabilitation, even if the crackdown has to be initiated at gunpoint by the courts and

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governments. Success here could be replicated in other urban areas. While the state government certainly has a major role to play in cleaning up Delhi, the Government of India’s long-term role in sustaining it cannot remain understated. Delhi needs short-term control measures to dovetail into long-term objectives. Scoring brownie points over each other in a sordid political game has already discredited both partners. Now that India has had modest success in the Paris talks, it must stand up and show it means clean-up business. And such clean-up operations must necessarily start from its National Capital.(To be concluded)

STATESMAN, DEC 23, 2015Chaotic Capital-IIShantanu Basu

Government-owned or hired staff  cars account for an inordinately large number of four-wheeled vehicles in Delhi. For a start, all government-owned diesel vehicles should be condemned or converted to CNG by 31 March 2016. An executive order banning the hiring of private passenger vehicles petrol, diesel or CNG  as hired taxis for use by governments and their agencies must immediately be issued by MoEF. Government orders that provide free transport to certain categories of officers (who often end up with 2-3 vehicles each, including hired cars extracted from PSUs) must be withdrawn and at least two senior officers ought to be pooled in a single car. Orders of the Delhi government that allow private use of official vehicles for a laughable monthly payment must be similarly rescinded.

The recommendations of the 7th Central Pay Commission, as and when accepted, could do away with the transport allowance for babus (except the physically challenged) and devote this saving to fund chartered buses.

The system of point-to-point air-conditioned chartered buses ought to be reintroduced. If an example were to be set, Ministers and legislators ought to be similarly pooled, at least for their journeys between home and office. Even for these pooled vehicles, a monthly mileage limit must be laid down, viz. not more than 2000 km/month, all trips inclusive. Likewise, corporates and other institutions could be prevailed upon, by law, to introduce similar arrangements.

The area from India Gate to Rashtrapati Bhavan, from Akbar Road to Parliament Library and the inner circle of Connaught Place could be converted into a no-motor vehicle zone on a pilot basis. Instead, battery-operated extended chassis golf carts (not rickety and unstable e-rickshaws), operated on a commercial basis, could take over for a start. Battery-operated shuttle minibuses between railway/DMRC stations and major commercial/office centres on commercial tariff basis should be contemplated. Since battery-powered vehicles would require quick charging points at

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regular intervals, BSES/NDMC overhead power lines to create such points for battery-operated vehicles on lamp posts could be operated as attender-free vending machines. Simultaneously, governments must reduce duties, taxes and imposts on hybrid and battery operated vehicles by 50-60 per cent and provide a suitable tax rebate for users for their O&M expenses.

Off-grid home solar-energy solutions in Delhi need to be subsidized by at least 50 per cent in the first decade to reduce the city’s dependence on fossil fuel-based energy plants in its vicinity. For institutional users, interest subsidy of 7-9 per cent on commercial borrowing may be contemplated, in addition to a  “green rebate”  on corporate tax. MCD’s garbage collection vats could be equipped with  incinerators with pollution-scrubbing equipment and tall smokestacks. Battery-operated school buses could be similarly subsidized. Street and traffic lights could be run on solar energy with BSES power as back-up. School, university and government buildings could be solar-powered since they often have adequate rooftops. Delhi’s international airport, that has a vast unutilized area, could be earmarked for  solar farms to power the airport’s large energy requirement. Similarly, parking lots at Delhi’s railway stations could be partly covered with solar power for the stations and also attract a larger parking premium on this count. Outsourcing all these activities would also create huge O&M employment.

Parking charges in all NDMC and MCD lots should be raised to Rs.75 for 4-wheelers for the first hour and Rs.50 for every subsequent hour, subject to a maximum of Rs.425 per day, Rs. 200 for 2-wheelers. Alternately, why not have a monthly parking pass; say for Rs.7500/4000 per month, valid in all lots across Delhi with a windshield-mounted machine-readable sticker? There is also a strong case for imposing a London-like CBD charge of say Rs.3000/car/month via automated toll collection gates in the radial roads converging on all major commercial/office areas. Likewise, an entry charge on light private and commercial passenger vehicles visiting Delhi, say for a monthly sticker charge of Rs.5000/car/month or Rs.500/day ought to be contemplated and tourist buses charged Rs.3000-5000 for every entry.

Enforcement of existing laws and regulations is a given. The Delhi government ought to speed up the ongoing process of connecting all PUC centres to a central server and further to CCTV cameras installed on traffic light posts to check, on real time basis, the validity of PUC certificates issued and current emissions. Builders must be frequently inspected for violating norms with fines ranging from Rs.100-250/sq. ft. of total sanctioned covered area, on each occasion. The industrial clusters in Delhi need to be closely inspected for environmental violations and fines provided under EPA Rules enhanced manifold. MoEF must realize that it is only a facilitator;  environmental preservation is primarily a State subject, although it’s new opulent premises in New Delhi’s Jor Bagh conveys an impression to the contrary. All open trucks carrying building materials, rubble, garbage, etc. must be covered with tarpaulin with

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exemplary fines for violation, say Rs.5000 on each occasion. All residential buildings with more than two living floors and office/business buildings could be mandated to provide for integrated incinerators when the building plan is submitted for sanction.  If tanneries could be relocated in Kolkata, why not in Delhi too? Likewise, the current system of one-time registration of private vehicles needs to be stopped and limited to five years, renewable for another 5+5 years. At every stage, revised one-time parking and pollution-compliance fees must be imposed on all owners and this must relate  to the purchase value, engine-size and mass of the vehicle. These revenues could finance underground parking below large community parks, shopping complexes and existing over-ground lots. This however, implies a much larger force of enforcement personnel, not babus ensconced in plush offices in Jor Bagh.

Going a step further, why can Parliament not enact legislation to stagger working hours in various categories of establishments all over India? Why not have government offices run from Wednesday to Sunday, schools  from Monday to Friday and private establishments from Tuesday to Saturday? For that matter, why not have two sets of working hours for private establishments employing lesser or more than 100 employees, one from 9 am to 5 pm, the other from 11 am to 7 pm. Post-7th Central Pay Commission, the municipal bodies and their contractors would be under tremendous pressure for increasing wages. Obviously, this implies a proportionate rise in productivity of such personnel so that their actual numbers come down. Municipal sanitation workers should be equipped with commercially available shoulder-mounted power blowers to speed up cleaning of streets and sidewalks.  Simultaneously, Delhi PWD and MCD must not only re-pave all broken roads but also provide RCC between the main road and unpaved area up to the outer walls of buildings located on either side of the road.  The open drains like those in Defence Colony, East Delhi and Najafgarh, and all storm water drains ought to be covered with steel grilles so that animal and plant waste and plastic do not enter and choke them. Drastic short-term measures like ‘odd-even’ will, in our patronage-based polity, only result in huge corruption and irresistible demands for  exemptions. The economic and social fallout of such knee-jerk actions can be considerable. The poor quality of human health in Delhi has a large negative footprint on the city-state’s economy and public health and allied systems. There are enough laws to clean our environment for which little legislation is required in the short term. Missing is the  vision, accountability and enforcement. Policy response for new long-term policy must therefore be carefully debated, calibrated and delivered, irrespective of vote-bank politics.

The utter disdain for the observance of the law  must be corrected by raising a dedicated enforcement machinery with policing powers. The  Chief Justice of India’s public support to the cause of tackling environmental pollution deserves the nation’s fullest support. The situation demands nothing short of Draconian solutions.(Concluded)

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WOMEN

BUSINESS STANDARD, 16 DEC, 2015Number of women billionaires rises seven-fold in 20 years: UBS-PwC reportAsia has seen the strongest growth of female billionaires in the past 10 yearsPuneet Wadhwa 

India fastest growth market for PwC, EY in FY15YES Bank dips on UBS downgradeBillionaires, too, overspend on their credit cardsAre we on the cusp of a new world order?Markets remain lacklustre on Asia sell-off, Paris attacks

The number of women billionaires has grown at a faster clip than men billionaires, multiplying

by 6.6 times over the last two decades compared to 5.2 times for men, with Asian female

entrepreneurs standing out as the main driver of this development, says a latest report by UBS

Group AG and PwC, “The changing faces of billionaires”.

“Our research shows the number of female billionaires has grown by a factor of 6.6, from 22 in

1995 to 145 in 2014. By comparison, the number of male billionaires remains far larger at 1,202,

but has grown by a relatively smaller factor of 5.2,” the UBS-PwC report says.

The survey of over 1,300 billionaires analysed data from the last 19 years across the 14 largest

billionaire markets, accounting for 75 per cent of global billionaire wealth. While the global

GDP has almost tripled from $30 trillion to over $77 trillion over the last two decades, the wealth

of billionaires in the study has increased almost eight-fold, from $0.7 trillion in 1995 to $5.4

trillion in 2014.

According to the report, Asia has seen the strongest growth of women billionaires in the past 10

years with their numbers growing by a factor of 8.3 from only 3 to 25 today. This compares to a

growth factor of 2.7 (from 21 to 57) in Europe and 1.7 or 37 to 63 in the US.

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Women billionaires in Asia make up almost one-fifth of the

global women billionaire population and generally are younger

than their global counterparts, the findings suggest. Nearly half

(52 per cent) of Asia’s women billionaires are first-generation

entrepreneurs. On the other hand, within Europe and the US,

women billionaires have mostly inherited their wealth (93 per

cent have done so in Europe, versus 81 per cent in the US).

Notably, almost a fifth (19 per cent) of US women billionaires are

self-made, compared with seven per cent in Europe.

"The rise of female and Asian billionaires over the last two

decades is creating an entirely new billionaire demographic, and I

see no signs of slowing. While there is no such thing as a typical

billionaire, virtually all are focused on building a lasting legacy

for future generations. Achieving this goal increasingly requires

strategic thought and long-term planning," said Josef Stadler,

Head Global Ultra High Net Worth, UBS.

High dropout rate

The dropout rate from this billionaire list in the past 20 years has

also been high. The report counted 289 billionaires in 1995, of

which only 126 remain today. The rest, according to the report,

dropped out due to death, family dilution or business failure. Over the same period, 1,221 new

billionaires were created bringing the total number to 1,347 billionaires in 2014.

However, those who prevailed greatly increased their wealth with consumer and retail,

technology and financial services being the dominant industries, making up for two-thirds of the

total wealth of the lasting billionaires today.

The technology sector in particular, the report says, is home to the most enduring billionaires

while industrials, real estate and health industries are sectors where billionaire wealth is more

fleeting.

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"The 126 prevailing billionaires have created $1 trillion of wealth, approximately 21% of that

produced by our entire global billionaire population over the period. By 2014, the average wealth

of the remaining billionaires had grown their average wealth to $11 billion from $2.9 billion in

1995, multiplying their assets by a factor of 3.8 and outperforming global GDP growth of just

2.5," says the UBS - PwC report.

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