Polygamy no longer progressive
The Ministry of Law and Justice submits in the Supreme Court that the practice of triple talaq and polygamy are needed to be adjudicated upon afresh by the apex court.
Polygamy may have been “progressive and path-breaking” centuries ago, but not now when women and notions of gender justice have evolved, the Centre told the Supreme Court recently.
If Muslim countries, where Islam is the State religion, have disregarded polygamy and triple talaq, why should India, a secular country, continue to deny Muslim women their rights under the Constitution, the Centre asked.
It said that there was no legal bar against abolishing polygamy and triple talaq, given the “march of time and the need for social reform”.
“It may be true that only some women are directly affected by a polygamous marriage, but the fact remains that every woman to whom the law applies lives under the fear, threat or prospect of being subject to these practices, which impacts her confidence and dignity,” the Centre said in an affidavit.
‘Undesirable cannot be essential’
The government listed names of “theocratic States”, which Pakistan at the top, followed by Bangladesh, Afghanistan and Iran, who have “regulated” their divorce law and polygamy in order to show that these are not “essential religious practices” that are beyond reform.
The government was responding to a nearly 70-page affidavit filed by the All India Muslim Personal Law Board (AIMPLB) in the Supreme Court. The Muslim body had strongly batted in support of the unilateral right of Muslim men to pronounce oral divorce through triple talaq, saying that as men, they were better at controlling their emotions, unlike women. The Board has also said that polygamy prevents illicit sex and protects women.
The government pointed to how the AIMPLB had also referred to triple talaq and polygamy in the Supreme Court as “undesirable”. The Board had told the SC that though practices like triple talaq and polygamy were “undesirable”, their hands were tied because the Sharia permitted these practices.
“No undesirable practice can be elevated to the status of an essential religious practice,” the Centre countered the Board.
Concern for women
It said “any practice that leaves women socially, financially or emotionally vulnerable or subject to the whims and caprice of menfolk is incompatible with the letter and spirit of Articles 14 and 15 of the Constitution”.
The government said Muslim women, merely by virtue of their religious identity and the religion they profess, cannot be relegated to a status more vulnerable than women of other religious faiths.
The Centre sought the Supreme Court to answer “whether in a secular democracy, religion can be a reason to deny the equal status and dignity available to women under the Constitution of India”.
“Behind the preservation of personal was the preservation of plurality and diversity among the people of India. The question arises as to whether the preservation of such diverse identities can be a pretext for denying to women the status and gender equality they are entitled to as citizens,” the Centre said.
Hindu son can divorce wife if she tries to separate him from aged parents
A Hindu son can divorce his wife for the cruelty of trying to pry him away from his “pious obligation” to live with his aged parents and provide shelter to them, the Supreme Court has held.
A woman becomes a part of the husband’s family and cannot seek to separate him from his parents for the sole reason that she wants to entirely enjoy his income, a Bench of Justices Anil R. Dave and L. Nageshwara Rao observed in a judgment.
Insisting her husband to live separately from his parents is a western thought alien to our culture and ethos, Justice Dave, who wrote the judgment, said.
“It is not a common practice or desirable culture for a Hindu son in India to get separated from his parents on getting married at the instance of the wife, especially when the son is the only earning member in the family. A son, brought up and given education by his parents, has a moral and legal obligation to take care and maintain the parents, when they become old and when they have either no income or have a meagre income,” Justice Dave wrote.
In India, generally people do not subscribe to the western thought, where, upon getting married or attaining majority, the son gets separated from the family, the court said. In normal circumstances, a wife is expected to be with the family of the husband after the marriage.
“She becomes integral to and forms part of the family of the husband and normally without any justifiable strong reason, she would never insist that her husband should get separated from the family and live only with her,” Justice Dave observed.
The court was confirming the divorce of a Karnataka-based couple in a recent judgment. Married in 1992, the lower court granted the husband divorce after he alleged cruelty on his wife’s part. He quoted instances of her constant suspicions about him having illegal affairs with a maid. It was later found that no such maid as described by the wife ever worked in the couple’s home
In another instance, the apex court found that the wife had attempted to commit suicide but was rescued in the nick of time. She wanted to separate the man from his parents who were dependent on his income.
However, the High Court had set aside the decree of divorce, saying the wife had a “legitimate expectation” to see her husband’s income used for her and not his family members.
Shuddering at the thought of the legal tangles in which the “poor husband” would have found himself caught in had she succeeded in committing suicide, the Supreme Court concluded: “The mere idea with regard to facing legal consequences would put a husband under tremendous stress.”
Indo-Pak. border will be sealed by 2018
Amid rising tensions between India and Pakistan following the surgical strikes across the Line of Control, Union Home Minister Rajnath Singh recently said the entire stretch of 3,323-km-long border between the two countries would be “completely sealed” by December 2018, for which a time-bound action plan would be formulated.
Remittances to India to decline by five per cent in 2016: World Bank
India, the world’s largest remittance recipient in 2015, may receive a remittance of USD 65.5 billion this year, a drop of 5 per cent, the World Bank has said in a new report.
“In 2016, remittance flows are expected to decline by 5 per cent in India and 3.5 per cent in Bangladesh, whereas they are expected to grow by 5.1 per cent in Pakistan and 1.6 per cent in Sri Lanka,” the World Bank said in a latest report on remittances.
Despite the drop, India is likely to top the list of countries receiving remittance.
The World Bank said in 2016, India is expected to receive a remittance of USD 65.5 billion, followed by China (USD 65.2 billion). Pakistan positioned at number five is estimated to receive USD 20.3 billion in 2016.
The World Bank said remittances to South Asia is expected to decline by 2.3 per cent in 2016, following a 1.6 per cent decline in 2015.
Weak economic growth
This is attributed mainly due to weak economic growth in remittances-source countries and cyclic low oil prices.
India retained its top spot in 2015, attracting about USD 69 billion in remittances, the World Bank had said.
Remittances from the GCC countries continued to decline due to lower oil prices and labour market ‘nationalisation’ policies in Saudi Arabia.
Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) is an alliance of six Middle Eastern countries-Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, the United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Bahrain and Oman.
Nobel Peace Prize awarded to Colombian President
The Nobel Peace Prize for 2016 has been awarded to Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos for his efforts to end his country’s 50-year civil war.
Mr Santos negotiated a peace agreement with the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (Farc) guerrilla group but the peace deal was rejected by a narrow majority of Colombians when it was put to referendum.
“The award should also be seen as a tribute to the Colombian people who, despite great hardships and abuses, have not given up hope of a just peace, and to all the parties who have contributed to the peace process,” said a statement by the Norwegian Nobel Committee.
Adoption of GST poised to boost India’s medium-term growth: IMF
Asserting that India has shown that progress on reforms could “ignite” business investment, the IMF today said the adoption of goods and services tax is poised to boost the country’s medium—term growth.
“India’s strong reform push in 2016 is welcome and should continue apace. Adoption of the goods and services tax is poised to boost India’s medium-term growth,” the IMF said in its latest Asia Pacific regional economic update.
Greater labour market flexibility and product market competition remain essential to create jobs and raise growth.
Priorities also include effective implementation of the new corporate debt restructuring mechanisms, it said.
“As shown by India, progress on reforms could ignite business investment (including already strong FDI inflows), further boosting domestic demand,” the IMF said.
Over the medium term, a number of Asian economies stand to benefit from a demographic dividend, as the working-age population in some economies like India and Indonesia continues to grow, potentially helping sustain strong potential growth.
In its report, the IMF said India’s GDP growth is projected at 7.6 per cent in both 2016/17 fiscal year (ending in March 2017) and 2017/18 fiscal year, up 0.1 percentage point relative to the April 2016 World Economic Outlook, a survey conducted and published by the IMF.
The ongoing growth recovery remains braced by private consumption, it said.
“Monsoon rainfall coming in at normal levels bodes well for agriculture and, along with a decennial rise in government employee salaries, will underpin the ongoing recovery in domestic demand,” the IMF report said.
“Further progress on reforms will boost sentiment, and the incipient recovery of private investment is expected to help broaden the sources of growth amid gradual fiscal consolidation and broadly neutral monetary policy,” it said.
“Medium-term growth has also been revised upward reflecting continued progress on structural reforms (constitutional amendment enabling implementation of the national goods and services tax, adoption of inflation targets, and removal of foreign direct investment (FDI) ceilings),” the report said.
The IMF said India’s growth has continued to benefit from the large improvement in the terms of trade, positive policy actions, including implementation of key structural reforms, gradual reduction of supply-side constraints, and a rebound in confidence.
Consumption growth has remained strong and activity in core industrial sectors has picked up. Government consumption is set to continue to support growth in 2016, it noted.
According to the report, in China, GDP growth is projected to remain relatively strong in the near term, helped by the fiscal stimulus on infrastructure spending. Overall, growth is projected to be 6.6 per cent in 2016 and 6.2 per cent in 2017 (0.1 percentage point higher for 2016 relative to the April 2016 WEO), reflecting fiscal stimulus and credit support.
Both consumption and investment growth have been revised upward, while the contribution of net exports has been revised downward, as import growth is expected to accelerate amid stronger domestic demand.
Medium-term growth has been revised down to 5.8 per cent from 6.2 per cent, reflecting rising vulnerabilities and slower progress on reining in credit growth and on state-owned-enterprise reform, it said.
Payments banks need RBI’s prior product approval
The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) recently said the entities that had been granted a payments bank (PB) licence would need to take specific approval for the products they would be offering to customers.
“At the time of submitting application for licence, the PBs should submit to RBI a list of financial products they intend to offer with a clear description,” the banking regulator said in the operational guidelines.
Banks do not need to take prior RBI approval to launch products but prepaid payment instruments issuers need to take such approval to offer payments products.
All new products proposed to be introduced thereafter should be intimated to RBI for information, it said. “If required, the RBI may place suitable restrictions on the design, functioning, or other features of the product including discontinuing the product,” RBI said.
There will be innovations as well as investment. So it is better to take prior approval rather than rolling it back after offering to customers if the regulator is not convinced about the product,.
RBI also said the annual plans for opening of physical access points by the PBs for the initial five years would need prior approval of the RBI. “The first such plan shall be submitted to RBI before commencement of business,” it said.
Payments banks are not allowed to lend. Their main mandate is to offer remittance services. They can also offer simple financial products like insurance and mutual funds.
The regulator also mandated that an employee of the PB should be available for sufficient duration, at a fixed location known to the customers at the district level, to attend to customer grievances and support agent supervision. This fixed location will be considered while assessing the requirement of opening at least 25 per cent physical access points in rural centres, RBI clarified.
In the operational guidelines on small finance banks, RBI clarified such entities are required to have 25 per cent of their branches in un-banked rural centres within one year from the date of commencement of operations.
Both payments banks and small finance banks have been allowed electronic authentication and confirmation for opening accounts and wet signatures have not been made mandatory.
RBI had granted in-principle licences to 11 payments banks and 10 small finance banks last year. While three out of 11 PBs have dropped out, others will have to start operations within 18 months of receiving in-principle approval. One small finance bank has already started operation, while two others have received the final licence.
Centre plans to set up Board of Internal Trade
The Commerce and Industry Ministry will consider a proposal put forward by traders for setting up a Board of Internal Trade to address all the issues pertaining to domestic trade. The ministry will look into the Confederation of All India Traders’ suggestion for constituting a Board of Internal Trade because in a large and diverse market like India, internal trade has several issues that will need special attention. The government, through such a Board, will benefit from getting alerts about the problems being faced by the domestic industry
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Petrol in India is cheaper than in countries like Hong Kong, Germany and the UK but costlier than in China, Brazil, Japan, the US, Russia, Pakistan and Sri Lanka, a Bank of Baroda Economics Research report showed.
Rising fuel prices in India have led to considerable debate on which government, state or central, should be lowering their taxes to keep prices under control.
The rise in fuel prices is mainly due to the global price of crude oil (raw material for making petrol and diesel) going up. Further, a stronger dollar has added to the cost of crude oil.
Amongst comparable countries (per capita wise), prices in India are higher than those in Vietnam, Kenya, Ukraine, Bangladesh, Nepal, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, and Venezuela. Countries that are major oil producers have much lower prices.
In the report, the Philippines has a comparable petrol price but has a per capita income higher than India by over 50 per cent.
Countries which have a lower per capita income like Kenya, Bangladesh, Nepal, Pakistan, and Venezuela have much lower prices of petrol and hence are impacted less than India.
“Therefore there is still a strong case for the government to consider lowering the taxes on fuel to protect the interest of the people,” the report argued.
India is the world’s third-biggest oil consuming and importing nation. It imports 85 per cent of its oil needs and so prices retail fuel at import parity rates.
With the global surge in energy prices, the cost of producing petrol, diesel and other petroleum products also went up for oil companies in India.
They raised petrol and diesel prices by Rs 10 a litre in just over a fortnight beginning March 22 but hit a pause button soon after as the move faced criticism and the opposition parties asked the government to cut taxes instead.
India imports most of its oil from a group of countries called the ‘OPEC +’ (i.e, Iran, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Venezuela, Kuwait, United Arab Emirates, Russia, etc), which produces 40% of the world’s crude oil.
As they have the power to dictate fuel supply and prices, their decision of limiting the global supply reduces supply in India, thus raising prices
The government charges about 167% tax (excise) on petrol and 129% on diesel as compared to US (20%), UK (62%), Italy and Germany (65%).
The abominable excise duty is 2/3rd of the cost, and the base price, dealer commission and freight form the rest.
Here is an approximate break-up (in Rs):
a)Base Price | 39 |
b)Freight | 0.34 |
c) Price Charged to Dealers = (a+b) | 39.34 |
d) Excise Duty | 40.17 |
e) Dealer Commission | 4.68 |
f) VAT | 25.35 |
g) Retail Selling Price | 109.54 |
Looked closely, much of the cost of petrol and diesel is due to higher tax rate by govt, specifically excise duty.
So the question is why government is not reducing the prices ?
India, being a developing country, it does require gigantic amount of funding for its infrastructure projects as well as welfare schemes.
However, we as a society is yet to be tax-compliant. Many people evade the direct tax and that’s the reason why govt’s hands are tied. Govt. needs the money to fund various programs and at the same time it is not generating enough revenue from direct taxes.
That’s the reason why, govt is bumping up its revenue through higher indirect taxes such as GST or excise duty as in the case of petrol and diesel.
Direct taxes are progressive as it taxes according to an individuals’ income however indirect tax such as excise duty or GST are regressive in the sense that the poorest of the poor and richest of the rich have to pay the same amount.
Does not matter, if you are an auto-driver or owner of a Mercedes, end of the day both pay the same price for petrol/diesel-that’s why it is regressive in nature.
But unlike direct tax where tax evasion is rampant, indirect tax can not be evaded due to their very nature and as long as huge no of Indians keep evading direct taxes, indirect tax such as excise duty will be difficult for the govt to reduce, because it may reduce the revenue and hamper may programs of the govt.
Globally, around 80% of wastewater flows back into the ecosystem without being treated or reused, according to the United Nations.
This can pose a significant environmental and health threat.
In the absence of cost-effective, sustainable, disruptive water management solutions, about 70% of sewage is discharged untreated into India’s water bodies.
A staggering 21% of diseases are caused by contaminated water in India, according to the World Bank, and one in five children die before their fifth birthday because of poor sanitation and hygiene conditions, according to Startup India.
As we confront these public health challenges emerging out of environmental concerns, expanding the scope of public health/environmental engineering science becomes pivotal.
For India to achieve its sustainable development goals of clean water and sanitation and to address the growing demands for water consumption and preservation of both surface water bodies and groundwater resources, it is essential to find and implement innovative ways of treating wastewater.
It is in this context why the specialised cadre of public health engineers, also known as sanitation engineers or environmental engineers, is best suited to provide the growing urban and rural water supply and to manage solid waste and wastewater.
Traditionally, engineering and public health have been understood as different fields.
Currently in India, civil engineering incorporates a course or two on environmental engineering for students to learn about wastewater management as a part of their pre-service and in-service training.
Most often, civil engineers do not have adequate skills to address public health problems. And public health professionals do not have adequate engineering skills.
India aims to supply 55 litres of water per person per day by 2024 under its Jal Jeevan Mission to install functional household tap connections.
The goal of reaching every rural household with functional tap water can be achieved in a sustainable and resilient manner only if the cadre of public health engineers is expanded and strengthened.
In India, public health engineering is executed by the Public Works Department or by health officials.
This differs from international trends. To manage a wastewater treatment plant in Europe, for example, a candidate must specialise in wastewater engineering.
Furthermore, public health engineering should be developed as an interdisciplinary field. Engineers can significantly contribute to public health in defining what is possible, identifying limitations, and shaping workable solutions with a problem-solving approach.
Similarly, public health professionals can contribute to engineering through well-researched understanding of health issues, measured risks and how course correction can be initiated.
Once both meet, a public health engineer can identify a health risk, work on developing concrete solutions such as new health and safety practices or specialised equipment, in order to correct the safety concern..
There is no doubt that the majority of diseases are water-related, transmitted through consumption of contaminated water, vectors breeding in stagnated water, or lack of adequate quantity of good quality water for proper personal hygiene.
Diseases cannot be contained unless we provide good quality and adequate quantity of water. Most of the world’s diseases can be prevented by considering this.
Training our young minds towards creating sustainable water management systems would be the first step.
Currently, institutions like the Indian Institute of Technology, Madras (IIT-M) are considering initiating public health engineering as a separate discipline.
To leverage this opportunity even further, India needs to scale up in the same direction.
Consider this hypothetical situation: Rajalakshmi, from a remote Karnataka village spots a business opportunity.
She knows that flowers, discarded in the thousands by temples can be handcrafted into incense sticks.
She wants to find a market for the product and hopefully, employ some people to help her. Soon enough though, she discovers that starting a business is a herculean task for a person like her.
There is a laborious process of rules and regulations to go through, bribes to pay on the way and no actual means to transport her product to its market.
After making her first batch of agarbathis and taking it to Bengaluru by bus, she decides the venture is not easy and gives up.
On the flipside of this is a young entrepreneur in Bengaluru. Let’s call him Deepak. He wants to start an internet-based business selling sustainably made agarbathis.
He has no trouble getting investors and to mobilise supply chains. His paperwork is over in a matter of days and his business is set up quickly and ready to grow.
Never mind that the business is built on aggregation of small sellers who will not see half the profit .
Is this scenario really all that hypothetical or emblematic of how we think about entrepreneurship in India?
Between our national obsession with unicorns on one side and glorifying the person running a pakora stall for survival as an example of viable entrepreneurship on the other, is the middle ground in entrepreneurship—a space that should have seen millions of thriving small and medium businesses, but remains so sparsely occupied that you could almost miss it.
If we are to achieve meaningful economic growth in our country, we need to incorporate, in our national conversation on entrepreneurship, ways of addressing the missing middle.
Spread out across India’s small towns and cities, this is a class of entrepreneurs that have been hit by a triple wave over the last five years, buffeted first by the inadvertent fallout of demonetization, being unprepared for GST, and then by the endless pain of the covid-19 pandemic.
As we finally appear to be reaching some level of normality, now is the opportune time to identify the kind of industries that make up this layer, the opportunities they should be afforded, and the best ways to scale up their functioning in the shortest time frame.
But, why pay so much attention to these industries when we should be celebrating, as we do, our booming startup space?
It is indeed true that India has the third largest number of unicorns in the world now, adding 42 in 2021 alone. Braving all the disruptions of the pandemic, it was a year in which Indian startups raised $24.1 billion in equity investments, according to a NASSCOM-Zinnov report last year.
However, this is a story of lopsided growth.
The cities of Bengaluru, Delhi/NCR, and Mumbai together claim three-fourths of these startup deals while emerging hubs like Ahmedabad, Coimbatore, and Jaipur account for the rest.
This leap in the startup space has created 6.6 lakh direct jobs and a few million indirect jobs. Is that good enough for a country that sends 12 million fresh graduates to its workforce every year?
It doesn’t even make a dent on arguably our biggest unemployment in recent history—in April 2020 when the country shutdown to battle covid-19.
Technology-intensive start-ups are constrained in their ability to create jobs—and hybrid work models and artificial intelligence (AI) have further accelerated unemployment.
What we need to focus on, therefore, is the labour-intensive micro, small and medium enterprise (MSME). Here, we begin to get to a definitional notion of what we called the mundane middle and the problems it currently faces.
India has an estimated 63 million enterprises. But, out of 100 companies, 95 are micro enterprises—employing less than five people, four are small to medium and barely one is large.
The questions to ask are: why are Indian MSMEs failing to grow from micro to small and medium and then be spurred on to make the leap into large companies?
At the Global Alliance for Mass Entrepreneurship (GAME), we have advocated for a National Mission for Mass Entrepreneurship, the need for which is more pronounced now than ever before.
Whenever India has worked to achieve a significant economic milestone in a limited span of time, it has worked best in mission mode. Think of the Green Revolution or Operation Flood.
From across various states, there are enough examples of approaches that work to catalyse mass entrepreneurship.
The introduction of entrepreneurship mindset curriculum (EMC) in schools through alliance mode of working by a number of agencies has shown significant improvement in academic and life outcomes.
Through creative teaching methods, students are encouraged to inculcate 21st century skills like creativity, problem solving, critical thinking and leadership which are not only foundational for entrepreneurship but essential to thrive in our complex world.
Udhyam Learning Foundation has been involved with the Government of Delhi since 2018 to help young people across over 1,000 schools to develop an entrepreneurial mindset.
One pilot programme introduced the concept of ‘seed money’ and saw 41 students turn their ideas into profit-making ventures. Other programmes teach qualities like grit and resourcefulness.
If you think these are isolated examples, consider some larger data trends.
The Observer Research Foundation and The World Economic Forum released the Young India and Work: A Survey of Youth Aspirations in 2018.
When asked which type of work arrangement they prefer, 49% of the youth surveyed said they prefer a job in the public sector.
However, 38% selected self-employment as an entrepreneur as their ideal type of job. The spirit of entrepreneurship is latent and waiting to be unleashed.
The same can be said for building networks of successful women entrepreneurs—so crucial when the participation of women in the Indian economy has declined to an abysmal 20%.
The majority of India’s 63 million firms are informal —fewer than 20% are registered for GST.
Research shows that companies that start out as formal enterprises become two-three times more productive than a similar informal business.
So why do firms prefer to be informal? In most cases, it’s because of the sheer cost and difficulty of complying with the different regulations.
We have academia and non-profits working as ecosystem enablers providing insights and evidence-based models for growth. We have large private corporations and philanthropic and funding agencies ready to invest.
It should be in the scope of a National Mass Entrepreneurship Mission to bring all of them together to work in mission mode so that the gap between thought leadership and action can finally be bridged.