Gandhi and Maulana Azad – Both were tried for Sedition.
Tilak too was tried for sedition
First introduced in 1870, the primary objective of the sedition law was to deal with “increasing Wahabi activities” in India during those times as they posed a challenge to the British colonial government.
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Read the newspapers carefully and you will find that second only to murder and rape, the offence which has seized the small minds of our ministers and the police is sedition. It is as if the country is infested with sedition and the people are in a mind to revolt. The offence is initially tried by magistrates, and they have to grapple with the elastic definition of sedition.
Two English barristers of high eminence agreed that the definition of sedition “is frighteningly broad and the crime has been used in the past to suppress political views” (Media Law by Geoffrey Roberts and Andrew Nicol, Q.C.). What a burden to impose on the poor magistrate, the struggling High Court judge, and the very mighty, self-conscious Supreme Court judges who delight in delivering long judgments embellished with high sounding and irrelevant quotes!
From the condemnation of Socrates to the persecution of modern writers and journalists, our world had seen too many examples of state control of unofficial ideas. A central purpose of the European Convention on Human Rights had been to set close limits to any such assumed power. We in this country continued to owe a debt to the jury which in 1670 refused to convict the Quakers, William Penn and William Mead, for preaching ideas which offended against state orthodoxy.” (Redmond Bate vs Director of Public Prosecutions before Lord Justice Sedley and Justice Collins on July 23, 1999; The Times, July 28, 1999.)
The criminal offence of sedition was born as sin in India — the sin of racism. It was gasping for breath in its home, Britain, and was consigned to the grave of obsolete laws for good reason, as a news report in India read: “A colonial era law intended to suppress the voice of freedom continues in force in India, but Britain itself abolished sedition as a criminal offence in 2009 as it was considered to be a relic of an era where freedom of expression was not considered a right as it is now.”
Sedition was abolished through the Coroners and Justice Act, 2009, under the Gordon Brown government. Three offences were abolished: the offences of sedition and seditious libel; the offence of defamatory libel; and the offence of obscene libel.
Claire Ward, the then Justice Minister, said at the time of the Act’s enactment: “Sedition and seditious and defamatory libel are arcane offences — from a bygone era when freedom of expression wasn’t seen as the right it is today. Freedom of speech is now seen as the touchstone of democracy, and the ability of individuals to criticise the state is crucial to maintaining freedom.” Britain’s Law Commission had recommended the abolition of the law of sedition in 1977.
According to Ward, “The existence of these obsolete offences in this country had been used by other countries as justification for the retention of similar laws which have been actively used to suppress political dissent and restrict press freedom.”
Claire Ward did not know the Indian mentality. Britain’s repeal of sedition in 2009 notwithstanding, India hugely enjoys the presence of sedition in its obsolete laws.
K.M. Munshi’s amendment
Bal Gangadhar Tilak, Annie Besant, the Ali Brothers, Maulana Azad, Gandhi and very many others suffered imprisonment under this archaic, barbaric law. It is to the credit of K.M. Munshi that he single-handedly secured its deletion from the Constitution.
It is the lasting disgrace of the Supreme Court that it brought it back by the back door 14 years later, ignoring totally the Constituent Assembly Debates and the enormous labour preceding it. K.M. Munshi was a member of the Drafting Committee.
The Draft Constitution was published in February 1948 and reprinted in October 1948 with changes by the Drafting Committee. The Constituent Assembly debated the offending provision on December 10, 1948. K.M. Munshi moved his amendment:
“Sir, the importance of this amendment is that it seeks to delete the word ‘sedition’ and use a much better phraseology, viz., ‘which undermines the security of, or tends to overthrow, the state’. The object is to remove the word ‘sedition’ which is of doubtful and varying import and to introduce words which are now considered to be the gist of an offence against the state.
“I was pointing out that the word ‘sedition’ has been a word of varying import and has created considerable doubt in the minds of not only the members of this House but of courts of law all over the world. Its definition has been very simple and given so far back as 1868.
It says ‘sedition embraces all those practices whether by word or deed or writing which are calculated to disturb the tranquillity of the state and lead ignorant persons to subvert the government’. But in practice it has had a curious fortune. A hundred and fifty years ago in England, holding a meeting or conducting a procession was considered sedition.
Even holding an opinion which will bring ill-will towards government was considered sedition once. Our notorious Section 124-A of the Penal Code was sometimes construed so widely that I remember in a case a criticism of a District Magistrate was urged to be covered by Section 124-A.
But the public opinion has changed considerably since, and now that we have a democratic government a line must be drawn between criticism of government, which should be welcome, and incitement, which would undermine the security or order on which civilised life is based, or which is calculated to overthrow the state.
Therefore, the word ‘sedition’ has been omitted. As a matter of fact, the essence of democracy is criticism of government. The party system necessarily involves an advocacy of the replacement of one government by another. This amendment therefore seeks to use words which properly answer to the implication of the word ‘sedition’ as understood by the present generation in a democracy and therefore there is no substantial change; the equivocal word ‘sedition’ only is sought to be deleted from the article. Otherwise, an erroneous impression would be created that we want to perpetuate 124-A of the IPC [Indian Penal Code] or its meaning, which was considered good law in earlier days.”
This is exactly what the Supreme Court did 14 years later.
The adoption of K.M. Munshi’s amendment unanimously by the Constituent Assembly on December 1, 1948, in effect erased Section124-A of the Penal Code on sedition. The Assembly was not deliberating in a blank. All talk of sedition implied reference to Section124-A of the Penal Code which defined sedition.
Let us trace the course of the litigation. First comes Romesh Thapar vs. State of Madras. A decision was made by a bench of five Supreme Court judges on May 16, 1950. The judgment was delivered by one of the court’s finest judges, Justice Patanjali Sastri, erudite, clear-headed and liberal.
He said, “It is also worthy of note that the word ‘sedition’ which occurred in Article 13(2) of the Draft Constitution prepared by the Drafting Committee was deleted before the Article was finally passed as Article 19(2). In this connection it may be recalled that the Federal Court had, in defining sedition in Niharendu Dutt Mazumdar vs The King-Emperor held that ‘The acts or words complained of must either incite to disorder or must be such as to satisfy reasonable men that this is their intention or tendency’ but the Privy Council overruled that [602] decision and emphatically reaffirmed the view expressed in Tilak’s case to the effect that ‘the offence consisted in exciting or attempting to excite in others certain bad feelings towards the government and not in exciting or attempting to excite mutiny or rebellion or any sort of actual disturbance, great or small.” (King-Emperor vs Sadashiv Narayan Bhalerao.)
“Deletion of the word “sedition” from the draft Article 13(2), therefore, shows that criticism of government exciting disaffection. or bad feelings towards it, is not to be regarded as a justifying ground for restricting the freedom of expression and of the press, unless it is such as to undermine the security of or tend to overthrow the state. It is also significant that the corresponding Irish formula of “undermining the public order or the authority of the state” [Article 49 (6) (i) of the Constitution of Eire, 1937], did not apparently find favour with the framers of the Indian Constitution.
Thus, very narrow and stringent limits have been set to permissible legislative abridgement of the right of free speech and expression, and this was doubtless due to the realisation that freedom of free speech and expression of the press lay at the foundation of all democratic organisations, for without free political discussion, no public education, so essential for the proper functioning of the processes of popular government, is possible…
“We are therefore of opinion that unless a law restricting freedom of speech and expression is directed solely against the undermining of the security of the state or the overthrow of it, such law cannot fall within the reservation under clause (2) of Article 19 although the restrictions which it seeks to impose may have been conceived generally in the interests of public order.”
Romesh Thapar had challenged in the Supreme Court the Madras government’s order banning the entry into the State of Cross Roads, a lively, pro-communist weekly published from Bombay, where Romesh Thapar was then resident. The Supreme Court held that the order was unconstitutional.
Justice Fazal Ali dissented.
Order upholding “sedition”
On January 30, 1962, came the disastrous Kedar Nath Singh vs State of Bihar which upheld sedition as defined in the colonial Section 124-A of the IPC. It was also a bench of five, and Justice S.R. Das was a member of both benches, in Thapar’s case and this. The judgment was delivered by Chief Justice of India Bhuvaneshwar Prasad Sinha. The offending speech that was under litigation had been delivered by a communist (Kedar Nath Singh) in intemperate language, but it was not seditious.
There is a clear distinction in law between extolling revolution, as the British politician Harold Laski did, and inciting it.
Chief Justice Bhuvaneshwar Prasad Sinha ignored completely the Constituent Assembly Debates, as did the concurring judges in the case. Unlike K.M. Munshi, they had not been to jail or suffered under British rule. What is astonishing is that Justice S.R. Das was a member of both benches. Like the Vicar of Bray, he merrily went along with both sides.
Chief Justice Bhuvaneshwar Prasad Sinha cited English cases. One such case said as far back as in 1867 that sedition was “nearly allied to that of treason”.
The tendency of sedition is to incite the people to “insurrection and rebellion” or “public disturbances or to lead to civil war”. Justice Patanjali Sastri’s words in Romesh Thapar were quoted, “It is also worthy of note that the word ‘sedition’ which occurred in Article 13(2) of the Draft Constitution prepared by the Drafting Committee was deleted before the Article was finally passed as Article 19(3). But the framers of the Constitution may well have reflected with Madison who was ‘the leading spirit in the preparation of the First Amendment of the Federal Constitution’ that it is better to leave a few of its noxious branches to their luxuriant growth, than, by pruning them away, to injure the vigour of those yielding the proper fruits.” This is pure guess work to reach a desired end.
How wrong-headed can you possibly get? Justice Sastri did not use the italicised words. The entire tenor and tone of their two judgments are fundamentally different, with Justice S.R. Das playing on both sides.
Chief Justice Bhuvaneshwar Prasad Sinha spoke of “subverting” the government by bringing that government “contempt or hatred”. Ergo, love thy government as thyself. Do Donald Trump, Boris Johnson or Emmanuel Macron demand the people’s love on pain of imprisonment? Does lack of “affection” imply subversion? Chief Justice Bhuvaneshwar Prasad Sinha and his four colleagues denounced “vilification and condemnation of the government in words which incite violence or have the tendency to create public disorder”. This is not sedition. If it were, cartoonists and columnists would be out of business.
“It is only when the words, written or spoken, etc. which have the pernicious tendency or intention of creating disorder or disturbance of law and order that the law steps in to prevent such activities in the interest of public order. So construed, the section, in our opinion strikes the correct balance between individual fundamental rights and the interest of public order. It is also well settled that in interpreting an enactment the court should have regard not merely to the literal meaning of the words used, but also take into consideration the antecedent history of the legislation,” the judgement said. The antecedent history of the sedition law belongs to the British colonial era.
History of sedition in India
It is doubtful if any of those fine judges was aware of the history of sedition in India. It was carefully traced by Walter Russell Donogh, an English barrister who practised in the Calcutta High Court, in “A Treatise on the Laws of Sedition and Cognate Offences of British India, Penal and Preventive with an Excerpt of the Acts in Force Relating to the Press, the Stage and Public Meetings” (Calcutta, Thacker, Spark & Co. 1991).
A maxim on the frontispiece of the work reveals his outlook: “Salus Reipublicae Suprema Lex.” The safety of the republic is the supreme law. This did not apply to colonial rule.
In 1837, the idea of sedition existed in gremio as one of the clauses of Thomas Babington Macaulay’s draft Criminal Procedure Code. That Bill was shelved for more than 20 years, and when at last it saw the light of day in 1860, the sedition clause for some unaccountable reason had been omitted. It was not until 1870, 10 years later, that the want of such a provision in a complete code of crimes came to be recognised. The result was that a Special Act (XXVII of 1870) was passed by way of amendment to the Penal Code, introducing Macaulay’s original clause practically unaltered, 33 years after its conception. Sir James Fitzjames Stephen, when introducing this Bill in August 1870 to amend the Penal Code observed that the provision in question was one which, by some unaccountable mistake, had been omitted from the Penal Code as ultimately passed. It stood as Section 113 in the draft Code published in 1837, and Sir Barnes Peacock was quite unable to account for its “omission” when the Code was enacted. It punished “attempts to excite feelings of disaffection to the government”.
“No one in his senses would contend that because a given law is good and suitable in England, it is therefore good and suitable in India. If a rule of law exists in England we may fairly consider whether it is suitable to India, but the answer to the question must always depend on the conditions which prevail in India. How much licence of speech can be safely allowed is a question of time and place. If I smoke a cigar on the maidan it pleases me, and hurts no one else. If I smoke a cigar in the powder magazine of the Fort, I endanger the lives of many, and do an act well deserving punishment. Language may be tolerated in England which it is unsafe to tolerate in India because in India it is apt to be transformed into action instead of passing off as harmless gas. ln legislating for India we must have regard to Indian conditions, and we must rely mainly on the advice of those who speak under the weight of responsibility and have the peace and good government of India under their charge.
“The difference between the social conditions prevailing in England and those of India appears to have been entirely overlooked by the most vigorous opponents of the Bill, for their arguments would seem to be based on the assumption of their complete similarity.”
This would account for the strenuous efforts made for the introduction of the English law, or what the colonial administration supposed to be the English law of sedition, in India.
On this point the observations of the Lieutenant-Governor of Bengal, Sir Alexander Mackenzie, carry with them the weight of authority and experience. “Much of the outcry,” he said, “against the present Bill rests upon its supposed divergence from the law of England on seditious libel, and on the assertion that the law as settled in 1870 was sufficient and ought to be final.
Now I venture to assert these two propositions — first, that the law of England, built up by judicial rulings to meet the circumstances of a homogeneous people directly interested in and sharing in its own government, is not necessarily a norm to which the law of India ought strictly to conform; and second, that the conditions of the country have themselves so altered since 1870 that what was adequate then is not necessarily adequate now.
As to the first point — If the section is in strict accord with the English law, all criticism of it loses weight; if it is not, there is in the very great difference in the conditions of the two countries ample justification for any deviation from the English law necessary for effectively checking the offence of sedition in India. It is clear that a sedition law which is adequate for a people ruled by a government of its own nationality and faith may be inadequate, or in some respects unsuited, for a country under foreign rule and inhabited by many races, with diverse customs and conflicting creeds. It is impossible in India to accept the test of direct incitement to violence or intention to commit rebellion, and limit the interference of the government to such cases.”
“To anyone,” he continued, “who studies, as I do from week to week, the utterances of the press in India, nothing can be more clear than that, though we seldom have such bold sedition preached as led to the recent trials in Bombay, or as prevailed here in 1870, we are now face to face with a far more insidious and equally dangerous style of writing and speaking. And, this is an evil which is yearly growing, and with the spread of what is called education is becoming more far-reaching in its noxious effects. It is indeed, in my opinion, to our own system of education that we owe all the trouble.
I have long been convinced that it is thoroughly unsound. We are turning out by scores of thousands young men who are trained only in words, look mainly for government employment, and failing to get it become, as the Maharaja of Travancore described them, ‘a host of discontented, disobedient, and sometimes troublesome young men’. This is the class that writes for the Native Press, perorates on platforms, and generally vents its spleen upon the government which has not been able to find appointments for more than a fraction of its members. To honest, well-informed criticism no English government would ever object.
But every government has the right to object when its critics wander off from criticism to calumny. No government, such as ours in India can afford to allow the minds of an ignorant and credulous oriental population to be gradually poisoned and embittered by persistent calumny of the government and all its measures. If these sections lead to a more careful, well-considered and responsible journalism, they will confer a benefit not only on the state and the public, but on the journalistic profession itself.”
The Supreme Court’s ruling in 1962 gave birth to oddities. For example, in Nazir Khan in State of Delhi (2003) & SCC 458 at 488. Sedition was designed by a colonial regime to contain discontent. It yearned for acceptance and affection. It has no place in a democracy. But this is what the Supreme Court rules. Sedition was deliberately omitted from the Constitution. Section124 of the IPC became non esse. It was deliberately restored by the Supreme Court.
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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.
Heat wave is a condition of air temperature which becomes fatal to human body when exposed. Often times, it is defined based on the temperature thresholds over a region in terms of actual temperature or its departure from normal.
Heat wave is considered if maximum temperature of a station reaches at least 400C or more for Plains and at least 300C or more for Hilly regions.
a) Based on Departure from Normal
Heat Wave: Departure from normal is 4.50C to 6.40C
Severe Heat Wave: Departure from normal is >6.40C
b) Based on Actual Maximum Temperature
Heat Wave: When actual maximum temperature ≥ 450C
Severe Heat Wave: When actual maximum temperature ≥470C
If above criteria met at least in 2 stations in a Meteorological sub-division for at least two consecutive days and it declared on the second day
It is occurring mainly during March to June and in some rare cases even in July. The peak month of the heat wave over India is May.
Heat wave generally occurs over plains of northwest India, Central, East & north Peninsular India during March to June.
It covers Punjab, Haryana, Delhi, Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Jharkhand, West Bengal, Odisha, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, Gujarat, parts of Maharashtra & Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh and Telengana.
Sometimes it occurs over Tamilnadu & Kerala also.
Heat waves adversely affect human and animal lives.
However, maximum temperatures more than 45°C observed mainly over Rajasthan and Vidarbha region in month of May.
a. Transportation / Prevalence of hot dry air over a region (There should be a region of warm dry air and appropriate flow pattern for transporting hot air over the region).
b. Absence of moisture in the upper atmosphere (As the presence of moisture restricts the temperature rise).
c. The sky should be practically cloudless (To allow maximum insulation over the region).
d. Large amplitude anti-cyclonic flow over the area.
Heat waves generally develop over Northwest India and spread gradually eastwards & southwards but not westwards (since the prevailing winds during the season are westerly to northwesterly).
The health impacts of Heat Waves typically involve dehydration, heat cramps, heat exhaustion and/or heat stroke. The signs and symptoms are as follows:
1. Heat Cramps: Ederna (swelling) and Syncope (Fainting) generally accompanied by fever below 39*C i.e.102*F.
2. Heat Exhaustion: Fatigue, weakness, dizziness, headache, nausea, vomiting, muscle cramps and sweating.
3. Heat Stoke: Body temperatures of 40*C i.e. 104*F or more along with delirium, seizures or coma. This is a potential fatal condition.
Norman Borlaug and MS Swaminathan in a wheat field in north India in March 1964
Political independence does not have much meaning without economic independence.
One of the important indicators of economic independence is self-sufficiency in food grain production.
The overall food grain scenario in India has undergone a drastic transformation in the last 75 years.
India was a food-deficit country on the eve of Independence. It had to import foodgrains to feed its people.
The situation became more acute during the 1960s. The imported food had to be sent to households within the shortest possible time.
The situation was referred to as ‘ship to mouth’.
Presently, Food Corporation of India (FCI) godowns are overflowing with food grain stocks and the Union government is unable to ensure remunerative price to the farmers for their produce.
This transformation, however, was not smooth.
In the 1960s, it was disgraceful, but unavoidable for the Prime Minister of India to go to foreign countries with a begging bowl.
To avoid such situations, the government motivated agricultural scientists to make India self-sufficient in food grain production.
As a result, high-yield varieties (HYV) were developed. The combination of seeds, water and fertiliser gave a boost to food grain production in the country which is generally referred to as the Green Revolution.
The impact of the Green Revolution, however, was confined to a few areas like Punjab, Haryana, western Uttar Pradesh in the north and (unified) Andhra Pradesh in the south.
Most of the remaining areas were deficit in food grain production.
Therefore the Union government had to procure food grain from surplus states to distribute it among deficit ones.
At the time, farmers in the surplus states viewed procurement as a tax as they were prevented from selling their surplus foodgrains at high prices in the deficit states.
As production of food grains increased, there was decentralisation of procurement. State governments were permitted to procure grain to meet their requirement.
The distribution of food grains was left to the concerned state governments.
Kerala, for instance, was totally a deficit state and had to adopt a distribution policy which was almost universal in nature.
Some states adopted a vigorous public distribution system (PDS) policy.
It is not out of place to narrate an interesting incident regarding food grain distribution in Andhra Pradesh. The Government of Andhra Pradesh in the early 1980s implemented a highly subsidised rice scheme under which poor households were given five kilograms of rice per person per month, subject to a ceiling of 25 kilograms at Rs 2 per kg. The state government required two million tonnes of rice to implement the scheme. But it received only on one million tonne from the Union government.
The state government had to purchase another million tonne of rice from rice millers in the state at a negotiated price, which was higher than the procurement price offered by the Centre, but lower than the open market price.
A large number of studies have revealed that many poor households have been excluded from the PDS network, while many undeserving households have managed to get benefits from it.
Various policy measures have been implemented to streamline PDS. A revamped PDS was introduced in 1992 to make food grain easily accessible to people in tribal and hilly areas, by providing relatively higher subsidies.
Targeted PDS was launched in 1997 to focus on households below the poverty line (BPL).
Antyodaya Anna Yojana (AAY) was introduced to cover the poorest of the poor.
Annapoorna Scheme was introduced in 2001 to distribute 10 kg of food grains free of cost to destitutes above the age of 65 years.
In 2013, the National Food Security Act (NFSA) was passed by Parliament to expand and legalise the entitlement.
Conventionally, a card holder has to go to a particular fair price shop (FPS) and that particular shop has to be open when s/he visits it. Stock must be available in the shop. The card holder should also have sufficient time to stand in the queue to purchase his quota. The card holder has to put with rough treatment at the hands of a FPS dealer.
These problems do not exist once ration cards become smart cards. A card holder can go to any shop which is open and has available stocks. In short, the scheme has become card holder-friendly and curbed the monopoly power of the FPS dealer. Some states other than Chhattisgarh are also trying to introduce such a scheme on an experimental basis.
More recently, the Government of India has introduced a scheme called ‘One Nation One Ration Card’ which enables migrant labourers to purchase rations from the place where they reside. In August 2021, it was operational in 34 states and Union territories.
The intentions of the scheme are good but there are some hurdles in its implementation which need to be addressed. These problems arise on account of variation in:
It is not clear whether a migrant labourer gets items provided in his/her native state or those in the state s/he has migrated to and what prices will s/he be able to purchase them.
The Centre must learn lessons from the experiences of different countries in order to make PDS sustainable in the long-run.
For instance, Sri Lanka recently shifted to organic manure from chemical fertiliser without required planning. Consequently, it had to face an acute food shortage due to a shortage of organic manure.
Some analysts have cautioned against excessive dependence on chemical fertiliser.
Phosphorus is an important input in the production of chemical fertiliser and about 70-80 per cent of known resources of phosphorus are available only in Morocco.
There is possibility that Morocco may manipulate the price of phosphorus.
Providing excessive subsidies and unemployment relief may make people dependent, as in the case of Venezuela and Zimbabwe.
It is better to teach a person how to catch a fish rather than give free fish to him / her.
Hence, the government should give the right amount of subsidy to deserving people.
The government has to increase livestock as in the case of Uruguay to make the food basket broad-based and nutritious. It has to see to it that the organic content in the soil is adequate, in order to make cultivation environmentally-friendly and sustainable in the long-run.
In short, India has transformed from a food-deficit state to a food-surplus one 75 years after independence. However, the government must adopt environmental-friendly measures to sustain this achievement.