The need to boost labour income and consumption expenditure
Many prefer work over vote in Odisha’s hinterland
Dusma Sabar in Odisha’s Nuapada district has been desperately chasing a labour agent to bring back his son from a brick kiln in Telangana so that last rites of his deceased daughter-in-law could be performed.
According to civil society organisations, more than one lakh families from five western districts – Balangir, Bargarh, Nuapada, Kalahandi and Subarnapur – migrated mostly to Andhra Pradesh and Tamil Nadu to work at construction sites and brick kilns. Since their contracts end in June, they are unlikely to come to exercise their franchise now. A conservative estimate says around 2 lakh voters may be deprived of this opportunity.
Hollow promises
For Kartik Rana, the brick-maker in Tureikela of Balangir district, the upcoming panchayat polls hold no meaning as it happens every five years without impacting his life and livelihood.
His exit also exposes the government’s hollow promises of making irrigation and drinking water available to villagers.
There are about 3,400 voters whose names are registered in voters’ list. “But, 1,500 voters will not be able to cast their vote as they are all expected to return in June.
Missing voters
It is not easy for any migrant worker to take leave and lose three days wages to return home to cast vote. It is not possible for the candidates to fund their travel expenses though there have been instances in the past where candidates decided for the seasonal workers to come and vote in the Assembly and general elections.
“The moment a villager migrates for work, the process of his exclusion begins; they feel disempowered and alienated and also face difficulty in enrolling their names for welfare schemes,” said Umi Daniel, head of the migration unit of Aide et Action, an NGO.
‘Need for model’
Mr. Daniel said the issue of enabling migrant workers to vote has been debated for long. “There is a need for a model that would help them to cast their vote. For example, the district administrations in all migrant-rich zones can target their employment generation programmes in a way that it does not affect election period,” he said.
NOTE: Why to read this News?
Ans: See this in perspective of Problems faced by Migrant Workers, recently One Nation One Ration has been enabled along with E-Shram Portal. Keeping this issue in mind you can think of Models which may enable workers to vote from where they are working, or enable them in regional schemes.
Celebrating 100 years of Bhimsen Joshi
(Only focus on Highlighted Portion)
Mention Pandit Bhimsen Joshi and every music lover of Dharwad will tell you a story about him as a maverick boy growing up in north Karnataka towns. The young genius who followed processions of musical bands forgetting to return home, who led a nomadic life in pursuit of a ‘guru’ and sang bhajans to entertain ticket collectors while travelling ticketless in trains...
The small-town boy went on to become a legendary vocalist and a Bharat Ratna. The life of Pandit Bhimsen Joshi, whose birth centenary is on February 4, continues to be a source of inspiration for many youngsters who are passionate about music.
Born in 1922 at Ron in what is today Gadag district, Bhimsen Joshi was the eldest among 16 children born to Gururaj Joshi and Godavaribai. He left home at a young age in pursuit of music and a suitable guru. The first ticketless journey was to Bijapur (now Vijayapura) and then to Pune, and subsequently to many music schools and gurus in many places. He went to Khandwa, Gwalior, Jalandhar and many other places, only to return to Dharwad district where he found his guru – Pandit Sawai Gandharva at Kundagol.
There he met Gangubai Hangal, another disciple of Sawai Gandharva, whom he fondly called ‘akka’ (elder sister). Gangubai went on to become a doyenne of Hindustani classical music and settled down in Hubballi. She would fondly remember how ‘Bhimsena’ would accompany her to the railway station when she had to catch a train to Hubballiafter music lessons from her guru and how he would discuss music, sing and ask her to demonstrate what she had learnt.
Afterthe training that spanned over several years, the ‘Ganda Bandhan’ (ritual that creates a bond between guru _amp; disciple) took place in Dharwad, where Bhimsen Joshi, married by that time, chose to settle down.
“It was here that his association with theatre began,” recalls Ramakant Joshi, proprietor of Manohar Granthamala, whose father, litterateur and publisher G.B. Joshi (Jada Bharata) took Bhimsen to Bagalkot to act in the play Nala Damayanti. The singer played the lead role and also composed the music.Bhimsen Joshi stayed in Dharwad for around five years.
“During this period, my father arranged the staging of two plays Bhagyashree and Parivartana, in which Bhimsen Joshi played the lead role and composed the music. These plays were staged in various towns and cities, including Hubballi, Pune, and Mumbai. It was during this period that he met Vatsala, an actor, whom he married later and subsequently shifted to Pune. “But, he shared a special bond with Dharwad till the end,” Mr. Ramakant Joshi said.
In fact, when All India Radio opened a station in Dharwad in 1950, the inaugural song Vande Mataram was sung by Pandit Bhimsen Joshi, Gangubai Hangal, Mallikarjun Mansur and Basavaraj Rajguru.
Musicians like M. Venkateshkumar find in Joshi an endless source of inspiration. “Our guru Puttaraj Gawai told us that Bhimsen was at Veereshwar Punyashrama for a few months before leaving Gadag. For us, he is a great source of inspiration. The struggle that he faced, the dedication, the commitment towards music always inspires us,” Pandit Venkateshkumar told The Hindu.
He fondly remembers how Pt. Bhimsen Joshi, a top-level artiste, would take care of budding and young musicians. “He never forgot Karnataka, and especially Dharwad. The Sawai Gandharva Music festival, which he organised in Pune, would have at least four musicians from Karnataka. When the Maharashtra Government honoured him with ‘Maharashtra Bhushan’, he asked the organisers to get me to sing at the award presentation ceremony,” he said.
Indian diplomats to boycott Beijing games
(Modern world cold war) Notice: Initially India was supporting but changed after direct attacks. India still takes non-aligned stance.
Terming China’s decision to field a People’s Liberation Army soldier involved in the June 2020 Galwan clashes as the torchbearer for the Winter Olympics Games in Beijing as “regrettable”, India announced a diplomatic boycott of the games just ahead of the opening ceremony on Friday. State broadcaster Doordarshan also announced it will not telecast the opening and closing ceremonies live, where India has one athlete, skier Arif Khan, participating.
The decision came after Chinese media reports identified Qi Fabao, a PLA regiment commander who received military honours for the Galwan clashes, where he was injured, as one of about 1,200 runners bearing the torch at a relay in Beijing.
China’s decision to field him and New Delhi’s announcement of its first ever political boycott of Olympic games, are likely to increase India-China tensions that have risen since PLA aggressions along the Line of Actual Control began in April 2020.
India had earlier expressed support for the Beijing Olympics, even as more than a dozen countries, led by the United States, had announced a boycott of the games.
“It is indeed regrettable that the Chinese side has chosen to politicise an event like Olympic,” said MEA spokesperson Arindam Bagchi, referring to the media reports. “The Charge d’Affaires of the Embassy of India in Beijing will not be attending the opening or closing ceremony of the Beijing 2022 Winter Olympics,” he added.
The Indian Ambassador to China, Pradeep Kumar Rawat, whose appointment was announced in December, is expected to take charge in the next few weeks, and hence the Charge d’Affaires Acquino Vimal is the top diplomat in Beijing at present. Mr. Vimal and other officials had been expected to attend the ceremonial functions at the games, although the MEA had said no political or high level representation would be sent from Delhi.
The Chinese decision to publicly honour the military commander for involvement in the deadly clashes in the Galwan valley, where 20 Indian soldiers, and at least four Chinese soldiers (far higher according to media reports) were killed, is seen as a deliberate insult to New Delhi, which came despite the fact that the Modi government had decided not to join western boycott calls over human rights concerns.
In November 2021, External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar had hosted a virtual Russia-India-China (RIC) trilateral meeting which issued a joint statement where they “expressed their support to China to host Beijing 2022 Winter Olympic and Paralympic Games.”
Other countries including the U.S., Japan, Australia, United Kingdom and a number of European countries including Latvia, Lithuania, Denmark, the Netherlands, Sweden and the Czech Republic have announced their plans for diplomatic boycott: sending athletes and sports officials, but no diplomatic or political presence, in protest of China’s restrictions on its Uighur population in Xinjiang and other human rights abuses.
Meanwhile Russian President Vladimir Putin, Pakistan Prime Minister Imran Khan, Presidents of five Central Asian republics Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan are due to attend the opening ceremony on Friday.
A border move that will only bolster China
(Notice Highlighted Geographical Points)
(Maps included in Our Monthly Maps Compilation)
After the 1962 Sino-India War was over, the Indian Army was confronted with the problem of bodies of around 190 Indian soldiers lying in areas around 8 kilometres to 16 kilometres inside the Chinese 1960 claim line in Ladakh. Collecting the bodies of the fallen soldiers after the war through mutual consent is an established military practice, and the Indian Red Cross wrote to its Chinese counterpart in April 1963.
The Chinese turned down the request, stating that the bodies had been properly buried, and there was no need to send any Indian parties into disputed areas. As most Indian soldiers were to be cremated, not buried, the issue was again taken up with the Chinese. In August, the Chinese agreed to carry out the cremation and hand over the ashes to the Indian Red Cross.
When the Indian Red Cross requested that Indian representatives be present during the ceremony, the Chinese cancelled the arrangements altogether. In its memo on September 16, 1963, the Chinese Foreign Ministry accused the Indian government of trying to lay claim to these territories through this device.
While cancelling these arrangements, the Chinese Foreign Ministry insisted that the Indians who died at their posts in Ladakh were ‘invaders’ and not defending their ‘motherland’. Earlier, after overcoming the stiff Indian resistance at Rezang La, memorialised in the Hindi film, Haqeeqat, and at Gurung Hill, the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) had buried the bodies of five Indian soldiers — wooden posts with the inscriptions in Chinese and English, ‘The Corpses of Indian Invaders’. The purpose of the elaborate exercise was to deny any legitimate Indian presence and claim over these areas in future negotiations. If Indian soldiers had died defending their motherland, then it was an area in Indian possession and control — that would belie the Chinese claim over the territories in Ladakh. Its efforts to create facts on the ground to bolster its ‘historical’ claim underline the extent of Chinese enterprise in asserting its territorial claims.
Delinking Depsang
It thus comes as a surprise that in a recent television interview, the Indian Army Chief, General M.M. Naravane, argued that “out of the five or six friction points (in Ladakh), five have been solved”. ‘Friction point’ is an Indian euphemism for points of Chinese ingress into hitherto India-controlled territory in Ladakh, where this control is exercised by the Army and the Indo-Tibetan Border Police (ITBP) through regular patrols to the claimed areas. These ‘friction points’ are Depsang, Galwan, Hot Springs, Gogra, North bank of Pangong Tso, Kailash Range and Demchok. By asserting that only one of the friction points is remaining to be resolved — he was referring to Hot Springs or PP15, the only one discussed in the last round of talks with the Chinese — he implicitly ruled out Depsang as an area to be resolved.
This attempt to delink the strategically important area of Depsang from the ongoing Ladakh border crisis is worrying. It may suit the domestic political agenda of the Narendra Modi government of proclaiming an early end to the crisis, but it has long-term strategic consequences for India.
Despang Plains
Depsang is an enclave of flat terrain located in an area the Army classifies as Sub-Sector North (SSN), which provides land access to Central Asia through the Karakoram Pass. A few kilometres south-east from the important airstrip of Daulat Beg Oldi (DBO), the Chinese army has blocked Indian patrols since early 2020 at a place called Y-junction or Bottleneck, denying it access to five PPs: PP10, PP11, PP11A, PP12 and PP13. A joint patrol of the ITBP and Army would patrol these five PPs approximately once a month. Y-junction is around 18 km on the Indian side of the Line of Actual Control, even though the Chinese claim line lies another five kilometres further west, to the east of Burtse town. Satellite imagery from November 2021 confirms Chinese deployments at the Y-junction: two PLA Ground Force camps with six infantry fighting vehicles split between two positions while a small Indian Army forward camp is stationed 1.2 km west of the Y-junction.
Stand-off in 2013 and patrols
The Indian forward camp is the new patrol base, with a permanent patrol deployed there, that was created after a 22-day long stand-off at Y-junction in April 2013. Since then, it has observed and stopped Chinese patrols from moving further to the Indian side, but a PLA patrol had still managed to get up to around 1.5 km short of Burtse in September 2015.
Essentially, till the current blockade, the Indian side was able to access the five patrolling points, asserting Indian control, while the PLA had been denied access to its claim line since the late 2000s. That status quo has been disturbed since early 2020.
Since the Ladakh border crisis came to light in May 2020, a section of the security establishment has tried to bury any conversation about Depsang. Media reports attributable to ‘sources’ have labelled it a ‘legacy issue,’ suggesting that the crisis has continued since April 2013. The 2013 stand-off was resolved diplomatically after negotiations led to reversal of an Indian ingress and bunker construction on the Chinese side in Chumar, while the PLA stepped away from the Y-junction. Lt. Gen. K.T. Parnaik (retd.), the then Northern Army Commander, has confirmed “resort(ing) to a quid pro quo, as we did during the Depsang intrusion in 2013. Early response creates leverage.”
Former Ladakh Corps Commander Lt. Gen. Rakesh Sharma (retd.) was categorical in asserting that “patrolling had continued, as planned, since [the] April/May 2013 stand-off” and “to now state that we were not able to reach our LOP since 2013 as [the] PLA was blocking our movement, is pure heresy”. The fact that specific major general-level talks for Depsang were held with the Chinese on August 8, 2020 proves that it is part of the ongoing crisis. A 22-day stand-off in 2013 generated much public and media outrage but a 22-month long blockade of patrolling rights in the same area now has been greeted with silence.
Depsang’s importance
The Army has always identified Depsang plains as where it finds itself most vulnerable in Ladakh, devising plans to tackle the major Chinese challenge. SSN’s flat terrain of Depsang, Trig Heights and DBO — which provides direct access to Aksai Chin — is suited for mechanised warfare but is located at the end of only one very long and tenuous communication axis for India. China, in turn, has multiple roads that provide easy access to the area. This leaves SSN highly vulnerable to capture by the PLA, with a few thousands of square kilometres from the Karakoram Pass to Burtse, likely to be lost. Nowhere else in Ladakh is the PLA likely to gain so much territory in a single swoop.
SSN lies to the east of Siachen, located between the Saltoro ridge on the Pakistani border and the Saser ridge close to the Chinese border. On paper, it is the only place where a physical military collusion can take place between Pakistan and China — and the challenge of a two-front war can become real in the worst-case scenario. If India loses this area, it will be nearly impossible to launch a military operation to wrest back Gilgit-Baltistan from Pakistan.
Theoretically, Depsang is also seen as a viable launchpad for a mechanised force-based military offensive launched by India inside Aksai Chin, if the Army has to fulfil Union Home Minister Amit Shah’s parliamentary vow of getting back Aksai Chin from China.
Danger of delinking
The biggest danger of delinking Depsang from the current border crisis in Ladakh, however, is of corroborating the Chinese argument, which invalidates the rightful Indian claim over a large swathe of territory. In sparsely populated areas like Ladakh, with limited forward deployment of troops, the only assertion of territorial claims is by regular patrolling. By arguing that the blockade at Y-junction predates the current stand-off — a ‘legacy issue’ that goes back years — the Chinese side can affirm that Indian patrols never had access to this area and thus India has no valid claim on the territory. Already living with the disadvantage of being a lesser power vis-à-vis China, this argument further weakens India’s hand during negotiations in Ladakh.
This will be akin to Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s statement during the all-party meeting in June 2020 that no one had entered Indian territory, which ended up bolstering Chinese position during the talks. India cannot afford to repeat that blunder again and lose its land. As was demonstrated by China in the aftermath of the 1962 War, there should be no holding back in painstakingly asserting one’s claims when it comes to safeguarding the territory. Denial of truth for domestic political gains, in this case, will certainly be to the detriment of India’s strategic interests.
Chandrayaan3 set for launch in August
India plans to execute the Chandrayaan-3 mission this August, Minister Jitendra Singh told the Lok Sabha on Wednesday.
Though the government had stated that the mission was scheduled for 2022, this is the first time that a specific month has been announced.
The Chandrayaan-3 mission is a follow-up of Chandrayaan-2 of July 2019, which aimed to land a rover on the lunar South Pole. It was sent aboard the country’s most powerful geosynchronous launch vehicle, the GSLV-Mk 3. However, lander Vikram, instead of a controlled landing, ended up crash-landing on September 7, 2019, and prevented rover Pragyaan from successfully travelling on the surface of the moon. Had the mission been successful, it would have been the first time a country landed its rover on the moon in its maiden attempt.
‘Pandemic linked’ delays
“Based on the learnings from Chandrayaan-2 and suggestions made by the national level experts, the realisation of Chandrayaan-3 is in progress. Many related hardware and their special tests are successfully completed. The launch is scheduled for August 2022,” Mr. Singh said in reply to a query from Ravneet Singh and Subburaman Thirunavukkarasar who wanted to know what delayed the mission. The Minister attributed them to “pandemic linked” delays and a “reprioritisation” of projects.
The last major satellite launches by the ISRO (Indian Space Research Organisation) were the Earth Observation Satellite-3 in August last and the Amazonia satellite in February.
The ISRO has planned 19 missions until December consisting of eight launch vehicle missions, seven spacecraft missions and four technology demonstrator missions.
The ISRO has been allotted ?13,700 crore for this financial year, nearly ?1,000 crore more than it spent last year. Despite the several missions planned this year, the budgeted outlay this year is less than the ?13,949 crore allotted last year.
The need to boost labour income and consumption expenditure
The Union Budget for 2022-23 has projected a fiscal deficit of 6.4% of nominal GDP, a narrowing from the 6.9% assumed in the revised estimates for the current fiscal year ending on March 31.
Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman said the move was “consistent with the broad path of fiscal consolidation announced” by her last year in order to reach a fiscal deficit level below 4.5% by 2025-26. “While setting the fiscal deficit level in 2022-23, I am conscious of the need to nurture growth, through public investment, to become stronger and sustainable,” she added.
What was the economic context to this year’s Budget formulation?
Though every economic crisis involves sharp reduction in output growth rate, the specificity of the present crisis in India lies in the sharper reduction in labour income as compared to profits. The consequent reduction in income share of labour was associated with a sharp fall in consumption-GDP ratio as well as absolute value of consumption expenditure during the pandemic. While the GDP in 2021-22 is estimated to attain the pre-pandemic level, real consumption expenditure remains to be lower as compared to 2019-20.
The squeeze in labour income and consumption expenditure witnessed during the pandemic was itself preceded by what turned out to be the longest episode of growth slowdown in the Indian economy since the liberalisation period.
The budget 2022 was placed in the midst of these distinct challenges. The first challenge is specific to the pandemic and pertained to the need of undertaking policies that boosts labour income and consumption expenditure. The second challenge pertained to addressing the structural constraints of the Indian economy that restricted growth even during the pre-pandemic period.
How has the Budget fared in this backdrop and what are the key shortcomings?
Continuing with the objective of fiscal consolidation, the Budget falls short of addressing both these challenges.
There are three distinct features of this fiscal consolidation process. Firstly, while share of revenue and non-debt receipts in GDP has remained more or less unchanged, the objective of fiscal consolidation has been sought to be achieved primarily by reducing the expenditure-GDP ratio.
The brunt of this expenditure compression fell on revenue expenditure. Continuing with the fiscal strategy adopted in the last two years since the pandemic, the allocation of capital expenditure as a share of GDP has been marginally increased in 2022-23 as compared to 2021-22. Though additional capital expenditure could be financed either by postponing fiscal consolidation process or by increasing revenue, however, the budget has sought to achieve fiscal consolidation by reducing the allocation for revenue expenditure-GDP ratio.
Secondly, since the bulk of the revenue expenditure comprises of food subsidies and current expenses in social and economic services, reduction in the allocation for revenue expenditure has been associated with fall in several key expenditure that affect the income and livelihood of labour.
For example, allocation for both agriculture and allied activities and rural development registered a sharp decline in nominal absolute terms in 2022-23 as compared to 2021-22. Similarly, in the midst of the ongoing pandemic, total nominal expenditure on medical and public health registered a sharp fall in 2022-23 as compared to 2021-22. Such expenditure compression has been associated with the overall fall in the allocation for total social sector expenditure.
Thirdly, despite sharp increase in profits during the pandemic, the corporate tax-GDP ratio has continued to remain below the 2018-19 level due to tax concessions. The last decade registered a sharp rise in the share of corporate tax concessions in GDP, which reached its peak at 3.9% by 2020-21 (see figure 3). Reflecting the trend in tax concessions, corporate tax-GDP ratio registered a decline particularly since 2018-19 when corporate tax-ratio declined sharply from 3.5% to 2.7%. Despite the objective of fiscal consolidation, the corporate tax ratio continues to remain low and restrict revenue receipts.
What are the implications for development spending?
The objective of fiscal consolidation along with the inability to increase revenue receipts has posed a constraint on development expenditure. With non-development expenditure comprising of interest payments, administrative expenditure and various other components which are typically rigid downward, the brunt of expenditure compression has fallen on development expenditure.
While the decade of 2010s was characterised by different governments meeting fiscal targets by adjusting their expenditure, it registered a sharp decline in the development expenditure ratio till the advent of the pandemic in 2019-20. Albeit to a limited extent, the fiscal stimulus implemented in the first year of the pandemic brought about a brief recovery in 2020-21. The fiscal consolidation strategy carried out in the last years has once again led the development expenditure ratio to slide downward.
The reduction in the allocation for development expenditure ratio for 2022-23 reflects reduction in the allocation for food subsidies, national rural employment guarantee program, expenditure in agriculture, rural development and social sector.
Why is the Budget’s fiscal consolidation approach a concern from the macro-economic perspective?
The Budget estimates of different expenditure are sensitive to the growth estimates for 2022-23. If the GDP growth rate and revenue growth rate happens to be lower than what is projected, then the actual expenditure can turn out to be even lower than what is projected. Given the fact that the actual GDP growth rate in at least the last four years have been consistently lower than what was initially projected by the Economics Survey, the possibility of actual expenditure falling short of budget numbers cannot be assumed away.
But even if the actual expenditure is close to the budget estimates, the recovery of labour income and consumption expenditure would be largely restricted by the manner in which fiscal consolidation has been carried out. This is because reduction in the allocation for development expenditure would have adverse impact on labour income and consumption expenditure. The positive impact of higher capital expenditure on the recovery process would be largely curtailed by the adverse impact of more than proportionate fall in revenue expenditure.
Way Forward Given the fiscal consolidation strategy of the Government, the prospect and extent of economic revival at the present remains heavily dependent on external demand. Despite the brief recovery in exports in the last few quarters, the possibility of sustained economic recovery relying exclusively on the export channel appears to be bleak at the present as different countries have already started pursuing fiscal consolidation at the dictate of the IMF. What the Indian economy lacks at the moment is an effective policy instrument that can boost labour income and aggregate demand.
