August 03, 2016

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Wednesday, August 03, 2016
EDITORIAL
The dynamic nature of poverty
Child labour by other means
The amendments to the Child Labour (Prohibition and Regulation) Act, 1986,
passed by Parliament recently, demonstrate a lack of national commitment to abolishing
all forms of child labour. Instead of attempting an overhaul of legislation
that has proved ineffective in curbing the phenomenon, Parliament has allowed
children up to the age of 14 to be employed in ‘family enterprises’, and created
a new category of ‘adolescents’ (the 14-18 age group) who can be employed in
‘non-hazardous’ occupations. In the name of acknowledging the socio-economic
realities of India, the amendments tweak the law in such a way that children are
in some form or other available for employment. The only concession to their
educational rights is that they are permitted to work in family enterprises only outside
school hours and during vacations. Curiously, the main amendment — to ban
children up to the age of 14 in any occupation — is being touted as a progressive
leap from the earlier ban limited to some occupations and processes. It should not
be forgotten that with the passage of the Right of Children to Free and Compulsory
Education Act, 2009, a statutory obligation to ensure that every child completes
elementary education, is already in place. The exemption to family enterprises
effectively retains conditions under which children are made to contribute economically
while studying. Working outside of school hours and earning valuable
income for the family will surely have a deleterious effect on the children’s health
as well as their aptitude for learning.
Regulation is going to be a big challenge, as it will be difficult to determine
whether a particular family is running an enterprise, or whether some faceless
owner has employed a single family to circumvent the law. The fallout will be
a higher dropout rate. They may go to school for some years, concurrently work
with their families, and graduate to being full-time adolescent workers, without
completing elementary education. The NDA government, like its predecessor that
proposed the amendments, seems to be satisfied with mere compliance with International
Labour Organisation Conventions 138 and 182. The former mandates
compulsory schooling till the age of 15, but permits countries with inadequate
education facilities to reduce it to 14, while Convention 182 prohibits employment
of children “in the worst forms of labour”. Bare compliance with international
norms is not enough. Children from the poor and marginalised sections, especially
Dalits, are still in danger of being deprived of both the joys of childhood and their
constitutional right to education. It is yet another stark reminder that the country
is far from achieving the complete elimination of child labour.
Soft on Saudi Arabia’s
war on Yemen
Saudi Arabia’s war on Yemen is going
on and on. But 16 months after a Saudi-led
coalition started bombing rebels in the poor
Arab country, none of the declared objectives
of the war seem to have been met.
The Shia Houthi rebels still control huge
swathes of territory, including the capital
Sana’a. President Abd Rabbuh Mansur
Hadi, on whose behalf Saudi Arabia intervened
in Yemen, hasn’t established credible
authority even in territories technically
ruled by his government. The war and
the resultant chaos have helped al-Qaeda
in the Arabian Peninsula steadily expand
its influence in Yemen. Over the past year
and a half, Saudi Arabia has repeatedly
come under international criticism for its
brute use of force and lack of interest in
finding a settlement to the civil war. UN
Secretary General Ban Ki-moon admitted
earlier this year that the UN did not blacklist
Saudi Arabia as a violator of children’s
rights because it had threatened to cut off
funding to the organisation. The statistics
are chilling. Since the bombing started in
March 2015, over 6,400 people have been
killed, half of them civilians, according to
the World Health Organisation. More than
30,000 people have been left injured, and
about 2.5 million remain displaced. An
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estimated 9.4 million Yemeni children are
in urgent need of humanitarian aid, as the
country grapples with food, power and water
shortages. These numbers suggest that
Yemen, a country of 24 million people, is
facing one of the worst humanitarian crises
in its modern history.
Tragically, there has been no meaningful
international attempt to solve this crisis.
There is a peace process on, but the prospects
of a settlement appear grim as the
Saudi coalition continues its attacks. Saudi
Arabia may have its strategic goals behind
the war, such as defeating Houthi rebels
who Riyadh perceives to be proxies of
Iran. What is intriguing is the silence of the
Western powers that are vocal about rights
violations elsewhere. The U.S. and the
U.K., allies of Saudi Arabia, could have
exerted pressure to end the bombing, and
push for a diplomatic solution. Nothing
of that sort has been evident. In fact, both
have shored up arms sales to Saudi Arabia
in recent years. This “special relationship”
explains Saudi Arabia’s impunity. But how
long can the world look away from Yemen?
The botched Saudi intervention has
proved that it is in no position either to win
the war or push for peace. Letting the status
quo continue will be disastrous.
SCRIPSI
“Please believe that one single positive dream is more important than a thousand negative
realities.”
~ Adeline Yen Mah
Sometimes the grand
narratives of the Left and
the Right do not seem to
have any relationship with
the lived experiences of
ordinary Indians. For the
past two decades, the Left
has tried to expand social
welfare programmes for
the poor in the country by
highlighting the growing
disparities between the rich
and the poor. The Right,
on the other hand, points
to the growing burden of
politically driven welfare
policies and emphasises the
need for economic growth
to alleviate poverty and improve
the lives of the poor.
These grand narratives often
obviate the fact that the
concept of poverty today
is fundamentally different
from that of poverty three
decades ago, and that safety
nets need to be tailored to
meet the needs of a society
in transition.
Complicated data
For example, most of our
anti-poverty policies rely
on identifying the poor by
using Below Poverty Line
(BPL) Censuses conducted
approximately once every
10 years. In 1993-94, when
half the Indian population
fell in the BPL category, it
was easier to identify the
poor — they lived in rural
landless households in
underdeveloped districts
such as the Dangs and Bastar
and often belonged to
the Scheduled Castes (SC)
or Scheduled Tribes (ST).
Even if all the above identification
strategies failed,
we still had a 50 per cent
chance of being right in
identifying the poor. Today,
however, when one in four
rural Indians and one in six
urban Indians is poor, our
Strategic affairs analysts
ponder whether India can become
a “great power”. It has
the prerequisites of size, location,
demography, economic
potential and political standing.
The question is about
its capacity to forge these
attributes into demonstrable
national strength. The Modi
government’s ambition in that
direction is evident in India’s
foreign policy initiatives in our
near and extended neighbourhood,
with major powers and
in campaigns for UN Security
Council and Nuclear Suppliers’
Group (NSG) membership.
Securing desired outcomes
in multilateral forums tests a
country’s international influence.
India’s application for
NSG membership at the recent
Seoul meeting of the group encountered
an unwillingness or
inability of the United States to
decisively influence the result,
unlike in 2008 when it effectively
got the group to approve
civil nuclear cooperation with
India. Besides raising questions
about U.S. motives, this
turned the spotlight on the diplomatic
tools India could use
to obtain success.
P. S. Raghavan
In 2008, India had addressed
NSG members’ non-proliferation
concerns. Its application,
therefore, should not have
been controversial, since its
record had not changed. What
was different was the geopolitical
landscape and the absence
of a strong U.S. push. This
gave countries the space to advance
their perspectives or to
pursue strategic advantage by
taking one or the other side.
The geopolitical games
The outcome in such international
negotiations is really
determined by geopolitical
games, bilateral equations and
domestic politics, more than
the “merits” of a case.
The strength of bilateral
relationships underpins such
negotiations. Every country,
big or small, matters. Mutually
beneficial bilateral cooperation
enhances the stake of both
countries in the relationship.
This influences their attitude in
multilateral forums on subjects
of interest to each other. As in
interpersonal relations, so in
diplomacy: make a friend before
you need him.
Another diplomatic tool is
projecting to countries the advantages
of a positive stance
and the “costs” of a negative
position. A current example is
the Saudi Arabian threat to sell
$750 billion of U.S. assets if
the latter enacts a law enabling
victims of 9/11 to sue the Saudi
government for its alleged
involvement in the terrorist
act. The U.S. Congress may
pass the bill, but the President
will probably veto it.
Awarding or withholding
major contracts and facilitating
chances of being wrong in
identifying the poor are far
greater.
Data from the India Human
Development Survey
(IHDS) point to another
trend. This survey, conducted
by the University of
Maryland and the National
Council of Applied Economic
Research (NCAER)
for the same households
at two points in time, viz.
2004-05 and 2011-12, is the
first large panel survey in
India. Results from the survey
show that if BPL cards
had been handed out in
2004-05 on the basis of the
household’s average consumption
expenditure, 25 of
the 38 Indians who would
have received these cards in
2004-05 would have been
out of poverty by 2011-12.
On the other hand, of the 62
Indians who were not eligible
to receive BPL cards in
2004-05, nine became newly
poor in 2011-12. Thus in
2011-12, 66 per cent of the
BPL card-holders would
have already moved out of
poverty, while 40 per cent
of the poor would not have
had a BPL card.
Spreading the net wide
Once we recognise that
poverty is dynamic in nature,
and that as per our
conventional definition of
poverty, poor households
may move out of poverty
and the non-poor may become
poor over a period
of time, we are forced to
question the veracity of our
fundamental assumptions
about poverty. Perhaps
poverty occurs not simply
due to the accident of birth
or as defined in terms of
where and in which family
people are born, but also
due to the accident of life
caused by the occurrence
of disease, disability and
unemployment. Achieving
this recognition entails a
complete transformation in
our mindset.
The second concern about
our approach to poverty is
that we want to cover the
maximum number of people,
consequently diluting
the support that we are able
to provide the poor. Empirical
data point to a strange
paradox. Ironically, in spite
of a decline in poverty, the
proportion of the population
receiving welfare benefits
has risen sharply. The
IHDS shows that between
2004-05 and 2011-12, the
proportion of the population
deemed to be poor fell
or impeding investments are
recognised negotiating tactics.
Countries leverage strategic
import decisions — civilian
and defence — to extract benefits
from the exporting country.
In the 1990s, when Boeing
dominated its market, China
placed a large order with Airbus
— apparently reacting to
U.S. criticism of its human
rights record. Airbus thereafter
consolidated its position in
China. Today, China is exploiting
the Airbus-Boeing competition
to extract technological
know-how for designing and
manufacturing its own civilian
aircraft.
India does not have the internal
flexibility to use such
tactics. Central audit and vigilance
guidelines are invoked to
block them. These guidelines
are meant to check profligacy
and venality of officialdom; not
to obstruct strategies pursued
in the national interest, provided
they are coherently defined
and implemented. In 2003, the
Vajpayee government initiated
an internal dialogue on evolving
a methodology, conforming
to international practices,
for extracting strategic value
from our major import orders.
from 38 per cent to 22 per
cent. But the proportion of
households receiving any
of the benefits under different
government schemes,
such as old age pension,
widow pension, and the
Janani Suraksha Yojana,
or scholarships and other
benefits, grew from 13 per
cent in 2004-05 to 33 per
cent in 2011-12. The proportion
of households buying
cereals from the Public
Distribution System (PDS),
which was intended to provide
subsidised foodgrains
to the poor, grew from 27
to 52 per cent. Further, the
newly initiated Mahatma
Gandhi National Rural Employment
Guarantee Act
(MGNREGA) provided
employment to 17 per cent
of the households, signifying
a substantial increase
from the almost negligible
participation in erstwhile
public works programmes.
Thus, the proportion of
households covered by all
these schemes taken together
grew from 35 per
cent to 68 per cent of the
total population over the
period under study.
Despite this massive expansion
in the coverage of
welfare programmes, the
incomes and subsidies accruing
from them still account
for a relatively small
proportion of the overall
household budget. In
2004-05, the transfers and
subsidies under the above
schemes accounted for an
average of Rs.3,129 per recipient
household per year,
which had increased to
Rs.6,017 in constant terms
in 2011-12. This amounts
to only about Rs.100 per
person per month in 2011-
12.
How to win the world over
Predictably, bureaucratic headwinds
grounded the initiative.
India’s Missile Technology
Control Regime (MTCR)
membership was vetoed by Italy
in 2015. When this veto was
lifted this year, some attributed
it to a deal on the Italian marines
awaiting trial in India for
the killing of two fishermen off
the Kerala coast in 2012. Even
if true, the national interest
justifies such deals. Similarly,
every time our government
signs a multilateral agreement,
it faces charges of a “sell-out”.
The truth that you must concede
somewhere to get something
elsewhere is as valid in
international negotiations as in
daily life.
The China lessons
Influence in multilateral
forums is enhanced by bilateral
and plurilateral alliances
promoting shared strategic,
security or economic interests.
India’s initiatives in East,
Southeast and West Asia and in
Africa are relevant in this context.
These elements feed into
specific negotiations: strategic
alliances, tactical alignments,
bilateral trade-offs and pressure
at sensitive points combine
to achieve the objective.
All these factors are relevant
in our approach to China. Notwithstanding
its inflexibility at
Seoul, India’s NSG membership
is not its most important
concern. This was demonstrated
by China’s strident response
to the recent Permanent Court
of Arbitration judgment on its
actions in the South China Sea.
China dismisses the court’s authority,
but is assiduously canvassing
international support
for its position.