1. Centre’s view on Kashmir situation has no bearing on Article 370 case: says SC
A Constitution Bench of the Supreme Court on Tuesday said a fresh affidavit submitted by the Union government saying Jammu and Kashmir is witnessing an “unprecedented era of peace, progress and prosperity” after its special status under Article 370 was abrogated on August 4, 2019, has “no bearing on the constitutional challenge” to the repeal of the provision.
The Bench, headed by Chief Justice of India D.Y. Chandrachud and including four of the senior-most judges, said it would start hearing the case from August 2. The court observed that the affidavit, filed on Monday, only sets out the “perspective of the Union government regarding the post abrogation of Article 370 developments and has no bearing on the issues raised in the petitions and shall not hence be relied upon for that purpose”.
The various petitions have questioned the Centre’s sudden move to “unilaterally unravel the unique federal scheme, under cover of President’s Rule, while undermining crucial elements of due process and the rule of law”. The Bench deleted the names of IAS official Shah Faesal and activist Shehla Rasheed from the list of petitioners. With the deletion of Mr. Faesal’s name, which was part of the cause title, the case would now be called “In re: Article 370 of the Constitution”.
The petitioners, represented by senior advocates including Rajeev Dhavan, Dushyant Dave, Raju Ramachandran, Gopal Sankaranarayanan, C.U. Singh and Nitya Ramakrishnan and advocates Kamini Jaiswal, Vrinda Grover, Prasanna S. and others, said the “legal challenge remains” despite what the Centre’s views about life in the erstwhile State of Jammu and Kashmir after the abrogation.
2. GST Council to impose 28% tax on online gaming firms
New measures: The council meeting examined the States’ proposals to set up GST Appellate Tribunals in the country. PTI
The Goods and Services Tax (GST) Council, at its 50th meeting on Tuesday, reduced or clarified the tax rate on some items ranging from uncooked or unfried snack pellets to special utility vehicles (SUVs), exempted imported drugs to treat cancer and rare diseases, and brought an end to a years-long debate on tax treatment of online gaming, casinos and horse racing.
Whether they involve skill or chance, or both or neither, bets and wagers made on all three activities, will attract a 28% levy and the GST laws will be amended to include online gaming, Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman said.
The council also examined States’ proposals to set up 50 Benches of the GST Appellate Tribunals in the country.
The government has said that the statutory bodies to resolve mounting GST disputes shall become operational within four to six months, with Benches coming up in the State capitals and places where the High Courts have Benches.
The Council cleared the appointment and service conditions for tribunal members and president.
The appointment and service conditions will apply from August 1.
The first meeting of the Council since February got off to a stormy start. Representatives of States not ruled by the BJP criticised the Union government’s recent decision to bring the GST Network under the purview of the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA), administered by the Enforcement Directorate (ED). The arguments were led by the Finance Ministers of Delhi and Punjab.
Ms. Sitharaman, who chaired the meeting, said many States had raised concerns about the issue and it was discussed after the listed agenda was concluded. Tamil Nadu, for instance, said that the inclusion of GSTN under the PMLA provisions is against the interests of taxpayers and against the basic objective of decriminalising the offences under the GST law.
Dispelling doubts that the GSTN is now going to share information about private businesses with other law enforcement agencies, including the ED, Mr. Malhotra said the ED will neither be receiving nor providing information.
3. Green washing
Changes to conservation laws must be backed by scientific evidence
The Forest (Conservation) Amendment Bill, 2023, that is being deliberated upon by a Joint Committee of Parliament, is a contentious piece of legislation that signals the complex challenges involved in balancing industrial development and the conservation of forests. While industrialisation inevitably means usurping greater tracts of forest land and ecosystems, the Forest (Conservation) Act, 1980 has been the mantelpiece legislation that has empowered the state to regulate this and impose costs on such industrial exploitation. Originally meant for notified forests, a landmark Supreme Court judgment, in the T.N. Godavarman Thirumalpad case (1996), among other things, broadened the scope of such protection to even those not officially classified so. India’s forest cover has seen only marginal increases, as biennial reports of the Forest Survey of India illustrate. Growth in forest cover inside officially recorded forests is stagnant, or at best incremental. It is tree cover in orchards, plantations and village homesteads that has been on the rise and supplementing India’s claim that 24% of its area is under forest and tree cover. India has committed to increasing this number to 33% and adding a carbon sink of 2.5 billion to 3 billion tons of CO2 this way, by 2030, as part of its international climate commitments.
The existing Forest (Conservation) Act, 1980 — in the Environment Ministry’s reckoning — was insufficient for these ends, as it did not incentivise private agro-forestry and tree plantation activities. From 2019 to 2021, India added 1,540 square kilometres of forest cover of which 1,509 sq. km was outside recorded forest area. The new amendments to the Forest Act gave such incentives by clearly defining the limits of the 1996 judgment. Only land recorded as ‘forest’ in any government record on or after 1980 would invoke provisions of the Act. Forest land authorised by States for non-forestry uses between 1980-1996 would not invoke provisions of the Act. The amendments effectively mean States can no longer classify unclassified forest land, or patches of trees with forest-like characteristics as ‘forest land’. The amendments also allow forest land, up to 100 km near India’s borders, to be appropriated, without central approval, for “strategic and security” purposes. The primary criticism is that these amendments do not really contribute to regenerating natural forest, but rather incentivise afforestation for commercial ends. What is worrying is that the parliamentary committee, despite its statutory privileges, has not expressed any opinion or suggestion on the way forward. Grooming private forests might look good in theory but expecting them to be a permanent carbon stock is wishful thinking given that strong market incentives exist to use them as ‘carbon credits’. While new climate realities might necessitate changes to the way conservation laws are interpreted, these must be backed by rigorous scientific evidence.
4. Demographic transition and change in women’s lives
Sonalde Desai is Professor and Centre Director, National Data Innovation Centre at the National Council of Applied Economic Research (NCAER), and Distinguished University Professor, University of Maryland, U.S.
Women’s childhood, adulthood, and old age have all been transformed in India’s demographic journey
The passage of World Population Day (July 11) is also a time to look at how India’s demographic journey has changed the lives of its citizens, particularly its women. India’s population grew from about 340 million at Independence to 1.4 billion. This growth was fuelled by the gift of life that receding starvation, improved public health, and medical miracles brought to India. In 1941, male life expectancy was about 56 years; only 50% of boys survived to age 28. Today, life expectancy for men is 69 years, and nearly 50% live to see the ripe old age of 75. This rapid decline in mortality took parents by surprise, who no longer needed to have four children to ensure that at least two would survive, causing population growth until fertility decline caught up with the mortality decline, and the Total Fertility Rate fell from 5.7 in 1950 to 2.1 in 2019.
These statistics mask the tectonic shift in the lives of people as they learn to adjust to a longer lifespan and fewer children. Nowhere is this more apparent than in the lives of Indian women. Women’s childhood, adulthood, and old age have been transformed over the course of demographic transition, sometimes positively, sometimes negatively.
Change for Indian women
As families began having fewer children, ensuring at least one son became more difficult. With four children, the chance of not having a son was barely 6%, but with two children, it grew to 25%. Social norms and patrilocal kinship patterns combined with lack of financial security reinforce a preference for sons. The India Human Development Survey (IHDS) found that 85% of women respondents expected to rely on their sons for old age support, while only 11% expected support from their daughters. Hence, parents who want to ensure that they have at least one son among their one or two child family, resorted to sex-selective abortion, and, in some cases, the neglect of sick daughters. Consequently, the number of girls per 100 boys, ages under five dropped from 96 to 91 between 1950 and 2019.
With a fertility decline, active mothering occupies a smaller proportion of women’s lives, creating space for education and employment. Good data on this only goes back 30 years, but my research with Sojin Yu, based on the National Family Health Survey, finds that the number of years women spend caring for children under five declined from 14 years in 1992-93 to eight in 2018-20; the years spent caring for children ages six to 15 dropped from 20 to 14 years. These changes are only partly accompanied by changes in the life course of women. While women’s educational attainment increased, with over 70% of girls enrolling in secondary education, early marriage and childbearing remain the predominant forces defining women’s lives. As a recent article by Park, Hathi, Broussard, and Spears documents, the average age at first birth has hardly budged about 20 for women born in the 1940s and still remains well below 22 years for those born in the 1980s.
Early motherhood, perhaps, explains why lower fertility does not translate into higher labour force participation for women. Women need to establish secure connections to the labour market and gain work experience if they are to get skilled jobs. By the time peak childcare demands end, they have missed the window for occupations that require specific skills; only unskilled work is open to them.
Demographic shifts also affect women’s lives at older ages. With rising life expectancy, the proportion of the female population aged 65 and above increased from 5% to 11% between 1950 and 2022, and is projected to reach 21% by 2050. While the proportion of older men will also increase, aging for women has unique implications. Women generally marry men who are older and are more likely to outlive their husbands. The 2011 Census shows that while only 18% of men above age 65 are widowed, about 55% of the women are widowed. For widowed women, the lack of access to savings and property results in dependence on children, mainly sons, bringing the vicious cycle of son preference to full circle.
Harnessing gender dividend
Changing patriarchal norms may take a long time. Meanwhile, enhancing women’s access to employment and assets will reduce their reliance on sons and could break the vicious cycle of gendered disadvantage, stretching from childhood to old age. However, unlike East Asian nations where demographic transformation has led to delayed and often foregone marriage and childbearing, early marriage and childbearing remain central to Indian women’s lives. Hence, any efforts at improving women’s labour force participation must be accompanied by access to safe and affordable childcare.
A World Bank evaluation based on a randomised controlled trial in Madhya Pradesh found that the expansion of Anganwadis to include a crèche led to an increase in the work participation of mothers. Arguably, the most striking example of the importance of childcare is documented in a study based in urban China by Du and Dong; it found that as state support for childcare declined, employment rates for mothers fell from 88% to 66%.
What are the practical strategies for enhancing childcare access? One relatively low-hanging fruit would be to make staffing crèche an acceptable form of work under the National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (NREGS). At present, NREGS is being used to build physical infrastructure but there is no reason it cannot be used to develop social infrastructure where NREGS workers can help staff crèches. The burgeoning self-help group movement can be harnessed to set up neighbourhood child-care centres in urban and rural areas. Obtaining the much hoped for demographic dividend cannot be done without fully harnessing the gender dividend. Improving access to childcare is an important component of achieving this.
5. 415 million Indians came out of multidimensional poverty in 15 years, says UNDP study
A total of 415 million people moved out of poverty in India within just 15 years from 2005-06 to 2019-21, with its incidence falling from 55.1% to 16.4% during the period, the United Nations (UN) said on Tuesday.
The latest update of the global Multidimensional Poverty Index (MPI) was released by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) and the Oxford Poverty and Human Development Initiative (OPHI) at the University of Oxford.
It said that 25 countries, including India, successfully halved their global MPI values within 15 years, showing that rapid progress is attainable. These countries include Cambodia, China, Congo, Honduras, India, Indonesia, Morocco, Serbia and Vietnam.
“The report demonstrates that poverty reduction is achievable. However, the lack of comprehensive data during the period of the COVID-19 pandemic poses challenges in assessing immediate prospects,” it added.
In 2005-06, about 645 million people were in multidimensional poverty in India, with this number declining to about 370 million in 2015-16 and 230 million in 2019-21.
‘Fast progress’
The report noted that deprivation in all indicators declined in India and “the poorest States and groups, including children and people in disadvantaged caste groups, had the fastest absolute progress”.
According to the report, people who are multidimensionally poor and deprived under the nutrition indicator in India declined from 44.3% in 2005-06 to 11.8% in 2019-21, and child mortality fell from 4.5% to 1.5%.
“Those who are poor and deprived of cooking fuel fell from 52.9% to 13.9% and those deprived of sanitation fell from 50.4% in 2005/2006 to 11.3% in 2019/2021,” according to the report.
In the drinking water indicator, the percentage of people who are multidimensionally poor and deprived fell from 16.4 to 2.7 during the period, electricity (from 29 to 2.1) and housing from 44.9 to 13.6.
The report said countries with different incidences of poverty also halved their global MPI value.
While 17 countries that did so had an incidence under 25% in the first period, India and Congo had a starting incidence above 50%.
India was among the 19 countries that halved their global MPI value during one period — for India it was 2005-06 to 2015-16.
According to the 2023 release, 1.1 billion out of 6.1 billion people (just more than 18%) live in acute multidimensional poverty across 110 countries.
The report said that 25 countries, including India, halved their global MPI values within 15 years
