Ashok Mitra to EPW Trustees: Protect Editor’s Independence, Face up to Legal Threats

A copy of the letter Mitra has sent to Deepak Nayar and D.N. Ghosh, head trustee and managing trustee respectively, of the Sameeksha Trust (which publishes EPW) about the recent resignation of its editor, Paranjoy Guha Thakurta.

Text of letter sent by the economist and former West Bengal finance minister to Deepak Nayyar and D.N. Ghosh of the Sameeksha Trust.

Ashok Mitra. Credit: YouTube screengrab

Ashok Mitra, the well-known scholar-economist, former finance minister of West Bengal, founding trustee of the Sameeksha Trust and long-time contributor to the Economic and Political Weekly, has joined the list of those dismayed by the recent turn of events at the journal in which an article on the Adani group was taken down and the editor, Paranjoy Guha Thakurta, who had also co-authored that article, resigned.

The Wire has obtained a copy of the letter Mitra has sent to Deepak Nayyar and D.N. Ghosh, head trustee and managing trustee respectively, of the Sameeksha Trust which publishes EPW.

Given the public interest issues at stake, we are publishing the text of Mitra’s letter below:

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Dear Deepak and Dhrubababu,

I wish I did not have to impose on you this letter which certainly does not make pleasant reading. I however see no alternative. You will perhaps appreciate the fact that I have scrupulously avoided taking a public stand on the controversies that have been going on around the Sameeksha Trust and the Economic and Political Weekly. But the latest development, which has gone to the length of the trustees insisting that the editor must abide by the views of a co-editor who will vet whatever he writes is against the very purpose of setting up the trust in 1966.

Please allow me to recount some bits of past history. Sachin Chaudhuri had founded a unique journal, the Economic Weekly in 1949. It was a unique experiment because alongside comments on contemporary issues, it also carried serious academic essays concerning the various aspects of different social sciences.

The Economic Weekly was financed by a family business group. Way back in 1966, Sachin Chaudhuri resented a remark made over the telephone by a representative of this family and chose to shut down the periodical. Friends immediately gathered around to raise adequate funds to sustain a journal of the nature of the Economic Weekly without having to seek funds from private entities.

This was how the Sameeksha Trust was born. The trustees are supposed to protect the sovereignty of editorial policies from interference from any quarters. It is ironical that the present trustees have decided to do precisely the reverse of the original purpose for establishing the trust. The role of the Sameeksha Trust was never to act as super editors who will oversee the editorial competence of the editor selected by them barely a year ago. If the editor had to be sacked because he wrote a piece questioning what he thought were shady practices indulged by a particular business group, it could then well be argued by a cynic that the trustees who selected the editor also deserved to be sacked.

In any event, it is important to ensure that EPW continues to play its role as an independent voice of academics, activists and journalists, many of whom have always been opposed to the policies of the ruling establishment and business oligarchy. I hope you will quickly find a new editor who can restore the credibility of the journal.

Let me add here something which I feel strongly about. I think the time has come for the trustees to reflect on the composition and functioning of the trust. Many of the members have been handpicked from a narrow academic circle largely centred in Delhi. I have a few suggestions that I hope you will consider without us having to engage in a public debate.

Firstly, I think the members of the trust should have a fixed tenure of say five or at most ten years and should make way for others at the end of his/her tenure. This will be an opportunity for instilling fresh ideas as well as strengthening the spirit to resist pressures. Many of you have served for decades, and it is time to invite younger economists and social scientists to gradually replace the current members over the course of the next year or so.

Secondly, the new members should be drawn from a wider regional and academic base, and should have made substantial contribution by writing in the EPW. They should be able to stand up to coercive threats and pressures, both from the political establishment and from business groups and other powerful interests.

Thirdly, the Sameeksha Trust must be prepared for more legal threats and coercion and work harder than before to protect editorial sovereignty and complete independence of the editor and editorial staff to pursue the mandate implicit in EPW’s progressive record and credentials.

I hope you will take this advice from an old man, who was involved in founding the trust and the journal and has spent a significant part of his life in helping to strengthen the EPW. My decision to invite the two of you to join the trust was based on my belief that you will do exactly that.

I look forward to a response and your reactions to my suggestions.

Ashok Mitra

PS: Somebody this morning told me about Romila [Thapar] and Dipankar [Gupta]’s letter in the Indian Express. It does not impress me, what the eminent professors say is not the final word. The final word lies with the judiciary. As Paranjoy [Guha Thakurta] says, till now he has a clean slate.

Allahabad HC Allows Plea to Challenge UP Govt’s Refusal to Sanction Yogi Prosecution

Besides Yogi, the then Gorakhpur Mayor Anju Chaudhary and local MLA Radha Mohan Das Agrawal have also been named as accused in the case.

Lucknow: Yogi Adityanath arrives to attend BJP's legislature party meeting in Lucknow on Saturday.PTI Photo by Nand Kuma(PTI3_18_2017_000190B)

Yogi Adityanath arrives to attend BJP’s legislature party meeting in Lucknow. Credit: PTI

Allahabad: The Allahabad High Court today allowed an application seeking permission to challenge the Uttar Pradesh government’s refusal to grant sanction to prosecute Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath in a decade-old communal riots case.

A division bench comprising justices Krishna Murari and Akhilesh Chandra Sharma allowed the amendment application of Parvez Parwaz and Asad Hayat, who had moved the court seeking a CBI inquiry into the Gorakhpur communal riots of 2007.


Also read: Exclusive: The UP Government’s Colossal Cover-Up Attempt to Protect Adityanath


The court fixed August 9 as the next date of hearing, while directing the state government to file its counter-affidavit on the plea.

According to the petitioners’ counsel, S.F.A Naqvi, “We had submitted that we should be allowed to challenge the government’s decision to refuse sanction since one of the accused in the case is heading the state government.” Parwaz is also the complainant in the FIR lodged in connection with the Gorakhpur riots, while Hayat is one of the witnesses in the case.

Besides Yogi, the then Gorakhpur Mayor Anju Chaudhary and local MLA Radha Mohan Das Agrawal have also been named as accused in the case.

As Job Losses Mount, BJP Seeks to Differentiate Between Employment Creation and Job Generation

Labour minister Bandaru Dattatreya sidestepped questions on jobless economic growth and the impact of demonetisation after admitting to ‘jobless growth’.

Labour minister Bandaru Dattatreya sidestepped questions on jobless economic growth and the impact of demonetisation after admitting to ‘jobless growth’.

Women work at a dry pond under the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MNREGA) in a village on the outskirts of Kolkata, 11 February 2014. Credit: Reuters

Women work at a dry pond under the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MNREGA) in a village on the outskirts of Kolkata, 11 February 2014. Credit: Reuters

Coming under repeated attacks for job losses across sectors and its inability to stem the tide by creating an environment conducive for business growth and employment generation, the BJP has now taken to avoiding key questions and begun resorting to obfuscating the issue by trying to portray that job loss or creation and employment generation were two different things. The party-led government at the Centre has also taken to sidestepping questions on jobless economic growth and impact of demonetisation thereon.

In response to several questions on the issue in parliament, the labour and employment ministry has in the ongoing monsoon session avoided key questions while hiding behind the comfort of spelling out the features of key central schemes for employment generation.

1.5 millions jobs lost in Jan-April 2017

The Wire had earlier reported how 1.5 million jobs were lost in India during the first four months of 2017, according to data released by Centre for Monitoring Indian Economy (CMIE). The issue of job losses has been repeatedly raised members in parliament through questions.

Today, in response to a question on whether automation in industry would result in job losses and retrenchment of factory workers and the estimated job losses/gains in low and high skilled IT industry in the country so far, labour minister Bandaru Dattatreya avoided a direct answer and only acknowledged that “according to the World Development Report (WDR) 2016 of World Bank based on technological feasibility, 69% of jobs in India are susceptible to automation.”

The minister also said that “companies are re-aligning and re-adjusting themselves to the changing business scenario and adjusting their workforce accordingly” as the technologies such as advanced robotics and automation are changing job roles across industries.

3.9 million employed in IT-ITES in 2017

He added that as per National Association of Software and Services Companies (NASSCOM), the industry was estimated to employ nearly 3.9 million people in FY2017, an addition of approximately 1,70,000 people over FY2016, and that the IT-ITES industry would remain a major net hirer in FY 2017-18. But clearly this data was far removed from the job loss figures CMIE had indicated.

Noting that the Centre uses results of surveys conducted by ministry of statistics & programme implementation and labour bureau to estimate levels of employment and unemployment, the minister said quick quarterly surveys on employment and unemployment in selected labour intensive and export oriented sectors are also conducted and as per the 2016 QQS “the net addition of jobs in these sectors is estimated to be 2.31 lakhs.”

22,000 IT/BPO jobs added in 2016 second half

“In IT/BPO sector,” he said, “there has been estimated increase in employment of 0.22 lakhs during July – December, 2016.”

The minister’s reply then went deep into the details of various government run employment generation schemes such as the Prime Minister’s Employment Generation Programme (PMEGP) run by ministry of micro, small & medium enterprises, Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MGNREGA), Pt. Deen Dayal Upadhyaya Grameen Kaushalya Yojana (DDU-GKY) scheme run by ministry of rural development and Deendayal Antyodaya Yojana-National Urban Livelihoods Mission (DAY-NULM) run by ministry of housing & urban poverty alleviation.

It also delved into how a new scheme, Pradhan Mantri Rojgar Protsahan Yojana, has been initiated by the ministry of labour and employment in the year 2016-17 for incentivising industry for promoting employment generation with the allocation of Rs 1000 crore. Under this scheme, he said, employers would be provided an incentive to enhance employment where the government will pay the employer’s contribution of 8.33% employees pension scheme made to new employees.

Government repeating itself

In fact, the data on government schemes appears to have become a standard for all ministry answers on the issue, no matter whether the member has sought their details or not. A week back, on July 24, Dattatreya had given out almost the same data while sidestepping the question from Jitendra Chaudhary on “whether the government is aware of the apprehension raised from various quarters about increased job crisis in the country in near future” and “whether the government has taken note of firing of large number of employees in the private sector”.

All that the minister offered by way of an answer was that “employment generation has been one of the most important priorities of the government. Employment generation is both a cause and consequence of economic growth and is impacted by demographic shifts and technological transformations.” He had again spoken about the QQS and the government schemes.

Jobless economic growth

Similarly, when on July 17, five members had raised the issue of “jobless economic growth” and demanded to know among other things “whether the current growth of the economy is not translating into more employment”, Dattatreya sidestepped the issue.

Though the minister had on May 30 this year himself stated that “the current growth is a jobless growth. Many European and Asian countries, including India, are facing it… growth is being reported but it is not reflecting in employment generation,” in his answer he did not repeat himself. Rather he offered 2015 data of the International Labour Organisation to state that India’s Labour Force Participation Rate (LFPR) or the percentage of population employed (of workforce aged 15 years and above) was lower than that of most other continents at 53.8%.

The Minister, however, stated that a task-force has been constituted under the Chairpersonship of Vice Chairman, NITI Aayog to address the issue of timely, periodic and reliable data on job creation and that its report has been placed in the public domain.

Key questions avoided

Similarly, Dattatreya had chosen to deftly answer a question on the “impact of demonetisation on job market” in his reply to member of parliament Rahul Kaswan on July 17. While the member had asked among other things “whether the unorganized sector in the country had to face loss of job opportunities on account of demonetisation” and “whether the government has conducted any study to assess the impact of demonetisation in the employment market”, all that the minister had to state was “employment in unorganized sector depends on variety of factors and it is difficult to pin point the degree of impact of demonetisation thereon. There is no such input available with this Ministry nor any such study has been conducted in this regard.”

Did Amit Shah make Dattatreya change track?

A probable reason for the evasive responses on the issue of job losses and impact of demonetisation could be pressure on the ministry from the party. In June, BJP national president Amit Shah had while disagreeing with Dattatreya’s views on “jobless economic growth” stated that job creation in tourism and aviation sectors was not factored in by the latter.

Shah, while defending his government’s economic policies, had also stated that “the investment made in various sectors, including through programmes like Make in India, is bringing in more funds and would create jobs.”

In fact, Shah had given an all new dimension to the issue of job creation and employment generation, when he had sought to differentiate between the two. He claimed that through financing by Mudra Bank, which extended loans without guarantee, over 7 crore youth have been provided self-employment opportunities. “”As many as 7.64 crore youth have got employment through Mudra bank. The loan amount that is disbursed by the bank varies from Rs 10,000 to Rs 10 lakh. These people turned from job seekers to job-generators,” he had claimed.

The BJP president reiterated this claim at a press conference in Lucknow today where he insisted that the government was focussed on employment generation and not just creation of jobs.

‘Media Bol’ Episode 08: Political Upheaval in Bihar

In the eighth episode of Media Bol, Urmilesh discusses the media coverage of the recent political upheaval in Bihar with Jai Shankar Gupta, editor of ‘Deshbandhu’, and senior journalist Neerja Chowdhury.

In the eighth episode of Media Bol, Urmilesh discusses the media coverage of the recent political upheaval in Bihar with Jai Shankar Gupta, editor of ‘Deshbandhu’, and senior journalist Neerja Chowdhury.

Why Premchand Thought That Elimination of Opposition Is a Threat to Democracy

“We have the right to consider holy any animal we like but to hope that followers of another religion will consider it equally sacred is nothing but to incite violence.”

“We have the right to consider holy any animal we like but to hope that followers of another religion will consider it equally sacred is nothing but to incite violence.”

Prime Minister Narendra Modi. Credit: Reuters/Amit Dave

Prime Minister Narendra Modi. Credit: Reuters/Amit Dave

“After the landslide victory of the Nazi Party in Germany, the question that arises is will Germany really turn into a fascist regime and will the Nazis be able to hold and consolidate power for at least five years? If it happens and the Nazis get an opportunity to establish themselves, they will suck the democratic life and vision out of Germany through its political and military strength in such a way that not a single opponent of the Nazi Party would be left in Germany for 25 years.”

Premchand recorded this apprehension in a brief commentary titled ‘Germany Ka Bhavishya’ (The Future of Germany) right after the victory of the Nazi Party in Germany in 1933. What is noteworthy in this excerpt is the part where he forebodes the “democratic vision” of Germany being sucked out. He says that the rise to power of one specific political force is a threat to democracy, endangering its existence. But this victory was nothing usual. “The growing repression of the illegitimate army of the Nazi Party in Germany and the crushing of all opposing powers prior to the election is the sole reason for Nazi victory,” he writes. “If not so, was it fair to conduct elections after incarcerating communists, beating up opponents and banning rival newspapers like Mussolini did and then declare it to be a victory of popular vote?”

It is not necessary to view Premchand’s observation in the context of the present times but the focus of his comment is the forced elimination of opposition before the victory of the Nazi Party. He does not censure the German opposition parties for their inability to protect themselves. He clearly states that the crime was Hitler’s who was phasing out the opposition through undemocratic means. The Nazis had a private army which none of the other political parties in Germany possessed.

Premchand unequivocally states that the elimination of opposition should be a cause for worry and one who carries it out must be held responsible for it and must be questioned.

Premchand’s sharp critical vision allowed him to see right through the what was happening in the world around him. His makes his stand clear. He holds European civilisation responsible for the events that unfolded in Germany. The suppression of Jews was one reason for the monopoly of the Nazi Party, the basis for which pre-existed. “We are tired of hearing the laurels of European civilisation. They are proud of their culture. We, the people of Asia, are foolish, barbaric, uncivilised. But when we look at the savagery of all these nations, we feel that these titles be returned to them along with interest.”

Premchand. Credit: Wikimedia Commons

Premchand. Credit: Wikimedia Commons

Speaking of antisemitism in Europe, Premchand writes, “The Jews are affluent people and nowadays policies of nations are money-driven. Agreed, that Jews had a hand in spreading communism in Russia. We may also admit that the Jews have taken it upon themselves to seek revenge for long-standing rivalries against the Christians and to crush their civilisation. But does it mean that the majority of a nation should become hell-bent on wiping the Jews out? Right after its victory, the Nazis have launched an onslaught against the Jewish community in Germany. While physical assaults and spilling of blood continues, the Jews are not allowed to leave the country. They cannot even save their lives. They have lived there for generations and claim an equal share in the advancement of the country. Yet they no longer have a place for themselves in Germany.”

Though it is not necessary to view Premchand’s remarks in light of the present context, in his own time Premchand also compared the events unfolding in his country with what was happening in Germany: “Here, the past few days have witnessed ugliness between a group of Hindus and Muslims. Responsible for it are those who have been enlightened in the West. The same Western civilisation is making a direct impact here.”

Nationalism is one invention of this Western civilisation. We are already aware of Rabindranath Tagore’s ‘Critique of Nationalism’. Bhagat Singh’s criticism of narrow-minded nationalism is less publicised as he has always been projected as a fanatical nationalist. In his essay, ‘Rashtriyata Aur Antar-Rashtriyata’ (Nationalism and Internationalism), Premchand writes, “Nationalism is the leprosy of the present era just as communalism was the leprosy of the medieval period. Both result in the same. Within its narrow perimeter, communalism aimed at establishing a peaceful and happy state, mutilating and detroying everything that fell beyond it without the slightest qualm. Nationalism, too, dreams of a Ram Rajya within its finite limits.”

Premchand projects a preference for internationalism over nationalism – a notion somewhat similar to the ideas of Gandhi, Nehru and Bhagat Singh. At the time when Premchand was writing, the question of nationalism rode on a cleft between Hindus and Muslims. Regretting the failure of the Hindus to view Khilafat movement from the comprehensive perspective of Mahatma Gandhi, he says, “The truth is that the Hindus have never understood the importance of Khilafat but always looked at it sceptically.” He adds more sternly, “The Hindus have never been known for their political generosity, but the kind of narrow-mindedness they have displayed at this occasion, one is forced to conclude that this community is at the peak of political bankruptcy. For no other reason could the entire Hindu community collectively go in a frenzy motivated by a few so-called nationalists driven by hysteria.”

Criticising the formation of Hindu organisations and shuddhi or cleansing movements, Premchand says, “Sadly, even the liberal leaders are not speaking a word against it.”

“Are there any Hindus today,” aska Premchand, “who are dedicatedly working towards Hindu-Muslim unity, and believe that it is a significant issue India is faced with? The pain and the agony for people can no where be seen among Hindus. They are ecstatic over the cleansing of a few thousand malkans as if that was their goal; as if independence has been achieved.”

“In the matter of cow-killing, the Hindus have adopted unjust ways since the beginning,” he writes. “We have the right to consider holy any animal we like but to hope that followers of another religion will consider it equally sacred is nothing but to incite violence. Cows are eaten all across the world. Would you pronounce a death warrant against the whole world for it?”

Though Premchand was writing it nearly a century ago, is it time now to put his words into action?

Apoorvanand teaches in Delhi University.

This article was originally published in The Wire Hindi and has been translated by Naushin Rehman.

India’s Non-Farm Loans Could Settle Distressed Farm Loans in Eight States 

Reserve Bank of India data shows that as of March 2016, the non-priority sector bad loans stood at Rs 4.1 lakh crore.

Reserve Bank of India data shows that as of March 2016, the non-priority sector bad loans stood at Rs 4.1 lakh crore.

The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) seal is pictured on a gate outside the RBI headquarters in Mumbai. Credit: Reuters/Danish Siddiqui/Files

Indian companies and individuals owed Rs 4.1 lakh crore to public sector banks in overdue loans in the “non-priority sector” – mainly corporate lending, car loans, personal finance, credit card dues and home loans – as of March 2016. These non-performing assets (NPAs), if fully recovered, would suffice to pay off distressed farm loans across eight states, with a third (32%) still left over, an IndiaSpend analysis of Reserve Bank of India (RBI) data shows.

In the decade to 2016, non-priority sector bad loans rose more than 22-fold (2166%) from when they were valued at Rs 18,300 crore in 2006. During the same period, the sector’s share in public sector banks’ NPAs rose from 44.2% to 76.7%. This growth was particularly pronounced after 2011-12-fold (1110%) in five years.

Public sector banks’ bad loans in the priority sector – which includes loans for agriculture, micro and small enterprises (MSMEs), small-scale industries, education, affordable housing and renewable energy – also grew during the same period, but slower. These grew five times (465.8%) from Rs 22,200 crore in 2006 to Rs 1.25 lakh crore in 2016, although their share in the total NPAs of public sector banks shrank by more than 55% (thanks to the growth of non-priority sector NPAs).

Agriculture-related bad loans, valued at Rs 48,467 crore, comprise the third largest NPAs, after corporate NPAs (Rs 3.16 lakh crore) and MSME NPAs (Rs 74,051 crore), according to this 2016 Lok Sabha reply.

“For non-priority loans, NPAs result when business models go wrong. They are normally linked to sectors rather than individuals – which is the case of farm loans, where the monsoon plays an important role,” Madan Sabnavis, chief economist of Credit Analysis & Research Ltd, a ratings agency, told IndiaSpend. “An economic downturn increases chances of NPAs as companies cannot service their debt. When there is no malafide intent or managerial incompetence, it is mainly such external conditions that lead to corporate NPAs. For farm loans it is more straight-forward and linked to monsoon,” Sabnavis said.

RBI officials refused to comment for this story.

85% jump in write-offs as NPAs eat into banks’ lending capacity

As of March 2016, 7.5% of all lending in India – by public, private and foreign banks, to both priority and non-priority sectors – amounting to Rs 6.1 lakh crore had become non-performing assets. This is more than twice the union budget for defence at Rs 2.6 lakh crore in 2017-18, which received the highest allocation among all central ministries this year.

This is the highest recorded gross NPA ratio in the last ten years, RBI data show. Prior to 2014, the ratio typically remained below 4%.

Such high NPA ratios limit banks’ ability to lend money to productive sectors.

An asset quality review introduced in April 2015, through which the RBI forced banks to finally recognise their stressed assets as NPAs and record them as such on their balance sheets, was the key reason why NPA ratios apparently rose from 2014-15 onwards.

The review unearthed numerous cases of loan “restructuring”– giving the borrower some concessions to avoid a default – and dressing up of account books. Over a decade, NPA write-offs jumped 85% from Rs 8,799 crore in 2006 to Rs 59,547 crore in 2016, according to this 2016 Lok Sabha reply.

The trend is significant, a former senior RBI official told IndiaSpend. “All provisions against write-offs eat into the capital of the bank, reducing its capacity to lend. The sharp slowdown in credit growth over the past couple of years is significantly attributable to banks’ unwillingness to take on any further risk of write-offs, which would reduce their capital even further,” the official wrote in an email, requesting not to be named. From a policy perspective, he explained, to sustain nominal GDP growth of 12-13%, credit should grow at least at that rate, if not faster. (Nominal GDP is estimated at current prices, not taking inflation into account, while real GDP is estimated at constant prices after accounting for inflation.)

This is evident from the waning stream of credit advances to both priority and non-priority sectors in recent years. While the volume of credit has risen in absolute terms, its year-on-year growth has slowed, RBI data show. Growth of lending in both sectors slowed by more than 35% – from 19.3% in 2013 to 12.4% in 2016 in the priority sector, and 11.2% in 2013 to 7% in 2016 in the non-priority sector.

“If [bank] capital is being eroded by loan losses, infusions are needed, either from the government or from the market. Neither is looking feasible at the moment. So, sooner or later, slow credit growth will impede GDP growth,” the former RBI official said.

Commercial banks’ aggressive long-term lending caused the NPA problem 

Most of the experts IndiaSpend spoke to for this story agreed that much of the NPA problem arose when commercial banks lent aggressively, for long durations, to the non-priority sector in the early 2000s, when the economy reached a growth rate of over 9% in 2005-06, 2006-07 and 2007-08.

“About half the NPAs in the system are in the infrastructure sectors. A substantial portion of the remaining are in sectors such as steel, which have been subject to various business shocks. These are mostly loans for capital expenditure and are long term,” the former RBI official told IndiaSpend. “Priority sector loans, on the other hand – crop loans, for example – are more often short-term loans for working capital purposes,” he explained.

The global economic slowdown of 2008 ushered in a prolonged period of uncertainty in India as elsewhere. Exports fell, some mining projects faced regulatory bans, sectors such as power and iron and steel faced difficulty getting permits, raw material prices fluctuated and infrastructure projects faced power shortages. All these factors, coming on top of aggressive past lending by banks, caused NPAs to swell, finance minister Arun Jaitley told the Lok Sabha in 2016.

During the early 2000s, when banking reforms were gathering pace, development finance institutions (DFIs) such as IDBI, ICICI and IFCI began to lose ground. DFIs had been created to provide medium- to long-term credit for industrial projects, and supplement commercial banks’ offering of short-term credit for working capital.

Initially, the government made low-cost capital available for DFIs, but withdrew subsidised funding in the early 1990s, leaving DFIs to rely on capital markets to raise funds. Further, a significant chunk of their loans to projects in the steel, textiles and basic chemicals sectors, among others, began to experience delays and cost escalations, turning loans into NPAs, as this Hindu Business Line report from January 2002 explains.

When DFIs consequently hiked their lending rates, they became uncompetitive against commercial banks that were now rapidly increasing their long-term portfolios as post-liberalisation reforms had opened up the banking sector to private and foreign players.

“Since 2002 commercial banks started lending more long-term loans compared to earlier when the bulk of their lending was short-term – working capital and trade credits,” Pronab Sen, country director for the India programme of the International Growth Centre, a New Delhi-based think-tank, told IndiaSpend. “In 2002, short-term credit accounted for 73% of bank loans – this is down to 45% now.”

As of March 2016, medium- and long-term loans had touched almost 50% of total loan portfolio, according to this Hindu Business Line report from April.

Share of corporate bad loans rose 67% after 2010-11

The share of non-priority NPAs in public banks rose from less than half in 2011 (45.9%) to greater than three-fourth (76.7%) of total NPAs in 2016. Meanwhile, the share of priority sector NPAs shrank by more than 55% (thanks to the growth of non-priority sector NPAs) from 53.8% in 2011 to 23.3% in 2016.

Infrastructure lending is also implicated as a major culprit in this Economic and Political Weekly (EPW) report from March, which says banks tried to push these loans in an attempt to stymie the effects of the 2008 global economic crisis.

As the regulator, the RBI relaxed income-recognition norms and allowed banks to restructure firms’ loans instead of allowing these to turn into NPAs. “This made it easier for already over-leveraged [or financially over-burdened] companies to borrow more,” the EPW report said. Between 2010 and 2012, the borrowing capacity of these companies further grew while their underlying financial situation worsened. By 2011, the Indian economy officially entered into a recession as demand started to slow down.

“From the dramatic growth years of the 2003-08 period, real GDP growth rate during 2011-13 slowed down to 6%. New projects failed to take off due to the lack of government approvals and projects that had received credit during the credit boom period got stalled owing to the general slowing down of the economy. The problem was especially acute in the infrastructure sector. This led to a fresh wave of NPAs, especially in sectors such as infrastructure, steel, metals, textiles, etc,” the EPW report said.

In 2016, fraud NPAs accounted for 7.15% of all NPAs

Commercial banks had enhanced lending for long-gestation projects even as they had little expertise or experience in assessing such projects’ creditworthiness.

As a result, data showed that 7.15% of total gross NPAs as on March 2016 constituted fraud, as finance minister Jaitley admitted in a reply to the Lok Sabha in 2016.

“This is even an greater worry [than the growth of NPAs or write-offs] because it directly reflects that risk assessment is not strong and it’s not the external environment but lacunae in the systems that has led to this,” Sabnavis of the credit rating agency said.

Since 2013, recovery of bad loans has dropped 53%

While NPAs and write-offs have leaped ahead unchecked, bad loan recovery has failed to keep pace. Since 2013, NPA recoveries have halved from 22% in 2013 to 10.3% in 2016, RBI data show. Recovery dropped from 18.4% in 2014 to 12.4% in 2016.

The government has advised banks to act against guarantors of defaulting borrowers under relevant sections of the Securitization and Reconstruction of Financial Assets and Enforcement of Security Interest (SARFAESI) Act, 2002, and other laws such as the Indian Contract Act, 1872,and Recovery of Debts due to Banks and Financial Institutions Act, 1993, etc., Jaitley said in his 2016 Lok Sabha response.

Of the 4.6 million cases referred to various recovery channels, RBI data show, 95.7% were referred to the alternative dispute resolution forums of Lok Adalats; 3.7% for prosecution under the SARFAESI Act, 2002, which allows banks and other financial institutions to auction properties to recover loans; and 0.5% to Debt Recovery Tribunals (DRTs), which work expressly to recover banks’ and other financial institutions’ debts.

While the number of cases referred to these channels has risen over four-fold since 2013, actual recovery has dropped by nearly half (44%) since 2015, data show.

Bad loan recovery under the SARFAESI Act – which accounted for the most money recovered – witnessed the biggest decline, of 40% between 2015 and 2016. Though loan recovery through Lok Adalats and DRTs picked up in 2016, the loans recovered in 2016 are still lower in value than the recovery in 2013.

In 2015-16, banks recovered Rs 22,800 crore of NPAs, lower than the amount recovered in 2013-14 (Rs 23,300), RBI data show.

Corporate NPAs vs farm loans waivers

Besides recovering NPAs through these channels, Jaitley also said the government and the RBI have undertaken measures such as setting up a joint lenders’ forum, a strategic debt restructuring scheme and a scheme for strategic structuring of stressed assets to resolve bad loans.

However, these measures appear to undo the work of the RBI’s asset quality review undertaken in 2015. Debt restructuring merely helps banks brush NPAs under the carpet, experts told IndiaSpend.

“Treating them [non-priority NPAs] as restructured assets where you increase the repayment periods and lower the interest rates delayed the inevitable. They should’ve been recognised earlier itself,” said Sabnavis. “‘This evergreening’ of stressed assets – giving a new loan to pay off the earlier loan – is common practice. The RBI is trying to prevent this from happening,” Sen from the India programme of the International Growth Centre told IndiaSpend.

Although the government appears eager to give non-priority sector corporate borrowers some leeway in repayment, it is quite likely to give into loan waiver demands, as IndiaSpend reported on June 15.

While corporates have assets to use as collateral for more borrowings, farmers – 85% of whom are small and marginal – are too poor to qualify for more loans. Further, experts reason, the central government bears the responsibility for NPA resolution and state governments for loan waivers.

“Farm loans do have special features such as a six-month servicing period compared to three months for other sectors and in the case of natural disasters the loans are rolled over for a period of upto three years,” Sen told IndiaSpend.

But these are not blanket provisions, he explains in this report published in Livemint on June 23. The measures are only applicable to farmers of officially designated ‘affected districts.’ The provision was already invoked in 2014 and 2015 in Maharashtra when the region witnessed drought, alleviating distress somewhat.

“The year 2016-17 is different. There was no drought or any other natural calamity. The farmers’ problems are almost entirely the outcome of demonetisation… practically all farmers have suffered, and there has been no rolling over of their loans. As a consequence, farmers across the country have to either agitate or face the prospect of default,” Sen wrote. “While waivers absolve the farmer of all liability, defaults entail serious consequences such as loss of collateral, if any, and loss of access to future bank loans.”

Last week, after reporting a spike in its own NPAs “due to farm loan waivers,” HDFC Bank warned that lenders may discontinue fresh loans to the agriculture sector, The Economic Times reported on July 28.

“Banks are likely to see increase in NPAs in the agriculture sector and a general worsening of credit culture… Loan waivers are likely to also impact the supply of credit as fresh lending to the agriculture sector could dry up,” the bank’s economists said in a note.

To be sure, waivers come with the imminent possibility of ‘errors of inclusion’ – even those farmers who do not need a waiver get it – making it an expensive prospect for the state exchequer, as the HDFC economists pointed out in their note.

However, defaulting on farm loans exposes the sector that employs 56% of India’s workforce to a heavy penalty. It may force the most distressed and the most vulnerable out of access to formal credit and possibly out of farming as well, Sen told IndiaSpend.

So should lenders waive farm loans? Or should they “restructure” non-priority sector NPAs? “The main consideration here is [that] a lot of the non-priority NPAs are large and valued customers of the banks, who also have considerable political clout,” Sen told IndiaSpend.

Alison Saldanha is an assistant editor with IndiaSpend.

IndiaSpend.com is a data-driven, public-interest journalism non-profit.

The Slump in Food Prices Sparks Calls for More Interest Rate Cuts

The Reserve Bank of India is under pressure to cut its main policy rate beyond the 25 basis points markets have priced in for Wednesday’s policy meeting.

The Reserve Bank of India is under pressure to cut its main policy rate beyond the 25 basis points markets have priced in for Wednesday’s policy meeting.

FILE PHOTO: An employee collects lentils from a container inside a grocery store at a residential area in Mumbai, India, May 11, 2016. Credit: Reuters/Shailesh Andrade/File Photo

FILE PHOTO: An employee collects lentils from a container inside a grocery store at a residential area in Mumbai, India, May 11, 2016. Credit: Reuters/Shailesh Andrade/File Photo

Latur: A nearly 60% drop in prices of a popular type of lentil is hurting Indian farmer Sanjay Somwanshi, but it is doing wonders for the country’s inflation – and piling pressure on a stubborn central bank to cut interest rates more aggressively.

Standing next to sacks of “pigeon peas” in Latur, an agricultural hub about eight hours from Mumbai by train, Somwanshi cuts a narrow slit in one and scoops out a handful of the red-coloured lentils.

He harvested them in February but delayed selling them because prices were too low.

“For the last six months I have been waiting for prices to move up, but they have in fact gone down further,” he said. “I can’t wait more as I need money for fertilisers.”

Falling prices for pigeon pea lentils have contributed to a slump for food that dropped annual consumer price inflation to 1.54% in June, the lowest since a new index was adopted in 2012.

There’s been a reversal in food prices; in June, they dropped 2.1% from a year earlier, while in July 2016 they shot up by 8.35%, a two-year peak.

The change in food prices has prompted calls on the Reserve Bank of India to cut its main policy rate beyond the 25 basis points markets have priced in for Wednesday’s policy meeting.

There might be tension with a government urging rate cuts to boost an economy that grew 6.1% in the January-March quarter, the slowest in more than two years.

‘A just assessment’ 

Soumya Kanti Ghosh, State Bank of India chief economist, said the way “typically volatile” food inflation is expected to stay low “should give the RBI comfort to cut rates more than 25 basis points beyond August.”

Given a benign inflation outlook, “deeper rate cuts will be a just and correct assessment of the current situation,” he said.

For years, India suffered double-digit increases in food prices, leaving monetary policy dependent on the vagaries of weather.

Proponents of further rate cuts believe India is in the midst of a sustained easing of food prices as the government has tamped them by keeping a lid on the minimum prices farmers can charge for their produce.

Furthermore, the government has also banned exports of lentils and put a tax on sugar exports while promoting imports of edible oils, wheat and some types of lentils in which India is not self-sufficient.

Arvind Subramanian, the Finance Ministry’s chief economic adviser, has argued strenuously in recent weeks that inflation is on sustained easing trend, in part due to government measures.

Cheaper imports

Farmers and others in Latur agree government efforts are a key reason behind the food-prices lump.

“The government is allowing cheaper imports despite record production. It hasn’t lifted its ban on exports. These moves created oversupply in the market and pulled down prices,” said Nitin Kalantri, a food processor.

Barclays estimates average food inflation was about 11% in 2009-2014 under the Congress-led government compared with around 5% under Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s administration.

For sure, food inflation could increase; the prices of onions, central to Indian cooking, have risen.

Also, the RBI has indicated it wants evidence of deeper agricultural reforms to be convinced of a permanent shift in food inflation, according to policy minutes.

Furthermore, the RBI believes it has less maneuvering room as it looks at other factors such as sticky core inflation in its quest to meet a 4% inflation target.

“Given the view that the interest rate cycle is close to bottoming out, the monetary policy committee is likely to emphasize a wait-and-watch stance rather than being proactive on rates,” said A. Prasanna, an economist at ICICI Securities Primary Dealership in Mumbai.

(Reuters)

Supreme Court Order on Domestic Abuse Cases Is a Step Back for Women’s Rights Law

By saying that the misuse of IPC Section 498A is rampant and needs to be tackled by instituting welfare committees to look into cases before action is taken, the court has revealed its biases.

By saying that the misuse of IPC Section 498A is rampant and needs to be tackled by instituting welfare committees to look into cases before action is taken, the court has revealed its biases.

Rajesh Sharma and Ors vs State of UP institutionalises the prejudices and rehabilitates the myths which the women’s movement in India has battled over decades. Credit: PTI

Rajesh Sharma and Ors vs State of UP institutionalises the prejudices and rehabilitates the myths which the women’s movement in India has battled over decades. Credit: PTI

On July 27, the Supreme Court laid down directions in Rajesh Sharma and Ors vs State of UP “to prevent the misuse of Section 498A [on a husband or his relative subjecting a woman to cruelty] of the Indian Penal Code (IPC) as acknowledged in certain studies and decisions”. Incidentally, this is the same court that chose to look the other way when LGBT activists, in Suresh Kumar Kaushal vs Naz Foundation, brought to its notice the wanton abuse of another sister penal provision, Section 377, saying that “mere fact that the section is misused by police authorities” would not impact upon the legality of the provision.

Section 498A of the IPC has “terrorised menfolk” for a while now since its birth in the statute book in 1983. Statistics of a large volume of non-follow up or acquittals under this provision adulterated with a generous measure of anecdotal evidence of cases of “husband and in law harassment by false implication in ‘dowry cases’” has contributed to the successful counter narrative of “misuse” which the court has bought into the Rajesh Sharma order.

Shaken by the all-round criticism of its retrograde acquittal in 1978 of the constables who allegedly raped a tribal girl in Mathura, India’s top court has had a catharsis with a series of pro-women judicial decisions. Be it the Mary Roy case (1986, when the Supreme Court upheld Christian women’s inheritance rights), the Shah Bano case (1986, upholding Muslim women’s right to maintenance on divorce), the Rupan Deol Bajaj case (1988, in favour of women co-employees’ right against sexual harassment), the Vishakha judgement (1996, listing guidelines on workplace sexual harassment), the Gurmit Singh case (1996, ruling that the sole testimony of a woman is sufficient to convict a rapist), or the Githa Hariharan case (1999, granting a mother’s right to be a guardian) – the top court has been emphatic about its gender sensitivity.

The peculiarities of Rajesh Sharma

But Rajesh Sharma closes that chapter and the golden run for women’s rights might just be over. Rajesh Sharma has done nothing dramatically new. In fact, the case notices how several high courts, such as the Delhi high court in the Chander Bhan case (2008) as well as the Madras high court, have jumped in to rein in and “judicially acknowledge” the “misuse” of Section 498A, by stipulating directions to the police on how to “investigate” complaints of cruelty by a married woman. In fact, the top court itself stepped in to protect innocent husbands and in-laws from harassment in the Arnesh Kumar case (2014) when it had restrained police officers from automatically arresting the accused in a complaint under section 498A and made action in such complaints subject to magisterial oversight.

Why then should Rajesh Sharma merit singling out and criticism from feminists? The only addition it brings is that it introduces the concept of a ‘Family Welfare Committee’, to be constituted in each district by the District Legal Services Authority, which shall give a “report” to the police in a month after “looking into” any complaint under Section 498A. Till such a report, “no arrest should normally be made”. The court directed that such committees should be peopled by “para legal volunteers/social workers/retired persons/wives of working officers/other citizens” and should be imparted “basic minimum training” and given “such honorarium as may be considered viable”.

A judgement is often more than the lis (latin for dispute) it decides. Else Marbury vs Madison (where the US Supreme Court gave itself the power to judicially review and overrule laws enacted by Congress) would have been a simple employment dispute between the rich Washingtonian William Marbury and the new secretary James Madison, who had suppressed his warrant of appointment as Marbury had been appointed by the outgoing president. The wily Chief Justice Marshall, sensing the political hot potato the case was, took off on a tangent, holding that the law which Congress had enacted giving Marbury the right to bring his case directly to the top court was itself bad and beyond the power of the Congress to enact. While the new president won and the old appointee lost, the court emerged as the serious winner, having established that it was the final word on the validity of laws enacted by the legislature and could even quash such laws.

Similarly, Brown vs Board of Education (which ended the segregation of blacks in the US) would have just been a school admissions case and Shah Bano (which tarnished Rajiv Gandhi’s Camelot when he undid the verdict by enacting a law taking away maintenance rights of muslim women) would have remained a matrimonial conflict involving a Bhopali lawyer who did not want to give his ex wife a few hundred rupees.

The impact of Rajesh Sharma is not confined to the quixotic book-club type bodies it has dreamt of, where retirees and officers’ wives would oversee and sanction legal action which should otherwise have followed the Criminal Procedure Code, which does not subject any complaint to such a pre-scrutiny. Rajesh Sharma institutionalises the prejudices and rehabilitates the myths which the women’s movement in India has battled over decades, with even some measure of success.

The progression of women’s rights law

The march of women’s rights law has closely mirrored India’s strides in development. The early 1980s, with the fallout of socialist policies, saw women as marginalised and playthings in the hands of men. Dowry was indeed a method of economic transition for the marrying groom, and the nation witnessed a rash of “dowry deaths”. Law, as usual, like the proverbial Bollywood police, had to always play catch up. The inadequacies of the law and the complacency and connivance of the legal system witnessed the mothers Satyarani Chadha and Shah Jahan take their battle against the dowry deaths of their daughters and the botched prosecution to the steps of the Supreme Court. The anti-dowry movement led to law reform. Dowry deaths were made a special offence. A presumption was inserted into the penal code that an unnatural death within seven years of marriage would be presumed to be a dowry-related death. It was during this period that Section 498A made its maiden appearance in the penal code. It punished the cruel treatment of married women at the hands of husbands and their relatives. Three years was the stipulated maximum punishment. The offence was cognisable (so the police could investigate without any court order) and non-bailable (only the court could grant bail).

The 1990s witnessed the unfolding of unprecedented liberalisation of India. This got more women into the workplace, more women educated and more women conscious of their legal rights and entitlements. While dowry remained a constant, like the North Star, women’s problems had mutated and become more complex. Sexual harassment at the workplace, stalking, acid attacks – the list only becomes more morbid. The law continued to play catch up. The Supreme Court proposed the idea of the Vishakha Guidelines on Sexual Harassment in 1996, but parliament got its act together in 2013.

While the court was covering itself with glory championing women’s empowerment, gradually the momentum for a counter narrative was also building up. The whispers slowly grew louder as the issue was mainstreamed in the new millennium. The murmurs were on the law’s perceived bias towards women and the reverse discrimination against men. Groups such as “husbands facing violence” and “movement for section 498B” gained traction. Soon, anecdotal evidence of “misuse of the dowry law” by women and reports about the bias of the legal system against husbands received public acceptance.

The myth is that Section 498A is a brahmastra in the hands of the wife, which was to be deployed to settle petty matrimonial scores. The modus operandi being to falsely and indiscriminately implicate the husband and his relatives – the old, young and infirm – and extract a hefty settlement under the threat of criminal prosecution. The other myths can be listed a follows:

  • Women are not best at deciding for themselves.
  • Women rush into matrimonial litigation at the slightest of pretexts.
  • Women are best served through encouraging reconciliation and acceptance of subordinate roles.
  • Women can only be treated with cruelty for dowry.
  • Real and actionable violence is only “physical”.
Is the era of the Supreme Court championing women's rights coming to an end? Credit: PTI

Is the era of the Supreme Court championing women’s rights coming to an end? Credit: PTI

Why Rajesh Sharma is a step back

Unfortunately, in Rajesh Sharma, the court gets entangled in each of these prejudices and they form the inarticulate (though sometimes articulated) major premise of this decision. Perhaps the court, having completely bought into the narrative of “misuse”, proceeds ahead with the conception that women “rush” into filing complaints without thinking through the consequences. This threatens “reconciliation” and also endangers “senior citizens” and women who are the in-laws at risk of arrest and police action.

While the “studies” of the wanton abuse of the “dowry law” seemed contrived and anecdotal, truth be told, there was a ring of truth in the accusation. This was on account of the gaping void in the law. On a lighter vein, having plodded through hundreds of matrimonial pleadings, I can say with certainty that “not serving the groom’s friends water” is the favourite add-on for a cut and paste divorce petition from a husband. Is this really the best that we can come up with against an errant wife? The wives’ lawyers have evidently been more creative. The best I have heard being “my mother-in-law snatched my mangalsutra and wore it herself.”

The question we must ask ourselves is why the need was felt to embellish and over implicate the dewars, nands and jethanis in the first place. This stemmed from the very prejudices and misconceptions which have been legitimised by Rajesh Sharma. First, that “cruelty” under Section 498A must somehow involve dowry. Second, it had to involve serious physical harm. Rajesh Sharma, in fact, makes an exception for serious physical injury and death cases – these cases do not need to be sent to the welfare committee of do-gooders on honorarium.

Nothing can be farther from the truth. A plain reading of the provision makes it crystal clear that for “cruelty” to be actionable under Section 498A, neither does it need to be related to dowry, nor does it have to involve physical cruelty or death.

The reason why many women felt compelled to exploit the criminal remedy was that the law either offered her the bhramastra of 498A with the police, arrest, jail and the attendant pressures of settlement or the languid civil option of fighting a contested, expensive and meandering matrimonial suit. There was nothing in the middle – a halfway house which could provide a woman facing domestic violence emergency relief of shelter, medical assistance and child custody, and restraining contact with a battering husband without having to throw her husband into prison. As a civil case would have zero impact on a husband dead set on litigating his wife into surrender, she is left with no option but to embrace the criminal remedy. Ingenuous lawyers over time came up with creative means of shoring up this option – throw in a dowry angle, involve the NRI sister-in-law, implicate the engineering-college-student dewar and so on and so forth. Telling the truth as it is, without the blood and gore, is felt to be inexpedient.

In my young days as a lawyer working with NGOs, I was scarred pretty early when a domestic violence victim reached out to me after a gender sensitisation intervention by ticking me off for trying to sell the idea that domestic violence need not only be physical or dowry-based and that it could be mental, verbal, sexual and economic. “Do you know what the judge told me?” the survivor asked, and I presumed her outrage remained undiminished by what was a repetition of her story. “She told me ‘Why are you making such a big deal about a slap or two in a marriage? Arrey ghar mein do char thappar to hum bhi kha letein hein (Even I get slapped a few times at home)’.”

It was such voices from the grassroots that convinced feminist advocates that there is a need for domestic violence law to campaign for a holistic definition of violence, which would recognise all facets of violence, including, for instance, nutritional violence where the girl-child bearing daughter-in-law is punished with a less nutritious or a wholesome diet. The success of this campaign, in the form of a comprehensive definition of domestic violence and its emancipation from the prism of dowry-related physical violence in the Protection of Women from Domestic Violence Act (PWDVA), lies in tatters in the wake of Rajesh Sharma.

The misuse counter-narrative, now entrenched with Rajesh Sharma, must be tackled by its horns. Rajesh Sharma cites National Crimes Record Bureau statistics to bolster the false cases narrative. I have already referred to the Section 377 case, where the top court shied away from legitimising consensual same-sex intercourse based on the dignity and privacy argument and on the strength of the misuse by police of the penal provision. I may also point out a few other facts. Before the PWDVA was conceived of as a alternative legal remedy which gave a battered woman an option other than 498A or civil litigation, women who resorted to criminally prosecuting their husband would often abandon the same midway. There were a host of factors involved, half-hearted attempts on account of cultural inhibitors being the most dominant. The women would settle the case and move on as contrary to the narrative, most women are wise enough to know that securing a violence-free, economically-stable life for themselves and their children was any day a more enticing alternative than sending the sasural to jail. In many cases, as 498A was non-compoundable (so cannot be officially settled), women would be forced to tank the criminal case once they had settled with the husband. In pure statistical terms, this would bolster the ranks of “false cases” and “acquittals”, though the truth was something else altogether.

What the court should have done

The road to hell is paved with good intentions. In my opinion, the most devastating fall out of Rajesh Sharma is that perhaps it unconsciously restores and legitimises the construct of a woman facing violence as a person who does not deserve autonomy. This is combined with the construct that she rushes into litigation and criminal prosecution unmindful of the toxic effects of the same on her matrimonial relations. Nothing could be farther from the truth and the learned judges perhaps are not exposed to how battered women are weighed down by gender and social constructs, and internalise and digest the violence and find justifications for the same. Most access the law well past breakpoint. Rajesh Sharma wants to send them back to the violent habitat. Conciliation and saving the marriage, but not the woman from violence, seems to be the priority for the court. I was also in the save marriage camp and 15 years ago that is what I told my client Sonia when she spent an agonising hour with me discussing how much her parents were pressuring her to return to her violent home with her year-old infant son. In fact, her father had also tried to get me to “put in some sense into her”. I was the welfare committee that the court in Rajesh Sharma now contemplates, and I sent Sonia back only to lose her to flames a week later.

The PWDVA was enriched by the experiences of activists and advocates who have been fighting for Sonia and Satyaranis. The adversarial legal system has failed India’s women – from the South Delhi socialite who could afford that page-three divorce lawyer, to the slum-residing domestic worker Trilokpuri whose greatest worry was how to explain to her employer the latest black eye bestowed by her unemployed, alcoholic husband. That is why the PWDVA came up with ‘protection officers’ who were to be that outreach person who would to serve as the bridge between the court and the violence survivor. The protection officer was also to coordinate in her area the services of doctors, shelters, paralegals and the police to afford coordinated, one-stop outreach for the violence survivor. States have not invested at all in realising the violence-free society that this law wanted to secure. Instead of ensuring a protection officer for each police station, most states have simply appointed a handful of protection officers in token compliance. In many cases these officers are also on contract with no incentives or job protection. Many states have also diverted existing officers to be protection officers, with other assignments to be discharged additionally.A city like Delhi, with lakhs of women, has about 17 protection officers.

Instead of constituting committees with retirees and housewives, the court in Rajesh Sharma should have directed all the states to increase the number of protection officers and to provide infrastructural support to such officers under the PWDVA. This would have provided timely assistance to women and would have steered them towards a meaningful redressal of their maladies, preventing the misuse of the criminal law which was the concern of the court.

Sanjoy Ghose is a Delhi-based lawyer.

African Migrant Women Face ‘Shocking Sexual Abuse’ on Journey to Europe, UN Report Reveals

The past three years have seen a nearly 600% increase in the number of potential sex trafficking victims arriving in Italy by sea.

An IOM staff member talks to a migrant at a reception centre. Credit: UN Migration Agency 2017

An IOM staff member talks to a migrant at a reception centre. Credit: UN Migration Agency 2017

Rome: Up to 80% of Nigerian migrant women and girls arriving on Europe’s shores in Italy could potentially be sex trafficking victims, spotlighting the horrific levels of abuse and violence migrants face along their arduous journeys for a better future, according to a UN study.

In its report, ‘Human Trafficking through the Central Mediterranean Route’ (in Italian), the International Organization for Migration (IOM) highlights the plight of those who have been assisted by the UN agency and calls for urgent action against the “market” which are supplied these victims was well as what is called is a “growing demand” for paid sexual services.

“Trafficking is a transnational crime that devastates the lives of thousands of people and is the cause of untold suffering,” Federico Soda, the director of the IOM coordinating office for the Mediterranean, said, announcing the findings.

“This is a theme we have been working on for years, committing to protect, prevent and collaborate with the authorities dealing with organised crime.”

According to the UN agency, over the past three years, its office in Italy has witnesses an almost 600% increase in the number of potential sex trafficking victims arriving in Italy by sea. The upward trend has continued during the first six months of this year, with most victims arriving from Nigeria.

The data feeding the report was drawn from IOM operations in various parts of Italy, where staff met with potential victims of trafficking as soon as they reached the country, allowing the UN agency to develop a list of indicators that can help identify potential victims.

Described in the report, the indicators include gender (most sex trafficking victims are women); age (most victims age between 13-24 years); nationality (most are Nigerians); and psycho-physical wellness (victims are mostly silent and often “controlled” by other migrants who speak on their behalf or refuse to let them be interview by IOM).

When IOM staff identify a potential victim of trafficking, they explain to them that it is possible to access protection mechanisms and, with the victim’s consent, the staff inform the anti-trafficking helpline about the victim.

Also, if the person agrees, IOM staff provides assistance in communicating and filing a report to the investigating authorities.

“The report describes IOM’s activities in the face of this phenomenon: the difficulties in protecting victims and the main vulnerabilities identified among several cases of people who were assisted by [the agency],” said Carlotta Santarossa.

“We also wanted to tell some of the stories of people who have been assisted by IOM staff to highlight the true nature of this painful and hateful form of slavery.”

(IPS)

Patna HC Dismisses Two PILs Against Nitish Kumar’s New Bihar Government

The PILs said that the formation of the new government was “unconstitutional” as chief minister Nitish Kumar had won a mandate as part of a grand alliance against the BJP.

Former Chief Ministers of Bihar, RJD chief Lalu Prasad Yadav and JD-U leader Nitish Kumar during a rally in Hajipur of Bihar on Aug 11, 2014. (Photo: IANS)

Bihar chief minister Nitish Kumar and former ally Lalu Prasad Yadav seen in happier times. Credit: PTI

New Delhi: The Patna high court today dismissed two public interest litigations (PIL) filed by Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) MLAs challenging the formation of a JD(U)-BJP government in Bihar. The Indian Express reported that the division bench dismissed the PILs saying that the court’s intervention was not needed since a floor test had happened in the state assembly.

The PILs said that the formation of the new government was “unconstitutional” as chief minister Nitish Kumar had won the mandate as part of the mahagathbandhan between the JD(U), RJD and Congress against the BJP. The PILs, that also stated that the RJD – which has the largest number of seats in the assembly – should have been called upon first to form the government, had been filed by RJD MLAs Saroj Yadav and Chandan Verma, and the Samajwadi Party’s Jitendra Kumar.

Nitish had resigned as chief minister on July 26, calling off the mahagathbandhan, and returned as chief minister the next day, with BJP as his ally.