Read The Hindu Notes of 2nd January 2019 for UPSC Civil Service Examination, State Civil Service Examination and other competitive Examination

The Hindu Notes for 2nd January 2019
  • Topic Discussed: The Hindu Notes of 2nd January 2019

    • The bilateral transformation

    India and Bangladesh must seize the opportunity to further enhance connectivity and trade ties

  • The spectacular victory of the Grand Alliance led by the Awami League (AL), headed by incumbent Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, in Bangladesh’s 11th general election, has delighted her supporters. This election is also a milestone for the coming of age of a new generation which is avowedly aspirational and is tired of the old political discourse that had deeply divided politics in Bangladesh. They have voted for economic progress and a secular polity.
  • The margin of victory has shocked and dismayed the Opposition parties that had coalesced into the National Unity Front (NUF), a coalition at whose core is the Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP), the AL’s bitter political rival. Former AL stalwart and famous jurist Kamal Hossain provided the leadership glue for the Opposition coalition. Nominally led by its Chairperson, former Prime Minister Khaleda Zia, currently in jail for corruption, the BNP’s guiding force is U.K.-based acting-Chairman Tarique Rahman, her controversial son who fled from the country in 2008 and lives in exile. He is convicted of money laundering and conspiracy to murder.

    • Brute majority

  • The AL has obtained a brute majority of 288 seats in a unicameral Parliament which has 300 directly-elected seats and 50 seats reserved for women. The latter are elected by the electoral college of directly-elected MPs, with proportional representation to parties elected to the Parliament.
  • Mr. Hossain’s monumental failure to deliver has left him and other Opposition leaders hurling allegations that the elections were “farcical” and asking that new elections be held under a non-partisan caretaker administration. The NUF managed to win just seven seats. The Election Commission, while taking note of some electoral malpractices and promising investigation, has declared the results valid and rejected the demand for new elections.
  • The margin of victory has lent some traction to persistent allegations of electoral malpractices, hounding of the Opposition, large-scale arrests of Opposition workers and intimidation of voters. Election-related violence on polling day claimed 17 lives. Several Opposition candidates withdrew from the fray, citing violent obstruction by AL workers, kidnapping of their election agents and voters being obstructed from casting their votes. Yet international observers have concluded that the elections were largely peaceful, fair and credible.
  • Though dogged by two consecutive controversial elections and increasing perceptions of authoritarian behaviour, Ms. Hasina is set for another five-year term in office. She has an enviable record of delivering record economic growth. Bangladesh’s GDP grew at a rate of 7.6% in the last quarter, making it one of the fastest growing economies in the world.

    • A bipartisan consensus

  • During the last decade of Ms. Hasina’s tenure as Prime Minister, high-level Bangladesh-India engagement has intensified. There is an irrevocable and irreversible bipartisan political consensus in India for upgrading relations across a comprehensive interface of ties. India’s ‘neighbourhood policy’ has focussed on Bangladesh, which has emerged as a key interlocutor in India’s ‘Act East Policy’ and sub-regional groupings like BIMSTEC (Bay of Bengal Initiative for Multi-Sectoral Technical and Economic Cooperation) and the BBIN (Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Nepal) Initiative. In Bangladesh too, a growing domestic political consensus, overriding fractious politics, has emerged in favour of close ties with India. Denial of support to Indian insurgent groups, with insurgent leaders handed over to India, has progressively built trust and confidence between the two countries. Bangladesh is India’s largest trading partner in South Asia with an annual turnover of around $9 billion plus an estimated informal trade of around $8-9 billion, across the 4,100-km-long porous border. Cooperation in connectivity, energy, security and intelligence matters has intensified. The Padma multipurpose bridge and the Akhaura-Agartala rail link will dramatically change connectivity within Bangladesh and with India. Waterways are also being revived to reduce the cost of trade.
  • Improvement in bilateral ties has led to newer areas of cooperation such as cyberspace. Bangladesh has provided cyber connectivity between the international gateway at Cox’s Bazar to Agartala for faster Internet connectivity in India’s northeastern States. India has also become a partner in Bangladesh’s nuclear power programme, with the beginning of construction at the Rooppur nuclear power plant. India is poised to export around 1100 MW of power to meet the energy deficit in Bangladesh. Power projects totalling more than 3600 MW are under implementation by Indian companies.
  • The adverse balance of trade has been a bilateral issue. The asymmetry in the economies of India and Bangladesh is the major factor. To enable more Bangladeshi exports to flow into India, duty free entry was granted in 2011 under the South Asian Free Trade Area. This has led to an increase in exports from Bangladesh from around $350 million to the current level of around $900 million. Bangladeshi exports have plateaued because of demand constraints in India and also because of limited items in the Bangladeshi export basket. An SEZ in Bangladesh for Indian manufacturing companies has been mooted and notified. When operational it will encourage Indian companies to manufacture there and export to India. Indian investment in Bangladesh has reached $3 billion. In 2017, 13 agreements worth around $10 billion were signed in the power and energy sectors.
  • To offset the economic asymmetry, India has granted Bangladesh generous lines of credit (LOCs) and grants, with commitments reaching $8 billion. While LOCs mainly cover infrastructure and connectivity projects, grants flow into social sector development. Capacity building under the Indian Technical and Economic Cooperation programme is an important strand in bilateral ties and people-to-people interaction. Bangladeshis are among the largest groups of tourists into India. The visa regime has been liberalised and over a million visas are issued to Bangladeshi citizens annually.
  • With the rise of religious radicalism and terrorism, defence and security issues will require greater cooperation. Bangladesh has taken strong and effective steps against those who have been inspired by the Islamic State and involved in terrorist strikes. Islamist organisations have been breeding grounds for religious radicals and extremist views. These forces will pose a considerable challenge for governance in Bangladesh in the future. With the massive loss, the NUF is likely to boycott the Parliament and take to street agitation, sullying Bangladesh’s reputation as a democracy.

    • Challenges ahead

  • There will be setbacks in India-Bangladesh ties, like the current Rohingya issue, which has imposed a huge economic and security burden on Bangladesh. Bilaterally, the issue of the illegal migration has already acquired a high profile in India with the publication of the draft National Register of Citizens in Assam. This will require deft handling of bilateral ties. Sharing of river waters will remain a challenge, but not an insurmountable one.
  • China’s security and economic footprint has grown in South Asia and managing this will remain a challenge for both countries. While Bangladesh is overwhelmingly dependent on military hardware from China, India has provided a $500 million LOC for procurement of defence-related goods from India. This momentum must be maintained and intensified.
  • India has welcomed the election results and Prime Minister Narendra Modi was the first leader to telephone and congratulate Ms. Hasina. Bangladesh-India relations have reached a stage of maturity and with further upgrading and integration of infrastructure, bilateral ties can be expected to grow stronger in the future.

    • Strange bedfellows in West Asia

    Tel Aviv believes that improved relations with Riyadh will serve many major strategic goals

  • Increasing intimacy between Saudi Arabia, the so-called bastion of Islamic orthodoxy, and Israel, the Jewish state carved out by the colonial powers in Arab Palestine, appears astonishing at first sight. The growing relationship, even if surreptitious, between the two states can be explained in large part with reference to the old adage, “my enemy’s enemy is my friend”.

    • Complex reasons

  • The enemy is Iran, which both countries perceive as the primary threat to their strategic interests in West Asia. Saudi Arabia is engaged in a fierce competition with Iran for influence in the Persian Gulf and wider West Asia. Riyadh seems to be losing this competition as demonstrated by recent events in Syria, Lebanon and Iraq as well as tiny Qatar’s defiant attitude.
  • The reasons for Israel’s overtures towards Saudi Arabia are more complex. A common front against Iran is, of course, a major factor determining Israeli policy. Iran is a potential challenger to Israel’s nuclear monopoly in West Asia and uses its influence in the Levant to impede Israeli dominance of the region. But equally important, the Israeli government believes that improved relations with Riyadh will serve other major goals.
  • First, Saudi Arabia’s lead in establishing relations with Israel, even if covert, is likely to induce other Arab states, especially the oil rich monarchies of the Gulf, to open their economies to Israeli investment and technical expertise, thus bringing Israel substantial economic benefits. Israel’s success in achieving this objective is critically dependent upon developing a significant, even if unacknowledged, relationship with Saudi Arabia.
  • Second, the Israeli government estimates that improved relations with the Saudi regime, the “guardian” of Islam’s two holiest sites, will help resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict to Tel Aviv’s satisfaction. This means Israel continuing to control the entire territory between the River Jordan and the Mediterranean Sea without giving the Palestinians any civil or political rights. Israel feels that with Saudi help, the status quo could be made acceptable to other Arab and Muslim countries as well since several of them, such as Egypt and Pakistan, are heavily dependent upon Saudi largesse.
  • Furthermore, Israel and Saudi Arabia have a common interest in preventing the democratisation of Arab countries. Authoritarian governments in the Arab world allow Israel to parade itself as the only democracy in West Asia. Saudi Arabia is mortally afraid of a democratic wave in the Arab world since it would further highlight the despotic nature of its regime. This apprehension drove its opposition to the democracy movements, especially in Egypt and Bahrain, during the short-lived Arab Spring.

    • U.S. nod

  • The Saudi-Israeli rapprochement has been actively supported by the Trump administration. The United States is extremely interested in the formation of a joint front between Saudi Arabia and Israel against Iran, America’s principal adversary in West Asia. Jared Kushner, the U.S. President’s son-in-law and the administration’s point man on West Asia, has developed a special relationship with Saudi Crown Prince Muhammad Bin Salman (MBS) in order to achieve this and other ends. He had used his leverage with MBS to prod the latter to accept Israel’s point of view on the Palestine issue before the Jamal Khashoggi murder stalled the expansion of the Saudi-Israeli relationship.
  • The rapprochement between Riyadh and Tel Aviv was moving apace until October 2, 2018, when Khashoggi, a Saudi dissident journalist, was murdered at the behest of the Saudi regime in the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul, Turkey. Senior officials of the two governments, including Mossad head Yossi Cohen, had clandestinely met several times. On the Saudi side, former senior aide to the Crown Prince, Saud al-Qahtani, and former deputy intelligence chief, Major General Ahmed al-Assiri, had played important roles in the secret negotiations with Israel.

    • Khashoggi murder

  • However, the Khashoggi murder has thrown a spanner in the works for several reasons. First, the two principal Saudi interlocutors have been dismissed from their crucial positions in order to demonstrate to the international community that the Saudi regime is genuinely interested in bringing Khashoggi’s murderers to justice.
  • Second, MBS, who many believe ordered the killing, has been the focus of intense criticism, including by leading Senators and Congressmen in the U.S., following the brutal murder and dismemberment of Khashoggi’s body. He is also held responsible for the Yemeni misadventure, which has left thousands of civilians dead and millions on the verge of starvation. He cannot, therefore, afford to take greater political risks at this moment by continuing the parleys with Israel.
  • This does not mean that the Saudi-Israeli relationship will return to the level of hostility that had once existed between the two states. Rapprochement has been an ongoing process for close to two decades. It was dramatically expedited with the appointment of MBS as Crown Prince and the de facto ruler of Saudi Arabia.
  • One can, therefore, conclude that their common hostility towards Iran and their close security relationship with the U.S. will eventually prompt Saudi Arabia and Israel to resume their covert relationship and eventually make it public. However, their contacts are likely to remain frozen for some time until the Khashoggi murder recedes from public memory. Yet the Saudi-Israeli rapprochement could be accelerated if MBS, who has been the driving force behind the Saudi policy of engagement with Israel, ascends to the Saudi throne in the near future.

    • A Democratic hope?

    Elizabeth Warren makes the first move towards a U.S. presidential bid

  • Elizabeth Warren, Democratic Senator of Massachusetts, has announced her likely candidacy for the 2020 U.S. presidential race. In her statement she put racial and gender-based inequality front and centre in her campaign agenda, as much as income inequality faced by the middle class. For these ills of the American economy, she blamed the excesses of under-regulated Wall Street corporations and billionaires with the money muscle to bend political rules. Although Ms. Warren, who won a second six-year Senate term in November, had declined to enter the 2016 general election and challenge Hillary Clinton in the Democratic primary, she made a name for herself as a top-tier Democrat by taking on President Donald Trump, describing him as a “thin-skinned racist bully”. However, she attracted criticism for an unnecessary controversy over taking a DNA test to establish her Native American heritage, after Mr. Trump used racist epithets to provoke and smear her ethnic antecedents. Notwithstanding that blip, the former Harvard law professor, who hails from a blue-collar background in Oklahoma, has repeatedly underscored her credentials as a champion of multiracial populism. Over the past year she has sharpened her attack on Mr. Trump’s politics, arguing that he deflects attention from the impact of his divisive policies on ordinary American families and instead blames “other working people, people who are black, or brown, people born somewhere else.”
  • Despite the considerable achievements of Ms. Warren, who had not held public office before 2013, the obstacles ahead for her proposed presidential run are formidable. First, the general expectation is that the field for the Democratic nomination will widen considerably over through 2019, given that more than three dozen Democratic candidates-in-the-making are said to be considering joining the race, several of them for the first time. Some, such as Kamala Harris of California or Cory Booker of New Jersey, could hold stronger appeal with millennial voters and people of colour. Second, it is hard to predict how Ms. Warren will fare against self-professed Democratic socialist candidate Bernie Sanders, or Senator Sherrod Brown of Ohio, both economic populists who could hypothetically cut into her share of voters of a similar ideological persuasion. Finally, the risk of pursuing a populist theme from the centre-left of the political spectrum is that she would be an easy target for Mr. Trump and conservatives, who are likely to deride her as an out-of-touch liberal academic and a threat to free enterprise. Nevertheless, as a candidate for the nation’s highest office, Ms. Warren’s ideological moorings are set. It is not inconceivable that, given how bitterly polarised the electorate is today, Ms. Warren’s bold liberalism could offer hope to millions of voters dismayed at what Mr. Trump has done to their nation.

    • Signs of a turnaround

    Regulatory vigil should not ease after the half-yearly decline in banks’ gross NPA ratio

  • The fog of bad loans shrouding the banking sector appears to be lifting after a long period of sustained stress. The Reserve Bank of India’s Financial Stability Report reveals the first half-yearly decline in the ratio of gross non-performing assets (GNPA) to advances since September 2015. The ratio across all scheduled commercial banks has eased to 10.8% as of end-September 2018, from 11.5% in March, with both public sector and private sector lenders posting drops in the key indicator of bad loans. A stress test for credit risk at banks that models varying levels of macro-economic performance shows that for the baseline assumption, the GNPA ratio would narrow to 10.3% by March 2019. This prompted RBI Governor Shaktikanta Das to prognosticate that the sector “appears to be on course to recovery”. Still, state-owned banks continue to have higher levels of bad loans than their private sector peers and are projected to show slower improvements over the second half of the fiscal. The GNPA ratio for public sector banks (PSBs) is posited to only inch lower to 14.6% by March, from 14.8% in September. One reason is that PSBs have a disproportionately higher share of bad loans from among large borrowers, who accounted for almost 55% of loans advanced by all banks as of September. The GNPA ratio for this category at PSBs was 21.6%, compared with just 7% at private banks.
  • Interestingly, the RBI’s Prompt Corrective Action (PCA) framework, which attracted criticism including from a government appointee on the central bank’s board, has significantly helped lower contagion risk to the banking system. A contagion analysis that assumes there would be no sovereign guarantee provided for the 11 PSBs placed under the PCA curbs, in the event of a simultaneous failure, projects that solvency losses due to such failure have more than halved over the four quarters ended September: to ₹34,200 crore (3.1% of total Tier-1 capital) from ₹73,500 crore (6.8% of total Tier-1 capital). Data on banking frauds are also a cause for concern. Close to 95% of the frauds reported in the six months ended September were credit-related, with PSBs again bearing the brunt of mala fide intent on the part of borrowers. The RBI’s report has justifiably spotlighted the urgent need to tighten the oversight framework for financial conglomerates in the wake of the IL&FS meltdown, which continues to ripple across the financial system, including at mutual funds and non-banking financial companies. As Mr. Das said in his foreword, “...the recent developments in NBFCs have underscored the need for greater prudence in risk-taking.” Regulators and policymakers need to work together to insulate the economy from the risks of similar fiascos.

    • ‘We need a long-term strategy to address agricultural distress’

    The Lok Janshakti Party leader on the story behind the NDA’s Bihar pact and the chances of a non-BJP, non-Congress federal front

  • Days after finalising the seat-sharing arrangement in Bihar for the 2019 general election with allies Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and Janata Dal (United), Union Minister of Consumer Affairs, Food and Public Distribution and Lok Janshakti Party president Ram Vilas Paswan takes stock of the electoral prospects of the National Democratic Alliance and of the proposed Opposition front to take on the NDA, and talks about his impending retirement. Excerpts:
  • You reached an understanding for the 2019 Lok Sabha polls with the BJP and the JD(U) after a tussle, forcing your party to deliver an ultimatum. What was the sticking point?
  • Each party wants to fight on more seats but that does not mean that we had any differences with the BJP or the JD(U). The word “ultimatum” was used by the media to refer to our talks, but we have always maintained that it is an internal matter of the alliance. It has been effectively settled and well ahead of the elections. We will fight the 2019 elections under the leadership of Narendra Modi. I had said it in 2013 and let me repeat it again, there is no vacancy at the top.
  • There’s an assumption that the number of seats the BJP has conceded in Bihar is because of its waning popularity.
  • That is not true. We never believe or indulge in bargaining. All we asked for was seven seats [of the 40 Lok Sabha seats in Bihar], the same number we contested in 2014. What created confusion were media reports of a four-plus-one formula [four Lok Sabha seats and one Rajya Sabha seat for the LJP]. These reports were not contradicted by the BJP. This was creating unrest among our cadres, which is why my son Chirag said the issue needed to be settled at the earliest.
  • Many say that Bihar and Uttar Pradesh hold the key to the 2019 polls. So doesn’t the Bahujan Samaj Party-Samajwadi Party in U.P. and the Congress-Rashtriya Janata Dal alliance in Bihar worry you?
  • The BSP-SP alliance will have no impact on the NDA’s electoral prospects. I can give you in writing that Mayawati and Akhilesh Yadav together will get only five seats. My declaration is based on my analysis of the 2009 Lok Sabha elections, when I lost the Hajipur constituency for only the second time in my career. [The LJP had snapped ties with the Congress just before the elections to join hands with Lalu Prasad’s RJD.] What was the reason for this loss? The Muslim vote. The Congress is always the first choice for a Muslim voter. They vote for anyone else only if Congress is not in the race. now as reports indicate the Congress is unlikely to be part of the Mahagathbandhan, then the decisive vote of the Muslim minority will be divided. The SP-BSP alliance is banking on three vote blocs — Muslims, Yadav and Dalits. Muslim votes will be divided between them and the Congress, Yadavs alone can’t get them through. There are two strands among Dalits too. One is Jatavs who blindly follow Mayawati and the other is Paswan, Pasis and so on, who are with us. Also, both parties will fight on 40 seats each, so what about other 40 wannabe candidates from their respective parties? Were they here for a charity show? They will have to deal with rebellion too. To top it, the Congress will fight all the 80 seats [in U.P.]. Even if the Congress cuts 1 lakh to 50,000 votes in each constituency, then how will the BSP-SP alliance stand?
  • In Bihar, there is no threat to the NDA. The Opposition alliance keeps spreading rumours that they are talking to Ram Vilas Paswan. I have never spoken to Lalu Yadav. Three diseased people together can’t make a healthy individual. There are already murmurs within Manjhi’s party (Jitan Ram Manjhi’s Hindustani Awam Morcha); Upendra Kushwaha (Rashtriya Lok Samata Party) is waiting with bated breath for power; Sharad Yadav exited the JD(U) with much fanfare, now we don’t hear much from him, do we? We will win more than 35 seats in Bihar.
  • The Congress seems to be cashing in on the Modi government’s failure to address growing agricultural distress by offering loan waivers. Will this have an electoral impact?
  • If a person is in pain, a painkiller can give him temporary relief, but the germs do not die. For the short term, loan waivers work well. But we need a long-term strategy. In Madhya Pradesh, for example, there is no doubt that Shivraj Singh Chouhan came up with pro-poor policies. He started the practice of bonus per quintal of produce. There was a view that businessmen benefitted more from this policy because they were bringing in produce from other States to sell in Madhya Pradesh. I was against the move and eventually the Central government decided to stop the bonus. It is obvious that the farmer was disappointed.
  • Who do you blame for this disappointment?
  • It is not a question of blaming anyone. Decisions are made by experts, IAS officers, intellectuals, they have their way of doing the arithmetic. A politician who comes from a village or a farmer’s home will have a different outlook. When we calculate the minimum support price (MSP), we consider the input costs alone and never take into account the cost of the land. The Prime Minister, BJP president Amit Shah, and the Agriculture Minister have to deliberate on the crisis. The politicians think through their heart and the bureaucracy works through its head. It is a systemic failure, and we should think how to change this system.
  • Do you think tall promises like 2 crore jobs each year made by Mr. Modi and Mr. Shah will be their undoing?
  • Why blame Prime Minister Modi or Amit Shah, this Pandora’s box was opened in 1991. Who was the Finance Minister then? Manmohan Singh. Before liberalisation, there was a mixed economy. There were enough jobs in the government sector. You opened the floodgates, and now that the waters have entered, how will you stop that? For 24 years, you did not bother which way the country was going. Now in 2014, when the Modi government took over, you are asking, where are the jobs? There were more government jobs earlier and thus more security, now everything is privatised.
  • But Manmohan Singh did not promise 2 crore jobs.
  • No, every government makes promises. Didn’t Indira Gandhi say “garibi hatao”? Did Congress implement it? If anyone is to be blamed, it is the Congress government which is to be blamed the most.
  • From being seen as anti-farmer, the Modi government is also battling the perception of being anti-Dalit.
  • This is a wrong claim. The biggest example is the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes (Prevention of Atrocities) Act, 1989, which was passed during the Rajiv Gandhi government and that too after relentless protests by many of us in Parliament. Thirty years later someone went to the Supreme Court and got the law diluted. Even then no political leader really took a lead to protest against it, neither me nor Mayawati. A purely organic and voluntary wave of protests started on its own spurred by social media. And one must remember that for the first time 10 to 12 Dalit protestors were killed in such a protest, more than the casualties during the Mandal agitations. So obviously, there was pressure on all political parties to act.
  • We also took a tough stand, Chirag served an ultimatum to the BJP. The Modi government acting swiftly, amended the Act to maintain the status quo.
  • Now the people who called the Modi government anti-Dalit started accusing him of being anti-forward. In Madhya Pradesh, they [BJP] paid for it. It is easy to assign labels, but my question is, which government has done anything for Dalits and backwards?
  • As an astute observer of Indian politics, which election in the past will you compare the 2019 election to, 1977 or 1996?
  • Whatever may be the results in 2019, one must remember that people have learnt lessons from the past. The question is, what kind of government do you want? Do you want a three-month government? The Deve Gowda and I.K. Gujral governments were in power for less than a year each; V.P. Singh was Prime Minister for 11 months; and Chandra Shekhar was in power for seven months.
  • Wherever there is a direct fight between the BJP and the Congress, the Congress manages to win. The recent Assembly elections in three States are examples, there may have been factors such as anti-incumbency which worked against the BJP. Though vote share between the two was almost same, still the Congress managed to pull through.
  • The prime difference is that in 1977 all the parties had come together to fight under one umbrella and the symbol of the Janata Party. That situation does not exist today. Now each party wants to fight on its own. Look at Mayawati. She had demanded a high number of seats in Madhya Pradesh from the Congress and then went on to fight on her own. Then she joined hands with the Congress even without being asked.
  • The Telangana Chief Minister and Telangana Rashtra Samithi chief, K. Chandrashekar Rao has been talking of a non-BJP, non-Congress Federal Front. Would you ever consider joining that?
  • I will be where I have been. If you ask me to play an astrologer, then I would say that the NDA will form the government. Once the elections are over, who will consider Rao as a leader? Will Mamata Banerjee or Chandrababu Naidu work under him? You can form any front right now, but once the question of leadership arises, then everyone will run away. Janata Party, that was born from the very womb of the Emergency, could not sustain itself in the face of personal ambitions and egos. Do you think any other front will survive?
  • Will you contest the 2019 Lok Sabha polls?
  • No, I will not fight the 2019 polls. I have been contesting from Hajipur since 1977 and I have done a lot for the constituency. I had always thought that once I complete 50 years in politics I will take a step back. Now I have a son who is also in politics. If I continue to stand around him, overshadowing him like a banyan tree, how will he grow? I have seen other leaders who can’t help but compete with their sons too. I am not like that.
  • Look at Lalu Yadav, he is remote-controlling his party from behind bars. I do not believe in that. There has been a demand from the constituency that my wife should contest from the seat but she too has refused the offer. We will have to take a call on who will replace me in Hajipur.

    • Boost to plain packaging

    More countries are adopting the tough measure in order to curb tobacco consumption

  • This year, Thailand and Saudi Arabia will join a growing club of nations introducing plain packaging of tobacco products. They are the first in the Asian and Arab regions, respectively, to adopt the tough measure in order to curb tobacco consumption — from September in Thailand, and May 1 in Saudi Arabia’s case
  • In December 2012, Australia became the first country to introduce plain packaging following the WHO Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (FCTC) guidelines. It has also been implemented in France and the United Kingdom (both 2016), Norway and Ireland (both 2017) and New Zealand and Hungary (both 2018). It will be implemented in Uruguay (2019) and Slovenia (2020). The move is under process or being considered in 14 more countries.
  • Plain packaging standardises the appearance of tobacco products. Other than brand and product names displayed in a standard colour and font style, it prohibits the use of logos, colours, brand images or promotional information. Besides increasing the effectiveness of health warnings, the idea is to reduce the attractiveness of tobacco products, with no scope for using packaging to advertise and promote consumption.
  • Understandably, the tobacco industry was opposed to Australia’s plain packaging initiative. But the ruling by the World Trade Organisation (WTO), in June 2018, favouring plain packaging, has struck a blow against the tobacco industry. The WTO panel, while rejecting the notion that Australia had unjustifiably infringed tobacco trademarks and violated intellectual property rights, said the plain packaging law led to “improving public health by reducing use of and exposure to tobacco products”.
  • With the legal hurdle to tobacco control being cleared, one is optimistic that countries, including India, which were undecided, can take steps to introduce similar legislation. In India, tobacco is the cause of about one million deaths annually.
  • In April 2016, India increased the size of graphic pictorial warnings, by 85%, on the packaging of tobacco products (both front and back). The percentage of users in India who thought of quitting because of such warning labels increased sharply to 62% (cigarette), 54% (bidi) and 46% (smokeless tobacco users), according to the Global Adult Tobacco Survey 2016-2017, when compared with the survey results of 2009-2010. Likewise, tobacco use among those aged 15-24 years showed a six-percentage point reduction (18.4% in 2009-10 to 12.4% in 2016-17). The number of tobacco users dropped by eight million.
  • Along with higher taxes and large pictorial warnings, plain packaging can serve as a tool to deter new users and prompt existing users to quit. Here is the proof: plain packaging along with other measures led to 0.55 percentage point reduction in smoking prevalence in Australia, translating into at least 1,18,000 fewer smokers.