Tuesday, April 09, 2024

In March 2024, the Geographical Indication (GI) registry of India added 22 new products from the states of Assam, Uttar Pradesh, Tripura, and Meghalaya. These products are now protected under the GI tag, which recognizes their unique qualities and geographical origin.

Assam

The state of Assam saw the inclusion of 12 products in the GI registry:

Asharikandi terracotta craft
Pani Meteka craft
Sarthebari metal craft
Jaapi (bamboo headgear)
Mishing handloom products
Bihu dhol
Bodo Dokhona (traditional attire of Bodo women)
Bodo Gamsa (traditional dress of Bodo men)
Bodo Eri silk
Bodo Jwmgra (a traditional scarf)
Bodo Thorkha (a musical instrument)
Bodo Sifung (a long flute)

Uttar Pradesh

Uttar Pradesh had five products added to the GI registry:

Banaras Thandai, a drink made by blending milk with a mix of nuts, seeds and spices
Banaras Tabla
Banaras Shehnai
Banaras Lal Bharwamirch
Banaras Lal Peda

Tripura

Two products from Tripura were granted GI tags:

Pachra-Rignai (traditional dress worn on special occasions)
Matabari Peda (a sweet preparation)

Meghalaya

Three products from Meghalaya were added to the GI registry:

Meghalaya Garo Textile weaving
Meghalaya Lyrnai Pottery
Meghalaya Chubitchi (alcoholic beverage)

About GI Registry

The Geographical Indication (GI) registry is a system that recognizes and protects products with unique characteristics, qualities, or reputation associated with their geographical origin. Established under the Geographical Indications of Goods (Registration and Protection) Act, 1999, the GI registry grants legal protection to products, preventing unauthorized use of the registered name. The GI tag helps preserve cultural heritage, promote economic development, and assure consumers of the product’s authenticity and quality.

A spirit that shines

Social progress of Mizos is striking in many ways. It runs counter to their geographical isolation & it has come notwithstanding many years of savage violence between insurgents & the State

Last month, I spent several stimulating days in Mizoram. I had some knowledge of the state’s political history, met numerous Mizos in the course of my life, but never visited the state before.

I flew first to Guwahati, where I caught up with some old friends, gloried in my sightings of the Brahmaputra, and spoke on Gandhi to the teachers and students of the university. On the flight to Aizawl, I had naturally opted for a window seat. I watched with a growing sense of anticipation as the plane breached the white line of the clouds and flew perilously close to the hills before making a very assured landing. At the airport, I was made to fill out an ‘Inner Line Permit’, an archaic relic of the British raj which — at least for Indian citizens — is long past its sell-by date.

A passenger train is a better way to see the countryside than an aeroplane; but a car is perhaps an even better way still. The drive from Lengpui Airport to the state capital, Aizawl, took an hour and a half, long enough to get a sense of the landscape.The shape of the hills reminded me of the sub-Himalayan district, thenin Uttar Pradesh, now in Uttarakhand, where I was born and raised. So did the narrow and winding roads and the fast-flowing streams. The vegetation was somewhat different; plenty of bamboo, a fair amount of deciduous trees, but — unlike in Uttarakhand — no coniferous species. And the human population seemed much more sparse too.

This last feature was deceptive; for the town of Aizawl, with homes built adjacent to one another on every level of every hill, was strikingly reminiscent of Naini Tal and Mussoorie. However, the traffic was noticeably more orderly than in a northern hill town. Drivers scrupulously followed lane discipline, waiting for a traffic jam to unblock itself rather than cut corners and make things messier.

I was in Aizawl for a seminar organised by the Pachhunga University College, established in 1958, and the oldest such institution in the state. The college has many girls and boys, freely mixing together in a manner altogether impossible in some Hindu-dominated areas of Uttar Pradeshor in some Islamic-dominated districts of Kerala. I have spoken in colleges in those parts too, to find, even in technically co-educational institutions, that boys and girls are not encouraged to befriend one another and sit separately in classroom and seminar hall alike.

In this respect, Pachhunga University College was entirely representative of the state as a whole. Walking the streets, going to the shops, striking up conversations in cafes — all testified to the advancement of women in the state. So do the statistics. Mizoram has the second-highest rate of female literacy among all the states of India; and the highest rate of female workforce participation. About 60% of Mizo women work outside the home; this is more than twice as high as the all-India rate, which stands at less than 30%. And Mizo women are far more likely to be working in better paid or more responsible jobs than women anywhere else in India. To quote from a Press Trust of India report of July 2022: “Mizoram has the highest 70.9 per cent ratio of female-to-male workers among those working as legislators, senior officials and managers, followed by Sikkim (48.2 per cent) and Manipur (45.1 per cent)…”

The social progress of the Mizos is striking in many ways. It runs counter to their geographical isolation and it has come notwithstanding many years of savage violence between insurgents and the State. Aizawl, the bustling and to all eyes utterly peaceful town I was now walking and talking in, had once borne the unlikely distinction of being the first Indian habitation to be strafed by the Indian air force.

This happened in the spring of 1966, after an armed group, the Mizo National Front, had launched an insurrection against the Indian State. The MNF was led by a one-time accountant called Laldenga, who had been deeply affected by a famine in the Mizo Hills some years previously, when widespread starvation had brought forth an utterly inadequate response from the government in New Delhi. Thinking that the Mizos had no prospect of an honourable future within India, Laldenga made contact with the military government of East Pakistan, which promised him arms and financial support. On the Pakistani side of the border, camps were created where young Mizo rebels were trained in the use of modern weapons.

In February 1966, the MNF attacked government offices and disrupted communications. It declared that the Mizos had formed an ‘independent’ Republic of their own. The insurgents captured one town, Lungleh, and were pressing hard on Aizawl too. The Indian State now sent in massed detachments of the army and also (as noted) the air force. Yet the rebels fought on fiercely, and it took another two decades for the conflict to finally end and for a settlement to be forged, through which Laldenga became chief minister of the Indian state of Mizoram rather than prime minister or president of a sovereign Mizo nation.

The grandparents, and possibly even some of the parents, of the students I spoke to in Aizawl would have lived through those times of violence, fleeing from their homes, seeking refuge in the forests, caught in the crossfire between the insurgents and the State. That after the settlement was forged the Mizos so quickly and completely rebuilt their lives is a testament to their sagacity and their courage.

Suffering can make people vindictive, prone to take revenge on others because of what they have been through themselves. That has been true of many descendants of Partition refugees and of descendants of Holocaust victims too. Yet in the Mizo case, their own history has made them deeply compassionate towards the suffering of others. Consider the ways in which they have welcomed victims of persecution in Myanmar and Bangladesh, many Christians like themselves, but quite a few Buddhists too. More recently, the Mizos have nobly borne the burden of Kukis fleeing the ethnic conflict in Manipur, taking on responsibilities that are rightfully those of the Union government.

A recent essay in the excellent magazine, Grassroots Options, attributes the community spirit of Mizo life to the legacy of jhum or swidden agriculture, which historically provided their main means of sustenance and livelihood. Involving cooperation across family units, jhum “created a social bond with one another and with nature. All these shared values and ideas eventually morphed into a code of social conduct.” The Mizo word for this code is Tlawmmngaihna, which Grassroots Options translates as “upholding humbleness in service, … particularly [to] the needy, sick, disabled and widowed under any and all circumstances.”

The community ethos of the Mizos predates the coming of Christianity to the region. For the most part, the Church has reinforced this spirit of working together. However, an admirable selflessness has, in some instances, surfaced as an unnecessary puritanism. Fearing the wrath of the bishops, successive state governments have introduced prohibition, which has led to an epidemic of bootlegging and the consumption of spurious spirits. In a culture where home brewing was traditionally practised and where temperance was rarely regarded as a sign of moral or spiritual uplift, imposing abstinence by government fiat has had counter-productive effects. And it has caused a substantial loss to the state exchequer too. Taxes on liquor legally brewed and legally consumed could go some distance in improving the decrepit roads of Mizoram.

Prohibition apart, my trip to Mizoram renewed my admiration for the people of a state I previously knew only through its history and its diaspora. Tragically, in common with the other states of the Northeast, Mizoram has counted for too little in the life of the Republic. The region has been treated by successive regimes in New Delhi with condescension and neglect, partly or even largely because it accounts for so few Lok Sabha seats. Yet, we in the so-called ‘mainland’ have a great deal to learn from the Mizos — from their community spirit, their ability to recover from defeat and despondency, their lack of caste prejudice and the relatively high status of their women, their love of life and of music.

Ramachandra Guha

Source: The Telegraph: 6/04/24

Bridging Inequality

Looking at the ever-increasing size of the Union Budget, doubling every three years, Finance Ministers are hard pressed to generate resources to meet the Central Government’s ballooning expenditure. Competitive populism dictates that more and more money is spent on handouts and freebies every year, and except for some token gestures like doing away with senior citizen concession on train travel, nothing much is done to curb expenditure. All parties, both at the Centre and in States, pay lip service to elimination of subsidies and freebies, but promptly forget their promises once elections are announced.

A situation has emerged where one political party’s welfare expenditure is another party’s freebie, and viceversa. The Central Government, whenever it needs extra funds, often takes short cuts like increasing GST rates or playing around with Central Excise levies on petroleum products. This is child’s play for the Government, since the Centre now controls all significant levers of taxation; Direct Taxes through Income-tax, and almost all Indirect Taxes through GST. State Governments follow the Centre’s lead, wherever they can.

Such ill-thought measures affect citizens adversely, because incidence of tax i.e., the particular segment of the population that has to pay the tax, is rarely one of the considerations. Even otherwise, Indirect taxes hit the poor more; according to the latest Oxfam report “Survival of the Richest: The India Story,” a little less than two-thirds (64.3 per cent) of the total GST is paid by the bottom 50 per cent of the population, one-third of the GST is collected from the middle 40 per cent, and only 3-4 per cent from the richest 10 per cent of the country.

Another toxic method is to resort to deficit financing. According to the Fiscal Responsibility and Budget Management (FRBM) Act 2003, fiscal deficit was to go down to 3 per cent of GDP by 31 March 2008, and reduce annually by 0.3 per cent thereafter, yet the fiscal deficit on 31 March 2024 is estimated at 5.8 per cent ~ far in excess of what was originally envisaged. Also, according to FRBM, Central Government Debt should not exceed 40 per cent of GDP by 2024-25, but according to Budget Estimates, Central Government Debt is slated to touch 82.4 per cent of GDP by 31 March 2025. The ills of uncontrolled State borrowing are many; it is a debt we incur, but which is repaid by future generations. Almost two and a half centuries ago US President Thomas Jefferson had observed: “The principle of spending money to be paid by posterity, under the name of funding, is but swindling futurity on a large scale.”

Thus, there are many good reasons for reducing Government expenditure. Unfortunately, all such reasons pale into insignificance in the face of compulsive populism. The FRBM Review Committee Report made a host of recommendations for ensuring fiscal prudence, including the setting up of an autonomous Fiscal Committee to manage fiscal strategy. None of the Committee’s recommendations have been implemented. Also, the Fifteenth Finance Commission had recommended a review of Central Schemes, with axing of unviable ones. However, Revised Estimates for Financial Year 2023- 24, show an expenditure of Rs.19.06 lakh crore on Central Schemes, out of total Budget expenditure of Rs.44.90 lakh crore, with no review of Central Schemes in sight. Obviously, an efficient tax system along with a brake on profligacy can help the Government balance its books.

But, sadly, in the recent past, no thought has been paid to the review of the overall taxation structure. Even in the third decade of the twenty-first century, Direct and Indirect taxes operate in different silos in India, never mind that most advanced countries, including UK and USA, have integrated both long ago. The first report of the Tax Administration Reforms Commission (headed by Dr Parthasarthy Shome), submitted on 30 May 2014, suggested integration of the two Revenue Boards, but even this suggestion got lost in the turf wars of North Block. Post-Covid, when the West faced economic uncertainty, certain ultra-rich public minded citizens, came forward offering to pay extra tax, to rescue their governments. No corresponding movement was seen in India, but the public noticed that in Covid times, when ordinary citizens faced extreme distress, certain categories of businesses like pharmaceutical companies and pharmacists, online retailers etc., made extraordinary profits.

In India, post-Covid, after a K-shaped economic recovery, though strenuously denied by Government agencies, the difference between the rich and poor has exacerbated, which has drawn the attention of a host of international agencies, including Oxfam and UNDP. Recently, a paper titled “Income and Wealth Inequality in India, 1922-2023: The Rise of the Billionaire Raj” authored by Thomas Piketty, Lucas Chancel, and Nitin Kumar, stated bluntly: “By 2022-23, top one per cent income and wealth shares (22.6 per cent and 40.1 per cent) are at their highest historical levels and India’s top one per cent income share is among the very highest in the world, higher than even South Africa, Brazil, and the US.” Notably, the share of the top 1 per cent was 6.1 per cent in India’s wealth and income in 1982, which rose steadily thereafter, with the rise being much more pronounced during the Covid period.

Currently, according to Hurun Research Institute’s 2024 Global Rich List, India is home to 271 billionaires, with 94 new billionaires added in 2023 alone. The number of new billionaires added last year is more than in any country, other than the US. The billionaires’ collective wealth amounts to almost US$1 trillion ~ nearly 7 per cent of the world’s total wealth. The Chancel, Piketty and Kumar Report also stated that more government expenditure on health, education, and nutrition was required to improve the lot of average Indians, so that the fruits of economic progress and globalization could trickle down to them.

The Report has prescribed a “super tax” of 2 per cent on the net wealth of the 167 wealthiest Indian families in 2022-23 which would garner 0.5 per cent of national income in revenues, and “create valuable fiscal space to facilitate such investments.” This is a worthwhile suggestion. Myriad anomalies have crept in the Indian taxation system, which was conceptualised by Nicholas Kaldor in the 1950s and implemented in the early 1960s (See “Taxation Travails,” 5 March 2024). Raising more revenues, the way the Government does it, i.e. by increasing GST rates, would only lead to more burdens for the poor. Probably, the required revenue for social sector spending could be generated by levying wealth tax on individuals holding assets in excess of Rs.100 crore, as also inheritance tax on inheritances above Rs.100 crore.

Needless to say, concentration of wealth will also get diluted, to some extent, by these taxes. The two main objections to re-introduction of the Wealthtax and Inheritance Act are: These taxes were discarded long ago because of difficulty in computation and also because they did not yield a significant amount of revenue. These objections are easily met. Presently, almost the entire wealth of the ultra-rich is held in financial assets like shares, mutual funds etc. which are liquid, divisible and easily valued in a transparent manner. Secondly, these taxes will affect only a minuscule proportion of taxpayers, which will ensure proper supervision by tax authorities, but as seen above, would result in generation of a sufficient amount of revenue.

Also, because of the liquid nature of the majority of assets, ‘hardship cases’ of children rendered homeless after a parent’s death due to inheritance tax, or holders of immovable property not being able to pay wealth-tax, will be few and far between. Then, there could be exemption clauses for a certain value, or for a certain asset class, or for both. In the ultimate analysis, taxation is a necessary evil for a civilised nation. As Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. had said in one of his famous judgements: “I like to pay taxes. With them, I buy civilization.”

DEVENDRA SAKSENA

Source: The Statesman, 08/04/24

Monday, April 01, 2024

Quote of the Day April 1, 2024

“We are responsible for the effort, not the outcome.”
Geeta

“हम प्रयास के लिए उत्तरदायी हैं, न कि परिणाम के लिए।”
गीता

Extension of AFSPA in Arunachal Pradesh and Nagaland

The Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) has extended the Armed Forces (Special Powers) Act (AFSPA) in certain districts of Arunachal Pradesh and Nagaland for an additional six months, effective from April 1, 2024. The decision follows a review of the law and order situation in these northeastern states.

Arunachal Pradesh

In Arunachal Pradesh, the AFSPA has been extended for six months in the following areas:

Tirap, Changlang, and Longding districts
Areas under the jurisdiction of Namsai, Mahadevpur, and Chowkham police stations in Namsai district, bordering Assam

Nagaland

In Nagaland, the AFSPA has been extended for six months in the following districts and police station areas:

8 districts: Dimapur, Niuland, Chumukedima, Mon, Kiphire, Noklak, Phek, and Peren
21 police station areas in five other districts of Nagaland, which has a total of 16 districts

Powers Under AFSPA

The Armed Forces (Special Powers) Act, 1958, grants sweeping powers to security forces in areas deemed as “disturbed”. Under the AFSPA, armed forces personnel are authorized to search, arrest, and open fire if deemed necessary for maintaining public order.

Reduced Application of AFSPA

In April 2022, the Centre reduced the number of disturbed areas under AFSPA in many parts of Nagaland, Assam, and Manipur. The Act was lifted from Tripura in 2015, Meghalaya in 2018, and Mizoram in the 1980s. Despite these reductions, the AFSPA remains in force in Jammu and Kashmir.

Demands for Repeal

Several political parties, NGOs, and civil society organisations in the northeastern region have been demanding the complete repeal of the AFSPA. Critics argue that AFSPA has led to human rights violations, while supporters claim it is necessary to maintain order in conflict-ridden areas.

Followers