Tag: News Wrap

Why India Has Frequent and Horrific Train Accidents

By Sanjoy Narayan

The worst recorded railway accident in India occurred in 1981 when an overcrowded passenger train was blown off the tracks and into a river during a cyclone in Bihar state, killing at least 800 people. This weekend another horrific accident involving three trains in the state of Odisha left nearly 300 people dead and 900 injured.

In the worst-ever railway accident in 1981, it was a terrible cyclone that had blown off the train, which plunged into a river. But last weekend’s accident was caused by a derailment. One long-distance passenger train overshot the tracks and smashed into another, and, going by initial reports, eventually, the collision carried on into a standing freight train.

The number of major railway accidents, to be fair, has reduced in the past 50 years. The railways have taken many measures to increase safety of operation, track upgrades, and technology to manage train movement. Yet, of the 10 train accidents that took place between 2018 and 2021, seven were because of derailments.

Train derailments mostly happen because rail tracks fracture or crack because of expansion and contraction on account of ambient temperature changes—extreme heat in summer followed by cold winters. The phenomenon of fractured tracks is the biggest challenge for the Indian Railways, which oversees a network that spans 128,305 km of track length, 102,831 km of running track length and 68,043 km of route length.

Derailments usually take place as a result of a combination of factors: mechanical glitches, signaling failures, and track construction faults. Railways often complain about lack of funds for maintenance and modernization of the track network. A Comptroller and Auditor General report showed that shortage of funds and underutilization of resources were to blame for at least a quarter of railway derailments. Many believe the pace of introducing new and faster trains is faster than the pace of implementing safety and infrastructure measures. Coach overloading and stress on tracks are also factors that  can contribute to derailments.

Spending more on railway infrastructure and track safety could be one of the steps in the way ahead. In February this year, India allocated a capital outlay of Rs 2.4 lakh crore for the railways. This is the highest ever allocation to the Indian railways. Even this could be inadequate for the required infrastructure needs of the network.

The other problem is overloading and overcapacity in the system. Some experts believe that utilization capacity should be reduced to 60-70% in order to have the system work at the best levels.

14 of the 20 most polluted cities in the world are in India

 Indian cities continue to dominate the list of most polluted places in the world. Fourteen of the top 20 most polluted cities in the world are in India. New Delhi, Greater Noida, Faridabad, and Ghaziabad, together comprising most of India’s National Capital Region, all feature on the list compiled by the World Health Organization (WHO).

The WHO uses the concentration of PM2.5 (suspended particulate matter of 2.5 micrometers or less in a given volume of air) as an indicator of air pollution. For purposes of ranking, WHO has considered the average value of the indicator during 2022. Delhi with an average of 92.6 is the fourth most polluted city in the world. Ahead of Delhi are Lahore in Pakistan 97.4, Hotan in China 94.3, and Bhiwadi in India 92.7.

As India’s population has outpaced China, its number of most-polluted cities has also overtaken China’s. The hazards of living in an environment of poor air quality cannot be overemphasized. It is the biggest cause of premature death globally after high blood pressure, inadequate diet and smoking. According to the Health Effects Institute, an independent, US-based non-profit corporation specializing in research on the health effects of air pollution, 6.7 million people died as a result of air pollution in 2019. In addition, the global health-related cost of air pollution related diseases is estimated to be around US$8.1 trillion.

In Indian cities such as Delhi and its satellite urban centres, the focus on reducing pollution spikes when the air quality levels reach catastrophic (and not just hazardous) levels. Usually this is in winters when smog and concentrated particulate matter increases and the effects are most palpable. Once it gets warmer and things improve (read: get back to normally hazardous levels) the furore dies down. What India needs is continuous efforts to reduce air pollution, including emissions from industries, crop stubble burning, vehicular emissions, and so on. Meanwhile, the country continues to remain high on the ignoble list of the world’s most polluted cities.

Is India just an assembler of iPhones, not a manufacturer?

In 2022-23, official estimates suggest that India achieved a record $10 billion (Rs 82,000 crore) worth of smartphone exports. This was touted to be the outcome of the Production Linked Incentive, or PLI, scheme of the government. PLI is a form of performance-linked incentive to give companies incentives on incremental sales from products manufactured in domestic units and is aimed at boosting the manufacturing sector and to reduce imports.

But shortly after those figures were released there was a dampener. Early last week, in a social media post, the former Reserve Bank of India governor, Raghuram Rajan, a noted critic of India’s economic policies in recent years, stated that the sharp rise in mobile phone exports out of India was fuelled largely assembly of devices in India using imported components rather than full-scale manufacturing of the phones.

In a column published on LinkedIn, Rajan, who is now a professor at the Chicago University, has explained that the growth in cellphone exports may be more on account of assembly of phones in India rather than genuine manufacturing. This, Rajan explains, is because the PLI scheme accords incentives based on the finished phone rather than on the value added by manufacturing in India. Much of the cellphone exports are that of cellphones assembled from imported components. Once the imports are offset against the value of the exports of the assembled phones, the value of manufacturing them in India is not nearly as what may be reflected by the total or gross export values.

According to Rajan, “We certainly cannot claim the rise in exports of finished cell phones is evidence of India’s prowess in manufacturing. Manufacturers are likely engaging in only assembly…”

The PLI scheme was introduced in 2020 to spur local production of mobile phones and offers companies an incentive of 4-6% on incremental sales of goods that are manufactured in India. The incentive is available for five years. If Indian companies are importing much of the cellphone components, including the processors or chips (which are the most high technology components of cellphones), the real value addition by manufacture in India is not the same as the total export value. Rajan has called for a review of the PLI scheme to make it really work as a booster for manufacture in India.

The spectre of jobless growth

India’s economy has been growing at a fast pace in recent years. It is estimated that the Indian economy will grow at a world leading rate of 6.5% for the fiscal year ending in 2024. Yet, jobs are not being created. India is still grappling with high unemployment rate. Overall, in the economy, according to the Centre for Monitoring Indian Economy (CMIE), India’s unemployment rate has been hovering around 7% or 8%, up from about 5% five years ago.

In urban India, the situation could be worse. During the COVID pandemic, urban unemployment was estimated to have touched nearly 21% and wages declined. While the rate of unemployment has declined since, there is a lack of fulltime jobs. Many young job seekers are either opting for lower paid jobs or on self-employment options, which are not adequately remunerative.

The reasons for the paradox—relatively high growth rates but low job generation– are complex and multifaceted. One reason is that India’s economy is still heavily dependent on agriculture, which employs a large percentage of the population but is not very productive. Another reason is that many of the jobs being created are in low-paying sectors such as retail and hospitality. Additionally, there is a mismatch between the skills that workers have and the skills that employers are looking for.

There are also structural issues with India’s labour market. For example, many workers are employed in the informal sector, which means they do not have access to benefits such as health insurance or retirement plans. Furthermore, labour laws in India can be complex and restrictive, which can discourage employers from hiring more workers.

Tackling the challenge of breaking out of the jobless growth syndrome is all the more crucial in a country that has already become the world’s most populous and where the number of people between the age of 15 and 64 is nearly 945 million.

Indians dominate American spelling contest

Last weekend, a 14-year-old boy won an annual spelling competition after successfully spelling the word “psammophile”. The word, psammophile, if you’re curious, describes an organism that lives or thrives in sandy areas. Dev Shah, an Indian origin boy from Largo, Florida, won the Scripps national Spelling Bee competition for 2023 and received $50,000 in cash for his achievement.

The spelling bee competition has become almost a domain of young people from the Indian community in the US. The bee began in 1925 and is open to students through the eighth grade. What is significant is that since 1985 when Balu Natarajn won the Scripps bee, Indian-origin students have been dominating the contest as winners through the years.

Weekly News Wrap

Five Things That Happened Last Week (And what to make of them)

By Sanjoy Narayan

How serious is Putin’s not-so-veiled threat of a nuke strike?

As Russia’s offensive against Ukraine enters the eighth month, speculation is growing over whether Russian president Vladimir Putin will follow through on his repeated threats about using nuclear weapons in the ongoing war. Most recently, after a counter-offensive by Ukrainian forces, which led to significant gains for Ukraine, Putin said Russia would “defend its land with all the forces and resources” that it has. Clearly, that is a reference to nuclear weapons but how real is the threat of Russia using them and thereby triggering a worldwide catastrophe of unprecedented proportions?

To help answer that question it would be meaningful to look at the most recent developments in the ongoing Russian offensive against Ukraine and the latter’s response. Over the past month, Ukraine launched high-powered offensives against Russian forces in the southern and eastern fronts, liberating dozens of towns and other settlements in regions that Putin had declared were part of Russia and had to be “recovered” by his country. 

Ukraine’s president Volodymyr Zelensky last month claimed that his forces had recovered more than 6000 square km of land, more than the area that Russia had invaded in the past few months. As of last week, Ukraine was believed to be continuing to gain ground. The problem is the ambiguity of the “facts” that have been trickling down from the area–much of it coloured by propaganda and counter-propaganda with either side making conflicting claims. 

What is less ambiguous, however, is the fact that winter is fast approaching and that can make things more difficult on the ground in the region. First, Ukraine has far less than the number of armed forces personnel than Russia does. In 2021, Ukraine had 246,445 (195,626 military personnel and the rest reserves) armed personnel. Compare that to Russia’s active personnel of 10,00,000 and reserves of 20,00,000. Also to be noted is Putin’s widespread mobilisation through conscription of able-bodied males, which will further add to Russia’s number on the battlefield. 

Against that background, how serious is Putin’s threat of a nuclear offensive in the region? The threat has predictably set off fears across the world. US president Joe Biden said that a nuclear offensive by Putin could lead to “Armageddon” for the world, implying an apocalyptic final and conclusive battle between the forces of good and evil. Elsewhere, there has been much speculation on what could happen if Putin does initiate a nuclear strike.

But will he? Last week, Euronews, a European television news network, headquartered in Lyon, France, spoke with Nikolai Sokov, a senior fellow at the Vienna Centre for Disarmament and Non-Proliferation who used to work at Russia’s foreign ministry who said the chances of a Russian N-attack against Ukraine were “very, very low”. That was because much of Putin’s nuclear threats so far have been against the West and NATO and not against Ukraine. The more likely scenario that could emerge according to him was that of Russian nuclear tests at the regular Russian test sites such as Novaya Zemlya in the north of Russia in the Arctic. These would be to further signal to the world about a potential nuclear strike.

Euronews quoted Sokov as saying: “Nuclear weapons have more utility when they’re not used and when you threaten their use. But once you cross the threshold the situation changes. Even though we’ve seen a lot of nuclear blustering on Moscow’s side. We have not seen any practical steps that might suggest that Russia is preparing to use nuclear weapons.”

Reassuring as that might sound, the fact is that the situation is fluid in the Ukraine conflict and nothing really can be predicted or ruled out.

As BJP pushes its campaigning, is Kashmir finally peaceful?

While addressing a public rally in Baramulla in north Kashmir, home minister Amit Shah last week said the assembly election in Jammu and Kashmir will be conducted once the Election Commission completes the exercise of publishing the revised electoral rolls. Shah’s rally was notable for the fact that it has been more than three decades since a Union cabinet minister had addressed a public gathering there as the state was torn by violence insurgency.

In fact, the BJP has been seeing bright prospects for the party in the forthcoming elections, which are expected to be held in 2023. On Shah’s trip to the state last week, he met representatives of the Dogra, Sikh, and Pahari communities and said he was committed to considering granting Scheduled Tribe status to Paharis. He also announced development projects worth Rs 2000 crore in the state. 

There have been attempts to normalise life in the violence-scarred state in recent times such as the reopening of cinema theatres. But things are not yet fully normal. During Shah’s visit, a director-general of police who was the head of prisons in the state was killed in mysterious circumstances. While the number of major incidents of violence have been far fewer in recent months, Kashmir is still not fully normal.

How medieval is our society?

Last week, in Gujarat’s Kheda district, during a garba dance performance, a few men, allegedly Muslim, were arrested when they threw stones at the dancers. Garba is a form of dance common in Gujarat and many traditional garbas are performed around a centrally lit lamp or a picture or statue of the Goddess Shakti. The men attacking the dancers were rightfully detained. But what happened next was shocking.

Videos that went viral showed policemen in plainclothes flogging the men in public in front of a cheering crowd. The men were then made to apologise with folded hands to the cheering public that had gathered to watch the garba event.

Such kind of vigilante justice is not uncommon in India, where society exists on various primitive levels, including the absolutely barbaric. While vigilantism of the kind that happened in Kheda is commonplace when it comes to majoritarian communities such as Hindus targeting Muslims (remember the lynchings that took place related to allegations of cow slaughter?), it is common even in incidents that are unrelated to inter-communal conflicts. Take road rage-related violence on streets of big cities. Or even minor scuffles in crowded public transport. More often than not they end up with members of the public taking the law into their own hands and dispensing “justice” that is usually marked by egregious use of violence.

What makes the incident in Kheda especially abhorrent is the fact that the proponents of vigilantism were cops who flogged the men in public and in doing so may have set an example for ordinary citizens to follow.

An appropriate Nobel Peace Prize 

There is a common thread that is shared by this year’s Nobel Peace Prize winners. Last week the prestigious prize was awarded to human rights organisations and advocates in Belarus, Russia, and Ukraine. These activists, including an imprisoned human rights activist, Ales Bialiatski, are all campaigners against abuses and civil rights violations by Russia or its Soviet past or, in the case of Belarus, Russian president Vladimir Putin’s ally, president Aleksandr Lukashenko. 

Bialiatski, 60, is the founder of the country’s Viasna (Spring) Human Rights Centre, which was set up in 1996 in response to a brutal crackdown of street protests by Belarus’s authoritarian leader Alexander Lukashenko. 

The second joint winner is the Ukrainian Centre for Civil Liberties (CCL). CCL is one of Ukraine’s leading human rights organisations and was founded when leaders of human rights groups from nine post-Soviet countries decided to create a cross-border resource support centre in Kyiv. 

The third winner is Russian human rights organisation Memorial, which the Putin regime shut down earlier this year. For more than three decades, Memorial worked to compile and highlight the focus on the millions of people who were killed, imprisoned or persecuted during the Soviet regime. 

Malta’s golden passport

The picturesque small island of Malta in the Mediterranean has something that the unspeakably rich could vie for: a golden passport. It is also known as investment citizenship. Many countries have the scheme where when an individual or a family brings in large sums of money as investment they get a citizenship but Malta’s is particularly seductive. For amounts starting at US$680,000 or so, Malta offers the right to a golden passport (that is, citizenship). But that is not all. Malta being a member of the European Union, it is essentially a passport that enables individuals free movement and visa-free travel to most of Europe and, basically, the right to live anywhere there.

The problem is that the EU is not taking kindly to it and has taken Malta to court. One of the problems is that although Malta has raised over $1 billion from the scheme, it is feared that many applicants could have criminal records and the passport offers them refuge from prosecution or possible incarceration in their home countries. It is also felt that citizenship should be a right and not a commodity that can be bought. For now, however, it is over to the courts.