UPSC topper Shubham Kumar has said that he was not sure about cracking the examination this year, which was his third attempt.

His first attempt was in 2018. "After the second attempt in 2019, I got the 290th rank, and then I got into the Indian Defence Account Service," he said.

The Union Public Service Commission (UPSC) on Friday declared the results of exams held in 2020. Kumar, a resident of Katihar district of Bihar, who has topped the Civil Services Examination 2020, said he is happy with his performance.

A total of 761 candidates have been recommended by the Union Public Service Commission for appointment in the bureaucracy of the country.

"I am very happy and feeling very good because I gave as much as I could... I was not sure that I would be able to do it this time," he told IANS.

Kumar has done civil engineering from IIT Bombay and hails from Katihar in Bihar.

"Currently, I am in National Academy of Defence Financial Management Pune and I am an official trainee in Indian Accounts Service," he said.

He said: "I was not that confident in the Mains this time as I was not able to answer all the questions well."

"Due to Covid, I was not able to prepare last year... I was all alone... friends became less and I could not talk to anyone, so it was like preparing by staying locked in a room."

Apart from Shubham, Jagriti Awasthi and Ankita Jain have secured the second and third positions respectively in the Civil Services Examination.

(Courtesy: IANS)

Public Interest Litigations have ensured against derailment of the rule of law and benefited the socially vulnerable sections

Efficient implementation of law is a pre-requisite for a stable and peaceful society and democracy is the torch bearer for a vibrant people-centric governance. The democratic fabric of a nation compliments the jurisprudence in ensuring the lawful governance. Over the years judicial activism through the Public Interest Litigation (PIL) has ensured that the derailment of the rule of law is prevented and the socially vulnerable sections of the society have immensely benefited.

The PIL concept was introduced by Justice PN Bhagwati. It refers to litigation undertaken to secure public interest and created an opportunity of justice to socially-disadvantaged groups and provided relaxation on the traditional rule of locus standi. Ever since its enunciation in 1980s, the judiciary has used it for the course correction of executive's functions and several landmark judgements have provided reliefs to affected citizens.

However, in India of late a serious problem of misuse of law is cropping up and threatening the jurisprudence. This writer has been a witness to such misuse of law both by the common citizens as well as people in power. He has recently written a book "Quest for Civility-an insight into Indian Babudom" on the misuse of power by people in authority.

The trigger for this article came from a newspaper report about challenging the appointment of Rakesh Asthana as the Delhi Police Commissioner under a PIL filed by a few non- government organizations opposed to the present dispensation at the Centre. Asthana has challenged it as misuse of law.

Now let us discuss it how his appointment was made and under what rule. The AllIndia Service officers IAS, IPS and IFS (forests) are recruited by the Union Government and it is up to the sweet will of the government to utilize them anywhere in the country or abroad in public interest. They can be granted extension in service or transferred from one cadre to the other if need be, depending upon their service records and the opinion of the government. Such action of the Central is absolutely within its power and cannot be challenged. The government will have its reasons for the appointment. Some officers may have their reasons to be disappointed with the decision. If affected officers had gone to the Central Administrative Tribunal it would have been justified and the case could have been decided on merit. However, how could an unaffected party challenge the power of the government? If the country allows such wastage of time on things based purely on ulterior motives or at the instigation of political leaders to regularly bring such matters in courts it would put the entire country's administration as well as security to peril.

There are many other instances of misuse of powers, however, which need the attention of Supreme Court, High Courts and lower courts as well as legislatures. Crimes against women are attracting the attention of the judiciary with stringent provisions but surveys had shown that most of the provisions of section 354 of IPC and the Dowry Prevention Law (Section 498A/ 406 of IPC) are the most misused provisions of law in India and yet no modifications seem to have been made in it. The provision, enacted to protect the dignity of a woman, has become a widely misused weapon by them and is used to harass and blackmail their husband and his family. Once an FIR is filed under 498A/406 (IPC) it becomes a tool in the hands of the police to harass the husband and all his relatives named in the FIR without even preliminary investigation.

According to a survey conducted by Fight against Misuse of Dowry law, 98 per cent of the cases filed under section 498A are false. One senior officer of Ladakh is facing a false dowry case and his father, a retired senior officer of 71 years, is running from pillar to post.  Similarly, section 354 is routinely used to harass men deliberately to settle property and other disputes. More than half of such cases ultimately prove false and no real punitive action is taken against the complainant.

The country needs to bring in a law to prevent misuse of law. If a case is dismissed, the complainant and others involved in the investigation and tendering of false witnesses must be punished. Only then the country's judiciary as well as the police and other agencies would be spared such wastage of time and at the same time the law protecting citizens would be implemented well.

(The writer is Chairman of Centre for Resource Management and Environment. The views expressed are personal.)

(Courtesy: The Pioneer)

India has a range of bilateral discussions lined up on current issues of interest

The United States is hosting the first in-person summit of QUAD leaders in Washington and perhaps beginning of a new era of cooperation on what the White House termed as “demonstration of the priority of engaging in the Indo-Pacific, including through new multilateral configurations designed to focus on 21st century challenges”. The centrality is the realigning of the partners' foreign policiesto Indo-Pacific coordination on shared targets. This roughly translates into keeping a sharp eye on Chinawhich is trying to defy international legal orders; therefore, a global consensus on the South China Sea is emerging. India's focus during the QUAD summit will be tackling the Covid-19 pandemic and future cooperation, climate change issues,and an open Indo-Pacific region that allows equal and fair access for nations to prosper. During the first, virtual meeting of the QUAD leaders in March, 2021, a commitment of one billion vaccines by 2022 was made. The leaders may also talk about additional relief and assistance measures for poor countries as a goodwill gesture. On the QUAD sidelines, a working group of senior representatives from member countries will focus on cyber security,secure supply chains infrastructure,and work towards finding a common language on emerging technologies including artificial intelligence. The global pandemic has ensured all digital economies around the globe, not to mention the QUAD members, need to find a common thread on defining paradigms for next-generation technology growth and collateral threats. The world industry facing acute shortage of semiconductor chips and other critical digital hardware components understand the importance of working with reliable trusted partners. United States, Australia, Japan and India are critical levers of the huge digital engine driving this technology towards a prosperity dream. One of the best outcomes from the QUAD summit could be for the leaders to come out with a paper on destinations and targets for this digital highway. This in itself could be one the key success stories for QUAD.

The last aspect on which most of the countries from the quadrilateral can make announcements would be on securing clean targets and achieving goals on climate change. The US envoy on climate John Kerry's visitto India a few days back was a firm commitment towards achieving time bound targets. The US offered assistanceto India for quickly reaching its renewable energy targets of 450 GW by 2030. Currently India's environment and climate change portfolio is held by ruling party heavy weight Bhupendra Yadav, who enjoysthe blessings of the senior leadership. The only challenge for India on this green path could be about assuming more green responsibilities at international forums while trying to attract investments. That is where the will of the domestic government and the organizational skills of the current minister will come for test. Finally on the sidelines of QUAD, Prime Minister Modi and his external affairs minister will hold a whole range of bilateral talks on current issues of interest. The India-US discussions and theoutcome notes would the most watched as this would be first in-person meeting between the President of the US and the Indian Prime Minister. Narendra Modi shared a visible sense of bonhomie with Joe Biden's predecessor Donald Trump. The same optics may not be repeated but Biden is unlikely to disappoint his counterpart. Afghanistan's safety, security and upholding of human rights in central Asia would definitely feature as key topics during the bilateral. The hurried exit of the US from Afghanistan has placed many fringe players such as India in a spot in the Central Asian theatre. Every major player in the region including China, Russia and Iranis trying to recalibrate its position with regard to Afghanistan.

(The writer is a policy analyst. The views expressed are personal.)

(Courtesy: The Pioneer)

The NCAER recently undertook a study on cooperative agro-processing and identification of institutional financial lacunae in the cooperative movement

The cooperative movement in India has regained focus after the Union Government recently created a Ministry of Cooperation to provide a separate administrative legal and policy framework for streamlining the cooperatives. The move is expected to cascade the movement down to the grassroots level for facilitating the growth of a people-based economic development model. It envisages an environment that would enable 'sahkar se samriddhi' (prosperity through cooperation) and promote 'ease of doing business' for cooperatives through various proactive measures, including the development of Multi-State Cooperatives (MSCs).

The genesis of the current movement can be traced to the enactment of the Cooperative Credit Societies Act by the British in 1904. Subsequently, Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru gave it a fillip by integrating cooperatives into the Five-Year Plans. His vision of “convulsing India with the cooperative movement…to make it, broadly speaking, the basic activity of India, in every village as well as elsewhere, indeed to make the cooperative approach the common thinking of India” was a precursor for the establishment of cooperative societies especially in rural India, thus laying the foundation for the largest cooperative movement in the world.

The institution of cooperative marketing societies by the National Development Council (NDC), coupled with the passage of the Multi-State Cooperative Societies Act by the Parliament in 1984 enhanced the importance of the movement. By definition, therefore, cooperative societies were envisioned as a combined agglomerate of persons voluntarily coming together to meet their common economic, social, and cultural needs through a jointly-owned and democratically-controlled enterprise.

It was anticipated that the cooperative movement would largely be concentrated in the agricultural sector, playing a significant role across operations spanning production, distribution, and consumption. Two of the most conspicuous success stories emerging from the implementation of this model were the White Revolutionand the Green Revolution. As per data from the National Dairy Development Board, in 2019-20, dairy cooperatives had procured 4.80 crore litres of milk from 1.7 crore members,while selling 3.7 crore litres of liquid milk per day. Farm sector experts point out that cooperatives have also positively impacted post-harvest processing, storage, transportation, trade, and input procurement for a range of activities in the agricultural sector.

The movement has reportedly fostered 5.03 lakh cooperatives, a membership of 210 million, and a network stretching through the entire breadth of rural India, while accounting for 46.31 per cent of the total agricultural creditand 23.5 per cent of the total fertiliser production across the country. These milestones have been achieved through the institution of 21 national-level, 361 State-level, and 2,572 district-level cooperative federations in the country. Hence, every sphere of national and local economic activity has literally been brought under the ambit of the cooperative movement.

But is the picture as rosy as these statistics apparently indicate? Rumblings of discontent among farmers, in particular, and the farm sector, in general, suggest that the contribution of cooperatives to actual growth in the agricultural sector is significantly lower than expectations. Despite the need for substantial investments in the form of plant, machinery, tools, and equipment in farming, the outcomes reflect low capital and low productivity linkages, along with the need for augmenting an under-performing marketing infrastructure.

In order to identify the ground-level roadblocks and suggest measures to overcome them, the National Council of Applied Economic Research (NCAER) recently undertook a study on cooperative agro-processing and identification of institutional financial lacunae in the cooperative movement with special attention on the role of the National Cooperative Development Corporation (NCDC). The NCAER study, covering 304 cooperative units in Assam, Chhattisgarh, Gujarat, Himachal Pradesh, Kerala, Maharashtra, and West Bengal, found that marginal and small farmers sell a major part of their agricultural commodities to private traders, which prevents them from reaping the profits of their produce even during a bumper harvest. Their small quantity transactions translate into meagre cooperative shares and weak bargaining power in the market. Lack of adequate storage facilities also compromises the processing of paddy, grains, and fruits and vegetables, which, in turn, adversely impacts the shelf life of products and compromises employment outcomes. Further, the study showed a decadal decline in the share of agro-processing in the total value of the manufacturing output from 32.31 per cent in 2000-2001 to 22.9 per cent in 2011-12.

The NCAER estimations, based on analysis of the 70th Round unit-level data from the National Sample Survey Office (NSSO), also highlight the need for providing cooperative support for marketing penetration and storage to smallholders, who constituted 86 per cent of the total share of landholdings in 2015-16, according to the Tenth Agricultural Census. In this context, NCDC, which has been at the forefront of the cooperative movement in the country, can offer pivotal support to the agriculture sector through the development of sustainable supply chains linking farmers to processing centres and markets. Critical funding from NCDC towards cooperative sector schemes comprising fisheries, dairy and livestock, water conservation, micro irrigation, agricultural insurance and credit, among others, constitutedover 49 per cent of the cumulative lending for the period 2008-13. Yet the corporation is not being offered concessional finance under priority sector lending. Compelled to source its funds from the market, NCDC faces constraints in offering loans to cooperatives at competitive rates, which has a deterrent impact on post-harvest agricultural activities.

An assessment of the capacity utilisation of the surveyed units revealed that nearly 34 per cent of them were under-utilising their capacities in the range of 25 to 75 per cent, due to various reasons, such as inadequate supply of products for processing, shortage of skilled manpower, funds crunch, lack of demand, and non-availability of advanced machinery. In addition, most States exhibit poor urban and rural representation of self-help groups and cooperatives in the sphere of foodgrain disbursal under the Public Distribution System (PDS) through the network of Fair Price Shops (FPS). Notwithstanding the policy for issuance of FPS licences to women's self-help groups, village panchayats, urban local bodies, and cooperatives, the combined percentage of their FPS presence in India is merely about 26 per cent, with the rest going to private individual ownership.

It is obvious that despite its monumental potential, the cooperative model in the country is facing numerous policy hurdles. Since the administration of cooperatives has traditionally fallen under the purview of the respective State governments, the establishment of a Central Ministry to oversee their functioning may also have certain political repercussions and revive the national debate on collaborative federalism. The immediate priority before the new Ministry, therefore, is to revamp the nation-wide cooperative strategy to ensure access to cost-effective institutional sources of credit, capital equipment, and state-of-the-art technology for producers, especially in agriculture. Another vital mandate for it would be fulfilment of the fundamental objective of cooperativesof lifting the illiterate and unskilled workers out of poverty by providing them comprehensive infrastructural and marketing support for livelihood. There is no denying the fact that cooperatives have always signified viable solutions even in a failing market. It remains to be seen if the renewed political and economic focus on cooperatives can actually metamorphose into a truly people-based movement at the grassroots level, to usher in prosperity through people's participation.

(Saurabh Bandyopadhyay is Fellow and Anupma Mehta is Editor at NCAER. The views expressed are personal.)

(Courtesy: The Pioneer)