View Articles

Food availability was the top concern of 21 per cent of Cubans responding to a recent opinion survey, reflecting the recurrent food shortages on the island promoted by the U.S. economic blockade and the shortcomings of the domestic food supply system. In 1960, the idea of a blockade was appealing to the U.S. State Department because it would cause deprivation and suffering. Those intentions resurfaced in 1992 with the so-called Cuban Democracy Act, which, still in force, restricts foreign partners of U.S. companies from exporting goods to Cuba. It covers exports of food and agricultural supplies.

A recent study released by the Indira Gandhi Institute of Development Research (IGIDR) reveals that the estimated monthly wage loss caused by job losses and layoffs in the country in the first two lockdowns alone, will touch Rs. 33,800 crore. The study also shows that these two lockdowns might have resulted in a job loss for 19.5 crore persons in the pandemic-hit India.

India, for the first time in its more than seven decades of parliamentary history, will have its Monsoon session with some members attending physically and others virtually. This hybrid experiment is necessitated due to the on-going Covid crisis. The lawmakers will be failing in their assigned role by the Indian Constitution, namely law making, holding the executive accountable and budget scrutiny if they do not meet. The Constitution stipulates that Parliament should meet at least once in six months and that six month period ends on September 22.With the curtailed budget session adjourned sine die on March 23, it is difficult for the legislature to question the executive with so many burning issues like Covid, economy, Chinese face off in Ladakh etc.

With inviting request from private operators for qualification for Rs 30,000 crore mega private trains project, Modi government has taken yet another step for privatization of the Indian Railways. The bait being ‘faster-more comfortable-world class travel’ as a bargain for getting support from the people who have been hitherto depending on this national carrier for affordable travel and goods-transport. Since the single motive of private investors is profit making, the move will increase the costs of rail services to the nation, and also the majority of the people who need to go to distant places for livelihood, medications, pilgrimages, and so on.

One question that unswervingly and consciously continues to haunt is why the Modi government has been desperate to destroy the democratic institutions of the country and its laws. The plausible answer obviously is as these are stumbling blocks in its path to transform India into a Hindu Rashtra, the government would not like keep on the statute books or have them in place.

COVID-19 has serious implications on agriculture, rural employment, and food security. Policy responses in relation to COVID-19 outbreak include several agriculture policies, agro-food supply chain policies, consumer policies, trade policies and others. However, much more are needed to overcome the crisis it has presented. Moreover, the legacy of problems cannot be left unsolved now without aggravating the agriculture crisis with the new COVID-19 twist and the largest number of stomachs in the world to feed within seven years.

Recent events in the south Asian region are upsetting and worrisome and these require statesmanship to wriggle out. There has been perpetual tension between Pakistan and India which has led to immense wasteful expenditure on arms race thus marring development in the two countries and adversely affecting health and education in particular. With some periods of thaw, most of the time, the two countries have been engaged in cold or hot war. There have been four full-fledged wars in addition to skirmishes at the border from time to time.

How valid is the assumption about Narendra Modi’s popularity? The BJP’s losses in the assembly elections of 2015 and 2016 underlined the ephemeral nature of its 2014 general election. Within a year of that success, the BJP lost in Delhi and Bihar and, in 2016, it lost in West Bengal, Kerala, Tamil Nadu and Puducherry. In the following year, the BJP lost Punjab and, in 2018, Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh. A year later, the BJP lost Maharashtra, Haryana and Jharkhand and then Karnataka in 2019.

Years ago, Bengal’s Marxist Chief Minister Jyoti Basu once asked one of his close business friends, Jit Paul of the Apeejay group: ‘what is the surest way to create employment fast?’ To this, Paul’s simple suggestion was: ‘create as many employers as fast as possible. They will automatically generate employment.’ As the head of a multi-party Left Front government, Jyoti Basu was aware of his limitation to promote such a pro-employer policy and did not discuss the subject further with other close business friends like industrialist Rama Prasad Goenka and Tata Steel’s Russi Mody. Few governments in the world have appreciated such a simple logic more than Communist China, especially since the time of its ‘paramount leader’ in the 1980s, Deng Xiaoping.

Ministry of Labour and Employment (MoLE) started working on National Vocational Qualification Framework (NVQF), sometimes in 2011-12. It constituted a committee of stakeholders under the chairmanship of Secretary Labour and Employment, which included representatives from Ministry of Human Resource Development (MHRD). In the meantime MHRD took an independent route and notified implementation of National Vocational Educational Qualification Framework (NVEQF) in September 2012. When MoLE and MHRD could not align, the matter was reported to Prime Minister’s Office. In a meeting between Principal Secretary to PMO (Shri Pulok Chatterjee), Secretary Labour and Employment (Dr Mrutyunjay Sarangi) and Special Secretary MHRD (Shri Ashok Thakur), National Skill Qualification Framework (NSQF) was conceptualized as an alternative nomenclature. Perhaps this committee is referred as Inter-Ministerial Committee in NSQF notification. National Skill Development Agency (NSDA) was proposed to anchor the NSQF.