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10th ministerial meet of the WTO
- Where: Nairobi, Kenya.
- When: Dec, 2015
- Significance: The ministerial meet is the highest policy making body of the WTO covering 161 members.
Why this meet is special
- The very relevance of the WTO and more specifically its Doha development round will be under question.
- TPP and RCEP and their role in world trade will take center stage.
- The TPP and RCEP will force significant structural changes in the way WTO functions.
TPP and RCEP
- Two important trade blocs are on the anvil —
- the Trans-pacific Partnership (TPP), which excludes India and
- Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP), which includes India and ten members of the ASEAN (Association of Southeast Asian Nations) plus Australia, China, Indonesia, Japan, South Korea and New Zealand.
- Trans-pacific Partnership (TPP) TPP includes the U.S., Canada, Australia, New Zealand and Japan among the large economies and Chile, Peru, Mexico, Vietnam, Singapore, Brunei and Malaysia among the smaller economies. Together they account for 40 per cent of global trade. 800 million people live in these countries.
- China, India and South Korea are not a part of TPP.
- The TPP seeks to ease the flow of goods, services and investments among its members and to strengthen the rules on labour standards, environmental issues, origin criteria and intellectual property.
- For India, the TPP might signal the erosion of the competitive edge its goods and services enjoy especially in the traditional markets of European union and the U.S.
Govt. forms committee to review drug pricing policy
- The government has formed an inter-ministerial committee to review the Drug Price Control Order (DPCO) 2013.
- Supreme Court verdict termed the drug pricing policy as irrational and unreasonable.
- The Supreme Court had observed that the Centre was fixing maximum price of a medicine above the retail price of the leading company.
- MBP (Market Based Pricing) was never used for any price regulatory purposes.
- Under the new policy, simple average ceiling prices were, in many cases, higher than the market leader price.
- The committee will look into the pricing of medicines, and specifically in the market based pricing formula which is being used at present under DPCO 2013.
Market based pricing was never used for any price regulatory purposes and this was making medicines costlier.
Essential Drugs
- The petitioner sought inclusion of more life-saving medicines of diseases such as diabetes and tuberculosis in the list of drugs whose prices would be regulated by the government.
- As stipulated under DPCO 2013, drug price regulator NPPA fixes the ceiling price of essential medicines of schedule-I.
- So far, the authority has fixed the ceiling price of 530 formulations from the list.
- No one is authorized to sell any scheduled medicine to a consumer at a price higher than the one notified by NPPA under the order.
- While fixing the ceiling price, 16 per cent margin is allowed for retailers.
United Nations’ 1951 Refugee Convention
- Was basically meant to protect the Europeans who became refugees due to World War-II.
- The Convention offers the refugee three basic protections — non-discrimination, non-penalisation, and non-refoulement.
- Of these, the most critical is the principle of non-refoulement, which mandates that no one can ‘return’ or expel a refugee against his will back “to a territory where he or she fears threats to life of freedom”.
- The Convention also states that a refugee is entitled to basic rights such as access to the courts, primary education, work, and travel documents.
- Over 140 nations are signatories to it.
- But the sad reality is that these statutes are observed mostly in the breach.
- Internally displaced persons (IDPs): people forcibly displaced by, say, the violence of ‘development’ (by a dam, a mine, a nuclear plant); by communal violence; or even a Salwa Judum .
- Asylum-seeker: a person who, as per UNHCR’s definition, “says he or she is a refugee, but whose claim has not yet been definitively evaluated.”
Decentralization (Very Very Very Important)
Why decentralization?
- To strengthen participatory democracy (encouraging people to utilize their right to vote),
- To facilitate responsive governance (peoples demands will be heard by the administration)
- To ensure greater accountability (people will find it easy to question local governments. State and Central governments are too far away you know) and
- To enable public service delivery according to diversified preferences of the people (it will be more easy to demand different freebies. Students = Phones, laptops; Ladies = Sarees, Men = liquor etc..)
Reality: Arguments against decentralization
- Decentralization has only helped Khap Panchyats grow more powerful.
- Caste based politics have become much stronger due to Local Elections.
- Moreover, local elections result in unnecessary expenditure.
- Elections every now and then creates an explosion of freebie policies, caste and religion based appeasement. But these Hindu Editorials….).
Meaningful argument put forward by VVIP
- Dr. Ambedkar was apprehensive that in the hierarchical society (caste based society) with highly skewed nature of asset and power distribution (upper caste = more power, more wealth, lower caste = ….), vesting more powers at the village level would only perpetuate exploitation of the dispossessed.
- [Constitution placed local governance in the State List (Entry 5) = More scope for misuse of decentralization]
73rd and 74th Constitutional amendments
- Part IX was inserted into the Constitution with Article 243(A to O) specifying matters such as the constitution, elections and the functions to be devolved for panchayats and for urban local bodies under Article 243P to Z.
- Article 243I and Y mandated the appointment of the State Finance Commission by the Governor every five years to balance their functions with funds.
- Article 280 was seeded with an additional term of reference (TOR) to the Union Finance Commission to take cognisance of the resource requirements of local bodies.
Five important issues
- Constitution assigns decentralisation including funding entirely to the discretion of State governments.
- Secondly, the constitutional framework does not prescribe any pattern, standard or model of decentralisation which again is left to the discretion of State governments (Every state has its own exploitation strategy).
- Third, there are no easy mechanisms to ensure compliance of even the prescribed provisions of the Constitution by the States.
- Most States have not complied with the requirement of having to appoint gram sabhas (243A), ward committees, district planning committees and metropolitan planning committees.
- There have been several attempts to postpone elections though they are required to hold them well before the expiry of the prevailing elected body or before six months if the body is dissolved for some reason, as required under 243K and U (don’t have to remember each and every provision).
- The States are required to appoint a Finance Commissions every five years and their reports are required to be placed in the legislatures with the action taken reports.
- Unfortunately, the States’ record shows complete violations of Article 243I and Y.
- Fourth, on the financial side, local bodies do not have any independent revenues. There is no separate list of tax bases assigned to them in the Constitution and they have to depend on the State governments to levy the taxes.
- There is also the problem of administrative capacity and interest groups resisting payment of taxes and user charges (one more –ve of Decentralization).
FFC did not continue the decentralisation reform initiated TFC
- Fourteenth Finance Commission (FFC) did not continue the decentralisation reform initiated by the Thirteenth Finance Commission (TFC).
- TFC initiated a package of conditionalities for availing the performance grants which was not continued by the FFC. (TFC intiated merit based grants and FFC ignored it)
The important features of the TFC recommendations included
1. linking the grants to local governments to previous year’s divisible pool of taxes and
2. linking a significant proportion of the grants for performance.
- In contrast, the FFC while recommending a much higher level of transfers, did not see Constitutional validity in linking the transfers to the divisible pool.
- It continued the performance grants, but linked them directly to the actions by the panchayats and municipalities rather than the State governments.
- Thus, the FFC in its report explained that it did not carry on the scheme of rewards and punishment because truthful adherence to the Constitutional framework did not permit it to do so.
- It is another issue that only a fraction of the performance grants recommended by the TFC were actually utilised and the Union government was the beneficiary in the process!
Legal checks to political vandalism (No legal checks to be accurate)
- The Representation of People Act, 1951 governs political parties in India.
- However, despite containing a list of barred activities, the Election Commission can only censure individual party members
- The Act does not provide for the punishment of political parties for any criminal activities their members commit.
- The Supreme Court has held that in the absence of such a provision, the EC cannot even de-register parties as it would amount to a quasi-judicial action being committed without a fair trial, a basic requirement of natural justice.
- At the opposite end of the spectrum is the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act, 1967.
- It has been used to ban associations like the Communist Party of India (Maoist) for engaging in “unlawful activity” and “terrorism”.
- However, these terms can legally be applied to only a few criminal activities. For example, the definition of “unlawful activity” only covers activities questioning and prejudicing the sovereignty and integrity of the Indian state.
- Moreover, the decision to ban an association is the prerogative of the Central government and not the judiciary.
- Ruling parties would obviously make no efforts to censure themselves and any action against opposing parties would inevitably lead to a media furore that would probably culminate in a logjam in Parliament.
- Section 144 of the Code of Criminal Procedure, 1973 (CrPC) is another available provision.
- It empowers State governments, via a magistrate, to issue an order “in urgent cases of nuisance or apprehended danger”.
- Governments generally use it to prevent acts or prohibit organizations if they feel it is in the public interest to do so.
- In a recent use of Section 144, the Goa government banned the Sri Ram Sena from enforcing its policy of moral policing in the State.
- However, Section 144 has also failed to prove a sufficient deterrent to parties because the response is determined by the discretion of politicians and is not automatic as with most crimes.
Corporate example: SC judgment on corporate criminal liability.
- SC says, “If an agent of a company commits a crime on behalf of the company, the company should be held responsible. [If RSS wala does something bad in the name of RSS, then the governing body of the RSS can be held responsible]
- It is high time that other organisations like political parties are also made liable for actions committed through their agents (Silly solution by The Hindu).
- Ideally, there should also be an amendment in the Representation of the People Act that allows the Election Commission to suspend a party from contesting elections if successfully convicted (Another impractical solution by The Hindu. EC cannot take the role of SC. Any such ban will lead to breakdown in democracy)
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