Following the PM’s address, our Finance Minister, Dr. Nirmala Sitharaman, through a set of conferences, laid out the specifics of the package divided into 5 tranches. This article seeks to explore the details, benefits and drawbacks of the same. 

The Package in Details

Some of the Key Highlights of the Package for various sectors in several tranches have been provided below:

EARLIER MEASURES 

The “Pradhan Mantri Garib Kalyan Yojana” provided the following:  

• Foodgrains and gas cylinders to the needy for three months.
• ₹500 to women Jan Dhan account holders for three months.
• Relief to construction workers via a Welfare Fund.
• Insurance cover to health workers.
• District Mineral Fund to facilitate greater medical testing.
• Increased minimum daily wage rate 
• An increased limit of collateral-free loans for Women Self Help Groups.

Apart from the aforementioned activities, the Indian government has also provided relaxation in Statutory and Compliance matters such as extending the last date for Income Tax Returns and filing GST returns, allowing for 24*7 customs clearance till 30th June 2020, and others. It has also sanctioned Rs. 15,000 crores for Emergency Health Response Package and issued pending income-tax returns up to Rs. 5 lakhs.

RBI’s Monetary Measures:

• Reducing Cash Reserve Ratios.
• Providing Targeted Long Term Repo Operations for fresh deployment in investment-grade bonds, commercial paper, and non-convertible debentures. 
• Increasing banks’ borrowing-limit under the Marginal Standing Facility.
• Special refinance facilities for NABARD, SIDBI and the NHB at policy repo rate.
• 3 months of moratorium on payment of all installments and interest on working capital facilities.

MSMEs AND OTHER BUSINESSES

• Availability of collateral-free, automatic loans with 4-year tenure.
• 25% reduction in the rate of Tax Deduction at Source (TDS) and Tax Collection at Source (TCS) 
• Equity infusion and Equity Support for MSMEs.
• Providing a new definition of MSMEs with additional turnover criteria to incentivise them to grow.
• Amendments of General Financial Rules to disallow Global tenders up to Rs.200 crores.
• Extension of the due date of all income-tax return for FY 2019-20.

AGRICULTURE^[3]

• Additional Emergency Working Capital for farmers through NABARD
• Provision of concessional credit to PM-KISAN beneficiaries.
• Promotion of ‘Vocal for Local with Global outreach’ vision via schemes formalising Micro Food Enterprises.
• Facilitating risk mitigation, assured returns and quality standardisation for farmers.
• Implementation of schemes for sustainable development of marine and inland fisheries, development of herbal cultivation, animal husbandry and beekeeping.
• Subsidies on transportation and storage.

MIGRANTS, LABOURERS and OTHERS^[4]

• Setting up shelters providing food and water to migrants by utilising  State Disaster Response Fund.
• Launching schemes to provide free food supply and affordable rental accommodation to migrant workers.
• Providing employment opportunities to the urban-poor by mass production of sanitizers and masks.
• Launching a Special Credit Facility for Street Vendors.
• Universalizing the minimum wage right and implementing the statutory concept of National Floor Wage to reduce regional disparity in minimum wages.
• Boosting the housing sector and the middle-income group through the extension of the Credit Linked Subsidy Scheme.

NEW HORIZONS^[5]

• Fast track Investment Clearance through Empowered Group of Secretaries (EGoS)
• Implementing schemes to upgrade industrial infrastructure and bring about beneficial policy reforms.
• Encouraging private sector participation and boosting investment in several sectors, including space activities.
• Facilitating Efficient Airspace Management for Civil Aviation.
• Improve autonomy, accountability and efficiency in Defence Production.
• Implementing a Tariff Policy Reform pertaining to Consumer Rights, Industry Promotion and Sector-Sustainability.

      GOVERNMENT REFORMS^[6]

• Promoting India as one of the easiest business locations by modifying the Ease of Doing Business Reforms relating to easy registration of property, fast disposal of commercial disputes and simpler tax regime. 
• Facilitating Technology-Driven Education via PM eVIDYA programme
• Increasing investments in the Public Health Sector to not only combat the present pandemic but also prepare for future pandemics.
• Supporting State Governments & promoting state-level reforms.
• Modifying policies to allow for the privatization of various sectors, while upholding the prominence of Public Service Enterprises in defined areas. 

Overall Stimulus Provided by the Aatmanirbhar Bharat Package

Problems

The earlier fiscal relief measures along with RBI’s measures constitute ₹9,94,403 crores, which leaves an effective amount of ₹11,02,650 crores. Thus, the immediate fiscal boost announced with such grandeur by the government is quite less than the promised amount because of the inclusion of RBI’s monetary measures, despite both being independent institutions. Direct investment by the government in the form of a boost to the aggregate demand guarantees immediate impetus to the economy, however, that might not be the case with the government’s indirect measures and RBI’s credit easing because the banks, instead of lending, might park the money back with the RBI, thus, rendering its help ineffective. Even if the banks transmit the liquidity measures from RBI to the citizens, the transmission procedure will not be smooth due to the prevailing inefficiency of monetary policy transfers.

The economic package includes a lot of measures spread over 5 tranches. However, there exists the problem of implementing those measures. A classic example is the provision of collateral-free automatic loans to MSMEs. There is a high risk of non-return to banks in such cases unless the businesses end up earning high-profits amidst a global crisis, that is if the MSMEs get the required loans after overcoming the hurdles of meeting the high credit score criteria, bearing high processing costs followed by tedious procedures, and still not receiving the entire amount applied for. 

Conclusion

Both ‘Aatmanirbhar Bharat Abhiyaan’ and the ‘Make In India Campaign’ attempt to attract Foreign Direct Investment by laying emphasis on the promotion of local products to help with the declining job market. However, this causes a critical problem in a developing country like India which needs to depend on cost-effective imports of several products in which it does not have a comparative advantage and the domestic production of which will lead to increased manufacturing cost, thus, leading to the loss of a competitive edge in the Global Market. Although, Aatmanirbhar Bharat Abhiyaan does possess an advantage due to the inclusion of agriculture, which had been neglected all this while.

Although the package is very comprehensive and caters to the needs of all people, past history of failures due to the presence of corrupt bureaucracy raises the question of whether the relief package will have its desired effect. However, if the package is properly implemented and people are educated about the schemes through various drives and trained to utilize the benefits available to them, then there exists the possibility of success of the package through economic upliftment of the nation.

The post AATMANIRBHAR BHARAT ABHIYAAN: RELYING ON A SELF-RELIANT ECONOMY appeared first on WISER WORLD.

The encounter of criminals is not a novel thing in India; in fact, it is much more commonplace than capital punishment. So, more people are killed by the police without trial than criminals sentenced to the gallows through the proper procedure by our courts. If they are a violation of the due process of justice, how come they are still such widespread phenomena?

Why Extra-Judicial Killings Continue Unabated?

It is now a well-known fact that Indians have lost faith in the judicial system. Rampant with red-tapism, corruption, procedural delays and empty posts, the mammoth of a system takes years to fulfill its promises. As the Hindi film, Damini has immortalized: “Tareekh pe tareekh milti hai My Lord, insaaf nahi milta!” This is a sad reality for the majority of people who spend half of their lives trapped in the slow-paced monotony of courts for trivial cases. Over three crore cases are pending in the courts of the country, nearly 15% of them for more than 10 years! As a result, many extra-judicial forms of punishment are seen to bring timely ‘justice’ in places where the courts have been exhausted. For instance, it took nearly 7 years for Nirbhaya rapists to face their ultimate punishment, while the Telangana police disposed off the 2019 rape accused within a few days and were hailed as heroes. This is a bleak picture of our hollow system, which has come to prefer encounters over trials.

Apart from the inadequacy of the judicial system, public perceptions of justice are also responsible for these methods adopted by the police. Justice in India has retained its barbaric, orthodox roots that embrace a tit-for-tat approach tainted with violence. Public lynching of an accused is given moral backing and it is seen as the policemen’s duty to teach the defiant criminals a lesson. So of course encounters of criminals are met with applause and immortalized into Bollywood ‘masala’ scripts. The film industry, with its penchant for the heroic cop protagonist who takes matters in his own hands to rid the society of all evil, has enhanced public acceptance and appreciation of cops turning executioners. Even the police deem it easier to kill a suspect than go through the trouble of building a case and proving the accused’s guilt.

We as citizens view justice in absolute terms. But in reality, the matters of law are much more complex than the black and white camps of fair and unfair. There is a vast grey area that encompasses the latent aspects of truth, penal action, and reform. To simplify it through killing criminals is an insult to the very nature of justice and rule of law. The difference between the roles of Police and the Courts blurs in our mind to give way to a twisted system where the cops play judge, jury and executioner, when all their jobs permit is capturing criminals and bringing them before the law. Even those who do not support the law enforcement’s use of such means willingly turn a blind eye fearing retaliatory action. Unlike the US, a civil movement against the high-handedness of the cops is rendered almost impossible as the police are viewed as the ultimate dispenser of justice.

The Price to Pay

You cannot play with fire without getting burnt; you cannot embrace or allow one form of police brutality (re encounters) without offsetting a spiral of police-administered justice that violates our rights. The custodial torture and deaths of Jayaraj and Fenix are a product of this very system that is used to getting away with killings. It is this very lack of accountability that has put the sanctity of our democracy in peril, for absolute power corrupts absolutely. With few exceptions, most encounters today are jaded with shady details and fake charges. As was seen in Punjab during the heights of militancy, police killed anyone whom they suspected in the slightest to have a connection with insurgents. The same was practised in the case of Naxalites. So many lives were lost with no proof of their guilt presented for perusal.

A democracy guarantees certain rights to its citizens, even to convicts. Free and fair trial is a necessity not only of the accused but also the state in order to ascertain without a doubt that the allegations levelled are true. And even if found guilty, the quantum of punishment should be in proportion to the crime committed. This is the job of courts, not the police. Subverting due democratic process even for handing out punishment threatens the very foundations of our state. The means, after all, do not justify the end, and all logic contrary to this is a sign of approaching totalitarianism. India chose to be a democratic nation for a reason; hence the policing measures should reflect the same commitment instead of behaving in a manner reminiscent of our coloniser’s policies. And the police connivance with the underbelly of crime and politics forms an inescapable nexus which has reduced encounters to a political tool readily used, than a last resort method.

This trigger-happy attitude not only severely deprives the accused a chance to prove their innocence or receive punishment in accordance with their crime; it also dehumanizes them in our eyes. All criminals are not hard-core evil. They are born from us, sometimes because of us…Without due process, the truth about their circumstances and motives will never see the light of the day. If we deprive even the most heinous ones of their rights, we fail as a democracy. Equality before the law is a fundamental right, therefore a terrorist and a petty criminal both have the right to defend themselves in front of unbiased judges through due procedure laid down by the law. Our sense of justice is hence very punitive. We as a people do not believe in reform despite claiming the opposite and are content to see criminals incarcerated for life, or worse, dead. What is the point of locking up the bad guys if they do not become better? Do we want to kill all evil or dive to its roots and weed it out? That is for us to decide.

Reform the Norms

The law is reason without passion

Aristotle

This is one statement that has stood the test of time. There is no doubt that there are numerous criminals with blood on their hands that deserve to be punished, but their fate is for the law to decide. One organ of the law enforcement taking the entire law into their hands is not only a mockery of the system but also defeats the very purpose that due legal processes were created for. The law should punish and reform the accused and simultaneously grant a reprieve to the victim. We cannot imagine the pain of someone whose rights have been violated, and it would be unfair to tell them to wait until justice is served because no amount of judicial action can reverse their suffering. But justice is never served through wanton murders without trials. To deprive the accused of their chance to defend themselves, to kill whom you deem guilty, spells another violation of the law. And if the law-protectors break it brazenly, what is to stop the common man from doing so?

All the delays, extensive paperwork, ever-shifting dates that have made the judicial system so tedious and unattractive call for reform, not a subversion of the law. And not just the system, there is a strong need to change the public attitude and perception of justice, and replace it with a more reform-centric approach instead of plain retribution. For us to question the authorities that undermine the constitution is the first step towards a stronger, more accountable nation.

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