Editorial 1. The Growth Triad
Context:
Infrastructure is universally acknowledged as a key driver of growth. Traditionally, though, infrastructure is associated with physical assets, typically roads, ports, power transmission lines, etc. However, since 2014, India’s development story has been closely linked with a strong focus on not just physical, but also social and digital infrastructure.
Budget 2023 gives a powerful thrust to these three dimensions of infrastructure development which, put together, accelerate inclusive growth.
Physical Infrastructure:
- The Government of India’s capital expenditure as a percentage of GDP increased from 1.7 per cent in 2014 to nearly 2.9 per cent in 2022-23.
- In Budget 2023-24, Rs 10 lakh crore (3.3 per cent of the GDP), an increase of three times from 2019, was allocated for infrastructure.
- The Ministry of Railways received its highest-ever allocation of Rs 2.4 lakh crore, approximately nine times the allocation in 2013-14.
- The Ministry of Road Transport and Highways saw a 36 per cent increase in its budget to about Rs 2.7 lakh crore.
- These targeted investments will not only create vital physical infrastructure and improve connectivity that will accelerate the movement of passengers and freight, but also create jobs, spur private investments, and provide a cushion against global headwinds.
- The direct capital investment by the Centre has been further supplemented by a one-year extension of the 50-year interest-free loan to state governments to encourage infrastructure investment and incentivise complementary policy actions, with a significantly increased outlay of Rs 1.3 lakh crore.
- This will lead to decentralised infrastructure development in urban and peri-urban areas across regions.
- A 66 per cent increase in allocation to the PM Awas Yojana will not only provide housing but also create jobs in rural areas.
- It is apt that the finance minister has observed that every rupee spent on infrastructure and capital expenditure gives 2.95 as a multiplier. In contrast, the money given through revenue expenditure gets less than a rupee for every rupee spent.
Digital Infrastructure:
- In the last eight years, one can witness the blurring of the digital divide that existed between urban and rural areas. The world has acknowledged India’s phenomenal success in building population-scale platforms at startup speed.
- This digital transformation of India is happening in two phases.
- The first phase started in 2015 and was led by the JAM trinity — Jan Dhan, Aadhaar and mobile linkages, and the Digital India programme.
- This had a huge benefit for the country through increasing penetration of government schemes and efficient financial inclusion.
- Low-cost accessibility (Aadhaar), the success of citizen-centric services such as the Unified Payments Interface (UPI), large-scale adoption and reach (DigiLocker, MyGov), and the vaccine journey (CoWin) are all significant and successful milestones in India’s first phase of public digital infrastructure creation.
- The second phase of digital transformation is now being led by the development, application, and large-scale expansion of cutting-edge technologies such as 5G, the Internet of Things (IoT), artificial intelligence (AI), quantum computing, mechatronics, robotics, and more.
Government focus on Artificial Intelligence (AI)
- An important domain that the government is focusing on currently is creating open AI resources. In a country like India, with its unparalleled linguistic and cultural diversity, AI has enormous potential as a tool for breaking down language barriers.
- The Digital India Bhashini portal is a public digital platform that hosts 260 open-source API-based AI models for speech-to-text conversion, machine translation, and text-to-speech conversion in 11 Indian languages and English.
- Bhashini has the potential to provide crores of Indians with access to the internet and other digital resources in their native languages.
- This will break linguistic barriers that limit access to technology and provide the benefits of Natural Language Processing to MSMEs and individual innovators in the hinterlands.
- Similarly, the Agriculture Accelerator Fund announced in the budget will enable the Indian agricultural ecosystem (startups, businesses, and farmers) to work collaboratively and find knowledge-based and farmer-centric solutions to benefit a sector that employs nearly half the workforce of the Indian economy.
Social Infrastructure:
- Investment in social infrastructure which includes education and skilling, public health and nutrition, drinking water and sanitation can lead to a more productive and proficient workforce, reduced mortality, wasting and stunting, increased social mobility and a higher quality of life. These factors contribute to a stronger and more inclusive economy and holistic development.
- Championing these primacies, the total expenditure of the central government in social infrastructure has increased by 134 per cent from Rs 9.1 lakh crore in 2016 to 21.3 lakh crore in 2023.
- The attention given to backward districts by the Aspirational Districts Programme spearheaded by NITI Aayog through data-driven governance has resulted in consistent macro improvements in key socioeconomic indicators at the district level.
- The emphasis on digital land records under the SVAMITVA Scheme of the Ministry of Panchayati Raj is a structural reform in rural land management that leads to individual economic empowerment.
- Targeted initiatives announced in the budget such as the mission to eliminate sickle cell anaemia will raise awareness about the near-fatal disease and screening seven crore people between the ages of 0 and 40 will immensely benefit the affected tribal areas.
- While a 232 per cent expansion in the Non-Communicable Diseases clinics and 320 per cent expansion in the districts covered under the PM National Dialysis Programme were recorded between 2014 and 2022, the government has continued to identify emerging public health challenges and address them.
Conclusion:
This concerted thrust on the creation, maintenance and expansion of physical, digital and social infrastructure has emerged as a systemic focus of India’s unique development model. A “Viksit Bharat” by 2047 cannot leave any citizen behind. This infrastructure triad will be the enabler of growth and leveller of opportunities. And, as the Prime Minister has observed, people must be at the heart of any infrastructure growth story. This is the guiding mantra of the Amrit Kaal.
Editorial 2. In Assam, Beti Padhao
Context:
As many as 650 million women in the world today were married as children. About a third of them were married before the age of 15. In India, which has the dubious distinction of being home to the largest number of child brides, UN estimates suggest that 1.5 million girls get married before they turn 18. About 16 per cent of girls in the age group of 15-19 are married at present.
According to the 2011 census, 44 per cent of women in Assam were married before the age of 18. The figures for Rajasthan, Bihar and Madhya Pradesh were 47 per cent, 46 per cent and 43 per cent, respectively.
In Assam, more than 4,000 FIRs have been filed and close to 2,500 people have been arrested for child marriage. Assam Chief Minister’s decision to give maximum priority to addressing this problem is well-meaning.
Child marriages affect the national economy negatively and do not allow us to come out of the vicious cycle of inter-generational poverty. Child marriage deprives women of education and life skills. Early pregnancies adversely affect the physical and mental health of young mothers.
The question, however, is: Are mass arrests and the indiscriminate use of criminal sanctions, which the Assam government has resorted to, the only solution to the problem of child marriage?
International Laws on Child Marriage:
- Modern international laws and conventions the UN Convention on Consent to Marriage, Minimum Age for Marriage and Registration of Marriages (1962), the UN Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (1979) and the Beijing Declaration (1995) do mandate countries to stipulate a minimum legal age for marriage. But child marriages continue to have religious sanctions in large parts of India.
Religious/Personal laws on Child Marriage:
- Hindu and Muslim Personal Laws do not explicitly prohibit child marriage.
- The Manusmritis say that if the father fails to marry off his daughter within three years of her attaining puberty, she can find a spouse on her own.
- According to Medhatithi, one of the oldest and earliest commentators on the Manusmriti, eight years is the right age for a girl to be given in marriage.
- The Rig Veda mentions garbhadhan literally as attaining the wealth of the womb. It is the first of the 16 samskaras a Hindu is expected to perform.
- The Greek traveller Megasthenes (350-290 BC) has written that he was told that the women of the Pandian kingdom in South India bear children at six years of age.
- About seven centuries later, the Persian polymath, Al Biruni, wrote that child marriages were rampant in India.
- The Muslim clergy too considered child marriages to be valid, though such children have the option to nullify their marriage.
Marriage Laws in the Colonial Period:
- The colonial state should be credited for reforming marriage laws.
- The Age of Consent Acts of 1861 and 1891 brought in reform in conjugal rights. The 1861 Act laid down 10 years as the minimum age for sexual intercourse. The Hindu intelligentsia opposed raising this age to 12 on the grounds that it violated norms related to garbhadhan.
- The death of 10-year-old Phulmoni Dasi in 1890 created public pressure to reform the Age of Consent Law. Phulmoni’s husband, Hari Mohan Maiti, was acquitted of charges of murder as she was just above the age of 10. Forty-four women doctors compiled a long list of child wives who had met the same fate as Phulmoni. The 1891 Act raised the age of consent for sexual intercourse to 12.
- Four years before this, the Rukmabai case gave new impetus to the campaign of social reformers like M G Ranade and Behramji Merwanji Malabari. Rukmabai had refused to solemnise her marriage, which had taken place when she was 11. Her husband Dadaji Bikaji had filed a petition for the restitution of his conjugal rights. He was supported by conservative Hindus including Bal Gangadhar Tilak.
- When the Age of Consent Act was amended in 1891, the conservatives criticised it as interference in Hindu society. Tilak’s newspapers Maratha and Kesari were at the forefront of this campaign. Rukmabai was probably the original Shah Bano, who stood up for her rights.
- These laws, however, had limited impact. In 1927, Rai Sahib Har Bilas Sarda introduced the Child Marriage Restraint Act in the Legislative Council of India and sought a ban on marriages of children below the age of 12. The legislation was passed in 1929 – it raised the age of marriage to 14 for girls and 18 for boys.
Child Marriage in Post-Independence Period:
- After Independence, the marriageable age for girls was raised to 15 in 1949 and 18 in 1978. The Prohibition of Child Marriage Act, 2006, stipulates imprisonment of two years or a fine which can go up to Rs 1 lakh, or both.
- In several cases such as P Venkataramana (1977), Rabindra (1986), and G Saravanan (2017) high courts have ruled that child marriages are neither void nor voidable but valid. In 2021, the Punjab and Haryana High Court held a Muslim girl’s marriage after attaining puberty was valid. The Supreme Court has recently agreed to hear this issue.
- On January 11, 2023, the Karnataka High Court refused to hold a marriage with a minor girl as void, under the Hindu Marriage Act, 1955. In the Hadiya case (2018), the Supreme Court mentioned attainment of puberty, and not 18 years, as the minimum age of marriage, as one of the conditions for a valid Muslim marriage.
- In its 205th Report (2008), the Law Commission has rightly suggested that poverty, indebtedness and dowry are the main reasons that poor families marry off their daughters at an early age.
Conclusion:
The Assam government should use education and a mass campaign to educate parents, rather than a coercive criminal law, to deal with the problem of child marriages. In the period between 2000-2010, the growth of women’s education, government investment in adolescent girls and public messaging have brought down the percentage of child marriages appreciably from 47 per cent to 30 per cent.
If in Assam, child marriages are more prevalent amongst Muslims, educating Muslim girls should be given the highest priority. There should be recognition of the complex nature of this social problem which no criminal law can really tackle. There should be the implementation of the visionary and practical solution of Beti Bachao, Beti Padhao.