Editorial 1: India and Sri Lanka five things to do
Recent Context:
- On July 21, Sri Lanka’s President Ranil Wickremesinghe will be in India for a visit.
- Both the nations are expected to finalise several investments supported by India, especially in energy, infrastructure and tourism.
- As Wickremesinghe was elected by a majority of MPs to tackle Sri Lanka’s economic crisis when the country defaulted on its sovereign debt in April 2022, and the measures implemented since are starting to stabilise the economy.
Significance of India-Sri Lanka bilateral relation:
- India is emerging as a serious alternative to China for global investments, its manufacturing sector is being noticed, and it has embarked on ambitious trade agreements.
- It is expending energy for a conducive neighbourhood too.
- India provided $5 billion in economic aid to Sri Lanka during its crisis in 2022, paving the way for the IMF’s $3 billion programme in March 2023 and Sri Lanka is now seeing interest from Indian private investment.
- Keeping Sri Lanka close helps to keep China at its periphery. A determined Neighbourhood First policy from India will uplift South Asia’s regional attractiveness
- Strategically, the bilateral engagement could naturally extend to the Indian Ocean, and beyond it, to the Indo-Pacific.
More needs to be done to strengthen bilateral relations.
- Currently, India and Sri Lanka have a give-take relationship where India provides aid.
- Ideally, it should be reciprocal, where gradually aid should turn into trade.
- The India-Japan bilateral relationship is a model. India is still the largest recipient of Japan’s overseas aid, but the assistance has changed from basic needs and health to infrastructure-building, like metro rails.
- Japan is now also India’s fifth-largest investor, with a cumulative investment of $38.7 billion in India.
Five areas of cooperation that India needs to expand to strengthen relation with Sri Lanka
1. There is need to consolidate fragmented aid programmes to Sri Lanka:
- Currently, Indian aid is routed via multiple ministries and agencies. A single development bank will work better.
- For e.g. ood models exist, like the Japan Bank for International Cooperation and China’s Development Bank, which finance large-scale development projects internationally.
- The Asian Development Bank, which is closely managed by Japan, can be a model of an MDB for South Asia
2. Moving ahead from manufacturing and services to foster supply chains in South Asia.
- India becomes a destination for manufacturing and services, it can foster supply chains in South Asia.
- Significant private Indian companies are investing in Sri Lanka.
- The Adani Group invested $1.14 billion in renewable energy in the Mannar Basin and the West Container Terminal at Colombo Port.
- The Tata Group already has investments in Sri Lanka’s tourism, agri-business, telecom and automobiles.
- All of them are allied with the Indian government’s agenda for investing in renewable energy, infrastructure and tourism in Sri Lanka.
- Thus aligned, Sri Lanka will gradually integrate into India’s emerging supply chain paradigm.
- India is embarking on trade agreements that are the precursor to this, and talks should be accelerated for a comprehensive and high-quality India-Sri Lanka free trade deal with a focus on supply chains and foreign investment.
3. In the sphere of Digitisation:
- The special focus of India’s G20 presidency is digital public infrastructure.
- India’s open-source fintech is among the best in the world, and is being adopted to achieve the UN’s SDGs.
- India’s UPI is being rapidly adopted worldwide. But it has not been exposed to its own South Asian neighbourhood.
- Most urgent on Wickremesinghe’s agenda should be the adaptation of India’s digital public infrastructure for Sri Lanka.
4 .Deeper engagement between the central bank governors of India and Sri Lanka:
- There is need for a deeper engagement between the central bank governors of India and Sri Lanka is needed.
- Frequent meetings and an early warning system for economic crises are necessary.
- The Asian Financial Crisis of 1997 ensured that ASEAN adopted a mutual monitoring mechanism for early warnings and methods to assist each other during a crisis.
- India and Sri Lanka can work on a similar system, which template can then be extended to other South Asian countries. Such institutional mechanisms are key to regional stability
5. Strengthening bilateral Security:
- It’s no secret that India’s most significant concern with Sri Lanka is the presence of China.
- Cumulative Chinese investments account for 18 per cent of Sri Lanka’s 2021 GDP and 10.8 per cent of the country’s foreign debt.
- This allows China special access to Sri Lanka and its waters. The docking of a Chinese “research” vessel in Hambantota Port in August 2022 caused India much consternation.
- The Indian Ocean is still India’s and Sri Lanka’s strategic backyard.
- India, Sri Lanka and the Maldives conduct a trilateral naval exercise already and participate actively in the important National Security Advisor-led Colombo Security Conclave which includes Mauritius, Bangladesh and Seychelles.
- But it has not deterred China, whose entrenched economic muscle and might in both island countries is forbidding.
- Sri Lanka must understand India’s security concerns
Conclusion:
- India has stepped up to help its neighbour in difficult economic straits and a credit line is showing the path to private and public investments.
- Further adoption of above mentioned areas of cooperation will lead to further improvement of bilateral relation between India and Sri Lanka .
- Therefore, this can lead to increased trade and the building of a robust South Asian supply chain. It’s a winning proposition for the region, and offers potential security through trade across the Indo-Pacific.
Editorial 2 : Rajasthan minimum income Bill: provisions, what makes it unique
Recent Context:
- Recently, Rajasthan state government introduced Rajasthan Minimum Guaranteed Income Bill, in state assembly which effectively seeks to cover the entire adult population of the state with guaranteed wages or pension.
What is the Bill?
- Under the Bill, all families of the state get guaranteed employment of 125 days every year while the aged, disabled, widows, and single women get a minimum pension of Rs 1,000 per month.
- Importantly, the pension will be increased at the rate of 15 per cent each year.
- The Bill has three broad categories:
- Right to minimum guaranteed income
- Right to guaranteed employment, and
- Right to guaranteed social security pension.
- The government anticipates an additional expenditure of Rs 2,500 crore per year for this scheme which may increase with time.
The major provisions of the Bill:
1. Minimum guaranteed income:
- Each adult citizen of the state has been guaranteed a minimum income for 125 days a year through the Rajasthan government’s flagship Indira Gandhi Shahri Rozgar Guarantee Yojana for urban areas and through Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA) in rural areas.
- As this year Budget, Rajasthan government has increased the employment guarantee per family from 100 days to 125 days for his urban employment scheme. The state will supplement the MGNREGA’s 100 days by providing jobs for an additional 25 days in rural areas.
- Next, the government will provide eligible categories with a minimum pension of Rs 1,000.
2. Guaranteed employment:
- The right to employment states the minimum wages should be paid “weekly or in any case not later than a fortnight.”
- The state will designate a program officer not below the rank of Block Development Officer in rural areas and an Executive Officer of the local body in urban areas to implement the Act.
- Among other things, the Program Officer shall ensure that the work site is within a radius of five kilometres of where the job card is registered in both rural and urban areas.
- If the Program Officer fails to provide employment within 15 days from the receipt of the application, the applicant shall be entitled to an unemployment allowance on a weekly basis “and in any case not later than a fortnight.”
3. Guaranteed social security pension:
- Every person falling in the category of old age/especially abled/widow/single woman with prescribed eligibility shall be entitled to a pension.
- It will increase over the base rate in two instalments 5 per cent in July and 10 per cent in January of each financial year 24 starting 2024-2025.
Conclusion:
- The Bill contains guarantee minimum employment and pensions by law which distinguishes it from the cash transfer schemes of various other states have which is a very welcome step.
- Therefore, the concern bill fulfills the vision of Mahatma Gandhi
- “The true measure of any society can be found in how it treats its most vulnerable members”, was a focal point of all his government’s policies.