INDIA-US STRATEGIC DIALOGUE

• India and US will hold their fourth strategic dialogue at New Delhi on June 24
• US delegation led by: Secretary of State John Kerry
• The Indian side led by: External Affairs Minister Salman Khurshid

 AGENDA:

• The export of shale gas by the US to India and the civil-nuclear energy cooperation 

 SHALE GAS EXPORT:

• Under the current US laws, Washington cannot export shale gas to countries with which it does not have a free trade agreement (FTA).
• Recently, the US Department of Energy had approved one licence for export of shale gas to a non-FTA country. 
• The sense in Washington is that selling shale gas to India will serve national interest as it will discourage New Delhi to buy it from Iran

 H1B & L CATEGORY VISAS:

• India concerned over high visa costs and problems, especially affecting the IT sector
• US promises to do whatever possible as it is a matter of legislation
• India says need to factor in concerns of both sides

 SECURITY & DEFENCE SECTOR:

• India and the US agree on the need to go beyond buyer-seller relations
•  To include defence co-develop and co-manufacturing and widen defence trade and industry collaboration
• Both sides plan fresh round of whole-of-government cyber security consultations
• Washington and New Delhi to cooperate missions to recover remains of US service members from World War II

SNOOPING PROGRAMME - security issues

•  India has launched a wide-ranging surveillance programme that will give its security agencies and even income tax officials the ability to tap directly into e-mails and phone calls without oversight by courts or parliament.
•  The expanded surveillance in the world's most populous democracy, which the government says will help safeguard national security, has alarmed privacy advocates at a time when allegations of massive US digital snooping beyond American shores have set off a global furore.

 CENTRAL MONITORING SYSTEM (CMS):

•  The Central Monitoring System (CMS) was announced in 2011. The government started to quietly roll the system out state by state in April this year.
• The new system will allow the government to listen to and tape phone conversations, read e-mails and text messages, monitor posts on Facebook, Twitter or LinkedIn and track searches on Google of selected targets.
•  Eventually, it will be able to target over 900 million landline and mobile phone subscribers and 120 million Internet users.
• The top bureaucrat in the Home Ministry and his state-level deputies will have the power to approve requests for surveillance of specific phone numbers, e-mails or social media accounts
• India does not have a formal privacy law and the new surveillance system will operate under the Indian Telegraph Act - a law formulated by the British in 1885 - which gives the government freedom to monitor private conversations. Monitoring of telephones and the Internet are part of the surveillance.

SHALE GAS IN INDIA

• Shale gas is often described as a game changer in energy politics, prompting Daniel Yergin and Robert Ineson to define it as “the biggest energy innovation of the decade.”
•  India is a fast developing country and energy is pivotal to maintain its steady economic growth, stability, and development. As the third-largest energy consumer in the world, where coal still dominates the energy mix – coal imports increased to a record 135 million tons in the last fiscal year – shale gas can represent a promising alternative, both in terms of costs and environmental impact thanks to its potentially lower emissions. 

DISCOVERY & CURRENT RESEARCH:

•  In 2002, Reliance Industries, a leading Indian energy company, discovered 14 trillion cubic feet (tcf) of natural gas in a reservoir in the Krishna-Godavari basin in shale formations, generating high expectations for future production.
• Current research has identified six main basins that could be successfully exploited once the Indian government reveals its national shale oil and gas policy: Cambay (Gujarat), Assam-Arakan (North-East), Gondwana (Central India), Krishna Godawari onshore (East coast), Cauvery onshore, and Indo-Gangetic basins. 

 CHALLENGES:

• Water, in particular, will represent a major challenge for Indian shale development. The large amount of water required in the process of hydraulic fracturing, or “fracking,” is a considerable obstacle in a water stressed country such as India, which continues to suffer from chronic shortages.
•  Land acquisition and the relocation of displaced people will be problematic. Further to this, India’s population density could make recovering resources more difficult.
•  The energy infrastructure of the country requires extensive development.
•  The regulatory and pricing framework in India is very complex and represents another issue of concern for investors. Price regimes, in particular, need to be reformulated and deregulated, with the elimination, at least in part, of the heavy subsidies provided by the government, which lead to substantial differences compared to market prices.

 CONCLUSION:

•  The challenges posed by the current energy infrastructure, gaps in the regulatory framework, and public environmental concerns, together with the uncertainties over the amount of effectively recoverable gas, will represent real obstacles for New Delhi. However, if they can be overcome, shale gas could certainly have a positive impact on the country’s energy security and on the future competitiveness of India’s economy.

Role of Media

The press today as a medium of dissemination of information has bypassed it conventional uses. The press today not only informs creation and dissemination of public opinion but also entertains. It is originally seen as a guardian of public interest, witness to hold the state accountable to the public.

It is to be a bridge between the people and government to create an alternate feedback system which is free from the influence of the bureaucracy and the politicians. It is to make the state aware of the demands on the nature of policies the public wants from them. A fair honest objective press is the most important constituent of what the west today calls good governance, so much so that the French statesman Talleyrand said “without freedom of press, there can be no representative government”.

For freedom of the press to be possible in reality, it cannot be subservient to the interests of the politicians, bureaucrats and industrialists. It has to be a neutral unifying force inculcating the ethos of the times with the ethos of our freedom struggle.

Historically the press paid a big part in the Indian national Freedom struggle, in which we had great leaders like Tilak,Maulana Azad and Mahatma Gandhi as editors of newspapers. Mahatma Gandhi himself edited the Indian Opinion, Young India, Navajivan and the Harijan and can be said as the most influential journalist of his times. The press in India acted as cornerstone of democracy ,a place where grievances will be heard by the rich and powerful of this country. But as more power came to the press so I might dare “the wolves have arrived too and in number”.

Today we have more than ninety thousand publications running in this country (the exact number is 93,985 registered publications, 850 permitted TV channels under news and current affairs category and 437 under non-news category). The Doordarshan which some of us feel has lost viewership itself runs 37 Channels. Besides, there are over 250 FM radios stations and numerous internet websites. Such numbers gives us a reason to be proud of the diverse Indian media industry but today media’s integrity is being questioned, the very basis of its existence to provide a medium between the public and the state has seen to become corrupted by vested interests.

Today media is plagued by problems of paid news which hit epic levels in election years(considering next year is an election year , it will be good exercise to watch for fabricated news this year).

 On January 15 this year, the Election Commision found that Madhya Pradesh Cabinet Minister Narottam Mishra “failed to lodge his accounts of his election expenses in the manner prescribed by law.” He faces possible disqualification. The EC’s notice to Dr. Mishra concerns 42 news items about him during the November 2008 state elections in Madhya Pradesh. These, it believed “read more like election advertisement(s) in favour of you alone rather than (as) news reports.” The EC names four newspapers in its notice: Dainik Bhaskar,Nai Duniya, Aacharan and Dainik Datia Prakash. Dainik Bhaskar is the second most-read daily in the country.What should be done to such newspapers and such reporters. The author believes that EC should ban such newspapers if found guilty of paid news.

 

We have three documents that highlight the issues mentioned in the table above. The first is a 2009 report by the Administrative Staff College of India (ASCI) at the instance of the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting on ‘Cross Media Ownership in India’. The second, February 2013 Consultation Paper by the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) on media ownership question. The third is a report on ‘Paid News’ made on May 6, 2013 by the Parliament’s Standing Committee on Information Technology. They together tell a truth that many would not like to hear.

The 300 odd news channel cannot get enough advertising revenue then when the question of survival versus ethics, how many do you think that in today’s time ethics would come on top. The coming of big business into  media and the resultant concentration and market domination are best summarized by the TRAI chairman’s Rahul Khullar comment during the discussion with a senior executive of Bennett Coleman and Co. Limited ( refer http://www.thehindu.com/opinion/op-ed/media-crossholding-in-cross-hairs/article4743586.ece) pointing to another participant, who had moments earlier said “3 or 4 media houses” control everything, Mr. Khullar shot back, “There is a large body of Indian citizens who feel that way. Wake up and smell the coffee.”And we do need to wake up and smell the coffee due to the growing political control of media today, from Shrimoni Akali Dal’s to DMK nearly every political party is involved in one way or the other to control information given to the public. The question that whether media censorship happens is one which is yet to be proven but so has been charges against most politicians in Indian courts.

The Article above has the TRAI listing out examples. Sun TV and Essel Group have interests in print, TV, FM as well as distribution platforms like Direct-To-Home (DTH) and MSOs. The Anil Dhirubhai Ambani Group is present in all media segments as well as DTH, while Star India has interests in broadcasting and radio, as well as distribution platforms. Ushodaya (Eenadu), India Today, Times Group, ABP Group, Bhaskar Group, Jagran Prakashan, Malayala Manorama Group have interests in all three media segments — print, TV and FM radio.

Corporate India can easily influence policies and gain mileage in the name of broadcasting news. Recent case of Zee News Executives asking for 200 crores from Jindal Steel is just one example. The case of declining values in Indian Society is endemic and this is affecting all parts of it. The magnitude of this has been highlighted by the TRAI paper , It drew a direct link between “uncontrolled ownership” and “paid news, corporate and political lobbying by television channels, propagation of biased analysis and forecast both in political arena as well as corporate sector and irresponsible reporting to create sensationalism.” It points to the “even more lethal issue where the ownership/control rests with entities which have both business and political interests.” The paper concluded that regulating media ownership is “essential in the public interest as a guarantee of plurality and diversity of opinion.”This is direct threat to the democracy of India. It has or will lead to an elite capturing of the information system which values GDP growth rate and repo rates over nutrition, IMR, education etc. The debates on television these days over the Food security bill are more about the cost of bill rather than understanding the benefits of such a scheme highlights the capitalistic nature of our media.

The need for media regulation was highlighted by News of the World Scandal that hit the Rupert Murdoch group and let to closing of an iconic paper (the author wishes sincerely that the same tragedy fall upon some of the newspapers in India doing paid news and irresponsible reporting which has led to extreme harassment to the people of this country).

In conclusion I would like to quote words of Walter Lippmann, perhaps the most renowned and respected American journalist of the 20th century. “There is no higher law in journalism,” he wrote, “than to tell the truth and to shame the devil - and remain detached from the great.”

The Ideal of detachment of the press from the politics and unethical corporate lobbying is a worthy ideal expressed and should be strived towards replication by the Indian Media Industry.

REAL ESTATE REGULATOR

• A Bill providing for setting up a regulator for the real estate sector and having provisions like a jail term of up to three years for developers issuing misleading advertisements about their projects repeatedly has been approved by the government.
• The Bill: The Real Estate (Regulation and Development) Bill
• It seeks to provide a uniform regulatory environment to the sector. It also intends to make it mandatory for developers to launch projects only after acquiring all statutory clearances from the authorities concerned.

 OBJECTIVE:

•  The objective of the Bill is to protect interests of consumers, promote fair play in real estate transactions and ensure timely execution of projects.

 HIGHLIGHTS:

• The Bill makes it mandatory for builders to clarify the carpet area of the flat. This would be made uniform for the entire country.
• The Bill has provisions under which all relevant clearances for real estate projects would have to be submitted to the regulator and also displayed on a website before starting the construction
• Failure to do so for the first time will attract penalty up to 10 per cent of the project cost, while a repeat offence can land the developer in jail.
• The importance of the regulatory Bill cannot be underestimated. Real estate is a sector that is beset with many malpractices and is one sector that attracts and generates maximum black money, leading to an astronomical rise in land and housing prices in urban India. The Bill will usher in transparency in the construction industry; ensure fair practices and accountability of builders and fast-track dispute resolution. Builders as well as property dealers will have to be registered. They will be able to launch projects only after getting all clearances. Misleading advertisements or delays in construction can invite a jail term or penalty.