Meghalaya Illegal Mining

• According to available government data, Meghalaya has a total coal reserve of 640 million tonnes, most of which is mined unscientifically by individuals and communities.
• In 2011–12, rat-hole mines produced about 10 million tonnes of coal. This large coal production in a small state had a devastating impact on the environment.

Some of the areas of Coal mining in Meghalaya are

• Ksan in Meghalaya’s East Jaintia Hills

What is a rat hole mine?

• A rat-hole mine comprises a deep vertical shaft with narrow horizontal tunnels, two to four feet in dimension, dug on its sides.
• Miners (mostly child labors) go into these horizontal tunnels for hundreds of feet to take out coal. Primitive tools are used to build and operate these mines and accidents are common and most are not reported.
• Rat hole mining involves digging of very small tunnels, usually only 3-4 feet high, which workers (often children) enter and extract coal.
• The National Green Tribunal (NGT) banned it in 2014, on grounds of it being unscientific and unsafe for workers. The state (Meghalayan) government has challenged the NGT ban in the Supreme Court.
• Despite a ban, rat-hole mining remains a prevalent practice for coal mining in Meghalaya, where a mine has recently collapsed.
• Since the coal seam is extremely thin in Meghalaya, no other method would be economically viable. Removal of rocks from the hilly terrain and putting up pillars inside the mine to prevent collapse would be costlier. In Meghalaya this is the locally developed technique and the most commonly used one.

Government policy?

• The government does not have a policy in place to regulate mining and the new mining policy drafted in 2012 has not yet been implemented,
• Moreover, the NGT found the 2012 policy inadequate as it does not addresses rat-hole mining.

Impact of Meghalaya coal mining

• Meghalaya coal has high sulphur content, leading to the discharge of sulphuric acid from these mines. The acid discharge in some areas is so severe that they have made the rivers acidic, affecting aquatic life and corroding machinery at hydroelectric projects and dams.
• The water also has a high concentration of sulphates, iron and toxic heavy metals, low dissolved oxygen (DO) and high BOD, showing its degraded quality.
• The roadside dumping of coal is a major source of air, water and soil pollution.
• None of the rat-hole mines had leases; they simply didn’t exist on paper. All of them were operating without any environmental clearance from the environment ministry or from the pollution control board. These illegalities were enabled by the so-called legal ambiguity regarding mining in Sixth Schedule areas as mentioned in the Constitution.
• As Meghalaya is a Sixth Schedule state, and the power to make laws with respect to land belongs to the Autonomous District Councils, landowners can mine without any permission from the state or the Union governments. To bolster the argument, it was alluded that the coal mines in Meghalaya were never nationalised.
• However, it was found that the coal mines of Khasi and Jaintia were nationalised under the Coal Mines (Nationalisation) Act, 1973.
• It is also found that paragraph 9 of the Sixth Schedule clearly stipulates the need for “Licences or leases for the purpose of prospecting for, or extraction of, minerals”.
• In addition, it is legally established that all central mining and environmental laws are applicable to the coal mines in Meghalaya.
• On a case filed by the All Dimasa Students’ Union that highlighted the unregulated coal mining in the Jaintia Hills, the National Green Tribunal (NGT) banned them in April 2014. But reports now indicate that in the guise of transporting already-mined coal, illegal mining was happening all along in collusion with the local and the state government.
• The political class supports these mines. The state government has challenged the ban in the Supreme Court and the state assembly in 2015 adopted a resolution urging the Centre to exempt Meghalaya from central laws so that rat-hole mining can continue.
• But such mines are environmentally damaging and unsafe to be allowed, and hence must be banned. The bottom line is the right to self-governance does not translate into the right to destroy the environment, even in the Sixth Schedule areas.
• Off-road movement of trucks and other vehicles in the area for coal transportation also adds to the ecological and environmental damage of the area.
• The practice has been declared as unsafe for workers by the NGT.
• The mines branch into networks of horizontal channels, which are at constant risk of caving in or flooding.

New Scrapping Policy

• The Centre’s proposed policy to raise road tax on vehicles of a certain age from April 1 next year has the potential to renew a big part of India’s vehicular fleet, reducing air pollution, raising fuel efficiency, and improving safety standards.
• It has taken the government years to finalise a “tax on clunkers” proposal, under which commercial transport vehicles will have to pay 10%-25% extra on road tax after eight years when renewing the fitness certificate, and, similarly, personal vehicles after 15 years; public transport is given concessions, while hybrids, electrics and farm vehicles are exempt.
• A higher tax in the most polluted cities, and on diesel engines is also on the cards.
• States, which enforce motor vehicles law, now have to weigh in on the proposed changes.
• Unlike similar programmes, such as the post-2008 recession CARS rebate plan in the U.S., India’s scheme relies on penal taxation to persuade owners to scrap their old vehicles, with no cash-for-trade-in arrangement.
• For this approach to work efficiently, the additional tax proposed should exceed the resale value of the polluting motor, making its disposal more attractive, with enough safeguards to ensure that it is indeed scrapped and recycled under a monitored system.
• Equity features can be built into the scheme, offering a discount to income-vetted marginal operators such as autorickshaw drivers, on the lines of the 2009 stimulus given under the JNNURM scheme for buses.
• This should ideally be part of a green post-pandemic recovery plan, with an emphasis on electric vehicles.

Analysis

• When the scrappage policy was on the drawing board last year, Road Transport Minister Nitin Gadkari envisioned a reduction in automobile prices of 20% to 30%, driven by the recovery of scrap steel, aluminium and plastic, all of which would be recycled.
• Now that he has a better-scoped plan, the focus must be on building capacities in the organised sector to manage the task of efficient materials recovery.
• Provisions will have to be built in to see that the sudden demand stimulus available to the auto industry does not disadvantage consumers, particularly those selling junk vehicles.
• The vehicle registration database for all States also requires updating, to reflect true numbers of old vehicles on the road, eliminating those scrapped; a significant number, more than 15 years old, still runs. Such data will help target scrappage policy benefits better.
• Moreover, many transport vehicles are operated by small entrepreneurs who lack the resources to transition to newer ones and need help as loans and grants.
• India’s policy to eliminate polluting fuel guzzlers has had a long gestation, and States should see the value of operationalising it as planned.
• New vehicles and cleaner fuels should help clear the toxic air in cities and towns and make roads safer.

Pradhan Mantri Kaushal Vikas Yojana (PMKVY) 3.0 and Analysis

• On January 15, 2021, the Ministry of Skill Development and Entrepreneurship (MSDE) launched the Pradhan Mantri Kaushal Vikas Yojana (PMKVY) 3.0.
• PM Kaushal Vikas Yojana was launched in 2015. It is an outcome-based and demand-driven skill training scheme. The objective is skill certification and reward schemes. It is implemented by the Center along with states.
• This is the third phase of the scheme to give a boost to skilling in the country. In this third version, the government wants to focus on matching local skilling requirements with local job opportunities.
• The thrust of PMKVY 3.0 is on empowering States and districts to implement skilling schemes by making regional-level plans.
• The scheme guidelines state that the scheme shall be implemented in two phases. The first is being implemented on a pilot basis during the 2020-21 fiscal year, while simultaneously initiating the creation of an implementation framework for the second phase (2021-2026).

Role of the Private Sector

• Over the last few years, there has been increasing evidence of the government and external partners working together on complex policy problems. At the more senior level, the government has formalised the induction of private individuals into the system by opening up lateral entry.
• Lower down the hierarchy, several central government ministries and entities, such as NITI Aayog, routinely recruit private individuals as consultants, officers on special duty or young professionals.
• Most of the lateral recruitment in government happens at this level. The role of this category of staff is primarily to support the existing bureaucracy and provide them with research and logistical support as and when the need arises.
• Given the staggering vacancies in the central government, such support is critical since civil servants are generally overburdened and under-resourced.
• Lack of capacity also often becomes evident in suboptimal policy decisions and poor implementation of those policies.
• For the stage of development India is at, it is as critical as it is difficult for the government to take a step back and reflect on how to deliver on its mandate across sectors in the most effective manner.
• If capacity within the government is lacking, it is necessary to leverage the domain knowledge and resources of private individuals and entities to forge thought partnerships.

Thought Partnerships

• It is important here to emphasise that thought partnerships are different from the recruitment of consultants to provide government officials with additional manpower to manage routine tasks.
• Thought partnerships are a structured mechanism for private entities to lend relevant strategic expertise to the government on policy design, evaluation and implementation.

Issue of funding

• From the government perspective, a practical question to be resolved in any such exercise which involves external partners is funding.
• Normally, the government would be rightly wary of accepting funding from agencies which come with caveats, associated obligations or other agendas, both implicit and explicit.
• It is also not always feasible for the government itself to fund projects involving private partners, more so when such projects are unconventional thought partnerships.
• It is not the quantum of money required to fund a thought partnership that becomes a roadblock (in most cases it would be a fraction of the department or Ministry’s budget), but the process of getting requisite approvals for funding external agencies.
• Given this context, it is ideal if a committed external partner funds the thought partnership expeditiously without strings attached.
• The good news is that several domestic and international philanthropies and impact investing firms are already investing billions of dollars into critical sectors in developing countries including India.
• The not-so-good news is that much of this funding goes into supporting projects or interventions that work in limited, contextual settings rather than systemic or sectoral transformation programmes.
• This is the difference between trying to improve learning levels in a district through direct classroom interventions versus rethinking how the government school system works in a State or the country.
• It is here that philanthropies and impact investing firms can make a huge difference.

Previous programmes

In the past, systemic thought partnerships have been attempted sporadically across ministries.

• In 2005, the Ashok Lahiri Committee, constituted by the Ministry of Finance, came out with a report which stated that there was not enough knowledge about external capital flows and controls in India. The committee’s recommendation resulted in the establishment of the National Institute of Public Finance and Policy, Department of Economic Affairs research programme. The programme led to the creation of a rich body of world-class research on capital controls and flows in India, developed by Indian researchers, that was used to inform government policy on the matter.
• In 2015, the Ministry of Corporate Affairs constituted a research secretariat headed by the Vidhi Centre for Legal Policy, to support the Companies Law Committee to make “informed decisions…on the principles involved as well as international practices in the areas of insolvency, raising of capital, penalties, related party transactions and other areas”.
• The National Institute of Financial Management is working with the Department of Economic Affairs to provide legal research and technical assistance on Indian and foreign financial markets, policy analysis, formulation as well as the conduct of impact assessment studies on decisions taken by the Securities and Exchange Board of India.
• In late 2018, the MSDE itself started engaging with multiple private firms such as Dalberg Global Development Advisors and Samagra-Transforming Governance to conceptualise and design its vision for 2025.

Conclusion

• These attempts at establishing thought partnerships between the government and private entities, while instructive, are largely disparate and episodic.
• They do not provide the definitive way forward on government-private collaboration.
• India faces a dearth of scholars and practitioners who are singularly focused on researching and solving India’s problems.
• As such, policy choices made in isolation from the rigorous debate, research and questioning that thought partnerships facilitate, can produce suboptimal results.
• It is therefore in the public interest that more such partnerships are forged and funded to channel external expertise and skills towards finding scalable solutions to the pressing policy challenges the country faces.

India’s growth rate for 2021: IMF

• The IMF on Tuesday projected an 11.5% growth rate for India in 2021, making the country the only major economy to register double-digit growth this year amidst the COVID-19 pandemic.
• The International Monetary Fund’s growth projections for India reflected a rebound in the economy, which is estimated to have contracted by 8% in 2020 due to the pandemic.
• China is next with 8.1% growth in 2021 followed by Spain (5.9%) and France (5.5%). The IMF said that in 2020 China is the only major country which registered a positive growth rate of 2.3%.
• India’s economy, the IMF said, is projected to grow 6.8% in 2022 and that of China by 5.6%.
• IMF Chief Economist Gita Gopinath, during a virtual press conference to release the update, said that India had a somewhat faster pace of recovery, but cumulatively by the end of 2022, its GDP is expected to be 9% below its pre-pandemic projected level. “We are seeing India come back to its 2019 levels, but it’s still below... Why do we have these upgrades (in IMF’s growth projections for India)... because the activity and mobility particularly came back much faster than expected in India. We have not seen another wave,” Ms. Gopinath said.

‘Faster pace of recovery’

• “In fact, we are seeing a very strong decline in cases, which is again a bit different from other parts of the world. So, these factors, including what we’re seeing in terms of high frequency indicators, point to [a] somewhat faster pace of recovery. But again, there is still some distance to go,” she added.
• Earlier this month, IMF MD Kristalina Georgieva had said India “actually has taken very decisive action, very decisive steps to deal with the pandemic and to deal with the economic consequences of it”.