MAT 2007

Read the passages to answer the questions that follow each passage.

PASSAGE -III
After President George W. Bush signed the United States - India Nuclear Cooperation Bill, he called up Prime Minister Manmohan Singh to tell him how pleased he was at this development. While welcoming this event, the Prime Minister took the opportunity to tell the President that there remained areas of concern that needed to be addressed during the negotiation of the bilateral agreement (called the 123 agreement, after the relevant clause number in the U.S. Atomic Energy Act, 1954). The U.S. has entered into some twenty five I 23 agreements with various countries, including the one concerning Tarapur. The Tarapur agreement concluded in 1963 was unique in that it guaranteed supplies of enriched uranium fuel from the U.S. for running the Tarapur reactors for their entire life. However, after 1978 the U.S. did not supply fuel saying its domestic legislation (under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Act) prevented it from doing so. India argued that Tarapur was an inter-governmental agreement and hence it had to be honoured by the U.S. But to no avail. However, later, the U.S. allowed France to supply fuel to India. Subsequently, the USSR (now Russia) and even China supplied fuel for Tarapur. The lesson from the Tarapur episode is that U.S. breached with impunity even a cast-iron guarantee it had furnished. Considerable bitterness gres between the U.S. and India are extended to many other areas beyond the nuclear one. When India agreed, reluctantly, in March 2006 to put imported reactors under “safeguards in perpetuity”, the U.S. consented to the Indian insistence on assurances of fuel supply. This meant India could build up a stockpile of fuel to tide over disruption in supply and the U.S. would agree to work with other countries namely Russia, France, and Britain to arrange alternate supplies. The U.S. legislation, based on the Hyde Bill, forbids India building up a stockpile of nuclear fuel. It also obligates the U.S. administration to work with other Nuclear Supplier Group countries to get them to suspend supplies to India, if the U.S. has done so under some provision of the Hyde Bill. It is not evident how the U.S. can address the legitimate concerns of India on continued fuel supply, given the boundaries set by the Hyde Bill. With regard to future nuclear tests, the Prime Minister has said, India is only committed to a voluntary moratorium. The moratorium is only a temporary holding off of an activity, conditioned by specific circumstances that obtained at the time when such a declaration was made. It cannot be construed as a permanent ban. The Hyde Bill has sought to make the moratorium into a permanent ban. However, there is no such restraint imposed on the U.S., China, Pakistan or any other country. In bringing up this issue, I do not wish to suggest that I favour a resumption of tests by India. But India cannot prevent other countries from carrying out tests. It is, therefore, unacceptable that India forfeits its right to test for all time to come under the agreement with the U.S. Even if the 123agreement is silent on the issue, Indian negotiators must put this issue on the table. The Hyde Bill calls for suspension of all cooperation and fuel supplies and even calls for return of all equipment and materials supplied earlier in the event of a test. It baffles one how India can return reactor installations that might have been operated a few years, were such a contingency to arise in future. The differences over the definition of “full civilian nuclear cooperation” have been discussed in the media. The Indian understanding was that reprocessing of spent fuel, enrichment of uranium, and production of heavy water also formed part of the term “full civilian nuclear cooperation.” In the congressional debate, it has been noted that these were construed by the U.S. to be in the nature of military activities and not civilian. India’s future plans for thorium utilisation for civil nuclear power depend crucially on reprocessing. Similarly, civil nuclear power units using natural uranium require heavy water as reactor coolant and moderator. Equally if India were to embark on a sizeable light water reactor programme, it may like to have control on supply of enriched uranium for economic and supply security reasons. India has technologies of its own in these areas and will develop them further in the years ahead. If the Indo-U.S. agreement moves ahead in the manner its sponsors have speculated, in a few decades from now some 90 per cent of the nuclear installations in India would be open to International Atomic Energy Agency inspections. In that scenario, how can India reconcile to the embargo from nuclear advanced countries on the export of enrichment, reprocessing, and heavy water technologies? Even if the issue were to be papered over new, it will then look from India’s point of view to have been a very bad bargain.

Read the passages to answer the questions that follow each passage.

PASSAGE IV
Mobility of capital has given an unprecedented leverage to companies not only to seek low paid, informal wage employees across national boundaries, but the threat of capital flight can also serve to drive down wages and place large numbers of workers in insecure, irregular employment. Informalisation strategies enable employers to draw on the existing pool of labour as and when they require, without having to make a commitment to provide permanent employment or any of the employee-supporting benefits associated with permanent jobs. As far as the working class is concerned, informalisation is in fact, a double-edged sword. For not only is the employee denied the rights associated with permanent employment, but the nature of casual work essentially destroys the foundations of working class organisations. As workmen move from one employer to another, numbers are scattered, everyday interests become divergent, and individualised survival takes precedence over group or collective struggles. 

Even workers who have been in sectors with a long tradition of unionisation are difficult to organise once they are removed from the arena of permanent employment. About 50,000 textile mill workers in Ahmedabad City were laid off during the late 1980s and early 1990s. The move to obtain compensation and rehabilitation for these workers floundered on the weakness of the struggle, as numbers of workers who were available for pressing their claims and taking to some kind of activism dwindled, the motivation of leaders declined and the struggle slowly frittered away. If this is the situation with workers familiar with the concept of unionisation, the task of organising vast masses of casual workers who have never been organised, is obviously much more difficult. The problem, essentially, is not only that of organising workers for struggle, but given the transitory nature of casual employment, employers are not bound to provide insurance of any kind, and frequently, there is no fixed employer against whom workers’ claims can be pressed. In this context, the formation of the National Centre for Labour (NCL) can be seen as a landmark in the history of the working class movement in India. The NCL is an apex body of independent trade unions working in the unorganised sector of labour, registered under the Indian Trade Union Act, 1926. Through its constituent members, the NCL represents the interests of workers in construction, agriculture, fisheries, forests, marble and granite manufacturing, self-employed women, contract workers, anganwadi and domestic workers, as also workers in the tiny and small-scale industries. The NCL, launched in 1995, has about 6,25,000 members spread over 10 states in India. The NCL reflects two tendencies. First, the formation of such a federation highlights that despite the problems in organising workers in the informal sector, there have in fact, been a range of organisations which have sought to address these issues. On a collective plane, their activities represent a marked departure from the traditional way of conceptualising union activities exclusively around organised or formal sector workers. Thus, the unionisation of the hitherto unorganised sector has become inserted into the political universe as a possible and legitimate activity. Second, the formation of the NCL, to an extent, overturns the pessimistic logic that the interests of the unorganised sector - given their diverse and inchoate form - cannot be articulated from a single platform. For the NCL aims precisely, do not only provide an anchoring for these diverse organisations, but more importantly, to articulate the need for institutionalised norms of welfare which can apply to the unorganised sector as a whole. It is in the context of this generalised movement that one needs to view recent efforts to bring in legislative acts which seek to create a new framework of laws and institutions addressing the needs of the unorganised sector. One of the major problems that has dogged this sector has of course been that of implementation. Thus, for example, while there is a stipulated minimum wage for most industries, this is frequently flouted by employers. A central objective of the NCL has been to advocate legislation to create agencies, which would mediate between the employer and the employee, to institutionalise certain guarantees of welfare and security to the' employee. Thus, for example, the State Assisted Scheme of Provident Fund for Unorganised Workers, 2000, proposed by the Labour Department of the Government of West Bengal, introduces the mechanism of a Fund which will be contributed to by the worker (wageearner or self-employed person), the employer, and the Government and to which the worker would be entitled at the age of 55 or above. By registering a worker to this programme and issuing an identity card, the initial hurdle to identifying a large mass of scattered workers is overcome, and a step is taken towards institutionalising their legitimate claims against the employers and from the State. The Karnataka Unorganised Workers (Regulation of Employment and Conditions of Work) Bill, 2001”, offers a more comprehensive framework for addressing the unorganised sector's needs. It envisages the formation of a Fund and a Board, in each sector. The Board, consisting of members from the Government, employers and employees, would be responsible for administering the Fund. Employers must compulsorily pay towards the Fund, a certain fixed percentage of the wages or taxes payable by them, or a certain percentage of the cost of their project, (for example, in construction projects). The concept of the Fund is designed to create the financial viability of social security for workers, and to provide a structure for employers' contribution. Thus, workers would be insured for accident and illness, old age,and .unemployment. The Board is designed to provide a mechanism to ensure the working of the Fund, and essentially, to institutionalise workers' claims against employers through an empowered agency. In the broader context of economic liberalisation, recently proposed labour reforms seek to extend the scope of contract employment and to facilitate worker lay-off. As casualisation of labour now seems an irreversible trend, the Bills outlined above would appear to be the only way to ensure workers' interest. To this extent, organisations such as the NCL, which have systematically struggled to push for such legislation, are serving an invaluable historical purpose. As the Karnataka Unorganised Workers Bill awaits endorsement during the Assembly sessions being held currently, for the protagonists of the movement, this would be a watershed, but, nevertheless only a moment in a struggle that needs to be waged at multiple points and to evolve to newer heights.

Each of these questions has four underlined parts. Identify the part which is not correct.