whatsapp no. 88986-30000 · a bench of justices l nageswara rao, hemant gupta, and s ravindra bhat...

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1. Maratha quota — the agitation, the politics

Relevant for GS Prelims & Mains Paper II; Polity & Governance

The Supreme Court on Wednesday referred to a Constitution Bench the question of

whether states can exceed the 50% limit on quotas that was set by a nine-judge Bench in

the landmark Indra Sawhney vs Union of India (1992) case. The question will now be taken

up by a Bench comprising at least 11 judges.

Case in Supreme Court

A Bench of Justices L Nageswara Rao, Hemant Gupta, and S Ravindra Bhat heard a batch of

petitions challenging reservations for Marathas in education and jobs in Maharashtra. The

petitions appealed a 2019 Bombay High Court decision that upheld the constitutional

validity of the Maratha quota under the Socially and Educationally Backward Classes

(SEBC) Act, 2018. The Bench also heard a petition challenging admission to postgraduate

medical and dental courses under the quota in the state.

Bombay HC ruling

A Division Bench of the High Court ruled last year that the 16% quota granted by the state was not “justifiable”, and reduced it to 12% in education and 13% in government jobs, as recommended by the Maharashtra State Backward Class Commission (MSBCC). The Bench ruled that “the limit of reservation should not exceed 50%”; however, “in exceptional circumstances and extraordinary situations, this limit can be crossed subject to availability

of quantifiable and contemporaneous data reflecting backwardness, inadequacy of representation and without affecting the efficiency in administration”. The court relied heavily on the findings of the 11-member MSBCC, which submitted in November 2018 that

the Maratha community is socially, economically and educationally backward.

Existing reservation

Following the 2001 State Reservation Act, the total reservation in Maharashtra was 52%:

Scheduled Castes (13%), Scheduled Tribes (7%), Other Backward Classes (19%), Special

Backward Class (2%), Vimukti Jati (3%), Nomadic Tribe B (2.5%), Nomadic Tribe C-

Dhangar (3.5%) and Nomadic Tribe D-Vanjari (2%). The quotas for Nomadic Tribes and

Special Backward Classes have been carved out of the total OBC quota. With the addition of

12-13% Maratha quota, the total reservation in the state went up to 64-65%. The 10%

quota for Economically Weaker Sections (EWS) announced by the Centre last year is also

effective in the state.

The Marathas

The Marathas are a politically dominant community who make up 32% of Maharashtra’s population. They have historically been identified as a ‘warrior’ caste with large landholdings. Eleven of the state’s 19 chief ministers so far have been Marathas. While division of land and agrarian problems over the years have led to a decline of prosperity

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among middle- and lower middle-class Marathas, the community still plays an important

role in the rural economy.

The discontent in the community could spill over into protests and unrest if the quota issue

is not resolved soon. In 2016-17, the Maratha Kranti Morcha (MKM) led 58 silent protests

demanding reservations. The second phase of the protest saw a spate of suicides. The

backward Marathwada region was the worst affected by the protests.

Political pulls, pressures

All three parties in the ruling coalition, the Congress, NCP, and Shiv Sena, are in favour of

the Maratha quota. The sub-committee for Maratha reservation headed by Ashok Chavan

has maintained they had recruited the best lawyers to plead their case in the SC. The state

government can be expected to explore all options to restore the quota. The MKM has termed the stay on quota as “extremely unfortunate”. The organisation holds the

government responsible for not presenting their case well before the apex court.

The opposition BJP has seen a political opportunity, and would be gearing up to use the

developments to consolidate its political base amongst the Maratha community, and make

inroads into Congress and NCP bastions in Western Maharashtra and Marathwada. Vanchit Bahujan Aghadi president Prakash Ambedkar said the court’s order does not impact OBCs, who were never against Maratha reservation. However, reservation for Marathas should

not be at the cost of the existing quota for OBCs.

Source: The Indian Express

2. Taking stock of jobs lost, sectors affected, and possible ways forward

Relevant for GS Prelims & Mains Paper III; Economics

Mahesh Vyas, MD and CEO of the Centre for Monitoring Indian Economy (CMIE), will be the Expert Guest at Thursday’s edition of explained.Live, where he will discuss “How to save existing jobs and create new ones”. Rising levels of unemployment have been brought into sharp focus by a sharp contraction of 23.9% in India’s GDP in the first quarter. The lockdowns are likely to result in the Indian economy contracting by over 10% in the full

financial year, and this is expected to result in more and more people losing jobs, apart

from fewer new entrants finding work.

In other words, the number of unemployed is likely to grow not just because more and

more people entering the labour force fail to find jobs, but also because several already

employed are likely to lose their jobs.

Lack of data

Any analysis of the jobs situation in India is marred by the lack of prompt data on employment and unemployment. India’s official data on unemployment — provided









through the Periodic Labour Force Survey (PLFS), which is conducted by the National

Statistical Office under the Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation — comes

out with a considerable lag. The PLFS is an annual survey that also provides quarterly

updates but the latest PLFS report, which was released in June, pertains to July 2018 to

June 2019 period.

In the absence of official estimates, the surveys done by CMIE, which Vyas heads, are often

seen as the benchmark. However, it should be underscored that CMIE and PLFS data are

not comparable because of methodological — and in particular, definitional — differences.

The story so far

In November 2019, a research paper by Santosh Mehrotra and Jajati Parida, published by

the Centre of Sustainable Employment at the Azim Premji University, analysed PLFS 2017-

18 data and found that for the first time in Independent India the total number of employed

people declined between 2011-12 and 2017-18 (Chart 2). They calculated that total

employment fell from 474 million in 2011-12 to 465 million in 2017-18 — a drop of 9

million.

PLFS 2017-18 also found that the unemployment rate had trebled in this period of 6 years,

reaching a 45-year high. According to Mehrotra and Parida, this meant the total number of

unemployed went up from 10 million in 2011-12 to 30 million in 2017-18.

The worst affected were the youth — those between ages 15 and 29. The total number of

unemployed youth went up marginally from 8.9 million in 2004-05 to 9 million in 2011-12

but shot up to 25.1 million by 2017-18. Worse, the rate of unemployment rose as one

improved on educational attainment.

Since the end of 2017-18, India’s growth has steadily faltered (Chart 1). As a result, Mehrotra told The Indian Express that he does not expect the total number of unemployed

coming down.









Source: CMIE

“The Covid pandemic now has, of course, completely destroyed the picture,” he said. India could have as many as 50 million unemployed at present, he added.

What’s more, according to his calculations, India needs to add around 10 mn to 12 mn new

jobs each year for the coming decade. A recent McKinsey study, too, pegged the total

number of non-farm jobs that India needed to create in the coming decade between 90 mn

to 140 mn.









Source: CMIE

Beyond NSO data

Since 2016, CMIE has been conducting its own surveys to track employment and

unemployment levels in India on a weekly basis. However, Vyas states that their definition

for gauging employment is far stricter and as such the data is not comparable to PLFS.

But even the CMIE data for the total number of employed and unemployed (Chart 3)

exhibits a disappointing trend with both metrics worsening since 2016. The pandemic in

2020 had the expected deleterious impact on the job market. According to Vyas, the worst

affected were salaried jobs which saw a reduction of 21 million between the start of April

and August end. In terms of the age group, CMIE data suggests that the jobs of those

between 15-39 were most severely affected.










3. What AstraZeneca vaccine trial’s pause means for trials

Relevant for GS Prelims & Mains Paper III; Science & Technology

Global pharma major AstraZeneca announced late on Tuesday evening that it was putting a

halt on ongoing clinical trials for a coronavirus vaccine it is developing in collaboration with Oxford University. It said it was a “voluntary” and “routine action” that happens “whenever there is a potentially unexplained illness in one of the trials”.

The Oxford-AstraZeneca candidate vaccine is undergoing phase-3 clinical trials at more

than 60 locations in the US, Brazil and South Africa. It is the same vaccine that was cleared

for combined phase-2 and phase-3 trials in India. The trials in India began last month, and

about 100 participants have received the dose.

Why have the Oxford-AstraZeneca candidate vaccine trials been halted?

Though AstraZeneca did not specify what exactly had happened, it has been reported that a trial participant in England developed “serious adverse” illnesses. As of now, it is not even clear whether the “adverse event” is even a result of the vaccine. The pause will enable the company to review what was the cause.

What does it mean for the trials now?

This is a temporary pause, to investigate the illness in the affected patient, though it is not

clear how long that is going to take. As of now, there do not appear to be any serious

question marks over the safety of the vaccine, because such incidents are not uncommon in

trials for vaccines or drugs. The only direct impact of the incident could be on the timeline

for producing the vaccine. AstraZeneca, like other developers, has been targeting early next

year for making its vaccine available.

But the incident has implications beyond that, for other vaccine developers as well. It

demonstrates the inherent uncertainties in the process of developing a vaccine, and the

importance of rigorously following the scientific method during trials.

What are these larger implications?

In the current rush to produce a coronavirus vaccine as early as possible, several usual

regulatory procedures have been bypassed, raising concerns amongst experts and

scientists. By all accounts, a coronavirus vaccine is expected to be ready by early next year.

That itself would have made it the fastest developed vaccine, ever.

But now, there is also an attempt, especially in the US, to release the vaccine this year itself.

There is also a political push make the vaccine, at least notionally, available before the

November 3 Presidential elections. President Donald Trump, seeking a re-election, has

repeatedly said that a vaccine could be available this year, possibly before November 3. The

vaccine is seen as boosting his re-election chances.









Elsewhere as well, there has been a rush to come out with a coronavirus vaccine, even if

that means skipping phase-3 trials. The Russian vaccine, and a couple of candidates in

China, have been approved in their respective countries without phase-3 trials having been

initiated. It is only now, after much criticism, that these vaccines are also preparing to

undergo phase-3 trials.

Are such incidents unusual during trials?

Shahid Jameel, a virologist, said the incident only highlighted the importance of following the prescribed processes. “The incident itself is nothing to be alarmed about as of now.

These things happen quite routinely during vaccine or drug trials. The good thing is that

despite the rush to produce a coronavirus vaccine, we still have systems in place that would pick these things out. So that is reassuring,” he said.

Unlike phase-1 and phase-2 trials, where the volunteers are carefully chosen to be healthy

adults, phase-3 trials involve a very large number of participants, some of whom can have

underlying diseases or weaknesses. As a result, it is not unusual for a case like the current

one to emerge during the trials.

“When such things emerge, and they do quite regularly, you have to pause, reassess, re-

examine. And that is what seems to be happening in this case. This is normal process, and

this is how it should be,” Jameel said. The incident is a reminder against deviating from prescribed processes in developers’ keenness to fast-track their development. It will also

likely temper public expectation and excitement about a vaccine being made available very

soon, and possibly ward off political pressure to rush through the process to meet political

deadlines.

A day earlier, nine pharma companies, including AstraZeneca, had released a joint statement promising not to prematurely release their vaccines, and “always make the

safety and well-being of the vaccinated individuals” their top priority. These companies said they would seek approval for their vaccine candidates only “after demonstrating safety and efficacy through a phase-3 clinical study”.

Will the incident impact the India trials?

AstraZeneca has not explicitly clarified whether trials at all locations have been paused. As

such, the status of the India trials, being sponsored by Pune-based Serum Institute of India,

is not clear. Serum Institute itself said the incident will have no impact on the ongoing trials here, and that it had faced “no issues at all” in the trials so far.

But the trials in India are already in a temporary, scheduled, pause, unrelated to the

incident, right now. In the initial round of the trials, 100 participants have been vaccinated.

Follow-up information from these participants is to be submitted to an independent expert

body, called the Data Safety and Monitoring Board (DSMB), for review. Only after the

expert body has reviewed and approved the data will the trials sites go ahead vaccinating









more volunteers. Further enrolment of participants in India has been put on hold for the

last one week, when the first 100 volunteers had been vaccinated.

What will the Board look at?

The DSMB is expected to meet on Thursday or Friday to assess the data generated from the

first group of volunteers. It will then decide whether the vaccine candidate is safe enough

to be administered in more participants. If it finds any serious safety issue, it can even

recommend that the trials be stopped. Some of the principal investigators involved in the

trials expect the DSMB to now also take up this new incident when it conducts its own review. “The DSMB will review the Indian data along with this particular event (in the UK participant) that has occurred, and then decide and let us know what has to be done,” one of the investigators said.






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