It has begun to realise that wisdom can also be gleaned from the experience of emerging economies The IMF

has spoken. In its latest World Economic Outlook, the IMF forecasts that the advanced countries will continue to be in a difficult situation, with a grim fiscal position and vulnerable financial markets. In contrast, emerging markets have done well on the fiscal front and are expected to continue with a neutral fiscal policy in the medium term. There were lessons to be learnt from the emerging economies that, if shared earlier, could have saved the global economy from this unprecedented recession. The IMF has come a long way in providing policy advice to its member countries. It has begun to realise that economic wisdom could also be gleaned from the macro-management experience of emerging economies. The view on capital flows has changed and is far more pragmatic and experience-based now, having evolved through an extensive, two-year consultative process with member countries. The emerging markets have been advised to stay alert to the risks stemming from increased cross-border capital flows, as low interest rates and a high risk appetite in advanced countries could result in a situation where too much money could be chasing too few emerging market assets. At last, the IMF has recognised what was being advocated by India and other emerging economies for more than a decade: easy monetary policy in advanced countries spills over to the emerging countries and causes disruptions in the smooth functioning of the markets. Another interesting case is inflation targeting, being discussed by the IMF in the context of a flatter Phillips curve (which represents a historical inverse relation between inflation and unemployment). which is certain to gladden the hearts of many policymakers and central bank governors in leading emerging markets, including India. Indeed, policymakers from India had been in the forefront of arguing that given the status of financial markets, twin deficits and the economy, inflation targeting is not the appropriate regime for India. The researchers in the IMF are only now beginning to realise that suggesting inflation targeting to all countries and in all circumstances was probably not the best policy advice. There is yet another case of change in policy advice. The IMF has now begun to question the impact of debt on economic growth, in the current context of deficient global aggregate demand and has offered research yielding mixed results on the effect of debt on growth. Historically, the IMF's advice was based on the premise that debt overhang has growth retarding implications on the economy through various channels like reduced public and private investment. In traditional literature, debt "overhang threshold" levels were discussed, which gave broadly similar results. In contrast, according to the IMF, recent studies to understand debt restructuring channels and its distributional effects across different sectors of the economy indicate a reverse result. Earlier, despite the celebrated 1944 article by Evsey Domar in American Economic Review, where two variables matter, the real interest rates and the growth rate of the economy the IMF would not consider the arguments of the emerging markets. Further, in 1992, after the Maastricht Treaty sanctified the two ratios of fiscal deficit and debt-to-GDP at 3 per cent and 60 per cent respectively, advocacy by the IMF became shriller. And Carmen Reinhart and Kenneth Rogoff raised the threshold level of debt ratio to 90 per cent before it negatively impacts growth in 2010. It now turns out that this number was based on an excel error. There was, and still is, no theoretical literature to justify these ratios, but the IMF assigned them a biblical status and applied it rigorously to all countries. The IMF, five years after the onset of the crisis, is now advising select central banks on exit policy and the use of the macro-prudential toolkit to mitigate risks and strengthen supervision of the financial sector during the exit phase. The strategy and policy advice by the IMF seems familiar to many regulators and supervisors in emerging markets, especially India, who continue to believe that precaution is better than cure. Another change is the recognition of the need to reflect emerging markets and developing countries in the governance and power structures in the IMF, which requires a reform of the quota formula and shares to reflect the changing structure of the global economy. With implementation of the 2008 reforms still pending and the formula reform deadline of January 2013 ignored, emerging markets wonder about the nature of the next quota revision promised by 2014 in the spring meeting communique. With the growing integration of the global economy, the need for distilling and sharing lessons from the experiences of both developed and emerging countries is a necessity. An institution like the IMF should have been in the forefront of the two-way cross-pollination of such knowledge. Better late than never, the reversal in many policy stances by the IMF since the global financial crises in 2008, and particularly in the past three years, is expected to strengthen relationships and the path to recovery and growth. The strategy and vision of the Indian policymakers is increasingly recognised by the world and international institutions a matter of national pride for all of us.

Can pornography be given free play when the state remains an integral expression of male power?

There are many things we need to know that we wish we did not have to. The existence of domestic violence against women and children is one of them. The use of pornography as a tool for learning and justifying such brutal behaviour, is another. We have lived in denial of links between the two for too long, despite ample evidence that patterns of abusive sexual dominance are often first picked up by males at home and then honed through viewing porn that furthers the idea of the inferiority of all females. Recent cases of gangrape also verify what feminists and criminologists have been saying for a long time: violent abusers of young women and female children are mostly repeat offenders, and known area bullies. Such men will become even more prone to abusive predatory behaviour after bouts of heavy drinking and collective viewing of pornographic material with similarly inclined male friends. Despite this, the moment the issue of banning pornography or regulating the sale of alcohol comes up, loud protests erupt, citing the constitutional right to earning a livelihood and the basic freedom of speech and expression. Think, for a minute, that material containing propaganda justifying the killing or torture of specific groups on the basis of caste or creed were made freely available. Would we not become outraged, knowing that such propaganda precedes and justifies casteist and ethnic violence? Why, then, should the easy availability of pornographic material depicting the grossest forms of violence against women and children, remain an exception, and Article 19(1) be invoked for its continuance? Even in a liberal state, can pornography be given free play, even when it comes at the cost of the free speech of women victims who, as it is, do not have full freedom of speech within homes? Liberal theoreticians of both sexes are so confused by the din of the erotic versus obscene debate that they mostly refrain from delving into how pornography capitalises on the tacit approval for male freedom of speech by the same state and the civil society that say they can book offenders only if the victims speak up. Even those outraged by the police dragging its feet and demanding better safety and policing of streets, ended up looking schizoid as they asked for dramatically swift state intervention and gory reprisals against the guilty on behalf of the sexually abused women and children, quite forgetting that they had found the state so useless that they wanted all leaders to resign. The state, as victims of sexual violence encounter it first hand, is not a free floating reality. It has a clear face and voice: that of the SHO who tries to bribe a child victim's father and buy his silence, that of an ACP who slaps a young female protester, an MP who looks upon the anger of women protesters dismissively, calling them a bunch of "dented and painted" females. With such movers and shakers, can even a vociferous demand for positive state intervention tilt the scales of justice in favour of women and children? Can the battered victims and their families be coaxed into believing that the state as it is, must be viewed as a primary tool of their empowerment? It is true that gender is first the construct of a social system, but in a country like ours, it has a long history that predates democracy. There are many who still seek to explain the upswing in rapes as linked to the wide dissemination of pornographic material to new technology. They like to remind us that we were a much kinder, safer society just a century ago, before the birth of the present day Westernised system. But they are wrong. Burning up TV sets or shops selling DVDs will not help. Violent and abusive behaviour against the weak, women and children in particular, has had a long history in India. Less than a century and a half ago, notorious gangs of thugs roamed our unsafe highways, unwanted widows were routinely being sent away when not being burnt on pyres, children from poor families were being sold to the highest bidders by their impoverished families and unpaid labour was routinely subjected to hair-raising acts of sadism by landlords and princelings. I have heard many stories about how, earlier, in large joint families, young girls and indigent widows felt the spectre of molestation by some male relative or family friend hanging over their heads. Some girls were saved from predatory family males by their prudent and watchful mothers, some were not. But all of them, when they reported sexual abuse to mothers or family elders, were forced to hold their tongues for fear of family reprisals and a social stigmatising that would render the victim as unmarriageable commodity. Fact is, since male dominance over women remains basically sexual, even in a democratic set-up, rape and porn are not deviant phenomena, but only one extreme example of the way in which men will use women and simultaneously show them their true place within a state they control and have moulded in their image. Since the modern Indian state is founded on male power, male dominance over women is clearly visible socially, economically and politically. Since nothing is gender neutral in India, and the state remains an integral expression of male power from the thana to Jantar Mantar to Parliament, how can it serve the interests of women on whose brutal dominance, powerlessness and guaranteed silence its porn and sex industries thrive? Go to the police first! Ironically the thanedar who lets boys be boys, finds young women out late at night on streets, women in pubs with male or female friends, women in comfortable cool short dresses that make mobility easier, abetting the crime, while the eroticisation of dominance and submission in popular films and myriad item numbers continue to be seen as entertaining by all. Unless the basic theory of such a schizophrenic state is questioned, can we assume that full implementation of laws amended by liberal jurists will solve the problem and lead to better-crafted legal arguments in favour of women that will show everyone, from our parliamentarians to the police and the courts, the error of their ways? The writer is a Delhi-based journalist and chairperson of Prasar Bharati

Why we need to revisit the 74th Amendment The National Panchayati Raj Day to mark the enactment of the 73rd Constitutional Amendment was observed on April 24 with due ceremony but little hype. Whatever the reasons for the celebration, even those are not available for the 74th Amendment dealing with municipalities. The Government of India's first line of defence on this issue is that these are state subjects. Nevertheless, the Union government did enter the domain of the states substantially, despite opposition from chief ministers like Jyoti Basu, M. Karunanidhi and N.T. Rama Rao. Between the governments of Rajiv Gandhi, V.P. Singh and P.V. Narasimha Rao, the 73rd and 74th Amendments required five different drafts, two joint parliamentary committee reports and ratification by the states before they became law in 1992. Article 243B requires every state to establish panchayats at the village, intermediate and district levels. In the case of municipalities, Article 243Q contains a similar stipulation, but it is followed by a proviso that a municipality may not be constituted in an urban area if it is specified as an industrial township where municipal services are provided by an industrial establishment. The preceding Article 243P states that a "municipality means an institution of self-government constituted under Article 243Q". The emphasis is on selfgovernment, not on water supply and drainage. It should also be mentioned that this proviso was absent in the bill introduced in Lok Sabha in September 1991 and it was not an issue for consideration for the JPC. The proviso was introduced as a government amendment only after the bill was received from the JPC in July 1992 and a most important purpose of the 74th Amendment, that of creating constitutionally mandated municipal bodies of self-governance for all urban areas, was sidetracked. According to Census 2011, there are 7,935 urban places. Of these, 4,041 are clothed in the garb of a corporation, municipality or nagar panchayat. The remaining 3,894 are only census towns, which have to remain content with that statistical certification. The list of such census towns without urban local self-government includes Noida and Kharagpur, and makes for extraordinary reading. The Veerappa Moily Commission in its sixth report on local governance recommended that private townships and gated colonies, including SEZs, must be placed under the jurisdiction of a local body, though they may have some autonomy for provision of infrastructure and services and collection of user charges. In October 2007, the government formally accepted this recommendation. However, the Union and state governments have been quite eager to seize every opportunity to exclude territories from municipal administration. The proviso to Article 243Q is not a mere loophole. The message it conveys is that a democratic dispensation is not compatible with development, in cynical disregard of the principal intent of the amendment, which is local self-government. Much has been written about the functional and financial domain of urban local bodies. The 11th, 12th and 13th Finance Commissions have all urged clarity and enhancement of financial resources, including an independent tax domain. Both the M.N. Venkatachaliah and Moily commissions have urged mandatory functions. The 12th Schedule, which is no more than a list of 18 subjects, has become an embarrassment, because the general perception is that municipalities and corporations are mandated to perform most functions relating to these subjects. But the reality is that few tasks under these subjects have been entrusted to the municipalities. As for public participation, the 74th Amendment contains a stipulation for ward committees. In pursuing the arithmetic parallel of numerical representation, as in panchayats, the diversity and complexities of different urban areas have not been adequately considered. Resisted by the states as an incursion into their powers and resented by elected representatives as undermining their domain, ward committees exist in a few states like Kerala and West Bengal, but hardly function. The amendment also included provisions for a district planning committee under Article 243ZD to secure development planning for the district, addressing both rural and urban concerns. Similarly, under Article 243ZE, a committee for metropolitan planning is required to be set up for each multi-municipal metropolitan area with a population of 10 lakh or more. Unfortunately, the composition of the two committees heavily favours elected members of the panchayats and municipalities. The proportion is four-fifths of the total number in the case of DPCs and two-thirds for MPCs. According to a recent CPR study, in the metropolitan areas of Mumbai, Kolkata, Chennai, Bangalore and Hyderabad, non-municipal urban territories, special purpose bodies, elected representatives of the state legislature and Parliament, as well as business and industry, are important stakeholders. The restricted design of the MPC does not allow for flexibility or adequacy of representation. This is a major reason why the MPC, though a constitutional requirement, has not been set-up at all, except in Kolkata and Mumbai. Even in these areas, they are practically non-functional. What, then, is the purpose of letting this flawed amendment remain as it is? As one who was privileged to be involved in the drafting of this amendment, I have to admit that if clarity is the objective, this piece of legislation leaves much to be desired. Yet, the intent of the amendment democratic decentralisation cannot be compromised by the letter of the law. It is time we revisited this amendment and considered the changes needed.