📰 Was Purandara Dasa born in a Malnad village?
•There is much speculation about where Purandara Dasa, regarded as the pitamaha of Carnatic music, was born. Now, an expert committee constituted by Kannada University, Hampi, has come to the conclusion that it was most likely a small village called Kshemapura (now called Keshavapura) at Araga hobli in Tirthahalli taluk of Shivamogga district.
•The committee comprising research scholars and musicologists has said that there is enough evidence to believe this place, which was a major province of the Vijayanagara empire, was the birthplace of the saint. However, it has also recommended further research. Till now, some have been arguing that the saint-poet was born in Purandaragadh, near Pune in Maharashtra, and finally settled in Hampi.
•The committee will submit its report by the end of this month. “We are convinced that Purandara Dasa hails from Araga. There is plenty of evidence to corroborate this,” said musicologist R.K. Padmanabha, chairman of the committee. The committee wants an authority set up in the village to take forward the research on the life and works of Purandara Dasa.
•The committee was formed by the government after much persuasion by B.S. Vishwanath, former MLA and cooperative activist who is organising the ‘Purandara Utsava’ in Tirthahalli, socialist leader Konanduru Lingappa, and others. Under the direction of the government, Mallika S. Ghanti, Vice-Chancellor of Kannada University, set up the committee, which has on board former Minister for Kannada and Culture Leeladevi R. Prasad and scholars A.V. Navada, Veeranna Rajoora, Aralumallige Parthasarathy, and Shivanand Viraktamuth.
Spot visits
•Mr. Viraktamuth, coordinator of the committee, told The Hindu that the committee members visited various places in the Sahyadri range of the Western Ghats, besides Udupi, Hampi, Kaginele and Purandaragadh. He said that the present-day Vartekeri of Keshavapura was the ‘Vartakara Keri’ (trade street) where Srinivasa Nayaka (later called Purandara) was engaged in trade. Nayakas still live in Araga hobli. “The existence of Vithalana Gundi and Dasana Gadde here further indicate the fact that Keshavapura was the native place of Purandara Dasa,” he said, adding that the language used by Purandara gives credence to this theory.
•“One reference by scholar Sa .Kru. Ramachandraraya points to Krishnadevaraya, emperor of the Vijayanagar empire, awarding five villages of Araga Samsthana as ‘inam’ to Narayana Yati of Koodalipura near the present Shivamogga town. Vyasatirtha, who was the guru for Purandara Dasa, was also ‘rajaguru’ of Krishnadevaraya. Araga at that point of time was a centre of arts and music,” he said.
•However, Dr. Ghanti added a word of caution. “There is a need to conduct in-depth research and study to establish the fact that Purandara Dasa was born in Keshavapura. If the committee recommends and the government advises, Kannada University is prepared to set up a Purandara Dasa Study Centre.”
📰 Social security still a raw deal for many
The goal of comprehensive social security coverage remains a mere slogan in many parts of the world
•A recent global report on social security could serve as a useful starting point to understand the appeal of populism across the world. The World Social Protection Report 2017-19 of the International Labour Organisation could also be viewed as a blueprint for action by political parties of the mainstream.
•A vast majority of people (4 billion) live without any safeguard against the normal contingencies of life, according to the study. Less than half (45.2%) have guaranteed access to only one social protection benefit in the face of a whole gamut of risks such as ill health, unemployment, occupational injuries, disability, and old age. More than half the population in rural areas are not covered by universal health programmes, as compared to less than a quarter in urban locations. The goal of comprehensive coverage evidently remains a mere slogan in several parts of the world.
•Yet, there is growing political support for the idea that public investment in social security is critical to eradicate poverty, boost economic growth, and reduce inequality. About 29% of the population enjoy comprehensive social protection. There has been a 2% increase in coverage in the last two years — a sign that the commitment is woefully inadequate given the magnitude of the challenge. Major obstacles in this regard are fiscal austerity measures. The report reinforces the alternative approach it has advocated for long, of economic stimulus and productivity-enhancing growth. Targets under the 2030 Sustainable Development Goals lay out the framework for concerted efforts in this respect.
•An earlier ILO study documented the challenges facing countries, at their current rate of progress, to meet the 2025 target of eradicating child labour. The latest report sheds some light on why the task seems almost elusive. Nearly two-thirds of children are not covered by any form of social protection, meaning that their education is unlikely to rank as a priority among households. Furthermore, 41% of mothers of newborns receive no maternity benefits. Only 27.8% of persons with severe disabilities worldwide receive appropriate support, says the report. This precludes effective interventions to alleviate the impact of different impairments on daily living.
•The expansion of old-age pensions to include 68% of people in the retirement age is a move in the right direction. However, the levels of support are not adequate enough even to lift people out of poverty, the report says. A trend away from the privatisation of pension protection in Poland, Argentina, Hungary, among others, is perhaps a moment for other countries to rethink.
•A highlight in the report is the practical tools and guidance on calculating the cost of different social benefits. It thus dispels the notion that universal coverage is beyond the reach of poor countries.
📰 Operation Digital Board in the offing
Govt. aims at improving digital education
•The Central Advisory Board of Education (CABE) on Monday passed a resolution to take steps towards Operation Digital Board on the lines of Operation Blackboard of 1987, which was started with the purpose of providing minimum basic facilities to all primary schools.
•“The idea of Operation Digital Board is aimed at providing better digital education in all schools. This will offer new opportunities and new ways of teaching and learning to schools,” Minister of Human Resource Development Prakash Javadekar said after the first day of the two-day 65th CABE meeting here.
•The Minister added, “It will be our endeavour to launch Operation Digital Board with the involvement of the Central and State governments, CSIR and community support.”
•He said that the meeting had just resolved to carry out the vision and it would take time for the details of the scheme to emerge.
•Education Ministers of 22 states took part in the CABE meeting. Other States were represented by officials. Each State informed the policy-making advisory body on education about their educational achievements, initiatives for digital education and teacher training, etc.Mr. Javadekar said the future vision was to provide quality education, equity, accessibility, accountability and affordability.
•Telangana shared its achievement of creating residential schools on the Navodaya Vidyalaya pattern to cater to as many as eight lakh students. The first-day of the CABE meeting was dedicated to school education. On the concluding day of the meet on Tuesday, higher education will be discussed.
📰 No clarity on probe into clinical trial violations
Drug regulator refuses to share its findings under the RTI
•Nearly seven years after the Indian drug regulator, the Drug Controller General of India (DCGI) began investigating nine Andhra-based clinical research organisations (CROs) over allegations of coercing people into joining clinical trials, it has refused to share its findings under the Right to Information (RTI) Act.
•When public-health activist and whistle-blower in the Ranbaxy cheating case, Dinesh S. Thakur, and Prashant Reddy Thikkavarapu, assistant professor at Hyderabad’s National Academy for Legal Studies and Research (NALSAR), asked the DCGI for the investigation’s findings, the regulator cited Sections 8(1)(e) and (h) of the RTI Act to deny the information.
•These two sections, respectively, exempt a public authority from disclosing information if such disclosure violates the authority’s “fiduciary relationship” with another body (the CRO in this case), and if it impedes an investigation.
•“Both grounds are quite silly,” Mr. Reddy told The Hindu. “The fiduciary relationship is one of trust, but a regulator’s relationship with a company it is regulating is not one of trust — it is merely enforcing the law.”
•In 2011, the DCGI began looking into nine firms, including Visakapatnam’s Actimus Bio-Sciences and Hyderabad’s GVK Biosciences.
•In Actimus’s case, several students had complained that the CRO had illegally detained them and tested drugs on them. In GVK’s case, a 24-year-old man had died while participating in a study on blood pressure drug Felodipine.
•Media reports also alleged that the man had been participating in several clinical-trials simultaneously, risking his own health and the quality of GVK’s data.
•Starting in 2014, the DCGI also began investigating GVK Biosciences, along with the Chennai-based Quest Life Sciences and Mumbai-based Alkem Laboratories, after European regulators found these firms to be manipulating trial data.
•The European Medicines Agency, among other regulators, banned drugs approved based on data from these companies.
•Around 700 drugs tested by GVK Biosciences, at least one tested by Quest, and at least one tested by Alkem were pulled out from European markets.
•When Mr. Thakur and Mr. Reddy requested information on the DCGI’s inquiry into these companies, it was also denied. However, the regulator said it had cancelled Quest’s licence to conduct bioequivalence studies for 15 days, an inadequate punishment given the scale of Quest’s misconduct, said Mr. Reddy.
•The DCGI investigation into data fraud and ethical violations by CROs has a bearing on patient-safety in India, because these companies also test the quality of drugs in the Indian market. Fraudulent data could mean that dangerous and ineffective drugs become available to patients.
•“If Quest was guilty of such terrible violations, their licence should have been cancelled so as to penalise them — a suspension of 15 days is a cruel joke on the law,” said Mr. Reddy.
•He said the company should have been tried for cheating and forgery. The allegations of ethical violations against Actimus, GVK and seven other companies are also punishable under the Indian Drugs and Cosmetics Act.
📰 Israel seeks ‘big data’ from India, signs 4 agreements
Plan to boost agriculture yield, counter cyberthreats
•Boosting measures to counter cyberthreats and to “revolutionise” Indian farm production, Israel has proposed to access India’s “big data,” the Ministry of External Affairs said at the end of the bilateral discussions on Monday, when both sides concluded four agreements.
•Speaking to journalists about the ongoing visit of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Vijay Gokhale, Secretary in charge of economic relations in the MEA, said Israel proposed to track individual Indian farmers, even as both sides joined hands to use a similar data-driven method to fight cybercrimes. “The idea of big data was brought into the discussion by the Israeli side in the context of emphasising how technology can now be used to agglomerate vast amounts of information and then bear on individual field and individual [Indian] farmer’s efforts, to improve the yield. This was the idea that was discussed today, the specifics will be discussed with the Agriculture Ministry and we will plan that soon,” Mr. Gokhale said. Minister for Agriculture Radhamohan Singh participated in the delegation-level talks on agriculture collaboration using Indian population’s big database, he said.
•The official refused to elaborate whether India had safeguards in place to share Aadhaar-based data with Israel, but indicated that the data under consideration would be of a magnitude to facilitate monitoring of “individual farmers’ and ‘water utilisation, cutting of crop, plantation, soil condition.”
📰 China slams Gen. Rawat’s remarks as “unconstructive”, says contradict Xiamen consensus
He underscored that in September, the leaders of India and China reached some important consensus on properly handling the differences and promote China-India relations.
•China on Monday slammed comments by the Chief of Army Staff Bipin Rawat as “unconstructive,” and said his remarks did not conform to the spirit of September talks in Xiamen between Chinese President Xi Jinping and Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
•During last week’s press conference, Gen. Rawat had said that India needed to shift its military focus from its western border with Pakistan to its northern border with China. He had also observed that if China was strong, India was not weak either.
•Besides, Gen. Rawat had highlighted the possibility of the return of Chinese troops to Doklam — an area that was the scene of a tense 73-day standoff between Indian and Chinese troops last year.
•“During the past one year, relations between China and India witnessed some twists and turns,” Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Lu Kang said in response to a question.
•He underscored that in September, the leaders of India and China reached some important consensus on properly handling the differences and promote China-India relations.
•“Recently, two sides enhanced dialogue on consultations, and bilateral relations have shown sound momentum of improvement and development,” he said, in an obvious reference to the visit to India by the Chinese foreign minister Wang Yi and State Councilor and Politburo member Yang Jeichi.
•“Under such background, the unconstructive remarks by the Indian senior officials not only go against the consensus reached by the two heads of state, and do not conform to the efforts made by the two sides to improve and develop bilateral relations.” He added: “It cannot help to preserve tranquility and peace in the border areas.”
•When asked to spell out any specific remark of Gen. Rawat that had irked China, Mr. Lu said: “I have made myself clear. If the senior official according to the report referred to Donglang (Doklam), I think you are clear about our position - Donglang belongs to China and has always been in the effective jurisdiction of China.”
•“The China border troops patrolling and stationed in the area are exercising our sovereignty rights. We hope the Indian side has learned the lessons of history and will avoid similar accidents to take place again,” Mr. Lu observed.
•He added: “If he refers to the situation in the whole India-China boundary, I have also said that last September the two heads of state have reached important consensus during the Xiamen summit. Both sides have maintained effective communication since then.”
•“The aim is to enhance strategic mutual trust and create enabling atmosphere for strategic communication. Recently the bilateral relations have shown positive momentum.”
•But the remarks of the Indian official “go against the consensus of the states and do not conform to the general trend of improvement of bilateral relations”.
•“We believe such kinds of remarks are not conducive to maintaining peace and tranquility in border areas.”
📰 China N-sub in disputed isles: Japan
•Japan said on Monday that a Chinese naval submarine spotted in waters off flashpoint islands in the East China Sea was one of its new type of nuclear-powered attack vessels.
•Earlier, China said three of its “Coast Guard vessels conducted a patrol in waters off the Diaoyu Islands,” Beijing’s name for the contested isles called Senkaku in Japan. Japanese Navy protested last Thursday after it spotted Jiangkai II class frigate and an unidentified submarine in disputed waters.
📰 India assures Israeli firms of easier environment to do business
•Even as Israel on Monday sought the relaunch of the negotiations on the proposed Free Trade Agreement (FTA) with India to boost ties, New Delhi promised Israeli companies that it would address their concerns and make it easier for them to do business here.
•Speaking at the India-Israel Business Innovation Forum, organised by the industry body CII, Ramesh Abhishek, Secretary, Department of Industrial Policy and Promotion, said: “I assure you [that we will] resolve all problems and make things easier and better for Israeli companies to do business in India.” He said the reform process would continue, so that India could attract investments from countries including Israel. As part of it, he said, incubators and research parks were being established, and Israeli companies could take advantage of them.
FTA talks
•Ohad Cohen, Trade Commissioner and Director of Foreign Trade Administration, Israel’s Ministry of Economy, said Israel’s focus, among others, was on exploring the possibility of restarting the proposed India-Israel FTA talks (on goods) and the operationalisation of the joint research and development fund created last year. The FTA talks had begun a decade ago and missed the 2014 deadline.
•Shraga Brosh, president of the Manufacturers Association of Israel, said Israeli firms were looking to expand cooperation in India in agriculture, smart cities, clean energy and water management.
•Deepak Bagla, Managing Director and CEO, Invest India (the Indian government’s investment promotion and facilitation agency), said that in the past six months, there had been a 16-fold increase in enquiries from Israeli firms looking to invest in India.
📰 India says Israel has taken UN vote in its stride
External Affairs Ministry says both sides view ties ‘holistically’ even as they seek an early resumption of peace talks between Israel and Palestinians
•India’s recent vote at the United Nations General Assembly, opposing U.S. recognition of Jerusalem as the Israeli capital, did not dent ties as bilateral ties are “much larger” than one issue, the External Affairs Ministry said on Monday.
•Speaking to presspersons, Vijay Gokhale, Secretary in charge of Economic Relations in the Ministry, said that both sides viewed ties “holistically” even as they sought an early resumption of peace talks between Israel and Palestinians.
•“Our side expressed our position on both the status of Jerusalem and Palestine.Both sides agreed that our relationship is much larger and our relationship is not determined by this [vote],” Mr. Gokhale said.
•The Palestine issue was discussed between the delegations led by Prime Minister Modi and Prime Minister Netanyahu, and sources said that the Israelis were aware that Mr. Modi was likely to visit the West Asian region soon, which may include a trip to the Palestinian capital of Ramallah.
•Both sides also discussed possibilities of resuming the stalled peace talks between the Israeli and Palestinian sides.
Peace discussions
•“The two Prime Ministers discussed the developments pertaining to the Israeli-Palestinian peace process. They reaffirmed their support for an early resumption of peace talks between Israelis and Palestinians for arriving at a comprehensive negotiated solution on all outstanding issues, based on mutual recognition and effective security arrangements, for establishing a just and durable peace in the region,” a joint statement by both sides issued after the bilateral meeting mentioned.
•The Hindu reported earlier that Israeli Ambassador Daniel Carmon had spoken about the talks about India’s vote at the General Assembly were continuing through bilateral “diplomatic channels”.
•Official sources said that the discussion on India’s traditional position was held in a frank manner and both sides agreed that this one issue should not become an impediment given the widespread convergence of a number of issues in bilateral relations.
•“Israelis understand that there are several factors that determine our position over Palestine,” said another official.
📰 Differences with Chief Justice not yet resolved: sources
Reports of conciliation termed ‘deliberate misinformation’
•Suggestions that the differences between the four Supreme Court judges and Chief Justice of India Dipak Misra had been resolved at the daily tea meeting before the hearings in the court began on Monday, were scotched by sources close to the four judges.
•They described the reports as deliberate misinformation. Reports of a resolution gained currency after Attorney General K.K. Venugopal was quoted in a section of the media saying that the issues had been ironed out at the informal tea meeting.
•Countering this, a source close to the four judges said there have been no attempts so far to resolve the issue raised by the four judges. While all four attended the morning tea session and spent a few minutes there before the day’s work began, the source claimed that talk of a resolution was a deliberate attempt to trivialise the issue raised by them. While everyone in a democracy has the right to say that the four judges were wrong in going public, what they are now facing is “mischief”, the source said.
•Monday was the first working day in the Supreme Court after the foursome – Justices Jasti Chelameswar, Ranjan Gogoi, Madan B. Lokur and Kurian Joseph – held an unprecedented press conference on January 13, criticising the Chief Justice of selective allocation of sensitive cases.
•This included the petitions seeking a probe into the death of CBI judge B.H. Loya, who was hearing the Sohrabuddin Sheikh encounter case. The day began as usual in the courtrooms of Chief Justice Misra and the four judges.
•All of them went about hearing the listed cases as usual with no sign of the simmering tensions within.
•The only aberration was when advocate R.P. Luthra made stinging remarks about the act of the four judges to call a press conference before a Bench presided over by Chief Justice Misra.
•The October 2017 letter to the Chief Justice circulated during the judges’ press conference referred to Mr. Luthra’s petition.
•In the letter, the four judges had pointed to how a particular Bench took upon itself the responsibility to order the finalisation of the Memorandum of Procedure for appointment of judges.
•The list of cases for January 16 shows that the Loya petitions are listed before the Bench led by Justice Arun Mishra.
•On Friday, Justice Gogoi had specifically confirmed that the allocation of Loya petitions was the immediate trigger for the press conference. On Sunday, a seven-member delegation from the Bar Council of India (BCI) had met 14 judges of the Supreme Court, including Chief Justice Misra.
•Speaking to The Hindu late Sunday evening, BCI Chairman Manan Kumar Mishra said the Chief Justice told the delegation that differences between the four senior-most judges and him would be resolved within the judicial institution and in a positive manner. (On Monday, he said the differences had been resolved.)
•However, two of the four judges had said on Sunday that “they had nothing particular to add” and that “it was up to the Chief Justice to take a decision within the framework of the institution.”
📰 Restoring order in the court
All the judges of the Supreme Court should sort out their differences internally and amicably
•The darkest day in the history of the judiciary in independent India is January 12, 2018. On this day, in an unprecedented move, the four senior-most judges of the Supreme Court — Justices J. Chelameswar, Ranjan Gogoi, Madan B. Lokur, and Kurian Joseph — held a press conference and raised a banner of revolt against the Chief Justice of India (CJI), Dipak Misra. They alleged that the CJI has been assigning cases, which have far-reaching consequences to the nation, selectively to Benches of his preference, thus ignoring well established convention. In reply to a query from the media, they stated that the case relating to the death of former special Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) judge B.H. Loya is one such instance. In justification of their otherwise objectionable conduct in addressing a press conference on these issues, they said they had been left with no other option. Asked if the CJI should be impeached, Justice Chelameswar said, “Let the nation decide”. The judges also said: “It is a discharge of debt to the nation that has brought us here.” Democracy is in peril, they added, and unless the institution is preserved, democracy will not survive.
Divided opinion
•Naturally, this incident has sent shock waves across the country in general and in the legal circles in particular. Many former judges, eminent jurists, and senior counsel have found the conduct of the four judges to be highly disagreeable. Former CJI, Justice T.S. Thakur, said that the conduct of the judges does not help resolve the issues. “It does not help anybody, particularly the institution, if someone was to bring it out in the open,” he said. Justice N. Santosh Hegde, former Attorney General of India Soli Sorabjee, and others have also strongly disapproved of the decision of the judges in holding a press conference. They feel that the image and reputation of the judiciary has been tarnished, and the confidence of the people in the judiciary shaken.
•However, a few former judges and lawyers have sought to justify the action by asserting that the judges had no other choice as their repeated pleas to the CJI, including the one on January 12 morning, did not bring about the desired result. They also feel that it is more important to address the issues raised by the judges rather than find fault with them for going public. According to them, disapproval of the form of protest must not cloud the substance of the grievances.
Serious damage done
•The opinion is divided, but no one can deny that the action of the four judges has caused serious damage to the credibility of the institution. Neither can it be denied that it has set a bad precedent — convention is that judges will never approach the media for redressal of their grievances, which is an internal matter. The day after the press conference, Justice Gogoi said that there is no crisis in the judiciary. Justice Joseph said there is no need for outsiders to intervene. If the judges themselves could have sat together and sorted out their differences, why did they go to the press and damage the image of the judiciary?
•The judges have also given an opportunity to politicians to fish in troubled waters. The Congress party lost no time in taking advantage of the situation and demanded that the Loya case be heard by the senior-most judges, and said that the issues raised must be addressed. Justice Chelameswar met with the leader of the Communist Party of India, D. Raja, at his residence minutes after the press conference. All these developments have enabled the media (both print and electronic) to extensively hold discussions about the functioning of the judiciary, which otherwise they could not have done. All this has further damaged the image of the judiciary. The common man, who had absolute faith in the institution and in the impartiality of judges, is now let to suspect that court decisions may not be purely based on merit.
•The conduct of the CJI and the Prime Minister in maintaining silence on the developments is commendable. The Central government has also rightly made its position clear that this being an internal matter of the judiciary, it will not intervene. The stand taken by the Bar Council of India and the Supreme Court Bar Association is also praiseworthy. Both have urged the Supreme Court judges to discuss the issues and settle them amicably by themselves. The Attorney General of India has also expressed the same opinion and is optimistic that the problem will be solved by the judges themselves.
The captain’s responsibility
•Of course, the CJI also cannot absolve himself of his responsibility for the present state of affairs. No doubt, he is the master of the roster, but that does not mean that he can act arbitrarily in exercising his powers. He has to exercise his powers reasonably, without giving scope for any justifiable criticism. He is also not expected to brush aside any reasonable suggestions in this regard from his colleagues. Even in the past, there might have been some instances where there was similar criticism of assignment of cases to preferred Benches. But such instances were few and far between and they were never discussed in public.
•The CJI is the first among equals and he is the captain who has to carry the whole team with him, while enjoying their goodwill and support. Let us hope that all the judges of the Supreme Court, including the CJI, will sort out their differences amicably and find a satisfactory solution to the problem. This will not only restore the diminishing image of the judiciary to some extent, but also put an end to the public debate on these issues.
📰 Tackling government litigation
The answer lies in finding solutions unique to each litigation-prone department
•It is trite to say that the government is the biggest litigant in India. No less than the Prime Minister and the Chief Justice of India have acknowledged this in the recent past, goading the other — the judiciary and the executive, respectively — to explore ways of addressing this issue. The solutions to the issue that have been proposed so far have failed to understand the underlying causes.
‘Government’ litigation
•According to the Ministry of Law and Justice, government departments are a party to around “46 percent” of court cases. This figure, albeit unverified, hides more than it reveals about the nature and extent of the problem of government litigation. For a start, it does not tell us what the term “government” means. To a layperson, everything from a local panchayat to the Prime Minister’s Office could be representative of the “government”. In addition, entities such as nationalised banks and universities, which most laypersons may not identify as “government’, are “State” for the purposes of Article 12 of the Constitution. Thus, any attempt at resolving the issue of “government litigation” must be based on the premise that the government in India functions in so many myriad forms that a one-size-fits-all approach to deal with the issue is impossible.
•A misconception regarding government litigation is that the government itself is a source of all cases involving the government. This appears to be the reason why existing policies attempt to address the issue of “government being a compulsive litigant” and do not consider cases where the government is a respondent. As a Vidhi Centre for Legal Policy report on the Supreme Court shows, only 7.4% of fresh cases filed before the court in 2014 were by the Central government. An ongoing study at Vidhi of writ jurisdiction of the Karnataka High Court seeks to shed light on this significant, yet ignored, aspect of government litigation.
•The writ jurisdiction vested in High Courts under Article 226 of the Constitution enables an ordinary citizen to access the highest court in her State to address grievances against any authority, including any government, for violation of any of her fundamental or other rights. As such, the number and nature of writ petitions filed before a High Court are indicative of the extent of friction between citizens and the government. Data for the year 2016 show that writ petitions constitute nearly 60% of all fresh cases filed before the Karnataka High Court. Further, a study of the respondent profile of writ petitions filed over five years (2012-16) shows that nearly 80% of them are filed against a combination of the State Government; parastatal agencies such as the Karnataka State Road Transport Corporation, universities, etc.; and local bodies such as the Bangalore Development Authority and the Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike. Most of these petitions filed against the State government are in relation to service, land revenue, land acquisition and education. Those against parastatal agencies such as KSRTC are in relation to service and labour-related matters, while those against local bodies are service, land acquisition and tax-related.
Possible solutions
•This analysis of petitions filed against the state at various levels of governance shows that a multi-pronged approach needs to be adopted to tackle the issue of “government litigation”, depending on the kind of litigation. For example, to reduce writ petitions filed under service and labour classifications, the state must put in place robust internal dispute resolution mechanisms within each department which inspire confidence in its workers as a means of addressing their grievances against the management.
•On the other hand, a study of land acquisition matters reveals that such petitions are mostly filed to challenge orders passed by quasi-judicial authorities on grounds of a violation of principles of natural justice or other basic principles of law. To reduce the incidence of such writ petitions, the state must either ensure that quasi-judicial authorities are judicially trained or create a separate class of judicial officers to discharge quasi-judicial functions.
•So far, the policies aimed at addressing the supply-side issues of government litigations are found to be lacking in data, research and analysis. A broadly worded policy such as the National Litigation Policy (2010) only provides a distant goalpost of transforming government into a “model litigant”. However, what is needed is an implementable action plan to ensure that citizens are not forced to file cases against the government and its agencies in the first place. This will require a relook at the functioning of litigation-prone departments and formulating solutions unique to each department.
📰 Wholesale inflation eases to 3-month low of 3.58%
India Inc demands rate cut; wants petrol, diesel under GST
•Wholesale price-based inflation (WPI) has cooled in December, 2017 to a three-month low of 3.58% thanks to the decline in prices of food items, according to data released on Monday by the Commerce and Industry Ministry.
•This prompted India Inc to demand lowering of interest rates. In November, the annual rate of inflation based on monthly WPI, was 3.93% (provisional), while in December 2016 it was 2.1%. Inflation in food articles eased to 4.72% in December 2017 from 6.06% in November 2017.
•“As inflation numbers are being driven largely on account of supply side factors, we urge the Reserve Bank of India to calibrate its monetary policy stance giving equal weightage to growth consideration. Lowering of repo rate in the upcoming monetary policy is critical to boost investments and build growth momentum at this juncture,” said Rashesh Shah, president, FICCI.
•He also sought measures in the Union Budget to strengthen the agriculture supply chain for effective management of food prices, as well as inclusion of petrol and diesel under the Goods and Services Tax regime to help lower the pressures of fuel inflation.
•Consumer price index -based inflation had surged to a 17-month high of 5.2% in December due to increased inflation in food, housing and personal care items. The RBI factors in CPI-based inflation while taking a call on key policy rates. It had maintained key interest rate (repo rate at 6%) in its December policy review. It had raised inflation forecast for the second half of the ongoing fiscal to 4.3-4.7% (up by 0.1 percentage point) (owing to global crude oil prices as well as implementation of the seventh Pay Commission suggestions). Meanwhile, WPI for October was revised upwards to 3.68% from the provisional estimate of 3.59%.
•“Upward pressure on price could ensue in case rabi production falls short especially for wheat and mustard and the nearly 3% decline in kharif crop output. In addition, the sustained rise in global commodity prices could further aggravate prices,” CARE Ratings said in a statement. “We expect wholesale inflation to be around 4% for the remainder of the fiscal,” the rating agency added.
📰 Aadhaar: Enabling a form of supersurveillance
The Aadhaar project falls short in limiting biometrics collection to voluntary choice and in guaranteeing data protection
•What really is Aadhaar all about? Is the machinery that supports it constitutionally sustainable? How does the creation of a central identity database affect the traditional relationship between the state and its citizens? What, in a democracy, ought to be the role of government? On Wednesday, January 17, a five-judge bench of the Supreme Court is scheduled to commence hearings on a slew of petitions that will bring these questions and more to the forefront of a constitutional battle for the ages. The verdict that the court ultimately pronounces will decisively impact the future of governance in the country. At stake is the continuing legitimacy of the social contract that the Constitution embodies.
From voluntary to coercion
•The Aadhaar project (although the christening of it came later) was put in motion through an executive notification issued in January 2009, which established the Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI). The UIDAI’s task was to conceive a scheme that purported to identify residents using biometric information — including, but not limited to iris scans and fingerprints — and to provide to people a “unique identity number”. This, the state told us, will enable it to ensure a proper distribution of benefits and subsidies, by plugging age-old leakages in delivering welfare services. What it didn’t tell us, though, was that it had barely, if at all, conducted anything resembling a neutral analysis of the costs and gains of the project before launching it.
•In any event, the UIDAI steamed ahead with enrolments, even as the government dithered in enacting legislation. As a result, a mountain of data was collected without any safeguards in place. Making things worse, a scheme that was supposedly voluntary was now proving to be anything but. Citizens were coerced into parting with private information, compelled by threats from the government. A failure to enrol, we were told, would close doors to a raft of state services. Slowly, as the list of these facilities began to expand, given that the project lacked any legislative sanction, the Supreme Court was driven to intervene. The court issued interim orders, on different occasions, clarifying that the programme had to be treated as voluntary, and that no person should be denied a service simply because he or she hadn’t enrolled themselves with the UIDAI.
•In March 2016, the Union government finally introduced in the Lok Sabha, in the place of an earlier Bill which had been stuck in the logjams of parliamentary committees, a new draft legislation titled the Aadhaar (Targeted Delivery of Financial & Other Subsidies, Benefits and Services) Bill, 2016. Remarkably, however, this proposed statute was categorised by the Speaker of the House as a money Bill, meaning that it did not require the Rajya Sabha’s affirmation for it to turn into binding law.
•Ultimately, as expected, the Bill came to be passed, and the Aadhaar Act came into force. This law not only retroactively legitimises the actions of the UIDAI before its enactment but also puts in place the structure that underpins the Aadhaar programme. The law itself terms enrolment with the UIDAI as voluntary, but, as we’ve since seen, the government has expanded, and continues to expand, the use of the number for a wide array of purposes. Now, before the Supreme Court, the Aadhaar Act and its various provisions stand challenged, together with the host of notifications issued by the government, which link Aadhaar to different services.
Heart of the matter
•To reduce the merits of the petitions to a few issues would, no doubt, be reductive. But, ultimately, in question are four core interests: the first concerns whether the state can at all compel a person to part with his or her biometric information without securing the person’s informed consent; the second involves questions over the surveillance apparatus that the Aadhaar Act creates; the third raises questions over the level of exclusion caused by the use of Aadhaar, for example, concerns over the extent to which the programme meets its purported objectives; and the fourth questions the degree of protection offered to the data that the UIDAI collects, stores and operates. On each of these, any sensible reading of the Aadhaar Act would show us that the machinery that it has put in place flagrantly infracts fundamental rights, granting, in the process, enormously invasive powers to the state.
•When a government creates a central database such as this, when it links that database with every conceivable human activity, it naturally allows itself access to the most intimate details of a person’s life. Effectively, what the Aadhaar programme tells us is this: our fingerprints don’t belong to us but to the state, that the government has an untrammelled authority to insist on expropriating our identity as a precondition for it to do its job. It ought to be clear that this vision, this basic hypothesis on which the Aadhaar Act operates, militates against the principles that lie at the foundation of any democracy. The essence of individual freedom, of the right to life that Article 21 of the Constitution guarantees, is that every person has a basic entitlement to bodily integrity, to decide for themselves how they want to lead their lives. But, how, we might wonder, can we truly be free, when the state is watching our every step?
Seamless police state
•Now, it would certainly be naive to contend that an Aadhaar-free India will also be free of surveillance. But that is not the argument that the petitioners are making. Their argument is somewhat more nuanced. It is that the Aadhaar Act, in centrally maintaining all this data, enables a form of super surveillance, permits the creation of a perfect police state, allowing the government to track every one of our activities in real-time, to trace, at any given point of time, a person’s physical location. Some might find this kind of surveillance exhilarating. But, in reality, it only emboldens the state to treat everyone one of us as criminals, to make a presumption of guilt at the grave cost of basic civil liberties.
•This mechanism for surveillance is further facilitated by the Aadhaar Act’s central design, which vests in the UIDAI a conflicting dual responsibility: to act both as the custodian of all the information that it collects and to act as a regulator of the Aadhaar database. This means that any breach made to the data that is centrally amassed, unless exposed in the manner in which The Tribunerecently did, will only be known to the UIDAI. It will then be for the UIDAI to decide how it wants to remedy such intrusions. As a result, when our Aadhaar data is leaked, we will be left with no recourse to an effective remedy.
Imperilling access to welfare
•Even more worryingly, the Aadhaar programme possesses the capacity to exclude individuals from welfare schemes, as opposed to aiding a more beneficial delivery of benefits. A number of studies conducted have already shown that biometric authentication comes with a series of fatal flaws. Given that Aadhaar is being seeded with public distribution schemes, the likelihood of people being denied basic welfare services, therefore, increases in manifold ways. The elderly and people involved in manual labour are but two groups of people whose fingerprints are difficult to record accurately, imperilling, thereby, their access to state services.
•For its part, in the Supreme Court, the government will no doubt argue that Aadhaar can bring about many benefits, that it has the capacity to do good. But any policy, howsoever poorly framed, will likely bring about certain gains, some of them even unintended. The question here is ultimately one of proportionality, one of justice. In the case of the Aadhaar Act, the government’s intentions are patently clear. The aim is to create a seamless police state, which will chill our freedom and place the state in a position of rampant power. Will the Supreme Court dare to stop this?
📰 Problem of plenty: on devising a sound agricultural policy
Agricultural policy should look to address the problem of severe price fluctuations
•There appears to be no end in sight to the cycle of boom and bust in the prices of agricultural goods. Over the last few weeks, across India the price of potatoes has fallen sharply after a year of bumper production. With the price of a kilogram of potato dropping as low as under a rupee in certain wholesale markets, many distressed farmers have left their produce to rot on the roads, and in cold storage facilities. Curiously, potato prices were many times higher just months ago amid scarce supply. Last year, the price of other produce like red chilli, tur dal and tomato witnessed a similar trend of steep falls compared to the previous season. The sharp swing in prices has been explained by the Cobweb phenomenon. Farmers tend to increase the production of certain crops in response to their high prices during the previous season, which in turn leads to a supply glut that causes prices to crash. The cycle repeats each passing year, with the lag between price and production causing a huge mismatch between supply and demand. The present fall in potato prices comes against the backdrop of a slowdown in the rural economy. According to advance GDP estimates released by the government last week, farm growth is expected to drop from 4.9% in 2016-17 to 2.1% in 2017-18.
•Given the humanitarian and political costs of agricultural distress, particularly in a year when many big States go to the polls, local governments could turn towards populism to satisfy their rural voter base. This could come in the form of fiscal measures such as farm loan waivers, a higher minimum support price for farm produce, or some combination of the two. The next Union budget may well be focussed on the rural economy through fiscal measures. Such relief measures that temporarily ease the pain on farmers, however, will fail to make a significant difference to their lives in the long run. Any permanent solution to the problem of agricultural distress will have to deal with the challenge of price fluctuations. The boom-and-bust cycle is the result of a broken supply chain that is over-regulated. In the absence of a robust market for buying and selling forward-looking contracts, farmers are left to fend for themselves against severe fluctuations. In addition, the domination of the wholesale market by cartels prevents farmers from receiving a fair price even when their produce is sold at much higher rates to consumers. The government must resolve to address these structural issues, and not limit itself to ad hoc policy measures in firefighting mode. There is a need to give farmers not just a better, but also more stable, return on their crops.
📰 A new weapon in the carbon fight
The ability of soils to sequester carbon as a win-win strategy must be recognised by policymakers
•It is not usual to think of soils in the context of climate change. Policy is usually focussed on reducing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from the electricity sector, transport and industry. There has, however, been a renewed interest in understanding how soils can serve as a sink for carbon dioxide since atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide have crossed 410 parts per million and oceans are already turning acidic. Besides, increasing soil carbon offers a range of co-benefits and this would buy us time before other technologies can help us transition to a zero-carbon lifestyle.
•Significant carbon pools on earth are found in the earth’s crust, oceans, atmosphere and land-based ecosystems. Soils contain roughly 2,344 Gt (1 gigatonne = 1 billion tonnes) of organic carbon, making this the largest terrestrial pool. Soil organic carbon (SOC) comes from plants, animals, microbes, leaves and wood, mostly found in the first metre or so. There are many conditions and processes that determine changes to SOC content including temperature, rainfall, vegetation, soil management and land-use change.
Many benefits
•Increasing SOC through various methods can improve soil health, agricultural yield, food security, water quality, and reduce the need for chemicals. Changing agricultural practices to make them more sustainable would not just address carbon mitigation but also improve other planetary boundaries in peril such as fresh water, biodiversity, land use and nitrogen use.
•Currently, the world is on a path to be about 3ºC warmer than pre-Industrial times even if there was follow through on all the commitments made at the Paris climate conference in 2015. The aim of the global community is to try and stay below 1.5ºC, which is a very tall order since current average temperatures are already about a degree higher.
•Approaches to increase SOC include reducing soil erosion, no-till-farming, use of cover crops, nutrient management, applying manure and sludge, water harvesting and conservation, and agroforestry practices. Rattan Lal from Ohio State University estimates that an increase of just 1 tonne of soil carbon pool of degraded cropland soils can increase crop yield by several kilograms per hectare. Moreover, carbon sequestration in soils has the potential to offset GHG emissions from fossil fuels by up to 15% annually. In contrast, it has been estimated that SOC in India has reduced from 30% to 60% in cultivated soils compared with soils that are not disturbed.
Soil and agriculture
•After the changes undertaken as part of the Green Revolution, crop yields increased for several decades, but there has also been a dramatic increase in the use of chemicals — pesticides, herbicides and fertilizers. Still, agricultural yields have begun to drop in many places for a variety of reasons primarily related to degraded soils. Industrial changes to agriculture have led to a range of adverse effects: loss of biodiversity, elimination of beneficial microbes and insects, reduction in yield, contamination of water bodies and soils, and increasing toxicity and deaths from chemical use in farm households.
•India has a large number of successful sustainable agricultural practices that are consistent with ecological principles. These include natural farming (or as the Japanese farmer Masanobu Fukuoka calls it, ‘do-nothing farming’), permaculture and organic farming. Personal and online reports indicate that the improvements to soil health and profits occur rapidly. But the knowledge and innovations of farmers who have successfully experimented with these methods must be considered in research and policy.
•The number of farmers in organic farming has been increasing steadily, but many are simply deploying regular agriculture with natural substitutes for chemicals. Up to a third of rainfed farmers simply do not have the means to add chemicals, and are organic by default. Many States have some sustainable farming, with Madhya Pradesh reportedly having the highest acreage.
Lessons for India
•Many of these practices have come into their own over several decades — through the efforts of farmers and sometimes with support from local groups — and the time is long past where these are regarded as outlandish alternative methods. Given that these techniques can contribute to relieving a range of challenges, State-level policy makers need to understand better the successes on the ground in India’s different agro-climatic zones
•They also need to identify what kinds of support are needed by farmers with small holdings to transition from existing practices. Not paying attention to the successes of our own farmers has partly contributed to the agrarian crisis the country now faces.
•India’s population will continue to increase through at least the middle of the century and we need to be able to grow more food, grown in less land and in more severe weather conditions. We ignore our own farmers’ successes at our own peril.
•The Parliamentary Standing Committee on Agriculture in its 2016 report in fact recommended “revision of the existing fertiliser subsidy policy and promotion of organic fertilizers”. The government has been promoting a Soil Health Card scheme to measure the health of the soils in different parts of the country and in each farm. There is little policy support for natural farming and the alternatives. The fertilizer lobby, extension services, and the many agricultural scientists — unschooled in agroforestry and ecological methods — would oppose changes but these practices that integrate good management of soil, water and land provide a host of benefits. The ability of soils to sequester carbon is a win-win strategy for farmers, people and for climate change and it is time we stopped ignoring these at the policy levels.
