📰 Ahead of ‘Khalistan rally’ in London, India announces Guru Nanak celebration
New Delhi move is seen as counter to the march in London.
•Hours ahead of the pro-Khalistan rally in London, External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj announced on Sunday that all Indian diplomatic missions would celebrate the 550th birth anniversary of the founder of Sikh faith Guru Nanak. The move is seen as a counter to the rally.
•Last month, India issued a demarche over the ‘Khalistani rally’, intended to drum up support for and awareness of a non-binding referendum on a Sikh homeland in 2020.
Right to gather
•The British government, however, said people had a right to gather and express their views, provided they did so within the law. The London rally is being organised by Sikhs for Justice, a U.S.-based group, though U.K. groups indicated they would participate too. The pro-Khalistan Sikh Federation U.K. said “some members” would be attending the event, while Dal Khalsa U.K. urged people to join the rally. The organisers received clearance from the London Mayor’s office during the weekend.
•“We will take the message of Guru Nanak to the world. His message of sharing the fruits of good deeds with all is the right teaching in this era when I, me, myself is the dominating idea. The Guru visited many places and so did Baba Farid. The message of One God taught by Guru Nanak is similar to the Indian teaching in the Shastras,” said Ms. Swaraj in her remarks delivered at the Pravasi Bharatiya Divas where she was the Chief Guest at a Sikh religious event organised by the Indian Council for Cultural Relations (ICCR).
•Indian diplomatic and cultural missions across the world will organise prayers and festivities to mark the 550th birth anniversary of Guru Nanak.
•The Minister did not refer to the London event in her speech but highlighted the inclusive elements of Sikhism. “We want to convey to the world that the Guru Granth Sahib is the best representative of the Indian understanding of multiple versions of truth. Guru Granth Sahib is the only holy book in the world which apart from the ten gurus of Sikh faith also contains messages (vaanis) of other learned saints and great souls (belonging to other faiths),” said Ms. Swaraj highlighting the inclusivist nature of the Sikh faith.
📰 Children living in jails worries SC
Panel to be formed to study their plight
•A committee headed by a retired judge of the Supreme Court will be formed to tackle the issue of children living in prisons merely because their mothers are convicts.
•A Bench of Justices Madan B. Lokur and Deepak Gupta has directed the government to form a panel headed by a former apex court judge, assisted by two or three Central government officers, to study the problems of mothers and children living inside prisons. Attorney-General K.K. Venugopal, for the Centre, agreed with the court’s view.
•The order came after Supreme Court’s amicus curiae and advocate Gaurav Agarwal submitted a report showing that there were 18 jails exclusively for women. Plus there are separate areas for women in other jails, but there is a huge lack of space for women inmates. He said these jails were not modelled to house women inmates, especially those with minor children staying with them.
•The committee would also look into what reforms could be introduced within the prison walls.
•The court said the Centre should issue a notification on the setting up of the committee, highlighting the importance of prison reforms and the fundamental right to life and dignity of the prisoners.
•The court ordered training manuals to be circulated to the Directors-General of Prisons and Secretaries of Prison Department in each State government/ Union Territory and also to three training institutes, that is, Institute of Corrections Administration, Chandigarh; Regional Institute of Correctional Administration, Kolkata; and Academy of Prison and Correctional Administration, Vellore.
•The court advised the Centre that criminals sentenced to imprisonment for six months or a year should be allocated social service duties rather than be sent to further choke the already overflowing prisons.
📰 Undoing a legacy of injustice
The Delhi High Court order striking down the Begging Act heeds the Constitution’s transformative nature
•In 1871, the colonial regime passed the notorious Criminal Tribes Act. This law was based upon the racist British belief that in India there were entire groups and communities that were criminal by birth, nature, and occupation. The Act unleashed a reign of terror, with its systems of surveillance, police reporting, the separation of families, detention camps, and forced labour. More then six decades after independent India repealed the Act, the “denotified tribes” continue to suffer from stigma and systemic disadvantage.
Instance of dehumanisation
•The Act was one strand of a web of colonial laws that dehumanised communities and ways of life. The colonial administrators were particularly concerned about nomadic and itinerant communities, which by virtue of their movements and lifestyle were difficult to track, surveil, control, and tax. Through laws such as the Criminal Tribes Act, and other legal weapons such as vagrancy laws, the regime attempted to destroy these patterns of life, by using criminal laws to coerce communities into settlements and subjecting them to forced labour.
•Independence brought with it many changes, but also much continuity. Despite the birth of a Constitution that promised liberty, equality, fraternity, and dignity to all, independent India’s rulers continued to replicate colonial logic in framing laws for the new republic. They continued to treat individuals as subjects to be controlled and administered, rather than rights-bearing citizens. One of the most glaring examples of this is the Bombay Prevention of Begging Act. The Begging Act was passed in 1959 by the State of Bombay, and has continued to exist in as many as 20 States and two Union Territories. But last week, in a remarkable, landmark and long overdue judgment, the Delhi High Court struck it down as inconsistent with the Constitution.
The minutiae
•What does the Begging Act do? It criminalises begging. It gives the police the power to arrest individuals without a warrant. It gives magistrates the power to commit them to a “certified institution” (read: a detention centre) for up to three years on the commission of the first “offence”, and up to 10 years upon the second “offence”. Before that, it strips them of their privacy and dignity by compelling them to allow themselves to be fingerprinted. The Act also authorises the detention of people “dependant” upon the “beggar” (read: family), and the separation of children over the age of five. Certified institutions have absolute power over detainees, including the power of punishment, and the power to exact “manual work”. Disobeying the rules of the institution can land an individual in jail.
•From its first word to the last, the Begging Act reflects a vicious logic. First, there is the definition of “begging”. The Act defines it to include “soliciting or receiving alms, in a public place whether or not under any pretence such as singing, dancing, fortune telling, performing or offering any article for sale” and “having no visible means of subsistence and wandering about or remaining in any public place in such condition or manner, as makes it likely that the person doing so exist soliciting or receiving alms.”
•Not only do these vague definitions give unchecked power to the police to harass citizens but they also reveal the prejudices underlying the law. The pointed reference to “singing, dancing, fortune telling, performing or offering any article for sale” makes it clear that the purpose of the Act is not simply to criminalise the act of begging (as commonly understood), but to target groups and communities whose itinerant patterns of life do not fit within mainstream stereotypes of the sedentary, law-abiding citizen with a settled job. And the reference to “no visible means of subsistence and wandering about” punishes people for the crime of looking poor — but it also reflects the lawmakers’ desire to erase from public spaces people who look or act differently, and whose presence is perceived to be a bother and a nuisance. The Begging Act encodes into law the vicious prejudice that recently saw a prominent institution putting up spikes outside its Mumbai branch, to deter rough sleeping (they were removed after public outrage).
•Once individuals fall within its clutches, the Begging Act effectively renders them invisible, by confining them to “certified institutions” after a truncated, summary judicial procedure. Like the poorhouses of 19th century Europe, it is based on a philosophy of first criminalising poverty, and then making it invisible by physically removing “offenders” from public spaces. Effectively, it places a cordon sanitaire around the poor and the “undesirable”, keeping them from accessing spaces reserved for the use of “respectable” citizens. For these people, the constitutional guarantees of pluralism and inclusiveness do not exist.
•The authorities have not hesitated to use the Begging Act as a weapon. Just before the 2010 Commonwealth Games, the Delhi government was engaged in combing operations to take beggars off the street, lest their presence embarrass the nation in the eyes of foreigners. Such operations are also a regular part of preparing for national events, such as Independence Day and Republic Day.
The judicial view
•In its judgment delivered last week ( Harsh Mander v. Union of India and Karnika Sawhney v. Union of India ), a Bench of the Delhi High Court presided over by the Chief Justice, held that the Begging Act violated Article 14 (equality before law) and Article 21 (right to life and personal liberty) of the Constitution. In oral argument, the government conceded that it did not intend to criminalise “involuntary” begging. The High Court noted, however, that the definition of begging under the Act made no such distinction, and was therefore entirely arbitrary. More importantly, it also held that under Article 21 of the Constitution, it was the state’s responsibility to provide the basic necessities for survival — food, clothing, shelter — to all its citizens. Poverty was the result of the state’s inability — or unwillingness — to discharge these obligations. Therefore, the state could not turn around and criminalise the most visible and public manifestation of its own failures — and indeed, penalise people who were doing nothing more than communicating the reality of their situation to the public.
•The Delhi High Court’s judgment marks a crucial step forward in dismantling one of the most vicious and enduring legacies of colonialism. It is as significant and important as a judgment delivered by the same court more than nine years ago, when it decriminalised homosexuality ( Naz Foundation v. NCT of Delhi ). It is perhaps fitting that this judgment comes just a few days before the Supreme Court is likely to vindicate Naz Foundation after a 10-year legal battle. Both Naz Found ation and Harsh Mander recognise that our Constitution is a transformative Constitution, which seeks to undo legacies of injustice and lift up all individuals and communities to the plane of equal citizenship.
•However, it remains only one step forward. Hopefully, other High Courts will follow suit and the constitutionality of vagrancy laws as well as other provisions in the Indian Penal Code that criminalise status will also be called into question. Nonetheless, it is important to remember one thing: a court can strike down an unconstitutional law, but it cannot reform society. Poverty — as the Chief Justice recognised in her judgment — is a systemic and structural problem. The Delhi High Court has done its job in striking down a vicious law that criminalised poverty. But it is the task of the Legislative Assembly and the government to replace the punitive structure of the (now defunct) Begging Act with a new set of measures that genuinely focusses on the rehabilitation and integration of the most vulnerable and marginalised members of our society.
📰 The inexorable wheels of justice
India’s legal history is replete with interesting cases of religious faith versus the law
•The recent hearings in the Supreme Court relating to the Sabarimala case have turned the spotlight on the status of religious faith in a system governed by the rule of law and the Constitution. Any attention bestowed on such discussions by a person of faith and belief appears to leave the observer with an uneasy feeling that the Constitution is the prime suspect in these proceedings. It leaves him with the uncomfortable thought that from the time of the advent of the Constitution, no religious practice has been safe in a system of Constitution-controlled governance. Nothing could be farther from the truth. The clash between religious faith and the law is not of recent origin and it would be unfair to lay the blame at the doorstep of the Constitution. On the other contrary, it is an inevitable consequence of human evolution.
•For centuries, religious faith and the principles it enunciated were the “law” that regulated society. But in a democracy with the Constitution as a guiding force, it is natural that the new order would challenge the old, and the litigative battles that we see in court today are the struggles between that old order and the new in the path of human evolution.
•This is, however, not to say that the struggle between the law and religious faith did not exist before the Constitution came into existence. There were people who asserted the supremacy of the law over religious belief even in the pre-Constitution days. One such example was the “Tirupathi Mahant case” in the Madras High Court.
The Tirupathi case
•Its facts are as follows. The East India Company, till the middle of the 19th century, oversaw the management and administration of the properties of the deity, Venkateswara or Srinivasa (or Balaji). After the Madras Regulation of 1817 was passed, the temple came under the Board of Revenue which supervised it through the District Collector. However, a movement in England (around 1840) disapproved a Christian company (the East India Company) administering Hindu and Muslim religious institutions. Consequently, the administrative reform management of the temple was handed over to a mahant who, as the head of that mutt, had his headquarters in Tirupathi. He was also commonly referred to as the Mahant of Tirupathi.
•When a flagstaff for the temple was erected, devotees donated large sums of money to acquire gold coins. These were to be placed in a vessel which was then buried at the base of the flagstaff. But soon a charge of criminal breach of trust and misappropriation was made against the mahant, with the allegation that the coins had been substituted with copper coins.
•Such a charge could have been proved or disapproved only by digging up the base of the flagstaff. But religious faith proved to be an obstacle. The mahant pleaded that the flagstaff could not be dug up after it had been sanctified and installed and such a course would prove calamitous to the sentiments of worshippers.
•Interestingly, the high priest, much against public sentiment, persevered and filed an application to have the vessel produced. The Magistrate ordered the application as prayed for. Against the order of the Magistrate, a revision petition was filed before the Madras High Court which in turn led to one of the most sensational cases in its history.
•A legal battle ensued between two of the greatest legal luminaries. Subramania Iyer (who went on to become a judge of the Madras High Court) appeared for the high priest, while Eardley Norton, a formidable barrister, appeared for the mahant. The case was heard by the Bench of Chief Justice Arthur Collins and Justice Muthusami Iyer.
Upholding justice
•P.S. Sivasamy Iyer, an advocate general and another High Court luminary, had a ringside view of the proceedings. In his memoirs he recalled: “He (Norton) invoked the religious sanctity of flagstaff and he appealed to the court to avoid a sacrilege, which could ring throughout the orthodox world, and he advanced every possible argument against digging up the site of the flagstaff. Norton went on for three hours. Sir Subramania Iyer’s turn then came. He spoke for less than an hour, but the effect was electric. All of Norton’s arguments were smashed completely within the span of less than half an hour. He wound up his magnificent speech, a speech of real eloquence, with that well-known saying,Fiat justitia ruat caelum which means as you know, ‘Let justice be done even though the heavens fall’. It was one of the best speeches I have ever heard from him, compact, condensed, and full of vigour and eloquence, just like him.”
•The Bench upheld the Magistrate’s order, (with the judgment delivered by Justice Muthuswami Iyer). It was a revelation. The vessel had no gold, just base metals.
•Therefore, even before the adoption of the Constitution, our legal history is replete with interesting cases of religious faith versus the law. If for any reason the Sabarimala case were to induce heartburn among its ardent devotees, whatever be their sentiments, they must bear in mind that the Constitution cannot be blamed. For in the ultimate analysis, as Subramania Iyer appropriately observed, “ Fiat justitia ruat caelum .
📰 Govt. extends loan waiver scheme to individual farmers
Earlier, a farmer family was seen as a single unit, and waiver was on cumulative debt
•Mumbai: Still struggling to meet commitments made to the agricultural sector under the farm loan waiver scheme, the Maharashtra government has now decided to waive outstanding loans of individual eligible farmers. Till now, the State government has spent ₹14,000 crore on the scheme.
•On Friday, the State government issued a Government Resolution (GR) on loan waivers to eligible farmers. The decision had been announced by the government the recently-concluded monsoon session of the State Legislature in Nagpur.
•Prior to changing its definition of an eligible farmer, the government had considered a farmer family as a single unit and up to ₹1.50 lakh of agricultural debt was waived. Now, each individual with an outstanding agricultural loan will be covered in the scheme, and up to ₹1.5 lakh will be waived by the government. “Each individual’s loan amount up to ₹1.50 lakh will be waived. The necessary instructions have been given to banks to prepare the list of potential beneficiaries,” an official from the State Cooperation Department said.
•Earlier, under the scheme, if a farmer had an outstanding loan amount of more than ₹1.5 lakh, the difference will have to be paid to the bank before he or she can avail of the State government waiver. The revised rule also states that farmers who have paid some money to the bank as per the earlier version of the scheme will be reimbursed if the cumulative outstanding loan amount is less than ₹1.5 lakh.
•The GR states: “For instance, as per earlier loan waiver scheme, if a family was having cumulative outstanding loan amount of ₹2 lakh, and to avail the benefits, ₹50,000 is already paid by the family, so the State would bear the burden of ₹1.5 lakh; as per revised norms, the ₹50,000 will have to be returned to the family because everyone in the family is entitled to loan waivers.”
•In March this year, the government said it has paid for bad farm loans worth ₹13,500 crore to banks, which benefited 35.32 lakh farmers. The government plans to cover at least 77 lakh farmers under the scheme.
📰 Instant messaging, first line of defence against moving herds
WhatsApp group launched by Forest Department staff goes a long way in reducing human deaths
•Like many of us, Deputy Range Forest Officer K.M. Devaiah scans his WhatsApp messages every morning. And, they trigger him into instant action. Far from being ‘good morning’ messages, these are SOS from estate workers and owners in Ammathi range of Virajpet forest division in Kodagu district seeking his help to clear a wild herd of elephants from their terrain.
•A routine act initiated among the Forest Department staff at the beat level, has become the first line of defence for people facing the brunt of conflict with elephants in the coffee plantations of Kodagu.
•A WhatsApp group launched by Mr. Devaiah in 2016, with eight guards as members of the group, sharing information on elephant herds, has expanded and is now christened ‘Rapid Response Team’.
•It has now become the most popular interface between the people and the department in tracking the movement of elephants in the estates around Ammathi.
•“Ever since the WhatsApp group was launched, we have been on our toes following the herds wherever they are. Our very presence is an indication to the local community that the herds are not far off and they become more alert and cautious,” said Mr. Devaiah.
•With almost half a dozen alerts received daily, Mr. Devaiah and his team map the areas of elephant presence and this information is passed on to all stakeholders, who take precautionary measures to stay safe.
•A senior forest official said it is a small initiative that has made a big difference at the ground level by minimising human deaths. Between 2011 and 2016 there were about 8 to 10 human deaths reported every year. But in 2017, the number of human deaths was down to one or two and there have been none so far in 2018, the official added.
•However, the authorities admit that in the perception of the public, the larger issue — of the presence of elephants in plantations and estates and threat posed by them — remain, and this is only a temporary reprieve.
•But given the potential to reduce loss of life, the model is now being replicated across the district.
📰 ISRO set to launch its TV channel
Space agency to promote scientific temper in country
•The Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) will have an year-long Vikram Sarabhai centenary celebration starting in August 2019 to honour the visionary scientist and its legendary founding father.
•In a few months’ time, it plans to roll out a dedicated ISRO TV channel showcasing space applications, developments and science issues, targeting young viewers and people in remote areas in their language.
Series of events
•Sarabhai, the architect of the Indian space programme, the first ISRO chief and renowned cosmic ray scientist, was born on August 12, 1919.
•ISRO’s tributes to Sarabhai start with naming the first Indian moon landing spacecraft of the Chandrayaan-2 mission ‘Vikram’. The mission is planned for early 2019. A chair each at Sarabhai's two alma maters, Cambridge University and Gujarat University, as also at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), would be set up, apart from giving awards, scholarships and fellowships in the country and abroad, ISRO Chairman K. Sivan said at a news conference on Sunday, the 99th birthday of the legend.
•Sarabhai was only 28 when he sowed the seeds of a space agency around the late 1940s and 1950s. “We have planned an year-long centenary of the visionary architect of the space programme and our first Chairman, Dr. Sarabhai, during 2019-20. A series of activities will be organised nationally and internationally to commemorate the great international scientist,” Dr. Sivan said.
•The events are being taken up with an initial outlay of ₹ 50 crore.
•Earlier, former Chairman of ISRO K. Kasturirangan unveiled a new bust of Sarabhai at the remodelled atrium of ISRO headquarters, Antariksh Bhavan.
•Dr. Sivan said 100 lectures by science luminaries would be held across the country and in association with the International Astronautical Federation, the global space networking body. Space clubs, knowledge centres and talk shows are also among the plans.
Public satellite launches
•As it strengthens its public outreach, ISRO will shortly start allowing the public to watch satellite launches from its Sriharikota launch centre. “We are opening our space port to visitors just as NASA (the U.S.’ National Aeronautical and Space Administration) does,” Dr. Sivan said.
📰 BCCI revamp: On Lodha panel recommendations
The Supreme Court has been pragmatic in tweaking the Lodha norms on running cricket
•Two years after accepting the Justice R.M. Lodha Committee’s recommendations, the Supreme Court has now extended some concessionsto those aggrieved by the rigorous rules, which aimed to revamp cricket administration in the country. The reasoning given in the order of a three-judge Bench headed by Chief Justice Dipak Misra suggests that it is a pragmatic modification rather than a significant climbdown. Justice Lodha, a former Chief Justice of India, however, feels that the court has now knocked out the foundation of his recommendations. The most significant change concerns the cooling-off period prescribed for office-bearers before they are allowed to contest for a subsequent term. Against the panel’s view that every office-bearer of the Board of Control for Cricket in India, in the national board or in a State association, should have a three-year break after a three-year term, the court has now allowed two three-year terms — that is, a tenure of six years — before the mandatory break kicks in. The logic behind a cooling-off period is that office-bearers should not be given lengthy tenures that enable them to establish personal fiefdoms. The argument against it is that the experience and knowledge that an office-bearer gains over three years should not be frittered away, and a second term could help consolidate such learnings. The Bench has accepted the logic behind this and chosen to defer the cooling-off period until she completes two terms. Given that there is a nine-year aggregate limit as well as an age limit of 70 for any office-bearer, this change may not amount to any significant dilution of the core principle that there should be no perpetuation of power centres.
•The Lodha panel had also favoured the ‘one State, one vote’ norm. This meant that an association representing a State alone should be recognised as a voting member of the BCCI, while associations representing a region within a State or entities that do not represent a territory should not have the same vote or status. This norm has been overruled. Gujarat and Maharashtra will have three votes each, as the associations of Baroda and Saurashtra in Gujarat, and Mumbai and Vidarbha in Maharashtra will have separate votes. In this, too, the court has accepted the reasoning that associations that had contributed significantly to Indian cricket need not be stripped of their full membership. It is now up to the administrators of the future to dispel Justice Lodha’s apprehensions that this may lead to manipulation of votes. Whether the changes adopted by the court while finalising a new constitution for the BCCI differ in significant ways from what was proposed by the Lodha committee will be a matter of debate. However, judicial intervention has been immensely helpful in making cricket administration more efficient and professional, and addressing the credibility deficit of recent times.
📰 Exclusionary state
The plight of inter-State migrants is not very different from that of refugees who lack citizenship rights
•In India, you do not have to be excluded from the National Register of Citizens to experience a sense of loss of territory, identity, belongingness and livelihood. You could just as easily feel that way if you were a rural-to-urban migrant worker facing dislocation and “uprootedness” — a state of constant threat and anxiety with no sense of control over your spatial and temporal existence. This is akin to the experience of refugees who lack citizenship rights.
•A large chunk of migrant labourers’ shelter and work are deemed “illegal” within Indian cities. The 2011 Census pegs the total number of internal migrants in the country, including those who have moved within and across States, at a staggering 139 million.
•The state’s role is not as dormant as it appears, when it comes to undocumented workers. It is proactive in allowing the absorption of cheap labour into cities, to serve the bulging demand of the urban middle class. Sometimes these labourers are exploited, required to work below subsistence levels, and reside in subhuman conditions, which is then perceived as encroachment.
•When the onus of “giving back” is on the state — of providing migrant workers with proper documents, secure jobs, housing and provisioning of other public utilities — the state often consciously and systematically derecognises them, and conveniently brackets them as “illegal”. Illegality, in turn, results in labels such as “criminals” that must be dealt with by the state again, to protect its “full” citizens, and to exclude the migrants further from the fruits of this “full” citizenship.
•Consider the Smart Cities Mission of 2015 that proposed investment allocations of Rs. 2,039 billion to convert 99 Indian cities into smart cities. A mere 8% of the intended projects have been completed so far in the past three years, according to the recent report released by Housing and Land Rights Network. Interestingly, many smart city proposals identify slums as a “threat” to the city in their “SWOT” (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, Threats) analysis while totally failing to account for migrant labour in the schemes. The report documents forced evictions and shelter demolitions in 32 out of the 99 proposed smart cities so far. Politically, inter-State migrants do not matter at all anyway because their votes do not count in the destination city.
•The national obsession with bringing order to international boundaries could also be applied within nation states, cities and neighbourhoods. The state’s role in ensuring equality, basic dignity, livelihood and providing minimum social security to its people must be upheld before all other priorities.
📰 Studies point to rising drug abuse among women in Punjab
Social stigma and lack of exclusive facilities deter them from seeking help, say doctors.
•The problem of drug abuse in Punjab over the years has largely been focused on males even as experts and studies point out that the number of women addicted to drugs is rising “alarmingly” in the State.
•Social stigma, state of denial and lack of exclusive facilities are the key reasons why women are not seeking help, experts have pointed out.
•The State government has been providing various treatment options for the youth, primarily focused on males. Punjab has 31 government de-addiction centres but there’s only one centre exclusively for women — in Kapurthala — that was set up in 2017.
•“On the basis of clinical experience, I can safely say that the problem of drug abuse among women is increasing in Punjab. The national survey on drug abuse happened around 15 years back, where there was no mention of females, but now their numbers are figuring in surveys, which itself is indicative of the rising problem of drug abuse,” Dr. Subodh B.N. from the department of Psychiatry in the Postgraduate Institute of Medical Education and Research (PGIMER), Chandigarh told The Hindu.
‘20 cases every year’
•“While 15 years back, we used to hardly see any drug- related cases of females, of late we are treating 15-20 women patients per annum. Moreover, amid fear of stigma most women do not come forward for treatment, which means the actual numbers are likely to be higher. These rising numbers is indeed worrying. An urgent attention is required to address the problem,” said Dr. Subodh.
•The recent study titled ‘Epidemiology of Substance Use and Dependence in the State of Punjab’, by the faculty of PGIMER, published in March 2018 in an indexed international journal, says that in Punjab almost 4.1 million people have been found to be using one substance or the other (licit or illicit) at least once in their lifetime. Among the lifetime users, 4 million were men and around 0.1 million were women. Number of people dependent on any substance in their lifetime was 3.2 million, with 3.1 million men and 0.1 million women.
•Licit substances consist of alcohol and tobacco, and illicit substances are opioids, cannabinoids, inhalants, stimulants, and sedatives. In terms of projected numbers, there were about 4.1 million lifetime users of licit substances and for illicit substances, the corresponding figure was 0.5 million.
•Opioids (heroin, smack, crude opium, poppy husk etc) were by far the most commonly used illicit drugs in the State. As per the study, 2,02,817 males and 10,658 females were found to be ‘lifetime dependent’ on opioids as per ICD-10 criteria. Interestingly, while 1,56,942 males were found to be ‘currently dependent’ on opioids (as per ICD-10 criteria) the figure of females was 10,658, which the experts believe is “alarming” and needs to be addressed urgently.
•Apart from the PGIMER study, the Punjab Opioid Dependence Survey (PODS), 2014-15, which exclusively focussed on opioid dependence, found 1% of females to be opioid dependants. The data was collected from a total of 3,620 opioid-dependent individuals across 10 districts.
•Based on analysis of the data, and after projecting these figures to the total population of the State, the size of opioid-dependent population in Punjab was estimated at 2,32,856.
•“The figures of this study seem to be the micro-tip of an iceberg, as these were cases that came at least once to the treatment facility. So we can very well imagine that there must be a large number which never ever sought any help,” Dr. Sandeep Bhola, associated with Outpatient Opioid Assisted Treatment in Kapurthala, told The Hindu. “The two main reasons for this seem to be social stigma and lack of exclusive facilities for females,” says Dr. Bhola.
Only one centre
•He adds that at the government’s sole de-addiction centre for women in Kapurthala, as many as 15 women have undergone treatment since July 2017. “Two women are currently under treatment. If more such centres are opened, it will help address this rising problem,” says Dr. Bhola.
•The Navjivan rehabilitation centre at Daulatpur in Patiala, which is privately run, has been witnessing an increase in queries on treatment of female drug addicts even though the centre caters only to males.
•Rohit Puri, who is in charge of the centre, says: “We suggest they go to Delhi or Amritsar where there are private centres, exclusively for women, which can offer them privacy.”
•Mr. Puri says that the female patients come from varied sections of society — rich, poor, educated and uneducated. “Only last month a woman aged around 35 had come to our centre for consultation. She was addicted to opioid substances and belonged to a conservative family. Females from liberal family backgrounds also get in touch with us for treatment,” he adds.
•Another study on Punjab, conducted by The Institute for Development and Communication (2001), which covered eight districts of Punjab namely Patiala, Jalandhar, Ludhiana, Amritsar, Gurdaspur, Ferozpur, Muktsar and Hoshiarpur, had revealed that consumption of poppy husk (bhukki), tablets and capsules were most popular amongst women.
📰 Wars of the currency kind
Nations letting currency weaken can spur instability
•Recently, RBI Governor Urjit Patel warned that the global trade war could escalate into a currency war. Trade wars erupt when countries impose tit-for-tat tariffs on imported goods, ostensibly to protect domestic manufacturers.
What is a currency war?
•Currency wars are triggered when nations either allow their currencies to weaken appreciably or devalue them to gain a competitive advantage over trade rivals.
•If other countries react by devaluing their respective currencies to retain competitiveness, this could lead to instability in markets.
What is devaluation?
•Devaluation is a policy tool to reduce the value of a currency, relative to other currencies, in a fixed exchange rate. It is used to set the relative prices of domestic and international goods and services at a new footing. Devaluation is different from depreciation, which is a decrease in the currency’s value due to market forces of demand and supply when the exchange rate of the currency is floating.
Does devaluation help?
•Governments may resort to devaluation for any one of three major reasons: To boost exports. The lowered value of the domestic currency will make it less expensive for foreign buyers (holding the currency whose value has become relatively stronger) to obtain the local currency to buy locally produced goods or services.
•In principle, more goods and services would be sold abroad, helping domestic businesses reliant on export markets such as software services companies, pharma firms and seafood exporters.
•To shrink a trade deficit — a devaluation while making exports more competitive also makes imports more expensive and hence less affordable. This helps reduce the volume of non-essential imports thus helping to narrow the trade gap. To reduce the debt servicing burden — nations with significant sovereign debt sold domestically may find it advantageous to let the currency weaken as it helps lower the notional cost of debt servicing.
Was the rupee ever devalued?
•In June 1966, hit by drought after two major wars (with China and Pakistan), India devalued the rupee by 36.5%. Again, in July 1991, a Balance of Payments crisis exacerbated by the sharp spike in oil prices in the wake of the Gulf War spurred India to devalue the rupee in “a two-step downward adjustment of 18-19%.”
