📰 A question of writ
The Sabarimala and Asia Bibi cases put the spotlight on how institutions adhere to constitutional principles
•On the streets of India and Pakistan, a frightening message is being sent out: that courts must not rush in where politicians fear to tread. In matters of faith, courts must simply sit on their hands and pray for divine intervention to resolve the petition before them. The public and political responses to Supreme Court judgments in two instances — Sabarimala in India and the Asia Bibi case in Pakistan — bear striking similarities. What is different, however, is the ability of the two states to enforce their writ.
•Sabarimala is considered to be one of the holiest temples in Hinduism, with one of the largest annual pilgrimages in the world. The faithful believe that the deity’s powers derive from his asceticism, and in particular from his being celibate. Women between the ages of 10 and 50 are barred from participating in the rituals.
•The exclusion was given legal sanction by Rule 3(b) of the Kerala Hindu Places of Public Worship (Authorisation of Entry) Rules, 1965. The validity of the rule and other provisions restricting the entry of women was decided by the Supreme Court last month. The Court, by a majority of 4:1, held that the exclusion of women between these ages was violative of the Constitution.
The Sabarimala judgment
•Then Chief Justice of India Dipak Misra and Justice A.M. Khanwilkar held that the practice of excluding women did not constitute an “essential religious practice”. Crucially, the judges also relied on Section 3 of the Act mentioned above which stipulates that places of public worship must be open to all sections and classes of Hindus, notwithstanding any custom or usage to the contrary. It was held that Rule 3(b) prohibiting the entry of women was directly contrary to this. A concurring judge, Justice R.F. Nariman, further held that the right of women (in the age bracket in question) to enter Sabarimala was guaranteed under Article 25(1). This provision states that all persons are “equally entitled” to practise religion. According to him, Rule 3 prohibiting the entry of women, was violative of Article 15(1) of the Constitution.
•Justice D.Y. Chandrachud, also concurring, emphasised the transformative nature of the Constitution which was designed to bring about a quantum change in the structure of governance. More crucially, it was a founding document, designed to “transform Indian society by remedying centuries of discrimination against Dalits, women and the marginalised”. ‘Morality’ used in Articles 25 and 26, the judge held, referred to constitutional morality which includes the values of justice, liberty, equality and fraternity.
•He also held that barring menstruating women from entering the shrine is violative of Article 17 (the constitutional provision prohibiting untouchability). The judge held that the concept of untouchability is grounded in the ideas of ‘purity and pollution’. These same notions form the basis for excluding the entry of menstruating women into religious shrines.
•The sole woman judge, Justice Indu Malhotra, who dissented, reasoned, “Issues of deep religious sentiments should not be ordinarily be interfered by the court. The Sabarimala shrine and the deity is protected by Article 25 of the Constitution of India and the religious practices cannot be solely tested on the basis of Article 14... Notions of rationality cannot be invoked in matters of religion... What constitutes essential religious practice is for the religious community to decide, not for the court. India is a diverse country. Constitutional morality would allow all to practise their beliefs. The court should not interfere unless if there is any aggrieved person from that section or religion.”
•While the Bharatiya Janata Party has seen the judgment as an attack on the Hindu religion, the Congress too has not lagged behind. Even an “instinctive liberal” such as Shashi Tharoor has said, “abstract notions of constitutional principle also have to pass the test of societal acceptance — all the more so when they are applied to matters of faith... In religious matters, beliefs must prevail; in a pluralistic democracy, legal principles and cultural autonomy must both be respected…”
Asia Bibi case
•In 1929, the funeral of a killer, Ilmuddin, took place in Lahore, executed for the murder of Rampal, a publisher, who had published an allegedly unsavoury reference to the life of Prophet Muhammad. Ilmuddin had been buried without funeral prayers as the authorities anticipated further trouble. But some eminent personalities, who included M.D. Taseer, assured the British authorities that there would be no trouble if there was a proper burial with a procession and Islamic prayers. The British relented and at the public mourning, the funeral prayer had to be read thrice before the surging crowds. The upshot of these events was that Section 295A was introduced into the Indian Penal Code to punish a deliberate insult to religious feelings.
•Years later, in Zia-ul-Haq’s Pakistan, Sections 295B and 295C were added to the Pakistan Penal Code which criminalised blasphemy against Islam and even made it punishable with death. In 2009, Asia Bibi, a Christian woman, was accused of blasphemy by her neighbours and jailed pending trial. She was sentenced to death in 2010 by a trial court.
•Her case became a cause célèbre and Salman Taseer, the Governor of Pakistan’s Punjab province, visited her in prison to express support. This act by Taseer, who was the son of M.D. Taseer who had negotiated Ilmuddin’s burial, did not go down well. So enraged was his bodyguard Mumtaz Qadri, that he assassinated Taseer in 2011. When Qadri was produced in court for trial, he was showered with rose petals by lawyers. He was tried and hanged in 2016, and his funeral attracted a crowd that rivalled the one at Ilmuddin’s.
•Last month, the Supreme Court of Pakistan allowed Asia Bibi’s appeal and declared her innocent of the charges. She has now been released and expected to be granted asylum in Europe. Her lawyer has fled Pakistan and the judges now fear for their lives. Pakistan faced the threat of mob violence led by the radical Tehreek-e-Labbaik Pakistan party. Despite Prime Minister Imran Khan’s initial bluster, an agreement has been signed with mob leaders to end the violence.
•The Chief Justice of Pakistan, Saqib Nisar, has reportedly defended himself by saying, “No one should have the doubt that the Supreme Court judges are not lovers of Prophet Muhammad... How can we punish someone in the absence of evidence?”
The thread
•It is easy to dismiss the Sabarimala and Asia Bibi cases as being unconnected and belonging to different jurisdictions and contexts. But both belong to the same region and trajectory of history. India was built on a secular foundation while Pakistan was built on a majoritarian Muslim agenda. However, both countries profess at least lip service to the rule of law. Years of majoritarianism have brought Pakistan to the point where its institutions have had to defend themselves before doing justice to minorities. India is at a stage, where its majority is seeking to bring its institutions to acquiesce in majoritarian instincts. A majority whose forebears had committed themselves to a magnificent constitutional compact now has elements who seek to regress from those values.
•The question is whether the people and the institutions succumb to pressure or adhere to principle. Each individual, regardless of birth ascribed identity, is a minority of one entitled to an individual guarantee of rights protected by the Constitution. It is in the adherence to individual rights that the greater public good rests. Those who sacrifice a little man or woman’s liberty for the security of the many will find neither liberty, nor security.
•Let us keep this in mind, as the Supreme Court agrees to hear in open court a review petition against its Sabarima judgment.
📰 GSAT-29 has a perfect launch
Heaviest satellite to be carried on indigenous rocket
•Amid concerns over Cyclone Gaja spoiling the launch of the country’s heaviest satellite to be carried on board an indigenous rocket from Indian soil, the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) pulled off the feat to perfection on Wednesday.
•The team went ahead with the launch of the GSAT-29 on board its second developmental flight GSLV-MkIII D2 from the Satish Dhawan Space Centre at Sriharikota to clear blue skies as plumes of smoke from the rocket left a trail in the horizon after lift-off from the second launch pad at 5.08 p.m.
Placed in orbit
•The satellite was placed in a geo-synchronous transfer orbit 17 minutes after launch.
•“The first operational mission of this vehicle (GSLV-MkIII) is going to be none other than the Chandrayaan-II mission in January next year. This vehicle is going to carry a human to space three years from now. Kudos to this excellent launcher of India,” ISRO Chairman K. Sivan said.
•The communication satellite, weighing 3,423 kg, “is a multiband, multi-beam communication satellite, intended to serve as test bed for new and critical technologies,” according to ISRO.
•The Ku-band and Ka-band payloads are expected to cater to communication requirements for people in remote areas in the country, especially Jammu and Kashmir, and the North-East.
•The satellite will be placed in a geo-stationary orbit at its intended location after three orbit raising manoeuvres over the next few days.
•While Prime Minister Narendra Modi had envisioned that an “Indian son or daughter” will undertake a manned space mission by 2022 while delivering his Independence Day address this year, Mr. Sivan said ISRO had set a target of achieving this feat by December 2021.
•He said ISRO planned to have two unmanned missions — one in December 2020 — before attempting to put a human in space.
📰 Setting a proper diet plan
To tackle malnutrition, food prices must be regulated and the PDS strengthened in both developed and poor States
•Despite being one of the fastest growing economies in the world, India has been ranked at 103 out of 119 countries, with hunger levels categorised as “serious”, in the Global Hunger Index 2018. Strikingly, in July, three girls died of starvation resulting from prolonged malnutrition in the national capital Delhi, which has a high per capita income. India’s child malnourishment level is not only the highest in the world but varies considerably across States. As per the National Family Health Survey-2016, the proportion of stunted (low height for age) children under five is significantly higher (38.4%) than global (22.9%) averages. The underweight (low weight for age) children rate (35.7%) is a lot higher than the global average (13.5%) too. India is home to over 53.3 million stunted, 49.6 million underweight and 29.2 million wasted (low weight for height) children under five.
Major challenges
•Growing prosperity has hardly made any significant dent in chronic malnutrition of children. Faster economic growth has enormous benefits, but it is by no means sufficient and sustainable if millions of children remain undernourished, as it not only impacts early childhood health and imposes disease burden but also affects education, wages and productivity when they grow up, which will impact India’s growth. Where does the solution lie?
•One problem lies with the current thinking of growth-oriented development. No doubt, the low income and Empowered-Action-Group (EAG) States face major challenges to improve malnutrition, but, two EAG States, Chhattisgarh and Odisha, have performed better on this front compared to Gujarat and Maharashtra where per capita income is almost double. The development path prevalent in Gujarat is more about growth and investment, which, however, has not been able to translate as better nutritional status in the State. Odisha, which is a low income State, has a better network of Integrated Child Development Services (ICDS), public health facility/workforce per lakh population and educational attainment among women, which have translated into a better nutritional status when compared with Gujarat. Further, tribals, rural, poor and illiterate mothers’ children are badly off in so-called developed States of Haryana, Gujarat and Punjab. These groups are also affected in poorer States of U.P., Bihar, Jharkhand and Madhya Pradesh. Around two-thirds of stunted/underweight children are from 200 districts of both less developed and developed States.
Agriculture v. hunger
•Another prominent idea is the need to link agriculture and nutrition, as agriculture provides answers to most nutrition problems. Our estimates, however, show malnutrition continues to be high in agricultural surplus States like Haryana (34% stunting and 29.5% underweight). Worryingly, malnutrition in some of its agriculturally-developed districts (Karnal, Panipat, Sonipat, Rohtak as well as in Gurugram) is even higher than the average of Odisha. Recently, Madhya Pradesh has registered double-digit growth in food grain production making it one of the wheat granaries of India, but acute malnutrition is still critical in most of its districts with a high proportion of underweight (42.8%) and stunted children (41.9%).
•To understand the contradiction between agrarian plenty and malnutrition, let us take the example of diversified food. With the increase in diversity in food intake, measured through Food Intake Index using 19 food items in all 640 districts, malnutrition (stunted/underweight) status declines. Only 12% of children are likely to be stunted and underweight in areas where diversity in food intake is high, while around 50% children are stunted if they consume less than three food items.
•A majority of children across districts in Tamil Nadu consume a reasonably highly diversified food, leading to lower percentage of stunted/underweight children across districts. Children in a majority of districts in West Bengal, Odisha, Kerala and Karnataka consume mediocre level of food items and malnutrition is relatively lower than in Rajasthan, U.P., Jharkhand, M.P., Gujarat, Bihar and Haryana (children in many of their districts consume less diversified food). The diversified food intake is very low in a majority of Indian districts; just 28% of children consumed over five items of the total 19 food items.
The way forward
•An inclusive and holistic approach, including controlling/regulating food price, strengthening the public distribution system (PDS) and income support policies for making food cheaper are important steps. The ICDS was a high impact nutrition intervention, but its universal availability and quality are questionable due to poor functioning. The government must broaden the ICDS programme by ensuring diversity in food items in worst-hit districts. The launch of the National Nutrition Mission as a strategy to fight maternal and child malnutrition is a welcome step towards achieving the targets of underweight and stunted children under five years from 35.7% to 20.7% and from 38.4% to 25% respectively by 2022. But sustained budgetary commitment towards nutrition components is not sharply visible.
📰 Full disclosure: on the credit rating industry
Structural reforms are needed to bring accountability to the credit rating industry
•After the IL&FS crisis, the Securities and Exchange Board of India is now trying to increase the level of scrutiny on credit rating agencies that failed to warn investors about it. SEBI has come out with new guidelines to improve the quality of disclosures made by credit rating agencies. According to the new norms, credit rating agencies will have to inform investors about the liquidity situation of the companies they rate through parameters such as their cash balance, liquidity coverage ratio, access to emergency credit lines, asset-liability mismatch, etc. Further, rating agencies will have to disclose their own historical rating track record by informing clients about how often their rating of an entity has changed over a period of time. SEBI has been working hard to improve transparency and credibility among rating agencies for some time now, including through a circular issued in November 2016 calling for enhanced standards for rating agencies. But the latest disclosure norms seem to be a response to the IL&FS defaults and the ensuing crisis. While rating agencies already make at least some of these disclosures one way or the other, mandating the formal disclosure of these facts is still welcome. The ready availability of information can help investors make better decisions.
•But the latest regulations can only help to a certain extent as a lot of the problems with the credit rating industry have to do with structural issues rather than the lack of formal rules. The primary one is the flawed “issuer-pays” model where the entity that issues the instrument also pays the ratings agency for its services. This often leads to a situation of conflict of interest, with tremendous potential for rating biases. Second, the credit rating market in India has high barriers to entry, which prevent competition that is vital to protecting the interests of investors. This is not very different from the case in many developed economies where rating agencies enjoy the benefits of an oligopoly. Better disclosures can increase the amount of information available to investors, but without a sufficient number of alternative credit rating providers, quality standards in ratings will not improve. It is thus no surprise that even after repeated ratings failures in their long history, credit rating agencies continue to remain and flourish in business. Structural reform should aim to solve another severe problem plaguing the industry, which has to do with rating shopping and the loyalty of credit rating agencies in general. Rating agencies will have to come up with lucrative business models that put the interests of investors above those of borrowers. Such a change requires a policy framework that allows easier entry and innovation in the credit rating industry.
📰 Explainer: Protecting the tiger’s habitat
Why is the death of tigress Avni controversial?
•Since 2016, the deaths of 13 people in the Pandharkawda divisional forest of Maharashtra have been attributed to tigers and at least five of them to Avni, a 6-year-old with two cubs. India’s wildlife laws permit a tiger which is believed to have preyed on humans to be killed. The State’s chief wildlife warden claimed he had evidence. The decision to shoot T1 (known as Avni) was taken in January but stayed by the Bombay High Court after appeals by activists. Three more deaths later, the Supreme Court, in September, cleared the way for the forest department to have the tiger killed. On November 2, it emerged that forest officials along with Asghar Ali, the son of hunter Nawab Shafat Ali, claimed to have chanced upon the tiger which, they said, charged at them. The hunting party failed to tranquilise Avni, as the rules required, and shot at it fatally. Union Minister for Women and Child Development Maneka Gandhi described the killing as “murder”, and several activists and some veterinarians have alleged that no attempt was made to tranquilise the animal. The National Tiger Conservation Authority has commissioned an independent team of wildlife experts to investigate the killing.
How serious is the tiger-human conflict?
•The killing of a man-eating tigers is a rare but not unprecedented in India. As tigers are India’s apex predators and symbols of its success at conservation, the unusual death of even one tiger causes disquiet in forest departments and among conservation biologists, tourism officials and activists. Out of 553 tiger deaths from 2012 to 2017, 22.1% were due to poaching, 15.4% were seizures, and 62.4% were attributed to natural causes and causes not attributable to poaching, according to information from the Rajya Sabha. India has 50 tiger reserves, but with forest area increasingly spilling into hamlets, there have been several instances of tigers preying on cattle, livestock and, sometimes, people. Days after the killing of Avni, villagers in Lakhimpur Kheri, U.P., crushed a tiger to death with a tractor after it fatally attacked a farmer.
Are conservation efforts adequate?
•While there is a larger concern about the shrinking space for tiger habitat in India, conservationists have also said that a few tiger reserves are being pampered at the expense of others. A recent study by the World Wildlife Fund said that eight tiger sanctuaries in India could, over time, support more than four times the current population of tigers in these sanctuaries. Ullas Karanth, the noted conservationist, has said that it is futile to preserve individual members of a species and that efforts must be made to conserve the species as a whole. Conservationists have also said that “man-eaters” is a legacy term from colonial hunters and incorrect in today’s times. Tigers don’t actively seek out humans; it is only because of increased contact between humans and animals that there are more conflicts which leads to deaths.
