📰 Supreme Court asks Parliament to frame laws to bar those accused of crimes from fighting elections
Court directs political parties to display the criminal record of candidates who contest on their ticket on their official websites.
•The Supreme Court on Tuesday directed political parties to publish online the pending criminal cases of their candidates and urged Parliament to bring a “strong law” to cleanse political parties of leaders facing trial for serious crimes.
•Rapid criminalisation of politics cannot be arrested by merely disqualifying tainted legislators but should begin by “cleansing” political parties, a five-judge Constitution Bench, led by Chief Justice of India Dipak Misra, observed.
Onus on Parliament
•The court said Parliament should frame a law that makes it obligatory for political parties to remove leaders charged with “heinous and grievous” crimes, such as rape, murder and kidnapping, to name only a few, and refuse ticket to offenders in both parliamentary and Assembly polls.
•“The nation eagerly awaits such a legislation,” the court told Parliament.
•The Bench, also comprising Justices A.M. Khanwilkar, Rohinton Nariman, D.Y. Chandrachud and Indu Malhotra, however, made it clear that the court cannot legislate for Parliament by introducing disqualification to ban candidates facing trial for heinous crimes from contesting elections.
•The 100-page judgment, written by Chief Justice Misra, who has just days left for his retirement on October 2, issued a slew of directions.
Full disclosures
•The court directed that candidates should divulge their criminal past to the Election Commission in “block letters.” Candidates should make a full disclosure of the criminal cases pending against them to the political parties under whose banner they intend to contest the polls. The parties, in turn, should put up the complete details of their candidates on their websites for public consumption.
•Further, both the candidate and the political party should declare the criminal antecedents of the former in widely-circulated newspapers. Finally, both the candidate and the political party should give “wide publicity” to the criminal record of the former by airing it on TV channels, not once, but thrice after the filing of nomination papers.
•Legal experts say the judgement, which compels political parties to come clean about the criminal elements within their apparatus, is unique as it opens a new vista that “the process of breaking crime-politics nexus extends much beyond purity of legislators and encompasses purity of political parties as well”.
•Chief Justice Misra explained that the directions to political parties to go public about the criminal cases against their candidates is a step to “foster and nurture an informed citizenry”. It is to protect the “culture and purity in politics”.
Informed choice
•It ensures that ordinary voters can have an “informed choice” about who he or she has to vote for in a country which already “feels agonised when money and muscle power become the supreme power”.
•The Chief Justice said criminals in power are nothing but a liability to this country. Their presence in power strikes at the roots of democracy.
•“The best available people, as is expected by the democratic system, should not have criminal antecedents and the voters have a right to know about their antecedents, assets and other aspects… Citizens in a democracy cannot be compelled to stand as silent, deaf and mute spectators to corruption… Disclosure of antecedents makes the election a fair one and the exercise of the right of voting by the electorate also gets sanctified,” Chief Justice Misra wrote.
•Criminalisation of politics and corruption, especially at the entry level of elections, has become a national and economic terror. It is a disease which is self-destructive and becoming immune to antibiotics, Chief Justice Misra wrote.
•"There is a steady increase in the level of criminality creeping into politics," the Supreme Court observed in the judgment.
‘Parliament must act’
•Chief Justice Misra said Parliament is obligated to act, as “criminalisation in politics is a bitter manifest truth, which is a termite to the citadel of democracy”.
•It noted with anguish that the Election Commission of India has its hands tied, helplessly watching as criminalisation of politics at the entry level is on the rise.
•The court countered the government's submissions that under the Representation of the People Act, only convicted lawmakers can be disqualified and not accused ones.
•It addressed the submissions made by Attorney-General K.K. Venugopal during the hearings that a person is presumed innocent until he is proven guilty and nothing prevents an accused, who won an election on public mandate, from becoming a lawmaker.
•“It is one thing to take cover under the presumption of innocence of the accused but it is equally imperative that persons who enter public life and participate in law making should be above any kind of serious criminal allegation,” Chief Justice Misra responded to the Centre in his judgment.
•The court said the danger of false cases foisted on candidates can be addressed by the parliament in the new law.
•Chief Justice wrote that criminality in politics should be kept at bay and the "malignancy is not incurable".
•The judgment came on a batch of petitions to bar politicians, who are facing charges of heinous crimes, from contesting elections and transforming themselves into parliamentarians and State legislators.
•The petitioners, Public Interest Foundation and advocate Ashwini Kumar Upadhyay, argued that lawbreakers have become lawmakers. Parliament and State legislatures cannot be a paradise for criminals.
📰 SC forms prison reforms panel
Decision follows letter from ex-CJI
•The Supreme Court on Tuesday formed a Committee on Prison Reforms chaired by former apex court judge, Justice Amitava Roy, to examine the various problems plaguing prisons in the country, from overcrowding to lack of legal advice to convicts to issues of remission and parole.
•A Bench of Justices Madan B. Lokur, S. Abdul Nazeer and Deepak Gupta appointed the Inspector General of Police, Bureau of Police Research and Development, and the Director General (Prisons) Tihar Jail as the panel’s members.
•The judgment came on a letter from former Chief Justice of India R.C. Lahoti highlighting the overcrowding in prisons, unnatural deaths of prisoners, gross inadequacy of staff and the lack of trained staff.
•Justice Lokur however said the Amitava Roy Committee need not confine itself to these four issues but can comprehensively examine and respond to the dire necessity of reforms in prisons.
•Issuing a slew of directions, the Bench has directed the committee to examine the extent of overcrowding in prisons and correctional homes and recommend remedial measures, including an examination of the functioning of Under Trial Review Committees, availability of legal aid and advice, grant of remission, parole and furlough.
•The panel would also probe the reasons for violence in prisons and correctional homes and recommend preventive measures.
📰 Voters’ choice: on Maldives presidential polls
The Maldives turns the page on pre-election cynicism with a dramatic result
•The interim results of Sunday’s presidential election in the Maldives have given the joint opposition candidate, Ibrahim Mohamed Solih a resounding victory in the direct contest with the incumbent, Abdulla Yameen. The final results will be published by the election commission by September 30 and the current government will, according to procedure, hand over charge on November 17. But it is immediately clear that Maldivian voters have ushered in change, with 58% of the voters choosing Mr. Solih. Regardless of political affiliation, Maldivians have much to celebrate with the successful completion of the election. To begin with, the turnout of 89.2% has disproved pre-election cynicism about the integrity of the electoral process. Early on, the opposition had suffered a setback when former President Mohammed Nasheed, who was seen as the frontrunner, was disqualified from contesting because of a “terrorism conviction”. Former President Maumoon Abdul Gayoom was behind bars on the charge of attempting a coup in February this year. Just ahead of the elections too, there had also been many misgivings over the conduct of the election commission, the courts and security forces, with these worries heightened when the headquarters of the main opposition party, the Maldivian Democratic Party, to which Mr. Solih belongs, were raided. Counting procedures were changed at the last minute, which led to some confusion during Sunday’s polling, and many foreign journalists, including from India, were denied visas. Fortunately, the outcome has belied the worst fears about the election, and after meeting with Mr. Solih, President Yameen conceded defeat and vowed to ensure a smooth transition.
•For New Delhi, the results are especially heartening as they present a chance to reset ties with Male, which have been on a downward spiral for several years. This was perceived to be a result of Mr. Yameen’s close understanding with China, to which the Maldives is now heavily indebted. Mr. Yameen responded to India’s criticism of the emergency he declared this year by clamping down on visas to Indian job holders, hundreds of whom await some movement in the matter after the new government takes over. India can also now renew talks over the fate of Indian Coast Guard and Air Force personnel stationed in the Maldives, whose visas have been pending since June. India was quick to welcome the provisional results and to congratulate, among others, the Maldivian Democratic Party, and the Jumhooree Party — to which the Vice-President-elect Faisal Naseem belongs. Going forward, New Delhi must stay clear of partisan positioning on the internal politics of the Maldives. The larger agenda must be to partner the Maldives in its stability and development rather than engaging in a tug of war with China.
📰 A change in the Maldives
India must seize the moment and rebuild the bilateral relationship
•Democracy is a strange leveller. In domestic politics it has a way of springing up surprises which few anticipate. Even in foreign relations, it can make crises disappear in the same manner in which it can create them. When most had assumed that a second term for Maldivian President Abdulla Yameen was a done deal, given the controlled nature of the Maldivian elections, the people of the small archipelago in the Indian Ocean voted for change and brought to power the Opposition candidate, Ibrahim Mohamed Solih. They came out in huge numbers with the turnout being 89.2% and dealt a decisive blow to Mr. Yameen.
Democratic vote
•Belying concerns that he may not respect the outcome, after a few hours of election results, Mr. Yameen conceded defeat in a televised address by saying: “The Maldivian people have decided what they want. I have accepted the results.”
•Mr. Solih is a senior politician in the Maldives and was the joint presidential candidate for an opposition alliance of the Maldivian Democratic Party (MDP), the Jumhooree Party and the Adhaalath Party. His victory underscores the commitment of the Maldivian politicians to secure the future of democracy in their country. The exiled former President of the Maldives, Mohammed Nasheed, who was ousted by Mr. Yameen in 2012, underlined this when he tweeted that Mr. Solih had done “an extremely good service” to the people. This was a do or die battle for democrats and they succeeded.
•After the results came out, India’s Ministry of External Affairs said Sunday’s election marked “not only the triumph of democratic forces in the Maldivesbut also reflects the firm commitment to the values of democracy and the rule of law.” Prime Minister Narendra Modi also called Mr. Solih, underscoring his support for better ties between the two countries. The U.S. State Department said the Maldivian people had “raised their democratic voices to determine the future of their country.”
•The Maldives has been in turmoil since its first democratically-elected leader, Mr. Nasheed, was forced out of office following a police mutiny in 2012. This was followed by the controversial election of Mr. Yameen in 2013 when the Supreme Court annulled the result. Mr. Yameen was trailing Mr. Nasheed, thereby providing him an opportunity to win in the second round of voting. Mr. Yameen’s presidency saw the Maldives flirting with Islamist radicalism and the democratic underpinnings of the nation came under assault. This February, he imposed a 45-day state of emergency fearing an attempt by his political opponents to impeach him. This led him to target his own half brother and former President, Maumoon Abdul Gayoom, and the judiciary. Even on the eve of the polling, the police was used to target the opposition MDP, amid concerns that the campaign had been heavily tilted in favour of Mr. Yameen.
•Mr. Yameen also fostered closer ties with China and Saudi Arabia, ignoring India and even pulling the Maldives out of the Commonwealth in 2016.
Tilt towards China
•The alacrity with which Mr. Yameen embraced China caught India off guard. During his China visit last year, the two nations signed 12 pacts, including a free trade agreement (FTA). Mr. Yameen not only fully endorsed China’s ambitious Maritime Silk Road initiative but also made the Maldives the second country in South Asia, after Pakistan, to enter into an FTA with China. The Yameen government pushed the FTA through the nation’s Parliament, the Majlis, stealthily, with the opposition not attending the parliamentary session.
•The opposition accused the Yameen government “of allowing a Chinese ‘land grab’ of Maldivian islands, key infrastructure, and even essential utilities, which “not only undermines the independence of the Maldives, but the security of the entire Indian Ocean region”. The massive infrastructure growth funded by Chinese debt was a key part of Mr. Yameen’s election campaign but the massive debt trap made it a difficult proposition to be accepted.
•Mr. Yameen may have conceded defeat but many of the challenges the Maldives faces linger. The opposition may have been united in its desire to oust Mr. Yameen but this unity will be tested in governance. Democratic institutions have been weakened and a fragile democracy can also be susceptible to radical ideologies if not effectively governed. And China is not going anywhere in a hurry. Its economic presence in the Maldives is a reality that all governments will have to contend with.
•Mr. Yameen’s ouster has certainly produced a favourable outcome for New Delhi and it should seize the moment to rebuild ties with Male. If there is one lesson out of the Maldives crisis, it is that political elites in India’s neighbours will come and go but if India can stand together with the aspirations of citizens of neighbouring countries, then the prospects of a long-term sustainable relationship will be much brighter.
📰 SC harks back to Mumbai blasts to cite criminalisation
Says political patrons had a nexus with criminal gangs, police, customs officials
•The presence of criminalisation of politics was felt in its strongest form during the 1993 Mumbai bomb blasts, a Constitution Bench of the Supreme Court, led by Chief Justice of India Dipak Misra, said in a 100-page judgment on Tuesday.
•The blasts, the court said, was “the result of a collaboration of a diffused network of criminal gangs, police and customs officials and their political patrons… the tremors of the attacks shook the entire nation.”
Vohra panel report
•The court referred to how the N.N. Vohra Committee, which was set up following a public outcry after the blasts, submitted its report in October 1993 after its study of the problem of criminalisation of politics and the nexus among criminals, politicians and bureaucrats in India.
•The committee had concluded that agencies, including the CBI, IB, RAW, had unanimously expressed their opinion that the criminal network was virtually running a parallel government.
•The committee report mentioned how money power was first acquired through real estate and then used for building up contacts with bureaucrats and politicians. “The money power is used to develop a network of muscle power which is also used by the politicians during elections,” Chief Justice Misra quoted from the report.
•The judgment also refers to the fact that voices within Parliament also felt the need to end the bane of criminal politics. The 18th Report presented by a parliamentary committee to the Rajya Sabha in March 2007 expressed a strong “feeling that politics should be cleansed of persons with established criminal background”. It said “criminalisation of politics is the bane of society and negation of democracy”.
•The Law Commission of India, in its 244th report, succinctly put it that “instead of politicians having suspected links to criminal networks, as was the case earlier, it was persons with extensive criminal backgrounds who began entering politics.”
•The Law Commission said that in the 10 years since 2004, 18% of the candidates contesting either national or State elections had criminal cases against them (11,063 out of 62,847).
•The Goswami Committee on Electoral Reforms, as early as in 1990, highlighted the crippling effect of money and muscle power in elections.
📰 Unemployment among educated youth at 16%: study
Report says gap between growth and jobs widening
•With higher growth rates not having translated into more jobs and increases in productivity failing to spur a commensurate rise in wages, the government ought to formulate a National Employment Policy that takes these trends into account, the State of Working India 2018, a new study released by Azim Premji University’s Centre for Sustainable Employment, recommends.
•Confirming the spectre of jobless growth, the study contends that this divergence between growth and jobs had increased over time. “If you look back at the 1970s and 80s, when GDP growth was around 3-4%, employment growth was about 2%,” lead author Amit Basole wrote in the study, released on Tuesday. “Currently, the ratio of GDP growth to employment growth is less than 0.1.” That means that a 10% increase in GDP results in a less than 1% increase in employment.
•The study uses government data to show that total employment actually shrank by seven million between 2013 and 2015, and cites private data to posit that an absolute decline has continued in the years since.
•Unemployment has risen to more than 5% overall, and the study slices the data to show that in geographic terms, north Indian States are the most severely affected, while in demographic terms, young people with higher education levels suffer an unemployment rate as high as 16%.
•While wages are rising in almost all sectors, hidden within the positive data is the worrying fact that rural wage growth collapsed in 2014, and has not risen since, observed Dr. Basole.
•In the organised manufacturing sector, though the number of jobs has grown, there has also been an increase in the share of contract work, which offers lower wages and less job security, according to the study.
•Also, of concern is the divergence of productivity and wages in the organised manufacturing sector. Labour productivity in the sector is six times higher than it was 30 years ago; however, managerial and supervisory salaries have only tripled in the same period, while production workers’ wages have grown a measly 1.5 times.
•Women’s participation in the paid workforce is still low, but the situation is unequal across States. In Uttar Pradesh, only 20 women are in paid employment for every 100 men, while that figure jumps to 50 in Tamil Nadu and 70 in Mizoram and Nagaland.
•With regard to earnings, the caste gap is actually larger than the gender gap. Dalits and Adivasis are over-represented in low-paying occupations, and severely under-represented in higher-paying ones, the study reveals. They earn only 55-56% of upper caste workers’ earnings, the data shows.
📰 Editing our genes
Bioethicists fear abuse of gene editing by governments and the private sector
•American biochemist Jennifer Doudna, one of the pioneers of the gene editing tool Crispr-Cas9, woke up in a cold sweat after she dreamt of Adolf Hitler. He was wearing a pig mask, and wanted to understand the tool’s uses and implications. In the book she co-authored, A Crack in Creation: Gene Editing and the Unthinkable Power to Control Evolution, Doudna recounts the dream, and acknowledges the “truly incredible power” of the technology, “one that could be devastating if it fell into the wrong hands.”
•Crispr, an acronym for Clustered Regularly Interspaced Short Palindromic Repeats, harnesses the natural defence mechanisms of bacteria to alter an organism’s genetic code. It’s likened to a pair of molecular scissors, a cut-and-paste technology, that can snip the two DNA strands at a specific location and modify gene function. The cutting is done by enzymes like Cas9, guided by pre-designed RNA sequences, which ensure that the targeted section of the genome is edited out. The elegance of this editing tool has transformed medical research, and gives rise to the question: can a faulty gene be deleted or corrected at the embryonic stage?
•Last month, researchers in China used a variation of Crispr. Instead of snipping strands, they swapped DNA letters to correct Marfan Syndrome, an inherited disorder that affects connective tissue. Huang Xingxu, the lead author of the paper, which was published in Molecular Therapy, said it was done on 18 viable human embryos through in-vitro. Two of the embryos, however, exhibited unintended changes. All were destroyed after the experiment.
•In 2017, American biologist Shoukhrat Mitalipov used Crispr to repair a genetic mutation that could cause a deadly heart condition. It was done on embryos in such a way that the faulty gene would not be passed down the family tree. The findings are the focus of an ongoing debate, with several scientists sceptical of whether the gene was corrected. Can accuracy be guaranteed in early stage embryos?
•Bioethicists expressed concern over the clinical application of such research. Can we — and should we — control or dictate evolution? These are still early days in a new frontier of genome engineering. Researchers are only beginning to understand the power — and fallout — of gene editing.
•Studies have shown that edited cells can lack a cancer suppressing protein. As our understanding grows, we will have the potential to edit out genes that cause fatal diseases. We will perhaps one day have the potential to use the very same mechanisms to edit out undesirable traits in human beings. This raises the spectre of eugenics.
•Bioethicists fear abuse of gene editing, not just by misguided governments hoping to create a ‘superior’ race, but also by the private sector preying on a parent’s desire to create a perfect child. For now, it remains a distant prospect, but silencing science or hijacking the debate is not the answer. The burden of this knowledge cannot be borne by science alone.
📰 India ranks 158th in ‘human capital’ score, behind Sudan
Study ranks countries for their levels of spending on education and health care
•India ranks 158th in the world for its investments in education and health care, according to the first-ever scientific study ranking countries for their levels of human capital.
•The nation is placed behind Sudan (ranked 157th) and ahead of Namibia (ranked 159th) in the list. The U.S. is ranked 27th, while China is at 44th and Pakistan at 164th.
•South Asian countries ranking below India in this report include Pakistan (164), Bangladesh (161) and Afghanistan (188). Countries in the region that have fared better than India in terms of human capital include Sri Lanka (102), Nepal (156), Bhutan (133) and Maldives (116).
•The study, published in journal The Lancet, says that India is ranked at 158 out of 195 countries in 2016, an improvement from its position of 162 in 1990. It showed that India is falling behind in terms of health and education of its workforce, which could potentially have long-term negative effects on the Indian economy. The study is based on analysis of data from sources, including government agencies, schools, and health care systems.
Stimulating economy
•The study, conducted by the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME) at the request of the World Bank, is the first of its kind to measure and compare the strength of countries’ “human capital”. The study underscores that when a country’s human capital score increases, its economy grows.
•“Our findings show the association between investments in education and health and improved human capital and GDP — which policy-makers ignore at their own peril,” said Dr. Christopher Murray, director, IHME at the University of Washington. “As the world economy grows increasingly dependent on digital technology, from agriculture to manufacturing to the service industry, human capital grows increasingly important for stimulating local and national economies.’’
•“Learning is based on average student scores on internationally comparable tests. Components measured in the functional health score include stunting, wasting, anaemia, cognitive impairments, hearing and vision loss, and infectious diseases such as HIV/AIDS, malaria, and tuberculosis,” the study said
•The study places Finland at the top. Turkey showed the most dramatic increase in human capital between 1990 and 2016; Asian countries with notable improvement include China, Thailand, Singapore, and Vietnam. Within Latin America, Brazil stands out for improvement. All these countries have had faster economic growth over this period than peer countries with lower levels of human capital improvement.
