📰 Cloud over key Tibetan meet as Delhi stalls Karmapa’s return
Govt. is unhappy with Dorje’s decision to acquire Dominican citizenship
•The indefinite postponement of the 13th Religious Conference of the Schools of Tibetan Buddhism and Bon Tradition, which was scheduled for November 29 and 30 in Dharamsala, has once again turned the spotlight on differences between the government and the Karmapa, the head of one of the four main sects of Tibetan Buddhism, over his return to India, officials confirmed to The Hindu.
•According to officials of the Ministry of Home Affairs and the Ministry of External Affairs, the two sides have reached an impasse over the 34-year-old Karmapa, Ogyen Trinley Dorje’s decision to acquire citizenship of Dominica earlier this year. As a result, despite several requests from the Karmapa for a visa, he has been unable to visit India as planned.
Requests denied
•The officials, who asked not to be named, confirmed that the Karmapa had written multiple letters to the Indian consulate in New York and to the Dalai Lama asking for a visa. The Karmapa said he wants to surrender the Identity Certificate (the yellow card issued by India to Tibetans for ease of travel) since he has already acquired Dominica’s citizenship.
•A senior government official told The Hindu that the Karmapa was welcome to visit India but the government would not agree to his demand to surrender the Identity Certificate. “He can come here on the Identity Certificate issued to him, there is no bar on him visiting here,” said the official.
•Another source denied any delay by the government in processing the papers, but said that in its opinion, “the Karmapa doesn’t need a visa.” With its tough stand, the government is understood to have made clear its annoyance with the Karmapa’s decision to overstay in the U.S. , where he travelled in March 2017, and acquire another country’s passport, rather than return to India.
•Since 1999, when the Karmapa and his sister fled to Dharamshala, the government has hosted him and allowed him to set up his congregation. Since then he has grown in prominence and is now considered as a possible successor to the Dalai Lama’s political clout over the Tibetan refugee population around the world.
•Confirming the impasse, the government’s former advisor on Tibetan Affairs Amitabh Mathur, who has been a key interlocutor said the matter has now been put on hold. “Karmapa is in a retreat now; it is not known when he would like to visit India. There are no restrictions on his travel, however” Mr. Mathur told The Hindu. A government official who had dealt with the Karmapa also said he hasn’t reverted on India’s response, and is “in penance” at present.
•The confusion over the Karmapa’s return is now casting a shadow over other issues in the community like the November conference of Tibetan religious leaders, which was postponed ostensibly after the death of a senior monk, Kathok Getse Rinpoche, head of the Nyingma School, in an accident in Nepal.
•While officials of the Central Tibetan Administration as well as government officials deny that the absence of the Karmapa had any role in the cancellation of the conference, most accept that it will be difficult to reschedule the conference without including him.
Keen to attend
•In an interview to Radio Free Asia in July this year, the Karmapa had underlined the importance of holding the conference as well as of his presence there.
•“I have no doubt or question that my return to India is absolutely certain. In November of this year, there will be an important meeting of the heads of the major Tibetan Buddhist traditions in Dharamsala, India. Therefore, I must attend,” he had said.
•In the interview he had also spoken of differences with the Indian government when he had first entered India, over accusations that he was a Chinese agent, and the fact that the government engaged with him for a long time via “lower-level officials”.
•The cancellation of the conference has come as a major surprise given the stakes involved in bringing together various streams of Tibetan Buddhism and their leaders in particular. The Dalai Lama was due to address the gathering on the last day of the conference organised by the CTA in Dharamshala, where a discussion on a successor to the Dalai Lama was also expected to be held.
Beijing’s concerns
•When asked about a date for the conference, officials said the conference has now been “indefinitely postponed” which led to speculation that New Delhi had bowed to Beijing’s sensitivities on the issue.
•Mr. Mathur said China was playing an influential role in the Buddhist circle in Nepal and Sri Lanka. “We have to take note of this growing Chinese engagement in our neighbourhood. They will do what’s in their interest. What we need to do is to expand and intensify our own engagement,” he said.
•In February, Foreign Secretary Vijay Gokhale had cautioned government officials and ministers against attending Tibetan conferences, which had led to the cancellation of several planned events to commemorate the 50th year of the Dalai Lama’s flight to India, as well as a major parliamentarians conference on the Tibet issue.
•When asked, MEA sources however, denied that the Chinese government had ever raised concerns over the 13th Tibetan leader’s conference.
📰 Supreme Court veers away from death penalty
Series of Supreme Court decisions on it veer away, point to various lapses
•A series of Supreme Court decisions after Chief Justice of India Ranjan Gogoi took over as top judge has seen the Supreme Court veer away from the death penalty and point out lapses in the way justice is administered in death penalty cases.
•For one, Chief Justice Gogoi has been heard repeatedly admonishing frivolous Public Interest Litigation (PIL) litigants for wasting the time of the court. The CJI has expressed annoyance at how his court is straddled with such PILs when judges ought to hear the under-100 pending death penalty references.
Uncertain prisoners
•“Every morning, these people wake up wondering when the court will hear them,” the Chief Justice said, expressing the uncertainty of prisoners in death row. The CJI said such cases are the priority for the court.
•Recently, the apex court put an end to its own practice of dismissing death penalty appeals in limine, without even assigning a reason for the decision. Death row convicts deserve an explanation as to why the highest court of the land had concluded that they deserved to hang for their crime.
•“Special leave petitions filed in cases where the death sentence is awarded by the courts below should not be dismissed without giving reasons, at least qua death sentence,” a three-judge Bench of Justices A.K. Sikri, Ashok Bhushan and Indira Banerjee observed in a recent judgment.
•The Bench’s decision came in a review petition filed by Babasheb Maruti Kamble, who was condemned to the gallows for murder.
•Kamble had filed a review against the apex court’s earlier dismissal of his appeal against death with a two-line order which merely said: “Delay condoned. Dismissed.” The apex court also laid down that in death penalty cases, the court was obliged to independently examine the case, “unbound by the findings of the trial court and the High Court.”
‘Time-honoured’
•“Such an approach is the time-honoured practice of this court,” the Supreme Court has observed.
•Justice Kurian Joseph, in his last solo opinion before retirement as Supreme Court judge, questioned the way courts decide that a person cannot be reformed and thus sentenced to death.
•“His good conduct in prison or the fact that he has engaged in studies inside the prison walls is not considered a mitigating factor against death penalty,” Justice Kurian told The Hindu.
📰 Report on ‘toxic’ talc worries India
Health Canada opens risk assessment draft flagging health risks linked to talcum powder use for public comments
•The debate over whether talcum powder poses serious health risks is in the spotlight again.
•A risk assessment draft on talc published by Health Canada, the country’s public health department, states that talcum powder is harmful to the lungs when inhaled during breathing and could possibly cause ovarian cancer when used by women in the genital area. The draft, which was opened for public comments on Saturday, would be confirmed in a final assessment that would entail Canada adding talc to a list of toxic substances if the proposed conclusions are confirmed at the end of a 60-day feedback period.
•At that point in time the Canadian government would also decide on the measures it would take to prohibit or restrict the use of the clay mineral, which finds wide use including in cosmetics, paints, ceramics.
Indian market
•In India, talcum powder is among the most widely known talc-based self-care products. From fighting perspiration and odour, to helping lend the user a ‘fairer’ skin tone, a large number of Indian consumers rely on talcum powder and the market is estimated to be worth about ₹700 crore.
•“Breathing in products containing talc can lead to coughing, difficulty in breathing, decreased lung function, scarring of the lung tissue,” Health Canada states in the draft assessment. “These effects may get worse over time. Using products containing talc in the genital area may cause ovarian cancer”, the health authority says. It adds that contact with the skin (excluding the female genital area) and mouth is, however, not a health concern.
•The draft cites research on talc by organisations including the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC), the Danish Environmental Protection Agency and the World Health Organization (WHO).
•Observing that the health concerns surrounding the use of talcum powder were not new, Bela Verma, president of the Mumbai chapter of the Indian Academy of Paediatrics said: “Yet, its usage and popularity has never gone down. Most Indians use talcum powder to get rid of sweat and the odour that it generates. But talcum powder clogs the pores, which are supposed to remain open. This is the main cause of local infections like folliculitis, boils, skin eruptions.”
•Specifically, in children, allergies due to inhalation of the particles was very common, Dr. Verma said, adding that she warns against the use of talcum powder, even those that are specially made for babies. “Newborn babies don’t need powders. They don’t even need daily soap baths. Just warm water works fine for their hygiene. Very rarely, I advise parents to use glycerine soaps which are mild.”
•Dermatologist Snehal Sriram echoed the views.
•“Most over the counter powders are talc-based. Some powders contain starch which is slightly better as the particles are not as fine as talc. However, I don’t recommend their use for children or adults either,” said Dr. Sriram.
•The American Academy of Pediatrics too warns against the use of baby powder due to the risk of serious respiratory problems.
•According to Sneha Limaye of Pune’s Chest Research Foundation, the fine particles of talcum powder posed the same health risks as particulate matter (PM) in polluted air as they could get lodged deep in the lungs.
•The risk of ovarian cancer has also been a big concern.
J&J case
•In July, a U.S. court ordered pharmaceutical giant Johnson & Johnson to pay $4.7 billion to 22 women who claimed that they had suffered from cancer as a result of using J&J’s talcum powder. The company is contesting that verdict.
•Canada’s draft states that the IARC has classified perineal use of talc-based body powder as “possibly carcinogenic to humans” on the basis of limited evidence in humans. It further cites a study that revealed the presence of talc particles in ovaries of humans and associated perineal exposure to talc with presence of talc in lymph nodes and ovaries of women diagnosed with ovarian cancer.
•Gynaecologist Suchitra Pandit said there was not enough evidence to conclusively link the use of talcum powder to ovarian cancer. “Use of talcum powder in the perineum region has been said to be a known cause and we advise against it. However, much larger studies are needed to prove the link”, said Dr. Pandit.
•J&J said it plans to respond to Health Canada as the draft is now open for public comments.
•“The draft by Health Canada appears to rely on a select review of the evidence and does not appear to include the largest, most recent studies on the use of cosmetic talc,” a J&J spokesperson told The Hindu. “Health Canada also relies on a handful of conclusions by third parties, which also were not based on a review of the wider body of evidence. The weight of the evidence does not support this draft conclusion.”
📰 Why are farmers all over India on the streets?
What happened?
•Mass farmer protests have erupted across the country over the past few months from Maharashtra to Bengal, with the October march in Delhi leading to violent clashes with the police. Farm distress has been on top of the agenda for political parties in the Assembly elections.
What is the problem?
•Apart from the headline-grabbing protests, data show evidence of farm distress. National Crime Records Bureau statistics show more than 3 lakh farmers have killed themselves in the last two decades. Indebtedness was cited as the reason for more than 55% of farmers’ suicides in 2015. Maharashtra, which saw the highest number of farmers’ suicides, has 57% of its farm families in debt. NSSO data show more than half of all farmers are in debt, with each household owing an average of ₹47,000. In States like Andhra Pradesh and Telangana, where levels of indebtedness are around 90%, the average debt of a household hovers around ₹1 lakh. Almost 70% of agricultural households spend more than they earn and almost a quarter of all farmers live below the poverty line. Census data for 2011 show the number of cultivators who own land have been overtaken by landless agricultural workers for the first time. Many of these 144 million workers earn less than ₹150 a day working in the fields, and the failure to generate jobs in other parts of the economy gives them few options.
What are the reasons for this?
•Long-term issues include the increasing fragmentation of land — average plot sizes are barely more than one hectare — a lack of post-production infrastructure, marketing mechanisms and supply chains. The last two years have actually seen record farm output in most major crops, but the resultant glut has led to crashing prices. At the same time, input costs have spiked, with diesel prices surging 26% this year and fertilizer costs shooting up more than 15%. Demonetisation was a blow to many in the rural cash economy. The move affected farmers’ ability to buy seeds and fertilizers, pay off loans and hire farm labour, according to an initial Agriculture Ministry report to a parliamentary panel last month. The Ministry later rescinded its report, but farmers groups say the long-term impact of the note ban lingers.
What is the government doing?
•The M.S. Swaminathan Commission had recommended that the minimum support prices for 23 major crops be set at 1.5 times the cost of production, and the government claims it has fulfilled its promises to do so. However, the government’s calculation of the cost of production only includes actual paid-out costs and the imputed cost of family labour, while the Commission’s formula also included the imputed cost of capital and the rent on the land. Moreover, the government only procures wheat, rice and a limited amount of pulses and oilseeds at MSP rates, benefiting only a fraction of farmers. Most summer crops have been selling at below MSP rates in the marketplace this year. While loan waivers are a popular poll promise and have been implemented in some States, small farmers without access to institutional credit are often left out. The cap on waivers and poor implementation has led to absurd situations such as farmers receiving cheques for just ₹1.
What policy solutions lie ahead?
•A government panel aiming to double farmers’ income by 2022 has come up with a 13-volume report, but its final set of policy recommendations is still pending with the Agriculture Ministry. It is expected to focus on ways to ensure sustainability of production, monetisation of farmers’ produce, re-strengthening of extension services and recognising agriculture as an enterprise and enabling it to operate as such by addressing structural weaknesses. This week, the Cabinet approved an agriculture export policy, lifting restrictions on organic and processed food, which it hopes will double farm exports by 2022 and widen the market for domestic produce. Farmers groups are urging political parties to support two private member Bills introduced in the last session of Parliament for guaranteed implementation of MSP and a comprehensive loan waiver and debt reduction scheme. However, they have also come out with a wider charter of demands, which deals with input costs, social security, farm workers employment, land rights, irrigation, agro-ecology, crop insurance and contract farming.
📰 IISER Kolkata team develops method to simulate, predict solar activity over ten years
An important reason to understand sunspots is that they affect space weather
•Astronomers have observed sunspots on the surface of the sun for nearly 400 years. It is known that sunspots follow a cyclic pattern of growing in number and disappearing in approximately 11 years, known as the sunspot cycle or the sun’s activity cycle. We are currently in the 24th sunspot cycle since the observation began in 1755.
•According to a paper published in Nature Communications, a team of researchers from IISER Kolkata have developed a way of predicting the intensity of activity in the next solar cycle (approximately from 2020 to 2031) using data spread over the last 100 years.
•Contrary to other calculations, they find that the sun’s activity would not dip during the next cycle, but it would be similar to the current cycle, perhaps even stronger. They expect the cycle to peak around 2024. “This is a unique data driven simulation work,” says Dipankar Banerjee, Solar physicist from Indian Institute of Astrophysics, Bengaluru, who was not involved in this research.
•The researchers simulate the behaviour of the sun using magnetic field evolution models and observational data. They simulate solar activity, and using inputs from observed data from one cycle, predict the behaviour of the sun over the next cycle, about ten years in advance. Comparing their simulations with recorded data from 1913 to present, they show a remarkable agreement in most cases. Using the same method, they predict solar activity over the next cycle, about ten years into the future.
•In an email to The Hindu, Dr. Dibyendu Nandi, who authored the paper, says “Our work has shown that we cannot make a prediction beyond the next sunspot cycle (i.e., beyond the next 10 years) because the dynamical ‘memory’ of the sun (i.e., the length of time over which past states affect future states of the sun) extends only over one sunspot cycle and not beyond,” Dr. Nandi, who is with the Centre for Excellence in Space Sciences India and Department of Physical Sciences, IISER Kolkata co-authored the paper with PhD student Prantika Bhowmik.
•“This kind of work will be very important for the understanding of the long-term variations of the sun and its impact on our climate which is one of the science objectives of Aditya mission. The forecast will be also useful for scientific operational planning of the Aditya mission,” says Prof. Banerjee.
•An important reason to understand sunspots is that they affect space weather. This refers to the effect of radiation, particle flux and magnetic flux in the region around the sun. During extreme events, space weather can affect electronics-driven satellite controls, communications systems, air traffic over polar routes and even power grids. The other reason sunspots are interesting is the belief that they are correlated with climate on earth. A lot of the research in this area focuses on predicting the way the next sunspot cycle will shape up – whether the sun will be extremely active and produce many sunspots or not.
•There have been predictions that the next cycle (cycle 25) will show reduced sunspot activity. There have even been speculations that the sun may be heading towards a period of prolonged low activity - what solar physicists describe as a ‘Maunder-like minimum’. The Maunder minimum refers to a period from 1645 to 1715 where observers reported minimal Sunspot activity — the number of sunspots reduced by a factor of nearly 1,000, over a period of 28 years. During this and other such periods of low activity, some parts of Europe and North America experienced lower-than-average temperatures. While the connection between the Maunder minimum and the climate on earth is still debated, it gives another reason to watch the sunspots.
•“Sunspot cycle 25 may reverse the substantial weakening trend in solar activity which has led to speculation of an imminent Maunder-like grand minimum and cooling global climate,” the researchers write.
