📰 Capable even if disabled
An institutional display of pure and simple discrimination dressed up as legal reasoning is unacceptable
•One of the darkest moments in the American disability rights movement was the American Supreme Court’s decision, in 1927, upholding the forced sterilisation of a mentally infirm woman, reasoning that it helped get rid of those who would sap the state of its strength by swamping it with incompetence. Similarly, in India, the Supreme Court’s ruling last Tuesday, in V. Surendra Mohan v. Union of India, has to be regarded as one of the darkest in India’s disability rights movement.
•The Court had to rule on the legality of the Tamil Nadu government’s policy of reserving the post of civil judge only for people whose percentage of blindness does not exceed 40-50%, resulting in the exclusion of the applicant who was 70% blind. It held that the government’s decision was rational and reasonable. It ruled that a judicial officer has to possess a reasonable amount of sight and hearing to discharge her functions. It accepted the claim that impaired vision makes it impossible to perform the functions required of judicial officers, such as assessing the demeanour of witnesses and reading and analysing evidence. It also accepted that asking a blind judicial officer to perform such administrative functions as recording dying declarations and conducting inquiries can result in avoidable complications. The judgment is problematic for four key reasons.
Examples of success
•First, the view that a totally blind person cannot thrive as a judge is belied by several examples of successful judges who are blind. One is former South African Constitutional Court judge Zak Yacoob, who has repudiated the notion that one needs to be sighted to assess a witness’s demeanour as being nonsensical, to U.S. Court of Appeals DC Circuit judge David S. Tatel, who thinks that it is neither fair nor accurate to impose low expectations on what blind lawyers can do. There is also former San Diego County Court judge David Szumowski, who has described the view that a blind person lacks the wherewithal to become a judge as an unfair characterisation, to Yousaf Saleem who, last year, became Pakistan’s first blind civil judge.
•Second, how, some contend, can a blind person be reasonably expected to thrive as a judge without being excessively dependent and inefficient? However, as the Supreme Court itself noted in 2017, “A lawyer can be just as effective in a wheelchair, as long as she has access to the courtroom and the legal library, as well as to whatever other places and material or equipment that are necessary for her to do her job well.”
•Those voicing such a statement of cynicism might find it equally hard to imagine how a blind person can write an article for The Hindu, as this writer is doing, or study computer science, as many blind Indians have done or be a successful civil servant, as Beno Zephine N.L. is.
•Third, the Court’s unreasoned assertion is an outcome of their ignorance about the capabilities of the disabled. However, as Laura Wolk notes, ignorance simply cannot be an excuse in 2019. It is simply unacceptable to condemn disabled legal professionals, possessing the intellectual wherewithal to be a judge, to the status of outcasts only because the judges delivering the judgment in this case appear simply not to have bothered to notice the competence of the millions of disabled people who inhabit this world.
•As Judge Szumowski asks Indian judges, “if you went blind while on the bench, and were able to efficiently discharge your responsibility before this, how would you feel if told that you can no longer continue as a judge, even if you are able to perform your functions with some amount of retraining and adaptive tech?”
Reasonable accommodations
•Fourth, as to obviating avoidable complications, the reasonable accommodations required by a blind judge may be considered irksome. However, it bears noting that “there is a distinct exhortatory dimension to be recognised in deciding whether an adjustment to assist a disabled person to overcome the disadvantage that she or he has in comparison to an able-bodied person is reasonable.” It does not lie in our mouth to say that we are truly committed to ensuring that the constitutional promise of equality is fully realised, if we lack the ability to even pay the price of making reasonable accommodations.
•This is not just of academic interest for me. On my path to becoming a blind postgraduate law student at the University of Oxford as a Rhodes Scholar, I have often been compelled to engage with the cynicism of those who thought that something was simply too difficult and messy for me to do as a blind person. And perhaps some things were, and continue to be, comparatively more difficult. But those experiences also helped me cultivate the ability to assert myself and to find ways of thriving in a world not designed for me — qualities that many able-bodied persons do not possess to the same degree and qualities which were recently recognised by a sitting Supreme Court judge in open court.
•When my Supreme Court tells me that my blindness makes me intrinsically incapable of becoming a judicial officer, when it arrogates to itself the power to stamp a badge of incompetence on thousands like me about whom it knows nothing, its declaration cuts to the core of my confidence about the fairness and robustness of our judicial system. Indeed, it is telling that even the applicant in this case took it as a given that those who are completely blind for all intents and purposes, like me, cannot become a judge; it only argued that a partially blind person can become a judge. I have never had any interest in becoming part of the judiciary. However, I earnestly believe that how we choose to respond to this institutional display of pure and simple discrimination dressed up as legal reasoning will be reflective of what kind of a society we hope to be.
Envoy says militants have vowed not to allow the use of Afghanistan for terrorism
•American and Taliban officials have agreed to the framework of a peace deal in which the insurgents guarantee to prevent Afghanistan from being used by terrorists, and that could lead to a full pull-out of U.S. troops in return for a ceasefire and Taliban talks with the Afghan government, the chief U.S. negotiator said Monday.
•“We have a draft of the framework that has to be fleshed out before it becomes an agreement,” the American envoy, Zalmay Khalilzad, said in an interview in Kabul. “The Taliban [has] committed, to our satisfaction, to do what is necessary that would prevent Afghanistan from ever becoming a platform for international terrorist groups or individuals.”
•After nine years of halting efforts to reach a peace deal with the Taliban, the draft framework, though preliminary, is the biggest tangible step toward ending the two-decade war.
Talking to Afghan govt.
•A senior American official said that the Taliban delegation had asked for time to confer with their leadership about the U.S. insistence that the insurgents talk with the Afghan government and agree to a ceasefire as part of any finalised deal. The official said they had made it clear to the Taliban that all the issues discussed were “interconnected” as part of a “package deal”. The official’s account was supported by details that have been leaked by some Taliban and Western officials in recent days.
•Although other Taliban sources said that more concrete details of a U.S. troop withdrawal had already been agreed upon, American officials said on Monday that those details had not yet been hashed out.
•Mr. Khalilzad returned to Afghanistan on Sunday to brief the government in Kabul after conducting six days of talks with the Taliban delegation in Doha, Qatar.
•In an address to the nation after being briefed by Mr. Khalilzad, President Ashraf Ghani expressed concern that a peace deal would be rushed. He highlighted previous settlements that ended in bloodshed, including when the Soviet Union withdrew from the country in the late 1980s. Despite a promise of a peace deal at the time, Afghanistan broke into anarchy. “We want peace quickly, we want it soon, but we want it with prudence,” Mr. Ghani said. “Prudence is important so we do not repeat past mistakes.”
Appointment of Baradar
•During the talks last week, the Taliban signalled its seriousness by appointing one of its most powerful officials from the original movement, Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar, as their chief peace negotiator.
•Senior American officials said new talks would start in late February, but suggested that teams from both sides could start on technical details before then.
•As the first step in the framework, Mr. Khalilzad said that the Taliban was firm about agreeing to keep Afghan territory from being used as a staging ground for terrorism by groups like al-Qaeda, and had agreed to provide guarantees and an enforcement mechanism. That had long been a primary demand by American officials. The next set of contingencies would see the U.S. agreeing to withdraw combat troops from Afghanistan, but only in return for the Taliban’s entering talks with the Afghan government and agreeing to a lasting ceasefire. Those last two points have long been resisted by Taliban officials, and could still provide trouble with the process, officials said.
•But the agreement in principle to discussing them at all was seen as a breakthrough after years of failed attempts, American and Afghan officials said.
📰 U.S. declares it has agreed upon peace framework with Taliban
Envoy says militants have vowed not to allow the use of Afghanistan for terrorism
•American and Taliban officials have agreed to the framework of a peace deal in which the insurgents guarantee to prevent Afghanistan from being used by terrorists, and that could lead to a full pull-out of U.S. troops in return for a ceasefire and Taliban talks with the Afghan government, the chief U.S. negotiator said Monday.
•“We have a draft of the framework that has to be fleshed out before it becomes an agreement,” the American envoy, Zalmay Khalilzad, said in an interview in Kabul. “The Taliban [has] committed, to our satisfaction, to do what is necessary that would prevent Afghanistan from ever becoming a platform for international terrorist groups or individuals.”
•After nine years of halting efforts to reach a peace deal with the Taliban, the draft framework, though preliminary, is the biggest tangible step toward ending the two-decade war.
Talking to Afghan govt.
•A senior American official said that the Taliban delegation had asked for time to confer with their leadership about the U.S. insistence that the insurgents talk with the Afghan government and agree to a ceasefire as part of any finalised deal. The official said they had made it clear to the Taliban that all the issues discussed were “interconnected” as part of a “package deal”. The official’s account was supported by details that have been leaked by some Taliban and Western officials in recent days.
•Although other Taliban sources said that more concrete details of a U.S. troop withdrawal had already been agreed upon, American officials said on Monday that those details had not yet been hashed out.
•Mr. Khalilzad returned to Afghanistan on Sunday to brief the government in Kabul after conducting six days of talks with the Taliban delegation in Doha, Qatar.
•In an address to the nation after being briefed by Mr. Khalilzad, President Ashraf Ghani expressed concern that a peace deal would be rushed. He highlighted previous settlements that ended in bloodshed, including when the Soviet Union withdrew from the country in the late 1980s. Despite a promise of a peace deal at the time, Afghanistan broke into anarchy. “We want peace quickly, we want it soon, but we want it with prudence,” Mr. Ghani said. “Prudence is important so we do not repeat past mistakes.”
Appointment of Baradar
•During the talks last week, the Taliban signalled its seriousness by appointing one of its most powerful officials from the original movement, Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar, as their chief peace negotiator.
•Senior American officials said new talks would start in late February, but suggested that teams from both sides could start on technical details before then.
•As the first step in the framework, Mr. Khalilzad said that the Taliban was firm about agreeing to keep Afghan territory from being used as a staging ground for terrorism by groups like al-Qaeda, and had agreed to provide guarantees and an enforcement mechanism. That had long been a primary demand by American officials. The next set of contingencies would see the U.S. agreeing to withdraw combat troops from Afghanistan, but only in return for the Taliban’s entering talks with the Afghan government and agreeing to a lasting ceasefire. Those last two points have long been resisted by Taliban officials, and could still provide trouble with the process, officials said.
•But the agreement in principle to discussing them at all was seen as a breakthrough after years of failed attempts, American and Afghan officials said.
📰 Learning to probe early
Why research should be made part of UG curriculum in India
•While addressing the 106th Indian Science Congress, Prime Minister Narendra Modi underscored the need for universities to get involved in research. While India has made considerable strides in achieving a near-perfect enrolment rate in primary education, it has failed to give higher education as much attention. As a consequence, Gross Enrolment Ratio in higher education is 25.8%, against China’s 48.44% and the U.S.’s 88.84%. Mr. Modi’s address alerts us to major lacunae in the education system that need to be looked at urgently if the higher education system is to meet the demands of today.
The importance of research
•Research remains a significant weakness in India’s higher education system, traditionally cocooned in specialised institutes such as the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research (TIFR), the Homi Bhabha Centre for Science Education, and the Indian Institute of Science (IISc). Unlike the world’s best higher education systems, there is hardly any interaction between these institutes and teaching universities.
•In India, about 80% of the students enroled in higher education are concentrated in undergraduate (UG) programmes. Research and application-oriented education can substantially enhance the quality of UG education. While the concept of UG research is fairly new in India, it is now taken as a given in many parts of the world. Several studies on such programmes have shown a positive impact on students, such as enhanced learning through mentorship, increased retention, increased enrolment in graduate education, more prowess in critical thinking, creativity, problem solving, intellectual independence, and understanding of research methodologies. Research at the UG level increases the aptitude for research-oriented career options as well as the employability of students. Based on the nature of their association and the nuances of a research programme, the faculty can also gain by sharing their research ideas with students, receive valuable feedback as well as help in the form of assistantship and apprenticeship. Additionally, research also helps the faculty enhance their teaching abilities and content by upgrading knowledge. Introducing and sustaining the culture of research at this level can also help solve the problem of shortage of faculty, as more students will likely opt for doctoral and post-doctoral studies and teach in their home country. In any sound higher education system, research and teaching should ideally go together.
•Besides, the government has also floated two ambitious projects towards internationalising higher education in India: ‘Study in India’ and ‘Institutes of Eminence’. Both these will need institutes to become world class and carry out high-quality research on campuses. Only then will competent faculty as well as doctoral students from across the world come to India. Internationalisation of campuses is important if India wants to be in the global university ranking lists and this will not happen without encouraging an ecosystem that promotes high-quality research.
Some strategic steps
•However, given the impediments vis-a vis infrastructure, teachers, funds and content, the government will need to take strategic steps to roll out policies to promote UG research programmes. First, investment in education needs to meet the world standard of at least 6% of GDP, to upgrade infrastructure, labs and resources, which are essential to carry out high-quality research. Second, the University Grants Commission and other regulatory bodies will have to come out with a priority list of reputable journals. This will rid the country of the problem of bogus journals and publications. Research institutes such as TIFR and IISc should mentor some of the well-performing universities and colleges till they become aware of the nuances of conducting fair and high-quality research. Once capable, these trained institutes can then help the second rung of colleges and so on. Third, there should be planned ways to embed research in UG curriculum. Due to limitations in curriculum and the practice of rote learning, most students in India, even at the Masters level, graduate without having attempted an original piece of research or dissertation. The UGC should make it compulsory for students to submit at least a 5,000-word research paper that should be assessed just as publication in serious research journals are. Unless students are made aware of the value of research from an early stage, they will not recognise the true value of higher education.
•The status quo in education has resulted in education that is not only substandard but also fails to open inquiring minds to the world of research. India must be innovative in its approch if its demographic dividend is to be tapped into. Otherwise, what Mr. Modi said will remain a quotable quote.
📰 India can’t handle more tigers, say experts
•Another official, involved in the ongoing census said the report — expected to be made public in May — will also, for the first time, discuss challenges of having a thriving tiger population.
•“Overall, given the low availability of prey in some reserves, this is the capacity that can be supported. However, there are vast tracts of potential tiger habitat that can be used to improve prey density, develop tiger corridors and therefore support a much larger population,” said Y. Jhala of the Wildlife Institute of India (WII).
10,000-15,000
•K. Ullas Karanth, director, Centre for Wildlife Studies, however, said, “I would estimate the potential carrying capacity for tigers in India at 10,000 to 15,000, not the 3,000 we already have. When tiger recovery efforts began 50 years ago we had about 2,000 tigers.. If after all this effort and expenditure, we are satisfied with just 3,000 tigers, it points at a serious management problem: needlessly huge amount of money is being dumped repeatedly on the same 25,000-30,000 sq. km area where tigers are already at saturation densities, while other areas with potential for future recovery are starved of key investments.”
•Since 2006, the WII has been tasked with coordinating the tiger estimation exercise. The once-in-four-years exercise calculated, in 2006, that India had only 1,411 tigers. This rose to 1,706 in 2010 and 2,226 in 2014 on the back of improved conservation measures and new estimation methods.
📰 Think differently about healthcare
India’s public health system can no longer function within the shadows of its health services system
•In India, public health and health services have been synonymous. This integration has dwarfed the growth of a comprehensive public health system, which is critical to overcome some of the systemic challenges in healthcare.
•A stark increase in population growth, along with rising life expectancy, provides the burden of chronic diseases. Tackling this requires an interdisciplinary approach. An individual-centric approach within healthcare centres does little to promote well-being in the community. Seat belt laws, regulations around food and drug safety, and policies for tobacco and substance use as well as climate change and clean energy are all intrinsic to health, but they are not necessarily the responsibilities of healthcare services. As most nations realise the vitality of a robust public health system, India lacks a comprehensive model that isn’t subservient to healthcare services.
A different curriculum
•India’s public health workforce come from an estimated 51 colleges that offer a graduate programme in public health. This number is lower at the undergraduate level. In stark contrast, 238 universities offer a Master of Public Health (MPH) degree in the U.S.
•In addition to the quantitative problem, India also has a diversity problem. A diverse student population is necessary to create an interdisciplinary workforce. The 2017 Gorakhpur tragedy in Uttar Pradesh, the 2018 Majerhat bridge collapse in Kolkata, air pollution in Delhi and the Punjab narcotics crisis are all public health tragedies. In all these cases, the quality of healthcare services is critical to prevent morbidity and mortality. However, a well organised public health system with supporting infrastructure strives to prevent catastrophic events like this.
•Public health tracks range from research, global health, health communication, urban planning, health policy, environmental science, behavioural sciences, healthcare management, financing, and behavioural economics. In the U.S., it is routine for public health graduates to come from engineering, social work, medicine, finance, law, architecture, and anthropology. This diversity is further enhanced by a curriculum that enables graduates to become key stakeholders in the health system. Hence, strong academic programmes are critical to harness the potential that students from various disciplines will prospectively bring to MPH training.
•Investments in health and social services tend to take precedence over public health expenditure. While benefits from population-level investments are usually long term but sustained, they tend to accrue much later than the tenure of most politicians. This is often cited to be a reason for reluctance in investing in public health as opposed to other health and social services. This is not only specific to India; most national health systems struggle with this conundrum. A recent systematic review on Return on Investment (ROI) in public health looked at health promotion, legislation, social determinants, and health protection. They opine that a $1 investment in the taxation of sugary beverages can yield returns of $55 in the long term. Another study showed a $9 ROI for every dollar spent on early childhood health, while tobacco prevention programmes yield a 1,900% ROI for every dollar spent. The impact of saving valuable revenue through prevention is indispensable for growing economies like India.
Problem of health literacy
•Legislation is often shaped by public perception. While it is ideal for legislation to be informed by research, it is rarely the case. It is health literacy through health communication that shapes this perception. Health communication, an integral arm of public health, aims to disseminate critical information to improve the health literacy of the population. The World Health Organisation calls for efforts to improve health literacy, which is an independent determinant of better health outcome. Data from the U.S. show that close to half of Americans lack the necessary knowledge to act on health information and one-third of Europeans have problems with health literacy. India certainly has a serious problem with health literacy and it is the responsibility of public health professionals to close this gap.
•Equally important is a system of evaluating national programmes. While some fail due to the internal validity of the intervention itself, many fail from improper implementation. Programme planning, implementation and evaluation matrices will distinguish formative and outcome evaluation, so valuable time and money can be saved.
•The public health system looks at the social ecology and determinants focusing on optimising wellness. Healthcare services, on the other hand, primarily focus on preventing morbidity and mortality. A comprehensive healthcare system will seamlessly bridge the two.
A council for public health
•A central body along the lines of a council for public health may be envisaged to synergistically work with agencies such as the public works department, the narcotics bureau, water management, food safety, sanitation, urban and rural planning, housing and infrastructure to promote population-level health. In many ways, these agencies serve to bring in many facets of existing State and federal agencies and force them to see through the lens of public health. The proposed council for public health should also work closely with academic institutions to develop curriculum and provide license and accreditation to schools to promote interdisciplinary curriculum in public health.
•As international health systems are combating rising healthcare costs, there is an impending need to systematically make healthcare inclusive to all. While the proposed, comprehensive insurance programme Ayushman Bharat caters to a subset of the population, systemic reforms in public health will shift the entire population to better health. Regulatory challenges force governments to deploy cost-effective solutions while ethical challenges to create equitable services concerns all of India. With the infusion of technology driving costs on the secondary and tertiary end, it is going to be paramount for India to reinvigorate its public health system to maximise prevention. India’s public health system can no longer function within the shadow of its health services.
📰 Investment over subsidies
A reconfiguration of public policy is needed to replace agricultural subsidies with investment
•We are witnessing something akin to lobbying for a universal basic income whereby every Indian citizen gets money paid into their bank account. A recent proposal published in the print media is presented also as a solution to the current agrarian impasse. It argues for the removal of all agricultural subsidies, which range from fertilizer subsidies to those on interest, water and power, and distributing the saving among most of the rural population. To its authors, this scheme presents itself as addressing ‘rural’ and not just ‘farm’ distress. To evaluate what is being proposed as a way out of the present agrarian crisis it would be useful to understand what defines it and to recognise the originally intended role for the agricultural subsidy.
•At its core the agrarian crisis is a case of agricultural activity not yielding enough returns for a section of the farming population. This group is facing a declining farm size due to partitioning across generations. As this population grows the process of fragmentation of the family farm will continue, with succeeding generations staring at a shrinking pie. There are two solutions to this problem. One is the obvious one of enabling some members of each household to shift out of farming. The other is to reconfigure public expenditure on agriculture to raise the yield of land. Actually, the latter would serve both objectives.
•A reconfiguration of public policy is needed to replace agricultural subsidies by capital formation or ‘investment’.
•For three and a half decades now subsidies have progressively replaced public investment for agriculture. Having once been less than half that of investment it is now five times as large. Evidence points strongly to a case for moving some distance back. The impact of public investment on both the yield of land and rural poverty, encompassing a cohort wider than farmers, is far greater than that of fertilizer, electricity, irrigation and interest rate subsidy. This crucial finding is due to the Sino-Indian team of economists Shenggen Fan, Ashok Gulati and Sukhadeo Thorat. In their study, the investments found most valuable were “educational” and on rural roads.
•The agricultural subsidies that are now found wasteful were designed with a purpose. The plan was to place agricultural production on a sound footing. It envisioned raising the yield of land, which works to generate rising output without inflation and with reasonable profit. The price of food has historically been high for Indians at the bottom of the income distribution. This has held back industrialisation and the desirable shifting of population away from farming to other activities. Even a total elimination of subsidies to enable this transformation via public investment may not be such a bad thing. However, eliminating them merely to implement a universal basic income would be unwise.
📰 Non-communicable diseases top killers in South-East Asia: WHO
Diabetes, cancer and heart disease responsible for over 70% of deaths worldwide
•Non-communicable diseases (NCDs) — mainly cardiovascular diseases, chronic respiratory diseases, diabetes and cancer — continue to be the top killers in the South-East Asia Region, claiming 8.5 million lives each year, according to the World Health Organisation (WHO).
Health goal
•Containing the NCDs has been listed by the WHO as its health goal for this year along with reducing mortality related to air pollution and climate change, global influenza pandemic etc.
•“One third of these deaths are premature and occur before the age of 70, affecting economically productive individuals. The four ‘major’ NCDs are caused, to a large extent, by four modifiable behavioural risk factors: tobacco use, unhealthy diet, insufficient physical activity and harmful use of alcohol. The NCDs disproportionately affect the poor, impoverish families, and place a growing burden on health care systems,” noted the WHO.
•Non-communicable diseases such as diabetes, cancer and heart disease, are collectively responsible for over 70% of all deaths worldwide, or 41 million people. These include 15 million people dying prematurely, aged between 30 and 69.
Fibre, whole grains
•Dr. K.K. Aggarwal, former president of the Indian Medical Association, said: “A study conducted world-wide has noted that consuming fibre and whole grains can reduce health risks from non-communicable diseases such as heart disease.
•The paper published in The Lancet indicates that eating fibre-rich foods reduces the incidence of coronary heart disease, stroke, type 2 diabetes and colorectal cancer by 16% to 24%. A higher fibre intake is also associated with lower bodyweight, systolic blood pressure and total cholesterol when compared with lower intake.
•Doctors then recommend — eat less and enjoy your food by eating slowly, fill half your plate with fruits and vegetables, avoid oversized portions which causes weight gain, at least half of your grains should be whole grains, limit consumption of food high in trans fats..
