📰 Study finds microplastics pollution in the Ganga
They are recognised as major source of marine pollution
•An analysis of the stretches of the river Ganga by Delhi-based environment NGO Toxics Link has revealed pollution by microplastics, defined as synthetic solid particles sized ranging 1 micrometre (μm) to 5 millimetre (mm), which are insoluble in water.
•The Ganga flows across five States and has been at the centre of a massive multi-crore undertaking by the Centre, in the form of the National Mission for Clean Ganga, to rid it off contamination.
•Microplastics are recognised as a major source of marine pollution. Untreated sewage from many cities along the river’s course, industrial waste and religious offerings wrapped in non-degradable plastics pile pollutants into the river as it flows through several densely populated cities. The plastic products and waste materials released or dumped in the river break down and are eventually broken down into micro particles and the river finally transports significantly large quantities downstream into the ocean, which is the ultimate sink of all plastics being used by humans.
•“Essentially all along microplastics are flowing into the river system. It does reflect or suggest a direct linkage between the poor state of both solid and liquid waste management; hence it is critically important to initiate steps to remediate it, said Priti Mahesh, Chief Coordinator at Toxics Link, said in a statement.
•The study, ‘Quantitative analysis of Microplastics along River Ganga’ was based on an analysis of water samples at Haridwar, Kanpur and Varanasi.
Highest concentration
•The highest concentration of such plastic was found at Varanasi, comprising single-use and secondary plastic products. The water testing was carried out in collaboration with the National Institute of Oceanography (NIO) in Goa. The samples were tested to identify the exact type or resin core and the results show presence of at least 40 different kinds of polymers as microplastics.
•The shapes and nature of the observed resins ranged from fibres to fragments, films and beads. Fragments were the predominant shape in all locations, followed by film and fibre.
•Microbeads were observed in Varanasi and Kanpur, while no beads were found in Haridwar. “ The most frequent size range observed in all the samples was <300µm,” said Dr. Mahua Saha, the lead researcher from the NIO.
•Previous studies say that over 663 marine species are affected adversely due to marine debris and 11% of them are said to be related to microplastic ingestion alone.
•“We need to address the threat of plastic on aquatic life more realistically and with a futuristic eye. Various stakeholders, including industry, the government and civil society organisations,
•need to join hands for improving plastic waste management and the subsequent reduction in microplastic pollution”, stated Satish Sinha, Associate Director at Toxics Link.
Bench quashes bail of BSP MLA’s husband, calls HC decision ‘a grave error’
•The Supreme Court on Thursday held that the bail granted to the husband of a legislator in Madhya Pradesh is an example of two “parallel systems” of justice — one for the rich and the other for the poor — at work.
•“India cannot have two parallel legal systems, one for the rich and the resourceful and those who wield political power and influence, and the other for the small men without resources and capabilities to obtain justice or fight injustice. The existence of a dual legal system will only chip away the legitimacy of the law,” a Bench of Justices D.Y. Chandrachud and M.R. Shah observed in a 33-page judgment.
•The court quashed the bail granted to Govind Singh, husband of Rambai, BSP MLA. It ordered that Singh be shifted to another jail.
A ‘grave error’
•The Bench termed the High Court’s grant of bail to a man with criminal antecedents who has been evading arrest a “grave error”. Singh is accused of murdering Congress leader Devendra Chaurasia in 2019.
•Shocked by the “machinations” at work even within the police force to protect Singh, the Supreme Court drew the spotlight on an order passed by the trial court judge in February, bringing on record the fact that he is being targeted for standing up to a “politically influential accused”. The apex court asked the Madhya Pradesh High Court Chief Justice to launch a time-bound probe into the trial judge’s order.
•The Supreme Court said the “independence of the judiciary is the independence of each and every judge”. The case pointed to a larger malaise of application of political pressure on trial judges. A judge expressing fear for his own safety in a case involving the husband of a powerful person did not bode well for the entire judiciary.
•“A judiciary that is susceptible to such pressures allows politicians to operate with impunity and incentivises criminality to flourish in the political apparatus of the State,” Justice Chandrachud wrote.
📰 The direction that the National Curriculum Framework needs to take
Shaping a National Curriculum Framework using only the National Education Policy will be shortsighted
•The National Council of Educational Research and Training (NCERT) has tasked the State Councils of Educational Research and Training (SCERTs) to develop four State Curriculum Frameworks (SCFs). They pertain to School Education, Early Childhood Care and Education (ECCE), Teacher Education (TE) and Adult Education (AE). This is as in the recommendations of the National Education Policy (NEP) 2020.
•At the first level, the NCERT will provide templates to the States to develop four draft SCFs, the drafts will feed into formulating the National Curriculum Frameworks, or NCFs, and the final version of the NCFs will be used as guiding documents to finalise the SCFs. The SCERTs are also supposed to develop 25 position papers, which will be similarly used to develop national position papers. The cycle seems to be designed to take onboard suggestions from all States, thereby making the NCFs representative and inclusive documents. The NCERT will also provide support to the SCERTs in terms of guidance, training of personnel, and technology platforms to develop these documents.
Much data collection
•So far so good. But the NCERT will also provide e-templates for each of these tasks “which will be filled-up by the States/UTs [Union Territories]”. Similarly, survey questionnaires/multiple choice questions, or MCQs, will also be provided to conduct surveys among various stakeholders. Thus, massive data collection seems to be in progress. Such surveys are designed, let us accept, with all good intentions to take on board views from all sections of the population. This is without doubt a must in a democracy, particularly in matters of deciding the aims, the objectives, and the content of curriculum because it affects everyone.
•However, the gathering and the organisation of such data to be used in curricular decisions requires more than just good intentions. The kind of questionnaires and template that one develops can emphasise certain kinds of recommendations while muting some others. Similarly, the cleaning and organising of the data may pick up what is already in the minds of the people handling such data and filter out what does not fit within their thinking. Even if these two problems are somehow solved, the problem of what the majority ‘wants’ and what ‘ought to be’ done remains. For example, if one asks about public opinion on the medium of instruction for the ECCE, the overwhelming majority is likely to favour English. Does it mean this would be in the best interest of the children and society?
Some valid questions
•A huge opinion gathering exercise preceded NEP 2020. One wonders why this could not prevent it from becoming a managerial policy geared to make education a training endeavour to produce a workforce for market needs. The policy is chock-a-block with words for values, capabilities and skills, all justified as needed for emerging market requirements. Furthermore, these lists are just heaps of words, devoid of any organising principle to decide priorities, inter-relationships and deriving curricular content and pedagogy from them. A similar unorganised list is repeated ad nauseum in the name of pedagogical recommendations. And yet, it fails to provide appropriate criteria to choose pedagogy at different stages and for different curricular areas.
•The so-called foundational stage crumbles under the slightest scrutiny on organisational as well as pedagogical grounds. The ECCE plus Classes one and two (first five years of education, for the age group three years to eight years) is proclaimed as one stage. But the ECCE and Classes one and two will be run in separate institutions; their teachers’ qualifications, salaries, and training are supposed to be different; their curriculum frameworks are supposed to be different. One wonders what makes it a single block.
•On pedagogical grounds, the capabilities of self-restraint, dealing with adults and people outside family, concentration span, responsible behaviour, self-directed activities and understanding the value of completing a task widely differ for a four-year-old and a six-year-old. These are the capabilities which determine the nature of pedagogy and formal learning; not the forming of synapses and the growth of brain mass.
•Thus, the people developing NCFs have to deal with these issues in addition to finding a method of making proper sense of gathered public opinion. If the National Curriculum Framework for School Education (NCFSE) is purely guided by the NEP 2020, we are unlikely to ensure the sound development of our schoolchildren. Fortunately, there is a way through which the teams developing the NCF and the SCFs can mitigate — if not completely solve — the problems created by the NEP 2020 as well as take on board public opinion in an appropriate manner. Furthermore, such a framework can also help in making appropriate use of what is good in this policy, for it is not completely devoid of good recommendations. For example, flexibility in secondary education, examination reform, more exposure to Indian languages, and taking on board Indian knowledge systems can make our education system better.
Documents of value
•One way out of this problem is to take a lot of help from the Secondary Education Commission Report (SECR) and Zakir Hussain’s Basic National Education (BNE) report. The purpose of surveys on public opinion is to create a consensus on basic values, and the vision and the direction our education system should take. The SERC assumes, without saying, that the democratic polity we adopted gives us that consensus. They also collected a lot of data, but that data was analysed and organised in the light of the vision of the individual, society, and education inherent in the democratic ideal. Thus, they had all the three necessary elements: the overall framework of values and future direction, current issues and problems of the education system, and public opinion. The SECR makes sense of the latter two in the light of the earlier. And it rigorously works out the aims of education, pedagogy and content to achieve those aims. The logical rigor is very clear in working our aims from the democratic values and pedagogy
from the aims. It is somewhat loose in working out the content. But the direction is clear.
•Another useful document in this regard is the BNE. The logical flow in this document may be somewhat amiss at one or two places in the beginning. But the rigorous derivation of educational aims from the vision of society, curricular objectives from the aims, and content from the objectives are starkly clear. These are coherent and rigorous documents because they place the values and principles of democracy and a morally, aesthetically and intellectually rich individual life at the starting point and try to resolve current economic problems in alignment with them. The current policy reverses the order. It is not that the content from these documents should be borrowed; rather, that the approach they take has much to teach. It is rigorous, rational, and very sound.
•Interestingly, the first edition of the BNE was in 1938 (https://bit.ly/2V2I9ij), SECR was written in the 1950s. Patricia White, a British philosopher of education, first argued for making democracy the basis for working out the school curriculum in 1973. John White worked out a rigorous method for the same in a paper published in 1998. The BNE and the SECR do not philosophically argue or give the detailed exposition of the method; they make practical use of this approach. It is somewhat surprising that the reports and curriculum frameworks developed after the 1980s in our country are completely overwhelmed by the current problems or by the pedagogical ideals of child-centrism and simply assumed that vague assumptions about the democratic ideals mentioned here and there randomly was enough. The objectives and content in these later documents are based on other fashionable or political or current issues.
Placing the debate
•It is time to again place the democratic ideal at the centre of our education. Not as an object of lip service or reverence, but as the source of a framework of values and principles to judge and justify all other aspects. Otherwise, we are likely to make the curriculum a political football, and stir up debates that border on cacophony. Let us remember that opinions without supporting arguments are nothing more than assertions. And one citizen’s assertions are only as good as another’s. This leaves the conclusion of the debate to the most powerful. The only way to wrest the judgment from the hands of the powerful is to have the curricular debates rooted in democratic values.
📰 Limits of cooperation: On reforms in cooperative sector
Reforms in cooperative sector should not be at the cost of federal principles
•The cooperative movement certainly needs reform and revitalisation. Beset by political interference, many cooperative societies do not hold elections regularly, while some are superseded frequently. The 97th Constitution Amendment, which came into effect in 2012, was a major step towards infusing autonomy, democratic functioning and professional management. The recent Supreme Court verdict holding the amendment unconstitutional to the extent it applied to cooperative societies under the control of the States is a reminder that even well-intentioned efforts towards reforms cannot be at the cost of the quasi-federal principles underlying the Constitution. The amendment added Part IXB to the Constitution, concerning cooperative societies. Part IXB delineated the contours of what State legislation on cooperative societies ought to contain, including provisions on the maximum number of directors in each society, reservation for seats for SCs, or STs, and women, besides the duration of the terms of elected members, among others. The question before the Court was whether the 97th Amendment impacted the legislative domain of the State Legislatures and, therefore, required ratification by half the legislatures, in addition to the required two-thirds majority in Parliament. The Gujarat High Court had found the amendment invalid for want of such ratification. The Supreme Court, by a 2:1 majority, upheld the judgment holding the amendment invalid, but only in relation to cooperatives under the States. The elaborate amendment would hold good for multi-State cooperative societies, on which Parliament was competent to enact laws.
•A significant limitation on Parliament’s amending power is the requirement that certain kinds of amendments to the Constitution must be ratified by 50% of the State legislatures. The Union government believed that as the subject of ‘cooperative societies’ in the State List was not altered in any way by the 97th Amendment, and that it only outlined guidelines on any law on cooperatives that the Assemblies may enact, the ratification was not necessary. A key principle from the judgment is that the ratification requirement will apply if there is any attempt to fetter the State legislatures in any way while enacting a law in their own domain, even if there is no attempt to alter the distribution of legislative powers between the Union and States. Thus, in the absence of ratification by the States, the amendment that sought to prescribe the outlines of State laws on a State subject did not pass constitutional muster. The judgment may mean that the concern expressed by some about the adverse implications of the formation of a new Ministry of Cooperation on federal principles could be true. However, there is no denying that the scope for democratising the functioning of cooperative societies and enhancing their autonomy remains unchanged.
📰 Will the new e-commerce rules really favour consumers?
The intent of the rules is unclear and there are several consumer protection rules already in place
• In June, the Union Ministry of Consumer Affairs, Food and Public Distribution came out with a list of proposed amendments to the Consumer Protection Act of 2019. These include appointment of a Chief Compliance Officer and a Resident Grievance Officer, provisions of fallback liability, registration of e-commerce entities and a ban on flash sales. The Centre claims that these amendments try to rein in unfair trade practices adopted by e-commerce companies and intend to take care of the interests of consumers. But not everyone agrees. Anupam Manur and Prithwiraj Mukherjee discuss the proposed amendments in a conversation moderated by Prashanth Perumal J. Edited excerpts:
What is your view on the draft e-commerce rules? Do they favour the consumers as the government claims?
•Anupam Manur: I’m critical of these new set of rules on multiple accounts. The first is the sheer scope of the law. The rules are applicable to all goods and services bought or sold over a digital or electronic network. When we say “all goods and services”, it includes your food delivery apps, hotel booking websites, etc. So, basically any kind of e-commerce. That’s a large move to be coming from the Ministry of Consumer Affairs, which brings me to my second point about overlapping jurisdictions. There’s a lot of talk about dominant firms. The regulation of these firms should actually come within the ambit of the Competition Commission of India. Then there’s talk about data privacy, which again is an issue which should be addressed by a data protection law. I think the rules are largely trying to push the government’s ‘Make in India’ initiative and favour small and medium scale enterprises, all under the veil of consumer protection.
•Prithwiraj Mukherjee: The draft is very complicated and the intent of the new rules is not clear. I’m assuming that the intent is to prevent one or two dominant firms from taking over not just e-commerce but commerce in general. But it’s one thing to have a law and another thing to uphold that law. I’ll give you an example from a slightly different domain. For a long time, we have what is known as a ‘Do Not Disturb’ list in our mobile phone sector. And most of us are probably registered on that list. Has that stopped you from getting spam? In fact, my service provider is sending me spam from scammers. And I am reasonably certain that these people are doing it through the service provider and that they didn’t get my number through any other way. If we were to bring this into e-commerce, the question is whether the same thing is going to happen with the new draft rules. I don’t know. So, how you uphold a legislation is just as important as the legislation itself.
Don’t you think putting the rules down on paper gives power to government officials to go after companies that break the rules?
•Prithwiraj Mukherjee: In principle the draft rules seem okay. There might be hidden consequences that we’ll discover only with time.
•Anupam Manur: Even in principle, the draft rules are unnecessary. E-commerce platforms already have customer care centres where you can lodge complaints. There is competition between platforms. Beyond that, there are a lot of other quality checks that these marketplaces put in place. There are consumer courts that cheated customers can access. I don’t think you need a separate nodal officer or a grievance officer. That just adds to the bureaucracy. Anyway, there’s not enough state capacity for implementing some of these rules. If you start a law knowing that you can’t implement it, I think it’s bound to fail.
Among other things, the draft asks companies to favour domestic goods over foreign ones. Do you smell any protectionism in the new rules?
•Prithwiraj Mukherjee: You’re using protectionism as a bad word. Every country has its own form of protectionism. In fact, the moment you charge an import duty, it means you are implicitly protecting your own people against some other country’s imports. That said, what we know is that a big company will always find a way to subvert a few laws. Let me give you the example of a ban on tobacco advertising. Did that stop India’s largest tobacco company from sponsoring a World Cup or the Indian cricket team? No, the company just found another way. At the end of the day, I think it is about ticking boxes. The spirit of the rule will never be implemented. What will happen is that companies will find increasingly creative ways of subverting the letter of the law.
•Anupam Manur: The fact that they’re asked to provide a domestic alternative at the same time... I think that’s not a level playing field. I don’t see any kind of economic reasoning for why an e-commerce marketplace has to push for a domestic alternative. If the domestic alternative is really that good, that company can compete. People will choose based on the quality of the products, price, etc. So, I will say that this is protectionism. To me, marketplaces being asked to provide domestic alternatives reeks of protectionism.
Could there be unintended consequences due to provisions such as the ban on flash sales, fallback liabilities, etc.?
•Anupam Manur: I don’t even see how the ban on flash sales is supposed to help consumers. You would think that flash sales help consumers. Second, the wording of the provision is just so wrong. They’ve said things like “significant reduction in price”. What do you mean by a “significant reduction in price”? Is a 20% discount significant for an iPhone? The rule is just open to different interpretations. But, as Prithwik said, these big companies are experts at regulatory arbitrage. They will find a way to negotiate and navigate through these things. It will be the smaller sellers and e-commerce platforms that will not be able to navigate through these laws. So, what you’re doing, in fact, is the opposite of what you wanted to achieve, which is to help out your small sellers. The draft rules are just going to increase costs for e-commerce.
•Regarding fallback liability, again it makes no economic sense. It displays a brazen misunderstanding of what marketplaces are supposed to be. It’s like holding a kirana store liable for selling you washing powder that is defective. That’s not how marketplaces work.
•Prithwiraj Mukherjee: I agree with Anupam on the issue of flash sales. I think it’s a terrible idea for the brand: it devalues your brand but that should not be the regulator’s concern. But I will say something about deep discounting. Now, the draft does not really specify what exactly constitutes a deep discount. But let’s go a little bit into the history and understand why they may have done this. In the U.S., there are some big players with big pockets who did what is known as loss leader pricing. Walmart, for example, would go into a small town in the U.S. and set up business. It would then offer expensive products such as medicines for free. This caused small pharmacies that cannot match Walmart to go out of business. If you look at the American retail space, the small-time retailers essentially went out of business.
•France realised that deep discounting can create problems. So, what it mandated is that you cannot sell anything cheaper than the price you bought it for. So, you have to actually talk about your procurement price. And there are only two approved sales seasons a year when stores can get rid of excess inventory by selling at lower than the cost price. The idea is to prevent a Walmart-like situation. So, in principle, I am not against having a law against deep discounting.
•Anupam Manur: I think retail density in India is amazing compared to many countries in the world. So, again, this comes back to the question of necessity. Do we need this law in this fashion at this moment? The answer is no. You have to do a cost-benefit analysis comparing the harm that the rules can potentially cause versus the potential benefits. I think the harm is higher at this point. There is a lot of competition among e-commerce retailers. So, I don’t see a need for this law just yet. I don’t think it is forward-looking either.
What do you see as the real reason behind these rules?
•Anupam Manur: I think we’ll be going into speculative territory, which is slightly unsafe. But in most people’s reading, it is just to help consumers. But if you look at the overall policy approach taken by this government over the last few years, that tells me that the government wants to encourage ‘Make in India’ because that’s one of its flagship schemes. They are trying to do this through rules without realising the kind of harm they can do in the long run, even for the domestic Indian firms. A series of steps in different domains — from increasing import tariffs on various products to encouraging domestic manufacturing — tell me that they want promote domestic industries.
•Prithwiraj Mukherjee: It is difficult to impute motives. But even if you were to impute motives, I don’t think vote bank politics is relevant here. I don’t think anybody’s going to vote based on these rules. Could there be lobbyists? Yes. But I am not willing to speculate.
What kind of rules would actually protect consumers?
•Prithwiraj Mukherjee: There are two principles. One is that consumers should not be cheated. So, any law that deals with deceptive advertising, leaking of data, spamming, etc. is in principle desirable. The second is that the monopolist should be properly regulated. Even the most capitalist economies will take action against monopolies. The other thing is you have a large number of gig workers in the e-commerce sector. Their needs need to be addressed.
•Anupam Manur: Before any form of government intervention, I would ask what is the market failure that you’re trying to address. Concentration of market power is a genuine concern that requires some form of intervention, but not through consumer protection tools. You have an entire body dedicated to doing this, which is called the Competition Commission of India. The second kind of market failure could be information asymmetry. But remember the whole point of the e-commerce marketplace is to reduce information asymmetry as well. Consumers can compare different products, rate and review products, etc. If you need to do something more, you can set quality standards. Beyond that, people who have been cheated have a consumer court. If you look at our standard shopping experience, sometimes you can buy things which are substandard. You either live with it and learn from the experience and buy better next time or if you’re deeply hurt and it’s a really expensive buy, you move the court. Consumers already had these options available to them. There’s no reason why a lot of the consumer protection rules that the government has come up with for the e-commerce retailers should not apply to brick-and-mortar stores. The fact that they’re going after e-commerce alone should tell you that their entire motive is different.
