📰 Rhino population up by 200 in Kaziranga
Last census conducted in 2018 put number of one-horned herbivore at 2,413
•The population of the greater one-horned or Indian rhinoceros in the Kaziranga National Park and Tiger Reserve has increased by 200 in four years, the latest census of the World Heritage Site’s flagship animal has revealed.
•The last rhino census conducted in 2018 had put the number at 2,413.
•Though the tiger reserve measures 1,355 sq. km, the census was confined to a rhino–bearing area of 864 sq. km. It was conducted from March 25 to 28 but the counting was done on the two days in between.
•Fifty elephants were deployed to cover all the 84 compartments of the park, its addition areas and civil areas. Apart from 125 enumerators and independent observers, 252 frontline staff were involved in the exercise. “We estimated 2,613 rhinos, which indicates an annual increase of 50 rhinos since 2018. During this period, Kaziranga lost 400 rhinos due to natural causes while poachers killed three,” Jatindra Sarma, Kaziranga’s director, told The Hindu .
Drones used
•This year’s census had a first — the use of drones for the recheck of 26 park compartments where the sample survey was done.
•Of the rhinos estimated, 1,823 were adults, 365 were sub-adults, 279 juveniles and 146 calves. The females outnumbered the males by 183. The gender of 273 adults and sub-adults could not be specified.
•A similar census was conducted in two more of Assam’s rhino habitats earlier in March. The Orang National Park recorded an increase of 24 rhinos over the figure of 101 in 2018. There was no incident of poaching in the 78.81 sq. km park on the northern bank of the Brahmaputra river during this period. The Pobitora Wildlife Sanctuary recorded five more rhinos than in 2018. Of the 107 rhinos, 50 were females, 30 males and 27 calves.
Concerns were raised over projects’ proximity to Tamil Nadu.
•India will set up hybrid power projects in three Islands off Jaffna, effectively replacing the Chinese venture cleared by Colombo last year.
•The MoU for the project was among those signed during a meeting between visiting External Affairs Minister (EAM) S. Jaishankar and his Sri Lankan counterpart G.L. Peiris late on Monday. It is the third Indian energy project coming up in Sri Lanka’s north and east, after the recent agreements for National Thermal Power Corporation’s solar venture in the eastern Sampur town, and the Adani Group’s renewable energy projects in Mannar and Pooneryn in the north.
•In January 2021, Sri Lanka’s Cabinet decided to award renewable energy projects in Nainativu , Delft or Neduntheevu , and Analaitivu islands to Chinese company Sinosoar-Etechwin, following an Asia Development Bank-backed competitive bid. India was quick to express concern to the Sri Lankan side over the Chinese project coming up in the Palk Bay, barely 50 km off Tamil Nadu. New Delhi offered to execute the same project with a grant rather than a loan. Unable to pick a side for over a year, Colombo kept the project in suspension, apparently putting off China. In a recent press briefing, the Chinese Ambassador in Colombo voiced rare criticism over the projects being interrupted for “unknown reasons”, and said it sent out the wrong message to potential foreign investors.
•Meanwhile, India and Sri Lanka have also agreed to set up a Maritime Rescue Coordination Center (MRCC), signalling greater defence sector collaboration between the neighbours. The initiative, involving Bharath Electronics and a $ 6 million Indian grant, obtained Cabinet approval last week. India will also help develop fisheries harbours in Point Pedro, Pesalai, and Gurunagar in the Northern Province, and Balapitiya, south of capital Colombo, in addition to supporting schools in the southern Galle district with computer labs and smart boards, extending a grant for Sri Lanka’s Unique Digital Identity project, and collaborating in diplomatic training, a statement said.
Gotabaya-TNA talks
•On developments in regard to Sri Lanka’s long-pending Tamil question, India has welcomed the recent talks between President Gotabaya Rajapaksa and the Tamil National Alliance (TNA), the largest grouping of legislators elected from the north and east.
•In a separate statement issued hours after Mr. Jaishankar’s meeting with a TNA delegation on Monday, the Indian High Commission said the Tamil leaders briefed the visiting EAM about their meeting with Mr. Rajapaksa on March 25. “They conveyed that the issues of release of political prisoners, land utilisation, missing persons, 13th Amendment implementation and diaspora investment were discussed in the meeting,” the statement said.
•Mr. Jaishankar discussed the same when he called on the President, the statement said, without mentioning the specifics of the discussion. The EAM has so far not publicly commented on the Tamil question or power devolution during this visit, while a tweet after his meeting with the TNA said he “discussed” the realisation of Tamil aspirations for equality, justice, peace, and dignity. During his last visit in January 2021, he convyed a strong message to the Sri Lankan leadership that it was in “Sri Lanka’s own interest” that the expectations of the Tamil people are fulfilled. “That applies equally to commitments made by the Sri Lankan government on meaningful devolution, including the 13th Amendment,” he told a Colombo media conference then.
•The official statement issued on Monday said Mr. Jaishankar welcomed “the positive developments” regarding the issues on the Government-TNA agenda, adding that he emphasised that the Government of India was “consistently supportive” of the realisation of the aspirations of the Tamils of Sri Lanka for equality, justice, peace and dignity within the framework of a united Sri Lanka, in addition to its ongoing development partnership in the region.
•In last week’s meeting, the first between the TNA and Mr. Rajapaksa since his election in 2019, the government made fresh assurances to address long-pending Tamil concerns, promising to look into the release of long-detained suspects arrested under Sri Lanka’s widely-criticised terrorism law, land grabs by state agencies, enforced disappearances, and development of the north and east. However, the government postponed discussing the TNA’s core demand for a political solution through a new constitutional arrangement devolving more powers to the provinces. Mr. Jaishankar encouraged the TNA to pursue those matters that the government has agreed to address, rather than wait only for the new constitutional settlement that may take time, sources present at the discussion said.
📰 Centralising tests: On common entrance exams and merit
A common test as the sole determinant of merit for admission is problematic
•The decision to conduct a Common University Entrance Test (CUET) for admission in undergraduate programmes in all University Grants Commission-funded Central Universities (CUs) from 2022-23 has triggered concerns. No doubt, the proposal is influenced by the National Education Policy, which advocates common entrance examinations by the National Testing Agency for undergraduate and graduate admissions and fellowships. The concept as such is not alien to the CUs. Over a dozen CUs admit students to undergraduate programmes using Central Universities Common Entrance Test (CUCET) scores. The proposed CUET, in 13 languages, seeks to make it mandatory for 45 CUs — there are 54 such institutions — to conduct admissions using a single national level test score. This would spare aspirants from taking multiple entrance tests and also eliminate unfair advantage gained from disproportionate scores in class XII. Critics are evidently viewing this development through the prism of the Narendra Modi government’s obsession with pushing the ‘one nation, one standard’ maxim in different sectors. But as early as 1984, the Madhuri R. Shah Committee, looking into the working of CUs, recommended a national merit examination. In the instant case, the UGC has clarified the existing scheme of reservations in individual universities would not be disturbed.
•Yet, the CUET may not qualify as a wholesome determinant of merit given the educational and regional disparities in India. While a vast majority study in State Boards, the test would be based on the NCERT syllabus, followed largely in CBSE schools. The policy limits the Class XII marks as a qualification benchmark and not a co-determinant of merit. With the test being introduced just ahead of an admission season, students, whose learning process was disrupted by COVID-19, may find it challenging. Education Ministers from Tamil Nadu, Meghalaya and Arunachal Pradesh have flagged some legitimate concerns. In the North-east, the argument about the test possibly affecting the interest of State domiciles to secure admission in a university in the region cannot be ignored. There are genuine apprehensions about CUET serving as a precursor to introducing a nationwide entrance test for all undergraduate courses — the UGC has said all institutions are free to use the test scores for admissions. It has been sufficiently demonstrated that common entrance tests spawn the coaching industry and induce cost-heavy hybrid courses from class VI onwards, creating a divide between the haves and have-nots. The country has miles to go in enabling access to entry-level higher education and bridging the gender and economic gap in its university portals. In such circumstances, it needs to be dispassionately examined if prescribing a single entrance test as a sole determinant of merit, either for CUs or for the higher education system as a whole, is pragmatic.
📰 Unreformable criminal justice
Any project aimed at criminal justice reform must accept the problems ingrained in our system instead of wishing them away
•India’s criminal justice regime is beset with problems which seem ingrained in not only the constitutive fabric of institutions, but also in the psyche of their functionaries. Much like we have learned to live with the pandemic, we must learn to live with such problems. As Professor Andrew Ashworth said, “A just and coherent criminal justice system is an unrealistic expectation of the people”. It is not our case that we must stop attempting to rid ourselves of such problems, but to ensure that our institutional responses reflect an acceptance of the depth of their roots.
The problems that are here to stay
•The first such problem is the disposal of pending cases. There are more than 4.4 crore cases pending before the judiciary. It is unlikely that this problem will go away any time soon. Second, justice mechanisms will remain inaccessible to marginalised classes of citizens. As Amartya Sen said, our justice system follows a transcendental institutionalist approach where the focus is on getting the institutional arrangements right without regard to the world that emerges from such arrangement. In such a world, where the focus has been upon institution building rather than capacity building, marginalisation of vulnerable sections of society is inevitable.
•The third is the problem of abuse of power by the police. The colonial mindset with which the institution was created is persistent. It determines and governs the manner in which the police discharge their functions. Our stress on crime control values too promotes such abuse of power. To hope that such abuse will end is just wishful thinking unless we are prepared to overhaul the police system overnight. Fourth, crime prevention is a utopian goal of our criminal justice system. Achieving a hundred per cent rate of success in crime prevention through either laws or policing is an unattainable ideal. Successive empirical research studies have shown that higher punishment has little impact on lowering crime rates. Similarly, initiatives such as community policing mechanisms and situational crime prevention are yet to deliver any concrete results.
•Fifth, diversionary principles in the treatment of offenders are yet to materialise. Even as several Law Commissions and committees have recommended non-custodial measures of punishment of offenders, these are yet to translate into practice. Even when we have a problem of overcrowding of prisons, custodial punishments are seen by the governments as a more effective measure. Sixth, there is a dearth of reliable state-sponsored data collection, maintenance and analysis mechanisms. The National Crime Records Bureau’s data mark the extent of such data collection and analysis. The methodologies adopted by the reports can be criticised on multiple grounds. Little effort is made by the state to map the perceptions of justice by the victims and the common man. The state also does not seem to realise that there is a dearth of reliable data.
•It must be noted that problems are not limited to the ones highlighted. Reforms in criminal laws and criminal justice, however, seem to have been recommended and conducted with the assumption that these problems will go away with time and effort. Our experience shows that this is not true. On the contrary, it must be assumed that these problems are here to stay unless drastic changes are made concurrently at the institutional, social and individual levels.
Accepting issues
•Accepting these problems as assumptions is likely to have a favourable impact on the way we plan our institutional reforms and responses. To illustrate, if we accept that our institutional arrangements cannot guarantee access to justice for the most vulnerable sections of society, our approach would automatically shift towards building the capacity of such sections to tap into the criminal justice system. Similarly, it is only when we assume that abuse of power by the police is not going anywhere and that imposing mere ethical obligations on police officers will not resolve the problem can we move into the realm of developing independent investigative procedures and stern punitive sanctions against errant police officers. If we accept that the problem of pendency of cases has acquired such huge proportions that we cannot dispose of all of these cases in 10 lifetimes, maybe we would be able to rein in our tendency to over-criminalise conduct.
•Any and all recommendations made by researchers and reformists must be made after considering these problems to be a reality. Any project aimed at criminal justice reform must instead accept the problems we have as assumptions. Only then can we can shift the discourse to bringing about holistic reforms in our criminal justice system.
📰 Bridging the bay in quest of a stronger BIMSTEC
The grouping has potential as a natural platform for development cooperation in a rapidly changing Indo-Pacific region
•Sri Lanka is gearing up to host the Fifth Bay of Bengal Initiative for Multi-Sectoral Technical and Economic Cooperation (BIMSTEC) Summit, now in its silver jubilee year (the summit is being held in virtual/hybrid mode on March 30, and Sri Lanka is the current BIMSTEC chair). This special occasion makes it imperative for BIMSTEC leaders to reinforce their commitments and efforts in building the momentum of collaborations in the Bay of Bengal region for the security and development of all.
•This summit is expected to build the required momentum of collaborations among the member states — Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Myanmar, Nepal, Sri Lanka and Thailand — as there has been commendable teamwork among them and a finalisation of several agreements to enhance regional strategic and economic integration. The unique ecology of BIMSTEC is witnessing enriched political support and commitment from India.
•Undoubtedly, BIMSTEC has special significance for India in a changing mental map of the region. India has made the Bay of Bengal integral to India’s ‘Neighbourhood First’ and ‘Act East’ policies which can accelerate the process of regional integration. BIMSTEC matters for India and the region.
An area of importance
•Finalising the BIMSTEC Charter; BIMSTEC Master Plan for Transport Connectivity; BIMSTEC Convention on Mutual Legal Assistance in Criminal Matters; BIMSTEC Technology Transfer Facility (TTF); cooperation between diplomatic academies/training institutions; and a template of Memorandum of Association for the future establishment of BIMSTEC centres/entities present signs of optimism as well as the comeback of the Bay of Bengal as a new economic and strategic space.
•Further, the economic and strategic significance of the Bay of Bengal is growing rapidly with a re-emergence of the idea of the ‘Indo-Pacific’ region. This notion assumes that the growing economic, geopolitical and security connections between the Western Pacific and the Indian Ocean regions are creating a shared strategic space. The Bay of Bengal is evolving as the centre of the Indo-Pacific region again. The renewed focus has given a new lease of life to the developmental efforts in the region, in particular BIMSTEC.
•As the BIMSTEC process turns 25 years, it is all set to make visible progress through advancing concrete cooperation among the member states. They have invested some fresh energy in the last couple of years to make BIMSTEC a valuable institution for regional integration and collaboration.
A bridge between Asias
•BIMSTEC has huge potential as a natural platform for development cooperation in a rapidly changing geopolitical calculus and can leverage its unique position as a pivot in the Indo-Pacific region. There has been tangible progress in BIMSTEC cooperation in several areas that include security, counter-terrorism, intelligence sharing, cybersecurity and coastal security, and transport connectivity and tourism, among others.
•The growing value of BIMSTEC and its attempt to generate synergy through collective efforts by member states can be understood, for three key reasons. First, there is a greater appreciation of BIMSTEC’s potential due to geographical contiguity, abundant natural and human resources, and rich historical linkages and a cultural heritage for promoting deeper cooperation in the region. Indeed, with a changed narrative and approach, the Bay of Bengal has the potential to become the epicentre of the Indo-Pacific idea — a place where the strategic interests of the major powers of East and South Asia intersect. Political support and strong commitment from all member countries are crucial in making BIMSTEC a dynamic and effective regional organisation.
Need for connectivity
•Second, BIMSTEC serves as a bridge between two major high-growth centres of Asia — South and Southeast Asia. Connectivity is essential to develop a peaceful, prosperous and sustainable Bay of Bengal region. Therefore, BIMSTEC needs to address two dimensions of connectivity – one, upgrading and dovetailing national connectivity into a regional road map; and two, development of both hard and soft infrastructures.
•The BIMSTEC Master Plan for Transport Connectivity will provide the necessary boost to connectivity. There is growing involvement of educational institutions, industries and business chambers through various forums and conclaves which are helping to enhance cooperation in the areas of education, trade and investments, information technology and communication among others. Resisting the temptation to make lofty promises, the BIMSTEC leaders have focused on priority areas through a concrete action plan on time.
India’s role
•Third, the BIMSTEC Secretariat coordinates, monitors and facilitates the implementation of BIMSTEC activities and programmes. The leaders must agree to strengthen the institutional capacity of the BIMSTEC Secretariat. Approval of a charter for BIMSTEC during the summit will further augment its visibility and stature in international fora. Likewise, India has implemented its promise to set up a Centre for Bay of Bengal Studies (CBS) at Nalanda University, Bihar for research on art, culture and other subjects related to the Bay of Bengal. The quest for economic growth and the development of the BIMSTEC region can be achieved with single-minded focus and cooperation among the member counties. In this endeavour, India has a key role in accelerating regional cooperation under the BIMSTEC framework and in making it vibrant, stronger and result-oriented.
📰 A ‘doomsday’ book that launched a movement
There is a consensus that most of the fundamental factors discussed in ‘The Limits to Growth’ have come true
•Fifty years ago, a book titled The Limits to Growth, authored by a group of economic modellers, was published as part of a project on the predicament of mankind. The project was sponsored by the Club of Rome, an organisation founded in 1968 primarily by an Italian industrialist, Aurelio Peccei, and comprising leaders from various fields of human activity. The Club evolved from the concept of problematique, which was that the growing global problems of environmental deterioration, depleting natural resources, pollution, overpopulation, inequality, ill-health, crime, war, and religious attitudes, among others, which are inimical to the human well-being, are inter-related and require a system-based approach. This data-driven study was pioneered by the System Dynamics group at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), led by Donella H. Meadows. It used a first-generation computer and codes and was far ahead of its time in its methodological approach. Still, what stumped the people of the day was its mind-blowing conclusion that the world system could collapse by 2070 given the human-induced changes in the environment combined with traditional economic growth models. The report, which recommended altering the growth model, which is rooted in the over-exploitation of finite natural resources, was also a wake-up call for action, as we do not have much time to lose.
Predictions
•This book soon became a subject of vehement criticism for its ‘doomsday’ prediction. However, the lead author of the thesis denied the allegation and said that it was not written to “predict doom but to challenge people to find ways of living that are consistent with the laws of the planet”. On the conclusions of this book, the journal Nature, in its editorial dated March 10, 1972, reflecting the cynicism prevalent among the academic circles towards the book, called it ‘Another Whiff of Doomsday’. The earlier ‘whiff of doomsday’ referred to another book, World Dynamics, by J.W. Forrester of MIT, that, for the first time, developed the computer code for system analysis and was a forerunner to The Limits to Growth. The critics in those early days, when computer literacy was minimal, said that the inferences of the book were unconvincing and that the authors ignored what they believed to be the self-correcting capabilities of the Earth systems.
•But they were ignorant of the tipping points in any complex system — the thresholds where a tiny change can push a system into an entirely new state. This is because the scientific validity of tipping points came much later. The stable environmental conditions during the last 10,000 years, called the Holocene, helped humanity to thrive, but because of the exponential increase in the rate of change, we would reach the tipping point fast. Human activities, unprecedented in the geological past, were quickly predominating natural forces in shaping the environment.
Trend of 50 years
•We are almost halfway to the 100-year mark predicted in The Limits to Growth, and there is a consensus that most of the fundamental factors discussed in the book have come true. Given the exponential growth of the population in parts of the world, the strain on precious natural resources has become acute, widening the gap between the haves and have-nots. The trend line presented in The Limits to Growth indicated that the global population might cross the seven billion-mark by the turn of the 20th century. The formal number available for the year 2000 was 6.11 billion, not considering the errors in understating the population in many poor countries. The formal number now is 7.9 billion. The population of impoverished regions of the world has gone up.
•Indeed, technology has made some unbelievable progress in the last half a century. The report demonstrated that the process of economic growth, structurally based on Gross National Product (GDP) as a marker of growth, is inexorably widening the absolute gap between the rich and the poor along with the number of undernourished people. Not a single trend projected in the book has gone off the track in nearly 50 years. This realisation is reflected in Nature’s editorial of March 16, 2022, commemorating the book’s 50th year, and advocates for global-level discussions on the GDP-based measures of economic performance.
•When The Limits to Growth was first published, environmental awareness was minimal, and huge knowledge gaps existed on the problems related to pollution. This book was the first to raise the issue of pollution, including the rising level of carbon dioxide emissions from the use of conventional sources of energy. The physical sciences later proved that the computer models on the relationship between environmental degradation and quality of life, introduced in The Limits of Growth, were fundamentally correct. For instance, almost coinciding with the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen, Johan Rockström and others, in a feature article dated September 24, 2009, in Nature, cautioned that we do not have the luxury of treating each of the planetary boundaries in isolation as they are coupled. This means that if the Amazon forests are drastically reduced, it could influence the stability of mountain glaciers in far-off Tibet. Scientific research has shown how humanity has already transgressed three of the Earth system processes — climate change, rate of biodiversity loss, and the nitrogen cycle — and is fast approaching the boundaries for global freshwater use, change in land use, and ocean acidification.
Contrarian concepts
•The Limits to Growth shaped human outlook on key existential issues towards the latter part of the 20th century. This is spilling over to the present times. In the end, the book put forward the “concept of a society in a steady state of economic and ecological equilibrium” and admitted that it requires a “Copernican revolution of mind” to attain those objectives. Most importantly, by implication, it helped raise doubts on the current economic models, which are purely based on GDP, which encourages profligacy, depletion of non-renewable resources and rising emissions. Contrarian concepts like “de-growth” and “post-growth” are gaining momentum among economic thinkers to tackle biophysical processes such as climate change. But political thinkers believe that monumental challenges exist as “de-growth” societies are organised around fundamentally different cultural, social, economic, political, and technological concepts as compared to those organised around the ideology of growth, both from the capitalistic and Marxian points of view. Even parts of Gandhian principles, including the concept of human cooperatives, assume importance in the context of de-growth options. As The Limits to Growth emphasises, the question is not only “whether the human species will survive, but whether it can survive without falling into a state of worthless existence”.
