📰 Home Minister to launch Hindi version of first-year MBBS books on Oct. 16
•Union Home Minister Amit Shah will launch the Hindi versions of first-year MBBS textbooks in Bhopal on October 16. With this, Madhya Pradesh will inch closer to becoming the first State to provide medical education in Hindi.
•The scheduled launch comes at a time when the Chief Ministers of two southern States have voiced their reservations against the move of the Parliamentary Committee on Official Language, headed by Mr. Shah, to employ Hindi as a medium of instruction in key institutions in the Hindi-speaking States, and regional languages elsewhere.
•Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan, however, said the initiative would change mindsets and prove that one could progress in life even after being educated in the Hindi medium. He said the move would make students feel proud of their mother tongue.
•The translated versions, says Medical Education Minister Vishvas Sarang, of books on medical biochemistry, medical physiology, and anatomy, have been prepared by a panel of 97 doctors over the past eight to nine months. He said not everyone warmed to the idea initially. “There was resistance from the experts. Some said it was not possible, while others said students might lose the competitive advantage but we persisted taking into account all these reservations,” Mr. Sarang said.
•There are, however, some fears about a Hindi-centric approach robbing students of crucial opportunities, and about the practical difficulties involved. Aakash Soni, former president of the Madhya Pradesh Junior Doctors’ Association (Undergraduate wing), said if such a move was made compulsory, then people may only be able to work in Hindi-speaking States.
•One UG medical student from Bhopal said medical education involved going through a lot of reference books that are in English, and a mix of languages could cause confusion.
📰 Army prepares road map for induction of electric vehicles
•In line with the national focus on reducing carbon emissions, the Army has put into plan a road map to induct electric vehicles (EV) wherever possible considering the operational commitments, sources said. The move will help significantly reduce dependence on fossil fuels.
•“Keeping in view the necessity and employability of EVs over various terrains, the Army will equip a few units located in peace stations with EVs sequentially. Around 25% of light vehicles, 38% buses and 48% motorcycles of select units and formations will be changed to EVs with adequate charging infrastructure,” a source said. “Various factors unique to Indian Army’s employability, remote locations of employment and operational commitments were considered to arrive at a definite time-bound road map.”
•Stating that the Army was also procuring EVs through the capital route, the source said the existing shortage of buses would be fulfilled by procuring electric buses for select peace establishments for initial exploitation. An open tender enquiry for procurement of 60 electric buses along with 24 fast chargers would soon be floated, the source said.
•The Army has already started using EVs as part of civil hired transport, officials said. Stations such as Delhi Cantonment have already established charging stations to support EVs being hired or inducted subsequently, one official said, adding that at Delhi Cantonment, a number of charging stations were also open to civilians.
Support infrastructure
•To enable a viable EV ecosystem as part of the overall plan, the required support infrastructure is being created, the source said. EV charging points on the parking lots of offices and residential complexes for charging are being set up, which will have at least one fast charger and two or three slow chargers.
•This also includes electric circuit cables and transformers with adequate load bearing capability based on anticipated number of EVs per station. Solar panel-driven charging stations are also planned in phases.
📰 The Court and the problem with its collegium
•Once again the collegium of the Supreme Court of India is in the news, and once again for the wrong reasons. This time, it is because of the difficulty that its five judges have in getting together for one meeting. The Chief Justice of India, Justice U.U. Lalit, assumed office on August 27, 2022. He has a short tenure and demits office on November 8, 2022. Nevertheless, he tries to set a scorching pace. He constitutes as many as five Constitution Benches to hear extremely important matters which his predecessors put on the back burner. The CJI also takes it upon himself to fill six vacancies in the apex court. He sets in motion the procedure contemplated for the collegium of the Supreme Court which is enshrined in the Memorandum of Procedure of 1999.
•A meeting was held on September 26 at which all the five members of the collegium were present. They decided affirmatively on one candidate, Justice Dipankar Datta, now Chief Justice of the Bombay High Court. There are several other names under consideration for the remaining slots, and these include four Chief Justices of High Courts and one lawyer practising in the Supreme Court. This is deferred to September 30. However, the meeting on September 30 is not held because Justice D.Y. Chandrachud, the seniormost puisne judge and in line to be the next CJI, sits in court till 9.30 p.m. Since the meeting cannot be held as scheduled, the CJI tries to obtain approval by circulation. Two judges accord approval but Justice Chandrachud and Justice Nazeer withhold approval. Apparently they do not object to the names but object to the procedure of circulation. In the meantime there is a letter from the Law Minister asking the CJI’s view on the appointment of his successor. With that the curtain is brought down on the proposed appointments. For some reason no one can fathom, the CJI’s collegium becomes a lame duck during his last month, while his court retains every power till the last minute of his last day in office.
Relevant questions
•If this was any other body conducting business for selecting the highest officers for the organisation, those in charge would face both questions and flak. Simply put, since the matter is of obvious importance, why could not five people who work in the same building meet the next day, or the day after, to conclude the business? If meeting in person was so difficult, surely we are all used to online conduct of business. The court itself has been quite proficient in conducting judicial work online for many months after COVID-19 struck us. If any of the names are not good enough, why not say so in circulation? If they were good enough, then why not just make the appointments by following any procedure feasible, whether personal meeting, circulation or online meeting? If business has to be done, then there appears to be no good reason why it did not get done.
•The problem, as has been the problem with the collegium, is that there is nobody in it to ask these questions. Time and again, it has been widely commented that this is an extra-constitutional or non-constitutional body brought in force by judgments of the Supreme Court virtually wresting the power of appointment of judges. The Constitution of India gave the last word to the President of India but mandated consultation with the Court. These judgments give the last word to the Court mandating consultation with the government. Not only that, what makes the problem even worse is that there is no seat in the collegium for any non judge — neither from the executive, the Bar or anywhere else. In other words, there is no one to offer suggestions or raise questions or even to observe what is going on.
•In 2014, Parliament by unanimity — mark the word unanimity — backed by State legislatures enacted the National Judicial Appointments Commission (NJAC); it comprised three judges, the Law Minister and two eminent persons to handle the task of appointing judges. By a 4:1 majority, the Supreme Court struck that down, setting at naught the entire legislative will of the country which was trying to reverse a constitutional coup. If the Court was concerned about being overruled in appointments, it could have just tinkered with and read down the Act, deleted the second eminent person and thus secured a situation where the judges were in the majority. This would have secured judicial primacy, provided for some executive involvement as well as had one person representing a larger public constituency. The point is that this will at least provide a place at the table for the question why and the question why not to be asked. There can be accountability and perceived performance only when these questions can be asked and have to be answered. Otherwise there will be insularity and opacity.
On judicial appointments
•In recent times, the Government seems to have given up on pursuing the commission for judicial appointments. One wonders why. Perhaps the answer partly lies in successive collegiums not putting forth names anathema to the Government, notably that of Justice Akil Kureshi (he retired in March as the Chief Justice of the Rajasthan High Court). This is hardly a satisfactory solution. It is time to revisit this question and secure a better, broad-based and transparent method of appointing senior judges to the High Courts and the Supreme Court. While doing so, we may also ask why there have been no appointments from the category of distinguished jurists which Article 124 of the Constitution contemplates. Appointments to the top court seem to be the preserve of judges from the High Courts with a handful of appointments from the Bar. Surely some nodding acknowledgement should be given to a specific provision made by the founding fathers in the Constitution. Or is it the view that in all these years we have produced no distinguished jurist worth the name?
📰 Unfilled vacancies, stagnant workforce delay RTI replies
The number of information commissioners and public information officers has to improve to handle the rise in RTI applications
•Data show that the number of information officers and first appellate authorities in the Central government has remained stagnant in the last few years. In contrast, the new Right to Information (RTI) applications filed as well as pending applications are increasing every year. Worryingly, the Central Information Commission and State Information Commissions, the final recourse in matters concerning RTI, also face manpower shortage. As a result, appeals and complaints are piling up.
•The RTI Act is implemented using a three-level structure. At the first level is the Central Assistant Public Information Officer/Central Public Information Officer (CAPIO/CPIO). Once an RTI query reaches the CAPIO/CPIO, they are expected to reply within 30 days. If the reply is not satisfactory or does not arrive on time, a first appeal can be made to the First Appellate Authority (FAA). If the FAA does not answer or if its answer is not satisfactory, the Central Information and State Information Commissions can be approached.
•A report released in October by the Satark Nagrik Sangathan, titled ‘Report Card on the Performance of Information Commissions in India, 2021-22’, states that the number of appeals and complaints pending before the Central and State Information Commissions as of June 30, 2022 was 3,14,323. The figure is based on data gathered from 26 Information Commissions obtained through 145 RTI applications. Chart 1 plots the increase in the number of pending appeals and complaints from 2.18 lakh to 3.14 lakh in the last three years.
•Chart 2 shows the State-wise backlogs in the 26 Information Commissions and the Central Information Commission as of June 30, 2022. Maharashtra leads the list with nearly 1 lakh appeals and complaints pending followed by Uttar Pradesh (44,482) and Karnataka (30,358). Data were not available for Tamil Nadu’s State Information Commission. The Commissions in Jharkhand and Tripura were defunct.
•Chart 3 shows the estimated time required for the disposal of an appeal/complaint by the Central and State Information Commissions. Using the backlog data and the monthly disposal rate, the Satark Nagrik Sangathan calculated the time it would take for an appeal/complaint filed on July 1, 2022 to be disposed of by the Central and State Information Commissions. The Sangathan assumed that appeals and complaints would be disposed of in a chronological order. The chart shows that it would take the West Bengal State Information Commission 24 years and 3 months to dispose of a complaint filed on July 1, 2022. A similar analysis in Odisha and Maharashtra showed that it would take five years. Only Meghalaya and Mizoram showed no waiting time (not plotted on the tree map). Tamil Nadu, Jharkhand and Tripura could not be plotted for reasons mentioned above.
•Chart 4 shows the opening balance of RTI requests at the beginning of every year and the number of new RTI requests filed in a year. This data pertains to the first level of the RTI process involving CAPIO/CPIO. As can be observed, both the figures are rising at a rapid pace, while the new filings came down a bit during the pandemic year.
•Chart 5 shows the number of CAPIOs, CPIOs and FAAs working for the Central government agencies. The number of CPIOs and FAAs has remained stagnant in recent years. While the number of CAPIOs surged earlier, that too has become stagnant in recent years.
•So, while the number of new and pending RTIs is rising at a rapid pace, the number of officers required to answer them has remained stagnant.
•The Supreme Court on Wednesday ordered States and their police forces to stop prosecuting free speech on social media under Section 66A of the Information Technology Act which was declared unconstitutional by the court in a judgment seven years ago.
•The court found it both “distressing” and “terrible” that the police had continued to pick out people and prosecute them under the draconian Section regardless of the fact that the highest court in the country had struck down the law as “vague” and “chilling”.
•A Bench led by Chief Justice of India U.U. Lalit directed “all Directors General of Police as well as Home Secretaries of the States and competent officers in Union Territories to instruct their entire police force in their respective States/Union Territories not to register any complaint of crime with respect to alleged violation of Section 66A”.
•However, the court clarified that this direction would apply only to a charge under Section 66A and not extend to other offences in a case.
Police powers
•In March 2015, the Supreme Court had found the police powers of Section 66A too wide with scant respect for individual liberty and free expression on the Internet. The order had come on the basis of a petition filed by law student Shreya Singhal, who had highlighted cases of young people being arrested and charged under the ambiguous provision for their social media posts.
•Section 66A had prescribed three years’ imprisonment if a social media message caused “annoyance” or was found “grossly offensive”. The court had concluded the provision to be vague and worded arbitrarily.
📰 Tamil Nadu notifies India’s first slender loris sanctuary
•In a first in the country, the Tamil Nadu government on Wednesday notified the Kaduvur slender loris sanctuary covering 11,806 hectares in Karur and Dindigul districts.
•Slender lorises, which are small nocturnal mammals, are arboreal as they spend most of their life on trees.
•The species acts as a biological predator of pests in agricultural crops and benefits farmers. Listed as an endangered species by the International Union for Conservation of Nature, slender loris has a wide range of ecological roles in the terrestrial ecosystem.
Habitat improvement
•The survival of the species depends on habitat improvement, conservation and mitigation of threats, Supriya Sahu, Additional Chief Secretary, Environment, Climate Change and Forests, said in a statement. Realising the need for immediate conservation of this species, the State government identified forest areas measuring 11,800 hectares in Karur and Dindigul districts.
•The sanctuary will cover Vedasandur, Dindigul East and Natham taluks in Dindigul district and Kadavur taluk in Karur district.
•In significant steps towards conservation of wildlife, the State government notified India’s first Dugong Conservation Reserve in the Palk Bay, Kazhuveli bird sanctuary in Villupuram, Nanjarayan Tank birds sanctuary in Tiruppur and the State’s fifth elephant reserve at Agasthyamalai in Tirunelveli. Further, 13 wetlands were declared as Ramsar sites.These path-breaking initiatives in 15 months have put Tamil Nadu at a pivotal position in the field of conservation, Ms. Sahu said.
📰 The war against illegal goods as India’s fight
•India’s wholesale inflation rate has been declining since July this year but has remained in double digits since April 2021. Last month, the inflation rate was recorded at 12.41%, from 13.93% in July. Consistently high inflation leads to people deferring purchases, purchasing less, going in for reuse and recycling, or just switching to cheaper alternatives. The search for cheaper alternatives kicks up a storm — markets are flooded with cheap inferior goods or spurious and fake brands, giving a dream run to the parallel economy players.
•This is where the China angle comes in. The parallel economy dealers need access to seemingly similar functioning cheaper goods which are aptly served by factories humming in China. As we get closer to the festive season, we will see, yet again, bazaars full of Chinese goods — from Deepavali lights, pooja idols, electronic items and bicycles to everything that the consumer needs. Clearly, the Government’s response to this situation is centered around its self-reliance or ‘Atmanirbharta’ agenda, which should place added focus on producing goods in bulk at the lowest possible cost. The Government’s intent is certainly taking shape, as was echoed by Piyush Goyal, Minister of Commerce and Industry, Consumer Affairs and Food and Public Distribution and Textiles, in a tweet recently. He said: “Our toy manufacturing sector is booming, with Indian toys rapidly filling up shelves in the country and abroad.” Such wins would be possible only if India can bring down the cost of manufacturing by addressing anomalies at each stage in the value chain.
A thriving market
•The consumer’s search for cheaper alternatives gives birth to another menace which hurts even more — a booming, smuggled and illegal goods market. This hurts more because it is done at the cost of taxes to the government, depriving the country of the fuel required to drive social transformation. In this economic activity, the target is not the cheaper category of goods, but rather the more expensive class of goods. According to the Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry’s Committee Against Smuggling and Counterfeiting Activities Destroying the Economy (CASCADE) — one of the best-known data sources for information on smuggling — the illicit market is thriving in five key Indian industries. This includes mobile phones, fast-moving consumer goods (FMCG) – household and personal goods, FMCG-packaged foods, tobacco products, and alcoholic beverages. The size of the illicit market in these industries was valued at ₹2,60,094 crore in 2019-20.
•According to a report by the Economist Intelligence Unit, in 2018 India ranked low in the Global Illicit Trade Environment Index and needed quantifiable actions to bring down the risks of illicit trade on the economy. In relation to three of the four elements, i.e., government policy, supply and demand, and customs environment, India ranks in the third quartile of the 82 countries covered in the index. It ranks 35 in terms of transparency and trade.
•The CASCADE report estimates that unlawful trade in the industries mentioned above results in a total estimated legitimate employment loss of 15.96 lakh. The combined FMCG industry (household and personal goods, and packaged foods), due to its illicit market size, accounts for about 68% of job losses. The estimated tax loss to the Government due to illicit goods in these industries has been estimated to be ₹58,521 crore. The report further reveals that two highly regulated and taxed industries, tobacco products and alcoholic beverages, account for 49% of the overall tax loss to the Government.
Rationalise taxes, promote local brands
•A lesser-known fact is that the more evolved manufacturing markets subtly support smuggling by only doing lip service and not taking strong action against their exporters and international traders as it does not harm their local economy but helps their manufacturing sector. Therefore, there have been fewer supporters in the developed world and in countries such as China for the war against smuggling. This is India’s fight as it is one of the largest consuming countries with porous borders and a weak enforcement machinery to stop smuggling.
•The only practical measure to stop smuggling and illicit trade is if the Government keeps taxes rationalised in the categories where smuggling is high, so as to give lesser cost arbitrage incentive to smugglers as well as aggressively promote local industry to build world-class brands and products. This would reduce the dependence on international manufacturers. There is a common thread in both cases — the need to support local industry by rationalising taxes and providing incentives to local manufacturers so they can make world-class goods that can compete with global brands in India as well as in global markets. Allowing global brands to manufacture in India also remains relevant provided they can offer India-specific pricing and are not allowed to remit royalties and profits out of the country earned from goods being consumed by Indians. China has a very successful policy wherein multinational corporations (MNC) reinvest profits earned by subsidiaries in China. India can make a concession by allowing MNCs to repatriate profits earned from the goods they sell outside India. This will propel India as a global manufacturing destination and MNCs will be able to hit their topline goals. Today, with India’s growing heft and attraction as a fast-growing economy, it is time to strike a better bargain.
Use of technology in enforcement
•Fast collective action using a mix of strategies that are rooted in smart taxation, restrictions on profit repatriation and stricter law enforcement are steps that will stop the inflow of smuggled, illicit and cheap, low-quality goods into the country. According to CASCADE, enforcement can be improved by using cutting-edge technology such as artificial intelligence, blockchain, and location technology. This will help in increasing the seizure of illegal goods. The Government must also increase consumer awareness so that people boycott smuggled, counterfeit and poor quality goods. The supply of cheap, counterfeit and smuggled goods is only nurturing crime syndicates and a parallel economy, and where the Government and the consumer are the losers. There is no better time than now to give ‘Atmanirbharta’ yet another dimension to accelerate its progress.
📰 We need a forest-led COP27
•In September, a study published in the journal Science said earth may have already passed through five dangerous tipping points due to the 1.1°C of global heating caused by humanity to date.
•Calls for developing and transferring technologies to support action on climate change have become louder worldwide. Technology has become a survival strategy for our species, but the degree of techno-determinism that exists in the strategy to reverse climate change is alarming. Technology alone is unprepared to deal with the challenge, which requires a societal overhaul and a zero emission strategy.
•History is on the side of technological innovation. Norman Borlaug, for instance, ushered in the Green Revolution, which fed billions of people and increased yields. But we may need a few million climate Borlaugs to tackle the problems staring at us.
Technological optimism
•COP26 at Glasgow also fuelled technological optimism. There was an observation that every technological solution discussed at COP26 depends on just three resources: nelectricity (non-emitting electricity generated by hydropower, renewables or nuclear fission), carbon capture and storage (CCS) or biomass. The total demand for those resources required by the plans discussed at COP26 cannot be met by 2050.
•We currently have 4kWh/day of nelectricity per person. But the COP26 plans require 32 (range 16-48). We currently have 6kg of CCS per person per year, but the COP26 plans require 3,600 (range 1,400-5,700). We eat 100kg plant-based food per person each year, but producing enough bio-kerosene to fly at today’s levels requires 200kg of additional harvest. There is no possibility that our supplies of these will be near the levels required by the plans discussed at COP26.
•In 2003, Ken Caldeira at the Carnegie Institution found that the world would need a nuclear plant’s worth of clean-energy capacity every day between 2000 and 2050 to avoid catastrophic climate change. In 2018, MIT Technology Review reported that at the given rate, the world will take nearly 400 years to transform the energy system.
•Tech-centric mitigation conversations leave forest economies and subjects such as conservation and forests, which are the best carbon removal instruments, to the ideological fringes of climate conversation. Climate action requires the same amount of investment in conservation as we see in shiny new technology transfers.
•While there was the deforestation-ending climate commitment at COP26, the nature of the pledge was vague. Countries may easily attempt to achieve their ‘net zero deforestation goals’ through monoculture farming. But this won’t be of much help: scientists, in a commentary in Nature, have stated that naturally preserved forests are 40% more effective than planted ones.
•Our climate crisis is intertwined with other complex issues. This means that we must insist on multi-pronged, interconnected climate solutions. Forests shine here too. Nothing exemplifies this more than the intersection of the climate change crisis and the biodiversity crisis. Forests, which are home to 80% of terrestrial wildlife, are at this intersection.
•Forests absorb a net 7.6 billion metric tonnes of CO2 a year. A new study has found that their biophysical aspects have a tendency to cool the earth by an additional 0.5%. The conservation of forests, along with other nature-based solutions, can provide up to 37% of the emissions reductions needed to tackle climate change. The Dasgupta Review-Independent Review on the Economics of Biodiversity reports that green infrastructure (salt marshes and mangroves) are 2-5 times cheaper than grey infrastructure (breakwaters).
•Another study estimated that the annual gross carbon emissions from tropical tree cover loss between 2015 and 2017 was equivalent to 4.8 billion tonnes. This causes more emissions each year than 85 million cars do in their lifetime. In 2019, approximately 34% of total net anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions came from the energy supply sector, 24% from industry, 22% from agriculture, forestry and other land use, 15% from transport and 6% from buildings.
Conserving natural sinks
•The IPCC Land Report estimates that land serves as a large CO2 sink. There is a growing body of evidence that a large proportion of the required removals could be achieved by conserving natural sinks, improving biodiversity protection, and restoring ecosystems. Preserving earth’s cyclical processes by protecting terrestrial ecosystems and natural sinks and transformative agricultural practices under the leadership of indigenous people and local communities is a far more equitable and cost-effective way of tackling the climate crisis than it is being done now.
•We need to realise that the climate crisis is just a symptom; our real problem is that human consumption and activity have exceeded the regenerative capacity of our planet. Technology, at best, can assist us, not lead us, on the pathway to a sustainable, regenerative and equitable world.
📰 A day to explore bear necessities
On first World Sloth Bear Day, Central Zoo Authority urges every zoo in India and around the world to celebrate the occasion for conservation and protection of the Indian species of bear
•The first World Sloth Bear Day was observed on Wednesday to generate awareness and strengthen conservation efforts around the unique bear species endemic to the Indian subcontinent. Classified as “vulnerable” on the IUCN Red List, sloth bears are endemic to the Indian sub-continent and 90% of the species population is found in India.
•A proposal for observing World Sloth Bear Day was mooted by Wildlife SOS India, an organisation involved in sloth bear conservation and protection for over two decades and the IUCN-Species Survival Commission sloth bear expert team accepted the proposal and declared the day to be celebrated worldwide.
•On Wednesday, the officials of the Ministry of Environment, Forests and Climate Change and the Central Zoo Authority (CZA), along with other stakeholders, participated in an event at Agra to observe the day. Member secretary of the CZA Sanjay Kumar Shukla presented a letter of support for World Sloth Bear Day on behalf of the CZA, and urged every zoo in India and around the world to celebrate the day for further conservation and protection of this Indian species of bear.
•Listed under Schedule I of the (Wildlife Protection) Act of India, 1972, the species has the same level of protection as tigers, rhinos and elephants.
•A press statement issued by Wildlife SOS on Wednesday said the organisation rescued and rehabilitated over hundreds of “performing dancing bears, thereby resolving a 400-year-old barbaric tradition (of dancing bears) while also providing alternative livelihoods to the nomadic Kalandar community members”.
•Nishith Dharaiya, co-chair of the IUCN sloth bear expert team, told The Hindu that the sloth bear (Melursus ursinus) was an important species and endemic to the Indian subcontinent with small populations in Nepal and Sri Lanka. “For a long time, sloth bears were exploited as dancing bears. Though the practice has been banned there are still a few cases of rescue,” Mr. Dharaiya said. He explained that sloth bears were omnivorous and survived on termites, ants and fruits.
•“Over the past few years there has been a rise of incidents of human sloth bear conflict in States like Gujarat, Rajasthan and Maharashtra among other states,” Mr. Dharaiya said.
