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TheJoker

Nietzsche

yudiTheRookiE

environment

urban waste

EPW

CurrentAffairs

solid waste

Sat, Jun 20, 2015

Economics of Solid Waste in India

This article provides an overview of the economics of solid waste, and related issues. Public attention to
solid waste and recycling has increased in India.
For many years, economists engaged in research studies related to municipal solid waste (MSW) were
hampered by the general lack of data. Very few municipal governments bothered to keep accurate data
on the quantity of waste generated, its composition, information about landfills
Rapid urbanisation and population growth increased solid waste generation in the past decade.
Inadequate solid waste management policy and the absence of appropriate guidelines led to serious
health and environmental problems all over India. The Municipal Solid Waste Management Handling
Rules, 2000 indicated that all the municipal authorities should take the responsibility of waste collection,
transportation, disposal, and segregation of solid waste.
In India, municipal agencies spend about 5%25% of their budgets on solid waste management.
Although, most local governments manage MSW collection and disposal in many parts of Indian states,
many states had inefficient construction and operation of MSW landfills and incinerators.
Landfills become increasingly expensive because of rising costs of construction and operations. Yet, the
available space for landfills decreased and land prices rose, while the environment had either no price
or had non-optimal prices assigned to it, which in turn had led to overuse or over-exploitation of these
functions and resulted in misallocation of resource. Therefore, environmental problems such as solid
waste management are problems of non-optimal pricing and misallocation, which means overuse of
resources, and unforeseen externalities.
In India, urban local bodies spend around Rs 500 to Rs 1,500 per metric tonne of solid waste, out of
which 60% to 70% is usually spent on collection alone, and 20% to 30% is on transportation. An
improper solid waste management approach resulted in all types of pollution air, solid and water
and as much as 95% was discarded as MSW.

Solid waste management had traditionally been addressed with command and control (CAC)
regulations, which regulated behaviour directly by prescribing specific legislations and standards which
should be achieved and by enforcing their compliance through the levy of penalties. Economic
Instruments (EIs), such as environmental taxes and subsidies sought to change the behaviour of
persons indirectly by changing relative prices (and hence incentives) that individuals and businesses
had to bear.
The use of EIs increased in developed countries and they could be effective in reducing waste
generation, diverting waste from disposal to recycling, and by converting waste to energy.
In addition, the polluter pays principle (PPP) could also be invoked. In the context of solid waste
management, PPP implied that all waste generators, including households and companies were
responsible for bearing costs associated with wastes they had generated. The PPP means that both
producers and consumers should pay in India. The large negative benefit was due to the fact that the
land costs were estimated to be about Rs 25 crore. Both biomethanation and sanitary landfill systems
emit greenhouse gases, the main difference being that sanitary landfills emit some methane (even after
the provision for gas collection), which is much more detrimental to the environment than carbon
dioxide.
The inefficient mechanism of waste collection and recycling by municipalities has led to a growing
informal economy, based on the collection of reusable wastes by ragpickers, which amounts to more
than $280 million annually in economic value (Kapur 2011). With slow, scattered, and inefficient
government initiatives to solve Indias solid waste problems, the country might find a solution, or a part
of the solution, in the informal networks that currently exist in the country.
India generates more than 100 million tonnes of municipal waste every year. On a per capita basis, this
was far lower than most developed countries, but the amount of garbage generated has been growing
fast.
Many thousands of people in developing cities depended on the recycling of materials collected from
waste for their livelihood. With the focus of the Millennium Development Goals on poverty reduction
and of waste management strategies for improving recycling rates, one of the major challenges in
developing countries is about how best to work in this informal sector to improve livelihoods, working
conditions, and efficiency of recycling (Wilson, Velis and Cheeseman 2006).
Worldwide, more than 15 million people make a living in the informal collection, recycling, and handling
of solid waste. Informal refuse collection could be a profitable activity.
In Mumbai, more than 30,000 waste pickers had recovered reusable items that could be recycled from
the stream of waste. Waste pickers had created more than 400 micro enterprises that processed waste
materials and made consumer products out of them. The economic impact of these activities had been
estimated at $600 million to 1 billion a year
Black Money Bill

EPW

polity

CurrentAffairs

Sat, Jun 6, 2015

Making a Show: The Black Money Bill

During the Budget Session, Parliament passed the Black Money (Undisclosed Foreign Income and
Assets) and Imposition of Tax Bill, 2015, paving the way for imposition of tough penalties and jail terms
on Indian residents unaccounted incomes and wealth holding in foreign locations that have avoided
the taxmans scrutiny. The bill, it must be noted, is limited in scope, since it applies only to illegal money
held or earned abroad, though there is the promise of a separate bill for unaccounted/unreported
incomes held in different forms within the country.
The 2015 bill legalises the right of the government to impose a 30% tax on undisclosed income or the
value of an undisclosed asset held abroad by a resident assessee, starting from assessment year 2016
17 (tax year 201516). If the sum involved has been earned or invested in a year prior to the year
immediately preceding the assessment year, it would be subject to penalties of up to 90% and a jail
term that can go up to 10 years. In sum, as and when undisclosed income from a source is discovered,
it would come under the purview of the law irrespective of when in the past that income had been
earned and remained undisclosed in a return. Since only a small fraction of the taxable but unreported
income or the assets acquired with it would have been earned or acquired in 201516, almost all such
undisclosed income would be subject to the maximum penalty and its holders subject to criminal
prosecution.
Implementing the law, of course, requires identifying undisclosed income stashed or invested in a
foreign location. That, as past experience reveals, is neither easy nor rigorously pursued. In an effort to
show that the government is bringing back black money held abroad, the new law has an amnesty
clause. It provides for a short compliance window during which those holding such unreported
incomes or assets abroad can declare them and pay the 30% tax and an additional 30% penalty. Since a
120% tax-cum-penalty that would operate once the window is closed is equivalent to confiscation and
the imposition of a fine, besides imprisonment, the thrust here is to get holders of black money abroad
to exploit the amnesty window. The benefit being offered to them is that they would lose only 60% of
this wealth in return for exemption from confiscation, an implicit 20% penalty and the ignominy and
hardship of jail, if discovered.
It must be noted that even as of now the taxation laws and those relating to the management of foreign
exchange allow for the prosecution of those residents holding undisclosed incomes and assets abroad,
and the imposition of taxes and penalties on those monies. despite the law, the process of transferring
unreported incomes (often illegally acquired and therefore unreportable) abroad through illegal
channels has continued.
It is not clear whether the Special Investigation Team to hunt down black money and its sources, set up
in compliance with a Supreme Court order, has thus far obtained more information than the
government already has.
it is not the weakness of the law that results in the accumulation of the black money, but the failure of
the monitoring and prosecuting mechanism to prevent the generation of illegal incomes and identify
tax evasion even on legally earned incomes. In fact, the way the tax laws and the system are structured,
merely unearthing what is black and making it white would not, in itself, make much difference to the
nature and the outcome of Indias development trajectory.
environment

EPW

CurrentAffairs

heat waves

Sat, May 30, 2015

India's Killer Heat Waves

India's Killer Heat Waves

The heat waves in Andhra Pradesh, Gujarat, Odisha, Telangana and other states have killed over 1,200
people so far. the disaster management authorities have admitted it is the poor, the ill and the oldthe
most vulnerablewho are the worst affected. Instead of bland and useless instructions, what is needed
are well-coordinated measures that range from the preventive to the curative.
almost every year the heat waves kill people all over the country, even if in smaller numbers.
What is notable about this phenomenon is that in developing countries its impact tends to be much
more severe due to a range of contributory factors like poverty, inequality, lack of public infrastructure
and an inability of public bodies to address the symptoms. Added to this there are issues of poor
sanitation and a larger disease load for the majority of the population. For people who are unable to get
enough nutrition, cannot access medicines and doctors, are without shelter and are unaware of
government schemes, the heat spikes lead to spikes in morbidity and mortality.
Perhaps the first step must be the recognition of heat waves as a disaster that affects public health. In
2013, the National Disaster Management Authority had written to the Prime Minister of the need to
include heat waves in the list of natural disasters. However, the group of ministers entrusted with the
task of taking a decision on the matter did not reach any conclusion
We are living in the times of climate change. Some of these intense heat waves are expected to increase
in their intensity and spread. We need adaptation measures which address not only the long-term
pattern of intense summer heat, which has been a traditional killer of the poor and destitute, but also
keep in mind the unexpected manner in which these heat waves will come and go. It is a tall task and
one which seems herculean for our callous and inept governments.
Finance Commission

local government

Fourteenth Finance Commission

EPW

polity

CurrentAffairs

Sat, May 23, 2015

Implications for Local Governments

The subject of local governments has not been comprehensively treated by the Fourteenth Finance
Commission. The implications of the new inter se distribution formula of the commission's award for
local governments have not been thought through and important conditionalities have been changed
or watered down.
The Fourteenth Finance Commission (FFC) has attracted considerable attention for increasing the
states share of the divisible pool to 42% and for further expanding the fiscal space to sub-national
governments. Avowedly taking a comprehensive view 1 of intergovernmental fiscal relations, public
finance, plan/non-plan distinction and so on while working towards cooperative federalism, the FFC
outlines the arguments for reforming the existing system of fiscal transfers.
Equity is and should be the overarching concern of any federal polity worth the name. It is the
underlying rationale for federalism. The criteria chosen for inter se distribution of transfers are
therefore very important in determining the share of each state. Generally they are governed by the

objectives to be served by the transfers. For inter se distribution of local government grants to the
states, the FFC uses the 2011 population with weight of 90% and area 10%.
The decision to use 1971 population followed from the days of the Seventh Finance Commission was
taken to avoid possible bias or disadvantage to any state that might choose to pursue family planning
to contain population, a policy initiated and vigorously incentivised by the central government.
Demographic changes obviously involves changes in fertility rate, ageing, migration (this is taken into
account in tax devolution) and so on. That the choice of 2011 population has adversely affected states
like Kerala, Tamil Nadu, West Bengal and Andhra Pradesh is abundantly clear from the fact that the
population share of Kerala in 1971 was 3.93%, Tamil Nadu 7.59%, West Bengal 8.16% and Andhra
Pradesh 5.10% while the corresponding share in 2011, is 2.76% for Kerala, 5.96% for Tamil Nadu and
7.55% for West Bengal. The 90% weightage to population is unprecedented and certainly a quantum
jump compared to the 50% followed by the Thirteenth Finance Commission and 40% by the Twelfth and
Eleventh Finance Commissions.
Constitutional Responsibilities
A finance commission constituted after the historic 73rd/74th constitutional amendments has a moral if
not mandatory responsibility to respect the letter and spirit of Part IX and Part IXA of the Constitution
which demand a vibrant and viable local democracy for the country. In fact, all the previous
commissions used criteria relating to devolution and decentralisation for inter se distribution. Here it is
instructive to listen to FFC which says:
Indeed, there was no need to promote a particular model of decentralization. However, the
Constitution mandates the creation of gram sabhas, peoples participation, five yearly elections,
reservation of seats for women and backward communities, creation of institutions of selfgovernment 3 at the level of panchayats and municipalities, tasked to prepare plans for economic
development and social justice (Article 243G and 243W) establishment of the District Planning
Committee to consolidate the plans at the local levels and prepare a draft development plan for the
district as a whole (Article 243ZD) and the like which proclaim a sui generis model of democratic
decentralisation.
Again, no union finance commission can ignore the state finance commission (Articles 243I and 243Y),
because Article 280(3) establishing the union finance commission was amended as part of the
73rd/74th constitutional amendments, adding sub-clauses (bb) and (c) to 280(3) requiring to
supplement the consolidated fund of a state through appropriate measures on the basis of the
recommendations of the state finance commission.
Also the language of the provisions establishing the union and state finance commissions with
reference to their tasks does not differ substantially except that the former was designed to rectify the
fiscal imbalances at the centrestate level and the latter at the state sub-state level.
Finance Commission
CurrentAffairs

EPW

polity

Fourteenth Finance Commission

Chaturvedi committee

Sat, May 23, 2015

Some Hits and Misses

The Fourteenth Finance Commission has come up with some bold and game-changing
recommendations such as an increase in the tax share going to states from 32% to 42%, setting up of
the Fiscal Council to make the centre accountable, and doing away with direct transfers to states under
centrally-sponsored schemes. But unlike the Thirteenth Finance Commission the FFC has not bothered
to estimate the impact of the Goods and Services Tax and disinvestment proceeds on gross domestic
product as well as fiscal space.
1 Positive Recommendations
The Fourteenth Finance Commission (FFC) has for the first time in the history of finance commissions of
India shown the guts to recommend a very large increase in the share of taxes going to the states. This
increase in the share from 32% to 42% of tax devolvement has largely resulted from a change in the
magnitude and composition of some specific purpose grants, on the one hand, and the clubbing up of
the component of direct transfers to the total resource pool, on the other. As is known, until 201415,
when finally the report of the Chaturvedi Committee (2011) was implemented by the centre, the
amount of such direct transfers was being passed on to the independent agencies in different states,
through centrally-sponsored schemes (CSS) without being routed through the states exchequer.
The FFC also explicitly notes that the fiscal space of the central government is not going to be reduced
due to the increased share of tax proceeds and that the changes are more in the form of composition
and character of the transfers (FFC 2015). However there is a little confusion here because the note of
dissent by one of the members of the FFC clearly mentions that the net tax resources of the centre
would shrink by about 1 percentage of gross domestic product (GDP) as a result of higher devolution.
Since the terms of reference (TOR) did not bind the FFC to look only at the items of non-plan allocations,
it could take a comprehensive view on all transfers, including both plan and non-plan. Various
committees and commissions in the past had also advocated removing the artificial distinction between
plan and non-plan funds for various reasons, implying that this change was long overdue.
A clear and loud message was also given in the report of the FFC that there has to be a symmetry
between the union and the states in regard to fiscal discipline. If the states are made answerable, the
union government has also to be answerable about its fiscal (mis)management. For this purpose the
FFC recommended the setting up of the institutional mechanism of the Fiscal Council.
Incidentally, the FFC did not accept the concept of the effective revenue deficit introduced in 2012
through revision of the FRBM Act by the earlier government. Instead, it advocated the use of the
traditional concept of the revenue deficit, namely, the gap between all revenue receipts and revenue
expenditure, for setting the fiscal targets. Thus, it reintroduced the traditional concept in the revised
FRBM Act by making appropriate amendments to replace the effective revenue deficit. Putting its foot
down in this matter was important to avoid manipulation of figures resulting from a change in the
definition that was made in 2012.
EPW

net neutrality

science & tech

CurrentAffairs

Sat, May 9, 2015

Net Neutrality Is Basically Internet

Egalitarianism

Net neutrality is neither a technical principle nor something necessary to uphold free markets. It is an
egalitarian principle as applied to a key building block of the new social system of the internet. But it is
equally important to check the concurrent tendencies of rapid centralisation of power in so many areas
that the networked social logic has caused.
Developing countries, including their otherwise politically conscious and active groups, have to date
mostly engaged with issues of basic access to the internet, and the quality or bandwidth of connectivity.
It is often considered premature to talk about internet-related architectural and governance issues
when people do not have basic access. Taking advantage of such apathy, telcos and big internet
companies (those providing content and applications) have chosen developing countries to begin
fiddling with the basic egalitarian design of the internet. The purpose is to set up permanent rentseeking positions over this most important techno-social infrastructure of the current times.
Facebook and Google have got into agreements with internet service providers (ISPs) to make available
their services free of data charges. This tilts the playing field against competing services, including those
provided by start-ups or by non-profit organisations who cannot afford to pay the ISPs to make their
services similarly available with no data charges. Facebook has gone a step forward and pulled together
a bouquet of different kinds of services called the Internet.org which is being provided free of data
charges.
If this rot is not checked, the basic egalitarian model of the internet that ensures equal status for all
content and applications prided through it will be deformed forever. such fundamental distortions in
the architecture of the internet have society-wide implications in terms of how egalitarian or otherwise
our emerging social systems would be.
Net neutrality is a principle that the ISPs will treat all content, applications and services equally, and not
prioritise or degrade any in relation to others. Telcos have the obvious incentive to build priority
channels and charge more for them. Dominant internet companies have the incentive to rent such
priority channels, thus employing their financial muscle to suppress competition which often comes
from poorly-resourced start-ups. Such kinds of commercial deals, though prima facie unfair, are
common in most economic areas. It is important then to understand why regulatory interventions are
needed to ensure that no discrimination on commercial grounds takes place in relation to the internet.
It is therefore important to seek clarity about what net neutrality really is, and what is the basis of such
a regulatory principle. One can start by pointing to what net neutrality is not. It is true that the internets
initial architecture was built on the principle that the carrier pipe will be completely dumb, with no
capacity to discriminate among the bytes passing over it. All intelligence was at the peripheryin the
end devices which collated the bytes into intelligible patterns. For a long time now, however,
considerable intelligence has been built into the network, which is able to discriminate between bytes
for many purposes, especially for traffic management, to ensure good internet experience for all users.
As long as such discrimination is not done for commercial considerations, whether to favour an ISPs
own offerings, or that of their commercial partners, it is not considered a violation of net neutrality. Net
neutrality as any kind of technical principle is therefore long dead. The term is today used primarily in
the meaning of a regulatory intervention.
A lot of people like to present net neutrality as upholding the free market. Net neutrality also gets
defined as the right of a user (or consumer) to access and use any content, application or service of her
choice. But the question arises: does invoking the states regulatory authority to disallow many possible

business models to the telcos not amount to an interference with the free market and free choice?
Much more than free choice, net neutrality is about equal opportunity. Just as the common school
system is a way to ensure a certain equality of opportunity for all children, net neutrality can be
understood basically as an attempt to provide equal opportunity to various social actors and activities
that employ the internet for many different purposes. This certainly includes start-up internet
companies, and since they certainly are not among the most oppressed classes of people, their case for
equal opportunity is promoted in the name of ensuring innovation. Unfortunately, it is the language of
the market that is somewhat exclusively employed in net neutrality discussions. In order to get to the
real significance of the net neutrality principle, the internet must be claimed for its larger social
moorings. The internet can be seen as providing a general playing field for shaping and supporting a
very broad range of social activities and institutions, the market being just one of them. Maintaining an
evenness or neutrality of this playing fieldmeaning the internetis important for the consumers,
producers and innovatorsthe market actors. But before that, it is important to us in terms of our
identity as social beings and citizens. It is becoming a key infrastructure for our social relationships,
practising culture, and vitalising democracy.
A much better basis for net neutrality than free market ideals is the common carriage principle which
comes from the telecom regulation. It has precedence in many areas of transport, roads and bridges,
and postal services. As per this principle, a carrier service represents a public utility, and has to be
equally available to all possible traffic over it, in a non-discriminatory manner. Recently, the US
regulator had to reclassify the internet as a telecommunication service from its earlier status of an
information service, to be able to apply the common carriage principle to it. This provided the basis for
net neutrality regulation.
Indeed, the internet today is quite more than just a channel of communication. To start with, it is
universally recognised as a new form of media. Apart from the common carriage principle, application
of some media regulatory principles to this new media of the internet can provide a good basis for
protecting and promoting its non-discriminatory, public nature. The media is recognised as a sector of
such exceptional social importance that it is customary not only to prohibit various kinds of
discriminations, which may be commonplace in regular commercial services, but also to ensure things
like checks on vertical integration (for instance, between carrier and content layers), limits on crossmedia or cross-platform ownership, clear separation between editorial and commercial content,
positive discrimination to protect diversities of various kinds, and so on
It is important to keep the internet neutral, as it becomes not just the infrastructure but the matrix of so
much social activity, and of societys organisations and institutions. It would not be hyperbolic to say
that we are moving towards an internet-mediated society. It is a societys political decision what it treats
as the playing field issues, sectors or conditions, whereby a certain degree of equity is enforced in
such areas through policy or regulation. And, what are considered as the play areas in which regard
people can compete and accordingly win (or lose) access to resources. Traditionally, governance,
justice and basic security are considered such playing field areas, as also basic education, health, and an
increasing number of what are understood as peoples rights. Whether or not some basic internet
services are to be provided equitably to allnot only as consumers of services, but also as producers,
sharers, innovators, citizens, and so onis therefore a sociopolitical decision depending on what kind
of society we want. It is on such larger sociopolitical considerations that the regulatory principle of net

neutrality is premised. In fact, it will be appropriate to locate the internet in a rights-based framework,
not only of negative rights like freedom of expression and privacy, but also positive rights like universal
access and a certain degree of basic neutrality and egalitarianism of the internet.
As all major social systemsfrom media, business, politics and governance to education, health,
agriculture and transporttransform via their digitalisation, datafication and networking, there are
strong tendencies for centralised controls and dominations being built into them. Numerous instances
of such a process exist, and it will be useful to extrapolate current early developments into likely future
mature scenarios to understand the required role of policy and regulation in the respective sectors. The
public internet is the all-important connector of all these systems to people. If net neutrality is enforced,
the public internet at least remains a layer that can protect a basic level of openness in the digitallymediated world and keep available avenues for possible structural reforms if the new systems are seen
going too askew on the equity front. However, if this open and public layer too is deprived of its
egalitarian qualities and dominant players are able to rent exclusive favoured channels to people, the
end-to-end, tightly-controlled systems that will get developed are likely to be extremely unfair and
exploitative.
EPW

economics

CurrentAffairs

global banking

banking sector

Sat, May 9, 2015

Global Banking in Retreat?

Two broad trends are becoming visible in global banking. One, the form of international banking is
changing: cross-border flows are being replaced by a focus on lending through local affiliates. Two, the
big international banks that are withdrawing are being replaced by others, including those with a more
regional focus.
Since 2008, cross-border claims of banks have declined sharply (as a proportion of recipient countries
total banking assets) while those of local loans extended by affiliates of foreign banks have increased.
As a result, the share of the latter in total claims (cross-border loans plus local lending) has grown from
less than 43% to 49%. We are seeing a shift from cross-border lending to local lending.
Moreover, the retreat of global banks is felt in emerging and developing Europe where outstanding
foreign claims are below their pre-crisis levels. It is not true of Asia and the Pacific region, where foreign
claims are nearly double their 2008 trough. Nor is it true of Latin America and the Caribbean where
foreign claims exceed their pre-crisis peak.
Banks from the non-Euro areas have offset only in part the reduction on account of Euro-area banks. As
a result, in the aggregate, total claims of inter
national banks have declined. However, we cannot
generalise from the actions of some high-profile European banks and say that global banking is in
retreat or that the retreat applies to all parts of the globe.
In some regions, there is evidence that the withdrawal of Euro-area banks has been made up for by
regional banks.
Even as Euro-area banks are retrenching, Japanese and Chinese banks are spreading their reach,
though mainly in Asia. A similar trend towards regionalisation is evident in Africa but not in Latin
America.

What explains these trends in global banking? The key factor clearly is changes in bank regulation
following the crisis of 2007. The GFSR cites an econometric analysis carried out for the report. The
analysis showed that half the reduction in cross-border claims as a percentage of the gross domestic
product since the period 200507 can be attributed to
regulatory changes.
We should not be surprised. Regulation is affecting cross-border lending of international banks in many
ways. The most obvious way is the higher capital requirements imposed under Basel 3 rules. Where
banks have difficulty in raising more capital, they resort to deleveraging, that is, reduction in the size
of their balance sheets. Assets in distant markets, where the banks do not have a clear competitive
advantage, are prime candidates for banks seeking to reduce their balance sheets. Deleveraging also
becomes necessary where expansion in foreign markets has been heavily dependent on borrowing
from wholesale markets in the developed world.
A second way in which regulation affects international banking, as the Economist (2015) points out, is
that regulators tend to treat foreign exposures more harshly in stress tests, that is, to assume that
foreign assets will not be as easily available for meeting liabilities as domestic assets.
Third, regulators assume that more foreign exposures mean a higher bill for domestic taxpayers; they
would, accordingly, require more capital to be held by banks with such exposures.
social

EPW

gender

gender inequality

CurrentAffairs

women

Sat, May 9, 2015

Bringing Women on Board

Coaxed and prodded by the Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI), listed companies in India
began appointing a woman member on their board of directors since the beginning of 2015. SEBI had
set 1 April as the deadline for compliance since the earlier one of 1 October 2014 failed to get much
response. The mandatory clause in the Companies Act, 2013 (along with the threat of a hefty graded
penalty for breach of the rule) and the fact that it evokes the highly controversial aura of reservation
have led to a great deal of angst about ramming gender equality down corporate throats.
Whether it is about employing qualified persons from among the disabled, giving equal employment
opportunities to people from marginalised castes and communities or any other socially or
environmentally responsible act, it has almost always been found wanting. Indias corporates have
jealously guarded their right as the private sector to appoint on the basis of merit. The little that
India Inc has done for equal opportunities, representation and social responsibility has been, with rare
exceptions, only to gain publicity through philanthropy. The same law also makes corporate social
responsibility (CSR) mandatory.
The widespread patriarchal prejudice, much deeper perhaps in Indias caste networked business
communities than in other urban professions, that few women understand finance and business seems
to have been the main reason for the reluctance to appoint women directors. Most Indian companies
are family- dominated and the men have traditionally controlled business with no role for women.

According to an industry estimate, before SEBIs directive only 6% of directors of the 1,463 companies
listed on the National Stock Exchange (NSE) were women. As of April this year, the
financial media
reported that 88% or 1,456 of the total companies listed on the NSE have appointed a woman director.
There are a total of 8,000 listed companies in the country
according to SEBI. Norway was the first to
reserve a quota for women on corporate boards followed by Italy and France; it is now the norm in
many market-friendly countries. Not surprisingly, these countries have the highest percentage of
women in top corporate leadership positions now, with Norway leading with 33%.
Notwithstanding the allegations of proxy and backseat driving by husbands and other male relatives,
often hurled at female panchayat and local governing body members elected under womens
reservations, there is much to commend this 33% quota. It has made women visible in places that they
did not dare to be seen in, and it has acquainted them with rules, procedures and protocols that were
hitherto closed off to them; the more spirited among them have become assertive about their rights
and in many cases forced issues of community interests to be given top priority. Most importantly,
these have awakened aspirations in younger women to aim for these positions. In the case of corporate
India too the focus should no longer be confined to the mere token of a one-woman member. It must
learn to appreciate the different and valuable perspectives and talent that women bring to the table (or
the board in this case).
bangladesh
China India border

Land Boundary Agreement

LBA

EPW

international

CurrentAffairs

Sat, May 9, 2015

A Border Settled
As is well known by now, the LBA was worked out between India and Bangladesh by Indira Gandhi and
Sheikh Mujibur Rahman in 1974. The assassination of Mujibur Rahman in 1975 and the coming to
power of the Janata Party government in India in 1977, with Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh members as
ministers, derailed this agreement. Since then, it has often been revived but was unable to overcome
the legislative hurdle as Hindutva parties and groups, as well as other chauvinist parties and forces like
the Asom Gana Parishad ratcheted up a shrill campaign against it every time the issue was raised. It
goes to the credit of the previous United Progressive Alliance government that it finally concluded the
agreement in 2011 with the Bangladesh government on the details of the transfer of territories and
enclaves as well as the status of the people living in them. This agreement was, unfortunately, again
delayed due to the strident opposition of the BJP as well as the opportunistic position of the newlyelected government of Mamata Banerjee in West Bengal.
There are a total of 111 Indian enclaves in Bangladesh and 51 Bangladeshi enclaves in India. Some
enclaves of one country are contained inside the others enclaves, called second order enclaves. There
is also a 1.7 acre jute field belonging to India within a Bangladeshi enclave situated within India, which
itself is an enclave within Bangladesh! Tens of thousands of people live in such enclaves and suffer daily
harassment from border guards of both countries and are unable to access any of the rights and
benefits of citizenship. The agreement simplifies the territorial divisionitself a tragic legacy of
partition. It also gives the people living in these enclaves the right to chose whether they would like to
continue living where they are and take on the citizenship of the country where the territory now falls,
or to migrate to the country whose citizens they presently are.

In the seven decades since independence, India has not managed to repair the mess that it was
bequeathed in the form of contentious borders; where there has been some progress, there has also
been many additions to the problems of settling borders. With Pakistan and China, it could well be
argued that Indias failings were matched by their own acts of omission and commission. However,
there was little other than political
incompetence and national chauvinism holding back a border
agreement with Bangladesh. One could be pessimistic and say that if an agreement with a friendly
neighbour could take so long to fructify, what hope is there that the far more intractable border
disagreements with China and Pakistan will be settled. However, the very fact that the border
agreement with Bangladesh has been settled shows a path to the settlement of similar problems with
China, if not with Pakistan.
political economy

EPW

polity

CurrentAffairs

Sat, May 2, 2015

Reflections on Indian Political Economy

the difficulty of organising collective action towards long-term public investment in infrastructure, a key
ingredient of economic growth, in a country where even the elite is fragmented and finds it difficult to
get its act together in doing something that would have benefited most of its members. With this failure
of collective action, the public surplus is often frittered away in short-term subsidies and handouts.
the same elite fragmentation that acts as a constraint on economic growth can work as a safeguard for
the resilience of democracy in India, where the divided groups may agree on the procedures of
democracy as a means of keeping one another within some bounds of moderation in their
transactional negotiations. 1
Collective Action Issue
The economic growth fundamentals for India are now potentially quite strong (stronger than it seemed
in 1984):
Domestic saving and investment rates are relatively high for a poor country.
After the opening of the Indian economy the alacrity with which a part of the hitherto protected
Indian business adapted to the demands of global competition and thrived suggests a remarkable
adaptability.
Vigorous entrepreneurial spirit in all corners of the economy, rejuvenated by the infusion of business
entries from hitherto subordinate castes and regional capitalists.
The majority of the population is quite young, with the potential of a large and productive young
workforce.
With better transport and communication (particularly with the remarkably fast spread of mobile
phones), connectivity is increasing in a way that is likely to speed up enhancement of productivity.
But there are major structural and institutional problems blocking the full realisation of these strong
growth fundamentals:

(a) The physical infrastructure (roads, electricity, ports, railways, etc) is weak. Public budgets laden with
heavy subsidies, salaries and debt servicing have very little left for infrastructure investment, leading to
increasing frequency of public-private partnerships on infrastructure.
(b) Secondary education is a minimum qualification for many good non-farm jobs, and yet the children
from poor families overwhelmingly drop out before entering or completing secondary schools, on
account of economic and, particularly in the case of girls, also social compulsions.
(c) The average quality of school and college education is not sufficient for employable skills for many,
(d) in matters of public health and sanitation, where India lags behind even some African countries. 2
(e) Environmental degradation has been a major drag on net economic growth.
Governance Ineffectiveness
All of the aboveinfrastructure, education, public health and sanitation, environmentinvolve the
governance effectiveness issue with respect to delivery of key public goods and services, which is rather
low in India, and, of course, varies a great deal between different states in India
Governance ineffectiveness is often regarded as a lack of state capacity, that many point to as Indias
major failing. tate capacity is sometimes weak not necessarily because of a dearth of capable people
but because of a systemic impasse.Extraordinary state capacity may be observed in some episodic
matters, for example, in organising the complex logistics of the worlds largest elections, the worlds
second largest census, and some of the worlds largest religious festivals. But extraordinarily poor state
capacity is displayed in, for example, some regular essential activities like cost-effective pricing and
distribution of electricitythe key input for the economy.
Four Structural Issues
(a) There is a brewing legitimisation crisis of capitalism in India for many sections of the people on
account of (1) rising inequality of wealth, (2) the flourishing of crony capitalism (exemplified by the socalled Gujarat model of development), (3) the displacements and dispossession of common people
from their land and degradation of their environment, and (4) deterioration in the supply of basic public
services (water, safety, etc) in the burgeoning cities and towns, while the rich arrange for private access
to these services.
(b) More than citizen rights and welfare, the young people who are the majority of aspirational India
seem to be demanding jobs. Over the next decade or so this can be a major source of political turmoil,
particularly because over many decades job growth in India has been very sluggish. Every month there
are about a million new entries into the non-farm labour force, but outside the construction sector, the
growth elasticity of job creation so far has been extremely low. Most recent economic success stories in
India have been in relatively skill-intensive or capital-intensive industries (software, pharmaceuticals,
vehicles, auto parts, etc).
(c) Even when jobs are created, there is a major regional discrepancy between job demand and supply,
which may turn the so-called demographic dividend from large numbers of young people into a ticking
time bomb in parts of the country. For demographic reasons these young people are more in the large
populous states of North India (where poor governance and infrastructural deficiency limit job growth

as well as delivery of welfare services). But jobs, when created, are more in states in west and south
India. Interstate migration can be a partial relief but, given the staggering numbers, it cannot be a
solution if one wants to avoid large costs of dislocation and nativist unrest.
(d) Tension between rentier and entrepreneurial capitalism: There are three major sources of rent: (1)
Traded natural resource intensive goods (like minerals). In the last decade the mining mafia had its way,
but with global recession and slowing down of the Chinese economy this source of rental income is a
bit weaker now. (2) Non-traded natural resource-intensive goods and services (like land and real estate).
(3) Political rent in other activities (following from collusion between politicians/bureaucrats and
connected sets of favoured businessmen). Even after liberalisation, capital crucially depends on various
kinds of regulatory discretion of officials as well as loans from public bankslarge corporate defaulters
on the latter have recently been described by the Reserve Bank of India Governor as freeloaders.
Hindutva
CurrentAffairs

article 25

EPW

secularism

polity

Supreme Court

Sat, May 2, 2015

Supreme Court's Tryst with Secularism and

Hindutva
In February this year, the Supreme Court held that although Muslim personal law permits a man to
marry four women, this does not offer protection against service rules that prohibit more than one
spouse.
Introduction
India is home to eight major religions of the world. A necessary concomitant for peaceful coexistence
then in such a diverse state is equality before law for all religions.
This phenomenon of equal/principled distance from all religions has over the years shuttled across
various judge-centric interpretations ranging from tolerance to a way of life to Indianisation to equality.
In the absence of a ready-made definition, the burden fell on the Supreme Court to lay down a standard
meaning. In February this year, in a landmark judgment, the court reignited the debate and held that
the statutory rule prescribing termination of service on contracting a second marriage without
dissolving the first did not violate the freedom to practise religion under Article 25.
In Keshvananda Bharati, 3 Chief Justice Sikri named secular character as one of the basic features of
the Constitution, also similarly worded and affirmed by Justices Shelat, Grover and Jaganmohan Reddy.
However, a contradiction arose between the judiciary-constructed concept of secularism and the earlier
views in Ahmedabad St Xaviers College Society vs State of Gujarat 4 where Justices Chandrachud and
Matthew wrote:
In short secularism in the context of our Constitution means only an attitude of live and let live
developing into the attitude of live and help live.
In S R Bommai vs Union of India, 5 the Court however once again confirmed secularism as part of the
Constitution. Seven out of the nine judges reiterated that secularism was one of the basic features of
the Constitution.

S Radhakrishnan in his famous Upton Lectures (1926) had for the first time characterised Hinduism as a
way of life rather than a religion based on dogma. This description was heavily relied upon in the
Temple Entry case. 8 The apex court once again made an attempt to settle this rampant confusion in
the Hindutva judgments. 9 It used Hindu, Hinduism and Hindutva interchangeably and went on to
say that these terms are not amenable to any precise definition and no narrow construction can be
applied to lay down a specific definition. The three major grounds as crafted by Justice Verma were:
(a) A speech with secular stance 10 which is alleged to discriminate against other religions and
promising to create a state for a particular religion cannot be treated to be a corrupt practice u/s 123(3)
as an appeal to vote on grounds of religion as the basis of such stance is promoting secularism.
(b) The constitutional vision and wisdom does not expect to create a duty to get political parties in line
with secularism considering the statement was merely an expectation in the form of a ray of hope.
(c) Hindutva and Hinduism were equated39. Ordinarily, Hindutva is understood as a way of life or a
state of mind and it is not to be equated with, or understood as religious Hindu fundamentalism. The
above opinion indicates that the word Hindutva is used and understood as a synonym of
Indianisation, i e, development of uniform culture by obliterating the differences between all the
cultures coexisting in the country.
disaster management
CurrentAffairs

NDRF

EPW

earthquake

international

National Disaster Response Force

Sat, May 2, 2015

A Reputation for Rescue and Relief

Indias disaster and emergency response seems to have matured and is now dependable when any
such event strikes. One only has to discern the professionalism of the response to the present
earthquake and compare it with the reaction in 2001 to the Bhuj earthquake to realise how much of an
improvement there has been; or compare the response to the 1999 cyclone in Odisha with the reaction
to Cyclone Phailin.
The watershed event for Indias disaster response seems to have been the tsunami of December 2004.
Some lessonsinstitutional as well as policywere learnt and implemented by both the government as
well as non-governmental actors. The National Disaster Management Authority was formed, protocols
for responding to disasters were drawn up, and a range of non-governmental actors were involved in
consultation and formulation of policies. Later, the NDRF was drawn up with contributions from the
central police and security forces. The Navy and the Air Force too have built capacities to deal with
civilian emergencies in coordination with the NDRF. Indias attempts at building a blue water Navy and
its larger policy of projecting its emerging power status have together also contributed to its enhanced
capabilities. This has been evident during the process of evacuation from war zones like Iraq, Libya and,
most recently, Yemen.
This enhancement in capabilities of meeting disasters seems, at present, to be restricted to sudden
destruction and damage of war, earthquakes and cyclones. It has not been in evidence with equal
efficiency and professionalism in facing floods, nor in dealing with situations of terrorist attacks, riots or

mob violence. India confronts a continuing, and growing, disaster of road accidents and even the
relatively minor matter of reaching first aid to victims and transporting them to hospitals remains
grossly inefficient. Nor has there been any perceptible improvement in dealing with fire accidents.
Further, while the rescue and immediate relief measures have seen improvements, there has not been
a parallel advance in preparing for disasters (perhaps Cyclone Phailin was an exception). The building
code for earthquake-prone areas is poorly enforced; safety drills and civil defence measures are poor
and there has been little investment of time, money or attention to fulfilling any of these standards and
courses of action. The longer, more difficult, work of rehabilitation too remains patchy and haphazard
at best and grossly neglected at most times. Victims of disaster are left, after the first flush of rescue
and relief, to fend for themselves as they try to rebuild their lives. Matters of class, caste and gender
discrimination, bureaucratic sloth and callousness, political one-upmanship and such other venalities
have, more often than not, blighted whatever feeble attempts made at rehabilitation. The few success
stories can be traced either to the ability of local communities to come together to help themselves or
to the individual initiative of some administrator or politician. Unfortunately, these have not been
codified into standard operating procedures, or institutionalised into protocols.
IP rights
CurrentAffairs

TRIPS

EPW

Pharmaceuticals

Intellectual property

economics

patents

Sat, May 2, 2015

Pharma Patents after 10 Years

Ten years on, the progressive provisions of the amended Indian Patents Act are being watered down.
Ten years have passed since the Indian Patents Act, 1970 was amended in 2005 to bring the countrys
laws in line with the Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS). The
most important of the 2005 amendments was the introduction of product patents for 20 years,
including for pharmaceutical products, but with the following safeguards: the amended Section 3(d) of
the Patents Act that put paid to attempts to evergreen patents (extending patent protection by making
minor changes to the original drug), the expanded compulsory licence (CL) provisions and the retention
of pre-grant (and the introduction of post-grant) opposition to patents. Section 3(d) incorporates a strict
bar for what constitutes an invention and clarifies what is not patentable in India: mere discovery of a
new form of a known substance which does not result in the enhancement of the known efficacy of that
substance or the mere discovery of any new property or new use of a known substance
This single provision, cited in a slew of cases, has prevented the runaway pricing of medicines seeking
patentsnotably Novartiss Glivec (imatinib mesylate, an anti-cancer agent). The case of the CL on
Bayers patent on Nexavar (sorafenib tosylate, also an anti-cancer agent) issued to Natco clarified the
circumstances under which a CL could be issued. These cases have subsequently shown the true cost of
manufacture once generic competition sets in. Several of these patent case rulings since 2005 have
taken cognisance of the overpricing and consequent lack of access to patented medicines. In the Natco
case, they constituted sufficient grounds for the issue of a CL.
n truth, there is nothing voluntary about voluntary licensing. It is an act that ties the hands of Indian
pharma by dangling short-term profits and convenience at the expense of longer term autonomy and
agency.

Section 3(d) as well as the CL provisions in the Patents Act have been painted the villains of the piece by
pharma lobbies in the US and European Union (EU), and their governments. Every time one of the
foreign pharma companies loses a patent-related case in India, or when the Government of India talks
of price control of patented medicines, there is a chorus of voices from these embedded lobbies that
India is violating TRIPS provisions. Or that India is not investment friendly, the reality notwithstanding.
Every one of the 2005 amendments is well within the TRIPS provisions and the World Trade
Organizations (WTO) 2001 Doha clarification on patents and public health.
If anything, it is the Indian government, especially the Narendra Modi government, that seems to have
developed cold feet because it thinks that diluting the balance in Indias patent laws by agreeing to data
exclusivity (likely to be introduced first for pesticides) and introducing pro-evergreening provisions will
help it cosy up to its strategic partners in the West. A similar piece of sad capitulation is the dithering
on bilateral trade negotiations, including whether to agree to private arbitration beyond the pale of
Indian courts and the reluctance to argue for the issue of CLs. A government-appointed committee,
with scant regard to conflict of interest of its members, is elucidating an IPR policy that conflates
innovation with patent protection, ignores open source and open access models, and pays mere lip
service to public interest.
NGOs

EPW

polity

CurrentAffairs

Sat, Apr 25, 2015

Strategy to Quash Dissent

the accountability of foreign-funded NGOs Few will question the need to set up structures of
accountability and transparency in organisations handling large funds, including those that come from
outside India. But the government appears less concerned about transparency and more about the
issues these organisations have chosen to raise. It has focused on two categories of NGOs: those raising
uncomfortable questions about the environmental fallout of some of Indias energy choices, particularly
nuclear and coal, and groups highlighting human rights concerns, especially around the Gujarat 2002
violence. If these NGOs happen to be partly funded from foreign sources, then inevitably the
government spots a conspiracy threatening national security.
If the government was only concerned about the accountability of organisations that receive foreign
funds, it could have adopted a different route. This issue has been raised earlier and in fact, in 2007 the
previous government had prepared a National Policy on the Voluntary Sector. It envisaged a system of
accreditation for all NGOs through a National Accreditation Council of India (NACI), comprising
representatives of government and NGOs. The concept went through various levels of consultation but
the NACI was never constituted. The Modi government has not yet made any mention of setting up
something similar.
The more important question is whether this government accepts that there is a legitimate space for
NGOs in a democratic society, irrespective of how they are funded. It is here that we can legitimately
question the governments agenda. While the previous government also displayed some amount of
paranoia about NGOs working on tribal rights and environment, and saw them as obstructionist, they
were not targeted in this way. In the last decade, through institutions like the National Advisory Council
and the Planning Commission, several civil society groups had avenues through which to offer their

perspectives to policymakers. Today, all such mechanisms have been set aside. Thus, barring agitation,
resistance and other forms of advocacy, there is no other way for people with a different perspective to
be heard. The space for dissent and questioning, particularly in an atmosphere when all this is deemed
anti-national and suspect, is rapidly shrinking.
So while NGOs are not faultless and could do with greater accountability and transparency, there can
be no justification for the kind of hounding that we are witnessing today. Whether these organisations
survive this battering or not, the message that is being sent out to civil society is clear: this government
will not tolerate NGOs that come in its way and will use multiple strategies, including shutting off
sources of funding, to squash them. None of this bodes well for the health of a democracy.
history

EPW

polity

CurrentAffairs

Article 370

Sat, Apr 18, 2015

Article 370 of the Constitution

A brief history of why Article 370 of the Constitution was framed in a certain manner and the
importance of the text of the Article from the viewpoint of the people of Jammu and Kashmir.
The princely states comprised almost half of the Indian territories in the subcontinent at the time of the
proclamation of 1858 by the British colonial powers and their princes enjoyed full sovereignty in the
internal matters subject only to the paramountcy of the British Crown.
The princely state of Jammu and Kashmir was one such state of the Indian India ruled by the Dogra
lineage of kings under British paramountcy.
The Cabinet Mission of 1946 through their memorandum articulated clearly the policy of the new
government towards the native princes on the withdrawal of British Rule from India. It affirmed that the
rights surrendered by the Indian states to the British Crown would revert to the rulers of the states
when the new dominions of India and Pakistan came into existence following the withdrawal of the
British from India. The Cabinet Mission, however, advised the native states to evolve their relationship
with the successor governments as the British would no longer be in a position to extend to them any
protection. Legally speaking, the princely states of Indian India became fully independent with the lapse
of British paramountcy on the coming into force of the Indian Independence Act, 1947 passed by the
British Parliament, creating two dominions out of British India, namely, India and Pakistan.
The native Indian states numbering 565 at that time, of which Jammu and Kashmir was one, were now
left with three choices: (i) to remain completely independent; (ii) to accede to India; or (iii) to accede to
Pakistan. The power to make the choice was vested in the ruler of the state concerned. Jammu and
Kashmir state which bordered both India and Pakistan and was ruled by Hari Singh, the then Dogra
king, vacillated in making a prompt choice and did not sign the instrument of accession in favour of
either India or Pakistan on the date of transfer of power by the British in August 1947. Perhaps, he
harboured an ambition of keeping an independent existence, free from both India and Pakistan which
eventually proved to be a costly political blunder for him and his people.
Peace in Kashmir was not to last long after the withdrawal of the British. Barely two months after
independence, on 20 October 1947, a large number of armed tribesmen invaded Kashmir from the side
of the border with Pakistan causing grave devastation and carrying out killings, rapes, loot and plunder

in the Valley of Kashmir. Unable to meet the situation with his own forces, Hari Singh was now left with
a Hobsons choice. He addressed a letter to Lord Mountbatten, the Governor General of India, seeking
Indian help to save the state from the raiders, and attached his signed Instrument of Accession to India
for acceptance by the Indian Government.
In March 1948, Hari Singh made a proclamation by which his council of ministers were to convene a
National Assembly based on adult franchise to work out a new constitution for Jammu and Kashmir. On
20 June 1949, he issued another proclamation conferring all his royal powers, functions and
prerogatives as ruler of the state on Yuvraj Karan Singh Bahadur to be exercised by him during the
absence of the maharaja who had by then shifted to his Jammu residence.
While India was a democratic republic as per the Constitution of India, something significant happened
in the state of Jammu and Kashmir soon thereafter. Yuvraj Karan Singh, now vested with the powers of
the ruler by Hari Singh, issued a proclamation convening a National Constituent Assembly for Jammu
and Kashmir on the basis of adult suffrage for drafting a constitution for the state. It was also to decide
the future of the question of accession with India. On 15 February 1954, the states Constituent
Assembly ratified the states accession to India. Section 3 of the states Constitution reads: the state of
Jammu and Kashmir shall be an integral part of India. Section 147 of the states Constitution has made
this article unamendable by a future legislative assembly of the state. This completed the process of the
states legal integration with India.
As already stated, the Instrument of Accession with India conferred powers on the Union of India in
matters of only external affairs, defence and communications. Internal administration was retained by
the state as is evident from the Clause 8 of the instrument. The instrument was a standard text as
engaged into by other native states as well. But while other native states voluntarily lost their
independence in internal administration by signing supplementary treaties with India and by accepting
in totality the Constitution of India, it was not so with Jammu and Kashmir. This special legal status of
the state of Jammu and Kashmir was upheld by the Supreme Court in Premnath Kaul vs State of Jammu
and Kashmir (A 1959 SC 749) and was again reaffirmed by the Supreme Court in Rehman Shagoo vs
State of Jammu and Kashmir (A 1960 SC 1).
Child labour bill

EPW

RTI Act

polity

CurrentAffairs

labour

Sat, Apr 18, 2015

Let the Children Play

Ban it or regulate it, the debate over child labour seems unending. Meantime, the numbers of children
compelled to work, mostly because of poverty, continue to grow. With all this talk about Make in India,
we so easily forget that a substantial portion of what is made in India is crafted by the hands of poor
children who ought to be in school rather than working in fields, forests, mines, shops, homes or in
highly hazardous sweatshops. The fact of children working in all kinds of occupations remains one of
Indias worst-kept secrets.
the existing Child Labour (Prohibition and Regulation) Act, 1986. It introduced a bill to amend the 1986
act that would have effectively prohibited all children below 14 years of age from any occupation that
would keep them out of school. The amendment would also have banned children between 14 and 18

years of age from working in hazardous industries (earlier, that applied only to children less than 14
years old). While the former was to ensure that children between the ages of 6 and 14 years could be
enrolled in schools under the Right to Education Act, 2009, the latter was being brought in to comply
with the International Labour Organizations Convention on conditions of work of adolescents.
the National Democratic Alliance government is reportedly planning to introduce another amendment
to the law. Arguing that banning children from engaging in any form of work leads to inspector raj and
places inordinate powers in the hands of labour inspectors, the government appears to be considering
allowing children to work with their families in certain occupations. These include working in the fields
or forests, or in home-based industries. Although there is to be a condition that such work participation
is permitted only during vacations or after school, how can this be monitored? Child rights activists
argue that if such an amendment is made, inevitably the most affected would be girls as parents could
then legitimately keep their daughters at home to engage in family occupations. This would go directly
against the efforts to increase the enrolment of girls in school that is substantially lower than that of
boys.
In any case, irrespective of the earlier ban on children under 14 years of age working in hazardous
industries, hundreds of them continue to work in factories making firecrackers and matchboxes, and in
the carpet industry. Worse still, the ban has made little difference to children employed in mines where
entire families are virtually bonded to contractors. These children have little chance of schooling in any
case as their parents migrate constantly to find work. In such a poverty-ridden and transient existence,
the provisions of a law that is mostly followed in the breach make little material difference.
Apart from the known areas where children are employed, in recent years there has been a spurt of
children being used for domestic work. With the increase in urbanisation and the growth of a middle
class that can employ domestic help, children become a ready choice. Every now and then, the curtain
of silence surrounding this is flung apart when a child escapes with tales of horror.
There is no pat solution to end child labour. That is evident after years of effort by many nongovernmental organisations, as well as by government. Giving children the right to be educated is a very
small step. It has to be followed up with specific enabling tools such as accessible and affordable
schools, subsidised books and uniforms, transport and other special assistance. Where governments
have done this, as in Bihar for instance, there has been a marked increase in enrolment, especially of
girls.
environment

khadi and village industries

EPW

green economy

CurrentAffairs

Sat, Apr 11, 2015

Khadi Production in India

A green economy is one that results in improved human well-being and social equity, while significantly
reducing environmental risks and ecological scarcities The single-most important challenge that
humanity faces today is the need for economic development within ecological limits. Humanity must
live within clear planetary boundaries to attain sustainability in the long run (Rockstrm et al 2009).
Human well-being/prosperity should be the core agenda of an economy, which motivates economic
activity and justifies economic output.

The effects of climate change are uncertain, and threaten potentially destabilising costs on society. If
necessary action is not taken, it might lead to a loss of 5% to 20% of gross domestic product (GDP) per
year (Spash 2007). But curtailing climate change is not an easy task. According to the International
Energy Agency, at least $11 trillion required between now and 2030 to shift away from fossil fuels (IEA
2009). According to familiar axioms, the problem of climate change may be tackled by internalising
external costs such as environmental and social costs into the market value of a product.
1 Criteria for Green Enterprise
a green economy enterprise should be based on shared (socially just), and lasting (ecologically
sustainable) prosperity. It should not be just delivering goods and services, but should also maintain,
and enhance social and environmental well-being. It should also help people to thrive and communities
to flourish by providing stability in markets, security in employments, ecological integrity, sustainability
in supply chains, and fairness.
The following are the five criteria of a green economy enterprise set by Jackson and Victor (2013),
(i)Providing equitable distribution of goods and services needed for prosperity
(ii)Using as little as possible in the way of materials and energy.
(iii) Causing as little damage as possible to ecosystems and ecological assets.
(iv) Offering people meaningful employment and the opportunity to participate in society.
(v) Contributing to the vitality of the community.
2Khadi as Case Study
Khadi was promoted as an ideology of self-reliance and self-sufficiency. Khadi became a key symbol of
the Indian freedom struggle. During the first half of the 20th century in India, most farmers were idle
for about four months due to the dry season. At the same time the second biggest occupation in the
country, the textile sector, which was mainly a decentralised rural industry, was suffering due to export
of Indian cotton to England, and subsequent import of costly finished cloth. In the process it deprived
the local population of work and profit.
Gandhi raised this issue to protest against British rule, and to simultaneously provide employment for
millions of underemployed rural folk. Gandhi urged people to grow and harvest their own cotton,
produce their own cloth by spinning and weaving during the dry agriculture seasons. Any person can
easily learn spinning on wheels and weaving on looms.
Khadi is a decentralised labour-intensive tool-based local cloth production, and encourages local
consumption. It brings power to the grass roots from the top, it places non-violence in front of force,
constructive work instead of class conflict, democracy instead of controls, aiming at the sanctity of
means instead of final objectives and a philosophy about the individual instead of a collectivist
philosophy, it is not just merely a piece of cloth but a way of life
Assessing Khadi Enterprises
3.1Equitable Distribution
Currently, 1.2 billion people are under extreme poverty around the globe (UN 2013b) and inequality is
increasing (UN 2013a). This clearly shows that still the green and industrial revolutions are not

completely successful in eradicating poverty and lessening the gap between the poor and rich.
Instead, if we have to provide full employment for all by increasing large-scale industries, the goods
produced on this massive scale will be too much to consume at the domestic level and will have to be
exported to other countries. But the crux of the problem is that all countries cannot export all the
goods simultaneously to other countries, because they will also have excesses. It is becoming
increasingly difficult to provide jobs in modern industries, especially in countries like India, because
modern industries are centralised in nature and they need huge capital and infrastructure investments .
Hence, to tackle poverty and unemployment, economic activity must be encouraged at a community
level.
To sustain economic activity at the community level needs continuous market support. It is not easy for
a community to be involved in production. So, any production system in the present situation should be
able to give employment to people as well as provide them some decent purchasing power. Producing
local products using local resources for the local market decreases the cost of goods compared to the
goods produced in a distant place if we include environmental costs. Hence, it is necessary to include
environmental costs on all goods produced. Once it is done, locally produced goods will become
cheaper than goods produced by large-scale industries. In a community-run enterprise the cost of
organisation, management, market, infrastructure and machinery, procurement of raw materials will be
minimal. The cost of the final product will be lower. When this cost is lower, marketing becomes easy at
the local level.
3.2Less Materials and Energy
The tools used in khadi enterprise like the spinning wheel and handlooms, are extremely simple and
inexpensive. These instruments are constructed from renewable resources like wood or bamboo within
a few hours by any carpenter and are easily available to all including the weakest in the society
3.3Minimal Damage
The core idea of khadi is self-reliance (SR) (Gandhi 1955). Hence it is intimately linked with ecological
balance as Johan Galtung, the father of modern peace research argues,
3.4Employment
A khadi enterprise does not produce just a piece of cloth; it creates self-sustained growth. Employment
for all the members of a community is necessary not only to produce goods but also to sustain the
same by creating necessary demand for goods. Khadi creates self-employment as well as purchasing
power where none exists. Since khadi operates as self-employment, there will be no chronic
exploitation of natural resources as well as human resource.
Vitality of the Community
In khadi enterprise, an entire community with different intelligent capacities as well as the physically
challenged can involve themselves since it is simple and easy to learn and pursue (
Critiques
Khadi has been criticised for its slow production. The khadi workers returns are high since he uses local
resources and there will be very less spending of income on management, organisation, sales,
advertisements, transportation, storage, electricity, machinery, factories, buildings, financial institutions,

etc, as happens with large-scale industries. Hence, the slowness of khadi is therefore outweighed by
what it alone can save in terms of all the monumental expenditures of production and distribution
necessitated by other large-scale industries. What is relevant about khadi is not its speed but its
simplicity and its consequent availability to one and all including the weakest, so that the market is
assured to all in the society.
Khadi is a sign of economic backwardness and implies poverty, a view some people have. It is an
entirely wrong notion. It is now clear that, if we consider the standard of living of industrialised
countries as high, then it is not possible from every world community to attain the same standard
because of ecological constraints. Hence, the contemporary economic system in future will lead to
massive crisis and chaos.
IT Act

EPW

polity

CurrentAffairs

Section 66A

Article 19

Sat, Apr 11, 2015

Shreya Singhal and 66A

The Shreya Singhal order is said to be unprecedented at least for the last four decades and also
precedent setting as its lucidity, some believe, will cause a ripple effect in opposition to a restrictive
understanding of freedom of speech and expression, and an expansiveness around reasonable
restrictions. Let us examine each of the three sections that the bench dealt with.
The Section in Question
Section 66A of the IT Act was introduced in a hastily-passed amendment. Unfortunately, the language
used in this section was a pastiche of outdated foreign laws such as the UK Communications Act of
2003, Malicious Communications Act of 1988 and the US Telecommunications Act, 1996. 1 Since the
amendment, this section has been misused to make public examples out of innocent, yet
uncomfortable speech, in order to socially engineer all Indian netizens into self-censorship. 2
Summary: The Court struck down Section 66A of the IT Act in its entirety holding that it was not saved
by Article 19(2) of the Constitution on account of the expressions used in the section, such as
annoying, grossly offensive, menacing,, causing annoyance. The Court justified this by going
through the reasonable restrictions that it considered relevant to the arguments and testing them
against S66A. S66A was struck down on the grounds of vagueness, over-breadth and chilling effect. The
Court considered whether some parts of the section could be saved, and then concluded that no part of
S66A was severable and declared the entire section unconstitutional.
Article 14 Challenge
The Article 14 challenge brought forward by the petitioners contended that Section 66A violated their
fundamental right to equality because it differentiated between offline and online speech in terms of
the length of maximum sentence, and was hence unconstitutional. The Court held that an intelligible
differentia, indeed, did exist. It found so on two grounds. First, the internet offered people a medium
through which they can express views at negligible or no cost. Second, the Court likened the rate of
dissemination of information on the internet to the speed of lightning and could potentially reach
millions of people all over the world.

Section 79
Section 79 was partially read down. This section, again introduced during the 2008 amendment, was
supposed to give legal immunity to intermediaries for third party content by giving a quick redressal for
those affected by providing a mechanism for takedown notices in the Intermediaries Guidelines Rules
notified in April 2011. But the section and rules had enabled unchecked invisible censorship 13 in India
and has had a demonstrated chilling effect on speech 14 because of the following reasons:
One, there are additional unconstitutional restrictions on speech and expression. Rule 3(2) required a
standard rules and regulation, terms and condition or user agreement that would have to be
incorporated by all intermediaries. Under these rules, users are prohibited from hosting, displaying,
uploading, modifying, publishing, transmitting, updating or sharing any information that falls into
different content categories, a majority of which are restrictions on speech which are completely out of
the scope of Article 19(2).
Two, a state-mandated private censorship regime is created. You could ban speech online without
approaching the court or the government. Risk-aversive private intermediaries who do not have the
legal resources to subjectively determine the legitimacy of a legal claim err on the side of caution and
takedown content.
Three, the principles of natural justice are not observed by the rules of the new censorship regime. The
creator of information is not required to be notified nor given a chance to be heard by the intermediary.
There is no requirement for the intermediary to give a reasoned decision.
Four, different classes of intermediaries are all treated alike. Since the internet is not an uniform
assemblage of homogeneous components, but rather a complex ecosystem of diverse entities, the
different classes of intermediaries perform different functions and therefore contribute differently to
the causal chain of harm to the affected person. If upstream intermediaries like registrars for domain
names are treated exactly like a web-hosting service or social media service then there will be overblocking of content.
Five, there are no safeguards to prevent abuse of takedown notices. Frivolous complaints could be used
to suppress legitimate expressions without any fear of repercussions and given that it is not possible to
expedite reinstatement of content, the harm to the creator of information may be irreversible if the
information is perishable. Transparency requirements with sufficient amounts of detail are also
necessary given that a human right was being circumscribed. There is no procedure to have the
removed information reinstated by filing a counter notice or by appealing to a higher authority.
Section 69A
The Court upheld S69A which deals with website blocking, and found that it was a narrowly-drawn
provision with adequate safeguards, and, hence, not constitutionally infirm. In reality, unfortunately,
website blocking usually by internet service providers (ISPs) is an opaque process in India.
Transparency
Usually, the reasons for blocking a website are unknown both to the originator of material as well as
those trying to access the blocked URL. The general public also get no information about the nature and
scale of censorship unlike offline censorship where the court orders banning books and movies are

usually part of public discourse. In spite of the Court choosing to leave Section 69A intact, it stressed the
importance of a written order for blocking, so that a writ may be filed before a high court under Article
226 of the Constitution.
encounter killing

EPW

polity

CurrentAffairs

Sat, Apr 11, 2015

Extrajudicial Executions
The Supreme Court has failed the citizen on encounter killings.
the disturbing increase in police-executed extrajudicial killings, crudely referred to as encounter
killings, threatens the lives of citizens. On paper, police encounters are said to comprise a
spontaneous shoot-out between police officers and armed civilians in which the police are fired upon,
and (in self-defence) fire back, killing the alleged criminals.
Police reports of encounter killings usually follow this shoot-out narrative. Yet the distinction between
supposedly legitimate encounters and so-called fake encounters is, in practice, illusory. More often
than not, evidence indicates that these police narratives are false, and that the alleged encounters have
in fact been staged: guns and ammunition are planted at the scene by police, victims bodies are
cremated before independent autopsies can be conducted, police officers rarely sustain injuries from
ostensible exchanges of fire, and witness accounts tell of police rounding up victims for execution.
Shockingly, police officers are frequently rewarded for such murders, creating an incentive to stage
further killings. Encounters thus constitute a gross violation of the right to life, a tenet enshrined in the
Constitution and in international human rights law.
Thanks in large part to the efforts of victims family members and advocacy groups, many cases of
extrajudicial killings that would otherwise have gone unreported are being challenged in court. Yet,
even cases that reach the superior courts are not guaranteed of a just resolution.
This situation is largely attributable to the Supreme Courts failure to enunciate clear procedural
guidelines for reporting and investigating extrajudicial killings, a failure exemplified by the Courts
indefinite stay of proceedings of a 2009 extrajudicial killings case, appealed from the AP High Court
decision, AP Civil Liberties Committee (APCLC) vs The Government of AP. In 2014, in an important
judgment the Supreme Court laid out the procedure in investigating police encounters ( Peoples
Union for Civil Liberties & Anr vs State of Maharashtra & Ors ). It would be helpful if both the AP and
Telangana Police in the recent cases were tested against the procedure laid out. However, the AP Police
Associations challenge to the AP High Court judgment is yet to be taken up.
, the High Court of Andhra Pradesh clarified current law as it relates to extrajudicial executions The
court held that all instances of encounter killings involving police officers must follow the proper
channels of legal procedure, including registration of each killing as a culpable homicide in an FIR,
proper investigation of each incident by an independent body, and judicial determination of the
criminal culpability of the police officer(s) involved.
The absence of a binding FIR requirementan official record in which perpetrators of extrajudicial
killings stand suspected of culpable homicide until a judicial hearing on the matterallows police
officers to escape judicial oversight for unlawful killings. Currently, it is common practice for fellow

police officers to administratively excuse perpetrators of extrajudicial killings from wrongdoing, without
recourse to an independent investigation or judicial hearing. Interestingly, the Union Ministry of Home
Affairs does not maintain adequate records of extrajudicial killings, largely because police frequently fail
to report incidents, or simply because encounter killing is not an enumerated category.
Shockingly, the Supreme Courts ambiguous response to the phenomenon of extrajudicial killings in
India is indicative of a wider societal tolerance of such behaviour. The prominence of so-called
encounter specialists is evidence of the societal acceptance of police extrajudicial killings.
The status quo on extrajudicial encounter killings in India and the tolerance of a police practice
involving summary executions of persons who have neither undergone trial nor necessarily engaged
their killers in a firefight to begin with, is reminiscent of the repression unleashed by the British colonial
government in pre-independence India. By delaying the APCLC appeal indefinitely, the Supreme Court
has, by default, sanctioned the ongoing, extralegal practice of encounter killings.
backward caste

Indra Sawhney

OBCs

EPW

caste

polity

CurrentAffairs

Sat, Apr 4, 2015

Abuse of Power
The Jat caste was already in the state list of OBCs in a number of states in North India. But the National
Commission for Backward Classes (NCBC) had as far back as 1997 rejected demands to include Jats in
the national OBC list.
The Supreme Court on an examination of all the relevant facts has correctly overturned the notification.
It has now been
commonplace for all governmentsat the centre and the statesto use reservations
as a political instrument to attract electoral support. They often anoint a particular caste into the list at
the 11th hour on the eve of elections. We have had two such instances in little over a year.
Yet, the decision is not always to expand the list of reservations. Political ideologies can drive the
removal of certain groups from the reservation.
There is also the rivalry between different groups to keep
intact their privileges which is adding to social
tensions. In 200708, the opposition by the Meenas to the Gujjar demand to migrate to the Scheduled
Tribe (ST) category from the OBC list in Rajasthan had led to violence. It was ironical that the Gujjars
were agitating to be included into the ST list, a social climbdown.
After clearly explaining why the central government order on Jat reservation had to be nullified, the
Supreme Court ventured into making vague and unconnected remarks on the larger issue of caste and
reservations. The judgment spoke of new determinants of backwardness, revision of the OBC list not
only for inclusion but also exclusion, and that greater attention needed to be paid to emerging social
groups like transgenders. The prime measure for backwardness is social backwardness, the Court
stated, adding that new practices, methods and yardsticks have to be continuously evolved moving
away from caste centric definition of backwardness.

The Supreme Court went on to even argue that caste cannot be the only standard to determine
backwardness, though it admitted it is an important factor. It also held that self-proclaimed
backwardness cannot be valid to determine backwardness.
It was somewhat unusual for the Supreme Court to make such observations, which are not relevant to
the writ petition it was hearing. The observations are also random and inconsistent and do not in any
way add to jurisprudence on reservations. The benchmark there remains Indra Sawhney (1992), which
upheld the implementation of separate reservations forOBCs, to which the most recent judgment
makes no further contribution.
contempt of court

Ethics

social

EPW

CurrentAffairs

Sat, Mar 28, 2015

Ethics and Theatrics

In a curious, but quite unsurprising, development, this preventive, restraining action is immediately
transformed by the media into a ban, and the legal issue is hijacked to become one of freedom of
expression; this is then further confused and confounded by the Government of India and sundry
parliamentarians who declare that far from being about freedom of expression, it is really about
foreigners conspiring to defame the country, by insulting the honour of Indian womanhood.
These slippages may or may not be opportunistic, may or may not be partisan and self-righteous, but
they provide us with an opportunity to disentangle the many strands in this story, now that the first
flurry of charges and countercharges has abated, and the film been seen by any and everybody who
wants to.
There is nothing new about crime fiction or, for that matter, with recreating a crime on screen by
interviewing a convict. When filmed, this is normally done in the form of a documentary, but such
documentaries are made after there has been a final closure to the case. They are also made when a
person suspected of a crime has not yet been charged, and the film-maker provides evidence which can
lead to charges being brought.
Indias Daughter falls into neither of the above categories. It interviews a convict while his appeal is still
pending in court; there is no closure to the case. Such a film raises serious questions of contempt of
court where the appeal against the death penalty is still pending. Miscarriage of justice can take place
through prejudice and bias operating during the trial and the appeal. History tells us that innocent
persons have been convicted on laughable evidence, due to hysteria built up in the media.
Section 2(c)(2) of the Contempt of Courts Act defines criminal contempt as the publication of any matter
which prejudices or interferes or tends to obstruct the administration of justice in any manner. In order
to strike a balance between free speech and the absolute need for a fair trial, Section 4 states that fair
and accurate reporting of judicial proceedings shall not constitute contempt. At the same time, the
court has the power to hold trials in-camera in the public interest.
Indias Daughter seems to be in contempt of court as the film was aired during the pendency of an
appeal in the Supreme Court. The film-maker gets the convict to make admissions and confessions in
relation to the offence, incriminating the others accused while exculpating himself. Already there is an
online petition demanding the death penalty for the accused, while the issue of crime and punishment

is yet to be decided. At the time of writing, the high court has orally observed that the press appears to
have overstepped its self-imposed limits during pendency of appeal, but the issue that the film raises is
far more serious: namely, is there an interference here with the functioning of the courts?
The merits and demerits of the film are not at issue here, each person will receive its message
differently, and very differently in different places; our concern is with the context in which a film like
this is made, and by whom; and with how that context and all that is pertinent to it, is represented.
EPW

international

Israel

CurrentAffairs

Palestine

Sat, Mar 28, 2015

Israel after the Election

Netanyahu's re-election will push Israel further into international isolation; this may even aid the peace
process.
After a bitter and divisive election campaign, Israel has voted to give Prime Minister Benjamin
Netanyahu another term in office. With 23.40% of the vote share, the Likud Party, in Israels
proportionate representation system, won 30 of the 120 seats in the Knesset, six more than its closest
rival, Zionist Union, an alliance between Labour and Hatnuah.
The election result puts paid to the hope, at least in the near term, of peace talks for settling Palestinian
statehood. The concern was articulated by none other than Israels most dependable ally, the United
States (US), where President Barack Obama said: According to Peace Now, an anti-settlement nongovernmental organisation (NGO),his government pursued aggressive pro-settlement policies over the
1967 Green Line, undermining the very basis of a two-state solution: construction and planning for
future construction in existing West Bank settlements; legalising existing settlements, thus encouraging
the practice; and record construction approvals in East Jerusalem.
The fact though is that Palestinian statehood is no longer in Israels hands. The world has been mealymouthed on its continuing aggressions against Palestine, but it has steadily moved towards the reality
of a Palestinian state. Israel, with all its democratic pretensions, cannot ignore this for long. In 2012, the
United Nations gave Palestine non-member status by 138 to 9 with 41 abstentions, giving Palestinian
statehood much legitimacy. In 2014, the parliaments of several European nations voted to ask their
governments to recognise the state of Palestine.
Israel has retaliated by withholding tax revenues due to the West Bank, a move that lost it more world
support because it punishes Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, a moderate who has
cooperated with Israel all along. Western enthusiasm for Bibi was already waning over the Likud
governments continuance of a cruel 2007 blockade of Gaza, and its frequent use of disproportionate
force in the territory.
By itself, an end to the mollycoddling of Israel by the US is not going to resolve West Asias multiple
crises. But as this is truly the cause for most of them, it would certainly help. Israel fears the day it will
lose its clout with the US and the West as the last bulwark against the spectre of nuclear-armed Islamist
terrorism. This is why it feels so threatened by the USIran talks.

India recently floated the prospect of a possible change in its historical support to Palestine. Though
nothing more has been heard of this, Hindutva forces have tended to identify themselves with Zionist
forces in Israel and the countrys method of dealing with neighbours and threats, including terrorism.
But it was a Congress government that gave full diplomatic status to Israel in 1992, amid the shifting
sands of a post-Soviet Union world, four years before India set up a representative mission in Ramallah
in Palestinian territory. If New Delhi has managed to balance its strategic relationship with Israel along
with its moral and diplomatic support for the Palestinian cause, it is because Israel needs Indias
support more than the other way around. There would be no bigger mistake India could make in its
foreign policy than alter this balance in Israels favour.
freedom of expression

EPW

polity

CurrentAffairs

Article 19

Sat, Mar 28, 2015

Freedom of Expression Is a Right

In a judgment that sits squarely alongside judicial landmarks such as Bhagwati Charan Shukla, Romesh
Thapar and Maneka Gandhi , the Supreme Courts decision to scrap Section 66A of the Information
Technology (IT) Act represents a crucial restatement of the citizens right to free speech and expression
in an era where both the technologies of communication and censorship have expanded manifold.
Their well-reasoned ruling strikes a body blow to the growing official tendency to treat dissent and
debate, criticism and sarcasm, humour and irony as acts of subversion that must be policed and
punished, if need be. Though the judges were pronouncing on the limited question of whether certain
impugned sections of the IT Act, 2000, were unconstitutional, their judgment will provide a protective
shield to all those individualswhether acting online or offlinewho have found themselves on the
wrong side of the law for having peacefully questioned or challenged government policy.
As with any law that is both unpopular and illegal, no one from either the Narendra Modi government
or the erstwhile Manmohan Singh administration is willing to publicly defend Section 66A any more. But
the fact remains that the offensive sectionwhich criminalises online speech on the vaguest of grounds
such as being grossly offensive or annoyingwas introduced in 2008 by Manmohan Singhs
government and defended vigorously by it and the Congress in public even when the poisonous nature
of its provisions became clear. before the Supreme Court, the Modi government insisted the law must
remain, offering only to frame guidelines that would reduce the scope for abuse.
The Court wisely rejected this offer and held the entire section to be in violation of the Constitution.
Citizens may now be as free with their views online as they might be in print or on air or at a public
gathering. They will still be bound by the restrictions governing those modes of expression, of course,
and the well-specified procedure which exists to manage those restrictions. But they will not have to
worry about the additional burden of being hauled off to a police station just because they spoke via a
tweet or a Facebook pos
The Supreme Court also did well to read down another section of the IT Act, Section 79(3)(b), dealing
with the liability of intermediaries like internet service providers (ISPs), making it clear that they must
expeditiously take down unlawful online material only if the government or a court asks them to do so.
The original interpretation of the section was again very vague, leading many ISPs to pre-emptively
delete content which, though lawful, was attracting an adverse reaction from others.

there is also disappointment over the refusal in the ruling to declare ultra vires the governments power
to block websites under Section 69A of the IT Act. One of the reasons this power was challenged was
because of the largely opaque and indeed secretive nature of the process by which the government
decided to block certain websites. Often, the owners of the website discover the fact that they have
been blocked after the order has been put into effect. any decision to block a website can be relatable
only to some of the subjects set out in Article 19(2) of the Constitution and cannot be open-ended, the
way 66A was. The originator of the targeted site has to be heard before any blocking decision is taken,
the reasons for the block have to be recorded in writing, and must be made available to all concerned
parties so that they may challenge this in a writ petition.
How effective these safeguards will be in protecting websites from unfair targeting will now be tested in
the months and years ahead. There are other problems with the IT Act and Rules which have not yet
been litigated, such as the ridiculous official demands being made on cybercafe owners that they
maintain a logbook of every website that every client visits. The abolition of Section 66A of the IT Act is a
great victory for free speech. But the threats to free speech are unlovely, dark and deep. And we have
miles to go before we sleep.
Whistleblowers Act

EPW

polity

CurrentAffairs

Sat, Mar 21, 2015

Sending Whistle-blowers to Their Deaths

The Whistle Blowers Protection Act, 2011 got presidential assent in May 2014. However, no rules have
been formed under the act and more importantly the National Democratic Alliance government has
declared that the 2011 act needs amendments on national security and sovereignty considerations,
before it can be implemented. As it is, the shortcomings in the legislation which was approved by
Parliament in February 2014 have been much debated and written about. Prime among these
shortcomings are the punishment of up to two years imprisonment and a fine of Rs 30,000 for false
and frivolous complaints and no action on a disclosure if it does indicate the identity of the
complainant or public servant, or if the identity is found to be incorrect. Further, if the complainant is
found to have been involved in the irregularity or illegality, he or she will not have immunity or leniency.
The 2011 act also does not apply to the private sector. Given that there is a nexus between government
employees and those from the private sector in almost all major corruption cases, the non-applicability
of the law to the private sector is a major lacuna. Many large Indian companies have, however, set up
their own whistle-blower protection policies, ironically, fearing exposure through social media should
they ignore initial complaints.
Indian Ocean

EPW

indian ocean rim association

international

CurrentAffairs

Sat, Mar 21, 2015

India's Ocean?

Over the last decade and more, the Indian state, parallel to its growing economy and international clout,
has sought to ramp up its presence in the Indian Ocean and claim the status of primus inter pares
within it. It has had a dominant, and domineering, relation with the island states of Seychelles,
Mauritius and Maldives and also, to a large extent, with Sri Lanka. In the attempt to redefine the Indian
Ocean as Indias Ocean, India has been encouraged by the United States and West Europe which have
found it increasingly difficult to continue to police these waters the way they did for about four
centuries. Indias rivalry with China has been the pivot on which Indias new interventions have turned,
whether it is the Indian Ocean Rim Association or the Bay of Bengal Initiative for Multi-Sectoral
Technical and Economic Cooperation.
Prime Minister Narendra Modis manifestly successful trip to Seychelles, Mauritius and Sri Lanka (and
the very public decision to drop Maldives from the itinerary) has been a continuation of this foreign
policy vision.
Parallel to this new diplomatic foray, there has been a renewed stress on building the capacities of the
Indian Navy to enable it to play a blue water role. In the past few years the Indian Navy has sent its
ships to patrol the coast of Mozambique on a request from its government and has been among those
leading the international efforts to stem the piracy which threatened the shipping lanes emerging from
the Suez Canal.
Overall, despite differences over the nuances and inflections of Indias new foreign policy and strategic
vision, much of domestic opinion has been laudatory and supportive. From nationalist hawks to the
drafters of Non-Alignment 2.0, from the mandarins in South Block to the peak-caps of the defence
services, all have welcomed this break from Indias obsessive focus on its northern borders and
neighbours to a more rounded view of its world.
The Chinese today have deep economic interests in protecting the sea lanes in the Indian Ocean
through which most of their imports of fuel traverse and a large part of their manufacturing exports are
shipped. The Indian states pockets, while much deeper than two decades ago, are still too small to
finance such a great game.
Further, there seems to be no strategic clarity, far less a consensus, regarding the purpose of Indias
new military strategic assertion, as distinct from the consensus over its desirability.

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