upsc-daiy editorial 7jul

 

Who is guilty — Stan Swamy or those who kept him behind bars?

The impunity of the state and its agents in destroying lives at will must be reined in. It cannot be legitimised by any electoral ‘mandate’.

Ah, so the sly old seditionist has slipped away. On Monday afternoon, Father Stan Swamy died in state custody. But the canny state, which had recognised that he intended to use a sippy cup as a terrorist device, and so took its time giving it to him, that state can surely claim that this was no ordinary death. It was a seditionist act. They will stop at nothing, these dangerous Urban Naxals. They will do anything to malign the noble state.

First, there were all the people who were dying of the virus, dying on hospital floors, dying on city pavements, bringing the fair name of the country into disrepute. But there were proper “nationalists” around who sought to prevent the spectacle of the burning pyres, the car park cremations, from being photographed and becoming public knowledge. And now Stan Swamy’s gone and died. Surely he knew that dying like this will be showing the country in a bad light. And, this is my case, he knew it! He is on record as having said that it will not be long now — to the court that denied him permission to return to Jharkhand. Even if the state did not have evidence of sedition earlier, surely they have it now. Stan Swamy’s death was a seditionist act! Guilty as charged — though they might not, yet, have charged him with the “crime” of dying in state custody.

Of course, the 84-year old had already spent a considerable time in custody, since the time that he was picked up from that charitable mission where he was ostensibly providing welfare services for the poorest “tribals” — as we call the original inhabitants of this land. Well, it will now become that much more difficult for the state to gather evidence against him — can’t that count as obstructing the course of justice, perhaps even as destruction of evidence i.e. himself? But surely they must have some evidence already, because they arrested him in the first place, right? And now that they can’t gather any more evidence against him — or, at least, he can’t commit any more illegal acts — they must consolidate what they have already, and duly subject him to a posthumous trial. The “collective interest” which trumped his plea for bail on health grounds, demands no less. And surely his dying like this — in state custody! — this must be clinching evidence. If his life didn’t yield enough to convict him, surely the manner of his leaving it, does.

But yes, since he is unlikely any more to be able to intimidate witnesses, or tamper with evidence — or, indeed, commit any more anti-national acts, having already committed the ultimate anti-national act — the honourable judges who denied him bail, should consider granting him bail now. Father Stan Swamy must be allowed to be free, in death.

At the online condolence meeting in the evening, there was much talk, particularly among Stan Swamy’s Jesuit colleagues, about the importance of “reconciliation”. Well, religious people have their ways, but those of us who are non-religious must resolve to remain unreconciled, carry forward the noble burden of “sedition” that Stan Swamy has left behind. It will not be easy.

First, there is the hard work of fighting for Adivasi rights — the rights of some of the most marginal sections of our society. These rights, to their land and their livelihoods, are under imminent threat from a corporate-driven model of vikas. But this fight will not be only against corporate greed. It will also be against those who carefully denigrate Adivasi into vanavasi, since the former name complicates the fanciful “Aryan” claim to being the original inhabitants of this ancient land. The whole invasion-conversion-based clutch of Sanghi ideologies rest on this necessary fraud.

And if that — being able to look at the innocent, bewildered faces of the dispossessed “tribals”, and not feel ashamed — wasn’t hard enough, Stan Swamy was engaged, right till the end, with the rights of the lakhs of prisoners who are held for years — unconvicted, untried, uncharged even — in fetid prisons. Stan Swamy’s heroic refusal to be sent to hospital has to be seen in this light: Either let me go and live out my last days among my people, in Jharkhand, he said, or send me back to jail. The judge chose wisely, in the collective interest. (May I please be allowed to secede from that “collective”?)

But, while this continent of misery — our own gulag archipelago — of the forgotten prisoners is scandal enough, there is yet another that I wish to flag in this moment of shame and sorrow. This is the question of accountability. There have to be identifiable people at every stage of this tale of horror. Name them — name the policemen, the lawyers, the judges, the jailers — and hold them responsible for their actions, and the consequences of those actions, the shattered hopes, the lives destroyed. Either Stan Swamy — that kind, gentle man — was guilty. Or the people and the processes that brought him to this end are guilty. This question cannot be left unanswered. The impunity of the state and its agents — destroying lives at will, the mere accounting of which will take years — this must be reined in, it cannot be legitimised by any electoral “mandate”.

Surprisingly, this apparently impossible problem admits of a really simple solution. State impunity rests on the legally untenable survival of the notion of sovereign immunity for the state and its agents. This notion derives from a pre-democratic, pre-republican, pre-constitutional age. Its only and limited contemporary role is in the matter of international interactions. In a constitutional republic, there can be no sovereign. The state, and its agents are all subject to the law, and the constitution. And, despite the existence of malignant legal draftsmen, even the law is subject to the law and the constitution. The ending of sovereign immunity will spell the end of malignant state impunity. The criminals who hunt under cover of immunity — in uniform and out of it, cloaked in the armour of office — will stand exposed. And, perhaps, become human, again.

 

The truth about oxygen deaths during Covid second wave

Data shows the urgent need to establish mechanisms of accountability within the public health system.

April 23 saw the highest number of oxygen shortage deaths in a single day.

The second wave of the Covid-19 pandemic laid bare how grossly unequipped India’s healthcare systems were to handle the spike in the number of daily positive cases. While several factors were responsible for the damage, an easily preventable dimension of the disaster is deaths caused due to shortages of oxygen in hospitals, which officials might have averted by heeding early warnings and taking prompt action to address an imminent oxygen crisis. Lack of proper official record-keeping, undercounting and denial continue to be recurring themes of the pandemic since the first wave. As an independent group of researchers, lawyers, students and concerned citizens, we have attempted to count deaths due to oxygen shortages in hospitals to counter this erasure.

To do this, we prepared a database by collating news reports of deaths due to lack of oxygen in hospitals, cross-verified details, and followed up with reports of instances where review committees in hospitals were formed and where compensation was considered. We have documented that at least 629 patients died due to oxygen shortage in 110 hospitals across the country between April 6 and May 19.

These figures do not include deaths due to oxygen shortage in home quarantined cases, patients refused admission in hospitals or unable to get medical diagnosis and treatment on time, and discharged from hospitals in anticipation of oxygen shortages.

April 23 saw the highest number of oxygen shortage deaths in a single day. At least 60 people died due to oxygen shortage across hospitals in the country, 46 of which were reported from Sir Ganga Ram Hospital and Jaipur Golden Hospital in Delhi. Both these hospitals issued statements linking shortages of oxygen supply to the deaths of their patients. Despite these admissions, government officials have continued to deny these deaths and downplay the seriousness of the oxygen shortage situation.

The Delhi government argued in the Delhi High Court that, in the case of the Jaipur Golden Hospital case, oxygen shortage could not be ascertained as the definite cause of death. Three weeks later, families of some patients who died at this hospital filed a plea with the Delhi High Court challenging this report. On the same day, the Delhi government constituted a six-member committee to look into all deaths caused due to lack of oxygen on a case-by-case basis.

In case of reports of deaths from 110 hospitals, there were, at least 54, denials by hospital and state authorities. Sometimes, hospital authorities acknowledged oxygen shortages but denied that as the cause of deaths, contrary to claims by patients’ families. Others have refused to release the exact number of deaths due to oxygen shortage. In some cases, like the May 9 incident at the Telangana Institute of Medical Sciences (TIMS), authorities maintained their denial even after doctors on duty confirmed oxygen shortages.

We found only 24 instances of investigation committees being set up to look into incidents of oxygen shortages. These include committees appointed by district and state authorities as well as courts. In some cases, the investigation by committees has led to the revision of figures, pointing to a pattern of undercounting and underreporting. For example, early media reports stated that at least 24 people died on May 3 at the Chamarajanagar Institute of Medical Science (CIMS) in Karnataka. However, the three-member panel appointed by the Karnataka High Court to investigate this reported that at least 36 in-patients died due to the non-availability of oxygen. During a hearing related to 26 deaths at the Goa Medical College and Hospital (GMCH), Bambolim, the Goa bench of the Bombay High Court observed that any loss of life due to lack of oxygen is an infringement of the right to live under Article 21 of the Constitution. Even as the court was directing the state government to ensure a smooth supply of oxygen, the estimate on the number of deaths at GMCH shot up almost three times.

The absence of any official nationwide count has motivated volunteers like us to track deaths due to oxygen shortages in hospitals to ensure that they are publicly acknowledged. More broadly, our data shows the urgent need to establish mechanisms of accountability within the public health system along with efforts to improve health infrastructure and oxygen supply.

 

How the fear of imperial encirclement has driven the Chinese Communist Party

Its development strategy since the 1980s has not been oriented towards building socialism, but towards turning China into a big power.

China’s development trajectory since the 1980s has not been oriented towards building socialism in the sense of creating a community within which the individual can lead an unalienated life; it has not even been oriented towards achieving full employment and eliminating poverty.(Illustration by C R Sasikumar)

The Bolshevik Revolution had an electrifying effect on Asian countries suffering from the dehumanising impact of imperialism. Its project of world revolution addressed their needs for the first time, in a way that the European socialist movement had never done. Communist parties were formed all over Asia almost immediately after the Bolshevik Revolution: Indonesia (1920), China (1921), India (1921), and South Seas (1925) that split into the CPs of Malaya, Indo-China, and Siam in 1930. The 13 delegates meeting in Shanghai on July 1, 1921, to found the CCP, however, must have had a vision of the world a century hence that is vastly different from what the world is today. Their vision would have been of a world without capitalism, imperialism, unemployment, poverty, and exploitation, and of an egalitarian China with a sense of community, ensconced within a universe of socialism.

No doubt China has made enormous strides over these hundred years under the leadership of the CCP. A nation that British imperialism sought to convert into one of opium addicts, through the Opium Wars of the mid-19th century, and Japanese imperialism into a colonial appendage, is today the second-largest economic power in the world. The growth rate of its GDP has been phenomenal, indeed unprecedented for as long a period as the one over which it has been sustained. Its technological prowess, manifested most recently by its ambitious space programme, has been impressive. Indeed it is the only third world country of significance that appears to have climbed out of its state of underdevelopment: Japan, it must be remembered, had never belonged to the third world, and South Korea and the city-states much lauded by the Bretton Woods institutions are too small to signify.

And yet behind the glitter of these achievements, we enter an area of doubt. Income inequality in China is quite pronounced, not of course as great as in Latin America but comparable to other Asian countries. The official claim of zero poverty is untenable: It is arrived at by taking a very low “poverty line”, of 9 yuan per day in early 2020, which would just suffice to buy two one-litre bottles of water, but is quite insufficient for meeting all one’s needs including food, clothing and shelter. The persistence of poverty is not surprising, since, despite the emergence of labour shortages in particular regions, China still has large unutilised labour reserves with which poverty is usually correlated. China’s unemployment and poverty are proportionately much lower than in other Third World countries like India but they have not disappeared.

In this respect, China’s experience is very different from that of the Soviet Union and other former socialist countries of Eastern Europe, which had used up their labour reserves and achieved full employment, even labour scarcity, a feat unparalleled in the contemporary world. Indeed, much criticism was directed at these countries for being one-party states and for imposing restrictions on individual freedom (as is being done against China) but even their detractors had to admit that they had eliminated unemployment and absolute poverty. This achievement was considered the chief hallmark of “actually-existing socialism” and had prompted the Hungarian economist Janos Kornai to remark that “classical capitalism is demand-constrained” (hence its unemployment) “while classical socialism is resource-constrained” (where all resources are fully utilised).

China’s development trajectory since the 1980s has not been oriented towards building socialism in the sense of creating a community within which the individual can lead an unalienated life; it has not even been oriented towards achieving full employment and eliminating poverty. Its orientation has rather been towards making China into a big power. Its project has been essentially nationalist rather than socialist, which, in turn, has been caused by the ever-present threat of imperialism, of domination, that is, by metropolitan powers.

The context within which the CCP was formed a hundred years ago and the context within which it operates today have this element in common — the fear of imperialist encirclement and the CCP’s desire to lead China out of such a predicament. The threat of this encirclement has not lifted in a hundred years. True, there was actual imperialist presence on Chinese soil a hundred years ago (the CCP had met in 1921 within the “French concession” in Shanghai), while today there is no actual occupation. But the threat persists.

The debates on the economic trajectory to be followed in China have been not so much between those who want a restoration of capitalism and those who want to pursue socialism, but about whether China can become more powerful through a pure strategy of building socialism or through the pursuit of a strategy that also harnesses the resources of private capital, both Chinese and foreign. The CCP has on the whole chosen the latter course over the last four decades, though it has made several “course corrections” to ensure that popular anger against its economic policies does not reach a flashpoint.

This is why when peasant anger over land acquisition for industrial projects was giving rise to thousands of protests every year, the CCP had come up with the slogan of “Towards a socialist countryside”. This entailed a significant diversion of resources for the upliftment of the quality of life in rural China.

Likewise, at different stages along the “reform” path, the CCP has used different props to keep its high growth rate going — from reliance on Township and Village Enterprises, to inviting foreign capital to set up export-oriented units, to stimulating home consumption through administered wage increases and the provision of credit.

I believe it is a mistake to think that a socialist strategy, based on the development of the communes, would have been less effective in thwarting imperialist encirclement of China; at the same time, it would have eliminated unemployment and poverty and given the regime a firmer domestic support base. But the fact of encirclement is real, as numerous US initiatives, from the now-defunct Trans-Pacific Partnership to the Quad, testify.

 

What is the revolt against Chirag Paswan really about?

The implosion in the Lok Janshakti Party is connected to the age-old tradition in our caste-ridden society of showing the Dalit his place.

The superficial assessment of the unfortunate developments in the Lok Janshakti Party (LJP) is that it is a family feud and power struggle. While it is true that the two main protagonists are closely related, the family angle is a mere sub-plot in a many-layered tragic drama, with powerful participants behind the scenes.

The man in the eye of the storm is Chirag Paswan. Indubitably, what happened on June 13 was an attempted coup, aimed at ousting Chirag from the party that his late father, Ram Vilas Paswan, had founded and nurtured to its present stature as a political force to reckon with — and which Chirag shepherded to great success in the 2019 Lok Sabha elections.

It is ironic that the beneficiaries of the party’s success have raised the banner of revolt. Some of them were chomping at the bit since the Bihar assembly elections, which LJP fought alone after being offered a demeaning reduction in seats by its allies in the NDA. For the LJP, the assembly results were a disappointment in terms of seats won, but to garner 6 per cent of the total votes polled, even when it contested only 135 seats, was no mean achievement. The LJP was successful in its collateral intent of ensuring the defeat of the JDU candidates in at least 50 assembly segments.

Predictably, Nitish Kumar will not forget or forgive the bloodied nose at the hands of the young upstart. The JDU first brought over the only LJP legislator to its fold, and now has engineered a split in the party. Through the crisis, the BJP has appeared aloof, but the Speaker’s haste in recognising Pashupati Paras as the leader of the LJP in the Lok Sabha tells its own story.

At a more profound but subterranean level, the LJP implosion has a visceral link to the age-old saga in our caste-ridden society of showing the Dalit his place. Dalit political parties came into being out of an aspiration for an equal place in the sun. With Ram Vilas Paswan gone and Mayawati fighting her demons, Chirag has emerged as the leading Dalit political voice. But given a highly stratified social structure of graded inequality, the Dalit leader knows that he has to overcome a deeply ingrained cultural bias that underestimates his worth. Socially powerful and privileged groups have joined in the effort to stifle the rising Dalit politician. But that’s the story of every Dalit in the country.

Laws have changed, but not society’s inhuman attitude toward the Dalit. Dr B R Ambedkar recognised this lethal societal infirmity, which explains his passionate espousal of a separate electorate for Dalits, but Gandhiji’s gun to his head and the subsequent Poona Pact of 1932 ensured the continuing subordinate status of the Dalit. As compensation for giving up his demand for equality, he was offered the sop of reservation as a means of empowerment.

Ambedkar was emphatic that political reform without reformulating social relations was an insult to the Dalit. In his treatise, The Annihilation of Caste, he asked Hindus the inconvenient rhetorical questions: “Are you fit for political power even though you do not allow untouchables to use public schools… public wells… public streets…wear what ornaments they like…eat any food they like?” Over eight decades later, the vicious legacy of caste discrimination still persists in every walk of life. There has been a 19 per cent increase in reported atrocities against Dalits from 2015 to 2019.

An irrational, wicked belief in Dalit inferiority is embedded in our culture. There are myriad social disabilities imposed on Dalits in everyday life. In many villages in the Hindi belt and Gujarat, Dalit grooms are forbidden from riding horseback. Recently, there have been three reported cases from MP, Gujarat and UP of Dalit grooms being assaulted by upper-caste men for the temerity of riding a horse.

Reservation in jobs and academia for Dalits has been the grudging political response to the most inhuman hierarchical stratification mankind has known. But, with affirmative action restricted to government institutions and cleverly manipulated to keep Dalits from the higher echelons of the establishment, the reservation policy has hardly made a dent in the tightly controlled network of upper caste and class privilege. Further, by mischievously creating a false binary of merit and efficiency versus affirmative action, the traditional elite have succeeded in slotting the reservation policy as a concession for the undeserving.

Over the years, the reservation policy has been systematically weakened. A series of “meritocratic” judgments have called into question the “creamy layer” among Dalits and reservation in promotions, making it difficult for Dalits to be in decision-making positions, which is what Ambedkar always feared. Out of 89 secretaries in the Government of India, there are only three from the ST category and one from the SC community.

Instead of red-hot rage at the whittling down of benefits for the Dalits and the smallness of heart of the privileged, Dalit leaders have passively accepted dilution of the reservation policy. Even a self-assured, fiercely proud Dalit like Chirag Paswan is being defensive and conciliatory when he calls for reservation for the EWS, despite knowing that the raison d’etre of the reservation policy is not economic considerations but untouchability and all its painful consequences.

The pervasive disinformation regarding the Dalit experience drew the following comment from an anguished Dalit colleague: “Instead of annihilating caste, as Ambedkar hoped, we have annihilated the stark truth of caste discrimination in our midst!”

 

Let’s not politicise the Central Vista project

It’s carrying out much-needed improvements, with an eye on the future.

The project will cost about Rs 20,000 crore and PM Modi wants to complete most of the important work before the end of his second term in 2024. The rest will be done later.

If the Opposition just keeps trying to prove Prime Minister Narendra Modi wrong on everything, it will only weaken its own existence. The voice of the Opposition will carry weight only if its criticism or protest is constructive. Today, some people are protesting against the Central Vista project, but they should understand that the initiative to build a new Parliament building was taken by the then Lok Sabha speaker Meira Kumar during the Congress-led government in 2012. The leaders of other parties, including Atal Bihari Vajpayee, supported it.

Under the Central Vista project, the offices of the vice-president, the prime minister and the 51 ministries will be housed under one roof. MPs will have offices. All the buildings will be connected to each other. This will be an advantage from the security point of view and help get rid of the problems that people face during VIP movement.

The project will cost about Rs 20,000 crore and PM Modi wants to complete most of the important work before the end of his second term in 2024. The rest will be done later.

A section of society is questioning the need to spend such a huge amount on the project during the pandemic when the economy is badly hit. People are also questioning its purpose and benefits.

Normally, this logic may be sound, but the completion of the Central Vista project is important from the administrative point of view. I have been a part of the Parliament for 18 years so I have seen and understood the requirements closely. Many of these buildings are dilapidated and difficult to work in. The legislature sits in the Parliament House whereas the president, vice-president, prime minister and the officials of 51 ministries sit in different places. Rashtrapati Bhavan, Parliament House, North Block and South Block, and the National Museum building were built in 1931. After that, Nirman Bhawan, Shastri Bhawan, Udyog Bhawan, Rail Bhawan and Krishi Bhawan were constructed between 1956 and 1968. Today, 39 ministries are housed in different buildings in the Central Vista area while 12 ministries are occupying rented premises outside. The annual rent for these buildings is about Rs 1,000 crore and they are located far from the PMO and other ministries. Obviously, the administrative work gets hampered. So, is spending such a huge amount on rent justified?

Another important point is that when the buildings were built in Central Vista and its surrounding areas, there was no digitalisation, unlike today. Now, along with the security of Parliament House and the ministries, the protection of digital files also matters. Building a new complex will ensure better security for both.

India is a rising power in the world today. Our priorities are changing, so it is very important that the entire central government should be accommodated in a cluster of buildings equipped with modern technology, so that ministers can easily reach out to each other, meet and interact. If the 51 ministries are closer to each other, it will definitely be a benefit from the administrative point of view.

We also have to keep in mind that our population is growing, so the number of MPs will have to be increased too in the future. Keeping this in mind, the new building of Parliament House will be built on about 65,400 square metres of land, with a large Constitution Hall, a lounge for MPs, a library, offices of several committees, etc. The Lok Sabha chamber will have the capacity to seat 888 members and the Rajya Sabha chamber will be able to accommodate 384 members. Along with this, there will be ample space for the National Museum, National Archives and the Indira Gandhi National Centre for the Arts and our heritage will also be displayed in a dignified manner.

Those who are critical of this project say that Rs 20,000 crore should be spent on helping the poor and providing healthcare facilities during the pandemic. But is the government executing this project by diverting the funds meant for the poor or the needy? Of course not. The government is not rolling back any welfare scheme meant for the poor. All schemes are running as before. The poor must be helped and every government has been doing this. The point is that we have to plan for the future too.

If we look at our post-independence history, any person who has been in power — be it Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru, Lal Bahadur Shastri, Indira Gandhi, Rajiv Gandhi or Atal Bihari Vajpayee — has planned for the future and that is why India occupies its current prime position. If Rajiv Gandhi had not dreamt of a technology-rich India, would we have been where we are today? We must worry about the present. Our current problems should be solved, but we should also dream of a better future. The office of our Prime Minister should also be state-of-the-art, equipped and secure like the parliamentary and presidential buildings of the USA, Russia, Britain and other developed countries. That’s why there should be no politics in the case of the Central Vista project. There are several other subjects for politicking.

 

Yes, minister

Manish Sisodia's defence of a student’s right to disagree is welcome. Others should pick up the baton.

A final semester MA student at AUD was fined Rs 5,000 for her remarks during the online convocation ceremony attended by Kejriwal.

No student should be punished for exercising their right to free speech within the university space.” In an argumentative democracy, that sentence — along with much of Delhi Deputy Chief Minister and Education Minister Manish Sisodia’s letter to the Principal Secretary, Education — should be a truism, not a statement to be lauded. Yet, the fact that Minister Sisodia publicly stood up for the right of a student of Delhi’s Ambedkar University (AUD) to criticise university policies and allegedly, Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal, is welcome. The notion that a “university should be a safe space for students to freely voice their opinion, debate and develop their points of view” has been increasingly under threat from various governments, including and especially at the Centre. And the fact that one of the top leaders of a state government has stood up for the right to free speech and dissent on campus could help guide the public conversation, both within and outside universities, back to fundamental constitutional principles and guarantees.

A final semester MA student at AUD was fined Rs 5,000 for her remarks during the online convocation ceremony attended by Kejriwal. The high-handed manner in which this punishment was announced is of a piece with a dismal pattern that has been taking shape in universities across the country since at least 2016. That eventful year saw the suicide of Rohith Vemula at Hyderabad Central University, the labelling of students at JNU as “anti-national” for holding a political programme as well as charges of sedition being filed against some of them. During the anti-CAA protests, subsequently, the police stormed the Jamia Millia Islamia and AMU campuses and many scholars and students have been arrested under the provisions of the draconian UAPA. In all this, students and their right to disagree and dissent have been pitted against muscular and homogenising ideas of nationalism. In fact, even Sisodia’s own AAP government in Delhi gave its sanction to prosecute former JNUSU president Kanhaiya Kumar for sedition.

In this climate, Sisodia’s defence of dissent acknowledges that the university is a space where the shibboleths of nationalism, and the claims of the powerful, are up for constant challenge and review. To maintain the campus as a site for creativity and innovation, students and scholars must be allowed to question accepted pieties and wisdom. The Delhi minister’s letter is a reminder that the state and those in society who disagree with its functionaries are not at odds. More representatives of the former — across states and at the Centre — need to stand up for the rights of the latter.

 

An uneven field

Draft e-commerce rules raise concerns of regulatory overreach. Welfare of consumers must be firmly at centre of policy.

The draft rules call for putting in place a fall-back liability clause. According to this, e-commerce firms will be held liable in case a seller on their platform “fails to deliver goods or services due to negligent conduct” causing a loss to the consumer.

The government has argued that the draft e-commerce rules — on Monday, the ministry of consumer affairs postponed the deadline for comments and suggestions on the proposed consumer protection rules from the earlier target date of July 6 to July 21 — seek to protect the interests of consumers, curb unfair trade practices, and encourage free and fair competition. It goes without saying that measures designed to elicit greater cooperation from e-commerce firms, ensure greater responsiveness to issues of consumer welfare, are welcome. As such, rules that require the appointment of a chief compliance officer and a resident grievance officer to ensure that consumer grievances are settled in a timely manner are steps in the right direction. But the proposed rules also seek to harden considerably the regulatory architecture in the online retail space, restrict the room for manoeuvre that e-commerce companies have, and create more ambiguity over their operations, without imposing similar constraints on their traditional brick and mortar competitors.

There are specific points of concern. The draft rules call for putting in place a fall-back liability clause. According to this, e-commerce firms will be held liable in case a seller on their platform “fails to deliver goods or services due to negligent conduct” causing a loss to the consumer. But this raises a question: If an e-commerce firm exerts no sway over the inventory, then can it be held responsible for the actions of the seller? Similarly, there is also ambiguity over flash sales. The ministry first noted that “only specific flash sales or back to back sales which limit customer choice, increase prices and prevent a level playing field are not allowed.” While it later elaborated that it will not regulate flash sales, it is puzzling how sales limit consumer welfare. Where is the cost-benefit analysis? Another rule that deals with related party transactions has caused much consternation. Under this, related parties of an e-commerce platform cannot be sellers on that platform. Contrary to expectations, doing so would tend to limit, not enhance, consumer choice on the platform.

Considering that such restrictive rules do not apply to the brick and mortar stores, which engage in discounts, end of season sales, and special tie-ups with manufacturers, imposing such restrictive regulations on e-commerce platforms lends credence to the charge that the rules were designed giving greater weightage to the interests of traditional retailers, rather than consumers, or small and medium sellers on the platforms. Vagueness in some of the terms employed in the rules, which leaves room for discretion in implementation, also raises apprehensions of greater regulatory intervention. These concerns need to be addressed. Policy should aim to reduce information asymmetry, facilitate competition, and bring greater transparency in pricing. In trying to enhance consumer welfare, it should not end up decreasing it.

 

The house of Didi

She showed that other spaces and worlds are possible, more mindful of environment and context.

The artist in her was resourceful in finding new ways to imagine the world even as she was not oblivious to market forces.

Her name doesn’t feature in the “top 100 architects” lists of design media in the country, she never had builders lining up outside her door, nor are there many books that acknowledge her work of over three decades. And yet the contribution of Delia ‘Didi’ Contractor — who died on July 5 at 91 — to Indian architecture is exemplary. A self-taught architect, Didi brought enormous rigour into her adobe (mud) buildings spread across Kangra, Himachal Pradesh. It wasn’t possible to lose sight of the trees, the sky or the Dhauladhars in any of them. In a single room, you would have a different view when you sat on the floor, a different one on a chair and a very different vantage point in the centre.

When most people thought of retirement at 60, Didi travelled on horseback for site visits. Stones would be excavated by hand and segregated into sizes and waste paper stripped along the grain to melt it faster with water. She recycled everything, from cork to broccoli stems; she rebuilt her connection with the earth every time she returned rice husk and pine into the mud plaster; she repaired the process of construction, by valuing those who worked on the ground. She mentored masons, contractors, gardeners, labourers, giving them new challenges and showing them a better way of working and living.

The artist in her was resourceful in finding new ways to imagine the world even as she was not oblivious to market forces. She found ways to make it sit within the radius of her aesthetic and ecological values, by being mindful of the environment and context. Just like the houses she designed without fences in Sidhbari, which sat enveloped by trees and shrubs, her life’s work was one without pretences or posturing.

---

 

 

July 7, 1981, Forty Years Ago: TN conversions

Home Minister Giani Zail Singh assured members of the consultative committee of Parliament attached to his ministry that the government would investigate the reported large-scale conversion of Hindus to Islam in a village in Tamil Nadu.

The panel alleged that a huge sum of money had been spent to bring about these conversions.

Home Minister Giani Zail Singh assured members of the consultative committee of Parliament attached to his ministry that the government would investigate the reported large-scale conversion of Hindus to Islam in a village in Tamil Nadu. The committee members include Niren Ghosh (CPM), Atal Bihari Vajpayee (Janata Party) and Madhu Dandavate (Janata). The panel alleged that a huge sum of money had been spent to bring about these conversions. They also referred to complaints that foreign money had been involved in the conversions. The Home Minister said that the Constitution gave every citizen the right to profess, practice and propagate religion. But indulging in forced conversions would be an abuse of this right.

Sailo’s complaint

The Chief Minister of Mizoram Brigadier T Sailo has protested to the prime minister that while talking peace with Laldenga in Delhi, the government is allowing his followers in the Mizo National Front a free run to terrorise people in the state. Armed men, he alleged, have been stalking government officials and forcing them to pay a part of their salaries. “A lot of government officers have had to pay out of fear,” he said. He said gun-totting MNF members were extorting money on the Silchar-Aizawl highway.

UK racial violence

As Liverpool was counting the cost of two successive nights of street violence, Skinheads who had triggered off a riot in Southall last week warned of a “rough summer” of racial violence in Britain. Interviewed over London radio, the Skinheads threatened another riot this week. They blamed coloured people for the trouble. But some listeners who came in on the phone in service of the programme described the Skinheads as “a disgusting lot of illiterate louts” and alleged that they had been proving Asians by making abusive remarks against them.

---

 

 

Let LGBTQ+ couples adopt

Recent jurisprudence recognises both the right of abandoned or orphaned children to be adopted and the equality of same-sex couples. In the context of the Covid tragedy, adoption by such couples must be legalised.

Covid-19 has placed before the country an opportunity to gift a new life to two communities simultaneously. One, by giving orphaned and abandoned children their right to have parents and the second by giving LGBTQ+ couples their rights to have children. (File Photo/Representational)

Written by Ravi Singh Chhikara and Navneet Singh

When Covid-19 hit the country, no one knew how devastating its impact would be on the lives of children. However, as the infections started rising and people started losing those close to them, it was clear that many children would get orphaned or abandoned. On June 1, the National Commission for Protection of Child Rights (NCPCR) informed the Supreme Court that more than 9,300 children in the country had lost their parents or were abandoned during the pandemic. However, as Justice Rao said, the actual number of children abandoned or orphaned may be much more than what has been cited in official and news reports. Further, this havoc has increased child trafficking, especially of girls.

How can India mitigate the agony of these orphaned and abandoned children who are, undoubtedly, the future of this country? Covid-19 has placed before the country an opportunity to gift a new life to two communities simultaneously. One, by giving orphaned and abandoned children their right to have parents and the second by giving LGBTQ+ couples their rights to have children. But, unfortunately, these rights are not recognised anywhere in our Constitution or any other law. Still, they need to be recognised for the public’s welfare.

India needs to abrogate its colonial-era policy that couples belonging to the LGBTQ+ community cannot adopt a child. The Juvenile Justice Act, 2015 and Adoption Regulations, 2017 lay down a requirement for adoption, regardless of religion. Although drafted in modern times but based on colonial rule, it provides that “no child shall be given in adoption to a couple unless they have at least two years of stable marital relationship”. Thus, a couple who cannot lawfully marry in India cannot fulfil this requirement.

This policy not only deprives the LGBTQ+ community members of their right to adopt a child, but also a child of their right to have the affection and love of parents. In the case of Lakshmi Kant Pandey vs. Union of India, the Supreme Court held that “Every child has a right to love and be loved and to grow up in an atmosphere of love and affection and of moral and material security and this is possible only if the child is brought up in a family.” The Court further held that the best alternative for an orphaned and abandoned child is to find adoptive parents rather than growing up in an orphanage or an institution where it will have no family life and no love and affection of parents. Most importantly, the Court pointed out that given the socio-economic conditions prevailing in the country, the child might have to lead life as destitute, half-clad, half-hungry, and suffering from malnutrition and illness. Also, an Expert Group that met in Geneva in December 1978 had adopted a “Draft Declaration on social and legal principles relating to the protection and welfare of children with special reference of foster placement and adoption, nationally and internationally”, which held that when biological family care is unavailable, substitute family care should be considered (Article 4).

The Court, by expressly recognising that “every child has a right to a family” has recognised that a child has a right to be adopted. Further, Article 39(f) expressly directs the government to draw policies so as to ensure that children are given opportunities and facilities to develop in a healthy manner and in conditions of freedom and dignity. Therefore, forcing a child to live in an institution and depriving them of the rights of having their own family is equivalent to depriving them of living a life full of freedom and dignity and thus, is against our Directive Principles of State Policy. Moreover, in the case of Indian Hotel & Restaurant Association & Anr. Vs. The State of Maharashtra, it was held that the state could not thrust its own notion of morality on society. Depriving a child of being adopted by the LGBTQ+ community and depriving LGBTQ+ to adopt a child is equivalent to the state enforcing its stereotypical morality.

The case of Navtej Singh Johar v. Union of India, which decriminalised an act of consensual sexual intercourse between same-sex couples, came in 2018. It places the couples of the LGBTQ+ community at par with other couples. Similarly, Indian Hotel & Restaurant Association & Anr. Vs. The State of Maharashtra came in 2019. The Juvenile Justice Act and Adoption Regulations came in 2015 and 2017, respectively. Thus, as a result of the jurisprudence developed in these two cases, which directs the state to forgo its stereotypical notions, these laws automatically become contrary to the judgments. These laws are violative of Article 14, which ensures equality to all; Article 15, which prohibits discrimination on the ground of sex; and Article 19, which grants the right to freedom of expression.

 

 

Menstrual health is a matter of human rights

Community-based approach that sensitise both men and women is the need of the hour rather than strategies that focus exclusively on providing sanitary pads

Anahita Khanna Foundation distributed sanitary pads to underprivileged women on World Menstrual Hygiene Day. (Express Archive)

Written by Suryaprabha Sadasivan and Bhavya Sharma

One of the most glaring but under-prioritised gender-related issues is menstrual health, which unfortunately gets compartmentalised as a women’s problem instead of getting noticed as a public health challenge and a barrier to nation-building. According to the National Family Health Survey (NFHS-4) 2015-16, India has over 355 million menstruating women. However, only 36 per cent of women were reported as using sanitary napkins, locally or commercially produced. The percentage of women using menstrual products did improve significantly across the country, especially in Daman and Diu and Dadra and Nagar Haveli, West Bengal and Bihar, as estimated in the first phase of the recently released NFHS-5. Despite this, menstrual health remains a low-priority issue in India marred with taboos, shame, misinformation, and poor access to sanitation facilities and menstrual products.

Societal restrictions during menstruation violate women’s right to health, equality and privacy. Several anecdotes reveal that women and girls are kept in isolation, not allowed to enter religious places or kitchens, play outside or even go to schools during menstruation. A survey conducted under the Integrated Child Development Services (ICDS) scheme by the Ministry of Women and Child Development (MoWCD) in 2018-19 reported that more than one-fourth of total girls enrolled in class VI-VIII drop out of school as soon as they hit puberty. The experience of menstruation for young girls is even more difficult due to inconsistent access to education on menstrual health and puberty. They are dependent on their mothers, grandmothers or women teachers for information and support to access menstrual products — these often come laden with views based on societal constructs and belief systems.

Many employers see menstruating women as a problem as they associate periods with inefficiency in work and reduced participation in the workforce. There are anecdotal examples of corporate workplaces showing insensitivity towards menstruating women fearing loss of productivity.

In the last decade, several schemes, including the Menstrual Hygiene Scheme (2011) and the Rashtriya Kishor Swasthya Karyakram (in 2014), have been launched to promote menstrual hygiene amongst adolescent girls in the age group of 10 to 19. Through the Suvidha initiative, the government distributed more than 5 crore brand sanitary pads at Re 1 from 6,000 Jan Aushadhi Kendras. Apart from central government schemes, state governments have also implemented programmes to distribute sanitary pads in schools in Rajasthan, Uttar Pradesh, Odisha, Maharashtra, Chhattisgarh, Andhra Pradesh, and Kerala. The Bihar government provides Rs 300 under the Kishori Swasthya Yojana to adolescent girls to buy sanitary pads. A major drawback in these programmes is that out-of-school girls remain left out of the system.

There is another question: How viable are programmes that focus solely on access to sanitary pads? Access to sanitary pads is, no doubt, important. But without committed efforts to educate both women and men on menstrual health management and its public health and socio-economic consequences, on ground transformation is likely to be low.

The need of the hour is to focus on a strategy that converges key departments in the government — health, education, women and child development and rural development among others — and improves accountability towards issues related to menstrual health management. The way forward lies in a community-based approach in which local influencers and decision-makers are sensitised to champion the issue and behavioural change campaigns targeted at both men and women are deployed to dispel myths and misconceptions. There is also a huge opportunity to create public-private collaborations to drive such campaigns and increase access to affordable menstrual hygiene products for rural and semi-urban regions. This could be done through the installation of sanitary pad vending machines at key public places, workplaces, schools, and colleges, as well as Anganwadi centres or childcare centres for rural areas.

First, however, it is crucial to acknowledge that menstrual health is not just a women’s issue, but a matter of human rights.