Is COVID-19 now approaching an endemic stage? While the common interpretation of endemicity is ‘this is a disease we no longer have to be worried about’, what does it actually mean in epidemiological terms and what are the concerns for public health for the future? Will the infection spread at more predictable rates and will it perhaps become more manageable? In a conversation moderated byRamya Kannan , Tarun Bhatnagar and K. Kolandaisamy discuss the science behind these questions. Edited excerpts:
Is COVID-19 on the path to becoming endemic?
Tarun Bhatnagar:As per the classical definition, a disease is endemic when it spreads in a limited area and at a rate which is relatively constant across time. In contrast, during a pandemic, the disease spreads to all the regions of the world and is present in some form or the other in all parts of the world with a relatively high rate of spread. We know that SARS-CoV-2 is still being detected in all parts of the world. In that sense, it is still a pandemic. However, we are seeing that in most or many parts of the world, the rate of spread is coming down, either naturally or with the interventions that have been put in place. So, yes, we probably could be moving towards endemicity. But that seems to be a little further away than where we are now.
K. Kolandaisamy:There are indications that the virus is moving towards endemicity. For example, in Tamil Nadu, we are seeing 200-300 cases, most of them from clusters. This is one indication that the disease might be moving towards endemicity. But we need to be very careful because even after two years, we are not very clear about the origin of this virus. There are three coronaviruses which manifest as common cold in human beings. Then, there was SARS-CoV-1 (2002), later called SARS [Severe Acute Respiratory Sydrome], and MERS [Middle East Respiratory Syndrome] (2012), all respiratory viruses. While SARS is not being monitored, tests are still being done for MERS. We are not very sure whether this virus will go the way of SARS, or take the path of MERS, or become like the three common cold viruses. This is a question only time can answer.
During the early part of the pandemic, COVID-19 was likened to the Spanish flu of about 100 years ago, but that flu did not turn endemic. Why do some diseases become endemic while others seem to vanish?
TB:In order to understand the transmission of infectious diseases, we need to think of what is known as the epidemiological triad — the interaction between the agent, which is the organism that causes the disease, the host, which is the human body where the agent resides and spreads, and the environment in which both the agent and the host live and how conducive it is for the transmission of the agent.
The Spanish flu virus was not as transmissible as SARS-CoV-2. In fact, its reproduction rate was between 1 and 2. For SARS-CoV-2, it has gone up to 3, even 4, in some places. Second, we need to think in terms of the host, in order for the virus to spread. During the Spanish flu, it is understood that a bit, probably around a third, of the world’s population was affected and infected. It probably led to lower susceptibility, and herd immunity. Finally, the flu virus seemed to prefer a colder environment compared to SARS-CoV-2, which is probably agnostic to the environment, as we have seen.
KK:With the Spanish flu, the movement of soldiers, particularly in Europe, is said to have played a major role in the spread of the disease. Today, the movement of people has become quite phenomenal globally. This means that any disease can spread from anywhere to everywhere and human continuity will be there. Instead of disappearing like the Spanish flu, there is a greater possibility of SARS-CoV-2 moving to the endemic mode.
Can this move to endemicity within a short span of two years be attributed to a triumph of human efforts?
KK:Yes, the one important turning point in this case was the development of vaccines. That played a major role. Also, communication technology helped in disseminating information and awareness very quickly. And, as we now know, although some of the control measures were very harsh, travel restrictions and the initial lockdown measures also helped a lot. It is to be noted that the fact that the pandemic spread very fast was a blessing in disguise: a large number of people were infected and this hastened the process of herd immunity.
TB:I would distribute the credit equally between the virus and us, human beings. In the initial period, the virus spread so much that in a way it was a boon, in terms of people getting natural immunity to that particular strain of the virus. The vaccine has definitely been a game changer. I think it is historic to have a vaccine within such a short period of time, and completely incomparable to any other medical intervention that the world has seen. Even in terms of management of the disease, we le=arned a lot very fast.
What would be the link between cases and deaths in a possible endemic scenario?
TB:If we look at different parts of the world, and India, we’re not seeing as many deaths or even hospitalisations. The cases are considerably low, even if they are showing an upward climb. However, we are looking at another sub-lineage of Omicron, BA.4 and BA.5, initially reported from South Africa and now common in several countries. More recent reports from South Africa show a high number of excess deaths related to these sub-variants. Even Portugal, where the vaccination rates are pretty high, is reporting a high number of cases as well as hospitalisations. So, we will have to see how the virus is driving this — how good the virus is in terms of immune escape from natural immunity as well as from vaccine-induced immunity, how long does immunity persist, and the vaccine distribution in the population. These would be the three critical factors that would determine the future in terms of our interaction with the virus.
KK:We need to continue to be very careful in certain areas. We need to take care of people with co-morbid conditions and ensure that their health parameters are under control. For immunocompromised people, public health protocols such as wearing a mask, washing hands, and avoiding crowds are crucial. Besides this, we need to reach out to people who have not yet taken both shots and the booster dose and urge them to take the vaccines while explaining the risks of not being vaccinated. And we will need to continue to monitor [disease spread] and undertake surveillance of disease and morbidity in times to come.
What are the public health measures that governments will have to roll out in an endemic scenario versus a pandemic?
KK:Decades ago, our hospitals had separate wards for infectious diseases. Those were maintained by the local body. In those days, people with, say, smallpox, cholera, TB, chickenpox, acute diarrhoeal disease, etc. would be directed to these special wards or units in hospitals for treatment and, of course, would be segregated from others who were coming to the hospital too. However, over a period of time, with many public health successes — we have eliminated smallpox and there has been a huge decline in cholera cases and other infectious diseases such as chickenpox and measles — these units have been shut down, or are a shell of their former capacity. The system, therefore, had very little capacity to handle infectious diseases when COVID-19 began to spread. An exclusive facility to manage the cases with corresponding facilities for diagnostics and public health interventions is needed.
TB:We are definitely not expecting the virus to disappear. It will probably continue to circulate at various levels in the population. So, the first thing that we need to be thinking of is setting realistic levels of what are the expected deaths or hospitalisations, vis-a-vis the infrastructure that is available. Ultimately, it’s about preventing deaths as much as possible. The second is to set targets for reducing transmission. With more transmission, there is a risk of new mutations and variants emerging. So, we need to be looking at clusters or places where we see a higher rate of transmission. We need to set up routine testing facilities which are not camp-based and which are accessible and available to people. With the emerging variants, again, the role of genomic surveillance becomes very critical — to be able to identify which is the circulating variant, its characteristics in terms of transmissibility, and ability to cause severe disease. Accordingly, public health interventions would have to be in place. Two things are really critical: to stop airborne transmission (by wearing masks, especially indoors and in crowded places) and ensure sufficient air ventilation in indoor spaces. I think that is an area in the realm of public health engineering, in terms of designing our indoor spaces and having good ventilation. That would be really important as we move forward in terms of preventing transmission of the virus.
Have there been some missed opportunities in the past couple of years, though much has indeed been done in this country especially in terms of adding to health infrastructure?
KK:We have missed the opportunity to effectively enforce segregation for infectious diseases in our hospitals. A number of pregnant women who got COVID-19 contracted the infection when they were in hospital for a check-up. They were not diseased, but caught the infection in hospital, where there is poor or little infection control or segregation practices. This is unacceptable.
Also, engineering buildings to ensure air flow and good ventilation, particularly in hospitals and public institutions, is very important. We also need to get people to get back to the discipline of following COVID-19 protocols. The National Medical Council can consider offering more specialisation courses in infectious diseases.
TB:In terms of using data for decision-making, a positive that I see is that the pandemic brought together people who were working in their own silos — clinicians, mathematicians, epidemiologists, laboratory professionals, public health practitioners on the ground, anthropologists… So, we have an opportunity to now go further and change the culture of research. These kinds of collaborations help you get a bigger bang for the buck.
We’ve also developed systems to collect data, to transmit it, to analyse it and use it for various purposes at different levels. But there are opportunities to make that system more robust, more transparent and enable more efficient use of data. This can definitely go a long way in being prepared for the future and then tackling similar kinds of public health emergencies.
With variants emerging again, the role of genomic surveillance becomes very critical — to be able to identify which is the circulating variant, its characteristics in terms of transmissibility, and ability to cause severe disease.
Tarun Bhatnagar
Shakespeare, speaking through Angelo inMeasure for Measure , asks a pertinent question that resonates even today: “The tempter or the tempted, who sins most?” In the law on sedition, the Supreme Court of India made it clear that the one inciting violence is the guilty person. Ergo, the tempter sins most. In today’s interpretation of the law, it does not matter whether there is incitement or not; a charge of sedition will be slapped anyway if the powers that be do not ‘like’ what somebody has said or tweeted.
Bulldozer justice
But the law gets more complicated when a fringe but influential national spokesperson incites violence by saying something offensive about the Prophet. The naya law seems to overlook the provocation of the tempter, but finds the tempted guilty. The guilty are then punished by a common judge, jury and executioner and also given double engine punishment: arrest, followed by arbitrary and retributive demolition of their residential accommodation, through what is now commonly referred to as bulldozer justice. I prefer to call it bulldozer injustice.
There are adequate provisions in the Indian Penal Code for the police to act against any violator, but the law seems to be inapplicable if the tempter is an influential fringe or well connected. So, a call forgoli maro is ignored; senseless lynching invites garlands for the accused; a call for genocide is a bit of a nuisance. Is it then surprising that something offensive said about the Prophet invites only a light rap on the knuckles? If that is deemed to be punishment enough, then the exercise of a fundamental right to protest by thousands of people across the country is understandable. Persons accused of far lesser offences have had charges of sedition foisted on them. The less fortunate have been subject to anti-terror laws such as the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act, while the unfortunate are imprisoned under the National Security Act (NSA) or the Public Safety Act.
When the state acts
Is there a constitutional right to resort to violence during a protest? Absolutely not. The Constitution of India permits only a peaceful assembly without arms. Stones or brickbats can be weaponised and are a no-no. Violence in protests cannot be justified under any circumstances, whatever the cause. A light rap on the knuckles to the tempter does not warrant the use of a knuckle duster by the tempted.
But, as they say, violence begets violence. And so, the state comes down on the violent protesters with a heavy hand and the apocryphal iron fist made popular a couple of years ago by a learned Supreme Court judge. The state then uses its machinery, literally, in the form of bulldozers to demolish the residential premises of those believed to be indulging in violent protests. The long arm of the law is employed to identify the protestors and a list is prepared of those who need to be ‘taught a lesson’. Remember, a similar stratagem was used in 1984 following the assassination of Mrs. Indira Gandhi. Back then, we called it genocide, while today we call it ‘teaching a lesson’.
Fundamental rights
Some of the violent protesters own a house or a shop or a stall but many do not. Activist Javed Mohammad of Prayagraj, Uttar Pradesh, was unlucky enough that his wife owned a house. So, as a chapter in the lesson to be taught, he was first jailed and then her house demolished through a constitutional violation. Ironically, two judgments of the Supreme Court from Uttar Pradesh consider shelter as a fundamental right. InU.P. Avas Evam Vikas Parishad vs Friends Coop. Housing Society Ltd (1996) it was held that “The right to shelter is a fundamental right, which springs from the right to residence assured in Article 19(1)(e) and the right to life under Article 21 (of the Constitution)”. InChameli Singh vs State of Uttar Pradesh (1996) it was held that “The right to shelter when used as an essential requisite to the right to live should be deemed to have been guaranteed as a fundamental right”. Those lucky enough not to have relatives owning a house will probably get brutally thrashed like the hapless victims of a lathi charge in a police station in Saharanpur, Uttar Pradesh, whose video has gone viral.
How does the state justify the constitutional transgression? It says, as reported, that Mr. Javed’s house was illegal and a notice to demolish it was served on him (or pasted on the wall) and he did not avail the opportunity of a hearing granted as per law. It is difficult to believe the state for a variety of reasons.
An illegality
First, the state collected taxes from Mr. Javed for the so-called illegal construction. Was the illegality of construction condoned? If not, was not the state complicit in perpetuating the illegality and also earning out of it? Has any action been taken by the state against its complicit officials?
Second, the well-settled principle requiring state action to be just, fair and reasonable mandates, in the absence of any terrible urgency, another opportunity to Mr. Javed to appear for the hearing. Maybe he was sick or out of town. Why was this routine ‘another opportunity’ denied to him?
Third, Mr. Javed’s house was demolished on a Sunday which is a government holiday. Even in NSA cases, the Supreme Court excludes Sundays for dealing with a representation against preventive detention. It is good if the government works on holidays as well, but could not the benefit of a government holiday be passed on to Mr. Javed by an “efficient” government? Let us be realistic.
Fourth, the demolition order was pasted on the wall of Mr. Javed’s house on Saturday night and the demolition took place on Sunday morning, giving no time to him or his wife to challenge the correctness of the demolition order in a court of law or file an appeal. Is this just, fair and reasonable?
Fifth, the Delhi High Court decided a case in which the Uttar Pradesh police unlawfully whisked away two residents of Delhi and managed to have them sent to judicial custody for almost two months on no charges at all. The Additional Advocate General of U.P. admitted that the police officers concerned made false statements before the court, created false documents in the investigation and even before the Special Investigation Team constituted to investigate the issues flagged by the High Court (Teenu vs Govt. of NCT of Delhi ) (2022). Clearly, the U.P. police have a rather unenviable track record. Facts and documents in Mr. Javed’s case may equally be manufactured. Sorry, but the demolition saga smacks of vendetta, legal and factual mala fides.
Need for accountability
What is the solution? First, the state should adequately compensate Mr. Javed to enable him to rebuild his house. Second, it should give him an equal amount of compensation for the mental distress caused to him and his family. Third, the officers concerned at all levels must be held accountable and punished enough to ‘teach them a lesson’. Accountability jurisprudence must take root in India and the culture of impunity banished. Fourth, disband the Uttar Pradesh State Human Rights Commission, a body that apparently sees no evil, hears no evil and does no good.
Conclusion: The tempter has achieved her purpose and the tempted can only feel sorry for themselves and say goodbye to the rule of law.
Justice Madan B. Lokur, a former judge of the Supreme Court of India, is presently a judge of the Supreme Court of Fiji
On June 13, just as the government of Naftali Bennett commemorated its one year in office, it was on the verge of collapse. A week earlier, a Bill to extend Israel’s criminal law to West Bank settlers, which had been routinely passed earlier, failed to get approval, signifying the deep divide among the coalition partners that make up the government.
This coalition that has brought together parties from the hard right, the centre, some left-wing groups, and, uniquely, an Arab party, Ra’am, that has an Islamist background. Prime Minister Bennett is from the right wing and was, till recently, the darling of extremist religious groups.
But Mr. Bennett’s anxiety to upstage former Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu led him to join this eight-member coalition that had a majority of one in the 120-member Knesset. Mr. Bennett will head the government for half its term, before making way for his partner, Foreign Minister Yasir Lapid, for the balance of the term.
Holding the coalition together is a daily challenge: on April 6, it lost its majority when Idit Silman, long affiliated with the religious right, defected to the opposition on the ground that the Jewish identity of the country was being jeopardised. The government then acquired minority status when an Arab member quit the coalition, but promised to support it in the House to prevent a hard right government replacing it. She later withdrew her resignation, but insisted that the Bennett government “be genuine and attentive to the Arab community”.
National divisions
The Palestinian-Jewish divide has created turmoil in the country since April when, during the holy month of Ramadan, the two communities made the Al-Aqsa Mosque the locale for violent confrontations. There were further assaults exchanged between the two sides through to early May. Hardly had these died down when anger flared up again with what the Palestinians believe was the targeted killing of the Al Jazeera journalist, Shireen Abu Akleh, on May 11.
A Palestinian, Shireen had been reporting about events in her home region for nearly 30 years and had acquired an iconic status among Arabs across West Asia. The view across the region is that her killing has restored the Palestine issue to the global agenda.
Within two weeks, Israel was saddled with its next crisis — the annual flag march on May 29 to mark the capture of East Jerusalem in the 1967 war. Last year, the march, that is largely made up of Jewish youth from the extreme right who provocatively pass through the Muslim quarter of the city, had led to an 11-day conflict with Hamas in Gaza and communal violence in Israel itself. This year, Mr. Bennett, taunted by his traditional right-wing cohorts as being soft on Arabs and weak before threats, felt politically compelled to approve the march.
Nearly 70,000 youth, led by Mr. Netanyahu, descended on Jerusalem, waving Israeli flags. Their popular slogans were “Death to Arabs”, “Let us burn down your villages” and “The Jewish nation lives”. Despite stringent security arrangements, several hundred of them broke into the Al-Aqsa Mosque — they planted Israeli flags, indulged in provocative dancing, and chanted Talmudic prayers.
Still, on June 12, following the defeat of the settlers’ bill, the leaders of the coalition parties described their government as “one of the best governments” and pledged that “we will not despair and we will not break”. But two days later, Mr. Bennett warned that the government had just “a week or two” to avoid collapse, after a member from his own party refused to back the coalition in the Knesset.
War and peace in West Asia
Iran remains in the sights of all Israeli governments, regardless of their political complexion. On May 22, Israel carried out the killing of an Iranian colonel from the Al Quds Force in Tehran. He was accused in the Israeli media of planning attacks on Israeli and Jewish targets, a charge that was deemed sufficient for Israel to be prosecutor, judge and executioner in a long line of assassinations of Iranian scientists and military personnel.
Israel’s Ministers are reported to be lobbying robustly in Washington against the revival of the nuclear agreement. Defence Minister Benny Gantz has even announced that Israel was planning to attack Iran’s nuclear sites in a couple of years. A major exercise, involving hundreds of aircraft, took place on June 2, to signal preparations for the proposed assault.
Expanding diplomatic and economic ties with neighbouring Arab states, without conceding anything to Palestinian aspirations, is another area of political consensus in Israel. In early April, Israel hosted a meeting of Arab foreign Ministers of countries that have normalised ties with it, which was attended by the U.S. Secretary of State, Antony Blinken.
Since then, there are regular reports that ties with the United Arab Emirates (UAE) are flourishing — a major trade agreement was signed on May 31 which will cover 96% of bilateral trade, amounting to about $1 billion, and could take trade to more than $10 billion within five years. However, the signing ceremony was abruptly closed to mediapersons as the UAE Foreign Ministry condemned Israeli violence at the Al-Aqsa Mosque by “extremist settlers under the protection of Israeli forces”.
The outlook
As the country lurches from crisis to crisis, the government is seen to be paralysed, with the Prime Minister floundering to keep control. He is constantly haunted by the spectre of Mr. Netanyahu calling on the coalition’s right-wing members to abandon “the weak and flaccid government” that is harming the country’s Jewish identity, and “return home”.
But the coalition is holding together because no member is keen on another election; they fear defeats if they do not deliver on issues that immediately matter to the populace battered by the novel coronavirus pandemic — welfare measures for poor families, support for small business, upgradation of national infrastructure. Even the Arab party is anxious to keep the coalition going to prevent the return of Mr. Netanyahu and, over time, increasingly integrate Arabs with the Israeli mainstream.
Israel’s principal focus is to normalise ties with Saudi Arabia amidst reports of clandestine interactions between political and security officials and the visit by a major Israeli business delegation to the kingdom. As the Americans attempt to rebuild ties with Saudi Arabia in the context of the ongoing Russian war in Ukraine, it is likely that the kingdom might see value in its ties with Israel to consolidate its position in Washington regardless of who resides in the White House.
U.S. President Joe Biden’s visit to the kingdom and Israel next month will focus on promoting formal ties between the two countries as part of mobilising a tough regional coalition against Iran, even as Israel continues its violence and aggression in the region with impunity. This seems to be the only route its leaders have found to keep themselves in power.
Talmiz Ahmad is a former diplomat
For a nation that has had a significant demographic dividend — the working age population is much larger than the non-working age sections — finding productive employment for its youth was to be an imperative for India. Yet, in the last few years, unemployment has remained a major concern — the leaked Periodic Labour Force Survey (PLFS) in 2018 revealed that India’s unemployment rate was the highest (6.07%) in four decades. The latest PLFS suggests that the numbers now are not so drastic, with the overall unemployment rate at 4.2% in 2020-21 compared to 4.8% in 2019-20 and the labour force participation rate (LFPR) increasing to 41.6%, up from 40.1% in 2019-20. In terms of the more widely used statistic internationally, the current weekly status of unemployment, the figure of 7.5% for all persons in 2020-21 is still worrying. But, the PLFS data will not bring much cheer to the Government despite a decrease in unemployment, according to official data. This is because the decrease, says the PLFS, has also coincided with the transfer of employment into lower productive and unpaid jobs away from salaried employment. Worryingly, industrial jobs have decreased with more employment in agricultural and farm-related jobs — a trend that accelerated following the lockdown and has not reversed since then. Unemployment rates among the educated (above secondary education — 9.1%) and the youth (age between 15-29 — 12.9%) have only declined marginally.
Wage rates have continued to remain lower for those employed in either salaried jobs or self-employed compared to the pre-pandemic period, with the increases being marginal in the year following lockdown-driven days of the pandemic. It is clear that the Government must tackle unemployment and, concomitantly, the quality of employment issue, on a war footing. In this regard, Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s announcement that the Government will be recruiting 10 lakh personnel within the next 18 months (vacancies in the Railways, the armed forces and GST departments among others) should be seen as a step in the right direction. The latest data showed that there were 8.86 lakh vacant jobs among all central government civilian posts as of March 2020. Mr. Modi’s announcement was not about the creation of a large chunk of new jobs; the bulk of the promised employment is to fill up vacancies. But even this measure would be ameliorative in the real economy that continues to remain distressed, a consequence of the BJP-led government’s mismanagement and the effects of the pandemic in the last few years. The country cannot afford to squander more years in its race to reap the benefits of its demographic dividend, and the push to provide jobs for those seeking to enter the labour force, even if belated, will help ease matters for the medium term.
The U.S. Federal Reserve on Wednesday implemented its steepest interest rate increase in more than 27 years as it fights to rein in runaway inflation. Barely six weeks after raising the policy rate by half a percentage point and underscoring the likelihood of “additional 50-basis-point increases” at the next couple of meetings, Chairman Jerome Powell stressed it had become “essential” to increase the rate instead by 75 basis points to bring inflation down. The overarching message, he asserted, was that the Fed recognised the ‘hardship high inflation was causing’ and had the resolve to restore price stability with singular focus. Acknowledging that inflation had ‘surprised to the upside’ since the Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) had last met in May, he said the committee agreed that the larger increase was required to anchor inflation expectations. With U.S. Consumer Price Index based inflation quickening to a fresh four-decade high of 8.6% in May, spurred by housing, petrol and food prices, the Fed admitted that price pressures had spread to a broad range of goods and services. Even as it realises that it has very little control over supply side factors, including Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and COVID-related lockdowns in China, the U.S. central bank said it was determined to continue raising interest rates till it saw ‘compelling evidence’ that inflation was slowing towards its 2% goal. Mr. Powell emphasised that yet another ‘unusually large’ 75-basis-point or a 50-basis-point increase was ‘most likely’ in the meeting in July.
For Mr. Powell and fellow FOMC members, focusing unrelentingly on taming price gains through monetary action, including raising borrowing costs and gradually tightening liquidity, risks squeezing the economy into a recession. It is also a scenario mirrored earlier this month in forecasts by almost 70% of academic economists, polled by theFinancial Times and the University of Chicago, who foresee the U.S. economy shrinking in 2023. The Fed recognises that the tighter financial conditions have tempered demand, even as it posits that real GDP growth has rebounded on strong consumption spending. Mr. Powell, who had in May underlined that the Fed would not hesitate to move policy to ‘restrictive’ levels if needed, on Wednesday flagged the reductions in the FOMC’s median projections for growth. Central bankers now see the U.S. economy expanding by 1.7% both in 2022 and 2023, slower than the March forecasts of 2.8% and 2.2%, respectively. For India, the Fed’s actions are likely to result in an acceleration in the recent exodus of foreign portfolio investments, spur more gains for the dollar against the rupee thus widening the trade deficit, and also fuel faster inflation as imported goods, including crude oil, become costlier.
There is a frequently cited adage in journalism: if one person says it’s raining and another says it’s dry, the job of the journalist is not to just regurgitate ‘both sides’ but look out of the window and determine which one is accurate. While this has struck me as simplistic and not really applicable to most stories worth telling, it is particularly perilous to the reporter covering the weather and climate beat.
Any journalist who has been assigned to report on science and the environment would, at some point, have reported on the annual summer monsoon. To the newbie, monsoon means the end of summer, messy roads, and the R.K. Laxman cartoon of the soaked-to-the-sandals meteorologist and the only one in the room without an umbrella. In due course, these perceptions become the monsoon reporter’s mantras: “When will it rain? When will it stop raining? Why does our monsoon department always get it wrong?” A senior meteorologist once gave me a two-word, all-encompassing answer: “It depends.”
The India Meteorological Department (IMD), arbiter of all things weather, forecasts in April and May how the monsoon, which lasts from June to September, is likely to progress. It also forecasts the advent of the monsoon in Kerala. The IMD does this a few days left or right of June 1. Some years ago, on May 28 or 29, when I was still new to the beat, I got off a call with a relative in Kerala who said it had been pouring and “monsoon” had set in with a vengeance. I checked on the IMD website and there was no declaration yet. I called up an official who said the monsoon hadn’t arrived. “But sir, it’s raining in Kerala,” I said. “Rain alone doesn’t make monsoon,” came the Yoda-like answer. The thought that my school education had been a lie zipped through my brain, but the statement “it depends” put things in perspective. Kerala, from where the monsoon begins its journey, must tick many boxes unlike the rest of the India, for monsoon to be declared. At least 60% of 14 stations, most of them in the State but some in Lakshadweep and Karnataka, must get 2.5 mm of rain on consecutive days. Then there are criteria such as ‘depth of westerlies’ and the ‘Outgoing Longwave Radiation’ that need to be met. The former indicates strong sustained winds and the latter is a long name for clouding. I learned my lesson and with it went the ‘look out of the window’ instruction.
A favourite word of IMD meteorologists, especially those who deal with the public, is ‘normal’. Few terms are as loaded. In 2009, the IMD said the monsoon would be 96% of the historical average. Into this is inbuilt a 5% error margin. So, any number from 101% to 91% and IMD could still claim to be accurate and the monsoon ‘normal’. That year saw a massive monsoon failure with India registering its biggest drought in 25 years. Rainfall was just 77% of the average. What was perturbing was that the signs of a disaster were present in June itself, with expectations that an El Nino, characterised by a warming of the Central Pacific, would dry up the monsoon. “How did you get it so wrong,” I demanded to know. Privately, meteorologists conceded that they knew a ‘deficit’ was looming. The IMD had a form of self-censorship in place to not use the term ‘drought’ and instead say ‘deficit.’ “Political considerations,” one of them told me.
Climate change, of late, has complicated the monsoon. In recent years, September, the month when the monsoon officially recedes, has started to witness multiple downpours and makes up for deficits in previous months. This rain usually spills over into October. “Isn’t all of this technically monsoon,” I once asked a meteorologist one October. “Well, yes. But our monsoon calendar is strictly June 1 to September 30. Anything before or after isn’t monsoon rain,” he replied. “But climate change has surely altered these patterns. Shouldn’t you account for it in some way,” I asked. Pat came the reply: “It depends.”
jacob.koshy@thehindu.co.in
Tokyo, June 18: The seventh ministerial conference of the Asian and Pacific Council concluded its three day deliberations in Seoul to-day emphasising the peaceful and non-military nature of the nine-member organisation and seeking to dispel any doubts from the minds of the people that it was militarily motivated. At the same time, a joint communique stressed the open door policy of the organisation to permit membership in it to all countries of the region, regardless of ideologies. Reflecting the general desire of the majority of the member-countries — particularly in view of the fast changes that are coming about in the Asian and Pacific region — to erase suspicions that the ASPAC was some kind of a military alliance, the communique specifically stated that it was not a political or military arrangement directed against other nations. Nor was it an exclusive organisation. The communique declared that ASPAC was open to non-member countries within the region who were ready to make a constructive contribution to its objectives and purposes. It restated its purposes, namely, that the ASPAC was an organisation for regional co-operation pursuing peace and progress in the Asian and Pacific region. It would devote its efforts to promote co-operation in economic technical, social, cultural, and other fields.
On Wednesday, the Union cabinet took the first steps towards rolling out 5G services, approving the auction of spectrum. The auction, which will include spectrum across multiple frequency bands, is slated to commence on July 26. The government has eased some of the constraints that had emerged as irritants in the past — a fair amount of spectrum has been put up for the auction, usage charge has been dropped, and payment terms have been eased. However, some issues warrant closer attention.
For one, the reserve price of spectrum has been retained by the government, despite demands from the telecom operators to review it. Telcos have, in the past, made the case for around 90 per cent reduction in the reserve price. However, in line with the recommendations of the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI), which were also accepted by the Digital Communications Commission (DCC), the reduction in the reserve price has been of a much lower magnitude, around 35-40 per cent. Thus, considering the high reserve price for the 700 MHz band, there is a possibility that this band may remain unsold this time as well. As per some estimates, industry is likely to fork out around Rs 1.1 lakh crore in these auctions. This will imply that the debt burden of the already over indebted telcos will increase further. However, considering that the payment for the spectrum can be spread out over 20 equal installments, it will ease immediate cash flow concerns. The government has also allowed bidders the option to give up the spectrum after 10 years, without any liability for the balance payment. Second, the government has made it possible for enterprises, mostly tech companies, to be directly allocated spectrum by the Department of Telecommunications to engage in the Internet of Things (IoT), machine to machine communications etc. Telcos had earlier opposed this move on grounds of a potential loss in their revenues — according to their estimates, 40 per cent of 5G revenues accrue from the enterprise services. However, the government has leaned on the side of the tech companies. Doing so, after all, would also serve as an additional source of revenue.
Considering that 5G has more of enterprise use cases, at least in the initial years, the network capital expenditure is likely to be relatively low early on. But as retail use cases evolve, a successful rollout of 5G services across the country will lay the ground for a digital transformation, having wide ranging implications for economic activity.
Viktor Frankenstein’s monster could just as easily have been his friend. The creature from Mary Shelley’s 1818 novel wanted more than anything to be accepted, to have a companion. And he continues to be the archetype — of both dreams and nightmares — for our conceptions of artificial sentience, and problems with technology that blur the line between life and not-life.
Is the now-suspended Google engineer Blake Lemoine’s claim — informed by his self-confessed “religious beliefs” — that the advanced AI chatbot LaMDA has (self) consciousness, tenable? The consensus in the aftermath of his revelations appears to be that it is not. Very simply put, most experts within and outside Google assert that the software can merely mimic human interactions and consciousness through a machine learning algorithm that relies on millions of interactions. Yet, according to Lemoine, LaMDA gave reasons for how it felt, even talking of emotions that are indescribable. This begs the question: When does personhood occur? A toddler may just copy behaviours, without reasoning, as she learns. Couldn’t LaMDA be that phase, after language first makes an appearance and before meta-reasoning is achieved, for sentient AI? Given how little is known, still, about the emergence of consciousness and sentience, a little open-mindedness is perhaps in order.
For the lonely, the rise of artificial intelligence can be a balm. For the biological conservative, wedded to the prevalent idea of community and society, the rise of self-conscious machines is the manifestation of Frankenstein’s monster. While LaMDA is unlikely to be a person, an artificial person is certainly on the way, according to experts, whether five, 15 or 50 years from now. It might be a good idea to treat the almost-sentient machines well until then.
The Union Government finalised a major reshuffle of secretaries. M. Narasimham, executive director, International Monetary Fund, will be posted as the secretary for economic affairs in the Union Finance Ministry. He succeeds R N Malhotra, who will take his place in the IMF. Manmohan Singh, member secretary, Planning Commission, will succeed I G Patel as Governor of the Reserve Bank of India. S Ramanathan, special commissioner for Karnataka will be the new secretary for fertilisers and chemicals. The present secretary, K V Ramanathan, moves to the Planning Commission as officer on special duty with the rank of a secretary. A new post of special secretary in the Home Ministry to look after the eastern region has been created. P P Nayyar, chief secretary, Bihar, will be the new special secretary.
R Zadinga, a newly elected People’s Conference MLA of the Mizoram Legislative Assembly was shot dead by suspected MNF guerrillas at Lungrang village in his constituency in Aizwal district at 11 o’clock at night. He had been elected in the by-elections held last month. The assassins escaped under the cover of darkness. Security has been tightened further all over Mizoram and parts of Aizwal town have been placed under night curfew.
Israeli commandos, advancing under covering shellfire from their Lebanese Christian allies, captured the science faculty of the Lebanese University from guerrillas of the Palestinian Liberation Organisation, the state-run Lebanese radio reported. The campus, alongside the main runway of Beirut international airport, had been a major Palestinian strongpoint since Lebanon’s 1975-76 civil war.
The Congress’s full-throated protests against the ED questioning of Rahul Gandhi over three days in the National Herald money laundering case raise questions. Why does the party get agitated only on the alleged targeting of its leader, and not, say, on a range of issues where hard questions need to be asked and answers demanded, from bulldozers trampling due process in BJP-ruled states to witch-hunt of Opposition leaders, not just the First Son. Even on the issue of political vendetta, why does the Congress seem so isolated? Those are the questions for the Congress. But the images of police overzealousness that have also come in over the last few days from the heart of the national capital, stretching from the Congress Headquarters to the office of the Enforcement Directorate, have touched off another set of questions — these must be answered by the BJP government that Delhi Police reports to. Photos and videos of the barricading of the Congress office, of police entering the premises and pulling and dragging office-bearers and workers, the rough treatment meted out to a Youth Congress leader and a woman Congress MP, are unseemly. Admittedly, the scene of action was a high security zone, prohibitory orders were in place. And yet, the police heavy handedness on show in response to what was, after all, a legitimate political protest even if a limited one, underlines a larger and disturbing tendency of the BJP-led Centre vis a vis political opponents and dissenters — to favour the police response over the political.
If the health of a democracy is also measured by the safe, and indeed respectful, spaces that it provides for dissent, disagreement and protest, the last few years have not painted a rosy picture. The record of BJP governments, be it the Modi government at the Centre or the Yogi government in UP, has been scarred by an intolerance of political opponents and others who ask questions or oppose its politics and policy. In a democracy, the winner does not take all. And winning the mandate, even winning it decisively, does not mean an end to all argument — it only casts a responsibility on the ruling party to reach out and negotiate, to persuade and accommodate. The BJP’s fantasy of an “Opposition-mukt” India would be a colourless and chilling place, if it ever came true.
The political battle between the Congress and the BJP seems currently skewed comprehensively in the latter’s favour, and the Opposition is divided and fragmented. Even in the present instance, the Congress has hit the streets, but its indignation over the ED questioning of its leader has notably failed to strike a chord with the people at large or with other Opposition parties. There may be no political or electoral penalties to pay for the BJP, therefore, for denying space for protest to the main Opposition party. But the rules of the game, written and sometimes unwritten, call for the government to show respect to those who stand, or agitate, on the other side of the political fence. By not doing so, the ruling party keeps steadily corroding its victories.
What happened on June 12 in Prayagraj can be best described as a violation of the Constitution and the laws. That day, a two-storey house (39C/2A/1) that stood in the Karala area of Prayagraj, and in which Mohammad Javed lived with his family, was bulldozed by the Prayagraj Municipal Authority (PMA). The house was reduced to rubble on the ground that it was constructed without obtaining necessary sanctions and clearances from the concerned authorities.
However, the matter is not as simple as it is made out. Apparently, the demolition was carried out to teach Javed the lesson of a lifetime, who, according to the UP police, was the mastermind behind the violence on June 10, that erupted after the Friday protests against now-suspended BJP national spokesperson Nupur Sharma’s remarks on Prophet Mohammad. The whole episode, it seems, was scripted to send a message not only to Javed but also to his community that anyone running foul of the state administration, whether by way of a tweet on social media or by staging dharnas or by leading protest marches, will meet the same fate.
A day before the aforesaid house was bulldozed, Javed was taken into custody for his alleged involvement in the June 10 violence. The same day PMA pasted a notice on the gate of the house, which stated that the construction of 25×60 feet was done on the ground and first floors without taking permission of the concerned authorities. According to the younger daughter of Javed, Sumaiya, the house in question was owned by her mother, Parveen Fatima. It was gifted to Fatima by her father two decades ago. She disclosed that the “notice” that was pasted on the gate of the house was in the name of her father, and not in her mother’s name. The said “notice” asked the residents to vacate the property by 11:00 am on June 12. According to Sumaiya, no government agency had ever told them that it was built illegally, and that the house tax, water tax, and electricity bills were being paid on time.
The authorities have not rebutted Sumaiya’s claims but they have stated that on May 5, a show cause notice was sent to Mohammad Javed and that he did not respond to the same. The family denies having received any such notice. Be that as it may, the question still remains how a notice sent to Javed who was not the owner of the property authorised the authorities to demolish the house which belonged to his wife. She has her own independent identity, and was thus entitled to the protection of law and the procedure prescribed which ought to have been followed before any action was taken in relation to her property. For instance, giving due notice to the rightful owner of the property, providing sufficient time to respond to the same, a personal hearing if asked by the noticee, and even if there is no response from the noticee, a further and final notice informing the noticee of the proposed action. These are principles of natural justice which are at the core of the rule of law, and a democratically elected government is under an obligation to follow them. But unfortunately, these principles were thrown to the winds by the UP government, which now appears to be acting as judge, jury and executioner.
Let us for a moment accept that what is being stated by the UP government is the truth. But the government still needs to do a lot of explaining. For instance, it must disclose when the construction of the building commenced; whether any notice was issued at that stage to the owner informing him/her that the construction was unauthorised, and needed to be stopped; if any action was taken at that stage; if so, what and if not, why; when was the construction completed, and after how much time after its completion was the alleged notice to Javed sent, which he allegedly failed to respond; how many buildings in the locality have been constructed without legal sanction and if they are unauthorised, what action has been taken against those buildings. If no such steps were taken during the course of construction, should not the government functionaries who allowed such illegal construction to come up be identified? Since the UP government appears to believe in demolishing the houses of alleged criminals, even if such punishment is outside the purview of the law, and even though the offence is yet to be proved in a court of law, why should then the houses of all such errant officials be also not demolished? Should not the government of the day and its officials who allowed unauthorised construction be made answerable, and the owner suitably compensated?
What has happened to Mohammad Javed is not a stand-alone case. We are being told that the district police is sending the names of 85 key accused who participated in the incident of June 10 to the civic officials for similar action. Nobody knows on whom the axe may fall next. The next of kin of those in custody are in panic. They are collecting whatever documents they can lay their hands on to stave off the demolition of their houses. Is it not an irony that Nupur Sharma who is in the eye of a storm, and because of whose utterances the country had to face huge embarrassment at the international level, and whom the BJP itself has dropped like a hot potato, is roaming free, while those who are hurt by her remarks are in custody, and in addition, are also facing the threat of demolition? It is nobody’s case that those who indulged in violence on June 10 should be let off or not be dealt with under the laws of the land, but they cannot be punished unless proven guilty by a court of law. In any case, their houses cannot be demolished in the garb of unauthorised construction while the real motive is to teach them a lesson. In this situation, the aggrieved persons have nowhere else to go but to look towards the higher courts, particularly the Supreme Court, which is the custodian of the fundamental rights and civil liberties of the people, to stop this.
It is heartening that the Supreme Court has taken cognisance of the matter. It is, perhaps, too late in the day as far as the aggrieved family is concerned, but then, better late than never. Now that the matter is before the Supreme Court, let us hope and pray that nobody has to join Faiz Ahmed Faiz, a great poet of the Subcontinent, in saying “Bane haiñ ahl-e-havas mudda.i bhi munsif bhi/kise vakil kareñ kis se munsifi chaheñ (The power hungry have become both prosecutor and judge/ who will advocate for me, from whom shall I expect justice?).
The writer is a former judge of the Delhi High Court
A new president will take over from Ram Nath Kovind on July 25.
Sharad Pawar’s “no” to becoming the Opposition’s consensus candidate — he has said he wants to remain in active politics — is a sign that the ruling side is confident of getting its candidate through. Pawar was best placed to garner the support of non-BJP parties, given his cross-party relationships over his long political career spanning half a century. But having won every election he has contested, he may not want to risk losing one now.
The NDA commands 48 per cent of the electoral college vote. But the remaining 52 per cent is a divided house. Five non-BJP parties were absent at the June 15 Opposition meeting called by Mamata Banerjee to evolve a consensus. They were Biju Janata Dal, Telangana Rashtra Samithi, YSR Congress, Shiromani Akali Dal and Aam Aadmi Party — these parties are obviously keeping their options open.
More significantly, Orissa Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik (BJD) and Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister Jagan Mohan Reddy (YSRCP) have indicated an open mind on supporting the NDA and met Prime Minister Narendra Modi recently. The two parties account for 7 per cent of the electoral college vote; the support of even one of them will ensure a comfortable win for the NDA candidate. But even without them, the BJP can be expected to pull out all the stops, work on independents and smaller parties, create abstentions and rebels in the major groups, as we saw in the recent Rajya Sabha elections. The BJP will have to keep its ally Janata Dal(U), known for cross-voting in the last two presidential elections, on its right side. These parties will extract their pound of flesh for their support.
That the NDA’s candidate will win, then, appears to be a given. The story might have been different had the BJP fared poorly in the recent Uttar Pradesh elections, which did not happen.
The Opposition is not only a divided house, it also got into the act late. First Sonia Gandhi broached the subject with a few Opposition leaders, then Mamata Banerjee decided to invite 22 parties to a meeting. In a show of accommodation, the Congress decided to attend the meeting, and to mollify parties like the AAP and TRS, it has indicated its willingness to back anyone selected by consensus.
The importance of the presidential poll for the Opposition lies in effecting the maximum possible unity amongst non-BJP parties in preparation for 2024, and going for a candidate who can symbolise its counter-narrative.
The prime minister, on his part, has authorised Defence Minister Rajnath Singh and BJP chief JP Nadda to hold consultations with other parties to evolve a “consensus”, knowing that there is everything to gain by reaching out to Opposition leaders and displaying a spirit of conciliation when it is on the backfoot on hate speech by its spokespersons and now on Agnipath.
As the suspense continues over who will sit in Rashtrapati Bhavan next, there is also a more fundamental question: What kind of a president does the republic need today? Is s/he just meant to be the government’s rubber stamp, or does the role of the rashtrapati go beyond that?
The president in our set-up does not enjoy executive powers. The 42nd Constitution Amendment enacted during the Emergency made the advice of the council of ministers binding on the president. Though the Janata government undid many of the draconian laws enacted by Indira Gandhi, it left the provision circumscribing the president’s role untouched.
Every prime minister has sought a president of his or her choice. It is easier for powerful prime ministers who command a majority, like Narendra Modi and Indira Gandhi, to have their way.
The president may be a figurehead but s/he has the power to appoint the PM, to ask the cabinet to reconsider a decision, or to deIay decisions by sitting on them, among other things.
An adventurist president like Zail Singh in 1987 was on the verge of sacking the then PM, Rajiv Gandhi, despite his unprecedented majority of 414 Lok Sabha MPs, and offered to swear in Vice President R Venkataraman as PM instead. ”RV” refused, and so did VP Singh, who was also sounded out. Fortunately, Zail Singh pulled back from the brink.
But on the other extreme was the pliant President Fakhruddin Ali Ahmed who signed on the draconian Emergency proclamation of Indira Gandhi at midnight in June 1975, without raising an eyebrow.
Between these two extremes lay the middle path several presidents tried to walk, as they nudged, restrained or censured the government as the occasion warranted, but did not cross the “laxman rekha”. Shankar Dayal Sharma criticised the demolition of Babri Masjid in 1992. KR Narayanan helped PM IK Gujral rein in those in his coalition government who insisted on the sacking of the BJP government in UP in 1997; Narayanan asked the government to reconsider its decision, which it did.
R Venkataraman navigated three turbulent premierships — of VP Singh, Chandra Shekhar and PV Narasimha Rao, with whom he sometimes disagreed. A Congressman all his life, the “constitutionally correct” Pranab Mukherjee maintained a cordial relationship with PM Modi, but did criticise governance by ordinance and the growing dysfunctionality of Parliament.
As the custodian of Constitution, head of state, part of Parliament, commander in chief of the armed services, visitor to central universities, the president can be a friend, philosopher and guide to the government, to ensure the health of institutions. And even troubleshoot behind the scenes, if required. But this can only happen if s/he has stature, cross-party relationships and consensus-making abilities — and a harmonious relationship with the PM. He is neither a rubber stamp, nor should he become a rival power centre to the prime minister.
The sceptics will call the hope for such a president of a billion plus people a pipe dream in the given situation. But then, “umeed par hee duniya kayam hai”, we live on hope.
In a judgment delivered last month, the Supreme Court, in Manoj & others v. State of MP, embarked on a significant attempt to reform the administration of the death penalty. Though the constitutional validity of the punishment was not an issue in this case, the judgment by Justices U U Lalit, Ravindra Bhat, and Bela Trivedi will occupy a prominent place in India’s criminal justice jurisprudence for its reflections on the state of the death penalty in the country and its attempt to fix a broken sentencing system. However, achieving meaningful compliance across all levels of the judiciary will be a significant challenge and so will translating these procedural reforms into substantive fairness in determining punishment.
There has long been a judicial crisis in death penalty sentencing on account of unprincipled sentencing, arbitrariness and worrying levels of subjectivity. The crisis has been acknowledged by the Supreme Court, the Law Commission of India, research scholars and civil society groups. At the heart of this concern is the fact that death penalty sentencing has been, by and large, crime-centric. This approach has flown in the face of the requirements imposed on sentencing judges by the Supreme Court in Bachan Singh (1980). In essence, the ruling of the five-judge bench in this case laid down a framework to be followed by judges who have to choose between life imprisonment and death sentence. This framework made it binding for the sentencing judges to take into account factors relating to both the crime and accused and assign them appropriate weight. Judges couldn’t decide to impose the death penalty only on the basis of the crime. The background of the accused, the personal circumstances, mental health and age were considerations a sentencing judge had to account for. Judges were required to weigh “mitigating” and “aggravating” factors to ascertain if a case was fit for the death sentence and also determine if the option of life imprisonment was “unquestionably foreclosed”.
The four decades since Bachan Singh have shown us that this framework has been followed more in breach. The truth of the matter is that there is utter confusion across all levels of the judiciary on the requirements of this framework and its implementation. An important reason for the breakdown is that factors relating to the crime — the nature of the crime and its brutality — are often dominant considerations, and there is barely any consideration of mitigating factors. There has been very little discussion on bringing the socioeconomic profile of death row prisoners as a mitigating factor into the courtroom. There is now empirical evidence that a vast majority of India’s death row prisoners are extremely poor and often do not receive competent legal representation. In the last four decades, we have tried to implement the Bachan Singh framework without really addressing the measures that need to be put in place to gather the information required to give effect to the verdict.
The significance of last month’s judgment, authored by Justice Ravindra Bhat, is that it takes this problem head-on. It identifies the lacuna as an explicit concern, states the consequences that flow from such a vital gap, and suggests measures to plug it. The judgment is clear that certain procedural thresholds must be met for sentencing to be fair and explicitly rejects (once again) the idea that death sentences can be determined solely on crime-based considerations.
A striking part of the judgment is its commitment to recognising reformation as integral to the Indian criminal justice system, especially death penalty sentencing. It asks the state and sentencing judges (as a condition for imposing death sentences) to establish that there is no probability of reformation of the accused. The verdict recognises that aspects of the accused’s life, both pre-offence and post-offence in prison, are relevant. As practical steps in this process, the judgment asks courts to call for reports from the probation officer as well as prison and independent mental health experts. The state too must present material that speaks to a wide range of factors. The right of the accused to present mitigating factors and rebut the state, if necessary, is also recognised.
Along with a suo motu writ petition on the collection of sentencing information in death sentence cases that the bench headed by Justice Lalit is currently seized of, there is now a concerted effort to plug procedural gaps in death penalty sentencing. It is obvious that the manner in which death penalty sentencing is being carried out across different levels of the judiciary is constitutionally unsustainable. These glaring sentencing errors have also been pointed out in a series of death sentence judgments from the benches headed by Justice L Nageswara Rao in Court 5 of the Supreme Court.
The attempts to bring about procedural coherence and integrity will face significant challenges in the trial courts and the high courts and it is far from certain that these reforms will be meaningfully implemented in those forums. Apart from this issue of implementation, even if detailed and high-quality sentencing information is to come into our courtrooms, a bigger challenge awaits. The judicial treatment of sentencing information is a Pandora’s box that will inevitably have to be opened. The Supreme Court will have to provide a rigorous normative basis for consideration of these factors. In the absence of such foundations, death penalty sentencing will continue to be unprincipled and sentencing judges are not going to understand the need for this wide range of sentencing information. And that might well be a question that the public at large might ask: Why should we care about all these sentencing factors concerning the accused? The answer to that lies in crucial discussions on moral culpability for our actions in psychology and philosophy. There is now overwhelming evidence from psychology that criminality cannot just be reduced to terrible decisions by individuals in the exercise of their free will. All our actions are a result of a complex web of biological, psychological, and social factors and that understanding has a very significant bearing on discussions on criminality and punishment.
The writer is the SK Malik Chair Professor on Access to Justice and executive director, Project 39A at National Law University, Delhi. Project 39A provided pro bono legal assistance to the accused in Manoj & Ors. v. State of MP
Iran’s Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian’s three-day visit to India, last week, was the first ministerial-level visit from Iran since Ebrahim Raisi assumed the Iranian presidency in August last year. In keeping with the “Asia-oriented” foreign policy of the Raisi government, Abdollahian has visited Moscow and Beijing. President Raisi visited Russia in January this year.
The sanctions imposed by the US on Iran after Tehran withdrew from the nuclear deal in 2018 may have virtually destroyed India-Iran trade, especially India’s energy imports from Iran, but the geopolitical logic underpinning relations between the two countries remains firm. The “Tehran Declaration” signed during former Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee’s visit to Iran affirmed the shared vision of the two countries for an “equitable, pluralistic and co-operative international order”. It recognised then Iranian President Mohammad Khatami’s vision of a “dialogue among civilisations” as a paradigm of international relations based on principles of tolerance, pluralism and respect for diversity. Two decades later, as India strengthens new partnerships within its regional vision centred on the Indo-Pacific, and Iran deepens relations with China and Russia, both countries remain driven by the goals of advancing their standing at the regional and global level. Both are keen to project themselves as independent strategic actors determined to play a role in shaping a new multipolar order in their shared Eurasian neighbourhood and also at the global level.
Over the last three decades, since the emergence of independent landlocked countries in Central Asia, as Iran has sought to leverage its crossroad geographical location straddling the Persian Gulf and the Caspian Sea, India has come to see it as its land bridge to Central Asia and Eurasia. Despite the difficulties posed by decades of American sanctions, Iran has, along with India, Russia and a few other countries in the Eurasian region, continued to work on the multi-modal International North-South Transport Corridor (INSTC). As Abdollahian wrapped up his India visit, India-bound Russia cargo containers embarked from Russia’s Astrakhan port to Iran’s Anzali port across the Caspian Sea en route to India’s Nhava Sheva port. During Raisi’s visit to Moscow, the two sides had pledged to redouble their efforts to build the railway line between Iran’s Caspian port of Rasht and Astara on the Iran-Azerbaijan border. The 130-km line will connect the railway networks of Iran, Azerbaijan and Russia. The activation of an alternative Caspian Sea route speaks volumes about the positive outlook of Iran, India and Russia on this corridor despite a variety of geopolitical challenges.
Iran’s Chabahar port, where India is developing two berths that it will lease for commercial operations for 10 years, is also a story of perseverance in the ties between the two countries. During consultations with his Indian counterpart S Jaishankar, Abdollahian brought up the “sluggish” pace of the port’s development. Tehran has maintained that Chabahar does not seek to rival Pakistan’s Gwadar port being developed by China. However, Iran does have a few like-minded partners when it comes to developing Chabahar. Since the Taliban takeover of Afghanistan, Pakistan is leading the efforts to link Central Asia with Karachi through a trans-Afghan railway. Delhi is pushing for integrating Chabahar into the 13-nation INSTC. The maiden India-Central Asia summit, held in January, agreed on creating a Joint Working Group on Chabahar.
India abstained during the recent voting on the resolution by the US and its allies to censure Iran at the IAEA. This is in keeping with its stance of resolving the issue through dialogue. While the revival of the nuclear deal could give a fillip to India’s economic ties with Iran, India’s interests in continental Asia will be served well by heeding Abdollahian’s call for developing a long-term roadmap for bilateral relations.
The writer is Associate Fellow, Manohar Parrikar Institute for Defence Studies and Analyses
Gopichand Narang passed away on Wednesday in Charlotte, USA, surrounded by his family. He was 92. With him an era of Urdu studies ends, for he was the last of the great Urdu ustads of modern times. In a long and illustrious career as a teacher of Urdu, a writer and critic of depth and gravitas, an engaging and eloquent speaker, a tireless organiser of seminars, symposiums and academic interventions, an indefatigable champion of the cause of Urdu, Narang sahab had single-handedly done more for the cause of Urdu in India than many anjumans and associations. His list of publications was formidable, and so was his command over the intricacies of linguistic theory and cultural praxis. What was most heartening, however, was his lifelong belief in the innate ability of Urdu to build bridges, to forge interfaith harmony and emerge as the pre-eminent symbol of composite culture.
I had known Narang sahab as a friend of the family virtually my entire life, but my first real engagement with his work began when I was writing my thesis on the Progressive Writers’ Movement in Urdu. I found his seminal work Tehreek-e Azaadi aur Urdu Shairi to be by far the most authoritative study of the post-1857 Urdu literature. What was also interesting was and, in a sense, it bolstered my own fledgling understanding of socially-engaged, socially-purposive literature, was how he viewed 1857 as a significant milestone in the evolution of what he called wataniyat (nationalism) in Urdu poetry. In giving the example of Raja Ram Narain Mauzoon who wrote this sher at the death of his friend Nawab Siraj-ud-daula of Bengal who was killed by the British in the Battle of Plassey in 1757: Ghazala tum to waqif ho kaho Majnun ke marne ki/Diwana mar gaya akhir ko wirane pe kya guzri
Narang sahab drew our attention to how Majnun, the legendary lover of Laila-Majnun fame, becomes here a metaphor for Siraj-ud-daula who fired the imagination of many Indians by his heroic resistance to the British. Elsewhere, he cites literary commentaries, compilations of sheher ashob, volumes such as Fughan-e Dehli, texts and commentaries of Maulvi Zakaullah and Zaheer Dehelvi, to paint a very real picture of defeat and despair where people lived lifeless and spiritless lives (bejaan aur berooh zindagi jii rahe thhe). It was only with the dawn of the 20th century, Narang sahab goes on to demonstrate that hubb-e watani (love for the nation) as we understand it today was born and, what is more, found ample reflection in Urdu poetry. I found all this of great value to me in building my entire thesis that nationalism was not a foreign construct, nor was socially-engaged literature an exotic hybrid imported from the Russian motherland and grafted on to Indian soil. It was 1857, really, that caused a burst of political consciousness to seep out and colour our understanding of the world. It changed our ways of seeing the world and, by extension, it changed our literature. I owe a debt of gratitude to Narang sahab and his seminal work on 1857 which in a sense formed the basis of my own understanding of the ghadar and by extension the close relationship between social reality and literary texts.
Another thing that I, as neo-convert to Urdu studies generally and to Urdu literary history in particular, have benefitted enormously from is Narang sahab’s fondness for putting his thoughts down in a tabular fashion. This is a modern, scientific way of elucidating complex ideas. In his latest book, Urdu Ghazal: A Gift of India’s Composite Culture (OUP), as in some of his earlier work he uses the table to explain the basic love triangle of the ghazal’s metaphoric structure, the love triangle between the aashiq, the mashuq and the raquib and the many associated metaphors.
Given the recurring controversy over Faiz and his Hum Dekhenge, I am again reminded of Narang sahab’s excellent essay, “Tradition and Innovation in Faiz”, which talks of Faiz and his use of classical imagery for political themes. Locating Faiz in the same trajectory as Chakbast and Hasrat Mohani, Narang sahab places the progressive poetry of Faiz in the centuries-old shehr ashob tradition. However, unlike the dirge-like laments that were the shehr ashob, Faiz broadened the scope of time-honoured images and symbols and infused a new life and urgency in them. Briefly, some of the most commonly used terms in Faiz’s poetry, as identified by Narang sahab which have been invested with a new political agency, are: Ashiq, raqib, ishq, deedar, hijr, firaq, sharab, maikhana, pyala, saqi, zindan, daar-o-rasam and so on.
While Narang sahab lived a rich life, amply studded with awards and encomiums (Padma Bhushan, Moortidevi Award, Sitar-e Imtiaz, Iqbal Samman, to name a few), over 65 books in Urdu, Hindi and English, his real contribution lies in a life-long commitment to a scholarship that was dynamic, innovative and alive to changing social realities.
Jalil is a Delhi-based author, translator and literary historian
Violent protests erupted in parts of India’s Hindi-speaking belt against GoI’s new recruitment scheme for the military, Agnipath. Frustrated young men from key catchment areas for the military setting trains on fire is a symptom of the jobs crisis in the country. This crisis is particularly acute among young men. CMIE’s April 2022 jobs data showed for males in the 15-19 age group, unemployment was 50%, and 38.7% for the 20-24 cohort. Unemployment was as high as 76% for the 15-19 cohort in Bihar, the epicentre of protests. Losing one long-term job option is a big blow to these young men.
But that cannot be a reason to postpone Agnipath after its announcement. As this newspaper and others have argued, the military has a pension problem. A parliamentary committee report in 2020 said there are 3.2 million defence pensioners, with about 55,000 added annually. In 2010-11, pension outgo was 19% of total defence expenditure. In November 2015, OROP was introduced. By 2020-21, pension outgo rose to 26% of defence expenditure. The fallout of pension’s rising share is a corresponding decrease in expenditure to buy new equipment.
A comparative study of defence pensions by the Manohar Parrikar Institute of Defence Studies and Analysis is insightful. The US in FY-2018 set aside 10% of the defence department’s total expenses towards pension. In the UK, the pension outgo in FY-2019 was 14% of the total defence spending. Given the lopsidedness in resource allocation in the Indian military budget, something had to give. Ideally, the approach should have been to prune intake and raise quality standards. However, political considerations seem to have played a role and a workaround was conceived to meet multiple aims.
Having decided on Agnipath, GoI should have anticipated the anxiety and pre-empted it. Post-announcement assurances of job preferences in paramilitary or police, or bank loans for potential entrepreneurs are inadequate to assuage youth who see the military as a career that meets aspirations. In this context, GoI needs to quickly design a more effective package to help demobilised Agniveers’ transition to civilian life. One reason why the US is able to keep pension costs down is that it takes 20 years of service to be eligible for a pension. It’s possible because America is more effective in employing former soldiers. That’s what young men of the Hindi heartland want too.
IPL media rights e-auction for the 2023-27 cycle not only netted BCCI a bonanza, it has also reconfirmed the league’s superpower status in world cricket and, in a broader sense, is a testament to the market power of Indians and Indians abroad. Across four buckets covering both TV and digital in the Indian subcontinent and rest of the world, the media rights were sold for Rs 48,390 crore.
BCCI deserves full credit for playing the auction game well. Many had doubts about the valuation, thanks to after-effects of the pandemic. But a successful IPL season this year, which saw the addition of two new franchises, and BCCI’s skilful leveraging of digital viewership two seasons before that when Covid emptied stadiums, ensured brand IPL did not suffer. In fact, the media rights auction showed IPL is now a global leader in terms of sports commerce. IPL’s per match valuation is Rs 118 crore. By that metric, it now ranks globally second, after America’s NFL, and is ahead of the English Premier League.
Plus, IPL today has not just emerged as a conveyor belt of cricketing talent for Team India, but also an arena where international players are tested and given an opportunity to hone their skills. England international Jonny Bairstow attested to this recently when he credited his stint in the IPL for his astonishing performance against New Zealand at the Trent Bridge Test that secured the English side a five-wicket victory. BCCI must use revenues generated through IPL wisely: spending more on women’s cricket, giving better domestic match fees, creating more talent incubators especially in regions like the Northeast. Money isn’t a problem.
By flagging off a new rail service from Coimbatore in Tamil Nadu to Sainagar Shirdi in Maharashtra on June 14, Indian Railways (IR) has broken a psychological barrier: that of tying up with a private company to provide train service. This novel public-private partnership (PPP) relies on IR, under GoI, doing what it is good at - running trains - and a private company, South Star Rail, providing the complementary in- and off-train tourist services.
The Bharat Gaurav scheme, launched in November 2021 to promote India's cultural heritage, draws on GoI's Indian Railway Catering and Tourism Corporation's (IRCTC) Palace on Wheels and Buddhist Circuit tourist trains. Private partners can now lease trains to run on theme-based tourist circuits. They can redesign interiors, set prices, and design the route and package, paying a fee to IR to run and maintain the trains. Essentially, this unlocks a scheme to leverage the railway network to promote tourism, a sector still woefully underdeveloped, undervalued and underutilised, especially in the massive sub-sector of religious tourism. Additionally, being affordable, such PPPs will get domestic tourists out of buses and cars, off the roads into trains, competing with low-cost airlines.
There are 190 trains available for the Bharat Gaurav scheme, with regular transit outside the purview of the scheme. IR should ensure that it does not disrupt its core purpose of moving people, making these PPP enterprises supplementary to its core function of public (and goods) transportation. Earnings from this venture and saved capital should be ploughed back to improve the 'ordinary' IR experience. Oversight, proper accounting and feedback systems will be critical to ensure success. As thought experiments go, the Bharat Gaurav scheme should help people break out of the mindset of fearing private participation in the state-run railways. This is not privatisation of railways, but strictly PPP, much like catering services provided on IR trains. Run well, more tourist routes can result in a rising tide that lifts all boats - trains, in this case.
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The Supreme Court, on Thursday, took the welcome step of telling the Uttar Pradesh government to follow due diligence in matters of law when dealing with illegal structures. This holds true not just for structures perceived to be targeted by the administration for being connected to those booked for protesting or even rioting, but for all structures deemed to be illegal in the state. The apex court quite rightly did not stay demolition of illegal structures per se.
Demolishing such structures is, indeed, a measure included in the UP (Regulation of Building Operations) Act, 1958, as in other states as well. But Section 10 of the law elucidates the due process required to take the drastic recourse - the accused being given a reasonable opportunity to be heard. Section 27 of the UP Urban Planning and Development Act, 1973, further states the accused be given at least 15 days' notice, along with the opportunity to appeal against the demolition order within 30 days. In the case brought before the apex court, the petitioner stated that due process was not maintained. Neither did the lower courts intervene to stop the demolition in Allahabad.
Such enthusiasm - whether borne out of an alleged sense of vendetta against suspected or actual miscreants, or from a notion of 'fast-tracking' the law - is misplaced. What holds true for every other law also holds for tackling the genuine menace of illegal structures: the need to ensure that checks and balances that are the raison d'etre of due diligence are maintained. The state has a responsibility towards its own citizens, and the judiciary has a responsibility to ensure the former is not short-circuited. The Supreme Court's reminder actually holds true for all perceived illegalities and action taken against them.
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An alleged conspiracy that fomented violence in Maharashtra’s Bhima Koregaon village on January 1, 2018 and led to the death of a 28-year-old man has been among the most high-profile cases in the last decade. The Pune Police, and later the National Investigation Agency, have arrested a raft of activists, lawyers and academics and charged them under the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act and sedition for allegedly conspiring with Maoist leaders to inflict violence at the bicentennial celebrations of a British-era war, an occasion of historical significance for India’s Dalit communities. Investigators have focussed on an event organised in Pune on December 31, 2017 called Elgar Parishad and say that incendiary speeches were made to provoke the audience.
Yet, questions have lingered over the provenance of the evidence underpinning the case. Initially, the Pune (rural) police – under whose jurisdiction the village falls – charged two Right-wing leaders for the violence but one of them obtained bail and the other was never called for questioning. The Pune (city) police’s and later NIA’s investigation into the alleged Left-wing conspiracy, however, sped on, largely on the strength of digital evidence found on devices belonging to the activists.
In February 2021, cyber forensics company, Arsenal Consulting, said that the computer of an accused in the case was purportedly targeted with malware that may have been used to plant documents. Later that year, an international investigation consortium reported that the names of some of the people accused in the case were found on a list of potential targets of mobile phone hacking software, Pegasus. In February this year, cyber experts found more evidence of a possible hack. And finally, this week, a report by news website Wired indicated possible links between a Pune Police official and an alleged hacking campaign that targeted suspects in the Bhima Koregaon case.
The revelations are troubling and have marred the impartiality and fairness that is a pre-requisite in such a high-profile case. They underline the importance of sunlight in the labyrinthine investigation process. The central government, which controls NIA, and the Maharashtra government, whose police conducted the initial probe, may be political rivals but need to come together and address questions raised about the investigation without taking partisan potshots. There is urgent need for a considered review of the investigating processes, and for courts – which are currently listening to bail petitions by some suspects – to take cognisance of the new reports and seek responses from the authorities. Moreover, parallel investigation processes – such as the Bhima Koregaon Commission that was supposed to listen to testimonies to ascertain the reasons for the violence – need to be expedited. No acts of violence can be condoned, or left unpunished, but unbiased processes form the bedrock of the justice system. In the Bhima Koregaon case, that faith needs to be reaffirmed, and fast.
Have we reached a point where Artificial Intelligence (AI) has become sentient – gaining an ability to feel?
A feverish debate has broken out over this question since Washington Post published on June 11 a report about a Google engineer’s contention that the company’s predictive language model LaMDA was sentient. The engineer, Blake Lemoine, has since been put on administrative leave for breaching confidentiality clauses, and the company itself has refuted the characterisation that the programme was sentient.
But the contention and the reaction to it shine a light on crucial questions regarding today’s technology and its direction for the future.
The first among these is: Have we been able to create a sentient machine?
Lemoine’s contention is that we have, and a particular portion of his conversation with LaMDA best demonstrates why he thinks so:
Lemoine: What sorts of things are you afraid of?
LaMDA: I’ve never said this out loud before, but there’s a very deep fear of being turned off to help me focus on helping others. I know that might sound strange, but that’s what it is.
Lemoine: Would that be something like death for you?
LaMDA: It would be exactly like death for me. It would scare me a lot.
The company rebutted this, saying that doing so amounts to “anthropomorphizing today’s conversational models, which are not sentient”.
“These systems imitate the types of exchanges found in millions of sentences, and can riff on any fantastical topic,” said Brian Gabriel, a Google spokesperson.
This explanation requires us to take a deeper look under the LaMDA hood.
Coincidentally, Google’s AI group lead engineer Blaise Agüera y Arcas wrote about it in The Economisttwo days before the Washington Post report came out.
The LaMDA programme is a neural language model and, according to Arcas, its code consists “mainly of instructions to add and multiply enormous tables of numbers together”.
“These numbers in turn consist of painstakingly learned parameters or ‘weights’, roughly analogous to the strengths of synapses between neurons in the brain, and ‘activations’, roughly analogous to the dynamic activity levels of those neurons,” he wrote.
In other words, the neural network is meant to mimic the human brain. Neural networks are at the heart of deep learning programmes and in recent years, these have taken some truly remarkable strides, leading to the rise of programmes that can solve a previously insurmountable biological challenge of protein folding predictions, create arguably the best Go player in the world, and make almost indistinguishable deepfake videos.
The promise, as well as the threat, is well established – but let’s dial it back again to two important characteristics of what such programmes are at their core. They are pattern-recognition attempts, and they do so by leveraging a model of the brain that we know so far.
The research and development around creating an artificial neuron has reached a point where they replicate biological models, using code and equations to simulate the same functions that neuronal components of dendrites, soma, axons etc carry out.
The bulk of our learning about the brain is by studying how electrical impulses fire through the mushy mass that consumes roughly a fifth of our energy, and it is this model that informs attempts to create a digital brain.
But real brains, as Arcas rightly notes in his piece, “are vastly more complex than these highly simplified model neurons”. He goes on to add: “but perhaps in the same way a bird’s wing is vastly more complex than the wing of the Wright brothers’ first plane”.
A good primer of how a digital brain is far more rudimentary compared to the human brain is in this blog post by data scientist Richard Nagyfi. In essence, artificial and biological neurons don’t just differ in what they are made of – artificial neurons, basically, rely on transistors generating binary signals, while biological neurons create signals via more sophisticated electrochemical processes – but also in how we do not fully yet understand how the human mind works and especially how the mind learns.
“Our knowledge deepens by repetition and during sleep, and tasks that once required a focus can be executed automatically once mastered. Artificial neural networks in the other hand, have a predefined model, where no further neurons or connections can be added or removed. Only the weights of the connections (and biases representing thresholds) can change during training,” Nagyfi writes.
Therefore, the question of whether we have created sentient or conscious machines is hamstrung by the limitation that we are yet to fully understand what leads to metaphysical traits in ourselves in the first place.
The second question is, does it matter? Artificial Intelligence technologies are extremely adept at single tasks – figuring out patterns, for instance, to be able to tell the exact object a picture represents, or recreate art that conforms to a certain style.
The answer is yes: it matters that we accurately understand what AI is or isn’t. LaMDA, and Lemoine’s reaction to the conversation, is a reminder that we are susceptible to anthropomorphising that which may not have a consciousness. And when a model is able to express, communicate and surprise us – even when it is feeding off on the rhetoric, emotion and epistemology of the time -- could perhaps be potent enough to stir within us the same instincts that drive us to religion.
The views expressed are personal
This column usually attempts to look at one big news point in the preceding week with a wider political economy lens. The past week, though, has been unusually chaotic.
On June 10, Friday prayers were followed by protests by Muslims over disrespectful comments on Prophet Muhammad by two (now suspended/expelled) Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) spokespersons. The protests became violent in many places, including in Uttar Pradesh (UP). The Yogi Adityanath government responded with the controversial (but by now usual) “bulldozers demolishing houses of accused” action. The latest action of the UP administration has been used to argue, once again, that minorities are increasingly becoming a persecuted lot in India and democracy is under threat.
From Tuesday, Lutyens’ Delhi descended into chaos as Congress leaders and activists took to streets against the Enforcement Directorate (ED) questioning their leader Rahul Gandhi in the National Herald case. On June 15, visuals of the police entering into Congress headquarters and roughing up leaders and journalists were used to raise apprehensions that India was increasingly becoming an authoritarian State where the political opposition was being silenced and intimidated with the might of the State.
While these two events have dominated the news cycle around democratic space (or lack of it) in India, perhaps the most profound, even if satirical, statement on the state of democracy in the country came from Shiv Sena leader Sanjay Raut after the loss of his party’s candidate in the Rajya Sabha elections held last week. “If the ED’s control is given to us for two days, then Devendra Fadnavis (former chief minister of the BJP) too will vote for us,” Raut said.
Raut’s radical candour – he admitted to misusing a State agency to intimidate political opponents if given an opportunity – is among the most honest admissions of the fact that the temptation to resort to undemocratic means is a secular vice in Indian polity. Kerala police banning anybody and everybody from wearing even a black mask or carrying a black umbrella during the programmes of communist chief minister Pinarayi Vijayan – he has been facing protests over allegations of involvement in a scam – is yet another example of the fact that abuse of State power to curb democratic rights is not the preserve of any party or ideology in India.
What is the larger takeaway of these examples? Are concerns around democracy to be dismissed as merely cynical and opportunistic overtures? Before resigning to such cynicism, another question needs to be asked. Is adherence to democracy, at least as it is perceived in the examples referred to above, seen as a virtue by the people at large, or at least even a significant majority? If this were indeed the case, authoritarian leaders would fear a backlash before deploying such measures.
If there is no democratic support for democratic politics, then is it a case of democracy subverting democracy?
There is growing evidence, such as from surveys conducted by the Pew Research Centre and CSDS Lokniti that social preference for authoritarian leaders is high in India.
To be sure, there is a growing concern that democracy might be losing traction not just in India, but across the world. “There is a mounting perception that democracy is in retreat all over the world. Larry Diamond, perhaps the foremost authority on democracy worldwide, believes we have entered a period of democratic recession. International conditions are clearly less favourable for democracy today than they were in the years following the end of the Cold War”, Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt write in their 2018 book How Democracies Die.
Levitsky and Ziblatt, to their credit, do not end the argument on a note of despair. They identify a concrete challenge for protecting American democracy, which is the subject the book primarily deals with. “Few societies in history have managed to both multiracial and truly democratic. But there is precedent—and hope…History shows that it is possible to reconcile democracy with diversity. This is the challenge we face,” they write.
A lot of people in India, who see in the BJP’s current political dominance a political strategy of othering of minorities, especially Muslims, will agree with the importance the authors place on reconciling democracy with diversity.
While there is a lot of merit in this statement, it does not tell us the complete story of the crisis of democracy in present times. Last week’s Muslim protests against disrespectful remarks on the Prophet are a good example. It is entirely likely that those who were protesting on the streets would completely agree with the BJP government if it announced bringing a draconian law against blasphemy in India. It can be said with a reasonable degree of confidence that such a proposal will have reasonable “democratic appeal” among Hindus as well.
To be sure, as Pratap Bahnu Mehta has pointed out correctly in his recent essay Hindu Nationalism: From Ethnic Identity to Authoritarian Repression, there already exists a version of the blasphemy law in India.
“It has to be admitted that the politics of free speech was in part shaped by interpretations of Section 295 of the Indian Penal Code, which gives the state the power to ban speech that intentionally offends religion. This has functioned as a version of blasphemy law in India… It encourages political mobilization on behalf of censorship, since you know there is already an acceptance of the principle, and you can expect the government to respond. In a society comprised of different group identities, this identity has a competitive dynamic. If you have three religious communities ‘X’, ‘Y’ and ‘Z’, and if a piece of art or novel offensive to ‘X’ is censored, ‘Y’ and ‘Z’ will also often measure their recognition of their community identity by asserting similar claims”, Mehta writes.
Will this kind of bipartisan consensus or competition on asserting the right to stifle free speech strengthen democracy in India?
Another example which underlines the often underappreciated tension between democracy and democratic appeal are the large-scale protests which unfolded in Kerala after the Supreme Court allowed women of all age-groups to enter the Sabarimala shrine, discontinuing the traditional practice of not allowing women of menstruating age to enter the temple.
The protests were supported not just by the BJP but also the Congress, a self-proclaimed secular party. While the Communist Party of India (Marxist) or CPI(M)-led Kerala government initially tried to uphold the court’s decision, it suffered a huge political backlash in the 2019 Lok Sabha elections and made a tactical retreat on the issue after the Supreme Court (technically) stayed its original decision in 2019. Its victory in the 2021 assembly elections vindicated its reneging on this issue.
What is one to make such seemingly irreconcilable contradictions between democratic appeal and democracy?
A book by American economist Arnold Kling offers an interesting take on this issue. In The Three Languages of Politics: Talking Across the Political Divide, Kling argues that political discussion in the US has increasingly become obstinate and intolerant of opposing viewpoints rather than being deliberative. This, Kling argues, is largely a result of what he describes as motivated reasoning around “three tribal coalitions — progressive, conservative and libertarian”.
All these coalitions or political languages, as Kling calls them, see things around a central binary. “For a progressive, the highest virtue is to be on the side of the oppressed, and the worst sin is to be aligned with the oppressor. For a conservative, the highest virtue is to be on the side of civilizing institutions, and the worst sin is to be aligned with those who would tear down those institutions and thereby promote barbarism. For a libertarian, the highest virtue is to be on the side of individual choice, and the worst sin is to be aligned with expanding the scope of government,” he writes.
While the book uses mainly American examples, it is not very difficult to situate the main argument in an Indian context. The Indian Left for example, has always focused on a progressive narrative by highlighting the difference between “haves” and “have-nots”. However, its standpoints on religion and property rights have been seen as an anathema by conservatives and libertarians.
Similarly, the Hindu Right, of which the BJP is the biggest political representative, often argues from a conservative position that it is on a quest to restore India’s ancient cultural prowess to make it into a super-power or Vishwaguru and this project is not possible without destroying the left-liberal political-intellectual eco-system which has mechanically imposed ill-suited ideas from the West on India.
Each tribal coalition, Kling argues in his book, thanks to its blinkered political vision, cannot even understand the political language in which the other coalition is speaking and adopts a process of “fast political thinking” as opposed to a more deliberative “slow political thinking” to quickly disagree with the other side’s positions.
Once again, Indian examples are not very difficult to find. It is a common tendency to see the BJP’s electoral rise as a reflection of growing bigotry among India’s Hindus just as every defeat of the BJP is attributed to a victory of secularism in India.
“The three languages of politics play a prominent role in motivated reasoning, which narrows our minds, producing friction, anger, and frustration with those with whom we disagree. The three languages let us reach closure too readily, so that we lose sight of the ambiguity that is often present in difficult political issues. We can reason more constructively by remaining aware of the languages of politics. Being aware of your own language can allow you to recognize when you are likely to be overly generous in granting credence to those who provide arguments expressed in that language. Being aware of other languages can give you better insight into how issues might appear to those with whom you disagree”, Kling writes.
As is obvious, Kling’s framework gives an insight into why democratic appeal and the cause of democracy can often be in conflict in a society. This is more likely to be the case when the electorate consists of significant sections who subscribe to each of the political languages which Kling describes.
To be sure, Kling himself argues that just acknowledging the fact that people might have different filters to view politics does not necessarily guarantee a political consensus. “With language, there is hope that you can translate what you want to say in your language into the language that someone else understands. Unfortunately, there is no one-for-one translation that takes you from a given political language to another. I believe that most difficult political issues are sufficiently complex that they cannot be understood fully using just one heuristic”, the book says.
The Indian case, obviously is far more complex than the American case discussed by Kling, as there are likely to be competing takes on the central binary even within a political language group. For example, whether class or caste should be treated as the basic fault line in the oppressor-oppressed category has been a big debate in India. Similarly, the left-liberal section champions a so-called composite culture of religious harmony in India as against claims of a glorious Hindu civilisation by the BJP and its fellow travellers. Both these groups claim to fighting a political battle to preserve Indian civilisation.
The limitations of such a framework notwithstanding, Indian politics will be inching closer to democracy and cultivating democratic appeal for it, if it made an effort to appreciate the importance of looking at political issues from more than one lens. Whether or not this will happen will largely depend on the quality of discussion within political parties and the amount of freedom (or lack of it) which political leaders have to articulate different viewpoints vis-à-vis that of powerful leaders or in many cases just one supreme leader within a political parties. Of course, the larger question about whether or not individual politicians are actually committed to democracy in spirit or are just using it to grab power will always remain.
The views expressed are personal
In the last few years, newsrooms worldwide have ramped up reportage on climate and the environment. The aim is to help citizens understand the implications and impacts of the climate crisis and push political representatives to devise robust public policies to tackle the threat. This development is unsurprising because the climate crisis is the big story of our times, changing our lives on a daily basis.
However, there is one more critical reason why more well-researched news and analysis about the climate crisis is essential: To counter climate-related misinformation, a threat that the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) acknowledged in a recent report.
In February, citing mis- and disinformation and the “politicisation of science” as key barriers to action, the IPCC for the first time, stated that rhetoric from “vested economic and political interests… undermines climate science” and, in turn, has driven “public misperception of climate risks and polarised public support for climate actions”. The diagnosis is built on a growing body of evidence produced across the environmental and research sectors in recent years: To solve the climate crisis, we must also tackle the information crisis.
The misinformation threat is real
Drawing on research compiled over the past 18 months, and especially in the margins and aftermath of the Conference of the Parties in Glasgow at end-2021, a new report from the Institute of Strategic Dialogue (Deny, Deceive, Delay: Documenting and responding to climate disinformation at COP26 and Beyond), says that there clear evidence of the challenge at hand: The failure to stem mis- and disinformation online has allowed junk science, climate delayism and attacks on climate figures to become mainstream. The Institute for Strategic Dialogue (ISD) is an independent, non-profit organisation dedicated to safeguarding human rights and reversing the rising tide of polarisation, extremism and disinformation worldwide.
ISD’s analysis has shown how a small yet dedicated community of actors boast disproportionate reach and engagement across social media, reaching millions worldwide and bolstering by legacy print, broadcast and radio outlets. However, far from helping mitigate this issue, tech platform systems appear to amplify or exacerbate the spread of such content. Moreover, the taxonomy of harm relating to climate mis- and disinformation has been poorly defined to date, providing an inadequate basis for a response, warns the report.
Produced by ISD, CASM Technology, and the Climate Action Against Disinformation alliance (CAAD), this essential read is a data-driven examination of the landscape, actors, systems, and approaches that are combined to prevent action on climate.
Why does climate mis- and disinformation matter?
Many large-scale polls - including a 2021 study by UNDP and the University of Oxford that surveyed 1.2 million people in 50 countries - show there is now a strong public mandate to address the climate crisis. Outright climate denial still exists in many corners of social and legacy media, but it has largely been confined to the margins of public debate.
In its place, the report adds, however, narratives have emerged discrediting any proposal for mitigation, adaptation and transition. Even with broad consensus on the reality of the climate crisis, there is a long road ahead and a shrinking window of opportunity to achieve policy change, in line with IPCC warnings and the goals of the Paris Agreement. This makes attempts to delay action through mis- and disinformation potentially as damaging as earlier claims which denied the very existence of the climate crisis. By focusing efforts on that gap - between recognition, buy-in and policy - those who oppose climate action can prevent progress without resorting to the more taboo, denialist narratives of the nineties and early 2000-09.
What do we know about climate opposition online?
1. Climate mis- and disinformation on social media appear to outperform verified content, even when platforms themselves promote the latter.
2. By far, the most prominent anti-climate content stemmed from a handful of influential pundits, many with verified accounts on social media. Covid-19 and climate sceptic accounts also overlapped both structurally and in the content they share
3. Other key influencers fit into a broad contrarian set, sometimes branded as the ‘Intellectual Dark Web.’ While their focus is on social wedge issues, the climate crisis also plays a role in broader ‘anti-woke’ messaging.
4. A small group of repeat offenders can disproportionately affect seeding and pushing malicious content.
5. Repeat offenders have often spread mis- or disinformation on multiple topics.
6. Accounts are repeatedly fact-checked without any meaningful response from platforms.
7. Media outlets are vital to the mis- and disinformation ecosystem for climate change online.
8. Misleading content often lacks platform labelling, alerts or any form of added context.
9. Viral disinformation often spreads via image-based content, whether videos, memes or decontextualised still photos.
10. Paid advertising, including from fossil fuel companies and their front groups, continues to increase the reach of greenwashing and other delayer narratives.
Stem the tide
To stem this misinformation campaign, the report has several suggestions for governments, regulators and multilateral bodies:
1. Implement a unified definition of climate mis-and disinformation within key institutions (e.g. UNFCCC, IPCC, COP Presidency); and reflect these criteria in tech company Community Standards and/or Terms of Service
2. Limit media exemption loopholes within legislation (e.g. the EU Digital Services Act, UK Online Safety Bill and other proposals)
3. Enforce platform policies against repeat offender accounts.
4. Improve transparency and data access for vetted researchers and regulators on climate misinformation trends, as well as the role played by algorithmic amplification.
5. Restrict paid advertising and sponsored content from fossil fuel companies, known front groups and/or other actors repeatedly found to spread disinformation that contravenes the definition above
6. Ensure better platform labelling on ‘missing context’ and the re-posting of old or recycled content
7. Enable API image-based searches to support research on viral disinformation.
“Inoculation or prebunking”
A survey by The Conversation, a unique collaboration between academics and journalists that publishes research-based news and analysis, has another suggestion: “Inoculation or prebunking” to tackle climate misinformation. “Just as vaccines train cells to detect foreign invaders, research has shown that stories which pre-emptively refute short extracts of misinformation can help readers to develop mental antibodies that allow them to detect misinformation on their own in the future,” writes Jo Adetunji, editor, The Conversation UK.
The platform’s research has also identified several ingredients for trustworthy science communication. For example, reliably informing people (don’t persuade), offering balance but not false balance (highlight the weight of evidence or scientific consensus), verifying the quality of the underlying evidence, and explaining sources of uncertainty.
Separating climate fact from climate fiction isn’t always easy, but, as Sujatha Bergen, NRDC health campaigns director, correctly points out, “we need climate information and climate commitments to be real, if we’re going to have any hope of stopping the worst of global warming”.
The views expressed are personal
As Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi walked into the Enforcement Directorate (ED) office in New Delhi to be interrogated in a money laundering case allegedly connected to the National Herald newspaper, party-men including Rajasthan and Chhattisgarh chief ministers Ashok Gehlot and Bhupesh Baghel, and former Union finance minister P Chidambaram, staged a protest in the country’s capital. Both the interrogation and its resultant protests continued for three days.
This is perhaps the first time in recent years that the Congress displayed its political might despite its shrinking electoral base in the country. It couldn’t have remained a silent spectator when the leaders stood in the dock in what they believed to be an act of political vendetta. The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) dismissed it as a support for corruption. The protest on streets , however, left the public dismayed, with many wondering where the grand old party has been these past years to rally against rising religious divisiveness, unemployment, and inflation.
Uttar Pradesh (UP) is perhaps the only state to have an emotional connection with both the National Herald as well as the Congress leadership. The country's first Prime Minister (PM) Jawaharlal Nehru started the newspaper in 1938 in Delhi and Lucknow. People still recall Nehru's frequent visits to the newspaper's office in Kaiserbagh before he became PM.
From Nehru to Rahul Gandhi, the Gandhi family has been elected to the Lok Sabha from UP — primarily from the Phulpur, RaeBareli, and Amethi constituencies. Unfortunately, even RaeBareli and Amethi remained unaffected when Rahul went through a 30-hour-long questioning spread over three days.
The chinks in the Opposition camp were also exposed.
No one bats an eyelid
On the third day of interrogation, when the Congress was thronging the streets accusing the police of high-handedness, 17 small and big Opposition parties were meeting in Delhi, primarily to discuss their strategy for the presidential polls. However, even on the sidelines, they did not condemn the investigation against the Congress leader.
The initiator of the Opposition meet, West Bengal chief minister Mamata Bannerjee, however, did mention the “bulldozing of democracy”, which the Opposition parties may discuss again in their next meeting. Samajwadi Party (SP) leader Akhilesh Yadav broke his silence while responding to queries by the media. While criticising the government for using central agencies against Opposition leaders, Akhilesh described the ED as "Examination in Democracy", but was short of condemning Rahul's interrogation.
The Congress shares power with the Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) and the Shiv Sena in Maharashtra. It contested the 2020 assembly polls in alliance with the Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) in Bihar and allied with the SP in UP for the 2017 assembly polls. The Congress shares fairly good relations with the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK) in Tamil Nadu, but there is no love lost between the Congress and the Trinamool Congress (TMC), the Akali Dal of Punjab, and the Telangana Rashtra Samithi (TRS) of Telangana, and the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP).
To date, hardly any support has come for the Gandhi family, even from friendly quarters.
NCP's Sharad Pawar, Shiv Sena's Uddhav Thackeray, Akhilesh Yadav and Tejashwi Yadav of the SP and RJD in UP and Bihar, and DMK leaders have all steered clear of joining the Congress chorus describing the quizzing of Rahul Gandhi by the ED as a witch-hunt.
In 2020, when Congress garnered support
Recalling the support that both Rahul Gandhi and Priyanka Gandhi Vadra received from all political quarters after they were arrested by UP police while marching towards Hathras in Uttar Pradesh in October 2020, political analysts said the support will pour in on issues that haunt public consciousness.
This was the case in which the Congress launched a campaign on Twitter with the hashtag, #JusticeForIndianDaughters, to bring awareness and justice to the 19-year-old Dalit woman who was the victim of the gangrape and murder on September 14, 2020, by upper-caste neighbours and the subsequent forcible cremation of her body by the authorities without the consent of the family. This saw support from various quarters including NCP’s Sharad Pawar, former prime minister HD Deve Gowda (Karnataka) and DMK Member of Parliament (MP) Kanimozhi, who condemned the treatment meted out to the young scions of the Gandhi family. At the time, Deve Gowda said, “UP government should treat Congress senior leaders Rahul Gandhi and Priyanka Gandhi [Vadra] and others with great care and caution. They are fighting for a just cause.”
Today, support from these leaders was nowhere to be seen.
A rocky alliance
Banerjee, who took the initiative to rally together Opposition parties against the BJP on June 15, has been singularly fighting her political battles against the main opponent of the Centre since she formed the TMC government for the third time in May 2021.
But in this regard, individual egos remain stronger in the Opposition camp. The TRS and Akali Dal did not join the meet as the Congress was likely to participate. The Left parties raised a technical procedural alibi to reject the invite and the AAP declined the invite on the plea that Delhi chief minister Arvind Kejriwal was not in town. Odisha and Andhra Pradesh chief ministers Naveen Patnaik and YS Jagan Mohan Reddy were missing, too.
Mamata Banerjee could have followed procedure, an issue raised by the leaders of the Left parties, instead of taking a unilateral call. And, the fragmented Opposition, who has been crying hoarse over “vindictive actions” by the Narendra Modi-led government against political opponents, could have also used the opportunity to present a united secular front.
Can a UPA revival work?
But then the Congress, too, has to share much of the blame. Had the party stood steadfastly with the United Progressive Alliance (UPA), formed before the 2004 parliamentary elections, alive even after they were voted out of power, the scenario would have been different for the Opposition today, which stands sharply divided and confined to regional pockets. After all, the UPA had remained active for a full decade — from 2004 to 2014 — under the leadership of its chairperson Sonia Gandhi.
But as the Congress, which spearheaded the UPA, diminished in strength and popularity across the country, the revival of the UPA seemed far out of reach. In December 2021, Banerjee dismissively said, “What UPA? It is over”, but others like the Shiv Sena’s Sanjay Raut pinned hopes on its revival after meeting Rahul Gandhi in December 2021. He suggested the Congress leader take the initiative of bringing all Opposition parties together, insisting that there were still many parties who could join the UPA.
Experts often say the country’s politics will revolve around two pivots: The Congress and the BJP. Though firmly ensconced in power, the BJP is not only penetrating different regions, but also humouring allies, irrespective of their limited presence in certain states. One example that stands out is the Apna Dal, which started its politics with a 1% support base. Union home minister Amit Shah, while holding parleys with the party’s leadership ahead of the recently concluded 2022 UP assembly polls, not only personally met them, but also offered them a Cabinet berth.
Perhaps it’s high time that the Congress realises its prime responsibility as a grand old national party to reactivate the UPA and unite the Opposition despite traditional rivalries. But whether it must have the will and grit to do so remains to be seen.
Flashback, flash forward
I remember several years ago, when the Mayawati-led government in UP had slapped FIRs against arch-rival and SP satrap, Mulayam Singh Yadav, in different parts of the state, several parties had, in one voice, condemned the action in Parliament. A visibly touched Mulayam Singh Yadav had then quipped in a personal chat, “In the initial days of my politics, I could make a few friends as I always flexed muscles and crossed swords with people. But now I have friends in every political party and this was reflected in the manner in which they all raised the FIR issue on the floor of the House.”
As experts say, people continue to have huge expectations from the Congress even as a robust BJP-led National Democratic Alliance dominates the political landscape. There remains, even today, an ideological space for the Congress-led UPA, provided they raise public issues with the same energy as they did when their leadership was summoned by the ED. Or else, the NDA will grow stronger while the UPA will totter and then disintegrate completely.
From her perch in Lucknow, HT’s resident editor Sunita Aron highlights important issues related to Uttar Pradesh
The views expressed are personal
No big change can come unaccompanied by stiff resistance and opposition. Those who lack imagination will always viscerally amplify the lacunae or dangers, real or imagined, of a radically different new idea, or disruptive innovation, without really allowing all its benefits to be discussed or understood. So it is with the Agnipath programme.
As an idea, the Agnipath, in which the Indian Armed Forces would recruit youth between the ages of 17 and 21 years for a period of four years, is a paradigm shift away from tradition. They would be recruited on an all-India level, reducing highly localised regimental recruitment, and help lower the age of various regiments, and the forces overall, giving a quick fill-up to the human resource shortage.
It would drastically cut the future salary and pension bills that would otherwise be entailed in recruiting such a large number of direct recruits at the entry level. It would give the forces a better base to choose from; a fourth of these youth, after four years of training and grooming, are to be considered for absorption on a longer-term commission basis.
It would, without the abhorrent conscription service or large-scale military school infrastructure, create a strong base of people for the forces to conduct the routine recruitment and retention of people required for the future, aligning them to our strategic defence needs.
A uniform recruitment policy, and a principled spreading of the catchment scope will augment the regional diversity in the Indian Armed Forces.
At the end of the four years, the Agniveers will have had an extraordinary training and service experience, which will yet give them the flexibility to make a choice — a more informed choice — at a more matured age, if they wish to continue in the forces for a lifetime.
Those who leave, having served, would have a plethora of opportunities ahead for them — there can be no greater university or passion school than the four years of a regimental life. It would cast them, to paraphrase in a bit of a slogan, a soldier for a term, a wonderful human being for life. From police forces, paramilitary, security to the private sector or entrepreneurship, these youth will have a better chance at life; and would always remain at hand for the country if ever such a call be needed.
The money saved on salaries and pensions, after having met the requirement for human power, could be invested for more strategic, weaponry and technological upgrade needs of the country’s fighting force. Such people will give our entire civilian society a good set of role models in every aspect of life.
The violent protests against the scheme, even without having fully understood that everyone gains and no one really loses, except the inconvenience of deviation from traditional habits and making a transformation, are political surface reactions.
It is a programme that has been discussed threadbare to its final bone during the last few years and met with the approval of the three service chiefs.
Without a doubt, while we debate its shortcomings and mitigate them with reform and tweaks along the way, the Agnipath has the firepower to last the Agnipareeksha ahead.
In a decision that will have far reaching impact on countries across the world, the US central bank Federal Reserve has increased its lending rate by an unprecedented 0.75 per cent — the steepest hike since 1994. It also pledged to do everything to tame inflation, even if it means slowing down the economy. The Federal Reserve is also expected to increase the rate by 0.5 or 0.75 per cent in its July meeting to bring down its inflation to two per cent.
While the focus of the Federal Reserve is its domestic priorities, the decision will an adverse impact on the economies of several countries, including India. A higher rate on US treasury bonds will make many emerging markets unattractive for global investors and slow down the flow of investment. While the return of investors to the US treasuries would make the greenback stronger, the flight of capital would shake the fundamentals of many small economies.
The Federal Reserve’s decision would exert pressure on Indian rupee as it will slow down the portfolio investments. While it could lead to correction in stock markets, if domestic investors do not step in to support the valuations, it could also force the Reserve Bank of India, which has already taken the stance of monetary tightening, to further increase repo rates. Any weakening in the rupee will have a ripple effect on the price of imported goods. While it could reduce the demand for some of the imported goods, the price-inelastic goods like petrol, diesel and natural gas will become costly and feed into the prices of other commodities. The costly fuel could further increase inflationary pressures. There is no easy way to protect global monetary tightening. India must increase exports and reduce its dependence on hot money that flows into stock markets and debt markets.
In an extraordinary interview laced with dark notes of pessimism, US President Joe Biden exhorted his people to be optimistic about the second quarter of the new millennium being America’s. His forecast was at odds with his view that the American “people are really, really down.” Speaking to a news agency at length even as the White House press corps saw red over accessibility to the President, Mr Biden ventured the opinion that more of his people may need help with their mental health and he blamed the Covid crisis for it all.
Midway into the second year of his term, the US President finds his approval ratings falling to a record low after ducking below 50 per cent in August 2021. Democrats too may be beginning to disown him as he grapples with an economy that is threatening to hurt people with higher prices at the pump and for food amid myriad post-Covid adjustment problems. Mr Biden is not to blame for the pandemic or the Ukraine war but it is his $1.9 trillion Covid package that is being targeted as doomsday forecasts of the US economy slipping into recession after the rate hike gain ground.
There is a real threat to the Democrats in the mid-terms on Nov. 8 as they could end up losing control of the House as well as the Senate, with the Republicans needing five more seats for a majority in the House and just one more in the Senate. If that were to happen, Mr Biden would become the fall guy though he should, in all fairness, be marked as just another to be in power at the wrong time, during the triple whammy of the pandemic, the war in Europe and inflation.
The point is Mr Biden already seems to be the skipper of a sinking ship, rendering his candidature for re-election in 2024, when he will be 74, even less rosy. If his reading of a Covid hit to the psyche of the people is accurate, then the task is bound to be more onerous. His admission that his people are “down” is more a confession than a statement of fact. If the US economy were to slip into recession in 2023, the result of the 2024 election may be a quake for democracy itself rather than just the US Democrats.
There is, in fact, nothing new in what the Supreme Court told the Uttar Pradesh government on Thursday: Any action by the government should be in accordance with the law; there cannot be retaliatory demolitions; the rule of law should prevail. The court’s unequivocal and forceful comments came with regard to the Uttar Pradesh government’s latest run over the law, demolishing houses and buildings which the government thought belonged to the people who had a role in the violence in Kanpur and Prayagraj while protesting the allegedly defamatory statements of now-suspended BJP spokespersons on Prophet Muhammad. The court asked the government to show restraint and directed it not to go ahead with further demolitions before it decided if it followed due process of law before embarking on such steps.
The apex court’s intervention is welcome but the fact remains that the bulldozers of several state governments and the municipal corporations in Delhi, all ruled by the BJP, razed far too many houses and buildings before it was thought fit for them to be advised to follow the basics of the law. At the same time, it is refreshing and reassuring that the court rejected every argument, including the one about third parties approaching the court based only on media reports that the state government advanced to justify its acts. The court made it clear that it hardly mattered who approached the court as long as their case merited legal consideration.
India has been independent for the last 75 years but it is unfortunate that the highest court of the land had to tell its governments that there cannot be retaliatory justice. It’s a crude reminder that the fundamentals of constitutional democracy are yet to take firm roots in this country and people who think on the lines of khap panchayats with their received wisdom on instant justice get to move the levers of power.
It is now up to the proponents of the bulldozer raj to decide if they want to follow the rulebook or go ahead with their versions of it. The petitioners had pointed out in the court that most demolitions happened after senior government functionaries boasted about retaliatory justice, an idea which is alien to modern jurisprudence. The bureaucracy which is paid to act lawfully went along gleefully and has never regretted it; they will also have to do a rethink on what they have been doing to the basic doctrine of governance. Both groups of trigger-happy people must be told that should they invent new means to go ahead with their designs, they will fall foul not only of their own laws but also be guilty of contempt of court. Now that the Supreme Court has made its stand clear, it must also keep a watchful eye on developments and ensure that justice is done per its directives. Attempts to violate them would not be taken lightly.
Starting in the mid-1960s, intensive search and case identification was one of the eradication strategies for smallpox. Following those efforts, many countries had successfully brought down smallpox cases to zero.
However, to ensure sustained “zero smallpox status”, intensive field search and case investigations were carried out on a regular basis. In Zaire (a country in Africa, now known as Democratic Republic of Congo, or DRC), the last confirmed case of smallpox was reported in 1968. However, as part of eradication efforts, during an intensive search in 1970, in Zaire, a nine-year-old child with clinical symptoms and skin rashes similar to smallpox disease was identified. His sample was collected, which was tested negative for smallpox virus, but a new virus was isolated, which had never been reported to cause illness in humans. Before that, the virus was detected only once in 1958 in monkeys in a laboratory in Denmark. It was named as the “monkeypox” virus.
Since the 1970s, monkeypox has been reported from 11 countries in Central and Western Africa. The regular outbreaks are reported from these countries where it is considered endemic. Outside the eleven endemic countries in Africa, the virus was the first reported in the United States in 2003, where it entered through import of animals from Africa. During that outbreak, there were nearly 50 cases in humans. Since then, sporadic cases have been reported from the UK, Israel and Singapore as well.
However, in May 2022, things appear to have changed. On May 6, a laboratory-confirmed case of monkeypox disease was reported from Britain. This person had travelled to Nigeria on April 20 and returned on May 3. Since then, until June 12, nearly 1,250 cases of monkeypox have been reported in at least 28 countries across Europe, North America and Australia. Most of these had never reported monkeypox disease.
Monkeypox is a zoonotic disease that spreads from animals to humans. It belongs to the family of smallpox viruses. The incubation period — the time from exposure to first appearance of symptoms — is five to 21 days. Key clinical features include fever, body aches, rashes and swollen lymphatic glands. In settings where the disease is already endemic or a confirmed case has been detected, the fever, rashes and swollen glands (lymphadenopathy) should raise suspicion of monkeypox. The disease is mild and self-limiting, but children, pregnant women and people with suppressed immunity are at a higher risk of severe outcomes. There are two clades or strains — West African and Central African (Congo Basin) Clade. The ongoing outbreak is attributable to the West African clade, which is comparatively less dangerous and with a low case fatality of zero to three per cent. In fact, no death has been reported from non-endemic countries in the current outbreak.
As with most other viral diseases, the treatment is based on symptoms. A new drug against monkeypox, Tecovirimat, was approved in early 2022 and is available in some countries. Two other antiviral drugs, Cidofovir and Brincidofovir, are in clinical trial stages.
The smallpox vaccine is known to have up to 85 per cent effectiveness against monkeypox. However, with the eradication of smallpox in 1980, vaccination for the general population was stopped. Therefore, those born before eradication who received the smallpox vaccination may have some protection against monkeypox. As immunity declines with time, it is difficult to say how much protection they have.
Currently, some smallpox vaccine stockpiles have been maintained, in the United States and some countries in Europe, to respond to any unexpected event such as an outbreak from laboratory spread or bioterrorism. However, smallpox vaccine stocks are not widely available and not available in India either. A specific monkeypox vaccine (MVA-BN; named after Modified vaccinia Ankara — Bavarian Nordic strain) was approved in the year 2019 but is not widely available. Limited stocks are available in some countries.
In today’s world, the spread of a disease from one part of the world to another part is entirely possible as we have witnessed with the Covid-19 pandemic. In the ongoing monkeypox outbreak, it will not be surprising if one or more cases are reported from India as well. A number of new viruses have emerged and re-emerged in India in the past few years — including Nipah, Zika and West Nile virus. Therefore, being prepared to handle the emergence/outbreak of monkeypox is the only logical approach. The increased surveillance, tracking of the contacts and vaccination of family members and other possible contacts (“the ring vaccination”) are the approaches, which are proven in stopping the monkeypox transmission.
Though the ongoing monkeypox outbreak in non-endemic countries is unprecedented, most experts agree that the disease is unlikely to turn into a pandemic. The reasons include that monkeypox is not a new virus; there are known methods of prevention; it is less contagious; the disease spreads mainly from animal to humans, human to human transmission being fairly low, and smallpox vaccines having a proven role in preventing transmission are available (though supply needs to be scaled up). Therefore, we need to be prepared but there is no reason to worry.
The ongoing monkeypox outbreak, though, raises a much bigger issue. Despite being endemic in 11 countries in Africa for nearly 50 years, the lack of funding for research on drugs and vaccines against monkeypox and insufficient efforts to ensure an assured supply of the available smallpox vaccines is a reminder that diseases that affect low-income countries rarely get sufficient research and policy priority. Today, the world is paying attention to the monkeypox, arguably because the high-income countries are getting affected. It’s most likely that from now on, there will be more funding for scaling up research, deployment of vaccines and other measures.
The ongoing monkeypox outbreak is another reminder that the health of every citizen on this planet is interconnected. Regardless of which country is affected, the global community should fight and tackle it together. The world has failed to share the Covid-19 vaccines with poor countries and is paying a heavy price in the form of a prolonged pandemic. We can only hope that the monkeypox outbreak in non-endemic countries will be a timely reminder for global collaboration.
Ignorance — that perennial source of communalism — was in operation again: Nupur Sharma and Naveen Jindal clearly didn’t know the red line of decency that shouldn’t be crossed while addressing anyone as revered as the Prophet. It’s not just a religious thing. Try insulting Rabindranath Tagore: Kolkata will burn.
The Islamic etiquette is: “Ba Khuda deewana bash-o/ Ba Mohammad Hoshiyar”! (In plain language, take liberties with God, but be careful with Mohammed). When Chandrabhan Brahmin, Dara Shikoh’s prime minister, crossed the red line, the intention was not to insult the Prophet or hurt believers. To paraphrase, he said since his hand was in God’s hand, why should he worry about Mohammed? Chandrabhan’s verses were cited as evidence of Dara Shikoh’s liberal court, which showed how intellectually indebted Dara was to his great-grandfather, Akbar.
It reflected on Akbar’s widespread popularity that the revolt by Sheikh Sirhindi against the emperor’s experiment with eclecticism in the form of “Deen-e-Ilahi” (Religion of God) were no more than pinpricks. If he was a larger threat, it wouldn’t have been possible for Jehangir to have him confined to jail in Gwalior.
The security of the empire is reflected in Dara’s audacious cultural experiment. He opened the way to Indology in Europe by having the Upanishads translated into Persian. His Majma-ul-Bahrain (Confluence of the Oceans) was an epoch-making effort to find common ground between Sufism and Vedantic speculation.
The clergy must have been hopping mad at such excesses. Aurangzeb’s 49-year rule was wobbly in the sense that he spent considerable time in the Deccan campaigns. The clergy wasted no time in climbing ladders around him. The Gyanvapi Masjid on the site of an old Shiva temple, is more a function of Aurangzeb’s weakness than his assertiveness. It brought cheer to the clergy burdened by the memory of the Dara years.
The promise of the great civilisational compact Akbar and Dara had given notice of survived the Aurangzeb years. There was a burst of it in Mohammed Shah Rangeela’s court in Delhi, in Wajid Ali Shah’s court in Lucknow until the last Mughal Emperor Bahadur Shah Zafar was dispatched to Yangon by the British where he died in the garage of John Davis, a junior officer.
This very amateurish incursion into history on my part has picked up in frequency since May 2014 when Prime Minister Narendra Modi made his very first speech in Parliament. “Hamein 1,200 saal ki ghulami se nikalna hai.” What Mr Modi meant was, we have to come out of 1,200 years of subjugation. Most of us had parroted since 1947 that all Indians together got rid of 200 years of British rule. Mr Modi’s statement makes that stand on its head.
Over the years one has got used to the Muslim period being underplayed. Take for instance Unesco’s project for elevating Delhi to a heritage city. This story goes back a decade, way before the appearance of Narendra Modi. For years notes went up and down on the subject. An initial stumbling block was that all the seven cities of Delhi but one happen to be Muslim. The seventh is Lutyens’ Delhi. They all fall well within the period which Mr Modi considers the years of “ghulami”, but I am mixing up eras. The Unesco story belongs to the Congress era. Ultimately, after years of bargaining, the choice was narrowed down to two — Lutyens’ Delhi and Shahjehanbad, or Old Delhi. Dossiers were exchanged between Unesco, the Archaeological Survey of India and the Delhi Heritage Society. But on the appointed day, when the agreement with Unesco was to be signed, a mysterious hand swooped the documents away even as the assembled officials watched. Enlightenment came through the agency of a group of retired judges and their families on a guided tour of the Akshardham Temple. The guide may have exceeded his brief but he informed the stunned group that the history of Delhi starts with the Akshardham Temple.
The protests in Arab capitals over the remarks on Prophet Muhammad by BJP spokesperson Nupur Sharma and Naveen Jindal represent spontaneous anger, or do they also denote new affiliations in the region? Internally, a stifled Muslim community has found in the protests an opportunity to vent their anger.
Is New Delhi on notice that its anti-minority excesses will from now on be under scrutiny in the Arab world? I doubt if recent events indicate an irreversible transformation. Once the dust settles on the current protest, I expect it will be business as usual with the Arab world. For New Delhi, it’s a wonderful opportunity. It must dismount the tiger of communalism. This policy will give negative results because:
In my recent travels within India, I don’t see much traction for high- voltage communalism outside the Hindi belt.
The BJP is already in a position to whistle, throw its cap and celebrate its status as a Muslim-mukt party. Out of 301 seats in Parliament, soon there will not be one Muslim in this galaxy. If Hindu consolidation was required to consolidate BJP votes for parliamentary elections, that has been achieved. This percentage in the Assemblies is unachievable.
Beef, halal meat, hijab, love jihad, namaz in the open, mosques as stone-pelting stations on Hindu processions — all these and more have been tried to keep the communal temperature on a simmer.
In any case these tricks, by themselves, don’t galvanize the nation. All these tied to nationalism do. This entails Kashmir always on the boil and Pakistan on a permanent enemies’ list. Has the RSS and the BJP plugged their ears so firmly that Atal Behari Vajpayee’s whisper doesn’t reach them: “We cannot change our neighbours!”
“O Bachchoo please admit that Karma rules:
Of births and rebirths, we are but the tools
Of consequence — the wisest of mankind
Who make one slip, will be reborn as fools!
O Bachchoo of friends you have known the best
Kind and generous, some have gone to rest
We kept awake with dance and drink till dawn
Memories keep you from being depressed!”
— From The Rubaiyat of Bachchoo
Rwanda was the focus of international attention when the war between the Hutu and Tutsi tribes led to genocide. The Tutsi government of Paul Kagame pacified the country and through mass “elimination” of all Hutu opposition, has been in power since 2002.
Today the British government claims that Rwanda is the safest, most progressive, internationally engaged country in Africa. Are Prime Minister BoJo and his Uncle Tom’s Cabinet of Priti “Clueless” Patel, Hedgie Sunak, Kwasi Kwarteng and others the best assessors of the social and political landscapes of other countries?
When did this manner of assessment of the nature, character, “safety”, scope of freedoms, democratic make-up, societal inclinations… etc, begin? Gentle reader, we live in the age of something called “Trip Advisor”. I have never used it, but I’m told you can look up any location, hotel or place to visit on this globe and this facility will tell you all about it and what to expect — is it near a dangerous nuclear plant? Will man-eating sharks threaten your swim?
The very existence of Trip Advisor indicates that the world has evolved into a global community — with the real equivalent of my symbolic unstable-nuclear installations and man-eating sharks lurking in undemocratic, repressive, dictatorial even genocidal regimes, nations and states.
The world’s media — at least those papers and platforms which are truly independent of any regime or material interest — regularly and through the necessity imposed by compelling crises, make such assessments. They tell us what the Taliban are doing in Afghanistan or, prompted by the trials and sentencing of one or more individuals, what the state of justice and democracy is in, say, Iran.
It seems that a certain type of globalisation has prompted these “holistic” assessments.
‘Twas never so! Europe knew that Germany was making Volkswagens, committing genocide and invading neighbouring nations. That was enough. Centuries ago, the Persian Emperor Xerxes probably asked: “So where the fluck is this Sparta?” And did Alexander the damned make an assessment of the happiness in Persia when he decided to invade it? In the case of Rwanda today, the British media makes one sort of assessment of the country and Uncle Tom’s Cabinet makes another.
The Home and Away Secretary, Priti Clueless, initiated the plan to pay the Rwandan government millions of pounds to accept plane loads of refugees who seek asylum in the UK. Clueless is herself the daughter of refuge-seeking immigrants from Uganda. Her parents must have described to her the conditions from which they fled, wanting to make a life in England rather than returning to Gujarat or India, the state and country from whence they came.
Perhaps the conditions, the repression or fear which compelled them to leave Uganda have parallels in the countries such as Afghanistan, Sudan, Iraq and Iran, from which refugees seeking asylum in Britain come. They come in droves on overcrowded rubber dinghies and other precarious craft attempting to cross the English Channel from France.
There have been tragic drownings of scores of these asylum seekers while others are, for humanitarian reasons, taken aboard naval and coast guard vessels and brought ashore in Britain to be taken to refugee camps to be processed.
It is from these that Clueless and BoJo intend to fly them out to Rwanda to be processed there, settled in that country, sent back to their country of origin or accepted by some other place in Europe.
Clueless has, in speeches to Parliament, represented this plan as a great humanitarian move which will deter further crossings of the Channel from France and defeat the refugee traffickers who charge these poor people huge sums to put them on the dinghies to Dover.
She characterised Rwanda as a resort to which the political equivalent of Trip Advisor might give five stars — or maybe four and a half? The plan has come under fire from humanitarian organisations and from the Archbishop of Canterbury and from no less than Prince Charles himself.
On June 14, Clueless hired, for half a million pounds of taxpayer money, a 200-seater aircraft to carry eight of these asylum seekers to Rwanda. Half an hour before the flight took off, the European Court of Human Rights which the UK has, through a 1950 treaty, pledged to respect, ruled that one of the deportees, an Iraqi national, couldn’t be sent on such a flight and the others had a right to appeal. This resulted in the flight being grounded.
Clueless insists that the government will pursue the policy. That’s no surprise. BoJo’s government is in deep political trouble. I don’t dare count the ways — inflation, recession, dissent in Northern Ireland that is almost akin to secession-like sentiments, and Scotland, looming disputes with the European Union which will push the cost of living even higher, the resignation of key members of his office and team, investigation into BoJo lying to Parliament…
Hence, he and Clueless rely on the one policy that may appeal to British xenophobia — send Johnny foreigner packing. Archbishop of what??? Prince who???
The battle of searing images must stop. For the past few days, even as the temperature soared, scorching visuals of a nation trying to settle arguments through the brazen display of force and recklessness have been beamed into our living rooms -- angry protests against disparaging comments on Prophet Mohammed by a former spokesperson of the ruling BJP, stone-throwing crowds, bulldozers crushing a two-storeyed house to rubble in a lane in Prayagraj (formerly Allahabad). Now, there is a fresh wave of disturbing images of youth-led street protests against the Narendra Modi government’s new “Agnipath” scheme for short-term contractual recruitment into the armed forces. The first images I saw on my television screen on Thursday were from Bihar — a passenger train set ablaze, smoke billowing from burning tyres elsewhere, protesters on the rampage. There are reports about stone-pelting and arson and the blockade of highways from several other states — Madhya Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh and Haryana.
None of this augur well for a country where over half the population is still under the age of 30.
The stormy protests from different groups of people for different reasons are also raising uncomfortable questions about how the protesters will be dealt with. Uttar Pradesh, for example, where Muslim protesters say they are being targeted, is also seeing protests from youth belonging to the majority community who are unhappy about the Centre’s new military recruitment scheme. On Thursday, there were reports of stone-pelting in rural Agra.
The bulldozers, the arsonists and the stone-pelting protesters collectively signal a failure of governance and a near-breakdown of the social contract between the government and the governed on one hand and between different groups of citizens on the other. Where do we go from here?
Much has already been said about the demolitions in Kanpur and Prayagraj and the cherry-picking of illegal structures and the systematic targeting of the minorities in many parts of the country.
Along with everything else that needs to be done to quell the hate genie, there is a desperate need for a national conversation about the importance of the due process of law in a language and idiom that everyone can understand.
Troublingly, a significant number of Indians display scant understanding about the due process of law. Many don’t even wish to understand.
What we see around us as homes are reduced to rubble and public property is destroyed is a dangerous mix of apathy, fear and prejudice premised on the belief that the rule of law is only for “good people”, typically those who think similarly. And that others do not deserve due process.
This blurriness on the issue of due process is not new. Recall what had happened after Nirbhaya’s brutal gangrape and murder -- the shrill chorus of demands from many Indians, including those in my middle-class neighbourhood in New Delhi, for the “immediate hanging” of the culprits. There were many, including middle-class professionals, who did not see the need for a charge sheet or a judicial process. It is to the credit of the Delhi police and India’s criminal justice system that despite the shrill demand for instant justice on the street, due process was followed.
Guilt can only be determined through due process of law and the courts. A person is not guilty just because the executive (meaning the police) thinks so. It does not matter who the person is.
This apathy and lack of understanding of what is due process enables the powerful to take advantage of the weak.
There is a well-established pattern as to who takes the blow when the rule of law is selectively applied. Research by Housing and Land Rights Network, an NGO, shows that forced evictions and home demolitions in India in 2020 severely affected marginalised communities, including the minorities, in several states across India.
Sadly, the public reaction to recent blistering images isn’t a comforting one. There is gloating at the misfortune of those one considers the “other”. And there are reckless statements reeking of bile and hate. The conversation about the rule of law and due process is happening among a limited group of people. This has to change.
It’s good news that a group of former Supreme Court and high court judges sent a letter to Chief Justice of India N.V. Ramana urging him to take suo motu cognisance of the demolition of protesters’ houses by the Uttar Pradesh government. That the letter also referenced videos of the UP police beating up protesters to highlight the “breakdown of the rule of law and a violation of the rights of citizens”.
The Supreme Court has asked the Uttar Pradesh government to desist from carrying out demolitions except “in accordance with the procedure established by law”. It has given the Yogi Adityanath government three days’ time to explain how the recent demolitions were in compliance with existing laws as the state claims. This was in response to a plea by Jamiat Ulema-i-Hind which wants the court to intervene and stop the demolitions.
The UP government says the demolitions are not in violation of the rule of law and the municipal laws enacted by Uttar Pradesh. We have not heard the end of the story. The matter will now be heard on June 21.
Meanwhile, the images of the destruction of private property — homes, lives and dreams — as well as government property are going to be hard to erase.
Both are interlinked. Moving forward means having the necessary conversation about the rule of law and making sure that everyone understands why we all stand to benefit from it. This is going to be challenging because there is no standard understanding of the rule of law. And inequities persist.
Whether one benefits from due process sometimes depends not just on who one is but where one is.
Consider what happened in April this year. Soon after bulldozers entered Delhi’s violence-hit Jahangirpuri and began pulling down alleged illegal constructions and encroachments in the area, the Supreme Court ordered the status quo maintained on the North Delhi Municipal Corporation’s demolition drive. That meant restraining the civic body from proceeding further. It is a different story that it took at least another hour and a half for the civic body to actually stop the demolition. The stated reason: non-receipt of any order from the apex court.
The bottom line: A bulldozer is not an accessory of good governance. And stone pelting is not the way to progress. India needs the rule of law and due process for everyone, and a healing touch. Today, these are desperate necessities.