THE HINDU – CURRENT NOTE 10 APRIL
Olive Ridley eggs hatch in thousands in Ganjam
Three crore hatchlings expected to come out of nests
•Thousands of hatchlings are coming out of the nests buried under sand on this coast to venture into the sea. The Rushikulya rookery coast in Ganjam district of Odisha is a major mass nesting site for Olive ridley turtles in India. This year, over 3,85,000 mother turtles reached the coast to lay eggs. Each nest contains around 100 eggs. This means over three crore hatchlings are expected to come out of the nests. On an average, 80 hatchlings come out of each nest.
•“As the rate of mortality among the hatchlings is so high, the Olive Ridley remains an endangered species,” Berhampur Divisional Forest Officer (DFO) Ashis Behera said.
•Forest range officer Dilip Kumar Martha said the hatching had started in a small number of nests on April 2. The process picked up on the night of April 7 and is expected to last for the next five days. This year, hatching was delayed by a few days because of the rains on the night of April 2.
•Bivash Pandav, a scientist of the Wildlife Institute of India, pointed to an interesting fact. The hatchlings come out of the sand 48 hours after they hatch. During this period, they remain under the sand, getting oxygen through the porous sand, their shells turning hard for them to cope with the condition outside.
Indian team in U.S. for defence technology talks
The Navies of the two countries signed terms of reference on March 1
•A Defence Ministry delegation is in the U.S. to discuss the entire range of cooperation under the Defence Technology and Trade Initiative (DTTI).
•Nine working groups have been established under the initiative, which aims to promote co-development and co-production of military technologies for use by both countries. The latest group set up recently is on new naval systems, such as sonars and sonobuoys, which are of interest to India.
•A six-member team headed by a Vice-Admiral from the Tri-Services Integrated Defence Staff (IDS), along with Service and Ministry members, has embarked on the three-day visit, a senior defence official said.
•“This is a task force meeting and they will comprehensively discuss all issues under the DTTI,” he said.
•However, India is still waiting for some clarity on appointments in the Pentagon. While the Indian side of the DTTI is co-chaired by A.K. Gupta, Secretary, Defence Production, the U.S. side is co-chaired by Frank Kendall, Under-Secretary for Acquisition, Technology and Logistics.
•However, with the change in the administration, there is no clarity on appointments as yet.
•The two Navies had signed the terms of reference at the first meeting of the new Naval Systems Joint Working Group in Washington DC on March 1.
Underwater surveillance
•Underwater surveillance systems such as sonars and sonobuoys are of particular interest to India as it is augmenting its capabilities to keep track of the increasing Chinese naval presence in the Indian Ocean.
•A senior official observed that some niche technologies with the U.S. can be accessed through the mechanism and various possibilities are being explored.
•The naval cooperation is also in U.S. interests and the Chief of the U.S. Pacific Command (PACOM), Admiral Harry Harris, said early this year that “there is sharing of information regarding Chinese maritime movement in the Indian Ocean”.
Clarity and facts on the ground
Why it’s essential that the Supreme Court speedily hears the Aadhaar petitions
•There are several conflicting accounts of precisely what transpired when senior advocate Shyam Divan made a request late in March for an early hearing of a batch of petitions that question the validity of the unique identification scheme, implemented through the Aadhaar (Targeted Delivery of Financial and Other Subsidies, Benefits and Services) Act, 2016 — or the Aadhaar Act. The next morning’s newspapers each produced their own versions: in the narration of some, the court made it clear that Aadhaar ought not to be made mandatory for welfare schemes; others reported that the court had also expressly clarified that Aadhaar could, in fact, be imposed in relation to certain state directives.
•“Let us take Income Tax returns. Is this a benefit? No, we don’t think so,” the Chief Justice of India, J.S. Khehar, sitting along with Justices D.Y. Chandrachud and S.K. Kaul, said, according to The Indian Express . “You can ask someone to have a bank account on the basis of Aadhaar. That is not a benefit. But if you want to make it mandatory for a poor person in a village to get his meagre pension, that could mean extending a benefit… For benefits, it (Aadhaar) cannot be pressed… for non-benefits, it can be done.”
•These statements, regardless of their exact import, understandably raise legitimate concerns. After all, they were made by the CJI, barely a day after the Lok Sabha had passed amendments to the Finance Bill making Aadhaar mandatory for securing a permanent account number (PAN), and consequently for filing income tax returns. But in attempting to comprehend the significance of these remarks, we must be careful not to ascribe any excessive value to them; indeed, there’s practically no utility to be gained in trying to put different news reports together to try to ascertain what the CJI may have really meant. For these statements were just oral ripostes, which don’t bear the force of a judicial order.
Point of no return
•What was more telling, however — and ultimately more damaging — about this entire episode was the result: the denial of Mr. Divan’s plea for a speedy inquiry into the validity of Aadhaar. It is now entirely likely that by the time the court gets around to hearing the challenge, the government will render Aadhaar a fait accompli , with its destiny, in this case, having been sealed by successive CJIs who have failed to so much as constitute a bench to hear the petitions. This lapse also highlights a deeper malaise in our judicial structure: where one person, the CJI, as the sole master of the Supreme Court’s roster, decides the composition of benches, and, as a result, wields enormous administrative power over which cases get heard and which cases get placed on a seemingly never-ending back burner.
•For close to 19 months, the petitions challenging Aadhaar have been stuck in an administrative logjam. In August 2015, at the bidding of the Union of India, a three-judge bench headed by Justice J. Chelameswar ruled that there was substantial confusion on whether the Constitution guaranteed citizens a right to privacy, and therefore that the case had to be placed before a larger bench, of an appropriate strength to be determined by the CJI. The bench also added (something which the court reiterated again in October that year) that it would be desirable to have the case finally heard at the earliest, having regard to its importance. But, all these months later, with Aadhaar becoming more and more entrenched in the Government’s grand plan, we are no closer to having a bench constituted to decide the legal challenge to the scheme.
•Consider the consequences. In a few months’ time, millions more would have enrolled with the Unique Identification Authority of India, submitting their biometric data, with a view to staying clear of the long arm of the country’s punitive laws. Given that there is still no authoritative ruling from the Supreme Court on whether the state’s present acts in extending the use of Aadhaar constitutes a contempt of the court’s previously granted interim orders, it is also quite plausible that the government is far from finished. As a result, when the court finally gets around to listing the petitions before a freshly minted seven-judge Constitution Bench — let’s say sometime in the year 2021 — the damage wrought by Aadhaar will be incapable of being undone. By then, India would have taken an irredeemable step towards becoming a surveillance state, and the question of whether we actually have a constitutionally protected right to privacy would be all but moot.
•This failure of the Supreme Court, needless to say, wouldn’t be unique to the Aadhaar challenge. There were a number of false dawns before the court had, on December 16, referred the challenge to the demonetisation policy to a Constitution Bench. Now, several weeks later, given that the court had explicitly refused to grant a stay of the policy, even if a bench is indeed constituted to hear the petitions, it’s unlikely to matter much: for the state has already thrust the policy on us, and its impact is now permanent.
•Today, were the court to hear the petitions challenging Aadhaar, it’s no doubt conceivable that, on an examination of the merits, it might conclude that India’s citizens possess no fundamental right to privacy, or that Aadhaar does not infringe on this right in a constitutionally unsustainable manner. Whatever our respective predilections might tell us about such a view, at least we might be able to take heart from the fact that the court would have performed its basic function under India’s democratic structure: of testing legislative and executive acts against the guarantees of the Constitution. What it’s presently doing, though, is indefensible. It is not only rendering academic these significant constitutional questions but, as the lawyer Gautam Bhatia has pointed out, it’s virtually deciding in favour of the government without actually delivering a judgment.
Perils of delays
•Delays in constitutional judgment, as K.M. Munshi, a member of the Constituent Assembly, had pointed out in a draft note in 1947, can have deep and perilous consequences on fundamental rights. “It is of the highest importance that the question whether a law is valid or not must be decided at the earliest moment,” he wrote. “Any uncertainty about its validity will lead to great hardships. The object of the fundamental law will be frustrated if people have to serve sentences, pay fines or deny themselves the privileges given by the Constitution for a long time under an invalid law.”
•Most constitutional courts around the world are acutely aware of these dangers. Even recently, there are notable examples from other jurisdictions where courts have fast-tracked certain cases with a view to ensuring that the questions they raise aren’t consigned to theory. The U.K. Supreme Court heard in December 2016 and ruled in January this year that British Prime Minister Theresa May must get Parliament’s approval before formally triggering Britain’s exit from the European Union. Also, last month, a South African High Court ruled that the decision by President Jacob Zuma to withdraw from the International Criminal Court was not only premature but was also procedurally flawed. In both these cases, a failure to decide expeditiously would have had irreversible consequences. It was to negate such an impact that the courts made suitable arrangements for a quick hearing. Comparing India’s Supreme Court to other constitutional courts around the world can be a difficult and even tedious exercise. There’s no question that our judiciary is fraught with an overflowing docket. But can there really be any excuse for a failure to rule punctually on live conflicts between the state and the citizenry?
The summer proceedings
•In response, it may well be pointed out that the Chief Justice has established three Constitution Benches that are scheduled to function during the court’s summer vacation. But this programming is a red herring, unless cases are prioritised for hearing in a transparent and logical manner. Thus far, the issues that appear to be accorded precedence over Aadhaar include the validity of triple talaq and polygamy as practised among Muslims, a cause taken up by the court virtually on its own motion, and the legality of WhatsApp’s privacy policy, which the court will begin hearing on April 18. This isn’t to suggest that these cases aren’t important. But given that they don’t encompass disputes that pit the individual directly against the state, the consequences that they are likely to have, from a standpoint of public and constitutional law, aren’t as instantly significant as the issues that the Aadhaar challenge presents. That these cases are being prioritised over Aadhaar is therefore curious, at its best, and is, at its worst, seriously damaging to any remaining notions that we might have of the Supreme Court representing a bulwark of freedom and democracy.
None for the road
The SC should examine the consequence ofits order on the liquor trade — and amend it
•The liquor trade, as the Supreme Court has emphasised, is indeed res extra commercium , something outside the idea of commerce. It exists solely at the discretion of policymakers without any concomitant fundamental right that other businesses enjoy. The point was cited by the court while ordering that liquor sales be prohibited within 500 metres from national and State highways. In a different sense, it only underscores how much the executive is, and ought to be, involved in policy-making on the subject. Imposing restrictions on the location of liquor outlets, applying them in a differential manner to vends, hotels and standalone bars is undoubtedly an executive decision. It is possible to argue that the executive will be lax in enforcement, corrupt in licensing or too revenue-centric to worry about the social costs of its decisions. However, is that reason enough for the judiciary to impose norms without regard to the problems that they may give rise to? Frankly, the answer is no. The court’s ill-considered order is wholly concerned with the availability of liquor — to the point that it bans sale of liquor on highway stretches even within city and town limits, where police checks are quite common — and does not touch upon strengthening the enforcement of the law against drunk driving. With the same moral outrage against high fatalities on our roads, and with much less economic cost, the court could have ordered stricter patrolling on highways and regular check-points.
•The order has come down like a sledgehammer not only on the liquor vends and the hospitality sector but also on the revenues of State governments, on the business of hotels and bars, and the tourism potential of many parts of the country. The inventive responses of State governments and the industry give an idea of how much they are affected by it — and indeed how absurd the court’s order is. States are downgrading highways into ‘urban roads’ or ‘major district roads’, moves fraught with consequences as safety and quality norms may be compromised; local bodies, which now have to maintain them, may not find the required resources. Some luxury hotels situated on highways are creating alternative entrances to claim that their bars are located beyond 500 metres. An enterprising owner has built a maze of sorts to create a longer walking distance from a highway to his bar. It is not clear how the 500-metre distance is to be measured — as a straight line from the highway in any direction or along the paths leading to an outlet. One may denounce or laugh away these moves to circumvent the order; but they can be also seen as desperate responses from those fearing loss of income, jobs and business. The court should have the wisdom and the humility to examine the consequences of its order and do the necessary thing — amend it.
Stepping up to a shared potential
As liberal democracies, India and Australia can encourage free trade and help safeguard the Indo-Pacific
•India is the world’s most populous democracy and will, by 2030, be the most populous country, overtaking China. And it is young — there are more Indian 10-year-olds than there are Australians.
•With more than a dozen distinct languages, scripts and religions, India is multiculturalism on the grandest scale; unlike China, its only rival for scale, it had never existed as a single nation prior to its independence in 1947.
•And to sustain a vibrant modern democracy, surely India is one of the greatest political achievements of our times.
•Once you appreciate its size, you see its potential. Think of all those 10-year-olds who will one day be voting in India’s elections and who will also, one day, belong to India’s middle class, the engine of its booming economy.
•Put all that together and it’s easy to understand why India will play a central role in our region and the world and, I hope for Australians, it is easier to see why the relationship between our two countries has never been more important.
•That formal relationship began for many Australians in 1950, when Robert Menzies became the first Australian leader to visit independent India. Since then, both countries have been transformed. Now we must turn our attention to transforming the relationship to one that matches India’s huge needs and its enormous potential with our people, Australia’s best assets, as well as our resources and our shared democratic traditions.
•I am delighted to be taking up Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s invitation to make my first official visit to India as Prime Minister, from April 9-12.
Three focus areas
•During the visit we will focus on three areas of our relationship that show great potential: our economic, knowledge and strategic partnerships.
•India is inspiring the world with its explosive economic growth. Its economic take-off is lifting millions out of poverty, transforming the country into the world’s fastest-growing major economy, with forecasted growth of 7.5% in 2017. This is a stunning result for India, and a rare opportunity for Australia. From Mumbai to Melbourne, from Bengaluru to Brisbane, India will be in the market to buy some of the best things Australia has to offer.
•Two-way trade is growing, and approaching $20 billion, but that’s far too low and there’s so much more we can do. This will be a key focus of my visit. I’ll meet with executives from some of India’s biggest companies, and speak with Australian entrepreneurs in India who are expanding their market reach into this extraordinary country.
•The Government will announce the results of the tenth round of the Australia-India Strategic Research Fund. Worth more than $100 million, this initiative has enabled our sharpest minds to collaborate in areas such as food security and health, and advance the boundaries of human knowledge in quantum computing, nanotechnology and astronomy. By combining our talents, we can add to the technological achievements already made in both our countries.
As an education destination
•For decades our citizens have been criss-crossing the Indian Ocean in search of knowledge. Last year, Australia was the second-most popular study destination for Indian students — 60,000 came to Australia to learn. Through the Government’s New Colombo Plan, I want to see more and more young Australians choosing India as a place to study and boost their own qualifications and experience. India’s demand for our minerals and resources remains high. But education is a new pathway to shared prosperity. Consider the numbers — the Indian Government is aiming to train 400 million people by 2022. We can help them achieve this goal.
•A great strength of our education relationship is found in the higher education and research sector. Collaboration between our institutes on high-end research, innovation, science and technology are central to developing our knowledge partnership.
•Having met twice already, Mr. Modi and I know that our close economic cooperation is also matched by shared strategic priorities.
•The security and stability of the Indo-Pacific is fundamental to both of us and my visit provides an opportunity to discuss key regional and geostrategic issues and strengthen our engagement. As liberal democracies, we can work together to encourage free trade and prosperity and to help safeguard security and the rule of law in our region.
The Indian link
•At home, we are lucky that India — its culture, its art, its food, its people — has become such a large and important part of Australian life. Half a million Australians are of Indian descent. That number increases each year. Whether it’s Little India in Melbourne, Diwali celebrations in Brisbane, or the long-established Sikh community on the North Coast of New South Wales, modern Australia, the most successful multicultural society in the world, could not be imagined without the contribution of Indian-Australians.
