THE HINDU – CURRENT NOTE 12 APRIL
‘Banning online pre-natal sex determination content dangerous’
Will curtail fundamental right to know of a genuine information-seeker, who is driven by curiosity: SC
•The Supreme Court on Tuesday observed that a general prohibition on all online content about pre-natal sex determination will curtail the fundamental right to know of a genuine information-seeker who is driven by curiosity.
•“Pre-natal sex determination ads is an offence. But a general prohibitory order against all online information pertaining to sex determination is dangerous. We will be curtailing the right to know under Article 19 (1) (a) of the Constitution,” a three-judge Bench led by Justice Dipak Misra observed orally.
•Attorney-General Mukul Rohatgi said there was a distinction between the right to know of an information seeker and the purely commercial objectives of those who post online sex determination ads to make money.
•“The search of the information seeker is protected by the right to know,” Mr. Rohatgi submitted.
•“Yes. Curiosity is fundamental to the right to know and you cannot curtail it with a direct order,” Justice Misra observed orally.
Restriction needed
•“Yes, there should be a restriction on sex determination ads. But can we smother choice of a person to gain information? Right to know is a fundamental right. If we pass a general type order, that is likely to offend Article 19(1) (a),” Justice Misra asked.
•The court asked for Mr. Rohatgi’s assistance and allowed advocate Sanjay Parekh, counsel for petitioner Sabu Mathew George, to effectively address the court on the question as to whether the ban on sex determination advertisements under Section 22 of the Pre-Natal and Pre-Conception Sex Diagnostic Techniques Act is restricted only to paid advertisements.
The court will hear them on April 13.
•Senior advocates Harish Salve and Abhishek Manu Singhvi, appearing for search engines Yahoo and Google, said intermediaries were not directly responsible for people uploading content online.
HIV law promises equality
Parliament passes Bill guaranteeing no discrimination in treatment, jobs
•With Parliament passing the Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV) and Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome (AIDS) (Prevention and Control) Bill, 2017, on Tuesday, people living with HIV and AIDS are guaranteed equal rights in medical treatment, admission to educational institutions and jobs.
•Terming the unanimous passage of the Bill in the Lok Sabha “historic”, Health Minister J.P. Nadda said the government “stands committed to free treatment of HIV patients”.
‘People-centric’ law
•Maintaining that the Bill was “people-centric”, the Minister said it strengthened the rights of people infected with HIV.
•“It is not the case that before the coming of this Bill, these people [those infected with HIV] were not empowered. But with the passage of this Bill, they will get more powers,” he said.
•The Bill lists various grounds on which discrimination against HIV-positive persons and those living with them is prohibited.
•Asserting that there will be no discrimination against persons infected with HIV, Mr. Nadda said, “Whosoever does not adhere to the provisions of the Bill will be penalised. There would also be civil and criminal proceedings against them. Action would be also taken against those who come between the implementation of the provisions of the proposed Bill.”
•The law provides a broad legislative framework for the response to HIV in India and is the first national HIV law in South Asia.
•The legislation prohibits discrimination against people living with, and affected by, HIV in a range of settings, including employment, education, housing and health care, as well as with regard to the holding of public or private office, access to insurance and freedom of movement.
•It also bans unfair treatment of people living with and affected by HIV with regard to accessing public facilities, such as shops, restaurants, hotels, public entertainment venues, public facilities and burial grounds.
•The Bill also prohibits any individual from publishing information or advocating feelings of hatred against HIV positive persons and those living with them.
UNAIDS upbeat
•Welcoming the passage of the landmark legislation, UNAIDS said that the Bill would improve access to justice for People Living with HIV . “This is an important step forward for people living with and affected by HIV in India and around the world,” said Steve Kraus, Director, UNAIDS Regional Support Team for Asia and the Pacific.
•“This legislation begins to remove barriers and empowers people to challenge violations of their human rights.”
•Asserting that India runs the second largest Anti-Retroviral Therapy (ART) programme in the world, Mr. Nadda said the rate of new HIV infections had dropped by 67% from 2.5 lakh to 85,000 and AIDS related deaths have declined to 54%, which is more than the global average.
•He said the government had spent Rs. 2,000 crore on ART alone and this was a 100% Centrally sponsored scheme as the “government is committed to (treating every patient) and no one will be left out”.
Global collaboration project Belle-II moves a step forward
Particle detector integrated with powerful accelerator
•The High Energy Accelerator Research Organisation (KEK) completed the much-awaited ‘rolling-in’ of the Belle-II experiment in Tsukuba, Japan, on Tuesday. This experiment is designed to study violations of the Standard Model of particle physics.
•A grand collaboration of 700 scientists from 23 countries, Belle-II has a significant Indian participation both on experimental and theoretical sides.
•The fourth layer of the six-layer, highly sensitive particle detector, which is at the heart of Belle-II, has been built by Indian scientists, led by Tariq Aziz and Gagan Mohanty, who are with the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research (TIFR), Mumbai.
•“In 1998, when Indians [in this field] were working mostly with CERN (European Organisation for Nuclear Research), KEK first wanted us to participate in this experiment, which had a complementary approach,” says Prof Aziz.
•Scientists from the Indian Institutes of Technology in Bhubaneswar, Chennai, Guwahati and Hyderabad; the Institute of Mathematical Sciences, Chennai; Panjab University; Punjab Agricultural University; Malaviya National Institute of Technology, Jaipur; Indian Institute of Science Education and Research, Mohali; and Tata Institute of Fundamental Research, Mumbai, are participating in this research. “Building the silicon vertex detector has been a directing force that brought us together. It is a very young team, with an average age of 30 years, apart from some senior leaders,” says Professor Mohanty.
•The lone person leading theoretical studies among this group of 35-40 experimentalists, IMSc’s Rahul Sinha says, “Some of the modes and techniques that will be possible for Belle-II to study were first proposed by the group at IMSc.”
No place for scholarship
New guidelines cutting the number of MPhil and PhD students a professor can supervise will kill research
•The claim that something as innocuous as the number of MPhil students that a university teacher is allowed to supervise will determine the future of research in Indian universities must seem far fetched. However, the drastic cuts mandated by the latest (2016) University Grants Commission (UGC) guidelines on MPhil and PhD are indeed alarming, and it is worrisome that they have not received the attention they demand.
A three-tier balance
•For those unfamiliar with it, research in Indian universities is located at the top rung of a three-tiered structure. The bottom rung is made of undergraduates who account for the vast majority of students in higher education, and are enrolled in a range of disciplines in the arts, social sciences, sciences, technology, and so on. The second rung is expectedly much smaller and consists of student enrolled for two-year post-graduate degrees. The third tier, much the smallest, is that of research students who may either enrol directly in the PhD degree, or opt to do an MPhil degree (usually of two years duration) before eventually going on to the PhD.
•The two-stage option is designed to address the need that master’s students often feel for additional training and skills before taking on the challenge of conducting original research for several years. This is a common requirement because in India master’s level courses do not involve original research — they emphasise the assimilation and reproduction of existing knowledge. The MPhil helps to orient students towards the new and entirely different activity of research aimed at adding to current knowledge by asking and answering new questions. Moreover, an MPhil degree makes one eligible for a full-time teaching position at the university and college level, and is thus critical for expanding faculty strength.
•Many commentators have remarked on the extraordinary expansion of Indian higher education in recent years. Official statistics show that enrolment has doubled over the past decade, placing us among the largest such systems in the world. Equally remarkable is the restructuring that has accompanied and enabled expansion. Increasing privatisation has meant that the majority of colleges today are privately managed (though many may also receive some government aid).
The oxygen of access
•There has also been a widening of access to students from disadvantaged backgrounds who are the first from their families to enter higher education. Apart from the very poor who have little chance of going beyond school, the presence (albeit to varying degrees) of students from rural areas, Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes, Other Backward Classes, Muslims is transforming what until recently was an elite structure. Moreover, women from all these groups are also present in numbers large enough to approach parity with men (official figures for 2015-16 place the share of female enrolment at 46.2%). Even more unprecedented is the fact that this kind of diverse student body is found not just at the lowest rungs of higher education but also at the top. Thanks to the implementation of reservations and the willingness of parents from vulnerable backgrounds to invest in higher education for their children, this transformation is also visible in postgraduate and research level classrooms.
•There is, therefore, a tremendous sense of promise associated with this historical moment. Indian higher education is poised to produce new generations of students at all levels, including young researchers from hitherto under- or un-represented groups who can expand and transform the knowledge base of society. They will also form the next generation of university and college faculty. However, instead of enabling and strengthening this surge, the UGC’s 2016 guidelines (which are mandatory for all institutions from the 2017-18 academic year) appear to be bent on halting and reversing it.
•The “vision” of these guidelines, embedded in its various clauses, is to severely curtail the number of MPhil students, perhaps with the intention of doing away with the degree altogether. The previous guidelines of 2009 allowed faculty to supervise up to eight PhD and five MPhil students, with the overall cap intended to regulate faculty workload. Surprisingly and inexplicably, the 2016 guidelines now say that an assistant professor can have just one MPhil and four PhD students; an associate professor two MPhil and six PhD students; and a full professor three MPhil and eight PhD students at a given point of time. Moreover, it has been further decided that only full-time regular faculty of a given department can be supervisors; that arrangements across departments (for interdisciplinary research) would require co-supervisors; and that supervisors from affiliating colleges must have at least two publications in refereed journals to be eligible to supervise.
•Keeping in mind that the MPhil is a two-year degree, with supervisors being allotted during the course of the first year itself, these guidelines amount to cutting down on student intake every other year, leading to unviably small cohorts at best. If anything, the significance of the MPhil has only grown in recent times. Today, more than ever before, State universities have been starting MPhil programmes in the pure sciences, social sciences and humanities, and in various interdisciplinary fields such as development studies, human rights programmes and women’s studies, and large numbers of students are entering this programme across the country. Given the transformation in the student body with more and more first generation students making it to this level, there is an acute need for adequate training in undertaking research, including more inventive and rigorous ways of imbibing research methodologies. Several institutions are currently engaged in planning new modes of teaching the kinds of reading, writing and research skills necessary to aid this process. Besides, younger faculty also need new training. Supervising an MPhil student is one of the best ways for an assistant professor to grow as a researcher and teacher, so much so that junior faculty should be encouraged to have more such students, at least initially.
Route to unviability
•But the precise opposite is being made to happen. MPhil classes will turn unviable because of low numbers. More students will try to get into PhDs straight from an MA degree and being ill-prepared for the challenges they will face, they are more likely to sink than swim. Faculty will be less equipped to develop as research supervisors. And most important of all, the necessary expansion in faculty strength — both to meet existing severe shortages, particularly in faculty from disadvantaged sections, and to meet the growth in students — will not only be halted but also reversed under the new conditions.
•The UGC, under the direction of the Ministry of Human Resource Development, appears in fact to be bent not just on quietly killing the research potential of India’s universities, but on diminishing higher education altogether.
Risky, ill-considered
Pakistan’s announcement on Kulbhushan Jadhav threatens to escalate bilateral tensions
•Pakistan’s sudden announcement on Monday that former Indian naval officer Kulbhushan Jadhav has been sentenced to death by a Field General Court Martial is a development fraught with danger. It could lead to a rapid escalation in bilateral tensions that the region can ill afford. The trial, sentencing, and its confirmation by the Pakistan Army chief, General Qamar Javed Bajwa, were carried out so secretly that the news took many in Pakistan as well by surprise. There are glaring holes in the procedures followed by Pakistan’s government and military in the investigation and trial of Mr. Jadhav. His recorded confession that was broadcast at a press conference within weeks of his arrest in March 2016 appeared to have been spliced. At various points in the tape, and in the transcript of the confession made available, Mr. Jadhav contradicts his own statements, suggesting that he had been tutored. Even if the confession was admissible in a court of law, little by way of corroborative evidence has been offered by Pakistan to back up the claim that Mr. Jadhav, who was allegedly arrested in Balochistan last year, had been plotting operations against the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor. Foreign Minister Sushma Swaraj’s statement in Parliament detailing 13 requests by the government for consular access, and replies from the Pakistan government that made the access conditional on India cooperating in the investigation, further casts the procedures followed in a rather poor light. International human rights agencies too have criticised them. Mr. Jadhav must be allowed a retrial, preferably in a civil court and with recourse to appeal.
•New Delhi must step up its responses in the matter, as it seems to have kept it on the backburner, confining itself to fruitless, repeated representations. India must also pursue the issue with Iran, where Mr. Jadhav is believed to have been based for more than a decade, and investigate how he was brought, by force or otherwise, into Pakistan. The timing of the announcement of the death sentence is also being seen in a spy versus spy context, with the recent disappearance of a former Pakistan Army officer in Nepal. These are matters best left to security agencies at the highest level, but the questions around Mr. Jadhav’s arrest need to be dispelled. Moreover, this escalation highlights the consequences of the breakdown in the India-Pakistan dialogue process, limiting the channels of communication between the two governments to sort out matters in a sober manner. The government has stood fast on its decision to not hold bilateral talks after the Pathankot attack in January 2016, but this policy is hardly likely to bring the desired results when a man’s life hangs in the balance. The Jadhav case requires a proactive three-pronged response from India: impressing on Pakistan that the death sentence must not be carried out, explaining to the international community the flawed trial process, and sending interlocutors to open backchannels for diplomacy for Mr. Jadhav’s safe return home.
GSTN data will be totally secure: CEO
All information to be encrypted
•Goods and Services Tax Network (GSTN), a company set up to provide IT infrastructure and services to the Central and State Governments, tax payers and other stakeholders for implementation of the GST, will have a completely foolproof data security protection and tax-related information, according to the firm’s CEO, Prakash Kumar.
•Mr. Kumar said only the tax payer and concerned assessing officer would have access to information submitted to GSTN portal by tax payers post GST.
•The system will have total stability and a backup facility.
•Even functionaries of GSTN would not have any access to tax-related information of tax payers after GST is enforced and that tax payers should rest assured on the front of data protection, he said at an event organised by an industry body.
•“Such has been the arrangement made in GSTN for protection of data security with best available tools and technologies of the time and that no leakage or even tampering is almost impossible on data and information submitted to GSTN portal,” Mr. Kumar said.
•“Security of your data is of prime importance because in invoice, the item cost is also included. We are cognisant of the fact that if your competitor comes to know of it, it will be a big set back for you. So all the information which will come to us is always in encrypted mode,” he said.
