📰 ‘Hypertension high in Kerala, low in Bihar’
Threat of non-communicable diseases rising, thanks to change in food habits and unhealthy lifestyle
•Non-communicable diseases (NCDs) have become a growing threat to global health. A recent study done to assess the diet and nutritional status of India’s urban population has pointed out that the increase in incidence of NCDs can be attributed to a change in food habits, sedentary behaviour and unhealthy lifestyles, among other risk factors.
•The study, titled ‘Diet and Nutritional Status of Urban Population in India and Prevalence of Obesity, Hypertension, Diabetes and Hyperlipidaemia in Urban Men and Women’, has brought to light the prevalence rates for non-communicable diseases as well as stunting, under-nutrition and obesity in children under 5 years in the 16 States surveyed.
•Revealing that Kerala has the highest prevalence of hypertension as well as high cholesterol in urban men and women, the study pointed out that Puducherry tops the list of States with the highest prevalence of diabetes. The survey was carried out by the National Nutrition Monitoring Bureau during 2015-16 by researchers from the National Institute of Nutrition.
•Avula Laxmaiah, lead investigator of the study, told The Hindu that the highest prevalence of hypertension was found to be in Kerala (31.4% women and 38.6% men) and lowest in Bihar (22.2% men and 15.7% women).
•Puducherry had the highest number of diabetic men and women (42%), followed by Delhi (36%), Karnataka and Kerala (33% each). Diabetics were the highest in the age group of 60-70 and lowest in the age group of 18-30.
•The southern States were among the 10 with the highest prevalence of obesity among urban adults. Puducherry topped with almost 60% women and 42% men being overweight.
•Tamil Nadu was close behind with 54% men and 38% women recorded as obese. Kerala, Karnataka and Andhra Pradesh recorded high levels of obesity among its urban men and women, he said.
Lifestyle practices
•Tamil Nadu, Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh and Kerala were among the top six States which had the most tobacco smokers among urban men.
•Dr. Laxmaiah said the researchers interviewed 5,642 mothers, who have children aged less than 36 months, for information on antenatal care and infant and young child feeding practices. While U.P. had the highest (43.6%) proportion of underweight children followed by Madhya Pradesh (32.3%), Puducherry had the lowest (14.2%).
📰 SC lifts veil on Collegium recommendations
Decisions to be uploaded on Supreme Court website
•In a historic move to usher in transparency, the Supreme Court Collegium, headed by Chief Justice of India Dipak Misra, has resolved to go public with all its recommendations to the government on judicial appointments, transfers and elevations to the High Courts and the Supreme Court.
•The recommendations will be uploaded on the Supreme Court's official website.
•The Collegium will further “indicate” the reasons for which it has decided to recommend or reject names for appointment, transfer or elevation to the High Courts and the Supreme Court.
•As a start, the Supreme Court has already posted online detailed reasons for its October 3, 2017 recommendations for judicial appointments to the Madras HC and the Kerala HC. The details are now available online under the heading “Collegium Resolutions”.
Shrouded in mystery
•The decision taken by Chief Justice Misra's Collegium to open up is unprecedented. During its entire existence of 24 years — ever since it was introduced in the Second Judges case judgment in 1993 — the Collegium's working has been shrouded in mystery.
•The secretive nature of the functioning of the Collegium continued through the tenures of 20 Chief Justices of India.
📰 GST Council gives relief to exporters, small businesses
Option of quarterly payments, dates set for input credit; rates cut on 27 items
•In what should come as relief to exporters and small businesses, the GST Council on Friday announced a slew of decisions to reduce their compliance burden, including the eventual setting up of an e-wallet for input tax credits for exporters, and the option for small businesses to file returns and pay taxes only once a quarter.
•The changes come two days after Prime Minister Narendra Modi said he had instructed the Council to find solutions to the problems being faced by traders.
•“The committee of secretaries, set up to look into the problems faced by the exporters, found that the credit blockage felt by them was causing a liquidity problem,” Finance Minister Arun Jaitley told reporters following the 22nd GST Council meeting.
•“In light of this, we have taken three decisions... By October 10, the refunds for July will be processed and paid, and by October 18, the same for refunds for August. The Council has also decided that each exporter will get an e-wallet in which a nominal sum will be deposited for tax credit purposes, which will be offset against the credit refund when it happens.”
•The third decision regarding exporters taken by the Council is to impose a nominal 0.1% GST rate for them till March 31, 2018, Mr. Jaitley said. The e-wallet system is expected to rollout from April 1, 2018, he added.
•The GST Council also reduced the tax rates on 27 items, Mr. Jaitley said.
•These include sliced dried mangos, khakhra and plain chappatis, unbranded ayurvedic medicines, plastic, rubber and paper waste, yarn, diesel engine parts, pump parts, e-waste and several services.
📰 Centre proposes three-year licence for contractors
No individual permits required for each project; Govt. also recommends electronic mode of payment
•The government has proposed a major overhaul in the contract labour law, which includes a three-year licence for contractors to work across the country instead of a separate one for new work orders.
•Contractors will no longer require a licence for undertaking each project, as per the proposed changes to the Contract Labour (Regulation and Abolition) Act, 1970.
•“The contractors can obtain a one-time licence valid for three years to work anywhere in the country from the Central Government. The contractor will have to, however, clearly define a particular area of work,” a senior Labour and Employment Ministry official said.
•If the contractor wants to work in a single State for up to three years, the permit needs to be obtained from the State Government, according to the proposal.
•However, the contractor will need to inform the government whenever it receives a work order from a company, failing which the licence may be cancelled, the proposed law stated.
Responsibility ceases
•The proposed law also seeks to make a distinction between contractors who provide services and those who provide human resources. Contractors who provide human resources to a company will no longer be responsible for providing canteen and restroom facilities to the workers. “Providing facilities such as canteen and restroom to contract workers has to be the responsibility of the principal employer who had hired workers from the contractor,” the official explained.
•If a work order is given to a contractor who has hired employees on payroll, then the workers will not be treated as contract workers under the Contract Labour (Regulation and Abolition) Act, according to a proposed clarification in the law.
•As per the current law, a worker is “deemed to be employed as contract labour in or in connection with the work of an establishment when he is hired in or in connection with such work by or through a contractor.”
•The government has also proposed to make wage payment “primarily” through electronic mode instead of cash payment.
•“The proposed law is in line with International Labour Organisation Convention 181 [on private employment agencies]. A one-time three-year licence for contractors comes as a blessing. Presently, contractors hide away from labour law compliance due to the complexity involved in renewing licence with each work contract,” Rituparna Chakraborty, co-founder and executive vice-president, TeamLease Services said.
📰 Law, faith, unreason
Banning ‘evil’ practices by law is not enough: social reform must be more broad-based
•Mere legislation is not enough to eradicate superstition from society, but laws do have the utility value of curbing the prevalence of inhuman rituals and practices. Seen in this light, the proposed Karnataka law targeting black magic and inhuman practices may be regarded as social reform. The Karnataka Prevention and Eradication of Inhuman Evil Practices and Black Magic Bill, 2017 has been approved by the State Cabinet and is likely to be introduced soon in the Assembly. It is not accurate to characterise this as just an ‘anti-superstition bill’, as what it seeks to prohibit are actions that offend human dignity, result in the exploitation of gullible and vulnerable people or cause harm to them. Organising macabre rituals, offering magical cures and threatening people, under peril of incurring divine or supernatural displeasure, are covered by this law, even though these can be treated as offences under the Indian Penal Code too. Perhaps ironically, it exempts established religious practices and the propagation of spiritual learning and arts, besides astrology and vaastu . Overall, it tries to heed the line between religious traditions and superstitious practices. Maharashtra already has a law against black magic and other ‘evil’ practices. It is not clear if it has made much headway in eliminating blind faith, but it must strengthen the hands of people willing to take on social practices steeped in ignorance and unreason. The proposed law ought to be seen as a reasonable restriction on the right to practise and propagate one’s religion under Article 25 of the Constitution. As long as these restrictions are in the interest of public order, morality and health, the law may withstand the test of constitutionality.
•It is not uncommon to read reports of disturbing rituals. Among the rituals the Bill outlaws is the urulu seve , also known as made snana , in which devotees roll over food leftovers, the practice of walking on fire, branding children, and piercing one’s tongue or cheeks. It is hard to make a case for retaining these practices. However, it is possible that some may ask whether everything that appears irrational to the less believing should be prohibited by law. When the state ventures to identify some practices — mostly prevailing among groups in the social periphery — as incompatible with ‘civilised’ norms, it must demonstrate that these are wholly inhuman, or exploitative. One must denounce acts that harm women in the name of exorcism, but is it possible to decry the very idea of devotees claiming to be “possessed” by god or the devil, except from the perspective of a rationalist? Ultimately, it is education and awareness that can truly liberate a society from superstition, blind faith and abominable practices in the name of faith. Until then, the law will have to continue to identify and punish acts that violate the people’s right to life, health and dignity.
📰 Section 66A once more
•After the Supreme Court struck down the draconian and arbitrary Section 66A of the Information Technology Act, an expert committee appointed by the government has proposed legislation to meet the challenge of hate speech online, by amending the Code of Criminal Procedure, the Indian Penal Code and the IT Act. Such a move could be read as an attempt to recast the whole legal framework to make up for a section which had been excised. This could produce the very “chilling effect” that the Supreme Court had warned against, when it struck down the offending and offensive section in 2015.
•In their judgement, Justices Rohinton F. Nariman and J. Chelameswar had observed that the weakness of Section 66A lay in the fact that it had created an offence on the basis of undefined actions, such as causing “inconvenience, danger, obstruction and insult”, which do not fall among the exceptions granted under Article 19 of the Constitution, which guarantees the freedom of speech. These very terms, definable only by a dictionary (indeed, the court was provided with a Collins dictionary) and without legal certitude, must recur in any future legislation to the same end.
•The court also observed that the challenge was to identify where to draw the line. Traditionally, it has been drawn at incitement, a term which has become abundantly understood through repeated legal usage, while terms like obstruction and insult remain subjective. In addition, the court had noted that Section 66A did not have procedural safeguards like other sections of the law with similar aims, such as the need to obtain the concurrence of the Centre before action can be taken. Local authorities could proceed autonomously, literally on the whim of their political masters.
•It is true that certain aspects of information technology require specific laws, for they are novelties. An SQL injection attack is not the same as breaking and entering, and hosting illegal files is not necessarily the same as fencing contraband property. But hate crime is as old as the hills. The court refused to distinguish between traditional media and the internet in this regard, which suggests that existing laws, if diligently applied, should suffice. Unconstitutional curbs on free speech are bound to resurface in any legislation designed to fill the void happily vacated by Section 66A, which had affected the lives of far too many innocents. It was a legislative crime which must not be revisited by the back door.
