📰 Contested history
In the Manipur hills-valley conflict, memory and myth are often confused with facts
•The article 'Unmindful of History' (The Hindu, December 29, 2017) makes some fine critiques of Chief Minister N. Biren Singh’s Bharatiya Janata Party’s government in Manipur, but it misrepresents history.
•Revisiting the Lushai Expedition (1871-1872) would put things in perspective. I will refer only to British records and not the Manipur royal chronicle. Alexander Mackenzie’s monumental work, History of the Relations of the Government with the Hill Tribes of the North-East Frontier of Bengal, first published in 1884, is a good place to start. There are also memories and myths to depend on in reconstructing history, but memories and myths differ from people to people, and from community to community, as insecurities and desires often influence facts.
•The Lushai Expedition followed a devastating raid by Lushai tribesmen on the Alexanderpur tea estate in Cachar. Several were killed, including a planter, Winchester. The raiders also abducted Winchester’s six-year-old daughter, Mary. Thereafter, the British launched a massive punitive expedition into the Lushai hills. Tedim Chins, known to the British as Kamhows, from the Tedim ranges of the present Chin State of Myanmar, were British-friendly, and their service was enlisted in the hunt for Mary. Manipur was then bound by a 1762 treaty with the East India Company and was called upon to send troops accompanied by Maj. Gen. W.F. Nuthall to block northern escape routes around Behiang, but was not part of the Cachar column carrying out the expedition under Brigadier General Bourchier.
•The expedition lasted from December 9, 1871 to February 24, 1872, when Mary was rescued and the Lushai chiefs behind the raid surrendered. Nothing of significance happened on the Manipur side, but when the expedition concluded, Manipur troops intercepted a team of Kamhows returning from the British expedition with 957 Lushai captives. The Kamhows were held and the Lushai captives were freed. They settled in Manipur. Kamhow leader Kokatung was brought to Imphal and put in prison, where he died. Bourchier was outraged. Nuthall was also angry but later reasoned that Manipur was justified in doing this as the Kamhows had earlier raided and committed offences within Manipur.
•The article also makes unsubstantiated remarks against Maharaja Chandrakirti whose father, Gambhir Singh, died in 1834 when Chandrakirti was just two. Gambhir Singh’s cousin Nara Singh then ascended the throne and Chandrakirti was appointed regent. When Chandrakirti came of age, by the principle of primogenitor, the throne was restored to him. Barely out of his boyhood then, he committed mistakes, but ultimately grew to be one of the ablest statesmen of the kingdom. For instance, he was the one to settle the Chassad-Kuki unrest in 1881.
Boundary modifications
•In 1834, when the boundary of Manipur was redrawn to gift the disputed Kabaw valley to Burma, Chassad-Kuki settlements were left neither in Manipur nor Burma. This 1834 line came to be known as the Pemberton Line, after Capt. R. Boileau Pemberton who drew it along the foot of “Muring hills” (British records), indicating that these hills were once the domain of the Maring Nagas.
•Towards 1881, Chassad became restive, and armed with muskets — which the British suspect were supplied by the king of Sumjok, a small Shan principality in Kabaw valley — made several attacks on Tangkhul Naga villages nearby. The matter could not be adequately addressed because of the ambiguity of Chassad’s subjecthood. The boundary was then redrawn to bring Chassad within Manipur and this brought peace. The boundary became the Pemberton-Johnstone Line after Col. James Johnstone, head of the 1881 boundary commission. Burma was invited but failed to turn up.
•This boundary was modified again in 1896 and thereafter came to be known as the Pemberton-Johnstone-Maxwell Line. This is the line ratified by the Rangoon Agreement of 1967 between India and Burma. The 1834 line is India’s earliest demarcated international boundary.
•In 1885, when the British again waged war on Burma to annex it, Manipur troops were called upon to march to Kendat in Burma to rescue European employees of the Bombay Burmah Company. It is also noteworthy that the Manipur army then had a sizeable number of Kuki soldiers. It is not true therefore that Manipur’s boundary did not extend into the southern hills. The fact is, unlike in its northern hills where large, fortified Naga villages practising a good measure of settled agriculture were common, its southern hills were largely barren of settled villages and population. Though changed considerably now, this demographic profile is still very much a marked feature of the State. Chandrakriti died in 1886, so he also cannot be justifiably associated with events during WWI as the article has done.
📰 Dark clouds across Asia
From east to west, India must brace itself for more disorder across the continent in 2018
•What awaits the Asia-Pacific in 2018? Prospects appear, if anything, bleaker than was the case in 2017. More disorder, coming with increasing signs of a breakdown in inter and intra-state relations, is perhaps on the horizon. The Asian region is nowhere near achieving the kind of equilibrium that the Concert of Europe brought to 19th century Europe.
Between the two giants
•The region is today an area of intense geostrategic and geo-economic competition. China is the rising economic and military power in Asia today — the second most important economic power after the U.S. and having the second or third most powerful military. In seeking dominance over Asia, however, it not only has to contend with a strong military and economic U.S. presence in the region, but it also cannot afford to ignore the competition from Japan and India. In mid-2017 in Doklam, India had demonstrated that it was more than capable of standing up to China’s bullying tactics.
•Much of the speculation about the extent of China’s rise is based on the common presumption that the U.S. under President Donald Trump had surrendered its global leadership role. The reluctance of the U.S. to embark on ‘new wars’, especially in Asia, does not, however, undermine its geopolitical, geostrategic and geo-economic pre-eminence. It is not China’s rise, but the breakdown of the institution of the state, as is evident in Afghanistan and Syria, that poses far more pressing problems for Asia.
•Undoubtedly, East Asia will remain a troubled region for much of 2018, with the leadership of North Korea intent on playing increasingly dangerous games and engaging in nuclear sabre-rattling. It is unpredictable at this point whether this would lead to a major destabilisation of the region, with far-reaching consequences for Asia and the world.
•The future of the rest of the Asia in 2018 is again dependent on how the strategic triangle of state relations between China, Pakistan and India plays out, as also the extent to which events in West Asia deteriorate. The situation has become more complicated as China and Pakistan have further strengthened their axis, which is inimically disposed towards India. Fragmentation of already difficult relationships does not hold out much hope for any improvement in 2018.
•As it is, options for an improvement in relations in 2018 between China and India appear limited. The 19th Congress of the Chinese Communist Party (October 2017) essentially highlighted China’s quest for global leadership and the means to achieve it, including making China’s military ‘world class’, one capable of ‘winning wars’. It contained few hints that signified a possible thaw in India-China relations.
Shots across India’s bow
•In 2017, India-China relations had steadily deteriorated. China is clearly peeved that India refuses to participate in its Belt and Road Initiative that straddles Asia and Europe. The stand-off at Doklam in mid-2017 was possibly intended by China to be a ‘shot across India’s bow’, to send a message to India. More such situations will, in all likelihood, be repeated in 2018.
•China can also be expected in 2018 to resort to other pressure tactics against India. Backing Pakistani intransigence in ‘needling’ India is certain to be one. Additionally, China can be expected to intensify its moves to displace India as the major partner in relations with many of India’s neighbours — 2017 had already seen China moving in this direction vis-à-vis Nepal, the Maldives, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh and Myanmar. As it is, China has succeeded to some extent in denting India’s long-standing relationship with Russia, having established a strategic congruence with that country.
•India would again need to be on its guard in 2018 as China consolidates its takeover of Gwadar (Pakistan) and Hambantota (Sri Lanka) ports. Together with China’s establishment of a base in Djibouti (on the Horn of Africa), India could find itself at the receiving end of China’s ‘Wei-Qi tactics’.
•As India grows closer to the U.S. in 2018, the India-China equation could further worsen. The most recent National Security Strategy of the U.S. refers to China as a ‘rival’, while welcoming India’s emergence as a ‘strategic and defence partner’. This is certain to ratchet up the rivalry between India and China in the Asia-Pacific region, likely to be further compounded by India’s association with the Quadrilateral (of U.S., India, Japan and Australia).
Looking at Pakistan
•Again, 2018 holds out little prospect of an improvement in India-Pakistan relations. The last year ended with a serious ceasefire violation along the Line of Control in the Rajouri Sector, in which army men, including a Major, were killed. In 2017 there was an over 200% increase in ceasefire violations, with infiltration touching a four-year high.
•This year began with a major terrorist attack by Jaish-e-Mohammad (JeM) elements on a Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF) camp in Avantipur (Pulwama district) in which five CRPF men were killed. The treatment meted out to the family of Kulbhushan Jadhav (currently incarcerated in a Pakistani prison) and the fake news that followed their visit provides an index of Pakistan’s cold, calculated and consistent hostility towards India. The South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC) continues to remain in cold storage. Pakistan has also not refrained from persisting with its proxies like the Lashkar-e-Taiba and the JeM in its war with India.
•In its neighbourhood, India must be prepared during 2018 for a further deterioration of the situation in already disturbed Afghanistan. The Afghan state is in real danger of imploding, and this situation could worsen. The latest attack by Mr. Trump on Pakistan’s duplicity in dealing with terrorism could well result in Pakistan adopting a still more perverse and disruptive role here, and providing further encouragement to the Afghan Taliban and the Haqqani network.
•The current peace talks may well collapse as a result. Any possibility of exerting greater military pressure by the North Atlantic Treaty Organization and allied forces may prove futile.
West Asia in turmoil
•The situation in West Asia in 2018 could well turn out to be far grimmer than in 2017. West Asia is at the crossroads today. The entire region is in turmoil. Syria has almost ceased to be a state. The war here entails major powers like the U.S. and Russia, proxies for certain West Asian countries, a medley of non-state actors, apart from terrorist outfits such as the Islamic State (IS) and al-Qaeda.
•Intrinsic to the Syrian and West Asian imbroglio is the ongoing war within Islam featuring, at one level, intense rivalry between Sunni Saudi Arabia and Shiite Iran, and at another, the spectre of a split down the line between the Arab and the non-Arab and the Sunni and Shiite worlds.
•In addition, there are other forces aggravating an already complicated situation, viz. the war in Yemen, the disruption within the Gulf Cooperation Council, the nascent upheavals in Saudi Arabia and Iran, and the spectre of de-stabilisation that hovers over much of the region. None of these issues is likely to find resolution in 2018, and could suck in more states of the region.
•If the U.S. were to follow through with its announcement to recognise Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, it might well ignite new tensions across the entire Arab world. This will further inflame radical Islamist ideas and tendencies across the region, paving the way for a new round of conflict.
•This year could also see a resurgence in terrorism. Both the IS and al-Qaeda seem to have acquired a new salience lately. The collapse of the so-called Islamic Caliphate and its territorial demise has hardly weakened the terror potential of the IS. In much the same manner as the Afghan jihad in 1980s and 1990s exacerbated insurgencies across parts of the world, retreating IS members returning to their homeland could provide a new narrative of terrorism in 2018. Existing cells across many parts of the world could well be re-vitalised as a result. The wave of attacks seen recently in Afghanistan can be attributed to this vanguard of retreating IS fighters.
📰 Trump’s outburst deepens Sino-Pak. ties
Central bank has already announced that it will use Yuan to settle bilateral trade
•Already its “iron brother”, China now appears set for an even tighter embrace of Pakistan, following a possible slide in ties between Islamabad and Washington.
•An op-ed in the state-run tabloid The Global Times posted late on Sunday noted that China should pay more attention to the potency of its economic assistance to Pakistan “as ties are set to get closer amid hostility from the U.S.”.
Beijing the clear winner
•An article in the Hong Kong based South China Morning Post (SCMP) had earlier noted “there is one clear winner from Donald Trump’s tweet tantrums this week: China, which suddenly finds its leverage over Pakistan multiplying as a result of the U.S. President’s mood swings”.
•The rise in anti-American sentiments in Pakistan appears to be conflating with the perception of China as a more reliable ally. This is notwithstanding the recent differences between Beijing and Islamabad regarding some of the financial aspects of a hydropower project under the omnibus $57-billion China- Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC).
•Soon after Mr. Trump’s tweet, Pakistan’s Central Bank swiftly announced that it would use the Chinese Yuan to settle bilateral trade and investment with China.
•“The central bank’s decision is significant given Islamabad had been resisting this demand from China. But one tweet from Trump managed to achieve what months of intense pressure and lobbying from Beijing could not,” the SCMParticle observed. Mr. Trump’s tweet also played into the hands of the religious-Right, now harbouring political ambitions in Pakistan’s elections later this year.
•The Hafiz Saeed-led Jamaat-ud-Dawah (JuD) demanded the expulsion of the U.S. Ambassador during street protests in Lahore.
•The Global Times article signalled that Pakistan would be justified in defining a new geopolitical calculus that covers China and Russia. “In these circumstances, it makes perfect sense for Pakistan to shift its foreign policy focus toward China and Russia,” it observed.
•China, it said, will continue its economic support to Pakistan, which is its prime partner. China sees Pakistan as a prime partner “under the Belt and Road initiative, with land and sea projects worth billions of dollars (known as the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor) under construction,” it observed.
📰 Tuting row resolved, says Army chief
Border personnel meeting was held to stop road building by Chinese civilians
•India and China held a Border Personnel Meeting (BPM) last week to resolve the incident of road building by Chinese civilians at Tuting in Arunachal Pradesh.
•“The Tuting issue has been resolved. A border meeting was held two days back,” the Chief of the Army Staff, Gen. Bipin Rawat, said on Monday.
•He was speaking to presspersons on the sidelines of an Army-industry seminar on indigenisation.
•In December last week, a group of Chinese civilians were noticed undertaking track alignment activity about one kilometre inside the Line of Actual Control (LAC) in Tuting.
•On December 28, a joint team of the Army and the Indo-Tibetan Border Police (ITBP) stopped them and sent them back during which some civil construction equipment, including two excavators, were left behind. Officials had said that there was no face-off at the site.
📰 Larger Bench to decide on Sec. 377
Petition seeks to quash law criminalising homosexualitySocietal morality changeswith time: Supreme CourtConcept of consensual sex may need more protection: apex court
•The Supreme Court on Monday referred to a larger Bench a writ petition filed by five gay and lesbian members of the LGBT community to strike down the colonial Section 377 in the Indian Penal Code of 1860, which criminalises homosexuality.
•A three-judge Bench, led by Chief Justice of India Dipak Misra, decided to revisit a December 2013 verdict of the Supreme Court in the Suresh Kumar Kaushal versus Naz Foundation, which dismissed the LGBT community as a negligible part of the population while virtually denying them the right of choice and sexual orientation.
‘Rights atrophied’
•The Bench said a section of people cannot live in fear of a law which atrophies their right to follow their natural sexual inclinations. It said societal morality changes with time, and law should change pace with life.
•While the court noted that Section 377 punishes carnal intercourse against the order of nature, it added, “The determination of order of nature is not a common phenomenon. Individual autonomy and individual natural inclination cannot be atrophied unless the restrictions are determined as reasonable.”
•The court observed that what is natural for one may not be natural for the other, but the confines of law cannot trample on or curtail the inherent rights embedded with an individual under Article 21 (right to life) of the Constitution.
•It noted the arguments of senior advocate Arvind Datar and advocate Menaka Guruswamy, who appeared for the petitioners, that Section 377 is not a reasonable restriction on the fundamental right to choice.
‘Part of privacy’
•The petitioners include Navtej Singh Johar, Bharathanatyam dancer; Sunil Mehra, senior journalist; Ritu Dalmia, restaurateur; Aman Nath, an expert on Indian art and culture; and Ayesha Kapur, food and beverage industry consultant.
•Mr. Datar argued that Section 377 has the potential to destroy individual choice and sexual orientation.
•The court agreed that both its decisions emphasising transgender identity in the NALSA case and the observations made by a nine-judge Bench in the right to privacy case upholding the right to sexual orientation and choice of sexual partners warrant a re-look into its dismissive verdict in the Naz case.
•But initially the Bench seemed reluctant, saying a five-judge Bench is already considering a curative petition by Naz.
•The court, at one point, even observed that a provision cannot become unconstitutional purely because it is abused. Mr. Datar, however prevailed, saying while Naz is an NGO, he is representing petitioners whose fundamental rights are directly affected by Section 377.
•“A right to sexuality, sexual autonomy and freedom to choose a sexual partner forms the cornerstone of human dignity which is protected under Article 21,” the petition said.
Paradigm shift
•The order reveals a paradigm shift in the apex court’s views.
•A Review Bench of the Supreme Court, in January 2014, had agreed with the December 11, 2013 verdict refusing to strike down Section 377 IPC. The 2013 verdict had, instead, set aside the historic and globally accepted verdict of the Delhi High Court.
•The High Court had read down Section 377 and declared that the penal provision targeted homosexuals as a class.
📰 A rare unity among parties
Ruling and Opposition groups are on the same side against Section 377
•Most political parties welcomed the Supreme Court’s decision on Monday to refer to a larger Bench the contentious Section 377 of the Indian Penal Code, which criminalises homosexuality.
•Following the court’s privacy judgment last August, the Congress had urged it to have a re-look at Section 377. Welcoming the court’s decision, Sushmita Dev, president of the All India Mahila Congress, said, “Everybody has equal right to live life the way they want.”
•The CPI(M) hailed the decision. “We welcome and hope that the Supreme Court will reverse its own unfortunate judgment earlier. The CPI(M) has always been against criminalisation of same sex between consenting adults. In a democracy, the police and the state have no business interfering in the personal choice of individuals,” Polit Bureau member Brinda Karat said.
BJP for consensus
•Replying to a debate in Parliament during the winter session, Union Law Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad had said consensus needed to be built after a detailed debate on Section 377.
•“Any decision that the Supreme Court takes in sync with the jurisprudential developments on gay rights the world over would be welcome. This is the position articulated by the BJP even after the SC’s previous judgement,” BJP spokesperson G.V.L. Narsimha Rao said on Monday.
•NDA ally Shiv Sena, known for its strident views on the subject, has welcomed the ruling. “They have the right to live the way they want. What can we say on it,” Shiv Sena MP Arvind Ganpat said.
Religious concerns
•The Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) expressed a more nuanced stand, with Majeed Memon, MP, saying that Section 377 had “sentimental and religious” fallouts and the stand of Christian and Muslim communities which were against legalising homosexuality should be considered.
•“The court has to examine constitutional validity in considering if the prohibition imposed on two adults accounts for violation of freedom; at the same time, legitimising may amount to encouraging immorality. Though legality and immorality are different concepts, the SC is embarking upon the test of importance of one over the other,” he said.
📰 Rainbow of hope for LGBT community
Activists and lawyers feel years of dialogue, pride parades and petitions have created public opinion in their favour
•The Supreme Court’s decision to refer to a larger Bench a writ petition to quash Section 377 of the Indian Penal Code, which criminalises homosexuality, has brought a ray of hope for LGBT community members and activists who have been fighting a long battle for their rights.
•Several activists and lawyers felt that the years of dialogue, pride parades and petitions had created public opinion in their favour, and only a few people with a “myopic vision” were opposed to the scrapping of controversial law.
•Dhrubo Jyoti, activist, said he was hopeful that the “draconian law” would go soon. “I am also hopeful that many of us queers will not see this as the end of the fight for dignity, but will fight against the many evils of caste, class, ability, region and politics that continue to shackle us both within and without,” he said.
•Minna Saran, signatory to a petition by parents of LGBT Indians against Section 377, said the Supreme Court’s decision would give confidence to youngsters and the people who felt that they had been deprived of a life similar to that others were leading.
•“For all those who were upset with the earlier ruling of the Supreme Court, this shows that acceptance is definitely growing in society. I am positive that the decision will be in favour of the thousands who have been fighting for their rights,” Ms. Saran said.
•“Section 377 is not only about gay sex but also about all unnatural sex and can be used to harass even people in heterosexual relationships,” said Nikhil, a former Delhi University student.
•He said that last year, he was desperate to get into a university in a country that did not criminalise homosexuality as he was tired of facing the various prejudices of Indian society.
•“I hope that the next generation of Indians will not have to look for opportunities to work and study outside the country because they will be able to lead a more dignified life away from home,” he said.
•Several senior lawyers felt that it was only a matter of time before Section 377 was repealed.
Expert view
•Legal experts like Rajiv Dhawan, Colin Gonsalves, Anand Grover, Dushyant Dave and Kamini Jaiswal welcomed the order.
•They said the matter was of utmost social and legal significance and a positive move had been initiated by the court for a re-look into the earlier judgment which, according to them, required reconsideration.
•“It’s quite refreshing to see a positive stand in the matter. The judgement of the apex court on Section 377 requires a serious reconsideration. This provision itself on the face of it is archaic and it is wholly unconstitutional,” Mr. Dave said.
•Twenty-six nations — Australia, Malta, Germany, Finland, Colombia, Ireland, the U.S., Greenland, Scotland, Luxembourg, England and Wales, Brazil, France, New Zealand, Uruguay, Denmark, Argentina, Portugal, Iceland, Sweden, Norway, South Africa, Spain, Canada, Belgium, and the Netherlands — have decriminalised gay sex.
📰 Cybercrime victims can complain online
Home Ministry set to launch web portal which will accept online abuse cases too
•The Ministry of Home Affairs is set to launch a web portal where people who have faced online abuse and victims of cybercrimes like financial frauds can register complaints on a real-time basis. The Centre also plans to give access rights to banks on the portal to address cases of fraudulent transactions online.
•Home Minister Rajnath Singh said last week that according to India’s Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT-In), there was a 21% increase per year in incidents of cybercrime.
Panel’s directives
•The portal has been readied on the directives of a committee appointed by the Supreme Court to check circulation of child pornography and sexual violence videos on the Internet.
•In December, the court asked the Centre to set up a cell in the Central Bureau of Investigation or the Ministry of Home Affairs to report and take down such videos and messages.
•On October 27 last, a Bench of Justices Madan B Lokur and U.U. Lalit said it “expected the government and social media platforms and Internet service providers, including Google, Yahoo, Facebook, WhatsApp and Microsoft, to abide by the recommendations on which there is consensus and to try and implement them at the earliest.”
•The portal will be operational from January 10.
Access rights
•“If money has been fraudulently withdrawn through someone’s credit or debit card, the person can log onto the portal and register a complaint. Since banks would be given access rights, the bank concerned would receive the complaint and take action immediately,” said a senior official of the Home Ministry.
📰 Break silos of information: PM
Security cannot be achieved alone, Modi tells conference of police officers
•Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Monday asked the State police chiefs to share information with one another as “security cannot be achieved selectively, or alone, and for that breaking of silos and information sharing among States can help make everyone more secure”.
•Speaking at the concluding day of the annual conference of DGPs and IGPs at the BSF Academy in Tekanpur, Madhya Pradesh, Mr. Modi said there was an emerging global consensus towards greater information sharing on illicit financial dealings, and India could play a key role in achieving this.
Priority for cybercrimes
•Mr. Modi said cybercrimes should be given top priority and dealt with immediately, an official release said.
•In this context, he particularly mentioned the importance of social media.
•He said messaging should rely on local languages for greater effectiveness.
•Referring to the radicalisation of youth, Mr. Modi urged the top police officers to use technology to pinpoint the problem areas.
•Nearly 250 top officers from the State police forces and central police organisations participated in the three-day meet.
•Mr. Modi said India was an “organic entity” and not an “assembled” one, and asked the police officers from the States to open up in sharing information on illicit financial dealings. He said while openness was getting increased acceptance worldwide, there was a need for greater openness among the States too, on security issues.
•Following a directive of Mr. Modi, the Home Ministry has been organising the conference outside the national capital since the NDA government came to power in 2014.
•The previous three conferences were held in Guwahati, Rann of Kutch and Hyderabad.
•The Prime Minister recalled how the nature and scope of the conference had changed since 2014, beginning with it being shifted out of Delhi.
•He appreciated the officers who had been instrumental in facilitating this change.
•Mr. Modi said the conference had now become more relevant, in the context of challenges and responsibilities facing the country.
•He said the new format of the conference had resulted in a marked improvement in the quality of discussions.
•The Prime Minister commended the security apparatus for keeping the country safe. He said the officers present in the conference had provided leadership, despite often having to operate in an environment of negativity.
•As a result of the discussions over the last few years, now, once an objective is clearly defined for the police force, there is a lot of cohesion in the execution.
📰 Centre to review rules on anthem
•The court had justified the playing of the anthem in cinema halls, seeing it as an opportunity for the public to express their “love for the motherland.”
•The Bench had observed that the protocol of showing respect and honour to the anthem was rooted in “our national identity, national integrity and constitutional patriotism.”
•But the order had attracted criticism from within the highest judiciary itself. Justice D.Y. Chandrachud, while sharing a Supreme Court Bench with Justice Misra (now Chief Justice) in October 2017, had doubted the logic behind the order, saying there was no need for an Indian to “wear his patriotism on his sleeves.”
•“The next thing will be that people should not wear T-shirts and shorts to the movies because it will amount to disrespect to the National Anthem... where do we stop this moral policing?” Justice Chandrachud had observed.
•The Bench was hearing a petition filed by the Kodungalloor Film Society, Kerala, to recall the order. The apex court had then left it to the government to “take a call” and issue a notification describing the circumstances and occasions for showing respect to the National Anthem.
•On November 30, 2016, a Supreme Court Bench led by Justice Dipak Misra, before he became the CJI, had directed that “all cinema halls shall play the National Anthem before the feature film starts and all present are obliged to stand to show respect...” The November 2016 order had come on a writ petition filed by Shyam Narayan Chouksey.
📰 SC for larger warnings on cigarette packs
Court stays Karnataka High Court order reducing pictorial warning size from 85% to 40%
•The Supreme Court on Monday stayed a Karnataka High Court order reducing the size of pictorial warnings on packages of tobacco products to 40% of the package space.
•The court foregrounded the health of citizens over the concerns of the tobacco industry and favoured a government regulation requiring packets of tobacco products to sport pictorial warnings covering 85% of their packaging space.
•A Bench led by Chief Justice Dipak Misra said it is mild to say that tobacco consumption and use causes “deterioration of health”. The apex court said “destruction of health” is a more appropriate phrase to explain the harm caused by tobacco.
•The court was hearing several petitions against the High Court decision, including one filed by NGO Health for Millions Trust.
•The Division Bench of the High Court had struck down the amendment to the Cigarettes and other Tobacco Products (Packaging and Labelling Rules) 2008, as amended in 2014.
‘Better impact’
•Attorney-General K.K. Venugopal and advocate R. Balasubramanium, both appearing for the Centre, challenged the High Court decision to reduce the size of pictorial warnings, saying in a country where illiteracy is rampant, the more prominent the warning, the better impact it would have on the minds of the people.
•Life sans health is not worth living and the chewing of tobacco or smoking of cigarettes or bidis, etc., causes irretrievable hazard to health.
•It is the obligation of the State to make the people aware as regards the injurious nature of these indulgences.
•Apart from the victim of the habit, the family suffers. The whole society faces peril, Mr. Venugopal argued.
•The High Court decision has left tobacco manufacturers with a free hand to sell “obnoxious and poisonous products in the market with no warning or 40% warning on the packages”, Mr, Venugopal submitted.
‘Ban tobacco’
•In their counter, senior advocate Kapil Sibal for the tobacco industry said effects of tobacco were horrible. “So, let the government ban tobacco products,” he submitted.
•Instead of a ban, the government is using “absolutely horrifying” pictures with no named source or scientific value on the tobacco packets.
•The use of such pictures on 85% packaging space is a violation of their fundamental right to do business under Article 19 (1) (g), Mr. Sibal submitted.
•He submitted that a parliamentary standing committee has already recommended pictorial warnings on 50% space and this should be adopted till March 31, 2018, when the issue would be re-examined.
•The next date of hearing is scheduled on March 12, 2018.
📰 No material to probe Gandhi assassination again: SC
A PIL had alleged a British conspiracy
•There is no substantive material to justify a need to re-investigate the assassination of the Father of the Nation, amicus curiae Amarendra Sharan said in his report to the Supreme Court on Monday.
•Seventy years after the assassination on January 30, 1948, the Supreme Court had asked Mr. Sharan to conduct an independent enquiry into the case files and evidence on the basis of a PIL filed by Dr. Pankaj Kumudchandra Phadnis that a fourth bullet was found and there was a British secret service conspiracy to kill the Mahatma.
•On the role of Vinayak D. Savarkar in the conspiracy, the amicus report said he was the former president of the Hindu Mahasabha and the “foremost ideologue of the right wing Hindutva philosophy at the relevant time.”
•Though Savarkar was acquitted of the charges of conspiracy and no appeal was filed against his acquittal, Mr. Sharan points out that the Justice Jivan Lal Kapur Fact-Finding Commission had analysed evidence and returned a finding that “all these facts taken together were destructive of any theory other than the conspiracy to murder by Savarkar and his group.”
•The Supreme Court amicus leaves his enquiries into the alleged role of Mr. Savarkar with the words, “Since the late Vinayak D. Savarkar had been acquitted, at this stage, it would neither be advisable/desirable nor possible to come to a definitive finding with respect to Vinayak D. Savarkar’s role in the assassination of Mahatma Gandhi.”
•The alleged fourth bullet was recovered from Gwalior and not Delhi. The recovery of this bullet was declared inadmissible on the insistence of the defence that it had no connection with the assassination, the report said. There was no documentary evidence to show that a British secret service was tasked with carrying out the murder.
📰 India unveils Pratyush, its fastest supercomputer yet
•India’s supercomputing prowess moved up several notches Monday after it unveiled Pratyush, an array of computers that can deliver a peak power of 6.8 petaflops. One petaflop is a million billion floating point operations per second and is a reflection of the computing capacity of a system.
•According to a statement by the Indian Institute of Tropical Meteorology (IITM), Pratyush is the fourth fastest supercomputer in the world dedicated for weather and climate research, and follows machines in Japan, USA and the United Kingdom. It will also move an Indian supercomputer from the 300s to the 30s in the Top500 list, a respected international tracker of the world’s fastest supercomputers.
•The machines will be installed at two government institutes: 4.0 petaflops HPC facility at IITM, Pune; and 2.8 petaflops facility at the National Centre for Medium Range Weather Forecast, Noida.
•The government had sanctioned ₹400 crore last year to put in place a 10-petaflop machine. A key function of the machine’s computing power would be monsoon forecasting using a dynamical model. This requires simulating the weather for a given month — say March — and letting a custom-built model calculate how the actual weather will play out over June, July, August and September.
•With the new system, it would be possible to map regions in India at a resolution of 3 km and the globe at 12 km.
•While inaugurating the facility at IITM, Pune, Union Science Minister Dr. Harsh Vardhan said Pratyush would be India’s “premier" HPC (high performance computing) and was a step up from India’s current peak capacity of 1.0 PF.
📰 The age of crypto-economics
The fundamental value proposition of the blockchain is that it eliminates the need for trust
•The Finance Ministry recently issued a statement warning against investing in bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies (CCs). Likening CCs to ‘Ponzi schemes’, it linked them to terror-funding, smuggling, drug-trafficking, and money-laundering. The stern advisory came after three other warnings issued by the Reserve Bank of India.
Why the distrust?
•Two aspects of the bitcoin phenomenon have attracted great interest: the challenge it poses to states and central banks; and the potential of its underlying technology to unleash a new wave of creative destruction.
•It would be safe to say that the world’s top central bankers have finally realised the futility of trying to control CCs. They are preparing to join them — by issuing their own Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDCs).
•A CBDC is a complex tool whose functionality is still being researched. But there is one flaw endemic to any CBDC: the contradiction between the centralising tendency of a CBDC and the decentralising technology that underpins cryptocurrencies. What economists conveniently forget when discussing CCs such as bitcoin is the trigger for it: distrust of bankers.
•The global financial crisis of 2008-09 raised a simple question: what option do people have if banks are not to be trusted? A man (or a group of people) named Satoshi Nakamoto provided an answer: a peer-to-peer, ‘trustless’ electronic cash system based on a technology called blockchain.
Why is it attractive?
•In order to be functional, a virtual currency must solve the problem of double spending. Given that anything digital can be copied, how do you prevent someone from spending the same unit of currency twice? Today’s cashless economy tackles this through a centralised ledger maintained by a ‘trusted’ intermediary — often a bank — on its own servers. But as per the definition of the problem, banks can’t be trusted, remember?
•Nakamoto solved the double spending problem by designing a decentralised ledger that bundles data about transactions into blocks, timestamps them, and links each new block of transactions with the previous one in an immutable chain of blocks that are copied, authenticated, and updated continuously, and publicly, on thousands of computers — the blockchain.
•The blockchain uses economic incentives (payment in the form of bitcoins or other CCs) to motivate members of the network to do the work of validating every transaction. It does away with the bank’s role as an intermediary, and this is what differentiates CCs from (the digital version of) fiat currencies.
•Not surprisingly, central banks and states are not pleased to have the rug of the cashless economy — with which they’ve been smothering ordinary citizens — pulled from under their feet by a technology that regards them with disdain.
•It has been pointed out that bitcoins, unlike a stock or a bond, are a purely speculative asset untethered to a material basis of value. While this is somewhat true, it doesn’t explain why bitcoins continue to remain attractive as a store of value. A major reason seasoned speculators find bitcoins irresistible is its deflationary nature, which makes it inflation-proof. Since there can only ever be 21 million bitcoins, unlike a fiat currency, it cannot suffer a loss in value due to inflation.
•In this regard, cryptocurrencies such as bitcoin may herald the next stage of neo-liberal economics: the privatisation of currency and disciplining of the state (no more quantitative easing!) by reducing the fiat currency into one of many competing currencies.
•In theory, the state still has a trump card: it decides the currency in which taxes are paid. But that may mean little in a scenario where the political apparatus has been captured by finance capital, which is increasingly the norm in democracies where unknown donors contribute astronomical sums to political parties.
Blockchain world
•Amid all the frenzy over bitcoin’s rocketing values, it is easy to forget that it is just one version of one application (cryptocurrency) of a new technology (blockchain). In some ways, the present moment is analogous to the early days of the Internet, when Hotmail was an exciting new discovery and the Internet was synonymous with email.
•Coinmarketcap.com, a website that tracks the market capitalisation of cryptocurrencies, lists 1,379 currencies. Away from the hysteria around bitcoin, lesser known cryptocurrencies such as Omisego, TRON, Golem, and Storj are attracting investments that are helping to set up an entire decentralised ecosystem and payments infrastructure on blockchain platforms that could radically transform the way businesses transact with each other.
•The fundamental value proposition of the blockchain is that it eliminates the need for trust — a commodity without which exchanges of value (transactions) cannot happen. This means that individuals and businesses can do away with a whole bunch of intermediaries whom they pay for managing trust.
•For instance, on Ethereum, a blockchain platform that calls itself “the android of the cryptocurrency world,” you can set up an application that enables people to rent out idle storage space on their laptop. Someone who needs cloud storage can pay you directly, instead of paying Amazon, a leading cloud storage intermediary. You could thus monetise a resource that you didn’t even know you had. Well, Storj is an application that does precisely that, and it already enjoys a market cap of $298 million. Ethereum, too, is listed on cryptocurrency exchanges, and it is worth $112 billion, not far behind bitcoin’s market capitalisation of $259 billion.
•Programmable money is another example of a decentralised blockchain-based application. Since digital currencies are software programs, one can program a particular CC such that, say, it cannot be used to buy the product of a company that uses sweat shop labour.
•Two domains that would gain immensely from blockchain applications and CCs are Artificial Intelligence and Internet of Things (IoT), since in an IoT world, thousands of devices would need to rapidly and seamlessly transact with each other in real time, without the devices’ owners having to dig into their wallets every time.
•Given the enormous scope for increased efficiency and cost-saving, it is not inconceivable that in the medium term, the biggest threat to businesses in the finance and digital space will come from the blockchain versions of themselves.
•Of course, as happened in the early days of the Internet, some of the claims being made about blockchain are plain silly. It is true that the technology’s peer-to-peer orientation renders it more democratic. But it is not about to usher in a socialist paradise. Even the World Wide Web was supposed to be a decentralised, democratic space where everyone was equal. We all know how that turned out.
•Clearly, technological innovations cannot substitute for the hard job of reducing socio-economic disparities through political mobilisation. If blockchain is getting traction, it is because it works with, rather than against, market logic.
•It so happens that right now any technology that drives decentralisation also carries some political promise by virtue of challenging the centralising tendency of power. But that is a byproduct, and not to be confused with its intent, which remains the same as with any other IT innovation of recent times: efficiency and profit.
📰 ‘BharatNet covers 1 lakh panchayats’
Govt. aims to lay fibre network by Dec.
•The government on Monday said it had laid optical fibre in more than 1 lakh gram panchayats, completing the first phase of the BharatNet project that forms the backbone for the Digital India initiative.
•The delay-marred project aims to bring high speed broadband to all 2.5 lakh gram panchayats (GPs) through optical fibre.
•The project, earlier called the National Optical Fibre Network, had obtained Cabinet approval in 2011 and the deadline was fixed for the end of 2013. It was later deferred to September 2015 by the UPA government. The NDA government re-examined the project status and set a target to complete the roll-out by the end of 2016. This was later delayed to December 2018. Now, the deadline is set for March 2019.
•“As on December 31, 2017, 2,54,895 km of OFC has been laid covering 1,09,926 GPs out of which 1,01,370 GPs have been made service ready,” the government said, while expressing hope for completing the project by December this year.
•Telecom Minister Manoj Sinha said, “For the second phase, financial incentive and disincentive clauses should be incorporated.”
•Telecom Secretary Aruna Sundararajan said the project’s second phase had been initiated and “we hope it will be completed well in time by December 2018.”
📰 Amended Companies Act notified
Changes to impact share issuance at discount, managerial remuneration
•The government on Monday announced that it has notified the Companies (Amendment) Act 2017, which is set to ease the implementation of the Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code 2016.
•“The Central Government notified the Companies (Amendment) Act, 2017... on January 3, 2018,” the government said in a release on Monday. “The provisions of this Amendment Act shall come into force on the date or dates as the Central Government may appoint by notification(s) in the Official Gazette. A few provisions in the Amendment Act have important bearing on the working of the Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code 2016.”
•Currently, Section 53 of the Companies Act 2013 prohibits the issuance of shares at a discount, something the new Act has changed.
•Similarly, Section 197 of the Companies Act 2013 requires the approval of the company in a general meeting for the payment of managerial remuneration in excess of 11% of the net profits.
•The amended Act says that in case of payment default, “... the prior approval of the bank or public financial institution concerned or the non-convertible debenture holders... for such payment of managerial remuneration shall be obtained by the company before obtaining the approval in the general meeting.”
Restriction on valuers
•Section 247 of the Companies Act 2013 prohibits a registered valuer from undertaking valuation of assets in which he has a direct or indirect interest.
•Amendments limit the prohibition to three years prior to a valuer’s appointment or three years after the valuation was conducted.
📰 Data theft: on UIDAI exposé
The UIDAI exposé is another reminder of the need for a robust data protection law
•Undercover investigations or so-called sting operations occupy a complex and problematical ethical space in journalism, but it is impossible to fault The Tribune’s exposé, published after accessing Aadhaar’s database of names, numbers and addresses. To begin with, the public interest — which lay in showing how easily the database could be breached and drawing attention to the existence of an organised racket to facilitate this — far outweighed, or more than compensated for, the act of unauthorised access, in this case secured on payment of a few hundred rupees. The investigation was written up in the best journalistic tradition — it focussed on how the data were being mined for money, it did not leak any Aadhaar numbers or other details to establish this, and it sought and received a response from shocked officials of the Unique Identification Authority of India before going to print. So it would have been a travesty of justice if The Tribune and the reporter who broke the story were treated as accused in the case where the charges include cheating under impersonation. It would have amounted to more than shooting the messenger. It would have constituted a direct attack on free public-spirited journalism and dissuaded attempts to hold public authorities and institutions accountable for shortcomings and promises.
•As for the FIR filed against the journalist, the UIDAI has clarified it needed to provide the full details of the incident to the police and that this did not mean “everyone mentioned in the FIR is a culprit…” In response to widespread disapproval of the prospect of a case being registered against the journalist, the Delhi police have belatedly clarified that they would focus on tracing those who sold the passwords to enable access to the information. Given the noisy hubbub and the misinformation about what was breached, it is perhaps important to stress that the encrypted Aadhaar biometric database has not been compromised. The UIDAI is correct in stating that mere information such as phone numbers and addresses (much of which is already available to telemarketers and others from other databases) cannot be misused without biometric data. The suggestion that the entire Aadhaar project has been compromised is therefore richly embroidered. But even so, it is obligatory for those who collect such information — whether it is the government or a private player such as a mobile company — ought to see that it is secure and not used for purposes other than that for which it was collected. In this digital age, a growing pool of personal information that can be easily shared has become available to government and private entities. India does not have a legal definition of what constitutes personal information and lacks a robust and comprehensive data protection law. We need to have both quickly in place if the Supreme Court’s judgment according privacy the status of a fundamental right is to have any meaning.
