📰 Limits to maximal rhetoric
India needs gender justice, not draconian laws
•We are living in strange times. For every minimum act of governance there is maximal rhetoric. While the government has permitted people who wield power to defend rapists and obstruct due process, and while some of India’s lawmakers are under a cloud, we have been presented with the Criminal Law (Amendment) Ordinance, 2018, as a deterrence against the commission of rape. After the horrific Delhi gang rape in December 2012, a fine legal team led by Justice J.S. Verma came up with a set of studied recommendations. In unequivocal language it stated that “the deterrent effect of death penalty on serious crimes is actually a myth”. In the light of the Kathua and Unnao rape incidents, the government has opted for an ordinance which may hog the headlines but is destined to open the proverbial Pandora’s box instead of fully implementing the recommendations of the Justice Verma Committee.
Sex and gender
•The issue is more complex. A large section is refusing to understand some basic facts. First, lawmakers should not only understand but also internalise the difference between sex and gender. The World Health Organisation has made this difference clear: “‘Sex’ refers to the biological and physiological characteristics that define men and women. ‘Gender’ refers to the socially constructed roles, behaviours, activities, and attributes that a given society considers appropriate for men and women. Aspects of sex will not vary substantially between different human societies, while aspects of gender may vary greatly.” It is the lack of gender equality that leads to sexual violence, and not biological constructs.
•For years, women’s groups have been arguing for fostering gender sensitivity. They have analysed masculinity through a critical gender lens and have produced an oeuvre of literature on this subject. As a newspaper ombudsman, my concern is that the ugly side of masculinity is undermining women journalists from doing their job. Two decades ago, newsrooms were predominately male-dominated and the idea of diversity in newsrooms had not gained currency. Now women are conspicuous in newsrooms and in the news-gathering process.
Attacking women journalists
•The Network of Women in Media, India (NWMI), a collective of women media professionals across India, has been systematically documenting acts of excesses against women journalists. Unfortunately, the list of excesses is growing. Last week, the NWMI strongly condemned the patronising behaviour of Tamil Nadu Governor Banwarilal Purohit towards a woman journalist, Lakshmi Subramanian. When the journalist asked him a question, the Governor responded by patting her on the cheek. This amounts to sexual harassment at the workplace under existing laws. The Governor publicly apologised to the journalist thereafter. However, the issue did not end there. S.Ve. Shekher, a well-known playwright, former MLA, and a prominent Bharatiya Janata Party leader, shared a Facebook post titled “Madurai University, Governor and the virgin cheeks of a girl”, which claimed that women cannot become reporters or news anchors without sleeping with top bosses. When there was justifiable outrage over the post, he came up with a lame excuse that he had shared the post without reading its content. The troubling aspect is that the law-enforcement system never really moves against the blatant misogyny of ruling party members. But it misses no opportunity to move against women journalists who seek accountability from the ruling regime. Based on a complaint by a self-styled organisation, the Hindu Sangathan, there is an FIR against journalist and cartoonist Swathi Vadlamudi for her stinging cartoon referring to the recent incidents of sexual assault.
•Women journalists do not feel secure even in the virtual space. The number of nasty, personalised attacks, including threats to kill and rape, is growing at an alarming speed. The NWMI has documented the ordeal faced by Anna M.M. Vetticad, Dhanya Rajendran, Neha Dixit, Kavitha Muralidharan, and Kavin Malar, to name a few. After the murder of journalist Gauri Lankesh, we have to take these threats seriously. The term ‘presstitute’, popularised by a sitting Minister, is not only an insult but a call to instigate violence against women journalists. The time has come to conduct gender-sensitive training workshops for those in power so that we are not left with draconian laws and no justice.
📰 Minorities’ commission to seek constitutional status
‘We are unable to act against errant officials at present’
•The National Commission for Minorities (NCM) has decided to approach the government for granting it Constitutional status to protect the rights of minority communities more effectively.
•If granted such a status, the NCM will be able to act against errant officials who do not attend hearings, follow its order or are found guilty of dereliction of duty, chairman Syed Ghayorul Hasan Rizvi said. The decision was made during the panel’s meeting last week, he said.
•Till now, only the National Commission for Scheduled Castes and the National Commission for Scheduled Tribes enjoy constitutional status. In its present form, the NCM has powers to summon officials, including chief secretaries and director generals of police, but has to rely on departments concerned to take action against them.
More powers
•If granted constitutional status, the NCM can penalise or suspend an officer for two days or send him/her to jail.
•Earlier, the Standing Committee on Social Justice and Empowerment (2017-18), in its 53rd report noted that the NCM is “almost ineffective” in its current state to deal with cases of atrocities against minorities. The committee recommended constitutional status to the body “without any delay”.
📰 Death penalty is not the answer
The focus must be on enhancing rape conviction rates and taking steps to rehabilitate and empower survivors
•Amid belligerent demands for capital punishment for rapists, on Sunday the President signed an ordinance that introduces the death penalty for those convicted of raping girls below the age of 12. But this clamour for introducing the most stringent punishment has conveniently sidestepped the more cogent criticism of the systemic failures in addressing increasing sexual violence against women and children.
•For those looking at it from the point of view of rape survivors and their bitter experiences with the criminal justice system, capital punishment for rape is the easiest and most convenient demand to raise, yet the most harmful one also for rape survivors. The women’s movement has laid emphasis on the need for the person raped to survive the assault, and in turn be enabled to book the perpetrators.
•There are numerous instances of the perpetrators killing their victims, so stringent anti-rape laws are perceived not to be deterrents but measures that further instigate rapists to attack the victims. In fact, the assumption that the severity of law is an adequate deterrent to crime being committed is a highly contested one, given that brutal rapes in India have not decreased despite enforcement of the Criminal Law (Amendment) Act, 2013 — a piece of legislation which prescribes the death penalty and life imprisonment for sexual assaults that result in death or the victim being reduced to a persistent vegetative state.
Patriarchal undercurrent
•Women’s movements across the world have consistently criticised knee-jerk, populist “solutions” to curbing sexual violence that in a highly patriarchal vein overemphasise the sexual aspect of the assault and reinforce the stigma attached to rape. Such “solutions” are seen as undermining the need to address the essential question of the rehabilitation of rape survivors, as well as the question of the complicit role played by state agencies in denying justice to survivors. This critique of capital punishment for rape stems from a concrete assessment of shoddy police investigations, low conviction rates, the overall tendency of hesitation within the judiciary in awarding severe punishment, and the capacity of stringent anti-rape legislation to enhance the propensity of rapists to murder their victims.
•The epidemic proportions that child rapes and sexual assaults on women are taking in India necessitates discussion on the entire process: from the initial moment complaints reach police stations to the moment of conviction, but more often, acquittal of sexual offenders.
•It is well known that right from the moment the criminal justice system is supposed to kick in, there is unwarranted delay by the police in filing missing person complaints and registering written complaints of sexual assault survivors. The reason for such police inaction is a debate within itself, but often enough, such inaction is connected to prevailing biases of class, caste, religion and gender. What is important to note is that a delay in police investigation amounts to an obstruction of justice since it allows the perpetrators to destroy crucial evidence and cover their tracks by influencing witnesses, and, sometimes, even the survivor.
•The huge difficulty rape survivors face in police stations and hospitals where medical examinations are carried out is another pertinent issue which is continually sidestepped. Such harassment tends to come under the spotlight only in extreme cases, such as the one where a child, after being sexually assaulted and left bleeding, was kept waiting for hours at a civil hospital in Gurugram in March this year.
•Further, insensitive methods of police investigation, tardy filing of charge sheets, delayed forensic reports, insensitive counselling, uneven disbursement of compensation to rape survivors, aggressive cross-examination of the survivor and her witnesses by defence lawyers, inadequate witness protection, and cumbersome court proceedings have together disempowered rape complainants. No amount of retributive justice can enable rape survivors, especially children who grapple with understanding their experience of hurt, to move on in life if the day-to-day pursuit of justice is an uphill and disempowering process in itself.
Low conviction rate
•Instead of harping on the quantum and severity of punishment, we have to highlight the issue of a low conviction rate for rape. The dismal conviction rate for rape in India is a consequence of complicity of state agencies. It is precisely this which contributes to the culpability of rapists and nurtures the growing impunity with which sexual crimes are committed. This is a reality well captured in National Crime Records Bureau data that show high figures of repeat sexual offenders.
What will work
•For the wheels of justice to start turning, it is essential to recognise that the crisis lies in the precise manner in which the existing criminal justice system unfolds. India’s growing rape culture is best reversed by enhancing conviction rates through reforms in the police and judicial systems, and by augmenting measures to rehabilitate and empower rape survivors. We require nothing short of the following: greater allocation of state resources towards the setting up of fast-track courts; more one-stop crisis centres; proper witness protection; more expansive compensation for rape survivors, and an overhaul of existing child protection services. Until these issues are addressed, little will change on the ground.
📰 Unprecedented crisis
The accountability and independenceof the judiciary must not be compromised
•These are extraordinary times for the judiciary. From signs of a confrontation with the executive over judicial appointments to an unpleasant rift among Supreme Court judges, it has seen much turmoil recently. The process initiated by major Opposition parties to impeach the Chief Justice of India is an unprecedented crisis. The motion, details of which cannot be revealed under Rajya Sabha rules until it is admitted, draws its substance and arguments mainly from the points raised by the four senior-most judges, whose dissent brought simmering differences to the fore. Their main charge, that CJI Dipak Misra selectively assigns cases to Benches of his choice, had some dark ramifications, including insinuations about the way he dealt with a petition by a medical college on the judicial and administrative side, and a case of suspected judicial bribery. The CJI has stuck to his position that as ‘master of the roster’ he has the prerogative to allot cases. Are the senior judges who question this entirely wrong? While putting in place the collegium system for judicial appointments, the Supreme Court said “consultation with the Chief Justice” meant “consultation with a plurality of judges”. The argument that the power to allot cases should be exercised by the Chief Justice in consultation with senior judges may have some substance from this point of view. The counter-argument is that a principle evolved for appointments can’t be stretched to cover routine functions such as constituting Benches. But this still raises the question: could the CJI have better addressed his colleagues’ concerns and put in place an informal consultative system, so the damage the institution has suffered could have been avoided?
•The movers of the motion do not have the numbers to get it passed. And it is wholly within the power of Vice-President and Rajya Sabha Chairman M. Venkaiah Naidu to decide whether to admit it. Against this backdrop, the impeachment attempt led by the Congress may be perceived in some quarters as no more than a political move to highlight its claim that key democratic institutions are in danger under the present regime. To the people at large, the real question is whether it is the internal rift or the executive’s attempt to keep it under its thumb that poses the greater danger to the judiciary. The Rajya Sabha Chairman will have to weigh one question before admitting the motion: what will cause greater damage to the institution, pursuing the process or rejecting it outright? Some may say any inquiry into the CJI’s conduct will imperil judicial independence, and others may argue that ignoring the allegations will be more dangerous. The Constitution advisedly envisages the impeachment of superior court judges as a rigorous political process driven by Parliament. It has in-built safeguards such as an inquiry by a panel of judges, and a two-thirds majority in both Houses. The intention is to provide for both accountability and independence of the judiciary. Neither of these objectives can be dispensed in favour of the other.
📰 Modi-Xi summit expected to give a strategic push to ties
Informal Wuhan meet will be a new milestone, says China’s Foreign Minister
•Chinese President Xi Jinping and Prime Minister Narendra Modi will hold a two-day informal summit from April 27 in Wuhan, to impart firm strategic direction to Beijing-New Delhi ties, amid profound changes in the global system.
•The expected re-set after last year’s Doklam standoff comes amid a larger conversation within Asia on the need to realign ties with Beijing in view of the growing protectionism in the United States.
•“The leaders will reach a strategic conclusion about the global situation and the development of China and India. They will also set the general course, identify new goals and create a new dynamic for the growth of China-India relations,” Chinese Foreign Minister and State Councilor Wang Yi said in his prepared remarks at the end of talks with External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj on Sunday.
•Mr. Wang said: “We will make sure that the informal summit will be a complete success and a new milestone in the history of India-China relations.” Elaborating on the global significance of the meeting in the Central Chinese city of Wuhan, Mr. Wang stressed that the international situation is “undergoing profound change, and China and India are growing rapidly and simultaneously.” “This makes for a more balanced international geometry and a stronger trend towards peace.”
Overlapping interests
•An official source told The Hindu that in the backdrop of the Doklam crisis, Prime Minister Modi had expressed the urgency of opening a broader strategic dialogue with China during the Xiamen summit of the BRICS countries in September. “It had become evident that China and India had overlapping interests in South Asia, the Indian Ocean and the Indo-Pacific. There was therefore an urgency to align our world views through a broader across-the-board dialogue,” the source said.
No pre-set agenda
•The official said that while a free-flowing conversation without a pre-set agenda between the two principals at the Wuhan retreat was expected, Mr. Modi, in the past, has expressed particular interest in two broad themes: a final settlement of the India-China boundary, and collaboration between India and China for the fruitful emergence of an “Asian century.” In her remarks after talks with the Chinese Foreign Minister, Ms. Swaraj said that “as two major countries and large emerging economies, healthy development of India-China relations is important for the emergence of Asian century.” She also highlighted the international importance of the summit, pointing out that Mr. Modi and Mr. Xi will “exchange views on bilateral and international matters from an overarching and long-term perspective with the objective of enhancing mutual communication.”
📰 Common wealth?
CHOGM again failed to make a casefor its relevance in the 21st century
•The Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting (CHOGM) held in London came with hopes of a “re-energised Commonwealth”. To begin with, the summit was being held in the U.K., the founder of the grouping of mostly former British colonies, after 32 years. Besides, Queen Elizabeth II, the head of CHOGM, attended the summit, which she has done infrequently in the last few years owing to her health. She opened her homes in Buckingham Palace and Windsor Castle for the event, in what was called a “charm offensive” by the hosts, who were looking to revive the 53-nation grouping as Commonwealth 2.0, amidst Britain’s rocky exit from the EU. In India too, the summit was seen to be a promising place to play a leadership role, and Prince Charles’s visit to Delhi to invite Prime Minister Narendra Modi bolstered that belief. Mr. Modi was the first Indian Prime Minister to attend CHOGM in a decade, after Manmohan Singh skipped the summits in Australia (2011) and Sri Lanka (2013) over bilateral differences, and Mr. Modi skipped the summit in Malta (2015) out of indifference. So it was widely expected that India would step up to a bigger role, and help chart a future course for the Commonwealth.
•Given the expectations, the outcome of the meet was underwhelming. It was announced Prince Charles would ‘succeed’ his mother as the head of the Commonwealth, ignoring calls for the position to be more democratically shared or rotated. There were substantive statements on the Blue Charter on Ocean Governance and on the Commonwealth Connectivity Agenda for Trade and Investment, which could together counter China’s Belt and Road Initiative. But there was little by way of a road map to achieve the goals. Prime Minister Theresa May apologised for her Home Office’s threat to deport thousands of immigrants brought as manual labour in the 1940s on the ship Empire Windrushfrom the Caribbean, but failed to convince most members of the Commonwealth that Britain would reverse its policies on immigration. The U.K.’s hard line on Indian “illegals”, which prevented the signing of a bilateral agreement on immigrant “returns” between Mr. Modi and Ms. May, too indicates that post-Brexit London is likely to welcome trade in goods from the Commonwealth, not services. The Commonwealth remains a great platform for development aid, democratic values and educational opportunities, but its relevance is unlikely to increase unless it adopts a more egalitarian and inclusive attitude to its next generation of Commonwealth citizens, to partake in a prosperity their forefathers built.
📰 Replanting Indian cotton
Researchers say it is time India moves on from hybrids
•Pink bollworm infestation in Bt cotton in India has turned the spotlight on an important question: has hybrid cotton lived up to its promise? India was a pioneer in this technology in the 1970s; today, it is the only country that exclusively grows cotton hybrids. Yet, cotton researchers are now asking if our over-reliance on this technology is responsible for our biggest problems in Bt cotton, such as infestation and low yield.
•The world’s first commercial cotton hybrid, Hybrid-4 (H-4), was developed in 1970 by the scientist Chandrakant T. Patel. The crop revolutionised cotton farming in India. Due to a genetic phenomenon called heterosis, hybrids often outyield open-pollinated (OP) varieties. So, from paltry yields of 122 kg of lint per hectare, production in India rose to 290 kg per hectare by 1992-93. The advent of hybrids also led to a mini-employment boom in the 1980s, with some 25 million people, mostly women, joining the labour-intensive hybrid industry.
•But the high cost of hybrid seeds prevented farmers from adopting them in a big way until 2002. This was the year when Bt cotton changed the economics of cotton production by cutting down on the costs of pesticides for bollworms. Farmers adopted Bt cotton in great numbers, despite Monsanto restricting it to hybrids. As a result, by 2011, over 95% of cotton in India was under hybrids, from less than 50% before 2002. Bt cotton’s insecticidal traits helped raise Indian yields further.
Why productivity plateaued
•Eventually, though, productivity plateaued. As of today, India’s average yield is around 500 kg of lint per hectare, about a fourth of Australia and Turkey which plant OP varieties. This is puzzling. Why has India’s productivity stagnated despite an ostensibly high-yield technology?
•Too many factors have contributed to this problem, some of which are uncontrollable, like climatic conditions and the sheer area under cotton production (11 million hectares). But other factors, such as the suitability of hybrids grown, are within India’s control and it is crucial to understand them.
•A big mistake that India made was in going overboard with the number of hybrids it approved after Bt cotton arrived. Until then, approval of new hybrids was a careful process: every time a seed company applied to release one, the Indian Council of Agricultural Research tested its agronomic traits in field trials for three years. This testing became less stringent after 2002, when the Genetic Engineering Approval Committee (GEAC) took over the process of Bt hybrid approval. Concerned that hybrid approval was taking too long and costing too much for seed companies, the GEAC simplified it. It said that as long as the genetic event (such as Monsanto’s Bt event, Mon 531) had been tested in field trials, the cotton hybrid containing it required testing for only about a year.
•This led to a deluge of poor-quality hybrids in India, with 1,128 hybrids being approved till 2012. Many of these inadequately tested hybrids were unsuited for the regions in which they were approved and hurt farmers and yield. “Farmers had to go through the harrowing experience of experimenting with new hybrids, only to burn their fingers in trying to identify the best,” says K.R. Kranthi, who headed Central Institute for Cotton Research (CICR) in Nagpur till 2017 and is now with the International Cotton Advisory Committee in Washington, DC.
An unsuitable hybrid
•What was the problem with an inadequately tested hybrid? Sometimes the seeds were of poor quality, sometimes the hybrids didn’t express enough Bt toxin, and sometimes hybrids meant for one agro-climatic zone were approved in other zones. For example, many hybrids that were meant for irrigated farmlands ended up in areas with no irrigation, a recipe for disaster. Hybrids are a high-cost, high-reward technology; they need the right irrigation at the right time, as well as large doses of fertilizers and pesticides. All this is expensive and beyond the reach of poor farmers. Vijay Kumar, a researcher who headed CICR’s Cotton Research Station in Surat, cites the example of Wagad tracts in Gujarat. These are barren lands where only a few Indian OP cotton varieties can survive. “People started growing Bt hybrids there,” he laments. “It pulled down yields.”
•Indian hybrids had another downside. Many were designed to be tall and bushy, unlike OP varieties which are short and straight. This meant that hybrids could not be planted in large densities — one of the contributors of high yields in Australia and Brazil. Low densities led to farmers prolonging the cotton-growing season to increase output, which in turn triggered pink bollworm attacks.
•Apart from being bushy, some of these hybrids also had a low harvest index, meaning that the mass of their seeds and lint was low compared to the mass of the rest of the crop, like shoots and leaves. This meant that fertilizers pumped into these hybrids were diverted to leaves rather than lint. This pulled down yield even in irrigated regions like Punjab. Further, Punjab suffered repeated whitefly infestations, which Bt cotton doesn’t protect against. Tackling this needed well-timed insecticide sprays, which farmers did not always do.
Can OP varieties save the day?
•Some cotton researchers believe that it is time to ditch hybrids and return to OP varieties, at least in rain-fed regions. Varieties are compact and can be selected for resistance against pests like whiteflies. When planted at high densities, they can rival hybrid yields, Mr. Kranthi and Mr. Kumar say.
•What route India takes towards varieties depends on the patent issues surrounding Bt cotton. The Delhi High Court ruled this month that the patent on Bollgard-2, Monsanto’s second generation Bt cotton, was unenforceable. This means that India has the option to use Bollgard-2, which confers resistance against pests like the American bollworm, in OP varieties. This was impossible until now, given Monsanto’s licensing agreement with seed companies. However, Monsanto may appeal the decision in the Supreme Court.
•Another, more radical, option is for India to skip Bt technologies altogether in OP varieties. Some researchers argue that Bt cotton is unnecessary, at least in some parts of the country. It was the cultivation of long-duration cotton that triggered both the pink and American bollworm infestations in these regions, creating the need for Bt cotton, they say.In a 2015 study, Andrew Paul Gutierrez, who studies pest control at the University of California, Berkeley, modelled data from Maharashtra’s Yavatmal district to show that pink-bollworm infestations began with the advent of irrigated, long-duration cotton. Mr. Gutierrez argued that if rain-fed farmers can control pink bollworm with short-season cultivation alone, the comparative benefits of Bt cotton wouldn’t outweigh its high costs.
📰 ‘Mega SEZs to spur electronics exports’
Draft of new policy to be out soon; Centre eyeing free trade pacts to drive exports of small electronics
•In a bid to make India an export hub for electronics, the government plans to set up at least one SEZ or special economic zone in every State under the proposed electronic policy.
•“The new policy will focus on making India an export hub,” a senior IT Ministry official said. “It has been proposed that at least one mega SEZ be set up in each state, with emphasis on coastal economic zones.”
‘Africa, Europe focus’
•Under the new policy, which was earlier expected to be out by March 2018, the government also plans to sign free trade agreements (FTAs) with countries, including those in Africa and Europe, to which India can export smaller electronic products.
•“We import a lot of heavy engineering products from some western and European countries. There is a big market for smaller electronic products in these markets, which we can tap. So, we can work out an agreement with them,” the official said.
•In 2016, as part of a Make in India strategy for electronics, the government think-tank NITI Aayog had recommended that India “forge FTAs [towards creating a] duty free market for our electronic goods. At present, our approach with respect to FTAs is defensive because we are a much larger importer of electronic products than an exporter. But a switch to an export-oriented strategy would convert FTAs into an opportunity.”
Push for CEZs
•It had also recommended that Costal Economic Zones (CEZs) be set up, similar to what China has done. Pointing out that India’s numerous SEZs have not taken off in the way they did in China due to issues such as size and location, the Aayog had said large areas near the coast can be set aside for CEZs “in which a sound ecosystem for healthy growth of export-oriented firms is fostered.”
•India has set a target of net zero imports in electronics by 2020, in the meeting of which the new policy will play a crucial role. The draft of the policy, expected to be out soon, will outline a framework to make India a global leader in product verticals such as medical and automotive electronics, besides mobile phone and consumer electronics.
•Deliberations with stakeholders on the revised policy started in September, following which nine sectoral working groups have been formed. The groups — with members from the industry and the Ministry — have been focussed on individual products such as mobile handsets, LED products, medical electronics, consumer electronics and automotive electronics, including electric vehicles.
📰 Use of blockchain beyond cryptocurrencies
Healthcare, banking, education, agriculture are sectors that could benefit; government push needed
•With India’s digital footsteps gaining significant stride in recent years, blockchain technology has caught the imagination of many. While most of us identify blockchain with cryptocurrencies, bitcoins in particular, tech designers are yet to fully realise its disruptive potential in numerous other sectors. In today’s rapidly evolving interconnected digital ecosystem, blockchain can emerge the biggest disrupter.
•Blockchain technology has the power to transform business processes and applications across sectors — from financial services to agriculture, from healthcare to education, among others. Blockchain-powered smart contracts, where every piece of information is recorded in a traceable and irreversible manner, can play a revolutionary role in enhancing ease of doing business. It will augment the credibility, accuracy and efficiency of a contract while reducing the risk of frauds, substantially.
Property deals
•Property transactions in India are still carried out on paper, making them prone to disputes. Application of blockchain technology would bring revolutionary changes through in-built transparency, traceability and efficiency in the system. State governments are already exploring use of this technology to bring order and efficiency to property transactions.
•Financial services has been a pioneer in blockchain-based use cases that are driving significant improvements in operations and client experience. For example, Yes Bank is an early adopter of this technology by implementing a blockchain-based multi-nodal system to fully digitise vendor financing for one of its clients. The system today enables the bank to do timely processing of vendor payments without physical documents and manual intervention, while enabling both parties to track the status of transactions in real time.
•Healthcare and pharmaceuticals is one of the best prospective areas where a lot of clinical data is built up and exchanged, which, owing to its sensitive nature, demands a secure and reliable system. Blockchain could play a crucial part in health insurance claims management by reducing the risk of insurance claim frauds. The technology can also be used to prevent the sale of spurious drugs in the country by tracking every step of the supply chain network at every level.
•The education sector can benefit from a blockchain-powered, time-stamped repository of pass-outs and job records of students so that it becomes easier for employers to verify the credibility of candidates.
•In agriculture too, seasonal data related to crop and climatic cycles and soil testing data can be protected and used by multi-nodal blockchain application for the benefit of insurance companies, researchers, market agencies and even to predict stock prices.
•Globally, blockchain technology has proven to be a change-maker. Nasdaq Inc. has successfully tested a blockchain-powered proxy voting system on its Estonian exchange and is gearing up for full-scale implementation. In Russia, blockchain-based systems are being pursued for land registry management as well as for improving the local voting system. The Dubai government, on the other hand, is on its way to implement blockchain-based paperless digital systems in areas such as visa applications, licence renewals and bill payments.
•Government as enabler
•While the government of India has eliminated the possibility of considering cryptocurrencies as legal tender, it has endorsed the idea of exploring use of blockchain technology for ushering in India’s digital economy.
•The NITI Aayog is exploring the use of blockchain and AI technologies in diverse areas such as education, healthcare, agriculture, electricity distribution and land records, among others. In this direction, the Think-Tank is reportedly building a platform called 'IndiaChain' — a shared, India-specific blockchain infrastructure that would leverage the trinity of Jan-Dhan-Yojana, Aadhaar and the mobile trinity.
•When implemented, this one-of-its-kind initiative will likely be the world’s largest blockchain implementation programme in governance.
•What may actually work for India is the version Blockchain 2.0 that allows programmable transactions (modified by a condition or a set of conditions), extending its capability from being able to do simple transactions to more complex transactions. It can also address privacy and regulatory needs, complex functions and is not limited to one vendor.
•Meanwhile, several State governments including A.P., Telangana, Gujarat, Karnataka and Maharashtra, have started gauging the possibilities, and even implementing in some cases, the distributed ledger technology for their e-governance initiatives. The A.P. government is leading the way in blockchain adoption by executing pilot projects in land records and transport.
For a true digital future
•Blockchain’s ability to enhance real-time visibility in the functioning of the supply chain offers myriad possibilities across a range of sectors to prevent leakages, and thereby increase efficiency. Realising its genuine potential, a number of leading corporations in India have started investing in Blockchain. At the same time, a number of start-ups are emerging in this space, developing and using the technology for diverse applications.
•While baby steps are being taken, it is also crucial to lay our collective focus on identifying and resolving key issues and challenges in implementing this technology, the prime amongst those being data privacy.
📰 Tigers face the ire of humans in U.P.’s terai
As conflicts rise, it’s a race for wildlife experts and forest officials to save the cats from angry villagers
•A young adult tigress rescued from a mob in the North Kheri Forest Division of Dudhwa Tiger Reserve in Uttar Pradesh has turned the spotlight on rising public animosity to the big cats in the region.
•The Dudhwa-Pilibhit tiger landscape is where the paths of tigers, leopards and humans cross, often with fatal consequences for both sides. Around 180 cases of conflicts leading to human deaths and injuries were recorded here between 2000 and 2018, data from the Wildlife Trust of India (WTI), which works with the State Wildlife Department, show. Of these, 98 pertain to tigers. The WTI team has rescued eight tigers from 36 human-tiger conflict situations since 2009, and four were released back into the wild.
•The tigress caught last week attacked and killed a villager, Kamta Prasad, 50, when he was in the fields near Sahatepurva. Officials spotted the tigress in the fields, surrounded by an angry mob, and launched a rescue using nets, and no tranquillisers. The cat was moved to Lucknow zoo.
•“We suspect she has been in this area, which is devoid of good forested habitat, for a few months,” said Prem Chandra Pandey, head of WTI’s Terai Tiger Project.
Accidental encounters
•Mayukh Chatterjee, head, WTI Human-Wildlife Conflict Mitigation Division, said, “The animosity and adverse reactions to these incidents are on the rise.” In fact, since 2009, only four or five cases of confirmed man-eating tigers have been recorded here, the WTI notes. Mr. Chatterjee said that almost 55% of the tiger attacks in the region occurred in forests, while around 32% were in sugarcane farms on forest fringes. “Most occurred during the day (90.6%), which suggests that most attacks by tigers are due to accidental encounters,” he said.
•In all, 136 humans have been attacked by tigers or leopards in 94 fringe villages of Dudhwa and Pilibhit in 151 cases, between 2000 and 2013, as per a joint report by the WTI and the U.P. Forest Department. Leopard attacks, by contrast, were concentrated within or near village boundaries (92.1%), with 47.6% occurring inside houses or near homesteads, 15.87% in village peripheries and 28.6% on farms.
•Tiger attacks were mostly in forests or on their fringes (54.79%), while (31.5%) were primarily in sugarcane fields. Only a small proportion (13.7%) were within or near homes.
Lying in wait
•Seasonally, tiger attacks were higher in winter (42.5%) probably due to a high influx of people collecting fuelwood in forests, followed by summers (39.7%).
•Attacks on livestock were the highest, involving leopards and tigers - 45 to 50% - during monsoons.
•A third of tiger attacks occurred when people were in their farms, but the highest (77.8%) of leopard attacks took place when the victims - mostly children - were sleeping, sitting or idle or doing odd jobs or using fields as a toilet.
📰 All trees are not woods
Classifying tree plantations as forests is deceptive. We need to work with local communities to restore lost forest cover
•The latest Forest Survey of India report has changed the calculation method for India’s forest cover to include plantations on private lands. It is common knowledge that private plantations of teak, eucalyptus and poplar are undertaken to earn incomes. Such plantations can’t be substitutes for natural forests with their wildlife and immense biodiversity. Natural forests have multiple ecosystem functions, none of which can be provided by commercial plantations.
•Classifying tree plantations as forests is naïve and deceptive — naïve because it ignores reams of research and evidence which show otherwise, and deceptive because this dangerous definition comes from a forest bureaucracy that projects itself as the sole guardian of India’s forests and is very aware that plantations are not forests. Forest officials are trained in ecological sciences and obviously understand this fallacy. There seem to be other considerations at work in including plantations this way. Revenue generation seems to be an objective, but perhaps more important, the scope to siphon off a large amount of money in the name of plantation. There’s hardly any accountability in such projects.
•In Odisha, the State from where I come, an unprecedented heatwave in 1998 claimed 2,048 lives. Today, temperatures are only increasing with climate change. Government measures have successfully reduced deaths due to heat waves, but the numbers are still alarmingly high. Climate change is the daily lived reality not only in Odisha but throughout India in the form of heatwaves, floods, droughts, and unseasonal rainfall. The situation is getting worse as global temperatures continue to increase.
•Protecting and restoring natural forests is one of the best ways to mitigate climate change. In this perspective, replacing forests with plantations raised by the private sector, as proposed in India’s just-circulated Draft National Forest Policy, is a terrible strategy. There is no need for profit-seeking private investments in forests as more than $7 billion of public compensatory afforestation funds are lying unused.
•Thousands of tribal and peasantry communities in Odisha have painstakingly protected forests for decades. Like their counterparts across India, they are now bringing claims to legally conserve and govern these forests under the Forest Rights Act of 2006. To marshal people to tackle climate change through forests, we need to work with these communities and turn protection and restoration of India’s forests into a forest rights-based movement of gram sabhas and local communities. The $7 billion compensatory afforestation fund should be given to the gram sabhas of the forest dweller and tribal communities empowered to protect and restore forests through the Act. This will help restore forests and mitigate the impact of climate change, while also meeting India’s international climate obligations.
