📰 Cauvery authority directs Karnataka to release water
At first meet, no discussion on the State’s decision to move SC against CWMA
•The Cauvery Water Management Authority (CWMA), at its first meeting here on Monday, directed Karnataka to release water to Tamil Nadu and other States but did not discuss Karnataka’s decision to challenge the constitution of the CWMA in the Supreme Court.
•“There is no need and no point in discussing Karnataka’s challenge…The Authority has nothing to do with it,” Masood Hussain, Interim-Chairman, CWMA, told The Hindu .
Appeal in SC
•The Karnataka government on Saturday decided to file an appeal in the Supreme Court against the setting up of the CWMA and the Cauvery Water Regulation Committee (CWRC) on the grounds that the move should have been discussed in Parliament.
•Mr. Hussain said the CWMA had directed Karnataka to release 34 tmcft (thousand million cubic feet) of water from the Biligundulu site. This would be over and above the water released in June, he clarified.
•The CWMA, which is yet to appoint full-time members, is scheduled to meet every 10 days during the monsoon months. Based on the storage of water in various reservoirs — Hemavathy, Harangi, Krishnarajasagar, Kabini, Mettur, Bhavanisagar, Amaravathy and Banasurasagar — it will recommend how much water ought to be released in keeping with the Supreme Court’s recent verdict in these blocks of 10 days.
•The apex court’s February verdict had said Karnataka will get 284.75 tmcft, Tamil Nadu 404.25 tmcft and Kerala and Puducherry 30 and 7 tmcft respectively.
•The CWMA includes Tinku Biswal, S.K. Prabhakar, A. Anbarasu and Rakesh Singh, secretaries of Kerala, Tamil Nadu, Puducherry and Karnataka looking after the departments of water resources, besides representatives of the Central Water Commission and Union Ministries of Agriculture and Water Resources. The CWMA will be headed by the Chairman, a senior and eminent engineer or a Secretary/Additional Secretary-level executive with experience in handling inter-State water disputes. The Authority will have two whole-time members and six part-time members, including one each nominated from the riparian States. There will be a Secretary from the Central Water Engineering Services cadre, but without voting rights.
📰 2021 census data to be stored electronically
Any tampering with info will be punished under IT Act
•The data collected during the 2021 Census will be stored electronically, the first time since the decennial exercise was conducted in 1951 in Independent India.
•According to an amended rule notified by the Registrar-General of India (RGI) on June 19, “The schedules and other connected papers shall be disposed of totally or in part by the Director of Census Operations, after creating an electronic record of such documents.”
Digital format
•A Home Ministry spokesperson said that till now the “schedules” (a tabular form containing details of individuals), carried by enumerators to households, were being stored in a physical form at the government’s storehouse in Delhi. It is based on these schedules that the relevant statistical information on population, language and occupation are sorted and published.
•“The records, running into crores of pages, were occupying space in government office and it has now been decided that they will be stored in an electronic format. Any tampering with the data will invite punishment under the Information Technology Act, 2000,” said the spokesperson.
Notification issued
•The RGI issued the notification as the process for the 2021 Census kicks in.
•The spokesperson said enumerators would start “house listing” in 2020, and the headcount would begin in February 2021. “An individual’s household data are not published by the RGI. They are published in the form of tables on the Census website. The data are preserved for 10 years and then destroyed. From now on, it can be stored forever in an electronic format,” he said.
📰 SC rejects plea to shut Kudankulam power plant
Allows extension of time till April 30, 2022, to build AFR
•The Supreme Court on Monday granted the Nuclear Power Corporation of India Ltd. (NPCIL) an extension of time till April 30, 2022, to build an Away From Reactor (AFR) facility to store spent nuclear fuel from the Kudankulam power plant.
•A three-judge Bench, led by Chief Justice Dipak Misra, said public interest prompted the court to agree to the NPCIL’s request for an extension of time to build the facility.
•The court did not agree to the demand by advocate Prashant Bhushan, for activist G. Sundarajan, to shut down the plant till the facility was ready. It suggested that he file an independent application and not mix the issue with the NPCIL’s current plea for more time.
•Mr. Bhushan said the continued operation of the plant without a “deep underground repository” to store the radioactive spent fuel was an open invitation to a catastrophe. He argued that the AFR facility was supposed to be built in five years, but this had not been done. In 2013, the court granted five years to NPCIL, till July 2018, to build the storage unit.
📰 NRC breather: court pushes deadline by a month
Concession by Bench comes after government agrees to stick to new date; adequate security for state coordinator Hajela and family ordered
•The Supreme Court on Monday extended its June 30 deadline for publication of the final draft of the National Register of Citizens (NRC) for Assam by a month. The charter is being prepared to identify illegal migrants in Assam.
•The leeway given by a Bench led by Justice Ranjan Gogoi came after the government and the State NRC Coordinator agreed to adhere to the new deadline.
•The coordinator, Prateek Hajela, last week said it would not be possible to release the final draft as scheduled on June 30 as the State was reeling under floods.
•The Bench asked the Chief Secretary and the Director-General of Police to provide adequate security immediately to Mr. Hajela and his family members, including his children, in view of the work done by him. It asked the officials to file a compliance report immediately after taking a decision on the issue. The court said it would consider all the interlocutory applications and other related matters on July 31.
•The first draft of the NRC was published in December-end as per the top court’s direction. The first draft, which is a list of the State’s citizens, was published on the intervening night of December 31 and January 1 where names of 1.9 crore people out of the 3.29 crore applicants were incorporated.
•Akhil Gogoi, leader of the Krishak Mukti Sangram Samiti said: “The delay is because the BJP and the RSS do not want the final draft to be published for loss of face. Flood was a mere excuse on the part of [NRC Coordinator] Prateek Hajela to delay the exercise at the bidding of BJP and RSS. The flood had affected only three districts. They could have published the data for the rest of the State.” Matiur Rahman, working president of the Assam Sanmilita Mahasangh said: “The delay is because of a ploy to include illegal migrants. This is all the more reason why 1951 should be made the cut-off year.”
📰 SC seeks steps for appointing Lokpal
Centre told to file an affidavit in the next 10 days; next hearing on July 17
•The Supreme Court on Monday asked the government to file an affidavit in the next 10 days, detailing the steps it would take for the appointment of Lokpal, the anti-graft ombudsman.
•A Bench of Justices Ranjan Gogoi and R. Banumathi scheduled the next hearing of the case for July 17.
•It has been constantly urging the government to complete the process of appointment at the earliest. In May, the Lokpal selection committee, led by the Prime Minister, had appointed former Attorney-General Mukul Rohatgi as eminent jurist to the panel that will short-list candidates.
•Besides the Prime Minister, the selection committee is composed of the Chief Justice of India and the Lok Sabha Speaker.
•Passed in 2014, the Lokpal and Lokayukta Act, 2013, was not implemented all these years because there was no Leader of the Opposition (LoP) in the 16th Lok Sabha. The 2013 law includes the LoP as a member of the selection committee. The Act intends the LoP to be part of the selection committee, which has to first appoint an eminent jurist among their ranks.
•However, on April 27 last year, the Supreme Court clarified that the appointment process need not be stalled merely because of the absence of the LoP. The judgment dismissed the government’s reasoning that the appointment process should wait till the Act was amended to replace the LoP with the leader of the single largest Opposition party.
•The hearing before Justice Gogoi’s Bench is based on a contempt petition filed by Common Cause, represented by advocate Prashant Bhushan, for not implementing the April, 2017 judgment of the court.
📰 Intellectual Property rules amended
Some powers with Customs revoked
•The Union Ministry of Finance has amended Intellectual Property rules to revoke the power vested with Customs authorities to seize imported products based on complaints of patent infringement.
•On June 22, the Ministry made two amendments to the Intellectual Property Rights (Imported Goods) Enforcement Rules, 2007. Firstly, the Intellectual Property Rights (Imported Goods) Enforcement Amendment Rules, 2018, omits all reference to the Patents Act, 1970.
Further conditions
•Another amendment incorporates further conditions that oblige the right-holder to notify the Commissioner of Customs of any amendment, cancellation, suspension or reaction that concern Intellectual Property rights, and require the Customs authorities to accordingly amend, suspend or cancel the corresponding protection provided by them.
•In the past, mobile phone companies have faced issues because of the earlier rules. For instance, in 2007, Madurai-based Ramkumar, who held a patent for a dual SIM, sought seizure of products imported by Samsung and Spice Mobile, which affected several importers.
•“Now, the amended law will permit the Customs authorities to cancel his patent from its records based on the order passed by the Intellectual Property Appellate Board (IPAB),” Subhatosh Majumdar, Patent Attorney and Managing Partner, S. Majumdar & Co., said.
📰 Court seeks response on FCRA amendments
It aids foreign funding to parties: plea
•The Supreme Court on Monday sought a response from the government on amendments made in the Foreign Contribution Regulation Act (FCRA) which benefit the ruling BJP and the Opposition Congress, both held guilty by the Delhi High Court in 2014 for receiving foreign funds from two subsidiaries of Vedanta, a U.K.-based company.
•A three-judge Bench led by Chief Justice of India Dipak Misra agreed to examine the petition filed by NGO, Association for Democratic Reforms, challenging the amendments made in the FCRA through the Finance Act, 2016 and Finance Act, 2018. The amendments were passed as a Money Bill with retrospective effect from the year 1976.
•The petition, represented by advocates Prashant Bhushan and Neha Rathi, contended the amendments were made to counter a March 28, 2014 decision of the Delhi High Court. The High Court had held the two major national political parties — the BJP and the Congress — guilty of taking foreign funding. It had directed the Centre and the Election Commission of India to take action against the two parties within six months.
•The Representation of the People Act bars political parties from receiving foreign funds. The petition argued that the “amendments have opened doors to unlimited political donations from foreign companies and thereby legitimising financial contributions received from foreign sources”.
•The amendments, the petition said, was also against the “settled principle of separation of powers since it has overruled the Delhi High Court judgment”. “It is a settled law the legislature cannot overturn any court judgment; it can only remove the basis of the judgment,” the petition argued.
📰 The strongman’s dilemma
With Erdoğan set to change the nature of the Turkish republic, his political style could exacerbate its problems
•With the electoral victory last month, 64-year-old President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan created history by becoming the longest serving ruler of Turkey. So far, that distinction belonged to Mustafa Kemal ‘Atatürk’, the founder of the Turkish republic, its first president from 1923 till his death in 1938.
•Mr. Erdoğan was Prime Minister from 2003 till 2014, when he was elected President. Having successfully conducted a referendum in April last year to convert Turkey into an executive presidency, he advanced the elections, which were not due till November 2019, to now return as an all-powerful President. Under the amended constitution, he can have two terms, and with another win in 2023, he could remain in position till 2028.
Reversing Atatürk’s legacy
•The collapse of the Ottoman empire with the end of World War I was the tectonic event that had enabled the founding of the Turkish republic and empowered Atatürk to transform Turkish society. He imposed Western norms of dress, Roman script for the language and a European legal system and calendar, converting the former Islamic caliphate into a secular republic. He was a popularly elected leader but implemented many of his reforms, which often generated opposition, with a degree of authoritarianism as Atatürk (Father of the Turks).
•In many ways, Mr. Erdoğan is taking Turkey through a change of similar magnitude. He became Mayor of Istanbul in 1994 on the strength of the pro-Islamist Refah (Welfare Party), which was banned in 1998 and he was jailed for ‘inciting religious hatred’. He re-emerged to set up the moderate Islamic Justice and Development Party (AKP) in 2001. Under his rule, Turkey has softened its secular image by giving greater importance to Islam. His anti-West rhetoric, sharper after an unsuccessful coup in July 2016, marks a significant shift from a Western-oriented North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) member state negotiating for European Union (EU) membership to one seeking to join a Russia-China dominated Shanghai Cooperation Organisation. Traditional elites in the judiciary, military and civil service, often described as those identified with Kemalism and belonging to the urban, secular, Western-oriented intellectual classes, are being replaced by the more religiously oriented, conservative, provincially oriented elite. These changes have already begun and with another decade ahead, Mr. Erdoğan is set to change the nature of the Turkish republic.
An all-powerful president
•It is clear that Mr. Erdoğan’s gamble in advancing the elections and establishing an electoral alliance between his pro-Islamic AKP and the ultra-nationalist right-wing Nationalist Movement Party (MHP) has paid off. In the presidential election, he ensured a first round victory by winning 53% of the vote. In the parliamentary elections, the AKP won 42% of the vote, giving it 295 seats in the 600-member legislature. Together with 48 seats of the MHP, it provides a comfortable majority though it will be the first time in 16 years that the AKP will depend on a coalition partner. Elections were peaceful but hardly fair, having been conducted under a state of emergency, though an 87% turnout lends credibility to Mr. Erdoğan’s victory.
•Coming after the constitutional referendum undertaken last April, Turkey will now have an executive presidency. With the abolition of the post of the Prime Minister, Mr. Erdoğan is both head of state and head of government with the power to appoint one or more vice presidents and cabinet members. The President will continue to head the AKP, can rule by decree and enjoys full powers to dissolve parliament. Theoretically, the parliament is empowered to investigate wrongdoings by the President to impeach him with two-thirds majority but this requires approval by the Supreme Court, where 12 of the 15 judges are presidential appointees.
•Mr. Erdoğan had made his preference for an executive presidency clear soon after he took over in 2014 after being Prime Minister for 11 years. The unsuccessful coup attempt (2016) reinforced his convictions and provided the opportunity. Fethullah Gülen, a cleric in exile in the U.S. for two decades, was held responsible and a purge of his supporters followed. More than 100,000 government officials have been dismissed by decree and another 50,000 are in jail pending trials. These include more than a thousand military officers (over a hundred of rank of general) accused of complicity in the coup. Nearly 200 media outlets suspected of Gulenist leanings have been closed, and 120 journalists are in detention. During the early years in power, Mr. Erdoğan had worked closely with the Gulenists to break the stranglehold of the secular Kemalists, particularly in the military and the judiciary. The relationship broke down in 2013 when Mr. Erdoğan’s family members were subjected to investigations involving influence-peddling and corruption, ostensibly by Gulenist sympathisers who were increasingly troubled by Mr. Erdoğan’s authoritarian tendencies.
Growing challenges
•Even with the domestic political opposition decimated and in disarray, Mr. Erdoğan faces tough challenges, both at home and abroad. Turkey’s economy has slowed down in recent years. Inflation is in double digits and, in 2018 the Turkish lira has declined by 20% in value. This has raised foreign debt levels even as stories about cronyism do the rounds negatively impacting the investment climate. Yet interest rates have been kept low for political reasons and this is unlikely to change till the municipal elections in March next year. The reason is that the large cities like Istanbul, Ankara and Izmir are the places which opposed the referendum and also voted against the AKP.
•Turkey vigorously supported the Arab Spring hoping to use the AKP’s ties with the Muslim Brotherhood (MB), which had become stronger, as a lever to strengthen its role in the Arab world. This backfired as Saudi Arabia changed track quickly seeing dangers of a reformist MB gaining ground. In Egypt, the military made a comeback, welcomed by the Saudi regime. Turkey was critical of Mohamed Morsi’s ouster as President and relations with Egypt broke down. In the embargo coordinated by Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain and Egypt against Qatar, Turkey has come out strongly in support of Qatar.
The Syrian fallout
•The worst fallout has been on account of Turkey’s involvement in the Syrian conflict. An early vocal supporter for the ouster of President Bashar al-Assad, Turkey initially was the corridor for the stream of Islamic fighters going to Syria. Nearly three million Syrian refugees entered Turkey, creating challenges for the EU which is committed to paying Turkey billions to man the barricades amid growing tensions.
•The environment dramatically changed with the growing threat of the Islamic State (IS) moving from Iraq into Syria and the establishment of the Caliphate by Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi in 2014. As the U.S. started attacking the IS in Iraq, Russia intervened in 2015 to bolster Mr. Assad. Use of the NATO airbase at Incirlik made Turkey a target with the IS mounting a series of attacks, including at Istanbul airport in 2016 which claimed over 40 lives.
•Turkey cracked down hard on the Kurdish militants (PKK) just when the U.S. was equipping the Syrian Kurds (YPG) to take on the IS in northern Syria, leading to a spike in Kurdish militancy in Turkey and further straining Turkey’s relations with the U.S. Mr. Erdoğan decided to get closer to Russia (and Iran) instead though the price was accepting the continuation of Mr. Assad. It is negotiating for the S-400 anti-missile system with Russia, raising the prospects of U.S. sanctions on a NATO member.
•Ironically, Mr. Erdoğan may find that even as he has become all powerful, his polarising brand of politics makes it more difficult to tackle the economic and security challenges facing the country.
📰 Reforming higher education
Many questions need to be answered in designing the successor regime to the UGC
•The draft Higher Education Commission of India (HECT) Bill is now in the public domain. The HECI will replace the main regulatory authority, the University Grants Commission (UGC), to “provide for more autonomy and facilitate holistic growth” of this sector and offer “greater opportunities to Indian students at more affordable cost”. The new commission will cover all fields of education except medical and, presumably, agriculture, and institutions set up under the Central and State Acts, excluding those of national importance.
Point of departure
•The main point of departure in the proposed Bill is a clear separation between academic functions and grant-giving ones, the former to be discharged by the HECI and the latter by the Ministry of Human Resource Development (MHRD) directly. The academic functions include promoting the quality of instruction and maintenance of academic standards, as also fostering the autonomy of higher education institutions for, inter alia , comprehensive and holistic growth of education and research in a competitive global environment in an inclusive manner. In other words, the HECI will be bestowed with comprehensive and overriding powers, including ordering the closure of institutions, in all academic and related matters while the purse strings will be controlled by the MHRD.
•The need for a single regulatory body arose largely in the context of multiple bodies set up over the years trying to cope with the ever increasing complexity of the sector, both in terms of rapidly expanding number of institutions to meet the demands of surging student enrolment, and the uneven and perhaps deteriorating standards in the quality of student output against the requirements of the job market. As Professor Furqan Qamar and others have shown, for almost a century after the first three universities were set up in 1857 till the UGC Act became operational in 1956, universities worked reasonably well without any outside regulator.
Problem of plenty
•The regime of multiple regulators started in the mid-1980s and various professional bodies also started asserting themselves as regulators from around the early 1990s when the country embraced the new challenges of liberalisation, privatisation and globalisation. This was also the period that marked a galloping growth of the sector with the setting up of many private universities. The response of the government, arguably, was to meet the emerging challenges.
•It can be observed that the heavy hands of multiple regulators (like the UGC and All India Council for Technical Education), together with the empowerment of professional bodies (like the Bar Council of India and Council of Architecture) have not yielded the desired dividends. Mushrooming of institutions and a steady decline of standards in most of them have not done much good to the image of the government and the architecture of regulation. While the proposed Bill seeks to empower the HECI with all academic functions, its role vis-à-vis professional bodies is unclear, and whether depriving the HECI completely of funding functions will affect its efficacy and stature in discharging its onerous responsibility remains a major question.
Question of funds
•As of today, the MHRD has been directly funding more than a hundred institutions of national importance, including the Indian Institutes of Technology, National Institutes of Technology and Indian Institutes of Science Education and Research. Funding 47 Central universities should not pose a problem for the ministry. The funding scheme of State universities, which account for more than 50% of the student enrolment, requires to be clearly worked out. If it is sought to be done through the Rashtriya Uchchatar Shiksha Abhiyan, or RUSA, a clear and transparent mechanism should be spelt out. How effective the role of the HECI would be to regulate state institutions with less than inadequate Central funding merits serious attention.
•The proposed Bill has to be situated in the context of certain new initiatives like granting near complete autonomy to the Indian Institutes of Management, providing graded autonomy to other institutions to free them from the clutches of regulations to enable them to develop into institutions of excellence.
•On the one hand, the HECI is being conceived as an overarching regulator (albeit without the teeth of funding function), and on the other it is sought to develop mechanisms so that more institutions are encouraged to move out of its regulatory ambit.
•Of the many functions of the HECI, specifying norms and standards for grant of autonomy and of graded autonomy is an important one. Linked with the issue are the recent initiatives to encourage public institutions to raise user charges so that they become self-sustaining as also to allow such institutions to take loan from the Higher Education Funding Agency to meet developmental costs. These are bold initiatives with major consequences, inducing institutions to abandon courses that have hardly any job prospects and starting ones that are market-friendly. Besides, the high fees to be paid by students for such courses might compel them to take concessional student loans. The first militates against the idea of higher education and the concept of the university and the second may result in the student loan crisis reaching alarming proportions on account of delay in payment and default. How the HECI would advise the government to surmount these problems remains to be seen.
The new setup
•As regards the structure of the HECI, there will be a chairperson, vice-chairperson and 12 members. The secretary of the HECI will be an officer of the rank of joint secretary and above or a reputed academic and will serve as its member-secretary. Will she have voting rights as a member, as she will be appointed by the HECI? Besides, the secretary, higher education is envisaged to don many hats, serving as a member of the search-cum-selection committee of the chairperson and vice-chairperson, then processing their appointment as a key functionary of the government, and finally acting as a member of the HECI. Such multiplicity of roles may create difficulties and conflict of interest. Also, the power of the government to remove the chairperson and members is rather overwhelming and should be constrained.
•Despite some apparent infirmities, the proposed Bill shows the resolve of the government to move forward in reforming the sector. While many questions remain unanswered, the proposal appears to be a plausible one, if the public expenditure in the sector continues to hover around the present level of over 1% of GDP, against the minimum requirement of 2%. Major issues like making the universities the hub of scientific and technological research, restoring the value of education in social sciences and the humanities, ensuring that poor and meritorious students can afford to be educated in subjects of their choice, improving the quality of instruction to enhance the employability of the students, addressing the concerns of faculty shortage, etc. require a quantum jump in allocation of public resources to this sector. Tightening the screws of regulation in the absence of rapidly expanding public expenditure has obvious limitations.
📰 How to list cases better
The quality and efficiency of court functioning can be improved with simple tweaks
•Chief Justice of India Dipak Misra recently flagged rising pendency in appeals lying with High Courts based on the findings of the Supreme Court’s Arrears Committee. He has since directed High Courts to prepare action plans for disposal of five and 10-year-old cases. He has also asked for High Court Arrears Committees to periodically review the situation. While it is crucial that a disposal review mechanism is put in place, the manner in which judicial performance is measured and accountability is exercised must be carefully revisited.
•For decades, the primary measure of court efficiency has been case disposal rates. Public perception of court performance and individual judges now hinges on the number of cases pending before them. Though a crucial indicator, it also puts pressure on judges to dispose of as many cases as possible, a problematic situation as it does not consider the quality of adjudication itself. Neither does it shed light on the exact nature of cases that have remained pending the longest, or the stage at which pendency recurs the most. Since these parameters are not measured, they are often disregarded in the discourse on court performance.
•To begin with, courts themselves must start analysing historical case data and introduce focussed interventions to counter specific case types or stages at which the case pipeline is clogged.
Impact of listing techniques
•The discourse on case pendency has largely revolved around delayed appointments and vacancies. Our study of case data of a High Court over five years showed how certain cases listing practices influenced case movement and harboured pendency.
•First, listing patterns were generally erratic, with the number of matters listed for the same courtroom ranging from 1 to 126 a month. In some courtrooms, it was 80-120 cases for a month.
•Second, a large number of cases listed in a day meant that inevitably, matters listed towards the end of the day remained left over. Thus, cases in the final stages of hearing most often clogged the case pipeline.
•Third, old pending matters barely made it to court. Our case data over three years showed that 91% of them remained unheard despite being allotted a separate day and specific judges. Some experts point out that these cases were listed for the second half of the day but would eventually never come up for hearing because of the large number of other urgent and routine matters listed. Advocates also tend to become disinterested in older cases in which clients have given up or stopped paying.
Spurring case movements
•One way to accelerate case movement is by making case listing more systematic. Here, courts must assess their performance based on the actual number of cases being heard. Listing more than 100 cases a day may look to be an impressive work schedule for a judge, but we found that it is very rare for all of them to be heard. Cause list preparation can be made more scientific if supported by a consistent study of the variance in the number of cases listed across courts, identifying the exact stages at which cases are clogging the pipeline for the longest duration, and the nature of cases left over. This will also ensure that only as many cases as can be reasonably heard will be listed on a daily basis.
•Second, the cause list should have cases methodically distributed by type and stage. The court can decide on a minimum and maximum number for particular matters. A senior counsel of the Supreme Court emphasised the need to tweak listings such that final hearings are the first matters a judge hears in a day as it requires his complete attention. In the cause list we studied, such hearings were listed at the end, inevitably accounting for the largest leftovers.
•Third, disposing of old and pending matters must be prioritised. Despite allotting two days in week to hearing these matters for most of the day, the High Court we studied had a massive docket of old pending cases. Their rate of case movement in newer matters (taken up on all other days of the week) was much faster than case movement recorded on specific days where old cases were listed. A solution would be to implement a policy where no adjournments are granted for frivolous reasons.
•Scientific listing has clear benefits. It will introduce standardisation across courts and help disincentivise judges from using discretionary practices in the number and nature of cases listed before them. It will promote fairness — a reasonable number of cases would be listed every day, and distributed across the day based on stage and case type.
•Another benefit would be better quality of adjudication. With an ever-increasing caseload, it is only fair to question the quality of decision-making. The Supreme Court, in April, remanded a case back to a High Court due to the poor quality of judgment (there were neither recorded submissions of the parties nor references to the relevant legal provisions used).
•The quality and efficiency of court functioning can be improved with simple tweaks. Therefore, it is time that the judiciary as an institution opens itself to the services of competent external agencies that can help them record, manage and analyse their data better, to build and sustain a healthy institution.
📰 Triggered by bad air
Proportion of pollution-linked diabetes is high in India
•Particulate matter that exists as fine dust in the air can lead to an increased risk of diabetes, particularly in low-income countries such as India.
•Analysis of the burden of pollution-linked diabetes (in the journal, Lancet Planetary Health ) estimates that in 2016, air pollution resulted in as many as 3.2 million new cases of diabetes. This is 14% of all new diabetes cases for that year, and India’s share was 20% of new cases. Annually, the researchers estimated that pollution-linked diabetes caused more than 2 lakh deaths in 2016.
•Even though previous studies had shown a significant impact of air pollution on diabetes, the burden of the disease had yet to be quantified. After studying over 17 lakh American veterans for around nine years, researchers at Washington University School of Medicine and VA St. Louis Health Care System in the U.S., showed that the risk of incident diabetes increased with rising concentrations of PM2.5 (fine dust less than 2.5 microns in diameter), even reaching significant impact at concentrations of 12 micrograms per cubic meter (m3).
•This level is considered “safe” by Indian standards which sets a limit of 40 micrograms per m3) and is far below what is experienced in cities. In Delhi, for instance, PM2.5 can touch nearly 100 micrograms per m3.
•Studies have shown that this fine dust enters the bloodstream through the lungs, reducing insulin production and triggering inflammation. This factor adds to the diabetes burden which affects more than 420 million people globally.
•Statistical models developed from U.S. veteran study were fine-tuned to more polluted environs by studying those with passive smoking risks (pegged at exposures of 35 micrograms per m3) and active smoking (667 micrograms per m3 per cigarette). Researchers then undertook a global estimate extrapolating national annual PM2.5 exposure estimates and using data points from the Global Burden of Disease study.
•India tops the list in terms of ‘Disability-Adjusted Life Years’, which measures years of healthy life lost due to pollution-linked diabetes. Researchers estimate that nearly 8.2 million years of healthy life were lost globally in 2016, and India lost 1.625 million healthy years.
•Where high economic growth has lead to higher pollution burdens, lower-income countries such as India are affected the most. After all, while the global PM2.5 average was 42.3 micrograms per c3, in India, it was 72.6 per m3. The study finds that a modest reduction in PM2.5 levels may lead to a reduction in diabetes cases in India.
📰 Linked by light
The scope of quantum optics is still unknown, and plans for future research are vast
•Since the late 19th century, when Max Planck modelled radiation emitted by a black body, the idea that light has a particle nature has come a long way. Albert Einstein won a Nobel prize in 1921 for his paper on the photoelectric effect, in which he developed the idea of light as quanta, or photons. For a long time after this, scientists were mainly interested in the quantum theory of matter.
•The development of laser science made possible the study of light as governed by quantum theory. Important contributions to statistical properties of light were made by scientists such as E.C.G. Sudarshan and Roy Glauber. Today, quantum optics powers many discoveries and its full potential can only be guessed at.
•The most ambitious attempt to date to unpack this potential might come from a paper entitled: “Light, the Universe and everything – 12 Herculean tasks for quantum cowboys and black diamond skiers”. Its 32 authors from 10 countries (three of them Nobel Laureates) attempt to set benchmarks in the field of quantum optics.
•The paper, a first-of-its-kind activity, touches on recent findings such as detection of gravitational waves by the team at LIGO, or the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory, that literally shook the world in 2015. It also dwells on exotic subjects such as the “time crystal”, and the importance of “nitrogen-vacancy centers in diamond”, which can help in building quantum computers of the future.
•Crystals are solids that show a repeating arrangement in space of a basic structure known as the unit cell. Time crystals (systems that repeat their crystal structure not just in space but also in time) were first proposed by Frank Wilczek, one of the authors of the paper, and who also shared the 2004 Nobel Prize in physics.
•In 2017, time crystals were demonstrated in a laboratory setting. “A beating heart is a time crystal in the broadest, purely mathematical sense,” writes Professor Wilczek in the paper. The questions he poses for research are around whether there are time liquids, glasses and quasicrystals and whether we could imagine a world where there is a time-dependent parallel to the properties of crystalline solids that we know.
•Astrophysics aficionados may be thrilled by Nobel physicist, Rainer Weiss’s contribution to the paper as well; he explores what gravitational waves might reveal about black holes, neutron stars and supernovae.
•Climate change and global warming are addressed by Prof. Goong Chen in the section, “What is the most urgent undertaking in science and technology?” He asks whether it is possible to “mimic, speed-up or even improve” photosynthesis by making use of nonlinear shortcuts to the chemical processes of carbon capture.
•Plans for future research that the authors have outlined could excite not only scientists but also science enthusiasts and sci-fiction writers across the world.
📰 One year after
In its second year, the GST regimemust be purposefully rationalised
•Since its midnight launch on July 1 last year, India’s Goods and Services Tax regime has evolved significantly. There have been serious implementation issues, but also the administrative will and flexibility to address most of these, with the Centre and States working together in the GST Council. After its initial days were marred by stuttering IT systems, the deadline for filing returns was pushed forward till most taxpayers got a hang of the system and the GST Network could augment its capacity. Industry had anxieties about the multiple tax rates, ranging from zero to 28%, with a cess on demerit goods. But gradually, the number of goods under the 28% bracket has been brought down to 50 from around 200. A unique component envisaged in India’s GST regime, matching of invoices for granting tax credits, has been kept on hold for fear of adding to taxpayers’ transition pains. Despite its glitches and snarls, the new tax has taken firm root and is altering the economic landscape positively. The strongest sign of this is the entry of over 4.5 million entities in the country’s tax net, many of which would have so far been part of the cash-driven, informal economy. This expansion of the tax net will also help increase direct tax collections.
•At Sunday’s GST Day celebrations, Prime Minister Narendra Modi ruled out a single tax rate but hinted at lower rates for more items. He was reacting to criticism about the flawed implementation of the One Nation, One Tax concept. Rhetoric aside, there is a clear buoyancy in revenue after a wobbly initial trend. The government was eyeing a little over Rs. 90,000 crore a month to make up for the revenues earned under the earlier regime and to compensate States for any losses due to the GST. Finance Minister Piyush Goyal is confident that the average monthly collections this year could touch Rs. 110,000 crore. This surge must allay the fiscal concerns of the Centre and the States, and nudge policy-makers towards further rationalising the GST structure. If not a single rate, there is certainly room for collapsing at least two of the current rates. It is also imperative that rates not be tinkered with too often and pricing disputes not be a default option under anti-profiteering norms for industry. If cement, as a critical infrastructure input, must be taxed lower than 28%, then decide a rate and stick to it. In its second year, the GST Council must pursue a time-bound approach to execute plans already announced to ease taxpayers’ woes, such as an e-wallet for exporters and a simpler return form. Besides, there must be a road map to bring excluded products — petroleum, real estate, electricity, alcohol — into the GST net. This reform still has miles to go, and the government must stare down the temptation to take populist steps ahead of general elections.
📰 China aims to outstrip NASA with super-powerful rocket
The Long March-9 is projected to carry 140 tonnes into low-Earth orbit
•China is working on a super-powerful rocket that would be capable of delivering heavier payloads into low orbit than NASA, a leading Chinese space expert was quoted as saying on Monday.
•By 2030, the Long March-9 rocket under development will be able to carry 140 tonnes into low-Earth orbit — where TV and earth observation satellites currently fly — said Long Lehao, a senior official from the Chinese Academy of Engineering, according to the official Xinhua news agency.
•This compares to the 20 tonnes deliverable by Europe’s Ariane 5 rocket or the 64 tonnes by Elon Musk’s Falcon Heavy, which in February catapulted one of the U.S. entrepreneur’s red Tesla Roadster cars towards Mars.
•It would also outstrip the 130 tonnes of NASA’s Space Launch System, which is due to become operational in 2020.
•China’s Long March-9 would have a core stage measuring 10 metres in diameter and boast four powerful boosters, each with a diameter of five metres.
•Xinhua quoted Mr. Long as saying the rocket could be used in manned lunar landings, deep space exploration or constructing a space-based solar power plant.
•In addition, China is working on a reusable space rocket, which is expected to make its maiden flight in 2021. The first stage and the boosters will be retrieved after a vertical landing, Mr. Long said in a speech in Beijing.
•China is pouring billions into its military-run space programme, with hopes of having a crewed space station by 2022, and of sending humans to the Moon in the near future.
•The Asian superpower is looking to finally catch up with the U.S. and Russia after years of belatedly matching their space milestones.
•China is also planning to build a base on the moon, the state-run Global Timessaid in early March.
