📰 Govt. leaves decision on Section 377 to the court
•The government chose not to take sides on the question of the legality of Section 377 IPC, a provision which criminalises homosexuality, leaving the decision entirely to the Supreme Court.
•“We leave it to the wisdom of the court,” Additional Solicitor-General Tushar Mehta told a Constitution Bench led by Chief Justice Dipak Misra on Wednesday.
Centre’s caveat
•The government’s decision to not contest writ petitions against Section 377 however came with a rider that the court should specify that the freedom to choose a partner does not extend to perversions like incest.
•“My choice of partner should not be my sister...That is prohibited under the Hindu marriage law. Allowing the choice of a partner should not extend to incest... sado-masochism...,” Mr. Mehta said.
•In a sharp retort, Justice D.Y. Chandrachud said the Bench is not here to adjudicate on any “kinky notions.”
•Justice Chandrachud addressed Mr. Mehta to say that the prerogative of this hearing was to understand the nature of a relationship and bring it under the protection of Article 21 (fundamental right to life) of the Constitution. Justice Rohinton Nariman intervened to observe that the Bench was delving into the ‘content’ of the fundamental right.
•Chief Justice Misra said the court is considering the issue of “protecting the relationship.”
Larger issue
•He said the court was not confining its ambit merely to LGBTQ or sexual orientation. It is examining the aspect of two consenting adults who should not be liable for criminal action for their relationship.
•“Mr. Mehta, we are not even on the sexual act. We are examining whether the relationship between two consenting adults is itself a manifestation of Article 21...We are on the nature of the relationship and not going to talk on marriage, etc,” Justice Chandrachud explained. “It should not come to a situation where two homosexuals enjoying a walk on the Marine Drive are disturbed by the police...we want to protect the relationship,” Justice Chandrachud observed.
📰 Adultery must remain a punishable offence, Centre tells Supreme Court
Section 497 of the Indian Penal Code - "supports, safeguards and protects the institution of marriage", it says.
•The Union government on Wednesday told the Supreme Court that it does not want to drop adultery as an offence, saying such a move would only weaken the institution of marriage.
•In a 11-page affidavit that will come up before a Constitution Bench, the Centre said the provision punishing adultery - Section 497 of the Indian Penal Code (IPC) - "supports, safeguards and protects the institution of marriage".
•The government agreed to the thought that "stability of a marriage is not an ideal to be scorned".
•The Constitution Bench would decide whether the pre-Independence provision of adultery in the IPC treated a married woman as her husband's "subordinate" and violated the constitutional concepts of gender equality and sensitivity.
•The petition, filed by Joseph Shine and represented by advocates Kaleeswaram Raj and Suvidutt M.S., seeks to drop Section 497 as a criminal offence from the statute book.
Court terms penal provision archaic
•Terming the penal provision archaic, the court had said it was time to reconsider its past decisions and consistent view from 1954 onwards that the penal provision was necessary to uphold family ties.
•Section 497 says that if a man has sexual intercourse with another's wife without the husband's "consent or connivance", he is guilty of the offence of adultery and shall be punished".
•On December 8, 2017, the court issued notice on the petition.
•A three-judge Bench, led by Chief Justice of India (CJI) Dipak Misra had observed that the provision raised a question mark on social progress, outlook, gender equality and gender sensitivity.
•It was time to bring to the forefront a different view with the focus on the rights of women, the CJI said.
•The Constitution Bench, to be headed by the CJI, may consider whether Section 497 would treat the man as the adulterer and the married woman as a victim.
•The larger Bench may also examine why the offence of adultery ceases the moment it is established that the husband connived or consented to the adulterous act. So, is a married woman the "property" of her husband or a passive object without a mind of her own?
•"The provision [Section 497] really creates a dent in the individual independent identity of a woman when the emphasis is laid on the connivance or consent of the husband. This tantamounts to subordination of a woman where the Constitution confers [women] equal status," the Supreme Court declared in the previous hearing.
•Further, only a husband or the person in whose care the husband has left his wife can file a complaint under Section 497.
•The petition challenges the validity of Section 198 (1) and (2) of the Code of Criminal Procedure, which deems that only a husband can be an aggrieved party in offences against marriage like adultery and only he can go to court.
📰 Fall of Section 377 will embolden LGBTQ community: CJI Dipak Misra
Fight against Act sees a cross-section of people approach Supreme Court.
•Chief Justice of India Dipak Misra indicated that collapse of the citadel of Section 377 IPC will open the gates for people from the LGBTQ community to come to court to overcome discrimination and claim their individual rights.
•“A declaration from the court will remove the ancillary disqualifications for people joining services, contesting elections. It will no longer be seen as moral turpitude,” Chief Justice Misra, leading the Constitution Bench, observed on Wednesday. Justice D.Y. Chandrachud said any law criminalising a community for their sexuality was an example of “social disdain.”
•The court was reacting to arguments made by advocate Jayna Kothari, representing Dr. Akkai Padmashali and two others, on the branding and ostracisation suffered by the transgender community from both law and society. She said laws like the Andhra Pradesh (Telangana Area) Eunuchs Act still criminalised transgender persons. Ms. Kothari said Section 36A of the Karnataka Police Act of 1963, which was amended only in 2016, saw transgender persons as a criminal class.
Criminal Tribes Act
•These Acts were identical to the notorious Criminal Tribes Act of 1871, which branded a number of marginalised population groups like transgenders as “innately criminal”. The Criminal Tribes Act was repealed in 1949 but Section 377 continues to survive in the statute book, Ms. Kothari argued.
•The fight against Section 377 has seen a cross-section of people approach the court. Navtej Singh Johar, a Sangeet Natak Akademi Award winning Bharatanatyam dancer; Sunil Mehra, a senior journalist; Ritu Dalmia, a famed restaurateur; Aman Nath, an expert on Indian art, culture who established Neemrana hotel chain; and business executive Ayesha Kapur are prominent among them.
•Arguing through senior advocate Mukul Rohatgi and advocate Saurabh Kirpal, they contended that “we are not seeking protection only as sexual minorities but recognition of characteristics that inhere to all human beings.”
•Hotelier Keshav Suri, through senior advocate Arvind Datar, has argued that right to sexuality, sexual autonomy and freedom to choose a sexual partner forms the cornerstone of human dignity. Section 377 criminalises a section of people. It is wrong to say that it only punishes the act and not the people.
•Twenty IITians represented by advocate Menaka Guruswamy argued that Section 377 violates Articles 15 (discrimination on sex), 14 (equality), 19 (liberty) and 21 (life and dignity) of the Constitution. Ms. Guruswamy portrayed it as a terrible colonial legacy which has a “chilling effect.”
•Appearing for the Voices against Section 377, senior advocate Shyam Divan urged the court to declare a ‘right to intimacy’. He said the LGBTQ people find it difficult when they accompany a loved one to the hospital for an emergency or while opening a bank account.
📰 High on rhetoric: on Punjab's drug menace
Punjab’s drug menace demands an all-out war that goes beyond empty gestures
•It has taken Punjab Chief Minister Captain Amarinder Singh over a year and a half to launch his much-anticipated war on drugs. This he did on July 4 by ordering mandatory drug tests for all government employees, including the police. While this is welcome, even if belated, it is a very small and insubstantial measure towards curbing the pervasive drug menace. For someone who promised to wipe out drugs from the State within a month of being elected, the conduct of annual drug tests on some 3.25 lakh employees is a piece of tokenism. More steps are needed; less missteps, too. The decision of the Punjab Cabinet to recommend the death penalty to drug-peddlers is an example of the latter. Capital punishment is abhorrent. Given that there is evidence that suggests it is also no guarantee of deterring crime, this is more of an empty signal. What is required is a comprehensive war on drugs fought on several fronts, including interventions in the community to spread awareness and foster a culture against the use of drugs. The challenges faced by the State are huge. Estimates vary but by some accounts as many as two-thirds of all households in Punjab have a drug addict in their midst. Punjab’s prisons are overcrowded with drug-users and peddlers, and its streets and farms witness the easy availability of narcotics and opiates. Last year the government arrested 18,977 peddlers and treated some two lakh addicts. The sheer extent of the problem suggests it is more than just a few profiteers that have been responsible for causing this menace or helping to sustain it. Something of this scale required a wide network, a well-oiled and smoothly run machinery that has the secret support and collaboration of at least a few of those who work in government.
•Given the geography, the drugs, whether it is opium or heroin, make an easy and assisted entrance into Punjabfrom the Golden Crescent (Iran, Afghanistan, Pakistan), and synthetic drugs are thought to come in via Himachal Pradesh. That means those guarding Punjab’s 553-km border with Pakistan must take serious steps to plug the inflow. The Central security forces are obviously beyond the control of Amarinder Singh. Therefore, security-planners in New Delhi have to make sure that the border is properly barred to the flow of narcotic substances. This is a national problem as a substantial portion of the drugs that land in Punjab make their way to the rest of the country. Given the links between drugs and terror, this poses a national security threat. Then there are the politicians. The previous Akali Dal-BJP alliance had also promised to drain Punjab’s vast drug swamp. The political class has a critical role to play in winning the war on drugs. It is not enough that politicians merely line up to have themselves tested for drugs to win political brownie points. They need to put the State and the nation above self-serving political ends and agree that this battle must be fought in concrete ways, going beyond photo-ops and sound-bites.
📰 Traffickers, peddlers, mules or users?
The law on drugs needs some amendments
•At a Cabinet meeting on July 2, the Punjab government recommended to the Union government the death penalty for first time offenders convicted for drug trafficking and smuggling. But the assumption that harsher measures can help deal with the State’s drug problem is flawed. Deterrence by harsh punishments has consistently failed, especially in the context of the Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances Act, 1985 (NDPS Act).
High rate of conviction
•The law on drugs is covered by the NDPS Act. The Act’s primary objective is to deter drug trafficking. It uses every trick in the book to achieve this: strict liability offences, mandatory minimum sentences, even the death penalty for certain repeat offences, to name a few. The system has responded to the law by maintaining a high rate of conviction and imprisonment. In 2015, 41.7% of all prisoners in Punjab were in jail for various offences related to this law. The conviction rate recorded for NDPS cases in Patiala for the same year was 90.7%. The comparative conviction rate under the Indian Penal Code was 30.7%. But Punjab continues to be plagued by drug-related deaths, as recently as June when 23 persons died of drug-related causes.
•The death penalty was introduced in the Act in 1989, to deter narco-terrorism. The legislators even at that time believed that the only way to tackle the growing drug menace was to incorporate the harshest possible punishments in the law. The law also provides a mandatory minimum sentence of 10 years for offences involving commercial quantities of drugs. This determination is based on the assumption that people found with commercial quantities of drugs are drug traffickers.
•But there’s a catch. An executive notification passed by the Department of Revenue in 2009 led to a major change in how commercial quantities under the Act were determined, creating a situation where many offences involving commercial quantity were, in fact, not trafficking offences at all. This notification assigns punishment based on the weight of the whole drug and not just pure content. As a result, sentencing in pharmaceutical drug cases changed drastically across Punjab. A case in Patiala where unauthorised possession of 20 bottles of cough syrup led to a 10-year prison sentence drives home this claim. Thus, given how the law in interpreted, it is hard to say whether the people imprisoned are traffickers, peddlers, mules or users.
•The law also seeks deterrence through strict liability provisions. Under the law, proving possession alone is sufficient, the prosecution does not have to prove intent to lead to conviction. Since intent is harder to prove than a criminal act alone, strict liability ensures higher convictions. This has, predictably, led to another predicament. The police in Punjab follow a template charge-sheet format, just to prove possession. They rarely, if ever, examine the intent of the criminal act. The way investigation is conducted right now, it is impossible to tell whether the person is a peddler or smuggler, or an addict feeding his habit.
Playing to the gallery
•The Cabinet’s proposal to make the law even harsher is an attempt to play to the gallery. It may alleviate people’s concerns for the time being, but it will not yield the results the state as well as its people so desperately seek. Instead, the law and the state need to take the opposite approach. To begin with, to ensure that traffickers are caught instead of users, the law must make intent an ingredient of offences under the NDPS Act. The burden of proof should be on the prosecution to prove that the accused possessed the drug for a particular purpose. Possession alone should not be sufficient to constitute an offence under the Act.
•The Act is also blatantly unforgiving of anyone found in possession of any drug. Section 27 of the Act makes consuming any narcotic drug or psychotropic substance a criminal offence. Criminalising addiction stigmatises it, which automatically inhibits addicts from coming forward for treatment. The state should consider decriminalising addiction and developing an effective treatment strategy by consulting experts, partner agencies and users, and allocating adequate resources. The Punjab government must assess its infrastructural needs and ensure that they are met.
📰 Aadhaar must for health mission cover
Mission ensures health cover to 10 cr.
•The government has mandated the use of Aadhaar card for administering its massive Ayushman Bharat, or National Health Mission, that assures a ₹5 lakh health cover to 10 crore families.
•While possessing an Aadhaar card isn’t mandatory to avail services, a proof of enrolment, or request for enrolment, is mandatory. The Ayushman Bharat is scheduled to roll out this August.
•“…A beneficiary eligible for receiving the benefits under the Scheme shall be required to furnish proof of possession of Aadhaar number or undergo Aadhaar authentication…Any beneficiary desirous of availing the benefits under the Scheme, who is not yet enrolled for Aadhaar, shall have to apply for Aadhaar by 31st March 2019 provided she or he is entitled to obtain Aadhaar,” says a notification by the Health Ministry on July 4.
•“...Provided that till the time Aadhaar is assigned to the individuals, benefits under the Scheme shall be given to such individuals, subject to the production of the following documents, namely:–
•(i) if he or she or has enrolled, his or her Aadhaar Enrolment ID slip; or
•(ii) a copy of his or her request made for Aadhaar enrolment and…(one) of a Bank Passbook, Voter id, etc.,” the notification specifies.
•Those having trouble verifying biometrics will have the option of getting “face recognition,” a technology that is yet to see the light of day. If nothing works, the patients will be required to get the QR code scanned on their enrolment letter.
📰 A clean cooking strategy: driving towards sustainability
In its drive towards sustainability and energy security, India must ensure an awareness of better cooking fuel choices
•Energy use, a key indicator of living standards across the world, is also instrumental in raising it. The choice of cooking fuel in households (especially rural) has a huge impact on living conditions especially for women and children. On an average in India, household spending on cooking fuel accounts for around 5-6% of its total expenditure. Factors such as socio-economic (availability and easy access, also determined by household income and price of fuel, education and awareness), culture or lifestyle, and, to a large extent, government policies also influence cooking fuel choice.
•Affordable, reliable and clean energy for cooking is essential not only for reducing health and environmental impacts but also helping women to do more productive work and developing the rural economy.
Comparing the options
•Among the various fuel options available (firewood, pellet, biogas, kerosene, liquefied petroleum gas or LPG, piped natural gas or PNG) biogas accounts for the lowest effective greenhouse gas emission; PNG and then LPG are next. An assessment of annual life cycle emissions of various fuels per household per annum is based on the estimation of life cycle emissions, feedstock processing, fuel processing, distribution and cook-stove use. Further, a comparison of the levelised cost of various fuels (non-taxed and not subsidised), annual life cycle emission per household (kg/CO2 equivalent) and extent of in-house air pollution for various cooking fuels suggests that biogas and PNG are the best cooking energy options. Cooking fuels emit substantial amounts of toxic pollutants (respirable particles, carbon monoxide, oxides of nitrogen and sulphur, benzene, formaldehyde and polyaromatic compounds) which contribute to indoor air pollution. In households with limited ventilation — common in rural household and semi-urban areas — these pollutants could lead to severe health problems. Among the various options available for cooking fuel, firewood and pellet are the most polluting, LPG and kerosene are moderately cleaner, and biogas and natural gas are cleaner fuels for combustion.
The push
•National level programmes to ensure that most switch to clean cooking fuels have been initiated since the 1980s, the National Project on Biogas Development (NPBD) being an example. But the programme has been hampered by mala fide practices, poor construction material, a lack of maintenance, misrepresentation of achievements and a lack of accountability and follow-up services. Once again, in order to ensure access to clean energy —a key focus area for poverty alleviation —the government launched a flagship programme, Pradhan Mantri Ujjwala Yojana in May 2016. with a cumulative target of providing LPG connections to more than eight crore families. Further, the Petroleum and Natural Gas Regulatory Board (PNGRB) has been holding auctions across cities for distribution of gas for cooking through PNG.
•However, since conventionally, governments have been subsidising LPG and as such a consumption-based subsidy is not available for biogas and PNG, it has led to a preference for LPG over other cleaner, safer, more cost effective and locally available options (biogas in rural areas). Further, LPG import along with large subsidies are a drain on government resources which hamper the focus on other social development programmes.
What can work
•To promote biogas in rural and semi-urban areas, adopting the service-based enterprise model with suitable resource availability offers a sustainable approach. It will also help self-drive the programme. The model is being successfully implemented in Hoshiarpur, Punjab using a 100 cubic meter biogas plant. The plant supplies clean and piped cooking biogas to 44 households and a school every day.
•Such models can also generation employment significantly at the grass-root level an important additional benefit of running a biogas programme. However, there is a need to provide financial support and facilitate capacity building in order to promote enterprise-based models for community-level plants.
•The cost-competitiveness of natural gas (including imported re-gasified LNG) calls for scaling its penetration in urban and semi-urban/rural areas. PNG needs to be promoted in urban areas beginning with the densely populated Tier-I and Tier-II/III cities, making LPG just one of the options to choose from rather than it having an edge over others. For this, the cost of LPG must be set as the upper-cost ceiling and the PNGRB could focus only on the setting up of safety regulations, with distribution rights being given to distributors.
•To further enable a consumer to freely make cooking fuel choices, consumption-based subsidies need to be replaced with a functional subsidy that is provided on the basis of household income levels and local variables. Possibility of leakages must also be eliminated by ensuring that subsidies of any kind are provided only through direct benefit transfer. Such an approach will provide a neutral thrust and promotion to different types of cooking fuels on the basis of their original virtues.
•As India takes a long-term view on sustainability and energy security, it is important to create an environment where its citizens are aware of the options and make their energy choices based on the nature of the fuel and not because of socio-economic constraints.
📰 The problems with the HECI draft Bill
The Higher Education Commission of India is likely to overregulate and micromanage universities
•The draft Higher Education Commission of India (Repeal of University Grants Commission Act) Bill, 2018 (HECI), aims to replace a historical statutory body, the UGC; push for more government control; and stifle critical thinking on campuses. As the education system is the most potent instrument for shaping a country’s future, and given India’s massive youth population, reframing the education system in a manner that will reflect the government’s agenda is clearly imperative for it.
No time to discuss
•That the government is in a hurry to pass this Bill in Parliament is reflected in the fact that Human Resource Development Minister Prakash Javadekar gave merely 10 days to stakeholders to submit their feedback on the Bill (the last date was July 7). This is worrying and definitely not the way a massive reform such as this should be deliberated.
•Mr. Javadekar argues that the draft Bill is in accordance with the government’s commitment to reform the regulatory mechanism to provide “more autonomy” to higher education institutes. He believes that the HECI will cater to the changing priorities of higher education. The UGC, it is argued, is preoccupied with disbursing funds and is unable to concentrate on mentoring higher education institutes, focus on research, and implement other quality measures required in the education sector. So, the HECI will focus solely on academic matters while grants will be issued by the Ministry.
•The argument is perplexing as what is expected of the higher education system as envisaged by Mr. Javadekar can very well be done by the UGC. To do so, the UGC needs to be restructured in a manner that will ensure that its autonomy is strengthened without any scope for patronage politics and political interference. However, no such restructuring has been attempted, taking into account the UGC’s founding goals, achievements, shortcomings and the reasons for such shortcomings.
•Instead, as the HECI draft Bill is already up on the Ministry’s website, it is important to dwell upon at least six of the concerns that are being expressed by the media and by academics.
Six concerns
•One, Mr. Javadekar tweeted that the transformation of the regulatory set-up is based on the principles of minimum government and maximum governance, separation of grant functions, the end of inspection raj, powers to enforce ‘Saaf Niyat, Sahi Vikaas’, and focus on academic quality. This is clearly a case of doublespeak. The nature of the structure of the commission and its advisory council shows that they are bound to have more “government” in decision-making processes rather than academics.
•Two, sweeping powers render the HECI more authoritative than the collective strength of campus authorities. The powers and functions of the HECI trivialise the concept of autonomy, not the least because “non-compliance (of directions of the HECI) could result in fines or jail sentence.” This means that the authority of the HRD Ministry will be strengthened. Also, under the new terms of engagement, universities will have to take the concurrence of the HECI before offering a course. This restricts the freedom of a university’s Board of Studies. The draft Bill states: If any University grants affiliation in respect of any course of study to any institution in contravention of the provisions of the regulation/rule/recommendation issued by the Commission...the Commission... may impose a penalty on such University and/ or on such Institution which may include fine, or withdrawal of power to grant degrees/diplomas or direction to cease operations.” If there is a threat of academic functions being usurped through this legislation, it calls for reflection.
•Three, with its mandate of improving academic standards with a specific focus on learning outcomes, evaluation of academic performance by institutions, and training of teachers, the HECI is likely to overregulate and micromanage universities.
•Four, the proposal to empower the Centre to remove the HECI’s chairperson and vice-chairperson for reasons including “moral turpitude” will again curtail the regulator’s autonomy, which in turn will impact the autonomy of universities.
•Five, instead of allowing institutions to evolve over time based on their specific needs, focussing on homogeneous, one-size-fits-all administrative models will go against the ethos of academic freedom, diversity, and knowledge production, and will help attempts to corporatise the education sector.
•Six, the move to replace the UGC with the HECI points to the Centre’s aim to restrict the role of the States in matters relating to education. Strangely, this legitimate apprehension has been articulated by only one politician, Kerala Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan, even though others have been voicing concerns that the Terms of Reference for the 15th Finance Commission will weaken federalism.
Access to education
•Mr. Javadekar’s sudden decision to opt for the HECI is attributed to Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s lament in October 2017 that no Indian university figures among the world’s top 500. However, Mr. Modi’s worries are misplaced. This is because one, the bigger concern for India is that despite being a country with a huge young population, higher education remains a privilege; many do not yet have access to it, mainly because it is not affordable. Also, those who do have access attend universities to further their life chances; aiming to get their university in the world’s top 500 list is not their priority. Two, education is a continuum from lower to higher. The quality of higher education is determined by the quality of lower education, which is extremely poor, and that should be our focus. Three, despite the Modi government’s slogan, ‘Sabka Saath Sabka Vikas’, the fact is that the number of Scheduled Castes, Scheduled Tribes, and Muslims who have access to even basic education, let alone higher education, remains abysmal. The Prime Minister should concentrate his energies on improving this dismal scenario rather than lamenting about India not figuring in the world’s top universities list. Even the poorest child in India should have access to the best education that will benefit and improve his or her future. Education must serve as ladder for those in the lower rungs of society. In India there is no such ladder, and many children continue to lead a poor quality life with no access to education. Seen from this perspective, the fact that there is no reference to expand the higher education sector such that it will reach the marginalised and the poor is what is actually a “blot”. Including the excluded should be India’s goal, and reservation and affirmative action are the way forward.
📰 Mercenary conservation
Allowing for private forests can leadto illegal activities and change thenatural behaviour of wildlife
•Karnataka recently drafted Private Conservancy Rules in a bid to increase forest area through private land. Under the rules, anyone who has a minimum of 100 acres of land bordering a national park can convert it to a “Wildlife Private Conservancy”. Of this land, 5% can be used to construct buildings for ecotourism; the rest has to be kept for flora and fauna. The move has received criticism, with activists and retired forest officers concerned that this could lead to illegal activities in private spaces.
•Though policies are different in India and South Africa, there has been much talk about how we are going down the Africa way with this new approach. In South Africa, agricultural land can be converted into wildlife reserves. The government specifies how much land is required for each animal, purchases are then made, and wildlife is introduced.
•Some game reserves allow hunting, which is legal. Hunting rights for specific animals are auctioned regularly. The highest bidder may gun down the animal and carry its head as a “trophy”. Each species has a minimum bid with the Big Five — namely, the cape buffalo, rhino, elephant, leopard and lion — being the most expensive. The locals wholeheartedly support hunting as it brings in foreign exchange and thus motivates the management to run the game reserve better, in turn leading to more hunting bids.
•Private reserve owners treat wildlife in any way they deem fit. In one game reserve, an elephant recently went rogue and broke the fence. It was shot down and the carcass was left rotting inside the reserve for months. In another instance, a red hartebeest with a tumour was shot down and thrown to lions. On inspection, the “tumour” was found to be a deposit of grass that happened probably due to a redirection of food through a cavity or hole. A veterinarian could have easily solved this, but that was not to be.
•Though these wildlife spaces are massive, they are private and hence fenced. This constantly challenges and changes the natural behaviour of wildlife. Some reserves have two sections: one with lions and one without. However, predators ensure survival of the fittest, and as a corollary, their absence leads to overgrazing and excess population. There is also a territorial issue: in enclosed spaces, an alpha cannot be established easily as the non-alphas are unable to find new ground. This leads to more infighting and behavioural disturbances. Also, the rules for poaching are still in the grey. Rhinos are regularly poached for their horns. Reserves urge people not to geo-tag their location, for example on social media, in fear of poachers noticing.
•Even though South African game reserves claim to respect wildlife, it is a business for them as their animals are bred and gunned down for money. If money weren’t a motivating factor, the spaces would have continued being agricultural lands.
📰 Internet benefiting rural China
55 million students in rural schools have access to live streaming classes
•China became the biggest gaming market in the world early last year, accounting for more than a quarter of the total gaming revenue globally. But it is much more than games and fun in the vast country where Internet is playing a big role in rural transformation with over 55 million students in rural schools getting access to live streaming classes.
•According to the China Internet Report 2018, released at the RISE international tech conference currently on here, local governments in China spend 8% of their annual budgets on digitisation of education. Nearly 78 million rural users read news from three primary news apps at least once a month and 50% of China’s poor villages will be equipped with e-commerce capabilities by 2020.
•China’s internet penetration is just over 50%, much lower than the 89% penetration in the U.S., but the country’s sheer size and scale of internet use has meant that there are three times the number of smartphone users and 11 times the number of mobile payment gateway users in China than in the US. With a user base of roughly 210 million, China is discovering the value of internet in the development of e-commerce, education and media in the rural expanses.
•The 100-page report says that about 2,100 Taoboo villages would soon account for 4,90,000 active online shops, which would translate into $19 million annual sales, creating 1.3 million new jobs. Internet giants such as Baidu, Alibaba and Tencent are present in almost every tech sector, from streaming videos to self-driving cars. According to the report, online shopping giants are going offline, allowing shoppers to scan product information with smartphones or use smart cards that guide them to their tastes. Users thus can place orders from their apps and have groceries delivered from the stores to their doors. The report gives a curated look at key trends and companies, said Ravi Hiranand, executive producer, Abacus.
📰 Climate change threatens the Nilgiri tahr
The endangered wild goat could lose approximately 60% of its habitat, starting from the 2030s
•The antics of the sure-footed Nilgiri tahr are a treat to watch, but these endangered wild mountain goats – found only in high altitudes in India’s Western Ghats — could be losing their footing with increasing climate change. Even under moderate scenarios of future climate change, tahrs could lose approximately 60% of their habitats from the 2030s on, predict scientists in their study in Ecological Engineering, an international journal that emphasises the need for ecological restoration.
•Scientists tried to predict how climate change can affect tahr habitat in the Ghats by mapping tahr distribution (using existing information and field surveys) and then using climatic factors of these locations to see where tahrs would be able to survive, given current and future climate change scenarios.
•They found that tahr strongholds such as Chinnar, Eravikulam and Parambikulam in Kerala will still be stable habitats under different climate change scenarios.
•However, other regions, including parts of Tamil Nadu’s Kalakkad Mundanthurai Tiger Reserve and the wildlife sanctuaries of Peppara, Neyyar, Schenduruny and Srivilliputhur, could experience severe habitat loss in future; in total, approx. 60% of tahr habitat could be lost across the Ghats from 2030s onwards. There are only around 2,500 tahrs left in the wild and their population — “small and isolated, making them vulnerable to local extinction” — shows a “decreasing” trend, as per the International Union for Conservation of Nature.
Local threat
•According to senior author Jayahari K. M. of Delhi-based World Resource Institute India, the study has to be seen in the context of this identified vulnerability; the impacts of climate change may further increase the chances of local extinction, he said. The study’s findings demand a comprehensive species management plan, said co-authors Sony R.K. and Sandeep Sen of the Ashoka Trust for Research in Ecology and the Environment.
•Scientists, including P. S. Easa, member of the National Board for Wildlife (who also co-authored the latest report on Kerala’s tahr populations), had drafted a tahr recovery plan in 2010. According to the report, only the Eravikulam and Mukurthi National Parks stress on tahr-centered conservation activities in their management plans. Though the recovery plan identified “conservation units” and made site-specific recommendations, how much of it has been implemented is unclear, said Dr. Easa.
•“It is important that we focus our efforts on these conservation units and monitor isolated populations,” he said.
