📰 Coming home to jail
Why the Repatriation of Prisoners Act, 2003 will prove to be a win-win situation for India
•Two cases of repatriation of Indian nationals, the first being 52-year-old Ismail Samma of Gujarat, and the second, of a sick 21-year-old, Jetendaera Arjanwara of Madhya Pradesh, highlight the tribulations of being imprisoned in a foreign prison.
•While Ismail’s imprisonment in Karachi, Pakistan, came to light last January after being given up for dead for nine years by his family, Jetendaera’s case became known in May after five years of detention. In this time, the young man’s physical and mental health had deteriorated and he suffered from a rare blood disease. Both men had accidentally crossed the border with Pakistan and were sentenced for illegal entry. They were detained well past their terms as a result of delayed consular attention and nationality verification.
Global conventions
•The right to return to one’s home country is assured under Article 12(4) of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. A sentence served in a foreign land, far away from family, familiar food and language, has been globally perceived to be more onerous than one served at home. Therefore, the Vienna Convention on Consular Relations, 1963, provides for information to consulate, consular protection and consultation upon arrest, detention and during trial in a foreign country including entitlement to travel documents.
•Similarly, the UN Model Agreement on the Transfer of Foreign Prisoners and Recommendations on the Treatment of Foreign Prisoners 1985, lays emphasis on the social rehabilitation of foreign prisoners through early repatriation to their home countries to serve their remaining sentence. The legacy of transfer of sentenced prisoners lies in the post-war humanitarian exchange of prisoners of war and in two UN Conventions of 2004 (against transnational organised crime and against corruption) which have laid emphasis on the issue of inter-country transfer of prisoners. Both anticipate, under Articles 17 and 45, respectively, that state parties may consider entering into bilateral or multilateral agreements for transfer to their territory of persons sentenced to imprisonment or other forms of deprivation of liberty for completion of their sentences.
•In consonance with these international humanitarian commitments, most countries have legislated on a Repatriation of Prisoners Act. The transfer framework under the Act is premised on the principles that an offence committed abroad is also an offence in the home country and the sentence implemented upon transfer shall not be aggravated.
Indian conditions
•India legislated its Repatriation of Prisoners Act in 2003, which came into force on January 1, 2004. The first part deals with the transfer of sentenced foreign national prisoners from India, while the second deals with the transfer of sentenced Indian nationals into India. It explains the eligibility for transfer, the transfer process and obligations upon the transferring and receiving states with regard to consent, communication and custody of a prisoner.
•Every sentenced foreign prisoner in an Indian prison and every Indian national in a prison abroad is technically eligible for repatriation to a prison in their home country under these conditions: they are willing; have no pending appeals; the offence is not an offence under military law; the sentence is not a death sentence; they have at least six months of their sentence still left to serve, and their transfer has the consent of both treaty countries.
•The Act is a significant one for a country such as India which sees considerable outflow and inflow annually by blue- and white-collar workers, fishermen, students, stateless persons and other groups. Several come into conflict with the law. The Minister of State for External Affairs told Parliament in March 2018 that there were as many as 7,850 Indian nationals in the prisons of 78 countries. Data on detentions from India’s National Crime Records Bureau showed that at the end of 2015 there were 6,185 foreign national prisoners; 66% of them were from Bangladesh alone. While more than 2,095 Indian nationals (2017) were known to be sentenced abroad (in Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Kuwait, the U.K., the U.S., Canada, Nepal, Bhutan, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, China, France, Germany, Indonesia, Myanmar and Thailand), 2,363 foreign nationals were sentenced prisoners in India at the end of 2015. They would be eligible for repatriation subject to nationality verification.
•On its part, India has taken steps for reciprocal transfers under the Act by developing a Standard Draft Agreement, signing 30 bilateral transfer agreements and entering into transfer arrangements with signatories of the Inter-American Convention on Serving Criminal Sentences Abroad and the Council of Europe’s Convention on the Transfer of Sentenced Persons. This brings at least 50 more countries into a co-operative administration of justice framework.
•However, despite the call of alarming numbers and the scope of treaties, there were only nine foreign prisoners repatriated from India in 2015, six from the U.K. and one each from France, Germany and the UAE. Between 2003 and March 2018, only 63 of 171 prisoner applicants abroad have been transferred to India.
•Effecting transfers under the Repatriation of Prisoners Act, presents a win-win situation for India as it need not spend unduly on the housing of foreign national prisoners. It can also save the cost of providing consular services abroad by bringing back Indian prisoners. It can simultaneously satisfy the public expectation of bringing nationals home and the meeting of international humanitarian commitments.
📰 Staring at statelessness
With the second and final draft of Assam’s National Register of Citizens set to be published on July 30, the fate of millions hangs in the balance. Rahul Karmakar reports on the predicament of those declared as ‘suspected foreigners’ and their efforts to convince the state otherwise
•Badal Das is paying for his illiteracy and a possible clerical error made five decades ago. He hails from Kinna Khal, a village of mostly Scheduled Caste Bengali Hindus located 500 metres east of the India-Bangladesh border. Since 2016, when the Foreigners Tribunal (FT) 4, one of 100 across Assam, in Silchar first summoned him, Das has spent more than Rs. 50,000 on policemen, lawyers and middlemen who had promised to settle his case quickly.
•Silchar, the headquarters of Cachar district in southern Assam’s Barak Valley, is 40 km from Kinna Khal. Despite all the ‘speed money’, the FT fixed the first hearing of his case only in March this year. But luck was not on his side. Two days before his scheduled hearing, lawyers in Silchar began a four-month boycott of the FT over a fee dispute. On June 6, Das was declared a foreigner.
•Villagers pooled funds to help Das, 53, who barely earns Rs. 4,000 a month selling fish, file a case against the declaration. FT4 has called him again on July 27. “All I want is two square meals a day for my family of three. I am not sure what will happen to me a few days from now. I have nowhere else to go,” he says.
Victimised by clerical error
•Das’s problems began soon after the Assam government launched the exercise to update the National Register of Citizens (NRC). The NRC was first prepared in 1951 using the particulars of everyone enumerated in the Census that year. Das used his father’s legacy data code, 310-4006-8764, to submit his papers. Specific to Assam, legacy data is an NRC applicant’s family link with names in official documents up to the 1971 voters’ list. But he ran into trouble because his father’s name read ‘Nokesh Chandra Das’ instead of ‘Nokesh Ram Das’ as was written in the refugee registration certificate of September 17, 1954. He had not realised that ‘Ram’ had become ‘Chandra’ in earlier voters’ lists when he enrolled as a voter in 1989 as ‘son of Nokesh Ram Das’.
•Most of the nearly 10,000 residents of Kinna Khal and the adjoining Narapati Colony, Subodhnagar, Chandinagar Part 4, and Salimabad belong to the fishing community. These villages are in low-lying areas locally known as ‘haor’. They remain flooded for eight months a year, as the Surma river beyond the Bangladeshi border tends to overflow.
•None of the 3,500 people living in Kinna Khal made it to the first NRC draft list of 19 million names (32.9 million had applied) published on December 31, 2017. They fear that they may be excluded from the second and final draft too, which is scheduled to be published on July 30. But why such a fear?
•“Ours is a flood-prone area and many documents have been destroyed by water. They (the NRC Seva Kendra or the NSK) have found fault with every single document we have submitted, be it the refugee registration card, the voters’ ID or the ration card. It is as if they have already decided that we are foreigners. This is our reward for living so close to the border,” says Kamal Krishna Das, who retired as a school teacher 15 years ago. He is in trouble for using his mother’s legacy data, which apparently did not match his credentials.
•A clerical error has also made 36-year-old Rasendra Namashudra’s life difficult. His wife Lakhi Mandal’s voter ID not only has her name printed as ‘Lakri’ but states her husband’s name as Bajendra Mandal. In the case of Bamacharan Das, 53, who runs a small pharmacy in Kinna Khal, the error is even more baffling. “A few letters here and there are understandable. But a very special system must have changed my name to an alien-sounding ‘Lakakagap Banre N’ in the voter ID,” he says.
The NRC cows
•Every family in Kinna Khal has spent Rs. 10,000-12,000 to get their names in the NRC. The expenses pertain to a range of bureaucratic hurdles, from submission of documents to the family tree verification process. Some like Sanchita, wife of trader Manmatha Das, have spent much more. Sanchita had to travel to an NSK in Dibrugarh, about 650 km away. Similarly, fisherman Nikunja Das had to travel to the Mayong NSK in central Assam’s Morigaon district, 350 km away, because a person not related to him had used his father’s legacy code.
•Among the first to travel beyond Barak Valley for family tree verification was Upen Das, 55, of Motinagar, a village near Silchar. The marginal farmer was summoned to an NSK in Hojai, 260 km away, a couple of months ago. “A man in Hojai was found to have used Upen’s legacy code fraudulently. But Upen was called at a very short notice. He sold his prized possession, a cow, cheaply to fund his trip to Hojai, where he hoped to prove that he belonged to the genuine family,” says Aurobinda Roy of the Silchar-based NGO, Unconditional Citizenship Demand Forum.
•At least 40 others who were summoned to NSKs outside the Barak Valley sold their cows at less than half the going rate of Rs. 35,000-40,000 in order to fund their trip. “Cattle sold off cheap in a hurry have come to be known as ‘NRC cows’. The exercise to weed foreigners out has thus devalued the otherwise revered cow,” Roy says.
•But the fishing villages of ‘haor ’ have no cows to sell. A few have sold their only asset and means of livelihood, their boat, while others have been supplying fish free to the people from whom they have borrowed money.
The D-voter target
•Kinna Khal falls under the Katigorah police station, about 12 km away. Within the station complex is a weather-beaten cottage that houses the Border Police unit where sub-inspector A.H. Laskar heads a three-man team.
•Assam is the only State to have something like the Assam Police Border Organisation, or Border Police, dedicated to curbing illegal migration. Set up in June 1962, it was initially a wing of the police’s Special Branch, under the Prevention of Infiltration of Pakistanis Act, 1964. In 1974, it became an independent branch headed by an additional director general of police (ADGP).
•“Come after July 15 when the case is registered (in the FT),” Laskar tells Farman Ali and his wife Majlufah from Siddipur, on the outskirts of Katigorah. Their names are in the new list of 1,440 D-voters under the Katigorah police station. In Assam, a D-voter is a ‘doubtful voter’, disenfranchised by the government on account of his or her alleged lack of valid citizenship credentials.
•“My family of five are in the NRC first draft. We have no idea why our daughter [Majlufah] has been marked a D-voter,” says 72-year-old Haji Sofiullah of Teentikri village. He is convinced that the government machinery is targeting Bengali Muslims. As an example, he cites the case of Suleiman Ahmed in the adjoining district of Karimganj. FT4 in Karimganj had declared Ahmed an Indian in a 2017 case, but he has been declared a ‘foreigner’ in a new case.
•Laskar, one of the 3,153 retired soldiers drafted into the Border Police under a Central government scheme, says he feels the pain of the people who have been served notices. “But I have a job to do. I have to submit a report within three days of receiving instructions,” he says.
•The 1,440 D-voters are scattered among the 199 villages under the Katigorah police station, with the farthest being Natanpur, on the Bangladesh border 32 km away.
•“At least 500 D-voters are in Kinna Khal and adjoining villages. We are easy targets for a police force that has been given a monthly target to produce D-voters,” says Shanku Chandra, a businessman-activist who has taken up 50 cases of poor D-voters and declared ‘foreigners’ in his village.
•A senior Border Police officer admits that the district police chiefs are under pressure to deliver but claims there were no specific targets in terms of generating D-voter cases. “Call it pressure or over-enthusiasm, most people targeted as suspected foreigners turn out to be Indian citizens,” says Aminul Islam of the All India United Democratic Front (AIUDF), a political party that has been helping the “victims of the system”.
•Islam says that the harassment of Bengali-speaking people — be it Hindus or Muslims — has increased ever since the Supreme Court in 2005 scrapped the Illegal Migrants (Determination by Tribunal) Act, 1983. As per this law, when it came to branding someone as a ‘foreigner’ or ‘illegal migrant’, the burden of proof was on the state. The Supreme Court brought back the British-era Foreigners Act of 1946, which shifted the burden of proof (that they are not foreigners) back on the individuals under suspicion.
•Non-Bengali Muslims too have carried the Bangladeshi tag. The Election Commission had allegedly, without investigation, marked Kismat Ali, 41, a D-voter in 2006, the year he cast his vote for the first time. He was served a notice, but when he failed to turn up for the hearing he was declared a ‘foreigner’ in an ex parte judgment. On August 12, 2015, he was sent to a detention camp in western Assam’s Goalpara, about 260 km from his home in Udalguri district. Kismat was freed on October 30, 2017, after having spent more than two years in Goalpara’s district jail, which doubles up as a detention centre for D-voters and declared foreigners. His freedom came only after he took his battle all the way to the Supreme Court.
•Ali’s father, Mukhtar, is originally from Uttar Pradesh’s Chhatia village. He had come to Assam in 1956 as a truck driver. But this information did not suffice for Ali’s older brother Yusuf, who has also been served a notice branding him a suspected foreigner. Sheikh Asghar, a 48-year-old carpenter from West Bengal’s South 24 Parganas, has a similar story. He was sent to the Goalpara detention camp in July 2017. His wife Shahnaz Begum, their 13-year-old son, and nephew Zishan have made up their minds to go back home as soon as he is released. “Uncle’s problem is that his father’s name is Sheikh Moral in some documents and Mohammed Jarif in some others. We don’t understand how we are ‘suspected foreigners’ when we have no property in Assam and don’t intend to stay here forever,” Zishan says.
•The system has also not spared some indigenous people, allegedly marked because of surnames common with Bengalis. One such is Anna Bala Roy, a Koch-Rajbongshi of Bongaigaon district, who was declared a ‘foreigner’ but was released after she submitted proof of her Indian citizenship. Her case came to the notice of the All Assam Students Union (AASU), which had spearheaded the anti-foreigners Assam Agitation from 1979 to 1985. “We will provide legal help to D-voters who can prove that they are Indian citizens by submitting any of the 14 documents accepted as valid,” AASU president Dipanka Nath says.
•The agitation, fuelled by the paranoia that the khilonjia (indigenous) would be overrun by Bangladeshis, ended with the Assam Accord of 1985, which fixed March 24, 1971 as the cut-off date for detection, deletion (from voters’ list) and deportation of illegal immigrants. But it bred xenophobia and an ethnicity-based nationalism that presented the bohiragata (outsider/non-indigenous) as the root of all evil.
Preparing for the worst
•Zishan says he changed his lawyer when he discovered that the man had been fleecing his uncle. “The police and the lawyers make the most of the poor people’s ignorance. People are served notices arbitrarily and are made to run from pillar to post. If this is not harassment, how do you explain the fact that more than 90% of the cases involving D-voters and foreigners are dismissed?” says Kamal Chakraborty of Unconditional Citizenship Demand Committee.
•He cites the example of Geeta Namasudra, 65, of South Shingari village in Karimganj district. She was sent to a detention camp on August 2, 2015 even though she had the 1966 legacy data of her father. She was granted bail in 2017, but her family could not manage the two sureties of Rs. 20,000 each that were needed. Kamalakhya Dey Purkayastha, a local Congress MLA, has promised to get her out on bail.
•“The problem lies in the so-called investigation by the Election Commission and the Border Police. Its purpose is only to pander to the prejudices of the Assamese majority and the government, who believe that there are millions of Bangladeshis in Assam. Hence, if they don’t find Bangladeshis, they accuse Indian citizens of being Bangladeshis, grossly violating their citizenship rights and making a mockery of the fundamental rights enshrined in the Constitution,” says Aman Wadud, who takes up cases of suspected foreigners pro bono.
•ADGP (Border) Bhaskar Jyoti Mahanta denies that genuine citizens are being harassed. “Action is taken according to inputs gathered from various sources. But our force takes care that no genuine Indian citizens are harassed,” he says.
•NRC Coordinator Prateek Hajela says there will be three categories of people after the final NRC draft is published: those with their names in the list, people put on hold due to doubts about their status, and the excluded. “But people will get an opportunity to prove their citizenship through claims and objections,” he says.
•The fear that genuine Indian citizens could get left out was sparked by Hajela’s submission before the Supreme Court on July 2, which stated that about 1.5 lakh people named in the first NRC draft would be left out of the final draft because of family tree test failure, suspicious certificates obtained by married women from gram panchayats, and data entry errors.
•“The NRC is a planned exercise to exclude the names of non-Assamese, particularly the Bengalis of Barak Valley. We fear the creation of a stateless people, who will then be exploited, as India has no treaty with any other country for their deportation,” says Sadhan Purkayastha of Citizens’ Rights Protection Coordination Committee.
•“The Brahmaputra Valley has always viewed Barak Valley as a cancer, and the rift between the two has only widened over the NRC and the Citizenship (Amendment) Bill, 2016, which, if passed, will grant citizenship to Bengali Hindus excluded by the NRC. So it is better to cut the cancer away and make Barak a separate State,” says Pradip Dutta Roy, founder-president of the All Cachar Karimganj Hailakandi Students Association. In May, he had written to Chief Justice Dipak Misra about a possible conflict of interest involving Justice Ranjan Gogoi, a “resident and voter in Assam” who “is monitoring the NRC process”.
•Others, though, give the benefit of doubt to the NRC machinery and see how things pan out. “There could be some problems with people who cannot prove their citizenship, but the government has laws to protect the rights of everyone, even those who have sought asylum for persecution in their countries,” says Cachar deputy commissioner S. Lakshmanan.
•The government is also aware of the cost on declared foreigners. It spends Rs. 13 lakh per month on 885 inmates — 265 Hindus and 618 Muslims — locked up in six detention camps.
•“The NRC will impact many lives, particularly poor, illiterate Bengali people who had citizenship documents but did not know their worth or could not preserve them. Our central leadership will find a way out,” says Amarchand Jain, Katigorah’s BJP legislator.
•The ‘haor’ residents, though, are angry with the Bharatiya Janata Party for ‘false promises’ that Bengali Hindus would be protected. “We voted for them for nothing. The Congress at least did not needle us,” says Shyamalkanti Deb, a teacher. There are nearly an equal number of Bengali Hindus and Muslims in the Barak Valley, comprising Cachar, Hailakandi and Karimganj districts.
•“The Muslims in Barak Valley are older settlers than the Hindus, many of whom came only during and after 1971. Many Muslims from here had actually gone over to what was then East Pakistan. The BJP’s pro-Hindu politics is behind the push for the Citizenship (Amendment) Bill, 2016. But for the Assamese nationalism that drives politics in the Brahmaputra Valley, Bengali Hindus and Muslims are the same — both are unwanted. That is why we are trying to set aside religious differences for a united stand against the disenfranchisement of Bengalis, which is what NRC is all about,” says Hilaluddin Laskar, a professor of philosophy in Hailakandi.
•Meanwhile, for people like Jitendra Deb, 60, a farmer in Kinna Khal, all that matters is his daily bread. “Our people came from barely a kilometre in that direction during Partition,” he says, pointing to the Sylhet district of Bangladesh 500 metres away. “They came here to escape conflict and persecution. We would rather die than be forced to go back there.”
📰 Tightrope walk for India, schedules talks with Iran, U.S.
Washington to reimpose curbs on Tehran from August 6, wants all countries to stop their oil imports; Iran clarifies that it understands India’s difficulties.
•Ahead of the first set of U.S. sanctions on Iran kicking in on August 6, the Union government is planning to hold talks with senior Iranian and American officials back-to-back next week. On Monday, Iranian Deputy Foreign Minister Seyed Abbas Araghchi will meet External Affairs Ministry officials. On Tuesday, a U.S. team headed by a senior Treasury Department official will hold meetings with Indian officials to discuss India’s options and concerns, government sources have confirmed.
•The U.S. team, led by Assistant Secretary for Terrorist Financing Marshall Billingslea, has senior diplomats, including State Department Deputy Assistant Secretary for Near Eastern Affairs Andrew Peek, energy officials as well as counter-terrorism officials, and will be in Delhi as part of a U.S. outreach to several countries to convince them to cut down oil imports from Iran to “zero” as well as cut off trade ties.
•This would be the “first face-to-face meeting with the U.S. since sanctions were reimposed”, a government official told The Hindu, adding that the two sides would exchange “perspectives as friends” on the issue. However, both Mr. Billingslea and Mr. Peek, a former U.S. military intelligence officer, are presidential appointees, served on U.S. President Donald Trump’s transition team, and are known for their hardline views on Iran.
•Mr. Araghchi was part of the team of negotiators of the multilateral nuclear deal JCPOA, which the U.S. withdrew from in May. Last month he had warned that Iran could also exit the JCPOA, without sufficient guarantees from the European Union, adding that the deal was now in the “Intensive Care Unit” (ICU), and is likely to ask India for assurances that it will not accede to U.S. pressure.
•This week Iran’s deputy envoy had warned that India would face a “deprivation of all other privileges Iran has offered to India” if it chose to replace Iranian oil from other sources, although he clarified later that Iran understands India’s “difficulties” with its energy choices and respected its sovereign right to choose partners.
Terror on agenda
•According to officials privy to the U.S. team’s agenda, Iran’s role in supporting terror groups in West Asia would be brought up strongly, and they will highlight the U.S.’s support to India on fighting terror.
•Earlier this month Mr. Billingslea took over as the President of the Financial Action Task Force (FATF), where the U.S. was responsible for a decision to “greylist” Pakistan for supporting the LeT and JeM among other terror groups.
•“India tells us fighting cross-border terror is a priority. Then it must also take U.S. concerns about Iran as a state-sponsor of terror and major cause of middle east instability into account,” a diplomat said.
•The visit comes close on the heels of U.S. envoy Nikki Haley’s trip to Delhi where she met Prime Minister Narendra Modi, calling for India to “revise” its relationship with Iran, while a State department said the U.S. would make no exceptions to countries continuing to deal with Iran. Earlier this week, at a briefing for airline manufacturers on Iran sanctions, Mr. Billingslea had a similar message: “We are not in a position to show flexibility on transactions with Iran at this time,” he said, when asked about licenses or waivers for companies trading with Tehran.
•The message appears to have been heard in Delhi. News agency Reuters reported that imports from Iran declined 16% in June despite India’s commitment during President Hassan Rouhani’s visit in February that it would increase its off take of Iranian oil this year. At the same time, India’s oil imports from the U.S. in June have doubled since last year.
•A senior official, briefing on the upcoming visit by the U.S. team said that India will seek a “carve-out” or waiver from sanctions for its investment in the Shahid Beheshti port at Chabahar, as it had received from the Obama administration the last time the US had imposed sanctions, in order to allow trade with Afghanistan. The team would also seek to clarify the U.S. position on the Rupee-Rial mechanism it put into place in 2012, which allowed it to import oil from Iran and supply essential foods and necessities to Iran from a UCO bank-operated fund created with up to half of the import figure in rupees.
•“The question is how do we engage with the US, and we are waiting for them to engage with us. Iran is an important near neighbour and we are an oil dependent economy. We have to see whether they can continue to supply us and if we have options,” the official said.
•The first set of U.S. sanctions will target Iran’s automotive sector, trade in gold, and other key metals.The remaining sanctions will come into place on November 4, and will include targeting Iran’s energy sector and petroleum-related transactions, as well as transactions with the Central Bank of Iran.
📰 ‘DNA profiles won’t be kept permanently’
Will be erased once case ends: official
•India’s proposed DNA databank, to be used during investigation into crimes or to find missing persons, will not permanently store details of people. The DNA details will be removed, subject to “judicial orders,” said a senior official in the Department of Biotechnology.
•“There will be nothing permanent in a DNA bank,” said Renu Swarup, Secretary, Department of Biotechnology. “If there’s a criminal case, till the case is solved the DNA profile will remain in the bank. They will be removed after a judicial order. These things will be specified in the rules.”
•The rules will come after Parliament approves the DNA Technology (Use and Application) Regulation Bill, 2018, the latest version of the DNA ‘profiling’ Bill framed by the Department of Biotechnology in 2015.
•The aim of that draft legislation was to establish an institutional mechanism to collect and deploy DNA technologies to identify persons based on samples collected from crime scenes or to identify missing persons. The Cabinet cleared the Bill on July 3. The Bill envisages a DNA Profiling Board and a DNA Data Bank.
📰 Survey launched to rank States on rural cleanliness
6,980 villages across 698 districts will surveyed
•The Centre has launched the Swachh Survekshan Grameen, 2018, a nationwide survey of rural India to rank the cleanest and dirtiest States and districts on the basis of qualitative and quantitative evaluation.
•A random selection of 6, 980 villages across 698 districts will surveyed during the month of August, following which the Swachh Survekshan Grameen awards are expected to be announced in time for Mahatma Gandhi’s birth anniversary on October 2.
•This is the first comprehensive survey for rural India, which has been launched after three successful editions of a similar survey in urban India, Parameswaran Iyer, Secretary to the Ministry of Drinking Water and Sanitation said at the launch event.
•“Citizen engagement is a key objective of this programme...we hope to get feedback from more than 50 lakh people,” he added.
•The rankings will be based on three basic parameters: direct observation of public places by independent surveyors, service-level progress using data from the Swachh Bharat Mission’s information system and citizens’ feedback. The feedback will be solicited through village meetings, online feedback and direct interviews, as well as discussions with key influencers such as local officials, elected representatives and anganwadi workers, said Mr. Iyer. An audio-visual publicity campaign, featuring Swachh Bharat ambassadors Amitabh Bachchan and Sachin Tendulkar, was also launched.
📰 Conferring eminence
Raising the quality of higher education across the board should be a priority
•In its report on higher education for the Twelfth Plan, the working group of the erstwhile Planning Commission identified expansion, inclusion and excellence as the three pillars for growth. The NDA government had the theme of excellence in its 2016 annual budget, with a proposal to make 10 institutions each in the public and private sectors globally competitive. The challenge of excellence is to develop liberal institutions founded on academic rigour, high scholarship and equitable access for all classes of students. Quite ambitiously, the Ministry of Human Resource Development has taken the decision to give Institution of Eminence (IoE) status to six institutes, three each from the public and private sectors. Potentially, this will help the select few rise above the many State, Central and private universities, national-level institutes of technology, science, management and humanities, and attract talent. While it is a creditable achievement, the recognition raises the bar for the chosen few: the IITs at Mumbai and Delhi and the IISc in the public category, and BITS Pilani and the Manipal Academy of Higher Education, which are private. Giving the tag to Jio Institute, which is yet to come up, generated understandable controversy. It should be ensured that this conditional recognition is fulfilled transparently, and that it meets the requirements on governance structure, infrastructure and faculty within three years.
•The idea of developing centres of higher learning advances the Nehruvian vision of building ‘temples of modern India’. The IoEs can become models of autonomy, academic innovation and equity of access, and lead to a transformation of higher education. That there is need for urgent reform became clear during the selection process: the empowered committee found that State universities had a low output because some of them had several faculty members recruited on contract basis, with no incentive to do research. Such ad hocism must end, and public universities should be insulated from political pressures. Vice-chancellors should be appointed on merit, free of ideological biases. With good governance structures and significant new financial grants, the selected public institutions will be able to innovate on courses and encourage research. The growth of these and other national institutions will also depend on policies to raise the expenditure on R&D as a percentage of GDP. Among countries with a comparable research output, India with 0.8% R&D spending trails Russia, Brazil, South Korea and even Singapore, according to Unesco data. Islands of eminence can inspire, but the long-term goal should be to raise the quality of higher education in all institutions through academic reform. The quality is uneven, and at the bottom levels, abysmal. At the same time, initiatives by charitable trusts — which have declined due to political support for commercialisation and aid cuts — must be welcomed, as this would help open more affordable colleges and universities.
