📰 The Sabarimala singularity
If the Supreme Court looks beyond the essential practices doctrine, it can lead to a radical re-reading of the Constitution
•The Supreme Court is currently hearing oral arguments in Indian Young Lawyers Association v. State of Kerala , in which rules that bar the entry of women aged between 10 and 50 years into the Sabarimala temple in Kerala have been called into question. At a purely unreflecting level the case might well appear to us to be an easy one to resolve. To prohibit women from entering a public space, from worshipping in a shrine of their choice, one would think, ought to be anathema to the tenets of a constitutional democracy. But, as a study of the rival contentions made before the five-judge Bench that heard arguments shows us, the religious freedom clauses in the Constitution are possessed of a special complexity, which the court’s own past jurisprudence has turned into a quagmire of contradictions.
Freedom of religion
•Generally, the right to freedom of religion of both individuals and groups is recognised as an intrinsic facet of a liberal democracy. The Constitution memorialises these guarantees in Articles 25 and 26. The former recognises a right to freedom of conscience and a right to freely profess, practise, and propagate religion, subject to common community exceptions of public order, morality, and health, and also, crucially, to the guarantee of other fundamental rights. Article 25(2)(b) creates a further exception to the right. It accords to the state a power to make legislation, in the interests of social welfare and reform, throwing open Hindu religious institutions of public character to all classes and sections of Hindus. Article 26, on the other hand, which is also subject to limitations imposed on grounds of public order, morality, and health, accords to every religious denomination the right, among other things, to establish and maintain institutions for religious purposes and to manage their own affairs in matters of religion.
•Until now, most cases involving a bar of entry into temples have involved a testing of laws made in furtherance of Article 25(2)(b). For example, in Sri Venkataramana Devaru v. State of Mysore (1958), the Supreme Court examined the validity of the Madras Temple Entry Authorisation Act of 1947, which was introduced with a view to removing “the disabilities imposed by custom or usage on certain classes of Hindus against entry into a Hindu temple.” The court upheld the law on the ground that statutes made under clause 2(b) to Article 25 served as broad exceptions to the freedom of religion guaranteed by both Articles 25 and 26.
Conflicting claims
•But here, in Indian Young Lawyers Association , the attack is to the converse; it is to Rule 3(b) of the Kerala Hindu Places of Public Worship (Authorisation of Entry) Rules, 1965, which states, “Women who are not by custom and usage allowed to enter a place of public worship shall not be entitled to enter or offer worship in any place of public worship.”
•It is by placing reliance on these rules that the Sabarimala temple prohibits women aged between 10 and 50 years from entering the shrine. It claims, through the Travancore Devaswom Board, that its deity, Lord Ayyappa, is a “Naisthik Brahmachari,” and that allowing young women to enter the temple would affect the idol’s “celibacy” and “austerity”. At play, therefore, in the case is a clash between a series of apparently conflicting claims: among others involving the temple’s right to decide for itself how its religious affairs ought to be managed, the rights of a community of devotees who believe that a bar on women’s entry is an essential religious practice, and the rights of those women seeking to assert not only their freedom to unreservedly enter and pray at the shrine, but also their rights to be recognised as equals under the Constitution.
•Traditionally, to resolve tensions of this kind, the Supreme Court has relied on a very particular jurisprudence that it has carved for itself to determine what manners of rituals and beliefs deserve special constitutional protection. This doctrine requires the court to define what constitutes, in its own words, an “essential religious practice”. Judging by its reaction to arguments made inIndian Young Lawyers Association , it appears that the Bench sees this canon as integral to how the case ought to now be decided. Indeed, the petitioners have argued that the ban enforced on menstruating women from entering the Sabarimala shrine does not constitute a core foundation of the assumed religious denomination. On the other hand, the Devaswom Board contends that established customs deserve respect, that this particular Lord Ayyappa in Sabarimala is a celibate, and that women of menstruating age are, therefore, forbidden from entering the temple.
Deeper inquiry
•Were the court to enter into an analysis of these rival claims, by conducting something akin to a trial on whether there exists a tradition as claimed that is essential to the practice of religion, it would be exceeding the remit of its authority, effectively causing it to shoulder dogmatic power over theology. Therefore, what we need is a subtler yet more profound inquiry. Once the court finds that the Sabarimala temple does not represent a separate denomination (this claim is a particularly difficult one for the Dewaswom Board to meet, given that the temple is otherwise open to the public at large), the court must ask itself whether it should yield to the temple’s view on an assumption that there does exist a time-honoured custom prohibiting any women aged between 10 and 50 years from praying at the shrine.
•On such a study, the court will undoubtedly notice that most policies of exclusion in India’s history have been defended as being extensions of a prescription of faith, of being rooted in culture and tradition. To defer to an association’s leaders in matters such as these can only, therefore, have the effect of immortalising discrimination. As Madhavi Sunder wrote in a 2002 paper, to side with “advocates of any singular vision of a community… will often have the effect of silencing (indeed, banishing) dissenters and narrowly defining an association. Worse still, law favouring the autonomy of the group over the autonomy of the individual tends to have the harmful effect of favouring the view of the association proffered by the powerful over the views proffered by less powerful members of the group that is, traditionally subordinate members such as women, children, and sexual minorities.”
•Indeed, Professor Sunder’s pioneering work on cultural dissent represents a fine starting point in any bid to find a progressive solution to the dispute over temple entry. It’s easy to see the manifold attractions of a general policy of limited judicial intervention in matters of religion. But the court should see this as an opportunity not to rationalise religious practices, but to overturn its existing passé ideas on the subject. Given the inexorable relationship in India between religion and public life, it’s time the court shattered the conventional divides of the public and the private. If the court can look beyond the essential practices doctrine and see this case for what it really is — a denial to women not only of their individual rights to freedom of religion but also of equal access to public space — it can help set the tone for a radical re-reading of the Constitution. This can help the court reimagine its jurisprudence in diverse areas, making a meaningful difference to people’s civil rights across spectrums of caste, class, gender and religion. Ultimately, the Constitution must be seen as representing not a hoary conception of boundaries between the state and the individual, but as a transcendental tool for social revolution.
📰 India’s Magna Carta
Marking the 100th year of the Montagu-Chelmsford Report
•This month marks the 100th year of the publication of the ‘Report on Indian constitutional reforms’, commonly known as the Montagu-Chelmsford Report (MCR). Edwin Montagu, then Secretary of State for India, had advocated for increased participation of Indians in the British Indian administration and had begun consultations nearly a year earlier. After many meetings with Indian representatives, Montagu and the then Governor-General, Lord Chelmsford, published the MCR on July 8, 1918.
•The MCR stands out for proposing some of the most radical administrative changes and for giving provincial legislatures the mantle of self-governance. To this extent, the report advocated the need “to emancipate the local governments and legislatures from central control; and to advance, by successive stages, in the direction of conferring responsible government on the provinces.”
•The Montagu-Chelmsford Committee visited Madras Presidency to gather the views of political leaders. T. Varadarajulu Naidu’s book, Justice Movement 1917, informs us that senior members of the Justice Party led by Sir Pitti Theagaraya met the Committee and made extensive demands, which included the “creation of municipalities and local body institutions with sufficient autonomy to handle their local issues... bereft of the intrusive control of the Government.” They further demanded that administration of the Presidency be eventually moved to the local legislature. To this end, they suggested that departments in administration be placed under the control of legislatures.
•Ultimately, the MCR established the framework for devolution of powers and gave credence to the cry for self-governance. This cannot come as a surprise because the report recommended that “the Provinces are the domain in which the earlier steps towards the progressive realisation of responsible government should be taken”. Another one of the most far-reaching objectives of the report was to elucidate the principle of accountable governance by directing that the “Government of India must remain wholly responsible to Parliament.”
•Thus was laid the platform for the development of a responsible government. However, in the 32nd session of the Indian National Congress, led by British theosophist Annie Besant, there was strong opposition to the Montagu declaration as something that “was unworthy of England to offer and India to accept.” However, Besant later accepted the reforms as essential for the progress of British India.
•The MCR would go on to become the basis for the Government of India Act, 1935, and, ultimately, the Constitution. The key principles of responsible government, self-governance and federal structure grew out of these reforms. The MCR on Indian constitutional reforms along with the Montagu Declaration are, thus, worthy claimants of the title of the Magna Carta of modern India.
📰 Different messages, different methods
How India and China are developing their engagements with Africa
•Africa’s global outreach was once driven by its engagement with the developed world. But this is changing as not only are African countries seeking other partners but emerging powers in Asia are also growing in self-confidence and seeing this as an opportunity to tap into. As the visits to Africa by Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Chinese President Xi Jinping this week underscore, both India and China are shaping new narratives of engaging with Africa. Ahead of the 10th Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa (BRICS) Summit in Johannesburg (July 25), Mr. Modi visited Rwanda and Uganda while Mr. Xi’s itinerary included Senegal and Rwanda, with a stopover in Mauritius.
Taking up the baton
•This is Mr. Modi’s second trip to mainland Africa after his visit to Mozambique, South Africa, Tanzania and Kenya in 2016. In the last four years, there have been 23 outgoing visits to Africa by the President, the Vice President and the Prime Minister. While Uganda has seen Prime Ministerial-level visits from India in 1997 and 2007, Mr. Modi’s visit to Rwanda is the first ever Prime Ministerial visit to the fast-developing East African nation with which India elevated its ties to that of a strategic partnership last year.
•Mr. Xi’s visit, his first to Africa after being re-elected in March, comes weeks after the first China-Africa Defence and Security Forum last month in Beijing, which saw a host of African defence ministers and army chiefs in attendance.
•For both China and India, bolstering economic ties are of paramount importance though Africa’s trading patterns with the Asian giants still remain rather traditional; Africa exports raw materials and imports manufactured goods. While India-Africa trade grew from $11.9 billion (2005-2006) to $62.66 billion (2017-2018), it is still no match to China, which is now Africa’s largest trading partner ($166 billion in 2011). The Indian private sector has yet to take full advantage of the investment climate in Africa.
Differences in approach
•While trade and investments are only part of the story, Indian engagement lays emphasis on the long term — enhancing Africa’s productive capacities, diversifying skills and knowledge, and investing in small- and medium-sized enterprises. China’s approach is more traditional — resource-extraction, infrastructure development and elite-level wealth creation.
•Both India and China are laying emphasis on infrastructure and connectivity projects in priority regions of the world as the next phase of economic globalisation. In China’s ambitious Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), East Africa and the Indian Ocean Region are key focus areas.
•India’s cross-border connectivity with Eastern African countries and Indian Ocean island countries is a natural extension of New Delhi’s desire to foster more robust people-to-people connections, increase investment-led trade and business opportunities, and strengthen bilateral partnerships. India is also seeking to reinvigorate its cultural links with East Africa under the rubric of Project ‘Mausam’, an initiative of the Ministry of Culture, which seeks to revive lost linkages with the Indian Ocean ‘world’ (East Africa, the Arabian Peninsula, the Indian subcontinent and Southeast Asia). India’s African cross-border connectivity has three primary forms: maritime-port connectivity under the government’s Security and Growth for All in the Region (SAGAR) and the SagarMala initiative; digital connectivity under the Pan African e-Network project on tele-education and tele-medicine (launched in 2004), and air connectivity in the form of direct flights from Indian cities to African destinations.
•India, Japan and many African nations have also launched a trilateral initiative, the Asia Africa Growth Corridor (AAGC), to develop ‘industrial corridors’, ‘institutional networks’ for the growth of Asia and Africa, and to promote development cooperation. Where the AAGC is a consultative initiative between three equal partners (India, Japan and Africa), the BRI is more of a top-down, unilateral approach to secure Chinese interests, which would eventually traverse continental Asia to reach Europe.
Military ties
•Africa features significantly in the security and geo-strategic considerations of both India and China. India’s security and defence cooperation with Africa is mainly limited to maritime cooperation in the form of anti-piracy operations off the coast of Somalia, deployment of Indian forces to UN peacekeeping missions in Africa, regular shipping visits, and joint-naval patrolling in the Western Indian Ocean Region. These are mainly with Tanzania, Kenya, Mozambique, and the Indian Ocean island countries Mauritius, the Seychelles, Madagascar and Comoros.
•China supports Africa’s military transformation by providing equipment, advanced technology, and independent capacity-building in security — and the China-Africa Defence and Security Forum is an important development.
•It is inevitable that as the centre of gravity of global politics and economics shifts to the Indo-Pacific region, emerging powers like India and China will begin to play a larger role in Africa. There are significant differences in their approaches, and the challenge for them would be to develop partnerships with African nations in a way that makes Africa a part of their growth stories to.
📰 Sanctions relief: on waiver for India under CAATSA
The resolution of the CAATSA stand-off will let India and U.S. address other bilateral issues
•The U.S. Congress’s report allowing the introduction of a presidential waiver of its controversial Countering America’s Adversaries Through Sanctions Act (CAATSA) will be greeted with a sense of relief in both New Delhi and Washington. The two governments have been working hard to avert a stand-off over the issue. The matter was particularly heated with India making it clear it would go ahead with the S-400 Triumf missile system deal with Russia regardless of the U.S. law and the threat of sanctions. CAATSA, signed reluctantly by President Donald Trump last August would have forced his administration to impose sanctions on any country carrying out significant defence and energy trade with sanctioned entities in Russia, Iran and North Korea. Mr. Trump had objected, arguing that the law took away his powers to decide on such matters. Indian delegations led by the Foreign Secretary had made a three-fold case for the waiver: that no weapons India bought would be used against the U.S.; that the U.S., which wants to partner with India in the Indo-Pacific, would hamper India’s military abilities by applying the sanctions or denying the country crucial technology; and that India has significantly reduced its dependence on Russian military hardware while increasing defence purchases from the U.S., and it would be unfair if the U.S. rewarded the effort with punitive measures. After months of testimony, including a final push for waiver for countries like India, Indonesia and Vietnam by U.S. Defence Secretary James Mattis a few days ago, the Congressional committee has relented. The Joint Explanatory Statement of the Committee of Conference, which reconciles House and Senate versions, has accepted the need for waivers. The “modified waiver authority”, or amendment to Section 231 of CAATSA proposed by Congress, allows the President to waive sanctions in certain circumstances, for six months at a time, as long as he certifies that it is in the U.S.’s national security interests and does not “endanger” ongoing operations.
•While the resolution of CAATSA-related sanctions is welcome, it isn’t the only irritant in the U.S.-India relationship that needs the attention of the External Affairs and Defence Ministers at the ‘2+2 dialogue’ with their American counterparts scheduled for September. The sanctions proposed by the Trump administration for energy trade with Iran still loom, as do possible punitive measures at the World Trade Organisation over tariffs and counter-tariffs the two countries have imposed on each other. New Delhi will also be aware that the waivers are contingent on Mr. Trump’s continued support to Indian defence requirements. Given the capricious and unpredictable policy swings Mr. Trump has shown, it will be prudent for New Delhi not to presume that the problems over CAATSA have fully blown over.
📰 Israel’s new law is a form of apartheid
International support for racism in historical Palestine is only going to add fuel to the fire
•The Israeli nationality law is now a fact. Its full name is “Israel, the nation state of the Jewish people”. It states that Eretz Israel (historical Palestine) is the homeland of the Jewish people and that the state of Israel is the nation state of the Jewish people. Furthermore, only the Jews have the right to self-determination in Israel. Hebrew is the only official language (until now Arabic was also an official language) and Arabic has a special status, which is undefined in the text of the law. The law defines future Jewish settlement, which some would call colonisation, in historical Eretz Israel (Israel and the occupied territories) as of supreme national value and vision. It grants religious and national communities the right to maintain a segregated habitat in the state (namely, the practice of having exclusive villages and towns for Jews). These are the main points of the new law.
A historical overview
•A closer deconstruction of this document reveals why this law changes the nature of Israel and, more importantly, why it is ominous as far as the Palestinians are concerned. First, this law denies the fact that within the state of Israel, and indeed within what is called Eretz Israel, there are two national movements. This total denial of the Palestinians’ right to Palestine as a future vision has to be seen in the wider context of the historical circumstances in which Israel was born in 1948. Zionism was a settler colonial movement and Israel is a settler state. This means that Jewish colonisation and the oppression of the Palestinians is on par with the European destruction of the native Americans or of the genocide of the aboriginals by the Australians. The difference is in the historical timing: the Zionist settler colonial project is an unfinished historical episode, as is the Palestinian resistance to it. The project has been quite successful: in 1948, Israeli ethnically cleansed half of Palestine’s population and took over 78% of the land. The Palestinian minority left under its control was put under a harsh military rule on the basis of British colonialist practices.
•This same regime was imposed later on the Palestinians in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip which Israel occupied in 1967. After the 1967 war, Israel stretched over the whole of historical Palestine, but still ruled millions of Palestinians despite its “success” in turning millions of them into refugees over the years. The so-called peace process that ensued after 1967 from an Israeli point of view was meant to find the best way of having as much of historical Palestine with as few Palestinians in it as possible. This is not an easy task in our times as it had been during the days of colonialism and imperialism — partly because of international sensitivity about ethnic cleansing and mainly due to Palestinian steadfastness. Even the most forthcoming Palestinian leaders and movements could not accept the best solution that Israel had to offer for the tension between the Jewish state’s territorial ambition and its demographic concerns. The two-state solution offered by some as a basis for peace is meant to allow Israel total territorial control over autonomous Palestinian Bantustans that could be called a state. The intentional community may support this formula, but Palestinians cannot and will not accept it.
Attempting a new approach
•The nationality law in many ways is an attempt for a new approach. It is part of a strategy that was born out of the failure of the charade of two states offered by Israel and the search for a new method for implementing the settler state’s vision. The architect of this strategy that can be called “unilateralism” is the former Israeli Prime Minister, Ariel Sharon. Its logic is that there is no need to negotiate with the Palestinians over the future, there is a need to decide what part of historical Palestine should be annexed to Israel and what parts can be ruled from the outside. The first step in 2006 was to enclave the Gaza Strip and take out the Jewish settlers from there (Sharon did not anticipate that Hamas would take over the evicted Strip, but nobody in Israel wants to go back and rule Gaza directly). The “unilateralists”, who are the vast majority of the Israeli policymakers today, do not wish to control directly the densely populated area A (the area designated under the Oslo Accord as being part of the Palestinian authority exclusive rule), which constitutes less than 40% of the West Bank. The rest of the 60% of the West Bank and pre-1967 Israel is now the Jewish state. Parts of it still have to be officially annexed to Israel, but this will probably happen in the near future.
•The nationality law defines clearly how Israel will deal with the millions of Palestinians under its direct rule. They will be citizens who will be tolerated only if they deny their national identity and the historical narrative. Despite the fact that they are the original and indigenous inhabitants of this country, they will be officially second-rate citizens under an apartheid system that will not allow them to live in exclusive Jewish communities or have the same state benefits, access to land, and freedom of movement and association as the Jewish citizens. Thus, the limitation of freedom and rights articulated in the new nationality law are guiding future governments not only in their attitude towards those who are today Palestinian citizens of Israel, but also those who might find themselves under such a category when other Palestinian areas are annexed to Israel.
•If any of these limitations, indeed if even one of them, had been imposed on Jewish citizens anywhere in the world, Israel and its supporters worldwide would have cried out that the worst kind of anti-Semitism had returned. Racism exists everywhere, of course, but institutionalised racism has been erased from almost everywhere in the world. The last triumphant battle against such racism took place in South Africa. It is no wonder that South Africa at the time of apartheid had strong and excellent ties with Israel.
The world must react
•India recently strengthened its ties with Israel. The nationality law should remind Indian politicians who their new bedfellows are. For those of us who struggle for justice and equality in Palestine, India symbolised the way forward in its anti-colonialist liberation campaign and its resistance in being drawn into Cold War imperialist politics. Tolerating a new apartheid state in West Asia, with international and particularly Western immunity, will not help the Arab world get out of the horrific bloodshed that it experiences these days. Such international support for racism in historical Palestine is only going to add fuel to the fire that we are all trying to extinguish. The nature of that racism may have been hard to detect in the past or from a distance, but today it has unfolded in all its inhumanity and ugliness and anyone with a modicum of decency should not stand by it. The world has helped to abolish one kind of apartheid and it can do it again.
📰 Muzzling information
The RTI Act Amendment Bill must be junked
•The Right to Information (RTI) Act, 2005, has empowered millions of Indians to question governments and hold public functionaries accountable. Of the nearly six million RTI applications filed every year in the country, a large proportion are by the poorest and the most marginalised who seek information about their basic rights and entitlements, like rations, pensions and health facilities. The use of the law has not been limited to accessing information about delivery of basic services, however. The RTI Act has been used extensively by citizens to question the highest offices in the country — from the educational qualifications of the Prime Minister and assets of public servants to human rights violations and false claims made by government functionaries — and seek answers from them.
•It is not surprising, therefore, that the RTI law has frequently faced a backlash from powerful vested interests. The latest attack on the legislation is the proposal of the BJP-led National Democratic Alliance government to amend it.
Why amend it?
•In complete contravention of the pre-legislative consultation policy, the government has drafted a bill to amend the RTI Act. The proposed amendment bill, which was brought in surreptitiously, seeks to destroy the independence of Information Commissions — the final adjudicators under the law.
•The RTI Act fixes the tenure of information commissioners at five years, subject to the retirement age of 65 years. Further, Sections 13 and 15 of the law state that the salaries, allowances and other terms of service of the Chief of the Central Information Commission shall be the same as that of the Chief Election Commissioner. Those of the Central Information Commissioners and State Chief Commissioners will be on par with Election Commissioners. The Chief and other Election Commissioners are paid a salary equal to the salary of a judge of the Supreme Court, which is decided by Parliament.
•The amendments seek to empower the Central government to decide the tenure, salaries, allowances and other terms of service of all Information Commissioners in the country. The rationale provided for undertaking this step is that treating Information Commissioners on par with functionaries of the Election Commission is incorrect, as the latter is a constitutional body while Information Commissions are statutory bodies.
•This contention is inherently flawed. The principle of statutorily securing tenure, and protecting the terms of service by equating it to functionaries of constitutional bodies, is routinely adopted to ensure independent functioning of statutory oversight institutions like the Central Vigilance Commission and the Lokpal. The fixed tenure and high status conferred on Commissioners under the RTI Act is to empower them to carry out their functions autonomously, without fear or favour, and direct even the highest offices to comply with the provisions of the law.
•Empowering the Central government to decide the tenure and salaries of Information Commissioners is a clear attempt to undermine their independence and to effectively make Commissions function like regular government departments.
•The BJP came to power on the plank of anti-corruption. The last four years, however, have witnessed repeated attempts to undermine the RTI Act.
Many vacancies
•The selection committee for the appointment of Central Information Commissioners is headed by the Prime Minster. Since May 2014, not a single Commissioner of the Central Information Commission has been appointed without citizens having to approach courts. It was without a chief for 10 months. The RTI Amendment Bill comes at a time when the Supreme Court has issued notice to the government for failing to fill vacancies in the Commission. Out of a total sanctioned strength of 11 Commissioners, there are currently four vacancies and four more are due to arise in 2018, including that of the chief. Failure to make timely appointments is leading to huge backlogs of appeals and complaints resulting in inordinate delays in the Commission, which render the law meaningless for citizens.
•The latest move to furtively subvert the RTI Act exposes the real intent of the BJP government – to not allow public scrutiny of its actions. In the face of overwhelming public and political opposition to the bill, the government has deferred its introduction in Parliament for the moment. But whether the will of the people prevails and the RTI law, which safeguards peoples’ fundamental right to information, is immunised this time from legislative challenge remains to be seen.
📰 It’s not straight to detention centres for those not on NRC
Centre says those not on the register can file claims and objections
•The Home Ministry has advised the Assam government that no action should be initiated by the administration or the police based on the draft National Register of Citizens (NRC) that is to be published on July 30.
•“There is no question of referring the persons whose names do not figure in the draft NRC to the Foreigners’ Tribunal as people are entitled to file claims and objections and due opportunity has to be given to them before final publication. The question of referring any person to a detention centre based on NRC exercise also does not arise. State government has been asked to issue clear instructions in this regard to all administrative and police functionaries,” Home Ministry said on Wednesday.
•As per directions of the Supreme Court, the Registrar General of India (RGI) is to publish the final list on July 30 to segregate Indian citizens living in Assam from those who had illegally entered the State from Bangladesh after March 25, 1971.
•The first draft containing the names of 1.9 crore out of 3.29 crore applicants was published on December 31 last year. The second and final draft is scheduled to be published on July 30.
52 to be deported
•Minister of State for Home Kiren Rijiju informed Parliament on Wednesday that 52 Bangladeshis currently in detention centres in Assam would be deported on July 30.
•“The [Bangladesh] government has accepted the identity of these people as its nationals. These 52 people will be deported on July 30 from the Mankachar check-post in Assam,” Mr. Rijiju said.
•In the past two years, 39 Bangladesh nationals were deported from Assam. The total number deported in 2013 was 5,234; the figure was 989 in 2014; 474 in 2015 and 308 in 2016.
•An official said the persons being deported were not part of the NRC, which certifies the citizens of India and not foreigners.
•“Those being deported are not at all connected with the NRC. They are already declared foreigners by the Foreigners Tribunals and are in detention camps. Their nationality verification has been done by Bangladesh which has issued transit documents for them. They entered India with legal documents and might have overstayed, some as recent as three years back,” said the official.
•The Ministry has asked the Assam government and neighbouring States to ensure maintenance of law and order in the run-up to, and after publication of, the draft NRC.
•“Assam has been advised to set up a State-level coordination committee under the chairmanship of the Chief Secretary to ensure coordination among State agencies, NRC authorities and Central agencies. Round-the-clock control rooms at the State capital and district headquarters are to be activated to receive complaints and coordinate prompt response,” the Home Ministry said.
•An intensive public awareness campaign has been launched to disseminate information regarding the NRC process, options available for individuals whose names do not figure in the draft NRC, and the procedure and timeline for filing claims and objections so as to address the concerns of people left out of the draft list, the Home Ministry said.
📰 India proud to partner Africa: PM
Modi outlines 10 principles for deepening India’s engagement with the continent
•Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Wednesday outlined 10 guiding principles for deepening India’s engagement with Africa to help in its economic growth and tackle challenges such as terrorism and climate change.
•Mr. Modi, who arrived here on Tuesday, addressed the Parliament of Uganda and said India was proud to be Africa’s partner.
•“Uganda is central to our commitment to the continent,” he said in his address, the first by an Indian Prime Minister in the Parliament of Uganda.
•He said Uganda, also known as the “Pearl of Africa”, was a land of immense beauty, great wealth of resources and rich heritage.
•He said the two nations were connected to each other by ancient maritime links, the dark ages of colonial rule, the shared struggle for freedom and the uncertain paths as independent countries in a divided world.
•“Today, India and Africa stand on the threshold of a future of great promise: as confident, secure, youthful, innovative, and dynamic people,” he said, adding that Uganda was an example of Africa on the move.
•He said India’s engagement with Africa would be guided by 10 principles and described them in detail.
•“We will strengthen our cooperation and mutual capabilities in combating terrorism and extremism; keeping our cyberspace safe and secure; and, supporting the UN in advancing and keeping peace,” he said.
Open oceans
•He said India would work with African nations to keep the oceans open and free for the benefit of all nations.
•“The world needs cooperation and not competition in the eastern shores of Africa and the eastern Indian Ocean. That is why India’s vision of Indian Ocean security is cooperative and inclusive, rooted in security and growth for all in the region,” he said, apparently referring to China’s manoeuvres in the Horn of Africa, including opening its first so-called support base on the continent in Djibouti last year.
•“We will support our industry to invest in Africa,” Mr. Modi said.
•India will harness its experience with digital revolution to support Africa’s development; improve delivery of public services; extend education and health; spread digital literacy; expand financial inclusion; and mainstream the marginalised, he said. “We will work with you to improve Africa’s agriculture,” he said.
📰 Detention no cure: on RTE Act amendment
The amendment to the Right to Education Act will only undermine its intent
•The legislation to amend the Right to Education Act to give States the power to detain students who fail an examination in Class 5 or 8 is a negative measure. Although many States want such a change, the amendment passed by the Lok Sabha goes against the view of many educationists, who argue that it would weaken one of the progressive features of the RTE Act, which is to guarantee the continued presence of the child in school during the formative learning phase. The proposed change will allow State Boards to declare a student failed and detain her on the basis of an examination, although Section 30(1) of the RTE Act holds out the assurance that no child shall be required to face any Board examination till completion of elementary education. There are genuine concerns on learning outcomes produced by India’s schooling system. But these are determined not only by a student’s effort but also by the number and quality of teachers, processes for continuous assessment and, crucially, active engagement of parents and the community in encouraging excellence. It is the lack of attention to some of these determinants that has created what Human Resource Development Minister Prakash Javadekar calls a “broken” school education system. Detaining already disadvantaged children can only break it further, and render the RTE Act a dead letter.
•The case to replace the no-detention provision with one that reintroduces examinations in grades 3, 5 and 8 was made by a sub-committee of the Central Advisory Board of Education set up to review the provision, but its assumptions were faulty. For one, it concluded that the crucial guarantee could be implemented only under ideal conditions, and these were not available, while the pioneering RTE Act wanted to extend it to all grades within its purview. Yet, the provision is central to the objects of the law, since it seeks to check dropouts and enable all children to attend school in order to derive benefits that go beyond rote-learning. In fact, in 2016 the NITI Aayog found, based on a study in Punjab, that bringing back detention in elementary schooling would increase the dropout rate, impacting the poor and Dalits the most as they depended on government institutions. Besides, the proposed ‘cure’ may make another problem worse: when parents are unable to ensure regular attendance of children due to social circumstances, it is inconceivable that detaining them for non-performance will act as an incentive to attend school regularly. The move to introduce examinations as filters has not been fully thought through, and may be a hasty response to demands from State governments which want to be seen as acting firmly in favour of quality. Tinkering with the RTE Act without sufficient thought will erode a major constitutional achievement.
📰 The minutiae of the Rafale deal
What is the Rafale deal?
•In September 2016, India and France signed a €7.87 billion Intergovernmental Agreement (IGA) for 36 Rafale multi-role fighter jets in fly-away condition. Among other things, the deal also has a 50% offset clause to be executed by Dassault Aviation and its partners in partnership with Indian companies. The basic cost of the aircraft is about ₹680 crore (and a little over ₹1,600 crore per aircraft for the whole deal). There are also India-specific aircraft modifications.
What is the political controversy?
•The Congress claims that this deal is very expensive and without any technology transfer. The party implied that it would benefit the Anil Ambani group that was selected by Dassault to execute part of the offset contract. The Defence Minister has asserted that no procedure has been violated. It is a government-to-government deal approved by the Cabinet Committee on Security, she said. The offset deal, she said, was one between two companies and the government had no role in it. In turn, the Congress has asked the government for the cost break-up in comparison with the earlier deal. The Minister has refused to share “classified information”, citing the 2008 France-India security agreement.
What is this agreement?
•In 2008, under the UPA government, India and France signed a general security agreement concerning “the protection of classified information and material in the field of defence.” Such an agreement seeks to safeguard the details of the platforms and technology shared, and prevent those details from falling into the hands of a third party. This agreement was further extended this March. While the agreement does not specifically refer to the details of cost, Article 4 of the agreement on security principles says: “The receiving party shall not disclose classified information and material to a third party, state, individual or legal entity with a third State’s nationality…” It also states that access to classified information and material would be based on “need-to-know” principle. So, to share pricing details of the deal in public, India would have to get in-principle approval from France. Following the controversy, France said that provisions of the security agreement apply to the IGA. In an interview, the French President said that if India wishes to share some of the critical information, France would not object to it. However, he also said, “In France, as in India, when an agreement is very sensitive, we cannot reveal all the details.”
📰 Underground lake detected on Mars
It is the first stable body of liquid water found on Mars and is about 20 km wide
•Using a radar instrument on an orbiting spacecraft, scientists have spotted what they said on Wednesday appears to be a sizeable salt-laden lake under ice on the southern polar plain of Mars, a body of water they called a possible habitat for microbial life.
•The reservoir they detected — roughly 20 km in diameter, shaped like a rounded triangle and located about 1.5 km beneath the ice surface — represents the first stable body of liquid water ever found on Mars.
Possibility of life
•Whether anywhere other than Earth has harboured life is one of the supreme questions in science, and the new findings offer tantalizing evidence, though no proof. Water is considered a fundamental ingredient for life.
•The researchers said it could take years to verify whether something is actually living in this body of water that resembles a subglacial lake on Earth, perhaps with a future mission drilling through the ice to sample the water below.
•“This is the place on Mars where you have something that most resembles a habitat, a place where life could subsist,” said planetary scientist Roberto Orosei of Istituto Nazionale di Astrofisica in Italy, who led the research published in the journal Science.
•“This kind of environment is not exactly your ideal vacation, or a place where fish would swim,” Orosei added. “But there are terrestrial organisms that can survive and thrive, in fact, in similar environments. There are microorganisms on Earth that are capable of surviving even in ice.”
•The detection was made using data collected between May 2012 and December 2015 by an instrument aboard the European Space Agency's Mars Express spacecraft that transmits radar pulses, which penetrate the Martian surface and ice caps.
•“This took us long years of data analysis and struggles to find a good method to be sure that what we were observing was unambiguously liquid water,” said study co-author Enrico Flamini, chief scientist at the Italian Space Agency during the research.
•The location's radar profile resembled that of subglacial lakes found beneath Earth's Antarctic and Greenland ice sheets.
•Mars long ago was warmer and wetter, possessing significant bodies of water, as evidenced by dry lake beds and river valleys on its surface. There had been some signs of liquid water currently on Mars, including disputed evidence of water activity on Martian slopes, but not stable bodies of water.
•Orosei said the water in the Martian lake was below the normal freezing point but remained liquid thanks in large part to high levels of salts. Orosei estimated the water temperature at somewhere between 14 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 10 degrees Celsius) and minus 94 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 70 degrees Celsius).
•It remains to be seen if more subsurface reservoirs of water will be found or whether the newly discovered one is some sort of quirk, Orosei said.
•If others are detected and a network of subglacial lakes exists like on Earth, he said, that could indicate liquid water has persisted for millions of years or even dating back to 3-1/2 billion years ago when Mars was a more hospitable planet.
•The question would be, Orosei added, whether any life forms that could have evolved long ago on Mars have found a way to survive until now.
•“Nobody dares to propose that there could be any more complex life form,” Orosei said.
