📰 Nepal to skip BIMSTEC military drill in India
•The Nepal Army has withdrawn from the first BIMSTEC military exercise to be held in India following a political row in the country over the participation in the event, a media report said on Saturday.
•Prime Minister K.P. Oli asked the national defence force not to participate in the drill, compelling the Nepal Army leadership to rollback its earlier decision to take part in the first-ever military exercise of the regional grouping initiated by India. The decision was taken just a day before the Army squad was set to travel to Pune, where the drill will commence on Monday, the Kathmandu Postreported.
•The move came after strong criticism from different quarters, including influential leaders of the ruling Nepal Communist Party.
•The Bay of Bengal Initiative for Multi-Sectoral Technical and Economic Cooperation (BIMSTEC) comprises Bangladesh, India, Myanmar, Sri Lanka, Thailand, Bhutan and Nepal.
📰 LEMOA already fully operational
The pact gives both countries access to designated military facilities in specific areas
•The India-U.S. foundational agreement for mutual logistics support, the Logistics Exchange Memorandum of Agreement (LEMOA), has been fully operationalised over the past few months, official sources said.
•Earlier this week, India concluded the third foundational agreement, Communications Compatibility and Security Agreement (COMCASA), which is meant for secure encrypted communications.
Exchange of SOPs
•“We had to inform them [U.S.] our standard operating procedures (SOPs). They had already done it. Now we can say LEMOA is fully operational,” an official said.
•The SOP document was shared with the U.S. two months ago.
•India had concluded the LEMOA in August 2016 in a culmination of a decade of negotiations between the two countries.
•The pact gives both countries access to designated military facilities on either side for the purpose of refuelling and replenishment in primarily four areas — port calls, joint exercises, training and humanitarian assistance and disaster relief.
•The SOPs include designating the points of contact for the U.S. military to work with, and set up, a common account for payments.
•“We had to designate the contact points and convey billing modalities and so on. We have done that now,” the official said.
For each service
•So far, the three services had individual accounts from which payments were being made during military exercises.
•“The SOPs are applicable to all three services. Each service has a designated LEMOA officer,” another official said.
•The biggest beneficiary of the LEMOA is the Indian Navy, which interacts and exercises the most with foreign Navies.
•The Navy has a fuel exchange agreement with the U.S. for fuel transfer on the high seas, which is set to expire in November.
•Now fuel exchange gets subsumed into the LEMOA and does away with the need for a separate agreement, an officer said.
•With COMCASA, India has signed three of the four foundational or enabling agreements with the U.S. meant to improve interoperability between the militaries and allow transfer of high-end military platforms.
Information pact
•The first one, the General Security Of Military Information Agreement (GSOMIA), which is for information safety, was signed in 2002.
•COMCASA, which was signed at the 2+2 dialogue on Thursday, is an India-specific version of the Communication and Information on Security Memorandum of Agreement (CISMOA).
•The last one remaining is the Basic Exchange and Cooperation Agreement for Geo-spatial Cooperation (BECA).
📰 What is the debate on uniform civil code all about?
What is it?
•Article 44 of the Directive Principles in the Constitution says the “State shall endeavour to provide for its citizens a uniform civil code (UCC) throughout the territory of India.” The objective of this endeavour should be to address the discrimination against vulnerable groups and harmonise diverse cultural practices. The stand taken by B.R. Ambedkar in the Constituent Assembly debates has survived the years. Dr. Ambedkar had said a UCC is desirable but for the moment should remain voluntary.
How did it come about?
•The Law Commission of India notes that the tracts of the Constituent Assembly debates reveal a lack of consensus on what a potential uniform civil code would entail. While many thought the UCC would coexist alongside the personal law systems, others thought that it was to replace the personal law.
•There were yet others who believed that the UCC would deny the freedom of religion. It was this uncertainty that led it to be included in the Directive Principles of State Policy rather than the chapter on Fundamental Rights in the Constitution.
Why does it matter?
•The codification of personal laws have historically generated protests. The Hindu Code Bill, one of the foremost pieces of social legislation, had triggered enormous opposition.
•The debate on the UCC is centred on the argument to replace individual personal customs and practices of marriage, divorce, adoption and successions with a common code. Those in favour of one code argue that it will end discrimination in religions. Detractors contend that it will rob the nation of its religious diversity and violate the fundamental right to practise religion enshrined in Article 25 of the Constitution. In fact, they hold that a state action to introduce the UCC is against the quintessence of democracy. The secular state is, after all, an enabler of rights rather than an inhibitor in sensitive matters of religion and personal laws.
What next?
•Legal experts say that the Supreme Court missed an opportunity to decide on the issue in 2017 when it outlawed triple talaq without addressing the core issue: whether personal law practices should prevail over the fundamental rights of life, dignity and non-discrimination. The Constitution Bench’s judgment was the product of an October 2015 decision of a two-judge Bench of the court to take suo motu cognisance of the discriminatory practices against Muslim women. This Bench pointed out that it had been 30 years since the court, in the Shah Bano case, urged the government to frame a common code to “help in the cause of national integration.”
•The Constitution Bench’s judgment came about a year after the Law Commission, in a novel move in October 2016, published a “questionnaire” to test the waters on the UCC. It wanted to see whether the nation was ready for it. The questions included “what measures should be taken to sensitise society to a common code or codification of personal law,” and would the UCC ensure “gender equality.”
•In the Shah Bano case, the court lamented that Article 44 remained a “dead letter.” Chances are that it may continue to remain so. In its consultation paper last week, the Law Commission chose codification of personal laws over the UCC as a way to end discrimination within religions. Codification of various practices and customs would make them ‘law’ under Article 13 of the Constitution. Any ‘law’ that comes under Article 13 should be consistent with the fundamental rights, the Law Commission has reasoned. This would protect the plurality of religions, too, and may be the way forward for the near future. In fact, the Law Commission has suggested in no uncertain terms that the UCC is “neither necessary nor desirable at this stage in the country.” It said a unified nation does not necessarily need to have “uniformity.”
📰 Section 377: A decree of hope
After the Section 377 ruling, HIV+ patients and health workers can look forward to better access to medical interventions
•The verdict by the Supreme Court, on Thursday, of rescinding Section 377 of the Indian Penal Code — which criminalised homosexuality — has also given cheer to HIV-positive patients, health-care workers and rights activists. They say it restores dignity and gives hope for enabling better care to HIV-positive gay individuals who previously were faced with the dilemma of going untreated or facing ridicule and discrimination after coming out.
Empowering move
•“This ruling opens access for many to treatment with dignity without fear and discrimination. Those who feared being counted are now getting a new voice with this judgment,” says Paul Lhungdim of the Delhi Network of Positive People, a trust that works on ensuring equitable access to medicine to those living with HIV.
•“From testing centres, to doctors’ rooms, to medicine dispersal units, discrimination towards gay people with HIV has been rampant. We were treated almost as if we deserved to be ill. Hopefully, this mentality will change now,” says an HIV+ gay patient registered in Delhi, who did not want to be named.
•He adds that he has friends who have had to leave their State, home and family for fear of backlash.
•“Access to protection, education about safe sex and timely medical interventions are all vital in our fight to contain HIV. This judgment has made us equal participants in the journey,” he adds.
•According to UNAIDS, there were 2.1 million people with HIV in India and 62,000 AIDS-related deaths, in 2016. Only half were accessing anti-retroviral therapy. The prevalence of HIV among gay men and other men who have sex with men (MSM) was 4.3%.
•In South Africa, there were 7.1 million people living with HIV in 2016. Since 1998, the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender (LGBT) community has had the same legal rights as non-LGBT people. The HIV prevalence there among gay men and MSM was 26.8%.
Cloak of fear
•The government admits that the existence of Section 377 in India encouraged “under-reporting” or even missing on HIV+ cases, and made risky sexual practices go unnoticed and unaddressed.
•“It is a known fact that for several decades now, Section 377 has hampered HIV/AIDS coverage. Many self-excluded themselves from the benefits of government programmes out of fear of life-threatening discrimination and backlash. The worst affected were people who were engaging in sexual acts that were criminalised under the law,” says a senior official in the Ministry of Health, who did not want to be identified.
•“The judgment of the Supreme Court is extraordinary and just,” says former Union Health Secretary K. Sujata Rao. “The decriminalisation of Section 377 will give access and ease of working for non-governmental organisations and workers from the National AIDS Control Organisation (NACO) to work openly and without fear of being charged as abettors of a crime.”
•To Dr. K.K. Aggarwal, former president of the Indian Medical Association (IMA), the job of health-care providers or the judiciary is to adapt with the changing times and broaden, delete or re-interpret the laws as per the needs of society. He says, “The medical community has always considered homosexuality as a normal and natural phenomenon and not a disease or crime. It becomes important now for a medical doctor to know if the person is a LGBT. Till now, many of them did not come forward and disclose their sexual orientation out of fear of the law.”
Moving forward
•However, another expert, Dr. Archana Dhawan Bajaj, gynaecologist and obstetrician at Nurture IVF Centre, New Delhi, says the judgment has posed new questions.
•She asks: “It’s a welcome judgment, but the next big debate is how are these couples going to start a family? What are the guidelines to having babies for same sex couples?”
📰 Maneka Gandhi bypassed; nutrition norms cleared
After PMO intervention, NITI Aayog approves guidelines
•The NITI Aayog has approved the supplementary nutrition guidelines, prepared by the Ministry for Women and Child Development, bypassing Minister for Women and Child Development Maneka Gandhi following intervention by the Prime Minister’s Office (PMO), according to a person familiar with the development.
•The PMO had stepped in to end a more than yearlong stand-off between Ms. Gandhi and the Ministry’s officials in the wake of sharp differences over the proposed norms.
Different approaches
•The disagreement primarily centred around the approaches to food procured as take-home rations and the hot cooked meals served to 10 crore beneficiaries at 14 lakh anganwadis under the Integrated Child Development Scheme (ICDS).
•While Ms. Gandhi recommended that take-home rations be procured either from self-help groups (SHGs) that have adequate manufacturing facilities or from government or private undertakings, the officials had favoured sourcing food items prepared with locally available ingredients, solely from SHGs.
•The Minister’s position was also at odds over hot meals — she instead wanted ready-to-eat mixes in packaged form to be served to beneficiaries.
PMO suggestion
•That the officials’ position has prevailed is evident from a communication sent by the Ministry’s top official to the PMO and the NITI Aayog, which has been reviewed by The Hindu.
•In June, R.K. Shrivastava, Secretary, Women and Child Development, wrote to the PMO about the delay in deciding on the norms and sought its intervention to expedite a decision that would back the officials’ position. The PMO then suggested that the matter be processed through the Cabinet Secretariat and the NITI Aayog. Subsequently, NITI Aayog Vice-Chairman Rajiv Kumar approved the guidelines on August 16.
•Ms. Gandhi declined to comment on the development.
•The debate within the Ministry has also included the issue of what constitutes supplementary nutrition at anganwadis. Ms. Gandhi has repeatedly asserted that policy-makers need to “stop thinking of giving food and instead think of giving nutrition,” while officials record in their communication to the NITI Aayog that as per the National Food Security Act “food security is supply of the entitled quantity of food grains and meals.”
•Purnima Menon, a senior research fellow at the International Food Policy Research Institute, contends that policy-makers have been taking positions on the crucial norms on the basis of assumptions in the absence of data.
•“This debate has been going on for 10 years. What is needed is to overlay what the uptake of food is vis-à-vis the models within the ICDS. Policy decisions should be based on data, what is the uptake and the quality of food with the different kinds of models that exist. There is no data systems about the quality of food, how people use it, what people think about it,” said Ms. Menon. “My opinion is that there are a lot of assumptions being made within all quarters, but what we need to do is to look at what is actually happening on the ground.”
📰 ‘25% of all accidental deaths in India are weather-related’
Men and elderly at maximum risk due to extreme weather events, says study conducted across the country from 2001-2014
•Weather-related deaths are on the rise globally and figures in India stand at a staggering 25%, noted a study conducted across the country from 2001-2014 by research-based organisation Population Council.
•From 2001-2014, 25% of all accidental deaths in India due to unnatural causes happened as a result of extreme weather events, it said, adding that men and the elderly were at maximum risk.
•Titled ‘Extreme Weather Event-Induced Deaths in India 2001–2014: Trends and Differentials by Region, Sex and Age Group’, the study was published this August.
Increasing trend
•“Deaths due to extreme precipitation and tropical cyclones declined over time, whereas an increasing trend was observed in case of lightning and extreme temperature conditions. Most extreme weather event-induced deaths were due to lightning, followed by extreme precipitation and temperature extremes,” said team leader Bidhubhusan Mahapatra.
Most affected
•The burden of deaths was the highest in central India, and Andhra Pradesh, Bihar, Uttar Pradesh, Maharashtra and West Bengal were affected the most by extreme weather events.
•“Loss of human lives due to extreme weather events can have an impact on both macro and micro levels. At the micro level, the death of an individual can bring mental distress to the family and the loved ones. Moreover, the death of an income-generating individual can have more serious consequences as it can throw a household into the poverty trap. At the macro level, the demographic structure can change if deaths from a particular age or sex are more frequent,” co-authors Monika Walia and Niranjan Saggurti noted in the study.
•Research on impact of extreme weather events-related deaths in India is rather limited.
•Hence, the study gives an insight into the area. The study added that about one-quarter of all accidental deaths due to unnatural causes resulted from extreme weather events — which is about five deaths per one million persons.
•Most deaths reported were due to lightning (40%), followed by extreme precipitation (24%), heatwave (20%) and cold wave (15%).
•The study also found that a higher number of males died due to extreme weather events than females across all years and regions in the country.
•A higher proportion of individuals who were 60 years or older died due to cold (47%) and heat (42%) waves than those in the younger age groups. In fact, four-fifths of the deaths due to cold and heatwaves were among individuals aged 44 years or older, said the study.
•“In India, these extreme events each year are a challenge for governments and policymakers due to the extent of damage, diversity and distribution of extreme events, and size of the population affected. The current study assessed the magnitude of loss of human lives due to extreme weather events and examined the region, State and the demographics most affected,” noted the study.
📰 India awaits longest road-rail bridge — the Bogibeel Bridge
Bogibeel will span the Brahmaputra in eastern Assam
•The Brahmaputra was till 1962 the only river in India that had not been bridged along its entire length either for road or railway, according to a 1988 book co-authored by former railwayman and IIT Madras teacher S. Ponnuswamy.
•The river, more than 10 km wide in several stretches, now awaits the completion of its fourth and easternmost span — the country’s longest road-rail bridge at 4.94 km — that India’s defence forces and residents of the eastern half of the Northeast have been demanding for almost five decades.
•“The Bogibeel bridge will usher in a new era of economic development in the region, apart from strengthening national security in the border areas,” AssamChief Minister Sarbananda Sonowal said, following a recent visit to inspect progress on the construction of the bridge.
•Sited about 17 km downstream of Dibrugarh town, the bridge will facilitate road and rail connectivity between the north and south banks of the Brahmaputra in the eastern part of Assam and Arunachal Pradesh.
•“A lot of emotion is attached to this bridge because it was part of the Assam Accord of 1985, but it is taking a long time,” said Lurinjyoti Gogoi, general secretary of the All Assam Students’ Union (AASU).
•For the construction wing of the Northeast Frontier Railway (NFR) that is undertaking the project, it is better late than never given the unpredictability of the Brahmaputra and instability of its banks.
Training the river
•While former Prime Minister H. D. Deve Gowda laid the foundation stone for the Bogibeel bridge in January 1997, work started only in April 2002, when Atal Bihari Vajpayee inaugurated the construction.
•With several deadlines having been missed over the past 16 years, impatience has grown in the area. The NFR had set a June target, which was pushed back to October, and the latest indications are that the formal inauguration might be delayed by another couple of months more.
•The protracted delay has resulted in the project’s cost increasing more than threefold to ₹5,800 crore, from the initial estimate of ₹1,767 crore.
•At Bogibeel, the unpredictable river needed to be trained first for diversion through a narrower channel by constructing a total of 4.83 km of guide bunds, while flood dykes had to be raised and strengthened 9 km upstream and 7 km downstream on both banks.
Strategic span
•“The actual work on the bridge began in 2011, and by that time we knew the guide bunds and dykes could withstand the river’s might,” a railway engineer, who did not wish to be named, said. The bridge has been designed for carrying very heavy loads and features dual broad-gauge tracks and a three-lane road.
•“This is very strategic from the defence point of view, and the Army has been demanding it for years,” retired Brigadier Ranjit Barthakur told The Hindu. “The bridge classification is on the higher side for movement of heavy military equipment. It will drastically cut time for induction of troops and logistics during a war-like situation,” he added.
•At present, troops moving between Dhemaji and Dibrugarh — districts on opposite banks — have to travel more than 600 km via the 3.015 km Kaliabhomora bridge, west of Bogibeel.
Ferry services could be hit
•The Inland Water Transport (IWT) Department of Assam fears that the Bogibeel bridge will impact ferry services to a large extent. At present, one government vessel and 24 private boats ferry 2,500 people, 146 cars and 84 two-wheelers on an average every day, said Bharat Bhushan Dev Choudhury, director, IWT Department.
•“We have to think of other ways to remain in business, such as long-distance cargo movement that works out cheaper than road transport,” Mr. Choudhury said.
📰 Why is outbreak of fever a worry in Kerala?
What happened?
•Public health officials had warned of the likelihood of outbreak of infectious diseases in the aftermath of the Kerala floods, and the State is battling a disease called leptospirosis, commonly known as ‘rat fever.’ Officials have confirmed 143 cases, with six deaths in the first four days of September.
What is leptospirosis?
•Leptospirosis is a zoonotic, or animal-borne, disease, caused by the bacteria of the genus Leptospira. It is largely found in animals, and occasionally surfaces in humans. It is most commonly spread through water contaminated by urine from infected animals, but contaminated food or soil can also act as vehicles for the disease. The key carriers are rodents, livestock and dogs, and that is why it is also known as ‘rat fever.’ Men — according to government guidelines — suffer more frequently from leptospirosis than women because of greater occupational exposure to infected animals and contaminated environment. Leptospiral infections occur more frequently in the 20-45 age group and it rarely happens in children. Much like dengue, it can manifest itself as no more than a mild flu and progress to a severe form that can cause kidney damage, liver failure, respiratory distress, meningitis, and even death. About 90% of leptospirosis cases manifest mild symptoms and the fatality rate can go as high as 15%, according to the Health Ministry. The authorities in Kerala have clinically confirmed 891 cases and 41 deaths this year.
Does it happen often?
•Leptospirosis outbreaks have frequently been reported in Kerala since the 1980s and are linked to flooding. The last major episode of leptospirosis was during 2013 when Kerala received more rain than this year. Key regions that have historically reported notable incidence include Andaman and Nicobar, Gujarat, Maharashtra, Karnataka and Tamil Nadu. The frontline medicine employed to contain leptospirosis outbreaks is doxycycline and there’s a standard protocol in the Kerala Health Department to control disease incidence. In view of the floods, State authorities have directed all workers involved in relief operations — fishermen, police, fire and rescue personnel — to consume the medicine. In case of symptoms such as fever, body pain, pain in leg muscles, yellowish hue in the eyes, variation in the amount and colour of urine, the afflicted ought to contact the nearest government health centre.
Is it under-reported?
•According to the Health Ministry’s National Centre for Disease Control, “rapid ecological changes have caused many new zoonotic diseases to emerge and resulted in epidemics. Leptospirosis is one among them.” The reclamation of wasteland, afforestation, irrigation and changes in cropping patterns and agricultural technology have been important factors. The World Health Organisation estimates the incidence of leptospirosis between 0.1–1 cases/100,000 population a year in temperate, non-endemic areas and between 10–100 cases/100,000 population a year in humid, tropical, endemic areas. However, India officially records no more than 10,000 cases annually. One of the key challenges is that it is a neglected disease with very little resources to investigate its extent. In a study in the peer-reviewed PLoS Neglected Tropical Diseases, a group of researchers reported that even north India, so far considered non-endemic, had many more cases than supposed. Though dated, the study found that the incidence increased from 11.4% in 2004 to 20.5% in 2008. Moreover, several of the cases so discovered presented themselves with complications such as renal failure, respiratory failure and neuroleptospirosis.
How seriously is it taken?
•The Health Ministry has a protocol called the ‘Programme for Prevention and Control of Leptospirosis’ since 2015. Because leptospirosis manifested several symptoms similar to dengue, malaria and jaundice, it was frequently “overlooked” and therefore it has advised the States to use blood test and serology to identify cases. It also has a detailed procedure for lab technicians to take body fluids samples for testing.
