📰 To resign is a right of the employee: SC
Can’t be compelled to serve, says court in case of Air India employee
•To resign is a right of an employee and he cannot be forced to continue, the Supreme Court has said in a recent order.
•An employee cannot be compelled to serve in case he is not willing “until and unless there is some stipulation in the rules or in the terms of appointment or disciplinary proceedings is pending or contemplated which is sought to be avoided by resigning from the services.”
•A Bench of Justices Arun Mishra and Vineet Saran made the observations while allowing the appeal of a former Air India engineer, who was refused his dues by the Central government carrier.
Past arrears
•Sanjay Jain served in Air India for the stipulated minimum five-year period before he resigned and served his 30-day notice.
•He joined a private airline and later approached his former employer to pay his dues, Provident Fund, gratuity and unpaid wages.
•Air India said it had refused to accept his resignation and asked him to re-join duty.
•The Bombay High Court dismissed his petition in September 2010. Subsequently, Mr. Jain moved the Supreme Court.
In support
•Setting aside the High Court’s decision, the Supreme Court ruled that Mr. Jain had “rightly terminated the relationship by serving the requisite notice for his resignation.”
📰 Ten years after the Mumbai attack
Vigilance is important against new variants of terror, remaining ahead of the curve is even more vital
•Ten years ago on this day, Pakistan carried out one of the most heinous of terror attacks perpetrated anywhere in the world. The 26/11 Mumbai terror attack, named after the date in 2008 when the attack took place, is in some respects comparable to the September 11, 2001 terror attacks in the U.S. Comparisons with the Madrid train bombings in 2004 and the London bombings in 2005 are, however, misplaced.
•India, and Mumbai city, are no strangers to terror. In 1993, over 250 people were killed in Mumbai in a series of coordinated bomb explosions attributed to Dawood Ibrahim, reportedly as reprisal for the demolition of the Babri Masjid. In July 2006, bomb explosions in a number of suburban trains in Mumbai killed over 200 people and injured several more. The most audacious terror attack till the 26/11 Mumbai terror incident was the attack on the Indian Parliament in 2001 by the Pakistan-based terror outfits, Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) and Jaish-e-Mohammed (JeM).
Into the 21st century
•Terrorism is hardly a post-modern phenomenon. Several of the terror attacks in the 21st century, however, reflect a paradigmatic change in the tactics of asymmetric warfare, and the practice of violence. Today’s attacks carried out in different corners of the world by al-Qaeda and its affiliates, the Islamic State, al-Shabaab, and similar terror outfits, are very different from those witnessed in the previous century. The tactics employed may vary, but the objective is common, viz. achieving mass casualties and widespread destruction.
•The 26/11 Mumbai terror attack was one of a kind, and not a mere variant of previous instances of terrorist violence. It was the rarest of rare cases, where one state’s resources, viz. Pakistan’s, were employed to carry out a series of terror attacks in a major Indian city. It was a case of ‘war by other means’, in which the authorities in Pakistan, the Inter-Services Intelligence Directorate, the Pakistani armed forces, were involved. It is difficult to recall any recorded instance in modern times where a state and its various agencies were directly involved in carrying out a terror attack of this nature. As is now known, the Mumbai terror attack was not based on a sudden impulse or whim. Several years of planning and preparation had preceded the attack, even as the the Pakistani President, Pervez Musharraf, was talking peace with then Indian Prime Minister, Manmohan Singh.
•The degree of involvement of the Pakistani deep state in the planning and preparation of the attack is evident from many aspects that have come to light subsequently. Seldom has any terrorist group then, or for that matter even now, used such highly sophisticated, state-of-the-art communications, including Voice over Internet Protocol. Planning for the attack involved the use of a third country address. Handlers in Pakistan were given unfettered freedom to provide instructions to the terrorists during the entire four-day siege. The choice of the sea route aimed at deception and avoiding detection, was again dictated by official agencies.
•The involvement of the Pakistani Special Forces in preparing the 10-member fidayeen group was confirmed by one of the conspirators, Abu Hamza, arrested subsequent to the 26/11 terror attack. The training regimen dictated by the Pakistani Special Forces involved psychological indoctrination by highlighting atrocities on Muslims in India and other parts of the globe, including Chechnya and Palestine; basic and advanced combat training; commando training; training in weapons and explosives; training in swimming and sailing — all under the watchful eyes of Pakistani instructors from the Special Forces. An even more unusual feature of the Mumbai attacks was the involvement of two U.S./Canadian nationals of Pakistani origin, David Headley (who at the time was a LeT operative) and Tahawwur Hussain Rana. The 10 attackers came via the sea from Karachi in a small boat, hijacked an Indian fishing trawler en route, and reached Colaba in a rubber dinghy on November 26 evening.
Horror over four days
•The targets were carefully chosen after having been reconnoitred previously by Headley for maximum impact, viz. the Taj and Oberoi Hotels, Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj Terminus, the Jewish centre at Nariman House, and the Leopold Cafe, since these places were frequented by Europeans, Indians and Jews. The Mumbai terror attack went on for nearly four days, from the evening of November 26 to the morning of November 29. Seldom has a terrorist incident lasted this length of time, since the Munich Olympics massacre in 1972.
•From an Indian standpoint, it was perhaps for the first time that an operation of this nature involved Rapid Action Force personnel, Marine Commandos (MARCOS), the National Security Guard (NSG) and the Mumbai Police.
•It was inevitable that there should be a great deal of recrimination in the wake of terror attack. The principal charge was that the security establishment had failed to anticipate an attack of this nature, and was not adequately prepared to deal with the situation. In retrospect, it has to be recognised that the Mumbai terror attack was an unprecedented exercise in violence, involving not merely a well-trained terrorist group, but also backed by the resources of a state, viz. Pakistan. Till then, the Pakistani state was only known to harbour terrorist groups like the LeT and the JeM, and use terror as an instrumentality to create problems for India.
•Secrecy was the very essence of this operation. Plans were limited to a mere handful of persons. In the LeT hierarchy, apart from Hafiz Sayeed, only a few like Zakiur Rehman Lakhvi, its chief military commander, Sajid Mir and Zarar Shah, its communications chief, were privy to the operational plans. U.S. intelligence is said to have penetrated Zarar Shah’s computer, and possibly had far more details of the operation than were actually shared with Indian intelligence.
Streamlining security
•In the wake of the terror attack, several steps were initiated to streamline the security set-up. Coastal security was given high priority, and it is with the Navy/Coast Guard/marine police. A specialised agency to deal with terrorist offences, the National Investigation Agency, was set up and has been functioning from January 2009. The National Intelligence Grid (NATGRID) has been constituted to create an appropriate database of security related information. Four new operational hubs for the NSG have been created to ensure rapid response to terror attacks. The Multi Agency Centre, which functions under the Intelligence Bureau, was further strengthened and its activities expanded. The Navy constituted a Joint Operations Centre to keep vigil over India’s extended coastline.
•Notwithstanding increased vigil and streamlining of the counter-terrorism apparatus, the ground reality is that newer methodologies, newer concepts more daringly executed, and more deeply laid plans of terrorist groups have made the world a less safe place. The actual number of terror attacks may have declined in recent years, but this does not mean that the situation is better than what existed a decade ago. Terrorism remains a major threat, and with modern refinements, new terrorist methodologies and terrorism mutating into a global franchise, the threat potential has become greater.
•One new variant is the concept of ‘enabled terror’ or ‘remote controlled terror’, viz. violence conceived and guided by a controller thousands of miles away. Today the ‘lone wolf’ is, more often than not, part of a remote-controlled initiative, with a controller choosing the target, the nature of the attack and even the weaponry to be used. Internet-enabled terrorism and resort to remote plotting is thus the new threat. Operating behind a wall of anonymity, random terror is likely to become the new terror imperative. There are no ready-made answers to this new threat. Vigilance is important, but remaining ahead of the curve is even more vital.
📰 Along the new Silk Roads
Regional agreements such as the BRI could embrace greater trade liberalisation goals
•At the recent Paris Peace Forum commemorating the end of World War I, the heads of the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank made the case for a more inclusive multilateralism. Drawing comparisons between 1914 and today’s situations in terms of inequalities, they warned against the temptation of a divisive globalisation which could only benefit the wealthiest.
•China’s discourse on a new “connected” multilateralism, through the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), is building upon the same inclusive project now led by a non-Western and non-democratic superpower. There is indeed an ambition to influence the world — if not directly control it — by making the rules on which it functions. This normative determination to achieve a far greater objective has hardly been addressed when analysing China’s BRI and its impact.
•There is more to the BRI than the six economic corridors spanning Asia, Europe and Africa, of which the $50 billion China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) is perhaps the most controversial. The BRI is included in the Constitution of an officially socialist China. The BRI “shared interest” and “shared growth” hence coexist with Marxism-Leninism and “capitalism with Chinese characteristics” in a country now said to be more trade-friendly than its protectionist American rival, the U.S. Beijing has never been afraid of contradictions in terms and this capacity to ‘Sinicise’ concepts is a signature trait. The BRI is a political project and a Chinese one no matter the number of other partners joining the effort and participating to its funding.
Normative yet not legal
•In this regard, the normative framework put in place by Beijing plays an interesting role. These norms manifest themselves in the form of guiding principles, declarations, general agreements and other communication tools including the hardly studied “Digital Silk Road” envisaging “innovation action plans for e-commerce, digital economy, smart cities and science and technology parks”. They constitute a normative discourse, a form of behaviour, a standard to abide by, but are not legally binding yet. The BRI indeed develops without any dedicated law, nor is it a comprehensive trade or economic partnership. It is different from conventional trade agreements that seek to eliminate market access barriers, harmonise regulations and impose preconditions for entry. The only legal texts one could refer to are to be found in the network of foreign trade agreements, bilateral investment treaties and other international investment agreements China is a party to. However, these networks of agreements have no special link with the BRI, although they could be brought in to resolve issues emanating from the BRI. China is a party to numerous state-sponsored business contracts between Chinese firms, including state-owned companies, and foreign business partners, public or private.
•This non-legal yet rather domineering proposal is not a surprise. The fluid, if not vague, nature of the BRI is nothing but a manifestation of a pragmatism with Chinese characteristics that has the capacity to constantly adjust to a fast-changing environment. The absence of law is actually partial and temporary. China is preparing for the domestic resolution of BRI disputes with the creation by the Supreme People’s Court of two dedicated branches of the China International Commercial Court, one in Shenzhen to tackle the Maritime Road disputes, and one in Xi’an to settle overland Belt issues. In addition, the Hong Kong International Arbitration Centre has specific BRI arbitration clauses and administered arbitration rules. Naturally, investor-state disputes could also be settled on the basis of China’s investment agreements, nationally or internationally, in a given arbitration forum — for example, the World Bank-sponsored International Centre for Settlement of Investment Dispute (ICSID).
Institutional strategies
•The institutional setting of the BRI is also rather light. Joint committees are put in place and the existing institutions mobilised from the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation to the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB), which is contributing to the BRI despite the rather distant position of some of its members and India in particular, which is the largest recipient of AIIB funding. In this context, China is not challenging the existing institutional set-up or proposing something different than what exists in the Bretton Woods Institutions. From the functioning of the banks to their advisory committees, the same structure and often the same people are found.
•The BRI as it stands is not conceived as a tool for economic integration. The Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) negotiations between the Association of Southeast Asian Nations and six countries is better equipped to deal with market access and integration goals within the Asia-Pacific region. Again, the BRI’s dispute resolution will be predominantly on commercial disputes, involving either projects or contractual obligations. However, with the world trading system passing through a turmoil, the possibility of regional trade agreements or amorphous legal devices such as the BRI embracing greater trade liberalisation goals cannot be entirely ruled out. A failure to resolve the WTO Appellate Body crisis or any consequent weakening of the multilateral dispute resolution process could present an opportunity for purely nationalistic initiatives to transmute and assume larger objectives.
📰 Leave them alone: on the Sentinelese
Calls to take action against the Sentinelese for a tragic death are dangerously misguided
•The death of a young American man at the hands of the inhabitants of North Sentinel Island in the Andaman and Nicobar Islands has led to dangerous lines of debate. Some have called for the Sentinelese to be convicted and punished and others have urged that they be integrated into modern society. Both these demands are misguided, and can only result in the extinction of a people. John Chau’s killing was a tragedy but his attempt to make contact with the Sentinelese, who he seemed to know something about, was foolhardy and dangerous, not only to himself but to them. There is a reason why no one — whether missionary, scholar, adventurer, U.S. citizen or Indian — is allowed to venture near North Sentinel Island without permission, which is given only in the rarest of circumstances and with meticulous precautions in place to ensure that the Sentinelese are not disturbed. Having lived in isolation in an island in the Bay of Bengal for thousands of years, the Sentinelese have no immunity or resistance to even the commonest of infections. Various degrees of protection are in place for the indigenous people of A&N Islands, but it is complete in the case of the Sentinelese. The administration enforces “an ‘eyes-on and hands-off’ policy to ensure that no poachers enter the island”. A protocol of circumnavigation of the island is in place, and the buffer maintained around the island is enforced under various laws. The Sentinelese are perhaps the most reclusive community in the world today. Their language is so far understood by no other group and they have traditionally guarded their island fiercely, attacking most intruders with spears and arrows. Arrows were fired even at a government aircraft that flew over the island after the 2004 Tsunami.
•Chau knowingly broke the law, as did those who took took him to the waters off North Sentinel Island. Seven persons, including five fishermen, have been arrested for facilitating this misadventure. To call for an investigation on the island, however, is to fail to see its historical and administrative uniqueness. At the heart of the issue is the survival of the Sentinelese. According to the 2011 Census, their population was just 15 — though anthropologists like T.N. Pandit, who made contact with them in the 1960s, put the figure at 80-90. This degree of ignorance about the Sentinelese often sparks an Orientalist public discourse, instead of understanding the dangers of trying to physically overpower them. Chau’s death is a cautionary incident — for the danger of adventurism, and for the administration to step up oversight. But it is also an occasion for the country to embrace its human heritage in all its diversity, and to empathetically try to see the world from the eyes of its most vulnerable inhabitants.
📰 106 judicial postings cleared in a month
Flurry of orders CJI Gogoi’s initial days as top judge
•The government has singularly honoured the recommendations of the Supreme Court Collegium since October 3, the day Justice Ranjan Gogoi took office as 46th Chief Justice of India.
•The Ministry of Law and Justice website shows that 106 judicial appointments to the High Courts and the Supreme Court were issued by the government from October 3 till date. These orders include the appointment of four new judges to the Supreme Court on November 1, less than a month since Chief Justice Gogoi took over as top judge.
•The government also approved 16 transfers of judges to the various High Courts.
•In fact, the total 122 appointments and transfers (106+16) come within 26 days of Chief Justice Gogoi taking over. That is, the number of orders of appointments issued by the government is 4.8 times more than the number of days the Supreme Court worked since October 3.
•Chief Justice Gogoi had himself recently expressed surprise at the speed — in 48 hours — with which the government cleared the Collegium’s recommendation of the four new Supreme Court judges.
•Compare this trend to the first two months of CJI Gogoi’s immediate predecessor, Justice Dipak Misra.
•Justice Misra assumed office as the 45th CJI on August 27 last year. The first order of appointment issued by the government was that of six judges to the Hyderabad High Court on September 18, 2017.
•On the other hand, the first order of judicial appointment was issued by the government on the very day, October 3, Chief Justice Gogoi took oath as CJI. This was the appointment of Justice Surya Kant as the Chief Justice of Himachal Pradesh High Court.
•The government made 50 judicial appointments in various High Courts and approved merely five transfers from August 27 to December 31 of 2017 when the Collegium was led by Justice Misra.
•The rush of clearances from the government comes even as the Supreme Court is seized with three politically-charged cases — Ayodhya dispute, Rafale deal and the CBI Director’s plea.
📰 RIMES terms Titli cyclone ‘rarest of rare’
It has recommended a detailed assessment to understand the risks in the wake of the devastation
•The Regional Integrated Multi-Hazard Early Warning System (RIMES) for Africa and Asia, a 45-nation international organisation on disaster warning, has termed ‘Titli’, the severe cyclonic storm that devastated Odisha in October, as ‘rarest cyclone’.
•“More than 200 years of cyclone track history in the Odisha coast reveals that the Titli cyclone is the rarest of rare in terms of its characteristics such as recurvature after landfall and retaining its destructive potential after landfall and recurvature away from the coastal areas for more than two days,” says RIMES in its latest report.
•The UN-registered organisation said: “Considering the history of cyclone tracks, no synthetic track projection captures the Titli type of cyclones. The forecast information available lacks actionable early warning information such as no indication of occurrence of secondary hazards, including landslides far away from the coasts.”
•The severe cyclonic storm left more than 60 people dead, mainly due to land slide in interior Gajapati district. Odisha, which takes immense pride in disaster preparedness, was confounded in the wake of the damage to both life and property caused by Titli in interior districts.
•Earlier, India Meteorological Department had called the formation of Titli as a ‘rarest of rare’ occurrence. The severe cyclone had changed its path after landfall.
•According to RIMES, the Odisha State Disaster Management Authority faced challenges in anticipating and managing Titli's impact due to lack of impact-based actionable early warning information and prior experience not only in India but also elsewhere.
•“The OSDMA, by learning the lessons from Titli cyclone, could evolve measures to minimise impacts in both coastal and non-coastal regions more effectively in future,” it said.
•The international body said: “The State government actions linked to the cyclone-risk management are also heavily focused on the coastal areas where cyclones cross at their peak intensities. Therefore, coastal areas now have been largely well managed through evacuations and other protocols, leading to zero casualties in these areas.”
•“The highest number of casualties occurred in a village called Baraghara in Gajapati district due to landslides. People did not evacuate, as the risk is unknown and also not expected. There was no pin-pointed forecast available what will happen where,” it said.
•The RIMES has recommended that a detailed risk assessment has to be carried out for Odisha to understand the risks in the light of the Titli devastation.
📰 HIV infected children likely to suffer cognitive impairment: study
Research on children under ART treatment in eastern India showed lower neuropsychological test scores, calling for better nutritional, psychological support
•Children infected with the Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV) have to endure a significant adverse impact on their neurodevelopment and cognitive functioning, a new study has revealed.
•Analysing resting state functional MRIs the study, published recently in the online journal NeuroImage Clinical, reveals that HIV-infected children have lower neuropsychological test scores thus reflecting reduced memory span, attention deficit and decreased visual-motor coordination among other conditions.
•Published on October 29, the study, carried out by a team of doctors at Fortis Memorial Research Institute in Gurugram, King George Medical University in Lucknow and Sidra Medicine in Doha, Qatar, highlighted significant fluctuations in regions of the brain that are associated with auditory, language, sensory and motor functional networks of HIV infected children.
•“Decline of mental processes has been commonly observed in HIV infected adults. The common condition we see in adult patients is dementia, which broadly refers to a decline in memory or thinking skills and encephalopathy, a condition that affects the structure or function of the brain. This new study asserts similar impact on HIV infected children”, said neurologist Dr Ravindra Garg from Lucknow’s King George Medical University, one of the investigators of the study.
•The researchers assessed 26 perinatally HIV infected children being treated under the National AIDS Control Programme in eastern Uttar Pradesh and 20 non-infected children from the same region. The mean age of the children was 10 years.
Cognitive changes
•“We carried out resting state Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) of all children and generated maps of Amplitude of Low Frequency Fluctuations (ALFF), a neuroimaging method to gauge spontaneous fluctuations and Functional Connectivity (FC) that analyses brain networks”, explained Dr Rakesh Gupta, a neuro-radiology expert from Fortis, adding that the findings were co-related with neuropsychological assessment scores.
•The neuropsychological assessment was carried out through a specially designed test for children to detect memory span, verbal meaning, mazes, learning names, quantity, discs, hidden figure, closure and exclusion. For example, in exclusion, children were given geometrical forms that have common characteristic except one and asked to pick the one that is different. This score reflects on the child’s cognition of figural classes and similarities. In closure, the children were shown incomplete pictures of familiar birds and animals for 30 seconds for them to identify. This reflects on their cognition of incomplete objects.
•In mazes, children held a stylus on the maze on a paper sheet and were asked to find a way out without crossing the walls. Mazes reflect visual-motor coordination, planning etc.
•The study concluded that all HIV infected children had lower neuropsychological test scores as compared to the control group.
Altered brain regions
•The HIV infected children in the study were also found to have significantly decreased Amplitude of Low Frequency Fluctuations (ALFF) and Functional connectivity (FC) in multiple brain regions that are related to cognition. Such reduction suggests altered brain functional activity, the study said. “We were able to locate altered cortical thickness, subcortical volumes and structural connectivity anomalies in the HIV infected children which reflects attention deficits, behavioural implications, and other cognitive issues,” said Dr. Mohammad Haris from Qatar’s Sidra Medicine, one of the authors of the study.
•Dr Haris, an expert in translational imaging, said the findings will facilitate early detection of structural and functional brain changes, allowing appropriate treatment and therapies to improve functional activities in children with immunity disorders.
•“At Sidra Medicine, we are in the process of developing the methodology of neurocognitive and neurodegenerative research. Such studies will help us evaluate the effects of different pathologies on normal brain development in children, as well as to monitor therapeutic effects,” he added.
Larger studies
•HIV is a virus that attacks the immune system and is known to affect almost every organ in the human body.
•Nearly 60,000 children in India are currently taking Anti-Retroviral Therapy (ART) for HIV. Doctors treating these children commonly observe slackened physical as well as mental growth.
•“The virus is present in patient’s bloodstream and thus gets lodged in every part of the body. It affects the brain, heart, kidney, liver etc., leaving the patient extremely immuno-compromised,” said paediatrician Dr. Yashwant Gabhale who heads civic-run Sion Hospital’s paediatric ART centre in Mumbai.
•“The key to achieving overall growth in HIV infected children is a good diet, 100% medicine compliance and regular physical activity. This ensures that their viral load is low and CD-4 (immune cells) count is high. However, a large majority of children fail to achieve this,” said Dr Gabhale, adding that larger studies with bigger sample size will reflect the ground realities more coherently.
•Doctors say such studies highlight the need for a holistic approach to HIV programmes. The emphasis should not only be on medication, but also nutritional, psychological and neurodevelopmental support.
📰 Ahead on malaria: on reduction in cases in India
Odisha shows the way in bringing down the incidence of new cases
•India has suffered from a major burden of malaria for decades, with high levels of morbidity and death. But the declining trend of the scourge shows that sustained public health action can achieve good results. The World Malaria Report 2018 of the World Health Organisation notes that India’s record offers great promise in the quest to cut the number of new cases and deaths globally by at least 40% by 2020, and to end the epidemic by 2030. A lot of that optimism has to do with the progress made by Odisha, one of the most endemic States. Investments made there in recruiting accredited social health workers and large-scale distribution of insecticide-treated bednets, together with strategies to encourage health-seeking behaviour, seem to have paid off. The WHO report highlights a sharp drop in the number of cases in the State. The reduction in cases by half in 2017 compared to the same study period in 2016 appears to reinforce research findings: malaria cases in Odisha have been coming down steadily since 2003, with a marked reduction since 2008, attributed to greater political and administrative commitment. This positive trend should encourage authorities not just in Odisha, but in the northeastern States and elsewhere too to cut the transmission of the disease further. Importantly, the reduction in the number of cases should not produce complacency and lead to a reduction in deployment of health workers and funding cuts to programme components. Where allocations have been reduced, they should be reversed. It should be pointed out that even in 2017, the Union Health and Family Welfare Ministry put the number of malaria cases in Odisha at 3,52,140.
•One issue that requires monitoring in India is resistance to combination therapy using artemisinin. Recent reports indicate that some patients in West Bengal became resistant to the treatment protocol used for the falciparum parasite, which causes debilitating cerebral malaria and leads to a high number of deaths. The phenomenon requires close monitoring — although the WHO said in a recent assessment that the treatment policy was changed to another efficacious set of combination drugs in some northeastern States, after statistically significant treatment failure rates were found in 2012. Eliminating malaria requires an integrated approach, and this should involve Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand and West Bengal, which have a higher burden of the disease. Odisha’s experience with using public health education as a tool and reaching out to remote populations with advice needs to be replicated. Given that emerging resistance to treatment has been reported in Myanmar, among other countries in this belt, there is a need for a coordinated approach to rid southern Asia of malaria.
📰 Andaman & Nicobar Islands: home to a tenth of India’s fauna species
The islands, comprising only 0.25% of country’s geographical area, has 11,009 species, according to a publication by the Zoological Survey of India
•The Narcondam hornbill, its habitat restricted to a lone island; the Nicobar megapode, a bird that builds nests on the ground; the Nicobar treeshrew, a small mole-like mammal; the Long-tailed Nicobar macaque, and the Andaman day gecko, are among the 1,067 endemic faunal species found only on the Andaman and Nicobar Islands and nowhere else.
•A recent publication by the Zoological Survey of India (ZSI) titled Faunal Diversity of Biogeographic Zones: Islands of India has for the first time come up with a database of all faunal species found on the island, putting the number at 11,009. The documentation proves that the islands, comprising only 0.25% of India’s geographical area, are home to more than 10% of the country’s fauna species.
Note of caution
•The publication, however, also cautions that tourism, illegal construction and mining are posing a threat to the islands’ biodiversity, which is already vulnerable to volatile climatic factors.
•“The presence of a large number of species in such a small area makes the Andaman and Nicobar Islands one of the richest ecosystems and biodiversity hot spots in India. Some of the species in A&N Islands are restricted to a very small area and thus more vulnerable to any anthropogenic threat,” Kailash Chandra, Director-ZSI, and one of the authors of the publication, said.
•The total area of the A&N Islands, which comprises of 572 islands, islets and rocky outcrops, is about 8,249 sq. km. The population of the islands, which includes six particularly vulnerable tribal groups (PVTGs) — Great Andamanese, Onge, Jarawa, Sentinelese, Nicobarese and Shompens — is not more than 4 lakh. The number of tourists visiting the islands has crossed the number of people residing in them, with latest data showing 4.87 lakh tourists visiting the islands annually.
•In a recent development, the Government of India relaxed the Restricted Area Permit (RAP) norms for some foreign nationalities notified under the Foreigners (Restricted Areas) Order, 1963, to visit 29 of its inhabited islands, till December 31, 2022. This has triggered further concerns of increased anthropogenic pressures over the islands’ ecosystem.
•Pankaj Sekhsaria, Senior Project Scientist, DST-Centre for Policy Research, Indian Institute of Technology (IIT)-Delhi, who has written extensively about the islands, said that some of the islands opened up for tourists are very difficult to access for a day visit.
Restricted Area Permit
•Some of the islands removed from the RAP list have no habitation except PVTG like Sentinelese in case of North Sentinel Island, and there is nothing other than a police outpost on the Narcondam Island, Dr. Sekhsaria pointed out.
•“The development paradigm that we are pushing for this place at the macro level, such as tourism, construction and development of military, are not taking in account three factors — ecological fragility of the area (the endemism), geological volatility (earthquakes and tsunamis), and the impact they will have on local communities,” he said.
•The publication, running across 49 chapters and 500 pages, not only prepares a database of species found in particular category of animals, but also highlights the most vulnerable among them. Of the ten species of marine fauna found on the islands, the dugong/sea cow, and the Indo-Pacific humpback dolphin, are both classified as Vulnerable under the IUCN (International Union for Conservation of Nature) Red List of Threatened Species.
•Among the 46 terrestrial mammalian species found, three species have been categorised as Critically Endangered — Andaman shrew (Crocidura andamanensis), Jenkin’s shrew (C. jenkinsi) and Nicobar shrew (C. nicobarica). Five species are listed as Endangered, nine species as Vulnerable, and one species as Near Threatened, according to the IUCN.
•Among birds, endemism is quite high, with 36 among 344 species of birds found only on the islands. Many of these bird species are placed in the IUCN Red List of threatened species under the Wildlife Protection Act (WPA).
Marine diversity
•Similarly, eight species of amphibians and 23 species of reptiles are endemic to the islands, and thus are at high risk of being threatened.
•Another unique feature of the islands’ ecosystem is its marine faunal diversity, which includes coral reefs and its associated fauna. In all, 555 species of scleractinian corals (hard or stony corals) are found in the island ecosystem, all which are placed under Schedule I of the WPA. Similarly, all species of gorgonian (sea fans) and calcerous sponge are listed under different schedules of the WPA.
•While highlighting that a long period of isolation from the mainland made the islands hotspots for speciation (the formation of new and distinct species) resulting in hundreds of endemic species and subspecies, the authors of the publication have underlined that any stress can have a long-lasting impact on the islands’ biodiversity, devastating the population size of any endemic fauna, followed by extinction within a limited span of time.
