📰 An invitation to corruption?
The Electoral Bond Scheme inhibits the citizen’s capacity to meaningfully participate in political and public life
•Early this year the government introduced an Electoral Bond Scheme purportedly with a view to cleansing the prevailing culture of political sponsorship. But the programme’s failings have been so blindingly obvious, and its consequences so utterly devastating to rectitude and transparency in government, that even O.P. Rawat, who just retired Chief Election Commissioner, thought it fit to deliver a damning indictment of the scheme. “There are many grey areas in this because when there is no ceiling on party expenditure and the EC (Election Commission) cannot monitor it, how can you be sure that what is coming in is not black money as there is a secrecy of the donor,” Mr. Rawat told The Economic Times in an interview last week. “Even foreign money can come and even a dying company can give money now... So, prima facie it appears the scheme cannot really deliver whatever it was intended to.”
Too opaque
•In its present form, the scheme permits not only individuals and body corporates, but also “every artificial juridical person,” to purchase bonds, issued by the State Bank of India, in denominations of ₹1,000, ₹10,000, ₹lakh, ₹10 lakh and ₹1 crore, during specified periods of the year. Issued in the form of promissory notes, once a bond is purchased the buyer can donate it to any political party, which can then encash it on demand.
•The government claims that since these bonds are purchased through banking channels the scheme will eliminate the infusion of black money into electoral funding. But not only is this argument palpably false, as a simple reading of the scheme’s terms shows us, the programme also virtually endorses corruption in political funding, as Milan Vaishnav has argued. Consider, for example, the fact that the scheme allows for complete anonymity of the donor. Neither the purchaser of the bond nor the political party receiving the donation is mandated to disclose the donor’s identity. Therefore, not only will, say, the shareholders of a corporation be unaware of the company’s contributions, but the voters too will have no idea of how, and through whom, a political party has been funded.
•Just as damaging to the most basic democratic ideals is the elimination of a slew of other barriers that were in place to check the excesses of corporate political sponsoring. For instance, the programme removes an existing condition that had prohibited companies from donating anything more than 7.5% of their average net-profit over the previous three years. This now means that even loss-making entities can make unlimited contributions. Additionally, the requirement that a corporation ought to have been in existence for at least three years before it could make donations — a system that was meant to stop shell concerns from being created with a view purely to syphoning money into politics — has also been removed.
Two judgments
•The dangers inherent in untrammelled funding of political parties, especially by corporations, have been apparent for many years. Even as early as in 1957, in a pair of judgments outstanding in their lucidity and prescience, the Bombay and the Calcutta High Courts warned Parliament of the perils in allowing companies to freely add to party coffers. It’s a threat, wrote Chief Justice M.C. Chagla, of the Bombay High Court, which is likely to “grow apace and which may ultimately overwhelm and even throttle democracy in the country”. The court was conscious that, given the circumscriptions of the law, it could scarcely deny, in the case before it, permission sought by Tata Iron and Steel Co. Ltd. to amend its memorandum of association, to allow the company to make contributions to different political interests. But this did not stop the court from drawing Parliament’s attention to the problem.
•Even H.M. Seervai, who was representing Tata, the court noted, conceded that the least the company could do was to disclose clearly in its yearly balance sheet the list of donations made by it. But, to Chief Justice Chagla, such a condition was grossly insufficient. It was imperative, he ruled, that not only the company’s shareholders, but electors too must know how a party is being financed. For democracy, he believed, couldn’t function unless the voters had free and complete access to information about the parties for which they were going to vote.
•Only months earlier, faced with a similar petition, the Calcutta High Court had made an almost identical appeal. “To the cynic it appears to be a plea of the company to have a legal sanction to bribe the Government of the day, to induce policies that will help the company in its business,” wrote Justice P.B. Mukharji. If amendments of this kind were allowed, and if joint stock companies serve as adjuncts to political parties, he added, the “man who pays the piper will then call the tune”.
•In entreating Parliament to act, the judgments were recognising a bedrock principle of democracy: that public action ought to be guided by transparency and fairness. Unfortunately, however, in the years since, every effort has been made to endorse opacity in political funding. The electoral bonds scheme, which represents the latest such assault, unless immediately rescinded, may well irredeemably damage India’s democratic edifice.
•As petitions filed in the Supreme Court point out, the scheme suffers from at least two foundational defects. One, that it was incorporated on the back of a series of amendments made to legislation, including the Representation of the People Act, the Income Tax Act and the Companies Act, which were introduced in the form of a money bill. And two, that the scheme flouts a number of fundamental rights.
•Article 110 of the Constitution allows the Speaker to classify a proposed legislation as a money bill, only when the draft law deals with all or any of the subjects enlisted in the provision. These subjects comprise a set of seven features, including items such as the imposition of a tax, the regulation of the borrowing of money by the government, the custody of the Consolidated Fund of India, the appropriation of money out of the consolidated fund, and any matter incidental to the subjects explicitly mentioned in Article 110. Hard as we might try, though, it’s impossible to see how the provisions pertaining to the electoral bond scheme could possibly fall within any of these categories. The Finance Act, through which these amendments were introduced, therefore did not deal with only those matters contained in Article 110.
Fundamental rights
•The scheme is equally destructive in its subversion of the fundamental rights to equality and freedom of expression. There’s no doubt that the Constitution does not contain an explicitly enforceable right to vote. But implicit in its guarantees of equality and free speech is a right to knowledge and information. Our courts have nearly consistently seen “freedom of voting” as distinct from the right to vote, as a facet of the right to freedom of expression and as an essential condition of political equality. In the absence of complete knowledge about the identities of those funding the various different parties, it’s difficult to conceive how a citizen can meaningfully participate in political and public life. As Ornit Shani’s wonderful book, How India Became Democratic, shows us, the institutionalising of equality through the principle of one person one vote, and through the creation of the universal adult franchise, was critical to building India’s republican structure. When the power of that vote is diluted through opacity in political funding, democracy as a whole loses its intrinsic value.
•Ultimately, therefore, to borrow from English jurist Stephen Sedley’s formulation, the electoral bonds scheme suggests two possibilities: one, that the government doesn’t understand the Constitution; or, two, it does, and has expressly set out to transgress it.
📰 End this long trauma
It is time to repeal the Habitual Offenders Act, which has only ended up re-stigmatising marginalised communities
•Consider this. Fifteen crore individuals, better known as the Denotified Tribes (DNT) of India, continue to be considered ‘criminal by birth’.
•The term, ‘De-notified and Nomadic Tribes’, can be traced to the Criminal Tribes Act (CTA) of 1871. The colonial government notified nearly 200 tribal communities to be hereditary criminals, cementing their societal identity as outcasts and subjecting them to constant harassment by the administration. After India gained Independence, these tribes were ‘de-notified’ from the list of Criminal Tribes, and, hence, the term.
Many reasons
•Several reasons can be ascribed to state-sanctioned stigmatisation of the DNTs in India under British rule, including the strategy to identify their allies and at the same time, subdue and monitor activities of rebellious tribal communities in India.
•The CTA allowed for close supervision and control over the mobility of the tribes which were notified by the provincial governments. The Act was amended in 1897, 1908 and 1911 to give sweeping powers to the authorities, some as draconian as allowing the state to remove any child of the age of six and above from its ‘criminal’ parents. By 1924, certain provisions were amended, and the Act was finally applicable to the whole of British India. Along with the introduction of laws such as the Forest Acts and the Salt Tax Act, the British threw a noose around the the lives of DNTs using stringent regulations.
•It is only in independent India that the need was felt to shift the collective burden of criminality to the individual, which led to the CTA being repealed and the Habitual Offenders Act (HOA) being enacted in various States. Not all States enacted it, Currently, a variant of the HOA Model Bill as proposed by the Union Government then stands enforced in 10 States across the country, having been enacted in many more.
•However, the HOA functioned as a mere extension of the CTA. Nomadic and semi-nomadic communities continued to face harassment at the hands of law enforcement agencies. Certainly, the mere repeal of the CTA could not change the mindset of government officials or members of society. The fact is that even in the 21st century, DNTs continue to face ostracisation by society at large. Given their centuries-old tradition of constant movement, they often do not possess any residential proof, which leaves them out of the majority of the government’s developmental schemes. Those deemed eligible for such schemes were randomly grouped under the Scheduled Castes, Scheduled Tribes or Other Backward Classes categories. As a result, most members of the DNTs continue to be out of the orbit of steps being taken to end discrimination.
•To address these issues, the first National Commission for Denotified, Nomadic and Semi-nomadic Tribes (NCDNT) was constituted in 2003, and reconstituted two years later under the chairpersonship of Balkrishna Renke, which submitted its report in 2008. The recommendations found an echo in the Idate Commission, constituted with the similar mandate in 2015, and currently withholding public release of its report. However, denied funding by the Ministry of Social Justice and Empowerment in fulfilling its mandate of carrying out survey and field validation work, the Idate Commission Report lacks the scientific data necessary to introduce reforms to address the plight of DNTs.
•The NCDNT report clearly recommends repealing the various HOAs. This has also been the constant refrain of community leaders, representatives and civil society organisations — as the Act still casts its shadow of the state on communities. The onus is thus upon us, lawmakers at the helm of democratic institutions that govern the country, to finally bring down the curtains on this age-old, state-sanctioned stigmatisation, and act upon the demands put forth by the DNTs.
A chance to make amends
•However, it is important to learn from previous mistakes. A mere repeal of the law will not address their need for establishing society-wide changes to gain access to political-social-economic welfare. Thus, the repeal of the HOA has to be accompanied by a slew of legal reforms to address the multitude of issues DNT communities face. Their unique lifestyle requires positive affirmation and development policies that cater to their long-standing and overlooked needs. It should be the duty of the government to be proactive and reach out to the DNTs since the latter would understandably refrain from seeking state help. As the sun sets on the 16th Lok Sabha, let us ensure that it also marks an end to the oppression of the nomadic and semi-nomadic tribes of India.
📰 Uneasy truce: on Huawei executive arrest
The U.S. action against a top Huawei executive threatens the tariff thaw with China
•The 90-day trade truce between China and the United States reached over the weekend on the sidelines of the G20 meet in Argentina is already proving to be fragile. Chinese telecommunications giant Huawei’s chief financial officer Meng Wanzhou was arrested recently by Canadian authorities, acting on an extradition request from the U.S. Ms. Wanzhou is the daughter of the company’s founder Ren Zhengfei, a former member of the Chinese military. The arresthappened around the time U.S. President Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping met in Buenos Aires to defuse trade tensions between their countries, but news of the arrest broke only on Wednesday. Huawei at this moment has been accused of breaching American sanctions against Iran, but U.S. lawmakers have also been concerned about the Chinese government using the company to carry out spying operations on foreign soil. Last year, it is worth noting, Chinese telecom giant ZTE reached a settlement with the U.S. government over charges of exporting banned items to Iran. Markets across the world were negatively affected on Thursday as trade tensions looked to flare up once again between the world’s two largest economies.
•It is hard to determine whether the present U.S. action against the Huawei official is based on legitimate concerns about national security or if the U.S. has simply attacked China on yet another front in the ongoing trade war. To be sure, other countries, including Australia and the United Kingdom, have also been quite wary about doing business with Huawei due to the alleged gathering of intelligence by the company. In particular, they fear that Huawei’s involvement in building their 5G network could lead to problems linked to cyber-espionage. At the same time, radical anti-Chinese politicians in the U.S. have every reason to exaggerate national security concerns simply in order to justify protectionist sanctions against Chinese companies. Huawei has clearly been seen by many as a serious threat to the global domination exerted by American technology companies. Either way, recent actions are bound to have a negative impact on U.S.-China trade ties as the Chinese will not be too happy about the continuing assault on multinational companies which have their roots in China. U.S. concerns about national security are also closely related to accusations against Huawei of violating intellectual property rights with the tacit approval of the Chinese government. The arrest might thus suggest that the U.S. may not go soft on its demand for the protection of intellectual property rights during its talks with the Chinese authorities in the next few months. With the rapid escalation in trade tensions over the year, it will take serious efforts to bring a lasting solution that is acceptable to both American and Chinese politicians.
📰 Use AI to filter social media, says government
Asks platforms to meet requests to take down objectionable posts in four hours
•The Union government has asked social media platforms to emulate the practices they follow in the U.K. in using tools based on Artificial Intelligence to identify and take down content that incites people to commit violence, a senior Home Ministry official said on Friday.
•On a request was made by a law enforcement agency, the Ministry has reduced the time limit to take down such posts and videos to about four hours from about 36 hours at present.
•The Ministry has asked Twitter to engage “flaggers” and “voluntary organisations” to identify, detect and take down objectionable content in real time.
•“While we recognise the utility of social media platforms, government cannot remain a mute spectator and has to ensure that they comply with the directives. They cannot take ages to respond to requests by agencies to bring down such content,” said the official.
•The official said that after the government held several meetings with representatives from Google, WhatsApp, Twitter, Facebook and others, the compliance rates in honouring requests by law enforcement agencies have gone up from 60% to 80%.
•“Google has agreed to deploy pro-active tools to voluntarily identify and remove such content. Social media platforms have been asked to engage NGOs working in the field, and appoint a grievance redressal cell, for prompt action,” said the official.
•The Ministry had asked Twitter to produce telephone numbers and other identifiable sources that could help track suspicious accounts, whenever asked for by law enforcement agencies.
•The Centre has stepped up its interactions with social media platforms to arrest the spread of rumours, and messages inciting unrest, cybercrimes and other activities that could be detrimental to national security. In May and June, over 20 people have been lynched based on fake posts or rumours floating on WhatsApp.
•WhatsApp has been asked to keep the complete trail of forwarding of unlawful content and share “meta data” with law enforcement agencies to identify the user who “originated the content.”
📰 Raghuram Rajan’s student Krishnamurthy Subramanian is new Chief Economic Advisor
The post had been lying vacant after Arvind Subramanian left it after a four-year stint.
•The Appointments Committee of the Cabinet has approved the appointment of Krishnamurthy Subramanian as the new Chief Economic Adviser for a period of three years, according to an official notification issued on Friday.
•Mr. Subramanian, who did his Ph.D from the University of Chicago Booth School of Business in 2005 under Luigi Zingales and former CEA and RBI Governor Raghuram Rajan, is also an alumnus of IIT-Kanpur and IIM-Calcutta. He is now an associate professor at the Indian School of Business, Hyderabad.
📰 M.S. Swaminathan calls GM crops a failure; Centre’s adviser faults paper
Genetically engineered Bt cotton has failed to provide livelihood security for farmers, says article.
•A research paper co-authored by leading agriculture scientist M.S. Swaminathan, which describes Bt cotton as a ‘failure,’ was criticised by India’s Principal Scientific Adviser (PSA), K. VijayRaghavan as ‘deeply flawed’.
•The paper, ‘Modern Technologies for Sustainable Food and Nutrition Security’, appears in the latest issue of the peer-reviewed journal Current Science. It is authored by P.C. Kesavan and Prof. Swaminathan, senior functionaries of the M.S. Swaminathan Research Foundation (MSSRF). The article is a review of crop development in India and transgenic crops — particularly Bt cotton, the stalled Bt brinjal as well as DMH-11, a transgenic mustard hybrid. The latter two have been cleared by scientific regulators but not by the Centre.
•“There is no doubt that GE (genetically engineered) Bt cotton has failed in India. It has failed as a sustainable agriculture technology and has, therefore, also failed to provide livelihood security for cotton farmers who are mainly resource-poor, small and marginal farmers,” according to the paper, “…The precautionary principle (PP) has been done away with and no science-based and rigorous biosafety protocols and evaluation of GM crops are in place.”
‘Flawed and full of errors’
•The piece also raises questions on the genetic engineering technology itself on the grounds that it raises the cost of sowing. Also, the insertion of foreign genes (in the plant) could lead to “molecular and cellular events not precisely understood.”
•“The Kesavan and Swaminathan ‘Review’ (sic) is deeply flawed and full of errors. Needs scientific rebuttal,” Mr. VijayRaghavan tweeted from his personal account. Before being appointed the PSA, Mr. VijayRaghavan, a biologist, was Secretary, Department of Biotechnology, which funds a variety of molecular biology projects. Mr. Kesavan, who is the lead author of the piece, told The Hindu that he was unaware of Mr. VijayRaghavan’s comment but was expecting a “scientific, point-by-point response (of any flaws).”
•“I’m not on Twitter but I believe a senior scientist shouldn’t be making such irresponsible comments,” he said.
•The Hindu reached out to Prof. Swaminathan’s office and was told that the paper had raked up “a lot of controversy.”
•“We’ll likely soon be holding a press conference or a discussion on some of the points raised since the paper was published,” a spokesperson for the MSSRF said.
•Mr. VijayRaghavan said in a text message that he wouldn’t be immediately elaborating on his criticism but would in a “few days.”
‘Last resort’
•Prof. Swaminathan, credited with leading India’s Green Revolution, has in recent years advocated ‘sustainable agriculture’ and said the government should only use genetic engineering as a last resort. “…Swaminathan emphasised that genetic engineering technology is supplementary and must be needbased. Only in very rare circumstance (less than 1%) may there arise a need for the use of this technology,” according to the paper.
•However, the MSSRF is also involved in GE research. It has a programme on developing drought-resistant GM rice by using genes from mangroves to potentially protect rice varieties grown along the coasts from being affected by higher saline content — a consequence of warming seas from climate change. “The programme is ongoing but isn’t aimed for the present. Genes from salt-tolerant plants too aren’t ideal…however, GE may be deployed to manage against abiotic stresses,” said Mr. Kesavan. Abiotic stresses refer to environmental factors that could meddle with plant yield, as opposed to ‘biotic’ stressors such as insects. Conventional GE technology uses genes from soil bacterium to either protect them from specific pests, or — as in the case of GE mustard — facilitate hybridisation. This means making the plant more amenable to developing higher-yielding varieties.
