📰 Terrorism has caused $1 trillion loss to world economy, says PM Modi
Terror has emerged as the biggest threat to peace and prosperity, the Prime Minister says.
•Terrorism has caused a $1 trillion loss to the world economy and the atmosphere it created has indirectly and deeply harmed trade and business, Prime Minister Narendra Modi said at the BRICS Summit here on Thursday as he welcomed increased cooperation from the members of the grouping.
•Addressing the plenary session of the 11th BRICS Summit at the iconic Itamaraty Palace in the presence of the Presidents of Brazil, China, Russia and South Africa, Mr. Modi said terrorism had emerged as the biggest threat to development, peace and prosperity. “According to some estimates, the economic growth of developing nations has decreased by 1.5% due to terrorism,” he said, adding that the scourge had caused a $1 trillion loss to the world economy. In 10 years, terrorism had claimed the lives of 2.25 lakh people and destroyed societies, he said.
•“The atmosphere of doubt created by terrorism, terror-financing, drug-trafficking and organised crime indirectly and deeply harms trade and business. I am happy that the first seminar on BRICS Strategies for Countering Terrorism was organised. We hope that such efforts and activities of the five working groups will increase strong BRICS Security Cooperation against terrorism and other organised crimes,” he said.
•Mr. Modi said sustainable water management and sanitation were important challenges in urban areas. “I propose to hold the first meeting of BRICS Water Ministers in India,” he said. “Recently, we started ‘Fit India Movement’. I want to increase contacts and exchanges between us in the field of fitness and health.”
•He also called for special attention to mutual trade and investment, saying intra-BRICS trade accounts for 15% of the world trade, while its combined population is over 40% of the world’s population.
The country has to focus on multi-dimensional approaches, and prevention activities.
•One in six people with diabetes in the world is from India. The numbers place the country among the top 10 countries for people with diabetes, coming in at number two with an estimated 77 million diabetics. China leads the list with over 116 million diabetics.
•On International Diabetes Day, the International Diabetes Foundation Diabetes Atlas makes it clear India needs to pause and re-evaluate its strategy to combat diabetes.
Growing numbers
•The ninth edition of the IDF Diabetes Atlas offers projections that continue to put India at the second slot right up to 2045. And the numbers are staggering — just over 134 million Indians will be diabetics in the next 25 years.
•India is on the top of the table of a clutch of countries in from southeast Asia — Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Nepal and Mauritius. Bangladesh, which is second on the list of top five countries with diabetes (20-79 years), however, has only 8.4 million diabetics.
•The IDF has stressed the urgency to develop and implement multi-sectoral strategies to combat the growing epidemic. “Diabetes, being a lifestyle disorder with multidimensional causative factors, definitely needs a multidimensional approach,” said A. Ramachandran, chairman, Dr.A. Ramachandran’s Diabetes Hospitals, Chennai, and member of the Diabetes Atlas Committee.
•“Once diabetes is diagnosed, currently, there is only fragmented care especially because our health delivery system is modelled for acute care rather than for chronic care.”
•Dr. Ramachandran highlights the very high cost of treating diabetes. “In the future the costs will soar, and we will not be able to afford them.”
•The IDF estimates that 10% of global health expenditure is being spent on diabetes. The way ahead, all experts concurred, was a focus on prevention. India needs a more effective national diabetes prevention programme which will require cooperation from several quarters, including medical education, health awareness in schools, and urban planning, he explains.
•V. Mohan from Dr. Mohan’s Diabetes Specialities Centre, also underlined that prevention was key to the problem. “In addition to people with diabetes, the country also has a huge burden of pre-diabetics. If we target them with information on the right lifestyle options to help keep blood sugar, lipids and blood pressure under control, we can prevent at least a third of people from developing diabetes.”
•The country should also be ready to offer treatment options, at least basic care for all who are living with diabetes, and provide for the treatment of various complications, and that is likely to be a massive challenge in future, he adds.
📰 Sabarimala case: Larger Supreme Court bench to decide role of courts in religion
Justices Chandrachud and Nariman deliver a dissenting judgment.
•A majority judgment delivered by a five-judge Bench led by Chief Justice of India (CJI) Ranjan Gogoi on Thursday kept a final decision on the Sabarimala review and writ petitions in abeyance till a larger Bench of seven judges delivers an “authoritative pronouncement” on the exact role a non-epistolary court can play in deciding whether a particular practice is essential or integral to a religion.
•The review Bench, however, did not pass any interim order for stay of its September 26, 2018 judgment, which upheld the right of women aged between 10 and 50 to enter and worship at the temple in Kerala.
•Chief Justice Gogoi, delivering the majority opinion along with Justices A.M. Khanwilkar and Indu Malhotra, framed a series of questions for the seven-judge Bench to examine.
•These include whether a court can probe whether a practice is essential to a religion or should the question be left to the respective religious head; should “essential religious practices” be afforded constitutional protection under Article 26 (freedom to manage religious affairs); and what is the “permissible extent” of judicial recognition a court should give to PILs filed by people who do not belong to the religion of which practices are under the scanner.
Dissent by two judges
•Justices Rohinton F. Nariman and D.Y. Chandrachud, however, joined to deliver a stinging dissent. They were part of the Constitution Bench that delivered the original majority judgment in September 2018.
•Both dismissed the majority decision of a reference to a larger Bench. Justice Nariman, who wrote the dissent, said the judgment of a five-judge Constitution Bench was the last word on the interpretation of the Constitution. Once a Constitution Bench has laid down the law, both legislature and the executive, were bound to comply. That is the rule of law.
•Instead of complying with the Supreme Court judgment, the country was witness to the “sad spectacle of unarmed women between the ages of 10 and 50 being thwarted in the exercise of their fundamental right of worship at the Sabarimala temple”. Organised efforts to thwart women from entering the temple should be put down firmly. All persons, including women between the ages of 10 and 50, were “equally entitled to practice the Hindu religion”.
•The Sabarimala judgment of September 2018 was based on a bona fide PIL plea, which had raised grave issues of gender bias on account of a physiological or biological function common to all women.
‘Constitution the holy book’
•The fears raised by Justice Malhotra, who dissented in 2018, about the threat of PILs being used by third parties to tinker with religious beliefs were unfounded. “Busybodies, religious fanatics, cranks and persons with vested interests will be turned down by the Court at the threshold itself,” Justice Nariman read out in open court. For judges, “the holy book is the Constitution”, he stressed.
•But Chief Justice Gogoi reasoned that an authoritative pronouncement from a larger Bench would instil public confidence. An increasing number of petitions were being filed questioning the validity of religious practices and their restrictions on women, he noted. Some of these have questioned long-held religious beliefs, including the one against the bar on Muslim women from entering mosques or the practice among Parsis to prohibit women who have married inter-faith from the holy fire place (Agyari) or the challenge against female genital mutilation in the Dawoodi Bohra community.
•Like the Sabarimala issue, these petitions concerned the tug-of-war between women’s fundamental right to equality under Article 14 and the believers’ right to freely practice religion. An authoritative pronouncement from the Supreme Court was necessary.
•“It is time that this court evolves a judicial policy befitting to its plenary powers to do substantial and complete justice… The decision of a larger Bench would put at rest recurring issues touching upon the rights flowing from Articles 25 [freedom of religion] and 26 [right of administration of property of religious endowments] of the Constitution,” Chief Justice Gogoi observed.
•The majority opinion said a seven-judge Bench decision on overlapping issues would be in accordance with “judicial discipline and propriety”.
•“An authoritative pronouncement will also reflect the plurality of views of the judges converging into one opinion. That may also ensure consistency in approach for the posterity,” Chief Justice Gogoi said.
•The majority opinion said the seven-judge Bench, while deciding the larger issues framed, could also consider whether the Kerala Hindu Places of Public Worship (Authorisation of Entry) Rules, 1965 would govern the Sabarimala temple.
📰 Open, all the same: On CJI office and RTI Act
With the CJI under the RTI Act, there will be greater transparency by public authorities
•The adage, “sunlight is the best disinfectant” is often used to delineate the need for disclosure of matters related to public interest through the Right to Information mechanism. The declaration of assets by ministers and legislators, besides electoral candidates, has gone a long way in shedding light on public authorities and provided the citizenry more relevant information about their representatives. Yet, judges of the Supreme Court had hitherto refused to share information on their personal assets, citing the express lack of public interest. The welcome ruling by a five-member Constitution Bench of the Supreme Court that the office of the Chief Justice of India is a “public authority” under the RTI Act, as much as the apex court itself, now enables the disclosure of information such as the judges’ personal assets. The judgment’s majority opinion, written by Justice Sanjiv Khanna, emphasised the need for transparency and accountability and that “disclosure is a facet of public interest”. In concurring opinions, Justice D.Y. Chandrachud asserted that judicial independence was not secured by secrecy while Justice N.V. Ramana argued for the need of a proper calibration of transparency in light of the importance of judicial independence. The Bench unanimously argued that the right to know under the RTI Act was not absolute and this had to be balanced with the right of privacy of judges. But the key takeaway from the judgment is that disclosure of details of serving judges’ personal assets was not a violation of their right to privacy.
•The main opinion also argued that information related to issues such as judicial appointments will also be subject to the test of public interest and procedures mandated in the RTI Act that specify that views of third parties (in this case, judges) must be sought. While laying out the importance of the assessment of public interest in any RTI query besides bringing the office of the CJI under the purview of the Act, the decision has gone on to uphold the Delhi High Court verdict in 2010. The RTI Act is a strong weapon that enhances accountability, citizen activism and, consequently, participative democracy, even if its implementation has come under strain in recent years due mainly to the Central government’s apathy and disregard for the nuts and bolts of the Act. Yet, despite this, the Supreme Court judgment paves the way for greater transparency and could now impinge upon issues such as disclosure, under the RTI Act, by other institutions such as registered political parties. This is vital as political party financing is a murky area today, marked by opacity and exacerbated by the issue of electoral bonds, precluding citizens from being fully informed on sources of party incomes.
📰 Will the Kartarpur Corridor survive India-Pakistan hostilities?
The happiness could be overpowered by toxicity unless India-Pakistan relations improve
•Over the past few days, thousands of pilgrims have visited the Kartarpur shrine through the special corridor built between India and Pakistan, which brought to reality a long-cherished dream of many Sikhs. After the celebration following the inauguration of the Kartarpur Corridor on November 9, many in the diplomatic and security establishment have expressed reservations about the project. In a conversation moderated by Suhasini Haidar, former diplomat Ambassador K.C. Singh and director of Institute for Conflict Management Ajai Sahni discuss the potential and the pitfalls of the India-Pakistan initiative. Edited excerpts:
The Kartarpur Corridor is a reality after seven decades. With Prime Ministers Narendra Modi and Imran Khan comparing the corridor to the Berlin Wall coming down, what are your thoughts?
•K.C. Singh: This was always welcome — not just the Kartarpur Corridor, but also perhaps the idea that other religious corridors may be built between the two countries. I think there may not be too many other religious spots like this, just four kilometres from the border.
•But let’s not conflate two things: the demand for the Kartarpur Corridor with India-Pakistan relations. If India-Pakistan relations were on a positive trajectory, Kartarpur would have been a confidence-building measure. Incidentally, this was never a part of the India-Pakistan comprehensive dialogue structure. Now if it was a confidence-building measure, you could see it helping the relationship further. But since the relationship is sour, and made worse by the August 5th decision on Article 370 in Jammu and Kashmir, you are dealing with two separate processes: a relationship going south and this kind of an initiative sticking out like a sore thumb.
•Ajai Sahni: I would agree, and add something. I believe both sides have entered into this Kartarpur arrangement for divergent, conflicting, and partisan political and domestic reasons. This is not a decision in good faith, to my mind. In 2017, a parliamentary committee had mulled over this idea, consulted widely with security and intelligence agencies, and come to the conclusion that however desirable, the Kartarpur Corridor was not advisable due to the situation on the ground. This was completely ignored.
Given that there were no other bilateral talks, isn’t the fact that the Kartarpur talks went on for an entire year a miracle of sorts?
•KC: Well, I think the question arises as to why Pakistan has gone ahead with the initiative despite the Balakot strikes, the Pakistan-bashing rhetoric during the elections this year, as well as dilution of Article 370.
In the past year, the Kartarpur Corridor seems to have been pushed by Pakistan’s military, with General Qamar Javed Bajwa making the first move when he offered the project. Government officials have also said that this project has been completed with “military precision”. Do you think Kartarpur is a military project for Pakistan?
•AS: Absolutely. The basic objective has been to give a fillip to the Khalistan [separatist] project. And this combines with efforts of the past 3-4 years of creating problems in Punjab through a terrorist proxy. It combines with the increasing rhetoric around Khalistan. We heard repeated statements from Pakistani Ministers that Khalistanis would be welcomed at Kartarpur. As far as the management of Kartarpur is concerned, it is completely in the purview of the Army and the Inter-Services Intelligence.
Is there an uptick in activity by these Khalistani groups?
•AS: Marginally, yes. From what we have recorded, in the eight years preceding 2016, we saw no fatalities relating to activities from separatists in Punjab. Thereafter we have seen some. There is some limited uptick, but no major traction.
I want to put these suspicions that you refer to in some context. We have other religious pilgrimages between the two countries (Ajmer Sharif, Nankana Sahib, Hindu shrines, etc.) and a convention from the 1970s regulating them. So, why is Kartarpur different?
•KC: First, the volumes are much smaller for those, and they are highly controlled. Lists are made in advance, and the Home Ministry and State governments run through them. Only a few thousand people go a few times a year.
•AS: The real concern can be radicalisation, recruitment, and identification [by separatist groups]. If the volumes are substantial, as I am sure they will be eventually, they [the Pakistani establishment] will set up systems to expose these people to diaspora elements. The Khalistani leadership, still being given safe haven in Pakistan, will be used to identify individuals who are potential recruits and who could be mobilised for action or propaganda to support the broader Khalistani purpose. This is the slow attritional policy they would have imagined. Whether or not they are able to succeed is another matter.
If you can put aside the suspicions, how big a moment is the Kartarpur opening for the Sikh community and followers of Guru Nanak around the country?
•KC: Kartarpur; Nankana Sahib, which is west of Lahore; and Damdama Sahib, which is between Islamabad and Peshawar are all important. There are many other gurdwaras in Pakistan, but these are the main ones. But at the same time I would say, let’s not hype it too much. It is great that it has been done, but India should now be smart about it and make a counter-proposal and say, please, let us exchange an enclave. We don’t want a corridor, and there is a natural barrier of the Ravi river which touches Kartarpur. We don’t know why Radcliffe drew the line south but took out this enclave at this point. So, like we did with Bangladesh, why can’t we exchange the enclaves of land with land here? Pakistan will immediately reject it because what they want is a constant pressure point. There is always the fear that the corridor will get linked to India-Pakistan relations. If relations are tense, they may tighten the flow of pilgrims, and even if they allow a normal flow here and the rest of the relationship is toxic, then you are allowing them to give the impression that Sikhs are favoured and creating a division with other Indians.
Are you saying that the government has allowed Pakistan to put issues of faith above national policy?
•AS: Well, it is abundantly clear that they neglected issues relating to national security policy and the declared national policy on Pakistan. This [Kartarpur Corridor] contradicts what the practice was over the last 4-5 years. The diplomatic and political ecosystem towards Pakistan has been one of hostility and within that Kartarpur stands out not only as a positive exception but a contradiction.
Given all that, will the Kartarpur Corridor survive?
•AS: I think it will be a perpetual hostage to a major terrorist event. And the moment something occurs, our political system will have to deal with the far greater disappointment of losing something we had gained as opposed to not having something the Sikh community desired. If Kartarpur is shut down now after having been opened up, the sense of loss will be far greater than not having access to Kartarpur for 72-73 years.
•KC: Well, you saw the engagement and the message that Prime Minister Khan sent [with reference to Kashmir at the opening]. You also saw that the Indian Prime Minister could not go across, and asked Punjab Chief Minister Amarinder Singh to carry offerings and pay obeisance on his behalf. So it cannot be seen in isolation to other problems. Those have become more toxic after the dilution of Article 370, and Mr. Khan said that, raising issues of human rights. So what can the corridor do by itself? It’s a happy occasion which will be overpowered by the toxicity unless we can find a way to move the whole relationship forward. It can be a beginning, but cautiously so, and won’t mean much unless the rest of the relationship goes forward.
Finally, many have said that Punjab bore the brunt of Partition. Can this engagement at least try and heal the wounds of the past?
•KC: No, I think when Punjabis meet they always get along. They speak the same language, discuss the same culture, food is the same. The two Punjabs having better connectivity should be a natural outcome. After all, in the past, Punjab was land-locked but connected to Central Asia. During Maharaja Ranjit Singh’s time, Lahore was connected by the Indus river, the Sutlej, and had riverine ties with the region. After Partition, all of that was delinked. So [Indian] Punjab has become completely land-locked and looks at the rest of India for goods and services and markets. There is no [cross-border] trade left, and so Amritsar, which was on a major trading route to Central Asia, is now completely land-locked, and the same goes for Pakistan’s Punjab province too. They are losing their links to the booming economy of India, simply because of their fixation on Kashmir.
•AS: We could always enumerate all the many advantages. There are economic and social advantages that would come from better relations between India and Pakistan. The difficulty is that politics always trumps economics. As long as you have this politics of hatred that is entrenched in Pakistan because of a certain religious doctrine, and that seems to be something that is increasingly being seeded in India as well, I don’t think one can imagine a very dramatic transformation or a very positive people-to-people relationship between the people of Punjab on this side of the border and people on the other side at present.
📰 Back from the brink
The nearly year-long measles outbreaks in the U.S. offer lessons for India
•On October 3, 2019, the U.S. just about managed to retain its measles elimination status declared nearly 20 years ago. A month earlier, New York State declared the end of a measles outbreak, which began on October 1, 2018 and continued for almost a year, bringing the country very close to losing the status.
•The last case of measles in New York State occurred on August 19 and completed 42 days (two incubation periods for measles) after the onset of rash. It ended just a couple of days before the duration of the outbreak could cross the one-year mark. This was crucial as a country loses the measles elimination status if a chain of transmission from a given outbreak is sustained for more than 12 months.
•An outbreak in New York City, which began on September 30, 2018, led to more than 600 confirmed cases. The outbreak in nearby Rockland County, New York, started the next day and led to more than 300 cases. While 29 other States in the U.S. reported outbreaks in the past year, these did not last long. The reason why they were both limited in size and short-lived was mainly because the vaccination coverage was high leading to high immunity protection in the population.
Reasons for outbreak
•The nearly year-long transmission in New York highlights the possibility of a sustained spread of measles in small pockets of an under-immunised community even when vaccine coverage with two doses nationally is high. Inequities in vaccine coverage, or gaps in vaccine coverage between communities, age groups and geographic areas in countries with high coverage at the national level, provide a fertile ground for outbreaks and for prolonged spread in such under-immunised groups.
•Gaps and disparities in vaccine coverage between communities was the reason why the two outbreaks among the children of New York lasted for almost a year. Vaccine coverage among children belonging to the ultra-Orthodox Jewish community was not high; measles vaccination coverage in schools in the outbreak area was only 77%. In addition, there was also a delay in vaccination. The reason? Parents had refused to vaccinate their children fearing that the vaccine might cause autism. Low protection in children of this community meant that they ran a high risk of getting infected by unvaccinated people returning from countries with ongoing measles transmission.
•While 1,249 cases of measles were laboratory-confirmed in 2019 from 22 outbreaks in 31 States, 75% of the cases were restricted to the Orthodox Jewish community in New York.
Problem in India
•These details are important for India, which has a twin problem. The first is that it has huge pockets of under-immunised children. Second, the immunisation coverage with two doses at the national level is far below the World Health Organization level of 95% needed for protection and elimination. Intensified efforts to increase immunisation coverage in recent years have led to a sharp drop in the number of measles cases annually in India. Yet, in the October 2018-2019 period, India reported 71,834 cases, the third highest number in the world, according to the WHO.
•While India intends to eliminate measles by 2020, the vaccination coverage has nowhere reached the 95% threshold for two doses. According to the June 2019 WHO and UNICEF estimate for national immunisation coverage, measles vaccine coverage in India in 2018 for the first dose was 90%. It was 80% for the second dose. But the reported coverage levels are “likely an overestimation”, the report cautions, based on a coverage evaluation survey.
•Protection offered by maternal antibodies last for only four-five months, while the first dose of measles immunisation is at nine-12 months of age. Thus there is a huge window during which infants are vulnerable to measles infection. Also, about 15% of children in India fail to develop immunity from the first dose of measles vaccine. Till such time older children are fully protected with two doses, infants will remain vulnerable.
📰 Supreme Court dismisses pleas to review Rafale ruling, raps Rahul Gandhi
The three-judge Bench closes criminal contempt plea against Congress leader Rahul Gandhi, asks him to be ‘more careful in future’.
•A three-judge Bench of the Supreme Court, led by Chief Justice of India (CJI) Ranjan Gogoi, on Thursday dismissed petitions seeking a review of the December 14, 2018 judgment upholding the purchase of 36 Rafale fighter aircraft.
•“The endeavour of the petitioners was to construe themselves as an appellate authority to determine each aspect of the Rafale purchase… We cannot lose sight of the fact that we are dealing with a contract for aircraft pending before different governments for quite some time. The necessity for those aircraft has never been in dispute... This court did not consider it appropriate to embark on a roving and fishing enquiry,” Justice Sanjay Kishan Kaul delivered the main judgment he co-authored with the CJI on Thursday.
•The Bench also closed a criminal contempt petition filed by BJP leader Meenakshi Lekhi against Congress MP Rahul Gandhi for wrongly attributing the phrase chowkidar chor hai to the court. It said Mr. Gandhi's statement was “unfortunate”. A political leader of his stature should be “more careful in the future”. It wondered whether Mr. Gandhi had even perused its order before making the statement. Mr. Gandhi had apologised to the court.
•“We do believe that persons holding such important positions in the political spectrum must be more careful. As to what should be his campaign line is for a political person to consider. However, this court or for that matter no court should be dragged into this political discourse valid or invalid, while attributing aspects to the court which had never been held by the court. Certainly, Mr. Gandhi needs to be more careful in future,” Justice Kaul read out an excerpt from the main opinion.
•Justice Kaul said the issues of registering an FIR and a consequent probe by the CBI were decided on merits by the court in the December last judgment. There was no need to reopen them.
•The review petitioners, who include former Union Ministers Yashwant Sinha and Arun Shourie and lawyer Prashant Bhushan, had alleged that the government concealed crucial facts and misled the apex court into giving a favourable verdict. They had sought the registration of an FIR and a CBI probe into their complaint against the Rafale purchase.
•Justice K.M. Joseph, the third judge on the Bench, agreed with the conclusions arrived in the main opinion of the Bench but suggested that the CBI should take prior sanction and register an FIR in case it found any material in the former Ministers' complaint.
•The court allowed the government’s application for correction of certain factual portions of the December last judgment. The main opinion said these mistakes only pertained to the narration of facts and did not affect the rationale of the judgment.
•The two judges said the 2018 judgment merely misconstrued between “what has been and what was to be done”. The verdict had misinterpreted facts on whether the government had shared the price details with the Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG). Secondly, it had conveyed the notion that the CAG report on the Rafale purchase was already before Public Accounts Committee of Parliament, when it was not. Thirdly, the government had claimed that a redacted portion of the report was placed before Parliament and was in public domain.
Pricing issue
•The court rejected the allegations on the pricing of the jets. It said it was not the function of the court to determine the prices. Such sensitive matters could not be dealt with on the mere suspicions of petitioners. Internal mechanism of such pricing would take care of the situation.
•Comparing the price of bare aircraft and fully-loaded aircraft was like comparing apples and oranges. “Best leave pricing to the competent authorities,” the judges advised the petitioners.
•The court noted how the review petitioners claimed they had got more information from “sources” about the Rafale deal after the court decision in December. In March, the court, in an order, agreed to examine various documents published in The Hindu to decide the veracity of the allegations against the Rafale purchase.
•“We decline to, once again, to embark on an elaborate exercise of analysing each clause, perusing what may be the different opinions, then taking a call whether a final decision should or should not have been taken in such technical matters,” the court rejected the plea for a relook on the basis of fresh information.
•On the aspect that it had misconstrued Anil Ambani’s company as that of his elder brother Mukesh, the court said the term ‘Reliance Industries’ was used in a generic sense while discussing allegations regarding the offset partner in the Rafale deal.
