📰 Sri Lankan President Gotabaya Rajapaksa arrives in New Delhi on two-day visit, to meet PM Modi on November 29
On November 29, Gotabaya Rajapaksa will hold extensive talks with Prime Minister Narendra Modi
•Sri Lanka’s newly elected President Gotabaya Rajapaksa, who on Thursday arrived in New Delhi on his maiden state visit abroad, will meet Indian Prime Minister Narendra at noon Friday. He will later call on President Ram Nath Kovind, according to the Ministry of External Affairs.
•Colombo-based officials said national and regional security, development cooperation and economic assistance are likely to come up at the high-level bilateral discussion that comes a fortnight after Mr. Rajapaksa clinched presidency.
•The visit also follows India’s particularly swift outreach to the region’s newest leader. Mr. Gotabaya, a military man-turned-bureaucrat, entered politics with a presidential bid and won with a decisive mandate. External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar, the first foreign official to call on him, flew to Colombo as Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s envoy, hours after Mr. Gotabaya formally assumed charge.
•Presidential adviser Lalith Weeratunga, who is on the Sri Lankan delegation to India, said Mr. Jaishankar’s visit signalled a “new beginning” in the ties. “The President [Mr. Rajapaksa] is really looking forward to this visit [to New Delhi].”
•National security, a “top priority” for the President, would likely be discussed at length, Mr. Weeratunga said. “The President is also keen that any impediment to Indian investment be ironed out. He is very focussed on every aspect of the partnership with India and wants to look at our close ties in a holistic manner,” Mr. Weeratunga told The Hindu before his departure.
Spotlight on Tamil issue
•Sri Lanka’s Tamil leadership and people are closely following the visit, especially since the Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) said after Mr. Jaishankar’s visit that New Delhi “expects” Sri Lanka to take forward its post-war reconciliation process, ensuring “equality, justice, peace and dignity” of the Tamil people.
•Veteran Tamil leader R. Sampanthan said he expected Mr. Rajapaksa’s visit to “make a positive contribution” to better relations between the neighbours. “Better relations will be facilitated by India’s concerns being addressed in regard to the process of reconciliation and the resolution of the national question in Sri Lanka,” he told The Hindu, expressing the hope that both governments would ensure that the past promises to the Tamils were kept.
•Referring to Mr. Modi’s recent remarks that the Constitution was “a guiding light”, Mr. Sampanthan said: “We too look upon the Constitution as the guiding light of our present journey. Our new constitution must be enacted without any further delay, as it will light up the path of Sri Lanka’s journey towards, peace, prosperity and progress for all its people.”
•The outgoing government could not complete the proposed constitution, despite its drafters tabling an interim report in Parliament based on wide consultations. It remains to be seen if devolution of powers to the Tamils, or more broadly a political solution through constitutional reforms, will figure at Friday’s discussions.
•Before his departure, Mr. Gotabaya tweeted: “Leaving for my first state visit to India and looking forward to strengthening bilateral relations with Shri @narendramodi and Govt of India”.
•Following his arrival in New Delhi, MEA spokesperson Raveesh Kumar tweeted: “A civilisational relationship nurtured through millennia President @GotabayaR on his first overseas visit since assuming office arrives in India on a State visit at PM @narendramodi’s invitation, demonstrating the strength & dynamism of [India-Sri Lanka] relations. #NeighbourhoodFirst”.
Rajnath Singh chairs Acquisition Council meeting
•The Defence Acquisition Council (DAC), chaired by Defence Minister Rajnath Singh, met on Thursday and approved the procurement of weapons and equipment worth Rs. 22,800 crore.
•Among them are six additional P-8I long-range patrol aircraft to be procured from the U.S. for the Navy and additional indigenous Airborne Warning and Control System (AWACS) aircraft for the Indian Air Force (IAF).
•As a follow-up to the successful indigenous Airborne Early Warning and Control (AEW&C) programme, the DAC revalidated the Acceptance of Necessity (AoN) for the procurement of additional AWACS aircraft, the Ministry said. “The mission system and sub-systems for these aircraft would be indigenously designed, developed and integrated into the main platform by the Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO).”
•The IAF now operates three Israeli Phalcon AWACS and three smaller indigenous Netra AEW&C systems mounted on Embraer aircraft. A shortage of these force multipliers was felt during the aerial engagement with the Pakistan Air Force, a day after the Balakot air strike in February.
•These platforms would provide on-board command and control and ‘early warning’, which would assist the IAF in achieving effective air space dominance in the least possible time, the statement said. The new systems are likely to be mounted on Airbus aircraft.
Indigenous design
•The DAC approved the indigenous design, development and manufacture of ‘thermal imaging night sights’ for assault rifles, and these will be made by the “Indian private industry and used by troops deployed on the front line.”
•It also approved the procurement of twin-engine heavy helicopters for the Coast Guard.
•These aircraft would help undertake missions to prevent maritime terrorism and enable rescue operations, it said.
📰 India’s food basket must be enlarged
Agrobiodiversity can help improve the country’s poor ranking in the Global Hunger Index
•India is ranked 102 in the Global Hunger Index (GHI) out of 117 qualified countries. Hunger is defined by caloric deprivation; protein hunger; hidden hunger by deficiency of micronutrients. Nearly 47 million or four out of 10 children in India do not meet their potential because of chronic undernutrition or stunting. This leads to diminished learning capacity, increased chronic diseases, low birth-weight infants from malnourished parents. The global nutrition report pegs 614 million women and more than half the women in India aged 15-49 as being anaemic.
Nutrition garden
•Recently, the Ministry of Human Resources Development brought out school ‘nutrition garden’ guidelines encouraging eco-club students to identify fruits and vegetables best suited to topography, soil and climate. These gardens can give students lifelong social, numerical and presentation skills, care for living organisms and team work, besides being used in the noon-meal scheme. Students also learn to cultivate fruits and vegetables in their homes and this could address micronutrient deficiencies.
•Agrobiodiversity — relating to diversity of crops and varieties — is crucial in food security, nutrition, health and essential in agricultural landscapes. Out of 2,50,000 globally identified plant species, about 7,000 have historically been used in human diets. Today, only 30 crops form the basis of the world’s agriculture and just three species of maize, rice and wheat supply more than half the world’s daily calories.
•Genetic diversity of crops, livestock and their wild relatives, are fundamental to improve crop varieties and livestock breeds. We would not have thousands of crop varieties and animal breeds without the rich genetic pool. India is a centre of origin of rice, brinjal, citrus, banana, cucumber species.
•Across the world, 37 sites are designated as Globally Important Agricultural Heritage Systems (GIAHS), of which three are Indian — Kashmir (saffron), Koraput (traditional agriculture) and Kuttanad (below sea-level farming). In India, over 811 cultivated plants and 902 of their wild relatives have been documented. Our promising genetic resources include rice from Tamil Nadu (Konamani), Assam (Agni bora) and Kerala (Pokkali), Bhalia Wheat and mushroom (Guchhi) from Himachal Pradesh and rich farm animal native breeds — cattle (42), buffaloes (15), goat (34), sheep (43) and chicken (19). Agrobiodiversity helps nutrition-sensitive farming and bio-fortified foods. For instance, moringa (drumstick) has micro nutrients and sweet potato is rich in Vitamin A. There are varieties of pearl millet and sorghum rich in iron and zinc.
Development goals
•The UN Sustainable Development Goal 2 advocates for Zero Hunger and the Aichi Biodiversity Target focuses on countries conserving genetic diversity of plants, farm livestock and wild relatives. It emphasises that countries develop strategies and action plans to halt biodiversity loss and reduce direct pressure on biodiversity.
•The Centre for Biodiversity Policy and Law (CEBPOL), a policy advocacy unit of the National Biodiversity Authority, came out with recommendations to increase India’s agrobiodiversity in 2019. These include a comprehensive policy on ‘ecological agriculture’ to enhance native pest and pollinator population providing ecosystem services for the agricultural landscape. It suggested promotion of the bio-village concept of the M.S. Swaminathan Research Foundation (MSSRF) for ecologically sensitive farming; conserving crop wild relatives of cereals, millets, oilseeds, fibres, forages, fruits and nuts, vegetables, spices etc. for crop genetic diversity healthier food; providing incentives for farmers cultivating native landrace varieties and those conserving indigenous breeds of livestock and poultry varieties.
•The recommendations also include encouraging community seed banks in each agro-climatic zone so that regional biotic properties are saved and used by new generation farmers; preparing an agrobiodiversity index, documenting traditional practices through People’s Biodiversity Registers, identifying Biodiversity Heritage Sites under provisions of the Biological Diversity Act, 2002; and strengthening Biodiversity Management Committees to conserve agrobiodiversity and traditional knowledge. Developing a national level invasive alien species policy is required to identify pathways, mapping, monitoring, managing, controlling and eradicating the invasive species and prioritising problematic species based on risk assessment studies.
•Loss of crop genetic resources is mainly a result of adopting new crop varieties without conserving traditional varieties. Similarly, there are concerns on high output breeds for production of meat, milk and egg. The consumption pattern and culinary diversity must be enlarged to increase India’s food basket. To conserve indigenous crop, livestock and poultry breeds, it is recommended to mainstream biodiversity into agricultural policies, schemes, programmes and projects to achieve India’s food and nutrition security and minimise genetic erosion.
📰 Widening gap
India must use green technologies to boost growth and become a climate leader
•The UN’s Emissions Gap Report comes as a sharp warning to countries preparing to meet in Madrid in December, under the aegis of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, that every year of inaction is jeopardising the main goal of the Paris Agreement: to keep the rise in global temperature over pre-industrial times well below 2°C, and ideally at 1.5°C. Emissions gap represents the difference between current actions to reduce greenhouse gases (GHGs) and what is needed to meet the target. In quantitative terms, the UN report estimates that there would have to be a 2.7% average annual cut in emissions from 2020 to 2030 for temperature rise to be contained at 2°C, while the more ambitious 1.5° C target would require a 7.6% reduction. But countries with large emissions, such as the U.S., China, the European Union (EU) nations and India, will face more challenging demands if corrective measures to decarbonise are not implemented now. Climate warnings issued over the years have failed to impress most politicians, but the EU is considering an emergency declaration, and the British Parliament adopted a resolution earlier this year. What the emissions gap findings make clear, however, is that symbolism can do little to mitigate the effects of dangerous climate change. Hundreds of millions of people could face the extreme impacts.
•In the U.S., the Trump administration has initiated the process of withdrawing from the Paris Agreement, but there is considerable sub-national support for climate action. The EU, where public pressure to act on climate change is high, is working on legislation to bring about net zero emissions. The U.K., responsible for a large share of historical emissions, has turned its net zero 2050 goal into a legal requirement. For these rich nations, the road to lower emissions is mainly through innovation and higher efficiencies in energy use. China and India, on the other hand, have to reconcile growing emissions with development needs. Their best options are a scaling up of investments in renewable energy, leapfrogging to clean technologies in buildings and transport, and greater carbon sequestration. Here, as the UN report points out, India could do much more. It needs to provide more consistent support for renewable energy, have a long-term plan to retire coal power plants, enhance ambition on air quality, adopt an economy-wide green industrialisation strategy, and expand mass transport. In the key area of buildings, the energy conservation code of 2018 needs to be implemented under close scrutiny. With a clear vision, India could use green technologies to galvanise its faltering economy, create new jobs and become a climate leader.
📰 Should life convicts be denied remission?
No one should be denied the benefit, but proof of reform and sound reasoning are needed
•Recently, the Tamil Nadu government released 13 prisoners serving life sentences for the massacre of six Dalit men in the village of Melavalavu in 1997. The move invited a swift rebuke from the Madras High Court for what it saw as the government’s haste in releasing them on grounds of ‘good conduct’, and caused considerable disquiet among activists and Scheduled Castes. In a conversation moderated by Jayant Sriram, Anup Surendranath, who teaches Constitutional Law at the National Law University, Delhi and Nandita Rao (Delhi High Court advocate and Additional Standing Counsel, Criminal, for the Delhi Government) discuss the constitutional position on remission and the procedures through which it is exercised. Edited excerpts:
Let’s start with the policy of State governments releasing prisoners early. The Tamil Nadu government grants general amnesty to a number of prisoners every year on M.G. Ramachandran’s birthday and on some other occasions. Does the practice interfere with the normal process by which prisoners are granted remission of sentence?
•Anup Surendranath: The State government has powers of remission under Sections 432 and 433 of the Criminal Procedure Code. Remission works in different ways. Each State has its own prison rules because ‘Prisons’ is a State subject. Each State has a different way of calculating remission. One way you get remission is for various kinds of conduct or work that you do in prison. You can also get remission [because of] the power of the State government under Section 432 of the CrPC, which is what the government seems to be exercising in this [case]. The Governor, if the State is under President’s rule, and the President too can exercise this power.
•Nandita Rao: Yes, prisoners are released on the birth or death anniversaries of prominent popular and democratic leaders. But it’s not as if you wake up on that particular date and announce that the first 10 names on the roll are going to be released. There is a proper procedure. There is a sentence review board.
•Some prisoners are entitled to consideration for early release after completion of 14 years; certain categories of prisoners are entitled after 20 years. So, six months before they are nearing 14 or 20 years, the prison authorities assess whether the person’s potential for crime has ended, whether his family is in socio-economic need, and whether he will be useful to society. The DCP and then the probation officer make an assessment. The CrPC provides for this. That is reformed jurisprudence.
There is still a lot of confusion on the meaning of life sentence. Some people think a life sentence means 14 years; others think it a sentence for life. What is the constitutional position?
•Anup Surendranath: I guess the controversy in the Tamil Nadu case is centred on how the government is choosing a bunch of people to be released and whether there are certain politically sensitive cases. But as Nandita said, there is a procedure to be followed and we’ll have to see if there was compliance with that procedure in this particular situation.
•But on the larger question of life imprisonment, you’re right, there is some confusion. When a court says that a person is sentenced to life, that does mean till the end of natural life. That means that the person is no longer going to get any other remedy from the court. And the court’s position is that there is no automatic right to release.
•Then there’s confusion arising from various prison manuals and how different States calculate remission. What is this calculation? If I’m on good behaviour, I get two days of remission per month. So, how do you calculate this for life imprisonment prisoners?
•Various prison manuals have 14 years or 20 years as the number they take. From that they start deducting these two days per month and that’s why you need to fix a number to life imprisonment to calculate remission right under the prison manuals. Now, of course, the court was concerned that in many cases there was still early release of prisoners. So, as I said earlier, there is the prison manual way of calculating remission and there is the CrPC way. And it is with the latter that courts became concerned — when prisoners are being released early and you can see the expression of that in Section 433, which brings in a limitation and says you can’t be released unless you’ve served 14 years in prison. But the court has clarified that this does not mean that you are automatically entitled as a matter of right to be released after 14 years; this is just the minimum period. After that, the government can assess based on the processes that Nandita was talking about.
Nandita, in a few instances the Supreme Court has said that a life sentence means till the end of natural life. I think that’s also been the case in some instances when a death sentence has been commuted to life, a pronouncement that it is being commuted on condition that the convict spends the remainder of his natural life in prison. It does point towards a trend of handing down this harsher wording of the punishment. What do you make of this trend?
•Nandita Rao: I’ve also noticed that when a death sentence is commuted to life. Generally, they’ve said they will not be released or granted remission till 35 years of incarceration. I haven’t read anywhere where they say that it’s till the end of the prisoner’s life. I think this sort of jurisprudence is to do with their own sense of equity between the victim and the accused. And I personally disagree with it because I feel it’s a violation of Article 21, which says that your life and liberty can be restricted only by the due process of law. And the due process of law has to be the statute. And the judiciary can only prescribe law or circumvent a law where none exists.
•Sections 432 and 433 of the CrPC are quite clear. There are detailed guidelines for the State. And the sentence review boards only release people after 14 years if they notice that there is regret, reform, if [the prisoners’] families are in need. So, I think there is pressure on judges to balance these two lobbies of capital punishment and anti-capital punishment. Whether in a case involving the rape and murder of an infant, if the guy is out in 14 years, or in this case [Melavalavu], where there was a heinous offence against a particular community and the guys are out after 14 years, I personally think the solution is not to say till 35 years or till a hundred years. That is the American jurisprudence.
•We have to have confidence in our State agencies. And if they make a mistake, this can be challenged in a writ petition about the timing of the release and the considerations which went into the release. Under the Right to Information Act you can ask for an evaluation from the prison authorities — how has this person shown regret or reform? What is the evidence that he will not commit such a crime again, and this can all be challenged in a writ petition.
•Anup Surendranath: I think there is a serious separation of powers issue that the court has waded into. In Union of India v. V. Sriharan (2015), who is the person convicted in the Rajiv Gandhi case, the court considered the question of whether the ‘court’ can exclude the remission powers of the government under Section 432 of the CrPC. As I explained earlier, the court gives a sentence and then the State government can choose, as per the procedure laid down, whether to exercise its remission powers or not. In Sriharan the Supreme Court said in all of these cases, the appellate court, that is a High Court or the Supreme Court, can explicitly exclude the remission powers of the State government or the Central government under Section 432 of the CrPC. That’s basically saying that courts can now ensure that accused persons can remain for the rest of their natural life in prison. That is a serious infringement of the separation of powers doctrine and that judgment itself has a dissent by two judges. They recognised the problem of this in creating a new punishment. This sort of punishment — that a court can impose life imprisonment and tell the government that you will not exercise the powers that you have been given under the CrPC — is a creation of a new punishment not authorised anywhere in the law. Thinking that harsher punishments and longer sentences will somehow solve serious social problems is a grave mistake.
Are there any instances of types of crimes under which you might say that a reduced sentence or early release is not appropriate?
•Nandita Rao: I am totally in disagreement with this argument that crimes which are coined as terrorist crimes or sedition crimes, or even violence or rape of a child, shouldn’t be considered for remission. That’s because remission is about the offender, it is not about the offence. And this tendency to make the offender and the offence identical is dangerous because this suggests that if somebody has committed an offence once, that person is to be branded or identified or limited to the offences committed. That person may be other things. He may be a father, a husband, a Good Samaritan in another respect, but probably because of an ideological indoctrination or financial need or mental distress, the person commits a crime.
•Anup Surendranath: I agree. The question of remission is essentially a question of reformation. Has this person reformed in prison and is he ready to be reintegrated into society? And I think where it gets complicated really is that our prisons don’t have the infrastructure, investment or the expertise to really make this assessment meaningfully over the years. So, we come out with this perverse solution: because we cannot have proper processes to assess reformation, let’s keep a certain category of offenders in prison for as long as we can. And therefore I see this entire move as a failure of another process. We really need to ask the question, as a society why are we sending people to prison? If we are sending people to prison as revenge and we want to express that, then, sure, we can have that social conversation and all of these other considerations go out of the window. But Supreme Court judgment after judgment has said that the aim of our penal system is reform. Right?
•And if you see the criminal amendments after the Delhi gang-rape case and the 2013 and 2018 Indian Penal Code amendments, the number of offences that now seem to invite life imprisonment for the remainder of the natural life [seem to have increased]. I agree that we seem to be going down this terrible American route of longer and longer sentences where people will never get out.
•Nandita Rao: In these types of sensitive cases, it is the duty of the state to also release the assessment of this person, the remorse that they have, and the acknowledgement that what they did was wrong. This needs to be done so that it is made clear that the state is not endorsing the convict’s conduct. So, if the government is actually doing this in a reformative spirit, it should make that known, but if the government is insidiously doing it for political reasons, then there is a problem. So, let us not attack the idea of remission and the idea of sentence review boards. Let us attack the Tamil Nadu government for not publicising the reasoning behind this release.
