📰 Protect the right of ordinary people to bail, Supreme Court tells judges
Those without means languishing in jails as undertrials, the court says.
•The Supreme Court on Friday gave a clarion call to judges to protect personal liberty and the right of ordinary people to bail, saying “liberty is not a gift for the few”. Common citizens without the means or resources to move the High Courts or the Supreme Court were languishing in jails as undertrials, it said.
•“Deprivation of liberty even for a single day is one day too many,” a Bench of Justices D.Y. Chandrachud and Indu Malhotra said in an order on Friday.
•“It is through the instrumentality of bail that our criminal justice system’s primordial interest in preserving the presumption of innocence finds its most eloquent expression,” Justice Chandrachud, who wrote the judgment, observed. The State should not be allowed to use criminal law to harass citizens, he said.
•On the court’s decision to grant bail to Republic TV Editor-in-Chief Arnab Goswami in an abetment to suicide case, the judgment said prima facie, the FIR against Mr. Goswami did not establish the charges against him.
•The judgment said, “Liberty survives by the vigilance of her citizens, on the cacophony of the media and in the dusty corridors of courts alive to the rule of [and not by] law. Yet, much too often, liberty is a casualty when one of these components is found wanting”.
•Courts were the “first line of defence” against the deprivation of citizens’ personal liberty. But reality, Justice Chandrachud pointed out, showed that undertrials remained behind bars while their bail applications were lobbed from one rung of courts to another.
Pending bail pleas
•To buttress this point, Justice Chandrachud highlighted that 91,568 bail pleas were pending in High Courts, while 1.96 lakh bail applications continued to wait for a hearing in the district courts.
•The judgment focused on the importance of the district judiciary.
•Justice Chandrachud said the district judiciary was only “subordinate” in hierarchy. It was less to none when it came to saving the lives of citizens or doing justice for them. The district judiciary “must be alive to the situation as it prevails on the ground – in the jails and police stations where human dignity has no protector”.
Arnab Goswami case
•The verdict gave detailed reasons for the apex court’s decision to grant bail to Mr. Goswami on November 11.
•The judgment said a “prima facie evaluation” of the FIR against Mr. Goswami did not establish the ingredients of the offence of abetment of suicide against him. It declared that the “doors of the Supreme Court cannot be closed to a citizen who is able to establish prima facie that the instrumentality of the State is being weaponised for using the force of criminal law”.
•The judgment criticised the Bombay High Court for “failing to notice” or even attempt to make a prima face evaluation of the contents of the FIR. It said the High Court did not take into account the “disconnect between the FIR and the provisions of Section 306 IPC [abetment to suicide]”.
•Justice Chandrachud said the High Court erred in asking Mr. Goswami to apply for regular bail instead of focussing on his plea to quash the FIR. “The High Court should not foreclose itself from the exercise of the power when a citizen has been arbitrarily deprived of their personal liberty in an excess of State power,” he noted.
‘Cannot allow reservation as process is in final stages’
•The Supreme Court on Friday directed the counselling for super-specialty medical courses in Tamil Nadu and Kerala to be held for the academic year 2020-2021 without providing reservations for in-service doctors.
•“As the admission process is at the final stages, we cannot permit reservation for in-service doctors for this year,” a Bench led by Justice L. Nageswar Rao ordered.
•The Bench, however, did not express any opinion on the validity of a Tamil Nadu government order of November 7, which allowed 50% in-service quota in super-speciality medical courses at government colleges in the State. Some NEET-qualified doctors had challenged the government order when the Madras High Court chose not to intervene.
•The Tamil Nadu government, represented by senior advocate C.S. Vaidyanathan, had explained that there were 369 super specialty medical seats in the State. However, 70% of the doctors who qualified left the State, he said, “At least, in-service doctors would serve in Tamil Nadu till their retirement.” Senior advocate P. Wilson argued that the law in the matter had been settled time and again.
•The judgment did not delve on the question of law, saying it would hear it in detail in February 2021. Meanwhile, it said the admission process, which was in its final stages, would proceed this year without in-service reservation.
•“The process for admissions to super specialty medical courses started on August 3. It was made clear to all the competing candidates that there shall be no reservation. The government order reserving 50% seats for in-service doctors would be detrimental to the interests of the meritorious doctors…” the Supreme Court observed in the case of Tamil Nadu.
•On Kerala, the court said the State government was unable to implement the Kerala Medical Officers Admission to Postgraduate Courses under Service Quota Act of 2008, which provides for 40% reservation for in-service doctors in super-specialty courses.
📰 Mizoram Assembly Speaker disqualifies Zoram People’s Movement MLA Lalduhoma
Lalduhoma, a retired IPS officer, was Indira Gandhi’s security chief.
•India’s first Member of Parliament to have been disqualified from the Lok Sabha has now been disqualified as an MLA in Mizoram.
•Mizoram Assembly Speaker Lalrinliana Sailo on Friday debarred Lalduhoma, a retired IPS officer who was in charge of former Prime Minister Indira Gandhi’s security, from the 40-member House.
•The disqualification was on the ground that Mr. Lalduhoma had declared himself as a representative of the Zoram People’s Movement (ZPM) despite being elected as an independent candidate from the Serchhip Assembly constituency. “He lost the character of an independent legislator because of the declaration,” Mr. Sailo said.
•The disqualification made Mr. Lalduhoma, 71, earn the dubious distinction of meeting the same fate in the Parliament and an Assembly.
•In 1988, the former police officer became the first MP to have been disqualified under the Anti-Defection Law for giving up membership of the Congress (I). He was elected to the Lok Sabha uncontested in 1984 as the Congress candidate but fell out with the party leadership.
•He formed the Mizo National Union, which later merged with the regional Mizoram People’s Convention. He later joined the Mizo National Front but broke away to form the Zoram Nationalist Party (ZNP).
•Prior to the 2018 Assembly polls, the ZNP and five other regional parties formed the ZPM. More of a forum than a party, the ZPM won seven Assembly seats to become the principal Opposition party.
•With Mr. Lalduhoma’s disqualification, the ZPM now has six MLAs, one more than the Congress.
Petition by MNF
•In September, 12 legislators of the ruling MNF had petitioned the Speaker demanding Mr. Lalduhoma’s disqualification for allegedly violating the Constitution.
•The MLAs alleged that Mr. Lalduhoma, elected as an independent, had breached Para 2(2) of the 10th Schedule of the Constitution by defecting to the ZPM. They also said he had indulged in ZPM activities by attending the party office and inducting new members into the party at functions across Mizoram, which “clearly manifested that he defected to the ZPM”.
•The Assembly served a show-cause notice on Mr. Lalduhoma on September 24 seeking an explanation. In his reply to the Speaker on October 8, he denied defection as “I have continuously maintained my allegiance to the ZPM since its formation in 2017”.
📰 ‘Sea sparkle’ has affected marine food chain: CMFRI
The bloom of Noctiluca Scintillans on Karnataka coast has displaced microscopic algae
•The bloom of Noctiluca Scintillans, commonly known as “sea sparkle” that the Karnataka coast has been witnessing since about a month, has displaced microscopic algae called diatoms, which form the basis of the marine food chain. This has deprived food for the planktivorous fish, scientists from the Central Marine Fisheries Research Institute (CMFRI), Mangaluru, have said.
•The bioluminescent Noctiluca Scintillans also brightened the sea water during night. CMFRI’s Principal Scientist and Mangaluru Centre Head Prathibha Rohit told The Hindu the toxic blooms of N. Scintillans were linked to massive fish and marine invertebrate kills. Though the species does not produce a toxin, it was found to accumulate toxic levels of ammonia, which is then excreted into the surrounding waters, possibly acting as the killing agent in blooms.
•The ammonia makes N. Scintillans unpalatable for most creatures. Only jellyfish and salps were known to prey on it. N. Scintillans grazes on other micro-organisms such as larvae, fish eggs, and diatoms. But the unicellular phytoplankton that live inside it can photosynthesise, turning sunlight into energy. They help their host cell survive even when food was scarce. Thus, N. Scintillans acts as both a plant and an animal, Dr. Rohit said.
•She said field studies by the CMFRI in the Arabian Sea off the Karnataka coast since a decade showed widespread blooms of the green dinoflagellate, N. Scintillans. Blooms were witnessed on September 8 this year while in September 2018 too such bioluminescence was witnessed along the Someshwara beach in Dakshina Kannada and Mattu in Udupi. This year, however, the intensity and vastness of the bloom close to the shore was observed by many.
Plankton bloom
•Dr. Rohit said plankton bloom was reported when the density of plankton would be more than 1,00,000 cells per m3. Bioluminescence was the production and emission of light by a living organism and occurs due to a chemical reaction, involving a light-emitting molecule and an enzyme, called luciferin and luciferase.
📰 Indian economy contracts by 7.5% in Q2
Country enters technical recession.
•India’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP) contracted 7.5% in the second quarter of 2020-21, following the record 23.9% decline recorded in the first quarter, as per estimates released by the National Statistical Office on Friday. The country has now entered a technical recession with two successive quarters of negative growth.
•However, the economy’s performance between July and September when lockdown restrictions were eased is better than most rating agencies and analysts anticipated. While most had estimated a contraction of around 10%, the Reserve Bank of India had projected a 8.6% decline in the second quarter.
Sharp recovery
•Agriculture, which was the only sector to record growth between April and June this year, grew at the same pace of 3.4% in the second quarter, while manufacturing gross value-added (GVA) staged a sharp recovery to record 0.6% growth between July and September after collapsing 39.3% in the first quarter.
•Electricity, gas, water supply and other utility services also recorded 4.4% growth in the second quarter, recovering from a 7% contraction in Q1. But it remained a bleak quarter for several sectors, including mining, services such as retail trade and hotels, construction and financial services.
•“We should be cautiously optimistic as the economic impact is primarily due to the pandemic and the sustainability of the recovery depends critically on the spread of the pandemic. The government remains ready to come up with calibrated responses,” said Chief Economic Adviser (CEA) Krishnamurthy Subramanian, stressing that there could be neither too much exuberance nor excessive pessimism at this point.
•Citing the uncertainty caused by the pandemic, Mr. Subramanian said the ‘V-shaped recovery’ should continue but it is difficult to be sure about positive growth returning in the remaining two quarters of this year. Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman had earlier suggested that the economy could record near zero growth in 2020-21.
•“The economic indicators and the industrial output numbers indicate that the recovery is happening very well. But because the effect is primarily from the pandemic, we should keep that in mind especially with the winter months ahead,” Mr. Subramanian told The Hindu.
‘Very encouraging’
•“The recovery is clearly very encouraging but this is still a period of uncertainty, and is reflected in the fact that the actuals are more encouraging than the estimates of several commentators,” he said.
•Rating agency Crisil attributed the better-than-expected growth to pent-up demand, support from agriculture and select export sectors, cost savings for corporates and a ‘learning to live’ attitude.
•“The second-quarter (Q2) GDP data have lent a positive bias to our full-year call of 9% contraction. However, there are some signs of flattening of economic activity in the third quarter which will need to be monitored closely along with the further spread of COVID-19,” said the firm’s chief economist Dharmakirti Joshi.
Construction sector
•The construction sector, which had contracted 50.3% in the first quarter at the peak of the lockdown against COVID-19, saw some improvement with contraction narrowing to 8.6% in the second quarter.
•Trade, hotels, transport and services remained deeply affected, shrinking 15.6% between July and September after a 47% dip in Q1. Mr. Joshi expects the services sector to be more vulnerable in the second half, particularly contract-based services.
•“Till the pandemic doesn’t go away, some of the sectors affected by social distancing such as services like travel and tourism will continue to experience demand slump. And services accounts for a good part of India’s GDP,” Mr. Subramanian said.
Govt. spending
•While the 7.5% contraction in GDP came as a positive surprise, there are concerns about a decline in government spending and the worsening fate of two key sectors compared to the first quarter.
•“The loss of momentum in government spending in the second quarter led to a 22% contraction in government final consumption expenditure. As a result, this component turned into the worst performer on the expenditure side from being the best performer with a 16.4% expansion in the first quarter,” pointed out Aditi Nayar, principal economist at rating agency ICRA.
•The CEA responded to these concerns by pointing to improved private consumption and investment. Consumption contracted by 11.32% in the second quarter, compared to a 27% decline in the first. Investment demand as measured by Gross Fixed Capital Formation improved from -47% in the first quarter to -7.4% in Q2.
•“The Indian economy is driven 90% by private consumption and investments and the improvements in those numbers, despite some decline in government spending, I would read as a positive sign,” he said.
•Financial, real estate and professional services recorded a 8.1% contraction in GVA from a 5.3% dip in Q1, while the GVA from public administration, defence and other services contracted 12.2% from a 10.3% shrinkage in the first quarter.
•Ms. Nayar also urged caution on reading too much into the manufacturing sector recovery, as it could be driven by aggressive cost-cutting measures, a lower wage bill and benign raw material costs.
•“The extent of the recovery in the performance of the informal sectors in Q2 remains unclear, and we caution that trends in the same may not get fully reflected in the GDP data, given the lack of adequate proxies to evaluate the less formal sectors,” she said.
Lockdown curbs
•The National Statistical Office also stressed that its estimates are hampered to some extent by the restrictions imposed in the first quarter of this year during the national lockdown.
•“Though the restrictions have been gradually lifted, there has been an impact on the economic activities. In these circumstances, some other data sources such as GST, interactions with professional bodies, etc. were also referred to for corroborative evidence and these were clearly limited,” it noted.
📰 Tech tact: On India’s apps blocking spree
India must stick to a rules-based approach in regulating the Internet
•India’s decision on Tuesday to block another 43 Chinese mobile applications hardly comes as a surprise. Since June, following escalation of tensions with China at the border, India has blocked over 250 Chinese mobile apps, a bunch at a time, on the grounds that they have been engaging in activities “which are prejudicial to sovereignty and integrity of India, defence of India, security of state and public order”. The latest instance of app blocking has come at a time when the two sides, while still talking, are struggling to come up with an agreement for disengagement along the Line of Actual Control. With the immensely popular TikTok and PUBG already blocked, this time it was the turn of the likes of Alipay Cashier, Snack Video, Chinese Social, Adore App, and Alibaba Workbench to meet the same fate. China, not for the first time either, has charged India with using national security as an excuse to target Chinese apps. Zhao Lijian, spokesperson of the Chinese Foreign Ministry, has asked India to “correct its discriminatory approach and avoid causing further damage to bilateral cooperation”. China crying discrimination is ironical — its version of the Internet is tightly controlled and heavily censored, and has been so for years. There may not be much to argue against decisions made on the grounds of national security. But the question to ask is: would this have come about if all was hunky-dory between the two countries?
•In the short run, it may be useful for India to use its vast market for Internet services as a leverage in its attempts to keep China in check at the border. Indian app alternatives may also find the much-needed space to grow now, and initial reports indicate as much. But there are a few risks with this approach, especially given India’s global ambitions in technology. First, this approach runs the risk of triggering an unconventional battle between the two countries in the larger technology realm, if not in the larger business space. China, being an important player in the technology global supply chain, will be hard, if not impossible, to sideline. Second, there is a risk that moves such as blocking apps would be perceived adversely by global investors and Internet companies. While it is true that there has been some push back against Chinese companies and technology globally, India must stick to a rules-based approach in regulating the Internet. There is a need to implement the long-pending data protection law. It is also important to engage with the ecosystem and provide clarity on these issues as India has to win the technology battle as well.
📰 A vial half full: On COVID-19 vaccine race
Haste and opacity will delay the availability of a safe and efficacious vaccine
•After a spate of successes in the vaccines being tested in human trials, there is now a blip: a manufacturing defect in some batches of the trial vaccine being tested and marketed by AstraZeneca, which has partnered with the Oxford University vaccine group to test and market the ChAdOx1 nCOV-19 vaccine. Some volunteers, who were supposed to get two doses of vaccine a month apart, got only half the required dose in one of the injections. Intriguingly, the data suggested that the efficacy was 90% in the half/dose-full dose sub-group than the 62% in the regular full dose group. The manufacturing snafu was disclosed by neither Oxford nor AstraZeneca, but came to light after the head of the United States vaccine programme disclosed it on Twitter. The company maintains that this was not a ‘mistake’ as the manufacturing discrepancy was discovered, and disclosed to the United Kingdom regulators. It was with their approval that the batches with the reduced doses were allowed to progress. However, the company is reportedly looking at an additional trial to properly test the half-dose/full-dose regime. A reduced dosage turning out to significantly improve efficacy could mean that more vaccine can be made and distributed to the world quickly. India is among those countries that is dependent on the Oxford AstraZeneca vaccine because some of those doses will be administered to a high-priority group of 30 crore people already identified by the government.
•Vaccine makers and immunologists are aware of the ‘prime boost’ technique where a limited dose of a vaccine is administered that prepares the immune system and a later shot then improves the overall production of protective antibodies. The results could even cause other vaccine manufacturers to test similar strategies. However, sober reflection leads to the ineluctable conclusion that this might not be one of the ‘lucky accidents’ of science lore. The fraction of people who got the reduced doses were under 55, and so it is not known if the dosage works for people in the older, more vulnerable group who have already been included in the high priority groups of several countries including India. Also, the number of volunteers who got the accidental dose were statistically insignificant to draw the conclusion of increased protection. Though the overall assessment, that the vaccine works, and is safe, holds, the events cloud trust in the process of scientific public communication. Companies that are otherwise jostling to prematurely announce vaccine results before scientific publication are opaque about full public disclosure. This when they have already been given a free pass in terms of accelerated regulatory processes, combining results from early trials and guaranteed government procurement. Haste and opacity will only delay the availability of a safe and efficacious vaccine as India prepares for possibly the largest immunisation programme in history.
📰 Stepping out of the shadow of India’s malnutrition
An immediate universalisation of the PDS, distribution of quality food items and community kitchens are a few solutions
•“School-er prarthana sabhar somoy hotat matha ghure pore jaoar ghotona hamesai ghotte dekhi amra. Beshirbhag khetrei ora mid-day-meal khete chaay naa, jiggesh korle bole pete byatha hochhe, Sir (There have been numerous instances during the prayer session in schools where we often observe students feeling sick and falling down out of dizziness. Most of the times they do not want to take mid-day meals and when asked, they complain of stomach ache).”
•These words were echoed during a telephonic survey which we conducted in the Burdwan district of West Bengal in September 2020, with schoolteachers on the health conditions of students. Apart from our academic interest, the survey had been largely motivated by a report in the Bengali daily, Anandabazar Patrika, on February 10, 2020.
•In this report, a schoolteacher had highlighted how girl students, who took admission in Standard five were relatively shorter in height than the previous year’s batch of students. This, the teacher inferred, was largely integrated with malnutrition that is burgeoning not only in the State but also in rest of the country. In line with what repeatedly restated in our survey, she had reported children from impoverished households not being able to have the mid-day meal many a time because of stomach-related problems, which, according to her, was a result of the children skipping breakfast. If this is found to be the general trend across India, such anecdotal evidence can have larger consequences that can very well lead to different manifestations of malnutrition.
Global reports, measures
•Two recent reports — the annual report on “The State of Food Security and Nutrition in the World 2020” by the Food and Agricultural Organization of the United Nations and the 2020 Hunger report, “Better Nutrition, Better Tomorrow” by the Bread for the World Institute – document staggering facts about Indian food insecurity and malnutrition.
•Using two globally recognised indicators, namely, the Prevalence of Undernourishment (PoU) and the Prevalence of Moderate or Severe Food Insecurity (PMSFI), these two reports indicate India to be one of the most food-insecure countries, with the highest rates of stunting and wasting among other South Asian countries. The PoU measures the percentage of people who are consuming insufficient calories than their required minimum dietary energy requirement, while the PMSFI identifies the percentage of people who live in households that are severely or moderately food insecure.
•The reduction in poverty has been substantial going by official estimates available till 2011-12. However, malnutrition has not declined as much as the decline has occurred in terms of poverty. On the contrary, the reduction is found to be much lower than in neighbouring China, Pakistan, Nepal and Bangladesh. Except China, these are countries which had somewhat similar levels of PoU in and around the year 2000. In terms of percentages, the PoU has declined 24.7% between 2001 and 2018 for India; other data are China (76.4%), Nepal (74%), Pakistan (42%), Afghanistan (37.4%) and Bangladesh (18.9%). It must be noted that the decline in China is way higher than that of India, even though it had started with lower levels of PoU in 2000.
•In contrast, Afghanistan (47.8%) that started with a higher base than India (18.6%) had experienced higher rates of decline. Of note is the fact that, economically, while Afghanistan is relatively much poorer and has gone through several prolonged conflicts in last two decades, it has been more successful in reducing malnutrition than India. Further, Pakistan and Nepal which had almost similar (slightly higher to be precise) levels of PoU in the initial years, have also successfully reduced malnourishment at a rate that is much faster than India. Therefore, irrespective of the base level of PoU, most of these countries have done better than India on this dimension.
•These findings also get substantiated through Food Insecurity Experience Scale survey, which covers almost 90% of the world’s population. Because it is not allowed to be conducted in India, direct estimates are not available. Instead, three-year moving average figures are given separately for the whole of South Asia and South Asia, excluding India. A difference between these two would roughly give us a sense about the extent and broad direction of the prevalence of food insecurity here. Our estimates indicate that between 2014-16, about 29.1% of the total population was food insecure, which rose up to 32.9% in 2017-19. In terms of absolute number, about 375 million of the total population was moderately or severely food insecure in 2014, which went to about 450 million in 2019.
Crucial elements excluded
•Despite the National Food Security Act – 2013 ensuring every citizen “access to adequate quantity of quality food at affordable prices”, two crucial elements that still got left out are the non-inclusion of nutritious food items such as pulses and exclusion of potential beneficiaries. Because of this, there is little to disagree that the current COVID-19 pandemic would make the situation worse in general, more so for vulnerable groups.
•In fact the recently initiated “Hunger Watch” by the Right to Food Campaign presents a very grim situation, with close to one out of every three respondents reporting low food consumption and massive compromise on food quality. Though States have temporarily expanded their coverage in the wake of the crisis, the problem of malnutrition is likely to deepen in the coming years with rising unemployment and the deep economic slump.
•Hence, a major shift in policy has to encompass the immediate universalisation of the Public Distribution System which should definitely not be temporary in nature, along with the distribution of quality food items and innovative interventions such as the setting up of community kitchens among other things.
•This year’s Nobel Peace Prize was awarded to the United Nations World Food Programme, which should bring some of the focus back on these pressing issues of undernourishment and hunger in India. The need of the hour remains the right utilisation and expansion of existing programmes to ensure that we arrest at least some part of this burgeoning malnutrition in the country.
