📰 Cabinet approves merger of four government-run film and media units
Films Division, Directorate of Film Festivals, National Film Archives of India and Children’s Film Society to merged into the National Film Development Corporation
•The Cabinet on Wednesday approved the merger of four government-run film and media units — the Films Division, the Directorate of Film Festivals, the National Film Archives of India and the autonomous body Children’s Film Society, with the National Film Development Corporation.
•Explaining the decision, a statement from the Ministry said that the merger of Film Media Units under one corporation will lead to convergence of activities and resources and better coordination, thereby ensuring synergy and efficiency in achieving the mandate of each media unit. “This will lead to reduction in duplication of activities and direct savings to the exchequer,” it added.
•The Films Division, which was established in 1948 and is the oldest of the four units, was created primarily to produce documentaries and news magazines as publicity for government programmes and to keep a cinematic record of Indian history.
•The National Film Archives of India was established in 1964 with the primary objective of acquiring and preserving Indian cinematic heritage. The Directorate of Film Festivals was set up in 1973 to promote Indian films and cultural exchange.
•The merger also brings into the fold an autonomous organisation, the Children’s Film Society, which was founded in 1955 with the specific objective of providing children and young people value-based entertainment through the medium of films.
•“While undertaking this exercise of convergence, the interests of employees of all the concerned Media Units will be fully taken care and no employee will be retrenched,” the Ministry’s statement said.
Cabinet also approves extension of license period from 10 to 20 years and reduced licence fee.
•The Union Cabinet on Wednesday approved 100% Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) in direct-to-home (DTH) service, extension of the license period from 10 years to 20 and a reduced licence fee.
•At a press conference, Minister for Information and Broadcasting Prakash Javadekar said, “The Commerce Ministry had already spoken of 100% FDI in the DTH sector, but because of the guidelines issued by the Information and Broadcasting [I&B] Ministry, the FDI was limited to 49%. We have corrected that aberration today.”
•The licence fee had been reduced in keeping with the rates in the telecom sector, he stated.
•A statement from the I&B Ministry said the proposed reduction was intended to align the licence fee regime applicable to the telecom sector and would be prospectively applied.
•“The difference may also enable DTH service providers to invest for more coverage, leading to increased operations and higher growth and thereby enhanced and regular payment of License Fee by them,” the statement said.
•Currently, India has 18 crore television sets, out of which 6 crore operate on DTH. The I&B Ministry claimed that the revised guidelines would help in fair degree of stability and bring in new investments. Since the DTH sector was a highly employment intensive sector, these changes would increase employment opportunities, it added.
📰 Scheduled Castes post-matric scholarship plan | Union Cabinet approves changes including new funding pattern
The aim is to enable four crore students access higher education over the next five years
•The Cabinet Committee on Economic Affairs on December 23 approved changes to the post-matric scholarship scheme for students from the Scheduled Castes, including a new funding pattern of 60-40 for the Centre and States. The changes were aimed at enabling four crore students to access higher education over the next five years, Social Justice and Empowerment Minister Thawarchand Gehlot said at a press briefing.
•Switching from the existing “committed liability” formula, the new funding pattern would increase the Centre’s involvement in the scheme, a statement said.
•An investment of ₹59,048 crore, of which ₹35,534 crore would be the Centre’s share, was approved for the next five years.
•Acknowledging the delays that have plagued the scheme, Mr. Gehlot said now the amount would be sent to the beneficiaries’ accounts directly.
Poorest students
•Social Justice Secretary R. Subrahmanya said the changes approved by the Cabinet were aimed at enrolling the poorest students, ensuring timely payments and maintaining accountability.
•He said an estimated 1.36 crore students who would otherwise drop out after Class 10 would be brought into the higher education system under the scheme in five years. A campaign for enrolling students from the poorest households would be carried out, he said.
•States would be asked to carry out verification of the students’ eligibility and caste status and collect their Aadhaar and bank account details.
•“Transfer of financial assistance to the students under the scheme shall be on DBT [direct benefit transfer] mode, and preferably using the Aadhaar Enabled Payment System. Starting from 2021-22, the Central share [60%] in the scheme would be released on DBT mode directly into the bank accounts of the students as per fixed time schedule, after ensuring that the State government concerned has released its share,” the statement said.
•The Secretary added that community audits of the scheme would be conducted to make sure the benefits were reaching the students.
•“The Central assistance, which was around ₹1,100 crore annually during 2017-18 to 2019-20, would be increased more than five times to be around ₹6,000 core annually during 2020-21 to 2025-26,” the statement said.
📰 ‘Free, fair and safe’ as the election motto
Polls in a pandemic need to be rescued from the virus so as to save not just one series of balloting, but democracy itself
•“Though there is light at the end of the tunnel, the road ahead is still dark and long.” — Soumya Swaminathan.
•Truer words than those of the Chief Scientist, World Health Organisation, have not been spoken in a long while. They remind me of Saint Cardinal Newman’s great hymn “Lead, Kindly Light” (1833) in which he says: The night is dark and I am far from home,/Lead Thou me on…./O’er moor and fen, o’er crag and torrent, till/The night is gone;....”
•If the novel coronavirus can mutate on the British Isles, it can do so anywhere, any time. In fact it will be a wonder if it does not. And so, whatever we do individually or collectively, we should know that we do so standing on a razor’s edge.
•The holding of elections is high on the list of that precarious condition.
Essence of democracy
•Overlapping with the pandemic, elections have been held across the globe. From the United States to South Korea, straddling India, they have brought massive numbers of people out of lockdowns, isolation and, above all, fear of getting infected and of infecting others, to vote. This calculated risk-taking is part of the ‘moor and fen, crag and torrent’ of our times. It has made the journey hard both in the fight against the virus and in the battle for saving democracy in a world where autocracy is at ease with restriction, democracy uneasy in ‘containment’.
•Millions have voted in no less than 34 countries since the pandemic broke, to reaffirm their faith in the life-breath of democracy — elections. They have shown that fear of endangering one’s health, one’s very life, is not going to come in the way of exercising political rights, political choice. In other words, millions have shown on continent after continent that life is to be protected but that a life without liberty is not a life worth protecting. Equally, that a life with liberty will be pure theory if a virus of the kind we are gripped by has placed ‘life’ itself in peril. One has to be free in order to breathe, one has to breathe in order to be free.
•So, it becomes crucial that as and when elections are announced anywhere they are conducted with zeal and — re-doubled care as to the virus’s challenge.
Elements that matter
•There are three players in an election — we the electors, the grid of candidates and the election-making machinery. The three, together, make an election. So also in a pandemic, there are three players — we the protection-needing public, the grid of health care, and the health-policymaking state. If voters are apathetic or un-vigilant, their will can be hijacked, distorted and even made comatose. So also in a vicious pandemic, if the affected public is callous, inattentive to the hazards involved, it can forfeit its discriminating and decision-making prerogatives. The health-care system can then become the non-consultative prerogative of the state.
•When the two — election and infection — coincide, the citizenry has to exercise its franchise with a commitment to political freedom and a compliance with pandemic fetters — an unavoidable contradiction.
•But, to adapt a part of Dr. Swaminathan’s words, there is a light in the middle of this tunnel. The elections just concluded in Bihar show us that India can handle that contradiction. The Election Commission of India (ECI) was faced with an existential issue: Should elections be held in a pandemic? Suggestions were not wanting that the Bihar elections be put off — a democratically regressive idea. Fortunately, the ECI did neither stop its mandate nor lose its perspective.
•A former Chief Election Commissioner, S.Y. Quraishi, has pointed out in his article, Bihar can be a leading example of how to successfully conduct a poll in difficult times of November 12, 2020 (Indian Express): “To leave nothing to chance, the ECI consulted its counterparts in several countries and asked them to share their experiences before deciding to overrule all objections and go ahead with the elections....” The ECI put in place a protocol in Bihar that kept the ballots moving and the virus held in check.
The forthcoming elections
•With the appearance of a variant of the virus in Britain, plans and prognoses have to be reappraised. Who can tell when and how hard the new variant or others of that kind will occur elsewhere and in India? As the ECI begins preparing for the polls to legislatures in Kerala (140 seats), Tamil Nadu (234), Puducherry (30), West Bengal (294) and Assam (126), it does so in a pall of uncertainty. But if elections do take place as per plan it is imperative that the ECI factors the virus into every step in the preparations and advises everyone concerned, including the voting public to wear masks when not indoors at home from right now.
•It will have to pay equal attention to both — the election and the infection.
•Our Constitution, no less, requires that. Its Article 21, famously described by Justice V.R. Krishna Iyer as ‘the procedural magna carta protective of life and liberty’ has been elaborated upon in pronouncements of the Supreme Court of India, notably in Sunil Batra vs. Delhi Administration, where it held that the “right to life” included the right to lead a healthy life.
Not extra goodwill but a duty
•When an individual’s participation in a public activity, arranged by the state, supervised and administered by a body set up under the Constitution, is likely to expose that person to a health hazard, it becomes the constitutional duty of the state to reduce the risks of that hazard to as near zero as possible. Steps taken by the state and the ECI to protect voters in the arena of voting are not an ‘extra’ act of goodwill but a duty performed towards a constitutional entitlement of the people. Just as the state would need to give protection to election personnel and to electors against any threat from miscreants, criminals and terrorists, so it is bound to protect them against an epidemic.
•The number of registered voters in the four States and Puducherry totals 177,450,325 or, around 180 million. The number of polling stations involved in the upcoming elections is 186,976. If we were to multiply the number of officials on election duty and security personnel per station, the figure of human beings exposing themselves to the risk of getting and spreading infection through this exercise of franchise would be immense. But, as I said, the ECI in Bihar has shown the way, reducing the numbers of voters per booth, increasing the number of booths, thermal testing each and every voter. And there has been the salutary step of postal votes being made available to senior voters above the age of 80.
Take these steps
•But more steps need to be taken. I will set out three: One, personnel scheduled to be drafted for election duty, and the number of security staff slated to be deployed should be identified as a priority category for access to vaccination. It would be their fundamental right , as much as that of the Defence Forces, to be protected by vaccines on a priority.
•Two, every voter entering a booth has to be wearing a mask, not as a desirability but as a desideratum like a voter identity card. If not wearing one, he or she should be asked to go back and return wearing one.
•Three, senior voters should be advised and enabled to vote in the first three hours of the voting using a separate queue-lane.
•‘Free, fair and safe’ should be the motto for the forthcoming elections, assuming they will take place — a big and ardent assumption, post the rising of the new variant in Britain.
•Elections held in a terror zone are secured against violence. So must elections in a pandemic be rescued from the virus so as to save not just one series of balloting, but democracy itself. The un-democratic temper and emergencies twirl one into the other. Not allowing the virus emergency an ‘election surge’ would be a victory for democracy as much as for public health.
•When the ‘long and dark tunnel’ ends in a blaze of light we must be voting free and breathing free.
📰 The tightrope between production, industrial peace
The Wistron incident is an example of how exploitative labour practices could accompany businesses moving to India
•Apple’s decision to place its Taiwanese supplier, Wistron Corp., on probation by not giving new orders — after an audit of the serious lapses in labour practices that led to violence in its facility in Narasapura in Karnataka — is a step forward in corporate accountability and ethical business operations. Pressured by Apple’s response, Wistron has also been forced to apologise to the workers, remove its Vice-President in charge of India operations, and initiate corrective measures to address workers’ grievances.
Realities of manufacturing
•That it took violence — images of which were further amplified in news and social media — for the workers to be ‘seen’ and ‘heard’, and for corrections to be undertaken (measures that needed to be in place at the workplace from the outset), points to the realities of high-tech manufacturing outsourced through supply chains in the global south that is built on precarities of labour involved in them. In fact, many of the suppliers subcontracting in the high-end electronics sector including those for Apple, have been involved in wilful violations of labour standards and practices.
•It is pertinent to note that unlike the present case, other cases of violent labour contentions in units manufacturing and assembling high-end technological devices in India in the recent past have received scant attention; for instance, two incidents in subcontracting firms assembling smartphones for Chinese brands in the Delhi National Capital Region in 2017 and 2018.
•Until recently, the default response of the brands has been evasion of responsibility by either shifting the onus to the subcontracting firms or keeping things in silent mode. The prevailing norms of work arrangements practised by the suppliers themselves downstream, was through hired labour from multiple subcontractors/third party work supply firms (the workers at the Narasapura facility, a majority of them young, were sourced from supposedly six subcontractors). This process creates ambiguity in identifying the primary employer and thereby, seriously constrains the workers from getting effective redress of their grievances.
The China experience
•The labour contention and the resultant violence at the Wistron facility can be comprehended better by taking into cognisance the operations of Taiwanese suppliers/subcontractors over the years in China, manufacturing high-end electronics devices for big brands including Apple.
•The foremost in this list is Foxconn. Riding on the global transformation of industrial production and increased outsourcing by corporate giants in the United States, Europe and East Asia, as part of the strategies of maintaining lean workforces, the unlimited supply of rural migrant labour at low wage levels, and the Chinese economic reforms propelled the creation of offshore assembly facilities. Further, the huge potential of the Chinese consumer market along with increased investment by the Chinese diaspora also played a role in facilitating the decision, which was further solidified by China joining the World Trade Organization in 2001.
•Beginning initially from the coast in southern China, these suppliers have gradually expanded across the Mainland, supported by lavish incentives, infrastructural support and preferential policies of local governments, who are eager to showcase development and whose officials’ career progression is indexed to the levels of economic progress.
Much trauma for workers
•As Apple and other brands churn out ‘smart’ devices at increased speeds, and with tight timelines 24x7, the burden falls literally on the shoulders of the workers employed in the supplier factories, forcing them to work under harsh conditions, doing overtime, long tiring shifts without much breaks, and under constant disciplinary monitoring by supervisors. The regimented work practices on the assembly line are matched by low pay and little or no social security, leading to strain and traumatic experiences, both physical and mental.
•In 2010, Foxconn was faced with a spate of suicides by workers across its facilities in China, thus pressurising Apple to diversify its range of suppliers — wire netting to prevent workers from jumping off terraces is a common sight in Chinese factories and industrial facilities even today.
•Another prevalent phenomenon is that of unpaid, forced student internships to fill shortages in labour supply and offset costs; students from vocational educational institutions are compulsorily employed, and subjected to the same exploitative conditions as the workers. Since they are not legally classified as workers, there are no obligations to offer social protections. The supply of student-workers is encouraged by local governments, since they are dependent on the suppliers’ support for resources, due to China’s skewed tax and revenue structure favouring the central government. Thus, the local governments are constrained and limited in employing any effective supervisory mechanisms or labour law compliance measures (a recent book, Dying for an iPhone: Apple, Foxconn and the Lives of China’s Workers by Jenny Chan, Mark Selden and Pun Ngai, is a rich, in-depth study of the lived experiences of workers in Foxconn facilities).
Safeguards vs. investments
•That many of these exploitative labour practices and violations of safeguards could be carried over when these facilities move into the Indian terrain is illustrated by the occurrence in the Wistron facility. In fact, when they combine with the precarities already embedded in India’s manufacturing sector, the consequences are debilitating for labour. This becomes all the more pertinent, in the backdrop of increasing keenness of governments in India to attract Taiwanese investments. However, given the weak legal-regulatory labour architecture and capacities, comprehensive supervision and control of the foreign invested enterprises looks a bridge too far. The passing of the new labour codes further erodes existing modicum of labour protection. The fear of ‘flight of capital’, coupled with weak state capacity in supervision make state administrations reluctant to step in unless things escalate.
Prognosis ahead
•Increasingly, following pressure from the consumers’ side and also being highly conscious of its brand image, Apple has provided a ‘Code of Conduct’ to all its suppliers, seeking to monitor and audit compliance of labour standards and safeguards. However, as demonstrated through the latest incident, there has been no strict adherence to this effect, thereby pointing to the tough balance that needs to be maintained between fulfilling production targets and ensuring industrial peace.
•In the absence of avenues for workers to channelise their grievances — representative associations and unions — and adequate collective bargaining mechanisms as well as social dialogue, frequent labour unrest including to the extent of violent confrontations, could very well be a daily reality in these high-end manufacturing facilities.
📰 An anti-science lawsuit
Instead of pursuing their case against Sci-Hub, publishers should work with the government to make research accessible
•Three scientific publishers — Elsevier, Wiley, and the American Chemical Society (ACS) — filed a suit against Alexandra Elbakyan of Kazakhstan and others in the Delhi High Court on December 21, 2020. The case will reportedly be heard this week. Most major Indian Internet service providers are named as parties in the case. The publishers want Indians blocked from accessing a site called Sci-Hub, started by Ms. Elbakyan in 2011. Who is Ms. Elbakyan, what is Sci-Hub, and why are publishers chasing her in an Indian court? To answer this, it is necessary to explain how scientific publishing works.
How scientific publishing works
•Scientists are usually paid by their institutions. Their research grants come from various organisations, usually governmental ones. In India, public institutions come under various ministries and departments, and major funding agencies are the Department of Science and Technology, the Department of Biotechnology, the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research, and the Department of Atomic Energy, among others. On completing any research paper, scientists seek to publish it in an academic journal, such as those run by Elsevier, Wiley, and ACS. The journals seek ‘peer review’ of these papers, that is, reviews by other scientists, and take a decision on publishing. Authors are not paid. Reviewers are not paid. Journals are mostly accessed online.
•This sounds like a cost-efficient system. Yet, publishers charge libraries exorbitant amounts for journal subscriptions (up to lakhs of rupees annually per journal, often bundled forcibly). Indian institutions each spend crores on subscriptions. It is estimated that about ₹1,500 crore is paid for India as a whole annually. Without subscriptions, a single article typically costs $30-$50 (₹2,200-₹3,500) or more. Academic publishing is thus among the most profitable industries in the world: Elsevier’s parent company RELX had profits of over 30% on revenue of nearly $10 billion in 2019. This overwhelmingly comes from taxpayers across the world who have already paid to fund the same research. Adding insult to injury, most journals require authors to transfer copyright to them.
•Resentment about this situation has built over decades. Alternatives have been explored, including an (equally problematic) open access, author pays model. Many top universities, and entire countries, have cancelled subscriptions to Elsevier en masse.
•In 2011, Ms. Elbakyan stepped into this mess with Sci-Hub, enabling scientists to search for academic papers from any publisher and freely download them. It is an efficient and easy-to-use site and extensively archives published scientific literature. Sci-Hub violates many copyrights owned by journals. But it is also a vast repository of open access, out-of-copyright, and public domain material, which a blanket injunction would disable. For scientists stuck at home in 2020, Sci-Hub has made literature accessible without navigating institutional VPNs. For journalists and the public, given the obscene per article charges levied by journals, Sci-Hub is the easiest and often only option.
A beneficial site
•Sci-Hub does not operate in India. Indian Internet service providers named as parties are providing a non-discriminatory common carrier service. The content on Sci-Hub does not harm India’s interests and is beneficial to the scientific development of the country. In 2020, leading publishers made COVID-19-related articles free to read. This has resulted in a boom in research and development of dozens of vaccine candidates in a very short time period: a testament to the value of open science. Sci-Hub’s “piracy” benefits the very people who create that content. This is the opposite of the situation in the creative arts where “pirating” music or films deprives creators of royalties; scientific authors get no royalties, and they and their funders want their work to be shared freely. But the keys to this largely taxpayer-funded work are held by private corporations overseas which have chosen to pursue a defendant from Kazakhstan in an Indian court.
•Is there an alternative to Sci-Hub? Yes. Publishers should voluntarily reform their policies to obviate the need for Sci-Hub. The Indian government has been discussing a ‘one nation, one subscription’ system whereby, in exchange for a fixed and reasonable cost paid directly by the government, scientific publishers would make their entire content available to all readers in India. Some publishers (not the plaintiffs) have expressed interest. Elsevier, Wiley and ACS should drop this misguided case, and join the Indian government in working out an equitable system of access to scientific literature that serves both their commercial interests and the Indian public.
