📰 Using God’s name to sell articles illegal, rules Bombay High Court
Plea had sought injunction to prevent advertisements on TV that promote the sale of articles like Hanuman Chalisa Yantra.
•The Aurangabad bench of the Bombay High Court has declared that advertisement of any article using the name of any God and claiming that it has supernatural qualities, is “illegal” and falls under the Maharashtra Prevention and Eradication of Human Sacrifice and other Inhuman, Evil and Aghori Practices and Black Magic Act.
•A division bench of justices T.V. Nalawade and M.G. Sewlikar was hearing a petition filed by Rajendra Ambhore, a teacher, seeking a direction and injunction to prevent advertisements on television channels that promote the sale of articles like Hanuman Chalisa Yantra.
•Mr. Ambhore said, in March 2015 he came across advertisements on TV claiming special, miraculous and supernatural properties/qualities in Hanuman Chalisa Yantra prepared by one Baba Mangalnath, who had achieved Siddhi (supernatural powers) and was blessed by Lord Hanuman. The Yantra costs ₹4900 and was said to be made of 24 carat gold. Singers and such other celebrities were shown in the ads talking about their experience, says the plea.
•The court held that telemarketers change the names of companies, God and Baba to show that each was a different Yantra.
•The court went on to say, “The objectives quoted in the Black Magic Act can be achieved mainly through education. Reformists like Mahatma Phule and Babasaheb Ambedkar who worked to remove evil practices and spread awareness against superstition were born on this soil.”
•It said it can safely be said that at least basic education was available to everybody in the State. But even some highly educated people were apparently attracted to mantra-tantra and black magic. In such a situation, the Black Magic Act was required to be enacted even in a progressive State like Maharashtra.
•“The propagation for sale by advertisement of any article, naming it Yantra or otherwise, by attaching the name of any God to such an article, including Lord Hanuman, or any Baba, with the representation that these articles have special, miraculous and supernatural properties and that they will help people to become happy, make progress in business, see advancement in career, show improved performance in education, recover from disease etc., is illegal and such propagation, advertisement, falls under the Maharashtra Prevention and Eradication of Human Sacrifice and other Inhuman, Evil and Aghori Practices and Black Magic Act.
•The court directed the State and Vigilance Officers to register such crimes, giving reports against persons who make such advertisements and sell such articles. The court also directed the State and Central governments to create separate cells in Mumbai to ensure that no such advertisements were telecast as advertisement or in the name of programmes in Maharashtra.
Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh, Himachal and Kerala directed to enforce culling in sick birds
•Avian flu has been reported at 12 epicentres in four States — Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh, Himachal Pradesh and Kerala. Directions have been given to enforce culling in sick birds as per the government’s 2015 National Avian Influenza Plan, according to a press statement from the Ministry of Fisheries and Animal Husbandry on Wednesday.
•In these States, cases of bird flu have been confirmed in crows in Rajasthan and Madhya Pradesh, in “migratory birds” in Himachal Pradesh, and in poultry and duck in Kerala.
•Influenza (AI) viruses have been circulating worldwide for centuries with four known major outbreaks recorded in the last century. India notified the first outbreak of avian influenza in 2006. Infection in humans is not yet reported in India though the disease has an animal origin.
•“There is no direct evidence that AI viruses can be transmitted to humans via the consumption of contaminated poultry products. Implementing management practices that incorporate bio security principles, personal hygiene, and cleaning and disinfection protocols, as well as cooking and processing standards, are effective means of controlling the spread of the AI viruses,” the Health Ministry advisory added.
•In India, the disease spread mainly from migratory birds coming into India during the winter months from September-October to February-March. However, secondary spread by human handling (through fomites) cannot be ruled out.
•In 2005, the Department of Animal Husbandry and Dairying, had prepared an action plan which was revised in 2006, 2012, 2015 and 2021, for the guidance of State governments in the prevention, control and containment of avian influenza in the country. This was prepared in the context of global concerns that the avian flu viruses would jump to humans and be transmissible.
📰 Science policy to help researchers access top journals for free
It now costs around ₹1,500 crore annually to subscribe to them
•The proposed Science Technology and Innovation Policy (STIP) aims to establish a system whereby all researchers in India can access research published in top international journals for no cost. The government will negotiate, said Akhilesh Gupta, senior adviser in Department of Science and Technology, on behalf of all research bodies with publishers to enable access. Currently, it costs around ₹1,500 crore annually to subscribe to these journals.
•“The price of subscription is very high and individual colleges cannot negotiate with publishers. Only a small fraction of our researchers are now able to benefit from these subscriptions and we would like to change that,” Mr. Gupta said at a media briefing on Wednesday.
•The Science Ministry hadn’t yet drawn up a plan of execution as the STI policy was still in draft mode. It was possible that the eventual cost to the exchequer would be higher but it would come with the benefit to increased access, he said.
•Secretary, Department of Science and Technology, Professor Ashutosh Sharma said, “Times have changed with the future coming at us at a much faster pace. This policy will help us prepare for the fast pace of change. New problems are emerging that could only be tackled through science, technology, and innovation, and this policy is a right step in that direction to build a strong foundation for the future.”
•The policy sets a target for doubling the number of Full-Time Equivalents (FTE) researchers, Gross Domestic Expenditure on R&D (GERD) and private sector contribution to the GERD every five years.
•The policy had been drafted through a “four track” process of consultation and endeavoured to major changes through short, medium and long-term mission mode projects. Dr. Gupta said the process involved nearly 300 rounds of consultations with more than 40,000 stakeholders.
•The policy is to identify and address the strengths and weaknesses of the Indian STI (Science, Technology, Innovation) ecosystem to catalyse the socio-economic development of the country and also make the Indian STI ecosystem globally competitive.
📰 SEBI moots entry norms to set up stock exchanges
Seeks views on allowing new players
•The Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI) has floated a discussion paper on review of ownership and governance norms to facilitate new entrants to set up stock exchanges and depositories, otherwise called as market infrastructure institutions (MIIs).
•As per the key proposals, a resident promoter setting up an MII may hold up to 100% shareholding, which will be brought down to not more than (either 51% or 26%) in 10 years.
•A foreign promoter from Financial Action Task Force FATF member jurisdictions setting up an MII may hold up to 49% shareholding, which shall be brought down to not more than (either 26% or 15%) in 10 years.
•Foreign individuals or entities from other than FATF member jurisdictions may acquire or hold up to 10% in an MII.
•Any person other than the promoter may acquire or hold less than 25% shareholding.
•At least 50% of ownership of the MII may be represented by individuals or entities with experience of five years or more in the areas of capital markets or technology related to financial services.
📰 The importance of social interactions
A year of being homebound has deepened divisions in a society already fraught with prejudices
•A year of restricting ourselves to the confines of four walls has made us keenly aware of our past exchanges, not only with our families, but also with the larger society. Of the many victims of the COVID-19 pandemic are social interactions and the millions of friendships that should have formed at schools and workplaces. In a country riven with oppressive prejudices, the past year may have widened the greatest fault line in the Indian society — religion.
•Hindus and Muslims constitute not only the largest religious communities in India, but they perhaps also form the pair with the most fraught relations in the recent decade. Still, over the years, children and adults have mitigated the barriers created by socialisation through everyday interactions across religious groups. But what happens when everyone spends a year without forming new friendships or circumscribing their interactions to limited online (or offline) meetings? The pandemic’s collateral damage may include tolerance and understanding between the majority and the minority.
Many inequities
•The religious identities of Hindus and Muslims have shaped their social ties, their political loyalties and their interaction with the Indian state. The long history of Hindu-Muslim ties in the subcontinent is marred by grotesque violence fuelled by myths, rumours and prejudice.
•The prevalence of cow-vigilante violence and ‘anti-conversion’ laws in recent years stands testimony to the worsening of inter-religious ties and deepening of prejudice by the majority community. In fact, tropes used to concoct fear about the Muslim community in the 1920s, such as ‘cow-killers’ and ‘abductors of Hindu women’, have found appeal even in the 21st century. The propagation of such stereotypes and the resulting prejudices allow for, and even normalise, violence against the minority to ‘protect the self’. While it would be an exaggeration to claim that every social encounter between members of the two groups is troubled, all is certainly not well in India. The display of prejudice need not take a violent form at all. The refusal to grant tenancy to members of the Muslim community pushes them to seek houses in a more homogenised area, progressively creating ghettos and further fuelling stereotypes. How do you mitigate a prejudice that is so pervasive and intense?
‘Contact Hypothesis’
•In 1954, Gordon Allport published The Nature of Prejudice, which contained, among other analyses of inter-group behaviour, a theory on prejudice. Specifically, it contained a hypothesis on how to reduce prejudice among majority and minority groups, popularly called the ‘Contact Hypothesis’. The idea was simple: contact (with some caveats) reduces prejudice. Subsequently, decades of social psychology research arrived at a far simpler idea: friendship reduces prejudice. Could it really be that simple? Could that work in India? The answer to both questions is the same: yes, to some extent.
•The empirical evidence largely supports the proposition. Multiple studies have noted that frequent interactions between members of different religious groups vastly reduce negative perceptions and anxiety towards ‘the other’. For instance, a youth study in 2017, conducted by Lokniti-CSDS and Konrad Adenauer Stiftung, found that 83% of Hindus who had a non-Hindu friend were comfortable having a non-Hindu neighbour, compared to 70% of Hindus who did not have a non-Hindu friend. Another paper discovered that even among people who consume media plentifully, interactions with people outside their community weakens prejudice.
•Education, however, presents an interesting puzzle. A recent study finds that college-educated Hindus are more likely than non-literate Hindus to perceive the Muslim community negatively, irrespective of whether they had a friend from the community or not.
•Although close interaction may ‘significantly’ reduce prejudices, this reduction is minimal at best. Firstly, the attitudes of suspicion and negativity towards the Muslim minority are deeply entrenched in the Indian society. Secondly, as this newspaper has reported over the last few years, the ghettoisation of Muslims continues to define both urban and rural landscapes. This ensures that most instances of quotidian social interactions — be it an evening tea or meeting at markets — are effectively denied, thereby limiting the building of lasting friendships at workplaces and schools. Thirdly, while Hindu individuals might hold great respect and affection for Muslim friends, they might not hold the same view about the community as a whole since they would consider a Muslim friend to be an ‘exception to the rule’. As a result, whilst interactions do take place and reduce prejudice, they do not cross a threshold already laid down by generations of socialisation and stereotypes.
Redefining the ‘us’
•Prejudice is a peculiar phenomenon. It is sustained through time, remains unaffected by even positive interpersonal relations, and provides the ammunition for communalism. Ashutosh Varshney asks in his book Ethnic Conflict and Civic Life, “Why do Hindus and Muslims live peacefully in Calicut but not in Aligarh?”. The answer, as he notes, lies in civic engagement and redefining the ‘us’. Ties need to be forged not just between individuals, but also across larger communities such that the relationships breach the confines of religious identities and encompass a multitude of identities. Be it local neighbourhood associations, professional unions or linguistic associations, membership of this civil society creates a new ‘us’. It allows society to maintain open lines of communication, even during a pandemic.
•During a year in which students and professionals have remained within the confines of their houses, what they have missed out on are unencumbered everyday interactions with their peers. Bonds of camaraderie are built over watercooler chats and rants about bus mates. In the absence of such avenues, it behoves parents, teachers and employers to encourage engagement through social organisations or other forms of safe civic engagement.
📰 The challenge of distributing opportunities better
The line between ‘reserved’ and ‘general’ is blurring, impacting reservation as an idea and as practice
•Doctors dealing with head injuries ask certain questions to determine if the patient is fully oriented. What year is this? Who is the prime minister of India? And so on. These are questions to which “Don’t know” is definitely an abnormal response. I have often wondered whether “what are your views on reservation?” would be a good or a bad post-concussion diagnostic question. On the one hand, every Indian has an opinion. On the other hand, the most opinionated usually air their views without accessing their brains.
A changing divide
•But things are changing. Until recently, reservation was at once our most divisive and our most unifying public issue. It divided Indians into the implacably opposed camps of the ‘reserved’ and the ‘general’ categories, with the latter dominating every aspect of public life with the partial exception of electoral politics. It also cemented internal solidarities within each camp, helping to hide hierarchical divisions and conflicting interests. As we enter the third decade of the 21st century, the tables are turning: the line separating ‘reserved’ and ‘general’ is becoming blurred, while long-simmering differences within each group can no longer be suppressed.
•How have these changes impacted reservation as an idea and as practice? The answer to this question has many dimensions. Only those relating to dominant ideologies and the law are considered below.
Quota, ideology and merit
•The ideologies that influence us most deeply shape our view of the world while remaining fully transparent themselves, like the lenses of our spectacles. Reservation — especially caste-based reservation — is a subject saturated in ideology. To eyes schooled in the dominant upper-caste ideology, quotas for “them” loom large and are seen as unambiguously bad and unjustified. Quotas meant for “us” — like the reservation for the Economically Weaker Sections (EWS), or for the wards of employees or alumni of universities and colleges — are not even visible as quotas, and even when they are, they do not look the same at all.
•Here is an interesting example. Some years ago, the large public university where I teach formalised and standardised the uneven practices followed in the past by different departments. It created the largest quota we have by setting aside half of all postgraduate seats for the students enrolled in its own undergraduate honours programmes. In other words, 50% of our seats in MA/MSc are reserved for those with BA/BSc honours degrees in the same subject from our own university. This is a straightforward quota, but it is officially called the ‘Merit Stream’.
•It does not matter whether the name was deliberately chosen to ward-off the stigma of reservation or whether it is a genuine case of ideological blindness. What is interesting about the name is that it unintentionally brings together words such as quota and merit that are thought to be ideological opposites. The seemingly contradictory name reminds us that, in fact, all quotas are merit quotas since they apply merit-based criteria of selection to the pool of eligible candidates.
Never mutually exclusive
•This leads to the unsettling discovery that merit and reservation are not — they have never been — mutually exclusive. Just as every quota today involves fierce competition among the eligible, every claim to merit is also built on structures of exclusionary access, or reservation-like arrangements, that allow merit to be acquired. For example, expensive private schools or coaching institutes are effectively reserved for the rich. In the real world, what is called merit is always a mix of ability, effort, and social capital, with the latter usually playing a big role.
•This may seem rather obvious, but it is vehemently denied by the ideology of merit which constructs it as an exclusively individual and innate thing. In practice, ‘merit’ has been a code word expressing the upper-caste sense of entitlement. But its magic is weakening as ever-growing numbers of “them” start to score higher marks than many of “us”. Moreover, the problems with depending exclusively on examination marks — the universal, and usually only, measure of merit in our system — are becoming hard to ignore. As competition forces a descent into the absurdity of third and fourth decimal place rankings, a new note of doubt is creeping into the language of upper-caste entitlement.
•The most recent judgment of the Supreme Court on reservation (Saurav Yadav vs. State of Uttar Pradesh & Others, October 18, 2020) serves as a reminder that it is an increasingly complex intersectional issue because social identities are no longer singular. The judgment also upholds the principle, stated and clarified in the wake of the so-called “Mandal judgment” during the 1990s, that the un-reserved category must be open to all, including those belonging to categories entitled to reservations.
•Not surprisingly, ideology has lagged behind the law. Upper-caste sentiment has been slow to accept that the un-reserved category cannot be treated as a quota reserved for the upper castes. A side-effect of the “reservation castes” forcing their way into the un-reserved category has been the grudging acknowledgement that rather than recognising excellence, merit criteria actually perform a rationing function in our system. They offer a socially acceptable way to reconcile the large number of meritorious candidates with the small number of places available. True merit cannot be measured by examination marks alone, as the late Arun Jaitley declared in Parliament when piloting the EWS reservation bill.
Turning points
•The year 2021 happens to be the centenary year of the “Communal” Government Order (GO) in Madras Presidency, which introduced reservation based on castes and communities. January 9 will be the second anniversary of the EWS reservation law passed in 2019, which created the first explicit mechanism of reservation for the upper castes (though carefully not named as such). And January 26 will mark the 70th birthday of our Constitution, which created, for the first time in our history, the figure of the caste-less citizen. These three legal events also mark crucial turning points in the intertwined histories of merit-as-ideology and reservation-as-policy.
Acknowledging caste as norm
•The Communal GO was the colonial government’s way of acknowledging the inequalities of caste and finding politically expedient ways of dealing with it. The two unintended consequences of our Constitution were first, the birth of the ideology of casteless-ness, and the positioning of reservation as the explicit exception to this implicit norm. The second was the consequent rise of the rhetoric of merit as caste-politics by other means. EWS reservation seems to bring the republic back full circle, tacitly acknowledging caste as the implicit norm despite continuing with the masquerade of casteless-ness.
•We are nowhere near a resolution, but at least upper-caste politics is also in the open now. Most important, the ideological weaponising of merit is being exposed for what it is. Hopefully,this will enable us to tackle the shared challenge of finding better ways of distributing opportunities and measuring abilities.
📰 Boosting India with maritime domain awareness
Beyond monitoring Chinese activity in the Indian Ocean, India’s initiatives could help generate intraregional synergy
•The legendary military theorist, Sun Tzu, is once said to have observed that the critical element in battle was foreknowledge, but that it “could not be elicited from spirits, nor from gods, nor by analogy with past events, nor from calculations”. As the great Chinese general saw it, foreknowledge could only be gathered with specialised tools and by men who knew the enemy well. A prior reading of the adversary and the theatre of battle, the master tactician asserted, could decisively shift the balance of fortune in war.
Nature of the enemy at sea
•In the modern maritime arena, war is a more complex proposition than in the days of Sun Tzu, but ‘foreknowledge’ is still critical. Today, the enemy at sea is often unrecognisable — a terrorist, a pirate, a criminal or a sea robber — an invisible presence that lurks behind regular actors such as fishermen and port workers. Law enforcement agencies today need to be a lot more vigilant, highly reliant on high-grade sensors and communication networks that observe and track suspicious movements, sharing information in real time. Practitioners describe this state of enhanced consciousness as maritime domain awareness.
•Of late, the Indian Navy has been on a drive to improve domain awareness in the Indian Ocean. The Navy is seeking to expand India’s surveillance footprint by setting up radar stations in the Maldives, Myanmar and Bangladesh; Mauritius, the Seychelles and Sri Lanka have already integrated into the wider coastal radar chain network. The Indian Navy’s efforts seem focused primarily on monitoring Chinese activity in the Eastern Indian Ocean, particularly in the seas around the Andaman and Nicobar islands. Since June 2020, when the Indian Army and the People’s Liberation Army clashed in Galwan in northern Ladakh,
•Indian maritime planners have been wary of the possibility of a greater Chinese presence in the eastern littorals. In recent months, India’s P-8I aircraft have scoured the near-seas for People’s Liberation Army Navy (PLAN) submarines, and Indian naval ships have patrolled the Andaman Seas and eastern chokepoints to deter any maritime adventurism by Beijing.
Neighbourhood synergies
•But maritime domain awareness is also generating cooperative synergies in the neighbourhood. There are reports that seven Indian Ocean countries — Bangladesh, Myanmar, Indonesia, Sri Lanka, the Maldives, Mauritius and the Seychelles — will soon post Liaison Officers at the Indian Navy’s Information Fusion Centre-Indian Ocean Region in Gurugram. . France already has an officer at the IFC, and four other Indo-Pacific navies — Australia, Japan, the U.K and the U.S. — have also agreed to position officers at the centre, fast emerging as the most prominent information hub in the Eastern Indian Ocean.
•New Delhi is also upping its engagement in the Western Indian Ocean by positioning a Liaison Officer at the Regional Maritime Information Fusion Centre (RMIFC) in Madagascar. Established under the auspices of the Indian Ocean Commission that India joined recently as an ‘observer’, the RMIFC is a key centre of maritime information in the Western Indian Ocean. India has also posted an officer at the European Maritime Awareness in the Strait of Hormuz (EMASOH) in Abu Dhabi to assist in the monitoring of maritime activity in the Persian Gulf and the Strait of Hormuz.
The French connection
•Delhi’s moves in the Western and South Western littorals have been facilitated by France, a key Indian Ocean power and a critical partner for India in the region. Having signed a logistics agreement with New Delhi in 2019, Paris is keen for a stronger partnership in the maritime commons. France has been instrumental in securing ‘observer’ status for India at the Indian Ocean Commission, and is pushing for greater Indian participation in security initiatives in the Western Indian Ocean. From an operational perspective, however, the Indian Navy’s priority remains South Asia, where the naval leadership remains focused on underwater domain awareness in the Eastern Indian Ocean.
China watch
•There is concern among maritime watchers that the PLAN may be poised to develop a generation of quieter submarines that would be hard to detect in the near-seas. Three years after the Chinese staged a breakthrough in submarine propulsion by successful testing shaftless rim-driven pump-jets, analysts fear that the next generation of PLAN nuclear submarines could be stealthier than ever, capable of beating adversary surveillance. The recent discovery of a Chinese unmanned underwater vehicle close to a southern Indonesian island suggests that China may already be mapping the undersea terrain in the approaches to the Indian Ocean Region, with a view to advance submarine operations.
•Not surprisingly, India has moved to expand its underwater detection capabilities in the Eastern chokepoints. In a bid to enhance surveillance over sensitive sea spaces, the Indian Navy has inducted two Sea Guardian drones on lease from the United States. With nine operational P-8I aircraft, the Navy’s coverage of the Bay of Bengal littoral is already considerable. With nine more aircraft planned to be inducted — three under an ongoing contract from the U.S. and six as part of a deal being negotiated with Washington — the surveillance footprint is set to further grow. Speculation abounds that New Delhi might also partner Japan in installing an array of undersea sensors near the Andaman Islands to help detect Chinese submarines.
The real test
•India’s initiatives in the maritime domain are motivated by more than just strategic considerations. Indian decision makers recognise the need for cooperative tools to fight transnational crime in the littorals. White shipping agreements with 21 countries in the Indian Ocean have enabled a comprehensive picture of maritime traffic, even as efforts are under way to help smaller island states build capacity to combat regional threats. India’s military satellite (GSAT-7A) may soon facilitate a real time sharing of maritime information with partners. These endeavours, naval officers say, are a manifestation of Security and Growth for All in the Region (SAGAR), Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s philosophical mantra that advances the idea of India as a ‘security provider’ and ‘preferred partner’ in the Indo-Pacific region.
•Indian initiatives, however, are yet to bring about an alignment of objectives and strategies of regional littoral states. While cooperative information sharing allows for a joint evaluation of threats, countries do not always share vital information timeously. To bring real change, India must ensure seamless information flow, generating operational synergy with partners, and aim to expand collaborative endeavours in shared spaces. That would be the real test of the maritime domain awareness ‘game-changing’ potential.
