📰 China unlikely to collude with Pak. to target India: IAF chief
Nevertheless, preparation is essential, says R.K.S. Bhadauria
•China would lose moral authority if it colluded with Pakistan to target India, said Chief of the Air Staff Air Chief Marshal (ACM) R.K.S. Bhadauria on Friday. He noted that he did not see China getting into a collusive kind of arrangement in a conflict situation to start with.
•“To my mind if they [China] start a collusive plan they would lose the moral authority there itself. As a combat power, if you need another country to even threaten some country, you have given away your weakness. We need to be prepared. There are situations where it can happen. But to say that we will start with a collusive threat, I don’t see it, especially with China,” ACM Bhadauria said in an interview to The Hindu at the ongoing Aero India.
•The collusive threat would be in the background, he stated, in electronics, support, their (Pakistan’s) knowledge of tactics on the western side and whatever they learnt from the U.S.
•Asked about the current stand-off with China in eastern Ladakh, he called it “stalemate status quo”. The situation in summer would depend on how talks went.
•“We should lay a lot of emphasis on the talks. The last round [of talks] was quite okay,” he said. In case an agreement was not reached and the current deployments continued, then as winter ended an element of higher level of alertness would be required. “It really depends on the ground realities.”
•ACM Bhadauria said the fall in the fighter squadron strength of the Air Force had been arrested.
•The order for 83 Light Combat Aircraft (LCA) being awarded to the Hindustan Aeronautics Limited (HAL) early this week at Aero India and aircraft deliveries beginning early 2024 would ensure that the numbers would keep going up.
•The first LCA MK-1A squadron would be made in 2024 and operationalised in a year after that. While the phasing out of the MiG-21s had caused a dip in squadron strength, last year the IAF constituted the first Rafale squadron and has so far inducted 11 jets.
First two such gliders were deployed off Chennai coast for trial runs to monitor seas round the year
•Indian National Centre for Ocean Information Services (INCOIS) has successfully tested the first deep sea long range ‘Slocum’ gliders under the recently launched Deep Ocean Mission to monitor the seas round the year and for an accurate assessment of impact of climate change on coastal waters.
•The first two such Slocum gliders were deployed off the Chennai coast for the trial runs. The gliders are named after Joshua Slocum, said to be the first man to sail across the world. These gliders are pre-programmed to move to specific locations and depths to move both horizontally and vertically.
Data transmission
•“Modern bio-geo chemical sensors are attached to these gliders to measure the sea temperatures, pressure, salinity, chlorophyll and other such parameters in a controlled manner. Data can be transmitted in real time and more exhaustive information stored can be obtained after a few months on retrieval,” explained INCOIS director T. Srinivasa Kumar, in an exclusive interaction.
•The Centre has given its nod to the five-year Rs. 4,000 crore Deep Ocean Mission to assess climate change, sea warming, impact on coastal regions and the marine ecosystem. “We will be working with our sister organisations like the Indian Institute of Tropical Meteorology, Pune, National Institute of Ocean Technology, Chennai, Nation Centre for Coastal Research, Chennai, National Centre for Earth System Sciences, Thiruvananthapuram, and others for ocean exploration to harness its vast resources,” he explained.
•“We are planning to have eight such gliders in two years, and each can be run for six months. Initially, we want to take them 1,000 km off the Chennai coast with the help of Ocean Research Vehicle ‘Sagar Nidi’ and launch. We are also planning to pick them up before the monsoon,” chipped in head of Ocean Observations and Data Management Group E. Pattabhi Rama Rao.
•While the trial runs had just five dives up to 15 metres deep, these gliders are also capable of going underwater up to 1,000 metres deep and move about eight centimetres per second. Gliders along with tide gauges fitted with GPS sensors will give a rounded data to understand the oceanic ecosystem better because the movements of the sea along with the atmospheric systems control the monsoons, cyclonic storms, wave surges besides tsunamis, pointed out Mr. Srinivasa Kumar.
•Oceans are carbon sinks and data being collected could help us understand the ‘coupling’ of atmospheric and ocean systems for a more accurate climate forecasting, he averred. This apart, INCOIS is also sourcing data from about 300 Argo floats placed every 300 km around the coastline reading the surface and undercurrents along with temperature and salinity.
•These are placed 2,000 metres deep and keep floating to the surface every 10 days with data transmitted every five days. The plan is to launch 50 such floats every year as they have a life span of four years, added Mr. Rama Rao.
📰 Regulatory code for OTT content soon
21 MPs ask government for action
•Twenty-one MPs cutting across party lines have sought an answer from the government about the content on over-the-top (OTT) platforms such as Netflix and Amazon Prime, asking whether the Centre was aware that such platforms were full of content with “sex, violence, abuse, vulgarity and disrespect to religious sentiments”.
•Information and Broadcasting Minister Prakash Javadekar recently said his Ministry would soon come up with a regulatory code on the content on these platforms. The guidelines are expected to be made public in a week’s time.
•“We are in the final stages of working on the guidelines and it will be soon out,” he told The Hindu . Sources in the I&B Ministry said the government had urged the platforms to come up with the guidelines themselves.
•The Ministry in its reply on Friday said there are currently 40 OTT platforms operating in India. The government, as a first step towards regulation, amended the “allocation of Business Rules” in November last year, bringing all online platforms under the mandate of the I&B Ministry. All the platforms were told to register with the Ministry.
•“The Government has received several grievances/complaints regarding content of programmes on OTT platforms,” the Ministry said in its reply.
Self regulation
•The Ministry said they had several rounds of consultations with the Internet and Mobile Association of India (IAMAI) impressing upon them the need for an appropriate self-regulatory mechanism for content over OTT platforms.
•“In August 2020, the IAMAI had informed the Ministry that a self-regulatory mechanism had been developed for the OTT platforms. On examination it was felt that the mechanism proposed by IAMAI did not give adequate cognizance to content prohibited under law and there were issues of conflict of interest, which were communicated to IAMAI in September, 2020,” the Ministry noted.
📰 Retail investors to be able to buy G-Secs directly: RBI
‘E-access to bonds via RBI gilt account’
•The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) said it would allow retail investors to open gilt accounts with the central bank to invest in government securities directly and without the help of intermediaries.
•“It is proposed to provide retail investors with online access to the government securities market — both primary and secondary — directly through the Reserve Bank (Retail Direct),” RBI Governor Shaktikanta Das said in a statement.
•“This will broaden the investor base and provide retail investors with enhanced access to participate in the government securities market,” he added.
•“This is a major structural reform placing India among select few countries which have similar facilities. This measure together with HTM [hold to maturity] relaxation, will facilitate smooth completion of the government borrowing programme in 2021-22,” the RBI Governor added.
•The RBI will soon come out with modalities for opening of such accounts.
•Later answering questions at a press conference, Mr. Das said the provision would not in any way hinder flow of investors’ funds into mutual fund schemes and bank deposits.
•“Allowing retail participation in the G-Sec market is a bold step towards the financialisation of a vast pool of domestic savings and could be a game-changer,” said SBI Chairman Dinesh Khara.
📰 RBI reiterates growth-supportive stance
Lowers projection for Q4 inflation, holds interest rates; to raise CRR in phases back to 4% by May 22
•The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) on Friday said it would retain an accommodative policy stance into the next financial year to help revive growth on a durable basis even as it held interest rates and vowed to ensure inflation remains within target.
•The RBI also lowered its projection for retail inflation for the current quarter and announced that it would gradually restore the Cash Reserve Ratio — which had been cut to address the pandemic’s fallout — to 4% in two phases by May 22 as part of a ‘normalisation process’.
Core a concern
•After breaching the RBI’s upper tolerance threshold of 6% for six consecutive months through November, CPI inflation had eased to 4.6% in December, helped by an appreciable softening in vegetable prices and a base effect. Core inflation, excluding food and fuel, however, remained elevated at 5.5% in December with only a marginal moderation from a month earlier.
•The RBI’s Monetary Policy Committee (MPC) noted in its statement that the RBI’s January survey showed households’ one-year ahead inflation expectations remained unchanged.
•“With the larger than anticipated deflation in vegetable prices in December bringing down headline closer to the target, it is likely that the food inflation trajectory will shape the near-term outlook,” the MPC observed.
Sees Q4 inflation at 5.2%
•Taking into consideration various factors including risks from increases in industrial raw material prices, the MPC revised its projections for CPI inflation: for the ongoing fourth-quarter to 5.2% (from 5.8% projected in December), that for the first half of 2021-22 to 5.2% to 5.0 % (from 5.2% to 4.6%) and estimated it to ease to an average 4.3% in the third quarter, with risks broadly balanced.
•The MPC also estimated real GDP growth at 10.5% in 2021-22, slightly lower than the 11% projected in the Economic Survey and the Internation Monetary Fund’s forecast of 11.5%.
•Stating that growth was recovering, and that the outlook had improved significantly with the roll-out of the vaccine programme in the country, the MPC cautioned that the recovery was, however, still to gather firm traction, making it crucial to persist with policy support. The rate-setting panel voted unanimously to hold rates.
•“Going forward, the Indian economy is poised to move in only one direction and that is upwards,” RBI Governor Shaktikanta Das asserted.
•“It is our strong conviction, backed by forecasts, that in 2021-22, we would undo the damage that COVID-19 has inflicted on the economy,” Mr. Das added.
📰 New questions
ICMR’s serological survey findings may have relevance for modifying vaccination policy
•The results of the ICMR’s third serological survey to ascertain the spread of COVID-19 show that nearly one in five Indians — about 270 million — may have been infected. The headline findings were publicised at a press conference and it will be a while before granular details of the course of the infection — as was known till December — will be made public in a peer-reviewed journal. However, what is known so far is that compared to August — when data for the second serological survey was announced — there has been a three-fold rise in infections. There has also been a five-fold rise (in percentage terms) of the infection in those aged 10-17 years. The third edition also included a serological survey of doctors, nurses and paramedical staff, revealing that nearly 25% — significantly above the national average — had been infected. Compared to reports of city-focused serology surveys in Delhi and mathematical modelling estimates, the ICMR survey-results appear to be more conservative in estimating the true spread. Experts of various hues point to the declining trend in infections since September, and the absence of multiple peaks in coronavirus cases as a pointer to the spread being far wider and speeding up ‘herd immunity’— a state when a significant proportion of people in a locale have been infected, thereby retarding future spread. But it would be wrong to derive comfort from this situation. The ICMR emphasises that the results point to a significant number still potentially vulnerable, underscoring the need to be vaccinated and continuing with distancing and masking up. Also, neither this survey nor any city-wide survey has evaluated how long antibodies persist and if certain virus mutant variants can overcome the protection from antibodies.
•Given that vaccines are round the corner for the general public and that no district has been immune from the virus, it is now no longer useful to know that 80% of India is still vulnerable. Rather, such surveys must shift focus to asking more granular questions: should the rise in spread among teenagers and children mean that they be considered for vaccination earlier than scheduled? Should companies accelerate trials to test protection in children? Should the rise in rural India — the survey is designed in a way to sample more villages than urban pockets — mean that they be given vaccines earlier? These and many more questions are no doubt already on the minds of specialist researchers but alongside the vaccination drives, the ICMR and the government health facilities must coordinate with a broader spectrum of specialists to investigate questions that can be used to guide and modify vaccination policy.
📰 Terminal declined
India and Japan are important donors, andSri Lanka must try and salvage the ECT deal
•The Rajapaksa government’s decision to overturn Sri Lanka’s tripartite agreement to develop Colombo’s East Container Terminal is a setback to India and Japan. The project, worth an estimated $500-$700 million, was a key marker for infrastructure investment in the island nation where Chinese projects are most prominent. More than two-thirds of trans-shipment at this port is tied to India, making it an important trade and connectivity link. Japan has been a keen supporter of Sri Lanka’s growth story, with its loans of about ¥1.1 trillion and grants and technical cooperation of about ¥300 billion. As a joint venture for India and Japan to invest in, the ECT project was also expected to showcase how the two Indo-Pacific partners, and also Quad members, could provide South Asia with viable, transparent and sustainable alternatives for financing and development. The sharp statements from New Delhi and Tokyo now reflect their deep disappointment and their suspicions about the motivations. The ostensible reason for the Rajapaksa government’s decision is growing pressure from port union groups which have opposed any foreign participation, and threatened a “work-to-rule” agitation if ECT operations were handed to the Adani group, as proposed. India has also had some misgivings about whether the Rajapaksa brothers, who became President and Prime Minister in 2019-2020, would in fact honour the commitments made by the previous government, given the acrimony between the two governments. Similar commitments made by former PM Ranil Wickremesinghe during a visit to Delhi when he signed an MoU for developing the Eastern city of Trincomalee through oil and infrastructure projects also appear to have fallen by the wayside. The larger question of a possible Chinese role in the ECT decision also hangs over the decision, given that other terminal projects at the Colombo Port such as the Colombo International Container Terminal, have not faced similar pushback. It is also curious that given its financial difficulties, Sri Lanka felt confident in taking a decision guaranteed to upset such important donors.
•New Delhi has said it continues to engage Sri Lanka on the ECT issue, although it remains cold to Colombo’s alternative offer of developing the West Container Terminal. Over the past year, the Modi government has invested much time and resources to India-Sri Lanka ties, including a new credit line, currency swap agreement, and COVID-19 assistance and vaccines. NSA Ajit Doval and EAM S. Jaishankar have visited Colombo more than once, and Mr. Modi has hosted President Gotabaya and Prime Minister Mahinda. India has also set much store by its partnership with Japan, which could be a template for similar projects, as a counter to China’s BRI. There is much at stake for all three countries to derail the partnership. It is in all their interest, but primarily Colombo’s, to find a compromise formula to salvage a deal that has far-reaching consequences for the region.
📰 A prisoner’s tragedy, a nation’s shame
The Perarivalan case is an example of state agencies sacrificing the lives of those with a ‘peripheral role’ in a conspiracy
•Perarivalan has been in prison for almost 30 years for his role in the assassination of Rajiv Gandhi during the 1991 election campaign. At the heart of the injustice being inflicted on Perarivalan is that government agencies have continued to insist on his incarceration despite being unsure of his role. It really is a classic case of state agencies being unable to identify and arrest those at the heart of the conspiracy while sacrificing the lives of those who might have had a peripheral role at worst.
Prolonged injustice
•The charges of the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) against Perarivalan for terrorist offences under the Terrorist and Disruptive Activities (Prevention) Act, or TADA, were upheld by the trial court along with the conspiracy to commit murder under the Indian Penal Code (IPC). Over the course of many rounds of litigation, his conviction only for the conspiracy to commit murder under the IPC has been sustained and he has served 30 years as part of his life imprisonment sentence (his death sentence was commuted in February 2014). But that procedural narration does not capture the profound injustice of Perarivalan’s incarceration.
•At the core of his conviction is his confession to a police officer, a violent legacy of the TADA that was carried forward under the Prevention of Terrorism Act (POTA). While confessions to a police officer are inadmissible as evidence under the Indian Evidence Act (to protect people from coerced police confessions), terrorism legislations such as TADA and POTA made confessions to the police admissible as long as it was made to an officer not lower than the rank of Superintendent of Police.
A suspect ‘confession’
•The CBI’s main weapon against Perarivalan was his confession to V. Thiagarajan (SP, CBI) where he allegedly confessed to his role in procuring a car battery for the main conspirator and purchasing two 9-volt batteries that were used in making the bomb to assassinate Rajiv Gandhi. All of this was damning until Mr. Thiagarajan came out in November 2013 and made the startling revelation that he had not recorded Perarivalan’s ‘confession’ accurately.
•In a sworn affidavit filed before the Supreme Court in December 2017, Mr. Thiagarajan stated that he had omitted to record Perarivalan’s statement that he did not know the purpose for which the battery was being procured. It was a glaring omission that completely changed the nature of Perarivalan’s involvement. In effect, Perarivalan was convicted based on a manipulated confession to a police officer.
•It is incredible that despite the Supreme Court dropping the TADA charges, his confession which was admissible only due to provisions of the TADA was then used to convict him for IPC offences. Beyond the untenable legal basis of Perarivalan’s conviction, details of the broader investigation into Rajiv Gandhi’s assassination only exacerbates the injustice. Justice M.C. Jain’s Report (Jain Commission Inquiry) to Parliament in March 1998 identified massive gaps in the CBI’s investigation, including lack of clarity on the source and the making of the bomb.
•To address these concerns, the CBI constituted the Multi-Disciplinary Monitoring Agency (MDMA) in December 1998 to conduct further investigations into the larger conspiracy and the origins of the human belt bomb used in the assassination. Over two decades, the MDMA has been submitting reports in sealed covers to the TADA Court and Perarivalan has been denied access to these. However, the MDMA has repeatedly stated that Perarivalan and the other accused are not part of these ongoing investigations. In essence, we have a situation where there is an acknowledgment at the highest levels that the origins and the making of the bomb remain unknown, and yet Perarivalan continues to be in prison for purchasing batteries whose use remains a mystery.
•Despite all these indications of tenuous connections to the larger conspiracy, Perarivalan and his mother, Arputham, have been on a tireless crusade to end his incarceration. Having served 30 years of life imprisonment for the conspiracy to murder, his effort to get a remission under the Code Of Criminal Procedure was rejected by the Central Government in April 2018.
•However, Perarivalan continued to be entitled to have his pardon considered by the Governor of Tamil Nadu under Article 161 of the Constitution. His application for a pardon had been pending with the Governor since December 2015 and under the Constitution, the Governor is bound by the aid and advice of the State government in the exercise of pardon powers.
•Meanwhile, the central government employed obfuscation as a strategy to prolong Perarivalan’s incarceration. Having initially maintained that the issue of pardon was solely between the Governor and Perarivalan, the Centre took a constitutionally untenable argument before the Supreme Court in December 2020 that it was the President of India who had the power to consider Perarivalan’s pardon.
•Then on January 21, the Centre submitted to the Supreme Court that the Governor would take a decision on Perarivalan’s pardon within a matter of days.
•On February 4, the Centre informed the Court that the Governor had finally considered Perarivalan’s pardon and had decided that the President alone had the power to consider such an application. It is a shocking abdication of a constitutional duty and a blatantly unconstitutional manoeuvre to ignore the advice of the State government, which the Governor is constitutionally bound to follow.
Life in jail
•Perarivalan was 19 years old when he was imprisoned, and 30 years later is still fighting for his freedom. In those 30 years, he has earned BCA and MCA degrees from the Indira Gandhi National Open University along with completing a whole host of certificate courses involving two wheeler mechanics, managerial skills, nutrition etc. In his book, An Appeal from the Death Row , Perarivalan says the MDMA will ultimately find that he had nothing to do with making the bomb. He then asks us, who can ever give him back his life. We must ask ourselves why Perarivalan continues to be incarcerated when we know that his confession was manipulated, that the government agencies themselves admit not knowing the origins of the bomb, and that Perarivalan is not part of the investigations on the bomb. Is it our fear that releasing Perarivalan would be a collective admission of our failure to successfully investigate the assassination of a former Prime Minister? It is cruel to ask Perarivalan to pay for our failures with his own life.
📰 Beating down critical journalism, creative freedom
The curious deference of the judiciary is part of the precariousness of the rights to freedom in India today
•Rioting in India’s capital city on a day reserved for the celebration of the Republic, was a new low in unravelling political concord. Within days of that trauma, points of entry into Delhi were barricaded with layers of concrete and steel, interwoven with vicious spools of concertina wire. Some locations had lethal iron nails embedded into the road and trenches dug deep to prevent the ingress of farmers long encamped around the capital city, protesting recent legislation that goes by the title of “agricultural reforms”.
Media clampdown
•A few days after the riots, expectations that public resentment would enable the forceful dispersal of protests seemed belied. Active efforts to deter critical reporting were by then under way. Nine senior journalists were charged under the law of sedition, for reporting the ambiguous circumstances of the sole fatality in the riots.
•A young freelance journalist was arrested and charged with lacking appropriate media credentials. Even as he was granted bail, in a rare exception to what is becoming the general rule of denial, the Home Ministry decreed that only journalists with press credentials granted by the central government could legitimately report on the farmers’ agitation.
•A number of social media pages run by newspapers and websites were blocked by executive order. For media platforms that did not relent, the legal process of securing injunctions began, along with an unsubtle threat that employees of the social media company, Twitter, could face arrest for failure to comply.
•The tragedy of a government that remains deaf to the anxieties of a significant section of Indian citizens was transformed into farce, when formidable machines of propaganda were mobilised on February 3, to push back against two inconsequential Twitter posts, by a music artiste from the United States and an environmental campaigner from Sweden.
Imperfections made worse
•Events since Republic Day constitute an unprecedented assault on three of the “rights to freedom” granted under Article 19 of the Constitution: free speech, free movement, and peaceful assembly. Like several other Articles in the Fundamental Rights chapter, Article 19 includes a non obstante clause: notwithstanding all its promises, each of the rights comes with certain conditions attached.
•These clauses were in most part inserted by the First Amendment to the Constitution, when the government of a fledgling nation sought to negotiate the fine line between freedom and necessity. It was a manifestly imperfect job of resolving a conundrum that has defied the most determined philosophical inquiries. And those imperfections have been compounded by decades of judicial default and executive caprice.
•The Supreme Court has spoken up in its lucid interludes, but often retreated rather than face down obvious abuses. In matters of sedition, the first impulse of the judiciary in the afterglow of the Republic’s emergence, was to strike the law down. Article 13 of the Constitution annulled every law that was inconsistent with the fundamental rights chapter and the Patna High Court was on solid ground when it held the sedition clause in criminal law unconstitutional. A few years later, in a milieu more sensitive to possibilities of disorder, the Supreme Court reinstated the law, but held it applicable only to “activities as would be intended … to create disorder or disturbance of public peace by resort to violence”.
•In 2012, the Gujarat High Court upheld this precedent in a matter involving the country’s largest English language newspaper, The Times of India , after sedition charges brought by the Commissioner of Police in Ahmedabad city. It also added that the Constitution protected strong commentary on “measures or acts of the Government, or its agencies, so as to ameliorate the condition of the people or to secure the cancellation or alteration of those acts by lawful means”.
•It took the newspaper and three employees, four years to secure full discharge. A luxury by the standards of the judicial system, this is one denied to most independent journalists and smaller media houses, entrapped in the coils of whimsical prosecution by police and other actors anxious to evade public scrutiny.
State’s new weapon
•The nine journalists charged after the violence at the Red Fort have been spared arrest, but that possibility will hang heavy over their practice for years, potentially inducing a “play-safe attitude”. The State government in Uttar Pradesh, inattentive to even these niceties, has used arrest as literally the first recourse against critical journalism.
•Siddique Kappan, who works with a number of news organisations and is a member of the Kerala Union of Working Journalists, was arrested by the police while on his way to Hathras early in October, to report on the death after alleged sexual assault, of a young girl of the Dalit community. He was charged with sedition and other offences, and the statutes invoked, including the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act, could potentially result in indefinite detention.
Angle of religion
•Politics of religious offence constitute another clear threat to freedom of speech and expression. The arrest of a stand-up comic, Munawar Faruqui, in Indore, for jokes that he did not crack, represents a particular depth of absurdity. He was denied bail in successive hearings and the Madhya Pradesh High Court was particularly severe in its strictures about an intent which remained unexpressed. He finally was granted bail after over a month in detention, by the Supreme Court.
•In deciding the S. Rangarajan versus Jagjivan Ram case in 1989, the Supreme Court declined to embrace a doctrine of censorship. The benchmark for judging the potential for offence had to be a “reasonable” person and not someone of “weak and vacillating” mind. Yet, in the case of the TV serial, Tandav¸ whose producers and cast face charges despite multiple apologies, the Court has now chosen to underline the conditional nature of the free speech right. An actor seeking exemption from arrest because he was only a paid professional, was told that he should not “play a role which hurts religious sentiments”.
Another blow
•In the matter of regulating the right to freedom of movement, the Supreme Court has encountered unanticipated turbulence. Last year, while hearing a petition seeking the dispersal of protests against the Citizenship (Amendment) Act in Delhi’s Shaheen Bagh area, the Court ruled that expressions of dissent should take place in “designated places only”.
•When called upon to apply the same principle to ongoing farmers’ protests, the Court baulked. A ruling that the protests were unconstitutional would have been the legal basis for a coercive dispersal of the farmers. Hesitant about that, the Court sought to play problem solver, nominating a team of mediators to find the solution the government had set its face against. It did not end well for the parties involved, and least of all, for public perceptions of the integrity of judicial institutions.
•Asymmetry in the application of the law, when charges are brought against partisans of the ruling party is another feature, widely commented on. While hearing a recent matter involving hate speech, the Chief Justice of India observed that the Court is trying to discourage litigation under Article 32, which enables any citizen to invoke the writ jurisdiction of the higher judiciary when fundamental rights are threatened. This ambivalence towards an article that B.R. Ambedkar called the “heart and soul of the Constitution”, and the curious judicial deference to the political executive, are central parts of the story of how precarious the rights to freedom are today.
