📰 Most NGOs don’t have SBI account
From April 1, a Delhi account is a mandatory provision to receive foreign funds
•Only 16% registered NGOs have active bank accounts with the State Bank of India’s main branch in Delhi, a compulsory requirement to receive foreign funds from April 1, according to submission made by a non-governmental organisation in the Delhi High Court on Wednesday.
•An Assam-based NGO has also moved the Gauhati High Court against another amended provision of the Foreign Contribution (Regulation) Act (FCRA) that makes Aadhaar mandatory for opening and operating the account in Delhi.
•The Gauhati High Court on May 5 sent a notice to the SBI asking it to explain why Aadhaar was necessary to open a bank account, when in 2018, the Supreme Court in the K.S. Puttaswamy (Aadhaar) case had ruled that mandatorily linking Aadhaar to a bank account “does not satisfy the test of proportionality”.
•According to the amended provisions of the FCRA enacted in September 2020, the NGOs registered under the Act were asked to open a designated bank account at the SBI, Delhi and compulsorily register the Aadhaar details of the chief functionaries, trustees and office-bearers.
•The amendment stated that all the existing FCRA accounts of the NGOs will be linked to the SBI account in Delhi, and while they may not be able to receive fresh foreign funds from April 1 in the existing accounts, they could utilise the money that already exists in the old account.
Pandemic poses hurdles
•Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, many NGOs could not complete the stringent paper work, making it impossible for foreign donors to send help during the second wave that has now spread to rural areas. Many said that they did not fulfil the eligibility criteria as they did not possess an Aadhaar card as a “matter of principle”.
•An Andhra Pradesh NGO that had moved the Delhi High Court last week seeking exemption from the March 31 deadline to open an account in Delhi, informed the court on Wednesday that out of the 22,457 NGOs with active FCRA licences, only 3,616 have active bank accounts with the SBI Main Branch, Delhi (NDMB).
•The NGO said that despite applying before March 31, their papers were not processed.
•“The court on Wednesday directed the Ministry to expedite the necessary approvals for opening the petitioners’ New Delhi FCRA account and has listed the matter for compliance in a week’s time,” said Abishek Jebaraj, the NGO’s counsel.
•Three more Andhra NGOs have approached the court with the same plea.
•The Assam NGO said in its petition that it applied for opening of an FCRA account in SBI, Delhi on March 9, before the March 31 deadline, but the application was not processed.
•The Ministry of Home Affairs did not comment on whether the government was considering to extend the March 31 deadline.
•Registered NGOs can receive foreign contribution under five purposes — social, educational, religious, economic and cultural. An FCRA registration is mandatory for NGOs to receive foreign funds. There are 22,591 FCRA-registered NGOs.
Indian physicians say it shows some good results and has fewer side effects.
•Still listed in India as a possible treatment option for mild COVID-19 patients under home isolation Ivermectin, according to the World Health Organisation’s recent direction, is not recommended for general use.
•This orally-administered drug is included in India’s revised national COVID-19 treatment protocol for people with mild infection even though its maker has now clarified that there is no evidence of its efficacy against the viral disease.
•“Safety and efficacy are important when using any drug for a new indication. WHO recommends against use of ‘Ivermectin’ for COVID-19 except within clinical trials,” Soumya Swaminathan, WHO’s chief scientist, tweeted earlier this week.
•Indian physicians who continue to use this drug state that it is an approved anti-parasitic agent. “It has shown, in laboratory settings, to inhibit SARSCOV2 replication. It may be effective for the management of early onset, mild COVID-19 for adult patients. In a clinical setting, it is observed that there is an early viral clearance in patients who are put on Ivermectin. Symptomatically, there is no faster resolution observed, in terms of fever, cough, or sore throat despite the use of Ivermectin. There are no severe adverse effects noted in patients with non-severe COVID-19,” said Vighnesh Naidu Y, consultant physician, Yashoda Hospitals, Hyderabad
•“Ivermectin is used for the treatment and eradication of two life-threatening illnesses which are onchocerciasis, responsible for blindness, and filariasis, which is debilitating,” said Sheela Chakravarthy, director, Internal Medicine, Fortis Hospitals, Bannerghatta Road.
•She added that Ivermectin was also found to be effective in reducing the multiplication of certain RNA viruses such as SARS and COVID RNA.
‘Reduces multiplication’
•“It has shown efficacy to bind to the spike protein site of the RNA virus thereby reducing the multiplication and attachment of the virus to the ACE receptor in the nasal epithelium. So, the usage of Ivermectin during the early stage of COVID-19 will prevent attachment of the virus to the nasal epithelium. The consumption of Ivermectin 12 mg once daily for three days is now recommended in the isolation protocols of Karnataka,” she explained and noted that there were multiple randomised controlled trials claiming the efficacy of this drug.
•Shafiq Ahmed, consultant, Urology HCMCT Manipal Hospitals, said that Ivermectin was first used in third world countries and a few papers emerged on its results in COVID-19 infection and as chemoprophylaxis for healthcare workers and their contacts which was also tested in-vitro.
‘A safe drug’
•“It is used for treatment of COVID-19 infection in mild to moderate cases. Since it’s a very safe drug, there are no major side effects reported till date. Therefore, It has been suggested from the recent literature and individual experience that the people who have not been vaccinated so far or those having mild symptoms of COVID-19 should take Ivermectin as prescribed by their doctor,’’ he said.
•Archana Dhawan Bajaj, Gyneacologist, Obstetrician and IVF expert, Nurture IVF, stating that there was a need to study Ivermectin further said that the rationale for its current use was the fact that it prevented replication of SARS COVID virus in-vitro. “Small cohorts of studies have been done in parts of the world and a lot has been studied in Australia and New Zealand where they have used Ivermectin and have found good results. And it seems to be a drug which does not have too many potential side-effects in its use. A lot of healthcare professionals worldwide are using it. Of course, more needs to be studied into the use of Ivermectin and scientific rational behind its use has really not been proven beyond doubt so use of Ivermectin though done worldwide and sometimes even indiscriminately,’’ she said.
📰 Protecting prisoners: On overcrowding of prisons
Imprisonment practices need a relook so that the police do not effect unnecessary arrests
•If overcrowding of prisons has been a perennial problem in this country, high occupancy levels can only mean bad news amidst a pandemic. The Supreme Court has been intervening from time to time to address this problem, but its latest order directing the interim release of eligible prisoners acquires salience in view of the uncontrolled second surge in the raging pandemic. Last year, the Court had passed such an order quite early — the one of March 23, 2020 came even before the nation-wide lockdown. The Court had then ordered all States to take preventive steps as well as constitute high-powered committees to determine the class of prisoners who could be released on bail or parole for a specified period. In directing this week that besides identifying more prisoners for release, the same set of prisoners be given parole this year too, the Court continues its trend of seeking to protect prisoners as well as those guarding them from getting infected. There have been significant initiatives to prevent any uncontrollable spread within the congested jails, ranging from stopping the practice of transporting remand prisoners to court for periodical extension of custody and hearings to asking authorities to prepare readiness and response plans. The Court’s order is welcome, both as a move to decongest jails and a measure that protects the right to life and health of the prisoners. Now that the issue of reducing occupancy in the prison is once again under focus, and not merely for the usual reason of overcrowding, but also in view of the vulnerability of prisoners and prison staff to infection and disease, a comprehensive look at imprisonment practices in the country may be in order.
•There have been reports of prisoners testing positive and getting hospitalised. How far the regular testing and medical treatment available to inmates across the country is effective is unclear. Further, even political prisoners, such as those jailed in the Bhima Koregaon case without any direct link to any act of violence, are being repeatedly denied bail, solely because stringent laws have been invoked against them. Some political activists in Delhi are also in jail under anti-terrorism laws for alleged complicity in riots early last year. The courts must take into account their vulnerability to infection and consider bail. In its order, the Supreme Court has rightly emphasised the need to adhere to the norms it had laid down in Arnesh Kumar vs State of Bihar (2014) under which the police were asked not to effect unnecessary arrests, especially in cases that involve jail terms less than seven years. In the past, the Court has also asked authorities in all districts in the country to give effect to Section 436A of the Cr.P.C., under which undertrials who have completed half of the maximum prison term prescribed for the offence may be released on personal bond. Effective follow-up action is needed to audit these measures so that these are not implemented selectively or arbitrarily.
📰 The science teaching and rationality India needs
The novel coronavirus crisis has fully revealed the price to be paid in the neglect of education and health
•A speeding autorickshaw driver once told me that slowing down might not be very useful to avoid an accident. He was responding to my unease, sitting behind him, feeling helpless about the consequence I might have to face on account of his reckless manoeuvres, especially at turns and roundabouts. He agreed to slow down because I asked him to, but he was not convinced that it would help avoid an accident. I was intrigued to hear this view and asked him to elaborate. He said that if another vehicle was going to collide with him in the coming few minutes, speeding might save you from that collision. The collision itself was a matter of destiny, not chance, for him and his logic was based on that perception. He wanted to persuade me to realise that an accident is something inevitable. When it is to happen, it will happen. Therefore, slowing down might invite it as much as speeding would.
•In academic parlance, this kind of logic has long been regarded as an expression of fatalism. This label does not allow nuances to be recognised in what is a broad framework for making sense of human life and its encounters with sudden changes, especially tragedies. Recalling this autorickshaw driver’s logic has helped me to make sense of arguments given in the context of diseases such as malaria and typhoid. When it comes to malaria, whether you get it or not depends on your ability to avoid being bitten by a mosquito. Of course not every mosquito, and not every bite, can cause malaria, but avoiding the proliferation of mosquitoes does prevent the chances of being infected by the parasite that causes malaria, carried by mosquitoes. Malarial mosquitoes breed in stagnant water, and that is where the imperative of avoidance begins.
Logic of avoidance
•For many decades now, schoolchildren have scored marks by giving the correct answer to the question, ‘How can mosquitoes be stopped from breeding in our neighbourhoods?’ It is a rare school that gives children a task of going around noticing stagnant puddles formed during the rainy season containing visible mosquito larvae. The standard textbook line of action is to spread kerosene on stagnant water. That is what municipal workers supposedly do, and that is what is taught in the lesson on the services that municipalities provide.
•As the pedagogic calendar goes, once a lesson has been delivered and the test based on it taken, there is no reason to recall its content in the later parts of the year, except for the final examination. So, if malaria, dengue and chikungunya persist during the long autumn and winter months, it is unlikely that a teacher will relate them to the lesson taught earlier on mosquito prevention. Thus, while mosquitoes are avoidable, the diseases they cause take on an inevitable character, quite different from the inevitability that my autorickshaw driver was associating with an impending accident.
•Before the advent of antibiotics, typhoid fever and jaundice were life-threatening, and especially in the case of children. Doctors knew that it was possible to prevent both these diseases by avoiding contaminated water. And this could be done by boiling drinking water. But more usually, boiling of water only started after someone had been diagnosed as suffering from typhoid, or from jaundice. In any case, boiling was cumbersome and expensive. Along with antibiotics, water purifying devices and bottled water have distanced us from the grim experiences associated with water-borne diseases prevalent before the 1970s. Common diarrhoea is still a threat to the life and health of babies. Instead of preventing it by ensuring the supply of clean water in all geographical locations, India as a nation has ended up addressing the problem of drinking water by popularising personalised devices.
No public systems
•The absence of public systems has proved costly both in health and in education. The teaching of science from the primary levels was a major policy initiative taken in the early decades of Independence through which the welfare state hoped to create general awareness on crucial matters of disease prevention and health. But the teaching of science is more than talking about science and telling students what ought to be done. In the case of boiling water, for example, it is hardly enough to say that high temperatures kill microbes. To achieve the belief that it actually does, one needs to see microbes with one’s own eyes.
•For an overwhelming majority of children, our system of education fails to provide them this kind of experience, even at the higher secondary level. The idea that boiling purifies water remains a matter of giving the correct answer in the examination, rather than a belief based on evidence seen through a microscope. This can hardly be described as a failure of education, because the seed of a capable public system was never sown, and, therefore, we could hardly expect a harvest. The novel coronavirus crisis has fully revealed the price that the neglect of education and health has wreaked.
COVID compulsion
•Just this week I had the opportunity to talk to a city-based rickshaw puller who had booked a seat in a private bus which would take him to his native village in Uttar Pradesh. When I asked him why he was going, he gave me the obvious answer I had expected, referring to the sheer inadequacy of income to sustain himself in the city. But then he mentioned another reason why he had to go urgently, and this had to do with a wedding in the village. He had to attend it, he said, otherwise his relatives would feel upset with him. It did not help our conversation when I alluded to the risk of him contracting the novel coronavirus while travelling in a bus and later attending a wedding ceremony.
•He was not particularly interested in my concern that he must take every precaution, and especially make sure that he did not remove his mask during the journey and during the wedding ceremony. His response to my concern for his well-being reminded me of what the autorickshaw driver had said many years ago, namely, that the inevitable cannot be avoided. In this case, the inevitable was hardly a matter of fate. In fact, it is the wedding that was inevitable and therefore unavoidable, even if it posed the risk of getting sick.
•My interlocutor also shared with me the feeling that the pandemic is mainly in the big cities and that villages are free of it. Apparently, despite being on WhatsApp, he had not heard about the surge currently being witnessed across rural parts of northern India. But the most interesting part of this conversation had to do with the mask. If the mask, a bit like boiling water, prevents an invisible microbe from entering the human body, it is a matter of faith for someone who has no idea of the world of invisible pathogens.
The mask and the citizen
•We may wonder why several western countries, where education is supposedly better, also failed to convince their citizens to wear masks. This argument is based on a positive stereotype of the West. Looking more closely at different countries that comprise the West, one noticed sharply differentiated levels of the quality of their school science. Over the last half century, some of the richest countries have allowed science at school to decline. India’s education system, which was already impoverished, suffered severe cutbacks under the repeated waves of lopsided economic reforms. New norms of public financing have undermined science teaching, robbing ordinary citizens of the intellectual resources they might have acquired during childhood.
•But science teaching alone cannot create miracles. For science to mean anything, a rational social environment is needed. Moreover, for science to acquire meaning during school life, it is important that children grow up in an ethos where dissent and debate are encouraged. It is obvious that the benefits of science and its teaching do not accrue when the democratic order, and the institutions on which it is based, are not in good health.
📰 Forget ‘play’, the machine needs to be scrapped
The Centre must revisit its vaccine policy by procuring 100% doses which can then be equitably disbursed to States
•In its affidavit submitted to the Supreme Court on May 9 in the suo motu COVID-19 management case, the Union of India avers, in the words of Justice Holmes, that “play must be allowed for the joints of the machine”. Arguably, in this instance, such play is irrelevant because the machine needs to be scrapped. The Centre must revisit its policy by procuring 100% of the vaccine doses which can then be equitably disbursed to the State governments.
Reasons to revisit policy
•The States were indeed thoughtless to ask for an immediate expansion of vaccination to all adults, beyond the 45-plus years priority group, but the affidavit shows the Centre as cavalier and spiteful. The submission provides three good reasons to revisit the new “liberalised” policy.
•First, it is indefensible and out of line with international practice; put bluntly, it is patently stupid.
•Second, it is incoherent and internally inconsistent — it alludes to liberalisation while controlling both price and quantity for every State — an inevitable consequence of the infeasibility of a liberalised policy at this time. Indeed, the Centre is currently threatening to penalise States that are not administering sufficient second doses.
•Third, the submission frequently resorts to legal legerdemain, obfuscating the argument, instead of constructively addressing the essential problem at hand.
•To begin with, at a time when the Centre is deciding which manufacturer of Remdesivir, hitherto a competitively marketed drug with multiple manufacturers, will sell how much to which State at what price, it is concomitantly deregulating the vaccine market, which currently has just two suppliers, in a situation of extreme shortage, exacerbated by adding 600 million 18 to 44-year-old citizens to 200 million unvaccinated people above the age of 45. This is far from using “differential pricing… to instil a competitive market”, a goal best left for later. In every other country, only the national government is buying vaccines, with odd exceptions such as Indonesia and the Philippines, where corporates are allowed to buy internationally, to vaccinate their workers for free. It is also perplexing why Covaxin is not more widely licensed, given that the affidavit makes it clear that much of the core work in developing the vaccine was done at the ICMR-NIV in Pune.
The high price States will pay
•In the affidavit, the Centre baldly admits that “by nature of its large vaccination programme, [it] places large purchase orders for vaccines as opposed to the State Governments and/or Private Hospitals and therefore, this reality has some reflection in the prices negotiated” — i.e., it can buy vaccines cheaper than States or the private sector. If so, why should it not buy and distribute, as it was doing till April 30?
•Next, the Centre takes 50% (it may have booked more than its share) to give to States for the 45-plus age group, and the States get 25% of the total vaccine production for their use. Each State is “informed by the Central Government in writing about the number of vaccines it would receive....” Further, “by conducting informal consultations with the vaccine manufacturers, [it] ensured that the prices of vaccine is uniform for all the States”, i.e., the Centre has fixed both quantity and price. It is clearly not a liberalised policy.
•The balance 25% in each State “will go to the private sector based upon the contracts between private sector and vaccine manufacturers,” but how is the private sector in a specific State defined, since contracts are at a corporate level and not by State units? Also, what happens if the private sector cannot absorb the 25%? After all, in terms of CoWIN sites, the private sector, which earlier had about 10% share, is now under 3%. Day before yesterday, Bihar had nine sites, Chhattisgarh, 32 and Arunachal Pradesh had none. The private sector allocation actually privileges large urban areas, where it is more present.
•Thus, instead of the full production at zero cost, the States now get one quarter of the production at twice or more the price paid by the Centre. The private sector will access the other quarter, at a landed cost that, based on current reports, might be up to 10 times the price it paid earlier.
•Little did States know that their petulant insistence on immediate universal vaccination would come at such a high price.
The Centre has little to show
•But, cannot States secure other supplies, e.g., via global tenders that many are now floating? The affidavit states, quite sensibly, that “efforts in the direction of procurement of other vaccines from other countries is essentially a responsibility of the Central Government” and “discussions for procurement of vaccines… has been going on since third-quarter of 2020… These negotiations are a complex undertaking which is currently ongoing on a war footing using all resources including diplomatic channels.” Effectively, the Centre has been trying for over six months, with little to show for it. Thus, States are either being led up the garden path — it is difficult to accept that States are so naive — or their global tenders are just grandstanding.
•Finally, legal legerdemain, that is most evident in the response to door-to-door vaccination. Yes, it is impracticable. But, the spirit was to make vaccination easier to access, e.g. through pop-up centres in communities, maintaining the necessary protocols. Instead, after expending five pages on creating and demolishing an unnecessary straw man of door-to-door vaccination, the affidavit dismisses the central question as to “whether the Central government will revisit its policy by procuring 100% of the doses which can then be equitably disbursed to the State Governments” with an airy “the answer has been already elaborated hereinabove”, when it has no such answer.
•Is there not enough residual trust between the Centre and States for such equitable distribution? If so, the need is to reinvigorate this trust, rather than accept policies leading to further Balkanisation.
•What then does this liberalised policy accomplish? It increases the vaccine maker’s revenue, with a weighted price of ₹477 per dose for Covaxin and ₹302 per dose for Covishield, based on prices to be paid by States and private firms. (On pricing, the weighted average is calculated based on a share of 50% for the Centre, 25% for States and 25% for the private sector for both vaccines, according to the affidavit. Covaxin and Covishield are both at ₹154 for the Centre, and ₹400 for States and ₹1,200 for the private sector for Covaxin and ₹300 for States and ₹600 for the private sector for Covishield.) While this is possibly too high, their revenue can be raised more simply by increasing the Centre’s price, currently ₹154, and providing the comfort of large long-term orders for 100% of India’s needs, enabling firms to invest more and sell globally. States could bear the extra cost directly without this convoluted new policy. It could even be financed by special interest-free 50-year loans to States, as promised last year for infrastructure, by the Finance Minister.
•The Union Minister for Health has clearly stated that “those who can afford to get them at the private and corporate sector rates shall go ahead”. Should such a policy be accepted, one that makes supplies less reliable and vaccination more expensive and less equitable across geographies and sends the marginalised to the back of the queue? One that delays vaccinating the vulnerable, by halving their allocation? Or should this “new” policy just be scrapped?
📰 A bullet train to hunger
The pandemic has highlighted the importance of expanding social security nets
•Pinki is a 28-year-old Dalit woman from Saharanpur, U.P. Her husband met with an accident during the national lockdown in April 2020. The two of them had to sell all their belongings for his treatment and subsequently became dependent on her parents. Such avoidable miseries were heaped on millions due to the unilateral national lockdown in 2020. The monthly report from the Finance Ministry in October stated, “From a trickle in not so distant past to now a sea of humanity coming out on the streets, the people of India have embraced the new normal where self-protection is inseparable from economic activity.” It attempts to poetically celebrate the spirit of resilience among the people by alluding to “self-protection” by shying away from the government’s responsibility of social protection. The experience for the poor is a kind of syndemic: a juxtaposition of the healthcare crisis due to the pandemic and the daily precarity of having to deal with hunger and uncertainty about livelihoods.
The rural-urban divide
•As per the State of Working India report 2021 of Azim Premji University, nearly half of formal salaried workers moved into informal work between late 2019 and late 2020 and the poorest 20% of the households lost their entire incomes in April and May 2020. Considering the modest national minimum wage threshold of ₹375 per day (the Anoop Satpathy Committee), 23 crore individuals have been pushed below these minimal earnings. Poverty rates in rural areas have increased by 15 percentage points (pp) and by 20 pp in urban areas.
•A worse impact on the urban poor was also observed in other surveys. For instance, many organisations affiliated with the Right to Food campaign and the Centre for Equity Studies, under the banner ‘Hunger Watch’ (HW), conducted a survey of nearly 4,000 households in 11 States in October 2020. The respondents were equally split between rural and urban. The survey focussed on understanding the hunger and livelihood situation among marginalised communities such as daily wage workers, single women households, people with disability, etc. The differential impact on rural and urban populations came across in this as well. Incomes reduced by half/quarter for more than half the urban respondents while it was a little over one-third for rural respondents. In October, in rural areas, 26% had no income while 30% had no income in urban areas. For only one in five rural respondents, the nutritional quality of food remained “more or less the same” in October compared to pre-pandemic levels. This was doubly worse for urban respondents. While 54% in urban areas had to borrow money for food, it was 16% lower for rural respondents. Nearly two-thirds of the urban respondents had to skip a meal while it was lower (41%) for rural respondents. Urban respondents experienced at least 12 pp more reduction in consumption of grains and pulses compared to rural. In summary, across 13 key parameters, urban respondents were 15 pp worse off compared to their rural counterparts. The conditions are worse when data are spliced by caste, religion and other special forms of vulnerability. For instance, 60% of Muslims, 51% of Dalits, 58% of older persons without caregivers and 56% of single women-headed households went to bed without a meal at least once. This pattern holds true across other parameters too. The number of respondents in each of these categories varies so they are not strictly comparable. However, the uniformity of these numbers across surveys indicates the disproportionate impact faced by some of these more vulnerable communities.
Two important laws
•Under the National Food Security Act (NFSA), 75% of the rural population and 50% of the urban population are entitled to 5 kg of foodgrains each month at subsidised prices. Despite well-known exclusions from NFSA due to identification errors as well as using old population estimates, the additional measures announced by the Central government under the Pradhan Mantri Garib Kalyan Yojana after the national lockdown were restricted to only those already covered by the NFSA. An additional entitlement of 5 kg of foodgrains per individual and 1 kg of pulses per household for free was given to those who hold Antyodaya Anna Yojana (AAY) cards under the NFSA. AAY card holders fall under the extremely poor category. This was discontinued in November. Supplementary rations were available under various State schemes. In the HW survey, a higher proportion of respondents in rural areas (56%) had NFSA cards compared to urban areas (27%). Of the respondents, 36% in urban areas did not have any ration cards compared to 13% in rural areas. Similarly, as per official records, there was a 47% increase in persondays of work under the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA) in 2020-21 compared to 2019-20 and a record 72 lakh households completed 100 days of work in one year. The wider coverage of the public distribution system (PDS) and a promise for employment in rural areas have perhaps cushioned the blow to some extent compared to urban areas.
•While still a long way to go, NFSA and MGNREGA have at least demonstrated the importance of expanding the social security nets. PDS entitlements are basic survival kits and fall far short of minimal nutritional requirements for a healthy society. As per conservative estimates, there are at least 33 crore very poor households in India. If even the basic survival needs of these households are not ensured, it is like plunging the combined population of Germany, France, the U.K., Spain, Portugal and Italy into irredeemable levels of starvation and malnutrition. With over 100 million tonnes of foodgrain stocks in the Food Corporation of India warehouses (as on May 1), not universalising rations at this stage is akin to taking a bullet train to hunger. The Central government must immediately expand the coverage and quantity under the NFSA for at least one year, increase MGNREGA entitlements to 200 days per household, initiate consultations for an urban employment programme and offer a wage compensation of ₹7,000 per poor household for the next few months.
📰 A hundred days after the coup
ASEAN has created a rare pathway to help Myanmar move forward
•On February 1, Army trucks and tanks rolled into the streets of Naypyidaw and Yangon, signaling the military’s overthrow of a government in which it had a sizeable share of power. The generals felt insecure with the landslide victory of the Aung San Suu Kyi-led National League for Democracy (NLD) in the November 2020 elections. They decided to exert full control and terminate the experiment of transition to democracy that their wiser predecessors had initiated in 2010.
Paying a hefty price
•The costs of this political U-turn have been high. People clashed with police and army units wielding batons, rubber bullets and live ammunitions. Youth, women, professional groups and ethnic minorities rose in unison to demand the release of their elected leaders and return of freedoms and democracy. People’s resolve surprised the military as much as the latter’s brutality shocked the largely non-violent protesters.
•In the end, unarmed demonstrators had to yield to the logic of the bullets fired. The civil disobedience movement began to lose momentum from early April. The people paid a heavy price: 750 were killed, thousands injured, and over 2,500 detained. One reality, however, remained unchanged: power still flowed from the gun in Myanmar.
•The Army offered a fundamentally unfair solution: the results of the 2020 elections were set aside, new elections were promised in a year or two and so was a ‘disciplined democracy’ (in which the military presumably would have more control).
•People opposing the military initially called for the restoration of the status quo ante i.e., undo the coup and let the newly elected parliament function, with a new NLD government. As there were no signs of the acceptance of this demand and violence escalated, positions hardened. The opposition then came up with a new, radical package, including rejection of the 2008 constitution, adoption of a new Federal Democracy Charter, and announcement of the ‘national unity government’ with representation from the majority Bamar and ethnic minority communities. The generals were not impressed.
ASEAN mediation
•The ASEAN group, which includes Myanmar, was deeply concerned over the coup’s adverse impact. Its principles, credibility and much-touted but largely eroded ‘centrality’ were endangered. Although still wedded to the concept of non-interference in internal affairs of its member states, ASEAN followed its activist tradition to assist Myanmar in exiting from this quagmire.
•But first it had to bridge internal differences, with members like Thailand, Cambodia and Vietnam inclined to be sympathetic to the military and others like Indonesia, Malaysia, and Singapore keen to mediate in the Myanmar crisis for the region’s larger good. Then, it had to navigate the chasm within the international community. The U.S., the U.K. and the European Union zealously advocated a policy of condemnation and strong sanctions against the military regime, while China and Russia were determined to protect the generals from excessive censure and opposition, on the ground that greater instability would jeopardise their interests.
•Fortunately, other Asian powers, notably India and Japan, preferred to support reconciliation. ASEAN also had to handle deftly the activism of the United Nations Secretary General whose special envoy strove to find a role for herself, even though Naypyidaw was opposed to her approach. ASEAN kept up consultations with her, even letting her visit Jakarta just when the momentous ASEAN summit was held on April 24 there. The summit’s ostensible agenda was a discussion on regional developments, but the single-most important item was to devise a classic way to defuse the crisis in Myanmar.
•Two major features of the Jakarta summit outcome need to be appreciated. First, the Five-Point Consensus has the presumed concurrence of Myanmar’s new strong man, Senior General Min Aung Hlaing. Its contents include immediate cessation of violence; supply of humanitarian assistance; constructive dialogue; and ASEAN’s mediation through the visit by a special envoy of ASEAN’s Chair and the ASEAN Secretary General. Who the special envoy would be remains unclear so far.
•Second, the first part of the Chairman’s statement includes a para on the repatriation from Bangladesh of the Rakhine state’s displaced people. This part also contains a line that “calls for release of all political prisoners including foreigners” were “also heard”. It was evident that the Myanmar representation had reservations on these two elements, the reason why they were excluded from the Five-Point Consensus. The unstated message from Jakarta was that Ms. Suu Kyi’s political role might become a casualty of an eventual settlement. She could be released only when the situation normalises, perhaps on condition that she glides into a deserved retirement.
What next?
•Critics in Myanmar underplayed the likely impact of the Jakarta agreement, with the key opposition leader, Dr Sasa, stressing that there would be no dialogue with the junta unless it agreed to the conditions put forward earlier, including the release of political prisoners. ASEAN has created a rare pathway to help Myanmar move forward. However, the road ahead promises to be difficult. The opposition in Myanmar would need to internalise the utility of a helping hand extended by the region. The military is perhaps grateful for the honourable opportunity to climb off the tiger it unwittingly rode on February 1. But it seems in no hurry to talk to the Opposition.
•International reactions to the Jakarta summit outcome have largely been positive. The UN and other global stakeholders appreciate Southeast Asia’s willingness to resolve its problems in its ‘family way’. As a neighbour with vital stakes, India welcomed the ASEAN initiative. New Delhi should unreservedly back ASEAN’s endeavours, helping it blossom further by extending requisite support to Jakarta and other capitals.
•Myanmar’s leaders should work for a lasting reconciliation, deriving inspiration from Lord Buddha’s ‘Middle Path’. A nation often let down by its leaders, Myanmar deserves a better future.
📰 EdTech needs an ethics policy
The privacy of students who use EdTech apps for learning is at risk
•The lack of a regulatory framework in India along the lines of the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) in Europe could impinge on the privacy of students who now use educational technology (EdTech) apps for learning. Since the onset of the pandemic, online education has replaced conventional classroom instruction. This has spawned several EdTech apps which have become popular. Schools and colleges have been able to move their content delivery, engagement and evaluation from offline to online and ensure minimal academic disruption. This exercise has forced teachers to become facilitators in learning rather than being content providers. The EdTech apps have the advantage of being able to customise learning to every student in the system.
Storing the smallest details
•To perform the process of learning customisation, the apps collect large quantities of data from the learners through the gadgets that the students use. These data are analysed in minute detail to customise learning and design future versions of the app. The latest mobile phones and hand-held devices have a range of sensors like GPS, gyroscope, accelerometer, magnetometer and biometric sensors apart from the camera and microphones. These provide data about the learner’s surroundings along with intimate data like the emotions and attitudes experienced and expressed via facial expressions and body temperature changes. In short, the app and device have access to the private spaces of the learner that one would not normally have access to.
•Researchers dealing with human subjects need to comply with ethics rules that committees of their respective research organisations formulate, along with global standards. One of the cardinal rules that should never be broken is informed consent. Before any research on human subjects is undertaken, researchers have to submit detailed proposals to their respective ethics committees and obtain their permissions. Those proposals and permissions are subject to transparent external reviews.
•Further, a researcher working with children, for example, would also have to convince schoolteachers, parents, and school managements about the nature of the research to be undertaken, type of data to be collected, method of storage, the potential harmful effects of such data, etc. All this should be done in writing, while giving the learner the option to opt out of the study at any point of time without any repercussions.
Minimal safeguards
•However, in the EdTech industry, where investments are pouring in, researchers and app developers are being pushed to be as intrusive as possible. The safeguards that traditional researchers are subject to are either missing or minimal in research that the EdTech industry promotes.
•Children use these apps without parent or adult supervision. Intrusion of privacy can happen unnoticed. The concept of informed consent is not meaningful since there are no proper primers to explain to stakeholders the intricacies in layperson terms. Further, there is no option to stop using the app without some repercussions. Since India does not have protection equivalent to the GDPR, private data collected by an EdTech company can be misused or sold to other companies with no oversight or protection. It is prudent to remember the 2014 study titled ‘Experimental evidence of massive-scale emotional contagion through social networks’, wherein Facebook manipulated the emotions of 7,00,000 users by changing the type of posts that were shown to the user.
•Given these realities, it is necessary to formulate an ethics policy for EdTech companies through the active participation of educators, researchers, parents, learners and industry experts. Such a policy draft should be circulated both online and offline for discussions and criticism. Issues of fairness, safety, confidentiality and anonymity of the user would have to be dealt with. EdTech companies would have to be encouraged to comply in the interest of a healthier learning ecosystem.
