📰 Supreme Court says govt must simplify COVID-19 death certification process
‘What is the remedy in the case of those given certificates showing some other reason as cause of death’
•The Supreme Court on Monday asked the Union government what it plans to do in cases of COVID-19 patients whose death certificates cited some other reason for the cause of death.
•“What is the remedy in the case of COVID patients who have already been issued death certificates showing some other reason as cause of death”, Justice M.R. Shah, who accompanied Justice Ashok Bhushan on the Bench, asked Solicitor General Tushar Mehta.
•The court suggested that the government should simplify the process for certification COVID-19 deaths. It asked the government whether the reason of death could be given as COVID-19 in the certificate if the family could produce a COVID-19 report, no matter whether the patient died in a hospital or outside. The court pointed out that some patients were not even given their medical records.
Penal consequences
•Mr. Mehta reiterated the government’s stand that any lapse in stating COVID-19 as the cause of demise in a death certificate would have penal consequences for those found responsible, including the certifying doctor.
•In its affidavit on Sunday, the Centre said: “It is mandated that any death resulting from Covid-19 shall have to be so certified i.e. as Covid death, failing which, everyone responsible, including the certifying doctor, shall be responsible for penal consequences”.
•The government stated that deaths with the diagnosis of COVID-19, irrespective of comorbidities, have to be certified as pandemic deaths. The only exception to the rule was when there was a clear alternative cause of death, for example, accidental trauma, poisoning, etc.
•The Supreme Court recently told the Centre that the death certificates of those who died of COVID-19 often do not reveal that fact. “The death certificates of persons who die from COVID-19 in hospitals show the reason as lung or heart problem or something else,” Justice Shah had addressed Mr. Mehta.
•“All deaths with the diagnosis of COVID-19, irrespective of co-morbidities, are to be classified as deaths due to COVID-19,” the Centre had clarified in the affidavit.
Jal Shakti Ministry report on water quality based on responses from PCBs of U.P., Bihar
•The dumping of bodies in the Ganga, allegedly of those who died of COVID-19, did not increase pollution in the river, the Jal Shakti Ministry has said.
•The National Mission for Clean Ganga (NMCG) had solicited reports in May from the Centre, and State Pollution Control Boards of Uttar Pradesh and Bihar, and the Central Water Commission on whether the disposal of cadavers in the river had affected water quality.
•Data for April-June suggested that the water quality in terms of pH, DO (Dissolved Oxygen), BOD (Biochemical Oxygen Demand) conformed with the bathing water quality criteria except “marginal deviations at few locations” and these weren't dissimilar from the water quality observed in previous years. They may not be attributed to incidents of floating dead bodies,” the NMCG has said in a report based on responses from these departments. The Hindu has viewed this report.
NHRC query
•Reports of bodies floating in the Ganga posing a health and environmental hazard triggered several public bodies into action, including, the National Human Rights Commission (NHRC).
•On May 14, the Commission had asked the Centre, Bihar and Uttar Pradesh State governments to furnish a report following a complaint by a private citizen that several unclaimed or unidentified, unburnt/ partially burnt, bodies, were found floating in the “sacred” river Ganga. Some of the dead bodies were suspected to be of COVID-19 victims.
•The complainant alleged that the disposal of bodies in and around river would not only pollute the river but also seriously affect all those persons who are dependent on the river.
Virus in water
•Along with assessing water quality, the Secretary, Ministry of Jal Shakti decided after a meeting with the Chief Secretaries of Uttar Pradesh and Bihar on May 18 to study if the river water was contaminated with the SARS COV-2 virus from dead bodies being disposed in it. They also wanted to know if the virus could spread and infect those who came in contact with the water.
•The ICMR-National Institute of Virology was approached study water samples from the river but they declined to take part in the study. The CSIR-Indian Institute of Toxicology Research (IITR), Lucknow has now been entrusted with the project.
•They have collected samples from burial sites (Kannauj, Unnao, Kanpur, Prayagraj and Ghazipur districts) in Uttar Pradesh and Buxor and Saran districts in Bihar though results of the analysis aren't yet public.
•Previous studies from the CSIR-Centre for Cellular and Molecular Biology, Hyderabad have shown that the coronavirus can be found in sewage and wastewater, and these have been used to estimate the prevalence of the infection in a cities and other urban locations.
•The NMCG, a Jal Shakti Ministry body, is the nodal agency tasked with coordinating the over ₹20,000 crore initiative to clean the Ganga, a flagship programme of the government. One of the measures employed is to discourage a practice of disposing uncremated bodies into the river. To this end, the NMCG had funded projects to improve crematoria along the banks of the river in riparian States.
📰 Chief of Defence Staff Bipin Rawat to chair key meet on theatre commands on Tuesday
Plan cleared at the highest levels of government, say officials. However, IAF still has major reservations on it
•Extensive studies have been undertaken and discussed over the last two years before arriving at a broad plan to create four integrated triservice commands, an official said on Monday. However, the IAF still has major reservations on the issue, said the official.
•Air defence and maritime theatre commands, integrated eastern theatre and integrated western theatre commands are being planned, the official said.
•As part of the ongoing deliberations, Chief of Defence Staff (CDS) Gen. Bipin Rawat is scheduled to chair a meeting on Tuesday with the Vice-Chiefs of the three services, the Chief of Integrated Defence Staff and the representatives from the Ministries of Defence, Home and Finance.
•“After studying Indian and western models of war fighting for over two years, table top exercises and war games were conducted and operational discussions were held to come up with the best model suited for us,” the official said. The commands will have Indian characteristics, ethos and way of fighting, the official stated.
•Detailed parleys have also been held with the veteran community and think-tanks to brainstorm on the far-reaching decisions, the official said.
•The plan has been cleared at the highest levels of the government and the Army and the Navy are fully onboard with it, two officials independently said.
•The IAF opposition is based on an incorrect understanding of the concept, the first official cited earlier said. “Current IAF stance of retaining most assets and operational control under the Air headquarters and the Air Chief goes against the very essence of integration and jointmanship.”
•The IAF insecurity that it will lose control over its assets and operations is unfounded because nothing is being changed from the ground till the level of Army commanders and equivalent, the official said. “All air bases, squadrons and air assets will continue to function under IAF officials.”
•A committee was recently set up comprising the Vice-Chiefs of the three services, the Chief of Integrated Defence Staff, the Chairman Chiefs of Staff Committee, and representatives from the Ministries concerned after issues like bringing in para military forces, which are under the Home Ministry, under the purview of the theatre commands as well as financial implications were raised.
•The mandate of the Chief of Defence Staff (CDS) includes bringing about jointness among the three services including through establishment of the commands.
📰 Army to get indigenous light helicopters by Dec. 2022
Lt. Gen. AK Suri takes over as DG, Army Aviation
•The Army, which is facing a huge shortage of light utility helicopters with the ageing fleet of Cheetah and Chetak helicopters, will receive the first batch of six indigenous Light Utility helicopter (LUH) by the end of 2022, a defence source said. The LUH was designed and developed by Hindustan Aeronautics Limited (HAL).
•In a separate development, Lt. Gen. Ajay Kumar Suri took over as the Director General (DG) and Colonel Commandant of the Army Aviation on Monday.
•“The acceptance in principle was received two months back. The Army will receive the first batch of six LUHs by December 2022,” the source stated. The LUH is meant to replace the ageing Cheetah and Chetak helicopters along with the Russian Ka-226T helicopters.
•At Aero India in Bengaluru in February, the Army variant of the LUH received its Initial Operational Clearance (IOC).
New DG
•Since November 2019, Lt. Gen. Suri, then as a Major General, was the Additional Director General and officiating as the DG, Army Aviation. He was commissioned into the Army in June 1985 as an artillery officer and was awarded wings to fly a combat helicopter in June 1990 and transferred to the permanent cadre of the Army Aviation in February 1999. He is the 5th Director General and 13th Colonel Commandant of the Army Aviation Corps.
•Lt. Gen. Suri has over 6000 hours of total service flying. He has flown all types of helicopters in the Army’s fleet. He also served as Air Operations officer at the United Nations peace keeping mission in Sierra Leone.
•The LUH is a 3-ton class helicopter with glass cockpit for reconnaissance and surveillance roles and as a light transport helicopter. It has been extensively test-flown at various geographic conditions, including high altitude.
•Following the IOC, HAL has moved to the next phase of integrating and flight-testing of mission and role equipment on the LUH. There is a tentative order of 200 LUH from the Army and the Air Force.
📰 A time to give: On ex-gratia compensation to families of COVID-19 victims
Families who lost breadwinners in COVID-19 need supportive policies and a safety net
•The Centre’s stated position before the Supreme Court on paying a standard ex gratia compensation to families of those who died of COVID-19 shows poor appreciation of the fallout of an unprecedented disaster. After initially asserting that such payments were beyond the Government’s fiscal affordability, although there is a provision in the Disaster Management Act for compensation, and externalising the pandemic as a global, ongoing event, the Home Ministry has now averred that the issue was the manner in which funds were to be put to use. Clearly, lack of resources would be a legless argument when the Centre is pursuing expensive redevelopment projects such as the Central Vista. What the Government says it wants to do is to deploy funds in health care, enhance social protection and support economic recovery of affected communities, rather than give one-time compensation payments (₹4 lakh) or notified ex gratia sought by the petitioners. There is nothing wrong in keeping the focus on provision of essential supplies and additional health infrastructure. In fact, the second wave peak was made considerably worse by poor health infrastructure and low public health expenditure, and a policy failure recorded by the Economic Survey which called for higher public spending of 2.5%-3% of GDP on health. But lending a helping hand to families now impoverished should also be a priority. The Centre, after tying itself in knots on free vaccines, should now spell out its road map for a universal public health system.
•The annual Budget included a raft of schemes under COVID-19 initiatives and claimed credit for Atmanirbhar Bharat packages, which, together with the RBI’s ameliorative steps, officially amounted to 13% of GDP. But the “above-the-line” relief in terms of health care and social protection, including cash transfers, are a small share of other spending such as credit provision to several sectors, as per some estimates. The IMF analysis of policy responses says that early in the pandemic, food, fuel and cash transfers to lower-income households came to 1.2% of GDP. With the second wave marked by many deaths and nationwide closures, a review of direct benefits is urgently called for. In court, the Home Ministry has said that confining solutions to compensation would be narrow. It is no one’s case that large direct cash benefits are the only good interventions. Families who have lost breadwinners need help while orphaned children need support. It also does not help that India’s pension system is weakening, bank deposits have low yields and official policy expects people to essentially fend for themselves. The Centre should not hesitate to review its tax basket to rely more on the wealthiest to compensate those who have been hit the hardest.
📰 A perpetual war: On dilemmas of ending U.S's 'forever war' in Afghanistan
U.S. should have backed Afghan govt. more instead of pushing hard to engage the Taliban
•The dilemmas of ending the U.S.’s ‘forever war’ appeared to fall heavily upon the shoulders of President Joe Biden, who is now helming his country’s rush for the exit before the self-imposed deadline of September 11, 2021, the 20-year anniversary of the WTC terror attacks. While he clearly signalled his intention to remain engaged with the war-torn country by meeting, in the first instance, Afghanistan’s President, Ashraf Ghani, and Chairman of its High Council for National Reconciliation, Abdullah Abdullah, at the White House this week, the U.S.’s troop withdrawal since May 1, 2021, in a sense signals the opposite intention. There is no mistaking the Taliban’s reaction, especially to Washington’s plan to wind down its Afghan military presence. Ever since February 29, 2020, when the U.S. and the Taliban signed the Doha “agreement for bringing peace” to Afghanistan, Taliban-linked violence has risen steadily, U.S. intelligence reports have assessed that al-Qaeda still has a presence in Afghanistan and the terrorist outfit’s decades-long ties with the Taliban have been undiminished. Meanwhile the situation on the ground is far from inspiring for anyone who hopes for peace in the region. Facing tepid resistance from the ANDSF, now with ever-reducing access to U.S. air support, the Taliban have managed to fight, hold on to and even take back the territories from the government.
•This reality begs the question of what new vortexes of violence, terrorist havens and other sources of regional instability Afghanistan might play host to now, and whether the U.S. and western powers will retain enough influence to prevent events in this regard from spiralling out of control. Closer to home, a sense of concern must be pervading South Block as the last U.S. troop carriers lift off from Bagram, potentially allowing agents linked to Pakistan’s military and intelligence establishment a freer hand to engage with extremist elements in Afghan with possible blowback for India. What will become of New Delhi’s long-sighted, soft-power investments into education, training and infrastructure and civil society development? Had the U.S. played a consistently strong hand supporting the Afghan government instead of pushing as hard as it did to engage the Taliban, that might have delayed Washington’s exit plans but provided more leeway for the ANDSF to push harder and take enough territory to weaken the Taliban’s overall strategic grip. Given the prospect of the ANDSF’s fragmentation — already occurring in some areas — it now appears more likely that a deal may be forged between the Taliban and powerbrokers once associated with the Afghan government. This could lead to a Taliban-centric religious council that sets an overall tenor of governance based on Islamic law yet permits a semi-autonomous executive governmental power to operate within that framework.
📰 India’s vaccine policy needs clarity
In seeking to pursue conflicting objectives, the policy architecture is complex and difficult to implement
•Contrary to popular perception, public policies are made without full knowledge or facts. More often than not, they embody assumptions arising from experience, an understanding of history, and present conditions. Considering the vast sea of unknowns surrounding COVID-19, it would be understandable to place a greater reliance on historical experience. Instead, India’s vaccine policy appears to be one of experimentation. Despite several modifications, the final policy as articulated by the Prime Minister on June 7 continues to lack clarity in its intent, design, funding and outcomes. In seeking to pursue conflicting objectives, the policy architecture is complex, difficult to implement, and could be a nightmare for accountants.
The vaccine policy
•After much loss of time, the final policy has the following elements: the stated objective is universal access to free vaccinations in all government and accredited facilities; the design for achieving the objective is creating a dual market under which the Central government will procure 75% of the total quantity manufactured, leaving the residue for commercial sale. The funding will be a mix of public finance and out-of-pocket expenditure. The outcome is to ensure that all 95 crore adults are fully vaccinated by the end of this year.
•The policy has two caveats related to pricing and volume of sales. While Covishield and Covaxin are supplied to the Central government at ₹150 per dose, the price for a consumer in the private market is capped at ₹780 for Covishield, ₹1,145 for Sputnik V and ₹1,410 for Covaxin. To avoid cornering of vaccines by corporates and enable medium and small hospitals to participate in vaccination, the Central government will specify hospital-wise and State-wise quotas for private sales. Based on the quota allocated, the said hospitals will procure the vaccine directly from the manufacturer or use the option of the National Health Authority portal, if accredited.
•Compare this maze with the policy followed under the Universal Immunisation Programme – the Central government indicates the quantity required, the delivery schedules and the rates as per global tender, and supplies quality, ready-to-use vaccines to the States to be provided free. The manufacturer is left to dispose of excess quantity, if any, in accordance with market forces and without interference from the government. Under this system, the government has negotiated incredibly low prices due to the volume of its orders. In view of its wide reach, the private sector’s participation, catering to the better-off sections which have the ability to pay, has averaged 5%-15% depending on the vaccine.
Current status of procurement
•It is estimated that the Central government has procured and placed advance purchases for 79 crore doses for ₹12,405 crore (including ₹1,485 crore from PM CARES). The State governments in May procured 2.6 crore doses incurring ₹810 crore, while the private sector (nine corporate chains and 300 hospitals) procured 1.2 crore doses. Selling at ₹1,000 per dose of Covishield and an average of ₹1,400 for Covaxin, the household expenditure on vaccines comes to about ₹1,332 crore. The private sector’s share in the total 82.8 crore doses procured and amount incurred is 1.45% and 9.1%, respectively.
•The total number of people who got vaccinated by June 21 with a single dose was 23.2 crore and with two doses was 5.05 crore. Of the total 190 crore vaccines required for covering the eligible population with two doses and 83 crore already secured for supply till year-end, the gap is 107 crore. This brings us to the first level of policy confusion. In the absence of spelling out the population segments that the government proposes to cover, it is unclear whether the 75% procurement cap refers to the stocks manufactured or by implication the eligible population. Clarity on this is important. If it refers to stocks, then the position can vary due to uncertainties and externalities associated with production. Besides, in the absence of credible information regarding real-world manufacturing capacity and wide price differentials, arriving at what that 75% of manufactured stocks would entail is difficult, creating an unstable environment for operation and planning.
•If it is 75% of the population to be covered, the policy assumes that 24 crore people have the ability to pay such high prices for a vaccine. How far is that a realistic assumption, given that as per data of the Pew Research Centre, the number of people earning less than $2 a day has doubled from 5.9 crore to 13.4 crore as a result of the pandemic? Due to the pandemic, under every income segment, the numbers have reduced — the number of people in the high and upper-middle class is estimated to have fallen to 1.8 crore from 2.5 crore, the middle class to 6.6 crore from the 9.9 crore prior to the pandemic, and the lower middle class to 116.2 crore from 119.7 crore.
•The second policy confusion is determining from where the 24 crore-paying population is to come from for buying the vaccine at the rates laid down by the government. The inequity this policy will generate between the rich and poor, urban and rural is embedded and will be hard to justify, besides clouding the actual requirement of vaccines for the government to administer. In other words, the demand may be more for free vaccines while the self-imposed ceiling of 75% of stocks may create artificial scarcities.
•Or is there an assumption that 75% coverage would ensure herd immunity and, with some luck, the pandemic may just blow over?
Concerns
•Apart from concerns of ethics and morality, the ‘two steps forward, one step backward’ policy fix has given rise to another set of issues necessitating simplification of the policy design. One, the idea of manipulating markets is not as smart as it sounds. Piecemeal orders increase investment risk for a company. Besides, delivering and processing small orders by multiple small entities (private hospitals) located in remote areas would further add to costs impacting the price at the point of delivery. Since price must ensure a minimum return on investment, it is critical that such complexities be addressed.
•Two, the small and medium private hospitals that have the reach in Tier 2 towns and rural areas do not have deep pockets to buy such costly vaccines. Given vaccine hesitancy, heightened by a constrained ability to pay, the mutating virus and constant shifts in vaccine dosage and periodicity due to emerging evidence, the additional burden of organising quality assurance all add to the risk.
•Three, differential pricing and dual markets provide wrong incentives and result in unhealthy competition, illegal charging for vaccines in government facilities, siphoning, diversion and leakage of the free vaccines to the private markets where in large swathes of the country it is the government doctors that double up as owners of private enterprises.
•Clearly, there is a need to simplify the policy with the government as the sole procurer. Implementation must be in accordance with district-level micro plans incorporating the public and private sector, to cover target groups as specified in accordance with epidemiological data. The objective has to be to restore normalcy, kick-start the economy, start schools and ensure people’s well-being. It is not the time to ask people to share costs when the economy is tanking. Vaccines are our only lifeline. They should be freely available and accessible to all, not only to the privileged few.
📰 The state of India’s poor must be acknowledged
This is ‘abject poverty’, and if the economy is to be repaired, the number of the poor has to be meticulously counted
•The son of a corn merchant-turned sociologist, Charles Booth had little patience for Charles Dickens and others in his time, who used lyrical prose to describe the desperation of the poor in working class London. Booth was also angry, in 1885, over the claims made by F.D. Hyndman, the leader of the Social Democratic Federation, which after an enquiry into the working classes of London had concluded that a quarter of the population of London lived in abject poverty. Confident of showing up the claims as sensational, he set about drawing his poverty map of the city and getting people to do door-to-door surveys. Much to his horror, his own landmark ‘Life and Labour of the People in London’ survey concluded that the numbers were much higher and a third of London lived in abject poverty. He had, unintentionally, nailed the importance of getting the numbers right, which settled the question of which class needed maximum attention.
An imperative
•In India, there is now, rightly, a consensus difficult for the Government to beat down that to be able to battle COVID-19 and secure India from successive waves, the exact numbers of the dead must be carefully documented. Something else that needs equal attention, if the state of the decrepit Indian economy is to be repaired, is to be able to meticulously count the number of the poor and to prioritise them. The World Bank $2-a-day (poverty line) might be inadequate but it would be a start and higher than the last line proposed by the C. Rangarajan committee.
•There has been hesitation for a variety of reasons to wrestle with the rising numbers of the poor in India. Not least, the pursuit of becoming ‘Vishwaguru’, has hampered this as that pitch works only if the leadership is able to mask the dramatic rise in poverty. Coming to terms with how low India’s median income is would disrupt the carefully constructed ride about being the biggest/largest in the world. A survey in 2013 had said India stood at 99 among 131 countries, and with a median income of $616 per annum, it was the lowest among BRICS and fell in the lower middle-income country bracket.
There has been a slide
•Since then — and we are still not talking of the novel coronavirus pandemic — three important data points have made it clear that the state of India’s poor needs to be acknowledged if India is to be lifted. The first being, the fall in the monthly per capita consumption expenditure of 2017-18 for the first time since 1972-73, which the Government withheld citing concerns with the quality of data collected, then the fall of India in the Global Hunger Index to ‘serious hunger’ category and India’s own health census data or the recently concluded National Family Health Survey or NFHS-5, which had worrying markers of increased malnutrition, infant mortality and maternal health. A fourth statistic earlier this year, of Bangladesh bettering India’s average income statistics, must also be a reason for Indians to introspect. What kind of growth path has led to India sliding in the sustainable development goals index (by at least two ranks last month) as well as in the per capita income rankings? If we do not bother to know of the increased numbers sliding into poverty, there would be little possibility of moving toward a solution.
•The precarious situation after the demonetisation in 2016 was rendered calamitous with the novel coronavirus pandemic and the shrinking of the economy. In 2019, the global Multidimensional Poverty Index reported that India lifted 271 million citizens out of poverty between 2006 and 2016. Since then, the International Monetary Fund, Hunger Watch, SWAN and several other surveys show a decided slide. In March, the Pew Research Center with the World Bank data estimated that ‘the number of poor in India, on the basis of an income of $2 per day or less in purchasing power parity, has more than doubled to 134 million from 60 million in just a year due to the pandemic-induced recession’. In 2020, India contributed 57.3% of the growth of the global poor. India contributed to 59.3% of the global middle class that slid into poverty. The last time that ‘India reported an increase in poverty was in the first 25 years after Independence, when from 1951 to 1974, the population of the poor increased from 47% to 56%’. So, India is again a “country of mass poverty” after 45 years. This has thrown a spanner in the so far uninterrupted battle against poverty since the 1970s. Urgent solutions are needed within, and the starting point of that would be only when we know how many are poor.
Poverty line debate
•In India, the poverty line debate became very fraught in 2011, as the Suresh Tendulkar Committee report at a ‘line’ of ₹816 per capita per month for rural India and ₹1,000 per capita per month for urban India, calculated the poor at 25.7% of the population. The anger over the 2011 conclusions, led to the setting up of the C. Rangarajan Committee, which in 2014 estimated that the number of poor were 29.6%, based on persons spending below ₹47 a day in cities and ₹32 in villages.
Reasons why numbers count
•Numbers matter for many reasons. The first is because knowing the numbers and making them public makes it possible to get public opinion to support massive and urgent cash transfers. The world outside India has moved onto propose high fiscal support, as economic rationale and not charity; it is debating a higher level of minimum wages than it has in the past. Spain has accorded security to its gig workers by giving delivery boys the status of workers. In India too, a dramatic reorientation would get support only once numbers are honestly laid out.
•The second argument for recording the data is so that all policies can be honestly evaluated on the basis of whether they meet the needs of the majority. Is a policy such as bank write-offs of loans amounting to ₹1.53-lakh crore last year, which helped corporates overwhelmingly, beneficial to the vast majority? Or has it been just beneficial to a thin sliver of the super rich? This would be possible to transparently evaluate only when the numbers of the poor are known and established.
•Third, if government data were to honestly account for the exact numbers of the poor, it may be more realistic to expect the public debate to be conducted on the concerns of the real majority and create a climate that demands accountability from public representatives.
•Fourth, India has clocked a massive rise in the market capitalisation and the fortunes of the richest Indian corporates, whose wealth has grown manifold in the past few years, even as millions of Indians have experienced a massive tumble into poverty. The stories of billionaires get reported regularly and prominently. To say that the stock market and the Indian economy are ‘not related’ is ingenuous. Indians must have the right to question whether there is a connection and if the massive rise in riches is not coincidental, but at the back of the misery of millions of the poor, whose ranks are swelling. If billionaire lists are evaluated in detail and reported upon, the country cannot shy away from counting its poor.
See the ‘bread line’
•The late Arjun Sengupta, as Chairman of the National Commission for Enterprises in the Unorganised Sector in 2004, had concluded that 836 million Indians still remained marginalised. He spoke of the poorest of poor and the commission’s recommendations on social security resulted in the enactment of the Unorganised Sector Workers Social Security Act. At the time his conclusion was ignored — that 77% of India was marginalised — emphasising that it was a problem of a much bigger magnitude, than the figure of 25.7% conveyed.
•The ‘bread line’ ostensibly owes its origins to the economic depression in the United States in the 1890s and charity by New York restaurants which organised soup kitchens. The queue or line of bread seekers would be distressingly long. A physical queue on the roads needed a policy response. It could not be wished away by simply looking away. The massive slide into poverty in India that is clear in domestic and international surveys and anecdotal evidence must meet with an institutional response. The Government must girdle up and unflinchingly quantify the slide from the ‘fastest growing economy’ to the country with the largest rise in the number of poor people. It must be accepted, to go back to the debate Charles Booth had with the Social Democratic Federation that it is “abject poverty” we are talking about; almost a sub-human level of existence of the majority of fellow Indians we cannot continue to be blasé about. Counting them would be a much-needed start to convey that each life matters.
📰 A case to decriminalise suicide
It is time for India to repeal Section 309 of the Indian Penal Code or strike it down
•India has the highest suicide rate in the Southeast Asian region, according to the World Health Organization. Depression, chronic ill health, guilt, trauma, substance abuse, failure in exams, and loss of loved ones are some of the reasons which influence a person’s decision to take his or her life. A total of 1,34,516 cases of suicide were reported in 2018 in India, according to the National Crime Records Bureau. While the rate of suicide was 9.9 in 2017, it increased to 10.2 in 2018.
Crime and punishment
•Section 309 of the Indian Penal Code dictates the penal provision for attempting suicide. If a person is suffering from any mental trauma or illness, he or she should be given reformative treatment rather than a deterrent punishment which is “simple imprisonment for a term which may extend to one year [or with fine, or with both]”. India has retained much of the colonial legal legacy in its penal jurisprudence. But the fact is that the British Parliament decriminalised attempts to suicide in 1961 through the Suicide Act. In India, a Bill to repeal Section 309 was first introduced in the Rajya Sabha in 1972 but it failed to pass in the Lok Sabha because the House was dissolved.
•We have witnessed a century-long tussle between two camps in which one advocates for penal provision and the other continuously demands that attempts to suicide be decriminalised. Those who favour the penal provision generally quote the judgment in Gian Kaur V. State of Punjab (1996) where the court held that the “right to life is a natural right embodied in Article 21” of the Constitution but “suicide is an unnatural termination or extinction of life and, therefore, incompatible and inconsistent with the concept of right to life”. In Aruna Ramchandra Shanbaug v. Union of India (2011), the Supreme Court endorsed the earlier judgment.
•On the other hand, those who argue that the act of attempting suicide should not be criminalised quote Maruti Shripati Dubal v. State of Maharashtra (1986). In this judgment, the Bombay High Court declared Section 309 unconstitutional. It said: “For example, the freedom of speech and expression includes freedom not to speak and to remain silent. The freedom of association and movement likewise includes the freedom not to join any association or to move anywhere... If this is so, logically it must follow that right to live... will include also a right not to live or not to be forced to live.”
•The court also said: “If the purpose of the prescribed punishment is to prevent the prospective suicides by deterrence, it is difficult to understand how the same can be achieved by punishing those who have made the attempts... Those who make the suicide attempt on account of the mental disorders require psychiatric treatment and not confinement in prison cells.” This idea was recorded in Chenna Jagadeeswar v. State of Andhra Pradesh and P. Rathinam v. Union of India (1994) where the court held that Section 309 of the Indian Penal Code is a violation of Articles 14 and 21 and is void and unconstitutional.
A solution
•In 2017, Parliament passed the Mental Healthcare Act. Section 115 (1) of the Act provides, “Notwithstanding anything contained in section 309 of the Indian Penal Code, any person who attempts to commit suicide shall be presumed, unless proved otherwise, to have severe stress and shall not be tried and punished under the said Code.” However, this law applies only to those suffering from mental illness. There is presumption of severe stress in case of an attempt to die by suicide.
•But what if severe stress is not proved? We have to shift from penalising attempts to suicide to making such cases medico-legal ones and provide psychological or mental treatment and support to the persons affected. As the issue demands a reformative stance, we need a permanent solution like repealing Section 309 of the Indian Penal Code or striking it down.
