📰 India largest source of government information requests, says Twitter
It accounts for 25% of global volume: transparency report
•India is the single largest source of government information requests during the second half of 2020, accounting for 25% of the global volume, as per the biannual Twitter Transparency Report released on Wednesday.
•Globally, Twitter received 14,561 such requests for 51,584 accounts in the six-month period from June to December 2020, of which 3,615 requests for 7,762 accounts were from India. For India, this is an increase of about 38% from the first half of the year when the number of such requests stood at 2,613.
•“Over the past year, we’ve experienced and continue to navigate severe global challenges, including the coronavirus pandemic. We’ve also seen concerted attempts by governments to limit access to the Internet generally and to Twitter specifically,” the company said in a blog.
•It added that global governments and law enforcement agencies submitted approximately 15% more information requests compared to the previous reporting period.
•For the June-December period, the compliance rate for government information requests was 30% globally, and 0.6% in India. The second highest volume of information requests originated from the United States, comprising 22% of global information requests.
Legal demands
•During the period, Twitter received a total of 38,524 legal demands to remove content specifying 1,31,933 accounts. The platform withheld or otherwise removed some or all of the reported content in response to 29% of these global legal demands.
•For India, the number of legal requests stood at 6,971, up 151% from 2,772 such requests in the first six months of 2020.
•As a result of legal requests, Twitter withheld 60 accounts and 598 tweets. In addition, 1,310 accounts were either suspended or some content was removed.
•The U.S.-headquartered firm said 94% of the total global volume of legal demands originated from only five countries — Japan, India, Russia, Turkey, and South Korea. “Accounts of 199 verified journalists and news outlets from around the world were subject to 361 legal demands, a 26% increase in these requests since the previous reporting period.” it added.
Enforcement action
•Further, the platform said that globally there was a 77% increase in the number of accounts actioned for violations of hateful conduct policy during this reporting period from 6,35,415 accounts to 11,26,990 accounts. The company also took enforcement action on 27,087 accounts containing non-consensual nudity, an increase of 194% from the prior reporting period. “From July to December 2020, we saw the largest increase in the number of accounts actioned under this policy,” it said.
It will also increase training opportunities and employment for seafarers.
•The Union Cabinet on Wednesday approved a subsidy scheme for shipping companies during global tenders for import of government cargo.
•The scheme provides a subsidy of ₹1,624 crore over five years.
•The subsidy support varies from 5% to 15% of the lowest bid by a foreign shipping company depending on whether the ship was flagged after or before February 1, 2021, and the age of the ship at the time of flagging in India. However, ships older than 20 years will not be eligible under the scheme, according to the Ministry of Ports, Shipping and Waterways.
•The provisions of this scheme will not be available if the lowest bidder is an Indian flagged vessel.
•Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman had first announced the scheme during her Budget speech earlier this year.
•“A strong and diverse indigenous shipping fleet will not only lead to foreign exchange savings on account of freight bill payments made to foreign shipping companies but would also reduce excessive dependence on foreign ships for transporting India’s critical cargoes,” according to the press statement. Additionally, the scheme is likely to lead to increase in training opportunities and employment for Indian seafarers, increase in collection of various taxes, development of ancillary industries and improved ability to borrow funds from banks.
•Despite having a 7,500-km long coastline, India's fleet comprises a meagre 1.2% of the world fleet in terms of capacity. The share of Indian ships in the carriage of export and import trade has declined from 40.7% in 1987-88 to about 7.8% in 2018-19. This has also resulted in an increase in foreign exchange outgo on account of freight bill payments to foreign shipping companies, which was at $53 billion in 2018-19.
📰 Stroke caused 6,99,000 deaths in India in 2019, which is 7.4% of the total fatalities
Contribution of non-communicable neurological disorders and neurological injuries to the total disease burden has more than doubled between 1990 and 2019.
•Contribution of non-communicable neurological disorders and injury-related neurological disorder to the total disease burden has more than doubled between 1990 and 2019, noted the first comprehensive estimates of disease burden due to neurological disorders and their trends in every State of India published in The Lancet Global Health by the India State-Level Disease Burden Initiative and released here on Wednesday.
•Stroke caused 6,99,000 deaths in India in 2019, which was 7.4% of the total deaths in the country, it said.
•The burden of non-communicable neurological disorders was increasing in the country, mainly due to ageing of the population, the paper noted.
•“Stroke, headache disorders, and epilepsy are the leading contributors to neurological disorders burden in India,” it said. High blood pressure, air pollution, dietary risks, high fasting plasma glucose, and high body-mass index were found to be the leading contributors among the known risk factors for neurological disorders burden.
•These neurological disorders include non-communicable neurological disorders (stroke, headache disorders, epilepsy, cerebral palsy, Alzheimer’s disease and other dementias, brain and central nervous system cancer, Parkinson’s disease, multiple sclerosis, motor neuron diseases, and other neurological disorders), communicable neurological disorders (encephalitis, meningitis, and tetanus), and injury-related neurological disorders (traumatic brain injuries and spinal cord injuries).
•The paper found that the burden of many neurological disorders vary substantially across the States.
‘Comprehensive perspective’
•NITI Aayog Member (Health) V.K. Paul speaking about the findings explained that this paper presented a comprehensive perspective of the burden of neurological disorders over the last 30 years, and systematically highlights the variations between the States.
•“Several government policies and initiatives are in place to address the burden of neurological disorders across India, however, more focused efforts are required for the planning of specific neurology services in each State. There is a need to address the shortage of trained neurology workforce, and strengthen early detection and cost-effective management of neurological disorders in the country to deal with their growing burden,” he said.
•Stating that neurological disorders contributed 10% of the total disease burden in India, Balram Bhargava, director general, Indian Council of Medical Research, noted that there was a growing burden of non-communicable neurological disorders in the country, which was mainly attributable to ageing of the population.
•Prof. Lalit Dandona, director of the India State-Level Disease Burden Initiative and senior author of this paper, explained that the study based on collaboration with leading neurology experts in India provided policy-relevant insights into the trends of neurological disorders across the States.
•“While the burden of infectious neurological disorders has fallen in India, this burden is higher in less developed States. On the other hand, the burden of neurological disorders related to injury is higher in more developed States. Among non-communicable neurological disorders, stroke is the third leading cause of death in India, and dementias are the fastest growing neurological disorder. These and other findings in the paper have important implications for planning to reduce the growing burden of neurological disorders in India.”
📰 Ramping up supply: On COVID-19 vaccination woes
Spikes, dips in vaccination rates are normal, but India needs to guard against slackening
•Less than a month after the Centre revised its vaccination policy and took over the responsibility of vaccine procurement from the States, old worries of a supply constraint appear to have resurfaced. The Centre’s CoWIN database shows that the weekly pace of vaccination has declined to nearly 60% of what was seen in the week after June 21, causing several States, particularly in South India, to complain of a shortage. On June 21, the first day of the new policy, 91 lakh doses were administered and until June 27, it was about 4 crore. The period July 5-11 saw only 2.3 crore vaccine doses dispensed. The Centre’s move to take over vaccine administration followed a chaotic April-May when the second wave roiled India with unprecedented ferocity. This was also the time that saw a surge in vaccine demand and the country being unable to deliver because of an underestimation of the need and demand. The heady week of June 21-27 saw 60 lakh vaccines a day becoming the norm. However, the last time India crossed that daily figure was July 3. At least 86 lakh doses have to be administered every day if all Indian adults are to be fully vaccinated by the year end. Beginning this week, the daily doses have again slipped to 30-40 lakh though this is better than in May when India struggled to provide even 20 lakh doses a day.
•There are two major concerns with the slackening pace. One, India still has managed to inoculate only 33% of its adult population with at least one dose; just about 8% have been fully vaccinated. At this rate, it is impossible for the Centre to deliver on its stated goal of inoculating all Indian adults by the year end. Second, the signs are apparent everywhere of an uptick in cases. The U.S. — the only country with more cases than India — after a month of reporting less than 15,000 cases a day is now, like India, seeing over 40,000 cases a day. There has also been a rise there in daily deaths. A similar acceleration is also visible in the U.K. and both these countries have vaccinated a large fraction of their adults. India, while better off than in May, still averages about 800-1,000 deaths a day. So, it is far from being out of the woods even as economic activity appears to have near-normalised in many parts. The Centre continues to put the onus on States for planning but does not address a concern of inadequate Covaxin supplies. It has ordered at least eight crore doses since January but only 4.7 crore have been administered. The concerns over a third wave have been voiced but meaningful preparedness entails having enough vaccines. While daily vaccination rates will see spikes and dips, aggressive publicity measures and campaigns are necessary to boost vaccination, as was seen in end June. The Centre and States must work towards sprucing this up.
📰 Making welfare conditional is a stamp of coercion
A simple reading of U.P.’s draft population control law is that it will grossly impinge on the right to reproductive freedom
•On Sunday, the government of Uttar Pradesh released a “Population Policy” in which it stated its intention to bring the gross fertility rate in the State down from the existing 2.7 to 2.1 by 2026. To achieve this, the government says it will consider the enactment of a new piece of legislation. One such law that might be on the anvil is an ominous proposal released just days earlier by the State’s Law Commission.
Incentives and disincentives
•This draft law, titled the Uttar Pradesh Population (Control, Stabilisation and Welfare) Bill, 2021, seeks to provide not only a series of incentives to families that adhere to a two-child norm, but also intends on disentitling families that breach the norm from benefits and subsidies. These recommendations are rooted in a culture of coercion. They are also steeped in myth. Experiences from across the world demonstrate that laws of this kind simply do not work. They invariably instil an attitude of discrimination, with a burden imposed disparately on the most vulnerable groups in society.
•The draft Bill echoes the U.P. government’s new policy in claiming that the State’s ecological and economic resources are limited. According to it, unless population growth is regulated, the State will be unable to guarantee the provision of basic rights to all citizens. It also invokes some of the now-usual buzzwords: sustainable development, it says, cannot be achieved without government-imposed birth control.
•To these ends, the draft postulates an array of measures. It promises public servants who undergo sterilisation and adopt a two-child norm several benefits. These include two increments during their service, subsidy towards the purchase of a house, maternity, or paternity leave, with full salary and allowances, as the case may be, for up to 12 months, and free health care and insurance coverage for the spouse.
•This is as far as the “incentives” go. The draft Bill also contains a list of punishments. It terms these euphemistically as “disincentives”. A person who breaches the two-child norm will be debarred from securing the benefit of any government-sponsored welfare scheme and will be disqualified from applying to any State government job. Existing government employees who infringe the rule will be denied the benefit of promotion. And last, transgressing individuals will be prohibited from contesting elections to local authorities and bodies.
•It is worth pondering over whether regulation of population is necessary at all. But assuming such regulation is a legitimate governmental aim, the first question that we must ask of the new proposal is: why. After all, experiences from other States in India show us that there are more efficacious and alternative measures available to control the growth of population, including processes aimed at improving public health and access to education.
•Indeed, the Union Ministry of Health and Family Welfare conceded as much before the Supreme Court late last year. Through an affidavit filed in court, the central government argued that “international experience shows that any coercion to have a certain number of children is counter-productive and leads to demographic distortions”. The Government further confirmed that India was committed to its obligations under international law, including the principles contained in the International Conference on Population and Development Programme of Action, 1994.
Pledge on right
•Foremost in those principles was a pledge from nations that they would look beyond demographic targets and focus instead on guaranteeing a right to reproductive freedom. Since then, in India, the Supreme Court of India has recognised this right as an inalienable promise. In Suchita Srivastava & Anr vs Chandigarh Administration (2009), the Court found that a woman’s freedom to make reproductive decisions is an integral facet of the right to personal liberty guaranteed by Article 21. “It is important,” the Court wrote, “to recognise that reproductive choices can be exercised to procreate as well as to abstain from procreating”.
•This ruling was endorsed by the Supreme Court’s nine-judge Bench verdict in K.S. Puttaswamy vs Union of India (2017). A reading of the plurality of opinions there shows us that the Constitution sees a person’s autonomy over her body as an extension of the right to privacy. In his judgment, Justice D.Y. Chandrachud held that privacy partakes different connotations. These include decisional autonomy, which comprehends, among other things, liberty over “intimate personal choices such as those governing reproduction”. Justice S.K. Kaul similarly declared in his separate judgment that the right to procreation was an important constituent of “the privacy of the home”.
•Like all other fundamental rights, the right to privacy is not boundless. But, as Puttaswamy clarifies, any restriction placed on the right must conform to a doctrine of proportionality. This requires first, that the limitation be rooted in statute; second, that the state show us that the objective of its law is founded on a legitimate governmental aim; third that there are no alternative and less intrusive measures available to achieve the same objective; and fourth, that there exists a rational connection between the limitation imposed and the aims of the statute. The logic here is simple: in pursuing public interest, it is essential that governments ensure that individual liberties are encroached upon to the lowest degree possible. A simple reading of U.P.’s draft law will show us that, if enacted, it will grossly impinge on the right to reproductive freedom. The government will likely argue that there is no violation of privacy here because any decision on sterilisation would be voluntary. But, as we ought to by now know, making welfare conditional is a hallmark of coercion. If we want the idea of India as a welfare state to mean something, the right to access basic goods cannot be made provisional on a person sacrificing her bodily autonomy.
•By all accounts, therefore, the proposed law will fall foul of a proportionality analysis. If nothing else, the Union government’s concession in the Supreme Court demonstrates that there are several alternative, less-intrusive means available to regulate population.
Negative consequences
•But the new proposal is also worrying because it is likely to bring with it a host of other deleterious consequences.
•For instance, an already skewed sex ratio may be compounded by families aborting a daughter in the hope of having a son with a view to conforming to the two-child norm. The law could also lead to a proliferation in sterilisation camps, a practice that the Supreme Court has previously deprecated. In Devika Biswas vs Union of India (2016), the Court pointed to how these camps invariably have a disparate impact on minorities and other vulnerable groups.
•As is so often the case with bad laws in India, though, this draft Bill may find support from some past judgments of the Supreme Court. In this case, the Government may point to the judgment in Javed & Ors vs State of Haryana & Ors (2003), where the Court upheld a law that disqualified persons with more than two children from contesting in local body elections. But not only is the present proposal far more disproportionate — in that it virtually sanctions civil death for those that violate the norms it fixes — the judgment in Javed can no longer be seen as good law.
•For one thing, its reasoning flies in the face of Puttaswamy. But as rousing as the nine-judge Bench verdict is, its legacy depends on how its findings are applied. For the judgment to have tangible value and meaning, any law of this kind, which invades upon our most personal and ethical choices, must be seen as repugnant to the Constitution.
📰 No pseudoscience, please
Astrology exploits the vulnerability of the human mind and cannot be taught as a mainstream course by universities
•The Indira Gandhi National Open University (IGNOU) is India’s premier national institute for improving access to education. Recently, IGNOU launched a degree course in astrology. This obsession with astrology is not a new phenomenon in a country which recently sent a spacecraft in orbit around Mars. A similar decision was taken by the Atal Bihari Vajpayee government in 2001, which was withdrawn after widespread opposition. In this context, all the citizens of this country who are concerned about the status of education and the role of scientific temperament in education need to take a stance about this decision.
Content of syllabus
•Let us start by examining what is covered by the IGNOU syllabus. Even a casual look at the syllabus gives us an understanding of the unscientific nature of the course. The syllabus includes the study of horoscopes, which are determined by the state of different planets at the time of our birth and which apparently impact all the things that we do throughout our life. It also includes how to decide on an auspicious time for initiating a specific task. It claims to train its students in how to nullify the ill effects occurring due to specific problems in their horoscope. The range of problems for which astrology can offer solutions has no limit. It provides solutions on when one needs to apply for a job to ensure a good result to even determining the time a nation has to take a decision to start a war!
•Let us try and evaluate the three basic assumptions of astrology on which this syllabus is based. The first assumption is that the planets around us in the universe have a continuous effect on human life. The second assumption is that the result depends on the time of birth of the person and the third assumption is that the future of a person depends on all this and can be changed by solutions offered by an astrologer.
•Let us now look at the main objections by astronomy (the science of the universe) to these assumptions. As per astrology, nine Navagrahas affect our lives. All of us know that four of these Navagrahas are not even grahas (planets). The sun is not a planet but a star. The moon is the natural satellite of the earth. Rahu and Ketu, which are claimed to be the most dangerous planets in astrology, are not even planets but points of intersection of the paths of the sun and the moon. The Milky Way, in which the sun and solar system are included, has countless stars other than the sun. It is not very difficult to appreciate how unscientific and potentially dangerous it will be to allow something like astrology as a mainstream course.
•Next, let us look at the time of birth. The nature of a horoscope is dependent on the time of one’s birth. And the time of birth used for this purpose by astrology is the time when the baby takes the first breath outside the mother’s womb. Modern science tells us that the baby is actually born when the sperm and ovum come together to form the embryo, and it grows for the next nine months through different stages. How do all these Navagrahas not have any impact on the baby when it is inside the mother’s womb and start affecting it only when it comes out? Astrologers have no answer. It is a simple observation that thousands of children are born in the world every second and their futures are not the same. What will be in their horoscope when a human being gives birth to a baby, say, on the moon or Mars tomorrow? The most serious effect of depending on astrology is that it takes human agency out of our lives.
Science and pseudoscience
•While we are on the path to astrology, Elon Musk, an American businessman, has started a project to humanise Mars under the SpaceX mission. The robotic rovers sent by NASA to Mars are collecting information and sending it back to earth. Stephen Hawking stated that the search for a habitable planet like earth in the universe should be the priority of astronomical research. Against this background, one needs to learn to differentiate between astrology, which is a pseudo-science, and astrophysics, which is a robust scientific discipline. Astrology exploits the vulnerability of the human mind while people face uncertainty. On the other hand, astrophysics depends on the core scientific principles of precise observations, hypothesis, experimentation and results based on all these. In an era where pseudoscience has started becoming the new normal, it’s our responsibility as citizens to oppose such decisions and demand the withdrawal of such a course.
