📰 National Gallery of Australia returns 14 art works including Chola idols
•The National Gallery of Australia(NGA) on Thursday announced it would return 14 works of art from its Asian art collection to India.
•The works of art being repatriated include 13 objects connected to art dealer Subhash Kapoor through Art of the Past and one acquired from art dealer William Wolff. The works include six bronze or stone sculptures, a brass processional standard, a painted scroll, and six photographs.
•Another three sculptures sourced from Art of the Past have also been removed from the collection. Further research will be undertaken to identify their place of origin before they are repatriated.
•Following this action, along with the repatriation of works in 2014, 2016, and 2019, the NGA will no longer hold any works acquired through Subhash Kapoor in its collection.
•“The decision to return the works is the culmination of years of research, due diligence, and an evolving framework for decision-making that includes both legal principles and ethical considerations,” the NGA said in a media release.
•The NGA Director Nick Mitzevich said, “As the first outcome of this change, the Gallery will be returning 14 objects from the Indian art collection to their country of origin.This is the right thing to do, it’s culturally responsible, and the result of collaboration between Australia and India."
•Mr. Mitzevich said the Gallery would continue its provenance research, including for the Asian art collection, and resolve the status of any works of concern.
•The Indian High Commissioner to Australia, Manpreet Vohra, welcomed the decision by the Australian Government and the NGA to return the art-works.
•The works being returned are: Child-saint Sambandar, dancing child-saint Sambandar of 12th century belonging to Chola dynasty, Processional standard [‘alam], from Hyderabad, Arch for a Jain shrine, 11th-12th century, Seated Jina, 1163 from Mount Abu region, Rajasthan, The divine couple Lakshmi and Vishnu [Lakshmi Narayana] 11-12th century, Durga Mahisasuramardini, from Gujarat.
•S. Vijay Kumar, art enthusiast and co-founder of India Pride, said the latest round of restitutions from the NGA mark an end to our decade long battle with them for transparency and accountability of their Kapoor acquisitions.
All India Quota was introduced in 1986 under SC directions
•The Union Health Ministry has announced 27% reservation for the OBCs (Other Backward Classes) and 10% quota for the Economically Weaker Sections (EWS) in the All India Quota (AIQ) scheme for undergraduate (UG) and postgraduate (PG) medical / dental courses (MBBS / MD / MS / Diploma / BDS / MDS) from 2021-22 onwards.
•This decision, it said, would benefit every year nearly 1,500 OBC students in MBBS and 2,500 such students in postgraduation and around 550 EWS students in MBBS and around 1,000 such students in postgraduation.
•The AIQ was introduced in 1986 under the directions of the Supreme Court to provide for domicile-free merit-based opportunities to students from any State to aspire to study in a medical college located in another State. It comprises 15% of UG seats and 50% of PG seats in government medical colleges.
In 2007
•Initially, there was no reservation in the AIQ up to 2007. That year, the Supreme Court introduced the reservation of 15% for SCs and 7.5% for STs in the scheme.
•When the Central Educational Institutions (Reservation in Admission) Act became effective in 2007, providing for uniform 27% reservation to the OBCs, the same was implemented in all the Central Educational Institutions viz. Safdarjung Hospital, Lady Harding Medical College, Aligarh Muslim University and Banaras Hindu University etc. However, this was not extended to the AIQ seats of State medical and dental colleges.
•“The OBC students from across the country shall now be able to take the benefit of this reservation in AIQ to compete for seats in any State. Being a Central scheme, the Central List of OBCs shall be used for this reservation. Around 1,500 OBC students in MBBS and 2,500 in postgraduation will be benefited through this reservation,” said the Ministry in a release.
•In the last six years, MBBS seats in the country have increased by 56%, from 54,348 seats in 2014 to 84,649 seats in 2020, and the number of PG seats by 80%, from 30,191seats in 2014 to 54,275 seats in 2020. In the same period, 179 new medical colleges have been established and now the country has 558 (govt 289, pvt. 269) medical colleges.
📰 Shared values: On India and the U.S.
India and the U.S. have a lot in common, but it is the differences that need attention
•U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken’s day-visit to Delhi this week was heavy on discussions and understandably light on deliverables. The visit, the third by a senior U.S. official of the Biden administration, was meant to prepare the way for more substantive meetings in Washington later this year, including the U.S.-India “2+2” of Foreign and Defence Ministers, the Quad summit of its leaders, and a bilateral meeting between Prime Minister Narendra Modi and U.S. President Joseph Biden. Public statements by Mr. Blinken and External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar, and readouts, indicate that most of their conversations are focused on Quad cooperation in the Indo-Pacific, Afghanistan, and in discussing the state of democracy and rights. On the Quad, they showed full convergence. On Afghanistan, Mr. Jaishankar said that there were “more convergences than divergences” on the common positions that there is no military solution to conflict, and that neither country would recognise a Taliban regime that takes Kabul by force. However, the divergences are more troubling for India, given that the fallout of the U.S. withdrawal will mean a less secure region. The U.S. continues to engage the Taliban in talks for a power-sharing arrangement, despite the Taliban leadership’s refusal to enforce a ceasefire, and stop attacks against civilians in areas they take over. The militia is also trying to squeeze trade and financial supply chains to the Afghanistan government. Perhaps the greatest worry for India is the U.S.’s refusal to hold Pakistan to account for having given shelter to the Taliban, as this will only embolden Islamabad if the Taliban advance in Afghanistan. New Delhi tiptoed around the U.S.’s announcement of a new “Quad” with Uzbekistan-Afghanistan-Pakistan on connectivity, but this is another cause for worry.
•On the subject of democratic freedoms, both sides maintained there were “shared values”. However, Mr. Blinken began his meetings with a “civil society roundtable” wherein internal Indian issues such as minority rights, religious freedoms and curbs on the media and dissent were discussed, making it clear that these were important areas for the Democrat administration. In his rebuttal to a question about the “backslide” in India’s democracy, Mr. Jaishankar had a three-pronged response, reiterating that the same standards apply for the U.S. and India, that policies that have come in for international criticism such as the Citizenship (Amendment) Act, the Article 370 amendment, and anti-conversion laws were part of the Modi government’s attempt to “right historical wrongs”, and that freedoms cannot be equated with “lack of governance”. Despite the attempt from both sides to paper over the cracks, this is an issue that they will grapple with in the future even as they build upon the strong “Comprehensive Global Strategic Partnership” that the world’s oldest and most populous democracies continue to share.
📰 In the interest of the public
Compulsory vaccination is legal and does not violate anyone’s fundamental rights
•In Registrar General v. State of Meghalaya, the Meghalaya High Court ruled that the State government’s order requiring shopkeepers, local taxi drivers and others to get the COVID-19 vaccines before they resume economic activities is violative of the right to privacy, life, personal liberty, and livelihood. In response to the court’s order, the State government released a new order stating that the requirement of vaccination was merely directory and not mandatory. The case raises important questions of how the government can overcome widespread vaccine hesitancy and bring the pandemic to an end.
Court’s reasoning
•The court reasoned that forcing people to vaccinate themselves vitiates the “very fundamental purpose of the welfare attached to it”. It ruled that the government’s order intrudes upon one’s right to privacy and personal liberty as it deprives the individual of their bodily autonomy and bodily integrity, even though the intrusion is of minority intensity. It ruled that the government’s order affects an individual’s right “significantly” more than affecting the general public. It found that the government’s order is not maintainable in law as there is no legal mandate for mandatory vaccination. It relied on the Central government’s frequently asked questions, which specify that COVID-19 vaccination is voluntary. The court concluded that the State, rather than adopting coercive steps, must persuade the people to get themselves inoculated.
•Compulsory vaccination has often been deployed in India and abroad. The Vaccination Act, 1880, allowed the government to mandate smallpox vaccination among children in select areas. Similarly, several State laws, which set up municipal corporations and councils, empower local authorities to enforce compulsory vaccination schemes. Contrary to the High Court’s opinion, compulsory vaccination has passed the muster of judicial review in several national and international courts abroad. In a recent judgment in Vavřička and Others v. Czech Republic, the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) said that the compulsory COVID-19 vaccination scheme is consistent with the right to privacy and religion. The ECtHR cites case laws in France, Hungary, Italy, the U.K., among others to show that several constitutional courts have validated compulsory vaccination and ruled that it has an overriding public interest.
Right to life and privacy
•The main bone of contention is that compulsory vaccination violates bodily integrity and takes away decisional autonomy from people, thereby violating their right to life and privacy. It is a well-established principle that no right is absolute; rather rights are subject to reasonable restrictions. According to the order in Justice Puttaswamy v. Union of India, a restriction on privacy can be justified if it passes a three-prong test.
•First, the restriction must be provided in the law. State governments have the authority to mandate vaccines under the Epidemic Diseases Act, 1897, which allows them to prescribe regulations to prevent the spread of an epidemic disease. Second, the restriction must have a legitimate aim. Compulsory vaccination pursues the legitimate aim of protecting the public from COVID-19. Third, the restriction must be proportional to the object pursued. With more than four lakh reported deaths and a looming third wave, the current scenario counts as a pressing social need. Violations of rights from mandatory administration of a vaccine cannot be termed so grave so as to override the health rationale underlying the government’s order. Nevertheless, the government could provide appropriate accommodation for persons based on genuine medical reasons. Even if the court felt that the consequences of non-compliance with the order (i.e., non-resumption of economic activities) was excessive, the government could have been ordered to replace it with less stringent consequences, such as a moderate fine.
📰 The long road to winning the battle against trafficking
Anti-trafficking policy exists in India, but where the system is found lacking is in the implementation of the laws
•July 30 is United Nations World Day against Trafficking in Persons. It is also a time to reflect on India’s human trafficking crisis. Between April 2020 and June 2021, an estimated 9,000 children have been rescued after being trafficked for labour, according to a child rights non-governmental organisation (NGO). In other words, 21 children have been trafficked every day over nearly 15 months. The Childline India helpline received 44 lakh distress calls over 10 months. Over a year, 2,000 children have arrived at its shelter homes and 800 rescued from hazardous working conditions.
Increased vulnerability
•The media frequently publishes individual stories of trafficking. Children as young as 12 are trafficked across States to work in factories in appalling conditions, where owners are turning to cheap labour to recoup their losses from the novel coronavirus pandemic. In November 2020, four children, between 12 and 16 years, died after being trafficked for labour from Bihar to Rajasthan; some of them had injuries from beatings.
•Child marriages are also rampant — over 10,000 cases were tracked between April and August 2020. In Madhya Pradesh, about 391 child marriages were stopped in April-May 2021, while in Odisha, 726 child marriages were prevented between January-May 2021.
•A child rights NGO, working with the Delhi Commission for Protection of Child Rights has highlighted the problem of rampant child labour. In a certain stretch within the national capital, at least 120 children can be seen working. The factors causing increased vulnerability are identifiable. Its report states: “The [corona] virus has resulted in loss of income and economic crisis, causing families’ reduced capacity to care for children in the long-term. It has also caused, in some instances, loss of parental care due to death, illness or separation, thereby placing children at heightened risk for violence, neglect or exploitation.” These factors are compounded by an erosion of some of the checks against child labour and child marriage provided by law, as well as the scrutiny of schools and society.
•The increase in Internet access in current times has also led to cyber-trafficking. An August 2020 report by a member of a child rights group in India notes that popular social media platforms and free messaging apps are often used to contact young people. Often, the trafficker or middleman lures the person to a place under the pretext of offering him employment. Once removed from their locality, they face challenges of limited resources, unfamiliarity with the area and perhaps the local language. Threats of violence from the trafficker, and, importantly, the absence of any identifiable authority to approach other than the police — who are often seen as threats themselves — make it nearly impossible for trafficked persons to report the incident.
•A recent report by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime on the effects of the pandemic on trafficking echoes these findings. It says, traffickers are taking advantage of the loss of livelihoods and the increasing amount of time spent online to entrap victims, including by advertising false jobs on social media. In addition, there is an increased demand for child sexual exploitation material online due to lockdowns.
Scant data, other gaps
•The Government admitted in Parliament as recently as March 2021 that it does not maintain any national-level data specific to cyber trafficking cases. The efficacy of certain schemes launched by the Ministry of Home Affairs to improve investigation and prosecution of cyber crimes remains to be seen.
•India is still classified by the U.S. Department of State as a Tier-2 country in its report on global human trafficking. This means that the Government does not fully meet the minimum standards under U.S. and international law for eliminating trafficking, but is making significant efforts to comply. The lack of implementation is illustrated by the state of the Anti-Human Trafficking Units (AHTUs). AHTUs are specialised district task forces comprising police and government officials. In 2010, it was envisioned that 330 AHTUs would be set up. RTI responses in August 2020 showed that about 225 AHTUs had been set up, but only on paper.
•If properly staffed and funded, AHTUs could provide crucial ground-level data on the methods and patterns of traffickers, which in turn can strengthen community-based awareness and vigilance activities. Global practices such as in Nigeria, Africa, should be encouraged in India, in consonance with a larger framework to protect women and children by incentivising education and creating safe employment opportunities.
Draft Bill, judicial issues
•With focus now shifting to the new draft anti-trafficking Bill, the point to be highlighted is that there is no shortage of anti-trafficking policy in India. Where the system is found lacking is in the implementation of the laws. Significant discussion is required on the provisions of the Bill, particularly with respect to bringing in the National Investigation Agency and increasing the punishment for offences, including the death penalty as an option in some cases. It is not proven that more stringent laws, particularly the death penalty, have any greater deterrent effect on crime. The draft Bill also provides for AHTUs/committees at the national, State and district levels, but as noted, their effective functioning cannot be taken for granted. Legislating without the political will to implement and monitor effectiveness is futile.
•Special attention must also be paid to the challenges prosecutors and judges face in trafficking cases. There were 140 acquittals and only 38 convictions in 2019, according to government data. This points to a failure of investigation and cannot be solved by the draft Bill’s provision that accused traffickers must be presumed guilty unless they can prove the contrary. Further, trials can drag on for years, with victims sometimes withdrawing their complaints after being intimidated by traffickers. Proper case management must be introduced to give meaning to the “fast track” courts. Other problems include the low number of beneficiaries of monetary compensation and the lack of consistent access to psychological counselling. Parts of the draft Bill recognise the importance of rehabilitation, but implementation is key.
•Most victims of trafficking are from low-income communities for whom the novel coronavirus pandemic and lockdowns have caused long-term financial distress. With schools continuing to be closed in much of India and no definite end to the pandemic in sight, it cannot be assumed that incidents of trafficking will decline with a return to “normalcy”. That apart, the failure of existing institutional mechanisms to foresee the present crisis should spur the Government and other stakeholders to take preventive action now. July 30 should be the beginning of the end of human trafficking in India.
📰 The wings of Pegasus, the epoch of cyberweapons
With their use not only during a conflict but even during peacetime, matters have reached a tipping point
•A raging controversy across the world on the misuse of Pegasus spyware — a great deal of which is mired in facts, suppositions, false trails, allegations and counter-allegations, but nevertheless contains more than a kernel of truth — has reignited a debate on the role of cyber weapons. From an occasional and sporadic instance of a cyberattack previously, cyberattacks on institutions such as banks and on critical infrastructure have proliferated to an alarming extent, signalling the emergence of the cyber weapon epoch.
•The Pegasus spyware is by no means the ultimate cyberweapon. It has, however, compelled nations to emerge from their deep slumber about the threat posed by such new age weapons, even though it has been quite a few decades since the world saw the advent of cyberweapons, albeit more primitive than those in vogue today.
An evolution
•One of the earliest instances of this kind occurred in the 1990s when Yahya Abd-al-Latif Ayyash, who served as the chief bomb maker for Hamas, was assassinated by Israel’s domestic Intelligence Agency, Shin Bet, using a doctored phone containing explosives, when he responded to a call from an unknown person. Many daring exploits of the past, which took months of effort, and the utilisation of large numbers of people and resources to achieve, are, in the cyber era, possible with far less effort and resources; the destruction of the Vemork power station (in Norway) during the Second World War which took months of planning, and the extensive resources of the Allied Powers (and involved loss of lives), for instance, could be achieved in 2019 with a fraction of this effort. In 2019, Norsk Hydro, aluminium and energy producer, became the victim of a cyberattack which was accomplished remotely and anonymously, and in the shortest possible time, but with the same telling effort.
•What is noteworthy is that while all of these rate as among the many dramatic transformations brought about by cyber technologies since the turn of the century, what merits contemplation is that while Moore’s Law democratised access to computing, and the Internet opened a whole new avenue for communication, all this is coming at a price. Privacy has been eroded and the Internet — true to its origins in Cold War strategy — has become a powerful weapon in the hands of those seeking to exploit its various facets.
Now, a preferred weapon
•Cyber is often touted as the fifth dimension of warfare — in addition to land, sea, air and space. However, it needs to be understood that cyber, as the domain of military and national security, also co-exists with cyber as a domain of everyday life. It is the same domain. The war is no longer out there. It is now directly inside one’s drawing room, with cyberweapons becoming the weapon of choice.
•Israelis, though not the cyber pioneers, today dominate the cyber domain along with the Chinese, Russians, Koreans and, of course, the Americans. Already by the first decade of the 21st century, cyberspace had graduated from being merely the new domain of warfare, into becoming fundamentally a civilian space. From its very inception, cyberweapons ranked as special weapons, not unlike nuclear devices of earlier times. Following the joint U.S.-Israeli effort in unleashing the Stuxnet Worm in 2010 — which helped disable several hundred centrifuges at the Iranian nuclear facility in Natanz — it became still more apparent that mankind had indeed unleashed a new weapon, and had in a sense crossed the Rubicon.
•The linkage between sabotage and intrusive surveillance is but a short step. There are many stories in circulation of the employment of the Pegasus spyware well before the present controversy, for in 2019, WhatsApp had sued NSO over allegations that several hundreds of its users were the targets of the Pegasus spyware. The Israeli company’s claim that the spyware is sold only to governments and official agencies is, however, unproven. Israel, for its part, identifies Pegasus as a cyberweapon, and claims that its exports are controlled.
Work in progress
•The Pegasus spyware it is stated can copy messages that are sent or received, ‘harvest photos and record calls, secretly film through the phone’s camera, or activate the microphone to record conversations. It can potentially pinpoint where you are, where you have been, and whom you have met. Once installed on a phone, the spyware can harvest more or less any information or extract any file’. Ongoing efforts by the NSO Group, the makers of Pegasus, are devoted to making the spyware difficult to detect.
•An earlier version of Pegasus, identified as far back as 2016, infected phones mainly through ‘spearphishing’. Since then, its capabilities have vastly increased, and it currently employs ‘zero click’ attacks, which do not require any interaction on the part of the phone owner. It is used to exploit certain ‘zero day’ vulnerabilities found in operating systems — about which the manufacturers themselves are unaware. Where ‘spearphishing’ or a ‘zero click’ attack cannot succeed, the Pegasus spyware can be installed over a wireless trans-receiver located near a target. Essentially, the Pegasus virus seeks what are termed as ‘root privileges’ — that enable communication with its controllers through an anonymised network of Internet addresses and servers and transit data.
•A brief survey of the more damaging cyberattacks during the past decade-and-a-half with or without the Pegasus spyware can be revealing. Beginning with the 2007 devastating cyberattack on Estonia’s critical infrastructure, this was followed by the Stuxnet worm attack a few years later on Iran’s nuclear facility. The Shamoon virus attack on Saudi Aramco occurred in 2012. Thereafter, followed the 2016 cyberattack on Ukraine’s State power grid; the 2017 Ransomware attack (NotPetya) which affected machines in as many as 64 countries; a Wannacry attack the same year on the United Kingdom’s National Health Service; and the series of attacks this year on Ireland’s Health Care System and in the United States such as ‘SolarWinds’, the cyber attack on Colonial Pipeline and JBS, etc.
Grave threat
•With cyberweapons becoming the weapon of choice not only during a conflict but even during peacetime, matters have reached a tipping point. Cyberweapons carry untold capacity to distort systems and structures — civilian or military — and, most importantly, interfere with democratic processes, aggravate domestic divisions and, above all, unleash forces over which established institutions or even governments have little control. The Pegasus spyware is all this and more. For the present, it is hiding behind a cloak of anonymity, and the unwillingness of those to whom it has been sold to to acknowledge its misuse, but the reprieve is likely to be only temporary. Cyber methods which undermine capabilities can remain anonymous only for some, but not for all time. For the present, it may remain unrecognisable, but this will be only for a limited period.
•Meanwhile, we must be prepared for, and guard against, a new epoch of cyber threats, employing newer, state-of-the-art cyberweapons, which will further intensify cyber insecurity across the board. As more and more devices are connected to networks, the cyber threat is only bound to intensify, both in the short and the medium term. What is especially terrifying is that instruments of everyday use can be infected or infiltrated without any direct involvement of the target. The possibilities for misuse are immense and involve far graver consequences to an individual, an establishment, or the nation. It is not difficult to envisage that from wholesale espionage, this would become something far more sinister such as sabotage.
Need for analysis
•Dealing with the cyber threat, hence, deserves careful analysis and assessment. Plunging headlong into so-called solutions which have little rationale or depth is hardly the answer to critical threats posed by sophisticated spyware such as Pegasus. Dealing with ‘zero day’ vulnerabilities require far more thought and introspection than merely creating special firewalls or special phones that are ‘detached’ from the Internet. What is needed is a deeper understanding of not only cyber technologies, but also recognising the mindsets of those who employ spyware of the Pegasus variety, and those at the helm of companies such as the NSO. Short-term remedies are unlikely to achieve desired results.
•With the advent of cyber weapons such as Pegasus, technology which is perceived as a friend could well become a matter of despair. At the pace at which cyber technology is evolving, erecting proper defences will prove difficult. Artificial Intelligence (AI) is often seen as a kind of panacea for many of the current problems and ills, but all advances in technology tend to be a double-edged sword. If truth be told, AI could in turn make all information warfare — including cyber related — almost impossible to detect, deflect or prevent, at least at the current stage of development of AI tools. Meanwhile, easy access to newer cyber espionage tools will add to the existing chaos. All this suggests that security in the era of ever-expanding cyberweapons could become an ever-receding horizon.
