📰 Not always fair game: On online gambling
State must guard against zealous paternalism while seeking to curb activities online
•Good intentions do not always make for good legislation. The Tamil Nadu government’s effort to protect its youth from the temptations of online gambling by amending a colonial gaming law to ban online rummy and poker, has not survived judicial scrutiny. Its amendment to the Tamil Nadu Gaming Act, 1930, has been struck down by the Madras High Court, which found the prohibition unreasonable because it sought to bring even games predominantly of skill under the label of gambling, if there was an element of betting or even prize money or any other stake involved. The State’s intention was acceptable to the extent that it sensed the danger involved in allowing addictive games. However, it erred in failing to make a distinction between games of skill and games of chance, and in seeking to treat as ‘gaming’ anything that involved stakes, contrary to judicial pronouncements circumscribing the term to games that are based on chance. In an audacious move that the court found completely unacceptable, the amending Act sought to “turn the statute on its head” by replacing a section that provided exemption to ‘games of skill’ from its purview with one that said it would apply to even games of skill if played for wager, bet, money or stake. The court rightly found that this would actually render illegal even offline games that were played for prize money. It said, “What was once the exemption or escape provision has now been given the most claustrophobic stranglehold and has the possibility of bringing about the most ridiculous and unwanted results if applied in letter and spirit.”
•One of the problems of political populism is that the state takes its paternalistic role too seriously. It assumes that large sections of society require guidance, lest their ideas of freedom lead them to uncharted zones where lack of restraint and self-control land them in debt and penury. Notions of individual freedom and choice tend to be forgotten. Another problem is that the moral element is predominant in such laws, often to the detriment of the reasonableness of their provisions. Some activities are associated with sin more than with commerce, and these are susceptible to the government’s regulatory reach and banning instincts. The court, while understanding the law’s intent, has rightly questioned the lack of proportionality in banning something that could have been regulated. It notes that excessive paternalism could descend into authoritarianism and curb an activity individuals are free to indulge in. It could not sympathise with the State’s contention that online games were invariably open to manipulation and no distinction need be made between games of chance and those of skill. However, it did remember to observe that appropriate legislation regulating betting and gambling activities is still possible, but something that conforms to constitutional propriety.
The two countries need to re-establish water cooperation as a common cause and draw inspiration from the 1950s
•Nitish Kumar should be credited for bringing ‘disaster management’ into the popular imagination in Bihar. In his early days as Bihar Chief Minister (2005-2010), he made a few noticeable structural changes, with renewed approaches in infrastructure augmentation for dams and reservoirs, detention basins, embankments and channel improvement. Non-structural measures were also adopted in later years such as floodplain management, flood forecasting and warning, flood insurance and financial compensation.
•However, despite the efforts made on the ground, people continue to suffer with perennial flooding in north Bihar (the Mithilanchal region). Already facing a humanitarian crisis of sorts following the novel coronavirus pandemic, this year’s extra rainfall and floods have been a moment of reckoning. Unfortunately, this chronic issue which is making over five crore people of the north Bihar in India and Tarai in Nepal so vulnerable, does not seem to get the attention it deserves by policymakers on both sides of the border.
•This year, on May 4-5, Bihar’s Disaster Management Department released two documents titled: “Pre-Flood Preparedness” and “Flood Control Order 2021”. The aim was to help the local administration in terms of preparedness and having in place a relief support system. However, a solution to the issue of chronic flooding lies in revisiting the old plans and arrangements between India and Nepal. This is because flood control in Bihar is just not possible till a dedicated intergovernmental panel is formed through a bilateral mechanism between India and Nepal, that in turn can study, assess and offer solutions to this shared crisis.
Fundamentals of flooding
•Historically, Bihar has been known to be India’s most flood-prone State. The Flood Management Improvement Support Centre (FMISC), Department of Water Resources, Government of Bihar estimates that 76% of the population in north Bihar faces the recurring threat of flood devastation. About 68,800 sq. km out of a total geographical area of 94,163 sq. km, or about 73.06% of the land area is flood affected. A large part of north Bihar, adjoining Nepal, is drained by a number of rivers that have their catchments in the steep and geologically nascent Himalayas.
•Originating in Nepal, the high discharge and sediment load in the Kosi, Gandak, Burhi Gandak, Bagmati, Kamla Balan, Mahananda and Adhwara Group wreak havoc in the plains of Nepal’s Tarai and Bihar. The FMISC says: “About 65% of the catchment area of these rivers falls in Nepal/Tibet and only 35% of the catchment area lies in Bihar. A review by Kale (1997) indicated that the plains of North Bihar have recorded the highest number of floods during the last 30-years. In the years 1978, 1987, 1998, 2004 and 2007[,] Bihar witnessed high magnitudes of flood. The total area affected by floods has also increased during these years. [The] Flood of 2004 demonstrates the severity of the flood problem when a vast area of 23490 Sq Km was badly affected by the floods of Bagmati, Kamla & Adhwara groups of rivers causing loss of about 800 human lives, even when Ganga, the master drain was flowing low.”
Cooperation of the past
•Unlike the indifference shown by Kathmandu on matters of floods and water management in recent years, the history of cooperation between India and Nepal for embankments starting in the 1950s is worth looking at. When work on the Kosi embankments started in January 1955, a group of retired Nepali soldiers came over voluntarily to join hands with Indian volunteers and start the work. Such a progressive government-citizen interface could not sustain itself and water cooperation between the two countries for a common cause waned. Consequently, not much has happened barring the use of water resources for hydroelectric generation.
Recasting water management
•For the people of Madhubani, Darbhanga, Sitamarhi, Sheohar, Saharsa, Supaul, Purnea, Araria, Madhepura, Katihar, Samastipur, Muzaffarpur, Bettiah, Motihari and Begusarai, the flood is a part of their lives. In fact, infrastructural interventions such as building embankments and re-routing streams have disturbed the conventional pattern of slow water flow.
•Earlier, without so many artificial barriers, the flow of water used to aid farming in the region. The Kosi Treaty of 1954, under which the embankments in Nepal were established and maintained, was not futuristic and did not make enough provisions for the maintenance of embankments and the rivers changing their course. The deposition of stones, sand, silt and sediment has led to river beds rising, changing course and causing unimaginable losses. Between the mid-18th and mid-20th centuries, the Kosi is said to have shifted over 100 kilometres westward, resulting in large-scale human displacements. Also, there is a need for greater sensitisation on climatic imbalances and sustainable development. Ironically, the same flood-affected regions also face the issue of drought and a sinking water table.
•Notwithstanding Kathmandu’s wavered approach on the matters concerning water management with India, it would not be apt to blame Nepal for releasing water from its rivers that cause flooding on the Indian side; and on their part, for believing that India is reaping the benefits from all projects that were taken up in the past. Clearly, course correction is needed to reestablish water cooperation as a common cause and draw inspiration for joint action from the 1950s.
For a policy refresh
•As early as in 1937, the transition from the traditional method of flood control to the embankment-based British system was thought out. To control the floodwater at Barahakshetra in Nepal, a high dam was thus planned and finally built after the devastating Kosi flood in 1953. Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru visited the flood-affected areas in 1953 and announced a visionary Kosi scheme for the safe resettlement of the affected people. Lalit Narayan Mishra, former Union Cabinet Minister, was the first prominent political leader from the Mithila region who unwaveringly tried improving infrastructural capabilities with the Kosi Project and other initiatives to control the flooding.
•In the mainstream political and policy establishments, greater attention needs to be given to this annual calamity and its devastating effects on lives and livelihoods. India and Nepal need to be in dialogue to end the crisis of flooding every year. With a long-term strategy of water management cooperation between India and Nepal, the matter should be looked into.
📰 A guide to resolving the Assam-Mizoram issue
Historical knowledge, sensitivity and an accommodative spirit need to accompany any dialogue and negotiation
•The violent stand-off between the Assam and Mizoram armed policemen at Vairengte in Mizoram, on July 26, about six kilometres from Lailapur, Assam which took six lives and left over 50 injured is the culmination of a long-standing border dispute.
History and a boundary
•Almost one and a half centuries ago and 17 years before the Lushai hills was annexed to British Assam in 1892, the ‘inner line’ boundary of the Lushai hills was ‘fixed’ in 1875 on the southern border of Assam’s Cachar district. In line with the colonial practice of ‘fixing’ borders, this boundary was however not ‘precise’ as it was drawn largely using natural markers such as rivers and hills. In post-independent India, the Mizoram government has accepted this boundary in preference over the subsequent revisions made by the colonial government when the Inner Line Permit under the Bengal Eastern Frontier Regulation, 1873 was extended to the Lushai hills district in 1930 and 1933.
•Unlike the 1875 boundary, which involved a proxy of Suakpuilala, one of the Lushai chiefs, the Mizoram government perceives that the boundary instituted by these revisions sidestepped them and amounted to unilateral superimposition — driven as it were by ‘administrative convenience’. These revisions are also seen to conspicuously fail to recognise the Mizo’s long-standing historical rights to use the un-demarcated southern border of Cachar as their hunting ground, for jhum cultivation, and as sites of their resource extraction including rubber and timber. The enclosure of about 509 square miles of the Lushai hills under the Inner Line Reserve Forest area via the Assam Forest Regulation, 1877, is being cited as one of the glaring exemplars of ‘encroachment’ by the Assam government into the Lushai hills (now Mizoram). However, considering that borders cannot be driven by perception but by institutionalised rules and laws, Assam’s government continues to refuse to accept Mizoram’s standpoint.
Assam’s stand
•Seen from this standpoint, the Assam government considers Mizo plantation and settlements in the Inner Line Reserve Forest areas as an ‘encroachment’. Such a standpoint is oblivious to the fact that Seipuia, a Lushai chief, established a village, Seidpur, on a hill nearly 10 miles from Silchar, the capital of Cachar. The Jalenga tea estate located in Tlangpui village and Paloi tea estate near Vairengte — both in Cachar — took their names after Zalenga and Palawia, two Lushai chiefs. Given that the Lushai (also known as old Kukis — Hrangkhawl, Biete, Ralte, etc.) are among the earliest settlers of Cachar, many villages in Cachar (and Karimganj) have Lushai settlements. Sporadic incidents of evictions or arrests by the Assam officials were reported in the 1970s and 2000s. A recent allegation of ‘encroachment’ happened in October 2020 when Assamese officials burnt down Mizo huts and other settlements in the Singla Reserve Forest which led to border clashes and a 12-day blockade of National Highway 306.
•Although Assam Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma is partially right in claiming that the dispute is about ‘reserve forest’ and not ‘land’, what is at the heart of this dispute is the contending approaches of the Assam and Mizoram governments to ‘borders’, namely ‘state-centric’ and ‘people-centric’ approaches.
•Mr. Sarma and the Assam government represent a continuum of the colonial ‘state-centric’ approach to borders which gives premium to legal, juridical and administrative recognition and protection of the border. Colonial state-making and state-expansion entail a ‘fixing’ of borders. The discovery of oil, tea, rubber and coal around the middle of the 19th century in the ‘outer limits’ of Assam proper and the concomitant attempt to commercialise these commodities impel the regulation of trade and commerce between the British and their competitors. The enclosure of land in these ‘outer limits’ by declaring them either as ‘forest reserve areas’ or imposing an inner line permit raj system stem from this.
•This development leverages a new land-use regime which is principally driven by efforts to augment State revenues. Forest conservation and the protection of tribal/indigenous land interests are peripheral concerns. One of the unintended consequences was the large-scale migration of labour from various parts of British India into Cachar, Hailakandi, and Karimganj. The ‘encroachment’ and ‘enclosure’ of their land and forest ‘commons’ reinforced the steely resolve of the tribal groups such as the Lushais to ‘protect’ their land. The series of raids since the mid-1840s, which culminated in the famous raid of Alexandrapore tea garden in Cachar in early January 1871, stems from this. In this raid, James Winchester, a British tea planter, was killed, and Mary Winchester, his daughter, captured. The British launched the Lushai Expedition (1871-72) partly to secure Mary’s release.
•The recent overtures by Mr. Sarma to approach the Supreme Court of India, and raise a 4,000-strong commando battalion to ‘protect’ the ‘forest reserve’ areas need to be seen against this backdrop. Parading a bullet-proof armoured vehicle is intended to drive home this message. The muscular display of power also becomes fully evident in the way in which a contingent of about 200 Assam armed policemen along with Karimganj forest officials overran the central paramilitary outpost, marched and ‘encroached’ deep into Mizoram’s border at Vairengte a day after the dispute had already flared up.
•Critics squarely blamed Mr. Sarma for this misadventure and political upmanship which cost the lives of five of of Assam’s armed policemen and a civilian and left over 50 people injured. It remains to be seen if the immediate valorisation, ex gratia payment of ₹50 lakh and securing jobs to each family of the ‘martyrs’, and ₹1 lakh relief to the injured edify his image as a ‘decisive’ Chief Minister or expose him as a regional bully. The last image has gained traction given that Assam has a long-standing border dispute with Arunachal Pradesh, Meghalaya and Nagaland.
Mizoram’s approach
•In contrast to the above, Chief Minister Zoramthanga and the Mizoram government advocate a ‘people-centric’ approach which seeks to give a premium to the historical and traditional rights of the local indigenous people on the one hand and to the principle of uti possidetis juris (‘as you possess under law’, including customary law) on the other hand. Mr. Zoramthanga and his predecessors have made concerted attempts to forge a consensus around this approach. The two-member boundary committee report of 1973 and the memorandum prepared by the Joint Action Committee, non-governmental organisations and all-political parties in Mizoram in 2018, which has been submitted to the Prime Minister of India, are pointers to this.
At the negotiating table
•Given that ‘borders’ are contested social constructs, ‘mental maps’ which are given subjective meanings and interpretations, the endeavours by Mr. Sarma and Mr. Zoramthanga to ‘fix’ the Assam-Mizoram border and resolve the dispute need to be sensitive to the historical context in which local land owners and protectors have transformed overtime as ‘encroachers’ of land across the two States. Such a resolution should be sensitive to the possibility of fluid and overlapping sovereignty, where forest ‘commons’ are seen not simply as sites of revenue-extraction but as powerful symbols of identity and sustainable livelihood resources for the local people.
•Deep historical knowledge, sensitivity and an accommodative spirit need to inform Mr. Sarma and Mr. Zoramthanga even as they sit down peacefully to enter into dialogue and negotiation under the neutral supervision of the Centre. It is about time that the Centre sets up a permanent inter-governmental forum to involve important stakeholders in order to effectively manage border and territorial conflicts. Any quick-fix solution driven by temporal electoral considerations should be avoided if we were to resuscitate and sustain interdependent Assam-Mizoram borders and beyond.
📰 Why are government schools not the first choice?
Improving the infrastructure of government schools will make them more attractive
•The public education system is the primary option for millions of students in India. These institutions have become more important as the pandemic takes a toll on the economy, putting fee-charging schools beyond the reach of many and forcing thousands to move to government schools. The Patna High Court recently asked for data on how many IAS and IPS officers have enrolled their wards in government schools. Anita Rampal and Uma Mahadevan discuss public education in a conversation moderated by G. Ananthakrishnan. Edited excepts:
About 51% students are in government schools and nearly 10% in aided schools, yet there seems to be a bias against such schools amongst wider sections of the middle class. What factors underline such a bias?
•Anita Rampal: People feel there are not enough teachers in these schools, or the schools may not be functioning regularly. They get carried away by the notions of a branded private school, even though it may not have good teachers. Also, private schools brand themselves [in a particular way]: they say they are English medium and parents feel that is good. But children don’t learn better in a second language, they learn better if they begin to first read and write in the first language. Then, they also learn English better as a second language.
•Government schools are not just of one kind. In Delhi, there are about seven-eight kinds of differently resourced government schools. Now, the ordinary government school is the poorest and is also getting the poorest children.
•Uma Mahadevan: There are different kinds of government schools: there are Kendriya Vidyalayas (KVs), which are very well-resourced, with good infrastructure and good teachers. There are Jawahar Navodaya Vidyalayas, which are islands of excellence and competitively looked at for admissions. There are residential schools run by different State governments which are again well-resourced, have good infrastructure, spacious classrooms. Then, there are other model schools. We also have municipal schools and the typical government schools run by the different Zilla Panchayats, which are not always as well resourced but often tend to get the poorer students.
•We should also look at the basic safety, well-being and hygiene factors in these schools. There is no reason why they cannot have well functioning toilets, drinking water and proper compound walls. To that extent, there is some work that should be done in improving the image of these schools. We then come to pedagogy, teacher development, the level of community participation, the parent committees, etc.
Ten years since the Right to Education law, have structural issues been addressed?
•Uma Mahadevan: It’s an ongoing process. Structural issues are vast. We are a very large country with different kinds of education systems in different States. And we have different kinds of issues — some areas may have a higher tribal population or different kinds of local issues that need to be addressed. But over the years, the RTE has contributed tremendously in filling our classrooms and in making education accessible to children who would otherwise have been at risk of slipping out or being pushed out of the education system and into situations like child labour or child marriage. We need to look long and hard at what we have been able to achieve and what remains to be achieved. The fact that there is a lot that remains to be done should not take away from the considerable work that has been done.
•Anita Rampal: I agree that we must look at what has been done, but also, barely 15% of the schools can be called as compliant with the RTE. That is also a reason why children are being pushed out. Section 29 of the RTE explains what kind of education every child has a right to. There is no school complying with that, including elite schools. It talks about discovery and activities which are child-centred. And on developing the potential of every child, not calling them ‘slow learners’, not testing them in a centralised way. We have abandoned that understanding.
Are the victims of this phenomenon predominantly in government schools?
•Anita Rampal: Yes. And poor children who don’t have tuition, parents to support them at home, or books. During COVID-19, 60-70% children had nothing. There was no attempt to go to them and see what they needed. But we say they have a ‘learning loss’ and poor ‘learning outcomes’.
•Uma Mahadevan: It’s true that we should be conscious of not using the language of deficit. The RTE gave us the approach of looking at the child not as a bucket to be filled but as a person who is growing and bringing to the class rich and valuable experiences and the ability to learn. The RTE also gave us the approach of formative assessments. It is not the child who is unable to learn; assessments need to help us find ways to help children learn better.
Some people prefer English. People don’t want a school which does not offer English.
•Uma Mahadevan: English is seen as aspirational, which is fine, but for it to become the medium of instruction would cut away a child from what she already knows, such as concepts. Education begins as a journey from the familiar to the unfamiliar. Education in the mother tongue in the primary years helps a child build on prior knowledge and concepts.
Do we have adequate capacity at the secondary and higher secondary levels in government schools? The net enrolment falls sharply beyond the primary level. Could this be increased with better access to quality public schooling?
•Uma Mahadevan: Definitely, especially for girls. The fact that there is a drop in net enrolment from primary to secondary should be viewed with concern. We need to understand the obstacles: transportation, location, etc., which may be preventing teenagers, especially girls, from accessing secondary education.
•Anita Rampal: It’s important that the public education system becomes a common school system. A KV has a small percentage of children coming from different socio-economic backgrounds. The notions of equity are more rooted there. Children get a chance to study with children from different socio-economic backgrounds. But in private schools, that’s not the case. We were shocked that a 12-year-old child could tell us, ‘why do these children have to have the same textbooks as us? You should teach them to make gol gappas and shoes’. This child is unquestioned by the school. When the school itself reproduces inequities, the government should not be talking of centres of ‘excellence’. Delhi takes a test for the Rajkiya Pratibha Vikas Vidyalaya (schools of the Delhi School Education Directorate). Why take a test at Class 6 and only then admit children?
A government teacher’s job is secure, with an attractive salary and perks and retirement benefits, compared to teachers in private schools. Yet people hesitate in choosing a government school. What can raise the morale of these institutions?
•Uma Mahadevan: While all that is true, the work of a government school teacher can be lonely and difficult. It’s highly creative work. There’s a lot more that we need to do in terms of empowering school leaders, school heads, school communities, the entire teaching community, as well as the non-teaching community.
•The midday meal cooks in a school also contribute to building a healthy and happy school environment as, say, the chemistry teacher. So, there’s a lot that we need to do to value the work of teachers and staff, make their work visible, so that families recognise that. We also need to create better professional networks for teachers, because the best teachers continuously learn from each other.
•Anita Rampal: Teachers’ professional development is a very weak area. Even students who do a four-year B.El.Ed course and start teaching feel the in-service training they later get is quite dismal. Teachers’ professional development is poor. We don’t find investment in terms of resources or in the planning of institutes. Now, 95% of teacher education is in private hands and most of it is substandard. Even today, almost half the regular teacher vacancies are filled by guest or ad hoc teachers.
How can the promise of wider access to government schools be realised?
•Uma Mahadevan: We should make a micro plan for every school, a larger plan for schools at the district level, and then at the State level. Then basic needs — drinking water, rainwater harvesting, school gardens, dining areas — need to be taken up before we can even start talking about levels of learning and teaching. The role of local bodies should be enhanced. Local bodies can take ownership, and school development committees can be linked with elected local bodies, so they can support the needs of schools.
•Anita Rampal: I agree, but let’s not say learning can come later and this can come first. These are all important aspects of making a good school.
•In terms of funding, it’s not just a matter of cess, it’s also priority areas. Right now, we have a priority area like a National Testing Agency. Why do we have something at the national level which decides what should happen at the local level? It should be more decentralised. Where are we finding investments in public institutes for teacher education? We have not found it for many years.
For government servants, and those in transferable jobs, there is a lot of paperwork, admission hassles and even the problem of compatibility of State boards. Is that a barrier due to which people don’t generally go to a State government school?
•Uma Mahadevan: That is something that parents keep in mind, because when people are transferred between States or to Delhi, the language, the second language, the board, the syllabus all come into the picture. Also the ability of a child to adjust to a new way of teaching and a new syllabus.
•Anita Rampal: Some years back, when a lot of curriculum renewal was happening in different States, the Ministry had asked me to look at how Kerala was doing its curriculum review, because its assessments were very different. It was creatively assessing children, which other States had not done. I documented this in some of the poorest districts in Kerala. What I found fascinating was that there were people who had earlier sent children to private schools and were now shifting them to government schools. They were not people very high up in the government hierarchy, but there were people from government offices too. They saw that their child was learning much better because they were not forced into the English medium.
And during the pandemic we have seen thousands of students moving to government schools in many States.
•Anita Rampal: Yes. If people who have lost livelihoods are seeking government schools, such schools should try to show their commitment to good quality education — not leave them as segregated silos for the poorest.
The courts have asked civil servants to send their children to government schools. Is this a logical course to pursue?
•Anita Rampal: You can’t take punitive measures and say, ‘why didn’t you put your child there?’ But trying to say, ‘why can’t we do it when all other countries have managed’ is something that we should take up seriously.
