📰 10.74 lakh birds flock to Chilika, largest wintering ground in Indian subcontinent
Odisha deploys 106 personnel for bird counting on the vast waters of the lake.
•Chilika Lake, the largest brackish water lake and wintering ground of the birds in the Indian subcontinent, saw a million of birds, including uncommon Mongolian gull, visiting the waterbody this year.
•As per the water bird status survey-2022 conducted in the Chilika, a total of 10,74,173 birds of the 107 water bird species and 37,953 individuals of 76 wetland dependent species were counted at the entire lagoon. Last year, the count in Chilika was over 12 lakh. Bird census members reported rare sighting of the uncommon Mongolian gull.
•The census was undertaken jointly on Tuesday by the Odisha State Wildlife Organisation, the Chilika Development Authority (CDA) and the Bombay Natural History Society. A total of 106 personnel, including bird experts from government and non-government organisations, were deployed. The Chilika Lagoon was divided strategically into 21 segments for the census.
•A total of 3,58,889 birds (97 species) were counted in Nalabana Bird Sanctuary inside Chilika – a decrease by 65,899 from the previous year. The decrease is attributed to high water level and presence of water in cultivated fields in adjoining areas. Water birds love to flock on large mudflats.
•“Among the three pintail species of ducks, the northern pintail (1,72,285), gadwall (1,53,985), Eurasian wigeon (1,50,843) accounted for over one lakh in this year’s count,” says the report. However, the population of gadwall and Eurasian wigeon was less than that of the previous year.
•There was marginal decrease in the number of species such as the northern shoveler, tufted duck and red crested pochard. An increase in population of northern pintail, common coot and common pochard was noticed.
•“The increase in numbers for the greater flamingo at Nalabana mudflat indicates that the restoration at Nalabana is effective. This year’s greater flamingo count was highest in last one decade. It is largely due to appropriate management of mudflats,” the CDA said. Overall, the local resident species such as purple swamp-hen, purple heron, Indian moorhen, and jacanas were found in higher numbers.
•Chilika lake hosts birds migrating from thousands of miles away from the Caspian Sea, Lake Baikal, Aral Sea, remote parts of Russia, Kirghiz steppes of Mongolia, Central and South East Asia, Ladakh and the Himalayas. The winged guests find the vast mud-field and abundant fish stock here suitable to congregate.
The border crisis has laid bare political, economic and diplomatic problems — the result of choices made after 2014
•Like Banquo’s ghost, the 1962 Sino-India war hangs like a shadow over the current state of bilateral ties between India and China. A military defeat close to six decades ago has no real bearing on the current border tensions, but is a constant reminder to Delhi, like Banquo’s ghost is to Macbeth, of its own fears and insecurities. An outcome of India’s choices since 2014, these weaknesses have been shown up by the prospect of a conflict with China, which may no longer be immediate but it does not feel as far-fetched and remote as it did just two years ago.
China’s diplomatic moves
•Nearly 20 months after the border crisis began in Ladakh, China has pressed on with aggressive diplomatic and military gestures against India. Beijing recently renamed 15 places in Arunachal Pradesh, following the six it had done in 2017, weeks after the Dalai Lama visited Tawang. China justifies the renaming as being done on the basis of its historical, cultural and administrative jurisdiction over the area — these old names existed since ancient times which had been changed by India with its “illegal occupation”. The External Affairs Ministry said that the move by Beijing ‘does not alter’ the fact that Arunachal Pradesh — itself a Sanskritised rechristening of the North-East Frontier Agency in 1971 on being made a Union Territory – was an integral part of India.
•Possession is indeed nine-tenths of the law but China’s renaming drive is one prong of its plan to assert its territorial claims in disputed border areas. On January 1, 2022, Beijing’s new land border law came into force, which provides the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) with full responsibility to take steps against “invasion, encroachment, infiltration, provocation” and safeguard Chinese territory. This law supports — and mutually reinforces — the construction of 628 Xiaokang border villages by China along its disputed border with India. As per available satellite imagery, at least two of these villages have been constructed on the Indian side of the Line of Actual Control (LAC) in Arunachal Pradesh. These villages will come in handy for Beijing when the principle of ‘settled areas’ is invoked to resolve the border dispute in the future.
•It is not just Beijing but even the diplomats posted at the Chinese Embassy in Delhi who have been emboldened by India’s cautious response. Last month, Political Counsellor of the Chinese Embassy, Zhou Yongsheng wrote an angry letter to Indian Members of Parliament — including two Union Ministers, Rajeev Chandrasekhar and Ramdas Athawale — for attending a meet organised by the Tibetan government-in-exile. The letter asked them to not engage with “out-and-out separatist political group and an illegal organization”. This angry missive from an Embassy official to two Ministers has earned no reproach from the Government for the Chinese Ambassador. It did not even beget an official condemnation from the External Affairs Ministry.
Submissive response
•The reasons for such submissiveness by the Narendra Modi government towards the Chinese are not difficult to understand. Delhi has run out of proactive options against Beijing that will force the Chinese leadership to change course on its India policy. Tibet and the Dalai Lama were often projected as a trump card but evidently are not. Beijing does not care for its declining popularity among the Indian populace. The two countries have an increasingly lopsided trade relationship driven by Indian dependency on Chinese manufacturing, a situation further worsened by the Government’s mishandling of the novel coronavirus pandemic. Delhi has little geopolitical or economic leverage over Beijing to boast of. There are no arrows left in Mr. Modi’s quiver. The best Delhi can do is to prevent any further loss of territory to China with extensive military deployment on the LAC, while hoping that Beijing, either with Moscow’s urging or otherwise, will give Mr. Modi an honourable diplomatic exit out of this crisis. If India was to give it back to the Chinese as good as it gets, Beijing may take it as an affront, further smothering Indian desire for a smooth end to the crisis.
•To restore the status quo ante on the LAC as of April 2020, India undertook internal balancing of its military from the Pakistan border to the China border and external rebalancing through a closer partnership with the United States in the Indo-Pacific. The Quad (Australia, India, Japan and the U.S.) has, however, remained a non-military grouping. The signing of the AUKUS (a trilateral security pact between Australia, the United Kingdom and the U.S.) and the humiliating American exit from Afghanistan made it crystal clear that for all the intelligence sharing and logistics support from the U.S., India will have to deal with the Chinese challenge on the border on its own. In decline since 2017, India’s economy is incapable of supporting such an endeavour. The Modi government has now placed its hopes on Moscow, which seems keen to play a mediator between India and China. Russian officials say that their offer of a Foreign Ministers meeting, if not a leaders’ summit, of the Russia-India-China grouping is on the table but Delhi first wants to see some steps from China towards resolving the border crisis.
Now revealed
•The Chinese challenge has laid bare globally India’s political, economic and diplomatic fragilities under Mr. Modi, and this has grim portends of how challenges in future will be managed. Worried about its northern borders and the threat of a two-front collusive threat, the Modi government and the ruling party are no longer as vociferous on Pakistan. Even if viciously attacking Pakistan has been an electorally rewarding domestic agenda for Mr. Modi, he has been forced to stay away from even mentioning India’s western neighbour in any of his recent electoral speeches. With ‘development’ and ‘employment’ no longer Mr. Modi’s calling card, that vacuum is being filled by the most horrific attacks by Hindutva bigots on Christians and Muslims under the benign gaze of the Hindu majoritarian government.
•Because of the China factor, the U.S. is currently looking away even as India mistreats its minorities and its democracy stands diminished. That is unlikely to continue for long if India is to be the democratic counter in Asia to the rise of a one-party authoritarian state like China, one that is now keen to offer its own governance and growth model to the world. India’s difficult diplomatic and military engagement with China is going to leave it more dependent on U.S. support, rendering the Modi government more vulnerable to American pressure on ‘shared values’.
•A decade ago, many observers had warned that the emergence of an increasingly assertive and confident China under Xi is going to be to India’s detriment. The signs were there when PLA soldiers walked into Chumar even as Mr. Modi hosted Mr. Xi in Ahmedabad in 2014. The Doklam crisis of 2017 only lulled the Government into thinking that the worst was over. It, instead, triggered the border crisis of 2020. With the loss in the 1962 war, India lost its pre-eminent position in Asia; with this display of weakness six decades later, India is in danger of losing its dominant influence even in South Asia.
•India’s internal situation, from Nagaland to Kashmir, with the minorities under attack, is not going to help either. India made its choices after 2014, and the China border crisis has only shown them up.
Onus on the leader
•With a rising China as its neighbour and a more self-centred U.S. – which is uncomfortable with India’s reliable partner, Russia — as its friend, Delhi continues to face difficult choices. Not made from a position of strength, in future too, these choices will be as much domestic as they will be in the domain of foreign policy. A collegial and deliberative model of decision-making would work best but is unlikely to be followed if the track record of the current dispensation is any indicator. Pushing a domestic narrative through a compromised media is one thing but dealing with the geopolitical realities at a difficult time is a different ball game.
•Put under the harsh glare, a domestically divided, economically weak and diplomatically boastful India has been found wanting in its ability to deal with future challenges. The immediate challenge, however, remains China. It cannot be wished away and must be tackled.
•As the Chief Minister of Gujarat, when Mr. Modi was barred from most western capitals after the 2002 riots, he frequently travelled to China. He made a show of learning from China’s remarkable and unique growth story, and applying it to the ‘Gujarat Model’ which he promised to India in 2014. After he became the Prime Minister, Mr. Modi has met Mr. Xi at least 18 times, but has not had even one telephone call since the border crisis began.
•As a proponent and exemplar of personality-centric diplomacy, which included two informal summits with Mr. Xi, there has been a surprising lack of any personalised move from Mr. Modi so far. Now that his generals, advisers and Ministers have failed to deliver, it is time for Mr. Modi to step up and personally resolve the crisis. He has no excuse left. Allowing things to fester will only ensure that India pays a price far higher than it can afford.
📰 These islands of excellence must not be marooned
The national law universities need to look at intra-collaboration and work on becoming multi-universities
•Recently, the Chief Justice of India (CJI), N.V. Ramana, made several comments concerning legal education through his addresses in various universities. He observed that the national law universities were being perceived as ‘elitist and detached from social realities’ because not enough students were joining the bar. He added that even among those who joined the bar, the trend was to practise at the levels of the Supreme Court of India and High Courts while ignoring trial advocacy. Earlier in the year, the CJI had made the comment that law graduates were ill-equipped to handle the profession and that sub-standard legal educational institutions in the country were a worrying trend. Additionally, the CJI made a remark recently that the focus on legal education should be on the practice and not theory.
•The CJI’s words are a welcome cause for introspection. As institutions capable of fundamentally altering the legal landscape of the country in the decades to come, such comments must not be brushed aside casually. So far, the experiment of national law universities has thrown up mixed results. While they have been celebrated as ‘islands of excellence in a ‘sea of mediocrity, as perceptible from the CJI’s remarks, they are also deemed by many to be detached from society. But this is just one of the many contradictions that national law universities face today. The first contradiction is that even though national law universities are criticised for imparting pedagogy focused on securing placements in corporates and corporate firms, it is these placements that are taken to be a significant marker in judging the success of national law universities.
•Another contradiction is that even though they are referred to as ‘National’ Law Universities, they are established and partially funded by State governments. National law universities, therefore, have to operate in an increasingly fluid political environment. With state funding shrinking, most national law universities are facing a serious crisis. The ‘national’ character of these universities stems from their cosmopolitan demographic profile of students and faculty. Of late, this ‘national’ profile of the national law universities has had to increasingly navigate the pressures in many States which, by virtue of being the primary patron of a national law university, are able to exert influence on several key issues such as domicile-based reservations and pay scale choices.
Research-driven academics
•The perceived disconnect between social realities and legal education can only be bridged if the research emerging from national law universities addresses social issues and provides workable and practicable solutions. Therefore, there is a need to focus on the promotion of research-driven academics. This requires us to move beyond the rigid framework created by the Bar Council of India and the University Grants Commission, which for example, needs the faculty to undertake a minimum number of lecture hours per week, etc. There is a need to have separate faculties for teaching and research. Research-driven academics must also be promoted through institutional arrangements and schemes incentivising the same. National law universities can no longer survive as mere teaching institutions.
Internal issues
•The national law universities face stiff competition from upcoming private universities vis-à-vis quality faculties with exposure to best practices and these universities lose out on such faculty owing to many factors including rigid pay scales. While the hiring of faculty holding foreign degrees is not the only solution, the training of the existing faculty in traditional methods of knowledge delivery cannot be expected to satisfy the purpose for which the national law universities were created. The same results in a demand from students for better faculty, pedagogies and curricula. While the delivery of these demands differs from national law university to national law university, these issues have been at the centre of student protests in several universities.
•Another reason for student protests in national law universities has been the inability of the leadership to respond to the needs of the students, faculty and staff in an adequate manner. Day-to-day problems when left unaddressed lead to avoidable confrontations. Decisions resolving the issues must be taken firmly and in a timely manner without undue delays. This problem is going to multiply as the State withdraws its funding and national law universities are left to generate their own resources. The same will require a display of ingenuity and entrepreneurship in raising adequate finances in the face of ever-increasing expenditures.
•It is equally important that the pedagogy must be focused on practical aspects of law, rather than just the theory. The courses must invigorate our classrooms with the experience of practitioners and arm our students with the practical understanding of the functioning of laws and the justice system. Our judges and advocates must be obligated to contribute to the classrooms. They must be encouraged to offer paid internships to students to incentivise their learning experiences.
•Finally, it must also be understood that the purpose of education at the graduate and postgraduate levels is fundamentally different. The focus of education at a graduate level must be practice-oriented with a focus on imparting students with the ability to learn and understand. On the other hand, the focus of pedagogy at the post-graduate level should be academic with a stress on imparting students with the ability to not only critically evaluate but also to apply the knowledge. This is crucial if we are to create well rounded and quality faculty which can contribute to the academic discourse meaningfully.
For the long term
•Going by the National Education Policy, the shape and the content of a single discipline university is to change soon. The need, therefore, is to plan the future vision of national law universities in terms of becoming multi-universities to include subjects of crucial significance, including the awarding of degrees other than the law discipline. Also, there is a need to establish an independent regulator for legal education in India. National law universities can collaborate in a significant way to benefit each other by sharing human resources and expertise.
•With the exception of a few national law universities, most have a long way to go with respect to many of the points raised above. This article is not intended to be a justification or an explanation to the CJI’s comments. Instead, its purpose is to introspect over and understand the problem areas which require rectification. As mentioned earlier, national law universities have the potential to transform the legal landscape of our country. But much is still required to be done before such a potential can be realised.
