📰 Forest Conservation Rules infringe upon land rights of tribespeople: NCST chief
•It is the duty of the commission to “caution the government” when its policies have the potential to affect the well-being and rights of tribal people, Harsh Chouhan, Chairperson of the National Commission for Scheduled Tribes (NCST), told The Hindu on Thursday.
•He said this was why the NCST had recommended to the Union Environment and Forest Ministry to put the new Forest Conservation Rules, 2022, on hold.
•“We wrote to the government about the rules, which essentially eliminate the requirement of consent of local tribespeople and forest dwellers for diversion of forest land for other purposes,” Mr. Chouhan said. He said this would amount to infringing upon the land rights of tribespeople under the Forest Rights Act.
•The rules were issued by the Environment Ministry in June this year under the Forest Conservation Act and both Environment Minister Bhupender Yadav and Tribal Affairs Minister Arjun Munda have repeatedly defended the rules.
Six-member group
•But soon after the rules were issued, the NCST formed a six-member working group that included members of the commission and experts to look into whether the rules issued in June violated any provisions in the Forest Rights Act (FRA) and if they infringed upon the rights of tribal people, according to officials.
•Based on the conclusion of this working group and repeated dialogue with villagers in forest areas and other stakeholders, the commission decided to recommend that the new rules be put on hold, Mr. Chouhan said.
•The NCST chief then wrote to the Environment Ministry on September 2, pointing out that the Ministry should, for now, focus on implementing the rules framed in 2017 and put on hold the new rules issued this year.
•It also dismissed the Tribal Affairs Ministry’s and Environment Ministry’s defence that provisions of the FRA are implemented parallelly and that the rules will not affect or dilute land rights of tribes people.
📰 This Hindi – and Hindi alone – counsel is flawed
•The 11th volume of the Report of the Official Language Committee submitted to the President of India on September 9, 2022, did not seem to evoke much interest in the media. Except the Chief Ministers of Tamil Nadu and Kerala, no other political leader reacted to the recommendations made.
A special status
•The main recommendations, as reported in a section of the print media, are that Hindi should replace English as the language of examinations for recruitment to the government; Hindi should be the only medium of instruction in Kendriya Vidyalayas, Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs), Indian Institutes of Management (IIMs) and central universities; it should be constitutionally binding on State governments to propagate Hindi, etc. The official language committee is a statutory committee constituted under Section 4 in the Official Language Act, 1963. Its duty is to review the progress made in the use of Hindi for the official purposes of the Union and submit a report to the President. The Act makes it obligatory for the President to issue directions “in accordance with the whole or any part of the report” (Section 4(4)). It can thus be seen that the committee’s recommendations are required to be acted upon.
•It is the special status of this committee’s recommendations which is crucial to the understanding of the official language policy in India. The recommendations have a mandatory character as is clear from the words “in accordance with” (Section 4(4)).
•Article 343 of the Constitution declares that Hindi in Devanagari script shall be the official language of the Union. It is common knowledge that the Constituent Assembly had witnessed a heated debate on the question of official language. The chapter on ‘Official language’ in the Constitution took final shape as a result of compromises made by the protagonists of diverse opinions. Finally, Hindi was declared the official language of the Union and it was also provided that the English language will continue for 15 years from the commencement of the Constitution. It was further provided that, if needed, Parliament may provide by law that English will continue even after the period of 15 years. Accordingly, Parliament enacted the official languages Act in 1963, providing for the continuance of English indefinitely as official language along with Hindi for the official purposes of the Union and for transaction of business in Parliament.
•The reported recommendations of the official language committee pose a problem for the President in as much as the committee says that Hindi should totally replace English as medium of instruction in central universities, IIMs, IITs, etc. The remit of the committee is to review the progress made in the use of Hindi for the official purposes of the Union and report to the President there on. Obviously the committee is not mandated to recommend the medium of instruction in universities and professional institutions. Further, since Parliament has declared by law that English shall continue along with Hindi, a statutory committee constituted under that very Act has no mandate to recommend the discontinuation of English.
Fallout in non-Hindi States
•India has seen great emotional upsurge, violent protests and immolations etc. in the country’s southern parts in the 1960s as a result of an attempt by the then Union government to exclude English and replace it with Hindi. So, Parliament had to provide for the continuance of English also to assuage troubled feelings in the southern region. The provision allowing English to be used indefinitely helped douse the flames. It does not require any great research to understand that the language issue has the potential to emotionally divide people. It is not a question of the willingness or the unwillingness of people of a region to learn Hindi. The issues are more complex. An example. Once Hindi replaces English, the language used in the examination for recruitment to the all India services will be Hindi alone.
•Therefore, candidates from the non-Hindi States, the south in particular, will face a great disadvantage when compared to those whose mother tongue is Hindi. The result would be a gradual elimination of candidates from the non-Hindi region from the all India services. The Constitution makers anticipated this problem, which is why the Constitution provides in Article 344(3) that the commission on official language shall have “due regard to the just claims and interests of persons belonging to the non-Hindi speaking areas in regard to public services”.
•India has two major groups of languages — the Indo-European language group and the Dravidian language group. Hindi belongs to the former and Tamil ( more ancient than Sanskrit) belongs to the latter. All the prominent languages in the Dravidian group, i.e., Tamil, Telugu, Malayalam and Kannada, have rich literature. However, it was English which brought the northern and southern regions together. In the Constituent Assembly, Maulana Azad had said: “we have got to admit that so far as language is concerned North and South are two different parts. The union of North and South has been made possible only through the medium of English. If today we give up English then this linguistic relationship will cease to exist”.
•The idea of one official language for the Union is a product of the freedom struggle which promoted Hindustani, a mixture of Hindi and Urdu. Later, when the Constitution was framed, the idea of Hindustani was given up and Hindi in the Devanagari script was adopted as the sole official language. In a country where there are two major language groups, the idea of one official language may not go far in fostering the unity of the people. It may, in the long run, give rise to serious imbalances in regional representation in the all India services as well as the personnel structure of the Union government.
A changing world requires English use
•Further, since the southern States cannot decide who will rule from Delhi and influence the decision making of the Union, it is all the more necessary to address the concerns of the people of this region on account of language. Hindi is a simple and elegant language which has been given its rightful place as the official language of the Union. While doing so the Constitution makers took care to see to it that English continues to be used as an official language along with Hindi. They left it to Parliament to decide the future of English which decided, through a legislative measure, to continue with English indefinitely. The mood of the Constituent Assembly was in large measure influenced by the freedom struggle, the nationalistic fervour it generated and, above all, Gandhiji’s strong advocacy of a national language for the country. That mood slowly changed over the years as India began interacting with the world. So, by the 1960s, the political class realised that English was crucial in acquiring knowledge in science and technology as well as in other fields of human activity. Therefore, Parliament decided to continue with English.
•The overwhelming public opinion in the south is that English should continue as one of the official languages. Today, the Union has Hindi and English as two official languages — as in Canada which has English and French as its official languages. In these circumstances, the policymakers should seriously think of making the provision constitutionally that Hindi and English should be the official languages of the Union. We love Hindi and all other Indian languages. Therefore, all efforts should be made to ensure their natural development so as to be able to meet the requirements of modern science and technology. At the same time we need English to better understand science and the world around us and beyond.
📰 Withdraw new AIIMS rules for treating MPs that promote ‘VIP culture’: doctors to Health Minister
•The Federation of All India Medical Association (FAIMA) has demanded immediate withdrawal of the new set of standard operating procedures (SOP) issued by M. Srinivas, Director, All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS), Delhi, aimed at streamlining treatment arrangements for sitting MPs at the outpatient department, emergency consultation, and for in-patient hospitalisation.
•In his letter earlier this week to Y.M. Kandpal, Joint Secretary, Lok Sabha Secretariat, the AIIMS Director said duty officers, who are qualified medical professionals, from the Department of Hospital Administration will be available at the AIIMS control room round the clock to coordinate and facilitate arrangements for MPs.
•Stating that this goes against the culture of AIIMS and promotes “VIP culture”, the FAIMA on Thursday wrote to Union Health Minister Mansukh Mandaviya seeking his urgent intervention.
•The association said the orders had adversely affected the morale of doctors, and added that inequality in terms of health care was unacceptable.
•Rohan Krishnan, the FAIMA president, said it was disheartening that an institution like AIIMS was setting a bad precedent. “Every patient in this country deserves good treatment — that includes an MP and also a homeless person,” Dr. Krishnan said.
•The Federation of Resident Doctors Association (FRDA) also condemned the move and said no patient should suffer at the cost of another’s privileges. “Having said this, a protocol to streamline things should not be viewed as derogatory, provided it doesn’t hamper patient care,” the FRDA noted.
Fresh set of directions
•“...The officer on duty will be the nodal officer to coordinate and facilitate requisite medical care arrangements for sitting MPs,” the AIIMS Director’s letter said.
•Dr. Srinivas, in his communication, said in case a sitting MP requires OPD consultation from a speciality/super-speciality department, the Lok Sabha/Rajya Sabha Secretariat or the personal staff of the MP will contact the duty officer and provide details about the ailment and specialist/super-specialist doctor to be consulted.
📰 Addressing north India’s burning issue sustainably
•The monsoon has receded, and North India is bracing for a smoggy winter. And with that the feverish focus on crop stubble burning has returned to India’s public discourse. Like each year, discussions have begun on how bad this year’s stubble burning season will likely be and what potential ad hoc techno-fixes could solve the issue — in the short term.
A problem that is historic
•We will soon read in-depth analyses of satellite image-derived counts of the number of fires observed on each day, and source apportionment studies that determine the exact contribution of stubble burning to poor air quality. The purportedly apathetic farmer who cares little about the well-being of Delhi’s urban citizenry will be held to a high standard of environmental stewardship, and the inevitable political mudslinging will follow soon. However, this heated public discourse adopts an unhelpful adversarial frame to a complex challenge. The problem is a historic one that cannot be fixed with short-term, unsustainable solutions.
•The root cause of stubble burning can be traced back to the 1960s-70s, when to meet the urgent challenge of feeding its rapidly growing population, India introduced several measures as part of its Green Revolution. The Green Revolution transformed the way agriculture was practised, especially in Punjab and Haryana. The economics of high-yielding varieties of paddy and wheat, supported by a guaranteed buyer (the government) and minimum support prices led to a crop duopoly oriented solely around increasing caloric intakes, supplanting the earlier diversity of crops grown in the region.
•Further policy moves in subsequent decades, which included the introduction of subsidies for electricity and fertilizers, and ease of access for credit in agriculture only served to cement this duopoly. But this transition to a two-crop agricultural praxis, while filling godowns and feeding mouths, has been depleting the water table, increasing pesticide and fertilizer use exponentially. It has also led to the consolidation of small farms into larger landholdings.
•In an attempt to address the growing water crisis, the Punjab and Haryana governments introduced laws around water conservation, encouraging farmers to look to the monsoon rather than groundwater to irrigate their crops. The shortened harvesting season that arose resulting from a not clearly thought-out policy move brought about the need for farmers to rapidly clear their fields between the kharif and rabi crops; the quickest of these ways was to burn off the remaining stubble post-harvest.
•The repercussion of stubble burning is felt all through the Indo-Gangetic Plain (IGP) airshed, where what is burned in Punjab and Haryana has an impact on air quality all the way down to Bihar and West Bengal. With studies showing a large contribution of stubble burning emissions on winter air quality in the National Capital Region, the demand for governments to act on this seemingly avoidable practice translated initially into a criminalisation of the act.
No significant improvement
•More recently, however, with concerted focus on the subject, a series of short-term ex-situ and in-situ solutions have been rolled out by the Union and State governments. In-situ solutions include happy seeders and bio-decomposers, while the ex-situ solutions include collecting and using stubble as fuel in boilers, to produce ethanol, or to simply burn away alongside coal in thermal power plants. Economic incentives to reduce burning have also been tested with limited success. With crores invested in these solutions over the last five years, we have yet to see any significant improvement in the situation.
Meaningful steps that are needed
•Driven largely by short-term thinking, these techno-fixes or alternative uses work at the margins, without addressing the root cause. As pointed out in a recent article, the entire value-chain of agriculture in the region needs to change if air quality, water, nutrition, and climate goals are to be addressed. In practical terms, this means substantially reducing the amount of paddy being grown in the region and replacing it with other crops that are equally high-yielding, in-demand, and agro-ecologically suitable such as cotton, maize, pulses and oil seeds. It will also require building trust with farmers to ensure they are seen as partners (rather than perpetrators) and providing them the financial support necessary.
•At a policy level, it also requires recognising that agriculture, nutrition, water, the environment, and the economy are all deeply intertwined in the era of the Anthropocene. One cannot be addressed in a silo without having second and third order effects on the other. Therefore, taking the long view on this would also mean establishing a mechanism for intersectoral policymaking that aligns our goals for sectoral policy within the broad frame of sustainable development we wish to follow.
•A transition at this scale has not been witnessed since the Green Revolution, but it is what is required if we are to address stubble burning in the long run. Fostering the conditions necessary for such a transition is complex. Whether our institutions have the right mix of political will and professional skill to do so remains to be seen.
•Which regions of the State have vulture populations? What are the reasons for the decline in vulture numbers? Are they man-made or natural? What steps do experts recommend in order to save the four species found in the State? What are the measures being taken by the State government?
•On October 19, the Tamil Nadu government formed a committee to set up an institutional framework for the effective conservation of vultures. Tamil Nadu boasts the largest population of vultures south of the Vindhiya Mountain Range.
•Vulture numbers are decreasing over the last few years, with experts attributing the cause to lesser availability of prey as well as erratic weather. Experts also agree that the use of some Non-Steroidal Anti-Inflammatory Drugs to treat cattle has led to the crash in vulture populations across India.
•The State government has banned the use of diclofenac to treat cattle, while there are strict restrictions for the sale of other NSAIDs in the Nilgiris, Erode and Coimbatore districts.
The story so far:
•On October 19, the Tamil Nadu government formed a committee to set up an institutional framework for the effective conservation of vultures. The State is home to four species of vultures — the white-rumped vulture (Gyps bengalensis), long-billed vultures (Gyps indicus), the Asian king-vulture (Sarcogyps calvus) and the Egyptian vulture (Neophron percnopterus).
Which areas in Tamil Nadu have vulture populations?
•While there have been reported sightings of vultures in other districts including Dharmapuri; essentially the Nilgiris, Erode and Coimbatore districts are believed to form one of the largest contiguous expanses where vultures are spotted. Home to the nesting sites of three of the four species of vultures seen in the State, the Mudumalai Tiger Reserve, parts of the Nilgiris forest division and the Sathyamangalam Tiger Reserve are crucial strongholds for the vultures in southern India. Occasional migrants such as the Himalayan griffon vulture and the Cinerous vulture are also spotted each year. Tamil Nadu boasts the largest population of vultures south of the Vindhiya Mountain Range.
•In the Nilgiris, researchers and forest department officials estimate that there are between 100 and 120 white-rumped vultures, 10 and 15 long-billed vultures and less than 10 Asian king vultures. Though Egyptian vultures are spotted in the Sigur plateau, encompassing the Nilgiris and Erode districts, they are not believed to use the landscape to breed, while researchers still remain unsuccessful in tracing the breeding sites of the critically endangered Asian king-vulture.
Are vulture numbers decreasing?
•While the population of the vultures in the Nilgiris, Erode and Coimbatore districts has remained largely stable, experts state that the numbers are still extremely low, and that even a single poisoning event could lead to several of the species going locally extinct, especially the long-billed and Asian king vulture. Over the last few years, breeding seasons have also seen fewer hatchings than is the norm, with experts attributing the cause to lesser availability of prey as well as erratic weather.
•Experts also agree that the use of some Non-Steroidal Anti-Inflammatory Drugs (NSAIDs) to treat cattle, such as diclofenac, nimesulide, ketoprofen among others, has led to the crash in vulture populations across India.
What role do vultures play in the local ecosystem?
•As scavengers, vultures help prevent the spread of many diseases and can remove toxins from entering the environment by consuming carcasses of dead cattle/wildlife before they decompose. Unfortunately, their tolerance for harmful substances does not extend to man-made drugs.
What are the challenges which impact vultures in the State?
•There are multiple. For one, temple tourism in the Sigur plateau is centred primarily around vulture habitats, such as Siriyur, Anaikatty and Bokkapuram. Over the last few years, there have been recorded instances of vultures abandoning nesting sites located too close to temples inside these reserves, with activists calling for strict controls on the amount of people allowed to attend these festivals.
•Another threat is the spread of invasive weeds such as the Lantana camara in vulture-landscapes, which hinder the birds from scavenging as their large wing-spans require plenty of open area to safely land and to take to the skies in case of any major threats. Finally, due to the illegal tapping of water along the streams running through these areas, possible climate change, and forest fires, the Terminalia arjuna trees, that many vultures use as nesting sites are disappearing. Only through a multipronged approach of increasing the amount of food available to the birds and managing invasive species can vulture numbers start rebounding, say experts.
What are the steps taken to protect vultures in the State?
•The State government has banned the use of diclofenac, a drug, to treat cattle, while there are strict restrictions for the sale of other NSAIDs in the Nilgiris, Erode and Coimbatore districts. Additionally, as the vultures in the Sigur plateau utilise landscapes in neighboring Karnataka and Kerala, experts have called for a synchronous vulture census to accurately identify vulture populations and nesting sites.
