March 2016 Archives

Assam Chief Minister Tarun Gogoi Faces Stiff Challenge in Home Base

After 15 years of Congress rule, the people of Assam appear to want a change. But will this mean victory for the BJP or simply a jolt for Tarun Gogoi and his party in the upcoming state elections?

Chief Minister Tarun Gogoi. Credit: PTI

Titabor (Assam): As we approached Titabor in Jorhat district, Assam Chief Minister Tarun Gogoi’s constituency, dark clouds covered the skies.

“It is likely to rain heavily,” warned my driver, and said that I may have to leave the township without attending the many public meetings that Gogoi was scheduled to address during the day.

Yet we drove on, some 15 kms from the town – a number of Congress flags were hanging from the windowsills of houses and shops along the way, interspersed by a few Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) flags and posters – to arrive at its outskirts at Borhola.

In Borhola, about a hundred people were waiting for Gogoi’s helicopter to arrive at the playground of the local high school. The weather improved a bit and Gogoi landed, much to the delight of the congregation. An old woman came forward to touch the Congress veteran’s feet saying, “We are with you.”

Amid pro-Congress and pro-Gogoi sloganeering, an enthused chief minister – elected from the constituency three times in a row – started for the venue of the day’s first public meeting in Borhola’s Shanti Path area.

As a crowd of 4000-odd people filling up a local open-air auditorium, Gogoi did not waste much time and tore into Prime Minister Narendra Modi, particularly for taking shots at him a day earlier in Majuli regarding his age.

“Yesterday, Modi made me 90 years old, which I am not. He might insinuate that I am redundant because of my old age but I want to ask you, are all old people useless? In his party surely old people are thrown aside. Senior BJP leaders like Murli Manohar Joshi, Jaswant Singh, were thrown aside after they became 70 years. This is not Congress’s culture. We don’t count age as a deterrent.”

He continued his anti-Modi tirade, “Modi always says Congress has not done anything in the last 60 years in Assam. If Congress has not done it, then who has brought Assam to this level of development and public security? People know in what condition Assam was before 2001 (before Gogoi became the chief minister). People were scared to come out of their homes then; there was law and order problem everywhere. The same BJP government was then at the Centre and the Asom Gana Parishad was ruling Assam. So many secret killings took place those days. They nearly destroyed Assam. Now both the parties have come together yet again. The BJP has nothing else to do but to only spread misinformation…”

Gogoi also did not spare his opponent, the BJP’s chief ministerial candidate, Sarbananda Sonowal. “Modi called him a diamond, a heera, yesterday (on March 26). He may have diamonds, pearls and silver with him, I have copper and iron, the common people of the state. Suddenly, Sonowal, accused in a murder case (of a student leader Sourab Borah in Titabor constituency) and Himanta (Biswa Sarma), embroiled in corruption, are diamonds and silvers.”

A formidable opponent

As political bigwigs compete to announce more appealing “special packages” every now and then during the ongoing campaign, Gogoi too has announced a special package for the people of Titabor if re-elected in the April 4 polls.

As a seasoned politician, and having seen this party through many ups and downs in Assam over the years, Gogoi is well aware that this time he has a formidable opponent in Kamakhya Tasa, the BJP’s state vice president. In the 2014 Lok Sabha elections, Tasa, formerly the president of the All Assam Tea Students Association, did the unthinkable; he defeated the Congress’ six-time winner, Bijoy Handique, from the Jorhat parliamentary constituency by an impressive margin of one lakh votes. A shocked Congress went down in a constituency that it took for granted for decades.

How much of those votes the BJP has managed to retain in the area is a question both the Congress and the BJP are anxiously awaiting the answer to.

Kamkhya Tasa could pose a challenge for the Congress with the tea tribe vote. Credit: Wikimedia Commons

A local correspondent of an Assamese daily said, “In the 2014 Lok Sabha elections, Handique was ahead of Tasa in Titabor but Tasa bagged a lot of votes from the Teok assembly constituency, which changed his fate from a possible loser to a clear winner. The gardens of Teok are much bigger than those of Titabor. So those votes were an important deciding factor in the Jorhat parliamentary elections. However, since it is an assembly election now, those votes naturally won’t count. So he needs to pull not just the votes of the tea tribe living in and around the gardens of Titabor but also the general votes to win the seat. Besides having some traditional base among the general voters in Titabor, Congress also has a lot of hold among the tea tribe. The tea workers union is with the Congress. Whether Tasa will be able to get a good number of both the tea tribe and general votes is now the question.”

If the crowd at the February 22 padyatra led by Sonowal and Sarma in Gogoi’s home turf in support of Tasa is any indication, the BJP candidate has been able to rustle up considerable support. During the 15-km padyatra from Rajabahar to Borhola, Sonowal urged the people “to give a chance to (the) BJP to form a government in the state to ensure all-round development irrespective of caste, community, tribe and religion.”

Speaking to The Wire, Tasa, who joined the BJP in 2004, asserted, “(The) media should not only look at voters from the community angle. I am a popular leader; both the tea tribe and general people are supporting me. In that padyatra, there were a large number of people; I don’t want to identify them community wise. It is Congress’s communal strategy to categorise people that way, not ours.”

He adds, “I got 40,000 votes from the Titabor area in 2014 Lok Sabha elections. Even though 10,000 votes have gone away from BJP in the last two years, I will start at 30,000 certainly.”

Time for change?

A wave for change can be felt while talking to a cross-section of people in the constituency. Many are seeking “a change after 15 years”. This hope for “change” seems to supersede development work, and the populist schemes, at some places. Most agree that the township has seen progress in Gogoi’s time, that “people are getting three rupee rice every month,” “free mosquito nets, blankets and thread for weaving,” yet some feel, “there should be a new dispensation just for a change.”

Some complains though exist on the ground. “The pace of some development work was slow despite it has been the CM’s constituency for so long. The roads in the town area and Borhola are certainly very good, but those in Bokajan and Bukahola areas are not. Also, only a select few people of the constituency have benefited from Gogoi, they have become rich businessmen,” claimed Bulen Boruah, a shop owner in Titabor Chariali and a native of Bukahola.

The BJP is hoping to hook such voters. Meeting after meeting in the constituency, Tasa has been harping on corruption, nepotism, slow development, unemployment and the lack of progress in the rural areas.

The numbers game

Although Tasa is being projected as a general candidate to both the media and the voters in the constituency, there is no denying that one of the main reasons the BJP decided to field him in Titabor is because of his tea tribe identity. The party is hoping he will be able to pull a good chunk of the over-45000 votes the tribe has in the constituency, the largest vote share there. The tribe, to whom the Centre has promised scheduled tribes status, are mostly engaged in the many tea gardens of the area. The community has been commonly considered a traditional vote bank of the Congress, and many political observers believe the party will be able to retain a good share of the tribe’s vote despite the BJP fielding a well-known candidate from the community.

“(The) Congress will certainly pull the tea garden voters in Titabor but I doubt how much of it will be from the youth who is now educated and is an aspirational class,” says well-known political commentator Nani Gopal Mahanta. The youth, he hinted, would swing to the BJP “to bring in change”.

Besides the tea tribe, the Congress has a strong traditional pocket borough in the Muslim-dominated Melamati area of Titabor. On March 27, at a public gathering attended by Gogoi, the community pledged their 24,000 votes to Congress.

“Also, the Assamese Thengal Kacharis are with Gogoi. Congress district president Bimala Sonowal is from the community; she will certainly ensure her community’s votes,” claimed a local Congress leader to this correspondent.

But Tasa said, “Like (the) Congress, (the) BJP doesn’t have a traditional voter base in Assam. We are dependent only on the goodwill of the people. Our poll plank is change, end of corruption and unemployment, and development of the area.”

Local BJP members also accused the Congress of “using money power” to win the elections. “We heard that a lot of money has changed hands in the tea garden areas to buy votes,” claimed one BJP Titabor committee member, naming a few names from the Congress camp too.

There is also the “outsider” question hovering over Tasa in Titabor. Although Tasa is from the Hatikhuli Tea Estate area of Bokakhat constituency, which falls under the Kolibor parliamentary constituency, neighbouring the Jorhat parliamentary constituency, he doesn’t belong to Titabor. At a public meeting, Gogoi referenced the issue: “I am from this area; I spent my childhood here. My father belonged to this place. People know me here. I am no outsider.”

Gogoi, whose father was a doctor in a local tea garden, has his ancestral house in Titabor and a part of his larger family resides in the township. Before contesting the assembly elections, Gogoi had been a formidable candidate from the Jorhat parliamentary constituency. Old timers still recall that he defeated the bigwig of Assam’s tea industry, Heman Borooah, in the Lok Sabha elections in the early 1970s.

In the 2011 assembly contest, Gogoi won the Titabor seat by 65,418 votes, with 11,219 votes going to the Asom Gana Parishad candidate Montu Moni Dutta. However, the times have certainly changed.

Satyen Hazarika, a pan shop owner in the main market of Titabor and whose family (from the local Sutia community) have traditionally been Congress supporters, sums up for this correspondent a trend he has been noticing in the last few weeks in the area, “Whether Gogoi has done development or not, people generally are looking at a change after 15 years of Congress rule. But people of Assam usually don’t want a CM candidate to lose from their constituency. So Gogoi is going to win from Titabor but he will win only by 2000-3000 votes.”

Perhaps the dark clouds over Titabor before Gogoi’s intensified campaigning were ominous.

Freedom Under Fire: VHP Gets Muslim Officer’s Name Cut from Temple Invite; Irom Sharmila Barred from Addressing JNU Students

A round-up of news, both bad and good, on the rights front from India.

A round-up of news, both bad and good, on the rights front from India.

Credit: rhinman/Flickr, CC BY 2.0.

HC orders reprint of invitations for Mahalingeshwara temple event without Muslim DC’s name

According to reports in Mangalorean News and Hindustan Times, the Karnataka High Court has responded to writ petitions objecting to the inclusion of the name of a Muslim IAS officer in a temple invitation on Wednesday and ordered that the invitations be reprinted without his name.

Earlier this month, the invitation to an annual temple festival at Mahalingeshewara temple in Puttur, Karnataka received objections from the Vishwa Hindu Parishad and Bajrang Dal because it carried the name of Dakshina Kannada Deputy Commissioner AB Ibrahim. Speaking to CNN-IBN, Ibrahim had said that he had done a lot for the temple and nobody had objected then. He also added that his name has been on several temple invites in the region before, with no trouble.

House ethics panel recommends expulsion of Delhi BJP MLA OP Sharma over sexist comment

The ethics panel of the Delhi assembly has called BJP MLA OP Sharma a “habitual offender” and recommended his expulsion, The Times of India reported. This comes in light of his derogatory and sexist remarks about AAP MLA Alka Lamba on the floor of the house in November. Sharma has called the report “politically motivated”.

OP Sharma is the same BJP MLA who was caught on camera thrashing CPI leader Ameeque Jamai outside the Patiala House courts in February this year.

How can women be stopped if men are allowed in temple, says High Court

According to a PTI report, the Bombay High Court observed yesterday that if men are allowed in a place of worship then women should also be permitted as no law prevents them. This was in response to a PIL filed by an activist and a senior advocate challenging the bar on entry of women in the sanctum sanctorum of Shani Shingnapur temple in Ahmednagar district of Maharashtra.

Irom Sharmila not allowed to address JNU students

The Delhi trial court on Wednesday acquitted rights activist Irom Sharmila of charges of attempting to commit suicide during a fast-unto-death in the capital in 2006.

A Hindustan Times report said that a march of JNU students was stopped by a police barricade when they tried to approach Manipur House, where Sharmila is staying. Though she was able to greet them from the other side of the barricade, police said that they could not let her address the gathering because she was still under judicial custody after refusing to sign a personal recognizance bond earlier this month.

Sharmila has been on hunger strike for 16 years now, demanding that AFSPA be revoked from Manipur. She spoke to The Wire the day before the judgment came in.

Do you know of any other incident we should highlight in this column? Write to me at jahnavi@cms.thewire.in.

Tata’s Corus UK Pullout is Part of the Great Indian Rollback of Overseas Acquisitions

India’s MNCs must learn to take it slowly in small bites and avoid being swept along by a desire for size rather than precise business logic.

Tata Steel’s decision late last night to seek buyers for its Corus steel business in the UK is the latest example of Indian companies finding they rushed too quickly and expensively into large foreign acquisitions that were all the rage a decade ago. Some have been successful, notably Tata’s Jaguar Land Rover (JLR) car business but, for many, the burdens of rising debt, falling markets and lack of international savvy and expertise have led them to sell what they had bought during the “India shining” years of the 2000s.

The Corus decision is a blow for the prestige of both Tata, one of India’s largest and most respectable conglomerates, and its former chairman, Ratan Tata, who drove the $13.6 billion acquisition in 2007 despite opposition from some colleagues. This was part of a plan to spread the group’s many businesses across the globe – $20 billion was spent on foreign take-overs during Ratan Tata’s time in charge. Shedding Corus is the biggest and toughest decision taken by Cyrus Mistry, who took over as head of the group from Ratan Tata in 2012, presiding over (2012 figures) $100 billion-plus revenues, more than half from 80 countries overseas.

It is also a blow for India – both the UK and Indian governments have been proud to boast that Tata is the biggest employer in the UK’s manufacturing industry, which it will no longer be once it loses Tata Steel’s 15,000 employees. Efforts have now started to find buyers at the same time as trade union opposition is being organised, with calls for the British government to help in what is becoming a major political issue over the future of the UK’s steel industry.

The deal looked logical because of synergy between Tata’s iron ore mining and steel producing business in India with Corus’s blast furnaces, rolling mills and other allied operations in the UK. But the purchase price was high, the steel slumped internationally and Corus could not compete. With its mentor, Ratan Tata, gone and Mistry needing to shed debt, last night’s news was perhaps inevitable.

Up for sale is Britain’s biggest steelworks at Port Talbot. It employs 4,000 people and is losing £1m a day, which will make it hard to find a buyer though there are some suggestions the UK government might consider temporary nationalisation. Plants in South Yorkshire, County Durham and Northamptonshire will also be put on the market.

In May 2007, I wrote in Fortune magazine about “the first flush of nationalistic fervour” that had greeted the Corus takeover and commented that there had been “so much foreign acquisition talk by Indian companies it seemed as if herd instinct had replaced financial caution”. And indeed, it had. Indian companies had reported 34 foreign acquisitions totalling $10.4bn as completed or pending so far that year, according to Dealogic, a British research firm. The total for the year 2006 was $23bn.

Tata Corus steel plant at Port Talbot in the United Kingdom. Credit: Ben Salter/Flickr CC 2.0

(That is small compared with China’s current international acquisitions. TheWall Street Journal has reported Chinese companies did deals worth roughly $68 billion in the first few weeks of this year, which is about half the total for all of last year, according to Dealogic.)

“Many companies had surplus cash, access to easy money, and hubris – an over-inflated view of what they could achieve,” a Mumbai banker said to me today.

To begin with, the overseas acquisitions were seen as an example of Indian companies growing up enough to venture outside their home markets. But by about 2009-2010, the story changed because bankers and businessmen wanted to castigate the Congress led government and its environment minister Jairam Ramesh, for making India such an unattractive place to invest that they were fleeing abroad. That may have been true in some cases, but it was mostly political spin.

Unsustainable

Coal mines, steel plants, and power and other infrastructure projects top the lists of industries where Indian companies rushed headlong into unsustainable commitments.

Leading the pack of companies with problems caused by expanding too fast and too far is Arcelor Mittal, the world’s largest steel company that is controlled by Calcutta-born London based Lakshmi Mittal, which made an $8 billion loss last year.

Companies shedding assets include Suzlon Energy, the world’s fifth-largest wind turbine maker and a stock market favourite some years ago, and a clutch of new infrastructure companies such as GMR, GVK and Lanco with interests in airports and other power, infrastructure and mining businesses. Fortis Healthcare, run by part of the family that developed the Ranbaxy pharmaceuticals company, had a hospitals and allied businesses’ buying splurge in Singapore, Australia, Hong Kong and Vietnam and then shed assets.

Bharti AirTel, India’s biggest mobile telecom operator, over-reached when it assumed it could easily cope with mobile businesses across Africa. It has sold operations in places such as Burkina Faso and Sierra Leone as well as shedding a telecom towers business to raise cash. Mukesh Ambani’s Reliance Industries got out of a US shale gas investment (though it profited from it financially, investing $254m and selling for $1bn five years later).

The Aditya Birla group did well with smallish acquisitions in carbon black and viscose fibre but then, seemingly left behind by other companies that were rushing abroad, acquired Novelis, a US industrial aluminium company, for $6 billion. That seemed a neat fit with Birla’s Hindalco bauxite and aluminium producing business, but Birla paid too much and has been saddled with a financial burden.

There have of course been successes. Tata Motors provided Jaguar Land Rover with the financial strength and management commitment and focus that it had lacked under Ford, the previous owner. It was thus able to build on design work for new models that Ford had started.

Bharat Forge (Kalyani group) and the Mahindra group have also done well with relatively small scale acquisitions in manufacturing businesses linked with the auto industry. There have also been successes in the information technology area with the industry leaders such as Tata’s TCS, Wipro and Infosys plus smaller players, in healthcare by the Godrej group for example, and in the pharmaceutical industry.

So all is not lost and lessons have maybe been learned – take it slowly in small bites and avoid being swept along by a desire for size rather than precise business logic.

John Elliott is a Delhi-based journalist who writes a blog ridingtheelephant.wordpress.com

The Crisis at Hyderabad University: An Explainer

Puzzled by recent events on the HCU campus? Here’s a handy timeline of what’s gone on over the past few months.

July-August 2015: ABVP and ASA clash

On July 30, students of the Ambedkar Students’ Association (ASA) at Hyderabad Central University took part in an event that spoke of the hanging of Yakub Menon, executed in 2015 for his role in the 1993 Bombay bombings. The ABVP (youth wing of the BJP) said this was nothing but a funeral meeting meant to rake up “communal tensions”.

Soon after, the ASA organised a protest against the “ABVP’s hooliganism” and disruption of the screening of the documentary Muzaffarnagar Baaqi Hai in Delhi. After this, an ABVP student on Facebook called all ASA members “goons”. ASA members allegedly barged into his hostel room late at night and demanded an apology. He wrote the apology, but then claimed that the ASA members had “attacked” him. A police case was filed and ASA members were taken into custody for a few hours. Five ASA members including Rohith Vemula were suspended for 6 months after a proctorial committee report, but this suspension was revoked by the acting VC at the time. The suspended students denied all charges of having hurt the ABVP member, and enquiry committees also could not ascertain whether it had happened.

December 2015: Vemula and others suspended from hostel

The new vice-chancellor Appa Rao Podile set up a new committee to look into the incident. This committee suspended the students from hostel. The students began sleeping in the open as to mark their protest.

January 17, 2016: Rohith Vemula’s suicide

Rohith Vemula. Source: Facebook

Dalit research scholar Rohith Vemula committed suicide in a hostel room on the HCU campus. His poignant suicide note was widely shared on social media. Widespread protests followed all over the country, condemning the role of Union ministers, the VC and the university administration in pushing the student to this point. Several people have since referred to Vemula’s suicide as an “institutional murder”.

A letter trail publicised after the suicide showed that Union labour minister Bandar Dattatreya and Union HRD minister Smriti Irani had written to the HCU administration asking that action be taken against Vemula and his ASA colleagues. Dattatreya had referred to Vemula and others as ‘anti-national’ and ‘casteist’.

January 18, 2016: Podile, Dattatreya and 3 others booked under SC/ST Atrocities Act

The Hyderabad police booked Podile, Dattatreya, BJP leader Ramachandra Rao and 2 students at HCU under the SC/ST Prevention of Atrocities Act for abetting Vemula’s suicide.

January 24, 2016: HCU VCAppa Rao Podile goes on leave

Following intense protests against him, Podile went on “long leave” in order to “facilitate talks with protesting students”. While going on leave, he had said: “I cannot say at this moment how many days I will be on leave. I have decided to be on leave till normalcy is restored. I have been in touch with the faculty and likeminded organisations to enable talks”.

February 26, 2016: Irani speaks in parliament; Vemula’s friends, family rebuff claims

Screen grab of HRD Minister Smriti Irani speaking in Parliament

HRD minister Smriti Irani spoke in both houses of parliament, addressing those who said she and other ministers from her government were responsible for Vemula’s suicide. Irani made several claims in her speeches, many of which were not factually correct, according to Rohith’s family and friends.

March 22, 2016: Podile returns to campus; police beat up and arrest protesting students and teachers

The vice-chancellor decided to return to campus on the morning of March 22, without prior intimation. Leaked “task sheets” have shown that Podile’s return was organised with precision. Outraged students held a protest outside the VC’s lodge, and the administration and media reports alleged that protesting students broke furniture and glass panes. The students present have disagreed, saying that although there was a scuffle, things were broken because the ABVP used them to form a ring around the VC’s lodge and protect the VC.

Police, CRPF and RAF forces came to the campus, and students assembled on the lawns outside the VC’s lodge were brutally removed and lathi charged. Some students were badly injured and had to be taken to hospitals, sources have said. Students have also said that they were abused and insulted, and female students were threatened with rape. Students from minority communities were allegedly called “terrorists”.

25 students and 2 teachers were arrested from the campus. All night, there was no news of those arrested and their whereabouts. It was later found that they were kept at Cherapally jail, though they had been moved through several locations on the first night.

Cases were booked on charges of damage to public property, trespass, preventing government officials from performing their duties, and other relevant sections of IPC, PTI reported.

March 22, 2016: Food, drinking water, internet facilities stopped

Non-teaching staff at the university went on strike after a scuffle with protesting students, meaning that students had no food or water available to them on campus. In addition, students alleged that internet facilities as well as ATM cards had been blocked by the administration.

Nobody without university identity cards, including the media, was allowed to enter the campus. Eyewitness accounts came in as students tried to get their message across. Rohith Vemula’s mother was also stopped at the gates when she tried to meet with students.

March 23, 2016: Community cooking disrupted; another student beaten up

Students started cooking together in a common area since messes were not functioning. However, the police intervened and did not let this happen, roughing up students yet again. PhD student Uday Bhanu was so badly hit that he had to be admitted to a hospital.

March 28, 2016: HCU students and teachers get bail

The court granted bail to all HCU students and teachers who had been arrested on March 22, 6 days after their arrest. They were released on March 29. They continue to demand the removal of the VC and justice for Rohith Vemula.

March 28, 2016: Appa Rao Podile issues an appeal

The VC stated that students add a lot to “the GDP of the country”. Students should then “rise above anger and confrontational attitudes”, he said. He also made an effort to justify why he had not intervened on behalf of arrested students and teachers.

March 29, 2016: Protests continue

Around 55 teachers went on strike at HCU to protest against the police brutality on campus and the return of Podile. Several students’ and teachers’ associations have spoken out in solidarity with the protests at HCU. Support continues coming in from various quarters, both national and international.

A Historian’s View of an Iconic Stretch of Water

‘The Channel’ offers a fascinating insight into the history of the ‘English’ Channel during the 18th century, and also tackles some of the big questions about identity and sovereignty that continue to be pertinent today.

‘The Channel’ offers a fascinating insight into the history of the ‘English’ Channel during the 18th century, and also tackles some of the big questions about identity and sovereignty that continue to be pertinent today.

The English Channel as seen from a satellite. Credit: Wikimedia Commons

An image of a rowing boat takes pride of place in the ornamental stonework above the doorway of 10 Halsmere Road in south London. The house was built in the 1930s as a home for district nurses serving a deprived area of Lambeth. Aboard the boat several figures hunker down as they pull their oars through a choppy sea. Above their heads, a sturdy oak tree symbolises their destination: England. Today the motif of a perilous sea journey is once again particularly poignant.

The bas relief in Halsmere Road tells the story of the Minet family who, in the late 17th century, escaped religious persecution in France to seek sanctuary in Britain. The fortunes of this family, who over the course of 200 years prospered to become property-owners and benefactors, are recounted in riveting detail by Renaud Morieux in The Channel: England, France and the Construction of a Maritime Border in the Eighteenth Century, published on March 31 by Cambridge University Press.

The first book to look at the history of the narrow seas which connect Britain and the Continent, The Channel examines the enduring symbolism, and permeability, of one of the world’s most iconic borders. Morieux was born and raised in France and now teaches British history at Cambridge. He is ideally qualified to explore the narratives of the stretch of water that separates and joins Britain and France.

The focus of Morieux’s research is on maritime rather than naval history and his book looks at the experiences of the communities who made their living on or beside the sea during the extended 18th century. In the telling of these stories, some local, some national, he raises some of the bigger political and philosophical questions about identity, sovereignty and border-control.

The Channel, a strait only 21 miles at its narrowest, has for centuries been perceived as a divider – a body of water that gives Britain its unique, and much trumpeted, identity as an island. “La nature a placé l’Angleterre et la France dans une situation respective, qui doit nécessairement établir entres elles une éternelle rivalité,”declared the propagandist Jean-Louis Dubroca in 1802. His assertion translates as: “Nature has placed England and France in a geographical location which must necessarily set up an eternal rivalry between them.”

Generations of British historians plugged a similar line (among them John Seeley and George Macaulay Trevelyan, both Regius Professors of History at Cambridge) to represent Britain as a thrusting sea-faring nation, shaped by its rocky shores. The almost sacrosanct idea of borders connects with the notion that geography creates natural divisions. Almost three centuries ago, the geographer Jean-Nicholas Buache de La Neuville wrote: “Nature herself had parcelled out the globe since its beginning; she had divided up its surface unto an infinite number of parts and had separated them from each other by barriers that neither time nor human intervention can ever destroy.”

But Morieux’s thesis is that the narrow Channel joined as well as divided – and acts as a zone for contact as well as conflict. As a body of water, it creates opportunities for trade and transport, informal and cultural exchanges. Britain and France were famously at war for much of the ‘long’ 18th century, between the Nine Years’ War of 1689-1697, which set William of Orange’s England and his European allies against Louis XIV’s France and the wars of the French Revolution, which ended with Waterloo in 1815.

But even in times of war, for the maritime and coastal communities of Britain and France, business continued much as usual. Fishermen harvested the ocean’s resources, sold their wares in ‘enemy’ ports and even joined forces to lobby national governments. Postal services were maintained as a result of ‘postal truces’ which safeguarded the passage of packet boats.

Smugglers flourished with the complicit support both from undercover agents and corrupt officials. In 1774 the number of smugglers (a term that became smogleur in French) operating out of the French port of Dunkirk was estimated at between 1,000 and 1,500. The goods that flowed illicitly from France to Britain, avoiding import duties, included Dutch gin, French tea from China and India, coffee from Saint-Domingue and textiles from Rouen and Lyon. These items arrived at the innumerable small coves and inlets of Kent and Sussex. The pickings were rich and the networks that made them possible were truly transnational.

Britain’s jagged shape and the existence of its surrounding seas are the result of massive geological and climatic changes over vast spans of time. That this island was, until 9,000 years ago, connected to mainland Europe by a chalk bridge represented a profound challenge to the notion of divine and impregnable isolation. In a chapter titled ‘The impossibility of an island’, a pun on Michel Houellebecq’s 2005 novel The Possibility of an Island, Morieux traces successive shifts in public discourse, both sides of the Channel, about the very formation of Britain as a physical entity encircled by protecting water – “this scepter’d isle” and “precious stone set in the silver sea” immortalised by Shakespeare in Richard II.

During the 17th and 18th centuries, debates about the origins of the people of the British Isles became increasingly conflicted. Commentators wrestled with Biblical teachings about creation and the growing evidence for what later become known as evolutionary theory. As early as 1677 Matthew Hale wrote: “We have reason to believe that we of this island [Britain] are not aborigines, but came hither by migrations, colonies, or plantations from other parts of the world.” Earlier still, Andre Du Chesne (1584-1640) doubted “that in the first age of the world men were drawn out of the earth, like pumpkins or mushrooms that are born of moisture in woods and forests”.

Maps are attempts to define the outlines of land and sea – and identify who owns what. Names, especially the naming of geographical features at points where national borders meet, are loaded with meaning and fraught with potential conflict. In the 1607 edition of William Camden’s Britannia, a section was devoted to the ‘British Ocean’: “This sea which is generally called MARE BRITANNICUM, and OCEANUS CALEDONIUS, … hath sundry and distinct names. Eastward… they call it the German sea.. But Southward where it inter-floweth France & Britain, it is properly called the BRITISH sea, & by the common mariners, The Chanel: by the English sailers, THE SLEEVE, and in the same sense, Le Manche in French, because it grow narrow in maner of a sleeve.”

In the 18th century, new names emerged for the Channel. The French monarchy aligned France’s territorial boundaries with the French shore – hence ‘La Manche’ in French, a neutral place-name – while the British viewed the Channel as an integral part of their territory. Seen from its northern shores, the Channel was ‘English’ or ‘British’.

Sharing the rich resources of the sea, and regulating fishing and other harvests, remained a matter of constant debate. Where did one state’s territorial waters begin and end? Was it possible to own parts of the sea and its wealth, or was the sea a common resource, belonging to all? Fisherman did not have the same relationship to, and imagination of, the coast as a cartographer, whose own conceptions differed from those of the customs officer.

In a discussion of fish stocks, an anonymous 18th-century author made a distinction between ‘sedentary’ fish such as shellfish and river fish (which he deemed as needing urgent protection from over-exploitation) and ‘travelling’ fish such as herring and mackerel (which needed no such protection). He noted that: “All the maritime nations of Europe regard the fruit of this fishing as one of the most advantageous products of their industry, and the men employed therein as the base and foundation of their strength and power.”

In The Channel, Morieux paints a portrait of a sea alive with activity and peopled by communities who were intimately connected as ‘transnationals’ benefitting from networks that operated regardless of national boundaries. For the Minet family, who as Huguenots (Protestants) were forbidden to practise their religion in Roman Catholic France, this narrow stretch of water offered an escape route.

Isaac Minet, who was born in Calais in September 1660 and died in Dover in April 1745, recorded personal and family details in his accounts book. His recollections included the family’s undercover crossing from France to the safety of Protestant England, a trip that meant evading a posse of French customs’ officials. Isaac Minet had well-established contacts in Dover, and within a single generation he and his family became integrated into civic society. He was naturalised English in 1705 and was elected ‘jurrat’ of the town corporation in 1731. Isaac’s grandson Hugues became mayor of the city in 1765. In 1770 Hugues Minet, having prospered as a businessman and owner of packets (boats), purchased land in Lambeth. Until these lands were sold to the City of London in 1968, his descendants continued to play a capital role in the development of the area. Among local institutions to bear the Minet name was The Mary Minet District Nurses Home in Halsmere Road.

Historic British conceptions of the maritime border continue to play out in current debates about migration control. The presence of British police and customs officers in Calais to monitor the crossing of the Channel reminds us of a period when the British monarchy claimed its sovereignty over the ‘narrow sea’. But human trajectories defy rules imposed by the state. In 2016 Calais, hundreds of British volunteers daily bring help to the refugees trapped in the so-called ‘jungle’. Then, as now, migrants, fishermen, merchants, smugglers and travellers follow their own agendas and itineraries. As much as it is an international frontier, the Channel also remains a truly transnational border.

The Channel: England, France and the Construction of a Maritime Border in the Eighteenth Century by Renaud Morieux is published by CUP on March 31, 2016.

This article was originally published on the University of Cambridge website. It is republished here under a Creative Commons license.

ICANN Ombudsman Says Sexual Harassment Claims ‘Not Serious By Any Standard’

If the larger ICANN community feels there is need for a harassment-specific policy, the policy development procedure should be exercised: Ombudsman

New Delhi: ICANN ombudsman Chris LaHette, on Wednesday, released the results of his office’s investigation into an allegation of sexual harassment posed by a Bangalore-based female researcher earlier this month.

The verdict: While LaHette was not able to make a “definite factual finding” – primarily because he says the investigation had become “compromised” after the woman publicly identified her alleged perpetrator – he believes the “matters alleged [in the complaint] cannot be considered serious by any standard”.

The female legal researcher, who is currently a student but was representing the Bangalore-based Centre for Internet and Society at an ICANN public meeting in Morocco, had alleged that she was sexually harassed by a participant from the private sector constituency at working session on March 6th.

She lodged a formal complaint with ICANN’s ombudsman office, which, in the absence of an official anti-sexual harassment committee, looks at issues and complaints of this nature.

According to the ombudsman’s report, the incident purportedly happened when the perpetrator leaned towards the woman, took her identification tag and during a discussion about the food being served at the meeting, told her “you can go make me a cheese sandwich”.

“If in fact the action and statement were made,” LaHette notes, “it may have been a lapse of good manners and and insensitive to gender.” “Such issues need to be taken in proportion, and best practice is not to debate this in a public forum where the issues are not yet clear. I note [name redacted] does not agree with my view,” the ombudsman’s report reads.

Other perspective

When contacted by The Wire, the female researcher said that she had a forwarded a copy of her 14-page statement, which is referenced in the ombudsman report but has not been included in it, to the ICANN board and was hoping to lodge an appeal with the board governance committee.

“I’m catching a lot of flak and people are saying my cause has been diluted. The development of a sexual harassment policy is important and while separate from my case is still connected. What I’d like to stress is that there were no factual inaccuracies with my testimony, as suggested by the ombudsman report, and I certainly do not want any compensation or damages,” she told The Wire.

Procedural unfairness

The ombudsman’s report also takes issue with the fact that the female researcher publicly identified the alleged perpetrator in a public social media post as part of a more general statement on sexual harassment issues that she faced.

According to the report, while LaHette was waiting for the woman to respond to certain queries regarding the incident, she “chose to [instead] simply publish the details and circulate these widely”. “By this stage, he [the perpetrator] had been named, which seriously compromised any impartial investigation,” the ombudsman notes in the report.

A secondary issue also raised is that while the ombudsman office’s generally tries mediation or shuttle diplomacy to resolve issues, the “publication and naming of the other party makes such steps impractical.”

Lack of procedure at ICANN

This specific case, which could potentially be the first officially recorded sexual harassment complaint at an ICANN meeting, has triggered a debate within the multistakeholder community over whether the global internet body needs to establish an official sexual harassment policy and institute a diverse sexual harassment committee.

The Centre for Internet and Society (CIS), for instance, issued a strongly worded statement that pointed out how the current ombudsman process for dealing with cases of sexual harassment is “simply inadequate for rights violations”.

“Merely having an ombudsman who is a white male, however well intentioned, is inadequate and completely unhelpful to the complainint.. Periodic gender and sexual harassment training for the ICANN board [must be done] to help them better understand these issues,” the CIS statement reads.

On the issue of sexual harassment and zero-tolerance, the ombudsman’s office is in complete agreement. While the report notes that “a reference” to treating other community members with “respect and civility” could cover harassment, if the larger ICANN community wishes to adopt a harassment-specific policy, this should be taken up through the organization’s policy development procedure.

Featured image: Jared Rodriguez / Truthout

India, Italy Spar Over Marines Issue Again as Ad-hoc Tribunal Reviews Enrica Lexie Case

For the second time in a year, the Italian side has sought – as a provisional measure pending adjudication of the jurisdiction issue – the return of its marine from India.

For the second time in a year, the Italian side has sought – as a provisional measure pending adjudication of the jurisdiction issue – the return of its marine from India

File photo of MV Enrica Lexie. Credit: E Vroom/Flickr

New Delhi: For the second time in eight months, India and Italy clashed before an international courtroom arguing over the return of an Italian serviceman to his country during the duration of the arbitration of the Enrica Lexie case in which two Indian fishermen off the coast of Kerala were killed by two Italian marines in 2012.

Ironically, the oral hearings began on Wednesday before an ad-hoc tribunal in Hague, just as Prime Minister Narendra Modi commenced a two-day official visit to Belgium and the European Union.

The India-EU summit had been called off last year after Brussels did not react promptly to New Delhi’s dates. The delay was ascribed by the Indian side to the EU’s foreign policy chief, Federica Mogherini – who is a former Italian foreign minister – being peeved over New Delhi’s insistence on trying the two marines in India.

Italy also single-handledly stopped India’s bid to join the Missile Technology Control Regime (MTCR) last year in October. While Italian diplomats did not give a explanation at the meeting for the ‘hold’ they placed on India’s candidature, it was believed to be a fallout of the prolonged case of the two marines.

India, on its part, believes the fate of the Italian marines is “not really a bilateral issue any more”. “It has been taken out of bilateral ambit to an international arbitration process, a process to which both parties stand committed,” said MEA’s joint secretary (Europe west) Nandini Singla on Monday to a question on whether the EU summit will heal the rift over the marines.

Last year, Italy moved the International Tribunal for Law of the Sea (ITLOS) seeking provisional measures to stop India from prosecuting the two marines, Massimiliano Latorre and Salvatore Girone, as well as for them to stay in their own country pending the trial process.

In its judgement delivered on August 24, 2015, the tribunal accepted the first part of Italy’s plea – suspending domestic prosecutions arising from the Enrica Lexie incident in both countries. But it refused to accept the second Italian plea, since it “touches upon issues related to the merits of the case” – which is the sole jurisdiction of specially-constituted tribunal to adjudicate the case.

The UN Convention for Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) specifies four methods to settle disputes, one of which is for ad-hoc arbitration as spelled out in Annex VII of the convention.

File photo of the two Italian marines, Massimiliano Latorre and Salvatore Girone, charged in India with the killing of two fishermen while off the Kerala coast in 2012. Credit: PTI

After ITLOS ruled on the matter last year, India and Italy agreed that the dispute would be settled under an Annex VII tribunal, which was finally constituted with five arbitrators on November 6, 2015.

A month later, Italy requested provisional measures from the ad-hoc tribunal under Section 290 (1) of UNCLOS to direct India to “take such measures as are necessary to relax the bail conditions on Sergeant Girone in order to enable him to return to Italy, under the responsibility of the Italian authorities, pending the final determination of the Annex VII Tribunal”.

While India had charged two Italian naval officer for the 2012 crime, Latorre has been in Italy for the past two years on Supreme Court-approved medical leave to recuperate from a stroke. A hearing for his leave extension will take place on April 17. Girone has, meanwhile, remained continuously in India since 2014, where he is confined to the Italian embassy compound.

In its December 2015 written submission which was publicly released today, Italy has argued that the “Annex VII proceedings could last between two to four years, or more before a final Award of the tribunal is rendered”.

“Sergeant Girone’s continuing deprivation of liberty, which is in breach of minimum guarantees of due process under international law, causes irreversible prejudice to Italy’s rights of jurisdiction over and immunity for its official,” it argued.

Italy renewed its “solemn undertakings to the effect that it will comply with an award of the Annex VII Tribunal requiring the return of the marines to India”.

Francesco Azzarello, ambassador of Italy to The Netherlands, and ‘agent’ of Italy in the Enrica Lexie case. Credit: Daniel Bockwoldt/ITLOS

“An individual cannot, however, be deprived of his liberty and other fundamental rights on the basis that he is a guarantee for the future compliance by a state with the award of an international tribunal,” said the Italian submission to the Tribunal.

As per a report of the Italian news agency ANSA, Italy’s ‘agent’, or representative at the hearing, Ambassador Francesco Azzarello said that since the arbitration “could last at least three or four years”, it meant that Girone risks “being held in Delhi, without any charges being made, for a total of seven-eight years”.

Azzarello told reporters on Wednesday that Italy was “hopeful’ as the case was “based on its solid humanitarian and legal reasoning, otherwise it would not have come here”.

In the first round of hearings today, India’s agent, Neeru Chadha, a senior official with the legal and treaties division of the Ministry if External Affairs, closely adhered to the Indian argument as delineated in its written response.

In written observations to the tribunal dated February 26, India noted that most of Italy’s contentions have been dealt with by ITLOS and that there were no new circumstances for modification of the August 24 order.

Neeru Chadha, former additional secretary and legal advisor, ministry of external affairs, and ‘agent’ of India in the Enrica Lexie case. Credit: Daniel Bockwoldt/ITLOS

“The provisional measure Italy is now requesting for the second time is also identical to one of its submissions on the merits,” said the Indian reply.

Italy’s assertion that the “immunity of the official” has been prejudiced meant that tribunal will have to judge the “merits” of the case, rather than only a provisional measure which won’t impact the final order, felt India.

Italy had argued that Latore and Girone could not be prosecuted by India due to the location of the incident on the high seas and also that they were subject to immunity as member of the Italian armed forces.

“..as India already explained, this is precisely why the provisional measure cannot be granted. Italy would obtain a prejudgment on the immunity issue and the remedies it is seeking on the merits – i.e., the relaxation of the (mild) measures of restraint on Sergeant Girone and his return to Italy,” argued India.

It pointed out that Girone was not in a jail, but staying at the Italian ambassador’s residence and was visited by his family members on multiple occasions.

“The humanitarian aspect of prolonged confinement of Sergeant Girone is pertinent and factual,” India noted, adding, “The Supreme Court of India, as stated above, has been quite sympathetic to these concerns allowing him to travel to Italy twice and Government of India also in fact [has] not opposed the requests for relaxation of bail conditions if circumstances so demanded”.

Asking the court to reject the Italian submission, India claimed that Italy was “delaying the proceedings on the merits of the case by presenting the same request again”. “These new proceedings add to the burden of this matter,” it added.

Indian police contends that Latorre and Girone, while posted on the merchant ship Enrica Lexie, had shot at two Indian fishermen, mistaking them for pirates operating near the Kerala coast on February 15, 2012.

The National Investigation Agency subsequently slapped charges against the two Italians under sections 302 (murder), 307 (attempt to murder), 427 (mischief) and section 34 (common intent) of IPC.

SC Guidelines Now Protect Good Samaritans Who Help Road Accident Victims

Now, if you help a road accident victim, you should expect to be treated with respect by hospitals, the courts and the police.

Delhi-Gurgaon Expressway: According to the Law Commission of India, 50% of those killed in road accidents could have been saved had timely assistance been rendered to them. Credit: Wikimedia Commons

Over the last 30 years, Suraj Prakash Vaid, a Delhi-based tours and taxi operator, has transported over 70 road accident victims to hospital. For his good deeds, he has had to face court hearings on more than one occasion since he was made a witness in several of the cases.

Now, people like him will no longer have to worry about harassment at hospitals, police stations and courts. The Supreme Court on Wednesday approved the guidelines issued by the Centre for the protection of Good Samaritans at the hands of the police or any other authority.

A bench comprising justices V. Gopala Gowda and Arun Mishra directed the Centre to give wide publicity to the guidelines, which clearly stipulate that people who help victims of road accidents or other calamities are not harassed in any way. According to a study by the SaveLIFE Foundation (PDF), this is expected to greatly change the attitude of bystanders in assisting road accident victims – and thus should result in saving many more lives.

The Law Commission of India observes that 50% of those killed in road accidents could have been saved had timely assistance been rendered to them (PDF). And a World Health Organisation report claims that “skilled and empowered bystanders play a crucial role in saving lives” and “in order to enable bystanders to come forward and help injured persons, a supportive legal and ethical environment is needed” (PDF).

It was SaveLIFE Foundation that filed the original PIL and triggered these developments. On the basis of a national study of past cases conducted by it, the foundation submits that three out of four people in India hesitated to come forward and help road accident victims, and that 88% of them had attributed this hesitation to fear of legal and procedural hassles. “These hassles include intimidation by police, unnecessary detention at hospitals and prolonged legal formalities,” it elaborates.

In a landmark ruling on March 4, the Supreme Court stated that it would pass an order on the recommendations of a three-member committee, chaired by its former Judge K.S. Radhakrishnan and comprising former Secretary of Road Transport Ministry S. Sundar and scientist Nishi Mittal, which had demanded protection for those saving accident victims.

The panel, appointed by the apex court in 2014, made 12 major recommendations in all, including setting up of State Road Safety Councils, evolving a protocol for the identification and removal of “blackspots,” monitoring to gauge the effectiveness of the action taken, and strengthening of enforcement relating to drunken driving, over-speeding, red light jumping, and helmet and seat belt laws.

The decision of the Supreme Court granting legal teeth to the guidelines assumes significance because the Centre has always claimed that it has found it difficult to enforce guidelines in the absence of any statutory backing. With the court order, the guidelines and standard operating procedures have become binding in all states and union territories.

A crucial step

Hailing the apex court’s decision, Piyush Tewari, the founder and CEO of SaveLIFE Foundation, said: “This is a big day for India. Until now most states were treating the guidelines merely as an advisory. But now, non-compliance will be treated as contempt of court, making these guidelines as reliable as laws. The onus is now on the state governments and union territories to ensure the implementation of these guidelines.”

The guidelines are an interim measure to deal with the issue till the Centre enacts appropriate legislation –but are also a crucial step in that direction. “In order to ensure the effective implementation of the guidelines and SOPs, it is imperative that a comprehensive Good Samaritan law is enacted at the Central and state level,” the foundation said. Such a legislation, it added, would give legal backing to the guidelines, address the concerns of the Good Samaritans and protect them from all forms of harassment.

Tewari concluded, “The next challenge is to get this information to the last mile. Lives will get saved only when people on the road are aware of these new rights they have.”

The nitty-gritty

The guidelines lay down the following:

The Good Samaritan will be treated respectfully and without any discrimination on the grounds of gender, religion, nationality and caste.
Any individual, except an eyewitness, who calls the police to inform them of an accidental injury or death need not reveal his or her personal details such as full name, address or phone number.
The police will not compel the Good Samaritan to disclose his or her name, identity, address and other such details in the police record form or log register.
The police will not force any Good Samaritan in procuring information or anything else.
The police will allow the Good Samaritan to leave after having provided the information available to him or her, and no further questions will be asked of him or her if he or she does not desire to be a witness.

Even when Good Samaritans agree to become witnesses, the guidelines accord them protection and comfort. They ensure that:

If a Good Samaritan chooses to be a witness, she will be examined with utmost care and respect.
The examination will be conducted at a time and place of the Good Samaritan’s convenience and the investigation officer will be dressed in plain clothes.
If the Good Samaritan is required by the investigation officer to visit the police station, the reasons for the requirement shall be recorded by the officer in writing.
In a police station, the Good Samaritan will be examined in a single examination in a reasonable and time-bound manner, without causing any undue delay.
If a Good Samaritan declares himself to be an eyewitness, she will be allowed to give her evidence in the form of an affidavit.

The guidelines also specify that the concerned Superintendent or Deputy Commissioner of Police are responsible in ensuring that all the above-mentioned procedures are implemented throughout their respective jurisdictions.

Timeline of developments

2012: PIL filed by SaveLIFE Foundation.

October 29, 2014: The Supreme Court directed the Centre to issue the necessary guidelines with regard to the protection of Good Samaritans until appropriate legislation was not made by the Union Legislature.

May 13, 2015: In a gazette notification (PDF), Ministry of Road Transport and Highways (MoRTH) notified the said guidelines. As per the guidelines, the disclosure of personal information by a Good Samaritan who brings an injured person to the hospital was made voluntary. They also provided that a Good Samaritan would not be liable for any civil or criminal liability.

January 22, 2016: MoRTH issued Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs) (PDF) for the examination of Good Samaritans by the police or during trial.

March 4, 2016: The Supreme Court reserved the judgment making the guidelines and SOPs binding on all states and union territories of India.

March 30, 2016: The Supreme Court approved the guidelines issued by the Centre.

Vijay Mallya Offers to Pay Rs.4,000 Crores to Settle Dues

Vijay Mallya on Wednesday submitted a proposal in the Supreme Court to pay 4000 crore rupees as partial settlement of the dues he owes to a consortium of banks led by State Bank of India.

Vijay Mallya has broken his silence. Credit: PTI

Vijay Mallya has offered to pay a partial amount of what he owes to a consortium of banks. Credit: PTI

New Delhi: Industrialist Vijay Mallya on Wednesday submitted a proposal in the Supreme Court to pay 4000 crore rupees as partial settlement of the dues he owes to a consortium of banks led by State Bank of India.

Senior counsel C.S. Vaidyanathan, appearing for Mallya and his company Kingfisher, made this proposal before a bench of Justices Kurian Joseph and Rohinton Nariman. When the court asked where Mallya is, Vaidyanatha confirmed he is out of the country and that he does not want to return due to the “surcharged atmosphere” against him.

Vaidyanathan said the proposal was a result of negotiations with Mallya, held through video conference for two days, and that Mallya’s presence may not be required as these days everything can be done through video conferencing. Requesting that the proposal to be kept in a sealed cover, he said “media hype against him (Mallya) vitiates public interest. The atmosphere becomes surcharged in the media if the proposal comes out.”

To this Justice Kurian countered, “No. Media has not vitiated the atmosphere. They want the money taken from the banks be recovered. They don’t have any other interest.” Replying on behalf of Mallya, Vaidyanathan said, “The atmosphere is so surcharged against me (Mallya). There are cases in which (the) media created such a surcharged atmosphere that even beatings have taken place… the less said the better.

Senior counsel S.S. Naganand, appearing for the consortium of banks, informed the court that the proposal was to pay by September 4,000 crore rupees of the over 9,000 crore rupees owed. Naganand said the proposal also mentions a payment of over 2000 crore rupees on the basis of a pending suit filed by Mallya’s businesses. When he expressed some reservations to accepting the proposal, the bench asked the banks to respond within a week. The bench took the proposal on record and told Naganand, “It is for you to tell us whether you reject this or not.”

The consortium of banks had initially approached the Debt Recovery Tribunal (DRT) to arrest Mallaya. But the DRT only issued a garnishee order preventing London-based Diageo Plc from transferring any money to Mallya for the moment. Mallya had received a $75 million payout for selling United Spirits to Diageo. The Karnataka high court had also declined to issue an arrest warrant against him.

In their appeal, the banks said Mallya had publicly declared his intention to stay in London and that if allowed to leave the country he was unlikely to come back. The banks also sought an order to impound his passport, which would curtail his movements in and out of the country without court permission.

The banks said that the DRT and the Karnataka high court were wrong in refusing to pass interim orders against Mallya. The high court had completely failed to protect the interest of the petitioner banks, which had to recover an amount in the excess of 9000 crore rupees from the four respondents – Kingfisher Airlines, United Breweries (UB), Mallya and Kingfisher Finvest (India) Ltd.

The banks claimed that they had individually advanced loans worth crores to Kingfisher and this had been restructured into a one-by-another agreement on December 21, 2010. UB and Mallya had executed corporate and personal guarantees to repay this amount due by that agreement. This loan had since been declared to be a non-performing asset and recovery proceedings were pending.

The banks said that grave miscarriage of justice would be caused if the proceedings were to be delayed any further or if Mallya succeeds in settling in London.

The bench posted the matter for further hearing on April 7.

‘World Class’ Optical Telescope, and India’s Largest, to Be Activated near Nainital

The instrument is part of a widening foray into observational astronomy that India has undertaken since the 1960s, and bolstered with the successful launch of its first multi-wavelength satellite in September 2015.

The location of Devasthal, Uttarkhand. Source: Google Maps

New Delhi: India’s largest ground-based optical telescope, in Devasthal in Uttarakhand, will be switched on March 30 by the prime ministers of India and Belgium from Brussels, during Narendra Modi’s day-long visit to the country. The telescope is the product of an Indo-Belgian collaborative effort, assisted by the Russian Academy of Sciences, that was kicked off in 2007. It is going to be operated by the Aryabhatta Research Institute of Observational Sciences (ARIES), an autonomous research body under the Department of Science and Technology.

The instrument is part of a widening foray into observational research in astronomy that India has undertaken since the 1960s, and bolstered with the successful launch of its first multi-wavelength satellite (ASTROSAT) in September 2015. And apart from the merits it will accord Indian astronomy, the Devasthal optical telescope will also be Asia’s largest ground-based optical telescope, succeeding the Vainu Bappu Observatory in Kavalur, Tamil Nadu.

A scan of the sketch of the 3.6-m optical telescope. Credit: ARIES

Its defining feature will be a 3.6-metre-wide primary mirror, which will collect light from its field of view and focus it onto a 0.9-m secondary mirror, which in turn will divert it into various detectors for analysis. This arrangement, called the Ritchey-Chrétien design, is also what ASTROSAT employs – but with a 30-cm-wide primary mirror. In fact, by contrast, the mirrors and six instruments of ASTROSAT all weigh 1,500 kg while the Devasthal telescope’s primary mirror alone weighs 4,000 kg.

A better comparison would be the Hubble space telescope. It manages to capture the stunning cosmic panoramas it does with a primary mirror that’s 2.4 m wide. However, Hubble’s clarity is much better because it is situated in space, where Earth’s atmosphere can’t interfere with what it sees.

Nonetheless, the Devasthal telescope is located in a relatively advantageous position for itself – atop a peak 2.5 km high in the Western Himalaya, 50 km west of Nainital. A policy review published in June 2007 notes that the location was chosen following “extensive surveys in the central Himalayas” from 1980 to 2001. These surveys check for local temperature and humidity variations, the amount of atmospheric blurring and the availability of dark nights (meeting some rigorous conditions) for observations. As the author of the paper writes, “The site … has a unique advantage of the geographical location conducive for astronomical observations of those optical transient and variable sources which require 24 h continuous observations and can not be observed from [the] east, in Australia, or [the] west, in La Palma, due to day light.”

The Devasthal optical telescope’s 3.6-m primary mirror with a hole in the middle, through which the secondary mirror will focus the light. Credit: IIST

From this perch, the telescope – held by ARIES to be of “world class” – will be able to log the physical and chemical properties of stars and star clusters; high-energy radiation emanating from sources like blackholes; and the formation and properties of exoplanets. The data will be analysed using three attendant detectors:

High-resolution Spectrograph, developed by the Indian Institute of Astrophysics, Bengaluru
Near Infrared Imaging Camera, developed by the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research, Mumbai
Low-resolution Spectroscopic Camera

“India has collaborated with a Belgian company called AMOS to produce this [telescope], which is the first of its kind in the whole of Asia,” said Vikas Swarup, spokesperson of the Ministry of External Affairs, in a statement. AMOS, an acronym for Advanced Mechanical and Optical Systems, was contracted in 2007 to build and install the mirrors. The assembly was readied in March 2015.

With Modi’s and Michel’s performance of the so-called ‘technical activation’ to turn the Devasthal instrument on, it will join a cluster of scopes at the Indian astronomical research community’s disposal to survey the skies at various wavelengths. Some of these other scopes are the Giant Metre-wave Radio Telescope, Pune; Multi Application Solar Telescope, Udaipur; MACE gamma-ray telescope, Hanle; Indian Astronomical Observatory, Leh; Pachmarhi Array of Cherenkov Telescopes, Pachmarhi; and the Ooty Radio Telescope, Udhagamandalam.

The Devasthal optical telescope’s supporting structure, which also hosts three detectors, under a protective dome. Credit: IIST

In fact, over the last few years, the Indian research community has positioned itself as an active player in international Big Astronomy. In 2009, it pitched to host a third advanced gravitational-waves observatory, following the installation of two in the US, and received governmental approval for it in February 2016. Second: in December 2014, India decided to become a full partner with the Thirty Meter Telescope (TMT) collaboration, a bid to construct an optical telescope with a primary mirror 30 metres wide. After facing resistance from the people living around the venerated mountain Mauna Kea, in Hawaii, atop which it was set to be built, there are talks of setting it up in Hanle. Third: in January 2015, the central government gave the go-ahead to build a neutrino observatory (INO) in Theni, Tamil Nadu. This project has since stalled for want of various state-level environmental clearances.

All three projects are at the cutting edge of modern astronomy, incorporating techniques that have originated in this decade, techniques that take a marked break from the conventions in use since the days of Galileo. That Modi has okayed the gravitational waves observatory is worth celebrating – but the choices various officials will make concerning the INO and the TMT are still far from clear.