October 2017 Archives

India Jumps to 100th Spot on World Bank’s Ease of Doing Business Rankings

The World Bank report ranked India top among the South Asian nations.

The World Bank report, based on data from New Delhi and Mumbai, ranked India among the top ten “improvers” globally. Credit: Reuters

New Delhi: India jumped into 100th place on the World Bank’s ranking of countries by ‘Ease of Doing Business’ for the first time in its report for 2018, up about 30 places, driven by reforms in access to credit, power supplies and protection of minority investors.

The report, based on data from New Delhi and Mumbai, ranked India among the top ten “improvers” globally, having done better in eight out of ten business indicators.

“Today’s result is a very clear signal from India to the rest of the world that not only has the country been ready and open for business, as it has been for many decades, it is now competing as the preferred place to do business globally,” Annette Dixon, World Bank’s vice president for South Asia, told reporters in New Delhi.

“Starting a business is now faster,” Dixon said, adding that India had strengthened access to credit system and made it easier to secure to procure construction permits.

However, the agency noted that India lags in areas such as “starting a business”, “enforcing contracts” and “dealing with construction permits.”

Also read: Ease Of Doing Business and Paying Taxes: How To Jump a Hundred Positions On the World Bank’s Rankings

The report excluded the impact of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s shock withdrawal of high-value banknotes last year and the implementation of a nationwide multi-rate Goods and Services Tax (GST), steps that affected businesses and dragged the economy to a three-year-low in the April-June quarter.

“In the case of GST, we know that this is a very complicated reform,” Dixon said, adding that the agency would observe the GST for the next two or three years to see its full implementation.

This month Modi eased tax rules for small and medium-sized companies in a bid to address growing criticism of his stewardship of Asia’s third-largest economy.

The World Bank report, covering the period from June 2 last year to June 1 this year, ranked India top among the South Asian nations.

“This year’s remarkable results are the culmination of efforts that have taken place over the past three years, so you can extrapolate forward and see that steps that are taken this year may take two-three years to show up in the results,” Dixon said.

‘Jan Gan Man Ki Baat’ Episode 143: Gujarat Elections 2017 and Aadhaar Judgement

Vinod Dua discusses politics in Gujarat in the run-up to the 2017 assembly elections and Subramanian Swamy’s criticism of Aadhaar.

‘Hum Bhi Bharat’, Episode 7: Allegations Against Ahmed Patel and the Politicisation of Terror

Arfa Khanum Sherwani discusses the allegations made by Gujarat CM Vijay Rupani against senior Congress leader Ahmed Patel.

Joining her for this episode are Siddharth Varadarajan, founding editor of The Wire and Apoorvanand, a professor at Delhi University.

Parched Chennai Suffers as Water Mafia Tightens Hold

Increasing encroachments on all water bodies combined with over-extraction of groundwater has led to the crippling of the city’s coastal aquifer system.

A tanker being filled with groundwater in Kalanji, a village 30km north of Chennai city centre. Credit: Author provided

About 30 km north of Chennai’s centre is the sand dune-laden coastal village of Kalanji. It’s located just beyond the industrial hub of Ennore, which hosts three thermal power plants, two ports and a coal yard, among other heavy industry. Kalanji and its neighbouring village of Kattupalli are among the last remaining traditional villages in this region. They are also the sites of excessive groundwater extraction, which provides for many of the heavy industries and the drinking water needs of the ever-expanding city and its suburbs.

On the other side of the city, 30 km south of the centre, is the erstwhile village and now peri-urban area of Perumbakkam. Regardless of the location, the story is similar. Perumbakkam and its adjoining neighbourhoods were a water-rich region with numerous lakes, ponds, wells and other water bodies. They are now a primary source of groundwater for Chennai’s expansive Information Technology (IT) corridor. About 200 water tankers, each with a capacity of 12,000 to 15,000 litres, ply from here to the nearby IT corridor every day, providing water to multi-storeyed apartment complexes and glass-walled offices.

The water tankers are an easy fix for industrial, residential and service-sector consumers, especially when there’s no infrastructure for water supply set up by the city authorities. For the thousands of inhabitants of these villages, the water tankers and the bore wells that feed them spell death for their traditional life and livelihoods.

“Nobody farms here anymore. That was all in the past. People now do anything to survive, even become criminals,” a teashop owner in Kattupalli told India Climate Dialogue. “The water tankers also drive all day and night at high speeds, resulting in accidents and even deaths of many of our people.” The villagers of Perumbakkam echo similar sentiments.

Natural water system destroyed

Chennai is blessed with an aquifer system that runs a few kilometres from the coastline along the entire coastal stretch of the metropolitan area as well as the Kancheepuram and Thiruvallur districts on either side of the city. An aquifer is an underground layer of rock saturated with water through which water can be extracted. A healthy aquifer is key for a good groundwater level and is recharged by the various wells, tanks, ponds as well as the wetlands that lie in and around Chennai.

There are very few agricultural fields remaining in Perumbakkam in the southern reaches of Chennai, with high-rise apartment complexes dotting the skyline. Credit: Author provided

Increasing encroachments on all of these water bodies, combined with over-extraction of groundwater as well as extreme weather, has led to the crippling of the city’s coastal aquifer system. For example, the Pallikaranai marsh, a sprawling wetland to the south of the city, is only a fraction of the size that it was a century back.

In the book, Reconsidering the Impact of Climate Change on Global Water Supply, Use, and Management, researchers from the Chennai-based non-profit Care Earth Trust state that the size of the Pallikaranai marsh has reduced from 6,000 hectare (ha) in the 1900s to the present 593 ha. Earlier this year, a study by the Central Groundwater Board (CGWB) confirmed that the city’s groundwater resources are being over-exploited. It stated that the water below the surface is being extracted at a rate of 185%.

“Starting from Minjur in the city’s north to Uthandi in its extreme south, large stretches of the coastal freshwater aquifers have become completely saline,” S. Janakarajan of the Madras Institute of Development Studies (MIDS) told India Climate Dialogue. Janakarajan has been studying water and environment related issues in Chennai as well as other parts of southern India for two decades.

“Also, it is clear that Chennai is susceptible to extreme weather events. You have a state climate change cell but they are doing absolutely nothing. There’s no climate change adaptation strategy. The Greater Chennai region has more than 3,600 water bodies but despite the tremendous rains of 2015, many were dry the next year,” Janakarajan said. “If only they had stored water and conserved these water bodies, the water table would have gone up, but they have not done it.”

Extreme weather adding to water woes

It is estimated that the present water requirement for the Greater Chennai region is about 1,400 million litres per day (mld) and the city’s Metro Water board expects this demand to rise to nearly 1,800 mld in four years. The city is highly dependent on its surrounding reservoirs to be periodically replenished since there are no perennial sources of water around Chennai. As of now, the primary sources for water to the city are reservoirs such as the Veeranam reservoir, located about 200 km from the city; water from the Krishna River in Andhra Pradesh about 400 km away; as well as two desalination plants built over the last few years.

“Even during the best of times we can supply about 830 mld of water. During a drought year, we can manage only about 450 mld,” a senior state government official told India Climate Dialogue. “So the rest comes from groundwater sources only. Even though there are laws and government orders that are supposed to prevent extraction of groundwater, these have never been implemented for the simple reason that the city is always water-stressed.”

A water tanker on the Old Mahabalipuram Road, Chennai’s IT corridor. The water mafia makes a killing by buying groundwater at INR 200 per tanker and selling at INR 1,000- 1,200. Credit: Amritharaj Stephen

Water tanker owners and private landowners in peri-urban regions exploit this water stress, holding the city to ransom. A strike by water tankers in March 2017, which was a reaction to seizures of two trucks by the revenue department for illegally extracting water, resulted in the entire IT corridor being nearly shut down.

While the strike was called off on the third day after the government conceded their demands, the Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry (FICCI) estimated that another day of strike would have led to a cumulative loss of business of up to USD 16 million on the IT corridor. The state official said, “You can control a group only when you’re in a position to control. If we can provide the water, we can take them on. As of now, that is not possible.”

Bleak future

In a report titled The Peri-urban to Urban Groundwater Transfer and its Societal Implications in Chennai, S. Packialakshmi and N.K. Ambujam of the Department of Civil Engineering, Sathyabama University, state, “Conservation and recharge measures should be adopted immediately in the hard rock areas, by constructing open shafts or open wells in and around the water bodies (till it reaches the fractured zone to inject the storm water effectively in monsoon times), by the construction of percolation ponds, adopting rainwater harvesting structures at the household level, protection of water bodies, etc.”

“While there are many laws which can be used to regulate over-extraction, in the many years I have been studying the groundwater scenario in Chennai, I have never seen them implemented,” Packialakshmi told India Climate Dialogue.

The Chennai Metropolitan Area Ground Water (Regulation) Act, 1987, and the Tamil Nadu Groundwater (Development and Management) Act, 2003, for the state of Tamil Nadu provide directions to regulate, control and conserve groundwater. Apart from this, there is a government order passed by the state public works department in 2010 that restricts extraction of groundwater within a distance of 10 km from the coastline. Unfortunately, all these measures have remained only on paper. In reality, water extraction continues unabated and only increases manifold when demand increases due to climate change-related scenarios.

“There’s no acknowledgement that there is even a problem. Acknowledgement doesn’t mean to have a law, it means to start acting on the law. They are just turning a blind eye to this situation. The groundwater situation here is an environmental disaster that is already in motion. It is only a matter of time before there is extensive salinity in all of our groundwater. It will be very difficult to return to anywhere close to normal if this happens”, city-based environmental activist Nityanand Jayaraman said.

This article was originally published by India Climate Dialogue.

Don’t Rely on China: North Korea Won’t Kowtow to Beijing

Politicians and pundits are overplaying China’s influence over Kim Jong-Un.

North Korean leader Kim Jong Un waves to people cheering during an opening ceremony of a newly constructed residential complex in Ryomyong street in Pyongyang, North Korea April 13, 2017. Credit: Reuters

Those who want to end North Korea’s nuclear threats often point to China as the sole actor who could save the day by making Kim Jong-Un and his regime stand down.

Beijing provides about 90% of imports that North Koreans rely on, mainly food and oil. So, the argument goes: China could significantly diminish those threats by shutting off its economic lifeline to North Korea.

Donald Trump has tweeted about his disappointment that China does “NOTHING for us with North Korea” when “China could easily solve this problem!”

It’s not just a view held by politicians. Many academics and policy analysts in the US, South Korea and Japan agree that China holds the magic key to making North Korea cease its nuclear activities. It is a view based on the assumption of a “patron-client” relationship between China and North Korea.

I have studied such lopsided alliances – including between the US and South Korea – and I’ve learned that no matter how in sync the national security goals of the two countries may be or how much the stronger power may have helped the weaker, the weaker never simply rolls over and obeys.

So, how much power can China really exercise over North Korea?

Relations with China and Russia

North Korea’s relations with its two major neighbors – China and Russia – over many decades suggest that Pyongyang is not easily restrained.

Let’s look at the history.

Kim Il-sung, the first leader of North Korea and the grandfather of Kim Jong-Un, played Beijing and Moscow off each other in order to launch his attack on the South in 1950.

After the Korean War started, Soviet military and economic support as well as massive Chinese assistance in the form of troops saved North Korea from destruction by United Nations forces. After the war, Sino-Soviet economic and military assistance continued, but the Kim regimes have rarely mentioned them as necessary contributions to the North’s economic and military development. Instead, the Kim patriarchs and their chosen “revolutionary martyrs for the fatherland” take the credit in the state’s official narrative for “vanquishing” the capitalist enemies in the Korean War and for the continued survival of the country.

Moreover, during the Cold War, Pyongyang had few qualms about consistently pursuing a “North Korea first” policy even if it meant offending the two big Communist neighbors.

In the late 1950s to the late 1960s, the Kim regime kicked out Soviet and Eastern European students in North Korea. They banned the Pravda and the Chinese People’s Daily newspapers and publicly condemned Khrushchev’s “revisionism” and Mao’s Cultural Revolution. Yet, all the while, North Korea milked both Moscow and Beijing for economic aid and technological assistance.

Over three generations, the Kim dynasty has made the manipulation of its large and powerful neighbors into an art form. North Korean regimes have never been in the habit of kowtowing to states that literally preserved its existence, helped feed its people and train its military.

Recent times

In recent years, China and Russia have been indispensable in providing North Korean elites sophisticated technical training. In one program, the regime culls the brightest of its approximately 5,000 to 6,000 “cyberwarriors” to further their studies in “cyberhacking” in China and Russia. But experts have noted that Pyongyang never demonstrates gratitude or indebtedness.

Rather, in the last two years, as China signed onto tougher UN Security Council sanctions, North Korea has been poking Beijing in the eye.

In September 2016, Pyongyang tested missiles at the start of the G-20 meeting of the world’s top economies, hosted by China. On September 3, 2017, North Korea detonated its sixth and most powerful nuclear device, a day before another major international gathering hosted by China. Many commentators have noted that Pyongyang’s timing was deliberate and aimed to embarrass its benefactor for seeming to side with Washington.

Young Kim Jong-Un – just 33 – has been bolder and brasher in this regard than his dynastic predecessors. About a year after assuming the top leadership after the death of his father in 2011, Kim essentially kicked out its joint venture partner, Xiyang Group. Xiyang Group is one of China’s largest mining and steel production companies and it had spent about US$40 million to develop iron ore extraction at Musan Mine. The desire to feed China’s steel mills aside, this big project was part of China’s effort to help develop its poor neighbor’s economy and infrastructure and guide it toward reform.

But tensions with Pyongyang began to emerge just as the contract was approved by North Korea. By 2012, these tensions had morphed into open conflict and physical violence. The North Koreans unilaterally annulled the contract, and used “violent methods” against Xiyang staff like depriving them of power and water. North Korean security officials even had the audacity to wake up Xiyang’s Chinese workers and forcibly deport them in the dead of night back.

North Koreans are well-practiced in pushing around more powerful states, even benefactors who bear life-sustaining gifts. So, it’s reasonable to ask – why would they back down if the benefits are withdrawn?

China has geopolitical reasons for wanting to keep North Korea a buffer state and prevent a mass migration crisis on its border with North Korea. But Beijing also knows that Pyongyang does not bend to the will of others and could lash out at China, especially if there’s nothing more to gain from its only generous ally. Such an erosion of Sino-North Korean relations would also be a loss for the US at the least, Washington would lose Beijing as a scapegoat. Worse, it could lose an important partner in managing the crisis with Pyongyang.

Katharine H.S. Moon is an Edith Stix Wasserman Professor of Asian Studies and Professor of Political Science in Wellesley College.

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.

India’s Plural and Diverse Identity Is Under Threat

The hitherto accepted norms of Indian culture are being re-packaged and distorted out of shape, and all citizens, particularly those who mould public perceptions through their work, need to respond to this challenge.

The hitherto accepted norms of Indian culture are being repackaged and distorted out of shape, and all citizens, particularly those who mould public perceptions through their work, need to respond to this challenge.

Former vice president Hamid Ansari. Credit: Reuters

Former Vice President M. Hamid Ansari inaugurated a two-day seminar on ‘Nationalism and Culture’ organised by the Progressive Writers Association in Chandigarh on October 28, 2017. Reproduced below is the text of his address.

I thank the organisers for inviting me to this important conference today. The theme is relevant to us as citizens as also to those who study the finer aspects of literature.

Writing is the product of hard work. It requires a sensitivity to register and interpret human experience. This gathering of writers knows only too well the role they and their writings play in shaping public taste and consciousness just as their predecessors did in earlier times. A good work of literature creates a stream of consciousness; a bad one evokes contempt and cynicism. Writers generally work in time and space; those blessed with deeper insight transcend these boundaries.

Writers thus have a social responsibility since their work influences and help shape public perceptions. The reading public, consciously or otherwise, judges the social purpose, intellectual depth and emotional sincerity of their writings. Their work is and should be reflective of contemporary cultural mores and of national identity.

We thus come to the critical question: What is Indian national identity?

There could be two ways of answering the question: the first would be a priori or deductive, independent of experience or facts; the second would be inductive based on facts and experience.

The first, premised on assumed infallibility of tradition, suggests uniformity, homogeneity, oneness; the second, based on ground reality, identifies diversity, heterogeneity, complexity.

It is truism that all perceptions have to be tested on discernible facts. What then is the factual reality of the Indian social landscape?

The Anthropological Survey of India indicates that our land has 4,635 communities diverse in biological traits, dress, languages, form of worship, occupation, food habits and kinship patterns. The Linguistic Survey of India indicates that apart from the 22 languages in the Eighth Schedule of the constitution, there are 100 other languages and thousands of dialects in the country.

As a result, the identity of India is plural and diverse, a consequence of coming together of people with such different social and cultural traits. It is this plurality that constitutes Indian identity expressed in the constitution through the principles of democracy and secularism. It is not a melting pot because each ingredient retains its identity. It is perhaps a salad bowl. Jawaharlal Nehru said it is a palimpsest on which the imprint of succeeding generations has unrecognisably merged.

For the same reason, Indian culture is not to be conceived as a static phenomenon tracing its identity to a single unchanging source; instead it is dynamic and interrogates critically and creatively all that is new.

This is the reality. Can we homogenise it? Can we initiate a process of assimilation? In a democratic polity, how is any ingredient to be subsumed in another? Can we visualise an India that is non-democratic, non-plural, non-secular?

Why then is effort underway to subsume diversity in a notional identity? Is its purpose to erase, subjugate or dominate this diversity and replace it with an imagined uniformity based on a version of history that corresponds neither to the authentic record of India’s past nor to the rich diversity of her present?

Alternatively, our approach could be accommodative based on the principles of pluralism and secularism with three ingredients:

Energetic engagement with diversity and educating all sections of the public, particularly students, about the uniqueness of our structure and benefits flowing from it
Going beyond mere tolerance, seeking active understanding across line of differences and considering community disharmony a threat to national security and deal with it in the same manner as other such threats
Having a continuous inter-community, inter-faith and cross-cultural dialogue, of speaking and listening in a process that reveals both common understanding and real differences.

History itself has becomes a site for struggle; it draws within its ambit all those who register and interpret human experience, particularly the writers. As citizens they cannot remain oblivious to what happens in the polity. While remaining committed to their chosen art, their social responsibility requires that they use their art to guide the public and lead them out of the poisonous haze of ignorance, superstition and unreasoned prejudice and to ensure that our secular culture and liberal democracy are preserved.

Friends, we live in difficult times. The hitherto accepted norms of Indian culture are being re-packaged, distorted out of shape. The values of liberal nationalism are sought to be substituted by illiberal doctrines and practices that impact adversely on individual freedoms guaranteed by the constitution of India. All citizens, particularly those who mould public perceptions through their work, need to respond to this challenge.

India has an age-long tradition of religious and philosophical dissent and of bringing forth multiple traditions of authenticity. Indians takes pride in being argumentative. Again and again our writers have penned anthems of resistance; many have recalled the words of Faiz Ahmad Faiz’s clarion call in the poem ‘Bol’. I am confident that similar responses would be forthcoming from today’s conclave.

Jai Hind.

Aarushi Talwar-Hemraj Case Is a Perfect Example of Why India’s Criminal Justice System Needs Reform

From the police and CBI to the courts and correctional facilities, reform is required at every stage of the system.

A memorial for Aarushi Talwar. Credit: PTI

India’s criminal justice system – comprising law enforcement (the police), adjudication (courts and the justice delivery system) and corrections (prison) – has never been so thoroughly exposed for its inherent weaknesses as in the 2008 murder case of teenager Aarushi Talwar and domestic worker Hemraj. It witnessed not only a botched investigation by the Noida police that made the case unsolvable due to the mishandling of the available forensic evidence, but also an unpardonable flip-flop by the CBI, which first gave a clean chit to parents Drs Rajesh and Nupur Talwar, then pronounced them guilty of the twin murder. Wild charges, ranging from debauchery to brutal murder of their own child were made against them; even the deceased was not spared. No wonder the CBI invited criticism from the Allahabad high court for tutoring witnesses and tampering with evidence.

They were awarded life sentences by a CBI court that was thus criticised by the high court:

The learned trial Judge has prejudged things in his own fashion, drawn conclusions by embarking on erroneous analogy conjecturing to the brim on apparent facts telling a different story propelled by vitriolic reasoning…. The learned trial Judge took evidence and the circumstances of the case for granted and tried to solve it like a mathematical puzzle.

If the two-stage policing (UP police and CBI) was the first stage of calumny, the CBI designated court was the second stage.

Also read: The Talwars Were Innocent. The Rest of Us are Guilty

Nine years later, and after their acquittal by the high court four years after the conviction, the case still appears to be alive. Hemraj’s family wants to move the apex court demanding justice for him and fix the responsibility of the CBI. On the other hand, India’s premium investigating agency, tasked primarily with anti-corruption enquiries, but assigned an extended role due to the existing and continued degeneration in the police organisations across the country, is mulling moving the apex court against the high court verdict. It is not yet clear if the Talwars would consider any further action to seek justice for their deceased daughter.

A broken system

In my last article in The Wire, I commented in detail about police reforms. Without repeating myself, using the preposterous claims and comments made by the then IG Meerut zone Gurdarshan Singh, who had accused Rajesh of murdering his daughter and Hemraj after he found them in an ‘objectionable’ position, I will point to diminishing investigating skills of the police. The reasons are both internal to the organisation and rooted in the apathy, or is it antipathy, of the governments – Union and states – as well as political parties. While police training deserves to be put under the lens, the paucity of sufficient cops puts the organisation and its personnel under pressure and stress and leaves virtually no time for the organisation to send them for periodical refreshers for updating their skills and knowledge. Political misuse and consequent politicisation of the police by most political parties which have been in power has also caused low morale of the personnel and institutional degeneration.

Though the CBI has solved many complex and high-profile cases, this is not the first time it has got a bad name. A CBI director during the UPA regime admitted to the Supreme Court that the premier investigating agency was a ‘caged parrot’ of the government of the day. Even though anti-corruption investigation is its main mandate, it has been entrusted with the investigation of serious criminal cases. In fact, increasingly, with the failings of various state police organisations to carry out a non-partisan and efficacious investigation, criminal cases where political partisanship is alleged, or where the police fail to nail offenders, the demand for a CBI inquiry is made. Needless to say, not only has the CBI come under a cloud for being a partisan organisation, irrespective of the regime in New Delhi, the case under reference has thoroughly exposed its efficacy, whatever the reasons that caused its flip-flop. Worse still, those who brought such a blot on the grieving family and pushed them into incarceration for four years will go scot free. And no one would even consider bringing reforms in the CBI.

Rajesh and Nupur Talwar. Credit: PTI

The recent tussle between the Union Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) and the West Bengal government over the withdrawal of central forces even as the Gorkhaland movement turned violent is a classic example of partisanship entering policing. While it exposed the inadequacy, and perhaps inefficiency, of the West Bengal police, the MHA decided to withdraw the Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF) and issued a note to the states that the central forces were meant only for emergencies, indicating that it did not treat the Darjeeling situation as an emergency. Interestingly, the state that protested the deployment of the CRPF in 1968 in Durgapur during a strike by the Left unions is now protesting the withdrawal of the same force.

The judicial system, particularly the lower courts, are under severe stress. There are close to 30 million pending cases in lower courts across states in the country. The Supreme Court (over 60,000) and 24 high courts have over four million pending cases. The high courts have a shortage of over 400 judges. While the higher judiciary has generally not been accused of a political slant, particularly after supersession stopped following the Three Judges Cases, fingers have frequently been raised in the lower courts across the country.

India’s prison system, defined lately as correctional homes, is also crying for reforms, despite some measures having been taken. Prison reforms have been discussed, and as is Indian practice, several committees have been formed since the 1980s. The most recent was the Draft National Policy on Prison Reforms and Correctional Administration, prepared in 2007 by the Bureau of Police Research and Development. In 2008, a 40-billion package for prison reforms was sanctioned. As always happens, allocation of funds, necessary though it is, without any road map and concrete plan for reforms, leads only to squandering of money.

Recommended reforms

The recommendations of the Committee on Reforms of the Criminal Justice System (CJS) constituted by the MHA on November 24, 2000, deserve a discussion here. The committee, as mandated, suggested measures for revamping the CJS in its report submitted in 2003. It premised the CJS reforms on the fundamental rights of citizens to a better system of justice, stating that seeking truth is a fundamental duty of the courts. Among the most fundamental reforms suggested by the committee was an infusion of features of the continental inquisitorial system in the adversarial system inherited from the British tradition by India. The former, the report insisted, is better equipped to seek truth as investigation is supervised by a judicial magistrate, resulting in higher conviction. However, it did recommend retaining the adversarial system as it ensures a fair trial, and in particular, fairness to an accused. Thus, adoption of some of the good features of the inquisitorial system such as the duty of the court to search for truth, to assign a proactive role to the judges, to give directions to the investigating officers and prosecution agencies in the matter of investigation and leading evidence with the object of seeking the truth and focusing on justice to victims would strengthen India’s adversarial system, making it effective.

Also read: What Happened in the Aarushi-Hemraj Murder Case was a Witch Hunt, Says Lawyer

Further, the committee suggested reforms in the Criminal Procedure Code and Indian Penal Code to ensure the right to silence of citizens ensured by Article 20 of the constitution, ensuring the rights of the accused, presumption of innocence and burden of proof. On the presumption of innocence and burden of proof, which are not only significant for the judicature but also investigation and prosecution, where the role of police is involved, the committee recommended a middle path, where ‘proof beyond reasonable doubt’ should be done away with. Since the CJS is aimed at ensuring justice to victims who have not been given any substantial right, not even to participate in the criminal proceedings, the committee stressed that the system must focus on justice for victims and made several recommendations which included the right of the victim to participate in cases involving serious crimes and to adequate compensation. It expressed its “considered view … that criminal justice administration will assume a new direction towards better and quicker justice once the rights of victims are recognized by law and restitution for loss of life, limb and property are provided for in the system”.

Even though the committee recommended separation of the investigation wing from the law and order wing, which has been recommended by practically all the police commissions, the Malimath Committee endorsed the National Police Commission suggestion for institutionalising the police system. In order to improve quality of investigation, it suggested measures within the existing organisational framework to improve policing; there the committee did not do any out of the box thinking, as its mandate did not include the organisational aspect of the police.

Thus we already have recommendations from a score of commissions and committees since the 1960s for police reforms, including those that looked at the Dharma Vira Commission to recommend actionable points for the government. The Malimath Committee makes the process complete, as it puts the police and policing in the broader framework of the CJS, showing how the anomalies of the police organisation and policing negatively impact the other two institutional processes and vice versa. In fact, the Aarushi Talwar case is the perfect example of the prevailing aberrations causing distortions in the system at each stage. Fixing it without any delay is imperative.

Ajay K. Mehra is honorary director, Centre for Public Affairs, Noida.

Does India Need to Be Told to End Violence in the Name of Religion Every Few Decades?

The current climate of violence in the country remains eerily similar to what it was in the late 1980s and 1990s after Indira Gandhi’s assassination. Only the target is different.

After the 1984 riots abated, all Sikhs became victims of various kinds of overt discrimination. Credit: Reuters

I was traveling to Delhi from western Uttar Pradesh in a cab. We passed a beat-up Alto, driven by a Muslim with a long, thick beard and a white skull cap. As my cab overtook his Alto, my driver shouted out, “Jaa, Pakistan jaa”. I was instantly reminded of a similar moment 30 years ago in a cab in Delhi. The only difference was that a turbaned Sikh was driving the vehicle and the taunt was ugarvadi or terrorist.

The anti-Sikh massacre that followed Indira Gandhi’s assassination by two Sikh bodyguards claimed the lives of numerous ordinary Sikhs who had nothing to do with secessionism.

After it abated, all Sikhs became victims of various kinds of overt discrimination. It took the form of barbs and slights, extra frisking by security personnel at airports and sports stadiums or the denial of jobs and rental accommodation. The fear rose to a pitch where many Sikhs chose to become invisible in order to survive. They cut off their beards and discarded their turbans. They dropped ‘Singh’ from their names. Instead of Sat Sri Akal, they started saying Namaste. Such a situation may now be in the past, but bitter memories remain. More than three decades have passed since Gandhi’s assassination. Her killers were hanged in 1989. Yet, justice remains elusive for the riot victims.

Also read: Within Hours of Indira Gandhi’s Assassination, Millions of Sikhs Had Become the Internal Enemy

Our society has a different target these days. But the current climate remains eerily similar to what it was in the late 1980s and 1990s. Back then, the scapegoating of an entire community vitiated the national mood and gave a shot in the arm to terrorism. The current round of intolerance has the potential to foment similar tragic consequences.

One of the highlights of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Independence Day speech this year was his appeal to end violence in the name of religion. Such an appeal would have been topical in India 30 years ago. Or, for that matter, on August 15, 1947, when we achieved freedom from Britain against the backdrop of the violence that accompanied the Partition. The fact that an Indian prime minister had to make such an appeal to the nation 70 years after independence is a telling déjà vu in itself. We all need to take note of that if we are invested in a better future. For if a similar appeal needs to be issued 70 years from now, the less said about the future, the better.

Vikram Kapur’s most recent book The Assassinations is based on the 1984 anti-Sikh massacre. He is associate professor of English at Shiv Nadar University. His website is www.vikramkapur.com.

Return Seven Hydel Projects to J&K to Make State Self-Reliant, RTI Activist Demands

The Central Information Commission has rejected an RTI plea seeking disclosure of records related to the discussions on the demand for handing over the NHPC projects.

Central Information Commission. Credit: PTI

New Delhi: In a Right to Information (RTI) query, activist Venkatesh Nayak has questioned the delay in returning hydel projects to Jammu and Kashmir, as was promised in a memorandum of understanding (MoU) between the Centre and the state in July 2000. He has also questioned the Central Information Commission’s (CIC) delay in his appeal and accused it of allowing NHPC Ltd, the ‘respondent’, to not respond to the query by treating it as a ‘third party’.

Nayak, who is a programme coordinator at the Commonwealth Human Rights Initiative, said that NHPC generates more than 40% of the hydel power from plants in Jammu and Kashmir. A bulk of its revenues come from these hydel projects. “While 12% of the power generated is supplied to Jammu and Kashmir free of cost, the state government is required to buy at commercial rates, between 19-20% of the power so generated by NHPC to meet local demands,” he said.

Secrecy around negotiations on return of projects

Noting that negotiations for the return of the hydel projects are being conducted in secrecy, Nayak said, “NHPC’s efforts to maintain secrecy about the negotiations contradict the repeated assertions of the Union Ministry of Power that the Central government had rejected the 2012 recommendation of the three interlocutors on Jammu & Kashmir to transfer Central sector power generating projects to the state”.

The interlocutors were appointed by the UPA government in 2010 to “identify the political contours of a solution and the roadmap towards it”, and two years later, had made multiple recommendations in their report for political, socio-economic and cultural confidence building measures in the state.

NHPC had asserted before the CIC that the negotiations are still going on, in support of their claim to Section 8(1)(d) of the RTI Act, Nayak said, wondering who then between the NHPC and the ministry was speaking the truth.

‘Modern-day East India Company’

He said while the ministry had claimed that the government has decided not to return the projects to Jammu and Kashmir, the least the NHPC could do was become “more transparent about these negotiations”. This way, Nayak said, NHPC would be able to shrug off the tag of ‘Modern-day East India Company’ given by its critics.

Nayak also argued that the return of the projects would make the state more self-reliant. He said that while Jammu and Kashmir’s dependency on “central financial support for survival” is often debated, it should be remembered that “all states in north India draw on the electricity produced by Jammu and Kashmir’s hydel projects. NHPC earns its profits from the power sold to these states. If even a portion of these revenues were to be rerouted to Jammu and Kashmir, the state’s dependence on the parliament for budgetary support would be reduced considerably.” This, he said, also appeared to be the basis of the interlocutors’ 2012 recommendation for returning hydel projects to the state.

Sewa – II Power Station in Jammu & Kashmir. Credit: NHPC

CIC treated respondent as a ‘third party’

Nayak said that the CIC refused to direct NHPC to open up details of negotiations regarding the return of hydel projects it operates in Jammu and Kashmir, while treating the latter as a ‘third party’ and holding that information about the negotiations would fall under the category of ‘commercial confidence’ under Section 8(1)(d) of the RTI Act, 2005.

He said this treatment ran contrary to the law laid down by the Delhi high court in Virender Singh Dabad, in which the CIC’s decision to treat Air India as both a respondent and a ‘third party’ was challenged. The high court had set aside the decision of the CIC, Nayak said, adding that “the CIC is duty bound to follow this precedent instead of the patently erroneous interpretation that it has been dishing out in multiple cases”.

Need for intervention

In April 2016, an RTI query revealed that NHPC had earned more than Rs 194 billion (almost $3 billion at current exchange rates) by selling electricity generated from the rivers of Jammu and Kashmir between 2001-2015. Following this, Nayak said he had filed a plea asking for details in the matter. In its response, NHPC had supplied a copy of the MoU that the state government had entered with the Centre and which was signed by then chief minister Farooq Abdullah and Union power minister P.R. Kumaramangalam.

The pact stated that seven hydel projects – Kishanganga, Uri-II, Bursar, Sewa-II, Pakal Dul, Nimmo Bazgo and Chutak – would be transferred to NHPC for a period of ten years for funding, execution and operation. Both the state and the Centre had also agreed that they would work out a mutually “acceptable methodology” for handing over these projects back to Jammu and Kashmir separately.

“Although the media in Jammu and Kashmir and elsewhere had been talking about ‘buyback’ of these projects, the MoU only talks about ‘handover’ of these projects to the state,” Nayak said.

Proceedings in the case

The Central Public Information Officer (CPIO), in his reply, named only an exemption, without explaining how disclosure would negatively affect public interest. Nayak said that following his first appeal, the first appellate authority (FAA) had given a more detailed order, saying that as NHPC was a listed company, the information sought was sensitive and “disclosure would lead to unwanted speculations and confusion among shareholders” and “affect the commercial confidence” of NHPC. Thus, they too had taken refuge in Section 8(1)(d) of the RTI Act.

Nayak then filed a second appeal in July 2016. In this, he had insisted that NHPC, being the recipient of the RTI application by way of transfer from the Union power ministry under Section 6(3) of the RTI Act, could not claim to be the ‘third party’ in the same case. He also noted:

Almost 90% of the shares of NHPC were held by the president of India and public financial institutions and so, it was not tenable to hold that the disclosure could not have led to speculation as there were simply not enough shares freely available for trading.

Nayak had also argued that the issue of return/buyback of the hydel projects was an emotive issue that was widely discussed in Jammu and Kashmir and across the country and so, there was immense public interest in favour of disclosure.

However, he said, in its order on October 9, the CIC only cited some of his arguments without making any effort to balance them against NHPC’s claim of confidentiality. Moreover, he said, the CIC also did not rule on the public interest angle and maintained a strange silence about the application of Section 8(2) which authorises it to direct disclosure of even exempt information in the larger public interest.

Finally, he complained that the CIC had also ignored the Delhi high court’s ruling, but quoted a 2009 full bench decision (in the matter of Milap Choraria vs Central Board Of Direct Taxes), where the board, the respondent public authority, was treated as a ‘third party’ in its own case and access to information was denied.

Tunnel Collapse After Nuclear Test May Have Killed 200 in North Korea

About 100 workers at the Punggye-ri nuclear site were affected by the initial collapse, which took place around September 10

People walk past a street monitor showing a news report about North Korea’s nuclear test in Tokyo, Japan, September 3, 2017. Credit: Reuters

Tokyo: A tunnel at North Korea’s nuclear test site collapsed after Pyongyang’s sixth atomic test in September, possibly killing more than 200 people, Japanese broadcaster TV Asahi said on Tuesday, citing unnamed sources familiar with the situation.

Reuters has not been able to verify the report.

About 100 workers at the Punggye-ri nuclear site were affected by the initial collapse, which took place around September 10, the broadcaster said.

A second collapse during a rescue operation meant it was possible the death toll could have exceeded 200, it added.

Experts have said a series of tremors and landslides near the nuclear test base probably mean the country’s sixth and largest blast on September 3 has destabilised the region, and the Punggye-ri nuclear site may not be used for much longer to test nuclear weapons.

(Reuters)