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Supreme Court orally indicates that the government should not deport Rohingya “now” as the Centre prevails over it to not record any such views in its formal order, citing “international ramifications”. The Supreme Court on Friday came close to ordering the government not to deport the Rohingya. It finally settled on merely observing that a balance should be struck between humanitarian concern for the community and the country's national security and economic interests. The court was hearing a bunch of petitions, one filed by persons within the Rohingya community, against a proposed move to deport over 40,000 Rohingya refugees. A three-judge Bench, led by Chief Justice of India Dipak Misra, began by orally indicating that the government should not deport Rohingya “now”, but the government prevailed on the court to not pass any formal order, citing “international ramifications”. With this, the status quo continues even though the court gave the community liberty to approach i...

Status quo remains over Rohingya crisis The Supreme Court on Friday orally indicated that the government should not deport Rohingya “now” as the Centre prevailed over it to not record any such views in its formal order, citing “international ramifications”. Supreme Court refers case of ban on women’s entry into Sabarimala temple to Constitution Bench The Supreme Court on Friday referred to a five-judge Constitution Bench a bunch of petitions challenging the age-old practice in Kerala's famed Sabarimala temple of not allowing women aged between 10 and 50 to enter the temple. Supreme Court refuses to modify October 9 order on cracker sales in Delhi-NCR The Supreme Court on Friday refused to modify its October 9 order suspending the sale of firecrackers in Delhi-NCR till November 1. The court said it knew that "some people are trying to give a communal tinge to our order... but we will consider that as people expressing their anguish at our order". Nine-nation Test...

Supreme Court has not asked for withdrawal of order on the Rohingya, says official. A day before the Centre for the first time acknowledged in the Supreme Court that the latter’s remark on its order to deport Rohingya could have international ramifications, the Home Ministry brainstormed on steps to be taken if Myanmar refused to accept the undocumented migrants. With no concrete “plan” in place to deport the Rohingya, the Ministry convened a meeting on Thursday to decide the logistics and financial implications if the illegal migrants were not accepted by Myanmar. On August 9, the Ministry issued a circular asking State governments to initiate the procedure to deport illegal immigrants, including the Rohingya. A Ministry spokesperson said the SC’s oral order on Friday was “neither a stay nor an interim order” on the circular. An official said the circular was still operative and the apex court had not asked the Centre to withdraw it. “Since the circular asked State governme...

‘Previous order dilutes woman’s right against dowry’ Two months after the Supreme Court stopped immediate arrests of accused in dowry harassment cases, the court on Friday did a re-think, saying its order dilutes the right of a woman to seek justice against the evil of dowry. On July 27, a Bench of Justices A.K. Goel and U.U. Lalit had concluded that Section 498A (dowry harassment) of the Indian Penal Code has come under much abuse. Dowry complaints are being filed in the heat of the moment by women over trivial issues. Innocent relatives, including parents of advanced age, siblings and grandparents, suffer harassment. Their judgment directed ‘Family Welfare Committees’ to sift the genuine cases of dowry harassment from the trivial ones. Police would take action only on the basis of the committee’s report. These committees were directed to be made up of social workers, homemakers, retired persons and other citizens. In an absolute U-turn, a three-judge Bench led by Chief Justi...

In the last three and half years, the rate of work completion under the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA) has drastically declined, leading to wastage of public money and leaving villages more prone to drought. This could also be a reason for people moving out of the programme. At a time when more than one-third of India’s districts are reeling under a drought-like situation due to deficit rainfall, here comes another bad news. The works started under the MGNREGA—close to 80 per cent related to water conservation, irrigation and land development—are increasingly not being completed or in practice, abandoned. Going by the data (as on October 12) in the Ministry of Rural Development’s website, which tracks progress of MGNREGA through a comprehensive MIS, 10.4 million works have not been completed since April 2014. In the last three and half years, 39.7 million works were started under the programme. Going by the stipulation under the programme, close t...

Rainfall in last few months and lack of preparedness led to spurt: experts There has been nearly a three-fold increase in dengue cases reported in Puducherry this year. Intermittent rainfall over the last couple of months and lack of preparedness have led to the spread of cases across the Union Territory. According to sources in the government General Hospital, the number of confirmed dengue cases in the Union Territory between January and September was around 1,800, with Puducherry accounting for about 1,400 cases. It was 490 in 2016, 803 in 2015, 1,408 in 2013, 1,063 in 2013, 871 in 2012, 232 in 2011 and 45 in 2010. Vector Control Research Centre (VCRC) director P. Jambulingam said there was an increase in the cases due to the intermittent rainfall as the temperature had become conducive to facilitate breeding of mosquitoes carrying dengue virus. As many as 800 cases were reported in August this year. “We should be prepared once we get the first few showers. If we do not pre...

Renegotiation of the Paris Agreement on climate change is not a viable option Between November 6 and 17 this year, world leaders, delegates from various countries and others from business, along with media and other representatives of civil society will gather at Bonn for the 23rd Conference of Parties (COP-23) of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). The meeting will primarily concentrate on various aspects associated with the implementation of the Paris Agreement (PA), which was negotiated at COP-21 and entered into force, or became legally binding, on November 4, 2016. COP-23 will be presided by Frank Bainimarama, Prime Minister of Fiji. It is fitting that a Pacific island nation chairs this year’s COP as the very existence of low-lying islands is threatened by sea level rise due to climate change. The meetings in Bonn will cover a wide range of issues, including adjusting to living in a warmer world with the associated impacts, known as adaptation...

It is not as difficult as it sounds When we attained Independence in 1947, like British dominions such as Canada and Australia and colonies such as Malaya and Kenya, we continued to adopt the civil service system inherited from the British. The first Prime Minister, Jawaharlal Nehru, was aware that the colonial civil service system was unsuitable for a politically free, socially feudal and economically poor country such as ours. Lord Mountbatten, the “last Viceroy of India”, did little about it. Yes, we renamed our civil services, calling them the Indian Administrative Service (IAS) and the Indian Audit and Accounts Service (IAAS), etc, but there has been only little change in practice. The IAS has continued to be deeply hierarchical and rule-bound rather than being driven by domain knowledge. Seniority is the basic criterion. We set up a brand new National Academy of Administration at Mussoorie, later to be called the Lal Bahadur Shastri National Academy of Administration. It was m...

This 1922 Nobel Peace Prize Laureate led one of the most interesting lives in the 19th-20th centuries. Fridtjof Nansen (pronounced FRID-choff NAN-sən) wore many caps during his lifetime — scientist, explorer, adventurer, trekker, zoologist, humanitarian, diplomat, a champion skiier who could ski fifty miles a day. This 1922 Nobel Peace Prize Laureate led one of the most interesting lives in the 19th-20th centuries. He studied the polar ice caps, dabbled in oceanography, repatriated prisoners of war, rescued refugees and was part of a group that was the first to cross Greenland. Today’s Google Doodle, in honour of his 156th birthday, features a neat gif of the adventurer skiing across the frozen tundras of the North. The doodle also features the legendary ‘Nansen passport’. Nansen was born on October 10, 1861 near Oslo. Even as a child, Nansen had a finger in several pies — swimming, skiing, the sciences and, oddly enough, drawing as well. According to the Nobel Foundation, it ...

As the world looks to end the era of easy money, India must be prepared India’s external balance sheet may have improved significantly since the infamous taper tantrum of 2013, but there are now signs that warrant more caution from policymakers. Last week, the current account deficit (CAD) widened to a four-year high of $14.3 billion in the first quarter of the current financial year, standing at 2.4% of gross domestic product, compared to 0.1% last year. The widening CAD was driven by a greater increase in merchandise imports than exports. A strong capital account surplus, however, has helped the country pay for its import bills without much trouble. Foreign investors starved of yield have been stepping up their investments in India, which remains one of the few places offering higher yields. Compared to last year, net FDI almost doubled to $7.2 billion in the first quarter, while net portfolio investment jumped about six times to $12.5 billion. The strong inflow of foreign capital...

Glitches in the GST regime are increasing the anxiety among Indian businesses For a reform that was cracked up to be India’s biggest tax overhaul since Independence, the roll-out of the goods and services tax is off to a less-than-desirable start. Over 80 days after its introduction, the GST Network, its online backbone, is struggling to keep pace with the millions of invoices and returns being filed electronically by businesses across the country. The government has extended the deadline for filing GST returns for July, the first month of the GST era, twice. And Finance Minister Arun Jaitley has reiterated an appeal to taxpayers to not wait till the last day, to avoid burdening the GSTN. But even those filing returns well before the last date have struggled. It is clear that the network had not been fully tested for chinks before July. A ministerial group formed by the GST Council to resolve the GSTN’s glitches gave an assurance last Saturday that 80% of the problems would be fixed...

The interim report on a new constitution should set off an informed debate in Sri Lanka It is only with a great degree of caution and circumspection that the interim report of the Steering Committee of the Constitutional Assembly of Sri Lanka can be welcomed. The panel, chaired by Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe, has done creditably by producing a forward-looking proposal within 18 months of its first sitting. However, there have been several such reports in the past that envisioned far-reaching reforms in the country’s structure. None of them found broad acceptance within Sri Lanka’s polity. It is thus difficult to see the interim report as the beginning of an irreversible process of constitutional reform. There is room for both hope and fear. There is scope for optimism that Sri Lanka’s fractious polity could get its act together and adopt a durable constitution that would protect its unity and stability, distribute powers equitably across ethnic and geographical divisions, an...

A second failure by Republicans to replace ‘Obamacare’ exposes incoherence in the party A second concerted push by Republicans in the U.S. Congress to “repeal and replace” the landmark health-care reform law passed by the Obama administration ended in tears when it failed to garner the minimum 50 votes necessary to pass on the floor of the Senate. The latest proposal, which came to be known as the Graham-Cassidy bill after the Senators who sponsored it, was built on the idea, contra-Obamacare, that each U.S. State could effectively write up its own provisions for implementing certain aspects of healthcare policy. And in return for ensuring that some basic tenets were followed, such as patients with pre-existing conditions not being excluded from health insurance schemes, they would be given sizeable block grants. These grants, effectively “sweeteners” for moderate Republicans nervous about the mid-term elections due in November 2018, were supplemented with the promise of further de...

The U.S. President needs to wind down war talk and initiate direct talks with North Korea U.S. President Donald Trump’s harsh rhetoric against North Korea and equally strident counter-threats by Pyongyang have made the situation in the Korean Peninsula drastically worse. After reports emerged that North Korea has developed a miniaturised nuclear warhead that can fit inside its missiles, Mr. Trump said that the country would be met with “fire and fury” of the sort the world had never seen if it continued to threaten the U.S. If Mr. Trump’s tough talk, which he repeated again in the following days with even a reference to America’s nuclear weapons, was intended to deter Pyongyang from escalating the situation, it was an instant failure. The North issued a specific threat, saying it was considering a plan to fire missiles towards Guam, the American territory in the Pacific. It is appalling that there’s no substantial effort to defuse tensions even as two nuclear powers are steadily es...

Each shell company must be duly investigated, instead of a ‘name and shame’ data dump The decision by the Ministry of Corporate Affairs to crack down on so-called ‘shell companies’, disqualify select directors in these entities and debar them from taking board positions for a specified period of time cannot be faulted. This would begin the clean-up of the Augean stables of firms set up in many cases with less than bona fide intent and having virtually no business operations. However, the Union government’s move to publicise the identities of some of these individuals with a view to ‘naming and shaming’ them is fraught with risk; the devil, as always, is in the detail. While the underlying motive for this action, as cited by the ministry, of “breaking the network of shell companies” in the government’s fight against black money is laudable, there is a real danger of inadvertently tainting genuine firms and individuals. This was in evidence when the Securities Appellate Tribunal recen...

Glitches in the GST regime are increasing the anxiety among Indian businesses For a reform that was cracked up to be India’s biggest tax overhaul since Independence, the roll-out of the goods and services tax is off to a less-than-desirable start. Over 80 days after its introduction, the GST Network, its online backbone, is struggling to keep pace with the millions of invoices and returns being filed electronically by businesses across the country. The government has extended the deadline for filing GST returns for July, the first month of the GST era, twice. And Finance Minister Arun Jaitley has reiterated an appeal to taxpayers to not wait till the last day, to avoid burdening the GSTN. But even those filing returns well before the last date have struggled. It is clear that the network had not been fully tested for chinks before July. A ministerial group formed by the GST Council to resolve the GSTN’s glitches gave an assurance last Saturday that 80% of the problems would be fixed...

Shinzo Abe’s decision to call parliamentary elections early could prove to be a gamble Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has gambled his career by calling snap elections to the Lower House of the Japanese Diet in late-October. The term of the House would have ordinarily lasted another year, but he clearly senses a turn in the popular breeze in his favour. Whether the electorate will vindicate his judgment, however, may well depend on the grit and tenacity of his challenger, Tokyo’s first woman Governor, Yuriko Koike. The former television anchor achieved an unprecedented feat last year by taking the city’s top job, trouncing the official nominee of Mr. Abe’s Liberal Democratic Party in a triangular race. Ever since, Ms. Koike, who had served briefly as defence minister during Mr. Abe’s first term in 2006-07, has become accustomed to thriving in a crisis. In a repeat of her growing penchant to take on a male-dominated establishment, Ms. Koike floated a local party earlier this year, which sp...

The Union and West Bengal governments and the GJM must urgently begin tripartite talks With a breakthrough ending the 104-day-long blockade in the Darjeeling hills, the Union and West Bengal governments must move forthwith to consolidate the ‘truce’ and address the setback to livelihoods and the local economy suffered over this period. The announcement on ending the bandh came from Bimal Gurung of the Gorkha Janmukti Morcha, which had led the agitation. Union Home Minister Rajnath Singh’s appeal to the protesters and his tentative offer of talks brought about this turnaround, but it is his specific mention of the beleaguered Mr. Gurung, who has been on the run from the West Bengal police, that made the difference. The blockade had severely hit life in the hill districts, and it is clear that local support for the agitation was waning. A section of the GJM, led by Binay Tamang, had shown an inclination to negotiate with the State government. In a move to cash in on the differences wi...

The Nobel Prize for Physics is a recognition of a project involving a rare kind of coordination The 2017 Nobel Prize for physics has been awarded to the LIGO-VIRGO collaboration for their detection of gravitational waves arising from the merger of two black holes. Gravitational waves are ripples in the fabric of spacetime caused by cataclysmic events in the universe such as colliding black holes or neutron stars. Though extremely violent, when these disturbances reach far-off regions in space and time the signals are weak and require extremely sensitive detectors to sense them. The very first detection of gravitational waves was made in September 2015, a signal of a black hole merger 1.3 billion years ago. In other words, the signals took that long to travel to Earth. Hence the observatory offers a way of looking back in time to unravel mysteries pertaining to the early days of the universe’s existence. Since then, the LIGO-VIRGO collaboration has detected such signals four times. J...

By holding policy rates, the RBI shifts focus to the government to give a fillip to growth The Reserve Bank of India’s Monetary Policy Committee has since inception retained its unwavering focus on its primary remit: the preservation of price stability. It follows then that the central bank’s rate-setting panel opted to leave benchmark interest rates unchanged and retain a neutral stance to achieve the medium-term target of keeping Consumer Price Index inflation close to 4% on a durable basis, while supporting growth. Spelling out the rationale for the decision, the MPC felt that with global crude oil prices having “firmed up further” amid a pick-up in demand and tighter supplies in the wake of OPEC’s production cuts, the threat of upward pressure on accelerating inflation has increased appreciably. Add to this the uncertainty posed by the prospects of weaker-than-anticipated kharif crop output and the impact this may have on food prices, and the concerns agitating policymakers will...