News

Palestinian President calls for international involvement in peace-making. In an interview to The Hindu, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas says Israel is working against the two-state solution, and strong international backing is required to implement it. What are your hopes from this visit to India, your first since 2012? This is my fifth visit to India since 2005. India and its people are very close friends to Palestine, and know very well the meaning of struggling for your independence, for justice and against colonialism. So first of all I’m coming to say thank you to the Indian people that has stood tall for the universal rights of freedom, justice and peace. I’m also coming to thank President [Pranab] Mukherjee and Prime Minister Narendra Modi for their generous economic support and will discuss the current situation in Palestine and the region, and how we can strengthen our relations with a country that has an important international weight and that we have a lot to lea...

The Mitanin and Sahiyya community health worker programmes of Chhattisgarh and Jharkhand were initiated by civil society and state actors in the early 2000s. Employing mainly women, they were precursors to the Accredited Social Health Activist (ASHA) programme, launched across rural India in 2005. Over the years, efforts were made by civil society participants to bring about a wider rights-based focus to the Mitanin and Sahiyya programmes. In the case of Chhattisgarh, Mitanin women have engaged in rights-based action concerning a range of health and social issues, including nutrition, sanitation, education, pensions, forest rights, land acquisition, legal justice, gender-based violence, and caste discrimination. Thousands of Mitanin women have also become Panchayat representatives in Chhattisgarh. In contrast, the entry of Sahiyyas into Panchayat leadership positions in Jharkhand has been less frequent, while rights-based activities led by Sahiyyas are relatively rare. This Policy R...

A Kerala minister’s exit after a ‘sting’ operation spurs a debate on privacy vs public interest The matter is now under a judicial inquiry, but the resignation recently of a minister in the Kerala government turns the spotlight once again on the tricky journalistic terrain of the sting operation. A new Malayalam television channel, Mangalam TV, had debuted on March 26 with a splash. It broadcast an audio recording allegedly of the then Transport Minister of Kerala, A.K. Saseendran, purportedly seeking sexual favours from a woman who had come to him for assistance. Her end of the conversation was not put out, and the channel reported that it had got the tape directly from the woman. Mr. Saseendran put up a defence imputing that all was not what it appeared on the broadcast — but in the ensuing storm, resigned. Four days later, on March 30, the CEO of the channel went on air to render an apology, presumably for misrepresenting matters, though we must await the inquiry report to get a ...

Including Hindi on road signs on national highways is understandable, but not replacing English ones After reports pointed to locations on milestones being represented in Hindi rather than English on NH 75 and NH 77 in Vellore, Tiruvannamalai and Krishnagiri districts, there was the expected sound and fury from various Dravidian political parties. This happened despite the fact that Tamil signs were more or less intact on these highways. Strident opposition to the move was expressed by the working president of the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam, M.K. Stalin; Marumalarchi Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam leader Vaiko; and Pattali Makkal Katchi president S. Ramadoss. Protests were threatened as the political leaders sought to blame the Bharatiya Janata Party-led government at the Centre for the move. Continuum of anti-Hindi agitations For these parties, and many others in Tamil Nadu’s civil society, the change from the use of English to Hindi signs on milestones is not merely a matter of conv...

The top court’s orders banning liquor sale on highways encroach upon the executive’s domain of policymaking Decades ago, Lon Fuller, the famous American legal philosopher, coined the term “polycentric problems”. Certain social issues, according to Fuller, involved a complex set of interdependent relationships, where changing one feature could result in unforeseen and far-reaching changes to other features. A polycentric problem was like a spider web, where “a pull on one strand will distribute tensions after a complicated pattern throughout the web as a whole”. Fuller argued that the judiciary was particularly ill-suited to resolve polycentric problems. The structure of the judicial process was not oriented towards taking into account the effect that a ruling would have on the many interdependent strands of a polycentric situation. Furthermore, the judiciary did not have the time, the resources, or the institutional expertise to engage in the kind of fine-grained, evidence-based, co...

It must coexist with the right to vote in order to deepen our democratic roots “There can be no doubt, that if power is granted to a body of men, called Representatives, they like any other men will use their power not for the advantage of the community but for their own advantage, if they can.” — James Mill The ancient Athenians, under their unique democracy, came up with a social custom. Each year, in the sixth or seventh month of their 10-month calendar, all the men were asked in their assembly whether they wished to hold an ostracism. If it was a yes, an ostracism was held two months later, in a reserved section of the local agora. Here, citizens wrote down the names of those they wished to be ostracised on shards of pottery, which were then deposited in urns. Officials counted the shards. Whoever had the largest pile of ostraka — the pieces of broken pottery that were used in voting — was banned from the city for 10 years. Even though such methods lacked due process and t...

The government should use the new mental health law to strengthen primary care The passage of the Mental Healthcare Bill in the Lok Sabha, putting it on course to become law and repealing the Mental Health Act of 1987, will potentially help India catch up with the advances made in the field by other countries. India urgently needs to make a transition from old-fashioned approaches to providing care for those suffering from mental illnesses, something that China, for example, has achieved through state-led policy reform. Even the sketchy studies on the nature of care available to Indians indicate that in terms of population coverage the new law faces a big challenge. The country’s grossly inadequate base of professional resources is evident from its ratio of 0.3 psychiatrists for 100,000 people (with marginally higher numbers taking independent private practitioners into account), compared to China’s 1.7. Then there are massive deficiencies in the availability of trained clinical psy...

The current model of commercialisation does not work for publicly funded research It takes money to make money. CSIR-Tech, the commercialisation arm of the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR), realised this the hard way when it had to shut down its operations for lack of funds. CSIR has filed more than 13,000 patents — 4,500 in India and 8,800 abroad — at a cost of ₹50 crore over the last three years. Across years, that’s a lot of taxpayers’ money, which in turn means that the closing of CSIR-Tech is a tacit admission that its work has been an expensive mistake — a mistake that we tax-paying citizens have paid for. Recently, CSIR’s Director-General Girish Sahni claimed that most of CSIR’s patents were “bio-data patents”, filed solely to enhance the value of a scientist’s resume and that the extensive expenditure of public funds spent in filing and maintaining patents was unviable. CSIR claims to have licensed a percentage of its patents, but has so far failed to s...

The insistence on observing IST vis-à-vis Northeast India’s needs ignores its social and economic impact In a two paragraph order delivered by Chief Justice Ajit Singh, the Gauhati High Court has dismissed a public interest litigation filed by Rita Mozumder seeking a direction from the Central government to notify a separate time zone for the Northeast. The court cites a high-level committee study, constituted by the Ministry of Science and Technology, that recognised the difficulties faced by a single time zone in eastern India but concluded that Indian Standard Time (IST) should nonetheless be retained. The issues raised by the petition demanded more than a cursory order dismissing the petition given the importance of the issue. Legislators, activists, industrialists and ordinary citizens from the Northeast have often complained about the effect of IST on their lives, and pursued the issue of having a separate time zone with the Central government, without much success. The petiti...

Wednesday’s attack once again underlines the challenges posed by ‘lone wolves’ The attack in London’s Westminster that left five persons dead, including the assailant, was the type of terror strike that British security officials have been expecting. For almost three years, the threat level from international terrorism in Britain has been “severe”, meaning an attack is deemed highly likely. This incident was different from a conventional terror strike, but bore similarity to attacks on European cities in recent years claimed by the Islamic State. As the Berlin and Nice assailants did last year, the London attacker, Khalid Masood, turned a vehicle into a lethal weapon by mowing down pedestrians on Westminster Bridge and later killed a police officer with a kitchen knife at the Parliament compound. Britain has one of the best counter-terror police and intelligence agencies in Europe. Since the 2005 London bombings, the country has remained largely safe. In the last four years, British o...

An Indian rethink on the Belt & Road Initiative may require a Chinese compromise In February 2014, when the Chinese government first brought up with India its plans for the Belt and Road (B&R) Initiative, four months after President Xi Jinping had unveiled the idea in Kazakhstan, it seemed an unworkable, ambitious pipe dream. China would need all the friends and partners it could get to make its plans for a 60-nation network encompassing 4.4 billion people. In the Chinese scheme, India could be a major partner, and maps of the time show the B&R travel east to west right through India. Swerving off the road A few months later Russia was enlisted through the $400-billion “Power of Siberia” pipeline, and Mr. Xi’s friendship at a time when the West had decided to isolate and cripple Moscow over Crimea’s annexation brought President Vladimir Putin firmly into the fold. With India, China’s plan was a grander one: the newly elected Prime Minister, Narendra Modi, would visit...

The current model of commercialisation does not work for publicly funded research It takes money to make money. CSIR-Tech, the commercialisation arm of the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR), realised this the hard way when it had to shut down its operations for lack of funds. CSIR has filed more than 13,000 patents — 4,500 in India and 8,800 abroad — at a cost of ₹50 crore over the last three years. Across years, that’s a lot of taxpayers’ money, which in turn means that the closing of CSIR-Tech is a tacit admission that its work has been an expensive mistake — a mistake that we tax-paying citizens have paid for. Recently, CSIR’s Director-General Girish Sahni claimed that most of CSIR’s patents were “bio-data patents”, filed solely to enhance the value of a scientist’s resume and that the extensive expenditure of public funds spent in filing and maintaining patents was unviable. CSIR claims to have licensed a percentage of its patents, but has so far failed to...

The U.N. General Assembly in 1993 designated March 22 as World Water Day and over the years as water resources are increasingly critically threatened and as acess to safe drinking water to greater numbers of people becomes a growing reality, this day has become a very important day and so too the themes chosen to motivate particularly policy makers and administrators dealing with critical resources such as water. On a very recent visit to Madras, talking with a environmentally sensitive architect friend who is also a conscientious citizen and civic activist, our conversation turned to summer and impending water shortages and I enquired about the ground water level in her house. As summer approaches, concerns over water scarcity rise to the surface and enquiries are not about the health and happiness of the person but about water supply and those with independent borewells, the condition of their borewells. As a socially conscious person, ofcourse she recharges her borewell and gro...

Beijing hosts Saudi and Israeli leaders, signalling a deepening regional engagement By hosting the leaders of Saudi Arabia and Israel, the two heavyweights in West Asia that do not have formal diplomatic relations, in consecutive weeks, Beijing has sent yet another signal on its growing appetite to deepen ties with the region. During the visit of King Salman last week, China and Saudi Arabia announced an investment cooperation deal worth $65 billion that will boost partnerships in fields such as energy, finance and aerospace. Days later, Chinese President Xi Jinping met Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in Beijing, where both leaders vowed to strengthen cooperation in the technology and agriculture sectors. Over the years China has built strong economic ties with countries in West Asia, while staying clear of the region’s several crises and hostilities. It is one of the top buyers of oil from Saudi Arabia and a key trading partner of Israel. For Iran, Beijing remained a trus...

On March 20, 2017, a meeting was hosted by the WaterAid India to discuss draft Public Health Bill 2017. The discussion was fostered in the presence of Mira Shiva (Initiative for Health and Equity in Society), Indira Chakravarty (Public Health Resource Network), Arun Srivastava (National Health Systems Resource Centre), Indranil Mukhopadhyay (Public Health Foundation of India) and the officials of WaterAid. Members present in the meeting scanned through the draft Bill and raised concerns related to the intent behind this sudden introduction of the Bill by the Ministry and also the implications, if it gets passed in its current form. During the meeting, the WaterAid, along with other experts, stressed on the need of more in-depth discussion and consultation with much wider group, including key health groups and other stakeholders. They were unanimous in their opinion that government should not pass this Bill in its current form and should call for a larger consultation to address it...

The Trump-Russia investigation could further erode the U.S President’s credibility The first open hearing into the alleged links between the campaign of Donald Trump and unnamed parties associated with the Russian government kicked off this week, even as the President put out a series of social media posts that seemed to mischaracterise statements coming out of that hearing. Ground-shaking revelations have come from the grilling of FBI Director James Comey and NSA Director Michael Rogers by the House of Representatives’ Intelligence Committee. The first was from Mr. Comey, who confirmed that the FBI was investigating Russia’s efforts to interfere in the presidential election, including links between specific individuals associated with the Trump campaign and the Russian government. Last month Mr. Trump’s nominee for National Security Adviser, Michael Flynn, resigned from his post after it emerged that he had withheld information about being in contact with Russia’s Ambassador in Was...

G20 states must play by the multilateral rule book even when President Trump regards trade as a zero-sum game Given Donald Trump’s election to the White House, it was perhaps inevitable that the G20 meeting of finance ministers would end in an impasse. First, the U.S. decided in January to withdraw from the Trans-Pacific Partnership. Then it called to renegotiate the North American Free Trade Agreement. In more recent weeks, the Trump administration has ratcheted up its rhetoric on the U.S. trade imbalances vis-à-vis Germany and China. Each of these is a pattern of the populist penchant to play the victim card in the global multilateral system, and contributed to the deadlock at the Baden-Baden G20 meeting last weekend. This is not to deny that there is some familiarity to the failure of G20 nations to live up to past pledges. In this instance, it was the difficulty of including a clause to unequivocally eschew protectionism in the final communiqué, largely aimed to placate the ...

Wastewater management receives too little social or political attention Wastewater is often an afterthought — flushed and forgotten — whether from household or commercial use. We may not know where wastewater ends up and we’re not too troubled by the mystery, just so long as it’s gone. The 2017 United Nations’ Water Development Programme’s World Water Development Report (WWDR) – Wastewater: The Untapped Resource makes clear that we can no longer afford this disconnect. The report, to be officially released today on World Water Day, notes that more than 80% of the world’s wastewater — over 95% in some least developed countries — is released into the environment untreated. In Thailand, 77% of wastewater was untreated in 2012; it was 81% in Vietnam the same year and 82% in Pakistan in 2011. Relevant to Asia-Pacific Untreated wastewater poses a threat to both human health and our aquatic ecosystems, and is a challenge that is particularly acute in Asia-Pacific. This region is ...