Be bold in revisiting the sedition law

The government’s admission in Parliament that the present definition of ‘sedition’ in the Indian Penal Code is too wide and requires reconsideration, is the first indication that the fallout of the Kanhaiya Kumar episode has had a chastening effect on the ruling party. There seems to be a realisation that invoking the draconian penal provision against students of the Jawaharlal Nehru University was an act of overreach by the Delhi Police. Further, legal luminaries had pointed out that the essential ingredient of sedition — an imminent threat to public order — was absent in the case. Opinion is growing that the relevant provision, Section 124-A, has no place on the statute book. While Union Home Minister Rajnath Singh assured Opposition members that an all-party meeting on the issue would be convened after the Law Commission submitted its report on the matter, Minister of State for Home Kiren Rijiju made a pointed reference to concerns that the definition of ‘sedition’ was very wide. He also sought to clarify that he was not discussing the merits of the case against JNU students or defending the action of the Delhi Police, indicating a significant political climbdown. In other remarks, Mr. Rijiju recalled that the Law Commission in its 42nd Report had rejected the idea of repealing the section altogether. A look at the 1971 report shows that in fact it wanted to expand the term relating to exciting “disaffection towards the government established by law” to cover disaffection towards the Constitution, Parliament, the government and legislatures of the States, and the administration of justice.

In penal law, vague and ‘over-broad’ definitions of offences often result in mindless prosecutions based merely on the wording of the act that seems to allow both provocative and innocuous speeches to be treated as equally criminal. While upholding sedition as an offence that fell under the ‘public order’ restriction on free speech, the Supreme Court ruled that it ought to be invoked only if a particular speech or action had a “pernicious tendency to create public disorder”. Words such as “excites or attempts to excite disaffection” or “brings into or attempts to bring into hatred or contempt” are unacceptably vague, and the further explanation that ‘disaffection’ includes “disloyalty and all feelings of enmity” compounds the problem. The provision in effect appears to demand ‘affection’ towards the government, except for a general exception allowing disapproval of governmental measures. Two High Courts had declared Section 124-A unconstitutional before the Supreme Court upheld the section in 1962 in Kedar Nath Singh v. State of Bihar. The Law Commission, while revisiting the issue, should take into account recent developments, especially the flagrant instances of misuse of the sedition law and the tendency to invoke it against those involved in strident forms of political dissent and scathing criticism of governments. One way to limit its mischief is to narrow the definition; but a more rational and constitutional option would be to scrap the provision altogether.

Keywords: JNU row, sedition law, Indian Penal Code, Kirren Rijju, Law Commission

Source: The Hindu, 18-03-2016

Privacy is a fundamental right

The Aadhaar Bill has been passed with no public consultation about the privacy safeguards necessary for such a database and no provision for public or independent oversight. The rights to liberty and freedom of expression cannot survive if the right to privacy is compromised.

The Central government has forced the Aadhaar Bill through Parliament in a week. Aadhaar has had an invasive and controversial presence well before the government’s attempt to legitimise it. It has been challenged before the Supreme Court, and in defending it, our Attorney General (funded by our taxes) has argued that we have no right to privacy. In this context, any version of the Aadhaar Bill would have been subject to close scrutiny. When the Bill is sprung in Parliament with little warning and mislabelled as a money bill to avoid Rajya Sabha scrutiny, it will naturally be treated with even more suspicion than usual.

There are extensive threats to privacy contained within this legislation, which seeks to institutionalise an extensive, pervasive database that links multiple other databases containing our personal information. It is unconscionable for the government to pass the Aadhaar Bill with no public consultation about the sort of privacy safeguards that are necessary for such a database.

The right to privacy in India

It is truly unfortunate that the privacy debate in India is circling back to its initial stages in 1948-49. While drafting the Constitution, amendments were moved to insert safeguards against search and seizure within the fundamental rights chapter. Dr. B.R. Ambedkar pointed out that these safeguards were already provided by the Code of Criminal Procedure but he agreed that adding them to the Constitution would make it impossible for the legislature to tamper with them. Although no convincing arguments were made against the amendment, there was commotion in the House. The vote was deferred. Eventually the amendment did not pass through the House but the debates were disappointing since they offered no discernible reason for this choice.

However, the Supreme Court soon read the right to privacy into the Constitution. Progressively, in case after case, it realised that the rights to liberty and freedom of expression cannot survive if the right to privacy is compromised. It began with recognising people’s rights against government intrusion into their homes and went on to build this norm over the years across a variety of cases. It is the right to privacy that protects us from the indiscretions of doctors who see us at our most vulnerable. It is the right to privacy that prevents the police from turning our homes inside out on a whim. It is the right to privacy that prevents, albeit fairly ineffectively, law enforcement from listening in on our phone conversations and recording them. This is all a result of the Supreme Court recognising time after time, across decades, that our other rights will not stand for much without privacy.

The Aadhaar database is a dangerous thing in itself. Like dams that wall in enormous quantities of water or plants storing toxic material, this database could cause widespread disaster if breached. It is necessary to take every possible precaution when building anything this dangerous. It is also necessary that whoever puts such a hazard among us takes full responsibility for the ill-effects if anything goes wrong. The Government of India is doing no such thing with the Aadhaar database. Despite multiple assurances of safety, it has offered citizens no guarantee of compensation or recompense if its poor choices endanger them.

In many ways, this legislation is something of a Trojan horse. We are told that its sole purpose is the noble goal of creating a functional Public Distribution System. We are also told that the sensitive information in the database is secure and inaccessible for any purpose other than authentication. However, the legislation does a fine job of obfuscation: in part labelled “protection of information”, it begins with very promising norms about not sharing information for purposes outside the legislation, and then undoes these norms completely by creating two enormously significant exceptions that permit the government to easily dip into Aadhaar data.

The exception permits the government to access the database in two separate ways. One way is if a district judge orders disclosure of information. This is very dangerous if one bears in mind that we have inadequately trained district judges all over the country, and that they are not given enough support to understand the implications of a database like Aadhaar. District judges in far-flung districts have been authorising mass blocking of online content and gag orders. These judges can now authorise access to Aadhaar data without any disclosure or discussion with the citizen affected — only the Aadhaar authority will have the right to contest the order if it is so inclined. The legislation offers no avenue where the affected party may appeal if her rights are affected. This creates a huge window for access and misuse of the database.

There is a second way in which the government may abuse its power and access the Aadhaar database. A Joint Secretary authorised by the government can direct disclosure of information “in the interests of national security”. This direction again leaves the affected party out of the equation, and nothing in the legislation compels any kind of public or independent oversight that may help ensure that there is no abuse of power. While this order will be reviewed by a committee consisting of the Cabinet Secretary and the Secretaries to the Government of India in the Department of Legal Affairs and the Department of Electronics and Information Technology, this is an inadequate safeguard for multiple reasons.

Inadequate safeguards

The safeguards contained within the Aadhaar Bill are appalling even by very outdated Indian standards. By international standards, they are laughable. The Indian standards for using technology for widespread surveillance began with the use of the telephone. When large-scale telephone tapping was challenged in PUCL v. Union of India (1997), the government attempted the very same national security argument that is being used for Aadhaar. The Supreme Court ruled that telephone tapping would violate Article 21 of the Constitution unless it was permitted by the procedure established by law, and that it would also violate the right to freedom of speech and expression under Article 19 unless it came within the permissible restrictions. The Supreme Court was very clear in this context that even when the law clearly defines the situations in which interception may take place, this law must have procedural backing to ensure that the exercise of power is just and reasonable. Having insisted on the need for procedural safeguards, the Supreme Court created a stopgap, interim administrative measure that was to act as a safeguard in the absence of a statutory mechanism. That this deeply inadequate stopgap measure continues to be our sole communication surveillance safeguard is a mark of how all governments across political lines find it difficult to restrict their own powers to respect the rights of the people.

Owing the great variation of privacy safeguards internationally, it was difficult until recently to argue convincingly for specific reforms to the system. However, that has changed since the then UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Navi Pillay published her detailed report on ‘The Right to Privacy in the Digital Age’ in July 2014. Ms. Pillay’s report stated clearly that internal procedural safeguards without independent external monitoring are inadequate for the protection of rights. This means that the system by which a Joint Secretary issues orders that are reviewed by three Secretaries is not acceptable. Ms. Pillay’s report said that effective protection of the law can only be achieved if all the branches of government as well as an independent civilian oversight agency are built into the procedural safeguards. The new Aadhaar legislation removed the independent oversight committee that was meant to monitor the operation of Aadhaar. Both its systems for access to Aadhaar data involve only one branch of government each.

Where Ms. Pillay’s report insisted that known and accessible remedies need to be made available to those whose privacy is violated, the Aadhaar legislation does no such thing. The remedies are supposed to include thorough and impartial investigation and the option of criminal prosecution for gross violation. The Aadhaar Bill excludes courts from taking cognisance of offences under the legislation, requiring that the authority that runs Aadhaar consent to prosecution for any action to be taken under the legislation. This part of the Bill completely undermines all the safeguards that do exist within it, since citizens cannot access these safeguards without co-operation from the authority which is arguably in a position of conflict of interest.

Impact of human rights violations

The government seems unable to resist the pressures of the Home Ministry. It is perfectly natural that investigating agencies will ask for as much power with as few hurdles as possible. Letting them have their way leads to a police state. It is for the government, especially one with such a significant majority, to have the intelligence and leadership to think long term.

If the object of Aadhaar is smoothly functioning government benefit schemes, why give law enforcement agencies or indeed anyone else access to the database at all? If the access is written in to provide for unforeseen future emergencies, the circumstances in which the state can breach our privacy must be much narrower. There must be more oversight and much more accountability in the manner in which this is done. If this system is something that the government lacks the expertise to build, it should have invited expert and other comments.

(Chinmayi Arun is Executive Director, Centre for Communication Governance at National Law University, Delhi, and Faculty Associate of the Berkman Centre at Harvard University.)

Keywords: Aadhaar Bill, Rajya Sabha, Lok Sabha, parliament session

Source: The Hindu, 18-03-2016

Know What is Reality

DHRUVA BHARGAVA





What we call maya is the way we experience the world. Our experience of the outer reality or world is not the experience of the world as it is. Rather, we experience the appearance or projection of the outer world within. So, if all we experience is mere projection, then, what lies beyond the veil of projection? Our innate capacity to perceive the external world enables us to experience the world in the form of projection.Through perception, the world is projected within which it is experienced. But the projection may not represent the complete picture of the world as it transpires through sensory and cognitive modalities having their own limitations. So, the appearance of the world too suffers limitations and our conclusions or the world's image remains incomplete.
Complications arise when we confuse projection with reality .This becomes the source of false knowledge, or avidya. Secondly , intense identification with the projection reinforces our sense of self that consolidates ego, another form of projection. Thirdly , we zealously defend the projection or impose the same on others, leading to ego clash. So, it is our inability to distinguish between appearance of reality and reality as two distinct phenomena.
Our resulting presumptions of the world are, thus, erroneously derived from the false knowledge of the world that create an endless cycle of confusion and suffering. We need to overcome this confusion with right knowledge. A mirage by itself is not maya but confusing it for the real thing is maya.

Decline in RTI queries & replies worries activists

Himanshi Dhawan

New Delhi





In a blow to transparency in governance, the number of RTI queries have declined as have the number of public authorities submitting data on the legislation.The annual report of the Central Information Commission (CIC) shows that a total of 7.55 lakh RTI applications were filed in 2014-2015, a decline of 79,000 since last year.Almost 90,000 RTI applications were pending decision at the start of the reporting year of 2014-15. Of the 2,030 public authorities registered with the CIC, only 75.27% submitted data on RTI for the year. This is much lower than 2012-2013, when of the 2,333 registered public authorities 79% submitted RTI returns.
The proportion of rejection of RTI applications has shot up by 1.2% in 2014-15. While only 7.20% of the RTI applications was rejected in 2013-14, this figure increased to 8.40% in 2014-15. “This is cause for worry and must be examined.On the face of it, this comparative figure appears to support the anecdotal experiences of many an RTI user that the public authorities under the government has begun rejecting more and more RTI applications under the NDA regime,'' Venkatesh Nayak, from CHRI who analysed the data said.
Data related to CIC is not encouraging either. The commisison received 35,396 appeals and complaints cases in 2014-15. It decided 20,181 cases during the year while 37,323 cases were pending before the CIC as on April 1, 2015.
CIC imposed penalties of over Rs 7 lakh on errant public information officers in 2014-15. This figure has come down by 61% since last year, when fines worth Rs 19.25 lakh were levied. However during 2014-15, the CIC recovered penalties better as compared to the previous year. It recovered Rs 11.31 lakh as compared to Rs 10.19 lakh which is about 10% higher.
Among the ministries and departments who have submitted information on RTI applications, the largest number have been filed with the finance ministry as it includes banks, financial institutions, insurance companies and tax authorities.The number of RTIs filed are about 1.4 lakh which has declined by 6%. The other public authorities that have fewer RTI applications as compared to last year are President's secretariat and ministry of external affairs.

Source: Times of India, 18-03-2016

No rise in CO2 emissions globally for 2nd yr in a row

Subodh Varma





Trend Being Linked To Surge In Renewable Energy Production

In a surprising bit of good news concerning the bleak climate change scenario, preliminary data shows that global carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions from burning of fossil fuels did not increase in 2015.This was the second year in a row when carbon emissions from energy-related use stayed flat.
Burning of fossil fuels contributes nearly twothirds of all carbon dioxide emissions globally with the rest arising from agriculture, deforestation etc.
While this stagnation is welcome news, and an indication that emissions can be controlled, it does not mean that global warming has stalled. That's because there are already excess greenhouse gases in the atmosphere.
Released by the International Energy Agency (IEA) in Paris on Tuesday , the data pegged 2015 CO2 emissions at 32.1 billion tonnes, virtually the same as in 2014.
This led several experts to claim that economic growth and emissions are no longer coupled or linked to each other because average global economic growth in these two years was over 3% per year, and yet carbon dioxide emissions were not increasing.
“The new figures confirm last year's surprising but welcome news: we now have seen two straight years of greenhouse gas emissions decoupling from economic growth,“ said the energy agency's executive director Fatih Birol.
In absolute terms, the total carbon dioxide release from energy use in 2015 was more than double what it was in 1975, and over a third more than in 2001.But the average 4% per year rate of growth seems to have been checked. The main reason for st alling of CO2 emissions from energy consumption appears to be the surge in renewable energy produc tion, the slowdown in the Chinese economy and re placement of oil with natu ral gas in the United States China and the US are the world's largest emitters.
In 2015, 90% of new elec tricity generation was from renewable sources, with wind energy alone produ cing half of it, preliminary date of the International Energy Agency suggests.
In the more than 40 years that the energy agency has been providing information on carbon dioxide emissions, there have been only four periods when emissions stood still or fell compared to the previous year. Three of those occasions -the early 1980s, 1992 and 2009 -were associated with global economic weakness.
But the current brake on emissions increase is the first time that this has happened during a global economic expansion. However, this link is still tenuous as China did slow down from the zooming growth it has enjoyed in previous years.
In China, emissions de clined by 1.5%, as coal use dropped for the second consecutive year. In 2015, coal generated less than 70% of Chinese electricity , ten percentage points less than four years ago (in 2011).
Over the same period, low-carbon sources jumped from 19% to 28%, with hydro and wind accounting for most of the increase.
In the US, emissions declined by 2%, as a large switch from coal to natural gas use in electricity generation took place.
In the European Union, too, renewables accounted for 15% of energy generation, up from 11% in 2011, according to a report of the EU released recently .





Source: Times of India, 18-03-2016

Girls as good as boys in maths: NCERT survey

The notion that girls are not good with numbers and science is just a myth, if data from a nationwide survey of more than 2.7 lakh students is any indicator.The survey conducted on Class X students showed girls performed on an equal footing with boys in mathematics, science and social sciences.The study, however, upheld another common belief-that girls have better language skills. Girls outperformed boys in English and other lan guages in the survey conducted in 2015 by the National Council of Educational Research and Training (NCERT) in 7,216 schools following different boards across 33 states and Union territories.
The study also highlighted rampant under-performance among students in rural settings, those studying in govern ment schools and hailing from underprivileged backgrounds such as Dalits and tribals.
Another disturbing trend was the poor showing in science and maths by students in a majority of states. Scores in science were below the national average in 24 states. In maths, the survey showed 21 states falling below the average. In general, students struggled the most in subjects that involved numerical problems and practicals.
The study also showed that a few states were far ahead of the rest. In mathematics, only four states and UTs performed way above the national average while students from 21 states and UTs were assessed to be significantly below the average.In science, as many as 24 states and UTs were below the national average even while a large variation was found in scores within states.
“The survey revealed that the majority of the states and UTs are performing below the overall average score in all subject areas... Low achievement is largely an outcome of lack of conceptual clarity and understanding,“ says the report.
On average, just 41% of the questions on English were answered correctly . In mathematics, the percentage was even less (40%). It was slightly better for science (43%) and social sciences (47%). It was only in modern Indian languages (MIL) that students on average managed to answer more than half the questions correctly (53.5%).
Shockingly , more than one-third of the students scored between 0 to 35%. Only 2% of them could score 75% and above in science and social studies while none could score as much in English and mathematics.
Among states, Karnataka performed the best, with students achieving scores significantly higher than the national average in four of the five subjects assessed. In English, the north-eastern states of Mizoram, Nagaland, Meghalaya and Sikkim were among the seven best performers.
The report also summarised the performances of various central and state Boards -in subjects as well as range of correct answers.In English, the top three boards were ICSE, CBSE and Nagaland board while in mathematics, ICSE, CBSE and Odisha board had the highest scores.
In science and social science, too, ICSE students performed better than the rest. In MIL, West Bengal board students outperformed the rest.

Source: Times of India, 18/03/2016

EDUCATION IS ALWAYS POLITICAL

Galileo was pronounced “vehemently suspect of heresy” by the Church in 1632 and lived the last nine years of his life under house arrest, for his espousal of heliocentrism. Curiously, Copernican heliocentrism had been used by Pope Gregory himself in 1582 to alter his eponymous calendar. This schizophrenic behaviour of the Church can be substantially explained by its assessment that Galileo’s espousal questioned the authority of the Church to decide what was true. This blow at the basis of the then political order had to be crushed—while Copernican calculations as a tool to change the calendar were perfectly acceptable.

Most certainly such heretical ideas had no place in schools and universities; the Church controlled that well. In fact, over the next two centuries, the Protestant and the Catholic churches and their institutions often vied for the claim of being more geocentric than the other. It’s only by the 19th century that geocentrism withered away from the curriculum in schools.

Let’s not fool ourselves that such things are memories of an “unscientific” past. As one example, all world maps that schools use (and Google uses) are wrong, and they feed Eurocentrism. The subtle nudge is in the choice of placing Europe at the centre of the world, but what is egregiously wrong is the relative proportions of the countries and continents. The geographies of “the North”— Europe and North America—are represented ludicrously bigger than they are; the 48 million sq km of “the North” is shown to be bigger than the 94 million square kilometer of “the South”. Open a map and look at these remarkable distortions: in reality, South America is about twice the size of Europe but shown to be equal, Greenland looks bigger than China but is actually one-fourth, and the Nordic countries look bigger than India but are actually one-third.

Even matters of the physical world are learnt and taught in schools often on the basis of political values and choices. These may be very deliberate choices, like the Church on heliocentrism or unthinking espousal as in the case of the Eurocentrism in the maps.

Let’s take another example from economics. Textbooks in economics from the 1960s and ’70s in India would be full of the virtues of central planning and arcane details of the Mahalanobis model, which seems very strange today. Equally strange are today’s economics text books, which are influenced by market fundamentalism and dominated by the idealized rationality-individualism-equilibrium nexus, which exists only in these books; this stuff is as disconnected from reality as was the planning model. What must we know in economics to say that we know economics is a substantially political and not a purely epistemic issue?

The content of education in any society is politically influenced. This political influence operates at both levels: to accept what is “true knowledge” (for instance, the planning model versus market theory) and to choose “worthwhile knowledge” that finds place in the curriculum from the universal set of “knowledge”. I have deliberately taken examples from areas which are not usually referred to when discussing how politics determines the content of education, while in certain subjects and areas, this issue is well-known—say, in the content of history and sociology, in the treatment of matters of gender and caste.

The processes and practices of education are as political as the content. What is the language of the medium of instruction? Who all do we include in education? If we want universal equitable education, how do we make it happen? Do we think “merit” takes precedence over affirmative action? Do the pedagogical approaches adequately factor for the diversity in the class? Every one of these questions, and many more which determine education, are political in nature.

Even more political than the content and processes of education are the aims of education. Education that aims to develop autonomous, critical thinking individuals and to help develop a just and democratic society is sharply political. And as sharply political would be education that aims to develop individuals who are not questioning but conforming to some existing order. In fact, the aims of education shape the processes and content of education, including significantly determining their political tilt.

Views from the extremes, both the left and the right, regarding the recent happenings in some university campuses, have been unsurprising. Ugly, unethical politics anywhere must be condemned. But what has been surprising is a view stated by some which amounts to “there must be no politics in educational institutions”. This view reflects either a very naïve understanding of education or an insidiously political (even if unconscious) choice. And that choice is for education to aim to develop people who do not engage with the most important issues around them, do not question and do not think for themselves. This amounts to deep politics in education of a kind that must be rejected.

We need education that energizes our democracy and builds an India as envisioned in the Constitution by developing the abilities of students to think and contribute as autonomous individuals; this education is certainly political. One way or the other, all education is political.

Anurag Behar is chief executive officer of Azim Premji Foundation and leads sustainability initiatives for Wipro Ltd. He writes every fortnight on issues of ecology and education.

Source: Mintepaper, 17-03-2016