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Tuesday, September 20, 2016

Right to photocopy

The clause lists cases where users are exempted from copyright infringement and includes teachers and students “in the course of the activities of an educational institution”.

Copyright is not absolute and nor should it be, according to the Delhi High Court. Last week, the court ruled against five prominent academic publishing houses including Oxford University Press, Cambridge University Press and Taylor & Francis, allowing Rameshwari Photocopy Services (based in the Delhi School of Economics) and Delhi University to make photocopied “course packs” of books and excerpts prescribed in the university’s syllabus. The decision is welcome — and also necessary.
The case goes back to 2012, when the publishers asked the court for a permanent injunction against the photocopy kiosk and Delhi University from making copies of works, citing the need to protect authors’ and publishers’ economic and creative rights. Almost immediately, students at the university formed the Association of Students for Equitable Access to Knowledge (ASEAK) to mount a legal and ideological defence of the photocopy shop and their right to access knowledge.
In March 2013, over 300 academics — many of whose works were on reading lists in Delhi University syllabi — wrote to the publishers asking them to withdraw the case and expressed solidarity with the students. The case came down to the court’s interpretation of Section 52(1)(i) of the Copyright Act, 1957. The clause lists cases where users are exempted from copyright infringement and includes teachers and students “in the course of the activities of an educational institution”. While the publishers insisted that this meant only teachers and students should be allowed to make copies, and not third parties like the photocopy shop or the university, the court disagreed. “Copyright,” the court said, “is meant to increase and not to impede the harvest of knowledge.”
It is true that copyright laws often protect the work and livelihood of authors, especially in cases of plagiarism and piracy. However, in a developing economy like India, neither economies of scale nor access justify the kind of enforcement of the law that the publishers were demanding. Academic works are usually prohibitively expensive in India and are bought by institutions and not individuals. There are usually a handful of copies of a prescribed text in university libraries — not nearly enough to meet the demand. In addition, most students cannot afford to buy their own copies. An educated workforce and citizenry is an essential need in a growing economy, especially one that is hungry for innovation. The court has, in this case, recognised that the protection of intellectual property needs to be balanced with social need.
Source: Indian Express, 20-09-2016
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Which city in India is safest to live in?

How do various cities compare with each other in terms of crime?

The ‘Crime in India 2015’ statistics released by the National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB) last week answers these questions. Apart from national and state-level statistics, NCRB also compiles data for 53 major cities which have a population greater than 10 lakh.
In 2015, 25 per cent of all crimes registered in major Indian cities that fell under the Indian Penal Code (IPC) took place in Delhi, which houses 10 per cent of the total population living in these 53 cities. IPC crimes constitute murder, dacoity, theft, crimes against women, children etc.
Kollam, however, had the highest crime rate. Rate refers to crimes committed per lakh population. In 2015, 1194 crimes were committed in Kollam for a lakh people followed by Delhi, where the crime rate was 1066.
The story is different for crimes under Special Local Laws (SLL). It constitutes crimes related to Gambling Act, Information and Technology Act, Electricity Act etc.
In sharp contrast with IPC crimes, just 0.5 per cent share of all SLL crimes were registered in Delhi. Lucknow, which constitutes 1.8 per cent of the total city population, contributes the highest share – 18.3 per cent – of SLL crimes followed by Ghaziabad which has a 12 per cent share. Lucknow (8717.2), Raipur (7132.1), Agra (7116) and Ghaziabad (7040.4) are the four cities having SLL crime rate greater than 7000 crimes per lakh population.
Note that NCRB numbers have a caveat: they are based on FIRs alone. Crimes for which FIRs were not registered are not accounted for in this data set.
How do various cities compare? The interactive charts the numbers for various crimes for these major 53 cities. Crime rate is a better indicator to compare crimes in cities compared to the absolute number of incidents due to varying population sizes across cities.
Instructions to read the chart: The bubble size is proportional to the number of incidents for that crime. Larger bubble size corresponds to more number of crime incidents. Crime rate is placed on the vertical axis – the higher the placement of the bubble on the vertical axis, the higher is the crime rate.
Delhi, Patna and Jodhpur turn out to be worst for various crimes.
For robbery, criminal trespass/burglary and theft, Delhi had the highest crime rate.
Jodhpur turns to be the most unsafe for women, having the highest crime rate for molestation, rape and cruelty by husband/relatives.
Patna had the highest crime rate for murder, kidnapping/abduction and dowry.
77 per cent of all cases under Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances (NDPS) Act were registered in Mumbai. A total of 24,018 FIRs were filed under the act of which 18,628 were in Mumbai.

Source: The Hindu, 7-09-2016
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One-third of total maternal deaths in 2015 happened in India: Report

‘About one quarter of babies worldwide still delivered in the absence of skilled birth attendant’

The latest Lancet series on maternal health reveals that nearly one quarter of babies worldwide are still delivered in the absence of a skilled birth attendant. Further, one-third of the total maternal deaths in 2015 happened in India, where 45,000 mothers died during pregnancy or childbirth while Nigeria shouldered the maximum burden of 58,000 maternal deaths.
Each year, about 210 million women become pregnant and about 140 million newborn babies are delivered. Ahead of the U.N. General Assembly, The Lancet has published a new series of papers on maternal health which reveal that while progress has been made in reducing maternal mortality globally, differences remain at international and national levels. “In all countries, the burden of maternal mortality falls disproportionately on the most vulnerable groups of women. This reality presents a challenge to the rapid catch-up required to achieve the underlying aim of the Sustainable Development Goals [SDGs] — to leave no one behind,” says series author Professor Wendy Graham, London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine.
According to the academic papers, there are two broad scenarios that describe the landscape of poor maternal health care — the absence of timely access to quality care (defined as ‘too little, too late’) and the over-medicalisation of normal and postnatal care (defined as ‘too much, too soon’). “The problem of over-medicalisation has historically been associated with high-income countries, but it is rapidly becoming more common in low and middle-income countries, increasing health costs and the risk of harm. For instance, 40.5% of all births are now by caesarean section in Latin America and the Caribbean,” stated one paper.
Lack basic resources
While facility and skilled birth attendant deliveries are increasing in many low-income countries, the authors say that phrases such as ‘skilled birth attendant’ and ‘emergency obstetric care’ can mask poor quality care. Additionally, many birth facilities lack basic resources such as water, sanitation and electricity. The authors warn that measuring progress via the current indicator of skilled birth attendant coverage is insufficient and fails to reflect the complexity of circumstances. “It is unethical to encourage women to give birth in places with low facility capability, no referral mechanism, with unskilled providers, or where content of care is not evidence-based. This failing should be remedied as a matter of priority,” added Professor Oona Campbell, London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine.
In high-income countries, rates of maternal mortality are decreasing but there is still wide variation at national and international level. For instance, in the U.S., the maternal mortality ratio is 14 per 1,00,000 live births compared to 4 per 1,00,000 in Sweden. The sub-Saharan African region accounted for an estimated 66% (2,01,000) of global maternal deaths, followed by southern Asia at 22% (66,000 deaths). However, the authors warn that not all care is evidence-based, and improved surveillance is needed to understand the causes of maternal deaths when they do occur. Additionally, they point to new challenges in delivering high quality care, including the increasing age of pregnancy, and higher rates of obesity.
The authors of the series identify five key priorities that require immediate attention in order to achieve the SDG global target of a maternal mortality ratio of less than 70 per 1,00,000 live births.

Keywords: Maternal deaths

Source: The Hindu, 20-09-2016
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Equality before uniformity

If a common code is impossible to argue for today, it is not because Muslim women are better off with their existing personal laws, but because of the insecurity and precariousness of Muslim lives and livelihoods

Two intertwined topics that have recently reclaimed their place in news headlines are the Uniform Civil Code (UCC), and Muslim women’s rights, or rather wrongs. A Law Ministry note prepared for the Law Commission declares that the three impediments to legislating a UCC are “separatism, conservatism, and misconceived notions about personal laws”. The note is unambiguously clear as to which personal laws are getting in the way — those protected by their minority status, that is, Muslim personal law. However, Muslim personal law has also been in the news independently of the UCC issue — because of the PIL supporting Shayara Bano’s demand for the repeal of unilateral divorce (or triple talaq), and the responses this has received.
Comparing Hindu and Muslim women

During the 1990s, the idea of a UCC was extensively criticised by women’s groups who feared the unspoken intentions of the Hindu Right in advocating it. An influential strand of argument questioned public perceptions and assumptions about personal law, namely: Hindu personal law has been successfully reformed; in sharp contrast, Muslim law remains uncodified and imposes the worst vulnerabilities on Muslim women; therefore, Hindu personal law should be made the basis for a UCC. There was much to be questioned in such assumptions. For instance, it was pointed out that, historically, Muslim personal law was way ahead of its Hindu counterpart since marriage was understood to be a contract between individuals with built-in provision for divorce, while Hindu law languished within notions of sacrament, the absence of personhood for Hindu wives, the vagaries of the Hindu Undivided Family, and so on. Much was made of a Census study on marriage and polygamy (which had been cited in the famous ‘Towards Equality’ report of 1974 on the status of Indian women) which showed that the incidence of polygamy (usually bigamy) was in fact greater among Hindus than Muslims. Moreover, such wives had no rights under the reformed Hindu law, unlike the rights available to Muslim women under polygamy.
Now that we are once again faced with the spectre of a UCC being foisted on us, this represents an opportunity to take stock from where we are today. We believe that there are three main lessons to be learnt from our recent past. First, we must stop making dubious comparisons between Muslim and Hindu women. Having studied the comparative data on polygamy that continue to be cited, we noticed the following. One, the data come from a special sample survey conducted by the Census of India in 1960 of one lakh women, which is explicitly acknowledged to be a non-representative sample — that is, it may be suggestive, but cannot stand for entities like India, Hindu women or Muslim women. Two, the survey includes women who were married between 1940 and 1960 — which means that 15 of these 20 years were prior to the enactment in 1955 of the Hindu Code Bill that outlawed polygamy. And three, the overall incidence of polygamy reported for Hindu and Muslim women is 5.7 per cent and 5.6 per cent, respectively. In short, these data do not prove that there was more bigamy among Hindu women than Muslim women even in 1960, let alone in more recent times. (We may note in passing that the authors of the ‘Towards Equality’ report were particularly concerned about the high incidence of polygamyamong tribal groups, where rates were increasing over time and had reached 18 per cent during 1951-60.)
The steady slide of Muslim women

Nothing is gained today by simply asserting that Hindu women are worse off than their Muslim counterparts — such careless claims may come back to haunt us in future. Yes, honour killings are sanctioned by khap panchayats in the very Hindu State of Haryana; but the khap campaign to amend theHindu Marriage Act to enforce gotra and caste prohibitions has failed. Moreover, there is growing evidence that women are claiming their inheritance as daughters under the Hindu Succession (Amendment) Act, 2005, particularly in regions (such as Haryana) where land prices have shot up, and the support of in-laws is forthcoming. While it is nobody’s case that Hindu law has been successfully reformed, decades of Hindu majoritarianism may well have benefited many upper-caste Hindu women, including in courts of law. In contrast, the status of Muslims as delineated in the Sachar Committee report a decade ago is likely to have declined further given their increased marginalisation in social, economic and political terms, making it almost certain that Muslim women are on average worse off today than they were just 10 years ago.
The second lesson from the past decades is that we must learn from and support much more broadly the struggles that have been waged since the 1980s by a wide variety of Muslim women’s organisations. A range of organisations emerged between 1984 and 2013, including Awaaz-e-Niswaan, Muslim Women’s Rights Network, Bharatiya Muslim Mahila Andolan (BMMA), and the Bebaak Collective, to name only a few. They speak in many voices and have different viewpoints. Undoubtedly some do argue that the only available option today is to work for personal law reform “from within”. But this is by no means the only position. In any case, the distinction between what is “internal” and “external” to personal laws is not always clear. For example, while unilateral triple talaq is viewed as being contrary to true Islamic principles by many theological schools, polygamy is considered to be part of mainstream Islam. Yet there are organisations asking for the abolition of polygamy, thus pushing the outer boundaries of personal law reform. Moreover, Muslim women’s organisations have also been demanding economic and political rights. In sum, if a common code is impossible to argue for today, it is not because Muslim women are better off with their existing personal laws, but because of the extreme insecurity and precariousness of Muslim lives and livelihoods in contemporary India. This was shared at a recent national convention organised by the Bebaak Collective, “Muslim Aurton ki Awaaz: Sadak se Sansad Tak”, attended by over 500 Muslim women and others in New Delhi on February 27-28, 2016.
Resisting statist agendas anew

The third lesson is that feminists must remember and recover the creativity and energy of the 1990s. While being trapped in a reactive relationship to the state with respect to the UCC, feminists and women’s organisations did much more in the 1990s than simply resist majoritarian agendas. Despite bitter and acrimonious debates, many creative alternative visions emerged of how genuine equality could be brought into the realm of family life and related institutions. In the decades since, we have been exploring rights in intimate relations, rights in economic and political spheres more generally, and observing the innovative use of secular laws by minority groups, such as the Juvenile Justice (Care and Protection of Children) Rules, 2007 for adoption of children by Muslims and Christians. Today, we must revive and re-energise these visions and reassert our refusal to think within the confines of statist agendas.
It is amply evident that the Law Ministry’s note on the UCC does not venture beyond the old desire for uniformity, and barely finds room for equality. This makes it all the more imperative to nurture and promote alternative perspectives — diverse voices must be empowered to enter public discourse, whether or not the state is ready to listen. After all, the common goal is gender justice, whether it is uniform or plural.
Mary E. John is Senior Fellow, Centre for Women’s Development Studies. Hasina Khan is a member of Forum Against Oppression of Women, Mumbai and founder member of Bebaak Collective. The views expressed are personal.
Source: Times of India, 20-09-2016
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We can change this’: World leaders at UN approve plan for refugee crisis

With more people forced to flee their homes than at any time since World War II, global leaders on Monday approved a declaration aimed at providing a more coordinated and humane response to the refugee crisis that has strained resources and stoked divisions from Africa to Europe.
The issue of what to do about the world’s 65.3 million displaced people took centre stage at the UN General Assembly with leaders from the 193 member states converging on New York for the first-ever summit on Addressing Large Movements of Refugees and Migrants.
“The bitter truth is this summit was called because we have been largely failing. Failing the long-suffering people of Syria, in not ending the war in its infancy. Failing others in now chronic conflict zones, for the same reason. Failing millions of migrants who deserve far more than lives marked by cradle-to-grave indignity and desperation,” said Zeid Ra’ad al-Hussein, the UN high commissioner for human rights.
Zeid praised the political consensus reached in approving the New York Declaration on Migrants and Refugees, but warned against complacency and self-congratulation.
He said xenophobia is a major factor contributing to failure thus far.
“We can change this ... but not when the defenders of what is right and good are being outflanked in too many countries by race-baiting bigots, who seek to gain, or retain, power by wielding prejudice and deceit, at the expense of those most vulnerable,” Zeid said.
The declaration no concrete commitments and is not legally binding but rather calls on countries to protect refugees’ human rights, boost humanitarian aid and increase resettlement of refugees.
“Today’s summit represents a breakthrough in our collective efforts to address the challenges of human mobility,” said Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, adding that the declaration will mean “more children can attend school; more workers can securely seek jobs abroad, instead of being at the mercy criminal smugglers, and more people will have real choices about whether to move once we end conflict.”
The document seeks to standardise responses to refugee situations and provide better education and jobs to refugees. It also encourages resettlement and includes plans for a campaign to combat xenophobia.
That may prove an uphill struggle as the declaration comes at a time that refugees and migrants have become a divisive issue in Europe and the United States.A number of countries rejected an earlier draft of the agreement that called on nations to resettle 10 percent of the refugee population each year, something that has led several human rights groups to criticize the document as a missed opportunity. The US and a number of other countries also objected to language in the original draft that said children should never be detained, so the agreement now says children should seldom, if ever, be detained.
The declaration paves the way for negotiations on a pair of global compacts, one providing guidelines on the treatment of migrants in vulnerable situations and another on seeking more equitable burden sharing in support of the world’s refugees.
According to the UN Refugee Agency, refugees are people forced to flee due to armed conflict or persecution, while migrants choose to move in search of a better life. Around the world, there are currently about 21.3 million refugees, 3.2 million asylum seekers, and 40.8 million migrants.
More concrete progress is expected at a follow-up summit on Tuesday called by President Barack Obama, where at least 45 countries are expected to make pledges that are in line with US goals of increasing humanitarian aid by $3 billion, doubling resettlement and increasing access to education for 1 million youngsters and access to employment for another million of the displaced.
“You hear all around the world the UN hasn’t handled the refugee crisis. The way the UN will handle the refugee crisis is if all of us countries within the UN step up and dig deep and face those political headwinds that we all face, to do more, to give more, to take on a greater share of the resettlement challenge,” said Samantha Power, the US ambassador to the UN.
Prior to the pledging summit with world leaders, Obama will host a meeting with top executives from 50 companies to discuss what the private sector can do to help address the problem, Power said.

Source: Hindustan Times, 20-09-2016
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Be Your Own Guiding Light
OSHO


All Buddhas appear to be negative. Gautama Buddha says, there is no truth in the Vedas and Upanishads. Beware of beautiful words, beware of philosophic speculation. Don't waste your time with hair-splitting, with logic. Be silent! Throw the Vedas out of your head, only then can you be silent. You have to be told that the false is false. You have to begin with this, “Neti, neti“ -neither this nor that.The master has to say to you, “This is false, that is false.“He has to go on pointing out to you whatsoever is false first, because when you have known all that is false, suddenly a transformation happens in your consciousness. When you have become aware of the false, you start becoming aware of the true. You cannot be taught what is truth, but you can certainly be taught what is not truth.You have been conditioned, you can be unconditioned.
Buddha says, look into your heart. Follow your nature. He is not saying to follow scriptures. He is not saying to follow him. He is not teaching you any morality . He is not trying to create a certain character around you, because all characters are beautiful prison cells.He is not giving you a certain way of life. Rather, he is giving you courage, to follow your own nature. He wants you to be brave enough to listen to your own heart and go accordingly .
“Follow your nature“ means flow with yourself. You are the scripture... and hidden deep down within you is a still, small voice. If you become silent, you will be guided from there.The master has only to make you aware of your inner master.
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Monday, September 19, 2016

Economic and Political Weekly: Table of Contents

Vol. 51, Issue No. 38, 17 Sep, 2016

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