Social Change: Table of Contents

Volume 48 Issue 1, March 2018

Articles

Hind Swaraj: Reading Gandhi’s Critique of Modernity in Tehran

Kian Tajbakhsh First Published March 1, 2018; pp. 1–17 Abstract Preview |  |  |

The Political Economy of the Ebola Virus Disease

Franklin Obeng-Odoom, Matthew Marke Beckhio Bockarie First Published March 1, 2018; pp. 18–35 Abstract Preview |  |  |

A Study of Muslims in the Newly Formed State of Telangana

Sujit Kumar Mishra First Published March 1, 2018; pp. 36–58 Abstract Preview |  |  |

The New Wave of Mobilisation in Kashmir: Religious or Political?

Simple Mohanty First Published March 1, 2018; pp. 59–71 Abstract Preview |  |  |

Long Working Hours and the Risk of Chronic Disease

Anita Pal, Laxmi Kant Dwivedi, Dolly Kumari First Published March 1, 2018; pp. 72–84 Abstract Preview |  |  |

Social Inequality and Institutional Deliveries

Pinak Sarkar, Nutan Shashi Tigga First Published March 1, 2018; pp. 85–103 Abstract Preview |  |  |

Poverty and Inequality among the Mishing People of Assam

Paranan Konwar First Published March 1, 2018; pp. 104–119 Abstract Preview |  |  |

Commentary

The National Committee Report on Tribal People

Vinay Kumar Srivastava First Published March 1, 2018; pp. 120–130 Abstract Preview |  |  |

Perspective

On Planning University Development: Shibboleths Versus Stylised Facts?

Jandhyala B. G. Tilak First Published March 1, 2018; pp. 131–152 Abstract Preview |  |  |

Book Reviews

Book review: Richard Falk, Manoranjan Mohanty and Victor Faessel (Eds), Exploring Emerging Global Thresholds: Towards 2030

B.S. Chimni First Published March 1, 2018; pp. 153–155 Abstract Preview |  |  |

Book review: Ashok Vajpeyi (Ed.), India Dissents: 3000 Years of Difference, Doubt and Argument

Satya Sivaraman First Published March 1, 2018; pp. 156–158 Abstract Preview |  |  |

Book review: T.K. Oommen, Social Inclusion in Independent India: Dimensions and Approaches

Kamalakanta Roul First Published March 1, 2018; pp. 159–161 Abstract Preview |  |  |

Book review: Devesh Kapur and Pratap Bhanu Mehta (Eds), Navigating the Labyrinth: Perspectives on India’s Higher Education

Amit Prakash First Published March 1, 2018; pp. 162–164 Abstract Preview |  |  |

Book review: Subhash Sharma, Why People Protest: An Analysis of Ecological Movements

Bharat Dogra First Published March 1, 2018; pp. 164–165 Abstract Preview |  |  |

Book review: Rakhshanda Jalil, Tarun K. Saint and Debjani Sengupta (Eds), Looking Back: The 1947 Partition of India, 70 Years On

Sohail Hashmi First Published March 1, 2018; pp. 166–168 Abstract Preview |  |  |

Book review: Tattwamasi Paltasingh and Renu Tyagi (Eds), Caring for the Elderly: Social Gerontology in the Indian Context

Deblina Dey First Published March 1, 2018; pp. 168–170 Abstract Preview |  |  |

Book review: Mason M.S. Kim, Comparative Welfare Capitalism in East Asia: Productivist Models of Social Policy

Vaishali Singh First Published March 1, 2018; pp. 170–172 Abstract Preview |  |  |

The need for digitizing land records in India

Clear land titles will make it easier for the poor to borrow from the formal financial sector

The Peruvian economist Hernando de Soto has often pointed out that a modern market economy requires a strong system of property rights. India is a mess on this front. Land titles are presumptive rather than conclusive. The Hindi film Khosla Ka Ghosla provides brilliant insights into the damage done by dysfunctional land titles. That is one reason why some have estimated that nearly twothirds of all pending cases in Indian courts are related to property disputes. NITI Aayog has said that such property cases take an average of 20 years to settle. The result is that millions of Indians cannot use their principal asset as collateral to borrow from the formal financial system. The poor suffer the most

The Union government has been busy trying to address this problem for almost a decade. The United Progressive Alliance government led by Manmohan Singh kicked off the National Land Records Modernization Programme in August 2008. It is now part of the Narendra Modi regime’s flagship Digital India initiative. The broad aim is to modernize land records management, reduce the scope for property disputes, make land records more transparent and move towards conclusive property titles. In short, the plan is to pull a system developed in the age of zamindari into the modern era.

The progress over the past decade has been uneven, with some states, such as Madhya Pradesh, Andhra Pradesh, Telangana, Chhattisgarh, Tamil Nadu and Maharashtra, doing better than the others. However, there are challenges, even in advanced states such as Maharashtra, as a recent field study by Sudha Narayanan, Prerna Prabhakar, Gausia Shaikh, Diya Uday and Bhargavi Zaveri found. Their study of 100 land parcels in five villages spread across two tehsils showed that the new digitized land records do a good job in reflecting ownership of land, but less so when it comes to recording encumbrances and area of land parcels.

Some of the most interesting work of sorting out the land titling mess has been done by state governments, as has been the case with labour law reforms as well. Three are worth mentioning here.

First, the Bhoomi Project in Karnataka led the way even before the Union government got into the act. The state government began to digitize land records at the turn of the century. The relevant document—the record of rights, tenancy and crops—has been made available through kiosks. The need to pay bribes to get access to this basic information in government offices has been done away with.

Second, the Rajasthan legislature passed the Rajasthan Urban Land (Certification of Titles) Act in April 2016. This law ensures that the state government is a guarantor for land titles in Rajasthan, and will provide compensation in case of issues of defective title. The guarantee is based on certification provided by the Urban Land Title Certification Authority, which will verify ownership of any property for a fee.

Third, Andhra Pradesh has taken a leap into the future. Its state government has tied up with a Swedish firm to use new blockchain technology to prevent property fraud. As in all other trades, blockchain will allow participants in a distributed ledger to check the ownership of a land parcel. As de Soto and former US senator Phil Gramm wrote earlier this year in The Wall Street Journal: “If blockchain technology can empower public and private efforts to register property rights on a single computer platform, we can share the blessings of private-property registration with the whole world. Instead of destroying private property to promote a Marxist equality in poverty, perhaps we can bring property rights to all mankind. Where property rights are ensured, so are the prosperity, freedom and ownership of wealth that brings real stability and peace.”

The Indian push to digitize land records—and establish conclusive rather than presumptive titles—should have been completed by now. The government has now pushed the year of completion to 2021. The delay may have been avoidable, but is understandable. Clear land titles will ease a lot of constraints—from making it easier for the poor to borrow from the formal financial sector to easing commercial land acquisition for infrastructure projects instead of the misuse of eminent domain. And, even as computerization continues, some more attention should be paid to the possibilities offered by new technologies such as blockchain.

Source: Livemint epaper, 8-08-2018

Commissions Of Inaction

National commissions are white elephants: Expensive and ineffective.

Over the years, in many important debates, this statutory body has often played the role of a foot-soldier of frivolousness.” This is what The Indian Express said about the National Commission for Women in an editorial (‘Sins of Commission’, July 30) in the context of its reported recommendation to the government for banning by law the Christian religious practice of confession. “Reckless and damaging” the suggestion indeed is, but for me an issue for deeper thought is the editorial’s assessment of the role played by this 26-year-old organisation as an exercise in frivolity which, in retrospect, seems to also be true of most of its sister institutions.

In India there are national commissions aplenty, all supposed to be parastatal watchdogs to oversee the implementation of human rights and civil liberties. Today there are at least eight such quasi-autonomous bodies. The exercise began in January 1978 with the establishment of a central Minorities Commission, followed five months later by a joint Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes Commission. Set up by the Morarji Desai government, these bodies were slated to be given constitutional status. But the move was scuttled by the then Opposition parties in league with some partners in government.

A second attempt to achieve the goal, made in 1990 by the V P Singh government, was also stifled. The bill moved for this purpose, passed two years later during the succeeding Congress rule, conferred constitutional status on the SC/ST Commission alone. The Minorities Commission was eventually rechristened as the National Commission for Minorities (NCM) and placed under an Act of Parliament. In 2003, the SC/ST Commission was split into two bodies, both enjoying constitutional status.

During V P Singh’s rule was also enacted a National Commission for Women Act 1990, but the first Commission under it was set up in January 1992 after the change of government. Next year, the new Congress government enacted laws for the establishment of two more national commissions, one each for backward classes and safai karmcharis. In quick succession, it decided to set up a National Human Rights Commission (NHRC), professedly to “counter the false and politically motivated propaganda by foreign and Indian civil rights agencies”. It came into existence in September 1993 under an ordinance retrospectively replaced early next year with the Protection of Human Rights Act. Mercifully, no new national commissions came up during the next 10 years, but on bouncing back to power in 2004, the Congress set up two national commissions — one each for minority educational institutions and protection of child rights. It had also moved a bill to confer constitutional status on NCM but did not seriously pursue the move. This year, a parliamentary committee and the present NCM endorsed the move but till date there has been no official response. Meanwhile, the government has conferred constitutional status on the National Backward Classes Commission.

The composition and appointment mechanism for various national commissions widely differ. The NHRC must be headed by a former Chief Justice of India and have two members each from amongst judges and human rights experts — all to be appointed by a high-level statutory committee. On the contrary, the NCM and NCW chairs and members are to be appointed by the government in its unrestricted discretion. While aspirants for the chair and membership of NCM should only be persons of “eminence, ability and integrity”, the NCW chair is simply to be one “committed to the cause of women” — only its members have to be “persons of ability, integrity and understanding who have experience in law or legislation, trade unionism, management of an industry or organisation committed to increasing employment potential of women, women’s voluntary organisations (including women activists) administration, economic development, health, education or social welfare”. The record of successive governments in adhering to the prescribed touchstones is disappointing. More so in the case of NCW — of its eight Chairs, the only name eminently fulfilling statutory requirements for eligibility has been of Mohini Giri.

Under the noses of these supposedly autonomous national bodies, the situation of citizens’ human rights and civil liberties has been moving from bad to worse. All these white elephants — each maintained with an exorbitant budget — are a drain on the state exchequer and ultimately an unwarranted burden on taxpayers.

Source: Indian Express, 8-08-2018

New students’ union seeks meeting with TISS officials

Issue is showcause notices sent to protesting students

The newly elected students’ union of the Tata Institute of Social Sciences (TISS) has sought a meeting with the officials of the institute this week over showcause notices sent to students who participated in the months-long protest over the withdrawal of financial aid to students from marginalised groups.

Aa decision taken to approach the administration was taken at a general body meeting on August 4.

“Engagement is of priority right now, as the students are adversely affected. We will seek a meeting this week itself. The administration is yet to get back to us,” said Jit Hazarika, president of the students’ union.

He said that the union would demand that these notices be rescinded, and ask for a dialogue on the issue of aid to Government of India Post-Matric Scholarship (GOI-PMS) students.

Several students had commenced a protest against the withdrawal of financial aid to students belonging to socially disadvantaged groups like Schedules Castes and Schedules Tribes, among others. After the institute filed a suit in the civil court, it restricted the protests within a 100-m radius of the institute.

The institute had sent showcause notices to several students, asking them to explain their position. A disciplinary inquiry was also initiated against the students by an independent committee, and students eligible for a Junior Research Fellowship (JRF) were told that it had been withheld.

Since the committee was conducting its inquiry, the PhD registration of Fahad Ahmad was also stalled, which was communicated to him in a letter dated July 25. Ahmad is the former general secretary of the students’ union in 2017-18, and was one of those spearheading the protest.

“I have been denied registration because I was fighting for social justice. I didn’t quit when other student union members left. It’s easy to target a Muslim in the current scenario. I challenged the undeclared emergency in TISS and in our country. I and several other students are facing the brunt of participating in the protest as the administration has even stalled JRF forms for all of us,” Ahmad said.                                                                                                                                  

TISS group condemns attack on students in Chembur building

The Progressive Students’ Forum at TISS on Tuesday condemned the alleged attack on a group of students from the north-east and Jharkhand at a building in Chembur last week, terming it racist.

Mirror had reported that a group of students was roughed up on August 4 by residents of a building where they had come for a get-together.

“The nature of the attack was so frightening.... One student suffered an eye injury and was severely beaten up in this attack. Racial slurs and abuses were also made by the mob,” the group said in a statement.” MMB

Source: Mumbai Mirror, 8-08-18

Potent Energy

The atom is the final unit of matter, just as the individual is the final unit of society. If one succeeds in breaking an atom, one does not destroy it; rather, one converts it into a greater force, known as atomic energy. Matter is energy in a solid form and energy is matter in a dispersed form. When the atoms of matter are broken and converted into atomic energy, they are transformed into a force much more potent than in their material form.

So it is with that unit of society known as man. When man is ‘broken’, his horizons expand vastly. Just as breakage does not destroy matter, so defeat does not ruin man. Matter increases in strength when broken up. So, man, when defeated, gains new, increased strength.

When man is beset by defeat, his inner forces are released. His senses are aroused. His concealed strength comes to the fore and he sets about redressing his setback. Spurred on with new resolve, he devotes himself to the task of regaining what has been lost. An irresistible spirit arises within him. Nothing can arrest his advance. Like a river flowing into the sea, he surmounts every obstacle in relentless pursuit of his goal.

The occurrence of an atomic explosion in matter turns it into a vastly more powerful substance. The human personality, too, contains huge, latent potential. This potential bursts out into the open when there is an eruption within one’s soul. It breaks free when some shattering disaster afflicts one. The strings that have held one down are torn apart and begin to vibrate to the tune of life.

Source: Economic Times, 8-08-18

National Register of Citizens: Beginnings and endings

For lakhs of immigrants, Muslim and Hindu, NRC puts final seal on citizenship. For others, it’s a long road to closure.

It’s been a week since the publication of the final draft of the National Register of Citizens. The prophets of doom have been proved wrong and a sense of calm prevails throughout the state. Not to speak of media and social analysts, even the state government which had asked for an additional 150 companies of para-military forces to deal with possible outbreaks of violence and had sought help from the Northeast Space Application Centre for proper mapping of the char or riverine areas for better policing, seems to have been caught by surprise.

Many have attributed this calm to the assurance given by the central government that mere omission of names from the NRC did not amount to being labelled a foreigner and that those left out of the NRC would be able to file claims before September 28 with a hint that this date could be further extended. Others have said that it goes to the credit of the Assamese and other indigenous people that they have reacted with “maturity” to the announcement that such a large number of “foreigners” have been detected in their state. Most of the Assamese nationalist organisations like the AASU and the AJYCP have declared that they would help all those Indian citizens whose names have not figured in the NRC to file their claims and have even offered to provide free legal assistance to those who cannot afford it.

This sudden sense of magnanimity on the part of the AASU and its sister organisations, who have enthusiastically celebrated the publication of the final draft list, seems to stem from the fact that they see the NRC as a final vindication of their several decades-long struggle to rid the state of foreign nationals. For them, this appears to be the beginning of a closure of an issue that has bogged the state since Independence. Whether it would really be a closure remains to be seen, especially because of the immense humanitarian dimensions involved in making lakhs of people stateless. But as of now, one notices a major change in the AASU’s usual rhetoric which appears quite toned down and accommodative, especially because it would like to take along with it all the stakeholders in the process, including minority organisations which it had long considered as enemies.

Now that doubts about the citizenship of lakhs of pre-1971 Muslim immigrants have been cleared, the AASU would obviously need their support to resist what is being seen by many as an onslaught on the status of the Assamese language by the rising number of Bengali speakers in the state. As per the 2011 language census, the number of Assamese speakers has decreased to 48 per cent from 58 per cent in 1991 while Bengali speakers have increased from 22 per cent (1991) to 30 per cent.

Although several minority organisations of Assam have expressed their doubts about the NRC process, the overall response to the publication of the NRC’s final draft has been quite positive. In most of the local TV shows, leaders of these organisations have welcomed the NRC and have expressed the hope that in the final list, the names of most of those who do not figure now would be included. It appears that the apprehensions that there would be a large-scale deletion of names in the Bengali-dominated areas of the Barak and Brahmaputra Valley have not been substantiated by the final NRC list.

According to a survey carried out by senior journalist Mrinal Talukdar of the leading local TV channel, Pratidin, the highest number of deletions, percentage wise, has been in the districts of Nagaon, Darrang, Bongaigaon and Kamrup Metro, where it ranges from 25 to 31 per cent, Darrang district heading the list. By contrast, the deletion figures are substantially less in districts like Morigaon, Karimganj, Goalpara, Barpeta, Cachar which have always been seen as dominated by illegal infiltrants from Bangladesh.

Another reason why the NRC figures have not created a stir is the fact that most of the pre-1971 immigrants of East Pakistan/ Bangladesh origin who have been living all these years with the tag of a foreigner have now found a place in the citizens’ register. The Deputy Speaker of the Assam assembly, Dilip Kumar Paul, summed up this feeling of relief when he said that despite his wife’s name not figuring in the list, he was happy that the people of Cachar and the Barak Valley, who have long carried the “Bangladeshi tag”, are now finally rid of it. The NRC, he said, has finally put the seal of citizenship on 90 per cent of the people of Barak Valley. This is also true of most of the other districts of the Brahmaputra and Barak Valleys where large masses of people long seen as illegal migrants from Bangladesh and looked upon with suspicion have now been cleared of stigma and accepted as citizens at par with the state’s indigenous people. This is certainly a great relief for these people and partly explains the lack of tension in the state following the publication of the NRC.

It needs to be seen that for lakhs of immigrants, both Muslim and Hindu, the NRC has put a final seal on their citizenship and this is a great closure for them. In this context, It is significant that organisations like the Assam Sanmilita Mahasangha, which has moved the Supreme Court for 1951 to be the cut-off year instead of 1971, have accused the AASU and the Asom Sahitya Sabha of betraying the Assamese cause by helping lakhs of “foreigners” to get citizenship.

It is near certain that after all the claims and objections are dealt with, the actual number of deletions will substantially come down. But even then, there would be a massive number of stateless persons, necessitating a well coordinated, nationwide move to work out a solution within humanitarian parameters. But that in itself should not deflect from the ground reality in Assam where immigration and demographic change continue to be a major concern for the indigenes.

Source: Indian Expres, 7/08/2018

IIT-Madras powers up a desi chip

Microprocessor developed by the institute’s computer scientists is fabricated by Intel

These are the kind of chips that India always wanted, but could not make. Now, computer scientists and a student team from the IIT- Madras have developed the first of a family of six industry-standard microprocessors.

The initial batch of 300 chips, named RISECREEK and produced under Project Shakti, have been fabricated free at Intel’s facility at Oregon, U.S., to run the Linux operating system.

The IIT team says its microprocessors can be adapted by others, as the design is open source. They optimise power use and compete with international units such as the Cortex A5 from Advanced RISC Machines (ARM).

On the test bench, the IIT design fared better than the A5, measured in terms of the DMIPS per megahertz rating, scoring 1.68 against the competition’s 1.57. At a frequency of 350 MHz, RISECREEK can meet the demands of defence and strategic equipment such as NAVIC (Indian Regional Navigation Satellite) and Internet of Things (IoT) electronics, its developers say. “Our process helps us develop the processor three times sooner than industry standards,” says Kamakoti Veezhinathan, Professor of Computer Science at the IIT- Madras, who led the project.

What makes RISECREEK different is the open source nature of the designs. “This is made in India, but even if it were made in the U.S., it would be contemporary,” says G.S. Madhusudan, project adviser from the IIT- Madras.

The team, led by Dr. Neel Gala, an alumnus of the IIT- Madras, is thrilled, not just because it developed a viable industry grade chip, but also because the process can be tapped for future efforts in semiconductors. “The Shakti plan started in 2014 as an IIT-M initiative. Last year, the Union Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology funded a part of the project,” says Dr. Kamakoti.

Family of six

The plan includes a family of six types of microprocessors. The first to be ready is the C class, RISECREEK. The E class of microprocessors that can be used in smart cards, IoT devices, fan/motor controls, etc, is almost ready and the I class, which can be used for mobile phones, desktops and mobile phones is soon to follow. The design for the S class which can be used for enterprise class servers is underway, and the H class, which will be used for building High Performance computers with a massive parallel processing capacity.

The H Class is part of the next phase of development, which the team calls the Para-SHAKTI (parallel SHAKTI) project. Para-SHAKTI will make microprocessors for indigenous high-performance computers with over 32 SHAKTI cores.

“The Shakti project is not aimed at only building processors. It also aims to build high speed interconnects for servers and supercomputers based on variants of the RapidiIO and GenZ standards. These are key to build large clusters of processors to get Petaflop and Exaflop level supercomputers,” says Mr. Madhusudan.

Small team

With a team of about eight students and three computer scientists, the team used BlueSpec System Verilog language to capture the processor functionality. Everything from that to making the final chip layout was done within the campus. The chip layout was sent to Oregon, to be fabricated by Intel. Once that was done, mounting the chip on a 10-layer verification board and bringing up the chip was done again at IIT Madras. The board bring- up and booting Linux was done in four days. “There are 70 million instructions from the point we switch on the system till the prompt comes. The chip executed these instructions without any bug at the first shot. This gives a lot of confidence to move ahead,” says Dr. Kamakoti.

Intel has fabricated the chip free of cost, and the team incurred a development cost of about ₹1.2 Crore. Regarding vulnerabilities due to outsourcing the fabrication of the chip, he says, “Since the entire design has been developed in-house, it is extremely difficult for a foundry to add backdoors or security vulnerabilities. But yes, an external fab can always induce vulnerabilities. A probable solution for this is to move towards a controlled fab.”

Source: The Hindu, 6-08-2018