Row over Javed Akhtar’s lyrics shows how producers defeat copyright laws

It is important to think beyond the politics of the present controversy and make efforts to protect the creators who bring melody and colour to our lives.

A recent tweet by lyricist Javed Akhtar, claiming he was credited as songwriter for a film he didn’t work on — PM Narendra Modi — raises some fundamental questions about the Indian copyright law. Whom should Indian copyright law primarily protect? The artist who created a work or the person who acquired certain economic rights from the artist through an assignment or license?

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Akhtar claims that his name was specifically included in the film poster without his knowledge or permission and he tweeted “Am shocked to find my name on the poster of this film. Have not written any songs for it!” The film’s producer, Sandip Singh, responded by tweeting, “We have taken the songs ‘Ishwar Allah’ from the film 1947:Earth and the song ‘Suno Gaur Se Duniya Walon’ from the film Dus in our film, thus we have given the due credits to respective lyricists Javed Sahab and Sameer Ji. @TSeries is our Music partner. @ModiTheFilm2019”.

Both tweets generated political heat on Twitter, but it is important to look at some key legal and policy questions, crucially, whether Akhtar has a right under the Indian copyright law to not be named as a lyricist in a movie that he does not wish to be associated with.

Under the Indian copyright law, there are two kinds of rights for creators — economic rights and non-economic rights. Economic rights comprise a bundle of rights including the right to reproduce, distribute and perform the work in public. These rights are assignable, transferrable, and waivable. Non-economic rights granted to the creators are generally known as “moral rights”. Under Indian copyright law, they are referred to as “Author’s Special Rights”, and includes right of attribution and right of integrity. The former is the right to be attributed as the author of a work, while the latter is the right to restrain or claim damages in respect of any distortion, mutilation, modification, or other act in relation to that work, if such acts would be prejudicial to her honour or reputation.

Moral rights under Indian copyright law are non-assignable, that is, creators cannot give away those moral rights to anyone through a contract. Unlike economic rights, they are also perpetual in character: Which means moral rights protection extends even beyond the term of copyright protection. While it is debatable whether perpetual moral rights protection is good for promoting creativity, it is important to note that one may not find a similarly strong moral rights position in many other jurisdictions. If one looks at the history of Indian copyright law, it can be seen that India consciously opted for a strong moral rights position in the first post-independence copyright legislation, deviating from the British approach which is reflected in most other parts of the Indian copyright law. Part of the reason could be the influence of freedom fighters like Gandhi, who were very keen on protecting the integrity of their works.

One of the important facets of moral rights is the right not to be named as an author, particularly in a scenario wherein the author considers that a modified version of her work would be detrimental to her honour or reputation. If one looks at cases wherein moral rights-related provisions have been invoked, it can be seen that the Indian judiciary has recognised this important aspect. The direction of the Delhi High Court to remove the name of the novelist Mannu Bhandari from the credits of the 1986 movie Samay ki Dhara, which was an attempt to adapt her novel Aap ka Bunty, is an example. In this context, it is important to ask ourselves whether we should deny the right of a creator to not be mentioned as a lyricist in a movie which she doesn’t want to be associated with or which she considers as prejudicial to her honour or reputation.

This question is also relevant in the context of the legal provisions on assignment of economic rights. While addressing the practical requirements of copyright assignment, lawmakers have taken note of the fact that creators are often forced to give away all their rights without adequate remuneration due to the imbalance in bargaining power. Indian copyright law has tried to address this issue through protective provisions. Restrictions introduced through an amendment in 2012 on assignments by a lyricist or composer for songs synchronised in a movie deserve special attention. Lyricists and composers are not allowed to assign or waive the right to receive royalties on an equal basis with copyright assignee, except for playing the music along with the film in a cinema hall. The amendment has also clarified that any agreement to the contrary shall be void. The only exceptions are for legal heirs of authors, and copyright societies established for the collection and distribution of royalties on behalf of creators. While that amendment was in the context of the right to receive royalties, the intention of legislators to protect lyricists and composers from undue exploitation of producers is very clear: This amendment was also a result of the efforts of Akhtar as a Member of Rajya Sabha.

However, the current controversy is an example of how economically powerful producers often try to defeat the creator-centric approach of India’s copyright law. It is important to think beyond the politics of the present controversy and make efforts to protect the creators who bring melody and colour to our lives.

Source: Indian Express, 2/04/2019

This article first appeared in the print edition on April 2, 2019, under the title ‘Where credit isn’t due’. The writer is assistant professor at National Law University, Delhi

How India can balance emission and growth

To meet its climate targets, the country must invest heavily in eco-friendly transport, power generation and buildings.

The Paris Agreement under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change ( UNFCCC) requires countries to set targets called Nationally Determined Contributions (NDC) that would help the world collectively move toward curtailing the temperature rise to 1.5 degrees Celsius and that can set the world on a low-carbon, climate-resilient future pathway. India made ambitious commitments and the two fundamental elements of India’s NDCs are 33-35% reduction in emission intensity of the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) by 2030 compared to 2005 levels and a conditional increase in the cumulative share of non-fossil fuel energy in installed capacity up to 40% by 2030.

The Energy and Resources Institute (TERI) in its series of research based policy analysis of NDC have said time and again that these two pillars to achieving the NDC goals in countries such as India require early uptake of advance climate-friendly technologies, while appreciating the level of ambition.

This study by International Energy Agency (IEA) released last week questions the ambition of these targets and the level of effort put in by governments towards achieving these targets. Reducing the carbon intensity of electricity generation requires that non-fossil fuel-based power generation should grow at a higher rate than fossil fuel-based power. Even though Indian government is pushing renewable energy generation through focused missions and schemes, reducing the share of fossil fuels would require comparatively larger capacity installation of non-fossil-fuel power systems (other than nuclear and hydro power) in order to meet the increasing demand for electricity due to higher projected growth. That is going to be an uphill task for India.

Estimates made by the government indicate that India could achieve part of its NDC goals more than a decade earlier than targeted, based on the impetus on renewable energy. But a question still remains over the future of coal. India’s National Electricity Plan (NEP), adopted earlier in 2018, is aimed to guide India to remain on track to achieving the renewable energy pillar of the Paris Agreement targets ahead of its time. It could potentially also become a global leader in combating climate change if it were to abandon plans to build new coal-fired power plants. The draft NEP contained no expansion of coal power after 2022, however the final NEP took a step backward and included more than 90 GW of planned coal-fired capacity, with an added risk of these becoming stranded assets. So coal in India is here to stay in India defining its development pathway, but that’s not the only defining element as it used to be a few decades ago.

A 2018 report by the national coal mining company, Coal India, confirms declining future costs of solar and renewable electricity storage (Coal India, 2018), which is likely to foster low-carbon investments. Investment in renewable power in India topped fossil fuels for the first time in 2017, according to the IEA, which is a consolation even in the wake of this current study by IEA. Therefore, with sustained growth, larger upfront investments in new transport infrastructure, buildings and power sector will be critical to India achieving its NDC targets.

Vidya Soundarajan is India regional programme manager, Action on Climate Today

Source: Hindustan Times, 2/04/2019

Think About It: What Makes A Good Life?

 A great career, financial success, a nice family, loads of friends, an active social life and exciting holidays make a good life, right? Think again. Often, i have admired the cheerfulness and tranquillity of many of the security guards, cleaners and gardeners at our building. They arrive at work earlier than required, are always very willing to help and they do it with a smile. I have chatted with a couple of them at times and found their approach to life a reminder of what makes a good life. Firstly, true quality of life is a reflection not of our standard of living but how we experience life within. Secondly, it is a measure of our level of freedom from our volatile emotionalmental states; how well we win over our frequent feelings of anxiety, fear and envy or craving for a different life. I have noticed three principles that contribute to such a good life. 1. Morality: We cannot be at peace or experience emotional freedom without a clear conscience. A high sense of moral integrity is important for a healthy inner life. Without strength of character, we can easily compromise on ‘minor’ infractions on integrity. We tell white lies, choose convenience over righteousness and assume that the end somehow justifies the means. It doesn’t! The emotional residue of any wrongdoing stays and accumulates in our psyche and manifests itself in one negative emotion or other. For example, guilt results in anxiety, irritability and low self-esteem. Immoral conduct in business or personal life corrupts and weakens us. Choosing to do the right thing strengthens our inner being. 2. Inner compass: To experience emotional freedom, it’s important to live life on our own terms. We feel free when we align our life to our innate traits, core values and our life’s calling. We carry enormous emotional baggage when we are trying to live a life that we believe others expect us to. One of the biggest reasons for stress in our lives is our constant propensity to compare ourselves with others. Living by our inner compass relies on feeling grateful for and at peace with who we are and our circumstances. We don’t crave for a different life and choose not to compare ourselves, our life or our progress, with others. 3. Wisdom around control: One of the factors contributing to our inner suffering is our desire to control outcomes – from advancement at work and children’s future to longevity and others’ perception of us. Being focussed on goals and doing our best to reach them is healthy. However, with our high achievement-orientation, we routinely obsess about the outcomes. That significantly increases our emotional burden. Wise people know the delicate balance between willpower and letting go. They do their best on what’s in their control and are wise enough to let go of the temptation to worry about what’s not in their control. That’s what can help us overcome our constant yearning for favourable outcomes and fully enjoy the present. It also helps us be compassionate towards ourselves, our colleagues and loved ones. As you may notice, these principles, while not necessarily easy to live by, are great social equalisers. They are within the reach of almost anyone, irrespective of their financial or social status. That’s how some of the staff in my building are happy and peaceful and lead a good inner life. I guess, you and i can, too

Source: Times of India, 2/04/2019

Economic and Political Weekly: Table of Contents

Vol. 54, Issue No. 13, 30 Mar, 2019

Editorials

Monitoring Digital Election Campaigns

Governmentalising the Research Mind

Terror and the Course of Law

Strategic Affairs

Dealing with Pakistan Needs a Grand Strategy

Zorawar Daulet Singh

Commentary

Son Preference and Daughter Aversion in Two Villages of Jammu

Ravinder Kaur, Charumita Vasudev

Some Macro-theoretical Foundations of Jobless Growth

C Saratchand

Book Reviews

Labouring over Sex Work

Meena Gopal

Betwixt and Between - Shifting Identities of a Provincial Town

Siddharth Menon

Perspectives

The 10% Quota - Is Caste Still an Indicator of Backwardness?

Ashwini Deshpande, Rajesh Ramachandran

Special Articles

Determinants of Electoral Outcomes - An Analysis of General Elections in India

Ajit Karnik, Mala Lalvani, Manali Phatak

Notes

Towards Building an Ecological Civilisation

Balmiki Prasad Singh

Money, Banking and Finance

Reflections on Indian Financial Markets

Partha Ray

Central Banking in India - A Retrospect and Prospects

Y V Reddy

Government Securities Market - Price Discovery, Monetary Management and Government Borrowing

Ashima Goyal

Understanding Systemic Symptoms of Non-banking Financial Companies

Wasim Ahmad, Bhaskar Pathak, N R Bhanumurthy

Monetary Policy Transmission in Financial Markets - Empirical Evidences from India

Edwin Prabu A, Partha Ray

Financial Literacy and Financial Inclusion - Unbundling the Nexus

Saibal Ghosh

From 50 Years Ago

From 50 Years Ago: China’s Widening Horizon

Letters

Mid-day Meal Cooks

Bharat Dogra

Healthcare before Profits

Jan Swasthya Abhiyan

Current Statistics

Current Statistics

The arrogance of the ignorant

It is tragic that ‘New India’ chooses to attack Adivasis and forest-dwellers instead of those destroying its ecology

When the tsunami hit the Andaman and Nicobar Islands in 2004, thousands perished. However, some of the oldest Adivasi tribes, the Jarawas and the Onges, lost nobody. These communities followed animals to the highlands well before the waves hit. Formal education was of little survival value in a context where you needed swift instincts.

When Western drug and pharma corporations send their scouts to remote regions in India to look for herbs to patent, the scouts do not consult top Indian doctors or scientists first. They smuggle their way into jungles inhabited by Adivasis where, in a moment of weakness, an elderly woman adept in the healing arts may divulge a secret or two. Later, the companies might test the herb in their labs and find that the woman’s claims were correct. This has long been the staple of biopiracy.

That those forests inhabited by Adivasis are some of the best conserved in the subcontinent is a long-standing fact contrary to the understanding of supposedly educated Indians. What is invaluable is what is often described as ‘indigenous knowledge’ — as though the knowledge gained over centuries of lived experience is of somehow lower valency than the literacy acquired in a school, or perhaps of no value at all.

Relationship with nature

Sadly, the articulate arrogance of ‘New India’ is such that it is unable to see any virtue in the lives of Adivasis and other forest-dwellers who have lived in and by the forests since times immemorial. Ensconced as it is in the air-conditioned offices of metropolitan India, duly estranged from any living ecology of the earth, while fully predatory on it, it sees people who live in and by the jungles as ‘underdeveloped’ criminals who are among those responsible for the thinning of the forests.

This appears to be the view held by petitioners, including retired forest officers and conservation NGOs, in a lawsuit filed in the Supreme Court in 2008. They seem to believe that humans are not a part of nature and can never coexist with it. It is far from their imagination to distinguish between Adivasis who know something about living sensibly with nature and the rest of us, who do not.

That even the courts would fall to such abysmal levels of understanding has become a defining feature of the reforms era. On February 13, the Supreme Court ruled that over 1.12 million households from 17 States, who have had their claims rejected under the Forest Rights Act (FRA) 2006, are to be evicted by the State governments before July 27. It is not clear what fraction of these are individual claims and what fraction are community claims. Nor are all of these Adivasi households. Some might fall under the ‘other traditional forest-dwellers’ category. Critically, the Central government failed to send its attorney to the court. Ironically, the FRA contains no legal provision for the eviction of rejected claimants. In the face of loud protests from around the country, the court issued a stay order (till July 10) on its ruling. This suits the political goals of the incumbent BJP as it prepares for the polls. Many States are yet to give their details to the courts. Once they do, the number of households to be evicted may rise. Close to 8-10% of the Adivasi population may be asked to vacate their traditional homes and abandon their livelihoods. Has the court contemplated the gravity of the implications? Where are these people supposed to live and make a living? What justice is there in acting in such an inhumane manner?

It betrays ignorance. The judges know that we live in an ecologically imperilled time when metropolitan India has much to answer for its corporate-consumer excesses. And yet, it is among the weakest and the wisest that they choose to attack. The world’s largest refinery is coming up in the Konkan, uprooting 17 villages, over half a million cashew trees and over a million mango trees. Thousands of acres of Himalayan forests and over a hundred villages will be submerged by one of the world’s tallest dams coming up in Pancheshwar in Uttarakhand. Are the conservationist petitioners and courts doing anything to stop any of this? They show little courage when it comes to tackling the land mafias, builder-developers, realtors, constructors and miners, but their conscience is ablaze over conserving Adivasis in the jungles.

A dying civilisation

This is the arrogance of ignorant India and it shall not abdicate till it has laid to rest the last hopes of what was ‘a wounded civilisation’, and is now a dying one. For, let us be clear about one thing: freeing the forests of their traditional inhabitants is almost certain to expose their erstwhile habitats in short order to the speedy, organised depredations of the forces of what has come to be seen by the elites as ‘development’.

If remote habitats are emptied of Adivasis, there may be nobody to forewarn us when ecologically perilous tipping points are crossed in the future. To make matters worse, worrying amendments that have been proposed to the Indian Forest Act, 1927, which further strengthen the stranglehold of forest officials over India’s jungles and its inhabitants, have now been made public.

Perhaps some day, when their decisions affect them, the folly of their pronouncements will dawn upon those who preside on the fates of millions today. But it shall be too late then. Before July, the safe-keepers of justice might wish to ponder Gandhi’s words: “A time is coming when those, who are in the mad rush today of multiplying their wants, vainly thinking that they add to the real substance, real knowledge of the world, will retrace their steps and say: ‘What have we done?’”

Aseem Shrivastava is a Delhi-based writer and teaches Ecosophy at Ashoka University; Abhinav Gupta is an independent researcher who has worked on forest issues and the FRA

Source: The Hindu, 1/04/2019

Analysis | What is forcing Indian women to stay at home?

Early marriage is not responsible for the low female labour force participation. Blame the male backlash effect for it.

India has one of the lowest female labour force participation rates in the world. In 2017, only 27% of adult Indian women had a job or were actively looking for one. The comparable figure for the rest of world was 50%. Equally alarming is the fact that the earnings and wages of women who are employed are low. According to the Global Wage Report 2018-19, the hourly wages of women are 34% less than men in India, a disparity that is highest among 73 countries mentioned in the report. It is often suggested that a major reason for the poor labour market outcomes of Indian women is the high incidence of child marriage in India. Advocacy group ActionAid estimates around 33% child marriages in the world happen in India. The average age of marriage for women also continues to be significantly lower compared to that in many other developing countries such as countries such as Brazil, Chile, Kenya and Pakistan.

Early marriage hampers labour market prospects of women in two ways. First, it interrupts a woman’s formal education, which negatively impacts her labour market outcomes. Second, early marriage leads to early motherhood. This causes younger brides to focus more on the home (raising children, for example), in turn, reducing their likelihood of participation and productivity in the labour market. In light of this, it is often proposed that one way to address the issue of dismal labour market prospects of Indian women is through policies that can potentially delay their marriage.

Can marriage delaying policies improve women’s labour market prospects in India? I recently collaborated with Gaurav Dhamija (a doctoral student at the Shiv Nadar University) to examine this question.

Using nationally representative household data of close to 40,000 women from the Indian Human Development Survey 2012, I found that delaying the age of marriage for women does not lead to better labour market outcomes for them.

One possibility is that delaying the age for marriage does not lead to more education and lower fertility for Indian women. This, however, does not seem to be the case. Indeed, older brides in my sample, are more educated and have lower fertility (as measured by the number of children).

According to this theory, the more educated (and hence empowered) a woman, greater is her chance of facing domestic violence. This is because when gender roles and power relations are redefined, men resort to violence to reinstate a culturally prescribed norm of male dominance and female dependence. In fact, in a recent study published in Population and Development Review, based on data from the National Family Health Survey 2005-06, sociologist Abigail Weitzman finds unequivocal evidence of Indian women who are at least as educated as their husbands have a higher likelihood of experiencing frequent and severe intimate partner violence than women who are less educated than their spouses.

Since the theory of backlash effect predicts a positive relationship between violence and educational attainment of women, and because education increases with women’s age at the time of marriage in my sample, it is reasonable to claim that older brides, as compared to younger brides, are likely to face more male backlash and be denied the freedom to work. This male backlash effect could nullify the positive effects of more education and lower fertility and, therefore, Indian women’s labour market prospects.

These findings suggest that for improving labour market outcomes of Indian women, conventional policies that talk about delaying marriage and laws to prevent child marriage may not be sufficient. Such policies must be complemented by smart and effective interventions to curb the male backlash effect. For example, gender quotas in politics and the corporate sphere could be useful in reducing male backlash. These steps must be taken through coordinated efforts of the government, panchayats, and NGOs to ensure that outdated gender role and age role beliefs do not serve as impediments for women to enjoy the fruits of delayed marriage.

Punarjit Roychowdhury is assistant professor of Economics, Indian Institute of Management (IIM) Indore.

Source: Hindustant Times, 1/04/2019

Don’t Try to be Perfect

Many a time, you become angry or miserable because of the feverishness for perfection. If you are too much of a perfectionist, you are bound to be an angry person. In a state of ignorance, imperfection is natural and perfection is an effort. In a state of wisdom or enlightenment, imperfection is an effort; perfection is compulsion and is unavoidable. When you are in ‘vairagya’ (dispassion), you can take care of even insignificant things with perfection. Perfection is the very nature of the Enlightened One. When we are joyful, we don’t look for perfection. If you are looking for perfection, then you are not at the source of joy. Joy is the realisation that there is no vacation from wisdom. The world appears imperfect on the surface but, underneath, all is perfect. Perfection hides; imperfection shows off. The wise will not stay on the surface but will probe into the depth. Things are not blurred; your vision is blurred. Infinite actions prevail in the wholeness of consciousness and, yet, the consciousness remains perfect, untouched. Realise this now and be natural. In this world, everything cannot be perfect all the time. Even the best, the greatest of actions, performed with the noblest of intentions, will have some imperfections. But the tendency of our mind is to grab the imperfection and hold on to it. And, in the process, we end up making our moods, our minds imperfect and our souls reel with this nonsense. It is imperative to get out of these cycles, and to become strong and courageous from within.

Source: Economic Times, 1/04/2019