CURRENT AFFAIRS
Newspaper Analysis and Summary– 01st April 2014
SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY
Just in case – The Indian Express
I’m an astrobiologist — I study the essential building blocks of life, on this planet and others. But I don’t know how to fix a dripping tap, or what to do when the washing machine goes on the blink. I don’t know how to bake bread, let alone grow wheat. My father-in-law used to joke that I had three degrees, but didn’t know anything about anything, whereas he graduated summa cum laude from the University of Life. It’s not just me. Over the past generation or two we’ve gone from being producers and tinkerers to consumers. What would we do if, in some science-fiction scenario, a global catastrophe collapsed civilisation and we were members of a small society of survivors? What key principles of science and technology would be necessary to rebuild our world from scratch? You would need to start with germ theory — the notion that contagious diseases are not caused by whimsical gods but by invisibly small organisms invading your body. Drinking water can be disinfected with diluted household bleach or even swimming pool chlorine. Soap for washing hands can be made from any animal fat or plant oil stirred with lye, which is soda from the ashes of burned seaweed combined with quicklime from roasted chalk or limestone. When settling down, ensure that your excrement isn’t allowed to contaminate your water source — this may sound obvious, but wasn’t understood even as late as the mid-19th century.
In the longer term, you’ll need to remaster the principles of agriculture and the ability to stockpile a food reserve and support dense cities away from the fields. Then there are the many materials society requires: How do you transform base substances like clay and iron into brick or concrete or steel, and then shape that material into a useful tool? To learn a small piece of this, I spent a day in a traditional, 18th-century iron forge, learning the essentials of the craft of the blacksmith. Of course, it needn’t take a catastrophic collapse of civilisation to make you appreciate the importance of understanding the basics of how devices around you work. Localised disasters can disrupt normal services, making a reasonable reserve of clean water, canned food and backup technologies like kerosene lamps a prudent precaution. Thought experiments like these can help us to explore how our modern world actually came to be, and to appreciate all that we take for granted.
Dartnell, an astrobiology research fellow at the University of Leicester, is author of the forthcoming book ‘The Knowledge: How to Rebuild Our World From Scratch’ The New York Times ENVIRONMENT
World not prepared to face climate change: experts - The Hindu
A U.N.-backed panel said on Monday climate change impacts are already taking place on all continents and across the oceans, however, the world is unprepared for risks from a changing climate. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) finalized a report on the
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CURRENT AFFAIRS impacts of climate change on human and natural systems, and possible methods of adaptation during the five-day conference last week in the Japanese city of Yokohama. “Impacts from recent climate-related extremes, such as heat waves, droughts, floods, cyclones and wildfires reveal significant vulnerability and exposure of some ecosystems and many human systems to current climate variability,” the report said. “We live in an era of man-made climate change,” Vicente Barros, co-chair of the working group in charge of drawing up the latest report, said in a statement.
Climate change is a growing threat to human security as it causes damage to homes and property, disrupts access to food and water and leads to forced migration, according to the IPCC, which is composed of hundreds of scientists and government representatives. However, “in many cases, we are not prepared for the climate-related risks that we already face,” Mr. Barros said. “Nobody on this planet is going to be untouched by the impacts of climate change,” Rajendra Pachauri, chair of the IPCC, told a news conference on Monday. Risks from climate change are “high to very high” if temperatures increase over 4 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels, where the world is now heading, the report said. If temperatures rise between 1 to 2 degrees Celsius, risks increase “disproportionately,” it said. The report issued on Monday assesses the impacts of climate change, adaptation and vulnerability of human and natural systems. It is the second of three assessment reports by the IPCC. “One thing that we have come up with is the importance of adaptation and mitigation choices because this is the only way we might be able to reduce risks of climate change,” Mr. Pachauri said.
Adaptation to reduce such risks is starting to take place, but, with a stronger focus on reacting to past events than on preparing for a changing future, said Chris Field, co-chair of the working group. “Governments, firms and communities around the world are building experience with adaptation,” Mr. Field said. “This experience forms a starting point for bolder, more ambitious adaptations that will be important as climate and society continue to change.” “We’re walking a tightrope, but if we act boldly and cut climate pollution faster major threats to human security can still be avoided and vital ocean systems, forests and species protected,” said Kaisa Kosonen, a Greenpeace International official. “The report makes it clear that we still have time to act,” said Samantha Smith from the World Wide Fund for Nature campaign group. “We can limit climate instability and adapt to some of the changes we see now. But without immediate and specific action, we are in danger of going far beyond the limits of adaptation,” she said. In September, the IPCC warned that humans were primarily responsible for global warming, which has led to a faster-than-predicted rise in sea levels, rapidly melting glaciers and ice sheets. A third report, which will focus on mitigation of climate change, is due for release in April in Berlin. A summit in Paris in 2015 will focus on the creation of new international climate treaty to replace the 1997 Kyoto Protocol, the first phase of which came to an end in 2012.
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CURRENT AFFAIRS POLITY AND GOVERNANCE
Second round of fishermen talks may be after Lok Sabha polls – The Hindu
Even as fishermen of Northern Sri Lanka are concerned over delay in holding the second round of talks with their Tamil Nadu counterparts, fisher-folk here see merit in the State government’s stand that the next round of talks be held only after the release of all the fishermen and their boats by the Island government. The State government’s position “is in line” with the widespread feelings among the fisher-folk here, said Chitravelu of Nambiyar Nagar fishing hamlet. He is one of the four members representing Nagapattinam in the bilateral talks between the fishermen of both countries. As the released fishermen by Sri Lanka continue to arrive in batches on the Indian shores – the third batch of 21 fishermen arrested by the Lankan Navy arrived at Rameswaram on Monday night and another batch scheduled to arrive at Karakial port on Tuesday - fisher-folk are now hopeful of an early announcement of the second round of talks.
The batch of 58 fishermen belonging to Thanjavur, Pudukottai, Ramanathapuram and Karaikal are expected to arrive along with their 11 boats at Nagapattinam on Tuesday. Speaking to The Hindu , Assistant Director of Fisheries of Karaikal, N. Elayaperumal, who is also an official member of the negotiating team, said the team will be informed of the date for the second round, once all men and their boats are released. As of last week, there were 98 fishermen lodged in Sri Lankan jails. On Sunday, 19 fishermen had arrived in the first batch. However, with the Lok Sabha poll campaign heating up and the bureaucratic machinery tied down by the model code of conduct, it is believed that the date for the second round of talks will be announced only after the elections. Meanwhile, in Rameswaram, local leaders have advised fishermen to exercise restraint till the second round of talks between the two countries was held. After the Lankan government had ordered the release of all the 98 fishermen arrested since March 19, the first batch of 19 fishermen had arrived here on Sunday. Even as the repatriation of the second batch of 58 fishermen on Monday has been rescheduled for Tuesday, the third and final batch of 21 fishermen arrived here with five boats.
The Indian Coast Guard vessel, Abheek, which was stationed at the International Maritime Boundary Line (IMBL) received the 21 fishermen on being handed over by the Lankan Navy and escorted them to the fishing jetty here. With five more ‘fishing days’ left before the 45- day ban on fishing, coming into force on April 15, leaders of fishermen associations advised the fishermen to exercise caution of restraint and avoid getting arrested till the talks were held. P. Sesu Raja, district coastal mechanised boat fishermen association leader, said the fishermen in the coastal districts have been advised not to cause any hindrance to the Lankan fishermen and complicate things. They were also strictly warned against using banned nets, he said. The leaders were anxious to have the talks at the earliest. However, U. Arulanandham, president of the Alliance for the Release of Innocent Fishermen (ARIF), felt that the talks could be held only during the ban period. Fishermen of the two countries were trying to find a solution to the dispute over fishing in the Palk Bay.
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CURRENT AFFAIRS
SC asks if Congress, BJP will jointly form Delhi govt. – The Hindu
Observing that formation of a government in Delhi “cannot be left in limbo” with Delhi Lt. Governor Najeeb Jung not taking any decision on holding Assembly elections, the Supreme Court on Monday granted two weeks time to the Congress and the BJP to file their response if they are willing to come together to form a government. A Bench of Justices R.M. Lodha and Kurian Joseph, after hearing senior counsel K. Parasaran for the Congress and senior counsel P.S. Patwalia for the BJP, granted time to the two parties on a petition filed by the Aam Admi Party, questioning the constitutional validity of imposing President’s Rule and keeping the Assembly in suspended animation. Senior counsel Fali Nariman, appearing for the AAP, suggested that Mr. Jung be asked to review his decision. Aam Admi Party leader Arvind Kejriwal on Monday met Mr. Jung and requested him to conduct fresh elections by dissolving the Assembly.
Delay in talks worries fishermen – The Hindu
Tamil Nadu fishermen have been rejoicing ever since President Mahinda Rajapaksa ordered the release of all Indian fishermen and trawlers in Sri Lankan custody, but fishermen of northern Sri Lanka remain rather concerned over the delay in holding the second round of discussions between fishermen of both countries. “The Sri Lankan government released the Indian fishermen after India abstained at Geneva. Both governments have reconciled, the Tamil Nadu fishermen are also happy, but our future alone remains a big question mark,” said N.M. Aalam, president of the Mannar Fisheries Cooperative Union. On March 27, soon after the Human Rights Council in Geneva adopted the U.S.-backed resolution calling for an international probe in Sri Lanka — 23 countries voted in favour of the resolution, 12 against it and 12, including India, abstained — President Rajapaksa ordered the release of the 98 Indian fishermen who were then under custody here, and their trawlers that had been seized.
This decision, termed by his office a “goodwill gesture” in return for India’s stance at Geneva, was received with great joy in India, particularly by Tamil Nadu fishermen. Fisher leaders in Tamil Nadu, over the next couple of days, even gave out interviews pointing to the Sri Lankan Navy’s “courteous” treatment of and “hospitality” to Tamil Nadu fishermen who were fishing near Katchatheevu. “All that is fine, but we need a lasting solution. The Sri Lankan government needs a consistent policy on this. The talks have to be held,” Mr. Aalam told The Hindu on Monday, adding that northern fishermen are concerned that they have become pawns in what fishermen perceive as diplomatic trade-offs. The talks — to be held as a follow-up to the first meeting held in Chennai on January 27 — were scheduled for March 13, but postponed to March 25. They were cancelled again as Sri Lanka, which had made arrangements for the meetings, did not hear from the Indian side, and there has been no update since.
One rank, one pension for HC judges, rules Supreme Court – The Hindu
The Supreme Court held on Monday that there should not be any disparity in the pension of High Court judges, irrespective of the source from where they are drawn. A three-judge
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CURRENT AFFAIRS Bench of Chief Justice P. Sathasivam and Justices Ranjan Gogoi and N.V. Ramana, while allowing a batch of petitions filed by retired judges, said: “Irrespective of the source from where the judges are drawn [from among district judges or from among lawyers], they must be paid the same pension just as they have been paid same salaries and allowances and perks as serving judges.” The Bench held that the fixation of higher pension to judges drawn from the subordinate judiciary, who had served for a shorter period, in contrast to judges drawn from the Bar, who had served for longer period, was highly discriminatory and breach of Article 14.
“The classification itself is unreasonable without any legally acceptable nexus with the object sought to be achieved. One rank, one pension must be the norm in respect of a constitutional office,” the Bench ruled. Writing the judgment, the CJI said: “Only practising advocates, who have attained eminence, are invited to accept judgeship of the High Court. Because of the status of the office of High Court judge, the responsibilities and duties attached to the office, hardly any advocate of distinction declines the offer. Though it may be a great financial sacrifice for a successful lawyer to accept judgeship, it is the desire to serve society and the high prestige attached to the office and the respect that the office commands that propel a successful lawyer to accept judgeship. The experience and knowledge gained by a successful lawyer at the Bar can never be considered to be less important from any point of view vis-à- vis the experience gained by a judicial officer.” The Bench, while directing the government to amend the rules with effect from 2004, said “When pensions are meagre because of the shorter service, lawyers who attain distinction in the profession may not, because of this anomaly, accept the office of judgeship. When capable lawyers do not show inclination towards judgeship, the quality of justice declines.”
Notice to Centre on Lokpal selection – The Hindu
The Supreme Court on Monday issued notice to the Union government on a petition challenging rules relating to the selection of the chairperson and members of the Lokpal. A Bench of Justices R.M. Lodha and Kurian Joseph, after hearing counsel Prashant Bhushan, appearing for Common Cause, an NGO, and Solicitor-General Mohan Parasaran, gave the Centre two weeks to respond and posted the hearing for April 17. When Justice Lodha asked whether the selection process was under way, Mr. Parasaran said the search committee had not met after the resignation of Justice K.T. Thomas, who was to head it. The selection committee, headed by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh was yet to meet to decide on the search committee, he said. Mr. Bhushan maintained that whether the selection process was on or not, the court should issue notice as the rules were contrary to the provisions of the Lokpal Act. He argued that Rule 10 (4)(i), which stipulates norms for non-judicial members of Lokpal, was not found in the Act. “The rule stipulates non-judicial members of Lokpal, apart from having special knowledge and expertise of not less than 25 years in matters relating to anti-corruption policy, public administration, vigilance or law, must have held or must be holding the post of Secretary to the Government of India or any equivalent post under the Central Government or a State Government,” Mr. Bhushan said. In its petition, Common Cause said, “Rules framed under the Lokpal Act are illegal since the mandatory provision of Section 61 of the said Act requiring any rule or regulation framed under it to be laid before
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CURRENT AFFAIRS each House of Parliament for a total period of 30 days has not been complied with.” It sought a declaration that the rules were ultra vires of the Lokpal Act. It also sought a direction to quash the entire selection process.
Inordinate delay in disposal of ailing Bhullar’s mercy plea: SC – The Hindu
The Supreme Court on Monday commuted the death sentence awarded to Devendra Pal Singh Bhullar in the 1993 Delhi bomb blast case to life imprisonment, citing the inordinate and unexplained delay in the disposal of his mercy petition by the President, and his mental illness. A Bench of Chief Justice P. Sathasivam and Justices R.M. Lodha, H.L. Dattu and S.J. Mukhopadhaya granted the relief to Bhullar on a curative petition filed by his wife Navneet Kaur. Writing the judgment, Justice Sathasivam said: “On January 21, a three-judge Bench of this court held in the Shatrughan Chauhan case that insanity/mental illness/schizophrenia is also one of the supervening circumstances for commutation of the death sentence to life imprisonment. By applying the principle enunciated in this case, the accused cannot be executed with the said health condition.”
The Bench said the medical report clearly showed that Bhullar was suffering from acute mental illness. The report said: “The scope for effective treatment options is limited, and thereby the chances of his recovery remain doubtful in the future course of his illness.” “We appreciate the fair stand taken by Attorney-General G.E. Vahanvati that Bhullar’s death sentence could be commuted to life term, applying the principle of the January 21 judgment, and we accept the same,” it said. The CJI said the January 21 ruling overruled the judgment of a two-judge Bench, which dismissed Ms. Kaur’s petition — challenging the inordinate delay in the disposal of the mercy petition — on the ground that when the accused was convicted under TADA, there was no question of showing any sympathy or considering the supervening circumstances. “In the light of the ratio laid down in the Shatrughan Chauhan case, we deem it fit to commute the death sentence imposed on Bhullar,” the CJI said.
Padma Vibhushan conferred on scientist Raghunath Mashelkar – The Hindu
President Pranab Mukherjee presented the Padma Vibhushan, Padma Bhushan and Padma Shri awards at an investiture ceremony at Rashtrapati Bhavan on Monday. India’s second highest civilian award, Padma Vibhushan, was presented to scientist Raghunath Anant Mashelkar. Twelve persons were honoured with the Padma Bhushan and 53 with the Padma Shri at the ceremony attended by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, Vice-President Hamid Ansari and several Ministers. Actor Kamal Hassan; Susanne H. Rudolph and Llyod I. Rudolph, distinguished professors of Political Science from the University of Chicago; neonatologist Neelam Kler; V.N. Kaul, former Comptroller and Auditor-General of India; badminton player and coach Pullela Gopichand; writer-lyricist and Tamil literary figure Vairamuthu; Anisuzzaman, professor emeritus, University of Dhaka; scientist Jyeshtharaj B. Joshi, vocalist Begum Parween Sultana, percussionist T.H. Vikku Vinayakram and Dr. Anumolu Ramakrishna (posthumous) were presented the Padma Bhushan.
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CURRENT AFFAIRS Actor Vidya Balan; Sanskrit scholar Naheed Abidi; poet Ashok Chakradhar; Bengali actor Sabitri Chatterjee; Mizo writer Chhakchhuak Chhuanvawra; Manipuri artist Elam Indira Devi; literary theorist G.N. Devy; social activist Brahm Dutt; medical practitioner Pawan Raj Goyal; former Water Resources Secretary Ramaswamy R. Iyer; Eluvathingal Devassy Jemmis, professor, IIS, Bangalore; theatre personality Bansi Kaul; activist for the visually challenged Jawahar Lal Kaul; sarangi player Ustad Moinuddin Khan, dancer Geeta Mahalik; poet and critic Vishnu Narayanan Namboodiri; squash player Dipika Rebecca Pallikal and designer Wendell Augustine Rodricks were among the Padma Shri awardees.
Rs. 352 crore to ryots for replanting horticultural crops – The Hindu
The Centre will provide an assistance of Rs. 352 crore to farmers for replanting horticulture crops that were hit by untimely rain and hailstorm earlier this month in parts of Maharashtra, Madhya Pradesh, Karnataka and Rajasthan. The fund release was sanctioned by an Empowered Group of Ministers (EGoM) that met here on Monday. The assistance is part of the ongoing schemes under the National Horticulture Mission. The government has also decided to release Rs. 92 crore from the National Disaster Response Fund to Karnataka for providing relief to farmers whose rabi crop has been hit by rain. This was decided at a meeting of the high-level committee headed by Union Agriculture Minister Sharad Pawar. The Karnataka government had given a memorandum seeking Central assistance. Finance Minister P. Chidambaram and Home Minister Sushil Kumar Shinde attended both meetings. Last week, the EGoM had cleared a financial assistance of Rs. 1,351 crore to Maharashtra and Madhya Pradesh for damage to horticulture crop and standing rabi crops, including wheat, pulses and oilseeds. Central teams had visited Maharashtra and Madhya Pradesh for spot assessment of the damage caused by unseasonal rain and hail in the two States. The Agriculture Ministry had taken the Election Commission’s advice on release of funds to the affected States, sources said. INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS
Warming worsens hunger problems: U.N. – The Hindu
Global warming makes feeding the world harder and more expensive, a United Nations scientific panel said. A warmer world will push food prices higher, trigger “hotspots of hunger” among the world’s poorest people, and put the crunch on Western delights like fine wine and robust coffee, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) concluded in a 32-volume report issued on Monday. “We’re facing the spectre of reduced yields in some of the key crops that feed humanity,” panel chairman Rajendra Pachauri said in a press conference after releasing the report. Even though heat and carbon dioxide are often considered good for plants, the overall effect of various aspects of man-made warming is that it will reduce food production, the report said. In the past several years the scientific literature has been overwhelming in showing that climate change hurts food production, said Chris Field of the Carnegie Institution of Science and lead author of the climate report. Food prices are likely to go up somewhere in a wide range of three per cent to 84 percent by 2050 just because of climate change, the report said.
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CURRENT AFFAIRS ECONOMY
RIL to continue gas supply on existing terms as interim measure – The Hindu
After a marathon day-long meeting in New Delhi on Monday, Reliance Industries Ltd (RIL) and companies from the fertiliser industry agreed to continue their gas contracts on existing terms until a new agreement is negotiated.The existing Gas Sales Purchase Agreements (GSPA) that ended on Monday night provided for supply of gas by RIL at $4.20 per million British thermal unit (mmBtu) and with the absence of a government notification on the new gas price, both sides temporarily agreed for the continuance of the old rate, officials involved in the discussion said. The new gas pricing, as per the Rangarajan Committee’s formula, was to come into effect from April 1, 2014, but it was postponed following a directive from the Election Commission due to enforcement of model code of conduct. The gas price from KG Basin fields was to increase from $4.20 mmBtu to nearly $8.40 mmBtu from April 1, 2014, onwards and this was cleared by the Cabinet. The existing contracts have been extended until the new pricing comes into effect, possibly after the formation of a new government at the Centre in June, 2014. Reportedly, RIL had been insisting that the procurers must sign the agreement at $8.40 per mmBtu, but it later relented.
The GSPAs that expired on Monday were signed in 2009 for a five-year period. There were 50 GSPAs, including 16 with fertilizer companies, 28 with power companies and the rest with city gas distributors. In another development, the Supreme Court of India, on Monday, appointed former Australian Supreme Court judge James Spigelman as the third presiding arbitrator to resolve the dispute between RIL and the Ministry of Petroleum & Natural Gas over the falling output from KG-D6 gas fields. The appointment of the third arbitrator from outside India has been done following a demand from RIL which has two foreign partners at the KG fields. Earlier, the Central Government had appointed former Supreme Court judge V. N. Khare as arbitrator while RIL had appointed former Supreme Court judge S. P. Bharucha as its arbitrator. The arbitration has been in limbo for over a year. The disputes arose following drastic depletion in gas output from RIL’s gas fields in the KG basin. While the Ministry of Petroleum & Natural Gas had accused RIL of hoarding gas to sell at higher prices following price revision effective April 1, 2014, RIL has been insisting that the fall in output was due to geological problems. EDITORIALS
When the courts legislate and execute – The Hindu
In 1973, a Bench comprising 13 Supreme Court judges ruled by a majority that Article 368 of the Constitution “does not enable Parliament to alter the basic structure or framework of the Constitution.” The Court ruled what has come to be known as “the basic structure” doctrine — a judicial principle that the Indian Constitution has certain “basic features” that cannot be altered or destroyed through amendments by Parliament. Paramount among these are the fundamental rights guarenteed by the Constitution. Only two years later, the Allahabad High Court found the then Prime Minister Indira Gandhi guilty of electoral malpractices. Justice
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CURRENT AFFAIRS Jagmohan Lal Sinha invalidated Mrs. Gandhi’s win and barred her from holding elected office for six years. The decision caused a political crisis in India that led to the imposition of the Emergency by Mrs. Gandhi’s government from 1975 to 1977.
The best of times
During the Emergency, Mrs. Gandhi altered the election law retroactively by the 39th amendment to the Constitution. Article 329A was inserted to void the Allahabad judgment. The retroactive, undemocratic, and politically motivated legislative enactment validated an election. The amendment secured her position and prevented her removal from Indian politics. Later the enactment was successfully challenged in the light of the 1973 ruling and Article 329A was struck down. The Judiciary curtailed autocratic politics — a stitch in time saved nine. Our fundamental rights are the conscience of the Constitution. This right, and every other legal right, stems from our ability to retain the integrity and the structure of our Constitution. There is a hard learnt, intellectual history to this legal inheritance. The principal of the basic structure of the Constitution is enshrined in Article 79 (3) of the Basic Law for the Federal Republic of Germany. The German constitution was drafted between 1948-49, in the immediate shadow of its Nazi past. During the drafting sessions, the Weimar constitution came under immense scrutiny by German jurists and scholars, who investigated the document at great length. The Constitution’s broad powers to suspend civil liberties, coupled with an insufficient system of checks and balances, presented a structural opportunity for Adolf Hitler to seize power and preside upon an authoritarian democracy.
In the 19th century, there were many who mocked Montesquieu for his fear of political power and for his cautiously articulated theory of separation of powers. The doctrine of separation of powers took a particular view of men and power. It assumed that power corrupts. In the Constitutional Assembly Debates, while discussing the fundamental rights, Dr. Ambedkar expressed similar sentiments. “I myself cannot altogether omit the possibility of a Legislature packed by party men making laws which may abrogate or violate what we regard as certain fundamental principles affecting life and liberties of an individual. At the same time, I do not see how five or six gentlemen sitting in the Federal or Supreme Court could examine the laws made by the Legislature and by dint of their own individual conscience or their bias or their prejudices can be trusted to determine which law is good and which law is bad.” Separation of powers is indispensable because under the Constitution, power divides itself so that reason can rule.
And the worst of times
In January this year, in the matter of Judicial review of Pardon power, the Supreme court in Shatrughan Chauhan & Anr. vs Union Of India & Ors. overstepped its constitutional power and duty and exercised the sovereign power of clemency, which it never possessed. The three-judge Bench, in its unprecedented authority, commuted a sentence of death to life for 15 persons on the singular ground of delay. The decision egregiously disregarded previous judgments laid down by the five-judge Bench of the Supreme Court. The Supreme Court has the appellate power to reduce a death penalty in regular appeals. However, it has
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CURRENT AFFAIRS never possessed such powers to exercise the remission or commutation while exercising the judicial review of clemency power. Protection of our fundamental rights remains paramount and the Judiciary can and must curb acts of excess, and ensure checks and balances. However, the protection of our fundamental rights itself never empowered the Supreme Court to either legislate or to execute. The decision in the Shatrughan Chauhan case has been widely and wrongly heralded as a decision in support of human rights, while squarely forgetting the Judiciary’s infringement of the cardinal principles of separation of powers. The Judiciary cannot revolt against the Constitution, but only on its behalf.
The errors in the Shatrughan Chauhan decision brought forward the case of three convicts — Murugan, Perarivalan and Santhan — in the Rajiv Gandhi assassination case before the consideration of the Supreme Court. These commutations were ordered on the same grounds as Shatrughan Chauhan & Anr. vs Union Of India & Ors . After commuting the death sentence to life imprisonment for these convicts, the court rendered an unsolicited legal opinion that was neither pleaded nor argued by the petitioners (para 31 of the judgment). The judgment erroneously declared the power of the State government under the Criminal Procedure Code, to exercise remission of “life sentence” to “no sentence,” and enabled the release of the convicts. In Krishta Goud & Bhoomaiah vs State of Andhra , the Supreme Court Bench presided over by Justice V.R. Krishna Iyer stated with clarity: “As Judges, we cannot rewrite the law whatever our views of urgent reforms, as citizens, may be.” When the State government’s decision was challenged by the Union of India in the Rajiv Gandhi assassination case, P. Sathasivam, Chief Justice of India stated: “We are responsible for this problem. We will solve it.”
The Tamil Nadu government taking political advantage of the “Tamil sentiments” in view of the coming election, exercised the remission power purely for political consideration, and demanded that the Centre act within 72 hours. Electoral politicking that appeals directly to mass sentiments, ethnonational affinities and sympathies, without institutional and social checks and balances, erodes the very foundation of our rights. The Tamil Nadu government’s decision to release the prisoners might create short term electoral victory, but it will further entrench a culture that places politics and emotional appeasement above governance and the rule of law. In a country governed by a written Constitution, the democratic right flows from the attribute of constitutional sovereignty. We cannot claim our fundamental right or any other legal rights, unless we retain the structure of our sovereignty. In the 1970s, when faced with gross violations of the country’s democratic structures, the Supreme Court stepped in, limiting the power of both the Legislature and Executive. Our Constitution is our act of revolution and the Judiciary its protector. Today when the same Judiciary oversteps its limits, it is indispensable that the decision is corrected, reviewed and reversed by a larger Bench.
(Suchitra Vijayan was trained as a Bar-at-Law.)
Final reprieve for Bhullar – The Hindu
The story of Devendar Pal Singh Bhullar is truly extraordinary. Condemned to death thrice in the past, he has now obtained a final reprieve from the Supreme Court, thanks to the
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CURRENT AFFAIRS humanitarian jurisprudence on clemency evolved by it in recent times. With the Court giving him the benefit of its January 21, 2014 verdict, the man convicted of killing nine persons and wounding 17 others in a car bomb attack in Delhi in 1993, will not be executed. His death sentence stands commuted to life on two grounds — that there was an unexplained delay of eight years in disposing of his mercy petition, and that he suffers from mental illness. The verdict was only to be expected, as both these grounds figure among the supervening circumstances for commutation listed by the Supreme Court in January in Shatrughan Chauhan vs Union of India . There were at least three days in Bhullar’s life that appeared to indicate that his fate was sealed: March 22, 2002, when the Supreme Court upheld the death sentence against him; June 13, 2011, when the President’s rejection of his mercy petition was communicated to the prison authorities; and April 12, 2013, when the Supreme Court upheld the President’s order. Rarely do cases get reopened after reaching finality in both the appellate and review jurisdictions of the Supreme Court. Yet, such was the scope of the relief envisioned in Shatrughan Chauhan that the Attorney General conceded that this death sentence was liable for commutation in the light of the principles enunciated in that verdict.
The question that arises now is whether there is any aspect of clemency, or constitutional limitation on imposing the irreversible penalty of death, that remains to be settled by the Supreme Court. One aspect that the Court will probably take note of some day in an appropriate case is whether difference of opinion among judges in the appellate court can be a ground for commutation. In Bhullar’s case, the death sentence imposed on him by the Designated Court was upheld by the Supreme Court by a majority of two judges to one. And the dissenting judge did not differ just on the sentence: he acquitted him, holding that the accused could not be convicted solely on the basis of a statement recorded by a police officer. While considering his review petition, the Bench was divided two-one on the effect of this difference of opinion, with the majority holding that one dissent could not be a ground to review the verdict. Questions on the irreversible harm caused by a possible doubtful or mistaken conviction will keep cropping up as long as the death penalty remains on the statute book, helping the judiciary fine-tune and humanise the body of law on death and mercy.
Message from Sri Lankan polls – The Hindu
The elections to the Western and Southern provincial councils in Sri Lanka, home to a third of the country’s voters, was expected to be a walkover for the Mahinda Rajapakasa-led United People’s Freedom Alliance. After all, the government had fought bravely against ‘foreign conspirators’ at the 25th session of the United Nations Human Rights Council in Geneva barely days ahead of the well-timed polling. In fact, much of the election campaign made it appear as if Sri Lanka was under siege and no one other than President Rajapaksa’s UPFA was capable of saving the nation. But the electorate did not buy the whole story, the voter turnout was low, and the results appeared puzzling. Local elections may be fought on immediately relevant issues and the outcome of a national poll may well be decided on larger considerations; still, the latest results provide an idea of the country's mood. The UPFA did win a majority in Mr. Rajapaksa’s home province, the Southern Province, and emerged the biggest party in the Western Province that has Colombo as its headquarters. But a point of concern for the ruling combine was the numbers: the UPFA won 33 of 55 seats in the South
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CURRENT AFFAIRS — down from 38 in 2009 — and managed 56 of the 104 in the West where it had 68 in 2009. More worrisome for the UPFA is the fact that it lost votes in the President’s hometown, Hambantota — represented in Parliament by his son Namal Rajapaksa. Clearly, people of the port-town prefer their district MP, Sajith Premadasa, son of former President Ranasinghe Premadasa. Mr. Sajith Premadasa has fought both the Rajapaksas and has a running battle going in his own United National Party. This is the last round of polls in Sri Lanka ahead of the parliamentary and presidential elections scheduled for 2016.
Though the losses do not appear massive, the message behind it cannot be wished away. The UPFA’s loss did not result in its main rival, the UNP, gaining votes. In fact, there appears to be serious confusion among people: they voted for former General Sarath Fonseka’s Democratic National Alliance, which is now emerging as the third force in the country, and also the JVP, which is re-grouping under a new leader, Anura Kumara Dissanayake. The UNP’s vote share declined in Colombo Central, its biggest stronghold, and it will have to double its vote share if it has to emerge on top in a future election. Ranil Wickremasinghe, the UNP chief who survived many bids to unseat him, does not seem to be the leader who can carry the UNP into an election victory. With Sarath Fonseka’s fate already sealed following the deal he struck to be released from prison, people are clearly looking for a new leader. And there appears no one in sight. That might be Mr.Rajapaksa’s biggest trump card yet.
Second sunrise of Indian jihad – The Hindu
“You who have ruled India for eight hundred years, you who lit the flame of the one true God in the darkness of polytheism: how can you remain in your slumber when the Muslims of the world are awakening?” the al-Qaeda ideologue Asim Umar asked India’s Muslims last summer. “If the youth of the Muslim world have joined the battlefields with the slogan ‘Shari’a or Martyrdom,’ and put their lives at stake to establish the Caliphate, how can you lag behind them? Why is there no storm in your ocean,” Mr. Umar demanded to know.
Last week’s arrests of key Indian Mujahideen operatives have led to speculation that India’s most feared terror group — responsible for savage serial bombings in major cities, including the 2006 attacks on Mumbai’s suburban train system — may be disintegrating. Tehseen Akhtar, its key recruiter, is now in prison; so is Muhammad Zarar Siddibapa, its operation chief. For investigators though, these breakthroughs have brought forth disturbing new evidence that Mr. Umar, and other propagandists like him, are succeeding in calling a new army into being — an army born in Indian towns and cities scarred by communal warfare and hardened in the battlefields of Pakistan’s north-west. The dusk that shrouds the Indian Mujahideen heralds, the evidence suggests, the coming of its second sunrise.
The new jihadis
Karachi residents Muhammad Fahim and Muhammad Abdul Walid, held by the Uttar Pradesh police last week, told investigators that they had first been recruited by the Lashkar- e-Taiba, and then broke with it to make their way to a Taliban training camp in Afghanistan’s southern Helmand district. Then, they were led by the fugitive Pune jihadist , Mohin Chaudhury to the Indian Mujahideen’s Karachi-based chief, Riyaz Shahbandri. Faisalabad-
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CURRENT AFFAIRS based bombmaker Zia-ur-Rahman, Mr. Akhtar’s recently arrested deputy, served with Taliban groups in Pakistan’s Punjab before volunteering to serve with the Indian Mujahideen fighting across the border. Meanwhile, new jihadist cells have sprung up within India. The recruits include young people, their minds fired by Internet Islamism, as well as veterans once linked to the proscribed Students Islamic Movement of India (SIMI). Fugitive Ranchi resident Haider Ali, the National Investigation Agency (NIA) says, raised volunteers from both these groups for the bombing of the revered Buddhist shrine at Bodh Gaya last year, as an act of vengeance for communal violence against Myanmar’s Rohingya Muslim minority.
Mr. Ali’s cell, only loosely connected through him to the Indian Mujahideen, followed up that attack with an attempt to assassinate Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi at a rally in Patna, surprising the organisation’s leadership in Karachi. In Tamil Nadu, volunteers at a Chennai college even signed up to serve with jihadists in Syria — recruited by local Islamists, and financed by a Singapore-based executive. Key commanders of the Indian Mujahideen, meanwhile, remain active in Karachi, most important of them being Riyaz Shahbandri, his brother Iqbal Shahbandri and Abdul Subhan Qureshi. There are a host of second-rung leaders still at large, like Mirza Shadab Beg, Shahnawaz Alam, Muhammad “Bada” Sajid, Alamzeb Afridi, Zulfikar Fayyaz “Kagazi,” Rahil Sheikh and Ariz Khan. The man who financed them all, ganglord Amir Raza Khan, is also at large.
The western storm
From Internet chats between Mr. Shahbandri and Mr. Siddibapa, recovered by the NIA, we know that several of those men have sought combat training with jihadistsin Pakistan’s north- west, and in Afghanistan, developing skills the Indian Mujahideen’s cadre never had. It has long been evident that the gathering storm of violent Islamism in Pakistan would lash India, too. In 2010, al-Qaeda released a posthumous audio message from Egyptian jihadi Said al- Masri, claiming responsibility for the bombing of the German Bakery in Pune. “The person who carried out this operation was a heroic soldier from the Soldiers of the Sacrifice Brigade, which is one of the brigades of Qaedat al-Jihad [the al-Qaeda’s formal name] in Kashmir, under the command of Commander Illyas Kashmiri, may Allah preserve him.” Mr. al-Masri’s message was wrong on several details of the operation, but for investigators, news that elements of al-Qaeda had developed links with jihadi groups acting against India did not surprise anyone. David Headley, the Pakistani-American Lashkar operative now serving a life term for his role in the 26/11 attacks, had told the NIA of an anti-India “Karachi project” linked to global jihadi groups.
Driven by communal events
Following Pakistani military ruler General Pervez Musharraf’s 2007 siege of jihadists holed up inside Islamabad’s Lal Masjid, Mr. Headley told the NIA, that an ideological war broke out among Pakistan’s jihadis . In spite of efforts by Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence, he said, the “aggression and commitment shown to jihad by the several splinter groups influenced many committed fighters to leave Kashmir-centric outfits and join the Taliban.” In turn, al-Qaeda became increasingly interested in India, as a means of competing for influence
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CURRENT AFFAIRS and legitimacy with traditional jihadi groups like the Lashkar, which were supportive of the Pakistani state. In the wake of 26/11, al-Masri himself released a statement warning India of attacks if it struck against Pakistan. The renewal of a jihadist constituency within India shouldn’t be a surprise: the rise of Mr. Modi, and the Hindu nationalist tendencies he represents, has unleashed existential anxieties among large numbers of Indian Muslims. Though the numbers of jihadi recruits are minuscule, the members of the new cells are also true to a familiar pattern. The earliest Indian jihadist formation, the Tanzim Islahul Muslimeen, was formed to protect Muslims against communal violence, and carried out its first strike, the 1993 bombings of inter-city express trains, to avenge the demolition of the Babri Masjid.
In interrogations, Indian jihad volunteers have repeatedly said they acted to avenge the Gujarat carnage of 2002. Feroze Ghaswala told police he had volunteered to join jihad training after witnessing the mass burial of 40 Gujarat riot victims. Peedical Abdul Shibly and Yahya Kamakutty, both successful computer professionals, are alleged to have prepared to carry out attacks in Bangalore. Men from Kerala trained in the mountains of Jammu and Kashmir with the Lashkar-e-Taiba. Zabiuddin Ansari, from Maharashtra, famously ended up in the 26/11 control room. Founded in April 1977, SIMI, the fountainhead of the modern Indian jihadistmovement, was itself driven by the forces of communal violence. From the outset, scholar Yoginder Sikand has said “that Islam alone was the solution to the problems of not just the Muslims of India, but of all Indians and, indeed, of the whole world.” It drew thousands disillusioned with traditional politics, Dr. Sikand has recorded, providing supporters “a sense of power and agency which they were denied in their actual lives.” From December 1992, following the demolition of the Babri Masjid, SIMI’s language became increasingly aggressive. In a statement in 1996, it declared that since democracy and secularism had failed to protect Muslims, the sole option was to struggle for the caliphate. Soon after, it put up posters calling on Muslims to follow the path of Mahmood Ghaznavi, the 11th century warlord. In 2001, after the 9/11 attacks, SIMI activists organised demonstrations hailing Osama bin-Laden as a “true mujahid.” Early in the summer of 2004, a group of young men fed up with SIMI’s inability to act on its own talk gathered in the small coastal town of Bhatkal in Mangalore — and founded what we now call the Indian Mujahideen.
The jihadi tradition
To understand the durability of the jihad within India, it is important to remember that its cadre are inheritors of a long political tradition. In a manifesto sent to the media after their September 2008 bombings in New Delhi, the group said the attacks were carried out “in the memory of two most eminent Mujahids of India: Sayyed Ahmed Shaheed and Shah Ismail Shaheed (may Allah bestow His Mercy upon them) who had raised the glorious banner of Jihad against the disbelievers.” The historian Ayesha Jalal has shown that the notion of jihad was an important theme in both pre-colonial and colonial India. Syed Ahmad and Shah Ismail were killed battling Sikh troops in a failed jihad involving the tribes of Pakistan’s north-west. Historian Stephen Dale has observed that these ideas stretched to the south of India, noting the work of the Sixteenth Century author, Zayn al-Din al-Ma’bari, who
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CURRENT AFFAIRS chronicled the jihad against Portugal’s intrusions into the Indian Ocean, hoping to “inspire the Faithful to undertake a jihad against the worshippers of the cross.” Each bombing the Indian Mujahideen carries out is a medium for a political message enmeshed with India’s dystopic communal landscape: that democratic politics cannot defend India’s Muslims. India’s intelligence and police services deserve credit for the long war they have fought, but it is time for politicians to act to heal our fractured nation.
The experiment of the century – The Hindu http://www.thehindu.com/todays-paper/tp-opinion/the-experiment-of-the- century/article5856889.ece
Colombo correction – The Indian Express
The UPA government’s decision to abstain on a resolution against Sri Lanka at the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva last week was indeed unexpected. In the last two years, India had backed the West-sponsored resolutions on Sri Lanka’s human rights violations during Colombo’s victorious war against the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, which ended in 2009. If India’s earlier position was about pandering to the Congress party’s allies in Chennai, its reversal this year has come amid the ruling party’s political isolation in Tamil Nadu. With apparently little to gain from further appeasement, the UPA government has chosen to do the right thing. In a terrible irony, the more Delhi bowed to the Tamil parties in Chennai, the less clout it had in promoting the rights of the Tamil minorities in Sri Lanka. The about turn in Geneva on Sri Lanka, then, is a belated but welcome corrective to one of the UPA’s worst foreign policy legacies — of putting the Congress party’s narrow political considerations above the national interest.
In its first term, the UPA, under pressure from the CPM, made heavy weather of the historic civil nuclear initiative with the United States unveiled in 2005. Instead of vigorously defending the deal — which sought to end India’s prolonged global nuclear isolation — Congress president Sonia Gandhi pulled the plug in 2007. It was Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s apparent threat to resign in mid-2008 that allowed the clinching of the deal, with great political difficulty. The reluctance to pursue what was in plain national interest became even more telling in the second term of the UPA. In 2010, Manmohan Singh boldly decided to transform the bilateral relationship with Bangladesh by resolving all outstanding issues, including cross-border terrorism, market access, transit, river water sharing and the cleaning up of a messy boundary inherited from the partition of the subcontinent. When the big moment for signing the agreements came in September 2011, during Manmohan Singh’s visit to Dhaka, the prime minister held back on the Teesta waters agreement as West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee threw a tantrum. Although the prime minister went ahead and signed the land boundary agreement with Dhaka, UPA 2 found it difficult to mobilise political support at home for its ratification in Parliament.
The second term also saw the Congress party becoming more wobbly towards Sri Lanka. Recall the prime ministers’s decision to skip the Commonwealth summit in Colombo last
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CURRENT AFFAIRS year. The pressure came not just from the Tamil parties, but also from senior Congress leaders in the state, including Finance Minister P. Chidambaram. While the PM saw the negative consequences of snubbing Colombo, the Congress party leadership had the last word. The UPA’s policy failures on Bangladesh and Sri Lanka have generated much bemoaning in Delhi’s national security establishment about the breakdown of the rules of the republic that made the conduct of foreign policy the sole responsibility of the Centre. A closer look, however, reveals that it is not the states that have got stronger and are exercising a veto over foreign policy decisions. The real source of trouble has been the lack of policy conviction and political will in the UPA. This, in turn, stemmed from the Congress party’s temptation to take the path of least resistance when confronted with difficult political challenges. If Prakash Karat did not like the nuclear initiative, Sonia Gandhi was ready to drop it. If Mamata Banerjee does not like the agreements with Dhaka, Delhi is ready to put them on hold. If Chennai does not like the prime minister going to Colombo, then so be it.
That Delhi has to take into account the views of the states, regions and communities on foreign policy issues that affect them directly is a matter of political common sense. It is not a matter of constitutional principle. In a large and diverse democratic state like India, conflict between the national and the local is frequent and inevitable. Resolving these tensions is the job of the political leadership at the Centre. The UPA government has fallen woefully short, thanks to the deliberate weakening of the prime minister’s role in the management of national affairs during the last 10 years. With neither political primacy in the party nor full administrative authority over his government, the prime minister did not, or could not, defend what he thought was in the national interest. But the problem of reconciling the tension between the national and the regional in foreign policy-making is not going to disappear after the elections. The next prime minister, most likely heading another coalition, will need considerable political skill in managing the disparate pressures on all national issues. In the few remarks on foreign policy that he has made during the election season, the BJP’s prime ministerial candidate, Narendra Modi, has declared that he would promote a greater role for states in the making of India’s foreign policy. Modi’s words are vague at the moment, but they certainly open the door for a debate on the role of states in Indian diplomacy. But in the end, it is all about competence in political management and the effective exercise of power by the national leadership. If Modi does become prime minister, he will indeed face pressures from the BJP’s regional allies and sections of his own party on the policies towards Sri Lanka and Bangladesh. If Sonia Gandhi and Manmohan Singh have set a negative example that must be avoided at all costs, the next prime minister could learn a thing or two from Atal Bihari Vajpayee, who artfully dodged pressures from his regional coalition partners and resisted those from the ideologues in the BJP and RSS during his six-year tenure as prime minister.
The writer, a distinguished fellow at the Observer Research Foundation, Delhi, is a contributing editor for ‘The Indian Express’
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CURRENT AFFAIRS
Why elections require special vigilance -The Indian Express
On a late January evening in 2008, two policemen were routinely checking vehicles in a remote corner of Davanagere district in Karnataka. They stopped a two-wheeler and searched its sidebox. To their surprise, the policemen found a pile of vehicle number plates stashed therein. Suspecting the two youngsters on the two-wheeler to be vehicle thieves, the policemen handed them over to the Honnali police station. It would have been treated as an ordinary arrest and dealt with accordingly, but for the fact that the district’s young superintendent of police thought of consulting the Subsidiary Intelligence Bureau in Bangalore, who lost no time in establishing the identity of one of the arrested persons as Raziuddin Naser, who had just returned after a sojourn in Pakistan. Sustained interrogation of Naser revealed that the banned Students Islamic Movement of India had revived itself under Safdar Nagori and was planning to carry out vehicle-bombing operations in Goa and elsewhere and that he and his partner were engaged in stealing vehicles to that end. That was the first indication of the emergence of the organisation which, a few months earlier, had decided to call itself Indian Mujahideen (IM).
Discreet and coordinated operations by Central intelligence and the police in various states led, within a couple of months, to the tracking down of Safdar Nagori and several of his associates belonging to different modules from various parts of the country. It was then believed that a great threat to national security had been averted thanks to the arrest and revelations of Raziudin Naser. That belief proved wrong. Starting with Jaipur in May 2008, a series of blasts, referred to by some as the BAD (Bangalore, Ahmedabad and Delhi) blasts, rocked the nation. Names like Riyas, Iqbal and Yasin Bhatkal became familiar to everyone. The past few years have seen intense and widespread operations by the intelligence agencies and security forces to nab the absconding IM leaders. Out of the 50 most wanted persons figuring on the National Investigation Agency’s website, about 10 are from the IM. Over the last six months or so, our intelligence agencies and police have succeeded in netting several of them, including Bhatkal, Asadulla Akhtar, Tehseen Akhtar alias Monu, Waqas, etc — the last two in the last week alone. But they cannot rest on their laurels, despite declarations by the media that the back of the IM has been broken. A quick scan of the situation on the ground gives rise to misgivings, such as: one, the IM is capable of mutating, as we have seen in the past. Two, several IM leaders are still in hiding, either within the country or abroad, from where they are capable of guiding destructive operations.
Among them are heavyweights like Riyas Bhatkal, Iqbal Bhatkal, Amir Reza Khan and Abdul Subhan Qureshi, besides shadowy figures like Dr Shahnawaz, Bada Sajid, Mirza Shadab Beig, Masood Sheikh, Raheel Sheikh, etc. Three, new recruits, well-educated and technologically capable, seem to be joining the IM. Look at the two youngsters arrested along with Waqas. Both are studying for engineering degrees in reputed institutes. Four, reports indicate that at least two LeT cadres, who infiltrated into India to be suicide bombers, have been intercepted in UP, presumably as the result of the revelations of Monu and Waqas. There may be more. Five, very recently, the leftwing extremist groups have once again demonstrated their capability to hit security forces. Six, it’s general election time, and security norms are usually lax during these times because of candidates’ compulsion to reach
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CURRENT AFFAIRS out to people whose votes they need. The last of the reasons merits very close attention by the powers that be. In South Asia, we have a sad history of assassinations during elections. When one looks back, memories of three young, dynamic political leaders come flooding in. One harrowing assassination that we in India are unable to forget is that of Rajiv Gandhi, who was seeking re-election after a term out of power when he became the victim of an LTTE human bomb at an election rally in Sriperumbudur. Gamini Dissanayake, who was just 52 and was campaigning to be president of Sri Lanka, was killed by the LTTE in 1994 while addressing a public meeting in Thotalanga.
In December 2007, Benazir Bhutto, hoping to make a comeback in Pakistan, succumbed to an assassin’s attack at a political rally in Liaquat National Bagh in Rawalpindi, which was meant to mark the beginning of her campaign. The significant fact to note is that all the three were out of power when they were killed. There seems to be an inherent problem in providing requisite security to opposition candidates in the South Asian context. I am not suggesting that this is intentional, but there is a mind-set amongst security and intelligence professionals, which refuses to accept that the threat level to an opposition leader could be higher than that of the incumbent prime minister or president. The dominant view, based on traditional wisdom, in the security and intelligence community is that there is an in-built threat which any person who holds a constitutional post faces and, therefore, the levels of protection to such leaders need to be higher than those for anyone else. We cannot, however, afford to lose any one of our leaders, whether from the ruling party or the opposition, in the run-up to the elections (or at any other time). The recent arrests show that our intelligence and security officials are maintaining a high state of alert, but they must continue to be cautious and remain alive to the flipside of success, which is the tendency to lower one’s guard.
The writer is a former chief of the Research and Analysis Wing.
Family ties – The Indian Express
Dynastic politics is a live topic, and it works well for Narendra Modi and Arvind Kejriwal. Pejorative references to “family rule” produce good sound bites. While leaders position themselves against it, the ubiquity of family connections will survive this election. Numerous “new faces” with family connections have been identified on candidate lists released by parties across India. Elections are important moments in the process of the formation of an elite. Nominations to contest the Lok Sabha and Vidhan Sabha elections are a chance to move ahead in the party. There are many aspirants, but tickets are few and distributed parsimoniously. The decision-making process is invariably opaque, but there is evidence, anecdotal and otherwise, that family connections help candidates get nominations. Politicians with family connections in the Lok Sabha have attracted much attention. The numbers alone are striking. In 2011, Kanchan Chandra and Wamiq Umaira reported that 34 per cent of MPs in the 15th Lok Sabha were related to currently or previously active politicians. The pattern has also been noted at the state level, but not been analysed as much. Along with C. Manikandan of Pondicherry University, I have done research on dynastic patterns at the state level in Tamil Nadu.
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CURRENT AFFAIRS Examining these patterns could throw light on dynastic politics in the national legislature. In 2009, the DMK put up a higher number of candidates with family connections for the Lok Sabha (28 per cent) than it did for the 2011 assembly election (20 per cent). It would be interesting to see if this applies elsewhere. One factor explaining the divergence may be finance — political families usually find it easier than other candidates to bear the heavy cost of contesting a large constituency. These costs, especially in the face of certain defeat, may encourage some sitting politicians to keep their hat out of the ring in 2014. However, courageously fighting a losing battle may reflect well on a family reputation. Closer examination of the careers of politicians with family connections reveals important variations. The dominant image of dynastic politics is that of a business. The younger generation is inducted to take the family concern forward. The older generation is well placed to lobby for nominations for relatives and fund their first forays into electoral politics. This image reflects the experience of many high-profile dynastic candidates, and we characterise this as an actively managed career. But not all candidates fit this pattern.
Some candidates have latent family connections, that is, a period of time has elapsed between the activity of an earlier generation and the entry of younger family members. The influence of the family is not so direct in these cases and older relatives are unlikely to have kickstarted the careers of their descendants. The gap in family activity may be as much as four decades. The later generation has to work harder to catch the eye of the party leadership. Sympathy successions are a third pattern, fairly common in by-elections where the candidacy is passed to the surviving spouse or a promising son or daughter. These nominations can say as much about the party as the new candidates. A sympathy nomination reveals how a party views a family reputation as a valuable asset to be conserved. These three categories are ideal types and they overlap. For example, a sympathy succession would advance the career of a young politician whose career was already being actively managed. Yet each category draws attention to different facets of dynastic politics. Active management emphasises the power and influence of well-established party heavyweights. The activation of latent careers focuses on the agency of the rising generation. Sympathy successions oblige us to think about how legislators build links with their constituency, apart from reminding us that parties sustain dynastic politics.
Come mid-May, we will know whether the Lok Sabha is a more or less dynastic legislature. These elections will contribute to the gradual re-shaping of India’s political elite. Some candidates will have been impoverished by the campaign and will be forced out of electoral politics. So, voters will help decide who are included in India’s political elite. But winning a seat may not be decisive in the career of an ambitious politician. Candidates from political families are less likely to suffer from this absolute veto. With the resources to contest again, they can press for another opportunity in the future.
The writer teaches Indian politics at the University of Bristol, and is the author of ‘Party System Change in South India
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