- India needs a non-sectarian, gender-neutral law that addresses desertion of spouses
Relevance: mains: G.S paper I: Social Issues & G.S paper II: Governance
Both Houses of Parliament have passed a Bill making instant triple talaq a criminal offence, amidst persistent doubts whether it ought to be treated as a crime or just a civil case. It is true that the Muslim Women (Protection of Rights on Marriage) Bill, 2019, is a diluted version of the Bill as it was originally conceived. Earlier, it did not specify who could set the law in motion. Now the offence is cognisable only if the affected wife, or one related to her by blood or marriage, files a police complaint. A man arrested under this law may get bail, after the Magistrate grants a hearing to the wife. Thirdly, the offence is compoundable, that is, the parties may arrive at a compromise. The government says its main objective is to give effect to the Supreme Court’s 2017 verdict declaring instant triple talaq illegal. It claims that despite the court ruling, several instances have been reported. Making it an offence, the government says, will deter further resort to triple talaq, and provide redress for women in the form of a subsistence allowance and custody of children, besides getting the erring husband arrested. However, the core question regarding the necessity to criminalise the practice of talaq-e-biddat has not been convincingly answered.
In the light of the Supreme Court ruling on its validity, there is really no need to declare instant triple talaq a criminal offence. The practice has no approval in Islamic tenets, and is indeed considered abhorrent. Secondly, once it has been declared illegal, pronouncing talaq obviously does not have the effect of “instantaneous and irrevocable divorce” as this Bill claims in its definition of ‘talaq’. The provisions that allow a woman to claim a subsistence allowance from the man and seek custody of her children can be implemented in the event of the husband abandoning her, even without the man’s arrest. If triple talaq, in any form, is void, how the questions of children’s custody and subsistence allowance arise while the marriage subsists, is not clear. And then, there is the practical question of how a man can provide a subsistence allowance while he is imprisoned. It has been argued by the Bill’s proponents that dowry harassment and cruelty towards wives are treated as criminal offences even while the marriage subsists. It is a patently wrong comparison, as those acts involve violence and cruelty and are rightly treated as criminal offences. The same cannot be said of a man invoking a prohibited form of divorce. The BJP projects the passage of the Bill as a historic milestone in the quest for gender justice. Such a claim will be valid only if there is a non-sectarian law that addresses abandonment and desertion of spouses as a common problem instead of focusing on a practice, which is no more legally valid, among Muslims.
(Source: The Hindu)
- Taking the cue from the U.S., the Indian Parliament needs to recognise hate killings as an act of terror
Relevance: mains: G.S Paper II: policy
At a time when India is reeling under hate lynching, it is sobering to remember that it took the United States Senate 100 years to approve a bill to make lynching a federal crime. Over 200 anti-lynching bills were introduced in the U.S. Congress since 1918, but all were voted down until the Justice for Victims of Lynching Act of 2018 introduced by three Senators of African-American descent including Kamala Harris was approved unanimously in the winter of 2018.
The U.S. bill describes lynching as “the ultimate expression of racism in the United States”. Senator Cory Booker said the bill recognised lynching for what it is: “a bias-motivated act of terror”. When will Parliament here recognise, similarly, that lynching is “a bias-motivated act of terror” and “the ultimate expression of communal hatred in India”?
Tool of fear
Some may dispute this description, citing the relatively small numbers of such mob crimes. They miss the point that hate lynching is designed as an act to terrorise an entire community. The number of lynch murders in the U.S. mentioned in the bill averages around 55 annually, but despite these small numbers, these performative acts of violence succeeded in instilling intense fear among all African-Americans for decades.
The same purpose is being served by lynching in India; again performative acts of hate violence, but now using modern technology, video-graphing of mob lynching, widely circulating these images through social media, and celebrating these as acts of nationalist valour. These have similarly instilled a pervasive sense of everyday normalised fear in the hearts of every Indian from the targeted minority community. It is this which indeed makes lynching an ultimate act of terror.
The Supreme Court of India recently asked the Union government and all the major States to explain what action has been taken to prevent these growing incidents of lynching, including passing a special law to instil a sense of fear for law amongst vigilantes and mobsters. Kunwar Danish Ali, a first term Bahujan Samaj Party MP from Amroha, raised the same question in Parliament, describing mob lynching as “an assault on democracy”. His inquiry was met with noisy disruptions, but he got no answer.
Significant statutes
The Uttar Pradesh Law Commission (UPLC) earlier last month took the initiative, unprompted by the Uttar Pradesh government, to recommend a draft anti-lynching law. It commends a law which closely follows in almost every major detail the first law against lynching passed in this country, a remarkable ordinance introduced by the Manipur government late last year, indeed the most significant statute against religious hate crimes in the country.
A noteworthy observation in the text of the United States bill is that it records that at least 4,742 people were lynched in the U.S. between 1882 and 1968, but 99% of all perpetrators remain unpunished. It is significant to remember that the first anti-lynching legislation proposed as far back as in 1918 in the U.S. targeted state officials for failing to provide equal protection under the laws to anyone victimised by a mob. Impunity characterises lynching in India as well. Addressing this squarely, both the Manipur statute and the UPLC draft create a new crime of dereliction of duty by police officials, holding a police officer guilty of this crime if he or she “omits to exercise lawful authority vested in them under law, without reasonable cause, and thereby fails to prevent lynching”. Dereliction also includes the failure to provide protection to a victim of lynching; failure to act upon apprehended lynching; and refusing to record any information relating to the commission of lynching. This crime carries the penalty of one to three years and a fine. The UPLC goes further to include also a new crime of dereliction of duty by District Magistrates.
The creation of this new crime was also the key recommendation of the Prevention of Communal & Targeted Violence (Access to Justice and Reparations) Bill, proposed by the National Advisory Council of the erstwhile United Progressive Alliance government (full disclosure: Farah Naqvi and I were co-convenors of the working group which drafted this proposed bill, which however was never even introduced in Parliament). We were convinced that it is only the creation of such a crime that will compel public officials to perform their duty with fairness, in conformity with their constitutional and legal duties, to ensure equal protection to all persons, regardless of their faith and caste.
Some recommendations
Both the Manipur law and UPLC recommendations also lay down elaborate duties of police officials in the event of lynching. These include taking all reasonable steps to prevent any act of lynching including its incitement and commission; to that end making all possible efforts to identify instances of dissemination of offensive material or any other means employed in order to incite or promote lynching of a particular person or group of persons; and making all possible efforts to prevent the creation of a hostile environment against a person or group of persons.
Both sensitively and expansively lay down official duties to protect victims and witnesses. They state that a victim shall have the right to reasonable, accurate, and timely notice of any court proceeding and shall be entitled to be heard at any proceeding in respect of bail, discharge, release, parole, conviction or sentence of an accused, and to file written submissions on conviction, acquittal or sentencing. They also explicitly require the Superintendent of Police to inform the victim in writing of the progress in the investigation. The victim shall have the right to receive a copy of any statement of the witness recorded during investigation or inquiry and a copy of all statements and documents.
Where the UPLC goes further than the Manipur statute is in laying down the right to compensation. It places the duty squarely on the Chief Secretary to provide compensation to victims of lynching within 30 days of the incident. It states that while computing compensation, the State government must give due regard to bodily, psychological and material injuries and loss of earnings, including loss of opportunity of employment and education, expenses incurred on account of legal and medical assistance. It also lays down a floor of ₹25 lakh in case lynching causes death.
The Congress government of Madhya Pradesh has announced its resolve to pass legal provisions against lynching. It chooses curiously to not do this by an anti-lynching law, but instead by amendments to the Madhya Pradesh Cow Progeny Slaughter Prevention Act 2004 (which would effectively limit its scope only to cow-related lynching, and not lynching triggered by other charges).
Its proposed amendments do not include any provisions to punish dereliction of duty, protect victim rights or secure compensation. All that it proposes is punishment for any act by a mob which indulges in violence in the name of cow vigilantism from six months to three years of imprisonment and a fine. It is unclear what deterrence such amendments would instil, since existing laws contain much greater punishments for murder and aggravated attacks. In its present form, it appears a weak, half-hearted and poorly thought-out measure. The Ashok Gehlot-led government in Rajasthan has also tabled an anti-lynching bill. This prescribes higher punishments, investigation by senior police officers, and mandatory compensation but not the critical elements of dereliction of duty or victim rights. Without these, they will make little difference on the ground.
Home Minister Amit Shah now heads a committee to propose action against lynching. The question remains: do we expect Mr. Shah, or indeed Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath to propose a law against lynching which punishes public officials who fail in their duties, protects victims and witnesses, and ensures comprehensive reparation, as proposed by the UPLC and provided in the Manipur statute?
“Someone is finally recognising our pain,” said the great-granddaughter of Anthony Crawford, an African American, who was lynched in 1916. I wonder how long survivors of lynching who lost their loved ones to merciless mob hate in India will have to wait for a government which will recognise their pain.
(Source: The Hindu)
- Aiming for the Moon:
Relevance: mains: G.S paper III: Science and technology
Space is the final frontier for mankind’s thirst of exploration and adventure. For all the anti-adventurists and killjoys, there are some obvious real-world applications in agriculture, telecom, weather forecasting, defence, medicine, natural resources and rare elements. Humans could become a space fairing species in another 30 years, perhaps even before if Elon Musk gets his way.
After the Apollo missions were completed, the world somehow lost interest in lunar missions. Scientists and space enthusiasts were still hopeful but public support faded away. For the next 50 years or so, a large number of the rocket launches made by the space organisations of the world were to put satellites in lower earth orbits, basically for communications and, let’s face it, for snooping on other countries. A relatively smaller number of missions were academically motivated.
The remarkable feats achieved by ISRO on July 22 and in other previous missions have made all Indians proud. Mostly because of two reasons: First, the critical parts of this mission — cryogenics, the orbiter, lander and the rover — are all indigenously developed. And second, the estimated cost of this project is Rs 978 crore only. I know putting “only” after that figure will surely raise eyebrows but do a Google search and compare it with what other space agencies have spent to achieve similar successes. Fun fact: The last Avengers movie was made at a cost of Rs 2,443 crore. It is in this context that I disagree with your editorial, ‘Another giant leap’ (IE, July 23) which counsels fiscal prudence on space missions.
Chandrayaan 2 was scheduled as early as 2011-12 in collaboration with Roskosmos. Failure in their Mars mission and following delays in the delivery of the lander forced the Russians to back out from the agreement signed on November 12, 2007. This led ISRO to develop the mission entirely in-house, which they did in a very short time. On July 15, the snag during the final countdown and the temporary cancellation of the launch may have given a reason to the international media and other space agencies to second guess India’s capabilities. But within a week, with a successful launch and that too with a very narrow launch window, ISRO made a statement, not with just words but with action.
Another example of the genius of our scientists was emphasised when they had to test the in-house made rover on a moon like surface. The moon’s surface is covered with craters, rocks and dust and its soil is of a different texture as compared to the earth’s. Importing lunar soil-like substance from the US was costly, hence ISRO decided to get “anorthosite” rocks from a couple of Tamil Nadu villages. They then crushed these rocks to the desired specifications and sent it to a test facility at Bengaluru, which resulted in huge savings. Scientists from NIT Tiruchirappalli, Periyar University, Salem and IISC Bengaluru worked on this project.
The remarkable part, however, is not the lower costs of these missions but the efficiency and the rate of success of these missions.
Government spending on flagship programmes has increased several times during the past couple of decades, while their return on investment both monetarily and in terms of standard of living is sub-par. On the other hand, there are certain expenditures for which the real motivation is the misguided notion of patriotism. For example, the Statue of Unity has an estimated cost of Rs 2,966 crore and the proposed Shivaji statue is estimated to cost Rs 3,600 crore. I am not against the commemoration of our national heroes, but can we not make their memorials less extravagant and give rest of the money to institutions like ISRO, DRDO and NDMA?
In India, where most government institutions eventually end up spending more than what was initially proposed, ISRO is an exception. Immediately after this success, rather than pivoting the zeitgeist towards supporting the organisation through more funding and resources, we are cautioning the agency to set its priorities right and have asked it to show fiscal prudence. That does not seem fair.
(Source: The Indian Express)
- We need reappraise our attitude to business failure:
Relevance: mains: G.S paper III: Economy
It is difficult to conclude what really drove V.G. Siddhartha, the embattled promoter of the Café Coffee Day (CCD) chain, to his tragic end. What has been clear for over a year now is that the son-in-law of the powerful Karnataka politician and erstwhile chief minister S.M. Krishna had been under increasing financial duress, which forced him to sell his 20% stake in mid-tier IT services firm Mindtree Ltd to Larsen and Toubro Ltd for ₹3,200 crore. But if the sale, which also sealed the fate of Mindtree’s original promoters, was expected to help him pay off his loans, it didn’t achieve that.
Since news of Siddhartha’s disappearance and a letter purportedly written by him surfaced two days ago, there have been attempts to gauge the precise level of his indebtedness.
CCD’s parent firm Coffee Day Enterprises Ltd owed ₹6,500 crore to various entities and, since his proceeds from the Mindtree deal were a much watered down ₹2,100 crore net of expenses and taxes, there was still sizeable debt on its books. What’s worse, a lot of it was “promoter level debt” with repayments expected over the next few months.
Besides, most of his other businesses, including real estate, hospitality, mining and transportation, have also been underperforming. He was also under substantial pressure from lenders, including a bank which also played a key role in the Mindtree transaction, and a particular private equity firm which was anxious about its early investment in a company that had lost nearly 44% of its value after its initial public offering.
Yet, none of this explains the final tragic decision to end his life. He was in the middle of negotiations for the company’s vending business and also had substantial income possibilities by way of rentals from its real estate holdings.
That apart, CCD’s operational numbers show little signs of strain. Its net operational revenue for 2018-19 was ₹4,264 crore, up 13% year-on-year, while Ebitda (earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization) at ₹961 crore was up 15% over the previous year. Of course, the chain had been growing rapidly, perhaps too rapidly, but that’s the nature of the food and beverage retailing business.
No, Siddhartha’s final decision remains baffling. Next week, on 8 August, CCD will declare its second-quarter results. That’s when we might get an inkling of his unfortunate motivations, the “mistakes” and the “financial transactions” he refers to in his letter, of which he says his “team, auditors and senior management” were “totally unaware” of.
Is this a Ramalinga Raju kind of confession, and, if so, is there a Satyam-like money trail in the books? That could also explain why the financials of the group, which hardly appear alarming to outsiders, were worrying enough for the man to take such an extreme step.
But even as we look for answers to these questions, it is also an appropriate time to confront the monster in our midst, one that we may have created. It is time that Indian society—including, and in particular, the media—takes a hard look at its attitude towards business failures.
As John Steinbeck wrote so memorably in his 1952 classic East Of Eden: “It would be absurd if we did not understand both angels and devils, since we invented them.” The devil we have germinated over the last few years is one of demonizing business failures, treating them as a virus that will infect us all unless we stamp them out at first whiff.
As much as we are ready with hosannas when we hear of multi-billion dollar deals, we are equally ready to strike with ferocity any business tycoon who dares to lose.
In this unbelievably unforgiving world that we have created, a businessman can do no wrong when he is on top and no right when he is down.
After all, today’s villains, including Vijay Mallya, Ravi Parthasarathy and Naresh Goyal, are the same people whose entrepreneurial spirit created not just companies but entire industries.
Much as there is to dislike about the many wrongs each may have committed, there is also need for perspective on their failures. Rarely does a businessman set about to destroy a venture that he or she has set up with so much effort and zeal. Circumstances, an adverse environment, abrupt changes in government policy or simple missteps can have a massive impact.
Often, a wrong business call in one year becomes a terrific call just a few years later. It is the nature of the beast, unless we live in an oligarchy like Russia or under a state-controlled regime as in China. In market-driven economies, businesses by their very nature are fraught with risks. If the risk-reward ratio turns too adverse, innovation and creativity suffer. What entrepreneurship certainly doesn’t need is the social media-fuelled lynch mob that descends the moment cracks appear in the edifice.
On Tuesday, even as the tragedy of Siddhartha was playing out among the waves of Netravati river in Karnataka, social media was abuzz with rumours of how the whole thing was a cover-up and he had already made good his escape to London. This is the kind of vilification that leads to such extreme reactions as decision-making gets clouded and the stigma of failure begins to haunt the entrepreneur.
The audacity that is needed to start a new business also needs a safety net of understanding and tolerance for failure if that venture collapses.
(Source: Livemint)