Latest newsx News | Top newsx News Headlines Today | Today India news | Breaking newsx News Today | English newsx News Headlines - TheDailyGuardian

India News Manch 2023 LIVE Day 2 : Uttarakhand Governor Gurmeet Singh on India News platform

December 14, 2023, 9:55 am

India News is organizing the country’s biggest political forum. This event is taking place at the NDMC Convention Center in Delhi. Today marks the second day of this program that began on Wednesday, December 13. It is worth mentioning that this three-day event will run until December 15, 2023.

On Wednesday, several eminent political figures of the country, including Member of Parliament Raghav Chaddha, Union Minister Anurag Thakur, Kiran Rijiju, and many renowned faces from the world of literature and entertainment, participated. Moreover, many other prominent personalities, who will share insights related to the country and the world, will also be included in today’s proceedings.

06:17 PM, 14 DEC, 2023

Hindi comes from the soul – Governor

When I speak Hindi, it comes from my soul.

06:17 PM, 14 DEC, 2023

While discussing the tunnel incident, the Governor mentioned that PM Modi was closely monitoring the situation.

06:15 PM, 14 DEC, 2023

Rescuing the 41 workers became a matter of everyone risking their lives. Facing challenges beautifully is inherent in our culture. We need to recognize the value of our culture. SDRF, NDRF, PMO, and the state’s Chief Minister did an outstanding job. Worked on the frontlines in the CM’s presence – Governor.

06:02 PM, 14 DEC, 2023

On the tunnel rescue operation, Uttarakhand Governor Lieutenant General Gurmit Singh (Retired) mentioned that the challenge began on Diwali day. With the start of World Congress on Disaster Management, it was successful.

05:54 PM, 14 DEC, 2023

Rajya Sabha MP Rakesh Sinha spoke on Kashmir

Rajya Sabha MP Rakesh Sinha spoke on Kashmir, stating that thousands of Pandits were killed. The attack is affecting people based on the tradition of Sanatan Dharma. The aim is to remove Modi.

05:34 PM, 14 DEC, 2023

‘We will move ahead with 5G’

Our country will move forward with the speed of 5G – Devusingh

05:30 PM, 14 DEC, 2023

Our youth is our nation.

Youth should become empowered, work should be done on empowering women- Devusingh

05:27 PM, 14 DEC, 2023

Nation First’-Dev Singh

Opposition puts itself first, but our party puts the country first – Devusingh

05:24 PM, 14 DEC, 2023

It is very important to connect with technology – Devusingh

It is important to connect with technology to create a transparent government – Devusingh

05:14 PM, 14 DEC, 2023

Who is Devusingh Jesingbhai Chauhan?

Devusingh Jesingbhai Chauhan is an Indian politician. Serves as the Minister of State for Communications of India.

05:11 PM, 14 DEC, 2023

Guaranteed to be ‘different’

Devusingh Chauhan, the guaranteed G’MOS, is different from the scammer.

04:49 PM, 14 DEC, 2023

We have brought 41 World Cups – Rat Miners

Rat miners said on saving 41 laborers

04:55 PM, 14 DEC, 2023

‘Rat mining is dangerous’

This is a methodology that is also dangerous – Rat Miners

04:54 PM, 14 DEC, 2023

A member of the Rat Miners team shared, “I have a 6-year-old daughter who promised that we would save the workers, and she kept that promise.”

04:52 PM, 14 DEC, 2023

Seeing the tunnel initially made them apprehensive. Then, they realized it wasn’t just about 41 lives but the stakes were as high as 41 thousand lives. They sacrificed everything, leaving aside food and drink, and focused on the task – Rat Miners team.

04:48 PM, 14 DEC, 2023

At first, they were afraid to enter the tunnel. Then they realized that not just 41 lives but the lives of 41 thousand were at stake here. They left everything behind, including food and drink, and focused on the task – Rat Miners.

04:45 PM, 14 DEC, 2023
Seeing the faces of the 41 workers, we forgot all the difficulties. Rescuing the workers felt like saving our own lives – Rat Miners.

04:40 PM, 14 DEC, 2023

Rat Miners team turned the impossible into possible by talking to the trapped workers in the tunnel and giving them hope of rescue.

04:35 PM, 14 DEC, 2023

Rescuing workers trapped in the Uttarkashi tunnel was extremely challenging. All rescue teams risked their lives. The families of the 41 workers were anxiously waiting for them – Rat Miners Team.

04:25 PM, 14 DEC, 2023

Only P Chidambaram attended the book launch; he has his own grace. No Congress leader was present. Looking at us, Baba’s soul must be happy – Sharmistha Mukherjee.

04:12 PM, 14 DEC, 2023

Sonia Gandhi made ‘Pranab ji’

Sonia Gandhi was the reason for Pranab Mukherjee’s progress – Sharmistha

04:08 PM, 14 DEC, 2023

‘Scolded for eating ICE Cream’

Indira Gandhi scolded Pranab Mukherjee for eating ice cream – Sharmistha

04:02 PM, 14 DEC, 2023

In her upcoming book ‘In Pranab, My Father: A Daughter Remembers,’ Sharmistha mentions a conversation with Sonia Gandhi on the phone after the decision to step away from the race for the PM’s position. The book reveals that when she asked her father about becoming the Prime Minister, his response was, “No, she (Sonia Gandhi) will not make me the Prime Minister.” In this book, Congress spokesperson Sharmistha shares some new and previously unknown aspects of her father’s political life. Note that ‘Rupa Publications’ has published this book.

04:01 PM, 14 DEC, 2023

Former President Pranab Mukherjee’s daughter, Sharmistha Mukherjee, takes a dig at the Congress, questioning why Rahul Gandhi is so arrogant.

03:48 PM, 14 DEC, 2023

The temple was demolished – Alok Kumar On today’s decision of Allahabad High Court on Gyanvapi case, he said that justice will be done only when the truth comes out. The temple was demolished. The ruins of the temple were demolished.- The truth will come out in the survey-Alok Kumar

03:40 PM, 14 DEC, 2023

Knowledge of technology came from our Puranas – Swami Sumedhanand

Information about technology has not been given by the British but it is known about it from our Ramayana – Swami Sumedhanand.

03:38 PM, 14 DEC, 2023

Making the dream of Lord Rama’s temple in Ayodhya a reality was not easy. We had to fight with our own chosen government, and this time, no one knew if the battle would be more on the ground or in the sky – Alok Kumar, VHP President.

03:29 PM, 14 DEC, 2023

“The dream of Ram Lala temple came true due to the sacrifice of lakhs of people”

Swami Sumedhanand Saraswati said that the dream of Ayodhya Ram Lalla temple coming true was due to the sacrifice of lakhs of people.

02:58 PM, 14 DEC, 2023

Due to controversy over a tweet, Anil Antony had to part ways with the Congress, despite having been associated with the party before, and he subsequently aligned himself with the BJP.

02:49 PM, 14 DEC, 2023

While praising his party, Anil Antony stated that their party, the BJP, is the largest party in the world.

02:47 PM, 14 DEC, 2023

Anil Antony, while criticizing the opposition, stated that the Congress is a party of one family.

02:43 PM, 14 DEC, 2023

The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has entrusted Anil Antony, the son of A.K. Antony, with significant responsibilities.

02:20 PM, 14 DEC, 2023

Sonarupa Vishal weaved lines about women, bringing their dreams to life, captivating the audience with the poetic atmosphere.

02:15 PM, 14 DEC, 2023

Echo of women power on stage

02:10 PM, 14 DEC, 2023

Sarvesh Asthana did conventional satire After Anamika Jain, Sarvesh Asthana attacked the demolition through his political satire.

02:05 PM, 14 DEC, 2023

Anamika Jain Ambar attacked her opponents through a political line.

01:58 PM, 14 DEC, 2023

Ram temple was our responsibility

Along with this, while attacking the Ram temple, Singh said that Congress had always said on Ram that Ram temple is historical but the date is not theoretical. But BJP completed this work. It is our responsibility to complete the Ram temple.

01:48 PM, 14 DEC, 2023

Corruption will remain as long as Congress party is alive – Jitendra Singh

The bundle of crores found at the house of a Congress MP in Karnataka says that corruption will continue as long as the Congress party is alive – Jitendra Singh

01:45 PM, 14 DEC, 2023

These people were taking advantage of Article 370 – Jitendra Singh

Removing Article 370 was the decision of the Supreme Court. The people advocating for it were taking advantage of it.

01:40 PM, 14 DEC, 2023

Jitendra Singh asserts that the Prime Minister not only says but also demonstrates what he promises.

01:38 PM, 14 DEC, 2023

A new beginning-Jitendra Singh

The government has worked by reaching people’s homes, a new beginning is coming – Jitendra Singh

01:30 PM, 14 DEC, 2023

Audience will have to reject bad content – Mohit Raina

Audience is the maker, it can help in changing TV, in this they will have to reject bad content – Mohit Raina

01:20 PM, 14 DEC, 2023

Mahadev got a lot – Mohit Raina

‘Mahadev, the God of Gods, has received a lot of love. I will continue to do such work in future too.

01:15 PM, 14 DEC, 2023

Made a living by modeling- Mohit Raina

Did modeling to survive in Mumbai. Started giving auditions for serials. The first pay check I got was Rs 6 to 7 thousand. Shared the first pay check with family members. -Mohit Raina

01:08 PM, 14 DEC, 2023

Special relationship with Anupam Kher-Mohit Raina

Actor Anupam Kher is also from Kashmir, so we often talk about the food there – Mohit Raina

01:02 PM, 14 DEC, 2023

Started my career from TV-Mohit Raina

The journey from serials to films was very good. Started working with television. Actor Mohit Raina, who reached every home with the television serial ‘Devon Ke Dev Mahadev’, told about his journey from serials to films.

12:58 PM, 14 DEC, 2023

Addressing questions from opponents, Purushottam emphasizes that Prime Minister Modi places trust solely in the politics of development. He accuses the opposition of mere rhetoric without any substantial work, highlighting that global leaders respect PM Modi while the opposition continues to criticize him.

12: 48 PM, 14 DEC, 2023

PM’s decision of ambulance for cattle – Union Minister Purushottam Bhai Rupala

No one did this before. Central Minister Purushottam Bhai Rupala mentions that it has never been done before – initially, ambulance services were only for patients, but Prime Minister Modi has considered it for migrants.

12:40 PM, 14 DEC, 2023

Sushant was different from everyone else – Abhishek Chaubey

It was great working with him. I gave him the script in the morning and he said yes to me at four o’clock. He was very different. Was very hardworking. He was a serious type of actor.

12:34 PM, 14 DEC, 2023

Abhishek Chaubey said that he is a resident of Ayodhya. Being afraid, he talked to his family about his film career. They thought I would become a hero but it was not so, I got direction from Delhi – Abhishek Chaubey

12:32 PM, 14 DEC, 2023

Series is novel-Abhishek Chaubey

You can go deeper in series but you cannot do this in films – Abhishek Chaubey

12:30 PM, 14 DEC, 2023

‘Udta Punjab’ director Abhishek Chaubey speaks on killer soup

It is a privilege for me to work with Manoj Bajpayee and Konkona Sen Sharma. Working with them makes my work easier. He did an amazing job.

12: 24 PM, 14 DEC, 2023

‘Udta Punjab’ director Abhishek Chaubey on India News platform

12:15 PM, 14 DEC, 2023

Congress is getting whatever it has done. His old works are responsible for the condition of the party – Jyotiraditya Scindia

12:01 PM, 14 DEC, 2023

On generation change – Jyotiraditya Scindia

This is a rule of law. This is not only a matter of politics but of every sector. Change should be a necessary thing and not optional. Where there is no change there can be no development.

11:58 AM, 14 DEC, 2023

Our family has never been in the chair and infatuation – Jyotiraditya Scindia

I completed the campaign given by the party. On the discussion about his failure on CM face, Scindia, citing the blood of his family, said that our family has never been in the grip of the chair and infatuation – Jyotiraditya Scindia.

11:52 AM, 14 DEC, 2023

Double engine government brought change – Union Minister Jyotiraditya Scindia

The decisions that are taken in the party are on the conscience of the party. Regarding the new CM Mohan Yadav in MP, he said that he will take MP much further.

11:46 AM, 14 DEC, 2023

Today’s children are not afraid of anyone – Akhilesh Yadav

Talking about being afraid of his father in his childhood, Akhilesh Yadav said in a different way that in our times children were afraid of their parents but today’s children are not like that, they are far ahead.

11:40 AM, 14 DEC, 2023

Yadav talks about Anchor Boycott

Those who were license holders should have been boycotted – Akhilesh Yadav

11:35 AM, 14 DEC, 2023

BJP betrayed the farmers- Akhilesh Yadav

Farmers have been betrayed by BJP. The work that Samajwadi Party has done in health, education and security, BJP has not done that work, BJP has ruined everything in 10 years. We were the ones who did good work on the expressway. We completed 323 kilometers of highway in 21 months.

11:33 AM, 14 DEC, 2023

We gave the best response system to UP- Akhilesh Yadav

Dial 100, for the safety of women we have given 1090 Power Women Line. We have understood that government is not formed by technology, talk about cow, government is formed only when we talk about caste census. On caste census, someone said that there is a need for X-ray of the society. We said it has become old, now CT scan will be done. The public will elect doctors, these clap and thali people will be removed.

11:30 AM, 14 DEC, 2023

Akhilesh Yadav on Uttarakhand Tunnel Rescue

Samajwadi Party gave five lakhs from its treasury in another such incident. The way in which the government was trying and many agencies were working. The suggestion of rat hole mining was correct. PM, CM met all the rescued workers. We talked to the government to give respect to rat hole miners. But the government did not give respect to the one who saved his life – Akhilesh Yadav

11:25 AM, 14 DEC, 2023

I will be doing the opening – Akhilesh Yadav

If this was a cricket match, I would have opened. If alliance is formed then there are many partners to support in running – Akhilesh Yadav

11: 24 AM, 14 DEC, 2023

Only those who make tea become Prime Minister – Akhilesh Yadav

I make my own tea, a habit I have had since my college days. Only those who make tea become Prime Minister – Akhilesh Yadav

11: 22 AM, 14 DEC, 2023

Caste census was not conducted after independence- Akhilesh Yadav

Akhilesh Yadav said on caste census that it did not happen after independence, it should have happened.

11: 21 AM, 14 DEC, 2023

Seats will be given with full respect- Akhilesh Yadav

On seat distribution, Akhilesh Yadav says that seats will be given with full respect.

11: 18 AM, 14 DEC, 2023

We have options for PM, BJP does not – Akhilesh Yadav

We have many faces for Prime Minister, but BJP does not. This will be known in next year’s elections.

11: 15 AM, 14 DEC, 2023

Farmers are being exploited- Yadav

BJP is giving exemption to big companies which are exploiting the farmers. Farmers are not getting the real price. Farmers are worried- Akhilesh Yadav

11:13 AM, 14 DEC, 2023

There is no ego for change – Akhilesh Yadav.

There is no ego to bring change in the country and society. Akhilesh Yadav emphasizes that there is no arrogance in bringing about change in the country and society. Speaking about change, he expresses his perspective.

11:07 AM, 14 DEC, 2023

Ladli Yojana is not the reason for victory in MP-Akhilesh Yadav

In response to a question, Akhilesh Yadav stated that the Ladli Bahan Yojana was not the reason for the victory in Madhya Pradesh, otherwise uncles wouldn’t lose. Additionally, he mentioned that the state has the highest incidents of crimes against women.

11:05 AM, 14 DEC, 2023

Will Fight to remove Modi – Yadav

While discussing politics, Akhilesh Yadav has expressed his intention to remove the BJP.

11:03 AM, 14 DEC, 2023

Akhilesh Yadav Talks about Modi and Politics.

Akhilesh Yadav, former Chief Minister of Uttar Pradesh, discusses public issues and change on India News, the country’s largest political platform, showcasing his political prowess.

10:45 AM, 14 DEC, 2023

Renowned actor Mohit Raina will share his journey from television serials to films.

Playing a central role in the television series “Devon Ke Dev Mahadev,” Mohit Raina will discuss his experiences and anecdotes from the world of entertainment. Besides his portrayal as Lord Shiva in “Devon Ke Dev Mahadev,” Raina has worked in TV soap operas such as “Mahabharat,” “Chehra” (2009), and “Ganga Ki Dheej” (2010). It’s worth mentioning that he is also an actor and model. Mohit Raina commenced his career with the science fiction TV show “Antariksh” (2004) and has worked in films like “Uri: The Surgical Strike” and others.

10:30 AM, 14 DEC, 2023

Will understand the political situation of 2024 from Akhilesh Yadav (former CM of UP)

Political veteran and former Chief Minister of Uttar Pradesh Akhilesh Yadav will today tell India News from the country’s biggest political platform about the election strategy for next year 2024.

10:00 AM, 14 DEC, 2023

Join veterans on this big platform of India News

After waiting for just a short while from now, the biggest political platform will start at around 10:30 AM. In which India News will ask answers to your questions from many famous faces related to politics, films and education etc.

09:30 AM, 14 DEC, 2023

Meet Abhishek Chaubey (Director of Udta Punjab)

In just a short time from now, Abhishek Chaubey, the director of the film ‘Udta Punjab’, will be on this special platform of India News.

Are Marriages Outdated?

May 14, 2023, 11:23 pm

This week on We Women Want, we take a relook at the institution of marriage and question the need to redefine certain patriarchal concepts. The panel includes Anuradha Das Mathur, Dean and Founder of the Vedika Scholars Program for Women; Shaili Chopra, Founder of She the People TV; and Dr Suman Khanna Aggarwal, a Gandhian and Founder President of Shanti Sahyog, an NGO that supports domestic violence victims.
The increasing financial independence of women and their ability to balance work and home life has empowered them to find their voice. However, while considering alternative forms of marriage, it is also important to acknowledge the positive aspects of married life, such as commitment and loyalty.
We Women Want is a weekly show that addresses women’s issues across different demographics. The show covers topics like body shaming, domestic violence, relevant laws, women’s health (including reproduction, menstruation, breast cancer, and IVF), acid attack survivors, domestic violence, and women in the workplace. Moderated by Priya Sahgal, Senior Executive Editor at ITV Network, the show has become a supportive community for women.

iTV network launches new digital platform NewsX Telugu

February 27, 2023, 1:39 pm

New Delhi, (Monday, 27 February): Yet another good news from the house of iTV Network. After launching a series of new news platforms, iTV network added a fresh feather to its crown with the launch of the NewsX Telugu portal that is https://newsxtelugu.com.

After the successful launch of Kannada, NEWSX is now entering the Telugu market that is spread across two states viz. Andhra Pradesh and Telangana. It promises to delight the audience’s with a complete package in the local language.

iTV Network which is rapidly expanding its footprints in south India, is coming out with a new age news portal https://newsxtelugu.com, which will have a real-time update of news across all sections including current affairs, politics, national security, entertainment, sports, health, travel which will be curated by some of the best content generators form the Telugu news media.

There’s a massive wave towards regional content across platforms and the subscribers of vernacular content are growing exponentially in tier 1 & 2 cities. NewsX Telugu will cater to the audiences of the new India who wish to consume content in their native language. The cultural ethos and heritage will keep Telugu readers coming to our site to feel the same.

On this occasion, the Managing Editor of NewsX, Rishabh Gulati,said “As a newsperson connecting with people is the number one priority. As a national network, being able to reach out to a Telugu audience and having a chance to tell their stories, their views, in their language and bring them to a national audience will be a real privilege.”

NewsX is a respected and credible brand and I’m looking forward to this platform to serve India’s Telugu speaking citizenry,” Gulati added.

Meanwhile, the Executive Editor of iTV network, Jayaprakash Ramaiah, said, “With a promise to deliver ‘News, Not Noise,’ we are thrilled to announce the launch of our new website, NewsX Telugu.”

“The website is launched with a special focus on the Andhra Pradesh and Telangana along with other interesting segments like entertainment, health, lifestyle and technology et al. We promise to bring news that is unbiased and fair-minded while maintaining independence and objectivity in our editorial policy,” he added.

Economic Survey to be tabled before the budget today

January 31, 2023, 11:52 am

The Economic Survey will be tabled on Tuesday after the President’s address. At an all-party meeting convened by it on Monday, the government said it was willing to discuss every issue under the rules during the Budget Session of Parliament.

“We seek the Opposition’s cooperation” in running the proceedings smoothly, Parliamentary Affairs Minister Pralhad Joshi said after the meeting which was attended by 37 leaders, including Defence Minister Rajnath Singh, representing 27 parties.

At the meeting, Aam Aadmi Party’s Sanjay Singh, RJD’s Manoj Jha, DMK, Left parties and others raised the Adani issue and sought a discussion on it in Parliament during the session.

The US-based short seller Hindenburg Research has accused the Adani Group of wrongdoings like stock manipulation. The company has dismissed the allegations as “nothing but a lie”.

Parties like the BRS and DMK raised the issue of conduct of governors in states ruled by them.

The YSR Congress demanded a nationwide caste-based economic census.

It is necessary to know the economic status of backward castes which are “lagging behind” on social and development indicators, the party said.

Budget Session 2023 begins with President Murmu’s speech

January 31, 2023, 11:46 am

Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman would be presenting the budget tomorrow. This will be the last detailed union budget before the BJP government contest the general elections next year. The session for the same began today with the address of President Droupadi Murmu in th joint sitting of both the houses.

There are lots of expectations from this year’s budget, however, the opposition is likely to corner the government on issues including Adani-Hindenburg row, a nationwide caste-based economic census and the women’s reservation bill.

The government plans to bring around 36 bills – including four related to the budgetary exercise – during the session.

The session will have 27 sittings and will continue till April 6 with a month-long recess to examine the budget papers.

The first part of the session will conclude on February 14. Parliament will reconvene on March 12 for the second part of the Budget Session.

All parties meet today before the budget is laid on the table

January 30, 2023, 11:49 am

An all-party meeting, being convened by the Centre ahead of the Budget Session, will be held in the national capital today. The government is likely to seek cooperation from the Opposition for a smooth running of the Parliament. Union Parliamentary Affairs Minister Pralhad Joshi has convened the meeting which will be held at noon in Parliament Annexe Building. During the meeting, the Opposition parties are likely to raise issues concerning them that they intend to raise in the Parliament.

A meeting of NDA floor leaders will also be held on January 30 afternoon to strategise floor cooperation. The Budget Session, which is heavy with the government’s financial agenda, will be held in two parts. It will begin with President Droupadi Murmu’s address to the joint sitting of the two Houses of Parliament. Economic Survey will be tabled after the President’s address.

Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman will present the Union Budget on 1 February. The Union Budget 2023-24 may be the last full budget before the 2024 Lok Sabha elections. The first part of the session will be held from 31 January and will go on till 13 February. It will see the debate in both Houses on the ‘Motion of Thanks’ to the President’s address which will conclude with a reply of Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

The Parliament will reconvene after a recess for parliamentary committees to discuss the demand for grants of various ministries. The second part will begin on 13 March and will continue till 6 April.

The Money Bill is passed after a discussion on demand for grants and it marks the culmination of the budget process. During the Monsoon Session, nine bills were passed by both Houses of Parliament.

Real-time train tracking system developed by Indian Railways

September 24, 2022, 12:46 pm

Indian Railways is developing a real-time tracking system in collaboration with the Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO). This will provide real-time updates on the trains including the arrival and departure times.

The Railway ministry said, “Real-Time Train Information System (RTIS), developed in collaboration with ISRO, is being installed on the locomotives for automatic acquisition of train movement timing at the stations, including that of arrival & departure or run-through. They get automatically plotted on the control chart of those trains in the Control Office Application (COA) system”

Travellers will now be able to track the timings, location, time or arrival and departure along with the speed of the trains with RTIS. The system will provide mid-section updates within 30 seconds.
RTIS devices have been installed in 2700 trains till now. In phase 2, 6000 more trains will be covered under the RTIS system.

Meanwhile, a senior IRCTC official also told about the success of the newly launched chatbot of the IRCTC. It is getting a remarkable response from the passengers during the beta launch as more than one billion people have used it.
It allows the passengers to book a train ticket without the IRCTC app login, via OTP (One Time Password) with just one click. The new conversational and convenient features enhance the experience of the passengers as it enables the passengers to book tickets via voice, chat and click-based system.

The official further added, “First time, the users can book a ticket without knowing their IRCTC password, it will be possible just with an OTP. AskDISHA 2.0 has also proven to be a very effective instrument and the addition of voice booking will make it even easier for travellers to plan their trips.”
It is estimated that at least 25% of the users will switch to this option in the future.

Jamnia: Like father, like daughters

March 4, 2022, 8:04 am

Situated merely 11 kilometers Eastwards of the archaeological destination of Mandu, their ancestral land of Jamnia constitutes the rich forest belt that is home to India’s many indigenous tribes, such as the Bhils and Gonds. Both, Veerangana and Shubhangana Jamnia grew up admiring their father, the younger Rajkumarsahib of Jamnia as he championed several social welfare causes that directly impacted the people of and around his Jamnia. In tandem with that, their proximity to tribal areas and wildlife deeply inculcated values of sustainability and environmental awareness in them.

Shubhangana Jamnia (L) and Veerangana Jamnia (R) with their father in the backdrop

Environmentally-friendly sanitary napkins

Shubhangana and Veerangana Jamnia during a distribution drive

A postgraduate student at the London School of Economics, her country’s astonishing lapses in public policy led Shubhangana to take up the subject as her specialisation. Her sister Veerangana is an Economics major from Mumbai’s St. Xavier’s College and endeavours to work in the world of sustainable fashion. Together, they have launched a series of social welfare initiatives for social welfare and wildlife conservation, the most recent one being Dor. Inaugurated earlier this year in October, Dor is a sustainable fashion initiative that generates proceeds for social welfare causes in Madhya Pradesh.

“The name ‘Dor’ literally means thread, and we aim to use it to connect the people of today to jointly unfurl a better tomorrow. With about 68% of Indian population living in rural areas, I wish to build my career in policy making for rural empowerment. Even though the number of developing villages is on the rise, we are paying a heavy price for this development through a depletion of our ecosystem. Urbanising villages isn’t the real empowerment of villages. Instead, real empowerment results out of natives being able to preserve their surrounding environment”, says Shubhangana.

Dor made a promising start by collaborating with Sanitree, a Scottish company that devices sustainable and ethical means of tackling period poverty and stigma around the world. It uses crowdfunding to finance a Jaipur-based co-operative of hundreds of local women who produce reusable cloth pads that are then freely distributed amongst India’s rural belts. Incidentally, Scotland has appeared in fairly recent news bulletins for being the world’s first country to make menstrual pads free of cost. One hopes for other countries to soon follow suit in a similar prioritisation of social welfarist policies.

Since its inception, Shubhangana and Veerangana’s initiative is on its way to channelising these reusable and environmentally friendly pads to 89 villages in Madhya Pradesh. Made entirely from organic materials, Sanitree’s pads do not contain the slightest trace of plastic and are fully biodegradable. Thus, true to their familial values, Shubhangana and Veerangana are effectively pioneering a cause that ensures rural empowerment and environmental conservation go hand in hand. “With only 2-3% of rural women using sanitary pads in India, profits from Dor are channelised to make sanitary pads available to them. What’s more, each kit can be reused for upto two years!” Shubhangana adds.

In recent times, India has seen a meteoric rise in its native manufacturing of sustainable menstrual hygiene products. Brands like PeeSafe, Carmesi, Heyday and Saathi are amongst the growing number of environmentally friendly sanitary napkins that cater to the hypoallergenic and environmentally conscious segment of menstruating girls and women in multiple urban centers. However, most of these are limited by the price component that limits their affordability to the nation’s elite and upper-middle classes. The stark disparities between urban and rural India’s access to menstrual hygiene is a contingency that has been glaring us in the face for decades. Poor menstrual hygiene due to poverty and taboo has caused many women serious illnesses and recurrent infections. Some of these even bear the potential of being life-threatening. The negation of women’s menstrual rights hygiene in our tax reforms also made for a dismal sight, but the government’s exemption of tax on sanitary napkins has been embraced as a welcomed, albeit a grossly delayed change.

The development sector has made some commendable effort in distributing disposable sanitary napkins to the poor while also gaining employment, but the story wasn’t as rosy as shown in Akshay Kumar’s blockbuster film ‘Padman’. Budget factors and the subsequent inferiority of manufacturing material are two of the multiple constraints in these models. However, initiatives such as Sanitree prove the possibility of garnering welfare collectives to champion the cause. And the fortification provided by young, local elites such as Shubhangana and Veerangana Jamnia is vital in ensuring that these initiatives percolate into the rural grassroots of India. To date, almost 25% of India’s girls abstain from attending classes during their menstrual period. This is merely one of the many statistics implying the challenges that await us, and delaying action only adds to the issue. Many CSR initiatives too have recently expressed vocal support for the cause of safe menstrual hygiene. For example, Rajasthan Royals carrying a sanitary brand sponsor’s name on the top of their jerseys during this year’s IPL was a revolutionary step in its own right. True to their example, the Jamnia girls prove that small scale enterprises following similar suit and undertaking social responsibilities is as easily possible as it is fulfilling.

“While menstrual hygiene is just the first cause taken up by Dor, our next aim is to reduce the impact of Covid-19 on child education in rural areas. Additionally, we run a parallel initiative for wildlife conservation-Tails of the Forgotten by creating social media awareness around animal rights and their protection”, the two sisters conclude.

BLUE-BLOODED POLITICIANS ARE ADDING SPICE TO THE RACE FOR VICTORY IN THE POLLS

March 4, 2022, 8:01 am

Power has always been the biggest weapon of Princely India. Erstwhile Maharajas waged wars, fought for land and constantly kept pushing their boundaries further. Many of their descendants, who are citizens of democratic India continue this quest for power, sitting in governments, both central and state and gathering support through vote bank that majorly comprises people who live within the borders of their present-day states.

Nawab Kazim Ali Khan of Rampur

Rani Pakshalika Singh and Raja Mahendra Aridaman Singh

Arvind Khanna

Sanjay Singh

Indian politics has a generous sprinkling of royal blood in its cadre. What with one of our Prime Ministers, V. P. Singh, or Vishwanath Pratap Singh being the Raja Bahadur of Manda in UP; Kalikesh Singh who hails from Patna Bolangir being a sitting MP; Digvijay Singh the Raja of Raghogarh being a major face of national politics in Congress, Vasundhara Raje from Dholpur being the Chief Minister for more than two tenures; Chandresh Kumari, the Princess of Jodhpur and the Rajmata of Kangra sitting in the Centre as the Culture Minister…. the list is endless.

In the current state elections of UP, Punjab and Uttarakhand as well one is seeing a battalion of erstwhile rajas, nawabs and zamindars fighting at the polls. Nawab Kazim Ali of Rampur and his son topping this list. While the father Kazim Ali Khan, Congress pits his might against the notorious Azam Khan in Rampur, his soft-spoken son; the Nawabzada Haider Ali Khan (Apna Dal, a BJP ally) fights Abdullah Azam Khan in Suar.

The Raja of Amethi Sanjay Singh, two times MP jumps into the fray fighting from Amethi, which also happens to be his erstwhile kingdom. In the past, his first wife Garima Singh held fort there. A Congress supporter he also crosses over to BJP for this year’s elections. Also in Amethi fighting the elections is another royal Mayankeshwar Sharan Singh who is contesting from Tiloi seat on BJP ticket.

In Agra, Bhadawar dynasty’s Rani Pakshalika Singh, who lost the 2012 polls from Khariagarh on SP ticket, is again contesting from the same seat on the BJP ticket. Rani Pakshalika Singh is a BJP candidate from the Bah constituency in the 2022 UP Assembly elections. An entrepreneur and social worker, she is often referred to as the richest rani, her declared assets being Rs 58.5 crore, which includes Rs 4 crore in moveable assets and Rs 54.4 crore as immovable assets.

Pratapgarh’s Kunda constituency always remains in news due to Raghuraraj Pratap Singh alias Raja Bhaiya of the Bhadri dynasty. He is again in the fray from the same seat as an Independent candidate and is looking forward to a double hat-trick win. Raja Bhaiya has been a Minister in the governments of Kalyan Singh, Ram Prakash Gupta, Rajnath Singh and Mulayam Singh in the past.

A known face in Uttrakhand politics Mala Rajya Laxmi, the BJP MP from Uttarakhand’s Tehri Garhwal constituency was seen actively campaigning for the MLAs of her region. . She is the daughter in law of erstwhile Tehri royal family scion Manabendra Shah who represented the seat in Lok Sabha for a record eight times. She also holds the distinction of being the first lady MP to make it to Parliament after Uttarakhand was declared a separate state. She was elected to the 15th Lok Sabha in a by-election and is a Member of the BJP State Parliamentary Board in the state.

Like her Preneet Kaur, wife of Captain Amarinder Singh and the Maharani of Patiala, was seen campaigning for her husband who is fighting the elections as a BJP ally. A sitting Congress MP, her campaign met with critique. Meanwhile, her nephew Arvind Khanna, whose mother Naginder Khanna was the daughter of Maharaja Bhupinder Singh, fights from the BJP ticket from Sangrur. Indeed these blue-blooded politicians are adding spice to the race up to victory at the polls.

A Practical Book On India’s Foreign Policy

March 4, 2022, 7:55 am

India’s Foreign Policy in the Post-Covid World: Through the Eyes of Indian diplomats’ (published by Wisdom Tree) edited by former Ambassador Surendra Kumar is not an ambitious book, but it is practical and somewhat unusual one. First, it gives us a slice of the world of Indian foreign policy, specific to the era we are very much living in—that of the great Covid-19 disruption. Second, it does so through the eyes of those who practice diplomacy rather than study it. Kumar has collected a virtual galaxy of retired Indian Foreign Service personnel, including a former National Security Adviser, three former foreign secretaries and five former secretaries in the ministry along with their colleagues, most of them who have served as distinguished ambassadors to various parts of the world.

By choice, many of them have written about the countries they served in thus providing us with a detailed view of the pandemic affected global trends. Such a book is not easy to review because there are more than two dozen separate themes penned in the various essays and in a sense each one of them deserves an analytical write-up. But that is simply not possible in the space allotted. So, to an extent, the bias of this review is towards the articles which have dealt with overarching themes.

Prime Minister Modi had set a scorching pace in his foreign policy approach by his travels in his first term. He set a personalised style by reaching out to foreign leaders like President Trump of the United States and Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu of Israel. But perhaps his lasting contribution will be the close ties established with the Saudi peninsula, especially with Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. But this kind of diplomacy got a major setback in the Chinese occupation of a number of border areas in eastern Ladakh in April-May 2020 just months after the second informal summit between Modi and President Xi Jinping of China.

But foreign policy as the essays in the book suggests is more than just prime ministerial visits and summits. It requires considerable conceptualisation and the ability to translate the ideas onto the ground with skill in a competitive environment with others seeking to do the same.

The tone of the book has been set by essays by two of the stars of the foreign service, former foreign secretary Shyam Saran and former NSA Shivshankar Menon. Both provide a larger picture of the foreign and security policy arena. Not surprisingly, given the Covid-19 pandemic, in his essay, Saran has warned about future Black Swan events arising from possible climate or cyber-related issues. He could well have added “Grey Rhino” developments arising from a crash into issues that are very obviously confronting us. One of these is the lack of a national strategy that can enable us to make informed choices and the other is the persistence of a development path that is simply not sustainable.

Former NSA Shivshankar makes the important point that there is, indeed, “no external existential threat to India.” Whether it is China or Pakistan or a combination of the two, they can, at best “divert and delay us” but they can be managed. Internal security is the most important and here the trend is that while separatist and terrorist violence has, in fact, declined, we now face the challenge of communal violence and individual crimes like rape and assault.

His second important point is that the process of dealing with external threats has led the country to periodically reform and upgrade its instruments and policies. But when it comes to internal security, the key area of policing has been largely unreformed. Shivshankar’s bottom line for the foreign policy of the future is for the need for the South Asian region to respond to its growing centrality in today’s geopolitical environment by coming up with a South Asian policy, rather than one confined to one or the other state of the region.

Clearly, some aspects of our foreign policy require a great deal of self-improvement. Primary among these is our economic policy. Though Rahul Chhabra has rightly summed up the aim of the Aatmanirbhar Bharat as the process of positioning India at the centre of the global supply chain, our achievement remains aspirational rather than real at this stage. It is clear, though, that the Covid-19 pandemic has triggered similar approaches towards re-shoring and near-shoring globally.

The same could probably be said about our regional policy, where the status of our relationship with a country often fluctuates with just who is the leader of that country at that particular point in time. Sheikh Hasina’s Bangladesh is very different from that of Begum Khaleda’s just as our relations with Oli’s Nepal are very different from those with Deuba’s. Here, former foreign secretary Ranjan Mathai makes the important point that a certain degree of patience is called for and this has paid off in the case of Sri Lanka and Maldives. Indeed, there is an element of prescience in his view that India would have to help Sri Lanka with its foreign debt crisis.

The key focus is, of course, the pandemic and as Anjali Prasad reminds us in her essay looking at the World Trade Organisation, there is a lot of work to be done. The pandemic itself revealed the ugly face of Covid-19 protectionism. Now India may confront a situation where it is denied a TRIPS waiver that it has sought on behalf of the developing countries in relation to vaccines, therapeutics and diagnostics for Covid-19. The challenge to us, Prasad says is larger and requires considerable focus on the part of our leadership to secure our interests, along with those of developing countries.

The editor Surendra Kumar has looked at two important aspects of Indian diplomacy today—that of utilising its soft power and the benefits of the Indian diaspora coming of age. There is little doubt that the Indian diaspora is a remarkable one. At one level it provides high-level scientific-technical people to various countries around the world, on the other, skilled and semi-skilled cyclical migrants keep the Gulf monarchies ticking, even while helping their mother country with huge remittances.

The writer is a Distinguished Fellow, Observer Research Foundation, New Delhi.

BOOK

India’s Foreign Policy in the Post-Covid World: Through the eyes of Indian diplomats

Edited by Amb Surendra Kumar (Retd)

New Delhi, Wisdom Tree, 2022.

Russia-Ukraine war: Failure of the global intelligentsia

March 4, 2022, 7:45 am

As the situation in Ukraine deteriorates, many are surprised as to what pundits predicted would never happen has escalated to full-scale aggression by Russia.

There were sufficient warning signs from the global intelligence community. These days even TV channels have access to private satellite images which clearly showed a troop build-up on the Russian side. Even a layman was expecting a war but somehow everyone involved in preventing the war refused to believe that Putin would actually launch an offensive.

From Putin’s perspective, Ukraine or at least parts of it belong to his motherland. Given his clout in Russia and pseudo dictatorship regime, this will be celebrated in Russia as a nationalistic move. They have sufficient natural resources and a domestic economy, however, fragile to survive a few sanctions by the west. If the Democratic People’s Republic of North Korea, the most sanctioned dictatorship in the world, can project prosperity, Russia should not have any issues dealing with the fallout of this aggression in the short to medium term.

The Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy is being hailed as a great wartime frontrunner, some even going to the extent of comparing him to one of history’s best wartime leaders Winston Churchill. I am skeptical of this opinion as I see the response of Ukraine more scripted for world consumption than demonstrating the true grit of the response of their defense forces. Approaching the UN Security Council and now the UN General assembly, filing a petition at the International Court of Justice at the Hague are all great diplomatic options, but diplomatic channels take time and don’t help the people on the ground facing the brunt of the situation. If anything, these should have been done weeks ago when it was clear that the attack was imminent. They now have even applied for an emergency EU membership which as everyone is familiar with the BREXIT fiasco takes years of negotiation and hence is nothing more than a hollow gesture.

Putin has since double-downed on his stance by putting his nuclear arsenal on high alert. This clearly is an empty threat as nuclear options since World War 2 only serve as a deterrent. China, a large trading partner of Russia, was the first nation to propose a ‘No First Use Policy’ in 1964. India also adopted this policy in 1998 after the Pokhran-II test. It would be diplomatic suicide for Putin to even consider a nuclear option as all the nations currently abstaining from voting in the UN will decidedly go against Russia if this were to happen.

Zelenskyy is currently bunkered in a heavily fortified location while citizens of Kyiv and other frontline towns are left to fend for themselves by taking refuge in subway stations, moving away from expected conflict zones or altogether trying to leave the country. Based on current news reports, there isn’t much evidence of any planned systematic evacuation of such frontline locations by Ukrainian defense forces. The president needs to focus internally and work with his defense forces on protecting his citizens while delegating international pressure options to a seasoned diplomat.

It is a sad moment as several world leaders projected confidence of no-war right up to the moment it happened; geopolitical strategists and think tanks who pride themselves on modeling threat assessment based on the ground sources, both in the intelligence community and otherwise, certain sections of the media’s “collective wisdom”, have failed the average citizens of Ukraine turned refugees in their own country, and the international citizens stranded, awaiting rescue missions by their respective home countries.

It is not the failure of intelligence agencies but the intelligence of the global intelligentsia which has failed us.

Need to attract philanthropic contribution in education

March 4, 2022, 7:43 am

Philanthropy has been a worldwide phenomenon. It has played an outsized role in education since time immemorial. Higher education globally has remained largely dependent on philanthropy. It is evident from history that people from wholly different religions, backgrounds, and talents joined hands together to help make life better for others. They have spent all or part of their earnings to charitable causes. Obviously, such people unite in the belief that one could rise in reality only by raising others. They leave behind the legacy of life. And in doing so they truly immortalize themselves in this mortal world. It would seem sensible to suggest that lessons need to be learned from the experience of those who have made a difference in the lives of innumerable people through their benevolent actions.

Philanthropy has been a major source of funding in educational institutions from a very early time of the sixteenth century in the western world. Its history in modern India can be traced back to the time of the establishment of Hindu College at Calcutta in 1817. Philanthropy has not only benefitted the institutions to launch newer programs, cover the operational costs and improve the quality but also helped the government in increasing access and subsidizing the cost of higher education.

Traditionally, the role of private philanthropy in higher education has been much more in the west than in other parts of the world. Western countries have greatly promoted it by providing lots of incentives to philanthropists. The largest number of philanthropists providing donations to universities and colleges come from the United States followed by Great Britain. A cursory glance at the literature, however, reveals that in most cases the donors prefer the elite institutions and especially the ones which are either attended by them or by their own children.

Some prominent public-figures who are fondly remembered for their great philanthropic work in the western world are the likes of Roman Emperor Frederick for establishing University of Bologna, King Philip II of France for Paris university, King Henry VIII for Cambridge University, John Harvard for Harvard University, John D. Rockefeller for University of Chicago, Leland Stanford for Stanford university. Similarly, there have been well-known public-figures in India who are venerated for their monumental contributions in the establishment of a number of institutions like Jamsethji Tata for the Indian Institute of Science, Thakur Rabindra Nath Tagore for Viswa Bharati, Pandit Madan Mohan Malviya and Kashi Naresh Prabhu Narayan Singh for BHU, Sir Syed Ahmad Khan for AMU, Maharaja Sayajirao Gaekwad III for Baroda University, Sir Annamalai Chettiar for Annamalai university, Bal Gangadhar Tilak for Deccan Education Society, to name a few. Private philanthropy in India has played a very vital role in the past. In fact, high quality higher education in the past has come only through private initiatives. But somehow that kind of philanthropy seems to have lately dried up in India.

The good news, which comes more rarely than the others in recent times is about two Indian families coming together to donate large amounts of their earnings to one of the most premier institutions of the country. It becomes increasingly important when one hears such a piece of good news amid a rising tide of voices warning of cuts in public spending on education. Last week, the two most extraordinarily generous philanthropists and entrepreneurs, Subroto Bagchi and N S Parthasarthy have entered into a pathbreaking partnership with the Indian Institute of Science (IISc), Bengaluru to set up a post-graduate medical school with 800- bed multi-speciality hospital. The two families have declared that they would collectively donate Rs. 425 crore for the project. This partnership sends out an incredibly important message to all the stakeholders including the government, the corporate houses as also to other institutions of higher learning.

This great news has come at a time when higher education is facing a very uncertain financial future. The opening of medical school on the campus of the IISc is going to provide a much-needed fillip to its research programs on the one hand and community health services on the other. Besides, this initiative is going to be in line with the latest developments which would enable the institute to integrate medical sciences with its other highly specialized programs related to biological, chemical, physical, mathematical, mechanical, electrical, electronics, computer sciences leading to interdisciplinary research. The institute is going to have an edge over others in carrying out the most scientific advancements across different domains of knowledge since the new knowledge in present times lies at the intersections of different disciplines. Besides, this transformation will help the institute to prepare scientists and other specialists needed by the modern world. Simultaneously, this initiative as a whole is also going to improve the global ranking of the institute.

Most of the leading universities around the world recognized the significance of interdisciplinarity a long time ago. They had shunned the nineteenth-century model of the university system by dissolving the boundaries of structured disciplines like physics, chemistry, astronomy, zoology, Botany, etc. The best global universities of the world are those that have ensured the existence of universal knowledge on their campuses. Some of the most outstanding medical schools are the part of such universities as is evident from the curricular programs of universities like Harvard, Stanford, Columbia, Oxford, Cambridge, Pennsylvania, Kyoto, Peking, Tsinghua, National University of Singapore, etc. The things in India are still far from being ideal, with a majority of medical schools continuing in a stand-alone kind of game.

There are about 600 medical colleges and 60 odd stand-alone Post-graduate institute in the country. As against the global practice, only a minuscule proportion of these colleges is actually located on the campuses of the universities. Of the 45 Central universities that are directly funded by the University Grants Commission, only three of them have got the medical schools. Universities are the most suitable places for medical schools where even faculty from across basic sciences, as well as social sciences, can contribute to community health programs by participating both in basic as also in applied research, which is in a very poor state. While some of the private universities like Kalinga Institute of Industrial Technology, Bhubaneswar; Bhartiya Vidyapeeth, Pune; Amrita Vishwa Vidyapeetham have taken the lead in setting up medical schools, public universities lag far behind expectations.

The first thing that might come to one’s mind is as to why have Bagchi and Parthasarthy duo chose only the IISc out of 1101 degree-awarding institutions in the country for this partnership. Surely, they have not chosen it because it is a 113-year-old institution, nor because it was established by Jamsetji Tata and Krishna Raj Wadiyar IV, nor because it was supported by the likes of 7th Nizam of Hyderabad, nor because it was originally conceptualized by Sir William Ramsay, a Nobel Laureate and headed by eminent personalities like Prof. Morris Travers (co-worker of Ramsay) and Sir C V Raman.

Ostensibly, they have chosen the IISc because of its proven track record of academic excellence continuing in perpetuity for over a century. Surely, they must have been more than satisfied by evidence of its academic excellence and the capacity of its intellectual growth. They would have looked into the quality of its undergraduate, graduate, and doctoral programs and found them the best in their ratings. They must have been gratified to learn that the institute has been offering as many as 11 interdisciplinary research programs over and above 33 other programs in basic sciences, mathematics, engineering and allied disciplines. They must have also noticed that academic excellence is the top-most priority of the institute and that improved academic excellence happens to be the goal of its each and every department. They would have also been impressed by the academic credentials of its 500 odd faculty and its most ideal teacher-student ratio of 1:8. Besides, they would have been deeply impressed by the volume and quality of its research outputs. They must have also taken into consideration its overall performance in global rankings such as in THE Asia (36), QS Asia (51), QS BRICS (10), etc. Above all, they must have had informed confidence in institutional leadership for judicious use of their money.

It is a fact now that public funding for a long time is not keeping pace with the growing enrolment in higher education. In fact, budgetary allocation continues to be on the lower side and no specific schemes have been implemented for qualitative improvement of teaching and research during the last decade. It has had such an adverse impact that most of the schemes which were launched for the promotion of research and development both at national and international levels during the eleventh five-year plan had to be suspended midway because of the paucity of resources. Earlier, the central educational institutions used to have some added advantage in terms of research and developmental assistance as compared to the provincial institutions. But now there are growing doubts over their ability to come up with the necessary funds. Obviously, it is likely to take them on a downward trend.

Traditionally public universities in India have remained highly dependent on State aid. But due to frequent budget downturns and recovery shortfalls, universities are finding it increasingly difficult to support and nurture aspirations of a swelling diversified group of learners. Under the circumstances, they will have to look up alternate means of the mobilization of resources to meet their additional requirements. One such resource, among others, could be corporate philanthropy which of course would be extremely challenging but not impossible at least for a couple of Indian universities with potential for excellence.

Surely, there may be some more entrepreneurs and business moguls like Subroto Bagchi and N S Parthasarthy who would be ready to donate part of their wealth for a worthwhile cause provided universities forge alliances and convince them that their resources would be used for national prosperity. Clearly, the main criterion for them would be the value of their money. Some Indian philanthropists donate a great deal of money to foreign educational institutions. They might be happy to bequeath part of their earnings to universities with potential for excellence if they are ensured the best value for their money.

The tier-one universities that have the potential for excellence need to set aside their reservations and try to use their best endeavours to take inspiring leadership lessons from the Indian Institute of Science, Bengaluru. The secret of success will be to drive forward on multiple fronts at the same time. They will have to demonstrate that their academic programs are rated the best in present times and that their competent and talented faculty are singularly committed to preparing the youth for tomorrow’s world and that their interdisciplinary research outputs in frontier domains of knowledge are comparable with the leading institutions of the world. Besides, the universities authorities will have to prioritize their role and duties and set up a dedicated department for fundraising. Above all, they will also have to embark on proactive measures to motivate and encourage private donations in education and to earn the social trust, respect, and confidence of donors by being at their very best and bringing good value for money.

The writer is former Chairman, UGC. The views expressed are the writer’s personal.

Last-minute Thoughtful Gifting Ideas For Valentine’s Day

February 12, 2022, 2:05 am

Season of love is here and it’s the best time to surprise and celebrate your love. We all love surprises but if you haven’t bought anything yet for your partner, we have a list of ideas for different types of people that could be easily delivered to your doorstep. Choose the product from below as per his/her personality and surprise them.

1. Silk Sarees: If your partner loves to drape in grace and beauty, you can gift her the Reshaweaves silk and silk blend sarees. The brand has launched its Valentine’s Day collection which includes silk and silk blend sarees in the shades of red and pink, curated especially for this love season. She can break the usual custom and wear it on your date night or can use it in other Indian festivals.

Reshaweaves Valentine’s day

The collection is beautifully created with the ethnic designs on Banarasi:, Bhagalpuri tussar silk and Chanderi. The collection has some very amazing detailing with a wide range of floral and geometric motifs along with plain and all-over patterns on the body. The best thing about this collection is that these stylish and elegant silk and silk blend sarees are quite affordable with a price range of Rs 2000-Rs 3000 for silk blends, while pure silk sarees range from anything between Rs 5000-Rs 10000.

Go surprise your partner with this stunning collection.

Availability- https://weaves.reshamandi.com/

2. Valentine’s Day Love Pendant: What can be the best gift for a jewellery lover than a Love Pendant. Gem Selections, India’s largest gemstone brand, has a specially designed Rose Quartz “Love Pendant” in its collection of premiere products. You can gift it to your loved one as Rose Quartz is said to be the crystal of Venus (the goddess of love and beauty). It is best known as the unconditional love stone and is thought to emit a powerful vibration of love. It also helps open the door for entering new love in life. If you are at the beginning of a relationship, or if you value your love and want to improve mutual understanding, or if you have been with your partner for years and want to strengthen your bond, Rose Quartz Can help you achieve all of them. More for options like Garnet with American Diamonds set in 18K gold, Mozambique Rubies with Diamonds set in 18K white gold and Diamond with Spinel set in 18K white gold.

Love Pendant- Gem Selections

Availability- https://www.gemselections.in/ and Gem Selections store.

3. Health supplements: Forget flowers this Valentine’s Day. If you want your partner to feel truly special and pampered, Steadfast Nutrition’s exclusive supplement for skin and haircare, CollaStead is a thoughtful gift for her beauty and health. This best-seller contains high-quality collagen, Rosehip Extract, and Vitamin C that work in synergy to boost dull and damaged skin, make hair thicker and stronger and strengthen nails. CollaStead is also a powerful antioxidant and a boon for not only skin, but also heart, brain, and immune health. So, help your partner feel beautiful inside out and look perfect for your date night.

Steadfast Nutrition CollaStead

Availability- https://www.steadfastnutrition.in/products/collastead and https://www.amazon.in/Steadfast-Medishield-Collastead-Box-Sachets/dp/B07VC6TTCH

4. Sustainable Products: If you are an environmentally aware couple, gift your loved one the gift of a sustainable lifestyle in the form of a kit with Phoenix- bamboo toothbrushes, Neem wood combs and other range of products available at the website. This will be an important step together as self-aware couples who are inclined towards reducing their carbon footprints. You can also share it on your social media handle to spread awareness on “love for the environment” this Valentine’s Day.

Gromacy-Phoenix products

Availability- https://gromacy.com/

Amrit Kaal calls for broad and bold approach

February 12, 2022, 1:44 am

The Budget 2022 bears the trademark professionalism of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s seven-year rule. The government has consistently desisted from populist measures and stayed the course of fiscal prudence, yet working towards unlocking the potential of the Indian economy.

Simple but far-reaching reforms like allowing self-attestation of residential and other proofs have improved ease of doing business. They have helped India move firmly towards weeding out the pernicious presence of middlemen from every sphere.

Readers here will recall former Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi’s famous lament when he said that only 15 paise in a rupee reaches the last person in the queue. He was talking about the leakage and pilferage in the delivery mechanism of the government when it came to providing the benefits of the central schemes to the citizens of the country.

The JAM trinity or the Jan dhan bank accounts for the poor, their linkage with Aadhar and Mobile phones have played a pivotal role in bringing down the pilferage and by conservative estimates the government has saved $12 billion in subsidies to phantom beneficiaries while increasing the efficiency of the delivery mechanism. Today almost all the monetary benefits to the citizens reach in their account with no interference from the middlemen.

The trend of ease and effectiveness can also be seen in the corporate world where the introduction of GST and lowering of corporate taxes have resulted in better compliance and bigger mopping up of tax collection.

Time to Address Population Issue

Far reaching as they are, yet, the reforms now need to shift gears and address fundamental issues like population explosion and unemployability as well as low productivity of our work force.

India is in a unique position to be the world’s largest economy in the next 25 years when it celebrates 100th year of it’s Independence. Its demographic dividend is said to last till 2055.

But this window of opportunity may be eclipsed by the same assets which are perilously poised to become liabilities.

Population expanding beyond a point can have disastrous impact on our limited natural resources and can also overwhelm educational and health infrastructure. We may be able to feed a large population but with its low productivity and health it would be difficult to graduate from a low income to even a middle-income country in the next quarter of a century.

However, the issue is mired in controversy due to the infamous legacy of forced sterilization during the Emergency Era. Yet it needs to be addressed if we are to progress and achieve our true potential. We are not advocating any draconian or punitive measures like China’s one-child policy. Not at all. India’s total fertility rate (TFR) has already come down to replacement levels (2) and in 13 states it will start to fall. But five states – Uttar Pradesh (2.4), Bihar (3), Meghalaya (2.9), Jharkhand (2.3) and Manipur (2.2) have higher TFR then the replacement levels. UP and Bihar with higher population base pose special challenges. Also, within the society and groups there are huge variations.

INVEST IN HEALTH

In the next 10 years India should pursue a policy of indirection aimed at improving health and education. In terms of health, all the developed nations as well as emerging economies or Asian Tigers (South Korea, Singapore etc) have devoted huge sums of money in creating quality health infrastructure.

Historically India’s health budget has been one of the lowest in the world. Efforts have been undertaken during the last seven years to address this lacuna. Yet the total outlay for the healthcare sector in the budget is still at 1.35 percent. Compared to our allocation China allocates 7 percent of its budget for healthcare and South Korea invests close to 8.4 percent. Developed countries like Germany and Japan invest more than 10 percent. Granted that these countries are cash rich. But we should understand that an enhanced investments in healthcare improves the chances of a child’s survival convincing the parents to have fewer children.

We propose that India should steadily increase its health budget from the current 1.35 to at least 10 percent in the next three years. The results of this bold move will pay for the investments done today.

EDUCATION IS THE KEY

Similarly, we propose that India should allocate 9 percent of its GDP towards improving education both in terms of reach as well as quality. Readers may be shocked at our proposition but they should remember every country in the world that has made strong, steady and stable progress has invested heavily in the two primary sectors. Studies all over the world have shown that more than financial improvement it’s the access to healthcare and education that helps in improving the human capital of a country. It also has a direct correlation with a woman’s enhanced confidence and her ability to limit the size of the family.

Along with access the curriculum needs a qualitative improvement. Education can never be value agnostic, there should be a strong element of ethics and character building. Moral education should also be a part of the curriculum. We need to increase the stature of our teachers as society builders. Like in Scandinavian countries teachers whether in primary education or in secondary or higher education are one of the highest paid professionals. India should adopt the model. It will not only attract the best of talent it will also overhaul the image of the teachers in the society. Later their work will speak for themselves and further enhance their stature by feeding into a positive feedback loop.

SDGS, THE NEW POLICY FRAMEWORK

Recently the UN Sustainable Development Solutions Network released its World Happiness Report 2021. India ranked at 140th place out of 149 countries. This brings into sharp focus our efforts in environment conservation, forest development and climate compatible development.

The framework offered by the 17 Sustainable Development Goals should now be embedded as default framework for any policy formulation. These are administrative matters that can be achieved in short time.

We propose something more fundamental if we intend to improve our position in World Happiness Index over a period of time and be among one of the happiest countries. Once again, the investment in quality value-based education will play a pivotal role in this regard. People’s happiness depends largely on three broad premises – access to good healthcare and education, easy affordability of a roof over their head and a perception that their opportunities or resources are not being siphoned off by corrupt and powerful.

We can again take a cue from Scandinavian nations where the society’s moral compass is so strong that people indulging in corrupt practices are shunned by the society. A corrupt and rich individual or a family can’t expect to become social, political or business leaders. An idea that was deeply embedded in Indian psyche till about a couple of generations ago when a town’s rich and the most respected person weren’t necessarily the same.

By taking care of higher investments in education and health and reverting to our own santan code of ethics we can once again create a society that’s poised to harness its natural talent to be the biggest economy and the most progressive society by 2047.

(Dr Anil Agarwal is the BJP’s Rajya Sabha Member and Santosh Mangal is the President Global India Collaborative. Views Expressed are Personal. With Inputs from Keshav Chaturvedi)

Budget 2022: Ayes and nays in taxation of digital assets

February 12, 2022, 1:39 am

Non fungible tokens (NFTs) gained tremendous popularity in India in last 4 or 5 years. Eminent personalities, movie stars and pop artists all over the world showed interest and promoted their own NFTs and NFT marketplaces. . Over the centuries, the currency has undergone several metamorphosis in different ages, starting with stone, to cowri, to metal, to paper to paperless and cashless (net banking) transactions. In the digital age, the cryptocurrency or virtual currency (VC) is the new Avatar of the currency. There was fear that the cryptocurrency will be banned in India and the crypto enthusiasts were living under great fear. While the proposal in Finance Bill 2022 has dispelled this fear of impending ban of cryptocurrency, it has also cleared the decks for the introduction of a centralized digital currency by the RBI.

The cryptocurrency was hitherto seen as ‘a bubble, a ponji scheme and an environmental disaster’. It was further argued that it is susceptible to hacking, as it is in digital media and because of its anonymity, it will also be outside the ambit of the anti-money laundering and anti-terrorism laws. Although cryptocurrency promotes technological innovation and has the potential to improve the efficiency and inclusiveness of the financial system and the economy in the long run, the then Finance Minister Mr Arun Jaitley in his budget speech in 2018 said that the Government did not consider cryptocurrencies as legal tender or coin, but the Government would explore the use of blockchain technology proactively for ushering in digital economy.

The RBI issued Circular in 2018 that the entities regulated by the Reserve Bank shall not deal in VCs or provide services for facilitating any person or entity in dealing with or settling VCs. The Central Board of Direct Taxes also had recommended to the Department of Economic Affairs in 2018 for its ban. The government was apprehensive of its likely misuse in the hands of miscreants for the purpose of illegal activities and as a knee jerk reaction, the Government introduced ‘The Crypto-token Regulation Bill, 2018’ contained a proposal (i) to prohibit persons dealing with activities related to crypto tokens from falsely posing these products as not being securities or investment schemes or offering investment schemes due to gaps in the existing regulatory framework and (ii) to regulate Virtual Currency exchanges and brokers where sale and purchase may be permitted. But within a year, there was a volte-face and the government introduced a bill “Banning of Cryptocurrency and Regulation of Official Digital Currency Act, 2019” with a proposal to ban the mining, generation, holding, selling, dealing in, issuing, transferring, disposing of or using cryptocurrency in the territory of India.

The apex court hearing a writ petition held in the year 2020 that NFT transactions are not illegal, but set aside the circular of RBI. With the Finance Minister in her budget speech, announcing introduction of central bank digital currency by RBI with centralized ledger, it is now clear that the government aims to treat other cryptocurrencies with decentralized ledger as digital assets and at the same time doesn’t want to make it legal tender.

With this hype around NFTs and cryptocurrencies, the Finance Bill 2022 also proposes amendments in Section 2 of the Income Tax Act, 1961 to define ‘virtual digital assets’ to include all NFTs and crypto currencies. A new section 115BBH has been proposed, which requires gain from the sale of virtual digital assets to be taxed at flat rate of 30%, without any allowance of expenses, except the cost of purchase of such asset and without any provision of set off of losses against other income and without any carry forward of losses from such transactions. Thus the taxation of gain from sale of virtual digital asset has been treated differently from the capital gains arising from sale of other capital assets, which provide for lesser rate of taxation of long term capital gains at 20%, with provision for indexation of the cost of asset and allowance of other costs like brokerage etc.

This move gives a clear picture that the Government encourages the centralised digital currency by RBI, since it has removed the ambiguities on legality of cryptocurrency transactions by taxing it. At the same time, it certainly shows intent not to promote other cryptocurrency transactions, by taxing the gain from such transactions at a higher rate.

The move is understandable because although NFTs and crypto currencies use blockchain technology for storage of binary data using cryptography, these virtual assets are decentralized and do not exist in a physical form, thus having no single authority regulating its issuance. The blockchain on which the ownership of these virtual assets gets recorded, is highly secure, which makes it impossible for the Government authorities to track the transactions, identify the investors and regulate the transactions undertaken through such assets. It leaves a large scope for its usage in illegal activities like funding terrorism etc. Though the bill to ban cryptocurrency is still pending, it seems to be a volte face again on the part of the government, by taxing the gains from the crypto currency transactions, which indirectly clears the government intent about its legality.

However, on the other hand the exorbitant rate of tax imposed on digital asset transfer might come as a dampener to the investors dealing in them, especially so, when transfer of digital assets being treated differently to be taxed at a flat rate of 30% without allowance of any expenses etc. Additionally, the Finance Bill provides for 1% tax deduction at source (TDS) to be made, while transferring the digital assets. Going even further, the transfer of digital assets in form of ‘gift’ is also not exempted from taxation.

The proposal demonstrates the Government’s realization of immense potential that the digital asset trading holds for the Indian economy. After the introduction of TDS on crypto currency transactions, such transactions will leave a trail and the fear of anonymity and its usage for terror funding will be over, as this will create instant report to the government, about the transactions by the agencies dealing in transfer of such digital assets.

The Government, through this move has created a sand-box of sorts that shall allow the regulators to observe the system formally and formulate policies in the future that focus on laying equal standards for all capital assets, be it digital or otherwise.

Can’t dictate filmmakers to use only decent language in films, they have artistic discretion, limited only by Article 19(2): Kerala HC

February 12, 2022, 1:35 am

While vindicating the liberty of filmmakers to make films as per their own choice, the Kerala High Court as recently as on February 10, 2022 in a learned, laudable, landmark and latest judgment titled Peggy Fen v. Central Board of Film Certification & Ors. in 2022 LiveLaw (Ker) 72 in WP (C) No. 28288 of 2021 has while dismissing a plea seeking to remove Malyalam movie Churuli from OTT platform SonyLiv for its allegedly excessive use of obscene language, observed clearly that a filmmaker has the discretion to decide what type of language should be used by the characters in his film. Justice PV Kunhikrishnan unequivocally added a rider though that as long as the language used in a movie was within the contours of the reasonable restrictions imposed on freedom of speech and expression under Article 19(2) of the Constitution of India. Very rightly so.

At the outset, the single Judge Bench of Justice PV Kunhikrishnan first and foremost puts forth in para 1 that, “This writ petition is filed by an advocate with a prayer to issue a writ in the nature of mandamus directing the respondents to remove the Malayalam movie “Churuli” from the ‘Over The Top Platform’ (for short ‘OTT Platform’) as expeditiously as possible. The second prayer is to issue such other writ, order, and direction directing the respondents as this Hon’ble Court deems fit in the interest of justice.”

While elaborating, the Bench then observes in para 2 that, “The petitioner is an advocate by profession and is having an office at Ayyanthole, Thrissur. ‘Churuli’ is a Malayalam language movie directed and co-produced by renowned director Lijo Jose Pellisseri and written by S. Harish. The movie was released on the OTT Platform in SonyLIV on 19.11.2021. According to the petitioner, even though the movie ‘Churuli’ is capable of invoking a sense of curiosity and mystery in the minds of the audience, there is an overdose of foul language used in the movie. It is pleaded that the movie contains obscene and filthy languages which are opposed to public morality and tranquility. According to the petitioner, every character in the movie uses at least a single offensive word in every dialogue they deliver. The filthy languages are used lavishly and without any curtain. It is the case of the petitioner that the words and language used in the film are not one that can be used publicly and openly. It is the case of the petitioner that, a person of common parlance will not use such languages even privately at home. According to the petitioner, the filmmaker had used such language deliberately with the intention to get more attention to the movie. Apart from using filthy words, the petitioner submitted that there are a lot of usages which is totally against the morality of ladies and objectionable to all ladies’ common conduct. The words used in the movie outrages the modesty of ladies and children and a person who is watching this movie will feel irritated and disgusted, the petitioner submits. It is pleaded that since a movie which is supposed to be a form of art, it influences common people of the society and it is common among people to imitate the dialogues of the Malayalam movies and if this similar situation happens with the movie ‘Churuli’, it will affect the public morality and tranquility. It is contended that the censor board has violated the rules and regulations by giving permission to release this movie. According to the petitioner, releasing a movie of this kind on a public platform will attract the offences under the Indian Penal Code. According to the petitioner, during the pandemic season, the children and the teenagers are staying at home as their schools are shut down and they are more prone to this OTT platform and this uncensored content. The parents seem it very difficult to monitor the children all the time, especially teenagers, who cannot be kept away from the phone or any other like gadgets as these devices are necessary for schools and colleges works. According to the petitioner, in January 2019 eight video streaming platforms had signed a self-regulatory code that stated a set of guiding principles for the contents which can be displayed online. There were five terms and conditions which had to be mandatorily followed and the same is extracted in the grounds of the writ petition and the same is extracted hereunder also:

a) No such content shall be added on these platforms which would cause any disrespect to the national emblem or national flag.

b) Display of content which can hurt religious sentiments could not be streamed.

c) Visuals promoting child pornography to be strictly prohibited.

d) Content which is banned by the law or order of the country could not be streamed.

e) Terrorism of any kind cannot be promoted.

It is the case of the petitioner that there is violation of the above terms and conditions also. Hence, this writ petition.”

Most significantly, what forms the cornerstone of this notable judgment is then laid bare in para 23 wherein it is held that, “In the light of the above principle, this Court has to consider the film “Churuli”. As narrated in the report submitted by the Special Team constituted by the additional 7th respondent, which includes three women members, the plot of the movie “Churuli” is the life of a group of Fugitives from law residing in deep forests which is highly inaccessible to the outside world. The inmates of the imaginary world are rough and tough in the character who are braving the odds of nature and are in constant dread of apprehension by law. Their living conditions are meagre and life is an everyday struggle for existence. They face danger from wildlife and other perils of forest life. The Special Team observed that it is a daily struggle for existence for the characters in the movie. The centre of action in the movie is an illegal Arrack brewing centre deep inside the forest. The characters in the movie due to their living conditions and circumstances are forced to speak in rough and tough language with expletives and cuss words in their day to day interactions. The filmmaker used a language, which, according to his artistic view, is used by the people in “Churuli”. In order to make the movie believable and for the audience to fully appreciate the life and culture of the character, the filmmakers use such languages. The persons living in such conditions cannot be expected to speak in a decent language used by people residing in a normal area. Nobody can dictate a filmmaker to use only decent language in his film and it is his artistic discretion to choose the language but of course with reasonable restriction mentioned in Article 19(2) of the constitution. The additional 7th respondent clearly stated in his statement that there is no statutory violation of any rules and no criminal offence is made out in exhibiting the movie “Churuli”. In such circumstances, this Court cannot direct any of the respondents to remove the movie “Churuli” from OTT platform. Moreover, there is no proper pleading in the writ petition. The prayers in the writ petition are vague. A reading of the writ petition itself will show that the intention of the petitioner is only publicity. Even the relevant rule which is applicable in an OTT platform movie is not referred to in the writ petition. Simply making an observation that the movie contains foul language or obscene language, this Court cannot direct to remove the movie from OTT platform. I have a strong doubt that the petitioner herself has not seen the movie in full with patience before filing this writ petition. Therefore, according to me, no relief can be granted in this writ petition.”

Be it noted, the Bench then envisages in para 24 that, “Before parting with this case, I am constrained to make certain observations. Social media is now popular among the citizens. Anybody can make any comments on social media because freedom of speech and expression is a fundamental right. But people are making comments on social media without properly understanding the facts. I am sure that most of the people who are making comments against this film namely “Churuli” have not seen the movie in full. Probably they may be relying on certain video clips received on Whatsapp, Facebook, Twitter, etc. to make comments. There is indeed freedom of speech and expression to every citizen as per Article 19 (1)(a) of the Constitution of India. But the above types of critics will be doing an injustice to a filmmaker by making comment about a film and make it an unpopular one without watching his movie in full. I can understand a criticism about a movie after watching the movie in full. But, without watching the movie, making comments alleging that it is a bad film, will hurt the filmmakers and artists. They are also human beings. Their work may be a good artistic creation or sometimes it may not be a good work. But before making comments against it or in favour of it, it is the duty of the citizens to watch their creation. I am told that now there is a phrase in social media about a new language called “Churuli language”. I am sure that the people who created this “Churuli language” have not seen the film “churuli” with patience and with the understanding that it is a creation of an artist. The artists are also part of our society. They create their work spending days and months. Making wrong comments on social media about an artistic creation, even without watching the creation is to be deprecated. It is the duty of the 7th respondent and his subordinates to protect the artistic freedom of a filmmaker by initiating appropriate proceedings including criminal cases, if any criminal offence is made out in such situation. The 7th respondent will give strict directions to his subordinates to take appropriate action in accordance to law, if such complaints are received.”

On a serious note, the Bench then conceded in para 25 that, “Another trend is about interpreting orders of a court of law. When this Court passed an order on 07.01.2022 which is extracted in paragraph-6 of this judgment, the same was published in almost all print and visual media correctly. But I am told that the social media interpreted the said order in such a way that this Court directed the Police to find out whether there is foul language in “Churuli” film! If this is correct, it is clear that the same is even without reading the order passed by this Court. This Court only observed that, before deciding this issue it will be beneficial to get the opinion of the State Police Department about the pleadings in the writ petition regarding the alleged statutory violation of law s enacted to ensure public order, decency or morality. This court also directed to find out whether there is any criminal offence made as alleged in the writ petition. This Court never directed the Police to find out whether foul or obscene language is used in “Churuli” film. The contents is correctly published in print and visual media. But I am told that social media started to create a story that High Court directed the Police to find out whether there is foul language in “Churuli” film. This is how social media forum is misused by a section of society. I am not blaming the entire community who are using social media and most of them are using the social media forum in a useful manner. But a minority is misusing the same.”

On an even more serious note and also adding a word of advice, the Bench then underscores in para 26 that, “Similarly when a Court delivers a judgment in a case, even before the judgment reaches the public, the criticism starts. It is surprising to see that, few lawyers are making comments about judgments of court of law even without reading the judgments. Some of the lawyers will start to comment about a judgment delivered by a court at 10.15 am or at 11 am immediately after the judgment is pronounced. The Bench and Bar are two sides of a coin. The lawyers should be the mouthpiece of the judiciary. A fair criticism about a judgment is always acceptable. But the criticism can be started only after reading the judgment. Such a culture is to be developed for which the lawyer community has got pivotal role. It is now a trend for a minority of the lawyers’ community to make comments about a judgment even without reading the judgments. If media people ask a lawyer at 11.05 am about a judgment delivered at 11 am, the lawyer will say that ‘I have not read the judgment, but from the available news I can make certain comments’. How can a lawyer make such comments without reading the judgment? He can simply say that I will read the judgment and will come back for making comments if necessary. If such a stand is taken, no media people will say that he should make comments even without reading the judgment. The lawyers should show the path to the society about the manner in which a judgment of a court is to be dealt with and how a judgment is to be criticized if it deserves such criticism. They can read the judgment and criticize the judgment if they want and of course not the judges who wrote the judgment. If the lawyers take a stand that they will make comments about a judgment of a court of law only after reading the judgment, that will go a long way because society will accept the stand of lawyers because they are respectable people in the society. If the lawyers started to comment about a judgment without reading a judgment, nobody can blame the poor citizens who make comments about judgment and judges on social media. I make it clear that such immature comments are not made by all the lawyers. But it is being done only by a handful of lawyers. At least hereafter, the lawyers should take an oath that they will make comments in print media, visual media, and social media about a judgment of a court of law only after reading the judgment. As I said earlier, the Bench and bar are two sides of a coin. The lawyers should be the mouthpiece of the judiciary. They should protect the interest of the judiciary. The judges may come and go. But Judiciary should stand. The lawyers are part and parcel of the judiciary. Anyway I leave it to the conscience of all lawyers.”

Finally, the Bench then concludes by holding in para 27 that, “In the light of the facts narrated in the earlier paragraphs, no relief can be granted to the petitioner in this case. The petitioner is a lawyer. The petitioner is coming before this Court with a writ petition without proper pleadings and even without a proper prayer. The prayer in the writ petition itself is vague. The statutory provisions applicable in this situation are not dealt with in this writ petition. It is a case to be dismissed with cost. But, taking a lenient view, I refrain myself. Therefore the writ petition is dismissed.”

In conclusion, the Kerala High Court has made it indubitably clear that filmmakers can’t be dictated to use only decent language in films. It was also made clear that they have artistic discretion limited only by Article 19(2). To put it differently, those litigants who similarly rush towards filing a writ petition at the drop of a hat under the pretext of finding something objectionable in the film must read this brief, brilliant, bold and balanced judgment in its entirety and pay heed to what has been held so commendably! Of course, it would certainly save them from landing themselves in inevitable choppy water and simultaneously also in indulging in an exercise in futility!

HIJAB CONTROVERSY FUELS DIVISIVE POLITICS DURING ASSEMBLY POLLS

February 12, 2022, 1:33 am

The Hijab controversy that erupted from the coastal area of Karnataka seems to have become a major political issue all over the country with activists taking rigid positions that would complicate matters even further. The row has been kicked up when the poll process for Assembly polls in five states has commenced and is helping divisive forces on both sides to consolidate their vote bases. It has been an age-old practice in many parts of the country where women belonging to all faiths, cover their heads because of the prevalent social customs. Having studied in Zakir Hussain Delhi College, which had a sizable Muslim presence, I do recall that first-generation Muslim girls from the walled city, who were students, would arrive at the College premises clad in Burqas since they would not have been permitted to travel without it, to acquire higher education by their orthodox parents. However, once inside the Gate, they would take off their Burqas in a room meant for this purpose and enter the premises in their Salwar Kameez or any other attire. They would attend all their classes and spend free time in the Girl’s common room or in their departments or classrooms.

While going back home, they would wear the Burqa at the Gate itself and return, only to be back in a similar fashion the following day. The underlying point was that inside the portals of this college, which is perhaps the oldest educational institution in North India, the Burqa was not permitted even though a majority of Principals were from the same faith and had a wider understanding of how students should conduct themselves. The Burqa or hijab was never an issue that was objected to by anyone and even the parents of the girls who attended college accepted this norm. What seems to be happening is that the row has been kicked up because the matter has assumed religious overtones. There is no bar if the girl students arrive wearing a Hijab and once inside the precincts of an educational institution, they must adhere to the prescribed uniform code. Where no such dress restrictions exist, there should be no problem whether anyone is wearing any sort of headgear. Parallels are being drawn regarding the turbans worn by Sikh boys in schools. In virtually every school, the Sikhs are allowed to wear the turban which matches the colour of the uniform and no controversy has ever arisen regarding this. In rural India, in many parts women belonging to every faith, not only cover their heads but their faces also. This is a social custom even if it is gender-specific.

Any woman who defies this faces a possible social boycott and condemnation. This practice may go against the individual rights of a person but that is how the reality is at the ground level. Of course, every person has the right to choose his or her attire but in an educational institution, one has to follow the rules if such rules exist. It is not a mere coincidence that the Hijab row has erupted when the Assembly polls are on and an attempt to polarize votes on basis of religion is sought to be made. Wearing the Hijab is a compulsion for many Muslim girls if they have to attend college. Otherwise, they would be deprived of education since their families may not permit them to step out of their homes without the headgear.

The matter has to be understood keeping in mind all the sensitivities that go with it and ABVP or other outfits which hold a contrary view should not make things difficult and ugly. Internationally, there is an accepted rule regarding travel norms. The photographs on the passport or Visas have to show a full frontal view of the face with the ears also being visible. Every individual follows this at the airports where authorities scrutinize travel documents. However, when women from West Asian countries in particular travel to say a place like London, they move around the streets with their Hijabs or Burqas after they are permitted to enter the country. In the liberal times we live in, such matters should not crop up and emphasis should be on larger issues that concern the better quality of life. Hopefully, the issue would be amicably sorted out by the judiciary and calm and peace shall be restored not only in Karnataka but other parts of India as well. It is much ado about nothing.

Islamophobia has stoked the hijab controversy

February 12, 2022, 1:31 am

A car passed, the driver’s window rolled down and the man spat an epithet at two little girls wearing their hijabs in New York’s Brooklyn area: “Terrorists!”

It was 2001, just weeks after the World Trade Centre twin towers in New York fell in a terror attack, and 10-year-old Shahana Hanif and her younger sister were walking to the local mosque from their Brooklyn home. Unsure and afraid, the girls ran.

Two decades have passed since then but those girls in the US have not been able to forget the incident. The treatment meted out to Muslims in the West has had far-reaching consequences, which have now even reached India.

The hijab controversy did not originate in Karnataka that is now roiling the state. It had been brewing for more than two decades. Lately, hijab or headscarves have become a part of the religious identity of Indian Muslim women. Earlier there used to be a burqa or niqab. The seeds were sown in the post 9/11, 2001 world, which led to Islamophobia. America’s “war on terror” gave rise to certain prejudices against Muslims. The US action aimed at the terrorists was misdirected toward the Muslim community in general. Many Muslims faced hostility and surveillance, mistrust and suspicion, and had to answer uncomfortable questions about their faith.

On 1st February every year, World Hijab Day is celebrated. This initiative was started by Nazma Khan, a Bangladeshi girl, who settled in the US. She faced discrimination when she wore hijab to the school, where students would either call her Batman or Ninja.

When she entered university post 9/11 some students would call her Osama Bin Laden. So, wearing a hijab became a powerful tool for her. She claims World Hijab Day is now celebrated in 190 countries. On this day women are encouraged to wear hijab.

Over the years Islamophobia took hold in the public domain as a consequence of the propaganda for the war on terrorism. The more the West criticised Muslims, the more religious hard-line the latter adopted and it became a trigger.

In the world of Internet communication, Muslim adolescents and young adults started assuming a public Islamic identity by wearing a hijab. For many Muslim girls, a quest for asserting their feminine identity of self-respect made the hijab a symbol of dignity.

A resistance against demonisation of Islam started growing. Many Muslim women, who would have otherwise shunned the hijab, either started wearing it or started coming out on the streets to protest against the banning of the hijab. Stiff resistance was seen when hijab was banned in France and some other European countries.

India, which had been out of the hijab controversy even when the debate was at its peak in other parts of the world, has now been drawn into it although there has been a tradition of purdah and ghunghat in the country. The purdah was prevalent among the Muslims in the form of burqa or dupatta, which has now assumed the shape of the hijab or a headscarf. It is now an accepted transition in Muslim society.

Ghunghat, which was prevalent, especially in the Rajput society has largely been phased out but the custom is still prevalent in conservative Hindu families. This commonality of the veil was also a source of bonding between the women of the two communities.

In India too, during the last 15 years or so hijab became a hallmark of dignity and celebration of Muslim womanhood, free from the abuses of gender-based objectification.

When this issue was raked up in a Karnataka Government College recently, it sparked a nationwide debate in an already politically-charged environment. The sudden raking of this issue gave the impression that it was done purely for political reasons and nothing else.

The present controversy surrounding Muskan Khan’s heckling by a mob of boys was debated in courtrooms. There is a point in the argument of the government’s contention that the schools have certain prescribed school uniforms and all students must follow the rule.

Karnataka Government in its affidavit to the High Court has given the reference of the Karnataka Education Act, 1983, which prescribes rules for the educational institutions of Karnataka, Rules 11 to 15. It says every recognised educational institution of the state may specify its own set of uniforms.

Such uniform once specified shall not be changed within the period of the next five years. When an educational institution intends to change the uniform, it shall issue notice to parents in this regard at least one year in advance. The government in its affidavit has also stated that the students had given an undertaking at the time of the admission that they shall abide by the dress code. However, only at the end of their term in December 2021, they applied for the special privileges.

In view of the sensitivity of the students of the two religions involved, a high-level committee is being formed which would submit its recommendations, but till then, the existing rules must continue. The idea of having a school uniform is to ensure that there should be no difference in the appearance of the schoolchildren, even though the students may belong to different castes or religions.

The uniforms may be a symbol of discipline but the schools must not suffocate the diversity and inclusivity among children. A school teacher recently wrote a very interesting article saying that teachers should not become gatekeepers of bigotry and parochial interests.

By wearing hijab in schools, Muslim girls may inadvertently isolate themselves due to the difference in their outfits. But at the same time, there is a need to understand that Muslim women are loaded with the baggage of what they have learned or heard about Islamophobia in foreign countries. Hijab has become a marker of their identity.

So, when they are asked to remove the headscarf and change their physical identity, which they have internalised over the last two decades, there is a stiff resistance on their part, they even get agitated. More so due to the ongoing religious polarisation in the country.

The bad optics of a Muslim girl being chased by a mob of boys pestering her to remove her headscarf has further worsened the situation. It was bad publicity for the government and the country. Ironically the incident did not happen in the same district where the issue had first surfaced, it happened in another district of Karnataka.

Something which should have been a non-issue had been magnified to the extent that the state government had to close down schools fearing a law-and-order situation. This has only led to the loss of children’s education. This is more harmful than anything else because their studies have already badly suffered due to the coronavirus pandemic. Those who had studied in schools two decades ago were much better-off, at least they did not face such issues.

In small towns these days, Muslim girls normally wear headscarves as they go out of their houses. Some of them could be seen smartly riding a scooter. When they enter the school, they neatly wrap their headscarves and keep them in their schoolbag, it comes out again over their head when they leave their schools.

That’s why when a video of a Muslim girl being hounded for wearing a hijab was uploaded it became viral, the girls could relate to it. It became a subject of intense discussion on social media platforms. Sadly, it turned into a Hindu vs Muslim trend.

Let’s look at this issue in another way. Suppose if a Hindu girl likes wearing a saffron scarf in the school, will she be allowed to do so? Certainly not, she will have to abide by the dress code laid down by the school authority. What’s good for goose is good for the gander.

Some people would argue that Sikh children are allowed to wear turban in schools and nobody points out that difference. We need to understand there are provisions in place for them. But it’s not there for the Muslims yet.

Worldwide governments have used hijab or niqab to demonstrate their own commitment to either Islamic piety or secular values. In Saudi Arabia, for instance, Islamic law is interpreted as requiring women in public to cover their entire bodies with a loose robe (abaya) and women are usually expected to cover their faces by wearing a veil.

In Iran, women must similarly cover their entire bodies, but the niqab is not required. Women are required to dress in a concealing manner in Saudi Arabia and Iran in line with the Islamic laws in the two countries.

France prohibits women from dressing in this manner and makes wearing a veil punishable offence as a sign of that country’s commitment to secular values.

A similar debate took place in Canada’s Quebec, where Bill 94 proposed to deny women who chose to wear the niqab access to public services. In both cases, a key argument was that the niqab, even when worn by choice, subjugated women who needed to demonstrate their belief in gender equity, assimilation, and liberal democracy by renouncing certain types of dress.

In Singapore, Halimah Yacob, the first lady President of the country herself wears the hijab. Interestingly until recently, the Muslim women who worked in Singapore as nurses, civil servants or in the police department were not allowed to wear hijab. Yacob had herself given a statement saying wearing hijab would be problematic at workplaces for professions that require a uniform.

In Turkey, the headscarf is officially banned in public settings, though the ban is not strictly enforced, and the headscarf is seen as a litmus test for one’s religiosity and commitment to secularism. The method of gauging women’s freedom and independence as directly proportional to how much they are covered was called into question by mass demonstrations in 2011 in Egypt, Libya, Bahrain, and Yemen, where women both in veils or without have played and continue to play key roles in public life.

Ironically, in the US where the movement to wear hijab was intense in protest of the biases, Ilhan Omar, a senator wears hijab. In India too, the hijab controversy has now turned into a nationwide debate and people from both communities must act responsibly. The children need to be made to understand that they should follow the dress code laid down by the schools until the matter is resolved in the courts. They need not give up their beliefs but respect each other’s diversity. They need not be insecure about their religious identity.

Teachers and parents must make a conscious effort in this direction to insulate children from the evils of bigotry.

Hardball diplomacy needs hard power

July 29, 2021, 7:23 am

In spite of the fact that service and consumer economy has been a major contributor to India’s GDP, it’s not good enough to meet the rising aspirations of the high-tech digital generation; nor does the service economy enable India to face the complex challenges of national defence, diplomacy, and international trade. Service economy does not create muscle power.

Tourism, call centres, delivery services, public education, and healthcare, etc, are very important, in fact indispensable, for the general welfare and prosperity of the people; but the Aatmanirbhar Bharat needs a strong and diverse technology and manufacturing base that can raise companies like Huawei, Samsung, and Taiwan Semiconductors Manufacturing Company (TSMC), for example.

Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, and later China grew their economic strength out of manufacturing, and the push to meet global standards made them exporting juggernauts. China’s share of global manufacturing is 28.7% compared to India’s 3.1%, according to Statista (2019). By and large, it’s manufacturing that enabled China to lift 850 million people out of extreme poverty since Deng Xiaoping opened up the country to the outside world. The Belt and Road Initiative rose out of its “Made in China” manufacturing might.

Without a vast, diversified and sophisticated manufacturing & industrial base, India would be always looking for the next generation of French Rafale jets or Russian S-400 missile system. And keep enviously looking at China’s Mars rover Zhurong and fearing its next move in the Himalayas.

India’s has the potential to, and must, become a globally competitive manufacturing and exporting colossal; and in the process, apart from absorbing surplus farm labour due to increasing agricultural mechanisation, it would create high paying jobs by utilising the brainpower of 1.5 million engineering graduates it turns out annually from its more than six thousand engineering and technology institutions. Hardly 20 percent get jobs for which they have been trained.

Manufacturing challenges scientists, engineers, and technocrats to keep developing new technologies and products through R&D for which there’s no end state. There’s always a new product to be developed to meet the competition. A culture of innovation and zero-defect perfection begins to develop in society.

Last year, a McKinsey Global Institute report, India’s Turning Point, posited that by 2030 India would need to generate at least 90 million new nonfarm jobs. Therefore, in order to “capture frontier opportunities, India needs to triple its number of large firms,” which numbering about 600 “account for almost 40 percent of total exports, and employ 20 percent of the direct formal workforce.”

Large companies (over $500 million revenue) are more innovative and productive than small or midsize firms. India needs to shed its socialistic-era fear of private sector big corporations, which must be allowed to become the engines of growth and high-paying employment. That said, in comparison with their corporate peers in major Asian economies, “India’s large firms have also not achieved their productivity or profitability potential,” according to the report.

India’s private sector needs more global exposure. Excessive protectionism diminishes competitive spirit and the need for innovation. Creative destruction is sine qua non for a free marketplace economy.

An atmosphere of intense marketplace competition, challenge and response, and struggle to scale up or perish must be created so that only the most efficient and best performing firms survive. The government’s recent decision to privatise more than 300 Public Sector Undertakings is a step in the right direction because it would open up huge spaces for the private sector to expand, compete, and innovate as well as create tremendous investment opportunities for Indian and global players.

To accomplish these goals India needs a new political-economic paradigm under which the Central government, the states, and the business sector need to be partners for economic growth. In the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic, the public-private sector cooperation has become absolutely essential as it is happening in the United States where the Biden government has stepped up to support critical industries from vaccines to advance manufacturing, space, and semiconductor chips. China, of course, has always supported its strategic companies, financially and diplomatically, to help them expand globally of which Huawei is a supreme example.

Being a democratic country, India cannot cherry-pick any particular company for the fear of crony capitalism; but it must select critical export-oriented manufacturing sectors for its “Make in India” programme and support them financially and diplomatically. Today exports need diplomatic support.

It is important to keep in mind that an exporting nation is diplomatically a stronger nation. International trade and commerce create diplomatic leverages, apart from spreading the nation’s culture. To have a global market share, a company has to be constantly innovative and price competitive, which in turn also helps the consumer at home. The United States, the European Union, and now China use their trading powers to advance their diplomatic goals.

Not least, to defend the Indian Ocean and the Himalayas, and to play a prominent role in the Indo-Pacific and have a seat on the global table, India has no alternative but to achieve sophisticated high-level economic growth through its manufacturing and technological muscle. Hardball diplomacy needs hard power.

Narain Batra, the author of ‘The First Freedoms and America’s Culture of Innovation’, and the forthcoming ‘India In A New Key: Jawaharlal Nehru to Narendra Modi’, is a professor of communications and diplomacy, Norwich University, Vermont. The views expressed are personal.

Love thy nature to lessen pandemic anxiety

July 29, 2021, 7:19 am

The young but fragile Himalaya is blessed with rich biodiversity. Its valuable resources have traditionally served as the foundation for the economic and cultural life of a vast and vibrant population.

A few attitudinal differences and climate change developments coupled with variation in soil conservation create striking changes in the terrain having fabulous flora and fauna. Such unique biodiversity not only encompasses ecological, scientific or economic values but it is also a capital of inheritance, passed down over generations, stressing the need for sustainable development.

BIOTIC INTERFERENCE

Developments of past and present indicate extremes of biotic interference. Making wise use of biodiversity inheritance should not be tutored. It has to be felt, imbibed and carried forward when one is confronted with the tentacles of Covid auntie and whims and fancies of the Covid uncle. Without entering into the realm of discussion about the origin of the virus, one should believe that SARS-CoV-2 is an offshoot of the prevailing environment. An environment throttled by one and all.

FAUNA NEEDS FRESH LOOK

Coming to judicious utilisation rather than exploitation of floral and faunal wealth, there may be a need for a fresh approach. Not only do farming communities near forests have to be sensitised to extract forest and non-forest timber products properly but they also have to be briefed to leave enough scope for growth and sustenance of grass, shrubs, water bodies etc, vital for the life of animals such as lions, elephants, tigers, and deer etc. While saying so, one is not aiming to touch upon the crucial food chain, rather the purpose is to prick our mind specifically about the plight of gentle elephants, who, being vegetarian, show full loyalty towards their masters.

Of 27,000 Asian Elephants in India, 21% reside in Assam. Due to the loss of forest habitat, they are increasingly coming face to face with humans. Every year, around 100 of them, unfortunately, get killed. They are also misused in the Tourism industry. The Wildlife (Protection) Act, 1972 bans the sale of captive and unregistered elephants.

The mere fact that they live, eat and move in groups or clusters, goes on to show their strong family instincts, something reflected glaringly in:

A) Episode of 18 elephants in Nagaon, Assam in May 2021 crushed by lightning

B) Freak, directionless walk of over 500 km by 15 elephants in Kunming area of Yunan province of China in June 2021.

SYMPATHY IS NECESSARY

Despite the inherent friendly attitude of the elephants and many other animals often the reports of entry into the human habitations hit the headlines. There has to be some reason for such an entry. What they get in return is hectic, irrational, and merciless action. The facial expression of the fauna in such a situation shows their state of helplessness. The onlookers, nevertheless, get sarcastic pleasure in having an exciting glimpse. Whether it is a case of entry by the loveable monkeys, leopards, tigers or the elephants into towns of different states, these should not be considered as an intrusion by the animals.

ASSERTION OF RIGHTS

It is felt that such behaviour has to be viewed as a valiant act of assertion of rights by certain species to counter the actual intrusion into their bonafide habitat by shrewd human beings. There should be no justification to suppress or subjugate the innocent animals either by mechanical or muscle power.

Will our Forest Service friends wake up and take requisite action especially during the current wave of Covid-19 pandemic, when almost two dozen ‘positive’ tigers and a couple of similarly infected lions have already left the world? Lingering threat to pets and domestic animals who soothes our feelings when we are tired, and exhausted, also fill the atmosphere, time and again.

Having stated so, I may humbly submit: “When the animal instinct among the humans crosses conceivable limits, the actual and bonafide sons and daughters of mother earth are left with no alternative but to react vehemently or justifiably.”

UNHEALTHY TUSSLE

It is not only the competition or tussle factor for habitat between the animals and human beings but it is a question of displaying adequate love and care for the natural endowments, indiscriminately gifted by the Almighty.

SAVIOUR DUTY

It may not be out of context to remind ourselves about the basic Hindu philosophy of emphasising reverence to the flora and fauna right from childhood. For generations, plants, such as peepal, banyan, tulsi, banana, mango etc. and the animals namely, cow, bull, lion, tiger, elephant, monkey, rat, cobra snakes etc. were being worshipped. Also, the morning ritual of offering water to Sun God, tulsi plant and peepal tree not only has given the requisite faith and confidence to the worshippers but it can also teach us again the forgotten lesson to do everything possible to Preserve flora and fauna.

To sum up, if we are mandated to avoid Social Interaction due to coronavirus and the more lethal third wave, how can we afford to undermine similar ‘social’ instincts among the animals?

Their state of hunger and helpless facial expressions during the last two rounds of lockdowns, calls for improving our overall attitude towards them. The timely food intake and sound health of fauna not only can improve their internal social behaviour but may also ensure a refined attitude towards their human handlers, caretakers or masters.

Even if we get rid of Covidity clinically, the love and affection displayed by the pets may prove much more valuable if not decisive in reducing our anxiety and depression. It may ultimately facilitate satisfactory healing of the community.

The writer is former Chief Secretary, the Government of Sikkim. The views expressed are personal.

BE THE VOICE OF THE VOICELESS

July 29, 2021, 7:18 am

India, being the land of sages, has always believed in ahimsa and equality for all living beings. The Constitution of India itself lays down in Article 51-A (g) that Indian citizens must be compassionate towards all living creatures. In the furtherance of it, the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (PCA) Act, 1960 was enacted along with Wildlife (Protection) (WP) Act. However, in the past few years, we, as humans, have betrayed our moral failure towards voiceless animals. The testament to this is the growing reports of animals being subjected to sexual abuse, being burnt alive, acid and pebble attacks, thrown off from the rooftop, lit crackers on their tails, and even cutting them down in marble cutter, the list is endless and horrendous. How have we stooped down so low that we are finding our entertainment in torturing voiceless beings?

PREVENTION OF ANIMAL CRUELTY

The Constitution imposes a fundamental duty on us to safeguard the wildlife and have compassion for all living creatures as a result of which the PCA Act was laid down as a measure to give rights of freedom and living to animals. The act was made in 1960 shows how little has been done since then. Unfortunately, in our country, the discussion related to animal rights revolves around political arcades, primarily cow slaughter or beef ban and protection for endangered species. Many animal lovers have been helping by rescuing and providing shelter homes, medication, and food to the tiny beings but for a collective measure, a well-executed law has to be made to safeguard the interest of animals.

The PCA Act in Section 11 defines cruelty and lists a series of offences and prescribes punishment for the same. However, the act lacks basic connotation with today’s time and needs strict amendments. Disturbingly, the punishment for treating animals cruelly is punishable with a fine of Rs 10 that may extend to Rs 50 on first conviction. On subsequent conviction within three years of a previous offence, it is punishable with a fine of Rs 25 that may extend to Rs 100 or imprisonment of three months or with both. Performing operations like Phooka or any other operations to improve lactation which is injurious to the health of the animal is punishable with a fine of Rs 1,000 or imprisonment up to two years or both and experimentation on animals is punishable with a fine up to Rs 200.

The WP Act too provides lists of species of both flora and fauna which need to the protected from increasing commercialisation of animal goods in form of trading of endangered species, uses of their skin for beauty products, selling off their horns in the black market and further being used in medical by-products. The law brings all these malpractices under its supervision. The act also controls the hunting of wild animals, protection of national parks and sanctuaries, restrict the illegal trade of wild animals, and articles. Section 39 specifies that any wild hunted animal found, killed, fed, alive, or dead shall be the property of the state government. Likewise, Section 9 of the act prohibits the hunting of wild birds.

JUDICIAL APPROACH

Our legislative provisions and judicial pronouncements make an effective case for animal rights. But since no rights and laws can be absolute, regulation of animal rights is a must. Therefore, time and again judicial pronouncements have become voices of the animals and their rights.

In 2014, Supreme Court’s landmark judgment in decisions banning the bull-taming festival ‘Jallikattu’ can be described as a watershed moment in terms of animal rights. It not only recognised that animals have a constitutional right to life under Article 21 of the Constitution as well as the right to dignity and fair treatment.

In a landmark judgement of Punjab and Haryana High Court, it was observed that “entire animal kingdom including avian and aquatic are declared as legal entities having a distinct persona with corresponding rights, duties and liabilities of a living person”, touching the matter of animal rights in the purview of Fundamental Rights.

The latest judgment by Delhi High Court states that stray dogs have the right to food and citizens have the right to feed them. The Court observed that “we have to show compassion towards all living creatures. Animals may be mute but we as a society have to speak on their behalf. No pain or agony should be caused to the animals. Cruelty to animals causes psychological pain to them. Animals breathe like us and have emotions. The animals require food, water, shelter, normal behaviour, medical care, self-determination.”

In 2006, the Bombay High Court passed an important ruling, wherein any film meant for public viewing in which animal is used or filmed, has to obtain a certificate from the Animal Welfare Board of India. It safeguards animals from being exploited or ill-treated during filmmaking.

In 2014, Supreme Court banned the illegal transport of cattle to Nepal for the Gadhimai festival that played a crucial role in bringing down the number of animals sacrificed that year.

VIABLE ALTERNATIVES

The Central government has already initiated the process of amendment of the PCA Act and other viable alternatives are being made for safeguarding the interest of animals at large. Some of the observations are as under:

In the present scenario of Covid-19, when every country is researching making successful medication and vaccines to end this pandemic, millions of mice, cats, dogs, rabbits etc are the ones on whom the trial is being done. This kind of horrible environment exposes animal cruelty. Through the Drugs and Cosmetics Rules (Second Amendment) 2014, animal testing for cosmetic products was prohibited all over India. But this subject needs more attention in today’s time. The present legislation in India needs to be modified by making more stringent laws.

Over the years illegal trafficking and poaching of animals across the borders have led to overexploitation of certain species to the point that their survival has become difficult and caused further cruelty to them. Wildlife resources must be managed sustainably and conserved by the law. For which the Indian Penal Code, 1860, under sections 428 and 429 constitutes that killing, poaching or torturing animals is a cognisable offence and is required immediate FIR and rigorous imprisonment which may extend to up to five years or fine or both.

There should be finer and stricter rules implemented for the transportation of livestock in India. The amended motor vehicle rule is one such step in this direction which provides that vehicles without special licenses for such transportation should not be ply on roads and a healthy and safe environment should be provided to these animals. The excessive overloading of animals, permanent partition for transportation of individual animals, health checks up can be some of the additions.

Shelter homes are the need of the hour. An animal that has been mistreated needs support and sometimes immediate for which there should be shelter homes with viable facilities. There should be proper checks and regulations with timely inspection of these shelter homes.

There should be 24/7 medical centres for animals, especially domesticated pets.

The PETA India suggested some regulations mandating the use of anaesthetics before castration and replacement of cruel practices.

The PCA Act needs refined and stern punishment. The drafted bill has increased the fine three times the cost of animals or Rs 75,000 with the imprisonment of three years that may extend to five or both, has been proposed.

Steps should be taken for the protection of ‘’dignity of the creature’’ like the law laid down in Switzerland which deemed activities degrading to the dignity of animals forbidden by law.

In many cases reported in India, the barking of dogs has been a cause of beating them and often owners try to stop dogs from barking. This should be considered illegal and pet owners should learn how to take care of their pets.

Registration of pets has become a mandate across the country. This is a huge step for making society pet friendly. Effective implementation of registration should be done and non–compliance to register should be met with dire consequences. People too should be responsible and help the government in this.

As per WP Act, there are some wild and endangered animals not just lions and tigers but a lot of exotic animals are banned to pet or keep domesticated. The reason for this is that these animals enjoy their natural habitats and can’t survive or properly nurture at our homes. We should not play down with the rule of the land and also report such incidents to the authorities at the earliest.

The issue of animal rights revolves around the question of whether animals should be given the same protections as humans. They should be treated with the utmost respect, care, and love. Animals should not be considered helpless and voiceless beings. In a society, where we all talk about how to be civilised, we buffoon the idea that animals are meant to be caged. There are a lot of things we can do to protect animals. You don’t have to own a pet to help in the cause. Let’s all be the voice they wish they had, and make the choice they wish they could. Stop animal cruelty.

The writer is an Advocate at Punjab and Haryana High Court, Chandigarh. The views expressed are personal.

Horrendous atrocities being committed on women and girls in Afghanistan

July 27, 2021, 3:25 am

A short video clip uploaded by an international news channel has shaken me to the core. In that video, a fourteen-fifteen-year-old girl is seen screaming and shrieking. Her parents are begging for mercy but Taliban terrorists are forcibly taking away the girl from the family.

The girl will now be turned over to some Taliban terrorist to quench his lust. If that monster is killed someday in the war, then the child will be given to another monster! This is the fate of that girl!

And that girl is not the only unlucky one. This is the fate of lakhs of girls like her in Afghanistan. In the areas which the Taliban has occupied so far, they have started barbarity in the name of Sharia. It has decreed that a list of unmarried girls above the age of fifteen years and widows should be prepared. It is evident that all these girls and women will be used for quenching the lust of terrorists.

Although the leadership of the Taliban based in Qatar is ruling out such incidents, the Taliban terrorists who are bloodying Afghan soil are kidnapping girls every day. In those areas, even the media is not working now so that the whole truth could come out. But the pictures and news that are coming out after filtering fill the mind with pain.

When the Taliban captured the whole of Afghanistan in 1996, it was women who had to bear the brunt of their brutality. The education of the girls had stopped. You must recall how an attempt was made on Malala because she was secretly spreading her voice to the world in favour of the education of the children. So will the girls be imprisoned in homes again? When asked, Suhail Shaheen, Taliban spokesman in Qatar, said that women will have freedom of education and work but under Sharia law they will also have to wear hijab. Let us remind you that during the Taliban regime from 1996 to 2001, it became notorious for their misogyny and violence against women. The women who did not wear the hijab or even those, whose fingers were visible, were also lashed publicly. A woman could not step out of the house without a male member of her household accompanying her. The actions of the Taliban are showing that the old dark days and dreadful nights are about to return.

When American troops landed on Afghanistan’s soil in 2001 and the Taliban started shrinking, there was a ray of light in the lies of the women there. The girls started going to school. Cruelty to women decreased. Women started going out for work. A lot has changed in Afghanistan in the last 20 years. But when America suddenly decided to withdraw its troops from Afghanistan, the ground slipped under the feet of the women of Afghanistan. Who will stop the Taliban now?

However, the rural women there have an inborn conditioning to discrimination because no woman’s name is even taken outside the house. Even on the doctor’s prescription slip it is written ‘daughter of so and so’ or ‘wife of so and so’. Her name is neither on her birth certificate nor on her death certificate. This irony is a part of their life. But the condition in urban areas was getting better. The arrival of the Taliban has raised a fog of fear and suspicion. The problem is that in Afghanistan there is no one to raise the voice of women and anyway, Taliban does not listen to anyone’s voice.

Interestingly, this time some brave Afghan women have come forward to raise their voice against the Taliban. In Afghanistan’s urban areas such as Kabul, Faryab, Herat, Jowzjan and Ghowr, hundreds of Afghan women took to the streets carrying Kalashnikov rifles and Afghan flags. They are trying to show to the world that they do not approve of Taliban rule. That is why they are with the National Army in the war against the Taliban and the barbaric terrorists should also understand that women are not lumps of meat for their lust. They too an fight the war and are ready for the war. It is possible that the Afghan army will also train and equip such brave women. However, in cities it may be possible to join and fight alongside the National Army, but what will happen in rural areas?

The painful and bitter reality of the present time is that the Afghan army has also left the rural areas defenceless. The Afghan National Army is focusing all attention on the security of the country’s

capital Kabul and various provincial cities. The Taliban took advantage of this vacuum immediately and took over the rural areas. Right now it is difficult to say how much of the country is with the Taliban and how much is with the army. But wherever there is Taliban, the life of women has become worse than hell. The number of women in Afghanistan’s population of 3.80 crore is about 1.8 crore. Today, after two decades of tasting freedom, Afghan women and girls are again scared of a repeat of that dark era of confinement as the Taliban advances and the world remains a mute spectator!

I feel like crying at the plight of these women..!

The author is the chairman, Editorial Board of Lokmat Media and former member of Rajya Sabha.

In Afghanistan, the terror outfit Taliban is committing horrendous atrocities on girls and women. It had been doing the same in the earlier regime too. But this time it is introducing sweeping restrictions on women in areas controlled by it. In defiance, women in many cities have picked up Kalashnikov rifles to defend their motherland against the Taliban.

TWAIL: Historical approach to understanding international law

July 27, 2021, 3:19 am

INTRODUCTION

Today, the ‘Third World’ country is the term first used by Alfred Sauvy in 1952 which now has come to denote a country which can be categorized as a ‘developing’ country. However, the origins of this term can be traced to the World War/Cold War period when Third World signified the countries who were non-aligned; neither part of the ‘free world’ nor of the ‘communist world’. Scholars vouching for the Third World Approaches to International Law (TWAIL) have stressed on the importance of using the original terminology of ‘Third World Countries’. Global South is another term frequently used as a synonym for Third World countries. The terms North and South emerged during the 1970s but till today no strict definition thereby questioning geographical preciseness of this term.

The Asian-African Conference held in Bandung organised by Egypt, Indonesia, Burma, India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka in 1955 was where Indian PM Jawaharlal Nehru rejected both sides in the ongoing cold war and propounded a principle of ‘non-alignment’. This led to the birth of Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) in 1961. This along with the Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC), Group 77 shows the building momentum among the Third world countries against the supremacy of the First and Second world countries. Further a rebellious attitude was also shown by the Third World reflected in its calls for a New International Economic Order (NIEO).

TWAIL has undertaken study of international law, its global history, role of international lawyers within the international order, importance of social movements, indigenous people, migrants etc. with a background of such previous organisations who came together with a common agenda. TWAIL has stood as a check to the Eurocentric approach taken by international law over the years. And accelerated efforts to balance out the asymmetries of power. According to Gathii, “TWAIL is a discipline in transition, expansion, definition and internal contestation about the varied agendas of its scholars, all at the same time.” Balakrishnan Rajagopal’s work brings light to the resistance that TWAIL projects to safeguard interests of the third world.

TWAIL was born in 1996 at Harvard Law School when group of students came together to discuss whether if taken a third world approach to international law what might be the major obstacles. The group consisting of Celestine Nyamu, Balakrishnan Rajagopal, Hani Sayed, Vasuki Nesiah, Elchi Nowrojee, Bhupinder Chimni and James Thuo Gathii coined the name of the group as ‘Third World Approaches to International Law’ (TWAIL). Antony Anghie and Chimni coined the terms ‘TWAIL I’ and ‘TWAIL II’: the former consisting of first generation post-colonial and the latter taking cues and developing further scholarship. The struggle of TWAILers II, III, IV and beyond – is to deal with the vestiges of ‘formal’ empire and expanding multi-dimensional forms of ‘informal imperialism’.

APPROACHES TO TWAIL

While discussing about the approaches within TWAIL, Gathii mentions critical, feminist, post-modern, Lat-Crit Theory (Latina and Latina Critical Theory Inc.), postcolonial theory, literary theory, modernist, Marxist, critical race theory among others. With these approaches what is studied is hegemony of dominant narratives along many axes– race, class, gender, sex, ethnicity, economics, trade, etc – and in inter-disciplinary ways – social, theoretical, epistemological, ontological and so on. Gathii discusses some coordinates; strictly refraining from calling them as principles as TWAIL scholarship has always been proposing for an ever-changing methodology and international order. It terms the coordinates as:

History matters: Importance here is given to how history has shaped the current geo-politics. Taking into account history, TWAIL scholars envision to build a south oriented framework for international order.

Empire moves: Imperialism cannot be only located in the country of the British. From local to national, public to private, ideological to material; Empire is traced in each of the components of nation and human life. This coordinate helps the TWAIL scholars to trace the colonial power and its fangs.

South moves: As the North moves, the South also is a term which is dynamic according to local specificities, regional trends, and larger changes to the global economic and political system.

Struggle is multiple: TWAIL is engaged is one fought on multiple fronts and on a diverse and shifting terrain. Thus, TWAIL is a discipline in transition, expansion, definition and internal contestation about the varied agendas of its scholars, all at the same time.

Struggle is here: TWAIL scholars, therefore, the struggle remains, and must remain, always there, and always here. It is, and must always be, about present ‘tactics’, and about a longer ‘strategy’.

CENTRAL THEMES OF TWAIL

As Karin Mickelson argues, history is the most fundamental element of a third world approach to international law. What is important to note here for TWAIL scholarship is the emphasis on seeing international legal history ‘as something alive than dead.’ Makau Mutua’s provocative thesis about redrawing the map of Africa because of the colonial illegitimacy of current borders is yet another example of seeing international legal history as relevant to and constitutive of the present rather than as a relic of the past. Antony Anghie’s book Imperialism, Sovereignty and the Making of International Law, (2005) is the leading TWAIL text revising mainstream international legal history tracing of continuities of coloniality in modern international law.

According to Vikrant Dayanand Shetty, “the ‘post’ in ‘postcolonial’ does not refer to ‘after period of colonialism’ or ‘triumphing over colonialism’ but to the ‘continuation of colonialism in the consciousness of formerly colonized peoples and in institutions imposed in the process of colonization.’” Examples of colonial continuities include, the composition of the UN Security Council, with five veto-wielding Permanent members; the weighted system of voting in the Bretton Woods institutions that gives the world’s richest economies the power to set the economic agenda of the former colonial countries; the rules of customary international law such as pacta sund servanda that bind former colonialized countries to comply with treaties even though they took no part in their formulation or formation; and the fact that self-determination retained the subordinate and dependent position of third world elites to their former colonial powers and to multinational capital interests.

Chimni analyses that, “Today, international law prescribes rules that deliberately ignore the phenomena of uneven development in favor of prescribing uniform global standards.” TWAIL recognises that the domination that US and Europe had over former colonies is in practice till date. In India, it can be seen in the fact that since the British left, we haven’t yet let go of the legal structure that the empire had built for us. India is also still in grips of the Macaulay’s system of Education. She has adopted the foreign terms like ‘secular’ in her constitution, ‘English’ as the official language, morals as per the Christian teachings. As India westernized, she also inherited such institutions which today can be called as the ghosts of the Empire. This has led to many TWAIL and other Indic scholars to question whether since independence has India ever been free. Chimni reiterates that the civilizing mission that the colonisers were on is the same mission with which they are using international law to rehabilitate and govern third world countries especially Africa; thus, legitimizing and justifying both the forms of colonial attitudes. He says, “humanitarianism is the ideology of hegemonic states in the era of globalization marked by the end of the Cold War and a growing North South divide.” This concept of the ‘civilizing mission’ has provided the moral basis of exploitation of the Third World. However, this exploitation, when administered by the colonial power, is legitimate because it is inflicted in self-defence, or because it is humanitarian in character and indeed seeks to save the non-European peoples from themselves. Less is discussed in mainstream international forum on the holocaust that the Victorian Empire committed on the citizens of India. Indian soldiers fought for the British in both World wars; 60,000 sacrificed their lives in world war I itself; she was the second largest contributor to Empire’s War in the 1940s; she bore the brunt of Churchill’s horrifying war policies which aggravated the already existing famine conditions. 5.4 million Indians according to Madhushree Mukherjee were killed amounting to war crimes justified under the garb of colonialism. She writes in her book ‘Churchill’s Secret War’, “if provisions protecting civilians had been in place before the war, the denial policy and the failure of His Majesty’s Government to relieve the famine could conceivably have been prosecuted as war crimes.”

CRITIQUES

TWAIL has failed to produce a single authority but has stirred the waters of international law with the ladle of colonial history. James Thuo Gathii also acknowledges the criticisms levelled against TWAIL on the basis of it being anachronistic, nihilistic and lacking methodological clarity. Secondly, its own critical attitude has been accused of being baseless. The absence of hierarchy and authority has given rise to flexible and fluid ways but has also proved as a disadvantage to organize the movement effectively. However, TWAIL is not a mere deconstructive and oppositional movement or network of scholars, but rather one that sees the potential of reforming if not remaking international law for the greater good. It also questions some third world countries and hence cannot be alleged to have been assuming innocence of these countries.

CONCLUSION

For the first time in history, emerging economies are counterparts on more than half of global trade flows, and south–south trade is the fastest-growing type of connection. South–south and China–south trade jumped from 8 percent of the global total in 1995 to 20 percent in 2016. Emerging economies, led by China and India, have accounted for almost two-thirds of global GDP growth and more than half of new consumption in the past 15 years. The founder of TWAIL Gathii has expressed that TWAIL-ers have transcended boundaries. There have been efforts from non-third world living scholars along with third world living scholars. He calls it a decentralized network which has been given exposure across not only in academies but also as course leaders, council members, etc. Some suggestions toward a new economic world order on the basis of TWAIL are to increase transparency and accountability of international institutions; increasing sensitivity towards problems of the third world; accepting that the solutions applied to western countries aren’t the exact solutions for third world problems; indigenous culture to be used to maximise the reach of international principles; Human Rights should be interpreted by keeping an account of the conditions of the third world countries; accepting that other than minority and acknowledged class there can be oppression of majority in such countries too; Ensuring Sustainable Development With Equity. Such suggestions to make international law more sensitive, equitable and far-reaching can be done only with the help of TWAIL. TWAIL scholars from and outside third world countries need to undertake this task and make the other side of the narrative aware of their side. Ramping up needs to take place since the third world countries are the future of tomorrow.

CONCOCTED NOISE ON HUMAN RIGHTS CANNOT STALL INDIA-US PARTNERSHIP

July 27, 2021, 3:16 am

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken is all set to visit India this week, during which he is expected to discuss the Quad—specifically how to counter the threat posed to the world by China—the situation in Afghanistan and the terrorism emanating from Pakistan. However, a State Department spokesperson’s statement that Blinken will also raise human rights issues with New Delhi, has got people of the woke variety excited, without realizing that at best any such talk will be a sideshow, a token mention under pressure from lobbies, some of which are even backed by Pakistan and China. The focus will be primarily on countering China, and India’s role in this scheme of things. Amid the cacophony over human rights, it must be pointed out that India has never claimed to be a perfect democracy. India is as flawed or as “perfect” as any other major democracy. Nothing has happened in the last seven years of the Narendra Modi government for India to be losing its democratic values. The whole issue is political, where a narrative of intolerance and authoritarianism has been spun for the last seven years by the “entitled”—and their ecosystem—who have been tossed out of the power structure and have become increasingly irrelevant. In fact, the power structure itself is more democratic now because of the wider representation on top from those outside of the “entitled” zone. The citizens of this democracy are as powerful as ever in exercising their will, and know how to keep their rulers under check. Institutions too are resilient enough to correct the excesses. The flaws are, of course, innumerable, but then which democracy is perfect? The American version, with its difficult race relations, its BLM riots, its mess of an election process which leaves millions feeling disenfranchised, its President’s refusal to hand over power even after losing an election? Hence, the picture being painted globally by mainstream foreign media—severely burdened by its left-liberal baggage—and some foreign policy analysts, with active help from some of those from inside this country itself, is a caricature of the ground reality. Add to this the fact of the rabid Left joining hands with the Wahhabis in the US, a manifestation of which are the so-called Progressives in American politics, and we have the concoction of a narrative whose ultimate goal seems to be ensuring a regime change, disregarding the verdict of the people in the world’s largest democracy.

The consensus in India is that Blinken will make a huge mistake if he barks up the “human rights” tree. Lecturing will not be tolerated. The backlash will be severe to the unfair criticism, jeopardising India-US strategic partnership. This is exactly what the Chinese want, to drive a wedge between the two nations. However, there is no reason to believe that he doesn’t understand that, whatever be the Democratic Party’s domestic compulsions, where the radical Left-Wahhabi fringe is threatening to become mainstream. The US recognises the threat that China is to the civilized world and the need to contain it. In fact, to come across as tough on China is excellent domestic politics for Joe Biden, given the negative sentiments in his country about India’s neighbour.

Considering Xi Jinping’s dangerously aggressive overreach, where he wants to be the emperor of all that he sees, military means may be the only way of containing him. So a conflict is likely, sooner or later—a conflict where the Quad will have to play a central role. Hence, much to their disappointment, the woke public is likely to discover that the “human rights” talk is at best a sideshow, confined to token statements from both nations. No amount of spurious noise can stall a partnership whose time has come, and Blinken’s India visit is testimony to that.

Is Pegasus controversy a toolkit to defame India?

July 27, 2021, 3:14 am

Is it not true that vested foreign powers are keen to destabilise India? Did The New York Times not seek to recruit a journalist who would be anti-establishment and anti-Modi? Is it not true that Amnesty International was violating the law of the land, and when asked to explain and comply, it ran away?

If a news report comes out a day before Parliament’s Monsoon session is set to begin and the next day opposition parties try to disrupt Parliament claiming that the rights of private individuals have been violated by the State, one is bound to doubt the intention behind such a story. Naturally, there would be closer scrutiny by the State and unbiased people about the authenticity of the report and the intentions.

This explains why Union Home Minister Amit Shah said “disrupters and obstructers would not be able to derail India’s development trajectory”. “Disrupters are global organizations that do not like India to progress. Obstructers are political players in India who do not want India to progress. People of India are very good at understanding this chronology and connection,” he said and assured that the Modi Government would continue to work for national welfare.

The story that first appeared in India was carried by a website that has earlier too published stories that have not been credible. This story was published in collaboration with 16 other international publications, including The Washington Post and The Guardian, which were media partners to an investigation carried out by Paris-based NGO Forbidden Stories and rights group Amnesty International.

The so-called investigation conducted by the Amnesty security team found a leaked database of 50,000 phone numbers which the reports said was of the NSO and target for surveillance using Pegasus spyware developed by Israel’s NSO. This also included potential 300 targets that were Indians and included politicians even from the ruling BJP, journalists, and activists.

The claim was that the data was leaked from the NSO server but the NSO had denied having any such data. It said: “The report by Forbidden Stories is full of wrong assumptions and uncorroborated theories that raise serious doubts about the reliability and interests of the sources…After checking their claims, we firmly deny the false allegations made in their report. Their sources have supplied them with information which has no factual basis, as evident by the lack of supporting documentation for many of their claims.” The NSO even threatened a defamation suit.

Analysis of the source of such reports would further establish understanding of the entire controversy. The source of the investigation is Forbidden Stories (FS) and Amnesty (AI). The FS, which claims to champion independent journalism, has become a tool of propaganda by the West and has backed leftist viewpoints in the entire world.

It is difficult to believe the FS claims that its activities are not affected by the ideology of its donors. One of the donors is Luminate founded by Omidyar group. Luminate holds that Illiberal democracies’ are emerging and civil society is under attack. It has lamented the rise of nationalism and polarization of communities. Scroll.in is supported by the Omidyar group.

One of the donors is the Open Society Foundation of George Soros whose antipathy for India is well known. He has lamented the rise of nationalist governments across the globe. He has criticized the Indian Prime Minister and his policy on Jammu and Kashmir. He has described the actions of the Modi Government as the “biggest and most frightening setback” to the survival of open societies worldwide.

Amnesty story in India is rather well known. Its accounts were frozen by the Indian Government in 2020 after it was found that it violated the FCRA. It opened business entities in India and used the FDI route to fund its activities. When caught it raised the bogey of the witch hunt.

The Washington Post owner Jeff Bezos has claimed that he was a victim of Pegasus. Some private photographs of Bezos were leaked which became the reason for his divorce that cost him Rs 3 lakh crore.

So, it is quite possible that all conspired to defame NSO and Pegasus and the countries that could possibly be linked. They could kill many birds with one stone. Paint some regimes as violators of Human Rights and individual liberty, paint Pegasus as the enemy of privacy of individuals and club a vibrant democracy like India with not-so-democratic regimes and paint the country’s image in a bad light.

Let us focus our attention on India. Many are unhappy with India’s growing clout and assertion. There were many foreign NGOs that worked unfettered without bothering to abide by the law of the land. Amnesty is not the only one. Greenpeace Organization had to close many of its India offices since foreign donations were stopped for violating Indian laws.

Of the 22,400 NGOs registered under the FCRA, the registration certificates of more than 20,600 were cancelled since 2011 for violating various provisions of the FCRA. Most were deregistered due to non-filing of annual returns which is mandatory as per law. The Government simply wanted to make NGO operations more transparent and accountable. Who gave the money and why and whether the money was used to serve that purpose? This intended to check siphoning and diversion of funds for other activities. These FCRA NGOs received more than Rs 58,000 crore in donations in the year 2016-17 and 2017-18.

The lobbies acting against India have an axe to grind. Such stories based on fiction— I call it fiction because you don’t need much brain to prepare such a list— intends to create an optics that India is intolerant and is violating the right of private individuals. After this, the lobbies would call on US Senators and representatives of European countries and the UK and ask them to issue Statements condemning India’s so-called attempt to muzzle the press and on the issue of their perception of violation of Human Rights.

Meanwhile, AI has come out with a curious explanation. It has claimed that it never said that the recently leaked list of phone numbers was specifically a list of numbers targeted by the NSO Group’s Pegasus spyware. It merely said that this is a list of numbers on which the NSO clients might like to spy on. This proves that the list was designed by FS and AI and dished out to select media outlets to sensationalize.

Those who had calculated that this would be India’s Watergate moment forcing the Prime Minister and the Government to resign were dejected that like many other arsenals this too failed to defame the Indian Prime Minister. This was a dangerous game plan. The entire controversy appears to be more like a toolkit to defame India and the Modi Government. Democracy like India has been clubbed with countries that India would not like to be compared with. India has been the target of many funders of FS and also AI and other international NGOs that have huge clout but they have failed to browbeat the Indian Government.

While the entire opposition could not hide its elation at something they calculated would bring the Prime Minister on its knees, the Government came up with a factual clinical response. “No unauthorized interception took place”, the Government asserted. The “sensational story” a day before the Monsoon session of Parliament cannot be a coincidence, India’s new IT minister Ashwini Vaishnaw said in the Lok Sabha. “Global expose of alleged hacking in India, using Israeli spyware Pegasus, is an attempt to malign Indian democracy and its institutions”.

He asked all parliamentarians to examine facts and pointed out that the consortium spoke of a leaked list of 50,000 phone numbers but the presence of a number in the list did not mean that the device was targeted. He suggested technical analysis on the phone numbers to know whether these phones were compromised using any spyware.

Although many opposition leaders tried to present this as a serious violation of the right to privacy, the Government refused to set-up an inquiry, and rightly so. A mere report based on conjectures cannot be the basis of an investigation unless we want India to be on perpetual inquiry spree.

If the government says it has not done anything illegal, the best way for those, if they have proofs of being snooped upon using spyware, is to get their phones examined followed by lodging of an FIR if the accusations are true. This would lead to investigation and help the police to reach the truth. Hacking is a crime and it must be dealt so. As of now, none have come forward saying that they are giving their phones for investigation.

The investigation should be done, if or not the story was used as a toolkit to malign the Indian Government. Whether certain organizations contacted Indian parliamentarians asking them to raise the issue? Whether some parliamentarians were aware of such a story coming up anytime soon? This would establish if the pandemonium was a spontaneous or well-crafted result of the toolkit.

Indian Government came out with a strong response when it pointed out to vibrant democracy in India and its zeal to defend the Right to Privacy which has been dubbed a fundamental right by the Supreme Court. The Government has introduced the Personal Data Protection Bill, 2019, and the Information Technology (Intermediary Guidelines and Digital Media Ethics Code) Rules, 2021, to protect the personal data of individuals and to empower users of social media platforms, a Statement from the IT ministry said.

Critics have often asked the Government to clarify if it was a client of the NSO? Is it important? If the Government has clarified the issue should be allowed to rest unless one has proof to the contrary. Who are the people interested in knowing this? The NSO may have sold the spyware to so many countries, some of which are very hostile to India. Is it not possible that one of these have tried to play mischief if at all such a thing has happened?

Those advocating investigation have not found much traction among people since Indians by and large do not mind spying by the State to keep themselves safe. Mahatma Gandhi had said pubic figures should not have private lives and their actions should be open to scrutiny. Actually, people are having the last laugh at those claiming privacy rights.

This produced desperation as evidenced in Trinamul Rajya Sabha MP Shantanu Sen snatching the paper from the hands of IT Minister Vaishnaw, when he was going to read out from that on the Pegasus controversy. He was rightly suspended for the rest of the Monsoon session for this unruly behaviour.

Chanakya who is credited with conceptualizing State and its functions had asserted that the State must have a strong network of loyal spies to secure the State against vested interests. This was essential to curb political corruption, to prevent instability due to machinations by vested interests, and to ward off both internal and external security threats. Who would oppose this? Technology has replaced or come as powerful tool to carry on the activities that would keep the State safe and stable.

When the State has various mechanisms to know activities of individuals that could be a threat to the country, why should the State resort to illegal spying. If the country is safe today and it has not witnessed bomb blasts and major terrorist activities that marked the earlier regimes, it is because of the strong intelligence network. Terrorist modules have been caught whether in West Bengal or Uttar Pradesh before they could produce collateral damage by their actions.

Violation of the right to privacy by the State under exceptional circumstances is small price citizens pay to be safe and secure. The Government must keep them safe and enable them to pursue their dreams. The State needs to be successful 100 per cent every time to prevent any terrorist or such incidents. Terrorists need to be successful only once.

Rather than trying to shoot through the shoulders of others either as an accomplice or a victim, opposition leaders should do well to participate in the process of enacting privacy law that can be basis of similar legislations in other countries.

The writer is the convener of the Media Relations Department of the BJP and represents the party as a spokesperson on TV debates. He has authored the book ‘Narendra Modi: The Game Changer’. Views expressed are writer’s personal.

COMING OUT OF THE SHADOWS: HOW TO PROTECT MENTAL HEALTH OF TEENAGERS

July 27, 2021, 3:00 am

Emerging from waves of Covid-19 pandemic, more than ever, we must prioritise the mental health of the growing minds — the children and adolescents. It is our collective responsibility to keep the well-being of young ones at the forefront in the preparation for future Covid-19 waves and recovery plans. Generation Z is quietly perceiving the layers of changes in our lives since the virus encroached on our spaces in early 2020. Now, while the much-awaited return to school is exciting for many, there would be children feeling anxious or even frightened (UNICEF, Aug 2020) to go back to regular school.

This is a time of the year when adolescents would have been spending days at school and college in the company of hundreds of others, preparing for school rituals, sports events, carving out their future plans, but, throughout the last year and a half, they are instead trudging through a difficult new normal. The virus brought in many stressors to the psychological environment, the impact of which is yet to be played out in statistical data charts and graphs to analyse the repercussions on society and the upcoming generation. The pandemic control measures have contributed to new mental health issues or a worsening of existing ones in all but the impact ripples are far and wide or even beyond what we can think now in the teens and adolescent age group.

Some children or youth may be grieving the loss of a parent or a loved one, others may be living in fear of the disease or fear of losing a bread earner in the family or a job. Millions in our country have been dropped out of school despite their and parents’ best efforts to educate them due to their inability to get a device or internet connectivity.

Adolescents across all socio-economic groups have been struggling to adjust to a life without the structure that a traditional school day provides. Social isolation, lack of peer support and the need for personal/ real-world connection seems to be growing. The lost sense of school life’s demands and timely examinations to keep the learning minds occupied have been creating tension in the psychological environment of every child. Out of all, children of essential workers and homeless children are at increased risk for having to live within the confines of homes on their own without adult supervision and the other without the basic amenities of life now made worse under the pandemic.

Across socio-economic conditions, there are children trapped in dysfunctional families with physical, verbal and even sexual abuse, and there’re those living with stressed adults who have been resorting to substance abuse within the confines of homes. To add to the list, flaring up of cyber dependency has been alarmingly on the rise as screen time for children are now the highest in our recent history.

With increasing stress comes an increased risk for mental health symptoms or reemergence of dormant disease, at a time when there are fewer options for getting the support that can help lower stress levels. These are various factors identified as Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs), and we know from research studies that when young people have these early experiences, they face an increased risk of lifelong morbidity or mortality.

When schools begin to reopen, we will need to implement more formal structures for mental health screening in the institutes and community settings. We must take precautionary measures against stigma and superstitions affecting caregiving, and there should be social laws in place to minimise the stigma around mental health conditions.

We all know law affects the operation of stigma in society and is the most efficient tool for blunting the effects of prejudice and stigma by protecting the diseased person against harmful conduct from miscreants/ ignorant lot in the society. The authorities must propagate strong messages in the society to create an inclusive environment for the people needing psychiatric help. India’s mental healthcare system needs strengthening. The authorities should now proactively implement the Mental Healthcare Act 2017. And this is a time when there is a dire need for integrated mental healthcare policy in the country covering all aspects of a sick mind.

We also need to enhance mental health awareness and stigma-busting programs in the local dialect or language through government and private sector initiatives. We should expand social-emotional learning programs to help build resilience in the growing minds. Capacity building for mental health management is an immediate must to meet a looming calamity, and suicide prevention programs should be revamped. There is a serious shortage of mental healthcare workers in India, the numbers of which according to WHO are: psychiatrists (0.3), nurses (0.12), psychologists (0.07) and social workers (0.07) for a population of 100,000.

Tele-psychiatry may be an immediate possible solution with such deficient conditions and it has proven to be a promising tool with children and adolescents, more so in emergencies.

Authorities must support schools and behavioural health care agencies in working together to ensure that when schools reopen, students will have the mental health services they need on campuses and in their communities to provide screenings, interventions, and referrals.

Our young people are the future of our country. We must remember that the period from age 10 to 25 remains a critical time of brain development and maturation. Both the experiences our young people face now and the support they receive from us in coping with and navigating these challenges will have profound impacts on their abilities to be successful adults, parents, and citizens for years to come.

The writer is a medical doctor (pathologist) and holds an MA in Creative Writing from the University of London. The views expressed are personal.

22ND KARGIL VIJAY DIWAS CELEBRATED ACROSS THE COUNTRY

July 27, 2021, 2:16 am

The nation remembers the supreme sacrifices of soldiers killed during the Kargil War when India successfully recaptured the covertly occupied few outposts inside the Line of Control on this day twenty-two years ago. Ever since the victory in Operation Vijay, 26 July is celebrated the ‘Kargil Vijay Diwas’ every year. Kargil Vijay Diwas is commemorated every year as a saga of gallantry and valour of a battle fought in the most inhospitable terrain in the World in the area of Kargil-Drass Sector of Ladakh. On this day the Indian Armed Force braving most difficult terrain, battling extreme weather conditions fought valiantly on the steep slopes of icy peaks with grit and valour thus defeating the evil designs of the enemy and throwing the intruders out from Indian soil. The Kargil War – Operation Vijay was fought at an altitude of approximately 16,000 feet. The ceremony was attended by a limited number of serving personnel from all three services following all COVID-19 safety precautions and guidelines.

DEFENCE MINISTER PAYS HOMAGE AT NATIONAL WAR MEMORIAL ON KARGIL VIJAY DIWAS

Defence Minister Rajnath Singh paid homage to the fallen heroes on the 22nd anniversary of Kargil Vijay Diwas at the National War Memorial in New Delhi on Monday. The Defence Minister laid wreath in the honour of the bravehearts who made the supreme sacrifice in the service of the nation during India’s victory in ‘Operation Vijay’ in 1999, also known as Kargil conflict.

In his message in the visitors’ book at the National War Memorial, Shri Rajnath Singh recalled the valour of the bravehearts of the Kargil conflict, saying that nation will never forget the sacrifice made by the gallant heroes of Indian Armed Forces. He added that the grateful nation will always be indebted to their courage and continue to follow their ideals. In a tweet, the Defence Minister said the supreme sacrifice of the brave soldiers will inspire the generations to come. Rajnath Singh also shared a video message on Twitter in which he saluted the valour and sacrifice of the brave Indian soldiers. Minister of State for Defence Ajay Bhatt, Chief of the Air Staff Air Chief Marshal RKS Bhadauria, Chief of the Army Staff General MM Naravane, Defence Secretary Dr Ajay Kumar and Chief of Integrated Defence Staff to the Chairman Chiefs of Staff Committee (CISC) Vice Admiral Atul Kumar Jain also paid homage to the fallen heroes at the National War Memorial on the occasion. Senior civil and military officials of Ministry of Defence were also present on the occasion.

During the Kargil conflict, the gallant soldiers of the Indian Army, with the help of Indian Air Force, overcame insurmountable odds, hostile terrain and inclement weather to win against the enemy that had occupied dominating heights. On this momentous occasion, the proud nation is celebrating the victory by remembering the fallen heroes through various events across the country.

KARGIL VIJAY DIWAS CELEBRATED BY ANDAMAN & NICOBAR COMMAND

Andaman and Nicobar Command (ANC) celebrated Kargil Vijay Diwas at Birchgunj Military Station on Monday to commemorate India’s victory during the 1999 Kargil war. The wreath laying ceremony by a Joint- service guard, comprising all components of ANC, was organised to pay homage to the fallen heroes of the Kargil War, who made the supreme sacrifice, upholding the highest traditions of the Armed Forces. Commander-in-Chief Andaman and Nicobar Command (CINCAN) Lieutenant General Ajai Singh laid a wreath to honour the bravehearts. Veterans of all the three services residing in Andaman and Nicobar Islands were also invited for the function. The CINCAN also interacted with the troops. He called for jointness among the Armed Forces and preparedness at all times, saying that it provides an exponential advantage in the battle field. All COVID-19 protocol measures were followed by the personnel present at the event.

HOMAGE PAID TO KARGIL VEERS AT THE WAR MEMORIAL AT VISAKHAPATNAM

On the occasion of the 22nd Anniversary of Kargil Vijay Diwas, Eastern Naval Command paid homage to our brave soldiers who laid down their lives fighting for our country. Vice Admiral Sreekumar Nair, Director General Naval Projects, Visakhapatnam, Mr. Manish Kumar Sinha, Commissioner of Police, Visakhapatnam and Commodore Rahul Gokhale Commanding Officer INS Circars paid homage to the Veers of Kargil War in a solemn wreath-laying ceremony at ‘Victory at Sea’ War Memorial Visakhapatnam. A 50 men Guard of Honour was paraded on the occasion. The Guard performed the ‘Salami Shastra’ and Vice Adm Sreekumar Nair placed the floral wreath. While the bugler sounded the ‘Last Post’, a two-minute silence was observed.

HOMAGE PAID ON KARGIL VIJAY DIWAS AT SHAHEED SMARAK, MUMBAI

On the occasion of the 22nd Kargil Vijay Diwas on 26th July, a solemn wreath laying ceremony was conducted at Shaheed Smarak at Colaba, Mumbai to commemorate the victory of the Indian Armed Forces and to pay tribute to the supreme sacrifice of our martyrs. During the ceremony, wreaths were laid by Vice Admiral R. Hari Kumar, PVSM, AVSM, VSM, FOC-in-C Western Naval Command, followed by Lieutenant General S.K. Prashar, AVSM, VSM, General Officer Commanding Maharashtra Gujarat & Goa Area, Rear Admiral Atul Anand VSM, Flag Officer Commanding Maharashtra Naval Area and Group Captain Jitendra Dinkar Masurkar, VM officiating Air Officer Commanding, Headquarters Maritime Air Operations and other Senior officers from all three services.

SOUTHERN ARMY COMMANDER PAYS HOMAGE AT WAR MEMORIAL, PUNE

Headquarters Southern Command celebrated Kargil Vijay Diwas which commemorates the Indian Armed Forces victory over Pakistan in 1999. 26th July every year is celebrated as ‘Kargil Vijay Diwas’ across the nation as a mark of remembrance for those who fought bravely at the icy heights with valour, defeating the enemy. Lt Gen J.S. Nain, GOC-in-C Southern Army in a solemn wreath laying ceremony held at the National War memorial, Pune paid tribute to the brave hearts of Kargil War who made the supreme sacrifice in maintaining the territorial integrity of the nation. Maj Gen Hukkur A.K. (Retd) the senior most veteran from Pune also laid wreath and paid homage to the Kargil War heroes. A week long celebration activities were organised across all Military Stations in Southern Command wherein Gallantry Award winners, veterans and veer naaris were felicitated during various events.“Kargil veterans are a source of inspiration to all of us in the Armed Forces and the nation. Their supreme sacrifice and service can never be forgotten,” said the Army Commander. He also felicitated the veterans present at the National War Memorial. During his interaction he gave assurance to all the veterans that the Indian Army is moving very strongly in the right directions as set by them and is absolutely committed and ready for any eventuality. The ceremony was conducted keeping strict COVID protocols with limited attendance.

ARMY CELEBRATES KARGIL VIJAY DIWAS

July 26 is observed as Kargil Vijay Diwas in memory of soldiers who sacrificed their life in Kargil War which took place from 3rd March to 26th July 1999. The day commemorates the success of “Operation Vijay” which was launched to recapture Indian territories occupied by Pakistani intruders in the Kargil-Drass sector in 1999. Kargil Vijay Diwas is a symbol of fearless determination and exceptional valour of Indian Armed Forces.

On the 22nd anniversary of Kargil Vijay Diwas, Sh Conrad Sangma, Chief Minister of Meghalaya and Lt Gen KC Panchanathan, AVSM, GOC 101 Area garlanded the busts of Capt K.C. Nongrum, MVC (P) and Maj David Manlun, KC (P), the two brave hearts from Meghalaya, who laid down their lives for honour of their motherland at Rhino Heritage Museum, Shillong. The Chief Minister interacted with the families of the heroes who were also present for the occasion. Later Air Marshal Amit Dev, AVSM, VSM, AOC-in-C Eastern Air Comd, Lt Gen KC Panchanathan, AVSM, GOC 101 Area and Lt Gen PC Nair, AVSM, YSM, DGAR laid wreaths at Rhino Prerna Sthal, Shillong in the memory of brave hearts who had made supreme sacrifice in Operation Vijay. The event was also attended by serving personnel and veterans.

GAJRAJ CORPS PAYS TRIBUTES TO WAR HEROES ON THE OCCASION OF KARGIL VIJAY DIWAS

On the occasion of Kargil Vijay Diwas, General Officer Commanding Gajraj Corps Tezpur Lt Gen Ravin Khosla laid wreath and paid tributes to the bravehearts of the Kargil War who sacrificed their lives to safeguard the sovereignty and integrity of the country, at Gajraj War Memorial in Tezpur on Monday. Kargil Vijay Diwas is celebrated every year on July 26 to commemorate India’s resounding victory over Pakistan in Operation Vijay in 1999.The Kargil war is regarded as a testimony of the Indian Armed Force’s grit and determination, in which the soldiers exhibited dauntless courage, resilience, valour and fought against all odds in the high altitude mountains in Kargil. Indian Army evicted the entrenched infiltrators from the icy heights and ensured a convincing victory for the country.

ASSAM RIFLES COMMEMORATES 22ND KARGIL VIJAY DIWAS IN MIZORAM

The battalions of 23 Sector Assam Rifles under the aegis of HQ IGAR(East) on Monday joined the nation in remembering the heroes of nation and celebrating 22nd anniversary of Indian Army’s victory in “Operation Vijay”. A grateful nation commemorates 26th July every year as “Kargil Vijay Diwas” to mark the victory of Indian Armed Forces against the intruders in icy heights of Kargil on this day. To pay tribute to the supreme sacrifice of our martyrs, a solemn wreath laying ceremony was organized at Assam Rifles War Memorial in Aizawl, Mizoram. Dr. Kambhampati Hari Babu, Governor of Mizoram graced the event as chief guest and also laid a wreath to honor the courage, valor and sacrifice of our martyrs.

The event also included visit of the Governor to the historical Quarter Guard of Assam Rifles. The construction of this historic building dates back to 1898, when this formed nucleus of ‘Aijal Fort’. The Aizawl city has developed with this building as its epicentre. Two majestic cannons used in the Battle of Waterloo placed in this building by Lt Col J Shakespeare, then superintendent of Lushai Hills add to the grandeur of the Quarter Guard. A motivational movie was screened at Serchhip showcasing the honour and valour of the martyrs during the Kargil war. An online quiz competition was organised at Lunglei for the kids as part of the Vijay Diwas celebrations.

KARGIL VIJAY DIWAS 2021 CELEBRATED AT KARGIL WAR MEMORIAL

The solemn ceremony to celebrate the 22nd anniversary of the Kargil Vijay Diwas at the Kargil War Memorial, Dras was held with Mr. R.K. Mathur, Lt Governor as the Chief Guest who laid a wreath and paid his tributes to the fallen soldiers in a ceremony held at Kargil War Memorial, symbolising ‘Shradhanjali’ from the entire nation to the bravehearts. This year’s Kargil Vijay Diwas celebrations were unique in two ways as the Kargil Vijay Diwas coincided with the ‘Swarnim Vijay Varsh Victory Flame’ reaching the Kargil War Memorial. The journey of the Victory Flame across the country commemorates 50 years of triumph in the 1971 Indo-Pak War.

On 26th July, at the Kargil War Memorial, the proceedings commenced with the reception of the ‘Swarnim Vijay Varsh Victory Flame’ at the Kargil War Memorial by General Bipin Rawat, Chief of Defence Staff in the presence of Lt Gen Y.K. Joshi, GOC-in-C Northern Command, Lt Gen P.G.K. Menon, GOC 14 Corps, Lt Gen D.P. Pandey, GOC 15 Corps and Lt Gen M.V. Suchindra Kumar, GOC 16 Corps, other officers, gallantry awardees, Veer Naris, NoKs of martyrs and civil dignitaries. It was followed by a solemn Wreath Laying Ceremony by esteemed civil and military dignitaries. The gallantry awardees of the Kargil War, next of kin of bravehearts, and veer naris also paid their tributes to the fallen heroes with tearful nostalgia. Every year on this day, the nation pays homage to the supreme sacrifices made by our bravehearts during Operation VIJAY in the Kargil War of 1999.

GAJRAJ CORPS PAYS TRIBUTES TO WAR HEROES ON THE OCCASION OF KARGIL VIJAY DIWAS

On the occasion of Kargil Vijay Diwas, General Officer Commanding Gajraj Corps Tezpur Lt Gen Ravin Khosla layed wreath and paid tributes to the bravehearts of the Kargil War who sacrificed their lives to safeguard the sovereignty and integrity of the Country, at Gajraj War Memorial in Tezpur on Monday. Kargil Vijay Diwas is celebrated every year on July 26 to commemorate India’s resounding victory over Pakistan in Operation Vijay in 1999. The Kargil war is regarded as a testimony of the Indian Armed Force’s grit and determination, in which the soldiers exhibited dauntless courage, resilience, valour and fought against all odds in the high altitude mountains in Kargil. Indian Army evicted the entrenched infiltrators from the icy heights and ensured a convincing victory for the country.

CHEMICALS FOUND IN CONSUMER PRODUCTS COULD INCREASE BREAST CANCER RISK

July 22, 2021, 7:04 am

A new study has shown that several common chemicals, including ingredients in consumer products and drinking water contaminants, could increase the risk of breast cancer by causing cells in breast tissue to produce more of the hormones estrogen or progesterone. The findings of the study appeared in the journal ‘Environmental Health Perspectives’. Every day, people are exposed to synthetic chemicals through the products they use. For many of these chemicals, the health effects are unknown.

However, this study has found the adverse effects of these chemicals and how it may increase the risk of breast cancer. “The connection between estrogen and progesterone and breast cancer is well established,” said co-author Ruthann Rudel, a toxicologist and research director at Silent Spring Institute. “So, we should be extremely cautious about chemicals in products that increase levels of these hormones in the body,” added Rudel. For instance, in 2002, when the Women’s Health Initiative study found combination hormone replacement therapy to be associated with an increased risk of breast cancer, women stopped taking the drugs and incidence rates went down.

“Not surprisingly, one of the most common therapies for treating breast cancer is a class of drugs called aromatase inhibitors that lower levels of estrogen in the body, depriving breast cancer cells of the hormones they need to grow,” said Rudel. To identify these chemical risk factors, Rudel and Silent Spring scientist Bethsaida Cardona combed through data on more than 2000 chemicals generated by the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA)’s ToxCast program.

The goal of ToxCast is to improve the ability of scientists to predict whether a chemical will be harmful or not. The program uses automated chemical screening technologies to expose living cells to chemicals and then examine the different biological changes they cause.

Reporting in the journal Environmental Health Perspectives, Rudel and Cardona identified 296 chemicals that were found to increase estradiol or progesterone in cells in the laboratory. 71 chemicals were found to increase levels of both hormones. The chemicals included ingredients in personal care products, chemical flame retardants in building materials and furnishings, and a number of pesticides.

The researchers don’t yet know how these chemicals are causing cells to produce more hormones. It could be the chemicals are acting as aromatase activators, for instance, which would lead to higher levels of estrogen, said Cardona. “What we do know is that women are exposed to multiple chemicals from multiple sources on a daily basis, and that these exposures add up.” The Silent Spring researchers hope this study will be a wake-up call for regulators and manufacturers in how they test chemicals for safety.

STUDY SHOWS WHY SECOND DOSE OF COVID-19 VACCINE SHOULD NOT BE SKIPPED

July 22, 2021, 7:01 am

The second dose of a COVID-19 vaccine induces a powerful boost to a part of the immune system that provides broad antiviral protection, according to a study led by investigators at the Stanford University School of Medicine.

The findings published in the journal Nature strongly supports the view that the second shot should not be skipped. “Despite their outstanding efficacy, little is known about how exactly RNA vaccines work,” said Bali Pulendran, PhD, professor of pathology and of microbiology and immunology. “So we probed the immune response induced by one of them in exquisite detail.”

The study was designed to find out exactly what effects the vaccine, marketed by Pfizer Inc., has on the numerous components of the immune response.

The researchers analyzed blood samples from individuals inoculated with the vaccine. They counted antibodies, measured levels of immune-signalling proteins and characterized the expression of every single gene in the genome of 242,479 separate immune cells’ type and status. “The world’s attention has recently been fixed on COVID-19 vaccines, particularly on the new RNA vaccines,” said Pulendran, the Violetta L. Horton Professor II.

He shares senior authorship of the study with Kari Nadeau, MD, PhD, the Naddisy Foundation Professor of Pediatric Food, Allergy, Immunology, and Asthma and professor of paediatrics, and Purvesh Khatri, PhD, associate professor of biomedical informatics and of biomedical data science. The study’s lead authors are Prabhu Arunachalam, PhD, a senior research scientist in Pulendran’s lab; medical student Madeleine Scott, PhD, a former graduate student in Khatri’s lab; and Thomas Hagan, PhD, a former postdoctoral scholar in Pulendran’s Stanford lab and now an assistant professor at the Yerkes National Primate Research Center in Atlanta. “This is the first time RNA vaccines have ever been given to humans, and we have no clue as to how they do what they do: offer 95% protection against COVID-19,” said Pulendran.

Traditionally, the chief immunological basis for approval of new vaccines has been their ability to induce neutralizing antibodies: individualized proteins, created by immune cells called B cells, that can tack themselves to a virus and block it from infecting cells. “Antibodies are easy to measure,” Pulendran said. “But the immune system is much more complicated than that. Antibodies alone don’t come close to fully reflecting its complexity and potential range of protection.”

Pulendran and his colleagues assessed goings-on among all the immune cell types influenced by the vaccine: their numbers, their activation levels, the genes they express and the proteins and metabolites they manufacture and secrete upon inoculation.

One key immune-system component examined by Pulendran and his colleagues were T cells: search-and-destroy immune cells that don’t attach themselves to viral particles as antibodies do but rather probe the body’s tissues for cells bearing telltale signs of viral infections. On finding them, they tear those cells up.

In addition, the innate immune system, an assortment of first-responder cells, is now understood to be of immense importance.

It’s the body’s sixth sense, Pulendran said, whose constituent cells are the first to become aware of a pathogen’s presence. Although they’re not good at distinguishing among separate pathogens, they secrete “starting gun” signalling proteins that launch the response of the adaptive immune system- the B and T cells that attack specific viral or bacterial species or strains. During the week or so it takes for the adaptive immune system to rev up, innate immune cells perform the mission-critical task of holding incipient infections at bay by gobbling up — or firing noxious substances, albeit somewhat indiscriminately, at — whatever looks like a pathogen to them.

The Pfizer vaccine, like the one made by Moderna Inc., works quite differently from the classic vaccines composed of live or dead pathogens, individual proteins or carbohydrates that train the immune system to zero in on a particular microbe and wipe it out. The Pfizer and Moderna vaccines instead contain genetic recipes for manufacturing the spike protein that SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, uses to latch on to cells it infects.

In December 2020, Stanford Medicine began inoculating people with the Pfizer vaccine. This spurred Pulendran’s desire to assemble a complete report card on the immune response to it. The team selected 56 healthy volunteers and drew blood samples from them at multiple time points preceding and following the first and second shots. The researchers found that the first shot increases SARS-CoV-2-specific antibody levels, as expected, but not nearly as much as the second shot does. The second shot also does things the first shot doesn’t do, or barely does.

“The second shot has powerful beneficial effects that far exceed those of the first shot,” Pulendran said. “It stimulated a manifold increase in antibody levels, a terrific T-cell response that was absent after the first shot alone, and a strikingly enhanced innate immune response.”

Unexpectedly, Pulendran said, the vaccine — particularly the second dose — caused the massive mobilization of a newly discovered group of first-responder cells that are normally scarce and quiescent. First identified in a recent vaccine study led by Pulendran, these cells- a small subset of generally abundant cells called monocytes that express high levels of antiviral genes — barely budge in response to actual COVID-19 infection. But Pfizer vaccine-induced them.

This special group of monocytes, which are part of the innate museum, constituted only 0.01 per cent of all circulating blood cells prior to vaccination. But after the second Pfizer vaccine shot, their numbers expanded 100-fold to account for a full 1 per cent of all blood cells.