SOCIAL ISSUE
SEX RATIO IN HARYANA TOUCHES 900 MARK FOR THE FIRST TIME IN 20 YEARS
· Prime Minister Narendra Modi launched the ambitious “Beti Bachao, Beti Padhao” (B3P) campaign against female foeticide in Panipat in January 2015. Two years later, Haryana, notorious for its skewed sex ratio and patriarchal mindset, saw a historic turnaround.
· Sex ratio at birth (SRB) in the State this past year touched the 900-mark for the first time in almost two decades.
· “The Prime Minister chose Haryana to launch the 'Beti Bachao, Beti Padhao' campaign. The correction of sex ratio in the State was an uphill task, but we accepted the challenge. The SRB in December 2016 was 914. We have to achieve 950, for which we will need support from our neighbouring States. The good news is that Haryana has shown the way and taken the lead in correcting the sex ratio in the country,” said Chief Minister Manohar Lal Khattar in a statement to The Hindu.
· This improvement was made possible due to effective implementation of the law against illegal sex determination and female foeticide.
· Multi-pronged strategy
· Convergence of all departments at the district-level, coupled with strong political will and co-ordinated efforts by all districts in the State, helped achieve this goal, said officials.
· “A special B3P cell was created by the Chief Minister’s Office to monitor the programme. Since convergence of many departments was required, besides the need to deal with the Attorney-General, due to which many cases went to the High Court, it was constantly monitored by the CMO. The Chief Minister held a video-conference with the Deputy Commissioners every month to monitor the progress. A social media group, moderated by the Additional Principal Secretary to the Chief Minister, was created to share and exchange information. This forum enabled healthy competition between different districts and helped them learn from each other’s experiences,” said a senior official associated with the programme.
Enforcing the law
· As part of its strategy, the State initiated an aggressive drive against female foeticide by ensuring stringent implementation of the Pre-Conception and Pre-Natal Diagnostic Techniques (PCPNDT) Act, 1994, and the Medical Terminal of Pregnancy (MTP) Act. As a result, 391 first information reports were lodged in the State since May 2015 and more than 1,000 offenders arrested.
· Doctors, paramedics and quacks were found involved in the illegal practice. In a few cases, political leaders were also part of the unholy nexus, including a case each in Karnal and Hisar.
· The first positive result of the strict enforcement was visible in December 2015, when the SRB touched the 900-mark for the month for the first time. “The results were encouraging and reinforced what we were doing,” said the official.
· Sex selective abortions are mostly conducted in the fourth month of pregnancy.
· Creating awareness through regular meetings, street plays and rallies in urban and rural areas was another key aspect of the programme. Those associated with the programme admitted that Haryana girls, including Sakshi Malik, Geeta Phogat, Babita and Deepa Malik, winning laurels for the country in sports helped the cause “tremendously”.
· However, the programme now faces new challenges: the mushrooming of illegal ultrasound centres near Haryana in Delhi, Rajasthan, Punjab and Uttar Pradesh. Haryana government officials have conducted 74 inter-State raids over the past year in this connection, with 37 (the maximum) in Uttar Pradesh alone.
A RIGHTS BILL GONE WRONG
o The Transgender Persons Bill 2016 is the product of an insincere attempt at lawmaking
o A disturbing facet of lawmaking in India is that laws are often drafted without in-depth research, as a result of which they are misinformed and remain paper tigers. Another is that a culture of tokenism prevails regarding pressing social issues, seen most recently in The Transgender Persons (Protection of Rights) Bill, 2016.
Radical changes in draft
o In April 2014, the Supreme Court delivered the landmark judgment of NALSA v. Union of India, which affirmed the fundamental rights of transgender persons. The court gave a series of directives to the government to institute welfare measures for transgender persons, including affirmative action. It also directed that the Expert Committee Report prepared by the Ministry of Social Justice and Empowerment (MSJE) be implemented.
o In December 2014, Tiruchi Siva, a Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam Rajya Sabha MP, introduced the Rights of Transgender Persons Bill, 2014 as a Private Member’s Bill. On April 24, 2015, in a rare instance, the Rajya Sabha unanimously passed the Bill. However, it never made it to the Lok Sabha.
o Instead, the government decided to get its own Bill — The Rights of Transgender Persons Bill, 2015 — drafted, which was put up for public comments in December. The 2015 Bill was largely based on the 2014 Bill, but it did away with provisions on Transgender Rights Courts and the National and State Commissions. The Ministry also consulted civil society and activists.
o The 2016 Bill has now been referred to a Standing Committee.
o To start with, the 2016 Bill in many ways falls short in its substantive content.
§ Clause 2(i) of the Bill, which defines the term ‘transgender person’, has been inexplicably borrowed from a provision of the Australian Sex Discrimination Amendment (Sexual Orientation, Gender Identity and Intersex Status) Act 2013, which defines the term ‘intersex’.
§ This, even though the Expert Committee Report clearly explained the difference between transgender and intersex identities. The 2014 and 2015 Bills had more accurate definitions of the term transgender.
§ In fact, the 2015 Bill was the most progressive in this regard as it granted a transgender person the right to identify as either ‘man’, ‘woman’, or ‘transgender’.
§ Another problem is the absence of a provision on reservation, running contrary to the NALSA judgment and the 2014 and 2015 Bills which directed reservations for transgender persons.
o Not a rights-based approach
o While the NALSA judgment is couched in rights language, locating the fundamental rights of transgender persons in the golden trinity of Articles 14, 19 and 21 of the Constitution, the 2016 Bill, though it uses the word “rights” in its title, deviates from a rights-based approach and leaves transgender persons at the mercy of the “benevolent” state. This is puzzling considering that the 2014 and 2015 Bills, and even other recent laws like the Rights of Persons with Disabilities Act, 2016 and the Mental Healthcare Bill, 2016, are framed in rights language.
o Further, the Bill is completely silent on how its content will impact the operation of existing laws. Most laws, including of marriage, adoption and succession, continue to be based on the binary of male and female. Criminal laws, especially those dealing with sexual offences, also continue to be gendered.
o The cisnormative (the assumption that everyone has a gender identity that matches the sex the person was assigned at birth) foundation of the law remains a significant barrier to access to legal justice for transgender persons.
o Jurisdictions like the U.K., Ireland, Argentina and Malta, which have legislated on transgender rights, clarify in their laws the impact gender change will have on existing legal institutions that are inaccessible to persons with non-conforming genders.
o The NALSA judgment too recognises the need for making civil rights accessible to transgender persons. However, the Bill fails to take this into account.
o Finally, none of the Bills have addressed the issue of Section 377, which is frequently used to harass transgender persons, specifically transgender women. The conventional understanding of Section 377 is that it criminalises all sex that is not between people of opposite genders.
o But recognising trans-rights means recognising that there are more than the “opposite” genders of male and female. Embracing rights of persons with non-conforming genders while criminalising persons with non-conforming sexual orientations is thus absurd.
o The 2016 Bill is the product of an uninterested and insincere attempt at lawmaking. India is within touching distance of enabling the legal empowerment of a hitherto marginalised community and it would be a shame if it squandered the opportunity by passing a bad law.
MIND THE GENDER GAP
· During the 2014 national and State elections, for the first time women’s safety and empowerment were topics of debate, marking a significant shift in how gender concerns are viewed by the political class as well as by voters in India.
· In the two years since, policy focus and public scrutiny on persistent gender inequality has grown exponentially. In 2015, 194 member states, including India, adopted the Sustainable Development Goals.
· Gender equality is one of the 17 goals to “transform our world”. This year, India ratified the Paris Agreement. The direct link between empowering women and alleviating poverty, increasing productivity, and combating climate change is well-recognized.
· However, the lack of targeted resources is often stated to be the biggest reason behind the sluggish progress in furthering the gender agenda. Therefore, it is important that India’s budget priorities reflect its commitment to invest in women and girls.
· Last year, the World Economic Forum’s annual Global Gender Gap Report ranked India 87 in terms of gender equality in economy, education, health, and political representation.
· Women’s declining labour participation, under-representation in Parliament, skewed child sex ratio, and prevalent gender-based violence are recognized challenges.
· To bridge these gaps, India formally adopted Gender Responsive Budgeting (GRB) in 2005. The rationale behind GRB is that policy outcomes are not as gender-neutral as commonly believed, and can reinforce or exacerbate exiting hierarchies.
· Hence, gender budgeting initiatives aim to integrate critical gender concerns into fiscal policies and administration to address disparities.
· Every annual budget since 2005 has included a statement that lists out two parts. There is Part A, which reflects ‘Women Specific Schemes’, namely, those which have 100 per cent allocation for women, and Part B, which reflects ‘Pro Women Schemes’, namely, where at least 30 per cent of the allocation is for women.
· Over the years, India has stood out for its implementation of gender budgeting, and with the Ministry of Finance (MoF) playing the central role, it has managed to successfully institutionalize the concept at both the national and State levels (16 States have embraced the exercise).
· Studies substantiate the positive link between GRB and improved indicators for women. For instance, a recent International Monetary Fund study found that States that employ GRB also show better female to male school enrolment ratios. Further, it was observed that GRB also has a positive impact on infrastructure spending.
Decentralization of funding
· Despite the successes, better implementation and planning are needed to ensure that these policies percolate right down to the last woman in the most remote parts of the country. In recent years, allocations have either remained stagnant or have been on the decline. For instance, Budget 2016-17 was widely considered to be a mixed bag for women. While the Ministry of Women and Child Development and National Commission for Women saw nominal increases, the scheme meant for implementing the Domestic Violence Act did not receive any allocation. Further, there was a decline in the number of ministries and departments that fall under GRB. The budget also initiated the decentralization of funding in GRB, thus shifting the onus for budgeting and implementation from the Central Ministry to State counterparts. While this did empower the States to come up with women-specific policies as per their respective challenges, the obvious downside was the risk that States could choose to not prioritize gender in their budgeting. In this way, the intent of universalizing the process, so that it equally benefits women in all States, was lost in the pragmatism of the move.
· For it to be truly effective, GRB must be viewed as an essential tool to tackle societal inequality that hinders progress instead of a symbolic exercise for pleasing the emerging women constituency. So far, GRB has focussed on identifying schemes that are exclusively dedicated to women.
· While this focus is imperative, it has restricted benefits without the incorporation of a gender lens across all welfare schemes. Sectors such as energy, urban development, food security, water supply and sanitation continue to operate in silos, despite having causal interrelationships with women’s empowerment. Policies carried out by these sectors do have a different impact on men and women.
· Therefore, moving forward, every budget presents the opportunity to mainstream gender in the policy environment, and demonstrate the commitment to include and enable women’s inclusion in India’s growth story.
· Equally, women’s potential in enabling development, instead of being passive beneficiaries of it, must be recognized in these processes. Commendably, the MoF organizes pre-budget consultations. It must be ensured that women are given adequate representation and opportunities to voice their different experiences on such platforms.
· Gender budgeting alone is not sufficient to tackle deep-rooted gender disparities. However, policies can be more effective if budgeting takes a broader, gendered approach which includes planning targeted interventions, getting the right policy push with the right budget allocation, and monitoring and evaluation mechanisms to ensure implementation.
· Moreover, policies should also be flexible to change based on feedback from the intended recipients as their exclusion from planning and execution processes is often the reason behind the failure of well-intentioned policies.
· It would also help if the Central government could, through an incentive mechanism, encourage State governments to take up GBR as a priority in their budget layouts. As the government gears up to present the Union budget in February, it will hopefully keep current realities and feedback in mind. While some issues can be debatable, the need to urgently address gender inequality is not.
JALLIKATTU BAN TO STAY AS SC REFUSES TO BE HURRIED INTO JUDGMENT
· The Supreme Court on Thursday refused to be hurried into pronouncing its order on a government notification allowing jallikattu before Pongal (Saturday).
· A Bench led by Justice Dipak Misra on Thursday termed the plea made during mentioning hour by a group of lawyers "simply unfair". Justice Misra said the process of drafting the judgment had just begun and pronouncement would take time.
· The notification, issued by the Centre on January 7 last year, had sought to circumvent an apex court ban on jallikattu in 2014.
· The notification had re-introduced bulls into the fold of 'performing animals' under the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals Act of 1960, thus giving an indirect nod to jallikattu, which the court had described as an act of "inherent cruelty". The court had stayed the notification on pleas made by animal activists. Justice Misra, who is heading the bench hearing the case, also declined permission to file an application for an interim lifting of the stay on the government notification for Pongal.
· The Tamil Nadu government had vehemently argued in favour of the notification, saying that it had introduced stringent controls over the conduct of jallikattu. "For 30 seconds or 15 feet, whichever is longer, the bull runs and is embraced by a tamer. What is the cruelty in that?” Tamil Nadu government had asked in the main hearings on the January 7 notification.
Additional Solicitor General P.S. Narasimha had argued against “absolute prohibitionism” in the case of jallikattu. It has to acknowledge that the government should be allowed a degree of flexibility in particular cases. The Centre had contended that jallikattu was inextricably linked to the rural life of Tamil Nadu, where villagers cannot shed their centuries-old culture and “go watch Formula One racing”.
On November 16, 2016, the Bench dismissed the State government's review petition against the 2014 judgment, saying the very act of "taming a bull" was counter to the concept of welfare of the animal under the 1960 Act.
EFFECTS OF ENDOSULFAN DEVASTATING
· Describing the effects of Endosulfan as “devastating,” the Supreme Court on Tuesday directed the Kerala government to release the entire compensation to over 5,000 victims, mostly newborns, and their families in three months.
· A three-judge Bench led by Chief Justice of India J.S. Khehar said the State of Kerala can initiate legal proceedings to recover the compensation money from pesticide companies responsible for the production and sale of the highly controversial but cheap agrochemical. The apex court said the State government can also approach the Central government.
‘Welfare state’
· Kerala has earmarked over ?180 crore for the payment of compensation to victims, some of whom are terminally ill from the effects of the pesticide which was aerially sprayed on cashew plantations adjoining habitats where the victims are located.
· The State has paid cash compensation ranging from ?2 lakh to ?5 lakh to the victims. It said the entire rehabilitation scheme, including a multi-speciality hospital, would cost over ?500 crore.
· Kerala counsel G. Prakash said a request to the Centre to spare ?486 crore for the victims fell on deaf ears despite the Kerala High Court decision highlighting the gravity of the health issues caused by the pesticide.
· “You are a welfare state ... Why don’t you make a package? Are you not concerned of your obligations as a welfare state? Why don’t you frame uniform norms for compensation? This is devastating,” CJI Khehar observed while perusing the records, pictures and news clips submitted by the petitioner, Democratic Youth Federation of India (DYFI), portraying the health crisis left behind by the pesticide. Disposing of the petition, the court said the State should consider providing life-time medical facilities to Endosulfan victims.
· In 2011, the Supreme Court ordered the immediate ban of Endosulfan while disregarding pleas of over 150 private export companies. It had said “any decision affecting human life, or which may put an individual’s life at risk, must call for the most anxious scrutiny.”
‘Social responsibility’
· “Every industry should look into corporate social responsibility also, you cannot just look at the money. For us cost is not the only point, even if one child suffers we do not want it on our heads. We hope it is the same for you,” then Chief Justice of India S.H. Kapadia had told the pesticide manufacturers.
· The Bench led by Chief Justice Khehar also issued a contempt notice against a group for its advertisement in an English daily in March 2012, accompanied by a picture of Chief Justice Kapadia (as he was then), claiming that the medical reports and surveys on Endosulfan victims were “fabricated.” .
STRATEGIC PARTNERSHIP REALLY
· Bilateral relations coast on diplomatic niceties and joint statements invariably use flowery language to describe relationships in the best possible terms. Nevertheless, India’s decisions over the past two decades to upgrade more than 30 of its bilateral relationships to “strategic partnerships” are excessive. While there may be many ways to parse the term, its usage in international diplomacy is fairly clear: it defines a bilateral relationship more important than others, but stops short of an actual alliance. The term “strategic” further implies a future convergence of interests in areas that are vital: security, defence and investment.
· If that is the case, India’s latest strategic partnership signed with the east African country of Rwanda, after Prime Minister Narendra Modi met Rwandan President Paul Kagame in Gandhinagar this week, warrants further study. Rwanda is a land-locked country with 90 per cent of its population engaged in subsistence agriculture. It is also still recovering from the mass murder of large sections of its Hutu population in 1994, though the country has registered remarkable progress and growth in the last few years.
· While it may therefore be an important destination for India’s development assistance, it is difficult to see how it qualifies as a “strategic partner”, particularly given that India is yet to set up a full diplomatic mission in the country; the last time New Delhi even sent a delegation to Kigali was in 2012.
· Given all of this, it would seem that the government’s move was more about window-dressing the relationship than imbuing it with any meaningful substance.
· Mr. Modi’s is not the first government to use the term “strategic partnership” lightly. Since 1998, when India announced its first strategic partnership with France, successive governments have signed such partnerships with dozens of countries. While relations with each of these are important, they are not vital to India’s interests.
· The nomenclature also begs a question: if all the countries on the list are strategically important, what does this mean for countries on the UN Security Council such as the U.S., the U.K., France, Russia and China, or others such as Japan, Australia, and some of the neighbours who genuinely contribute to India’s security and economic interests and who have also signed strategic-partnership agreements with New Delhi?
· Clearly, a more cogent policy with clear-cut criteria for strategic partnerships must be considered by the Ministry of External Affairs, with the focus on countries with which there is a long-term vision on securing India’s needs, coupled with a convergence of strategic interests.
