Seven steps to an economic rebalancing - The Hindu

23rd May 2014 - Link

Indian economy. After smooth sailing at close to nine per cent growth rate it suddenly dropped to less than five per cent in a very short time, leaving behind unemployment, social unrest, banking woes and stuck projects in its wake.

Seven Steps for Economic Rebalancing

1.Needs to rebalance savings and investments which have deflated over the recent past and are inadequate to sustain a high rate of growth.

2.The share of manufacturing in GDP must be stepped up in accordance with the employment imperative and the need to build an advanced knowledge-intensive, technology-based product profile.

3.The economic mindset has to incorporate a much faster pace of planned urbanisation, along with a humane approach, which would foster higher economic productivity given all factors of production.

4.India’s financial sector requires modernisation and integration with the larger global system, a task which was interrupted by the global financial crisis.

5.India’s major resource — its people — must be critically upgraded in order to effectively participate in a knowledge-driven global economy.

6.Our global integration in terms of the flow of goods, services, technology and funds must be greatly expanded.

7.We must strategise to redress the massive infrastructure gap that we currently face.

WHAT the new government has to do?

1.It needs to focus on immediate measures that would moderate inflation and bring in new growth drivers.

2.It would need to lay strong foundations in all these rebalancing imperatives in order to ensure sustained high growth over the next two to three decades. 

3.Remove poverty and improve the quality of life by improving human development indices. 

4.Create the right conditions of governance, macroeconomic stability, and policy framework for private sector entrepreneurship to flourish.

HOW can the new government do it?

The new government could achieve the required stability and rebalance the economy by focussing on the following sectors:

Agriculture:

Immediate action: Better food-grain management. 

In the long run: 

1.Water management:

It can play a critical role in unleashing a new era of agriculture growth, including new irrigation facilities, water user charges, mapping of micro-districts for best usage, and interlinking of rivers.(Narendra Modi has already announced - Pradhan Mantri Krishi Seechayee Yojana.) 

2.Strengthening of supply chains, both for agri inputs such as fertilizers, farm mechanisation and seeds as also for upstream investments in storage and cold chains. 

3.Corporate sector participation through novel ideas like land leasing, and farmer-producer cooperatives.

Taxation and Savings:

Immediate action: Lower interest rates that could kick-start new household consumption and corporate investments.

In the long run:

1.The Goods and Services Tax is one overarching reform measure that can immediately meet many economic targets such as lowering inflation, raising economic efficiency and productivity, and incentivising investments. 

Steps:

• The government must act quickly to resolve last mile issues to forge an agreement with States and introduce GST without delay
• Stability on tax policies is essential to revive investor sentiment and bring in more capital, particularly from overseas. 

2.Investments need to be greatly escalated in all infrastructure sectors, including power, transport and urban development, among others, as the country can absorb $10 trillion worth of new infrastructure over the next three decades.

Steps:

• Look into restarting the infrastructure and manufacturing projects already on the ground by creating a strong institutional mechanism for project oversight.
• Unlocking stranded projects would be the fastest way to create demand for upstream and downstream sectors.
• Need to identify top projects with multiplier impact and roll them out on the fast track.

3.Strengthening the corporate bond market to make it more efficient and vibrant.

Steps:

• New financial instruments.
• Calibrated tax measures.
• Rationalisation of stamp duties.

Energy Management:

Key constraints for sectors such as manufacturing and infrastructure is the lack of adequate power capacity.

Immediate action: Holistic energy policy to bring together thermal, hydro and renewable sources.

In the long run:  

1.Resolve challenges in electricity pricing, transmission and regulation

Steps:

The Electricity Act, 2003 sets a sound foundation and can be updated to encourage minimisation of transmission and distribution (T&D) losses and strengthen the finances of distribution companies, including by reducing subsidies. 

2.The mining sector is a key corollary to the energy effort as a lack of fuel supply linkages has stymied large power capacities from going on-stream. 

Steps:

• All angles including exploration, bidding and mining practices have to be explored.
• The private sector should be incentivised to play a stronger role in these areas.
• Complicated procedures in environment clearances, land acquisition and other processes in delaying projects and raising transaction costs would have to be streamlined and fast-tracked.

Employment Generation:

1.Leveraging Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA) funds for skill development.

2.Deploying private sector expertise under the Apprenticeship Act. 

3.Expansion of the number of Industrial Training Institutes (ITI) and more vocational trades.

4.Consolidate laws as well as shift some social security obligations from the government to the private sector.

Global Trade:

Building export competitiveness would enable India to have a larger presence in global value chains. 

Steps:

• A comprehensive suite of steps to identify the right products and strategies in conjunction with India’s product profile and comparative advantages are central to this endeavour.
• Effective marketing in key global destinations and making India a favoured investment destination can be conducted in tandem.

The rights of prisoners with disabilities - The Hindu

20th May 2014 - Link


No person shall be subjected to degrading, inhuman or cruel punishment that is violative of human dignity; the duty of care to be exercised in this matter during pre-trial custody is of a much higher order. These are standards applicable to all custodial situations and to all persons, irrespective of caste, sex, race, religion, or place of birth.


Treatment in custody

The Veena Sethi case:(early 1980s) 

• Brought to light the treatment of prisoners with mental illnesses and their prolonged incarceration for periods ranging from 16 to 30 years in custody.
• Without bringing them any substantive relief beyond release from illegal custody and transport and food expenses till they reached home. 

Dr. G.N. Saibaba case:

• The conditions under which he is being held in custody.
• The fact needs close and urgent examination here is not whether he has Maoist “links” or whether he is a “sympathiser” or even whether a university professor can be harassed in this manner. 

Laws in this matter


1.UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (UNCRPD):

The Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities is an international human rights treaty of the United Nations intended to protect the rights and dignity of persons with disabilities. Parties to the Convention are required to promote, protect, and ensure the full enjoyment of human rights by persons with disabilities and ensure that they enjoy full equality under the law.

India is a party to this convention and ratifies it.

Article 4(d): enjoins States Parties “to refrain from engaging in any act or practice that is inconsistent with the present Convention and to ensure that public authorities and institutions act in conformity with the present Convention.

Article 15(1): “No one shall be subjected to torture or to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment.” 


Article 15(2): “States Parties shall take all effective legislative, administrative, judicial or other measures to prevent persons with disabilities, on an equal basis with others, from being subjected to torture or cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment.”

Article 17: “Every person with disabilities has a right to respect for his or her physical and mental integrity on an equal basis with others.”

Under the UNCRPD:

The denial of special provisions, appropriate assistance and specialised health care access to a person with disabilities in custody, who uses a wheelchair and has special health care needs arising from chronic illness, comes firmly within the meaning of degrading, inhuman and cruel treatment in derogation of the state’s obligation to UNCRPD 


2.Laws in the Indian Constitution:


Article 21 of the Constitution: denying the right to accessible facilities for personal care and hygiene is violative of the right to dignity and bodily integrity — both guaranteed under , but also under 


Article 14 of the Constitution: that sets out the substantive right to equality before law
The Criminal Procedure Code (CPC): 
Deals with venerability of women and provides very different standards for involvement of women in custodial situations and  in criminal investigation. 

There are also special standards for the treatment of women prisoners and pregnant women in custody.

Where prison and custodial facilities are not equipped at all to deal with the specific needs of persons with disabilities, arrest and detention in custody should be a measure of last resort

How to prepare Current Affairs from Newspapers in Less than one hour for UPSC IAS IPS CSAT Exam

Source

1. Why is it important to read the newspaper?
2. Can’t I just use Chronicle, Civil Service Times or Pratiyogita Darpan?
3. What are profile-based interview questions?
• Location-based questions
• Academic background based questions.
• Hobby
• Firefighting
4. Which newspapers should I read
5. Should I read more than one newspaper?
6. What are the important items in a newspaper?
• Administration/ Polity
• National News
• International News
• Economy
• FrontPage
• Columns / Editorials
• What to prepare from Columns/ Editorials?
• Sports / music / life-style/ Bollywood
7. How to read the newspaper in less than 1 hour?
• The beginning
• The front-page and second page
• Third, fourth and fifth page
• The 6 to 9 Page
• Page 10-11 (Columns and Editorials)
• Page 12-13 (International)
• Page 14 (TV, Astrology, Cartoon strips)
• Page 15-16 (Business and economy)
• Page 17-20 (Bollywood, Lifestyle, Sports)
8. The Review

Mizoram: bamboozled by land use policy - The Hindu

14th May 2014 - Link


This article is important as it has a mix of Environment & Biodiversity, Culture, Agricultural geography and Polity,
all of these topics are really important from prelims as well as mains point of view.


Bamboo dances of Mizoram
Two spectacular bamboo dances, one celebrated, the other reviled, enliven the mountains of Mizoram. 

Cheraw:

In the colourful Cheraw, Mizo girls dance as boys clap bamboo culms at their feet during the annual Chapchar Kut festival. 

Jhum:

The festival itself is linked to the other dance: the dance of the bamboos on Mizoram’s mountains brought about by the practice of shifting agriculture, locally called jhum or ‘lo.’ 

In jhum, bamboo forests are cut, burnt, cultivated, and then rested and regenerated for several years until the next round of cultivation, making bamboos vanish and return on the slopes in a cyclic ecological dance of field and fallow. 

While Cheraw is cherished by all, jhum is actively discouraged by the State and the agri-horticulture bureaucracy.

Organic Jhum Cultivation

Jhum uses natural cycles of forest regeneration to grow diverse crops without using chemical pesticides or fertilisers. 

Process of Jhum:

1.Early in the year, farmers cut demarcated patches of bamboo forests and let the vegetation sun-dry for
weeks. 

2.They then burn the slash in contained fires in March to clear the fields(that are one to three hectares in area), nourish the soil with ashes, and cultivate through the monsoon. 

3.Each farmer plants and sequentially harvests between 15 to 25 crops. 

4.After cultivation, they rest their fields and shift to new areas each year. 

5.The rested fields rapidly regenerate into forests, including over 10,000 bamboo culms per hectare in five years. 

6.After dense forests reappear on the original site, farmers return for cultivation, usually after six to ten years, which forms the jhum cycle.

Benefits of Jhum:

• Regenerating fields and forests in the jhum landscape provide resources for many years.
• The farmer obtains firewood, charcoal, wild vegetables and fruits, wood and bamboo for house construction and other home needs.
• Prof. P. Ramakrishnan at Jawaharlal Nehru University, “economically productive and ecologically sustainable.”

New Land Use Policy(NLUP)


The State’s NLUP 

• Deploys over Rs.2,800 crore over a five-year period “to put an end to wasteful shifting cultivation” and replaces it with “permanent and stable trades.”
• Under this policy, the State provides Rs.1,00,000 in a year directly to households, aiming to shift beneficiaries into alternative occupations like horticulture, livestock-rearing, or settled cultivation.
• The policy has created opportunities for families seeking to diversify or enhance income. Still, NLUP’s primary objective — to eradicate “wasteful” shifting cultivation

In Mizoram, 1,01,000 hectares have been identified for oil palm cultivation.

Reasons for this policy:

• Government Claims: Jhum often concede that jhum was viable in the past, but claim population growth has forced jhum cycles to under five years, allowing insufficient time for forest regrowth, thereby making jhum unsustainable.
• Govt also claims: Plantations, such as pineapple and oil palm, claiming they are better land use than jhum.
• Promoting and subsidising such plantations and corporate business interests undermines both premise and purpose of present land use policies.
• Following the entry of three corporate oil palm companies, over 17,500 hectares have already been permanently deforested within a decade.

Results of this policy:

• State only supports industry and alternative occupations, leaving both bamboo forests and farmers who wish to continue with jhum in the lurch.
• Oil palm, rubber and horticultural plantations are monocultures that cause permanent deforestation, a fact that the India State of Forest Report 2011 (ISFR).
• Drastically reduces rainforest plant and animal diversity.
• As forest cover and bamboo decline, people in some villages now resort to buying bamboo, once abundant and freely available.

What should be done instead?

• Better use of public money and resources would be to work with cultivators and agroecologists to refine jhum where needed.
• The State can: involve and incentivise communities to foster practices that lengthen cropping and fallow periods, develop village infrastructure and access paths to distant fields, and provide market and price support, and other benefits including organic labelling to jhum cultivators. 

Today, the  Unless a more enlightened government reforms future policies in favour of shifting agriculture, Mizoram’s natural bounty of bamboos is at risk of being frittered away.
   

Correcting a historical injustice - The Hindu

14th May 2014 - Link

This article provides the historical background to RTE Act much in news these days, and hence is important from essay point of view.

Present Condition

Election manifestoes over decades have rhetorically spoken of six per cent of GDP or more to education and this election has been no exception.
The actual spending on education is only around three per cent.
School infrastructure and teaching personnel are inadequate and of poor quality while the dropout rate is rampant even at the elementary school stage.
Why this condition?

During the framing of the Constitution, free and compulsory education, which was listed for inclusion as a justiciable fundamental right, was unceremoniously transferred to the list of non-justiciable fundamental rights — later termed as “Directive Principles of State Policy.”

K.T. Shah,Member of constituent assembly had warned that : “Once an unambiguous declaration of such a (justiciable) right is made, those responsible for it would have to find ways and means to give effect to it. If they had no such obligation placed upon them, they might be inclined to avail themselves of every excuse to justify their own inactivity in the matter, indifference or worse.”

Why was the right to education dropped from the list of justiciable fundamental rights?

Historical Background:

Plan for Post-War Education Development in India, 1944 (Sargent Plan):
The Sargent Plan had set forth a scheme for the universalisation of free and compulsory education by 1984.

Why wasn’t this adopted?

1.Huge estimates of cost and time.
2.Cripps proposals of 1942 : country’s impending fragmentation into several independent dominions or               states hence the centrally controlled plan was perceived to be a threat to the political and fiscal autonomy of the independent units via the subventions that would be needed for its operation. 

During framing of the constitution:

On the date on which the right to education was considered by the Constituent Assembly for retention as a fundamental right, the proposed autonomous units of the Indian Union offered by the Cabinet Mission Plan of May 16, were not substantially unlike those proposed by Cripps in 1942, nor was the right to education less costly.


BUT

On June 3, 1947, the Mountbatten Plan for two nations, India and Pakistan, was proposed, and within days accepted as inevitable, changing forever the dynamics of Centre-state relations, from that of the “weak Centre-powerful autonomous states” paradigm of the Cabinet Mission Plan of May 16, 1946, under which the Constituent Assembly had been set up, to one in which the Centre was strong, with residuary powers.


Since the Mountbatten Plan was accepted hence the right to education was not deleted. It was moved to the list now known as the “Directive Principles of State Policy,”

Result

The electoral promises of allocation of six per cent of GDP to education have remained as pious wishes. 

It remains to be seen whether education will be recognised even now as a paramount necessity, or whether fiscal apprehensions will continue to override the right of children to education.

Bodo hopes and minority rights - The Hindu

12th May 2014 - Link

The Bodoland Territorial Area District (BTAD) has emerged as one of the most volatile flashpoints of violence in the country with deadly clashes breaking out repeatedly over a mobilisation of identity, territory and resources being linked to claims on political power.

Who are the Bodos?

• The Bodos, who constitute the largest tribal community out of a total of 34 tribal communities in Assam.
• The BTAD, an area of 27,100 square kilometres (or 35 per cent of Assam), the Bodos constitute less than 30 per cent with no other ethnic group (Assamese speakers, Bengali Muslims, Bengali Hindus, Koch-Rajbongshis) having an absolute majority.



Timeline of violence

They have been fighting for greater political autonomy since the early decades following independence

1960s - This gathered momentum with the organisation of the Plain Tribals Council of Assam (PTCA)  

1987- The demand for a separate State by the All Bodo Students’ Union (ABSU). 

February 2003 - The Bodoland Territorial Council (BTC) was formed as a special territorial privilege under the Sixth Schedule of the Constitution as in the Memorandum of Settlement of  between the Government of India, the Government of Assam and the Bodo Liberation Tigers (BLT). 

Why this violence?

• In the interest of early colonialism, new reservation policies were introduced to restrain “native” access to valuable forests and to stimulate the clearance of fertile “wastelands” for the setting up of tea estates resulting in an increasingly restrictive regime of “boundaries” that curtailed livelihood options
• This colonial enterprise for revenue maximising, also accompanied by schemes like “grow more food,” radically altered western Assam’s demography as a large influx of poor peasants and labourers from Chota Nagpur, Odisha, Andhra Pradesh, Bihar, Nepal and Maimansing was engineered in the interest of the colonial economy
• The tribal population in northwest Assam surrounded by a wealthy forest zone of 3,539.95 sq.km — in formal-judicial terms, more than 80 per cent was inaccessible to them. This entrapment is not only of the community from the resources but is also an entrapment of one community from the other.

Result of this:

The fear of all political minorities in Bodoland is a replication of the way the Bodo community was once entrapped.

And now:

Feelings of relative deprivation through an entrenched minority entrapment could spark off new insurgencies in the BTC/BTAD territory.

Why did the BTC accord fail?

1.The BTC accord justifies that every community with perceived historical roots in a particular place has a right       to delineate that “imagined place” and to protect it from perceived “outsiders.”

    as a result

    Riots in the Bodoland area have highlighted increasing valorisation of the “son of the soil” doctrine, a                 doctrine that is the result of powerfully territorialised (ethnic) identities and the enduring but highly selective       reaffirmation of “natural” geo-cultural links between ethnic groups and territory.

2.the choice to negotiate with the BLT in 2003 bilaterally and a significant tolerance of BLT ceasefire violations all seem to have been intended to allow the BLT to consolidate local power.

3.Even the interim body created to oversee the first elections to the BTC was headed by former militants.

4.Observations about the exercise of special political autonomy often show that it has perpetuated local oligarchies and created new elites, often weakening the links between people and political power.

Need for radical measures

1.First step would be to sweep the region clean by seizing the significant amount of illegal weapons.

2.A modification of the BTC agreement: The arrangements now not only give the elites from one ethnic group disproportionate power over the others, but also provide further incentive and a rationale to/for this domination.

The BTC accord needs be reworked to expand the democratic ambit of its mandate by making it more accommodative with a greater share and proportionate representation to different communities residing in BTAD.

Otherwise, a redrawing of BTAD boundaries by removing areas with a substantial non-Bodo majority seems to be a sensitive but an unavoidable option.

The case against privatisation of education - The Hindu

10th May 2014 - Link

This article debates whether higher education in India should be privatized or not.

Note: I have organised this article in form of arguments and counter arguments on the topic.

Arguments: Are arguments n points of those who demand privatisation of education

Counter- Arguments: Are counter arguments to those points(arguments) by the author.

Argument:

The supply of publicly provided professional education has not expanded commensurately with the growth in demand, thus signalling a failure.

Another associated argument - The government should cease regulating institutions that it does not fund.

Counter- Argument:

Educator's - performance actually determines the life chances of a very large number of individuals in society.

So they must be regulated like driving licenses and medical practices are regulated.

Argument:

Doctors and engineers, trained using the tax payer’s money, have now begun to enter politics.

Counter-Argument:

The answer to this malaise is surely not the privatization of professional education, but to expect that these youth in question serve in India, if not in the public sector itself, for a brief period after graduation, in lieu of which they repay the cost of their education.

Argument:

India’s regulatory agencies can be ham-handed in their interventions and are perceived to be corrupt.

That politicians influence the regulator to further the interests of private institutions owned by them or their clients.

Counter-Argument:

This deficit only provides an argument for drastically reforming how our regulatory bodies are populated and run rather than a case for dismantling them.

The most important reason for the state to remain in higher education is that the private sector is yet to demonstrate its capacity to create knowledge on a sufficient scale. Where is the research that creates knowledge? Even in these ‘professional’ courses there is more research in public institutions than in the private ones.

Reasons for greater knowledge creation in public institutions are

• They often have large government facilities attached to them.This enables the apprentice to learn by doing, arguably the best way to learn
• Underlying objective is not the pursuit of profit.

The private sector is not a presence much felt among the arts and sciences as these subjects do not always command high exchange value

Right to Education: neither free nor compulsory - The Hindu

9th May 2014 - Link

Background:

2002:

Constitution (Eighty-sixth Amendment) Act 2002 added Article 21A to the Constitution, which requires the state to provide free and compulsory education to all children aged six to 14.

2009:

Right of Children to Free and Compulsory Education Act 2009 (“2009 Act”) was enacted, which provides that children aged six to 14 have a right to free and compulsory education, and provides for a quota of 25% of school seats to be reserved for children from weaker and disadvantaged sections.

Several private schools challenged the constitutional validity of the 2009 Act on the basis that the law, which imposed infrastructural and regulatory requirements on schools and violated:

• Article 19(1)(g): constitutional right to practise any profession or occupation.
• Article 30(1):  the constitutional rights of minority groups to establish and administer schools. 

2012:

SC  gave Judgement in - Society of private schools of Rajasthan Vs Union of India (Rajasthan Schools case)

Judgement:

The majority of the Court held that the 2009 Act is constitutionally valid and shall apply to government-controlled schools, government-aided schools (including minority schools), and private unaided non-minority schools.

However, the 2009 Act infringes the fundamental freedom guaranteed to unaided minority schools under the Constitution, therefore the Act shall not apply to such schools.

Court reasoning:

The main question is whether the 2009 Act violates Article19(1)(g) of the Constitution (which gives every citizen the right to practise any profession or occupation.)

Why should it apply to rest of the institiutions?

Article 19(6) of the Constitution of the Constitution - The State can regulate by law the activities of private schools, including admission, by imposing reasonable restrictions in the public interest under .

The quota obligation imposed on private unaided non-minority schools is in the public interest and is a reasonable restriction for the purposes of Article 19(6). Therefore, the 2009 Act shall apply to private unaided non-minority schools.

Why it shouldn't apply to unaided minority schools?

Article 29(1) of the Constitution protects the right of minorities to conserve their language, script or culture, and

Article 30(1) protects their right to establish and administer schools of their choice.

So according to the court - Imposing a quota on such schools would result in changing their character and would therefore violate these minority rights. Therefore, the 2009 Act shall not apply to unaided minority schools.

Regarding government-aided minority schools, Article 29(2) of the Constitution protects every citizen’s right of admission into a State-aided school. Accordingly, the 2009 Act shall apply to aided minority schools.

2013:

In Pramati Educational and Cultural Trust Vs Union of India : The Court has gone further than Rajasthan Schools and completely removed all minority schools, whether aided or unaided, from the purview of the RTE Act.

Three problems are evident with the reasoning adopted in Pramati 

First:

It has placed Article 30 on a pedestal, possibly elevating it to a status above the fundamental freedoms, even Article 21. All fundamental rights are limited by reasonable restrictions imposed by law on certain bases, but Article 30 alone, on the Court’s interpretation in Pramati, is above any restriction in any manner.

Second: 

The Court bases its reasoning upon judgments in T.M.A. Pai v State of Karnataka (2002) and P.A. Inamdar v State of Maharashtra (2005) which were decided in the context of tertiary education and not primary education. The Constitution does not recognize a fundamental right to tertiary education, but primary education is a fundamental right.

Third:

It was held, for instance, in TMA Pai that admitting a few members of a non-minority group into a minority institution does not take away the minority character of such an institution and that Articles 29 and 30 clearly contemplate such an inclusion.

The Court’s judgment in Pramati, by closing the door to non-minority students of economically weaker sections, actually goes contrary to the principles laid down in the earlier Bench decisions in TMA Pai and Inamdar, despite the Court extracting passages from these judgments in Pramati.

Where everyone is a minority - The Hindu

7th May 2014 - Link

The Bodoland Territorial Council (BTC), that narrow wedge of land in western Assam where everyone is a minority.

Current violence

While the State government has directly blamed the shadowy Songbijit faction of the National Democratic Front of Boroland for the massacres, there is, as always, a complex play of factors here:

• Militants were under tremendous pressure from security forces since they killed an Additional Superintendent of Police in Sonitpur district. The police went after them with a vengeance, taking down several cadres.forced the faction to hit vulnerable targets, to take the heat off, get time to regroup while also stoking communal fears and exposing the shortcomings of the State government.

• A statement by a prominent Bodo leader, Pramila Rani Brahma of the Bodoland People’s Front (BPF):  "Since Muslims had voted against the party’s Lok Sabha candidate, he was unlikely to do well". This has complicated matters and led to calls for her arrest.

Timeline:

1993 - An armed group, the Bodo Liberation Tigers (BLT), attacked Santhals as well as Muslims. For their own safety, they were placed in relief camps, which again came under attack. Accounts say that not less than 50 were killed in those incidents.

2002 - there were a series of attacks; in one, non-Bodo passengers were pulled out of a bus and shot. Soon after this, the BLT decided to come to the negotiating table.

2003 - The Sixth Schedule of the Constitution, which enables small tribes in four States of the north-east to run their own affairs in the manner of an expanded Panchayati Raj system, instead of being completely dependent on the whims of the State government.

The Sixth Schedule aims to protect tribal rights from encroachment by larger non-tribe groups and is in place in parts of Assam, all of Meghalaya, Mizoram and a part of Tripura.

The Schedule was extended to the western Assam plains to create the BTC as part of an agreement between the Centre, the State government and the BLT.

Drawback:
BPF is the party in power in the BTC, which rules the “Bodo” districts. But there’s a major flaw in the system — the BPF doesn’t have control over law and order: the State government has jurisdiction of the police.

2008 - A major outbreak occurred in which both Bodos and non-Bodos including Muslims were rendered homeless and placed in camps. In 2008 again, bomb blasts across the State killed over 100 persons including 80 in Guwahati.

These were attributed to the National Democratic Front of Bodoland, led by Ranjan Daimary, which sought independence from India.

2012 - when over 100 died and about 4.5 lakh were displaced in rioting and killings, was described as the most extensive internal displacement since Partition.

Reasons for failure of peace accords

The core of the problems in the north-east, be it in Nagaland, Manipur, Assam or elsewhere, lies in the mobilization of identity over land.

There are two issues here:

First:

• If key problems are to be tackled, then all sides need to sit down together to work out the ways that land and resources can be shared without creating further ill-will.
• The State government and the BTC have failed to do so. They have failed because they have looked for quick-fix solutions without going deep enough and far enough to meet people’s grievances. The fallout that we see today is that of manufactured consent.

Second:

• There is a second critical point: if such processes are to gain momentum, then there must be a relentless campaign against terrorist groups.
• The way governments proclaim that they will tackle ethnic and communal violence with a “firm hand”; yet, once the bloodshed is over, the displaced go home and the issues vanish from the headlines, it’s back to business as usual with the criminals, extortionists and their partners in politics and the bureaucracy.

In this situation, tossing out the mantra of “Bangladeshi” immigrants as being at the heart of the problem would be extremely ill-advised. Nothing could be further from the truth, so insidiously easy to push, so dangerous to stoke.

Choosing the Chief Justice - The Hindu

5th May 2014 - Link

The issue of having a fixed tenure for the Chief Justice of India arises owing to the short tenures that Chief Justices have on average.

• In the last 20 years, there have been 16 Chief Justices of India.
• Only four have had tenures of more than two years.
• Eight have served for less than a year with one having served for less than a month.

Reason: for the limited length of such tenures

At the time a vacancy in the Chief Justice’s post arises, the senior-most judge in the Supreme Court is appointed irrespective of the length of tenure remaining before his retirement.

Consequence:

Excessively frequent transitions lead to systemic inefficiencies, increase incoherence in strategies to deal with ongoing problems and hinder the stability of leadership that a large and widely respected institution requires.

Why does such a convention exist?

Two Reasons —

• The legitimate expectations of future Chief Justices to hold such offices would be taken away in the absence of its strict application.
• Any other method would be subjective with considerable potential for the independence of the judiciary being adversely affected.

These two points are discussed in detail below

No legitimate expectation

No judge of the Supreme Court can have a “legitimate expectation” to be Chief Justice of India.

The protection of legitimate expectation does not require the fulfillment of the expectation where an overriding public interest requires otherwise. In other words, personal benefit must give way to public interest and the doctrine of legitimate expectation would not be invoked which could block public interest for private benefit” — ( Monnet Ispat and Energy Ltd. v. Union of India And Ors. , (2012)11SCC1)- A recent judgement by justice RM Lodha.

Overriding public interest in this case lies in the need for stable leadership of the Indian judiciary and its attendant public benefits.

Future judges becoming Chief Justice is on the other hand a matter of great personal honor and no more.

Conclusion:

The “legitimate expectations” of Chief Justice-ship that individual judges may harbor cannot provide a principled ground against fixed tenure and modified application of the seniority convention.

Objectivity by Seniority

Age functions as a de facto criterion for appointment of judges to the Supreme Court( no judge since 1979 having been appointed before the age of 55, a high rate of turnover of Chief Justices is inevitable.)

Reason:

To stick to seniority despite this can only be explained by the objectivity that seniority is perceived to lend, thereby obviating threats to judicial independence.

Such objectivity is overstated for two reasons: 

First:

• Seniority is determined not simply by age, but rather by the date of appointment to the Supreme Court.
• The process of appointment by a collegium led by the Chief Justice of India is opaque, functioning without any transparency or accountability for decisions taken.
• Certain appointments have raised wide speculation in legal circles for their timing with cases of unexplained expedition or delay, regarding which neither can information be sought nor review requested.
• It is thus within the realm of possibility that the objectivity that the seniority convention engenders is often founded on a ruse.

Second:

• Rampant corruption in public life ==> accountability discourse , as a result a premium has been placed on objective criteria in decision-making.
• Independent commissions are regularly demanded since they are expected to decide more objectively than ministries.
• Objectivity today has become a byword for fairness and more worryingly, any decision not on objective criteria often automatically leads to claims of corruption or hanky-panky.
• This disincentives good decision-making and creates perverse results, worse than the malaise it set out to cure.

Competence, not Seniority

The appointment of the Chief Justice of India provides an ideal opportunity to reverse this trend.

Judicial Appointments Commission (JAC): 

A carefully constituted commission is a body which should be empowered to select the person, who in its opinion is the most competent to deal with the administrative, judicial and leadership tasks expected of a Chief Justice of India.

It is a shame numerous Chief Justices that India has had for extremely short duration's, could not serve for longer; or several others seen widely as deserving of the office never served at all

JAC provides an opportunity to prevent such unfortunate incidents from recurring by dispensing with the seniority convention

It would demonstrate that as a mature polity, India is prepared to trust decisions taken by accountable public authorities following well-established and transparent processes.