Editorial Round-Up (01.12.16)

India’s Missing Girl Children (The Hindu)

Paper: I & II; Topic: Women Issues

Issue: Fewer and fewer girls as a ratio of total births

New data from the Civil Registration System of the Registrar General of India point to the hardening of the pattern, with a fall in sex ratio at birth from 898 girls to 1,000 boys in 2013, to 887 a year later.

This depressing trend is consistent with evidence from the Census figures of 2001 and 2011.

In the understanding of the Centre, which it has conveyed to Parliament, girls stand a poor chance at survival because there is a “socio-cultural mindset” that prefers sons, girls are seen as a burden, and family size has begun to shrink.

The BJP-led government responded to the silent crisis with the ‘Beti Bachao, Beti Padhao’ campaign, which focusses on the prevention of sex-selective abortions, creation of opportunities for education and protection of girl children.

Now that the scheme is set to enter its third year in January, there should be a speedy assessment of its working, particularly in districts with a poor sex ratio where it has been intensively implemented.

A wider assessment needs to be made on why States such as Tamil Nadu with a strong social development foundation have slipped on sex ratio at birth (834), going by the CRS data for 2014.

Way Ahead: Clearly, there is a need to go beyond slogans and institute tangible schemes.

Enforcement of the law that prohibits determination of the sex of the foetus must go hand in hand with massive social investments to protect both immediate and long-term prospects of girls — in the form of cash incentives through registration of births, a continuum of health care, early educational opportunities and social protection.

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Jana Gana Mana (Indian Express)

Paper: I & II; Topic: Nationalism; Key Constitutional Provisions

Issue: Supreme Court’s directives on the national anthem — it shall be played in all cinema halls, everyone shall stand up as a mark of respect, with all exits closed off, among other do’s and don’ts.

India’s Constitution speaks of respect to the national flag and anthem as a fundamental duty in Part IV A — a non-justiciable part of the document.

Article 51(A) says that “it shall be the duty of every citizen of India — (a) to abide by the Constitution and respect the ideals of the national flag and the national anthem”.

Implication of FDs being kept non-justiciable: Respect to the nation and its symbols would not be enforced by state diktat or extracted through legal compulsion.

Break from the past:

In August 1986, in Bijoe Emmanuel & Others vs State of Kerala & Others, for the bench of Justice O. Chinappa Reddy and Justice M.M. Dutt, the question was: Did the refusal of three children, belonging to a sect called Jehovah’s Witnesses, to sing the national anthem during the morning assembly — because according to them, its singing is against the tenets of their religious faith — justify their expulsion from school?

Calling the expulsion a “violation of the fundamental right to freedom of conscience and freely to profess, practise and propagate religion”, the apex court said that “there is no provision of law which obliges anyone to sing the national anthem…”

It concluded: “Our tradition teaches tolerance; our philosophy preaches tolerance; our Constitution practises tolerance; let us not dilute it”.

Objections being raised against the order:

* Order curbs individual freedom in the name of nationalism.

* This is an instance of striking judicial overreach.

* That the court is invoking the Constitution while moving against the spirit of individual liberty.

* The order is difficult to implement and would be a nightmare for law enforcement authorities. It runs the risk of being violated on a large scale, leading to law and order problems as it is bound to give rise to vigilantism.

Way Ahead (Mixed up on movie hall nationalism; The Economic Times)

Experience of citizenship is the basis of patriotism and national feeling.

For that experience to be positive and affirming, social relations as mediated by the state must be such as to make citizens stakeholders in a common endeavour and individual achievements enrich the lives of society at large

This can happen when policy, governance and the polity at large work to improve the lives of all and induce common stakeholdership. Then does one section’s sorrow furrow every brow and another lot’s success bring joy to all.

The way to boost patriotism is to refine this politics, not to make a song and dance out of the nation’s symbols.

Editorial Round-Up (30.11.16)

In Chains (TT)

Paper: GS II; Topic: Education

Issue: Government of West Bengal’s bid to bring uniformity and accountability in Higher Education.

Government of West Bengal wants to impose a common syllabus for science and technology in all universities across the state.

The education minister of West Bengal, Partha Chatterjee, has also talked of introducing a biometric system of attendance for the faculty members of universities and colleges.

In West Bengal, the erstwhile Left Front government started the tradition of politicizing education that is being followed diligently by the current dispensation.

The consistent efforts at homogenizing education seem to have succeeded only in levelling it down. In West Bengal, the Left Front government's decision to stop the teaching of English in primary schools sealed the fate of generations of students. 

Such results are not unexpected when politicians, rather than academics and scholars, formulate educational policies.

Partha Chatterjee: State has every right to regulate teachers since it pays their salaries.

Last Word: Educational institutions do rely on the State for funding. But to use this dependence as a justification for deciding the syllabi on the institutions' behalf or for policing teachers is to coerce them into submission. Authoritarian States survive by controlling thought. India runs the risk of turning into one.

Long road to gender equality in India (Mint)

Paper: GS I, II, & III; Topic: Women Issues, Gender Equality, Gender Budgeting

Issue: Gender budgeting has helped but women need more economic freedom and better access to public goods

India formally adopted gender budgeting in 2005. In that year, finance minister P. Chidambaram included in the budget documents a separate statement on spending programmes/schemes that benefit women in particular.

There are two types of schemes that are included—those in which the entire provision is for women and those where at least 30% of the money is meant for women.

Sixteen states have also embraced gender budgeting over the past decade.

Has gender budgeting just been for show or has it had a real impact? A new research paper by economists at the International Monetary Fund (IMF) uses data from the states to check whether a focus on gender budgeting has made a difference in those states that have adopted it.

Research Paper Highlights:

* States which have adopted gender budgeting have tended to move towards greater gender equality measured by female to male enrolment ratios at different levels of schooling. The impact is more intense when it comes to primary rather than secondary schooling.

* Gender budgeting has a significant impact on spending on infrastructure.

* Specific programmes targeted at women do make a difference. One of the best examples is the decision of some state governments to give free bicycles to girls going to school.

However, gender budgeting alone is unlikely to solve the massive problem of gender inequality.

There are two other issues that also need public policy attention—economic freedom and public goods.

The Fraser Institute has developed an index to measure the legal barriers women face when it comes to exercising the same economic freedom available to men in their countries. There are five components to the index of gender disparity—freedom of movement, property rights, financial rights, freedom to work and legal status. In the Indian case, these legal rights are protected by a liberal constitution but social norms do prevent women from exercising these freedoms.

The other big issue is public goods. The lack of certain core public goods such as safe streets or lack of clean drinking water are more likely to hurt the economic prospects of women more than men. The argument for safe streets is almost self-evident. The lack of clean drinking water on tap in effect means that women in many parts of the country spend several hours every day walking in search of water.

Bitter pills (IE)

Paper: GS III; Topic: Pharma Industry

Issue: Substandard pills in circulation in India and its impact

Twenty-seven commonly-used medicines (antibiotics, painkillers, cough syrups etc.) in the country have failed quality tests in seven states.

The medicines were found wanting on several counts, including false labelling and inadequate quantity of ingredients.

The regulatory tests that began in March have incriminated 18 pharma majors. Alarmingly, only three of the medicine brands in question have been recalled from the market.

A 2014 study by ASSOCHAM estimated that around a fourth of the drugs sold are either substandard or counterfeit.

Shortcomings of the inspection and regulation system:

Shortage of Drug Inspectors: A drug inspector has the responsibility of inspecting various facilities including those producing allopathic drugs, homeopathic drugs, blood banks, even cosmetics. There has been no focus on specialists for each of these.

The country consumes more than 385 billion medicines every year. But an ICRIER report of 2015 notes that there is no consolidated list of drug manufacturing outfits.

Drug regulatory offices have been hamstrung by incomplete digitisation — in some cases, even incomplete computerisation.

In most cases, failure to comply with standards results in a short-term suspension of a manufacturer’s production licence — hardly an effective deterrent when manufacturers have several production units.

Impact of Circulation of Substandard Drugs

Health: The repeated administration of sub-therapeutic doses of anti-malaria medicines played a role in the proliferation of drug-resistant parasites.

Health: Poor quality antibiotics have been incriminated in the spread of tuberculosis.

Economics: Internationally, India’s generic medicine industry has been questioned for compromising on product quality. The US Food and Drug Administration, for example, has banned medicines from at least 35 plants in the country. Last year, the EU banned 700 Indian drugs on grounds of quality.

Last Word: The country’s medicine industry has to put its house in order. The government should monitor it stringently.