Daily Current Affairs – 14th October 2022

Social Empowerment, The Mandal Way

The social justice discourse in modern India can be traced to the initiatives of social revolutionaries such as Jyotiba Phule, Savitribai Phule, Shahu Maharaj and Periyar, B.R. Ambedkar during colonial rule. But the Mandal politics completely changed the social empowerment of depressed classes.

What is the Mandal way?

The Mandal Commission: The Socially and Educationally Backward Classes Commission (SEBC), was established in India in 1979 by the Janata Party government under Prime Minister Morarji Desai with a mandate to “identify the socially or educationally backward classes” of India.

To address Caste based discrimination: It was headed by B.P. Mandal, an Indian parliamentarian, to consider the question of reservations for people to redress caste discrimination, and used eleven social, economic, and educational indicators to determine backwardness.

Recommendation of Other backward classes: In 1980, based on its rationale that OBCs (“Other backward classes”) identified on the basis of caste, social, economic indicators made up 52% of India’s population, the commission’s report recommended that members of Other Backward Classes (OBC) be granted reservations to 27% of jobs under the Central government and public sector undertakings, thus making the total number of reservations for SC, ST and OBC to 49%.

What Constitution of India says: As per the Constitution of India, Article 15 (4) states, “Nothing in this Article or in clause (2) of Article 29 shall prevent the State from making any provision for the advancement of any socially or educationally backward classes of citizens or for Scheduled Castes and Scheduled tribes”. Hence the Mandal Commission created a report using the data of 1931 census which was last caste wise census and extrapolating same with some sample studies.

Affirmative action taken: VP Singh was accused of using the Mandal Report which was ignored by the Janta government. It was a social revolution and affirmative action. Earlier 25% population of India which is SC ST was covered and now more than 50% of Other Backward Class came under reservation.

Witnessed violent protest: The youth went for massive protest in large numbers in the nation’s campuses, resulting in many self-immolations by students.

What is Mandal 2.0: In 2006, reservations were extended to OBC candidates in institutionsof higher learning popularly known as MandalII.

How mandal politics empowering the social groups?

Helped to ensure the brotherhood: “Fraternity” as enshrined in the ‘Preamble’ of the Constitution, entails instilling confidence and camaraderie in the all communities. Reservations raised the hope of OBC communities to actively become the part of Government functionaries.

Increased spending on socially backward group: Public spending is considered a reliable way to measure development. Governments can choose to distribute their limited resources in either economic or social sectors. Economic sectors, like industry, ports, highways, etc., generally support economic growth by attracting private investment. Social sectors like education, healthcare, and social security promote the welfare of the masses. Influential theories in social science argue that working-class coalitions support social welfare (Acemoglu and Robinson 2006, Rueschemeyer et al. 1992). In the Indian context, OBC and SC politicians should be expected to support social spending.

Increased sensitivity towards backward classes: It is found that places with higher OBC political representation in combination with higher OBC reservation in the bureaucracy are more likely to spend more in social sectors.

Removing the elite culture: Appointment of lower caste officials at the local level can help in breaking down long-established upper-caste patronage networks and hence potentially reduce ‘elite capture’ of government programmes.

Built confidence and empowerment: According to IAS officer from Bihar cadre Lower castes would not have dared to enter the office of the DM (district magistrate) or BDO (block development officer). They thought that if they said something, they would be punished. That changed. Now they have the confidence to raise their voice against the DM. They don’t know if their job will get done, but they can enter his office without fear.”

What are the issues with reservation?

Statistics: The central list of OBC has 2,633 entries. According to the commission, many of the 2,633 entries comprise several classes, communities and sub-communities, etc, which means the total number of individually named classes/castes in the central list is between 5,000 and 6,000.

Skewed benefits: 25 per cent of the reservation benefits were availed of by communities listed in 10 entries of the central list. Another 25 per cent were availed of by communities listed in another 38 entries.

Few communities never got the benefit: The commission also found that 20 per cent of the communities, listed in 983 entries, could not avail of any benefits. Those in another 994 had a share of just 2.68 per cent.

1% but 50% reservation: Just about 40 of 5,000-6,000 castes/communities among the OBCs (other backward classes) — which constitute less than 1 per cent — have cornered 50 per cent of the reservation benefits in admissions to central educational institutions and recruitment to central services, a panel constituted by the government has found.

Reality check on India’s Population policy

Earlier this year, the United Nations published data to show that India would surpass China as the world’s most populous country by 2023.According to the 2018-19Economic Survey, India’s demographic dividend will peak around2041, when the share of the working age population is expected to hit 59%.

What is the Present status of India’s population?

Declining Total fertility rate (TFR): The Total fertility rate (TFR) has declined from 2.2 (reported in 2015-16) to 2.0 at the all- India level, according to the latest National Family Health Survey of India OR NFHS- 5 (phase 2) released by Union Health Ministry.1.6 in urban areas2.1 in Rural area and 2.0 all India.

Sex ratio: There are 1,020 women per 1,000 men in India according to the recently released Fifth Edition (NFHS-5). Such a sex ratio has not been recorded in any of the previous four editions of the NFHS.

What will be the Impact of declining fertility?

Implications on Political economy: It’s not just the economic implications that we need to think about but also the implications of the political economy.

Spatial difference: India’s fertility fell below 2.1 births for certain States 10 years ago. In four other States, it’s just declining. So, not only is the fertility falling, the proportion of the population that will be living in various States is also changing.

North-south imbalance: The future of India lies in the youth living in U.P., Bihar, M.P. If we don’t support these States in ensuring that their young people are well educated, poised to enter the labour market and have sufficient skills, they will become an economic liability.

How India can take advantage of its demographic dividend?

Investing In literacy: If China hadn’t invested in literacy and good health systems, it would not have been able to lower its fertility rates. In any case, we have much to learn from China about what not to do.

Planning for elderly: Especially in the case of the elderly, where the estimates show that12% of India’s total population by 2025 is going to be the elderly. Every fifth Indian by 2050 will be over the age of 65. So, planning for this segment merits equal consideration.

Focusing on gendered dimension: India certainly has the capacity to invest in its youth population. But we don’t recognise the gender dimension of some of these challenges. Fertility decline has tremendous gender implications.

Lowering the Burdon on women: What it means is that women have lower burden on them. But it also has a flip side. Ageing is also a gender issue as two thirds of the elderly are women, because women tend to live longer than men do. Unless we recognise the gender dimension, it will be very difficult for us to tap into these changes.

Educating the young girls: So, what do we need to do? India has done a good job of ensuring educational opportunities to girls. Next, we need to improve employment opportunities for young women and increase the female employment rate. Elderly women need economic and social support networks.

Do we really need the population policy?

Existing policy is right: India has a very good population policy, which was designed in 2000. And States also have their population policies. We just need to tweak these and add ageing to our population policy focus. But otherwise, the national population policy is the right policy.

Reproductive health is important: What we need is a policy that supports reproductive health for individuals. We also need to start focusing on other challenges that go along with enhancing reproductive health, which is not just the provision of family planning services.

Avoiding the stigma: We need to change our discourse around the population policy. Although we use the term population policy, population control still remains a part of our dialogue. We need to maybe call it a policy that enhances population as resources for India’s development, and change the mindset to focus on ensuring that the population is a happy, healthy, productive

Thinking beyond two child policy: Our arguments and discussions have not gone beyond the two-child norm. The two-child norm indicates a coercive approach to primarily one community. And there are too many myths and misconceptions around population issues, which lead to this discourse, which takes away attentions of from real issues.

Regulating online speech is an urgent need

The Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (Meity) has mooted two proposals for governance of online speech government appointed grievance appellate committees (GAC) and the industry self-regulatory body (SRB) seek to preclude this contest in favour of a unilateral government and industry agenda.

What is an online speech?

A recorded online speech is delivered, recorded, and then uploaded to the Internet for later viewing. Examples are TED Talks and presentations in online or blended speech classes.

Such speech are recorded or sometimes made in real time using various social media platforms.

How unregulated online speech is becoming dangerous day by day?

Gendered disinformation and harassment campaigns: Impacting the mental health, job performance, and if and how they engage with online spaces.

GLAAD’s 2021 Social Media Safety Index says: 64% of LGBTQ social media users reported experiencing harassment and hate speech, including on social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Instagram, and TikTok.

Contributing to communal violence: In countries like India and Sri Lanka, failure to remove and prevent the amplification of harmful content can contribute to profound offline consequences, including violence and death.

What are the proposals for the regulation of online speech?

Setting up Grievance appellate committees (GAC): The GACs, as per the draft issued by the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (Meity), will be constituted by the central government and will serve as an appellate body against decisions of various social media platforms.

Appointing Self-regulatory body by social Media platforms(SRB)?: As the name suggests, industries such as twitter, meta etc will appoint their own personnel and constitute the self-regulatory body to hear the grievances against the social media posts.

What are the Criticism over GAC and SRB?

Lack of substantive framework: Not only has the government not laid down a substantive policy with objectively defined contours of forbidden speech, the government wants the right to apply this highly subjective criteria on individual pieces of content and/or users.

Unreasonable removal of content: It is notable that the government has already arrogated this right and routinely issues take down orders (without providing rationale) to social media platforms to take down or block content with minimal pushback from platforms.

Serving the Governments agenda: However, the national security, public order logic of takedowns does not apply to reinstatement of content/users proactively blocked by the platforms and it is likely that an additional purpose of the GACs is to provide an institutional avenue for the ruling government machinery to get a set of aligned accounts/content reinstated instead of just takedowns.

Such regulations are said to be Non-democratic: It is evident that the GAC doesn’t meet even minimal standards of democratic legitimacy and should be scrapped. The industry SRB proposal too lack democratic legitimacy.

Profit before public interest: Platforms have repeatedly shown themselves to be driven by profit motives, which are often at odds with public interest. It is thus likely that such a platform-led body will try and maximise the interests of the industry and individual platforms as opposed to the interests of the Indian people.

It will increase Government’s unrestrained powers: Notwithstanding Twitter’s plea in Karnataka High Court against Centre’s “disproportionate use of power” to issue “overbroad and arbitrary” content-blocking orders, the track record of platforms in India of resisting government pressure has been very poor.

For example recent Twitter episode: For instance, a former safety head with Twitter reportedly told US regulators that Twitter put a government agent on its payroll under duress.

High Chances of Government’s pressure: The SRB may act as a rubber stamp providing false legitimacy for covert government pressure while the binding nature of SRB orders will make it easier for the government to exercise pressure on a single lever to ensure compliance across all platforms.

Lack of consensus in SRB: The other real possibility is that such a body will be a non-starter, wracked by internal dissensions or non-compliance and thus pave the way for the government GAC. This possibility is indicated by the divergent views of the constituent platforms.

Conclusion

The current proposals are preoccupied with policing individual pieces of content whereas the impact of social media platforms on our information ecosystems is fundamental. Social media platforms now play an increasingly interventionist role in amplifying certain voices and our public debate must move forward to review structural issues affecting information ecosystems.

Split Verdict on Hijab Row

The Supreme Court has delivered a split verdict in the Karnataka hijab ban case with one of the two judges on the Bench upholding the March 15 order of the Karnataka HC validating the government’s ban, and the other set aside the HC ruling.

What lies next?

With the divided bench, the matter has now been directed to be placed before Chief Justice of India (CJI).

What is a Split Verdict?

A split verdict is passed when the Bench cannot decide one way or the other in a case, either by a unanimous decision or by a majority verdict.

Split verdicts can only happen when the Bench has an even number of judges.

This is why judges usually sit in Benches of odd numbers (three, five, seven, etc.) for important cases, even though two-judge Benches — known as Division Benches — are not uncommon.

After the verdict

In case of a split verdict, the case is heard by a larger Bench.

The larger Bench to which a split verdict goes can be a three-judge Bench of the High Court, or an appeal can be preferred before the Supreme Court.

In the case of the hijab verdict, the CJI, who is the ‘master of the roster’, will constitute a new, larger Bench to hear the matter.

Earlier cases with a split verdict

In May, a two-judge Bench of the Delhi HC delivered a split verdict in a batch of petitions challenging the exception provided to marital rape in the Indian Penal Code (IPC).

Justice Rajiv Shakdher held that the exception under Section 375 (which deals with rape) of the IPC is unconstitutional, while Justice C Hari Shankar held that the provision is valid.

About the ‘split’ ruling

While Justice Hemant Gupta dismissed the appeals challenging the Karnataka High Court order, Justice Sudhanshu Dhulia allowed them.

In his judgment, Justice Dhulia referred to the Bijoe Emmanuel case, saying it “squarely covers the issue”.

What is the Bijoe Emmanuel verdict?

The Bijoe Emmanuel case came before up a Bench comprising Justices O. Chinnappa Reddy and M M Dutt in 1986.

The court granted protection to three children of the Jehovah’s Witness sect who did not join in singing the national anthem at their school.

The court held that forcing the children to sing the national anthem violated their fundamental right to religion.

V J Emmanuel, the father of the children pleaded with the court that for the Jehovah’s Witnesses, only Jehovah should be worshipped.

Since the anthem is a prayer, the children would stand up in respect when it was playing. However, their faith did not allow them to sing it.

The Supreme Court had said that while the Kerala HC had examinedwhether or not the national anthem contained any word or thought, which could offend anyone’s religious susceptibilities, it had misdirected itself as that was not the question at all.

Why the hijab case should be heard by a larger Bench?

First and foremost, the matter should be heard by a larger Bench preferably 5 judges as-

It has to be decided whether the right to practice religion can intertwine with the right and autonomy of educational institutions to decide their uniform.

While private institutions have the autonomy to decide on the uniform, the court needs to study and decide whether such issues should be looked at in a uniform manner.

Considering the complexities of the matter which also involves several issues such as female dignity, freedom of expression, and the school’s right to decide on the uniform.

A Constitution Bench would also have the right to re-examine the Emmanuel verdict which was delivered by a two-judge Bench.