Shalini Sinha
10th September 2019
Proff Kiran Thakur
Principles of Newspaper Editing
The Hindu- Editorials
The Amazon fires, an alarm that lacks proportion
T. Jayaraman and Kamal Murari
The effect of deforestation can be repaired slowly. Fossil Fuel emissions cannot be put back into where it came from.
The upsurge of global environmental anxiety over the recent spate of forest fires in the Amazon, apparently marking a renewed push to deforestation, is clearly testimony to the heightened awareness of the danger to human security represented by global warming. The provocatively anti-environmental and climate denial views of Brazil’s President, Jair Bolsonaro, and his colleagues, the reining in of environmental controls if not disabling them, the President’s initial air of unconcern, and his absurd counter-allegations regarding the causes, have all contributed to exacerbating this anxiety. Predictably, this has drawn the ire of environmentalists, and public and government opinion globally, though the global media has been more circumspect.
Unfortunately, in this confrontation, facts and scientific evidence have become collateral damage, obscuring in the hype some of the substantive challenges to global climate action. The confrontation is also in danger of skewing the global discourse on climate policy, opening the way for unprecedented pressure from developed countries on the global South.
A controversial transfer: On Tahilramani's transfer
CJ Tahilramani’s transfer to Meghalaya HC once again shows collegium system’s flaws.
The unusual transfer of the Chief Justice of the Madras High Court, Justice Vijaya Kamlesh Tahilramani, to Meghalaya High Court has caused understandable disquiet among lawyers. While the Constitution does provide for such transfers from one high court to another, it is extremely rare that the senior-most Chief Justice in the country is shifted from a large court with a complement of 75 judges to one of the newest courts, which has a strength of only three judges. It is no surprise, therefore, that the judge, who entered the superior judiciary in 2001, and is the senior-most high court judge in the country, chose to resign, rather than continue in circumstances bordering on humiliation. It is unfortunate that the collegium rejected her request for reconsideration without assigning a reason. It is easy to argue that one high court is as good as any other, that such transfers should not be seen as a ‘demotion’, and that the Chief Justice of India (CJI) should be free to transfer the head of any high court in the interest of “better administration of justice”. However, it is a fallacious argument when one considers that there are no known complaints about her performance or any public controversy around her judicial or personal conduct. It is possible that the transfer is based on an internal performance assessment, or complaints not available in the public domain. However, in the absence of any explanation, the bar cannot be blamed if they see the transfer as punitive. If it is performance-related, a question arises as to whether all judges are being assessed on the same criteria.
The controversy once again brings under focus the flawed collegium system of appointments and transfers. In recent years, the government and the collegium have been disagreeing frequently on the latter’s recommendations for appointments. However, judicial transfers are initiated solely at the instance of the CJI. Therefore, the perception that Justice Tahilramani’s transfer has something to do with her judgment in the Bilkis Bano gang rape case, when she was in the Bombay High Court, is quite misconceived. It was after this verdict that she was appointed Chief Justice of the Madras High Court, and a year has elapsed since then. The Memorandum of Procedure relating to appointments and transfers of high court judges says the opinion of the Chief Justice in this regard “is determinative”. And in the case of a Chief Justice of a High Court, the CJI needs to take into account, “only the views of one or more knowledgeable Supreme Court Judges” while proposing a transfer. In the Second and Third Judges cases, the Supreme Court felt that the fact that the proposal is initiated by the CJI and recommended by a plurality of judges is enough as a safeguard against arbitrary transfers. However, the Tahilramani controversy shows that the systemic faults of the collegium system — opaqueness and the scope for personal opinions colouring decision-making — remain unaddressed
Belated realisation: On Trump's peace negotiation with Taliban
An erratic president Trump changes his mind over talks with Taliban
In a dramatic set of posts on Twitter, U.S. President Donald Trump announced the cessation of peace negotiations with the Taliban while also revealing that the insurgent group’s representatives were to have participated in secret talks at the Camp David retreat in Maryland. This is yet another instance of the stock that the maverick President puts in personal diplomacy in the conduct of America’s foreign affairs. His tweets abruptly seem to have indicated the end, at least for now, to the negotiations conducted by the chief U.S. negotiator, Zalmay Khalilzad, with the Taliban. Mr. Khalilzad had disclosed that he had reached an “in principle” agreement with the Taliban, but the details have not been revealed. The negotiations were over U.S. troop withdrawal from the country and assurances from the Taliban of not letting the country to be used as a safe haven for terrorists targeting the U.S. Mr. Trump said that a suicide car bomb attack in Kabul on Thursday was the trigger for his sudden decision. But the Taliban has been continually engaging in a series of wanton attacks against civilians throughout the course of the talks that the U.S. had with the group in Qatar. One estimate suggests that it has engaged in 173 terror attacks resulting in 1,339 fatalities in 2019 alone. The Taliban has perversely used the attacks as a bargaining chip of sorts, to undermine the Afghanistan government and to seek concessions on its own terms. It is not clear why Mr. Trump chose this moment to call off talks as little has changed in the Taliban’s behaviour. What all this ambiguity reveals is Mr. Trump’s erratic nature.
Afghanistan has continued to be wracked by internecine violence, with the Taliban increasing its control over several provinces and the government’s writ prevailing only in the north-central parts of the country. A durable peace, with the U.S. seeking early troop withdrawal, is only possible if there are talks between all Afghan groups and other regional stakeholders, with a guarantee by the Taliban that it will eschew terror. But the Taliban has refused to engage with the Afghan government and the U.S.’s decision to delink the violence from the Doha talks only seemed to have emboldened the group. Mr. Trump must reveal the contents of the so-called “in principle” agreement and set more meaningful terms of engagement involving the Afghan regime in any further talks with the Taliban. It serves neither the U.S.’s own interests, as Mr. Trump seems to have belatedly realised, nor those of the beleaguered Afghan people if the Taliban is allowed to get away with repeated murder.
Development matters, but so does identity
Rajeev Bhargava
Disturbing a federal system that protects the complexity of human identities could pave the way for conflict
It is sometimes claimed that once ordinary people benefit from economic development, they automatically set aside issues related to their identity. Such a view was found not only in materialist theories that gave explanatory primacy in human life to economic factors but also among leaders of social and political movements. Nehru, for instance, is believed to have assumed that as India makes economic progress, religious identity would matter less and communal conflict would disappear. It seems that the government’s claim on Jammu and Kashmir shares the same premise. Give Kashmiris an economic package, prospects of more jobs, better healthcare, high-quality consumption goods and they will forget their specific identity and assimilate peacefully with the rest of India. ‘Development’ shall trump identity.
Identity is much misused and abused. We misunderstand it, misconstrue its significance, maliciously politicise it but it refuses to go away. Why? Undeniably, we are biological creatures with basic material needs. But we are also expressive creatures, image-builders, story-makers, concept-inventors, and so live in a world saturated with images, representations, myths, stories, and philosophies. Over thousands of years, multiple imaginary worlds have been fashioned, each of which is the collective possession of different societies. These imagined narratives shape our material needs, making them complex, elaborate and distinct. All humans do not have the same food and sartorial preferences. They design their dwellings differently. They even use their bodies and tongues differently to communicate with one another. In short, our material needs, suffused with imagination and saturated with concepts, are filled with intricacy and nuance.
What is the political implication of these observations? Modern socio-economic conditions require states to take care not only of people’s material welfare but also their identities. But these conditions also foster ethno-nationalisms that insist on one state for every monocultural identity. Deep down this is a lie, because it defies the intricacies of human cultures. So, is there a viable modern political system that protects the complexity of human identities and mitigates their rough, violent edges? There is. A decent federal system that allows a great deal of political autonomy to distinct cultural groups, protects important common (national) interests and enables fruitful encounter of regional cultures does that. Disturbing this federal arrangement for the sake of a simplistic idea of unity is not a smart thing to do. At worse, it paves the way for prolonged conflict that endangers development. Paradoxically, then, we might well be undercutting development in the very name of development.
Giving age-old ties a new shine
Dmitriy Frolovskiy
Beyond its burgeoning trade links with India, Russia has emerged as a balancer in India-China relations
Despite the Russia-India-China triangle reconciling on a shared vision and responsibility for the future of Eurasia, watchfulness resurfaces behind the curtains. As the U.S.-China trade war is tending to get out of hand and China may invigorate its outreach throughout the continent to toss American presence, the strategic triangle might soon face increased pressure that could challenge the existing balance of power. Though Russia and India benefit from the current status quo in interactions, enhanced exchange and geopolitical coordination, neither country is interested in becoming hostage to China’s galloping regional ambitions. New Delhi is specifically concerned about Moscow growing more dependent on Beijing, while the Kremlin wants to avoid possible rifts in China-Indian relations. Such beliefs act as powerful catalysers to boost more fruitful cooperation between the two nations on a number of areas.
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