09-08-2017 (Important News Clippings)
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भारत छोड़ो आंदोलन के नायक जेपी-लोहिया
आंदोलन के 75 वर्ष: कमजोर होते लोकतंत्र में विपक्ष के सामने इन समाजवादी नेताओं की प्रेरणा
अरुण कुमार त्रिपाठी (ये लेखक के अपने विचार हैं) प्रोफेसर एडजंक्ट, महात्मा गांधी अंतरराष्ट्रीय हिंदी विश्वविद्यालय, वर्धा
आखिर पाबंदी
संपादकीय
अमेरिका की चिंता समझी जा सकती है। खासतौर पर तब जब विनाशक हथियारों के मसले पर दुनिया के अनेक देशों की सलाह और चेतावनी के बावजूद उत्तर कोरिया ने लगातार आक्रामक रुख अख्तियार किया हुआ है। हालांकि इस बीच अमेरिका की ओर से भी युद्ध होने और उत्तर कोरिया में भारी तबाही मचाने की धमकियां दी गर्इं, जिससे उसे यह कहने का मौका मिला कि अपनी सुरक्षा के लिए परमाणु बम हासिल करने का उसका कदम न्यायोचित साबित हुआ है। उत्तर कोरिया की इस दलील को अंतरराष्ट्रीय राजनीति पर नजर रखने वाले कुछ विशेषज्ञों का भी समर्थन हासिल हुआ। हालांकि उत्तर कोरिया के नेता किम जोंग उन के बारे में जिस तरह की धारणा है, उसमें किसी वार्ता की गुंजाइश पैदा होने में काफी मुश्किलें सामने आ सकती हैं। लेकिन विश्व राजनीति को अपने मुताबिक चलाने के मकसद से अमेरिका ने कुछ देशों में कैसा दखल दिया है, यह छिपा नहीं है। व्यापक संहारक क्षमता वाले रासायनिक हथियार होने की आशंका में अमेरिका और उसके मित्र देशों ने इराक को तबाह कर दिया, जबकि बाद में इराक पर लगाए गए सारे आरोप निराधार साबित हुए। यहीं एक बुनियादी फर्क है।
इराक अपने पास संहारक हथियार होने के आरोप का खंडन कर रहा था, जबकि उत्तर कोरिया ऐसे हथियारों के इस्तेमाल की धमकी देता रहता है। जाहिर है, उसका रवैया विश्व-शांति के लिए एक बड़ी समस्या बन चुका है। इससे पहले उत्तर कोरिया और चीन यह प्रस्ताव रख चुके हैं कि अगर अमेरिका धमकी देना और उसकी सीमाओं पर सैन्य गतिविधियां रोक दे तो प्योंगयांग परमाणु विकास के कार्यक्रम खत्म कर सकता है। अमेरिका ने इस पर गौर करना जरूरी क्यों नहीं समझा? तनातनी के क्रम में जिस तरह उत्तर कोरिया की ओर से परमाणु हथियारों तक के इस्तेमाल की धमकियां सामने आ रही हैं, उसमें अगर कभी ऐसा होता है तो अंदाजा लगाया जा सकता है कि दुनिया एक बार फिर किस तरह की त्रासदी की गवाह बनेगी। उत्तर कोरिया के प्रकरण से एक बार फिर परमाणु अप्रसार नीति की नाकामी रेखांकित हुई है। लिहाजा, पूर्ण एटमी निरस्त्रीकरण के लक्ष्य को अपनाया जाना चाहिए।
Date:08-08-17
Beyond Jamia
Let’s ask: Under what conditions, which educational institutions need special protection, for what purposes?
Pratap Bhanu Mehta The writer is vice-chancellor, Ashoka University. Views are personal
The core of the issue is whether this clause is meant as an anti-discriminatory and protective clause, to ensure that minority institutions are not discriminated against; or whether it confers upon minority institutions special privileges and a greater degree of autonomy that non-minority institutions do not enjoy. Every generation of the Indian Supreme Court, beginning with the benchmark Kerala Education Bill 1957 case down to the recent Pramati Educational And Cultural Trust Case, has replayed a version of this debate. But the net result has been more confusion than clarity.
A column has too little space to go into the legal intricacies of a particular case like Jamia. But the stakes in the constitutional issues around Article 30 (1) are high for a number of reasons. It will be politically tempting to communalise the debate over Article 30 (1), but that would be a mistake. But it is worth looking at the context beyond Jamia that makes the stakes in this debate high. The big backdrop to these cases is the deep mess we have created in the regulation of education, and higher education in particular. Education policies, from admissions to recruitment, are now among the most litigated areas in law. This is because education itself is overregulated and the intricate degree of control we seek to exercise over it creates all kinds of anomalies. Till T.M.A. Pai, the right to run and administer education institutions was not even recognised as a general right; and even after the recognition of that right, it is subject to so much regulation and interdiction that it is not clear what it amounts to. Under these circumstances, being granted minority status became like a prized regulatory possession.
Under the “special privileges” interpretation of Article 30 (1), minority education institutions were given a degree of autonomy that many non-minority institutions rightly envied. Since education is a high-stakes game, this also led to a process of greater minoritisation: More and more groups within states want to come under the ambit of minority institutions to claim these privileges. We actually don’t know the full extent of minoritisation of institutions because government data largely concentrates on whether schools are aided or unaided.
The differential regulatory burden imposed on minority and non-minority institutions varies from state to state depending on the private universities acts of those states. But the idea that there is a differential burden of regulation is broadly correct. This differential regulation affects even colleges within the same university, say SRCC and St. Stephen’s, over basic issues like what autonomy they should have over admissions. Differential burden itself would not be a problem if it were related to some clear principles.
Neither the financial character (whether an institution is aided or unaided), nor the educational purpose seems to matter with any degree of clarity. The courts rightly held that minority institutions can impart broad secular education. But it does create situations where institutions that are identical in purpose face differential regulation merely on account of who started it. In other words, differential regulation is no longer related to justice, or educational objectives, or protecting rights. It has become, in some instances, about merely giving an identity-based privilege. But it is important to remember this privilege is extended to a range of minorities within states, not just Muslims.
The framing of education regulation as rooted in identity-based privilege is reinforced in several ways. For instance, in the National Commission for Minority Educational Institutions Act, only minorities can be appointed to the Commission. There are not too many regulatory and quasi-judicial entities with these kind of extensive identity-based restrictions on membership. The Right to Education Act accentuated the problem of differential regulation. It exempted minority institutions from 25 per cent reservation for children from economically weaker sections.
If the objective of reservation was social integration, this exemption was even more anomalous. It again reinforced the perception that Article 30 (1) was really about giving special privileges, not about protecting minorities. Mahesh Giri has introduced a private members’ bill in Parliament to rectify this clause in the RTE.
The stakes in the debate over minority educational institutions cannot be fully understood unless we recognise that in the backdrop are two large issues in education: Over regulation and a projected sectarianism in state policy. Courts have been largely responsible for this mess, since they have never clearly articulated what a right of non-minorities to set up and administer an educational institution of their choice might look like. So the issue of the rights of minority institutions has become the wedge to open the debate on regulation more generally. But in this debate we are likely to see two forms of bad faith. The BJP will most likely focus on institutions like AMU and Jamia that can also be inserted into a communal narrative.
It will do little to clarify the broader regulatory regime. The BJP’s critics and the Congress will likely forget the fact that there is a genuine constitutional mess in the way in which the rights and identities of educational institutions have been conceptualised. We need to find a way of returning to first principles that asks under what conditions which kinds of institutions need special protection and for what purposes.
The stakes in these debates would be much lower if there were first a national consensus on the rights of educational institutions in general and it gave them the relevant freedoms. And if these rights were sensibly articulated, all kinds of institutions, including minority rights, would be protected. Minorities face special disadvantages, depending on the circumstances, and they have to be taken into account in making policy. But an Occam’s razor principle might be useful: First see if a minority right or interest is better protected if it can be articulated as application of a more general right that everyone has, rather than as a special exemption. The AMU and Jamia cases will be decided on the statutes that govern them. But the communal character of this debate will not be defused unless the question of the larger freedom to run educational institutions is settled.
Date:08-08-17
Partners in deceit
Political parties stand together against transparency in politics
Jagdeep S. Chhokar The writer is former professor, dean, and director in-charge of IIM, Ahmedabad
The Rajya Sabha election has once again brought to the fore what political unanimity means in India. I first encountered it in early 2001, when the Union of India filed an appeal in the Supreme Court (SC) against a decision of the Delhi High Court requiring candidates contesting elections to disclose pending criminal cases. Political unanimity was on display when several parties intervened in the case in support of the government. But the SC upheld the HC judgment.Thereafter, 22 political parties joined hands against the SC judgment. The Representation of the People Act (RP Act) was amended unanimously in Parliament to render the SC judgment ineffective. The amendment of the Act was declared “unconstitutional” and “null and void” by the SC and finally, candidates had to submit affidavits disclosing pending criminal cases. This was in 2003.
In 2007, an application under the Right to Information Act was filed to the Income Tax department, requesting copies of Income Tax Returns (ITRs) of political parties. When the request was denied, first appeals under the RTI Act were filed. When these were rejected, a second appeal was filed before the Central Information Commission (CIC). Parties, without exception, argued that their ITRs must not be made public. The CIC, however, decided otherwise.
In 2011, a complaint was filed before the CIC against political parties refusing to accept RTI applications; the parties claimed they were not “public authorities” under the RTI Act. Data was presented to show that six national political parties (BJP, Congress, CPI, CPM, NCP, and BSP) fulfilled the conditions stipulated in Section 2(h) of the RTI Act which defines a “public authority”. However, all six maintained that though they fulfil the conditions, the Act does not apply to them. A full bench of the CIC, in a unanimous decision on June 3, 2013, declared them to be “public authorities” under the RTI Act, and “directed” them to respond to RTI applications within six weeks. None of them, however, complied with the CIC decision. Notices issued by the CIC were ignored, which then said it was unable “to get its orders complied with” though there had been “wilful noncompliance” of its “final and binding” decision. The case is in the SC.
In March 28, 2014, a division bench of the Delhi HC held the BJP and the Congress guilty of violating the Foreign Contributions Regulation Act (FCRA), and “directed” the Government of India to take action under FCRA “within six months”. Both the parties filed appeals in the SC against the HC judgment. The government amended the FCRA in the 2016 Budget with retrospective effect. However, during hearings in the SC, it was discovered the FCRA amended with retrospective effect was the one that came into force in 2010, whereas the HC judgment had clearly mentioned the conviction was for donations received in 2009 and earlier, under FCRA 1976, which was then in force. The lawyers for the BJP and the Congress withdrew their appeals. The conviction of the BJP and the Congress under FCRA stands, and has been implicitly endorsed by the Supreme Court.Now the upcoming Rajya Sabha election. Both the BJP and the Congress have reacted against the provision of “None Of The Above” (NOTA) option. The Congress filed a petition in the SC and the BJP went to the Election Commission to get NOTA withdrawn. NOTA was ordered to be provided on the EVMs or the ballot paper by the Supreme Court in September 2013, and has been a part of all elections since then. Many wonder why the BJP and the Congress have now turned against NOTA. The reason is contained in the Supreme Court judgment, which says if more and more people use NOTA, “the political parties will be forced to accept the will of the people and field candidates who are known for their integrity.”