Delhi govt decides to shift millenium bus depot

6:44 PM

Society

Every passing day, I feel more and more how no other government comes anywhere close. Yes, they have their shortcomings. Yes, they have made some mistakes.

The most important factor, though, is their willingness to learn. Its their intent. Administration can be learnt. Intention cannot.

Delhi govt decides to shift millenium bus depot

articles.economictimes.indiatimes.com

NEW DELHI: The Aam Aadmi party government today decided to shift to a new location the DTC millennium bus depot built on the Yamuna river bed at a cost of Rs 60 crore ahead of the Commonwealth...

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Googlization of Indian Election Process and Legal Challenges

5:28 PM

Youth

Public domain reports that Internet giant Google made a formal presentation to the Election Commission proposing a tie-up with it for voter facilitation services ahead of Lok Sabha elections. It has been reported that in its presentation before the EC, Google proposed providing its search engines free of cost to Indian voters during the 2014 general elections, as also proposed free online voter registration besides making available vital details of Voter EPIC card numbers and polling station location.

Given this significant development, it becomes pertinent to examine the legal challenges facing the potential Googlization Of Indian Election Process.

Tying up with a foreign intermediary like Google has legal ramifications on India’s security, integrity and sovereignty as also its cyber security.

Post Snowden, this kind of proposed tie-up assumes tremendous significance as this tie-up suddenly could makes India’s online voter registration data amenable to jurisdiction of US authorities including NSA. One report suggests that NSA has taken more than 6.2 billion bits of data from India in one month unauthorizedly. The proposed tieup could throw up a scenario where Indian electoral data is going to be allowed to leave territorial boundaries of India and be resident on servers of a company, that is known to be data driven company that has no respect for any privacy and whose Chief Evangelist Vint Cerf himself stated that privacy may be more of an anomaly.

The Election Commission of India is a statutory authority appointed under the Indian Constitution. It has duty bound to uphold the principles of the Constitution. It also has to do all things not just to protect and serve the ideals of the Indian Constitution but also to ensure that the Indian Constitution is not in any way subverted.

The Indian Constitution has granted fundamental rights to its citizens including the right to life. The right to life includes the right to live life with human dignity. The right of your election registration data not to be revealed to another person is part of the implicit right detailed under Article 21 of the Constitution of India under the fundamental right of life and privacy. Any kind of action which leads to unauthorized disclosure or dissemination of voter registration information would be in gross violation of Article 21 of the Constitution of India.

Another important thing to consider is, whether Google as an intermediary has complied with the Indian Information Technology Act, 2000 as also rules and regulations made thereunder, including the Information Technology Rules, 2011.

The Election Commission of India has to recognize its own capacity as an intermediary under the Information Technology Act, 2000. That being so, EC is itself mandated to exercise due diligence while discharging its obligations under the Indian cyberlaw.

Google has made a mammoth empire based on data. This kind of election registration data could be extremely significant for a variety of data analytics and related activities which could also then be monetized for strategic, commercial and other reasons.

Given the proposed tieup, the focus of attention has to be on what kinds of safeguards need to be taken as to ensure that the abuse or unauthorized access to such voter registration data of Indian voters for General Elections 2014 does not take place.

Seen from another perspective, Election Commission of India today is dealing with large amount of electoral data in the electronic form. This electoral data of the Election Commission of India is part of India’s Critical Information Infrastructure, which need to be appropriately protected.

With the coming of the Indian National Cyber Security Policy, it becomes imperative that constitutional authorities like the Election Commission of India comply with its objective and principles. All constitutional authorities in India are under obligation to ensure that they do not do any activity in the electronic and digital ecosystem which could have an impact upon India’s sovereignty, integrity and security.

India as a nation has to realize that one of the most effective ways of weakening India as a nation could be to target Indian democracy. Only in being duly diligent, being secure and constantly alert about various ramifications does the path lie for India to protect its sovereign interests in cyberspace.

The author Pavan Duggal is Asia’s and India’s leading Cyberlaw expert and authority and a practicing Advocate, Supreme Court of India. He can be contacted at his email addresses pduggal@vsnl.com and pavanduggal@yahoo.com.

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Beheading bad ideas: Food, power & other non-merit subsidies are pro-rich

5:26 PM

Society

I don’t know how many people have actually read Sir Thomas More’s 1516 “Utopia”. It wasn’t just a welfare State, it was more like a communist (not socialist) State, with no private property, centralized planning and free food, health and education. Sir Thomas More’s reasons for writing “Utopia” are unclear. No doubt part of the reason was satirical. But in common parlance, “Utopian” has come to mean an ideal society that one can dream about. It isn’t realistic. For reasons that had nothing to do with “Utopia”, Thomas More was beheaded in 1535. Unfortunately, those ideas don’t die down, even though Sir Thomas More didn’t intend them seriously. Those ideas aren’t beheaded. If Utopia is ideal, its antithesis is Dystopia. In the first recorded use of the word dystopian, John Stuart Mill said, “It is, perhaps, too complimentary to call them Utopians, they ought rather to be called dystopians or, cacotopians. What is commonly called Utopian is something too good to be practicable; but what they appear to favour is too bad to be practicable.” This doesn’t mean bad ideas aren’t sought to be practiced and certainly, in the case of India, they are practiced in the name of the poor.

I think of it in the following way. Let’s use data from 2001 Census. Comparable data for 2011 Census aren’t yet available. There were 593,615 villages. 45,276 had populations less than 100, 46,276 had population sizes between 100 and 199 and 127,511 had populations between 200 and 499. We say that 68.71% of India’s population lives in rural India, suggesting that it is bad thing. We are almost normative about it. There are indeed reasons, since urbanization is correlated with economic development. However, 18% of US population also lives in rural United States and we aren’t normative about that. There are indeed issues about Census definitions of “rural” and “urban”. But that apart, the reason we aren’t normative about “rural” in developed societies is because “rural” in developed economies doesn’t connote an absence of physical and social infrastructure. Contrast that with those villages with population sizes less than 499. They have no physical or social infrastructure worth the name, despite six decades and more after Independence. As development proceeds, for various reasons, some of those villages disappear. But till then, I would interpret “inclusive growth” as delivering physical and social infrastructure there. Whether we like it or not, there are opportunity costs of resources. Something that is spent on subsidies cannot be spent elsewhere.

There is quite a bit of research, not just on PDS, on a pro-urban bias in India’s subsidy culture. Without getting into the niceties of that debate, and there is quite a volume of literature, the point I wish to make is different. Milovan Dilas wrote about a “new class” in communist countries, the Russian word being nomenklatura. That expression wasn’t primarily about subsidies. However, despite urban poor also existing, subsidies in India aren’t what the poor, rural or urban, truly get. Beneficiaries are richer sections, the so-called middle class. There are different ways to classify subsidies, explicit and implicit, producer and consumer, merit and non-merit. The merit subsidies have positive externalities, so that they are in some sense, desirable. Think of the non-merit subsidies – food, fertilizer, petroleum products, power, road transport. In these too, there is a pronounced pro-rich bias. Every rupee that is spent on non-merit subsidies is a rupee that could have been spent on merit subsidies, or on providing physical and social infrastructure. Stated differently, such non-merit subsidies benefit the nomenklatura, which is the reason they demand it in the name of the poor, knowing fully well that the poor won’t benefit.

There is evidence for this in other countries and there is evidence for this in India too. We have been down that route several times since Independence. It hasn’t worked. But we don’t learn, or don’t wish to. Bad ideas don’t get beheaded.

Policy Puzzles

Writer:  BIBEK DEBROY

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Stop wasting government money

9:38 AM

Society

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Only 10% of students have access to higher education in country!!

8:57 AM

Youth

Access to education beyond higher secondary schooling is a mere 10% among the university-age population in India. This is the finding of a report "Intergenerational and Regional Differentials in Higher Education in India" authored by development economist,Abusaleh Shariff of the Delhi-based Centre for Research and Debates in Development Policy and Amit Sharma, research analyst of the National Council of Applied Economic Research.

The report says that a huge disparity exists — as far as access to higher education is concerned — across gender, socio-economic religious groups and geographical regions. The skew is most marked across regions. Thus, a dalit or Muslim in south India, though from the most disadvantaged among communities, would have better access to higher education than even upper caste Hindus in many other regions. Interestingly, people living in Bihar, Uttar Pradesh and West Bengal — designated as the north central region — and those in northeast India have the worst access to higher education. Those in southern India and in the northern region — consisting of Jammu & Kashmir, Punjab, Himachal Pradesh, Uttarakhand, Chandigarh, Haryana and Delhi — are relatively better placed in this regard. 

In the age group 22-35 years, over 15% in the northern region and 13% in the southern region have access to higher education. In the north-central region, the number is just 10% for men and 6% for women whereas in the northeast, only 8% men and 4% women have access to higher education. 

The report, brought out by the US-India Policy Institute in Washington, is based on data from the 64th round of NSSO survey 2007-08. It throws up quite a few other interesting facts. For instance, among communities, tribals and dalits fare worst with just 1.8% of them having any higher education. Muslims are almost as badly off, with just 2.1% able to go for further learning. Similarly, just 2% of the rural population is educated beyond higher secondary level, compared to 12% of the urban population and just 3% of women got a college education compared to 6% of men. 

South India offers the best opportunities for socially inclusive access to higher education including technical education and education in English medium. For instance, the share of Hindu SC/ST in technical education in south India is about 22%, and the share of Muslims 25%. These were the lowest shares among all communities in south India. But this was higher than the share of most communities including Hindu OBCs and upper caste Hindus in most other regions. South India also has the highest proportion of higher education in the private sector at about 42%, followed by western India where it is 22%. The northeast has the least privatized higher education sector and is almost entirely dependent on government-run or aided institutions. 

Not surprisingly, government institutions are the cheapest places to study at, with annual expenditures ranging from less than Rs 1,000 to around Rs 1,500, except in north and south India, where the average is above Rs 2,000. Both private and privateaided institutions are quite costly, making them difficult to access for the poor. With little regulation of the quality of education and cost differentials, the poor and deprived are often trapped in low quality education, the report points out. It adds that although free education is provided at school level, it is almost non-existent at higher levels. 

The report also compares India's low 10% access to higher education with China's 22% enrolment and the 28% enrolment in the US. Since the early 1990s, China's post-secondary enrolments grew from 5 million to 27 million, while India's expanded from 5 million to just 13 million, says the report, while emphasising that higher education has the potential to enhance productivity and economic value both at the individual and national levels. 

"The government has to urgently address the geographical skew in the availability of higher education facilities in the two regions of north-east and north-central," says Shariff. "The central region, comprising Chhattisgarh, MP, Rajasthan, Jharkhand and Odisha, too needs attention. There is so much talk about a Harvard in India. I say, give two hoots to Harvard. What we need are thousands of community colleges that can offer professional courses so that youngsters can improve their skills and become employable."


Note: This article is taken from Timesofindia.com.

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Kiss a same sex friend, take a photo, post it on Facebook: Gay for a day movement goes viral a day after SC ruling

1:25 PM

Society

The Supreme Court of India on Wednesday ruled against decriminalising gay sex - something that left the LGBT community disappointed. While the Court may have gone by the law, on Twitter and other social networking sites, the court's order sparked a revolution of sorts.

The Supreme Court bench of Justice G.S. Singhvi and Justice S.J. Mukhopadhayay, on Wednesday set aside the Delhi High Court verdict of 2009, and said there was no constitutional room for change in Section 377 of the Indian Penal Code (IPC).

Section 377 of the IPC holds that same-gender sexual relationship is against the order of the nature and is an offence. The apex court upheld the constitutional validity of the section.

While the reactions to the Supreme Court's order were restricted to 140 characters by the twitterati, on Facebook, the Court's order ignited a movement: the Gay For a Day movement.

On the Facebook page created for this purpose, the administrator, Tanmay Sahay, wrote, "All you have to do is change your profile picture to one in which you are kissing someone from your gender in protest of the Supreme Court of India's ruling that criminalizes homosexuality. And at this very difficult time, we must support of our friends and family and fellow citizens for their right to express their sexuality."

Read more at: http://indiatoday.intoday.in/story/gay-for-a-day-movement-catches-fire-on-facebook-day-after-sc-ruling/1/330774.html

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Kimani Maruge-The First Grader

1:28 AM

Society

The soldier who fought for the right to go to school in Kenya

Former Mau Mau freedom fighter Kimani N'gan'ga Maruge was 84 when he first went to school. 

When Kimani Maruge burst into the public limelight, I thought it was a bad joke, a publicity stunt gone too far. Seriously, how could a man aged over 80 enrol in Standard One? Nevertheless, I followed his ‘educational career’ with detached interest.

Two years down the line the man was still at it. So the guy was serious after all? I was now asking myself. Slowly he was winning me over. And yes he had become a media superstar. Boy, did the media love Maruge? And he rarely disappointed. He always came up with soundbites, that TV people ran over and over again.

My most enduring image was of the old man with a blue (I am colour blind) blazer, with matching knee-length shorts. His socks were always pulled to the base of his knees. And below them was a pair canvas shoes popularly known as Bata Bullets.

Thus dressed, and with his ubiquitous cane Maruge would drag one heavy foot after the other on his way to school.

It did not take long before the folks at Guinness Book of Records took notice, and he promptly entered their books for the dogged way he sought to get educated. He became the world’s oldest pupil.

This man kept telling everyone who cared to listen that he went to school so that he would be able to read the Bible, and soon he was reading his favourite book.

It was worthy noting here that Maruge despite his advanced age wanted to learn how to read. His example put to shame many people who soon after they are through with formal schooling throw away their books. You’ve probably heard of infamous academic bonfires, where secondary school leavers pile all their books and set fire to them.

In their foolish thinking that is the end of them and reading. These are people who have been socialised to think that reading is a form of torture, that is only tolerated for the sake of sitting exams.

During the just concluded Storymoja Hay Festival I attended a session where Muthoni Garland, the managing director of Storymoja, told the story of a young woman who came looking for a job in her firm.

When Muthoni asked the young woman the last title she read a book, the young woman shamelessly told her that she no longer reads and she had now finished schooling! Muthoni says she was scandalised and rightly so. Here is a person who hopes to be employed in a publishing firm, and who does not read.

Well, that girl is in good company. There are quite a number of people who work in our publishing houses, who do not read. Don’t ask me how I know.

Back to Maruge. As a media star, his star never faded. He continued to attract media attention in almost everything he did. Such was his star power that the Kenya Publishers Association (KPA) invited him as a guest during the 2005 edition of the Jomo Kenyatta Prize for Literature awards at the Nairobi International Book Fair.In his speech Maruge, then in Standard Five, counselled on the need to cultivate a healthy reading culture. He also took the opportunity to urge the youth against engaging in casual sex.

After that Maruge retreated to his quiet lifestyle in Kenya’s Rift Valley, where he continued with his studies. The next time I heard major news on him was after the post-election violence, where he was talking to the media from an Internally Displaced Persons’ (IDP) camp.

He had been ejected from his home for belonging to the ‘wrong tribe’.

And that is how he landed in a home for the aged, in Nairobi, from where he continued with his education. All this time, he pledged to pursue his education up to university level.

By now, Maruge was looking frail, and he spoke with difficulties, but still his star power was unmistakable. Everything he did attracted media attention.

This included his baptism ceremony at a Nairobi church. Meanwhile Hollywood was planning to shoot a major movie based on his life. Titled the First Grader, the movie unfortunately, could not be shot in Kenya as the relevant authorities levied exorbitant taxes on the moviemakers. South Africa gave them tax incentives they sought and that for the umpteenth time the South African country got to shoot a movie originally destined for Kenya.

I must mention here that I was involved, in a small way in scouting for a suitable person to play the part of Maruge, but that is a story for another day.

Maruge died on August 14, at the Chesire Home for the aged in Kariobangi North, where he was staying, from complications of stomach cancer. He was aged 89.

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