THE HINDU 7TH DECEMBER IMPORTANT ARTICLES
SC will ensure rule of law, says CJI
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Noting that there is a political angle to the whole religious intolerance debate, Chief Justice of India Tirath Singh Thakur sent a strong message against divisive forces, saying that India is an inclusive society where people of all faiths and religions flourish with mutual respect and the Supreme Court will ensure that the rule of law reigns supreme.
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When the Constitution guarantees Rule of Law to those who are not our citizens, there is no question that citizens of India, no matter of what religion or faith should feel unprotected. We [Supreme Court] have no reluctance to protect the beliefs of our fellow citizens. As long as Rule of Law prevails no one has to be afraid.
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There would be zero tolerance towards “devious behaviour” or corruption within the judiciary and appropriate action would be taken if complaints received are found to be genuine on scrutiny.
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“It should not be the case that the Collegium makes appointments of judges first and later discovers that they were not in consonance with the Constitution Bench’s guidelines. It is better to avoid such confusion and wait till the Bench pronounces the verdict on the Collegium. It is also not proper for us to make fresh appointments when a Bench has already reserved the case for judgment.
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A proposal to increase the retirement age of High Court judges from 62 to 65 is pending and would require an amendment in the law. He said retired judges who are good can also be appointed as ad hoc judges.
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On post-retirement jobs for judges, the Chief Justice said: “If you don’t need judges anywhere in any jobs, change the law. If you can find a substitute in a politician or a bureaucrat, change the law. If judges are of no use to you, change the law.”
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But as long as the statute allows it, we have no choice. Parliament has to change the law. I believe that there are certain offences, terrorism and heinous crimes, for which, if a court finds the accused guilty, the only punishment is death.”
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Concerning the release of the juvenile accused in the Nirbhaya gang-rape case, he said amendments to the Juvenile Justice Act is before Parliament and the Supreme Court has kept aside similar cases of juveniles accused of heinous crimes, for final word from the lawmakers.
India, Pak NSAs meet in Bangkok
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In a joint press release announcing the meeting between Pakistan NSA Lt. Gen (Retd.) Nasir Khan Janjua and Ajit Doval, Foreign Secretaries Aizaz Ahmad Chaudhury and S. Jaishankar, and other officials, the MEA said the discussions covered “peace and security, terrorism, Jammu and Kashmir, and other issues, including tranquillity along the LoC.”
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Sushma Swaraj will visit Islamabad this week, leading the Indian delegation to the ‘Heart of Asia’ donor conference on Afghanistan. Ms. Swaraj, whose visit is yet to be announced. several reasons for holding the NSA talks away from the public glare in Thailand, and came after both sides agreed to compromise on their previous positions that led to the cancellation of NSA talks in August.
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While the government agreed to include Jammu and Kashmir in the talks along with terrorism, which it had earlier refused to, the venue of a third country obviated Pakistan’s requirement of meeting with the Hurriyat conference.
60-70 per cent of dietary supplements in the market are fake: Assocham study
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Dietary supplements market in India is currently estimated at about $2 billion and is likely to almost double by 2020 thereby clocking a compounded annual growth rate (CAGR) of about 16 per cent during the course of next five years.
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According to a survey conducted by the Assocham Social Development Foundation across top Indian cities in 2012, about 78 per cent adolescents in urban India daily consumed dietary supplements in one or the other form to enhance their physical appearance, improve immunity and increase their energy levels undermining the various side-effects of such supplements.
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“Vitamin and mineral supplements will form major areas of opportunities for nutraceuticals players in the coming years driven by rising demand from an evolving customer base with middle class population being the major consumers in this regard.
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As per current market segmentation, vitamins and minerals account for lion’s share of about 40 per cent in Indian dietary supplements market followed by herbal supplements (30 per cent), probiotic (10 per cent), omega-3 fatty acids (five per cent) and proteins, amino acids and other essential elements together account for the remaining share of 15 per cent.
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Dietary supplements (mainly vitamins and minerals) are primarily produced by pharmaceutical companies and are predominantly prescription-based, recommended by physicians, nutritionists, gym instructors and others who act as major influencers.
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Higher purchasing power has made people more health conscious and prompted them to adopt a healthy diet routine completed with consumption of nutritional supplements. Dietary supplements are sold in many forms like tablets, capsules, soft gels, gel caps, liquids and powders. These products are readily available to consumers through chemist shops and online channels.
‘Progressive Paris pact will unlock green funds’
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India stands to gain from massive renewable energy investments and achieve energy efficiency in key sectors under a climate agreement, a global coalition of business organisations working on low carbon economic growth.
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The top industries and services that could reap the benefits are energy companies, financial services attracting investment from around the world, and the IT sector that would find new opportunities in big data analytics, measuring and monitoring systems to meet national climate obligations.
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Besides direct benefits, the economy could save enormous costs in the future, both in terms of higher efficiency and avoided losses due to more severe catastrophic climate events.
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The WMB group consists of seven business facing networks working to promote business action on climate, and to develop a policy enabling environment for a clean economy. It works with investors who collectively are worth almost $20 trillion in assets under management.
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Global business has welcomed the announcement by Prime Minister Narendra Modi on boosting growth of solar and other renewables by 2022, and cutting the energy intensity of growth.
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The coalition is “very sympathetic to the Indian position [on emissions reduction], because you must reduce emissions as a global community, otherwise, we will breach temperature thresholds that threaten natural resources, threaten food security, undermine development and human rights.”
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The Indian government’s position that in order to be effective on climate you need to reduce the cost of capital so that low carbon investments become possible is understandable, the coalition says. The price point of energy for consumers who have limited disposal income must be low.
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The availability of technologies should also be increased so that India can meet its commitments to deploy more and more energy. Simultaneously, there is a need to tackle issues of governance, of relations between industrialised economies and the least developed countries, and domestic governance.
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Businesses are looking to the forthcoming UN Framework Convention on Climate Change agreement to provide policy certainty, “as the type of investments we need are not six-month or five-year investments, they stretch across multiple decades. The important market signal that is sought is the long-term goal towards decarbonisation before the end of the century”.
Startup policy in New Year
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The government is gearing up to unveil a new policy for promoting startups in January 2016 with an eye on boosting innovation, entrepreneurship and creating new jobs. We will come up with a full package of ideas and incentives for the Start-up India initiative announced by the Prime Minister Narendra Modi in his Independence day address to the nation.
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The Start-up India policy would be a set of significant measures to encourage entrepreneurship in the economy and we hope it would become a game-changer in making the ecosystem conducive for new ventures.
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The policy, officials said, would bolster and complement the other initiatives already launched to promote new enterprises such as the Mudra scheme, short for Micro Units Development and Refinance Agency.
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Separately, the Rs.2,000 crore fund of funds for venture capital investments has almost entirely drawn down its corpus, the official added. Finance Minister Arun Jaitley had launched the India Aspiration Fund, set up under the Small Industries Development Bank of India or SIDBI
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Nearly 90 per cent of the venture capital in Indian startups is coming from overseas. We are trying to create a domestic VC industry and the Rs.2,000 crore allotted from this fund would enable seed funding for entrepreneurs and innovators.
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We need innovations that solve Indian consumers’ problems, with a grassroots-level movement. Foreign venture capital firms tend to have a bias towards replicating business models proven in developed countries
Government aims to move five more reforms to labour laws
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The government is striving to introduce five more labour reform legislations in the winter session of Parliament, including the bills to introduce a new wage and industrial relations code and amend laws governing child labour and bonus payments.
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These are in addition to the amendments to the Factories Act of 1948 that the government had listed for introduction in the Lok Sabha last week, but eventually wasn’t tabled. The only new bill to be introduced in Parliament’s lower house so far in this session is the Arbitration and Conciliation (Amendment) Bill, 2015.
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If time permits, we want to at least table the Bills to introduce the Wage and Industrial Relations codes, the new law for small factories and the amendments to the Child Labour and Payment of Bonus Act.
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The government has officially listed the Payment of Bonus (Amendment) Bill, 2015 for consideration and passing in the Lok Sabha this week, which would be the penultimate week of the winter session.
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The law is being changed to make more employees eligible for bonus and double such payments. It proposes to raise the salary ceiling for statutory bonus payments to Rs 21,000 per month from Rs 10,000 specified under the 1965 law.
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The Small Factories (Regulation of Employment and Conditions of Services) Bill, for instance, seeks to make it easier for manufacturing firms to employ upto 40 workers by exempting them from compliance with six labour laws which include the Factories Act, the Industrial Disputes Act of 1947 and the Shops and Establishment Acts of respective states.
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The code on wages aims to replace four different laws pertaining to salaries — the Payment of Wages Act of 1936, the Minimum Wages Act of 1948, Payment of Bonus Act, 1965 and the Equal Remuneration Act, 1976. Similarly, the code on industrial relations would substitute three different laws — the Trade Unions Act of 1926, the Industrial Disputes Act and the Industrial Employment (Standing Orders) Act of 1946.
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The government has also proposed to introduce the Child Labour (Protection and Regulation) Amendment Bill, 2012 in the Rajya Sabha this week. The Bill proposes that children below fourteen years of age may only be allowed to work in their own family enterprises.
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It also bars employment of children in hazardous occupations till the age of 18 years. Nobel laureate Kailash Satyarthi has, however, raised concerns about the Bill reducing the list of such occupations from 83 to just three – mining, inflammable substances and explosives and hazardous occupations as per the Factories Act.
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This would leave the door open for children to be employed in sectors that are largely family-run like the carpet industry, embroidery and agriculture.
Editorial, Opinion & Perspective
Secular in spirit and in letter
Speed up relief efforts
Science & Technology
‘Child-friendly paediatric TB drugs will be a game changer
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Treating young children afflicted by drug-sensitive TB disease will no longer be the same. After years of neglect, the availability of flavoured, easily dissolvable first-line TB drugs in correct doses marks a watershed moment as the special needs of these children will be met.
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The tablets, which are a combination of two and more medicines in a fixed dose (FDC), are meant for children weighing less than 25 kg. The Revised National Tuberculosis Control Program in India has made the child TB program a priority. India expects to roll out the new FDCs in a pilot project in 100 districts.
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According to the World Health Organisation, at least 1 million children become ill with TB each year and 140,000 children die each year. It’s an irony that despite the high demand, children around the world have not had access to appropriate TB medicines.
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Young children, who have relatively greater mass of liver in proportion to total bodyweight, absorb and eliminate drugs faster than adults. Children are not little adults but need higher doses of the medicines than what they were receiving and what is prescribed for adults.
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But pharmaceutical companies did not rise to the occasion due to several reasons. Difficulty in diagnosing childhood TB led to underestimation of the number of paediatric TB cases.
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In the absence of medicines of correct dosages, parents and caregivers were forced to crush or cut medicines meant for adults to achieve correct dosing. Very often, the crude method of crushing adult tablets resulted in imprecise dosing, not to mention the bitter taste when tablets were broken.
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It is likely that cutting and crushing of adult pills could have contributed to drug resistance as caregivers were never fully sure to give the right dosages. The availability of child-friendly drugs of correct dosages will have many advantages — dramatically simplify and improve adherence, improve overall treatment, stop the growth of drug-resistant TB, and save lives.
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“In India, children are treated with many disparate regimens. Having fixed-dose combinations in the correct doses and that are easy for providers to give and for children to take could dramatically improve treatment.
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Bioequivalence studies of the new combinations have already been done, based on which the products were approved by the WHO’s Expert Review Panel. Children will be treated with two fixed-dose combinations — rifampicin, isoniazid and pyrazinamide for the first two months (intensive phase), and then isoniazid and pyrazinamide for the remaining four months (continuation phase).
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Due to HIV infection and isoniazid resistance in the country, India advocates four drugs, including ethambutol to treat TB. “Ethambutol has to be given separately as it cannot be combined with other three drugs”
Primates: fighting for survival
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From the Kashmir grey langur found in India to Western purple-faced langur of Sri Lanka, Lac Alaotra bamboo lemur and Perrier’s sifaka of Madagascar and Sumatran orangutan of Indonesia are all fighting the most critical battle: to survive.
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The report highlighted “the plight of 25 species including the Hainan gibbon ( Nomascus hainanus ), of which there are thought to be just 25 individuals left in the wild.
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The burning and clearing of tropical forests leading to the release of greenhouse gases causing climate change and habitat destruction, hunting for food and illegal wildlife trade were identified as the major threats to these prized 25.
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While Madagasakar has five of its species in the list, India has one, the Kashmir Gray Langur, also known as Himalayan Grey Langur or Chamba Sacred Langur.
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The species was enlisted as Critically Endangered way back in 2008 in the Red List of IUCN as it was “restricted in its range with an extent of occurrence of less than 5,000 sq km and an area of occupancy of less than 500 sq km, being to a valley surrounded by high peaks in Chamba which is affected by human activities causing a continuing decline in habitat quality.”
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A very small population of Himalayan Grey Langur with “less than 250 mature individuals” was surviving. The species was found occurring in Northwestern India in Himachal Pradesh and Jammu and Kashmir. The valley where it lived was surrounded by snow peaks and therefore it remained isolated from other langurs.
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The assessment that only 25 individuals of Hainan gibbons, 50 of Northern sportive lemur and 60 of Golden headed langur were remaining in the wild has pressed the alarm bells for conservationists.
Unfair to target India for coal-based power: CSE
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Even as India is being targeted for expanding coal usage for energy production, a Delhi—based green NGO today said that focusing only on coal and India is an “unnecessary distraction” and creating “bad blood” at the climate conference here and is a “well planned campaign“.
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Focusing on only coal and only India is an unnecessary distraction. It is creating a lot of bad blood in Paris. It looks like a well planned campaign to ensure that the issue of carbon budget where one needs to take into account the historical responsibility of nations (on emissions) and equity issue in the climate debate here is being treated as obstruction.
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India’s entire focus on equity and common but differentiated responsibilities (CBDR), to counter that has been brought forward. But US has both gas and coal, 68 per cent depends on fossil fuel, 87 per cent of electricity in Australia comes from coal.
For normal growth, low dose radiation necessary!
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Ever since the discovery of X-rays, researchers have exposed fruit flies, mice and other living beings to radiation. An atom bomb survivor study and medical and industrial exposures to radiation have provided human data.
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These demonstrated that radiation at high doses will cause cancer. But at low doses there are uncertainties. As a matter of abundant caution, scientists assume that even low doses have a detrimental effect and there is no threshold below which the effect is zero. Presently, many scientists oppose this Linear No threshold Hypothesis.
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It was difficult to carry out such an experiment, as natural radiation which primarily consists of gamma radiation emitted by radioactivity present in building materials and soil and cosmic radiation from outer space is present everywhere.
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How to achieve ultra low levels of radiation? Researchers set up their laboratory in New Mexico, USA in the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP). WIPP is located at a depth of 650 metres in the middle of a 610-metre thick ancient salt deposit that has been stable for more than 200 million years. The radioactivity content of the salt deposit (pure sodium chloride) is extremely low.
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The thick salt layers reduce cosmic radiation to negligible levels. To reduce the radiation background still further the scientists used a 15.24 cm thick vault made from pre-World War II steel in which there are no fallout radioactive elements.
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After exposure, the scientists extracted the RNA from the microbes and demonstrated the molecular evidence that ultra low background radiation inhibited growth and elicited a stress response in the two species of bacteria. Interestingly, when the researchers returned the cells to background radiation levels, growth rates recovered and the stress response dissipated.
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