Besieged by sophistry
Mahesh Jethmalani | Member of BJP and senior advocate
The Times of India
Jethmalani says that the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) “serves the twin purpose of resolving a long neglected issue of statehood to refugees to India” and does so “in a manner which is wholly compliant with constitutional morality.”
He goes on to debunk two “canards” levelled against the new citizenship law — that it is discriminatory in nature and is arbitrary. On the first charge, Jethmalani goes into the history of Pakistan, Afghanistan and Bangladesh to explain why other religious minorities were not included in the law. On Hazaras in Afghanistan, he says that they are no longer religious minorities, “Hazaras are not victims of religious persecution by the Islamic State of Afghanistan and the Hazara community has carved out a thriving urban enclave in West Kabul. It is perhaps even safe for Hazaras to return to Afghanistan in present times”, writes Jethmalani. While on the Ahmadiyya community, he notes, “treatment of Ahmadiyyas by prominent and powerful individual muslims/institutions representing them reveals that the grant of citizenship to Ahmadiya refugees is fraught with grave risk in as much as it has the potential to foment acute sectarian strife.”
On the charge that it is arbitrary, Jethmalani states that it is misconceived and “the CAA has limited the scope of its operation to Pakistan, Afghanistan and Bangladesh on the grounds that these are self-proclaimed Islamic Republics.” Jethmalani goes on to analyse the Rohingya crisis in Myanmar and Tamil refugees in Sri Lanka to come to the conclusion that Rohingyas constitute a threat to the security of the state, while “the exclusion of Sri Lanka from the scope of the CAA is thus wholly justified; it is a friendly neighbor, a secular state, its previous ethnic tensions have sharply declined and its Tamil population is presently safe and secure in the country.”
Don’t call them anti-national
C. Raj Kumar | Founding Vice Chancellor of O.P. Jindal Global University
The Indian Express
Kumar says that while the CAA raises many constitutional questions, there is more than just constitutionality at stake. He lists four reasons why the new law will not pass the scrutiny of the Supreme Court. The first being, “there is no intelligible differentia.” By privileging non-Muslims for citizenship, the new act “doesn’t qualify the rest of reasonable classification…. [and] is an example of discrimination”. The framers of the Constitution rejected the grant of citizenship on the basis of religion, he explains.
Second, it does not have a rational relation to the object. Kumar explains this in lieu of the choice of countries and religions that come under the ambit of the new citizenship law — giving citizenship to those who have faced religious persecution. He writes that both the choice of countries and religions are not in tandem with the objective. Third, Kumar writes that “arbitrariness is antithetical to equality.” He states the SC “has emphasised the importance of non-arbitrariness to pass the test of equality.” Kumar notes the final reason and perhaps the most important one, that CAA alters the basic structure of the Constitution.
Disentangling the threads of a broken criminal justice system
Abhinav Sekhri | Lawyer
Hindustan Times
The National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB) of India published its Crime in India 2017 report after a gap of almost two years and then immediately released the 2018 report. Sekhri argues that, “the Indian criminal justice system is being crushed under its own weight.” While the usual solutions will be to get more judges, more courts and put in more investment, Sekhri states, “it is foolhardy to think that a pendency level of almost 25 million cases at the trial level is being caused only because of poor infrastructure.”
He argues that a fair share of the blame lies in the manner in which the criminal justice system works. “Trials are long-drawn procedures, which come at significant costs for taxpayers, and also cause great hardship to persons who are accused without credible material,” he writes.
Sekhri concludes by saying, “Thus, to argue that the law should ‘make trials faster’ to reduce delays is, frankly, wrong. What that leads us to are farcical procedures, which end up being set aside in appeals and compounding injustice.”
Call Up the Right Numbers
Sachchidanand Shukla | Chief economist, Mahindra Group
Economic Times
Shukla argues that if consumer price index (CPI) is to be used as a “nominal anchor” for monetary policy and an indicator for the cost of living, it needs to be frequently revised.
Having scrapped the household Consumption Expenditure Survey (CES) for 2018-19, the central government is putting out fresh surveys in 2020-21 and 2021-22, he writes. However, CPI will be revised only three years later and this delay could lead to “data deficiencies”, overestimation of inflation and thereby skewed monetary policy at the cost of higher growth, explains Shukla. Furthermore, “Any food-driven rise in inflation would end up overestimating the underlying inflation in the period ahead — as weight of food should be lower than what it was in 2011-12”, he observes.
Shukla explains how CPI’s accuracy in reflecting the cost of living has probably declined and will continue to do so in the next few years. He suggests constructing an alternative CPI basket using “extrapolated weights based on changes in consumption patterns over the last decade” or “setting higher or lower tolerance limits for rising or falling inflation on account of food and non-food prices”.
Why deny broadcasting telecom-like success?
T.V. Ramachandran | President, Broadband India Forum and Founder
Financial Express
Ramachandran recommends telecom regulator TRAI to apply the same “growth-fuelling policies” to the broadcasting industry as it has done for Indian telecom.
In the 1990s, TRAI’s “astute, market-friendly, and liberalised policies resulted in a win-win” for all players in the telecom industry, explains Ramachandran. However, TRAI has created a “volatile regulatory environment” for broadcast, issuing more than “36 notifications in just 15 years”, he writes.
Ramachandran criticises the New Tariff Order (NTO) that has been in operation for just a year and “mandates that all operators offer 200 channels for a base price of Rs 130”. This type of “bouquet pricing” is like “demanding the same price for a papadand a more expensive sabzi, both ordered a la carte”, he observes.
Not only are restrictions like pricing caps “perplexing”, but they come at a time when economic growth is paramount, explains Ramachandran. These caps are “counter-productive” as they can result in a “decline of quality programming—driving consumers away”, he adds.