The Hindu Editorial Analysis | 3rd September ’20

Table of Contents

Dissent and detention

Allahabad High Court: Dr. Kafeel Khan has been a victim of state persecution.
The doctor was detained under the National Security Act (NSA) on February 13, 2020, shortly after he was granted bail in an earlier case.
Baba Raghav Das Medical College Hospital, Gorakhpur – deadly toll among children admitted to the encephalitis ward – severe shortage of oxygen cylinders – suspended
Arrested: on January 29, 2020, for an address to students of Aligarh Muslim University last December.
High Court: the speech does not disclose any effort to promote hatred or violence; and nowhere does it threaten peace in Aligarh.
The process to invoke the NSA itself began only after the bail order, the Bench comprising Chief Justice Govind Mathur and Saumitra Dayal Singh noted.
The use of stringent national security laws against political dissenters, in the absence of any appeal to violence, is something to be condemned in all cases.
Even though the verdict gives him relief, it comes after he spent seven months in jail.

Grim Sovereign Tangle

GST almost serve as an exemplar of co-operative federalism.
GST faces an existential crisis.
The Centre is obliged to pay to the States, for a period of five years, compensation for revenue shortfalls in return for their having ceded the power to levy the multiple taxes that were subsumed into the GST.
In July, the Centre paid out the last instalment of compensation for the last fiscal and is, so far, yet to pay anything for this year.
States can either borrow ₹97,000 crore, without having it added to their debt and with the principal and interest paid out from future cess collections, or they can borrow the entire ₹2.35-lakh crore shortfall, but will have to provide for interest payments themselves.
The Finance Ministry has argued that higher borrowing by the Centre will push up interest rates and dent India’s fiscal parameters.
For now, the only certainty is that the compensation cess levied on demerit goods will stay on beyond 2022, and may even be raised, affecting several businesses, including the jobs-intensive auto sector.

One error rectified, many to go

In 2005, Parliament amended the Hindu Succession Act of 1956 to bring daughters of coparceners on a par with sons in a joint Hindu family.
The law bestowed upon daughters the same rights and liabilities as that of sons.
In Vineeta Sharma v. Rakesh Sharma (2020), the Supreme Court held that a coparcener’s daughter would become a coparcener in her own right by birth, thereby setting aside the Prakash v. Phulavati (2015) judgment that created a condition for a daughter to avail her right of being coparcener only if her father was alive on the date of this amendment.
In 1956, equal right of succession at par with a son was given to a daughter, but only after the demise of the father or mother.
The 2005 amendment, however, gave the right to property to a daughter in a joint Hindu family during the lifetime of the father.
In the present judgment, Vineeta Sharma v. Rakesh Sharma , the court rightly held that as laid down in Section 6 (1) (a), daughter is to be a coparcener by birth; so there is no question of being prospective or retrospective.
It is the physical status that matters and should not be linked to a date.

A missed opportunity

Non-personal data are data that do not identify an individual.
The Committee of Experts on the Non-Personal Data Governance Framework has recommended in its report, among other things, making privately held non-personal data “open”.
The objective is to make such data available for general use, though the committee does lay down conditions for such data transfers.
We think that the report is a missed opportunity to address the governance frameworks around what are some of the most important non-personal data sets in a country — those created by government agencies, or those resulting from taxpayer money.

Why data should be open to citizens

The state should be transparent about information that it has.
If taxpayer money has funded any of the data sets, then it is an obligation of the state to return the fruits of that funding to the taxpayer.
By permitting the reuse of government data sets, we avoid the need for duplication.
Government data sets, curated according to publicly verified standards, can lead to increased confidence in data quality and increased usage.
Free flow of information can have beneficial effects on society in general.

One of the nine pillars of the Digital India Policy is “information for all”.
The National Data Sharing and Accessibility Policy (NDSAP), 2012 requires all non-sensitive information held by public authorities to be made publicly accessible in machine readable formats (subject to conditions).
The government has also set up an Open Government Data Platform to provide open access to data sets held by ministries and other agencies of the government.
Various States have also either created their own data portals or have provided data sets to the Open Government Data Platform.

Failure to create an open data society

Lack of clarity in some of the provisions of the NDSAP or the relevant implementation guidelines.
The inability to enforce guidelines appropriately, which has meant that data sets released by governments are often inconsistent, incomplete, outdated, published in non-machine readable or inconsistent formats, include duplicates, and lack quality (or any) metadata, thereby reducing re-usability.
The Gopalakrishnan Committee could have evaluated what is going wrong with existing policies and practice pertaining to government data, and deliberated on how these can be addressed. Instead, the report largely focuses on the dangers posed by data collection by private sector entities.
Since data governance is a relatively new concept in India, the government would be better served in taking an incremental approach to any perceived problems.
This should begin with reforming how the government itself deals with citizens’ data.
This would engender greater trust in data governance practices and, importantly, allow the development of state capacity to govern the data ecosystem

Victory in a long battle for equal opportunities

This year shall be remembered as a landmark in Indian military history for years to come.
The Supreme Court of India, on February 17, delivered a much-anticipated ruling that allows women to serve as permanently commissioned (PC) officers in 10 combat support arms and services of the Indian Army.
The Supreme Court also directed the central Government to rescind the embargo on command appointments for women officers.
This July, the government issued formal sanction offering PC to women officers of the Indian Army.
This is the culmination of a struggle for equal opportunity that began almost 27 years ago when the Army inducted the first batches of women as officers in non-medical corps .
The Indian armed forces began inducting women in the non-medical branches in the year 1992, as short service commission (SSC) officers. The scheme initially allowed for a five-year service period, which was revised to 14 years.
In the armed forces, both men and women opt for the Short Service Commission. However, upon completion of 14 years of service, male officers could get a permanent commission. Women officers who had put in the same number of years of service, were denied this privilege.
With the grant of PC, women officers will now be entitled to serving till the age of retirement and not forced to look for alternative careers after 14 years.
This will provide clarity on their career paths and place women officers on an equal footing with men for promotions, professional growth, and provide job security.
Despite forming a relatively minuscule 3.29% of the total strength of the Indian Army, women in all branches of the army have served shoulder to shoulder with male officers in operational field areas (The Indian Air Force has almost 13% women in the officer cadre).
Given the evolving nature of warfare supported by technology, many of us do not consider this a question of gender ability but of performance, opportunity, and a fighting chance.
Israeli Defense Forces have achieved widespread integration of women.
Will women get the opportunity to directly join the services as permanently commissioned officers?
There is no provision for women to choose defence as a long-term career right at the outset as a PC officer.
When parity of allowing entry of women as permanent cadre is attained, it would truly be a level-playing field in terms of equal opportunity and career advancement.

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