The Hindu Editorial Analysis | 17th Oct '19

Table of Contents

Peanut paste not a solution for severe malnutrition: study

Clean drinking water and sanitation as imporant as food’
Deaths due to severe acute malnutrition (SAM) in India could be about a tenth of what was earlier believed, which implies that instead of taking emergency measures such as providing Ready To Use Therapeutic Food (RUTF), there needs to be a focus on non-food interventions such as sanitation, health, clean drinking water along with an emphasis on nutrition, suggests a new study published in a peer-reviewed medical journal on Wednesday.
The paper, published in PLOS Medicine, provides new evidence at a time when inter-ministerial discussions are under way on formulating guidelines for nutritional management of SAM children and when policy-makers and experts are divided on the issue of providing either RUTF or locally made energy-dense food.
During the study, the researchers observed 2,704 children in West Singbhum district in Jharkhand and Kendujhar district in Odisha, who were born between October 1, 2013 and February 10, 2015 and alive at six months of age. They were followed up at 9, 12 and 18 months.
The research found that there were a total of 513 SAM children, of which six died — four within six months of the start of the episode, and two after six months. The fatality for SAM was 0.8% (4/513) within 6 months and 1.2% overall (6/513).
‘These figures are much lower than the 10%-20% range for SAM fatality estimated by WHO and often cited by policy makers for prescribing remedial methods. Moreover, 99% of all children with SAM at 6 months of age (227/230) were alive 3 months later, 40% (92/230) were still SAM, and 18% (41/230) had recovered.
“There are multiple attempts to show that Severe Acute Malnutrition is an acute emergency situation and that afflicted children will either die or never “recover” unless “magical therapeutic food” (RUTF) is provided. We have busted this myth. Mortality in SAM is very low over six months to one-year period and spontaneous recovery occurs in a substantial proportion. In fact, after 32 weeks of starting RUTF (given for 16 weeks), the recovery rates in our studies without CMAM [Community-Based Management of Acute Malnutrition] are broadly comparable to any therapeutic food. Thus, the current Indian evidence indicates that scare-mongering over SAM is unwarranted. These children are not merely nutrition starved, but are hungry for development,” Professor H.P.S. Sachdev, a paediatric consultant at Sitaram Bhartia Institute for Science and Research, who co-authored the study, told The Hindu.
Preventive measures, apt nutrition counselling, and care for illnesses are vital aspects of SAM management, he added.
According to WHO, RUTF is a thick paste of peanuts, vegetable oil, sugar and milk powder and a complex of vitamins and minerals.
The findings echo results from three other Indian studies, which found fatality rates for SAM to range between 2.7% to 5.2% among children older than 6 months. The study also explains that the most vulnerable children probably died before reaching six months, which is before a child begins complementary feeding along and treatment with RUTF becomes relevant. These deaths are due to premature birth or low birth weight — factors that account for 46.1% of all deaths of children under five years in 2017.
According to government data shared before Parliament, there were 93.4 lakh SAM children based on National Family Health Survey-4 in 2015-2016.

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The U.S. House of Representatives passed a Bill on Tuesday sought by pro-democracy protesters in Hong Kong that aims to defend civil rights in the semi-autonomous territory, prompting an angry response from China.
The Hong Kong Human Rights and Democracy Act, which will now move to the Senate before it can become law, has drawn rare bipartisan support in Congress.
The law would end the Hong Kong-U.S. special trading status unless the State Department certifies annually that city authorities are respecting human rights and the rule of law. China expressed “strong indignation” over the passing of the Act, which also requires the U.S. President to identify and sanction people who are responsible for the erosion of autonomy and serious abuses of rights in the city.
“What Hong Kong faces is not the so-called human rights and democracy issue at all, but the issue of stopping violence, reinstating order and upholding the rule of law as soon as possible,” said Foreign Ministry spokesman Geng Shuang in a statement.

Meghalaya Governor stokes a row

Meghalaya Governor Tathagata Roy stoked a controversy on Wednesday for his remark on Nobel laureate Abhijit Vinayak Banerjee.
Mr. Roy asked why Mr. Banerjee’s middle name was Vinayak.
“I have two fundamental questions. Where is Abhijit Banerjee born? Many are saying Kolkata, others saying Dhule in Maharashtra. His mother is Marathi and father Bengali, late Dipak Banerjee. The tradition in Maharashtra is to use father’s name as the middle name. Then his [Mr. Banerjee’s] middle name should have been Dipak; [then] why is it Vinayak?” asked the Governor in a post in Bengali.
The comment infuriated thousands on both Twitter and Facebook. Many asked if he was not insulting his position by asking such “irrelevant” questions.
Others asked if Mr. Roy and his party — the BJP — was targeting the economist because he did not support demonetization.

Refusing to recuse

There is a compelling case for Justice Mishra to withdraw from the land acquisition case
Should Justice Arun Mishra recuse from a five-judge Supreme Court Bench formed to give an authoritative interpretation of a provision in the 2013 land acquisition law? There is quite a compelling case that he must. In the normal course, recusal could be a judge’s individual decision. In the course of the hearing, before orders were reserved on this question, he suggested that the demand for his withdrawal amounted to “bench-hunting” and an attempt to tame the judiciary. However, the case history shows that there could be grounds for apprehension that he has a predisposition towards a particular view that would affect his ability to render an impartial ruling in the current referral. Last year, in an unusual verdict, a Bench headed by Justice Mishra, with one judge dissenting, overruled a 2014 judgment by another three-judge Bench on the interpretation of Section 24 of the Right to Fair Compensation and Transparency in Land Acquisition, Rehabilitation and Resettlement Act, 2013. It was unusual because every Bench is bound by the precedent set by another Bench of the same size. And if a Bench differs with the ruling of a coordinate Bench, it ought to refer the matter to a larger one, instead of adjudicating the question itself. Adherence to this doctrine of precedent ensures judicial discipline. In holding that the earlier judgment was per incuriam (an order passed without due regard to law) Justice Mishra departed from this doctrine.
When a similar matter came up before judges who were part of the Bench that had passed the 2014 judgment, it was brought to their notice that their ruling no longer held the field. The Bench, headed by Justice Madan Lokur, ordered that in view of the conflicting judgments, all hearings on land acquisition matters involving Section 24 be postponed until the question whether the matter has to be examined by a larger Bench was decided. It was only thereafter that Justice Mishra referred the matter to the CJI for constituting a larger Bench. In this backdrop, Justice Mishra’s vehement refusal to withdraw from the hearing is disappointing. Far from undermining the judiciary, the demand for his recusal advances the principle that justice must be seen to be done. International standards of judicial impartiality take into account the perception or apprehension of bias, and it need not necessarily be a fact. The argument that a prior decision on a question of law does not disqualify any judge from considering the same question again is normally valid. However, it may not be applicable when the prior decision was made against the reigning precedent. The controversy also brings under focus the power of the CJI as Master of the Roster. In a court of 34 judges, would it not have been better had the case been posted before a Bench in which Justice Mishra was not a member?
In a digital economy, data is the central resource. The Prime Minister recently compared data to property at the advent of the industrial era. Data is being considered as a nation’s new wealth. How data will be employed fruitfully, and its value captured, will decide a nation’s rank in the emerging new global geo-economic and geopolitical hierarchies.
The global digital or artificial intelligence (AI) economy is currently a two-horse race between the U.S. and China. It is feared that all other countries, including the European Union (EU) and major developing countries such as India, will have to become fully digitally dependent on one of these two digital superpowers. This will considerably compromise their economic and political independence, something referred to as digital colonisation.
The shift to digital power, and its concentration, is very evident. Seven of the top eight companies by market cap globally today are data-based corporations. A decade back, this list was dominated by industrial and oil giants. Almost all top digital corporations in the world are U.S. or Chinese.

Importance of data sharing

All credible efforts to escape such a dismal situation, like in the French and the U.K.’s AI strategies, numerous EU documents, and India’s NITI Aayog’s AI strategy, focus on one central issue — more data-sharing within the country, and better access to data for domestic businesses. But how is this to be actually achieved when a few global digital corporations such as Google, Facebook, Amazon and Uber, continually vacuum out India’s and Indians’ data, and then by default treat it as their private property, including freely sending it abroad? French AI strategy calls for an aggressive data policy, and control on data outflows. NITI Aayog’s AI strategy has sought mandated sharing of data for social purposes.
Appropriate data policies must ensure that the required data is actually available to Indian digital businesses. After all, most of this data in the first place is collected from Indian communities, artefacts and natural phenomenon, and is about them.
Global corporations like to consider data as a freely shareable open resource till the data is out there, with the people, communities, outside ‘things’, etc. But the moment they collect the data, it seems to become their de facto private property and they refuse to share it, even for important public interest purposes.
This lawless logjam can only be broken by asserting a community’s legal right over data that is derived from, and is about, the community concerned, or about ‘things’ that belong to it. This is the concept of community data inscribed in India’s draft ecommerce policy.

Community data

To understand data’s value, and why a community should own data about itself, it helps to see data as the basis of detailed and deep intelligence about a community. We are careful in parting with personal data because it provides deep intelligence about us which can be used to manipulate us. Similarly, data about a group of people, even if anonymised, provides very wide and granular intelligence about that group or community. The very basis of a digital economy is to employ such data-based intelligence to reorganise and coordinate different sectors — think Uber in the transport sector and Amazon in consumer goods. But this data-based community intelligence can equally be used to manipulate or cause harm to the community, if in the hands of an untrusted or exploitative party. Such data-based harm could be economic — beginning with unfair sharing of the gains of digital efficiency, but also social, political security-related and military.
It is for this reason that communities, including a national community, should effectively control and regulate intelligence about them. This requires effective community control over its data that produces such intelligence. A complex and gradual process of classification of various kinds of data, and developing governance frameworks around them, is required.
A great amount of data would indeed be fully private to the corporation concerned. Public agencies and regulators may not be too bothered about how such private data is used, where it is moved to, etc. But a big part of data that comes into play in a digital economy is community data, which has to be treated carefully. In less important areas or sectors it may need no or very little regulation, but in other important areas, the community data concerned may require close regulation. This could be about accessing such data for social purposes, ensuring that important public interest is met in various uses of data, and to make data available to domestic businesses, to stimulate competition and for India’s digital industrialisation.
All this requires India to preserve its data policy space. We have not even begun dealing with the very complex data policy issues, including data classification, data ownership rights, data sharing, data trusts, and so on. This is a task that India should urgently embark upon, in full earnest. There is no time to lose as global advantages and vulnerabilities in terms of a digital economy are fast being entrenched. This is very similar to how the Industrial Revolution triggered fundamental changes and new global power configurations in the 19th century.

Preserving data policy space

News reports indicate that at the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership trade negotiations, being held with Association of Southeast Asian Nations, China, South Korea, Japan, Australia and New Zealand, India may accept free data flow clauses with some public policy exceptions.
The history of trade agreements clearly show that such public policy exceptions almost never work, especially for developing countries. It needs to be understood that suitable data controls and policies are not to be exceptions but the mainstream of a digital economy and society.
In signing on a free flow of data regime, however cleverly worded, India will largely end up ceding most of its data policy space, and data sovereignty. And with it, it will give up any chances for effectively using Indian data for India’s development, and for digital industrialisation to become a top digital power. It will effectively be laying the path for permanent digital dependency, with India’s data flowing freely to data intelligence centres in the U.S., and now some in China.
From these global centres, a few global “intelligence corporations” will digitally, and intelligent-ally, control and run the entire world.
With countries yet hardly clear about appropriate data policies, and the data-related requirements for digital industrialisation, it is not clear what the hurry is to sign global free flow of data agreements. The digital economy seems to be growing and flourishing very well even without such regimes.
Disengaging from signing binding agreements on uninhibited data flows across borders does not mean that a country would simply localise all data. Some kinds of data may indeed need to be localised, while others should freely flow globally. It just means that a country retains complete data policy space, and the means to shape its digital industrialisation, and thus its digital future. Our understanding in these areas is just now beginning to take shape. It will be extremely unwise to foreclose our options even before we discover and decide the right data and digital polices and path for India.
Global politics is changing at a fast pace. Thus a setting where there was a chariot of peace, joint cooperation, multilateralism and liberalism whose strings were controlled by institutions such as the United Nations, the World Trade Organisation (WTO) and the International Court of Justice has now become one of warhorses pulling in different directions to embrace unilateralism, protectionism and isolationism.
The global order is now dipping into a vortex of disruptions largely caused by the United States, China and Brexit. India also stands at the crossroads in terms of its foreign policy approach. It has a crucial decision to make in terms of the journey ahead whether to: continue with its time-tested stable policy of non-alignment and strategic autonomy; join the bandwagon of unilateralism and be a permanent treaty ally of one of the superpowers, and, finally, embark upon a calculated trip with the objective of expansion in terms of forging new relations and exploring fresh territories by adopting a strategy of “multialignment and transactional autonomy”.
The answers are complex. But one domain of foreign policy which requires a serious relook is the IndiaU.S. relationship because the backstage reality of a no-trade deal, and continuing U.S.-Pakistan bonhomie, among other irritants, have taken the wind out of the sails of the friendship between the leaders of the two nations as seen at the recent “Howdy Modi” event in Houston. Cross-currents in the India-U.S. relationship cannot be ruled out.

Contextualising ties

India-U.S. ties have shades of the good, the bad and the ugly.
The good is linked to historic terms, a key example being the India-U.S. civil nuclear deal, the ongoing defence cooperation of the past decade worth billions of dollars and the signing of three “foundational defence agreements”, i.e. the Communications Compatibility and Security Agreement, the Logistics Exchange Memorandum of Agreement and the Basic Exchange and Cooperation Agreement for Geo-spatial Cooperation. The bad is current trade challenges, the U.S.’s hyphenation of India with China in its trade war and its call for the removal of the “developing country” tag assigned by the WTO. And the ugly is when during the 1971 war, the U.S. sent its fleet towards India to assist Pakistan.
The good outweighs the bad and the ugly but a sense of the current mood at Capitol Hill that preceded the high-profile visit to Houston in September seems loaded with scepticism as far as India’s multilateral outreach is concerned, especially in connection with the procurement of defence material from Russia and some unreal expectations such as India having military boots on the ground in Afghanistan.
In this context, before taking any decision on the future trajectory of India-U.S. dynamics, the Indian establishment must remain mindful of the unpredictability and inherent contradictions in U.S. foreign policy and, at the same time, capitalise on U.S. “isolationism and retrenchment” by maintaining its time-tested policy of “non-alignment and strategic autonomy”.
Points of concern
The contradictions in the U.S.’s outlook are many.
First, the recent and abrupt abandonment by the Trump administration of the Kurds who assisted the Americans in fighting the Islamic State both in terms of resources and manpower should serve as a warning sign to India in terms of its Afghanistan strategy. The current Indian dispensation must prepare for the eventuality of a sudden withdrawal of U.S. forces from Afghanistan which could lead to a complete takeover by the Taliban, with potential repercussions on India’s northern front.
Second, with respect to Pakistan, there is confused signalling from the official “advisers” of the White House, often creating a fog of uncertainty over stated policy. For example, Jim Mattis, former U.S. Secretary of Defence has openly lambasted Pakistan (in his latest book) even as Mr. Trump who was till very recently calling Pakistan a “friend who he does not need” is now projecting Pakistan Prime Minister Imran Khan as his “friend in need” (on account of America’s Afghan ‘ejection plan’) without realising Pakistan’s bond with terrorism.
Third, the U.S. campaigned for Iran’s nuclear deal in 2015, then withdrew itself from the accord in 2018 and has now adopted a blanket sanction policy qua any nation dealing in oil transactions with Iran. With such a track record what is the guarantee that the U.S., which now expects India to forego its age-old friendship with Russia, will not start transactions with them later, leaving India out in the cold?
Despite these contradictions and challenges, a number of opportunities in the new world order await India.
The Prime Minister must ensure that India-U.S. bilateralism survives the axe of unilateralism without sacrificing India’s “sweet spot” and tag of being “everyone’s friend”.
Mr. Trump needs to realise that India at this juncture cannot afford to get derailed from the tracks of globalisation, regional alliances, trade opportunities and, at the same time, be convinced that India will never take sides hurting U.S. interests in real strategic and economic bilateral terms. When the U.S. withdrew from the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty signed with Russia in 1987, the comment by U.S. Defence Secretary Mark Esper that the “U.S. is looking to deploy more missiles in Asia” has led to chatter about the start of another arms race.
However, India cannot afford to get dragged into this and must focus on multi-alignment both with the U.S. and Russia especially in terms of getting a waiver under the Countering America’s Adversaries Through Sanctions Act in purchasing the S-400 missile system from Russia.

Potential in trade

On the trade front, India, instead of China, can be an effective supplier rather than being an outsourcing hub. With respect to the Indo-Pacific, the U.S. views it as a platform to contain China hegemony.
India, on the other hand, sees it as an opportunity for economic expansion, with the U.S. being an equal partner. China’s cautious pragmatism along with assertiveness needs to be factored into the decision-making process of both New Delhi and Washington.
What India and the U.S. could do is to forge a broad-based and productive political partnership. After all, mutual interdependence of countries is based on formal prerogatives of sovereign states.
The convergence of perception between India and the U.S. on global and regional issues of common interest provides enormous opportunities for both countries to work closely in reshaping the global political order.
The friendship has the potential to grow stronger by the day without sacrificing India’s global positioning at the altar of unilateralism.