The Hindu Editorial Analysis 1st August 2018

Table of Contents

Numbing numbers

• National Register of Citizens
• First list published on December 31, 2017, the publication of the final draft before the Supreme Court-mandated and monitored exercise moves to the next phase of claims and objections wasn’t accompanied by major turbulence.
• Timelines achieved by NRC bureaucracy and its 55,000-odd workforce.
• Even a skilfully devised system of digitised mapping of family trees is subject to
• Human interface
• Subjective bias
• Inherent flaws in the NRC of 1951
• Electoral rolls of 1961 and 1971
• Left out figures 40,07,707 : Sparked great anxiety about the legal status of so many individuals.
• Central and State governments must step up their assurances that there is no need for panic.
• How India addresses the fate of those eventually left off the list will ascertain whether its democracy can lay claim to being humane or not.
• But when people have been allowed (or they have managed) to be in India for so long, when they have built their lives and become part of local economies and communities, they cannot and must not be rendered state-less on the basis of a list.

Towards war’s end

• Last week talks between: Syria’s Kurdish rebels & President Bashar alAssad’s regime
• Syrian Democratic Council: ready to work with the regime towards creating “a democratic, decentralised Syria with a new system and a new form”.
• Most of Syria’s population centres are now controlled by the regime.
• Damascus’s strategy appears to be to seize the entire south and then move north.
• Kurdish leader: they are not seeking independence from Syria, and only want to protect their autonomy.
• A deal with the Kurds could upset Turkey
• The Syrian regime therefore has to do a balancing act here, with support from Russia.

In Justice S.A. Bobde’s words, “Constitutions like our own are means by which individuals – the Preambular ‘people of India’ – create ‘the state’, a new entity to serve their interests and be accountable to them. ”
• Moreover, in Justice Chandrachud’s words: “The individual is the focal point of the Constitution because it is in the realisation of individual rights that the collective well being of the community is determined. ”

A fundamental error
August 24 will mark the first anniversary of the unanimous affirmation of the right to privacy by a nine-judge Bench of the Supreme Court.
The state’s purpose under the Constitution, says the report, is “based on two planks”. First and foremost, “the state is a facilitator of human progress” and is “commanded” by the Directive Principles of State Policy “to serve the common good”. Here, Fundamental Rights, which help protect against a state “prone to excess”, come “second”.
This ignores the very structure of the Constitution 1. It expressly stated the primacy of the individual as the beneficiary of fundamental rights. 2. It rejected the argument that the right to privacy dissolves in the face of amorphous collective notions of economic development.
Enabling the government’s convenience is not an objective laid out by the right to privacy judgment.
To the report’s view that the individual ought not to be the spotlighted while making a law, the right to privacy judgment is in stark contrast.
By using complicated language like, the report, already a technical document published only in English, alienates ordinary Indians from engaging with a subject of real significance to each of us.
Right to privacy judgment signified hope that things could get better, that values of freedom, autonomy and dignity would be realised.

The public-private gap in health care
NITI Aayog’s document, ‘Three Year Action Agenda, 2017-18 to 2019-20’, has a section on health care.
One of the recommendations is for the government to prioritise preventive care rather than provide curative care.
The new Ayushman Bharat health scheme to provide secondary and tertiary care to those who are socioeconomically deprived has a cap of ₹5 lakh per family per year.
The actual act of transplantation itself needs expensive infrastructure and trained human resources. For the continuing success of the transplanted organ, expensive medication is needed.
India: out-of-pocket expenses is 70%
Governments have been giving subsidies to private players, especially to corporate hospitals. The problem of distrust
Distrust of the public in government hospitals.
The perception that doctors in the private sector are much better than those in the public sector has a severe debilitating effect on the professional image of medical personnel in public hospitals.
Our hearts tell us that every possible medical intervention should be available to every citizen. Our minds tell us that the government is not committed to this.
The only pressure group which can ensure at least equitable medical care is the electorate. •

Friends or Seoul-mates?
Mr. Moon launched a foreign initiative called New Southern Policy
South Korea set up a state-run research centre on India and ASEAN under the Korea National Diplomacy Academy, which is tasked with establishing a theoretical foundation for the Moon administration’s vision to diversify strategic partnerships across the Asian region.
The clash between the two countries over the deployment of the U.S. Thaad missile defence system in the Korean Peninsula set off an economic retaliation by China against South Korea, whose economy is highly dependent on the Chinese market.
Further, the ongoing U.S.-China trade war has heightened uncertainty surrounding South Korea’s core economic interests.
Mr. Moon: wished to elevate relations with India to the same level as with other major powers in the world — namely, the U.S., China, Japan and Russia.
South Korea backing India’s bid for Nuclear Suppliers Group membership
Joint capacity-building programmes in Afghanistan

Important News

Set procedure to vet NRC claims: SC
Court asks authorities not to act against 40 lakh people left out of draft
The Bench of Justices Ranjan Gogoi and Rohinton Nariman ordered the government, in consultation with State NRC Coordinator Prateek Hajela, to frame a ‘fair’ standard operating procedure (SOP) to deal with the claims and objections of those who did not find their names in the draft NRC.
States told to count Rohingya
The government also made it clear that Rohingya were “illegal migrants” and not “refugees.”
Centre is pulling out FRDI Bill
Financial Resolution and Deposit Insurance (FRDI): Bail-in clause could be the main reason • IMF should not help Pakistan pay off Chinese lenders, warns Pompeo • Koreas talk on reducing tensions
North and South Korea discussed reducing tension but didn’t announce any detailed agreements after military talks on Tuesday, while the United States detected renewed activity at a North Korean missile factory, casting more suspicion over the North’s intentions.
Core industryies growth quickens to 6.7% in June • Biggest king penguin colony shrinks by 90%