The Hindu Editorial Analysis | 26th Feb’20

Table of Contents

Counting birds together

The State of India’s Birds Report 2020 represents the first collective attempt in India to understand and assess how the avifauna are doing.
While there are several species, including globally threatened ones, whose populations are doing reasonably, more bird species are showing declines in population than are showing population stability or increases.
During the last two decades, over half the species assessed have declined.
These declines are particularly acute for certain groups of birds, including birds of prey, migrant shorebirds, birds of forests and grasslands, and endemic birds of the Western Ghats.
To the list of 67 globally threatened Indian bird species previously identified by the IUCN (as critically endangered, endangered or vulnerable), the report adds 34 more species.
The number of species of high conservation concern in India is now 101.
The report also provides strong reasons for hope that we can further strengthen the understanding and conservation of our avian heritage.
The report has two distinctive features that define a new approach

The information it builds on comes from citizens like us all.
The report’s data and analysis are in the public domain, inviting critique and further refinement.

There are over 1,300 species of birds in India. While some are loud, colourful or diurnal, and hence relatively easier to detect, others are quiet, shy, or nocturnal.
Only through the efforts of over 15,500 birdwatchers, it became possible to assemble a dataset of over 10 million records, with data points going as far back as the 1970s.

Open access to data:

A better public and scientific understanding of our biodiversity can grow only from wider and open access not only to data, but also from opening the entire process of scientific inquiry to wider peer and public scrutiny and challenge.
Birds are nearly everywhere.
They are colourful, they sing and they display.
They perform vital functions like predation and seed dispersal.

A test of governance

Communal violence in parts of Delhi, an earshot away from the nerve centre of the government of India, has claimed 13 lives and left over 150 injured.
Mobs of pro-CAA demonstrators and anti-CAA protesters wielding sticks and weapons have taken over parts of the city and the Delhi police have proved themselves woefully inadequate.
Both sides complain that calls were made to the police since Sunday but there was no effective intervention.
Policing and law and order in Delhi are the responsibility of the Union Home Ministry.
Communal violence any time, anywhere happens only due to the inefficiency or collusion or both of those in power.
More psychological than an empowering voter option
The recently-concluded Delhi Assembly elections were the 45th Assembly polls since the inception of the none of the above (NOTA) option in 2013.
Roughly one in 200 voters of Delhi opted for NOTA in the last six to seven years, with relatively larger support for NOTA in reserved constituencies.
In 2013, India became the 14th country to institute negative voting through NOTA.
However, it is not a “right to reject”.
NOTA in India is a toothless option;, former Chief Election Commissioner of India S.Y. Quraishi, had observed in an article: “Even if there are 99 NOTA votes out of a total of 100, and candidate X gets just one vote, X is the winner, having obtained the only valid vote.
The rest will be treated as invalid or ‘no votes’.
There have been pleas to extend the scope of NOTA.
In 2018, a former CEC, T.S. Krishnamurthy, has recommended holding elections again in those constituencies where the victory margin is less than the total numbers of NOTA.
A PIL has been filed in Madras High Court seeking the full right to reject in place of NOTA.
In June 2018, the Maharashtra State Election Commission (SEC) issued an order that said: “If it is noticed while counting that NOTA has received the highest number of valid votes, the said election for that particular seat shall be countermanded and a fresh election shall be held for such a post.”
In November 2018, the SEC of Haryana went a step further and issued an order where NOTA is treated like a “fictional candidate” in municipal polls from December 2018. If NOTA gets maximum vote, none of the “real” candidates will be declared elected, and the elections will be cancelled and held afresh. What is more, the candidates securing votes less than NOTA would be barred from contesting in that re-election.
Interestingly, in Makassar, Indonesia, the only candidate in the 2018 election for mayor received 35,000 less votes than NOTA, which forced a repeat election in 2020.
Whether using NOTB (‘none of the below’) instead of NOTA — with such an option as the first on the electronic voting machine — might produce a significantly different outcome or not.

Two rising powers in two different eras

The rise of China is an epochal development that could change the international system drastically.
If China was primarily an agrarian, feudal, backward country in 1949 at the time of the revolution, it is radically different today.
Decades of economic reforms under the tight control of the Communist Party has transformed the country into an industrial and technological powerhouse.
It is only a matter of time before China overtakes the U.S. to become the world’s largest economy.
This economic rise has had strategic consequences as well.
This rapid rise has upset the existing equilibrium of the global order, which has been largely centred around the U.S., at least since the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991.
The rise of imperial Germany in the late 19th century and the rise of the Soviet Union in the 20th century shaped the global order too.
Imperial Germany’s rise as an industrial and military power after the Franco-Prussian War of 1870 and the subsequent unification of Germany disrupted the power dynamic in Europe, which was dominated by Great Britain and France.

The economic tensions spilled into the military arena, with Germany adopting Weltpolitik (world politics, its expansive foreign policy doctrine).
Threatened by a resurgent Germany, Britain and France joined Russia to form the Triple Entente.
This, in turn, heightened Germany’s paranoia that its natural rise was being curtailed.
The U.S. is doing its best, through alliances in the Pacific, to contain China.

Then and now

The tensions between imperial Germany and Britain were primarily a result of the race for new economic territories between the colonial powers, which Lenin called “inter-imperialist rivalry”.
Both China and the U.S. are closely integrated into the global economic system. They are each other’s biggest trading partners.
China is still a growing power.
In 40 years, it hasn’t fought a war. And the path to growth and development is still open for China.
Does this mean that the competition between the U.S. and China could lead to a new Cold War?
China is not seeking to build an ideological bloc against the U.S. Its focus is on its own economic rise and in reshaping the international order.
An anti-China strategic alliance is yet to take shape despite the U.S.’s earnest efforts. Even the trade and tech wars launched by the U.S. are not meeting their declared goals.
It will not be easy for the U.S. to wean the Russians away from the Chinese.

Rights, duties and the Constitution

At the height of the Emergency, Indira Gandhi’s government enacted sweeping changes to the Constitution, through the 42nd Amendment.
“… it is also proposed to specify the fundamental duties of the citizens and make special provisions for dealing with anti-national activities.”
“Fundamental duties” and “anti-national activities” came into the world fused at the hip.
CJI: citing Gandhi’s Hind Swaraj, observed that “real rights are a result of [the] performance of duty.
” The first thing to note is that as citizens, there exists a wide range of duties that bind us in everyday life.
These duties are owed both to the state, and to other individuals.
Breach of these legal duties triggers financial consequences (fines), or even time in jail.
At any given time, therefore, we are already following a host of duties, which guide and constrain how we may behave.
The logic of rights: two important concerns animating the Constituent Assembly Under the colonial regime, Indians had been treated as subjects.
Apart from the long and brutal history of colonialism, the framers also had before them the recent example of the Holocaust, where the dignity of more than six million people had been stripped before their eventual genocide.
The first role of the fundamental rights chapter, therefore, was to stand as a bulwark against dehumanisation.
Every human being no matter who they were or what they did had a claim to basic dignity and equality that no state could take away, no matter what the provocation.
Second, the framers were also aware that they were inheriting a deeply stratified and riven society. The colonial regime had not been the only oppressor; the axes of gender, caste and religion had all served to keep masses of individuals in permanent conditions of subordination and degradation.
The second role of rights, thus, was to stand against hierarchy.
Through guarantees against forced labour, against “untouchability”, against discriminatory access to public spaces, and others, fundamental rights were meant to play an equalising and democratising role throughout society, and to protect individuals against the depredations visited on them by their fellow human-beings.
The twin principles of anti-dehumanisation and anti-hierarchy reveal the transformative purpose of the fundamental rights chapter.
The recognition that true democracy could not exist without ensuring that at a basic level, the dignity and equality of individuals was protected, both from the state as well as from social majorities. It was only with these guarantees could an individual rise from the status of subject to that of citizen. And, as should be clear by now,
it was only after that transformation had been wrought, that the question of duties could even arise.

NEWS

Violence continues in Delhi for third day, toll climbs to 13
Trump renews offer to mediate on Kashmir, but skirts CAA
India and the United States on Tuesday strengthened their partnership with agreements on healthcare and energy, and issued a joint statement that designated the two countries as “Comprehensive Global Strategic partners”.
SC to hear petition for safety of Shaheen Bagh protesters
India, U.S. to upgrade ties, call on Pak. to curb terror
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