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Table of Contents

Ending impunity

- May 22, 1987: about 45 men from Hashimpura village near Meerut in Uttar Pradesh were abducted in a Provincial Armed Constabulary truck.
- 38 total deaths, 22 bodies not found.
- The prosecution case was backed by the testimony of five men who survived being shot and thrown into waterbodies.
- A turning point was the surfacing of a General Diary Register earlier this year with details of PAC personnel, their weapons and truck sent on duty to Meerut, which Delhi HC allowed as additional evidence.
- Culture of impunity that allows police or lynch mobs to get away with murder.
- The reason why communal violence or lynchings are so common in India is that the law seldom catches up with the perpetrators, and there is no effective deterrence if collective violence breaks out.
- The only way to curb communal and mob violence is to end this culture of impunity.
- A crime occurring in 1987 languished without closure for so long. The chargesheet was filed only in 1996, charges framed a decade later after Supreme Court transferred the case to Delhi, and the trial took another nine years.

High Court: custodial deaths + targeted killings of people from a particular community.
Hashimpura massacre case will be long remembered both for the unconscionable delay the judicial system has become habituated to and for the manner in which a case almost lost has been retrieved by the higher judiciary.
Policing and the criminal justice process must be fair, and free from all manner of prejudice.

Mapping Brazil’s far-right shift

Jair Bolsonaro, who will become the new President of Brazil early next year, will be the most extreme far right leader to govern a democratic nation.
Brazil: largest country in South America
Philippines, the U.S., and Hungary
Some have called Mr. Bolsonaro ‘Brazil’s Trump’
Three pillars won Mr. Bolsonaro the Brazilian presidency — of ‘Beef, the Bible and the Bullet’.
Beef: commercial sectors such as the agricultural, livestock, mining, energy and logging industries.
1.6-billion-acre Amazon rainforest: Canada, Switzerland, the U.S. and Australia.
Bible: promoting very harsh social policies, such as against abortion and gender equality.
Bullet: military + police + middle class
Acidic rhetoric calling for more police violence against the poor.
Mr. Trump and Mr. Bolsonaro had a telephonic conversation too.
Mr. Bolsonaro will likely pull Brazil out of it, or at least minimise its role in the BRICS process.
Brazil will return to its position of subordinate ally to the U.S.

Support for lives on the move

Migration: Domestic or Internal and International
Modern formal urban sector has often not been able to absorb the large number of rural workers entering the urban labour market.
This has led to the growth of the ‘urban informal’ economy, which is marked by high poverty and vulnerabilities.
Its not a transient phenomenon: it is mature
2014 data: migrant worker earns only 2/3 rd of what local earns.
Large cost of migration: ‘search cost’ + hazard of being cheated
Labour market segmentation

The benefits of migration

Higher skills, social connections and assets = fortune out of migration
Migrants belonging to lower castes and tribes have also brought in enough income to improve the economic condition of their households in rural areas and lift them out of poverty.
So its important to target both circular and temporary migrant/s

Why a national policy?

Less than 20% of urban migrants had prearranged jobs.
Education level is important.
Distinguish between policy interventions aimed at ‘migrants for survival’ and ‘migrants for employment’.
Interventions aimed at enhanced skill development would enable easier entry into the labour market.
As remittances from migrants are increasingly becoming the lifeline of rural households, improved financial infrastructure to enable the smooth flow of remittances and their effective use require more attention from India’s growing financial sector.

A clear purpose

In the U.K., for example, great arguments are going on about how Brexit will evolve, and how Britain will amend its relationship with the EU.
The arguments are complex, and they are closely linked to the role of the Prime Minister, her relations with fellow Ministers, and public reactions to these issues.
Readers of the newspapers, expect the journalists to keep up to date with changing information and present it analytically, in a way that leads to greater understanding.
President Donald Trump: an eccentric President

Important News

- Share non-confidential info on Rafale deal, SC tells govt.
- Gave the government 10 days
- The Bench said any information considered at this stage to be strategic or confidential might be placed before the court but not be made available to the petitioners or their lawyers.
- India jumps to 77th rank in the Ease of Doing Business Index
- India jumped 23 ranks in the World Bank’s Ease of Doing Business Index 2018 to 77. In the 2017 report, the country was ranked 100.
- Madras HC bans online sale of drugs
- Banned online sale of medicines that could be sold only in pharmacies on the prescription of a registered medical practitioner.
- Justice R. Mahadevan, in an interim order, directed the Union Ministry of Health and the competent authorities under the Drugs and Cosmetics Act, 1940, to take immediate action.
- Only ‘green’ crackers can be sold in Delhi, says SC
- Bench of Justices A.K. Sikri and Ashok Bhushan directed that only green crackers can be manufactured henceforth across the country.
- That means once the existing stocks are used up, no new polluting crackers can be made.
- Bihar ex-Minister ‘in hiding’, SC told
- “All is not well in Bihar,” the Supreme Court said on Wednesday and expressed displeasure over the failure of police in arresting former State Minister Manju Verma — who stepped down in the wake of the Muzaffarpur shelter home scandal — in a case of recovery of “illegal ammunition” from her.
- A former Minister has gone hiding and the State does not know where its former Cabinet Minister has gone after her (anticipatory) bail plea was rejected,” the Bench said while terming it as “strange”.
- Ms. Verma had resigned as Social Welfare Minister in the Bihar government following the Muzaffarpur case, where several women at a shelter home were allegedly raped and sexually abused, after it came to light that her husband Chandrashekhar Verma had spoken to prime accused Brajesh Thakur several times between January and June.

Unanimous decision: SC Collegium
The Supreme Court Collegium led by Chief Justice of India Ranjan Gogoi said it took “extensive deliberations and discussions” among themselves and their colleagues to unanimously resolve to recommend four names for elevation as judges to the apex court.
Perusing files, will call officers if needed: CVC
Chief Vigilance Commissioner K.V. Chowdary on Wednesday said that the commission had not examined any Central Bureau of Investigation officer till now.
He added that the commission was still examining the files sought for and sent by the CBI with reference to the allegations of corruption against CBI Director Alok Verma and that if the allegations “do not survive”, the officer will not be examined.
The top two officers in the CBI, Mr. Verma and Special Director Rakesh Asthana, have made allegations of bribery and corruption against each other.
Crisis continues in Sri Lanka
Speaker requests President Sirisena to convene Parliament
Sri Lanka’s political deadlock entered its sixth day on Wednesday, with the sacked Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe and former President Mahinda Rajapaksa, appointed in his place, vying for legitimacy.
Khashoggi was strangled and dismembered: Turkish prosecutor
Jamal Khashoggi was strangled as soon as he entered the Saudi consulate in and then dismembered as part of a premeditated plan, Turkey’s chief prosecutor said on Wednesday, making details of the murder public for the first time.

Financial News

RBI autonomy is ‘essential’, says Centre
The Ministry of Finance has acknowledged that the autonomy of the Reserve Bank of India is an ‘essential and accepted governance requirement,’ in a statement issued on Wednesday.