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Midnight rumble

Turf war between 2 individuals.
Abrupt replacement of Alok Verma as Director of CBI
Is he removed because he was politically inconvenient?
The action of the new acting director, M. Nageswara Rao — who has transferred many officers investigating cases against Mr. Asthana — exposes where its sympathy lies.
Section 4B of the Delhi Special Police Establishment Act assures the Director of a two-year tenure and makes it clear that he cannot be transferred except by the highpower committee — comprising the Prime Minister, the Leader of the Opposition and the Chief Justice of India — that appointed him.
Mr. Verma has challenged the legality of his dismissal and also hinted about interference in CBI.
The Supreme Court will address the question whether the ‘interim measure’ amounts to unlawfully curtailing the Director’s tenure.
How to repair CBI’s tarnished image?

An ‘anti-national’ regulation

- Universities are a source of new ideas for human advancement, hold a mirror to society, and act as a bulwark against authoritarianism.
- The university in India is changing under external pressure.
- University Grants Commission has been controlling Unis in India.
- Publicly-funded universities to be subjected to the Central Civil Service (conduct) rules governing Central government employees.
- Central government employees are prohibited from writing critically about the government and making joint representations.
- The silencing of academics is taken to be both a sign of backwardness and incompatible with democracy.

Universities need to follow codes maintaining respect for the autonomy of its members, ensuring fairness in the evaluation of the performance of students and teachers, efficiency in the conduct of everyday business, and accountability in the wielding of power by the administrative authority.
Albert Einstein left for USA coz of lack of freedom.
The Massachusetts Institute of Technology is ranked first in the Quacquarelli Symonds (QS) ranking of the world’s universities for 2019.
The university ranked first in the Times Higher Education (THE) ranking of universities in 2018 is Oxford.
The very reference to it as the ‘home of lost causes’ reflects its character as a bastion of free thinking.
50 years ago Jagdish N. Bhagwati and Padma Desai expressed an anti-establishment view.
It took two decades for it to find a place in India’s economic policy. The launching of the economic reforms of 1991 was a ‘BhagwatiDesai moment’ in that their central prescription, liberalization, was adopted.

Did Jinnah want Pakistan?

The Sole Spokesman by Ayesha Jalal in her book claims that Muhammad Ali Jinnah wanted to use Pakistan as a bargaining counter to get a better deal for Indian Muslims and the Muslim League in a united India.
According to Ms. Jalal, this strategy backfired because Jinnah overplayed his hand. In the final phase, she says, “It was Congress that insisted on Partition. It was Jinnah who was against Partition.”
Venkat Dhulipala challenged this view in his book Creating a New Medina (2015).
He quotes Jinnah declaring several times, beginning 1941, that he was willing to sacrifice the minority provinces’ three crores Muslims to “liberate” the six crores in the majority provinces. Mr. Dhulipala attributes such statements to a carefully crafted policy by Jinnah to create an independent state that he calls a “New Medina”.
There is truth in both these assertions. Jinnah was probably not interested in a completely independent Pakistan.
He used the religious imagery of the “New Medina” to garner popular support in the Muslim-minority provinces, especially Uttar Pradesh.
He needed this support desperately because he had no base in the Muslim-majority provinces.
The North-West Frontier Province had a Congress Ministry and the Muslim leaders in Punjab and Bengal, the two largest Muslim-majority provinces, were averse to Jinnah’s interference in their provincial affairs.
For Jinnah, the best option was the creation of a loose federation consisting of two autonomous entities, Hindustan and Pakistan, that would have parity with each other at the federal level, with himself the undisputed leader of Pakistan.
This is why the Cabinet Mission Plan of 1946, which envisaged groups of provinces on the basis of religious majorities and a weak Centre, appealed to him.
Jawaharlal Nehru torpedoed the plan, perhaps deliberately. The subsequent decision by Nehru and Sardar Patel that Partition was the lesser evil when compared to a weak Centre put paid to Jinnah’s ambition of dealing with the Congress leadership based on parity in a loosely federated India.

Important News

Centre sets up GoM on sexual harassment
The Centre on Wednesday established a Group of Ministers to recommend measures to effectively implement the law against sexual harassment at the workplace and to strengthen the legal and institutional framework in response to the #MeToo campaign.
Home Minister Rajnath Singh will head the GoM, which includes Minister for Road Transport and Highways Nitin Gadkari, Defence Minister Nirmala Sitharaman and Women and Child Development Minister Maneka Gandhi.
A panel of legal luminaries, recommended by Ms. Gandhi on the lines of the Justice Verma Committee, has been quietly junked.
Lokayukta from Feb., T.N. tells SC
The State’s assurance came after a Bench led by Chief Justice Ranjan Gogoi took a stern view of the non-appointment of the anti-corruption ombudsman.
Government to set up skill development centers
The Centre has decided to set up skill development institutes on government land, in partnership with private players, across the country. The Union Cabinet approved the scheme on Wednesday, according to an official statement.
Nod for a panel on sustainable development goals
The Cabinet on Wednesday approved the setting up of a high-level steering committee chaired by the Chief Statistician of India and Secretary to the Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation to review if India was on track to achieving the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDG).
SC bans the sale of BS-IV vehicles from 2020
The country will have to shift to the cleaner Bharat- VI fuel from April 1, 2020. Bharat Stage (BS) emission norms are standards instituted by the government to regulate output of air pollutants from motor vehicles.
Israel, India sign $777 mn missile deal
Israel Aerospace Industries (IAI) has signed a $777 mn deal with Bharat Electronics Limited (BEL) to supply additional Barak-8 Long Range Surface to Air Missile (LRSAM) systems for seven warships of the Indian Navy.
RBI may make some changes in PCA norms
The Reserve Bank may make some changes in the Prompt Corrective Action (PCA) framework that put restrictions on financially weak banks, sources said.
The changes could be made in the next few weeks after taking into account various aspects and in the larger interest of the banking system, sources said, adding that the recent RBI board meeting had a discussion on the issue.