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Manipur shows the way

Its anti-lynching law breaks important ground in attempting to control hate crimes and ensure police action
Six months have passed since the Supreme Court — anguished by what it described as ‘horrific acts of mobocracy’ — issued a slew of directions to the Union and State governments to protect India’s ‘pluralist social fabric’ from mob violence.
The court felt compelled to act in the shadow of four years of surging hate violence targeting religious and caste minorities.
It also urged Parliament to consider passing a law to combat mob hate crime.

Comprehensive in definition

The Manipur law closely follows the Supreme Court’s prescriptions,
creating a nodal officer to control such crimes in every State, special courts and enhanced punishments.
But its weighty significance lies in that it breaks new ground in some critical matters concerning hate violence in India, and shows the way in which the Union and other governments need to move if they are serious about combating hate crimes.

Its definition of lynching is comprehensive

covering many forms of hate crimes. These are “any act or series of acts of violence or aiding, abetting such act/acts thereof, whether spontaneous or planned, by a mob on the grounds of religion, race, caste, sex, place of birth, language, dietary practices, sexual orientation, political affiliation, ethnicity or any other related grounds .…”
The law, however, excludes from its provisions solitary hate crimes.
For the law to apply instead it requires that these hate crimes are undertaken by mobs (defined as a group of two or more individuals, assembled with a common intention of lynching), thereby excluding from its provisions solitary hate crimes.
This restriction of numbers is arbitrary, since the essence of what distinguishes these kinds of crimes is not the numbers of attackers but the motivation of hate behind the crimes; Therefore, provisions of this law should apply to all hate crimes, not just lynching, regardless of the numbers of persons who participate.

On the public official

The most substantial and worthy contribution of the law is that it is the first in the country dealing with the protection and rights of vulnerable populations which creates a new crime of dereliction of duty of public officials.
It lays down that “any police officer directly in charge of maintaining law and order in an area, omits to exercise lawful authority vested in them under the law, without reasonable cause, and thereby fails to prevent lynching shall be guilty of dereliction of duty” and will be liable “to punishment of imprisonment of one year, which may extend to three years, and with fine that may extend to fifty thousand rupees”.
Equally pathbreaking is that it removes the protection that is otherwise extended to public officials charged with any offence committed while acting in their discharge of official duty.
At present, no court can take cognizance of such an offence except with the previous sanction of the State government.
The Manipur law means that now no prior sanction is required to register crimes against public officials who fail in their duties to prevent hate crimes such as lynching.

In almost every incident of hate crime

They arrived late deliberately, or watched even as the crimes were under way without restraining the mobs;
they delayed taking those injured to hospital and
on occasion even ill-treated them,
ensuring their death; and
after the hate crimes, they tended to register criminal cases against the victims and to defend the accused.

The second momentous contribution of the manipur law

is that

It does away with the requirement of prior state sanction before acting on a hate crime.
All hate crimes today should attract section 153a of the indian penal code, which is related to fostering enmity between people on the basis of religion, race, language and so on.
But registering this crime requires prior permission of the state government, and most governments use this power to shield perpetrators of hate crimes who are politically and ideologically aligned to the ruling establishment.
The manipur law does away with this requirement, which would make acting against hate crimes far more effective and nonpartisan.

The third substantial feature is that

it clearly lays down the duty and responsibility of the State government to make arrangements for the protection of victims and witnesses against any kind of intimidation, coercion, inducement, violence or threats of violence.
It also prescribes the duty of State officials to prevent a hostile environment against people of the community who have been lynched, which includes economic and social boycott, and humiliation through excluding them from public services such as education, health and transport, threats and evictions.

The last substantial contribution of the law is

requiring the state to formulate a scheme for relief camps and rehabilitation in case of displacement of victims, and death compensation.
Again, in most cases of lynching, we have found that States have only criminalised the victims, never supported the survivors who live not just in loss and fear, but also in penury.
But the law needs to prescribe a much more expansive framework of mandatory ▪gender-sensitive reparation on an atonement model, requiring the state to ensure that the victim of hate violence is assisted to achieve material conditions that are better than what they were before the violence, and that women, the elderly and children are supported regularly with monthly pensions over time.

Learning to compete

Skill India needs a sharp realignment if it is to meaningfully transform people’s life chances
In 2013, India’s skill agenda got a push when the government introduced the National Skills Qualification Framework (NSQF).
This organises all qualifications according to a series of levels of knowledge, skills and aptitude, just like classes in general academic education.
For instance, level 1 corresponds to Class 9 (because vocational education is only supposed to begin in secondary school in many countries, including India).
Levels 1, 2, 3 and 4 correspond to Classes 9, 10, 11 and 12, respectively.
Levels 5-7 correspond to undergraduate education, and so on.
For each trade/occupation or professional qualification, course content should be prepared that corresponds to higher and higher level of professional knowledge and practical experience.
The framework was to be implemented by december 27, 2018.
The ministry mandated that all training/educational programmes/courses be NSQF-compliant, and
All training and educational institutions define eligibility criteria for admission to various courses in terms of nsqf levels, by that time.
National skill competitions, or india skills, a commendable initiative of the ministry of skill development and entrepreneurship (MSDE).
Twenty-seven states participated in india skills 2018, held in delhi.
Maharashtra led the medals tally, followed by odisha and delhi.
Now, teams will be selected to represent india at the 45th world skills competition, scheduled in russia this year.
It was also heartening that the abilympics was included in india skills 2018, for persons with disabilities.

Course curriculum not clear

There are two priorities requiring action before the next round of india skills is held.
There are five pillars of the skills ecosystem:

The secondary schools/polytechnics;
Industrial training institutes;
National skill development corporation (NSDC)-funded private training providers offering short-term training;
16 ministries providing mostly short-term training; and
Employers offering enterprise-based training.

From which training programmes and NSQF courses did participants come to the competition? The answers to this would hold the key to improve skill india government programmes dramatically.
India Skills was open to: government industrial training institutes, engineering colleges, Skill India schemes, corporates, government colleges, and school dropouts.
Skill India is understood to mean courses that are compliant with the NSQF.
A majority of the participants were from corporates (offering enterprise-based training) and industrial training institutes; only less than 20% were from the short-term courses of the NSDC.
Neither industrial training institutes nor corporates’ courses are aligned with the NSQF.
Meanwhile, the india skills competition has provided evidence that many reforms are critical and urgent.
We have advocated these reforms in the Sharda prasad expert group report, submitted to the MSDE in 2016.
This points to the need for more holistic training and the need to re-examine the narrow, short-term NSQF-based NSDC courses to include skills in broader occupation groups, so that trainees are skilled enough to compete at the international level
If India Skills 2018 was only open for the NSQF-aligned institutions, it would have been a big failure.
This indicates that the NSQF has not been well accepted or adopted across India.
One reason for this is that unlike for general academic education, which requires the completion of certain levels of certification before further progression is permitted, there is no clear definition of the course curriculum within the NSQF that enables upward mobility.
There is no connection of the tertiary level vocational courses to prior real knowledge of theory or practical experience in a vocational field, making alignment with the NSQF meaningless.
Efforts to introduce new Bachelor of Vocation and Bachelor of Skills courses were made, but the alignment of these UGC-approved Bachelor of Vocation courses was half-hearted.
There is no real alignment between the Human Resource Development Ministry (responsible for the school level and Bachelor of Vocation courses) and the Ministry of Skill Development (responsible for non-school/nonuniversity-related vocational courses)

Too many councils

We must also reduce complications caused by too many Sector Skill Councils (SSCs) anchoring skill courses.
World Skills holds competitions in construction and building technology, transportation and logistics, manufacturing and engineering technology, information and communication technology, creative arts and fashion, and social and personal services.
To cater to these sectors, 19 SSCs participated in India Skills 2018 as knowledge partners with the help of industry or academic institutions.
But India has 38 SSCs (earlier it had 40). Why did the others not participate?
The first reason is that the representation of their core work was done by the other SSCs.
For example, we have four SSCs for manufacturing: iron and steel, strategic manufacturing, capital goods, and, infrastructure equipment. In effect these are treated as one in World Skills courses.
As we had proposed, there should be just one SSC called the Machinery and Equipment Manufacturing Council, in line with the National Industrial Classification of India.
Similarly, there is no reason to have four SSCs (instead of one) each of textile, apparel made-ups and home furnishing, leather and handicrafts.

It was a mistake to create 40 SSCs.

Outcomes have shown that they have been ineffective.
If we want Skill India trainees to win international competitions and if we want competitors to come from schemes of the Ministry, we must find a way to provide broader skills in broader occupational groups.
The second, and related, reason is that the other SSC courses were not comprehensive enough for students to compete.
Most of their NSDC-SSC- approved training does not produce students who can showcase “holistic” skills for broad occupational groups in such competitions.
sectors should be consolidated in line with the National Industrial Classification of India.
This will improve quality, ensure better outcomes, strengthen the ecosystem, and help in directly assessing the trainee’s competence.
India could learn a lesson from Germany, which imparts skills in just 340 occupation groups. •Vocational education must be imparted in broadly defined occupational skills, so that
if job descriptions change over a youth’s career, she is able to adapt to changing technologies and changing job roles.
Skill India needs a sharp realignment, if India is to perform well in the World Skills competition later this year.

Hitting its stride

The Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank has grown stronger, but it should develop a wider portfolio of projects

On January 16, the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB) marked its third anniversary.
India has been the bank’s biggest beneficiary, with a quarter of the AIIB’s approved projects geared towards its development.
India is also the only country apart from China to enjoy a permanent seat on the Bank’s board of directors.
The bank has been both a rule-maker and rule-taker, devising innovations in multilateral development finance while upholding existing best practices.
Most of its projects are co-financed with the world bank or the asian development bank, suggesting a healthy mix of complementarity and competition with its peers.
U.S. President barack obama’s administration sought to dissuade western countries and asian allies from joining the bank as prospective founding members, pointing to concerns related to governance and environmental and social safeguards.
The reality is that the AIIB’s lending practices have been socially conscious and prudent, attested by its triple-a credit rating secured from the three major international rating agencies

As the AIIB marches from strength-to-strength, it should develop a wider portfolio of projects in areas such as smart cities, renewable energy, urban transport, clean coal technology, solid waste management and urban water supply
Along with the New Development Bank, its uniqueness must lie in faster loan appraisal, a lean organisational structure resulting in lower cost of loans, a variety of financing instruments, including local currency financing, and flexibility in responding to its clients’ needs
A distracted U.S. appears neither willing nor capable of fundamentally reshaping and resourcing the muchvaunted Bretton Woods-era institutions for the challenges of the 21st century.
▪India, China and other multilaterally minded major countries will need to pick up this gauntlet in the areas of trade, development and finance.
The successful mainstreaming of the AIIB in three short years must become just the beginning of system-wide reform and overhaul.