लखनऊ। उत्तर प्रदेश में स्कूल 30 सितम्बर तक नहीं खुलेंगे। उप मुख्यमंत्री डॉ. दिनेश शर्मा ने रविवार को यह जानकारी दी। उन्होंने कहा कि स्कूलों में 50 फीसदी अध्यापक बुलाए जा सकेंगे। केन्द्रीय गाइडलाइन के मुताबिक कक्षा 9 से 12 तक के स्कूल-कॉलेज 21 सितम्बर से खोले जाने थे। मगर राज्य सरकार ने फैसला किया है कि यूपी के हालात अभी ऐसे नहीं है कि स्कूल-कॉलेज खोले जाएं। प्रदेश में बढ़ते संक्रमण को देखते हुए स्कूल खोलना सम्भव नहीं है। इसलिए यह फैसला लेना पड़ा है।

नौकरी। उत्तर प्रदेश पुलिस विभाग में सरकारी नौकरी की राह देख रहे युवाओं के लिए बड़ी खुशखबरी है। पुलिस, दमकल और कारागार विभाग में जल्द बंपर भर्तियों की तैयारी है। उत्तर प्रदेश पुलिस भर्ती एवं प्रोन्नति बोर्ड करीब 16,668 पदों पर भर्ती परीक्षा कराने की तैयारी में जुटा है। दारोगा (सब इंस्टेक्टर) और समकक्ष पदों के लिए प्रस्तावित भर्ती में करीब तीन हजार पद भी बढ़ाए गए हैं। पूर्व में 6130 पदों पर भर्ती होनी थी, लेकिन अब दारोगा के 9534 पदों पर भर्ती की तैयारी है, जिसमें पीएसी प्लाटून कमांडर के 484 व फायर स्टेशन ऑफिसर (एफएसओ) के पद भी शामिल हैं।

उत्तर प्रदेश पुलिस भर्ती एवं प्रोन्नति बोर्ड दिसंबर और जनवरी माह में दारोगा समेत विभिन्न पदों पर भर्ती की परीक्षा कराने की तैयारी कर रहा है। हालांकि आने वाले दिनों में कोरोना संक्रमण की रफ्तार भी काफी मायने रखेगी। डीजी भर्ती बोर्ड आरके विश्वकर्मा ने बताया कि दारोगा भर्ती के पूर्व अधियाचन में उपनिरीक्षक नागरिक पुलिस के करीब तीन हजार पद बढ़ा दिए गए हैं। पूर्व में 6130 पदों पर भर्ती होनी थी, लेकिन अब दारोगा के 9534 पदों पर भर्ती की तैयारी है, जिसमें पीएसी प्लाटून कमांडर के 484 व फायर स्टेशन ऑफिसर (एफएसओ) के पद भी शामिल हैं।

इसके अलावा पुलिस में एसआई, मिनिस्टीरियल और स्टैनो के 1329 पदों पर भर्ती प्रस्तावित है। कारागार सेवा में बंदी रक्षक के 3638 पदों पर भर्ती होनी है, जिसमें महिला बंदी रक्षक के 626 पद शामिल हैं। इसी तरह फायरमैन के 2065 व आरक्षी घुड़सवार पुलिस के 102 पदों पर भी भर्ती होनी है। भर्ती बोर्ड ने दारोगा व अन्य पदों पर भर्ती परीक्षा कराने के लिए टेंडर आमंत्रित करने की प्रक्रिया शुरू कर दी है।

डीजी भर्ती बोर्ड आरके विश्वकर्मा का कहना है कि दिसंबर के अंतिम सप्ताह से जनवरी 2021 के दूसरे सप्ताह के बीच परीक्षाएं संचालित कराने की तैयारी है। दारोगा भर्ती की लिखित परीक्षा करीब 29 पारियों में कराई जाएगी। भर्ती बोर्ड का अनुमान है कि अगले दो माह में कोरोना संक्रमण की रफ्तार थमने के बाद भर्ती प्रक्रिया को तेजी से आगे बढ़ाया जाना संभव हो सकेगा।

इस वीडियो के सहारे सबा ने बताया है कि कैसे लोगों को बहू की शक्ल में नौकरानी चाहिए होती है और कैसे लड़कियों को प्यार नहीं बल्कि कारोबार का जरिया मान लिया गया है. सबा ने ये भी कहा कि अब समय आ गया है कि शादीशुदा महिलाओं से जुड़े घिसे-पिटे स्टीरियोटाइप्स को तोड़ा जाए.

इस वीडियो के सहारे सबा ने बताया है कि कैसे लोगों को बहू की शक्ल में नौकरानी चाहिए होती है और कैसे लड़कियों को प्यार नहीं बल्कि कारोबार का जरिया मान लिया गया है. सबा ने ये भी कहा कि अब समय आ गया है कि शादीशुदा महिलाओं से जुड़े घिसे-पिटे स्टीरियोटाइप्स को तोड़ा जाए.

इस वीडियो के सहारे सबा ने बताया है कि कैसे लोगों को बहू की शक्ल में नौकरानी चाहिए होती है और कैसे लड़कियों को प्यार नहीं बल्कि कारोबार का जरिया मान लिया गया है. सबा ने ये भी कहा कि अब समय आ गया है कि शादीशुदा महिलाओं से जुड़े घिसे-पिटे स्टीरियोटाइप्स को तोड़ा जाए.

इस वीडियो के सहारे सबा ने बताया है कि कैसे लोगों को बहू की शक्ल में नौकरानी चाहिए होती है और कैसे लड़कियों को प्यार नहीं बल्कि कारोबार का जरिया मान लिया गया है. सबा ने ये भी कहा कि अब समय आ गया है कि शादीशुदा महिलाओं से जुड़े घिसे-पिटे स्टीरियोटाइप्स को तोड़ा जाए.

The acquittal of all the accused in the Mecca Masjid blast case shines the light on the National Investigation Agency (NIA), and the view is unimpressive. The organisation was formed after the Mumbai attacks, in response to two realities. One, that terrorism is agnostic to borders and jurisdictions, and therefore an agency with a nationwide footprint was needed to replicate strategies and successes at one location elsewhere. Two, the CBI, the famous “caged parrot”, had attained disreputability, and a national agency perceived to be above political pressures and other motives, and deserving of public trust, was required. However, the Mecca Masjid acquittals — the circumstances in which they played out, and the unanswered questions they leave behind — suggest that the NIA has not lived up to its promise.

In January, NIA chief Y C Modi claimed a 95 per cent conviction rate, but the numbers miss the point. These convictions included petty counterfeiting matters and Arms Act cases, the bread and butter of any enforcement agency. But the NIA was set up for the express purpose of addressing high-profile cases with wider political and geopolitical implications, such as the Mumbai attack.

It had performed well in that matter, working with agencies overseas and interrogating David Headley in the US. But from about 2014, it was clear that it would be unable to make a rigorous case in the Mecca Masjid matter. Notably, the agency had become controversial in 2015, after the NDA came to power at the Centre, following the revelation by former special prosecutor Rohini Salian that a superintendent of police of the NIA asked her to go easy on the Malegaon accused. The NIA was supposed to be the agency above such controversies, and immune to interference. On the contrary, it has laid itself open to the charge of attempting to interfere with due process.

In the Mecca Masjid case, the loss of evidence has contributed significantly to the outcome. But the perception that the agency showed little initiative to plug the loopholes has done more damage. A parliamentary committee pulled it up for similar lack of energy in 2017, when it dragged its feet on a probe in the Pathankot attack. In the present case, the phenomenon of witnesses turning hostile and the accused disowning testimony has drawn unfavourable attention. And the resignation of the judge who delivered the verdict, only two months before his retirement, is thought-provoking. Despite a fine beginning, today the NIA looks more like a new, unimproved CBI.

There should have been no reason for us to be shocked by what Cambridge Analytica has done as its website openly boasts of having “played a pivotal role in winning presidential races” and claims to have “up to 5,000 data points on over 230 million American voters”. Nobody has questioned as to how this data was obtained.

Last month, a whistleblower blew the lid off one of the worst-kept secrets in the world—breaches of personal data are occurring with alarming regularity and this data is being used to influence a large section of the population into making choices that have immense strategic implications for nations. As Christopher Wylie, a former Director of Research at Cambridge Analytica, told the Observer, “We exploited Facebook to harvest millions of people’s profiles. And built models to exploit what we knew about them and target their inner demons.”

There should have been no reason for us to be shocked by what Cambridge Analytica has done. That it was using personal data for psychographic profiling has been well known. Its website openly boasts of having “played a pivotal role in winning presidential races” and claims to have “up to 5,000 data points on over 230 million American voters”. Nobody has questioned as to how this data was obtained.

Immediately after the revelation, the IT and Law Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad warned the CEO of Facebook, “Mr Mark Zuckerberg you better note the observation of the IT Minister of India. We welcome the Facebook profile in India, but if any data theft of Indians is done through the collusion of Facebook system, it shall not be tolerated. We have got stringent power in the IT Act, we shall use it, including summoning you in India.”

Thereafter, the complete issue degenerated into a political slugfest between the Bhartiya Janta Party (BJP) and the Congress about which of the two parties had, in the past, engaged with Cambridge Analytica.
 

Sadly, this is a familiar and typical Indian response. We tend to ignore crucial issues till they literally hit us in the face. Thereafter, we adopt a mix of bluster, threats and political finger-pointing to show how serious we are about the matter at hand. Unfortunately, in this mix, the crux of the real problem remains unaddressed, till it comes to haunt us again.

Facebook, and other MNCs like Google, Amazon etc, do not need to collude in data theft. They already own our data. Facebook terms of use have the following conditions, “For content that is covered by intellectual property rights, like photos and videos (IP content), you specifically give us the following permission, subject to your privacy and application settings: you grant us a non-exclusive, transferable, sub-licensable, royalty-free, worldwide licence to use any IP content that you post on or in connection with Facebook.” And if you are a Facebook user outside the United States, “You consent to having your personal data transferred to and processed in the United States.”

Finally, your legal rights, “You will resolve any claim, cause of action or dispute (claim) you have with us … exclusively in the US District Court for the Northern District of California or a state court located in San Mateo County, and you agree to submit to the personal jurisdiction of such courts for the purpose of litigating all such claims.”

Therefore, summoning Mark Zuckerberg will not solve the problem. We have accepted Facebook’s terms to surrender our personal data because the government has no law to protect our data. Facebook and Cambridge Analytica are only the visible manifestations of the more serious problem – how personal data of millions of internet and social media users in India is being used with impunity by technology companies, data brokers, commercial enterprises, analytical firms and governments, with scant regard to its larger impact on national integrity and security.

How did we get here? The cost of saving data has plummeted and more and more data is being stored by everyone, from governments to private companies to data brokers. As the volume of data grew, it was not possible to analyse this by human intervention. Therefore, sophisticated algorithms were created which helped in data analytics for creating individual profiles of users. These algorithms are essential for the billions of dollars that Amazon, Google and Facebook earn, but they are also opaque and focused only on keeping us hooked.

What we see on the Facebook is not necessarily what our friends post, or different viewpoints on a particular subject, but what the algorithm determines we should be seeing. Therefore, anything that we ‘like’ is going to be fed more to us. This creates an echo-chamber which further reinforces our beliefs and biases. It also sharpen divisions in society by playing on our fears.

The potential of social media is enormous and there was a quick jump from commerce to politics and then to warfare. Even as Cambridge Analytica was seducing politicians around the world with promises of voter influence, use of data as an information warfare tool was gaining ground. If companies can create sophisticated algorithms for psychographic profiling of individuals, why not nation states that have much greater resources at their disposal. The shockwaves caused by the alleged Russian attempts to influence voting in the US and other European countries is a clear indication of the power of information warfare.

In India, we are facing our own challenges. There is a vicious social media campaign in Kashmir directed from across our borders. There is no doubt that this will only grow in scale and scope in the future. There is also no doubt that we are ill-prepared for this kind of warfare.

The start point in this war has to be the protection of our data. The government recently released a White Paper on a ‘Data Protection Framework for India’. It was a comprehensive document but completely overlooked the national security perspective of data. The White Paper has raised some apprehensions on data localisation and the economic impact of a strict data protection law. While respecting this view, it must be also be stated that this is the argument often extended by foreign technology giants who wish to continue exploiting our data. The European Union, Russia, China and many other countries have extremely strict data laws and there has been no significant impact on their economy. In any event, we must value national security over commercial interests.

Former US President Barak Obama, in a BBC interview conducted by Prince Harry, said, “One of the dangers of the internet is that people can have entirely different realities. They can be cocooned in information that reinforces their current biases…The question has to do with how we harness this technology in a way that allows a multiplicity of voices, allows a diversity of views, but doesn’t lead to a Balkanisation of society”.

In India, we have our own vulnerabilities and fractures in society. Limiting how social media uses our personal data to increase these fissures is essential for protecting the character of India.​

(The author is former Northern Commander, Indian Army, under whose leadership India carried out surgical strikes against Pakistan in 2016. Views are personal.)

Here is a sample of what has outraged Indians over the last year: a violent mob attacked a bus full of schoolchildren to protect the honour of a mythical queen. Riots erupted between caste groups over a battle fought two hundred years ago. Young people were killed for falling in love outside their faith and for eating the meat of their choice.

We are willing to die and kill for dead queens, sacred animals, and caste history, all symbols of our past. But why is our response so muted when it comes to our children and youth, who symbolize our future?

Angry high-school students are out protesting on Delhi streets over the leaked Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) grade 10th and 12th question papers. Data analysis conducted by Geeta Kingdon shows that between 2004 and 2016, the median percentage score in CBSE’s school leaving examinations have been systematically inflated by 8%. Only 40% of our 14-18-year-olds can calculate the price of a shirt sold at a 10% discount and less than 60% could read the time from an analog clock, according to the findings of the Annual Status of Education (ASER) report. And, less than 17% of India’s graduates are employable.

None of these revelations are new. We have known for years that our education system is failing. Children are going to school but not learning much beyond “floor level tasks.” Yet, there has been no big bang policy shift, very little sustained media scrutiny and indeed no parent uprising.

Why does the bleak future of our young people not stoke our collective outrage?

Students, parents and employers all benefit from good education. But they lack the voice to press for change. Politicians, bureaucrats, and media can influence education from the outside, but they find it of no use to advance their agendas.

Till recently, the software outsourcing industry boomed. Companies flocked to hire at campuses of even second rate engineering colleges. Most of these graduates are ill equipped to do entry level jobs. Corporations spend months to reskill them rather than getting entangled in lobbying government to fix college teaching.

Politicians do not win elections, or bureaucrats get promotions on an education platform. It takes years for good education policies to show results and even for bad ones to fail. Few in public office have that kind of patience to sow and wait. Fewer have the gumption to take on the entrenched unions, cartels, and ideologues who block meaningful change in schools and colleges.

Children are the most important beneficiaries of a good education yet the ones with least power to shape it. When children are in school, they are either unaware of how little they are learning or afraid to speak up. College students sometimes raise their voices in protest, but mostly on issues tangential to their learning.

Parents choose to exit the school system rather than pressuring it to change. Millions of parents pull their children out of broken government schools and enroll them in low-fee private schools. Then they find out that even private schools do not deliver much better results. The better-off among them find refuge in tuition centres. The rest make do with what they get.

However, this pattern of exiting without a voice need not be fait accompli for Indian education. “The time for the richer Indian to secede has come to an end,” notes philanthropist Rohini Nilekani in her article for this column “The end of secession” (13 November 2017). “The foul air in Delhi is a perfect example of a great leveller. Rich and poor alike must breathe in its health hazards,” Nilekani argues.

The leak of CBSE question papers may be the fateful “foul air moment” for Indian education. Fates of children living in Gurgaon skyscrapers hangs in uncertain balance alongside their mofussil peers. Consider this. There will soon be 100 million under-skilled and under-employed young people on our streets. Many will be desperate, leading them to harass, loot, and molest, or to harm themselves if not others. A student commits suicide every hour in India, unable to fulfill aspirations, cope with failure, or find emotional support, according to IndiaSpend reports.

Would we keep quiet if these were your children or mine? Will they find a college of their choice? Will they qualify for a job when they graduate? How will we grow our businesses when there are so few skilled people to hire? What India story will we sell to attract foreign investors? What myth will politicians spin to get the disillusioned to vote this time?

Now is the time to cry out for an excellent education for every child.

Parents, students, and employers must demand that our institutions deliver real capability and not empty certificates. Let us stamp our vote to those leaders who can make this happen. Let us not keep quiet till we get what we deserve. But with the right to raise our voices comes the responsibility to stay invested. Media must capture this moment and ensure that those in power heed this call. It must hold them accountable for action.

It is our children’s future, not our ancestor’s pride, that deserves our outrage first. Only then can we begin to unleash the potential of our 100 million young minds.

Written by Anustup Nayak

Written by Sagarika.Ghose

With an eye on impending state elections, Karnataka CM Siddaramaiah recently raised the flag of a south Indian revolt. States south of the Vindhyas have been effectively subsidising the north, he wrote on Facebook. After Chandrababu Naiduled TDP exited NDA, DMK president MK Stalin declared he would support a “Dravida Nadu” of southern states. In Bengal, Mamata Banerjee repeatedly attacks New Delhi’s imperiousness and Keralites have taken to social media to protest stereotyping the entire state as a “killing field” simply because of age-old political violence between rival party cadres.

With 20 ruling alliance CMs, clearly the opposition feels squeezed and there are moves afoot to create a loose chief ministers’ front. The Centre vs states battle poses a fundamental challenge for the polity: is a strong Centre run by a majority government and a dominant personality cult always in confrontation with the possibility of a looser federation of states in which no single party or individual enjoys overwhelming power? It could be argued coalition governments, although dubbed ‘rickety’ and ‘unstable’, capture India’s plural ethos better than a single party.

The Janata coalition of 1977, and those led by HD Deve Gowda and IK Gujral were indeed shaky. Yet the coalition government led by AB Vajpayee and minority government led by PV Narasimha Rao were highly successful. Former RBI governor YV Reddy recently said that coalition governments produce better economic growth than majority ones, pointing out that India saw the highest growth from 1990-2014 during coalitions.

The Vajpayee coalition government of 1999 – the first to last a full five years – was a remarkable experiment that saw growth rates pick up, tough decisions on disinvestment taken, a new relationship with the US as well as a drive towards infrastructure. It showed that if there was a consensus-building leader as a glue, it was possible to provide purposeful governance even if no party had an absolute majority. From George Fernandes to Chandrababu Naidu, Vajpayee was trusted.

If Vajpayee was the reconciler, PV Narasimha Rao was the crafty political manager who, while heading a minority government pulled off the most dramatic transformation post-Independence India had ever seen, namely the 1991 reforms. With stealth and statecraft Rao liberalised the economy, carrying with him a divided Congress and a hostile opposition.

Contrast this with India’s majority governments. Indira Gandhi’s thundering mandate in 1971 led within three short years to a descent into socialistic protectionism and the 1975 Emergency. Rajiv Gandhi’s huge victory in 1984 soon collapsed amid perceptions of influence-peddling coteries around an all powerful PM.

Today PM Modi rules with a massive majority, repeatedly proving his electability. Yet there’s a question over his highly individualistic governance style that seems to be alienating significant sections of the political class. Every NDA ally today appears disillusioned, TDP’s angry estrangement revealing a certain flaw in a decision making structure concentrated overwhelmingly around the prime minister’s office in Delhi.

Modi has talked of cooperative federalism, yet chief ministers complain the Centre sees them as rivals. For example in the PM’s latest Ayushman Bharat scheme, several state governments fear that their own health insurance schemes will be subsumed under this gargantuan central plan and the PM will get all the credit. After all, why should opposition-ruled ruled states like Bengal and Karnataka accept Delhi’s writ if they aren’t given the political space to implement their own programmes?

Also, when a powerful ruling party speaks of a ‘Congress mukt Bharat’ the opposition begins to fear not just defeat but elimination. In this sense BJP’s the new Congress which in the 70s similarly sought to politically crush not only its rivals but federalism itself with disastrous results in Punjab and J&K.

By contrast, the GST negotiations show what can be achieved if there’s give and take between Centre and states. Here the Centre reassured states of being equal stake holders, the reason why no state, despite serious misgivings, has so far walked out of the GST edifice. Can India’s politics resemble the cooperative federalism of a GST-like council in 2019 with a balance of power between federal government and states?

UPA-1 coalition saw a similarly consensual formula. Despite the Left’s haranguing presence, it was able to create high growth and move forward on an Indo-US nuclear deal. The perception was that the Centre was weak which led to slow decision-making, yet the nonpolitical Manmohan Singh wasn’t seen as a political adversary by chief ministers. By contrast, Modi’s dominant political personality has left him vulnerable to being seen as a threat by regional leaders, pitting BJP’s political expansionism against regional forces in states.

BR Ambedkar designed India’s Constitution as more federal than unitary. “India, that is Bharat, shall be a Union of States,” declares Article 1. Today more than ever before, India lives in its states and not in Delhi, it’s an era of robust and powerful CMs. That’s why the shifting contours of politics, where Mamata Banerjee and K Chandrashekhar Rao are sharing their alternative chai pe charcha or a Sharad Pawar and Chandrababu Naidu are weighing their options or a loose regional or federal front is taking shape, are not as misconceived as they may initially appear. Of course any coalition of CMs can’t revolve simply around a ‘Modi mukt Centre’ agenda but must become a template for ensuring equitable share in resources and a greater say for states in decision making.

A federal front mirrors Indian realities in which power doesn’t flow from the top but where decision making’s genuinely federalised. In fact, in many ways coalition governments are perhaps the only remaining institutional check on democratic authoritarianism and over centralisation. India’s diverse polity has always needed a wide dispersal of political power to create a truly ‘United States of India’.

Amba Kak

When you order through a food delivery app on your phone, it might retain your address without your explicit consent, so that the next time they know where to send your order. The app might also send discount coupons to the same address without fresh consent. So far so good.

But what if your food delivery history, and location data has also been tracked via your mobile so that it’s possible to identify what times and locations you’re most likely to make large purchases. That data is then shared with an e-commerce website and suddenly you can’t figure out why you see a higher quote for the same product as compared to your friend.

And what if the food delivery app shares your consumption preferences with your health insurance company. They conclude that your excessive intake of fast food indicates high likelihood of certain diseases, and therefore more expensive premiums.

Maybe you were ordering pizzas for your office, and so it’s an inaccurate inference. But you might never have the opportunity to challenge it.

Of course the privacy settings of the delivery app had an “opt out” to thirdparty data sharing. But you never went so deep. You were just ordering pizza.

In the wake of the Cambridge Analytica scandal the cry has gone out that “something” must be done. The Indian government has joined the chorus, and Union minister Ravi Shankar Prasad has wagged a finger at Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg warning that there would be “stringent action” if his company was found complicit in the “theft” of Indian people’s data.

Despite these allegations, this is not a story of unforeseen hacks or breaches. Much like the food delivery example, it is about an entirely foreseeable problem that flows from a lack of accountability through the chain of entities that process vast amounts of personal data, and a failure to ensure informed consent.

If ever there was a moment to recognise that the market for personal data will not correct itself, it is now. What we need more than a summons to Zuckerberg, is a strong data protection law.

In May this year the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) is set to come into force in Europe, with variations in several other Asian countries. These already give us the right language to call out the problem, and some tools with which to tackle it.

Here is what we would need to start with: Purpose limitation: We need the legal principle of “purpose limitation” to restrict unbridled access to personal data. The app economy is fuelled by data sharing – for example, maps that use your location, or communication apps that access your contact list, which may be acceptable. But app developers should only be permitted to collect data that they can demonstrate as proportionate and necessary for the stated purpose of their service.

Consent: As the collective outrage to the Cambridge Analytica revelations demonstrates, people were shocked at the permissive settings on their own Facebook accounts. Default opt-in, what is termed “consent based on silence”, seemed unjustifiable.

India’s privacy law needs clear standards for consent. The European GDPR mandates that this must be freely given, specific, informed and unambiguous. It clarifies that language should be clear and plain, use no unfair terms, and must allow separate consent to be given for different data processing operations. It should be possible to consent to one but refuse it to another. (South Korean law in fact requires active opt-in to any marketing uses of personal data.) Even-if consent: The fine-print cannot be viewed as a contract that encapsulates the sum total of our rights. Our rights to privacy emanate from the Constitution, and the Supreme Court’s landmark privacy judgment recently reminded us that any interference into privacy must be necessary and proportionate.

Regardless of the user’s consent there must be obligations to fulfil fairness and proportionality. For example, consent should never legitimise the collection of data in excess of a specified purpose.

Legitimate interests of the business: India’s law will need clear standards for what businesses claim to be “legitimate interests”, offered as an alternative to consent. If individuals could not reasonably expect their data to be used in certain ways, or if it would cause a violation of their right to meaningful opt-out, then that should override the business interest. Combining distinct databases, where data was initially collected in other contexts, and for other purposes, and which create complex profiles of individuals without their knowledge, is not legitimate, proportionate or necessary.

The Cambridge Analytica episode demonstrates that enforcing the substance and spirit of privacy law might be a challenge. However, this pessimism should only get us to stronger regulation. A toothless regulator is far easier to ignore – both at the stage of enforcement but even at the prior stage of compliance.

A strong data protection authority with clear standards and punitive powers will have tremendous influence over the legal risk calculus of companies providing services to Indians.

Summoning Mark Zuckerberg may not.

UIDAI, central and state governments, and companies must reveal all their plans for Aadhaar

Written by : Saubhik.Chakrabarti, Times of India

One march and one byelection in March 2018 has sent a message to BJP for May 2019. But it’s important that we read the message right.

24×7 punditry will claim marching Maharashtra farmers and SP-BSP voters in Gorakhpur are early signs of BJP losing national ground to angry kisans and smart alliances. But hold on.

Gorakhpur, once Yogi Adityanath’s ultra-safe seat, has undoubtedly delivered a shock and a larger message to Modi-Shah’s party. BJP, though, still has many cards to play.

It’s true the party appears to have misread the ground reality in Gorakhpur – a smooth transfer of BSP votes to SP. Can this become the anti-BJP model for UP? SP and BSP can fight together and split seats according to their supposed areas of dominance. BJP lost Bihar’s state polls to the Nitish Kumar and Lalu Prasad grand alliance. May be, we have seen the beginning of the UP grand alliance.

But again, not so fast. Even assuming that infamously fractious leaders of SP and BSP can put together an UP-wide alliance, against them will be the new, new BJP, the most formidable electoral fighting machine India has ever seen. The safestbet after Gorakhpur is that BJP’s leadership will go back to the drawing board and reassess everything. For Modi-Shah’s BJP, UP is now an electoral emergency, and this transformed BJP’s likely response to such a challenge is a big X factor.

More, national polls don’t necessarily evoke similar voter responses as parliamentary byelections and state polls. In 2014, Modi’s BJP was the crystal clear alternative to a hapless Congress. In 2019, who’s the alternative to Modi’s BJP? The most definitive message from yesterday’s byelections was that in India’s two biggest states, UP and Bihar, Congress is a mystery that’s fast becoming history. Congress of 2019 won’t be the same as Congress of 2004 or 2009.

If Congress fights national polls with an at best patchy electoral record, and is therefore subject to pulls and pressures of a dozen regional satraps, the national opposition will appear as notional to voters thinking about a national government. To the extent that dissatisfaction against Modi’s BJP won’t find a central locus, it’s advantage BJP.

The likely fragmented, fractious, multiparty nature of the opposition is relevant when considering the kisan vote as well. The kisan vote is a challenge for BJP – serious academics studying farmers say there’s been a definite erosion of support for the party between 2014 and now.

But recall that the farmers march to Mumbai was organised by the kisan wing of CPM. Congress had nothing to do with it. And further, when BJP has taken electoral knocks from angry kisans, as it did in the Saurashtra region in Gujarat state elections, it was more a self-goal (ignoring farmers’ complaints on low crop prices) than Congress mobilisation.

As Abhishek Manu Singhvi rather honestly said, Congress has a long way to go before building a ground level movement. Therefore, even if there’s an angry kisan vote nationally, there’s no natural national candidate to fully exploit it.

Farmers’ economic conditions are determined by structural realities that can’t be changed in 13 months that’s left for general elections. But elections are about messaging and managing, and luck and lucre. BJP, when confronted with the challenge of making farmers less angry, has advantages in all four.

Messaging: The rural vote is not only the farmer vote. The majority of rural India is non-cultivator landless labour. For them BJP’s messaging focussed on higher supply of cooking gas, rural electrification and, if it’s up and running even in a small way, the new national health insurance scheme are not electorally irrelevant.

For farmers, Modi government’s crop insurance scheme and the national emarket programme for crops appear to be good ideas that have not seen good implementation. But which anti-BJP party will lay claim to be good implementers of good ideas for farmers? A widespread, electionturning and national kisan vote against BJP will work only if BJP had nothing to say to farmers and another party had a convincing alternative. Neither applies.

Managing: Post-Gujarat elections, the Centre made import of pulses difficult, to help farmers. Before UP elections, BJP announced statewide farm loan waiver. Post the Mumbai march, BJP accepted the demand for a bigger loan waiver scheme in Maharashtra. In MP, a scheme that tries to compensate farmers for low market prices is in force, and should and probably will be improved. The point is, in power in the Centre and in most major states in India, BJP has many quickfix policy options to try and win back kisan support. Who’s to say there will be no national loan waiver if a general election strategy absolutely demands it?

Luck: Monsoons are predicted to be normal. True, good monsoons don’t by themselves guarantee good farmer incomes because bumper crops and low prices often coexist. But a bad monsoon would have really been a tough election challenge for BJP, and it’s lucky that way.

Lucky, too, that GDP growth is picking up just as national polls approach, and agriculture, construction and manufacturing are also growing fast. An incumbent that goes to national polls with accelerating GDP growth and fast-growing sectors that generate employment for aam admi has an advantage.

Lucre: Never, ever underestimate the power of money in elections. BJP will fight 2019 general elections with not just ferocious determination but with resources unmatched in Indian election history. Ground armies backed by a huge campaign cash pile can change more than a few ground realities.

So, yes, Mumbai and Gorakhpur have sent a message to BJP in March 2018. But for Bharat in 2019, it’s still advantage ruling party.

Written by Kaushik Basu (Indian Express)

Written by Ila Patnaik (Indian Express)

PNB scandal points to unreformed financial sector, failure of risk management and auditing systems.

The Punjab National Bank-Nirav Modi scandal has, once again, given rise to questions about public sector banking in India. The mixing of the business of banking with government is fraught with difficulties. Public ownership effectively reduces the RBI’s powers to punish managements and boards of banks when they fail to perform their key role of managing risk. Rules of hiring and salary, political pressures, lack of accountability and the implicit sovereign guarantee of PSBs create the wrong incentives.

While the blame-game is on for l’affaire Nirav Modi, India needs to address fundamental questions about ownership of banks and the difficulties it creates. This is not surprising given the public support for PSU banks. Public sector ownership comes with an implicit sovereign guarantee.

For instance, depositor angst about the Financial Resolution and Deposit Insurance (FRDI) bill has been mainly because it has brought into the public debate the fact that all deposits are not guaranteed. Most depositors are not aware of the Rs 1 lakh limit of deposit insurance. The realisation that deposits above one lakh may not be safe if a bank fails, even if the bank is owned by government, is creating huge discomfort. Whether a bank is involved in fraud, as allegedly in the case of the PNB, or whether it has made bad judgements about business loans, depositors have been looking towards public ownership rather than the competence of the bank management for keeping their savings safe.

Given that there are few avenues for safe financial savings, this is to be expected. On the one hand, India forces banks to hold government bonds through the Statutory Liquidity Ratio. On the other, it does not allow households to lend to the government through small savings schemes like the Public Provident Fund and National Savings Schemes beyond income tax rebates. Nor can households purchase risk-free government bonds through the stock market. Households which have low-risk appetite go through the public sector banking system to find avenues for their financial savings. The lack of other instruments in the financial sector, therefore, creates political pressure for public ownership of banks.

The PNB-Nirav Modi fraud highlights the failure of operational risk management and auditing systems. Regardless of whether it was inefficiency or fraud, what is the accountability of the management and the board of the bank? If the PNB was privately owned, would the impact of such a fraud have been only on the two officials arrested or directly involved?

It is reported that the RBI has asked the PNB to pay other banks who gave credit based on the PNB’s guarantee. If the PNB pays up and suffers losses, would it be the taxpayer who will fill in for these losses through further re-capitalisation of the bank?

How many times in the past have taxpayers paid the PNB and other public sector banks that were falling short? CAG Report No. 28 of 2017 titled “Performance Audit Union Government Recapitalisation of Public Sector Banks” says that GOI, as the majority shareholder, has infused capital of Rs 1,18,724 crore from 2008-09 to 2016-17 in PSBs for meeting their capital adequacy requirements. The government has announced that it is infusing another Rs 2.11 lakh crore into PSU banks. At the same time, bad loans in the banking sector are above 10 per cent of outstanding loans. According to the RBI’s Financial Stability Report, while NPAs are rising for both public and private sector banks, those for public sector banks could rise to as much as 14.6 per cent by March 2018.

What is the way forward? The answer may not lie in the over-simplified solution that public sector banks should be privatised. That would be part of the solution, but along with that, other reforms are needed.

First, there is a need to address the requirements of a large and increasing number of investors who should get greater access to mechanisms to lend to government. This may not even mean lower returns. Considering that today the government 10-year bond yield at above 7 per cent is higher than the fixed deposit rate offered by most banks, some could choose to invest in bonds directly through the stock market. This needs a reform of the bonds market.

Second, small savings schemes should be reformed. Direct lending to small savings schemes can be expanded beyond the tax rebate caps. Interest rates can be linked to government bond yields. Third, to address concerns about private banks the deposit insurance cap could be raised; Rs 5 lakh would cover 98 per cent deposits.

Fourth, if the government decides that PSBs should offer risk-free deposits above the cap on deposit insurance they should be allowed to invest only in government bonds, or, do “narrow banking”. Then the implicit sovereign guarantee could effectively turn into explicit sovereign guarantee. The business of giving loans, making decisions, figuring out risk management systems, hiring competent staff, provisioning for bad loans, creating mechanisms for accountability and punishing management when systems fail can be left to private banks. Today the taxpayer pays when PSBs fail to perform these functions properly. Narrow banking by PSBs can take this burden away from the taxpayer.

The reforms of 1991 changed the way business works in India. They allowed the private sector to set up production and import without needing licences. They fundamentally took government out of the role of determining how and what should be produced. However, what they failed to do was to take the government out of the role of financing production and trade. By maintaining a largely bank dominated financial system and keeping it public sector dominated, India tried to run a market economy on one leg. The other leg, of finance, that should have supported the market economy, has been dragging the economy down. More than 25 years after liberalisation, finance is increasingly emerging as the binding constraint which emphasises the pressing need for fundamental reform.

Written by Devidutta Tripathy

Punjab National Bank, India’s second-biggest state-run lender, stunned the country’s financial sector this month when it announced it had discovered an alleged fraud worth $1.8 billion at a single branch in Mumbai.

India is a federal state with its constituting units, the states, having the autonomy of governance in the subjects specified by the Constitution. Federalism is one of the basic features of the Constitution. The constitution of legislative assemblies and formation of state governments are autonomous functions. The Union government cannot interfere with the governance of a state except when there is a proclamation of Emergency under articles 352, 355 and 356 of the Constitution.

We have to ignore two instances in the past where the legislative assemblies of nine states were dissolved by their governors under Article 174 (2) (b) of the Constitution. In 1977, the Congress party had the majority in these assemblies. When the Janata Party assumed office at the Centre after emerging victorious in the elections held that year, the Union Home Ministry wrote to the chief ministers of these states asking them to request the respective governors to dissolve the assemblies. And, the governors did so.

When the Congress party came to power at the Centre, in 1980, it repeated the exercise in the nine states. The legislative assemblies in these states were dissolved. Notwithstanding the federal Constitution and the fact that the provisions of article 174 (2)(b) are not meant to give the Centre the power of dissolution of state legislatures, the Centre used these provisions in a dubious manner to interfere in the governance of the states. Unfortunately, the Supreme Court did not rise to the occasion during these two instances. The provisions of Article 174 (2)(b) give power to the governor to dissolve the legislative assembly when either its tenure comes to an end or the political situation in the state compels him to do so. This power is not to be used by the governor at the Centre’s instance. On the two occasions, the Central government wanted to dissolve the legislative assemblies in the state concerned because the ruling party at the Centre had won all or a majority of the seats in the Lok Sabha there. That can hardly be a reason for dissolving the legislative assemblies.

It is common experience that people vote differently for the Lok Sabha and the state assemblies — for various reasons. To undo the legislative assembly because the people in the state concerned have voted for a different political party while electing members of the Lok Sabha is to make a mockery of federalism. Legislative assemblies in various states have been dissolved before the end of their tenure on account of internal political developments in the states. As a result, the elections to these assemblies have to be held today at different times which do not coincide with the timings of elections to assemblies in other states or with the elections to the Lok Sabha.

If it is now decided to hold elections to the different state assemblies along with the election to the Lok Sabha, the assemblies whose tenure has not expired and in some cases, which have been constituted a year or few months earlier, will have to be dissolved for no reason other than the will of the Centre to hold elections simultaneously. As mentioned earlier, there is no provision in the Constitution except Articles 352, 355 and 356, which gives power to the Centre, that is the President, to dissolve the legislative assemblies. Those powers are limited and can be exercised only in the circumstances mentioned in the said articles. Any attempt to read such power in article 174 (2)(b) or elsewhere will be clearly unconstitutional. Hence, simultaneous elections are not legally possible.

The next question is whether elections to state assemblies and the Lok Sabha should be held simultaneously even if these are due at the same time. This is not a question of law but of ensuring genuine representation in the Houses at the two levels. Voters vote on local issues while voting for the state assemblies and are motivated by national and international concerns while electing their representatives in the Lok Sabha. But simultaneous elections may steamroll them into voting for the same party for both the Houses, although they do not desire to do so. This may distort the true opinion of the people. The purpose of election itself may thus be defeated.

– Written by P B Sawant – Indian Express