Why should I care about Jaimat’s resolutions?

To Mr. Kanchan Gupta:

Posting here since I can’t condense this in a tweet.

Groups and individuals have a fundamental human right to express their opinions. You have a right disagree with their views publicly.

You have been relentlessly tweeting about their resolutions. I am wondering what makes you *so* worked up. I am sure there are so many other individuals and groups that you disagree with. If you disagree with a policy or action of a government, I can understand that. Why should you and me be affected by whether or not someone wants to sing or not sing a song?

For example, you said, “I really do wish there would be a vigorous and loud debate on Jamiat’s 24 other resolutions.” This is what prompted my tweet. Why should I waste my time debating what they say? Maybe there is a resolution that says, “2+2=5.” Bad for them.

My fundamental question is, “Why do you care, and why should I?”

Important RTI dispute involving the IITs

Central Information Commissioner Shailesh Gandhi is going to hear an important dispute relating to the Right To Information act. Prof. Rajeev Sharma, a computer sciences professor at IIT Kharagpur has filed an RTI application seeking test scores of all applicants who appeared in the IIT Joint Entrance Examination in 2006. The JEE exam board is stalling the process.

It has been very hard to get complete information on this dispute. Reporting, like it is usually the norm, has been pathetic. Here is what I understand of where this dispute currently stands.

Some irregularities in the JEE exam

The plaintiff Prof. Kumar has been doggedly seeking information about the IIT JEE 2006 examination. He alleges irregularities in calculating which students made the cut. In fact, the Calcutta High Court is currently hearing a case on this very issue. The court asked the IITs to submit the formulae used to calculate applicants who are offered admits. The IITs have submitted several different formulae on different occasions. Moreover, they destroyed all answer sheets before they were supposed to.

Soft-copy versus hard-copy

Now, let’s come back to the RTI application that that IITs have not yet responded to. Times of India has reported that this is an issue of soft-copy of data versus hard-copy. The paper reports that the IITs have offered to provide printouts of the data (running to tens of thousands of pages) at cost to the plaintiff. This clearly would be ridiculous.

However, I am not sure if this is the case. Prof. Gautam Barua, Director of IIT Guwahati, who is also responsible for the entrance examinations, responded to me that the dispute was not one of hard or soft copy, but one of privacy. I could not reach the reporter and got no response from Prof. Kumar. So, I have to give the IITs the benefit of doubt.

Privacy issue

Prof. Barua claimed to me that the IITs offered to provide the data after removing personally identifying information. In fact, a news report seems to corroborate this claim.

IIT Guwahati Director Gautam Barua has said that he had offered the appellant data for scrutiny with the names made anonymous. IIT Guwahati [...] had refused to provide marks and personal details of candidates on a CD as requested by Prof Rajeev Kumar of IIT Kharagpur.

Releasing personal information of applicants would be ridiculous. However Prof. Barua did not clarify where he stood on the soft-copy issue.

Where it stands now

To me this is such an open and shut case. There is no question that privacy should not violated. There is also no question that information should be provided in the most accessible form, in this case a soft-copy. I don’t know why this has been dragging for so long.

Prof. Barua agrees that they have not provided the application any information yet, and are waiting for the CIC’s hearing. This puzzles me. They could have provided a soft copy of data without private information on their own accord.

Resolution?

Shailesh Gandhi is going to hear this soon. I hope he clarifies one important piece of this issue. The RTI act clearly specifies that information includes electronic data and that citizens have a right to this data in an electronic form or in the form of printouts. The act does not specify that a soft-copy, where available, should be preferred. I hope he does that.

“information” means any material in any form, including records, documents, memos, e-mails, opinions, advices, press releases, circulars, orders, logbooks, contracts, reports, papers, samples, models, data material held in any electronic form and information relating to any private body which can be accessed by a public authority under any other law for the time being in force;

["right to information"] includes the right to obtaining information in the form of diskettes, floppies, tapes, video cassettes or in any other electronic mode or through printouts where such information is stored in a computer or in any other device;

On climate change, ‘Glenn Beck types’ (Sagarika Ghose) descend on Indian TV

Update: I am not the only complaining. See Shoddy journalism by Sagarika Ghose on Global Warming.

Sagarika Ghose is currently a senior editor on CNN-IBN. I am not particularly a fan of her. To be fair to her, I might be misrepresenting her by taking issue with a couple of occasions where she has been, let’s say, less than stellar. As with all of Indian news channels in English, she is an active champion of the shouting match culture. Don’t take my comments to be condemnation of her, but merely two incidents where I did not like what she did.

Climate change is in the news because India’s Minister of State for Environment and Forests Jairam Ramesh recently suggested that India should look to curb its CO2 emissions. CNN-IBN had a shouting match to discuss “India selling out to the West on Climate Change?”. Sagarika Ghose then went on to tweet these enlightening words

• 1. Interesting point raised last night: our problem is poverty, not climate. lets first get rich, then we can go green.
• 2. The richest countries in the world are the greenest. the fact is we need hell-for-leather development, nothing will happen to our skies!
• 3. Is even the science of climate change dodgy? is there any evidence that CO2 is bad for us? who says the climate’s changing for the worse?
• 4. for those interested–read The Skeptical Environmentalist by Bjorn Lamborg. huge amounts spent on “green” tech is a waste of money
• 5. @scanman lamborg says drought deluges were regular 100 years ago when no greenhouse gases.Difference: today you see them on TV!!.

It is reasonable to say that India should ignore climate change since poverty is a larger issue (assuming that development conflicts with the climate), but to totally misrepresent facts and science is atrocious.

• Note the contradiction between the first and the second tweet. 1) “lets first get rich, then we can go green.” and 2) “The richest countries in the world are the greenest”. Wouldn’t becoming rich make us green automatically?
• “The richest countries in the world are the greenest”? Where did she get this information from? I have never heard of Africa being affected by acid rain or such ills of industrialization.
• “nothing will happen to our skies!” Very naive. I will give her a pass an blame it on twitter’s 140 character limit.
• “Is even the science of climate change dodgy? is there any evidence that CO2 is bad for us? who says the climate’s changing for the worse?” I don’t know where to start. Now, I am not a researcher in this area, but I know well to rely on scientific consensus, as that is the best I, or anyone, can hope to do. Scientific opinion on climate change is overwhelming in that global warming is real and the blame lies on man-made CO2 emissions.

She mentioned Bjorn Lamborg. I recommend that you watch his awesome TED talk on what global priorities we should set. Among other things, this talk argues that we should not fight global warming now. Addressing the problem and accepting a scientific fact are two separate issues. I have not read his book, and do not know if he outright denies global warming. Even if he does, she should have put it in perspective in light of the overwhelming scientific consensus being in the other camp.

About the Indian media, I was happy that we did not have clowns like Glenn Beck who grossly misrepresented facts in topics they were not experts on. I have to to change that view now.

Statues make for better judges in India’s Supreme Court

India’s founders could have installed statues in the Supreme Court to function as judges and these statues would have done a better job than India’s current crop of judges in the Supreme Court. For one, these statues wouldn’t be able to hear any stupid cases. Like the one about Mayawati and her statues.

I am absolutely annoyed over India’s Supreme Court hearing this case. I am no student of law, and would appreciate if any one could point out what I am missing here.

Just to recap, this is the story. Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Mayawati seems to be megalomaniac. She wants to unveil several statues of herself throughout the state, costing taxpayers about Rs. 5.5 billion ($ 120 million). Unsurprisingly, this has riled up several people. Activists are seeking all avenues to stop this nonsense. A common strategy in such situations is to approach the judiciary. So far so good.

They file a Public Interest Litigation (PIL) in India’s Supreme Court. For any case there needs to be a litigant, the affected party. Presumably, a few taxpayers file a case against the government claiming that their tax rupees are wasted. For them to have a case shouldn’t the administration have done something unconstitutional, or have broken the law? How can any democratic system allow any case where litigants argue about an administration and legislature’s spending priorities? Some folks might want to spend money on education, some might favor welfare measures, while others might like statues. Aren’t elections meant to settle these issues?

What legal basis do courts have to hear such cases? And what basis are they going to use to make any judgement? Are they going to prevent the government from installing Mayawati’s statues? What if the statues were those of Gandhi? What if the plan was to install one statue of Gandhi? When does a rightful expenditure become wrongful and what authority does the court have? Forget the authority, what capability do they have? How did judges suddenly assume they were smart enough to decide how to allocate a state’s budget?

What next? Are they going to direct the Central Government to invade China?

I usually use the word moron to describe such actors. In this instance, doing so would be insulting to morons.

One interesting outcome of the case is that, the Supreme Court threatened to get the Central Government dismiss the UP State Government if they would not follow the court’s orders. Now, I do agree that any government should faithfully follow any court’s orders. Disobedience should be an impossible solution. Otherwise, our system of Rule of Law would break down. What happens if the Central government refuses to listen to a court’s orders? The court stages a coup?

In this situation, statues serving as judges would have done a better job. They would not have heard this case at all.

India’s police state in Manipur

I very briefly mentioned about Indian Government atrocities in Manipur, while talking about the abject state of civil liberties in India.

On July 23rd this year calm unarmed Chongkam Sanjit, a 27-year old was murdered by Manipur police. Here are a series of pictures that document Sanjit’s murder. Shoma Chaudhury’s excellent story from a month ago goes over the history of violent state overreach in Manipur. CNN-IBN has an educative news story on the same issue.

Manipur’s story seems to like that of Blackwater in Iraq. Only that it is by India’s own government on its own people.

PS: I have written several posts where I have complained about India’s media and CNN-IBN. I have to give them their due for this story and others by Arjit Sen. Good reporting.

“We are morons”: Gujarat State Government

The Gujarat state government banned Jaswant Singh’s book “Jinnah: India-Partition-Independence” and had this to say:

Jaswant Singh’s book questions role of Sardar Patel during the partition of India as well as his patriotic spirit. This is an attempt to tarnish the image of Patel who is considered the architect of modern united India [...] So, the state government has decided to ban the book with immediate effect for wider public interest

Translation: “We are morons. We exercise our constitutional right to be stupid.” My first reaction was, “You could do that?”

On thinking more about it, I must say this would be a really strong defence. What would a judge’s reaction be when one person’s implicit right to be stupid conflicts with another person’s right to free speech?

Is Indian outrage over Khan’s questioning justified?

A couple of days ago, the leading news story in all of India’s news channels was that of actor Shahrukh Khan being questioned by US Customs and Border Protection at Newark Airport. A brouhaha was raised (I can’t tell by whom). But from this screenshot from NDTV, one might conclude that the entire country is up in arms. (That’s a different topic for another day). Famous Indians on twitter were surely expressing their displeasure. Shashi Tharoor tweeted

This also happens to 100s of innocent Muslims daily who don’t have 1 billion ppl to stand up for them. Raises real qsns abt US procedures

I am not sure if means the billion comes because he is Indian or because he is Shahrukh Khan? Then we have our bone-headed Union Cabinet Minister Ms. Ambika Soni who wants a tit-for-tat

I have always felt – even when I was frisked there – that the way they frisk us we should do the same for them here

Yeah, right. This is how a Union Minister wants to organize our security apparatus — to spite people.

I am bewildered by these folks’ (and new channels) reactions. And I am still trying to figure out what exactly outrages them. Is it the fact that an Indian star was stopped, or is it the fact that an Indian was stopped, or that the US government is (only) alleged to have resorted to racial profiling at its borders? After all, SRK was still not yet inside the US when he was stopped. Visiting the US is after all a privilege (not a right) and the CBP is well within its rights and duties to check who they let in.

And which country have these folks been living in all along? My friends tell me several stories of being stopped by police within Indian territory. I too have an incident where I had my civil liberties violated. I was travelling in a cab in Chennai. A cop stopped the vehicle and shined a torch light into the car to see what’s inside and then let us go. He violated my right to privacy. Now, your reaction on hearing about this incident will likely be one of ridicule. “Keep all your privacy, 4th amendment stuff in the US. This is India.” If that is your reaction, I have made my point.

Where where these folks when recently the story broke, of a young unarmed man shot by police while being detained by them? The news channel websites did not have such elaborate coverage. A year ago, the Andra Pradesh government admitted to torturing Muslim youths. No one seemed to care. Recently, Human Rights Watch released a report detailing abuses by Indian Police. Not a sound was heard from India’s political class. Don’t know if there are 1 billion ppl or the government that represents them standing behind these victims.

Indians are silent about such violations of civil liberties and even abuses and murders by government officials within India, but raise a hue and cry when one was merely stopped not within the US, but at its borders. Fascinating.

I have to mention how Shahrukh Khan has conducted himself. In a dignified manner he answered in an interview

They said my name was common. I was too polite to ask, ‘common to what?’

My thoughts on the ruling against Sec. 377

I am really happy today over the Delhi High Court ruling parts of Section 377 unconstitutional. The ruling is available in PDF format here. The entire judgement is awesome. The judges did not restrict themselves to narrow legal issues, but spoke overwhelmingly about broad constitutional issues such as privacy, dignity and equality.

In the run up to the court case there was a lot of discussion about homosexuals accelerating the spread of HIV/AIDS, and that was one argument for same-sex intercourse to remain illegal. I was always baffled by such discussion and to me the issue was about privacy and individual liberties in a democratic society. It was clear to me as day, that Section 377 is unconstitutional. I am glad that the Judges spoke about civil liberties in no uncertain terms.

Here are a few nuggets from the ruling:

• The ruling cites court cases from various countries including Lawrence v. Texas which struck down sodomy laws in the United States.
• I did not know that the Indian Constitution (like the United States Constitution) does not have an explicit “Right to Privacy.” On the issue of privacy there are mentions of Roe v. Wade, and Planned Parenthood v. Casey.

• The Court went above and beyond what it was called to do. In a single stroke, it accorded protection against discrimination on the basis of “sexual orientation.” I found this really surprising.

  We hold that sexual orientation is a ground analogous to sex and that discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation is not permitted by Article 15. Further, Article 15(2) incorporates the notion of horizontal application of rights. In other words, it even prohibits discrimination of one citizen by another in matters of access to public spaces. In our view, discrimination on the ground of sexual orientation is impermissible even on the horizontal application of the right enshrined under Article 15.

• The Court clearly understands that a Government or a Constitution cannot grant fundamental rights to people. Sweet :)

  In the present case, the two constitutional rights relied upon i.e. ‘right to personal liberty’ and ‘right to equality’ are fundamental human rights which belong to individuals simply by virtue of their humanity, independent of any utilitarian consideration. A Bill of Rights does not ‘confer’ fundamental human rights. It confirms their existence and accords them protection.

Kudos and thanks to Chief Justice Ajit Prakash Shah and Justice S. Muralidhar.

India not too late in decriminalizing homosexuality

Today, the Delhi High Court stuck down discriminatory provisions of Section 377 which criminalized homosexual behavior. This is not too late, compared to what happened in the United States. It was only six years ago, on June 26, 2003, that United States Supreme Court struck down sodomy law in Texas. The case is Lawrence v. Texas and was ruled 6-3. Add a couple of Scalias and Thomases to the court and they’d have ruled against freedom.

The Delhi High Court ruling talks clearly about liberty and equality guaranteed by the Constitution of India. A win for human rights.

Women in the workplace

A couple of days ago I visited Doordarshan’s Chennai studios for a recording. After I left, I couldn’t help but think about gender roles and women in the workplace.

Nearly every person I encountered was a male. When we entered the studio room, there were a coterie of about ten men, whiling away their time (which I guess is typical of a state-run enterprise, but let us not get to it now). Security personnel at the gate, a group of people collecting information on who enters or leaves the place, camera crew, sound engineers, and the show’s producer were all men. Employees in the make-up room were all women, reinforcing gender stereotypes. There was one woman in the studio who checked the sound level, and two there were two female janitors.

I am curious to know why there were no male employees in the makeup room. Or, why all cameramen, light operators, studio foreman and the producer were all men. Is this because women were denied opportunities by their own families, or because society discriminated against them?