‘Inaccuracies, procedural violations’ in Great Nicobar EIA report
Why Republic Day is celebrated
The Preamble to the Constitution declares that India is a ‘Republic’. This self-description must be taken seriously: being a republic is integral to India’s political identity. Moreover, this is not just a descriptive but also a strong, ethical, normative claim. Being republican is an ideal to which we are meant to consistently aspire, and when we go astray, we should know that we have done something wrong, feel remorse, and make amends.
If our political identity loses its republican character, we must quickly act to restore it. It is because we cherish being a republic that on every January 26 since 1950, we celebrate this founding moment. The parade and the ritual surrounding it are meaningless unless we get the spirit behind the event.
Against monarchy
What is meant by a republic and what is its significance? For a start, the primary collective intent behind a republic is anti-monarchical. The Greeks defined monarchy as the ‘rule of one (mono)’, a form of government where one-person rules and all others obey; one is sovereign, all others his subjects.
We usually associate it with the hereditary rule of Maharajas and Maharanis but in the Greek definition of the term, it also covers rule by modern dictators (autocracy). But what is wrong with the rule of one person? Why fear rule by one person? Perhaps the most pernicious quality about monarchy is that it subjects people to the whim and fancy of one person, to his arbitrary will. One day he likes us and gives us, say a land grant. The next day, he withdraws the grant and puts us in jail. All powers are vested in him. God-like, he becomes judge and jury, makes and executes laws, decides when they are violated, and rewards and punishes as he pleases. All these decisions affecting us are taken without discussion, mysteriously, privately, and expressed as revealed truth. The entire decision-making process remains close to his chest. Hidden from everyone, it brooks neither transparency nor accountability. It is this tyrannical potential of the rule of one person, the absolute and arbitrary use of power that we dread.
Government by discussion
What alternative does a republic offer? The English word ‘republic’ is derived from the Latin ‘Res publica’ — the public thing. This translates in the political domain into decision-making in the open, in full view of all. A republic then is associated with what we today call the ‘public sphere’, an open space where people put forward claims about what is good for the community, what is in collective interest. After discussing, debating and deliberating upon them, they reach decisions about which laws to have and what course of action to take. A republic is ‘government by free and open discussion’.
The contrast between monarchical and republican forms of government could not be sharper. Monarchy entails surrender to the arbitrary power of another person, allowing whimsical intrusion in our choices, living at the mercy of the master. It breeds slavery.
Those who live for long periods under subjection of others tend to develop slavishness, a mental torpor difficult to dispel. Silenced, they lose a vibrant sense of their own agency, are rendered without the capacity to think for themselves or take decisions about their own lives. For this reason, Gandhi used the idea of Swaraj to challenge not only political colonisation by the British, but the colonisation of our minds. It is because rule by one makes people unfree and enslaves them that the republic, its alternative, is strongly associated with freedom. To have a republic is to have a free people. This is why Gandhi’s swaraj is an important republican idea. And also, why the republican tradition emphasises the importance of citizenship. After all, to be a citizen is to belong to a political community where one can express oneself and act freely. Citizens alone have political liberty. Without it, we are mere subjects.
For republic-lovers, political liberty means not unbridled freedom to do whatever one pleases (negative liberty), but to live by laws made by citizens themselves, that are a product of their own will, not the arbitrary will of others. This explains why republics have a constitution generated by a deliberative body of citizens which provides the basic law of the land, the fundamental framework of governance. The phrase “We, the People” in the Constitution is not a mere literary embellishment but central to a republican constitution. The willingness to live by self-made regulations but enforced by public power or the state also means that those who value a republic are not against states per se but against those that take away our political freedom.
‘Republic’ and ‘democratic’
It appears from what is said above that the word ‘republic’ covers all that is meant by the term ‘democratic’. Our own Constituent Assembly initially took the view that since the word ‘republic’ contains the word ‘democratic’, it may be unnecessary to use both. This would have been in keeping with the French republican tradition where the two terms are used interchangeably.
Yet, after announcing its commitment to sever its links with an external, imperial monarch, and with all existing and future claims of local rajas and make India a republic, B.R. Ambedkar and Jawaharlal Nehru conceded that since an undemocratic republic is conceivable, a separate commitment to democratic institutions is necessary.
This decision was correct. It was wise to keep both terms in the Preamble. The idea of the republic conveys that decisions shall be made not by a single individual but by citizens after due deliberation in an open forum. But this is consistent with a narrow criterion of who counts as a citizen.
Ancient Roman republics were not inclusive. Ancient India probably had aristocratic clan-republics which were far from democratic. In ancient Greece, slaves, women, and foreigners were not considered citizens and excluded from decision-making.
Indeed, for many Greek thinkers, democracy had a negative connotation precisely because it was believed to involve everyone, including plebeians, what we contemptuously call ‘the mob’. What the term ‘democratic’ brings to our Constitution is that citizenship be available to everyone, regardless of their wealth, education, gender, perceived social ranking, religion, race, or ideological beliefs.
The word ‘democracy’ makes the republic inclusive. No one is excluded from citizenship. For example, all have the right to vote. At the same time, if voting, for practical reasons, is restricted only to choosing representatives who, in the name of the people, make laws and policies, then citizens must at least have the right to be properly informed, seek transparency and accountability from their government.
A republic must, at the very least, have perpetually vigilant citizens who act as watchdogs, monitor their representatives, and retain the right to contest any law or policy made on their behalf. By going beyond mere counting of heads, the term ‘republic’ brings free public discussion to our democratic constitution. It gives depth to our democracy. It is mandatory that decisions taken by the representatives of the people be properly deliberated, remain open to scrutiny, and be publicly, legally contested even after they have been made.
When the farmers came out on the streets to peacefully challenge the three farm laws made by the current government, they exercised not only their democratic rights but also exhibited the highest of republican virtues. It is to celebrate such political acts of citizens that we have the Republic Day.
For a civic solidarity
The NHRC has done the right thing in directing the Ministry of Home Affairs and the Arunachal Pradesh government to submit an action taken report against the racial profiling and relocation of the Chakma and Hajong communities in the northeastern State.
They had fled their homes in the Chittagong Hill Tracts in erstwhile East Pakistan (present-day Bangladesh) after losing land to the construction of the Kaptai dam on the Karnaphuli river in the early 1960s.
They had sought asylum in India and were settled in relief camps in Arunachal Pradesh. Since then they have been well integrated in villages in the southern and south-eastern parts of the State.
In 2015, the Supreme Court directed the State to grant them citizenship, but this had not yet been implemented. In a judgment in 1996, the Court had stated that the “life and personal liberty of every Chakma residing within the State shall be protected”.
In light of these orders and given that most of the Chakma/Hajong community members were born in the State and have been living peacefully, the Arunachal Pradesh Chief Minister’s announcement, in August 2021, that they would be relocated outside the State and that steps would be taken for a “census” of the communities was clearly unwarranted.
The so-called State-driven census would have amounted to a racial profiling of the two communities that have also been the subject of an antagonist and nativist campaign by organisations such as the All Arunachal Pradesh Students’ Union. The issue has not been helped either by statements made earlier by the Union Minister of State for Home, Kiren Rijiju, about relocation.
It is difficult, but not impossible, for any State government in the northeast to balance the interests of native tribal communities and those of legitimately settled refugees and their progeny. Special rights guaranteed in the Indian Constitution in these States in order to protect the tribal people, their habitat and their livelihoods, have more than occasionally been misinterpreted as favouring tribal nativism with overblown demographic fears fanning hatred for communities such as the Chakma/Hajong in Arunachal Pradesh and Mizoram. Unfortunately, political forces have also limited themselves to using ethnic fissures for power and sustenance. Uprooting communities that fled their homelands under duress and have since been well settled in their adopted areas, contributing to the diversity of culture and the economy, would be a violation of their rights and repeating a historic wrong.
Way Forward
A dialogue between the State government, civil society and those of the Chakma/Hajong communities would go a long way in addressing concerns in implementing the Court judgment of 2015, rather than the course currently adopted by Itanagar. Implementing the NHRC directive should be a step in the process to reverse that course.
Additional
Chakmas and Hajongs
They are ethnic people who lived in the Chittagong Hill Tracts, most of which are located in Bangladesh.
Chakmas are predominantly Buddhists, while Hajongs are Hindus.
They are found in northeast India, West Bengal, Bangladesh and Myanmar.
They fled erstwhile East Pakistan (now Bangladesh) in 1964-65 and came to India and settled in Arunachal Pradesh. Reasons:
Chakmas lost their land to the development of the Kaptai Dam on the Karnaphuli River, Bangladesh.
Hajongs faced religious persecution as they were non-Muslims and did not speak Bengali.
In 2015, the Supreme Court directed the Centre to grant citizenship to Chakma and Hajongs who had migrated from Bangladesh in 1964-69.
They did not directly come into the ambit of the Citizenship Amendment Act, 2019 (CAA) because Arunachal Pradesh is among the states exempted from the CAA since it has an Inner Line Permit to regulate entry of outsiders.
The 2019 CAA amended the Citizenship Act of 1955 allowing Indian citizenship for Hindu, Sikh, Buddhist, Jain, Parsi, and Christian religious minorities who fled from the neighboring Muslim majority countries of Pakistan, Bangladesh and Afghanistan before December 2014 due to religious persecution or fear of religious persecution. However, the Act excludes Muslims.
Even as the original immigrants await citizenship, many of their descendants born in India who are eligible for citizenship by birth are struggling to enroll as voters. The refugees were given voting rights in 2004.
For a very long-time local people have been protesting against Chakmas and Hajongs because of their differing ethnicity.
If the Chakmas and Hajongs are ejected from Arunachal Pradesh, Assam shall be the dumping ground for all the unwanted communities in the States covered by the Inner-Line Permit (Manipur, Mizoram and Nagaland besides Arunachal Pradesh) and the Sixth Schedule areas (Meghalaya).
Gen. Rawat, Kalyan get Padma Vibhushan
General Bipin Rawat, first Chief of Defence Staff who died in an air crash recently, and former Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Kalyan Singh who headed the State during the Babri Masjid demolition were conferred with Padma Vibushan posthumously on the eve of the Republic Day. Padma Vibhushan, part of the Padma series, is the second highest civilian award.
Congress leader and former Chief Minister of Jammu and Kashmir Ghulam Nabi Azad and former West Bengal CM Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee were awarded Padma Bhushan.
Bharat Biotech’s Suchitra and Krishna Ella, Serum Institute of India’s Cyrus Poonawalla, prime manufacturers of the two COVID-19 vaccines, were also accorded with Padma Bhushan along with Natarajan Chandrasekaran, Chairman of Tata Sons, and former Union Home Secretary and Comptroller General of India (CAG) Rajiv Mehrishi.
Satya Narayana Nadella, Chairman and CEO of Microsoft Corporation, Sundararajan Pichai, CEO, Google and Alphabet were also accorded with Padma Bhushan.
Punjabi singer Gurmeet Bawa was given Padma Bhushan posthumously.
Neeraj Chopra, gold medallist at 2021 Tokyo Olympian, paralympics medal winner Avani Lakhera and singer Sonu Nigam were given Padma Shri.
Guruprasad Mohapatra, former AAI chairman and DPIIT Secretary, was given Padma Shri posthumously.
Radheyshyam Khemka, president of Gita Press, known for publishing Hindu religious books, was accorded Padma Vibhushan posthumously.
This year the President has approved conferment of 128 Padma awards comprising four Padma Vibhushan, 17 Padma Bhushan and 107 Padma Shri Awards. While 34 awardees are women, the list also includes 10 persons from the category of Foreigners/Non–Resident Indians and Overseas Citizens of India.
Burkina Faso, once known as one of the most stable countries in West Africa, has been mired in a deadly cycle of jihadist violence since 2015.
Monday’s coup, in which mutinous soldiers overthrew the democratically elected government of President Roch Marc Christian Kaboré, was a direct result of this growing instability which the government failed miserably to tackle.
Mr. Kaboré was elected President in 2015 almost at the same time jihadists, belonging to al Qaeda and the Islamic State, were expanding across the Sahel region.
They turned the vast countryside of this landlocked country bounded by Mali and Niger — both rocked by Islamist violence — into ungovernable territories. Over the last seven years, at least 2,000 people have been killed and over one million displaced in this country of 22 million people. The military and large sections of civilians saw the Kaboré government as ineffective, corrupt and out of touch with the ground reality. The coronavirus pandemic and the associated economic woes have also pushed the Burkinabe people further into misery.
An uprising, touched off in the streets of Ouagadougou, the capital city, a few days ago, was followed by the mutiny. The soldiers moved in quickly, surrounding the presidential palace.
West Africa has seen a series of successful coups in recent months. In September 2021, special forces in Guinea ousted the government and captured power. In Mali, the military staged a coup for the second time in less than a year, in May 2021.
While in Chad, the President was killed in conflict in April, Sudan saw the military throwing out a power-sharing agreement it had reached with civilian revolutionaries and taking the levers of the state in its hands.
The ease with which the generals captured power in all these countries should be a warning to other elected governments in the continent. While taking power, all these military leaders promised elections, but soon their focus shifted to tightening their grip on power rather than resolving the crises that they used to justify their power grab or allowing a transition to a legitimate government. The story of Burkina Faso is not different.
The coup was reportedly welcomed by protesters in the streets of Ouagadougou. It is understandable because the people, fed up with the jihadist violence and the state’s inability in tackling it, may have thought the men in uniform could at least provide them better security.
But this support could be short-lived as the power-hungry junta faces a terrorist machinery spread across the Sahel along with the post-coup political divisions and instability at home. Coups are hardly a solution to the many crises these countries face. Rather, the juntas, which lack political legitimacy, end up making them worse.
The United Nations and the crisis in Yemen
The crisis in Yemen has steadily escalated in recent weeks with the Houthi missile and drone attacks on Saudi Arabia and the UAE and the retaliatory air strikes by the Saudi-led coalition on the Houthi-held territories in Yemen.
The worsening crisis with wider geopolitical implications for the Gulf region has raised questions on what the international community, especially the UN, has done to resolve the issue. While the UN has failed to find a lasting ceasefire, let alone a settlement to the conflict, its different agencies have been working in Yemen since the crisis broke out in early 2011.
It has established the Office of the Special Envoy to the Secretary-General on Yemen (OSESGY) to engage with all Yemeni political groupings and the Security Council (UNSC), has adopted many resolutions concerning Yemen, calling on all parties to respect the ceasefires.
UN agencies are also in the forefront of providing humanitarian relief to the country.
What is the role of the UN Special Envoy on Yemen?
In April 2011, the UN appointed a Special Advisor to the Secretary-General on Yemen. The Special Advisor played a critical role in mediating the early negotiations between warring parties in the southern Arabian country. He met with Yemeni leaders, foreign diplomats and the Yemenis demonstrating in squares around Sana’a. These negotiations later facilitated the signing of the first political transition agreement, the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) Initiative and its Implementation Mechanism, in November 2011.
In 2012, the UN formed a special political mission for Yemen by establishing the Office of the Special Envoy to the Secretary-General on Yemen. The Special Envoy is responsible for engaging with all sides in Yemen, including the Government, political parties, civil societies and working closely with other regional and international actors to facilitate the political transition on behalf of the UN Secretary-General. The Special Envoy briefs the Security Council regularly on the peace process and the situation in Yemen.
Negotiations led by the Office of the Special Envoy enabled the Yemenis to conclude a National Dialogue Conference in 2014, seeking a new federal and democratic Yemen. The Office of the Special Envoy provided diplomatic, political, technical, logistical and financial support for the national dialogue process. It also facilitated dozens of Dialogue sessions at the interlocutors’ request. Since 2015, the Office has mediated four rounds of talks between the Yemeni warring factions in Geneva (June 2015), Bienne (December 2015), Kuwait (April to August 2016) and Stockholm (December 2018). The Special Envoy played a crucial role in facilitating the Stockholm Agreement that agreed to a ceasefire (Hodeidah Agreement), opening humanitarian corridors (Taiz understanding) and a prisoner swap.
What is the Security Council’s stand?
Since 2011, the UNSC has adopted 18 Resolutions regarding the various facets of the crisis in Yemen. The first resolution (UNSCR 2014), adopted on October 21, 2011, called for implementing the GCC initiative for the peaceful transition of political power in Yemen. Resolutions 2051 (2012), 2140 (2014) and 2216 (2015) also urged all parties to continue the efforts for the political transition, especially the implementation of the National Dialogue outcomes. The Council Resolutions 2140 (2014), 2216 (2015), 2266 (2016) 2342 (2017) imposed targeted arms embargo, travel ban, and assets freeze against certain individuals and entities. Since the adoption of Resolution 2140, the Council has enlisted nine Houthi leaders for threatening Yemen’s peace, security, and stability.
On December 21, 2018, Resolution 2451 endorsed the Stockholm agreement, called on all parties to fully respect the ceasefire in Hodeidah, and authorised the Secretary-General to establish and deploy a UN monitoring team in Yemen. Subsequently, Resolution 2452 established a Special Political Mission to support Hodeidah Agreement (UNMHA). Most recently, Resolution 2586 has extended its mandate until July 15, 2022. The Security Council also addressed the role of the Special Envoy in its resolutions 2451 (2018) and 2452 (2019).
In addition to the resolutions, the Security Council adopted several presidential statements and issued numerous press statements on the Yemen crisis. The statements discussed various issues, ranging from calling warring parties to refrain from taking actions that undermine Yemen’s unity, sovereignty, independence, and territorial integrity to expressing grave concern regarding the humanitarian situation in Yemen. In its latest statement issued on January 14, 2022, the Security Council condemned the Houthi seizure and detention of a UAE-flagged vessel off the Yemeni coast.
How is the UN tackling the humanitarian crisis?
Yemen faces the world’s worst humanitarian crisis. More than half the population are at risk of famine, and 80% of the people require some form of humanitarian assistance. According to the UN, in 2021, a Yemeni child under the age of five died every nine minutes because of the conflict.
The UN and its agencies have been delivering humanitarian aid in Yemen from the beginning of the crisis. The UN’s World Food Programme (WFP) distributes 100,000 tonnes of food commodities monthly, reaching more than 13 million people. The WFP also delivered nutritional support to 3.3 million pregnant and nursing women and children under five. The UN Population Fund (UNFPA) has reached nearly 2 million people with reproductive health services. UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF) is helping treat severe acute malnutrition in children by providing essential therapeutic food and medical supplies. Lastly, the UN Office for Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) works closely with the Government and humanitarian agencies at all levels to enhance humanitarian coordination.
Note: Re-read because it is important with perspective of: Role of International agencies in managing global crisis.
Inaccuracies, procedural violations’ in Great Nicobar EIA report
The details of the recently released draft environment impact assessment (EIA) report for the mega development project in the Great Nicobar Island have raised serious questions related to submission of incorrect or incomplete information, scientific inaccuracy and failure to follow appropriate procedure. A public hearing to discuss the report has been scheduled for Thursday at Campbell Bay, the administrative headquarters.
The matter is related to the NITI Aayog-piloted ?72,000-crore integrated project in Great Nicobar that includes construction of a mega port, an airport complex, a township spread over 130 sq. km of pristine forest and a solar and gas-based power plant. Andaman and Nicobar Islands Integrated Development Corporation Ltd. (ANIIDCO) is the project proponent.
The pre-feasibility report for the project was prepared in March 2021 by the Gurugram-based consultant AECOM India Pvt. Ltd. A committee of the Ministry of Environment Forest and Climate Change (MoEFCC) issued terms of reference (ToR) to prepare the EIA report in May 2021.
Concerns raised
Ecologists and researchers have been raising concerns about this project for over a year, and the recent draft EIA has not been able to allay those fears. Concerns begin with the role of the Hyderabad-based Vimta Labs Ltd. hired for conducting the EIA.
While the ToR for preparing the EIA was finalised only in May 2021, the report itself lists many instances of Vimta staff being in the field and conducting studies as early as December 2020.
