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More than eight months after the Karnataka government banned the wearing of the hijab in state pre-university colleges, triggering a row and spawning debates across the country, a two-judge bench of the Supreme Court delivered a split verdict.
While Justice Hemant Gupta upheld the Karnataka High Court order validating the ban and said “it was only to promote uniformity and encourage a secular environment” in classrooms, Justice Sudhanshu Dhulia, underlining that all that matters is the education of the girl child, set aside the state and High Court orders and called the right to wear the hijab in classrooms “a matter of choice”, a “fundamental right” linked to the girl’s “dignity and her privacy even when she is inside the school gates”.
The split verdict means that the matter will now be placed before the Chief Justice of India for further directions — it will likely go to a larger bench. And until the Supreme Court issues any direction, the ban on the hijab in Karnataka classrooms will remain in place.
Dismissing appeals against the March 15 verdict of the High Court which upheld the February 5 state order, Justice Gupta, who presided over the two-judge bench, said irrespective of whether the practice of wearing the hijab is a religious practice or essential religious practice or social conduct for the women of Islamic faith, the “interpretations by the believers of the faith about wearing of headscarf is the belief or faith of an individual”.
The religious belief cannot be carried to a secular school maintained out of State funds. It is open to the students to carry their faith in a school which permits them to wear hijab or any other mark, may be tilak, which can be identified to a person holding a particular religious belief but the State is within its jurisdiction to direct that the apparent symbols of religious beliefs cannot be carried to school maintained by the State from the State funds. Thus, the practice of wearing hijab could be restricted by the State in terms of the Government Order.
Justice Dhulia, on the other hand, said “a girl child has the right to wear hijab in her house or outside her house, and that right does not stop at her school gate. The child carries her dignity and her privacy even when she is inside the school gates, in her classroom. She retains her fundamental rights. To say that these rights become derivative rights inside a classroom, is wholly incorrect”.
Editorial Page
Split wide open (Page no. 12)
(GS Paper 2, Polity and Governance)
On the face of it, the liberal perspective on the issue of hijab seems clear and unambiguous: Pro-choice. In solidarity with the extraordinary women of Iran who in their ongoing struggle against the state-imposed hijab have put their lives on the line.
In support of those Muslim girls in India who choose to wear the hijab to school contrary to the uniform prescribed by the management. However, the just-in split verdict of the two-judge bench of the Supreme Court on the subject has me torn. It leaves me, a Left-Liberal, at odds with me, a Progressive Muslim.
The Karnataka High Court had on March 15 upheld a Karnataka government order effectively empowering college development committees of government junior colleges in the state to ban the wearing of the Islamic headscarf in college campuses.
Now, Justice Sudhanshu Dhulia of the apex court has decided to allow all the appeals and quash the judgment of the Karnataka High Court while Justice Hemant Gupta has proposed dismissal of all the appeals.
Justice Gupta has observed that his order framed 11 issues raised by the appellants. Having dealt with each one of them in detail he finds them all without merit.
On the other hand, Justice Dhulia noted the main thrust of his judgment was that the entire concept of essential religious practice was not essential to the dispute. The high court took a wrong path. According to him, it is ultimately a matter of choice and Articles 14 and 19.
“It is a matter of choice, nothing more and nothing less,” Justice Dhulia observed, adding that, “The foremost question in my mind was the education of the girl child. Are we making her life any better?”
He also held the view that the judgment in the Bijoe Emmanuel case “squarely covers the issue”. This refers to the 1986 ruling of the apex court that upheld the fundamental right of three school-going children from the Jehovah’s Witness sect to stand respectfully but not join others in singing the national anthem during the school assembly as it conflicted with the tenets of their faith.
The Liberal Me has no doubt that Justice Dhulia’s views are in consonance with constitutional values. But the Progressive Muslim Me fears that were a larger bench to subsequently rule accordingly, it would effectively strengthen the regressive sections among Indian Muslims.
“It is a matter of choice, nothing more and nothing less,” opines Justice Dhulia. Is it really “nothing more and nothing less”? As is public knowledge, cutting across sectarian divides — Sunni, Shia, Barelvi, Deobandi, Wahhabi, Salafi, Maududian — virtually the entire Muslim clergy in India is of the view that hijab (niqab, burqa) is mandatory in Islam.
The abstract principle of a woman’s freedom to choose, I fear, will feed into the it-is-mandatory argument; act as convenient cover for Islam’s patriarchs to keep, even push, women behind the veil. Perhaps we should ask ourselves a simple question, or two: One, if hijab is indeed a matter of choice, why are India’s Muslim conservatives continuing to maintain a deafening silence over the Iranian women’s right to choose or refuse head coverings? What stops them from condemning the ongoing repression of the dictatorial Iranian regime? Two, do Muslim girls studying in Muslim-run schools, 3-year-olds included, have the right to choose or they simply must conform?
Virtual Exchange (Page no. 12)
(GS Paper 3, Economy)
Across the world, digital currencies are increasingly gaining traction. As many as 105 countries are currently exploring the contours of central bank digital currencies (CBDCs).
Ten countries have already launched a CBDC, while another 17 are in the pilot stage. In the Union budget, Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman had announced that the RBI would issue a digital currency this year.
A few days ago, the RBI released a concept note detailing the aims and design options and also the possible benefits and risks that are likely to stem from issuing a CBDC in India.
The rationale for issuing a digital currency ranges from accelerating the pace of financial inclusion and digitisation in the economy, enhancing the efficiency of the payment systems, lowering the costs associated with physical cash management, and ensuring financial stability given the proliferation of crypto currencies. However, the RBI will have to make several design choices to determine the form of the digital currency.
The first consideration centres on the technological backbone — whether the underlying infrastructure of the CBDC will be a centrally controlled database or based on a decentralised ledger technology like Bitcoin.
Second, the central bank will have to decide whether it will opt for a wholesale digital currency whose usage is restricted only to financial institutions or a retail digital currency which allows for its widespread usage.
Third, will the CBDC be issued and managed solely by the central bank or will its management be left to intermediaries. There are other design considerations, such as will the CBDC be token or account based, will it be interest bearing or not, and the degree of anonymity that it offers.
It would appear that the RBI seems to be in favour of an indirect model, similar to the current currency management system, with a non-interest bearing, token-based CBDC.
India already has a robust payments ecosystem which provides for real-time transactions. To what extent the benefits from issuing a CBDC will materialise is debatable.
One particular area where a CBDC can provide significant gains is remittances. It is possible that CBDCs will lower the costs and friction associated with international remittances.
Considering the wide-ranging ramifications of introducing a CBDC, as the RBI begins to firm up its views on the form and functionality of the CBDC — it has stated that it will launch pilots to examine the specific use cases of the CDBC — it must tread carefully.
Idea Page
Babus to Karmyogi (Page no. 13)
(GS Paper 2, Polity and Governance)
In the 1980s, former Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi famously remarked that “of the Rs 1 sent from Delhi, only 15 paisa reaches the intended beneficiary”.
The statement speaks of the extent of administrative failure in the country at that time. India built its growth model to overcome perceived market failures.
It took many of us four decades to realise that when the state takes on a large number of economic responsibilities, the chances of failure are high — Air India, coal mines and banks became loss-making entities after they were nationalised.
However, for every challenge, there is an innovative solution. Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s direct benefit transfer initiative using the JAM trinity has, for instance, turned Rajiv Gandhi’s lament on its head.
More than 90 paisa of every rupee transferred from the Centre in diverse welfare schemes today reaches the intended beneficiary. The silent revolution in the delivery of services is poised to intensify.
On Independence Day last year, PM Modi launched the Mission Karmyogi and set up the Capacity Building Commission (CBC) and talked about “developing an effective citizen-centric civil service”.
The capacity-building mission, targeted at 20 million civil servants working at the Centre and state-level, holds the key to enabling the state to deliver public goods and services to India’s more than 130 billion citizens.
In June this year, a passenger on a train to Gorakhpur tweeted about a railway ticket inspector: “Being a true rail karmyogi Shri Ambrish Prasad has shown great compassion towards his fellow passenger… he gave his berth to this couple.
Lady was pregnant… they had wait-listed tickets and there was no other vacant berth”. The official was being true to Mission Karmyogi’s credo.
Under the Mission, nearly 95,000 railway staff, including all ticket conductors, reservation and freight clerks and station masters, have participated in workshops to enhance their motivation to serve.
These officers could help make the railway experience a pleasant one for passengers and freight customers. These trained staff are members of a virtual group where they share their karmyogi moments every day. Applause from their supervisors increases their motivation.
Bollywood has created a negative view of the police force among people. Mission Karmyogi aims to change such perceptions. For starters, the programme is being implemented in all Union Territories.
Who governs speech (Page No.13)
(GS Paper 2, Polity and Governance)
Speech is at the fulcrum of opinion-making in democratic societies. The governance of speech — the determination of what speech is allowed, not allowed, promoted or discouraged — is thus an intensely political, and contested, exercise. The two proposals mooted for governance of online speech — government-appointed grievance appellate committees (GAC) and the industry self regulatory body (SRB) — seek to preclude this contest in favour of a unilateral government and industry agenda.
The GACs, as per the draft issued by the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (Meity), will be constituted by the central government and will serve as an appellate body against decisions of various social media platforms.
This is upfront government control. Not only has the government not laid down a substantive policy with objectively defined contours of forbidden speech, the government wants the right to apply this highly subjective criteria on individual pieces of content and/or users.
It is notable that the government has already arrogated this right and routinely issues take down orders (without providing rationale) to social media platforms to take down or block content with minimal pushback from platforms.
However, the national security, public order logic of takedowns does not apply to reinstatement of content/users proactively blocked by the platforms and it is likely that an additional purpose of the GACs is to provide an institutional avenue for the ruling party machinery to get a set of aligned accounts/content reinstated instead of just takedowns. It is evident that the GAC doesn’t meet even minimal standards of democratic legitimacy and should be scrapped.
The industry SRB proposal too lacks democratic legitimacy. Platforms have repeatedly shown themselves to be driven by profit motives, which are often at odds with public interest.
This is evident generally in the rampant amplification of disinformation and hate speech in a bid to maximise engagement even though it comes at the cost of the integrity of the information ecosystem; and specifically in India, where US-based social media platforms have been far more casual in enforcement of their own content standards as compared to in their home country as indicated by disproportionately lower investments in language capability etc. It is thus likely that such a platform-led body will try and maximise the interests of the industry and individual platforms as opposed to the interests of the Indian people.
Moreover, notwithstanding Twitter’s plea in Karnataka High Court against Centre’s “disproportionate use of power” to issue “overbroad and arbitrary” content-blocking orders, the track record of platforms in India of resisting government pressure has been very poor.
Explained Page
In US security strategy, China ‘only competitor’, India key partner (Page no. 17)
(GS Paper 2, International Relations)
In March 1983, then United States President Ronald Reagan addressed the nation on “defence and national security”: “We must continue to restore our military strength.
If we stop in midstream, we will send a signal of decline, of lessened will, to friends and adversaries alike. Free people must voluntarily, through open debate and democratic means, meet the challenge that totalitarians pose by compulsion.”
Three years later, Reagan signed the Goldwater-Nichols Department of Defense Reorganization Act, which brought about sweeping changes in the command structure of the US military.
The Act aimed to resolve the systemic challenges that had been identified during the Vietnam War, the aborted attempt to rescue American hostages in Iran in 1980, and some other incidents.
The Goldwater-Nichols Act provided the legal basis for the National Security Strategy (NSS), which lists the security concerns and challenges of the US and the plans to deal with them, and gives Congress and the administration “a common understanding” of the strategic landscape.
Christopher S Chivvis, director of the American Statecraft Program at the Carnegie Endowment, wrote in November 2021: “The strategies of Presidents George H W Bush and Bill Clinton embraced an expansive role for the United States, advocating for policies to ensure US global primacy, promote the spread of democracy, and underwrite global security.
Under the presidency of George W Bush, the 2002 National Security Strategy took a more militaristic approach that divided the world into free and unfree nations, stressed the need for a war on terror, and — most controversially — endorsed the use of preemptive military force.
In the aftermath of the “Great Recession”, and with the evident problems with the US interventions in Iraq and Afghanistan, “President Barack Obama’s strategy sought to outline a somewhat less ambitious set of goals…, although it still promised to underwrite global security”.
And Trump’s strategy, Chivvis said, “placed a much heavier focus on a particular version of American sovereignty, especially on border security, and downgrading the importance of US alliances.”
In an “interim” NSS published in March 2021, President Joe Biden’s administration recommitted the US to NATO, and said Washington “must demonstrate that democracies can still deliver for our people”, and vowed to “defend our democracy, strengthen it and renew it”.
RythuBharosaKendras (Page no. 17)
(GS Paper 3, Agriculture)
An Ethiopian delegation led by the country’s Agricultural Minister Dr MelesMekonenYimer is in Andhra Pradesh (AP) to study the first-of-its kind RythuBharosaKendras (RBKs), which have been set up by the Y S Jagan Mohan Reddy government.
The delegation met the CM on Wednesday (October 12), who explained the RBK model and offered to share the operational know-how.
The Ethiopian delegation will also meet officials from agriculture and horticulture departments to understand how they work.
Officials said that Ethiopia has shown keen interest in the RBKs. Since the country wants to increase its agriculture output, it seeks to improve the quantity and quality of yields, reduce production costs, and provide newer skills to it’s farmers.
The delegation, before calling on the CM, visited the integrated call centre at Gannavaram and RBK at Gandigunta village in Yuyyurumandal of Krishna district.
Set up for the first time in the country, the RBKs are unique seeds-to-sales, single-window service centres for farmers that have been set up across the state.
They are a one-stop solution to all farmers’ needs and grievances. RBKs sell pre-tested quality seeds, certified fertilisers and animal feed. Farmers can purchase or hire farm equipment, and even sell their produce at the prevailing MSP in the RBKs.
Touted as role models for the country, agriculture and horticulture officials manning the RBKs also provide services like soil testing and make recommendations — on which crops to sow, and quantity and type of fertiliser to be used. The state government also pays crop insurance, procures grains and makes payments to farmers through the RBKs.
RBKs facilitate interaction between farmers, agriculture scientists, and agriculture extension officers right at the village level. Apart from providing services and items for sale, RBK officials demonstrate new farm equipment and provide training to farmers.
Based on inputs provided by officials after soil testing and weather conditions, many farmers have changed their cropping patterns and benefited immensely, according to the state Agriculture Department.
The RBKs have been responsible for elimination of spurious seeds and uncertified and dangerous fertilisers, which can cause crop damage and failures.
Over 10,700 RBKs — multi-functional kiosks with digital Aadhar authentication equipment — have been set up across the state. The RBKs, staffed by agriculture and horticulture graduates, help farmers decide the crops they should cultivate in a scientific manner.