The study report of National Commission for Protection of Child Rights (NCPCR) titled “Assessment of pattern, profile and correlates of Substance use among children in India” indicates that 40 to 70 percent of street children in different cities of India are vulnerable to some type of substance abuse. The report also indicates that out of 4024 children surveyed in 135 cities, 22 percent were street children who were victims of substance abuse. As per the report, the health, physical, social effects on the victims include physical violence, life threatening situation, impaired performance, sadness/anxiety, etc. Government of India is implementing the Cigarettes and Other Tobacco Products (Prohibition of Advertisement and Regulation of Trade and Commerce, Production, Supply and Distribution) Act, 2003whichprohibits selling of tobacco products to person below the age of 18 years and in places within 100 metres radius from the outer boundary of an institution of education, which includes school colleges and institutions of higher learning established or recognized by an appropriate authority. Also the Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substance Act, 1985 lays down that a controlled substance shall be sold after the buyer establishes his identity and upon a declaration made about the purpose for which the controlled substance is being purchased. The Ministry of Women and Child Development is implementing a Centrally Sponsored Scheme, namely, Integrated Child Protection Scheme (ICPS) from 2009-10 for children in difficult circumstances including children who are victims of substance abuse. Under ICPS, financial assistance is provided to State Governments/UT Administrations, inter-alia, for setting up and maintenance of various types of Homes, including, Shelter Homes, Open shelters etc. These Homes provide inter-alia, shelter, food, education, medical attention, vocational training, counselling, etc. to such children so that they can ultimately reintegrate into the mainstream society. The Ministry of Social Justice & Empowerment is implementing “Central Sector Scheme of Assistance for Prevention of Alcoholism and Substance (Drug) Abuse” which provides financial assistance to eligible Non-Governmental Organisations, Panchayati Raj Institutions, Urban Local Bodies etc. for running Integrated Rehabilitation Centres for Addicts (IRCAs) to provide composite/integrated services for the rehabilitation of addicts which is inclusive for all sections of the society. |
Read,Write & Revise.Minimum reading & maximum learning
21 December 2014
Drug and Substance abuse among children
IFoS MAINS -2014 result declared,samveg ias dehradun
congratulations to every one who got interview cal
http://upsc.gov.in/exams/written-results/ifs_main/2014/IFSMain_2014_WrtnReslt_English_Final.pdf
Propagation without proselytisation: what the law says
Legislative and legal history validates the Opposition argument that there is no need for a new anti-conversion law.
The Fundamental Right to “propagate” one’s religious faith has always trodden on slippery ground. Legislative history and judicial precedents have remained wary of the tipping point when the “basic human right” to spread religion translates into conversion through force, fraud or allurement.
Article 25(1) of the Constitution says “all persons,” not just Indian citizens, are equally entitled to the freedom of conscience and the right to profess, practise and propagate religion freely.
Legislative and legal history validates the Opposition argument that there is no need for a new anti-conversion law. The original intention of the Constituent Assembly and the interpretation of Article 25 by the Supreme Court later on clearly differentiate the right to propagate from the right to convert other persons to one’s own religion. The former is a Fundamental Right, the latter, if forcibly done and not by choice of the person converting, is illegal. The law is already clear. Again, a five-judge Bench of the Supreme Court has upheld the validity of individual States to enact Freedom of Religion laws to ensure public order.
However, the Winter Session of Parliament saw the heat on conversions go a notch up. Finance Minister Arun Jaitley, as Leader of the House in the Rajya Sabha, asked if the Opposition was “willing for a total ban on religious conversions or a ban on forcible religious conversions?”
“Let them tell us the option. The government is ready for either of the two options,” Mr. Jaitley said.
To go back in history, one has to start with the morning of December 6, 1948, at the Constitution Hall where the Constituent Assembly debated the inclusion of “right to propagate” as a Fundamental Right.
Here, Lokanath Misra cautions the Assembly that “the cry of religion is a dangerous cry.” “It denominates, it divides, and encamps people to warring ways.”
“Today, religion in India serves no higher purpose than collecting ignorance, poverty and ambition under a banner that flies for fanaticism. The aim is political, for in the modern world all is power-politics and the inner man is lost in the dust,” he said.
Misra advised the Assembly that everybody should have the right to profess and practise their religion as they saw best, but not to “let him try swell his number to demand the spoils of political warfare.”
But Pandit Lakshmi Kanta Maitra disagreed that “propagation does not necessarily mean seeking converts by force of arms, by the sword, or by coercion.” He argued the Fundamental Right to propagate may probably work to remove the “misconceptions” in the minds of the people about other co-existing religions in this land of different faiths.
H.V. Kamath then rose to talk of the “real meaning” of the word “religion.” He pointed to how Dharma, in the most comprehensive sense, should be interpreted to mean the true values of religion and spirit. He pointed to how this young nation was moulding its Constitution in the background of a “war-torn, war-weary world.”
Kamath argued that even as no particular religion should receive State patronage, “we must be very careful to see that in this land of ours, we do not deny anybody the right not only to profess or practise but also to propagate any particular religion.”
“This glorious land of ours is nothing if it does not stand for the lofty religious and spiritual concepts and ideals. India would not be occupying any place of honour on this globe if she had not reached that spiritual height which she did in her glorious past,” he argued.
But over the years, these lofty ideals have been replaced by immediate concerns about propagation.
The Supreme Court has unequivocally declared that the right to propagate does not mean the right to convert.
In his January 2011 judgment on the murders of Graham Staines, an Australian missionary who worked with the tribal people in Orissa, and his two sons, Justice P. Sathasivam wrote, “It is undisputed that there is no justification for interfering in someone’s belief by way of use of force, provocation, conversion, incitement or upon a flawed premise that one religion is better than the other.”
Chief Justice of India A.N. Ray, heading a five-judge Bench, in Rev. Stainislaus vs. State of Madhya Pradesh, upheld the validity of two regional anti-conversion laws of the 1960s — the Madhya Pradesh Dharma Swatantraya Adhiniyam and the Orissa Freedom of Religion Act.
The court dissected Article 25 to hold that “the Article does not grant the right to convert other persons to one’s own religion but to transmit or spread one’s religion by an exposition of its tenets.”
“What is freedom for one is freedom for the other in equal measure and there can, therefore, be no such thing as a fundamental right to convert any person to one’s own religion,” the court interpreted.
In reference to the 1954 judgment of Ratilal Panachand Gandhi vs. State of Bombay, the court held that the “freedom of conscience [the right to believe in one’s faith] is not meant merely for followers of one particular religion but extends to all.”
The Supreme Court, in reference to the Arun Ghosh vs. State of West Bengal verdict of 1950, holds that an attempt to raise communal passions through forcible conversions would be a breach of public order and affect the community at large. Thus, it held that the States were empowered under Entry 1 of List II of the Seventh Schedule of the Constitution to enact local Freedom of Religion laws to exercise its civil powers and restore public order.
These local laws make forcible religious conversions a cognisable offence under Sections 295A and 298 of the Indian Penal Code. These provisions stipulate “malice and deliberate intention to hurt the sentiments of others” as a penal offence. But many human rights organisations and scholars argue that anti-conversion laws have less to do with fraud and more to do with violence against Christians.
Even pre-Independence anti-conversion statutes by Princely States such as the Raigarh State Conversion Act of 1936, the Patna Freedom of Religion Act of 1942, the Sarguja State Apostasy Act 1945 and the Udaipur State Anti-Conversion Act of 1946 were specifically against conversion to Christianity.
Over the years, more Freedom of Religion Bills have found their place in legislative history, including in Arunachal Pradesh in 1978 and Gujarat in 2003.
Under the Madhya Pradesh Freedom of Religion (Amendment) Act of 2006, if a person chooses to convert, he has to declare it before the District Magistrate concerned. Even the religious priest who “directly or indirectly participates” should give details of the purification ceremony and details of person whose religion is going to be changed to the District Magistrate with one month’s notice.
The same year saw Chhattisgarh pass a similar law seeking 30 days’ notice from a person desiring to convert and permission from the District Magistrate. With the Himachal Pradesh Freedom of Religion Act, 2006, the State became the first Congress-ruled one to adopt a law prohibiting forcible conversions.
More than 50% of farm households in debt
NSSO survey across 35000 family units
Nearly 90 per cent of India’s farmers have less than two hectares of land, according to the most extensive survey of farm households to date conducted by the National Sample Survey Office (NSSO). The survey says the average farm household makes less than Rs. 6,500 a month from all sources of income.
The NSSO released the findings from its 70th Situation of Agricultural Households in India on Saturday. The new survey was for the agricultural year 2012-13 and covered 35,000 households. For this survey, the NSSO defined an agricultural household as one in which at least one member was self-employed in agriculture (even if part-time) and which produced at least Rs 3,000 worth of agricultural produce in a year.
By this definition, 58 per cent of rural households are agricultural households. “While some of the rest could be doing non-farm work, a significant number work exclusively as agricultural labourers, which the NSSO did not count,” an official from the Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation explained, asking not to be quoted as he was not authorised to speak to the media.
Over half of all agricultural households are in debt; and 42 per cent of them owe money to banks and 26 per cent owe moneylenders. Over 40 per cent of agricultural households have Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MGNREGS) job cards, showing that even those households not classified as ‘labourers’ utilise the scheme.
One in three farm households has less than 0.4 hectares of land and less than 0.5 per cent are large farmers, having over 10 hectares of land. Large farmers are often absentee landlords, the data indicates; 54 per cent of farmers with over 10 hectares possess land in other states.
Scheduled Caste and Scheduled Tribe farm households were over-represented among the poorest classes with the smallest land holdings, the data showed. Large farmers were almost exclusively OBC or forward caste.
While wheat is the most commonly grown crop in the first half of the year, paddy growing dominates the second half, the data shows. In both seasons, however, sugarcane is the most profitable crop, giving its cultivator an average of over Rs 80,000 per season.
Private traders dominate the procurement space, and few farmers have enough information about Minimum Support Prices or report getting the MSP for their produce, the data shows.
Re-engineering infrastructure PPPs
To revive PPPs, the govt should take on macroeconomic risks flowing from uncertainties in GDP growth rates. The private sector can absorb project management and execution risksOne of the major initiatives of recent years has been the pursuit of PPPs (public-private partnerships) in infrastructure. This was a necessity given the need to improve infrastructure and the limited funds with government, which also needed to contain the fiscal deficit.
In the years preceding the economic slowdown, a fairly large number of projects, primarily in the roads sector, were taken up through PPPs. The underlying presumption in the design of the PPP process was that the private sector could make informed judgments about the costs of a project and the revenue streams that would be generated through user charges for the duration of the concession agreement. Accordingly, it could bid for projects with capital subsidy through viability gap funding (VGF) becoming the bid evaluation parameter.
With the advent of the economic downturn, these PPP projects began to unravel. The assumption of eight-to-nine per cent sustained GDP growth year-on-year was misplaced. As the downturn persisted, awarded projects stalled and there were no takers for new projects. The new government inherited about Rs 1.50 lakh crores of troubled projects in the road sector, and is still trying to find a way forward.
It is now clear that a credible long-term forecast of GDP growth rates and hence a realistic estimate for revenue realisations for the life of the concession agreement is not feasible. The basis on which private promoters and their financiers could absorb risk turned out to be illusory.
A return to traditional fully government-funded contracting for project execution in the EPC mode appears, prima facie, an attractive option. This, however, has its natural ceiling flowing from the present necessity of lowering the fiscal deficit. As infrastructure is still a major constraint for growth, with work on expressways and high-speed trains yet to really start, creative ways for getting PPPs back into infrastructure need to be found.
The way forward would be to learn from recent experience and allocate risks realistically. This implies that the private sector needs to be assigned risks which it can manage and the government should take on those risks which only it can absorb. Hence government should take on the macroeconomic risks flowing from the uncertainties regarding GDP growth rates. The private sector can absorb project management and execution risks. It can also, separately, be a partner in revenue realisations where there is only the upside.
Thus there could then be two matching PPPs around the same project. One could be for project execution and maintenance on an annuity basis. The other could be for revenue realisation. The government as the sovereign could absorb the risk of the mismatch between the liability for annuity payments, which are fixed in the first PPP, and the uncertain revenue streams from the asset created through the other PPP.
With assured annuity payments the project becomes bankable and the private partner has the right incentives to execute it with the least cost and time and also high quality, as the costs of maintenance are disproportionately greater if quality is compromised.
Long-term fixed interest rate financing for these projects could also be put together as a part of project preparation and be made available to prospective bidders. For this government may need to absorb the risk arising from the asset-liability mismatch for long-term fixed rate lending by a consortium of lenders. If this were to be done, the bids received would be even more attractive as the bidders would not have to factor in any interest rate risk.
The revenue PPP works well for enhancing revenues through better marketing and sales efforts. These become quite effective for projects such as new airports, hotels, convention centres, new townships and industrial parks, including flatted factories, where demand needs to be generated. A good successful example of these from the pre-economic reform era are the two Taj Hotels of Delhi, where NDMC and DDA built the basic hotel structures on their land at their cost and the Taj Group did the finishing and furnishing, and ran the hotels paying a fixed lease rent and a share of the revenues. This was a win-win successful PPP, as the revenue shares for both partners rose with the success of the hotels. In natural networks such as expressways and tracks for high-speed trains, the potential for demand creation by the private partner is, however, somewhat limited.
The contingent liability arising from the mismatch between annuity payments and revenue streams can be comfortably borne by government. The liability for annuity payments would commence at least three-to-four years later, after project completion. By then, the fiscal situation should, hopefully, be more comfortable. With this approach a fairly large investment programme of, say, around Rs 5 lakh crore, could be initiated right now through PPPs on an annuity basis. Additional infrastructure projects of around Rs 5 lakh crore would generate considerable additional demand for steel, cement, construction equipment and commercial vehicles. This, in turn, would have a significant multiplier effect and add to the growth momentum in the economy.
A neat solution for stalled projects would be to take them over on an 'as is where is' basis. After take-over, these could be bid out again for completion through annuity-based PPPs. Due diligence through a credible third-party mechanism of valuation of assets created vis-à-vis expenditure booked would address transparency and fairness issues. This would take care of the huge risk of NPAs from these projects for banks and the entire financial sector. It would also restore market sentiment fully for infrastructure PPPs.
Restructuring debt, or permitting promoters to exit or bring in new partners, does not address the real problem of non-viability of the concession agreement. The fact is that a non-viable contract cannot be implemented.
Without government action to stimulate domestic demand the economic recovery is likely to remain feeble, as is the case at present. But with unorthodox measures, growth may well get back to eight per cent-plus.
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