ESSO: Providing scientific & technical support

By all measures, 2013-14 has been the most challenging, eventful and productive years for various endeavors of the Earth System Science Organization (ESSO) in the recent past. One of the important milestones accomplished during year is commencement of full-fledged operations at the 3rd Antarctic Station “Bharati”. India has been accorded observed status in the Arctic Council in recognition of India’s scientific contribution and endeavour in Polar research.

During the year, the country witnessed a number of natural disasters such as tropical cyclones Thane, Phailin, and Helen and extreme events like landslides in Uttarakhand and floods in Andhra, Gujarat due to intense precipitations, and earthquakes besides strongest southwest monsoon of the recent years. It was a daunting task to issue timely and reliable information on rainfall, winds, storm surges, high waves which have been successfully performed. This has received an overwhelming appreciation from a wide range user community. The improvement in forecasting of various events has been accomplished primarily due to coordinated effort of all the entities of ESSO and strengthening of observations networks of ocean and atmospheric sectors, assimilation of data, implementation of high resolution global and regional ocean atmospheric models.

The high performance computing system has been upgraded from the existing 70 Teraflop to storage archival capacity of one Petabyte, which is ranked at 36th position in the world’s top 500 and first in the country. The Agro-Meterelogical advisories have been extended to all the 600 districts of the country and sub-district services are being done on pilot scale in selected districts. Currently, over 4.2 million farmers have subscribed to the agro-advisory services. For the first time in India, an indigenous climate model has been employed for studying variability and predictability of monsoon on seasonal, interannual and decadal time scale. The long range forecast for the season (June-September) rainfall for the country as a whole was 104-108% against actual rainfall of 106% of LPA for the year 2013.

With regard to ocean mineral survey and exploration, the work was productive. A series of seven major research cruises of 30 days each have been conducted in the central Indian Ocean Basin for acquisition of marine geophysical data, where the newly developed deep-see mining technologies were tested and made operational on experimental basis. These include testing of ROSUB at the mining site for exploitation of hydrothermal sulfides, which transmitted real-time data from the Indian Ridge in the Indian Ocean to oversee monitoring the operations from Chennai.

India’s filed the application for allotment of a site for exploration of Polymetallic Sulphides in the Indian Ocean during meeting of the International Seabed Authority, Kingston, Jamaica, held from 8-19 July 2013. Towards providing improved earthquake information, a set of 75 Broadband seismic and GPS receivers have been established. The state of the art Indian tsunami early warning system is now capable of issue advisories on tsunamis occurred not only due to earthquakes anywhere in the Indian Ocean but also landslides as demonstrated during the recent Pakistan earthquake. As per India’s commitment to the UNESCO, the International Training Centre of Operational Oceanography was established and made operational for promotion of capacity building and training activities for the countries of the Indian Ocean Region.

Under the outreach programs, the ESSO had organized Earth Science Olympaid in September 2013. The economic benefits of various services being rendered by ESSO across the sectors are well recognized, which contributes sustainably to the GDP. Lastly, the ESSO’s participation of various activities emerged from the Result Framework Document effort. Viz., preparation of Action Plans for ISO 9001:2008, and effort should be made for improve Innovations and Citizen’s charters have been rated as one of the best. The evaluation of performance of the RFD of ESSO has secured 94% consistently for the 3rd year.

Rajeev Suri is Nokia CEO

Rajeev Suri is Nokia CEO

Yet another India-born business leader has climbed the ranks. Finnish firm Nokia, which recently sold its mobile unit to Microsoft, has appointed Rajeev Suri as the company's new CEO and President.

Mr. Suri joined Nokia in 1995 and has held a wide range of leadership positions in the company. Since October of 2009, he has served as CEO of NSN, the former joint venture between Nokia and Siemens that is now fully owned by Nokia.

During his tenure as CEO, that business went through a radical transformation to become one of the leaders in the telecommunications infrastructure industry.

Risto Siilasmaa, who has been serving as the interim CEO, will now return to his role as Chairman of Nokia's Board.

“I am honoured to have been asked to take this role, and excited about the possibilities that lie in our future,” said Mr. Suri, in a statement. “Nokia, with its deep experience in connecting people and its three strong businesses, is well-positioned to tap new opportunities during this time of technological change. I look forward to working with the entire Nokia team as we embark on this exciting journey,” Mr. Suri added.

Where should the judiciary draw the line?

Where should the judiciary draw the line?
Judicial activism, keeping in view the ideals of democracy, is necessary to ensure that unheard voices are not buried by more influential and vocal ones.

“Instead of re-ploughing the well-worked terrain which ranges justiciability against non-justiciability, the real challenge is to formulate a democratically justifiable role for the courts.”

While justifying this statement of hers, Professor Sandra Fredman elucidates the “remarkable way” in which the Indian judiciary has succeeded in the above endeavour. It is the same Indian judiciary which has come under the media scanner over the past few months — interventions/ decisions in the imprisoning of Subrata Roy in the SEBI-Sahara dispute; the IPL betting case; the challenge to Section 377 of the IPC; and the most recent dicta on the status of transgenders have evoked a mixed response. What the critics of judicial intervention have, however, missed is the fact that in each of these cases, judicial intervention would have been unnecessary but for legislative/ executive inaction and inefficiency — PRS Legislative Research’s data reveals that 51 per cent and 42 per cent of the available time in the Budget and Monsoon Sessions for the year 2013 was wasted due to disruptions. The object of this piece is not to go into the merits of each of the above decisions but to put forward an argument in favour of judicial activism and to analyse where the Court has to draw its Lakshman rekha keeping in view the main aim of judicial activism.

After playing a largely “interpretative” role in the 1950s and 1960s, the Supreme Court, starting from the 1970s has been the major force standing up against legislative and executive excesses and inactions. Judicial activism was necessary to ensure that constitutional and legislative changes were not used as tools to aid an authoritarian Government. Starting from inventing the ‘basic structure’ doctrine to bring constitutional amendments under the judicial scanner to widening the scope of the right to life and liberty by reading into it the non-justiciable directive principles of state policy such as the duty to promote education and the duty to preserve the environment, the 1970s and 1980s saw the judiciary play a highly proactive role in ensuring that India develops into a thriving democracy.

The decision in Maneka Gandhi v. Union of India, where it was held a person could be deprived of his right to life only by a law which was just, fair and reasonable; and in Bandhua Mukhti Morcha v. Union of India, where the concept of Public Interest Litigation (PIL) was introduced and the locus standi requirement was diluted, were landmark developments in the march of Indian constitutional law and more importantly were key game changers which ensured that India did not slide down the slippery slope towards dictatorship.

Intervention, not overreach
The most common argument against excessive judicial intervention is Professor Waldron’s who argues that empowering judges to decide on policy issues amounts to disrespecting the democratically elected representatives of the majority.

The logical extension of this argument is that judicial activism results in upsetting the balance of power between the executive, legislature and the judiciary.

However, such an argument firstly assumes that the legislature and executive are performing their functions efficiently and secondly that the judiciary is incapable of intervening in a manner which helps further the ideals of democracy.

The assumption that the Parliament and executive make policy decisions based on effective participation with the citizens a flawed one and the judiciary has a role in ensuring that there is effective participation from interest groups. Further, Professor Waldron’s argument assumes that judicial intervention means that judges have the final say on the policy issue. The judges can, however, promote decision making relating to policy issues without being the ultimate decision maker.

The Indian model of activism has formed the bedrock of South African jurisprudence. However, there are certain landmark South African decisions which can be used as a guide as to where Courts must draw the Lakshman rekha.

The best example is the Rand Properties case which involved a challenge to the state’s eviction of inmates of dilapidated buildings in central Johannesburg.

Since right to housing was a fundamental right which the state had failed to provide, the judiciary directed the state and the inmates to “engage with each other meaningfully … and in the light of the values of the Constitution, the constitutional and statutory duties of the municipality and the duties of citizens concerned” to resolve the dispute.

The judiciary, by its interventions, ensured that these deliberations were on a level playing field as the final result of the deliberations was susceptible to scrutiny by the Court.

In this manner, while it ensured that executive inaction was not pardoned, the final decision itself was left to the executive but subject to judicial superintendence.

Another example of an innovative pro-democratic intervention is the case of Minister of Health v. Treatment Action Campaign, where the government was given directions to review its policy regarding distribution of antiretroviral drugs and plan an effective and comprehensive national programme to prevent Mother To Child Transmission (MTCT) of HIV.

In order to ensure enforcement, the judiciary required that MTCT prevention policy should have timeframes for its implementation and that it must take into consideration the condition of those who cannot afford to pay for medical treatment. Most importantly, it required the state to continuously report to it about the implementation of the programme.

Restrictive interference
These cases clearly illustrate that it is possible for courts to monitor actions of the other limbs of democracy without actually stepping into their shoes. These precedents get theoretical support from the writings of Professor Roach who argues that the judiciary should not create policies to enforce rights but must require the government to draft its own policy and submit it along with a timetable for execution. The finalisation of this plan must be only after the judiciary has heard objections from other interested parties.

Once such a policy is framed by a legislature/ executive, it is to be interfered with by the judiciary in a very restrictive manner, using the principle of deference. According to this principle, the judiciary, while evaluating executive/ legislative action (or inaction), should modify the policy framed only when the reasons provided are not reasonable.

A court should merely see whether the reasons provided by the executive justify its decision, not whether the court would have reached the same decision. This standard should be applied not only when a policy is tested before the courts but also by courts to see if executive / legislative inaction is justified.

While there is the danger of judicial activism being misused by unscrupulous elements and the Supreme Court has come down heavily on such misuse, the solution is not to throw away the baby with the bathwater.

The mere risk of judicial over-activism cannot be an argument against judicial activism. Judicial activism, keeping in view the ideals of democracy, is, in fact, necessary to ensure that unheard voices are not buried by more influential and vocal voices. Indeed, on most occasions, timely interventions of the judiciary in India — the home of judicial activism — has helped democracy flourish in our country despite repeated failures of the other organs.

samveg ias

ias-2015

UPPCS-2014

UPPCS-2014 NOTIFICATION

motivational

हमें अच्छे -से-अच्छे अवसर दिए जाते हैं,पर हम अपनी मनः स्थिति के अनुरूप ही उनका चुनाव करते हैं 

एक आदमी कहीं से गुजर रहा था, तभी उसने सड़क के किनारे बंधे हाथियों को देखा, और अचानक रुक गया. उसने देखा कि हाथियों के अगले पैर में एक रस्सी बंधी हुई है, उसे इस बात का बड़ा अचरज हुआ की हाथी जैसे विशालकाय जीव लोहे की जंजीरों की जगह बस एक छोटी सी रस्सी से बंधे हुए हैं!!! ये स्पष्ठ था कि हाथी जब चाहते तब अपने बंधन तोड़ कर कहीं भी जा सकते थे, पर किसी वजह से वो ऐसा नहीं कर रहे थे.
उसने पास खड़े महावत से पूछा कि भला ये हाथी किस प्रकार इतनी शांति से खड़े हैं और भागने का प्रयास नही कर रहे हैं ? तब महावत ने कहा, ” इन हाथियों को छोटे पर से ही इन रस्सियों से बाँधा जाता है, उस समय इनके पास इतनी शक्ति नहीं होती की इस बंधन को तोड़ सकें. बार-बार प्रयास करने पर भी रस्सी ना तोड़ पाने के कारण उन्हें धीरे-धीरे यकीन होता जाता है कि वो इन रस्सियों नहीं तोड़ सकते,और बड़े होने पर भी उनका ये यकीन बना रहता है, इसलिए वो कभी इसे तोड़ने का प्रयास ही नहीं करते.”
आदमी आश्चर्य में पड़ गया कि ये ताकतवर जानवर सिर्फ इसलिए अपना बंधन नहीं तोड़ सकते क्योंकि वो इस बात में यकीन करते हैं!!
इन हाथियों की तरह ही हममें से कितने लोग सिर्फ पहले मिली असफलता के कारण ये मान बैठते हैं कि अब हमसे ये काम हो ही नहीं सकता और अपनी ही बनायीं हुई मानसिक जंजीरों में जकड़े-जकड़े पूरा जीवन गुजार देते हैं.

याद रखिये असफलता जीवन का एक हिस्सा है ,और निरंतर प्रयास करने से ही सफलता मिलती है. यदि आप भी ऐसे किसी बंधन में बंधें हैं जो आपको अपने सपने सच करने से रोक रहा है तो उसे तोड़ डालिए….. आप हाथी नहीं इंसान हैं.