Editorial 1: It’s back on us
Recent Context
- Recently, A five-judge Constitution Bench of the Supreme Court headed by Chief Justice of India (CJI) D Y Chandrachud refused to grant legal status to same-sex marriages.
- While two judges the CJI and Justice Sanjay Kishan Kaul recognised that queer couples can form “civil unions”, they were in the minority.
- The majority of three judges said that the issue lay exclusively in the domain of the legislature.
Separation of power: Law making power lies with the legislature
- Nowhere in the world where queer sex has been decriminalised, has law reform that introduced marriage equality followed within five years.
- Indeed, even where civil partnership rights have been recognised for queer people, it has often taken several years for marital rights to then be conferred.
- To bestow that would need amendments to several laws, which is the domain of the people’s elected representatives, not a selected few jurist.
- As separation of power is bedrock of Indian constitution, therefore debated in the courtroom provide robust thought and detailed understanding of the law reform required to provide queer people with relationship rights through the legislature
- Such effort requires not the lurch towards filing writ petitions, but the hard work of engaging with the larger diverse queer community, understanding our priorities and needs, amplifying realities, strategically thinking can be represented, and sensitising and advocating with those in positions of power whose understandings need to be enhanced as queer community know this well, having worked for decades to rid India of Section 377.
The recent judgment of Supreme court
- The judgment of the Supreme Court has been disappointing not because it rejects marriage equality, but because of some of the other things it does not go far enough to do.
- For example, the non-recognition of discriminatory acts against queer live-in relationships as actionable claims while foisting responsibility on the legislature, is a failure of the court to exercise judicial review.
- While the Court uses lofty themes of dignity, inclusivity, and empowerment, ultimately it is the implementation of its directives that will give real meaning to much of the substance of the ruling.
- After all, like the Puttaswamy judgment on privacy, if such decisions are followed daily in the breach, then they are as valuable as the paper they are written on.
- While lending some clarity on the scope and composition of this forum, the court fails to indicate a timeframe.
- In 2018 while decriminalising queer people, the same court directed the State to “ensure that this judgment is given wide publicity through the public media… at regular intervals, and initiate programmes to reduce and finally eliminate the stigma” against queer people.
- Further, and “above all, all government officials, including and in particular police officials … be given periodic sensitisation and awareness training of the plight” of queer persons.
- Five years later, absolutely nothing has been done in this regard. There is no reason to believe that a committee to look into equality claims by queer people will be set up and made meaningfully functional.
What lies ahead for the queer community?
- The evidence that has been documented and presented to the Court is only but a little of all that exists to reveal the inequality and violence that queer people face in their daily lives.
- Therefore, a committee Whether a committee need to be set with the all stakeholder participation to augment the views of community and use it to advocate for equity, so that the need for change becomes undeniable to even the naysayers.
Conclusion:
As the SC asks to bring reform from the legislative side then therefore, The buck has been passed not just to the legislature, but also back to the queer community to organise and work in unison on a long yet likely rewarding path.
Editorial 2: Revolution and its Sutradhar
Context:
- In March 1963 American agronomist Norman Borlaug came to Delhi and toured the country’s major wheat-growing areas to study the crop that was in the grain-filling stage prior to harvesting.
- He was accompanied by M S Swaminathan and based on his field observations, decided to send about 100 kg seeds each of four semi-dwarf wheat varieties he Sonora 64, Mayo 64 and Lerma Rojo 64A for testing under Indian conditions.
- It was Swaminathan who had first recognised the potential of growing the Mexican varieties and was instrumental in getting Borlaug to India and responsible for bringing green revolution in India.
Role of MS Swaminathan in bringing green revolution
- In 1965-66 and 1966-67, India suffered back-to-back droughts. As foodgrain production fell to 72-74 million tonnes (mt), from the previous five years’ average of 83 mt, imports soared and touched 10.4 mt in 1966. Swaminathan now pushed for the import of 18,250 tonnes of seeds of the two Mexican varieties.
- As the imported seeds got planted on a large scale, foodgrain output crossed 95 mt in 1967-68 and 108.5 mt by 1970-71. Wheat production alone more than doubled from 11.4 mt to 23.8 mt between 1966-67 and 1970-71 that fulfilld the vision of green revolution.
- The Green Revolution relied on breeding varieties enabling farmers to apply more nutrients and water.
- This “more input, more output strategy” has yielded diminishing returns over time, apart from being environmentally and financially unsustainable.
- A younger Swaminathan of the 21st century would, perhaps, have focused on technologies for improved nutrient and water use efficiency (“less input, more output”) and breeding for climate change.
- He would have championed cutting-edge agricultural biotechnology, gene modification and editing research with the same zeal as with the semi-dwarf wheat and rice varieties.
- The parallel one can draw is with Verghese Kurien. The father of the White Revolution certainly understood dairy technology, but the man who provided Amul its technical backbone and invented the world’s first spray dryer for making powder from buffalo milk is the largely forgotten H M Dalaya.
- As Kurien admitted, “my role was in marketing, external affairs and handling politicians, bureaucrats and other establishment people”. Yet, there could have been no Green or White revolutions without Swaminathan and Kurien.
The futurist concern raised by MS Swaminathan
- Swaminathan wasn’t only sutradhar; he was also Lord Krishna of Indian agriculture who saw what lay ahead too.
- As early as January 1968, he flagged the risks of pathogen and pest attacks from mono-cropping (“a single variety…grown in large, contiguous areas”) and “unscientific tapping of underground water (leading to) the rapid exhaustion of this wonderful capital resource left to us through ages of natural farming”.
- The Green Revolution relied on breeding varieties enabling farmers to apply more nutrients and water. This “more input, more output strategy” has yielded diminishing returns over time, apart from being environmentally and financially unsustainable.
Conclusion:
- Today, Indian agriculture demands more scientists like Swaminathan and Kurien who could have the ear of the political leadership. They had a strategic vision for the sector that placed the farmer at the centre in their overall scheme of things.
- Therefore, While recognising the valuable contribution of Swaminathan in agriculture, Prime Minister Narendra Modi called him not a “Krishi Vaigyanik” (agricultural scientist), but a “Kisan Vaigyanik” — a farmers’ scientist.