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Kila
Raipur games |
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Think
big Cheating
at Harvard?
Still
struggling with debt
The
innovative Indian
New
medical visa laws to regulate surrogacy
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Think big
Big
cities draw in an increasing number of commuters, people who travel fairly long distances on a daily basis to work in the city and then return home. While many commuters often depend on public transportation, be it buses or, if available, trains, a large number of them depend on their personal vehicles for this daily commute. Besides being expensive and causing excessive wear and tear to the drivers and passengers, these are also an inefficient mode of transportation that clog the streets of the city and roads leading to it, besides causing pollution and other related ills. As cities expand, it is the duty of the governments concerned to provide efficient means of transportation to the workforce. Indeed, the difference that the Delhi Metro has made to the nation’s capital is so visible that many other cities are vying with one another to introduce it. Indeed, it is only recently that the Chief Minister of Haryana laid the foundation stone of the Mundaka (Delhi) - Bahadurgarh Metro rail link, thereby providing a promise of faster commute and a better economic future to the area. Ludhiana in Punjab is also on the Metro map, and so are other cities. We, however, need to keep in mind that city metro trains are but one kind of commuter trains. Better intra-city train connectivity is also needed. There is considerable traffic from the neighbouring towns to cities that become hubs like Ludhiana and Chandigarh. If we look at the latter, it is obviously necessary to provide connectivity between Ambala, Rajpura, Patiala and Ludhiana with Chandigarh by running trains between these cities at frequent intervals. This would certainly cut the traffic chaos on roads and provide the people of the area with a safe and speedy method of commuting, while also benefiting the environment. A win-win situation that needs a vision, long-term planning and some resources that can easily be allocated, if there is a will to do so.
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Cheating at Harvard?
Corruption
is a great equaliser. It’s not just a quote that creates controversy among castes, but a fact of global proportion. We, the inhabitants of crowded, jostling-for-space, Third World countries who can’t get a better rating among the worst corrupt nations of the world, can now find some consolation in the fact that even ‘they’ do it. ‘They’, the denizens of the prosperous, first-world countries where they claim to have created ‘systems’ that deliver fairness and justice. This consolation becomes all the more heart warming when one learns that cheating takes place even in the Ivy-League institutions, that too at Harvard, the Mecca of quality education. In one of the largest cheating scandals that have surfaced at Harvard, about half of the 279 students enrolled in an “Introduction to Congress” course are suspected of academic dishonesty ranging from inappropriate collaboration to outright plagiarism on the take home final exam. But, unlike here, no CBI or other law enforcing agency was involved. The university launched an investigation into the cheating scandal and the accused have been given forced withdrawal from the university that lasts two to four semesters. But the scale of this cheating has given jolt to Harvard’s immaculate reputation. Though, Harvard graduates should know, they can never equal Indian ingenuity when it comes to cracking exams, a thing Indians learn to dread right in their crib. So they find devices — beyond Harvard’s imagination — to overcome this fear. We have hi-tech mass copying for our entrance tests conducted by the very prestigious PGI, Chandigarh, and busted by the CBI. Our CAT papers were leaked by bribing lower-level employees of printing presses where CAT examination papers were printed. Next time a Harvard professor willing to do research in cheating should take a few tips from our system that always ensures delivery — just don’t ask how.
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No one respects a talent that is concealed. — Desiderius Erasmus
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Still struggling with debt The
global financial crisis started six years ago and the world has been quite different since. There have been unimaginable changes in the developed world and no one could foresee that the integration of the EU, a bastion of prosperity, would stand threatened. Though the crisis gained momentum in the US with the collapse of the Lehman Brothers in 2008, it had started earlier with the sub-prime home loan crisis in 2007. An easy access to loans at low interest rates in the US led to a spate of sub-prime loans, which finally led house prices to plummet. Sub-prime loans denoted imprudent lending to borrowers who did not meet the normal criteria of creditworthiness. These mortgages were securitised and resold to banks and financial institutions in the world. There was lack of adequate capital holdings from banks and insurance companies to back the financial commitments they had made. Once the collapse of the big banks started, it quickly spread to other countries which had been part of the huge network of financial transactions around the world. There were many consequences and the worst was that one after the other, banks and companies started shutting down and there were massive job losses. Many financially secure people became vulnerable to bankruptcy as the stock markets collapsed. Many people had to leave their comfortable homes and became homeless. The reasons for the global financial crisis are well known. With lax regulation, bankers and financiers in the US got tempted to indulge in excessive speculation to create high-risk financial products that led to a big bubble which finally burst and led to the turmoil in the financial markets. All the financial products created on the basis of home-loan mortgages became toxic and whosoever had toxic assets in their portfolios around the world, was affected. The credit rating agencies had an adverse role to play as they could not, or did not, gauge the excesses of the Wall Street. Fortunately, Indian banks were spared because of the strict laws and the RBI guidelines regarding asset quality in their portfolios. A sudden shortage of liquidity ensued after the financial crisis and the US government came forward and took over the affected mortgage firms -- Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. One of the reasons for Obama’s return to presidency this year is due to the fact that he stepped in at the right moment and gave huge bailouts to the banks to recover and they did recover. Other countries also had to give generous stimulus packages to recover from the damage that the financial collapse caused. India, however, got affected indirectly. The fall in worldwide exports translated into a loss of jobs in India. Certain industries like the diamond-cutting business, textiles and garments needed incentives to revive and the government gave a big stimulus package to revive the flagging export sector. China also gave a very big stimulus package of four trillion yuans. China has learnt a lesson that export-led growth can be dangerous and a sharp dip in external demand can derail GDP growth and hence changed its focus and strategy to promoting domestic consumption and incomes. To further trigger economic recovery, the US government started monetary easing and has already injected $2.9 trillion into the economy through bond purchases. It helped business to access funds from the market. Some members of the EU have done poorly since the global crisis and have not been able to recover. Even though many economies recovered, southern Europe, Greece, Portugal, Italy and Spain have faced a mountain of debt due to slow exports and a rise in public spending. They are not able to put their economies back on track despite undergoing severe austerity measures and are experiencing the slowest growth ever. The austerity measures have actually aggravated the unemployment situation since the economic contraction that resulted led to more job losses. The UK is experiencing a triple-dip recession currently and its GDP has been shrinking again. The US also registered a contraction in the real GDP growth by 0.1 per cent recently. After the financial crisis there were a lot of international conferences and meetings. The G20 was entrusted with the responsibility of finding a way of reforming the international financial architecture. They deliberated in several meetings in different countries and came up with a solution of rearming the IMF, making it much stronger than before and making the surveillance mechanism more comprehensive. The Basel-based Bank of International Settlements was also given the task of monitoring all the countries with the help of the Financial Stability Board and various norms were stipulated so that countries could abide by them. Yet volatility of financial flows continued and France’s president Nicolas Sarkozy made a suggestion at the Cannes G20 meeting that a code of conduct should be laid down so that the affected countries could apply capital controls. Even though volatility in currency markets has ebbed somewhat, the US and Japanese monetary easing has created problems in emerging markets like India and the rupee is still not stable due to ‘hot money’ coming in and leaving within a short span of time. The uncertainty revolves around how the EU is going to manage its weaker members even after the European Central Bank gave them a huge bailout amounting to two trillion euros. How the world economy is going to come out of recession and debt is the question that has to be addressed now. Even India’s public debt is mounting though it is still manageable. It is faced with a big fiscal deficit (5.9 per cent of the GDP) which will need contraction if inflation control is to remain a high priority. Thus around the world even though the sting of the global financial crisis has gone, the poison of slow growth, trade and investment and huge debt in developed countries remain. The latest data from the IMF states that debt is high at 30 per cent in the emerging markets and 124 per cent of the GDP in G7 or the highly developed economies. The US debt is $16,400 billion. The German economy which was the star performer of the EU in exports has shown a decline in exports in the past few months. The world has to learn from the crisis a few lessons indeed. Both monetary and fiscal policies have been harnessed in all the debt-ridden countries. The instability in financial flows continues with the movement of ‘hot money’. FDI flows have yet to recover to the pre-crisis level. In general, the global economy is still struggling to come to grips with an alternative financial architecture and full economic
recovery.
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The innovative Indian
What
did Allama Iqbal, ‘Poet of the East’, have in mind when he wrote in his famous nazm Taraana-i-Hindi “sare jahan se achha Hindustan hamaara”, this cryptic couplet: Kuchh baat hai ki hasti mitati nahin hamari; sadion raha hai dushman daur-i-zaman hamaara? After long and deep reflection I have identified in this splendid she’r two uncanny abilities which we Indians have in ample measure: innovation and improvisation. Innovation is when you introduce something new to an existing material or method; you can even innovate on another’s creation. To improvise is to make do with whatever is available on hand. The most popular word for this strange skill is jugaad. Way back in 1973when Nek Chand’s creation had not been named ‘Rock Garden’ and was known to only a select few, I took up the research of this “outsider art” with a religious zeal. And before long I discovered that our self-taught genius had extended the scope of these national abilities to the realm of significant creativity the world would view with undiminished wonder. My conclusion was that an Indian is the most innovative individual in the world with the enviable power to create something out of nothing. I substantiated my inferences from scores of examples that are extant in everyday life so familiar that we fail to appreciate their underlying creativity or, to put it metaphysically, the active Indian imagination that transforms ideas into objects almost magically. Since Nek Chand, as a roads inspector, had the rich resource of coal-tar drums to launch in 1958 his now-internationally-acknowledged project, I surveyed the entire city to find to my amazement that this object had been put to umpteen different uses with innovation and improvisation. Coal-tar drums have been used for boundary-walls, for traffic rotaries, for tree-guards, to name only a few. A puncture-wala cuts it longitudinally and fills it with water to test the tubes for puncture. My curiosity led me to see how an Indian innovates on other objects to put them to a vast variety of uses. I found that the semi-skilled and skilled labourers from UP and Bihar have an unmatched innovative ability such as qualified architects may well envy. In the shopping corridors the architects fancifully turned the fascia of the colonnade inwards for concealed lighting—something that never happened. But these labourers who sleep in the corridors use the extended slab for stacking their sleeping kits. The tall and talented among them just throw it up a la basket ball style to land where it must. The short-statured have devised an iron bar with a forked end to which they hook the baggage to place it on the in-turned cement concrete slab. Others with a better sense of utilising someone else’s resources have gone a step further. In Sector 18 all the dealers in electrical and electronic goods stack their conduits and pipes up there. In Sector 35 shopkeepers have regular lockable cabinets installed there. The blacksmith welds iron bars to a bicycle crank wheel to make a tripod stool. The same object in a rural hamlet inserted in a hole in the mud wall becomes a ventilator. The roadside barber uses the tree to hang the mirror from a nail and attaches a wooden plank to improvise a table-top for his shaving and cutting kits. A chaiwala creates a bench by resting a broken lamp-post on pre-cast kerb-slabs pulled out of the sidewalk. The list is almost endless but the surprising thing is that the Indian’s uncanny ability to innovate and improvise comes from our scriptural sermons that this world is maya [illusion]and swarga [heaven] awaits us somewhere up there provided we do not fall into the trap of attachment. Thus the requirements of the Indian masses are minimalist but their survival rate is incredibly high. Ah, but no government has so far appreciated this titanic talent of the innovative Indian, much less exploited it to make India the envy of the developed nations — by our national gift of
jugaad!
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New medical visa laws to regulate surrogacy The
unregulated reproductive tourism industry “procreating” surrogacy is burgeoning, with India being the first country proposing to legalise commercial surrogacy. While the new Assisted Reproductive Technology (ART) Regulation Bill and Rules, 2010, are still in the womb, the non-statutory Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) Guidelines, 2005, are being followed. The Indian entrepreneurial industry spirit has catapulted the business of providing ‘wombs on rent’ to a whopping trade valued at Rs 25,000 crore. Medical visa However, soon the business of surrogacy may plummet. As per the latest and new Indian visa regulations, effective November 15, 2012, all foreigners visiting India for commissioning surrogacy will be required to apply for medical visas and cannot avail of simple tourist visas for surrogacy purposes. The Ministry of Home Affairs vide a letter dated July 9, 2012, has stipulated mandatory conditions for such medical visas, which if not fulfilled, will lead to visa rejection. These new medical visa regulations stipulate that a letter from the embassy of the foreign country in India or its foreign ministry should be enclosed with the visa application, stating clearly that the country concerned recognises surrogacy and that the child to be born to the commissioning couple through the Indian surrogate mother will be permitted to enter their country as a biological child of the couple commissioning surrogacy. And the couple will undertake to take care of their surrogate child. The treatment will be undertaken only at registered ART clinics in India recognised by the ICMR and the foreign commissioning couple must produce a duly notarised agreement between them and the prospective surrogate Indian mother. After the surrogate baby is born, exit permission will be required from the Indian Foreigners Regional Registration Office (FRRO) by the couple before leaving India to verify the issuance of a certificate from the ART clinic, confirming the discharge of liabilities of the Indian surrogate mother and ensuring the custody of the child with the commissioning parents. Clearly, the safeguards, besides the moral and ethical dimensions that remain unaddressed through any legislation, have been administratively put in place to regulate the surrogacy industry. The dam built with the strong bricks of the conditions of medical visas will prevent the gushing flow of unrestricted, pouring and muddled surrogate waters that had polluted India by becoming a bane for women’s health, their basic dignity and fundamental rights. Harmony in law Commercial surrogacy is illegal in the UK, though permissible under the British law on the payment of reasonable expenses to the surrogate mother. In most American states, compensated surrogacy agreements are either illegal or unenforceable. In some Australian states, arranging commercial surrogacy is a criminal offence and surrogacy agreements giving custody to others are void. In New Zealand and Canada, commercial surrogacy is illegal, although altruistic surrogacy is allowed. In Italy, Germany and France, commercial or other surrogacy is unlawful while in Israel commercial surrogacy is illegal and law only accepts the surrogate mother as the real mother. India, in total contrast, accepts commercial surrogacy and no law declares it illegal. The Supreme Court on September 29, 2008, in Baby Manji Yamada Vs Union of India and Another (All India Reporter 2009 SC 84), observed that “commercial surrogacy reaching industry proportions is sometimes referred to by the emotionally charged and potentially offensive terms: wombs for rent, outsourced pregnancies or baby farms”. However, by disallowing visas to foreigners whose countries prohibit surrogacy, the new medical visa regulations will ensure that we harmonise and fall in tandem with those nations whose overseas citizens wish to wrongfully patronise surrogacy in India. Of our own, we have banned foreign single, unmarried or gay parents by restricting surrogacy to couples constituted by a foreign man and woman who have been married for at least two years. Operations of unethical, unregistered and unrecognised ART shops cannot be availed of anymore. Making it official Most foreign embassies have indicated on their websites that the Indian government now requires medical visas for foreigners coming to India for surrogacy. Stringent DNA tests are in place to establish genetic connections for parentage and foreign nationality. Indian consulates overseas and Visa Facilitation Services (VFS) have also notified that foreign nationals must ascertain beforehand whether their country permits surrogacy and that they cannot enter India for surrogacy purposes by tourist visas. The British High Commission, New Delhi, vide its letter of October 30, 2012, to the India High Commission, London, states that the British Government recognises surrogacy and makes provisions for commissioning couples for children born overseas through surrogacy. The UK Human Fertilisation and Embryology Act, 1990, is cited in support. It allows surrogacy if one parent is genetically related to the surrogate child and no money other than reasonable expenses are paid in respect of the surrogacy arrangement. Alternatively, the letter also takes the support of the embryology Act for providing parental orders to commissioning parents. This letter is stated to be a request for entertaining applications for medical visas for purposes of surrogacy in India as per requirements of the new visa regulations. Plugging loopholes Rather than Parliament catching up to make a law to regulate the unscrupulous surrogacy trade, the new medical visa regulations have stepped in to do what the law ought to have done. Rather than permitting surrogate children to be born in India with the risk of being stateless persons and being denied entry into foreign countries where their commissioning parents reside, it is necessary that such unethical practices leading to such disastrous situations must be pre-empted. The Indian government in its administrative wisdom has stepped in at a time when the regulatory law is nowhere near the horizon. Recent instances of surrogate children from Germany, Japan and Israel born in India and leaving upon court intervention should well make legislators think of enacting a strict surrogacy monitoring law. The ART Bill, 2010, has legal lacunae and lacks creation of a specialist legal authority for determination and adjudication of legal rights of parties, in addition to falling in conflict with existing family laws. These pitfalls should not become a graveyard for a law yet to be born. Surrogacy needs to be regulated by a proper statutory law. Till then, the visa regulations will provide succour and relief.
Recommendations of Law Commission
New regulations The writer is a
Chandigarh-based lawyer.
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Despite the legal, moral and social complexities that shroud surrogacy, economic necessity stimulates women to shake off their inhibition and fear of social ostracism to be lured by agents or corporate surrogacy consultants for international markets. Free availability of a large pool of women willing to be surrogates, a good medical infrastructure, fractional costs, less waiting time, close monitoring of surrogate mothers by over two lakh in-vitro fertilisation (IVF) clinics and no laws to restrict single, gay or unmarried couples from becoming parents by surrogacy, has taken this unethical trade in India to spiralling heights.