Political and Social Issues

A universal sisterhood

Women peace activists from across South Asia gathered under the roof of the United Nations Women's office. These foot soldiers of peace came together to present a joint resolution to the United Nations Secretary-General, outlining measures to improve the participation of women in peace building and value women's role as peace makers.
The resolution drew on the experiences of activists from conflict areas in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Nepal, India, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh.
Data show that women's involvement in peace processes has been very limited.
Women affected by conflict often suffer in silence, conforming to our culture of shame.
Even in a post-conflict scenario, the impact of sexual violence persists, preventing women from accessing education, becoming financially independent, and participating in governance and peace-building.
“During the armed conflict in my country, women began mobilising at the grassroots for reconstruction and rehabilitation. However, once the peace agreement was signed in 2006, their role was absented,” says Bandana Rana, a Nepali gender-activist.
We are waiting… for peace to prevail… for the Naga freedom struggle to end. Ours is a closed society, where the chief of the village is still chosen by a hereditary system
These harbingers of peace at the UN office belonged to a myriad of nationalities and generations. And they chose to speak in one voice, echoing a sentiment that looked beyond the borders.

Green energy needs market push

Would you mind paying one-and-a-half paise more for electricity that comes from windmills or solar plants? Most likely, you would not.
But that is the burden, according to Dr Pramod Deo, Chairman of the Central Electricity Regulatory Commission, the ‘renewable energy certificate' (REC) regime imposes on electricity consumers in India.
It will give people who put up renewable energy capacities such as windmills, biomass and solar plants sufficiently attractive returns, justifying their investments.
Eight months after it came into existence, the REC green shoots are growing well.
The REC is basically a tradable unit (trading takes place on the last Wednesday of each month) given to a producer of renewable power, who opts not to sell the power for a preferential tariff.
The producer — say, a company that owns a windmill farm — will get the REC even if it sells the power to a part-owner of the wind farm at a negotiated price, provided it does not get the benefit of any other incentives.
The RECs, which are based on generation, are sold through the power exchanges, within a prescribed price band.
Those who buy them are the ‘obligated entities', or the power distribution companies or bulk consumers of power, which are mandated by law to buy either green power at high prices in the market, or to buy the RECs instead.
RECs are traded on Indian Energy Exchange Limited and Power Exchange of India Limited. The former accounted for 89 per cent of the RECs traded last month.
The stock market does not as yet have either a sufficient understanding or awareness of the RECs, as is reflected in the low prices of renewable energy company stocks; but when the awareness builds up, valuations will rise, enabling companies to raise more funds for further investments in renewables.
Enforcement is largely in the hands of State electricity regulators and a lot depends on how strict they are in making the obligated entities discharge their Renewable Purchase Obligation (RPO).
Obviously, the first step is to tell them that there is no wriggling out. An effective way of sending this signal is to ask for a ‘compliance undertaking' at the beginning of each financial year
The supply side of the market has been fairly well taken care of. But the demand side is still a niggling issue and the question ‘what if there are no takers for the RECs' is still weighing on the minds of many.
Some sort of a ‘renewable regulatory fund' should be created to take care of the off-take of the RECs, perhaps at the mandatory minimum price, in case there are unsold RECs in the market.

Civil society groups frown at Plan panel's privatisation slant

Civil society organisations criticised the Planning Commission for “over-reliance” on the public-private partnership (PPP) model in its Approach Paper to the 12 {+t} {+h} Five-Year Plan (2012-17).
Representing Dalits, women, children and the disabled, the members also said that the Approach Paper lacked a regulatory framework to ensure equity. “The approach seems to be more about employing market efficiency rather than equity and empowerment,”
There was also a demand for sex-aggregated data of poverty line, landless and farm workers.
We see growth as one of the aspects of the 12th Plan and affirm the need for social inclusion, which is a multi-dimensional concept.

Making the law easier for the common man

One of the reasons for popular dissatisfaction with the administration of justice is the uncertainty of law which sometimes results in miscarriage of justice. The multiplicity of interpretations, the inadequacies of legislative drafting, ambiguities in policies and the variety of languages in which transactions are made add to the confusion and make repeated litigation inevitable.
In the United States, complex and ambiguous laws have been simplified, codified and re-stated by the American Law Institute for the convenience of the legal community and the litigant public. In India, the problem persisted, alienating people from the law itself and providing litigants and advocates their heyday to often delay and manipulate the process to their advantage. The rule of law and access to justice have been in jeopardy in the circumstances.
Chief Justice of India S.H. Kapadia released three Restatement volumes in New Delhi on three different legal subjects prepared by a committee headed by senior Supreme Court judge R.V. Raveendran (since retired) and published by the Indian Law Institute.
It is doubtful whether the lawyers and judges who are the experts to advise the litigants are themselves clear on the various issues involved.
The Restatement Series, which the Supreme Court started with, included Legislative Privileges, Contempt of Court and Public Interest Litigation. The event marked a quiet revolution in the simplification, clarification, consolidation and dissemination of the law authoritatively.
The printers and distributors have agreed to price the publications in the public interest at the bare cost of paper, ink and printing. Soon it may be available free in digital form as well.
Restatement is intended to be an authoritative neutral statement of the law on the subject, identifying and removing uncertainties and ambiguities surrounding the legal principles and clarifying the current law for its better adaptation to the needs of society.
Thus, it can save judicial time and expedite disposal of cases. Lawyers may not have to carry or cite multiple decisions or run the risk of overlooking judgments; nor need judges be afraid of being misguided by overruled propositions or amended statutory provisions.
The Restatement draft involved two revisions — first when it was sent for critical feedback among selected expert consultants and, second, when the revised text was scrutinised by the editorial committees consisting of judges, jurists and academics.
These Restatements are thus an easily accessible, clearly understandable, non-technical statement of the current law otherwise spread into many constitutional provisions, voluminous statutory texts, innumerable judicial pronouncements — sometimes conflicting and confusing.
What the government can do is to support the project with funds, undertake translations of the volumes in all official languages and reach them to people through panchayats and other local bodies so that the rule of law prevails with the removal of ignorance.
Even the gram panchayats can function effectively without bureaucratic dependence only when the law and the Constitution become unambiguously familiar to the elected representatives.
Restatement can never act as a substitute for professional advice if and when legal action is required.
If Restatements are brought out on the Right to Education, Health, Food, Work, Clean Environment and a corruption-free government, the common man can hope to be less prone to exploitation and more empowered to seek remedies under the law.