'Constitutional' protests

 The Chief Justice of India, while hearing the petition regarding farmers' protests, has observed that protests are constitutional as long as they do not endanger lives and damage property. This is a simplistic and controversial observation. This amounts to legalising gheraos and bandhs. 

Police has no authority to prevent constitutional activities. If a group of people blocks a road (minor or major road makes no difference) and if this activity is certified as constitutional by the highest judicial functionary in the country, how can the innocent public exercise its right to free movement? Does the CJI say that we have a constitutional right to inconvenience others in whatever way we want provided we desist from hitting them or damaging their property?

It appears that the anarchist forces are succeeding in perverting the course of justice. Farmer unions have welcomed various observations made by the court as a moral victory for them. In that case, they must be happy about the suggestions of the Supreme Court. They have also claimed that setting up new panels as suggested by the court will not resolve concerns. Are they happy that the issue will not be resolved?

The Supreme Court is losing its direction because of lobbying by the media. For example, The Hindu today carries an article by Mr.Harish Khare containing direct attacks on the Supreme Court and indirect attack on Modi. (Attacks on Modi and disparaging statements on institutions like courts are an essential requirement for publication of an article in the newspaper.)

Khare argues that 'judges are not in the business of soothing and smoothing.' What is the sin committed by the Supreme Court to warrant this argument? The author is annoyed that the court has shown politeness in dealing with the central government. While passing an order on Central Vista inauguration, the court had said, "We thought we were dealing with a prudent litigant and deference will be shown.... We have shown deference to you and expected that you will act in a prudent manner. The same deference should be shown to the court and there should be no demolition or construction." This is a polite way of warning the government to know its limits. But Khare is aghast that the court is polite towards the government. He calls this 'a protocol of deference' that is 'baffling and inexplicable.'

Deference means respect and politeness. In a democracy, institutions like courts and the government are not expected to deal with one another impolitely or disrespectfully. Anarchists are desperate to create misunderstanding and animosity among institutions.

Khare is unaware that firmness can be exercised politely. Such writers only endeavour to browbeat the judiciary into submission to their extraneous and heinous agenda of causing unrest in the country. He accuses the High Courts of being 'plainly unsympathetic to those who have had reason to critique and protest the Citizenship (Amendment) Act'. Do we see the cat out of the bag now? 

Harish Khare concludes his intimidation of the judiciary arguing that in the absence of 'countervailing judicial constraints' on the government, the 'kisans are manning the barricades at the Sindhu border' !

There is no wonder that the CJI is bullied enough to make the observation mentioned in the first paragraph.

Role of opposition in a democracy

 Democracy is a fragile political system that can be nurtured and sustained only if the parties both in government and the opposition play their roles responsibly. Otherwise democracy will degenerate in to dictatorship or anarchy.

It is the duty of the government to act in accordance with the Constitution. It is only to be expected that the policies of the ruling party and the opposition parties are different. They are not Tweedledum and Tweedledee. Therefore, many steps taken by the government will not be agreeable to the opposition, though they are perfectly legal. In such cases, the opposition can express its views but does not have the right to torpedo the government moves.

The opposition can also contest the government action legally. Adoption of demonstrations to create nuisance, inconvenience and traffic snarls are blatantly anti-democratic.

It is unfortunate that almost all opposition parties in our country now or earlier have misunderstood or misinterpreted their role. For example Ms.Kanimozhi, an M.P. from Tamil Nadu has argued in the Madras High Court that accusing the Chief Minister of corruption amounts to discharge of her duty as an elected representative of the people! In her view, this accusation cannot be a cause for a criminal defamation case. The honourable M.P. has not produced any evidence of corruption before the court and has gone on to add that she has said only Edappadi in her speech which is the subject matter of the criminal case and that this is not necessarily a reference to the Chief Minister Edappadi K.Palaniswami. This is a disingenuous argument that cuts little ice.

If the opposition thinks that its function is only to criticise and deactivate the government on an ongoing basis, there cannot be anything but inertia in the country's economy. This will only lead to widening the distance between the voters and the opposition. This is what seems to be happening in our country as the results of many recent elections show. Opposition's acts need to be such as to regain the confidence of the voters. If the acts only betray bitterness towards the party in power, they will only ensure a longer term in power for the ruling party.

mRNA

 mRNA (messenger RNA) is a molecule of RNA that is read by a ribosome while forming a protein. Its history is interesting and it epitomises the significance of global efforts. mRNA is now in the news because Pfizer - BioNTech and Moderna have developed mRNA-based  vaccines against COVID-19.

Existence of mRNA was conceptualised / visualised by Jacques Monod, a French biochemist and Francois Jacob, a French biologist. Later it was discovered by Sydney Brenner, a South African biologist.

An Hungarian biochemist, Katalin Kariko,  revolutionised the understanding of mRNA by speculating on its various uses. She even suggested its utility in vaccine development. She was far ahead of her times. Her views were not taken seriously by other scientists. (Her daughter, Susan Francia won Olympic Gold Medal twice in rowing.)

The Turkish couple, Ugur Sahin and Ozlem Tureci, set up the biotech company, BioNTech in Germany and developed the vaccine against COVID-19. The vaccine is marketed by Pfizer, an American pharma company. It is manufactured in Puurs, Belgium.

The first regulatory approval was given in the U.K.

Interfaith Marriage

 Interfaith alliance is a perennial hot potato. There is a lot of controversy of late about marriages between persons of different religions. In particular, Hindu brides marrying Muslim bridegrooms are attracting suspicious notice by some state governments as a device for forcible conversions.

Religious conversions are not prohibited by law. But forcible conversions are unlawful. The argument against the government intervention is that these conversions are of persons who are adults and as such involve legitimate exercise of freedom of conscience. 

There is a lot of truth in the statement that love is blind. It requires an inordinate amount of rational jingoism to claim otherwise. Love is an emotion. There is nothing wrong about emotion. In fact, in the absence of emotions, life will be an unbearable drudgery. However, it is illicit to exploit emotions as a religious tool for conversion.

Love is a strong emotion that prods an individual to do even untypical acts. A person in love is prone to perform some acts which the person would not do otherwise. It would be unlawful to take advantage of this emotion to convert a person's religion. At the same time, it would amount to denial of fundamental right if a person is forced not to marry a person of his or her choice. 

So, what is the way out? It may be legislated that interfaith marriages need to be performed only under the Special Marriage Act. This would legitimise the marriage and also obviate the need for conversion. Under the Muslim personal law, marriage with a non-Muslim is in most cases a nullity.

HDFC Bank

 HDFC Bank is arguably one of the most respected banks in India. Its digital facilities have recently been plagued by frequent outages. (In digitals, even one outage is deemed frequent.) The customers have reasons to be dissatisfied. Its reputation is so robust that the banking regulator, RBI, would think twice before reprimanding it.

On December 2nd, RBI imposed some curbs on extension of digital services by the bank. For instance, the bank is prohibited to issue any new credit card. These curbs will be removed after the failures are rectified. The bank's Board has been advised to examine these lapses and fix accountability. A real reputational loss for HDFC Bank.

What is stated above is bad enough; on top of this, the assurance given to its customers is baffling. The bank has informed the exchanges, "The  Bank  has  been  taking  conscious,  concrete  steps  to  remedy  the  recent  outages  on  its  digital  banking  channels  and  assures  its  customers  that  it  expects  the  current  supervisory  actions  will  have  no  impact  on  its  existing  credit  cards,  digital  banking channels and existing operations."

In brief, the bank 'expects' that its customers will not be adversely impacted. This is not an assurance. This is only a statement conveying expectation. One really expects this bank to communicate more responsibly.

This amateurish response may be because HDFC Bank is not used to being in a tight corner. This is a real test for the new MD.

More (Less?) on COVID-19

 The more the information that we get about COVID-19, the less we seem to know about it. This is strange, but this is what makes the disease very challenging.

Any disease can be fully defined or understood only if there are unambiguous details about its symptoms, prevention and cure. There are people who imagine they have a disease though they do not have any symptoms and clinically they are disease-free. We call them hypochondriacs. Asymptomatic carriers of SARS-CoV-2 (as the virus causing COVID-19 is called) may be called the reverse hypochondriacs. They deny the existence of COVID-19 in their case, but doctors assert they are diseased.

The whole world seems to be cheering the sighting of vaccines with 90 -plus % efficacy. This is despite Merck, a large pharma company that has been a pioneer in introduction of many vaccines, throwing cold water on the cheering billions. Merck wonders how it is possible to engineer a vaccine against a virus whose behaviour remains largely enigmatic now. Merck ought to know!

Pfizer and Moderna have designed a gene-modifying m-RNA based vaccine. The long term effects of GM products are mostly unknown. Vaccines are to be administered to the entire global population. Is  humanity becoming a global guinea pig?

About the cure, the less said the better. EUA (Emergency Use Authorisation), repurposed medicine and immunity boosters are bandied about as if we have caught the virus by the scruff of its neck. The virus continues to hold us as its hostage.

Banks and Business Houses

 RBI seems to be considering permitting NBFCs and large corporate / industrial houses to promote new commercial banks. This has been described as a 'bombshell' by Raghuram Rajan and Viral Acharya. They argue that such houses are themselves big borrowers and we cannot expect them to choose good borrowers and therefore credit quality of banks would suffer.

This criticism is debatable and is one-sided. Though it is fashionable to condemn large industrial houses as purveyors of corruption and spewers of malpractices, facts do not bear this out. Fourteen banks were nationalised in the year 1969. Prior to this, many of these had been promoted by industrial groups. Central Bank of India, UCO Bank, Indian Bank and Indian Overseas Bank had industrial houses as their promoters. They were doing well; therefore, the government did not have any problem in managing them. They became sloppy and corrupt subsequently because of political interference.

The private banks which went under had been promoted by 'eminent bankers'. Global Trust Bank (Trust was an oxymoron here) and Yes Bank (Yes for mismanagement?) were the babies of Ramesh Gelli and Rana Kapoor, both banking doyens. They got banking licences because they were professionals and not industrial / business magnates. They taught industrialists how to be corrupt!

Thus there are examples to show that the problem is not with industrial houses. It lies elsewhere. If potential promoters are not subjected to strict due diligence, whoever they are, banking mishaps will happen. Industrialists at least know the difficulties faced by businesses and as bankers they will not be indifferent to customers. To dismiss them as fraudulent as a group is a sign of unpolluted prejudice.

RBI's former Governor and Deputy Governor could have proposed better due diligence before sanctioning licences to open banks. Unfortunately they have chosen to mouth populist condemnation of businessmen and industrialists. This goes to show that what is ailing us is a closed mind. Any attempt to open it will spontaneously evoke cynicism and contempt.