Climate rogue (The Indian Express - 03 June 2017)

     In reneging on the Paris Agreement, Donald Trump’s America has ceded the bully pulpit on climate change

      Less than five months after assuming office, US President Donald J. Trump has fulfilled his ludicrous “election promise” to withdraw his country from the Paris Climate Change Agreement. The decision puts the US, which claims leadership in global environmental negotiations, in telling company: War-ravaged Syria, and Nicaragua, which has argued that the Paris pact is not radical enough.

    

     Trump’s decision was not unexpected. Nevertheless, the announcement was appalling in its rejection of the science and history of climate change, and smacked of the US president’s contempt for India and China. “I cannot support a deal that punishes the United States, the world’s leader in environmental protection, while imposing no meaningful obligations on the world’s leading polluters…. India can double its coal production.

But we are supposed to get rid of our coal plants,” Trump said. That is somewhat rich coming from the president of a nation whose annual greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions are second only to that of far more populous China.

     Historically, the US has pumped in more GHG into the atmosphere than any other country. But like the then-US president George W. Bush, who refused to sign the Kyoto Protocol in 2001, Trump has always denied America’s historical culpability in climate change. Much has, however, changed between 2001 and today, and Trump is unlikely to get away with his braggadocio, like Bush did. The US president’s climate denial has got him bad press from not just global political leaders but also the Pope and corporates such as Exxon-Mobil. The US decision is unlikely to have a domino effect and other countries are unlikely to ease their efforts to decarbonise.

     India and China, whose per capita GHG footprint is far lower than the US, have affirmed their commitment to the Paris agreement. In fact, India’s target of producing 40 per cent of its installed electricity capacity by 2030 from non-fossil fuels outstrips that of the US by 10 per cent. With Trump reiterating his “commitment” to reopen some coal mines, the US might now find it difficult to attain this comparatively conservative target.

     The absence of the US from the Paris agreement will hurt the pact in other ways. A core condition in the Paris pact commitments of most developing nations is the promise of financial and technology support from developed countries. On Thursday, Trump announced that his government will go back on the Barack Obama administration’s promise of a $3 billion contribution to help poor nations develop sustainable energy sources. Meanwhile, the EU commissioner for climate action and energy, Miguel Arias Canete, has pledged continued “global leadership” on climate change.

But will the EU also put its money where its mouth is?

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Players & superstars (The Indian Express - 03 June 2017)

     Ramachandra Guha’s resignation from cricket administration flags important concerns. It may not be enough

     Ramachandra Guha’s resignation letter to Vinod Rai, chairman of the Supreme Court-appointed Committee of Administrators (CoA) to manage Indian cricket, is at once damning and revealing. Guha shines unflattering light on ills that still plague Indian cricket, despite the CoA being in the fourth month of its existence. The biggest issue that Guha has tackled in the letter is the “superstar culture” in Indian cricket — an equivalent of “VIP culture” in Indian society in general.

     The subject of celebrity cricketers, past and present, getting away with much, has been the big elephant in the room, spoken in whispers by Indian cricket watchers but never addressed so specifically, and unequivocally, as it is by Guha. He takes on the holy cows — Sunil Gavaskar (BCCI commentator and director of a player management company), Rahul Dravid (India A coach and IPL team mentor), Sourav Ganguly (Bengal Association’s president with media/broadcast commitments) — for blatant conflicts of interest. He cites previous communications as proof that even though the CoA members were made aware of the issue, they didn’t take any action.

     Guha points out, correctly so, that the superstar culture in the BCCI management is at the root of such conflicts of interest and lack of transparency. But why blame the BCCI and CoA alone? The SC made Gavaskar, despite his conflict of interest, the BCCI’s interim head during IPL 2014. While Guha’s letter is welcome, and the evidence it produces incriminating, will it change anything? The answer, tragically, seems “no”. The letter, in its spirit, doesn’t read different from the findings of the Justice Mukul Mudgal committee and the recommendations of the Justice R.M. Lodha panel, which led to the SC setting up the Committee of Administrators (CoA) to run the sport without the encumbrances of a reluctant BCCI.

     It had a sweeping mandate, and the backing of the court. And yet, in a matter of months, the committee appears to have mutated into a subset of the same BCCI it had taken over from. No one would be more thrilled to read Guha’s letter than the board’s old guard. The timing suggests that, for Guha, the tipping point was the ongoing Anil Kumble-Virat Kohli rift, which looms over India’s Champions Trophy campaign.

     Isn’t giving senior players the impression that they may have a veto power over the coach, Guha asks, another example of the superstar culture gone berserk? It’s ironic that the letter appears sympathetic to Kumble, who had in the past benefited from the same culture: He mentored teams in the IPL while running a player management company.

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Just plead guilty (The Indian Express - 03 June 2017)

     US’s new visa questionnaire provides the thrill of a criminal interrogation to law-abiding applicants

     Is the daily grind of work, study or the sheer boredom of an uneventful life getting you down? Does the ennui of being a law-abiding citizen make you crave risk and adventure? Don’t worry. Uncle Sam will make you experience the thrill of a criminal life without actually breaking the law. The Trump administration’s new visa questionnaire for applicants across the world is an interrogation into details that even the most interested love interest will not know, or care about. It will make you feel, just for wanting to study or holiday or work in the US, like a harbourer of great secrets and a threat to the global order.

     The US state department now needs details of all the social media handles, email addresses and phone numbers that applicants have had in the last five years. Remember the embarrassingly angst-ridden blogs of your youth or that late night Facebook post you forgot to delete? Well, the US state department will examine them before you can frolic with Mickey Mouse in Disneyland.

     Those who live life the old-fashioned way — with a minimal digital footprint — need not worry. The US administration’s services for criminal thrills have a comprehensive analogue component: Applicants will need to provide 15 years of biographical information, including addresses, for every job and place they have travelled to.

     The new visa application process has been criticised on multiple counts — from granting arbitrary power to consular staff to creating a bureaucratic backlog and the fact that the US already has one of the most stringent visa processes in the world. Luckily for thrill-seekers, the Trump administration has paid no heed. So forget bungee jumping and river rafting, and just visit your unfriendly neighbourhood US visa office.

     Incidentally, the White House is trying to re-impose the travel ban on people from six Muslim-majority countries. So even if you do manage to make it through the interrogation, you may still be guilty.

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We need Paris: on U.S pulling out of climate deal (The Hindu - 03 June 2017)

     The U.S. strikes a blow to the climate pact, but the rest of the world must step up the efforts

     In abandoning the Paris Agreement on climate change, U.S. President Donald Trump has chosen to adopt a backward-looking course on one of the most important issues facing humanity. Ignoring scientific evidence on carbon emissions, Mr. Trump has carried his contempt for environmental regulations to an extreme with the decision to pull out of a hard-won compact that seeks to make the world safer for future generations. His move is incongruent with economic reality, because the most valuable American companies in manufacturing, computing, banking services and retailing, ranging from General Electric to Apple and Tesla, all see a future for growth and employment in green innovation, and not in fossil fuels. Some of them have begun reaping the benefits. For poorer residents of various countries, though, weakening of the climate agreement and failure to progressively reduce carbon emissions by 2020 and beyond threaten to impose misery and deepen poverty. Every successive year is becoming hotter than the previous one, and the ice sheets in West Antarctica and Greenland, which hold the key to sea levels, have recorded a steady loss in mass. As a major legacy polluter, the U.S. has a responsibility to mitigate the damage. This is something that Barack Obama recognised, but Mr. Trump has abdicated.

     It is heartening, however, that there is strong support for the Paris Agreement among many individual States and cities in the U.S., while the European Union and China, which together represent about 39% of man-made emissions, now effectively lead the effort to cut greenhouse gases. Energy efficiency is having an impact, and has levelled off coal use in America; it has in fact fallen over the past four years, including in 2016, in spite of an overall rise in energy consumption. Mr. Trump’s assertion that he represents Pittsburgh, not Paris, is clearly misplaced. India, which he has unfairly blamed for seeking climate funds and building coal plants, should strengthen its pledge to cut the emissions intensity of GDP by 35% by 2030, based on 2005 levels, and expand its ambitious renewable energy programme. The wider challenge now is to maintain the momentum on climate finance for mitigation and adaptation, since the U.S. pledge of $3 billion to the Green Climate Fund made earlier is unlikely to be fulfilled. Funding is crucial for poorer countries in order to cope with extreme weather events and sharp variations in food production caused by climate change. The U.S. exit should not affect the overall goal, which is to keep the increase in global average temperature over pre-industrial levels to less than 2°C. Equally, the principle of common but differentiated responsibilities that underpins the UN climate framework, and casts a duty on industrial powers responsible for the world’s accumulated carbon emissions, needs to be strengthened.

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Gross misuse: on States using 'Goondas Act' (The Hindu - 03 June 2017)

       The Supreme Court’s caution against use of ‘Goondas Act’ for arbitrary detention is timely

       Preventive detention laws in the country have come to be associated with frequent misuse. Such laws confer extraordinary discretionary powers on the executive to detain persons without bail for a period that may extend to one year and courts tend to review them on the touchstone of strict adherence to the prescribed procedure. Sometimes they question the invocation of the draconian power when sufficient provisions are available in the ordinary laws of the land. Several States have a law popularly known as the ‘Goondas Act’ aimed at preventing the dangerous activities of specified kinds of offenders. In a recent order, the Supreme Court has questioned the use of words such as “goonda” and “prejudicial to the maintenance of public order” as a “rhetorical incantation” solely to justify an arbitrary detention order. It struck down the detention of a man who had allegedly sold spurious chilli seeds in Telangana, holding that the grounds of detention were extraneous to the Act. This detention order has captured what is wrong with the frequent resort to preventive detention laws. It stated that recourse to normal legal procedure would be time-consuming and would not be an effective deterrent against the sale of spurious seeds. Therefore, it claimed, there was no option but to invoke the preventive detention law to insulate society from the person’s evil deeds. The court rightly termed this as a gross abuse of statutory powers.

       The Goondas Act is meant to be invoked against habitual offenders, but in practice it is often used for a host of extraneous reasons. The police tend to use it to buy themselves more time to investigate offences and file a charge sheet. At times, it is used merely to send out a “tough message”. For instance, four persons seen in video footage of women being molested in Rampur in Uttar Pradesh were detained under the Act even though it was not clear if they were habitual offenders. And there are times when preventive detention is overtly political. The recent detention of four political activists in Chennai under the Goondas Act is a direct result of a pathological tendency in Tamil Nadu to crack down on any kind of political activity even remotely linked to the Sri Lankan Tamils issue. The detention of Thirumurugan Gandhi, leader of the ‘May 17 Movement’, a pro-Tamil Eelam group, and three of his associates under the Goondas Act is a brazen violation of their fundamental rights and another instance of abuse of the law. The case involved nothing more than violation of prohibitory orders to hold a candle-light vigil in memory of Sri Lankan Tamils who died in the last phase of the civil war in 2009. Those who authorise such preventive detention for flimsy reasons should understand that prevention of crime needs an efficient system of investigation and trial, and not draconian laws.

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Exit America: Trump drops Paris Accord, hurts world and US (The Time of India - 03 June 2017)

President Donald Trump’s announcement that America is pulling out of the Paris Accord on climate change mitigation reneges on past US commitments and sends a negative signal to the world. The 2015 Paris agreement had got more than 190 countries to commit to reducing greenhouse gas emissions and restricting the rise in global average temperature to below 2 degree celsius above pre-industrial levels. The previous US administration had played a major role in facilitating the historical accord by committing to overdue emission cuts. Trump now wants to reverse this under the garb of protecting American jobs. This is myopic strategy, drastically curtailing American soft power and leading to the US ceding its leadership role in the world.

Trump has sought to project the Paris Accord as discriminatory towards the US. He even alleged that it allowed India to double its coal production by 2020 and condition its mitigation efforts on billions of dollars in aid. This is false as coal plants are fast losing their charm in India due to falling prices of renewables such as solar. Plus, India has committed to achieving 40% cumulative electric power installed capacity from non-fossil fuel resources by 2030.

Add to this the fact that according to 2013 data per capita CO2 emission in the US was 16.4 metric tonnes, whereas India’s was just 1.6 metric tonnes. Hence, Trump has ignored the US’s historic responsibility for being the world’s biggest polluter. He can hardly pitch for mitigation equivalence when the industrial starting line was never the same, nor are even current per capita emissions remotely close. Now, as climate change hits poor countries hard, they will only blame America. And an authoritarian power such as China could take its place in the world’s affections, making it tough for the US to conduct its foreign policy.

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Legs and the man: How Priyanka schooled the sanskari fashion police (The Time of India - 03 June 2017)

Memo to morality police: Priyanka Chopra doesn’t care what you think of her clothes, attitude or body. She posted a photo of her Berlin meeting with Prime Minister Narendra Modi, only to find it crawling with trolls. They asked how she could wear such an immodest dress in front of Modi, lectured her on Indian values, berated her for sitting with her legs crossed, a ‘disrespectful’ posture.

PeeCee did not explain, defend her dress or genuflect to ‘Indian culture’. Instead, she posted another picture of herself with her mother, both in short skirts, with the caption, ‘Legs for days’. Now that’s owning her body – the point of a pair of legs is not to look perfect, or decorous, or to be revealed and hidden according to patriarchy’s instructions. They’re meant to carry a person around, whether she’s in a sari or a bikini or a burqa or a dress. They are simply part of the body she lives in, and will not be shamed about. That photo of her cuddling with her mother was not about presenting a flawless facade, it was simply being easy in her skin.

Now, if only all those obsessing over her exposed calves had a fraction of that calm confidence. Sadly, these slutshaming ‘sanskari’ men can only slot women into two types: virginal good girls and vessels of family honour, or sex-objects to snigger and salivate over. So more power to Priyanka, for being herself with no apologies.

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समग्र रूप से फायदा ही हुआ है देश की जनता को (Rajasthan Patrika - 03 June 2017)

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अर्थव्यवस्था तक पहुंच गई है नोटबंदी की तपिश (Rajasthan Patrika - 03 June 2017)

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बदलती विश्व राजनीति में भारत क्या करें? (Dainik Bhaskar - 03 June 2017)

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लोकतंत्र में विरोध के ऐसे तरीके कहां तक जायज? (Dainik Bhaskar - 03 June 2017)

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