Daily News Compilation (HINDU) 25 June - Editorials

Supplementing without supplanting

Issue: About 10,000 Indian workers in Iraq of which about 40 have been abducted.

So author ponders upon why so many Indians are trapped there in search of lucrative jobs.

Lucrative jobs propel the youth to go overseas to earn . However, they instead land up as bonded labourers in the Gulf with no documents and are made to work for a pittance. Most of them have landed in Iraq from Dubai via Qatar and Kuwait through devious Indian travel agents working in connivance with employment syndicates operating from Gulf countries.

Emigration Act, 1983

• applies only to ‘recruitment’ and ‘recruiting agents.’ 
• Registration and obtaining permits from a State Protector of Emigrants working under a Protector General of Emigrants under the Ministry of Overseas Indian Affairs are essential under the Act. Without obtaining any such registration certificate or a valid permit, no recruiting agent or employer can legally send any person abroad. ==> But in reality there are very few such registered agencies across India
• Act does not identifies or defines travel agent or human smuggling.
• It neither recognises the proliferating business of human trading, nor does it seek to check or punish such activities. 
• Many claim that they do not need any registration or work permit under the Emigration Act as they do not recruit people and are therefore not recruiting agents. A travel agent needs no educational qualification, no experience, no office or business premises and no registration or regulation under any law.

 Punjab was the first and only State in the country to enact a law against human smuggling — The Punjab Prevention of Human Smuggling Act, 2012, with supporting rules of 2013 — to check and curb travel agents’ illegal and fraudulent activities and penalise those involved in organised human smuggling rackets.

This law has many noteworthy features — 

• it defines the terms human smuggling and travel agent; 
• it provides for a licensing regime for travel agents and debars persons from operating without a licence; 
• it gives power of search, seizure and arrest to magistrates and police officials, 
• it provides for reasonable compensation to be paid to aggrieved persons by the travel agent. 
• It also specifies the punishment for offences and authorises courts to decide whether any illegally acquired property is liable to be confiscated. 
• Cheating, the Act says, shall have the same meaning as under the Indian Penal Code.
• Dishonest misrepresentation with the intention of wrongful gain or deception, cheating or allurement is punishable under the Act. 
• If any travel agent wants to advertise or hold seminars, he will have to notify the competent authority in writing and give complete details of advertisement of seminars. 
• The Act does not include recruitment agents who are governed and registered under the provision of the Emigration Act.

There is an urgent need for Parliament to pass a law against human smuggling. Piecemeal State legislations with limited ambit of application will restrict the scope to only State borders. A Central law is therefore the composite solution.

Positive step, but hurdles remain

News: Ratification of Additional Protocol (AP) to the India-specific nuclear safeguards agreement with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).

• bolsters our case for NSG membership.
• creats openings that could be possibly used for easier access to advanced nuclear technology, a presence in the NSG, which functions on the basis of consensus, would arm India with the power to protect its core interests
• reinforces India’s credentials as a country committed to non-proliferation, for transfer of data on India’s nuclear exports to the IAEA is a core element of the document.
• ratification may also improve the atmospherics of the visit in September to the U.S. by Prime Minister Modi. India has now fulfilled a commitment that it had made in the Indo-U.S. joint statement of 2005.

Still impediments to nuclear commerce between New Delhi and the rest of the world would remain. 

• The Nuclear Liability Bill, which puts the onus of damages on the supplier, continues to hamper normalisation of India’s nuclear trade with countries including the U.S. and France. 
• The bilateral nuclear cooperation agreement between India and Japan, which would allow New Delhi to import nuclear know-how from Tokyo, is also not yet concluded. 

Continue the conversation

News: London summit, the global campaign to combat sexual violence in conflict

• The London summit resulted in as many as 150 countries signing a protocol to end sexual violence in conflict situations, at the end of week-long deliberations. 
• The guidelines contained therein on collection of evidence and investigation of atrocities remain critical to the protection of the integrity and dignity of individual victims. 
• The provisions of the protocol are obviously far from being any binding legal commitments. 
• Nevertheless, such promises provide a platform that civil society organisations may build upon to press governments to commit to concrete actions in the future. 

Some initiatives taken earlier in this direction:

1. The 1925 Geneva Conventions and the special tribunals to try crimes of genocide and breach of humanitarian law established in the 1990s are still at best well-intentioned, rather than vibrant and effective, institutional mechanisms. 
2. Even the more recent International Criminal Court (ICC) based in The Hague is beset with formidable obstacles when it comes to bringing criminals to justice. 

Pest sprays poisoning world food supplies

The world’s most widely used insecticides have contaminated the environment across the planet so pervasively that global food production is at risk, according to a comprehensive scientific assessment of the chemicals’ impacts.

The new assessment analysed the risks associated with neonicotinoids, a class of insecticides on which farmers spend $2.6bn (£1.53bn) a year. Neonicotinoids are applied routinely rather than in response to pest attacks but the scientists highlight the “striking” lack of evidence that this leads to increased crop yields.

The chemicals imperilled food supplies by harming bees and other pollinators, which fertilise about three-quarters of the world’s crops, and the organisms that create the healthy soils which the world’s food requires in order to grow.