Without shifting IPL out, the rights of fans and protesters could have been protected

The shifting of Indian Premier League cricket matches out of Chennaireflects poorly on the Tamil Nadu administration. It is misleading to see the development as a victory for protesters espousing the Cauvery cause or as the inevitable result of the current political mood in Tamil Nadu. By conveying its inability to give adequate police security to the remaining matches to be held in the city, the State government, which had adopted a wishy-washy attitude towards holding the IPL in Chennai, simply capitulated. It is undeniable that there were aggressive protests around the Chepauk stadium just before the season’s first match in the city. Road blockades, frayed tempers and scuffles between the police and protesters suggested it would be a challenge to hold more matches. But governments exist to maintain public order and are expected to stand up to threats made by a fringe, whether it is calling for the ban of a book, a film or a cricket match. If cricket is a victim of such protests, it is because of its very success. It is a soft, high-profile target for those who want to raise their visibility and profile. This is why the sheer irrationality of singling out one tournament – which has no connection whatsoever to the Centre or the State government or the Cauvery crisis for that matter — was lost on those leading the call for a ban.

Instead of going weak and ambivalent on assurances of safety, the State government and the police should have worked out a solution under which scheduled matches and the right of the protesters to voice their grievanceswere both protected. As for the IPL management, it may have felt there was sufficient reason to drop Chepauk as a venue because of the State government’s attitude. While cricket stadiums are now securely protected, there was no mechanism to screen ticket-buyers and — as the last match in Chepauk revealed — very little that can be done to stop protesters from flinging shoes and other objects on to the ground. There is legitimate and widespread concern in Tamil Nadu over the Centre’s inexplicable delay in framing a scheme to resolve the Cauvery problem, over which there has been more than one protest over the last few days. But the fact that the Chennai Super Kings’ ‘home’ matches will now be played in Pune is a blow to the game’s fans in Chennai. That the IPL is a commercially driven extravaganza bordering on entertainment does not justify it being fair game for protesters. It may be true that sport cannot remain completely divorced from politics and there is no denying the dominant political mood on the Cauvery issue. However, rarely has this principle been extended to threaten a sporting event that has no link whatsoever to the political cause — in this case a water-sharing crisis that principally involves two States.

Attempts to undermine the investigation into a little girl’s rape and murder must be resisted

The 15-page chargesheet filed by the Jammu and Kashmir Police’s Crime Branch on the abduction, rape and murder of an eight-year-old girl in Kathua district is chilling. An unspeakably horrific crime has been overlain with an ugly form of communal politics, which has heightened the feeling of vulnerability among the Bakherwal nomadic community. Asifa Bano had been missing in Rasana village since January 10. On January 17, her mutilated body was found, bearing the marks of gang rape. This week, local lawyers tried to prevent the police from filing the chargesheet, and the Jammu High Court Bar Association called for a bandh on Wednesday demanding that the investigation be handed over to the Central Bureau of Investigation. By all accounts, the demand owes less to any faith in CBI impartiality, and more to the ongoing attempt to influence the police’s investigation that has led to the arrest of eight men, including some policemen charged with destroying evidence. The chargesheet lists as the main conspirator the caretaker of the temple in Rasana where Asifa was allegedly held, and threads together the sequence of events. The insinuation that a local police force that reflects the multi-religious composition of the State cannot be entrusted with a case in which the victim is a Muslim and the alleged accused are Hindus must be strongly resisted.

It is a shame that the State government, a coalition of the J&K Peoples Democratic Party and the BJP, has been so feeble in criticising the sectarian undercurrents. Protests in Kathua have been going on for months, amidst allegations that innocent people are being framed and demands that one of the arrested police officers be released. An organisation called the Hindu Ekta Manch too populated the protests and two BJP ministers from the State government were present at a rally in support of the accused. The Gujjar-Bakherwal community’s sense of isolation, as the dead eight-year-old is sought to be defined by her ethnic and religious identity, is especially heightened given the backdrop of drives to evict them from what they say are their traditional camping sites in forests. One line of inquiry is that the motive for her abduction and assault was to instil fear among the nomads in pressing for their rights to the forests and commons. But while it is understandable that the nomads are feeling the brunt of the intimidation and it is vital to address their larger anxieties, to superimpose the crime on the tussle over forest rights would be to diminish the brutality brought upon the little girl. The investigation must be pursued for the hate crime it is. It does not just tie in with her community’s rights — along with the Unnao rape case in U.P., in which the victim’s father died in police custody this week, it shows how loaded the system is against those seeking justice.

This great man took physics to the people, and changed the way we think about disabilityThis great man took physics to the people, and changed the way we think about disabilityThis great man took physics to the people, and changed the way we think about disabilityThis great man took physics to the people, and changed the way we think about disability

Few scientists manage to break down the walls of the so-called ivory tower of academia and touch and inspire people who may not otherwise be interested in science. Stephen Hawking was one of these few. Judging by the odds he faced as a young graduate student of physics at Cambridge University, nothing could have been a more remote possibility. When he was about 20 years old, he got the shattering news that he could not work with the great Fred Hoyle for his PhD, as he had aspired to. Around this time he was diagnosed with Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis, an incurable motor neurone disease, and given two years to live. Not many would have survived this, let alone excelled in the manner he did. Luckily, the type of ALS he had progressed slowly, and over time he made many discoveries that marked him among the great physicists of his time. His first breakthrough was in the work he did for his PhD thesis. The expanding universe and the unstoppable collapse of a black hole under its own gravity present two extreme spectacles for the physicist to grapple with. Inspired by Roger Penrose’s ideas on the latter, Hawking came up with a singularity theorem for the universe. This work and its extensions, known as the Hawking-Penrose singularity theorems, brought him international acclaim. Later, along with others he formulated the laws of black hole mechanics, which resemble the laws of thermodynamics. Thinking along these lines led him to a contradiction — that this theory predicted that black holes would exude radiation, whereas in a purely classical picture nothing could escape the black hole, not even light. He resolved this contradiction by invoking quantum mechanics. The radiation of the black hole was named Hawking radiation.

There is no doubt that with Hawking’s death the world has lost an outstanding scientist. But he was not only a pathbreaker in the world of science. He came to be known to millions with the publication of A Brief History of Time, his best-selling book describing in non-technical terms the structure, development and fate of the universe. He ranks with Isaac Newton and Albert Einstein as that rare physicist who fired the popular imagination. However, while Newton and Einstein worked on broad canvases, Hawking was focussed on cosmology and gravitation. His was a life that carried to the public not only the secrets of the cosmos but also the promise of hope and human endeavour; he showed that disability need not hold a person back in the pursuit of his dreams. He leaves behind a wealth of knowledge, and also the conviction that the will to survive can overcome all odds.

The great scientific invention

Surprise softening: on RBI's inflation projections

The Reserve Bank of India’s policymakers have acted predictably in opting to keep interest rates unchanged and in retaining the ‘neutral’ stance. Price stability, after all, remains the Monetary Policy Committee’s primary remit, and trend line retail inflation continues to run above its medium-term target of a durable headline inflation reading of 4%. But as with all central bank policy statements, it is not only the action but also what is said that is closely scrutinised for clues on what may lie ahead. The RBI’s bimonthly monetary policy statement, unfortunately, ends up sending mixed messages as its outlook for inflation and assessment of the factors contributing to price gains are at variance. The MPC has appreciably lowered its projections for CPI (consumer price index) inflation for the fourth quarter of 2017-18, and for the new fiscal year. It sees price gains having slowed to 4.5% over January-March — a full 60 basis points lower than the 5.1% pace it had projected in February. Forecasts for the first and second halfs of 2018-19 have also been substantially trimmed. Price gains in the first half are now in the 4.7-5.1% range (as against 5.1-5.6% projected in February), with inflation slowing in the second half to 4.4%.

The key factors cited by the RBI in lowering its inflation projections are a “sharp decline in vegetable prices and significant moderation in fuel group inflation.” In extending the moderation in food prices in February-March as a major driver of the lowered trajectory for price gains in the new financial year, the RBI is not fully convincing on account of an assertion (of a “likely reversal in food prices in H1”) and an assumption (of a “normal monsoon”). Despite a private weather forecaster’s projection of normal rains from June to September, the MPC itself acknowledges the risks that temporally or spatially deficient monsoon rainfall could pose to food prices. Also, policymakers appear to have glossed over the RBI’s March survey of households’ inflation expectations — where prices are seen edging up over the three-month and one-year-ahead horizons — as well as feedback that manufacturers expect input and output prices to rise. Volatility in oil prices too have been played down. The other surprise is the decision to jettison Gross Value Added as the main measure of economic output and switch to Gross Domestic Product. While the assertion that GDP growth will strengthen this fiscal has given investors cause for cheer, the forecast of 7.4% is unchanged from the implicit projection from February. The messaging on the economy could have been clearer and more consistent.

From being hunting trophies to protected species, the lure of blackbucks

“The Wildlife Protection Act, 1972 turned out to be a blessing for blackbucks, chinkaras, tigers and elephants and so many other animal species, a large number of whom were killed by the colonial-rulers and various maharajas as they went on their ‘shikars’ (hunting sport),” she told PTI.

The People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA), among other animal right groups, on Thursday welcomed the conviction of Bollywood star Salman Khan in the 1998 blackbuck killing case, saying his sentencing will definitely act as a deterrent for other potential offenders.

Blackbucks are protected animals under the Schedule I of the Wildlife Act since 1972. Tiger, leopard, elephant, pangolin, monitor lizards, pythons fall in the same category, Maulekhi said.

Scientifically called, Antilope cervicapra, it is an ungulate species of antelope native to the Indian subcontinent and has a life span of 10-15 years, experts said.

“In 2008, they were declared ‘Near Threatened’ by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), but in 2017,were moved to the category of ‘Least Concern’,” she said.

According to IUCNredlist.org, their range declined sharply in the 20th century because of “unsustainable hunting“.

“The blackbuck formerly occurred across almost the whole of the Indian subcontinent south of the Himalaya. Their range decreased during the 20th century and they are now extinct in Bangladesh and Pakistan. Blackbucks are still present in the terai zone of Nepal,” it said.

According to the PETA, blackbucks are an “extremely vulnerable species” and on the “endangered list in India, afforded the highest protection under the WildlifeProtection Act 1972“.

“Threats to them include hunting, destruction of their forest homes, climate change and conflict with villagers,” it said.

PETA India spokesperson Sachin Bangera said all animals who are hunted “suffer immensely“.

“Hunters often severely injure but fail to kill them, and the animals run away and die later slowly of blood loss, gangrene or starvation. Hunting rips animal families apart and leaves countless animals orphaned when mother animals are killed,” he said.

Maulekhi cited examples of the Bishnoi tribes to emphasise the protective spirit espoused by them and also of the nomadic tribe Bawaria in the Himalayas which continue to hunt animals.

“Bishnois revere blackbucks like they revere all animals and plant life. And, it has been felt that though blackbucks stay in the wild, they tend to feel secure in the vicinity of the Bishnoi community,” she said.

In India, they are found across Gujarat, Maharastra, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, Bihar, Karnataka, Tamil Nadu and parts of Andhra Pradesh, the Delhi-based animal activist added.

A herbivore species, blackbucks inhabit open grassland, dry thorn scrub, scrubland and lightly-wooded country as well as agricultural margins, where they are often seen feeding in fields. They are mainly sedentary, but may move longer distances in summer in search of water.