17 Feb 2020: UPSC Exam Comprehensive News Analysis

B. GS 2 Related

Category: SOCIAL JUSTICE

1. Madhya Pradesh grapples with spiralling neonatal deaths

Context

• According to the National Health Mission (NHM), Madhya Pradesh has recorded the highest percentage of newborn deaths of 11.5% against the total admissions to government-run Sick Newborn Care Units (SNCUs) in the past three years (2017-19).
• The country’s average is 7%.

Factors responsible for deaths

• Staff crunch.
• Low community referrals.
• Absence of a special neonatal transport service to health centres.
  • There is a dedicated service to transport pregnant women to hospitals from remote areas, there is none for neonates.
• Reliance on units in cities as last resort.
• The non-availability of enough units to cater to increasing institutional deliveries.
  • Institutional deliveries in Madhya Pradesh has increased (80.8% as per the National Family Health Survey-4, 2015-2016), the neonatal care units are utilized optimally, but their numbers are not increasing proportionately.
• The health of children and mothers is not tracked in a systematic way by one platform, and services are often given randomly.

Neonatal mortality

• According to the Sample Registration System, neonatal deaths in India mainly occur owing to premature births and low birth weight (35.9%), pneumonia (16.9%), birth asphyxia and birth trauma (9.9%), other non-communicable diseases (7.9%), diarrhoea (6.7%), congenital anomalies (4.6%) and infections (4.2%).
• Under the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals, each country, including India, has aimed to bring down neonatal mortality to at least 12 per 1,000 live births. In 2018, it stood at 23 for India.

Read more on this at CNA dated Jan 13, 2020.

E. Editorials

Category: POLITY AND GOVERNANCE

1. Perverse zeal: On Kafeel Khan arrest (NSA)

Context

• The Uttar Pradesh government has slapped the National Security Act (NSA) on Dr. Kafeel Khan of Gorakhpur for his alleged inflammatory and provocative comments against the Citizenship (Amendment) Act (CAA) at Aligarh Muslim University recently.

National Security Act (NSA)

It is a stringent law that allows preventive detention for months, if authorities are satisfied that a person is a threat to national security or law and order. It was promulgated in 1980, by the Indira Gandhi government and its purpose is “to provide for preventive detention in certain cases and for matters connected therewith“.

As per the National Security Act, the grounds for preventive detention of a person include:

• Acting in any manner prejudicial to the defence of India, the relations of India with foreign powers, or the security of India.
• Regulating the continued presence of any foreigner in India or with a view to making arrangements for his expulsion from India.
• Preventing them from acting in any manner prejudicial to the security of the State or from acting in any manner prejudicial to the maintenance of public order or from acting in any manner prejudicial to the maintenance of supplies and services essential to the community it is necessary so to do.

The order can be issued by the District Magistrate or a Commissioner of Police under their respective jurisdictions, but the detention should be reported to the State Government along with the grounds on which the order has been made.

How does it work?

• Under the National Security Act, an individual can be detained without a charge for up to 12 months; the state government needs to be intimated that a person has been detained under the NSA.
• A person detained under the National Security Act can be held for 10 days without being told the charges against them.
• The detained person can appeal before a high court advisory board but they are not allowed a lawyer during the trial.

Concerns

• One must note that preventive detention was a tactic of the colonial order to suppress the activities of nationalists fighting for freedom.
• A detainee under preventive detention doesn’t enjoy any of the personal liberties granted by Articles 19 or 21 of the Indian Constitution.
• In the normal course, if a person is arrested, he or she is guaranteed certain basic rights.
  • These include the right to be informed of the reason for the arrest. Section 50 of the Criminal Procedure Code (Cr.PC) mandates that the person arrested has to be informed of the grounds of arrest, and the right to bail.
  • Sections 56 and 76 of the Cr. PC also provides that a person has to be produced before a court within 24 hours of arrest.
  • Additionally, Article 22(1) of the Constitution says an arrested person cannot be denied the right to consult, and to be defended by, a legal practitioner of his choice. But none of these rights are available to a person detained under the NSA.
• The Act crushes dissenting voices and targets “political activists and trade unionists”.
• Even when providing the grounds for arrest, the government can withhold information which it considers to be against the public interest to disclose.
• It is being used by our democratic government against the people who fight for their right to live a life free from pollution, e.g.: anti-Sterlite protests in Tuticorin.

Conclusion

• Justice D.Y. Chandrachud of the Supreme Court had said that protest and criticism directed at government policy do not amount to being anti-national, officials should pause before they are seen as enablers of the excesses of an authoritarian dispensation.
• Thus, NSA should not be invoked in cases where sections of the IPC would suffice and given the bias in the political executive, the Supreme Court must step in and issue guidelines to check the NSA’s misuse.

2. In political micro-targeting, the vulnerable Indian voter

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