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  • Opportunity for India in changing global order

    The world is going through a transition phase. We are experiencing the rise of new powers and the decline of the old. India has to navigate its path through this changing order keeping its interests in mind. The double opportunity in current scenario for India is explained in the article. To know more about it, continue reading.

    The changing global stage

    • The world today is fragmenting and slowing down economically.
    • Asia-Pacific is the new economic and political centre of the world with the rise of China, India and other powers — Indonesia, South Korea, Iran, Vietnam.
    • Rapid shifts in the balance of power in the region have led to arms races and the US’s “America First” attitude has led to rising uncertainty.
    • China-U.S. strategic contention is growing, uninhibited so far by their economic co-dependence.
    • As China seeks primacy in a world so far dominated by the U.S., the world faces a destabilising power transition which may or may not be completed.

    What should India’s response be to the new situation?

    Alliance with the US?

    • Many experts advocate that India should enter into an alliance with the U.S in the wake of rising China.
    • But India is much greater and more resilient than these people think.
    • Also, the aim of foreign and security policies of India has been the pursuit of strategic autonomy for India.
    • Thus, in the present situation, India should retain the above initiative and not get entangled in others’ quarrels. (i.e. the US-China quarrel)
    • Also, India should focus on pursuing its own national interest in this disorganized and uncertain world by creative diplomacy and flexibility.
    • An alliance seems to be exactly the wrong answer.

    China challenge

    • One way to handle China could be to see whether the two countries can evolve a new modus vivendi.
    • This new modus vivendi shall replace the one that was formalised in the 1988 Rajiv Gandhi visit.
    • The old framework is no longer working and the signs of stress in the relationship are everywhere.
    • The more India rises, the more it must expect Chinese opposition.
    • So, India will have to work with other powers to ensure that its interests are protected in the neighbourhood, the region and the world.
    • The complexity of India-China relations suggests there is a scope for new modus vivendi.
    • This would require a high-level strategic dialogue between the two sides about their core interests, red lines, differences and areas of convergence.

    What India can do to keep the region multi-polar?

    • As U.S. is withdrawing from the world, it will no longer be the upholder of international, economic and political order.
    • There is uncertainty over how the US will choose to deal with China.
    • India must work with other powers to ensure that this region stays multi-polar and that China behaves responsibly.

    Double opportunity for India

    • 1. Opportunity in the US-China contention
    • US-China contention will continue in future. Hence, both China and the U.S. will look to put other conflicts (eg: conflicts with India on trade or border issue) and tensions on the back burner.
    • This effect is already perceptible in the Wuhan meeting between China’s President Xi Jinping and Mr. Modi in early 2018.
    • And the apparent truce and dialing back of rhetoric by both India and China.
    • 2. Opportunity to Change national security Structures
    • Today, India is more dependent on the outside world than ever before.
    • It relies on the world for energy, technology, essential goods like fertilizer and coal, commodities, access to markets, and capital.
    • Adding the new security agenda and the contested global commons in outer and cyberspace and the high seas to India’s traditional state-centred security concerns gives India a sense of insecurity.
    • So, India needs to adapt to the changes and avoid imitating China.

    Consider the question-“The global order is experiencing geopolitical churn, new powers are rising and older are staring at the decline. In such a scenario, examine the opportunities India can explore in the context of the US-China contention”.

    Conclusion

    India risks missing the bus to becoming a developed country if it continues business and politics as usual. The most important improvement that India needs to make concerns its national security structures and their work — introducing flexibility into India’s thinking and India’s structures. For change is the only certainty in life.

  • What is Stringency Index?

    India enforced one of the strongest lockdowns at an early phase of case growth. Now, an index created by the University of Oxford quantifies that.

    The Stringency Index provides a computable parameter to evaluate the effectiveness of the nationwide lockdown in India.

    What is Stringency Index?

    • It is among the metrics being used by the Oxford COVID-19 Government Response Tracker.
    • The Tracker involves a team of 100 Oxford community members who have continuously updated a database of 17 indicators of government response.
    • These indicators examine containment policies such as school and workplace closings, public events, public transport, stay-at-home policies.
    • The Stringency Index is a number from 0 to 100 that reflects these indicators. A higher index score indicates a higher level of stringency.

    What does the Stringency Index tell us?

    • It provides a picture of the stage at which any country enforced its strongest measures.
    • Oxford provides an overlay of countries’ death curve and their stringency score.
    • Some countries saw their deaths just begin to flatten as they reached their highest stringency, such as Italy, Spain, or France.
    • As China pulled stronger measures, its death curve plateaued.
    • In countries such as the UK, the US, and India, the Oxford graphs find that the death curve has not flattened after strictest measures were enforced.

    How does India compare with others?

    • The Index has found that India indeed had one of the strongest lockdown measures in the world — at a 100 score since March 22.
    • When compared to other countries with the similar or higher caseload, India called its strict lockdown at a much earlier point on its case and death curves.
    • These 18 other countries had more than 500 cases when they called their strictest lockdown, while India had 320.
    • Again, India had only four deaths on March 22, when its score reached 100, while most countries had more deaths at that point (except Switzerland; no deaths).
    • Spain called for its strictest measures later in its case and death count than all others. Sweden has had the most liberal measures in this set, and Iran the second most liberal.

  • The Resistance Front (TRF)

     

    (Image Source: The Economic Times)

     

    A newly floated outfit, the Resistance Front, has come under the scanner of enforcement agencies for its suspected links with the banned Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT).

    This is a very significant development with respect to India’s concern against terrorism. Terrorism and the terror outfits are increasingly becoming more institutionalized and ‘the Resistance Front’ is an another move towards it.

    ‘The Resistance Front’

    • TRF, which is owning up terror attacks in Kashmir these days, is an offshoot of the terrorist group Lashkar-e-Taiba and is also associated with other terror outfits such as Hizbul Mujahideen, Jaish-e-Mohammed.
    • Various reports claim that after the abrogation of Article 370 in J&K, Pakistan decided to increase the terror activities in the Valley.
    • However, facing international pressure and to protect itself from being blacklisted by the Financial Action Task Force (FATF), Pakistan decided to launch a new terror group with a new identity.
    • Various Indian security agencies operating in Kashmir feel that the ‘TRF’ was formed due to the pressure on Pakistan from the FATF to cut down on the funding of the terrorist groups.

    A new strategy justifying terrorism

    • The word ‘resistance’ has been used by Pakistan and the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) to put in place a new strategy for supporting terrorism against India.
    • Pakistan’s plan is to rebrand the terrorists operating under the umbrella of JeM, LeT and Hizbul as “non-religious” rebellion.
    • Pakistan wants to project Kashmiri terrorism as a resistance movement by Kashmiris. So far Hizbul and LeT have come under TRF’s umbrella.

    Must read:

    https://www.civilsdaily.com/news/explained-amendments-to-the-uapa/

    Back2Basics: What is the FATF?

    • FATF is an intergovernmental organization founded in 1989 on the initiative of the G7 to develop policies to combat money laundering.
    • The FATF Secretariat is housed at the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) headquarters in Paris.
    • It holds three Plenary meetings in the course of each of its 12-month rotating presidencies.

  • Risk of Early Locusts Attacks: A new concern

    Locusts normally arrive during July-October but have already been spotted in Rajasthan. At a time India is battling COVID, they present a new worry with their potential for exponential growth and crop destruction.

    Along with being a disaster issue, Locust attack is also a challenge for India’s food security. Discuss what socio – economic and technological ways can be adopted to tackle this menance.

    What exactly are Locusts?

    • The desert locust (Schistocerca gregaria) is a short-horned grasshopper that is innocuous while it is in a “solitary phase” and moving about independently.
    • These winged insects differ from normal hoppers and become dangerous only when their populations build up rapidly and the close physical contact in crowded conditions triggers behavioural changes.
    • They, then, enter the “gregarious phase”, by grouping into bands and forming swarms that can travel great distances (up to 150 km daily), while eating up every bit of vegetation on the way.
    • If not controlled at the right time, these insect swarms can threaten the food security of countries.

    How seriously should the first sightings be viewed?

    • The damage potential of locusts has been limited in India only because of the country hosting a single breeding season — unlike Pakistan, Iran and East Africa, where they also multiply during January-June.
    • There’s nothing much to worry right now, as the rabi crop has already been harvested and farmers are yet to commence plantings for the new Kharif season.
    • The locusts’ bands so observed are less populated. But their timing, though, is cause for concern.
    • The normal breeding season for locusts in India is July-October. But this time, they have been sighted by mid-April.
    • Last year, too, they were seen towards end-May as isolated grasshoppers.
    • The longer time to breed is more conducive for a build-up of gregarious insect swarms, as opposed to solitary, innocuous hoppers.

    Control measures in India

    • India has a Locust Control and Research scheme that is being implemented through the Locust Warning Organisation (LWO), established in 1939.
    • It was amalgamated in 1946 with the Directorate of Plant Protection Quarantine and Storage (PPQS) of the Ministry of Agriculture.
    • The LWO’s responsibility is monitoring and control of the locust situation in Scheduled Desert Areas mainly in Rajasthan and Gujarat, and partly in Punjab and Haryana.
    • The LWO publishes a fortnightly bulletin on the locust situation.

    What kind of damage can they cause?

    • Locusts are polyphagous, i.e. they can feed on a wide variety of crops.
    • Secondly, they have the ability to multiply rapidly. A single female desert locust lays 60-80 eggs thrice during its roughly 90-day life cycle.
    • It is estimated that a 1-square-km area can accommodate 40-80 million of these insects, making the growth of their swarms exponential quite like the Covid-19 virus.

    What is the genesis of the present locust upsurge, particularly in East Africa?

    • It lies in the Mekunu and Luban cyclonic storms of May and October 2018 that struck Oman and Yemen, respectively.
    • These turned large desert areas in remote parts of the southern Arabian Peninsula into lakes, which allowed the insects to breed undetected across multiple generations.
    • The swarms attacking crops in East Africa reached peak populations from November onwards while building up since the start of this year in southern Iran and Pakistan.
    • Widespread rains in East Africa in late March and April have enabled further breeding.
    • Prior to that, the locusts from spring breeding areas of southwest Pakistan and southern Iran would arrive in Rajasthan and Gujarat during May-June.
    • They would, then, breed with the onset of the southwest monsoon rains and continue doing so through the Kharif cropping season.

    What can and should be done?

    • If the monsoon is good, and in the absence of control operations, the magnitude of attack could be worse than in the 2019-20 rabi season.
    • The last year’s locust incursions were the first and most significant since 1993.
    • Local authorities in Rajasthan and Gujarat had to treat over 4.30 lakh hectares of infested areas with sprayers mounted on tractors and other vehicles.

    Pesticides give better control

    • The old generation organophosphate insecticides such as Malathion (96% ultra-low volume aerial application) are effective against locusts.
    • About one litre of the chemical is necessary to treat a hectare of their breeding areas, including trees where they halt for the night.
    • There is ample stock of pesticides to control any swarms in India.

    Click here to read about the complete genesis of Locusts and their origin:

    Locust Invasions and its mitigation

  • What is Urban Ozone?

    A Manchester (UK) based research has found that the nationwide lockdown may be leading to the generation of a dangerous pollutant, urban ozone.

    The Ozone is formed due to different factors in the Troposphere and the Stratosphere (where the ozone acts as a protective layer). Note these differences from prelims perspective.

    Urban Ozone

    • The photochemical production of ozone may become more important in urban areas during summertime in these low conditions of oxides of nitrogen.
    • As nitrogen oxides reduce, photochemical production may become more efficient and can lead to higher ozone concentrations in the summertime.
    • The higher summer temperatures increase emissions of biogenic hydrocarbon from natural sources such as trees. These biogenic hydrocarbons significantly affect urban ozone levels.
    • While ozone is important for screening harmful solar UV radiation when present higher up in the atmosphere, it can be a danger at the Earth’s surface and can react to destroy or alter many biological molecules.

    Back2Basics: Ozone Gas

    • It is a gas that occurs both in the Earth’s upper atmosphere and at ground level.
    • Ozone occurs in two layers of the atmosphere. The layer closest to the Earth’s surface is the troposphere.
    • Here, ground-level or “bad” ozone is an air pollutant that is harmful to breathe and it damages crops, trees and other vegetation. It is the main ingredient of urban smog.
    • The stratospheric or “good” ozone protects life on Earth from the sun’s harmful ultraviolet (UV) rays.

    Formation of Ozone

    • Ozone is produced naturally in the stratosphere when highly energetic solar radiation strikes molecules of oxygen, and cause the two oxygen atoms to split apart in a process called photolysis. If a freed atom collides with another O2, it joins up, forming ozone.
    • The majority of tropospheric ozone formation occurs when nitrogen oxides (NOx), carbon monoxide (CO) and volatile organic compounds (VOCs), react in the atmosphere in the presence of sunlight, specifically the UV spectrum.

  • Mass Hatching of Olive Ridley Turtles begins

    Mass hatching of Olive Ridley turtles began at Odisha’s Rushikulya rookery, a major nesting site of these marine turtles.

    Mass hatching of Olive Ridley turtles is a very celebrated news every year. Also make sure to look at the Rivers system in the region from the map above.

    Olive Ridley Turtles

    • The Olive Ridley Sea Turtle (Lepidochelys olivacea), also known as the Pacific ridley sea turtle, is a medium-sized species of sea turtle found in warm and tropical waters, primarily in the Pacific and Indian Oceans.
    • In the Indian Ocean, the majority of olive ridleys nest in two or three large groups at Rushikulya rookery near Gahirmatha in Odisha.
    • The coast of Odisha in India is the largest mass nesting site for the olive ridley, followed by the coasts of Mexico and Costa Rica.
    • The species is listed as Vulnerable in the IUCN Red List, Appendix 1 in CITES, and Schedule 1 in Wildlife Protection Act, 1972.

    Special feature: Mass nesting

    • They are best known for their behaviour of synchronized nesting in mass numbers, termed Arribadas.
    • Interestingly, females return to the very same beach from where they first hatched, to lay their eggs.
    • They lay their eggs in conical nests about one and a half feet deep which they laboriously dig with their hind flippers.
    • They hatch in 45 to 60 days, depending on the temperature of the sand and atmosphere during the incubation period.

  • Rare Black Panther spotted in Netravali Wildlife Sanctuary

    A rare Black Panther was spotted in the Netravali WLS in South Goa.

    There are many WLS and National Park in the tiny state of Goa. Unlike others, they rarely find any mention in news. Here a quick revision for you.

    Make sure to locate them on map.

    • Bhagwan Mahavir Wildlife Sanctuary,

    • Bondla Wildlife Sanctuary,

    • Netravali Wildlife Sanctuary,

    • Cotigao Wildlife Sanctuary,

    • Mhadei Wildlife Sanctuary,

    • Salim Ali Bird Sanctuary,

    • Anshi National Park.

    Black Panther

    • Black Panther or Black Leopard is a color variant of spotted Indian leopards, reported from densely forested areas of south India, mostly from the state of Karnataka.
    • A black panther is the melanistic colour variant of any Panthera, particularly of the leopard (P. pardus) in Asia and Africa, and the jaguar (P. onca) in the Americas.
    • They are also known as the ghost of the forest.

    About Netravali Wildlife Sanctuary

    • Netravali Wildlife Sanctuary is located in South-Eastern Goa, India.
    • It constitutes one of the vital corridors of the Western Ghats and covers an area of about 211 sq.km.
    • Netravali or Neturli is an important tributary of River Zuari, which originates in the sanctuary.
    • Forests mostly consist of moist deciduous vegetation interspersed with evergreen and semi-evergreen habitat; there are also two all-season waterfalls in the sanctuary.
    • The Gaur or Indian Bison, Malabar giant squirrel, four-horned antelope or chousingha, leopard, black sloth bear along with a host of other predators and herbivores find home in the sanctuary.

  • [pib] Kailash – Mansarovar Yatra Route from Dharchula to Lipulekh

    The Border Roads Organisation (BRO) has completed the construction of road from Dharchula to Lipulekh along the China Border, famously known as Kailash-Mansarovar Yatra Route.

    We can expect a prelims question asking to arrange few passes from West to East or vice versa. Click here to get through all such Himalayan Passes.

    Darchula – Lipulekh road

    • The road is an extension of Pithoragarh-Tawaghat-Ghatiabagarh road. In this 80 Km road, the altitude rises from 6000 feet to 17,060 feet.
    • It originates from Ghatiabagarh in Uttarakhand and terminates at Lipulekh Pass, the gateway to Kailash Mansarovar.
    • With the completion of this project, the arduous trek through treacherous high-altitude terrain can now be avoided by the Pilgrims of Kailash Mansarovar Yatra and the period of journey will be reduced by many days.

    (Note: The Lipulekh Pass links Uttarakhand with China’s Tibetan Autonomous Region.)

    Significance

    • At present, the travel to Kailash Mansarovar takes around two to three weeks through Sikkim or Nepal routes.
    • Lipulekh route had a trek of 90 Km through high altitude terrain and the elderly yartris faced lot of difficulties.
    • Now, this yatra will get completed by vehicles.

    Also read:

    The Northern and Northeastern Mountains | Part 2

    Back2Basics: Border Roads Organisation (BRO)

    • The BRO develops and maintains road networks in India’s border areas and friendly neighboring countries and functions under the Ministry of Defence.
    • It is entrusted for construction of Roads, Bridges, Tunnels, Causeways, Helipads and Airfields along the borders.
    • Officers from the Border Roads Engineering Service (BRES) and personnel from the General Reserve Engineer Force (GREF) form the parent cadre of the Border Roads Organisation.
    • It is also staffed by officers and troops drawn from the Indian Army’s Corps of Engineers on extra regimental employment.
    • The BRO operates and maintains over 32,885 kilometers of roads and about 12,200 meters of permanent bridges in the country.

  • Law to deal with pandemics

    India lacks specific legislation to deal with pandemics like COVID. While NDMA 2005 and Epidemic Diseases Act 1897 has been invoked to deal with the present situation, both acts lack specific provision in dealing with the pandemics. Here we can take lessons from UK’s Coronavirus Act and Singapore’s regulations to create a well-drafted Indian COVID 19 law.

    Which acts were used for enforcing lockdown?

    • The home ministry issued directions to State governments and district authorities under the Disaster Management Act of 2005.
    • Under the Act, the National Disaster Management Authority (NDMA) was set up under the Prime Minister, and the National Executive Committee (NEC) was chaired by the Home Secretary.
    • The State governments and authorities exercised powers under the Epidemic Diseases Act of 1897 to issue further directions.
    • District authorities such as the Commissioner of Police have consequently issued orders to impose Section 144 of the Criminal Procedure Code in public places.

    Issues with the laws used for lockdown

    • The invoking of the Disaster Management Act has allowed the Union government to communicate seamlessly with the States.
    • But serious questions remain whether the Act was originally intended to or is sufficiently capable of addressing the threat of a pandemic.
    • The use of the archaic Epidemic Diseases Act reveals the lack of requisite diligence and responsiveness of government authorities in providing novel and innovative policy solutions to address a 21st-century problem.
    • Another serious problem is that any violation of the orders passed would be prosecutable under Section 188 of the Indian Penal Code.
    • But section 188 of IPC is a very ineffective and broad provision dealing with disobedience of an order issued by a public servant.

    The UK and Singapore’s laws to deal with the pandemic

    • U.K’s Coronavirus Act, 2020: It deals with issues including emergency registration of healthcare professionals, temporary closure of educational institutions, audio-visual facilities for criminal proceedings, powers to restrict gatherings, and financial assistance to industry.
    • Singapore’s Infectious Diseases Regulations, 2020: These regulations provides for the issuance of stay orders which can send ‘at-risk individuals’ to a government-specified accommodation facility.
    • Both U.K.’s and Singapore’s laws set out unambiguous conditions and legally binding obligations.
    • As such, under Singaporean law, the violators may be penalised up to $10,000 or face six months imprisonment or both.
    • In contrast, Section 188 of the Indian Penal Code has a fine amount of ₹200 to ₹1,000 or imprisonment of one to six months.
    • Even then, proceedings under Section 188 can only be initiated by private complaint and not through a First Information Report.
    • As such, offences arising out of these guidelines and orders have a weak basis in terms of criminal jurisdiction thereby weakening the objectives of the lockdown.

    Problems in the government’s approach

    • The Union government showed no inclination towards drafting or enacting COVID-19-specific legislation that could address all the issues pre-emptively.
    • There has been little clarity on a road map to economic recovery.
    • A consolidated, pro-active policy approach is absent.
    • In fact, there has been ad hoc and reactive rule-making, as seen in the way migrant workers have been treated.
    • This has also exposed the lack of coordination between the Union and State governments.

    Consider the question, “Unlike many countries which legislated specific acts to deal with Covid-19 pandemic, India was already equipped with acts which enabled it to deal with the pandemic. Describe the acts and their provisions used to deal with the pandemic. What were the issues  with these provisions?”

    Conclusion

    In past instances, the Union government has not shied away from promulgating ordinances. These circumstances call out for legislative leadership, to assist and empower States to overcome COVID-19 and to revive their economic, education and public health sectors.

    Back2Basics: National Disaster Management Act 2005

    • On 23 December 2005, the Government of India enacted the Disaster Management Act.
    • The act envisaged the creation of the National Disaster Management Authority (NDMA), headed by the Prime Minister.
    • The act also provides for State Disaster Management Authorities (SDMAs) headed by respective Chief Ministers.
    • NDMA and SDMAs spearhead and implement a holistic and integrated approach to Disaster Management in India.
    • The NDMA was formally constituted on 27thSeptember 2006, in accordance with the Disaster Management Act, 2005 with Prime Minister as its Chairperson and nine other members, and one such member to be designated as Vice-Chairperson.
    • According to the Disaster Management Act, 2005 a disaster is defined as-
    • A catastrophe, mishap, calamity or grave occurrence in any area, arising from natural or manmade causes, or by accident or negligence which results in substantial loss of life or human suffering or damage to, and destruction of, property, or damage to, or degradation of, environment, and is of such a nature or magnitude as to be beyond the coping capacity of the community of the affected area.
    • The MHA has defined a disaster as an “extreme disruption of the functioning of a society that causes widespread human, material, or environmental losses that exceed the ability of the affected society to cope with its own resources.

    Epidemic Diseases Act  1897

    • The Epidemic Diseases Act is routinely enforced across the country for dealing with outbreaks of diseases such as swine flu, dengue, and cholera.
    • The colonial government introduced the Act to tackle the epidemic of bubonic plague that had spread in the erstwhile Bombay Presidency in the 1890s.
    • Using powers conferred by the Act, colonies authorities would search suspected plague cases in homes and among passengers, with forcible segregations, evacuations, and demolitions of infected places.
    • Historians have criticised the Act for its potential for abuse.
    • In 1897, the year the law was enforced, Lokmanya Tilak was punished with 18 months’ rigorous imprisonment after his newspapers Kesari and Mahratta admonished imperial authorities for their handling of the plague epidemic.

    Provisions of the 1897 Epidemic Diseases Act

    • The Act is one of the shortest Acts in India, comprising just four sections. It aims to provide for the better prevention of the spread of Dangerous Epidemic Diseases.
    • The then Governor-General of colonial India had conferred special powers upon the local authorities to implement the measures necessary for the control of epidemics.
    • Although, the act does define or give a description of a “dangerous epidemic disease”.

    Its various sections can be summarized as under

    • The first section describes all the title and extent, the second part explains all the special powers given to the state government and centre to take special measures and regulations to contain the spread of disease.
    • The second section has a special subsection 2A empowers the central government to take steps to prevent the spread of an epidemic, especially allowing the government to inspect any ship arriving or leaving any post and the power to detain any person intending to sail or arriving in the country.
    • The third section describes the penalties for violating the regulations in accordance with Section 188 of the IPC. Section 3 states, “Six months’ imprisonment or 1,000 rupees fine or both could be charged out to the person who disobeys this Act.”
    • The fourth and the last section deals with legal protection to implementing officers acting under the Act.

  • Judiciary’s tryst with technology

    COVID pandemic has been changing many aspects of our life and forcing us to innovate or embrace the novel changes. The judiciary is not immune to this change. This article advocates for the adoption and popularization of online court. But there were several attempts at the adoption of technology in the working of courts even before the pandemic. Time has now come to its adoption on a wider scale.

    Three types of courts in our justice delivery system

    • First, conventional courts located in court complexes where judges, lawyers and litigants are physically present.
    • Second, online courts where the judge is physically present in the courtroom but the lawyer or litigant is not.
    • This is the present arrangement, except that now the courtroom is the residential office of the judge, due to the lockdown.
    • Third, virtual courts where there is no judge, lawyer or litigant and a computer takes a decision based on the inputs of the litigant.

    Pilot project with Tihar Jail

    • The pilot was for dealing with routine remand cases of prisoners.
    • The procedure postulated prisoners being produced in court, not physically but through video conferencing (VC), hence an online court.
    • The pilot project started tentatively with some hiccups but proved to be a success.
    • Now several courts have adopted the online process with varying degrees of commitment.

    District courts and High Courts’ adoption of online route

    • A few district judges have taken a step forward and recorded the statement of parties in cases of divorce by mutual consent.
    • As of now, several such cases, including those involving NRIs, are dealt with through VC in online courts.
    • Punjab and Haryana judges have gone even further ahead. The online courts record the expert evidence of doctors from PGIMER through VC.
    • This has freed the doctors from time-consuming trips to the courts and has resulted in savings of several crores for the exchequer.
    • A determined and concerted effort is necessary to popularise online courts at the district level.
    • Some high court judges in Delhi and Punjab and Haryana have completely dispensed with paper.
    • In these high courts, everything is on a soft copy, through e-Filing and scanned documents.
    • Lawyers and judges have made necessary adjustments to the new regime and the cases are conveniently heard and decided in “paperless courts”.
    • A few other high courts initiated similar steps, but have yet to institutionalise “paperless courts”.

    What are the problems?

    • Unfamiliarity with the medium of communication is the major issue. Judges are simply not used to consciously facing a camera generally and in particular while hearing a case.
    • Similarly, lawyers find it difficult to comfortably argue while seated.
    • Body language, facial expressions, the tone and tenor, both of the judge and the lawyer, make for important signals and clues which cannot be captured in VC.
    • Some technical problems in conducting online hearings have also surfaced. The bandwidth is not adequate or stable enough.
    • The picture sometimes breaks or gets frozen and the voice often cracks.
    • Consultations are also a problem. Lawyers occasionally need to consult their client or the instructing advocate; judges also need to consult each other during a hearing.
    • Attention needs to be paid to these real-time issues otherwise lawyers will harbour misgivings about a fair hearing.
    • The chairman of the Bar Council of India has voiced a concern that 90 per cent of the lawyers are not computer literate or tech-savvy.

    eCourts Project: A virtual court

    • A virtual court is a unique contribution of the eCourts Project.
    • A pilot virtual court was launched in August 2018 in Delhi for traffic offences and it has been a great success.
    • Virtual courts have been successfully tried out in Delhi, Haryana, Maharashtra and Tamil Nadu.
    • A virtual court is a simple programme through which a person can find out if a challan has been issued to him or her through a search facility.
    • If a challan has been issued, the details are available online and the person may plead guilty or not guilty.
    • On a guilty plea, the minimum fine is imposed and on a not-guilty plea, the case is electronically transferred to the traffic court for trial.
    • At the end of the day, a judge reviews the cases and disposes of them electronically depending on the option exercised.
    • One judge is all it takes to manage the virtual court for Delhi or an entire state.
    • With the launch of virtual courts, the daily footfalls to the courts have drastically reduced and thousands have pleaded guilty and paid the fine electronically.

    Potential of the virtual courts

    • The virtual court system has the potential of being upscaled and other petty offences attracting a fine such as delayed payments of local taxes or compoundable offences can also be dealt with by virtual courts.
    • This will ease the burden on conventional courts and therefore must be strongly encouraged.

    Consider the question- “Covid-19 pandemic has been forcing judiciary for faster adoption of technology. Discuss the issues and advantages of the adoption of technology such as video conferencing by the judiciary”

    Conclusion

    Post lockdown, justice delivery will certainly undergo a transformation. And judges, lawyers and litigants will need to adapt to the new normal. Several countries and courts have made adjustments not only for the period of the pandemic or lockdown but also for the future. We should certainly not be left behind but must also make a roadmap to meet the challenge.