Tag: #knwoledge

Examination Should Be Abolished

“Change of focus distress the mind”.

“An excess of everything is bad”.

In India, it is increasingly felt that education system is highly examination oriented. Exams and tests are held at regular intervals. Success in the exams is at index of once intelligence. Exams do cause a lot of stress rather it can be said that a student’s academic future simply depends on the marks scored by him. His admission in reputed college depends solely upon his performance in examination.

As a result, students finds studies stressful, monotonous and exasperating. Unachievable targets set by the parents and perceptors, unbearable peer pressure, cut throat competitions makes one question the usefulness of the examination system. In my sense, it is all futile. We cannot deny the fact that it is resulting into spate of suicides, absenteeism and even the percentage of dropouts has increased.

Exams should be cancelled and replaced by less stressful and more fruitful forms of assessments for several reasons including:

1)     They do not define one’s skills and capabilities: Thomas Edison once said: “Tomorrow is my exam but I don’t care, a single paper can’t decide my future” and we all know what Edison achieved is his life, other successful people followed such a path and if they cared much about exams, they surely would not have achieved what they did.

2)     They do not differentiate between students: Exams do not depend on someone’s preparation only, they are also dependent on their physical and mental health, and their social situation; you most luckily would not get a second chance if you developed a diarrhea during exam, such a factor would decide whether you’re among best or worst students no matter how intelligent you are, and how much you prepared for the exam. So you see how unfair the whole system is!

3)     Cheating: The broken educational system values more grades than learning and that what obliged students to try any means –sometimes illegal ones- to pass to the next level, history is full of people who try every trick to cheat at exam time, modern technology also has made it much easier for students to pass their tests with less efforts and students’ last issue nowadays is knowledge.

4)     Stress: Exams take a toll on a student’s body and mind through the forms of stress and anxiety and you might end up in a mental institution. Because of exams, a medical student was caught eating pages from one of their recommended texts since he failed to absorb information from taking his lectures too literally.

It is also felt that examinations don’t prepare students for life. They simply enable the students to become reasonably well informed, fact churning individuals. There should be a system of consistent evaluation throughout the year and, the examinee should not be tested only for facts and information acquired by him but should be tested for life skills. So, the examination system should be abolished instead of examinations being conducted at the end of the academic session.

Reserve Bank Of India

The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) is India’s central bank, also known as the banker’s bank.
The RBI controls the monetary and other banking policies of the Indian government. The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) was established on April 1, 1935, in accordance with the Reserve Bank of India Act, 1934. The Reserve Bank is permanently situated in Mumbai since 1937.

Establishment of Reserve Bank of India

The Reserve Bank is fully owned and operated by the Government of India. The Preamble of the Reserve Bank of India describes the basic functions of the Reserve Bank as;

1)Regulating the issue of Banknotes

2)Securing monetary stability in India

3)Modernising the monetary policy framework to meet economic challenges

The Reserve Bank’s operations are governed by a central board of directors, RBI is on the whole operated with a 21-member central board of directors appointed by the Government of India in accordance with the Reserve Bank of India Act.

The Central board of directors comprise of:
Official Directors – The governor who is appointed/nominated for a period of four years along with four Deputy Governors.
Non-Official Directors – Ten Directors from various fields and two government officials.

Functions of RBI

  1. The Issuer of the Currency: It has the sole authority to produce the currency. It also takes action to stop regulating the passage of fake money.
  2. Banker to the Government: It acts as a financer both to state and central government. It delivers short-term credit. It governs all new matters of government lands, maintaining the government debt unsettled, and taking care of the market for the government securities. It counsels the government on banking and monetary subjects.
  3. Banker’s Bank: It is the bank of all banks in the country as it delivers the loan to banks, rediscounts the invoice of banks and receives the payment of banks.
  4. Lender of Last Resort: All the other banks can borrow from the RBI by keeping qualified securities as a deposit at the time of crisis.
  5. Money Supply and Regulator of Credit: To manage demand and supply of cash in economy by Open Market Actions, Credit Ceiling and much more. It has to meet the credit necessities of the remaining banking system. It requires sustaining price stability and an elevated rate of economic growth.

New Forms of Punishment

Section 53 prescribes five types of punishments to be meted out to a person convicted of a crime under the Code, depending on the nature and gravity of the offence,viz .:

(i) Death; (ii) Imprisonment for life; (iii) Imprisonment, rigorous with hard labour, or simple; (iv) Forfeiture of property; and (v) Fine.

It is suggested to add five new forms of punishment to the existing ones in section 53, IPC with a view to deter particular types of criminals. Such punishments will have more psychological, social and moral impact on the criminals and will go a long way in curbing crimes. The proposed punishments are: (i) Externment, (ii) Compensation to victims of crime, (iii) Public Censure, (iv) Community service, and (v) Disqualification from holding public office.

(i) Externment: Externment or banishment is a form of punishment in which an accused is sent out of the place of his residence to another place for a specified period of time as mentioned in the order issued by the court. This is done to deprive the accused of the company of his family members, friends and associates so that he or she may not indulge in criminal activities. Externment is resorted to primarily in case of anti-social, hardened and habitual criminals.

(ii) Compensation to victims of crime: Unfortunately, the victims of crime in our country do not attract the attention of law makers. Of late, Civil Procedure Code, 1973 in section 357 has empowered the court to award compensation to the victims of crime in very limited cases at the time of passing the judgment. No doubt, the higher judiciary has on times provided compensation to the victims of crime of custodial violence, sexual assault, rape, illegal detention by invoking Article 21 of Constitution, but such instance will not serve the plight of helpless victims.

(iii) Public Censure: Public Censure or social censure is one of the methods of punishment prescribed in some of the countries, such as Russia, Columbia etc., in respect of certain offences of anti-social nature, such as white-collar crimes, tax crimes, food adulteration, etc. In ancient India, public censure was considered suitable punishment for certain class of criminals.

(iv) Community Service: Community service or corrective labour is a form of punishment in which the convict is not deprived of his liberty. Corrective labour is the standard penalty given in those cases where it is considered that the accused need not to be isolated from the society. The period ranges between one month to one year in such cases. This system is used in Soviet Russia with good results. An important feature of this type of punishment is that the accused is not deprived of his liberty and he may go home after the day’s work.

(v) Disqualification from holding public office and contest elections: Disqualification to hold public office and contest election of legislature and local bodies as a form of punishment will have the adequate and desired deterrent sanction, if sincerely implemented. Representation of the People Act, 1951 disqualifies a person convicted for a period of two years or more to contest election for a period of six years. But the provisions are very limited in scope and are being abused with impunity.

Covid -19, Society and Law

Introduction

Humankind is going through a new and unprecedented experience with the rapidly spreading Covid-19 pandemic. We still do not know who ‘patient zero’, the first person to be infected and transmit it to others, was. The severity of this virus, which has caught the world by surprise, lies not only in the delay of laboratories in finding an effective and efficient vaccine, but also in the fact that the measures taken to counter it differ considerably from what was previously adopted to confront various acute crisis, whether health, political, social or economic.

There is no doubt that the Covid-19 pandemic will change the face of human society, but it forces us to ask some important questions. Will this change only affect the healthcare systems, or will it extend to consumption patterns, value systems, political regimes and legal systems, thus leading to the fall of the huge financial and economic empires? Will the major transformations the world will undergo be determined by how we recover from the effects of this situation?

According to the World Health Organization, the problem does not lie in Covid-19 alone but rather in the fear, panic and terror caused by the spread of this virus, and amplified by the media, which has been presenting the situation as if it were the end of the world. Barring the measures adopted by China, where the virus originated, the methods used to manage the crisis around the world are somewhat similar. To some extent, China succeeded in curtailing the spread of the virus, thanks to the spirit of discipline in its people, and due to its health infrastructure, the plethora of research centres and laboratories, and the ability to control the sources of information from the onset. Most other countries have wasted precious time after the first cases appeared, relying on legal and security control in dealing with the pandemic and information about it, rather than establishing a single entity to disseminate information backed by science.

The current crisis is not of the pandemic alone. Rather, it is of the far-reaching consequences on human behaviour. Addressing these repercussions should not be limited to taking ad-hoc costly measures limited to the current situation but should prompt us to think about putting into place innovative measures and actions that go beyond the pandemic. Measures like imposing quarantines, enacting new laws to manage the pandemic, using modern tools for e-learning and telework, ensuring a minimum standard of living for all, granting loans, exemptions from paying water and gas bills and taxes, assisting the unemployed, and using the military to assist in security measures during the epidemic have cost countries billions of dollars. These are funds that could have been invested in infrastructure or other major projects, but instead have now been used to respond to the immediate needs of the people.The pandemic will radically change the modern world, leading to three likely outcomes.

The first outcome

A new theory will be integrated within political science in the future. Indeed, traditional legitimacies in the systems of government, which are derived from ballot boxes, hereditary legitimacy or religion, are beginning to decline, leaving room for a new theory called the “theory of achievements”. Since the Cultural Revolution of Mao Zedong in the 1960s, China has worked on this emerging legitimacy, as the Chinese Communist Party has distinguished itself from the rest of the Communist parties in the world.

The second outcome

The traditional conflict between wrong information and right information will transform into a conflict between convincing information and unconvincing information, as legal arsenals and control tools are no longer effective in the spread and prevalence of correct information. The method of producing information and choosing its dissemination channel is becoming a means of turning it into convincing information, regardless of if it is true or false.

The third outcome

The process of monitoring people will transition from external to internal control using smartphones. This is also what happened in China, to curb down on misinformation on Covid-19 during its early stages and as a preventive measure in the absence of a vaccine. These smart devices have become effective tools for measuring citizens’ reactions at home to what is happening in their surroundings.

A coming human revolution

Humankind is going through a humanitarian revolution, the kind that has occurred only thrice before: first, after the discovery of fire; second, with the advent of agriculture; and third, following the industrial revolution. The most prominent sign of this ‘fourth revolution’ is the predominance of new technology and the supremacy of modern means of communication, which have spawned a conflict between two major concepts of using the internet. The first can be described as social perception with a human connect, while the second is non-social perception, and can be termed as wild and unbridled. The humanitarian-minded perception is likely to win this conflict, as this human revolution is making its mark on our social existence and old behaviours. This will impact the current value system and will have political andeconomic implications.

The post-epidemic stage will see the emergence of a new human being, whose daily behaviour and thinking will differ from what it was before the Covid-19 outbreak. The political, legal and economic systems will have to adapt to this new human being. Despite the timely importance of the current safety measures being put into action around the world, there is a great need for these to be integrated into a comprehensive post-pandemic thinking. In fact, we will find ourselves faced with a generation who thinks differently from the pre- pandemic generation.

In light of the impact of Covid-19 on the individual and collective behaviours of society and State, and people’s continued thirst for information, it is necessary to keep in mind the post- pandemic world when it comes to decision-making. The Covid-19 storm will pass and mankind will survive, despite the loss of many lives. Humankind will soon live in a world that is very different from the one before the virus. However, the pandemic will succeed where the other movements of the 20th century have failed in their struggle to establish democracy and human rights, and preserve a safe environment for all.

Internet and Mobile Association of India v. Reserve Bank of India

Statement of Facts

  1. On 5th April,2018 Reserve Bank of India issued a press release raising the concern about the consumer protection from trade of virtual currencies. They were of the view that trading in virtual currency also referred as crypto currency are prone to hacking and therefore would lead to money laundering, terrorist activities, etc. In this view RBI asked the banks to not to deal with the transactions related to the trading of virtual currency.
  2. The services which RBI directed the bank not to deal with were – maintaining the accounts, registering, trading, settling, clearing, giving loans against virtual currencies, accepting virtual currency as collateral, opening accounts of exchanges dealing with them and transfer of sale/purchase of virtual currencies.
  3. The matter was challenged by Internet and Mobile Association of India. The Supreme Court of India allowed the petition on the ground of proportionality. Earlier in 2013 the Reserve Bank of India do issued a public caution to the traders and holders of virtual currency in context with the legal and security related risks associated with it.

Issues Raised

  1. Whether the Reserve Bank of India had the jurisdiction to disallow the trade of virtual currency?
  2. Whether the Respondent had the powers to regulate virtual currency as they were not equivalent to money or legal tender?
  3. Whether the circular which was issued by the RBI was proportional?

Critical Analysis of the Case

A step in the right direction was taken by the Supreme Court of India, in the judgment of Internet and Mobile Association v. RBI. The court quashed the circular of the RBI that directed financial agencies to disocciate themselves from entities involved in virtual trading or transactions relating to VC’s. Some of the concerns that led to the issuance of circular include the anonymity of the transactions and the protection of investors when dealing in cryptocurrency. The major apprehension of the RBI was the inherent difficulty in tracking the source of money which has led to an increase in the number of cryptocurrency scams in the country. Still a very volatile technology, we have not had enough discussion around its shortcomings, leading to an adverse preference of this technology in the monetary circuit.

The Petitioner relied on the case of MS Gill v. Chief Election Commissioner, which led that there was an express prohibition of any authority to do anything which may improve its case. The contention of the petitioners rested on the premise that denial of banking services to those activities of trade recognized by law, would be extremely disproportionate, leading to the violation of extremely disproportionate, leading to a violation of Article 19(1)(g) of the Constitution. Therefore, an understanding of whether there was an infringement of this constitutional right was necessary and to this end, the court relied on the case of Md. Yasin v. Town Area Committee, which makes it amply clear that the right under article 19(1)(g) would be affecyted “In effect and in substance” when there is a complete stoppage of a particular business activity, owing to a certain measure that was undertaken. In Keshavlal Khemchand and Sons Pvt. Ltd. v. Union of India, the court pointed out that “Reserve Bank of India is an expert body to which the responsibility of monitoring the economic system of the contry is entrusted, under various enactments like the RBI Act, 1934, the Banking Regulation Act, 1949.”

The judgement of the court has started an effective discussion on lines that were never traversed before, and while that is indeed commendable, we need to look ahead and anticipate the potential risks on the economy. With that in mind, VC’s promise a more feasible future, especially in this era where people are connected through technology in ways previously unimaginable. Various stakeholders have posted many suggestions, particularly with regarding to creating a model that can monitor and regulate crypto currency, without bringing a blanket ban of the same, which ought to be considered by the government in the light of pending bill. What we need to do is find a balance and not discourage startups from adopting this technology, and if this is ignored, India could be handicapped from exploring opportunities that crypto currencies have to offer. Instead of shying away from addressing these concerns, we need to be proactive and have a structured policy in pace to assuage any potential concerns in the future.