Transgender Persons Act comes into effect - Pragnya IAS Academy - News Analysis.

Transgender Persons Act comes into effect.

Activists raise concerns about requirement of gender certificate

The Social Justice Ministry issued a notification on January 10, 2019, notifying the Transgender Persons (Protection of Rights) Act, 2019, which was passed by Parliament on November 26 and given Presidential assent on December 5, 2019.

The Act aims to end discrimination against transgender persons in accessing education, employment and healthcare. It also recognises the right to self-perceived gender identity and provides for certification from a District Magistrate; in case a transgender person has had a gender-change surgery, the law says they can obtain a certificate from the medical facility where they had the operation, and apply for a change in their certificate.
However, many in the community have raised concerns about the requirement of a certificate from the district magistrate.
Activists have expressed concerns about the lack of awareness and sensitisation. Lovely Kumari, a transwoman, who had participated in the Delhi Chief Electoral Officer’s campaign to boost turnout among transgender voters in last year’s the Lok Sabha elections, said that trans people found it difficult to get papers.
“During the elections, we went door-to-door ... It was difficult because many of us have two different names on our documents. People don’t have any knowledge about this [about the transgender identity certificate under the Act],” she said.
However, Dr. Manabi Bandopadhaya, who became India’s first transgender college principal in 2015, said certification was needed to prevent misuse of welfare measures. “Transgender people are deeply deprived. Nothing will change till there is sensitisation of common people,” she said.


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Transgender Persons Act comes into effect.

Ten zero-waste cities: How Thiruvananthapuram cleaned up its act - Pragnya IAS Academy - News Analysis.

Ten zero-waste cities: How Thiruvananthapuram cleaned up its act.

Kerala’s capital popularised a model that minimised waste creation

Thiruvananthapuram, the capital city of the state of Kerala, has shown how decentralised waste management is the answer to minimising waste creation.
In 2011, the city was in the eye of a storm when its only municipal landfill at Vilappilsala was forced to shut down, following local protests over the mismanagement of waste at the site.
Facing public pressure, the Thiruvananthapuram Municipal Corporation (TMC), which administers the city, introduced a decentralised system for waste management.
The model has brought rich dividends to the city and offers an excellent lens to understand the implementation challenges, politics of priorities, and the roles of different stakeholders in the road towards zero waste.
How did they do it?
Thiruvananthapuram, with a population of approximately 0.9 million, is spread over an area of 214.86 square kilometres and is divided into 100 wards.
In 2010-2011, the city produced 250 tonnes of municipal solid waste.
Following the 2011 protests, the TMC introduced segregated collection of waste to ensure maximum efficiency. It formalised and institutionalised source-level composting and decentralised resource recovery as part of city waste management.
The entire process of waste management in the city now is based on the principle of proximity which ensures the least amount of displacement of waste. Bulk generators or commercial establishments, meanwhile, are required to take responsibility for their own waste.
Bulk generators include hotels, restaurants, commercial establishments, community halls, and institutions. For residential flats and gated communities, the TMC offered a 50 per cent subsidy for setting up organic waste management in situ. For low-value non-recyclables such as laminates, households are encouraged to drop them off in TMC collection centres.
According to TMC officials, presently, 1,25,000 households (50 per cent of the total households in the city’s 100 wards) as well as 350 bulk generators compost their wet waste.
Close to 100 bulk generators and 4,000 households have set up biogas plants for in situ treatment of waste. These plants have been placed in the households at zero cost.
The technologies used for composting in households are pipe, kitchen-bin and pot / bio composting. For communities, aerobic bins are used.
Many of the bulk generators use organic waste converters for composting as well. This diverts 67 per cent of the waste from the city’s landfills (see below).
Decentralised Waste Management facilities in TMC

The strategy of sector-wise waste management has been a novel and practical idea implemented successfully by TMC, Shibu Nair, India coordinator of Global Alliance for Incinerator Alternatives (GAIA), said.
TMC also organizes periodical collection drives for specific types of non-recyclable discards. The materials will be sent to the authorized recyclers.
TMC runs a resource recovery centre which is operated by Clean Kerala Company, a state-owned enterprise that processes low-value plastics for road construction and recycling. The agency is also responsible for managing and processing electronic and domestic hazardous waste.
Further, the Anti-Littering Enforcement Team (ALERT) launched by the civic body ensures that citizens do not litter public places or water bodies. The team functions 24 hours under the watchful eyes of a patrolling squad which comprises officials belonging to the corporation’s health wing.
The public is also empowered to alert the squad if they come across instances of waste dumping at night. The information about the solid waste management (SWM) service delivery is also made available to the citizens through the Smart Trivandrum application.
Besides providing periodical alerts on collection of segregated dry waste, the app also helps users locate the SWM infrastructure such as the nearest material recovery centre or community composting/biogas plants.
Today, Thiruvananthapuram generates about 350 tonnes of waste per day. Out of this, about 49 per cent is from households, 11 per cent from commercial centres, 10 per cent from hotels and restaurants, and the rest is from other segments.
About 83 per cent of the total waste generated in the TMC is compostable, 11 per cent consists of inert, seven per cent forms paper, five per cent makes for plastics and the rest comprises other dry waste.
T’puram, a pioneer on zero waste
The TMC’s waste management plan was not the first of its far-sighted measures to manage waste. It brought in the green protocol for the first time in India to tackle plastic pollution.
The protocol was first practiced at an international workshop on zero waste in Kovalam in 2000. Many institutions have adopted this initiative, including the state legislative assembly complex in the city.
Attukkal Pongala, a religious festival where over four million women congregate in the city, has enforced the methods of the Green Protocol, Nair added.
So what is Green Protocol? It is essentially a set of measures, which when implemented, results in a significant reduction of waste.
“The significance of Green Protocol is this: as waste reduction occupies the top position in the waste management hierarchy, the Green Protocol’s methodology is focused on the prevention of waste generation. More importantly, implementing the Green Protocol can save money as well as resources. It has emerged as one of the most efficient and sustainable models in waste management,” stated Nair.
He added that TMC had succeeded in ensuring public participation in its SWM programme, and had excellent institutional mechanisms and stakeholders including elected representatives, officials, volunteers and private entities. (Source:downtoearth)


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Ten zero-waste cities: How Thiruvananthapuram cleaned up its act.

What is National Security Act? - Pragnya IAS Academy - News Analysis.

What is National Security Act?.

What is it?

On February 8, the Congress-led government in Madhya Pradesh invoked the National Security Act (NSA) against three men accused of killing a cow near Kharkhali village. This and a spate of recent cases, in which different State governments have invoked the stringent provisions of the NSA to detain citizens for questionable offences, have brought the focus back on the potential abuse of the controversial law. Put simply, the NSA empowers the Centre or a State government to detain a person to prevent him from acting in any manner prejudicial to national security. The government can also detain a person to prevent him from disrupting public order or for maintenance of supplies and services essential to the community. The maximum period for which one may be detained is 12 months. But the term can be extended if the government finds fresh evidence.

How did it come about?
Preventive detention laws in India date back to early days of the colonial era when the Bengal Regulation III of 1818 was enacted to empower the government to arrest anyone for defence or maintenance of public order without giving the person recourse to judicial proceedings. A century later, the British government enacted the Rowlatt Acts of 1919 that allowed confinement of a suspect without trial. Post-independence India got its first preventive detention rule when the government of Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru enacted the Preventive Detention Act of 1950. The NSA is a close iteration of the 1950 Act. After the Preventive Detention Act expired on December 31, 1969, the then Prime Minister, Indira Gandhi, brought in the controversial Maintenance of Internal Security Act (MISA) in 1971 giving similar powers to the government. Though the MISA was repealed in 1977 after the Janata Party came to power, the successive government, led by Mrs. Gandhi, brought in the NSA.
Why does it matter?
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. A person could be kept in the dark about the reasons for his arrest for up to five days, and in exceptional circumstances not later than 10 days. Even when providing the grounds for arrest, the government can withhold information which it considers to be against public interest to disclose. The arrested person is also not entitled to the aid of any legal practitioner in any matter connected with the proceedings before an advisory board, which is constituted by the government for dealing with NSA cases.
What lies ahead?
The National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB), which collects and analyses crime data in the country, does not include cases under the NSA in its data as no FIRs are registered. Hence, no figures are available for the exact number of detentions under the NSA. In January, the BJP government in Uttar Pradesh arrested three persons under the NSA in connection with an alleged cow-slaughter incident in Bulandshahr. In December last year, a Manipur journalist, who had posted an alleged offensive Facebook post on the Chief Minister, was detained for 12 months under the NSA. Experts say these cases point to the fact that governments sometimes use it as an extra-judicial power. It is time to reconsider the law, they argue, because in four decades of its existence, the NSA has been in the news for all the wrong reasons. (Source: The Hindu)


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What is National Security Act?.

Centre accused of ‘illegally’ denying details on RTI Act - Pragnya IAS Academy - News Analysis.

Centre accused of ‘illegally’ denying details on RTI Act.

An activist has accused the government of “illegally” withholding information about amendments proposed to the Right to Information Act, 2005, after her plea seeking details about the procedure followed was turned down.

RTI activist Anjali Bharadwaj wrote to the Department of Personnel and Training (DoPT) last month demanding to know when were the amendments to the Act proposed and forwarded to the Union Cabinet. She sought details about the consultative process followed by the government before bringing the amendments and wanted to know whether the government had placed the draft of the revised legislation in the public domain. She demanded a copy of the draft law.
In response, the DoPT refused to provide any details. “The matter regarding amendments in the RTI Act, 2005 is under consideration and has not reached finality. As per section 8(i)(i) of the RTI Act, 2005, information requested by you cannot be supplied at this stage,” the DoPT wrote to Ms. Bharadwaj last week.
The clause cited exempts the government from giving information about Cabinet papers, including records of deliberations of the Council of Ministers, Secretaries and other officers.
“The government has confirmed that it is planning to amend the RTI Act but has illegally refused to share details of the amendment Bill,” said Ms. Bharadwaj.
She objected to the government declining to share details of the consultation process as it was not an exercise restricted to the Cabinet or government officials but involved the wider community and was not exempt under the section of the RTI Act cited by the DoPT. (Source: The Hindu)


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Centre accused of ‘illegally’ denying details on RTI Act.