new CRI ( Computer related inventions) guideline

Open source software, entails software that can is developed, tested or improved through public collaboration and distributed freely among others. It is said to be the way forward for innovation and not patenting because:

>There are numerous patents in the software department and the possibilities of patent infringement are large. This leads to litigation resulting in increased costs for the users.
>Numerous web giants like Facebook, linked in, twitter are all based on open source and wouldn’t have developed if the source code that their programs are based on were patented.
>Patent seeks to create monopolies, which stifles innovation as these major players try to prevent new firms from entering.

How India’s patent rules are affecting innovation?

>The Computer Related Invention (CRI) guidelines in India state that only software attached to a novel hardware can be patented. Contrary to the argument by MNCs that it will stifle innovation, it will actually lead to increased innovation due to a level playing field for new comers and experienced ones alike.
>It will be a big boost for the “Make in India” and “digital India” programmes and will foster entrepreneurship. E.g. SHAKTI processor programme at IIT-Madras aimed at building open source mobile and server processors, operating systems, etc.
>It will lead to increased spending on R&D by MNCs in a bid to stay relevant in the changing software market.

Thus the need of the hour is to do away with software patents to ensure an open playing field for all. What India needs is an independent innovation policy unaffected by corporate interests.

एक आखिरी बार चूमो

तुम्हारे चुम्बन में वो एहसास न था
जो पहली दफे किया था तब था.

तुम दबे पांव आ के
सीने से चिपक
दिल में धंस गए पता ही नहीं चला.

निकलने में वक़्त लगता है.
मक्खी तो नहीं कि
झटक दूँ और दूध गटगटा जाऊं.

एक आखिरी बार चूमो
फिर जाता हूँ.

तुम्हारे होंठों पे ज़िगर रख के

तुम्हारे होंठों पे ज़िगर रख के मैं
बाजुओं से
मसलना चाहता हूँ सांझे पल.
ढूंढना चाहता हूँ
आँखों में शबनम
सुबह के हिस्से का सूरज.

खुरदरा सा सूरज
उफन कर
सीने से लग जाता है.
जैसे उसकी मुक्ति वहीं हो.

तुम्हारे गालों को
मुट्ठियों में जकड मैं
खुद को कैद करने की
अधूरी ख़्वाहिश पूरी करता हूँ.

इत्तेफ़ाक़ से,
तुम बिलकुल तुम हो.
मेरे सीने से लग के भी
मुझसे दूर जाने के सपने देख लेते हो.
बंद आँखे किये.

तुम दूर जा के फिर मेरे ख़्वाब देखते हो.

Making a hollow in the Forest Rights Act

Over 12,000 villages across Odisha conserve their community forests, says a 2013 Odisha Jungle Manch study. In a visit last October to seven villages in Keonjhar district’s Gandhamardan range, Munda communities showed me their forest protection rosters. Each roster listed four villagers for every weekday to roam the forests and prevent tree felling and timber smuggling.

I wasn’t there to study community conservation however, but to speak to villagers about forged gram sabha consent resolutions submitted in their names last January by the Odisha government and the State-owned Odisha Mining Corporation (OMC). The submissions, to the Ministry of Environment, Forests & Climate Change (MoEFCC), were part of a “forest clearance” proposal to enable OMC to acquire and turn 1,400 hectares of forest into an iron ore mine.

Resolutions and deceit

To the shock and anger of people in the seven villages — since they had held no such gram sabhas — the copycat resolutions depicted them as saying they had no ties to the forest and that they “requested” the government to divert the sought area to OMC. Since discovering the forgery, villagers have written to the MoEFCC and the Ministry of Tribal Affairs (MoTA) twice, pointing out the fraud. They have got no response yet.

Gram sabhas mandated by the landmark Forest Rights Act, 2006 (FRA), are the only officially-recognised space for Adivasi and forest-dwelling communities to participate in State decision-making around the enclosure and destruction of forests for mining. This, when such communities not just depend on but proactively protect such forests. Forging gram sabha resolutions clears the path to lucrative mining. For example, OMC valued the ore it would sell from this proposed mine at Rs.79,000 crore. Such fictions manufacture on file the legal requirement of villagers’ participation and consent. A senior forester, serving in another Adivasi-populated, mineral-rich State, wrote to me after reading my account (http://bit.ly/22J6fHZ) of the forgery, saying, “I have seen this many times, in many files.”

Contrast the official actions and inaction on Gandhamardan with another example from Odisha: Niyamgiri. Following a 2013 Supreme Court order, in 12 gram sabhas under the FRA, villagers including Dongria Kondhs articulated ecological, spiritual and food security grounds to not mine Niyamgiri for bauxite. Over two years on, the Odisha government has moved the court to annul the gram sabha resolutions. Among other things, its petition argues, there is “grave doubt” whether what villagers said “were genuine statements setting out what was really felt.” Never mind that the gram sabhas, in line with court directives, were kept free of State government and company influence, had a magistrate present, and were videographed.

This State and mining company-created universe — where what Adivasis say must be stamped out, while fictions in their name routinely spawn far-reaching decisions to their detriment — is hardly unique to Gandhamardan and Niyamgiri. Across mineral-rich, forested Adivasi landscapes, governments are hollowing out the FRA to favour miners. Here are just three instances.

In Jharkhand’s Chatra district, the Oraon village of Jala has had to move the High Court to challenge the denial of their community forest rights (CFR) claim, and forged gram sabha consent submitted towards clearance for a coal mine. In Chhattisgarh, the official junking of the law is more candid. In Kanker district’s Rowghat area, the administration, in response to an RTI request, has stated that there is “a bar” on recognising FRA claims or granting such titles in 12 Adivasi villages, since a rail line for a proposed iron ore mine is planned in their area!

Further north, in Surguja district is Hasdeo Arand, among India’s best forests. Months ago, Gond villagers wistfully narrated how, in order to mine the area for coal, Adani Mining staff were uprooting soaring sal trees, and fencing off stretches of forest villagers had traditionally used. As we spoke, Adani staff drove up in two sport utility vehicles, insisting on being present through our conversation. This January, local officials cancelled the CFR title awarded in 2013 to the area’s Ghatbarra village. The sole purpose: to enable Adani to mine.

Cutting out the community

MoTA, the nodal ministry for FRA and the spokesperson for Adivasi interests, is yet to effectively address the hollowing out of this crucial law. The MoEFCC’s conduct also causes concern. Entrusted with stewarding our forests, it has instead concentrated great energy on how to hasten their felling (through the forest clearances it awards). In doing this, it has, among other things, mounted a prolonged effort to see if and how meaningful community participation can be eliminated from the clearance process.

But what if our governments thought less like mining companies and approached FRA not as a “roadblock” but as a means to achieve a more just, democratic and ecologically informed conversation around mining? This would mean admitting that the knowledge base of local communities, that interact most intimately with the forests, is of value in decision-making. As the 2013 SC order observed: “…we have realised that forests have the best chance to survive if communities participate in their conservation and regeneration.”

Further, if nurtured seriously as an institution of local governance, FRA-mandated gram sabhas can be a vital mechanism to outline the full costs and gains of mining, and more crucially, how these get distributed. This could help ameliorate some of the “resource curse” impacts and deep-rooted corruption that plague India’s mining industry, as outlined in grim detail by the Justice Shah Commission’s reports on illegal mining.

In years of travelling through mineral-rich areas, I cannot recall an example of an Adivasi community telling me they are better off because of the way the company took over their forest and land for mining. But there have been countless accounts of villagers being beaten up, swindled, having bulldozers pulverise their homes, sacred sites, food and livelihood sources, being incarcerated, and even killed in police firings.

These are fates that national elites would be loathe to accept for ourselves in the name of “development”. But we are happy to prescribe them for Adivasi citizens. As Masuri Behra, a Gandhamardan resident on seeing her name in the village’s forged resolution asked aloud, “Why do they kick us in the stomach like this?”

Chitrangada Choudhury is a Fellow with the Open Society Institute.

जियो, मेरे | अज्ञेय

जियो, मेरे आज़ाद देश की शानदार इमारतो
जिनकी साहिबी टोपनुमा छतों पर गौरव ध्वज तिरंगा फहरता है
लेकिन जिनके शौचालयों में व्यवस्था नहीं है
कि निवृत्त होकर हाथ धो सकें।
(पुरखे तो हाथ धोते थे न? आज़ादी ही से हाथ धो लेंगे, तो कैसा?)

जियो, मेरे आज़ाद देश के शानदार शासको
जिनकी साहिबी भेजे वाली देशी खोपड़ियों पर
चिट्टी दूधिया टोपियाँ फब दिखाती हैं,
जिनके बाथरूम की संदली, अँगूरी, चंपई, फ़ाख्तई
रंग की बेसिनी, नहानी, चौकी तक की तहज़ीब
सब में दिखता है अँग्रेज़ी रईसी ठाठ
लेकिन सफाई का कागज़ रखने की कंजूस बनिए की तमीज़...

जियो, मेरे आज़ाद देश के सांस्कृतिक प्रतिनिधियो
जो विदेश जाकर विदेशी नंग देखने के लिए पैसे देकर
टिकट खरीदते हो
पर जो घर लौटकर देसी नंग ढकने के लिए
ख़ज़ाने में पैसा नहीं पाते,
और अपनी जेब में-पर जो देश का प्रतिनिधि हो वह
जेब में हाथ डाले भी
तो क्या ज़रूरी है कि जेब अपनी हो?

जियो, मेरे आज़ाद देश के रौशन ज़मीर लोक-नेताओ :
जिनकी मर्यादा वह हाथी का पैर है जिसमें
सबकी मर्यादा समा जाती है-
जैसे धरती में सीता समा गई थी!
एक थे वह राम जिन्हें विभीषण की खोज में जाना पड़ा,
जाकर जलानी पड़ी लंका :
एक है यह राम-राज्य, बजे जहाँ अविराम
विराट् रूप विभीषण का डंका!
राम का क्या काम यहाँ? अजी राम का नाम लो।
चाम, जाम, दाम, ताम-झाम, काम- कितनी
धर्म-निरपेक्ष तुकें अभी बाकी हैं।
जो सधे, साध लो, साधो-
नहीं तो बने रहो मिट्टी के माधो।

नंदा देवी | अज्ञेय

नंदा,
बीस-तीस-पचास वर्षों में
तुम्हारी वनराजियों की लुगदी बनाकर
हम उस पर
अखबार छाप चुके होंगे
तुम्हारे सन्नाटे को चीर रहे होंगे
हमारे धुँधुआते शक्तिमान ट्रक,
तुम्हारे झरने-सोते सूख चुके होंगे
और तुम्हारी नदियाँ
ला सकेंगी केवल शस्य-भक्षी बाढ़ें
या आँतों को उमेठने वाली बीमारियाँ
तुम्हारा आकाश हो चुका होगा
हमारे अतिस्वन विमानों के
धूम-सूत्रों का गुंझर।
नंदा,
जल्दी ही-
बीस-तीस-पचास बरसों में
हम तुम्हारे नीचे एक मरु बिछा चुके होंगे
और तुम्हारे उस नदी धौत सीढ़ी वाले मंदिर में
जला करेगा
एक मरुदीप।

India Saudi Arabia

Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s visit to Saudi Arabia, arguably the leader of the Sunni Muslim countries in West Asia, clearly sets out the priorities of his government’s policy for the region. The Riyadh trip came eight months after Mr. Modi went to the United Arab Emirates, another Gulf nation and a member of the Saudi camp.

Historically, India’s West Asia policy has been multi-directional. During the Cold War years, India maintained close economic cooperation with both Saudi Arabia and Iran, the rival poles in regional geopolitics. Even when New Delhi warmed up to Israel in the 1990s as part of the country’s efforts to diversify its diplomatic engagement in the post-Soviet world, it was careful not to jeopardise the traditional relations with Muslim countries. The bi-directional approach has been expanded to a tri-directional foreign policy to accommodate the three key pillars of West Asia — Saudi Arabia, Iran and Israel.

Ties with Iran, however, took a beating during the sanctions years when New Delhi cut its energy cooperation significantly despite its vitality and huge energy potential. It was during the same time that India deepened cooperation with the Saudis. Mr. Modi’s visit to Riyadh should be seen against this background. His government appears to be following the regional policy set by its immediate predecessor. This approach, while not entirely giving up the tri-directional framework, is tilted more towards the Saudi camp and Israel. Mr. Modi is expected to travel to Israel this year, the first visit by an Indian Prime Minister to the Jewish nation. Many see the trip to Riyadh as part of New Delhi’s balancing act between the Saudis and the Israelis. On the other side, there appears to be a complete lack of interest on India’s part to reboot ties with Iran even after international sanctions on the country were removed following the nuclear deal.

The Saudi significance

To be sure, there’s a consensus in India’s foreign policy establishment that maintaining vibrant ties with Saudi Arabia is imperative to its national interest. Today, Saudi Arabia is India’s largest supplier of crude oil. That India is dependent on imports to meet around 70 per cent of the country’s energy demand itself makes Riyadh a vital player in the country’s quest for energy security. Besides, India is the largest recipient of foreign remittances from the kingdom. Of the 11 million Indians working in West Asia, nearly three million are in Saudi Arabia. Therefore, stability in the region, and particularly in Saudi Arabia, is high on India’s core agenda. But bilateral relations have gone beyond the economic realm in recent years, acquiring a strategic sense and pushing both countries to beef up their security partnership.

For decades, India was a passive player in West Asia — a beneficiary of good relationships with multiple actors. Despite the growing economic ties, political contacts between Saudi Arabia and India were at minimum till the Manmohan Singh government took office in 2004. West Asia acquired great significance in Dr. Singh’s world view; he even appointed a special envoy for the whole region. The January 2006 visit of the late King, Abdullah bin Abdulaziz, to Delhi set a new tone for bilateral ties. Dr. Singh reciprocated the visit in 2010 — the first Indian Prime Minister visiting Saudi Arabia in nearly 30 years — and signed the Riyadh Declaration, which set the framework for enhanced cooperation in the security, defence and economic spheres. Since then, there has been marked improvement in security cooperation and intelligence sharing between India and Saudi Arabia. Riyadh also extradited several terror suspects to India in a clear departure from its established policy towards New Delhi.

The broader framework for reactivating India’s Saudi ties was set in the post-9/11 world where counter-terror cooperation became a new diplomatic norm between terror-affected countries. Dr. Singh found it an opportunity to deepen security ties with Sunni Muslim countries, and Mr. Modi appears to be taking this policy a step forward. The main focus of his trips to both the UAE and Saudi Arabia was counter-terrorism. Both Abu Dhabi and Riyadh are Pakistan’s historical allies. The joint statements, issued in August with the UAE and this week with Riyadh, are unsurprisingly similar. And both have indirect references to Pakistan’s dual policy towards terrorism. It is clear that Mr. Modi is giving a Pakistan spin to the ‘Act West Asia’ policy of his predecessor. India’s objective appears to be to build a “counter-terror narrative” in diplomatic engagements with Pakistan’s close allies which could complicate the latter’s foreign policy. India would also not prefer to sit on the margins at a time when China is raising its profile in West Asia. Chinese President Xi Jinping recently visited Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Iran. The relationship between Beijing and Tehran is particularly going strong.

Enhanced ties with India are important for Saudi Arabia as well. The kingdom is facing economic strain in the wake of persistently weak oil prices. The U.S. is no longer as dependent on the region for energy as it used to be, thanks to the shale boom. Demand from China is also receding in the wake of a slowdown. Besides, competition in the oil market is expected to tighten with a sanctions-free Iran entering the global economic mainstream without any bars. In this context, India is a vital market for Saudi Arabia. There is believed to be friction between Islamabad and Riyadh over the former warming up to Tehran and their growing energy cooperation. Pakistan also refused to join Saudi Arabia’s war coalition that has been bombing Yemen for the past one year in the name of fighting the Iran-backed Shia rebels.

The sore points

But the question is how far both sides will go. Will Saudi Arabia abandon Pakistan and support India’s positions in multinational forums? The Saudis may like to use their growing relations with India to put pressure on Pakistan, but a structural overhaul of Riyadh’s South Asia policy is not on the cards. Pakistan, after all, is the country with an “Islamic bomb”, a “historic ally” of the Saudis. So if India, while reactivating its West Asia policy, looks only through the Pakistan prism, it might end up making strategic mistakes. Another sore point is the growing Saudi-Iran rivalry, which has always influenced West Asian geopolitics. By skewing its West Asia policy towards the Saudis, even though it might help meet its short-term goals, New Delhi also runs the risk of antagonising Iran at a time when the country is emerging a stronger player in West Asia post the removal of sanctions.

Then there’s the ideological problem. While Saudi Arabia denounces all forms of terrorism, Saudi money is funding Wahhabi Islamic groups around the world. Many extremist outfits are inspired by the Wahhabi branch of Islam. Saudi Arabia’s aggressive foreign policy in West Asia under King Salman bin Abdulaziz al Saud is doing great damage to regional stability, which is India’s most important goal in the region.

In Syria, the Saudi support for the rebels has played a key role in destabilising the regime, leading to the rise of the Islamic State. In Yemen, the war has unleashed chaos and a humanitarian catastrophe, creating conditions for radicalism to flourish.

So Saudi Arabia is not always a source of stability in West Asia, it is a disruptor too. India will have to factor these developments in its overall West Asia approach. The best way to do it is to restore the balance in its West Asia policy.

stanly.johny@thehindu.co.in

Panama Papers

http://www.insightsonindia.com/2016/04/05/insights-editorial-panama-papers-explained/

More power to the vaccine arsenal

India has made huge strides as far as public health achievements are concerned, made possible by the use of safe and effective vaccines delivered through quality programmes. For example, small pox was eliminated in 1975, polio in 2014 and maternal and neonatal tetanus (MNT) in August 2015.

While India has shown its ability to undertake massive campaigns to improve vaccination coverage, routine immunisation coverage, which stands at 65 per cent when last measured, remains low. Moreover, the immunisation schedule lacks important vaccines that are already in use in most countries. All that is set to change.

In 2014, the Prime Minister’s Office announced the decision to introduce four new vaccines as part of India’s Universal Immunization Programme (UIP). These are vaccines against rotavirus, rubella and polio (injectable) and an adult vaccine against Japanese encephalitis introduced in districts with high levels of the disease. Earlier in 2011, a vaccine against Haemophilus influenza type B (Hib) was introduced as part of the pentavalent vaccine to contain diphtheria, pertussis, tetanus, hepatitis B and Hib. Thus the government has introduced or committed to introduce more vaccines than it has in the last 30 years of the UIP.

These vaccines could collectively prevent at least one lakh infant deaths, deaths of adults in the working age group and up to 10 lakh cases of hospitalisation each year. India’s UIP will now be able to provide free vaccines against 13 life-threatening diseases to 27 million children annually, the largest birth cohort in the world.

The India Newborn Action Plan (INAP) was launched in September 2014 with the aim of reducing preventable newborn deaths and stillbirths and the goal to attain single digit neonatal mortality and stillbirth rate by 2030. The current rate is 38/1,000 live births. To reach this goal, four additional vaccines are being thought of as priority vaccines for introduction in India.

Priority vaccines

The first of them is the Pneumococcal conjugate vaccine. Singularly, bacterial pneumonias kill more children under the age of five than any other disease. India has the world’s highest number of deaths caused by Streptococcus pneumoniae, the bacteria most commonly associated with pneumonias. There are an estimated 5-6 lakh cases of severe episodes of pneumococcal pneumonia and 95,000-1,05,000 deaths in India annually. An effective and safe vaccine for pneumococcus pneumonia is available.

The Human Papillomavirus (HPV) vaccine is next. Cervical cancer is one of the top three cancers affecting women in the world. Worldwide, every fourth new case is an Indian. It is estimated that in India, there are 1.32 lakh new cases every year and about 75,000 deaths reported. Two strains of HPV-16 and -18 are responsible for almost 80 to 85 per cent of cervical cancers. Preventive vaccines are available and are given to adolescents (9-13 years).

The third is the influenza vaccine. Immunising mothers during pregnancy against vaccine-preventable diseases has the potential to improve health outcomes in mothers and their children. This is likely to emerge as a key strategy to address neonatal mortality in particular which accounts for almost half of the under-five mortality. This strategy has been successfully used to eliminate MNT. Clinical trials have shown that influenza vaccination during pregnancy can prevent influenza disease in pregnant women and their newborn children for the first six months of life with no indication of harm to the recipients or their children .

Given the potential impact of maternal influenza immunisation programmes on maternal and child health worldwide, the World Health Organisation Strategic Advisory Group of Experts on Immunization (SAGE) has recommended that pregnant women having influenza vaccine receipt in countries initiating or expanding their influenza vaccine programmes be made a priority. In India, a large number of deaths were reported during the H1N1 outbreak from 2009 onwards. Infection in pregnant women led to deaths in their third trimester. The Maharashtra government has introduced seasonal flu vaccine for high-risk groups including pregnant women. Season flu vaccine, which includes the pandemic H1N1 strain, is a priority vaccine for use in high-risk groups in India including pregnant women.

The last is the cholera vaccine. Though interventions for the prevention and control of cholera (including an oral vaccine produced and licensed in India) are available, cholera remains an important cause of morbidity and mortality. It is estimated that there are about 7-8 lakh cases every year resulting in about 20,000-24,000 deaths. About 400-500 million people are at risk. Outbreaks occur after the monsoon. Though the oral vaccine is available in India, there has been limited use.

Targeting seven diseases

The UIP is now a much strengthened programme, supported by a transparent system of taking decisions to introduce new vaccines, being sensitive to adverse events following immunisation and with the capacity to add additional vaccines. Through Mission Indradhanush [to cover, by 2020, children who are either unvaccinated, or are partially vaccinated against diphtheria, whooping cough, tetanus, polio, tuberculosis, measles and hepatitis B], India aims to be on track to increase routine immunisation coverage to 90 per cent within a few years. The years to come may well be the golden years of immunisation in India.

(Prof. Ramanan Laxminarayan is Distinguished Professor and

Dr. Lalit Kant is Senior Adviser, Infectious Diseases, Public Health Foundation of India, New Delhi.

The views expressed are personal.)

Towards restorative criminal justice | N.R. MADHAVA MENON

The way criminal justice is designed and administered today hardly serves any of the purposes for which it is set up: towards securing life and property. It does not deter criminals because of the delay and uncertainties involved in its processes and ridiculously ineffective punishments it imposes on those few who get convicted. It provides wide discretion to the police and the prosecution, rendering the system vulnerable to corruption and manipulation and endangering basic rights of innocent citizens. It ignores the real victim, often compelling him/her to find extralegal methods of getting justice. Above all, it puts heavy economic costs on the state for its maintenance without commensurate benefits in return. With nearly 30 million criminal cases pending in the system (the annual capacity of which is only half that number), and with another 10 million or more cases being added every year, whatever is left of the system is bound to collapse completely unless some radical alternatives are adopted urgently.

Faced with a similar situation, the U.S. adopted plea bargaining and diversion to administrative and quasi-judicial institutions in a big way several years ago with the result that less than a third of criminal cases are allowed to go for trial. Diversion is followed in the U.K. as well. Recently, it reformed its criminal justice system giving a central role to the victims to direct their cases in the system. In Russia, Australia and several other countries, the victim is brought centre stage through what is called “restorative justice” to replace unproductive aspects of conventional criminal processes. On the recommendation of the Committee on Reforms of Criminal Justice System (2003), India also adopted “plea bargaining” under Chapter XXI-A of the the Code of Criminal Procedure to take out from the system cases punishable up to seven years of imprisonment for negotiated settlement without trial. However, the Bar and the Bench seem to be allergic to plea-bargained settlement, with the result that even after a decade of its introduction, it remains a dead letter not invoked by those caught in the system.

Differentiated penal codes

The committee on criminal justice reforms recommended a threefold strategy to arrest the drift and to prevent total disaster. First, the law, substantive and procedural, requires a fresh comprehensive look based on changes in society and economy as well as priorities in governance. The guiding principle in the reform process should be decriminalisation wherever possible and diversion, reserving the criminal justice system mainly to deal with real “hard” crimes. A suggestion was made to divide the Penal Code into four different codes — a “Social Offences Code” consisting of matters which are essentially of a civil nature and can be settled or compounded through administrative processes without police intervention and prison terms; a “Correctional Offences Code” containing offences punishable up to three years’ imprisonment where parole, probation and conditional sentences can be imposed in lieu of prison terms and can be handled under summary/summons procedure where plea bargaining can be liberally invoked without the stigma of conviction; an “Economic Offences Code” where property offences which affect the financial stability of the country are dealt with by a combination of criminal and administrative strategies including plea bargaining (both on charge as well as on punishment) with a view to making crimes economically non-viable; and an “Indian Penal Code” which will have only major crimes which warrant 10 years’ imprisonment or more or death and deserve a full-fledged warrant trial with all safeguards of a criminal trial. The police and prosecution systems will accordingly be reorganised making them more specialised, efficient and accountable.

The second strategy proposed by the committee was institutional reform of police processes, including investigation of crimes, professionalisation and rationalisation of court systems with induction of technology and limiting appeal procedures to the minimum required. It is here the committee sought to bring in a bigger and responsible role to victims of crime in the whole proceedings. The Code of Criminal Procedure (Amendment) Act of 2006 adopted a small part of the recommendation on victims and left the rest for future consideration. This did not help in changing the system to a victim-centric one; nor did it support a restorative approach necessary to make the system serve its reformatory and deterrent functions meaningfully.

Victim-oriented criminal justice

What does “victim-centric” mean in the criminal justice system? It means restoring the confidence of victims in the system and achieving the goal of justice in whichever sense the idea is conceived. Toward this end, the system must confer certain rights on victims to enable them to participate in the proceedings, including the right to be impleaded and to engage an advocate in serious offences, the right to track the progress of the proceedings, the right to be heard on critical issues and to assist the court in the pursuit of truth. Second, victims have the right to seek and receive compensation for injuries suffered including appropriate interim relief irrespective of the fate of the proceedings. Victims may also submit a victim impact statement to the courts setting out the effect of the crime on their lives.

Today, a victim-centric approach in criminal justice can also mean healing the wounds through reconciliation and restorative means of justice rather than letting it get prolonged in the system, leading to frustration and more wrongs. Restorative justice is more akin to indigenous systems of quick, simple systems of resolution of wrongs which enjoy community support, victim satisfaction and offender acknowledgement of obligations. Thus perceived, restorative justice takes on board all three parties — the offender, the victim and the community — in a harmonious resolution of the injury, maximising the sense of justice and restoring peace and harmony in the community.

Restorative justice is distinct from mediation though it involves meetings and dialogues to fix responsibility for wrongdoing and to find a solution acceptable to all three parties. More importantly, it directly addresses victim needs and therefore emphasises the private dimensions of a public wrong. It is not a substitute to the formal criminal justice system, but a good backup to reduce its workload and to increase the sense of justice in the system as a whole. In a sense, the concept of “plea bargain” is closer to the idea and processes of restorative justice and therefore nothing new to criminal proceedings.

A distinctive feature of restorative justice is that it looks at the needs of crime victims which are today outside criminal justice concerns, leading to frustration and alienation of victims from the system itself. The victim is deprived of information on why he should suffer the injury and how it is going to be repaired. He would perhaps feel vindicated if the offender were to make an effort to right the harm, even if partially, by restitution. The victim would respect the system if it could make the offender assume responsibility and persuade him to transform himself. Restorative justice therefore aims to respond to the needs of the victim and help sustain interpersonal relationships while reinforcing offender obligations. Justice, in other words, should engage with victims, offenders and the right-thinking members of the community in an effort of reconciliation and repairing of harm. This approach begins with a concern for victims and their needs even when no offender has been identified or apprehended.

Limiting the adversarial model

Several countries across the world are now replacing the adversarial model of criminal justice partly or wholly with different models of restorative justice, yielding promising results in crime control. The process is more collaborative, consensual and inclusive, that is characteristic of indigenous systems of justice. The role of the state is reduced and the participation of communities encouraged. This is not to be confused with the khap panchayat model of arbitrary decision-making by a few elders of the locality. Due process requirements are followed in restorative justice while participation is enlarged and made transparent, inclusive and accountable. While doing so, the system respects diversity as a social fact, interrelatedness as a virtue and correcting/healing the harm as a major objective.

Crime and violence constitute a major impediment for development and social integration for a plural society like India. The adversarial model of criminal justice, with punishing the offender as its only aim, has proved costly and counterproductive. Communities have to be involved and victims given rights in finding ways to correct the wrong. While keeping the adversarial system for certain serious and complex offences, India needs to experiment with more democratic models aimed at reconciliation and restoration of relationships. Restorative justice is a welcome idea particularly in the matter of juvenile justice, property offences, communal conflicts, family disputes, etc. What is needed is a change of mindset, willingness to bring victims to the centre stage of criminal proceedings and to acknowledge that restoring relationships and correcting the harm are important elements of the criminal justice system.

N.R. Madhava Menon is former Vice-Chancellor of the National Law Universities in Bengaluru and Kolkata, Director of National Judicial Academy in Bhopal and presently Honorary Director of the M.K.N. Academy of Continuing Legal Education in Kochi.