Daily News (In Short)-30-July-2015

#* Questions raised over Yakub Memon’s hanging

New Delhi: Despite a last-ditch effort at appealing to India’s highest court to provide a grace period of 14 days, Yakub Memon, the lone convict in the 1993 Mumbai serial blasts, was reportedly executed at the Nagpur central prison on Thursday morning. Hours before his execution, he appealed to the Supreme Court one last time which held an unprecedented early morning hearing.
In the days leading to the execution, the country has faced questions over the death penalty.
In an editorial last week, The Hindu said that hanging Memon “will only give the impression that the lone man available among the many brains behind the ghastly act of terrorism is being singled out”. Thursday’s editorial titled “Inhumane and unconscionable” states that the time has come to end the debate around death penalty and take “the moral position that there shall be no death penalty on the statute book, regardless of the heinousness of the offence, the circumstances or the number of fatalities involved”.
The Indian Express asks readers to “leave aside high moral or spiritual principles”, but points out that the “decision to execute rests on caprice”. That caprice is precisely what the death penalty is, everywhere it is in effect.
Others like Congress MP in the Rajya Sabha Mani Shankar Aiyar have written and questioned the decision pointing out that the “commuted co-conspirators played a much bigger role, and a much more critical and direct role in the actual execution of the bomb blasts than did Yakub Memon. Why should he be hanged while the others are not?”
S. Hussain Zaidi, the author of Black Friday, an account of the 1993 blasts, added to that: “Since they didn’t get Tiger Memon, any other Memon would do. And Yakub, being educated, smart and suave, fitted the bill. It didn’t matter that they were shooting the messenger.”
In an opinion piece in Scroll.in, Jyoti Punwani writes that the Supreme Court’s upholding the death sentence for the man who surrendered hoping to clear his name in the Mumbai blasts case, also draws attention to the miscarriage of justice in the preceding riots. Here is a chart that shows how partisan India’s justice system can be.
The Caravan has an interesting take on why it’s often the individual predilection of judges which determines what constitutes our collective conscience and how the judiciary misappropriated the phrase “collective conscience”. And here is executive director of Amnesty International views in Outlook.
Meanwhile, interesting data has emerged suggesting that despite its informal moratorium, India did not stop handing out death sentences. Data collected by the Centre on the Death Penalty at the National Law University in Delhi shows that trial courts across the country have sentenced 1,800 people to death over the last 15 years, but only 5% of these sentences were confirmed by the Supreme Court. Around 385 people are currently on death row in India.

#* Soldier Killed in Jammu and Kashmir's Poonch in Fresh Ceasefire Violation by Pakistan

An Army soldier was killed in a sniper attack by Pakistani troops who targeted forward posts in Jammu and Kashmir's Poonch district in a violation of ceasefire on Wednesday night.

Rachpal Singh was critically injured in the sniper fire by Pakistani troops at a forward post in Poonch along the Line of Control (LoC) on Wednesday night, a police officer said today.

Mr Singh, who belonged to 22-Sikh unit, later succumbed to injuries. He was guarding the Parvinder post when the incident occurred.

This is the third incident of sniper attack by Pakistani troops along the LoC this month. Two Border Security Force jawans were killed in similar incidents along the LoC in the Kashmir Valley.

There were two other incidents of ceasefire violations along the LoC in the Valley yesterday.

#* Malaysia Says Almost Certain Debris Found Off Madagascar Is From a Boeing 777

KUALA LUMPUR:  Malaysia is "almost certain" that plane debris found on Reunion Island in the Indian Ocean is from a Boeing 777, the deputy transport minister said today, heightening the possibility it could be wreckage from missing Flight MH370.

Malaysia Airlines was operating a Boeing 777 on the ill-fated flight, which vanished without a trace in March last year while en route from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing in one of the biggest mysteries in aviation history. The plane was carrying 239 passengers and crew.

Search efforts led by Australia have focused on a broad expanse of the southern Indian Ocean off Australia, roughly 3,700 km (2,300 miles) from France's Reunion Island.

France's BEA air crash investigation agency said it was examining the debris, found washed up on Reunion Island east of Madagascar on Wednesday, in coordination with Malaysian and Australian authorities, but that it was too early to draw conclusions.

Aviation experts who have seen widely circulated pictures of the debris said it may be a moving wing surface known as a flaperon, situated close to the fuselage.

"It is almost certain that the flaperon is from a Boeing 777 aircraft. Our chief investigator here told me this," Malaysian Deputy Transport Minister Abdul Aziz Kaprawi told Reuters.

Abdul Aziz said a Malaysian team was heading to Reunion Island, about 600 km (370 miles) east of Madagascar.

It would take about two days to verify if the piece was from MH370, he added.

A person familiar with the matter earlier told Reuters the part was almost certainly from a Boeing 777.

The piece usually contains markings or parts numbers that should allow it to be traced to an individual aircraft, the person added.

Investigators believe someone deliberately switched off MH370's transponder before diverting it thousands of miles off course. Most of the passengers were Chinese.

Beijing said it was following developments closely.

MH370 Link "Very Plausible"

The plane piece is roughly 2-2.5 metres (6.5-8 ft) in length, according to photographs. It appeared fairly intact and did not have visible burn marks or signs of impact. Flaperons help pilots control an aircraft while in flight.

"The part has not yet been identified and it is not possible at this hour to ascertain whether the part is from a B777 and/or from MH370," a BEA spokesman said in an email on Wednesday.

Greg Feith, an aviation safety consultant and former crash investigator at the U.S. National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB), said his sources at Boeing had told him the piece was from a 777.

Whether it was MH370 was not clear, he said.

"But we haven't lost any other 777s in that part of the world," Feith said.

Oceanographers said vast, rotating currents sweeping the southern Indian Ocean could have deposited wreckage from MH370 thousands of kilometres from where the plane is thought to have crashed.

If confirmed to be from MH370, experts will try to retrace the debris drift back to where it could have come from. But they caution that the discovery is unlikely to provide any more precise information about the aircraft's final resting place.

"This wreckage has been in the water, if it is MH370, for well over a year so it could have moved so far that it's not going to be that helpful in pinpointing precisely where the aircraft is," Australian Deputy Prime Minister Warren Truss told reporters.

Robin Robertson, an oceanographer at the University of New South Wales in Sydney, said the timing and location of the debris made it "very plausible" that it came from MH370, given what was known about Indian Ocean currents.

Malaysia Airlines said it was too early to speculate on the origin of the debris.

The Australian Transport Safety Bureau (ATSB) said it was working with Boeing and other officials.

Boeing declined to comment on the photos, referring questions to investigators.

Aviation consultant Feith said that if the part was from MH370, the bulk of the plane likely sank, while the flaperon had air pockets that allowed it to float below the water's surface.

Finding the wreckage would involve reverse engineering the ocean currents over 18 months, Feith said. "It's going to take a lot of math and science to figure that out," he said.
© Thomson Reuters 2015

#* Google Pays Tribute to President Kalam With 'Black Ribbon'

NEW DELHI:  Google on Wednesday paid a special homage to "missile man" APJ Abdul Kalam by displaying a black ribbon on its homepage.

The solemn mark of respect on Google India homepage only testifies to the universal appeal the former President exercised on the minds of people, especially the youth, from small-towners to net-savvy urban folks.

Google, known for remembering past icons and marking important occasions and anniversaries through its characteristic doodles, has in the past paid tribute to several Indians, including filmmaker Satyajit Ray, mathematics genius Shakuntala Devi and cine icon Raj Kapoor among others.
For Dr Kalam, perhaps reflecting the simplicity that he stood for all his life, the search giant has used no doodle but just a black ribbon placed below the search tab, and on running the mouse iver it reads, "In memory of Dr APJ Abdul Kalam".

Tributes have been pouring in from home and abroad to pay respects to the country's "missile man" whose life inspires countless Indians.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi, President Pranab Mukherjee and host of world leaders including US President Barack Obama, Russian President Vladimir Putin have joined in paying tribute to the former head of the state.

Bihar government has decided to name an agricultural college in Kisanganj after him. Incidentally, President Kalam was the brain behind the revival of the Nalanda University.

#* The return of peace at any cost with Pakistan

The terrorist attack in Dinanagar in Punjab on Monday was a rare occurrence of such violence in a state where the guns fell silent nearly 24 years ago. Gurdaspur district was once notorious as a hotbed of Khalistani terrorists. But preliminary investigation in this case shows the terrorists were from Pakistan and, so far, there is no evidence of a Khalistani angle to the atrocity. This has not been lost on the Narendra Modi government. Within two days of the event, reports suggest that there will be no going back on bilateral talks between India and Pakistan. The “Ufa spirit”, so to speak, persists and the agreement arrived at between Prime Minister Modi and Pakistan’s Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif in Russia seems to be holding for now.
This is not surprising. One can call this India’s sagacity in pursuing peace or some kind of reversion to a default position, but the truth is that sooner or later, all Indian leaders return to the negotiating table with their Pakistani counterpart.
Ideally, Pakistan should be held responsible for any aggression emanating from its soil, be it terrorism or ceasefire violations by its army. At the moment, it pleads helplessness in controlling terrorists in its territory. This is a poor excuse, but one that has been bought by successive governments in India. The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government is the latest in this line of governments.
Why this is the default Indian position is not hard to discern. A mix of geographic reality and institutional legacies restricts what any government can do. At one level, it is a simple matter of geography. To use a cliché: one can choose one’s friends, but one can’t choose neighbours. Like or dislike, one has to deal with Pakistan. This is a constant in policymaking with respect to any of our neighbours in South Asia.
The other variable is institutional. This is made of strategic vision (what should India do with Pakistan?) and negotiating strategies (should there be a constant application of “heat” on Islamabad or does that become counterproductive after a while). On this front, too, the dice is loaded in favour of a “peace at any cost” attitude.
Given this matrix, the two equilibria are either to ignore any aggression by Pakistan or simply respond to any violation by it with an appropriate level of hostile attention. The former approach characterized the Congress: it did not matter whether a bunch of terrorists mowed down 175 persons in Mumbai or whether the international border in Jammu and Kashmir lit up from artillery fire. In both cases, the Manmohan Singh government chose to pursue talks, albeit with a hiatus after a terrorist attack. The BJP, in contrast, was expected to be less restrained and, to an extent, it engaged in a tit-for-tat response for a while. Not any more.
The BJP’s approach now seems to be undergoing some kind of “fine-tuning”. A distinction seems to have been made between attacks by terrorists (now fashionably called non-state actors by Islamabad) and ceasefire violations by its armed forces. The Modi government is now fine with the former type of violation. While publicly, the government has said that India’s honour will not be bartered—home minister Rajnath Singh said as much—but sooner or later, this tooth-combed policy will collapse. Either the BJP will revert to its original position, or what it does will become indistinguishable from what the Congress did during 2004-14.
This is self-defeating. The claim that the hands of an elected government in Pakistan needs to be supported and that terrorist attacks are calculated to derail peace talks is the same as peace at any cost idea. Why should India bear terrorist attacks to bolster the hands of an elected government in Pakistan? Even the most plausible answer is fantastic: that in the long run, a civilian government can deliver lasting peace only if its hands are strengthened and it has the ability to keep the army at bay. India should not be thinking for Pakistan. History and experience show that has never worked.
The BJP, the party considered to have a different outlook, is proving to be not very different from the Congress. The two factors mentioned earlier—geography and institutional inertia—are now hitting the BJP with a vengeance. The truth is that Indian political parties are too engrossed in domestic affairs to spend time and think hard about Pakistan. The last time a leader devoted some energy and attention to this problem was Indira Gandh iin 1971, and she also reacted only after the massive refugee influx from East Pakistan forced her to act

#* Taliban Capture District in Afghanistan's Helmand Province

LASHKAR GAH, AFGHANISTAN: Afghanistan's Taliban have captured a district in the southern province of Helmand that foreign troops struggled to secure for years, in the latest setback for Afghan government forces now largely battling the militants on their own.
News of the fighting came a day after the government said elusive Taliban leader Mullah Omar had died in Pakistan more than two years ago.

Officials in Helmand said the Taliban has Now Zad district on Wednesday after two days of fighting.
 "Right now our security forces are still on the outskirts of the district and fighting with the Taliban," said provincial police chief spokesman Obaidullah Obaid.
Obaid declined to comment on casualties but residents of the area, speaking to Reuters by telephone, said the bodies of members of the government security forces and Taliban were lying in the streets after the battle.

#* Moody’s cautions against curbing RBI autonomy on policy rates

Moody’s on Thursday cautioned against tampering with the independence of the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) in deciding on interest rates saying it would hurt India’s economic prospects.
Moody’s Analytics, an economic research unit of Moody’s Corp, also raised a red flag over the Parliament logjam and said it is denting business confidence as key reform bills like land and GST are stuck.
A revised draft of the Indian Financial Code calls for creation of an interest rate-setting panel, where majority of the seven members will be nominated by the government.
While the earlier version of the code gave RBI Governor veto power over panel’s decision, the revised draft does not confer any such powers on him.
“We believe that a government-elected panel undermines the RBI’s independence. Moving to the new model would severely dent the RBI’s competency: Credibility would be lower, politics would drive decisions, and transparency would be reduced.
“Overall, we believe that tampering with the central bank’s independence would make it difficult to anchor inflation expectations. This would weigh on India’s economic prospects, particularly financial market stability,” Moody’s Analytics said in a report.
It said India’s monetary policy, with Governor Raghuram Rajan at the helm, has been effective.
The report titled– India’s Outlook: Waiting for Reforms to Fuel Growth– said inflation has fallen, external accounts have improved, and the economy is poised for further rate cuts.

#* Maggi Mess: Nestle India Reports First Quaterly Loss in 15 Years

Nestle India Ltd slipped to a second-quarter loss as sales plunged after its hugely popular Maggi noodles were pulled off shelves over safety concerns. The unit of Swiss food giant Nestle SA said  that the quarter was "extremely challenging", as it reported a net loss of 644 million rupees ($10 million), compared with a profit of 2.88 billion rupees a year earlier.

Sales fell 20 percent to 19.34 billion rupees, and the company also reported one-off costs of 4.52 billion rupees in the quarter.  "Nestle India is making all efforts and will continue to engage with authorities to bring Maggi Noodles back on the shelves," Suresh Narayanan, due to take over as managing director of the company in August, said in a statement.

(How Other Instant Noodle Brands Are Using the Maggi Noodles Controversy to Their Advantage)

Nestle has been at the centre of India's worst food scare in a decade after local regulators reported that some packets of the company's Maggi instant noodles, one of India's most popular snacks, contained dangerous levels of lead.

(Beyond Maggi Noodles: Some of the Most Shocking Food Controversies)

Etienne Benet stepped down as the company's managing director last week, days after India's food safety regulator banned Maggi noodles, calling them "unsafe and hazardous for human consumption".

(Why Does the Indian Consumer Feel Betrayed by Maggi?)

The noodles sell at roughly a dozen rupees per packet, and Maggi has long been market leader in India, even though its sales represent only 0.005 percent of Nestle's global revenue of about 92 billion Swiss francs ($96 billion). Nestle has maintained Maggi is safe, and appealed against the ban in court. But it has to continue with a nationwide recall of some 27,400 tonnes of the noodles until a verdict is reached.

(States that Have Banned Maggi Noodles: Story So Far)

Recently, there has been a lot of buzz on social media about Maggi noodles being back on shelves. Maggi lovers have been posting pictures of noodle packets indicating that it is still available. One of them even posted a picture of the packet with an FSSAI logo. The Food Safety and Standards Authority of India (FSSAI) imposed the ban on 5th June 2015 which was followed by similar moves by governments of some Indian states and a nation-wide recall of all existing stock. We called few departmental stores and supermarkets across New Delhi and all of them confirmed that Maggi noodles are still banned here and are off shelves. 

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