Editorial 1:
Putting the brakes on ‘bulldozer justice’
Context
The thread in extra-legal demolitions carried out across different parts of India is a lack of due process and a blatant disregard for directives issued by the judiciary in the past.
Introduction
The Supreme Court of India has invited suggestions from the parties concerned to frame appropriate pan-India guidelines on extra-legal demolitions. The order comes in the wake of multiple instances of demolitions where the houses and building establishments of persons accused of certain crimes have been razed without following due process. These demolitions have become commonplace over the last few years, targeting vulnerable groups and often leaving them without any legal recourse.
What are the key concerns w.r.t Bulldozer justice?
- Discriminatory justice: This selective, yet arbitrary, state action has rendered the right to housing meaningless since evictions are brazenly carried out by local authorities, often at odd hours, without any alternative facility or engagement for rehabilitation.
- Marginalisation against the spirit of constitution: The inequality, social conflict and segregation that follow such action run the risk of intensifying the marginalisation of certain communities and go against the spirit of the Constitution and due process enshrined in criminal procedure laws.
- Limiting the executive power: In light of overarching principles of human rights, constitutional values and social justice, there is a strong need to formulate guidelines and re-imagine the existing legal framework which bestows unbridled executive power on municipal authorities to order and execute such demolitions.
The legality of punitive demolitions
- Cases of large-scale demolition drives: as a means of collective punishment for rioters are becoming rampant.
- For instance, What started with bulldozer action in Delhi’s Jahangirpuri has now spilled over to different parts of the country.
- The violence that ensued in Nuh, Haryana, due to a clash between two religious groups in 2023, ended with the local administration demolishing a number of homes in the neighbourhood.
- Communal riots in Madhya Pradesh’s Khargone also resulted in the demolition of houses and businesses owned by Muslims who were deemed to be ‘alleged rioters’.
- Bypassing the due process of law in haste: Quick instinctive action against those perceived to be at odds with the law has emerged as a dangerous pattern of state-driven oppression.
- In each of these cases, the demolition is justified under municipal laws either on account of action against encroachment or under the pretext of unauthorised construction.
- The due process envisaged under various judgments of the Supreme Court and High Courts, including Sudama Singh & Ors. vs Government of Delhi and Ajay Maken & Ors vs Union of India are completely bypassed.
- The tit for tat approach: This ‘tough on crime’ or ‘eye for an eye’ approach has escalated to become a political brand for several State governments.
- Violating the fundamental rights: Treating demolitions as a fair response to the destruction of public infrastructure undermines existing processes envisaged under criminal laws and constitutes a gross violation of fundamental rights.
- Supreme Courts intervention: In the course of devising guidelines for such extra-legal demolitions, the Supreme Court must impose a complete moratorium on the punitive demolition of establishments.
- In other legitimate instances of demolition, the guidelines should prescribe a strict tripartite procedure to ensure that those at the receiving end are not rendered helpless without any recourse.
Due process in legitimate demolitions
The issue of displacement of persons for varied reasons has for long been a cause of concern.
- The United Nations Basic Principles and Guidelines on Development-based Evictions and Displacement, 2019: prescribe directives to address this issue from a humanitarian perspective, multiple court cases in the higher judiciary have dealt with demolition issues in a piecemeal manner over the years.
- Albeit helpful, these scattered efforts to address the issue have culminated in a myopic view of the problem, leading to temporary solutions.
- The current task of the Supreme Court — i.e., formulating pan-India guidelines — must look at the issue through a multidimensional lens.
- Demolitions as a last resort: The cardinal rule is that demolitions must be carried out only in exceptional circumstances, and according to the due process established under law.
- Accurately classifying the law: Of not only the types of buildings or constructions that can be brought down by state actions but also the surrounding circumstances that need to be assessed before any action is taken.
- Balance between rights and actions: The assessment of the surrounding circumstances must strike a balance between state action and the right to adequate housing and resettlement while bearing in mind that such violations have come to be systemic.
- Understanding the agenda and patterns of demolitions: There is also a need to analyse data on demolitions that have taken place over the last few years to identify clear patterns and better understand the existing gaps and deficiencies in the process.
Key aspects that can be considered for the guidelines
Once broader subject-matter-based issues have been addressed, an analysis should be done for procedural steps that can be incorporated into the relevant legislation and rules. The procedural guidelines should be structured in a phased manner, to add multiple checkboxes at each stage which need to be ticked before any adverse or irreversible step is taken.
- The first phase, i.e., pre-demolition: The burden of proof to show cause should be shifted from the affected person and placed on the authority to show why no other option other than demolition and displacement of affected persons is needed for public good and how the relevant human rights are being protected in the process.
- A reasoned notice for demolition: including information about land records and resettlement plans, should be widely publicised, giving ample time for those concerned to analyse the situation, seek legal advice and respond to the show-cause notice.
- An independent committee: appointed by the State government, including judicial and civil society representatives, should review the proposed demolition (particularly when a large number of houses in a neighbourhood are proposed to be demolished) and provide technical assistance to the affected parties about their rights and options.
- Stakeholders approach: Affected persons must be engaged in discussions about alternative housing options and compensation.
- Focus on the vulnerable members: During this phase, the needs of vulnerable groups such as children, the elderly, and disabled persons should be addressed.
- Granting time: A minimum period of a month should be provided between the intimation of notice to demolish and its execution, allowing affected individuals time to retrieve their belongings.
- The second phase, i.e., during the demolition: The use of physical force should be minimised in the eviction process and the use of heavy machinery such as bulldozers should be avoided.
- Presence of officials: There should be a requirement for the presence of government officials who are not a part of the authority demolishing the construction.
- Pre decided time: The time for the demolition should be pre-decided and surprise demolitions should be cause for punitive action against the authority.
- The third phase, i.e., rehabilitation: Adequate and proper temporary or permanent rehabilitation should be provided to the persons concerned to ensure that they are not left homeless.
- A speedy grievance redress mechanism: needs to be established under every law that allows for demolition to afford the affected persons a chance to challenge the decisions that may have been taken at any stage.
- Remedies such as compensation, restitutions and return to the original home must be carved out within the law.
Way forward
Affixing personal liability
While the demolitions carried out across different parts of India reflect varied patterns, the golden thread that runs through all such instances is the lack of due process and blatant disregard for directives issued by the judiciary in the past. Municipal laws, which empower authorities to carry out such demolitions, usually provide complete impunity to officials under the ‘good faith’ clauses housed under such laws. Such clauses prevent the initiation of judicial action against those who unscrupulously carry out demolitions.
Conclusion
While laying down pan-India guidelines is most definitely a welcome step, sensitisation of law enforcement personnel to follow existing directives on the subject matter is the need of the hour. Simultaneously, avenues to affix personal liability on those who order such forced evictions and demolitions should be explored to ensure that there are checks and balances in the powers wielded by officials. Sensitizing law enforcement and affixing personal liability are essential steps to ensure accountability and balance in demolition practices across India.
Editorial 2:
Health care using AI is bold, but much caution first
Context
India cannot jump into AI-driven health care without first addressing the foundational issues within its health system.
Introduction
News about the possibility of a “free AI powered primary-care physician for every Indian, available 24/7” within the next five years is ambitious. It raises critical questions about feasibility, sustainability, and the readiness of India to tackle such enormous undertakings.
Importance of Primary Health Care
- Primary health care (PHC) ensures the right to the highest attainable level of health by bringing integrated services closer to communities.
- Addressing the health needs, tackles broader health determinants through multisectoral action, and empowers individuals to manage their health.
- Risk of adapting AI: We risk undermining this fundamental aspect of PHC by relying on Artificial Intelligence (AI) as it is impersonal, making people passive recipients of care rather than active participants.
Artificial Intelligence v/s Human
- Importance of Human intelligence: AI excels in processing and automating repetitive tasks but lacks characteristics of human intelligence such as understanding the physical world, retrieving complex information, maintaining persistent memory, and engaging in reasoning and planning.
- Non-mechanistic aspects of health: These are all fundamental to medicine, where understanding the nuances of a patient’s condition goes beyond pattern recognition.
- Need for human skill: Delivering health care demands a human-centric approach of empathy and cultural understanding.
- Consciousness — the awareness and understanding of the real-world environment — underpins human decision-making, distinguishing human intelligence from AI.
- Ethical concerns: AI cannot replicate the moral and ethical reasoning that comes from conscious experience.
- Unlike other domains, health-care data is scattered, incomplete and often inaccessible for AI training, making it difficult to train a model.
What are the key data, models and issues?
- Traditional methods: Naegele’s rule from obstetrics, which has been in use for over 200 years, can be used to highlight the challenges in health care.
- It is based on 18th century reproductive habits of European women, which may not be applicable today.
- This method is used to predict the birth date of a child during pregnancy. It relies solely on the length of the last menstrual cycle and has a 4% accuracy.
- It fails to account for critical factors such as maternal age, parity, nutrition, height, race, and uterus type, which are essential for accurate prediction.
- Developing a better predictive model than Naegele’s rule requires vast amounts of personal data, which belong rightfully to patients.
- This illustrates the inherent paradox in AI development in health care — the need for extensive data collection to improve accuracy is at odds with privacy and ethical concerns.
- Costs of introducing an AI: The costs involved in establishing infrastructure to capture, collect, and train this data are substantial.
- As reproductive health and fertility rates change over time, constant fine-tuning of AI models is necessary, leading to recurring expenses.
- Health-care data is complex and personal, making it difficult to standardise it across populations.
- Demographic challenges in capturing the data: India’s diversity complicates the issue further.
- This diversity means that data for AI models must be extensive and deeply contextualised, but generating such data requires access to personal and behavioural information.
AI’s utility in health care
- Defining and streamlining the tasks: AI can play a crucial role in specific, well-defined tasks within health care, particularly through narrow intelligence, diffusion models and transformers.
- Importance of Narrow Intelligence: It focuses on specialised tasks such as predicting hospital kitchen supply needs, managing biomedical waste, or optimising drug procurement.
- Diffusion models: which are adept at predicting patterns from complex datasets, can help screen histopathology slides or screen only a subset of the population using medical images.
- Large Language Models (LLMs) and Large Multimodal Models (LMMs): Are emerging as powerful tools in medical education and research writing.
- These can provide rapid access to medical knowledge, simulate patient interactions, and support the training of health-care professionals.
- By offering personalised learning experiences and simulating complex clinical scenarios, LLMs and LMMs can complement traditional medical education.
Concerns regarding Artificial Intelligence
- The Black box problem: A significant issue with AI in health care is the “black box” problem, where the decision-making processes of AI algorithms are not transparent or easily understood.
- This poses risks in health care, where understanding the rationale behind a diagnosis or treatment plan is critical.
- Health-care providers are left in the dark about how certain conclusions are reached, leading to a lack of trust and potential harm if the AI makes an incorrect or inappropriate recommendation.
- Real life vs Reel Life debate: Google DeepMind’s AI mysterious algorithm defeating world-class players in the GO game (board game) can be celebrated.
- While such feats are acceptable for games, they raise concerns in real-life health-care decisions.
Thus, the stakes are serious in human health, where the consequences of a mistake can be life-threatening.
India and the issue of AI governance
- Ethical concerns: A recent petition in the Kenyan Parliament by content moderators against OpenAI’s ChatGPT has highlighted the ethical complexities in AI development, revealing the exploitation of underpaid workers in training AI models.
- Safeguarding interest from exploitative tendencies: This raises concerns about the exploitation of vulnerable populations in AI training.
- It underscores the importance of safeguarding the interests of Indian patients because the data required to train the model legally belong to patients.
Way forward
Addressing the ethical needs should be a key priority. While population-level data generated by health systems can be useful, it is prone to ecological fallacy. India lacks comprehensive regulation or legislation addressing AI such as the European Union Artificial Intelligence Act, making it all the more critical. AI tools in health care must be developed and deployed with the core medical ethics of “Do No Harm”.
Conclusion
AI-powered health care in India promises increased efficiency and reduced error rates. Advanced AI technologies require significant investments in research, data infrastructure, and continuous updates — costs that someone must bear. India cannot leapfrog into AI-driven health care without first addressing the foundational issues in its health system. The complexities of patient care, the need for high-quality data, and the ethical implications of AI demand a more measured approach. Ensuring a more inclusive and ethical AI will help address many current and upcoming challenges and ensure all are participants to the AI investment infrastructure.
