Editorial 1:The continuing distribution of the death penalty
Context
Creating a safer environment for women and children is a complex issue; punishment alone cannot change society.
Introduction
The life of the death sentence in India has been unending, and like a phoenix revives itself in different forms every now and then. The latest addition to this is the Aparajita Woman and Child (West Bengal Criminal Laws Amendment) Bill, 2024, adopted by the West Bengal government, the reason being the brutal rape and murder of a doctor at Kolkata’s R.G. Kar Medical College and Hospital. It seeks to amend the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita, 2023 (BNS), the Bharatiya Nagarik Suraksha Sanhita, 2023 and the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences Act, 2012, in their application to the State of West Bengal. Among other things, it introduces the death penalty for the offence of rape.
Critical review of Laws related to sexual crimes
- While it has been unanimously passed by the Bengal Assembly, the State Governor was critical but has referred it to the President of India Droupadi Murmu for consideration.
- In the month of August, there were several such cases in other States with the survivors being Dalit/Adivasi women and children.
- In 2022 alone, the National Crime Records Bureau recorded 31,516 rapes in India, nearly four each hour, and 248 cases of murder with rape/gang rape. Rajasthan, Uttar Pradesh, and Madhya Pradesh topped the list with 5,399, 3,690, and 3,029 recorded cases of rape, respectively.
Global data
- The global figures on the death penalty: from Amnesty International, at the end of 2023, nearly three quarters of countries had abolished the death penalty in law or practice:
- Abolition of Death Penalty: 112 countries had completely abolished the death penalty in law for all crimes, while 144 countries overall had abolished the death penalty in law or practice.
- In South Asia, while Bhutan and Nepal are the only abolitionists for all crimes, the Maldives and Sri Lanka are abolitionists in practice.
- Retention of Death Penalty: But 55 countries still retained the death penalty in law and practice. India, along with Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Pakistan, are the retentionists.
- Project39A reports that in 2023 alone, India had 120 recorded death sentences. There were no recorded executions, and the number is down from 167 in 2022.
- Highest death row population: In two decades there were 561 people under the death sentence in India at the end of 2023, a constant rise since 2019, when it was 378.
- Procedural concerns: Most of such death row prisoners spend several years on death row, with some being exonerated later.
- Psychological and physiological concerns: They have severe physical, psychological and mental health problems and without any state compensation, which suggest grave procedural flaws and perhaps caste, class, and religious biases that pervade different institutions of the Indian criminal justice system and the people who exude power through them.
- Some of these prisoners commit suicide, signifying the inhuman prison conditions in which they are made to live, including prison overcrowding, as undertrials are mostly from the marginalises communities and left to fend for themselves.
- They continue to constitute three-fourths of the total number of incarcerated people in India.
On VAWC and societal responses
- The impact of use of ‘decolonisation language’ that gave birth to the BNS (replacing the Indian Penal Code), while enabling a few positive changes, has increased the number of offences punishable by death from 12 to 18.
- Dormancy w.r.t women concerns: India has shifted to a more deterrent regime for sexual offences without any significant change in women’s safety and empowerment.
- Recent trends on death sentence: A glance at the nature of offences where the death sentence has been given by sessions courts in 2023, shows murder involving sexual offences at the top of the chart (64)
- Sexual violence against women and children (VAWC), particularly where the victim is killed, most often led to outbursts of public anger, grief, and shock, followed by the demand of capital punishment from certain sections for the rapists, who are often termed as rakshas, haivaan, wehshi darinda.
- This framing creates an ‘othering’ — as if the accused is not from the same society that we inhabit — and justifies death for them as a tool for avengement, which also seems to be rooted in India’s religious and societal culture that celebrates death (the killing of devils by gods and goddesses).
- Such calls for ‘justice’ to victims: mostly use the honour of the family, community, and nation, ignoring the victim’s autonomy and what they want, which is also reflected in judicial discourse.
- Normalisation and politico-legal tolerance: of everyday VAWC by men, including their public flogging, sexual violence, and killing — outside by strangers without any public intervention, and at home by husbands and relatives. Worryingly, searches for victims’ videos trend on Google and explicit sites.
- The recommendations made by the Justice Verma Committee argued that the death sentence does not necessarily act as a deterrent against crimes such as sexual offences, including gang rapes.
- The Union Cabinet did not consider those recommendations: So, if the objective behind the death penalty is not fulfilled, the carceral politics of sexual violence must be dismantled by infusing abolitionist feminism.
- Need for Human rights-based language: A key concern is also to bring human rights-based language to masses, the majority of whom do not have access to it, and whose thoughts towards the death penalty are shaped by cultural and religious narratives.
- Need for Human abolitionist feminist movement: to refuse the death sentence and even life imprisonment without parole as responses to sexual violence including rape.
- This movement should seek to understand and work upon the social causes and cultural conditions that lead to VAWC.
- Addressing the structural issues: of redistribution of land and wealth for the marginalised communities, their representation in all spaces and institutions — both private and public — and a radical shift towards properly funded public education and health care.
- Collaborative efforts: By the governments and society need to work on the kind of targeted support and a range of state facilities rape survivors need in order to access education, employment, health, marital and family life.
- Holistic and comprehensive support to victims: They also need to provide support to families of rape survivors, particularly minor siblings, if any, in terms of their access to education and resources, and take part in community building and a realisation of fraternity to ensure their dignity that the Indian Constitution upholds.
Complex issues but there must be a start
- Need for Victim-centred procedural and institutional reforms and some sort of ‘beta padhao, beti bachao (educate the son, to protect the daughter’) policy initiative to eliminate the patriarchal notion of the honour of the family, community, and nation residing in female bodies and virginity.
- Avoiding Invisibilising and ignoring the problems mentioned above: as it will make the abolition movement appear superficial to say the least and forced from the top.
- Avoiding the escape route: The death penalty is the safest escape route from accountability as it does not burden the state with the hard work of reforming the police, prosecution, judiciary and supporting survivors.
- Ensuring an evidence based policymaking: A culture of utilising existing research for an evidence-based informed policymaking by the central and State legislatures needs to be inculcated to avoid knee-jerk populist reactions that lead to criminal injustice.
- Research on the judicial background: Additionally, research needs to be conducted on if and how the socio-religious background of judges plays a role in them awarding the death sentence.
Way forward
Indian society is again striving for social change through legal reform. It seeks the care, the safety and the support for rape survivors and their families, alongside state accountability. But we must remain attentive to how the apparatus of laws (including contract, family, labour and property laws) constructs the socio-economic status of women and children, particularly from the oppressed castes and other marginalised communities. It asymmetrically distributes wealth, knowledge and power. Abolition of the death penalty and creating a safer environment for women and children are complex issues. They require understanding, teaching, and engaging the law, critically.
Conclusion
There must be an admission of and public talk about caste, race, religion and gender-based violence through an intersectionality lens, including by the organisations and the people who champion these causes. Feminists argue that sexual offences are more about power than sex. There is a need for public and judicial awareness campaigns debunking the myth of the death sentence leading to a reduction in VAWC and to bring gender equity from within the private sphere (family) to the public sphere, rather than distributing death penalty and sentence inflation. Punishment alone cannot change society. Thus, effective change requires shifting the focus from punitive measures like the death penalty to promoting gender equity.
Editorial 2: Demographic advantage, Indian economy’s sweet spot
Context
Gainfully employing a large, young, and aspirational population is not easy but it is a challenge India can take on.
Introduction
Much has been written about India’s emergence as an economic giant — it is the world’s fastest growing big economy, and is currently the fifth largest. Demographics is a major factor in propelling this rise given that the median age is around 28 years and 63% of the population is of working age. However, the labour force participation rate stood at 55.2% in 2022, according to a recent report released by the International Labour Organization (ILO), which goes on to state that falling labour intensity is likely due to growth being led by the services sector rather than manufacturing. Therefore, while we are certainly not experiencing “jobless growth”, more steps are needed to harness the demographic dividend.
Continue with the reforms agenda
- Pushing for ongoing reforms: There is a need to press ahead with the ongoing reforms agenda to maintain, if not accelerate, India’s growth trajectory as that by itself will create opportunities galore.
- Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman’s Budget speech referred to initiate and incentivise improvements in productivity and to facilitate markets and sectors to become more efficient.
- Cooperation between centre and states: While there is much that the Centre has done to enhance ease of doing business, much of what needs to be done next, especially in the context of production, concerns the States (which is where the action is now). Hence, both need to walk in lockstep to broaden and deepen reforms.
- Technological boost: The Economic Survey for 2023-24 states that technological advancements have led to a declining capital-to-output ratio and an increasing capital-to labour ratio.
- Labour related concerns: Arvind Panagariya, economist and Chairman of the 16th Finance Commission, while speaking at a recent event in the Federation Of Indian Chambers Of Commerce and Industry said capital-led economic growth is not ideal as the country has an abundance of labour.
- Challenges faced by MSMEs: The reluctance of Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises, the backbone of employment, to grow in size and scale as well as that of large business houses to foray into labour-intensive sectors can be attributed to the compliance burden and costs imposed by outdated labour laws.
- Challenges in labour intensive sectors The impasse over implementing the new labour codes approved by Parliament is sending a wrong signal to existing and prospective investors alike.
- It is important that one or two States with an evolved manufacturing ecosystem break the logjam by taking the lead.
- Push for manufacturing sector: The Centre’s efforts to give a boost to the manufacturing sector is generally viewed from the angle that it is untenable for 45% of the workforce to be employed in the agricultural sector which accounts for only 18% of GDP.
- Fragmentation and productivity concerns: While taking steps to enhance agricultural productivity, we must not forget those who are engaged in the unorganised and non-agricultural sectors — about 19% of the workforce — which are highly fragmented and suffer from low productivity.
- Skill upgradation: It is important to address their aspirations by focusing on high-growth potential sectors such as toys, apparel, tourism, and logistics which are also labour intensive.
- Then, as skills get upgraded, there will be an opportunity to move up the value chain and provide even better and higher paying jobs.
Skilling is a continuous process
Skilling is an important aspect of making future generations productive members of society. The Economic Survey highlighted that only 4.4% of the workforce in the age cohort of 15-29 years is formally skilled.
- Workforce skilling related concerns: The dichotomy of labour surplus and skills shortage must be addressed through meaningful public-private partnerships wherein industry plays an integral role in devising the curriculum and imparting ‘on the job training’.
- Boosting the lifelong skilling: Moreover, skilling is not a one-time intervention but a lifelong process which requires flexibility in institutional mechanisms as well as learning agility.
- The emphasis of the New Education Policy (NEP) 2020 on foundational skills as well as higher order cognitive skills and critical thinking is a good step but, in a constantly changing world, the document must be reviewed periodically and updated.
Way Forward: Impact of AI/ML
- Major risks related to AI/ML: In an era of artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML), repetitive tasks with low skills are most at risk but there will always be a need for human intervention and oversight.
- Balanced approach to AI/ML: While we must not underestimate the impact of AI/ML, neither should it be demonised.
- Harnessing regulations: The key is to have appropriate regulations govern its use while harnessing what it has to offer.
- Growth dynamics of AI/ML: In addition to the opportunities offered by various emerging sectors, AI/ML itself is estimated by Statista to grow by nearly nine times to become a $826.73 billion worldwide market by 2030.
- According to NASSCOM: India already has the second largest talent pool globally in this field but the current gap between demand and supply is 51% which is projected to widen. Though very niche, it is an opportunity which should not be missed.
Conclusion
Gainfully employing a large, young and aspirational population is not easy but it is a far better challenge to have than dealing with an ageing one with its attendant economic and societal implications. India is in a sweet spot and must employ a holistic approach to create a talent pool so as to harness its demographic dividend for the benefit of the world at large. Thus, the proactive steps towards harnessing demographic dividend will help us achieve a more inclusive growth.
