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The fifth edition of the National Family Health Survey (NFHS) provides a valuable insight into changes underway in Indian society. It throws light on traditional parameters, for instance im munisation among children, births in registered hospital facilities, and nutritional levels. While there is a general improvement in these parameters, there were mixed signals in nutrition. Gains in childhood nutrition were minimal as were improvements in obesity levels. The prevalence of anaemia has actually worsened since the last survey in 2015-16. But the survey’s major contribution is its insight into behavioural and sociological churn. When highlights were made public last year, the focus was on India’s declining total fertility rate that had, for the first time in the country’s history, dipped to below the replacement level, or a TFR (Total Fertility Rate) of 2.1. If the trend were to persist, India’s population was on the decline in line with what has been observed in developed countries, and theoretically means improved living standards per capita and greater gender equity. Because this TFR had been achieved across most States, two notable exceptions being most populous Uttar Pradesh and Bihar, it was also evidence that population decline could be achieved without coercive state policies and family planning has struck deep roots. The more detailed findings, made public last week, suggest that this decline is agnostic to religion. 

Russia invaded Ukraine on February 24 apparently to stop NATO’s further expansion into its neighbourhood. But in less than three months, the same invasion has pushed two countries in that neighbourhood to consider NATO membership. Last week, the Prime Minister and President of Finland, which has stayed neutral since the end of the Second World War, said they hoped their country would apply for NATO membership ”without delay”. Sweden, which has stayed out of military alliances for 200 years, stated that NATO membership would strengthen its national security and stability in the Baltic and Nordic regions. If these two countries now formally apply for membership, it would be the biggest strategic setback for Russian President Vladimir Putin whose most important foreign policy focus has been on weakening NATO. Particularly alarming for Russia is the case of Finland, with which it has a hostile past. Stalin invaded Finland in 1939 demanding more territories. Though the Red Army struggled in the initial phase of the war, it forced Finland to sign the Moscow Peace Treaty, ceding some 9% of its territory. But a year later, the Finns, in an alliance with the German Nazis, attacked the Soviet troops. Peace was established along the 1,340-km Finnish-Russian border after the Nazis were defeated in the Second World War. Now, Ukraine appears to have deepened the security concerns of Finland and Sweden. It is still not clear whether these countries would be inducted into NATO any time soon. Within the alliance, decisions are taken unanimously. Turkey has already expressed its opposition to taking the Nordic countries in. While the U.S. and the U.K. are pushing for NATO’s expansion, Germany and France have taken a more cautious line.  Hungary, which has deep ties with Russia and has already held up the EU’s plan to ban Russian oil imports, has not made its views clear. But the mere declaration of intent by Finland and Sweden to join NATO has sent tensions in Europe soaring, with Russia threatening ’military and technical’ retaliation. Normatively speaking, Finland and Sweden are sovereign countries and free to take decisions on joining any alliance. It is up to NATO to decide whether they should be taken in or not. But a bigger question these countries as well as Europe as a whole face is whether another round of expansion of NATO would help bring in peace and stability in Europe, particularly at a time when the continent is facing a pre-First World War-type security competition. It would escalate the current crisis between nuclear-armed Russia and NATO to dangerous levels. Already the several rounds of NATO expansion and Russia’s territorial aggression have brought the world to its most dangerous moment since the 1962 Cuban missile crisis. Russia should immediately halt the war and all the stakeholders should focus on finding a long-term solution to the crisis.

Pronouncing its verdict on a protracted dispute over the levy of Goods and Services Tax (GST) on ocean freight charges paid by importers, the Supreme Court on Thursday held that such a tax was untenable. Its 153-page judgment has also dwelt at length on the nature of the recommendations of the GST Council, the constitutional body set up to oversee the operations of the indirect tax regime. Invoking the spirit of cooperative federalism, the Court has held that both the Union and State legislatures have ”equal, simultaneous and unique powers” to make GST laws, and the recommendations of the Council, where they have a one-third and two thirds voting share, respectively, are not binding on them. While amending the Constitution to pave way for the tax system that subsumed multiple central and State levies, Parliament had intended for the Council’s recommendations to only have ’a persuasive value’, as per the Court. This has sparked fears that individual States can start vetoing the Council’s recommendations that they do not agree with, and refuse to implement them, thus threatening the ’One Nation, One Tax’ edifice of a reform that took years to bring about. Opposition-ruled States have hailed the verdict as upholding their rights vis-`a-vis what a few termed as the ’arbitrary imposition’ of Centre’s decisions in the Council. The Finance Ministry has sought to quell anxiety by indicating that the Court has only elaborated on the Council’s existing arrangement and the status quo would continue. States can already reject the Council’s decisions but none has chosen to so far, it said. 

The main advantage of the scheme of Linguistic Provinces which appeals to me quite strongly is that Linguistic Provinces would make democracy work better than it would in mixed Provinces. A Linguistic Province produces what democracy needs, namely, social homogeneity. Now the homogeneity of a people depends upon their having a belief in a common origin, in the possession of a common language and literature, in their pride in a common historic tradition, community of social customs, etc. is a proposition which no student of sociology can dispute. The absence of a social homogeneity in a State creates a dangerous situation especially where such a State is raised on a democratic structure. History shows that democracy cannot work in a State where the population is not homogeneous. In a heterogeneous population divided into groups which are hostile and anti-social towards one another the working of democracy is bound to give rise to cases of discrimination, neglect, partiality, suppression of the interests of one group at the hands of another group which happens to capture political power. The reason why in an heterogeneous society, democracy cannot succeed is because power instead of being used impartially and on merits and for the benefit of all is used for the aggrandisement of one group and to the detriment of another. On the other hand, a State which is homogeneous in its population can work for the true ends of democracy, for there are no artificial barriers or social antipathies which lead to the misuse of political power. 

I was on the point of asking him what that work might be, but something in his manner showed me that the question would be an unwelcome one. I pondered over our short conversation, however, and endeavoured to draw my deductions from it. He said that he would acquire no knowledge which did not bear upon his object. Therefore all the knowledge which he possessed was such as would be useful to him. I enumerated in my own mind all the various points upon which he had shown me that he was exceptionally well-informed. I even took a pencil and jotted them down. I could not help smiling at the document when I had completed it. It ran in this way— Sherlock Holmes—his limits. 1. Knowledge of Literature.—Nil. 2. Philosophy.—Nil. 3. Astronomy.—Nil. 4. Politics.—Feeble. 5. Botany.—Variable. Well up in belladonna, opium, and poisons generally. Knows nothing of practical gardening. 6. Practical but limited. Tells at a glance different soils from each other. After walks has shown me splashes upon his trousers, and told me by their colour and consistence in what part of London he had received them. 7. Chemistry.—Profound. 8. Anatomy.—Accurate, but unsystematic. 9. Sensational Literature.—Immense. He appears to know every detail of every horror perpetrated in the century. 10. Plays the violin well. 11. Is an expert singlestick player, boxer, and swordsman. 12. Has a good practical knowledge of British law. 

Curiously, the chiming of the hour seemed to have put new heart into him. He was a lonely ghost uttering a truth that nobody would ever hear. But so long as he uttered it, in some obscure way the continuity was not broken. It was not by making yourself heard but by staying sane that you carried on the human heritage. He went back to the table, dipped his pen, and wrote: To the future or to the past, to a time when thought is free, when men are different from one another and do not live alone—to a time when truth exists and what is done cannot be undone: From the age of uniformity, from the age of solitude, from the age of Big Brother, from the age of doublethink —greetings! He was already dead, he reflected. It seemed to him that it was only now, when he had begun to be able to formulate his thoughts, that he had taken the decisive step. The consequences of every act are included in the act itself. He wrote: Thoughtcrime does not entail death: thoughtcrime IS death. Now he had recognized himself as a dead man it became important to stay alive as long as possible. Two fingers of his right hand were inkstained. It was exactly the kind of detail that might betray you. Some nosing zealot in the Ministry (a woman, probably: someone like the little sandy-haired woman or the dark-haired girl from the Fiction Department) might start wondering why he had been writing during the lunch interval, why he had used an old-fashioned pen, WHAT he had been writing—and then drop a hint in the appropriate quarter. He went to the bathroom and carefully scrubbed the ink away with the gritty darkbrown soap which rasped your skin like sandpaper and was therefore well adapted for this purpose. He put the diary away in the drawer. It was quite useless to think of hiding it, but he could at least make sure whether or not its existence had been discovered. A hair laid across the page-ends was too obvious. With the tip of his finger he picked up an identifiable grain of whitish dust and deposited it on the corner of the cover, where it was bound to be shaken off if the book was moved. 

In a substantial blow in favour of free speech, the Supreme Court has effectively suspended the operation of the sedition provision in the country’s penal law. ”All pending trials, appeals and proceedings with respect to the charge framed under Section 124A be kept in abeyance”, it has said in an order that will bring some welcome relief to those calling for the abrogation of Section 124A of the IPC, which criminalises any speech, writing or representation that ”excites disaffection against the government”. The Court has recorded its hope and expectation that governments at the Centre and the States will refrain from registering any fresh case of sedition under Section 124A of the IPC, or continuing with any investigation or taking any coercive measure under it. The hope and the expectation arise from the Union government’s own submission that it has decided to re-examine and reconsider the provision as part of the Prime Minister’s efforts to scrap outdated laws and compliance burdens. Perhaps, realising that its order may not be enough to deter thin-skinned and vindictive governments and politically pliant police officers from invoking it against detractors and dissenters, the Court has given liberty to the people to approach the jurisdiction courts if any fresh case is registered for sedition and cite in their support the present order, as well as the Union government’s stand. That the sedition law is being persistently misused has been recognised years ago, and courts have pointed out that the police authorities are not heeding the limitation imposed by a 1962 Constitution Bench of the Supreme Court on what constitutes sedition. The Court had upheld the section only by reading it down to mean that it is applicable only to ”acts involving intention or tendency to create disorder, or disturbance of law and order, or incitement to violence”. In practice, the police have been using the broad definition of sedition to book anyone who criticised the Government in strong and strident language. The question now before the Court is whether it ought to overrule a decision rendered by a five-judge Bench 60 years ago. If it chooses to do so and strikes down Section 124A as an unconstitutional restriction on free speech, it may help the larger cause of preventing misuse of provisions relating to speech-based offences. However, the Government may choose to prevent such a situation by amending it so that the offence is narrowly defined to cover only acts that affect the sovereignty, integrity and security of the state, as reportedly recommended by a panel of experts. When the Government submitted that it was revisiting the provision on its own, it was expecting only an indefinite postponement of the hearing on the constitutional validity of Section 124A, but it must now heed the spirit of the order and take effective steps to prevent its misuse.