UGC sets up body to prepare list of academic journals

Source: Hindustan Times dated 29.11.2018. Article by Amandeep Shukla

NEWDELHI: To curb the practice of academics getting papers included in so-called predatory journals (as dubious or sub-standard publications are called) instead of focusing on quality research, higher education regulator University Grants Commission (UGC) has formed a consortium of academic bodies to prepare and maintain a list of credible journals.

The step was taken after reports highlighted that the high number of papers being published in poor quality journals in India, adversely affecting the country’s image, UGC said in a note.

Named Consortium for Academic Research Ethics (CARE), the body, headed by UGC Vice Chairman Bhushan Patwardhan will prepare a list of journals in the field of social sciences, humanities, languages, arts, culture and Indian knowledge systems etc.

According to a communiqué by UGC Secretary Rajnish Jain, the Indian Council of Social Science Research (ICSSR), Indian Council of Philosophical Research (ICPR), Indian Council of Historical Research (ICHR), Sahitya Academy, Lalit Kala Academy, Indian Council for Medical Research (ICMR) etc will be among the several bodies which will be members of the consortium.

Members of the consortium will prepare the list of quality journals in their respective disciplines within a defined timeframe, it said. Once the CARE reference list of quality journals is released, it will replace the existing UGC list of approved journals, the regulator said.

The decision was taken at the UGC meeting earlier this month, the communiqué said.

“Publications in dubious substandard journals lead to long term academic damage and tarnishing of image. Research articles published in poor quality journals is reported to be high in India, which has adversely affected its image,” Jain said in the note. The number of research articles is an important factor in both institutional rankings as well as individual promotions.

UGC revamps system to weed out dodgy research paper shops

News article in the Indian Express dated 29.11.2018 regarding the revamp of UGC system to weed out dodgy research paper shops by Shyamlal Yadav. Link to this article:
http://epaper.indianexpress.com/c/34424731

Misinformation is Dictionary.com’s word of the year

Source: Times of India dated 27.11.2018

Misinformation, as opposed to disinformation, was chosen on Monday as Dictionary.com’s word of the year on the tattered coattails of “toxic,” picked earlier this month for the same honour by Oxford Dictionaries in these tumultuous times.
Jane Solomon, a linguist-in-residence at Dictionary, said in a recent interview that her site’s choice of “mis” over “dis” was deliberate, intended to serve as a “call to action” to be vigilant in the battle against fake news, flat earthers and anti-vaxxers, among other conduits. It’s the idea of intent, whether to inadvertently mislead or to do it on purpose, that the Oakland, California-based company wanted to highlight. The company decided it would go high when others have spent much of 2018 going low. AP

‘Misinformation’ ruled this year: Dictionary.com

Source: DNA dt. 27.11.2018

Misinformation, as opposed to disinformation, was chosen on Monday as Dictionary.com’s word of the year on the tattered coattails of “toxic,” picked earlier this month for the same honour by Oxford Dictionaries in these tumultuous times.

Jane Solomon, a linguist-in-residence at Dictionary, said in a recent interview that her site’s choice of “mis” over “dis” was deliberate, intended to serve as a “call to action” to be vigilant in the battle against fake news, flat-earthers and anti-vaxxers, among other conduits.

It’s the idea of intent, whether to inadvertently mislead or to do it on purpose, that the Oakland, California-based company wanted to highlight. The company decided it would go high when others have spent much of 2018 going low.

“The rampant spread of misinformation is really providing new challenges for navigating life in 2018,” Solomon told The Associated Press ahead of the word of the year announcement. “Misinformation has been around for a long time, but over the last decade or so the rise of social media has really, really changed how information is shared. We believe that understanding the concept of misinformation is vital to identifying misinformation as we encounter it in the wild, and that could ultimately help curb its impact.”

In studying lookups on the site that trended this year, Dictionary noticed “our relationship with the truth is something that came up again and again,” she said.

For example, the word “mainstream” popped up a lot, spiking in January as the term “mainstream media,” or MSM, grew to gargantuan proportions, wielded as an insult by some on the political right. Other words swirling around the same problem included a lookup surge in February for “white lie” after Hope Hicks, then White House communications director, admitted to telling a few for President Donald Trump.

The word “Orwellian” surfaced in heavy lookups in May, after a statement attributed to White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders accused the Chinese government of “Orwellian nonsense” in trying to impose its views on American citizens and private companies when it declared that United Airlines, American Airlines and other foreign carriers should refer to Taiwan, Hong Kong and Macau as part of China in public-facing materials, such as their websites.

Misinformation, Solomon said, “frames what we’ve all been through in the last 12 months.” In that vein, the site with 90 million monthly users has busied itself adding new word entries for “filter bubble,” ‘’fake news,” ‘’post-fact,” ‘’post-truth” and “homophily,” among others. Other word entries on the site have been freshened to reflect timely new meanings, including “echo chamber.”

The company’s runners-up for the top honour include “representation” driven by the popularity of the movies “Black Panther” and “Crazy Rich Asians,” along with wins during the US midterm elections for Muslim women, Native Americans and LGBTQ candidates.

But the rise of misinformation, Solomon said, stretches well beyond US borders and Facebook’s role in disseminating fake news and propaganda in the Cambridge Analytica scandal. —AP

Gender of justice

An article about gender sensitization of the judiciary and necessity of appointing more female judges  by G. S. Bajpai and Raghav Mendiratta in the Indian Express dated 19.11.2018. Link to this article:
http://epaper.indianexpress.com/c/34117678

All-men benches ponder over triple-talaq and Sabarimala

Source: DNA dated 19 Nov 2018
Article by Yogesh Pratap Singh

The idea of a reflective judiciary representing all sections of the society has only lately been recognized in India.

Even though reflective judiciary has not been raised as an issue before the Supreme Court, but Justice S R Pandian in Second Judges Transfer Case manifestly spoke for it: “It is essential and vital for the establishment of real participatory democracy that all sections and classes of people, be they backward classes or scheduled castes or scheduled tribes or minorities or women, should be afforded equal opportunity.”

This paper efforts to highlight the critical state of gender representation in the Indian judiciary. The government released in 2017 some disturbing statistics: of the judges in the Supreme Court and various High Courts, only 12% are women. The Supreme Court has only ever had eight women judges.

It was astounding to learn that the first woman judge in the Supreme Court was appointed only after 39 years of its establishment. After the retirement of Justice Ruma Pal, the Supreme Court was without a female judge for almost four years.

It was only after Her Excellency Prathibha Patil’s intervention, that the collegium headed by the Chief Justice K G Balakrishnan recommended the elevation of Gyan Sudha Misra, Chief Justice of the Jharkhand High Court, as Supreme Court judge.

The situation in High Courts are equally grim. The 24 High Courts of our country have only around 10% of women judges. And High Courts of Uttarakhand, Tripura, Meghalaya, Manipur, Jharkhand, Chhattisgarh, Jammu & Kashmir and Himachal Pradesh do not have even a single female judge.

The condition is shoddier in the lower judiciary. A report by the Vidhi Centre For Legal Policy (2017), reveals that the number of women judges can be pegged at around 28% of the total strength.

While states like Bihar (11.52%), Jharkhand (13.98%), Gujarat (15.11%), Jammu and Kashmir (18.62%) and Uttar Pradesh (21.4%) are at lowest end of spectrum, Meghalaya (73.8%), Goa (65.9%) and Sikkim (64.7%) are slightly better.

Inadequate representation of women has serious social and political ramifications. It not only demonstrates the lack of diversity in judicial perspectives, but directly magnifies the implied bias that exists in courts.

This dearth of diversity is sensed most intensely when we see constitutional benches, all comprised of men, pondering over critical women issues such as triple-talaq, marital rape, adultery and entry of women in temples and mosques. It crumbles the courts’ legitimacy as representative of the various sections of society and questions the equality of opportunity for women in the legal profession.

There seems a world of difference between precept and practice. The Supreme Court, which is at the helm of appointment affairs in constitutional courts for the last three decades, has failed miserably to apply principles of gender justice (which it has preached from the bench in cases like Vishaka or Sabrimala) while recommending names for High Courts and the Supreme Court.

It apparently seems to be clutched by patriarchal bias that confronts the process of appointment, promotion and elevation. Several judges and lawyers have testified to this gender bias in the appointment and promotion process.

The former Chief Justice of the Delhi High Court, Justice A P Shah, has evoked an instance how a woman lawyer recommended for judgeship was vetoed on the grounds that she was ‘rude, but similar behaviour displayed by a male lawyer have not been taken as a ground of disqualification.’

As far as subordinate judiciary is concerned, states like Andhra Pradesh, Assam, Bihar, Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand, Karnataka, Odisha, Rajasthan, Tamil Nadu and Telangana have provided a quota for women that ranges between 30 to 35%.

Prominent women lawyers like Indira Jaising, Meenakshi Arora and many others have expressly raised the issues of discrimination that women lawyers face in the legal profession embedded with a deeply-rooted ‘old boys club mentality’.

This has contributed to the low representation of women in legal profession, as estimated around 10%. When it comes to senior advocates in the Supreme Court, this further goes down to 3% (only 12 women lawyers have been designated as senior counsels by the Supreme Court).

Eight women in the Delhi High Court, six in the Bombay High Court and one in the Allahabad High Court, have been designated as senior advocates so far. This state of affairs makes it difficult for this class to aspire for judicial posts in constitutional courts.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who swears by gender justice, has to persuade state governments, at least those where the BJP is in power, to reduce this gender inequity by providing women reservation in judicial services at all levels.

But, eyes will be more on the five lords of country’s highest court. They will have to take this issue on board in a more systemic manner, if India’s higher judiciary is to be truly representative.

Writer is associate professor of law, NLU

Skill India is ailing

An article about problems in vocational training in India by Ashok Thakur and S. S. Mantha in the Indian Express dated 17.11.2018. Link to this article:

http://epaper.indianexpress.com/c/34053496

RTI Act is being steadily emasculated by spurious use of ‘personal information’ exemption

Source: Times of India dated 17.11.2018

Article by Shailesh Gandhi

The right to information is being steadily constricted by gross subversion of the law and Constitution. RTI Act mandates in Section 7 (1) that information can only be refused for exemptions specified in Section 8 and 9. Personal information may be exempted under Section 8 (1)(j) when “disclosure … has no relationship to any public activity or interest, or which would cause unwarranted invasion of the privacy of the individual unless the Central Public Information Officer or the State Public Information Officer or the appellate authority, as the case may be, is satisfied that the larger public interest justifies the disclosure of such information: Provided that the information, which cannot be denied to the Parliament or a State Legislature shall not be denied to any person.”

A simple reading of the words shows that information under this clause can be denied if it is personal information whose nature has apparently no relationship to any public activity or interest; or whose disclosure would cause unwarranted invasion of the privacy of the individual. If the information is personal information, it must be seen whether the information came to the public authority as a consequence of a public activity. Generally, most of the information in public records arises from a public activity. Applications for a government job, ration card, passport, caste certificates are some examples of public activity.

However, there may be some personal information which may be with public authorities public activity, eg medical records, or transactions with a public sector bank. Similarly, a public authority may come into possession of some information during a raid or seizure which may have no relationship to any public activity. These would be exempt.

Unfortunately, it has become commonplace for adjudicators to truncate this clause and deny all information which can be connected with any person. Across the country information about MLA funds expenditure, officer’s leave, caste certificates, file notings, educational degrees, beneficiaries of subsidies and much more is being denied. Many PIOs are denying information which may have the name of a person claiming it is personal information and hence exempt.

Even if the information has arisen by a public activity, it could still be exempt if disclosing it would be an unwarranted invasion on the privacy of an individual. The denial of information from public records on grounds of privacy has to be in line with Article 19 (2) of the Constitution which allows placing restrictions on Article 19 (1) (a) in the interest of ‘decency or morality’. If, however, it is felt that the information is not the result of any public activity, or disclosing it would be an unwarranted violation of ‘decency or morality’, before denying information it must be subjected to the acid test of the proviso: “provided that the information, which cannot be denied to the Parliament or a State Legislature shall not be denied to any person.”

Public servants have been used to answering questions raised in Parliament and legislatures. Hence, when they have a doubt, the law requires them to consider if they would give this information to the elected representatives. They must first come to the conclusion that they would not provide the information to MPs and MLAs, and record it when denying information to citizens.

Another perspective is that information is to be denied to citizens based on the presumption that disclosure would cause unjustified harm to some interest of an individual which should be protected. If, however, the information can be given to legislature it means the likely harm is not very high since what is given to legislature will be in public domain. Hence, it is necessary that when information is denied based on the provision of Section 8 (1) (j), the person denying the information must give his assessment that such information would be denied to Parliament or State legislature if sought in the decision.

This exemption has been illegally made so wide as to deny most information. This is an illegal and unconstitutional emasculation of RTI by a majority of officials, commissioners and courts. An important fundamental right is being curtailed and the right to publish could be next.

The writer is former Central Information Commissioner

The purpose of a public library

An article about the laws not addressing the most important issue of the role of public libraries by Bibek Debroy in the Indian Express dated 16.11.2018. Link to this article:

http://epaper.indianexpress.com/c/34026776

Law students can write exams as per old rules

Source DNA dated 14.11.2018, p.2

After the Bombay High Court stayed the 60:40 exam pattern, i.e., 60 marks for theory and 40 for practicals, for law course this year, the Mumbai University has withdrawn its August circular on introducing a new exam pattern. This has brought great relief to the students who were against the newly-introduced pattern.

According to law students, a paucity of faculty in law colleges will make it difficult for the new pattern to be implemented successfully, since it lays stress on internal examinations.

Parthsarthi Saraf, a third-year student of GJ Advani Law College in Bandra, had filed a writ petition in October against the new exam pattern.

He added, “If the university wants to introduce the 60:40 exam pattern, they should rope in full-time faculties first. The lack of full-time faculties in Mumbai University law colleges will make implementation of this pattern impossible.”

Echoing the sentiments of Saraf, Sachin Pawar, an LLM student, said, “Mumbai University has issued a circular for all law professors asking them to follow Bombay High Court’s order and conduct law exams for the academic year 2018-19 as per the prevailing system. However, we are desperately waiting to get the new timetable. We have also written to the Vice Chancellor to bring to his notice that the law exams should not clash with company secretary exams, which will begin from December 20.”

An official from Mumbai University said, “The university has decided to issue a new timetable in the next two to three days. As soon as the HC stayed the new exam pattern, the university announced it has been postponed.

Uniformity needed for admissions in universities

Uniformity needed for admissions in universities
Source: DNA, November 13, 2018

Mumbai: The Bombay High Court has said that the Maharashtra government needs to have a uniform mechanism of the admission process for students in all its universities.

A division bench of Justices B R Gavai and M S Karnik observed earlier this month that there is a disparity in the admission process in some educational institutions.

It was hearing petitions filed by two students challenging decisions of two different colleges for refusing them admission to masters course in law.

According to the petitioners, they had inadvertently mentioned marks secured by them in the final year of their graduation instead of the average marks secured during their three-year degree course.

The bench noted that there is a disparity in the procedure followed in different colleges and universities on the issue of which marks are to be taken into consideration.

“On account of this disparity, students are suffering,” the court said.

In some universities, the marks obtained only in the last year are considered as those obtained in the graduation while some universities consider the average of the marks obtained in all the years’ examinations, as the final marks, it said.

“We find it appropriate that at least in all the universities, which are under the control of Maharashtra state, there should be some uniform practice on this issue. One uniform mechanism needs to be followed for admission procedure,” the court said.

The bench also said that a “hyper-technical” approach should not be adopted by universities and colleges while giving admissions to students of various courses. —PTI

Student is a consumer, can file complaint

Source: Times of India dt. 10th November 2019, p.5

Student is a consumer, can file complaint

Jehangir B Gai

Aditya was a student studying in Oberoi International School, Goregaon. As the school had refused to allow him to appear for his exams, his mother filed a complaint before the Mumbai Suburban District Consumer Forum alleging deficiency in service and unfair trade practice.

The Forum dismissed the complaint on the ground that a student cannot be considered a consumer. Aditya’s mother challenged this order and argued her own appeal in person. She pointed out there were several precedents in which a student had been held to be a consumer.

The Maharashtra State Commission pointed out that conduct of exams by statutory boards was not considered to be a service-,but in the absence of any legal binding, it would be incorrect to hold a student is not a consumer. Besides, there were several rulings of the National Commission as well as the Supreme Court where it had been held that failure to adhere to the guidelines of the University Grants Commission constituted an unfair trade practice, and suitable relief was granted to students under the Consumer Protection Act.

In its order of November 1 delivered by Justice A P Bhangale for the bench along with A K Zade, the Commission held since the law did not debar a student from redressing his grievance before the consumer fora, the complaint ought to have been adjudicated on merit. The complaint was remanded back to the Forum to decide whether or not the school was responsible for deficiency in service or unfair trade or restrictive trade practice.

Conclusion: A student can approach the consumer forum against educational institutions which make bogus claims of affiliation, commit breach of University Grants Commission guidelines, misrepresent about the available infrastructure, or any other grievance which can be termed deficiency in service or unfair or restrictive trade practice.

(The author is a consumer activist and has won the Govt.of India's National Youth Award for Consumer Protection. His email is jehangir.gai.columnist@outlook.in)