Scientific Approach to Fighting Poverty

I strongly recommend reading Esther Duflo's interview in The Hindu Business Line. There is much sense in the points she makes about a lack of research about effectiveness of various schemes. It also tells us why it may not be a good idea to rapidly expand coverage of schemes without waiting for the outcome of pilot studies.

Vinay Sitapati on Homosexuality: A Comment

Vinay Sitapati's op-ed 'Which tale to tell?' in the Indian Express today is not very well thought out. His first point may be true that many believe (falsely) it is a western rich-boy perversion. But his argument on harm is more troublesome: 'After all, we don’t have the freedom to smoke cocaine or commit incest (even though, strictly speaking, these choices don’t harm anyone else).' The argument in case of both cocaine and incest is that they do harm someone. In case of cocaine, it is not only the person consuming it but also those who are victims of crimes perpetrated either by people on the drug or by those committing crimes in pursuit of it. The same goes for incest where the argument is that it harms the child who might be born out of that relationship.

The next problem is with his facts. He says 'Since scientific data conclusively proves that sexual orientation is determined at an early age and is unchangeable, being gay is like being born a woman, a Dalit or a Muslim.' This is not entirely true. It is now said that sexual orientation may not necessarily be determined at an early age and may evolve over time. Prof. K.S.Jacob's op-ed in The Hindu recently also reiterates this point.

His third error is his statement on the equality portion of the judgment: 'Just as there can be no discrimination on the basis of race, caste or religion, those with alternate sexual orientations cannot be discriminated against. This is what the high court meant when it said that the constitutionally protected identity of “sex” in articles 15 and 16, includes “sexual orientation”.' This is factually incorrect. Citing Anuj Garg, the court said that sexual orientation is analogous to sex, not included within the category of sex though it quoted from a foreign opinion which suggested that sex should include sexual orientation.

The author believes that the equality argument is a better one than a freedom/Art.21. If we set aside the legal quibble that sexual orientation is not included under art.15 and focus upon the question only from a political/moral standpoint, I think the two are related and are not entirely separable. It would be good for Mayawati to come out publicly and support it. In fact, a legislation supported by the progressive parties to enshrine protection from non-discrimination for LGBT and possibly other sexual minorities would be an excellent idea. But I am not betting on it because at the center, there would be considerable resistance to the idea. A better answer would be to start slowly at the state level. The communist parties which have supported the High Court judgment can take the lead and push for legislation in the states where they are in power.

My criticism of the High Court judgment is here.

Media Speculation, Public Perception and Questions about the Batla House Encounter

Coomi Kapoor's article in the Indian Express is worth reading. There is considerable force to his argument that reporting on the Batla House encounter has been considerably prejudiced particularly in Mail Today which has taken the lead in publicizing the fake encounter theory and fanned suspicions about the actions of the Delhi Police. I am not suggesting that the questions raised here are all false, only that the claim that the event was entirely staged to eliminate the dead police officer and the muslim students living there is in all probability unfounded.

The activists' accusation that the NHRC report is simply an attempt to whitewash the incident may or may not be true but their questions regarding the autopsy findings of the dead house inmates do appear genuine and ought to be addressed. The report only addressed the limited question of how the firing started for which the findings from the autopsy of Mohan Chand Sharma had sufficient corroborative value to back up the police version of the story. The remaining question however still needs to be addressed by the NHRC: were any of the inmates likely killed by the police not out of self-defense but as retribution for the death of one of their own after the encounter began? Let us see what the Delhi High Court says about this.

An Economic Analysis of Why Delhi's Buses Are Deadly

Here (link via Freakonomics).

How Bush is Spending Time Now

Here.

Constitutional Comparitivism in the Context of Sotomayor Hearings

Opinio Juris has a post on the role of foreign law in the interpretation of domestic statutes. A worthwhile read particularly in light of the Delhi High Court's approach in Naz Foundation.

Obscenity, Art and Law: The Consequences of Lady Chatterley's Lover

An interesting history of how the first amendment came to protect 'obscenity' in the US. It is an interesting example of how a single book had such diverse consequences in different countries. While it was the vehicle for liberalization of First Amendment jurisprudence in the US, it turned out to be an occasion to reassert the highly subjective and flawed Hicklin test in Ranjit Udeshi v. State of Maharashtra in India.

RhD positivity, Toxoplasmosis and Traffic Accidents

I am posting the abstract of a recent paper which arrived at an interesting relationship amongst RhD, Toxoplasma infection and the incidence of infections:

Background: Latent toxoplasmosis, protozoan parasitosis with prevalence rates from 20 to 60% in most populations, is known to impair reaction times in infected subjects, which results, for example, in a higher risk of traffic accidents in subjects with this life-long infection. Two recent studies have reported that RhD-positive subjects, especially RhD heterozygotes, are protected against latent toxoplasmosis-induced impairment of reaction times. In the present study we searched for increased incidence of traffic accidents and for protective effect of RhD positivity in 3890 military drivers.

Methods: Male draftees who attended the Central Military Hospital in Prague for regular entrance psychological examinations between 2000 and 2003 were tested for Toxoplasma infection and RhD phenotype at the beginning of their 1 to1.5-year compulsory military service. Subsequently, the data on Toxoplasma infection and RhD phenotype were matched with those on traffic accidents from military police records and the effects of RhD phenotype and Toxoplasma infection on probability of traffic accident was estimated with logistic regression.

Results: We confirmed, using for the first time a prospective cohort study design, increased risk of traffic accidents in Toxoplasma-infected subjects and demonstrated a strong protective effect of RhD positivity against the risk of traffic accidents posed by latent toxoplasmosis. Our results show that RhD-negative subjects with high titers of anti-Toxoplasma antibodies had a probability of a traffic accident of about 16.7%, i.e. a more than six times higher rate than Toxoplasma-free or RhDpositive subjects.

Conclusion: Our results showed that a common infection by Toxoplasma gondii could have strong impact on the probability of traffic accident in RhD negative subjects. The observed effects could provide not only a clue to the long-standing evolutionary enigma of the origin of RhD polymorphism in humans (the effect of balancing selection), but might also be the missing piece in the puzzle of the physiological function of the RhD molecule.

John Milton

Several interesting posts about John Milton can be found here.

Carter's Article on Women and Faith

I was reading Carter's article in The Guardian today titled 'The words of God do not justify cruelty to women'. His main point is that religions are open to interpretation and ought to be interpreted in a way that ensures equal treatment of the genders. Even a single religion is quite complex; so summarizing all the religions is quite impossible to do in a few sentences or a blog post but I will present a general theme here of the problem. Texts, I tend to think, can be contradictory or unclear in many places and do have some passages open to broader reading supportive of equality and others that would lend themselves to a narrower misogynist interpretation. Recognizing that they were generally composed at a time when gender roles were distinguished and women were not envisaged in positions or roles similar to men, that would not be entirely surprising. To promote a progressive interpretation then would require some elements of the faith to be downplayed as compared to others but that might amount to diminishing its authenticity. A better answer might be to challenge faith itself but this might make it unpalatable to many. I do not quite have a solution to this but I think allowing a market with various faiths, versions of a faith and even the absence of faith and letting everyone take their pick is the best way forward.

A Critique of the Naz Foundation Judgment

I have posted it here. A short comment before anyone reads it. This was originally written for the other blog Law and Other Things but now posted here. It was not intended to be against gays nor was it meant to convey any animus against any individual or group. It was written essentially in the belief that it would serve as a principled critique against what I considered to be an activist opinion of the Delhi High Court. I do believe that legalization of homosexual sodomy is primarily a political question and not a legal one. Thus it could be said that it was, in a sense, a critique about the means rather than the ends that Naz Foundation and other activist groups adopted.

The other intention of writing this critique was to initiate a discussion into the larger issue of how we view marginalized groups as well as to point out that there may well be other similarly placed groups we have not paid attention to which would also benefit from better public understanding of their predicament and an evidence based approach. Having reviewed a considerable body of evidence about adults who have sex with minors (this group includes both pedophiles who are attracted to prepubescent minors and ephebophiles who are attracted to post-pubescent minors), I am persuaded that outlawing all sexual relationships between adults and minors may not be justified and the question of consent is better determined based on the onset of puberty and in accordance with what studies show about the harm associated with particular acts.

I was hoping that the post would generate a debate that would flesh out details about such thorny questions and would help separate out the truth from common myths that appear be driving the Indian debate today. In addition, I thought that it would be a worthwhile occasion to examine the moral theories of John Gardener, Robert Wintemute, Ronald Dworkin and others in an era where science may have altered assumptions thought to be true in the past. Sadly, that did not happen. For those reading this post, I hope it provides them with a certain amount of insight that will drive them to ask more questions, reflect and gain better answers. Happy reading!

(PS: If you have questions, feel free to contact me).