Letters to the editor dated September 2, 2021

In NEP 2020 the proposed Higher Education Commission of India, reporting to the ministry, dispenses with every other autonomous regulator in the sector. Autonomy, the key essence in the field of learning, per se, could become extinct. The three language formula of the old policy is quietly being buried to deny primacy to English. Here the government is not sure how this trade off will impact our medium of transmission of technical Ken. Rigid separation between academic disciplines are done away with. Students would now select subjects of their liking across the streams. This would exponentially drive the needs — be it infrastructure, funds, quantity, variety and quality of faculty.

The private operators of education will be at an advantage and push up the cost of education even more. Government colleges will have neither funds nor the autonomy to recruit valued faculty. Education spend, now at a lowly 1.2 per cent, is to be boosted to 6 per cent of GDP, even as our healthcare spend post Covid needs exponential lift. The goverment will need to fund two major sectors simultaneously.

Navi Mumbai

It refers to the Editorial ‘Clearing the air’. Drone rules 2021 is indeed a welcome move which should enable many sectors which are using drones for optimising their services. But all these efforts will be futile if Digital Sky platform is not ready. And it is indeed surprising that it has been almost three years and yet Digital Sky is not operational. This is age old lacuna in our system where we launch schemes and take new initiatives but forget to monitor the implementation and progress. When it comes to misuse of Drone's operation, as we progress these teething issues would be sorted out. As the drone sector is still in its infancy, the government’s flexible approach will help in safeguarding people’s safety and privacy.

Noida

With reference to “Enforcing contracts key to ‘ease of business’” (September 2), this issue is a cause of concern. There is a need for ensuring the efficacy and efficiency of contract enforcement through use of technology and alternate resolution mechanism to boost the trade and investor sentiment. The enormous piling up of unnecessary litigations, misusing the authority given under constitutional rights, imposes insurmountable burden on the judiciary. People with no mens rea or common intention to commit an offence, relying on presumptions and surmises with no legally admissible evidence and leads to escalating litigations and delaying justice. The archaic legal codes need to be modified.

Bengaluru

Despite its progress in EoDB ranking, India lags behind at 163, out of the 190 nations surveyed in a World Bank study, with regard to contract enforcement.

When even sensational criminal cases take unconscionably long to be decided, delay in civil cases causes no outrage in India. As per published data, out of over two crore cases pending in district courts, one-third are civil cases. In contrast, a contract takes a maximum of one month to be enforced, in Dubai or Singapore. No wonder, the litigants prefer to approach these countries for the same, skipping India. Unless the profit from a contract enforcement is more than the cost involved, why would a businessman even consider the option?

The only way to address this problem is by encouraging alternative dispute resolution mechanisms (ADRs) such as negotiation, arbitration, conciliation and mediation agencies. In fact, the latter needs to be made mandatory up to a threshold limit of the value at dispute, with no interference from the Indian courts, except in cases of blatant miscarriage of justice.

Chennai

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