Deflections & Denials; Judicial Drift; Unfriendly Stranger
Opinion Watch
Deflections & Denials
A Telegram bot allegedly gave out the personal details of the people who had given their Aadhar identification to get vaccines through CoWin portal, and the government as if on a mechanical auto-response denied that any leak had happened. But the Asian Age in its Editorial opined that the denial gave rise to more doubts as the government suggested an earlier indirect leak.
The daily also recalled that Dark Leak Market, a hacker group, in June 2021 had claimed to be in possession of data of 15 crore Indians who had taken Covid jabs. The daily has said that if the claims of the data breach are true, then it’s a big cybercrime, violation of privacy, besides raising questions on the safety of digital payments as well.
Ram Sewak Sharma was the architect of Aadhar-seeded CoWin, but he reportedly himself didn’t share his unique identity number while taking the Covid vaccine. That the personal details of the people are being treated with callousness can be seen in an avalanche of telemarketing calls, and many startups have mushroomed by simply datamining.
Judicial Drift
A Gujarat court made a mention of Manusmriti to deny termination of pregnancy of a minor rape survivor, and The Telegraph raised the question of judicial waywardness in delivering justice. While termination of pregnancy of 24 weeks old is allowed in exceptional circumstances, the daily reasoned that courts in Kerala and Delhi have allowed such options to minor rape survivors.
But, the Kolkata-based daily reasoned, the issue of more significance is the claim of the Gujarat court that minor girls of 16 years as mentioned in Manusmriti were biologically ready to be mother. Noting that the prejudices do exist, the daily wondered at the open expressions of biases in the courts.
Standardization of the conduct of the judicial administration is an issue not paid enough attention. The directive of the Manipur High Court to include Meitei in the ST category has thrown the state into ethnic strife, killing several people and displacing many.
Unfriendly Stranger
Gurugram is a concrete city and the people there often seek out friendships in strangers, and The Economic Times has in its Editorial gave an account of a person who went high with heavy drinking. The heavily drunk man, said the daily, gave 10 notes of Rs 2000 to buy a liquor bottle costing Rs 2000 only, but there he was lucky as the seller returned nine notes.
As he set out to enjoy his drinks in his car, a stranger joined him and they together finished the bottle, said the business daily, adding that afterwards the man was asked to go home and the stranger drove away with the car along with Rs 18,000, laptop, and mobile phone.
Such incidents aren’t rare in the national capital region where drinking in cars is an unofficial fundamental right of too many people. The callousness indeed comes at a cost.
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