Dr. Hansraj Bhardwaj, a stalwart of the Indian legal and political arena, passed away on March 8, 2020, leaving behind a legacy of legal reforms and initiatives that have had a lasting impact on the Indian judiciary. As we fondly remember him on his third death anniversary to be inspired by his lifetime achievements and service to the nation. Dr. Bhardwaj served as the Minister of Law and Justice of India for the longest time and was known for his unwavering commitment to the rule of law and judicial independence.

Dr. Bhardwaj's contributions to the Indian justice system were manifold. He introduced several significant legal reforms and initiatives that have helped to strengthen the justice system in India and improve access to justice for all. Some of his major contributions include the introduction of the Right to Information Act, the establishment of legal aid clinics across the country, the promotion of alternative dispute resolution methods, the introduction of the National Litigation Policy, and his efforts to promote gender justice and judicial independence.

One of Dr. Bhardwaj's most significant contributions to the Indian justice system was the introduction of the Right to Information Act in 2005. The Act provides citizens of India with the right to access information held by the government or any public authority. The Act has been instrumental in increasing transparency and accountability in governance and has had a profound impact on the functioning of the Indian judiciary. Through this law, the common people of India have been empowered to question the decisions made by the government and hold them accountable for their actions.

Dr. Bhardwaj was also a strong advocate of judicial independence and worked tirelessly to strengthen the appointment process for judges. During his tenure, he introduced a new system for the appointment of judges, and reduce the influence of political parties and other vested interests. 

Dr. Bhardwaj's contributions to the Indian justice system also extended to improving access to justice for marginalized communities in India. He established legal aid clinics across the country to provide free legal assistance to those in need. He also introduced the Legal Services Authorities Act, which created a framework for legal aid services in India. Through these initiatives, he ensured that the poor and marginalized sections of society had access to legal assistance and were able to fight for their rights in the courts of law. 

Another important area of Dr. Bhardwaj's work was the promotion of alternative dispute resolution (ADR) methods such as mediation, arbitration, and conciliation. He introduced the Arbitration and Conciliation (Amendment) Bill, 2003, which aimed to streamline the process of ADR in India and make it more effective. Through this bill, he sought to reduce the burden on the courts and provide a faster and more cost-effective mechanism for resolving disputes.

Dr. Bhardwaj was also a strong advocate of gender justice and introduced several laws and initiatives aimed at protecting the rights of women in India. He played a key role in the passage of the Protection of Women from Domestic Violence Act, 2005, which provides legal protection to women from domestic violence. He also worked to promote the rights of women in the workplace and introduced several laws aimed at preventing sexual harassment and ensuring gender equality. Another significant contribution of Dr. Bhardwaj was the introduction of the National Litigation Policy in 2010. The policy aimed to reduce the burden on the courts by promoting out-of-court settlements and reducing the number of frivolous cases filed. The policy also sought to promote efficiency and transparency in the justice system and to reduce the backlog of cases in the Indian courts. 

In addition to his contributions to the Indian justice system, Dr. Bhardwaj also played a key role in the Congress party's political campaigns. He was known for his excellent oratory skills and was a prominent speaker at party rallies and events. He was also involved in the party's election strategy and worked to mobilize voters in favor of the Congress party. Overall, Dr. Hansraj Bhardwaj's contributions as a politician for the Congress party were significant and far-reaching. Right from his active entry in 1982 to his exit in 2009, he kept the Congress party's flag flying high in national politics. Of course, he played a key role in the party's growth and development and made significant contributions to the Indian national congress party. His unwavering commitment to the rule of law and judicial independence, as well as his efforts to promote gender justice and empower marginalized communities, made him a respected and admired leader of the Congress party in the country.
 
 
 
 

Innovation, which is advancement over an existing product or idea, is a prerequisite for continuous improvement. But a disruptive innovation shakes up an industry once in a while. Disruptive innovation in business is not a new concept. It took birth in 1995 when it was proposed by one of the world’s leading thinkers on innovation Christensen along with his co-authors.

However, over the years, this concept has been misunderstood. It has generally been misapplied to a situation where the industry norms are shaken up and existing players stirred. And here’s where the catch is. Originally, Christensen ideated the concept of disruption, more like a David and Goliath situation– a smaller company with fewer resources successfully challenging an established business.

Established businesses in their effort to retain their existing majority target customer base, focus mainly on improving their present products or services and largely ignore other market segments. New entrants that sense this gap provide products or services lucrative to the overlooked segments.

While the established businesses do not pay heed to these new entrants, they slowly make inroads into upmarket, providing the same products or services to the majority customers whilst retaining their earlier advantage–lower prices. Once these mainstream customers embrace the new products or services, in large quantities, one can say disruption has occurred.

According to Christensen, potential for disruptive innovations arise because established businesses ignore both low-end and new markets. In an attempt to be more profitable, established businesses concentrate on providing mainstream customers with high quality products and services and commit resources in upgrading, enhancing and perfecting their existing products and services, all the while ignoring the low-end market. Sensing this opportunity, new entrants foray into this gap by using a low-cost business model. A low-end disruptor snatches the market share in this segment and pushes the established businesses upmarket. Additionally, disruption can occur by creating new markets where none existed, by developing new products for consumers, at a lower price and an acceptable quality. Arrival of personal computers, and later smartphones are perfect examples of new-market disruption.

The first computers, known as mainframes, were huge and very expensive. With costs as high as $2 million and size as big as to fill an entire room, computing technology was out of bounds for the common man. With the invention of the personal computer, a small and affordable piece of machine, a new market segment of individuals was created.

Over the years, with continuous improvement in its capabilities, a humble personal computer made the mainframe computers virtually obsolete. The next step in new market disruption is the emergence of smartphones, which are creating disruptions at two levels. One, the ability to use the internet in a phone at a fraction of cost of a personal computer is making usage of personal computers less necessary. Two, smartphone photograph taking capabilities are set to disrupt the digital photography industry.

However, over the years, the above concept has been misused by many who have not given serious thought to the notion itself. Internationally, Uber has been touted as a disruption. It uses mobile applications to connect consumers who need rides with drivers who are willing to provide them. Founded in 2009, the company has enjoyed fantastic growth and is still expanding. It has reported tremendous financial success, with funding rounds and soaring valuation. No doubt, Uber has transformed the business of transportation.

But has it brought about disruption? For disruption to happen, a company has to target an overlooked customer base and provide the right fit of product or service, usually at a lower cost. Uber connected the end users, i.e., customers used to taking cab services, to service providers. So, Uber did not fulfill any of the two conditions to become a disrupter – firstly, it did not bring the market segment that did not use cab services into its fold; and secondly, cab and taxi services were definitely not a new market. Finally, there is no threat to the car industry from Uber.

A well-known quote prevalent in Silicon Valley “disrupt or be disrupted” says it all. All businesses are continuously looking for opportunities to become disruptors with new innovative ideas, products or business models. But only a few are able to become disruptors. Disruptive innovation transforms complex and expensive products or services into simple and reasonable options. Although very time-consuming and enormously risky, creating disruption shakes up the existing established products and services by pushing the boundaries of any industry.

( Hima Bindu Kota  The author is an educator, Article syndicated via The Pioneer )

Subhash Chandra Bose: A question of, by, and for the conscience of the people of Bharat.

Do not we the people of Bharat would like to enlighten ourselves with a book telling us about the post-1945 life of Subhash Chandra Bose but no conjectures of the same and guess what; the book is published by and endorsed by the government of Bharat? With this in mind let us traverse the realities.

The personas that have fought for the freedom of their respective countries have always been used by their descendants to reap international mileage and public support at home.

The political history and present state of affairs of any country shows how the present politicians use the past politicians to convince people that if the people lhad liked the past politicians then they have to love the present politicians because the present politicians are the replication of the past ones.

We find that our Subhash Babu and I will not use the title Netaji because Subhash Chandra Bose may be a leader to the world but to us, he is our Father, son, and brother respectively, and at the highest level, our Martyr and henceforth I shall call him as our Babu.

We find that Subhas Babu was eccentric, he was eccentric and unconventional to the  Congress propagation of independence through the prism of non-violence however Mr. Gandhi did direct the Bharatiya Soldiers to fight for the British in the second world war and also directed out of rhetoric to Jews and Britishers that let Germany slaughter even your women and children.

Subhas Babu lived, as he is not living today, a life of adventure, adventure for sake of Bharat not for his pleasure. Now, we do not have any official declaration on his life post-1945 even after the finding of the Mukherjee commission that Subhash Babu did not die in a plane crash. Yes, many files have been declassified but they do not draw a convincing picture of the post-1945 life of Subhas Babu.

Our Babu has become a subject matter of many films namely Bose: Dead/Alive and Gumnami and such films have negated the plane crash theory and even made our Babu remain alive till 1985. I do not want to delve into what is termed as conjecture about the life period of our Babu post-1945. Instead, I ask the following questions:

Why shall not the post-1945 life of Subhas Babu, if any, be declared by the government? The government says such disclosure will affect the sovereignty, integrity, and foreign relation of Bharat with other countries.

Now, why not then does the government defines what kind of consequence regarding sovereignty, integrity, and foreign relation will follow post-disclosure?

We have the official secret Act which prohibits the government's servants and citizens to disclose secret information not permitted by law for disclosure but such disclosure is been prohibited for anti-typing, therefore you cannot disclose the information of our Bharat to our enemies.

So, therefore does not such non-disclosure by the government show that the information about the post-1945 life of Subhas Babu is a piece of information that we do not want our enemies to know?

Now does such non-disclosure also show that our enemies are interested to know about Subhas Babu for destroying us?

Who are those enemies?

Or

Will the brand of Congress and Gandhi be in jeopardy if the post-1945 life of Subhas Babu is disclosed as they were the influencers in India when the alleged 1945 plane crash happened and the alleged demise of Subhas Babu/Gumnami Baba took place in 1985?

One may argue that if that be so, then the BJP party in power would have disclosed the post-1945 life of Subhas Babu exposing the Gandhi family and the congress.

The answer is that such disclosure will affect the brand of the Mahatama of Gandhi which the BJP also sells to spread peace and secularism.

 Therefore it appears that disclosure of the post-1945 life of Subhas Babu will be detrimental to the image of Bharat. But should not we expose that Bharat which suppressed her most valiant freedom fighter? Should not Bharat be punished who made the life of Subash Babu deleterious?

If Subhas Babu has lived after 1945, then he had lived with Pain. It is alleged that Gumnami Babi used to say his coming to the Public will be detrimental to Bharat. However, the record shows that our Subhas Babu has not been declared a war criminal by the allied powers.

The Right to Information Act gives u the right to know however at the same time it upholds the Official Secret Act thereby allowing the government to hide information from the public.

I am been told we shall not dig out the past which can affect our present. Yes, it appears that the post-1945 story of our Babu will affect our present and perhaps may be detrimental to the same but cannot we inform our present of the falsities of the past?

We have to decide, the Bharatiyas have to take a decision. The game of majority prevails in the Parliament and we shall call upon the parliament that we will not physically harm anyone after getting the true state of affairs of Subhas Babu's life but we shall inform our present about the true National life of our Past.

Social Justice that I understand includes the Right of the People living in the society to know the history of the society which I argue can be upheld if a social engineer like Subhas Babu is been made known to the public page by page and inch by inch. Mind u the INA comprised people of every sex and religion.

‘Democracy conceives the rule of the majority but sometimes it forgets to emphasize the conscience of the majority and here in the case of Subhas Babu, the conscience of we the people of Bharat wants to know not like the phrase the nation wants to know’.

Views expressed by the writer are personal.  

The next great war may come out of some damned foolish thing in the South China Sea or the East China Sea. Alliances are as old as civilisation. Older, actually: almost every hunter-gatherer band that anthropologists have studied, from the New Guinea highlanders to the Yanomamo in the Amazon, made alliances with other groups to try to protect themselves.

But they often also ended up fighting people they had no quarrel with. ‘The enemy of my enemy is my friend’ is the usual logic that the alliances are built on, but people tend to overlook the fact that alliances also mean that ‘the enemy of my ally is my enemy too.’

Right now, the various regional alliances that already exist seem to be consolidating into a single all-embracing alliance system. It was that kind of system that made the First World War happen, and we probably don’t want to see that happen again.

Only three years ago there was only one big alliance in the world: the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO), founded in 1949, victorious in the Cold War, and more recently an alliance in search of a new role. Almost everybody in Europe and North America belonged to it.

Apart from that, the United States had bilateral alliances or alliance-like arrangements with a number of countries in the Middle East (Israel), East Asia (Japan, South Korea and perhaps Taiwan) and Oceania (Australia and New Zealand).

Three of the world’s biggest countries, China, India and Russia, had no military alliances worth talking about. Unless you think that the China-North Korea, India-Bhutan and Russia-Armenia alliances count.

It was, in other words, a loosely-coupled world: something could go really bad in one part of the planet, and countries in other regions would not necessarily be dragged into it.

The shift began with rising concern in the Asia-Pacific countries and the United States about the irresistible rise of president-for-life Xi Jinping to supreme power in China. The response to that was the Quad, formally the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue: the US, India, Australia and Japan.

Founded in 2017, it began as just a talking shop, but after bitter clashes between Indian and Chinese troops on the Himalayan frontier in 2020 India came fully on board, participating in the first joint naval exercises with the other three Quad members in 2020.

Then came AUKUS, an alliance uniting the United States, the United Kingdom and Australia, with the initial task of arranging for Australia to get a fleet of nuclear-powered attack submarines. It was transparently designed to challenge China’s territorial ambitions in the South China Sea.

This pretty well completed the architecture for an ‘Indo-Pacific NATO’ whose members would account for about a third of the world’s GDP. The original NATO members account for about 45 per cent of global GDP (although the US and the UK are being double-counted in this reckoning).

While China’s more belligerent style under Xi certainly accounts for the speed at which a counter-balancing alliance took shape in the region, the equal and opposite reaction to this enterprise was the announcement of a “no limits” partnership by Xi and Russian President Vladimir Putin, in early 2022. All this happened before Russia invaded Ukraine again in February of last year (having done it once already in 2014).

You can see how everybody was reacting in large part to moves by the other ‘side’, and why Xi backed off quickly from his ‘no limits’ partnership with Russia once he realised how obsessed Putin was with his Ukraine legacy project.

Nevertheless, the game is now afoot, and it will be hard to stop. Germany announced that it was doubling its defence budget last February; Japan said it would do the same last month. China is rapidly expanding its armed forces despite a failing economy, and Russia’s growing derangement is hard to ignore.

All the planners and analysts insist that they have it under control. We shouldn’t worry that we are living through a high-speed replay of the creation of the entangling alliances that dragged everybody into the First World War. This is a different time.

My problem is that I can’t see what is so different about this time. Outside the specific and well-contained war in Ukraine, there are no great issues of principle at stake, and none of the great powers is planning to destroy or subjugate any of the others. (Ukraine is not a great power, so that doesn’t count.)

Count Otto von Bismarck, first Chancellor of the newly united German Empire, remarked in 1878 that “One day the great European War will come out of some damned foolish thing in the Balkans.” As it did, in 1914, once all the alliances were in place.

The next great war may come out of some damned foolish thing in the South China Sea. Or the East China Sea, for that matter.

Gwynne Dyer’s new book is The Shortest History of War, Article Courtesy The Pioneer