| Dear Express Explained reader, You may have heard or read about the renewed controversy over the words ‘socialist’ and ‘secular’ in the Preamble of the Constitution, which were not there originally, but were added by Indira Gandhi’s government during the Emergency. There have been demands from time to time for these words to be removed – mainly from those who believe that ‘secularism’ has been used by political parties to “appease” Muslims for their votes. Most recently, a challenge in Supreme Court on various legal and technical grounds was dismissed by a Bench led by then Chief Justice of India Sanjiv Khanna, which pointed out that the top court had repeatedly ruled that secularism was fundamental to the Constitution, and that there was no reason for the challenge after so many years had passed without the words having come in the way of lawmaking. Nonetheless, the debate was reopened by a senior leader of the RSS last month, following which some prominent constitutional and government functionaries weighed in, and the opposition issued its retort. What to make of all this? Irrespective of what politicians have said or done over the decades (or might do in the future), the Constitution that commenced in 1950 envisioned India as a secular country, and the amendment in the Preamble introduced by the government of the Emergency only made explicit what was already implicit in a wide range of its provisions. Apurva Vishwanath explained how. It isn’t just the world’s biggest economy under its unpredictable President that has been injecting uncertainty in global trade. Partly in response to US actions, China has been putting restrictions of its own on exports, some of which impact India directly. Harish Damodaran, who writes on the agri sector of the economy, wrote how China’s squeeze on the global supplies of phosphate fertilisers has impacted Indian stocks of DAP, a critical farm input especially in the early stages of the cropping cycle. As governments, legal systems, companies, and educational institutions around the world try to establish terms of engagement with generative AI that is changing our world more quickly than traditional decision-making mechanisms can often cope, several fundamental questions are being asked. One of them is as follows: are generative AI models built on stolen creative work? More than 20 lawsuits in the US are currently litigating the question of copyright and theft, and judgments have been passed by two courts recently. In both these cases, involving Anthropic, the creator of Claude, and Meta, the creator of Llama, judges have ruled in favour of the tech companies. Vidhatri Rao, who writes on AI, summed up the arguments on both sides, and explained why these judgments matter. Finally, I would like to flag to you this week another fascinating piece by Jay Mazoomdaar, an incomparable writer on wildlife and the environment, and specifically tigers and other felines. Of late, there have been several instances of the majestic striped cat being rescued from seemingly unlikely places and situations in eastern India – in Jharkhand, West Bengal, and Odisha. Why and how did these tigers, mostly males, land themselves there? The answer, as Jay has explained, lies in the peculiarities of tiger behaviour, and regional variations in the degrees to which the conservation of the species and its habitat have succeeded in India. Do read. Thank you for reading The Indian Express Explained. There is a large body of explanatory journalism, on a wide range of topics, on our website, and I hope you will check it out soon if you haven’t already. Also, many of our best explainers are now behind a paywall, so I hope you will subscribe. Sincerely, Monojit |
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