 5th August, Article 370 got scrapped in Kashmir and a curfew was imposed in the valley. This coincided with India having the most productive parliament session in the last 15 years. So the parliament passed 30 bills. This is a record for the number of bills passed in a single session after the constitution of a new Lok Sabha. 40 bills were introduced, 33 in Lok Sabha and 7 in Rajya Sabha. This is being called historic and the most productive session as I mentioned. However, we should look a little closely at 5 major bills. First, UAPA. Tomorrow, I could be taken to jail. Let me bring you up to speed as to how. According to a proposed new amendment to the UAPA, the government can unilaterally declare anyone a terrorist. The onus will then be on the concerned person to prove their innocence. All of this can happen to anyone on the mere suspicion of the government. If the government thinks you are a problem, you can be booked under UAPA without any warrant or proof. Let me tell you a little bit about UAPA. The UAPA was first passed in 1967. This law allowed the government to declare any organization as unlawful. It also defined and criminalized unlawful activities. In 2004, the act was amended to define terrorism as a crime and grant the government power to declare and ban organizations as terrorists. The same amendment gave police greater power of interrogation by allowing them to detain persons without bail and in addition, the set person must first convince the court that they are innocent. The new bill has added two significant elements to the law. It allows National Investigation Agency, much greater leeway to take control of the cases that would otherwise fall under the domain of the police of individual states. Essentially, this gives the center more power. The center will now be able to declare individuals as terrorists and not just organizations. This also allows them to seize the individual's property. Home Minister Amit Shah told the parliament that those who attempt to plant terrorist literature and terrorist theory in the minds of the young through propaganda and frenzy will also be designated under the new law. However, terrorist literature or theory is not defined anywhere. Now let's look at the next bill. Right to Information and what has happened here. In the form of the Right to Information Amendment Bill 2019, the government has amended sections 13, 16 and 27 of the RTI Act, which carefully links and thereby equates the status of the central information commissioners with the election commissioners and the state information commissioners with the chief secretary in the states so that they can function in an independent and effective manner. The deliberate dismantling of this architecture empowers the central government to unilaterally decide tenure, salary, allowances and other terms of services of information commissioners both at the center and at the states. But why is there unseemly haste and determination to amend the law? The RTI is a constant challenge to the misuse of power. In a country where the rule of law hangs by a slender thread and corruption and the arbitrary use of power is a daily norm, the RTI has resulted in a fundamental shift empowering a citizen's access to power and decision-making. More than 80 RTI users have been murdered because their courage and determination for using the RTI was a challenge to the corridors of power. The RTI has been used persistently to ask questions to the government from the village Russian shop, the Reserve Bank of India, the finance ministry, on demonetization, non-performing assets, the Rafale fighter aircraft deal, electoral bonds, unemployment figures and much more. The information related to decision-making at the highest level has in most cases eventually been accessed because of the independence and high status of the information commission. Is this what the government is trying to amend? The RTI movement has struggled to access information and through it a share of governance and democratic power. An independent information commission, which is the highest authority on information along with the powers to penalize corrupt officials has been a cornerstone of India's celebrated RTI legislation. The commission, which is vested by law with status, independence and authority, will now function like a department of the central government and be subject to the same hierarchy and demand for, shall we say, bending the knee. The decision of the government to grab hold of the powers to set the terms and conditions of service and salaries of an independent body must be understood as an obvious attempt to weaken the independence and authority granted by the law. Third, the National Investigation Agency. The NIA was set up in 2009 in the wake of the Mumbai terror attack that claimed 166 lives. The NIA bill, which now awaits presidential approval after being passed unopposed in the Rajasabha was amended to include three key provisions. The amendment adds wit to the schedule of crimes that the agency can investigate, including human trafficking, counterfeit currency, manufacture or seal of prohibited arms, cyber terrorism and offences under the Explosive Substances Act. Secondly, it extends the NIA's jurisdiction outside India, subject, however, to international treaties and domestic laws of the concerned foreign nation. Third, the bill allows for the constitution of special courts by the centre in order to conduct trials. Among other issues, the NIA has been accused of targeting minorities, especially Muslim youth, in addition to infringing upon the rights of the police in states. While parties including the Congress, DMK, CPIM and AIMIM laid out their arguments against the bill, only six MPs, including AIMIM chief Asaduddin Ovesi, left MPs and an MP belonging to the National Conference, voted against the amendments on July 15 in the Lok Sabha. The opposition brought in three main questions. First, should sessions courts be turned into special courts for NIA investigations? Second, should the government be pushing for widening the ambit of the NIA when there are doubts in people's minds about the objectivity of the organisation? Third, without defining the meaning of terrorist, should these amendments be brought in? Fourth, transgender bill. On December 17, 2018, Lok Sabha passed the Government of India's Transgender Persons Protection of Rights Bill. The transgender community in the country is vehemently protesting against this bill, as it not only disempowers the community, but also criminalises them. Another bill that the community is protesting against is the Trafficking of Persons, Prevention Protection and Rehabilitation Bill, also known as Trafficking Bill. Both the transgender bill and the trafficking bill reflect the moral crusade of the current Bhartya Janta Party. The former goes on to say that those who have not had gone through sex reassignment surgery can only identify as transgender, and not as male or female. And the identification as transgender depends on the scrutiny and certification by a district screening committee. Those seeking to identify as male or female need to have had an SRS. In the case of sex work, the latter denies sex work from being considered work. The trafficking bill adds on to the existing laws that are used against the community. The transgender community across the country is coming together to tell the government how far its policies are from the reality. Fifth, surrogacy. The Surrogacy Regulation Bill, which was passed by the Lok Sabha on August 5th, 2019, once again denies women agency over their own bodies. The bill seeks to outlaw commercial surrogacy and allows only altruistic surrogacy for the needy couples with proven conditions of infertility. To clarify, commercial surrogacy generally refers to any surrogacy arrangement in which the surrogate mother is compensated for her services beyond reimbursement of medical expenses. The alternative to commercial surrogacy is altruistic surrogacy, in which a woman volunteers to carry a pregnancy for intended parents without receiving any monetary compensation in return. Women are once again being asked to use their bodies for the greater good without getting paid for it. Sperm donors will continue to get paid. With the passage of the Surrogacy Regulation Bill, women will be cut off from what could be a guaranteed source of income. Motherhood will be mystified as sacred and women will be punished for being independent. You can read more on the bills passed and its impact on the internet. Let us know in the comments if you want more bills to be explained and do not forget to subscribe to us on YouTube and follow us on Facebook. Thank you for watching.