A tale of targeted violence in Hashimpura: the Delhi High Court on recognition,relations and responses

On 31 October 2018, Justice Dr S Muralidhar (then) at the Delhi High Court convicted 16 members of the Provincial Armed Constabulary (PAC) for, inter alia, the murder of 38 Muslim residents of Hashimpura, a neighbourhood in Meerut, Uttar Pradesh in the summer of 1987. In so doing, he described the events that unfolded in Hashimpura as the ‘targeted killing’ of ‘members of a particular minority community.’ The judicial recognition of targeted violence in contemporary Indian society forms the focus of the present article. The article contends that Muralidhar J’s reference to targeted violence paves way for the recognition of an important juridical concept that warrants further academic and legal engagement. By adopting a relational approach, I argue that the conceptual utility of the category of targeted violence lies in its ability to unmask the social relations that it implicates. Targeted violence is not aimed at individual actors, but social relations between perpetrators, individual victims and those who share the victims’ minority identity. Committed to the legal recognition of social experiences, I demonstrate how the category of targeted violence accurately reflects the experiences of and relations between different social actors. I further build a case for why and how legal and judicial responses to targeted violence ought to be informed and shaped by a recognition of its relational harms.

     

Youth Engagement and Suicide Risk: Testing a Mediated Model in a Canadian Community Sample

Suicide is a leading cause of death among adolescents in many industrialized countries. We report evidence from a mediation model linking greater youth activity engagement, spanning behavioral and psychological components, with lower suicide risk through five hypothesized intrapersonal and interpersonal mediating factors. Self-report survey data (15% French, 85% English) were gathered from a community sample of 5,015 Canadian adolescents participating in a mental health promotion program. Youth (M _age = 15.77, SD = 1.42, 50% female) were from two urban centers in southern Ontario, Canada. Youth engagement (youth’s most important type of activity, frequency of involvement, and psychological engagement), suicide risk predictive factors (self-esteem, current concerns, depressive symptoms, coping ability, and connections with others), and suicide risk (ideation and attempts) were assessed. Consistent with the hypothesized mediation model, enjoyment and stress in youth’s most important activity and various activity types were associated with the various hypothesized suicide risk predictive factors, which in turn were related to suicide risk. Implications for conceptualizations of youth engagement as a multidimensional construct and for suicide risk prevention efforts are discussed.     

Motivated Responding in Studies of Factual Learning

Large partisan gaps in reports of factual beliefs have fueled concerns about citizens’ competence and ability to hold representatives accountable. In three separate studies, we reconsider the evidence for one prominent explanation of these gaps—motivated learning. We extend a recent study on motivated learning that asks respondents to deduce the conclusion supported by numerical data. We offer a random set of respondents a small financial incentive to accurately report what they have learned. We find that a portion of what is taken as motivated learning is instead motivated responding. That is, without incentives, some respondents give incorrect but congenial answers when they have correct but uncongenial information. Relatedly, respondents exhibit little bias in recalling the data. However, incentivizing people to faithfully report uncongenial facts increases bias in their judgments of the credibility of what they have learned. In all, our findings suggest that motivated learning is less common than what the literature suggests, but also that there is a whack-a-mole nature to bias, with reduction in bias in one place being offset by increase in another place.     

Baselines for Clean Development Mechanism Projects: The Marrakesh Accords and Beyond

The Marrakesh Accords at the seventh meeting of Conference of Parties (COP-7) finally set the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) wheel moving by establishing a CDM Board and providing some broad guidelines on baselines for the CDM projects. The broad guidelines provide flexibility to develop baselines, which gives rise to prospect of more than one baseline for a project. This has been illustrated with a case study of Zafarana, a wind farm power project. seven possible baselines emerge when applying the broad guidelines included in the Accords indicating the need for detailed guidelines. In the current scenario, a project developer may have to work-out the best course of action considering criteria such as level of complexity and available expertise to develop the baseline, availability of data, expected return etc.     

Evaluation of shooting distance by AFM and FTIR/ATR analysis of GSR

The techniques of atomic force microscopy (AFM) and Fourier transform infrared attenuated total reflectance (FTIR/ATR) spectroscopy are applied to the analysis of gun-shot residue (GSR) to test their ability to determine shooting distance and discrimination of the powder manufacturers. AFM is a nondestructive technique that is capable of characterizing the shapes and size distributions of GSR particles with resolution down to less than a nanometer. This may be useful for estimation of the shooting distance. Our AFM images of GSR show that the size distribution of the particles is inversely proportional to the shooting distance. Discrimination of powder manufacturers is tested by FTIR/ATR investigation of GSR. Identifying the specific compounds in the GSR by FTIR/ATR was not possible because it is a mixture of the debris of several compounds that compose the residue. However, it is shown that the GSR from different cartridges has characteristic FTIR/ATR bands that may be useful in differentiating the powder manufacturers. It appears promising that the development of AFM and FTIR/ATR databases for various powder manufacturers may be useful in analysis and identification of GSR.