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Author: CD Staff

  • [Burning Issue] Relevance of BRICS in the changing global order

     

    Context

    • The 11th summit of the BRICS grouping comprising Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa was held in Brasilia last week.
    • Pitted as a counterweight to G7, the combine of developed economies, BRICS represents the world’s top emerging economies and claims to serve as a bridge between the developed and developing world.
    • Questions are also being raised about its efficacy and impact. Its significance for India has also been put to questions several times.

    What is BRICS?

     

    • BRICS is an acronym for the grouping of the world’s leading emerging economies, namely Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa.
    • The BRICS Leaders’ Summit is convened annually. It does not exist in form of organization, but it is an annual summit between the supreme leaders of five nations.

    inception

    • On November 30, 2001, Jim O’Neill, a British economist who was then chairman of Goldman Sachs Asset Management, coined the term ‘BRIC’ to describe the four emerging economies of Brazil, Russia, India, and China.
    • He made a case for BRIC on the basis of econometric analyses projecting that the four economies would individually and collectively occupy far greater economic space and become among the world’s largest economies in the next 50 years or so.

    Formation

    • The grouping was formalized during the first meeting of BRIC Foreign Ministers on the margins of the UNGA in New York in September 2006.
    • The first BRIC Summit took place in 2009 in the Russian Federation and focused on issues such as reform of the global financial architecture.

    Members

    • South Africa was invited to join BRIC in December 2010, after which the group adopted the acronym BRICS. South Africa subsequently attended the Third BRICS Summit in Sanya, China, in March 2011.
    • The Chairmanship of the forum is rotated annually among the members, in accordance with the acronym B-R-I-C-S.
    • BRICS now brings together five economies accounting for 42% of the world’s population, 23% of the global GDP and an around 17% share of world trade.
    • The five BRICS countries are also members of G-20
    • The group at each summit elects one of the heads of state of the component countries to serve as President Pro Tempore of the BRICS. This year it was Brazil.

    Financial Architecture of BRICS

     

     

    Currently, there are two components that make up the financial architecture of BRICS, namely:

    1. the New Development Bank (NDB) or sometimes referred to as the BRICS Development Bank and
    2. the Contingent Reserve Arrangement (CRA).
    • Both of these components were signed into a treaty in 2014 and became active in 2015.

    New Development Bank

    • The proposed NDB or the BRICS Development Bank is a multilateral development bank operated by the BRICS states.
    • The bank’s primary focus of lending will be infrastructure projects with authorized lending of up to $34 billion annually.
    • South Africa will be the African Headquarters of the Bank named the “New Development Bank Africa Regional Centre”.
    • The bank will have starting capital of $50 billion (members contributing $10 billion each) with capital increased to $100 billion over time.

    BRICS CRA

    • The BRICS Contingent Reserve Arrangement (CRA) is a framework for providing protection against global liquidity pressures.
    • This includes currency issues where members’ national currencies are being adversely affected by global financial pressures.
    • It is found that emerging economies that experienced rapid economic liberalization went through increased economic volatility, bringing uncertain macroeconomic environment.
    • The CRA is generally seen as a competitor to the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and along with the New Development Bank is viewed as an example of increasing South-South cooperation.
    • It was established in 2015 by the BRICS countries. The legal basis is formed by the Treaty for the Establishment of a BRICS Contingent Reserve Arrangement, signed at Fortaleza, Brazil on 15 July 2014.

     

    Significant feats of BRICS

     

    I. Johannesburg Declaration, 2018

    • The 2018 summit saw the BRICS leaders come together and discuss various international and regional issues of common concern and adopted the ‘Johannesburg Declaration‘ by consensus.
    • It implies that this important multilateral grouping has a lot to say about the state of the world.
    • The leaders jointly reaffirmed their commitment to the principles of mutual respect, sovereign equality, democracy, inclusiveness and strengthened collaboration.
    • The BRICS leaders have used the summit to reject the growing unilateralism and instead reiterate their commitment to the strengthening of multilateral institutions, calling for stronger intra-trade within member states.

    II. Focus on New Industrial Revolution

    • The other big idea emanating from the summit is to help nations to prepare for the Fourth Industrial Revolution.
    • Participants embraced it, articulating the need for a new strategy on employment, education and skill development as the digital revolution unfolds.
    • The leaders commended the establishment of the BRICS Partnership on New Industrial Revolution (PartNIR).
    • The BRICS Partnership on New Industrial Revolution (PartNIR) aims to deepen BRICS cooperation in digitalisation, industrialisation, innovation, inclusiveness and investment and to maximise the opportunities and address the challenges arising from the 4th Industrial Revolution.

    III. BRICS Plus

    • The BRICS outreach to Africa began at the last summit hosted by South Africa, in 2013.
    • It has picked up momentum now but African leaders want more
    • They need big loans from the New Development Bank (NDB) for their infrastructure projects
    • China introduced the “BRICS Plus” format at the Xiamen summit last year by inviting a few countries from different regions.
    • South Africa emulated it, arranging the attendance of top-level representation of five nations of its choice: Argentina, Jamaica, Turkey, Indonesia and Egypt
    • The precise role of “BRICS Plus” countries will take time to evolve but an immediate benefit is the immense opportunities it provides for networking among leaders.

    IV. Brasilia outcome

    • During Brazil’s chairmanship, the grouping reported 30 new outcomes, initiatives and documents.
    • The latest summit needed a 73 para-long Brasilia Declaration to spell out the leaders’ shared worldview and spectrum of their work.
    • Much to India’s satisfaction, the commitment of BRICS to counterterrorism seems to be getting strengthened.
    • Its working group on countering terrorism has expanded its activities through five thematic subgroups that deal with terrorist financing, use of Internet for terrorist purposes, countering radicalization etc.
    • Where the BRICS shows signs of advancing is in the economic domain. Here, five facets need to be highlighted.

    V. NDB projects

    • The New Development Bank (NDB), the grouping’s flagship achievement, has 44 projects with its lending touching $12.4 billion, in just five years.
    • This is not a small gain, but the bank needs to grow as “a global development finance institution”. A move is now afoot to open its membership selectively.
    • NDB has opened its regional centres in South Africa and Brazil, and will do so in Russia and India in 2020.

    VI. Local currency Bond Fund

    • With a successful Contingent Reserve Arrangement in the bag, BRICS governments are set to establish a local currency Bond Fund.
    • But the earlier proposal to launch a credit rating agency remains shelved due to internal differences.

    VII. Business promotion

    • Business promotion among member-states has been accorded a new salience.
    • The BRICS Business Council held a substantive dialogue to foster cooperation in areas ranging from infrastructure and energy to financial services, regional aviation and digital economy.
    • Its cooperation with the NDB is being encouraged. The national trade promotion agencies signed an MoU on cooperation among themselves.
    • A BRICS Women Business Alliance was also created, both as a women empowerment measure and as a tool to bring “a distinctive perspective on issues of interest for the business community.”

    VIII. Commitment on NIR

    • Following up on the decisions taken at the previous summit, operationalisation of the Partnership on New Industrial Revolution is underway.
    • It is focused on cooperation in digitalisation, industrialisation, innovation, inclusiveness and investment.
    • This partnership will be concretized by establishing industrial and science parks, innovation centres and business incubators.

     

    Relevance of BRICS

    There are three major factors that threaten the relevance of the BRICS grouping and render it just another multilateral grouping in an already bloated set of groupings:

    I. Political

    • These countries are not all on the same page at the same time. While India and Russia share historically close ties, India-China relations experience swing from warm to frosty and back like a pendulum.
    • Russia and China have been united by a common adversary. US-led West-imposed sanctions on Russia and Washington and Beijing’s trade war have pushed the world’s second and third-largest military powers closer together.

    II. Economic

    • There isn’t much convergence. From being four economies to watch out for back in 2001, they (along with South Africa) are all in the middle of some sort of economic doldrums.
    • But the reasons for the states of these economies vary vastly.
    • BRICS can be broken into two groups — those that took advantage of globalization’s march to integrate themselves into global supply chains (primarily China and India).
    • The other faction includes those that took advantage of globalization to sell their abundant natural resources (primarily Brazil, Russia and South Africa).

    III. Strategic

    • A small positive, if that, is that it gives India one more mechanism, occasion and opportunity to hold dialogue with China.
    • There may be little tangible movement in India-China ties, however, if diplomacy is to work, sustained interaction between parties is essential.
    • A counterpoint to this point, however, is that India and China already have several points of contact bilaterally and multilaterally (at the UN, SCO, East Asia Summit etc.) and that one extra platform isn’t going to make a whole lot of difference.
    • Perhaps that is true, but the glorified talk-shop that discusses “futuristic subjects” that is BRICS will continue to exist despite its irrelevance, and any little benefits it affords should be appreciated.

    IV. People-to-People exchange

    • BRICS members have recognised the need for strengthening People-to-People exchanges and to foster closer cooperation in the areas of culture, sport, education, film and youth.
    • People-to-People exchanges seek to forge new friendships; deepen relations and mutual understanding between BRICS peoples in the spirit of openness, inclusiveness, diversity and mutual learning.
    • Such People to people exchanges include the Young Diplomats Forum, Parliamentarian Forum, Trade Union Forum, Civil BRICS as well as the Media Forum.

     

    India’s position amongst BRICS

     

    • Eighteen years later, India finds itself as one of the emerging economies in the grouping and beyond, especially
    • As PM Modi attends the 11th BRICS Summit in Brasilia, his sixth since he assumed office in 2014, it will be the beginning of what New Delhi sees as the “second cycle” of BRICS.
    • From the Indian perspective, BRICS has emerged the voice of developing countries or the global south.
    • As these countries face an aggressive club of developed countries, raising challenges on issues from WTO to climate change, India believes BRICS has to protect the rights of the developing countries.
    • Also, India has to maintain the balancing act between Russia-China on the one side and the US on the other.

    India’s successes

    • The fact that BRICS has put counter-terrorism on top of the agenda has been a success for India.
    • That was evident in the BRICS Summit in Xiamen in September 2017, with China as the chair.
    • The fact that it was achieved, despite the strained ties due to the standoff in Doklam, was a testimony to the value Beijing and New Delhi attach to the outcomes of the grouping.
    • On the question of multilateralism, India has articulated a vision for strengthening and reforming the multilateral system itself.
    • When India calls for multilateralism, it is not a call to reinforce the status quo of multilateralism but to reform it since this is what BRICS had originally set out to do.

    Challenges confronting India at the BRICS

     

    Some of the crucial challenges are:

    I. China’s massive economic weight in the forum

    • Its GDP at nearly $12 trillion is now more than twice that of the other four members put together.
    • This has changed the internal balance in the BRICS in favour of Beijing.

    II. China led Globalization

    • Apprehension about US-led globalization was one of the motivations behind India’s quest for a multipolar world in the past.
    • But India is now struggling with the issue of China-led globalization. The Belt and Road initiative has added to India’s concerns about China’s rise.

    Major disappointments at BRICS

     

    • Despite of the Brasilia Outcome it is difficult to identify new elements in the BRICS’s endeavour to strengthen and reform the multilateral system.
    • The “urgent need” to reform the UN, the World Trade Organization, the International Monetary Fund and other international organisations was stressed once again, even as little progress has occurred on this score.
    • Interest in open and free trade was reiterated, despite growing protectionist tendencies.
    • On the expansion of the UN Security Council, BRICS exposed its disunity yet again by sticking to the formulation that refuses to go beyond China and Russia supporting the “aspiration” of Brazil, India and South Africa.

    A critical evaluation

    • Overall, while the BRICS grouping may have completed a decade, it continues to face the challenges of the lack of a binding ideology, bilateral differences, diversity in terms of socio-cultural and political systems, and China’s overwhelming presence, which reduces the space for other countries in the grouping.
    • It has transformed into an amorphous collective with its fingers in all sorts of pies, but an inability to commit to very many common goals.

    I. Goals yet not clear

    • The contribution of BRICS to project the perspectives of developing economies is laudable.
    • However, by hosting outreach meetings with countries in its neighbouring (or broader) region, each chair (with Brazil’s exception) gave the impression that BRICS would do more for them.
    • But the NDB has been lagging behind on this score. It needs to start extending loans for projects in non-BRICS countries to create a solid constituency of supporters.
    • Also, is such a plethora of meetings really essential? Do the results justify the expenditure? India’s representatives should ask, do they help the poor and vulnerable sections of the BRICS community?
    • Finally, BRICS should ponder if in the short term it needs to focus on fulfilling existing commitments instead of taking on new ones.

    II. Namesake consensus against Terrorism

    • In 2016, it was noted that successive declarations by the BRICS nations tended to echo the same throwaway lines on terrorism, but do little about assuaging one another’s real concerns.
    • The 2019 iteration is no different with its “We condemn terrorism in all its forms and manifestations, which should not be associated with any religion, nationality or civilisation…”.
    • Through it all, China continues to show brazen disregard to India’s concerns about terrorism emanating from Pakistan. This is unlikely to change anytime soon.

    III. Kindleberger Trap

    • As China rises and positions itself as the sole challenger to American hegemony, there is a growing discussion about the possible Kindleberger Trap.
    • This is a situation where China may fail to provide global public goods like a clean environment and financial stability, despite being a superpower.
    • Small countries have little incentive to contribute to global public goods and it is generally the responsibility of great powers to provide global governance.
    • The idea of the Kindleberger Trap is also applicable to rising powers like India, which have global ambitions.

    IV. Climate at peril

    • Climate governance too has been highlighted as an area where BRICS members have a lot of potential to contribute, but so far, that has not happened.
    • Russia has been ambivalent towards climate change and has recently joined the Paris Agreement.
    • India has taken initiatives outside the grouping to project itself as a leader in the fight against climate change, such as the launch of the International Solar Alliance in 2015 with France.
    • Apart from the global agenda, BRICS allows New Delhi to send out messages about its foreign policy priorities, underscoring its desire to be part of issue-based coalitions.

    Way Forward

     

    • A close examination of India’s record in BRICS reveals that New Delhi has used its membership to make a substantial contribution to the global financial architecture, while also making efforts to address glaring gaps in areas such as counter-terrorism, the fight against climate change and UNSC reform.
    • India is not a free-rider in a system of global governance dominated by the West, and continues to provide a vision of global governance.
    • The BRICS needs to expand its agenda for increasing its relevance in the global order. As of now, climate change and development finance, aimed at building infrastructure must dominate its agenda.
    • For BRICS to remain relevant over the next decade, each of its members must make a realistic assessment of the initiative’s opportunities and inherent limitations.

     

     

     

     

    References

     

    https://www.civilsdaily.com/news/op-ed-snap-the-big-five-at-10/

    https://www.thehindu.com/opinion/op-ed/brics-on-the-ball/article30009282.ece

    https://www.firstpost.com/india/brics-summit-2019-relevance-of-grouping-in-2019-unclear-but-it-does-provide-india-one-major-benefit-7655521.html

    https://www.orfonline.org/research/india-and-its-brics-dilemmas-57891/

  • [Burning Issue] The Ram Janmabhoomi Verdict

    Context

    In a unanimous judgment, a bench headed by CJI Ranjan Gogoi asked the Centre to formulate a scheme within three months and set up a trust to manage the property and construct a temple.

    Centre had acquired the entire 67.73 acres of land including the 2.77 acre of the disputed Ramjanmabhumi-Babri Masjid premises in 1993.

    Background

     

    • The Ayodhya dispute was a political, historical, and socio-religious debate in India, centered on a plot of land in the city of Ayodhya, Uttar Pradesh.
    • The issues revolve around the control of a site traditionally regarded among Hindus to be the birthplace of their deity Rama, the history and location of the Babri Masjid at the site, and whether a previous Hindu temple was demolished or modified to create a mosque.
    • The mosque there, the Babri Masjid, was demolished during a political rally which turned into a riot on 6 December 1992.
    • The first recorded instances of religious violence in Ayodhya occurred in the 1850s over a nearby mosque at Hanuman Garhi. The Babri mosque was attacked in the process.
    • Since then, local groups made occasional demands that they should have the possession of the site and that they should be allowed to build a temple on the site, all of which were denied by the colonial government.

    The Mosque over temple

     

    • Babur was the first Mughal emperor of India and the founder of the Mughal empire.
    • It is believed that one of his generals, Mir Baqi, built the Babri Masjid (“Babur’s Mosque”) in 1528 on his orders.
    • The belief came into currency since 1813–14, when the East India Company’s surveyor Francis Buchanan reported that he found an inscription on the mosque walls which attested to this fact.
    • He also recorded the local tradition, which believed that emperor Aurangzeb (r. 1658–1707) built the mosque after demolishing a temple dedicated to Rama.

    Testimony of excavations

    • In its judgment, the Supreme Court referred to an Archaeological Survey of India (ASI) report to observe that the Babri Masjid, which stood on the disputed site until its demolition in 1992.
    • It reported that Mosque was not built on vacant land and there was evidence of a temple-like structure having existed on the land before the mosque was built.
    • Considering the ASI report valid, the Supreme Court said what was found in the excavation “was not an Islamic structure”.

    Judicial intervention

     

    Allahabad High Court Judgment of 2011

    A suit was filed by the Sunni Wakf Board for declaration and possession of the site. The Allahabad high court bench began hearing the case in 2002, which was completed in 2010.

    After the Supreme Court dismissed a plea to defer the High Court verdict on 30 September 2010, the High Court of Allahabad, the three-member bench ruled that the disputed land be split into three parts.

    The judgment which was pronounced with majority decision of 2:1 held that the 2.77 acres land located in Ayodhya will be divided into a three-way division — one-third for the Sunni Waqf Board, one-third for the Nirmohi Akhara and one-third to the party for ‘Ram Lalla’ or infant Ram represented by the Hindu Maha Sabha.

     

    The Final Verdict

    • The Hindus would get the entire disputed 2.77 acres in Ayodhya where the demolished Babri Masjid once stood.
    • Possession of disputed 2.77-acre land will remain with the Central government receiver.
    • The Muslims will get alternate five acres of land either in the surplus 67 acres acquired in and around the disputed structure by the central government or any other “prominent” place.
    • A trust will be formed in 3 months to build a temple on the disputed land. The court held that the Nirmohi Akhara is not the shebait or devotee of the deity Ram Lalla but will get to be a member of the Trust.

    What the verdict relied upon?

    • In the backdrop of the said dispute then P.V. Narasimha Rao government enacted, in September 1991, a special law to freeze the status of places of worship as they were on August 15, 1947.
    • The law kept the disputed structure at Ayodhya out of its purview, mainly because it was the subject of prolonged litigation.
    • It was also aimed at providing scope for a possible negotiated settlement.

    Places of Worship Act, 1994

    • The Act declares that the religious character of a place of worship shall continue to be the same as it was on August 15, 1947.
    • It says no person shall convert any place of worship of any religious denomination into one of a different denomination or section.
    • It declares that all suits, appeals or any other proceedings regarding converting the character of a place of worship, which are pending before any court or authority on August 15, 1947, will abate as soon as the law comes into force.
    • However, there is an exception to the bar on instituting fresh proceedings with regard to suits that related to the conversion of status that happened after August 15, 1947.
    • This saves legal proceedings, suits, and appeals regarding the chance of status that took place after the cut-off date.
    • These provisions will not apply to ancient and historical monuments and archaeological sites and remains that are covered by the Ancient Monuments and Archaeological Sites and Remains Act, 1958.

    How did SC use the act?

    • In its verdict, the Supreme Court commended the enactment as one that preserved the constitutional value of secularism by not permitting the status of a place of worship to be changed.
    • The state has, by enacting the law, enforced a constitutional commitment and operationalized its constitutional obligations to uphold the equality of all religions and secularism, which is a part of the basic features of the Constitution.
    • It said the Places of Worship Act imposes a non-derogable obligation towards enforcing our commitment to secularism.
    • The court observed that non-retrogression is a foundational feature of the fundamental constitutional principles, of which secularism is a core component.

    Article 142 invoked by SC

    Article 142(1) states that “The Supreme Court in the exercise of its jurisdiction may pass such decree or make such order as is necessary for doing complete justice in any cause or matter pending before it, and any decree so passed or order so made shall be enforceable throughout the territory of India in such manner as may be prescribed by or under any law made by Parliament and, until provision in that behalf is so made, in such manner as the President may by order prescribe”.

    • The Supreme Court, implicitly referring to the demolition of the Babri Masjid at the disputed site, said that it was invoking Article 142 “to ensure that a wrong committed must be remedied”.
    • This was the first time that the court invoked this power in a case involving a civil dispute over an immovable property, involving private parties.

     

    Significance of the verdict

     

    Communal politics comes to an end

    • Ayodhya in the past was the center stage for communal politics and a tool for polarization before elections.
    • The high-pitched events not only disrupted daily life and business, but also endangered communal harmony in the region.
    • By settling the dispute between communities by the intervention of the Supreme court and other democratic institutions supporting this landmark judgment, a new era of Economic progress in the region is expected.
    • This, in turn, will lead to the exploration of tourism and synergy to business development at the priority of the Govt and all the stakeholders in the region.

    Victory of harmony over hate

    • The date on which the verdict had been delivered, November 9, was particularly significant as it was on that day that the Berlin Wall, dividing East and West Germany, had been brought down and people on opposite sides reconciled PM Modi said.
    • India also saw the opening of the Kartarpur Sahib Corridor. Ayodhya verdict on this day, therefore, is telling us that the message from the date is to be united in harmony and amity.

    Law stands apart over political considerations, religion and beliefs

    • The judges declared that the demolition of the 16th century Babri Masjid on December 6, 1992, was “an egregious violation of the rule of law” and “a calculated act of destroying a place of public worship”.
    • The Muslims have been wrongly deprived of a mosque which had been constructed well over 450 years ago, the Bench said.
    • The Court referred to the Places of Worship (Special Provisions) Act of 1991, which prohibits the conversion of the status any place of worship, to say that all religions are equal.
    • After giving the disputed land to Hindus and a separate five acres for construction of a mosque in Ayodhya, the SC shut the door for fresh litigation to alter the status quo of sites such as those in Kashi and Mathura, which have also seen discord over worship.
    • “The Constitution does not make a distinction between the faith and belief of one religion and another. All forms of belief, worship, and prayer are equal,”
    • The Bench said the Act “speaks to the future by mandating that the character of a place of public worship shall not be altered”.
    • “Places of Worship Act is an affirmation of the solemn duty which was cast upon the State to preserve and protect the equality of all faiths as an essential constitutional value, a norm which has the status of being a basic feature of the Constitution,” the Supreme Court addressed the government.
    • In the times to come and given India’s demographic and cultural complexity, the judgment may prove to be an invaluable legal treatise that upholds “justness” and delivers impartial treatment to a vexed and emotional case.

    Latent implications of the ruling

     

    Ruling is regarded as majoritarian coercion

    • The Supreme Court has averted an immediate crisis, insofar as there has been neither outbreak of violence, nor any reports of bloodshed in the aftermath of the Ayodhya verdict.
    • The point is that majoritarian coercion over time has deepened and legitimized a process where institutional remedies for highly charged communal disputes are sought.
    • What mattered ultimately was comfort, peace and tranquility and the judgment — by its so-called ‘balancing act’, it is argued — holds immense promise.
    • But perhaps the greater crisis that the Court has involuntarily invited is that of minorities losing their faith in the institution of the judiciary.
    • In an environment where the legislature and the executive are turning majoritarianism as accused by some parliamentarians, they are left with no choice but to repose their faith in the courts.

    Worrisome silence

    • The response from Muslim denominational organizations is guarded. It ranges from immediate acceptance to muted disagreement to appeals to “move on”.
    • There are various social media postings that have appealed to the Sunni Waqf Board to decline the compensatory gift of five acres of land.
    • Nevertheless, a state of shock and incredulity runs deep; the silence and stillness is far more worrisome.
    • The demolition of the mosque in 1992 had indeed left its impact on generations to come, as the Nellie (1983), Gujarat (2002) and Bhagalpur (1989) riots did.

    Conclusion

    • The issue inherently has a religious angle, and to appease these sentiments there is a larger need to address the issue of communalism.
    • The verdict attempts to bring an end the festering one-and-a-half centuries-old legal battle over the title to the disputed structure.
    • The judgment did result in a victory for the majority and coincidentally for the mob that demolished the Babri but a reading of the judgment clearly shows disapproval and disavowal of the mob.
    • The legal victory is indeed based upon secular principles and pluralist ethos. This can be projected as the victory of secularism too.

    Let’s have a look at the chronology of the Ayodhya dispute

     

    1528:

    First Mughal Emperor Babar is believed to have constructed Babri Masjid

    1885:

    Mahant Raghbir Das moves Faizabad court seeking permission to construct a temple in the vicinity of the Babri Masjid. The plea is declined.

    December 22-23, 1949:

    Idols of Lord Ram is mysteriously found inside the mosque

    1950:

    Gopal Visharad and Ramachandra Das moves Faizabad court for permission to worship the idols

    1959:

    Nirmohi Akhara files plea seeking possession of the disputed land.

    1961:

    Central Sunni Waqf Board, U.P., moves court for declaration of title of the disputed land and removal of the idols inside the mosque.

    February 1986:

    Faizabad court allows Hindus to worship the idols.

    August 1989:

    Allahabad High Court takes over the title dispute. Orders status quo.

    November 1989:

    The Rajiv Gandhi government allows Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP) to perform puja near the disputed site.

    September 1990:

    BJP leader L.K. Advani begins rath yatra

    December 1992:

    Kar sevaks demolish Babri Masjid. Justice Liberhan Commission appointed to probe.

    1993:

    P.V. Narasimha Rao government acquires 67 acres of land adjoining the disputed site. The Supreme Court upholds the acquisition in its Dr. Ismail Faruqui judgment.

    April 2002:

    Allahabad High Court commences hearing the title suits.

    March 2003:

    SC bans religious activity in the acquired lands in Mohd. Aslam @Bhurre case.

    2009:

    Liberhan Committee submits inquiry report.

    September 30, 2010:

    High Court delivers a majority judgment for three-way partition of the disputed property among Hindus, Muslims and Nirmohi Akhara.

    May 2011:

    SC stays the high court judgment on cross-appeals filed by the parties.

    August 2017:

    A three-judge Bench of the Supreme Court led by Justice Dipak Misra begins hearing the appeals. The main title issue is side-tracked. Muslim parties seek a reference of a contentious observation made in the Faruqui judgment that worshipping in mosques are not integral to Islam to a Constitution Bench. A majority judgment is pronounced declining the prayer.

    January 2019:

    A Constitution Bench of five judges led by Chief Justice of India Ranjan Gogoi resumes hearing the title appeals but suggests mediation first.

    August 6, 2019:

    Mediation committee led by former Supreme Court judge, Justice F.M.I. Kalifulla fails to draw a consensus and court hearing commences.

    October 16, 2019:

    After 40 days of hearings, the Constitution Bench reserves judgment

    November 9, 2019:

    Constitution Bench clears the way for constructing Ram Temple at the disputed site. It orders the government to provide five-acre land to Muslims at a prominent place in Ayodhya.

     

     

    References:

    https://thewire.in/law/ayodhya-dispute-public-justice

    https://www.thehindu.com/news/national/a-chronology-of-the-ayodhya-dispute/article29929198.ece

    https://www.bloombergquint.com/opinion/ayodhya-verdict-beliefs-do-matter

    https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-india-50065277

    https://www.thehindubusinessline.com/opinion/some-questions-on-ayodhya-verdict/article29985922.ece

    https://www.indiatoday.in/india-today-insight/story/why-critics-of-majoritarianism-on-the-ayodhya-verdict-are-wrong-1617787-2019-11-11

    https://thewire.in/communalism/ayodhya-verdict-babri-masjid-ram-temple-dn-jha

  • [Burning Issue] WhatsApp Snooping

     

    Context

    • Possibly one of the biggest stories in that broke in cyberspace recently has been WhatsApp’s reports that 1,400 of its users were hacked by Pegasus, a spyware tool from Israeli firm NSO Group.
    • A significant number of these Indian users include journalists, academics, human rights and Dalit activists.
    • Further, the timing of such surveillance — late April to mid-May — rakes up another set of worries about the motive behind the hack.

     

    Pegasus

    • All spyware do what the name suggests — they spy on people through their phones.
    • Pegasus works by sending an exploit link, and if the target user clicks on the link, the malware or the code that allows the surveillance is installed on the user’s phone.
    • A presumably newer version of the malware does not even require a target user to click a link.
    • Once Pegasus is installed, the attacker has complete access to the target user’s phone.
    • The first reports on Pegasus’s spyware operations emerged in 2016, when Ahmed Mansoor, a human rights activist in the UAE, was targeted with an SMS link on his iPhone 6.

    Method of working

    • A Pegasus operator must convince a target to click on a specially crafted ‘exploit link’ which allows the operator to penetrate security features on the phone.
    • This automatically installs Pegasus without the user’s knowledge or permission.
    • Once the phone is exploited and Pegasus installed, it begins contacting the operator’s command and control and send back the target’s private data, including passwords, contact lists, events, text messages, and live voice calls from popular mobile messaging apps.
    • The operator can even turn on the phone’s camera and microphone to capture activity in the phone’s vicinity.

     

    Why is Pegasus dangerous?

    • What makes Pegasus really dangerous is that it spares no aspect of a person’s identity. It makes older techniques of spying seem relatively harmless.
    • What can’t it do would be an easier question to answer. Once on a phone, the spyware has the run of the place.
    • It can intercept every call and SMS, read every email and monitor each messaging app.
    • Pegasus can also control the phone’s camera and microphone and has access to the device’s location data.
    • The app advertises that it can carry out “file retrieval”, which means it could access any document that a target might have stored on their phone.

     

    Concerns over Snooping

    The pertinent questions are, who is behind this surveillance and hacking incident; and has this intrusion of privacy reached a level that has not been fathomed by the legal and technical communities?

    Stretching this further, is this a vulnerability ignored by WhatsApp’s management?

    Perpetrators behind the attack

    • The other angle to this whole episode is the role of the perpetrators behind the hack.
    • With access to technology increasing, networks can be intruded from any part of the world provided the encryption can be broken.
    • The offering of products such as Pegasus and their misuse or proliferation has the same, if not more, ramifications as advanced nuclear technology falling into the wrong hands.
    • The role of non-state actors with support from rogue nations or even criminal syndicates is also not out of question.

    Security and privacy breach

    • Clearly, the potential revelations are worrying a large section of social media users about the confidentiality and integrity of the networks, which is the basis of trust for most users.
    • At the same time, the NSO Group’s claim about only working with specific security agencies across the world brings to the fore questions about the role of such agencies.

    Government under question

    • Some in India have been quick to jump the gun and blame the government and its ‘snooping’ networks.
    • But, that is definitely not proven to be the situation yet, and both the MeitY and Ministry of Home Affairs have clearly said they played no role.

     

    Snooping:  an offence in India

    • Any form of online interception, monitoring and decryption are well defined as per the provisions of the Information Technology Act 2008 (IT Act) and the concomitant rules.
    • These provisions clearly list the 10 agencies that can undertake such actions and the procedures for them, the competent authority who can order such an action being the Union Home Secretary.
    • Even such authorised surveillance actions have to be reviewed by a committee, headed by the Cabinet Secretary, which meets at least once in two months.
    • Likewise for States, the respective Home Secretary is the competent authority and the Chief Secretary heads the review committee.
    • No such authorizations have been given by any of the competent authorities for the monitoring of the affected individuals in India for the period in reference.

     

    Whom to blame, then?

    • This is a clear case of willful hacking whose proportions entail it to be seen as a cyber terrorism attempt; it calls for application of Section 66 (F) of the IT Act to deal with the perpetrators.
    • To date, there have been three denials, by the central government (the ministry of electronics and information technology, the ministry of home affairs, and CERT-IN, a technical body that probes cyber threats).
    • The issue has brought to the fore the fear around the possibility of how emerging network access technology could also beat secured encryption, which remains the fundamental basis of user trust and hitherto privacy.

     

    Clear implications

     

    No national security without individual privacy!

    We must all recognise that national security starts with securing the smartphones of every single Indian by embracing technologies such as encryption rather than deploying spyware. This is a core part of our fundamental right to privacy.

    • This intrusion by the spyware is not merely an infringement of the rights of the citizens of the country but also a worrying development for India’s national security apparatus.
    • The security of a device becomes one of the fundamental bedrocks of maintaining user trust as society becomes more and more digitized.
    • Such an approach belies appreciating the injury and threats to individuals and the country.
    • There is an urgent need to take up this issue seriously by constituting an independent high-level inquiry with credible members and experts that can restore confidence and conduct its proceedings transparently.

    Alleged perpetrator

    • The alleged spying on Opposition leaders and activists in India reminds one of the illegal espionage in the Watergate scandal.
    • Given that NSO claims it only sells to governments and the fact that it is mostly critics of the ruling dispensation who have been targeted, some people have alleged that it is the Indian government that was behind the snooping.
    • In response, the Union minister of IT Minister alleged that the former Indian government had spied on the then chief of the Indian Army as well as the Union Finance Minister.

    A note of caution

    • Social media providers must stop chest-thumping, start investing in attribution solutions and be honest with users about the risks involved in their products.
    • Such software must be strictly controlled and legal provisions must be inked, so that providers of such technologies are deterred.
    • Needless to say, a relook at laws, technology and ethics is needed, preferably sooner than later.
    • In the digital age, companies will emerge and operate in the grey areas of the intersection between technology and security to make a profit.
    • But national security must not be used as a shield by either governments or private players to justify the violation of fundamental rights.

     

    Way Forward

     

    • It is incumbent on Parliament, the judiciary and Facebook, the company that owns WhatsApp, to plug the breach of privacy and nail those responsible for it.
    • Indian government must leverage its relationship with Israel to hold NSO to account.
    • Since this attack involves users from a quite a few countries, there is a greater need for global cooperation to a concerted and coordinated investigation.
    • The government has made it clear that it holds a sovereign right over the data of its citizens. The idea of data sovereignty must include a citizen’s right to privacy.
    • It must punish anyone found guilty of unlawfully violating the privacy of Indian citizens.

     

     

    References:

    https://www.civilsdaily.com/news/spyware-pegasus/

    https://scroll.in/article/942300/explainer-how-whatsapp-was-hacked-to-spy-on-indian-dissidents-and-who-did-it

    https://www.telegraphindia.com/opinion/whatsapp-snooping-is-a-grievous-offence/cid/1719010

    https://www.hindustantimes.com/analysis/why-there-cannot-be-any-national-security-without-individual-privacy-analysis/story-JvDaOJLW85gXR9cILtwq7M.html

  • [Burning Issue] India’s exit from RCEP

    Context

    • India decided to drop out of the RCEP agreement, citing its negative effects on farmers, MSMEs and dairy sector.

     

    What is RCEP?

     

    Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) is a proposed free trade agreement (FTA) between –

    • The 10 members of ASEAN
    • Additional members of ASEAN +3 = China, Japan, South Korea
    • Members with which ASEAN countries have FTA = India, Australia, New Zealand

    RCEP includes more than 3 billion people, has a combined GDP of about $17 trillion, and accounts for about 40 per cent of world trade. By any means, this is a huge community in making.

     

    How significance was RCEP for India?

    • From India’s point of view, the RCEP presented a decisive platform which could influence its strategic and economic status in the Asia-Pacific region and bring to fruition its “Act East Policy.”
    • It is expected to be an ambitious agreement bringing the 5 biggest economies of the region – Australia, China, India, Japan and South Korea – into a regional trading arrangement.

    There are three immediate benefits that its trade policymakers should note-

    #1. The RCEP agreement would complement India’s existing free trade agreements with the ASEAN and some of its member countries.

    This consolidation can address challenges emanating from implementation concerns vis-à-vis overlapping agreements, which is creating a “noodle bowl” situation obstructing effective utilization of these FTAs.

    It will also help achieve its goal of greater economic integration with countries East and South East of India through better access to a vast regional market ranging from Japan to Australia.

    NOTE:            India is not a party to two important regional economic blocs: the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation and the Trans-Pacific Partnership. The RCEP would enable India to strengthen its trade ties with Australia, China, Japan and South Korea, and should reduce the potential negative impacts of TPP and TTIP on the Indian economy.

    #2. Getting India closer to ASEAN

    • Clubbing with the ASEAN has been a principal policy priority for both China and India.
    • At present, while China has clubbed with the ASEAN+1, ASEAN+3 and ASEAN+6,
    • India is clubbed only under the ASEAN+6 framework

    #3. India can leverage its capabilities in IT, Healthcare, Education and services

    • The RCEP will create opportunities for Indian companies to access new markets
    • India is well placed to contribute to other countries in RCEP through its expertise in services

    #4. Balancing with China

    • India’s allies in Southeast Asia, as well as Australia, want India to join it to balance China.
    • On the other hand, many in India feel that RCEP will aggravate India’s burgeoning trade deficit with China.
    • The Indian industry feels that China does not provide a level playing field for items that they could export, especially in fields like pharma, IT, films, indigenous medicines, wellness and yoga.
    • Some of these are founded on opacity that surrounds the Chinese government’s decision making.

     

    What compelled India to opt-out?

    Chinese imports

    • Key issues that have prevented India from coming on board include “inadequate” protection against surges in imports.
    • This is a major concern for India, as its industry has voiced fears that cheaper products from China would “flood” the market.
    • India had been seeking an auto-trigger mechanism that would allow it to raise tariffs on products in instances where imports cross a certain threshold.
    • India has also not received any credible assurances on its demand for more market access, and its concerns over non-tariff barriers.

    Rules of origin criteria

    • Its concerns on a “possible circumvention” of rules of origin — the criteria used to determine the national source of a product — were also not addressed.
    • Current provisions in the deal reportedly do not prevent countries from routing, through other countries, products on which India would maintain higher tariffs.
    • This is anticipated to allow countries like China to pump in more products.

    Trade deficit

    • Despite India already having separate, bilateral FTAs with most RCEP nations, it has recorded trade deficits with these countries.
    • China India has an over $50 billion trade deficit is one of the major reasons for New Delhi not joining in at this stage.
    • During negotiations, it was also not able to get a favourable outcome on its demands on the base year that would be used to reduce the tariffs on the products that would be traded as part of the pact.

    Protecting domestic industries

    • Throughout the RCEP negotiations, several sections of the Indian industry have raised concerns over India signing the deal.
    • They have argued that some domestic sectors may take a hit due to cheaper alternatives from other participant countries.
    • For instance, the dairy industry was expected to face stiff competition from Australia and New Zealand.
    • Similarly, steel and textiles sectors have also demanded protection.

     

    RCEP minus India

    It comprises half of the world population and accounts for nearly 40% of the global commerce and 35% of the GDP. RCEP would have become the world’s largest FTA after finalisation, with India being the third-biggest economy in it. Without India, the RCEP does not look as attractive as it had seemed during negotiations.

    What it means?

    • Divided ASEAN – ASEAN has been keen on a diversified portfolio so that member states can deal with major powers and maintain their strategic autonomy. ASEAN member states have tried to keep the U.S. engaged in the region.
    • Indo-Pacific – Both geopolitically and geo-economically, China is set to dominate the Indo-Pacific. India’s entire Indo-Pacific strategy might be open to question if steps are not taken to restore India’s profile in the region.
    • Rejected China’s dominance – India signalled that, despite the costs, China’s rise has to be tackled both politically and economically. Japan is now suggesting that it would work towards a deal that includes India.

    Implications for India

     

    Inherent lack of confidence?

    • Our government’s decision to stay out of the RCEP has drawn near-unanimous support from political parties and organisations representing farmers, traders and industries.
    • It is clear recognition that Indian producers will find it difficult to cope with increased import, especially of dairy products from Australia and New Zealand and manufactured goods from China.

    Isolation from the global value chain

    • India’s absence in integrating with global value chains will impact India’s internal and external ambitions.
    • India’s own evidence shows that jobs linked to global value chains earn one-third more than those jobs focused on the domestic market.
    • The inability to accede to the RCEP and ensure India’s integration into these emerging global value chains means India will lose out on a key opportunity to create such high-quality, high-paying jobs.
    • Moreover, India’s absence in both of Asia’s two key economic architectures will take away from India’s goals as a regional and Indo-Pacific power, as well as a prospective global power.

    Unclear on ‘national interest’

    • India’s ambitions to become a global hub for manufacturing means that it is the country’s long-term national interest to be integrated into global value chains.
    • Such growth matters for two reasons: within India, it will create millions of jobs and secure a stable future for India’s young population, and externally, to facilitate India’s rise as one of the poles in a multipolar 21st century.
    • India cannot decide its future by remaining isolated and sitting alone in a corner.

    The Indian protectionism

    • It has been argued that the Indian industry has hidden behind a wall of protectionism for far too long, and must open itself to global competition.
    • There is a tendency in Indian industry to seek protection, whenever any steps towards globalization are taken.
    • However, it is an acknowledged fact that globalization did benefit the Indian economy, it brought in newer technology and made Indian industry far more competitive.
    • RCEP does provide Indian industry a huge market to grow and expand, provided it transforms and the government frees it from bureaucratic controls that have been stifling growth.

    Conclusion

    • It does not seem a good idea for India to be out of the agreement from its inception, only to join it later.
    • Economic isolation is not an option for India. However, there are reports that India will move towards bilateral trade pacts.
    • Given India’s own ambitions to generate growth and jobs within India, and becoming a key player and rule-maker on the world stage, India’s decision to withdraw from the RCEP is not ideal.
    • India must now translate this withdrawal into a commitment for domestic reforms to prepare itself for the next opportunity to integrate itself into the global value chains and unleash Indian manufacturing.
    • However, having no deal is far more prudent than signing up for a bad one.
    • It is easy to succumb to the rapturous sound of global applause, but far tougher to make a tactical retreat in the larger national interest.

     

     

    References

    https://www.civilsdaily.com/what-is-the-significance-of-rcep-for-india/

    https://www.civilsdaily.com/news/explained-rcep-trade-negotiations/

    https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/markets/stocks/news/how-to-craft-an-rcep-to-indias-advantage/articleshow/72016572.cms

  • [Burning Issue] Death of Baghdadi and Its Global Implications

     

    Context

    • The death of ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi last week ended one of the most intense and aggressive manhunts in the world. He blew himself in a dead-end tunnel.
    • As a “leader on the run” for more than five years, Baghdadi was more of a symbol for a Caliphate.
    • It will be an overstatement to claim that his killing put an end to the ISIS network.

     

    ISIS: A quick recap

    • The Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) officially known as the Islamic State (IS) is a terrorist group and a formerly unrecognized proto-state that follows a fundamentalist Salafi jihadist doctrine.
    • Within 18 months of the withdrawal of US troops from Iraq in 2011, the AL Qaeda in Iraq captured large territories across Iraq and Syria and morphed itself into ISIS.
    • The group has been designated a terrorist organization by the United Nations as well as by many international organizations and individual countries.

     

    Modus operandi of IS

    • Riding high on extremists and terrorists from across the globe, ISIS announced “decentralized” wilayas and asked their supporters to join them if they could not travel to the Caliphate.
    • The decentralized wilayas in West Africa, the Philippines, Egypt, Yemen, Afghanistan, Indonesia, and Libya have become more active and are showcasing successes on social media daily.
    • IS started systematically encouraging lone actor attacks in the West in 2016.

     

    The most lethal weapon

    • The real threat that the IS, however, poses is that it is able to convince the Muslim extremist fringe that their time has come.
    • Radicalization, in any event, has less to do with numbers than with the intensity of beliefs. The struggle is not against presumed disparities or injustices meted out to Muslim minorities.
    • Rather, it reflects the quest for a new militant Islamist identity.
    • In addition to this, the IS introduced the concept of a new Caliphate — especially al-Baghdadi’s vision of a Caliphate based on Islamic history.
    • This further ignited the imagination of Muslim youth across the globe and became a powerful magnet to attract volunteers to their cause.

     

    Who was Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi?

    • The leader of the IS was often described as the most wanted individual in the world.
    • The US designated him a terrorist some eight years ago and declared a bounty of $10 million (more than Rs 70 crore) on his head.
    • Baghdadi, who was believed to have been born in Iraq perhaps in 1971, proclaimed himself Caliph of the Islamic State in 2013.
    • He made his first known public appearance the following year, delivering a Ramzan sermon at the Great Mosque of al-Nuri in Mosul in northern Iraq.
    • This was the place at which the IS declared itself to be a worldwide Caliphate with al-Baghdadi at its head.

     

    The rise

    • In early 2014, al-Baghdadi’s fighters had taken control over western Iraq, and over the next year and a half, the IS ran a sweeping campaign of terror and brutality across a vast patch of Iraq and Syria.
    • It went on terrifying the world with grisly videos of beheadings and shaking up governments everywhere.
    • By the end of 2015, it had control over an estimated 8-12 million people over which it imposed an unforgiving version of Sharia law, attracting jihadists from across the world, including a few from India.
    • The terrorist organization and empire that Baghdadi headed was estimated at the time to have been the size of Great Britain, with an annual budget of over a billion dollars and an army of more than 30,000 jihadists.

    Downfall

    • The ISIS started to weaken from 2016 onward as the international coalition, backed by regional allies including, most importantly, Syrian Kurdish peshmerga fighters, gained ground in Syria and Iraq.
    • As the formal structure of ISIS crumbled, thousands of its fighters went underground, even though local groups continued to carry out isolated terrorist incidents across the world in the name of ISIS and al-Baghdadi.

     

    Infamous terror activities

    • Among the biggest of ISIS attacks were carried out in Paris in November 2015, and in Sri Lanka in 2019.
    • Al-Baghdadi described the attacks in Sri Lanka on Easter as revenge for the defeat in Al-Baghuz Fawqani in Syria, which was taken from ISIS in late March.

     

    What does Baghdadi’s killing now mean?

    • Should Baghdadi’s elimination be confirmed, it would mark the bringing to justice of one of the biggest terrorist killers of modern times and the successful conclusion of a massive international manhunt.
    • It must be remembered that there have been multiple alerts about his death earlier.
    • In June 2017, Russia claimed he had been killed in an airstrike near Raqqa, Syria; two weeks later, the most reliable Syrian Observatory of Human Rights reported “confirmed information” that al-Baghdadi was dead.

     

    Did this put an end to ISIS?

    • Baghdadi’s death will not necessarily mark the end of ISIS itself, which though fragmented and no longer easily visible, is far from dead.
    • ISIS lives on and today it is much stronger than it was in 2011 before Baghdadi when American troops pulled out of Iraq and the group was considered defeated.
    • Besides its thousands of fighters in Iraq and Syria, ISIS has a Khorasan province and provinces in the Philippines and West Africa and it is strong and growing in Afghanistan.
    • These are groups that are robust on the ground and there is enough evidence to suggest that there is the connective tissue between the affiliates and ISIS’s core group in Iraq and Syria.

    Implications for India

     

    Rising influence in the vicinity

    • ISIS has attracted foreign fighters from South Asia, mainly Pakistanis, Afghans, Maldivians, and Bangladeshis.
    • The Easter attacks showed the potential of violence even by a small group of committed cadres with support of the ISIS network.
    • The NIA during its investigations has since come across links connecting IS units in Kerala and Tamil Nadu as well as in Sri Lanka.
    • In Bangladesh three years ago, ISIS did create a small but effective network with the active support of western nationals of Bangladeshi origin.

    Vulnerability at home

    • Less than 100-200 Indians so far are believed to have traveled to Syria and Iraq and Afghanistan to join ISIS.
    • This creates the potential for more recruitment as well as aiding attacks on Indian soil or interests.
    • A few weeks ago, ISIS propaganda has called for jihad pegged on sentiments around Kashmir and has specifically called for attacks on Indian interests in the Arabian Peninsula.

     

    Global implications

    • ISIS has suffered significant setbacks over the past two years, losing most of its territorial control, and has returned to its roots as an insurgent organization.
    • Given the recent successes in the fight against ISIS, many analysts and government officials are optimistic that Baghdadi’s death will result in substantial weakening and perhaps the demise of ISIS.
    • However, to effectively bring down a terrorist group through targeting its leader, it’s important to consider three factors: organizational structure, ideology, and popular support.
    • Baghdadi’s death will not hinder the operational capacity or bring about the collapse of ISIS. In fact, it could even be counterproductive to weakening ISIS.

    ISIS – An ideology not a personality cult

    • Advocates of this view argue that Baghdadi is irreplaceable, given his claim of lineage to the prophet Muhammad.
    • Despite this belief in Baghdadi’s authority and legitimacy as a leader of the self-proclaimed caliphate, however, ISIS is not a cult of personality.
    • Baghdadi was successful in institutionalizing essential organizational structures.
    • Looking at nearly 1,000 instances of leadership decapitation from 1970 to 2016 revealed that it is often ineffective against religious, separatist, Islamist and large organizations.

    ISIS is more organized

    • Bureaucratized terrorist organizations are diversified with a clear division of responsibilities and functions, standard operations procedures, and other characteristics that create redundancies to support their resilience.
    • In the case of ISIS, Baghdadi created complex bureaucratic structures to govern and manage its finances, social programs, infrastructure and military resources.
    • ISIS has also developed into a hybrid organizational structure.
    • That is, the group is hierarchical at the upper organizational levels, with the emir at the top; deputies who oversee financial, military, legal and social operations; and legislative councils including the Shura Council.
    • At the lower operational levels, the group is more decentralized, with networks including those in Iraq and Syria; affiliated groups in South Asia, the Arabia and Africa; and lone actors who span the globe.
    • Such hybrid structures are especially difficult to weaken through targeting efforts.

    The ideology

    • The leadership of Islamist, religious or separatist groups is not necessary for recruitment, inspiring attacks or ensuring that the group’s message stays relevant.
    • The ideology becomes self-sustaining, and the Islamic State’s use of propaganda and technology has been effective at broadening their base of support transnationally.
    • In August 2018, Baghdadi urged his followers to carry out lone-actor attacks in Western countries.

    New successor in queue

    • ISIS has a wide and deep pool of militants from which to recruit his successor and a bureaucracy that encourages specialization and training.
    • Less than a week after Baghdadi’s death, the organization announced a successor, Abu Ibrahim al-Hashimi al-Qurashi, as the new caliph.

    Popular support

    • It grants the basis for group legitimacy, which can increase an organization’s efficiency and resilience.
    • After an attack on a terrorist group’s leadership, popular support is essential to maintaining organizational strength and capacity.
    • The creation of the self-proclaimed ISIS caliphate broadened this base of support.

    Conclusion

    • The caliphate may be weakened after him, but Baghdadi created a highly resilient bureaucratic organizational structure capable of withstanding the loss of leaders.
    • Attacks on high-profile leaders are visible counterterrorism measures that can make a fearful U.S. audience feel secure in the belief that their government is successfully fighting the war on terrorism.
    • It is an alternative to such costly policies as large-scale military operations.
    • But in the case of ISIS, it’s an alternative that not only disregards critical aspects of the group’s resilience — it could even fuel a strengthened retaliation.

     

     

    References

    https://www.civilsdaily.com/news/op-ed-snap-taking-stock-of-islamic-state-2-0/

    https://www.thehindu.com/news/international/afghan-islamic-state-after-baghdadi/article29865207.ece

    https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2019/11/05/death-baghdadi-isnt-end-isis/

    https://indianexpress.com/article/explained/after-death-of-al-baghdadi-who-is-the-worlds-most-wanted-criminal-6104708/

    https://indianexpress.com/article/explained/explained-abu-bakr-al-baghdadi-islamic-state-us-raids-syria-6090189/

  • [Burning Issue] Naga Peace Talks

    Context

    • The deadline set by the Centre for wrapping up the Naga peace talks, October 31 has ended up.
    • While the Centre’s interlocutor and now Nagaland’s Governor, R N Ravi, has stressed that some key issues remain unresolved with the National Socialist Council of Nagalim (Isak-Muivah), or NSCN(I-M).

     

    Rise of Naga nationalism

    • The British had annexed Assam in 1826, in which they subsequently created the Naga Hills district and went on to extend its boundaries.
    • The assertion of Naga nationalism, which began during British rule, has continued after Independence, and even after Nagaland became a state.
    • Along the way, the unresolved issues gave rise to decades of insurgency that claimed thousands of lives, including civilians.

     

    The Naga assertion through History

    • The earliest sign of Naga resistance dates back to 1918, with the formation of the Naga Club.
    • In 1929, the Club famously told the Simon Commission “to leave us alone to determine for ourselves as in ancient times”.
    • In a memorandum to the Simon Commission in 1929, representatives of Naga tribes demanded that Nagas be left free after Independence and not be included in the Indian Union.
    • Ahead of Independence, a nine-point agreement was signed between the Government of India and the Naga National Council.
    • This included an experimental coexistence with India for 10 years to be reviewed at the end of that period.
    • While the Nagas saw this provision as temporary, with a right to self-determination after 10 years, Naga historians say the Indian government has interpreted the “trial period’’ as accession to the Indian Union.
    • In 1946, A Z Phizo formed the Naga National Council (NNC), declared Naga independence on August 14, 1947, and then, in 1951, claimed to have conducted a referendum.
    • The referendum got an overwhelming majority in support of an independent Naga state.
    • By the early 1950s, the NNC had taken up arms and gone underground.
    • The NNC split in 1975, the breakaway group being the NSCN, which split further in later years, most prominently into the NSCN(I-M) and NSCN (Khaplang) in 1988.

     

    What are the Naga peace talks?

    • The talks seek to settle disputes that date back to colonial rule.
    • The Nagas are not a single tribe, but an ethnic community that comprises several tribes who live in the state of Nagaland and its neighborhood
    • One key demand of Naga groups has been a Greater Nagalim that would cover not only the state of Nagaland but parts of neighboring states, and even of Myanmar.

     

    And how have the peace talks played out in recent years?

    Before the ongoing talks, which followed a framework agreement in 2015, there were two other agreements between Naga groups and the Centre. 1975:

    • A peace accord was signed in Shillong in which the NNC leadership agreed to give up arms.
    • Several NNC leaders, including Isak Chishi Swu, Thuingaleng Muivah and S S Khaplang refused to accept the agreement and broke away to form the NSCN.
    • In 1988 came another split, with Khaplang breaking away to form the NSCN(K) while Isak and Muivah headed the NSCN(I-M).

    1997:

    • The NSCN (I-M ) signed a ceasefire agreement with the government in 1997, preceded by rounds of talks since 1995.
    • The key agreement was that there would be no counter-insurgency offensive against the NSCN(I-M), who in turn would not attack Indian forces.
    • The NSCN (I-M) had then announced to “every citizen of Nagalim wherever they may be”, that a ceasefire agreement was entered into between India and the outfit to bring about a lasting political solution.

    2015:

    • In August that year, the Centre signed a framework agreement with the NSCN(I-M).
    • PM Modi described it as a “historic agreement” towards settling the “oldest insurgency” in India. This set the stage for the ongoing peace talks.
    • In 2017, six other Naga armed outfits under the banner of the Naga National Political Groups (NNPGs) joined the talks.
    • Today, Muivah remains the senior-most Naga rebel leader. Isak died in 2016. In the NSCN(-K), its leader Khaplang died in 2018.

     

    What was in the framework agreement?

    • The government has not yet spelled out the details in public.
    • Following the agreement, the government had said in a press statement: “The Government of India recognized the unique history, culture, and position of the Nagas and their sentiments and aspirations.
    • The NSCN understood and appreciated the Indian political system and governance.
    • On the other hand, the NSCN(I-M) issued a statement earlier this year which said that Nagaland State does and will not represent the national decision of the Naga people.
    • The statement was in opposition to the proposal for a Register of Indigenous Inhabitants of Nagaland (RIIN) in the state of Nagaland.

     

    Where does the territorial demand currently stand?

    • The accord being finalized “does not change the boundary of states; it provides autonomous Naga territorial councils for Arunachal and Manipur; a common cultural body for Nagas across states.
    • It provides for specific institutions for the state’s development, integration and rehabilitation of non-state Naga militia and the removal of the Armed Forces Special Powers Act.
    • The map of Greater Nagalim in the NSCN(IM) vision, on the other hand, covers a 1,20,000 sq km sprawl across the Northeast and Myanmar — the area of Nagaland state itself is only 16,527 sq km, a fraction of this vision.
    • Amid the anxiety this has caused among citizens in neighboring states, state governments have assured them that their respective states’ territorial integrity would not be compromised.

     

    What are the other issues?

    • The government and the NSCN(I-M) have failed to agree on issues relating to a separate Naga flag and a constitution.
    • In its latest statement, the NSCN(I-M) has said it will not budge from the demand for the flag and the constitution — and that it is looking for a lasting solution.
    • However, the NSCN(I-M) has adopted a procrastinating attitude to delay the settlement raising the contentious symbolic issues of separate Naga national flag and constitution.

    I. Independence celebration

    • The tallest leader of the Naga struggle, Dr A Z Phizo, met M K Gandhi in Delhi on July 19, 1947.
    • According to Naga historians, Gandhi agreed that the Nagas would celebrate their independence a day ahead of India, on August 14, 1947.
    • To this day, Nagas across Nagaland, Manipur, Assam and Arunachal Pradesh celebrate August 14 as Independence Day.

    II. The Naga flag

    • In the Naga narrative, passed down generations by word of mouth, the Naga flag was not designed by a mortal but is of divine origin.
    • As Naga groups battled the Indian armed forces, the legend goes, Phizo and his closest colleagues had a vision — a rainbow, in a startlingly blue sky that had appeared after a storm.
    • A woman of the Rengma tribe, one of the tribes under the Naga umbrella, was commissioned to weave the flag.
    • It was hoisted for the first time in Parashen in Rengma on March 22, 1956.
    • The flag has a blue background, representing the sky. A red, yellow and green rainbow arches across the centre.
    • The Star of Bethlehem adorns the top left corner of the flag; Nagas are predominantly Christian.

     

    Present status

    • The flag remains a symbol of the Nagas’ struggle for over 60 years, of their religious faith, of the aspirations of the Naga people, and their identity.
    • It helps bind all the different Naga tribes together.
    • Outside Nagaland state, in particular, the flag continues to elucidate strong emotions of identity from Nagas.
    • Inside the state, common citizens are today divided on it. Certain sections believe that with secession from the Indian Union no longer possible, the Naga flag has lost some of its relevance.

     

    Status of secessionist tendencies

    • The moderates have supported a complete inclusion in the Indian state, for access to the latter’s development project, infrastructure, and its education and health facilities.
    • But a large section of the Nagas still holds dear the idea of the Naga identity and their tribal roots.

     

    Impacts of disagreement

    • The statement from the Governor’s office has given rise to speculation that the government is ready to sign a final peace agreement with other groups without the NSCN (I-M), the largest group.
    • Civil society groups in Nagaland are divided in their opinion.
    • Some have said the talks should be wrapped up with whatever is offered now and keep other issues open for later negotiations.
    • Others believe all issues should be settled and the NSCN (I-M) should be on board, even if it takes longer than the deadline.

     

    Conclusion

    • The Naga struggle claimed thousands of lives over decades and devastated countless homes, all over the idea of a sovereign Naga nation.
    • If the NSCN (I-M) accedes to economic and political packages alone, without a separate flag and constitution, it remains to be seen whether it will be seen as a solution, or as a defeat.

       

    References https://indianexpress.com/article/explained/explained-history-of-naga-flag-and-why-is-it-important-6098576/ https://indianexpress.com/article/explained/naga-talks-long-road-issues-6090652/

  • [Burning Issue] Annual Crime in India Report-2017

    Context

    • After a delay of two years, the annual Crime in India Report 2017 was published by the National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB).
    • The NCRB has introduced more than three dozen new categories and sub-categories of crimes under various heads.
    • The report omits data on mob lynchings, khap killings, murder by influential people and killings for religious reasons.
    • Data on farmer suicides after 2015 are yet to be published although, sources said, the fully compiled.

    About NCRB

    • The NCRB is an Indian government agency responsible for collecting and analyzing crime data as defined by the Indian Penal Code (IPC) and Special and Local Laws (SLL).
    • NCRB is headquartered in New Delhi and is part of the Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA).
    • NCRB was set-up in 1986 to function as a repository of information on crime and criminals so as to assist the investigators in linking crime to the perpetrators.
    • It was set up based on the recommendation of the Task-force 1985 and National Police Commission 1977.

    Highlights of the report

    At least four categories where significant diversification of data can be seen are crimes against women and children, atrocities against Dalits, cases of corruption, and time taken by police and courts to take cases to their conclusion.

    For the first time, the NCRB has introduced categories of cyber crimes against women and children.

    I. Crime against women

    • As per the report, 359849 cases of crime against women were reported in the country.
    • Uttar Pradesh topped the list with 56,011 cases followed by Maharashtra with 31,979 cases and West Bengal 30,002.
    • Majority of cases under crimes against women were registered under ‘Cruelty by Husband or his Relatives’ (27.9%) followed by ‘Assault on Women with Intent to Outrage her Modesty’ (21.7%), ‘Kidnapping & Abduction of Women’ (20.5%) and ‘Rape’ (7.0%),” the report said.
    • In the category of cyber crimes against women, the NCRB has recorded 4,242 offenses where women were either stalked, blackmailed or their morphed pictures were uploaded on the internet.

    II. Crime against children

    • A total of 95,893 cases of kidnapping and abduction were registered during 2017, showing an increase of 9.0% over 2016 (88,008 cases).
    • A total of 63,349 children (20,555 male, 42,691 female, and 103 transgender) were reported missing in 2017.
    • During the year 2017, a total of 70,440 children were recovered/traced, the report said.

    III. Riots

    • As per the report, 58,880 incidents of rioting were reported, of which the maximum incidents were reported from Bihar – 11,698, followed by Uttar Pradesh – 8,990 and Maharashtra – 7,743.
    • Of the total riots reported, communal and sectarian riots accounted for 723 and 183 incidents respectively.
    • There were 805 riots due to caste conflict and 1909 riots occurred due to political reasons, the report said.

    IV. Hate Crimes

    • The incidents registered under the Scheduled Caste Prevention of Atrocities Act saw an increase from 5,082 incidents reported in 2016 to 5,775 in 2017.
    • Incidents of crime related to Scheduled Tribes dipped from 844 in 2016 to 720 in 2017.

    V. Pendency of cases

    • While the NCRB has always collected data on pendency of cases with police and in courts, this was largely about the number of such cases. In the latest report, the NCRB has also recorded the period of pendency.
    • The data show police delayed charge sheets in 40% of cases. For IPC crimes, police are supposed to file a charge sheet within 90 days.
    • But data show that in certain cases such as rioting, which includes communal riots, police delayed filing of charge sheets in 60% of the cases.
    • It says there are more than 3 lakh cases pending investigations for more than one year. In courts as a whole, 2,71,779 cases were pending trial at the end of 2017.

    The New Categories

     

    I. Fake news

    • The NCRB for the first time collected data on the circulation of “false/fake news and rumors.”
    • Under the category, maximum incidents were reported from Madhya Pradesh (138), Uttar Pradesh (32) and Kerala (18).

    II. Anti-National activities

    • A new category of offenses committed by various categories of “Anti-National Elements” was included.
    • It showed that the maximum offenses were committed by Left Wing Extremist (LWE) operatives (652), followed by North-East insurgents (421) and Terrorists (Jihadi and other elements) (371).
    • The maximum number of killings was carried out by LWE insurgents (82).
    • As many as 72 of these killings took place in Chhattisgarh. This was followed by killings by terrorists (36) — 34 in J&K alone. North-East insurgents killed 10 people.

    No data on lynching

    • The data collected under the new sub-heads of death due to mob lynching, murder by influential people, killing ordered by khap panchayat and murder committed for religious reasons have not been published.
    • This data was ready and fully compiled and analyzed.
    • The decision to collect data on lynchings had been taken in the wake of a spate of lynching incidents across the country through 2015-16.
    • The idea was that such data collection would help the government formulate its policies better in tackling these crimes.
    • Lynchings happen for a variety of reasons which include suspicion of theft, child lifting, cattle smuggling or communal reasons.

    Why need such data?

    • NCRB’s annual crime reports give valuable information about the state of crime in the country.
    • They give a picture of the law and order situation by tracking the levels of various crimes across states and helping in the assessment of criminal investigation and justice delivery systems.

    Significance of the data

    • The crime records data provide key inputs for policy-making and are needed by the police, other departments and by civil society.
    • They are also social documents.
    • Governments should base their policies, decisions, and actions on such data.
    • It is vitally important that the data is correct and is not misrepresented, and the people have a right to know them.

    References

    https://indianexpress.com/article/explained/explained-whats-new-in-crime-report-and-the-data-6082764/

    https://www.civilsdaily.com/news/annual-crime-in-india-report-2017/

    https://www.deccanherald.com/opinion/second-edit/is-govt-hiding-ncrb-report-too-768943.html

  • [Burning Issue] Randomized Controlled Trial and This Year’s Nobel Prize In Economics

    Context

    • The 2019 Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences was awarded to three economists for their pioneering research into the use of experimental approaches to fight global poverty.
    • The new Nobel laureates are considered to be instrumental in using randomized controlled trials to test the effectiveness of various policy interventions to alleviate poverty.

    Why have Banerjee, Duflo, and Kremer won the Nobel Prize?

    • The research conducted by this year’s Laureates has considerably improved our ability to fight global poverty, the Nobel citation says.
    • Their new experiment-based approach has transformed development economics.
    • In Poor Economics, Banerjee and Duflo bemoaned how the debates on poverty “tend to be fixated on the ‘big questions’: What is the ultimate cause of poverty? How much faith should we place in free markets? Is democracy good for the poor? Does foreign aid have a role to play? And so on”.
    • Banerjee, Duflo and Kremer, who have been working together since the mid 1990s, are different in that they do not get stuck with the “big questions”.
    • Instead, they break down a problem, study its different aspects, conduct various experiments and, based on such “evidence”, decide what needs to be done.

    Randomized Controlled Trial

    • A RCT is an experiment that is designed to isolate the influence that a certain intervention or variable has on an outcome or event.
    • A social science researcher who wants to find the effect that employing more teachers in schools has on children’s learning outcomes, for instance, can conduct a randomized controlled trial to find the answer.
    • The Nobel laureates’ trio applied RCT to the field of economics beginning in the 1990s.
    • Kremer first used the technique to study the impact that free meals and books had on learning in Kenyan schools.
    • Banerjee and Ms. Duflo later conducted similar experiments in India and further popularized RCTs through their book Poor Economics, published in 2011.

    A small testimony

    • Esther Duflo, along with Raghav Chattopadhyay, did an outstanding study of India’s decision to reserve some of the leadership of local governments — village panchayats — for women.
    • Since the choice of which seats are to be reserved for women is done by lottery in India, since 1993, following a constitutional amendment, this turned out to be a perfect setting for studying how the election of women leaders could affect economic well-being in the locality.
    • By studying a massive data set from West Bengal and Rajasthan, they proved that the provision of local public goods, like water supply, improves in statistically significant ways in villages where women are elected to lead.
    • Likewise, Michael Kremer’s research, done with Ted Miguel, on what de-worming in schools in Kenya could do for child health and absenteeism of school students was quite remarkable.
    • By doing a massive randomised controlled study, they showed that benefits of deworming could be staggering, way beyond the costs of such an intervention.

    How does this approach work in practice?

    • Breaking down the poverty problem and focussing on the smaller issues such as “how best to fix diarrhoea or dengue” yielded some very surprising results.
    • For instance, it is often believed that many poor countries (like India) do not have the resources to adequately provide education, and that this resource crunch is the reason why school-going children do not learn more.
    • But their field experiments showed that lack of resources is not the primary problem.
    • In fact, studies showed that neither providing more textbooks nor free school meals improved learning outcomes.
    • Instead, as was brought out in schools in Mumbai and Vadodara, the biggest problem is that teaching is not sufficiently adapted to the pupils’ needs.
    • In other words, providing teaching assistants to the weakest students was a far more effective way of improving education in the short to medium term.
    • Similarly, on tackling teacher absenteeism, what worked better was to employ them on short-term contracts (which could be extended if they showed good results) instead of having fewer students per “permanent” teacher, in order to reduce the burden on teachers and incentivise them to teach.

    Why is RCT so popular?

    • At any point in time, there are multiple factors that work in tandem to influence various social events.
    • RCTs allow economists and other social science researchers to isolate the individual impact that a certain factor alone has on the overall event.
    • For instance, to measure the impact that hiring more teachers can have on children’s learning, researchers must control for the effect that other factors such as intelligence, nutrition, climate, economic and social status etc., which may also influence learning outcomes to various degrees, have on the final event.
    • RCTs promise to overcome this problem through the use of randomly picked samples.

    Significance

    • Many development economists believe that RCTs can help governments to find, in a thoroughly scientific way, the most potent policy measures that could help end poverty rapidly.
    • Research done by Abhijit, Esther and Michael has transformed the way development economics is practised nowadays, not just in United States but the world over.

    Criticisms of RCT

    • A popular critic of randomized controlled trials is economist Angus Deaton, who won the economics Nobel Prize in 2015.
    • He has contended in his works that simply choosing samples for an RCT experiment in a random manner does not really make these samples identical in their many characteristics.
    • While two randomly chosen samples might turn out to be similar in some cases, he argued, there are greater chances that most samples are not really similar to each other.
    • RCTs are more suited for research in the physical sciences where it may be easier to carry out controlled experiments.
    • More fundamentally, RCTs do not guarantee if something that worked in Kerala will work in Bihar, or if something that worked for a small group will also work at scale.
    • This Nobel, albeit indirectly, for RCTs will likely stoke this debate again.

     

     

     

    References

    https://finshots.in/archive/abhijeet-banerjee-nobel-prize/

    https://indianexpress.com/article/opinion/columns/abhijit-banerjee-nobel-prize-economics-policy-making-6069266/

    https://www.civilsdaily.com/news/explained-randomized-controlled-trial-rct/

  • 21st October 2019 | Prelims Daily with Previous Year Questions

    [WpProQuiz 267]

  • [Burning Issue] Modi-Xi Informal Summit at Mamallapuram

    Context

    • PM Modi and Chinese President Xi Jinping recently held an informal summit in the ancient coastal town of Mamallapuram or Mahabalipuram in Tamil Nadu.
    • The two countries convened their first Informal Summit in central China’s Wuhan in April 2018, where they exchanged views on issues of global and bilateral significance.
    • Irrespective of the rhetoric of a Wuhan spirit, the relationship is facing difficulties, reflected in a number of disputes between the two countries.

    Informal Summits

    • Informal Summits act as supplementary exchanges to annual Summits and other formal exchanges such as the G20 Summit, EU-India Summit and the BRICS Summit among others.
    • It allows for direct, free and candid exchange of views between countries, something that may not be possible to do through formal bilateral and multilateral meetings that are agenda driven.
    • Informal Summits may not take place on a fixed annual or biennial schedule; they are impromptu in the sense that they take place when a need for them is perceived by the concerned nations.

    Why do we need such summits?

    • Since Informal Summits allow discussion on wide-ranging issues, they are not particularly purpose-specific, and are sometimes considered to play bigger roles in diplomatic dialogue than formal exchanges.
    • This is the reason is that they tend to be more in-depth, and relatively flexible in intent and the scope of discussion.
    • The “institutionalization” of such Summits would help in strengthening the “strategic communication” between the countries, irrespective of the political party in power.

    Why Mamallapuram?

    • Mamallapuram was chosen for various reasons — historical, practical, as well as strategic. Mamallapuram was the epicenter of the relations of China with India since ancient times.
    • The 2004 Saluvankuppam excavations in Kancheepuram district make it clear that Mamallapuram was a port town even during the Sangam era about 2000 years ago.
    • The mighty Pallavas, whose flourishing sea port was Mamallapuram for a long time, had a relationship with China and had even sent envoys there during their rule.
    • Available literature shows that the Pallava Kings had a trade and defence relationship with China.
    • There was understanding that these kings would help China in keeping a check on the growth of Tibet as a powerful nation during those years.
    • Chinese monk Hiuen Tsang visited Kancheepuram in the seventh Century AD and he no doubt reached the ancient port town of Mamallapuram and then continued his journey to the temple town.

    Key takeaways of the summit

    1) Trade

    • China is one of India’s largest trading partners. the bilateral trade between the two nations reached $95.54 billion in 2018, but the trade deficit was at $53 billion in China’s favour.
    • During this summit, Modi and Xi reinforced their commitment to improve trade relations.
    • This was one of the key agreements of the Wuhan summit. The leaders agreed to a new set up new mechanisms to achieve this goal.

    2) Working together on international issues

    • India and China have many similar interests at the World Trade Organisation and at the UN.
    • Both nations have been under stress because of Trump’s trade war and due to the rising tensions in West Asia.
    • If they can come together and effect meaning change to resolve these issues, then other emerging economies will also stand to benefit.
    • They agreed that there must be reforms that reflects the new realities of the 21st century.
    • They also agreed that rules-based multilateral trading systems must be supported and strengthened.

    3) People to people contact

    • To celebrate the 70th year of diplomatic relations between the two nations, the year 2020 will be designated as Year of India-China Cultural and People to People Exchanges.
    • To celebrate the civilizational ties between the nations, the MEA said that the two leaders have decided to form a ‘Sister-state relationship’ between Tamil Nadu and Fujian Province.
    • There is also a proposal to set up an academy to study these links.
    • The focus on tourism and contact among the people of both nations will not only boost trade, but it will help in building trust between them.
    • Establishing such confidence-building measures can help integrating the people by removing stereotypes.

    4) Chennai connect

    • Xi said that he was happy with the welcome he received and said that invited Modi for another round of discussion China next year.
    • The two leaders also made a commitment to manage differences  in such a way that they would “not allow differences on any issue to become disputes”.
    • The ‘Chennai connect’ sets the tone for future discussions.
    • Here, the two leaders agreed to set up a new mechanism to have better cooperation in trade and defence.

    5) Kashmir issue

    • In August, India scrapped Article 370, which gave special status to the state.
    • This irked China, which has several interests in the state (they have invested in PoK, and claim a portion of the state).
    • They lent their support to their “all-weather friend” Pakistan as it is unlikely to give up on using Pakistan to balance India.
    • This issue happened right before the summit, and many believed that India should raise this matter with China.  But it was not even a part of the discussion.
    • The lack of Kashmir in the talks also shows that both nations are willing to look beyond, at least at the leadership level.

    Xi’s 100-year plan

    • Xi Jinping on Saturday declared that Beijing was pursuing an “unshakable policy” of developing close ties with India, and proposed a 100-year plan to cement ties between the two ancient civilizations.
    • Xi stressed that “military security exchanges and cooperation” between the two countries must be “earnestly” improved.
    • Xi also called for” fair and reasonable” solution to the “boundary problem” that is acceptable to both parties based on “Political Guiding Principles Agreement” agreed to by the two countries in 2005.

    Continuing the Wuhan Spirit

    • For instance, in Wuhan, both premiers discussed a range of subjects, including the India-China boundary question, bilateral trade and investment, terrorism, economic development and global peace.
    • They succeeded in reaching a “broad consensus”.
    • China is not the only country with which India has had an Informal Summit.
    • The two leaders discussed their countries’ responsibilities towards maintaining global peace and stability, military and nuclear energy cooperation, and the movement towards an equitable world order.

    Potential of such informal summits

    • At the first Informal Summit between India and China held in Wuhan on April 27-18, 2018, Modi and Xi met “to exchange views on overarching issues of bilateral and global importance.
    • It aimed to elaborate their respective visions and priorities for national development in the context of the current and future international situation.
    • The Wuhan Summit achieved a “re-set” of the Sino-Indian relationship after the two-month long border standoff at the India-China-Bhutan tri-junction in Doklam.
    • Significantly, at Wuhan, the two leaders decided to give “strategic guidance” to their military, so that issues did not escalate as in the case of the Doklam standoff.

    Way Forward

    • India succeeded in waking up the Chinese to the reality that this new faith-based global terror invoking Jehad, which was emanating from Pakistan, was dangerous for both India and China in the long run.
    • The two nations enjoy a ‘deeper strategic communication and effective practical cooperation’.
    • In a nutshell, the second informal summit is an advance over Wuhan and has established a bilateral grid that suits the security and economic strategy of India.

     

     

     

     

    References:

    https://www.civilsdaily.com/news/explained-modi-xi-informal-summit/

    https://www.civilsdaily.com/news/china-backs-wuhan-spirit-despite-differences-on-bri/

    https://www.indiatoday.in/news-analysis/story/is-there-hidden-chinese-message-narendra-modi-xi-jinping-meet-nepal-1609198-2019-10-14

    https://www.thehindubusinessline.com/news/modi-xi-informal-summit-key-takeaways/article29680297.ece

    https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/blogs/toi-edit-page/modi-xi-summit-chinas-territorial-fetishism-and-why-the-road-from-wuhan-may-peter-out-at-mamallapuram/

    https://www.orfonline.org/expert-speak/modi-xi-summit-a-more-balanced-china-policy/

    https://www.thequint.com/videos/news-videos/modi-xi-jinping-informal-summit-mahabalipuram-explained