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GS Paper: GS2

  • [op-ed snap] Seize the summit

    Context

    India announced that it will invite all heads of government of Shanghai Co-operation Organisation member countries, including Pakistan.

    Significance of the invitation

    • First since 2014: The summit will assume significance should Pakistan Prime Minister accept the invitation.
      • As it will be the first by a head of government or state of that country to India since former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif attended the swearing-in ceremony of Prime Minister in 2014.
    • Hopes belied: Nothing came from that meeting and hopes created by the invitation were belied.
    • Failed attempts to engage: Attempts to engage after that failed, including at a previous SCO summit at Ufa in 2015.

    Latest events that further reduced the engagement

    • Pulwama attack: First, there was the February 2019 Pulwama attack, India’s Balakot response, and Pakistan’s counter-response.
    • Article 370: After India did away with Jammu & Kashmir’s special status, India and Pakistan have downgraded even their diplomatic presence in each other’s countries.
    • Both the countries withdrew their high commissioners after the Article 370 issue.
    • Trade stopped completely: Bilateral trade, which had managed to survive earlier shocks to relations, has stopped completely.

    Opportunities presented by SCO summit

    • “Inputs of all stakeholders”: In deciding whether to accept the invitation, the Pakistan PM will have to take into consideration “inputs of all stakeholders”.
    • A polite way of saying that the final yes or no will rest with the Pakistan Army.
    • A chance for a high-level meeting: Even if Imran Khan stays away and sends a minister instead, it would still be a chance for a high-level bilateral meeting.
    • The world wants India and Pakistan to engage: The world wants India and Pakistan to engage, and this was evident in the way the UNSC refused to take up the Kashmir issue, saying it was not the forum for it.
    • Opportunity for India to make a start: India has declared several times recently that it wants to peel away from historical foreign policy baggage.
      • India should make a start with Pakistan by making it possible for such a meeting to take place.
    • Making acceptance of invitation easier: India can make it easier for the Pakistan Prime Minister to accept the invitation.
    • Resuming trade: A start could be made by resuming trade, which has ground to a dead halt
    • Sending High Commissioner back: India can start by sending India’s High Commissioner back to his office in Islamabad.

     Conclusion

    The SCO summit presents an opportunity for both the countries to end the long hiatus in the relations which is essential for both the countries to resolve the long-standing issues and progress of both the countries.

     

     

     

  • Death Penalty in India (Annual Statistics Report 2019)

    Trial courts in India delivered 102 death sentences in 2019, over 60% fewer than the 162 death sentences passed in 2018.

    Highlights of the Report

    • In 2019, fewer death sentences overall were delivered.
    • 1 out of 2 sentences for sexual violence-murder; in 3 out of 4 sexual violence-murder death sentences, children were the killer’s victims.
    • The courts were, however, especially unforgiving of murders that involved sexual violence — the proportion of death sentences imposed for murders involving sexual offences was at a four-year high in 2019 at 52.94%.
    • 2019 also saw the highest number of confirmations by High Courts in four years; 17 out of the 26 confirmations (65.38%) were in offences of murder involving sexual violence.
    • The Supreme Court, primarily during the tenure of the previous CJI Gogoi, listed and heard 27 capital cases, the most in a year since 2001.

    Project 39A

    • These are the headline findings in the fourth edition of The Death Penalty in India: Annual Statistics, published by Project 39A at the National Law University (NLU), Delhi.
    • Project 39A is a research and litigation initiative focussed on the criminal justice system, and especially issues of legal aid, torture, death penalty, and mental health in prisons.
    • The report tracked news of death sentences awarded by trial courts published online by news organisations in English and Hindi.
    • It checked these numbers against judgments uploaded to websites of High Court and district courts.

  • Yada Yada Virus

    A new virus detected in Australian mosquitoes has been provisionally named the Yada Yada virus (YYV).

    Yada Yada

    • It is an alphavirus, a group of viruses that the researchers described as small, single-stranded positive-sense RNA viruses.
    • It includes species important to human and animal health, such as Chikungunya virus and Eastern equine encephalitis virus.
    • They are transmitted primarily by mosquitoes and (are) pathogenic in their vertebrate hosts.
    • Unlike some other alphaviruses, Yada Yada does not pose a threat to human beings.

  • [op-ed of the day] Preventing mob lynching

    Context

    The spate of incidents of lynching over the past few years has led to a heightened sense of insecurity among the marginalised communities. The Centre should specify penal action against officials and doctors accused of dereliction of duty.

    2018 Supreme Court Judgement

    • In 2018, the Supreme Court described lynching as a “horrendous act of mobocracy”.
    • The Court exhorted the Centre and State governments to frame laws specifically to deal with the crime of lynching.
    • The SC laid down certain guidelines to be incorporated in these laws including
      • Fast-track trials.
      • Compensation to victims, and
      • Disciplinary action against lax law-enforcers.

    The State laws

    • Manipur bill for the law against lynching:  The Manipur government came up first with its Bill against lynching in 2018, incorporating some logical and relevant clauses.
      • Provision of nodal officer: The Bill specified that there would be nodal officers in each district to control such crimes.
      • Compensation to the victim: The law provides for adequate monetary compensation to the victims or their immediate kin.
      • Punishment for failure to enforce the law: Police officers who fail to prevent the crime of lynching in their jurisdiction are liable to be imprisoned for a term that may extend from one to three years with a fine limit of ₹50,000.
      • No concurrence of state for the prosecution of the police: No concurrence of the State government is required to prosecute them for dereliction of duty.
    • Rajasthan bill: The government has accepted only a few guidelines issued by the apex court.
      • No action against police officers: The bill is also silent on any action to be initiated against police officers who may be accused of dereliction of duty.
    • West Bengal bill: Most other guidelines of the Supreme Court have been adopted by the State.
      • Stringent punishment: Punishment for lynching to death is punishable with the death penalty or life imprisonment and a fine of up to ₹5 lakh.

    What the Centre can do

    • Adoption of the SC guidelines: The Centre should adopt the guidelines provided by the SC to deal with the crime.
    • Action against doctors: Centre would do well to incorporate sections in the law for penal action against doctors who stand accused of-
      • Dereliction of duty.
      • For delay in attending to victims of lynching.
      • For submitting false reports without carrying out a proper and thorough medical examination of the victims.
    • The compensation scheme for victims: Under the compensation scheme for the victims, the amount to be paid to the victims should be recovered from the perpetrators of the crime.
      • Collective fines: Collective fines should be imposed on the villagers where the lynching takes place.
    • Punishment for a political leader for inciting the mob: Centre could even provide for punitive action against political leaders found guilty of inciting mobs.
    • Punitive action against police: Punitive action to be taken against police officers accused of dereliction of duty, as incorporated in the law enacted by Manipur government, could be replicated in the Central law too.
      • Punitive action as a deterrent: It would deter police officials acting in a partisan manner in favour of the lynch mob.

    Conclusion

    Until a zero-tolerance attitude is adopted in dealing with mob lynching, this crime will continue to show a rising trend.

     

  • Agreement to end the Bru-Reang Refugee Crisis

    The Ministry of Home Affairs has presided over the signing of an agreement between Union Government, Governments of Tripura and Mizoram and Bru-Reang representatives to end the 23-year old Bru-Reang refugee crisis.

    Who are the Brus?

    • Reangs or Brus are the second largest ethnic group in Mizoram.
    • Their exodus in 1997 was spurred by violent clashes in Mamith subdivision, a Reang-dominated area, when they demanded creation of an autonomous council that was vehemently opposed by Mizo groups.
    • Around 34,000 people were forced to live in sub-human conditions in tents in Tripura. No solution could be reached all these years.
    • These people were housed in temporary camps at Kanchanpur, in North Tripura.

    Highlights of the Quadripartite Agreement

    • Under the new agreement around 34,000 Bru refugees will be settled in Tripura and would be given aid from the Centre to help with their rehabilitation and all round development.
    • These people would get all the rights that normal residents of the States get and they would now be able to enjoy the benefits of social welfare schemes of Centre and State governments.
    • Under the new arrangement, each of the displaced families would be given 40×30 sq.ft. residential plots.
    • This would be in addition to the aid under earlier agreement of a fixed deposit of Rs. 4 lakhs, Rs. 5,000 cash aid per month for 2 years, free ration for 2 years and Rs. 1.5 lakhs aid to build their house.

  • Suspension of the Internet: What the Rules say, what the SC underlined

  • Women Business and the Law (WBL) Index 2020

     

    The Women Business and the Law (WBL) 2020 index to measure the economic empowerment of women was recently published.

    WBL Index

    • The WBL report released by the World Bank.
    • It is based on the countries’ formal laws and regulations that have a bearing on women’s economic participation, covering eight areas (eg, parenthood, equality of pay).
    • It tracks how laws affect women at different stages in their working lives and focusing on those laws applicable in the main business city.

    India’s poor performance

    • India placed 117th among 190 countries on the index.
    • India, the world’s most populous democracy scored 74.4 on a par with Benin and Gambia and way below least developed countries like Rwanda and Lesotho.
    • The global average was 75.2 — a slight increase from 73.9 in the previous index released in 2017.

    Global Performance

    • Only eight economies scored a perfect 100 — Belgium, Canada, Denmark, France, Iceland, Latvia, Luxembourg, and Sweden.
    • Those countries have ensured equal legal standing to men and women on all the eight indicators of the index.
    • No economy in ‘East Asia and the Pacific’, ‘Europe and Central Asia’, or ‘Latin America and the Caribbean’ were among top reformers, the report claimed.
    • Countries in ‘Middle East and North Africa’ and ‘Sub-Saharan Africa’ accounted for nine of the 10 top progressing countries on the WBL Index:
    1. Saudi Arabia
    2. The United Arab Emirates
    3. Nepal
    4. South Sudan
    5. São Tomé and Príncipe
    6. Bahrain
    7. The Democratic Republic of Congo
    8. Djibouti
    9. Jordan
    10. Tunisia

    Significance of the Index

    • Legal rights for women are both the right thing to do and good from an economic perspective.
    • When women can move more freely, work outside the home and manage assets, they are more likely to join the workforce and help strengthen their country’s economies.

  • [op-ed of the day] Let’s not muddle along on how we share natural endowments

    Context

    Governments regulations and restrictions in the markets, believing that policies could artificially restrict either supply or demand, or both, often results in unrealistic or unworkable prices.

    Adoption of the auctioning process to allocate resources

    • Design of process makes the difference: While auctions may be the cleanest way to allot scarce natural resources to private parties, their design makes all the difference.
    • Three things needed to get the desired results from auctions:
      • Clear policy goal: Define clear policy goals for the allotment of the resource whether coal blocks, spectrum or land.
      • The proper process of periodic review: Define a proper process for periodic review of the design itself, since it may not be possible to get everything right in the first instance.
      • Make the process non-partisan: Make the political oversight process as non-partisan as possible, so that regime changes do not keep upending policies.

    What went wrong in spectrum allocation case?

    • Arbitrary tweaks in policy: Arbitrary tweaks were made in the telecom licence and spectrum allocation policy.
      • Which is what forced the apex court to intervene and cancel those licences.
    • The claim of revenue loss: Cancellation followed a  claim by the CAG that the “presumptive” revenue losses may have been as high as ₹1.76.
    • Result of the two events-policy of revenue maximisation: The net result was that all subsequent auctions were designed to maximize spectrum bids.
      • Winner’s curse: The policy finally ended up becoming a winner’s curse, evident in the pile of debt incurred by the telecom sector.
    • Why did this happen? This happened because of the absence of a clear policy goal.

    Real estate sector

    • High land prices: The same goes for real estate, which is struggling right now due to high land prices because the bureaucracy prevents price reduction in land.
      • Unaffordable to middle-income buyers: That make most properties unaffordable for middle and lower-middle-income buyers.
    • Low FSI issue: Urban land prices are high due to artificial constriction of supplies through the fixing of low floor space indices (FSIs) even in land-scarce localities.

    Technology and periodic review of policy

    • Technology can lower costs: Spectrum or land or coal mines are not always in short supply, for new technology lowers costs.
      • Efficient spectrum use: The same spectrum can, with the use of newer technology, be used more efficiently.
      • 3D printing in construction: Better infrastructure and improved building technologies (even 3D printing techniques for mass housing projects in non-urban areas) can lower housing costs enormously.
      • Automated coal mining: Automated coal mining can lower coal production costs, enabling higher profitability even with relatively high auction bids.
    • Need for periodic policy review: Technology can reduce the prices of the resources and hence the periodic review of the prices at which the resources are allocated need to be taken to for balanced pricing.

    Conclusion

    • Policies on the allocation of scarce resources need to evolve based on actual experience and changing technologies and processes.
    • The success or failure of a specific policy cannot be judged purely from a revenue or transparency point of view.

     

     

     

  • Indian Origin Tamils and Sri Lanka’s Citizenship Law

    Recently an MHA spokesperson wrote on Twitter that about 4.61 lakh Tamils of Indian origin were given Indian citizenship during 1964-2008. The reference was to the Indian Origin Tamils (IOTs) of Sri Lanka, and the Lal Bahadur Shastri-Sirimavo Bandaranaike Pact of 1964.

    The Indian Origin Tamils

    • Different from Sri Lankan Tamils who live predominantly in the North and East, the IoTs are descendants of indentured Tamil workers.
    • The British had shipped them to the island in the mid 19th century to work on tea estates in the five hill districts of the Central and Uva provinces.
    • These people now call themselves Malayaha (hill country) Tamils — because of the historical stigma attached to being “Indian” Tamils.
    • At the time of Sri Lanka’s independence, the IOTs numbered around 800,000.
    • They were the backbone of the tea industry, politically active, and keen to ensure their rights in independent Sri Lanka through strategic alliances with unions and left parties.
    • Determined to blunt their political rights, the ruling parties described IOTs as “birds of passage” with no loyalty to the country, as India’s fifth column in Sri Lanka, and as people who stole the locals’ jobs.

    SL’s 1948 Citizenship Act

    • Sri Lanka’s Nov. 1948 Citizenship Act was the first in a series of divisive moves by the Sinhala rulers to consolidate their political base in the majority Sinhalese (Buddhist and Christian) community.
    • It was aimed at excluding IOTs — then as now, the predominant workforce in the upcountry tea estates — whose numbers and growing association with leftist parties were proving to be politically inconvenient.
    • The IOTs that India accepted through the 1964 agreement were not “fleeing” Sri Lanka.
    • Most were, in fact, reluctant to leave the country in which they had lived for three generations or longer.
    • Those that remained, were stateless in Sri Lanka for decades until their status as citizens was settled ironically because the ruling party now wanted their votes.

    What did the Act provide?

    • Under the Act, citizenship could be only by patrilineal descent or registration.
    • For citizenship by registration, umarried persons had to show 10 years of uninterrupted stay in Sri Lanka from the date of application; married persons had to show 7 years.
    • Most IOTs were unlettered and poor, with no documents. Effectively an entire community was rendered stateless.
    • Soon afterward came the Indian & Pakistani Residents’ Act of 1949, which opened a window for those above a certain income level.
    • Only 1,40,000 had been granted citizenship under the Indian & Pakistani Residents’ Act, and 2,50,000 were accepted by India as its citizens.
    • Finally, the 1949 Ceylon (Parliamentary Elections) Amendment was passed, under which only citizens could vote.
    • The IOTs were stripped of voting rights, and the fallout was immediate: in 1947, there were 7 Indian Tamils in the legislature; in 1952, there were none.

    Issues with the Act

    • This Act sharply delineated ethnic differences, and distorted the political system to weight it in favour the Sinhalese majority.
    • This created an intractable dynamic of ethnic outbidding between the two major Sinhalese-dominated parties to attract Sinhalese voters at the expense of the Sri Lankan Tamil minority.
    • This directly contributed to the latter’s alienation, support for secessionism, and the outbreak of ethnic violence and civil war in the 1970s and 1980s.

    India’s response

    • The treatment of Indian Tamils had cast a shadow on India-Sri Lanka relations even before independence; post-independence, the citizenship laws became a major irritant.
    • They were denounced in India, and the Madras legislature passed a resolution against them.
    • In 1947, PM Nehru had tried unsuccessfully to persuade Senanayake to give citizenship to all Indian Tamils who had lived in the country for 7 years prior to January 1, 1948.
    • The two countries corresponded on this issue until Nehru’s death in 1964.
    • Nehru rejected the Sri Lankan position that the “stateless” IOTs were automatically Indian citizens, and would have to be shipped to India.

    Repatriation of IOTs

    • After the 1962 war with China, PM Shastri was eager to mend fences with Sri Lanka. He gave in to Bandaranaike’s demands, and it was agreed that Sri Lanka would accept 3,00,000 IOTs and their natural increase, while India would accept 5,25,000 IOTs and their natural increase.
    • The status of the balance 1,50,000 IOTs was to be decided later.
    • Some 4,00,000 reluctantly applied for citizenship of India; 6,30,000 applied for Sri Lanka’s.
    • By the time the window agreed upon in 1964 closed, only 1,62,000 IOTs had been given Sri Lankan citizenship. In the same period, India gave citizenship to over 3,50,000.

  • Ethnic Unity Law in Tibet

    The People’s Congress of Tibet passed a law that makes ethnic unity in the region mandatory, reflecting the significant role that the autonomous Himalayan region plays in its economic and social development.

    About the Law

    • The law makes it clear that Tibet has been an inalienable part of China since ancient times.
    • It states that it is the common responsibility of the people of all ethnic groups to safeguard national reunification and take a clear stand against separatism.

    Ethnic Unity in China

    • This is not the first time that the phrase ethnic unity has been mentioned by China.
    • In October 2019 the Communist Party of China published a guideline for enhancing ethnic unity.
    • It stressed on efforts to improve the governance of ethnic affairs, guaranteeing the legal rights and interests of citizens of ethnic groups.
    • It called for cracking down on “criminal acts” that sabotage ethnic unity or cause ethnic separation.
    • Before this, in 2016, China began a campaign in the autonomous territory of Xinjiang to promote ethnic unity and called for people to respect the cultures of the minorities who call the region home.

    Why such Law?

    • There are more than 40 ethnic minorities in the region, which account for 95 per cent of Tibet’s population of over three million.
    • Like Tibet, Xinjiang is another region of China that houses multiple ethnic minorities.
    • A similar legislation was passed there four years ago and in recent times, China has faced criticism for detaining at least a million Uighur and other Muslims, along with some ethnic Kazakhs and Uzbeks.
    • China has began “re-education camps” in Xinjiang, a region that has been claimed by China since 1949.
    • China has denied these allegations and maintains that the facilities where the detainees are housed are vocational training centers.