Note4Students
From UPSC perspective, the following things are important :
Prelims level: Panjshir valley
Mains level: Paper 2- India's approach towards Taliban
Context
After the collapse of the government in Kabul, India has adopted a wait and watch approach in its dealing with the Taliban.
Taliban’s position in Afghanistan
- The Taliban grip over Afghanistan will only strengthen unless there is a popular revolt against it in the cities.
- The Panjshiri defiance is unlikely to go anywhere without considerable and abiding support from the US and a firm commitment from Tajikistan.
- After a talk between leaders of the extinguished Afghan Republic and the Taliban on central government formation, there has been no news of the process for more than a week.
- There is continuous pressure on Taliban leaders and Pakistan from the Western donor community for the formation of a government acceptable to it.
- Some Taliban leaders would want financial flows to continue to prevent a collapse of the Afghan economy.
The approach of the international community toward the Taliban
- Assurances would be sought from the Taliban not only by the West but also by Russia and China that there will be no attempt to put in place the 1990s practices of the Islamic Emirate on gender issues and the more medieval manifestations of the Sharia.
- Commitment to anti-terrorism: US will keep close scrutiny on the Taliban to honor its commitment to al Qaeda and will demand that it continues to cooperate on ISIS-K extermination, an objective shared by Russia.
- Diplomatic recognition of a Taliban government, including allowing it to occupy the United Nations seat in the forthcoming future will depend on its acceptability.
- However, the US and EU will not be reluctant to maintain open and direct contact with a Taliban government.
Issues with India’s wait and watch policy
- India continues to “wait and watch” Afghan developments.
- What is being overlooked is that “strategic patience” cannot be an alibi for inaction.
- The invocation of the British Raj policy of “masterly inactivity” by some scholars defies logic for it applied in a completely different context.
- Recognition v. legitimacy: Besides, while diplomatic recognition or its denial is a specific act of a country in inter-state relations, “legitimacy” is more applicable in the internal jurisdiction of countries.
- India “waited and watched” Afghan developments from the sidelines, at least since the US-Taliban deal.
- How long will India continue to “wait and watch”?
Way forward
- Establish open contact: To explore the Taliban’s approaches towards India there is an obvious need to establish open and direct contacts with it.
- That will also allow India to convey its red lines.
- This should not be confused with diplomatic recognition.
- Welcome Afghans: The establishment of open contacts with the Taliban will not be contradictory to actively welcome those Afghans, irrespective of their faith, who are closely connected with India.
Consider the question “What are the implications of the return of the Taliban in Afghanistan for India? What should be India’s approach in dealing with the Taliban controlled Afghanistan?”
Conclusion
It would damage India’s reputation greatly and into the future, if perceptions grow, as they are growing, that India has abandoned its friends in Afghanistan at the time of their need.
Get an IAS/IPS ranker as your 1: 1 personal mentor for UPSC 2024
Attend Now
Note4Students
From UPSC perspective, the following things are important :
Prelims level: Not much
Mains level: Paper 2- Enduring features of international politics
Context
As the last American soldiers fly out of Kabul airport and the world adapts to the return of the Taliban, three uncomfortable but enduring features of international politics have come into sharp focus.
1) The normalisation of the Taliban by the International community
- That victories on the battlefield have political consequences is one of the fundamental features of international politics.
- There is no reason for India to be surprised at the rapid normalisation of the Taliban by the international community.
- Whether it likes the new and victorious sovereign or not, a government has the obligation to secure its national interests — ranging from the protection of its citizens and property to maintaining the regional balance of power.
- India is not immune to this essential principle of international relations and will find ways to protect its stakes in Afghanistan under Taliban rule.
2) Future U.S. relations with the Taliban
- The second enduring feature of world politics — that there are no permanent friends or enemies, only permanent interests.
- Convergence of interests: The US would want to explore if the Taliban can help secure long-term American interests in preventing a regrouping of international terror outfits like the al Qaeda and ISIS in Afghanistan.
- The Taliban on the other hand would want American and Western support in rebuilding Afghanistan.
- It is by no means clear if such a deal can be clinched, given the big risks it presents to both sides.
- The US engagement with the Taliban to counter the ISIS-K has been met with derision across the world.
- Critics say all these groups are part of the same school of terror, driven by similar religious zeal and nurtured in Pakistan’s sanctuaries.
3) Exploit the differences between adversaries: Way forward for India
- The third feature of international politics is that differences even among the closest of friends are natural and always offer openings to adversaries.
- For India, the main interest is in preventing Afghan soil from being used by anti-India terror groups.
- At least a section of the Taliban is eager to continue political and commercial engagement with India.
- This is part of a natural quest for a diversified set of international partnerships.
- India would be right to wait patiently on the Taliban’s ability to deliver on these promises and stand up against the Pakistan army’s pressures to keep India out.
- Exploit the contradictions: India should not rule out contradictions between Pakistan and the terror groups it has nurtured as well as among various jihadi organisations.
- Despite its powerful appeal, religious ideology has failed to build durable political coalitions within and across nations.
Conclusion
Given this history, it is unwise for Delhi to paint the external challenges arising from the Afghan tumult as a single coherent force. The Panchatantra has a more sensible strategy to offer — try and divide your potential adversaries and strengthen your internal unity.
Get an IAS/IPS ranker as your 1: 1 personal mentor for UPSC 2024
Attend Now
Note4Students
From UPSC perspective, the following things are important :
Prelims level: NMP
Mains level: Paper 3- National Monetisation Pipeline
Context
The Government has launched a National Monetisation Pipeline, or NMP to sell the revenue streams of public assets over the next four years.
About NMP
- Financing infrastructure: As outlined in the Union Budget, the NMP aims to mobilize resources for financing infrastructure.
- Type of assets: The pipeline mostly includes railway stations, freight corridors, airports, and renovated national highway segments amounting to ₹6-lakh crore, or 3% of GDP in 2020-21.
- The other two methods of raising resources are: setting up a development finance institution (DFI) and raising the share of infrastructure investment in the central and State Budgets.
Concerns
1) Not different from Disinvestment-Privatisation (D-P)
- Asset monetization as defined in NMP is the same as the net present value (NPV) of the future stream of revenue with an implicit interest rate (whether it is a sale or lease of the asset).
- Missed targets: Since D-P proceeds (revenues) have seriously missed the targets almost every year, how believable are the NMP targets? And how are they likely to perform differently?
- If the NMP attempt to shore up public finances, such distress (fire) sale would find it difficult to obtain a “fair value” for public assets.
- Would the market not factor in the dire state of the economy in beating down the prices, as in any distress sale?
- The NMP document seems silent on how to overcome past mistakes.
2) PPP mode of implementation
- The NMP outlines mainly two modes of implementing monetization: public-private partnership (PPP) and “structured financing” to tap the stock market.
- PPP in infrastructure has been a financial disaster in India, as evident from what happened after the economic boom of 2003-08.
- After the 2008 financial crisis, many PPP projects failed to repay bank loans leading to the piling up of non-performing assets (NPAs) of banks.
- Further, the bulk of the lending was too politically connected to corporate houses and firms.
- India is still reeling from the legacy of that period without any easy and credible solutions in sight.
3) Stock market crash threatens the success of InvIT
- An Infrastructure Investment Trust (InvIT) is being mooted as an alternative means of raising finance from the stock market.
- In principle, InvIT is much like a mutual fund, whose performance is largely linked to stock prices.
- The disinvestment process began in 1991 in which the bundles of shares of public sector enterprises (PSEs) were sold by UTI in the booming secondary stock market to realize the best price.
- However, as the market crashed in the wake of the Harshad Mehta scam, stalling and discrediting the disinvestment process for almost the entire decade.
- Hence, it may be worth learning the lessons from the historical missteps before exploring the idea all over again by the current stock market boom
- At present, the U.S. Fed committed to reducing its assets purchase program (known as quantitative easing), the “hot money” inflow that has fuelled Indian stock prices may dry up throwing up nasty surprises.
Thus, it seems unwise to anchor the acutely needed investment revival strategy on a discredited PPP model or on fickle Foreign Institutional Investors (FII) investment in a frothy stock market.
Suggestion: Monetise debt
- With the financial system flush with liquidity with no takers for bank credit, finance the proposed investment — as envisaged in the Budget — by government borrowing.
- With a negative 0.4% real interest rate (real interest rate is nominal interest rate minus inflation rate), domestic borrowing in home currency is a steal.
- No Crowding out: Chances of crowding-out private investments are remote with a liquidity overhang in the market.
- Low inflation risk: Inflation risk is also limited with little aggregate demand pressures (barring temporary bottlenecks due to localized lockdowns).
- Rating downgrade risk: If the debt is productively used to expand GDP (the denominator), rating downgrade risk due to the rising Debt-GDP ratio seems minimal.
- Moreover, rising external debt by fickle portfolio investors perhaps carries a greater risk to external instability.
Consider the question “How the National Monetisation Pipeline seeks to implement the asset monetisation? What are the challenges in asset monetisation?”
Conclusion
If reviving investment demand quickly is the real goal, debt monetisation seems a better option than asset monetisation.
UPSC 2022 countdown has begun! Get your personal guidance plan now! (Click here)
Get an IAS/IPS ranker as your 1: 1 personal mentor for UPSC 2024
Attend Now
Note4Students
From UPSC perspective, the following things are important :
Prelims level: FOSS
Mains level: Paper 3- Potential of FOSS
Context
Recognising its potential, in 2015, the Indian government announced a policy to encourage open source instead of proprietary technology for government applications. However, the true potential of this policy is yet to be realized.
Advantages of FOSS
- Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) today presents an alternative model to build digital technologies for population scale.
- Freedom to modify: Unlike proprietary software, everyone has the freedom to edit, modify and reuse open-source code.
- Reduced cost and innovation: This results in many benefits — reduced costs, no vendor lock-in, the ability to customise for local context, and greater innovation through wider collaboration.
- Use in public service delivery: We have seen some great examples of public services being delivered through systems that use FOSS building blocks, including Aadhaar, GSTN, and the DigiLocker.
- FOSS communities can examine the open-source code for adherence to data privacy principles, help find bugs, and ensure transparency and accountability.
Challenges in adoption by government in GovTech
- In 2015, the Indian government announced a policy to encourage open source instead of proprietary technology for government applications.
- Several misconceptions remain in the understanding of FOSS, especially for GovTech.
- Trust issue: “Free” in FOSS is perceived to be “free of cost” and FOSS is often mistaken to be less trustworthy and more vulnerable, whereas FOSS can actually create more trust between the government and citizens.
- However, Many solutions launched by the government including Digilocker, Diksha, Aarogya Setu, Cowin — built on top of open-source digital platforms — have benefited from valuable inputs provided by volunteer open-source developers.
- Such inputs have immensely helped in improving solutions and making them more robust.
- Accountability issue: In the case of FOSS, there appears to be an absence of one clear “owner”, which makes it harder to identify who is accountable.
- While this concern is legitimate, there are ways to mitigate it.
- For example, by having the government’s in-house technical staff understand available documentation and getting key personnel to join relevant developer communities.
Way forward for greater adoption of FOSS in GovTech
- Here is a four-step path to make this vision a reality.
- 1) Incentivise FOSS in government: The government’s policy requires all tech suppliers to submit bids with open source options.
- Suppliers also need to justify in case they do not offer an open-source option
- Sourcing departments are asked to weigh the lifetime costs and benefits of both alternatives before making a decision.
- While this serves as a good nudge, the policy can perhaps go a step further by formally giving greater weightage to FOSS-specific metrics in the evaluation criteria in RFPs, and offering recognition to departments that deploy FOSS initiatives, such as, a special category under the Digital India Awards.
- 2) Create a repository of GovtTech ready solutions: a repository of “GovTech ready” building blocks that are certified for use in government and audited for security compliances is needed.
- Creating a repository of ready-to-use “GovTech-ised” building blocks can help departments quickly identify and deploy FOSS solutions in their applications.
- 3) Encourage FOSS innovation: FOSS innovations can be encouraged through “GovTech hackathons and challenges”, bringing together the open-source community to design solutions for specific problem statements identified by government departments.
- One such challenge — a #FOSS4Gov Innovation Challenge — was recently launched.
- 4) Create an institutional mechanism: A credible institutional anchor is needed to be a home for FOSS-led innovation in India.
- Such an institution can bring together FOSS champions and communities that are scattered across India around a shared agenda for collective impact.
- Kerala’s International Centre for Free & Open Source Software (ICFOSS) is a great example of such an institution.
Conclusion
With an IT workforce of more than four million employees, what we need is a concerted push to harness the biggest promise that FOSS holds.
UPSC 2022 countdown has begun! Get your personal guidance plan now! (Click here)
Get an IAS/IPS ranker as your 1: 1 personal mentor for UPSC 2024
Attend Now
Note4Students
From UPSC perspective, the following things are important :
Prelims level: Food fortification
Mains level: Paper 3- Nutrition security through food fortification
Context
On August 15, Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced that, by 2024, rice provided to the poor under any government scheme — PDS, mid-day-meal, anganwadi — will be fortified.
Need for nutrition security in India
- 15.3 per cent of the country’s population is undernourished.
- India has the highest proportion of “stunted” (30 per cent) and “wasted” children (17.3 per cent) below five years of age, as per the FAO’s recent publication, ‘The State of Food Security and Nutrition in the World, 2021’.
- These figures indicate that India is at a critical juncture with respect to nutritional security.
- Other factors: Other factors like poor access to safe drinking water and sanitation, low levels of immunization and education, especially of women, contribute equally to this dismal situation.
India’s journey towards nutrition security
- As per the ICAR website, they had developed 21 varieties of biofortified staples including wheat, rice, maize, millets, mustard, groundnut by 2019-20.
- These varieties are not genetically modified.
- These biofortified crops have 1.5 to 3 times higher levels of protein, vitamins, minerals, and amino acids compared to the traditional varieties.
- A research team at the National Agri-Food Biotechnology Institute in Mohali has also developed biofortified colored wheat (black, blue, purple) that is rich in zinc and anthocyanins.
- The HarvestPlus program of the Consultative Group for International Agricultural Research (CGIAR) has been working closely with ICAR, to improve the access of the poor in India to iron-rich pearl millet and zinc-rich wheat.
- Globally, more than 40 countries have released biofortified crops, benefitting over 48 million people.
- Leveraging science to attack the complex challenge of malnutrition, particularly for low-income and vulnerable sections of society, can be a good intervention.
Challenges in securing nutrition security
- Access to nutritious food is only one of the determinants of nutrition.
- Other factors like poor access to safe drinking water and sanitation, low levels of immunization and education, especially of women, contribute equally to this dismal situation.
- Need for a multi-pronged approach: In the long run, India needs a multi-pronged approach to eliminate the root cause of this complex problem.
Way forward: Multi-pronged approach
1) Focus on mother’s education
- There is a direct correlation between a mother’s education and the well-being of children.
- Targeted programs for improving the educational status of girls and reducing school dropout rates need to be promoted.
- The Global Nutrition Report (2014) estimates that every dollar invested in a proven nutrition program offers benefits worth 16 dollars.
2) Scale-up innovation in biofortified food by supporting policies
- Innovations in biofortified food can alleviate malnutrition only when they are scaled up with supporting policies.
- This would require increasing expenditure on agri-R&D and incentivizing farmers by linking their produce to lucrative markets through sustainable value chains and distribution channels.
- The government can also rope in the private sector to create a market segment for premium-quality biofortified foods.
- For instance, trusts run by the TATA group are supporting different states to initiate fortification of milk with Vitamin A and D.
3) National awareness drive
- A national awareness drive on the lines of the “Salt Iodisation Programme” launched by the government in 1962 can play an important role at the individual and community levels to achieve the desired goals of poshan for all.
- Branding, awareness campaigns, social and behavioral change initiatives, can promote the consumption of locally available, nutrient-dense affordable foods among the poor and children.
Consider the question” Access to nutritious food is only one of the determinants of nutrition, and fortified food can play important role in this direction. Suggest the other measures to ensure nutrition safety in India.”
Conclusion
Biofortified food is a step in the right direction, however, other factors should also be given equal attention in securing national security in India.
UPSC 2022 countdown has begun! Get your personal guidance plan now! (Click here)
Get an IAS/IPS ranker as your 1: 1 personal mentor for UPSC 2024
Attend Now
Note4Students
From UPSC perspective, the following things are important :
Prelims level: Not much
Mains level: Paper 3- Land reforms
Context
The farmers’ agitation in India has attracted worldwide attention and support.
Story of land reforms in India
- Being a state subject, various states implemented reforms with varying degrees of effectiveness and equity.
- Objectives: The objectives were the same: Abolition of feudal landlordism, conferment of ownership on tenants, fixing land ceilings, distribution of surplus land, increasing agricultural productivity and production, etc.
- However, owing to manipulations in land records, much surplus land was not available for distribution among the landless tillers.
- Less than one per cent of the total land in the country was declared as surplus.
- The relevant criteria for land entitlement should have been employment and main source of income.
Change in social structure after land reforms
- The ex-tenants, after getting land made use of several programmes —Green Revolution technology, bank nationalisation and priority sector lending, urbanisation and expanding urban markets.
- They cornered a disproportionate share of various subsidies.
- The tenant-turned-capitalist farmers formed political parties, which produced strong state-level leaders, who controlled state-level planning, fiscal policies and politics.
- In place of a strong Centre and weak states, came a weak Centre and strong states.
- Rich farmers have formed strong power blocs, with unquestioned clout and bargaining power, not only in north-western India but also in states like Maharashtra.
Need for agrarian reforms
- Farmers are seeking legal safeguards against market fluctuations, especially against any downward pressure on agricultural prices.
- While they welcome every rise in prices, they demand legal protection against price falls, a legitimate stance.
- Even as agricultural prosperity must be promoted,it should not be just shared between farmers (especially rich ones) and urban consumers, but by all.
- Farm workers, in particular, must benefit from it.
Reforms for farmworkers
- Agricultural land should be pooled and equally distributed among farm households.
- Non-farm households should not be permitted to hold farmland.
- Land reforms should be a central subject; while agriculture can remain a state subject.
- Such a programme will empower and enrich marginalised and excluded individuals and social groups.
- It should be the kernel of a justiciable universal property right that must form an integral/inalienable part of Article 21 (Right to Life) of the Constitution.
Conclusion
The right to life is hollow without a right to livelihood. Through an effective land reforms programme, let’s build a prosperous India based on equity and justice.
UPSC 2022 countdown has begun! Get your personal guidance plan now! (Click here)
Get an IAS/IPS ranker as your 1: 1 personal mentor for UPSC 2024
Attend Now
Note4Students
From UPSC perspective, the following things are important :
Prelims level: Cost of capital
Mains level: Paper 3- Asset monetisation and challenges in it
Context
The government has announced an ambitious programme of asset monetisation. It hopes to earn ₹6 trillion in revenues over a four-year period.
About Asset monetisation
- Unlike in privatisation, no sale of government assets is involved.
- The government parts with its assets — such as roads, coal mines — for a specified period of time in exchange for a lump sum payment.
- Asset monetisation will happen mainly in three sectors: roads, railways and power.
- Other assets to be monetised include: airports, ports, telecom, stadiums and power transmission.
- Two important statements have been made about the asset monetisation programme.
- The focus will be on under-utilised assets.
- Monetisation will happen through public-private partnerships (PPP) and Investment Trusts.
Challenges
1) Investors would prefer property utilised assets over underutilised assets
- Suppose an asset is not being used adequately because it has not been properly developed or marketed well enough.
- A private party may judge that it can put the assets to better use.
- It will pay the government a price equal to the present value of cash flows at the current level of utilisation.
- This is a win-win situation for the government and the private player.
- The government gets a ‘fair’ value for its assets.
- The private player gets its return on investment.
- Increase in efficiency: The economy benefits from an increase in efficiency.
- Monetising under-utilised assets thus has much to commend it.
- However, in case of an asset that is being properly utilised, the private player has little incentive to invest and improve efficiency.
- It simply needs to operate the assets as they are.
- The private player may value the cash flows assuming a normal rate of growth.
- The cost of capital for a private player is higher than for a public authority.
- The higher cost of capital for the private player could offset the benefit of any reduction in operating costs.
- The government earns badly needed revenues but these could be less than what it might earn if it continued to operate the assets itself.
- There is no improvement in efficiency.
- The benefits to the economy are likely to be greater where under-utilised assets are monetised.
- However, private players will prefer well-utilised assets to assets that are under-utilised.
- That is because, in the former, cash flows and returns are more certain.
2) Valuation challenges
- It is very difficult to get the valuation right over a long-term horizon, say, 30 years.
- For a road or highway, growth in traffic would also depend on factors other than the growth of the economy.
- . If the rate of growth of traffic turns out to be higher than assessed by the government in valuing the asset, the private operator will reap windfall gains.
- Alternatively, if the winning bidder pays what turns out to be a steep price for the asset, it will raise the toll price steeply.
- The consumer ends up bearing the cost.
- It could be argued that a competitive auction process will address these issues and fetch the government the right price while yielding efficiency gains.
- But that assumes, among other things, that there will be a large number of bidders for the many assets that will be monetised.
3) Life of the returned asset may not be long
- There is no incentive for the private player to invest in the asset towards the end of the tenure of monetisation.
- The life of the asset, when it is returned to the government, may not be long.
- In that event, asset monetisation virtually amounts to sale.
- Monetisation through the PPP route is thus fraught with problems.
Way forward: InvIT route
- Infrastructure Investment Trusts (InvIT) are mutual fund-like vehicles in which investors can subscribe to units that give dividends.
- Monetisable assets will be transferred to InvITs.
- The sponsor of the Trust is required to hold a minimum prescribed proportion of the total units issued.
- InvITs offer a portfolio of assets, so investors get the benefit of diversification.
- In the InvIT route to monetisation, the public authority continues to own the rights to a significant portion of the cash flows and to operate the assets.
- So, the issues that arise with transfer of assets to a private party — such as incorrect valuation or an increase in price to the consumer — are less of a problem.
Key takeaways
- Low cost of capital for public authority: In general, due to the low cost of capital for public authority, the economy is best served when public authorities develop infrastructure and monetise these.
- InvIT route: Monetisation through InvITs is likely to prove less of a problem than the PPP route.
- Monetise under utilised assets: We are better off monetising under-utilised assets than assets that are well utilised.
- Monitoring authority should be set up: To ensure proper execution, there is a case for independent monitoring of the process.
- The government may set up an Asset Monetisation Monitoring Authority staffed by competent professionals.
Consider the question “How asset monetisation is different from privatisation? What are the challenges in asset monetisation? Suggest the ways forward.”
Conclusion
Government must pay attention to the challenges in asset monetisation and use it in the proper way to increase the efficiency in the economy.
UPSC 2022 countdown has begun! Get your personal guidance plan now! (Click here)
Get an IAS/IPS ranker as your 1: 1 personal mentor for UPSC 2024
Attend Now
Note4Students
From UPSC perspective, the following things are important :
Prelims level: Diclofenac
Mains level: Paper 3- Declining vulture population and steps taken
Context
India lost more than 95% of its vulture population through the 1990s and by the mid-2000s. Today, the country requires urgent conservation efforts to save vultures from becoming extinct.
About vultures
- Vultures belong to the Accipitridae family whose members include eagles, hawks and kites.
- They are relatively social birds with an average lifespan of 10-30 years in the wild.
- Vultures are slow breeders and so the survival of every individual is very crucial.
- Generally, vultures rely on other carnivores to open carcasses.
- Their powerful bills and long slender necks are designed to help them tear off the meat chunks from inside the carcass.
- India has nine species of vultures. Many are critically endangered.
- Vultures have a highly acidic stomach that helps them digest rotting carcass and kill disease-causing bacteria.
Role played by vultures in ecosystem
- Removing vultures from the ecosystem leads to inefficient clearing of carcasses and contaminates water systems.
- If dead animals are left to rot for long durations, it may give rise to disease-causing pathogens.
- The animals that consume such flesh become further carriers of disease.
- Thus, they play a crucial role in maintaining the health of the ecosystem.
Factors responsible for decline in future population
- India has nine species of vultures. Many are critically endangered.
- Use of diclofenac: The main reason for the decline in the vulture population is the use of the drug, diclofenac.
- Diclofenac, which relieves cattle of pain, is toxic to vultures even in small doses and causes kidney failure and death.
- Hunting: Myths about the medicinal healing powers of vultures’ body parts has led to the hunting of vultures.
- Quarrying: Quarrying and blasting of stones where vultures nest have also caused their decline.
Steps to increase numbers
- India banned diclofenac for veterinary use in 2006.
- Five States are to get vulture breeding centres under the Action Plan for Vulture Conservation for 2020-2025, approved in October 2020.
- Vulture ‘restaurants’, which exist in some countries, are also a way of preserving the population.
- In these ‘restaurants’, diclofenac-free carcasses of cattle are dumped in designated areas where vultures gather to feed.
Conclusion
Awareness and action must go hand in hand. With International Vulture Awareness Day coming up on September 4, it is important for us to spread awareness about the importance of vultures in our ecosystem.
UPSC 2022 countdown has begun! Get your personal guidance plan now! (Click here)
Get an IAS/IPS ranker as your 1: 1 personal mentor for UPSC 2024
Attend Now
Note4Students
From UPSC perspective, the following things are important :
Prelims level: Not much
Mains level: Paper 2- Way forward for India on Afghanistan issue
Context
In the chaos that has followed the Taliban takeover of Kabul on August 15, India has been relatively silent.
India’s role in Afghanistan’s development
- India’s role spanned three areas in Afghanistan:
- In terms of infrastructure building and development assistance, encompassing all 34 provinces of the country.
- In terms of building democracy, helping script the Constitution and hold elections.
- In terms of educational investment, allowing thousands of young Afghans to study, be trained as professionals and soldiers, and become skilled in India.
- India was the first country that Afghanistan signed a strategic partnership with.
- India was the only country that undertook perilous but ambitious projects such Parliament, the Zaranj-Delaram Highway, and the Chabahar port project in Iran for transit trade.
- India was by far the one country that polled consistently highly among countries that Afghan people trusted.
- What should India do now? India should not choose to simply walk away from such capital, regardless of the developments in Afghanistan, domestic political considerations in India and geopolitical sensitivities.
The marginalisation of India’s role in negotiations over Afghanistan
- No other power from the west to the east has considered India’s interests while charting its course on Afghanistan.
- India has found itself cut out of several quadrilateral arrangements: the main negotiations held by the “Troika plus” of the United States-Russia-China-Pakistan that pushed for a more “inclusive government” including the Taliban.
- The alternative grouping of Russia-Iran-China-Pakistan that formed a “regional arc” that has today seen them retain their embassies in Kabul.
- Neither India’s traditional strategic and defence partner, Russia, nor its fastest growing global strategic partner, the United States, thought it important to include India.
- It is time to accept that India is in need of a new diplomatic strategy.
Way forward for India
1) Leveraging its position at the UN
- India needs to begin by rallying the United Nations, to exert its considerable influence in its own interest, and that of the Afghan “republic”, which is an idea that cannot be just abandoned.
- Next, India must take a leading role in the debate over who will be nominated to the Afghan seat at the UN depending on the new regime in Afghanistan committing to international norms on human rights, women’s rights, minority rights and others.
- As Chairman of the Taliban Sanctions Committee (or the 1988 Sanctions Committee), India must use its muscle to ensure terrorists such as Sirajuddin Haqqani must not be given any exemptions: on travel, recourse to funds or arms.
2) India’s engagement with Afghanistan
- The question of whether India should convert its back-channel talks with the Taliban and with Pakistan in the past few months into something more substantive remains to be debated.
- This becomes more important as India now faces a “threat umbrella” to its north, including Pakistan’s cross-border terrorism, Afghanistan’s new regime and China’s aggression at the Line of Actual Control.
- A more broad-based and consultative process of engaging all political parties would be required.
- While not directly dealing with the Taliban, India must ensure stronger communication with those who are dealing directly, including leaders such as former Afghanistan President Hamid Karzai, to ensure its interests.
- As a part of its engagement, India must consider whether to revive its assistance to the resistance, which at present includes Ahmad Shah Massoud Jr., Amrullah Saleh, Abdul Rashid Dostum and Atta Mohammad Noor.
3) Engagement with the Afghan people
- The Government must embrace its greatest strength in Afghanistan — its relations with the Afghan people — and open its doors to those who wish to come here.
- In particular, India must continue to facilitate medical visas for Afghan patients and extend the education visas for students who are already admitted to Indian colleges.
Conclusion
It is India’s soft power, strategic autonomy or non-alignment principles and selfless assistance to those in need, particularly in its neighbourhood, that has been the strongest chords to its unique voice in the world. The moment to make that voice heard on Afghanistan is now.
UPSC 2022 countdown has begun! Get your personal guidance plan now! (Click here)
Get an IAS/IPS ranker as your 1: 1 personal mentor for UPSC 2024
Attend Now
Note4Students
From UPSC perspective, the following things are important :
Prelims level: Trailing indicators
Mains level: Paper 3- Indicators to look at to get the state of economy
Context
GDP growth estimates range from a high of 11 per cent, as per the government, to 9.5 per cent as per RBI. The variation is stark. So, what should one look at to evaluate the state of the economy?
Things to consider while evaluating the economy
- First, since the economy contracted by 7.3 per cent in 2020-21, all numbers will be exaggerated in the upward direction.
- Second, beware of interpretations based on single-month data.
- Cumulative numbers are better at times, but can be misleading too.
- Third, what is more important is how things will play out during September-December as this is the festival-cum-harvest season which engenders spending normally.
- Several indicators are used as leading signals of the economy, but here, too, we need to be careful.
- PMIs for manufacturing and services tell us if we are better off than the previous month.
- But that is not how data is normally presented as we usually talk of year-on-year growth.
- But it is an early signal for sure. The IIP and core sector numbers will be influenced by base numbers and come with a lag.
Indicators to look at as signs of recovery
- Credit growth: Bank credit is a good indicator of whether companies are producing more as all activity requires working capital.
- Here, the picture is not good as growth is (-) 0.4 per cent as of July end, indicating that activity has not picked up yet.
- Therefore, credit growth is in the negative territory.
- Investment: Debt issuances are lower in the first four months at around Rs 1.25 lakh crore, which is half of the Rs 2.57 lakh crore mobilised last year.
- Therefore, the investment scenario is still one where companies are watchful.
- There is surplus capacity in industry with utilisation rate being at 69.4 per cent in March 2021.
- Rural demand: Rural demand is an integral part of the story and presently progress on the kharif crop is satisfactory.
- A good crop is also necessary to generate spending power besides augmenting supplies in the market as well as food processing industry.
- The second wave has pushed back rural households with more expenditure on health care.
- Employment generation: Employment generation is a trigger for higher income and spending and while the battle between CMIE and EPFO data remains unresolved, the market will finally reveal if people have more money.
Inflation concern
- Inflation is high and though there is a view that it is transient.
- Several households, who are living on a fixed income have witnessed a double whammy in the form of lower returns on deposits and cumulative inflation of 6 per cent last year, and a similar number this year.
Conclusion
Investment will trail consumption and while the Centre has a good capex plan, it is only one piece in the overall puzzle. The private sector must get involved and with the banks being hesitant, the road can get longer.
UPSC 2022 countdown has begun! Get your personal guidance plan now! (Click here)
Get an IAS/IPS ranker as your 1: 1 personal mentor for UPSC 2024
Attend Now
Note4Students
From UPSC perspective, the following things are important :
Prelims level: Food fortification
Mains level: Paper 3- food fortification to deal with anaemia
Context
To deal with the high prevalence of anaemia, the government has been pursuing the policy of food fortification with iron. This policy needs a rethink.
Rice-fortification policy
- There are high levels of anaemia in India, affecting women and children equally.
- This is despite the corrective measures like mandatory supplementation of iron tablets through Anaemia Mukt Bharat programme of pharmaceutical iron supplementation.
- To deal with the issue, the government has decided on compulsory rice fortification in safety-net feeding programmes like the ICDS, PDS and school mid-day meals.
- This was announced by the Prime Minister in his recent Independence Day address to the nation.
- The mandatory rice fortification programme is being piloted in some districts already.
- Food fortification is considered attractive as it requires no behavioural modification by the beneficiary.
Why iron fortification policy needs re-examination?
1) Over-estimation of anaemia burden
- High WHO cutoff for Hg levels: WHO haemoglobin cut-offs are used to diagnose anaemia in India.
- There is a growing global consensus that these may be too high.
- A recent Lancet paper suggested a lower haemoglobin cut-off level to diagnose anaemia in Indian children.
- Using this will actually reduce the anaemia burden by two-thirds.
- Capillary Vs venous blood sample: Haemoglobin level can be falsely low when a capillary blood sample (taken by finger-prick) is used for measurement, instead of the more reliable venous blood sample (taken with a syringe from an arm vein). The anaemia burden in India is estimated from capillary blood, which inflates the anaemia burden substantially.
- If the recommended venous blood sample is used, it would halve this burden.
- There is, thus, a significant overestimation of anaemia burden.
2) Other nutrients and protein intake
- A MoHFW national survey (Comprehensive National Nutrition Survey) of Indian children showed that iron deficiency was related to less than half the anaemia cases.
- Many other nutrients and adequate protein intake are also important, for which a good diverse diet is required.
3) Iron requirement over-estimated
- The idea for iron fortification comes from the premise that a normal Indian diet cannot possibly meet an individual’s daily iron requirement.
- This is wrong thinking, and is based on older iron requirements (as per National Institute of Nutrition [NIN] 2010), which were much too high.
- The latest corrected iron requirements (NIN 2020) are 30-40 per cent lower.
- The iron density of the Indian vegetarian diet, about 9 mg/1000 kCal, can thus meet most requirements.
4) Challenges in rice fortification
- Rice fortification is very complex.
- It requires a fortified rice “kernel” or grain that is composed of rice flour paste, along with the required concentration of micronutrients and binders, extruded into a grain that exactly matches the shape of the rice it is intended to fortify.
- The problem lies in making “matching” kernels for each rice cultivar that is distributed in the food safety-net programmes from year to year and state to state.
- If it does not match, the instinct of a home cook will be to pick out and discard the odd grains, thereby defeating the purpose of fortification.
Risks involved
- Ingesting fortified salt (two teaspoons, 10 g/day) or rice (quarter kilo/day) will deliver an additional 10 mg iron/day each to the diet.
- When the iron intake exceeds 40 mg/day, the risk of toxicity goes up.
- The unabsorbed iron that remains in the gut can wreak havoc among the beneficial bacteria in the large intestine.
- Iron causes oxidative stress, and more seriously, is implicated in diabetes and cancer risk. Men will also be more at risk.
Way forward
- We just need to absorb the existing dietary iron better and complement this with all the other nutrients that are required, by eating a diverse diet (with fruits and vegetables, for example), and improving our environment.
- Indeed, it is well-known that the benefits derived from the nutrients in whole foods are greater than the sum of their parts.
Conclusion
We need to rethink our reductionist strategies if we are to deliver food and nutrition security to our people.
UPSC 2022 countdown has begun! Get your personal guidance plan now! (Click here)
Get an IAS/IPS ranker as your 1: 1 personal mentor for UPSC 2024
Attend Now
Note4Students
From UPSC perspective, the following things are important :
Prelims level: National Mission on Oilseeds and Oil Palm
Mains level: Paper 3- Oil palm cultivation in India
Context
On August 15, Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced a support of Rs 11,000 crore to incentivise oil palm production.
National Mission on Edible Oils and Oil Palm (NMEO-OP)
- Under NMEO-OP, the government intends to bring an additional 6.5 lakh hectares under oil palm cultivation.
- The agro-business industry has said the move will help its growth and reduce the country’s dependence on palm oil imports, especially from Indonesia and Malaysia.
- Indonesia has emerged as a significant palm oil hub in the last decade and has overtaken Malaysia.
- The two countries produce 80 per cent of global oil palm.
- Indonesia exports more than 80 per cent of its production.
Reducing the import dependence
- India imported 18.41 million tonnes of vegetable oil in 2018.
- The National Mission on Oilseeds and Oil Palm are part of the government’s efforts to reduce the dependence on vegetable oil production.
- The Yellow Revolution of the 1990s led to a rise in oilseeds production.
- Though there has been a continuous increase in the production of diverse oilseeds — groundnut, rapeseed and mustard, soybean — that has not matched the increasing demand.
- Most of these oilseeds are grown in rain-fed agriculture areas of Gujarat, Andhra Pradesh, Haryana, Karnataka, Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh, Tamil Nadu and Uttar Pradesh.
Issues with oil palm cultivation in India
- Impact on biodiversity: Studies on agrarian change in Southeast Asia have shown that increasing oil palm plantations is a major reason for the region’s declining biodiversity.
- The Northeast is recognised as the home of around 850 bird species, it is also home to citrus fruits, it is rich in medicinal plants and harbours rare plants and herbs.
- Above all, it has 51 types of forests.
- Studies conducted by the government have also highlighted the Northeast’s rich biodiversity.
- The palm oil policy could destroy this richness of the region.
- To preserve the environment and biodiversity, Indonesia and Sri Lanka have already started putting restrictions on palm tree plantation.
- Water pollution: Along with adversely impacting the country’s biodiversity, it has led to increasing water pollution.
- Climate change: The decreasing forest cover has significant implications with respect to increasing carbon emission levels and contributing to climate change.
- Against the notion of self-reliance: Such initiatives are also against the notion of community self-reliance:
- The initial state support for such a crop results in a major and quick shift in the existing cropping pattern that are not always in sync with the agro-ecological conditions and food requirements of the region.
- Against commitment to sustainable agriculture: The policy also contradicts the government’s commitments under the National Mission for Sustainable Agriculture.
- The mission aims at “Making agriculture more productive, sustainable, remunerative and climate resilient by promoting location specific integrated/composite farming systems.”
- The palm oil mission, instead, aims at achieving complete transformation of the farming system of Northeast India.
- Studies also show that in case of variations in global palm oil prices, households dependent on palm oil cultivation become vulnerable.
Consider the question “India depend on import for its vegetable oil requirements to a larger extent. What are the steps taken by the government to reduce the dependence? Can oil palm cultivation in India be a solution?”
Conclusion
Similar environmental and political outcomes cannot be ruled out in India. Apart from the possible hazardous impacts in Northeast India, such trends could have negative implications on farmer incomes, health, and food security in other parts of the country in the long run.
UPSC 2022 countdown has begun! Get your personal guidance plan now! (Click here)
Get an IAS/IPS ranker as your 1: 1 personal mentor for UPSC 2024
Attend Now
Note4Students
From UPSC perspective, the following things are important :
Prelims level: Not much
Mains level: Paper 2- Issues with automated facial recognition system
Context
On June 23, 2021, the Joint Committee examining the Personal Data Protection Bill (2019) was granted a fifth extension by Parliament. While the Government has been simultaneously exploring the potential of facial recognition technology.
Automatic Facial Recognition in India
- To empower the Indian police with information technology, India approved implementation of the National Automated Facial Recognition System (NAFRS).
- On its implementation, it will function as a national-level search platform that will use facial recognition technology.
- It will help to facilitate investigation of crime or for identifying a person of interest regardless of face mask, makeup, plastic surgery, beard or hair extension.
Issues with AFR technology
- Intrusive in nature: The technology is absolutely intrusive, for the purposes of ‘verification’ or ‘identification’, the system compares the faceprint generated with a large existing database of faceprints typically available to law enforcement agencies.
- Accuracy and bias: Though the accuracy of facial recognition has improved over the years due to modern machine-learning algorithms, the risk of error and bias still exists.
- With the element of error and bias, facial recognition can result in profiling of some overrepresented groups (such as Dalits and minorities) in the criminal justice system.
- Privacy: As NAFRS will collect, process, and store sensitive private information: facial biometrics for long periods; if not permanently — it will impact the right to privacy.
- Accordingly, it is crucial to examine whether its implementation is arbitrary and thus unconstitutional, i.e., is it ‘legitimate’, ‘proportionate to its need’ and ‘least restrictive’?
- The Supreme Court, in the K.S. Puttaswamy judgment provided a three-fold requirement to safeguard against any arbitrary state action.
- Unfortunately, NAFRS fails each one of these tests.
- Any encroachment on the right to privacy requires the existence of ‘law’ (to satisfy legality of action); there must exist a ‘need’, in terms of a ‘legitimate state interest’; and, the measure adopted must be ‘proportionate’ and it should be ‘least intrusive.’
- Lack of law: It does not stem from any statutory enactment (such as the DNA Technology (Use and Application) Regulation Bill 2018 proposed to identify offenders or an executive order of the Central Government.
- Rather, it was merely approved by the Cabinet Committee on Economic Affairs in 2009.
- Fails proportionality test: Even if we assume that there exists a need for NAFRS to tackle modern day crimes, this measure is grossly disproportionate.
- For NAFRS to achieve the objective of ‘crime prevention’ or ‘identification’ will require the system to track people on a mass scale — avoiding a CCTV in a public place is difficult — resulting in everyone becoming a subject of surveillance: a disproportionate measure.
- Impact on civil liberties: As anonymity is key to functioning of a liberal democracy, unregulated use of facial recognition technology will dis-incentivise independent journalism or the right to assemble peaceably without arms, or any other form of civic society activism.
- Due to its adverse impact on civil liberties, some countries have been cautious with the use of facial recognition technology.
- In the United States, the Facial Recognition and Biometric Technology Moratorium Act of 2020 was introduced in the Senate to prohibit biometric surveillance without statutory authorisation.
- Similarly, privacy watchdogs in the European Union have called for a ban on facial recognition.
Way forward
- Statutory basis: NAFRS should have statutory authorisation, and guidelines for deployment.
- Data protection law: In the interest of civil liberties it is important to impose a moratorium on the use of facial recognition technology till we enact a strong and meaningful data protection law.
Consider the question “What are the issues associated with the deployment of NAFRS? Suggest the way forward.”
Conclusion
In sum, even if facial recognition technology is needed to tackle modern-day criminality in India, without accountability and oversight, facial recognition technology has strong potential for misuse and abuse.
UPSC 2022 countdown has begun! Get your personal guidance plan now! (Click here)
Get an IAS/IPS ranker as your 1: 1 personal mentor for UPSC 2024
Attend Now
Note4Students
From UPSC perspective, the following things are important :
Prelims level: India's expenditure on health
Mains level: Paper 2- India needs NHS like healthcare model
Context
Even after the pandemic, the Indian government continues to budget less than 1 per cent of GDP for healthcare, one of the lowest in the world.
About NHS
- Every year, Britain’s legendary health network National Health Service (NHS) cures 15 million patients with chronic ailments, at a fraction of the cost spent by the US.
- The NHS funded by direct taxes is also the fifth largest employer in the world, after McDonalds and Walmart.
- One of every 20 British workers is employed as a doctor, nurse, catering and technical personnel.
Public healthcare in India
- Even after the pandemic, the Indian government continues to budget less than 1 per cent of GDP for healthcare, one of the lowest in the world.
- In contrast, China invests around 3 per cent, Britain 7 per cent and the United States 17 per cent of GDP.
- So, 62 per cent of health expenses in India are paid for by patients themselves
- This is one of the main reasons for families falling into poverty especially during the pandemic.
- In India, hospitals are beleaguered with absentee staff.
- As per a Niti Aayog database, in the worst state of Bihar in 2017-18, positions for 60 per cent of midwives, 50 per cent of staff nurses, 34 per cent of medical officers and 60 per cent of specialist doctors were vacant.
- Those on the job, despite being handsomely paid, are chronically overworked.
Conclusion
In the 21st century, not much has improved in India’s public hospitals. Still, in India doctors are often equated with gods. What India needs in NHS like healthcare model.
UPSC 2022 countdown has begun! Get your personal guidance plan now! (Click here)
Get an IAS/IPS ranker as your 1: 1 personal mentor for UPSC 2024
Attend Now
Note4Students
From UPSC perspective, the following things are important :
Prelims level: Cities in Afghanistan
Mains level: Paper 2- Implications of Taliban control over Afghanistan
Context
Notwithstanding the current triumphalism in Pakistan at “overthrowing” the US-backed order in Kabul and “pushing” India out of Afghanistan, India can afford to step back and signal that it can wait.
Uncertainties about the future
Two interconnected political negotiations unfolding are likely to determine Afghanistan’s immediate future.
1) Setting up political order
- One is focused on building a new political order within Afghanistan.
- More than a week after President Ghani fled Kabul, there is no government, let alone an inclusive and internationally acceptable one, in sight.
- Before Pakistan can get the Taliban to share power with other groups, it has to facilitate an acceptable accommodation between different factions of the Taliban.
- Then there is the problem of including the non-Taliban formations in the new government.
2) Gaining international recognition
- The international community has set some broad conditions for the recognition of the Taliban-led government.
- Besides an inclusive government at home, the world wants to see respect for human rights, especially women’s rights, ending support for international terrorism, and stopping opium production.
- Pakistan will hope to get some of its traditional friends like China and Turkey or new partners like Russia to break the current international consensus.
- Pakistan and the Taliban, however, know Chinese and Russian support is welcome but not enough.
- They need an understanding of the US and its allies to gain political legitimacy as well as sustained international economic assistance.
- The West, too, needs the Taliban to facilitate the evacuation of its citizens from Kabul and, sooner rather than later, deliver humanitarian assistance.
How India differs from Pakistan in its approach towards Afghanistan?
- India has never been in strategic competition with Pakistan in Afghanistan. India’s lack of direct geographic access to Afghanistan has ensured that.
- Both their strategies have roots in the 19th-century policies of the Raj.
- Forward policy: The Pakistan Army’s quest for strategic depth in Afghanistan harks back to the “forward policy” school that sought to actively control the territories beyond the Indus.
- The forward policy seeks political dominance over Afghanistan in the name of a “friendly government” in Kabul.
- Masterly inactivity: India, in contrast, stayed with a rival school in the Raj that called for “masterly inactivity” — a prudent approach to the badlands beyond the Indus.
- India’s strategy seeks to strengthen Kabul’s autonomy vis-à-vis Rawalpindi and facilitate Afghanistan’s economic modernisation.
- The Afghan values that India supports — nationalism, sovereignty, and autonomy — will endure in Kabul, irrespective of the nature of the regime.
Consider the question “What are the implications of the return of Taliban in Afghanistan for India? What should be India’s approach in dealing with the Taliban controlled Afghanistan?”
Conclusion
Strategic patience coupled with political empathy for Afghan people, and an active engagement will continue to keep India relevant in Kabul’s internal and external evolution.
UPSC 2022 countdown has begun! Get your personal guidance plan now! (Click here)
Get an IAS/IPS ranker as your 1: 1 personal mentor for UPSC 2024
Attend Now
Note4Students
From UPSC perspective, the following things are important :
Prelims level: Parliamentary Committees
Mains level: Paper 2- Issues with legislative process
Context
The recent Monsoon Session of Parliament is proof that the speed of passing laws trumps their rigorous scrutiny in our legislative process.
Issues with lawmaking process in India
1) Avoiding pre-legislative scrutiny
- In our parliamentary system, a majority of laws originate from the government.
- Each ministry decides the path its legislative proposals will take from ideation to enactment.
- For example, last year, the Shipping Ministry requested public feedback on the two bills — Marine Aids and Inland Vessels.
- This mechanism enables the strengthening of the legal proposal through stakeholder inputs before being brought to Parliament.
- However, ministries expedite their bills by not putting them through a similar pre-legislative scrutiny process.
2) Misuse of Ordinance route
- Over the years, successive governments have exploited the spirit of this constitutional provision.
- Governments have promulgated an ordinance a few days before a parliamentary session, cut a session short to issue one, and pushed a law that is not urgent through the ordinance route.
- But the executive sometimes fails to follow through on the legislative urgency.
- Bringing in law through the ordinance route also bypasses parliamentary scrutiny.
- But parliamentary committees rarely scrutinise bills to replace ordinances because this may take time and defeat the issuing of the ordinance.
- Over the last few years, bills like GST, Consumer Protection, Insolvency and Bankruptcy, Labour Codes, Surrogacy, and DNA Technology have benefited from parliamentary committees’ scrutiny.
- Their closed-door technical deliberations, inputs from ministry officials, subject-matter experts, and ordinary citizens have strengthened government bills.
3) Delay in rule framing
- Unnecessary urgency in getting laws passed by Parliament does not result in their immediate implementation.
- For the law to work on the ground, the government is supposed to frame rules.
- Last year the Cabinet Secretary twice requested the personal intervention of secretaries heading the Union ministries to frame regulations for bringing into force the laws made by Parliament.
- Before the Monsoon Session, he wrote a follow-up letter on similar lines to his colleagues.
Implication of fast-tracking the law-making
- Difficulty in achieving desired outcomes: Hurriedly-made and inadequately-scrutinised laws hardly ever achieve their desired outcomes.
- Wastage of time of legislature: Enacting statutes without proper scrutiny also wastes the legislature’s time when the government approaches Parliament to amend such laws.
- Loss of opportunity: But the unmeasurable cost of a poorly-made law is in the loss of opportunity to an entire nation that has to comply with it.
Way forward
- The government must ensure that it identifies the gaps in our legal system proactively.
- All its bills should go through pre-legislative scrutiny before being brought to Parliament.
- The legislature, on its part, should conduct in-depth scrutiny of government bills.
- Mandatory scrutiny of bills by parliamentary committees should become the rule and not the exception.
Conclusion
India is in urgent need of course correction in its legislating process. What we need is a robust law-making process.
UPSC 2022 countdown has begun! Get your personal guidance plan now! (Click here)
Get an IAS/IPS ranker as your 1: 1 personal mentor for UPSC 2024
Attend Now
Note4Students
From UPSC perspective, the following things are important :
Prelims level: Article 142 (1)
Mains level: Paper 2- Issue of judicial appointments
Context
For the first time ever, the Supreme Court Collegium led by the Chief Justice of India (CJI) recommended/selected as many as nine persons at one go to be appointed to the apex court.
Significance of the move
- It is a happy augury that the present CJI, Justice N.V. Ramana, could, along with his colleagues in the Collegium, select the judges within a short period of his assumption of office.
- It is a tough task to build a consensus around one person or a few persons, the CJI being the head of the Collegium, has an unenviable task in building that consensus.
- Therefore, it can be said without any fear of contradiction that the job of selecting as many as nine judges for appointment to the Supreme Court was done admirably well.
- The latest resolution of the Collegium gave effect to the multiple judicial pronouncements of the top court on the subject.
- The selection of three women judges, with one of them having a chance to head the top court, a judge belonging to the Scheduled Caste and one from a backward community and the nine selected persons belonging to nine different States, all point towards an enlightened and unbiased approach of the members of the Collegium.
- A needless controversy is sought to be raised by a section of the media about this round of selection citing the non-existing ‘Rule of Seniority’.
Various norms to be followed in judicial appointment
1) Consideration of merit
- Article 142 (1) contains the concept of ‘complete justice’ in any cause or matter which the Supreme Court is enjoined to deliver upon.
- So, while selecting a judge to adorn the Bench, the fundamental consideration should be his/her ability to do complete justice.
- In the Supreme Court Advocates-on-Record Association and Another vs Union of India (1993), the Court spelt out the parameters within which to accomplish the task of selecting candidates for appointment to the higher judiciary.
- The most crucial consideration is the merit of the candidates.
- The merit is the ability of the judge to deliver complete justice.
2) Plurality
- The nine judges who decided the above case were quite aware of these compelling realities.
- So, they said, “In the context of the plurastic [pluralistic] society of India where there are several distinct and differing interests of the people with multiplicity of religions, race, caste and community and with the plurality of culture, it is inevitable that all people should be given equal opportunity in all walks of life and brought into the mainstream.”
3) Transparency
- India is perhaps the only country where the judges select judges to the higher judiciary.
- It is, therefore, necessary to make the norms of selection transparent and open.
- In 2019, a five judge Bench of the Supreme Court, of which the present CJI was also a member, laid emphasis on this point.
- The Bench observed: “There can be no denial that there is a vital element of public interest in knowing about the norms which are taken into consideration in selecting candidates for higher judicial office and making judicial appointments”.
Thus, the essence of the norms to be followed in judicial appointments is a judicious blend of merit, seniority, interests of the marginalised and deprived sections of society, women, religions, regions and communities.
Consider the question “What are the various norms to be followed by the Collegium for judicial appointments? What are the issues with Collegium system of judicial appointment?”
Conclusion
The Collegium has started doing its job. Now, it is time for the Government to match the pace and take the process of appointments to its logical conclusion at the earliest.
UPSC 2022 countdown has begun! Get your personal guidance plan now! (Click here)
Get an IAS/IPS ranker as your 1: 1 personal mentor for UPSC 2024
Attend Now
Note4Students
From UPSC perspective, the following things are important :
Prelims level: Article 235
Mains level: Paper 2- Independence of judiciary
Context
The August 11 order of the Himachal Pradesh High Court directed that “hereinafter, all the courts in the state other than the high court shall be referred to as district judiciary”. Furthermore, “these courts shall not be referred to as subordinate court” but as trial courts.
Issues with the judicial hierarchy Vs. hierarchy of judges
- The expression “subordinate courts” used by Part VI, Chapter 6, of the Constitution of India cannot signify that judges are subordinate.
- The term subordinate has implications for the independence of the judiciary, entrenched with and since Kesavananda Bharati (1973) as the essential feature of the basic structure of the Indian Constitution.
- No judge is “subordinate” to any other, constitutionally judges are limited in the jurisdiction but also supreme within their own jurisdiction.
- However, Article 235 speaks of “control over subordinate courts”.
- This Article created the notion of subordination by describing these entities and agents as persons “holding a post inferior to the post of a district judge”.
Constitutional provision
- The Constitution no doubt contemplates a hierarchy of jurisdictions, but no judge, acting within her jurisdiction, is “inferior” or “subordinate”.
- On appeal, or review, a court with ample jurisdiction may overturn and even pass judicial strictures but this does not make the concerned courts “lower” or “inferior” courts.
- Supervisory powers: High courts always have considerable powers of superintendence on the administrative side but this “supervisory“ power has been recognised by the apex court as a “constitutional power” and subject to the right of appeal as granted by Article 235.
- While the Constitution allows “supervision”, it does not sanction judicial despotism.
- Despite this, arbitrary practices in writing confidential reports of district justices seem to continue.
Way forward
- Constitutional amendment: A complete recasting of Article 235 is needed, which does away with the omnibus expression of “control” powers in the high courts.
- The amendment should specifically require the high courts to satisfy the criteria flowing from the principles of natural and constitutional justice and all judicial officers who fulfil due qualification thresholds should be treated with constitutional dignity and respect.
- Collegiate system at high court’s level: For most matters (save elevation), senior-most district judges and judges of the high courts should constitute a collegiate system to facilitate judicial administration, infrastructure, access, monitoring of disposal rates, minimisation of undue delays in administration of justice, alongside matters concerning transfers, and leave.
- If an ACR is to be adversely changed in the face of a consistent award for a decade or more, it should be a collegiate act of the five senior-most justices, including the Chief Justice of the High Court.
- CJI Ramana has recently agreed in principle, following the request of the Supreme Court Bar Association, that chief justices of the high courts should consider lawyers practising in the Supreme Court for elevation to the high courts.
Consider the question “Do you agree with the view that the Constitution contemplates a hierarchy of jurisdictions, but no judge, acting within her jurisdiction, is “inferior” or “subordinate”. Give reason in support of your argument.”
Conclusion
The changes suggested here needs to be implemented to ensure the independence of the judiciary at all levels.
UPSC 2022 countdown has begun! Get your personal guidance plan now! (Click here)
Get an IAS/IPS ranker as your 1: 1 personal mentor for UPSC 2024
Attend Now
Note4Students
From UPSC perspective, the following things are important :
Prelims level: Not much
Mains level: Paper 2- Afghanistan issue and its implications for India
Context
The fall of Kabul in the wake of the American withdrawal from Afghanistan will prove to be a defining moment for the region and the future shape of its geopolitics.
Implications of the US withdrawal for India
1) Increase in threat from China
- The manner in which the United States withdrew from Afghanist created the regional power vacuum in the Eurasian heartland.
- An axis of regional powers such as China, Pakistan, Iran, Russia, and the Taliban, have already started filling this power vacuum.
- Advantageous for China: The post-American power vacuum in the region will be primarily advantageous to China and its grand strategic plans for the region.
- BRI expansion: Beijing will further strengthen its efforts to bring every country in the region, except India, on the Chinese Belt and Road Initiative bandwagon, thereby altering the geopolitical and geoeconomic foundations of the region
- The much-feared Chinese encirclement of India will become ever more pronounced.
- Even in trade, given the sorry state of the post-COVID-19 Indian economy, India needs trade with China more than the other way round.
- Unless India can find ways of ensuring a rapprochement with China, it must expect Beijing to challenge India on occasion, and be prepared for it.
2) Terror and extremism
- The U.S. presence in Afghanistan, international pressure on the Taliban, and Financial Action Task Force worries in Pakistan had a relatively moderating effect on the region’s terror ecosystem.
- There is little appetite for a regional approach to curbing terrorism from a Taliban-led Afghanistan.
- This enables the Taliban to engage in a selective treatment towards terror outfits present there or they have relations with.
- It is unlikely that the Taliban will proactively export terror to other countries unless of course for tactical purposes, for instance, Pakistan against India.
- The real worry, however, is the inspiration that disgruntled elements in the region will draw from the Taliban’s victory against the world’s sole superpower.
3) Impact on India’s regional interests and outreach to Central Asia
- The return of the Taliban to Kabul has effectively laid India’s ‘mission Central Asia’ to rest.
- India’s diplomatic and civilian presence as well as its civilian investments will now be at the mercy of the Taliban, and to some extent Pakistan.
- Had India cultivated deeper relations with the Taliban, Indian interests would have been more secure in a post-American Afghanistan.
4) Impact on India’s foreign policy choices
- Shift to Indo-Pacific: Given the little physical access India has to its north-western landmass, its focus is bound to shift more to the Indo-Pacific even though a maritime grand strategy may not necessarily be an answer to its continental challenges.
- Improving relations with neighbours: India might also seek to cultivate more friendly relations with its neighbours.
- India has already indicated that it would not challenge the junta on the coup and its widespread human rights violations.
- The last thing India needs now is an angry neighbour rushing to China.
- Stability in relations with Pakistan: The developments in Afghanistan could nudge India to seek stability, if not peace, with Pakistan.
- Both sides might refrain from indulging in competitive risk-taking unless something dramatic happens which is always a possibility between the two rivals.
- That said, stability between India and Pakistan depends a great deal on how politics in Kashmir plays out, and whether India is able to pacify the aggrieved sections in the Valley.
Consider the question “What would be the fallout of the Taliban’s return in Afghanistan for India? What steps India needs to take to mitigate the impact on its interests?”
Conclusion
The lesson for India in the wake of these developments is clear: It will have to fight its own battles. So it must make enemies wisely, choose friends carefully, rekindle flickering friendships, and make peace while it can.
UPSC 2022 countdown has begun! Get your personal guidance plan now! (Click here)
Get an IAS/IPS ranker as your 1: 1 personal mentor for UPSC 2024
Attend Now
Note4Students
From UPSC perspective, the following things are important :
Prelims level: Article 20
Mains level: Paper 2- Provision for punishing the Members of Rajya Sabha for misconduct inside House
Context
The Chairman of the Rajya Sabha is reportedly contemplating action against MPs who, he thinks, were involved in the fracas in the House.
Provisions in House Rules of Rajya Sabha for punishing members
1) For conduct inside the House
- Ground for punishment: Rule 256 of the Rajya Sabha’s Rules of Procedure specifies the acts of misconduct: Disregarding the authority of the chair, abusing the rules of the council by persistently and willfully obstructing the business thereof.
- However, the power to suspend a member is vested in the House, not in the chairman.
- Under the rule, the maximum period of suspension is for the remainder of the session.
- By convention, a suspended member loses his right to get replies to his questions.
- Thus, suspension from the service of the House is regarded as a serious punishment.
- But, surprisingly, the rules do not spell out the disabilities of a suspended member.
- These are imposed on them as per conventions or precedent.
- Suspension for the remainder of the session makes sense only when they are suspended immediately after the misconduct has been noticed by the chair.
- The rules of the House do not empower Parliament to inflict any punishment on its members other than suspension for creating disorder in the House.
2) Misconduct outside the House
- For the acts of misconduct by the MPs outside the House, which constitute a breach of privilege or contempt of the House, usually the privilege committee investigates the matter and recommends the course of action and the House acts on it.
- A special committee is appointed usually when the misconduct is so serious that the House may consider expelling the member.
- Special committee was appointed in 2005 to inquire into the issue of MPs accepting money for raising questions in Parliament.
- So, special ad-hoc committees are appointed only to investigate serious misconduct by MPs outside the House.
Issue in the present context
- It appears that the Rajya Sabha secretariat has prepared a report on the incident in the Rajya Sabhi, which accuses some MPs of assaulting security personnel.
- But special ad-hoc committees are appointed only to investigate serious misconduct by MPs outside the House.
- No special committee is required to go into what happens before the eyes of the presiding officer inside the House.
- As per the rules of the House, they need to be dealt with then and there.
- The rules do not recognise any punishment other than suspension for a specific period and in this case, the Session is already over.
- Article 20 of the Constitution prohibits a greater penalty than what the law provided at the time of committing the offence.
Conclusion
Punishing the MPs for their misconduct in the House is restricted by the provision in the House rules. These restrictions need to be looked into in the face of growing disruption by the members.
UPSC 2022 countdown has begun! Get your personal guidance plan now! (Click here)
Get an IAS/IPS ranker as your 1: 1 personal mentor for UPSC 2024
Attend Now