Note4Students
From UPSC perspective, the following things are important :
Prelims level: CAPF
Mains level: Paper 2- Issues with MHA's decision to deploy CAPF for the security of MLAs
The article deals with the issue of the Home Ministry’s decision to provide security to BJP MLAs in West Bengal.
Context
Recently, the Union Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) decided to provide security cover to 77 MLAs of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) who were elected earlier this month after the West Bengal Assembly poll.
Issues with the decision
1) Threat perception discussed for a group and not one by one person
- Decisions to provide security to persons under threat is taken by a committee in the MHA.
- The committee comprises officials from the MHA, the Intelligence Bureau, Delhi Police and senior officials of the Central Armed Police Forces.
- In the meetings of the committee, the threat perception of each of the person to be secured is discussed one by one and not collectively for any group as such.
- However, in the decision to deploy CAPF personnel for the 77 MLAs, threat perception for each of the persons was not discussed.
2) Law and order is a state subject
- Law and order being a State subject, West Bengal is duty-bound to protect every citizen of the State, more so the MLAs.
- By deploying central forces, the Centre has sent a clear signal that it does not rely upon the State government to provide fool-proof security to the BJP MLAs.
- This is not a good sign for Centre-State relations.
- The Central government’s distrust of officers who are considered close to a State’s ruling dispensation does not bode well for police officers across the country.
3) Burdening the security forces
- The number of protected persons has increased in recent years.
- In 2019, as many as 66,043 police and CAPF personnel were deployed to protect 19,467 persons against the sanctioned strength of 43,556 personnel, as per the Data on Police Organisations.
- Constant deployment of CAPF personnel on protection duties impacts their training schedule.
Curbing the tendency to have security as status symbol
- To curb the tendency of demanding security personnel around themselves, leaders and prominent persons should be asked to bear the expenditure.
- Similarly, Members of Parliament and leaders with criminal records should be charged a fee for the security personnel deployed to protect them.
Conclusion
The Centre’s decision to provide security to the MLAs would set a wrong precedent and does not bode well for federalism.
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Note4Students
From UPSC perspective, the following things are important :
Prelims level: Provision in Social Security Code 2020
Mains level: Paper 2- Issues with the Social Security Code 2020
Provisions in Social Security Code 2020
- India’s Parliament in September 2020 passed a Social Security Code (SS Code 2020).
- The SS Code 2020 merges existing social security laws and attempts to include informal workers within the ambit of social security administration.
- The SS Code 2020 amalgamates and rationalises the provisions of eight existing central labour laws.
- Of these acts, employees provident fund, employees state insurance (ESI), maternity benefit, gratuity are entirely for organised sector workers.
- Employee threshold removed: For employees’ state insurance, the existing employee threshold has been withdrawn.
- Now the central government can extend ESI benefits to any organisation irrespective of the number of workers employed.
Key benefits not available to informal workers in Social Security Code 2020
- Maternity benefit: Under the SS Code, the provision of maternity benefit has not been made universal.
- Maternity benefit is presently applicable for establishments employing 10 workers or more.
- The definition of ‘Establishment’ in the proposed code did not include the unorganised sector.
- Hence, women engaged in the unorganised sector would remain outside the purview of maternity benefit.
- Employees Provident Fund: The SS Code maintains that the Employees’ Provident Fund Scheme will remain applicable, as before, to every establishment in which 20 or more employees are employed.
- Thus, for informal sector workers, access to employees’ provident fund remains unfulfilled too in the new code.
- Payment of gratuity: Gratuity shall be payable to eligible employees by every shop or establishment in which 10 or more employees are employed, or were employed, on any day of the preceding 12 months.
- But although payment of gratuity was expanded in the new Code, it still remains inaccessible for a vast majority of informal workers.
Challenges faced by informal workers in availing social security
- Registration barrier: To avail social security, an informal worker must register herself on the specified online portal to be developed by the central government.
- Absence of definition: The absence of definite and unambiguous provisions in the present code would further complicate achievement of universal registration.
- Lack of awareness: Experience shows that there is an awful lack of awareness among informal workers regarding social security schemes.
- Lack of digital literacy: Online registration places a further challenge as most informal workers lack digital literacy and connectivity.
- Lack of documents: Informal workers also find it difficult to furnish all documentary papers required as part of the registration process.
- Furnishing proof of livelihood and income details in the absence of tangible employer-employee relations is very difficult.
- Such requirements deter informal workers from completing the registration and they continue to remain outside the social security ambit.
Way forward
The provision of social security could be used to formalise the workforce to a certain extent. Employers could have been made to own up to the responsibility of providing social security to their workers.
1) Inter-State cooperation
- As unorganised workers are spread across the length and breadth of India, inter-State arrangement and cooperation becomes imperative.
- The central government should conceptualise a basic structure, which if successful, should be adopted by States after necessary customisation.
2) Universal coverage
- The unorganised workforce is all encompassing, minus the minuscule regular workers of organised sectors.
- This identity should be primal and all unorganised workers should have basic social security coverage, irrespective of labour market classifications.
- The code fails to undertake such inclusion in a meaningful way.
Conclusion
The Social Security Code fails to provide adequate protection to informal workers, who constitute 91% of the workforce. The pandemic and misery brought by it on these informal workers highligths the need for universal social security.
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Note4Students
From UPSC perspective, the following things are important :
Prelims level: Article 342A
Mains level: Paper 2- Interpretation of 102nd Amendment and issues created by it
The article highlights the issues with the Supreme Court judgement in the Maratha reservation case.
Three findings from Maratha reservation judgement
- Recently, the Supreme Court of India declared as unconstitutional a Maharashtra law which provided for reservation to the Maratha community.
- Three primary findings emanated from the judgement-
- 1) Maratha not backward class: The Court held that the Maratha community did not constitute a socially and educationally backward class.
- 2) Breach of 50% limit: The bench said that the law was in breach of a rule previously set by the Court disallowing reservations made in excess of 50% of the total available positions.
- 3) Power of the States: The Court held that State governments had no independent power to declare a group as a backward class.
Issues with the judgement
The latter two findings run against the values of equality and federalism, which the Court has long regarded as integral to India’s democracy.
1) 50% limit does not stem from the Constitution
- Articles 16(4) and 15(4) which confer power on the government to make reservations do not contains 50% limitation.
- Reservation as an exception: Originally, however, these clauses were seen by the Supreme Court as exceptions to a broad rule of formal equality envisioned by the Constitution.
- To that end, the Court held that to allow reservation in excess of 50% would lead to an exception overriding a rule.
- Reservation as basic guarantee: Countering the reservations as an exception position, a seven-judge Bench, in State of Kerala vs N.M. Thomas (1975), held that a programme of reservation was inherent in the Constitution’s basic guarantee of equal treatment.
- This judgment held that affirmative action by the state was compelled by an objective of attaining substantive equality.
- With this judgement the rule requiring that reservations stay under 50% ought to have been deemed incongruous.
- But when the Court sat as a nine-judge Bench in Indra Sawhney vs Union of India (1992) it sustained the 50% limit.
- The majority on the Bench ruled, on the one hand, that N.M. Thomas was correct in seeing reservations as embedded in a constitutional vision of substantive equality.
- On the other hand, the bench accepted that reservation made in excess of 50%, barring exceptional circumstances, was harmful to that very vision.
2) Interpretation of 102nd Amendment curtails the powers of the State governments to declare groups as backward
- After Indra Sawhney judgement, the determination of backward classes was made by the National Commission for the Backward Classes, at the level of the Centre, and by regional commissions at the level of the State governments.
- This division in power, gave States autonomy to classify groups as backward.
- In contrast, the power to prepare lists of Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes, vested solely with the Union government.
- The 102nd Amendment (2018), introduced Article 342A.
- Article 342A stipulated that the President of India may, after consultation with the State government, notify groups of persons within such a State who are deemed to be socially and educationally backward.
- Any such “Central List”, the clause clarified, could only be altered by Parliament.
- Article 366(26C) was also added, and “socially and educationally backward classes” was defined as “such backward classes as are so deemed under Article 342A for the purposes of this Constitution”.
- In interpreting these changes, a majority in the Maratha reservation judgement concluded that the power for determination of other backward classes rests solely with the Centre.
How this interpretation goes against the federalism
- This interpretation of 102nd Amendment altogether dispossess States from exercising a time-honoured authority.
- But yet the amendment, in the Court’s belief, did not violate the Constitution’s basic structure.
- This was because, according to the majority, the alterations neither took away “the very essence of federalism” nor denuded the States of their effective power to legislate.
- But divesting states of power this critical, to classify groups as backward, entitling many communities to protection under Articles 15(4) and 16(4) is offensive to the “essence” of federalism.
- The changes, as interpreted by the Court, directly impede the ability of States to secure just social order.
Consider the question “What are the implications for the States of the interpretation of the 102nd Amendment by the Supreme Court in the Maratha reservation case?”
Conclusion
It is imperative that Parliament amend the Constitution and grants to States an express power to determine backwardness. Any other result will offend the delicate balance at the heart of Indian federalism.
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Note4Students
From UPSC perspective, the following things are important :
Prelims level: Not much
Mains level: Paper 2- India's health worker brain drain
The article highlights the issue of shortage of healthcare workers in India even as it exports its healthcare workers to other countries.
India as an exporter of healthcare workers
- For several decades, India has been a major exporter of healthcare workers to developed nations particularly to the Gulf Cooperation Council countries, Europe and other English-speaking countries.
- As per OECD data, around 69,000 Indian trained doctors worked in the UK, US, Canada and Australia in 2017.
- In these four countries, 56,000 Indian-trained nurses were working in the same year.
- There is also large-scale migration of health workers to the GCC countries but there is a lack of credible data on the stock of such workers in these nations.
- There is no real-time data on high-skilled migration from India as in the case of low-skilled and semi-skilled migration.
Shortage of nurses and doctors
- The migration of healthcare workers is part of the reason for the shortage in nurses and doctors.
- If we look at the figures for countries where we export our healthcare workers, we see just how big the difference is between the sending and the receiving countries.
- As per government reports, India has 1.7 nurses per 1,000 population and a doctor to patient ratio of 1:1,404.
- This is well below the WHO norm of 3 nurses per 1,000 population and a doctor to patient ratio of 1:1,100.
- But, this does not convey the entire problem.
- The distribution of doctors and nurses is heavily skewed against some regions.
- Moreover, there is high concentration in some urban pockets.
Factors driving migration
- There are strong pull factors associated with the migration of healthcare workers, in terms of higher pay and better opportunities in the destination countries.
- However, there are strong push factors that often drive these workers to migrate abroad.
- The low wages in private sector outfits along with reduced opportunities in the public sector plays a big role in them seeking employment opportunities outside the country.
- The lack of government investment in healthcare and delayed appointments to public health institutions act as a catalyst for such migration.
Measures to check brain drain and issues with it
- Over the years, the government has taken measures to check the brain drain of healthcare workers with little or no success.
- In 2014, it stopped issuing No Objection to Return to India (NORI) certificates to doctors migrating to the US.
- The NORI certificate is a US government requirement for doctors who migrate to America on a J1 visa and seek to extend their stay beyond three years.
- The non-issuance of the NORI would ensure that the doctors will have to return to India at the end of the three-year period.
- The government has included nurses in the Emigration Check Required (ECR) category.
- This move was taken to bring about transparency in nursing recruitment and reduce the exploitation of nurses in the destination countries.
- The government’s policies to check brain drain are restrictive in nature and do not give us a real long-term solution to the problem.
Way forward
- We require systematic changes that could range from increased investment in health infrastructure, ensuring decent pay to workers and building an overall environment to motivate them to stay in the country.
- The government should focus on framing policies that promote circular migration and return migration — policies that incentivise healthcare workers to return home after the completion of their training or studies.
- It could also work towards framing bilateral agreements that could help shape a policy of “brain-share” between the sending and receiving countries.
- The 2020 Human Development Report shows that India has five hospital beds per 10,000 people — one of the lowest in the world.
- Increased investment in healthcare, especially in the public sector, is thus the need of the hour.
- This would, in turn, increase employment opportunities for health workers.
Consider the question “What are the factors driving the migration of healthcare workers from India? Suggest the measure to stem their migration.”
Conclusion
India needs systematic changes that could range from increased investment in health infrastructure, ensuring decent pay to health workers and building an overall environment that could prove to be beneficial for them and motivate them to stay in the country.
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Note4Students
From UPSC perspective, the following things are important :
Prelims level: Not much
Mains level: Paper 2- China's wolf warrior foreign policy and its implications for India's neighbours
The article explains the implications of China’s assertive foreign policy for India’s neighbours.
Chinese warning to Bangladesh
- The Chinese ambassador to Bangladesh warned Bangladesh against joining the Quad and added that it will risk “significant damage” to its relationship with Beijing if it warms up to the Quad.
- This came as a surprise as China was warning Bangladesh against joining a club that has no plans to invite new members, let alone Bangladesh.
- China always used tough language when it came to issues of its sovereignty and territorial integrity.
- The aggressive style now covers a much broader range of issues.
- Beijing is conscious that Bangladesh’s impressive economic performance in recent years as well as its location at the top of the Bay of Bengal littoral lends a new strategic salience to Bangladesh.
- China notes India’s growing diplomatic investment in developing a strategic partnership with Bangladesh.
- China is also not blind to the emerging interest in US and Japan to expand cooperation with Dhaka.
- Bangladesh, which supports China’s Belt and Road Initiative, is open to similar infrastructure cooperation with the US, Japan and India.
China’s wolf worrier diplomacy
- The new wolf warrior diplomacy confronts head-on any criticism of China in the public sphere.
- India has been at the receiving end of this policy for a while — especially during the recent crises of Doklam and Ladakh.
- But India’s South Asian neighbours, all of whom enjoy good relations with China, are only now getting a taste of Beijing’s new diplomatic medicine.
- Chinese Ambassador’s public remarks about the Quad were about telling Bangladesh to resist any Indo-Pacific temptation.
- Pre-emption is very much part of Beijing’s strategic culture.
What such assertive diplomacy mean for South Asia
- Delhi has learnt after long that too much diplomatic interference in the Subcontinent has tended to undermine the pursuit of India’s regional objectives.
- China, as the world’s newest superpower, probably bets that its substantive leverages — including economic, diplomatic, and military — will limit the costs while deterring smaller nations from crossing the markers that it lays down.
- South Asian elites have always seethed at India meddling in their internal affairs; they have held up China’s non-interventionist policy as a welcome alternative.
- The controversy in Bangladesh over China’s remark on joining Quad should help update their past images of Beijing
- India is now more circumspect than before about interventions in the region.
- It recognises that avoiding knee-jerk interventions is a sensible policy.
- Our neighbours have always complained about India’s inefficiency in implementing economic projects and contrasted this with China’s speed and purposefulness.
- But they are also discovering the flip side of Chinese economic efficiency — the capacity to set and implement terms of cooperation that are not always in favour of the host nation.
- All the regimes in the region have had access to different sections of the Indian elite and some capacity to shape the discourse on neighbourhood policies.
- They have no political recourse at all in China’s closed political system.
Consider the question “As Beijing becomes ever more assertive in South Asia, the costs of relying on China are likely to become more apparent to South Asia’s smaller nations. Comment.”
Conclusion
Until now, Chinese support against India seemed free of cost. As Beijing becomes ever more assertive in South Asia, the costs of relying on China are likely to become more apparent.
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Note4Students
From UPSC perspective, the following things are important :
Prelims level: Not much
Mains level: Paper 2- Factors driving engagement among West Asian countries
The article highlights the unprecedented engagement among the countries of West Asia even among the rivals and explains its significance.
New diplomatic engagements in West Asia
- Recently, there have been interactions between senior Saudi and Iranian officials, the first since diplomatic ties were broken in January 2016.
- Following the removal of the diplomatic and economic blockade on Qatar that was imposed by Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain and Egypt, Doha has made efforts to mend ties with both Saudi Arabia and Egypt, in tandem with similar initiatives of its doctrinal and political ally, Turkey.
- On May 5, Turkey and Egypt had their first diplomatic meeting in Cairo after they had broken diplomatic ties in 2013.
- The two countries, on opposite sides on almost all regional issues, are now exploring how to address their differences.
Driving force behind these engagements
- The driving force behind these unprecedented engagements is the advent of the Biden administration at the helm of politics in the United States.
- He has taken a tough line on Saudi Arabia, scrutinising its human rights record and opposition to the war in Yemen.
- Besides concerns in West Asian capitals, the broader message is that the U.S. is now likely to be less engaged with the region’s quarrels.
- These signals of new U.S. policies have occurred even as the novel coronavirus pandemic is devastating West Asia.
- Finally, one major factor is the recognition that the ongoing regional conflicts, in Syria, Yemen and Libya, despite the massive death and destruction, have yielded no military outcome and now demand fresh diplomatic approaches.
Long way to go in resolving differences
- Egypt remains uneasy about Turkey’s ties with the Brotherhood and its regional ambitions.
- Saudi Arabia has similar concerns about Turkey’s doctrinal affiliations and its relations with Iran.
- There are difficulties in reshaping Saudi-Iran relations as well.
- Iran may ease the pressure on the kingdom in Yemen and gradually yield ground in Iraq.
- However, Syria will test their diplomatic skills as they explore how to accommodate their competing strategic interests in that devastated country.
Historic period for West Asian diplomacy
- This is truly a historic period for West Asian diplomacy.
- The major states are displaying unprecedented self-confidence in pursuing initiatives without the involvement of western powers that have dominated regional affairs for at least a couple of centuries.
- This has left a pervasive sense of insecurity across West Asia and made the countries dependent on western alliances to ensure their interests.
- This has left a pervasive sense of insecurity across West Asia and made the countries dependent on western alliances to ensure their interests.
Role for India
- Given that regional contentions are inter-connected, third-party facilitators will be needed to promote mutual confidence and prepare the ground for a comprehensive regional security arrangement.
- This will bring together regional and external states with a stake in West Asia security.
- This arrangement will have provisions for participating states to uphold regional peace and promote mutually beneficial cooperation in energy, economic and logistical connectivity areas.
- Given its close ties with all the regional states, India is well-placed to build an association of like-minded states — Japan, Russia, South Korea — to shape and pursue such an initiative for West Asian peace.
Conclusion
These new diplomatic engagements with erstwhile rivals could in time overturn existing regional alignments and possibly end ongoing conflicts.
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Note4Students
From UPSC perspective, the following things are important :
Prelims level: TRIPS
Mains level: Paper 3- TRIPS waiver and India's stand
The article highlights the variance in India’s stand on intellectual property rights waiver for Covid related drugs on the international level and domestic level.
Removing the IPR barrier
- When the pandemic hit the globe, India and South Africa piloted the proposal to waive key provisions of the Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) agreement on COVID-19 vaccines, drugs, therapeutics, and related technologies.
- The core idea is that IPRs such as patents should not become barriers in scaling up production of medical products essential to combat COVID-19.
- The TRIPS waiver proposal, now backed by the U.S. would give immunity to member countries from a legal challenge at the WTO if their domestic IPR laws suspend or do not enforce IP protection on COVID-19 medical products.
- Member countries of the World Trade Organization (WTO) are under an obligation to ensure that their domestic intellectual property rights (IPR) laws conform to the requirements of the TRIPS agreement.
No use of compulsory licencing in India
- The existing flexibilities under the Patents Act of 1970, such as compulsory licences, which are consistent with the TRIPS agreement, can be used to increase the supply of COVID-19 medical products.
- However, despite the nudging by the judiciary and others, the government inexplicably hasn’t made use of compulsory licences in the pandemic.
- While issuing compulsory licences for COVID-19 vaccines in the absence of technology transfer is easier said than done, they can be used to augment the supply of drugs and other therapeutics.
- For instance, there are demands that compulsory licences be issued for drugs such as Remdesivir to augment supply.
- Natco, an Indian pharmaceutical company, has requested a compulsory licence under Section 92 of the Patents Act for Baricitinib, a COVID-19 drug.
- This is ironic because India has historically played a leading role in mainstreaming TRIPS flexibilities like the compulsory licence at the WTO.
- The Central government, in an affidavit filed before the Supreme Court, states that the main constraint in boosting the production of drugs like Remdesivir is the unavailability of raw materials and essential inputs.
- The affidavit further states, “it is presumptuous to assume that the patent holder will not agree to more voluntary licences”.
Issues with the government’s stand
- If that is the real bottleneck, and not IPR-related legal hurdles, why is India pushing for a TRIPS waiver at the WTO?
- The first step in advocating for the removal of IPR-related impediments at the WTO is to make use of the existing lawful means.
- Therefore, the government’s stand before the Supreme Court is not only contradictory with India’s position at the WTO but also severely undermines it.
Way forward
- To make its TRIPS waiver stand convincing, the government needs to make aggressive use of Sections 92 and 100 of the Patents Act to license all patents necessary to make COVID-19 medical products.
- The government should not only transfer Covaxin’s technology to domestic pharmaceutical companies, to boost national supplies, but also offer it to foreign corporations.
- By unlocking its vaccine technical know-how to the world, India would demonstrate its resolve to walk the talk on the TRIPS waiver.
Conclusion
India must take a consistent stand on IPRs on COVID-19 medical products internationally and domestically.
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Note4Students
From UPSC perspective, the following things are important :
Prelims level: Not much
Mains level: Paper 2- Disproportionate burden of pandemic on women
The article highlights the disproportionate impact of the pandemic on women and suggests measures to soften the impact.
Widening gender employment gap
- Even prior to 2020, the gender employment gap was large.
- Only 18% of working-age women were employed as compared to 75% of men.
- Reasons include a lack of good jobs, restrictive social norms, and the burden of household work.
- The nationwide lockdown hit women much harder than men.
- Data from the Centre for Monitoring Indian Economy Pvt. Ltd. show that 61% of male workers were unaffected during the lockdown while only 19% of women experienced this kind of security.
- Men who did lose work were able to regain it, even if it was at the cost of increased precarity or lower earnings, because they had the option of moving into fallback employment arrangements.
- Even as new entrants to the workforce, women workers had poorer options compared to men.
- Women were more likely to enter as daily wage workers while men found avenues for self-employment.
- So, not only did women enter into more precarious work, it was also likely to be at very low earnings compared to men.
Growing domestic work
- With schools closed and almost everyone limited to the confines of their homes, household responsibilities increased for women.
- The India Working Survey 2020 found that among employed men, the number of hours spent on paid work remained more or less unchanged after the pandemic.
- But for women, the number of hours spent in domestic work increased manifold.
- This increase in hours came without any accompanying relief in the hours spent on paid work.
Way forward
- The following measures are needed now:
- The National Employment Policy, currently in the works, should systematically address the constraints around the participation of the women’s workforce.
- Expansion of the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA) and the introduction of an urban employment guarantee targeted to women as soon as the most severe forms of mobility restrictions are lifted.
- There is a need for coordinated efforts by States to facilitate the employment of women while also addressing immediate needs through the setting up of community kitchens, the opening of schools and anganwadi centres, and engagement with self-help groups for the production of personal protective equipment kits.
- Further, a COVID-19 hardship allowance of at least ₹5,000 per month for six months should be announced for 2.5 million accredited social health activists and Anganwadi workers, most of whom are women.
- The pandemic has shown the necessity of adequate public investment in social infrastructure.
- The time is right to imagine a bold universal basic services programme that not only fills existing vacancies in the social sector but also expands public investments in health, education, child and elderly care, and so on, to be prepared for future shocks.
Consider the question “Examine the impact of the pandemic on women. Suggest the measures to mitigate the impact.”
Conclusion
As the country meets the challenge of the second wave of the pandemic, it is crucial to learn lessons from the first wave to chart the policy path ahead.
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Note4Students
From UPSC perspective, the following things are important :
Prelims level: Inflation
Mains level: Paper 3- Role of RBI in taming inflation
The article highlights the need for the RBI to focus on inflation instead of pursuing elusive growth.
Is inflation at a level to be concerned about?
- Due to the devastation caused by the pandemic, MPC kept its stance to ‘look through’ the sustained rise in prices through much of last year.
- The release of the consumer-price inflation number for April 2021 (4.3%) might seem to validate their decision.
- But there are many reasons why the MPC should be concerned.
- To start with, the April print carries little validity since the base for comparison (April 2020) has been rubbished by RBI in the past on the grounds that it relates to the first month of the lockdown.
Inflation comes down but after causing devastation
- Through a combination of the base effect (high level of inflation in the previous comparable period), belated but inevitable monetary policy action and a fall in demand that more than offsets the disruption in supply, inflation will come down.
- However, before inflation comes down, it brings untold misery to the public at large.
- In a country where close to 20% of the population lives below the poverty line and food is a major item of their consumption basket, any rise in inflation, especially food inflation, hurts the poor disproportionately.
- Add to that the distress caused by job losses on account of the pandemic, and this time round, the pain is likely to be magnified many times over.
What is causing inflation?
- Monetary policy acts with long and indeterminate lags.
- Far from spurring credit offtake through low interest rates excess liquidity has spilled over into price pressures in India.
- Wholesale price inflation at 7.4% (March 2021) was the highest in 8 years, while it would be naïve to take any solace from the latest consumer price index number.
- The RBI needs to be appreciated for doing its bit to keep the wheels of our economy moving during the pandemic.
- However, its failure to shift gear in the face of mounting evidence of inflation cannot be neglected.
- When inflation was breaching the upper end of RBI’s target band for months on end, the message should have been clear.
US recovery and its impact on Indian economy
- Globally, commodity prices are already on the rise.
- Not without reason, it would seem, as borne out by 12 May’s inflation print of 4.2%, America’s highest in 12 years
- Part of the reason is the excessive easing of US monetary and fiscal policies.
- Rising US inflation has huge implications for countries like India that are at the receiving end of US policies.
- As the US economy recovers, the dollar strengthens and US interest rates rise, the rupee is bound to weaken in response, adding to inflationary pressures here.
Consider the question “What are the factors stoking inflation in the pandemic? How far the monetary policies pursued by the central bank is responsible for it?”
Conclusion
When the MPC meets next in early June, it must re-order its priorities. Instead of chasing elusive growth, it must revert to its swadharma, own dharma, and focus instead on inflation.
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Note4Students
From UPSC perspective, the following things are important :
Prelims level: Tribunals
Mains level: Paper 2- Need for the National Tribunals Commissions
Context
- The Centre has abolished several appellate tribunals and authorities and transferred their jurisdiction to other existing judicial bodies through the Tribunals Reforms (Rationalisation and Conditions of Service) Ordinance 2021.
Issues with the abolitions of tribunals
- The Ordinance has met with sharp criticism for not bypassing the usual legislative process.
- Several tribunals such as the Film Certification Appellate Tribunal were abolished without any stakeholder consultation.
- Despite the Supreme Court’s direction in Rojer Mathew v. South Indian Bank (2019), no judicial impact assessment was conducted prior to abolishing the tribunals through this Ordinance.
- While the Ordinance has incorporated the suggestions made in Madras Bar Association v. Union of India (2020) on the composition of a search-cum-selection committee.
- But it has disregarded the court’s direction in Madras Bar Association v. Union of India (2020) for fixing a five-year term.
No NCT constituted
- Further, the Centre is yet to constitute a National Tribunals Commission (NTC), an independent umbrella body to supervise the functioning of tribunals, appointment of and disciplinary proceedings against members, and to take care of administrative and infrastructural needs of the tribunals.
- The idea of an NTC was first mooted in L. Chandra Kumar v. Union of India (1997).
- Developing an independent oversight body for accountable governance requires a legal framework that protects its independence and impartiality.
- Therefore, the NTC must be established vide a constitutional amendment or be backed by a statute that guarantees it functional, operational and financial independence.
- As the Finance Ministry has been vested with the responsibility for tribunals until the NTC is constituted, it should come up with a transition plan.
Advantages of NTC
- The NTC would ideally take on some duties relating to administration and oversight.
- It could set performance standards for the efficiency of tribunals and their own administrative processes.
- It could function as an independent recruitment body to develop and operationalise the procedure for disciplinary proceedings and appointment of tribunal members.
- Giving the NTC the authority to set members’ salaries, allowances, and other service conditions, subject to regulations, would help maintain tribunals’ independence.
Consider the question “What are the issues with Tribunals Reforms (Rationalisation and Conditions of Service) Ordinance 2021? How the constitution of the National Tribunals Commission would help to improve the role played by tribunals?”
Conclusion
The way to reform the tribunal system is to look at solutions from a systemic perspective supported by evidence. Establishing the NTC will definitely entail a radical restructuring of the present tribunals system.
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Note4Students
From UPSC perspective, the following things are important :
Prelims level: Juvenile Justice (Care and Protection of Children) Act, 2015.
Mains level: Paper 2- Dealing with orphaned children
The article highlights the need to be aware of the legal provisions while helping a orphan child.
Helping orphaned children
- Social media is flooded with requests to adopt children who have lost their parents in the pandemic.
- However, before handing over an orphan child to any agency, family or person, it is important to be aware of the laws.
- If an orphan child is kept by someone without lawful authority, he or she may land themselves in trouble.
- According to the Hindu Minority and Guardianship Act, 1956, the father, and in his absence the mother, is the natural guardian.
- Not even a close relative can look after the child without authorisation.
What are the options to help
- First option is any individual who finds an orphan child or even any child who needs care and protection under the circumstances, should immediately call the toll free Childline number 1098.
- It is an emergency phone outreach service managed by the Women and Child Development department’s nodal agency, the Childline India Foundation.
- The second option is to intimate the district protection officer concerned whose contact details can be found on the National Tracking System for Missing and Vulnerable Children portal.
- The third alternative is to approach the nearest police station or its child welfare police officer who is specially trained to exclusively deal with children.
- jOne can always dial the Emergency Response Support System (ERSS) which is a pan-India single number (112) based emergency response system for citizens in emergencies and seek the necessary help.
- The non-reporting of such children is also a punishable offence under the Juvenile Justice (Care and Protection of Children) Act, 2015 (JJA).
Procedure after a child reaches outreach agency
- Once an orphan child is recovered by the outreach agency, it is the duty of the said agency to produce the child within 24 hours before the Child Welfare Committee (CWC) of the district.
- The CWC, after an inquiry, decides whether to send the child to a children’s home or a fit facility or fit person.
- If the child is below six years, he or she shall be placed in a specialised adoption agency.
- The State thus takes care of all such children who are in need of care and protection, till they turn 18 years.
- In Sampurna Behrua vs Union of India (2018), the Supreme Court of India directed States and Union Territories to ensure that all child care institutions are registered.
Procedure for adoption
- Once a child is declared legally free for adoption by the CWC, adoption can be done either by Indian prospective adoptive parents or non-resident Indians or foreigners, in that order.
- Another important feature of the JJA is that it is secular in nature and simple in procedure.
- While the Hindu Adoptions and Maintenance Act, 1956 is religion specific but also relatively cumbersome in procedure.
- Second, the procedure of adoption is totally transparent and its progress can be monitored from the portal of the statutory body, the Central Adoption Resource Authority.
Directives to the police
- The Supreme Court in Bachpan Bachao Andolan vs Union of India directed all Directors General of Police, in May 2013, to register a first information report as a case of trafficking or abduction in every case of a missing child.
- At least one police officer not below the rank of assistant sub-inspector in each police station is mandatorily required to undergo training to deal with children in conflict with the law and in need of care and protection.
- They are not required to wear a uniform and need to be child-friendly.
- Similarly, each district is supposed to have its special juvenile police unit, headed by an officer not below the rank of a Deputy Superintendent of Police.
- The Supreme Court in Re: Exploitation of children in Orphanages in the State of Tamil Nadu (2017) inter alia, specifically asked the National Police Academy, Hyderabad and police training academies in every State to prepare training courses on the JJA and provide regular training to police officers in terms of sensitisation.
- The National Commission for Protection of Child Rights (NCPCR) recently wrote to the Chief Secretaries of all States and Union Territories on the issue of children orphaned due to COVID-19.
Conclusion
Following the Covid surge and subsequent increase in request for adoption of children, the laws and procedure for the protection of children must be noted.
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Note4Students
From UPSC perspective, the following things are important :
Prelims level: Not much
Mains level: Paper 2- Reforming medical education in India
The article highlights the issue of shortage of doctors in India and issues with the involvement of private sector in it.
Government approach
- Market-oriented approach towards medical education: NITI Aayog’s proposal of allowing private entities to take over district hospitals for converting them into teaching hospitals with at least 150 MBBS seats.
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Note4Students
From UPSC perspective, the following things are important :
Prelims level: Al-Aqsa Mosque
Mains level: Paper 2- Israel-Palestine conflict
The article discusses the types of response the recent violence in the Israel-Palestine conflict would invoke across the world and also explains the perils of ignoring the conflict.
Three types of responses
- The deadly riots in Israel and the war in Gaza, is likely to evoke three kinds of responses: The indifferent, the imperial, the humanitarian.
1) Moral indifference
- Instead of becoming the symbol of the unfinished tasks of decolonisation, and a human rights catastrophe, the Palestinian question is now mostly an occasion to vent cynicism.
- The moral questions the oppression of Palestinians poses is avoided by claiming that in this conflict we can assigning rights and wrongs equally to both sides.
- There is the spectacle of civilians on both sides living in terror.
- There is the fanaticism of the right-wing in Israel and there is the fanaticism of Hamas and Fatah.
- Blaming both sides also whitewashes the fact that there is a monumental injustice to the Palestinians at the heart of the problem.
2) The imperial response
- The events leading up to the recent clashes at the Al-Aqsa Mosque can be seen as part of a long pattern of pushing out Palestinians from territory Israel wants to claim.
- American administration has not been able to significantly roll back this project of pushing the Palestinians out.
- Palestine will once again be the site where the Biden administration’s liberal internationalism will face challenge.
3) Humanitarian response
- This third response is to dig beneath the politics and find bridges in shared humanity and suffering.
- This is also the tack of the peace movements that use culture and a history of shared suffering to build bridges.
- They emphasise that dispossession and exile is something both communities share; they, of all the people, should be able to understand each other.
- Humanity and culture, even when deeply internalised, collapse quickly when subject to fear.
- And they always fall short of acknowledging the core issue at stake: Political equality between two peoples.
Geopolitical implications of conflict
- The violence of Israel will beget more terrorist violence of Hamas and Fatah, with every world power from Russia to Iran influencing the chaos.
- Israel needs to be reminded of the blowback of imperial politics: The ultimate consequence of trying to dominate a people is that you end up destroying the moral legitimacy of your own claims.
- No amount of military capacity can compensate for the images of lynching, rioting, and provocations that we have seen this week.
Conclusion
We continually risk conflict if the Palestinian question is simply treated as an object of geo-political opportunism, not as a question of basic dignity and justice.
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Note4Students
From UPSC perspective, the following things are important :
Prelims level: Drugs and Cosmetics Act
Mains level: Paper 2- Blackmarketing during pandemic
The article highlights the issue of black-marketing of drugs during the pandemic and the factors responsible for it.
Problem of fake and sub-standard drugs
- There have been reports of fake remdesivir amid the Covid pandemic.
- It is difficult to quantify the morbidity and mortality effects of fake or sub-standard drugs, but they are substantial.
- Legally, the Drugs and Cosmetics Act (DCA) has different categories of misbranded, adulterated and spurious drugs.
- In 2003 Mashelkar Committee noted that although the Drugs and Cosmetics Act has been in force for the past 56 years, but the level of enforcement in many States has been far from satisfactory.
- The committee also noted that the problems in the regulatory system in the country were primarily due to inadequate or weak drug control infrastructure at the State and Central level.
Steps taken to deal with the issue
- Assistance has also been provided under the World Bank assisted Capacity Building Project to upgrade testing facilities and to establish new drug testing laboratories.
- The Drugs & Cosmetics Act, 1940 has recently been amended in 2008 for providing more stringent penalties to those involved in the trade of spurious drugs.
- There are specially designated courts and regulatory infrastructure has been strengthened.
- There is also a whistle-blower scheme.
Distinction between hoarding and black-marketing
- A hoarder is anyone who stocks up items.
- The crime isn’t hoarding per se but of selling a drug without a licence.
- Data on prosecutions, and convictions when prosecuted, of crimes under Drugs and Cosmetics Act, are not encouraging.
- Incidentally, courts have ruled police officers can’t register FIRs, arrest and prosecute (for cognisable crimes) under this law.
- That’s the job of drugs inspectors.
- The notion of a black market is different, though the two can be related.
- In this context, it means charging a premium when there is a shortage.
- A black market occurs when the price at which a product is sold is higher than an administratively determined price.
Conclusion
Action not taken in the best of times now strikes back at us in the worst of times.
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Note4Students
From UPSC perspective, the following things are important :
Prelims level: Not much
Mains level: Paper 2- Need for ethics policy in EdTech
The article highlights the privacy concerns associated with EdTech apps in the absence of a regulatory framework.
Privacy risks associated with EdTechs
- Since the onset of the pandemic, online education has replaced conventional classroom instruction.
- This has given rise to several EdTech apps which have become popular.
- To perform the process of learning customisation, the apps collect large quantities of data from the learners through the gadgets that the students use.
- These data are analysed in minute detail to customise learning and design future versions of the app.
- The latest mobile phones and hand-held devices have a range of sensors like GPS, gyroscope, accelerometer, magnetometer and biometric sensors apart from the camera and microphones.
- These provide data about the learner’s surroundings along with intimate data like the emotions and attitudes experienced and expressed via facial expressions and body temperature changes.
- In short, the app and device have access to the private spaces of the learner that one would not normally have access to.
Informed consent in research
- Researchers dealing with human subjects need to comply with ethics rules along with global standards.
- One of the cardinal rules that should never be broken is informed consent.
- Before any research on human subjects is undertaken, researchers have to submit detailed proposals to their respective ethics committees and obtain their permissions.
- Further, a researcher working with children, for example, would also have to convince schoolteachers, parents, and school managements about the nature of the research to be undertaken, type of data to be collected, method of storage, the potential harmful effects of such data, etc.
Minimal safeguards in EdTech
- The safeguards that traditional researchers are subject to are either missing or minimal in research that the EdTech industry promotes.
- The concept of informed consent is not meaningful since there are no proper primers to explain to stakeholders the intricacies in layperson terms.
- Since India does not have protection equivalent to the GDPR, private data collected by an EdTech company can be misused or sold to other companies with no oversight or protection.
Way forward
- Given these realities, it is necessary to formulate an ethics policy for EdTech companies.
- Such a policy draft should be circulated both online and offline for discussions and criticism.
- Issues of fairness, safety, confidentiality and anonymity of the user would have to be dealt with.
- EdTech companies would have to be encouraged to comply in the interest of a healthier learning ecosystem.
Consider the question “What are the challenges associated with the adoption of online education mode? Suggest the ways to deal with these challenges.”
Conclusion
The lack of a regulatory framework in India along the lines of the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) in Europe could impinge on the privacy of students. What we need is ethics policy in online education space.
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Note4Students
From UPSC perspective, the following things are important :
Prelims level: Not much
Mains level: Paper 2- Managing the strategic competition with China
The article highlights the need for a critical assessment of the stand-off with China last year and offers key lessons in managing the strategic competition with China.
Year after stand-off
- After over a year, the stand-off between Indian and Chinese troops in eastern Ladakh shows no signs of resolution.
- More broadly, the India-China bilateral relationship has ruptured.
- Reversing a long-held policy, India will no longer overlook the problematic border dispute for the sake of a potentially lucrative wider relationship.
- Even if disengagement continues, the relationship will remain vulnerable to destabilising disruptions.
- Therefore, the Ladakh crisis offers India three key lessons in managing the intensifying strategic competition with China.
Three key lessons
1) Military strategy based on denial are more useful
- Military strategies based on denial are more useful than strategies based on punishment.
- The Indian military’s standing doctrine calls for deterring adversaries with the threat of massive punitive retaliation for any aggression, capturing enemy territory as bargaining leverage in post-war talks.
- But this did not deter China from launching unprecedented incursions in May 2020.
- In contrast, the Indian military’s high-water mark in the crisis was an act of denial — its occupation of the heights on the Kailash Range on its side of the LAC in late August.
- This action served to deny that key terrain to the Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA), and gave the Indian Army a stronger defensive position.
- A doctrinal focus on denial will give the Indian military greater capacity to thwart future land grabs across the LAC.
- Over time, improved denial capabilities may allow India to reduce the resource drain of the increased militarisation of the LAC.
2) Political cost matters more
- China is more likely to be deterred or coerced with the threat of political costs, rather than material costs.
- The material burden of the crisis would not disrupt its existing priorities.
- In contrast, India successfully raised the risks of the crisis for China through its threat of a political rupture, not military punishment.
- A permanently hostile India or an accidental escalation to conflict were risks that China, having achieved its tactical goals in the crisis, assessed were an unnecessary additional burden.
- The corollary lesson is that individual powers, even large powers such as India, will probably struggle to shift Beijing’s calculus alone.
- Against the rising behemoth, only coordinated or collective action is likely to be effective.
3) India should accept more risk on LAC
- India should consider accepting more risk on the LAC in exchange for long-term leverage and influence in the Indian Ocean Region.
- From the perspective of long-term strategic competition, the future of the Indian Ocean Region is more consequential and more uncertain than the Himalayan frontier.
- At the land border, the difficult terrain and more even balance of military force means that each side could only eke out minor, strategically modest gains at best.
- In contrast, India has traditionally been the dominant power in the Indian Ocean Region and stands to cede significant political influence and security if it fails to answer the rapid expansion of Chinese military power.
Conclusion
As these three lessons show, the future of the strategic competition is not yet written. If India’s leaders honestly and critically evaluate the crisis, it may yet help to actually brace India’s long-term position against China.
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Note4Students
From UPSC perspective, the following things are important :
Prelims level: Juvenile Justice law
Mains level: Paper 2- Child adoption procedure
The Covid pandemic has orphaned many children. As a consequence there has been an increase in pleas on social media for adoption. However, such pleas go against the legal provisions. The article deals with the issue.
Legal provisions for protection of children
- Today, some people are offering infants for instant adoption by stating how the children have lost their parents to pandemic.
- However, such adoptions are illegal.
- The Juvenile Justice (Care and Protection of Children) law was enacted in 2015.
- The Juvenile Justice Act is a secular law, all persons are free to adopt children under this law.
- The Juvenile Justice Rules of 2016 and the Adoption Regulations of 2017 followed to create the Central Adoption Resource Authority (CARA).
- CARA is a statutory body for the regulation, monitoring and control of all intra-country and inter-country adoptions.
- CARA also grants a ‘no objection’ certificate for all inter-country adoptions, pursuant to India becoming a signatory to the Hague Convention on Protection of Children and Co-operation in Respect of Intercountry Adoptions.
- India is also a signatory to the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child.
- Thus, protections afforded to children became a legal mandate of all authorities and courts.
- Persons professing the Hindu religion are also free to adopt under the Hindu Adoptions and Maintenance Act of 1956.
- Rehabilitation of all orphaned, abandoned and surrendered children is regulated by the strict mandatory procedures of the Adoption Regulations.
Procedure for adoption
- The eligibility of prospective adoptive parents living in India, duly registered on the Child Adoption Resource Information and Guidance System (CARINGS), irrespective of marital status and religion, is adjudged by specialised adoption agencies preparing home study reports.
- The specialised adoption agency then secures court orders approving the adoption.
- All non-resident persons approach authorised adoption agencies in their foreign country of residence for registration under CARINGS.
- Their eligibility is adjudged by authorised foreign adoption agencies through home study reports.
- CARA then issues a pre-adoption ‘no objection’ certificate for foster care, followed by a court adoption order.
- A final ‘no objection’ certificate from CARA or a conformity certificate under the adoption convention is mandatory for a passport and visa to leave India.
Way forward
- CARA must conduct an outreach programme on social media, newspapers and TV, warning everyone not to entertain any illegal adoption offers under any circumstances whatsoever.
- The National and State Commissions for Protection of Child Rights must step up their roles as vigilantes.
- Social activists, NGOs and enlightened individuals must report all the incidents that come to their notice.
- Respective State Legal Services Authorities have the infrastructure and machinery to stamp out such unlawful practices brought to their attention.
- The media must publicise and shame all those involved in this disreputable occupation.
- At the same time, the police authorities need to be extra vigilant in apprehending criminals.
Conclusion
Tough times call for tough measures. This business of criminal trading of children must be checked with an iron hand.
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Note4Students
From UPSC perspective, the following things are important :
Prelims level: Not much
Mains level: Paper 2- Growing inequality in access to health and education
Impact of pandemic
- The novel coronavirus pandemic has accelerated the use of digital technologies in India, even for essential services such as health and education, where access to them might be poor.
- Economic inequality has increased: people whose jobs and salaries are protected, face no economic fallout.
- Well-recognised channels of economic and social mobility — education and health — are getting rejigged in ways that make access more inequitable in an already unequal society.
Growing inequality in access to education
- According to National Sample Survey data from 2017, only 6% rural households and 25% urban households have a computer.
- Access to Internet facilities is not universal either: 17% in rural areas and 42% in urban areas.
- Surveys by the National Council of Educational Research and Training (NCERT), the Azim Premji Foundation, ASER and Oxfam suggest that between 27% and 60% could not access online classes for a range of reasons: lack of devices, shared devices, inability to buy “data packs”, etc.
- Further, lack of stable connectivity jeopardises their evaluations.
- Besides this, many lack a learning environment at home.
- Peer learning has also suffered.
Inequality in access to health care
- India’s public spending on health is barely 1% of GDP.
- Partly as a result, the share of ‘out of pocket’ (OOP) health expenditure (of total health spending) in India was over 60% in 2018.
- Even in a highly privatised health system such as the United States, OOP was merely 10%.
- Moreover, the private health sector in India is poorly regulated in practice.
- Both put the poor at a disadvantage in accessing good health care.
- Right now, the focus is on the shortage of essentials: drugs, hospital beds, oxygen, vaccines.
- In several instances, developing an app is being seen as a solution for allocation of various health services.
- Digital “solutions” create additional bureaucracy for all sick persons in search of these services without disciplining the culprits.
- Platform- and app-based solutions can exclude the poor entirely, or squeeze their access to scarce health services further.
- In other spheres (e.g., vaccination) too, digital technologies are creating extra hurdles.
- The use of CoWIN to book a slot makes it that much harder for those without phones, computers and the Internet.
Issues with the creation of centralised database
- The digital health ID project is being pushed during the pandemic when its merits cannot be adequately debated.
- Electronic and interoperable health records are the purported benefits.
- For patients, interoperability i.e., you do not have to lug your x-rays, past medication and investigations can be achieved by decentralising digital storage say, on smart cards as France and Taiwan have done.
- Given that we lack a data privacy law in India, it is very likely that our health records will end up with private entities without our consent, even weaponised against us.
- For example, a private insurance companies may use health record to deny poor people an insurance policy or charge a higher premium.
- There are worries that the government is using the vaccination drive to populate the digital health ID database.
Way forward
- Unless health expenditure on basic health services (ward staff, nurses, doctors, laboratory technicians, medicines, beds, oxygen, ventilators) is increased, apps such as Aarogya Setu, Aadhaar and digital health IDs can improve little.
- Unless laws against medical malpractices are enforced strictly, digital solutions will obfuscate and distract us from the real problem.
- We need political, not technocratic, solutions.
Conclusion
Today, there is greater understanding that the harms from Aadhaar and its cousins fall disproportionately on the vulnerable. Hopefully, the pandemic will teach us to be more discerning about which digital technologies we embrace.
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Note4Students
From UPSC perspective, the following things are important :
Prelims level: Not much
Mains level: Paper 2- US withdrawal from Afghanistan and its implications for the region
The article highlights the important role played by the US in the geopolitics of the region and the impact of the US retreat on the region foreign policy landscape.
How the US shaped the regional politics of South Asia
- Since it replaced Britain as the major external power in Greater Middle East half a century ago, America has been the pivot around which the regional politics has played out.
- Many regional actors sought alliances with America to secure themselves against ambitious or troublesome neighbours.
- Others sought to balance against America.
- Israel’s security, ensuring oil supplies, competing with other powers, making regional peace, promoting democracy, and stamping out terrorism are no longer compelling factors demanding massive American military, political and diplomatic investments in the region.
Region now has to learn to live with neighbours
- As America steps back from the Middle East, most regional actors either need alternate patrons or reduced tensions with their neighbours.
- Although China and Russia have regional ambitions, neither of them bring the kind of strategic heft America brought to bear on the Middle East all these decades.
- Turkey has figured that its troubled economy can’t sustain the ambitious regional policies.
- After years of challenging Saudi leadership of the Islamic world, Erdogan is offering an olive branch to Riyadh.
- After years of intense mutual hostility, Saudi Arabia and Iran are now exploring means to reduce bilateral tensions and moderate their proxy wars in the region.
- Saudi Arabia is also trying to heal the rift within the Gulf by ending the earlier effort to isolate Qatar.
- These changes come in the wake of the big moves last year by some Arab states — the UAE, Bahrain, Morocco and Sudan — to normalise ties with Israel.
How India’s approach helped maintain ties in the region
- India’s emphasis on good relations with all the regional actors without a reference to their conflicts has been vindicated by the turn of events.
- Barring Turkey, which turned hostile to India under Erdogan, India has managed to expand its ties with most regional actors.
- Hopefully, the new regional churn will encourage Turkey to take a fresh look at its relations with India.
Effect on India-Pak relations
- The regional reset in the Middle East has coincided with efforts by Delhi and Rawalpindi to cool their tensions.
- The ceasefire on the Line of Control in Kashmir announced at the end of February appears to be holding.
- The US withdrawal from Afghanistan poses major challenges to the Subcontinent.
- India and Pakistan, for very different reasons, would have liked to see the US forces stay forever in Afghanistan.
- For India, American military presence would have kept a check on extremist forces and created conducive conditions for an Indian role in Afghanistan.
- For Pakistan, American military presence in Afghanistan keeps the US utterly dependent on Pakistan for geographic access and operational support.
Challenge of terrorism
- The prospect of trans-border links between the Taliban and other extremist forces in the region is a challenge that South Asian states will have to confront sooner than later.
- Soaring levels of violence in Afghanistan and attack on the former president of Maldives, underlines South Asia’s enduring challenges with terrorism.
- Unless the South Asian states collaborate on countering extremism and terrorism, every one of them will be weakened.
Consider the question “How US troop withdrawal from Afghanistan will influence the regional geopolitics of the region?”
Conclusion
The region needs to focus on the peace and harmony in the region while resolving the bilateral issues through dialogue.
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Note4Students
From UPSC perspective, the following things are important :
Prelims level: Not much
Mains level: Paper 3- Challenges after TRIPS waiver
The article highlights the challenges countries could face despite the patent waiver for Covid-19 vaccine.
TRIPS waiver for Covid-19 vaccine
- The United States has finally relented and declared its support for a temporary waiver of the Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) agreement for COVID-19 vaccines at the World Trade Organisation (WTO).
- Hopefully, the U.S.’s decision would cause other holdouts like Canada and the European Union to give up their opposition.
- While the U.S.’s decision is to be welcomed, the devil would be in the details.
The challenges after waiver
1) Conditions of the waiver
- If the experience of negotiating such waivers, especially on TRIPS, were anything to go by, it would be too early to celebrate.
- In the aftermath of the HIV/AIDS crisis the WTO adopted a decision in 2003 waiving certain TRIPS obligations to increase the accessibility of medicines.
- However, this waiver (later incorporated as Article 31 bis in the TRIPS agreement) was subject to several stringent requirements such as the drugs so manufactured are to be exported to that nation only; the medicines should be easily identifiable through different colour.
- Given these cumbersome requirements, hardly any country, in the last 17 years, made effective use of this waiver.
2) Countries will protect the interest of pharma companies
- India and South Africa proposed a waiver not just on vaccines but also on medicines and other therapeutics and technologies related to the treatment of COVID-19.
- So, the U.S. has already narrowed down the scope of the waiver considerably by restricting it to vaccines.
- Medicines useful in treating COVID-19 and other therapeutics must be also included in the waiver.
- While the U.S. would not like to be seen as blocking the TRIPS waiver and attracting the ire of the global community, make no mistake that it would resolutely defend the interests of its pharmaceutical corporations.
3) Lack of access to technology
- The TRIPS waiver would lift the legal restrictions on manufacturing COVID-19 vaccines.
- But it would not solve the problem of the lack of access to technological ‘know-how’ related to manufacturing COVID-19 vaccines.
- Waiving IP protection does not impose a legal requirement on pharmaceutical companies to transfer or share technology.
- While individual countries may adopt coercive legal measures for a forced transfer of technology, it would be too draconian and counterproductive.
- Therefore, governments would have to be proactive in negotiating and cajoling pharmaceutical companies to transfer technology using various legal and policy tools including financial incentives.
4) Domestic IP regulation
- While a TRIPS waiver would enable countries to escape WTO obligations, it will not change the nature of domestic IP regulations.
- Therefore, countries should start working towards making suitable changes in their domestic legal framework to operationalise and enforce the TRIPS waiver.
- In this regard, the Indian government should immediately put in place a team of best IP lawyers who could study the various TRIPS waiver scenarios and accordingly recommend the changes to be made in the Indian legal framework.
Conclusion
Notwithstanding the usefulness of the TRIPS waiver, it is not a magic pill. It would work well only if countries simultaneously address the non-IP bottlenecks.
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