Note4Students
From UPSC perspective, the following things are important :
Prelims level: Not much
Mains level: Paper 2- Reforms in institutions and role of civil society
Context
In the wake of the second wave of Covid, our failure as a country to hold our government accountable is evident. Civil society perhaps also needs to re-examine its role.
What constitutes civil society
- India’s civil society has many actors:
- Grassroots organisations that connect to the last mile and provide essential services.
- Think tanks and academic institutions that churn out new policy ideas and generate evidence.
- Advocacy organisations that amplify and build support for causes.
- Large impact funds and philanthropists who decide how these organisations get funded.
Challenges faced by civil society
- Government have significantly curtailed the kind of activities that civil society actors can engage in.
- Philanthropists and donor organisations often find themselves unable to support initiatives that strengthen India’s democracy and its accountability mechanisms, for fear of retribution.
- By ignoring the politics around policy and focussing disproportionately on technocratic solutions, civil society has also missed the wood for the trees.
How civil society can play role in reforms of democratic institutions
- In the absence of a strong push from civil society, our democratic institutions have no intrinsic incentive to reform.
- There is a need to re-examine parliamentary rules that are heavily tilted in favour of the sitting government, strengthen the judiciary, bolster federalism and the independent media, while creating transparency in decision making within the executive.
- Civil society has an important and irreplaceable role to play here.
- Civil society organisations too need to broaden their agenda to include issues that strengthen India’s institutions while collaborating to present a strong unified voice that demands more transparency and accountability in all areas and levels of policymaking.
- This involves taking more fights to the courts on transgressions by the government, building public opinion about expectations from a well-functioning democracy and creating tools and fora that help citizens engage with policymaking more readily.
Conclusion
To not see the strengthening of institutions and the deepening of checks and balances as important areas of work is our collective failure, one we must address immediately.
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: Crime and Criminal Tracking Network and Systems and the National Intelligence Grid
Mains level: Paper 2- Need for a coordinated database of fugitives
Context
India lacks a domestic tracking system for fugitives. That makes it easier for them to evade the criminal justice system.
Challenges at investigation and prosecution level
- Central agencies have developed reasonable expertise in investigation and prosecution because they are focussed only on investigation and prosecution work.
- On the other hand, State police forces (except specialised wings) are engaged in law-and-order work as well as investigations.
- The bulk of the investigation and prosecution work happens at police stations in the States.
- There is a tendency to close investigations once the accused have absconded.
- Some police stations do initiate proceedings for attachment of property and declaration of the accused as proclaimed offenders, but the number of cases where coordinated efforts are made to pursue fugitives – domestically or internationally – are hardly documented.
No system for tracking criminals domestically
- Through Interpol Notices and the sharing of immigration databases of different countries, there exists a system of tracking criminals worldwide.
- However, there is no coordinated system or database for tracking criminals or wanted persons domestically in India.
- In the absence of such a system, it is relatively easy for criminals from one police station/jurisdiction to melt into the population in any other area, almost undetected.
Way forward
- The creation of a nationwide database of wanted persons, which could be accessible for police agencies, the public and others is needed.
- A nation-wide system of ‘Wanted Persons Notices’, similar to Interpol Notices, is required, to help track fugitives domestically.
- The Crime and Criminal Tracking Network and Systems and the National Intelligence Grid are efforts in the right direction/
- Countries like the U.S. have functional inter-State extradition and fugitive tracking systems.
- India needs to set up such dedicated ‘fugitive tracking units’.
- There needs to be enhanced integration between immigration agencies, State police agencies, Interpol-New Delhi, the External Affairs Ministry and Home Ministry and central investigation agencies.
- Sharing India’s ‘wanted’ database or providing access to it to foreign embassies on a reciprocal basis or through treaties or arrangements would also be helpful.
- Signing of more bilateral and multilateral conventions on criminal matters would help plug legal infirmities.
- Signing bilateral agreements on cooperation in policing matters would also help.
- All relevant legal processes and requirements should be incorporated into one consolidated law on international cooperation.
- The entire gamut of activities pertaining to fugitives, from investigation to extradition, needs to be incorporated into a specialised set-up.
Conclusion
In the absence of a coordinated database, criminals can go undetected. What we need is a watertight system that would deter criminals from hoodwinking the law.
Back2Basics: Crime and Criminal Tracking Network and Systems (CCTNS)
- CCTNS aims at creating a comprehensive and integrated system for enhancing the efficiency and effective policing at all levels and especially at the Police Station level.
- It aism at adoption of principles of e-Governance, and creation of a nationwide networked infrastructure for evolution of IT-enabled state of- the-art tracking system around “investigation of crime and detection of criminals” in real time.
- It is is a critical requirement in the context of the present day internal security scenario.
- The scope of CCTNS spans all 35 States and Union Territories and covers all Police Stations (15,000+ in number) and all Higher Police Offices (6,000+ in number) in the country.
- The CCTNS project includes vertical connectivity of police units (linking police units at various levels within the States – police stations, district police offices, state headquarters, SCRB and other police formations – and States, through state headquarters and SCRB, to NCRB at GOI level) as well as horizontal connectivity, linking police functions at State and Central level to external entities.
National Intelligence Grid (NATGRID)
- First conceptualised in 2009, NATGRID seeks to become the one-stop destination for security and intelligence agencies to access database related to immigration entry and exit, banking and telephone details of a suspect on a “secured platform”.
- All State police are mandated to file First Information Reports (FIR) in the CCTNS.
- It is only a repository and the data pertaining to FIRs of a particular police station are a State subject.
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 124 and Article 214
Mains level: Paper 2- Collegium system
Context
Judiciary is being challenged, from within and outside. It must shield itself from further erosion of its independence and competence by scrupulously following the law, as declared by the Supreme Court (SC) itself.
How the Collegium helped to secure the independence of judiciary
- In 1993, the SC held the following:
- The process of appointment of Judges to the Supreme Court and the High Courts is an integrated ‘participatory consultative process’.
- The process aims at selecting the best and most suitable persons available for appointment.
- The Collegium consists of the CJI and the four senior-most judges of the SC and high courts.
- It was devised to ensure that the opinion of the Chief Justice of India is not merely his individual opinion, but an opinion formed collectively by a body of men at the apex level in the judiciary.
- By judicial interpretation, the Supreme Court re-interpreting Article 124 and 214 of the Constitution empowered the judiciary to make appointments to the higher judiciary to secure the rule of law.
Threat to the judicial independence
- The framers of the Constitution were alive to the likely erosion of judicial independence.
- On May 23, 1949, K T Shah stated that the Judiciary, which is the main bulwark of civil liberties, should be completely separate from and independent of the Executive, whether by direct or by indirect influence.
- In 2016, the Supreme Court struck down a constitutional amendment for creating the National Judicial Appointments Commission (NJAC).
- The SC strongly disapproved of any role for the political executive in the final selection and appointment of judges.
- The SC said that “reciprocity and feelings of payback to the political executive” would be disastrous to the independence of the judiciary.
Consider the question “How the Collegium system helped the Judiciary secure its independence? What are the issues with it?”
Conclusion
The selection of deserving judges is essential to ensure the independence of the judiciary. The Collegium must do its best in this task.
Back2Basics: About the National Judicial Appointments Commission
- The NJAC or National Judicial Appointments Commission sought to change the system, where judges would have been appointed by a commission where the legislative and the executive would have had a role.
- The NJAC was supposed to comprise of the Chief Justice of India (Chairperson, ex-officio), two other senior judges of the Supreme Court, The Union Minister of Law and Justice, ex-officio and two eminent persons, to be appointed by the Chief Justice of India, Prime Minister of India, and Leader of Opposition in the Lok Sabha.
- The bill was passed by the Lok Sabha on 13 August 2014 and by the Rajya Sabha on 14 August 2014, and became an Act.
- The NJAC replaced the collegium system for the appointment of judges.
- The NJAC Bill and the Constitutional Amendment Bill, was ratified by 16 of the state legislatures in India, and the President gave his assent on 31 December 2014.
- The NJAC Act became effective from April 13, 2015.
- The NJAC enjoyed support from the Supreme Court Bar Association and many legal luminaries but was also challenged by some lawyer associations and groups before the Supreme Court of India through Writ Petitions.
- A three-judge bench of the Supreme Court referred the matter to a Constitution Bench that heard different arguments for over a month.
- Finally, on October 16, a five-judge bench of the Supreme Court declared the 99th Constitutional Amendment Act and the NJAC Act 2014 “unconstitutional and void”.
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: Agriculture Infrastructure Fund (AIF) Schemes
Mains level: Read the attached story
The Centre has decided to allow state-run market yards to access financing facilities through its Agricultural Infrastructure Fund to calm the fears of protesting farmers that such market yards are being weakened.
Agriculture Infrastructure Fund (AIF) Schemes
- It is a Central Sector Scheme meant for setting up storage and processing facilities, which will help farmers, get higher prices for their crops.
- The Union Cabinet approved this scheme in July 2020 for a period of 10 years.
- It will support farmers, PACS, FPOs, Agri-entrepreneurs, etc. in building community farming assets and post-harvest agriculture infrastructure.
- These assets will enable farmers to get greater value for their produce as they will be able to store and sell at higher prices, reduce wastage and increase processing and value addition.
Note the following things about AIF:
1) It is a Central Sector Scheme
2) Duration of the scheme
3)Target beneficiaries
What exactly is the AIF?
- The AIF is a medium – long term debt financing facility for investment in viable projects for post-harvest management infrastructure and community farming assets through interest subvention and credit guarantee.
- Under the scheme, Rs. 1 Lakh Crore will be provided by banks and financial institutions as loans with an interest subvention of 3% per annum.
- It will provide credit guarantee coverage under Credit Guarantee Fund Trust for Micro and Small Enterprises (CGTMSE) for loans up to Rs. 2 Crore.
Target beneficiaries
The beneficiaries will include farmers:
- PACS, Marketing Cooperative Societies, FPOs, SHGs, Joint Liability Groups (JLG), Multipurpose Cooperative Societies, Agri-entrepreneurs, Startups, and Central/State agency or Local Body sponsored Public-Private Partnership Projects
What are the new changes?
- The Union Cabinet decided to extend the AIF to State agencies and Agricultural Produce Marketing Committees (APMCs), as well as federations of cooperative organizations, Farmers Producers Organizations and self-help groups.
- They will now be eligible for interest subvention for loans up to ₹2 crores, with APMCs allowed to access separate loans for different kinds of infrastructure projects to build cold storage, silos, sorting, grading and assaying units in their market yards.
- The scheme has also been extended to 2032-33.
Why such a move?
- The modifications in the Scheme will help to achieve a multiplier effect in generating investments while ensuring that the benefits reach small and marginal farmers.
- The APMC markets are set up to provide market linkages and create an ecosystem of post-harvest public infrastructure open to all farmers.
- This is also proof that APMC will not end as the farmers’ concern since the three farm laws.
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: Tele Law Scheme
Mains level: Pendency issue in Indian Judiciary
The Law Ministry recently commemorated an event to mark the coverage of more than nine lakh beneficiaries of the government’s tele-law scheme, using common service centres (CSCs) to provide justice across the country.
Tele-Law Scheme
- The concept of Tele-Law is to facilitate the delivery of legal advice through a panel of lawyers stationed at the State Legal Services Authorities (SALSA) and CSC.
- Tele-Law means the use of communications and information technology for the delivery of legal information and advice.
- The project initiates to connect citizens with lawyers through video conferencing facilities by the Para-Legal Volunteers stationed at identified 50,000 CSCs.
- This e-interaction between lawyers and people would be through the video-conferencing infrastructure available at the CSCs.
Features of the program
- Under this programme, smart technology of video conferencing, telephone/instant calling facilities available at the vast network of CSC.
- It enables anyone to seek legal advice without wasting precious time and money.
- The service is free for those who are eligible for free legal Aid as mentioned under Section 12 of the Legal Services Authority Act, 1987.
- For all others, a nominal fee is charged.
Back2Basics: Free legal aid in India
- Article 21 of the Constitution of India states, “No person shall be deprived of his life or personal liberty except according to procedure established by law”.
- Hence ensuring legal aid to everyone is necessary for ensuring substantive equality.
- Article 39A of the Constitution of India provides for free legal aid to the poor and weaker sections of the society, to promote justice on the basis of equal opportunity.
- Articles 14 and 22(1) also make it obligatory for the State to ensure equality before the law and a legal system that promotes justice on a basis of equal opportunity to all.
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: Methanogens on saturn's moon
Mains level: Hunt for extra-terrestrial life
NASA’s Cassini spacecraft has detected an unusually high concentration of methane, along with carbon dioxide and dihydrogen, in the moons of Saturn by flying through their plumes.
What is the new observation?
- The spacecraft has found that Titan has methane in its atmosphere and Enceladus has a liquid ocean with erupting plumes of gas and water.
Are there methane-producing organisms on Earth?
- Most of the methane on Earth has a biological origin.
- Microorganisms called methanogens are capable of generating methane as a metabolic byproduct.
- They do not require oxygen to live and are widely distributed in nature.
- They are found in swamps, dead organic matter, and even in the human gut.
- They are known to survive in high temperatures and simulation studies have shown that they can live in Martian conditions.
- Methanogens have been widely studied to understand if they can be a contributor to global warming.
Could there be methanogens on Enceladus?
- We cannot conclude that life exists in the Enceladus ocean.
- It is the probability that Enceladus’ hydrothermal vents could be habitable to Earth-like microorganisms.
- There can be life hypotheses.
What other processes could have produced the methane?
- Methane could be formed by the chemical breakdown of organic matter present in Enceladus’ core.
- Hydrothermal processes could help the formation of carbon dioxide and methane.
- On Earth, hydrothermal vents on seafloors are known to release methane, but this happens at a very slow rate.
- This hypothesis is plausible but only if Enceladus was formed through the accretion of organic-rich material from comets.
- The results suggest that methane production from hydrothermal vents is not sufficient to explain the high methane concentration detected by Cassini in the plumes.
- An additional amount of methane produced via biological methanogenesis could match Cassini’s observations.
Get an IAS/IPS ranker as your 1: 1 personal mentor for UPSC 2024
Attend Now