Note4Students
From UPSC perspective, the following things are important :
Prelims level: Freedom of speech and restrictions on it
Mains level: Paper 2- Issues with Section 124A of Indian Constitution
Context
Chief Justice of India N V Ramana has ignited a passionate debate during a preliminary hearing concerning whether “sedition” should be an offence at all, and how to prevent its misuse or abuse, were it to remain
Issues with the sedition under Section 124A
- Against fundamental right: The meandering meanings of expressions such as “disaffection” towards the government, “hatred”, “contempt” etc. constitute an unreasonable restriction on the fundamental right to free expression guaranteed under Article 19(1)(a).
- Neither the framers of the Constitution nor the authors of the amended Article 19(2) included “sedition” as a ground for “reasonable restriction” to freedom of speech and expression.
- Colonial past: CJI Ramana in preliminary hearings has pointedly asked the Attorney General whether “sedition under Section 124A of the Indian Penal Code is still required after 75 years of independence from colonial rule.
- Prone to misuse: The lack of definition of terms used in the section leaves vide the scope for interpretation and thus rampant misuse and abuse.
Way forward
- Some law luminaries have found new stirrings of hope in the Supreme Court to strike it down.
- Find means to prevent misuse and abuse: Alternative way,as the learned attorney general observed is to find constitutional ways and practical means to prevent the abuse and misuse of law.
- Forbid rampant private complaints: A most immediate step is to forbid rampant private complaints by citizens and authorise only very senior police officials to take appropriate action.
Conclusion
What Gandhiji said — the law may not be used to “manufacture affection” under pain of a penal sanction — was as true then as it remains now. It is high time to realise that the law of “sedition” must go, even when it may strictly not even exist!
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Note4Students
From UPSC perspective, the following things are important :
Prelims level: Green Pass
Mains level: Paper 2- Issues with vaccine travel policies
Context
The introduction of Covid-19 vaccines has opened up opportunities to help revive travel. However, it is important to carefully design policies that help revive travel demand.
Vaccine certificates
- Many countries like China and Israel have introduced vaccine certificates that ease the process of entering and travelling across the destination country for vaccinated travellers.
- Can encourage discriminatory treatment: Though these certificates can ensure trade facilitation, they can potentially act as a trade barrier if they encourage discriminatory treatment.
- The recent and the most contentious issue in this regard is the European Union’s “Green Pass” scheme.
Issues with European Union’s Green Pass
- Through this vaccine certificate, the European Commission intends to remove travel restrictions such as entry bans, quarantine obligations and testing.
- Only 4 vaccines listed: The EU has listed only four vaccines approved by the European Medicines Agency (EMA) for the pass: Pfizer-BioNTech’s Comirnaty, Moderna’s Spikevax, Oxford-AstraZeneca Vaxzevria and Johnson & Johnson’s Janssen.
- It makes travellers from countries administering alternate vaccines ineligible for certification.
- When it was launched, the policy did not even allow AstraZeneca’s Indian-manufactured vaccine, Covishield.
- Against COVAX policy: This goes against the policy of COVAX, which has categorically stated that such measures would effectively create a two-tier system and would negatively impact the growth of economies that are already suffering the most.
- Discriminatory against low-income countries: Vaccine doses administered per 100 people is 1.4 for low-income countries as compared to 93.2 for high-income countries.
- This makes travellers from low-income countries ineligible to avail these certificates.
- As per estimates based on information from the WHO, countries not administering any of the EMA-approved vaccines account for at least 14 per cent of the vaccinated population.
- These lie mostly in low and middle-income countries, including India.
- Harms domestic sector: Nationals from many of these countries also serve in the hospitality industries in countries across the world, including Europe.
- With this exclusion criteria, an indirect cost burden is put on their domestic service sectors that are already reeling due to the pandemic.
- Against globalisation policy: With such discriminatory intervention, the EU policy does not go well with the globalisation policy of collective welfare.
Steps to boost vaccine production
- Covid vaccine makers across the world have created a platform, led by the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations, to connect with key raw material suppliers needed for boosting production.
- In a recent declaration, WTO members have agreed to review and eliminate unnecessary existing export restrictions on essential medical goods needed to combat the pandemic.
Way forward
- Cooperate on vaccine production: To achieve the desired goal, countries need to cooperate on vaccine production to accelerate the global vaccination process.
- Remove restrictions and trade barriers: Accelerating global vaccine production makes lifting trade barriers on raw materials for vaccine production critical.
- The two relevant bodies, WHO and WTO, should also work together to sort out selective criteria for international movement.
Conclusion
Developed countries should refrain from discriminatory international travel policies against low-income countries and focus on increasing vaccine production to close the vaccination gap at the global level.
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Note4Students
From UPSC perspective, the following things are important :
Prelims level: CoC in IBC
Mains level: Paper 3- Issues with IBC
Context
National Company Law Appellate Tribunal (NCLAT) stayed the approval granted by the Mumbai bench of the National Company Law Tribunal (NCLT) to the resolution plan for the Videocon Group.
Concerns with resolution plan
- Resolution plan submitted by Twinstar Technologies, provided for payment of Rs 2,962 crore — a mere 4.15 per cent of Videocon’s total admitted debt of Rs 64,838 crore.
- Payment of debt not in fair and equitable manner: Under the IBC (Section 30(2)(b)), the resolution plan must provide for payment of debts amongst creditors in a “fair and equitable” manner.
- However, in the plan submitted by Twinstar, unsecured assenting financial creditors and operational creditors are getting a paltry 0.62 per cent and 0.72 per cent of their admitted dues.
- Even the secured assenting and dissenting financial creditors had to settle for only 4.9 per cent and 4.56 per cent of their respective dues.
- Confidentiality obligation concerns: Twinstar’s bid of Rs 2,962 crore is close to the liquidation value of the Videocon Group estimated at Rs 2,568 crore, thereby raising legitimate suspicion and concern over the confidentiality of the resolution process.
- The I&B Regulations, 2016 state that the resolution professional must maintain the confidentiality of the fair market value and liquidation value of the corporate debtor and can only disclose the same to the CoC members after the resolutions plan have been submitted.
- Time delay: Status-quo ante has been restored until the next date of hearing by which time more than three years would have passed since the Videocon group was admitted into insolvency proceedings.
- This is way beyond the statutory timeline of 330 days.
Confidentiality rules need to be revised
- The CoC members must, on receipt of the information, issue an undertaking of confidentiality.
- But no such obligation falls on the resolution professional.
- Further, Section 29(2) of the code provides that the resolution professional must disclose all “relevant information” to the resolution applicant and it is for the resolution applicant to ensure compliance with confidentiality obligations.
- Again, there is no such duty imposed on the resolution professional.
- Even under Section 25 of the code, titled “Duties of resolution professional”, the specific duty to maintain confidentiality of sensitive information is absent.
- Clearly, the current regime does not have much deterrence value so as to ensure solemn adherence to confidentiality.
Conclusion
Videocon was one of the first test cases to examine the prospects of insolvency jurisprudence in India and the first one, for group insolvency proceedings. However, almost four years and a 95 per cent haircut later, the call for an immediate course correction couldn’t be louder.
Back2Basics: Operational creditor and financial creditors
- When a corporate defaulter is brought under the resolution process (Corporate Insolvency Resolution Process or CIRP), there can be two types of creditors to whom the corporate should give back money –
- (1) the entities who gave loans or funds to the corporate.
- (2) the entities from whom the corporate bought inputs and other services.
- The financial creditors are basically entities (lenders like banks) that have provided funds to the corporate.
- Their relationship with the entity is a pure financial contract, such as a loan or debt security.
- On the other hand, business and other entities that have provided inputs and other materials and services and to whom the defaulted corporate owes a debt are called as operational creditors.
- Both have claims on the defaulted corporate or the defaulted corporate owe payments to both these categories.
- Rights for these categories under the resolution process are also different.
- The IBC gives a clear preference to the claims of the financial creditors over the operational creditors through several procedures.
Haircut
- A haircut is the difference between the loan amount and the actual value of the asset used as collateral.
- It reflects the lender’s perception of the risk of fall in the value of assets.
- But in the context of loan recoveries, it is the difference between the actual dues from a borrower and the amount he settles with the bank.
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Note4Students
From UPSC perspective, the following things are important :
Prelims level: Creamy Layer
Mains level: OBC issues
A proposal to revise the criteria for defining the “creamy layer” among OBCs has been pending for years, and MPs have raised the issue during the ongoing Monsoon Session of Parliament.
What is the Creamy Layer?
- Creamy Layer is a concept that sets a threshold within which OBC reservation benefits are applicable.
- While there is a 27% quota for OBCs in government jobs and higher educational institutions, those falling within the “creamy layer” cannot get the benefits of this quota.
Basis of Creamy Layer
- It is based on the recommendation of the Second Backward Classes Commission (Mandal Commission).
- The government in 1990 had notified 27% reservation for Socially and Educationally Backward Classes (SEBCs) in vacancies in civil posts and services that are to be filled on direct recruitment.
- After this was challenged, the Supreme Court in the Indira Sawhney case (1992) upheld 27% reservation for OBCs, subject to exclusion of the creamy layer.
How is it determined?
- Following the order in Indra Sawhney, an expert committee headed by Justice (retired) R N Prasad was constituted for fixing the criteria for determining the creamy layer.
- In 1993, the Department of Personnel and Training (DoPT) listed out various categories of people of certain rank/status/income whose children cannot avail the benefit of OBC reservation.
- For those not in government, the current threshold is an income of Rs 8 lakh per year.
- For children of government employees, the threshold is based on their parents’ rank and not income.
- For instance, an individual is considered to fall within the creamy layer if either of his or her parents is in a constitutional post; if either parent has been directly recruited in Group-A; or if both parents are in Group-B services.
- If the parents enter Group-A through promotion before the age of 40, their children will be in the creamy layer.
- Children of a Colonel or higher-ranked officer in the Army, and children of officers of similar ranks in the Navy and Air Force, too, come under the creamy layer.
- Income from salaries or agricultural land is not clubbed while determining the creamy layer (2004).
What is happening now?
- MPs have raised questions about the pending proposal for revising the criteria.
- They have asked whether the provision of a creamy layer for government services only for OBC candidates is rational and justified.
Has it ever been revised?
- Other than the income limit, the current definition of the creamy layer remains the same as the DoPT had spelled out in 1993 and 2004.
- The income limit has been revised over the years.
- No other orders for the definition of the creamy layer have been issued.
- While the DoPT had stipulated that it would be revised every three years, the first revision since 1993 (Rs 1 lakh per year) happened only in 2004 (Rs 2.50 lakh), 2008 (Rs 4.50 lakh), 2013 (Rs 6 lakh), and 2017 (Rs 8 lakh).
- It is now more than three years since the last revision.
What does the government propose to do about the revision?
- A draft Cabinet note has stated that the creamy layer will be determined on all income, including salary calculated for income tax, but not agriculture income.
- The government is considering a consensus on Rs 12 lakh but salary and agriculture income are also being added to the gross annual income.
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Note4Students
From UPSC perspective, the following things are important :
Prelims level: Himalayan Orogeny
Mains level: Territorialization of Himalayas
A conceptual audit of questions related to geopolitics and security concerns while talking or thinking about the Himalaya is perhaps long overdue.
About the Himalayas
- The Himalayas are a mountain range in South and East Asia separating the plains of the Indian subcontinent from the Tibetan Plateau.
- The range has many of Earth’s highest peaks, including the highest, Mount Everest, at the border between Nepal and China.
- Lifted by the subduction of the Indian tectonic plate under the Eurasian Plate, the Himalayan Mountain range runs west-northwest to east-southeast in an arc 2,400 km.
- It consists of parallel mountain ranges: the Sivalik Hills on the south; the Lower Himalayan Range; the Great Himalayas, which is the highest and central range; and the Tibetan Himalayas on the north.
- The Karakoram are generally considered separate from the Himalayas.
Identity of Himalayas: Only as a frontier
- We have been examining the Himalaya mainly through the coordinates of geopolitics and security while relegating others as either irrelevant or incompatible.
- In a certain sense, our intellectual concerns over the Himalaya have been largely shaped by the assumption of fear, suspicion, rivalry, invasion, encroachment and pugnacity.
- If during colonial times it was Russophobia, then now it is Sinophobia or Pakistan phobia that in fact determines our concerns over the Himalayas.
- Ironically it is the Delhi-Beijing-Islamabad triad, and not the mountain per se, that defines our concerns about the Himalayas.
A national Himalaya
- Border issues has given birth to the political compulsion of territorializing the Himalaya on a par with the imperatives of nationalism.
- Thus the attempt to create a national Himalaya by each of the five nations (Nepal, Bhutan, India, Pakistan, and Tibet/China) fall within this transnational landmass called the Himalaya.
India and the Himalayas
- India’s understanding of the Himalayas is informed by a certain kind of realism, as it continues to remain as space largely defined in terms of sovereign territoriality.
- It may be perceived that such an alternative conceptualization of Himalayas is not only possible but also necessary.
Various initiatives
- National Mission on Himalayan Studies: It is a classic case in point that provides funds for research and technological innovations, but creating policies only for the Indian Himalayan Region (IHR).
A historical logjam of territorialization
- The Himalayas territorialization bears a colonial legacy which also sets up its post-colonial destiny as played out within the dynamics of nation-states.
- The arbitration of relationships between and among the five nation-states falling within the Himalayan landmass has failed to transcend.
- The lines of peoplehood and the national border never coincided; thus, it was bound to give birth to tensions while working out projects predicated upon national sovereignty.
- Given this historical logjam, what we can only expect is the escalation of territorial disputes as the immediate fallout.
Borders and their differences
- It needs to be recognized that political borders and cultural borders are not the same things.
- Political borders are to be considered as space-making strategies of modern nation-states that do not necessarily coincide with cultural borders.
- It needs to be realized that the domain of non-traditional security (cases of ecological devastation, climate change) is equally important.
Conclusion
- The Himalaya is a naturally evolved phenomenon should be understood through frameworks that have grown from within the Himalaya.
- Viewing the Himalayas as a space of political power is a violent choice, which actually enriched ultra-sensitivity towards territorial claims and border management.
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Note4Students
From UPSC perspective, the following things are important :
Prelims level: Near-Surface Shear Layer
Mains level: NA
Indian astronomers have found a theoretical explanation for the existence of the Near-Surface Shear Layer (NSSL) of the Sun for the first time.
What is a Near-Surface Shear Layer?
- It was long known the Sun’s equator spins faster than the poles.
- However, a peek into the internal rotation of the Sun using sound waves revealed the existence of an intriguing layer where the rotation profile of the Sun changes sharply.
- The layer is called as a near-surface shear layer (NSSL), and it exists very close to the solar surface, where there is an outward decrease in angular velocity.
What have researchers found?
- They have used an equation called the thermal wind balance equation to explain how the slight difference in temperature between solar poles and equator, called thermal wind term.
- It is balanced by the centrifugal force appearing due to solar differential rotation.
- They have noted that if this condition is true near the solar surface, it can explain the existence of NSSL, which is inferred in helioseismology (technique of using sound waves to peek inside the Sun) based observation.
Why study NSSL?
- Understanding NSSL is crucial for the study of several solar phenomena like sunspot formation, solar cycle, and it will also help in understanding such phenomena in other stars.
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Note4Students
From UPSC perspective, the following things are important :
Prelims level: Biotech-PRIDE
Mains level: Not Much
The Union Ministry for Science & Technology has released “Biotech-PRIDE (Promotion of Research and Innovation through Data Exchange) Guidelines” developed by the Department of Biotechnology (DBT).
Biotech-PRIDE
- These guidelines aim at providing a well-defined framework and guiding principle to facilitate and enable sharing and exchange of biological knowledge, information and data.
- They will facilitate this and enable the exchange of information to promote research and innovation in different research groups across the country.
- They will be implemented through the Indian Biological Data Centre (IBDC) at Regional Centre for Biotechnology supported by the Department of Biotechnology.
Creating a national repository: Bio-Grid
- Other existing datasets/ data centres will be bridged to this IBDC which will be called Bio-Grid.
- This Bio-Grid will be a National Repository for biological knowledge, information and data.
- It will be responsible for enabling its exchange, developing measures for safety, standards and quality for datasets and establishing detailed modalities for accessing data.
Why need such guidelines?
- India ranks number 4 amongst the top 20 countries contributing biological databases.
- The Government invests a large number of public funds for biosciences to gain deep insights into intricate biological mechanisms and other processes and for translation.
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