Note4Students
From UPSC perspective, the following things are important :
Prelims level: Official language , Eight schedule
Mains level: Read the attached story
The 11th volume of the Report of the Official Language Committee headed by Home Minister submitted to President has triggered angry reactions from the CMs of Tamil Nadu and Kerala, who have described the Report as an attempt to impose Hindi on non-Hindi-speaking states.
About the Official Language Panel (for Hindi)
- The Committee of Parliament on Official Language was set up in 1976 under Section 4 of The Official Languages Act, 1963.
- Section 4 of the Act says there shall be constituted a Committee on Official language, on a resolution to that effect being moved in either House of Parliament.
- It should have the previous sanction of the President and passed by both Houses.
Terms of reference of the committee
- The Committee is chaired by the Union Home Minister, and has, in accordance with the provisions of the 1963 Act, 30 members — 20 MPs from Lok Sabha and 10 MPs from Rajya Sabha.
- The job of the Committee is to review the progress made in the use of Hindi for official purposes, and to make recommendations to increase the use of Hindi in official communications.
History of its establishment
- With the active promotion of Hindi being mandated by Article 351 of the Constitution, the Official Language Committee was set up to review and promote the use of Hindi in official communications.
- The first Report of the Committee was submitted in 1987.
Issues with the committee
- The name of the Committee is a little misleading.
- This is because unlike the other Parliamentary panels, the Committee on Official Language is constituted by the Home Ministry.
- It does not submit its report to Parliament like other Committees of Parliament.
- The contents of the report submitted are not in the public domain.
- The panel has the largest representation from the ruling majority party. This has made states more furious.
What has the Shah panel recommended in its latest (2021) report?
- Medium of instruction: The panel has made around 100 recommendations, including that Hindi should be the medium of instruction in IITs, IIMs, and central universities in the Hindi-speaking states.
- Administrative communication: The language used for communication in the administration should be Hindi, and efforts should be made to teach the curriculum in Hindi, but the latter is not mandatory.
- Hindi translation of HC verdicts: High Courts in other states, where proceedings are recorded in English or a regional language can make available translations in Hindi, because verdicts of High Court of other states are often cited in judgments.
- Mandate for govt. officials: The panel wants state governments to warn officials that their reluctance to use Hindi would reflect in their Annual Performance Assessment Report (APAR).
Why are these recommendations under criticism?
The crux of the recommendations is being ‘perceived’ that-
- There is a deliberate attempt to reduce the usage of the English language in official communication and to increase the usage of Hindi.
- Knowledge of Hindi would be compulsory in a number of government jobs.
Is this the first time that such recommendations have been made?
- The makers of the Constitution had decided that both Hindi and English should be used as official languages for the first 15 years of the Republic.
- But in the wake of intense anti-Hindi agitations in the south, the Centre announced that English would continue to be used even after 1965.
- On January 18, 1968, Parliament passed the Official Language Resolution to build a comprehensive program to increase the use of Hindi for official purposes by the Union of India.
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Note4Students
From UPSC perspective, the following things are important :
Prelims level: NA
Mains level: Equitable delivery
Context
- 15th Finance commission on horizontal devolution agreed that the Census 2011 population data better represents the present need of States, to be fair to, as well as reward, the States which have done better on the demographic front, Finance commission has assigned a 12.5 per cent weight to the demographic performance criterion. Population, area, forest and ecology, demographic performance, tax efforts, income and distance are the criteria for horizontal distribution of funds.
Why equitable delivery is necessary in the country?
- To fulfil the need of basket of Goods: There is a basket of goods and services that should be delivered by the State. It is best not to call them public goods, since “public goods” have a specific meaning for economists and this basket has items that are typically collective private goods.
- To achieve Aantodaya approach (last person): Curlew Island is in the Andaman and Nicobar Islands. Until the 2011 Census, it had a population of two. Pulomilo Island, also in Andaman and Nicobar, had a population of 20 in 2011. At the time of elections, we read of astounding attempts made, so that voters in remote locations can vote. No one should be disenfranchised because of remoteness of location. By the same token, a resident, regardless of location, must be entitled to that basket.
- To achieve poverty alleviation: The quality of public services affects economic growth via its impact on poverty alleviation, human capital formation and corruption.
- High cost of delivery: States can have differential sources of revenue. Alternatively, the cost of delivering that basket may vary across geographical zones.
- Problems associated with migration: Over time, villages of course get depopulated. They are reclassified, get absorbed into larger agglomerations, or disappear because of migration.
How equitable delivery can be achieved?
- State need to take honest responsibility: The State cannot abdicate its responsibility of providing the basket.
- Economic compulsion: Migration is a voluntary decision, often driven by the pull (and push) of economic forces. That voluntary decision cannot be replaced by fiat.
- Dividing the pool between the governments: The Union Finance Commission has a vertical task, dividing the divisible pool between the Union government and states.
- Adjusting to the criteria set by FC: It also has a horizontal task, dividing State share between different states. Accordingly, from the 1st to the 15th, Finance commission have adopted different formulae, with an attempt to also create incentives, by attaching weights to fiscal efficiency and even demographic performance.
- This leaves variables like population, geographical area, income distance, infrastructure distance and forest cover:
- expenditure equalisation based on needs/costs of public services;
- Revenue equalisation measured by the ability of the state to raise revenue from one or more sources; and
- Macro indicators covering broader economic or non-economic indicators that approximate fiscal capacity, where data constraints make it difficult to apply the other approaches.
- Addressing Geographic area and population: Needs/costs are sought to be measured through geographical area and population. All Finance Commissions have used area as another criterion in the devolution formula on the ground of need — the larger the area, greater is the expenditure requirement for providing comparable services.
Conclusion
- Equitable access to public goods and services in low income and inequal (economic inequality) country like India is cumbersome task. Finance commission is trying their best for equitable allocation of resources.
Mains Question
Q. How Equity is different from equality? What is the finance commission’s criteria for horizontal allocation of resources among the states ?
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Note4Students
From UPSC perspective, the following things are important :
Prelims level: Central Information Commission
Mains level: RTI Act,amendments,pending complaints ,Delay in the process, Credibility of the CIC
Context
- The number of information officers and first appellate authorities in the Central government has remained stagnant in the last few years. In contrast, the new Right to Information (RTI) applications filed as well as pending applications are increasing every year. Worryingly, the Central Information Commission and State Information Commissions, the final recourse in matters concerning RTI, also face manpower shortage. As a result, appeals and complaints are piling up.
- RTI is an act of the parliament that sets out the rules and procedures regarding citizens’ right to information.It replaced the former Freedom of Information Act, 2002.
- Time bound response: Under the provisions of RTI Act, any citizen of India may request information from a “public authority” (a body of Government or “instrumentality of State”) which is required to reply expeditiously or within 30.
- Immediate Information in an urgent petition: In case of a matter involving a petitioner’s life and liberty, the information has to be provided within 48 hours.
- Digitization of records: The Act also requires every public authority to computerize their records for wide dissemination and to proactively publish certain categories of information so that the citizens need minimum recourse to request for information formally.
Implementation of RTI
- The RTI Act is implemented using a three-level structure.
- Public Information Officer: At the first level is the Central Assistant Public Information Officer/Central Public Information Officer (CAPIO/CPIO). Once an RTI query reaches the CAPIO/CPIO, they are expected to reply within 30 days.
- First Appellate Authority (FAA): If the reply is not satisfactory or does not arrive on time, a first appeal can be made to the First Appellate Authority (FAA).
- Central Information and State Information Commissions: If the FAA does not answer or if its answer is not satisfactory, the Central Information and State Information Commissions can be approached.
What are the vacancy related issues?
- Low Performance of Information Commissions: A report released in October by the Satark Nagrik Sangathan, titled ‘Report Card on the Performance of Information Commissions in India,2021-22’,states that the number of appeals and complaints pending before the Central and State Information Commissions as of June 30, 2022 was 3,14,323. The figure is based on data gathered from 26 Information Commissions obtained through 145 RTI applications.
- Increase in the pending appeals: There is an Increase in the number of pending appeals and complaints from 2.18 lakh to3.14 lakh in the last three years.
- Leading states in pending complaints: Maharashtra tops the list with nearly 1 lakh appeals and complaints pending followed by Uttar Pradesh (44,482) and Karnataka (30,358). Data were not available for Tamil Nadu State Information Commission. The Commissions in Jharkhand and Tripura were defunct.
- Substantial delay in reply: The Sangathan assumed that appeals and complaints would be disposed of in a chronological order. It would take the West Bengal State Information Commission 24 years and 3 months to dispose of a complaint filed on July 1, 2022. A similar analysis in Odisha and Maharashtra showed that it would take five years. Only Meghalaya and Mizoram showed no waiting time(not plotted on the tree map).
What is the recent amendment?
- Parity with CEC broken: So far, the CIC received the same salary and perks as that of the Chief Election Commissioner or a judge of the Supreme Court.
- Now on par with Cabinet Secretary: The new rules make the CIC an equivalent of the cabinet secretary and central information commissioners the same as secretary to the government in terms of salary. In the states, the downgrading will be to the level of a secretary to the government, and additional secretary respectively.
- Tenure: The tenure has been reduced from 5 years to 3.
- Power of ICs undermined: The CICs and ICs at both the Centre and the states have the power to review the functioning of government public information officials, and intervene on behalf of citizens seeking information about decisions of the government. This stands undermined.
- Lack of enforcing powers: these officials have zero powers to enforce their orders, except the imposition of a fine for non-compliance.
- Authority exercised: Over the years, government departments coughed out information because they were seen in the same league and of the same authority as the CEC and Supreme Court judges.
Conclusion
- The RTI has unquestionably proved to be one of the significant milestones and a major step towards ensuring the participatory and transparent development process in the country. Dilution of RTI is like downgrading the participation of citizens in public affairs. Government should strengthen the RTI instead of weakening.
Mains Question
Q. Discuss the dilution of RTI through 2019 amendments. How vacancies affect the time bound replies under the RTI Act 2005?
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Note4Students
From UPSC perspective, the following things are important :
Prelims level: Appointment of Judges
Mains level: NJAC,Collegium system and related issues.
Context
- Once again, the Collegium of the Supreme Court of India is in the news, and once again for the wrong reasons. This time, it is because of the difficulty hat its five judges have in getting together for one meeting. Justice Chandrachud and Justice Nazeer withhold approval.Apparently, they do not object to the names but object to the procedure of circulation.
What is Collegium system?
- The Collegium of judges is the Indian Supreme Court’s invention.
- It does not figure in the Constitution, which says judges of the Supreme Court and High Courts are appointed by the President and speaks of a process of consultation.
- In effect, it is a system under which judges are appointed by an institution comprising judges.
-
After some judges were superseded in the appointment of the CJI in the 1970s, and attempts made subsequently to affect a mass transfer of High Court judges across the country.
What was the perception around Independence of judiciary under threat?
- There was a perception that the independence of the judiciary was under threat. This resulted in a series of cases over the years.
- First Judges Case (1981): SC ruled that the “consultation” with the CJI in the matter of appointments must be full and effective. However, it rejected the idea that the CJI’s opinion, albeit carrying great weight, should have primacy.
- Second Judges Case (1993): Introduced the Collegium system, holding that “consultation” really meant “concurrence”. It added that it was not the CJI’s individual opinion, but an institutional opinion formed in consultation with the two senior-most judges in the Supreme Court.
- Third Judges Case (1998): On a Presidential Reference for its opinion, the Supreme Court, in the Third Judges Case (1998) expanded the Collegium to a five-member body, comprising the CJI and four of his senior-most colleagues.
- Emphasis on Seniority principle: Collegium system emphasizes excessively on seniority.
- No discussion on merit and objectivity: However, following the seniority convention offers a semblance of certainty and transparency, even though it takes away from selecting judges on other objective criteria such as merit and competence.
- Collegium changes its own decision: At times, the sanctity of Collegium’s own decisions no longer stands. Its own previous decision to appoint other persons to the Supreme Court was reversed, without any explanation or justification.
- Lack of procedure: Besides this, no one knows how judges are selected, and the appointments made reek of biases of self-selection and in-breeding.
- Widely known Nepotism: Sons and nephews of previous judges or senior lawyers tend to be popular choices for judicial roles.
- Lack of checks and balances: With its ad hoc informal consultations with other judges, which do not significantly investigate criteria such as work, standing integrity and so on, the Collegium remains outside the sphere of legitimate checks and balances.
- Opaque system: The lack of a written manual for functioning, the absence of selection criteria, the arbitrary reversal of decisions already taken, the selective publication of records of meetings.
Collegium system is blessing in disguise
- Protect independence of judiciary: 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.
- NJAC Declared unconstitutional: In 2016, the Supreme Court struck down a constitutional amendment for creating the National Judicial Appointments Commission (NJAC).
- Distrust on political executive: 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.
What is National Judicial Appointment Commission (NJAC)?
- What is NJAC?
- guarantee the independence of the system from inappropriate politicisation,
- Strengthen the quality of appointments,
- Enhances the fairness of the selection process,
- Promotes diversity in the composition of the judiciary, and
- Rebuilds public confidence in the system.
- NJAC was missed opportunity of reforms: The SC in its majority decision declared the NJAC unconstitutional and missed an opportunity to introduce important reformatory changes in the functioning of the judiciary.
- Judicial majority could have been discussed: According to the experts, the Supreme Court could have read down the law, and reorganised the NJAC to ensure that the judiciary retained majority control in its decisions. However, it did not amend the NJAC Act to have safeguards that would have made it constitutionally valid.
- No reforms in the collegium system: It also did not reform the Collegium in any way to address the various concerns voiced by one and all, including the Court itself, Instead, to the disappointment of all those who hoped for a strong, independent and transparent judiciary, it reverted to the old Collegium based appointments mechanism.
Conclusion
- Appointments to the top court seem to be the preserve of judges from the High Court with a handful of appointments from the Bar. Surely some nodding acknowledgement should be given to a specific provision made by the founding fathers in the Constitution. Judges appointing the judges is not a sustainable practice for future of judiciary.
Mains Question
Q.What is NJAC? Why Collegium system is blessings in disguise? Explain the Collegium system of appointments.
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Note4Students
From UPSC perspective, the following things are important :
Prelims level: Article 66A
Mains level: Read the attached story
The Supreme Court has ordered States and their police forces to stop prosecuting free speech on social media under Section 66A of the Information Technology Act which was declared unconstitutional by the court in a judgment seven years ago.
What did Section 66A do?
- Introduced in 2008, the amendment to the IT Act, 2000, gave the government power to arrest and imprison an individual for allegedly “offensive and menacing” online posts, and was passed without discussion in Parliament.
- Section 66A empowered police to make arrests over what policemen, in terms of their subjective discretion, could construe as “offensive” or “menacing” or for the purposes of causing annoyance, inconvenience, etc.
- It prescribed the punishment for sending messages through a computer or any other communication device like a mobile phone or a tablet, and a conviction could fetch a maximum of three years in jail.
- In 2015, the apex court struck down the law in the landmark case Shreya Singhal v. Union of India, calling it “open-ended and unconstitutionally vague”, and thus expanded the contours of free speech to the Internet.
Why was the law criticized?
- The problem was with the vagueness about what is “offensive”.
- The word having a very wide connotation was open to distinctive, varied interpretations.
- It was seen as subjective, and what might have been innocuous for one person, could lead to a complaint from someone else and, consequently, an arrest arbitrarily.
So, how did 66A come under the Supreme Court’s scrutiny?
- The first petition came up in the court following the arrest of two girls in Maharashtra by Thane Police in November 2012 over a Facebook post.
- The girls had made comments on the shutdown of Mumbai for the funeral of a political leader.
- The arrests triggered outrage from all quarters over the manner in which the cyber law was used.
- The petition was filed by Shreya Singhal, then a 21-year-old law student.
What were the grounds for the challenge?
- The objective behind the 2008 amendment was to prevent the misuse of information technology, particularly through social media.
- The petitioners argued that Section 66A came with extremely wide parameters, which allowed whimsical interpretations by law enforcement agencies.
- Most of the terms used in the section had not been specifically defined under the Act.
- The law was a potential tool to gag legitimate free speech online and to curtail freedom of speech and expression guaranteed under the Constitution, going far beyond the ambit of “reasonable restrictions” on that freedom.
What did the Supreme Court decide?
- In March 2015, a bench of Justices J. Chelameswar and R.F. Nariman ruled in Shreya Singhal v. Union of India declared Section 66A unconstitutional for “being violative of Article 19(1)(a) and not saved under Article 19(2).”
- Article 19(1)(a) gives people the right to speech and expression whereas 19(2) accords the state the power to impose “reasonable restrictions” on the exercise of this right.
- The decision was considered a landmark judicial pushback against state encroachment on the freedom of speech and expression.
- The bench also read down Section 79– now at the centre of the ongoing “intermediary liability” battle between the Centre and micro-blogging platform Twitter– defining key rules for the relationship between governments and commercial internet platforms.
- Section 79 says that any intermediary shall not be held legally or otherwise liable for any third party information, data, or communication link made available or hosted on its platform.
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From UPSC perspective, the following things are important :
Prelims level: Flex Fuel
Mains level: Ethanol blended petrol (EBP) Program
The auto sector is testing many new technologies to reduce carbon emissions. Flex fuel is one technology that has gained currency.
What are Flex Fuel Vehicles?
- Like traditional vehicles, flex fuel vehicles have an internal combustion engine, but instead of regular petrol, it can run on blended fuel—petrol with ethanol or methanol.
- The ethanol mix can vary between 20% and 85%.
- The vehicle has additional sensors and different programming of the engine control module to assess the blend of the fuel and adjust accordingly.
- Unlike electric hybrid vehicles, no bulky parts need to be added to the basic gasoline vehicle architecture.
- Upgrading existing vehicles to run on high blend of ethanol fuel, however, is possible but expensive and not considered feasible.
Are they better than traditional vehicles?
- Flex fuel vehicles are seen as a one-shot solution for multiple problems—pollution, oil import bill and glut in sugar production.
- According to the US department of energy, they have lower overall greenhouse gas emissions, between 40-108%, depending on the feedstock used to produce them.
- It could also help bring down India’s crude oil import bill.
- Further, India also suffers from a glut in sugar production of 6 million tonnes and in sugar season 2020-21, about 2.4 million tonne was diverted to produce 302 litres of ethanol for blending.
- India has set a target of 20% blending rate for 2025.
Is there a catch in flex-fuel technology?
- There is unlikely to be any direct benefit to the consumer.
- Though ethanol costs much lower than petrol at ₹47-64/ltr depending on the sugarcane source, oil marketing companies are expected to pocket the cost differential.
- It is also controlled by the government. So, chances of frequent revision are high.
- On the contrary, the fuel economy is likely to fall by 4-8%.
What are the challenges?
- For mass adoption, an adequate supply of different types of ethanol blends is needed across the country.
- This would have to be in addition to the existing network as current vehicles on the road would have to be supplied with fuel that has only 10% ethanol blending.
- This means significant investment in infra by oil firms.
- At the same time, a constant supply of ethanol would have to be ensured.
- Since this largely comes from sugarcane in India, which is a water-guzzling crop, any drought could have an impact on blending rates.
How do they fit in with carbon neutrality?
- With electrification already on the horizon, flex fuel vehicles are seen as a stop-gap arrangement.
- The benefit for the environment is less as compared to battery EVs or hydrogen fuel cell vehicles of the future.
- With much lower cost of running, they also offer better economy for consumers.
- The Toyota pilot project notwithstanding, there is also resistance from the industry.
- They want to prioritize investments and not get stretched thin between hybrid and battery electric, fuel cell and flex fuel technologies.
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Note4Students
From UPSC perspective, the following things are important :
Prelims level: Jaiprakash Narayan-JP
Mains level: Not Much
Union Home Minister unveiled a 15-foot statue of Jayaprakash Narayan or JP on his 120th birth anniversary at the socialist icon’s birthplace, Sitab Diara village in Bihar’s Saran district.
Who was Jayaprakash Narayan?
- JP was born in 1902 in Bihar’s Sitab Diara, a village prone to frequent-flooding, after which his family moved to a village in Uttar Pradesh’s Balia district.
- He quit college to join the non-cooperation movement, before going to study at the University of California, Berkeley, where he was influenced by the ideas of Karl Marx.
Political affiliations
- JP returned to India in 1929 and joined the freedom struggle and the Indian National Congress, upon the invitation of Jawaharlal Nehru and drawn by a speech by Maulana Abul Kalam Azad.
- He went on to become the founding members of the Congress Socialist Party (CSP).
- However after independence took it out of the Congress and formed the Socialist Party, which was merged with J B Kripalani’s Kisan Mazdoor Praja Party to form the Praja Socialist Party.
Dissociation from active politics
- While Nehru was keen on JP joining the Union government, JP sought to distance himself from electoral politics, opting to focus on social causes instead.
- He was disillusioned with political parties and called for communitarian democracy.
- Parties, he believed, were centralized and susceptible to moral and financial corruption.
The JP movement
- Students in Gujarat began demonstrating in late 1973, in response to mounting mess bills.
- The protests became widespread in the state, with workers, teachers and several other groups joining in the movement, calling for a change in government.
- JP saw the youth of Gujarat that had been able to bring about political change as an alternative route from electoral.
- The protests against corruption grew widespread, and students of Bihar began their movement in March 1974.
- The students approached JP, who left his self-imposed political exile and led the movement. At a rally in Patna he called for Sampoorna Kranti (Total Revolution).
Opposition to the Emergency
- When Indira Gandhi imposed an Emergency on June 25, 1975, JP shifted his focus to opposing the authoritarian rule and opposition parties looked to him for leadership.
- The Socialists were naturally drawn to him ideologically, while the RSS and its political front the Jana Sangh sought to return to the mainstream, and were happy to be dissolved into the Janata Party that JP had formed.
- JP is celebrated for launching a popular, mass movement against the Indira Gandhi government, which led to the formation of the Janata Party government in the 1977 general election.
- This was the first non-Congress government in the country.
Try this PYQ:
Who among the following were the founders of the “Hind Mazdoor Sabha” established in 1948?
(a) B. Krishna Pillai, E.M.S. Namboodiripad and K.C. George
(b) Jayaprakash Narayan, Deen Dayal Upadhyay and M.N. Roy
(c) C.P. Ramaswamy Iyer, K. Kamaraj and Veeresalingam Pantulu
(d) Ashok Mehata, T.S. Ramanujan and G.G. Mehta
Post your answers here.
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From UPSC perspective, the following things are important :
Prelims level: Sloth Bear
Mains level: NA
The first World Sloth Bear Day was observed yesterday to generate awareness and strengthen conservation efforts around the unique bear species endemic to the Indian subcontinent.
Sloth Bear
- The sloth bear (Melursus ursinus) is an important species and endemic to the Indian subcontinent with small populations in Nepal and Sri Lanka.
- Classified as “vulnerable” on the IUCN Red List, sloth bears are endemic to the Indian sub-continent and 90% of the species population is found in India.
- Listed under Schedule I of the (Wildlife Protection) Act of India, 1972, the species has the same level of protection as tigers, rhinos and elephants.
- Commercial international trade of the sloth bear (including parts and derivatives) is prohibited as it is listed in Appendix I of the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES).
- The sloth bears are omnivorous and survived on termites, ants and fruits.
Why protect sloth bears?
- For a long time, sloth bears were exploited as dancing bears. Though the practice has been banned there are still a few cases of rescue.
- Sloth bears are one of the most aggressive extant due to large human populations often closely surrounding reserves that hold bears.
- Aggressive encounters and attacks are relatively frequent, though in some places, attacks appear to be a reaction to encountering people accidentally.
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