Note4Students
From UPSC perspective, the following things are important :
Prelims level: Pangolin
Mains level: Not Much
The Odisha Forest and Environment Department has completed its first-ever radio-tagging of the Indian pangolin in an attempt to standardize the rehabilitation protocol for the animal in the State.
Why radio-tagging?
- The radio-tagging aims to know its ecology and develop an effective conservation plan for it.
- The radio-tagging is part of a joint project by the department and non-profit, the Wildlife Conservation Trust (WCT) that also involves the species’ monitoring apart from other activities.
About Pangolin
IUCN status: Endangered
- India is home to two species of pangolin.
- While the Chinese Pangolin (Manis pentadactyla) is found in northeastern India, the Indian Pangolin is distributed in other parts of the country as well as Sri Lanka, Bangladesh and Pakistan.
- Both these species are protected and are listed under Schedule I Part I of the Wild Life (Protection) Act, 1972 and under Appendix I of the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES).
- Commonly known as ‘scaly anteaters’, the toothless animals are unique, a result of millions of years of evolution.
- Pangolins evolved scales as a means of protection. When threatened by big carnivores like lions or tigers they usually curl into a ball.
- The scales defend them against dental attacks from predators.
Pangolin in China
- Pangolin meat is considered a delicacy in China and Vietnam.
- Their scales which are made of keratin, the same protein present in human nails — are believed to improve lactation, promote blood circulation, and remove blood stasis.
- These so-called health benefits are so far unproven.
What makes pangolins the most trafficked animals in the world?
- Their alleged health benefits in traditional Chinese medicines prompted a booming illicit export of scales from Africa over the past decade.
- Officials quote the trafficking price of Pangolin and its scale anywhere between Rs 30,000 and Rs 1 crore for a single animal.
- Conservation of pangolins received its first shot in the arm when the 2017 Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES) enforced an international trade ban.
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Note4Students
From UPSC perspective, the following things are important :
Prelims level: Not much
Mains level: Paper 3- Digital diplomacy
Context
India is pioneering the concept of digital public goods, with it, there is an opportunity for India to embark on digital diplomacy.
Digital public goods in India
- Built on the foundation of Aadhaar and India Stack, modular applications, big and small, are transforming the way we make payments, withdraw our PF, get our passport and driving licence and check land records, to name just a few activities.
- There is an opportunity for India to embark on digital diplomacy — to take its made-in-India digital public goods to hundreds of emerging economies across the world.
How Digital Diplomacy can help India?
- This could be a strategic and effective counter to China’s Belt and Road Initiative.
- Enhancing the productivity of emerging economies: Emerging economies are characterised by gross inefficiencies in the delivery of government services and a consequent trust deficit.
- Digital public goods spread speed, transparency, ease and productivity across the individual-government-market ecosystem and enhance inclusivity, equity and development at scale.
- Acceptance in emerging economies: India’s digital diplomacy will be beneficial to and welcomed by, all emerging economies from Peru to Polynesia, from Uruguay to Uganda, and from Kenya to Kazakhstan.
- Goodwill: It will enable quick, visible and compounding benefits for India’s partner countries and earn India immense goodwill.
Benefits of Digital diplomacy
- Reusability: The code is highly reusable
- Low cost: The cost of setting up an open source-based high school online educational infrastructure, to supplement the physical infrastructure, for an entire country is less than laying two kilometres of high-quality road.
- No debt trap: The investments required for transporting digital public goods are minuscule in comparison and there is no chance of a debt trap.
- Short gestation period: Unlike physical infrastructures such as ports and roads, digital public goods have short gestation periods and immediate, and visible impact and benefits.
- It plugs leaks: Digital infrastructure plugs leaks.
- It eliminates ghost beneficiaries of government services, removes touts collecting rent, creates an audit trail, makes the individual-government-market interface transparent and provides efficiencies that help recoup the investments quickly.
- Processes get streamlined and wait times for any service come down dramatically.
- Increases productivity: Productivity goes up and services can be scaled quickly.
- Benefits can be rapidly extended to cover a much larger portion of the population.
- Compounding instead of depreciation: Above all, the digital public goods infrastructure compounds while physical infrastructure depreciates.
Three ways in which digital public goods infrastructure compound
- Compounding happens for three reasons.
- [1] Growth of technologyy: Chips keep becoming faster, engines more powerful, and gene-editing technology keeps improving.
- [2] Network effect: As more and more people use the same technology, the number of “transactions” using that technology increase exponentially — be it Facebook posts or UPI transactions.
- [3] Rapid creation of new layers of technology: For example, the hypertext protocol created the worldwide web.
- Then the browser was built on top of it, which made the worldwide web easier to navigate and more popular.
- Thousands of new layers were added to make it what it is today.
- Growth of UPI in India: To give an example, consider the surge in UPI-based payments in India.
- This kind of growth doesn’t happen with a few entitled and privileged people using UPI more and more; it happens with more and more people using UPI more and more.
- Use of Diksha: The use of Diksha, the school education platform built on the open-source platform Sunbird, has followed the same trajectory — today close to 500 million schoolchildren are using it.
Conclusion
Made in India digital tools can help other emerging economies deal with economic, governance challenges.
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Note4Students
From UPSC perspective, the following things are important :
Prelims level: Not much
Mains level: Paper 2- Palk Bay conflict
Context
The arrest of 68 Indian fishermen by the Sri Lankan authorities between December 18 and 20 and the impounding of 10 boats for “poaching” in the territorial waters of Sri Lanka has flared up the conflict between the two countries.
About Palk Bay
- Palk Bay is home to diverse resources including 580 species of fish, extends from Point Calimere of Nagapattinam district to Mandapam-Dhanushkodi of Ramanathapuram district over about 250 km.
- Source of dispute: It is an important marine zone between south-eastern India and northern Sri Lanka, has been a source of dispute for long.
About the conflict
- Negotiations: The genesis of the dispute can be traced to the October 1921 negotiations between representatives of the Governments of Madras and Ceylon, on the need for the delimitation of the Palk Strait and the Gulf of Mannar.
- Delimitation: It was in the mid-1970s that two agreements were signed by India and Sri Lanka, under which the International Maritime Boundary Line (IMBL) came into being.
- Instead of settling the issues, the pacts gave way to new problems, including the recurring incidents of Tamil Nadu fishermen crossing the IMBL and getting caught by the Sri Lankan authorities.
Cause of the problem
- Different fishing practices: The asymmetric nature of fishing practices in Tamil Nadu and the Northern Province of Sri Lanka is said to be the cause of the problem.
- While Tamil Nadu’s fishing community uses mechanised bottom trawlers, its counterpart uses conventional forms of fishing, as trawling is banned in Sri Lanka.
- Difference in resources: The fishermen of Tamil Nadu continue to cross the IMBL, as the Sri Lankan side of the Bay is considered to have more fishery resources than the Indian side.
Way forward
- Weak away fishermen from trawling: The deep-sea fishing project, to wean away the fishermen of Tamil Nadu from bottom trawling, launched in July 2017, has not yielded the desired results.
- Relaxation of norms of the project is under the consideration of the Union Government, to draw greater response from the fishermen.
- Motivation for deep-sea fishing: Given the fact that deep sea fishing takes longer duration and has a higher recurring cost per voyage than what the fishing community experiences currently, the need for providing continuous motivation to the fisherfolk assumes critical importance.
- Other strategies: Various strategies, including the promotion of seaweed cultivation, open sea cage cultivation, seaweed cultivation and processing, and sea/ocean ranching should be adopted.
- Forming FPOs: There is a view that if the community is encouraged to form fish farmer producer organisations, it may take to sustainable fishing practices.
- Institution of stakeholders: A section of specialists favours the creation of an international institution of stakeholders for regulating the fishing sector in the Bay.
Consider the question “What leads to the dispute between India and Sri Lanka over the Palk Bay? Suggest the way forward for fishermen in Tamil Nadu.”
Conclusion
For all this to happen, sustained public pressure and political will are a must.
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Back2Basics: What is bottom trawling?
- A bottom trawl consists of a large tapered net with a wide mouth and a small enclosed end.
- The mouth of a trawl net has two weighted doors that serve not only to keep the net open, but also to keep the net on the ocean floor.
- These doors can weigh several tons.
- In addition to the heavy doors, the bottom of the net is a thick metal cable (footrope) studded with heavy steel balls or rubber bobbins that effectively crush everything in their path.
- As the net drags along the seafloor, living habitat in its path is crushed, ripped up, or smothered as the seabed is turned over.
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Note4Students
From UPSC perspective, the following things are important :
Prelims level: Rythu Bandhu Scheme
Mains level: DBT schemes for farmers
The total funds disbursed under Rythu Bandhu, Telangana government’s direct benefit transfer scheme for farmers, will soon touch Rs 50,000 crore in the coming days.
What is Rythu Bandhu?
- Rythu Bandhu is a scheme under which the state government extends financial support to land-owning farmers at the beginning of the crop season through direct benefit transfer.
- The scheme aims to take care of the initial investment needs and do not fall into a debt trap.
- This in turn instills confidence in farmers, enhances productivity and income, and breaks the cycle of rural indebtedness.
DBT under the Scheme
- Each farmer gets Rs 5,000 per acre per crop season without any ceiling on the number of acres held.
- So, a farmer who owns two acres of land would receive Rs 20,000 a year, whereas a farmer who owns 10 acres would receive Rs 1 lakh a year from the government.
- The grant helps them cover the expenses on input requirements such as seeds, fertilizers, pesticides, and labour.
How much does it cost the state exchequer?
- Since the Kharif season of 2018, the state government has been crediting Rythu Bandhu assistance to farmers.
- As of date, it has credited Rs 43,036.64 crore into the bank accounts of beneficiaries.
- This season, the state government will disburse another Rs 7638.99 crore, taking the total sum disbursed so far to over Rs 50,000 crore.
Comparing with the PM-KISAN scheme
- The state government has often said that the Centre’s PM-KISAN (Pradhan Mantri Kisan Samman Nidhi) scheme is a “copy” of Rythu Bandhu.
- Under PM-KISAN, a land-holding family receives an income support of 6,000 per year in three equal installments.
- Rythu Bandhu is based on anticipated input expenditure for each acre of land and there is no restriction on the number of acres owned by a farmer.
- PM-KISAN only provides support to the family and not to the farm units.
Criticisms of the Rythu Bandhu Scheme
- The scheme does not cover the landless or tenant farmers.
- Farmer bodies have been demanding that the state government should extend the agriculture assistance to tenant farmers as well.
- They have pointed out that those who work on lands taken on lease from landowners also need government assistance at the beginning of a crop season.
- It is difficult to bring tenant farmers under the ambit of the scheme because of the informal nature of the agreements they enter into.
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Note4Students
From UPSC perspective, the following things are important :
Prelims level: Mutual funds, Blockchain funds
Mains level: Not Much
The Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI) has ruled that Indian mutual funds (MFs) cannot invest in crypto-related products until government regulations on are clear.
What are Blockchain Funds?
- Blockchain is a digital ledger system that facilitates the process of recording transactions and tracking assets in a network.
- It is possible to have blockchain without crypto, but in practice the two are highly interlinked.
- Cryptocurrency tends to power the resources needed for a public blockchain network.
- Unlike specific crypto-based investments, blockchain funds invest in multiple companies that are driving sustainable earnings from blockchain businesses.
- Some key companies in this ecosystem are US-based Coinbase Global Inc and Advanced Micro Devices Inc, and Japan’s GMO internet Inc.
Why has SEBI blocked Blockchain funds?
- Absence of regulations: SEBI concerns stem from unclear regulations around cryptocurrencies in India.
- Unclear future: While investing, trading and holding crypto assets are allowed in India as of now, the laws are still not clear as to how they are regulated and taxed.
- Possible ban: There is a possibility that the government may ban trading in crypto altogether or come up with stringent thresholds for investors to delve into this new asset.
- Taxing the gains: For taxation purposes, short-term capital gains from individual crypto investing are taxed at personal taxation rates, however, there are no clear guidelines for fund investing.
Are blockchain funds good investments?
- The technology is creating value by revolutionizing the way assets and digital records are managed and transferred.
- Many companies, particularly in financial services, are investing millions of dollars in researching and building Blockchain infrastructure.
- Although the technology is still in the nascent phase in India, its potential across the board is huge.
Back2Basics: Mutual Funds
- A mutual fund is a company that pools money from many investors and invests the money in securities such as stocks, bonds, and short-term debt.
- The combined holdings of the mutual fund are known as its portfolio. Investors buy shares in mutual funds.
- Each share represents an investor’s part ownership in the fund and the income it generates.
Mutual funds are a popular choice among investors because they generally offer the following features:
- Professional Management. The fund managers do the research for you. They select the securities and monitor the performance.
- Diversification or “Don’t put all your eggs in one basket.” Mutual funds typically invest in a range of companies and industries. This helps to lower your risk if one company fails.
- Affordability. Most mutual funds set a relatively low dollar amount for initial investment and subsequent purchases.
- Liquidity. Mutual fund investors can easily redeem their shares at any time, for the current net asset value (NAV) plus any redemption fees.
Risks with MFs
- With mutual funds, one may lose some or all of the money invested because the securities held by a fund can go down in value.
- Dividends or interest payments may also change as market conditions change.
- The more volatile the fund, the higher the investment risk.
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Note4Students
From UPSC perspective, the following things are important :
Prelims level: Regression Theorem
Mains level: Not Much
This newscard is an excerpt from the original article published in the TH e-paper edition.
Regression Theorem
- The regression theorem refers to a theory of the origin of money.
- It states that money must have originated as a commodity with intrinsic value in the marketplace.
- The idea was first proposed by Austrian economist Carl Menger in his 1892 work “On the Origins of Money.”
- This theory is offered as an alternative to the state theory of money which states that money (fiat money) can come into existence only when it is backed by the government.
Evolution of Money
- The regression theory argues that money comes into existence through a gradual process of evolution in the marketplace, without the need for any government sanction.
- Economists who try to explain the regression theory generally start with the question of why money, particularly fiat money which is simply just a piece of paper, has any value at all in the marketplace.
- The most common answer to this question is that fiat money can be used to buy other useful goods such as houses, cars etc.
- But this answer is insufficient —it tries to tackle the question of why fiat money can buy other useful goods by simply saying that it can buy other useful goods.
Why is fiat money, which has little intrinsic value, considered valuable?
- In real life, people accept money in exchange for goods in the present because they are aware that money was accepted as a medium in exchange for other goods in the past.
- For example, people accept wages in the US dollar today because they are aware that the dollar was used to buy cars, groceries and other goods in the market yesterday.
- This gives them confidence in the value of their money.
What made people accept money in exchange for other useful goods in the past?
Ans. Intrinsic Value
- Economists who advocate the regression theory of money argue that money must have originated as a useful commodity like gold or silver or the barter system.
- This is the only way, they argue, it could have possibly been accepted by people in exchange for other useful goods at some point in the past.
- If a thing did not possess any intrinsic value, it is unlikely that people in the marketplace would have accepted it in exchange for other goods and services.
- So, commodities like gold and silver must have been traded in exchange for other goods and services at some point in history purely because they offered some kind of personal utility to people.
- For example, these precious metals could have been used to make ornaments, to fill teeth, etc., which gives them intrinsic value.
- They maintain value over time because their supply cannot be easily ramped up as mining gold involves significant production costs.
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Note4Students
From UPSC perspective, the following things are important :
Prelims level: Indus valley civilization and its decline
Mains level: Aryan Invasion Theory
The 2022 calendar of the IIT, Kharagpur on the theme of “evidence” for “rebutting the Aryan invasion myth” has caused controversy.
What is the Aryan Invasion Theory?
- It has always been understood that the Aryans migration from the Steppe happened after 2000 BCE.
- In 1953 Mortimer Wheeler proposed that the invasion of an Indo-European tribe from Central Asia, the “Aryans”, caused the decline of the Indus Civilization.
- As evidence, he cited a group of 37 skeletons found in various parts of Mohenjo-daro, and passages in the Vedas referring to battles and forts.
- However, scholars soon started to reject Wheeler’s theory, since the skeletons belonged to a period after the city’s abandonment and none were found near the citadel.
Basis of this theory
- This was first propounded when linguistic similarities between Sanskrit and the major European languages were discovered by European scholars during the colonial era.
- This tool was used by the colonizers to legitimize their rule in India.
- The theory hypothesizes that during 2000BC Aryans from Europe invaded or migrated into the Asian subcontinent.
- It states these ‘invaders’ killed the original Dravidians and set up the Aryan race in the South-Asian subcontinent.
- The Aryan Invasion Theory claimed that these ‘invaders’ were the root of modern Indian civilization, not the Harappan civilization.
Its rebuttal
- Recent studies have debunked the theory after DNA samples from 5000-year old Harappan remains were proven to be similar to modern Indians’ DNA as part of the Rakhigarhi Project.
Who were the Harappans then?
- The Harappans who created the agricultural revolution in northwestern India and then built the Harappan civilization were a mix of First Indians and Iranians who spoke a pre-Arya language.
- The Arya were central Asian Steppe pastoralists who arrived in India between roughly 2000 BCE and 1500 BCE, and brought Indo-European languages to the subcontinent.
- The new study says the Iranians arrived in India before agriculture or even herding had begun anywhere in the world.
- In other words, these migrants were likely to have been hunter-gatherers, which means they did not bring a knowledge of agriculture.
Try this PYQ:
Q With reference to the difference between the culture of Rigvedic Aryans and Indus Valley people, which of the following statements correct?
- Rigvedic Aryans used the coat of mail and helmet in warfare whereas the people of Indus Valley Civilization did not leave any evidence of using them.
- Rigvedic Aryans knew gold, silver and copper whereas Indus Valley people knew only copper and iron.
- Rigvedic Aryans had domesticated the horse whereas there is no evidence of Indus Valley people having been aware of this animal.
Select the correct answer using the code given below:
(a) Only 1
(c) 1 and 3 only
(b) 2 and 3 only
(d) 1, 2 and 3
Post your answers here.
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Note4Students
From UPSC perspective, the following things are important :
Prelims level: ARIIA
Mains level: HEIs in India and their competence
Atal Ranking of Institutions on Innovation Achievements (ARIIA) 2021 has been recently released.
About ARIIA
- ARIIA is an initiative of erstwhile Ministry of HRD, implemented by AICTE and Ministry’s Innovation Cell.
- It systematically ranks all major higher educational institutions and universities in India on indicators related to “Innovation and Entrepreneurship Development” amongst students and faculties.
- ARIIA 2020 will have six categories which also includes special category for women only higher educational institutions to encourage women and bringing gender parity in the areas of innovation and entrepreneurship.
- The other five categories are 1) Centrally Funded Institutions 2) State-funded universities 3) State-funded autonomous institutions 4) Private/Deemed Universities and 5) Private Institutions.
Major Indicators for consideration
- Budget & Funding Support.
- Infrastructure & Facilities.
- Awareness, Promotions & support for Idea Generation & Innovation.
- Promotion & Support for Entrepreneurship Development.
- Innovative Learning Methods & Courses.
- Intellectual Property Generation, Technology Transfer & Commercialization.
- Innovation in Governance of the Institution.
Key highlights of 2021 report
- Seven IITs and the IISc, Bengaluru, are among the top 10 central institutions in promotion and support of innovation and entrepreneurship development.
- The top rank has been bagged by the IIT, Madras followed by the IITs in Bombay, Delhi, Kanpur and Roorkee.
- The IISc has bagged the sixth position in the ranking followed by the IITs in Hyderabad and Kharagpur, the NIT, Calicut.
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Note4Students
From UPSC perspective, the following things are important :
Prelims level: Deucha-Pachami Mines
Mains level: Not Much
Thousands of Tribals fear displacement following the implementation of the project to mine coals and basalts from the Deucha-Pachami coal block in West Bengal’s Birbhoom district.
Deucha-Pachami Mines
- Deucha-Pachami-Dewanganj-Harinsinga coal block is the second-largest coal block in the world; it is the largest in India.
- It is located in Deucha and Panchamati area under Mohamad bazar community Development Block of Birbhum district, West Bengal.
- The block has a thick coal seam trapped between equally thick layers of rocks, mostly basalt. It has a great economic value.
- The existence of these thick basalt layers, however, makes mining of coal difficult; foreign investment and technology will be hence needed for mining.
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Note4Students
From UPSC perspective, the following things are important :
Prelims level: Not much
Mains level: Paper 2- Importance of middle powers in Arab Gulf
Context
On December 19, Pakistan hosted a special session of the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) to address the crisis in Afghanistan.
The humanitarian crisis in Afghanistan and how regional countries are responding to it
- The humanitarian crisis in Afghanistan is peaking with no basic amenities available for its population and a harsh winter ahead.
- While Pakistan hosted the OIC, India played host to foreign ministers of Central Asian states where Afghanistan topped the agenda as well.
- All the attending countries — Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Kyrgyzstan — also OIC members, chose to prioritise deliberations with New Delhi.
Qatar’s growing influence in Afghanistan and implications for the region
- Saudi Arabia, the UAE, and Pakistan were the only three countries that had officially recognised the previous Taliban government in 1996, until its fall in 2001.
- Fast forward to the 2010s, and it was the small but rich state of Qatar that became the mediating force on Afghanistan.
- Doha hosted the official Taliban political office from 2013 to allow negotiations with the U.S.
- Qatar’s new role on Afghanistan gave it significant diplomatic and political visibility the world over.
- In West Asia, Qatar’s growing influence was causing unease in the traditional power centres in Abu Dhabi and Riyadh, specifically on issues such as the Qatari leadership’s support for political Islam and organisations such as the Muslim Brotherhood.
Fundamental changes
- Economic blockade: In 2017 the UAE and Saudi Arabia initiated an economic blockade against Doha in the hope of reigning the Kingdom in and disallowing it from pursuing its geopolitical designs that were challenging the long-held power status quos.
- This four-year long impasse ended in 2021.
- These four years created fundamental changes within the larger Arab Gulf construct.
- Qatar mitigated risk and moved closer towards Turkey and Iran.
- Today, both Qatar and Turkey are bidding to operate a landlocked Afghanistan’s airports under the Taliban regime.
- For the Gulf specifically, Qatar’s punching-above-its-weight approach in geopolitics was also making it more powerful and influential with Washington D.C.
- To mitigate this, the Saudis played a central role during the recent OIC special session.
- They repaired their broken relationship with Pakistan.
Way forward for India
- Over the past decade, India has recognised the importance of middle powers in the Arab Gulf to a fast-evolving global order, from fighting against terrorism to newer diplomacy challenges such as Afghanistan.
Conclusion
The Arab Gulf is poised to become an important player once again in Afghanistan under the shadow of the Taliban.
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Note4Students
From UPSC perspective, the following things are important :
Prelims level: Not much
Mains level: Paper 2- Dealing with Covid
Context
The Government must make COVID-19 data including that for vaccine regulatory approvals and policy available.
Kay decisions
- On December 25, the Prime Minister of India announced two key decisions.
- Vaccination of children: All children in the 15-17 age bracket will be eligible to receive COVID-19 vaccines from January 3, 2022.
- Third shot: All health-care workers, frontline workers and the people aged 60 years and above (with co-morbidities and on the advice of a medical doctor) can get a third shot, or ‘precaution dose’.
- The eligibility for the precaution dose will be on the completion of nine months or 39 weeks after the second dose.
- Teenage children whose birth year is 2007 or before will be eligible for COVID-19 vaccines.
- Children will receive Covaxin, the reason being (according to the note) it is the only emergency use listed (EUL) World Health Organization vaccine available for use in this age group in India.
Issues with the decision
- Lack of scientific evidence: The decision is said to be based on ‘advice of the scientific community’.
- A few members of the National Technical Advisory Group on Immunisation (NTAGI) in India, have written or spoken publicly about not having enough scientific evidence to administer booster doses and vaccinate children in India.
- Successive national and State-level sero-surveys have reported that a majority of children in India had got natural infection, while staying at home and thus developed antibodies.
- The studies have shown that children rarely develop moderate to severe COVID-19 disease.
- Targeted vaccination approach not adopted: Most public health and vaccine experts favour a ‘targeted vaccination approach’ by prioritising high-risk children for COVID-19 vaccination.
- However, such an approach is likely to face an operational challenge in the identification of the eligible children.
- Consultation cost: A majority of the elderly have one or other comorbidities. Of the 14 crore elderly population in India, an estimated 7 to 10 crore people could have co-morbidities.
- If they have to seek advice from a physician, in order to get vaccinated, this essentially means that there would be up to 10 crore of medical consultations, which would come at a cost — all of which is avoidable.
Suggestions
- Do away with prescription: The conditionality of comorbidities and the need for advice/prescription by a doctor for ‘the precaution shot’ in the elderly should be done away with.
- Third dose to all immunocompromised adults: There is scientific evidence and consensus on administering the third dose for immunocompromised adults.
- The Indian government should urgently consider administering a third dose for all immunocompromised adults, irrespective of age.
- Third dose on a different vaccine platform: Studies have found that a heterologous prime-boost approach — third shot on a different vaccine platform — is a better approach.
- Identify policy questions: Various pending policy questions on COVID-19 vaccine need to be identified urgently.
- The technical expert should be given complete access to COVID-19 data for analysis and to find answers to those scientific and policy questions.
- Vaccine supply and stock management: Vaccination for teenage children, exclusively with Covaxin (which means 15 crore doses for this sub-group) has other implications.
- Covaxin will also be needed for people coming for their first shot, returning for their second shot, and then for their ‘precaution dose’ if a third shot of the same vaccine is allowed.
- Focus on primary vaccination: The precaution dose and vaccination for children should not divert attention from the task of primary vaccination, which continues to be an unfinished task in India; 46 crore doses are still needed for the first and second shots.
- Make data public: It is time the Union and State governments in India make COVID-19 data — this includes clinical outcomes, testing, genomic sequencing as well as vaccination — available in the public domain.
- This would help in formulating and updating COVID-19 policy and strategies and also assess the impact of ‘precaution dose’ as well as vaccination of children.
Conclusion
The Indian government urgently needs to make COVID-19 data available, including the one used for regulatory approvals of vaccines and for vaccine policy decisions. This will bring transparency in decision making and increase the trust of the citizen in the process.
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Note4Students
From UPSC perspective, the following things are important :
Prelims level: Not much
Mains level: Judicial Reforms
At least two Supreme Court judges have in the past few months openly expressed the need to “Indianize” the legal system.
What is the news?
- This week, Justice S. Abdul Nazeer underscored the need to embrace the great legal traditions as per Manu, Kautilya, Katyayana, Brihaspati, Narada, Parashara, Yajnavalkya and other legal giants of ancient India.
- Continued neglect of their great knowledge and adherence to alien colonial legal system is detrimental to the goals of our Constitution and against our national interests, he said.
- He emphasized the need for Indianization of the legal system to decolonize the Indian legal system.
- He concluded that this colonial legal system is not suitable for the Indian population.
Background of the case
Then CJI P.N. Bhagwati in the M.C. Mehta Case way back in 1986 has said that-
- We cannot allow our judicial thinking to be constricted by reference to the law as it prevails in England or for the matter of that in any other foreign country.
- We no longer need the crutches of a foreign legal order.
- We are certainly prepared to receive light from whatever source it comes from, but we have to build up our own jurisprudence.
Indianization of Judiciary
- Last month, CJI N.V. Ramana called for the “Indianization” of the legal system to provide greater access to justice to the poor as the “need of the hour”.
- CJI emphasized this as an adaptation to the practical realities of our society and localize our justice delivery systems.
- For example, parties from a rural place fighting a family dispute are usually made to feel out of place in the court, the CJI clarified.
Major suggestions by CJI:
(A) Simplification
- The simplification of justice delivery should be our pressing concern.
- It is crucial to make justice delivery more transparent, accessible and effective.
- Procedural barriers often undermine access to justice.
- The Chief Justice said both judges and lawyers have to create an environment which is comforting for the litigants and other stakeholders.
(B) Alternate dispute mechanisms
- The CJI said alternate dispute mechanisms like mediation and conciliation would go a long way in reducing pendency, unnecessary litigation and save resources.
Major suggestions by CJI:
(A) Simplification
- The simplification of justice delivery should be our pressing concern.
- It is crucial to make justice delivery more transparent, accessible and effective.
- Procedural barriers often undermine access to justice.
- The Chief Justice said both judges and lawyers have to create an environment that is comforting for the litigants and other stakeholders.
(B) Alternate dispute mechanisms
- The CJI said alternate dispute mechanisms like mediation and conciliation would go a long way in reducing pendency, unnecessary litigation and save resources.
Recent moves of Indianization
- Supreme Court judgments show that the Indian legal system had made an early start at consciously getting rid of the “crutches” of colonial influence.
(1) General principles laid by the SC
- The evolution of laws in India has been through legislation and the binding precedents of the Supreme Court under Article 141 of the Constitution.
- Article 142 of the Constitution of India deals with the Enforcement of decrees and orders of the Supreme Court.
(2) Public Interest Litigation
- The public interest litigation mechanism is truly Indian.
(3) Reference to Indian texts
- Several judgments since the 1980s refer to the works of Manu and Kautilya.
- In the privacy judgment, Justice S.A. Bobde (retired), referred to how “even in the ancient and religious texts of India, a well-developed sense of privacy is evident”.
- He mentions that Kautilya’s “Arthashastra prohibits entry into another’s house, without the owner’s consent”.
Issues with Ancient Texts
- In the Sabarimala Case, the court pointed to the Manusmriti to observe that in these “ancient religious texts and customs, menstruating women have been considered as polluting the surroundings”.
- It went on to hold that practices that legitimize menstrual taboos, due to notions of purity and pollution, limit the ability of menstruating women to attain the freedom of movement and the right of entry to places of worship.
Way forward
- It is time for courts to wake up from their colonial stupor and face the practical realities of Indian society.
- Rules and procedures of justice delivery should be made simple.
- The ordinary, poor, and rural Indian should not be scared of judges or the courts.
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Note4Students
From UPSC perspective, the following things are important :
Prelims level: IPO
Mains level: Not Much
The Securities & Exchange Board of India (SEBI) has approved amendments to a slew of regulations to tighten the Initial Public Offering (IPO) process and norms governing the utilization of IPO proceeds by promoters.
What is an IPO?
- Every company needs money to grow and expand.
- They do this by borrowing or by issuing shares.
- If the company decides to opt for the second route of issuing shares, it must invite public investors to buy its shares.
- This is its first public invitation in the stock market and is called the Initial Public Offering (IPO).
What does it mean for investors to buy shares?
- When one buys such shares, he/she makes an IPO investment.
- He/she gets ownership in the company, proportionate to the value of your shares.
- These shares then get listed on the stock exchange.
- The stock exchange is where you can sell your existing shares in the company or buy more.
How does an IPO work?
- The Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI) regulates the entire process of investment via an IPO in India.
- A company intending to issue shares through IPOs first registers with SEBI.
- SEBI scrutinizes the documents submitted, and only then approves them.
Who can hold IPOs?
- It could be a new, young company or an old company that decides to be listed on an exchange and hence goes public.
What are the recent regulations?
- In its board meeting, SEBI approved conditions for sale of shares by significant shareholders in the Offer-For-Sale (OFS) process via an IPO and has extended the lock-in period for anchor investors to 90 days.
- Shares offered for sale by shareholders with more than 20% of pre-issue shareholding of the issuer, should not exceed 50% of their holding.
- If they hold less than 20%, then the offer for sale should not exceed 10% of their holding of the issue.
- These changes are as per proposals recommended by SEBI’s Primary Market Advisory Committee.
Also read:
[Sansad TV] The IPO Boom
Try this question from CSP 2019:
Q.In India, which of the following review the independent regulators in sectors like telecommunications, insurance, electricity, etc.?
- Ad Hoc Committees set up by the Parliament
- Parliamentary Department Related Standing Committees
- Finance Commission
- Financial Sector Legislative Reforms Commission
- NITI Aayog
Select the correct answer using the code given below:
(a) 1 and 2
(b) 1, 3 and 4
(c) 3, 4 and 5
(d) 2 and 5
Post your answers here.
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Note4Students
From UPSC perspective, the following things are important :
Prelims level: Read the attached storyd
Mains level: Issues with role of Governor
Maharashtra Governor and the incumbent government are locked in a tussle over the election of the Speaker of the Assembly. The Governor has not given his consent to the election program decided by the Cabinet.
Election of Speakers to the Assembly
- Article 178 of the Constitution provides for every Legislative Assembly to choose two members of the Assembly to be respectively Speaker and Deputy Speaker.
- The Constitution does not specify the process of holding these elections; that is left to the state legislatures.
- It also does not set a timeframe other than to say the elections should be held “as soon as maybe”.
Some states lay down timeframes
- In Haryana, the election of the Speaker must be held as soon as possible after the Assembly election, and the Deputy Speaker must be elected within another seven days.
- In UP, the Speaker’s election is required to be held within 15 days if the post falls vacant during the term of the Assembly.
- The date for the Speaker’s election is notified by the Governor.
A crucial case in Maharashtra
- As per Rule 6 of the Maharashtra Legislative Assembly Rules, “The Governor shall fix a date for the holding of the election and the Secretary shall send to every member notice of the date so fixed.”
- A former Secretary of the state Assembly said the election of the Speaker can take place only after the Governor fixes the date for it.
What are the recent amendments?
- The govt has moved a motion in the Assembly seeking amendments to Rules 6 (election of Assembly Speaker) and 7 (election of Deputy Assembly Speaker) by voice vote instead of a secret ballot.
- The amendments excluded the words “holding of the election” and included the words “to elect the Speaker on the recommendation of the Chief Minister” in Rule 6 of Maharashtra Assembly Rules.
What are the objections to these amendments?
- The Opposition accused the govt of running the “most insecure government” that does not trust its MLAs and fears there would be cross-voting in the election of the Speaker.
- It argued that the Rules cannot be amended in the absence of the Speaker.
What is the government’s position?
- The government has argued that the amendments are in line with the Rules that are in practice in Lok Sabha, the Upper House of the state legislature, and in the Assemblies of several others states.
- It has also been said that the amendments would put an end to horse trading.
What is the way ahead?
- The govt can explore legal options to see whether the election of the Speaker could be held without the consent of the Governor.
- However, the situation is very odd.
- While Rule 6 mandates that the Governor should fix the date for the election, the amendment says that the Governor should fix the date on the advice on the CM.
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Note4Students
From UPSC perspective, the following things are important :
Prelims level: Konark Sun Temple
Mains level: Kalinga and other temple architecture
The Archaeological Survey of India is working on a preliminary roadmap to safely remove sand from the interiors of Odisha’s Sun Temple, which was filled up by the British 118 years ago to prevent it from collapsing.
Konark Sun Temple
- Konark Sun Temple is a 13th-century CE Sun temple at Konark about 36 kilometres northeast from Puri on the coastline of Odisha, India.
- The temple is attributed to king Narasinga Deva I of the Eastern Ganga Dynasty about 1250 CE.
- Declared a UNESCO world heritage site in 1984 it remains a major pilgrimage site for Hindus, who gather here every year for the Chandrabhaga Mela around the month of February.
Its architecture
- Dedicated to the Hindu Sun God Surya, what remains of the temple complex has the appearance of a 100-foot (30 m) high chariot with immense wheels and horses, all carved from stone.
- Its architecture has all the defining elements of the Kalinga architecture – it includes Shikhara (crown), Jagmohana (audience hall), Natmandir (dance hall), and Vimana (tower).
- Also called the Surya Devalaya, it is a classic illustration of the Odisha style of Architecture or Kalinga Architecture.
- Once over 200 feet (61 m) high, much of the temple is now in ruins, in particular the large shikara tower over the sanctuary; at one time this rose much higher than the mandapa that remains.
- The structures and elements that have survived are famed for their intricate artwork, iconography, and themes, including erotic kama and mithuna scenes.
- The Jagamohan is the only structure that is fully intact now.
Earlier restoration efforts
- It had been filled with sand and sealed by the British authorities in 1903 in order to stabilize the structure, a/c to ASI.
- The sand filled in over 100 years ago had settled, leading to a gap of about 17 feet.
- However, the structure was found to be stable.
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Note4Students
From UPSC perspective, the following things are important :
Prelims level: Apatani textile, GI tags
Mains level: Not Much
An application seeking a Geographical Indication (GI) tag for the Arunachal Pradesh Apatani textile product has been filed by a firm.
Apatani textile
- The Apatani weave comes from the Apatani tribe of Arunachal Pradesh living at Ziro, the headquarters of lower Subansiri district.
- The woven fabric of this tribe is known for its geometric and zigzag patterns and also for its angular designs.
- The community weaves its own textiles for various occasions, including rituals and cultural festivals.
- The tribe predominantly weaves shawls known as jig-jiro and jilan or jackets called supuntarii.
- The traditional handloom of this tribe is a type of loin loom, which is called Chichin, and is similar to the traditional handloom of the Nyishi tribe.
What makes it special?
- The people here use different leaves and plant resources for organic dying the cotton yarns in their traditional ways.
- Only women folk are engaged in weaving.
Answer this PYQ in the comment box:
Q.Which of the following has/have been accorded ‘Geographical Indication’ status?
- Banaras Brocades and Sarees
- Rajasthani Daal-Bati-Churma
- Tirupathi Laddu
Select the correct answer using the code given below:
(a) 1 only
(b) 2 and 3 only
(c) 1 and 3 only
(d) 1, 2 and 3
Post your answers here.
About Geographical Indication
- A GI is a sign used on products that have a specific geographical origin and possess qualities or a reputation that are due to that origin.
- Nodal Agency: Department for Promotion of Industry and Internal Trade (DPIIT), Ministry of Commerce and Industry
- India, as a member of the World Trade Organization (WTO), enacted the Geographical Indications of Goods (Registration and Protection) Act, 1999 w.e.f. September 2003.
- GIs have been defined under Article 22 (1) of the WTO Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) Agreement.
- GI is granted for a term of 10 years in India. As of today, more than 300 GI tags has been allocated so far in India (*Wikipedia).
- The tag stands valid for 10 years.
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Note4Students
From UPSC perspective, the following things are important :
Prelims level: Not much
Mains level: Paper 2- Aadhar-voter ID linking issue
Context
The Election Laws (Amendment) Bill, 2021 which facilitates amendment to the Representation of People’s Act, is a step toward implementing online-based remote e-voting for which the use of Aadhaar will be the primary identity.
Objectives of linking
- The linking of Aadhaar with one’s voter ID was primarily to build a biometric dependent voting system from the very beginning.
- The change could help fight fraud and duplicates in the electoral rolls.
About the pilot programmes on linking the voter id
- In 2014, the Election Commission of India (ECI) conducted two pilot programmes on linking the voter id with Aadhaar in the districts of Nizamabad and Hyderabad.
- Based on the effectiveness, the ECI called for a National Consultation on Aadhaar and voter id linking.
- The ECI launched the National Electoral Roll Purification and Authentication Programme (NERPAP) on April 1, 2015, which had to be completed by August 31, 2015.
- After a Supreme Court of India order on August 11, 2015, it was announced that this NERPAP would be shut down.
- But as Telangana and Andhra Pradesh were early adopters of this programme since 2014, both States have nearly completed linking Aadhaar and voter id for all residents.
- Methodology is unknown: The methodology followed by the ECI to find duplicate voters using Aadhaar is unknown to the general public.
- SRDH data used: In a letter from the CEO Andhra Pradesh (then for Telangana and Andhra Pradesh) to the ECI, it is clear that the State Resident Data Hub (SRDH) application of the Government of Telangana and Andhra Pradesh was used to curate electoral rolls.
- The SRDH has data on residents of the State which is supplied by the Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI) or collected further by the State governments.
- While the UIDAI was constrained not to collect data on caste, religion and other sensitive information data for Aadhaar, it recommended to the States to collect this information, if required, as part of Aadhaar data collection; it termed the process as Know Your Resident (KYR) and Know Your Resident Plus (KYR+).
- It is these SRDH applications that the ECI used to curate electoral rolls which resulted in the deletion of a sizeable number of voters from the list in Telangana in 2018.
Concerns
- Disenfranchisement: The role of the ECI to verify voters using door-to-door verification (in 2015) has been subsumed; a software algorithm commissioned by the Government for purposes unknown to the public and maintained by a private IT company is in control now.
- Subjecting key electoral rolls to surveillance software damages the concept of universal adult suffrage.
- What the experience in Telangana and Andhra Pradesh highlights is voter suppression and disenfranchisement.
- Issue of ensuring electoral integrity: In a situation where the role of money makes a mockery of the democratic process, linking Aadhaar will be futile.
- Electronic Voting Machines (EVMs), if foolproof, put an end to the days of booth capturing prevalent in the days of paper ballots.
- E-voting can also be gamed using malware to change the outcome of an election.
- While the Bill does not look into large-scale e-voting, there is an issue of ensuring electoral integrity.
- Voter profiling: An Aadhaar-voter ID linkage will also help political parties create voter profiles and influence the voting process.
- Online trends on the day of voting and micro-targeting voters using their data will make it easier for political parties in power to use data for elections.
Consider the question “What are the objectives of Aadhar-Voter Id linking? What are the concerns associated with such linking?”
Conclusion
The linking of Aadhaar with voter ID will create complexities in the voter databases that will be hard to fix. This process will introduce errors in electoral rolls and vastly impact India’s electoral democracy.
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Note4Students
From UPSC perspective, the following things are important :
Prelims level: EPR
Mains level: Paper 3- Regulations on EPR and issues with them
Context
In October, the Environment Ministry published draft regulations on Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR), set to come into effect by the end of this year. These regulations denote a backslide, particularly with respect to integration of the informal sector.
What is EPR?
- Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) requires the manufacturer of a product, or the party that introduces the product into the community, to take responsibility for its life cycle.
- An FMCG company should not only account for the costs of making, packing and distributing a packet of chips, but also for the collection and recycling/reuse of the packet.
Shortcomings in the guidelines
The guidelines fall short in three areas: people, plastics and processing.
[1] Integration of informal sector is lacking
- By failing to mention waste pickers or outlining mechanisms for their incorporation under EPR, the guidelines are retrogressive.
- For decades, waste pickers, working in dangerous and unsanitary conditions, have picked up what we throw away.
- Besides, by diverting waste towards recycling and reuse, waste pickers also subsidise local governments responsible for solid waste management.
- Further, they reduce the amount of waste accumulating in cities, water bodies and dumpsites and increase recycling and reuse, creating environmental and public health benefits.
- Between 1.5 and 4 million waste pickers in India work without social security, health insurance, minimum wages or basic protective gear.
- Suggestions: An effective EPR framework should address the issue of plastics and plastic waste management in tandem with the existing machinery, minimise duplication and lead to a positive environmental impact, with monitoring mechanisms including penalties for non-compliance.
- EPR funds could be deployed for mapping and registration of the informal sector actors, building their capacity, upgrading infrastructure, promoting technology transfer, and creating closed loop feedback and monitoring mechanisms.
[2] The scope of plastic covered need to be altered
- The EPR guidelines are limited to plastic packaging.
- There are other multi-material plastic items like sanitary pads, chappals, and polyester that pose a huge waste management challenge today, but have been left out of the scope of EPR.
- Three categories of plastic packaging: Plastic packaging can be roughly grouped into three categories: recyclable and effectively handled by the informal sector, technologically recyclable but not economically viable to recycle, technologically challenging to recycle (or non-recyclable).
- [1] Rigid plastics like PET and HDPE are effectively recycled.
- Suggestion: The government could support and strengthen the informal recycling chain by bridging gaps in adequate physical spaces, infrastructure, etc.
- [2] Typically flexible plastics like LDPE and PP bags are recyclable, but due to their contamination with organic waste, lightweight, and high volume, the costs of recycling are prohibitively expensive relative to the market value of the output.
- Suggestion: Market value for these plastics can be increased by increasing the demand for and use of recycled plastics in packaging, thus creating the value to accommodate the current costs of recycling.
- [3] Multi-layered and multi-material plastics are low weight and voluminous, making them expensive to handle and transport.
- Since they are primarily used in food packaging, they often attract rodents, making storage problematic.
- Even if this plastic is picked, recycling is technologically challenging as it is heterogeneous material.
- The Plastic Waste Management Rules mandated the phase-out of these plastics.
- However, in 2018, this mandate was reversed.
[3] Processing technologies need to be closely evaluated
- Not all processing is recycling.
- Processes like waste-to-energy, co-processing and incineration have been proven to release carbon dioxide, particulate matter, harmful dioxins and furans which have negative climate and health impacts.
- While the environmental impact and desirability of these processes continues to be debated, the draft regulations legitimise them to justify the continued production of multi-layered plastics.
- Technologies like chemical recycling and pyrolysis are capital-intensive, yielding low returns and running into frequent breakdowns and technological problems.
- They also release carbon dioxide and other pollutants.
- These end-of-life processes are economically, environmentally and operationally unsustainable.
- A number of gasification, pyrolysis and other chemical recycling projects have figured in accidents such as fires, explosions and financial losses.
Way forward
- Address issues of the informal sector: The consultation process should involve informal workers.
- Alter the scope of plastics covered: The scope of plastics covered by the guidelines could be altered to exclude those plastics which are already efficiently recycled and to include other plastic and multi-material items.
- Processing technologies should be closely evaluated: And end-of-life processing technologies should be closely evaluated, based not only on their health and environmental impacts, but also on the implications for continued production of low-quality and multi-layered plastics.
Consider the question ” The Environment Ministry published draft regulations on Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR). Examine the issues with the regulations and suggest the way forward”
Conclusion
In conclusion, the government should redo the consultation process for the draft guidelines.
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Note4Students
From UPSC perspective, the following things are important :
Prelims level: Not much
Mains level: Dowry deaths in India
Dowry death can be presumed if the wife was harassed, mentally and physically close before her death in the marital home, the Supreme Court has held.
Section 304B, IPC
- A Bench led by Chief Justice of India N.V. Ramana was interpreting Section 304B of the Indian Penal Code (dowry death).
- The provision mandates that the death of a married woman could be linked to the crime if she had been harassed for dowry “soon before her death”.
What is the recent judgment?
Ans. Bridges the gap between extreme Harassment and Death
- The cruelty has to be proved during the close proximity of time of death. It should be continuous.
- Such continuous harassment, physical or mental, by the accused should make life of the deceased miserable which may force her to commit suicide, ruled Justice Hima Kohli.
- The court said the expression “soon before her death” would normally imply that the interval should not be much between the cruelty or harassment concerned and the death in question.
- In other words, there exists a proximate and live link between the effect of cruelty based on dowry demand and the death concerned.
Other takeaways
- Frequent incidents of cruelty disturb the mental equilibrium of the women concerned, ruled the court.
- However, the presumption of dowry death was also rebuttable, observed the court.
Dowry System : A Backgrounder
- The dowry system in India incorporates payments in the form of capital, durable goods, real estate among others, made to the bridegroom from the family of the bride as a condition for marriage.
- The abuse for the demand for dowry can be in the form of verbal and the most serious can take the shape of death of the victim or dowry death.
Dowry Deaths in India
- Dowry deaths are deaths of married women who are murdered or driven to suicide by continuous harassment and torture by their husbands and in-laws.
- This is mainly over the demand of dowry, making the women’s homes the most dangerous place for them to be.
What numbers reveal?
- In 2020, reported dowry death cases in India amounted to nearly seven thousand.
- This was a gradual decrease from the 2014, in which this number was approximately 8.5 thousand.
Why is dowry so much prevalent?
- Bride pricing: There exists a system of “bride price”, whereby the family of the groom had to give some gifts to the family of the women before marriage.
- Property inheritance: Until its amendment in 2005, the Hindu Succession Act of 1956 was biased towards the male next of kin when it came to property inheritance. The amendment stated that women had the right to their parents’ property irrespective of being married.
- Financial dependency: In practice, the inheritance of the woman is socially imparted to her as dowry in marriage leading to financial dependence on the husband or the in-laws.
Factors contributing to its continuance
- Traditions and historicity: It has been a preconceived notion of the people that the dowry system has been existing since centuries back and it is quintessential to be followed by the two families.
- Social status associated with Dowry: It is a belief among people that dowry giving or receiving gives a lot of merit in reputation and honor within the society.
- Illiteracy: Although dowry is something that is even practiced by the literates of our society, it becomes a lot difficult to make them understand the laws.
- Bridegroom coercion: The demand for the well-earned bridegroom in prestigious workplaces often encourages brides families to pay hefty dowries leading to the continuance of such evil customs.
Legal measures against dowry
- Code of Criminal Procedure, 1973: Dowry death is a non-bailable offence and the person cannot be acquitted without court’s order.
- Dowry Prohibition Act of 1961: It was passed by the government which prohibits the giving or taking of dowry in India.
Dysfunctions created by the Dowry system
- Defamation: There have been many instances where these laws have been used to defame or slander one’s name.
- Fights for property inheritance: This go ugly when the girl involves into interfaith marriage. This often leads to honor killing.
Way forward
- The dignity, modesty and safety of women must be prioritized by all. Abusing them just for dowry or any other financial favour is a shameful act in itself.
- To prevent such heinous crimes stringent provisions and measures need to be undertaken by the government.
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Note4Students
From UPSC perspective, the following things are important :
Prelims level: Not much
Mains level: Left-Wing Extremism
Six Maoists including four women cadres were killed morning in an “exchange of fire” with a joint team of Telangana and Chhattisgarh police in Sukma district of Chhattisgarh.
What is Naxalism?
- The term ‘Naxal’ derives its name from the village Naxalbari of district Darjeeling in West Bengal, where the movement originated in 1967 under the leadership of Charu Majumdar and Kanu Sanyal.
- It refers to the use of violence to destabilize the state through various communist guerrilla groups.
- Naxalites are far-left radical communists who derive their political ideology from the teachings of Mao Zedong.
History and evolution
- Russian Revolution: Naxalism in India, like any other leftist movement around the globe draws its ideological basis from the Russian revolution.
- Overthrowing Tsarist Regime: Lenin successfully fought against the Czarist Rule through a combination of peasant movement and an armed struggle.
- Marxian ideology of class struggle: The prime intent was to bestow power in the hands of the exploited and marginalized and enforce societal control over governance and nation building.
- Neo-Marxism: After the success of the Lenin-led revolution in Russia, the intellectual class in many countries got inspired. Prominent amongst them were Fidel Castro and Mao Zedong.
Root cause of origin in India
- Corporate exploitation: Since Eastern India is rich in natural resources including forests, minerals and mines, tribal face exploitation and harassment from government and corporate bodies targeting to extract those resources.
- Tribal alienation: Tribal communities have been systematically alienated from their traditional rights over natural resources after independence.
- Livelihood losses: Tribal livelihood is at stake due to depletion of natural resource base.
- Forceful displacement: Forceful displacement from their homeland destroys their traditional governance system.
- Absence of governance: In such exploited areas, the absence of governance becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy since the delivery systems are extinguished through killings and intimidation.
- Foreign provocations: Many of LWE outfits are supported by external forces inimical to India and the Maoists consider such alliances as strategic assets.
Other factors:
- Oppression and HR violations by Security Forces e.g. AFSPA
- Violation of Constitutional Protections under PESA and FRA
- Prevalence of Acute Poverty
Impact of LWE
- Romanticism without a cause: Some sections of the society, especially the younger generation, have romantic illusions about the Maoists, arising out of an incomplete understanding of their ideology of Class –Struggle.
- Extreme violence: Their doctrine glorifies violence as the primary means to overwhelm the existing socio-economic and political structures.
- Destruction of governance mechanism: LWEs aims at creating a vacuum at the grassroots level of the existing governance structures by killing lower-level government officials, police personnel of the local police stations and the people’s representatives of the PRIs.
- Radicalization of youths: After creating a political and governance vacuum, they coerce the local population to join the movement.
- Urban-Maoism: Many extremists have facilitated mass-mobilization in semi-urban and urban areas through ostensibly democratic means often led by well-educated intellectuals.
Outcomes of perpetrating LWE
The Leftist organizations skilfully use state structures and legal processes to further the Maoist agenda and weaken the enforcement regime through:
- Recruitment of ‘professional revolutionaries’
- Raising funds for the insurgency
- Creating urban shelters for underground cadres
- Providing legal assistance to arrested cadres and
- Mass- mobilization by agitating over issues of relevance/ convenience
Govt initiatives for LWE affected areas
- Aspirational Districts: The MHA has been tasked with the monitoring of the Aspirational districts programme in 35 LWE affected districts.
- HRD measures: Building of schools under the Eklavya model.
- Road Connectivity Project for LWE affected areas (RRP-II): This aims for improving road connectivity in LWE affected States. Under this, 9279 km of roads and 392 bridges are sanctioned.
- Naxal Surrender Policy: It aims to wean away misguided youth and hardcore naxalites who have strayed into the fold of the naxal movement and cannot find a way back.
SAMADHAN doctrine: It encompasses the entire strategy of government from short-term policy to long-term policy formulated at different levels. SAMADHAN stands for-
- S- Smart Leadership
- A- Aggressive Strategy
- M- Motivation and Training
- A- Actionable Intelligence
- D- Dashboard Based KPIs (Key Performance Indicators) and KRAs (Key Result Areas)
- H- Harnessing Technology
- A- Action plan for each Theatre
- N- No access to Financing
Way forward
- Indian counterinsurgency has to work with a dual objective of defeating the insurgents militarily and fully quell the insurgent impulses. This will need institutional overhauls.
- States must do more to synergize their efforts by launching coordinated operations, thereby denying Maoists any space for maneuverability.
- On parallel grounds, it is also important to segregate the population from the insurgents both operationally and ideologically.
- The conflict over the distribution of resources can be mended with economic development.
With inputs from:
https://www.mha.gov.in/division_of_mha/left-wing-extremism-division
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