Interventions For Development

01-April-2022
The Hindu
Editorial
Discussion
Assam-
Meghalaya
accord
01-April-
2022
India-Nepal
ties
An opportunity to
repolish India-
Nepal ties
• GS PAPER II
• India and its
neighbourhood- relations.
An opportunity to repolish India-Nepal ties
▪ Prime Minister Sher Bahadur Deuba’s India visit should be used as a

chance to recast power and trade links
▪ Context ➔ The visit of Nepal’s Prime Minister Sher Bahadur Deuba to
India, beginning April 1 — four years after a Nepali leader visited New
Delhi — is significant.
▪ It is the first bilateral visit abroad for Mr. Deuba who leads an election
government; local elections are to take place on May 13 and federal
elections are slated later in the year.
▪ In April 2018, Nepal Prime Minister K.P. Sharma Oli had a lacklustre-feel
good visit to India, with little achievement worth talking about.
▪ Mr. Deuba assumed office in July 2021, his fifth time as Prime Minister,
leading a fragile coalition that has not been able to make Parliament
function.
▪ The Nepal Parliament has been dysfunctional since July 2020 after cracks
within the former Communist alliance developed in December 2019.
▪ The novel coronavirus pandemic has been a face-saving event for
political forces.
▪ Nepal’s relations with India, that plummeted to a historic low after the
Indian blockade in September 2015, have yet to recover as Nepalis do not
see relations with India improving any time soon.
▪ India’s refusal to accept demonetised bills with the Nepal Rastra Bank
worth just INR₹7 crore and the unknown fate of the report submitted by
the Eminent Persons Group (EPG) have not helped in securing it a better
image in Nepal.
▪ The fact that passengers boarding flights from Nepal to India are still
subjected to a pre-boarding security check even over 20 years after the
hijack of an Indian Airlines aircraft, determines the perception of trust of
India in Nepal.
▪ This is despite thousands of Nepalis serving in the Indian Army and
Nepali villages expressing grief whenever violence escalates in India as
many lose their lives defending a country that is not their own.
Complicated geopolitics
▪ Geopolitics is a complicated challenge for Nepal, whose geography

requires it to make best use of its position between China and India.
▪ The last couple of months are an example of how complicated it can get.
▪ When the Nepalese Parliament ratified a U.S.$500 million grant
assistance- Millennium Challenge Corporation (MCC) pact, there were
street protests and big-time social media campaigns supported by China.
▪ However, India’s silence and the offer of other routes for power
transmission as an alternative to the MCC confused everyone: was India
for or against the MCC grant to Nepal?
▪ With relations between India and the United States further complicated
by the China factor and India abstaining on the Russia vote in the United
Nations even as Nepal voted in favour of it, the problems have continued
to mount.
Complicated geopolitics
▪ The recent visit by the Chinese Foreign Minister, Wang Yi, to Nepal has
resulted in a situation that everyone in Nepal is trying to decipher.
▪ Analysts also suggest that Mr. Wang did assure his Indian counterpart
that Nepal should work out its internal equations with India and that
China would stay out.
▪ But in reality, the Chinese engagement has been very deep as seen in the
anti-MCC campaign.
▪ U.S. grant and investment activities are seeing a revival post the MCC
ratification and India does not want to see other powers active in Nepal.
▪ With Mr. Deuba leading a fragile coalition, there are not many issues he
may want to accomplish, but he should be able to push some of the key
pending ones.
The main priorities
▪ First, the power trade agreement needs to be such that India can build
trust in Nepal. Despite more renewable energy projects (solar) coming up
in India, hydropower is the only source that can manage peak demand in
India.
▪ For India, buying power from Nepal would mean managing peak
demand and also saving the billions of dollars of investments which
would have to be invested in building new power plants, many of which
would cause pollution.
▪ Second, while trade and transit arrangements go through the usual

extensions, it is time to undertake a complete rethink as the sales of
goods and payments moves through electronic platforms — this can
provide many new opportunities for businesses on both sides of the
border.
The main priorities
▪ Third, the Bilateral Investment Promotion and Protection Agreement

(BIPPA) signed between India and Nepal needs more attention from the
Nepali side.
▪ A commitment from Mr. Deuba on implementing this would attract more
foreign investments from Indian investors.
▪ The private sector in Nepal, especially the cartels in the garb of trade
associations, are fighting tooth and nail against foreign investments.
▪ So, it will be important for Mr. Deuba to deliver a message that Nepal
welcomes Indian investments and that he is willing to fight the domestic
cartels knowing well that it may dent a bit of funding for his party for
elections.
A new Nepal now
▪ Finally, it is for Mr. Deuba to provide the confidence that Nepal is keen to
work with India while at the same time making it clear that it cannot
take on India’s pressure to ignore China or the U.S. In the context of
Nepalis currently living in 180 countries, India must note that it is a new
Nepal it has to deal with from now.
▪ Perhaps there is hope that the situation can improve — in the

appointment of Dr. Shankar Sharma, a seasoned economist, who was also
Nepal’s Ambassador to the U.S., as Nepal’s Ambassador to India.
▪ He was responsible for recalibrating Nepal’s relations with the U.S.
Perhaps we can hope that India will engage with him more deeply
without the usual condescending attitude. Perhaps, an open moment has
arrived.
Assam-Meghalaya
border accord
• GS PAPER III
• Internal security related
issues.
Assam-Meghalaya border accord
▪ The agreement to resolve six disputed points along

the Assam-Meghalaya border is a model for others
▪ Tuesday’s agreement between Assam and
Meghalaya to end their boundary dispute in six of
the 12 areas, where discord persisted, is a welcome
first step.
▪ The agreement signed by Assam Chief Minister
Himanta Biswa Sarma and his Meghalaya
counterpart Conrad Sangma, in the presence of
Home Minister Amit Shah, also sets the stage to
resolve differences in the remaining six areas.
▪ Based on a draft resolution of January 29 between

the two States, the agreement covers Tarabari,
Gizang, Hahim, Boklapara, Khanapara-
Pillangkata and Ratacherra under the Kamrup,
Kamrup (Metro) and Cachar districts of Assam
and the West Khasi Hills, Ri-Bhoi and East Jaintia
Hills districts of Meghalaya.
▪ By adopting a give-and-take approach, the two States have

demonstrated that knotty boundary issues can be resolved — in this case,
partially to begin with — if there is a will to arrive at an agreement.
▪ Of the disputed territory — a little over 36 square kilometres — the two
States will get a near equal share, enshrining the sharing principle that
might serve as a template to resolve other boundary disputes in the
northeast.
▪ Assam, the mother State from which other States were carved out in the
northeast, currently has boundary disputes with Arunachal Pradesh,
Mizoram and Nagaland.
▪ As the Home Minister underscored in Delhi, the spirit shown by Mr. Sarma
and Mr. Sangma should be used in other disputes as well.
▪ People living in the six disputed areas should be allowed to choose where
they want to live.
▪ While Mr. Sarma has blamed the Congress for allowing the dispute
between Assam and Meghalaya to fester, Nandita Das, Congress MLA
from the Boko seat, alleged that in three of the six “resolved sectors”,
there was no give and take.
▪ The agreement requires delineation and demarcation by the Survey of
India as well as parliamentary approval.
▪ One can only hope that the right lessons will be drawn by Assam,
Arunachal Pradesh, Mizoram and Nagaland from Tuesday’s accord to
understand the other’s point of view and come to agreements.
▪ In July 2021, five policemen and a civilian from Assam were shot dead in
violent clashes with their Mizo counterparts at a disputed point between
Assam and Mizoram.
▪ The clash came right after a meeting that Mr. Shah had had with the
Chief Ministers of northeast States to resolve boundary disputes.
▪ It is imperative that Assam and the other States locked in dispute use
goodwill and the good offices of the Centre.
▪ Rather than entrusting security to paramilitary forces, one confidence-
building measure could be to deploy State police without arms wherever
possible.
▪ It would be a signal that all States are committed to resolving their

disputes peacefully.
▪ For the moment, Tuesday’s agreement is a moment to savour.
04-April-2022
The Hindu
Editorial
Discussion
Strategic
autonomy
04-April-
2022
When a man assumes a public trust, he should consider himself
as public property” – Thomas Jefferson.
Playing the
strategic autonomy
game
• GS PAPER II
• Effect of policies and
politics of developed and
developing countries on
India’s interests.
Playing the strategic autonomy game
▪ New Delhi should play its cards extremely well right now to invest in
future geopolitical dividends
▪ The Russian invasion of Ukraine has led to a flurry of diplomatic activity
in New Delhi: some visitors came to test the waters, some to discuss life
beyond Ukraine, some to seek solidarity, and some others to issue veiled
warnings.
▪ New Delhi has been forthcoming and patient.
▪ What, however, hasn’t gone down very well in India is the public
chastisement of its Russia policy i.e., the decision to continue its trade
with Russia and unwillingness to condemn Russian aggression.
▪ It appears that several visitors to New Delhi miss a crucial point: India is
not in Europe even if it shares, despite the occasional aberration, many of
the norms and values held dear by much of the international community.
▪ More importantly, notwithstanding the Indian diaspora in the West and
the warmth of people-to-people contacts, India is a post-colonial country
with understandable sensitivities about how Western interlocutors
engage the country.
▪ More so, it is unfair to ask a developing country fighting serious economic

hardships and recovering from the debilitating impact of COVID-19 not
to buy discounted Russian oil, especially when some of India’s critics are
still buying energy from Russia, discounted or not.
▪ Several Western policy commentators are aghast as to why India is
unwilling to endure some economic pain to send a loud and clear message
that it doesn’t not support territorial aggression by any country.
▪ The answer once again lies in the state of India’s economy, its need for
unrestricted supply of defence equipment, and its geopolitical location.
▪ There is little doubt that the Ukraine war will impact the Indian
economy, slowly perhaps but steadily for sure.
▪ Unfortunately for India, the sanctions on Russia have come at a time
when the Indian economy is still recovering from the impact of COVID-19.
The strawman arguments
▪ One of the arguments that is emphatically made by several of India’s

partners in the West is that the Russia-Ukraine war is a broader conflict
between democracies and non-democracies, and therefore India must
decide which side of the ideological divide it wants to be on.
▪ That is not just a baseless myth, but a dangerous trope that can plunge
the international community into another needless ideological rivalry.
▪ This is not something that New Delhi should get caught in. Russia’s
military aggression is unjustified, and India’s decision to abstain from
condemning Russia is based on a geopolitical rationale (just like India did
not condemn the American invasion of Iraq in 2003); it has nothing to do
with India being any less of a democracy.
The strawman arguments
▪ The second argument is that Russia is unlikely to help India in a future

conflict with China.
▪ This argument is not without merit, but then again, it misses the point.
▪ Russia may not help India against China in the longer run, but India
certainly cannot afford to have yet another unfriendly country in an
otherwise deeply unfriendly region.
▪ And that is sound strategic rationale for not alienating Russia.
▪ This argument also implies that the West may not stand by India when it
comes to China if India doesn’t stand by them today.
▪ This argument overlooks the reality that China is a challenge to the U.S.
as well as to India, albeit in varying degrees.
▪ India needs the assistance of its partners to meet the China challenge, but
this is hardly a one-way street.
Charms of the swing state
▪ This is also India’s big power moment.

▪ The fact that both the opposing sides in this war are rushing their senior
interlocutors to New Delhi to woo India also shows that India is the most
sought-after swing state in the contemporary international system, a role
it has played well so far.
▪ Despite being in an adversarial relationship with India, China sees merit
in reaching out to India to convince the latter to move on with business as
usual notwithstanding what it did to India in 2020.
▪ China sees the Ukraine war as an opportunity to construct an anti-

American world order by forging some regional unity.
▪ This at least partly explains Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi’s recent
visit to South Asia.
▪ Then came Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, the only recent visitor
to have managed a personal meeting with the Indian Prime Minister.
▪ The meeting is also a clear indication of the Indian leadership’s intent not
to abandon Moscow, at least not yet.
▪ The U.S. is also keen to retain India in its fold.

▪ For sure, it doesn’t want to lose the exceptional gains it has made with
India over the past two decades.
▪ The visitors from the U.K. and Germany also want New Delhi on their
side.
▪ New Delhi may indeed be on their side, but not in the manner they would
like India to be.
▪ By refusing to fully ally with either side and yet maintaining good
relations with both, New Delhi may have finally experimented with the
tenets of strategic autonomy that it has long professed but struggled to
practice.
▪ Contemporary Indian diplomacy is a textbook example of a swing state
that refuses to swing either way.
Between the present and future
▪ Yet, there is a time to be a swing state, and a time to think beyond it.
▪ There is little doubt that the war will quicken the fundamental
transformations that Asian geopolitics was already undergoing.
▪ Southern Asia’s continental geopolitics is now China-centric.
▪ It is only a matter of time before the rest of the Asian region becomes
China-centric as well.
▪ The U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan, its current focus on Russia and
Ukraine, the further weakening of Russia, and Beijing’s proactive
outreach to the region with money and muscle will eventually lead to the
end of Indian primacy in the region and the rise of a China-centric Asian
geopolitical order.
▪ When the Ukraine war is done and dusted, India will be relegated to a
weaker position in the region that it was before the war began.
▪ The current adrenaline rush in New Delhi of being a swing state courted
by various powerful suitors will eventually fade away.
▪ That is the harsh reality of geopolitics.
▪ That is precisely why New Delhi should play its cards extremely well right
now to invest in future geopolitical dividends.
▪ Decision-makers in New Delhi will have to go back to the drawing board
and create long-term plans to engage the region, including China, and
the international community.
▪ Put differently, New Delhi will need to keep in mind its long-term
objectives even during the delicate balancing that it is doing today.
▪ Ideally, in the longer run, India would like to have both the West and
Russia on its side.
▪ But given how this war is unfolding and the manner in which Beijing is
making its moves, New Delhi may indeed find it harder than ever to
manage the growing contradictions between the West and Russia.
▪ Geopolitical choices are almost never black and white, nor are they
always readily available.
▪ Sometimes, therefore, states must proactively try to shape the
environment to generate new options.
▪ It is New Delhi’s turn to do so.
Building faith in
India’s investigative
agencies
• GS PAPER II
• Governance, Transparency
& Accountability.
Building faith in India’s investigative agencies
▪ An independent umbrella body that brings the various agencies under

one roof holds the key to shoring up their credibility
▪ The image of the institution of police is regrettably tarnished by
allegations of corruption, police excesses, lack of impartiality and close
nexus with the political class.
Police and investigation agencies need social legitimacy
▪ The police and investigative agencies may have de-facto legitimacy, but
as institutions, they are yet to gain social legitimacy.
▪ Police should work impartially and focus on crime prevention. They
should also work in cooperation with the public to ensure law and order.
▪ The CBI possessed immense trust of the public in its initial phase.
▪ But with the passage of time, like every other institution of repute, the
CBI has also come under deep public scrutiny.
▪ The need of the hour is to reclaim social legitimacy and public trust.
Issues affecting the system and causing delay in trial
▪ Lack of infrastructure, lack of sufficient manpower, inhuman conditions,

especially at the lowest rung, lack of modern equipment, questionable
methods of procuring evidence, officers failing to abide by the rule book
and the lack of accountability of erring officers.
▪ Then there are certain issues that lead to delays in trials.
▪ They are: Lack of public prosecutors and standing counsels, seeking
adjournments, arraying hundreds of witnesses and filing voluminous
documents in pending trials, undue imprisonment of undertrials, change
in priorities with the change in the political executive, cherry-picking of
the evidence, and repeated transfers of officers leading to a change in the
direction of the investigation.
Way forward
▪ Break the nexus with political executive: The first step to reclaim social
legitimacy and public trust.is to break the nexus with the political
executive.
▪ Reform of the police system is long overdue in our country.
▪ The Ministry of Home Affairs has itself recognised the glaring need for the
same in the “Status Note on Police Reforms in India”.
▪ Comprehensive law: Our investigative agencies still do not have the
benefit of being guided by a comprehensive law.
▪ Independent and autonomous investigative agency: The need of the hour
is the creation of an independent and autonomous investigative agency.
▪ Umbrella organisation: There is an immediate requirement for the
creation of an independent umbrella institution, so as to bring various
agencies like the CBI, SFIO, and ED under one roof.
Way forward
▪ This body is required to be created under a statute, clearly defining its

powers, functions and jurisdictions.
▪ Such a law will also lead to much-needed legislative oversight.
▪ Separation of prosecution and investigation: One additional safeguard
that needs to be built into the scheme, is to have separate and
autonomous wings for prosecution and investigation, in order to ensure
total independence.
▪ Annual audit of performance: A provision in the proposed law for an
annual audit of the performance of the institution by the appointing
committee will be a reasonable check and balance.
▪ Strengthening state investigative agencies: There is no reason why state
investigative agencies, which handle most of the investigations, cannot
enjoy the same level of credibility as that of the national agency.
Way forward
▪ The proposed Central law for the umbrella investigative body can be
suitably replicated by the states.
▪ Ensure women’s representation: An issue that needs addressing at this
stage is the representation of women in the criminal justice system.
▪ Often, women feel deterred in reporting certain offences due to a lack of
representation.
▪ Relations with community: Relations between the community and police
also need to be fixed.
▪ This is only possible if police training includes sensitisation workshops and
interactions to inspire public confidence.
Conclusion
▪ It is imperative for the police and the public to work together to create a
safe society.
▪ Ultimately the police must remember that their allegiance must be to the
Constitution and the rule of law and not to any person.
The Indian Antarctic Bill
introduced in Lok Sabha
• GS PAPER II
• Government policies and
interventions for
development in various
sectors and issues arising
out of their design and
implementation.
The Indian Antarctic Bill introduced in Lok Sabha
▪ The draft bill is the first domestic legislation

with regard to Antarctica in India.
▪ Nearly 40 years after India first signed the
Antarctic Treaty, the government has
brought in a draft Indian Antarctic Bill,
2020.
▪ Earth Sciences Minister Dr Jitender Singh
tabled the draft Bill in Lok Sabha on Friday.
What is the Antarctica Bill?
▪ The draft bill is the first domestic legislation with regard to Antarctica in
India.
▪ Twenty-seven countries including Argentina, Australia, Belarus, Belgium,
Canada, Chile, Columbia, Finland, France, Germany, Italy, Japan,
Republic of Korea, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Peru, Russian
Federation, South Africa, Spain, Sweden, Turkey, Ukraine, United
Kingdom, United States of America, Uruguay and Venezuela already
have domestic legislations on Antarctica.
▪ Many others, such as India, are now following suit.
▪ While India has been sending expeditions to Antarctica for the past 40
years, these expeditions have been circumscribed by international law.
▪ The Bill now puts into place a comprehensive list of regulations related to
Antarctica, for such scientific expeditions, as well as for individuals,
companies and tourists.
▪ The Ministry has explained that it expects activity in Antarctica to

increase in the coming years, making the enforcement of a domestic set
of protocols essential.
▪ A domestic legislation will further provide more validity to the Antarctic

Treaty, and subsequent protocols, of which India is a signatory.
▪ The most significant part of the Bill is extending the jurisdiction of Indian
courts to Antarctica, for crimes on the continent by Indian citizens, or
foreign citizens who are a part of Indian expeditions.
▪ So far there was no recourse for crimes committed during an expedition,
including crimes against the environment.
What is the Antarctica Treaty?
▪ The Antarctic Treaty was signed in 1959 by 12 countries — Argentina,

Australia, Belgium, Chile, French Republic, Japan, New Zealand, Norway,
Union of South Africa, USSR, the UK of Great Britain and Northern Ireland
and the US of America, and came into force in 1961.
▪ The Treaty covers the area south of 60°S latitude.
▪ The objectives of the treaty are to demilitarize Antarctica and establish it

as a zone used for peaceful research activities and to set aside any
disputes regarding territorial sovereignty, thereby ensuring international
cooperation.
▪ Currently, 54 nations are signatories to the Antarctic Treaty, but only 29

nations have a right to vote at the Antarctic Treaty Consultative
Meetings – this includes India.
▪ India signed the Antarctic Treaty in 1983 and received consultative status
the same year.
▪ The Convention on the Conservation of Antarctic Marine Living Resources

(CCAMLR) was set up in 1980 for the protection and preservation of the
Antarctic environment and, in particular, for the preservation and
conservation of marine living resources in Antarctica.
▪ The Protocol on Environmental Protection to the Antarctic Treaty was

signed in 1991 and came into force in 1998.
▪ It designates Antarctica as a “natural reserve, devoted to peace and
science”.
What are the main provisions of the Bill?
▪ While the most significant provision of the Bill remains the extending of
jurisdiction of Indian courts to Antarctica, and the investigation and trial
for crimes committed on the Arctic continent, the Bill is a comprehensive
document of regulations, particularly keeping in mind environmental
protection and the fragile nature of the region.
▪ The Bill introduces an elaborate permit system for any expedition or

individual who wishes to visit the continent.
▪ These permits will be issued by a Committee that will be set up by the
government.
▪ The Committee will comprise of the Secretary Earth Sciences ministry and
will also have officials from Defence, Ministry of External Affairs, Finance,
Fisheries, Legal Affairs, Science and Technology, Shipping, Tourism,
Environment, Communication and Space ministries along with a member
from the National Centre for Polar and Ocean Research and National
Security Council Secretariat and experts on Antarctica.
▪ The permits can be cancelled by the Committee if deficiencies are found

or activities in contravention of the law are detected.
▪ While India does not carry out commercial fishing in the area, since every
country has an allotted quota, the Bill now provides for this activity.
▪ However, strict guidelines are in place in accordance with international
law.
▪ Like fishing, while India does not carry out any tourism activity in the
region, and very few Indian tourists visit Antarctica, when they do, they
do so through foreign tour operators.
▪ Antarctica receives a number of tourists from foreign countries.
▪ The Bill now enables Indian tour operators to operate in Antarctica,
although, like for commercial fishing, this is circumscribed by strict
regulations.
▪ The Bill further enlists elaborate standards for environmental protection

as well as waste management.
What are the prohibitions?
▪ The Bill prohibits drilling, dredging, excavation or collection of mineral

resources or even doing anything to identify where such mineral deposits
occur — the only exception is for scientific research with a granted permit.
▪ Damaging of native plants, flying or landing helicopters or operating

vessels that could disturb birds and seals, using firearms that could
disturb the birds and animals, remove soil or any biological material
native to Antarctica, engage in any activity that could adversely change
the habitat of birds and animals, kill, injure or capture any bird or
animal have been strictly prohibited.
What are the prohibitions?
▪ The introduction of animals, birds, plants or microscopic organisms that

are not native to Antarctica are also prohibited.
▪ Extraction of species for scientific research needs to be done through a
permit.
▪ The central government can also appoint an officer to carry out
inspections.
What is the penalty system that has been introduced?
▪ The draft Bill proposes the setting up of a separate designated court to

try crimes committed in Antarctica.
▪ The Bill further sets high penal provisions — the lowest penalty
comprising an imprisonment between one-two years and a penalty of Rs
10-50 lakh.
▪ Extraction of any species native to Antarctica, or introduction of an exotic
species to the continent can draw imprisonment of seven years and a fine
of Rs 50 lakh.
05-April-2022
The Hindu
Editorial
Discussion
Autism
spectrum
05-April-
2022
Policy needle
migrant
support
•“I don’t know in what weapons the world war three will be fought, but
forth world war will be fought only through sticks and stones” – Albert
Einstein.
The India-
Australia trade
agreement
05-April-
2022
Push the policy
needle forward on
migrant support
• GS PAPER II
interventions for
sectors and issues arising out
of their design and
implementation.
Push the policy needle forward on migrant support
▪ Context ➔ Only two years ago, in the wake of a nationwide lockdown,

India was left shocked by the plight of migrant workers walking
hundreds of kilometres, facing hunger, exhaustion and violence, to get to
the safety of their home villages.
▪ The dire circumstances of the migrants tugged at our collective
heartstrings.
▪ They became the focus of large-scale relief efforts by governments and
civil society alike.
▪ The Government ramped up the One Nation One Ration Card (ONORC)
project, announced the Affordable Rental Housing Complexes (ARHC)
scheme, set up the e-Shram portal and began to draft a migration policy.
Push the policy needle forward on migrant support
▪ These initiatives generated hope that the migrant crisis of 2020 would be
a turning point, setting India firmly on a policy path by offering
adequate citizenship and the accompanying social, economic and
political rights to internal migrants.
Still a tale of distress
▪ Two years on, migrant distress has disappeared from our television
screens but continues to be a lived reality.
▪ Repeated surveys have found that the incomes of migrant households
continue to be lower than pre-pandemic levels, even after returning to
cities.
▪ Migrants are finding less work and their children eating less.
▪ The post-1991 poverty alleviation of almost 300 million Indians, driven by
migration out of farm work, is being undone.
▪ Despite this, a cohesive migration policy guidance remains elusive.
▪ Instead, disconnected policy initiatives and technocratic fixes chase
specific agendas while nativism re-asserts itself through domicile quotas
and reservations.
Still a tale of distress
▪ The agenda of migrant inclusion has been pushed to the periphery of our
collective consciousness.
▪ This is not something India can afford to precipitate.

▪ Today, a third of the nation’s workforce is mobile. Migrants fuel critical
sectors such as manufacturing, construction, hospitality, logistics and
commercial agriculture.
▪ Despite clear economic and humanitarian reasoning to bring migrants
back into the policy discourse, the current policy scenario is at best
fragmented and at worst waning.
▪ To course correct, we must recognise the entrenched structural constraints
slowing the migration policy momentum and take strategic steps to push
the policy needle forward.
A politicised phenomenon
▪ First, we must recognise that migration is a highly politicised

phenomenon in India.
▪ States are highly influenced by the political economy of migration.
▪ ‘Destination States’ experience a tension between economic needs, which
require migrant labour, and political needs, which promote nativist
policies that impose domicile restrictions on employment and social
security.
▪ On the flip side, the ‘sending States’ are highly motivated to serve their
“own people” because they vote in their source villages.
▪ This fragmented policy response to internal migration follows from State-
specific calculations on what political dividends might be reaped (or lost)
by investing fiscal and administrative resources towards migrants.
▪ Moreover, development policy in India has bet big on rural development

as an antidote to migration.
▪ This widespread ‘sedentary bias’ continues to influence policy even
though migration is an important pathway for impoverished
marginalised rural households to find economic security (and social
emancipation).
▪ Second, migrants are a perennially fuzzy category in policy discourse,

located inside two larger categories that have long troubled
policymakers: the unorganised worker and the urban poor.
▪ Even the e-Shram portal, which has made impressive progress in
registering unorganised workers, has been unable to accurately
distinguish and target migrants. Policy interventions in major urban
destinations continue to conflate the urban poor with low-income
migrants.
▪ Hence, slum development continues as the primary medium for
alleviating migrant concerns, while in reality, most migrants live on
worksites that are entirely out of the policy gaze.
▪ There seems to be an implicit assumption in the policy circles: if we cannot
solve the problems of informality, how can we help migrants?
▪ Further, it is assumed that migrants will be automatically catered to with

the formalisation of the economy, the labour market, the housing
market, finance and so on.
▪ This pushes the timeline for addressing the migrant issue far out. It is no
longer an urgent priority.
Gaps in the data
▪ Third, migration policy discourse is seemingly paralysed by the now well-

acknowledged failure of official datasets to capture the actual scale and
the frequency of internal migration in India.
▪ Data systems designed to periodically record only one spatial location
have posed great challenges to welfare delivery for up to 500 million
people who are part of multi-locational migrant households.
▪ The novel coronavirus pandemic has placed a sharp focus on problems
such as educating and vaccinating those children who accompany their
migrant parents, or ensuring that migrant women avail maternity
benefits at multiple locations.
Gaps in the data
▪ Policy in India often emerges from the ground up, taking decades to
cement into national law and standard practice.
▪ We have seen this in education and food security.
▪ In migration too, despite the structural constraints outlined above, it is
heartening to see many initiatives on the ground that have immense
potential to influence strategic shifts in migration policy.
▪ For example, many States have initiated data projects that can track
migrants and generate dynamic real-time data that aid welfare
delivery.
▪ Maharashtra’s Migration Tracking System (MTS), which focuses on women
and children has been successfully piloted in five districts.
Gaps in the data
▪ Chhattisgarh’s State Migrant Workers Policy is premised on registering

migrant workers at source and tracking them through phone-based
outreach systems.
Gaps in the data
▪ In States, a heightened awareness about migrants’ issues is locating

initiatives in departments other than labour, which has traditionally
been the nodal department for migrant welfare.
▪ For example, Maharashtra’s MTS is located within the Women and Child
Development Department.
▪ However, there is further need for multisectoral approaches underpinned
by a strategic convergence across government departments and
initiatives.
▪ Odisha’s Planning and Convergence Department, which offers an
institutional mechanism for inter-departmental coordination, is one
possible model.
The Centre has a lead role
▪ In this scenario of well-meaning but scattered experimentation, migrants

would be well served if the Centre played a proactive role by offering
strategic policy guidance and a platform for inter-State coordination.
▪ State-level political economy constraints make the Centre’s role
particularly crucial in addressing issues of inter-State migrant workers at
‘destination States’.
▪ The NITI Aayog’s Draft Policy on Migrant Workers is a positive step
forward in articulating policy priorities and indicating suitable
institutional frameworks, and deserves a speedy release.
The Centre has a lead role
▪ At a time when economic recovery and inclusive growth are urgent policy
goals, migration policy can hardly afford to gestate.
▪ Strategic initiatives to provide migrants safety nets regardless of location
as well as bolster their ability to migrate safely and affordably must keep
up the momentum towards migrant-supportive policy.
Better early than
late
• GS PAPER II
• Issues related to health.
Better early than late
▪ Children on the autism spectrum who have been part of early

intervention programmes have shown great progress
▪ Sameeran had not begun to speak by the age of two.
▪ He was restless and had to be called multiple times before he responded
to his name. He would gaze at the moving fan for long periods and get
upset if it was switched off.
▪ Sameeran’s mother was worried, but her husband brushed aside her
concerns. Sameeran’s mother, however, decided to get him assessed.
▪ Sameeran’s diagnosis turned out to be autism. Speech and occupational
therapy were initiated immediately, along with supportive education.
▪ Today, Sameeran is seven and has few traces of the autistic features.
Better early than late
▪ He has integrated into a mainstream school and while challenges still

arise, he has been making steady progress.
▪ The early intervention provided Sameeran the skills necessary to cope
with his challenges.
What is early intervention?
▪ The set of services towards identification, assessment and a multi-

pronged therapeutic approach to disabling conditions in the 0-3 age
group is referred to as early intervention.
▪ While physical disabilities are evident from birth, intellectual disabilities
take time to manifest.
▪ Autism Spectrum Disorder leads the list.
▪ Autism is a condition related to brain development that impacts how a
person perceives others and socialises with them, causing problems in
social interaction and communication.
▪ It also includes limited and repetitive patterns of behavior.
▪ The term ‘spectrum’ in Autism Spectrum Disorder refers to the range of
symptoms and severity.
▪ Early intervention programmes take advantage of neural plasticity or

the ability of the brain to mould itself to stimuli.
▪ The greatest changes as a result of intervention are observed in the ages
0-3.
▪ This is not to say that programmes beyond this age are not effective, but
they take more effort and time.
▪ There are many signs that parents can look out for.
▪ The child may exhibit some or many of them: The child does not smile at
the parent or return their smile. She avoids eye contact.
▪ She neither uses gestures nor imitates actions.
▪ She does not look at the parent when her name is called even though she
can hear her name being called. She shows no interest in playing with
other children.
▪ She lines up her toys instead of playing with them.
▪ She does not share any of her interests with the parent, nor follows when
the parent points out something.
▪ She seems attached to objects rather than people.
▪ She loves gazing at moving objects, lost in thought for long periods.
▪ She hates anything sticky, but may love to play with water and pour it
over herself.
▪ She resists eating certain foods, does not like to touch rice with her fingers
and takes a long time to finish her meal. She gets upset if her routine is
changed and wants things in the same place/order every time.
▪ She repeats words or phrases she hears on TV or in videos instead of ‘real
communication’.
▪ She does not communicate her needs or respond when asked a question;
she repeats the question instead of answering. She finds it hard to fall
asleep or has a disturbed pattern of sleep.
▪ The three big challenges to early intervention are parental ignorance; an

unwillingness to accept facts; and social stigma attached to seeking
specialised services.
▪ The following are the comments we often encounter.
▪ One: “Speech delays run in our family; she will catch up.” The fact is that
this is a myth and the parent will only be losing time.
▪ Two: “She has no siblings and our apartment has no children she can play
with.” The fact is that even if she had siblings, she would need some help.
▪ Three: “She loves gadgets; she eats better when she has the phone.” The
fact is that gadgets affect sleep and exacerbate the uneven skill
acquisition seen in children on the spectrum.
▪ Four: “Put her in playschool, she will be fine.” The child may not have the
skills to initiate social interactions.
▪ Five: “What will people think?” What your child needs is more important
than what others think.
An integrated approach
▪ Paediatricians are the first point of contact.

▪ A vigilant practitioner can pick up the red flags as early as 18 months.
▪ The child should be assessed by a team comprising an occupational
therapist, special educator, speech therapist and physiotherapist.
▪ A plan of action should be put in place. Communication within the team
is of critical importance in helping the child.
▪ The child should receive a combination of therapy and special education
for one to two hours every day.
▪ Parents need to be educated on home plans and in dealing with the
condition and behaviour of the child.
▪ Sometimes, the extended family also needs to be counselled on how to
provide the right environment to nurture the child.
An integrated approach
▪ Children who have been part of early intervention programmes have

shown remarkable progress, and the process of their integration with the
mainstream has been faster.
▪ A programme that prevents disabling conditions is better than one that
tries to mitigate the effects once disability has set in.
07-April-2022
The Hindu
Editorial
Discussion
Mission India-
Vatsalya Australia
ties
07-April-
2022
Caged parrot
Mullaper - CBI
iyar dam
A candid
conversation about
the ‘caged parrot’
• GS PAPER II
• Statutory, regulatory and
various quasi-judicial
bodies.
A candid conversation about the ‘caged parrot’
▪ If the CBI is to tread the path of virtue, it should have a strong leader
with a distinct belief in the law and ethics
▪ The Chief Justice of India (CJI), Justice N.V. Ramana, must be lauded for
his candid appraisal recently of the pathetic state of India’s investigating
agencies.
▪ Last week in Delhi, while delivering the annual (and the 19th edition)
D.P. Kohli Memorial Talk organised by the Central Bureau of
Investigation (CBI), the CJI minced no words in condemning the utter
subordination of agencies to the executive and its disastrous consequences
for the cause of justice.
A candid conversation about the ‘caged parrot’
▪ D.P. Kohli was the first Director of the CBI after the agency was renamed
the CBI in 1963 from the earlier Special Police Establishment.
▪ A man of impeccable character, he was faceless and fearless, and a model
to be emulated by his successors.
Judiciary’s gaze is crucial
▪ The CJI has not said anything new at the lecture that we in India do not
already know.
▪ But coming as it did from the head of the Indian judiciary, his stern
warning that investigating agencies will pay a heavy price for their utter
willingness to stoop to please politicians should be taken seriously by all
outfits, especially the CBI, which has had a patchy record with regard to
political interference in sensitive investigations.
▪ The CJI called upon investigators to stand up to unethical pressures in
order not to betray the trust reposed in them by the public.
▪ He even dropped a hint that if middle- and senior-level investigators
deviated from the path of objectivity and neutrality, they would pay for
it dearly.
Judiciary’s gaze is crucial
▪ We have already seen how the Supreme Court of India and High Courts
have often admonished investigators for their sloppiness and deviation
from ethics.
▪ Therefore, we need a strong Supreme Court and equally strong High
Courts to keep our investigators on the straight and narrow path.
Some change
▪ There is no denying the fact that the CBI has been grossly misused by
successive governments.
▪ This is why in December 1997, another fearless judge, Justice J.S. Verma
had lambasted the then CBI Director in the so-called Hawala case,
rebuking him for stalling the investigation at will, thereby sending
inappropriate signals to his subordinates in the crucial investigation.
Some change
▪ Justice Verma was so provoked by state of affairs that he went on to

prescribe a new clinical procedure for the selection of the CBI chief, giving
him also a much needed and fixed tenure of two years during which he
could not be removed by the government.
▪ It may not be an exaggeration to say that earlier, CBI Directors were
changed at will almost like how one would wear new garments every
day.
▪ This mandatory tenure was meant to insulate the CBI Director from the
caprice of the executive.
▪ This process has since been expanded to include the CJI in the selection
panel.
Some change
▪ It will be incorrect to assert that all this has transformed the CBI into an
apolitical and objective body.
▪ Meticulous supervision by the Supreme Court in some important cases has
made more than a marginal difference to the honesty of investigation.
▪ There is palpable fear among CBI officers that the judiciary could
intervene were an aggrieved person to prove that an investigator had
been arbitrary and dishonest.
▪ It will be unfair to the CBI to say that its investigation has not acquired
any greater uprightness than before even after the many reprimands it
had received from the higher judiciary.
▪ My view is also that the allegation of political interference has been
blown out of proportion, because only about 10% of cases handled by the
CBI have political overtones.
A bright spot and lows
▪ The CBI now has some of the brightest Indian Police Service officers in its
higher echelons.
▪ None of them may be expected to be reckless and sacrifice their careers
by bending to unethical pressures from their Director or from the
government’s echelons.
▪ However, it is not enough if the middle-rung supervisors alone are
straightforward.
▪ There needs to be a strong and virtuous leader who will not only be
honest but also stick his neck out to protect his deputies if and when
confronted by an unscrupulous political heavyweight.
▪ If the CBI has to tread the path of virtue, it should have the strongest
leader with a distinct belief in the law and ethics.
▪ Unfortunately, in recent years, at least two Directors brought ignominy to

the CBI.
▪ This has proved that whatever the courts may do to enforce discipline
and adherence to the law, there are the odd leaders who could subvert
the system.
▪ Little can be done to move away from this unfortunate situation unless
there are bold and enlightened persons heading investigation agencies,
and who will be firm with the executive if it tries to intimidate junior
officers.
▪ My own experience is that if one stands up and explains to a Prime

Minister why a particular course of action suggested by a junior Minister
or someone in the ruling party was unacceptable, then one has shown the
right path to one’s subordinates within the organisation.
▪ It is equally true that a Prime Minister will support you nine times out of
10 if you present your view in a rational and reasonable manner.
▪ If a Director is unable to display even this element of courage he should
not be heading the organisation.
▪ If this honest approach to investigation does not get fused internally,
mere tinkering with the criminal law and the procedure to appoint heads
of important criminal justice organisations will be of no avail.
▪ It is not that the CJI and the other judges are unaware of some
investigating officers swerving from the right path at the instance of a
small-time politician.
▪ But they are helpless in their efforts to stem the rot because many in the
higher judiciary do not want to exceed their brief and upset things.
▪ There have also been some big fish who have been caught in the net of
investigators — a former Chief Minister of Bihar and a former Home
Minister of Maharashtra, are examples.
▪ But given the magnitude of the problem, the steps taken so far to check
dishonesty in the higher echelons of the government are only cosmetic.
▪ This is why I am still cynical: however much the judiciary stands by law
enforcement outfits, little will change in terms of the public servant
(including popular and elected Ministers) curbing the unabated
corruption in the country.
What is needed
▪ Finally, I do not endorse the CJI’s proposal of an umbrella organisation

that will oversee all investigating agencies.
▪ This idea was meant to avoid having multiple agencies looking into the
same set of allegations.
▪ Apart from its impracticality, such a novel body could generate its own
problems — of turf wars and ego clashes.
▪ I would rather have the focus on weeding out the dishonest among
officers and rewarding those who have shown and proven themselves to
be honest and professionally innovative.
Sending a
strategic message
• GS PAPER II
• Bilateral, regional and
global groupings and
agreements involving
India.
Sending a strategic message
▪ The footings for stronger India-Australia ties have been set

▪ At a recent meeting in New Delhi, Prime Minister Narendra Modi was
almost forced to give a brief lecture on geological history to his colleagues
while highlighting the importance of integrating the Indian and
Australian economies in contemporary times.
▪ By way of a metaphor, he pointed out how India and Australia were part
of the same supercontinent, the Gondwanaland, until both drifted apart
during the Jurassic age.
▪ For a variety of reasons, almost till the beginning of this century, New
Delhi and Canberra remained apart much after the original tectonic
shifts had originally split them.
A historic deal
▪ A pivotal moment in history for the two countries was struck on April 2,
when Australia and India struck a trade deal after two decades of efforts.
▪ Mr. Modi described it as a “watershed moment for bilateral relations”.
▪ The India-Australia Economic Co-operation and Trade Agreement
(IndAus ECTA) eliminates tariffs on more than 85% of Australian goods
exports to India (valued at more than $12.6 billion a year).
A historic deal
▪ With a GDP expected to grow at 9% in 2021-22, India is the world’s

fastest growing major economy.
▪ Today, the growth opportunities for Australian businesses are larger in
India than in any other market.
▪ Over the five years leading up to the pandemic, two-way trade and
investment between Australia and India doubled.
▪ Now, IndAus ECTA is “expected to increase bilateral trade from AUD$36.7
billion to AUD$60 billion,” according to Commerce Minister Piyush Goyal.
A historic deal
▪ Through IndAus ECTA, tariffs on a range of Australian exports to India,

including coal, lentils, sheep meat, wool, lobsters and rare earths, will be
eliminated.
▪ The deal also includes a phased reduction of tariffs on wine and
agricultural products including avocados, cherries, nuts and blueberries.
▪ This is welcoming news to Australian businesses, particularly in the face of
economic sanctions on a range of Australian produce they faced from
China last year.
A historic deal
▪ The deal also extends to enhancing services exports and strengthening our
people-to-people links, including a quota for chefs and yoga teachers,
post-study work visa of 2-4 years for Indian students on a reciprocal
basis, mutual recognition of professional services and other
licensed/regulated occupations, and work and holiday visa arrangements
for young professionals.
▪ The role of the Indian diaspora as a key national economic asset should
not be underestimated in this deal.
▪ Data from the India Economic Strategy Update confirm that nearly one
in five overseas students in Australia are from India, making full fee-
paying Indian students the largest group of overseas students.
A historic deal
▪ But as a former Indian Ambassador to Australia tweeted, it is the

strategic message of this ECTA that is as important as its economic
content.
▪ With the turbulence faced by both nations in the Indo-Pacific region, the
convergence of economic and geopolitical risks is real.
▪ ECTA is a clear response to those changing dynamics that both countries
face.
▪ And the fact that India today counts on the support of Australia through
the Quad and maritime security and now through a trade agreement
shows the diversification of its strategic and economic approach.
A deal despite challenges
▪ Yet the Russian invasion of Ukraine remains a ‘balancing act’ for India.
▪ Half of its arms imports come from Russia and some 70% of its military
hardware is Russian-made.
▪ The need for India’s military diversification is now greater than ever.
▪ Australia is limited in its delivery on this front. And whilst India would no
doubt like to rely less on Russia, the U.S. is not stepping up to supply India
with its latest missiles.
▪ It is a testament to the growing resilience and bandwidth of bilateral ties

that despite differences over India’s reticence in condemning the war in
Ukraine and its purchase of heavily discounted Russian oil, the trade deal
was brought to a closure with remarkable alacrity.
▪ In the past, Canberra’s fierce response to India’s 1988 nuclear tests and
the Indian media’s over-the-top reaction to attacks on Indian students in
Melbourne in 2009-2010 had almost derailed ties.
▪ While both countries have come from different places, they seem to have
arrived at the same place, practising economic liberalisation at their own
pace.
▪ Hailing from opposite sides of power blocs during the Cold War, they now
have shared norms and democratic principles and support a rules-based
order.
▪ While they will continue to face headwinds that create new geopolitical
and economic uncertainties, the footings for a stronger relationship have
been set.
▪ Their mutual commitment to economic advancement through IndAus
ECTA is symbolic of how far the relationship has come.
▪ That means the future for both nations’ peoples is full of promise and
opportunity.
The child at the centre
• GS PAPER II
• Welfare schemes for
vulnerable sections of
the population by the
Centre and States and
the performance of
these schemes.
▪ Mission Vatsalya must bring together services and structures to help

children in distress
▪ Schemes designed for social good do well on intent, but their success
depends on whether they are built on principles of sustainability and
work within structures of accountability.
▪ While the Centre’s intent to provide ‘integrated benefits to children and
women’ is behind the comprehensive revamping of the Department of
Women and Children’s schemes, is this a rejig constructed with rules that
will ensure maximising benefit for shareholders — women and children?
▪ Mission Vatsalya, which has been operationalised, is one of the new triad
of schemes along with Mission Shakti, and Poshan 2.0, that aims at
securing a healthy and happy childhood for every child.
▪ Components under Mission Vatsalya include statutory bodies; service

delivery structures; institutional care/services; non-institutional
community-based care; emergency outreach services; training and
capacity building.
▪ The impact of this on one of the pillars of India’s child protection services,
the ChildLine, has been giving child rights activists sleepless nights.
▪ ChildLine (1098), the 24-hour toll free helpline for children in distress, will
be manned by the Home Affairs Ministry under Mission Vatsalya, Union
Minister Smriti Irani said last year, citing the need to ‘preserve data
sensitivity’.
▪ ChildLine has been in operation for over 25 years, growing gradually to

become one of the largest global networks to assist and rescue children in
distress.
▪ It has functioned as a public-private partnership between the
government and civil society organisations to provide a first-responder
safety net, and kick start the process of rescue and rehabilitation of
children.
▪ A road map to implement the scheme is not yet available, but it is
understood that police personnel will first answer the call, handing over
implementation to NGOs later.
▪ This flies in the face of the facts invoked while setting up the ChildLine in
1996 — children do not feel comfortable confiding in police personnel.
▪ It also sought to reduce the burden on the police force, by invoking their
assistance only if the circumstances necessitated it.
▪ This was proven beyond doubt during a short-lived experiment in
Chennai around 2003 when ChildLine calls were diverted to All Women
Police Stations (AWPS) — they were inundated with calls, hampering
regular work. Sometimes, all the children wanted was to spend some time
talking to someone, or they were making multiple blank calls before they
picked up the courage to tell all.
▪ In many cases, police intervention was not needed at all.
▪ The old system was hurriedly revived, and order restored.
▪ The Centre will do well to incorporate these responses as it sets out a road
map for a key aspect of child protection.
▪ Above all, it must consider the issue from the perspective of the key
beneficiary of this scheme — the child — and make sure that his/her
safety, security and happiness are ensured in a bond born of trust,
necessarily going beyond the letter of the law.
Safety first
• GS PAPER II
interventions for
implementation.
Safety first
Safety first
▪ The Dam Safety Authority might be able to monitor safety aspects of

Mullaperiyar dam
▪ The Central Water Commission (CWC)’s proposal to let the Mullaperiyar
dam’s Supervisory Committee continue for a year essentially means
status quo continues.
▪ The proposal makes the Chief Secretaries of Tamil Nadu and Kerala
accountable and provides for the participation of technical experts as
panel members.
▪ The proposed arrangement, presented before the Supreme Court on
Tuesday, has become necessary as the CWC is of the view that the
National Dam Safety Authority (NDSA), the regulatory body envisaged
under the recently enacted Dam Safety Act, will require one year to
become fully functional.
Safety first
▪ On Thursday, the two States are expected to inform the Court of their
response.
▪ Given the features of the 126-year-old Mullaperiyar dam and the
controversies surrounding its lime and mortar structure, both States
would have nothing much to complain about regarding sticking to the
existing arrangement for some more time although they differ in the way
they approach the dam.
▪ Located in Kerala, it is used by TN for multiple purposes.
▪ While TN is keen on getting the strengthening work completed to raise
the water level to 152 ft from 142 ft, Kerala wants a new dam built.
▪ In the backdrop of landslides in Kerala after heavy rain, fears, though
misplaced, have arisen over the dam’s structural stability.
Safety first
▪ Regardless of these apprehensions being addressed through technical and

scientific bodies, the issue of safety crops up time and again.
▪ What this underlines is that there should be no room for complacency
about the dam’s safety.
▪ It is for this purpose that the apex court too has been addressing the issue
of having a stronger institutional mechanism than the existing
Supervisory Committee which has been rendered almost toothless.
Safety first
▪ Ideally speaking, the authority would have been well suited to handle
issues concerning the Mullaperiyar, as the Act empowers the body to
perform the role of the State Dam Safety Organisation (SDSO) in this
context because the NDSA assumes the role of SDSO for a dam located in
one State and owned by another.
▪ But, as more time is required to have the authority fully in place, the
Centre has chosen to rely on the existing structure, with the respective
Chief Secretaries being made accountable.
▪ With a sub-committee functioning under the Supervisory Committee and
one more panel under the National Disaster Management Authority, the
oversight mechanism appears to be fine.
▪ Still, however well-designed the scheme might be, it is for the authorities
to make sure their actions instil public confidence during the monsoon,
when the issue of safety in Kerala acquires precedence.
Safety first
▪ It is also their duty to ensure there is no panic and to deal with

scaremongers.
Russia vs the West:
A clash of
civilisations
• GS PAPER II
• Effect of policies and
politics of developed and
developing countries on
India’s interests.
Russia vs the West: A clash of civilisations
▪ It was till recently a swing state, as described by Samuel Huntington,

keen to economically engage with Europe. The West squandered an
opportunity, pushing it into China’s arms
▪ One of the world’s most derided visions of international affairs is Samuel
Huntington’s infamous “Clash of Civilisations”.
▪ Huntington saw the state of the post-Cold War conflict as chiefly being
between civilisational complexes that had shared history, geographic
contiguity and a common culture.
▪ He argued that the primary axis of future conflict would be cultural fault
lines between civilisations rather than between political ideologies.
▪ Huntington mapped civilisations largely in line with geographically

clustered ethno-religious groupings.
▪ For example, he predicted (in 1993) that the Islamic world would be the
Western culture’s chief antagonist, the likelihood of a Sino-Islamic
alliance, and positioned India (“Hindu” culture) and Russia (“Orthodox”
culture) as “swing civilisations”.
▪ It is particularly interesting to dust off Huntington’s pages and revisit his
predictions regarding Russia and India.
▪ Most importantly, he also identified Ukraine as a unique “cleft” between
civilisations due to the linguistic and religious divide between western
and eastern Ukraine.
▪ Firstly, both the brewing of the conflict in Ukraine and the short one that
Georgia already suffered have their roots in NATO’s shock 2008
announcement in Bucharest regarding membership extension to Ukraine
and Georgia.
▪ Russia under Vladimir Putin has been involved in four international
conflicts — with Georgia in South Ossetia in 2008 (directly in response to
the Bucharest announcement), the eastern troubles in Ukraine starting in
2014 (after the ousting of President Viktor Yanukovych in 2013),
intervention in Syria in support of Basher al-Assad in 2015 and the more
decisive move into Ukraine in 2022 that we are still witnessing.
▪ The Georgian conflict of August 2008 lasted 12 days and the casualties on
both sides measured in hundreds, not thousands.
▪ The conflict ended with the Russian-speaking enclaves in Georgia

becoming de facto Russian, and the chances of Georgia joining NATO
disappearing.
▪ The Russian military intervention in Syria was a relatively minimalist
operation designed to support ground combat being conducted by the
Syrian regime’s forces, often against ISIS-type elements.
▪ Even today, Russia’s demands to end the war in Ukraine are limited to
the recognition of Crimea as Russian (it is overwhelmingly a Russian
population and has repeatedly voted for incorporation into Russia)
territory, recognition of the two breakaway regions in the east (both
overwhelmingly Russian-speaking) and a constitutional amendment to
the effect that Ukraine would not pursue NATO membership.
▪ These are not revanchist objectives, but seemingly minimalist ones,

especially in the context of the Russian interest in doing business with and
in Europe.
▪ Consider, therefore, what Russia has been up to in the economic sphere.

▪ It has been acting as a ready adjuster of the global oil supply as conflicts
in the Middle East caused supply-side shocks, and a willing long-term
supplier of critical natural gas to Europe via the jointly-built Nord Stream
pipelines that run from Russia, across eastern Europe to Germany and the
West (another pipeline running in the frigid waters of the north and
skipping multiple countries along the way has recently been blocked by
Germany).
▪ The construction of these pipelines was a signal of long-term Russian
interest in economic integration with the West.
▪ It is important to note the difference between a financing arrangement,

free-market access or participation in a country’s stock exchange on the
one hand, and the construction of massive cross-continental
infrastructure for the delivery of natural resources.
▪ The former are flexible, modular types of economic interaction, capable
of being moulded according to evolving dynamics and vulnerable to
actions like financial sanctions and embargoes.
▪ The latter, of which Nord Stream is an example, are much harder to wish
away when circumstances change.
▪ What should the existence of Nord Stream I and the construction of Nord
Stream II signal to the world about Putin’s Russia and its interests during
the period 1997 to 2012 (when the project was first mooted and when it
was inaugurated by German Chancellor Angela Merkel)?
▪ This is the same period during which Russian oligarchs’ capital poured
into Europe.
▪ To even an amateur observer, these Russian behaviours ought to have
signalled a willingness, even a desire, for closer integration with Europe.
▪ One does not build deep economic relations with and invest in the assets
of a region that one is planning to go to war with or even develop future
adversarial relations with.
▪ Either Putin and the entire Russian establishment are fundamentally

irrational or this is a war that they never wanted, but have felt
compelled to undertake due to a hostile aversion to NATO expansion so
close to Moscow.
▪ To go back to Huntington’s view of Russia as a “swing civilisation”, it is

possible to see this period from the late 1990s until quite recently as the
West’s best opportunity to move past its Cold War mentality, its
insistence on shrill moralising and towards a pragmatic relationship with
its old nemesis.
▪ This would have been the optimal strategy to ensure that in the face of
the brewing rivalry between the US/Europe and a rising and intransigent
China, Russia may have been peeled away from a Sino-alliance.
▪ Instead, the West’s utter inability or unwillingness to accept Ukrainian

neutrality and economic integration with both East and West (Russia had
mooted a four-way economic partnership prior to its takeover of Crimea
in 2014, consisting of Ukraine, the EU, Russia and the IMF, which the West
rejected), and its continued encouragement of Ukrainian membership of
a formal, Cold War-era, anti-Soviet security bloc has all but ensured that
Russia now “swings” right into Xi Jinping’s arms.
▪ This is a significant own-goal in terms of Western grand strategy.
▪ Crucially, overt Russian support for Chinese ambitions in Asia is a
fundamental shift in geopolitics for India, which has always counted on
Russian support.
▪ India finds itself in an unenviable position, but has also proven itself to be
an assertive, independent power with a subtle and sophisticated policy-
response process.
▪ Unlike most western capitals today, the Indian government enjoys a
degree of freedom in charting a path during this crisis, since domestic
opinions are not strong either way.
▪ More importantly, India has correctly understood the strategic context,
background and implications for the international order of these events,
and will continue to move carefully, support dialogue towards an early
end to the conflict and maintain a studious silence on the question of
absolutist “moral” judgements.
▪ India’s position is economically vulnerable to an extended war in Ukraine

through the weakness of the rupee, dependence on oil and other imports,
and the secular flight to safety of global (western) capital.
▪ This means that India’s self-interest lies in a rapid resolution of the
military and economic warfare.
▪ It does not lie, however, in making any wild “swings” this way or that.
Despite Huntington classifying us as a swing power, walking the path of
independence and self-reliance while continuing to expand our
burgeoning relationship with the West in the long-term is India’s best
strategic choice.
▪ However, India’s relationship with the West will be based on mutual self-
respect, rather than the traditional high-handedness that we have
experienced hitherto.
▪ This implies that any calls by commentators in India for India to “speak
up” and condemn the Russian aggression in Ukraine are largely playing
into the unidimensional and self-serving narrative of one side while
paying scant attention to national interests.
▪ We have little to gain by jumping into the current shouting match, and
much to gain by continuing to move steadily but carefully towards long-
term partnerships with like-minded democracies, no matter their
“culture”, religious traditions or the colour of their skin.
▪ The question is: Will culture eat strategy for breakfast (a favourite line of
MBA-enthusiasts in the corporate world) or end up destroying us all in
nuclear armageddon?
08-April-2022
The Hindu
Editorial
Discussion
08-April-
2022
•The mark of an educated person is the willingness to use one‘s
knowledge and skills to solve the problems of society
BRICS and the • GS PAPER II
creation of a • Bilateral, regional and global groupings and
multipolar world agreements involving India.

BRICS and the creation of a multipolar world
▪ Ukraine crisis could catapult India to the centre of a diplomatic and

economic triangle, with Russia and China, in Indo-Pacific
▪ BRICS is developing in a direction that was never envisaged.
▪ The group was brought together by geopolitical rather than economic
considerations and this can be seen in the strategic interests shared by
Russia and China.
▪ It took them two decades to draw closer.
▪ Later, India joined Russia and China, thus changing RC into RIC, the
entry of Brazil changed RIC into BRIC, and with South Africa as its
member, the group became BRICS.
▪ BRICS is actively involved in the efforts to change the world economic

system by increasing the number of non-Western states in international
financial institutes despite frantic opposition by the traditional
distributors of world money.
▪ The BRICS countries decided to create the $100 billion BRICS Development
Bank and a reserve currency pool worth over another $100 billion to offer
an alternative to countries in the non-Western world when it comes to
choosing the sources of funding for development or coping with serious
economic crises.
▪ The consequences of the Ukraine crisis for BRICS and the world cannot be
overestimated.
▪ It demonstrates that the West has not abandoned the idea of a unipolar
world and will continue building it up by drawing into its foreign policy
orbit issues it calls “international” or even “common to mankind.”
▪ Many non-Western states look at this as a new wave of colonialism, which
having abandoned the old slogans (“superior culture”) for new ones
(“democracy”), uses the old methods and pursues the same aims.
▪ This will increase the desire of non-Western countries to enhance their
coordination and perhaps the current conflict is already showing signs in
this respect.
▪ The BRICS states are different in many respects and their disagreements
with the West are rooted in different historical and political
circumstances.
▪ Brazil, which represents Latin America and has strong left socialist
tendencies, disagrees with the West on social issues.
▪ Latin America is especially sensitive to diktats from the North and
recurrences of the Monroe Doctrine.
▪ The situation in South Africa is the same: The local communists belong to
the ruling coalition while the West is accused of abetting the old order.
▪ In Russia and India, people are not so much repelled by the political as by
the moral values of the West.
▪ The Western political system causes much milder negative feelings even
though there are differences in that field too.
▪ This means that the determination to oppose diktats plays an important
role in the opposition to the West.
▪ Given this context, the current crisis in Ukraine will consolidate BRICS as
the group will make further efforts to become a real alternative to the
West to create a real multipolar world.
▪ The important question now is: Is there a rise of the RIC now within the
BRICS?
▪ If one disaggregates BRICS into its geopolitical components within
northern Eurasia, there are some interesting dynamics in play, revolving
around the foreign ministerial triangular Russia-India-China (RIC)
relationship.
▪ Dialectically, the fallout from Russia’s alienation from the G-8 group of
nations (reduced to G-7), raises the prospect that — tactically at least —
Russia, India, and China might be playing their own triangular
integrationist card within BRICS at Moscow’s initiative.
▪ Neither India nor China (nor Brazil and South Africa) may be on board
with isolating Moscow.
▪ In fact, both the Asian giants — India and China — may stand to reap the
“best of both worlds” as the Ukraine imbroglio plays out.
▪ Russia has every incentive to accommodate both India and China in the
energy sector, especially in the case of the Beijing-Moscow axis that has
been languishing in limbo due to the price of shipping gas to China.
▪ This could mean greater industrial and energy cross investments between
Russia and India as well as between Russia and China.
▪ This will create a north Eurasian integrationist core within BRICS,
whichever way Moscow’s relations with the US and Europe play out.
▪ Additionally, the proposed arrangement for rupee-ruble cross currency

pairing could well be a harbinger of more concerted efforts to settle
payments in non-dollar currencies with more countries looking at India’s
sovereign Financial Messaging Systems (SFMS), while also remaining
connected with a central system like SWIFT.
▪ This should also anchor India’s quest to build a dedicated payment
mechanism for energy-related payments and settlements as a long-haul
measure.
▪ This could change the contours of the global payments landscape and
benefit the rupee immensely.
▪ People of the old school may still be basking in the dollar’s hegemony but
there is no harm in pushing for rupee internationalisation.
▪ Thus, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine appears to have unwittingly put India

at the sweet centre of a diplomatic triangle in the Indo-Pacific.
▪ As the war progresses, New Delhi has been receiving a stream of high-
profile visitors from around the world.
▪ This has included delegations from the US, Australia and Japan, India’s
partners in the Quad.
▪ The foreign minister of Greece has also been to India and the Israeli prime
minister is scheduled to visit soon.
▪ But in a surprising turn of events, even traditional rival China is making
overtures to India at this time, with Foreign Minister Wang Yi’s visit.
▪ Another suitor is Russia, India’s trusted arms supplier for decades, which
is now also becoming a supplier of discounted crude oil to India as Moscow
recoils from sanctions enforced by western consumers of its natural gas.
▪ New Delhi is basking in its well-deserved spotlight with well-crafted

diplomacy.
▪ India could be looking at a new dawn.
▪ After all, RIC controls 22 per cent of the global GDP and 16 per cent of
global exports of goods and services.
IAS is a system that
promotes mediocrity and
risk aversion
• GS PAPER II
• Role of civil services in a
democracy.
IAS is a system that promotes mediocrity and risk
aversion
▪ IAS is a system that promotes mediocrity and risk aversion
▪ Has the IAS failed the nation?
▪ I wish the answer were a resounding ‘no’. Much to my regret though,
that’s not the case.
▪ The public perception of the IAS today is of an elitist, self-serving, status
quo perpetuating set of bureaucrats who are out of touch with reality,
who wallow in their privileges and social status and have lost the courage
of conviction to stand up for what’s right.
aversion
▪ It wasn’t always like this.
▪ In the mid-1970s when I was a fresh entrant into the service, if the
government was being attacked by the opposition on a scam or a
scandal, all that the CM had to do was to stand up in the Assembly and
announce that he would appoint an IAS officer to inquire into the matter.
▪ That was enough to shut out the debate. Today if a CM said that, she is
likely to be booed.
aversion
▪ It’s difficult to put a precise date on when the decline started.
▪ When the IAS was instituted soon after Independence as a successor to the
colonial era ICS, it was seen as the home grown answer to the enormous
task of nation building in a country embarking on an unprecedented
experiment of anchoring democracy in a poor, illiterate society.
▪ Whether it was agricultural development, land reforms, building

irrigation projects, promoting industry, improving health and education
delivery, implementing social justice or enforcing the rule of law, the IAS
was seen as the delivery arm.
▪ IAS officers led this effort from the front, built an impressive development
administration network from ground zero and earned for the service a
formidable reputation for competence, commitment and integrity.
aversion
▪ That reputation began unravelling in subsequent decades.
▪ The IAS lost its ethos and its way. Ineptitude, indifference and corruption
had crept in.
▪ Arguably, this negative stereotype view is shaped by a minority of
officers who have gone astray, but the worry is that that minority is no
longer small.
aversion
▪ A CM once told me that of the IAS officers at his disposal, about 25% were
callous, corrupt or incompetent, the middle 50% had happily turned into
sinecures and that he had to depend on the remaining 25% to get all his
work done.
▪ The Prime Minister echoed a similar view when he openly expressed in the
Parliament last year his disenchantment with the ‘babu culture’ in the
bureaucracy.
aversion
▪ What explains this malaise in the IAS?
▪ The standard scapegoats are the recruitment examination, the induction
training and subsequent in-service training, limited opportunities for
self-improvement and indifferent or even callous career management.
▪ For sure, these are all areas in need of improvement but to believe that
these are the biggest problems ailing the IAS is to miss the wood for the
trees.
aversion
▪ The biggest problem with the IAS is a deeply flawed system of incentives
and penalties.
▪ The service still attracts some of the best talent in the country, and young
recruits come in with sharp minds and full of enthusiasm to ‘change the
world’. But soon, they become cogs in the wheels of complacency and
acquiescence, turn lazy and cynical, and worse, lose their moral compass.
▪ IAS officers would like the world to believe that this happens because of
politicians standing in the way of their delivering results.
▪ You can’t miss noticing that most IAS memoirs are, at heart, tales of: “I
was going to do great things but politicians came in the way and stopped
me.”
aversion
▪ I don’t want to trivialise the challenge of political interference; in a
democracy, it comes with the territory. But to blame politicians for the
intellectual and moral decline of the IAS is self-serving.
▪ Politicians will of course dangle carrots but why should officers go for
them?
▪ What happens though is that some individual officers with weak moral
fabric succumb to the temptation and others follow suit, either attracted
by the rewards or simply to save their careers.
▪ The truth is that no political system, no matter how venal, can corrupt a
bureaucracy if it stands united and inflexibly committed to collective
high standards of ethics and professional integrity.
▪ Sadly, that’s not been the IAS story.
aversion
▪ It strikes me that Prime Minister Boris Johnson of the UK is currently
being investigated for alleged ‘partygate’ transgressions by the British
equivalents of our cabinet secretary and the Delhi police.
▪ And not one member of the UK parliament, not even an opposition MP,
has cast any doubt on the integrity of the probes.
▪ Such a thing happening in our system is unimaginable, and that’s a
reflection not of the low esteem in which our politicians are held but of
the low esteem in which our bureaucracy is held.
aversion
▪ So, what is the problem with incentives and penalties?
▪ For a start, when everyone gets promoted by efflux of time, to use a
bureaucratic phrase, there is no pressure on officers to perform and
deliver results.
▪ In a system where the smart, enthusiastic and capable are not assured of
rising to the top, and the corrupt, lazy and incompetent don’t get
weeded out, there is no motivation for officers to upgrade their
knowledge and skills.
▪ A system that promotes mediocrity and risk aversion rather than
innovation and change sinks to a low common denominator as indeed the
IAS has.
aversion
▪ The IAS has to be reformed into a meritocracy.
▪ There will be resistance of course but it is doable. How to go about that
has to await another opinion piece.
▪ I am deeply conscious that there are hundreds of young IAS officers out
there in the field performing near miracles under testing circumstances.
▪ Sadly, my generation of civil servants and subsequent cohorts have
bequeathed a flawed legacy to these unsung heroes.
▪ To them passes the challenge and opportunity of recovering the soul of
the IAS.
Prelim Booster
News Discussion
09-March-2022
Kanya Shikhsa Pravesh Utsav
On International Women’s Day, the Ministry of Women and Child
Development (MoWCD) has launched a landmark campaign Kanya Shikhsa
Pravesh Utsav.
👉 About
◎ Launched by the Women and Child
Development Ministry in partnership with the
Education Ministry and UNICEF.
◎ This scheme will fulfil the target of Right To
Education act that says to bring out-of-school
girls back to the education system.
◎ Umbrella Initiative è The campaign has been rolled out under the umbrella
of the Beti Bachao Beti Padhao(BBBP) Initiative.
◎ Key Features of the campaign è Under the campaign, over 400 districts
across all states will be funded under Beti Bachao Beti Padhao Scheme for
outreach and awareness generation at the grassroots level to sensitize
communities and families to enroll adolescents girls in schools. This funding
will be over and above the funding from Samagra Shiksha Abhiyan.
◎ Moreover, Anganwadi workers(AWWs) will also be further incentivised for
counseling and referring out of school adolescent girls.
◎ Significance of the campaign è The campaign intends to build on the
existing schemes and programmes like Schemes for Adolescent Girls (SAG),
Beti Bachao Beti Padhao (BBBP) and National Education Policy (NEP) to
work on a comprehensive system for out of school girls.
👉 Women’s day 2022
◎ Celebrated every year around the world on March 8.
◎ Theme for International Women’s Day, 2022 (IWD 2022) is ‘Gender equality
today for a sustainable tomorrow’.
◎ IWD 2022 campaign theme is ‘#BreakTheBias’. è It intends to promote a
“gender equal world”, which is “free of bias, stereotypes, and
discrimination”. “A world that is diverse, equitable, and inclusive”, and
where “difference is valued and celebrated”.
◎ History and significance è IWD has been celebrated for over a century now,
but many people think of it purely as a feminist cause. Its roots, however,
are found in the labour movement, wherein it was first organised in 1911 by
the early 20th century Marxist from Germany Clara Zetkin.
◎ What colors symbolize International Women’s Day? è Purple, green and
white are the colors of International Women’s Day.
○ Purple signifies justice and dignity.
○ Green symbolizes hope.
○ White represents purity, albeit a controversial concept.
○ The colors originated from the Women’s Social and Political Union
(WSPU) in the UK in 1908.
Savitribai and Jyotirao Phule
Governor Bhagat Singh Koshyari has recently received flak for his remarks
on the child marriage of the social reformist couple Jyotirao and Savitribai
Phule.
👉 About Jyotirao Phule
◎ Born in 1827 in Satara district of Maharashtra.
◎ Phule was given the title of Mahatma on May 11,
1888, by Vithalrao Krishnaji Vandekar, a
Maharashtrian social activist.
◎ His work is related mainly to eradication of
untouchability and caste system, emancipation and
empowerment of women, reform of Hindu family
life.
◎ In 1873, Phule founded the Satyashodhak Samaj, or the Society of Seekers
of Truth, for the rights of depressed classes, to denounce the caste system
and to spread rational thinking.
◎ His famous works è Tritiya Ratna (1855), Gulamgiri (1873), Shetkarayacha
Aasud, or Cultivator’s Whipcord (1881).
👉 Savitribhai Phule
◎ Born in Naigaon in Maharashtra on January 3, 1831.
◎ Phule is widely regarded as one of India’s first generation modern feminists
for her significant contributions in ensuring equal education opportunities
under the British raj.
◎ She became the first female teacher in India in 1848 and opened a school
for girls along with her husband, social reformer Jyotirao Phule.
◎ The two also worked against discrimination based on caste-based identity,
something vehemently opposed by the orthodox sections of society in
Pune.
◎ The couple set up ‘Balyata Pratibandak Gruha’, a childcare centre for the
protection of pregnant widows and rape victims.
◎ Phule also played a pivotal role in directing the work of the Satyashodhak
Samaj, formed by her husband with the objective to achieve equal rights for
the marginalised lower castes.
◎ As an extension, they started, ‘Satya Shodhaka Marriage’ where the
marrying couple has to take a pledge to promote education and equality.
◎ Savitribai opened a clinic in 1897 for victims of the bubonic plague that
spread across Maharashtra just before the turn of the century.
◎ She also set up “Balhatya Pratibandhak Griha”.
◎ In her honour, University of Pune was renamed Savitribai Phule University
in 2015.
Try this PYQ 2016
Q. Satya Shodhak Samaj organized
a) a movement for upliftment of tribals in Bihar
b) a temple-entry movement in Gujarat
c) an anti-caste movement in Maharashtra
d) a peasant movement in Punjab
Try this PYQ 2016
Answer (c
Donate a Pension initiative
Ministry of Labour and Employment launched the “donate a pension”
scheme under the Pradhan Mantri Shram Yogi Maan-Dhan Scheme (PM-
SYM).
👉 About
◎ “Donate a pension” scheme allows a citizen to
donate the premium contribution of their
immediate support staff such as domestic workers,
drivers, helpers, care givers, nurses, in their
household or establishment.
◎ The donor can pay the contribution for a minimum
of one year, with the amount ranging from Rs. 660
to Rs. 2,400 a year, depending on the age of the
beneficiary.
◎ The premium amount can be paid through maandhan.in or by visiting a
Common Service Centre anywhere in the country.
👉 PM-SYM:
◎ It is a 50:50 voluntary and contributory pension scheme in which the
beneficiary makes a stipulated age-specific contribution and the Central
Government matches it.
◎ Implementation è The Ministry of Labour and Employment oversee PM-
SYM.
◎ Eligibility è Workers working in the unorganised sector in the age group of
18-40 years can register themselves and deposit a minimum of Rs 660 to
2400 every year depending on their age.
◎ They should not be covered under New Pension Scheme (NPS), Employees’
State Insurance Corporation (ESIC) scheme or Employees’ Provident Fund
Organisation (EPFO). Further, he/she should not be an income tax payer.
◎ Benefits è After attaining the age of 60 years they will receive the
minimum assured pension of Rs 3,000 per month.
◎ Beneficiaries è The unorganised workers whose monthly income is Rs
15,000/ per month or less.
Side-channel attacks
Indian researchers have built a low-energy security chip that is designed to
prevent Side-channel attacks (SCAs) on IoT (Internet of Things) devices.
👉 About SCA
◎ SCA is a security exploit that aims to gather
information from the indirect effects of the
functioning of the system hardware rather than
attacking a programme or software directly.
◎ They basically aim to extract sensitive information
like cryptographic keys, proprietary machine
learning models and parameters by measuring
things like timing information, power consumption
and electromagnetic leaks of a system.
Side-channel attacks
◎ For example, it can be used on a smartwatch to extract ECG and heart rate
signals that one wants to keep secret.
SLINEX
The Ninth Edition of India - Sri Lanka Bilateral Maritime Exercise SLINEX
(Sri Lanka–India Naval Exercise) is scheduled at Visakhapatnam from 07
Mar to 10 Mar 2022.
👉 About
◎ The exercise is being conducted in two phases; the
Harbour Phase at Visakhapatnam on 07-08 Mar 22
followed by the Sea Phase on 09-10 Mar 22 in the
Bay of Bengal.
◎ Sri Lanka Navy will be represented by SLNS Sayurala,
an advanced offshore patrol vessel and the Indian
Navy by INS Kirch, a guided missile corvette.
SLINEX
◎ SLINEX aims to enhance inter-operability, improve mutual understanding
and exchange best practices and procedures for multi-faceted maritime
operations between both navies.
◎ SLINEX is in consonance with India’s policy of ‘Neighbourhood First’ and PM
Modis vision of ‘Security and Growth for All in the Region (SAGAR)’.
Try this PYQ 2008
Q. ‘Hand-in-Hand 2007’ a joint anti-terrorism military training was held by the
officers of the Indian Army and officers of Army of which one of the following
Countries?
a) China
b) Japan
c) Russia
d) USA
Try this PYQ 2008
Answer (a
The fort of Halebidu
The historic fortification which stood for centuries at Halebidu was
demolished recently to lay a road.
👉 About
◎ It was once the capital of Hoysalas in the
state of Karnataka.
◎ The place has been recommended for
the World Heritage Site Tag.
◎ The Hoysala rulers had built the fort
using granite boulders in the 11th
century.
The fort of Halebidu
◎ It served as a protective wall for the capital township, which included
temples, including Hoysaleshwara, Shantinath Basadi among other historic
structures and monuments.
◎ At present, the Hoysaleshwara temple is not part of the Swachh Iconic
Places (SIP).
Quick revision (True/False)
Question True / False

1. Theme for International Women’s Day, 2022 -> Gender equality today True
for a sustainable tomorrow.
2. Pradhan Mantri Shram Yogi Maan-Dhan Scheme (PM-SYM) -> Ministry False
of Finance will oversee PM-SYM.
3. SLINEX -> India - Singapore Bilateral Maritime Exercise. False
4. Jyotirao Phule -> In 1873, Phule founded the Satyashodhak Samaj, or True
the Society of Seekers of Truth.
5. Side-channel attacks -> aims to gather information by attacking a False
programme or software directly.
24
24
11-April-2022
The Editorial
Discussion
India’s role in a
disordered world
• GS PAPER II
• Bilateral, regional
and global groupings
and agreements
involving India.
India’s role in a disordered world
▪ New Delhi can play an important role in shaping a new, more

democratic, world order
▪ Western nations want to throw Russia out of the G-20.
▪ China has opposed them.
▪ India will be chair of the G-20 from December 1, 2022. The world is
greatly disordered.
▪ What should India stand for?
India’s role in a disordered world
▪ Institutions of global governance have failed to unite the world.

▪ Summit after summit has produced mostly hot air in trying to resolve the global
climate crisis.
▪ Vaccines were hoarded by rich countries in the COVID-19 pandemic: poor countries
starved.
▪ The World Trade Organization (WTO) was already in the intensive care unit before
the novel coronavirus pandemic, with rich and poor countries unable to agree on
equitable rules, when COVID-19 froze global supply chains.
Undemocratic architecture
▪ Millions of civilians died in the Second World War.

▪ European cities were razed by carpet bombing.
▪ The war ended with two nuclear bombs to terrorise the Japanese
government into submission, erasing two Japanese cities and killing
thousands of civilians.
▪ Never again, the victors vowed.
▪ New institutions for global governance were established — the United

Nations and the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT), and
the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) to provide
finance to build the economies of all countries to eliminate poverty.
▪ However, the victors retained their veto power within the United Nations
Security Council to determine when force can be used to keep the world in
order, and to prevent the proliferation of nuclear power outside their
small circle because they could not trust other countries to use it wisely!
▪ They also control the World Bank, the IMF, and the WTO.
▪ The UN General Assembly meets every year — now 193 nations strong.
▪ It passes many resolutions to address global problems — hunger, poverty,
women’s rights, terrorism, climate change, etc.
▪ However, “might is right”: members of the Security Council retain their
right to deny the democratic will of the Assembly when it does not suit
them.
▪ Global governance is not democratic.
▪ If the leader of any member country overrules resolutions of its own
parliament, he would be branded an undemocratic dictator.
▪ Armed interventions and sanctions imposed on countries, authorised by
the Security Council to restore democracy in other countries, make a
mockery of global democracy.
▪ The United States, the United Kingdom, France, Italy, Japan, West
Germany and Canada formed the G7 in 1976 ‘so that the noncommunist
powers could come together to discuss economic concerns, which at the
time included inflation and recession following the Organization of the
Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) oil embargo’.
▪ The European Union was invited to attend in 1977.
▪ Russia joined in 1998 — and ‘its inclusion was meant as a signal of
cooperation between East and West after the collapse of the Soviet Union
in 1991’.
▪ However, Russia was thrown out in 2014 when it invaded the Crimea.
▪ China was never a member.
▪ The rapid spread of global finance and trade after the victory of the
Washington Consensus in 1991, created instabilities in developing
countries.
▪ After the Asian financial crisis, the G20 was formed in 1999 with the aim
of discussing policies in order to achieve international financial stability.
▪ Russia and China are members. Now western nations want to throw
Russia out of the G-20.
▪ China has opposed them.
▪ India will be chair of the G-20 from December 2022, or will it be G-19
then?
▪ Meanwhile, India is being hectored by officials from the U.S. and the U.K.
to support their sanctions on Russia.
▪ India has so far refused to be cowed down.
Inequalities have only risen
▪ The belief that unfettered flows of finance and trade across national
borders will lift people in all poor countries out of poverty and make the
world flatter in terms of inequality has failed.
▪ Inequalities have increased within countries and amongst them too.
▪ Citizens are reacting everywhere. Even in democratic countries such as
the U.S., demands are increasing for more “socialism” and less unbounded
capitalism.
▪ Strong leaders who put the interests of their own countries first are
gaining power through elections — in Turkey, Hungary, Poland, Russia,
and even India. Donald Trump had once too.
▪ Free market capitalism is not ideologically compatible with a genuine

democracy.
▪ Capitalist institutions are governed by the fundamental principle of
‘property rights’: decision rights in capitalist enterprises are allocated in
proportion to property owned.
▪ Whereas, genuine democracies are founded on the principle of equal
human rights.
▪ All western electoral systems — in Britain, the U.S., and Europe, began
centuries ago with rights to vote limited to property owners only.
▪ Universal adult franchise, wherein all humans have equal votes whether
they are billionaires or paupers, is a more recent development in the
West.
▪ In many western countries, women and racial minorities were given even
de jure equal voting rights only in the last century, and continue their
struggles for de facto equality in their societies.
Social tensions
▪ The rules of governance of capitalist and democratic institutions have

always been in tension within societies.
▪ Capitalist institutions want to be unfettered by democratic regulations to
make it easier to do business.
▪ Democratic institutions want to rein in the competitive animal spirits, red
in tooth and claw, of capitalism to create a more compassionate
capitalism that improves the world for everyone, not only for financial
investors.
▪ The simultaneous imposition of free markets and elections in countries
“liberated” from communism or socialism by the U.S. has invariably
increased inequalities and increased social tensions and sectarian
conflicts, which more elections cannot resolve democratically.
Social tensions
▪ This is the story of Iraq, Afghanistan, Russia, and even Chile, which was
once the showcase of the western model of liberal capitalism.
▪ When social tensions increase too much, elections often produce populist
socialists such as Hugo Chávez in Venezuela, or capitalist autocrats such
as Vladimir Putin in Russia.
▪ The West does not like either sort when they stand up against the
Washington-controlled “North Atlantic” hegemony of the world.
▪ Though capitalist dictators such as Augusto Pinochet in Chile, and the
monarchies of the Gulf/West Asia can be their good friends.
▪ Even Chinese communists were tolerated so long as they were not a
threat to U.S. power.
Redistribution of power
▪ Power accumulates in societies by the principle of “cumulative

causation”.
▪ Those who already have more power, from greater wealth or more
education, will use their power to not only improve the rules of the game
— ostensibly to improve the world for everyone — but also to ensure they
remain in power.
▪ Redistribution of de facto power within a society must often precede the
redistribution of assets of wealth and education that are the sources of
power.
▪ Those who have power will resist losing it. That is the natural order.
▪ Violent internal revolutions and anti-colonial movements are the means
of changing power equations, as are armed wars even between rich
countries in Europe.
Redistribution of power
▪ All violence must stop.

▪ To prevent violence, it is essential that global governance becomes
genuinely democratic.
▪ Countries must not attack each other. But they must be given the
freedom to evolve their own democracies and economies and not be
dictated to by others.
▪ The hypocrisy of undemocratic global dictators using their financial
powers to impose sanctions (which are weapons of mass destruction that
harm innocent civilians), to bring down their opponents, must stop.
▪ Calling on a democratic country such as India, to take their side, must
also end.
Getting serious
about supporting
the care economy
• GS PAPER III
• Indian Economy and issues
relating to planning,
mobilization of resources,
growth.
Getting serious about supporting the care economy
▪ Care work is vital for economies in general and India needs to have a
strategy and action plan for improved policies
▪ Greater investment in care services can create an additional 300 million
jobs globally, many of which will be for women.
▪ In turn this will help increase female labour force participation and
advance Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 8 (which is to ‘promote
sustained, inclusive and sustainable economic growth, full and productive
employment and decent work for all’).
Still ‘unseen’ by policy
▪ Every year, March 8 is celebrated as International Women’s Day.

▪ The immense contribution of women to all spheres of life is often
overlooked, unfairly valued, and hardly rewarded.
▪ This is ‘particularly evident in care work — both paid and unpaid, which
is crucial to the future of decent work.
▪ Care work encompasses direct activities such as feeding a baby or nursing
an ill partner, and indirect care activities such as cooking and cleaning’.
▪ Whether paid or unpaid, direct or indirect, care work is vital for human
well-being and economies.
▪ Unpaid care work is linked to labour market inequalities, yet it has yet to
receive adequate attention in policy formulation.
▪ Paid care workers, such as domestic workers and anganwadis in India,
also struggle to access rights and entitlements as workers.
Still ‘unseen’ by policy
▪ The importance of care work is now widely acknowledged and covered in

various international commitments such as the SDGs and the
International Labour Organization (ILO)’s Centenary Declaration.
▪ Since March 2020, the demand for care services has skyrocketed.
▪ However, the investment in the care economy has not matched the pace.
▪ This year, to commemorate International Women’s Day, the ILO brought
out its new report titled, ‘Care at work: Investing in care leave and
services for a more gender-equal world of work’.
▪ The ILO is the only tripartite UN agency, which brings together
governments, employers, and workers of 187 member States, to set labour
standards, develop policies and devise programmes promoting decent
work for all women and men.
Benefits down the line
▪ The report highlights the importance of maternity, paternity, and special

care leave, which help balance women’s and men’s work and family
responsibilities throughout their lives.
▪ Furthermore, it demonstrates that workplaces that provide time, income
security and space for undertaking care services such as breastfeeding,
enable positive nutrition and health outcomes.
▪ Bridging the gaps in current policies and service provisions to nurture

childcare and elderly care services will deliver the benefits of child
development, aging in dignity and independent living as the population
grows older and also generate more and better employment
opportunities, especially for women.
Maternity leave, child care
▪ Maternity leave is a universal human and labour right.

▪ Yet, it remains unfulfilled across countries, leaving millions of workers
with family responsibilities without adequate protection and support.
▪ India fares better than its peers in offering 26 weeks of maternity leave,
against the ILO’s standard mandate of 14 weeks that exists in 120
countries.
▪ However, this coverage extends to only a tiny proportion of women
workers in formal employment in India, where 89% of employed women
are in informal employment (as given by ILOSTAT, or the ILO’s central
portal to labour statistics).
▪ While paternity leave is recognised as an enabler for both mothers and
fathers to better balance work and family responsibilities, it is not
provided in many countries, including India.
▪ Globally, the average paternity leave is nine days, which further

exacerbates inequity.
▪ Access to quality and affordable care services such as childcare, elderly

care and care for people with disabilities is a challenge workers with
family responsibilities face globally.
▪ While India has a long history of mandating the provision of crèches in
factories and establishments, there is limited information on its actual
implementation.
▪ There is scope for improvement in availability, accessibility, affordability
and quality.
▪ Working conditions of care workers are another critical gap to address.
▪ Though childcare and anganwadi workers undertake important work,
and childcare is recognised as professional work in advanced countries,
they lack recognition as workers and do not have requisite access to
workers’ rights and entitlements in India.
▪ Domestic workers, on whom Indian households are heavily reliant, also

face challenges in accessing decent work.
▪ They became ad hoc care workers during the novel coronavirus pandemic
without adequate social or health protection measures.
▪ According to the Government’s 2019 estimates, 26 lakh of the 39 lakh
domestic workers in India are female.
▪ While important developments have extended formal coverage to
domestic workers in India, such as the Sexual Harassment of Women at
Workplace (Prevention, Prohibition and Redressal) Act and the
minimum wage schedule in many States, more efforts are required to
ensure decent work for them.
Suggestions
▪ Recognising care workers and promoting decent work for all, including
for domestic and childcare workers are also necessary for India to achieve
the SDGs which have a principle of ‘leave no one behind’.
▪ They, like all other workers, need to enjoy basic human and worker’s
rights and access fair wages, enjoy a workplace free from violence and
harassment, have good working conditions, and access social protection,
among other benefits.
Look at it as public good
▪ India spends less than 1% of its GDP on the care economy; increasing this
percentage would unfurl a plethora of benefits for workers and the
overall economy.
▪ Therefore, in consultation with employers’ and workers’ organisations
and the relevant stakeholders, the Government needs to conceptualise a
strategy and action plan for improved care policies, care service
provisions and decent working conditions for care workers.
▪ The ILO proposes a 5R framework for decent care work centred around
achieving gender equality.
▪ The framework urges the Recognition, Reduction, and Redistribution of
unpaid care work, promotes Rewarding care workers with more and
decent work, and enables their Representation in social dialogue and
collective bargaining. Care work should be viewed as a collective
responsibility and public good.
Look at it as public good
• A human-centred and inclusive recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic

that benefits workers, employers, and the government, requires a more
significant investment in and commitment to supporting the care
economy, which cares for the society at large.
• GS PAPER II
Why the regulation
• Effect of policies and politics of developed and
of sanctions matters developing countries on India’s interests.
Why the regulation of sanctions matters
▪ Sanctions not only lead to economic harm but also bear legal
consequences for the sanctioning states
▪ With the recent discovery of a series of suspected war crimes in the
Ukrainian town of Bucha and the fear of a new Eastern offensive,
Western sanctions on Russia have reached a new high.
▪ The European Union (EU) seems more determined than ever before to
restrict the importation of Russian oil and gas, while the U.S. and the U.K.
keep targeting financial assets and oligarchs.
Why the regulation of sanctions matters
▪ Seen as the lesser of two evils against a member of the United Nations
Security Council (UNSC) and a nuclear power still supported by strategic
allies, sanctions offer a seemingly efficient alternative to the use of
military force.
▪ Yet, their damage on human rights and populations have been long
demonstrated.
▪ In addition, in a globalised economy, their medium-term impact on the
very countries issuing these sanctions can be rather severe.
▪ These reasons give rise to the need to regulate and monitor the use of this
political tool for economic warfare at the crossroads between
international law, trade, investment, or finance, and for which only a few
legal scholars, other than human rights specialists, have showed interest.
▪ An apparent peaceful legal tool, sanctions can eventually backfire.
What are sanctions?
▪ Although there is no universal legal definition, a sanction can be defined

as a measure of coercion of an economic nature, as opposed to diplomatic
or military means, taken by states, either collectively or individually.
▪ Collective sanctions can be imposed by an international organisation
based on a multilateral (UN) or regional (EU) treaty.
▪ The UNSC is at the centre of the collective sanctions’ edifice with its
Chapter VII, ‘Action with respect to threats to the peace, breaches of the
peace, and acts of aggression’.
▪ But a strict procedure needs to be followed: first the “existence of any
threat to the peace, breach of peace or act of aggression” needs to be
determined (Article 39) and then the decision to resort to measures not
involving the “use of armed force” decided (Article 41).
What are sanctions?
▪ Article 41 states: “These may include complete or partial interruption of

economic relations and of rail, sea, air, postal, telegraphic, radio, and
other means of communication, and the severance of diplomatic
relations.”
What are sanctions?
▪ Sanctions are not defined nor listed, as such, but the allusion is clear.
▪ Since 1966, the UNSC has established 30 regimes of sanctions which have
taken a variety of shapes from trade measures to embargoes on arms;
and financial tools to travel bans.
▪ The UN insists on the idea that these sanctions cannot operate “in a
vacuum”, but should rather be seen as part of a larger apparatus to
restore peace and security.
▪ Fourteen UN-supported programmes of sanctions are in place in the
world today.
▪ Each of them is administered by a sanctions committee chaired by a non-
permanent member of the UNSC.
▪ More than 30 EU sanctions regimes have been adopted and some of these
already targeted Russia’s previous intervention in Ukraine.
What are sanctions?
▪ With Russia as a permanent member and veto power member of the

UNSC, the UN’s scope of action is rather limited, so much so that its
credibility is questioned.
▪ Hence, sanctions are also taken unilaterally, that is by a given state with
no basis in a treaty and often without any legal ground.
▪ The U.S. has historically championed this category with the adoption of
tools like complete embargoes i.e., the total interdiction of trade, travel,
and financial transactions, and more targeted measures such as blocking
or freezing financial assets and imposing restrictions on importations or
exportations with, for example, a licensing system.
▪ The authority to take these measures is a matter of domestic law.
What are sanctions?
▪ However, the question of jurisdiction is particularly sensitive as there is a

clear extraterritorial element to the unilateral imposition of economic
restrictive measures.
▪ Aware of the controversial nature of these sanctions, the UN has put in
place a system of monitoring and, since May 2015, appointed a Special
Rapporteur on the negative impact of the unilateral coercive measures
on the enjoyment of human rights.
▪ In the language of the International Law Commission, these unilateral
sanctions are called “countermeasures”.
▪ Close to the idea of self-defence, the measure at stake could be described
as “self-help” or “self-protection”.
What are sanctions?
▪ The question of legality, however, remains and, in a globalised economy

made of international trade and investment interconnections, could later
backfire.
When sanctions legally backfire
▪ What if trade and investment tribunals condemned the sanctioning states

for treaty violations?
▪ In international economic law, sanctioning countries first appear to enjoy
certain latitude.
▪ International trade agreements such as the World Trade Organization
and various investment treaties provide for security exceptions.
▪ These include Article XXI of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade
(GATT), Article XIV bis of the General Agreement on Trade in Services,
and Article 73 of the Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property
Rights along with a host of bilateral investment treaties.
▪ While some considered these exceptions as ‘self-judging’, recent WTO

disputes including ‘Russia – Measures Concerning Traffic in Transit’ (DS
512) and ‘Saudi Arabia – Protection of IPRs’ (DS567) see these exceptions
as partially justiciable, which means that an examination of their legality
is not completely outside of the purview of international trade and
investment tribunals.
▪ Accordingly, even if the policy space available for invoking national
security exceptions is considered to be narrower than many states would
tend to believe, the legality of economic sanctions in the context of war is
unlikely to be questioned by trade tribunals.
▪ However, other international tribunals may have a final say.

▪ The Nicaragua case has provided a clear illustration of the ambiguity
and illegality of these measures.
▪ Economic sanctions were imposed by the U.S. to attain political goals in
the comprehensive trade embargo levied against the Government of
Nicaragua in May 1985.
▪ The International Court of Justice eventually condemned Washington,
which had argued that the measures had been taken in compliance with
Article XXI of the GATT (national security reasons).
▪ In the Bank Mellat case, the U.K. also learned the hard price of economic
sanctions-related damages as an Iranian bank claimed £1.3bn over trade
ban damages.
▪ For all these reasons, there is at least a case for proper notification and
basic legal due process.
▪ The announcement and invocation of sanctions cannot be hurriedly done
as sanctions not only affect private actors and lead to significant
economic harm and disruption in supply chains (as we observe today with
energy and commodities), but also bear longer damaging legal
consequences for the sanctioning states.
12-April-2022
The Hindu
Editorial
Discussion
• GS PAPER II
• Functions and
The responsibilities of the
‘Chandigarh Union and the States,
question’ issues and challenges
pertaining to the federal
structure.
The ‘Chandigarh question’
▪ Why has the issue of the shared capital between Punjab and Haryana
resurfaced? Is the Central government trying to fan old flames?
▪ The story so far: The newly elected Punjab Legislative Assembly passed a
resolution, moved by the Chief Minister himself, on April 1 in a special
session seeking the transfer of Chandigarh to Punjab.
▪ With this, the ‘Chandigarh question’ has resurfaced, but this time it
occupies the national spotlight.
How did Chandigarh come to its current status?
▪ Chandigarh, described as a ‘planned city’ emblematic of ‘Nehruvian

modernity’, is a greenfield city, which was commissioned by the
government in independent India to replace Lahore, which went to
Pakistan after Partition, as the capital of of Punjab.
▪ Designed by Le Corbusier in association with Pierre Jeanneret, it is located
on the foothills of the Shivalik Himalayas on village land acquired from
what was then the Kharar tehsil of Ambala district. It was the capital of
undivided Punjab from its inauguration in 1953 till 1966.
▪ Under the Punjab Reorganisation Act, 1966 following the Punjabi Suba
movement, Haryana was carved out of the Hindi-speaking regions as a
separate State while the hill regions of Punjab were merged with what
was then the Union Territory (UT) of Himachal Pradesh.
How did Chandigarh come to its current status?
▪ Chandigarh was made a UT and has remained the joint capital of

Haryana and Punjab with State assets divided between Punjab and
Haryana in the ratio of 60:40.
What is the Chandigarh issue?
▪ Since 1966, the lack of full rights to its capital has remained a vexed issue
in Punjab politics.
▪ All the governments and most political parties of Punjab have regularly
raised the demand for Chandigarh.
▪ It has featured in all major developments, whether it is the 1973
Anandpur Sahib resolution, Dharam Yudh Morcha (of Akali Dal with J.S.
Bhindranwale) and the 1985 Rajiv-Longowal Accord.
▪ Since 1966, the Punjab Assembly has passed at least six such resolutions
with the last being in 2014 under the Shiromani Akali Dal-Bharatiya
Janata Party (SAD-BJP) government.
▪ The BJP’s opposition to the latest Assembly resolution is the first time a
political party has taken a contrarian stand.
What is the Chandigarh issue?
▪ Political actors in Punjab also interpret any action of the Central

government vis-à-vis Chandigarh in terms of its implications for Punjab’s
claim over the city.
▪ For example, in 2008, CM Parkash Singh Badal withdrew his
government’s No Objection Certificate to convert Panjab University,
which the 1966 Act designated an ‘inter-state body corporate’, into a
Central university after criticism emerged that this had weakened
Punjab’s claim over the city.
What is different this time?
▪ The immediate provocation this time has been two recent decisions of the
Central government, both taken in the aftermath of SAD breaking ties
with the BJP over the now withdrawn farm laws.
▪ In February, the Centre amended the rules governing the functioning of
the Bhakra Beas Management Board (BBMB), constituted under the 1966
Act, changing the eligibility criteria for the two full-time members of the
Board which have, though technically open to all Indian officials, by
convention gone to officials from Punjab and Haryana.
▪ Officers from the two States may not be able to meet the new eligibility
criteria given the technical qualifications specified.
▪ All stakeholders in Punjab and Haryana have objected to this move
though Haryana CM Manohar Lal Khattar was more muted in his
response.
What is different this time?
▪ Second, following the March-end announcement by Union Home Minister

Amit Shah, the Centre issued a notification bringing Chandigarh UT
administration employees under the Central Services Rules with effect
from April 1, 2022 replacing the Punjab Services Rules.
▪ Coming within weeks after the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) rose to power in
Punjab, this move was interpreted not just as a continuation of the
Centre’s contentious relationship with the AAP government in Delhi, but
also as an affront to Punjab’s claim over Chandigarh.
What has been the position of the Union government on
the city?
▪ At the time of the 1966 Act, the Union government with Indira Gandhi as
Prime Minister indicated that the UT status to Chandigarh was
temporary and that it would be transferred to Punjab.
▪ This decision was formalised in 1970 with Mrs Gandhi promising Haryana
funds for building its own capital.
▪ According to the 1985 Rajiv-Longowal Accord, Chandigarh was to be
handed over to Punjab on January 26, 1986 but this never fructified after
the assassination of Longowal and the long period of militancy till the
mid-1990s.
▪ The recent developments could thus indicate a shift in the Central
government’s position.
What about Haryana?
▪ As in Punjab, all parties in Haryana present a common position asserting

the latter’s claim to the city and have objected to any move which
associates Chandigarh solely with Punjab.
▪ The International Airport which comprises territory from both the UT and
Mohali city of Punjab was inaugurated in 2015 but remains nameless as
Haryana has objected to the inclusion of Mohali in the name claiming
that Haryana has a 50% stake in the airport.
▪ Haryana had also objected to the name ‘New Chandigarh’ for a township
developed in the Mullanpur area adjoining Chandigarh in Punjab.
▪ Apart from the ruling BJP-Jannayak Janta Party, the Congress and
Indian National Lok Dal have also condemned Friday’s resolution, and
raked up other inter-State disputes, prominently that of the Satluj
Yamuna Link.
Is there a distinctive Chandigarh position?
▪ Employees and unions of the Chandigarh administration have mostly

welcomed the change in service rules since the Central provisions carry
more benefits, especially on retirement age and other allowances, though
pay scale-wise Punjab rules are considered better.
▪ After decades of existence as a UT, Chandigarh has developed a
distinctive cultural character.
▪ Given its geographical location at the intersection of three States, as well
as the presence of many educational institutions, medical establishments
and the Army and Air Force, Chandigarh has developed a unique
cosmopolitanism and become a magnet for the youth across the north
western region.
▪ City residents thus favour the status quo.
Is there a distinctive Chandigarh position?
▪ The Chandigarh units of political parties, in contrast with their Punjab

party units have time and again reiterated retention of the status quo.
What lies ahead?
▪ While this time the issue has attracted more attention than usual, the
future depends on the AAP’s calculations.
▪ Its Punjab mandate indicates massive expectations from the electorate
including better service conditions from government employees but it has
inherited a debt-ridden government.
▪ Upping the ante on Chandigarh could buy it time but not much else.
▪ Moreover, it wishes to expand in other States, especially Haryana.
▪ It also risks antagonising city residents after performing well in the recent
Chandigarh municipal corporation elections.
▪ As a new party without the comfort of long-established State units, it will
have to balance these contending claims in deciding further action.
One Nation
One Language
• GS PAPER II
interventions for
implementation.
One Nation One Language
▪ Conext ➔ Recently, on the occasion of Hindi Divas, the Union Minister of

Home Affairs held that if one language can do the work of uniting the
country, then it is the most spoken language, Hindi.
▪ The remark was made in the context of preserving India's ancient culture
and English being an imposed colonial legacy.
▪ This has revived the debate of imposition of Hindi under the name of One
nation One language.
Background
▪ The Constituent Assembly of India adopted Hindi written in Devnagari

Script along with English as the official language of the country on
September 14, 1949, under Article 343(1).
▪ Article 351 gives power to the Union Government to issue a directive for
the development of the Hindi language.
▪ The Hindi language is one of the 22 languages of the Eighth Schedule of
the Constitution of India.
▪ The imposition of Hindi was contested in many non-Hindi states,
especially in the southern state of Tamil Nadu. Violent protests broke out
in southern India leading the then Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru, to
introduce the ‘Official Languages Act’ in 1963, which assured the
continuation of English along with Hindi as the official language of the
Union of India.
Background
▪ Anti-Hindi protests of 1965 marked an important turn in India’s official

language policy. The ‘Official Languages Act’ was amended in 1967
guaranteeing the "virtual indefinite policy of bilingualism" for all official
purposes of the Union.
▪ Given the linguistic diversity of India, there is no national language as all
the states are free to decide their own official languages.
Should Hindi Become Lingua Franca for India?
▪ The 2011 Census listed 1,369 ‘mother tongues’ in the country. Hindi is only
one among them.
▪ Hindi has largely been influenced by Persian — and then English, among
other languages.
▪ Also, when the languages were enumerated, Hindi subsumed
Bhojpuri, which is spoken by a little over five crore people. The Census
has put Bhojpuri as a subset of Hindi.
▪ So, it may be true that Hindi is spoken by a large number of people in
India, but it is equally true that it is not spoken by a majority of
Indians.
▪ The fact that Constitution, which has made space for 22 languages in
the Eighth Schedule, upholds the language diversity principle.
▪ It is ironic that our animosity towards English makes us blind to the fact
that the idea of a singular nation: One nation, One language, is itself a
European Idea, whereas India always believed in Unity in diversity.
▪ This idea is not in tune with our history, culture and civilisation as India is
a multilingual society.
▪ Many leaders in the national movement visualized a special role for
Hindi. Most of them supported Hindusthani, a mixed language, not the
pure Hindi being pushed today. But all of them were clear that it could
not be imposed.
▪ Today nearly 35% of people are migrating daily for work. Therefore,
clubbing together multilingual spaces with monolingual habitats is not
fair to the large cities today.
▪ Any idea of one link language, whether Hindi or English, will be

economically disastrous for India. It will slow down migration and reduce
the ease of capital flow.
▪ If there is a mechanical and monolithic idea of unity followed by any
entity, such an entity generally generates great hostility beyond its
immediate borders. This may affect the relationship with India's
neighbouring countries.
▪ In neighbouring Bangladesh – then East Pakistan – the language
movement against the imposition of Urdu on Bengali speakers was a key
driver of Pakistan splitting into two nations.
▪ English is the language that can be linked to India’s successes in modern
sectors such as IT.
Way Forward
▪ Rethink the three-language policy, which exists just on paper now.

▪ Three-language formula envisaged by Kothari Commission sought
that, Hindi should be introduced in non-Hindi-speaking States from
an early stage and the Hindi-speaking States should introduce a non-
Hindi Indian language.
▪ However, most non-Hindi speaking States did introduce Hindi,
unfortunately, the Hindi-speaking States bypassed the requirement to
teach a non-Hindi language (preferably a South Indian language)
through Sanskrit.
▪ The three-language formula is a sound formula, but the choice of
language (s) must be left with the citizens and not the Government.
Way Forward
▪ Moreover, there are better ways to foster national unity than imposing a
language.
▪ Creating a common market for the country, through a single,
simplified tax structure.
▪ Fostering a single labour market.
▪ A united nation has to have space for diversity. India is united in its
diversity. Diversity is a great philosophical idea and should never be seen
as a cultural burden.
13-April-2022
The Hindu
Editorial
Discussion
HOPS as a route to
universal health
care
• GS PAPER II
• Issues related to health.
HOPS as a route to universal health care
▪ ‘Healthcare as an optional public service’ would ensure the legal right to

receive free, quality care in a public institution
▪ The lingering COVID-19 crisis is a good time to revive an issue that is,
oddly, slow to come to life in India — universal health care (UHC).
▪ Meanwhile, UHC has become a well-accepted objective of public policy
around the world.
▪ It has even been largely realised in many countries, not only the richer
ones (minus the United States) but also a growing number of other
countries such as Brazil, China, Sri Lanka and Thailand.
▪ Some of them, such as Thailand, made a decisive move towards UHC at a
time (20 years ago) when their per capita GDP was no higher than
India’s per capita GDP today.
▪ The time has come for India — or some Indian States at least — to take
the plunge.
▪ The basic idea of UHC is that no one should be

deprived of quality health care for the lack of
ability to pay.
▪ This idea was well expressed — in archaic
words perhaps — by Aneurin Bevan, the fiery
founder of the National Health Service (NHS)
in Britain.
▪ “No society,” he said, “can legitimately call
itself civilised if a sick person is denied medical
aid because of lack of means.”
▪ The same idea inspired the Bhore Committee
report of 1946, where a case was made for
India to create its own NHS-type health-care
system.
Routes to UHC
▪ In concrete terms, UHC typically relies on one or both of two basic

approaches: public service and social insurance.
▪ In the first approach, health care is provided as a free public service, just
like the services of a fire brigade or public library.
▪ If this sounds like socialist thinking, that is what it is.
▪ Interestingly, however, this socialist project has worked not only in
communist countries such as Cuba but also in the capitalist world (well
beyond the United Kingdom).
Routes to UHC
▪ The second approach allows private as well as public provision of health

care, but the costs are mostly borne by the social insurance fund(s), not
the patient, so the result is similar: everyone has access to quality health
care.
▪ Social insurance is very different from a private insurance market.
▪ The simplest variant is one where insurance is compulsory and universal,
financed mainly from general taxation, and run by a single non-profit
agency in the public interest.
▪ That is how it works in Canada (province-wise), and to varying extents in
other countries with “national health insurance” (e.g., Australia and
Taiwan).
▪ This single-payer system makes it easier for the state to bargain for a
good price from health-care providers.
Routes to UHC
▪ But some countries have other models of social insurance, based, for
instance, on multiple non-profit insurance funds instead of a single payer
(Germany is one example).
▪ The basic principles remain: everyone should be covered and insurance
should be geared to the public interest rather than private profit.
Some challenges
▪ Even in a system based on social insurance, public service plays an

essential role.
▪ In the absence of public health centres, dedicated not only to primary
health care but also to preventive work, there is a danger of patients
rushing to expensive hospitals every other day.
▪ This would make the system wasteful and expensive.
▪ As it is, containing costs is a major challenge with social insurance,
because patient and health-care provider have a joint interest in
expensive care — one to get better, the other to earn.
▪ One possible remedy is to require the patient to bear part of the costs (a
“co-payment”, in insurance jargon), but that conflicts with the principle
of UHC.
Some challenges
▪ Recent evidence suggests that even small co-payments often exclude

many poor patients from quality health care.
▪ Another challenge with social insurance is to regulate private health-care

providers. Here, a crucial distinction needs to be made between for-profit
and non-profit providers.
▪ Non-profit health-care providers have done great work around the world
(including the U.S., where most hospitals were non-profit institutions just
a few decades ago).
▪ For-profit health care, however, is deeply problematic because of the
pervasive conflict between the profit motive and the well-being of the
patient.
▪ This calls for strict regulation, if for-profit health care is allowed at all.
Some challenges
▪ Today, most countries with UHC rely on a combination of public service

and social insurance.
▪ For all we know, however, the NHS model based on plain public service
may be the best approach.
▪ Private non-profit health care can be regarded as a form of public
service, and private for-profit health care tends to defy discipline.
▪ A vibrant NHS is hard to beat.
Some challenges
▪ The word “vibrant”, of course, is critical.

▪ I am referring not only to good management and adequate resources but
also to a sound work culture and professional ethics.
▪ A primary health centre can work wonders, but only if doctors and nurses
are on the job and care for the patients.
▪ India’s public health services have a bad name in that respect, but they
are improving, and they can improve more.
Right to health care
▪ What would be a possible route to UHC for India today?

▪ The private sector is too entrenched for a NHS to displace it in the near
future.
▪ But it is possible to envisage a framework for UHC that would build
primarily on health care as a public service, and have a chance at least to
converge toward some sort of NHS in due course.
▪ This framework might be called “healthcare as an optional public service”

(HOPS).
▪ The idea is that everyone would have a legal right to receive free, quality
health care in a public institution if they wish.
▪ It would not prevent anyone from seeking health care from the private
sector at their own expense.
▪ But the public sector would guarantee decent health services to everyone
as a matter of right, free of cost.
▪ In a sense, this is what some Indian States are already trying to do.
▪ In Kerala and Tamil Nadu, for instance, most illnesses can be
satisfactorily treated in the public sector, at little cost to the patient.
▪ There is a thriving private sector too, begging for better regulation and
restraint.
▪ But health care of decent quality is available to everyone as an optional
public service.
▪ HOPS would not be as egalitarian as the NHS or national health

insurance model where most people are in the same health-care boat.
But it would still be a big step toward UHC.
▪ Further, it is likely to become more egalitarian over time, as the public
sector provides a growing range of health services.
▪ If quality health care is available for free in the public sector, most
patients will have little reason to go to the private sector.
▪ What about social insurance?

▪ It could play a limited role in this framework, to help cover procedures
that are not easily available in the public sector (e.g., high-end
surgeries).
▪ Social insurance, however, carries a risk of tilting health care towards
expensive tertiary care, and also towards better-off sections of the
population.
▪ The extension of social insurance to for-profit health-care providers is
especially risky, given their power and influence.
▪ There is a case for social insurance to work mainly within the non-profit
sectors (public and private), leaving out for-profit health care as far as
possible.
▪ The main difficulty with the HOPS framework is to specify the scope of
the proposed health-care guarantee, including quality standards.
▪ UHC does not mean unlimited health care: there are always limits to
what can be guaranteed to everyone.
▪ HOPS requires not only health-care standards but also a credible method
to revise these standards over time.
▪ Some useful elements are already available, such as the Indian Public
Health Standards.
▪ Tamil Nadu is well placed to make HOPS a reality under its proposed
Right to Health Bill.
▪ Tamil Nadu is already able to provide most health services in the public
sector with good effect (according to the fourth National Family Health
Survey, a large majority of households in Tamil Nadu go to the public
sector for health care when they are sick).
▪ The scope and quality of these services are growing steadily over time.
▪ A Right to Health Bill would be an invaluable affirmation of the State’s
commitment to quality health care for all.
▪ It would empower patients and their families to demand quality services,
helping to improve the system further.
▪ Last but not least, it would act as a model and inspiration for all Indian
States.
Branded a criminal for
following custom
• GS PAPER II
• Mechanisms, laws,
institutions and Bodies
constituted for the
protection and
betterment of these
vulnerable sections.
Branded a criminal for following custom
▪ The practice of marrying early unwittingly lands young tribal men in jail
under the POCSO Act
▪ The Nilgiris district of Tamil Nadu has a substantial tribal population.
▪ Tribal communities in the region include the Todas, Kotas, Irulas,
Paniyas, Kattunayakas, and Kurumbas, each with distinct practices,
cultures, and ceremonies.
▪ Tribal people practise customs that “civilised” society finds difficult to
accept. Child marriage, for instance, is common in some of these
communities.
▪ There are ceremonies attached to each practice, sanctified by religion.
▪ Due to the conflict between some of these traditional practices and the
law of the land, tribal people often unwittingly end up in jail.
Customs and laws
▪ The Protection of Children from Sexual Offences (POCSO) Act is a

landmark legislation, enacted in 2012, to protect children from sexual
offences.
▪ One provision in the law mandates hospitals to report to the jurisdictional
police station when girls below 18 years of age are admitted for delivery.
▪ On receipt of such reports, police authorities are mandated to register an
FIR against the person responsible for the pregnancy.
▪ This provision clearly intends to punish males who have forced sexual
intercourse with girls below 18 years of age.
▪ However, the law fails to make room for consensual relationships or
validated marriages in some communities.
▪ Most tribal people do not keep records of their date of birth.
Customs and laws
▪ Most of them marry when they come of age and usually have children
before they reach the legal age of marriage.
▪ As a result, tribal boys are arrested and prosecuted.
▪ Hindu laws are the products of the unification and codification of the
customs of a majority of people who follow Hinduism, but they are not
inclusive or universal.
▪ The law recognises that there are customs and traditions followed by
different groups of people, beyond what is codified, and provides that
they are equally legal.
▪ India is a diverse nation and it is difficult, even improbable, to have a
uniform law for the whole country.
Customs and laws
▪ Tribal communities in India follow diverse practices, some of which are for
survival and adaptation.
▪ For example, polyandry is practised by the Gallongs of Arunachal
Pradesh, where the brothers of a family who cannot afford a high bride
price marry the same woman.
▪ This gives them an economic advantage.
▪ Similarly, it is natural and logical for tribal communities with a lower life
expectancy to marry before they are 18 years old.
▪ To treat those who engage in such practices as criminals is to be averse to
the tenets of social justice enshrined in our Constitution.
Customs and laws
▪ Many tribal communities in the Nilgiris usually get girls married off early,
that is, when their daughters attain puberty.
▪ Many tribal people are hardly aware of the existence of a law, or the age
of majority, or the legal age for marriage.
▪ This being the case, arresting the husbands of girls who have happily
welcomed the arrival of a baby is cruel.
▪ Till date, about 50 such criminal cases have been filed against tribal
youth in Nilgiris district.
▪ Tribal women are mostly self-sufficient; it is only in recent times that they
have started to utilise medical services.
▪ If there are unfortunate incidents of prosecution, they may be
discouraged to seek proper medical care.
Customs and laws
▪ Codified Hindu laws provide statutory recognition to the customs of

Hindus, while also equally recognising customs not dealt with thereunder.
▪ Polyandry, child marriage and divorce among tribal communities,
practised by them in their own unique ways, are recognised as customs.
▪ By being placed on the same pedestal as mainstream custom, polyandry
cannot be treated as adultery, nor can child marriage be punished using
a standard that the tribal people do not relate to.
Customs and laws
▪ The hardships faced by the tribal youth who are arrested under the
POCSO Act are manifold.
▪ The youth are remanded to judicial custody often without even knowing
why they are being arrested.
▪ Bail is granted almost two weeks after their arrest, which means they are
incarcerated as undertrials.
▪ Legal assistance is often beyond their reach.
▪ This detention, which is beyond their comprehension, is sometimes viewed
by them as ill luck brought by the newborn, leading to the abandonment
of the child and a breakdown of marital life.
▪ Custodial interrogation in these cases is unnecessary and should not be
adopted as routine practice.
Customs and laws
▪ If at all, police authorities can issue notice under Section 41A of the Code
of Criminal Procedure and ask the person charged to appear before them
for interrogation instead of arresting and remanding him.
Customs and laws
▪ At the outset, while child marriages must be dissuaded, a blanket and

rigid law that fails to address multiple factors such as tribal customs,
religious validation, adolescent consent and elopement, and criminalises
males who engage in sexual intercourse with consenting females, cannot
be the solution.
▪ The Madras High Court recently quashed cases under the POCSO Act
against teenagers for elopement.
▪ It held that the Act cannot be invoked in such cases.
▪ In Arnab Manoranjan Goswami v. The State of Maharashtra (2020), the
Supreme Court reiterated that the basic rule of criminal justice system is
‘bail’ and not ‘jail’ and urged the High Courts and District Courts to
enforce this principle.
Customs and laws
▪ Prosecution cannot be made the norm in child marriage cases, especially

when the act is valid in the eyes of personal custom that a person
subscribes to.
▪ Child marriages solemnised in violation of upper age limits are voidable

under the Prohibition of Child Marriage Act, 2006.
▪ After the couple reaches the eligible age, the marriage is ratified and
legalised.
▪ Criminal cases registered under the POCSO Act against tribal boys
eventually end in acquittal for want of evidence or because of
compromise.
▪ So, no purpose is served with these arrests.
Tools to create awareness
▪ Tribal populations have made substantial headway in education thanks

to a targeted campaign to create awareness.
▪ Such tools can be employed in the implementation of the POCSO Act.
▪ The tribal communities of Wayanad district in Kerala face similar issues
as those in the Nilgiris.
▪ In response, the District Legal Services Authority of Kerala created a short
film, Incha, in the Paniya language to educate the people about the
POCSO Act when more than 250 cases were registered against tribal men
who had married girls under the age of 18.
▪ However, how far a blanket law can make incursions into the cultural
practices of a tribal group remains a question.
Tools to create awareness
▪ A provision intended to protect children from sexual abuses/offences is

threatening the lifestyle of certain people to whom this country promises
social justice.
▪ To be branded a criminal for following cultural practices and to be
stripped of dignity is cruel.
▪ A law that seeks to protect a vulnerable group should not be allowed to
strip yet another vulnerable and marginalised group of its rights and
practices.
▪ India is a nation of diversity and has always managed to balance the
interests of diverse groups to ensure democracy and equality to all.
▪ An amendment to the POCSO Act is required so that we continue
celebrating the cultural chaos that we call our country. After all, law is
for its people.
A model struggling to
deliver
• GS PAPER II
• Issues related to education.
A model struggling to deliver
▪ Anganwadi workers have the potential to revive early childhood

education, but they are underpaid and overburdened
▪ Evidence on Early Childhood Education (ECE) suggests that children who
engage in early and play-based learning activities have better
developmental outcomes than those who don’t.
▪ The National Early Childhood Care and Education Curriculum
Framework in 2013 mandated a ‘play-way’ curriculum in all Anganwadi
Centres (AWCs) and preschools.
▪ In 2018, the government launched the ‘Transformation of Aspirational
Districts’ initiative.
▪ One of the components involved capacity building, improving
infrastructure, and nurturing a child-centric environment in the AWCs of
these districts.
▪ The National Education Policy (NEP), 2020, envisions universalising

Early Childhood Care and Education through Anganwadis.
▪ However, the advent of COVID-19 led to an abrupt halt in ECE services
and progress.
▪ AWCs fall under the Integrated Child Development Services (ICDS)

Scheme.
▪ Preschool education is one of the six services provided in this package.
▪ AWCs are expected to provide preschool education through low-cost,
locally sourced material that caters to the sociocultural context of
mothers, and children below six years.
▪ The infrastructure usually consists of an open space and one or two rooms
to carry out activities.
▪ On the other hand, private preschools usually mimic the formal schooling
approach in terms of infrastructure and learning activities.
Learning crisis
▪ Evidence on AWCs and private pre-schools indicates that neither model

provides appropriate inputs for the holistic development of young
children.
▪ An impact study on early childhood by the Centre for Early Childhood
Education and Development at Ambedkar University and ASER Centre
found that children who regularly participate in a preschool programme
perform better than children who do not. But at the same time, preschool
education (AWCs or private preschools) is not developmentally
appropriate for children.
▪ As a result, children’s early learning outcomes were nowhere close to the
expected levels.
▪ An all-India survey of young children by ASER in 2019 found that not
even half of the enrolled children between the ages of four and eight
could perform age-appropriate cognitive tasks.
Learning crisis
▪ The cause of this learning crisis in Anganwadis may lie in the fact that
such centres are under-resourced and overburdened.
▪ A report on the ICDS by the Ministry of Women and Child Development
identified the absence of adequate space, lack of play-based learning
materials, low investment in ECE and “constraints of human resources” as
some key reasons for this situation.
▪ It said the implementation of the ICDS scheme in AWCs was uneven
across States.
▪ The report also highlighted the lack of research and development in non-
formal preschool education, making it one of the weakest dimensions of
the ICDS model.
▪ The evidence showed a severe deficit in the delivery of quality ECE
services even before COVID-19.
Learning crisis
▪ The pandemic has impacted 28 million young children across India due to
the sporadic closure of AWCs and private schools (UNICEF).
▪ As a consequence, any progress made in ECE may be reversed.
▪ However, innovative strategies were devised to continue early education
in some States.
▪ In Gujarat, the ‘Umbare Anganwadi (doorstep Anganwadi)’ initiative, a
video series consisting of educational modules and easy-to-follow
activities, was telecast every alternate day and streamed on online
platforms to promote interactive learning.
▪ Similarly, Anganwadi workers in Haryana, Punjab, Odisha and Bihar
visited homes to conduct activities with children.
▪ However, anecdotal evidence suggests that access to these strategies was
not uniform.
Learning crisis
▪ They also placed a huge burden on Anganwadi workers.

▪ Paramjeet, an Anganwadi worker in Punjab, said, “We give activities for
children via WhatsApp, but I cannot reach all children as every parent
does not have a smartphone.
▪ Sometimes, I cannot track children as the parent who owns the
smartphone is at work.”
▪ To understand the repercussions of school closures, ASER conducted three
field surveys in 2021 and found that the learning abilities of children had
regressed.
▪ As we move into the third year of the pandemic, more children may be
entering primary school severely unprepared.
Improving the model
▪ The Anganwadi model has been struggling to deliver quality ECE, but the
potential of Anganwadis remains enormous.
▪ Over the years, Anganwadi workers have ensured last-mile delivery of
ECE and education care schemes.
▪ It is crucial to leverage their vast reach by filling implementation and
infrastructural gaps.
▪ If we increase the honorarium of Anganwadi workers, build capacity and
invest in research and development of a meaningful ECE curriculum,
AWCs will be an ideal launchpad for children entering primary school.
14-April-2022
The Hindu
Editorial
Discussion
Benjamin Franklin •“An investment in knowledge
always pays the best interest.”
Beijing’s
move, India’s
turn
14-April-
2022
Diabetes in
pregnancy
The key phrase is • GS PAPER II
‘focus on the foetus, • Issues related to health.
for the future’
The key phrase is ‘focus on the foetus, for the future’
▪ Early detection of diabetes in pregnancy can help prevent trans-

generational transmission of NCDs
▪ The novel coronavirus pandemic has been an eye-opener to all about
what a widespread, global public health issue looks like.
▪ Drawing an analogy from this communicable disease pandemic, one
would be better placed to fathom the range and the depth of another
pandemic — a silent ‘pandemic of non-communicable diseases’ (NCDs),
i.e., diabetes and related conditions such as obesity, hypertension and
heart disease, sweeping across the world, rapidly yet steadily over the
last few decades.
The global burden
▪ To illustrate the global burden of NCDs, let us use the example of

diabetes mellitus.
▪ Diabetes is a disease characterised by a sustained increase in blood sugar
(“hyperglycemia”) that eventually affects the blood vessels in the body
causing damage of various vital organs that include the heart, eyes,
kidneys, nerves and brain.
▪ In the year 2021, the prevalence of diabetes was estimated by the
International Diabetes Federation (IDF) to be 537 million people.
▪ On extrapolating the data to the year 2045, it is safe to say that almost
783 million people will be living with diabetes.
▪ In addition to this, for every person who is known to have diabetes, there
is another person whose diabetes has yet to be detected.
The global burden
▪ Further, a number of people live with what is called ‘pre-diabetes’, which

is the penultimate stage before overt diabetes.
▪ There is a saying in Tamil that one should not search for the origin of a
sage and the headwaters of a river.
▪ But, in the case of diabetes and other NCDs, we have no other option but
to fervently search for the sage and the headwaters before the world
faces a deluge.
The global burden
▪ While several reasons can be ascribed for this rising trend — these include
an aging population, urbanisation, genetic predisposition, nutrition and
lifestyle transition — there is one factor that has not yet received due
attention, namely, diabetes that occurs during pregnancy.
▪ Pregnancy-related diabetes encompasses both newly detected diabetes
during pregnancy (or ‘gestational diabetes’) as well as women with pre-
existing diabetes (or ‘pre-gestational diabetes’).
▪ For the sake of simplicity, we will use the broader term ‘Hyperglycemia-
in-Pregnancy (HIP)’ that covers both.
▪ The global prevalence of HIP is 16.7% of all live-births. In India, one out of
four live-births is complicated by HIP.
A programming
▪ In the 1980s, the British physician and epidemiologist, Prof. David

Barker, put forward his hypothesis of “fetal origins of adult disease”.
▪ Prof. Barker stated that a man’s susceptibility to many of the adult-
onset diseases had already been programmed while he was still an
unborn, developing baby (“foetus”) inside his mother’s womb.
▪ In this intra-uterine (inside the womb) programming, any adverse
stimulus — say an increased blood sugar level in case of maternal
diabetes — permanently affects the structure, the functioning and the
metabolism of the developing human body at the cellular and tissue
levels, thereby predisposing the individual to disease in adult life.
A programming
▪ Furthermore, the pancreas of the foetus (which secretes the hormone

insulin), is able to respond to the maternal blood-sugars present in the
blood that go to the foetus.
▪ In case the blood sugar levels are increased, the fetal pancreas secrete
excessive insulin, which in turn deposits fat in the growing foetus,
sometimes even resulting in a ‘big baby’.
▪ When this adversely programmed child grows up, he is faced with an
unhealthy environment of high caloric foods, lesser physical activity and
stress.
▪ At this point of time, the trigger of the gun loaded inside the womb is
pulled by the environment. Eventually, the child develops diabetes or
pre-diabetes.
▪ He also becomes prone to other related NCDs such as hypertension and
heart disease.
Transgenerational effects
▪ The claws of HIP extend even more to reach future generations.

▪ The offspring, when an adult, might transmit unfavourable genetic and
epigenetic effects to the next generation.
▪ If the offspring were a girl, she is also prone to develop pregnancy-
related diabetes, adding additional adversity for her progeny.
▪ Thus, a vicious cycle is established.
▪ Hyperglycemia begets hyperglycemia; diabetes begets diabetes and the
vicious cycle goes on.
▪ All of this started at one point — when a woman developed HIP
sometime earlier!
▪ A major strategic point for checkmating diabetes and other NCDs lies at
the intra-uterine level.
▪ To achieve this, action should commence well before conception.
▪ In a woman with pre-existing diabetes, blood sugar values need to be
maintained closer to normal levels prior to conception. She should also
maintain a healthy weight.
▪ The first trimester in pregnancy is a critical period when the organ
systems of the body begin to form.
▪ If any perturbation occurs at this stage, the damage is likely to persist for
life.
▪ If such a perturbation could be thwarted, say by achieving good blood
sugar control in the mother, the risk of future NCDs in the offspring could
be minimised.
▪ Therefore, the need is that pregnant women should be screened for

diabetes at their very first visit to a maternity clinic.
▪ The present recommendation by the ‘Diabetes-in-Pregnancy–Study
Group of India’ (DIPSI) lays emphasis on testing for diabetes in ‘all
pregnant women’ from the ‘early weeks of pregnancy’.
▪ Once HIP is detected, further management by medical nutrition therapy
— and if needed, insulin therapy — is done.
▪ DIPSI, led by its founder-patron, Prof. V. Seshiah from Chennai, has

established a ‘single-test approach’ wherein a pregnant woman is
subjected to a single glucose-load by mouth and blood sugar is tested
after two hours.
▪ Here, the pregnant woman need not be fasting to undergo the test.
▪ This test has been approved and adapted by the Government of India in
its National Health Mission.
A window of opportunity
▪ The time around conception offers a great window of opportunity to

optimise metabolic status in all women in the reproductive age group.
▪ The health of offspring and of further generations depends upon the
metabolic health of the pregnant woman.
▪ Targeting pregnancy-related diabetes and breaking the vicious cycle of
transgenerational transmission is a wholesome action to significantly
bring down the expanding burden of diabetes and other NCDs.
A window of opportunity
▪ In recognition of his numerous contributions to the field of pregnancy-

related diabetes in India and around the world, the Government of India
has declared the birthday of Prof. Seshiah, which falls on March 10, as
“National Gestational Diabetes Mellitus Awareness Day”.
▪ Furthermore, Prof. Seshiah was conferred the Padma Shri in the field of
medicine (as a part of the Republic Day honours this year).
▪ At this juncture, it is wise to reiterate his words on the prevention of NCDs
in the community, i.e., “Focus on the Foetus, for the Future”.
Beijing’s move, • GS PAPER II
• Bilateral, regional and global groupings and
India’s turn agreements involving India.
Beijing’s move, India’s turn
▪ If this moment provides for a reset of India’s ties with China, it will alter
New Delhi’s relationship with the U.S.
▪ Looking at the long list of diplomats, officials, and ministers from across
the globe rushing to New Delhi in the last few weeks, one would assume
that India was playing an active role in resolving the crisis in Europe.
▪ Despite his ambitions to be hailed as a global statesman, Prime Minister
Narendra Modi has scrupulously avoided engaging with the crisis.
▪ India has refused to condemn Russia’s military invasion, continues to
trade with Russia, and has abstained from voting on United Nations
resolutions.
An unmistakable signal
▪ India is the centrepiece of the Joe Biden administration’s Indo-Pacific

strategy.
▪ Indian Foreign and Defence Ministers recently held the ‘2+2’ meeting with
their American counterparts.
▪ The Japanese Prime Minister was in New Delhi last month.
▪ The Australian Prime Minister held a virtual summit with Mr. Modi days
before the two countries signed an interim trade deal.
▪ He had to then explain that he had not betrayed Ukraine by signing the
deal with India.
▪ Even as India’s Quad partners (U.S., Japan, Australia) impose trade

sanctions on Russia, condemn Russian President Vladimir Putin and
provide military aid to Ukraine, India recently welcomed the Russian
Foreign Minister to New Delhi.
▪ The signalling was unmistakable: he was the only visiting foreign official
among the many in New Delhi to get a personal meeting with Mr. Modi.
▪ A shift is nevertheless discernible: India has chosen to increase, rather

than reduce, import of its meagre crude oil supplies from Russia, being
offered at a discount.
▪ Despite a warning by the U.S. Deputy National Security Adviser Daleep
Singh in New Delhi that there will be “consequences to countries that
actively attempt to circumvent or backfill the sanctions,” India and
Russia are exploring ways of conducting bilateral trade by bypassing the
dollar-based financial system.
▪ India’s Quad partners have been exceptionally sympathetic towards New

Delhi’s case so far, but the underlying stress in their ties with India will
come to the surface as the crisis drags on.
▪ These tensions have been noted in Beijing, which has praised India for
pursuing an independent foreign policy.
▪ In recent years, Chinese officials had looked at Indian moves in the region
through the prism of their U.S. policy, but India’s stance on Ukraine has
triggered a rethink in Beijing.
▪ Foreign Minister Wang Yi’s visit to New Delhi in March was driven either
by the need to wean India away from the Quad or as an exploratory step
towards a larger strategic reset with New Delhi.
▪ It would be erroneous to focus on the minimal outcome of the visit to

deem it a failure.
▪ That the visit took place is itself a big success given that some 90,000
soldiers from both armies have been deployed in Ladakh for nearly two
years now, after Chinese troops moved in to occupy certain territories
that were hitherto in Indian control.
▪ Despite 15 rounds of negotiations between senior military commanders,
China continues to occupy at least three such areas.
▪ From other such areas, both the armies have disengaged i.e., moved their
soldiers a couple of miles behind, but there has been no de-escalation i.e.,
they have not moved the troops to their bases.
▪ In his meetings with Mr. Wang, External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar did
not demand the restoration of status quo ante of April 2020 in Ladakh;
disengagement from remaining “friction points” was the only
precondition for return to normalcy in China-India ties.
▪ In a rush to declare the crisis as resolved, India made further concessions
to China by seeking disengagement only from Patrolling Point 15,
suggesting that the other two areas — Depsang and Demchok — are
“legacy issues”.
▪ This is in keeping with Mr. Modi’s stance since June 2020, when he first
denied Chinese occupation of Indian territory in Ladakh and has since
kept silent on the matter.
▪ Questions on the border crisis have been denied in Parliament.
▪ No official media briefings have taken place in two years. The

government has thus successfully kept the truth of Chinese ingress hidden
from the Indian public.
▪ Mr. Modi’s desire to downplay Chinese bellicosity was confirmed by

former U.S. Ambassador to India Kenneth Juster, when he said that the
Indian government had instructed U.S. officials to neither mention the
Chinese aggression in any joint statement nor raise it in a strong manner
otherwise.
▪ While New Delhi is being excessively accommodative of Beijing, China is
unconcerned about Indian sensitivities.
▪ Before coming to India, Mr. Wang signed a provocative statement on
Kashmir in Islamabad with the Foreign Ministers of the Organisation of
Islamic Cooperation countries and asserted China’s strong ties with
Pakistan.
▪ While it has allowed South Korean and Pakistani students to return to
China, China has not extended the same courtesy to over 23,000 Indian
students.
▪ If China is extending a handshake to India, it is only on its own terms.
▪ Despite the border crisis, India’s trade with China reached a record high
of $125 billion in 2021.
▪ India remains the biggest recipient of loans disbursed by the Asian
Infrastructure and Investment Bank.
▪ The Modi government did not criticise China’s clampdown in Hong Kong
and has never raised the issue of mistreatment of Uighurs in Xinjiang,
although it may have been driven by a defensiveness about the criticism
of its own strong-arm policies in Kashmir.
▪ The activities of the Dalai Lama and the Tibetan community in India
have been calibrated to remain within limits that do not provoke Beijing.
Changing relationships
▪ China is the glue that binds the Quad together.

▪ While Indian and American policies are at variance in countries such as
Myanmar, Iran and Afghanistan, China is the one interest that aligns the
two countries together.
▪ That basic premise of a collaborative partnership with India will be tested
by these recent moves from Beijing towards New Delhi.
▪ Questions have always been raised in whispered tones in Washington
about the relative power gap between the two Asian powers (China’s
economy is nearly six times India’s size).
▪ This notwithstanding, it has been an article of faith in Washington in the
past couple of years that having suffered from Chinese military
aggression in 2020, India realises that it needs the U.S. to counter the
threat from Beijing.
▪ This was the thrust of Mr. Singh’s blunt counsel in New Delhi.
▪ During Mr. Wang’s visit, China offered to create a virtual G-2 in Asia by
protecting India’s traditional role and collaborating on developmental
projects as ‘China-India Plus’ in South Asia.
▪ Once India’s limited preconditions for declaring the border crisis resolved
are met, the offer will seem more alluring and real than it does today.
▪ When Mr. Modi as Chief Minister of Gujarat was denied a visa to travel to
the U.S. owing to his association with the 2002 Gujarat riots, he made
regular visits to China.
▪ His comfort level with Beijing goes far deeper than any tactical
realignment at play due to current geopolitical churning.
▪ If this moment provides for a reset of India’s ties with China, it will alter
New Delhi’s relationship with the U.S. and raise questions about the
effectiveness of Quad.
▪ While the Biden administration continues to harp on “shared values” with

the Modi government, the truth is that New Delhi’s commitment to
democratic values, basic freedoms, constitutional rights, and treatment of
religious minorities has been alarmingly poor.
▪ Mr. Modi’s critics allege that his idea of democracy is closer to that of
Donald Trump, Viktor Orbán and Mr. Putin than that of the current U.S.
administration.
▪ Misgivings already in place have been brought into a sharp contrast by

the Ukraine crisis.
▪ The geopolitical churning has placed the choices made by Mr. Modi as
Prime Minister under a harsh glare.
▪ New Delhi’s decisions have not been to the liking of the U.S.
▪ As India is put under greater pressure, the outcomes could spring another
surprise for Washington.
15-April-2022
The Hindu
Editorial
Discussion
15-April-
Air quality
issue
2022
If I find the constitution being misused, I shall be the first to
burn it.
The key phrase is • GS PAPER II
‘focus on the foetus, • Issues related to health.
for the future’
Amending the Weapons
of Mass Destruction Act
• GS PAPER III
• Security challenges and
their management.
Amending the Weapons of Mass Destruction Act
▪ Recently the Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD) and their Delivery

Systems (Prohibition of Unlawful Activities) Amendment Bill, 2022 was
passed in the Lok Sabha.
What is the WMD Bill?
▪ The Bill amends the WMD and their Delivery Systems (Prohibition of
Unlawful Activities) Act, 2005 which prohibits the unlawful manufacture,
transport, or transfer of WMD (chemical, biological and nuclear weapons)
and their means of delivery.
▪ It is popularly referred to as the WMD Act.
▪ The recent amendment extends the scope of banned activities to include
financing of already prohibited activities.
▪ The WMD and their Delivery Systems (Prohibition of Unlawful Activities)
Act came into being in July 2005.
What was the purpose of the original WMD Act?
• Its primary objective was to provide an integrated and overarching

legislation on prohibiting unlawful activities in relation to all three types
of WMD, their delivery systems and related materials, equipment and
technologies.
• It instituted penalties for contravention of these provisions such as
imprisonment for a term not less than five years (extendable for life) as
well as fines.
• The Act was passed to meet an international obligation enforced by
the UN Security Council Resolution (UNSCR) 1540 of 2004.
What is the UNSCR 1540?
• In April 2004 the UN Security Council adopted resolution 1540 to address

the growing threat of non-state actors gaining access to WMD material,
equipment or technology to undertake acts of terrorism.
• In order to address this challenge to international peace and security,
UNSCR 1540 established binding obligations on all UN member
states under Chapter VII of the UN Charter.
• Nations were mandated to take and enforce effective measures against
proliferation of WMD, their means of delivery and related materials to
non-state actors.
• It was to punish the unlawful and unauthorised manufacture, acquisition,
possession, development and transport of WMD became necessary.
What is the UNSCR 1540?
• UNSCR 1540 enforced three primary obligations upon nation states —

1.To not provide any form of support to non-state actors seeking to acquire
WMD, related materials, or their means of delivery;
2.To adopt and enforce laws criminalising the possession and acquisition of
such items by non-state actors;
3.To adopt and enforce domestic controls over relevant materials, in order
to prevent their proliferation.
What has the Amendment added to the existing Act?
• The Amendment expands the scope to include prohibition of financing of

any activity related to WMD and their delivery systems.
• To prevent such financing, the Central government shall have the power
to freeze, seize or attach funds, financial assets, or economic resources of
suspected individuals (whether owned, held, or controlled directly or
indirectly).
• It also prohibits persons from making finances or related services
available for other persons indulging in such activity.
Why was this Amendment necessary?
• India echoes these developments for having made the Amendment

necessary.
• Two specific gaps are being addressed-
1.As the relevant organisations at the international level, such as the
Financial Action Task Force have expanded the scope of targeted
financial sanctions and India’s own legislation has been harmonised to
align with international benchmarks.
2.With advancements in technologies, new kinds of threats have emerged
that were not sufficiently catered for in the existing legislation.
• These notably include developments in the field of drones or unauthorised
work in biomedical labs that could maliciously be used for terrorist
activity.
• Therefore, the Amendment keeps pace with evolving threats.
What more should India do?
• India’s responsible behaviour and actions on non-proliferation are well

recognised.
• It has a strong statutory national export control system and is committed
to preventing proliferation of WMD.
• This includes transit and trans-shipment controls, retransfer control,
technology transfer controls, brokering controls and end-use based
controls.
• Every time India takes additional steps to fulfil new obligations, it
must showcase its legislative, regulatory and enforcement frameworks to
the international community.
• It is also necessary that India keeps WMD security in international focus.
Setting up a precedence
• There is no room for complacency.

• Even countries which do not have WMD technology have to be sensitised
to their role in the control framework to prevent weak links in the global
control system.
• India can offer help to other countries on developing national legislation,
institutions and regulatory framework through the IAEA (International
Atomic Energy Agency) or on bilateral basis.
Could the Amendment become troublesome to people on
account of mistaken identity?
• In the discussion on the Bill in Parliament, some members expressed
concern on whether the new legislation could make existing business
entities or people in the specific sector susceptible to a case of mistaken
identity.
• The External Affairs Minister, however, assured the House that
such chances were minimal since identification of concerned
individuals/entities would be based on a long list of specifics.
What is the international significance of these
legislation?
• Preventing acts of terrorism that involve WMD or their delivery systems
requires building a network of national and international measures in
which all nation states are equally invested.
• Such actions are necessary to strengthen global enforcement of standards
relating to the export of sensitive items and to prohibit even the
financing of such activities.
Way forward
• Sharing of best practices on legislations and their implementation can

enable harmonization of global WMD controls.
• India initially had reservations on enacting laws mandated by the
UNSCR.
• This is not seen by India as an appropriate body for making such a
demand.
• However, given the danger of WMD terrorism that India faces in view of
the difficult neighbourhood that it inhabits, the country supported the
Resolution and has fulfilled its requirements.
Conclusion
• It is in India’s interest to facilitate highest controls at the international

level and adopt them at the domestic level.
• Having now updated its own legislation, India can demand the same of
others, especially from those in its neighbourhood that have a history of
proliferation and of supporting terrorist organisations.
A window for inter-State
collaboration, to breathe
easy
• GS PAPER III
• Conservation,
environmental
pollution and
degradation.
A window for inter-State collaboration, to breathe easy
▪ Context ➔ Over the last few years, the Delhi and Punjab governments
have been at the receiving end of scathing criticism on the issue of air
pollution.
▪ But the annual inter-State blame games have only served as a distraction
even as residents in the two States continue to breathe polluted air.
▪ Now, with the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) governing both Delhi and
Punjab, collaboration for clean air should be the mantra for both State
governments.
A window for inter-State collaboration, to breathe easy
▪ While Delhi dominates the discourse on air pollution in India, Punjab is

home to nine of the 132 most polluted cities in the country identified by
the Central Pollution Control Board.
▪ In 2019, Delhi and Punjab together faced economic losses estimated to be
approximately ₹18,000 crore due to worsening air pollution.
▪ Therefore, by collaborating for clean air, both States can ensure
improvements in citizen well-being and labour productivity.
What needs to be done
▪ So, how can the two States collaborate?
▪ First, those in charge of the two States must talk.

▪ Setting aside their disagreements on the contribution of stubble burning
to Delhi’s air pollution, the States should arrive at a common
understanding of sources polluting the region.
▪ This would result in solutions that are amenable to both governments.
What needs to be done
▪ Second, create platforms for knowledge exchange.

▪ A common knowledge centre should be set up to facilitate cross-learning
on possible solutions to developmental challenges in both States.
▪ Such a centre would especially benefit Punjab given the host of measures
that the Delhi government has already taken to improve air quality in
Delhi.
▪ For instance, Delhi has 40 continuous air quality monitoring stations.
Using proven solutions
▪ Third, collaborate to execute proven solutions.

▪ The two States could co-design solutions that would improve air quality.
▪ They could jointly institutionalise a task force comprising experts from
State-run institutions to pilot these solutions and assess their impact.
▪ This would ensure wider acceptance of the proposed solution, which has
not been the case in the past.
▪ For instance, the PUSA bio-decomposer (developed by the Indian
Agricultural Research Institute), touted as a solution to stubble burning
by the Delhi government, has received mixed reviews from farmers.
▪ Further, the decomposer only makes sense for early maturing varieties of
paddy, as even with the decomposer, stubble would take between 25 to
30 days to decompose.
Using proven solutions
▪ Therefore, it is of little use in high burn districts such as Sangrur, Punjab,

where late-maturing paddy varieties are dominant.
Market for diversified crops
▪ Fourth, create a market for diversified crop products.

▪ The persistence of stubble burning in Punjab and its contribution to toxic
winter pollution in Delhi cannot be denied.
▪ Shifting away from the ‘paddy-wheat cycle’ through crop diversification
is a sure shot solution to stubble burning.
▪ But, the lack of an assured market for agricultural products, other than
wheat and paddy, has acted as a deterrent.
▪ For years now, the AAP government has toyed with the idea of
introducing ‘Aam Aadmi kitchens’ in Delhi.
▪ These community kitchens could potentially incorporate crops other than
wheat and paddy in meals offered. Scaling up such kitchens in the two
States could signal demand and an assured market for diversified crop
products.
▪ Finally, both State governments should assert the need for extending
inter-State cooperation to other States in the Indo-Gangetic plains in
different inter-State forums.
▪ One such forum is the Northern Zonal Council which has representation
from Chandigarh, Delhi, Punjab, Haryana, Rajasthan, Himachal
Pradesh, Jammu and Kashmir and Ladakh.
▪ Both Delhi and Punjab must use this platform to highlight the need for
coordination with neighbouring States to alleviate the pollution crisis.
▪ AAP has an opportunity to showcase political leadership towards air

quality improvement in Delhi and Punjab.
▪ However, while collaborative solutions exist, everything cannot be
achieved this winter.
▪ This year, both State governments should focus on identifying clear
metrics that they will use to evaluate their performance in the coming
years.
▪ With a collaborative plan of action, we can be optimistic about cleaner
air in the years to come.
Solving India’s
idol theft problem
• GS PAPER I
• Indian culture will cover the
salient aspects of Art Forms,
Literature and Architecture
from ancient to modern times.
Solving India’s idol theft problem
▪ Building an inventory of antiquities should be the first step

▪ Sometimes, CAG reports make us feel despondent. There is such a 2013
report on “Preservation and Conservation of Monuments and
Antiquities”.
▪ Monuments and antiquities are part of our heritage and culture and we
don’t market them adequately.
▪ In particular, this report flags the inefficiency of the Archaeological
Survey of India (ASI).
▪ Excavation and preservation require distinct skill-sets and expertise and
since it seeks to combine them both, I have reservations about something
like the Ancient Monuments and Archaeological Sites and Remains Act of
1958.
▪ But let’s leave larger issues aside and focus on only one aspect.
▪ CAG in its 2013 Report stated that “131 antiquities were stolen from
monuments/sites and 37 antiquities from Site Museums from 1981 to 2012″
▪ It added that in similar situations, worldwide, organisations took many
more effective steps:
▪ 1] Checking of catalogues of international auction house(s),
▪ 2] Posting news of such theft on websites.
▪ 3] Posting information about theft in the International Art Loss Registry.
▪ 4] Sending photographs of stolen objects electronically to dealers and
auction houses and intimate scholars in the field.
▪ Lack of legal provisions: The report also stated that the ASI had never
participated or collected information on Indian antiquities put on sale at
well-known international auction houses viz. Sotheby’s, Christie’s, etc. as
there was no explicit provision in the AAT (Antiquities and Art Treasures)
Act, 1972 for doing so.
▪ India is a signatory to the 1970 UNESCO Convention on the Means of

Prohibiting and Preventing the Illicit Import, Export and Transfer of
Ownership of Cultural Property. (We ratified it in 1977).
▪ Perhaps we should also sign the 1995 UNIDROIT (International Institute
for the Unification of Private Law) Convention on Stolen or Illegally
Exported Cultural Objects.
▪ Cultural heritage can take many forms, though we tend to identify more
with moveable cultural heritage, like paintings, coins and archaeological
objects, and there are Interpol surveys and databases on such crimes.
▪ The CAG report was in 2013 and in the last few years, there have been
several reasons to make us feel less despondent.
▪ All of us have read reports about some 200-odd idols being returned by
the US, Britain, Canada and Australia.
▪ The PM has spoken about “sabka prayas”.
▪ If there is a reason for reduced despondency, that’s because some citizens
have taken Article 51A(f) of the Constitution seriously.
▪ “It shall be the duty of every citizen of India to value and preserve the
rich heritage of our composite culture.”
▪ I refer to initiatives and success of the India Pride Project.
▪ The credit for recent returns can largely be attributed to this.
▪ A stolen Buddha statue has returned from Italy.

▪ Italy also suffers and several stolen antiquities have been returned by the
US to Italy.
▪ That being the case, it shouldn’t be surprising that many best practices
originate in Italy.
▪ The following list is illustrative.
▪ (1) A specific law on protecting cultural heritage, with enhanced
penalties;
▪ (2) Centralised management before granting authorisation for
archaeological research;
▪ (3) Specialisation in cultural heritage for public prosecutors;
▪ (4) An inter-ministerial committee for recovery and return of cultural

objects;
▪ (5) MOUs and bilateral agreements with other countries and
international organisations to prevent illegal trafficking;
▪ (6) Involvement of private organisations and individuals in protection;
▪ (7) A complete inventory of moveable and immoveable cultural heritage,
with detailed catalogues;
▪ (8) Monitoring and inspection of cultural sites; and
▪ (9) Centralised granting of export requests.
▪ One could say the 2013 CAG Report did a bit of (8), but that was a one-
off and isn’t a permanent solution.
▪ This isn’t a binary, nor is it possible to accomplish everything overnight.

▪ However, incrementally, one can move towards (1), (3), (4), (5), (6), (8)
and, especially, (7).
▪ Surely, we should start with that inventory.

▪ If we are informed in Parliament that idols and artefacts have been
stolen from centrally-protected temples, museums, monuments and
archaeological sites, we should be aghast.
▪ While fingers can rightly be pointed at Western museums and auction-
houses (this isn’t only about the colonial era), there is internal
connivance.
▪ How do heritage man-holes turn up at Sotheby’s? Monson Mavunkal may
have been arrested now.
▪ But the fact remains he functioned in Kerala for years with impunity. (In
fairness, he seems to have sold fake stuff, not genuine objects.)
▪ Subhash Kapoor, also arrested now, sold genuine stuff to museums.

▪ How was Nataraja stolen from Sripuranthan? How was it smuggled to the
US? How was it then sold to the National Gallery of Australia?
▪ How was provenance established?
▪ Subhash Kapoor may have been arrested and Nataraja returned, but the
established modus operandi is, unfortunately, obvious.
▪ With non-existent security, idols are routinely stolen by local thieves,
perhaps to melt.
▪ With international cartels, this moves to the big league.
▪ For two years after Nataraja and Uma Maheshvari (this idol was in
Singapore) were stolen, we didn’t even know they had vanished.
▪ It shouldn’t be surprising that they didn’t feature in the ALR (Art Loss
Register).
▪ “Poetry in Stone” has a lot of stuff about Kapoor, documenting how
culture was left to vultures, without that inventory.
18-April-2022
The Hindu
Editorial
Discussion
A north pole
for science &
technology
18-April-
2022
“The hardest thing in life is which bridge to cross and which
to burn.”
Bertrand Russell
Ambedkar had
warned about Indian
democracy’s fragility
• GS PAPER I
• Modern Indian history from
about the middle of the
eighteenth century until the
present- significant events,
personalities, issues.
Ambedkar had warned about Indian democracy’s fragility
▪ Garlanding his statues or worshipping him while ignoring his warnings

would be hypocrisy
▪ As we celebrated the 131st birth anniversary of B R Ambedkar, several
interesting and conflicting perceptions of his role as one of the makers of
modern India came to mind.
▪ He is one leader from the pre-independence times who has gained
phenomenal after-life recognition, respect and popularity, not only as a
messiah of the Dalits but also as one of the greatest Indians of the
modern age. He was a nation-builder with a difference.
▪ Unlike Gandhi, Nehru, Subhas Bose and Bhagat Singh, he didn’t fight
against British imperialism.
▪ In fact, he supported British rule and until mid-1946 struggled to ensure
that the British did not leave India so early.
▪ His primary fight was against the evil of untouchability and casteism in
the Hindu community.
▪ He was a severe critic of Mahatma Gandhi and the politics of the Indian
National Congress for fighting only the external evil of foreign rule while
ignoring the cancerous disease within the Hindu community.
▪ In his very first meeting with Gandhi, Ambedkar told him that he had no
faith in great leaders and mahatmas.
▪ “History tells that mahatmas, like fleeting phantoms, raise dust, but raise
no level.”
▪ Gandhi, on his part, expressed “the highest regard” for Ambedkar, and
added, “He has every right to be bitter.
▪ That he does not break our head is an act of self-restraint on his part”.
▪ The central question for Ambedkar was: Why was it that during their
whole history, the Hindus did not feel ashamed about the practice of
untouchability?
▪ Why did the great men of that faith not rise in revolt against such
abominable caste inequality?
▪ Following a deep study of Hindu religious texts, he came to the conclusion
that because of the religious sanctity provided to casteism, it was not
possible to remove it.
▪ His undelivered lecture, later published as The Annihilation of Caste, was
a severe critique of Hinduism.
▪ In 1935, he declared that though he was born a Hindu, he would not die a
Hindu and indeed a few months before his death he led his flock of more
than 4,00,000 to convert to Buddhism.
▪ But he remained deeply concerned that India was internally divided, that
Hindu society was undemocratic and that it emphasised inequality and
exclusion.
▪ He was worried that “if Hindu Raj does become a fact, it will, no doubt,
be the greatest calamity for this country”.
▪ Indeed, it was his effort to make this country a better place that underlay
his labour in drafting the Constitution of India.
▪ The role of chairman of the Drafting Committee of the Constitution of

India came to him as a pleasant surprise. He believed that law was a
powerful instrument for social change and he brought to his task the
vision of a new social order.
▪ Ambedkar worked to embed the objectives of liberty, equality and
fraternity and the concept of dignity of the individual at the heart of the
Constitution.
▪ He could not carry through some of his strongly-held ideas.
▪ He had to compromise on several issues; even nursing a resentment about
having to work as a hack, and do what he was asked to do in the larger
interests of the nation.
▪ In the end, though, the Constitution’s text, as it was finally passed,
carried his stamp.
▪ In his final speech in the Constituent Assembly on November 25, 1949, a

day before it was adopted on November 26, 1949, he exuded a great
sense of achievement.
▪ One of Ambedkar’s most important contributions, however, was a set of
sharp, categorical warnings.
▪ His first warning was, “In politics, we will have equality and in social and
economic life we will have inequality…
▪ We must remove this contradiction at the earliest moment, or else those
who suffer from inequality will blow up the structure of political
democracy which this Assembly has so laboriously built up”.
▪ The second problem he highlighted was the complete absence of the

principle of fraternity in our country: “How can people divided into
several thousand castes be a nation?”
▪ Respect for the dignity of the individual is central to a good society.
▪ As a member of the Nehru Cabinet, Ambedkar felt that the prime
minister was more focused on issues of economic development and not as
much on social reconstruction.
▪ Rights are protected not by law, but by the social and moral conscience of
the society.
▪ Another warning was against the peculiar Indian habit of devotion or

hero-worship of leaders, that is bhakti.
▪ As he emphasised, “Bhakti, in religion, may be a road to the salvation of
the soul.
▪ But in politics, bhakti or hero-worship is a sure road to degradation and
to eventual dictatorship.”
▪ Given his deep sense of history and culture, Ambedkar was worried that
there was a danger in India that democracy may give place to
dictatorship.
▪ As he underlined, “It is quite possible for this new-born democracy to
retain its form, but give place to dictatorship in fact.
▪ If there was a landslide of popular support, the danger of that possibility
becoming an actuality is much greater”.
▪ It seemed almost prophetic. Critics are taking note of Indian democracy
turning into electoral autocracy.
▪ The cumulative effect of corporate power, increasing inequality,
communal hatred and the allowance given to mobs to humiliate others,
poses a real danger.
▪ Babasaheb warned that we need to recognise the evils that lie across our
path and “which induce people to prefer government for the people to
government by the people”.
▪ He asked us to be on guard against these evils and said “that is the only
way to serve the country”.
▪ This warning from Babasaheb is particularly relevant now.
▪ Garlanding his statues or his ritual worship and ignoring his warnings
would be hypocrisy.
What is the meaning of Freebies?
• The literal meaning of freebie is something that is given free of

charge or cost. Political parties are outdoing each other in
promising free electricity and water supply, laptops, cycles,
electronic appliances, etc. These are called ‘freebies’ and
characterized as fiscally imprudent.
What are the reasons for the rise of freebie culture during
elections?
• Criminalization of Politics: According to the Association for Democratic Reforms
(ADR), 233 MPs in the current Lok Sabha are facing criminal charges, up from 187 in
2014. These candidates often resort to distribution of liquor, money, goods etc. to
lure voters.
• Myopic opinion of masses: It is believed that Indian masses vote and react more on
short term freebies and less on long term policies. This encourages parties to offer
more freebies.
• Historical Baggage: Since the independence, parties have been promising some
form of freebies to attract voters. Even if a new party comes to power, then also it
can’t rationalize or outrightly abolish the freebie commitments of prior
governments e.g., Several State Governments have been forced to continue power
and irrigation subsidies due to political pressure. Governments fear that
discontinuance will antagonize their voter base.
What are the reasons for the rise of freebie culture during
elections?
• Concealment of Actual performance: Freebies are often used as a
means to conceal the poor performance of incumbent Government
on economic and social parameters. They provide an opportunity to
alter the voter’s mindset from real issues to short term gains.
• Domino Effect: The rise in coalition era politics since the 1990s has
witnessed a rise of new political parties. These small and new
parties have to offer more freebies than larger parties to lure the
voters. Moreover the increase in competition among the parties to
seek the votes, each party tries to outdo the others in terms of
populist promises.
What are the arguments in support of Freebies?
• Welfare State: The Constitution places an obligation on the State to take

proactive measures for the welfare of poor and downtrodden. For
instance, Art. 39(b) calls for resource distribution for achieving common
good.
• Glaring Inequality in the society: In India there is a wide inequality
between the rich and the poor in terms of income and wealth. The OXFAM
report 2021 showed that the income of 84% of households in the country
declined in 2021, but at the same time the number of Indian billionaires
grew from 102 to 142.
• Sacrifices by the marginalized section: They gave up land for cities,
roads, factories and dams. However, they largely became landless workers
and slum dwellers. Their kinship, culture and lives got disrupted. Several
economists argue that the gains of development have hardly trickled down
commensurately, especially after 1991. The cost of freebies offered is a
fraction of what the poor lose.
• The World Bank recognised in the 1980s that the prevalent policies
marginalize the poor and a ‘safety net’ (freebies) is needed.
What are the arguments in support of Freebies?
• Cushion during Emergencies: COVID-19 has been one of the biggest

health emergencies in the world in over a century. Such extreme events
warrant state support to prevent chaos and disruption in society
e.g., the free COVID-19 vaccination for every individual in India led to a
more prudent management of the pandemic.
• Economic Push: They help increase the demand that prevents the rate of
growth from declining further. Free education and health are anyway
justified because they are cases of ‘merit wants’ and increase productivity
of labor.
• Incentives for the rich: The well-off and businesses get ‘freebies’ that are
euphemistically called ‘incentives’. Since 2006, the Union Budget estimates
these to be between Rs 4-6 lakh crore each year. If the well-off who don’t
really need freebies can get so much, why can’t the marginalized
(especially women and youth) get a fraction of it?
• Social Stability: Freebies enable the government to release the growing
discontent in the marginalized section. They keep a lid on societal
disruption which would be far more expensive.
What are the arguments against Freebies?
• Undermines the spirit of Democracy: This is the primary concern as many
people tend to vote for parties based on the free incentives offered by
them. They fail to judge them on their performance and don’t vote as per
merit. Even the Supreme Court has observed that freebies shake the root
of free and fair elections.
• Fall in Productivity: Freebies create a feeling in masses that they can live
with minimal effort. This decreases their productivity towards work e.g.,
a trend has been created that whoever avail loan from banks does not
repay them, expecting a waiver of loans during the election. This gives
rise to moral hazard and an incentive to default.
• Fiscal Stress: Freebies generally form part of revenue expenditure. Excess
allocation towards them leaves little to spend on capital expenditure that
is a sine qua non for achieving long-term growth.
• A case in point is Tamil Nadu which has been rolling out freebies in
keeping with poll promises and ended up with unsustainable fiscal
conditions.
What are the arguments against Freebies?
• Discourages the honest taxpayer: It creates a sense of discontentment

in the mind of an honest taxpayer whose money is used to fund the
freebie expenditure. This feeling is more dominant especially when
the State is unable to improve the public services due to freebie
commitments.
• Sectoral Collapse: The populist measures of loan waiver have put
significant pressure on the banking sector. Similarly rising power
subsidies have enhanced pressures on discoms who are failing to
sustain themselves.
• Wastage of Resources: Promises of free water and electricity
creates a severe stress on the water table and leads to over
exploitation as seen in states of Punjab and Haryana. NITI Aayog
has cautioned that 21 major cities of India are on the verge of
running out of groundwater in a few years.
What steps can be undertaken going forward?
• First, there should be strengthening of internal party democracy so that

promises of development and not freebies are made in the elections. This
would also reduce the magnitude of criminalization of politics.
• Second, the Election Commission should be given greater powers like
power to deregister a political party, power of contempt etc. This
would curtail distribution of liquor and other goods during elections and
ensure expenditure as per the desired limit.
• Third, the Government should use the money spent on freebies
towards job creation and infrastructure development as advised by
Madras HC in 2021. This will lead to social upliftment and progression of
the State.
• Fourth, the focus should now be tilted on improving public expenditure
efficiency. This requires focusing on outcomes and not merely
outlays. One good example is the distribution of LPG subsidy through
direct benefit transfer (DBT) which led to a decline in the subsidy bill.
What steps can be undertaken going forward?
• Fifth, the Government should also focus on decreasing the

magnitude of black economy. Black Economy erodes the fiscal pool
of government and leads to suboptimal spending thereby enhancing
the tilt towards freebies to lure voters.
• Sixth, in the long run, eradication of unnecessary freebie culture
requires an attitudinal change in the masses. This warrants delivery
of robust moral education at all levels which can be done by properly
implementing the New Education Policy, 2020.
• India has experienced the politics of freebies for a long time and the
outcome of those policies has been sub-optimal, inefficient, and
unsustainable. Therefore rather than doling out money, focus should
be on spending it efficiently. It is high time the discourse on
improving public expenditure efficiency should take center stage
while discussing the role of fiscal policy in India. However, until that is
achieved, reliance on acceptable freebies like health, education etc.
can’t be completely stopped.
20-April-2022
The Hindu
Editorial
Discussion
Demolition
drives violate
international law
20-April-
2022
No man is good enough to govern another man without that
other’s consent.
Demolition drives
violate
international law
• GS PAPER II
interventions for
implementation.
Demolition drives violate international law
▪ The bulldozing of houses in M.P. was to impose collective punishment on

the alleged rioters
▪ Context → Communal clashes broke out during Ram Navami processions
in several parts of the country including at Khargone in Madhya Pradesh.
▪ Subsequently, the Madhya Pradesh government bulldozed the houses of
those who were allegedly involved in rioting.
▪ The State government claims that these demolitions are in response to
illegal encroachments.
▪ However, the fact that these arbitrary demolitions are being carried out
against the alleged rioters of one particular community and in the
immediate aftermath of the riots shows that their purpose seems to be to
impose collective punishment.
Background
▪ This idea of serving ‘justice’, quick and cold, through bulldozers
emanated in Uttar Pradesh.
▪ In the wake of protests against the Citizenship (Amendment)
Act, 2019 the Uttar Pradesh government passed orders to
recover damages from those who were allegedly involved in
destroying public property.
▪ This process has been further institutionalised through the
enactment of the Uttar Pradesh Recovery of Damages to Public
and Private Property Act, 2020.
▪ Several commentators have already pointed out that the use of
such brute state power violates various domestic legal
provisions.
What is wrong with this ?
▪ 1. The bulldozing machines— the new symbols of brute state power — are
not just demolishing houses and shops but also bulldozing rule of law and
our constitutional order.
▪ 2. Our purpose is to illustrate that the act of bulldozing houses without
due process and legal sanction also amounts to a breach of India’s
international law obligations.
▪ 3. The right to housing is not only a fundamental right recognised under
Article 21 of the Indian Constitution, it is also a well-documented right
under the international human rights law framework, which is binding on
India.
▪ 4. For instance, Article 25 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights
(UDHR) states that “everyone has the right to a standard of living
adequate for the health and well-being of himself and of his family,
including food, clothing, housing and medical care…”.
More Articles in ICESCR
▪ Likewise, Article 11.1 of the International Covenant on Economic, Social

and Cultural Rights (ICESCR) recognises “the right of everyone to an
adequate standard of living for himself and his family, including
adequate food, clothing and housing, and to the continuous
improvement of living conditions”.
▪ Furthermore, under Article 11.1, countries are under an obligation to take
“appropriate steps” to ensure the realisation of these rights such as the
right to adequate housing.
▪ The rights recognised under ICESCR, according to Article 4, can be
restricted by States only if the limitations are determined by law in a
manner compatible with the nature of these rights and solely to promote
society’s general welfare.
Right to adequate housing
▪ However, any limitation imposed on the rights given in the Covenant

such as the right to adequate housing cannot lead to the destruction of
these rights.
▪ This is categorically recognised in Article 5 of ICESCR.
▪ Besides, international law also prohibits arbitrary interference in an

individual’s right to property.
▪ For instance, Article 12 of the UDHR states that “no one shall be subjected
to arbitrary interference with his privacy, family, home or
correspondence, nor to attacks upon his honour and reputation”.
▪ Article 12 also stipulates that “everyone has the right to the protection of
the law against such interference or attacks”.
▪ This same right is also provided under Article 17 of the International
Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR).
▪ Article 17 further provides that everyone has the right to own property
alone as well as in association with others and that no one shall be
arbitrarily deprived of his property.
▪ Thus, arbitrary interference with an individual’s property is a gross

violation of the ICCPR.
Forced evictions
▪ The Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR)

commonly known as the United Nations (UN) Human Rights Office —
whose mandate is to promote and protect human rights guaranteed
under international law — has elaborated on the content of the right to
adequate housing.
Forced evictions
▪ According to the UN Human Rights Office, an integral element of the

right to adequate housing is ‘protection against forced evictions’.
▪ Building on the right to adequate housing, given in Article 11.1 of ICESCR,
the UN Human Rights Office defines ‘forced evictions’ as ‘permanent or
temporary removal against the will of individuals, families and/or
communities from the homes and/or land which they occupy, without the
provision of, and access to, appropriate forms of legal or other
protection’.
▪ The right to adequate housing also entails freedom from arbitrary
interference with one’s home, privacy, and family.
Forced evictions
▪ The bulldozing of the houses by the Madhya Pradesh government of the

alleged rioters amounts to forced eviction and arbitrary interference with
an individual’s home, thus a breach of Article 11.1 of the ICESCR.
▪ This action can be defended under international law only if it can be
shown that the forced eviction is as per the law and in conformity with
the provisions of the human rights covenants.
▪ Also, other requirements such as whether the state action was necessary
and proportionate will have to be examined.
▪ It is unlikely that these forced evictions can be lawfully defended given
the timing of the eviction.
Forced evictions
▪ One wonders that if these demolitions were against illegal

encroachments, then did the authorities get the eviction order on the day
of the riots, or did they have an eviction order earlier, but decided to act
only after the riots?
▪ Also, were the eviction orders limited to the Muslim locality?
Judicial incorporation
▪ Moreover, the international human rights law identified above has been
judicially incorporated by the Supreme Court of India into the Indian
legal system.
▪ The apex court in cases like Bachan Singh vs State of Punjab, Vishaka vs
State of Rajasthan, and recently in the famous Puttaswamy vs Union of
India has laid down the principle that the fundamental rights
guaranteed under the Constitution must be read and interpreted in a
manner which would enhance their conformity with international human
rights law.
Judicial incorporation
▪ As the custodian of India’s constitutional order, it is high time that the

judiciary acted and imposed necessary checks on the unbridled exercise of
power by the executive.
▪ Courts should use international law to counter the nationalist-populist
discourse.
A new shine • GS PAPER II
to old ties agreements involving India.

A new shine to old ties
▪ India and UK have faced legacy issues, fundamental paradoxes. Now,

amid a changing strategic scenario, Boris Johnson’s visit is well timed to
move the relationship forward
▪ The current upbeat mood on India’s relations with Britain stands in
contrast to the entrenched pessimism in Delhi and London about their
prospects.
▪ Although many contentious issues remain, including the visible
differences over Ukraine, the outlook for bilateral ties has never looked
as good as it is today.
▪ The bitter legacies of colonialism had made it impossible for the two sides
to pursue a sensible relationship in the past.
▪ But over the last couple of years, Delhi and London have begun a
promising and pragmatic engagement devoid of sentiment and
resentment.
▪ As Prime Minister Narendra Modi hosts British premier Boris Johnson this
week in India, the moment is ripe to turn the expansive new possibilities
— in trade, investment, high technology, defence, and regional
cooperation— into concrete outcomes.
▪ India’s post-colonial engagement with Britain has been riddled with

multiple paradoxes.
▪ One is the deeply intimate relationship between the two elites that sat
uncomfortably with a rough-edged political relationship between the
two governments.
▪ Delhi’s lingering post-colonial resentments and London’s unacceptable
claim for a special role in the Subcontinent generated unending friction.
▪ The consequences of Partition and the Cold War made it harder for Delhi
and London to construct a sustainable partnership.
▪ As the two sides make a determined effort to transcend the paradoxes,
the regional and international circumstances provide a new basis for
mutually beneficial engagement.
▪ Central to this is the under-appreciated role of the US in transforming the

bilateral ties between Delhi and London.
▪ It was the US that first recognised India’s rapidly-growing relative weight
in the international system.
▪ At the turn of the millennium, Washington unveiled a policy of assisting
India’s rise.
▪ This was based on a bipartisan American consensus that a stronger India
will serve US interests in Asia and the world.
▪ Over the last two decades, it has led to a quick transformation of US
relations with India.
▪ That brings us to the second paradox.

▪ At the dawn of Independence, India saw London as the natural
interlocutor with an unfamiliar Washington.
▪ Britain saw itself as a guide to the US in navigating the intricacies of the
post-Partition Subcontinent.
▪ That, of course, did not do much good for Britain or the US in India.
▪ Today it is Washington that is setting the pace for Delhi’s relationship

with London.
▪ Britain was much slower in appreciating India’s new geopolitical salience.
▪ It is now playing catch up.
▪ That India’s relations with two key countries of the Anglosphere — the US
and Australia — could be better than those with Britain is something that
would have been unimaginable in the 1950s.
▪ Even more improbable was the proposition that Delhi could build these
relations with Washington and Canberra without any reference to
London.
▪ That brings us to the third paradox on China’s role in shaping India’s

relations with the West.
▪ For Washington, the strategic commitment to assist India’s rise was
rooted in the recognition of the dangers of a China-dominated Asia.
▪ London in the last two decades was moving in the other direction — a full
embrace of Beijing.
▪ Former British PM David Cameron and the treasury secretary, David
Osborne, had declared a “golden decade” in relations with China in 2015.
▪ The City of London was ready to merge itself with Asia’s rising financial
centre — Shanghai.
▪ Things were on course until the US pulled the plug on Britain’s China
romance.
▪ Once the American deep state decided to confront Chinese power in the
late 2010s, London had to extricate itself from the Chinese Communist
Party’s powerful spell.
▪ As the US unveiled a new Asian strategy, Britain followed with its own
“Indo-Pacific tilt” that helped secure the region against China’s muscular
policies.
▪ This provides a very different regional context for the elevation and
consolidation of India’s strategic partnership with Britain.
▪ Sceptics will say the regional dynamic is not all favourable to India and
the UK, and point to Pakistan— which has long stuck in the throat of
India’s relations with Britain.
▪ Unlike the US and France, which are committed to an “India first”
strategy in South Asia, Britain remains torn between its new enthusiasm
for India and the inertia of its historic tilt towards Pakistan.
▪ Delhi is acutely conscious that London’s affection for Pakistan will persist
as a complication.
▪ But India is confident that Pakistan’s relative decline in the region is
bound to make it a less weighty factor in India’s bilateral relations with
Britain.
▪ Optimists might even imagine Delhi persuading London to nudge
Pakistan towards political moderation and regional reconciliation.
▪ The question of Pakistan brings us to the fourth paradox—the domestic

dynamics of Britain that have tended to sour ties with India.
▪ For long, the reigning assumption in Delhi was that the Labour Party was
empathetic to India while the Tories were not.
▪ That ceased to be true quite some time back, as the Labour Party’s vote
bank politics at home began to target India and its position on Kashmir.
▪ Under Jeremy Corbyn, Labour took it to an extreme.
▪ The Tory leadership has rejected this approach and helped build a
measure of political confidence with India.
▪ The complications generated by Britain’s internal politics are not limited

to Pakistan and Kashmir.
▪ The bad news is that most of India’s internal issues get politicised in
Britain.
▪ The good news is that Delhi is learning to engage with British domestic
politics.
▪ Delhi has figured out that the interconnected politics of India and Britain
— shaped by the large South Asian diaspora of nearly four million — can
be cut both ways.
▪ Although the Tories have drawn close to India since Johnson took charge,
the relationship between the Conservatives and the BJP leads us to the
fifth paradox.
▪ If the Tories are romantic about the Raj, nationalists in India bristle at the
British imperial connection.
▪ Yet, together they are constructing a new relationship between India and
Britain.
▪ For post-Brexit Britain, the romance with the past has an urgent realist
basis — making the best of its historic ties.
▪ Having walked out of Europe, Britain needs all the partners it can find
and a rising India is naturally among the top political and economic
priorities.
▪ Delhi meanwhile has become supremely self-assured in dealing with
London.
▪ With the Indian economy set to become larger than Britain’s in the next
couple of years, Delhi is no longer defensive about engaging Britain.
▪ Even more important, Delhi recognises the value of a deep strategic

partnership with London.
▪ It may be recalled that former prime minister Inder Kumar Gujral had
famously dismissed Britain as a “third rate power” 25 years ago.
▪ That statement was as untrue then as it is today.
▪ Britain remains the fifth-largest economy, a permanent member of the

Security Council, a global financial hub, a centre of technological
innovation, and a leading cyber power.
▪ It has a significant international military presence and wide-ranging
political influence.
▪ Realists in Delhi are trying to leverage these British strengths for India’s
strategic benefit.
Why is there no
debate in Parliament?
• GS PAPER II
• Parliament and State Legislatures –
structure, functioning, the conduct
of business, powers & privileges
and issues arising out of these.
Why is there no debate in Parliament?
▪ MPs are encouraged to blindly follow the party whip. The executive is less
accountable and laws are passed with inadequate scrutiny
▪ The Monsoon Session of the Indian Parliament in 2021 saw the Lok Sabha
clearing over 18 bills with about 34 minutes of discussion for each.
▪ The Essential Defence Services Bill (2021), enabling the government to
prohibit strikes, lockouts and lay-offs in units in the defence industry, saw
12 minutes of debate in the Lok Sabha, while the Insolvency and
Bankruptcy Code (Amendment) Bill (2021) had just five minutes of
debate (PRS India, 2021).
▪ Not one bill was referred to a parliamentary committee.
▪ And with the voice vote becoming the norm, MPs were rarely mustered in
the House to record votes.
▪ The Parliament’s productivity is notable (129 per cent for the Lok Sabha
in the last session in 2022) but a tradition of debate has been lost. Has
Parliament become a mere post office?
▪ Deliberation on legislation is a design feature of parliamentary

democracy.
▪ In the US, Senator Ted Cruz was given the opportunity to speak for 21
hours and 19 minutes in the Senate House, against Obamacare in 2013.
▪ When parliamentary proceedings have time set aside for such debates,
the quality of legislation improves, while enabling consensus.
▪ Meanwhile, in India, the Farm Laws Repeal Bill (2021) was passed in just
eight minutes (three minutes in the Lok Sabha, five minutes in the Rajya
Sabha), reducing MPs to a mere headcount.
▪ It doesn’t have to be like this — India’s constituent assembly debates to
frame the Constitution were initiated in December 1946 and went on for
166 days, wrapping up only by January 1950.
▪ Ideally, parliamentary conventions would be upheld and strengthened,

with free votes allowed for MPs, and the process of deliberation revived.
▪ Additionally, MPs rarely have adequate resources to conduct in-depth
research — a typical MP gets an allowance of Rs 40,000 per month to
hire a legislative assistant.
▪ Meanwhile, in the UK, the average MP salary is £84,144, while in 2021,
they got an allowance of £193,000-2,16,000 to hire legislative assistants.
▪ To revive deliberation, the government should raise funding for
parliamentary research.
▪ A parliamentary democracy, by design, should ensure government

accountability.
▪ In Westminster, the British prime minister is required to answer questions
from MPs in the House of Commons every Wednesday, from 12 pm to
12:30 pm.
▪ This can be a mix of tabled and un-tabled supplementary questions, with
the prime minister not knowing what queries will be asked.
▪ The result — as often seen on television — is a raucous set of probing
questions and hesitant answers, with the government kept on its toes.
▪ Even during Covid-19—induced lockdowns, PMQs were held virtually,
enabling accountability (India, notably, scrapped Question Hour during
this period). In India, this tradition has rarely been considered, with the
prime minister and ministers often given queries in advance.
▪ Meanwhile, another avenue of ensuring accountability is the

parliamentary committees — in the US, Senate and House Committees
scrutinise laws, confirm government appointments, conduct
investigations, and hold hearings.
▪ In the UK, the House of Commons ran a public reading mechanism in 2013
where members of the public could add comments to draft legislation via
a web portal, with 1,000 individuals participating with over 1,400
comments.
▪ In India, long-term development plans are simply not subject to
parliamentary scrutiny, with just annual outlays approved.
▪ Where such committees have taken initiative, they have had an impact
(for example, the JPCs on allocation and pricing of Telecom Licences and
Spectrum in October 2013, on irregularities in Securities and Banking
Transactions in December 1993, etc).
▪ New Zealand makes it compulsory for all bills to be referred to a select

committee for scrutiny.
▪ Ideally, we would have Department Related Standing Committees

(DRSCs) reviewed periodically, with all bills referred to them — such
committees would have the power to elicit public views and call-in
advisors (PRS Legislative, 2011).
▪ Major reports of such committees would ideally be read and debated in
Parliament.
▪ Another feature of parliamentary democracies is allowing MPs to take

initiative. Sometimes, this can take the form of private member bills.
▪ The UK has passed seven private member bills since 2019, while Canada
has passed six bills.
▪ In India, meanwhile, just 14 private member bills have been passed by
both Houses since 1952 (six of them when Nehru was in power).
▪ While limited, such bills serve as a reminder of what could have been —
the Women’s and Children’s Institutions (Licensing) Act, 1956 (No. 105 of
1956) by Rajmata Kamlendu provided for the “licensing of institutions
established and maintained for the reception, care, protection and
welfare of women or children”.
▪ The Code of Criminal Procedure (Amendment) Bill (1953), introduced by

Raghunath Singh, sought to empower higher courts to stay or suspend
orders passed by lower courts.
▪ Ideally, we should set up mechanisms to enable private member bills to
gain a hearing and even to be put to vote.
▪ Beyond Parliament, for most MPs in India, the ability to drive change in
their constituencies is limited.
▪ Consider the Members of Parliament Local Area Development (MPLAD)
scheme, which enables MPs to recommend select development initiatives
to the local district authority, with a maximum cap of Rs 5 crore.
▪ With about 6,38,000 villages in India, the average parliamentary
constituency ends up having 1,000 each.
▪ If one were to equitably divide the sum, it would add up to Rs 15,000 per
locality (barely enough to have three metres of concrete road).
▪ And even this amount was suspended over the past 1.5 years, with the
government reportedly “saving” Rs 6,320 crore.
▪ Meanwhile, in the Philippines, the Priority Development Assistance Fund

provides funds to senators for small-scale infrastructure and community
projects.
▪ Such schemes unlock constituency-specific development, enabling
bottom-up democracy.
▪ Instead, we have institutional mechanisms to stifle debate and remove

initiative for MPs.
▪ The anti-defection law punishes any errant MP or MLA who leaves one
party for another – going against the party whip could lead to an MP
losing his seat.
▪ The consequence has been chilling, with MPs rarely getting access to any
legislation prior to it being tabled.
▪ This law has disincentivised MPs to have a distinguished voting record.
▪ MPs simply look to press the button highlighted by the whip, with the
party system determining one’s stand as a parliamentarian.
▪ Consider this: Of India’s 543 Lok Sabha seats, 250 are occupied by
politicians who profess to be farmers.
▪ And yet, few, if any, of these “farmers” were able to raise their voices on
the debate on the three farm laws in Parliament.
▪ A vote for one’s conscience has become a rarity in India’s august forum.
▪ The anti-defection law has not served its purpose and should simply be
scrapped. If not, MPs will not be lawmakers who ideate and debate.
▪ Future portents are grim. The average MP in India represents over 25

lakh citizens — larger than the population of countries like Botswana,
Slovenia, Estonia and Bhutan.
▪ In comparison, each MP in the UK represents 92,000 citizens, while each
member of the US House of Representatives is accountable to 7,00,000
people.
▪ With such numbers, no MP can ever adequately represent the interests of
their constituents. Of course, by 2026, the Lok Sabha could reportedly
end up having over 1,000 seats.
▪ While ensuring representation is key, with this, MPs are unlikely to have
significant speaking time, let alone space to influence debates or take
initiative.
▪ In 1956, Feroze Gandhi introduced a private member’s bill advocating

press freedom to cover parliamentary proceedings; this was later codified
as the Parliamentary Proceedings (Protection of Publication) Act (1956).
▪ Ideally, Parliament and its members would seek to drive an accountable
government.
▪ Our Parliament must reflect the changing aspirations, restlessness and
ambition of the new India, driving accountability and not suborning itself
to the executive — it should be a true centre of inquiry.
United Nations Has Failed
Introduction
• In the aftermath of the 2003 American invasion of Iraq, unprovoked and without the United
Nations Security Council’s approval, many obituaries were written of the global body as it
failed to prevent an unwanted war.
• Almost two decades later, the UN’s relevance is yet again debated over similar
circumstances as Russia, another P5 member, has invaded Ukraine without the Council’s
assent or any immediate provocation.
• A unilateral war, without the UN’s sanction, goes against the fundamentals of its Charter.
After all, the organization was established, in the wake of the devastating World War II, to
“save succeeding generations from the scourge of war”.
• It was created to give peace a secure foundation and to uphold equal rights of men and
women, and of “nations small and large”.
Relevance of UN
• Critics point out the impunity with which the five permanent
members of the Security Council go about advancing their self-
interests unhindered, as long as they do not step on each other’s
toes.
• Russia chairing the Council meeting to consider a resolution deploring
its own actions was aptly compared to the fox being in charge of the
chicken coop.
• Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy lost no time to demand that
a country that commits war crimes should not be allowed to hold a
permanent seat in the Security Council.
• While a change there requires an amendment to the UN Charter that
is next to impossible, the General Assembly did vote to suspend
Russia’s membership of the Human Rights Council.
Relevance of UN
• With President Vladimir Putin ordering his country’s nuclear forces

to heightened alert status, a red line has been crossed, adding a
chilling dimension to the conflict.
• Belarus quickly abandoning its status as a non-nuclear-weapon
country, reaffirming its readiness to host Russian nuclear weapons
on its territory, is a fallout of grave concern
• True, the UN could not prevent the conflict in Ukraine, the first war
on European soil for many decades.
• True, the stature of the UN stands diminished. Yet, puzzling as it may
sound, the UN has a pivotal role to play amidst the war and it will
continue to have a significant role even after the war has ended.
Relevance of UN
• The answer to this puzzle can be found in the 2001 Nobel Peace
Prize citation. (So far, the UN, its specialised agencies, related
agencies, funds, programmes, and staff have won the prestigious
Peace Prize 12 times).
• Awarding the 100th Peace Prize to then secretary-general, Kofi
Annan, the Nobel Committee stated its wish “to proclaim that the
only negotiable route to global peace and co-operation goes by way
of the United Nations”.
• It was an eloquent testimony to the UN’s raison d’être in our
troubled world.
Relevance of UN
• Ever since its inception, the UN has been at the forefront of several
efforts to reconstruct societies torn apart by conflicts and to
maintain ceasefire among warring parties.
• The first such operation, the UN Truce Supervision Organisation
(UNTSO), launched in 1948 following the Arab-Israeli conflict the
same year, is still operational. So is the second one, the UN Military
Observer Group (UNMOGIP) launched in 1949 to maintain the
ceasefire between India and Pakistan in Jammu and Kashmir.
• Each, for different reasons, can be considered a failure, since neither
has been able to produce or maintain peace.
Relevance of UN
• Major success stories from among the more than 70 peacekeeping

operations during the past 75 years do exist, however.
• They include, among others, restoring peace in Cambodia, the
Balkans, Timor Leste, and Liberia — all societies torn apart by brutal
civil wars.
• Among the glaring failures are the debacle in Somalia and the
inability to stop the 1994 genocide in Rwanda that killed more than
8,00,000 people in just three months.
Relevance of UN
• Nearly 4,200 peacekeepers from some 120 countries have died

serving under the UN flag, including more than 160 from India, the
highest number for any troop-contributing nation.
• In 2007, India became the first country to deploy an all-women police
contingent to a peacekeeping mission, to war-torn Liberia.
• India is currently the third-largest troop contributor to UN peace
operations with over 5,500 uniformed personnel serving in seven
missions.
Relevance of UN
• The tragedy in Ukraine raises immediate questions: Who will stand by the country during its
reconstruction?
• Who will protect the millions of people, internally displaced as well as those who fled the
country seeking refuge elsewhere?
• Europe’s worst humanitarian and refugee crisis in decades has witnessed the number of refugees
who have fled to neighbouring countries, including Russia, nearing five million.
• Humanitarian relief has become the UN’s forte, but it is not the whole story.
• With the war in Ukraine and NATO’s increasing military build-up in Eastern Europe, more crises
cannot be ruled out. There is no guarantee that the war may stop in Ukraine.
• A stray incident could ignite more disarray and violence ahead. Issues such as European security
and arms control will need to be resolved through dialogue to prevent further disaster. In all
these, the UN will have a major role to play.
Relevance of UN
• While the UN will be grappling with the humanitarian crises unleashed by the war,
parallel attempts are necessary to restore multilateralism as the norm of the world
order.
• Errant superpowers exempting themselves from that principle will only lead to more
catastrophes.
• Eventually, the very structure of the Security Council, the veto system, and even its
membership will need an overhaul to reflect the realities of the 21st century.
• However, those who rush to write obituaries for the UN whenever it fails to avert a
conflict should not overlook the fact that the only global body of its kind is the sum of
its parts and cannot exceed the political will of its member states.
• As Dag Hammarskjöld, the second Secretary-General, famously said about the
organisation: “The UN was not created to take mankind to heaven, but to save
humanity from hell.”
Message
• Today’s(19 April, 2022)

Editorial Discussion will शंख सी पुकार कर
be published Tomorrow, रुके न तू, थके न तू
Not able to speak much झकु े न तू, थमे न तू
due to mouth sores.
Regret the
सदा चले, थके न तू
inconvenience caused रुके न तू, झकु े न तू
to you.
22-April-2022
The Hindu
Editorial
Discussion
This is India’s
moment of
reckoning
22-April-
2022
This is India’s moment
of reckoning
• GS PAPER II
• Bilateral, regional and global
groupings and agreements
involving India.
This is India’s moment of reckoning
▪ The country can be the fulcrum of the new global order, as a peaceful
democracy with economic prosperity
▪ I have been deeply saddened by recent global developments of conflict
and violence in Ukraine.
▪ Talk of nuclear threats have alarmed me.
▪ Regardless of provocations and causes, however justifiable they may
seem to be, violence and consequent loss of human lives are deeply
regrettable and avoidable.
▪ As Mahatma Gandhi’s nation, India must be a committed and relentless
apostle of peace and non-violence, both at home and in the world.
Conflict and a reshaping
▪ The Russia-Ukraine conflict portends a reshaping of the world order.

▪ Ever since the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, a paradigm of free societies,
frictionless borders and open economies evolved to be the governing
order in many nations.
▪ This catalysed freer movement of people, goods, services and capital
across the world.
▪ Global trade and per capita GDP nearly doubled in this period, marking
an era of general peace and prosperity.
▪ Societies and economies in the world became intertwined closely in the
pursuit of shared global prosperity.
▪ Such tight inter-dependence among nations will lead to fewer conflicts
and promote peace, was the established wisdom.
▪ The Russia-Ukraine conflict has dismantled this wisdom.

▪ If inter-connectedness and trade among nations were mutually
beneficial, then it follows that its disruption and blockade will be
mutually harmful.
▪ Retaliatory economic sanctions imposed on Russia have hurt all nations,
albeit some more than the others.
▪ Egyptians are reeling from food shortages due to their dependence on

Russian and Ukrainian wheat,
▪ Germans suffer from high costs of heating in winter due to their
dependence on Russian gas,
▪ Americans face a shortage of electric cars due to unavailability of car
batteries that are dependent on Russian nickel,
▪ Sri Lankans have taken to the streets on economic woes and
▪ Indian farmers run the risk of high fertilizer prices triggered by a global
shortage.
‘Global Village’, a lived reality
▪ ‘Global Village’ is not just an academic term but a lived reality for the
nearly eight billion people on the planet.
▪ This ‘Global Village’ was built on the foundation of advanced
transportation networks, cemented with the U.S. dollar as the reserve
currency and fenced by integrated payment systems.
▪ Any disruption to this delicate balance runs the risk of plunging the
‘Global Village’ into disequilibrium and derailing the lives of all.
▪ India too has benefited enormously from being an active participant in

this interconnected world, with a tripling of trade (as share of GDP) in
the last three decades and providing vast numbers of jobs.
▪ Trade with other nations should and will always be an integral
cornerstone of India’s economic future.
▪ A reversal towards isolationism and protectionism will be foolhardy and
calamitous for India.
▪ The Russia-Ukraine conflict is a global geo-economic conflict that

threatens to hark back to the Cold War era of two dominant power blocs.
▪ Nations that did not condemn the Russian aggression in the United
Nations constitute more than half the world’s population but a quarter of
the world economy versus nations that condemned Russia, account for
three-quarters of the global economy.
▪ The former, the Russia-China bloc, are large producers with rising
consuming power while the latter, the western bloc, are today’s large
consumers.
▪ Any new curtain that descends between these two blocs and divides them
will cause major upheavals to the entwined global economic equilibrium.
A trade opportunity
▪ During the Cold War, when India pursued a prudent foreign policy of
non-alignment, trade was a small part of India’s economy.
▪ Now, trade represents a significant share of India’s GDP.
▪ India’s trade is dependent on both these power blocs and on the current
global economic structures of free trade, established reserve currency and
transaction systems.
▪ As the western bloc of nations looks to reduce dependence on the Russia-
China bloc of nations, it presents newer avenues for India to expand
trade.
A trade opportunity
▪ The western bloc of nations has expressed its desire to embrace a new
paradigm of ‘free but principled trade’ that values both morals and
money.
▪ While one may reasonably quibble about this new doctrine, India, as the
largest peace-loving democracy, stands to gain enormously from this
‘principled trade’ aspiration of the western bloc.
▪ It presents a tremendous opportunity for India to become a large
producing nation for the world and a global economic powerhouse.
▪ However, to capitalise on these opportunities, India needs free access to
these markets, an accepted and established global currency to trade in
and seamless trade settlements.
A trade opportunity
▪ The American dollar has emerged as the global trade currency, bestowing
an ‘exorbitant privilege’ on the dollar, much to the justifiable
consternation of other nations.
▪ But a forced and hurried dismantling of this order and replacing it with
rushed bilateral local currency arrangements can prove to be more
detrimental for the global economy in the longer run.
▪ I recall the time when I was part of bilateral currency negotiations such as
the Indian rupee-Russian rouble agreement in the late 1970s and 1980s,
when we mutually agreed on exchange rates for trading purposes.
▪ Such isolated bilateral agreements are fraught with risks, but when trade
is a small share of the economy and such agreements are limited to a few
trading partners, it was wieldy.
Needed, ties on either side
▪ Now, with India’s robust external sector, a flourishing trading

relationship with many nations and tremendous potential to expand
trade, such bilateral arrangements are unsustainable, unwieldy, and
perilous.
▪ Opportunities to buy discounted oil or commodities may be enticing but if
it entails a prolonged departure from the established order of dollar-
based trade settlement or jeopardises established trading relationships
with western bloc markets, it can have longer term implications for
India’s export potential.
▪ In the long run, India stands to gain more from unfettered access to the
western bloc markets for Indian exports under the established trading
order than from discounted commodities purchased under new bilateral
currency arrangements that seek to create a new and parallel global
trade structure.
▪ India thus needs not just a non-aligned doctrine for the looming new
world order but also a non-disruptive geo-economic policy that seeks to
maintain the current global economic equilibrium.
▪ By the dint of its sheer size and scale, India can be both a large producer
and a consumer.
▪ With rising inflation, volatile crude oil prices, global uncertainty, weak
domestic private investment and deteriorating fiscal situation, expanded
external trade in the changed global situation presents the best
opportunity to salvage India’s economy and create large numbers of jobs
for our youth and women.
▪ To best utilise this opportunity, India needs not just cordial relationships
with nations on either side of the new divide but also a stable and
established global economic environment.
▪ It is important for India to adopt a strategic economic self-interest

doctrine within the larger paradigm of its non-alignment foreign policy.
Social harmony is a must
▪ Just as it is in India’s best interests to balance the current geo-economic

equilibrium, it is also imperative for India to maintain its domestic social
equilibrium.
▪ To be a large-scale producing nation, India needs millions of factories
with hundreds of millions of people of all religions and castes across all
States to work together.
▪ Social harmony is the edifice of economic prosperity.
▪ Fanning mutual distrust, hate and anger among citizens, causing social
disharmony is a shameful slide to perdition.
Social harmony is a must
▪ The reshaping and realignment of the world order will be a unique

opportunity for India to reassess its foreign policy, economic policy and
geo-political strategy and don the mantle of global leadership.
▪ Strengthening India’s global economic might through a cautious geo-
economic strategy in the aftermath of the Russia-Ukraine conflict can
potentially mark a pivotal turn in India’s economic history.
▪ India can be the fulcrum of this new global order, as a peaceful
democracy with economic prosperity.
▪ But this requires India to first stem the raging communal divisions within.
▪ I sincerely wish and fervently hope that India can emerge as the
harbinger of peace, harmony and prosperity in this new world.
Growing • GS PAPER II
• Effect of policies and politics of developed and
ambitions developing countries on India’s interests.

Solomon islands
Growing ambitions
▪ China’s security pact with the Solomon Islands is a first, but unlikely to be
the last
▪ China’s government announced on April 19 that it had signed a
landmark security pact with the Solomon Islands, evoking concern from
Australia and the U.S.
▪ The agreement is the first of its kind that China has agreed with any
country, and underlines its ambitions to play a security role in the Pacific.
▪ The final version has not been made public, but according to a draft that
was leaked last month, it will pave the way for China to deploy its
security forces there.
▪ The Solomon Islands can request police and military personnel “to assist in
maintaining social order”, while China can make ship visits and use its
ports for logistics.
Growing ambitions
▪ This will give China’s vessels a strategic

foothold in the Pacific, in a region close to
Australia and Guam, where the U.S. has a
naval base.
▪ Both countries unsurprisingly expressed
concern, with Washington, this week, even
dispatching a senior official and Indo-Pacific
Coordinator, Kurt Campbell, to the Solomon
Islands, who will take up the pact as well as
plans to reopen the U.S. Embassy there.
▪ China questioned the motivations of the
visit, noting that the Embassy had been
closed for 29 years but the U.S. had now
taken a “sudden” interest.
Growing ambitions
▪ The significance of the pact extends beyond the immediate regional

security concerns in the Pacific.
▪ For decades, China insisted it would never open a military base abroad.
▪ Then, in 2017, the PLA put into use its first foreign base in Djibouti.
▪ The Solomon Islands government said the agreement does not imply
China will build a base there.
▪ Chinese military planners have, however, made clear that further bases
— for its navy — are in the works, with experts suggesting possible
locations in Pakistan, Cambodia, and Equatorial Guinea (in the
Atlantic).
Growing ambitions
▪ The pact does, however, relate to a second key pillar of China’s avowed
“peaceful rise” doctrine, which was, as popularised by “Panchsheel” or the
“five principles of peaceful co-existence” — the “non-interference” in the
internal affairs of other countries.
▪ The deployment of security forces in a foreign country certainly does not
square with that idea.
▪ China has already begun to do so elsewhere, albeit on a limited scale.
▪ Chinese media have mentioned China-Pakistan patrols in Pakistan-
occupied Kashmir, while reports have suggested the deployment of
security forces in Tajikistan near the Wakhan corridor that links
Afghanistan and Xinjiang.
Growing ambitions
▪ China’s past commitments on military bases and non-interference were

intended to show the world Beijing would not seek to become a global
“hegemon”, its favoured term to describe the U.S.
▪ But this is less of a concern for Xi Jinping, who has made clear his view
that the “East is rising and West declining” and that China should be
unabashed about moving to the “centre stage”.
▪ The latest security pact is unlikely to be the last.
Tinkering to • GS PAPER III
• Awareness in the fields of IT, Space, Computers,
innovate robotics, nanotechnology, biotechnology.

Tinkering to innovate
▪ Recently, India has improved its ranking in the Global Innovation Index
from 81 (2015) to 46 (2021) and science education will be the key to
improving future rankings.
▪ April marks the beginning of the academic calendar year of ‘Tinkering’
and ‘Innovation’ with the ATL Community Day celebration to provide an
equal opportunity to all for innovation.
▪ Recently, India has improved its ranking in the Global Innovation Index
from 81 (2015) to 46 (2021) and science education will be the key to
improving future rankings.
▪ The Constitution (Article 51 A h) states that “It shall be the duty of every
citizen of India to develop scientific temper, humanism and the spirit of
inquiry and reform”.
▪ One of the tools to develop it is by strengthening science education. What
if we learn and promote it in a fun and playful manner?
▪ Since Independence, there have been various efforts to strengthen science

education where science was primarily envisioned as a tool to solve
problems of hunger and poverty.
▪ In 1961, the Indian Parliamentary and Scientific Committee studied the
problems of science in Indian schools.
▪ Emphasis on science education was also laid through various education
commissions, especially the Secondary Education Commission (1952),
Kothari Commission (1964) and NPE 1986.
▪ Few science movements such as the Kerala Sasthra Sahithya Parishad and
Hoshangabad Science Program also helped popularise science.
▪ The establishment of Homi Bhabha Centre for Science Education (a centre

under the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research) has immensely helped
disseminate research for strengthening science education and the quality
of science teachers in India.
▪ The position paper on teaching science (developed under the National
Curriculum Framework 2005) by NCERT strongly advocates taking out
science from textbooks to the real world.
▪ In continuation with several such efforts, to make science learning more

hands-on and experiential, the Atal Innovation Mission (AIM) launched
by NITI Aayog (in 2016) under the leadership of Prime Minister Narendra
Modi has emerged as a powerful nationwide initiative primarily
promoting a culture of innovation and entrepreneurship.
▪ In fact, it strengthens science education in schools throughout India, with
the ingredients of creativity, innovation, and ‘tinkering’.
▪ AIM tries to accelerate these traits among school children through its
tinkering labs – the Atal Tinkering Laboratories (ATLs).
▪ It covers around 7.5 million students from 9,500 plus schools spread across
722 districts in India.
▪ Seventy per cent of the ATLs are established in government, government-
aided, girls and co-ed schools.
▪ So, what is Tinkering?

▪ Remember your childhood, when you used to disrupt your toy car, pull
out its key, motor, and gears and check how it worked.
▪ You might have put it in water to check if it still works.
▪ That was when you ‘tinkered’ for the first time in your life and
undoubtedly you would have got scolded by your parents for breaking
toys.
▪ Unfortunately, such ‘tinkering’ also faded from our school science labs.
▪ These labs are mostly confined to pre-planned experiments, like a
theatre.
▪ For example: To check whether the colour of a chemical A changes after
adding chemical B or not.
▪ If it changes, at what level (volume), if not then students might

manipulate the experiment to get the desired result in their notebook
(for the purpose of examination and score marks).
▪ There is also a lack of freedom in science labs as students are under

pressure to handle laboratory tools carefully.
▪ Often students are instructed to leave the lab as soon as the experiments
get over and warned of a penalty if any equipment gets damaged.
▪ To a greater extent science labs and science exhibitions have become
synonymous with ‘Thermocol Models’.
▪ ATLs have disrupted this ‘thermocol’ culture, especially in government

schools.
▪ What students need is time and freedom to explore and experiment with
manipulative, and at least create something out of it.
▪ It not only sparks their creativity but boosts them to innovate.
▪ ATLs provides young tinkerers a chance to play with electronic
equipment, Arduino, Raspberry Pi, Robotics, do-it-yourself kits and
software like AutoCAD and TinkerCAD.
▪ The lab is also equipped with basic infrastructures like a projector,
computer system and 3D Printer.
▪ According to teachers, the culture of ATL enables them to put a more

contextual and practical approach while teaching science in the
classroom.
▪ On a lighter note, children love to spend more time in ATL than in
classrooms.
▪ While working in ATL, they also develop their reasoning skills.
▪ We talked to Dr Devendra Singh (teacher and mentor of an ATL

established at Gaya, an aspirational district under NITI Aayog) and got
some insights into what’s being cooked in the lab.
▪ He shared his experiences of developing an Air Water Generator, for
which he and his team of students (who come from moderate
backgrounds) were awarded a patent in October 2020.
▪ He shared an incident of how students used a constructivist approach and
used reasoning skills to develop a path (coil) for water so that it could
reach from top to bottom in a specific time.
▪ However, water reached in less time than required.
▪ To overcome this problem, students modified the same coil in a zigzag
manner and adjusted the timing.
▪ He says that ATL provides a realistic opportunity for students as well as

him as a teacher to relive Kolb’s experiential learning, Bloom’s Taxonomy
from remembering to create something and develop psychomotor skills.
▪ Children study local societal problems and brainstorm to create models

for solutions.
▪ They learn programming to design-relevant digital models; get the
prototype through a 3D printer (which they enjoy a lot) and rework it to
finalise their product under mentors.
▪ ATLs also use Meta- Teaching where senior students guide and brainstorm
with current students.
▪ ATL established in government schools has provided access and

opportunity to tinker for children of the working class.
▪ These children already have some exposure to tinkering at some level
because of their parent’s occupations.
▪ A child whose father works at an electric shop, already has some
experience of working with wires, batteries, bulbs etc. at home or a child
who assists a family in farming already has some knowledge about soil,
machines etc.
▪ When such children get an opportunity to tinker at ATL, they use their
out of school knowledge to create useful products on their own.
▪ Their products can go for a patent, and they can also start their own
enterprise if needed.
▪ Such motivation for ATL among students can be helpful to curb

attendance problems at schools.
▪ ATL also promotes a culture of standardisation of lab tools across all
schools under AIM.
▪ All AIM affiliated schools across India, irrespective of an elitist or a simple
school, get the same laboratory kit and same funding, which cuts dis-
parities across ATL of these schools.
▪ All financial and lab kit formalities are governed through the GEM
portal.
▪ While the ATL propagates a dynamic culture of science learning, it has a
great social implication as it advocates equity, access and opportunity for
young tinkerers, especially for the underprivileged.
▪ Through ATL, schools, teachers and students across India have got
connected with each other in an atmosphere of healthy competition.
▪ It will strengthen the development of science and tinkering culture at
government schools.
▪ Tinkering leads to discovery learning. It’s better to Tinker than to get
bored.
Latest Developments in this context
• Border issues :
• Assam and Meghalaya signed an agreement to resolve the five-decade-old border dispute .
• Assam, with the maximum border disputes in the region, got into a proactive border dialogue.
• The dialogues on the state’s border disputes with Meghalaya, Arunachal Pradesh, Nagaland and
Mizoram are continuing at a steady pace and progress is being made in the other disputes as well.
• In January 2022, Assam and Nagaland agreed to settle their dispute out of court and talks are on
with Arunachal Pradesh to solve the 122 disputed sites.
• There are regular engagements between Assam-Mizoram to maintain peace and work out a
permanent solution.
• Reduction of the disturbed areas under AFSPA : The Union Home Ministry (MHA) decided to reduce the
Disturbed Areas(DA) under the Armed Forces (Special Powers) Act (AFSPA) in Assam, Nagaland and
Manipur after decades.
• DAN has been in force in the whole of Assam since 1990, in all of Manipur (except the Imphal
Municipality area) since 2004 and in the whole of Nagaland since 1995.
• Pertinently, AFSPA was completely removed from Tripura in 2015 and Meghalaya in 2018,
respectively.
• Clearly, more areas will be out of the ambit as the situation improves on the ground.
North East
• Peace Efforts: The government of India has tried its best to accommodate the demands of
the tribal groups and other inhabitants in the region, within the framework of the Indian
Constitution.
• Peace has been witnessed in most places across Assam, and even in Nagaland and
Manipur talks with various groups for a permanent solution had resulted in a
cessation of violence.
• The NLFT Tripura Agreement (August 2019), the Bru Agreement (January 2020),
the Bodo Peace Accord (January 2020) and the Karbi Anglong
Agreement (September 2021) have actually resulted in about 7,000
militants surrendering their arms.
• In 2021, militancy incidents had reduced by 74 per cent compared to 2014 and
security personnel and civilians deaths have also come down by 60 per cent and 84
per cent, respectively, during this period.
• Other efforts : Government's efforts to address the issues of the Northeast and have
been moving according to a strategic plan which is premised on three objectives —
ending all disputes, ushering in economic progress and taking the region’s
contribution to GDP back to its pre-Independence levels, and making efforts to
maintain and preserve the region’s languages, dialects, dance, music, food, and culture
and make it attractive for the whole country.
Challenges to the Development of the NER
• Difficult Terrain: It is majorly a mountainous region, except the state of Assam, which
has plains as a major part of its area. This makes it difficult for the government
schemes to be implemented in the area.
• Connectivity: It is a landlocked region. Therefore, it has limited access to the sea.
Similarly, it has a difficult terrain that renders expressways and wider roads
infeasible.
• This is complicated by the absence of railway infrastructure in the region.
• Backward Areas: The people of the North East Region are still content with a simple
lifestyle and lack of technology in their day-to-day lives.
• The standard of living continues to be low, due to the absence of high-income
generation opportunities.
• Insurgency: One of the major regions for the lack of development in the region is
the lack of political and social stability in the country.
• The artificial boundaries of the British legacy have not been fully accepted by the
tribal communities of the region, which is compounded by political opportunism.
• The region is still caught in the vicious circle of violence due to political reasons
and the diversion of youth towards the insurgent groups, which leads to a lack of
skill enhancement and consequent lack of opportunity.
Government's efforts to handle them
• The North East Industrial Development Scheme (NEIDS), 2017: It has come into force with effect
from 01.04.2017 for a period of five years.
• The scheme covers the manufacturing and service sector of all the States of North Eastern
Region (NER), including Sikkim.
• 'NITI Forum for North East'
• In collaboration with the NITI Aayog, the 'NITI Forum for North East' constituted for
accelerated, inclusive and sustainable development in the NorthEast Region, has identified 5
focus sectors, viz. Tea, Tourism, Bamboo, Dairy and Pisciculture.
• Swadesh Darshan Scheme
• Under the Swadesh Darshan Scheme of the Ministry of Tourism, sixteen projects with themes
of Heritage, Wildlife, Spiritual, Tribal, Eco-adventure etc with a total amount of Rs.1,337.63
crore have been sanctioned.
• PRASHAD Scheme
• Under the Pilgrimage Rejuvenation and Spiritual Heritage Augmentation Drive (PRASHAD)
Scheme, development of Kamakhya Devi Temple (Rs.29.99 crore) and Pilgrimage Facilitation
at Nagaland (Rs.25.26 crore) and Meghalaya (Rs.29.31 crore) have been sanctioned.
• Further, Kaziranga National Park (Assam) has been identified under the Iconic Site
Development Scheme.
Government's efforts to handle them
• Ministry of Development of North Eastern Region (MDoNER), under its various
schemes like Non-Lapsable Central Pool of Resources (NLCPR) and its successor North
East Special Infrastructure Development Scheme (NESIDS), Schemes of North Eastern
Council (NEC) and North East Road Sector Development Scheme (NERSDS) has also
taken steps to bridge the social and physical infrastructure gaps.
• Digital North East Vision 2022
• It was launched by the Union Minister for Electronics & IT in Guwahati.
• The Vision Document emphasises leveraging digital technologies to transform the
lives of people of the northeast and enhance the ease of living.
• Pan-India Schemes
• In addition, various Pan-India Schemes are being implemented in the North Eastern
States for their sustainable development, e.g., Jal Jeevan Mission, Atal Mission for
Rejuvenation and Urban Transformation, Swachh Bharat Mission, etc.
Conclusion
• The efforts by the Union government to make the northeastern region the main pillar of the Act
East policy have been useful in bringing a sense of political stability that is very crucial for optimal
economic development and capacity enhancement in the region.
• These developments are significant for restoring normalcy and enabling perception changes about
the northeastern region
26 -April-2022
The Hindu
Editorial
Discussion
26 -April-
2022
The goal of an
energy-secure
South Asia
• Religion is a matter between the man and his Maker.
• Patel
• What is really needed to make democracy function is not knowledge
of facts, but right education.”
• Gandhi
The goal of an • GS PAPER III
energy-secure South • Infrastructure: Energy.
Asia
The goal of an energy-secure South Asia
▪ South Asia has almost a fourth of the global

population living on 5% of the world’s landmass.
▪ Electricity generation in South Asia has risen
exponentially, from 340 terawatt hours (TWh)
in 1990 to 1,500 TWh in 2015.
▪ Bangladesh has achieved 100% electrification

recently while Bhutan, the Maldives, and Sri
Lanka accomplished this in 2019.
▪ South Asia has almost a fourth of the global
population living on 5% of the world’s landmass.
▪ Electricity generation in South Asia has risen
exponentially, from 340 terawatt hours (TWh)
in 1990 to 1,500 TWh in 2015.
▪ Bangladesh has achieved 100% electrification
recently while Bhutan, the Maldives, and Sri
Lanka accomplished this in 2019.
▪ For India and Afghanistan, the figures are 94.4% and

97.7%, respectively, while for Pakistan it is 73.91%.
▪ Bhutan has the cheapest electricity price in South Asia
(U.S.$0.036 per kilowatt hour, or kWh) while India
has the highest (U.S.$0.08 per kWh.)
▪ The Bangladesh government has significantly
revamped power production resulting in power
demands from 4,942 kWh in 2009 to 25,514 MW as of
2022.
▪ India is trying to make a transition to renewable
energy to provide for 40% of total consumption,
while Pakistan is still struggling to reduce power
shortage negatively impacting its economy.
▪ The electricity policies of South Asian countries

aim at providing electricity to every
household.
▪ The objective is to supply reliable and quality
electricity in an efficient manner, at
reasonable rates and to protect consumer
interests.
▪ The issues these address include generation,
transmission, distribution, rural electrification,
research and development, environmental
issues, energy conservation and human
resource training.
▪ Geographical differences between these

countries call for a different approach
depending on resources.
▪ While India relies heavily on coal, accounting
for nearly 55% of its electricity production,
99.9% of Nepal’s energy comes from
hydropower, 75% of Bangladesh’s power
production relies on natural gas, and Sri
Lanka leans on oil, spending as much as 6% of
its GDP on importing oil.
Electrification, growth, SDGs
▪ Given that a 0.46% increase in energy consumption leads to a 1% increase

in GDP per capita, electrification not only helps in improving lifestyle but
also adds to the aggregate economy by improving the nation’s GDP.
▪ For middle-income countries, the generation of power plays an essential
role in the economic growth of the country.
▪ More electricity leads to increased investment and economic activities
within and outside the country, which is a more feasible option as
opposed to other forms of investments such as foreign direct investment.
▪ The South Asian nations have greatly benefited from widening electricity
coverage across industries and households.
▪ For example, 50.3% of Bangladesh’s GDP comes from industrial and
agricultural sectors which cannot function efficiently without electricity.
▪ Nepal’s GDP growth of an average of 7.3% since the earthquake in 2015
is due to rapid urbanisation aided by increased consumption of
electricity.
▪ On the other hand, Pakistan suffered a drop in industrialisation of
textiles by 9.22%, wiping off U.S.$12.4 billion from the industry in 2014
due to power shortages.
▪ India leads South Asia in adapting to renewable power, with its annual
demand for power increasing by 6%.
▪ Solar power-driven electrification in rural Bangladesh is a huge step

towards Sustainable Development Goal 7 (which is “Ensure access to
affordable, reliable, sustainable and modern energy for all”) by 2030
and engaging more than 1,00,000 female solar entrepreneurs in
Sustainable Development Goal 5 (which is “achieve gender equality and
empower all women and girls”).
▪ India’s pledge to move 40% of total energy produced to renewable
energy is also a big step.
▪ Access to electricity improves infrastructure i.e., SDG 9 (which is “build
resilient infrastructure, promote inclusive and sustainable
industrialization and foster innovation”).
▪ Energy access helps online education through affordable Internet (SDG 4,

or “ensure inclusive and equitable quality education and promote
lifelong learning opportunities for all”), more people are employed (SDG
1: “no poverty”), and are able to access tech-based health solutions (SDG
3, or “ensure healthy lives and promote well-being for all at all ages”).
Green growth, green energy
▪ South Asian leaders are increasingly focused on

efficient, innovative and advanced methods of
energy production for 100% electrification.
▪ Prime Minister Narendra Modi in his ‘net zero by
2070’ pledge at COP26 in Glasgow asserted
India’s target to increase the capacity of
renewable energy from 450GW to 500GW by
2030.
▪ South Asia has vast renewable energy resources —
hydropower, solar, wind, geothermal and biomass
— which can be harnessed for domestic use as well
as regional power trade.
▪ The first-ever Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) benefits such as

poverty reduction, energy efficiency and improved quality of life were
realised when there was India-Bhutan hydro trade in 2010.
▪ The region is moving towards green growth and energy as India hosts the
International Solar Alliance.
▪ In Bangladesh, rural places that are unreachable with traditional grid-
based electricity have 45% of their power needs met through a rooftop
solar panel programme which is emulated in other parts of the world.
▪ This is an important step in achieving Bangladesh’s nationally
determined contributions target of 10% renewable energy of total power
production.
Regional energy trade
▪ The South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC) prepared

the regional energy cooperation framework in 2014, but its
implementation is questionable.
▪ However, there are a number of bilateral and multilateral energy trade
agreements such as
▪ the India-Nepal petroleum pipeline deal,
▪ the India-Bhutan hydroelectric joint venture,
▪ the Myanmar-Bangladesh-India gas pipeline,
▪ the Bangladesh-Bhutan-India-Nepal (BBIN) sub-regional framework
for energy cooperation,
▪ and the Turkmenistan-Afghanistan-Pakistan-India (TAPI) pipeline,
rumoured to be extended to Bangladesh.
▪ ‘South Asia’s regional geopolitics is determined by the conflation of

identity, politics, and international borders.
▪ Transnational energy projects would thus engage with multiple social
and ideational issues’ which is a major limitation for peaceful energy
trade.
▪ If energy trade is linked and perceived through the lens of conflict
resolution and peace building, then a regional security approach with a
broader group of stakeholders could help smoothen the energy trade
process.
▪ The current participation in cross-border projects has been restricted to
respective tasks, among Bhutan and India or Nepal and India.
▪ It is only now that power-sharing projects among the three nations,
Nepal, India, and Bangladesh, have been deemed conceivable.
▪ India exports 1,200MW of electricity to Bangladesh, sufficient for almost

25% of the daily energy demand, with a significant amount from the
Kokrajhar power plant in Assam worth U.S.$470 million.
▪ Bhutan exports 70% of its own hydropowered electricity to India worth
almost U.S.$100 million.
▪ Nepal on the other hand, not only sells its surplus hydroelectricity to India
but also exported fossil fuel to India worth U.S.$1.2 billion.
What is needed
▪ South Asia is reinforcing its transmission and distribution frameworks to

cater to growing energy demand not only through the expansion of
power grids but also by boosting green energy such as solar power or
hydroelectricity.
▪ Going forward, resilient energy frameworks are what are needed such as
better building-design practices, climate-proof infrastructure, a flexible
monitory framework, and an integrated resource plan that supports
renewable energy innovation.
▪ Government alone cannot be the provider of reliable and secure energy
frameworks, and private sector investment is crucial.
▪ In 2022, private financing accounted for 44% of household power in
Bangladesh, 48.5% in India, and 53% in Pakistan.
What is needed
▪ Public-private partnership can be a harbinger in meeting the energy

transition challenges for the world’s most populous region.
• GS PAPER II
India, Europe and the
Russian complication agreements involving India.
India, Europe and the Russian complication
▪ Ukraine war has persuaded Delhi to recalibrate its great power relations,
compelled Brussels to wake up from geopolitical slumber
▪ The re-election of Emmanuel Macron as the president of France on
Sunday has sent a sigh of relief across Europe and North America.
▪ Delhi too is pleased with the return of Macron, who laid a strong
foundation for India’s strategic partnership with France.
▪ Victory for Marine Le Pen, Macron’s opponent, would have dramatically

complicated the geopolitics of Europe.
▪ If the Russian aggression against Ukraine challenges the existing
European regional order, Le Pen’s challenge to Macron underlined
Moscow’s expansive influence in the internal politics of European nations.
▪ Le Pen, like so many other right-wing leaders in Europe, has close ties to
Vladimir Putin. Many of them are deeply hostile to the European Union.
▪ Le Pen’s victory would have not only altered France’s international
trajectory, but also shaken the EU to its political core.
▪ Unlike the Soviet Union, which sought to shape

European politics though left-wing parties,
Russia today influences European politics
through right-wing parties.
▪ That Le Pen got nearly 42 per cent of the
popular vote reflects the growing challenge to
mainstream politics.
▪ European establishments now have no choice
but to double down on confronting Putin.
▪ Russia’s threat to the regional and domestic order in Europe is among

multiple factors shaping Delhi’s intensifying engagement with Brussels.
▪ Although India and the EU have talked of a strategic partnership for two
decades, they have struggled to realise it.
▪ Three major external factors are facilitating the transformation of India’s
ties with Europe.
▪ The first is the Russian question.

▪ As the war in Ukraine dominates Delhi’s
conversations with visiting European leaders this
week, India’s reluctance to condemn Putin’s
aggression might suggest nothing has really changed
— that Delhi is tied inseparably to Moscow and is at
best “neutral” in Russia’s conflicts with the West.
▪ During the last few weeks, Delhi has insisted that its
silence is not an endorsement of Russian aggression.
▪ India’s position has continued to evolve. Delhi’s
repeated emphasis on respecting the territorial
integrity of states is a repudiation of Russia’s
unacceptable aggression.
▪ There is no question that the Ukraine invasion has put Delhi in acute
strategic discomfort amidst the escalating conflict with China.
▪ For India, a normal relationship between Russia and the West would
have been ideal.
▪ But Russia’s confrontation with the West comes during India’s rapidly
expanding economic and political ties to Europe and America.
▪ Delhi might be sentimental about India’s historic Russian connection but
it is not going to sacrifice its growing ties to the West on that altar.
▪ Russia’s declining economic weight and growing international isolation
begins to simplify India’s choices.
▪ Meanwhile, geographic proximity and economic complementarity have

tied Europe even more deeply to Russia.
▪ The EU’s annual trade with Russia at around $260 billion is massive in
comparison to India’s $10 billion.
▪ Unlike India, Europe’s societal connections with Russia are deep-rooted.
▪ A range of leaders in Europe, including Macron, have been advocating a
historic reconciliation with Russia and Moscow’s integration into the
regional security order.
▪ Putin’s reckless invasion of Ukraine has compelled Europe to embark on a

costly effort to disconnect from Russia.
▪ This is particularly true for Germany, which has cultivated strong
commercial ties with Russia.
▪ With Putin locked in a long and unwinnable war in Ukraine, Russia is
condemned to pay a heavy price for his folly and is bound to emerge as a
terribly weakened power.
▪ The war in Ukraine has certainly presented a major near-term problem

that needs to be managed by Delhi and Brussels.
▪ Yet, they also find themselves in the same policy boat — of trying to
reduce reliance on Russia.
▪ And over the longer term, a diminished Russia is bound to become less of
a complicating factor in India’s engagement with Europe.
▪ For nearly a century, India’s Russian connection had complicated Delhi’s

ties to Europe.
▪ If the Russian revolution of 1917 inspired large sections of the Indian
national movement, the partnership with Moscow dominated India’s
international relations during the Cold War.
▪ That phase is drawing to a close.
▪ Second is the China question that adds a new imperative

to India’s partnership with Europe.
▪ Contrary to the mythology in Delhi that Russia has been
pushed into China’s arms, Moscow has been deepening
ties with Beijing for more than two decades triggering
many anxieties in Delhi.
▪ In June 2021, Joe Biden had met Putin in Geneva with an
offer to explore a productive relationship with Russia.
▪ Putin, however, made a conscious choice to turn to China
instead.
▪ In February, Putin traveled to Beijing to announce a
partnership “without limits”.
▪ Whether Russia was pushed or jumped into Chinese arms makes no

difference to India.
▪ India has no option but to manage the consequences of the Russian

decision.
▪ In the last two decades, China has emerged as a great power and now
presents a generational challenge for Indian policymakers.
▪ That challenge has been made harder by Putin’s alliance with Xi Jinping.
▪ As Delhi strives to retain a reasonable relationship with Moscow, Europe

emerges as an important partner in letting India cope with the China
challenge.
▪ This is reinforced by Europe’s own rethinking on China.
▪ For more than two decades, Europe pursued relentless economic
engagement with China, without a reference to Beijing’s long-term
political ambitions.
▪ Thanks to the growing problems of doing business with Xi’s China,
Beijing’s geopolitical alliance with Moscow, and the rapid deterioration of
Sino-US relations, Brussels is ready to invest serious political capital in
building purposeful strategic ties with India.
▪ Delhi is ready to reciprocate.
▪ Finally, there is the American question.

▪ Until recently it appeared that Europe’s calls for
“strategic autonomy” from the US were in sync with
India’s own worldview.
▪ But the Ukraine crisis has underlined the US’s centrality
in securing Europe against Russia.
▪ In Asia, Chinese assertiveness has brought back the US
as a critical factor in shaping peace and security.
▪ The US, however, is not looking for weak allies in
Europe and Asia.
▪ Washington wants a strong Europe taking greater responsibility for its

own security; it would like Delhi to play a larger role in Asia and become
a credible provider of regional security.
▪ Above all, America wants India and Europe to build stronger ties with
each other.
▪ The Ukraine war has persuaded Delhi to recalibrate its great power
relations and has compelled Europe to end its long geopolitical holiday.
▪ For the first time since independence, India’s interests are now aligning
with those of Europe.
▪ Together, Delhi and Brussels can help reshape Eurasia as well as the Indo-
Pacific.
27-April-2022
The Hindu
Editorial
Discussion
Integrated
Command
and Control
Centres
27 -April-
2022
• "There is no chance of the welfare of the world unless the
condition of women is improved. It is not possible for a bird to fly
on one wing"
• — SWAMI VIVEKANAND
STRATEGIC IMPORTANCE • GS PAPER III
OF ANDAMAN AND
• Security challenges and their management.
NICOBAR ISLANDS
STRATEGIC IMPORTANCE OF ANDAMAN AND NICOBAR ISLANDS
▪ Conext ➔ In the last few years, the Andaman and Nicobar Islands (ANI)
have gained an important position in India’s foreign policy.
ANDAMAN AND NICOBAR ISLANDS
▪ The ANI are two groups of islands: Andaman

Islands and the Nicobar Islands, covering an area of
8,249 sq km.
▪ The entire island chain consists of 836 islands
including islets and rocky outcrops, of which some
38 are permanently inhabited.
▪ The islands are governed as a single Union Territory
by the Central Government of India, through the
Andaman Nicobar Administration.
ANDAMAN AND NICOBAR ISLANDS
▪ The ANI are also home to India’s only integrated

tri-service command of the armed forces—the
Andaman and Nicobar Command (ANC) for
maritime surveillance and enhancing India’s
strategic presence in the eastern Indian Ocean.
Strategic importance of ANI
▪ Securing SLOC ➔ These islands act as a

physical barrier that secures busy Sea Lines
of Communications (SLOC) by creating a
series of chokepoints: The Preparis Channel
in the north, the Ten Degree Channel
between the Andaman and Nicobar Island
groups and the Six Degree Channel to the
south.
▪ While the first two sea lanes are used
infrequently by commercial shipping, all
vessels that pass through the Malacca Strait
must traverse the Six Degree Channel. For
instance, the channel acts as primary conduit
for India-ASEAN trade ($ 78 billion in 2021).
▪ Countering increasing Chinese presence ➔

China’s efforts to expand its footprint in the
IOR to overcome its ‘Malacca Dilemma’
(China’s fear of a maritime blockade at the
Straits of Malacca’) and fulfil its ‘Maritime
Silk Road’ ambitions have fueled
apprehensions about freedom of navigation
in these waters.
▪ By gaining ground at critical chokepoints,
China could use them to its benefit during
any future conflict or a standoff with India.
▪ ANI’s strategic location allows India to
pursue sea denial warfare strategy (denying
the adversary the use of the near sea) to
dictate terms in littoral space
▪ Net security provider ➔ India can also

leverage the potential of these islands to
protect its own interests and burnish its
image as the ‘net security provider’ in the
region.
▪ Connection with Southeast Asia ➔

Containing about 30 percent of India’s
Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ), ANI connects
South Asia with Southeast Asia. The
northernmost point of this archipelago is
merely 22 nautical miles from Myanmar and
the southernmost point, Indira Point, is only
90 nautical miles from Indonesia.
▪ Important fulcrum of Indo-pacific ➔ The

ANI are at the intersection of the Indian
Ocean and the South China Sea, and further
to the Pacific Ocean, an important fulcrum
of the strategic concept of the Indo-Pacific.
Challenges in ANI’s strategic development
▪ Inadequate attention to strategic

importance of ANI ➔ A section of India’s
foreign policy community has argued
against turning the islands into a strategic-
military hub, on the grounds that it
wouldn’t sit well with Southeast Asian
countries, who perceive India to be
benevolent and benign power.
▪ Slow pace of development ➔ Internet
connectivity, even at the naval base in the
capital Port Blair, is reported to be erratic.
Road building, airstrip construction, and
even the building of jetties has been slow or
non-existent.
▪ Institutional reluctance ➔ Notwithstanding

episodic visits by other navies, there exists
some traditional institutional reluctance
towards allowing port visits to the ANI by
foreign navies in general and the US Navy in
particular.
▪ If naval vessels and military aircraft of other
major navies become regular visitors, it
could accentuate China’s ‘Malacca
Dilemma’.
▪ Ecological Fragility ➔ Establishing a credible

Aerial and Naval presence in this ecologically
fragile and ethnographically extremely
sensitive region presents complex challenges.
The governance parameters were regulated
under a protectionist regime to ensure the
preservation of natural resources.
▪ The state machinery was also designed in a
way that imposes structural limitations on
development projects.
▪ These were further sustained by
environmentalists, anthropologists and social
scientists and backed by the Supreme Court,
which favoured environmental conservation in
its judgements regarding the islands.
▪ Other challenges ➔
▪ The absence of a human presence on
hundreds of these islands has made them
vulnerable to narcotics smuggling, intrusion
by foreign vessels, and other incursions.
▪ Heavy rainfall restricts building activity to
six months a year and the distance from
mainland adds to the cost of construction as
all material must be shipped to the islands.
▪ Few companies are willing to work on the
islands because of the distance and cost. For
some materials, importing from Indonesia
would be far cheaper and more cost
effective than sending shipments from the
Indian mainland.
Initiatives taken in ANI
▪ Maritime hub ➔ In 2015, the government

announced a INR 100,000-million plan to
develop the islands into the country’s first
maritime hub. It aims to develop facilities,
such as telecommunications, electricity, and
water which will help in building and
expanding strategic capabilities.
▪ Declining protectionism ➔ In 2019, a new
Island Coastal Regulation Zone Notification
was promulgated, allowing land
reclamation for ports, harbours and jetties.
This is expected to usher in luxury tourism in
Smith, Aves and Long Islands, and water
aerodromes in Neil and Havelock islands.
Allowing such projects will help in creating
strategic infrastructure.
▪ Maritime exercises ➔ ANC conducts joint

maritime exercises such as the Singapore
India Maritime Bilateral Exercise and
Coordinated Patrols with Myanmar,
Thailand and Indonesia. It also conducts
MILAN, a biennial multilateral naval
exercise, to build friendship across the seas.
▪ Twenty countries participated in the 2018
MILAN edition, making it the largest naval
exercise in the Andaman Sea.
▪ Others ➔
▪ The Chennai-Andaman and Nicobar
undersea internet cable was inaugurated to
provide high-speed internet connection to
seven remote islands of the ANI chain —i.e.,
Swaraj Dweep (Havelock), Little Andaman,
Car Nicobar, Kamorta, Great Nicobar, Long
Island, and Rangat.
▪ The commander-in-chief of the ANC has
been empowered to requisition military
assets from the three services, handle land
acquisition cases, and been granted
additional financial powers.
▪ In 2018, India and Indonesia, set up a special task force to enhance connectivity
between the ANI and the port of Sabang in Aceh to promote trade, tourism and
people-to-people contacts.
▪ An India-Japan cross-servicing agreement, which has provisions for the ANC to
host Japanese warships, is under consideration.
Road Ahead
Road Ahead
▪ Encouraging migration ➔ There is a need to

consider encouraging migration from the
mainland and open up some of the
strategically located uninhabited islands to
tourism. That would give India a stronger
physical footprint and would help the
country track the movement of vessels and
people.
▪ Strategic infrastructure ➔ In a bid to
emphasise its regional pre-eminence, the
Indian Navy in recent times has raised the
tempo of naval operations in the Bay of
Bengal. Reinforcing strategic infrastructure
on the islands is a way of highlighting
India’s combat prowess.
Road Ahead
▪ Cooperation with strategic partners ➔ Port

visits by US, Japan, Australia, France or the
UK can lead to further graded cooperation
in all the dimensions in the ANI between
India and its key strategic partners.
▪ Engagement with ASEAN ➔ There lies an
opportunity to make ANI an important
element of “Act East Policy” of engaging
with countries in the region east of India.
A splintered
‘nerve centre’
• GS PAPER II
interventions for
sectors and issues arising out
of their design and
implementation.
A splintered ‘nerve centre’
▪ Services of urban local bodies have to be integrated with the ICCC for
improving amenities for people
▪ Networked infrastructure in cities of the global South seems to be a
chimera that everyone wants to ride.
▪ It is mostly the people, however, who occupy networks that make
infrastructure work for our cities.
▪ Take, for example, the water supply distribution lines in most Indian
cities.
▪ In its current form, no sensor may ever replace the “linemen” who work
the valves spread across the city, often with a simple rod, to regulate the
supply of water.
▪ And yet, a different logic of governing infrastructure is in the making.
A splintered ‘nerve centre’
▪ The Union Minister for Housing and Urban Affairs Hardeep Singh Puri
recently announced that Integrated Command and Control Centres
(ICCCs) have been established in 80 cities selected as part of the Smart
Cities Mission, a Centrally Sponsored Scheme.
▪ The ICCC projects being executed may be seen as part of the “pan city”
component of the mission which envisages “application of selected Smart
Solutions to the existing [emphasis added] city-wide infrastructure”.
Five pillars of ICCC
▪ The overbearing images of a hall with giant video walls notwithstanding,

an ICCC has five basic pillars:
▪ first is bandwidth;
▪ second, the sensors and edge devices which record and generate real-time
data;
▪ third, various analytics which are software that draw on data captured
by end devices to generate “intelligence”;
▪ fourth is data storage;
▪ fifth, the ICCC software which may be described as, in MoHUA’s words, “a
system of systems” — the anchor for all other application specific
components and has been described as the “brain and nervous system” of
the city.
▪ Central to the promise of ICCC is the idea of

“predictive modelling” which uses data to
generate inputs on not just how the city is but also
how it can be.
▪ It could tell which direction the city is growing in;
it could predict future real estate hot spots; it
could identify and predict all accident-prone spots
in the city, and it could predict the bus routes
prone to crowding.
▪ This is in sharp contrast to how things actually
work on the ground: our frames of response are
retrospective and we are constantly retrofitting
our cities as the primary mode of transformation.
▪ The ICCC may be seen in sync with the functions of an urban local body
(ULB) under the 74th Constitutional Amendment, towards improving
services for people.
▪ Several contradictions may arise in this context.
▪ First, the project is being executed under the aegis of the Special Purpose
Vehicles (SPVs) constituted under the Companies Act, 2013, in the selected
cities.
▪ Projects of the SPV that overlap with core ULB areas have been a source
of tension between the two, one that the cities are still learning to resolve.
▪ Unless the core staff of ULB working across departments such as health,
town planning, water supply, etc., adopt the ICCC systems, it risks being
a splintered “nerve centre”.
▪ One solution is to build a team in the SPV that can act as a bridge, inspire
more users, and develop capacities; however, as “contract employees”
they may be subject to the mercurial aspects of administration.
▪ Second, there is the risk of permanent underutilisation of the system.
▪ With poor integration with ULB services, and not just software
integration but also in terms of workflows and SOPs, the functional
capability may continue to be titled towards video surveillance.
▪ Even with the latter, configuration of video surveillance analytics and its
application has been less than perfect and the police department
operators often use the systems manually to screen the footage in the
wake of an incident which defeats the purpose of ICCC.
▪ Third, the sizeable investments required create

contradictions in some cities which are
otherwise struggling for funds to upgrade
their basic infrastructure and services.
▪ One of the key questions to gauge the success
of ICCC in future, maybe to ask, if cities are
choosing to build and sustain these systems
out of their own revenue or untied devolution
funds.
▪ If not, ICCCs may struggle to outlive the
exhaustion of mission grants.
▪ And finally, despite the efforts to keep

procurement vendor-agnostic, some segments
of ICCC are still dominated by select industry
players who may dictate terms to the city or
engage in arm-twisting for payments.
‘War rooms’
▪ The ICCCs in some cities served as a “war room” during the COVID-19
pandemic, and its application is cited as a success.
▪ Despite its usefulness, the success of such “war rooms” lay in the fact that
the municipal, district and the police administration were bound together
by the compulsions of the pandemic, which may not be normally
forthcoming.
▪ Unless the services of the ULB and the people taking them to the residents
of a city are “integrated” into ICCCs, they may turn out to be as the
images show: a hall with giant video walls, a rather expensive one.
How Indonesia’s ban on
Palm Oil exports will hurt
India?
• GS PAPER III
• Indian Economy and issues
relating to planning,
mobilization of resources,
growth, development.
How Indonesia’s ban on Palm Oil exports will hurt India?
▪ The abrupt ban on palm oil exports by Indonesia, its biggest exporter, is
expected to rock household economics globally.
▪ Palm oil is among the world’s most-used cooking oils, and India’s
dependence on Indonesia is expected to deal a supply-side shock.
Why - Indonesia curbs palm oil export
▪ Indonesia has clamped down on exports starting 28 April primarily

because of soaring inflation in the country.
▪ This is not the first time the South East Asian country decided to arrest
local prices by banning exports—it had announced limited curbs in
January too.
▪ However, brokerages suggest that the ban will probably be a temporary
measure of two to three weeks, as Indonesia cannot afford to lose out on
exports for long.
▪ Indonesia’s president Joko Widodo has stated that he would ensure that
the availability of cooking oil in the domestic market becomes “abundant
and affordable”.
Impact on India
▪ Palm oil is among the world’s most-used

cooking oils, and India’s dependence on
Indonesia is expected to deal a supply-side
shock.
▪ The export ban could send food inflation
soaring as India is the largest importer of palm
oil from Indonesia.
▪ It imports about 8 milliontonnes of palm
oilannually; the commodity accounts for nearly
40% share of India’s overall edible oil
consumption basket.
Impact on India
▪ Edible oil prices could surge as much as 100-

200% in India if the government fails to find a
new source of palm oil.
▪ Cooking oil prices are already at record levels
as the Ukraine war disrupted shipments of
sunflower oil.
▪ Prior to the war, the Black Sea region made up
over 75% of global sunflower oil exports.
How could it impact packaged goods firms?
▪ Since palm oil and its derivatives are used

in the production of several household
goods, the impact of the ban could eat
into the margins of Indian packaged
consumer goods players.
▪ Analysts said listed firms such as
Hindustan Unilever Ltd, Godrej Consumer
Products Ltd, Britannia Industries Ltd,
and Nestle SA could feel the impact of the
ban in the near term.
What are India’s import options?
▪ India is most likely to turn to Malaysia,

the second-biggest palm oil exporter, to
plug the gap.
▪ But Malaysia is also facing a labour
shortage owing to the pandemic which
has resulted in a production shortfall.
▪ Hence Malaysia is unlikely to be able to
plug the gap.
▪ Also the bilateral ties have soured since
few years due to unwarranted comments
by its former PM Mahathir Mohammed
on Kashmir.
What are India’s import options?
▪ India could also explore importing from

Thailand and Africa—they produce three
million tonnes each.
How can India mitigate the impact of the ban?
▪ Palm oil prices rose by nearly 5% over the weekend after the
announcement of the export ban. Finding an immediate solution is going
to be a challenge.
▪ Even if India manages to find an alternative source, prices will be high as
a major exporter is now out of the calculation.
▪ The industry expects India to engage with Indonesia on an urgent basis,
before the ban comes into effect on 28 April.
▪ Besides, the Centre is likely to negotiate with other oil-supplying nations
in Latin America and Canada.
29-April-2022
The Hindu
Editorial
Discussion
29 -April-
2022
• "Climate change is simply, the greatest collective challenge we
face as a human family"
• — BAN KI MOON
How to shock-proof
India’s power
sector
• GS PAPER III
• Infrastructure: Energy.
How to shock-proof India’s power sector
▪ The efficiency of thermal plants must be increased

and regulators empowered to bring down losses
▪ In October last year, India witnessed significant
power shortages stemming from the low inventory
of coal at the power plants.
▪ After seven months, we are back to square one as
reports of coal-shortage induced power outages
across states continue to pour in.
▪ On the one hand, there is a rush towards buying
expensive coal and power on the exchanges.
▪ On the other, states like Andhra Pradesh and
Gujarat have asked industries to reduce
consumption to manage the power deficit.
▪ As economic activity resumed after the Covid-induced lockdowns, the

demand-supply mismatch for commodities such as coal widened globally,
leading to a surge in prices.
▪ Geopolitical tensions have exacerbated the existing crisis. Amidst such
unprecedented volatility, how can the Indian power sector become more
resilient to future shocks?
▪ Global supply disruptions due to the Russia-Ukraine conflict have sent

coal prices touching historical highs.
▪ The cost of imported coal in India is expected to be 35 per cent higher in
the fiscal year 2022-23 compared to the past year.
▪ Subsequently, power producers paid a premium of up to 300 per cent in
March to secure coal supplies in the domestic spot market.
▪ Even as coal stocks available with state thermal power plants fell, India
also witnessed a sudden rise in energy demand in March — the hottest in
its recorded history.
▪ This pushed peak power demand to 199 GW in the middle of March.
▪ The last week of March saw a 13 per cent higher demand over past year
trends, accompanied by high electricity prices on the power exchange.
▪ This has left distribution companies (discoms) with two options: Procure
expensive power, but face uncertainty in revenue recovery or resort to
power rationing, as several states are doing.
Steps taken by government
▪ The Ministry of Power has taken a host of measures to alleviate the crisis.
▪ This includes giving directions to ensure maximum production of coal at
captive mines, rationing of coal to non-power sectors, and a price cap of
Rs 12 per unit on electricity traded on exchanges.
▪ But we need to do more to enhance the sector’s resilience to such
disruptions from exogenous factors.
▪ First, create an enabling ecosystem to ensure power plants work

efficiently.
▪ India has about 200 GW of coal-based generation capacity which
accounts for nearly 70 per cent of the total electricity generated in the
country.
▪ However, according to a CEEW assessment, a disproportionate share of
generation comes from older inefficient plants, while the newer and
efficient ones remain idle for want of favourable coal supply contracts or
power purchase agreements.
▪ fuel allocation and supporting the priority dispatch of efficient plants
could help India reduce coal demand by up to 6 per cent of our annual
requirement, and set aside more coal for the proverbial rainy day.
▪ Second, enable discoms to undertake smart assessment and management

of demand.
▪ We have advanced tools for medium- and short-term demand
forecasting.
▪ However, few discoms have embraced these to inform their procurement
decisions.
▪ With more than 90 per cent of power being procured through long-term
contracts, discoms have little incentive to dynamically assess and manage
demand.
▪ Introducing time-of-day pricing and promoting efficient consumption
behaviour would help shave peak demand and avoid panic buying in the
market.
▪ Third, empower electricity regulators to help bring down discom losses.

Despite two decades of sectoral reforms, the aggregate losses of discoms
stand at 21 per cent (2019-20).
▪ This is reflective of both operational inefficiency and poor recovery of
dues from consumers, including those affiliated with state governments
and municipal bodies.
▪ These losses are also the reason for discoms not being able to pay the
generators on time, resulting in payment delays to Coal India, which, in
turn, is reluctant to supply coal on request.
▪ Besides the ongoing initiatives like introducing smart meters and
network strengthening, empowering regulators would be critical to infuse
payment discipline across the supply chain of the electricity sector and to
keep cost recovery as a key metric.
▪ Given the country’s development aspirations, India’s power demand is set

to rise substantially and become more variable.
▪ Increasing climatic and geopolitical uncertainties underscore the need to
become more efficient in the way we generate, distribute and consume
energy.
▪ We need to act now for the long-term resilience of India’s power sector.
India’s nuclear
doctrine not
useless
• GS PAPER III
• Security challenges and
their management.
India’s nuclear doctrine not useless
▪ While Russia continues to threaten NATO with its nuclear prowess, India
must refrain from doing the same—Chinese aggressors might not know
the meaning of restraint.
▪ Taking a cue from the Russian nuclear strategy, Bharat Karnad, in an
article for ThePrint asserted that India should discard its No First-Use
(NFU) nuclear policy in favour of the first-use doctrine, targeted
principally against China.
▪ The underlying argument is that since India is not sufficiently capable of
deterring and defeating “expansive-minded China” conventionally, it
should threaten China with limited nuclear escalation to deter aggression
in Eastern Ladakh.
India’s nuclear doctrine not useless
▪ Theoretically, Karnad suggests that India adopt the asymmetric

escalation strategy, operationalising tactical nuclear weapons as
warfighting instruments against large-scale conventional threats to deter
and defeat their outbreak.
Conventional inferiority and nuclear compensation
▪ The idea of limited nuclear response emerged during the Cold War.
▪ In the early phase of the cold war, both the United States and the Soviet
Union threatened massive retaliation in response to nuclear and
conventional aggression.
▪ However, the advent of thermonuclear or hydrogen bombs in the mid-
1950s, employing the principle of nuclear fusion, made strategies of
massive retaliation increasingly suicidal.
▪ Any first use of nuclear weapons would have led to massive nuclear
retaliation in response, causing an unprecedented catastrophe and
irreversible devastation to both the warring parties.
▪ The threat of limited nuclear response was introduced as a relatively

more credible option to deter conventional threats.
▪ As a result, both the US and USSR stockpiled thousands of low-yield
nuclear weapons to control escalation.
▪ The idea of limited nuclear war gained credence when States such as
Pakistan and North Korea acquired nuclear weapons.
▪ Equipped with low-grade military hardware and relatively weak
military forces, they faced the pressing challenge of deterring
conventionally superior adversaries.
▪ Thus, to compensate for their inferiority, they adopted the threat of
limited nuclear war to deter conventional aggression.
▪ Indeed, there is a general claim that conventional inferiority produces
nuclear compensation.
▪ However, as rational as asymmetric escalation sounds, it can be

questioned on the following grounds:
▪ First, the conventional inferiority thesis assumes that the nuclear
deterrent is more attractive than conventional military options.
▪ Nuclear weapons are massively destructive than their conventional
counterparts; however, the same cannot be said about their usability.
▪ Historical records show that nuclear weapons have little military utility.
▪ Nuclear weapons do not aid ground forces in capturing or holding
territory, nor do they help win wars of aggression.
▪ In short, nuclear weapons cannot be used to achieve limited political and
military objectives.
▪ In the Indian context, asymmetrical threats from Pakistan can be

addressed with conventional instruments (e.g., surgical strikes on enemy
targets).
▪ Moreover, as demonstrated by the Indian Army’s capture of the Kailash
Range crest during the Galwan standoff in August 2020, it is clear that
proactive deployment of our armed forces is enough to tackle Chinese
aggression.
▪ Second, the asymmetric escalation strategy assumes that States can

control nuclear escalation, or limited nuclear escalation would remain
limited without risking massive nuclear exchange.
▪ The challenge of controlling escalation and the credibility of limited
nuclear threats are two well-recognised problems in academic and
strategic circles.
▪ The limited nuclear attack cannot be hermetically separated from full-
scale nuclear war.
▪ Robert Jervis argued, “Even a slight chance that a provocation could lead
to nuclear war will be sufficient to deter all but highly motivated
adversaries.”
▪ Third,the argument for India employing nuclear weapons against China

assumes that China is risk-averse and would not respond to a limited
nuclear strike.
▪ While the prognosis might be true in certain instances, one can never be
sure about China’s escalation management strategy and response options
in a state of crisis.
▪ Fourth, Karnad builds upon the Russian escalate to de-escalate doctrine

to suggest a similar approach for India.
▪ He argues that “the Russian tactic of ‘escalating to de-escalate’ should be
rejigged to deal with India’s prime and only credible adversary”.
▪ The alleged Russian de-escalation doctrine argues that Russia might use
nuclear weapons early in a conventional regional conflict to deter or
terminate conventional hostilities without risking massive nuclear
exchange.
▪ It assumes that a regional conflict would not involve values for which the
adversary would tolerate the risk of even a single nuclear strike, thus
capitulating to Russian coercion tactics.
Russian nuclear strategy
▪ There is little concrete evidence of de-escalation being part of the Russian

declaratory strategy.
▪ The latest Russian military doctrine released in 2014 and the principles on
nuclear deterrence “reserve the right to use nuclear weapons in response
to the use of nuclear and other types of weapons of mass destruction
against it or its allies, as well as in the event of aggression against the
Russian Federation with the use of conventional weapons when the very
existence of the state is in jeopardy.”
▪ In the late 1990s and early 2000s, Russia adopted a low nuclear-use
threshold on the lines of de-escalation strategy; however, in its 2010
military doctrine, Russia raised the bar for nuclear use.
▪ Russian rationale to include limited nuclear strikes against conventional

war was a stop-gap arrangement until Russia modernised its
conventional capabilities and developed long-range precision strike
weapons.
▪ Lately, Russia realised that while nuclear weapons are good for
deterrence, they cannot be literally employed to achieve political
objectives and address security threats in the neighbourhood.
▪ Since 2008, Russia has made persistent efforts to modernise its

conventional forces and reduce its unhealthy dependence on nuclear
weapons.
▪ The 2014 Russian military doctrine codified the evolving ideas on non-
nuclear deterrence, envisaging military and military-technical measures
such as precision strike weapons for strategic deterrence purposes.
▪ Russia demonstrated the growing importance of the precision strike
regime in its military strategy during the 2015 air campaign in Syria and
strategic-operational exercise Zapad 2017.
▪ As Russian conventional response options have expanded, its dependence

on nuclear weapons has decreased.
▪ A leading Russian nuclear strategy expert argues that “States that face a
conventionally superior adversary do not necessarily lean back and rest
on their nuclear laurels: some seek to rectify their conventional
inferiority,” A similar argument can be made in the case of Pakistan,
which has diversified its conventional response options against limited
conventional aggression by India, especially the air and naval strike
capabilities.
▪ Thus, to build upon an outdated version of Russian doctrine to deduce

lessons for Indian nuclear strategy is inexplicable.
▪ The Russian experience suggests that excessive dependence on nuclear

weapons can be counterproductive and unsustainable in the longer term.
▪ Channelling away resources from improving conventional forces reduces
flexibility by restraining military response options.
▪ Also, there are clear limits to what nuclear deterrence can achieve (They
cannot deter all forms of aggression).
Way forward
▪ The strategy of asymmetric nuclear escalation and the idea of

conventional inferiority rests on questionable assumptions which might
be incorrect.
▪ Also, any strategy needs to be analysed in the context of a particular
country’s security dynamics.
▪ Even if one assumes that conventional asymmetry with China poses
security threats to India (Though many, including the author, would
argue that India’s conventional forces, at least in the theatre of conflict,
are capable of deterring threats from China), nuclear weapons are not
sufficient to address all of them.
Way forward
▪ As envisioned by India’s nuclear doctrine, they are best suited for

deterrence by punishment and futile for warfighting.
▪ To address looming security threats from China, India need not lower its
nuclear threshold but enhance conventional response options and
leverage conventional, informational, and non-military (political,
diplomatic, and psychological) warfare tools.

Interventions For Development

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Interventions For Development

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01-April-2022

▪ Prime Minister Sher Bahadur Deuba’s India visit should be used as a

▪ Geopolitics is a complicated challenge for Nepal, whose geography

▪ Second, while trade and transit arrangements go through the usual

▪ Third, the Bilateral Investment Promotion and Protection Agreement

▪ Perhaps there is hope that the situation can improve — in the

▪ The agreement to resolve six disputed points along

▪ Based on a draft resolution of January 29 between

▪ By adopting a give-and-take approach, the two States have

▪ It would be a signal that all States are committed to resolving their

▪ More so, it is unfair to ask a developing country fighting serious economic

▪ One of the arguments that is emphatically made by several of India’s

▪ The second argument is that Russia is unlikely to help India in a future

▪ This is also India’s big power moment.

▪ China sees the Ukraine war as an opportunity to construct an anti-

▪ The U.S. is also keen to retain India in its fold.

▪ An independent umbrella body that brings the various agencies under

▪ Lack of infrastructure, lack of sufficient manpower, inhuman conditions,

▪ This body is required to be created under a statute, clearly defining its

▪ The draft bill is the first domestic legislation

▪ The Ministry has explained that it expects activity in Antarctica to

▪ A domestic legislation will further provide more validity to the Antarctic

▪ The Antarctic Treaty was signed in 1959 by 12 countries — Argentina,

▪ The objectives of the treaty are to demilitarize Antarctica and establish it

▪ Currently, 54 nations are signatories to the Antarctic Treaty, but only 29

▪ The Convention on the Conservation of Antarctic Marine Living Resources

▪ The Protocol on Environmental Protection to the Antarctic Treaty was

▪ The Bill introduces an elaborate permit system for any expedition or

▪ The permits can be cancelled by the Committee if deficiencies are found

▪ The Bill further enlists elaborate standards for environmental protection

▪ The Bill prohibits drilling, dredging, excavation or collection of mineral

▪ Damaging of native plants, flying or landing helicopters or operating

▪ The introduction of animals, birds, plants or microscopic organisms that

▪ The draft Bill proposes the setting up of a separate designated court to

▪ Context ➔ Only two years ago, in the wake of a nationwide lockdown,

▪ This is not something India can afford to precipitate.

▪ First, we must recognise that migration is a highly politicised

▪ Moreover, development policy in India has bet big on rural development

▪ Second, migrants are a perennially fuzzy category in policy discourse,

▪ Further, it is assumed that migrants will be automatically catered to with

▪ Third, migration policy discourse is seemingly paralysed by the now well-

▪ Chhattisgarh’s State Migrant Workers Policy is premised on registering

▪ In States, a heightened awareness about migrants’ issues is locating

▪ In this scenario of well-meaning but scattered experimentation, migrants

▪ Children on the autism spectrum who have been part of early

▪ He has integrated into a mainstream school and while challenges still

▪ The set of services towards identification, assessment and a multi-

▪ Early intervention programmes take advantage of neural plasticity or

▪ The three big challenges to early intervention are parental ignorance; an

▪ Paediatricians are the first point of contact.

▪ Children who have been part of early intervention programmes have

▪ Justice Verma was so provoked by state of affairs that he went on to

▪ Unfortunately, in recent years, at least two Directors brought ignominy to

▪ My own experience is that if one stands up and explains to a Prime

▪ Finally, I do not endorse the CJI’s proposal of an umbrella organisation

▪ The footings for stronger India-Australia ties have been set

▪ With a GDP expected to grow at 9% in 2021-22, India is the world’s

▪ Through IndAus ECTA, tariffs on a range of Australian exports to India,

▪ But as a former Indian Ambassador to Australia tweeted, it is the

▪ It is a testament to the growing resilience and bandwidth of bilateral ties

▪ Mission Vatsalya must bring together services and structures to help

▪ Components under Mission Vatsalya include statutory bodies; service