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Editorial
The Chinese have a knack for making headlines on India’s borders. The latest move, in April, saw them “renaming” 11 places in Arunachal Pradesh, which they consider to be “Zangnam” or, in English, “South Tibet”.
The announcement was made after approval from the State Council, implying a green light from the very top of the Chinese system.
Zhang Yongpan, of the Institute of Chinese Borderland Studies of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, claims that China’s move to “standardise” names in Zangnam “completely falls within China’s sovereignty and it is also in accordance with the regulation on the administration of geographical names”.
India responded typically by “rejecting outright” this act of nomenclatural aggression on part of the Chinese. The “re-naming” of disputed territories has been a long-held tactic of the Chinese government, and this is the third batch of “re-naming” with reference to Arunachal Pradesh.
More significantly, it is not the first provocative act of Chinese provenance in recent months. Ever since the unresolved stand-off at Galwan in June 2020, there has been no serious attempt by Beijing at a resolution, let alone a restoration of the status quo ante, while several instances of further provocation have occurred from the Chinese side.
Another border skirmish in December 2022 in the Tawang area showed that whatever policy the Ministry of External Affairs is masking with its anodyne statements, it is not ensuring deterrence.
Buddhism, India’s soft power projection tool (Page no. 6)
(GS Paper 2, International Relation)
There is much significance to India having hosted a two-day global Buddhist summit in New Delhi (April 20-21), which was organised by the Ministry of Culture in collaboration with the International Buddhist Confederation.
The summit saw the participation of key figures from the global Buddhist community, including the Dalai Lama. It was at this summit that the Prime Minister, Narendra Modi, laid emphasis on the continuing relevance of the Buddha’s teachings in today’s world.
The summit was a significant opportunity for India to project and connect with the Buddhist population around the world, thereby strengthening the country’s soft power.
The Indian government has been actively investing in its Buddhist diplomacy efforts, with a focus on promoting tourism through the development of the “Buddhist tourist circuit”.
Additionally, Mr. Modi has made it a point to visit Buddhist sites during his Southeast and East Asian visits. By hosting such a high-profile event, the Indian government hopes to demonstrate its commitment to preserving and promoting Buddhist culture and heritage, as well as strengthening ties with the global Buddhist community.
With its strong historical and cultural ties to Buddhism, India is well-positioned to play a leading role in shaping the discourse around Buddhist issues on the global stage.
Against the backdrop of the Russia-Ukraine crisis, Mr. Modi said, “India has not given ‘Yuddha’ to the world but ‘Buddha’.” This resonates with his earlier statement of his telling the Russian President, Vladimir Putin, that ‘this is not the era of war’.
The Delhi summit’s theme, “Responses to Contemporary Challenges: Philosophy to Praxis”, also highlights India’s attempts to provide an alternative to contested global politics, with morality as the guiding principle.
Explainer
The lack of a drug recall law in India (Page no. 8)
(GS Paper 2, Health)
On April 25, Abbot, a multinational pharmaceutical company, published a public notice in newspapers alerting people about a mislabelled batch of medicine that it had inadvertently shipped to the market.
While such recalls take place regularly in the U.S., we have never witnessed domestic or foreign pharmaceutical companies recall substandard or mislabelled drugs in India.
One of the reasons for this difference in behaviour in India and the U.S. is because the law in the latter requires pharmaceutical companies to recall from the market those batches of drugs that have failed to meet quality parameters. India, on the other hand, has been mulling the creation of a mandatory recall law for substandard drugs since 1976, and yet no law exists that mandates such medicine be removed from the market to this day.
In 1976, the Drugs Consultative Committee, which consists of all the state drug controllers along with senior bureaucrats from the Ministry of Health and the national drug regulator, the Central Drugs Standard Control Organisation (CDSCO), discussed the issue of drug recalls.
The minutes of this meeting record a discussion on how drugs ordered to be recalled by a state drug controller in one State were found to be on sale in another State. While the meeting resolved to have greater cooperation between various state drug controllers to facilitate better coordination, this decision never translated into amending the law to create a legally binding structure to enforce such recalls.
Since then the issue has come up repeatedly in regulatory meetings in 1989, 1996, 1998, 2004, 2007, 2011, 2016, 2018 and 2019 but none of them resulted in amendments to the Drugs and Cosmetics Act to create a mandatory recall mechanism. In 2012, certain recall guidelines were published by the CDSCO but they lacked the force of law.
What are the regulations to curtail misleading food ads? (Page no. 8)
(GS Paper 2, Polity and Governance)
On April 29, the Advertisement Monitoring Committee at the Food Safety and Standards Authority of India (FSSAI) flagged 32 fresh cases of food business operators (FBOs) making misleading claims and advertisements. As per the regulator, the count of such offences has shot up to 170 in the last six months.
There are varied regulations to combat misleading advertisements and claims, some are broad, while others are product specific. For example, FSSAI uses the Food Safety and Standards (Advertising & Claims) Regulations, 2018 which specifically deals with food (and related products) while the Central Consumer Protection Authority (CCPA)’s regulations cover goods, products and services.
Further, the Programme and Advertising Codes prescribed under the Cable Television Network Rules, 1994 stipulate that advertisements must not imply that the products have “some special or miraculous or supernatural property or quality, which is difficult of being proved.”
The FSSAI seeks that the advertisements and claims be “truthful, unambiguous, meaningful, not misleading and help consumers to comprehend the information provided”.
The claims must be scientifically substantiated by validated methods of characterising or quantifying the ingredient or substance that is the basis for the claim.
Product claims suggesting a prevention, alleviation, treatment or cure of a disease, disorder or particular psychological condition is prohibited unless specifically permitted under the regulations of the FSS Act, 2006.
Text & Context
How micro-targeting campaigns affect the vulnerable Indian voter (Page no. 9)
(GS Paper 2, Polity and Governance)
Two years ago, there was a massive outcry against the hiring, by Indian political parties, of Cambridge Analytica, a data mining and analytics firm.
The episode highlighted the need for regulating social media platforms by way of a comprehensive data protection law which takes issues such as political micro-targeting seriously.
With the recently introduced draft of the data protection law, the Personal Data Protection Bill, 2019, the debate has again resurfaced.
In the Internet age, any data protection law must be alive to the potential impact of social media companies in shaping public opinion.
The current draft empowers the Central government to notify social media intermediaries as significant data fiduciaries if their user base crosses a certain threshold and whose actions are likely to have an impact on electoral democracy.
This provision merits serious discussion to ensure that digital tools are used for enhancing democracy through citizen engagement, and not for harvesting personal data for voter targeting.
In today’s world, online presence, which ensures greater outreach, is a key source of competitive advantage. This realisation gave rise to strategic efforts by political parties to tap into the fragmented political discourse by catering to the individual.
Earlier, the idea was to capture mass issues. But in the present day and age, the focus of the campaign is the individual. Political parties are increasingly employing data-driven approaches to target individual voters using tailor-made messages.
Such profiling has raised huge concerns of data privacy for individuals and has become a burning issue for political debate.
Therefore, the concerns related to regulation of the digital world are being debated in all jurisdictions which have experienced the impact of this technological advancement.
Although, each jurisdiction may have distinct factors influencing the final shape of the Internet governance model, the reasons for the initial debate are common to all, i.e. to arrest any negative externalities emerging out of the Internet.
Therefore, any forward-thinking regulatory framework needs to have both supervisory mechanisms in place as well as effective law enforcement tools in its quiver.
News
In new ‘Quad’ meet with U.S., Saudi Arabia, UAE, Doval discusses infrastructure plans in Gulf (Page no. 10)
(GS Paper 2, International Relations)
In what is being billed as another important “Quad” in West Asia, Saudi Prince and Prime Minister Mohammad Bin Salman (MbS) hosted a special meeting of the National Security Advisers (NSAs) of India, the U.S. and the UAE, in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.
The meeting, to consider regional initiatives on infrastructure, was billed last week by U.S. NSA Jake Sullivan as “unlike anything seen in the region in recent years”.
Mr. Doval’s visit is significant as it follows a week after his visit to Iran, which recently agreed to restart ties in a meeting brokered by Beijing.
The MEA and the National Security Council did not comment on Mr. Doval’s travels, but both Saudi Arabia and the U.S. government issued formal statements on the discussions.
“During the meeting, [the leaders] discussed means to strengthen relations and ties between their countries in a way that enhances growth and stability in the region,” said the Saudi Ministry of Foreign Affairs about the meetings that included the UAE NSA and Deputy Ruler of Abu Dhabi Sheikh Tahnoun, U.S. National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan and Mr. Doval.
According to a U.S. White House statement, the meeting sought to “advance their shared vision of a more secure and prosperous Middle East region interconnected with India and the world”.
In particular, the bilateral meeting between Mr. Sullivan and Mr. Doval is one of a number of meetings set over the next few weeks to prepare for upcoming meetings of Prime Minister Narendra Modi with U.S. President Joseph Biden this month, and the PM’s state visit to the U.S. in June. U.S. Ambassador Eric Garcetti will finally present his credentials to President Droupadi Murmu on May 11, and is expected to begin formal meetings on preparations for the state visit.
Mr. Sullivan and Mr. Doval will meet again “on the margins of the Quad Summit later this month in Australia,” announced a White House statement on Monday.
High Court does not have power to direct changes to Scheduled Tribes List: CJI (Page no. 11)
(GS Paper 2, Polity and Governance)
Even as the Manipur government and the Union government claimed that the State was returning to normalcy, Chief Justice of India D.Y. Chandrachud asked why a 23-year-old Constitution Bench judgment which clearly held that no court or State had the power to “add, subtract or modify” the Scheduled Tribes List was not “shown” to the Manipur High Court in the first place.
Chief Justice Chandrachud orally said a High Court does not have the power to direct changes to the Scheduled Tribes List. “It is a Presidential power to designate a Scheduled Caste or Scheduled Tribe,” he observed.
Violent clashes and deaths followed in the days after a Single Judge Bench of the Manipur High Court, on March 27, directed that the State government “shall consider the case of the petitioners for inclusion of the Meetei/Meitei community in the Scheduled Tribe list, expeditiously, preferably within a period of four weeks from the date of receipt of a copy of this order”.
It is not open to State governments or courts or tribunals or any other authority to modify, amend or alter the list of Scheduled Tribes specified in the notification issued under clause (1) of Article 342,” the Constitution Bench in State of Maharashtra versus Milind had held in November 2000.
It had held that a notification issued under clause (1) of Article 342, specifying Scheduled Tribes, can be amended only by law to be made by Parliament.
“The Scheduled Tribes Order must be read as it is. It is not even permissible to say that a tribe, sub-tribe, part of or group of any tribe or tribal community is synonymous to the one mentioned in the Scheduled Tribes Order if they are not so specifically mentioned in it,” the Bench had drawn the line.
Five more cheetahs to be released into wild at Kuno (Page no. 12)
(GS Paper 3, Species in News)
Five more cheetahs — three females and two males — will be released from the acclimatisation camps to “free-roaming conditions at the Kuno National Park (KNP) in Madhya Pradesh before the onset of monsoon in June, the Union Environment Ministry said.
The statement was based on a report submitted by an expert committee to the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA), which is the nodal body for Project Cheetah. The committee members visited the KNP on April 30 and reviewed the current status of Project Cheetah.
Twenty cheetahs have been brought from Namibia and South Africa since September 2022 as part of a translocation programme to reintroduce the wild cat into Indian habitat.
As part of their acclimatisation, the animals were housed in special enclosures. However, two of them died — one of kidney infection and the other of heart failure, following a strenuous hunt.
The long-term plan to acclimatise the animals to Indian conditions is to gradually release them into the wild — though all the animals are radio-collared and the Madhya Pradesh State wildlife officials are tracking their movement — and keep adding more animals from Africa until a sizeable self-sustaining population is established in a decade or so, while accounting for natural mortality and acclimatisation-related challenges.
So far, four of the cheetahs have already been released into the wild — with one of them even ranging outside the Kuno National Park and venturing into farms in Uttar Pradesh. It had to be tranquillised and returned to the sanctuary.
The remaining cheetahs, the statement said, would remain in the acclimatisation camps for the duration of the monsoon season (June-September).
After September, when the monsoon ends, more animals would be released into the KNP or surrounding areas in “a planned manner” to the Gandhi Sagar Sanctuary in Madhya Pradesh.
The cheetahs would be allowed to move out of the KNP and not necessarily recaptured unless they venture into areas where they are in “significant danger.