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Responding to External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar’s comments saying relations with China were in “an extremely difficult phase” and there were “many reasons” for both countries to work together, the Chinese government said it hoped India would work with it in “ the same direction” to bring relations back on track at “an early date”.
Mr. Jaishankar, speaking in Bangkok, also noted that it would be difficult “for the Asian century to happen if India and China could not come together”, an observation that the Chinese Foreign Ministry appeared to endorse on August 19, 2022. Beijing did, however, appear to strike a different note on the Minister’s remarks on the border situation and on the Quad.
A Chinese leader said once if China and India cannot achieve sound development, then an Asian century cannot happen, Foreign Ministry spokesperson Wang Wenbin said. “A true Asia Pacific century or Asian century can come only when China, India can and other countries can achieve sound development.
China and India are two ancient civilisations, two emerging economies and two big neighbours. We have far more common interests than differences.”
He said both sides had “the wisdom and capability to reinforce each other better than wear each other down”.
“It is hoped that the Indian side can work with China in the same direction to follow through on the common understanding between our two leaders on being each other’s cooperative partners, not causing threats to each other, and presenting each other with development opportunities, so that China-India relations can come back to the right track of sound and steady development at an early date and uphold the common interest of China, India and the developing world.”
Mr. Jaishankar pointed out the reason for the current difficulties was “what China did at the border”. Asked about China’s willingness to resume talks to complete the disengagement process in the border after more than two years of a stand-off, Mr. Wang said, “I would like to stress that China and India maintain smooth communication over the border issues. The dialogue is effective.”
‘Give Aadhaar details of 12 Bangladeshi nationals’ (Page no. 1)
(GS Paper 2, Polity and Governance)
The High Court of Karnataka has directed the Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI) to furnish information and documents submitted for securing Aadhaar by 12 Bangladesh nationals, some of whom are already convicted in a gang-rape case.
Among the 12, some are facing trial in human trafficking and illegal immigration cases before a trial court.Justice Krishna S. Dixit issued the directions to the UIDAI while allowing a petition filed by the National Investigation Agency (NIA).
The NIA had approached the court as UIDAI had declined to provide the information and documents sought for, as Section 33 mandates that confidential information/authentication documents, which are prohibited from being revealed, can be disclosed in certain cases only by an order of the court not inferior to a judge of the High Court.
While directing UIDAI to hand over all the documents and information, the court also directed the NIA not to use such details for any purpose alien to investigation of the offences and prosecution of the offenders.
The NIA had sought the details of AshrafulMondal alias Ashraful Islam, SobujShaik, HridoyBabo alias Rifadul Islam Ruda, Rakibul Islam Sagar, Mohammad Babu, RafsanMondal alias Alami Hussain, Samit alias DailmAhamed Jillion, Mohammad Azim Choryor, Mohammad Jamal, RaihanShaik, Rasul Khan, and Rocky Khan.
They were arrested in June last year from a rented house in Ramamurthynagar police station limits after a video of the gang rape of a Bangladeshi woman went viral in Bangladesh and in Assam.
While a sessions court convicted some of them in May this year for gang rape based on the chargesheet filed by the city police, NIA, which took over the investigation on human trafficking and illegal immigration, filed a chargesheet against all of them.
The NIA, which expanded the scope of investigation to a larger conspiracy, sought information and documents from UIDAI for ascertaining the genuineness of the information and documents that led to generation of Aadhaar.
The High Court said that UIDAI was required to provide the details as NIA was probing the case that was related to cross-border human trafficking and forcing vulnerable women from Bangladesh to prostitution in India by creating fake identification documents.
Editorial
The injustice of exceptionalism (Page no. 8)
(GS Paper 2, Polity and Governance)
Eleven men who were sentenced to life imprisonment in 2008 for the gang rape of BilkisBano (she was pregnant then) and the murder of her family members in 2002 were released this week from a jail in Gujarat.
A Special Central Bureau of Investigation Court had sentenced the men to life imprisonment in 2008. Their release seems unjust and the subsequent celebration of their release by some is revolting. While the applicable law in this case, on the face of it, seems to give the power to the Gujarat government to release these men, serious questions about the legality of the decision have emerged.
However, the injustice, in this case, goes beyond questions of legality or illegality. It runs deeper. Therefore, it is crucial to locate the source of this injustice.
As in most States, Gujarat’s current remission policy (it adopted a new and revised remission policy for prisoners in 2014), makes those convicted of rape ineligible for premature release.
However, the Supreme Court of India had earlier ruled that the remission question in this case would be governed by the remission policy of 1992 that was in force at the time of conviction which did not exclude those convicted of rape from executive remission.
Is the injustice in this case to be located in the fact that the 1992 policy allowed remission to this category of offenders? Does justice demand that certain categories of offenders be ineligible for remission? Before we get to these questions, a brief explanation on remission and premature release is called for.
State governments have laid down behaviour/activities that can earn prisoners a certain amount of days as remission, that is then deducted from their sentence.
For example, if a prisoner earns two years in remission and a court has sentenced them to 10 years, they can leave prison effectively after eight years.
This system is enshrined in the Prisons Act, 1894, and also rules developed by different States (prison is a state subject).
However, the Code of Criminal Procedure (CrPC) is clear that life convicts have to undergo a minimum of 14 years of actual imprisonment before they can be considered for remission/premature release.
Each State has its own procedure to consider each application for release. There is very little transparency on how these decisions are made.
End this asymmetrical conflict over ‘freebies’ (Page no. 8)
(GS Paper 2, Polity and Governance)
The issue of ‘freebies’ has bounced back, when the Supreme Court of India on August 3, 2022, recommended constituting an expert committee comprising representatives of the beneficiaries, Union and State governments, the Finance Commission, NITI Aayog and the Reserve Bank of India to study the issue of ‘freebies’.
The Court seems to toe the line of critics that ‘freebies’ stress States exchequers, drawing them in debt traps. On the other hand, those in favour of freebies argue that in a stratified society where capital in different forms (intellect, wealth, caste) gets accumulated in the hands of a select few, the poor and the marginalised become victimised. Here, ‘social welfare measures’ that are otherwise ridiculed as ‘freebies’ act as a shock absorber.
In the famous Reagan tax cuts, or Reaganomics, associated with ‘Trickle down economics’ there was a maximum cut given to higher income earners and corporations in the expectation that any benefit provided at the top would trickle down to the poor in the form of job creation, higher output, and infrastructure development.
While ‘trickle down’ yielded some positive results, it also widened inequality, diminished inclusive growth, and was criticised by economists such as Nobel Laureate Joseph E. Stiglitz.
In India, neo-liberal schemes of the post-1990s such as the Special Economic Zones (SEZs), Software Technology Parks of India (STPI), and Bio Technology Parks (BTP), (where there were incentives in the form of tax holidays, subsidised power, and waiver of stamp duty), were seen as a result of ‘trickle down economics’, including the recent cut in corporate tax from 30% to 18%.
However, the World Inequality Report 2022 says that the top 1% of India held 22% of the total national income as of 2021, and the top 10% owned 57% of the income. In another instance, a research paper, ‘Wealth Inequality, Class and Caste in India, 1961-2012’, states that India’s upper caste households earned nearly 47% more than the national average annual household income, thus making India one of the most economically and socially stratified countries in the world.
Further, 93% of the top corporate board members and 61.8% of micro, small and medium enterprises (MSME) are owned by upper castes (MSME data March 31, 2022) — so, freebies in the form of incentives benefit the upper caste elites.
The Union government seems to rely more on indirect taxes than direct taxes.
News
Indian team deliberating on ocean diversity pact (Page no. 11)
(GS Paper 3, Environment)
A delegation from India and other member countries of the United Nations are in New York to deliberate on a one-of-its-kind agreement to conserve marine biodiversity in the high seas, namely the oceans that extend beyond countries’ territorial waters.
The agreement follows a resolution by the UN General Assembly in May and is expected to be the final in a series set in motion since 2018 to draft an international legally binding instrument under the 1982 United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS).
The high seas comprise nearly 45% of the Earth’s surface.The Indian delegation comprises officials from the Ministry of Earth Sciences (MoES), Centre for Marine Fisheries and Research Institute and the Ministry of External Affairs.
A key aspect of the agreement is deciding on the rights of companies that undertake exploration for biological resources in the high seas: do companies have absolute rights on any discovery or extraction in these regions or should they share their gains, in terms of intellectual property and royalties with a UN-prescribed body, said M. Ravichandran, Secretary, MoES. The MoES is the nodal Ministry tasked with coordinating India’s position on the forthcoming agreement.
Typically the focus of mining activity in the sea has been for gas hydrates, precious metals and other fossil fuel resources.
However with advances in biotechnology and genetic engineering, several companies see potential in exotic microbes and other organisms – several of them undiscovered – that abide in the deep ocean and could be used for drugs, vaccine and a variety of commercial applications.
Last June, the Union Cabinet approved a ‘Blue Economy’ policy for India, a nearly ₹4,000-crore programme spread over five years, that among other things will develop a manned submersible vessel as well as work on “bio-prospecting of deep-sea flora and fauna including microbes”.
Studies on sustainable utilisation of deep sea bio-resources will be the main focus. Mr. Ravichandran said that there were already companies carrying out such exploratory activities though little was known about them.
He said that preliminary discussions in the run-up to the conference suggested that countries were likely to firm up a final agreement – a process that has been in the works for over a decade – at the conclusion of the conference on August 26.
Amethi unit all set to make AK203 rifles (Page no. 11)
(GS Paper 3, Defence)
The manufacture of the AK-203 assault rifles by the Indo-Russian joint venture at Amethi, Uttar Pradesh is set to begin by year-end and the manufacturing equipment required for it will be dispatched from Russia shortly, according to a senior official of Kalashnikov, the Russian company which manufactures the rifles. The production was originally scheduled to begin early this year.
“Training of Indian workers of the factory will begin shortly and the manufacturing process will reach 100% indigenisation in three years,” the official who did not wish to be identified said. He stated that earlier issues with regard to the ammunition for the rifles have been resolved.
Confirming this, Dmitry Shugaev, Director of the Federal Service for Military-Technical Cooperation (FSMTC) of Russia, said on the sidelines of the Army-2022 expo, “Work is under way to organise the production of the AK-203 assault rifles in India, the serial production of which is expected to begin in late 2022-early 2023.”
As reported by The Hindu earlier, as part of pre-production activities, retrials were scheduled to be done with ammunition from the Original Equipment Manufacturer (OEM) in Russia in the first half of February, but got delayed by few months due to the war in Ukraine.
On this, officials said this issue had now been resolved and a local manufacturer of ammunition had been identified in India.
As per the contract, over 6.1 lakh AK-203 assault rifles costing over ₹5,000 crore will be manufactured by a Joint Venture, Indo-Russian Rifles Private Ltd (IRRPL), at Korwa, Amethi in Uttar Pradesh. IRRPL was set up jointly between erstwhile OFB [now Advanced Weapons and Equipment India Limited (AWEIL) and Munitions India Limited (MIL)] of India and Rosoboronexport (RoE) and concern Kalashnikov of Russia.
A modern production line has been established and a small arms range has been set up where both factory and acceptance tests of assault rifles will be carried out.
The full-scale production of the rifles is expected to be reached within 2-3 years, Director-General of Rosoboronexport Alexander Mikheev had stated earlier.
As per contractual terms, the first 70,000 AK-203 rifles will be produced in India with a phased increase in the extent of localisation from 5% to 70%. The remaining rifles will be produced with 100% localisation.
Business
FTA norms to prevail in Rules of Origin disputes (Page no. 14)
(GS Paper 3, Economy)
Exemptions specified in a Free Trade Agreement (FTA) with regard to country of origin will prevail in case of conflict between revenue department and importer.
In an instruction to chief commissioners, the Central Board of Indirect Taxes and Customs (CBIC) said the customs field officers should be sensitive to applying CAROTAR and maintain consistency with the provisions of relevant trade agreement or its Rules of Origin.
Customs (Administration of Rules of Origin under Trade Agreements) or CAROTAR Rules, came into effect from September 21, 2020.
It empowers the customs officers to ask the importer to furnish further information, consistent with the trade agreement, in case the officer has reasons to believe that the country-of-origin criteria have not been met.
Where the importer fails to provide the requisite information, the officer can make further verification consistent with the trade agreement.
"In the event of a conflict between a provision of these rules and a provision of the Rules of Origin, the provision of the Rules of Origin shall prevail to the extent of the conflict," according to the CAROTAR rules.
In the instruction issued on August 17, the CBIC wrote to the chief commissioners saying: "The officers under your charge should be sensitive to applying CAROTAR maintaining consistency with the provisions of relevant trade agreement or its Rules of Origin."
India has inked FTAs with several countries, including the UAE, Mauritius, Japan, South Korea, Singapore, and ASEAN members.
Under an FTA, the trading partners agree to significantly reduce or eliminate import/customs duties on the maximum number of goods traded between them, besides relaxing norms to promote trade in services and investments.
The 'rules of origin' provision prescribes for minimal processing that should happen in the FTA country so that the final manufactured product may be called originating goods in that country.