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The Union Cabinet approved a third revival package of ₹89,047 crore for Bharat Sanchar Nigam Ltd. (BSNL), enabling the state-owned operator to receive spectrum in the 26 GHz, 700 MHz, 2,500 MHz and 3,300 MHz bands.
With this allotment, BSNL will be able to provide pan-India 4G and 5G services. It added that the operator will be able to provide 4G coverage in rural and uncovered villages under various connectivity projects, fixed wireless access services for high-speed Internet connectivity, and services/spectrum for captive non-public network.
The authorised capital of BSNL will be increased from ₹1,50,000 crore to ₹2,10,000 crore. The package has a total outlay of ₹89,047 crore.
After a few months of field deployment [of 4G and 5G networks], it will be rapidly rolled out across the country on BSNL network.
Editorial
Sedition — illogical equation of government with state (Page no. 6)
(GS Paper 2, Governance)
In its 279th Report, the Law Commission of India has recommended the retention of Section 124A of the Indian Penal Code which contains the Law of Sedition.
It has also recommended enhanced punishment for this offence in the name of national security. While Section 124A provides for a minimum imprisonment of three years, the commission recommends a minimum of seven.
In 2022, the Supreme Court of India had ordered a stay on all existing proceedings and also on the registration of fresh cases (S.G. Vombatkere vs Union of India) under sedition upon the Union Government assuring the Court of a review of this law at the earliest.
The Court’s stay order was in consideration of the fact that this law was widely misused by the law enforcement authorities.
The law of sedition in India has a long and infamous history. Section 124A was incorporated in the Indian Penal Code in 1870. The purpose was to suppress the voice of Indians who spoke against the British Raj, as the government did not want any voice of dissent or protest. The wording of Section 124A clearly reveals the intention of the colonial government.
Sedition is an offence against the government and not against the country, as many think. The offence is in bringing or attempting to bring in hatred or contempt or exciting or attempting to excite disaffection towards the government established by law.
The offence is committed by spoken or written words, by signs or by any other means. Thus, the gist of the offence is bringing a government into hatred or contempt or causing disaffection towards the government of the day.
The law of sedition was defined and applied in two different ways during the British period. The first major case was Queen Empress vs Bal Gangadhar Tilak 1897 in which the Bombay Court found Bal Gangadhar Tilak guilty of sedition for writing a couple of articles in Kesari, a Marathi weekly, invoking Shivaji, which was interpreted as exciting disaffection towards the British government.
Judge Stratchy explained the law as: “The offence (Sedition) consists in exciting or attempting to excite in others certain bad feelings towards the government.
Opinion
Tackling the human-dog conflict (Page no. 7)
(GS Paper 2, Governance)
Dogs have evoked different emotions in people for hundreds of years. You can hate them or love them, but you cannot ignore them.
Over the past few decades, for example, the growing population of street dogs has posed increasing challenges for municipalities and cities across the country. With so many interest holders and their beliefs, it has been difficult to discuss the issue as many emotions are involved.
The cynicism of some stakeholders has even led to the dismissal of animal birth control initiatives as a failure, which is both mischievous and wrong-headed.
Various factors contribute to street dog overpopulation, and animal birth control, while being an integral measure, is only a part of the broad solution to a complex problem. Other components are needed.
By disparaging the effects of the Prevention of Cruelty (Animal Birth Control) Rules 2001, critics overlook the progressive trajectory of the policy which has now produced The Prevention of Cruelty (Animal Birth Control) Rules 2023 rules that have been designed to address emerging challenges.
If there are further challenges after the implementation of the 2023 rules, we will see more policy reform. That is how public policy works. We should seek to improve our strategies and policy responses, and not give up and discard animal birth control altogether.
Explainer
How can we transition to a low-carbon city? (Page no. 8)
(GS Paper 3, Environment)
In 2020, cities dumped a whopping 29 trillion tonnes of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. Therefore, given the significant impact that cities have on the environment, low-carbon cities are crucial to mitigate the effects of climate change.
Transitioning to low-carbon or even net-zero cities requires us to integrate mitigation and adaptation options in multiple sectors. This is called the ‘sector-coupling approach’, and it is necessary to decarbonise urban systems.
An energy-system transition could reduce urban carbon dioxide emissions by around 74%. With rapid advancements in clean energy and related technologies and nosediving prices, we have crossed the economic and technological barriers to implementing low-carbon solutions.
The transition must be implemented both on the demand and the supply side. Mitigation options on the supply side include phasing out fossil fuels and increasing the share of renewables in the energy mix, and using carbon capture and storage (CCS) technologies.
On the demand side, using the ‘avoid, shift, improve’ framework would entail reducing the demand for materials and energy, and substituting the demand for fossil fuels with renewables.
Secondly, in order to address residual emissions in the energy sector, we must implement carbon-dioxide removal (CDR) technologies.
As we now have the appropriate technologies and knowledge base to build net-zero urban systems through energy transitions, the only impediments are social and political in nature.
The strategies to mitigate and adapt to low-carbon varies based on a city’s characteristics. Transitioning to renewable energy sources is not as simple as replacing fossil fuels with clean energy.
There are multifarious issues of energy justice and social equity to be dealt with. This is a key consideration when we frame energy-transition policies that are socially and environmentally fair. These considerations are a city’s spatial form, land-use pattern, level of development, and the state of urbanisation.
How KFON aims to bridge the digital divide in Kerala (Page no. 8)
(GS Paper 3, Infrastructure)
On November 7, 2019, the Left Democratic Front (LDF) government in Kerala announced that access to the Internet would be a basic right in the State, becoming the first State in the country to do so.
The declaration came three years after the UN had passed a resolution recognising Internet access as a basic human right. The announcement was accompanied by a detailed plan to ensure that it would become a ground reality, with the setting up of the Kerala Fibre Optic Network (KFON), through which Internet connections would be provided free of cost to 20 lakh below-poverty-line (BPL) families.
The project is aimed at ensuring universal Internet access and narrowing the digital divide, which has become especially acute after the COVID-19 outbreak.
The Kerala government’s role involves setting up the vast infrastructure required for providing Internet, especially to remote corners of the State.
The network has reached remote locations, including tribal hamlets in Wayanad and elsewhere, which had remained out of the information superhighway until now.
The cabling works, stretching to 34,961 km, piggybacks on the Kerala State Electricity Board’s (KSEB) existing infrastructure. KFON Limited is, in fact, a joint venture of the KSEB and the Kerala State Information Technology Infrastructure Ltd (KSITIL).
In July 2022, the Department of Telecommunications (DoT) granted KFON an infrastructure provider (IP) licence and also approved it as an internet service provider (ISP).
The aim was to provide Internet connections to 14,000 BPL families, with 100 each from the State’s 140 assembly constituencies in the first phase.
The panchayats and the urban local bodies were given the responsibility of choosing the beneficiaries. However, the process of selection has been slow, with many local bodies delaying the submission of a list of beneficiaries from their area.
As of now, Internet connection has been provided to 7,000 BPL families across the State. Each household will get 1.5 GB of data per day at 15 Mbps speed. In the second phase, Internet services will be made available to the public at affordable rates.
Text
Giving voice to the LGBTQIA+ community, and others who need visibility (Page no. 9)
(GS Paper 1, Social Issues)
In an interview with The Village Voice, published in 1984 titled ‘James Baldwin on Being Gay in America’, the novelist and essayist made a remark that really struck a chord with me, something that I am always cognizant of when I read something that, more often than not, is too-simplistically classified as ‘queer literature’.
Giovanni’s Room is not really about homosexuality. It’s the vehicle through which the book moves,” he said in the interview, referring to his 1956 novel about an American man living in Paris who struggles to come to terms with his sexuality.
It’s about what happens to you if you’re afraid to love anybody, which is more interesting than the question of homosexuality.
This need to break away from the pigeonholing of books with queer characters into a single, reductive category such as ‘queer literature’ hit me anew when I read, Boulder, Spanish poet and writer Eva Baltasar’s slim, powerful novella that was recently shortlisted for the International Booker Prize.
While the complexities of queer parenthood are a vital aspect of the book, an intense, incredibly sensual story of the relationship between a cook on a merchant ship and Samsa, her Scandinavian lover, the overarching theme is universal: a meditation on the never-ending tussle between intimacy and independence.
In an interview with the UK-based Pink News, an online newspaper for the queer community, Baltasar talks about why telling queer stories with nuance helps normalise them, she says, adding in that same interview that she is thrilled “not only to be giving voice and visibility to [the LGBTQ+] community but also to all the people and communities who, for whatever reason, feel uncomfortable living in our society or have no choice but to struggle through every day just to be true to who they feel they are.”
News
India, U.S. review export control regulations (Page no. 10)
(GS Paper 2, International Relation)
India and the U.S. pledged to streamline their export control regimes for critical technologies at the inaugural India-U.S. Strategic Trade Dialogue (IUSSTD), as senior delegations led by Foreign Secretary Vinay Kwatra and U.S. Under Secretary of State Victoria Nuland and Under Secretary for Commerce Alan Estevez met in Washington.
The talks came just ahead of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s visit to Washington when a number of high-technology partnerships, including a deal that will involve GE-414 jet engine sales to India, are on the cards.
Meanwhile, senior U.S. officials indicated a softer line on India-Russia ties and said Mr. Modi’s visit would help build trust and confidence in the U.S.’s “most important bilateral relationship”.
“IUSSTD focused on ways in which both governments can facilitate the development and trade of technologies in critical domains such as semiconductors, space, telecom, quantum, AI, defence, bio-tech and others,” said a press release issued by the Indian Embassy.
“Both sides reviewed the relevant bilateral export control regulations with the objective of building and diversifying resilient supply chains for these strategic technologies”.
Mazagon Dock and German firm strike deal on submarines (Page no. 12)
(GS Paper 3, Defence)
The public sector defence shipyard Mazagon Dock Shipbuilders Ltd. (MDL) and the German original equipment manufacturer Thyssenkrupp Marine Systems (TKMS) signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) for partnering in submarine production in the presence of German Minister of Defence Boris Pistorius in Mumbai.
They will now jointly bid for the Navy’s Project-75I to build six advanced submarines in India estimated to cost over ₹45,000 crore.
According to the MoU, TKMS would contribute to the engineering and design of the submarines as well as the consultancy support to this joint project and MDL would take responsibility for constructing and delivering the respective submarines. The construction of the submarines would take place in India and is expected to have significant local content.
The P-75I is being executed under the Strategic Partnership model of Defence Acquisition Procedure and the Request For Proposal (RFP) was originally issued in July 2021 to the MDL and Larsen & Toubro with 12 weeks’ time to respond and has since seen several extensions, the latest deadline being August.
Mr. Pistorius held talks with his Indian counterpart, Rajnath Singh, on Tuesday during which progress of the deal was discussed.
He said it could become a “flagship project”.
Business
‘Crop shortages could exacerbate inflation following MSP increases’ (Page no. 14)
(GS Paper 3, Economy)
The inflationary impact of the 5%-11% increase in the minimum support price (MSP) for farm produce will be an additional factor for the RBI’s Monetary Policy Committee (MPC) to consider at its bimonthly policy review to be announced.
The spillover effects on consumer food prices from higher assured remuneration to farmers would hinge on the government’s procurement strategy and prevailing market prices, but any output shortages could lead to higher prices, economists cautioned.
The 7% increase in paddy MSP could lead to higher prices if the crop did not exceed last year’s output, said Bank of Baroda chief economist Madan Sabnavis, who termed the hikes ‘quite aggressive’ relative to past increases.
Procurement takes place for rice, whose inflation is already high at 11%,” noted Mr. Sabnavis. “So an increase of 7% will add to benchmark prices.
Similarly, jowar, bajra and maize are all running inflation of 13-15% and hence, also run a risk of higher prices in case of crop failure.
The crux will hence be the size of the crops this season,” he said, stressing that food prices were the major risk to inflation so the Reserve Bank of India would be cautious until there was more clarity on kharif crop prospects.
State Bank of India economists said that the inflationary impact of higher MSPs “will be negligible” depending on the prices prevailing in the e-National Agriculture Market (e-NAM) as well as procurement levels.