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Prime Minister Narendra Modi said India needed a Uniform Civil Code (UCC) as the country could not run with the dual system of “separate laws for separate communities”.
He was addressing booth-level workers of the BJP in Bhopal (and the interactive session being livestreamed to 10 lakh workers of the party), a speech which clearly signalled his government’s intent on bringing the UCC.
His statement on the UCC comes at a time when the country’s political calendar for the next one year is packed with Assembly polls in five States and the 2024 Lok Sabha election.
It also comes less than a fortnight after the 22nd Law Commission of India sought fresh suggestions from various stakeholders, including public and religious organisations, on the UCC.
There was also dual messaging in Mr. Modi’s address wherein he urged the Muslim community in India to “understand which political parties are instigating them to ruin them”, at a time when he had been dogged with concerns expressed in certain quarters of the United States, during his state visit there, on minority rights.
“Colleagues, Muslims in India will have to understand which political parties are instigating them to ruin them while reaping benefits for themselves.
Govt. extends deadline for Aadhaar-based payments for MGNREGS to August 31 (Page no. 1)
(GS Paper 2, Governance)
The Union Rural Development Ministry has extended the deadline for mandatory payments of the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MGNREGS) via the Aadhaar-based Payments System (ABPS) to August 31.
The Ministry announced this on social media, though it did not share the order in public. This is the fourth time it is extending the deadline, since the State governments have complained that reconciling the differences in Aadhaar data and the job card details of the beneficiaries is taking some time.
The first order was issued on January 30, setting the deadline for February 1; it was later extended to March 31 and then to June 30.
According to a press release by the Ministry on June 3, Aadhaar has been seeded for 13.75 crore out of the total 14.28 crore active beneficiaries.
Of this, 12.17 crore Aadhaar numbers have been authenticated and 77.81% are already eligible for ABPS. In May, 88% of the wage payment was through ABPS.
It highlighted that this pressure to use ABPS had led to a high deletion rate of job cards with several beneficiaries excluded because of a mismatch between their Aadhaar and job card details.
States
Seven products from U.P. get GI tag 8
(GS Paper 3, Economy)
The Geographical Indications Registry in Chennai has given tags to seven different products from Uttar Pradesh. ‘Amroha Dholak’, ‘Mahoba Gaura Patthar Hastashlip’, ‘Mainpuri Tarkashi’, ‘Sambhal Horn Craft’, ‘Baghpat Home Furnishings’, ‘Barabanki Handloom Product’ and ‘Kalpi Handmade Paper’ are the products that been given the Geographical Indication (GI) tag.
The Amroha Dholak is a musical instrument made of natural wood. Mango, jackfruit and teakwood is preferred for making the dholak.
Wood from mango and sheesham trees are used to carve the multiple sized and shaped hollow blocks, which are later fitted with animal skin, mostly goatskin, to create the instrument.
The application for Baghpat Home Furnishings says Baghpat and Meerut are famous for their exclusive handloom home furnishing product and running fabrics in cotton yarn since generations, and only cotton yarn are used in the handloom weaving process.
According to the details filed for the Barabanki Handloom Product, there are around 50,000 weavers and 20,000 looms at Barabanki and adjoining area.
Historical details for Kalpi Handmade Paper show that Munnalal ‘Khaddari’, a Gandhian, formally introduced the craft here in the 1940s, though many locals say that Kalpi’s association with paper-making dates further back into history.
The handmade paper-making cluster at Kalpi is a huge cluster, engaging more than 5,000 craftsmen and approximately 200 units.
The Mahoba Gaura Patthar Hastashlip is a stone craft.
It is a very unique and soft stone with scientific name, the ‘Pyro Flight Stone’. Gaura stone craft is made of radiant white-coloured stone that is predominantly found in this region. It is used for making craft items.
Editorial
Tracing the arc of American ‘exceptionism’ for India (Page no. 8)
(GS Paper 2, International Relation)
The growth of the relationship between India and the United States is often traced from its nadir 25 years ago, when the U.S. imposed sanctions against India (and Pakistan) after they tested their nuclear weapons in May 1998.
Since then the arc of the relationship between India and America has grown year-on-year, some years more than others, built by five American Presidents (Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, Barack Obama, Donald Trump, Joe Biden) and three Indian Prime Ministers (Atal Bihari Vajpayee, Manmohan Singh, Narendra Modi) over the first two decades of the 21st century.
While the Clinton-Vajpayee-era gave impetus to summit-level diplomacy in the relationship, the Manmohan-Bush and Manmohan-Obama relationship highlighted nuclear diplomacy and Modi-Obama and Modi-Trump worked on trade and military diplomacy.
After his visit to Washington in earlier this June, Mr. Modi’s meetings with Mr. Biden during his state visit to Washington have led to the two nations forging ahead with technology diplomacy, including the unprecedented new promise of Transfer of Technology (ToT) from the U.S. as a result of the Memorandum of Understanding between General Electric (GE) Aerospace and Hindustan Aeronautics Limited (HAL) “to produce fighter jet engines for the Indian Air Force”.
For India, the rapidly rising arc of ties has been seen in terms of shrugging off what Mr. Modi in 2016 called the “hesitations of history” and of renouncing the government’s Cold War muscle-memory in Indian foreign policy towards the U.S.
The more important arc, however, is the shift in the U.S.’s belief in “American exceptionalism”, to a more pragmatic era of “American exception-ism for India”. In other words, it is the U.S.’s decision to make a series of exceptions specifically for India in the first quarter of this century that has been responsible for the big surges in a relationship billed as the most “defining partnership of the century” by Mr. Obama (2009), and Mr. Biden (2023).
In 1998, just six months after the U.S. imposed sanctions on India mandated by the Arms Export Control Act, in November, Mr. Clinton signed a waiver to the sanctions on both India and Pakistan.
The Bush administration’s push for civil nuclear exemptions, resulted in the India-U.S. Joint Statement in 2005, a waiver under the Non-Proliferation Act, the Henry Hyde Act and the 123 Agreement with India, which also led to an India-specific exemption at the Nuclear Suppliers Group in 2008.
Opinion
A model for quality and inclusive education (Page no. 9)
(GS Paper 2, Education)
The National Institutional Ranking Framework (NIRF), adopted by the Ministry of Education to rank institutions of higher education in India, shows a noteworthy feature of Tamil Nadu. Specifically, the 2023 NIRF ranking of the top 100 colleges in India reveals the consistent success of Tamil Nadu in providing higher education that is both of good quality and inclusive. The Tamil Nadu experience, in congruence with the State’s motto of development with social justice, offers an important insight for other States.
The NIRF employs a ranking metric comprising five parameters with varying weightage to assess the quality of colleges: Teaching, Learning and Resources (40%), Graduation Outcome (25%), Research and Professional Practices (15%), Outreach and Inclusivity (10%) and Perception (10%). Each of these parameters has several components, which again have varying weightage. Though far from perfect, the metric is reasonably robust as it uses broad-based and curated parameters.
The number of colleges participating in the NIRF ranking has grown from 535 in 2017 to 1,659 in 2020, and 2,746 in 2023. This five-fold increase notwithstanding, the participating colleges constitute only a paltry proportion of the actual number of colleges in India.
Since NIRF ranking has already gained wide traction and credibility, it is likely that many good-quality colleges participate in the exercise.
A place in the top 100 would bring them repute and increase demand for admission. On the contrary, the non-participating colleges are likely to be poor in quality and seriously lacking in most of the parameters of the ranking metric. Therefore, it is reasonable to assume that many good-quality colleges participate in the ranking.
Of the top 100 NIRF-ranked colleges in 2023, Tamil Nadu has the largest share (35). Delhi (32) comes next, followed by Kerala (14) and West Bengal (8).
These four States collectively contribute to 89% of the top colleges, which speaks volumes about other regions. Bigger States such as Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, and Odisha do not have a single college in the top 100.
Even the share of the other southern States is abysmal: Karnataka has two colleges, Telangana has one, and Andhra Pradesh has none. The share of Tamil Nadu (35%) is more than double the combined share of the other four southern States (17%).
Explainer
The concerns about India-U.S. digital trade (Page no. 10)
(GS Paper 3, Economy)
During Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s U.S. state visit, cooperation on technology emerged as a prominent talking point and yielded some of the most substantive outcomes, according to Foreign Secretary Vinay Kwatra.
However, digital trade is also the area where some of the biggest U.S. tech companies have recently flagged multiple policy hurdles, including “India’s patently protectionist posture”.
Earlier this year, the Washington D.C.-headquartered Computer & Communications Industry Association (CCIA), with members like Amazon, Google, Meta, Intel, and Yahoo, flagged 20 policy barriers to trading with India in a note titled “Key threats to digital trade 2023”.
Notably, in FY2023, the U.S. emerged as India’s biggest overall trading partner with a 7.65% increase in bilateral trade to $128.55 billion in 2022-23.
However, digital or technology services did not emerge as one of the sectors at the forefront of bilateral trade. The CCIA points out in its report that “despite the strength of the U.S. digital services export sector and enormous growth potential of the online services market in India, the U.S. ran a $27 billion deficit in trade in digital services with India in 2020”.
In the recent past, however, the two countries have been ramping up their tech partnership through moves like the Initiative on Critical and Emerging Technology (iCET) announced by President Joe Biden and Prime Minister Narendra Modi last year.
Additionally, under the iCET, India and the U.S. also established a Strategic Trade Dialogue with a focus on addressing regulatory barriers and aligning export controls for smoother trade and “deeper cooperation” in critical areas.
The CCIA, while appreciating the reinvigorated efforts to ramp up trade through bilateral initiatives, has flagged in its note, the “significant imbalance” and “misalignment” in the U.S.-India economic relationship.
“The U.S.’s extension of market access, trade and openness to Indian companies to operate and succeed in the U.S. has not been reciprocated by the Indian side,” it reads, adding that the Indian government has deployed a range of “tools to champion their protectionist industrial policy”, tilting the playing field away from U.S. digital service providers in favour of domestic players.
Text
Feminist approaches to international relations (Page no. 11)
(GS Paper 2, International Relation)
After the Second World War, the global order was undergoing various shifts which could not be explained by traditional theories of inter-state war and conflict.
The rise of violent trans-state actors and groups, ethnic conflict and tension, and the relatively peaceful ending of the Cold War were markers of a changing global arena where the state was not just the only player.
This called for different and varied approaches to look at international relations (IR) not just as an order of states and relations among them but where multiple actors and institutions factor in.
The feminist approach to IR is one such perspective which sees the international arena through primarily a gendered lens.
The feminist perspective to IR emerged out of what is popularly known as ‘the third debate’ between positivists and post-positivist scholars in the 1980s.
Here the positivist assumptions within IR, that the field is a value-neutral arena where definitions and structures such as anarchy and nation state are set in stone and self-explanatory, were challenged.
Post-positivists questioned the very foundations of the discipline, its basic knowledge structure and ideals and said that IR needs to be analysed more critically.
They called for pluralism and more diversity in IR which up to that point was dominated by realist and liberal perspectives.
The first generation of feminist perspectives in IR were not so much as a fresh approach to understanding global politics as trying to deconstruct the fundamental foundations laid down by realist and liberal IR scholars and how they fail to properly represent all actors in conflict and foreign policy.
Realists believe the international arena is in a state of anarchy (there is no overarching sovereign power to govern nation states and tell them what to do).
Therefore, states are constantly involved in ‘power politics’, trying to safeguard their own interests and security. While some countries use power only when their security is threatened, some other (larger) countries actively seek and use power to gain a relative advantage over other nation states.
Power and the need for security is the ultimate driving force as far as realists are concerned. Liberal scholars, on the other hand, prioritise cooperation.
News
‘Sedition law must to retain India’s integrity’ (Page no. 12)
(GS Paper 2, Governance)
Amid a clamour for the colonial-era sedition law to be repealed, Law Commission Chairman Justice Ritu Raj Awasthi (retd) said that it was an important tool to safeguard the “safety and integrity of India” given the situation in many parts of the country, from Kashmir to Kerala and Punjab to the Northeast.
Defending the panel’s recommendation to retain the law, which is at present under abeyance following directions of the Supreme Court issued in May last year, he said enough safeguards had been proposed to prevent its misuse.
He said that special laws such as the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act (UAPA) and the National Security Act (NSA) operated in different fields and did not cover the offence of sedition and therefore, the specific law on sedition needed to be there too.
He also said that the sedition law being a colonial legacy was not a valid ground for its repeal and several countries, including the U.S., Canada, Australia and Germany, had their own such laws.
In its report submitted to the government last month, the 22nd Law Commission headed by Justice Awasthi supported retaining Section 124A of the Indian Penal Code (IPC) with safeguards to prevent its misuse.
The recommendation triggered a political uproar with several Opposition parties alleging that it was an attempt to stifle dissent and voices against the ruling party ahead of the Lok Sabha election next year.
While the government said it would take an “informed and reasoned” decision on the Law Commission report after consulting all stakeholders and that the recommendations were “persuasive” but not binding, the Congress had alleged that the government wanted to make the sedition law more “draconian”.
Referring to the “procedural safeguards” recommended by the commission, Justice Awasthi said that the preliminary inquiry would be held by a police officer of the rank of inspector or above.
The inquiry would be done within seven days from the occurrence of the incident and the preliminary inquiry report would be submitted to the competent government authority for permission for lodging of FIR in this regard.
World
Russia to transfer Wagner hardware to Army; Prigozhin arrives in Belarus (Page no. 15)
(GS Paper 2, International Relation)
Russia prepared on Tuesday to take possession of heavy military hardware held by Wagner as Moscow moved to bring the mercenary group under its control after its aborted mutiny.
Russia’s FSB said on Tuesday that the criminal case against the group’s troops was now closed. “Preparations are underway for the transfer of heavy military equipment from Wagner to units of the Russian armed forces,” the Defence Ministry said.
Russian President Vladimir Putin told troops gathered on Tuesday at the Kremlin they prevented civil war after a revolt by Wagner mercenaries, and held a minute’s silence for pilots killed during the insurrection.
It was the latest in a series of addresses Mr. Putin has made after the rebellion. “You de facto stopped civil war,” Mr. Putin told troops from the Defence Ministry, National Guard, FSB security service and Interior Ministry.
He addressed them inside the Kremlin’s Cathedral Square, standing on a red carpet and facing men in different uniforms. Soldiers holding the Russian flag and bayonets stood behind the longtime leader. “You proved your loyalty to the people of Russia and the military oath. You showed responsibility for the fate of the motherland and its future.
He also said that Moscow had paid out last year just over $1 billion to the Wagner mercenary group, which last week staged a failed mutiny.
In an address to the nation, Mr. Putin had accused Ukraine and its Western allies of wanting Russians to “kill each other” during the revolt.
A plane linked to Mr. Prigozhin and believed to be carrying him into exile landed in Belarus from the southern Russian city of Rostov early on Tuesday, a flight tracking service said.
Business
Q4 current account deficit narrows to $1.3 billion as trade deficit shrinks (Page no. 16)
(GS Paper 3, Economy)
India’s current account deficit (CAD) narrowed to $1.3 billion (0.2% of GDP) in the fourth quarter of FY23, from $16.8 billion (2%of GDP) in the preceding three-month period, and $13.4 billion a year earlier, data released by the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) show.
The sequential decline was mainly on account of a moderation in the trade deficit to $52.6 billion in Q4 from $71.3 billion in Q3, coupled with robust services exports.
Net services receipts increased, both sequentially and year-on-year, on the back of a rise in net earnings from computer services. Private transfer receipts, mainly remittances by Indians employed overseas, rose 20.8% to $28.6 billion.
Net foreign direct investment at $6.4 billion was higher than $2 billion in Q3, although lower than a year earlier ($13.8 billion).
For the full fiscal year, the current account deficit widened to $67 billion (2% of GDP), from a deficit of $38.7 billion (1.2%) in FY22, as the trade deficit ballooned to $265.3 billion, from $189.5 billion.
Both export and import values are expected to soften owing to weak external demand and lower international commodity prices - leading to a narrower goods trade deficit.