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The Supreme Court said that the electoral bonds scheme only offered “selective confidentiality”, which does not prevent the ruling party from unearthing the identities of donors to Opposition parties and then hounding them through its investigative agencies.
“There are ways and means for the ruling party to get information about contributions to the Opposition. The Opposition, on the other hand, may not be able to know who your [party in power] donors are, but you will know about their donors.
It is easier for the party or person in power to get the information. The Opposition is at a disadvantage to question your donations, but the ruling party is not.
That is the grey area here,” Justice Sanjiv Khanna, part of the Constitution Bench headed by Chief Justice D.Y. Chandrachud, addressed the Centre.
Chief Justice Chandrachud asked whether the State Bank of India had a statutory obligation to maintain confidentiality.
UPSC tightens guidelines for appointment of State DGPs (Page no. 1)
(GS Paper 2, Polity and Constitution)
Only police officers with at least six months of service left before retirement will be considered for appointment as the Director-General of Police (DGP) of a State, the Union Public Service Commission (UPSC) said in amended guidelines issued last month.
In another change, the Empanelment Committee constituted by the UPSC will not assess Indian Police Service (IPS) officers on Central deputation for a State DGP’s post if the Union Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) says that “it will not be possible to relieve the officers”.
Senior government officials say the amendments make explicit what have been considered unwritten norms, even as some States have appointed DGPs on the verge of retirement, and many States have appointed acting DGPs to avoid due process.
Editorial
Impacting a woman’s freedom to reproductive choices (Page no. 6)
(GS Paper 1, Social Issues)
On October 16, in X vs Union of India, the Supreme Court of India declined permission to a woman who was seeking to terminate a 26 week-long pregnancy.
A Bench presided over by the Chief Justice of India (CJI), D.Y. Chandrachud, held that the woman’s case fell outside the scope of the Medical Termination of Pregnancy (MTP) Act, 1971
The Court said the statute permitted the termination of pregnancy beyond 24 weeks only in cases where the foetus exhibited substantial abnormality, or where the woman’s life was under direct threat.
Here, since doctors would have to terminate a “viable foetus”, the Court rejected the plea to exercise its extraordinary powers.
The judgment falls short of bestowing any explicit rights to the unborn. But the upshot of its conclusion is just that: when a foetus becomes viable, and is capable of surviving outside the mother’s uterus, the woman’s right to choose stands extinguished, barring circumstances where the specific conditions outlined in the MTP Act are met.
AI and the issue of human-centricity in copyright law (Page no. 6)
(GS Paper 3, Science and Technology)
The Executive Order in the United States, issued by the Biden administration on October 30, on ‘Safe, Secure, and Trustworthy Artificial Intelligence (AI)’, illustrates the changing attitude of global leaders towards AI regulation.
Implementation and the use of AI without the necessary safeguards can have enormous implications for the future of humanity, and the changes in regulatory approaches are a welcome development.
One of the many areas wherein AI has raised tough questions is ownership and enforcement of intellectual property (IP) rights.
For example, while generative AI tools such as ChatGPT and Midjourney allow people with minimal creative skills to produce reasonably beautiful outputs with the help of a couple of text prompts, their use has raised a number of copyright-related questions.
These include whether the use of copyrighted materials, including texts and images, as training data infringes the rights of millions of authors and artists on the Internet.
A related query revolves around copyright ownership over output generated by AI, autonomously or with inputs from humans.
Opinion
Reconciliation over retribution (Page no. 7)
(GS Paper 2, International Relation)
The image of shattered solar panels in Gaza amid billowing smoke is a grim reminder that peace is a prerequisite for progress.
If the political leadership of the world cannot ensure a peaceful present, how do we expect them to protect us from other threats like “global boiling”? Francis Bacon in his essay On Revenge describes revenge as “a kind of wild justice.”
‘Wild’ means raw or not regulated by judicial restraint or civilised conduct. Revenge is an act of retaliation implying an earlier act of provocation. Even if that is the case, and whatever its irrationality, an act of vengeance by the establishment can never be justified like the earlier act.
The state can punish an unlawful act through its statutory organs but can it subject an entire community to retribution by mindless annihilation? There cannot be any apology for the perpetrators of violence but the responsibility of the state lies in bringing them to justice as administered by the strong arm of law and not in bulldozing its way in a manner that grinds everything to dust.
Explainer
Understanding the U.S.-Israel relations (Page no. 8)
(GS Paper 2, International Relation)
Within days of the October 7 attack by Hamas inside Israel, killing at least 1,400 people, President Joe Biden travelled to Israel to declare solidarity with the Jewish state.
Mr. Biden described Hamas as “unadulterated evil” and stated that America “stands with Israel”. Since the October 7 attack, Israel has been bombing Gaza relentlessly and is currently carrying out a ground invasion in which at least 8,700 Palestinians have already been killed.
The U.S. has been careful not to criticise Israel even in the face of the latter’s disproportionate attack on the tiny enclave of 2.3 million people.
The U.S. has also vetoed a UN Security Council resolution that called for a humanitarian pause to Israel’s attacks and voted against a resolution at the UN General Assembly calling for a humanitarian truce, which was passed with a landslide.
This is not surprising given the history of the U.S.-Israel relations. Barring minor personality clashes between leaders, the U.S. has stood solidly behind Israel, irrespective of the latter’s actions, at least since 1967.
News
Rajya Sabha privilege panel to review pleas against members (Page no. 10)
(GS Paper 2, Polity and Constitution)
The Privileges Committee of the Rajya Sabha has called for a meeting to review complaints against House members, including those against suspended AAP MPs Sanjay Singh and Raghav Chadha and Trinamool Congress member Derek O’Brien.
The meeting comes against the backdrop of the Supreme Court’s observations earlier in the week expressing concern about the indefinite suspension of MPs, while hearing a petition filed by Mr. Chadha.
Mr. Singh was suspended in July indefinitely during a protest by the Opposition parties demanding a debate on Manipur.
Mr. Chadha was suspended on August 11, the last day of the Monsoon Session for “gross violation of rule, misconduct, defiant attitude and contemptuous conduct”.
A breach of privilege motion was moved against him by four Rajya Sabha members for proposing their names for a Select Committee without their consent in violation of rules.
Three privilege complaints moved by BJP MPs Biplab Kumar Deb, Anil Agarwal and Bhubaneswar Kalita against Mr. O’Brien for “casting unsubstantiated reflections on high authorities” was admitted by the committee in October. Mr. O’Brien was not suspended.
Kozhikode and Gwalior enter creative cities list (Page no. 12)
(GS Paper 1, Culture)
Kozhikode in Kerala and Gwalior in Madhya Pradesh have made it to the prestigious creative cities list of UNESCO for contributions in the fields of literature and music, respectively.
The announcement was made by UNESCO on its official website on October 31, which is designated as World Cities Day.
“On World Cities Day, 55 cities join the UNESCO Creative Cities Network (UCCN), following their designation by UNESCO Director-General Audrey Azoulay.
New cities were acknowledged for their strong commitment to harnessing culture and creativity as part of their development strategies, and displaying innovative practices in human-centred urban planning.
The newly designated Creative Cities are invited to participate in the 2024 UCCN Annual Conference (July 1-5, 2024) in Braga, Portugal.
Author Nandini Das wins 2023 British Academy Book Prize (Page no. 12)
(Miscellaneous)
Indian-born author Nandini Das has been named the winner of the 2023 British Academy Book Prize for Global Cultural Understanding, a leading international non-fiction award with a prize money of £25,000, for her book Courting India: England, Mughal India and the Origins of Empire.
The U.K.-based academic’s debut work, described as the “true origin story of Britain and India told through England’s first diplomatic mission to the Mughal courts”, was revealed as this year’s winner at a ceremony at the British Academy in London.
As a Professor in the English faculty at the University of Oxford, the 49-year-old author has sought to present a new perspective on the origins of empire through the story of the arrival of the first English ambassador in India, Sir Thomas Roe, in the early 17th century.
By using contemporary sources by Indian and British political figures, officials and merchants, she has given the story an unparalleled immediacy that brings to life these early encounters and the misunderstandings that sometimes threatened to wreck the whole endeavour.
He described how, through her beautiful writing and exceptional research, the jury was drawn to the contrast between an impoverished, insecure Britain and the flourishing, confident Mughal Empire.
World
Politicians, tech leaders gather for U.K.’s AI summit (Page no. 13)
(GS Paper 3, Science and Technology)
Politicians and tech leaders gathered in the U.K. on Wednesday for the first Artificial Intelligence (AI) Safety Summit which sought to build a framework to mitigate the risks of AI while maximising its potential.
The two-day event, is being held at Bletchley Park, a country estate where Alan Turing and other scientists broke the Nazis’ ‘Enigma’ code during the Second World War , has resulted in a ‘Bletchley Declaration’.
The Declaration “affirms the need to address these risks, as the only way to safely unlock these extraordinary opportunities,” U.K. Science, Innovation and Technology Secretary Michelle Donelan said, adding that the declaration emphasised the importance of governments, technology developers and civil society working together to deliver AI safety.
Minister of State for Electronics and Information Technology Rajeev Chandrasekhar, representing the Government of India, said the government had maintained that international conversations on AI were “extremely important” and that the government’s view was that the framework for regulating technology should be driven by a coalition of countries and the framework should not be “episodic” but more sustained.
Business
PMI points to manufacturing growth easing to 8-month low (Page no. 6)
(GS Paper 3, Economy)
Manufacturing sector growth eased in October to the slowest pace since February as new orders dipped to a one-year low, with the seasonally adjusted S&P Global India Manufacturing Purchasing Managers’ Index (PMI) slipping to 55.5 from September’s 57.6.
Growth subsided on several fronts, with demand for consumer goods being the worst hit. Job creation was the weakest since April, with less than 4% of firms hiring new staff.
Business confidence slid to a five-month low, as concerns surrounding the path for inflation and demand dampened spirits compared with the first half. International orders slowed to a four-month low. Input cost pressures intensified for producers who reported rising prices for aluminium, chemicals, paper, rubber and steel.
“New orders index slipped to a one-year low, as some firms raised concerns about” current demand, said Pollyanna De Lima, economics associate director at S&P Global Market Intelligence.
Firms signalled that rising inflation expectations would dent production in the coming 12 months.
Science
Haemoglobin isn’t used only in blood, scientists discover (Page no. 20)
(GS Paper 2, Health)
Textbooks have said for decades that haemoglobin is found in the red blood cells (RBCs), that it makes blood red, carries oxygen, and is essential for our survival.
A new and serendipitous discovery has revealed that haemoglobin isn’t used by RBCs alone. In a study published in Nature, scientists from China have reported that chondrocytes – cells that make cartilage, the connecting tissue between bones – also make haemoglobin and seem to depend on it for their survival.
Feng Zhang, a pathologist in the Fourth Military Medical University in China, had been working on bone development since 2010. In 2017, when he was studying growth plates –cartilaginous tissue at the end of certain long bones that allow the bones to become longer –he stumbled upon a few spherical blob-like structures. They seemed to bear an uncanny resemblance to RBCs, and they contained haemoglobin.
Dr. Zhang then teamed up with Quiang Sun at the Beijing Institute of Biotechnology and used advanced microscopy techniques to investigate further.
Picture what happens when oil is mixed into water: the oil separates out into little globules in a process called phase separation.
That’s what seemed to be happening in the chondrocytes in the cartilage as well. Dr. Zhang ascertained that the chondrocytes within the growth plates of newborn mice were not only producing large amounts of haemoglobin, but also that it was coalescing and forming large blobs without a membrane.
The scientists called these blobs haemoglobin bodies, or Hedy.