Whatsapp 93125-11015 For Details
In a historic judgment, the Supreme Court allowed unmarried and single women whose pregnancies are between 20 and 24 weeks to access safe and legal abortion care on par with their married counterparts.
A Bench led by Justice D.Y. Chandrachud pried open the restrictive grip of a 51-year-old abortion law which bars unmarried women from terminating pregnancies which are up to 24-weeks old.
The Medical Termination of Pregnancy Act of 1971 and its Rules of 2003 prohibit unmarried women who are between 20 weeks to 24 weeks pregnant to abort with the help of registered medical practitioners.
The rights of reproductive autonomy, dignity and privacy under Article 21 of the Constitution gives an unmarried woman the right of choice as to whether or not to bear a child on a similar footing as that of a married woman.
The court declared that prohibiting single or unmarried pregnant women with pregnancies between 20 and 24 weeks from accessing abortion while allowing married women with the same term of pregnancy to access the care was violative of the right to equality before law and equal protection (Article 14).
The court said a single woman may have suffered the same “change in material circumstances” as a married pregnant woman. She may have been abandoned or without a job or been a victim of violence during her pregnancy.
Her life could be in danger due to foetal abnormalities. She may have been a victim of sexual exploitation leading to the pregnancy. There would be cases in which she could have got pregnant due to contraceptive failure, leaving her in a state of mental anguish.
“The law should not decide the beneficiaries of a statute based on narrow patriarchal principles about what constitutes permissible sex. This would create invidious classifications,” Justice Chandrachud said in the judgment which coincided with the International Safe Abortion Day.
The source of her pregnancy may also be the same vulnerability that applies to other women. There is a need to have a forward-looking interpretation of the law, the court said.
“The law should not decide the beneficiaries of a statute based on narrow patriarchal principles about what constitutes permissible sex. This would create invidious classifications,” Justice Chandrachud said in the judgment which happen to coincide with the International Safe Abortion Day.
UNESCO lists 50 iconic Indian textiles (Page no. 1)
(GS Paper 1, Art and Culture)
UNESCO released a list of 50 exclusive and iconic heritage textile crafts of the country. Toda embroidery and Sungadi from Tamil Nadu, Himroo weaves from Hyderabad and Bandha tie and dye weaving from Sambalpur in Odisha were some of the textiles that made the cut.
Handmade for the 21st Century: Safeguarding Traditional Indian Textile lists the histories and legends behind the textiles, describes the complicated and secret processes behind their making, mentions the causes for their dwindling popularity, and provides strategies for their preservation.
According to UNESCO, one of the major challenges to the safeguarding of Intangible Cultural Heritage in the South Asia is lack of proper inventory and documentation. The publication, which aims to bridge this gap, brings together years of research on the 50 selected textiles.
Some of the iconic handcrafted textiles documented from north India are Khes from Panipat, Chambarumals from Himachal Pradesh, Thigma or wool tie and dye from Ladakh and AwadhJamdani from Varanasi.
From the south, Ilkal and Lambadi or Banjara embroidery from Karnataka, SikalnayakanpetKalamkari from Thanjavur have been included.
Kunbi weaves from Goa, Mashru weaves and Patola from Gujarat, Himroo from Maharashtra and Garad-Koirial from West Bengal also find a place among the 50 iconic textiles.
Spotlight
All quiet on the Maoist front (Page no. 6)
(GS Paper 3, Internal Security)
Every monsoon, fresh spells of rain revitalise the rivers, waterfalls, streams and multitudinous brooks that flow out of the hills of BurhaPahar, a forested area spread over 50 sq. km in the trijunction of Latehar and Garhwa districts in Jharkhand and Balrampur district in Chhattisgarh. The rolling landscape offers a tranquil getaway for urban travellers and an inviting challenge for adventure seekers.
However, for over three decades, large parts of this picturesque terrain remained inaccessible as it served as the command centre of the Communist Party of India (Maoist), a banned organisation of left-wing guerrilla fighters engaged in constant battles with Indian security forces.
Early this month, a counter-insurgency offensive codenamed Operation Octopus — jointly launched by special teams from the Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF), its elite Commando Battalion for Resolute Action (CoBRA) unit, Jharkhand Jaguar, and the district police of Garhwa and Latehar — finally freed BurhaPahar from the control of Maoists. A large bunker was demolished and over 100 improvised explosive devices (IEDs) were recovered. Union Home Minister Amit Shah termed the mission a “historic milestone” in the fight against Left Wing Extremism (LWE) and lauded the troops that had led the offensive.
The area was one of the last bastions of the Maoist insurgency, which traces its roots to a 1967 uprising in Naxalbari, a village in West Bengal. The Maoists organised uprisings among landless workers in West Bengal, Bihar and Andhra Pradesh, and later spread to the mineral-rich States of Odisha, Chhattisgarh and Jharkhand.
In 2004, two armed wings, the People’s War Group in Andhra Pradesh, and the Maoist Communist Centre in Jharkhand and Bihar, united to form the CPI(Maoist). In 2006, the then Prime Minister Manmohan Singh described the rebels as “the single biggest internal security challenge ever faced by our country”.
Armed conflict in the ‘red corridor’ has claimed the lives of about 16,650 security personnel in the past 40 years and 3,000 Maoists over the last two decades.
At Hatedih hamlet, the team met locals who complained about the State Forest Department’s objections to them gathering wood for putting up fences in their fields.
But they remained tight-lipped when questioned about the Maoists on the run. After climbing over boulders on the nearby TetukNullah, the squad reached a makeshift bridge, where the motorcycles had to be dragged through the sandy riverbed while crossing a tributary of the Burhariver. The final five km of the hour-long trip was a bumpy ride through slushy terrain.
Editorial
India lacks a complete paediatric cardio care service (Page no. 10)
(GS Paper 2, Economy)
It is overwhelming for parents to be told that their child may have heart defects. It is worse when the child does not get treated in time due to lack of paediatric cardiac care in the vicinity of his/her home.
Congenital Heart Disease (CHD), which the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), Atlanta, U.S., acknowledges to be the most common congenital disorder, is responsible for 28% of all congenital birth defects, and accounts for 6%-10 % of all the infant deaths in India.
Paediatricians say timely medical intervention can save 75% of these children and give them normal lives. The lack of a national policy for the treatment of cardiovascular diseases in children keeps a huge number outside the ambit of treatment. It is estimated that over 1,00,000 children keep getting added to the existing pool of children awaiting surgery.
According to the Pediatric Cardiac Society of India (PCSI), the prevalence of congenital cardiac anomalies is one in every 100 live births; or an estimated 2,00,000 children are born with CHD every year.
Only 15,000 of them receive treatment. At least 30% of infants who have complex defects require surgical intervention to survive their first birthday but only 2,500 operations can be performed each year.
A case in point is the premier All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS), where infants are waitlisted till 2026 for cardiac surgery.
A retired health bureaucrat says that there has been more neglect and little improvement in child health care because creating a comprehensive paediatric cardiology care service is usually considered economically unviable — it is resource intensive and requires infrastructure investment that politicians and policymakers choose to evade.
There are 22 hospitals and less than 50 centres in India with infant and neonatal cardiac services. Geographically, these centres are not well distributed either.
A 2018 cardiology department report of AIIMS, highlighted how South India accounted for 70% of these centres; most centres are located in regions with a lower burden of CHD.
For instance, Kerala has eight centres offering neonatal cardiac surgeries for an estimated 4.5 lakh annual childbirths. Populous Uttar Pradesh and Bihar, with an estimated annual childbirth of 48 and 27 lakh births per annum, respectively (Census of India, 2012), do not have a centre capable of performing neonatal cardiac surgery.
For 600 districts with a 1.4 billion population, there are only 250 paediatric cardiologists available. The doctor to patient ratio is an abysmal one for half-a-crore population.
Opinion
How much should India prop up the rupee? (Page no. 11)
(GS Paper 3, Economy)
Last week, the rupee weakened against the dollar past the 81-mark to a record low. In recent months, the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) has been intervening in the forex market to smoothen the decline.
With the RBI dipping into its kitty for this purpose, Indian foreign exchange reserves have fallen by about $94 billion in 12 months to about $545 billion until mid-September.
The use of forex reserves is appropriate at this juncture. You build your reserves during good times and spend them during bad times. Right now, reserves are being spent in trying to curb currency volatility.
You can’t defend the rupee at a particular level, because that would be swimming against the tide, which is not possible in this environment. But you can make it less volatile. Having said that, there is also a limit to how much you can lean on the reserves.
They can burn out pretty quickly if you are aggressive in your interventions. So, you need a multi-pronged approach, which involves several measures, which the RBI has already taken to increase the supply of U.S. dollars in the Indian market, such as easing provisions for remittances, allowing short-term foreign portfolio investments in government securities, etc. We can even think of a scheme similar to the one introduced in 2014 to attract NRI investments.
You also need to let the rupee depreciate in an orderly manner. Some, but not too much, depreciation will partly help the export sector, as global demand is the key influencer of exports, and currencies of our competitors are also weakening. So, the vulnerability that stems from high current account deficit (CAD) can get addressed to some extent.The interest rate channel also needs to be used. In Friday’s monetary policy announcement, we believe the RBI will go in for a 50 basis point hike. Part of it will be to address domestic concerns and part of it will also help mute the impact of the U.S. Federal Reserve’s rate hikes.
There is a limit to the RBI continuously managing volatility because exchange rate management is not its mandate, but price stability through inflation containment is. The root cause of this rupee volatility is the Federal Reserve’s decision to raise rates.
They are in an aggressive, hawkish mode, which is spurring foreign portfolio investors to move out of emerging markets.
So, bridging the interest rate differential is the policy tool we should be using, because volatility management can also give a panic signal to the market. In the [current] Monetary Policy Committee (MPC) meetings, if we can front load that for macroeconomic stability, and for stability in the currency markets, that could be effective.
Explainer
The draft Telecommunication Bill (Page no. 12)
(GS Paper 2/3, Governance/Economy)
The Ministry of Communications released a draft of the Indian Telecommunication Bill, 2022 last week for public comments. Since then, the draft has generated a significant amount of discussion on various changes that it proposes to make to the current telecom regulatory framework. The Minister for Communications, AshwiniVaishnaw, has stated that the Bill would become law in the next 6-10 months.
The draft Indian Telecommunication Bill is an attempt by the government to update the extant regulatory framework in keeping with the advancements and challenges in the sector.
This was much needed given that the three main legislations that occupy this domain are considerably outdated, with the most recent of these having been enacted more than 70 years back.
These legislations are the Indian Telegraph Act enacted in 1885, the Indian Wireless Telegraphy Act enacted in 1933 and the Telegraph Wires (Unlawful) Possession Act in 1950.
The Indian Telecommunication Bill looks to repeal these legislations and “restructure the legal and regulatory framework” for the telecommunications sector.
Over-the-top (OTT) communication services refer to services that provide real time person-to-person telecommunication services. Some popular examples of these include messaging platforms like Whatsapp, Telegram, Signal, Messenger, Duo, Google Meet etc.
These platforms use the network infrastructure of telecom service providers like Airtel, Vodafone and Jio and provide features that compete with telecommunication services such as voice calls and SMS services.
Telecom Service Providers (TSPs) allege that these features result in a double whammy for them as they cut into their sources of revenue (voice calls, SMS) while not having to deal with infrastructure and licensing costs that they have to undertake.
Therefore, TSPs have been demanding a level playing field with OTT services.
The current draft of the Bill expands the definition of “telecommunication services” to include OTT communication services. As a consequence of this, OTT telecommunication services may be subject to the same licensing conditions as TSPs.
Under the extant framework, TSPs have to be issued the Unified Access Service Licence (UASL) for them to be able to provide telecom services in India.
If OTT communication services are required to obtain the same licence, they would also be subject to a number of conditions such as maintaining ‘know your customer’ details of their users, adhering to certain encryption regulations and allowing lawful access to the government of their equipment and networks.
News
175 alleged drug smugglers held in Operation Garuda (Page no. 16)
(GS Paper 3, Internal Security)
About 175 persons allegedly involved in drug smuggling have been arrested in different parts of the country in an operation led by the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) in close coordination with the Interpol, the Narcotics Control Bureau (NCB) and the police forces.
The multi-phase exercise code-named "Operation Garuda" has been launched to dismantle the drug smuggling networks with international linkages through coordinated enforcement actions across the world, through the Interpol.
According to the CBI, the operation has so far resulted in the registration of 127 cases and arrests along with the seizure of huge quantities of narcotics. "Apart from the CBI and the NCB, the police in eight States and Union Territory, including Punjab, Himachal Pradesh, Gujarat, Maharashtra, Tamil Nadu, Delhi and Manipur participated," said an agency official.
The enforcement agencies checked about 6,600 suspects. Among those arrested were six proclaimed offenders or absconders. The seizures comprise 5.13 kg of heroin, ; 105.997 kg of Tramadol, 33.94-kg ganja, 3.29-kg charas, over 1.30 kg of mephedrone, a large number of Buprenorphine tablets and other narcotics substances.
Business
Senior citizens, families to see small gains in small savings (Page no. 18)
(GS Paper 3, Economy)
The Centre on Thursday announced increases of 0.1-0.3 percentage points in interest rates payable on five small savings instruments (SSIs) including the KisanVikasPatra, Senior Citizens’ Savings scheme and time deposits for 2 and 3 years, for the quarter beginning October 1, marking the first increase in small savings rates since January 2019.
The rate for KisanVikasPatra has been raised to 7% from 6.9% for the coming quarter, and senior citizens’ savings will earn 7.6%, instead of the 7.4% payable till September 30.
Rates were left unchanged for seven other designated small savings schemes, including the Public Provident Fund (PPF) at 7.1%, and the SukanyaSamriddhi Account Scheme at 7.6%.
The last time small savings rates were raised was for the January to March quarter of 2019, just ahead of the last Lok Sabha elections. The rates had been kept unchanged for nine successive quarters since the April to June quarter of 2020, when they were slashed across schemes.
In August, the RBI had observed that the rise in yields on government securities (G-secs) had turned ‘the spread between the existing interest rates’ and formula-based rates ‘negative for most small saving schemes’.
Returns on SSIs are linked to market yields on G-secs with a lag and are fixed on a quarterly basis at a spread of 0-100 basis points over and above G-sec yields of comparable maturities.
The decision to raise rates on just five SSIs, will mean that returns for some of the schemes, such as the PPF, will be negative in the coming quarter in relation to the formula.