27 August 2024, The Hindu
Amit Shah announces five new districts for Ladakh
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Prelims: Current events of national and international importance.
- Union Home Minister Amit Shah said on Monday that five new districts — Zanskar, Drass, Sham, Nubra and Changthang — would be created in the union territory of Ladakh for “bolstering governance in every nook and cranny.”
- Ladakh presently has two districts — Leh and Kargil — with autonomous hill development councils.
- Prime Minister Narendra Modi said it was a step towards better governance and prosperity and the districts would “now receive more focused attention, bringing services and opportunities even closer to the people.”
Communal tension in Tripura over alleged defacement of idol, houses burnt and shops looted
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GS 1 Communalism (Indian Society)
- The Central Reserve Police Force and Tripura State Rifles platoons were deployed after violence broke out in two localities in Jirania subdivision of West Tripura due to an alleged defacement of an idol of goddess Kali.
- State Tourism Minister Sushanta Chowdhury, who is also the local MLA, helped to contain the situation on the ground.
- Twelve houses were burned down, three shops were looted and a place of worship was damaged. Around 15 displaced families were given shelter in a government school.
No more delays
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GS 1: Population and related issues
- In what can only be a case of muddying the waters, the Union government is reportedly mulling the expansion of data collection in the long-delayed Census to include caste enumeration.
- That caste may be one of the variables in the Census could be an outcome of the strident demand for a caste census by several political parties.
- But considering the incomplete and poorly constructed nature of the Socio-Economic and Caste Census of 2011, which resulted in data that were unwieldy, inaccurate, and hence unusable, the government must not hurry into utilising the office of the Registrar General and other agencies to tabulate caste.
- There must first be a definite time frame to conduct the Census on a war footing.
- If the delay is deliberate, in order to allow for delimitation to be conducted first in 2026, this will be harmful not just to public policy but also to relations with States.
- As of June 2024, out of 233 countries, India was one of 44 not to have conducted the Census this decade.
- The ostensible reason provided by the Union Home Ministry was delay due to the COVID-19 pandemic, but 143 other countries conducted the Census after March 2020, which marked the onset of the pandemic.
- India shares this dubious distinction of not having a Census with countries affected by conflict, economic crises or turmoil such as Yemen, Syria, Afghanistan, Myanmar, Ukraine, Sri Lanka and in sub-Saharan Africa.
Unending war
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GS 2: Effect of policies and politics of developed and developing countries on India’s interests, Indian diaspora
- Israel’s “pre-emptive” strike on Lebanon on August 25 and Hezbollah’s rocket and drone attacks on Israel underline the complexities and escalatory risks of the raging multi-party war in West Asia since October 2023.
- While the main theatre is Gaza, which Israel has been mercilessly pounding since the October 7 Hamas attack, the conflict has effectively spread to Israel’s northern border and southern Lebanon.
- Over the past 10 months, Hezbollah, the Iran-backed Lebanese Shia militia, has launched hundreds of rocket attacks towards Israel, “in solidarity with the Palestinians”.
- Israel has responded with air strikes on Lebanon, killing Hezbollah operatives and civilians.
- The trigger for the latest flare-up was the Israeli killing of Fuad Shukr, a senior commander of Hezbollah, in a strike in Beirut on July 31 — the day Israel killed Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran.
- On August 25, after striking hundreds of Hezbollah targets, Israel said the Shia group was planning to carry out a large-scale attack and that its assault was defensive.
- But the massive strike did not deter Hezbollah from launching over 300 katyusha rockets and drones towards Israel, killing at least one soldier and wounding several.
The heavy shackles of fear and vigilance
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GS 1: Society (Women)
- The brutal rape and murder of a woman doctor in Kolkata has led to the country finding itself, once again, engaged in a deep conversation on the safety of women in India.
- Women across the country face a spectrum of aggressive behaviours and violence — from sexual harassment and dowry-related deaths to rape and domestic violence.
- While the physical impact of violence against women is acknowledged by both the state and society as visible and tell-tale signs on women, there is considerably less focus on its psychological and behavioural consequences.
- This oversight means that while the physical and explicit acts of violence may provoke immediate and visible responses and draw public attention, the enduring psychological impact remains difficult to measure and often goes unnoticed and unaddressed.
Crime, health-worker safety and a self-examination
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GS 1: Society, Social Empowerment
- The year 2017 saw heated protests by resident doctors in Maharashtra, following a series of vicious attacks on medical personnel in rather quick succession — as is invariably the case with sensationalised criminal offences.
- Despite the magnitude of the problem, the solution was straightforward and run-of-the-mill.
- It meant bolstering security in public hospitals and strengthening legal instruments to bring the malefactors to rapid justice.
- Similar incidents came and went, with much happening during the COVID-19 pandemic. The knee jerk responses too continued.
- One is hard-pressed to recall any conspicuous precedents of swift justice.
A proper probe alone can ensure timely justice
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GS 2: Important aspects of governance, transparency and accountability
- Amid national outrage over the rape and murder of a trainee doctor in Kolkata and the sexual abuse of two kindergarten girls in Badlapur, Maharashtra, Prime Minister Narendra Modi has spoken twice in 10 days on crimes against women.
- In his 78th Independence Day address, Mr. Modi said that crimes against women should be investigated without any delay, and that it was important to instill fear among culprits of committing such crimes.
- “There should be a wide discussion about the criminals who get punished so that even those who commit such sins fear the consequences including hanging to death.
- I feel that it is very important to create this fear,” he said. Then, while addressing the Lakhpati Didi Sammelan in Jalgaon, Maharashtra, on Sunday, Mr. Modi said that committing a crime against women was “an unpardonable sin”, adding that the guilty should not be spared.
On the unrest in the Balochistan region
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GS 2: India and its neighbourhood relations
- In the past few weeks, Balochistan, in Pakistan, has witnessed large-scale protests. Balochistan is a region with a distinct cultural and historical identity that is now divided between three countries mainly Pakistan, Iran and Afghanistan.
- The Baloch Yakjehti Committee (BYC) had called for a ‘Baloch Raaji Muchi’ (Baloch National Gathering) in the Gwadar port city to highlight human rights violations, resource exploitation, and the government’s inability to provide basic amenities to people in the province.
- Consequently, there were clashes between the protestors and the security forces, resulting in fatalities and detentions.
- The security forces’ crackdown and blockade of major thoroughfares in many towns and cities, such as Gwadar, Hub, Mastung and Quetta, resulted in a sharp increase in the prices of necessities such as food, medicine, and petrol.
Report reveals minimal use of plea bargaining in India
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GS 2: Judiciary
- Nearly two decades after plea bargaining was introduced as one of the means to reduce the overwhelming pendency of cases in the courts, its application in India remains minimal, a recent report by the Ministry of Law and Justice has revealed.
- The report titled ‘Access to Justice through Plea Bargaining as an Alternative Model to Traditional Criminal Trial in India: A Case Study of Select Indian States’ was prepared by the Guru Gobind Singh Indraprastha University (GGSIPU), Delhi, and released on July 8 by the Department of Law and Justice.
Bail should not suffer due to one’s inability to find people to stand surety: SC
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Prelims: Judiciary and its functioning
- For Girish Gandhi, the problem was too much bail and too few people to stand surety for him.
- Gandhi got bail in 13 separate cases of criminal breach of trust, cheating and criminal intimidation, but could only get two pairs of people to stand surety for his bail.
- He faced the prospect of staying behind bars for his inability to find 22 others to sign as surety for the remaining 11 First Information Reports (FIRs).
Education Ministry defines ‘literacy’, ‘full literacy’ in push for adult literacy
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GS 2: Issues relating to development and management of Social Sector/Services relating to Education
- In a letter to all States, the Ministry of Education (MoE) has defined ‘literacy,’ and what it means to achieve ‘full literacy,’ in the light of the renewed push for adult literacy under the New India Literacy Programme (NILP), a five-year programme (2022-27), which aims to onboard one crore learners per year above 15 years across all States and union territories.
- In the letter, School Education Secretary Sanjay Kumar has stated that literacy may be understood as the ability to read, write, and compute with comprehension, i.e. to identify, understand, interpret and create along with critical life skills such as digital literacy, financial literacy etc, and full literacy (to be considered equivalent to 100% literacy) will be achieving 95% literacy in a State/UT that may be considered as equivalent to fully literate.
Jobless dole helps Karnataka youth, but many find it insufficient
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GS 3: Indian Economy and issues relating to planning, mobilization, of resources, growth, development and employment
- Prasanna Kumar, a resident of Davanagere in central Karnataka who completed his Commerce degree eight months ago and is still searching for a job, receives a ₹3,000 allowance as a beneficiary under the Yuva Nidhi scheme for the last four months.
- “While the money I am receiving may not be enough to sustain me for a month, it covers my travel expenses to Bengaluru, allowing me to attend job interviews at least twice a month,” he told The Hindu.
India should extradite Hasina: BNP leader
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GS 2: India and its neighborhood- relations
- India should extradite former Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina to Bangladesh, demanded Mirza Fakhrul Islam Alamgir, general secretary of the Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) on Monday (August 26, 2024).
- Speaking to The Hindu in an interview at the BNP’s office in the Gulshan neighbourhood in Dhaka, Mr. Alamgir expressed optimism for engaging with India and said his party will protect those Indian investments that are helping the country.
