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Harping on India’s recent successes in the international sporting arena and how sports brought the world together during the century’s biggest pandemic,
Prime Minister Narendra Modi inaugurated the FIDE 44th Chess Olympiad in Chennai, declaring, “In sports there are no losers. There are winners and there are future winners.
Noting that the most prestigious tournament in chess had for the first time come to India – the home of chess – during the 75th year of freedom from colonial rule, Mr. Modi said there had never been a better time for sport in India than the present. The country had its best ever performances in the Olympics, Paralympics and Deaflympics.
We achieved glory even in sports where we had not won earlier. Today sports is seen as a great profession of choice. India’s sporting culture is becoming stronger due to the perfect mix of two important factors – energy of youth and enabling environment.
The Prime Minister noted talented youngsters, especially from small towns and villages, are bringing glory and it was heartening to see women at the lead of India’s sports revolution. He credited administrative framework, incentive structure and infrastructure for this.
Applauding the organisers for managing the event within a short time, Mr. Modi noted it was only for the first time in three decades the tournament was being organised in Asia with the participation of the highest number of players and teams.
Besides, for the first time the Olympiad had a torch relay, across 75 iconic locations, travelling over 27,000 km.
Mr. Modi said the most prestigious tournament in chess had come to India, – “the home of chess” and that too to Tamil Nadu the “chess powerhouse of India”.
Tamil Nadu is home to the finest minds, vibrant culture and the oldest language in the world, Tamil, who was dressed in a shirt, dhoti and a shawl (with black and white checked borders) – the traditional attire of Tamil Nadu.
Citing the Chathuranga Vallabhanathar Temple near Needamangalam in Tamil Nadu, he said it had a story of the king playing chess with a princess.
The Prime Minister noted how when the world began to fight the COVID-19 pandemic two years ago, for a long time life had come to a standstill. “In such times it was various sports tournaments which brought the world together. Each tournament gave the important message we are stronger when together, we are better when together.
Biden, Xi hold talks amid Taiwan row (Page no. 1)
(GS Paper 2, International Relations)
United States President Joe Biden and China’s President Xi Jinping held a phone meeting amid rising tensions between the two countries on a range of issues, most recently on the possible upcoming visit of U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi to Taiwan.
This call was their first since March – and the fifth since Mr. Biden took office – and came amid fears of a new Taiwan crisis, adding to an already long list of tensions on matters ranging from trade and technology to the South China Sea.
China this week stepped up its warnings on the announced visit by Ms. Pelosi and said the U.S. would bear all the consequences if the visit, which would mark the most high-level engagement between the U.S. and Taiwan since 1997, went ahead.
Observers pinned their hopes on Thursday’s call as providing a last possible off-ramp. Mr. Biden is expected to make the case that the U.S. President cannot veto a visit by a House Speaker representing a different branch of Government. Mr. Xi, for his part, might demand a reiteration from Mr. Biden of his Government’s commitment on its “One China” policy.
This is about keeping the lines of communication open with the president of China, one of the most consequential bilateral relationships that we have, not just in that region, but around the world,” White House National Security Council spokesman John Kirby told the media.
China’s Foreign Ministry and military issued separate warnings on the possible visit. A spokesperson for the Ministry of Defence said China “will not sit back”.
China demands that the United States honour its promise that it would not support ‘Taiwan independence’,” PLA Senior Colonel Tan Kefei said, adding, “if the U.S. side insists on making the visit, the Chinese military will take strong actions to thwart any external interference or ‘Taiwan independence’ separatist scheme.
A visit by Ms. Pelosi, whom he referred to as the third most important U.S. political figure after the President and Vice President, would “seriously violate the one-China principle and the stipulations in the three China-U.S. joint communiques, seriously harm China’s sovereignty and territorial integrity, and seriously damage the political foundation of China-U.S. relations.”
Editorial
What numbers do not reveal about tiger conservation (Page no. 10)
(GS Paper 3, Environment)
Extinction. This ominous word has one meaning. The death of a species. And it is a word that we seem to hear so often these days, especially in the news.
But the opposite is possible. Today (July 29), which is Global Tiger Day (also called International Tiger Day), the world and India can celebrate the recovery of at least one endangered species. India is now reporting increased tiger numbers, and a recent International Union for Conservation of Nature assessment suggests that tiger numbers have increased by 40% since 2005.
Decades of research in ecology and evolution suggest that numbers are critical to avoid extinction. Populations that are smaller than 100 breeding individuals have a high probability of extinction.
At the same time, for populations to persist, they should be part of larger landscapes with other such populations that are connected. Small and isolated populations face a high probability of extinction.
This is because small populations are subject to chance/random events. These chance events may cause them to lose advantageous genetic variants, while other, detrimental genetic variants might increase in frequency.
This process is called genetic drift. Also, individuals in small populations are more likely to be related, leading to inbreeding. This exposes the many slightly disadvantageous genetic variants that are present in all genomes.
When expressed together, these detrimental genetic variants cause inbreeding depression, and reduced survival and reproduction of inbred individuals.
A closer look at the distribution of tigers across their range shows that most tiger ‘populations’ are smaller than 100. On their own, most tiger populations do not have a high chance of survival.
We know that most tiger reserves in India are small and embedded in human-dominated landscapes. So, does the landscape between tiger reserves (agricultural fields, reserve forests, built-up areas and roads) allow tigers to move through them?
One way to answer this question is to use movement data sourced from radio-collared tigers, often difficult to come by for a rare and endangered species.
Alternatively, tigers can be genetically sampled using their excreta/scat, hair and other biological samples from different tiger reserves and analysed in a laboratory.
Genetic variants in tiger DNA can be identified and analysed and compared across tiger reserves. Sets of tiger reserves that show shared genetic variation are well connected — the inference is that the intervening landscapes facilitate connectivity or movement.
Narrow view (Page no. 10)
(GS Paper 2, Governance)
The Supreme Court’s verdict upholding all the controversial provisions of the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA) falls short of judicial standards of reviewing legislative action.
Undergirding every aspect of its analysis is a belief that India’s commitment to the international community on strengthening the domestic legal framework for combating money-laundering is so inviolable that possible violation of fundamental rights can be downplayed.
The judgment repeatedly invokes the “international commitment” behind Parliament’s enactment of the law to curb the menace of laundering of proceeds of crime which, it underscores, has transnational consequences such as adversely impacting financial systems and even the sovereignty of countries.
There is, no doubt, widespread international concern over the malefic effects of organised crime fuelling international narcotics trade and terrorism.
Much of these activities are funded by illicit money generated from crime, laundered to look legitimate and funnelled into the financial bloodstream of global and domestic economies.
A stringent framework, with apposite departures from the routine standards of criminal procedure, may be justified in some circumstances. However, experience suggests that money-laundering in the Indian context is linked or is seen as a byproduct of a host of both grave and routine offences that are appended to the Act as a schedule.
These ‘scheduled’ or ‘predicate’ offences ought to be ideally limited to grave offences such as terrorism, narcotics smuggling, corruption and serious forms of evasion of taxes and duties.
However, in practice, the list contains offences such as fraud, forgery, cheating, kidnapping and even copyright and trademark infringements.
The Enforcement Directorate has also been manifestly selective in opening money-laundering probes, rendering any citizen vulnerable to search, seizure, and arrest at the whim of the executive.
It is disappointing that the Court did not find the provision for forcing one summoned by the ED to disclose and submit documents, and then sign it under pain of prosecution, as violating the constitutional bar on testimonial compulsion.
Nor was it impressed by the argument that the search and seizure provisions lack judicial oversight and are exclusively driven by ED officers.
OPED
Is the Environmental Performance Index really faulty? (Page no. 11)
(GS Paper 3, Environment)
Last month, India protested against its ranking on the Environmental Performance Index (EPI) of 2022, prepared by researchers at the Yale and Columbia Universities in the U.S.
The report measures 40 performance indicators across 11 categories to measure the “state of sustainability around the world.” India was ranked last (180) with low scores across a range of indicators.
The Indian Government as well as environment experts have pointed to the faulty methodology of the index that skews the results in favour of the Global North. Chandra Bhushan, Sharad Lele and Anant Sudarshan discuss the report in a conversation moderated by Sonikka Loganathan. Edited excerpts:
Rating by its very nature is a subjective exercise. But a good rating is one that tries to reduce subjectivity, normalises all indicators, and then develops consensus around the subjective issues.
The first step is to remove subjectivity as much as possible. Every rating will end up comparing apples with oranges, if you don’t normalise the indicators. So, the second step is to normalise indicators. Third, if there is subjectivity, you get experts to generate consensus around it. All three have not been done.
I’m not sure what kind of peer review was done because, if you look at the indicators, even a person with basic knowledge of ratings would tell you that the indicators have not been normalised.
EPI has used tree cover loss as an indicator to rate deforestation in a country. Eritrea is the best country (as per the ranking). The total dense forest cover in Eritrea is only about 50 hectares, which is similar to forest cover in one part of Lutyens' Delhi.
There is a difference between an index and a ranking. Indices themselves have very limited value, even if you make them absolute, because they collapse the hugely complex issue of environment into one number.
But relative ranking is just useless. For example, you could have all countries between seven and nine out of 10. Some country will still end up at 180 because it is at 7.0 whereas others are 7.1 and above.
Now the government, instead of responding and quibbling about details, could have used this occasion to call for a meeting of people within the country who follow these issues, to ask questions about where we are, and put out maybe our own performance index, in a much more nuanced manner that tells us something about where we are with respect to, say, five or 10 years ago.
Explainer
After the referendum: The challenges of a power grab in Tunisia (Page no. 12)
(GS Paper 2, International Relation)
Tunisian voters have approved a new Constitution that would turn the country back into a presidential system, institutionalising the one-man reign of President Kais Saied, who suspended the elected Parliament and awarded more powers to himself last year.
According to preliminary results, 94.6% voters backed the new Constitution in the referendum, which saw only 30% turnout. Most opposition parties, who called Mr. Saied’s power grab a coup, had boycotted the vote.
While Mr. Saied has welcomed the result, his critics have warned that the new Constitution would erase whatever democratic gains Tunisia has made since the 2011 Arab Spring (Jasmine) revolution and push the country back into an authoritarian slide.
Among the countries that saw popular protests bringing down dictatorships in 2011, Tunisia was the only one that witnessed a successful transition to democracy.
The Arab Spring protests began in Tunisia in December 2010, leading to the fall of the regime of Zine El Abidine Ben Ali, who had been in power since 1987. Ben Ali had to flee the country in the face of the mass uprising.
Quickly, protests spread to other Arab countries such as Egypt, Libya, Bahrain, Yemen and Syria. While protesters brought down the 30-year-long dictatorship of Hosni Mubarak in Egypt, the revolution did not last long in that country.
In 2013, the military seized power toppling the elected government of President Mohammed Morsi, a Muslim Brotherhood leader. In Libya, the protests against Mohammar Gaddhafi slipped into a civil war, which saw a military intervention by the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO).
The NATO intervention toppled the Gaddhafi regime (the Libyan leader was later assassinated), but the country fell into chaos and anarchy, which continue to haunt it even today.
In Bahrain, the Shia majority country ruled by a Sunni monarchy, neighbouring Saudi Arabia sent troops to crush protests in Manama’s Pearl Square.
In Yemen, President Ali Abdullah Saleh had to relinquish power, but the country fell into a civil war, leading to the rise of the Shia Houthi rebels, who now control capital Sanah, and the subsequent Saudi attack on the impoverished country.
In Syria, protests turned into a proxy civil war, with President Bashar al-Assad’s rivals backing his enemies, and his allies, including Hezbollah, Iran and Russia, backing the regime.
President Assad seems to have won the civil war, for now. Tunisia was the only country that saw a peaceful transition to democracy, and with the new Constitution, it is witnessing another transition.
Reviving BSNL in a competitive telecom market (Page no. 12)
(GS Paper 3, Indian Economy)
To spur Bharat Sanchar Nigam Limited’s (BSNL) overall competitiveness in the steep domestic telecom market and de-stress its balance sheet, the Union Cabinet on Wednesday approved yet another revival package worth ₹1.64 lakh crore. The second reform package after 2019 is meant to be utilised over the next four years.
The revival package would initiate measures on three fronts, namely, infusing fresh capital for upgrading the state-owned operator’s services, strengthening its stressed balance sheet and augmenting its fibre network by merging Bharat Broadband Nigam Limited (BBNL) and BSNL.
It is expected that the package could help with a turnaround in such a manner that BSNL starts earning profits in FY2026-27.
The package has three broad components. Starting with the endeavour to upscale its services, BSNL would be allocated spectrum in 900/1800 MHz band administratively at the cost of ₹44,993 crore via equity infusion.
Spectrum can be defined as invisible radio frequencies on which wireless signals travel, facilitating phone calls and internet usage. To put it simply, the allocation would help BSNL increase as well as consolidate its serviceable bandwidth.
Thus, it would be able to provide high speed data utilising a vaster network presence, more importantly, in rural areas. Other than spectrum, in order to pursue its social objectives, the Government would provision ₹13,789 crore to the company to fund its operational viability gap in the commercially unviable rural wireline operations that it had undertaken between 2014-15 and 2019-20.
Additionally, the Government would also be increasing the authorised capital from ₹40,000 crore to ₹1.50 lakh crore in lieu of its adjusted gross revenue (AGR) dues, provision of capital expenditure and allotment of spectrum.
The AGR refers to the fee-sharing mechanism that computes the share in revenues that the telecom service providers (TSPs) are required to pay the government as annual licence fee and spectrum usage charges.
Among the more import features of the package was the proposed merger of Mahanagar Telecom Nigam Ltd (MTNL) and BSNL.
It was argued that since the BSNL reaches out to populations in rural areas and MTNL is based in the metro cities of Mumbai and Delhi, combining their synergies would help acquire a pan-India footprint.
It was informed in April this year that the merger had been delayed owing to financial reasons, including the high debt of MTNL.
For helping spur operations, the Government had announced a capital infusion of ₹20,140 crore for acquiring spectrum.
The overall package which was for MTNL and BSNL combined, paved the way for the two PSUs to raise long term-bonds for which the Centre provided sovereign guarantee.
News
Rajya Sabha suspends three more members (Page no. 14)
(GS Paper 2, Indian Polity)
Amid an uproar in the Rajya Sabha by Opposition parties, three more Members of Parliament — Aam Aadmi Party’s (AAP) Sandeep Kumar Pathak and Sushil Kumar Gupta and Independent legislator Ajit Kumar Bhuyan — were suspended from the House.
This comes a day after AAP’s Sanjay Singh was suspended for the remaining part of the week for his “unruly behaviour” in the House.
19 more MPs of the Opposition, including seven from the TMC, six from the DMK, besides those from the TRS, CPI-M and CPI, were suspended for the same reason. Additionally, four Congress MPs were suspended from the Lok Sabha for the rest of the Monsoon Session as well.
The 20 suspended Rajya Sabha MPs are on a 50-hour-long relay protest near the Gandhi Statue at the Parliament, targeting the Centre over the gridlock in the House.
Since the session began on July 18, the Opposition has been demanding a discussion on issues such as inflation, GST on essential items, and LPG price hike. With Parliament in limbo over the protests and suspensions, Opposition leaders have taken to social media to lash out at the BJP-led government, labelling it “dictatorial” and claiming that it is afraid.
With the suspension of Opposition MPs from both the Lok Sabha and Rajya Sabha, it is abundantly clear that Modi Sarkar is in no mood to allow the Opposition to raise REAL, URGENT issues being faced by the people of our country in Parliament.
Meanwhile, Union Parliamentary Affairs Minister Prahlad Joshi responded to the Opposition’s attacks, saying, “We have been maintaining that the government is ready for discussion on price rise and today Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman resumed her office after recovering from Covid. Their suspension can be revoked by the Chair if they apologise and assure that they will not again bring placards into the House.
Govt. worried about teen pregnancies (Page no. 16)
(GS Paper 1, Social Issues)
High teenage fertility in some areas remains a cause of concern in India even as the fertility rate has stabilised across the country, the Health Ministry said in its Family Planning Vision-2030 document released earlier this week.
It added that participation of men will be encouraged in the family planning programme and that lack of access to contraceptives had been identified as a priority challenge area.
“While multiple factors have been identified that explain low contraceptive use among married adolescents and young women, two most important factors are child marriage and teenage pregnancy.
Over 118 districts reported high percentage of teenage pregnancies and are mostly concentrated in Bihar (19), West Bengal (15), Assam (13), Maharashtra (13), Jharkhand (10), Andhra Pradesh (7), and Tripura (4).
Additionally, over 44% of the districts in India reported high percentage of women marrying before they reach the age of 18.
These districts were in the States of Bihar (17), West Bengal (8), Jharkhand (7), Assam (4), two each in Uttar Pradesh, Rajasthan and Maharashtra. Coincidentally, these districts also experience low rates of modern contraceptive use.
India is the second largest country in the world. The country’s population is expected to continue to grow until mid-century (due to population momentum), however, the population growth will decline substantially, said the document.
India’s population has reached 136.3 crore (1.36 billion) and is expected to reach 147.9 crore (1.47 billion) by 2031 and further 152.2 crore (1.52 billion) by 2036, it added.
Also the adolescent population will reach 22.9 crore (229 million) by 2031 and further 22 crore (220 million) by 2036.
“The youth population in the age-group of 15-24 increased from 23.3 crore (233 million) in 2011 to 25.2 crore (252 million) in 2021 and will now decline to reach at 23.4 crore (234 million) in 2031 and further reach 22.9 crore (229 million) in 2036.
The government said male contraceptive methods were largely limited to condoms. Male sterilisation was at 0.3%. Overall male participation was also determined by perception towards women’s contraceptive use.
The vision also included a plan to use the private sector for providing modern contraceptives. Private sector contributes 45% share of pills and 40% share of condoms.
For other reversible contraceptives like injectables, the share is 30% and 24% for IUCD,” said the report, adding that sterilisation was mostly done by the government sector.