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The Supreme Court said the Parliament may not be able to effectively debate the issue of doing away with "irrational freebies" offered to voters during elections, saying the "reality" is that not a single political party wants to take away freebies.
The court suggested setting up a specialised body composed of persons who can “dispassionately” examine the problem.
The observations from a Bench led by Chief Justice of India N.V. Ramana came even as the Centre said these freebies were paving the way to an "economic disaster" besides "distorting the informed decision of voters".
The Centre, represented by Solicitor General Tushar Mehta, said it "substantially and in principle" supported doing away with the practice of promising freebies to voters. Mr. Mehta said the court should allow the Election Commission of India (ECI) to "apply its mind" to the problem.
But senior advocate Kapil Sibal said the ECI should be "kept away" from the discussion on freebies. "ECI is MFI (Most Favoured Institution)," Mr. Sibal. He said the issue was political and economical in nature and did not just concern elections.
Not a single political party will allow freebies to be taken away. We take the side of the ordinary people, the downtrodden. Their welfare has to be taken care of. We are not just looking at this as just another problem during election time. We are looking at the national economic well-being.
The court said the government as well as organisations like Niti Aayog, Finance Commission of India, the Law Commission, Reserve Bank of India, Opposition, etc, have to be involved in the process of brainstorming on the problem of freebies and come up with constructive conclusions on the issue.
The court directed the parties to make "suggestions for the composition of a body". It proposed that this body could examine ways to resolve the issue of freebies and file a report before the Centre or the ECI.
The court said once the parties come up with suggestions on the composition of such a body in a week, it would pass orders.
Senior advocate Vikas Singh, for petitioner Ashwini Upadhyay, said political parties and those in power in states riddled by debts should first come out in public about where they would source the money for paying for the largesse.
Union govt. rolls back Data Protection Bill (Page no. 1)
(GS Paper 2, Polity and Governance)
Union Information Technology Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw announced the withdrawal of The Personal Data Protection Bill, 2019 in the Lok Sabha and stated that the government has decided to come up with a fresh bill that fits into the comprehensive legal framework with reference to the suggestions made by the Joint Committee of Parliament (JCP) on the Bill.
Stating the reasons for withdrawal, the government said that “The Personal Data Protection Bill, 2019 was deliberated in great detail by the Joint Committee of Parliament, 81 amendments were proposed and 12 reccomendations were made towards comprehensive legal framework on digital ecosystem.
Considering the report of the JCP, a comprehensive legal framework is being worked upon. Hence, in the circumstances, it is proposed to withdraw The Personal Data Protection Bill, 2019 and present a new bill that fits into the comprehensive legal framework.”
The Joint Committee of Parliament on the Personal Data Protection Bill had submitted a 542-page report with overall 93 recommendations and 81 amendments to the Bill in December 2021.
Apart from that, the panel, headed by former Union Minister and BJP MP, P.P. Chaudhary had recommended about 97 corrections and improvements to the Bill.
The key discussions in the panel were based on whether the proposed Data Protection Authority should get constitutional status and whether States should have their own Data Protection Authorities.
The Opposition members had alleged that the penalty provisions on fiduciaries if they breach or process data in an unauthorised manner were watered down despite their objections.
China steps up pressure on Taiwan (Page no. 1)
(GS Paper 2, International Relation)
China’s military will begin one of its largest ever exercises in waters off Taiwan that will effectively seal off its airspace and waters for four days, part of a number of measures Beijing is expected to announce in retaliation for visit by United States House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.
The Chinese military said it will begin large-scale exercises in six areas in the waters and airspace to the north, east, southwest and southeast around the island of Taiwan and also conduct live-fire drills and missile tests. Some of the drills will be in what Taiwan sees as its territorial waters.
Chinese analysts described the four-day exercises as an effective “blockade”, which is likely to disrupt both shipping and aviation.
“For safety reasons, entering of vessels and aircraft to the above-mentioned sea and air space is prohibited,” an official notice said. Taiwan’s Taoyuan International Airport as many as 51 international flights have been cancelled alone as the drills begin.
Ms. Pelosi, the highest-ranking U.S. official to visit Taiwan since then House Speaker Newt Gingrich in 1997, left Taiwan for South Korea following talks with President Tsai Ing-wen and an address to the legislature. Ms. Tsai bestowed on her the Order of Propitious Clouds with Special Grand Cordon, a Taiwanese civilian award.
China summons U.S. envoy Nicholas Burns, warns America shall 'pay price' as Pelosi visits Taiwan In her address, Ms. Pelosi said the world was “divided between democracy and autocracy” and the U.S. “will not abandon our commitment to Taiwan and we are proud of our enduring friendship.”
That brought a sharp response from Beijing. “The nature of her visit is not about democracy,” Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Hua Chunying said. “It is an issue about China’s sovereignty and territorial integrity…What she has done is not about upholding democracy, it is a provocation and infringement on China’s sovereignty and territorial integrity.”
Editorial
Teaching the Taliban the wrong lessons (Page no. 6)
(GS Paper 2, International Relation)
At a recent Track-2 meeting for Afghan and regional delegates, a senior Taliban official was more than confident that the militant group was well on its way to global acceptance.
The “Emirate” had “almost completed” the official recognition process from the international community, citing the number of countries that now operate diplomatic missions in Kabul, the number of bilateral visits Taliban delegations have made and received, the number of multilateral meetings the Taliban have been invited to in Russia and China, as well as the most recent one in Uzbekistan, where as many as 30 countries including India sent senior envoys to meet around a table with a large Taliban delegation to discuss “Afghanistan: Security and Economic Development” in Tashkent.
The statement by the Taliban official is a sign of the confidence that the Taliban feels that their takeover of Kabul by force one year ago is a “done deal” for the world.
It is also a sign of all the wrong lessons the Taliban have taken from the reactions of the international community. Al-Qaeda chief Ayman al-Zawahiri’s killing in a recent U.S. drone strike on a home in Kabul’s posh Sherpur area is proof that the Taliban, including the Haqqanis who reportedly hosted Zawahiri, feel little pressure to keep their end of the Faustian bargain the world made with them in August 2021.
Part of that bargain was the Doha agreement signed between the United States and the Taliban on February 29, 2020, which was endorsed by the UN Security Council, and premised on four conditions: Taliban guarantees that they would prevent the use of Afghan soil by international terrorist groups against the security of the U.S. and its allies; the U.S. and Coalition forces would provide a “timeline” for the withdrawal of forces; a political settlement for Afghanistan would arise from Taliban talks with the Afghan (Ghani) government, and that the Taliban would announce a ceasefire.
It is fairly clear that only one of those conditions was met, i.e., the U.S. and others withdrew all foreign troops from Afghanistan by August 31, 2021.
OPED
Reaping the demographic dividend (Page no. 7)
(GS Paper 3, Indian Economy)
The UN report, World Population Prospects 2022, forecasts that the world’s population will touch eight billion this year and rise to 9.8 billion in 2050. What is of immediate interest to India is that its population will surpass China’s by 2023 and continue to surge.
A long-time critic of China’s population policy and author of Big Country with An Empty Nest, Yi Fuxian, believes that without its one child policy, China’s population, too, would have naturally risen and peaked at 1.6 billion in 2040, allowing the world’s second-largest economy to enjoy a much longer “demographic dividend.”
Instead, China is enduring an ongoing population implosion, which by 2050, will leave it with only 1.3 billion people, of whom 500 million will be past the age of 60.
India’s population, by contrast, would have peaked at 1.7 billion, of whom only 330 million will be 60 years or older.
Simply put, India is getting a demographic dividend that will last nearly 30 years. How it handles this windfall will determine if it will rise to the top of the economic league table by the end of this century or continue to eddy at lower middle-income levels.
Most optimistic about India’s future rise are major consulting firms. Deloitte’s Deloitte Insights (September 2017) expects “India’s potential workforce to rise from 885 million to “1.08 billion people over the next two decades from today”, and “remain above a billion people for half a century,” betting that “these new workers will be much better trained and educated,” than their existing counterparts.
It contends that “the next 50 years will, therefore, be an Indian summer that redraws the face of global economic power.”
McKinsey & Company’s report, ‘India at Turning Point’ (August 2020), believes the “trends such as digitisation and automation, shifting supply chains, urbanisation, rising incomes and demographic shifts, and a greater focus on sustainability, health, and safety are accelerating” to “create $2.5 trillion of economic value in 2030 and support 112 million jobs, or about 30% of the non-farm workforce in 2030.”
Bring back the dhow route (Page no. 7)
(GS Paper 2, International Relation)
A Chinese military vessel is scheduled to call at the Sri Lankan Port of Hambantota. The Indian Government, with their concerns for Indian security, has raised the issue with the Sri Lankan government.
The Sri Lankan government is heavily in debt and distress partly because of the mega infrastructure of the Hambantota port and many other such projects.
The Hambantota port is now the property of a Chinese corporation, having been swapped for part of Sri Lanka debt to a variety of Chinese entities.
China’s interests in the Indian Ocean grew in the context of the ‘One Belt, One Road’ initiative. The OBOR consists of two components; namely the Maritime Silk Road Initiative (MSRI) and the Silk Road Economic Belt (SREB).
It constitutes a massive geopolitical project that aims to construct landscapes to enable flow of trade and investment by ‘promoting economic cooperation and connectivity’ between Asia, West Asia, Africa, and Europe.
In the last one thousand years, many emerging powers have frequently attempted to capture and centralise these trade routes, only to find that they finally end up dealing with the same merchant families of the Indian Ocean — families prospering in the Arabian Gulf, East Africa, the Indian Peninsula, Bay of Bengal, Sri Lanka, Maldives, and other small island states.
For centuries, Indian Ocean navigators, ship owners and merchants were the custodians of all trade routes that crisscrossed their ocean.
From the ports and harbours on Bahr Faris (Arabian Gulf) and down to the Swahili Coast on the west to the ports and harbours on the far east to Malacca.
The Gujarat and Malabar Coasts to the Bay of Bengal on the north and the island states in the south of the ocean. Hundreds of ports and thousands of families were linked by navigation and trade, marriage, and love.
Explainer
Understanding the provisions for foreign visits of State government Ministers (Page no. 8)
(GS Paper 2, Governance)
Delhi Lieutenant-Governor (LG) Vinai Kumar Saxena recently advised Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal against attending the World Cities Summit in Singapore as it was for “mayors of cities”.
Now, State Transport Minister Kailash Gahlot — who had also sought political clearance for an official visit to London — has moved the Delhi High Court with a plea to set aside the need for travel clearances by the Centre for private foreign visits of State government Ministers.
He has also asked for the framing of appropriate guidelines with respect to the clearances for official foreign tours of Chief Ministers and other State government members.
According to the petition, on April 5, the Chief Minister received an invitation from the Minister in the Prime Minister’s Office and Second Minister of Finance and Development Singapore, to participate in the World Cities Summit scheduled from July 31 to August 3.
The State government’s Deputy Security (Protocol), through a letter dated June 3, requested that all necessary clearances and arrangements for the visit be made.
On June 7, the file was submitted for sign-off to the LG office. On June 3, the petitioner had applied for political clearance for his official visit to London from June 12 to 19.
Additionally, the petition also mentioned another instance wherein political clearance for the Delhi Chief Minister’s proposed visit to Copenhagen for attending the 7th C-40 World Mayors Summit in October 2019 was rejected by the MEA “without providing any reasons”.
On August 16, 1982, the Cabinet Secretariat had issued an office memorandum titled “‘Guidelines regarding foreign travel of Ministers of State government and Union Territories and State government officials”, stating that foreign visits by members of the State governments in their official capacity would require clearances from the Ministry of External Affairs (MEA), Ministry of Home Affairs, Finance Ministry, and the Central Administrative Ministry. It issued another order on March 30, 1995, reiterating the same.
The Secretariat circulated another order on September 3, 2004, modifying the provisions to the extent that the final orders were to be issued by the Finance Ministry.
The following directive dated November 2, 2004, stipulated that Chief Ministers required further approval from the Prime Minister’s Office before an official visit. On August 26, 2010, yet another office memorandum made political clearances mandatory before private visits of Ministers in State governments, which was reiterated through an order on May 6, 2015.
News
Cabinet nod for climate pledges (Page no. 11)
(GS Paper 3, Environment)
India has ratified pledges made by Prime Minister Narendra Modi in Glasgow last November to accelerate India’s reliance on renewable energy to power the economy and be effectively fossil fuel-free by 2070. However the approved pledges were fewer than those Mr. Modi committed to.
The Union Cabinet, chaired by Mr. Modi, approved an update to India’s Nationally Determined Contribution (NDC), which is a formal communication to the United Nations, spelling out steps to be taken by the country towards keeping global temperatures from rising beyond 2°C by the end of the century.
Mr. Modi had laid out five commitments, or ‘ Panchamrit’, as the government references it, namely: That India would increase its non-fossil energy capacity to 500 GW (gigawatt) by 2030, India would meet 50% of its energy requirements from “renewable energy” by 2030, it would reduce the total projected carbon emissions by one billion tonnes from now till 2030, India will reduce the carbon intensity of its economy by more than 45% and by the year 2070, India will achieve the target of “Net Zero,” namely, that there would be no net carbon dioxide emitted from energy sources.
However, a press statement, following the Cabinet approval, only mentions two of these promises, namely that India is committed to reduce emissions intensity of its GDP by 45% by 2030, from 2005 level and achieving 50% cumulative electric power installed capacity from non-fossil fuel-based energy resources by 2030. The press note says these commitments were “... a step towards achieving India’s long term goal of reaching net-zero by 2070.”
India’s last NDC was on October 2, 2015 that specified eight targets, including reducing the emissions intensity of GDP by 33-35% (of 2005 levels) by 2030, having 40% of its installed electricity capacity sourced from renewable energy and create an additional carbon sink of 2-3 billion tonnes of CO2 equivalent through forest and tree cover by 2030.
India’s NDC did not “bind it” to any sector-specific mitigation obligation or action and that India’s goal was to reduce overall emission intensity and improve energy efficiency “while protecting the vulnerable sectors of economy and society.
Senior Ministers of the government have several times said India would achieve its target ahead of schedule. Power Minister R.K. Singh said at the Sydney Energy Forum in Sydney, Australia, on July 13 that India had installed 162 GW of renewable energy capacity, which is 41% of the 402 GW of electricity installed.
Business
Advise States to enforce digital generation of DIN’ (Page no. 14)
(GS Paper 3, Indian Economy)
The Supreme Court has directed the Union of India/GST Council to issue an advisory to States regarding implementation of the system of electronic (digital) generation of a Document Identification Number (DIN) in indirect tax administration.
The States of Kerala and Karnataka have already implemented it. The court appreciated the two States for that, saying it was “laudable”.
A Bench led by Justice M.R. Shah further impressed upon the States “to consider to implement the system for electronic (digital) generation of a DIN for all communications sent by the State tax officers to taxpayers and other persons concerned so as to bring in transparency and accountability in the indirect tax administration at the earliest”.
The order came in a petition filed by Pradeep Goyal, represented by advocate Charu Mathur, to direct the States and the GST Council to take necessary steps to implement a system for electronic (digital) generation of DIN for communications sent by the state tax officers to taxpayers and other persons concerned.
The petition had also sought a direction to the GST Council to consider and take a policy decision in respect of implementation of the DIN system by States. In view of the implementation of the GST and as per Article 279A of the Constitution, the GST Council was empowered to make recommendations to the States on any matter relating to GST, it had said
The petitioner had argued that GST Council could also issue advisories to the States for implementation of the DIN system, which “shall be in the larger public interest and which may bring in transparency and accountability in the indirect tax administration”.
In the order, the court noted that the Centre had taken a decision and as such had implemented the DIN system of Central Board of Direct Taxes and on and from October 1, 2019 as every CBDT communication would have to have a DIN.
Implementing a system for electronic (digital) generation of a DIN would prevent any abuse by the departmental officers of pre-dating communications and ratifying actions by authorisations subsequently made out in the files, the court agreed with the petitioner.