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Away from public glare, New Delhi held its first political dialogue with the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) in Brussels on December 12, 2019.
NATO is a political and military alliance of 28 European countries and two countries in North America (USA and Canada).
Attended by senior officials including from the Ministry of External Affairs and the Ministry of Defence, it is learnt that the idea was to ensure that the dialogue was primarily political in character and to avoid making any commitment on military or other bilateral cooperation.
India’s talks with NATO hold significance given that the North Atlantic alliance has been engaging both China and Pakistan in bilateral dialogue.
There was a view here that given the role of Beijing and Islamabad in New Delhi’s strategic imperatives, reaching out to NATO would add a key dimension to India’s growing engagement with US and Europe.
Until December 2019, NATO had held nine rounds of talks with Beijing, and the Chinese Ambassador in Brussels and NATO’s Deputy Secretary General engaged with each other every quarter.
NATO had also been in political dialogue and military cooperation with Pakistan, having opened selective training for Pakistani officers, and its military delegation visiting Pakistan in November 2019 for military staff talks, it is learnt.
The first round of dialogue was finalised for December 12, 2019, by the Indian mission in Brussels after it received a draft agenda for the meeting from NATO.
Upon receipt of the draft agenda, an inter-ministerial meeting was convened with representatives from the External Affairs and Defence ministries, and the National Security Council Secretariat.
The government, sources said, was of the view that engaging NATO in a political dialogue would provide New Delhi an opportunity to bring about a balance in NATO’s perceptions about the situation in regions and issues of concerns to India.
Govt. and Politics
Justice Lalit is made 49th CJI, set to take charge on August 27 (Page no. 5)
(GS Paper 2, International Relation)
President Droupadi Murmu appointed Justice Uday Umesh Lalit as the 49th Chief Justice of India. Justice Lalit will succeed Justice NV Ramana who is due to retire on August 26.
In exercise of the powers conferred by clause (2) of Article 124 of the Constitution of India, the President is pleased to appoint Shri Justice Uday Umesh Lalit, Judge of the Supreme Court, to be the Chief Justice of India with effect from August, 2022.
Justice Lalit, who will assume charge on August 27, will have a relatively short tenure of over three months and is due to retire on November 8.
He will also only be the second CJI to have been appointed directly from the Bar without serving as a judge of a high court. Justice SM Sikri, who was CJI from January 1971 to April 1973, is the only other CJI who was directly appointed from the Bar.
Justice Lalit enrolled as an advocate in June 1983 and worked in the chambers of former Attorney General Soli Sorabjee. He was one of the country’s top criminal lawyers before being appointed a judge of the Supreme Court in August 2014. His father, U R Lalit, was an Additional Judge of the Nagpur Bench of the Bombay High Court from 1974 to 1976.
Justice Lalit has been part of several important rulings in the SC and headed the bench that last month sentenced Vijay Mallya, who was found guilty of contempt of court in 2017, to four months’ imprisonment and fine of Rs 2,000. He also headed the bench that convicted the fugitive businessman for contempt in May 2017.
World
China reaffirms military threat to annex Taiwan (Page no. 8)
(GS Paper 2, International Relation)
China reaffirmed its threat to use military force to bring self-governing Taiwan under its control, amid threatening Chinese military exercises that have raised tensions between the sides to their highest level in years.
The statement issued by the Cabinet’s Taiwan Affairs Office and its news department followed almost a week of missile firings and incursions into Taiwanese waters and airspace by Chinese warships and air force planes.
The actions have disrupted flights and shipping in a region crucial to global supply chains, prompting strong condemnation from the U.S., Japan and others.
An English-language version of the Chinese statement said Beijing would “work with the greatest sincerity and exert our utmost efforts to achieve peaceful reunification.
But we will not renounce the use of force, and we reserve the option of taking all necessary measures. This is to guard against external interference and all separatist activities.
We will always be ready to respond with the use of force or other necessary means to interference by external forces or radical action by separatist elements. Our ultimate goal is to ensure the prospects of China’s peaceful reunification and advance this process.
China says the threatening moves were prompted by a visit to Taiwan last week by U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, but Taiwan says such visits are routine and that China used that merely as a pretext to up its threats.
In an additional response to Pelosi’s visit, China said it was cutting off dialogue on issues from maritime security to climate change with the U.S., Taiwan’s chief military and political backer.
Taiwan’s foreign minister warned Tuesday that the Chinese military drills reflect ambitions to control large swaths of the western Pacific, while Taipei conducted its own exercises to underscore its readiness to defend itself.
Beijing’s strategy would include controlling the East and South China seas via the Taiwan Strait and imposing a blockade to prevent the U.S. and its allies from aiding Taiwan in the event of an attack, Joseph Wu told a news conference in Taipei.
Taiwan split with the mainland amid civil war in 1949 and the island’s 23 million people overwhelmingly oppose political unification with China, while preferring to maintain close economic links and the status quo of de-facto independence.
Through its maneuvers, China has pushed closer to Taiwan’s borders and may be seeking to establish a new normal in which it could eventually control access to the island’s ports and airspace.
The U.S., Taipei’s main backer, has also shown itself to be willing to face down China’s threats. Washington has no formal diplomatic ties with Taiwan in deference to Beijing, but is legally bound to ensure the island can defend itself and to treat all threats against it as matters of grave concern.
Explained
What is Langya, the new zoonotic Virus detected in China? (Page no. 9)
(GS Paper 3, Science and Tech)
Almost three years after the novel coronavirus was detected in China, a new zoonotic virus has been discovered in the country’s two eastern provinces with 35 infections identified so far. This new type of Henipavirus is also being called Langya Henipavirus or the LayV.
Henipaviruses are classified as biosafety level 4 (BSL4) pathogens. They can cause severe illness in animals and humans, and as of now there are no licensed drugs or vaccines meant for humans.
The newly discovered virus is a “phylogenetically distinct Henipavirus”, according to a recent study — A Zoonotic Henipavirus in Febrile Patients in China — published in The New England Journal of Medicine.
The types of Henipaviruses that had been identified prior to this included Hendra, Nipah, Cedar, Mojiang and the Ghanaian bat virus.
According to the US CDC, the Cedar virus, Ghanaian bat virus, and Mojiang virus are not known to cause human disease. But Hendra and Nipah infect humans and can cause fatal illness.
Langya, meanwhile, is known to cause fever, with the NEJM study calling for a deeper investigation of associated human illness.
The study adds that Langya’s genome organization is “identical to that of other Henipaviruses”, and that it is closely related to the “Mojiang Henipavirus, which was discovered in southern China”.
Langya was discovered in eastern China during surveillance testing of patients who had fever along with a recent history of animal exposure.
It was identified and isolated from the throat swab sample of one of those patients. According to the NEJM study, 35 patients with LayV infection were found in Shandong and Henan provinces, out of which 26 were only infected with this new virus and no other pathogen.
The study looked at the 26 patients with only LayV infection to identify the associated symptoms. While all 26 had fever, 54% reported fatigue, 50% had cough, 38% complained of nausea.
Also, 35% of the total 26, complained of headache and vomiting. The study found that 35% had impaired liver function, while 8% had their kidney function impacted.
The patients were accompanied by abnormalities of “thrombocytopenia (35%), leukopenia (54%), impaired liver (35%) and kidney (8%) function”, the study noted.
Thrombocytopenia is low platelet count, while leukopenia means a fall in the white blood cell count, in turn reducing the body’s disease-fighting capability.
Idea Page
The same discrimination (Page no. 11)
(GS Paper 2, Governance)
The Other Backward Classes or OBCs largely come from farming and other “middle level” communities in India. The Justice Rohini Commission, ostensibly set up to ensure equitable distribution of reservation benefits among the OBC castes through sub-categorisation, was given yet another extension (10th in five years) last month.
However, the political aim behind this endeavour is likely the desire of the current ruling dispensation to divide the OBC block, which constitutes over 50 per cent of the country’s population.
The issue of sub-categorisation arises from the perception that a few dominant castes among the OBCs have cornered a disproportionate amount of the benefits emanating from the reservation. The truth of the matter cannot be ascertained until a caste census is conducted.
A far more pressing matter than the sub-categorisation of OBCs is a glaring, prevalent injustice. Currently, for each state, there are two OBC lists — from the state and the Centre.
So, a caste may be included in the OBC list of a state and enjoy the reservation benefits in state government jobs and educational institutions but not with respect to central government jobs or educational institutions.
Across all the states, there are hundreds of such OBC castes whose members are being denied reservation benefits in central government jobs.
Articles 15(4) and 16(4) of the Constitution make special provisions for socially and educationally backward classes of citizens (SEBCs, popularly known as OBCs), the Scheduled Castes (SCs) and Scheduled Tribes (STs).
So, provisions available to SCs and STs should have been extended to OBCs. In 1955, the first Backward Classes Commission identified and listed 2,399 castes as OBCs and recommended various welfare measures for the same.
But, the then central government took the strange decision not to implement the recommendations of the Commission. It said, instead, that no all-India lists of backward classes should be drawn up nor any reservation be made for any group of backward classes in central government jobs.
Ignoring the recommendations of the Commission proved to be detrimental to the uplift of more than 50 per cent of the population. The Centre suggested that state governments may draw up their own lists.
This was a body blow to the castes in the category. Due to the much-delayed introduction of OBC reservations in the 1990s, those from OBC castes have an abysmal representation in central government jobs — just about one-third of their proportion in the general population.
As a counterfactual, the SCs and STs — who have had the benefit of reservations right from Independence — have a much more robust representation in central jobs.
Economy
Digital lending norms: Direct credit to a/c, sans third party (Page no. 13)
(GS Paper 3, Economy)
Aiming to curb rising malpractices in the digital lending ecosystem, the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) issued guidelines for entities engaged in digital lending, with the norms stating that all digital loans must be disbursed and repaid through bank accounts of regulated entities only, without pass-through of lending service providers (LSPs) or other third parties.
The norms follow the recommendations of a working group for digital lending, whose report was made public last November.
The concerns primarily relate to unbridled engagement of third parties, mis-selling, breach of data privacy, unfair business conduct, charging of exorbitant interest rates, and unethical recovery practices.
The regulator classified digital lenders into three categories: entities regulated by the RBI and permitted to carry out lending business, entities authorised to carry out lending as per other statutory or regulatory provisions but not regulated by the RBI, and entities lending outside the purview of any statutory or regulatory provisions.
The latest regulatory framework is focussed on the digital lending ecosystem of RBI’s regulated entities (REs) and the LSPs engaged by them to extend credit facilitation services.
As for entities falling in the second category, the respective regulator may consider formulating rules on digital lending, based on the recommendations of the working group, the RBI said.
For entities in the third category, the working group has suggested specific legislative and institutional interventions for consideration by the government to curb illegitimate lending.
Apart from direct disbursals and repayments of digital loans, the norms mandate that any fees or charges payable to LSPs in the credit intermediation process shall be paid directly by the RE and not by the borrower.
A standardised key fact statement (KFS) must be provided to the borrower before executing the loan contract. The all-inclusive cost of digital loans in the form of annual percentage rate (APR) will have to be disclosed to borrowers.
The APR shall also form part of KFS. Automatic increases in credit limit without the explicit consent of borrowers has been prohibited.
The loan contract must provide for a cooling-off or look-up period during which borrowers can exit digital loans by paying the principal and the proportionate APR without any penalty.