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The situation along the Line of Actual Control since 2020 had “eroded strategic trust and the public and political basis of the relationship” between India and China, National Security Advisor Ajit Doval told Beijing’s top diplomat Wang Yi, in what is one of his sharpest statements in three years of the border standoff.
Doval met Wang Yi, Member of the Communist Party of China (CPC) Political Bureau and Director of the Office of the CPC Foreign Affairs Commission, on the sidelines of the BRICS NSAs’ meeting in Johannesburg late on Monday.
According to the official readout by the Ministry of External Affairs, “During the meeting, the NSA conveyed that the situation along the LAC in the Western Sector of the India-China boundary since 2020 had eroded strategic trust and the public and political basis of the relationship.”
It said that the NSA “emphasised the importance of continuing efforts to fully resolve the situation and restore peace and tranquility in the border areas, so as to remove impediments to normalcy in bilateral relations”.
The two sides agreed that the India-China bilateral relationship is significant not only for the two countries but also for the region and world,” it said.
Doval’s message was much more sharply-worded than what was put out after External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar’s meeting with Wang just about 10 days ago — on the sidelines of the ASEAN Regional Forum (ARF) Ministerial Meeting in Jakarta. Jaishankar had tweeted that he discussed “outstanding issues related to peace and tranquillity in border areas” with Wang. Jaishankar has, in the past, said that the situation in the LAC is “abnormal”.
In Parliament
Bill to bring various names of 12 tribal groups in ST list gets RS clearance (Page no. 8)
(GS Paper 2, Governance)
The Rajya Sabha passed a Bill to include different versions of the names of 12 Scheduled Tribe (ST) communities of Chhattisgarh to ensure that an additional 72,000 people from the state are able to avail the benefits of reservation.
The Bill was passed with a voice vote in the absence of the Opposition members, who had walked out in the first hour of the afternoon proceedings after Leader of Opposition in the House, Mallikarjun Kharge, was not allowed to raise the issue of the situation in Manipur.
The proceeding, which had been adjourned earlier in the day, began in the afternoon amid slogans from the Opposition benches. In the middle of this, Deputy Chairperson Harivansh called for Kharge to speak on the Bill.
Discussion on the Bill continued after the walkout, with several members stating that the Opposition was not serious about issues of people from tribal communities. Minister of State for Tribal Affairs Renuka Singh, who comes from Chhattisgarh, said: “The Opposition is completely absent here today.
LC passes new bill to decriminalise biodiversity offences (Page no. 8)
(GS Paper 3, Environment)
Amid the opposition’s loud protests on the violence in Manipur, Lok Sabha passed the Biological Diversity (Amendment) Bill, 2023 by a voice vote. The bill brings changes to the Biological Diversity Act, 2002 by decriminalising biodiversity offences, among others.
Among several criticisms of the Bill was that it promotes ‘ease of doing business’ and would exempt users of codified traditional knowledge and Ayurveda, Yoga and Naturopathy, Unani, Siddha, and Homoeopathy (AYUSH) practitioners from sharing benefits with local communities.
Union forest, environment and climate change minister Bhupender Yadav discussed the Biological Diversity (Amendment) Bill in the Lok Sabha on 25 July.
While introducing the bill, he said a “significant" bill is being discussed in this house today, and added, “Significant because the whole world is undergoing a triple crisis now.
On one side is the crisis of climate change, on another is the crisis of desertification of land, and on the third, the crisis of the loss of biological resources.
In our country, we want to promote ease of doing business…by (decriminalising offences) ease of doing business and ease of living is being brought forward by this Bill.
Editorial
Structures of impunity (Page no. 12)
(GS Paper 2, Governance)
Taking cognisance of the video of sexual violence on Kuki-Zo women, the Supreme Court of India noted on July 20 that “using women as instruments for perpetrating violence is simply unacceptable in a constitutional democracy”.
The Court is now seized with redressing the use of rape and other forms of sexual violence as a preferred “instrument” of mass violence.
However, it is disturbing that it was the virality of the video-trophy that drew the judicial gaze to this crisis in constitutional democracy.
The reports of mass sexual violence in Manipur that were published in print and social media did not produce similar constitutional effect.
These reports suggest that there is a pattern to this violence. And a colossal failure to provide essential commodities, medical, financial and legal help to the dispossessed, homeless and traumatised victims in camps.
Mass sexual atrocity is not a public secret that everyone knows about and agrees not to talk about. It is flaunted and video-trophies are circulated. These atrocities which are filmed are re-enacted with each upload and forward.
Stripping and parading put the victims on display as degraded objects, where the victim is stripped literally and symbolically of all that is social. This is a form of bareness that inverses the modes by which a person becomes social.
This spectacle of violence degrades and puts on display a stripped body, in full view of a complicit and voyeuristic spectatorship.
It serves a pedagogical function of power — one that “teaches a lesson” to subjugated and despised women and communities and communicates a message to all women.
Ideas Page
Gulf route to Pakistan (Page no. 13)
(GS Paper 2, International Relation)
As Pakistan embarks on yet another IMF programme (the 23rd since 1958) for structural adjustment, there is a new factor that has come to the fore — the Khaleeji (or Gulf) capital.
According to media reports, the United Arab Emirates has offered to bring significant new investments that could help pull Pakistan out of its unending cycle of economic crises and bailout packages.
India, which has seen a rapid transformation of bilateral relations with the UAE under Prime Minister Narendra Modi, might not be averse to seeing it play a key role in promoting Pakistan’s economic stability and making it part of the trade and investment flows between the Gulf and South Asia.
The UAE offer includes buying Pakistan’s public assets, which Islamabad plans to privatise. It also wants to modernise the Karachi port and finalise a trade liberalisation agreement between the two countries. All these steps are highly controversial in Pakistan, but Islamabad may not have many options.
The Arab Gulf has long been in an intimate partnership with Pakistan that was built around religious solidarity, dollops of regular economic assistance, concessional oil facilities, as well as cooperation on regional security.
Pakistan enjoyed much goodwill in the Gulf as a major Islamic nation. The Gulf rulers, in turn, had exclusive privileges in sovereign Pakistan.
They also often helped resolve the differences between Islamabad and Rawalpindi — recall the safe exile that Saudi Arabia gave Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif after Pervez Musharraf ousted him in a coup in 1999 and locked him up.
Express Network
Voter has the right to know candidate background (Page no. 15)
(GS Paper 2, Polity and Constitution)
The voter has a right to know the full background of a candidate, the Supreme Court has reiterated while dismissing a plea by Lok Sabha MP Bhim Rao Baswant Rao Patil, who had challenged a High Court order refusing to reject the election petition against him.
Dismissing his plea, a bench of Justices S Ravindra Bhat and Aravind Kumar said on Monday that “the elector or voter’s right to know about the full background of a candidate — evolved through court decisions — is an added dimension to the rich tapestry of our constitutional jurisprudence”. and that “keeping this in mind…there would be a denial of a full-fledged trial, based on the acknowledgment that material facts were not suppressed”.
Patil won the Lok Sabha polls from Zaheerabad constituency in Telangana on a TRS (now BRS) ticket in 2019 by a margin of 6,229 votes.
Following this, Madan Mohan Rao of the Congress, who finished second, filed an election petition, alleging, among others, that Patil had furnished false information in the election affidavit; that the Returning Officer had not followed the Election Commission’s October 2018 guidelines; and that there was no previous publication of papers regarding pending cases against him and those in which he was convicted.
Explained
DNA technology bill: Feature debate why it was withdrawn (Page no. 16)
(GS Paper 3, Science and Technology)
On Monday, the government withdrew The DNA Technology (Use and Application) Regulation Bill 2019 from the Lok Sabha, ending a 20-year effort to build a new regulatory framework for the use of DNA fingerprinting technology in the criminal justice system.
The Bill, introduced in Parliament multiple times, faced opposition on grounds of the accuracy of DNA technology, potential threats to individual privacy, and the possibility of abuse.
The present Bill was introduced in the Lok Sabha in July 2019 and was referred to the Department-related Parliamentary Standing Committee on Science and Technology.
The committee submitted its report in February 2021, recommending several changes in the draft. But instead of introducing a fresh Bill with changes, the government decided to withdraw it altogether, its decision made easy by the fact that the main provisions of the Bill have already been enacted as part of another law, the Criminal Procedure (Identification) Act, that was passed by both houses of Parliament last year.
The Bill had three primary objectives. First, it sought to set up a DNA profiling board as the regulatory body, one of the functions of which would be to provide accreditation to laboratories authorised to carry out DNA sample tests.
The Bill also provided for the creation of databases — DNA Data Banks — for storing of DNA information collected from convicts and accused.
This database could be indexed and searched for matching samples from crime scenes. And third, it sought to facilitate collection of DNA samples from the convicts and accused.
Economy
IMF raises India growth forecast for FY 24 to 6.1% (Page no. 17)
(GS Paper 3, Economy)
The International Monetary Fund (IMF) raised its forecast for India’s GDP growth for the current fiscal to 6.1 per cent from 5.9 per cent predicted in April due to stronger domestic investments.
This upward revision marks a reversal of the IMF’s April decision, when it had cut the growth forecast from 6.1 per cent to 5.9 per cent.
Growth in India is projected at 6.1% in 2023, a 0.2 percentage point upward revision compared with the April projection, reflecting momentum from stronger-than-expected growth in the fourth quarter of 2022 (FY23) as a result of stronger domestic investment.
For the calendar year 2023, the growth projection for the country is 6.6 per cent. In the latest update of its World Economic Outlook, the IMF also raised its baseline forecast for world growth in the year to 3 per cent from 2.8 per cent forecast in April.
This came amid reduced chances of a recession in the US, where inflation fell to 3 per cent in June, in what could likely make the expected Fed rate rise today the last in the cycle.
The world’s largest economy, as per the IMF, will likely grow 1.8 per cent in calendar year 2023, up 0.2 bps from April estimate.