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America’s relationship with Pakistan has “not served” either of the two countries, External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar said Sunday raising questions on the Biden administration’s approval of a USD 450-million sustenance package for F-16 fleet.
Very honestly, it’s a relationship that has neither ended up serving Pakistan well, nor serving the American interests. So, it is really for the United States today to reflect on what are the merits of this relationship and what do they get by it,Jaishankar said in response to a question during an interaction with the Indian-Americans.
Referring to the argument made by the US that F-16 sustenance package is to fight terrorism, he said everybody knows where and against whom F-16 are used. “You’re not fooling anybody by saying these things,” he said in response to a question.
Early this month, the Biden administration approved a USD 450 million F-16 fighter jet fleet sustainment programme to Pakistan, reversing the decision of the previous Trump administration to suspend military aid to Islamabad for providing safe havens for the Afghan Taliban and the Haqqani network.
In a notification to the US Congress, the State Department made a determination approving a possible foreign military sale for sustainment and related equipment for an estimated cost of USD 450 million, arguing that this will sustain Islamabad’s capability to meet current and future counterterrorism threats by maintaining its F-16 fleet.
In a call with US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, Defence Minister Rajnath Singh had expressed India’s concerns about the F-16 package to Pakistan.
Express Network
Twitter: Govt cannot order blocking of accounts without notice (Page no. 9)
(GS Paper 2, Polity and Governance)
The Union government cannot block Twitter accounts without first issuing notices to the users and Twitter itself, the social media platform told the Karnataka High Court, citing norms laid down by the Supreme Court and Section 69A of the Information Technology Act, 2000.
The court was hearing a petition moved by Twitter against orders issued by the Ministry of Electronic and Information Technology to block 39 accounts in 2021.
Senior counsel Arvind Datar, appearing for Twitter, said that the government had issued blocking orders for innocuous messages too, an example being ‘Hindu youth donates blood to save mom of Muslim jawan posted in Jammu and Kashmir’.
The counsel argued that orders issued for blocking messages should be in accordance with section 69A of the IT Act and that blocking should be restricted to tweets and not the whole account unless there are repeated offences.
If the central government finds a tweet to be objectionable or offensive then there is a particular procedure to be followed and as per the Supreme Court decision in Shreya Singhal they have to give notice to me and to the person sending the message that this is objectionable and why it should not be taken down — reasons have to be recorded in writing.
The counsel said when orders are issued to block tweets it must be stated as to how they have offended. “If law mandates a notice and if notice is not given it is prejudice caused to me,” the counsel said, arguing that notices must be sent to account holders and Twitter regarding the intention to block an account and the reasons behind the move.
At the heart of article 19 (1) (a) (right to freedom of speech and expression) is the right to criticise. Freedom of speech allows for criticism of the government within the norms,” the counsel for Twitter said.
The Centre has argued in its written counter that Twitter being a foreign platform cannot seek the freedom of speech and other rights available to Indian citizens for the users of its platform.
The Centre has argued that the majority of the 69A blocking orders issued by it are related to national security and public order issues.
Examples of such content include anti-India, or seditious or any religious contents that have potential to incite violence and contents that affect communal harmony in the country eg. SFJ or Khalistan related content,” it has argued while asking the court to dismiss the plea filed by Twitter Inc.
Twitter approached the high court earlier this year with a plea to quash 10 orders issued in 2021 by the Centre to block 39 accounts or to restrict the orders to specific tweets which allegedly violate Section 69A of the Information Technology Act, 2000.
Editorial Page
The Eurobomb (Page no. 12)
(GS Paper 2, International Relations)
In a major move last week, Russian President Vladimir Putin threatened the use of nuclear weapons against Ukraine and its Western backers.
When the territorial integrity of our country is threatened, to protect Russia and our people, we will certainly use all the means at our disposal,” he said, in an implicit reference to nuclear weapons. To underline the seriousness of his threat, Putin added it “is not a bluff.
This is certainly not the first time the Russian leader has rattled the nuclear sabre. Soon after he launched the Ukraine invasion in February, Putin issued a similar warning and ordered his armed forces to put Russian nuclear weapons on alert. What is different this time is Russia’s weakening position in Ukraine.
The recent setbacks on the battlefield have persuaded Putin to order the mobilisation of a larger number of troops and call for an annexation of the occupied territories in eastern Ukraine.
The nuclear threat appears to be part of an effort to salvage a modicum of political gains from a “war of choice” that has gone terribly wrong.
Putin’s nuclear threat did not make a difference the last time around; this time he is signalling a greater commitment to using nuclear weapons by claiming that the occupied territories are now a part of Russia, and organising referendums to lend a veneer of political legitimacy to their annexation. That brings us to the link between Russia’s “territorial integrity” and the threat to use nuclear weapons.
Moscow’s nuclear doctrine states that it will use nuclear weapons in a conventional war in the event of an attack on Russia and if the very existence of the state is threatened.
By turning the “occupied territories” into “Russian territory”, Putin is arguing that attempts by Ukraine and its Western supporters to liberate occupied territory would be met with a nuclear response.
For those who can’t see the nature of the threat this time, Dmitry Medvedev, Russia’s former president and a close associate of Putin, has made the threat explicit. He has declared that Russia will use nuclear weapons, not just tactical nuclear weapons but also strategic ones, to defend the “new Russian territories”.
Putin will hope that the danger of a nuclear war would encourage those in the West who seek a compromise with Russia (at the expense of Ukraine, of course) and bring the war to a quick close.
But Ukrainian leader VolodymyrZelenskyy has dismissed the nuclear threat and vowed to fight on until the occupied territories are brought back under Kyiv’s control.
The US has warned Russia against the use of nuclear weapons, and is likely to continue its armed support to Ukraine.
That puts the nuclear ball back in Putin’s court. Will Putin court the dangers of a full-scale nuclear war with the West for a few additional districts in Ukraine? Using nuclear weapons for offensive or coercive purposes has not been easy.
The Idea Page
Deciding the rarest of the rare (Page no. 13)
(GS Paper 2, Polity and Governance)
Forty-two years ago, the Supreme Court took the view that the death penalty did not violate the Constitution and prescribed a framework it hoped would ensure fairness in sentencing.
The Court has now come full circle in confronting the reality that death penalty sentencing has been anything but fair. In a momentous ruling last week, the Supreme Court has said that fundamental aspects of death penalty sentencing need re-examination and resolution by a Constitution Bench of five judges.
Four decades and over 400 judgments after Bachan Singh v State of Punjab (May 1980), a three-judge bench has had the judicial courage to acknowledge that there are serious problems in India’s death penalty regime, indicating that the current state of death penalty sentencing is untenable.
While approving the constitutional status of the death penalty in May 1980, the Supreme Court was acutely aware that it had to ensure that the imposition of death sentences did not become an arbitrary and subjective exercise in individual cases.
In determining which individuals the law could subject to death in a fair manner, it was integral that the sentencing judges were deciding according to the law and not on their individual whim.
Concerned with fairness, Bachan Singh proposed a sentencing framework towards ensuring that the sentencing judge’s discretion to choose between life imprisonment and the death sentence was guided by considerations that were relevant to the law. Before imposing the death sentence, Bachan Singh required the court to weigh the aggravating and mitigating circumstances (popularly known as the “rarest of rare” case) and determine whether the option of life imprisonment is “unquestionably foreclosed”.
Over the years, multiple concerns have emerged with this framework. The courts have taken differing approaches in which factors are relevant to sentencing, how best to bring in factors relevant to punishment, the ability of poor defendants to bring in such information, the weightage sentencing factors must receive, and the contentious role of public opinion.
The problem that the Supreme Court’s reference to a Constitution Bench seeks to remedy is the need to achieve consistency on the requirements of a fair, meaningful and effective sentencing hearing.
This is not the first time that the Supreme Court has noticed that all is not well with the Bachan Singh framework. In 2009, in Santosh Kumar Bariyar v State of Maharashtra, Justice S B Sinha expressed concern about the lack of uniformity in death penalty sentencing.
In 2018, Justice Kurian Joseph in his minority opinion in Channu Lal Verma v State of Chhattisgarh called for a relook at the constitutional possibility of the death penalty because of the arbitrariness that had crept in. Periodically, others too have brought out this flaw.
Lethal Lottery in 2008, and the 262nd Law Commission of India Report in 2015, underscored the inconsistencies in the Supreme Court’s approach to death penalty sentencing.
Taking forward abe legacy (Page no. 13)
(GS Paper 2, International Relations)
Shinzo Abe, India’s closest friend in Japan, was assassinated a few months back. His importance for India and for India-Japan relations is reflected in the nation’s mourning, Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s blog post on his passing, and his visit to Japan to attend Abe’s funeral.
Abe was instrumental in energising like-minded powerful democratic countries for a free and open Indo-Pacific. He could clearly see the changing geopolitical and economic situation and tried his best to collaborate with India on multiple dimensions to counter China, a hostile neighbour to both India and Japan.
India-Japan relations reached new heights on economic, security and strategic issues during Abe’s official tenure. After Abe demitted office, the relations have continued to be on the upswing with Japan being led by Prime Minister Fumio Kishida who leads Abe’s party, the Liberal Democratic Party. In fact, PM Kishida has assured to follow Abe’s policy on economic, strategic and security issues. The India-Japan ministerial meeting (2+2) on defense and security cooperation and joint maritime exercises reflect continuity in India-Japan cooperation.
During his political career, Abe pushed for stability, security and a rules-based international order in the Indo-Pacific. Japan under his leadership took initiatives for mini-lateral institutional collaboration like the QUAD for international public goods like the rule of law, freedom of navigation and free trade.
To complement this, Japan undertook bilateral initiatives with India including the Joint Declaration on Security Cooperation in 2008 and the Acquisition and Cross-Servicing Agreement in 2020.
India and Japan share democratic values and understand the emerging geopolitical and economic developments. Therefore, it is hoped that Modi and Kishida would take these initiatives to further bilateral and regional infrastructure development and ensure resilient security and strategic alliance to stop a highly powerful and aggressive neighbour.India-Japan economic relations have also been going from strength to strength.
The economic relations took off from the Special Economic Partnership Initiative (SEPI) in 2006 which mainly focused on Japanese collaboration in developing the Delhi-Mumbai Industrial Corridor (DMIC), special economic zones, warehousing zones etc. SEPI accelerated after the ministerial-level economic dialogue in 2012.
India is the largest recipient of Japanese Official Development Assistance (ODA). Japanese ODA, through the Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA) and the Japan Bank for International Cooperation (JBIC) at a very nominal interest rate, is going to economic infrastructure projects such as transport, telecommunication, power, the Yamuna Action Plan and infrastructure development in the North East.
The assistance accelerated following Japan’s announcement in 2016 to help India build critical infrastructure and address social and environmental issues caused by rapid growth.
The ODA has been directed towards brownfield toll road projects and integrated gas procurement, storage, transportation and supply business.
Explained Page
The Kurmis: a political history (Page no. 15)
(GS Paper 1, Indian Society)
The increase in the visibility and profile of Nitish Kumar in national politics ever since he dumped the BJP and joined hands with Lalu Prasad has spotlighted the OBC Kurmi community to which the Bihar Chief Minister belongs.
Kurmis are a smaller community than Yadavs, and they have not always had a cordial relationship. But the political aspiration of Kurmis has spiked in recent weeks — Yadavs for the first time appear willing to accept them as “elder brothers” — and if the bonhomie between Nitish and Lalu continues, the BJP might need some new social engineering manoeuvres in Bihar and UP soon.
Kurmis are a landowning farming community whose status varies from place to place. The People of India series edited by K S Singh refers to Kurmis as “progressive farmers” who “avail of maximum benefits of all the development schemes available in the area and region”.
Unlike Yadavs, Kurmis use a wide variety of surnames like Patel, Verma, Sachan, Gangwar, Katiyar, Baiswar, Jaiswar, Mahto, Prasad, Sinha, Singh, Pradhan, Baghel, Chaudhary, Patidar, Kunbi, Kumar, Patil, Mohanti, Kanaujiya, Chakradhar, Niranjan, Patanwar, and Shinde, etc.
Some Kurmi surnames are used by other communities as well, making it difficult to identify a Kurmi by name alone. Sometimes they use no surname at all.
Kurmis are distributed across several states — Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Odisha, Maharashtra, Gujarat, Chhattisgarh, Madhya Pradesh, West Bengal, Jharkhand, Goa, and Karnataka. Besides Nitish in Bihar, the Congress chief minister of Chhattisgarh, BhupeshBaghel, is also Kurmi.
In most states, Kurmis belong to the Other Backward Classes (OBC) in both the central and state lists for reservations.
In Gujarat, Patels, who are linked to Kurmis, are in the general category, and have been demanding OBC status. In West Bengal, Odisha, and Jharkhand — where Kurmiis written as ‘Kudmi’ — Kurmis want to be included among Scheduled Tribes.
No data are available on the representation of various sub-castes in government jobs. But in 2018, the Justice G Rohini Commission set up to sub-categorise OBCs analysed data on 1.3 lakh central jobs given under the OBC quota over the five preceding years, and OBC admissions to central higher education institutions including universities, IITs, NITs, IIMs and AIIMS over three years, and reportedly found that the main beneficiaries were Yadavs, Kurmis, Jats (Jats in Rajasthan, except those in Bharatpur and Dholpur districts, are in the central list of OBCs), Sainis, Thevars, Ezhavas and Vokkaligas.
Surjapuri and Bajjika (Page no. 15)
(GS Paper 1, Indian Society)
Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar and Education Minister Prof Chandra Shekhar have asked the state education department to set up academies for the promotion of the Surjapuri and Bajjika dialects on the lines of the Hindi and Urdu academies.
The education department will also set up an umbrella body to monitor the progress of all languages and dialects spoken in Bihar.
Surjapuriis spoken mainly in Kishanganj and other parts of Seemanchal in northeastern Bihar, including the districts of Katihar, Purnia and Araria. The dialect, a mix of Bangla, Urdu, and Hindi, is also spoken in contiguous parts of West Bengal.
The name Surjapuri comes from Surjapurpargana, which no longer exists. But there is a toll plaza called Surjapur between Purnia and Kishanganj.
Although Surjapuri has nothing specifically to do with religion, the largest share of speakers of the language is made up of Surjapuri Muslims, who live mainly in Kishanganj, the district that has about 70 per cent Muslim population.
About 80 per cent Muslims of Kishanganj are Surjapuri. Prominent leaders of the community include former MP AsrarulHaqQasmi, the sitting Congress MP from Kishanganj Dr Mohammad Jawed, the head of the Bihar unit of AsaduddinOwaisi’s AIMIM, Akhrarul Imam, and the former Union minister Rafiq Ahmad.
Qasmi, the two-term Congress MP from Kishanganj, owed his election victories (in 2009 and 2014) to the overwhelming support he received from the Surjapuri community, and had worked hard for the promotion of the Surjapuri dialect. He passed away in 2018.
Bajjika, one of five dialects spoken in Bihar, is a mix of Hindi and Maithili, and is spoken mainly in Vaishali, Muzaffarpur, and parts of Sitamarhi, Sheohar and Samastipur. Bajjikais not as well known as other dialects such as Bhojpuri and Maithili. Although the Bihar education department had considered teaching in local dialects up to Class 5 during the second Nitish Kumar government (2010-15), it did not come to fruition.
Eight academies or functioning organisations — for Hindi, Urdu, Bhojpuri, Maithili, Angika, Magahi, Bangla, and South Indian languages — already exist in Bihar, and the government’s decision on Bajjika and Surjapuri takes note of the two dialects that had been left out.
The idea of setting up an umbrella organisation for Bihar’s languages and dialects envisages a platform for academics, litterateurs, and officials to work together to promote literary writing, the upgradation of dictionaries, and the updating of the grammar of these dialects.
While Maithili and Bhojpuri have made progress in fields of art, culture, and literature, Magahi, Angika, Bajjika and Surjapuri remain less-developed. The idea is to promote literary writing and conduct more research in Surjapuri and Bajjika as well, so that these dialects could be more popular.
DawoodiBohras and excommunication ,what is the practice, how it ended up in SC (Page no. 15)
(GS Paper 1, Indian Society)
The Supreme Court said it will examine whether the excommunication of the Dawoodi Bohra community’s members can be continued.
According to the Bombay Prevention of Excommunication Act, 1949, which first sought to prevent excommunication, the practice was defined as the “expulsion of a person from any community of which he is a member, depriving him of rights and privileges which are legally enforceable by a suit of civil nature”. This act was later repealed, and a legal challenge has been posed to the practice.
The DawoodiBohras are members of the Muslim community’s Shia sect. Their leader is known as the Al-Dai-Al-Mutlaq. For over 400 years, the leader has been based out of India, including the current and the 53rd leader, His Holiness Dr SyednaMufaddal Saifuddin. According to the members, around 1 million members of the community are spread across the world.
The leader of the community is recognised by the members as having the right to excommunicate its members. In practice, being excommunicated includes not being allowed to access a mosque belonging to the community or a burial dedicated to the community. Among those who have faced excommunication in the past were people who contested the headship of the leaders.
The Act was enacted on November 1, 1949, to stop the practice of excommunication prevalent in certain communities, as it led to the deprivation of legitimate rights and privileges of its members and in “keeping with the spirit of changing times and in public interest”.
The excommunication of any community member was made invalid, “notwithstanding anything contained in law, custom, usage” for the time being in force.
After the act was enacted, one of the members of the Dawoodi Bohra community filed a suit in 1949, saying certain orders passed by their leader were illegal because of the act.
Other cases also came before various courts and a petition was filed before the SC by the leader, challenging the constitutionality of the act.
The 51st leader of the community, SardarSyednaTaher Saifuddin Saheb, challenged the constitutional validity of the act in 1962, stating it violated fundamental rights guaranteed in the Constitution under Article 25 (Freedom of conscience and free profession, practice and propagation of religion) and Article 26 (Freedom to manage religious affairs).
It was submitted that the power of excommunication was part of the management of community affairs in matters of religion, and depriving the Dai of the right and making its exercise a penal offence, “struck at the very life of the denomination and rendered it impotent to protect itself against dissidents and schismatics”.
Economy
During PCA years, none of our services found wanting; now eye balanced growth (Page no. 17)
(GS Paper 3, Economy)
Of the 11 banks that had been placed under the prompt corrective action (PCA) framework of the RBI between 2017 and 2018, Central Bank of India was the last one to exit the restrictions after more than five years.
Having recently emerged out of the regulatory curbs, the state-run lender is now aiming for balanced growth and lowering net non-performing assets (NPAs) to below 3.6 per cent by December, its Managing Director & Chief Executive Officer M V Rao told Hitesh Vyas. Edited excerpts:
I cannot give any number on that but I can indicate that whatever numbers we have been showing from the past five quarters, we will maintain that.
We have been very conservative in our numbers, in the sense that wherever provision was required, we have provided more than adequate.
We have controlled our slippages and expect them to be below our target of Rs 4,000 crore for FY23, set at the beginning of the year. Our aim is to keep credit cost at 1-1.2 per cent (by March 2023). So, the resultant effect … will be positive on our profits. We don’t foresee anything that will stop us from growing. It is only balanced growth that we are eyeing.
PCA is initiated once the threshold levels relating to capital, asset quality and profitability of a bank are breached. These parameters are tracked through the capital to risk-weighted assets ratio (CRAR) / common equity tier (CET 1) ratio, the net NPA ratio and return on asset
Our net NPA is already below 4 (as of June 30, 2022) and we are aiming to bring it down to 3.6 per cent by December 2022.
Few quarters back, our credit deposit ratio was in the range 50-51 per cent and it went up to 57.04 per cent (in Q1 FY23), and we will be touching 60 per cent by December 2022.
The floor for credit growth is 12 per cent but it will be more than 12 per cent (for FY23). In the RAM (retail, agriculture and MSME) segment, we are eyeing 13-14 per cent.
We have very consciously balanced our credit book with RAM and corporate in the ratio of 65:35. We will maintain this ratio with a margin of +/- 5 per cent.
Our endeavour is to go for highly-rated accounts that have low risk weights. In a similar manner, our target for deposit growth is 7 per cent.
Actually, the PCA framework suggests certain benchmarks, which you have to meet. At the end of the day, the sustainability of these numbers in the long-run is something that matters as it helps one to gauge the strength of the bank.
So, whatever improvements we were making, it was reviewed and inspected by the RBI team, and they took the decision to remove us from the PCA framework. As far as customers are concerned, none of our services or products have been found wanting during all these years (under PCA).
We do not want to sell any non-core assets. We are only focussing on enhancing the value of our subsidiaries. That is the reason we have moved the headquarters of Cent Bank Home Finance Ltd from Bhopal to Mumbai.
They have changed their entire software and technology platform and will be working at par with any other housing NBFCs.
No timeline set for embedding NavIC in India-made phones (Page no. 17)
(GS Paper 3, Science & Technology)
The government is discussing with smartphone manufacturers about embedding the indigenously-developed navigation system NavIC in phones manufactured domestically.
However, the Ministry of Electronics and IT said in its official Twitter handle, no timeline has been fixed to finalise the proposition yet.
The Ministry’s statement came following media reports about a meeting between the government and manufacturers where embedding the NavIC system in their phones over the United States’ GPS system in the coming months was discussed.
According to the reports, mobile players and chipset companies present at the meeting, held in the first week of September, said that embedding NavIC support will incur additional costs as the present chipsets are tuned to support frequency band which is suitable for GPS and Russian navigation system GLONASS.
At present, some chipsets like Snapdragon mobile platforms 720G, 662, and 460 supportNavIC technology.