26 Aug 2020: UPSC Exam Comprehensive News Analysis

E. Editorials

Category: SOCIAL ISSUES

1. The marginalisation of justice in public discourse

The author opined that, in India, while self-interest and national glory dominate, concern for distributive justice is rare.

Concerns:

• Given the compulsion to advance our self-interest, the burden of sacrifice for achieving national goals is easily passed on to those who are powerless to desist it.
• The thought that the burden of realising national goals such as development must be shared equally by all is missing.

What is distributive justice and why does it matter?

• The idea of distributive justice requires not only a social condition marked by an absence of love or familiarity, but also the circumstances of justice.
• For instance, a society where everything is abundantly available would not need justice. Without the necessity of sharing, justice becomes redundant.
• Also, in a society with massive scarcity, justice is impossible. In order to survive, each person is compelled to grab whatever happens to be available.
• Justice, therefore, is possible and necessary in societies with moderate scarcity.
• Justice also requires that people are neither totally alone nor organically united with others.
• And, if one was totally fused with others, with no distinction between self and other, then again, sharing will be unnecessary.
• To sum up, justice acquires value in societies with moderate scarcity, where people are forced to deal with those who they don’t love.
• It requires a moral psychology in which humans are neither wholly selfish nor entirely benevolent.
• Since most societies share these conditions, it may safely be concluded that justice is a necessary social virtue and has great moral value.

Giving persons their due:

• The basic idea of justice is that ‘each person gets what is properly due to him or her’, that the benefits and burdens of society be distributed in a manner that gives each person his or her due.
• In hierarchical notions, what is due to a person is established by her or his place within a hierarchical system. For instance, certain groups are born privileged. On this conception, justice requires that the benefits and burdens be unequally shared or distributed.
• This conception of justice has rarely remained unchallenged.
  • Innumerable examples can be cited in Indian history, where aspects of this hierarchical notion had been temporarily opposed — in the early teachings of the Buddha, passages in Indian epics, Bhakti poetry, and protest movements such as Veerashaivism.
• In present times, however, this challenge has become robust, explicit and sustained. This is so because of the prevalence of the idea that each person, regardless of caste, class, colour, creed or gender, has equal moral worth.
• If so, we need a different conception of justice, of sharing or distributing, of giving people their due that is consistent with equal dignity.
• In societies still infested with live hierarchies, people must first struggle for recognition as equals, for what might be called basic social justice.
• Then, they must decide how to share all social benefits and burdens among equal persons — the essence of egalitarian distributive justice.

Needs and Desert:

Two main contenders exist for interpreting what is due to persons of equal moral worth.

• Need-based principle: what is due to a person is whatever is necessary for general human well-being. Since our basic needs are identical, justice requires their fulfilment in every single person. Beyond this basic threshold, our needs usually vary, and therefore justice further requires the fulfilment of different needs.
• Principle of desert: determined not by birth or tradition but by a person’s own qualities, for instance, natural talent or productive effort. This underpins the idea of equal opportunity to all, albeit with justified inequalities of outcome.

Conclusion:

• Most reasonable egalitarian conceptions of justice try to find a balance between need and desert.
• They try to ensure a distribution of goods and abilities (benefits) that satisfies everyone’s needs, and a fair distribution of social burdens or sacrifices required for fulfilling them.
• After this, rewards are permissible to those who by virtue of natural gift, social learning and personal effort, deserve more.
• Our society is afflicted by deep material, cultural and knowledge-related inequalities which are growing by the day.
• A deafening silence on social and distributive justice is more common.
• It is therefore imperative to ask where we stand in relation to different forms of egalitarian justice mentioned in our Preamble.
• We are falling way short of standards of social and distributive justice. For the trend to be reversed, putting justice back into public discourse should be the priority.

Category: SECURITY

1. Down, but not out

Context:

The UN counterterrorism chief’s statement to the Security Council on the continuing presence of Islamic State (IS) terrorists in West Asia, Africa and elsewhere is a serious warning to the countries in these regions.

Background:

• At its height, the Islamic State held about a third of Syria and 40 percent of Iraq.
• By December 2017 it had lost 95 percent of its territory.
• In December 2018, President Donald Trump declared that ISIS was defeated and signalled the US’s intention to withdraw all 2,000 troops supporting the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) in Syria.
• But the SDF continued its offensive and in February 2019 launched the final siege on ISIS forces in Baghouz, the last holdout. Baghouz fell in March 2019. This formally ended the caliphate’s claim to any territory.

Concerns:

• Two years after the Sunni jihadist group was declared defeated, more than 10,000 IS fighters remain active in Iraq and Syria. IS-driven terror attacks are on the rise.
• Iraq and Syria are particularly vulnerable to the IS’s resurgence as these countries are yet to be fully stabilised after the wars.

Political instability in West Asia and North Africa:

• Ever since they lost territories, IS fighters withdrew from the front lines and started operating in cells in the deserts, mountains and hinterlands of conflict-ridden countries.
• Political instability in parts of West Asia and North Africa is allowing the IS space to operate.

Syria:

• Though the Bashar al-Assad government has practically won the civil war, Syria is now a divided country.
  • While the government controls most of the territories, a coalition of jihadists and rebels is running the Idlib province.
  • In the northeast, the Kurdish rebels have declared autonomy.
  • On the Syrian-Turkish border, Turkey, backed by pro-Turkish rebels, has carved out a buffer and has been in permanent conflict with the Kurds.

Iraq:

• Iraq, after months of protests and instability, has finally got a government.
• However, Prime Minister Mustafa al-Kadhimi is torn between the U.S. and Iran.
• Pro-Iran Shia militias continue to target U.S. troops inside Iraq, which could turn the country into a battlefield between Washington and Tehran.

Afghanistan:

• In war-torn Afghanistan, it continues to stage attacks, targeting ethnic and religious minorities.

Libya:

• Libya has two governments, which were fighting each other until the recent ceasefire (in August 2020).
• The Libyan conflict has spilled over into Mali and Burkina Faso, where jihadists have established a solid presence.
• Chaos breeds militancy, and as the main group here is the IS, it would remain active as long as these countries remain unstable.

West Africa:

• The terror outfit has a province in West Africa with nearly 3,000 fighters, according to the UN.

Way forward:

• Though the IS no longer controls any big city, its rise from a breakaway faction of al-Qaeda in Iraq to one of the world’s most potent terrorist groups should be a lesson for all stakeholders.
• The IS has its roots in the U.S. invasion of Iraq. It started growing by exploiting the civil war in Syria. The regional governments, as well as their international backers (and rivals), should be mindful of this fact.
• If they fail to address the regional fault-lines and continue to fight each other, the jihadists could emerge winners once again.

Category: ECONOMY

1. Magnets for manufacturing

The editorial throws light upon the importance of devising State-specific industrialisation strategies in coordination with the Centre to improve manufacturing in India.

Context:

• It is a popular belief that, in the aftermath of the pandemic, several manufacturing companies operating from China will relocate their businesses to other destinations, including India.
• Discussions have been initiated by many American, Japanese, and South Korean companies based in China with the Indian government to relocate their plants to India.

Why are companies exiting China?

• Countries have come to realise that relying heavily on China for building capacities and sourcing manufacturing goods is not an ideal business strategy due to supply chain disruptions in the country caused by COVID-19.
• Fear of Chinese dominance over the supply of essential industrial goods persists.
• There is a growing risk and uncertainty involved in operating from or dealing with China in the light of geopolitical and trade conflicts between China and other countries, particularly the U.S.

Prime Minister’s emphasis on using the COVID-19 crisis as an opportunity to pursue the goal of a self-reliant India or Atmanirbhar Bharat must be viewed against this background.

Can India succeed in attracting manufacturing firms and jobs from China?

India’s position:

• While China ranks first in contribution to world manufacturing output, India ranks sixth.
• India’s share of manufacturing in Gross Domestic Product (GDP) stood at 15% in 2018. This is only half of China’s figure.
• Industry value added grew at an average annual rate of 10.68% since China opened up its economy in 1978. In contrast, the manufacturing sector has grown at 7% after India opened up its economy.
• In 2018, with the world share of 18%, China was the largest exporter of manufactured goods next to the European Union. India is not part of the top 10 exporters that accounted for 83% of world manufacturing exports in 2018.

Challenges facing India:

• Compared to China, India faces numerous constraints in promoting the manufacturing sector.
• There are infrastructure constraints, a disadvantageous tax policy environment, a non-conducive regulatory environment, high cost of industrial credit, poor quality of the workforce, rigid labour laws, restrictive trade policies, low R&D expenditure, delays and constraints in land acquisition, and the inability to attract large-scale foreign direct investment into the manufacturing sector.

Way forward:

• Unless the challenges are effectively addressed, the dream of making India a manufacturing powerhouse rivalling China would be difficult to realise.
• An important requirement for the development of the manufacturing sector is the availability of land area.
• Andhra Pradesh, Bihar, Chhattisgarh, Madhya Pradesh, Odisha, Rajasthan, Telangana, and West Bengal – the States that have large land area but contribute disproportionately little in manufacturing GSDP must be encouraged to scale up manufacturing activities.
• Strong and carefully designed policy actions on the part of individual States would improve India’s overall investment climate, thereby boosting investments, jobs, and economic growth.
• In addition to its initiatives aimed at attracting manufacturing companies looking to relocate their plants to India from China, the Centre has urged the States to evolve their plans.
• Since India follows a federal government system, a lasting solution to these constraints cannot be possible without the active participation of State governments.
• Effective policy coordination between the Centre and the States is essential.
• The need of the hour is to instil teamwork and leverage ideas through sharing the best practices of the Centre and States, across the manufacturing sector.

Q1. Consider the following statements with respect to the National Clean Air Programme:

Q2. Consider the following statements with respect to Earth Observation Satellites:

Q3. Which of the following is India’s first aircraft carrier?

Q4. Consider the followings statements with respect to SCO Regional Anti-Terrorist 
Structure (RATS):

I. UPSC Mains Practice Questions

1. Critically analyse the government policies for dealing with and mitigating the hazards of air pollution in India. (GS 3 Environment and Ecology) (15 Marks, 250 Words).
2. Political instability in parts of West Asia and North Africa is allowing the Islamic State space to operate. Discuss how the re-emergence of the Islamic State could pose a serious challenge. (GS 3 Security) (15 Marks, 250 Words).

Read the previous CNA here.