18 Jul 2018: UPSC Exam Comprehensive News Analysis

F. Tidbits

1. Counter-drone strategy for country’s airports is ready

• A dozen new moons have been discovered around Jupiter, bringing its total number of moons to 79, the most for any planet in the solar system.
• One of the moons has been called a “real oddball” due to its tiny size.

• The Centre has raised safe limits for axle weight for transport vehicles by 20-25%.
• The revised axle limits will be applicable to new vehicles.
• An advisory would be issued to States to ensure that axle weight limits for heavy vehicles and trucks are enforced strictly.
• The Ministry has also proposed to dispense with fitness certificate for new vehicles and make it mandatory to have vehicle tracking system and FASTags for electronic toll collection for all commercial vehicles in its draft amendment to the Commercial Motor Vehicles Act.
• The amendments also proposed that a driving license and pollution certificates can be carried in physical or digital form.

Significance

• The move will help reduce logistics costs by 2% and attempts to bring norms at par with international standards.
• More pre-purchases are expected in fiscals 2019 and 2020.
• It is a good way to control overloading and fleet replacement would start as everyone wants to be competitive.
• Logistics companies see efficiencies improving and the automakers are eyeing growth.
• The timing is perfect as now highways, as well as arterial roads, have improved considerably.
• The implementation of norms will also arrest the tonnage shift in the MHCV segment to a certain extent that was based on vehicle economics

Concerns

• The decision will be beneficial for transporters and could reduce traffic in the long run, but it will not lead to immediate reduction in tariff.
• Efficiency benefit will only be realised by transporters plying new trucks but there will be no meaningful impact on freight rates as they are determined by the operating economics of the entire fleet of trucks.
• However, long term growth may subside given benefits from higher load capacity.

• The Telecom Commission has approved TRAI’s recommendations on net neutrality.
• Two exceptions have been created — special category of applications, for example, remote surgery and special situations such as a natural disaster.
• TRAI has made specific recommendations on what changes should be included in licensing conditions.
• They have proposed that all the players in this ecosystem should be registered with the DoT which will truly empower people and will fulfil one of the important promises of Digital India viz. ubiquitous and affordable connectivity.
• The Western countries have had technology development but India is going from being completely offline to completely online. So, India is leapfrogging technology and not following the development process as was in other countries.

Significance

• A lot is going to depend on the Internet whether it is health, education or agriculture. Therefore, it is particularly important from a developing country’s perspective that the Internet remains non-discriminatory and innovative.

Concerns

• Operators have criticised TRAI’s proposal for public Wi-Fi, citing security issues.

• The government has doubled import duty on more than 50 textile products — such as jackets, suits and carpets — to 20%, a move that is aimed at promoting domestic manufacturing.
• The Central Board of Indirect Taxes and Customs has also raised the ad-valorem rate of duty for certain items.
• It is aligned to the ‘Make in India’ initiative.
• Imported products that face the new duty include woven fabrics, dresses, trousers, suits and baby garments.
• But the least developed countries including Bangladesh would continue to enjoy duty-free access to Indian markets.
• As per WTO norms, India would not be able to give further incentive to the textile sector.

• The Directorate General of Trade Remedies’ recommendation to impose a 25% safeguard duty on solar component imports is a double-edged sword, according to analysts, as it will spur domestic manufacturers of these components, but will also raise costs for projects planned on cheaper, imported components, by about 15-20%.

Background

• The DGTR, after hearing an application from the Indian Solar Manufacturers Association, recommended a safeguard duty on solar component imports from China and Malaysia.
• Currently, 85-90% of solar modules used in India are imported from China and Malaysia.

Boon or bane?

• The boon is the opportunity it provides the domestic module industry to flourish.
• The bane is the duty could raise capital costs for solar projects based on imported modules by 15-20%.

Significance

• The duty would put more than ₹1 lakh crore worth of solar power projects in jeopardy, as firms had committed to ongoing projects of about 27 GW.
• Given that the safeguard duty is applicable only for two years, this is unlikely to lead to any material increase in the domestic solar module/cell manufacturing capacity.

• Justice Chandrachud, who is part of the five-judge Bench led by Chief Justice Dipak Misra hearing a plea to strike down Section 377 that criminalises gay sex even if it is between consenting adults, was reacting to arguments that homosexual behaviour leads to spread of HIV.

Justice Chandrachud’s observations

• Public acceptance of people in gay relationships will help meet health concerns and control the spread of HIV.
• Same sex couples living in denial with no access to medical care were more prone to contracting and spreading sexually transmitted diseases.
• The cause of sexually transmitted diseases is not sexual intercourse, but unprotected sexual intercourse.
• A village woman may get the disease from her husband, who is a migrant worker. This way would you now want to make sexual intercourse itself a crime?

Other judges

• Justice Malhotra asked whether heterosexual people do not transmit HIV.
• Justice Rohinton Nariman said prohibitions have never resolved social issues. If you license prostitution, you control it. If you kick it under the carpet owing to some Victorian-era morality, it will only lead to health concerns.
• Giving a strong indication that the Bench would declare that Section 377 violates the right under Article 21 of the LGBTQ community to sexuality, sexual orientation and choice of sexual partner, Justice Nariman said the whole objective of fundamental rights is to empower the court to strike down laws like Section 377.

• Asking whether the people of India have lost their tolerance for one another, the Supreme Court condemned the recent spate of lynchings as horrendous acts of mobocracy and told Parliament to make lynching a separate offence.
• The judgment, by a three-judge Bench led by Chief Justice of India Dipak Misra, wonders whether the populace of a great Republic like India has lost the values of tolerance to sustain a diverse culture?

Justice Mishra

• The recent litany of spiralling mob violence, their horror, the grim and gruesome scenes of lynchings are made worse by the apathy of the bystanders, numbness of mute spectators, inertia of the police and, finally, the grandstanding of the incident by the perpetrators of the crimes on social media.

The judgement

• It said the primary obligation of the government is to protect all individuals irrespective of race, caste, class or religion.
• Crime knows no religion and neither the perpetrator nor the victim can be viewed through the lens of race, caste, class or religion.
• It directed several preventive, remedial and punitive measures to deal with lynching and mob violence.
• It ordered the Centre and the States to implement the measures and file compliance reports within the next four weeks.
• Lynchings cannot become the order of the day.
• The law is practised in courts and not on the streets.
• The limited role, if any, of a vigilante is to report an incident to the police and not become the law and punisher himself.
• A citizen is accountable to the law, which gives him wings to realise his aspirations. In return, the law demands the citizen to pay it obeisance.
• When vigilantes involve themselves in lynchings or any other brutalities, they put their accountability to the law on the ventilator.
• The court held that it is every person’s duty to protect lives and human rights.
• No act of a citizen is to be adjudged by any kind of community under the guise of protectors of law.
• There cannot be a right higher than the right to live with dignity and further to be treated with humaneness that the law provides.
• No citizen can assault the human dignity of another, for such an action would comatose the majesty of law.
• The government cannot allow self-styled vigilantes to take over from law enforcement agencies.
• Any external forces who assume the role of protectors are criminals, the judgment observed.

Orders to the government

• It ordered the Centre and the States to take immediate steps to stop the dissemination of fake news or stories on social media, which has a tendency to whip up a mob frenzy.
• The court ordered the State governments to have a special task force to procure intelligence on people likely to spread hate speeches, provocative statements and fake news in each district.
• The district-level nodal officers should hold regular meetings with their local intelligence units to identify the existence of the tendencies of vigilantism, mob violence or lynching in the district and take steps to prohibit instances of dissemination of offensive material on social media.
• Areas with a five-year history of lynchings should be identified in each district within the next three weeks.
• Nodal officers in districts shall take steps to eradicate a hostile environment against any community or caste.
• The police shall register an FIR under Section 153A (promoting enmity) of the IPC against the suspects.
• If found guilty, a person faces up to five years of imprisonment.
• The trial shall be held in a fast-track court on a day-to-day basis and completed in six months.
• Maximum sentence should be granted to the guilty to make an example of them and serve as a deterrent.

Compensation scheme

• The judgment directed the Central government to issue appropriate directions/advisories to the States to reflect the gravity of the situation.
• The State governments have been given a month to prepare a lynching/mob violence victim compensation scheme with due regard paid to the nature of bodily injury, psychological injury and loss of earnings including loss of opportunities of employment and education and expenses incurred on account of legal and medical expenses and so on.

G. Prelims Fact

• The ‘Adopt a Heritage: Apni Dharohar, Apni Pehchaan’ scheme is an initiative of the Ministry of Tourism, in collaboration with the Ministry of Culture and the Archaeological Survey of India.
• It was launched in September 2017 on World Tourism Day by President Ram Nath Kovind.
• Under it, the government invites entities, including public sector companies, private sector firms as well as individuals, to develop selected monuments and heritage and tourist sites across India.
• Development of these tourist sites calls for providing and maintaining basic amenities, including drinking water, ease of access for the differently abled and senior citizens, standardised signage, cleanliness, public conveniences and illumination, along with advanced amenities such as surveillance systems, night-viewing facilities and tourism facilitation centres.
• The sites/monument are selected on the basis of tourist footfall and visibility and can be adopted by private and public sector companies and individuals — known as Monument Mitras — for an initial period of five years.
• The Monument Mitras are selected by the ‘oversight and vision committee,’ co-chaired by the Tourism Secretary and the Culture Secretary, on the basis of the bidder’s ‘vision’ for development of all amenities at the heritage site.
• There is no financial bid involved.
• The corporate sector is expected to use corporate social responsibility (CSR) funds for the upkeep of the sites.
• The Monument Mitras, in turn, will get limited visibility on the site premises and on the Incredible India website.
• The oversight committee also has the power to terminate a memorandum of understanding in case of non-compliance or non-performance.

Background

• This is not the first time the government has tried to rope in the corporate sector to help maintain tourist sites and monuments.
• In one such attempt, the government in 2011 formed a National Culture Fund. Since then, 34 projects have been completed under it through public-private partnerships.
• Another similar scheme under the UPA government was ‘Campaign Clean India,’ in which the government had identified 120 monuments/destinations.
• Under this scheme, the India Tourism Development Corporation had adopted Qutab Minar as a pilot project in 2012, while ONGC adopted six monuments — Ellora Caves, Elephanta Caves, Golkonda Fort, Mamallapuram, Red Fort and Taj Mahal — as part of its CSR.
• The government said the scheme would help to increase tourist footfall.

Concerns

• The project kicked up a storm after reports that private entity Dalmia Bharat, under an MoU, would build infrastructure and maintain the iconic Red Fort.
• Dalmia Bharat has committed ₹25 crore for the purpose.
• The Opposition termed it an attack on the idea of India, alleging that the government was handing over the symbol of India’s independence to private parties.

Way forward

• Notwithstanding criticism, the government intends to expand the ‘Adopt a Heritage’ scheme.
• Under the scheme, the government has put up a list of over 93 ASI monuments that can be bid for by private and public-sector firms, as well as individuals.
• This is a pretty small list, as the ASI protects 3,686 ancient monuments and archaeological sites, including 36 world heritage sites.
• So far, 31 agencies or Monument Mitras have been approved to adopt 95 monuments/tourist sites.
• However, only four MoUs have been signed. These are between the Ministry of Tourism, the Adventure Tour Operators Association of India and the Government of Jammu & Kashmir for Mt. Stok Kangri, Ladakh; the Ministry of Tourism, the Adventure Tour Operators Association of India and the Uttarakhand government for trail to Gaumukh; the Ministry of Tourism, the Ministry of Culture, the ASI and Dalmia Bharat for the Red Fort (in Delhi) and the Gandikota Fort (in Andhra Pradesh).

H. Practice Questions for UPSC Prelims Exam