18 Jun 2020: UPSC Exam Comprehensive News Analysis

B. GS 2 Related

Category: INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS

1. Is China’s ‘peaceful development’ over?

Context:

As news broke about the violent clashes between Indian and Chinese troops in the Galwan Valley of eastern Ladakh, a Chinese J-10 fighter briefly entered Taiwan’s air defence zone, prompting the self-ruled island to scramble its aircraft in response.

Read more about the India-China military standoff along the Line of Actual Control.

China’s approach towards its neighbourhood:

• Recent development was the third Chinese incursion into Taiwan’s airspace within a week.
• Two months ago, Chinese vessels had entered the waters of Malaysia and Vietnam.
• In May 2020, Chinese Coast Guard ships pursued Japanese fishing boats in waters claimed by both countries.
• All these incidents point to a newfound aggressiveness in China’s approach towards its already troubled neighbourhood, from the Himalayas to the South and East China Seas.

Details:

• Tensions in the neighbourhood are not new for China.
• The roughly 4,000 km-long India-China border, which is not clearly demarcated, has seen occasional flare-ups.
  • In 2017, troops from both countries were locked in a face-off in the India-China-Bhutan tri-junction of Doklam for over two months.
• China has claims over the South China Sea.
• Reunification with Taiwan is one of its self-declared goals, under its “One China Policy”.

China’s most major policy decisions post-COVID-19:

• What makes the current stand-offs different is China’s readiness to use force in addressing these challenges.
• This was the first time in 45 years that blood was spilt on the India-China border.
• Recently, in an annual policy blueprint, China dropped the world “peaceful” in referring to its desire to “reunify” with Taiwan, ending a nearly 30-year-long precedent.
  • This sharp turn marks China’s most major policy decisions post-COVID-19.
• Relations with the U.S. are particularly bad, with the Trump administration openly targeting China for its handling of the pandemic.
• When Australia pushed for an investigation into the pandemic outbreak, Beijing punished the country by imposing trade curbs.
• In Hong Kong, which has been seeing anti-China protests for a year, Beijing has introduced a new national security law, granting itself broader powers in the Special Administrative Region.
• In the middle of the COVID-19 outbreak, China now appears to be overseeing an expansive foreign policy that pushes the boundaries.

Concerns:

• Xi Jinping’s predecessor had adopted the “peaceful rise” (or “peaceful development”, as the the Chinese later called it) policy to assure other countries, especially the U.S. and China’s Asian neighbours, that its rise did not pose any threat to others.
• The whole series of positions China has taken with respect to Taiwan, Tibet, Hong Kong, national sovereignty or whatever problems they have with the U.S. is an indication that China seems to have come out of its “peaceful rise” policy.
• The “China Dream”, laid out by President Xi after he took power in 2012, seeks to turn the country into a wealthy, strong and modern global power by 2049, the centenary of the Communist revolution.

E. Editorials

Category: INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS

1. History, the stand-off, and policy worth rereading

The editorial talks about China’s legendary revolutionary leader Mao Zedong’s five finger policy (with respect to Ladakh, Sikkim, Bhutan, Nepal and Arunachal Pradesh) and how India should cast a grand strategy to renew its compact with each of those areas in the current situation.

Mao’s five finger policy:

• The deadly clashes at Galwan and the ongoing stand-off between India and China on the ridges or fingers around the Pangong Tso are a metaphor for the wider conflict between the two countries over all the areas that Chinese strategy refers to as the “five fingers of the Tibetan palm”.
• In the 1950s, Mao described Tibet as the right hand palm, while Ladakh, Sikkim, Bhutan, Nepal and Arunachal Pradesh are five fingers.
• According to the construct, attributed to Mao, it was China’s responsibility to liberate the fingers.
• Sixty years ago, India began to set about ensuring that quite the reverse ensued, and all five fingers were more closely attached to India, not China.

India’s countermove:

• In the 1950s, even after India and China signed the Panchsheel agreement in 1954 and before the 1962 China-India war, the Nehru government had begun to worry about some of China’s proclamations.
  • Especially after the flight of the Dalai Lama to India in 1959, China began to demand “self-determination in Kashmir”.
  • The Chinese press and radio launched a propaganda war against India, while the Chinese government allowed Naga and Mizo dissidents into China for refuge and training.
• More importantly, school textbooks there began to depict the “five fingers” as a part of China, in the 1950s.

Three-pronged foreign policy approach:

The three-pronged foreign policy New Delhi set into motion during the 1962 war, that provided an effective counter to Mao’s five finger policy over the course of the century, is perhaps not so well understood.

1) Managing the borders

• The first was a push for building border infrastructure and governance.
• In the mid-1950s, the government piloted a project to build the Indian Frontier Administrative Services (IFAS) for overseeing NEFA (Arunachal Pradesh) and other areas along the India-China frontier.
• A special desk was created in the Ministry of External Affairs for officers who would tour all the regions from NEFA to Ladakh in order to make suggestions for the rapid development of these areas. It was wound up in 1968.
• The IFAS’s role has since been transferred to the Indian Army and the Border Roads Organisation.
• It is an idea worth revisiting, especially as areas along the frontier continue to complain of neglect and a lack of focus from the Centre.

2) Outreach and treaties

• The second prong was a series of treaties that were signed with neighbours such as Nepal and Bhutan, and the consolidation of control, militarily and administratively, of other territories that acceded to India, including Ladakh as a part of Jammu and Kashmir (1947), and NEFA (1951).
  • In 1950, India signed a treaty with Sikkim that made it a “protectorate”, and by 1975 the Indira Gandhi Government had annexed Sikkim and made it the 22nd State of India.
• Each of these treaties built unique relationships with New Delhi, tying countries such as Nepal and Bhutan in ways that were seen as a “win-win” for both sides at the time.
• However, over time, the treaties have outlived their utility, and the benefits of unique ties with Nepal and Bhutan, including open borders and ease of movement, jobs and education for their youth as well as India’s influential support on the world stage, have waned in public memory.
• China was not able to make inroads with Bhutan as it did with Nepal because the Indian government renegotiated its 1949 Treaty of Perpetual Peace and Friendship between the Government of Bhutan of 1949 with the India-Bhutan Friendship Treaty in 2007.
  • This has held India and Bhutan ties in good stead, even during the Doklam stand-off between India and China in 2017 in the face of severe pressure from China.
• New treaties may not, in themselves reduce India’s security threat from China in its neighbourhood, but they create space for a more mutually responsive diplomacy that is necessary to nurture special relationships.

3) The Tibet Issue:

• For the third prong, India’s policy towards Tibet should be looked at more closely.
• While New Delhi’s decision to shelter the Dalai Lama and lakhs of his followers since 1959 is a policy that is lauded, India must now look into the future of its relationship, both with the Tibetan refugee community in India, as well as with its future leadership.
• At present, the Dalai Lama has the loyalty of Tibetans worldwide, but Karmapa Lama, who lived in India after his flight from China in 2000, and was groomed as a possible political successor, has now taken the citizenship of another country and lives mostly in the United States.
• Given that it is home to so many Tibetans, India must chart a more prominent role in this discourse.

Conclusion:

• Finally, it is necessary to introspect on how India’s own reorganisation of Jammu and Kashmir in August 2019 has changed the security matrix and threat parameters for India, and its neighbours.
• While Pakistan’s extreme reaction to the move was expected, China’s reaction was perhaps not studied enough.
  • Beijing issued a statement decrying the impact on Jammu and Kashmir.
  • Also a statement specifically on Ladakh, calling it an attempt to “undermine China’s territorial sovereignty by unilaterally changing its domestic law” and warning that the move was unacceptable and will not come into force.
• Home Minister’s vow in Parliament, to take back Pakistan Occupied Kashmir (PoK) and Aksai Chin was not taken lightly either, as China’s stakes in PoK now go beyond its historical closeness with Pakistan, to its investment in the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor that runs through it.

As the government readies its hand on dealing with China, it must not lose sight of every finger in play.

2. Disorder at the border

Context:

• Twenty Indian personnel, including a Colonel, were killed in violent clashes with Chinese troops along the Line of Actual Control (LAC) in Ladakh.
• The clashes came amid a de-escalation process in the Galwan area after a month long stand-off between troops at several points along the LAC in Ladakh and Sikkim.

Read more on issue, covered in 14^th June 2020 Comprehensive News Analysis.

What next?

• In order to prepare its response appropriately, the first step the government must take is to appraise the nation of exactly what has occurred along the LAC, including incidents in Ladakh and Sikkim.
• The government must conduct a full investigation of the Galwan clash and put out clearer details.
• Both the MEA and the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs have reaffirmed their commitment to dialogue as a means of restoring peace. Both sides must also acknowledge that the recent developments have undone decades of painstakingly negotiated confidence-building mechanisms.
• Without a full restoration of the status quo ante, reparations for the casualties, as well as some honest commitment to abide fully by any agreement, talks with Beijing at this point might not mean more than empty words.

Category: HEALTH

1. A prescription of equitable and effective care

The editorial talks about the need to get the public and private sectors into a functioning partnership in handling the pandemic.

Issue:

• Medical care has been disrupted by the novel coronavirus.
• The private sector, which delivers the major part of medical services, is now functioning at a skeletal level.
• Patients have considerable difficulty in accessing medical care.
• With the focus on prevention, doctors have been unable to attend to their primary task of providing good clinical care to reduce morbidity and prevent deaths.

Way forward:

Partnership between public and private hospitals:

• In order to implement a universal COVID-19 care programme, the government health system should collaborate with private hospitals.
• As the number of COVID-19 cases continue to rise, there is a need to pull together the resources of the public and private sectors into a functioning partnership, to provide good clinical care, ameliorate suffering and prevent deaths.
• The government should financially assist the private sector by reimbursing basic patient care costs for providing COVID-19 care.

Combating fear:

• Because of the labelling and stigmatisation of those diagnosed with COVID-19, the public are reluctant to come to hospital and may come late or refuse to visit the hospital at all.
• Clear message must be sent out that hospitals will provide good quality care at affordable cost and ensuring confidentiality.
• Good supportive care for sick patients is essential in preventing deaths.
• Hospital services have to focus on in-patient management of moderate and severe cases, prioritising intensive care unit (ICU) beds for potentially reversible illness.

Adequate facilities for medical staff:

• Medical staff taking care of COVID-19 patients are anxious that they may acquire the infection and transmit it to their family members.
• Deaths of hospital staff due to COVID-19 have been reported, although the mortality risk is lower than that of the general population.
• Medical staff involved in COVID-19 care should be adequately protected with appropriate personal protective equipment, or PPE, and should be trained in infection control and clinical care protocols.

Conclusion:

These initiatives can only be realised with appropriate leadership from the government. The private sector has to be fully involved in clinical care of the COVID-19 epidemic.  Response to the epidemic must combine good science, clinical reasoning and a humane response to save the lives of the people of our country.

2. Maternal health matters

The editorial points to the death of a pregnant woman in Noida after being turned away from a number of private and government hospitals, raising questions about effectiveness of welfare measures for pregnant women and the state of maternal health in the country.

Details:

• Over the last 15 years, the state has been promising maternal well-being to pregnant women provided they turn up at public hospitals during labour, and has been providing a cash incentive to those that have institutional birth.
• Consequently, it has become almost routine for all pregnant women to reach health facilities during labour.
• Elaborate tracking systems have been instituted by the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare to track every pregnant woman, infant and child until they turn five.

Issues:

• However, during lockdown, the state appeared to have missed out on charting out plans to ensure the health and well-being of those women expected to give birth.
• Frontline workers were pressed into community surveillance, monitoring and awareness building for COVID-19.
• The public health system was overburdened with handling the pandemic: most secondary and tertiary hospitals were either those designated as COVID-19 facilities or those unequipped with enough PPE kits.
• Though pregnant women have been identified as people being ‘high risk’, reference on the need to provide emergency services for pregnant women was lacking.
• In 12 weeks (of lockdown), approximately 9,00,000 pregnant women (15% of the six million women giving birth) who needed critical care had to face enormous hurdles to actually obtain treatment at an appropriate hospital. Added to this were the women who have had miscarriages or sought abortions: another 45,000 women every single day.
• India’s Maternal Mortality Ratio came down to 122 deaths per 1,00,000 live births (SRS 2017), from 167 per 1,00,000 births in 2011-13. Much effort and investment over many years have led to this decrease. As India struggles to manage the COVID-19 pandemic, the hard-won gains of the last 15 years can be erased with one stroke.

Way forward:

Acknowledge the shortcomings of health care system:

• The health policymakers need to acknowledge the shortcoming of an overstretched and under-resourced system in responding to the critical care needs of pregnant women during crises.

Scrutinise the role of private sector:

• Although 80% doctors and 64% beds are in the private sector, clinics have closed down and private hospitals have stepped back fearing infections.
• Larger hospitals have begun charging exorbitant amounts.
• Therefore, the role of the private sector needs to be scrutinised.

Ensure transparency:

• In order to win back the trust of pregnant women, the state will have to account publicly for how the millions of deliveries took place; or how abortions, miscarriages and childbirth complications were handled.

Conclusion:

Improved maternal health was the lynchpin around which public health systems had been strengthened over the last 15 years. As a part of the  longer-term management strategy, it is time to consider doing things differently for improving maternal well-being.