07 June 2021: UPSC Exam Comprehensive News Analysis

E. Editorials

Category: SOCIAL ISSUES

1. Recognising sex work as work

The article talks about the need to grant basic labour rights to adults who earn by providing sexual services and consider the decriminalisation of sex work.

Context:

• Sex workers are among those communities that have been badly affected during the pandemic.
• As sex work is not recognised as “legitimate work”, sex workers have not been able to yield benefits from the government’s relief programmes.

Details:

• In India, sex work is governed by the Immoral Traffic (Prevention) Act.
• The Suppression of Immoral Traffic in Women and Children Act was enacted in 1956.
• After having made a few amendments to the act, it was changed to the Immoral Traffic (Prevention) Act.
• The legislation penalises acts such as keeping a brothel, soliciting in a public place, living off the earnings of sex work and living with or habitually being in the company of a sex worker.

Issue:

• This Act represents the old-fashioned and regressive view that sex work is morally wrong and that the people involved in it, especially women, never consent to it voluntarily.
• In the popular depiction, entry into sex work is involuntary and through deception. It is believed that these women need to be rescued and rehabilitated, sometimes even without their consent.
  • While in certain cases involving minor girls the argument is true, for many consenting adult sex workers, it has been a problem.
  • It carries prejudice that women who practise sex work are morally devious.
• Besides criminalising sex work, the act has pushed sex work underground thereby leaving sex workers more prone to violence, discrimination and harassment. 
• It deprives the sex workers of the powers to fight against the traffickers and has made them more susceptible to be harassed by state officials.
• A major argument is that the Act denies an individual their right over their bodies and imposes the will of the state over adults articulating their life choices.

Way Forward:

• Evidence shows that many women choose to remain in sex work despite opportunities to leave after rehabilitation by the government or non-governmental organisations.
• The Justice Verma Commission had also acknowledged the distinction between women who are trafficked for commercial sexual exploitation and adult, consenting women who are in sex work of their own will.
• The judiciary is moving in the direction of recognising sex workers’ right to livelihood.
  • The Supreme Court, in Budhadev Karmaskar v. State of West Bengal (2011), opined that sex workers have a right to dignity.
• Sex work must be recognised as work.
• Adult men, women and transgender persons in sex work have the right to earn by providing sexual services.
• They must be allowed to live with dignity; and remain free from violence, exploitation, stigma and discrimination.
• The government must take a re-look at the existing legislation and do away with the ‘victim-rescue-rehabilitation’ narrative.
• COVID-19 has provided more reasons to consider the decriminalisation of sex work and a guaranteed set of labour rights which are among the long-pending demands of sex workers in India.

Category: HISTORY

1. Embedded in Ambedkar’s historiography

The article talks about the embrace of Buddhism by Dr. B. R. Ambedkar.

The Light of Asia:

• The Light of Asia by Sir Edwin Arnold is a poem on the life and teachings of the Buddha and was published in London in 1879.
• This book contributed greatly to the international community’s knowledge of Buddhism.
• It is also known to have played an important role in India’s cultural awakening and social transformation.
• It has had an influence on many of India’s leaders such as Swami Vivekananda, Mahatma Gandhi, Jawaharlal Nehru and Dr. B.R. Ambedkar among others.

Details:

• Amongst the biggest ever events in twentieth-century Indian history was the conversion of Dr Ambedkar to Buddhism.
• Dr Ambedkar had had a long engagement with Buddha and Buddhism.
• Sir Arnold awoke Kosambi and Kosambi had a huge impact on Ambedkar.
  • Dharmanand Kosambi had discovered Buddhism after reading ‘The Light of Asia’ in 1899 and become a Buddhist monk and the first modern Indian scholar of Pali.
• After publishing a series of books and articles arguing that Buddhism was the only way for the Untouchables to gain equality, Ambedkar publicly converted on 14 October 1956, at Deekshabhoomi in Nagpur, over 20 years after he declared his intent to convert.
• Around 380,000 of his followers converted to Buddhism at the same ceremony.
• Ambedkar asked Dalits not to get entangled in the existing branches of Buddhism (Theravada, Mahayana and Vajrayana).
• He called his version Navayana or ‘Neo-Buddhism’.
• On converting to Buddhism, Ambedkar made 22 vows and asked his supporters to do the same. The vows demonstrate the social movement aspect of Navayana Buddhism, and its core deviation from earlier sects of Buddhism.
• Unfortunately, Ambedkar did not live long after his conversion, to practise Buddhism. He passed away just two months after his official conversion.
• Dr Ambedkar is recognised as the “modern Buddha of his age”. The title was given by Mahant Veer Chandramani, the great Buddhist monk who initiated Babasaheb to Buddhism.

Category: HEALTH

1. The red flags on the trail of the virus

The article talks about the need for closer scrutiny with respect to China’s actions and the Wuhan lab connection to the origin of the SARS-CoV-2 virus.

Context:

Calls to investigate the origin of the COVID-19 pandemic have resurfaced.

Read more on this issue covered in the Editorial ‘Probing the origins of the SARS-CoV-2 virus‘ covered on May 30th, 2021 CNA.

Details:

• China avoided the scrutiny of the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV) by promoting the narrative that the virus spread from a wet market (seafood and animal market) in Wuhan.
• The lab-leak proposition was discredited as a conspiracy theory and the natural spread narrative was not questioned as the alternative was unimaginable.
• An article in the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists has laid out a strong case for an investigation into the event.
• It has pointed towards a collusive cover-up of the possible leak of the novel coronavirus from the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV).
• World Health Organization (WHO) findings are tainted, as Daszak, a self-declared partisan of the natural occurrence theory and with a personal financial stake in the WIV experimentation, was included in the inquiry team.

Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV):

• The WIV operates a Biosafety level-4 (BSL-4) facility.
• Its deficient safety had been flagged by U.S. inspectors, but there is no record of any remedial action.
• In 2019, in an interview, it was revealed that after six years of research, over 100 new SARS-related coronaviruses, some of which were introduced into human cells at WIV, caused SARS disease in humanised mice and were untreatable.
• The research carried out involved the creation of novel, life-threatening and pandemic-creating viruses.
• A former Israeli intelligence official Dany Shoham, has linked the WIV to China’s biological weapons programme.

The U.S. link:

• Earlier, it was made public that the coronavirus-related research in the WIV was funded by American money. 
• It is believed that the American funds were made available to a Chinese laboratory to conduct sensitive research because it was less expensive and dangerous to carry out the experiments in China. 
• Besides, U.S. funding ensured it would have access to the experiments conducted at the WIV.

China’s Reaction:

• It has covered up facts and impeded the investigation.
• Countries demanding greater transparency and accountability have been either denounced or punished by China.
• China’s reactions only fuel the suspicion that China has something to hide.

Major concerns:

• With advances in biotechnology, it is possible to genetically engineer existing pathogens to make them more lethal and difficult to treat.
• Other troubling features of such genetically engineered pathogens could be higher mortality and ethnic specificity.
• A possible antidote or vaccine would only be accessible to those conducting such research.
• It is evident that the research at the WIV i.e bioengineering more lethal coronavirus variants has crossed ethical boundaries.
• The 1972 Biological and Toxin Weapons Convention (BWC) has no systems to verify compliance with its prohibitions, nor any enforcement mechanisms to penalise infringement of its provisions.
• These shortcomings have not been addressed thus compromising on biosecurity and wilful breaches of the Convention.

Way Forward:

• While it is difficult to distinguish between a naturally occurring event, an accidental release of a genetically modified pathogen, or its deliberate use, it is the responsibility of the institution and the country where the first outbreak occurred to establish the facts.
• The coronavirus research conducted in the WIV for years is an example of science that has gone out of control, without ethical restraints or any code of conduct for the scientists.
• Such action threatens the very existence of humankind. Therefore, China’s role requires closer scrutiny.