16 Nov 2020: UPSC Exam Comprehensive News Analysis

E. Editorials

Category: INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS

1. Suu Kyi again

Context:

While full results of the Myanmar general elections are yet to be announced, the Election Commission has stated that Daw Aung San Suu Kyi’s party National League for Democracy has won at least 346 of the 476 elected seats in Parliament (322 seats are needed to stay in power).

Challenges facing Myanmar:

• One of the country’s gravest challenges is in the western state of Rakhine, where over seven lakh ethnic Rohingya Muslims fled to neighbouring Bangladesh in 2017 following a military crackdown (for ethnic cleansing).
• Myanmar is facing charges of genocide at the Hague, which it denies, saying the campaign was legitimately targeting insurgents who attacked police posts.
• Hundreds of thousands of Rohingya are confined to camps and villages where the vast majority are denied citizenship and freedom of movement.
• Rakhine is also engulfed in a worsening civil conflict between government troops and the Arakan Army, an armed group that recruits mostly from the majority Buddhist Rakhine population.
• When Ms. Suu Kyi’s NLD came to power after winning Myanmar’s first truly contested election in 2015, hopes were high that the pro-democracy icon would spearhead the transition into a full democracy.
• Suu Kyi, who is barred from becoming the President by the military-era Constitution, took the levers of power as the State Counsellor in 2015. (By virtue of having married a foreign national, she is barred from becoming President).
  • Instead of confronting the Generals or pushing to end the military’s outsized influence, she is appeared to have bought peace with them.
  • Her public defence of the Generals’ handling of the operations in Rakhine State that led to the exodus of at least 740,000 Rohingya Muslims dented her image as a pro-democracy fighter and raised questions about her commitment to the country’s transition.

Concerns:

• Supporters of Ms. Suu Kyi highlight the complexities of Myanmar’s power dynamics.
  • It is said that even though the military allowed free elections, it made sure that its interests were preserved.
  • A bloc of seats in Parliament is reserved for soldiers, which would prevent any amendment to the Constitution.
  • The military would control three key government ministries, including the Defence Ministry.
  • The military also continued its campaigns against the country’s ethnic minority rebel groups despite her promise to reach out to them.
• This suggests that, despite the elections, the power struggle between the popular civilian leadership and the powerful military establishment is an ongoing reality.
• While Ms. Suu Kyi avoided confronting the Generals, she remained a force between the military and the people.

India-Myanmar Relations:

• India has kept cordial relations with both Suu Kyi and the Myanmar Army.
• While Buddhism provides a cultural bond, the Indian government has made common cause with the Myanmar government on the Rohingya issue.
• However, India does not have the deep pockets for Chinese-style infrastructure projects.
  • India is working on two key infrastructure projects in Myanmar —a trilateral highway between India-Myanmar and Thailand, and the Kaladan Multi Modal Transit project that aims to connect mainland India to the landlocked Northeastern states through Myanmar. Read more on the India – Myanmar – Thailand Trilateral Highway.
  • A port at Sittwe and an inland waterway are part of this project.

Way forward:

• When Ms. Suu Kyi begins her second term with another decisive victory, she would face tough questions again.
• As the elected ruler, she will also have to address allegations of genocide and walk her talk of making peace with the ethnic minority groups.
• With her mandate, she must be more assertive against the military in Myanmar’s transition.

Category: POLITY AND GOVERNANCE

1. A recipe to tear down trade unions

Context:

The article analyses how the new labour laws are an attack on workers’ ability to safeguard their rights.

Background:

• Labour law reform has been on the table since 1991 as every government’s favourite solution for economic growth. Yet, there was no consensus between governments, political parties, workers and their trade unions, and employers, on what this meant.
• In 2019, the Central Government introduced four bills on labour codes to consolidate 29 central laws.
• While the Wages Code was passed in 2019, the other three bills were referred to a Standing Committee on Labour. As per the recommendations of the Committee, the government replaced these bills with new ones in September 2020, and these were passed in the same month.
• The government, in 2020 passed three Bills (Labour codes) to amalgamate laws on social security, occupational safety and health and industrial relations.

Read more on this topic covered in 20^th September 2020 and 26^th September 2020 Comprehensive News Analysis.

Criticisms:

• Concerns are being raised that the Central government has actively excluded trade unions from pre-legislative consultations on drafting the new labour codes, repealing all existing labour laws and replacing them with four new labour codes.
• It is opined that they dilute workers’ rights in favour of employers’ rights, and together undermine the very idea of workers’ right to association and collective action.

Long History of Trade Unions:

• Trade unions first emerged in the 19th century as self-managed organisations of workers in the face of extreme exploitation.
  • They provided, and continue to provide, a collective voice to working people against employers’ exploitative, unfair and often illegal practices.
  • It is through trade unions that workers have been able to win better wages, fairer employment conditions, and safe and secure workplaces.
  • It also provided members (workers) and elected officers of a union a degree of immunity, including against the law on criminal conspiracy.
  • The law recognised that actions based on collective decisions by workers were legal and did not constitute a criminal conspiracy.
• In India, workers won the legal right to form trade unions under the colonial rule in 1926, when the Trade Union Act (TUA) was adopted.
  • The law provided a mechanism for the registration of trade unions, from which they derived their rights, and a framework governing their functioning.
  • The TUA also bound workers’ actions within a legal framework by providing for deregistration if a trade union “contravened any provisions of the Act”.
• The creation of the Industrial Relations Code (IRC), has a very sinister outcome for workers’ right to association.
  • The code widens the grounds under which a trade union may be deregistered.
  • Under the TUA, deregistration was limited to the internal functioning of a union — in case a union violated the financial rules set down under the law or its own constitution.
  • The Standing Orders Act and the Industrial Disputes Act had nothing to do with the internal functioning, and, therefore, with the existence of a trade union.

Vague definitions:

• Under the new IRC, a trade union can be deregistered for contravention of unspecified provisions of the code.
  • The possibility of deregistering a trade union in this unspecified manner shifts the balance completely in favour of employers, who continue to enjoy protection under the Companies Act.
  • This violates the principles of equality before the law and of natural justice.
• When a trade union is deregistered, it can no longer represent its members (the workers) before the dispute resolution machinery or in court and any collective decision taken by its members and elected officers can be treated as illegal.
• The new code would deter collective action by workers’ unions.

Extra-legal formations:

• With the threat of deregistration ever-present, workers and their unions will be pushed to create extra-legal formations like ‘struggle committees’ and ‘workers’ fronts, that existed before the TUA, in order to advance their demands against unreasonable employers.
• This would have two outcomes:
  • It will push employment dispute resolution outside the legal framework.
  • It would lead to criminalising working-class dissent, since workers’ agitations will have to take place through extra-legal formations.

Conclusion:

Once a trade union is deregistered or is effectively silenced by a constant and amorphous threat of deregistration, workers effectively lose their fundamental right to freedom of association. This has grave implications for the working class’s ability to defend its rights.