19 Nov 2020: UPSC Exam Comprehensive News Analysis

E. Editorials

Category: SOCIAL JUSTICE

1. Reinventing cities

Context

• Post COVID-19, Prime Minister (PM) Narendra Modi has called for changes in urban planning to make our cities more liveable and sustainable, with better amenities.
• He emphasized resetting the mindset, processes and practices for safe urban living, and acknowledged that governments actually do little for the working millions.

Liveable Cities

• According to the PM, liveable meant having better housing, better work environment and short and efficient travel facilities.

Need for change

• In the first hundred days of the pandemic, the top 10 cities affected worldwide accounted for 15% of the total cases.
• In the Indian context, cities like Mumbai, Delhi, Bengaluru and Chennai, became the epicenters of the disease.
  • It was due to the density of the population infections erupted, and this eventually spread to smaller towns as well due to reverse migration from the cities.
• Therefore the PM is looking at developing a strategy beyond the current pandemic.

Affordable Housing

• Mumbai is estimated to have added only 5% of rental housing in New Residential Construction (1961-2000), and that too led by private funding.
• The abject housing conditions of migrant labourers in major cities in India has come under scrutiny during the pandemic, with virus hotspots in slums.
• Creating well-designed good affordable housing to tackle inequality is one way governments can help economies recover from the crisis.
  • The post-COVID-19 era, therefore, presents an opportunity to make schemes such as the Centre’s Affordable Rental Housing Complexes deliver at scale, focusing on new good houses built by the state — on the lines of the post-war reconstruction in Europe, Japan and South Korea.

Way forward

• The Ministry of Housing, which until now has focused on smart cities, can work with State Governments to collect the data on housing requirements to meet the demand and supply in each city.
• Laws on air pollution, municipal solid waste management and water quality should be implemented in its true spirit.
• Past scourges such as cholera, the plague and the global flu pandemic a century ago led to change in waste handling, social housing and health care. It is now important that governments show the political will to reinvent the cities.

Category: ECONOMY

1. The need for ‘maximum government’

Context

• The article speaks about expanding the role of the Government to soften the economic impact of Coronavirus and to revive growth in the economy.

Issues with the Economic Revival

• The Central Government, as part of relief measures under Atmanirbhar, provided incentives to the business sector with an assumption that they would make investments to revive the economy.
  • But corporate investments depend on two parameters, one is sales, the other is credit from the institutions. Both parameters are tied to each other.
  • Only when the existing stocks are sold and profits are made, companies would want to make investments in the market. Lack of profits with an increase in credit support will not entice the corporates.
  • This is in general true for both big businesses as well as MSMEs. However detailed the credit package may be, in times of deep economic crises, they will not deliver as they will be wary of taking more loans.
• The banking sector is offering loans at a lower rate of interest to induce the household sector.
  • But when there is a cloud of doubt over future incomes (or dwindling current income) and if people are not sure of a regular salary in the immediate (or even distant) future which affects their capacity to pay EMIs on these loans, why would they take the risk of taking a loan?
• Even if we assume that there are takers for these loans, if the banks are burdened with bad loans as a result of past decisions, they might refuse to pass on the fall in the policy rate to the consumers in order to increase their margins to cover for the past losses, in which case the very premise of a fall in the cost of loans is violated.

Such credit lines, guarantees or the low cost of loans, therefore, hardly have an effect on reviving demand in the economy.

Way forward

• FRBM should be kept in abeyance, both for the Centre and the States, and the government should inject a fiscal stimulus of at least ₹10 lakh crore and borrow to finance it or, if required, monetize the deficit.
  • The stimulus can include among other things, free ration and other essentials like oil, soap and cooking gas for a period of six months;
  • Cash transfer till employment opportunities are back; and
  • An urban employment guarantee law.
• It is now the right time to make massive investments in the underfunded health sector by building a robust public health infrastructure on the principle of public provisioning instead of the insurance route which has failed in the U.S.
• The crisis provides us a chance to make laws with respect to climate change both at the national and international levels. There cannot be a better time than this for a green deal, which addresses both the demand and supply side of emissions.
  • A comprehensive green deal can be planned, partly financed by the government and partly by carbon tax, which not only changes the energy mix of the economy but also makes the poor and the marginalised a part of a sustainable development process.

Conclusion

• The COVID crisis has provided us with an opportunity to rethink our health, economic and climate policies.
• Therefore, we can choose to act now to prevent future harm and to create a better world for this and future generations.

Category: POLITY

1. Amid a judicial slide, a flicker of hope on rights- Bail applications

General Criminal Procedure

• Sections 436-439 of the Criminal Procedure Code (CrPC) has provisions for bail for various offences.

Factors to be considered in bail application as decided in State of U.P. through CBI vs. Amarmani Tripathi, (2005):

• whether there is any prima facie or reasonable ground to believe that the accused had committed the offence;
• nature and gravity of the charge;
• severity of the punishment in the event of conviction;
• danger of the accused absconding or fleeing, if released on bail;
• character, behaviour, means, position and standing of the accused;
• likelihood of the offence being repeated; reasonable apprehension of the witnesses being tampered with;
• danger of justice being thwarted by grant of bail.

Read more on Bail.

Section 4(2) CrPC

• It gives power to special laws apart from the Indian Penal Code (IPC) to lay down separate procedures.
• Various statutes dealing with a special set of crimes have thus crafted distinct provisions for bail and a few of them have made a grant of bail more stringent than CrPC.

Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act (UAPA)

• Special statutes have additional restrictions apart from these eight conditions. The criteria for bail under UAPA therefore differ.

Background

• Zahoor Ahmad Shah Watali was alleged to have been involved in unlawful acts and terror funding.
• He was accused of transferring funds received from Lashkar-e-Taiba chief Hafiz Saeed, the Pakistan High Commission in New Delhi, Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence, among others, to Hurriyat leaders.
• The NIA claimed Watali helped them wage war against the government of India by repeated attacks on security forces and government establishments.

National Investigation Agency (NIA) vs Zahoor Ahmad Shah Watali

• The Supreme Court on the interpretation of UAPA said the National Investigation Agency has gathered enough evidence to believe that the accusations against Watali are prima facie true.
• The Court has ruled that an accused must remain in custody throughout the period of a trial, even if the evidence against the person is eventually proven inadmissible (and the accused is acquitted).
• The SC under the UAPA said that the burden of proving whether the allegations made in the first information report is correct or not rests on the accused and he has to refute the allegations if bail has to be granted to the accused.
• The Supreme Court’s interpretation was on the UAPA alone, and not on general criminal procedure.

Concerns

• Broad offences included under the UAPA and difficult bail conditions mean individuals can be detained indefinitely even without the conviction of the accused.
• Even if the person is eventually acquitted of the charges, the delays in conducting judicial proceedings mean the case may only get heard several years after their arrest – failure to get bail means they have to spend the entire time in jail.
• It has left a glaring loophole for rampant abuse by the government, police and prosecution alike.

Conclusion

• Therefore, the bail provision under UAPA is distinct. While other statutes require recording of an opinion by the court that there are reasonable grounds for believing that the accused is “not guilty” of the alleged offence, UAPA requires recording of an opinion by the court deciding bail that there are reasonable grounds for believing that the accusation against such person is “prima facie” true.