01 Oct 2020: UPSC Exam Comprehensive News Analysis

B. GS 2 Related

Category: POLITY AND GOVERNANCE

1. Crimes against Scheduled Tribes saw 26% rise in 2019: NCRB report

Context:

Annual Crime in India report 2019 has been published by the National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB).

Findings:

Crimes against SCs and STs:

• Crimes against members of the Scheduled Castes (SCs) and the Scheduled Tribes (STs) saw an increase of over 7% and 26% in 2019 compared with the 2018 figures.
• It showed an increase of 1.6% in the registration of cases over 2018.
• Uttar Pradesh recorded the highest number of crimes against the SCs in 2019, followed by Rajasthan and Bihar.
• In the number of cases of rape of women belonging to the SCs, Rajasthan topped the list followed by Uttar Pradesh and Madhya Pradesh.
• Madhya Pradesh recorded the highest number of cases against the STs, followed by Rajasthan and Odisha.
• The highest number of incidents of rape of tribal women was registered in Madhya Pradesh.

Crime against women:

• From 2018, the rate of crime against women has risen by 7.3%.
• India recorded an average of 87 rape cases every day in 2019.
• Assam reported the highest rate of crimes against women.
• Uttar Pradesh also had the highest number of crimes against girl children under the POCSO Act, followed by Maharashtra and Madhya Pradesh.

Murder and kidnapping cases:

• Murder cases across India in 2019 reported a slight dip – 0.3% – from the previous year.
• Kidnapping cases also reported a decline of 0.7% in 2019.

Note:

Due to the non-receipt of data from West Bengal for 2019, the 2018 data has been used to arrive at national and city-wise figures.

E. Editorials

Category: INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS

1. Time to shift focus to the maritime sphere

The editorial talks about the need for India to shift its focus from continental strategies to the maritime sphere as its continental grand strategy is facing an existential crisis today.

State of India’s continental strategy

• India is a country that is traditionally obsessed with a continental approach to war and peace.
• However, India might have reached a dead-end in terms of its grand strategic plans in the continental space.

China and Pakistan:

• Given that reconciliation with its key adversaries (China and Pakistan) is unlikely and pursuing its ambitious territorial claims on the ground is almost impossible, India’s continental options seem restricted to holding operations to prevent further territorial loss.
• China has begun to push the boundaries with India. The peaceful India-China Line of Actual Control in the northeast is now a thing of the past.
• In the northwest, the Pakistan front has also been heating up. Ceasefire violations on the Line of Control (LoC) have spiked since last year as has the infiltration of terrorists across the LoC. The India-Pakistan contestation over Kashmir has become fiercer.
• While the geopolitical collusion between Pakistan and China to contain and pressure India from both sides is not a new phenomenon, the intensity of the China-Pakistan containment strategy against India at the moment is unprecedented.
• The extent and intent behind this collusion will determine the future of the high stakes game in the Himalayas for a long time to come.

Changes in Afghanistan:

• The ongoing withdrawal of the United States from Afghanistan and the consequent reduction of India’s influence in Afghanistan, the return of the Taliban, with whom India has very little contact, could turn the geopolitical tide against India.
• Also, the Taliban is no more an outcast, and with the withdrawal of forces of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization from Afghanistan, the geopolitical interests of Pakistan, China and Russia would broadly converge in the region.
• The change of the geopolitical landscape in Afghanistan and the frictions in Iran-India relations will further dampen India’s ‘Mission Central Asia’.

In sum, this could signal the end of the road for India’s north-eastern and north-western geopolitical forays.

Way forward:

India needs to find a way out of this situation. One key part of the solution is to creatively deal with its continental dilemmas.

1) Deal with Pakistan:

• Pressure from the Pakistan front could be eased by addressing the Kashmir question with Islamabad.
• Creating a modicum of normalcy on the LoC by activating existing mechanisms such as the Director-General of Military Operations (DGMO) hotline is another way to deal with the Pakistan front.

2) Maritime Strategy:

• Excessive focus on the continental sphere since Independence has not yielded great returns in terms of secure borders, healthy relations with its neighbours or deterrence stability.
• India must shift its almost exclusive focus from the continental sphere to the maritime sphere.
• While India seems stuck between Pakistan and China from a continental perspective, the country is located right at the centre of the Indo-Pacific geopolitical imagination, in the midst of the oceanic space spanning from the shores of Africa to that of the Americas.
• India has already begun to think in this direction with the Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) establishing a new division to deal with the Indo-Pacific in April 2019.
• There is a need to fast-track the work in this direction to keep pace with the emerging realities and to make use of new opportunities.

Why should India focus on its Maritime Strategy?

• There are several reasons why a maritime grand strategy would work to India’s advantage while still struggling with a continental dilemma.
• Unlike in the continental sphere where India seems to be hemmed in by China-Pakistan collusion, the maritime sphere is wide open to India to undertake coalition building, rule setting, and other forms of strategic exploration.

Focus on Indo-Pacific:

• While there is little any country can do to help India in its continental contestations, there is a growing great power interest in the maritime sphere, especially with the arrival of the concept of ‘Indo-Pacific’.
  • Great powers remain ever more interested in the maritime sphere.
  • The interest has grown substantially since the term Indo-Pacific was coined.
  • Germany recently released its Indo-Pacific guidelines following the example of France which brought out its Indo-Pacific strategy.
• New Delhi must use its Indo-Pacific engagements to dissuade Beijing from salami-slicing Indian territory in the high Himalayas.
• It would provide India a unique opportunity to enhance its influence and potentially checkmate the Chinese ambitions in the region.
• Also, maritime space is a lot more important to China than engaging in opportunistic land grab attempts, owing to massive Chinese trade that happens via the oceanic routes and the complex geopolitics around the maritime chokepoints which can potentially disrupt that trade.
• A revitalised Indian maritime grand strategy may or may not affect China’s activities in the Himalayas but will certainly provide India a lot more space for manoeuvre in the region.
• India must ideate on the current and future maritime challenges, consolidate its military and non-military tools, engage its strategic partners, and publish a comprehensive vision document on the Indo-Pacific.
• India must also consider appointing a special envoy for Indo-Pacific affairs.

Conclusion:

• It is high time New Delhi shifted its almost exclusive focus from the continental space to the maritime space, stitching together a maritime grand strategy.
• The MEA’s Indo-Pacific Division is a good beginning.
• India’s decision in 2019 to elevate the Quad meetings among India, Japan, the United States and Australia to the ministerial level is also a step in the right direction.

Category: POLITY AND GOVERNANCE

1. Is one language enough?

The example of Indonesia:

• Hundreds of languages were spoken across thousands of islands that now comprise the modern nations of Indonesia, Malaysia and Singapore.
• Malay had evolved due to the need in maritime Southeast Asia for a common language for trade and other exchanges.
• While negotiating independence from Dutch colonial rule, Indonesian nationalists decided that a reformed version of Malay (renamed Bahasa Indonesia) would become the official language.
• With Bahasa, Indonesia aimed to bring more than 300 ethnic groups together with no one ethnic group, including the Javanese, overshadowing the rest.
• From the outset of its independence, Indonesia recognised the importance of avoiding the inequality that was likely to occur by imposing the language of one dominant ethnic group over others.

Debates in the Constituent Assembly:

• Unlike Indonesia, the issue of adopting a national language could not be resolved when the Constituent Assembly began drafting India’s Constitution.
• The adoption of a national language, the language in which the Constitution was to be written, and the language in which the proceedings of the Constituent Assembly were to be conducted were the main questions debated.
• While the representatives of the Hindi-speaking provinces argued for adopting Hindi as the sole national language, members from the southern part of the country opposed this.

Official Languages Act 1963:

• There was widespread resistance to the imposition of Hindi on non-native speakers, especially in Tamil Nadu.
• This led to the passage of the Official Languages Act of 1963, which provided for the continued use of English for all official purposes.
• Hindi became the sole working language of the Union government by 1965 with the State governments free to function in the language of their choice.
• Meanwhile, the constitutional directive for the Union government to encourage the spread of Hindi was retained within Central government entities in non-Hindi-speaking States.

Loss of language and a way of life:

• The Census points to the fact that while Hindi is the fastest growing language, the number of speakers of other languages has dropped.
• According to the 2001 Census, India has 30 languages that are spoken by more than a million people each.
• The Constitution lists 22 languages and protects them in the Eighth Schedule.
• Many languages are kept out of this schedule even if they deserve to be included.
• Eg: Tulu, which is spoken by over 1.8 million people and has inscriptions dating back to the 14th and 15th centuries.
• Hindi, a much younger Indo-Aryan language, has been gaining prominence since before independence.
  • Old Hindi assimilated words from Persian.
  • With the arrival of Islamic administrative rule in north India, it became Hindustani.
  • The growing importance of Hindustani in colonial India and the association of Urdu with Muslims prompted Hindus in north India to develop a Sanskritised version, leading to the formation of a modern standard Hindi a century later.
  • It was based on the vernacular of Delhi and the surrounding region and came to replace prestige dialects such as Awadhi, Maithili and Braj.
  • The literary value of these dialects has diminished in due course.

Conclusion:

• When a refined language loses its status in literary and daily interactions, the way of life associated with it also vanishes.
• If other well-evolved or endangered and indigenous languages are not protected and promoted, our future generations may fail to understand their real roots and culture.
• While discussing Hindi and its use, there is a need to focus on the merit of other Indian languages.
• Instead of focusing on one national language, emphasis must be on learning a language beyond one’s mother tongue and getting to know a different way of life.

Q1. Which of the following could be the reason/s for Current Account Deficit?

Q2. Consider the following statements with respect to the Environment Pollution Control 
Authority (EPCA):

Q3. Which of the following have been given the Geographical Indication Tag?

Q4. Consider the following statements with respect to BrahMos:

I. UPSC Mains Practice Questions

1. With India’s excessive focus on the continental sphere since Independence not having yielded great returns, the time has come for a shift in its strategic approach to the maritime sphere. Evaluate. (15 Marks, 250 Words) (GS 2 International Relations).
2. What are the issues associated with prioritising a single language in multi-lingual India? Discuss the need for preserving India’s linguistic diversity. (15 Marks, 250 Words) (GS 2 Polity and Governance).

Read the previous CNA here.