09 Sep 2020: UPSC Exam Comprehensive News Analysis

B. GS 2 Related

Category: EDUCATION

1. NSO report shows stark digital divide affects education

Context:

National Statistical Organisation (NSO) has released the findings of the survey on household social consumption related to education, as part of the NSO’s 75th round, conducted from July 2017 to June 2018.

Details:

• The report shows just how stark the digital divide is, across States, cities and villages, and income groups.
• Across India, only one in 10 households have a computer — whether a desktop, laptop or tablet.
• However, almost a quarter of all homes have Internet facilities, accessed via a fixed or mobile network using any device, including smartphones.
  • Most of these Internet-enabled homes are located in cities, where 42% have Internet access.
  • In rural India, however, only 15% are connected to the Internet.
  • The national capital has the highest Internet access, with 55% of homes having such facilities.
  • Himachal Pradesh and Kerala are the only other states where more than half of all households have Internet.
  • Odisha has the least Internet-enabled homes.

E. Editorials

Category: INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS

1. What is in a NAM and India’s alignment

Context:

• India’s External Affairs Minister, S. Jaishankar, has stated recently that non-alignment as a foreign policy was a concept of relevance in a specific era and a particular context (Cold War era), though the independence of action enshrined in it remains a factor of continuity in India’s foreign policy.
• This statement seems to strengthen the growing perception that India has abandoned the policy of non-alignment.

Background:

Non-alignment policy:

• Non-alignment policy gained traction during the Cold War era. It meant not seeking to formally align with or against the two politico-military blocs led by the United States or the Soviet Union. It meant remaining independent or neutral and retaining autonomy of policy for the country.

Non-alignment movement:

• The Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) is an international organization based on the Non-alignment policy.
• The Non-Aligned Movement was established in 1961 in Belgrade, mainly based on the initiative of the Indian Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru, Ghanaian President Kwame Nkrumah, Indonesian President Sukarno, Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser and Yugoslav President Josip Broz Tito.
• The Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) provided a platform for newly independent developing nations to join together to protect their autonomy. The members united around NAM’s flagship campaigns for de-colonisation, universal nuclear disarmament and against apartheid.

Also read: Non-Aligned Movement (NAM)

Dynamics of foreign policy:

Alliance system of the cold war era:

• During the Cold War, the countries in an alliance had ideological convergence and also faced a common military threat. With the disintegration of the USSR and the end of the Cold War, the international options of alliance partners widened.
• Notably, the strategic interests of former alliance partners are no longer congruent.
  • The growing differences between the EU and the U.S. and the divergences within the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) are a case in point.

The decreasing influence of NAM:

• The disintegration of the Soviet Union in the 1990s, universal decolonization and the end of the apartheid regime in South Africa has resulted in the NAM countries diversifying their network of relationships across the erstwhile east-west divide and the non-alignment policy losing its relevance.

Details:

• The author of the article, P.S. Raghavan, a former diplomat and the Chairman of the National Security Advisory Board analyzes the current situation and discusses India’s options in the dynamic international relations realm.

India’s geo-strategic objectives:

• Two significant aspects of India’s foreign policy has been to secure its economic and security interests in the Indo-Pacific space and also to ensure strategic influence and security along the continental landmass to its north and west.
  • As part of its Indo-Pacific outreach, India has adopted the Act East policy of bilateral and multilateral engagements in Southeast Asia and East Asia and the Pacific.
  • India has been trying to establish connectivity and cooperation with Afghanistan and Central Asia.

India’s geo-strategic challenges:

• India’s primacy in the Indian Ocean is being challenged by the growing presence of the Chinese navy in the Indian Ocean region and China’s deepening relations with the Indian Ocean littoral countries.
• Given that India shares its northern and western border with two hostile and nuclear-armed neighbours, India has not been able to establish its influence in the continental landmass. India has been busy addressing the security aspects along its borders. This has also limited India’s access to Central Asian economies.
• The growing cooperation between Pakistan and China also raises the threat of a two-front war for India.
• China has been making inroads into India’s neighbouring countries like Nepal, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka. Chinese influence has been growing at the cost of India’s strategic depth in these countries.

Aligning with the U.S.:

• In the wake of the border tensions with China along the LAC and China’s increasing assertiveness, there have been calls for India’s foreign policy to make a decisive shift towards the United States to counter China.

Convergence:

• Shared India-U.S. interests in dealing with the challenge from China in the maritime domain have been a strategic underpinning of the bilateral partnership between India and the U.S. since the early 2000s.
• The trade war between the U.S. and China and the deteriorating ties between the two superpower nations have brought India and the U.S. on a common platform to counter Chinese assertiveness.

Challenges:

• In the immediate-term, Indian and U.S. perspectives are less convergent in India’s continental neighbourhood.
  • While India is keen on engagement with Iran and Russia to help increase its connectivity in the region, the U.S. on account of its deteriorating ties with Iran and Russia has pressed on India to reduce its interactions and dependency on these nations.

The way forward for India:

• Presently as reiterated by the current External Affairs Minister, the Indian foreign policy vis-a-vis its international relationships should be driven primarily by the objective to advance prosperity and influence of India.
• Given that China poses the single largest threat to India in the current circumstances, India’s options should be guided by the intent to neutralize this threat posed by the Chinese.

Partnership with the U.S. based on mutual interests:

• Given the current circumstances, it might seem that a decisive shift in the form of increased convergence with the U.S. is a viable option for India.
• India should see its ties with the U.S. as a joint venture and not as an alliance. The two countries should pursue shared objectives for mutual benefit and accept the differences of perspectives and try to address them.
  • The U.S. should acknowledge that India’s development of trade routes through Iran would also serve its strategic interest of finding routes to Afghanistan and Central Asia, bypassing Pakistan and Russia, respectively.
  • As the U.S. confronts the challenge to its dominance from China, the classical balance of power considerations would dictate a modicum of accommodation with Russia.
• Despite the growing partnership between India and the U.S., the Indian administration has repeatedly clarified that the rejection of non-alignment does not mean alignment and the government has reiterated that India will not join an alliance system.

The Russia factor:

• While partnering with the U.S., India must also consider further broad basing its relations with Russia beyond the traditional defence and energy pillars. India should build a strong relationship with Russia to try to exploit Russia’s reluctance to be a junior partner of China.

For more information on this topic, refer to:

CNA dated Aug 20, 2020: China-Russia ties as a major determinant

Stitching together an alliance of like-minded countries:

• The countries in the Asia-Pacific region are having to face an assertive China in the South China Sea. These countries are reluctant to define China as a strategic adversary, because of their economic engagement with it and the huge military asymmetry.
• Deepening India’s engagement with such countries might play to India’s advantage.

For related information, refer to:

CNA dated July 22, 2020: The main planks in a counter-China policy

CNA dated Aug 11, 2020: Isolating China, as proposition and the reality

Category: POLITY AND GOVERNANCE

1. A case for down-to-earth governance

Context:

• The article discusses the challenges in a democratic form of governance and suggests ways to strengthen the democratic governance structure in India.

Challenges in representative democracies:

Money as a factor in elections:

• Around the world, electoral democracies are affected by the issue of funding political parties and elections.
• Money has become an important factor deciding the winnability of the candidates. Money is required to win elections legitimately, even when people are not bribed to vote. Uninterrupted visibility and communication with citizens require advertisements as well as teams of professionals for managing social media. This has increased the cost of elections.
• The race to raise more money for even legitimate electioneering purposes can corrupt the process of funding parties and elections. This happens to be the root cause of corruption in politics and government.

Quality of elected representatives:

• Despite having been elected based on the principle of universal adult franchise and enjoying popular mandate, the quality of the elected representatives is a cause of concern.
  • There are growing indications of increasing criminalization of politics.
  • Debates within India’s Parliament, in which all members have been elected by the world’s most impressive election machinery, hardly inspire citizens’ confidence in their representatives’ ability to govern the country.

Process flaws:

• There is an inherent flaw in the design of the process for electing representatives.
  • Representatives of the people are chosen by smaller electorates within geographical constituencies. However, when they meet together in the national assembly, they are expected to govern the whole country and consider what is best for the whole country.
  • Constituency favouring leads to challenges for reaching optimal solutions.
  • However, if the people who elected them find they are not protecting local interests, they will not be elected again.
• Political parties in electoral democracies provide a solution to the problem of creating an alignment of views among representatives from hundreds of constituencies around the country.

Multi-party systems:

• It is easier to form effective governments in electoral democracies when there are fewer parties. When there are too many parties and too many contradictory points of view to be accommodated within a coalition, governance can break down.
  • The 1990s witnessed political uncertainty in India due to the lack of a clear mandate in the general elections. Recently, Israel had to undertake multiple rounds of elections to form a government.

Intraparty democracy:

• There is a lack of intraparty democracy in most political parties of the day.
• Political parties when not internally democratic, serve as means for self-aggrandising politicians to amass power and wealth as a result of which democracy as a whole suffers.

The temptation of direct democracy:

• Given the above-discussed challenges to representative democracy, it is tempting to abandon political parties and parliaments and revert to direct forms of democracy where every decision can be put directly to all citizens to vote on.
• New Internet technologies could provide relevant tools to make this possible.
• However, there are challenges with respect to direct democracy as well. If all voters have not understood what is at stake, they cannot decide well and they could be guided by emotions rather than objective facts and figures. Complex issues, where many interests collide, must be resolved by reason, not settled by the numbers.
  • The article quotes Brexit as an example of the hasty results of a referendum.

The Way forward:

Addressing the existing concerns:

• Electoral funding must be cleaned up. The criminalization of politics must be ended and democracy within political parties must be improved to make representative democracy work better.
• Electoral reforms are essential.
• This will require appropriate legislation and their strict enforcement by the constitutionally backed institutions like the election commission and the judiciary.

Local governance and citizen participation:

• Local governance, wherein citizens manage their local affairs democratically is a must for a good, democratic governance system. There is a need for greater decentralization of powers and functions.
• Active citizen participation in the democracies would allow them to become the source of solutions to many problems in society.
• Given the familiarity with the local conditions, the locals will be able to take optimal decisions.
• Local systems solutions will be effective even in solving global systemic problems of environmental sustainability and inclusive growth.

I. UPSC Mains Practice Questions

1. Despite the previous attempts made at the decentralization of power in India, strong local governance remains the unfinished agenda to make India’s democracy stronger and deeper. Comment. (10 marks, 150 words)(GS paper 2/Polity and Governance)
2. Given the historically dynamic nature of international relations, evaluate the need for India to abandon its non-alignment policy and consider aligning more closely with the U.S. to meet the immediate threat posed by an assertive China. Are there any challenges or concerns associated with such an approach? (15 marks, 250 words)(GS Paper 2/International Relations)

Read the previous CNA here.