VisionIAS
07:52
Friday, December 20, 2019
The HINDU Notes – 19th December 2019
VisionIAS
07:17
📰 Are fears over the Citizenship (Amendment) Act misplaced?
To reassure Indian Muslims, the PM needs to state that the govt. will not conduct an exercise like NRC
•A day after asserting at an election rally that those “creating a storm” against the Citizenship (Amendment) Act (CAA) can be “identified by their clothes itself”, Prime Minister Narendra Modi tweeted that “no Indian has anything to worry regarding this Act”. It is unfair to dismiss without careful consideration the government’s claim that Indians have nothing to fear from the CAA. Not even its critics can deny that all that the CAA does is to offer a benefit: citizenship. It does not take away anything from anyone. And, it offers the benefits of citizenship to persecuted religious minorities from Afghanistan, Pakistan and Bangladesh.
•True, it doesn’t offer this benefit to persecuted Ahmadiyyas or Shias from these countries. It is discriminatory towards persecuted non-Indians who are Muslims. But what has that got to do with Indians, or Indian Muslims, for that matter? As has been pointed out umpteen times by Home Minister Amit Shah, the CAA doesn’t even refer to Muslims. So why is it being said that this law targets Indian Muslims?
No CAA without NRIC
•For an answer, we don’t need to look beyond the Home Minister’s own statements. Mr. Shah has repeatedly underscored two things: one, he will implement the National Register of Indian Citizens (NRIC), extending the NRC exercise conducted in Assam to the rest of India; and two, the sequence is all-important: he will implement the CAA first, and only after that, the NRIC.
•Put simply, the CAA is a safety net that will ensure, and insure, the citizenship of all Hindus, Sikhs, Christians, Buddhists, Jains and Paris — not just the lakhs of Hindus classed as “illegal migrants” by the Assam NRC, but also others all over India who might be categorised as “foreigners” when the NRIC is implemented. The citizenship of all of them will first be secured through the CAA, and only then, after all non-Muslims are protected with requisite citizenship-related documentation, will the all-India NRC or NRIC be implemented. If there is no NRIC, there would be no need for the CAA either. The NRIC’s objective is to divide the people domiciled in India into two categories: citizens and “illegal migrants”. The CAA’s objective is to pre-emptively rescue, prior to the NRIC exercise, the citizenship of all Indians except those whose religion finds no mention in the CAA.
Threat of omission
•It’s simple arithmetic: add all the religious groups under threat of exclusion by the NRIC (Hindus, Buddhists, Muslims, Sikhs, Jains, Christians, Parsis). Subtract from this set all the religious groups secured by the CAA (Hindus, Buddhists, Sikhs, Jains, Christians, Parsis). We are left only with Muslims as the remainder. They will be the only community excluded from the ‘legislative benevolence’ of the Indian state as incarnated in the CAA. Ready to be scooped up, like so many gasping fish, by the NRIC net.
•Every Indian who is puzzled by the intensity of the anti-CAA protests sweeping the country needs to answer a few simple questions: What happens when, after Hindu, Sikh, Buddhist, Jain, Parsi and Christian residents of India who are excluded by the NRIC are granted citizenship, thanks to the CAA, only Muslim “non-citizens” remain? Will these stateless people be sent to detention camps? Or will they be accorded an inferior status in a hierarchy of citizenship where non-Muslims occupy a higher position?
•Even if the government were to announce that it won’t implement the CAA, the very existence of this legislation is a danger to the social fabric of the country, for it is a tremendous enabler of hate speech. The world’s foremost experts on Genocide Prevention consider hate speech the prime harbinger of genocide. “The Holocaust did not start with the gas chambers. It started long before with hate speech,” observed Adama Dieng, the UN Secretary General’s Special Adviser on Prevention of Hate Speech, on Prevent Genocide Day this month. As a political tool, the CAB-NRIC combo has the potential to encourage hate speech, especially at election time. As an administrative tool, it weakens constitutional safeguards against genocidal machinations, which could prove deadly in the unlikely event of the world’s largest democracy mutating into a majoritarian state sympathetic to such machinations.
Exclusionary precedents
•There is ample historical precedent for exclusionary citizenship laws and the ends they served. The Reich Citizenship Law of 1935 stripped German Jews of their citizenship, and everyone knows what came after. Closer home, the 1982 Citizenship Law in Myanmar rendered Rohingya Muslims stateless, despite the fact that they were indigenous to the Arakan region. Myanmar is currently facing charges of genocide at the International Court of Justice.
•Assurances by the government that “no Indian will lose citizenship” are to be welcomed. But anti-CAA protesters are convinced that under the CAA-NRIC regime, sections of Muslims will cease to be “Indians” anyway. Once they lose their citizenship, the government can still claim that no “Indian” has lost citizenship, for it is the government which decides who is an Indian and who isn’t.
•If it is indeed the case that all fears about the CAA are misplaced, and it is only “vested interests” that are misleading the nation, then it is easy for the Prime Minister to dispel such misapprehensions. Instead of blandly insisting that “not a single Indian will lose citizenship”, he only needs to declare categorically that the government will never, ever conduct anything like the NRIC. And he must repeat this assurance in every election rally, tweet it out, and reiterate it in his radio address. Can he do so? If he cannot, or will not, then what does that say of the intent behind the CAA?
📰 The rhetoric and reality of capital punishment
Daily Current Affairs, 19th December 2019
VisionIAS
07:05
1) Chennai Corporation launches India’s first waste exchange platform
•The Madras Waste Exchange, which is both a web portal and an application, has been conceptualised by the Smart City Mission, with support from the Union Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs.
2) GST Council fixes 28% uniform tax rate for lottery
•It was for the first time that the GST Council resorted to voting to decide on an issue as it fixed a uniform tax rate on both state and private lotteries. The GST Council also decided to exempt upfront amount payable for long term lease of industrial and financial infrastructure plots by an entity having 20% or more ownership of Central or State Government.
3) 50% concession for ‘Ek Bharat Shreshtha Bharat’ participants
•The concession has been granted as a special case and it is admissible only in the normal train services and not for booking of Special Trains or Coaches. This concession will be provided on production of requisite certificate in the prescribed railway format from the Secretary of concerned Department of Human Resource Development of various States.
4) Odisha Govt. launches ‘Jalsathi’ programme
5) Govt approves Rs 436 cr outlay for skilling 4 lakh persons
6) India and US sign defence tech transfer pact during 2+2 dialogue
•India and the US have a common vision of a free, seamless and peaceful Indo-Pacific region. India has bought weapons worth more than $15 billion from the United States over the past decade as it seeks to replace its Russian-origin military and is in talks for helicopters, armed drones and a bigger Indian plan for local production of combat planes together worth billions of dollars.
7) National conference on ‘Uniformed Women in Prison Administration’ begins
•In this Conference, uniformed women officers and staff of all the states from Jail Wardens up to Director Inspector Generals level, members of non-governmental organizations, representatives of academic institutions and officers of other government departments are taking part in the conference. At present, there are more than 900 uniformed women government servants working in the state jail department.
8) “Environmental Sustainability and Economic Development” Summit held in Delhi
9) Thawarchand Gehlot launches Braille version of ‘Exam Warriors’
•The book will surely benefit visually-impaired students who face mental stress during examinations. It will boost the confidence level of these students and help them get success in various competitive exams.
10) Dehradun hosts Conference of Presiding Officers of Legislative Bodies
11) Anti-hijacking exercise conducted in Kochi port
•Apharan was aimed at streamlining the response mechanism/preparedness to thwart any attempt by anti-national elements to hijack a merchant’s vessel or attempt forced entry of a rogue/commandeered merchant vessel into the Kochi harbour.
12) S. Mandhana in ICC’s ODI and T20 team of the year
•Mandhana has played 51 ODIs and 66 T20Is for India, besides a couple of Test matches. She has combined tally of 3476 runs in T20Is and ODIs.
Thursday, December 19, 2019
GS SCORE Current Affairs December 2019 Week 3 PDF
VisionIAS
07:38
GS SCORE Current Affairs December 2019 Week 3 PDF
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THE HINDU NEWSPAPER IMPORTANT ARTICLES 19.12.2019
Wednesday, December 18, 2019
The HINDU Notes – 18th December 2019
VisionIAS
19:05
📰 Time to defend India’s secularism
The Citizenship (Amendment) Act has imperilled the nation’s constitutional values, and no one can afford to be silent
•India’s secular structure faces a profound crisis. The Citizenship (Amendment) Act, 2019, must be rejected for three reasons. First, it is against the letter and spirit of our Constitution. Second, it is divisive, deeply discriminatory and violative of human rights. Third, it seeks to impose the politics and philosophy of Hindutva, with its vision of a “Hindu nation”, on our entire people and on the basic structure of our polity. Our constitutional values are in peril, and no person who has faith in our democracy can afford to be silent and uninvolved in what is happening around us.
Against common citizenship
•Let us understand each of these three points. The first is that the Citizenship (Amendment) Act is against the letter and spirit of our Constitution. Articles 5 to 11 of the Constitution deal with citizenship, and the Citizenship Act, 1955, lays down criteria for citizenship based on birth, descent, registration, naturalisation, and citizenship by incorporation of territory. By setting new criteria, the Citizenship (Amendment) Act goes against the premise of common citizenship regardless of differences of caste, creed, gender, ethnicity and culture. Further, Article 14 of the Constitution lays down that the “State shall not deny to any person equality before the law or the equal protection of the laws within the territory of India”. It bears emphasis that Article 14 applies not only to citizens but to “all persons within the territory of India”.
•What do we mean by the spirit of the Constitution? We associate the drafting of our Constitution with the rich debates of the Constituent Assembly, and the wisdom of its members, amongst whom Babasaheb Ambedkar stands tall. It is often not recognised, however, that it was the heroism of millions of unsung freedom fighters that made our Constitution a reality. These men and women, who came from the working class, peasantry, and socially marginalised groups — whatever their religious persuasion — challenged the colonial authorities in their struggle for human rights and economic justice. This struggle had broader aims than the overthrow of colonial rule. These torchbearers of modern Indian history played a crucial role in creating the demand for social justice, and a Constitution with democratic and secular values in a society in which discrimination and inequality were deeply ingrained. Although the framing of the Constitution did not mark the end of the struggle for civil liberties and for an egalitarian society, it, nevertheless, was a milestone in our history.
•Our freedom fighters were also conscious that theirs was a struggle for a society free of caste and religious deprivation and discrimination, and free of the deep social and economic inequalities that characterise Indian society. This was true of the manifestos of the Left from the early 1920s; this aspiration was also reflected in the resolution of the Karachi session of the Indian National Congress in 1931, held after the execution of Bhagat Singh and his comrades. Confronted by the radical mass upsurge of the time, the Congress passed resolutions on the freedom of speech, press, freedom of assembly, freedom of association, and equality before the law.
•The national movement in British India was further strengthened by movements in the erstwhile princely States. Our forebears dreamt of an independent India where communal prejudice would be alien to the polity. It is not surprising that the threat to those parts of our Constitution that defend secularism, democracy, social equality, federalism, and individual and social diversity, should come from that section of the polity that did not participate in the freedom struggle. The surrender to British imperialism by the precursors of today’s forces of Hindutva, is a chapter of India’s history that is cast in stone. No amount of denial can change that unheroic past.
Violative of rights
•Our second point is that the Citizenship (Amendment) Act is divisive, deeply discriminatory and violative of human rights. As I have written before, our national unity was won through struggle; the Citizenship (Amendment) Act is one of the many threats to its survival. Our hard-won Constitution recognises individual and social differences, and that we must weave the cord of unity by creating a sense of belonging and inclusiveness for all.
•The Citizenship (Amendment) Act attempts to create and deepen communal division and social polarisation in the country. The Act gives eligibility for citizenship to Hindus, Sikhs, Buddhists, Jains, Parsis and Christians from Afghanistan, Bangladesh and Pakistan who entered India on or before December 31, 2014, and specifically excludes Muslims from that list. In granting citizenship on the basis of religion, it discriminates against Muslims and rejects the basic concept of secularism.
•That the Citizenship (Amendment) Act is discriminatory and violative of human rights has been recognised by those who have come out on the streets in many States, in opposition to the Act. It is noteworthy that university and college students figure so prominently in the upsurge against the Act. Though pushed through in the Lok Sabha and the Rajya Sabha by the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and its allies, these young citizens of India have come together — much as students did during the anti-colonial struggle — to reject the attempt to divide India along religious lines. They have denounced this Act as discriminatory and violative of human rights.
The Right’s agenda
•Our final point, that the agenda of Hindutva and its ultimate goal of establishing a “Hindu Nation” underlie the Citizenship (Amendment) Act, is well established both by past experience and the present actions of the BJP-Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh. We mentioned earlier the absence of the forces of Hindutva from the freedom movement. It was in this period that M.S. Golwalkar propounded his theory of India as a “Hindu Nation,” where other religious communities had no rights of citizenship. The Citizenship (Amendment) Act is the latest blow by the BJP to the secular nature of our polity.
•When the Left has been in Government we have made every effort to use the machinery at our command to preserve communal harmony; elsewhere, we have organised the masses to ensure such harmony.
Notes from Kerala
•Kerala’s struggle for secularism and social equality has much to teach us. Historically, the different strands of Kerala’s social renaissance and, subsequently, the forces of the Left and other progressive sections, fought hard against social discrimination and communalism, and for social and economic equality.
•All political parties and social groupings of different types in Kerala, other than the parties and organisations of Hindutva, have come together against the Citizenship (Amendment) Act. The peaceful satyagraha held in Thiruvananthapuram on December 16, attended by political parties, religious leaders, and cultural leaders is a symbol of our united determination to uphold constitutional values and basic human rights, and to oppose discrimination.
•We cannot postpone our protest and united resistance against this assault on secularism and democracy.
📰 Defence ties to get push at ‘2+2’ with U.S.
The HINDU Notes – 17th December 2019
VisionIAS
19:00
📰 Climate of inaction: On UN climate change conference
India should not take comfort from its status as a low per capita carbon emitter
•If climate change is the defining issue of the century, the UN conference in Madrid failed miserably in galvanising action to address it. This year’s outcome is all the more depressing because nearly 200 delegates representing rich and poor countries had the benefit of new scientific reports from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change warning of near-certain catastrophic consequences of inaction, and an analysis from the UN Environment Programme on the gap between current greenhouse gas emissions and the limit over the coming decade. Eventually, in Spain, the Conference of the Parties to the Paris Agreement, degenerated into an unproductive wrangle over establishing a market system to trade in carbon credits earned through reductions in emissions, with some countries eager to cash in on poorly audited emissions savings from the Clean Development Mechanism of the Kyoto Protocol that preceded the Paris pact. Such horse trading stands in contrast to the real losses from extreme weather events that climate-vulnerable countries, India included, are facing with frightening regularity: even insured losses worldwide during 2017 and 2018 together stood at a record $225 billion, while the bulk of destruction had no such risk cover. These dire data should have imbued the climate negotiations with urgency and purpose, but the final declaration was desultory, merely expressing serious concern at the emissions gap in seeking to limit temperature increase to 1.5° C.
•Climate negotiators might have tossed the more intractable questions — raising $100 billion a year from 2020 for developing countries, creating a strong framework to address loss and damage from climate events and transferring technology to poorer countries on reasonable terms — to the next conference a year later, but they cannot avoid rising pressure from civil society in several countries for concrete action. One of the models that will be closely studied is the Green Deal that has been announced by the European Commission, with binding targets for member nations to cut emissions by at least 50% by 2030 and go net zero by 2050. This approach could potentially make the EU the leader in global climate action, a position that the U.S. never adopted, and China will take longer to aspire for. India’s own status as a low per capita carbon emitter offers little comfort as its overall emissions are bound to grow. With a low base compared to other major nations, it may well achieve its initial voluntary targets under the Paris Agreement, but a shift away from fossil fuels is inevitable in the longer term. As it prepares to face calls for higher ambition in 2020 and beyond, India has to involve its States in mitigation and adaptation efforts. Death and destruction by frequent storms, floods and droughts should lead to urgent cohesive action.
📰 The widening fissure in India’s rule of law
