Daily Current Affairs for UPSC CSE
Topics Covered
- SC decision on Farm Laws
- Kalapani Dispute between India and Nepal
- Adultery Law
- U.S. strategic framework for the Indo-Pacific’ from 2018
- Working Group on Digital Lending
1 . SC decision on Farm Laws
Context : The Supreme Court on Tuesday stayed the implementation of three controversial farm laws, calling its order “extraordinary” and a “victory for fair play”.
Background
- Farmers have been protesting for months against the Centre’s three new farm laws.
- Several rounds of negotiations between the Centre and farmers had produced no results, even as senior citizens, women and children among the protesters were exposed to serious health hazards posed by the cold and COVID-19. Deaths, not due to violence, but either of illness or by way of suicide, had occurred already.
About the News
- The stay on their implementation means the Centre cannot, for the time being, proceed with any executive actions to enforce the laws.
- The court formed a four-member committee of experts “to listen to the grievances of the farmers on the farm laws and the views of the government and make recommendations”.
- The committee consists of Bhupinder Singh Mann, National President, Bhartiya Kisan Union and All India Kisan Coordination Committee; Dr. Parmod Kumar Joshi, agricultural economist, Director for South Asia, International Food Policy Research Institute; Ashok Gulati, agricultural economist and former chairman of the Commission for Agricultural Costs and Prices; and Anil Ghanwat, President, Shetkari Sanghatana.
About the Laws
- The laws are: The Farmers’ Produce Trade and Commerce (Promotion and Facilitation) Act, The Essential Commodities (Amendment) Act and The Farmers (Empowerment and Protection) Agreement on Price Assurance and Farm Services Act. – Details of the Laws already covered under Current Affairs
2 . Kalapani Dispute between India and Nepal
Context : The Kalapani territorial dispute is expected to be “raised” by Nepal during the Joint Commission meeting to be held here during the visit of Foreign Minister Pradeep Kumar Gywali this week, but there will be no “border talks”
About the News
- The visit, which was announced by Prime Minister K.P. Sharma Oli will instead focus on the Joint Commission agenda, which includes a broad spectrum of development project
- According to officials the boundary issue that erupted last year over Nepal’s decision to include Indian territories in its map, would be handled separately only when the designated Foreign Secretary-level mechanism, which is agreed upon bilaterally, meets.
Background
- The bone of contention is the Kalapani-Limpiadhura-Lipulekh trijunction between Nepal-India and China (Tibet).
- Located on the banks of the river Kali at an altitude of 3600m, the Kalapani territory lies at the eastern border of Uttarakhand in India and Nepal’s Sudurpashchim Pradesh in the West.
- India claims the area is part of Uttarakhand’s Pithoragarh district, while Nepal believes it to be part of its Dharchula district. Matters came to a boil earlier this year, when India opened an 80-km road linking Uttarakhand with Lipulekh, across the disputed piece of land.
Historical Background of the issue
- The issue in itself goes back to the early 19th century, when the British ruled India and Nepal was a conglomeration of small kingdoms under the reign of King Prithvi Narayan Shah.
- The single image most strongly associated with the history of modern Nepal is surely that of Prithvi Narayan Shah of Gorkha, girded for battle, a look of determination in his eyes and his right hand pointed skywards.
- Shah is believed to be the most ambitious ruler among the Gorkhas, under whose rule in the late 18th century, Nepal was unified, its domains stretching out as far as Sikkim in the East and the Garhwal and Kumaon region of Uttarakhand in the West.
East India Company
- By the second decade of the 18th century, the English East India Company (EIC) too had acquired a formidable presence in the subcontinent, and had strengthened its main bases in Madras, Calcutta and Bombay.
- By the early 19th century, as the EIC began expanding its territories northwards in Awadh, it came into close proximity with Palpa, an independent town within the Nepalese heartlands. Soon after, a border dispute arose between the two powers.
- The Nepalese were also proving to be a hindrance in allowing the British to realise their trade ambitions with Tibet.
- On November 1, 1814, the British declared war on Nepal. The war went on for the next two years, involving a series of campaigns.
- In 1815, the British general, Sir David Ochterlony, managed to evict the Nepalese from Garhwal and Kumaon. A year later, the war came to an end with the signing of the Sugauli treaty.
Sugauli Treaty
- The treaty delimited the boundaries of Nepal, as it stands today.
- Treaty “required Nepal to give up all territories west and east of its present-day borders, to surrender the entire Tarai and to accept a permanent British representative (or ‘resident’) in Kathmandu”.
- The fifth article of the treaty stated: “The Rajah of Nepal renounces for himself, his heirs, and successors all claim to or connection with the countries lying to the west of the river Kali and engages never to have any concern with those countries or inhabitants thereof.
- Consequently, the river Kali marked the western border of Nepal.
- However, there is no clear consensus on what is the precise location of the river Kali, giving rise to the dispute over whether the land consisting Kalapani-Limpiadhura-Lipulekh is part of present day India or Nepal.
- While some scholars suggest that the lack of consensus is due to the shift in the course of the river over time, there are others who say that the British cartographers in the consequent years kept shifting the line demarcating the river eastwards for strategic reasons.
Nepal’s Argument
- According to Nepal “since no map attached with the Sugauli Treaty counter signed by both the agreeing parties has come to light, the only way to ascertain the correct location of Kali is to examine the existing maps of the period.”
- According to them, up until the year 1857, all maps produced by British cartographers suggest that the origins of the Kali river lies in the Limpiadhura pass.
- “But in the period between 1857 and 1881, a subtle but deliberate attempt to misname the river Kali got under way
- Nepal Geographers maintain that the cartographic move on the part of the British was ‘unauthorised’, ‘unilateral’, and ‘without any agreement with the government of Nepal’.
- Hence Nepal’s case is that the river originates from a stream at Limpiyadhura, north-west of Lipu Lekh. Thus Kalapani, and Limpiyadhura, and Lipu Lekh, fall to the east of the river and are part of Nepal’s Far West province in the district of Dharchula.
- The dispute over the location of the river, and consequently that of the territoriality of Kalapani, was first raised by the Nepalese government only in 1998.
- Even when Indian military units occupied the Kalapani area during the Sino-Indian war of 1962, Nepal did not raise an objection. Nepal virtually ignored the Kalapani issue from 1961 to 1997
- Accordingly, the Nepalese government contended that the western border of the country be shifted 5.5 km westward to coincide with the borders as decided in the treaty of Sugauli.
India’s Arguments
- Officials in India claim that revenue records dating back to the 1830s show that Kalapani area has traditionally been administered as part of the Pithoragarh district.
- British India conducted the first regular surveys of the upper reaches of the river Kali, in the 1870s.” Accordingly, a vintage map of the 1879 shows Kalapani as part of India.
- The Indian government has held that the 1879 map is what should be considered in deciding the borders between the two countries rather than the maps before the period which are held up by Nepal.
- These differences amount in reality to differences in the maps that each country possesses, which is further exacerbated by the shifting course of the Mahakali river in the area that was earlier accepted as the boundary
- In the course of the last several decades, the border issue has come up on several occasions, and despite repeated negotiations, the two countries have failed to reach a consensus.
- Hence New Delhi’s position is that the Kali originates in springs well below the pass, and that while the Treaty does not demarcate the area north of these springs, administrative and revenue records going back to the nineteenth century show that Kalapani was on the Indian side, and counted as part of Pithoragarh district, now in Uttarakhand.
3 . Adultery Law
Context : The Supreme Court on Wednesday admitted a petition filed by the Ministry of Defence (MoD) seeking to exempt armed forces personnel from the ambit of a Constitution Bench judgment of 2018 that decriminalised adultery.
About the News
- A three-judge Bench led by Justice Rohinton Fali Nariman said the plea had to be considered by a Constitution Bench because the original verdict, striking down Section 497 (adultery) of the IPC, was pronounced by a five-judge Bench in September 2018. The court referred the case to the Chief Justice to pass appropriate orders to form a five-judge Bench to clarify the impact of the 2018 judgment on the armed forces.
- The government said in the petition that personnel of the Army, Navy and the Air Force were a “distinct class”. They were governed by special legislation, the Army Act, the Navy Act and the Air Force Act.
- Adultery amounted to an unbecoming conduct and a violation of discipline under the three Acts. The special laws imposed restrictions on the fundamental rights of the personnel, who function in peculiar situation requiring utmost discipline.
- The three laws were protected by Article 33 of the Constitution, which allowed the government to modify the fundamental rights of the armed forces personnel. The judgment of 2018 created ‘instability’. It allowed a personnel charged with carrying on an adulterous or illicit relationship to take cover under the judgment.
- One of the chief reasons given by the government for seeking exemption is, incidentally, that “there will always be a concern in the minds of the Army personnel who are operating far away from their families under challenging conditions about the family indulging in untoward activity.
Background
- Adultery law in India is defined by the Indian Penal Code Section 497.
- IPC Section 497 states, “Whoever has sexual intercourse with a person who is and whom he knows or has reason to believe to be the wife of another man, without the consent or connivance of that man, such sexual intercourse not amounting to the offence of rape, is guilty of the offence of adultery.”
- Section 497 also states that a man found guilty of adultery “shall be punished with imprisonment of either description for a term which may extend to five years, or with fine, or with both.”
- In cases of adultery, the wife shall not be punishable as an abettor.
- Similarly, an unmarried woman can not be prosecuted for adultery. The offence of adultery is, according to Section 497, committed by a man against a married man.
- The adultery law has been criticised for treating women as property owned by men.
- In the event of a man committing adultery by means of sexual intercourse with a married woman or an unmarried woman, this law does not confer any right on the man’s wife o prosecute the adulterous husband or the woman with whom the husband has indulged in sexual intercourse with.
- Simply put, only a man can be a victim or accused/culprit under the reading of Section 497 of the IPC.
Who challenged the law?
- Last August, Joseph Shine, a 41-year-old Indian businessman living in Italy, petitioned the Supreme Court to strike down the law. He argued that it discriminated against men by only holding them liable for extra-marital relationships, while treating women like objects.
- “Married women are not a special case for the purpose of prosecution for adultery. They are not in any way situated differently than men,” his petition said.
- The law, Mr Shine said, also “indirectly discriminates against women by holding an erroneous presumption that women are the property of men”.
What did the judges say?
- All five Supreme Court judges hearing the case said the law was archaic, arbitrary and unconstitutional.
- According to the judgeent husband is not the master of wife. Women should be treated with equality along with men. Ancient notions of man being perpetrator and woman being victim no longer hold good”. Law “perpetuates subordinate status of women, denies dignity, sexual autonomy, is based on gender stereotypes”.
4 . U.S. strategic framework for the Indo-Pacific’ from 2018
Context : With days to go before its end, the Trump administration has declassified a sensitive document on the U.S. strategic framework for the Indo-Pacific’ from 2018. The 10-page document — which does not come with any surprises — outlines objectives and strategies with regard to China, North Korea, India and other countries in the Indo-Pacific region.
Key Observation about India in the report
- With regard to India, one of the ‘desired end states’ of the U.S.’s strategy is for the U.S. to be India’s preferred partner on security issues and for the two countries to “cooperate to preserve maritime security and counter Chinese influence” in Southeast Asia and other regions of “mutual concern”.
- The U.S. aims to help India become a net security provider in the region, solidify a lasting strategic partnership with India “underpinned by a strong Indian military able to effectively collaborate with” the U.S and its regional partners. These objectives it plans to achieve via enhanced defence cooperation and interoperability; working with India “toward domestic economic reform” and greater leadership roles for India in the East Asia Summit and ASEAN Defence Ministers’ Meeting Plus.
- Consequently, the U.S.’s to-do list has on it offers of support to India via military, diplomatic and intelligence channels “to help address continental challenges such as the border dispute with China and access to water, including the Brahmaputra and other rivers facing diversion by China.
- The U.S. also seeks to bolster common principles, including the peaceful resolution of disputes and the transparent infrastructure-debt practices (a reference to alternatives to financing by China’s Belt Road Initiative which has led to untenable debt positions in borrowing countries), as per the Indo Pacific strategy.
- The U.S. aims to support India’s “Act East” policy and “its aspiration to be a leading global power, highlighting its compatibility with the U.S., Japanese and Australian vision” of the Indo-Pacific, as per the document.
- “A strong India, in cooperation with like-minded countries, would act as a counterbalance to China,” is one of the underlying assumptions of the strategy, which expects Chinese military, economic and diplomatic influence will continue to increase in the short term.
5 . Working Group on Digital Lending
Context : The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) has constituted a working group on digital lending — including online platforms and mobile apps — to study all aspects of digital lending activities in the regulated financial sector as well as by unregulated players. This is to ensure that an appropriate regulatory approach is put in place.
Terms of Reference of the committee
- The working group will evaluate digital lending activities and assess the penetration and standards of outsourced digital lending activities in RBI regulated entities; identify the risks posed by unregulated digital lending to financial stability, regulated entities and consumers; and suggest regulatory changes to promote orderly growth of digital lending.
- It will also recommend measures for expansion of specific regulatory or statutory perimeter and suggest the role of various regulatory and government agencies. It will also recommend a robust fair practices code for digital lending players.
Benefits of Digital Lending
- Digital lending has the potential to make access to financial products and services more fair, efficient and inclusive. From a peripheral supporting role a few years ago, FinTech-led innovation is now at the core of the design, pricing and delivery of financial products and services
- While penetration of digital methods in the financial sector is a welcome development, the benefits and certain downside risks are often interwoven in such endeavours,” the RBI said.
Issues with Digital Lending
- Reports of individuals and small businesses falling prey to growing number of unauthorised digital lending platforms.
- Excessive rates of interest and additional hidden charges being demanded from borrowers
- Adoption of unacceptable and high-handed recovery methods
- Misuse of agreements to access data on the mobile phones of the borrowers.
Conclusion
A balanced approach needs to be followed so that the regulatory framework supports innovation while ensuring data security, privacy, confidentiality and consumer protection,” banking regulator added.