Daily Current Affairs for UPSC CSE
Topics Covered
- President’s Address
- Information Technology Agreement (ITA)
- India justice report 2020
- Patharughat Peasant uprising
1 . President’s Address
Context : Backing farmer protests, Oppn to boycott President’s address
History & precedent
- In the United Kingdom, the history of the monarch addressing the Parliament goes back to the 16th century.
- In the United States, President Gorge Washington addressed Congress for the first time in 1790.
- In India, the practice of the President addressing Parliament can be traced back to the Government of India Act of 1919. This law gave the Governor-General the right of addressing the Legislative Assembly and the Council of State. The law did not have a provision for a joint address but the Governor-General did address the Assembly and the Council together on multiple occasions.
- There was no address by him to the Constituent Assembly (Legislative) from 1947 to 1950.
- And after the Constitution came into force, President Rajendra Prasad addressed members of Lok Sabha and Rajya Sabha for the first time on January 31, 1950.
Constitutional Provision
- The Constitution gives the President the power to address either House or a joint sitting of the two Houses of Parliament.
- Article 87 provides two special occasions on which the President addresses a joint sitting.
- The first is to address the opening session of a new legislature after a general election.
- The second is to address the first sitting of Parliament each year.
- A session of a new or continuing legislature cannot begin without fulfilling this requirement.
- When the Constitution came into force, the President was required to address each session of Parliament. So during the provisional Parliament in 1950, President Prasad gave an address before every session.
- The First Amendment to the Constitution in 1951 changed this position and made the President’s address once a year.
- The Constitution states that the President shall “inform Parliament of the cause of the summons
- The speech that the President reads is the viewpoint of the government and is written by it.
- The government uses the President’s address to make policy and legislative announcements.
Procedure & tradition
- In the days following the President’s address, a motion is moved in the two Houses thanking the President for his address.
- The Prime Minister replies to the motion of thanks in both Houses, and responds to the issues raised by MPs.
- The motion is then put to vote and MPs can express their disagreement by moving amendments to the motion.
- Opposition MPs have been successful in getting amendments passed to the motion of thanks in Rajya Sabha on five occasions (1980, 1989, 2001, 2015, 2016). They have been less successful in Lok Sabha.
- The President’s address is one of the most solemn occasions in the Parliamentary calendar. It is the only occasion in the year when the entire Parliament, i.e. the President, Lok Sabha, and Rajya Sabha come together.
2 . Information Technology Agreement (ITA)
Context : The Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) is looking to restart manufacturing and export of electronic goods under the multination Information Technology Agreement (ITA)
What is the ITA?
- The original Information Technology Agreement (ITA) was reached on 13 December 1996, through a “Ministerial Declaration on Trade in Information Technology Products”, at the first WTO Ministerial Conference, held in Singapore.
- As the first and most significant tariff liberalization arrangement negotiated in the WTO after its establishment in 1995, it led to the elimination of import duties on products which in 2013 accounted for an estimated US$ 1.6 trillion, almost three times as much as when it was signed in 1996.
- The ITA covers a large number of high technology products, including computers, telecommunication equipment, semiconductors, semiconductor manufacturing and testing equipment, software, scientific instruments, as well as most of the parts and accessories of these products.
- Subscribed initially by 29 members, participation quickly increased at the beginning of 1997 when a number of other members decided to join the Agreement.
- ITA now covers 81 WTO members, which account for approximately 97 per cent of world trade in information technology products.
- The ITA requires each participant to eliminate and bind customs duties at zero for all products specified in the Agreement.
- Because the ITA concessions are included in the participants’ WTO schedules of concessions, the tariff elimination is implemented on a most-favoured nation (MFN) basis. This means that even countries that have not joined the ITA can benefit from the trade opportunities generated by ITA tariff elimination.
India and Information Technology Agreement
- India joined the ITA in 1997, it could not scale up electronic manufacturing or export under the scheme due to the lack of a suitable ecosystem.
- In a meeting of the WTO in 2012, India had highlighted the skew of the domestic ecosystem of electronics and related component manufacturing by arguing that each vertical was dominated by a handful of companies, most of which were foreign. This, India had then said at the WTO, was a huge barrier for entry of new companies and prevented large scale participation in the innovation process.
- Domestic companies had, as late as 2015, flagged the issue of viability and competition they faced from global electronic manufacturing giants.
- Subsequently, however, with the introduction of electronics manufacturing and production-linked incentive schemes, the number of domestic as well as foreign companies making electronic products have increased significantly
3 . India justice report 2020
Context : Second annual survey on police, prisons, judiciary and legal aid India Justice Report, released was released
About the Report
- The report analysed expenditure, vacancies, representation of women and members of SC, ST and Other Backward Classes, across 18 large and mid-sized states with a population of over 1 crore and eight smaller states.
- The report was an initiative of Tata Trusts, along with the Centre for Social Justice, Common Cause, CHRI, DAKSH and TISS-Prayas and Vidhi Centre for Legal Policy.
Details of the Report
- At 25.3 per cent, Bihar leads the list of 25 states for employing most women in its police force, The state finished ahead of Himachal Pradesh (19.2%) and Tamil Nadu (18.5%). However, although it is the only state to have more than 20 per cent women in the police force, women account for only 6.1 per cent in the officer category. Tamil Nadu, the report says, has the highest percentage of women police officers (24.8%) , followed by Mizoram (20.1%).
- On diversity, Karnataka is the only state to meet its quotas for SC, ST and OBC in both officer cadre and constabulary, Chhattisgarh being the only other state that meets the diversity requirements for constabulary.
- The lack of representation of women as judges in high courts is telling. Sikkim tops the list with 33.3 per cent women – Sikkim High Court has just three judges, one being a women. Overall, only 29 per cent judges in HCs across the country are women, but no state except Sikkim has over 20 per cent women judges. Of the rest, Andhra Pradesh tops the list with 19 per cent, followed by Punjab and Haryana, where the common HC for the two states has 18.2 per cent women judges.
- Four states — Bihar, Uttarakhand, Tripura and Meghalaya — have no woman judge in its high courts.
- Despite the low figures, women’s representation has marginally increased in police, prisons and the judiciar
- Women account for 10 per cent of all police personnel, up from 7 per cent in January 2017; 13 per cent prison staff (10% in December 2016); 29.3% of judges (26.5% in 2017-18).
- Overall, Maharashtra retained the top spot on delivery of justice to people among 18 large and mid-sized states, followed by Tamil Nadu, Telangana, Punjab and Kerala.
- The report also noted that an overwhelming two-thirds of all prisoners are undertrials awaiting a conviction.
4 . Patharughat Peasant uprising
About Patharughat Peasant uprising
- Twenty five years before the Jallianwallah Bagh massacre, more than a hundred peasants fell to the bullets of the British on January 28, 1894 in Assam.
- The unarmed peasants were protesting against the increase in land revenue levied by the colonial administration, when the military opened fire.
What led to the Patharughat uprising?
- After the British annexation of Assam in 1826, surveys of the vast lands of the state began. On the basis of such surveys, the British began to impose land taxes, much to the resentment of the farmers.
- In 1893, the British government decided to increase agricultural land tax reportedly by 70- 80 per cent. “Up until then the peasants would pay taxes in kind or provide a service in lieu of cash,”
- Across Assam, peasants began protesting the move by organising Raij Mels, or peaceful peoples’ conventions.”
- Despite these gatherings being democratic, the British perceived them as “breeding grounds for sedition”. “So whenever there was a Raij Mel, the British used to come down on it with a heavy hand to disperse them
- On January 28, 1894. when the British officers were refusing to listen to the farmers’ grievances, things heated up. “There was a lathi charge, followed by an open firing which killed many of the peasants present.”
- Official records, as mentioned in the Darrang District Gazette, 1905, placed the casualties in the Patharughat incident as 15 killed and 37 wounded.”
- However, unofficial sources claim it was a much higher number, around 140.
Why was the incident significant?
- For the larger Assamese community, Patharughat comes second only to the Battle of Saraighat, when the Ahoms defeated the Mughals in 1671. “It is extremely inspirational for the Assamese community, like a national awakening
- “It was a peaceful protest and a precursor to the Civil Disobedience movement, which was later propagated by Mahatma Gandhi.”
- It was “one of the few occasions in the history of the pre-Congress, pan-Indian anti-imperialist movement, when, in the absence of a well defined leadership, the masses organised themselves to resist the autocratic designs of the British.”
Note : Economic Survey will be covered separately