CURRENT AFFAIRS – 26/07/2023

Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Chinese President Xi Jinping reached a “consensus” to restore bilateral ties during their meeting in Bali last year, said China, the first time either side has suggested that the meeting between the two leaders at a dinner had included any substantial conversation.

The claim was made in a Chinese Foreign Ministry statement issued after a meeting between National Security Adviser (NSA) Ajit Doval and his counterpart Director of theCentral Foreign Affairs Commission of the Communist Party of ChinaWang Yi in Johannesburg, where both advisers are attending the BRICS meeting of NSAs.

The Indian statement on the Doval-Wang meeting did not include any reference to the claim, and instead focused on the continuing Line of Actual Control (LAC) stand-off that Mr. Doval said had “eroded” the “public and political basis” of the ties.

Opposition parties belonging to the Indian National Developmental, Inclusive Alliance, or INDIA, plan to move a no-confidence motion against the Narendra Modi government in the Lok Sabha on Wednesday to force the Prime Minister to speak on Manipur unrest.

As only 13 working days of the Monsoon Session are left and the Lok Sabha Speaker can take up to 10 days to admit a no-confidence motion as per procedure, the Congress is keen on moving the motion on Wednesday morning. The party’s leader in the Lok Sabha, Adhir Ranjan Chowdhury, confirmed the same to a news agency.

The document seeking the motion is ready, and the Congress issued a three-line whip, asking all its Lok Sabha members to be present, for a parliamentary party meeting at 10.30 a.m. on Wednesday.

Before that, floor leaders of the 26 parties of the INDIA bloc will meet at the office of the Congress president and Leader of the Opposition in the Rajya Sabha, Mallikarjun Kharge, as a no-trust motion needs the support of at least 50 or more members to be adopted in the House.

Informed sources told The Hindu that the move to bring a no-confidence motion was first discussed at a meeting chaired by Mr. Kharge on Monday and thereafter, he broached the issue with other INDIA constituents on Tuesday morning at the floor leaders’ meeting.

These INDIA parties also hit back at Mr. Modi for comparing them to the British East India company, with Mr. Kharge saying Mr. Modi is “rattled”. “Call us whatever you want, Mr. Modi. We are INDIA. We will help heal Manipur and wipe the tears of every woman and child. We will bring back love and peace for all her people. We will rebuild the idea of India in Manipur,” tweeted Congress leader Rahul Gandhi.

Amid the growing confrontation between the government and the Opposition, Union Home Minister Amit Shah wrote to the Opposition leaders of both Houses, stating the government was ready for an elaborate discussion on Manipur and appealed to them for their cooperation.

However, the stage seems to be set for more confrontation instead of cooperation. Congress leaders Manish Tewari and Syed Nasser Hussain, at a joint press conference, accused the Prime Minister of “committing grave impropriety”.

“The PM speaking about Manipur outside the House a few minutes before the Monsoon Session was about to commence is an instance of grave parliamentary impropriety. This impropriety has been further aggravated by his not speaking a single word on Manipur in Parliament,” they said.

(with inputs from Vijaita Singh)

India has embraced four priority areas for the circular economy during its G-20 presidency: circularity in the steel sector; Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR); circular bioeconomy and establishing an industry-led resource efficiency and circular economy industry coalition. There is now heightened recognition of resource efficiency and circular economy strategies within the G-20 community.

Most G-20 member countries have committed to net zero ambitions and are working to mitigate greenhouse gas emissions. In order to ensure growing resource consumption in an environmentally responsible manner, there is also a need to raise the current recycling rates of 15%-25%. Given the crucial role of steel in infrastructure development, its efficient utilisation is important. The demand for steel is poised to grow especially in growing economies such as India. Globally, about 7% of energy sector emission is attributed to iron and steel production. Transitioning towards a circular steel sector is a key strategy to tackle steel sector emissions. The key lies in ensuring collaboration among the G-20 member countries for knowledge sharing, technology co-development and technology transfer. The presidency document for knowledge exchange on the ‘Circular Economy in [the] Steel Sector’ is a potential blueprint for a net zero pathway for the steel industry, reducing resource utilisation and minimising wastage. Under India’s G-20 presidency, there is an emphasis on the significance of the EPR framework in integrating circularity throughout the value chain. As different countries have implemented different EPR models, it is necessary that G-20 member-countries share best practices to accelerate the transition to a circular economy.

Effective implementation of EPR plays a pivotal role in promoting the growth of the recycling infrastructure and establishing a streamlined waste collection system. With over 20,000 registered Producers, Importers, and Brand Owners (PIBOs) and over 1,900 plastic waste processors on the centralised EPR portal, India boasts one of the largest frameworks for EPR. The combined EPR obligation of registered PIBOs crosses 3.07 million tons. India has also notified comprehensive rules for e-waste and battery waste management.

Since 1970, the consumption of biological resources in G-20 member countries has risen 2.5 times. Biowaste such as municipal and industrial waste and agricultural residue has become a global issue as much of it is burned, causing pollution, biodiversity loss and global warming. Combined with crops well-suited for degraded lands, biowaste can serve as valuable primary raw materials and viable substitutes for mineral resources. Adopting a circular bioeconomy approach will reduce the need for extracting virgin resources and provide an effective waste disposal solution.

The Government of India has been working towards the adoption of biofuels. The Pradhan Mantri JI-VAN Yojana provides financial support to integrated bio-ethanol projects to set up second generation (2G) ethanol projects. 2G bioethanol technology produces bioethanol from waste feedstock such as crop residues and municipal solid waste that would otherwise have no value. Additionally, India has also made it mandatory for coal-burning thermal power plants to use a 5% blend of biomass pellets along with coal. The Galvanizing Organic Bio-Agro Resources (GOBAR) Dhan scheme was launched by the Government of India to convert cattle dung and other organic waste into compost, biogas, and biofuels to promote sustainable agriculture and reduce pollution. With over 500 functional biogas plants, the scheme has also helped create rural livelihoods and ensured improved sanitation. The Sustainable Alternative Towards Affordable Transportation (SATAT) Scheme, launched in 2018 to promote the use of Compressed BioGas (CBG) as an alternative green transportation fuel, has aided the bioenergy sector by accelerating the development of infrastructure for the production, storage and distribution of CBG.

As industries are crucial in advancing resource efficiency and circular economy practices, India has envisioned an industry coalition in these areas. The coalition will also aim to achieve enhanced technological collaboration, build advanced capabilities across sectors, mobilise de-risked finance, and facilitate a proactive private sector engagement.

Global platforms such as the G-20 play an important role in addressing key issues and presenting solutions by adopting a collaborative approach. Resource efficiency and circular economy have emerged as key solutions in collective efforts in tackling triple planetary challenges. India’s G-20 presidency has focused extensively on these approaches which offer promising pathways towards a more sustainable and resilient future.

In the last one month, at least three different High Courts have either quashed First Information Reports (FIRs) and pending criminal proceedings or acquitted accused persons under the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences (POCSO) Act, 2012. One High Court released the accused on bail on the grounds that the accused and victim had consensual sex.

On July 12, the Delhi High Court released a 25-year-old accused on bail on the premise that the 15-year-old girl had eloped with him on her own and did not support the prosecution’s story of sexual assault. On July 10, the Bombay High Court quashed the conviction of a 25-year-old man under POCSO on the grounds that he had consensual sex with the 17-year-old girl. The girl had terminated her pregnancy after the arrest of the accused. On July 7, the Madras High Court not only quashed an FIR registered under POCSO and consequential criminal proceedings, but also directed the Director General of Police to produce the reports of all such pending cases before the Court. On June 27, the Madhya Pradesh High Court quashed an FIR registered under POCSO and all criminal proceedings on the basis that the sexual relationship was consensual. The judgment did not mention the age of the accused (who used to be her coach). The Court recommended that the Indian government consider reducing the age of consent of the prosecutrix from 18 to 16 years. The relevant sections of the Indian Penal Code (IPC) were also applied in these cases.

A ‘child’ under POCSO is defined as any person below the age of 18 years. Acts of penetrative sexual assault committed on children are criminal offences under POCSO. The purpose of defining ‘child’ under POCSO, and of the provision under Section 375 of the IPC (sexual intercourse, whether with or without her consent, is rape if she is under 18 years of age), is to safeguard children against penetrative sexual assault irrespective of their consent, which could even be unequivocal and voluntary. Otherwise, the third part of Section 90 of the IPC, which provides that consent is not consent “unless the contrary appears from the context, if it is given by a person who is under 12 years”, was sufficient to interpret consent for a child of any age.

An analogy can be drawn with the Scheduled Castes and the Scheduled Tribes (Prevention of Atrocities) Act, 1989, where, if certain prohibited acts are committed with the knowledge of the caste of the victim, intention does not have to be proved separately. The provision was made specifically to safeguard vulnerable groups. Similarly, if children are to be treated as a separate and vulnerable category, consent should be of no avail if the accused had knowledge of the victim being a child.

However, in the cases cited above, the High Courts neither honoured the age of consent nor took any cognisance of the mandatory legal presumption in favour of the prosecutrices. Even the difference between the age of the prosecutrix and the age of the accused, which ranged up to 10 years, was not taken into account. Though there are recommendations from various sources to reduce the age of consent from 18 to 16 years, the case where the victim was 15 years was also not paid heed to.

If all ‘consensual sex’ cases are to be quashed by the judiciary, what will be the bottom line age of consent and who will set that boundary? Can the objective of POCSO be softened and allowed to boil down to Section 90 of the IPC (which is general in nature) where consent of a child who is even less than 12 years of age be admitted? Can such interpretations be said to be in the ‘best interests of the child’? In two of the above four cases, minor girls had become pregnant and terminated their pregnancy. Did the courts examine whether these girls really understood the consequences of early pregnancies?

The High Courts have not declared any provision of the IPC or POCSO unconstitutional. Therefore, quashing the cases of consensual sex may not lead to any less work for the police; they will still have to register FIRs whenever a child goes missing or a cognisable offence is reported either by parents or any other third party and proceed with their investigation.

One of the reasons, inter alia, for the reluctance of courts to convict accused persons in consensual sex cases could the harsh minimum imprisonment, which is 10 years and 20 years for penetrative sexual assault and aggravated penetrative sexual assault, respectively. Instead of proving to be a deterrent, this appears to be benefiting the accused. The Bureau of Police Research and Development could analyse the cases of consensual sex (as has been directed by the Madras High Court), age-wise, across States and help the Central government in taking a decision of reducing the age of consent based on that study. One solution could be to reduce the age of consent with some leverage allowed to the judiciary to interpret consent in cases of the victim being of lower age based on the child’s understanding of consequences. The caveat of the ‘best interest of the child’ would be necessary.

While reducing the age of consent is within the jurisdiction of Parliament, the Supreme Court must step in to quickly resolve the gap between the laid down law (as understood by the investigating agencies) and the different interpretations by the High Courts. This acquires importance in light of the Supreme Court judgment in Independent Thought v. Union of India (2017) wherein it held that even sexual intercourse with a minor wife is rape.

Full-reserve banking, also known as 100% reserve banking, refers to a system of banking where banks are not allowed to lend out money that they receive from customers in the form of demand deposits. Demand deposits are deposits that customers can withdraw from the bank at any point in time without any prior notice. So, under full-reserve banking, banks are mandated to hold all money that they receive as demand deposits from customers in their vaults at all times. In this case, banks simply act as custodians to depositors’ money and may charge a fee from depositors for the service of safekeeping that they offer to the depositors. This is in contrast to today’s banking system in which banks pay interest to customers on their demand deposits. In other words, under full-reserve banking, banks are expected to hold reserves backing 100% of their liabilities in the form of demand deposits. This is to ensure that banks can successfully meet redemption demands from depositors, and thus avoid a run on the bank even if all depositors someday decide to come asking for their money at the same time.

Under a full-reserve banking system, banks can only lend money that they receive as time deposits from their customers. Time deposits are deposits that customers can withdraw from the bank only after a certain period of time that is agreed upon between the bank and its customers. This arrangement gives banks the time to lend these deposits to borrowers at a certain interest rate, collect repayments from the borrowers, and finally repay depositors their money along with a certain amount of interest.

In the banking system that exists today, also known as the fractional-reserve banking system, banks predominantly do not lend money in the form of physical cash. So the cash deposits that they receive from their customers, whether as demand deposits or as time deposits, mostly stay in their vaults. Still, banks face the risk of a depositor run for a different reason — banks lend more money than the cash they have in their vaults. This is made possible because most lending to various borrowers happens in the form of electronic money. A bank that wants to lend money can simply open a loan account in its books under the name of a certain borrower and credit the account with electronic money equivalent to the loan amount. In fact, the value of such electronic loans created by banks out of thin air can turn out to be many times the actual amount of cash in the banks’ vaults. So, if borrowers decided to withdraw in the form of cash all the money that was loaned to them electronically by the bank, the bank may be forced to use all the cash deposits that it received from depositors to meet the demand for cash and still be unable to meet the demand for cash. This can cause a run on the bank as the bank has created loans far exceeding the amount of actual cash in its vaults.

However, bank runs rarely happen for a number of reasons. For one, most transactions in today’s economies happen through checks and other non-cash instruments which ensure that the demand for cash remains minimal. So, banks rarely face the imminent risk of a large number of their customers suddenly showing up at their door demanding cash from their accounts immediately. Secondly, central banks bail out banks by providing them with any emergency cash that they may need to meet a sudden rise in the cash demands of customers.

Under a full-reserve banking system, however, banks are prohibited from creating loans without actual cash in their vaults to back these loans.

In fact, some economists have argued that it should be considered as fraudulent practice if a bank issues loans without the necessary cash in its vaults to back their loans. Supporters of fractional-reserve banking, however, believe that full-reserve banking unnecessarily restricts bank lending. They believe that allowing banks to create loans without the necessary savings to back these loans can help spur investment and economic growth.

In other words, proponents of fractional-reserve banking believe that such banking frees the economy from having to rely on real savings from depositors to finance the huge investments required to fuel growth.

Proponents of full-reserve banking argue that it is the only natural form of banking and that it can prevent the various crises that affect today’s fractional-reserve banking system. Since banks will be allowed to make loans to borrowers only out of their time deposits and since they will be legally forced to keep demand deposits in their vaults to meet depositor demands for cash, the chances of a bank run would be negligible under a full-reserve banking system. Supporters of full-reserve banking also argue that since banks will not be able to create money out of thin air in a full-reserve banking system, their influence on the economy’s money supply will become severely restricted. This, they argue, will prevent artificial economic booms and busts that are said to be the consequence of changes in money supply.

The Lok Sabha on Tuesday passed the Biological Diversity (Amendment) Bill, 2021 amid sloganeering by Opposition members demanding that Prime Minister Narendra Modi make a statement on the Manipur violence. The Bill aims to amend the Biological Diversity Act, 2002.

“In the 20 years since the Act was brought into force by the Vajpayee government, we have seen that there were problems and it was necessary to address them,” Bhupendra Yadav, Minister for Environment and Forests and Climate Change, said. “To ensure that tribes and vulnerable communities benefit from the proceeds of medicinal forest products, these amendments were necessary. By decriminalising certain activities, we are encouraging Ayurveda as well as ease of doing business.”

The amended Bill was drafted in response to complaints by traditional Indian medicine practitioners, the seed sector, industry and researchers that the Act imposed a heavy “compliance burden”.

The Bill sought to exempt registered AYUSH medical practitioners and people accessing codified traditional knowledge, among others, from giving prior intimation to State biodiversity Boards to access biological resources for certain purposes.

Environmental organisations such as Legal Initiative for Forests and Environment (LIFE) have said that the amendments were made to “solely benefit” AYUSH (Ayurveda, Yoga and Naturopathy, Unani, Siddha and Homeopathy) firms and would pave the way for “bio piracy”.

The Bill decriminalises a range of offences under the Act and substitutes them with monetary penalties.

An analysis by the Centre for Science and Environment and the Down To Earth magazine on how the Biodiversity Act was being practically implemented, showed serious shortcomings. There was no data — barring in a few States — on the money received from companies and traders for access and benefit-sharing from use of traditional knowledge and resources.

A Joint Parliamentary Committee was constituted in December 2021 to analyse the amendment Bill.

Congress spokesperson Jairam Ramesh, who was a member of the committee, in a letter addressed to other members and BJP MP Sanjay Jaiswal, committee chairperson, said that these exemptions could open the law for abuse.

On a day when India’s first President from the tribal community, Droupadi Murmu, completed one year in office, the Rashtrapati Bhavan on Tuesday got a unique gallery dedicated to tribal arts, culture and heroes.

The gallery, which is around 2,200 square feet in area, has been developed by the Indira Gandhi National Centre for Arts, an autonomous institution under the Union Culture Ministry.

Ms. Murmu took over as the 15th President of the country last July and is the first from the tribal community. She hails from a small village, Uparbeda in Odisha, and had worked as a teacher.

The new gallery ‘Janjatiya Darpan’ (tribal mirror) was inaugurated by Ms. Murmu at the Rashtrapati Bhavan.

The gallery showcases different themes such as unsung tribal freedom fighters, traditional natural resource management practices such as Halma, tribal art such as Dokra, musical instruments and various scripts such as Gunjala Gondi.

It also houses agricultural and household implements, bamboo baskets, textiles, paintings such as Warli, Gondi and mud art, scrolls, masks and jewellery, metal work, weapons, and contemporary photographs depicting tattoos.

“The aim of this gallery is to provide a glimpse of rich art, culture and the contributions of tribal communities in building this nation,” a Rashtrapati Bhavan statement said.

Sources in the IGNCA said that the gallery was created within a short span of 10 days.

The President also inaugurated ‘Navachara’, an artificial intelligence-enabled gallery developed by the Rashtrapati Bhavan, in collaboration with Intel India and ‘Sutra-kala Darpan’, a textile collection which showcases a collection of textiles that document the illustrious legacy of the Rashtrapati Bhavan.