📰 First Quad Summit | Quad leaders for ‘open, free’ Indo-Pacific
Focus on vaccines, climate change, emerging tech makes group a force for global good, says PM Modi
•Members of the Quadrilateral Framework or ‘Quad’ will become “closer than ever before”, said Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Friday, in his address to the first ever leadership summit of the grouping.
•Addressing the virtual summit, Mr. Modi, President Joe Biden of the United States, Japanese Premier Yoshihide Suga and Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison highlighted cooperation among the member countries to beat the global COVID-19 pandemic, with joint partnership on vaccines, and emphasised the need for an “open” and “free” Indo-Pacific region.
•“We are united by our democratic values and our commitment to a free, open and inclusive Indo-Pacific. Our agenda, covering areas like vaccines, climate change, and emerging technologies make the Quad a force for global good. We will work together, closer than ever before on advancing our shared values and promoting a secure, stable and prosperous Indo-Pacific,” said Mr. Modi, who described the Quadrilateral Framework as an “important pillar of stability in the region.”
•The member nations agreed to ensure “equitable” access to vaccines to counter the pandemic. A joint statement, titled ‘The Spirit of the Quad’, said: “We will join forces to expand safe, affordable, and effective vaccine production and equitable access to speed economic recovery and benefit global health.”
•Addressing the meeting, President Biden emphasised that the Indo-Pacific region should be governed in accordance to human rights.
‘Big agenda ahead’
•“And we're renewing our commitment to ensure that our region is governed by international law, committed to upholding universal values and free from coercion. We’ve got a big agenda ahead of us,” said Mr. Biden.
•Addressing the gathering, Mr. Morrison laid out the agenda of the Quad in the near future and said, “We join together as leaders of nations to welcome, what I think will be a new dawn in the Indo-Pacific through our gathering.”
•Prime Minister Suga acknowledged the new dynamism that Quad has received because of the meeting of the top leaders of the member countries.
•“With the four countries working together, I wish to firmly advance our cooperation to realise, a free and open Indo Pacific, and to make a tangible contribution to the peace, stability, and prosperity of the region, including overcoming COVID-19,” he said.
•The ‘Quad’, has been taken to the “apex level”, said Foreign Secretary Harsh Vardhan Shringla during a special briefing on the leaders’ summit.
•“We are all committed to free and open, inclusive, secure and prosperous Indo-Pacific. Today’s summit adopted a positive vision to address contemporary issues with vaccine cooperation. Leaders agreed to strengthen, peace and stability in the Indo-Pacific region,” said Mr Shringla, who described the focus on the vaccines as the “most pressing”.
•He informed that Japan, U.S. and Australia will finance the vaccine initiative that India has welcomed.
•“We look forward to participating in the initiative whole-heartedly. During the discussion there was wholesome appreciation of the Vaccine Maitri initiative,” said Mr Shringla.
•The vaccine expert working group, a critical and emerging technology working group, and a climate working group for technology, capacity building and climate finance have been cleared during the summit. The Foreign Secretary also said the Quad leaders have agreed to meet in person during the coming months.
•“The Quad does not stand against anything, it stands for something,” said Mr Shringla, explaining that Quad is a value-based grouping that is trying to deal with the need for vaccines, climate change and other such issues. He informed that the issue of military takeover in Myanmar came up during the discussion among the leaders.
Fine amount will be recovered from their salaries
•The Rajasthan State Information Commission has adopted a tough stance against government officials showing negligence in providing information under the Right to Information (RTI) Act.
•The Commission has imposed fines on five officials of different departments and passed adverse remarks about their conduct.
•The Commission has ordered that the fine amount will be recovered from the salaries of the officials.
•Two officials of the Rural Development and Panchayati Raj Department were fined ₹15,000 each, one official was penalised ₹10,000, and two officials of the Local Self Government Department were told to pay ₹5,000 each.
•The weekly review of work by Chief Information Commissioner D.B. Gupta and penalisation orders have made an impact, ensuring compliance with the RTI Act.
•The Commission has laid emphasis on display of information by the departments and local bodies on their own.
No response to notices
•State Information Commissioner Lakshman Singh slapped a fine of ₹15,000 on the then Village Development Officer of Sata panchayat in Barmer district for not providing information to an applicant in 2018.
•The official did not respond to the Commission’s notices issued five times.
•The Commissioner also imposed a fine of ₹15,000 on the then Village Secretary of Koorna in Pali district for not providing information since 2018 and overlooking its notices. The Commission directed for providing information of 100 pages free of cost to the applicant. A similar order imposing a fine of ₹10,000 was passed against the Village Secretary of Bhakhri in Jodhpur district.
•Similarly, State Information Commissioner Narayan Bareth imposed a fine of ₹5,000 on the Secretary of Urban Improvement Trust, Kota. The then Executive Engineer of Asind municipality in Bhilwara district was also penalised ₹5,000 in two separate matters.
📰 Cut benzene emission at fuel outlets, says committee
Fix vapour recovery system to improve air quality, says NGT-appointed panel
•A joint committee appointed by the National Green Tribunal (NGT) to study air pollution in Kerala has recommended the installation of vapour recovery system at fuelling stations and retrofitting of diesel vehicles with particulate filters to improve air quality.
•The report submitted before the Southern Bench of the tribunal pointed out that petrol refuelling stations were a major source of benzene emissions, volatile organic compounds, and particulate matter 2.5 concentration. “Therefore, installation of vapour recovery system is an important step in improving air quality. This is to be implemented in coordination with the Petroleum and Explosives Safety Organization [PESO] shortly,” it said.
District wise analysis
•The joint committee comprises officials of the Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change, Central and State Pollution Control Boards, and the CSIR-National Environment Engineering Research Institute, Chennai. The committee was directed to assess the ambient air quality levels in the State, especially in Thiruvananthapuram, Kollam, Kochi, Alappuzha, Kozhikode, Thrissur, Kasaragod, and Kannur.
•The panel recommended stringent action against industrial units that do not comply with emission norms.
Diesel generators
•The Pollution Control Board has already suggested retrofitting of emission control devices of generators and replacing diesel generators with gas-based ones.
•Other recommendations include promoting battery-operated vehicles and banning old diesel vehicles in a phased manner, greening of open areas, and creation of green buffers along traffic corridors.
•The short term measures recommended include strict action against visibly polluting vehicles (to be initiated by the Motor Vehicles Department), introduction of wet / mechanised vacuum sweeping of roads, controlling dust pollution at construction sites, and ensuring transport of construction materials in covered vehicles.
Study in June
•The tribunal has asked the committee to assess the air quality in the post-pandemic phase to study the scenario when activities are expected to peak.
•The committee has said that the study could be held in June, anticipating that educational institutions may reopen, and public transport will return to normal.
📰 Stop illegal influx from Myanmar, Centre tells northeastern States
Letter to Chief Secretaries says States have no power to grant refugee status to any foreigner
•The Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) has written to the Chief Secretaries of Nagaland, Manipur, Mizoram and Arunachal Pradesh to “take appropriate action as per law to check illegal influx from Myanmar into India.” The directive comes weeks after the military coup and subsequent crackdown in the neighbouring country led to several persons crossing over into India.
•MHA reiterated that State governments have no powers to grant “refugee status to any foreigner” and India is not a signatory to the United Nations Refugee Convention of 1951 and its 1967 Protocol.
•More than a dozen foreign nationals including policemen and women from Myanmar have fled to neighbouring Mizoram fearing a military crackdown. The Tatmadaw, or Myanmar military, had taken over the country after a coup on February 1.
•India and Myanmar share 1,643 km border and people on either side have familial ties.
•In a letter dated March 10 to the four States and Assam Rifles , MHA said, “As you are aware, there is a probability of large scale illegal influx into Indian territory through IMB (India-Myanmar border) due to current internal situation in Myanmar. In this regard, MHA has already issued an advisory Dated 25.02.2021 to Chief Secretaries of Mizoram, Nagaland, Manipur and Arunachal Pradesh and also to Border Guarding Force(BGF) along IMB (Assam Rifles) to stay, alert and take appropriate action to prevent a possible influx into Indian territory.”
•The letter stated that it has been reported that “illegal influx from Myanmar has started.”
•It recalled the guidelines addressed to all States on August 8, 2017 “wherein instructions were issued to sensitize all law enforcement and intelligence agencies for taking prompt steps in identifying the-illegal migrants and initiate the deportation processes expeditiously and without delay.”
•It also mentioned another set of guidelines to States sent on February 28, 2018 “advising them to sensitize the law enforcement and intelligence agencies for taking appropriate prompt steps for identifying illegal migrants, their restrictions to specific locations as per provisions of law, capturing their biographic and biometric particulars, cancellation of fake Indian documents and legal proceedings including initiation of deportation proceedings as per provisions of law.”
•Manipur Chief Minister N. Biren Singh had told The Hindu in an interview on March 10 that they awaited instructions from the MHA as a large number of people from Myanmar attempted to cross over to India.
•A Free Movement Regime (FMR) exists between India and Myanmar under which every member of the hill tribes, who is either a citizen of India or a citizen of Myanmar and who is resident of any area within 16 km on either side of the Indo-Myanmar Border (IMB) can cross the border with a border pass (with one-year validity) issued by the competent authority and can stay up to two weeks per visit.
📰 Two bad options: On U.S. push for Afghan unity government with Taliban
Afghanistan’s leaders have to choose between war and sharing power with Taliban
•President Joe Biden’s push for an interim unity government in Afghanistan is a testament to his administration’s grim assessment of the situation in the war-torn country. In a letter to Afghan President Ashraf Ghani, which was first published by Afghanistan’s TOLOnews, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken has proposed a senior-level meeting between the government and the Taliban in Turkey and a multilateral conference of envoys from the U.S., Russia, China, Iran, India and Pakistan to discuss a lasting Afghan solution. The peace push comes at a time when the Biden administration is reviewing the U.S.’s Afghan strategy. According to the February 2020 agreement signed between the Trump administration and the Taliban, the U.S. is scheduled to withdraw its troops by May 1. The Taliban have warned they would step up fighting targeting the coalition troops should the U.S. fail to pull out by then. The Biden administration is understandably under pressure. There appears to be a consensus in Washington that there is no military solution to the crisis. The U.S. wants to get out of the longest war in its history. But as Mr. Blinken says in the letter, the U.S. worries that if its troops are out without a peace mechanism, the Taliban, which already controls much of the country’s hinterlands, could make “rapid territorial gains”.
•The U.S. seeks to stop this happening by proposing an interim “inclusive” government between the warring parties. Further, both sides should hold talks on the future constitutional and governance framework. Regional powers, including India and Pakistan, could play a decisive role in this transition as part of a UN-mandated multiparty peace process. This is a more inclusive approach than what the Trump administration did. Under Mr. Trump, the U.S. held direct talks with the Taliban excluding the Afghan government. And after reaching a deal, the U.S. put pressure on the Afghan government to release prisoners, but failed to get any concessions from the insurgents on reducing violence. Even when Afghan government representatives and the Taliban were holding talks in Doha, Qatar, Afghanistan continued to witness violence. The Biden administration does not seem to have faith in the Doha talks, which, even after months, failed to achieve any breakthrough. After 20 years of war, the Afghan leadership does not have any good options to end the conflict. If the Biden administration decides to stick to the Taliban deal and pull back troops, there is no guarantee that the intra-Afghan talks would hold. The Taliban would rather try to take over the whole country using force. If the government accepts Mr. Biden’s proposal, Afghanistan’s elected leaders will have to share power with the Taliban and agree to amending the Constitution, which means some of the country’s hard-won liberties could be sacrificed. It is a choice between two bad options.
📰 Casting the Asian dice on a West Asia board
As the complicated nature of security across this geography changes, the Asian footprint is expected to only grow
•This month, a contingent of the Indian Air Force including fighter aircraft and over 120 personnel is, for the first time, in the midst of a multi-nation exercise hosted by the United Arab Emirates (UAE) named Desert Flag (March 3-27). Other than India and the UAE, Bahrain, France, Saudi Arabia, South Korea and the United States are also participating, offering an interesting view for New Delhi of the various geo-political intricacies at play in and around the West Asia region.
Complexities, Asia’s links
•West Asia is home to perhaps some of the most complex security conundrums of the modern times. The sixth edition of Desert Flag this year takes place as tensions between Iran and the U.S. peak. Also added into the mix is the signing of the Abraham Accords in September 2020 between Israel, the UAE and Bahrain, a more cordial and joint Arab-Israel dynamic predominantly designed to counter Tehran’s growing influence in the region, as seen through the wars in Syria and Yemen.
•While joint exercises in West Asia between Arab states and their western counterparts is common, the 2021 edition’s involvement of contingents from India and South Korea showcases the growing interests of Asian economies. As net importers of crude oil, these Asian economies rely heavily on the West Asian states for their supplies, and, by association, have increased stakes in the safety and security of the region from the perspective of political and economic stability. And more importantly, in the protection of vital sea lanes in areas such as the Strait of Hormuz, the Gulf of Aden and the Red Sea stretching out into the Arabian Sea and the wider Indian Ocean.
A fading U.S. hold
•To put the above in perspective, in April 2020, Saudi Arabia was India’s top supplier of oil followed by Iraq. For South Korea, in late 2019, it was also Saudi Arabia as the top supplier as both New Delhi and Seoul hedged their bets and diversified, with Russia and the U.S. entering as strong alternatives. The participation of both India and South Korea in these exercises in the Persian Gulf is reflective of these trends and growing concerns in Asian capitals over an eroding U.S. security blanket in the region. This is highlighted even further by the fact that January 2021 marked the first time since 1985 that the U.S. did not import oil from Riyadh (https://bit.ly/30DziDa), and this reality will be reflective in how Washington DC deals with West Asian politics in the years to come.
Iran and tensions
•Amidst these new realities, both India and South Korea have found themselves caught in regional tensions as the pressure on Iran to restart the 2015 nuclear agreement (Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, or JCPOA) increases, which the U.S. unceremoniously exited in 2018 under the indelible American presidency of Donald Trump. Both India and South Korea have faced carbon-copy consequences over the past decade as the West first negotiated with Iran, and later tried to manage the fallout of the JCPOA collapse.
•In 2013, an Indian oil tanker named MT Desh Shanti was confiscated near the Strait of Hormuz by Iranian forces and taken to the port of Bandar Abbas on the pretext of the ship violating environmental norms. This was also the time when Iran was under sanctions, and looking for oil payments from India, which New Delhi could not complete due to said sanctions. The Desh Shanti episode was seen as a pressure tactic by Tehran.
•Fast forward to January 2021; Iran confiscated a South Korean tanker, MT Hankuk Chemi, also from near the Strait of Hormuz, lugging the ship to an Iranian port, once again highlighting that the vessel was violating environmental norms. This came at a time when Tehran and Seoul were locked in an argument over billions of dollars’ worth of oil payments frozen due to sanctions against Iran over its nuclear programme.
India’s involvement
•The idea of Asian nations having to band together to protect their energy interests in West Asia is not new. Former Indian diplomats have even suggested an idea equitable to an ‘importers OPEC’, or Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries, led by Asian states which today have a much larger stake in West Asia’s oil than the West.
•India’s security footprint in West Asia has seen a steady increase, and energy security and safe passage of sea routes are one of the main driving factors. The Indian Navy has made multiple port calls from the UAE and Kuwait to Iran and Qatar in recent years. In 2020, India had also planned its first bilateral naval exercise with Saudi Arabia, which was postponed due to the novel coronavirus pandemic.
•This trend of an increasing Asian security interest and footprint is expected to only magnify in the years to come as the nature of security in West Asia changes itself. Regional states will become more responsible for their own security, and as Asian economies become stronger stakeholders, their geopolitics will become more visible across this geography.
📰 The new media rules are a tightening noose
What is worrying is the executive’s idea that users need to be protected against the very media that seek to inform them
•The Information Technology (Intermediary Guidelines and Digital Media Ethics Code) Rules, 2021, notified towards the end of February by the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology should not come as a surprise because it is of a piece with the systematic incremental erosion of the freedom of speech and expression that has marked the Bharatiya Janata Party’s rule under Prime Minister Narendra Modi. The fate, or the final shape, of the notification will depend on the way the two petitions already filed against it in courts in Kerala and Delhi are decided upon. But the more worrying aspect of this clumsily veiled move by the executive to keep the media — particularly the standalone digital news media, which have generally proved more defiant and inconvenient for the government than the mainstream press or television channels — on a leash is the way it invokes and insinuates the idea that the public, or the users, need to be protected against the very media that in fact seek to make them critically informed citizens, thereby making their democracy that much richer and deeper.
A redress mechanism
•For all appearances, the overarching intent of this new set of rules is to put in place a grievance redressal mechanism for the end user or consumer of social media and over-the-top (OTT) platforms and the digital news web portals. That, of course, would normally be an unexceptionable public purpose. But in an already vitiated climate of overweening political and religious majoritarianism, where the street tends to (and is often egged on to), whip up and aggressively nurse and drive a sense of outrage or hurt on any and every issue, irrespective of institutional procedures or safeguards, the nature and scope of the bulk of grievances can easily be imagined.
•Further, the smaller or medium-sized independent digital news and current affairs portals, which are for the most part struggling to stay afloat irrespective of whether they are newer startups or have been around for a few years, will be the ones hardest hit by this redress requirement. Any criticism of the ruling party or government could trigger an orchestrated avalanche of grievances. The notified rules set out an elaborate time-bound three-tier process whereby each and every such grievance is first handled at the level of the portal itself by its own grievance officer, and if not satisfactorily settled, passes on to the self-regulatory body of the sector or industry, and if yet not resolved, moves further up to an inter-ministerial oversight committee of the central government.
Regulation by the government
•The sheer process of such grievance handling can stymie the operations of a relatively smaller digital venture in the news and current affairs space. The process, further, makes a mockery of the concept of self-regulation, with an inter-ministerial committee of government officials in effect becoming an appellate authority over the self-regulatory exercise. This would be self-regulation by the media organisation and the industry at the government’s pleasure; regulation by the government masquerading as self-regulation by the news media entity or industry. What is worse, the notification gives the Secretary, Ministry of Information and Broadcasting, ad hoc emergency powers to block any content the government considers problematic even without such token procedure.
•Negation through distortion of the idea of self-regulation is really the nub of the matter, at least as far as the section pertaining to publishers of news and current affairs in the notification is concerned. Real or imagined grievance out there becomes an alibi for this clumsy sleight of hand whereby the government can in effect prescribe, oversee and overrule so-called self-regulation by the publishers. It would be a joke if it did not have such serious implications.
Poses a financial threat
•A measure like this, moreover, jeopardises the very sustenance of the already financially straitened and functionally beleaguered digital news media — unless that is the very intention. Monetisation avenues become scarce, and investors and brands run scared because of what they see as political considerations supervening upon business interests and a whimsical media policy regime in constant flux.
•What makes this notification seem more diabolic than ham-handed censorship is the buzz around the same time about confabulations between groups of ministers and journalists — some of them proactively furthering the ruling party’s ideology and agenda, some easily pliable, some perhaps unwary and unwittingly roped into the discussions — and the classification of the journalists by the BJP caucus involved in this exercise based on how cosy or distant they are seen to be to the establishment. It then seems to be part of a concerted move by the government to bring the more critical sections of the news media to heel.
Eroding pillars of democracy
•The case for organic self-regulation by the news media as against by an external authority or body becomes more focused and urgent in the context of this notification and the many anecdotal symptoms of a censorship mindset we see growing around us. It is important to take a step back and remind ourselves that the fourth estate, or the fourth pillar, is as much a player as the other three pillars — the executive, the legislature and the judiciary — in the separation of powers scheme of our constitutional democracy.
•Although the freedom of the press per se is not an explicitly prescribed fundamental right in the Indian Constitution, and is, rather, a derivative right from Articles 19(1)(a) and 19(1)(g) which give every citizen the right to free speech and expression, and to practise any profession respectively, these freedoms have in practice become constitutive and definitive of the fourth estate in the country. That fourth pillar of democracy must be in a dynamic relationship of checks and balances vis-à-vis the other three pillars: the executive, the legislature and the judiciary. It is a healthy tension among the four pillars that keeps the democratic edifice strong and vibrant.
•The fourth estate in India, though, has increasingly been at the receiving end of draconian executive acts, invocations of legislative privilege and judicial intolerance. If the fourth estate is to be treated by the executive as an inconvenience to be sidelined, surely the other pillars, the judiciary and the legislature, lay themselves open to the same fate. Already characterisations of democracy, like the illiberal democracy in Orbán’s Hungary or authoritarian democracy here at home, are intimations of the uncertainties ahead. Surely, the body blow delivered to our democracy by the Emergency of 1975-77 must be, more than a bad memory, a lesson at this conjuncture.
•At the risk of sounding tongue in cheek, this notification also begs the question as to why the government should go to such devious lengths to trammel press freedom when there are deadlier weapons in its armoury, including the archaic Sedition law and the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act, or UAPA, which it has shown little reluctance to use against critical voices.
Truth is getting unstuck
•The situation harks back to the beginning of 18th century England, when the idea of the press freedom that we take (or now no longer take) for granted was being fought and suffered for, and secured inch by inch. The mindset of the establishment then was on telling display in the observation of Chief Justice John Holt while giving sweeping powers to the authorities to invoke seditious libel: “If men should not be called to account for possessing the people with an ill opinion of the government, no government can subsist; for it is very necessary for every government that the people should have a good opinion of it.”
•To this flagrant belief could be traced the origins of truth not being allowed as a legal defence in a case of libel, which had such enormous consequences for truthful journalism. It took a very long time to change that premise and make truth a valid defence against libel. Now, again, truth seems to be coming unstuck as a value. This contentious notification takes it an absurd step further. A blatant measure of government regulation of the news media is sought to be passed off as self-regulation by that same news media. If that is not post-Truth, what is?
